Captain Blaise

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Title:     Captain Blaise
Author: James B. Connolly [More Titles by Connolly]

Two years now since Mr. Villard had come home, and not a soul on the plantation but believed that at last the new master had given up his mysterious voyages and was home to stay. But one day I had business in Savannah, and while there, hearing that the bark Nereid was in from the West African coast, I strolled down to the river front; and presently I was approached and addressed by the master of the Nereid, a seaman-like and rather shrewd-looking man who had a message for Mr. Villard, he said--from the West Coast.

"I am charged to ask him to pass the word to Captain Blaise," said the Nereid's master, "that an old friend of his lies low of fever into Momba. Captain Blaise would know who. We were putting out of Momba lagoon and I was standing by the rail, when a nigger came paddling up and whispered it. Like a breath of night air it was. 'Tell Master Captain that Ubbo bring the word,' said the nigger, and like another breath of wind he passed on. No more than that. A short, very stout, and very black nigger. And I was to pass the word to Mr. Villard, a gentleman of estate near Savannah, Georgia, and if you, sir, will attend to that, my part's done."

After my dinner in town was through with, I rode hard; but it was late night by the time I reached the manor-house. I found him sitting out under the moon, smoking a cheroot as usual, and he continued to smoke immovably for some minutes after I had delivered the message; but by and by he stood up and took to pacing the veranda, and presently, after his fashion, to speak his thoughts aloud.

"A hundred thousand acres and a thousand slaves, good, bad, and indifferent--surely a man does owe a little something to his manorial duties. At least, so all my highly respectable and well-established neighbors tell me. What do you say, Guy?"

"I never gave much thought to the matter, sir."

"No? Well, doubtless you will--some day. But d'y' remember Kingston Harbor, where the black boys dive through the green waters for the silver sixpenny pieces, and Kingston port, where the white roads and the white walls throw back the tropic sun so that it seems twice as hot as it really is--Kingston, Guy--in Jamaica, where the sun sets like a blood-orange salad in a purple dish? D'y' remember, Guy, and the day we were lying into Kingston in the Bess and the word came that my uncle was dead? Aye, you do; but don't you remember how he used to rail against me? To be sure--you were too young. And yet a good old uncle, who gave me never a mild word in his life but left me his all at death."

"And why shouldn't he, sir?"

"Why not? Aye, that is so. Why not? And yet he could have left it to anybody--to you, say."

"Why to me? Who am I?"

"What? Who are you?" He ceased his pacing. "That is so, Guy--who are you? You with the strange, quick blood writ so plain in your countenance that there--"

"Isn't it good blood, sir?"

"Aye, Guy, be sure it is good blood. But often have I thought how he would have stormed if--" He gazed curiously at me.

"If--"

"Aye, if--but no matter." He resumed his nervous pacing back and forth, back and forth, hands in pockets, head up, chin out, and face turned always toward the river, past the moss-hung cypress trees to the yellow Savannah flowing swiftly beyond. The salt tide-water made as far as Villard Landing, and when it was in full flood, as now, it brought the smell of the sea strongly with it.

"No matter that now, Guy. A good old soul, my uncle, d'y' see; but the blood was everything to him. And he put it in the bond and I am bound by it: that only the lawful issue, a son of the house, shall inherit. 'I'll have no strange derelict child inherit my estate.' His own words. So this fair estate, lacking lawful issue of my body or my old uncle's son--and he is dead--it goes out of the family. Oh, a stormy, intolerant, but well-meaning old uncle, who would have none of his property left to--Oh, but not that, Guy--no, no, lad." He laid a restraining hand on my shoulder. "No, no, lad, you must not take that to yourself; for you are, no fear, honest born."

"I've waited long for you to tell me even that. Won't you tell me more, sir?"

"Enough for now. But whatever my uncle thought or wished, here, Guy, is an estate to your hand to enjoy. What d'y' say, eh, to the life of a Southern gentleman on his plantation? A hundred thousand acres, a thousand slaves, a stable of the horses you love so, upland and river bottom to hunt, dancing, riding, balls, the city in winter. Is not that something better than the hard, uncertain sea, Guy?"

