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With Drake on the Spanish Main

by Herbert Strang · English · Gutenberg #38795 · 521,994 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: With Drake on the Spanish Main

Author: Herbert Strang

Illustrator: Archibald Webb


        
Release date: February 18, 2012 [eBook #38795]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38795

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITH DRAKE ON THE SPANISH MAIN ***




Produced by Al Haines










[Illustration: Cover art]





[Frontispiece: "The Spaniard swung round."]





WITH DRAKE ON THE

SPANISH MAIN


BY

HERBERT STRANG



ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR BY ARCHIBALD WEBB



LONDON

HENRY FROWDE

HODDER & STOUGHTON

1908




OXFORD: HORACE HART

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY



Copyright, 1907, by the BOBBS MERRILL COMPANY in the

United States of America




PREFACE

The romancer, in choosing as the setting for a tale the period of a man
who looms large in history, finds himself on the horns of a dilemma.
He cannot place his fictional near his historical hero without either
dwarfing the former until the young reader ceases to find him
interesting, or robbing the latter of some of the glamour with which
history invests him.

In the following pages I have tried to meet the difficulty by making
Francis Drake the presiding genius of the story.  The deeds of Dennis
Hazelrig are akin to those of Drake; the same spirit of adventure
dominates them: and when, in the course of the story, the real and the
fictitious personages meet, it is, I trust, without loss of dignity to
either.

HERBERT STRANG.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

JETSAM


CHAPTER II

SEA-GIRT


CHAPTER III

A WRECK--AND MIRANDOLA


CHAPTER IV

SALVAGE


CHAPTER V

THE EDGE OF THE MARSH


CHAPTER VI

THE SPANISH WHIP


CHAPTER VII

AMOS TURNPENNY


CHAPTER VIII

HALF-PIKES AND MACHETES


CHAPTER IX

AMOS TELLS HIS STORY


CHAPTER X

THE MAROONS BUILD A CANOE


CHAPTER XI

THE MAIN


CHAPTER XII

BENEATH THE WALLS


CHAPTER XIII

THE TAKING OF FORT AGUILA


CHAPTER XIV

VAE VICTIS


CHAPTER XV

A LONG CHASE


CHAPTER XVI

JAN BIDDLE, MASTER


CHAPTER XVII

THE DEMI-CULVERIN


CHAPTER XVIII

JUAN THE MAROON


CHAPTER XIX

DRAKE'S CAMP


CHAPTER XX

A RAID THROUGH THE FOREST


CHAPTER XXI

MAIDEN ISLE AGAIN


CHAPTER XXII

A FIGHT ON THE CLIFFS


CHAPTER XXIII

BOMBARDED


CHAPTER XXIV

THE LEAGUER OF SKELETON CAVE


CHAPTER XXV

THE MULE TRAINS


CONCLUSION




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LOI
"The Spaniard swung round"  _Frontispiece_.  _See p._ 78

Map of Maiden Isle

Dennis saves Mirandola

"Captain singled out Captain"

"The sailor threw up his left hand to ward off the attack"

"A shot fell immediately in their wake"

Map to illustrate Drake's adventures

"The seaman flung him bodily at the fourth Spaniard."
ELOI



CHAPTER I

Jetsam

Daybreak!  But, eastward, no glory of dawn.  Black thundrous clouds
roll sullenly across a livid sky, riven at moments by pale zigzags of
flame.  Rain tumbles in cascades.  League upon league of white-crested
waves chase one another in fury, hissing, roaring as they hurl
themselves upon a stubborn shore, only to be broken and thrown back
into the seething turmoil.  The wind outstrips them, shrieking as it
cleaves a way through the massed foliage, in mad haste to reach the
mainland and smite the yielding tops of Darien's palms and pines.

The shelving sandy beach is strewed with the jetsam of the storm.
Here, a tangled heap of seaweed, left by a breaker when, spent with its
own rage, it falls back baffled.  There, a log of wood, hard by
nameless creatures of the sea, destroyed by the fury of their own
element.  And here, high up the strand, beneath a bank overgrown with
large-leaved plants, lies a human form, huddled, motionless.

The waves do not touch it now; the storm has exhausted itself; the tide
is ebbing.  Minute by minute the sea becomes less boisterous; the strip
of sand widens; the rain ceases.  By and by the sun breaks through the
eastern sky, and, gathering strength, disperses the lingering clouds
and flings his radiance over the scene.  His beams, falling aslant
through a gap in the cliffs, strike upon the draggled form on the sand;
it stirs slightly, stretching itself as a leaf uncurls.  At last, when
the air quivers with heat, and all things lie under a shimmering haze,
Dennis Hazelrig heaves a sigh, opens his eyes, and looks amazedly about
him.

His eyes close; for some minutes he remains still; then he lifts
himself slightly, falls back with a gasp, and lies again as one dead.
But Nature is recovering under the beneficent rays.  Pigeons are cooing
in the branches above; parrots are screaming; insects drone their
burden; and when a mosquito, adventuring forth, alights on a human
cheek, and tastes, Dennis is stung once more into consciousness.  He
starts up, brushes the marauder away, staggers to his feet, and, to
prevent himself from falling, clutches at a tuft of grass in the
overhanging bank.  Its thin blade-like edge draws blood from his hand,
and he looks at the red stain as at some strange phenomenon.  Then he
laughs huskily, checks the sound as though it too is unfamiliar, and
laughs again--a short sobbing laugh.

"Certes, I am alive!" he mutters.


An hour or two passed before Dennis ventured once more to try his
tottering legs.  The sun's heat had dried his clothes, which, as he
ruefully observed, had been so rent by the buffeting waves that they
hung upon him precariously.  But in the same genial warmth his strength
was returning, and though all his body ached, he could now move without
a stagger.  Catching sight of some clams near him, he was conscious of
a vast emptiness within, and felt for the clasp-knife which he was wont
to wear slung about his waist.  It still hung upon its chain.  He had
opened and eaten, ravenously, a dozen of the shellfish before he
realized that after all his thirst exceeded his hunger, and he looked
round for a spring of fresh water.  He walked some paces along the
shore, groaning with every movement, until his ear caught the musical
ripple of a stream, and he saw a rivulet flowing across the sand from a
narrow water-course in the cliff.  In an instant he was down on his
knees, drinking his fill.

Refreshed with the draught, he rose and began to consider.  He was
alive: that was the first thing.  It seemed marvellous to him.  The
tornado had ceased.  Looking round, he could hardly believe that the
sea now so calm was the same sea which, but a few hours before, had
been a raging monster.  As far as the eye could scan it stretched away,
shimmering in the sunlight, only a white crest here and there giving
sign of its late disturbance.  Not a sail broke the line of the
horizon.  What had become of the _Maid Marian_ and her crew and his
companion adventurers on board?  Had they, had any of them, been cast
ashore like himself, on some other part of this strange coast?  If he
had escaped, why not others?  There was something cheering in the
thought, and instinctively he braced himself for a search when,
remembering that awful night--the amazing suddenness of the blast that
struck the bark, rending the sails like ribands, snapping the mainmast
like a reed, the tumultuous waves, the crashing thunder, the bursts of
lightning, the deluge that poured down from the heavens--as he
remembered these battling elements he shuddered involuntarily; could it
be otherwise than by a miracle that he had survived?

He lived over again his last conscious moments.  The mainmast had gone
by the board.  He heard the hoarse shout of Miles Barton the master,
calling upon the men to cut away the wreckage.  He was with them at the
task, struggling to keep his feet, when the gallant vessel staggered
under the onslaught of a tremendous sea, and he was swept off her deck.
He heard cries all around him, but could see nothing for the darkness
and the blinding rain.  Striving to keep his head above water, he felt
his strength failing, so puny was it against the might of the
passionate waves, when he encountered a floating spar, and clung to it
with the tenacity of despair.  After that he knew nothing.  His grip
must have relaxed, for the spar was not near him when he awoke to
consciousness on the beach.  Yet it seemed that this had been his
salvation.  He must have held to it until near the shore; then some
mountainous breaker had torn him away and hurled him to the spot where
he had lately opened his eyes again upon the world.

Hapless bark!  It was scarcely possible that she had survived the
hurricane.  And what of the souls on board with him?  What of Miles
Barton, the bluff sea-dog her master, and his cheery crew, and the
score of gallant gentlemen who had sailed out of Plymouth Sound but two
months before, gay, high-hearted adventurers for the Spanish Main?
Where was Sir Martin Blunt, the blithe captain of the band, and Philip
Masterton, and Harry Greville, and Francis Tring, all young men of
mettle, whom Dennis was proud to call his friends, and who, though but
little his elders in years, had seen and done things in the great world
that made him burn with envious admiration?  Alas! he could not but
fear that the sea had swallowed them.

But then again came the thought: might not Fortune have befriended them
too?  Why imagine the worst?  And Dennis thrust sad thought from his
mind; hope was not dead.  His meal had given him strength to search,
and search he would.

He looked about him.  The sandy beach was narrow.  It was overhung by
cliffs of varying height, in parts merely a low bank, in parts reaching
an altitude of perhaps forty or fifty feet.  They were covered with the
dense vegetation of the tropics.  Some distance to the north of where
he stood the receding tide had left bare a long ledge of massive rock,
running up into the highest part of the cliff.  To the south the shore
was less rocky, and within half a mile curved round to the east.  It
was in this direction that he decided to go.

But he had not walked far along the glistening sand when he suddenly
bethought himself.  Signs of life there had yet been none, save the
cries of birds from the trees above him.  But what if he came upon a
fishing village, and found himself among enemies--the wild red men of
whom he had heard, the Spaniards of whose terrible deeds returning
navigators made such grim tales for the winter nights at home?  Where
was he?  On some shore of the Caribbean Sea, he made no doubt, for only
the day before, when the _Maid Marian_ was sailing merrily westward,
Sir Martin had declared, and old Miles had borne him out, that but a
few more days would bring them to the point where they expected to meet
other adventurers who had preceded them on the same quest for
excitement and gain.

And Dennis halted as one dazed when the full sense of his calamity was
borne in upon him.  He was alone!--alone!  There might be, for all he
knew, thousands of people almost within hail of him; but he was none
the less alone, for they would be of another race, speaking another
tongue, unfriendly, hostile.  He sat down on a smooth rock and, resting
his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, stared moodily out
to sea.  Between him and all that he held dear stretched this wide
ocean for thousands of miles.  In utter hopelessness he wondered why it
had not swallowed him up with all his comrades, instead of casting him
here, a battered miserable body.

The mood passed.  He had escaped the perils of the sea, not by his own
strength, but by the hand of Providence.  If perchance he had more to
fear from man than from nature--why, it behoved him, an English boy,
and a Devon boy to boot, to face his destiny with a stout heart.  After
all, he was of the same stuff as Master Walter Raleigh and Master
Francis Drake and many another bold man of Devon.  He could not think
that any one of them, in his situation, would give way to black
despair; and, lifting his aching body from the shore, he walked on: he
would at least learn somewhat of his surroundings.

The beach, he found, bore gradually to the left, so that he could see
but a short distance ahead.  Still he encountered no signs of life,
save here and there a scuttling crab, and the rank plant growths above
him, whence now and again a bird fluttered out and wheeled screaming
about his head, and then soared clattering into the foliage.  Soon he
tired of this monotonous tramping over sand, which appeared to lead no
whither; and observing at length a cleft in the rocks, whence a shallow
stream swiftly poured itself upon the beach, he bethought himself he
might more quickly make a discovery if he pushed his way up the
water-course, which must by and by lead to higher ground.  He turned in
obedience to this impulse, waded through the stream, that wound this
way and that between banks thickly covered with vegetation, and after
what seemed an eternity to his aching limbs, found himself upon a cliff
overlooking the sea.  His wandering had brought him by a circuit to a
point north of the spot where he had awoke to consciousness.

The cliff on which he stood was much higher than the surrounding
country.  To right and left the ground shelved downwards, and he now
perceived that the coast on both sides had an inward trend; that, in
fact, the cliff was also a promontory.  Turning round, he found that
his view was blocked by the trees except in one direction, where a
sudden dip in the ground gave him an outlook over several miles.  And
there, surely, at the far end of the vista, was the sea again.  For the
first time the suspicion occurred to him that he had been cast upon an
island.

He went to the farthest point of the cliff to scan more carefully the
horizon.  Looking across the sea, which from the beach had seemed an
unbroken plain, he now saw in the far distance several dark vague
shapes rising a little above the surface.  These must be islands.  To
the north, somewhat nearer to him, and somewhat more definite, were
similar forms, which seemed to grow in size during the hour or more he
watched them, no doubt owing to the fall of the tide.  Far to the south
he descried a long dark bar upon the horizon; this must be land, many
miles away, probably the mainland.  His view to the east being almost
entirely shut out by the foliage, he could feel no certainty that his
suspicion was justified; but he felt a stirring of interest and
excitement now: supposing it were indeed an island, how did the
discovery bear upon his lot?

Once more he turned and gazed along the valley at whose end he saw the
sea.  It could not be many miles away; perhaps in an hour or so he
could reach it.  The island, apparently, was not a large one, so that
he could not go far without meeting its inhabitants.  He looked around
for any signs of habitation--a roof-top, a column of smoke; but there
was none.  Next moment he reflected that, if the island were small, it
would not take him long to make its circuit and search every yard of
the beach for tracks of his late comrades--of the _Maid Marian_ too.
Still cherishing a hope that some might have survived like himself, he
set off to descend the cliff towards the beach, every downward step
racking his bruised limbs and strained joints.  When he gained the
beach, he once more tramped southward, his eagerness lending him speed.
He passed the water-course up which he had struck inland, and soon
after came upon scattered articles of wreckage, among them the broken
topmast of the _Maid Marian_.  With a sigh for his lost comrades he
passed on.

The sun had risen high in the heavens, and Dennis was fain to rest.

"I'm a poor battered hulk," he said aloud, finding some little solace
in the sound of his voice, "and hungry--how hungry I am!"

He looked around for food, spied some shell-fish and ate them raw,
quenching the ensuing thirst at another stream that rippled down from
the interior.  The feeling of nervousness lest he should encounter
strangers again took hold upon him, and he felt a desire to hide.  He
found himself casting uneasy, almost terrified glances around him from
the nook in which he was now resting, somewhat sheltered from the sun's
fierce rays.  Then, conquering the feeling, he rose again to continue
his search of the beach.  He must by and by, he thought, come upon some
quay or harbour.  When he should see it, he would halt and consider his
course of action: whether to advance and risk the meeting with
strangers, or to retreat until with recovered strength and a clearer
mind he could prepare himself for what might be in store.

As he proceeded, he noticed that the jungle frequently approached to
within a few feet of the mass of weed that marked high-water.  At one
spot he discovered, almost buried in the sand, the worm-eaten
stern-post of a vessel.  He could distinguish one or two letters of her
name.  Many a ship, he doubted not, had been wrecked on this coast,
many a hapless wight had been cast up by the tide, alive or dead.  By
and by he came, on the southern side of the island, to high cliffs, and
he set about scaling that which offered the easiest ascent, to obtain a
view of sea and land from this point of vantage also.  It was densely
wooded, and as he mounted he heard, besides the cries of startled
birds, other sounds that struck uncannily upon his ear.  In his
weakened state any new note in these sounds set his nerves tingling,
and more than once he stopped, and could scarcely prevent himself from
turning and speeding back to the beach, where at least there was
nothing to cause him fresh tremors.

Near the top of the cliff the wood thinned away somewhat, and when he
reached its highest point he found himself on a stretch of greensward.
Northward the ground sloped gently down to a clump of trees, of a
species unknown to him, tall, with slender trunks, which it seemed to
him he could climb as easily as the masts on the _Maid Marian_.  He
made his way to them, half minded to swarm up the tallest of the group,
so that from its summit he might gain a view, possibly, over the whole
island, and solve the question that troubled him--whether somewhere
upon it there was a settlement of men.  Only when he reached the foot
of the trunk did he remember his weakness.  He stood leaning against
it, and gazing up its length felt that at present his muscles were
incapable of the feat.

All at once his eyes became fixed in his head.  Travelling to the top,
where a mass of foliage crowned the towering stem, they had lighted
upon a face, that seemed to be peering at him from between the leaves.
The feeling of fright that had before almost paralysed him seized him
again.  But next moment he laughed aloud.

"Ninny that I am!" he murmured.  "Afraid of a monkey!"

He looked again.  The monkey, a large long-tailed specimen of its kind,
was gazing at him gravely, with a look so human that it reminded him of
his old schoolmaster at Winchester.  With the sportive instinct of a
boy--Dennis was not yet seventeen--he stooped, picked up a stout piece
of fallen branch, and flung it upward.

"Stir, Sir Monkey!" he cried.  "I hail thee as the lord of this island!"

The wood struck the branch on which the monkey was perched.  Chattering
angrily, it flung its long arms around the branch above, and swung
itself up, resting there, blinking and showing its teeth at this
unmannerly intruder.

"A big fellow indeed!" said Dennis to himself.  "I will not climb.  If
the beast is angered, as he seems, he would be no mean foe in his high
perch.  I'll not try a bout with you, Sir Monkey.  For this time,
farewell!"

And he went on, smiling a little as he became conscious that the
meeting with the monkey had cheered him.




CHAPTER II

Sea-Girt

Besides the birds, and the ground animals which he heard at times
scurrying through the undergrowth, the sole inhabitant of the island
that Dennis had yet discovered was a monkey.  Though he was beginning
to suspect that his fears of encountering hostile human folk had been
needless, he still felt a timid reluctance to leave the coast-line for
the interior; and having given up for the present his idea of climbing
a tree to obtain a wider view, he contented himself with walking to the
top of the cliff, to continue his observations from that point.  His
native courage was returning; yet, as he mounted the cliff, he moved
for the most part under cover of the trees; the dread of possible
enemies still made him wary, though every now and then he forgot his
precautions, only remembering them again when the sense of his
loneliness forced itself upon him, or when he was momentarily startled
by a sudden sound.

Panting a little from his exertions when he gained the summit,
conscious of his bodily weakness, of bruised limbs and strained sinews,
he looked eagerly around.  Eastward stretched an illimitable expanse of
sea; he scanned it longingly, yet doubtfully, for while it was from
that quarter, or from the channel between the island and the mainland,
that he might hope for rescue from a friendly ship, it was thence also
that he might be descried perchance by an enemy.  He sat down on the
grass, once more yielding to the heavy sense of forlornness, and
thinking sadly of his lost companions.  How long he remained there he
knew not; his mind wandered a little: he thought afterwards that he had
probably slept, for he suddenly awoke to the consciousness of a gnawing
hunger.  He had walked far, and the few shell-fish he had picked up on
the shore gave but meagre sustenance.  Stiff and cramped, he rose to
search again for food.

There was nothing edible in his immediate neighbourhood.  The trees
sprang to a lofty height, and bore no fruit.  Plucking up his courage,
he made his way slowly down the slope towards the middle of the island.
The vegetation grew thicker as he proceeded; there was no path or road;
all was a wild tangle.  At first he saw nothing wherewith to ease his
pangs; never in his life had he taken a thought for his next meal; it
was a new experience.  Often enough at home he had plucked fruits as
they grew; he remembered with a strange homesick feeling many a boyish
depredation upon neighbouring orchards, out of sheer mischief, not from
a longing for food.  But there were no apple-trees or plum-trees here.
And when at last he came upon a broad-leaved tree upon which grew huge
clusters of a yellowish fruit, in shape like monstrous pea-pods, he
hesitated, wondering whether this might not be one of those evil trees
of which he had heard, one taste of which would turn his skin black,
and fire him with a raging thirst, and afflict him with a madness whose
end was death.  But his natural appetite would not be gainsaid.  With
hope and misgiving mingled he at last stretched up his hand and plucked
one of the tempting pods, and stripped off the skin, and nibbled a
morsel of the soft fruit within.  It was delicious; but so was the
devil's fruit of mariners' tales--the more delicious the more
poisonous.  Somewhat anxiously he waited; there was no change in the
colour of his skin; he watched it through the rents of his tattered
garments; and indeed it seemed to him that any change would be for the
better, for he perceived for the first time that he was already black
and blue with bruises.  He bit off another and a larger piece; then,
with the ravenous haste of one long fasting, he let prudence fly, and
ate the whole fruit, and another, and another, until he saw with
surprise and qualms that his feet were encircled by a ring of empty
skins.  But he felt astonishingly refreshed and invigorated; he must
eat one more; and thus, timorously and recklessly, he made acquaintance
with the banana.

Of water for drink there was abundance.  He drank gladly at a stream,
and wandered on.  It was strange that he no longer felt alone.  He saw
no man, nor any trace of one; he had become accustomed now to the
rustle of birds and the swish of four-footed creatures moving amid the
greenwood; what then caused him to look apprehensively around?  What
was this odd feeling of expectation that possessed him?  There was
nothing to account for it, and by and by the nervousness which had left
him during his search for food returned in greater force.  It was not
lessened when he suddenly became aware that the sun was setting.
Darkness, he knew, would soon envelop him, and there came with a rush
upon his mind the memory of his early childhood, when night, with its
silence, its blackness, had filled him with terror.  He felt that a
night in the solitude of these unfamiliar trees would be unbearable,
and, guiding himself by the sunset glow, he hurriedly plunged through
the jungle towards the shore.  There, under the open sky, he could feel
more at ease.

His course brought him to the beach on the southern side, where, in the
morning, he remembered having seen, though in his despondency he had
not heeded, a number of half-rotten staves of casks.  These might, he
thought, serve him for making a rude shelter.  He soon found the spot,
and then noticed, what had escaped his dazed observation before, that
close by the staves there lay a medley of stripped branches.  Had some
one, at some time, built himself of these materials a shelter in that
very place?  He gathered the stuff together and rigged up a crazy hut,
such as he had seen erected by shepherds on the moors of Devon.  The
day had been hot, but he knew from his experience on shipboard that the
nights were cold; already he felt a sharpness in the air, and shivered
in his tatters.  The hut would defend him somewhat from the chill of
night.

Another fear seized upon him with the approach of dark.  His mind had
been so occupied with thoughts of human enemies that the possibility of
the island harbouring wild beasts had not, in the daylight, occurred to
him.  The darkness, he knew, brought forth small and great beasts; and
he remembered with a shudder the tales told him by one of the hardy
adventurers on board the _Maid Marian_--of packs of wild dogs that
scoured these tropic woods, devouring sleeping men; of the hideous
cayman, that lurked upon the shore, and, having swallowed
hundredweights of stones to increase its heaviness, seized upon some
unwary creature, and dragged it down into the watery depths, to feast
upon it at leisure.  All wild beasts, he had heard, were afraid of
fire; he had his flint and steel, secure in a leather pouch upon his
girdle; but he had no dry timber; the sodden wood of the staves and
branches of which he had built his hut would be useless, and he shrank
from issuing forth into the now darkening woods to find material that
would serve.  He comforted himself with the recollection that not once
during his tramp around the island had he seen any animal larger than a
hare, save the monkey; and he resigned himself to make the best of what
he feared would be a cheerless night.

The dark fell rapidly, again he had that strange feeling that he was
not alone.  He went to the entrance of the hut, where he had drawn some
of the worm-eaten branches, strung together with a few creepers, across
as a door.  Peering out, he saw nothing but the darkened cliffs and the
sea, heard nothing but the wash of the surf, the rustle of the breeze,
and the soft tones of wood-pigeons.  He returned to the rear of the
cabin, where he had strewed leaves for his couch.  As he lay back upon
it and looked up to the roof he started, and instinctively seized a
branch for protection: above him shone two greenish eyes peeping
through one of the many gaps.  His hasty movement disturbed the
watcher, and Dennis heaved a sigh of relief as he heard a shrill
chattering above, and knew it for the gibber of a monkey.  Springing up
he dashed out of the cabin to drive the intruder away.  He was just in
time to see the monkey springing up the nearest tree.

It was long before he fell asleep.  Then his rest was fitful and
disturbed, not only through his over-wrought nerves, but by the
nocturnal cries of creatures in the forest, and the attentions of
insects, which nipped and stung with importunate malice.  In spite even
of them, however, he slept; and when with the rising of the sun they
betook their satiated bodies elsewhere, he lay till the morning was
drawing towards noon in the sound sleep of exhausted nature.

Opening his eyes upon bright day, he was tempted by the smoothness of
the sea to bathe.  When he flung off his clothes he laughed to see the
parti-coloured patches on his skin.  Blue, and yellow, and black, the
bruises reminded him of his battering in the storm, and his laughter
turned to sighing as he thought once more of his comrades and their
hapless fate.  But in the physical joy of swimming he again plucked up
heart, and he left the stinging water with a most healthy hunger.  The
recollection of his feast of fruit drew him into the woodland.  He
wandered long before he lighted upon the banana grove, and though, in
the course of roaming, he saw other fruit-bearing trees, he resisted
for the present the temptation to climb and taste; when once his hunger
was appeased by the fruit he knew, he could more safely make an
experiment on the unknown.

He saw, too, many animals which had escaped his notice previously.
There were hedgehogs, and tortoises, and giant spiders, and scorpions
to which he gave a wide berth; but he caught no glimpse of any
four-footed beast to cause him dread, and having by this time made up
his mind that there were no human beings on the island, he went more
fearlessly, with a readier eye to note the features of his new abode.

Happening once to halt and glance back he saw, perched in the branches
of a tree not many yards away, a monkey.  Was it the same, he wondered,
as that which had peered at him out of the tree he had thought of
climbing, and pried upon him in his humble cabin?  It seemed to be of
the same size; it had spindly limbs and a long slender tail; but
probably there was a colony of the strange creatures on the island.

"Good morrow, Sir Monkey," he said, again finding a pleasure in the
sound of his voice.  "Are you lonely too?  You were not, surely, cast
like me upon this island, far away from kith and kin.  You have a wise
and solemn look: what secrets do you harbour in that shallow skull of
yours?  And what do you think of me, I wonder, when you look at me with
those cunning little eyes?  I wish you could speak, for here am I
prating to myself like an old gossip of eighty."

As he moved on it was very soon clear that the monkey was dogging him.
He amused himself by putting the matter to the test.  When he sat down,
the monkey stopped, and remained almost perfectly still, partially
concealing itself among the leaves.  When Dennis rose and went on his
way the monkey followed, springing from branch to branch with amazing
dexterity, always keeping at a distance.  Dennis became interested,
fascinated, as he watched the movements of the agile creature.

"Truly, Sir Monkey," he said, "I begin to wish I had a tail."

And as the day wore on, and the monkey kept pace with him wherever he
went, he began to find in its presence something of the comfort of
human companionship.  Once, as he sat resting under a tree, the broken
skin of a fruit he had eyed longingly fell within a couple of yards of
him, and looking up he saw the monkey sucking with relish at another of
the same kind.

"Aha! my fine fellow," said Dennis, "you have something of a man about
you, and mayhap what is good for you is good for me too."

And he climbed a tree on which the pale yellow fruit was hanging, and
plucked one, and made a wry mouth at his first taste of the tartish
lime.

Thus the day passed in aimless yet not unprofitable wandering.  Warned
by his experience of the previous night, he resolved to prepare his
shelter somewhat earlier.  Where should it be?  He was determined not
to go back to the cabin, for the insects had plagued him there
unmercifully, and he could only ward them off by means of a fire.  But
flame by night and smoke by day rising from the shore would assuredly
provoke curiosity among the crew of any passing ship; and since, of the
vessels likely to pass in these latitudes, the most would undoubtedly
be Spaniards, he was loath to attract visitors who might prove so
eminently undesirable.  Yet, as he knew from his experience in woods at
home, the insects would be even more numerous inland than at the shore.
A fire he must have, and it struck him that if he could find, somewhere
in the middle of the island, a sheltered hollow, he might safely kindle
there a few sticks, trusting that the over-arching foliage would
prevent a glow in the sky, and that the smoke, in the night-time, would
pass unobserved.

About a mile from the edge of the eastern cliff was a spring whence a
little stream flowed westward.  At its source but an inch or two wide,
it gathered volume on its winding course, and Dennis, tracking it,
wondering by what circuit it would finally reach the sea, discovered
that it ran at length into a somewhat extensive marsh.  He knew nothing
about rainfall and land drainage, but being a lad of some powers of
observation and reasoning, he was not long in coming to the conclusion
that the marsh collected as in a cup the water that fell on the
surrounding high ground during such torrential rains as had fallen on
the night of the storm.  It was clear that there must be an outlet, or
the marsh would be a lake, and this outlet he found amid thick
undergrowth towards the western cliff near which he had been thrown by
the sea.

Penetrating the dense jungle, he discovered that the outflow poured
through a channel some three feet deep.  Only a small stream now
trickled down its centre; the banks were sandy and dry, and the
interlaced foliage so arched it over, that Dennis decided he might rest
in it secure from observation, and even run the risk of kindling a fire
at night.  It seemed scarcely necessary to bring the staves of his
cabin over several miles of difficult country to this spot; the trees
themselves formed a sufficient shelter; but with his clasp-knife he
cleared away some of the undergrowth, and lopped off a few low-growing
branches to make a little enclosure; and by the time the natural shade
deepened at the approach of night, he had fenced in a few square yards
and scooped out a hollow in the middle for his fire.

All the time he was working the monkey watched every movement from a
branch overhead.  Dennis was not at first aware of the animal's
presence, so closely hidden was it by the foliage.  Only when he struck
a spark from his flint, and after some ineffectual attempts succeeded
in blowing up a flame, did the monkey reveal its hiding-place by a
little gibber of amazement.

"So ho! my friend," cried Dennis, looking up vainly.  "You haunt me
like a familiar.  Have you never seen a fire?  Do not let your
curiosity tempt you too far, for, much as I value your company, I had
rather you remained at your present comfortable distance until I know
you a little better.  Play the sentinel, Sir Monkey, if you will."

Dennis felt very well satisfied with his contrivance as he sat by the
fire, eating a supper of bananas before laying himself down on a bed of
leaves.  The smoke defended him somewhat from the insect pests; the
warmth was comforting; and the cheerful glow gave him a sense of
homeness and well-being.  He fed the fire more than once during the
night, waking, it seemed, when the diminished heat warned him that the
fuel needed replenishing, And when he awoke from his longest spell of
sleep the dawn was stealing through the trees, birds were cooing,
whistling, chattering overhead, and the monkey, on a low branch, was
watching him with unalterable gravity.




CHAPTER III

A Wreck--and Mirandola

Dennis, as he made his breakfast, pondered deeply on the situation,
taking the monkey in to his confidence.  "Could we change parts, Sir
Monkey--if I were you, and you were Dennis Hazelrig, what would you do?
This is your island: we will call it yours; I am your guest.  You seem
to be a solitary creature like myself: are you miserable, I wonder?
Does your loneliness trouble you?  There is food for us both: it is so
warm that for the present, at least, I need no more clothes than you;
neither of us will starve.  How old are you?  You look wise enough to
be very old.  Am I to remain on this island until I have a beard as
long and white as Sir Parson's at home?  Oh, you cannot understand what
I say, for all your wise look: you cannot know what a wretched mortal I
am.  What can I do?"

The monkey only blinked at him, and plucked a dark plum-like fruit from
the bough and munched it.

For a time Dennis sat listless, feeling too wretched even to move from
the spot.  Then he got up and made his way back to the cliff.  He stood
on the summit, scanning the whole circumference of the shining sea.
Not a sail was in sight.  He scarcely knew whether he was disappointed
or not.  Supposing a vessel hove into view, he durst not try to attract
the attention of some one on board.  If it were English it would be
welcome as a spar to a drowning man.  If it were Spanish, he might as
well jump into the maw of some sea monster.  Yet how could he discover
its nationality without at the same time betraying his presence?
Several times during that third day he climbed to the same spot, and
looked out with the same eagerness; not one glimpse did he catch of a
white wing upon the water; and he always turned away with the same
uncertainty.

He spent hours in roaming, as aimlessly as before, along the beach and
through the woodland.  Coming in the course of the day to the cliff
near which he had been cast ashore, he remembered that hitherto he had
not made a complete circuit of the island; the beach northward appeared
to be barred by huge masses of rock.  In his present mood he had no
curiosity to see what lay beyond; he supposed indeed that, if he did
care to clamber toilsomely over the barrier, he would simply arrive at
a point of the beach which he had already reached from the other side.

But later in the day, when the tedium of inaction had become
unbearable, he started to explore the lower course of the streamlet on
whose bank he had slept.  He found that the channel gradually widened,
the banks growing higher as he neared the sea.  By and by he came upon
a wide pool on whose rim a mass of seaweed lay rotting in the sun, and
stooping out of sheer curiosity he dipped his finger and, tasting,
discovered that the water was salt, as he had supposed.  Clearly at
high tide the sea came thus far up the gully.  The entrance was as yet
hidden from him by the jutting shoulder of the cliff, but he could hear
now the light rumble of surf upon the beach, and he went on, feeling
some curiosity to learn whereabouts on the shore he would arrive.

He had taken but a few more steps when, rounding the projecting cliff,
he came upon a scene which petrified him with astonishment.  Docked in
the sand, lying over on her side, was the battered hulk of a two-masted
vessel.  Her stern was somewhat towards him, and he read, painted
there, the word _Maid_; but so familiar was he with her lines that he
needed not the rest of the name; this was in very truth the wreck of
the _Maid Marian_.  Of her two masts only the stumps remained: her
deck, inclined towards him, was littered with a medley of rigging; her
rudder was gone, part of her bulwarks torn away.

There was an uncanny look about the hapless vessel as she lay there on
the sandy beach, at the head of a small bay bounded by the cliffs on
either side.  Dennis felt just such a thrill as he might have felt had
he come suddenly upon the body of a friend.  The solitude, the silence,
intensified by the rustling wash of the surf, the background of
boundless sky and ocean, combined to affect him with a sense of
desolation.  He felt a shrinking reluctance to approach, and when he
had conquered this and stood beneath the vessel's quarter, it was some
time before he summoned up the resolution to climb on board.  Then he
mounted slowly, hesitatingly, by the aid of a loose shroud, holding his
breath as if fearful of disturbing a sleeper.

All was intensely still.  Multitudinous insects were crawling this way
and that among the litter of rigging: save for these there was no sign
of life--where for two months as merry a company as ever trod deck had
talked and laughed and jested.  Dennis felt a lump in his throat as he
recalled the little incidents of the voyage: quarter-staff bouts with
old Miles Barton, wrestling matches with Harry Greville, sword-play
sometimes with the captain himself.

The hatchways were battened down.  He shrank from going below.  Evening
was drawing on; he would leave the wreck now, and return in the
morning.  And as he set his foot once more on the beach, and began to
retrace his steps up the gully, he saw the monkey grinning at him from
a tree on the cliff, and was surprised to find how pleasant and
consoling was the creature's company.

Hard on his discovery of the wreck came another discovery.  Retracing
his way up the chine, he noticed a green ledge on the cliff, some few
feet above his head, on the right-hand side.  The thought occurred to
him to rest there for a little; he could reach it by an easy climb.
When he gained the ledge, he found that it ran back for a longer
distance than he had supposed below.  At its further end grew a wild
mass of bushes and trees, some of which bore a plum-like fruit that he
had seen the monkey eating with enjoyment.

He went to pluck some of the fruit, and penetrating a little way into
the thicket, he suddenly perceived that the bushes appeared to grow
across an opening in the rock.  He pulled the strands aside, and looked
into the dark entrance of a cave.  The discovery interested him.  Might
he not find here a better lodging than the rude shelter he had made on
the bank of the stream?  It was far above high-water mark, and
conveniently placed for refuge, being accessible landwards only by the
rocky channel, and wholly hidden from observation at sea.  Yet he
paused before stepping into the cave.  Might it not be a wild beast's
lair?  True, he had seen no animals which he could have any cause to
fear, but at this moment of overstrung nerves he felt a child's dread
of the dark.

"A proper adventurer, in good sooth!" he said to himself.  "The skirts
of a nurse would befit me better than an island in the Spanish Main."

And without more ado he took a step forward and entered.

The daylight was quenched within a few feet of the opening.  Striking a
spark from his flint, he kindled a mass of dried grass he had stowed in
his pouch for this purpose, and started as the brief flame lit the
interior, for there, almost at his feet, lay a human skeleton.
Incontinently he dropped his torch and fled,--scoffing, when once more
in the free air, at his lack of courage.  But the wish to make this his
abode was vanished.  He had no fancy to consort with skeletons, and
besides, the damp and musty atmosphere of the cave was unpleasant.
Without delay he set off to regain his former resting-place.

These new discoveries had introduced a disturbing element into his life
on the island.  Uninhabited as it apparently was now, clearly it had
not always been so.  What was the history of that skeleton?  Were there
others further within the cave?  It was not the remains of a castaway,
for not even in the fiercest hurricane could the sea penetrate so far.
Had some poor wretched fugitive fled there for refuge from a human
enemy, and been slain or starved?  These questions kept him wakeful
long that night, and haunted him even while he slept.

With morning light he thought less of the cave and more of the wreck.
The _Maid Marian_ had left Plymouth well equipped with stores; the
hatchways had been battened down in the storm, and unless the sea had
poured in through holes stove in her sides, there must be below decks a
considerable quantity of materials that would prove serviceable if his
stay on the island was to be lengthened.  As soon as he had finished
his breakfast he set off to return to the chine.  It was no surprise to
him now to observe the monkey following, like an attendant lackey.

"Come, Sir Monkey," he said, with an attempt at gaiety, "let us go
together and inspect our treasure trove."

He felt again a strange sense of awe as he climbed into the vessel's
waist, and trod her planks delicately.  But remarking that her position
had been shifted slightly by the incoming tide during the night, and
that little streams of water were escaping from holes on to the sand,
he reflected that it behoved him to lose no time if he wished to secure
her contents, for any day a tempest might spring up and shatter the
hulk irretrievably.  Gulping down the timidity that still troubled him,
he climbed to the quarter-deck, and went forward through the broken
doorway into the main cabin.

The floor was littered with the possessions of his dear lost comrades.
Here was Harry Greville's sword; near it a pistol-case that had
belonged to Philip Masterton.  He stepped over these and other relics
and entered the captain's cabin beyond.  Here, too, all was ruin and
disorder.  Garments, instruments of navigation, an ink-horn, trumpets,
a drum, Sir Martin's arms and breastplate, the big leather-bound book
in which he wrote his diary of the voyage, lay pell-mell on the floor.
Dennis could hardly bear to look upon these mementoes of the lost, and
he soon turned his back on them and returned to the open part of the
vessel, where he sat for a time, given up to melancholy brooding.

At last he rose, threw off the oppression, and ventured to force up the
main hatch forward of the mainmast and descend.

[Illustration: Insulae Virginis Charta]

Even now he could not bear to remain long below.  He explored the whole
length of the vessel in sections, returning at short intervals to
breathe the fresh air and enjoy the cheerful sunlight.  On one of these
occasions he was amused to see that his faithful attendant had now
ventured to quit the security of its tree, and was sitting on a rock
within a few yards of the vessel, an interested spectator.

His inspection of the contents of the vessel fully rewarded him.  In
the steward's store abaft the mainmast he found a large number of
utensils--an iron pease-pot, a copper fish-kettle, a skimmer, several
wooden ladles, a gridiron, a frying-pan, a couple of pipkins, a
chafing-dish, a fire-shovel, a pair of bellows, trays, platters,
porringers, trenchers, drinking-cans, two well-furnished tinder-boxes,
candles, and candlesticks.  There were casks of beer and wine, great
boxes of biscuits, bags of oatmeal, pease, and salt, whole sides of
home-cured bacon, several cheeses, a tierce of vinegar, jars of honey
and sugar, flasks of oil, pots of balsam and other salves, a pledget
for spreading plasters, a pair of scissors, and several rolls of linen,
these last evidently provided for the exigencies of fighting.  In the
carpenter's store forward there were hammers, awls, chisels, files, a
saw, hundreds of nails, both sixpenny and fourpenny.  In the armoury
were half-pikes, cutlasses, muskets, with bandoliers, rests, and
moulds, calivers, barrels of gunpowder and tar, and leaden bullets,
such as were to be bought at Plymouth six pounds for threepence.  And
as to the other appurtenances of a well-found ship, Dennis was almost
bewildered by the quantity of them--bolts, and chains, and pulleys,
buckets, mops, sand-glasses, horn lanterns, faggots for fuel,
fishing-nets, articles of apparel, things for trade and barter: the
list would fill a page or two.  And he rejoiced exceedingly to find
that all were in good condition, even the cheeses: there could not be
even a rat on board to commit depredations.

Surveying this great and substantial store, Dennis rubbed his head in
puzzlement.

"'Tis a month's work," he said ruefully, "and for one pair of hands.
The grave and reverend signor yonder will scarce assist, I trow,
indeed, 'tis to be feared he may be thievishly inclined, and needs must
I bestow the goods skilfully.  Well, to it; time and tide, they say,
waits for no man."

He began by carrying the biscuits and other perishables from the hold
to the bulwarks, where he rigged up a running tackle, and lowered the
bags and boxes to the sand beneath.  So intent was he upon his task
that it was with a start of surprise and alarm he noticed that the tide
was flowing in, and had almost reached the vessel.  Threatened with the
loss of the precious stores, he was hard put to it to drag and carry
and roll them up the beach beyond the reach of the waves, and the sun
was far down towards the western horizon before he had them high and
dry.  By this time the sea was several feet deep around the vessel, and
the thought struck him: what if the wreck were to float away on the
tide and all the remaining salvage be snatched from him?  So grave a
misfortune must be prevented.  At once he swam out to the ship, and
securely fastening to the stump of the broken mast one of the stout
cables he found below, he again plunged into the sea, and in a little
had wound the other end about two sturdy trees growing out from the
cliff.

While the wreck remained in its present position it was desirable that
he should have his lodging close by.  There was no shelter on the shore
itself, nor did the cliff promise a comfortable abiding place; and his
thoughts returned to the cave, which was a good deal nearer than the
spot where he had rested the previous night.

Among the things he had brought ashore were a lantern, a tinder-box,
and a candle.  Fortified with a light, he entered the cave with less
tremor than on the previous evening, and looked about him.  The cave
was deep: his light did not reach the further extremity.  The roof was
damp and green with moss.  There was the skeleton, stretched on the
rocky floor.  By its side, as he now saw, lay a hatchet of curious
shape: a little beyond were some coloured beads.  But within the circle
of light he discovered no other remnants of humanity; these were not
very terrible after all, and he might have taken up his abode there but
for the fusty, humid atmosphere.  He gave up the idea of sleeping in
the cave, but made for himself, just outside and across the entrance, a
couch of cloaks taken from the wreck.