He had paused for my answer, but I made none. He was standing motionless, except for the backward toss of his head and the deep inhalation, three or four times, of the briny air from the flooding river. There was disappointment in his voice when he took up the talk again.

"Oh, Guy, between us two what a difference! I was born ashore, you at sea, and yet

"'It's you for the back of a charging barb,
And me for the deck of a heaving brig!'"

In a lower voice he repeated the couplet, and was plainly vastly pleased with it. "Faith, and I wonder is that my own, or something I read somewhere. Something of the lilt of a Scotch strathspey to 't, shouldn't you say? You know more of such things. What d'y' say--shall I claim that for my own, Guy?"

"You do, sir, and it's not Homer, nor Dante, nor Keats who will rise up to accuse you of plagiarism."

"Bah! You would no more allow me the merit of a poetic vein than--"

"Poetry, sir?"

"Poetry--why not?" and suddenly bending sidewise and forward, he essayed to obtain a fuller view of my face. And it is true that I was thinking of anything but poetry.

His face darkened as he gazed. "A hundred estates and plantations were nothing to me against--" he burst out passionately, but no further than that. He checked himself and went inside, and with no good-night going.

In the morning he was gone. I waited--one, two, three days, and then I went also--to Savannah, where I saw the Bess, but so altered that it needed a lifetime's intimacy to hail her in the stream. Her spars had been sent down and her name was now the Triton, and to her bow and stern was clamped the false work which left her with no more outward grace than any clumsy coaster; and by these signs I knew that Mr. Villard of Villard Manor would once more disappear and that Captain Blaise would soon again be sailing the Dancing Bess overseas.

Captain Blaise had not yet come aboard; but whatever ship he sailed the full run of that ship was mine, and I went into his cabin to wait for him.

It was after dark when he came over the side. It was always after dark when he boarded the Bess in home ports. His words were colder than his expression when he addressed me. "And where are you bound?"

"I don't know yet, sir."

"And why not?"

"You have not yet told me, sir, where you are going."

"Suppose it should be the West Coast and the old trade?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but even so I go."

"And leave all that good life you love so at the Manor?"

On his face was still the stern look. I could not stand it longer and I stepped closer to him. "You have not turned against me, sir?"

He softened at once. "Guy, Guy, don't mind me. I meant well. I thought you might prefer the shore to living on the sea."

"I do, sir, but when you are at sea it's at sea I'd rather be too, sir."

"Ah-h--" and when he looked at me like that it mattered not about his law-breaking--he was the bravest, finest man that ever sailed the trades. "Guy, my boy, if you'll have it so, why come along. And once more we'll cruise together; but you won't judge your commander too harshly, will you, Guy?"

We took the ebb down the river. Our papers read for a West India trading voyage, but we lingered not among the West Indies. Four weeks later we raised the Cape Verdes, and an islet rose like a castle from out of the mists. Abreast of a pebbled beach we came to anchor and waited.

II

A boat scraped alongside, and the agent Rimmle came aboard. He came out to have a chat for old time's sake; and yet not so old either, he corrected, and would Captain Blaise come ashore and have a drink or two of good liquor? And Captain Blaise replied that he carried as good liquor in his locker as ever graced any sideboard ashore. And they dropped into the cabin, where I happened to be, and had a glass of wine and a word or two, and another glass and a few more words; and at last Rimmle put the question: Would Captain Blaise run one more draft?

Long ago, Captain Blaise promised me that there was to be no more slave-running, and as he never lied to me, I wondered now why he paused and pondered as if debating with himself. At last he looked up. "It doesn't pay any more, Rimmle."

"Well, in these days," observed Rimmle, "I don't blame you, with the bull-dogs of men-o'-war making it so hot."

We all had to smile at that, and Rimmle, seeing that Captain Blaise was not to be shamed into it, went on. "But suppose there was larger head-money than ever was paid before, Captain? And if half the head-money and the crew's pay were laid down in advance? For it is hard, as you have often said, Captain, that anything should happen to brave and willing men on such a cruise and they have neither profit nor safety of it." It was the old talk all over again, the agent urging him once more to take to slave-running, except that in other days Captain Blaise had displayed less patience.

The wineglasses had already been filled too frequently for me, and, pleading business, I had spread out a coast chart on the other end of the cabin table and was studying it, this by way of removing myself from a conversation which I saw was not to end with trading or slave-running.