Before settling himself for the night, he returned to the base of the
cliff, opened with the hatchet one of his precious boxes of biscuits,
and taking a handful, sat on a flat rock to make an unaccustomed
supper.  He had barely eaten a mouthful when he saw a brown figure leap
from somewhere above his head, swoop on the still open box, clutch one
of the biscuits, and spring away with a long chatter of delight.

"Ah, knave!" he exclaimed, "my prophetic soul avouched that your
gravity cloaked an evil bent.  You are a thief, Sir Monkey.  But I do
not grudge you the biscuit; your constancy in attendance merits some
reward.  A toothsome morsel, is it not?  It pleases me to see your
pleasure, and--yes, I have it!  You are my sole companion on this
island; why should we not be friends?  You must learn a rightful
humility, to be sure.  Regarding me as the dispenser of luxuries, will
you not love me, with the respectful love of a dependent?  Come, let us
see."

Rising from his seat in time to forestall a second application to the
biscuit box, he went to it, took half a dozen, shut down the lid, and
returned to the rock.

"Now, Mirandola," he said--"I name you Mirandola for your wisdom, not
your larceny--here in my hand I hold one of the twice-cooked, the
fellow of the one you found so delectable.  Come and take it, and give
thanks."

But the animal sat motionless on its branch, grinning and gibbering.

"You do me wrong to suspect me," Dennis went on.  "Well, this is to
prove my good faith."

He flung the biscuit on to the sand a few yards away, and laughed
quietly to see what ensued.  The monkey chattered volubly with
excitement, swung itself to a lower branch, then back to its former
perch, where it sat for a moment blinking and grinning.  Then it
descended with extraordinary rapidity to the foot of the tree, crouched
behind the trunk while a man might count ten, and with frantic haste,
as though fearful its courage would not endure, it darted on all fours
across to the biscuit, looking in its movements like a gigantic spider.
Seizing the delicacy, it sped back to the tree, squatted on the lowest
branch, and set its jaws right merrily to work.

"That is your first lesson, Mirandola," said Dennis, placing the
remaining biscuits in his pouch, in full sight of the animal.  "The
second begins at once; it enjoineth patience."

And heedless of the loud outcry made by the monkey when it saw these
choice comestibles disappear, Dennis returned to his couch, and laid
himself down for the night.




CHAPTER IV

Salvage

Rising with the sun, Dennis set about making a more careful examination
of the hull of the _Maid Marian_.  The leaks in her timbers were rather
more serious than he had supposed.  Clearly they would prevent her from
drifting out to sea on the tide, but they would also render her final
break-up inevitable in the event of a violent storm from the
north-west.  There were signs on the face of the cliff that at times
the waves dashed over the narrow beach of sand against the wall of rock
beyond.  In these latitudes, as the fate of the _Maid Marian_ proved,
storms arose without warning, and with incredible swiftness; and it
behoved Dennis to make all speed in saving the ship's stores.

At low tide on this day, and on many that followed, he worked hard at
his task.  He rigged up a block and pulley in the waist, by means of
which he was able to hoist casks and other heavy objects up the
hatchways and lower them over the side of the vessel.  It was more
difficult to convey them from the vessel to a place of safety beyond
the reach of the tide.  At first he tried to haul them by a rope, but
finding soon that he succeeded only in working up a ridge of sand which
rendered haulage exhausting and in some cases impossible, he bethought
himself of the device of employing rollers, such as he had seen used by
fishermen on the beach at home.  It was an easy matter, with the tools
now at hand, to lop off and strip some straight boughs suited to his
purpose, and upon these he brought, slowly and not without pains, the
bulkier goods to safe harbourage.  The tide always rose about the
vessel too soon for his impatience; but the work was arduous, the
intervals were really needed for rest, and they gave opportunities of
furthering his acquaintance with the monkey.

His relations with Mirandola, indeed, were placed on a sound and
satisfactory footing long before he had emptied the hull.  The biscuits
were invaluable.  At intervals, now long, now short, he would throw one
towards the monkey, which watched all his doings at the wreck day by
day with unfailing regularity.  Little by little he diminished the
length of his throw, until, on the third day after his first lesson,
Mirandola had gained sufficient confidence to approach him to within a
few inches.  On the fourth day, after keeping the monkey waiting longer
than usual, Dennis took a biscuit from his pouch, held it for a moment
between his fingers, then put it back again.

"It is time, Mirandola," he said, "that your education was completed.
You are, I verily believe, as wise as a serpent; will you not believe
that I am harmless as a dove?  This is the same biscuit I stowed but
now in my pouch; it is for you; it is yours if you will take it
mannerly.  No, I will not cast it on the sand; it is more seemly to
take it from my hand, and, I do assure you, it will be no less
relishable.  Come, then, dear wiseacre; have I ever deceived you?  Show
a little confidence in your true friend and well-wisher."

He held forth the biscuit, with an alluring smile.  Mirandola cocked
his head on one side, gazed at this dispenser of delectable things with
a searching solemnity, and then crawled forward with watchful eye,
dubiously halting more than once.  At length he came to Dennis's feet,
and sat up, with so gravely sad an expression that Dennis found it hard
not to laugh.  Then, thrusting up his long arm, he made a grab at the
biscuit.

"Not so, Mirandola," said Dennis, holding it beyond the monkey's reach.
"Manners maketh man; assuredly they will not mar monkeys.  Ape the
gentle philosopher your namesake; be courteous and discreet.  Now, once
more."

He lowered the biscuit slowly, keeping his eyes on the creature's face.
But with a suddenness that took him aback, Mirandola raised himself on
his hind legs, flung out an arm, and, before Dennis could withdraw it,
held the biscuit in his skinny paw.

"Wellaway!" laughed Dennis.  "I may keep my breath to cool my porridge,
for all the effect my words have upon your savage nature."

Then, to his surprise, the monkey came to him again, and held out his
hand.

"You shall not be disappointed," he said.  "Not for the world would I
reject your advances.  Here is a biscuit, and with this, shall we say,
our friendship is sealed."

And it was not long before Mirandola would sit upon his knee, and take
food from his hand with all mannerliness; and, its distrust gone,
showed itself to be as affectionate and devoted as a dog.

Dennis availed himself in other ways of the hours when the tide
interrupted his labour with the stores.  There was no lack of planking
and tarpaulin in the vessel; these he utilized in building on the
ledge, and near a fresh spring that ran out of the cliff, a little hut
about two trees that grew near enough together to form uprights for his
roof.  Then he erected two small sheds close by, wherein to shelter his
goods from the weather.  At first he fumbled with the unfamiliar tools,
not omitting to pinch his fingers as he hammered in the nails.  But he
soon acquired a certain dexterity, and was indeed mightily pleased with
his handiwork.

Every now and again he made a trip across the island, to discover
whether any vessels were in sight.  Once or twice he descried a sail on
the horizon; once, indeed, he felt some excitement and anxiety as he
saw a bark under full sail bearing straight, as he thought, for the
shore.  But in this he was mistaken; the vessel altered her course, and
Dennis, watching her diminishing form, hardly knew whether to be glad
or sorry.  He was in truth too busy for self-commiseration: work filled
his days, unbroken sleep his nights.  His feeling of loneliness had
almost entirely passed away, for Mirandola was his inseparable
companion, and it pleased his fancy to talk to the monkey as to a human
being.

So engrossing had his labour been that he had taken no account of the
passage of time.  It came upon him with a shock, once, that the
unnumbered days were flitting away.  The idea that he was doomed to
grow old upon this island, and linger out his years in endless
solitude, struck his imagination with a chill, and set him climbing the
cliff in a kind of frenzy, to scan once more the wide horizon for a
sail.  If at that moment a vessel had hove in sight, he would have
flown a flag, fired a musket, to attract attention, reckless what crew
it bore, so deep was his yearning to see a fellow man.  When the fit
passed, it left him with a new desire.  Never yet had the possibility
occurred to him of leaving the island.  Could he construct a raft, or
build a boat--nay, was there a chance of making the _Maid Marian_
herself, battered as she was, seaworthy?  The absurdity of attempting
to navigate single-handed a bark of near a hundred tons set him
laughing; but the idea suggested a new outlet for his energy, just at
the time when the conclusion of his salvage work had bereft him of
occupation.

He became fired with the purpose of saving the vessel.  The weather
hitherto had been perfect; but sooner or later a storm must come, and
then the ship would be ground to splinters against the cliff.  Was it
possible to float her?  He had unloaded what he imagined to be a good
many tons of stores; thus lightened, could she be moved?  If he could
succeed in floating her, whither could she be taken?  His tour of the
island had failed to discover any harbour; there was little to gain and
much to lose by allowing himself to drift about aimlessly in such a
hulk.  Suddenly an idea struck him.  Would it not be possible to devise
some means of floating her up the gully, round the shoulder of the
cliff?  Her draught was not great: at high tide the water was deep
enough to carry her many yards beyond her present position, to a point
where she would be at once invisible from the open sea and protected
from the weather.

At the next fall of the tide he made a thorough inspection of the
wreck.  It was easy to find the leaks, for at every ebb the water that
had entered the vessel at the flood gushed out in tiny cascades.  Many
a time he had seen ships careened and caulked in the dockyard at
Plymouth.  He had plenty of rope of which to make oakum, and of tar
more than enough to meet his needs; in his search through the vessel he
had lighted on no caulking iron, but a long nail would serve, and it
should go hard with him, he thought, but he would make the old hulk
sound and seaworthy ere many days were gone.

He found an unexpected assistant in Mirandola.  He had teased out but
an inch or two of rope when the monkey squatted down by his side and
began with his strong nimble fingers to copy him, looking up in his
face with an air of such busy importance that Dennis was fain to lie
back and laugh.

"By my troth, Sir Mirandola," he said, "this is friendship indeed.  And
you outdo me, on my soul; you pick two inches to my one.  'Tis not the
daintiest of work for fingers untrained to it, and if it pleases you,
why, I will e'en leave it to you, and admire this unwonted usefulness
in a philosopher."

But he found that when he ceased, the monkey ceased also.

"Poor knave!" he said.  "You see not the end.  'Tis but an apish trick
after all.  Well, God forbid that I should judge your motive; I am
thankful for your help, and we will work together."

Between them the two collaborators soon had a fine heap of oakum ready
for use, and a couple of days' hard work at low tide sufficed to caulk
all the seams.  Mirandola's share in this second part of the job gave
Dennis more amusement.  The busy creature solemnly dabbed tar on sound
parts of the timbers, and chattered with disgust when he discovered
that the stuff clung to his hairy skin, defying all his efforts to get
rid of it.

"I' faith, I named you more fittingly than I wot," quoth Dennis.
"Pico, your illustrious namesake, was a gentleman of rare and delicate
taste.  Touch pitch and thou art defiled.  But a little turpentine,
mayhap, will cleanse the outward spots; and as for your inward
hurt--what think you of a spread of honey on your biscuit?"

Mirandola thought nobly of the new delicacy, and came in time to look
for honey whenever he had imitated Dennis with more than usual energy.

The leaks having been well caulked, Dennis proceeded to pump the water
from the lower parts of the hold.  He awaited the next high tide with
great eagerness.  To his joy the vessel floated, and rode fairly
upright on her keel.  The tide carried her several yards up the beach,
leaving her again high and dry at the ebb.

But Dennis now found himself faced by a difficulty.  He wished to get
the vessel round the shoulder of the cliff, so that the tide might
carry her up the chine to the pool below his hut and sheds.  The
distance was barely eighty yards, but he had noticed, from the movement
of a log floating some little way out, that the set of the current was
from north to west; so that if once she were allowed to float free, and
felt the force of the current, she would probably drift away in the
opposite direction from what he desired.  On the other hand, if she
were driven too high on the beach, she might stick so firmly in the
sand that it would be impossible to move her, and then she would lie at
the mercy of the first north-west gale.

His little nautical knowledge was at first at a loss.

"Mirandola, your speechless wisdom is of no avail," he said ruefully,
as he sat at his fire one evening, feeding the monkey with pease
porridge.  "You and I are both landsmen; unlike you, I adventured
forth, to gain gold, and fight the don Spaniards, if so the fates
should ordain.  Here is never a Spaniard to fight, and as for gold, the
wealth of Croesus would not at this moment benefit me a jot.  If I had
been bred to the sea, now, I should not be at this pass."

But long cogitation, and another visit to the ship, determined a course
of action.  The windlass, he discovered, was uninjured, and though it
was very stiff, he could still manage to turn it.  A big jagged rock
jutted out from the cliff near the shoulder round which the vessel must
be warped.  To this rock he carried a rope from the stump of the
mainmast and securely fastened it.  This would prevent the vessel from
drifting out to sea.  Then, with a hatchet from the ship's stores he
cut a number of thick branches from the trees along the gully, and
pitching them into the pool floated them one by one on to the beach
alongside the wreck.  There was plenty of rope on board to fashion
these into a stout raft, on to which, with the aid of the windlass, he
lowered a kedge anchor just sufficiently heavy to hold the vessel in a
calm.  It was a matter of some difficulty to get the anchor so evenly
adjusted on the raft that the latter would not turn turtle; but after
some patient manoeuvring Dennis arranged it squarely in the centre, and
when the tide came in the whole floated with a fair appearance of
stability.  Then with a long pole Dennis cautiously punted the raft out
beyond the gully, paying out as he went a stout cable, connecting the
anchor with the windlass.  Some thirty yards beyond the gully, at a
point near enough in shore to be beyond the reach of the current, he
prepared to drop the anchor.  It was too heavy for him even to move;
the only plan that suggested itself was to bring about what he had up
to that moment been most anxious to prevent--the raft must now be
intentionally upset.  One by one he cut away the lashings of the
outermost logs on the seaward side.  At last he felt by the movement of
the raft that only his own weight prevented the crazy structure from
turning over.  He slid from the raft into the sea; the far side sank
and the anchor slipped over and went with a thud to the bottom.  Then
the raft righted itself, and Dennis scrambled aboard.

The rest was easy.  When the tide ebbed it carried the wreck inch by
inch towards the anchor, for with the aid of the windlass Dennis was
able to keep the cable constantly taut, while at the same time he paid
out the rope connecting the vessel with the shore.  A couple of tides
brought him in this way up to the anchor; then, transferring the shore
cable to a stout tree some distance up the gully, he slacked off the
kedge line when the tide was running up, and allowed the wreck to be
carried shorewards.  In this way the _Maid Marian_ floated slowly up
the gully on the flood, and another couple of tides brought her within
a few yards of the pool, which he designed for her permanent harbourage.

Below this there was a narrow bar that threatened to baulk him.  At low
tide, indeed, he had to shovel away a large amount of sand in the
middle of the channel, and once came near losing his temper with
Mirandola, who, with well-meant industry, and a quite innocent
pleasure, set about scooping back the sand as it was dug out.  But the
animal tired of this fatiguing amusement; the difficulty was overcome;
and when at last the vessel rode gently into the little natural harbour
below the hut, Dennis hailed the success of his long toil with a
cheerful "Huzza!" and broached a cask of sack.  Of this indulgence he
partly repented, for the monkey seized upon the empty can when he laid
it down, and drained it greedily.

"No, no, my friend," said Dennis, gravely.  "Wine maketh glad the heart
of man; I do not read that it is anywise a drink for brutes.  And all
your philosophy would not reconcile me to a drunken Mirandola.  'Be not
among wine-bibbers,' says the wisest of kings and men; I bethink me he
says also, 'My son, eat thou honey, for it is good!'  You shall have
honey, my venerable son."




CHAPTER V

The Edge of the Marsh

During his operations about the wreck, Dennis had noticed that the
monkey showed a strange aversion for the sea.  At low tide, when the
vessel was high and dry, he quite cheerfully accompanied his benefactor
on board; but as a rule, when he saw the tide rolling in, he chattered
angrily, swarmed down the side of the vessel, and posted himself at the
nearest point above high-water mark.  Only on the one occasion, when he
mounted the windlass, did he remain on deck when the tide was at flood;
there he seemed to regard himself as out of reach of the waves.  Dennis
wondered whether the dread of the sea was a characteristic of the
monkey tribe, or whether Mirandola had at some time suffered a
sea-change which it was determined not to repeat.

He took endless pleasure in studying the amiable creature; and when,
his work with the ship being finished, he began once more to take
lengthy strolls across the island, he drew a new delight from the
companionship of the monkey.  The friendship being so firmly
established, Mirandola showed off his accomplishments with a freedom he
had not displayed when he regarded this newcomer with distrust and
suspicion.  Dennis laughed to see his antics in the trees.  He would
curl his long tail about a branch, and swing to and fro with manifest
enjoyment.  Sometimes, clutching a banana with one hand, he would pick
another with one foot, and hold a third to his mouth with the second
hand.  Sometimes when he saw Dennis holding his forehead in a brown
study, he would rub his long gaunt arms over his own brow with a
wistful look that brought a smile to the lad's face.  He was amiability
itself, and showed genuine distress when Dennis took occasion to scold
him for some piece of inconvenient prankishness.

Now that his thoughts were no longer engrossed with his salvage work,
Dennis more often speculated on his future.  The prospect was not very
encouraging.  Supposing he could carry out his half-formed purpose of
building a boat, what chance was there of surviving a voyage across the
ocean in a vessel that, untrained as he was in handicraft, must
necessarily be a clumsy thing?  And unless he could risk an ocean
voyage he felt that he had better remain where he was.  No European
nation but the Spaniards and the Portuguese had settlements on the
American coast.  What might be expected at the hands of the Spaniards
he knew full well.  Had he not heard from the lips of one Master John
Merridew fearsome tales of their treachery and cruelty?  John Merridew
had sailed with Captain John Hawkins to the West Indies, with Master
Francis Drake as one of the company.  Forced by foul weather into the
port of St. John de Ulua, the Captain made great account of a certain
Spanish gentleman named Augustine de Villa Nueva, and used him like a
nobleman.  Yet this same Augustine, sitting at dinner one day with the
Captain, would certainly have killed him with a poniard which he had
secretly in his sleeve, had not one John Chamberlain espied the weapon
and prevented the foul deed.  And recalling Merridew's narrative,
Dennis wondered what had become of those hundred poor wretches who,
when victuals ran short, and the ship's company were driven to eat
parrots and monkeys and the very rats that swarmed in the hold,
preferred to shift for themselves on shore, rather than starve on
ship-board.  In imagination he saw that touching scene, when the
General, as Merridew called Captain Hawkins, gave to each man five
yards of cloth, embraced them in turn, counselled them to serve God and
love one another; and thus courteously bade them a sorrowful farewell,
promising, if God sent him safe to England, to do what he could to
bring home such as remained alive.  That Captain Hawkins would fulfil
his promise Dennis believed; but how many of those Englishmen were
still living?  He reflected that he at least had food and present
safety; compared with theirs his lot was a king's.

But he was not to escape misfortune altogether.  One day the storm he
had so long been expecting broke over the island, hurling great seas
into the mouth of the chine, threatening to dash the _Maid Marian_
against the rocks or sweep her out into the ocean.  In the midst of
pelting, blinding rain Dennis strove to ensure her safety.  She
wrenched at her anchor; every moment he feared lest her mooring ropes
should be snapped; he could do little but keep a watch on the
fastenings.  And while he was thus watching, a roaring flood passed
through the gully from the plateau above, swamping his hut, washing
away some of his hardly-won stores; and the fierce blast tore off the
roof of one of his sheds, exposing its contents to all the fury of the
weather.

Next day he did what he could to repair the damage.  Fortunately much
of his perishable goods was contained in stout boxes which he always
kept securely fastened, and the things he lost were those he could best
spare.

In the afternoon of that day, he went across to the opposite side of
the island, as he was wont to do at intervals, to take a look-out from
the high cliff there.  He wondered whether the storm had cast any other
ill-fated vessel upon the shore.  But, scanning the whole horizon, he
saw nothing but league upon league of restless sea.

"Our solitude is not to be disturbed, Mirandola," he said to the
monkey, "for which let us be thankful.  Or ought we to deplore it?  I
wish you could speak, my friend, and tell me something of your history.
Are you the last of your race, I wonder?  Well, so am I.  I have no
kith nor kin; nor, as it appears, have you.  I have a humble estate in
an island--to be sure, somewhat larger than this.  Now I come to think
of it, this island is yours; it is a mark of nobility of soul--or is it
poverty of spirit?  I cannot say--that you do not regard me as a
supplanter.  Good Holles, my steward, would not brook the intrusion of
any adventurer on my lands.  Heigh ho!  How fares the old fellow, I
wonder?  How he shook his old head when I acquainted him with my
purpose to join Sir Martin Blunt in his voyage to the Spanish Main!
'God save you, sir!' said he, and asked whether he should sell my
whippets!  One thing I know, Mirandola: that if it please God to bring
me safe home in season, Holles will give me a faithful account of his
stewardship.  Let me think I am your steward, good my friend.  And now
let us return to our honey-pot."

On the way back, Dennis struck somewhat to the left of his usual path,
to skirt the marsh on its south-western instead of its north-eastern
side.  It was far larger in area than when he had first seen it; its
outlet was too narrow to carry off the surplusage due to the tremendous
rains.  Dennis was picking his way around the oozy edge, letting his
thoughts travel back to the pleasant land of Devon, when suddenly he
was brought up short by the sight of a mark in the soft earth, the
strangeness of which mightily surprised and perplexed him.  Parallel
with his own tracks there ran for a few yards a faint ribbon-like
track--such a track as might be made by a large cart wheel that had
rested very lightly on the surface.  It was a single track: following
its course, he found that it disappeared into the water, just as he had
seen the mark of a cart wheel disappear into a roadside horse-pond at
home.

He looked around.  There was nothing to account for the mark.  He
scouted the idea that it had been actually made by a wheel; a vehicle
must have been drawn by animals, and there were no hoof-marks to match.
With all his puzzling he could find no explanation, and though he
looked warily about him as he went on his way, with some return of his
old feeling of nervousness, he saw no sign to suggest that the island
had been visited.

It was a day or two before he again found himself near the marsh.  He
had been fishing from the base of the high cliff that formed his usual
look-out.  A kind of natural pier of broken rock jutted out from the
cliff seawards, and the deep water on each side was the favourite
resort at high tide of shoals of small fish, which chose it, he
supposed, because the depth was not great enough for the ground sharks
that sometimes made their appearance off the shore, and the little fish
could disport themselves there in security.

Carrying his catch on a string--enough for his own dinner, for
Mirandola would not touch it--he passed again by the brink of the
marsh, and once more was puzzled by the wheel-like track which he had
seen before and been unable to explain.  The marsh had somewhat shrunk
in the interval; the receding water had left more of the track visible:
and the outer soil having been baked hard by the sun, the strange
imprint was clearer and more definite.

It occurred to Dennis now to attempt to trace the mark in the opposite
direction, away from the point where it disappeared in the water.  It
speedily grew fainter as he came to harder soil, and he lost it
altogether where it entered undergrowth which had no doubt been
partially submerged when the marsh was at its highest.  But after some
search he found it again where it emerged from the rank vegetation, and
from that point he traced it with little difficulty, for it kept fairly
close to the margin of the lake.  Its resemblance to the track of a
wheel had now ceased; not even the most rickety of carts, driven by a
drunken tranter on a Devonshire lane, could have made such erratic
movements as must have caused this shallow winding mark on the soil.
Dennis followed its curves with persistent curiosity, not unmixed with
a vague uneasiness.  Mirandola accompanied him, springing lightly from
bough to bough of the trees nearest the edge of the marsh, descending
with extraordinary quickness and loping along the ground where gaps
intervened, or the fringe of the woodland belt took a trend inwards.

At length the tracking came perforce to an end.  Again the trail
disappeared into the water, and Dennis halted, feeling a little vexed
that his patience was, after all, to bear no fruit.  He looked round
for Mirandola.  The monkey had disappeared, exploring, no doubt,
thought Dennis, a close-packed thicket that came within a few yards of
the morass, having apparently crowded out all nobler trees save one
slender cedar which, dominating the undergrowth, seemed taller than it
really was.

Dennis was about to give up the problem as hopeless and go on his way,
when suddenly he heard Mirandola chattering in a manner that was new to
him.  The moment after, the monkey sprang from the thicket into the
tree, and climbed with frantic speed to the very top, where he sat
gibbering and shaking with terror.  Dennis, wondering what had
perturbed him, took a step forward, then started back in a cold shiver.
A huge serpent was rearing itself from the midst of the undergrowth and
winding its coils about the trunk of the tree.

Mirandola on the topmost branch had now ceased his chattering, and
clung, watching the monster with dilated eyes.  The poor creature was
helpless.  To descend from his perch would have been fatal; there was
no other tree at hand to which it might escape.  Indeed, under the
fascination of the serpent's baleful eyes, as it slowly drew its
immense coils up the trunk, the monkey lost all power of motion; and
Dennis himself, even with the thicket between him and the monster, felt
a sort of chill paralysis as he watched its sinister movements.  For
half a minute he stood rooted to the spot; then, making an effort to
throw off this dire oppression, he tried to think of some means of
helping the monkey.  At that moment of danger, he was conscious for the
first time of the strength of his affection for the animal whose
companionship had done so much to relieve the awful solitude of the
island.  Unless he intervened, Mirandola was doomed, and the thought of
losing Mirandola filled him with a fierce longing to slay this monster
that was crawling inch by inch towards its prey.

His first impulse was to run back to his hut for the gun he kept there
ready loaded; but slow as the serpent's progress was, before he could
return to the spot the tragedy would have ended.  Then he remembered
how the reptiles in the woods at home were killed.  A blow on the
vertebrae crippled them; could he cripple this huge creature, which
even yet had not heaved all its length into the tree?  His only weapon
was the sailor's clasp-knife which he always carried at his girdle.  He
opened it impulsively, then hesitated.  If he failed to hit the
vertebrae, and dealt only a flesh wound, he might perchance save the
monkey, but could he then save himself?  He knew nothing of a boa
constrictor's power of movement; yet his instinct told him that, if
once enfolded in those monstrous coils, he must inevitably be crushed
to death.  But he could not stand and see his pet mangled and devoured:
the serpent, moving deliberately, as though aware of its victim's
paralysis, was not yet beyond his reach.  Springing through the
undergrowth, he marked a spot some distance from the reptile's tail.
The serpent heard his approach, and turned its head slowly in his
direction; but a second later Dennis drove his knife with all his force
at the centre of the sleek round mass.

Next moment he was thrown sprawling on the ground, by a flick of the
tail as the upper part of the serpent's body writhed convulsively under
the blow.  He jerked himself to his feet and leapt away through the
undergrowth in panic fear.  A few steps brought him to open ground, and
then, crushing down his nervous terror, he looked back.  The coils were
slipping down the tree, and in a moment it was clear that the serpent's
power was gone; its huge bulk moved uncontrollably: its motor force was
destroyed.  Dennis ventured to enter the thicket again.  When the
serpent reached the ground, it writhed as he had seen injured eels and
earthworms writhe, but its movements were all involuntary; Mirandola
was saved.

[Illustration: "Dennis saves Mirandola."]

The monkey was now chattering volubly, but still clung to his perch.
Clearly he would not venture to descend while his enemy moved.  For
some time Dennis watched it; then, feeling that he must put an end to
its maimed life, he hurried away to fetch his gun.  A bullet in the
head: and the reptile lay motionless.

Even then some little time elapsed before Mirandola yielded to Dennis's
persuasive calls and slid, still somewhat nervously, to the ground.  He
avoided the reptile's body, and scampered away with shrill cries to the
open.  When Dennis overtook him, the monkey sprang upon his shoulder,
and so they returned to the hut.

After this thrilling experience Dennis felt somewhat less at ease in
his peregrinations of the island.  He had come to think that he had
nothing to fear there so long as it was unvisited by men.  But the
thickets that gave hiding to one huge reptile might harbour many more.
Henceforth he walked more warily, and never ventured far from his hut
without a gun.




CHAPTER VI

The Spanish Whip

Dennis had given up the idea of building a boat as a means of escape
from the island; but now that time again hung heavy on his hands, he
reverted to it as a refuge from the tedium of idleness.  It promised to
give him much labour, for, unless he stripped the planking from the
_Maid Marian_, he must needs fell trees for himself, and prepare his
timbers as well as his unskill could devise.  The trees of the island
were for the most part unknown to him; and he was not aware of the
Indian practice of hollowing out a cedar trunk with fire or hatchet.
In his wanderings he now began to take note of the different species,
with a view to selecting one that would best suit his tools.

One day, when he was strolling through the woodland on this errand, he
was amazed, and not a little alarmed, to hear, from some spot far to
his right, what seemed to him to be the ring of axes.  He halted,
incredulous.  The island, he was assured, had no other inhabitant; yet
he could not be mistaken; the sound of tree-felling reminded him of
home, and he felt a sudden deep yearning for the combes and holts of
far-off Devon.  But this feeling was immediately quelled by a sense of
danger.  Who were these woodcutters?  No friends, he was sure; he had
given up hope of finding friends upon these remote coasts.  And if not
friends, discovery by these spelt death to him, or slavery to which
death would be preferable.

He was minded to turn about and seek safety in his hut.  Built upon the
edge of the chine, it could only be discovered by careful exploration
of the woodland, and the chine was all but invisible from the sea.
There he might remain in hiding, with a fair chance that he would not
be found.  But this first impulse passed.  He felt an overmastering
curiosity to see who these visitors were.  Whence had they come, he
wondered?  Why, if they came from the distant mainland, had they
crossed the sea?  He could not suppose that wood was lacking upon the
shores of the great continent.

Slowly, with infinite caution, he began to thread his way towards the
sound.  There were open spaces amid the woodland; these he durst not
cross, but kept always in the shelter of the trees.  He dreaded lest
Mirandola should betray him by a cry; but the monkey leapt from bough
to bough almost noiselessly, as if he too had taken alarm from the
unwonted sound.  A few weeks before, Dennis himself would have found it
difficult to make his way through the woods and the undergrowth without
giving signs of his presence by the snapping of twigs or the rustle of
parting foliage; but the abiding sense of danger which had oppressed
him during his earlier passages across the island had bred in him a
wariness of movement that was now almost as instinctive as in the wild
creatures whose lives depended on their caution.

Guiding himself by the sounds, he was drawn towards a grove of trees
that lay about two hundred yards from the southern beach.  Only a day
or two before he had struck his hatchet into one of them, and concluded
from its soft white sappy rind that it would not provide fit timber for
his boat.  Yet it was clearly these trees upon which the unseen woodmen
were at work.  He stole forward, and coming to a dense fringe of
undergrowth beyond which the grove lay, he edged his way into the
thicket, and very stealthily pressed the foliage aside until he got a
view of what was doing.

The trees grew somewhat far apart, and across a fairly open space he
saw the strangers whose unexpected presence was causing him such
concern.  Five men, stripped to the waist, were hard at work with axes.
Four of them had dusky skins of reddish hue; the fifth, a short,
thickset, brawny man, the muscles of whose arms showed like great
globes, was clearly a white man, though his hands and arms were stained
a bright scarlet quite different from the red duskiness of southern
natives, or the red-brown caused by exposure to sun and wind.  As they
moved, the five men clanked the chains that fettered their ankles to
stout logs of wood.  A little apart stood three men looking on,
laughing and talking together in a tongue strange to Dennis.  They were
big swarthy fellows, with soft wide-brimmed hats, each decked with a
feather, brown leather doublets and hose, and long boots.  Each bore a
caliver and a whip.

The sun was high in the heavens, its beams beating down through the
trees upon the unprotected backs of the toilers.  Sweat was pouring
from them.  The trees were thick, some at least two yards in
circumference; to cut them through needed no slight exertion.  The
white labourer paused to draw his arm across his reeking brow.  Then
one of the watchers strolled across from the tree against which he had
been lolling, and raising his whip, brought the thong with a stinging
cut across the back of the slave who had dared to intermit his labours.
A red streak showed livid on the white skin.  For a moment it seemed to
Dennis, watching the scene, that the victim was about to turn upon his
assailant with the axe, his sole weapon.  An expression of deadly rage
writhed the features of his red, bearded face.  His grip tightened upon
the axe.  But he controlled his impulse with an effort.  The warder
laughed brutally, flung a taunt, and cracked his whip in the air in
challenge and menace.  Sullenly the woodman resumed his task, and his
persecutor, with another laugh, turned and rejoined his companions,
applauded by their grins.

Dennis felt himself stung to anger.  This swarthy ruffian, he doubted
not, was a Spaniard, a subject of King Philip, once the consort of an
English queen.  It was not a pleasant introduction to the race
dominating the Americas.  Apparently Mirandola liked them no better
than he, for at the first sight of the strangers the monkey had fled
away.  Dennis found him a good quarter-mile distant when, taking
advantage of an interval during which the Spaniards ate and drank, and
the flagging toilers rested, he strode away to a banana grove to
refresh himself.

He watched the group till near sundown.  Several trees having been
felled, the men proceeded to hack off the branches and to chip away the
white rind.  Then the strange scarlet colour of their arms and hands
was explained.  The heart of the trees was a brilliant red.  As the
rind was stripped off, the Spaniards drew near and examined the core,
and under their direction the labourers cut and trimmed certain
selected logs.  The work was still unfinished when the sun went down,
and the leader of the Spaniards gave the word for returning to the
shore.  The logs were struck off the slaves' ankles and replaced by
manacles; then they set off.  Dennis followed them at a safe distance,
and when he came within view of the sea, there was a small vessel
riding at anchor some little distance off shore, and the slaves were in
the act of dragging a row boat through the white surf.  In this they
all put off, and darkness covered them up as they regained the ship.

Dennis returned to his hut, joined by the monkey on the way.

"Here is food for thought, Mirandola, my friend," he said.  "No fire
for us to-night!  Are you acquainted with don Spaniards and their ways?
You kept a wide berth: have you too suffered at their hands?  Who is
the poor wretch the ruffian lashed?  By his looks he would pass for an
Englishman: I hope he is not of English breed.  Yet I hope he is: what
do you make of that, Mirandola?  I protest I love your wise and
friendly countenance; but there is something warming to the heart in
the sight of one of my own kind, if such he be.  We must be up betimes,
my friend; maybe the morrow will give us assurance."

Thinking over the incident before he slept, Dennis wondered why the
party had returned to the ship.  If the purpose of their visit was to
obtain any quantity of this strange red wood, doubtless they had
several days' work before them; why had they not camped on shore?
Perhaps they felt that the slaves were safer on board; perhaps, too,
they did not care to weaken the ship's company during the hours of
night.  It was a small vessel; probably there was not a large number of
Spaniards aboard; but doubtless they were all armed like the three who
had come ashore, and their slaves, being fettered, would need but a few
to control them.  Dennis hoped that when they returned next day they
would not make too thorough a search for similar groves elsewhere in
the island, for if they should discover his hut, he had little doubt
they would seek to impress him into the hapless gang.

His sleep was restless.  Many times he woke with a start and sprang up
trembling, feeling that the Spaniards were on his track.  At daybreak
he was on his way towards the western shore, and took up his position
in the same thicket, the leafy screen being almost impenetrable.  The
monkey was with him now; but when his ears caught first the measured
thud of oars, then the clank of chains drawing nearer, Mirandola
chattered angrily, sprang into a tree, and disappeared.

The party came into view: five slaves, three Spaniards.  The former
were, to all appearance, the same as those Dennis had seen on the
previous day; but it seemed to him that their armed guards were
different; probably the men of the ship took it in turns to come
ashore.  But if the individuals were different, their methods were much
the same.  Indeed, before Dennis had been watching the work many
minutes, he had reason to know that the warders of to-day were even
more ingeniously brutal than those of yesterday.  The first thing he
noticed was a change in their manner of rendering their slaves
harmless.  One of them carried a large wooden mallet; the others had
between them iron staples with sharp-pointed ends.  These staples they
drove one by one with the mallet into the boles of the five trees
selected for the day's operations.  Secured to each staple was one end
of a long chain, the other end of which was fastened to the captive's
ankle band.  Thus the hapless woodmen were fettered not merely by the
logs of wood, as on the previous day, but by chains that bound them to
the very trees they were to cut down.  The staples were driven into the
trunks below the line of the cleft to be made; but the chains, though
long, seemed to Dennis scarcely long enough to enable the men to escape
crushing should the trees happen to fall the wrong way.  That was a
chance which evidently did not trouble the guards.

Dennis wondered why this additional precaution had been taken to ensure
the safe custody of the wretched men.  Had they shown signs of mutiny?
It would not be surprising after the treatment of the previous day.
Certainly the ingenious device lightened the task of surveillance, for
the wood-cutters, however exasperated, could not turn upon their guards
until they had forced out the staples with their axes.

The three Spaniards threw themselves down at some distance from the
slaves and lolled negligently against the trees.  The wood-cutters
plied their axes, sturdily, monotonously, never speaking, their faces
expressing nothing but a sullen despair.  Dennis fixed his eyes on the
white man, and felt an eager longing to hear him speak.  One word would
be enough to show whether he was indeed an Englishman.  But the man was
as silent as the rest, and nothing was heard save the ring of the axes
and the voices of the Spaniards conversing.

Five trees lay upon the ground; the warders rose to drive the staples
into others.  It appeared that time hung heavy on their hands.  Some
demon of mischief suggested to one of them a means of obtaining a
little diversion.  His proposal was received with shouts of laughter by
his companions.  Dennis did not understand what was said, but the
meaning was soon made plain.  The three men drew lots with three twigs
of unequal length, and placed themselves by the side of three
slaves--the white man and two Indians--as fate determined.  Again they
drew lots, and proceeded to fasten their men to three new trees.  The
other two Indians were set to strip the trunks already felled.  It was
soon evident that the Spaniards' amusement was to be had at the expense
of the wood-cutters.  They pooled a number of pieces of eight; the
Spaniard whose man first felled his tree was to take the stakes.

The three men set to work, the warders standing over them with their
whips.  The faces of the Indians wore their wonted look of dull apathy;
but Dennis saw the lips of the white man tighten, and a grim scowl
darken his brow.  The sport commenced.  Excited by their gamble, the
Spaniards urged on their men with loud cries.  For some minutes the two
Indians smote the trees with feverish energy; the white man plied his
axe with measured strokes, neither slower nor faster than before.  The
warders became more and more excited, and from cries proceeded to
blows.  One of the Indians flagged, and to stimulate him the Spaniard
behind dealt him a savage blow with his whip, and the poor cowed wretch
laid on with greater vigour.  Hidden in the bush Dennis nervously
clutched his sword and felt the blood surge into his cheeks.  Fine
sport, indeed!  The other Spaniards, not to be outdone, began to
belabour the backs of their men also, and Dennis, seeing great weals
rise on the bare flesh, could scarcely control the impulse to dash at
all costs from his hiding-place to the aid of the suffering men.  He
saw the face of the white man pale beneath the sun-tan and the red
stains; perchance the Spaniard would have had a qualm if he had seen
the fury his features expressed.  But he did not see it; with callous
levity he shouted, and brought his whip down with a sickening crack
upon the broad red-streaked back.

Then, with a suddenness that took Dennis's breath away, the white man's
pent-up rage burst its bounds.  At the end of his endurance, he swung
round with a nimbleness surprising in a man of his bulk, and flung his
axe with unerring aim at his tormentor.  The man fell among the logs.
In a second, before the other Spaniards had time to recover from the
shock of this unheard-of audacity, one of the Indians at work on the
fallen tree hurled his weapon at the warder nearest him, and struck him
headlong to the ground.  The third man had sufficient command of his
wits to take to his heels and scamper away.

The wood-cutters were between him and the shore, and the direction of
his flight was towards the thicket in which Dennis stood, all tingling
with the excitement of this amazing change of scene.  He gripped his
sword; but the Spaniard stopped short within a few yards of the bushes,
uttered a furious oath, and turning about, kindled his match, preparing
to shoot at the slaves, who were hacking with frenzied haste at the
staples that held them to the trees.  The two Indians who were free
were hobbling towards the woodland on the other side, appalled by their
own temerity.  Dennis heard the Spaniard chuckle as he raised his
caliver.  The man knew full well that, even if the woodmen succeeded in
breaking loose, he would have time to shoot them down one by one,
hobbled as they were.

Dennis could no longer remain inactive.  An enemy of the Spaniards,
whatever his colour, was a friend of his.  He could not see the poor
wretches slaughtered.  For an instant he thought of kindling his own
match and firing at the Spaniard, who was within easy range.  Then,
changing his mind, he pushed aside the bushes, sprang into the open,
and leapt over the ground with the lightness of a panther.  The
Spaniard heard his movements and swung round; Dennis saw the startled
look of terror in his eyes.  Taken aback, he had no time to ward off
the musket stock of this assailant who had sprung as it were out of the
earth.  His cry of alarm was stifled in his throat, and under the blow
dealt him with all the force of honest rage he dropped senseless to the
ground.




CHAPTER VII

Amos Turnpenny

Dennis felt his limbs tremble as he stepped round the fallen body and
went forward.  The white man and the biggest of the Indians had already
released themselves, and stood as though rooted to the ground with
amazement.

"I am a friend," cried Dennis, while still separated by some yards from
them.

"My heart, that's a true word!" gasped the white man, and Dennis
thrilled with joy as he heard the broad accent of a south-countryman.
"A friend, true; and a blessed word to Haymoss Turnpenny's ears."

They gripped hands, and looked each other squarely in the face.  There
was a lump in Dennis's throat, and a mist of tears in the elder man's
eyes.  Then Turnpenny glanced over his shoulder with a sudden access of
fear.

"We bean't safe," he muttered, and there was a world of terror in his
gesture and tone.  "They'll find us, and then 'twill be hell-fire.  Can
'ee hide us?"

"Let us first release that black man."

"Ay, sure, fellow creature, although black.  I'll do it, in a trice."

He walked towards the trees where the last man was still struggling to
force out the staple.  At this moment Dennis saw one of the others, who
had released his feet from the hobbling logs, springing past him with
uplifted axe, the fire of fury in his eyes.  Turning, he noticed that
the Spaniard he had felled was moving.  He had but just time to dash
after the man and prevent him from butchering his prostrate enemy.  The
Indian drew back in surprise, and Dennis stood on guard until the
Englishman joined him.

"Bean't he killed dead?  Why didn't 'ee kill him, lad?  T'others be
dead as door nails, and won't trouble you nor me no more."