This Rimmle was one of those who held Captain Blaise for a sort of idol. I had seen dozens of the kind before. Great hours for them when they could sit in with the famous Captain Blaise, and so now, with the agent bound to talk of the West Coast trade, lawful and otherwise, Captain Blaise was making but slow headway.

I was thinking of stepping up on deck to stretch my legs, when the conversation took a sudden shift. "Captain"--Rimmle put the question hesitatingly--"I thought I had seen the last of you. May I ask what lured you back?"

Captain Blaise had decanted another bottle and was viewing the rich-colored bubbles as he held the carafe up against the light. Such little things afforded him keen pleasure. He set the carafe down--softly--only to ask by way of reply: "Rimmle, what is it always brings men back?"

Rimmle laid his head to one side and nodded shrewdly. "As far as my experience goes, Captain, it is one of three things."

"And which of the three is my failing?" Captain Blaise was absently filling their glasses.

"M-m--It cannot be money--you never cared for that. You who have made fortunes and spent them as fast as you made them--no, it cannot be money. And then your newly acquired property in the States--"

"My newly acquired--What of that?"

"Why, the rumor is out that you fell heir to a great estate in the States--on the banks of the Mississippi or the Ohio, or some outlandish name of a river in the States."

"Oh, a rumor! Go on."

"And as for the drink--it must be a great occasion, indeed, Captain, when you take more than is good for a man. And so--"

"We can never take too much drink in good company, Rimmle. And so drink up--here's health! And so you think it must be--" He smiled faintly at the agent. "And yet who should know better than you that all the gold I ever gave for a woman's favor would not suffice to keep the poorest of them in cambric handkerchiefs."

"As to that"--the agent pursed up his full moist lips--"it is true; the kind who looked for money were never your kind. And yet that kind sometimes cost men a hundred times more in the end."

Captain Blaise bent deferentially toward the agent. "You think that, Rimmle--truly?"

Rimmle bowed wisely.

Captain Blaise continued to regard him in the most friendly way, and yet with an air of doubt, as if debating how far to discuss matters of this kind with him. And then, leaning yet further forward and speaking rapidly, energetically: "And agreeing that it is so, who is it that ever regrets the price? D'y' think that I, even though I be what I be, that I--Why, Rimmle, even you who live to amass money"--Rimmle flushed--"even you have had your days when--To be sure you have had." Rimmle beamed. "And so, Rimmle, you can believe possibly that Captain Blaise may yet have his immortal hour, and cherish the hope none the less dearly in his heart because his head, from out the experience of bitter years, tells him that it can never be. And it may be that I go this time for neither money nor drink, nor anything else in which traders ashore or aship commonly bargain. But, hah, hah!"--he grinned suddenly, sardonically, at the agent. "Think of us, Rimmle, sitting in the cabin of a West Coast slaver and smuggler discoursing in this fashion--two gallant gentlemen who trade in human misery."

Ten years since Captain Blaise had done any slave-running, and Rimmle, who knew that, was slave-running still, and so he did not quite know how to take this outburst.

Neither did I. Where Captain Blaise was sincere and where talking for effect I could not have said; but surely he was moulding Rimmle like jelly; and now looking out from under his eyebrow at Rimmle, but his lips curved in a smile, he selected a cheroot and lit it, and lit another for Rimmle, who now smiled too. And cheroot followed cheroot, and story story, and drink drink, and the agent gurgled with joy of the intimacy. "What adventures you have had, Captain, and"--he blew a cloud to the cabin roof--"what stories!"

"Adventures? Stories?" Captain Blaise shrugged his shoulders. "Well enough, Rimmle, in their way. 'Tis true I can tell of blockades evaded and corvettes slipped, of customs officers bedevilled, of tricks on slow-tacking junks, and of dancing with creoles under the moon. But what is that? The heedless, unplanned adventuring of an irresponsible American captain. Now you, if you cared to talk, Rimmle, you, I warrant, could tell of big things, things which concern great people--of admirals and governors and what not; for you, it is well known, Rimmle, have your own bureau of information."

Rimmle chuckled. "It is true"--and then he paused. Captain Blaise refilled their glasses. In courtly imitation of the Captain, Rimmle raised his and they drank.