"We'll let this fellow live; he may be useful to us."

"Why didn't 'ee kill him with your sword or caliver?  He's vermin, as
they be all."

"Well, his back was towards me," said Dennis.  "Besides, a shot would
have alarmed his comrades on the ship."

"The ship!" repeated the man, looking round again with fear in his
eyes.  "The ship!  They'll find us!  We are rats in a trap!  Lord save
us all!"

"Come, we must think of something.  Can you speak to these men?"

"Ay, in some sort.  Not in their own tongue, 'tis monkey-talk to me.
Ah! look at 'em, poor knaves."

The Indians had fallen upon the provisions brought by the Spaniards for
their own consumption, and were devouring them ravenously.  Turnpenny
called to them in a husky whisper, as though fearful of his own voice
reaching the ears of an enemy.  Then, taking the dazed Spaniard with
them, the woodcutters, hobbled by the logs, made off across the island,
led by Dennis to the watercourse at the further end of which his hut
stood.  Within half a mile of that spot he halted, and got the
Englishman to tell the others to remain there until rejoined.  With
Turnpenny he hastened on.

"God be praised I was able to help you," he said.

"Ay, but I fear me 'tis to your own undoing.  They will come ashore,
and catch 'ee, and flay 'ee alive."

"Tell me, how many men are left on the bark?"

"Ten, lad, all armed to the teeth.  Sure they will land when we don't
go aboard at night.  They will hunt us down.  This time to-morrow we'll
be dead men, or worse than dead."

"Pluck up heart," said Dennis.  "There are six of us; I have arms for
all; we can post ourselves at a place of our own choice, and make a
good defence, I warrant you."

"My heart!  But what will be the use?  Say we beat them off, 'twill be
like as if we tried to stem the waves.  With a fair breeze the mainland
is but a day's sail, and there the Spaniards swarm like cockroaches in
a hold.  I tell 'ee, lad, whoever ye be, we be dead men!"

"I've been nearer death," said Dennis quietly.  "Look!  There is my
hut.  I was cast up on this shore from a wreck: I have been here
several weeks, months--I know not: it has pleased God to keep me alive
here, alone on this island, and I believe there is hope for us all."

"Amen! ... My heart!  There's a sheer hulk in the pool yonder."

"Ay, all that's left of the _Maid Marian_.  But I will tell you my
story anon.  Come away into the hut, and let us talk of what we can do
to save ourselves from the Spaniards."

As they entered the hut, the Englishman drew back with a startled cry.
Perched on a cask sat Mirandola.  He chattered angrily at the sight of
a stranger.

"My one friend on the island, and a faithful comrade," said Dennis.  "A
gentle soul; he will do you no harm."

"A friend, say you?  'Tis against nature to be friends with a
spider-monkey.  And I be fair mazed; it do seem all a dream, only in
the offing yonder there be a real ship, and, say what 'ee will, I be
afeard."

"We'll first file off these clogging hobbles.  And what say you to a
mug of beer?  It has come far; I have not broached the cask, and maybe
'tis still drinkable."

"My heart!  I never thought to taste beer or cider again.  'Twill
comfort my nattlens, sure, and I was once a good man at a tankard."

The fetters were soon struck off; a mug of beer was drawn, and drained
at a gulp; but Turnpenny was still ill at ease.  He went to the
entrance of the hut and looked nervously up and down the gully,
listening with head cocked aside.  Dennis could not guess at the
terrible past which had made this stout English mariner as timid as a
child.

"Let us get back to the black men," he said, knowing from his own
experience the value of action in banishing sad thoughts.  "Are they
Indians of America?"

"Maroons, sir, half Injun, half negro; lusty fighters, and faithful
souls when they do love 'ee."

"We'll knock off their chains and give them arms.  What can they use?"

"Not muskets, nor harquebuses, but anything that will dint a blow."

"Half-pikes and swords, then.  For yourself, take your pick."

"Ay, it do give me heart to handle a cutlass again.  Here's a fine
blade, now, and a musket--give me a harquebus; I could shoot once, but
my arm is all of a wamble now.  Lookeedesee!"

He raised the heavy weapon to his shoulder and tried to steady it.

"See!  Shaking like a man with the palsy," he said, his nervousness
returning.  "I be no more good than a bulrush."

"Pish, man!" said Dennis cheerily.  "You are overwrought; your arm is
tired with wielding the axe.  An hour's rest will set you up.  Come,
bring the file and the weapons; we must see that the others are not
scared in our absence."

The four maroons had remained on the spot where they had been left,
keeping guard over the Spaniard, who had now quite recovered from his
blow.  They eyed Dennis with a wide stare, and fell silent when he
approached, seeming scarcely to comprehend the wonderful good fortune
that had befallen them.  The removal of their fetters and the gift of
arms struck them as a crowning mercy; they grovelled upon the ground as
in the act of worship.

"They take 'ee for a magician, sir," said Turnpenny.  "'Tis marvellous
to their simple poor minds.  All the world be full of spirits to them;
a storm at sea be the stirring of witches, and the Spaniards be devils.
My heart!" he exclaimed suddenly, "the fear has took me again!  When
they do miss the sound of the axes they will jealous summat wrong, and
then they'll come and we'll be all dead men."

"Cheer up!" said Dennis.  "'Tis easy to cure that.  Two of the men can
set-to upon the trees again, and one can steal to the shore and keep an
eye on the ship, and acquaint us if he sees any stirring there."

"But what of the Spaniard, lad?  'Tis then only one maroon to watch
him, and 'tis not enough.  If so be the knave be left to himself, he'll
run to the beach and give the alarm."

"We'll stop that, too.  When he has had a portion of food, we will gag
and bind him, and all will be well."

When the Spaniard was secured, the whole party returned to the scene of
the tree-felling, and while one of the men went stealthily forward to
spy upon the ship, two others plied their axes upon the fallen trunks.

Dennis, more alert of mind than the sailor, foresaw that the trick
could have only a temporary success.  When the time came for the
wood-cutting party to return to the vessel, their non-appearance would
awaken suspicion among the Spaniards on board.  Believing the island to
be uninhabited, they would not guess what had happened; it would not
even occur to them as possible that cowed and unarmed slaves would have
courage enough to turn on their masters, much less overcome them.  But
if the party did not return at nightfall, the captain would certainly
send some of his men to discover the cause.  Of all men the Spaniards
were the most superstitious; when they landed, their very superstitions
would put them on their guard.  Their approach would be cautious; they
would probably discover the escaped slaves before these could strike at
them effectively; and then, when the inevitable fight came, the party
of six, of whom only two could use firearms, and one had partially lost
his nerve, would stand a poor chance against men armed cap-a-pie and
doubtless inured to the practice of warfare.  Besides, even if the
landing party could be taken by surprise and routed, the sound of the
combat would alarm the Spaniards still remaining on the ship.  They
would sail away, and in a few days return in overwhelming strength.

Dennis was at first staggered by the difficulties and perils of the
situation, and he dared not consult with Turnpenny until the sailor had
regained his courage.  For the present the important thing was to keep
him employed, so as to turn his thoughts from anything that would feed
his fears.

"We must bury these two knaves," said Dennis, glancing at the bodies of
the Spaniards.  "You and I can do that.  Your name, I bethink me,
is----"

"Turnpenny, by nature, Haymoss by the water o' baptism, sir."

"Haymoss?"

"Ay, sure, a religious good name, sir; a' comes betwixt Joel and
Obydiah somewheres after the holy psa'ms.  Born at Chard, sir, in
Zummerzet, but voyaged to Plimworth when that I was a little tiny boy,
and served 'prentice aboard the _Seamew_--master, John Penworthy."

Dennis had heard only the first sentence of this string of facts.  He
was in the very act of stooping to dig a grave with one of the maroons'
big axes, when there flashed into his mind an idea which set him aglow
with hope.

"Well, friend Amos," he said, so quietly that none could have suspected
his inward eagerness, "think you not we may strip the outer garments
from these knaves before we bury them?  Your back would be the better
for a covering, and this leathern doublet would well beseem you."

"True, sir, but I never donned a stranger's coat yet.  I be English
true blue, and though the Spaniard's doublet might span my back,
'twould irk my feeling mind, sir!"

"To please me, Amos.  I would fain you covered your arms--the red is
too like blood, and we may see enough of that ere we be many hours
older."

To Dennis's gratification the sailor did not again blench at the
suggestion of a fight with the Spaniards.  He laughed.

"My heart!  'Tis easy to see you be a new man in this new world, sir.
The stains of logwood don't worrit me; 'tis a noble dye, you must own,
and many's the noble garment that has been dyed for a Spaniard's madam
out o' the logwood I've cut.  But since it offends your innocent eye,
I'll e'en don the knave's coat afore I put him out o' sight in earth
too good for him."

Overjoyed at the man's recovered spirits, Dennis hastened, as they went
on with their task, to press his advantage.

"You are two enemies the less, Amos--nay, three, counting the knave we
have in pound among the trees yonder.  What say you to our making a
shift to put a few more in the same case?"

"What mean you, sir?"

"Tell me, what people hath the ship yonder, besides the ten Spanish
knaves of whom you spoke?"

"Why, sir, as a true man I answer, a black cook--no maroon, but a swart
fat knave from the Guinea coast; and three maroons, who fell sick, or
rather were well-nigh beat to death, in an island over against the
continent yonder we visited on the same errand."

"And they are gyved, as you were?"

"All but the cook.  He goes free, but, my heart! 'tis little he gains
by it.  He is every man's football and whipping-boy."

"Why then do the Spaniards remain aboard the ship when there are so few
slaves to guard?"

"'Tis first because they be idle knaves, who would never do a hand's
turn save by necessity.  Item, because they be but poor seamen, and
need a dozen to handle a craft, only forty ton burden, that three
true-born Englishmen could sail into the devil's jaws.  Item, because
the spot where she lies at anchor is ill-protected; 'tis rather an open
roadstead than a bay, and if a squall should come up sudden, as 'tis
nature in this meridian, they'd need all the lubbers' work to get a
fair offing."

"So three true-born Englishmen are a match for a dozen base cullies of
Spain?  Is that your thought, Amos?"

"Ay, at musket, pike, or quarter-staff; there's never a doubt on it."

"Think you two, then, are a match for ten?  The balance turns a little
in favour of the Spaniards; by right proportion it should be two to
eight; but mayhap four maroons on t'other scale would even the odds."

Turnpenny desisted from his work, and a shadow of his former fear came
upon his face.  Dennis did not allow time for the fit to lay hold of
him.

"There is advantage to him who strikes first," he went on, quietly.
"If we wait, assuredly we shall have to fight against heavy odds.  But
if we assume a bold part, and jump the risks, we may gain all the
vantage of surprise, and enforce it with that English blood you hold so
high in estimation, to say naught of English thews and sinews.  Why,
man, that stout arm of yours would fell an ox."

"True, sir," said the simple mariner, bending his arm to raise the
muscle, and looking at the knotty protuberance with great complacency;
"I ha' done desperate deeds of strength in my time.  But, heart alive!
do 'ee think to capture the ship?"

"I think of venturing for it; and, unless I be mightily mistaken, Amos
Turnpenny is not the man to turn his back on a venture of that kind."

"Not by nature, sir," said the man, uneasiness struggling with simple
vanity in his mind.  "By nature I be as bold as a lion.  But the lion
in the story was meshed in with ropes, and could do no harm to a silly
mouse; and for four year past, sir, the ropes of mischance have held my
spirit in thrall, wherefore it is that----"

"That you are afraid?  Nonsense!  You are the lion; I am the mouse.
Let us say that I, by good luck, have gnawed those confining ropes
asunder, and now, on this island, you are free of mind as of limb, and
a man of heart and vigour."

Turnpenny flung down his axe and fairly jumped.

"My heart!" he cried, gleefully; "'tis the very marrow of the tale!  I
be free, free!  For four year I have forgot the word.  Sound of limb,
straight of eye, with all my five wits, praise God above!  Speak your
thought, sir; Haymoss Turnpenny is your man."




CHAPTER VIII

Half-Pikes and Machetes

The Spaniards had by this time been buried.  The two maroons were still
hacking at the trees.  Nothing had been reported by the man on the
look-out.  Glancing at the sun, Dennis guessed that it was still two or
three hours from setting.  But for interruptions there would be ample
time to develop his plan.

"Come beneath the shade," he said to Turnpenny.  "There is much to be
said and done.  If perchance a man lands from the ship, we must take
him prisoner.  If several come, we must fight them at the gully.  If
they lie secure, and we are undisturbed, we shall capture their vessel
this night."

"I believe it, sir, partly; I'd believe it more firm if I understood."

"Give me your judgement on my plan.  At sunset we will haul some logs
down to the shore and push off in the boat, as if we were the Spaniards
with their slaves.  You and I will rig ourselves in the doublets and
hose of the two yonder; it will go hard with us if, in the dark, we do
not mislead the Spaniards into security.  We will mount into the
vessel, and if luck favour us we shall be masters of the craft before
the Spaniards have awakened to the danger."

"A noble plan, but fearsome," said Turnpenny, shaking his head.  "We
shall be two short, sir.  We rig up as Spaniards, you and me; granted;
but the knaves on deck will see two Spaniards instead of three, and
they will want to know what has become of Haymoss Turnpenny."

"We will take our prisoner.  Then they will see three Spaniards, and if
they then miss Amos Turnpenny, let them suppose that the sailor man has
turned troublesome, and been left on the island, to bring him to a
reasonable humility."

"Ay, sure, that unties the knot.  But I would not give a groat for my
chance of seeing Plimworth Sound again if the knaves spy the head of
Haymoss sticking out o' the Spanish doublet.  The captain, he be a man
of desperate fight; no miserable dumbledore is he; 'tis a word and a
blow with him; I've seed him kill a man of his own breed for no more
than a wry word."

"We must trust to our disguise, and the dark."

"But the maroons, sir; they'll be of no use 'ithout weapons, and if
they climb aboard with naked steel in their hands, 'tis all over with
us."

"You and I will mount first."

"That would put the knaves on guard at once.  'Tis always us poor
slaves that come over side last into the boat and go first out of it,
so as never to give us no chance of making off.  They need not be
afeard; whither could poor miserable wretches escape away?  But there
it is."

"Well, Amos, we must accept the wonted course, though I would fain go
first, with you at my elbow."

"It is my very own thought, sir.  No white man can trust a black un in
the deadly breach.  But be jowned if I see any ways o' they maroons
getting aboard with arms in their hands."

"Nor I.  Mayhap an idea will enter our conceits anon."

"My heart!  There be another thing I had clean forgot.  We have ta'en
their irons off."

"We must put them on again.  We will not fail for the sake of a clank."

"Ay, but there's the rub, sir.  The maroons will show fight if we
attempt that same.  Poor souls!  Having no language and no intellecks
to speak of, they'll not understand the main of our intent.  They will
suppose 'tis but a change of masters, and I fear me my few words o'
Spanish will not suffice to set their minds at ease."

"You made them understand you a while ago; you must try again.  But a
word more.  I judge the sun is grown far on the west; 'twill soon be
time to put our fortunes to the hazard.  And, lest our dallying here
waken the suspicions of the Spaniards, let us don these articles of
apparel e'en now, and fix on the irons, and then go down to the shore,
the maroons hauling the stripped logs thitherwards.  The ropes are
handy here."

"What, sir, haul logs in the very sight of the knaves?"

"Ay, do we not wish to deceive them?  If they see two Spaniards
marshalling the black men, cracking their whips, moreover, will they
not believe 'tis their comrades, bent on finishing the work this night?
'Tis growing towards dusk; the vessel lies out too far for them to mark
our lineaments; 'twill lull them into a fool's security."

"And so it will.  I will presently go speak to the maroons with my
tongue, and, seeing that the poor mortals lack understanding, with my
fingers and my eyes and my ten toes if the case do require it."

Dennis watched the sailor somewhat anxiously.  It would be a stroke of
rank ill-fortune if they refused to have their manacles replaced.
Everything depended on their docility.  To his joy, after some minutes
of gesticulation, Turnpenny came back, his broad face beaming with
conscious self-esteem.

"Be jowned if I haven't done it easy!" he said.  "I spoke 'em plain,
and to make all clear, I put my two hands together, with one finger
pointing aloft: that stood for yonder vessel.  Then I pointed to this
doublet, and to yours, and set my face to a most wondrous frown, by the
which they understood that you and me pass for Spaniards.  A firk with
my cutlass did signify our warlike intent, a thrust of my arms forth
and back pictured the sweep of oars; and, to make an end o't, they
understand our fixed purpose and are keen set to lend us their aid."

"Admirably contrived!" said Dennis.  "Now, while I bring the Spaniard
to bear us company, do you replace the irons and fasten ropes about the
logs.  Darkness will steal upon us unawares and prevent the first part
of our contriving."

As Dennis returned to the gully to fetch the Spaniard, he saw that
Mirandola was keeping pace with him through the trees.  Since the event
of the morning the monkey had held himself aloof, as if scared by the
presence of so many strange men.  Dennis halted and called to him, but
the animal blinked and made no movement to descend.

"Ah, Mirandola," said Dennis, as he walked on, "even the wisest of us
have our failings.  Jealousy, my friend, is a canker.  I love thee none
the less because I have a new friend.  Will you not believe it?  Is
there not room for both--Turnpenny and Mirandola?  If we succeed in
this enterprise, you and Amos must be made at one."

Some little while later, in the growing dusk, the four maroons were
hauling a heavy log out from the undergrowth that fringed the sea.
Dennis and Turnpenny urged them with rough cries and persistent
cracking of their whips.  As soon as they came within view of the
vessel the ropes were cast off, and they all made their way back.  When
they returned with a second log, there came a faint hail from the
vessel.

"Ay, ay, 'od rot you!" shouted Turnpenny indistinctly in response,
knowing that at the distance his voice could not be recognized.
"Belike 'tis a call to us to embark, sir," he said to Dennis.  "Mark
you, they called us; no man dare say they did not call us; and if they
do not like us when we appear, 'tis not because we are not proper men."

The logs were laid alongside of those brought down the previous day;
then the men released the boat's moorings, and hauled her off the shoal
where she lay into water deep enough to float her.  By this time it was
almost dark, and the number of men who clambered into the boat could
not easily be counted on board the vessel, nor would it be noticed that
the maroons hoisted each a large bundle.  At the last moment Dennis had
decided not to encumber the boat with the captive Spaniard.  He had
thought of using the man to reply in Spanish to any hail from the
vessel during the passage from the shore; but this might be attended
with danger if the Spaniard should have courage enough to risk the
inevitable penalty should he raise his voice to warn his comrades.
Accordingly he was left on shore, gagged and bound, in a spot where he
might easily be discovered by the Spaniards next day if the enterprise
failed.  There were no wild beasts to molest him, and the place chosen
was remote from the haunts of the boa constrictor.

The maroons pulled steadily towards the silent vessel, lying low in the
water some two hundred yards off shore.  Already a lamp had been lit
aboard.  Every member of the little party in the boat was tense with
anticipation.  Not a word was spoken.  The silence would cause no
wonderment among the Spaniards on the vessel; a party of free negroes
might have filled the air with their babblement; but the maroons
partook of the reserve of the Indian race, and, living, as they did, in
a state of deadly feud with the Spaniards, they nourished a deep silent
longing for vengeance in their hearts.  Besides, these men were cowed
slaves, and, after the hard day's toil they were supposed to have
undergone, no one would have expected them to be talkative or merry.

Stroke by stroke the boat drew nearer to the ship.  At length a voice
hailed it, and a flare was kindled in the waist of the vessel for its
guidance.

"Why do you return so late?" came the question in Spanish.

Turnpenny answered in passable Spanish, but in a muffled tone--

"Wait till we come aboard."

A few seconds later the boat came beneath the vessel's side and was
made fast.  The biggest of the maroons--he who had flung his axe at the
Spaniard--got up and clambered aboard.  On his back he bore a huge load
of bananas.  Close to his clanking heels swarmed a second man; before
the first was well over the bulwarks a third was beginning the ascent,
each carrying a similar bundle.  The fourth man had but just set his
foot on the rope ladder that hung over the side when there came to the
ears of Dennis and the sailor, nervously awaiting their turn, the sound
of altercation above.  One of the Spaniards had bestowed a kick upon
the foremost of the slaves, and, laughing loud, grabbed at the load of
fruit upon his back.  The maroon, instead of dropping his burden and
cowering away, as was the wont of slaves, held firmly to it, and
stepped back to avoid the Spaniard's clutch.

"You hound!" cried the man, with an oath, and snatched a knife from his
belt.

Then, to his utter amazement, the maroon let his load fall indeed,
contriving as he did so to rip out of it a shortened half-pike which
was cunningly concealed there.  The light of the torch fell on the
naked steel.  With a loud cry of rage the Spaniards who had been
lolling on the vessel's side sprang towards the slave, cursing his
audacity, shouting to their supposed comrades in the boat below to ask
the meaning of this unheard-of act of mutiny.  But he stood his ground,
glaring upon them, holding his weapon to ward them off.  And now at his
side his three fellow-slaves were ranged, their bundles lying at their
feet, glistening half-pikes in their hands.  Yelling with fury the
Spaniards, armed at the moment only with their knives, pressed forward
to teach these mutineers a lesson.  What access of madness had seized
them?  Where was the abject look of terror with which they usually
shrank from their masters?  What could the men in charge have been
about?  The Spaniards rushed to the fray with the violence of wrath and
outraged bewilderment.