Captain Blaise filled them up again. "Men like myself, Rimmle, are but pawns in this trading game. It is the people on the inside, the Governor of Momba and gentlemen like you, who direct the play."

Rimmle smacked his lips. "M-m--To be sure, the Governor of Momba--"

There was a half-hour of anecdotes of the Governor of Momba and his son before Cunningham's name was even mentioned; and when the question of him was slipped, so casually was it slipped that I, with senses astretch, did not realize that this must be the sick man at Momba--not until the next question was put.

"But there must have been something else, Rimmle, between the Governor and Cunningham?"

Now, had they been drinking ordinary wine or heavy ale, Rimmle might have held his own. But this was a rare vintage, a delicate bouquet meant for a finer breed than Rimmle. His tongue was still limber but his wits were fled. He was vain to display to the famous Captain Blaise his knowledge of secret affairs. "Yes, it is true, Captain, there was more than showed on the surface there. And that insult to Cunningham was no accident. No,"--he winked,--"not at all. He had insulted and shot men before, but he never knew that Cunningham was a professional duellist himself. None of us in Momba knew. Did you, Captain?"

"He was not." Captain Blaise banged his hand on the table. "He killed three men, yes; but bad men, and killed them in fair combat."

"Hm-m. A man to let alone that; but nothing of that was known--not then. However, he took the Governor's professional duellist out behind a row of palms one sunny morning and shot him--a beautiful bit of work. It was the vastest surprise--a shock. But a duel, lawful possibly in your country is not so in ours, Captain, and--"

"And is his daughter with him?"

"When she is not at the Governor's house--yes."

"What! Why there?"

"I don't know, unless it is the only house in that country where a young lady of her position--and then her beauty--"

"Under that old satrap's roof? But here, Rimmle, what is the Governor going to do with Cunningham?"

"Well, Captain, if it should happen that she will marry the Governor's son, why Cunningham might be allowed--you know how, Captain, ho! ho!--surely, to escape. Especially as nobody seems to mourn the man he shot. But when she seemed slow to fall in with their wishes, and as Cunningham had converted all his property into gold and diamonds and shipped them or hid them--though no search has unearthed them--preparatory to shooting the Governor's friend, why they grew suspicious and threatened to push matters. Cunningham was nominally under arrest always. And then he fell sick. How sick? Hard to say. But should he die, or be punished--imprisoned, say--for the duel, consider it. She is a beautiful girl, true, but human, and in time in that lonesome country where white gentlemen of social position are so scarce--! And, after all--the Governor of Momba's son and--"

"Rimmle"--Captain Blaise had stood up to look through an air port--"it's a fair wind for me. Shall I put you ashore?"

"Ashore? Why, yes, yes! Bless me, I've had quite a stay, haven't I? But if you care to try again, Captain, my friend Hassan is into Momba. He will be aboard, no fear. If you do business with him, Captain, why, draw on me, and it's money in my pocket."

"If I do business of that kind this cruise, Rimmle, I promise you I'll do it with Hassan."

"Thank you, Captain. Speedy voyage to you, and don't forget Hassan. Good-by, sir, to you."

Within the hour we sailed for Momba.

III

A squadron of corvettes and sloops o' war put their glasses on us lazily as we neared Momba; but with our Dutch bow and stern, our stumpy spars, no self-respecting war-ship was bothering the Triton. They let us pass without so much as a hail.

Captain Blaise planned to cross Momba Bar that night, all the more surely to cross because the watchers ashore, seeing us hang on and off in the late afternoon, would probably report that we were waiting for morning. So we hauled her to in the dusk where, were it light, we would have seen, under its three fathom of water, Momba Bar lying white and smooth and quiet as a sanded deck as we passed on. With the wind coming low and light from the land that was; but were it a high wind and from the sea, there would be no going over that bar at night or any other time.

We slipped silently up the inside, the northerly passage, to the lagoon, and crept up the lagoon just as silently, but even as we were mooring the Bess in a nook at the head of the lagoon, a tall Arab was alongside. With him Captain Blaise and I went ashore in the ship's long-boat, and to avoid suspicion we took no arms. An hour of camp-fires and shadows under the trees we wasted then with this sharp trader Hassan. No printed calicoes, or brass rings, or looking-glasses for him, nor rum, he being a true believer. Nothing of that; but of gold paid into hand, and plenty of it there must be. And Captain Blaise, to allay suspicion, discussed matters hotly. Finally he agreed to the Arab's terms, and Hassan salaamed, and out under the open sky we went again.