At this first moment the fight was not unequal.  The six Spaniards who
had been on deck found that with their knives they could not come to
close quarters with the four stalwart maroons wielding half-pikes.  The
latter, moreover, had kicked off the fetters loosely set about their
ankles, and moved with freedom.  And while the Spaniards were shouting
for their comrades in the cabin and, as they supposed, in the boat
below to come to their aid, the numbers of the mutineers were suddenly
augmented.  At the first sound of the scuffle, Dennis and Turnpenny,
each armed with a cutlass, had sprung on to the ship, the former by the
ladder behind the last maroon, the latter, with a sailor's agility,
leaping up to the gunwale and hauling himself over.  When they reached
the deck they found the Spaniards dancing round the little group of
slaves, who were keeping them at bay with valorous lunges of their
weapons.

No sooner had the two Englishmen joined the combatants than they found
that they had now the whole ship's company to reckon with.  A huge
Spaniard rushed from the main cabin behind the maroon, a machete in one
hand, a pistol in the other.  There was a flash, a sharp barking sound;
one of the slaves staggered and fell.  Other Spaniards came headlong
out, in their haste not pausing to bring fire-arms.  From the
forecastle ran one of the sick maroons.  The instant his eyes took in
the scene, he snatched up a belaying pin from the deck and, weak as he
was, threw himself into the melee.  Now had come the chance for which
he had so long hungered, and his black blood seethed as he rushed to
pay off old scores.

There was hot work then amidships that narrow vessel.  Cutlass and pike
were matched, not for the first time, against the long Spanish knife.
Under the disadvantage of surprise the Spaniards, though they
outnumbered their assailants, were not so effectively armed for the
fray.  The maroons laid about them doughtily; they knew how terrible a
weapon was the knife at close quarters, and their whole purpose was to
hold their masters off and cripple them if they could.

The big Spaniard who had rushed first from the cabin and fired at the
maroon found himself immediately afterwards engaged with a lithe young
man who, though clad in a Spanish doublet, was certainly not a
fellow-countryman of his.  Instinctively, as it seemed, captain singled
out captain.  Dennis made a vigorous cut at him, but the blade was
fouled by the shrouds above his head, and the blow, losing half its
force, was easily warded off by the Spaniard's machete.  He sprang
back; if his opponent had been a little nimbler Dennis would have been
at his mercy; but the Spaniard was gross with idleness and good living;
heavy of movement he failed to seize his advantage, though in the lunge
his knife cut the lad's doublet, and gashed his sword arm in the
recovery.

[Illustration: "Captain singled out Captain."]

Dennis was scarcely conscious of his wound.  At this fierce moment his
practice on the deck of the _Maid Marian_ served him well.  To attempt
a second cut would have been to give another opening.  He shortened his
arm and gave point.  The Spaniard was no tyro.  With a turn of the
wrist he parried the thrust, which was aimed low, but could not prevent
the blade from entering his shoulder.  He staggered and reeled back
towards the doorway of the cabin, and the two men immediately behind
him rushed into the fight.  Turnpenny meanwhile had been engaged in a
similar duel, and by the sheer force of his bulk had borne his opponent
to the deck.  Side by side Dennis and he faced their new assailants.
One of these, a long sinewy fellow, had an amazing dexterity with his
knife, and a most perplexing nimbleness of movement.  Dennis kept him
at bay only by the length of his cutlass.  For a few moments there was
brisk work around the mast.  Making a sweeping cut, Dennis somewhat
overreached himself, and it would have gone ill with him had not
Turnpenny, who had run a second man through, perceived his danger in
the nick of time.  Springing forward, he pierced the fellow to the
heart.

Three of the Spaniards had now fallen.  The rest, who had barely held
their own against the maroons, were stricken with fear when they saw
their comrades' fate.  Two of them sprang overboard; the remaining
four, finding the three maroons now reinforced by the Englishmen,
rushed back after their captain into the cabin, and, before they could
be overtaken, slammed-to the door and shot the bolt.  Dennis snatched
up a belaying pin and brought it with all his force against the door,
but made no impression on its stout timbers.  There was a roar and a
flash close to his ear; he felt his cheek singed; one of the Spaniards
had fired through a loophole in the cabin wall.  The moment after,
there was another flash from a loophole on the other side, and one of
the maroons uttered a cry of pain.  In the open waist of the vessel the
little party had no protection from musket fire; the loopholes had
doubtless been pierced against the contingency of such an assault as
this, and nothing but the darkness could prevent the Spaniards in the
cabin from bringing down a man at every discharge.  They had the whole
armoury of the ship to draw upon; there was no means of checking their
fire; and realizing the situation Dennis called on Turnpenny and the
rest to seek cover.  Some found shelter just forward of the mainmast;
two swarmed on to the poop, and, climbing to the edge of its break,
held themselves ready with their half-pikes to attack any one
attempting a sortie from the cabin.  Dennis and the sailor, picking up
the calivers they had laid down when they boarded the vessel, dropped
down behind a coil of rope towards the forecastle.

"My heart!" exclaimed Turnpenny, as he primed his weapon.  "'Twas brisk
work, and not the end neither."

"They are run to earth, Amos, 'tis true, got away like foxes.  Our case
is not too good.  We are baulked, my friend."

"Ay, sir.  With all the victuals and munitions abaft, the knaves have
the better of us.  We cannot get at them; say we made endeavour to
scuttle the ship, they could shoot us afore we got away."

"And there are sick maroons in the forecastle, I bethink me you said.
I would fain save them alive.  We must do something to bring the knaves
to an engagement.  There are five of them now.  With time to recover
themselves somewhat, and fortify themselves with food, they can if it
so please them lie low till morning light, then sally out upon us with
arms loaded, several pistols apiece, and we, fasting, would be of a
surety overmatched."

"Ay, and we cannot feed ourselves even on that noble store of bananas,
for they lie athwart the very course of bullets from the cabin."

"Could we smoke them out?  Could we blow the door in?"

"With a sufficiency of powder, but the magazine is beneath the cabin."

"Is there none elsewhere?"

"Why, now I do mind me, the boatswain hath a vast relish for wild fowl,
and is never loath to go a-shooting on shore.  'Tis like he hath a
little secret store."

"Then I will go rummage the forecastle.  Do you bide here, Amos, and
keep ward over my caliver until I return."

When the party boarded the vessel, there had been a dim light in the
forecastle.  It was now extinguished.  Dennis went in through the open
entrance; then, feeling safe from the enemy's bullets, he took a candle
from his pouch and having lit it, held it above his head.  He shrank
back, startled for the moment.  The pale flame had fallen full on the
face of a big negro, crouching in the corner of an upper bunk.  A
second glance assured him that he had nothing to fear; the black face
was sickly with terror.  In a flash Dennis remembered the negro cook of
whom Amos had spoken.  As cook, being allowed a certain freedom of
movement about the vessel, the man would probably know where the
boatswain kept his powder, and search might be unnecessary.  Dennis
called to him; the negro only showed more of the whites of his eyes.
Dennis beckoned him with his finger; he only cowered and groaned.

"'Tis to be main force then, you white-livered rascal!" cried Dennis,
and, setting down his candle, caught the man by his waist-band and
began to haul his oily mass out of the bunk.  "You gibber more
brutishly than Mirandola; come, or I'll shake your fat bulk to a jelly."

Not without labour he lugged the negro forth, and dragged him aft to
the place where Amos was crouching.

"Here's a fat knave that's like to dissolve with fright," he said.  "I
do not understand his monkey-talk; speak to him, Amos.  Ask of him what
we need to know, and tell him we intend him no harm, and will certainly
not expect such a craven to fight."

"Ay, sir, 'tis Baltizar the cook, and a very whey-blooded knave.  I'll
ferret it out of him, trust me."

He took some minutes in his scraps of Spanish to make the man
understand what was required of him.  When he understood, the negro
became very voluble.  He said that the boatswain did indeed keep a
small jar of powder in his sea-chest, but there was a much larger
quantity concealed among the ship's stores under hatches.  It had been
placed there by the mate--"the long knave I spitted," Amos
explained--who was accustomed to do a little private trading with the
natives of the mainland, and had destined the powder as a bribe for
certain pearl-fishers of the coast.

"Is it in the fore-peak?" asked Dennis, remembering where he had found
powder on the _Maid Marian_.

"No, worse luck!" replied Turnpenny, after questioning the man.  "'Tis
in the lazaretto, and the hatchway being but a few feet from the break
of the poop, we cannot come at it 'ithout running the hazard of a shot
from the cabin."

"'Tis darker now; could I not risk the deed?"

"The knaves med not see you, 'tis true; but you could not knock out the
battens 'ithout raising a din, and they would know your whereabouts,
and not all on 'em would miss your carcase.  Be jowned if I'd like to
see 'ee make the venture."

Releasing the negro, Dennis crouched again behind the coil of rope.

"We must find a way to get that powder," he said.  "A mariner like you,
Amos, ought to be fertile in devices.  Come, set your brains on the
rack."

"I be afeard they be soft wi' four years' misery, but I'll rouse 'em.
If I had but the second sight, now, like the old witch as lived within
a cable-length o' my grandad's hut on the moors!"

But Amos had done his brains an injustice.  He had not pondered many
minutes before he exclaimed--

"My heart!  We have them on the hip!  We'll e'en shin up the shrouds
and lower the mainsail.  She's furled on the yards, but we can unreeve
her 'ithout noise, and when she's down, she'll be a barricade betwixt
the mainmast and the break o' the poop, and not a knave of them can see
what is toward in the waist."

Dennis applauded the notion, and the two instantly set about their
task.  Crawling to the starboard side, they crept along by the rope
netting that replaced in the waist the wooden bulwarks which bounded
the decks, and reached the shrouds of the mainmast unperceived by the
enemy in the cabin.  To swarm up was the work of a few moments to
Turnpenny, and Dennis was little less expert, having practised himself
on the _Maid Marian_ in many details of the mariners' duties.  Gaining
the yards, they cast off the robands, made the buntlines fast, then,
easing the earings, lowered away by the buntlines and the clew-garnets.
Scarcely five minutes after they had left the shelter of the rope-coil,
a wall of canvas shut the waist from the view of the Spaniards.

They had barely finished their task when two musket-shots rang out, and
two holes were cut in the sail.  Clearly the enemy was on the alert.
There was no time to be lost.  Turnpenny knocked out the battens as
quickly as possible, and lifting the hatch, disclosed a small ladder
leading down into the lazaretto.

"I will go down," said Dennis, "being of less bulk than you, Amos."

He climbed nimbly down, struck a light, and after a little search
discovered a jar of powder among a miscellaneous collection of ship's
stores.  Hoisting the jar up, he gave it into the hands of Turnpenny,
climbed up again, and returned with the sailor to the coil of rope, to
be out of harm's way while they went on with their preparations.

"If we fire the whole jar we shall of a surety sink the ship," said
Dennis; "and that I am loath to do.  We must needs make a petard; but
how?"

"That cook knave shall find us a tin vessel, or I'll firk him," said
Turnpenny.

He went into the forecastle.  Dennis heard a brisk exchange of bad
Spanish; then the sailor returned, with a small canister out of which
he poured a heap of peppercorns.

"Most admirable!" said Dennis, who had meanwhile forced off the top of
the jar.  Making a hole in the rim of the canister near the lid, he
filled the vessel with powder and firmly closed it.

"There's our petard, Amos.  Now to place it."

"That be my job, sir."

"No, no, we go shares in this work.  'Twas your idea to lower the sail.
I carry less flesh than you, and therefore can go more lightly."

"But mayhap I be surer footed on the plank, being a mariner of forty
year."

"I doubt it not, yet the deed shall be mine."

Carrying the canister, and in the pouch slung at his neck a handful of
powder for the train, he crept to the side of the vessel, ran lightly
along the gangway by the rope netting, and lifting a corner of the
sail, stood between it and the wall of the cabin.  Then he dropped on
hands and knees, and wormed his way forward until he touched the wall,
following it along until he reached the door.  Being beneath the line
of loopholes, he was in no danger so long as he moved quietly; but at
the slightest sound the enemy would fling open the door and give him
his quietus before help could reach him from beyond the barricade.  He
might have felt still more confident had he known that Turnpenny had
crept along after him, and was waiting at the corner of the sail, ready
to spring to his aid in case of need.

Feeling with his hand for the middle panel of the door, Dennis laid the
canister down close against it.  To ensure that the hole he had made in
it, to connect with the train of powder, should rest upon the planks
and not turn over, he pressed a slight dent in the rim.  Then he crept
backwards the way he had come, laying close to the cabin wall a train
of powder from his pouch, not stinting the quantity, so that there
might be no gaps in the line.  He drew a breath of relief when he came
once more to the further side of the canvas and stood erect.  There was
not a gust of air stirring; the confined space between the sail and the
cabin was hot and stuffy; and what with holding his breath during the
minutes his task had occupied, and the strain upon his nerves, he had
felt almost suffocated.

He said not a word when he found Turnpenny awaiting him, but placed his
finger on his lips and motioned the man to return.  The charge having
been laid in safety, it remained to arrange a course of action when the
door should be blown in.  While the sail was still lowered it would be
impossible to dash forward into the cabin.  The screen was no longer
required now that there was no further need for the open hatchway; to
remove it might indeed put the enemy on their guard, but they could not
know what to expect, and there would be no time after the explosion to
hoist the sail, even if it were possible to spare men for the task.  So
Turnpenny volunteered to replace the hatch and hoist and bend the sail,
work which he would do more quickly and expertly than Dennis.  It was
then necessary to communicate with the maroons, for to attack the cabin
in less than full strength, against superior weapons, would be to court
disaster.  A loud whisper reached the men who had taken shelter behind
some tackle forward of the mainmast, and brought them crawling to their
leaders.  It was not so easy to attract the attention of the two men
who had shinned up the poop, and to whom, though they had probably seen
Dennis as he crawled beneath the sail, he had not dared to make a sign.
The difficulty was removed by a word from Turnpenny to one of the
maroons.  The man made a strange clicking in his throat, and within a
couple of minutes his comrades had crept noiselessly along the port
side of the vessel, and the party was complete.

With great solemnity and many repetitions the sailor exhausted his
small stock of Spanish in explaining what was required of them.  They
were all to charge together the instant after the petard had done its
work.  If the force of the explosion proved sufficient to blow in the
door, they would dash through into the cabin and engage the enemy hand
to hand.  If, on the other hand, the door should be only partially
shattered--as Turnpenny pointed out, there was no calculating on the
precise effect of a charge of gunpowder--two men were to break it in
with a short spar unrigged for a battering ram.  Dennis counted on
gaining a few moments while the Spaniards recovered from the surprise
and shock of the explosion.  In that brief interval it might be
possible for him and Turnpenny to find the loopholes in the cabin wall
and thrust the muzzles of their calivers through.  By the time they had
fired the door would be burst in, and then it would be a fight to the
death.

If the occupants of the cabin had felt any wonder or misgiving at the
manipulation of the sail, there was nothing during the pause to give
them either explanation or reassurance.  They might have suspected that
the intention of lowering the sail was to screen an approach to the
hatchway; but as, according to Baltizar the cook, the jar of powder had
been appropriated by the mate secretly, and he was now dead, it would
never have occurred to them that their enemy would seek there anything
but food.  Otherwise they would assuredly have made some effort, beyond
the firing of two random shots, to avert their fate.

There was absolute silence when Turnpenny had concluded his whispered
instructions to the maroons.  The vessel rocked gently, almost
imperceptibly; the tide was on the turn.  Dennis crept once more to the
gangway by the rope netting, stole along on bare feet, and stooped with
a beating heart to apply the match which Turnpenny had made for him.
It had an inch or two to burn before it reached the train of powder;
and he stood back against the side, out of danger from the explosion,
ready to rush across to the nearest loophole when the moment came.

Suddenly a line of flame shot like a lightning flash across the planks.
In an instant there was a deafening crash, and though each man of the
attacking party knew what was coming, and was beyond reach of actual
harm, they were all somewhat dazed by the explosion.  But it was only
for the fraction of a second.  Then Dennis and Turnpenny sprang
forward, one on each side of the cabin entrance, towards the loopholes
whose position they had marked in the previous fight.  For a few
moments they were baffled by the blinding smoke, but finding the holes
almost simultaneously, they thrust in the muzzles of their weapons, and
fired at random into the cabin.  A muffled cry from within announced
that one or other of the shots had taken effect, but the next instant
there was a roar as the Spaniards discharged their muskets together at
the gaps rent in the door by the explosion.  At the time the Englishmen
knew not whether any man was hit, for, dropping their calivers, they
seized their cutlasses, and, just as the spar carried by two lusty
maroons levelled the shattered door, they dashed at the opening.

The light from a horn lantern hanging in its gimbals struggled with the
smoke that filled the room.  Dennis stumbled over a body that lay
across the entrance.  He had barely recovered his footing when he was
amazed to hear a frenzied shriek from the further end of the cabin, and
two men rushed forward with uplifted hands, shouting again and again a
single word which, being Spanish, he did not understand.

"My heart! they cry for quarter!" cried Turnpenny, as much amazed as
Dennis.

One of the maroons who had carried the spar, either not understanding
or not heeding the wild despairing cry, thrust at the foremost Spaniard
with a half-pike, and the wretch fell forward, hurling Dennis to the
floor and doubly blocking the entrance.  Dennis threw the man off and
scrambled to his feet; but before he could take a step forward there
was a second explosion, louder and more shattering than the first, and
when he recovered his dazed senses he found himself lying at the fore
end of the waist, twenty feet away from the cabin.




CHAPTER IX

Amos Tells his Story

"Body o' me!  Will 'ee squall like babbies?  Make for the boat, you
howling knaves!"

And then Turnpenny launched into a tirade of Spanish abuse, which came
somewhat more trippingly from his lips than sentences of sound
instruction.  Dennis rose, and staggered towards the sailor.

"God be praised!  I feared you were dead, sir.  The knave has blowed up
the powder magazine, and in five minutes by the clock the ship will
tottle down by the stern.  These black rascals were howling like souls
in bale, in the stead of swinging overboard into the boat while there
is time.  Come away, sir; the craft will sink to the bottom or ever we
gain the island."

Bruised and sore, dropping blood from his untended wound, Dennis
hastened with Amos to the side, and was in the act of following the
maroons into the boat when he suddenly remembered the two sick men in
the forecastle.

"I'll be with you anon," he cried, hurrying across the waist.

"What a murrain!" muttered Amos, scrambling back and running after him.
"Shall we drown for a brace of savages!  Wilful!  Wilful!"

He reached the forecastle in time to see Dennis hauling from his bunk
the fat negro, who lay there huddled and shivering with terror.

"Make the fat fool understand!" cried Dennis, shoving the cook into
Amos's arms.  Then he hurried to the further end, where the maroons lay
in a stupor of fright.  Having no words to acquaint them with their
peril, he sought to move them by signs; but the men gazed at him in
fear, regarding him doubtless as a new oppressor.

"Amos, leave that lump of jelly and come hither," he shouted.  The
sailor bawled a word or two in Spanish, and sped the negro towards the
side with a kick.  Then he made haste to join Dennis.

"The wretches are helpless," said the boy.  "We must carry them--fair
and softly, Amos."

"Ay, sir, an you will; but our case is parlous; I fear me our leisure
will not serve."

"No delay, then.  Hoist this fellow upon my back; do you bring the
other.  We cannot suffer the knaves to drown."

They staggered forth with their burdens, Dennis foremost.  As he
stumbled towards the side he caught sight of a man crawling slowly from
the direction of the cabin.  The man called to him feebly, but Dennis
did not pause until he had reached the gangway by the netting, where he
laid the maroon down.

"Call to his fellows below there to assist him into the boat," he cried
to Amos.  "There is a man yet alive; we must save him."

"Beseech you let the knave drown," returned the sailor.  "'Tis a
pestilent Spaniard--a meal for sharks.  Be jowned if the lad be not a
mere dunderpate," he grumbled, as he lowered his burden into the hands
of the men below.

Meanwhile Dennis had hastened to meet the wounded man, who groaned
miserably as he dragged his limbs along.  Half supporting, half
carrying him, Dennis brought him to the side just as the second maroon
had been bestowed safely in the boat.  Turnpenny, still growling under
his breath, helped to lift the Spaniard down.  Then the boat was cast
off, and the men rowed for the shore.

"Canst see any sign of the knaves that leapt overboard?" said Dennis,
looking around.

"Never a hair," replied Turnpenny, "Sure they be swallowed quick by the
sharks, and there's an end."

Dennis shuddered.  It was his first acquaintance with the tragedy of
adventure on the Spanish Main, and his unschooled heart turned sick at
the thought of the terrible fruit his scheme had borne.  He gazed at
the dark form of the vessel that was gradually fading into the night.
The poop was already under water.  He had not foreseen this end to his
enterprise; the rapid sequence of events had bewildered him.  What had
caused the second explosion?  Had the magazine been fired by accident?
What a mercy it was that he and all his party had not been blown to
atoms!  He could not but feel a poignant pity for the poor wretches who
had thus suddenly met their doom.

The boat grounded on the shoals.  He sprang into the water and assisted
Turnpenny and the maroons to carry the helpless men to the fringe of
grass, and to haul the boat up the beach.  Then he turned once more to
look at the vessel.  No longer was her dark form outlined against the
starlit sky; she had gone down, leaving no trace.

Joining the men on the stretch of greensward where they were assembled,
he suddenly heard the shrill voice of Mirandola close at hand, and next
moment felt the touch of the animal's paw upon his arm.  The monkey had
followed the party at a distance when they came down to the shore in
the dusk, and sat forlorn on the grass, watching the boat that carried
his master away.  Could the poor beast think human thoughts, Dennis
wondered, as he felt its body trembling against his?  Had it believed
that it was deserted by the being who had treated it with kindness?
Certainly it showed clear signs of gladness now, and its joy at
recovering its one friend had vanquished its dislike and suspicion of
the rest.

"Here we be, sir, ten martal souls," said Turnpenny, "reckoning
Baltizar, who in sooth is more like a jellyfish than a man.  What be us
to do?"

"We cannot tramp across the island in the dark, Amos.  What say you to
camping in the logwood grove?  'Tis nigh at hand, and we can lie there
with fair comfort until the dawn."

"With all my heart.  'Twill be a drier bed than those villanous knaves
yonder can boast."

"Poor wretches!  How came it that the magazine blew up, think you?"

"I know not, sir.  I will ask the knave you brought last from the
vessel--a deed of merciful madness."

He spoke a few words to the wounded prisoner, while the maroons who had
formed the wood-cutting party conveyed their sick comrades to the
grove.  The man replied in feeble accents.

"This was the manner of it, sir," said Amos, after a minute or two.
"The captain being sore wounded, and two killed outright, the other
knaves, seeing how that they stood in danger of being sliced by our
bilbos, did incontinently call upon him to render up the vessel, hoping
thereby to come off with their lives.  But the captain, a tall man and
of a good spirit, did resolutely refuse to yield to their entreaties,
swearing that he would with his own hand blow up the vessel rather than
deliver it to heretics and dogs of English.  Straightway he passed into
his own cabin, and made fast the door; which seeing, and knowing that
what he had said, that would he perform, the knaves began to whoop and
hallo for quarter.  Then did the captain, as 'tis to be supposed, make
into the after cabin and fire his pistol into the magazine, and so
dealt the ship that mighty blow."

"And this man--who is he?"

"A man of Portingale, sir, not of Spain, and so somewhat nearer grace.
He thanks you and all the saints that he remains alive, though his
limbs be maimed withal."

"Let us convey him softly to the grove; on the morrow we will look to
his wounds and bind them up with balsam and other salves from the
wreck."

"Marry, you use him too gently.  'Tis like warming a snake in your
bosom; and, since charity begins at home, we will look to our own hurts
first."

When the party was settled as comfortably as possible in the grove,
Dennis and the sailor disposed themselves side by side to sleep.  But
both were wakeful, for all their fatigue.  They lay for a time in
silence, each fearful of disturbing the other; but Dennis, hearing at
last a long pent-up groan from his companion, asked what ailed him.

"Thinking, sir--old thoughts of home."

"I have been minded to ask you of your history, Amos, but we have had
other matters to speak of.  How came you to be a prisoner of the
Spaniards?"

"'Tis a tale long in the telling, sir, but I will give 'ee the drift of
it.  I were a young cockerel of twelve when I ran away to sea.  It kept
a-calling me; night and day I heard the sound; and when I could no
longer endure it, I went and joined myself ship-boy to a worthy mariner
o' Plimworth.  Afterwards he made me his prentice, and so a mariner I
have been from that day to this.  Ay, 'twas a brave life for a man, in
the days of King Hal, lad.  I mind me I were but rising seventeen when
the French king took a conceit to invade England.  My heart! he had
reason enough, for King Hal had before sent a power to capture
Boolonny, on the French coast, which they did, and burnt it with fire.
The French king would have his tit for tat, and he gathered a great
power and a mighty fleet to strike at Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

"I was rising seventeen, as I said, and gunner's mate aboard the _Anne
Gallant_, a noble galleass.  The fleet made a brave show, lying off
Spithead, and I was hot to show my mettle; 'twas my first fight, by the
token, and sure 'twas a famous fight.  The _Anne Gallant_ and others of
her sort, with the shallops and rowing-pieces, did so handle the French
galleys that our great ships in a manner had little to do.  The only
hurt we suffered was the breaking of a few oars.  We anchored for the
night, as did the French fleet, we hoping to come at them in the
morning; but when daylight broke, hang me if the French were anywhere
to be seen, and though we gave chase they got away and ran into their
ports.  But a little after, the _Anne Gallant_, with three other
galleasses and four pinnaces, was set upon off Ambletoosy by eight
great galleys.  There was great shooting betwixt us; we drew alongside
of the _Blancherd_ galley in the smoke, and leaping aboard her, we took
her captive, with two hundred and thirty pikemen and musketeers, and a
hundred and forty rowers.  Master King Francis got the wrong pig by the
ear when he tackled King Harry.

"Ah me and well-away!  That was over twenty-five year ago.  I served
many years on merchantmen, under many a master, good and bad.  I made
one voyage to the Guinea coast with Master Hawkins, and five year ago,
being about to set sail to the Indies for to trade slaves with the
Spaniards, he sent for me and made me boatswain aboard his own great
ship, the _Jesus of Lubeck_, of 700 tons.  Marry, 'twas a goodly
squadron that sailed out of Plimworth Sound.  Besides the _Jesus_,
there was the _Minion_ of Captain Hampton, the _William_ and _John_,
all great ships, and three smaller vessels, of the which Master Francis
Drake commanded the _Judith_.  Hast ever set eyes on Master Francis?"

"Ay, indeed, once only--this very year, in Plymouth, some months before
I sailed."

"And I warrant he was stout and brave, and as 'twere a raging fire
against the Spaniards, making ready to chastise the villanous traitors
and promise-breakers: was it not so, good-now?"

"Well, to say sooth, when I saw him he seemed to have no thought of
Spaniards: his whole mind was set on a game at the bowls, and he was
some little put out when he failed of winning."

"Master Francis put out over such a trifle?  Why, believe me, with
these very eyes I saw him warp his bark clear when beset by Spanish
fire-ships and battered by Spanish guns, with as serene a countenance
as he were sailing a shallop for pleasure on the Plym.  Master Francis
put out for losing at the bowls!  Tush, lad!"

"Nevertheless 'tis true, for I was there present, and saw and heard it."

"God-a-mercy!" ejaculated Turnpenny.  "And what was the manner of it?"

"Why, Master Drake came to two gentlemen bowling on the Hoe, and one of
them, being summoned away, left the other to play out the game with the
Captain.  He was beat, as I said, and being well conceited of his
skill, he was for a moment vexed.  Then he laughed, and clapped his
hand on the shoulder of the other--a stripling he was--and said: 'A rub
for me, my lad; 'twas a rare game, and I thank thee.'"

"Ay, that was true Master Francis: he is ever gall and honey mingled.
Art then of Plimworth, sir?  As you love me, your name?"

"Dennis Hazelrig, of Shaston."

"Of Shaston?  I was never there.  I will mind of your name.  You be
gentle, I know by your speech, and Dennis Hazelrig do sound richer to
the ear than plain Haymoss Turnpenny, but----"

"Come, man, to your story," interrupted Dennis.

"Ay, sir, then I must make a tack.  I was at Plimworth, a' b'lieve,
when the name of Master Drake set me out o' my true course.  Well, the
ships I named, great and small, sailed right merrily out o' the Sound
o' Plimworth; 'twas a day of October, I mind me, the very season o'
gales.  We had a deal of buffeting afore we made the coast of Guinea,
and a deal of hard knocks afore we took on board our store o' negroes
for to sell to the Spaniards of the Main."

"To sell?"

"Why yes, sir; that is Captain Hawkins his trade; and knowing now
myself what it is to be a slave, I have a fellow feeling for the poor
knaves, black as they be, and bought and sold like cattle.  Well, 'twas
near six month afore we came to the Indies and did some traffic among
the islands.  Then by ill hap, as we sailed for Cartagena, we were
caught in a most violent and terrible storm, the which battered us
mightily for the space of four days; in sooth, we feared we should go
to the bottom.  The _Jesus_ was dealt with most sorely, her rudder
shaken, and all her seams agape.  Then, coasting along Florida, we ran
into the jaws of another tempest, the which drave us into the bay of
Mexico.  There we sought a haven, and moored our ships in the port
called St. John d'Ulua, where we landed, and our General made proposals
of traffic.

"The next day did we discover a fleet of thirteen ships open of the
haven, and soon we spied a pinnace making towards us.  There was in her
a man bearing a flag of truce, and he came aboard the _Jesus_,
demanding of what country we were.  I mind we laughed at the knave; he
swelled himself out like a turkey-cock.  Our General made answer that
we were the Queen of England her ships, come for victuals for our
money, and that if the Spanish General would enter, he should give us
victuals and other necessaries and we would go out on the one side of
the port, the while the Spaniards should come in on the other.  But it
had so fell out that with their fleet there came a new viceroy of the
Spanish king, and he was mightily put out by our General's reply,
thinking it something saucy from an Englishman with so small a fleet.
The proud knave returned for answer that he was a viceroy with a
thousand men, and would ask no man's leave to enter.  Our General
laughed, and set us laughing too when he said: 'A viceroy he may be,
but so am I.  I represent my Queen, and am as good a viceroy as he; and
as for his thousand men, I have good powder and shot, and they will
take the better place, I warrant him.'"

"A right proper answer," said Dennis.  "And what then?"

"Why, Master Viceroy gave in, and swore by king and crown he would
faithfully perform what our General demanded, and thereupon hostages
were given on both sides.  The villanous knave!  Our General chose out
five proper gentlemen and sent them aboard the Spanish admiral; but the
viceroy, stuffed with fraud and deceit, rigged up five base swabbers in
costly apparel and sent them to our General, as if they were the finest
gentlemen of Spain.  Yet did we use them right royally, deeming it to
be an act of courtesy and good troth.

"Then their ships came with great bravery into the port, and there was
great waste of powder in firing salutes, as the manner is at sea.  But
'twas not long afore our General became doubtful of their dealings.  So
did we all, for with my own eyes I saw them, when they moored their
ships nigh ours, cut out new ports in the sides, and plant their
ordnance towards us.  'So ho!' says I, 'there be trickery and
hugger-mugger in brew.'  Our master, one Bob Barrett, chanced to be
well skilled in the Spanish tongue, and him our General sent aboard
their admiral to know the meaning of these same doings.  The base
villains set poor Bob under guard in the bilbows, and we had scarce
seen that mark of their knavery when they sounded a trumpet, and
therewith three hundred of them sprang aboard the _Minion_ from the
hulk alongside.  My heart!  Many a time afore had I seen the blazing of
our General's wrath, but never so fierce as it blazed then.  His eyne
were like two coals of fire as he called to us in a loud voice.  I mind
his very words.  'God and St. George!' cried he.  'Upon those
traitorous villains, my hearts, and rescue the _Minion_; and I trust in
God the day shall be ours.'  And with that, with a great shout we leapt
out of the _Jesus_ into the _Minion_, and laid on those deceitful
knaves, and beat them out; and a shot out of the _Jesus_ fell plump
into the poop of the Spanish vice-admiral, and the most part of three
hundred of the villanous knaves were blown overboard with powder.

"It was a good sight to see Captain Hampton of the _Minion_ cut his
cables and haul clear by his stern-fasts, the while his gunners poured
round shot into the vice-admiral that rode ablaze.  But there was but
four of us to their thirteen.  The Spaniards came about us on every
side, and began to fire on us with brass ordnance from the land.  My
heart!  'Twas hot work for us when we scrambled back on to the _Jesus_
as the _Minion_ sheered away.  Being so tall a ship we could not haul
her clear.  She had five shot through her mainmast; her foremast was
struck in sunder with a chain-shot, and her hull moreover was
wonderfully pierced.  Our General gave orders that we should lay her
alongside of the _Minion_ till dark, and then take out her victuals and
treasure and leave that noble vessel.  A right true man is Captain
Hawkins.  In the midst of that noise and smoke he called to Samuel his
page for a cup of beer, and it was brought to him in a silver cup; and
he drank to us all and called to the gunners to stand by their ordnance
lustily like men.  He had no sooner set the cup out of his hand but a
demi-culverin shot struck away the cup, and a cooper's plane that stood
by the mainmast, and ran out on the other side of the ship; the which
nothing dismayed our General, for he ceased not to encourage and cheer
us.  I hear his voice in my ears now.  'Fear nothing!' he cries, 'for
God, who hath preserved me from this shot, will also deliver us from
these traitors and villains.'

"But on a sudden we perceived that the Spaniards had loosed two
fireships against us.  The men of the _Minion_ were in such a taking
with fear of those monsters that they bided not the outcome, nor did
they heed their captain's commands, but in a mighty haste made sail.
The _Jesus_ being then alone,--for the _Angel_ was sunk and the
_Swallow_ taken, and Master Drake had warped the little _Judith_
clear--our General cried to us to spring upon the _Minion_ ere her
sails could draw, which he himself did.  As I made to do his bidding,
my heart! there came toppling on my head a portion of the main topsail
cross-tree, and struck me senseless withal.  When something of my wits
returned to me, there was I, amid a score of wounded and captive
fellows, on the deck of the noble _Jesus_, and a mob of Spaniards
around; sure she must have been built under an evil star."

"And what befell you then?" asked Dennis, eagerly, for Turnpenny had
fallen silent.

"God-a-mercy, sir, the fear takes me when I think on't!  They hauled me
ashore, with certain others of our men, and hanged us up by the arms
upon high posts, until the blood gushed out at our finger-ends.  'Tis
by the merciful providence of God alone I am yet alive, carrying about
with me (and shall to my grave) the marks and tokens of their barbarous
cruel dealings.  'Tis by the same wondrous grace I 'scaped handling by
the Inquisition, that hath devoured many of my poor comrades.  My heart
and my reins cry and groan for the terror and pain of their sufferings.
God have mercy on us all!"

Overcome by the recollection of what ensued upon his capture by the
Spaniards, Turnpenny went by turns hot and cold and was unable to
continue his story.  Many times during the night Dennis was woke from
his own troubled slumbers by a cry from his companion, upon whom, now
that the time of action had ceased, his former sickly terror seemed to
have returned with double force.  Both were heartily glad when morning
came, and with the new day the necessity of facing their new situation.




CHAPTER X

The Maroons Build a Canoe

The events of twenty-four hours had wrought a surprising change in
Dennis's circumstances.  The solitude of the island had suddenly become
peopled.  No longer would Mirandola be his sole comrade and confidant.
He was inexpressibly glad of the company of a fellow-countryman; the
presence of a group of men of strange races was somewhat embarrassing.
Besides Turnpenny, there were now on the island the Spaniard who had
been left pinioned on the shore, and the wounded Portuguese rescued
from the sinking ship, three survivors of the wood-cutting party, three
sick comrades, and the fat negro cook; in all a community of eleven.
Small as it was, after his loneliness Dennis felt it to be a crowd.

His first care on waking in the morning was to liberate the bound
Spaniard, and to bring salves from his store for dressing the wounds of
the Portuguese, and of his party; his own wounds proved to be slight.
While absent on this errand he left Turnpenny in charge of the rest,
and found when he returned that the sailor had already spread a
delectable breakfast, having set the maroons to gather from the trees
not merely bananas, but several other fruits which Dennis himself, in
his dread of eating something poisonous, had not yet ventured to taste.
When the wounded man and the sick maroons, who were still bewildered by
their good fortune, had been attended to, he held a consultation with
Turnpenny.  As a result of this he decided to keep the whereabouts of
his hut and the existence of the stores a secret from the white men.

"They be all villains and traitors," said Turnpenny; "we must e'en keep
them prisoners, and give them into the ward of the maroons.  Wherefore
I say, let the maroons build them a hut a mile or more away from your
dwelling.  They are idle knaves, and having been so long time slaves,
they will be well content to do nothing but keep watch and ward over
those that once were their masters.  And as for their food, there is
enough on the island for a whole city."

"And what of us, my friend?"

"Why, sir, here we be, two Englishmen, a thousand leagues or more away
from home, but a few leagues from the mainland, where Spaniards rule
the roast, and like to be discovered any day if another logwood party
come ashore.  'Tis not in reason we could do with them what, by the
mercy of God and your own ready wit, sir, we did with the knaves
yesternight; and if we be found, there's naught afore us but death or
chains; and for myself, I'd liever die than endure such things as I
have suffered since the fight at St. John d'Ulua."

"Why then, good Amos," said Dennis with a smile, "it does seem we must
cast lots who shall be king of this island, and the other shall be
chancellor, and we will put in practice in our governance the ideas of
the incomparable Sir Thomas More, who, though a Papist, did set forth
in his _Utopia_ most worthy and admirable schemes of ruling a society
of men."

"I know naught of Sir Thomas More or what you call Utopia; and as for
king and chancellor, I am but poor Haymoss Turnpenny, that cannot read
nor write and have never had the ruling of more than a crew of
mariners.  Call yourself king an 'ee please, sir; but methinks 'twould
be more fit and commendable if we seized upon this island in the name
of our sovereign lady Queen Bess."

"A right loyal notion, and one that we will put in act.  But then we
must give it a name."

"Ay, sure, and what better name than Maiden Isle, after that same
gracious lady?"

"So it shall be, and I here proclaim Elizabeth, by the grace of God
queen of England, France, and Ireland, queen of Maiden Isle on the
Spanish Main.  But this is idle mockery, Amos.  We are not builders of
empires, but poor castaways, doomed to linger out our lives in what is
after all a desert, or else in painful servitude.  There is nothing for
laughter here."

And then they fell to talking of their chances of one day escaping from
the island and seeing the fair shores of England again.  It could only
be by being taken off by an English ship, or by setting off themselves
and risking the perilous voyage across the Atlantic.  The latter
alternative seemed beyond the bounds of possibility.  The _Maid
Marian_, even if they could make her hull seaworthy and repair her
shattered spars and rigging, would need a crew to navigate her, and the
maroons were not sailor men.  To build a smaller craft capable of the
long voyage was an enterprise beyond their powers.  Turnpenny could
make a shift to navigate a vessel, but he had no practical skill in
ship-building.

The other alternative seemed equally unlikely, Dennis learnt from the
sailor that the island on which they had so strangely met was situated
deep in the Sound of Darien.  It was less than a hundred and fifty
miles from Cartagena, the capital of the Spanish Main, to the east, and
about the same distance from Nombre de Dios to the west; but the trend
of the coast caused vessels to stand out some distance to sea in
passing, and thus the island was little likely to be touched at by
chance visitors.

One other course occurred to Dennis, only to be dismissed when he
mentioned it to Turnpenny.  It was to build a boat capable of conveying
them to the mainland, and to take refuge among the Indians or the mixed
race of Cimaroons or maroons who had settlements at various parts of
the coast.  But Turnpenny pointed out that this would expose them to
the risk of being caught by the Spaniards, who were constantly at war
with the natives, and would at the same time quite ruin the chances of
getting into touch with an English vessel.  While they remained on the
island there was always the bare possibility of some English or
Huguenot adventurer coming within reach.

Faced by the prospect of an indefinite sojourn on the island, they had
only to make the best of it.  Turnpenny explained to the maroons the
plan arranged for them, and they accepted it without demur.  The
prisoners were sullen and resentful, perforce submissive, not a little
distrustful of their guards, from whom they had deserved no kindness.
Baltizar the fat negro was given the task of supplying the party with
food, partly from the natural resources of the island, partly from the
stores of the _Maid Marian_, which Dennis resolved to share,
economically, with the rest.

A spot about a mile from the chine was chosen as the site of the
shelters for the maroons and their prisoners.  Having set the men at
work, Dennis returned with Turnpenny to his own hut.  Mirandola no
longer showed any jealousy of the presence of a third party; apparently
he had been cured of it by fright at the prospect of being deserted.
Turnpenny, on his part, before the day was out was so much amused at
the animal's antics that he lost his first disgust.

"My heart!" he exclaimed, when, work for the day being over, the monkey
sat on a tub, happily feasting on biscuits and honey: "if 'tis wise
looks do make a chancellor, sure the beast be the properest chancellor
to your king, sir."

"You look pretty wise yourself, Amos," said Dennis, laughing.  "We had
resolved that the sovereignty of this island belongs to our lady Queen
Bess; say then that I am her viceroy, and you my chamberlain; and for
Mirandola, why, let us make him our jester."

Day followed day uneventfully.  Dennis made a still more thorough
exploration of the island in Turnpenny's company, and had his eyes
opened to many things which had formerly escaped him.  Passing the spot
where he had saved Mirandola from the boa constrictor, he mentioned the
incident, and remarked that he had seen no other reptiles in the course
of his wanderings.

"'Tis because you knew not where to look," said Turnpenny.  "The snakes
in this new world be cunning; 'wise as serpents,' says the Scripture,
and a true word.  They dress their skins so as to look like the trees
they live in; 'twould puzzle Solomon himself in all his wisdom and
glory to say which is tree and which is the coil of a snake."

And as they passed through the thickest woods, which Dennis had
prudently refrained from entering, the sailor drew his attention more
than once to snakes of various kinds whose coils were almost
indistinguishable from the trunks of trees.

Once he plucked some fruit from a kind of palm, and, pressing it,
squeezed out a juice as black as ink.