"A proper villain, Guy, is that fellow. Did you ever see so wonderfully cunning a smile? And in the morning I am to give him a draft on Rimmle! Sometimes I think there must be something infantile about me, strangers do pick me up for such an innocent at times. But in the morning, my shrewd Hassan--"

Naked feet padded beside us. "O Marster Carpt'n, Marster Carpt'n, suh--"

"You, Ubbo!"

"Yes, suh, Marster Carpt'n." It was a short, very stout, and very black negro who stood at attention before Captain Blaise.

"Where's your master?"

"Waitin', Carpt'n, suh. He sick, suh, but not so he die, he say, suh."

"And Miss Shiela?"

"Missy Shiela at de Governor's, suh. An' de missy know you come too, suh. I been watchin', suh, for long time. I see de ship, suh, an' I know you come over de bar, suh, to-night. An' I tell de marster, suh. An' marster waitin', an' Missy Shiela waitin', Marster Carpt'n, to take um away--to take um home, suh. He very sick, suh."

"After us, Ubbo."

We raced to where was the long-boat, screened under a bank. From her crew we took four good men and followed Ubbo.

The roof of a low building loomed above the jungle growth. Ubbo uttered a warning sound. We could hear the regular tread and presently a form showed around the corner of the house. It was a negro in uniform with a musket held carelessly over his shoulder.

Captain Blaise whispered to his men: "When he comes around again get him. No noise. Choke him first." The four sailors leaped together when next he appeared. In an instant almost it was done. They laid him on the ground, threw his musket into the brush, and we entered the building.

On a cot beside an open window, with a reading-lamp at his head, lay a tall man.

"Still alive, Gad," called Captain Blaise cheerily.

"Still alive, Blaise, and I reckon you did a neat job on that nigger guard, for all I heard was a little gurgling. Yes, still alive. Still alive, Blaise, thanks to Shiela's discrimination in the selection of the Governor's nourishing cordials, and thanks no less to my boy Ubbo's sleepless habits. But, old friend, you're none too soon. And don't waste any time in getting Shiela. She is still at the Governor's. I bade her stay there so they would not suspect. She has my sabre and duelling pistols with her, by the way. And she'll bear a hand with them, if need be. But who is this? Oh, this is Guy? I'm glad to know you, Guy."

A wreck of a tall, slender, handsome man, such a man he may have been in his prime as was Captain Blaise, but older. A sporting, reckless sort he may have been, but a man of manner and blood. Two of the crew bore him out, though one would have sufficed. "Ubbo will show you where the strong-box is, Blaise," he called on being borne off; and Ubbo led us through the thick jungle to where, under a rock over which a little water-fall played, a massive iron chest was buried. It took two stout men of the crew to handle it.

We saw Mr. Cunningham and the strong-box safely to the long-boat and then, with Ubbo, took station behind a hedge which bordered the Governor's grounds. There was much going on there--music and people strolling on the lawn. Captain Blaise pointed out the Governor to me, and his son, and bade me notice also fifteen or twenty barefooted but armed and uniformed negroes clustered between two rows of palms on the farther side of the lawn.

"We'll wait here, with the hedge to protect us," said Captain Blaise, and motioned to Ubbo. "Tell Miss Shiela that all's ready."

The negro slipped away. A short minute or so and Captain Blaise, who had been peering like a man on watch on a bad night, gripped me nervously. "Look, there she is!"

I looked. Never again would I have to be told to look. She was framed in a low window off the veranda. The Governor's son was now close behind her. Ubbo was standing on the lawn over near the musicians. We crept nearer. Turning, as if accidentally, she saw him and called to him. "How is your master, Ubbo, to-night?"

"Marster tell me to say he more happy to-night, Missy."

"Told you to say, Ubbo?"

"Yes, Missy, marster tell me to say."

"That's the signal, that sentence," whispered Captain Blaise.

"That's good. You can go, Ubbo." She smiled and chatted with the Governor's son then.