"That is a good sight," cried Dennis gladly.  "I found in the cabin of
the _Maid Marian_ a store of paper and quills, but the ink was all
spilled, and I had nothing wherewithal to write.  So I have lost count
of the days, and know not whether I have been on this isle weeks or
months.  Now I can make a journal."

"Not so neither!  This juice is good to write withal, but the marks
disappear within the ninth day, and the paper is as white as if it had
never been written on.  'Tis no matter, indeed; we should be none the
happier for seeing the tale of our days."

One day Dennis showed Turnpenny the cave in the cliff, which hitherto
he had refrained from revealing.  The sailor attentively examined the
trinkets which Dennis had found on the floor beside the skeleton and
carefully collected.  He pronounced them to be such ornaments as were
worn by the natives of the mainland, and made no doubt that the
skeleton was that of some Indian or maroon done to death by brutal
persecutors.

Dennis got him to continue the story of his life, never yet resumed
since his first night on the island.  He had been sent, he said, among
a gang of prisoners from St. John d'Ulua to Cartagena and thence to a
place on the coast somewhat south of Cartagena, where the governor had
a pearl fishery.  It was defended by a fort, garrisoned by some fifty
Spaniards.  Expecting reprisals from Hawkins for the treacherous
treatment he had received, the governor had ordered the fort to be
strengthened, and dispatched several of his able-bodied prisoners to
assist in the work.

"And I think of my dear comrades rotting in the dungeons of Porto
Aguila--for so 'tis named.  There was Ned Whiddon, and Hugh Curder, and
Tom Copstone, and a dozen more, and for all I know they are there even
now, toiling all day, with many stripes from the villanous whips, and
groaning all night in most foul and noisome dungeons.  Ah! the tales I
could tell would make your skin creep and your hair to stand on end.
Why, what think 'ee they do if the tale of work seem to them not
sufficient?  They tie the poor wretch to a tree, and take thorns of the
prickle palm, and put them into little pellets of cotton dipped in oil,
and stick them in the side of the miserable captive, as thick as the
bristles of a hedgehog.  This alone causes a most fierce torment, but
they are not content therewith.  They set the oiled cotton afire, and
call on the poor wretch, with loud despitous laughs, to sing in the
midst of his torment, and if he cries out in the agony of pain they out
upon him for a base miserable coward and villain.  With my own eyes I
have seen the foul deed, and many more which it is shame to tell of."

"How came it that you got aloose?" asked Dennis.

"Why, it happened in this wise.  The treasure of pearls fished up from
the sea-bottom at that place was wont to be conveyed to Cartagena every
month by ship.  One day the vessel sent with this intent came into the
port wonderfully battered by a storm, the which had nigh stripped her
of all rigging and had moreover washed half her crew overboard.  The
garrison at the fort being soldiers, and there being no other mariners
at hand, the Spanish captain moreover being fearful of the governor's
wrath if the treasure should be delayed, he sent half a dozen or more
of his slaves, French and English, aboard that vessel to work her back
to the capital city.  My heart!  I well nigh wept for joy when I heard
what was in store, for I bethought myself that of a surety we mariners,
French and English, might seize upon that vessel on the voyage and sail
her at our pleasure.  But it was as if the knave had seen to the very
heart of my intent, for when we mounted on ship-board, there were
Spanish soldiers set over us, two for one, and with the Spanish crew
they were as three to one, and they armed.  My device was come to
naught.  We did each man his best to lengthen out that voyage, if
perchance we might fall in with an English vessel and acquaint them
with our case; but never a sail did we see till we made the harbour of
Cartagena, and all our hopes were dashed.

"Then it came to pass that, being a handy man and a stout, I was sold
for money to the master and owner of a ship employed in the traffic of
timber--that same vessel that lies a fathom deep yonder.  At sea I was
a mariner; ashore, being stout of the arms, I was made to ply an axe on
the trees, as you yourself saw.  'Tis three year or more since I fell
prisoner at St. John d'Ulua, and six months since I last set eyes on my
comrades at Porto Aguila, and I fear me I shall never see them more."

"Why think you they be even now there?"

"Why, sir, because the Spaniards be all knaves, and there is no truth
nor faithfulness in them, not one.  The Captain of that place was the
Governor of Cartagena his own son.  A son, one med think, would be
loving and obedient unto his father, but 'tis not so among these dogs
of Spain.  Why, body o' me! in the stead of doing diligently the thing
his father commanded, this young roisterer must needs build him a
house, and thereto he used the labourers sent him with intent to
strengthen the fort, and when I came from that place the house was got
but a little above the ground, and was not like to be finished for a
full year."

"Might not other labourers be hired from Cartagena?"

"I trow not.  The Spaniards are so scared and daunted by the descents
of venturers' ships upon their coasts that they are looking to their
fortresses throughout the Spanish Main.  By long and large 'tis more
like the prisoners will be conveyed back to Cartagena for to build new
forts there.  But this will not be yet, for the Governor of Cartagena
holds the pearl-fishery in dear affection, and he will not bring the
men thence until he has assurance that all is done as he commanded.
No, truly, I believe they be still at Porto Aguila, my dear
mate-fellows, and though I praise God for His infinite goodness and
mercy in bringing me safe into this haven and out of the hands of those
wicked men, I mourn in my heart for Hugh Curder, and Tom Copstone, and
Ned Whiddon, and other my comrades; God save them!"

Many a time in the succeeding days did Amos relate incidents in the
life of the prisoners at Porto Aguila that made Dennis's blood run
cold.  He now began to understand the deep and fierce hatred of the
Spaniards that filled the hearts of adventurers who had returned from
expeditions to the American coast.  The same consuming desire for
humbling and punishing the proud Spaniards burnt in his veins, and he
chafed at the idleness to which he was enforced on this remote island.

Meanwhile the other inhabitants of Maiden Isle were living what
appeared to be a contented life.  With abundance of food, and nothing
to do, the maroons enjoyed, as Dennis thought, conditions that answered
to their idea of bliss.  He was therefore a little surprised one day to
hear the unwonted sound of wood-felling, and to find, when he came to
the spot, four of the men plying their axes lustily upon a huge cedar.
They desisted when he approached, with something of a guilty air that
puzzled him.  They had shown themselves very amiable companions,
grateful for their rescue from their taskmasters.  He could only
suppose that even they had begun to weary of idleness, and had resorted
to their former occupation of log-cutting from no other motive than the
desire to kill time.

But Turnpenny shook his head when Dennis suggested this explanation.

"It do seem to me there be another meaning in it, sir.  'Tis their
intent, a' b'lieve, to make unto themselves a canow."

"But they have no skill to do it, nor fit implements, Amos."

"Bless your eyes, sir, you do not know them.  Wait a while, and if that
be not their purpose, never trust Haymoss Turnpenny."

Letting a few days pass, Dennis went again one morning with the sailor
to the scene of the tree-felling.  The huge trunk had already begun to
take shape as a canoe at least twenty-five feet long.  The men were
diligently working at it, some with axes, others with fire.  Its
interior had been partly hollowed out, the wood and pith burnt away,
and the charred sides scraped with the hatchets.  It was clear that
within a few days the tree would become a vessel which, whether
navigable or not, would certainly float.

"'Tis a pretty piece of work," said Dennis to Turnpenny.  "Ask them
whereto they design it."

Turnpenny spoke a few words in Spanish.  The answer was surprising.
One of the maroons, a man whom the others seemed to have elected as
their leader, threw down his hatchet and fell on his knees.  Then, in a
strange jargon which the sailor had much ado to understand, he gave
voice to the sentiments and aspirations of himself and his comrades.
They were sick of solitude.  They had homes upon the mainland; and
yearned to see again their relatives and comrades, to return to their
settlement, to share in its life, to seek opportunities of revenging
themselves on their oppressors.  And so they were making this canoe, in
which they would sail over the sea.  They were not ungrateful for the
kindnesses showered upon them by the white men; indeed, to show their
gratitude, they would take them with them, having first killed the two
prisoners.  Their spokesman on his knees besought the white men to
yield to their desire, and come with them.  They would supply all their
needs, and follow them with all obedience, if they would lead them
against the Spaniards.

"Tell him to get up," said Dennis.  "This is a matter we must think
upon."

Dennis and Turnpenny held by and by a serious consultation.  They felt
that they were in a somewhat awkward predicament.  The maroons' desire
to regain their friends was natural and reasonable, but their departure
would deprive the white men of valuable allies.  And what of the two
prisoners?  Turnpenny would not have hesitated to kill them, but Dennis
shrank from that course.  They might allow the maroons to carry them
off; but then the Spaniards would either be butchered as soon as the
canoe was out of reach, or they would probably be held as hostages and
exchanged for natives held captive by the Spaniards on the mainland.
In that case they would certainly report the presence of two white men
on the island and the assault upon the lumber boat; a search party
would be the result, and Dennis and his companion would be slaughtered
or carried away into slavery.  On the other hand, if the maroons were
allowed to depart, leaving the prisoners on the island, the burden of
keeping watch over them would prove a constant source of anxiety.

"The canoe is all but finished," said Dennis.  "We must let them finish
it.  To forbid them, poor knaves, would be cruel."

"And vain, to boot," said Turnpenny, "for if we took their axes from
them, they would use bits of sharp rock.  The Indians have hollowed out
such canows with instruments of flint from the beginning of the world."

"We must let them go, then.  For ourselves, I see not at present our
course; but we can provide against the worst hap by conveying our
stores, secretly and by night, to Skeleton Cave; 'tis a good
hiding-place, not like to be easily discovered, and we know not what
necessity may drive us to make it our habitation."

The transfer of the stores occupied two nights.  Mirandola accompanied
the two men as they went to and fro between the sheds and the cave,
clinging so closely to them that it seemed as if he had some intuition
of changes to come.

"By my soul," said Turnpenny with a laugh, "he be as faithful as a dog."

"And whatever may chance, we will not leave you, Mirandola," said
Dennis.  "Shall I forget the days when you were the only friend of my
solitude?  Would you could speak, for assuredly I would ask your
counsel on this pass to which we are come."

They went daily to the clearing to watch the progress of the canoe.  As
yet they had given no answer to the maroons; but these were working
very diligently at the task, having apparently inferred from the
silence of the white men that at least nothing would be done to prevent
their making use of the vessel.  Dennis and Turnpenny talked over the
situation again and again; but their thoughts followed the same weary
round.  At one moment they were almost resolved to throw in their lot
with the maroons and voyage with them to the mainland; the next they
shrank from this course as throwing away what seemed their only chance
of ultimate rescue--the chance of being found some day by an English
vessel.

The problem weighed more heavily on Dennis than on Turnpenny.  Compared
with his former sufferings, it was to the sailor a slight matter.
Dennis, lying sleepless at night, envied his friend the soundness of
his slumbers.  The mariner snored as peacefully on his canvas couch in
the corner of the hut as though he were on a feather bed at home.  To
Dennis the hours of darkness passed wearisomely.  He thought of all
that had happened since he sailed with light heart from Plymouth Sound,
and wondered sometimes whether his comrades had not perchance been
happier in meeting swift death in the storm.  Then he upbraided himself
for his ingratitude to the Providence which had preserved his life and
health, and given him the companionship of a fellow countryman.  He
contrasted, too, his lot with that of Turnpenny's mates on the
mainland, dragging out a miserable existence of slavish toil.  He
recalled the sailor's stories of the tortures they endured--and then
suddenly, one night, there flashed upon his mind a possibility which,
in his preoccupation with his own plight, had never yet occurred to
him.  The maroons would shortly leave the island; had Providence
arranged this as an opportunity for helping the hapless Englishmen in
the Spaniards' power?  If Turnpenny and he should accompany the black
men, might they not find, at some time or other, a means of rescuing
the prisoners--Ned Whiddon, Hugh Curder, Tom Copstone, and the rest?

The idea set Dennis throbbing with a new hope, a new aim.  Slaves
sometimes escaped; the maroons themselves were the offspring of negroes
who had made off from the Spanish settlements and formed alliances with
the native Indians of the woods.  Their communities were constantly
being recruited: what if the sailor and he should cast in their lot
temporarily with the men about to embark, and watch for opportunities
of communicating with the distressed Englishmen!  Even if they never
found a means of reaching home, it would still be something to the good
if their comrades were got out of the hands of their oppressors.  At
the worst they might form a settlement of their own, and live free,
though in exile.

The idea took complete possession of Dennis.  He felt no desire to
sleep.  For a moment he was tempted to wake Turnpenny and put the
question to him; instead, he got up, and stole quietly from the hut, to
think it over more fully under the open sky.  He walked down to the
shore, and, sitting on a rock, looked over the sea and pondered the
matter to the soft accompaniment of the washing tide.

It was clear that the Spaniards of the mainland had no suspicion that
the island was inhabited, or they would long since have visited it.
They might be off their guard.  From what Turnpenny had told him he
knew the indolence of their temperament--the unlikelihood of their
taking precautions against problematical dangers.  Unless directly
threatened by the vessels of adventurers like Hawkins and Drake, they
might be expected to ply their trade--manage their pearl fisheries,
work their mines--without great vigilance.  True, they had recently set
about strengthening their defences; but probably the season of panic
had passed; it was years since Hawkins had troubled them.  It had
already been proved what a determined few could do; if he, with
Turnpenny and the six maroons, could safely reach the mainland, might
they not bide their time until, Fortune assisting them, they found some
means of bringing off the prisoners, or at least of striking a blow in
their cause?  Surely it was better to make the attempt than to rust in
idleness on the island, waiting on a chance that might perhaps never
come, and always exposed to the risk of discovery by the Spaniards.
The more Dennis thought, the more his imagination was captivated by the
idea, and when he at last returned to the hut he was resolved to broach
the subject to Turnpenny as soon as he should wake.

As he came to the entrance the sailor's voice hailed him.

"Be that you, sir?"

"Yes.  I could not sleep, and went for a walk on the shore."

"I had but just waked, all of a sweat, and shaking like a leaf."

"Why, what ailed you?"

"A dream, sir.  Do 'ee believe as dreams come true?  My old grandam was
wont to say they go by contraries; dream of a weddin', she would say,
sure there would be a funeral.  And she was a wise woman; ay, sure."

"I know not, Amos.  We read in Scripture of dreams that most wondrously
came true.  'Twas in a dream that Solomon asked of God an understanding
heart, the which was promised to him with riches, and honour, and
length of days; and Solomon lived long in the land, and became the
richest and wisest of kings.  Scripture was written for our
instruction, Amos, and I would liever believe in Holy Writ than in the
old wives' tales of a score of grandams.  But what then was your dream?"

"Why, sir, if it be not sin to speak it, I was standing alone in a
waste place, and on a sudden the voice of Tom Copstone spoke out of the
air, and said, 'You and me, Haymoss; you and me, my heart!'  And while
I was wondering in my simple mind what those words might mean, there
was a thick smoke, and a roar as of thunder, and I stood dazed, and the
fear came upon me.  And then the smoke lifted, and I saw old Tom with
's head all bloody, and Hugh Curder behind him, and behind him again I
saw you, sir, and Ned Whiddon, and, God a-mercy! my very own self, as I
ha' seen myself time and again in the glass, but sore battered and
misused.  And I thought sure 'twas my ghost, and the fear of it woke me
up, and I rose all panting and trembling, and cried to 'ee, and when
there was no answer I broke into a sweat, remembering my grandam's
words."

"Well, 'tis all safe.  I also have had a dream, Amos, and yet I did not
sleep.  And 'tis to tell you my dream I am here now.  Mayhap it will
fit yours; God in His mercy send that both yours and mine come true!"




CHAPTER XI

The Main

The dawn of day found Dennis and Turnpenny discussing the scheme which
was born of the night's meditation.  Remembering his bitter experience
of bondage among the Spaniards, and oppressed by his superstitious fear
that his dream portended some calamity, the sailor at first refused
point-blank to consider Dennis's suggestion.  But by and by, when
Dennis had shown him how light had been his sufferings, after all, by
comparison with those of his comrades, and had declared his belief that
the strange coincidence of the dream with his own imaginings was an
augury of good, Turnpenny's better feelings got the upper hand of his
timorousness, and he threw himself with ardour into a consideration of
the project.

As soon as it was light, he asked Dennis to lead him to the very spot
where the idea had occurred to him.  And there, in the little bay
beneath the chine, he became the bold-hearted English sailor again.

"My heart! we're a-going to do it," he said.  "See here, sir."  He
began with the end of a half-pike to mark out a rough plan on the dry
sand.  "Here be the fort.  Here be the don Captain's new house; the
foundations were no more than laid when I was hauled away on ship
board.  Here, at this angle, be the rooms of the guard; in the cellars
beneath my poor comrades lie and groan o' nights.  In this quarter be
the pearl-fishers, penned up like cattle when their work is done.  And
here, under the guns of the fort, be the little harbour, with a quay of
planking.  Nor'ard, a mile or more, is the fishery, where the black
knaves have to dive for the baubles, and woe betide 'em if they do not
bring up enough to please their masters."

"And think you you could pilot us to the place, Amos?"

"I've never a doubt of it.  Twice have I sailed to it in direct course
from Cartagena, and many's the time I have passed it in the lumber
ship.  'Tis true I am not so skilled in the landmarks from this side as
from the side of Cartagena; nathless I be a ninny, not worth the name
of mariner, an I be not able to lay a course thitherwards without
losing my bearings."

"What is the country thereabout?"

"Why, sir, for the most flat and forest clad.  Behind the fort there is
a hill, fairish high.  Once on a time 'twas covered with trees, but a
great stretch of the forest was of late burned black by a fire; I mind
it well, for the shape of the black patch is like to a monstrous
cayman, upwards of a mile long.  'Tis a famous landmark, and clear to
the eyes a great way off at sea.  Let me but spy that, and I warrant I
will steer any bark to it on a straight furrow."

"Well, then, Amos, it does seem that with good luck we can make a
landing somewhere on the coast, and then it shall go hard with us but
we can, by taking thought, devise some plan whereby we may release your
comrades from their chains.  But we cannot do it without help from the
maroons; think you they would be willing to lend us aid?"

"My heart!  Do but promise them a share of the Spaniards' treasure, and
they will be hot to have at them."

"But the fishery belongs to the Governor of Cartagena, you said.
Imprimis, we are not pirates; nor indeed is there like to be a great
hoard of pearls at Porto Aguila, for they will be sent, no doubt, for
safety to Cartagena."

"Bless your bones, sir, I warrant there be more kept at Porto Aguila
than be sent to Cartagena.  The Captain, truly, is the Governor's son;
but every Spaniard is a shark, and would rob his grandam's grave were
he not afeard of ghosts.  And as for being pirates, when 'tis Spaniards
in question I would be a pirate without the tenth part of a scruple,
for 'tis certain the fishery was filched from the Indians; they be the
Spaniards' jackals."

"Well, let us go to the maroons and put the case to them."

Dennis need have had no doubt as to the men's reception of his
proposal.  To begin with, they were frankly delighted that the white
men would accompany them.  They had often talked among themselves about
the young lord, as they called him, who had led the attack on the
Spaniards' vessel, and they were agreed that his presence in the canoe
would serve them as a talisman.  Then, even without the prospect of
plunder from the Spaniards' treasure-house, they nourished a bitter
resentment against their old oppressors, and were ready to embrace any
opportunity of striking a blow at them.

"We are the servants of the young lord," said their spokesman to
Turnpenny, "we will do whatever he bids."

"Ask them if they know the region."

The reply was in the negative.  None of them had ever been engaged in
the pearl fishery; most of them hailed from the neighbourhood of Nombre
de Dios.

"Then our whole dependence is on you, Amos," said Dennis.

"Ay, sir, and it do daunt me somewhat.  In a bark, or a shallop, or
e'en a longboat, I could have great comfort; but a canow, sir--a mere
tree-trunk hollowed out, wi' no ribs nor planks, no spars nor other
gear; 'tis a fearsome and wonderful craft, with a crazy look."

"But the maroons are wont to handle such craft, you told me.  They will
navigate her; you will but have to cry the course."

"True, sir, but no master mariner that hath any manhood in him will be
content to govern a craft being ignorant of its true nature.  Yonder
monkey would be as fit."

"Ah!  We must take Mirandola.  The poor beast would, I verily believe,
break his poor heart did we leave him here in loneliness again."

"Leave the knave prisoners to bear him company, sir."

"No, no.  Besides that it would be a poor compliment to Mirandola
himself, it would have some spice of danger for us.  Left to themselves
in freedom, the men would of a surety signal to any passing ship, the
which being in all likelihood Spanish, the report of our doings would
soon be spread abroad through all the coast, and a hue and cry would be
raised after us.  We must bring them along with us.  Trust me, they
shall have no chance then of giving the alarm to the enemy, and 'tis
not unlike, indeed, they may serve us as hostages."

"I fear me they'll be the Jonahs in our marvellous craft."

"An ill comparison, Amos.  Jonah fled from his duty, and by reason of
his wrongdoing peril came upon the mariners.  The similitude does not
hold."

"That be a great comfort, sir, in especial for that there be no whales
as I know on in these waters, but only sharks."

In answer to a question from Turnpenny, the head man of the maroons
said that the canoe would be ready to take the water within a week.
But he added that since the young lord had agreed to make the voyage
with them, they were willing to remain a little longer on the island,
in order to give careful finishing touches to the craft and ensure its
thorough seaworthiness.  Dennis thanked them, through the sailor, for
thi

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