"She can't have interpreted the message aright," I panted.

"Because she did not leap into the air? Trust her--she's Gadsden Cunningham's, her own father's daughter."

In a few minutes she turned from the Governor's son to his father, from him to her ladyship, and from her without haste to some less distinguished member, and then in the most casual way in the world she strolled inside and from our sight.

Hardly a minute later the signal came: a firefly's flash five times together and three times repeated from the darkened upper story.

Ubbo was with us when the signal came. "Marster Carpt'n," he whispered, and handed him a sabre and a pair of duelling pistols. "Missy send um--an' dey loaded, both um, suh."

Captain Blaise, taking the sabre and passing me the pistols, ordered Ubbo to show the way.

We skirted the grounds and entered by a rear gate a garden where were all sorts of low-growing trees and high-growing shrubs to screen us as we drew near the rear veranda. I saw the white gown with the dark blue sash shining out from the shrubbery, and then the white and blue drew back. I would have leaped out on the path to follow, but a restraining hand was on my arm. "Wait, wait!" warned Captain Blaise.

It was the Governor and his son hurrying around the corner of the veranda. "I do not believe it," the Governor was saying. "I cannot credit it. That could not have been his ship which was reported still off the bar at dark--a clumsy galliot of a craft she was described; and besides, he would not dare, a whole squadron cruising within an hour's sail."

"But he is gone, and we found the guard was overpowered. He does not even know how it happened, and his ship is even now moored in the lagoon, and he himself was with Hassan less than an hour ago. Hassan will say no more until he gets his advance money in the morning. But if we move now, he is caught like a rat in a trap. Why not send word to the squadron? The wind is from the sea again and increasing, and he cannot now recross the bar. If we could get hold of Cunningham's nigger, he'll know something. Perhaps we can make him tell. I've sent Charlotte to watch her." He ran to the corner of the veranda. "O Ubbo! Where in the devil is he? O Ubbo! Only a few minutes ago he was talking to her out front. Ubbo! O Ubbo!"

A mulatto girl came hurrying from within the house. "The American missy, I cannot find her. She not in her room, suh."

"What!" The fat old potentate almost jumped into the air.

But the son kept his head. "Not in her room, Charlotte? And Ubbo gone, too? Had I not better make the guard ready, sir?"

"Yes, yes; have the guard fall in."

They rushed around the corner of the veranda and we leaped into the lighted path. She, too, stepped out into the light. "Captain Blaise, oh, Captain Blaise, you don't know what courage you give us."

"Miss Shiela, you don't know what joy you give us.

"Still the same--but--but who is this?" she cried out like a surprised child. And then she seemed to know without being told, for "Oh-h, of course, this is Guy," she said, and smiled as if she had an hour to smile in, and gave me both hands.

"Come," said Captain Blaise abruptly. And down the rear path we hurried, and, circling the garden, entered the hedged path to the lagoon bank. All went well until we had to pass the walk which crossed our path from the front lawn. Here the light of a row of hanging lanterns fell on us.

And they saw us, the Governor and his son and the assembled guards, and came charging down across the lawn after us. But only two abreast could they come down the path.

"The boat is now but a hundred yards away, Miss Shiela," said Captain Blaise. "Guy will take you there. Go you, too, Ubbo." I took her hand and we raced to the bank, where I handed her to a place beside her father in the boat.

"And what are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I? Why, I must go back to help Captain Blaise."

"Oh, of course. But hurry back. And be careful, won't you?"

I ran up the path and was soon at his elbow. The column was crowding down the path, and so soon after coming from the bright light, possibly they could not see clearly when he swung. However it was, one groaned and slid down. He cut again and the head of the column stopped dead. "What's wrong?" came a voice, the Governor's. "What are you stopping for?"

"Won't you step this way and find out?" jeered Captain Blaise.

"What! only one man?"

The hedge lining the path was waist high, trimmed flat and wide, but I never suspected what was coming until I saw the flash and felt the ting of the bullet on my cheek. "Drop!" warned Captain Blaise, but I had no mind to drop. I held one of Mr. Cunningham's duelling pistols ready for the next shot. I saw it and fired, to the right of and just above the flash. I had half seen how he had rested his elbow on the hedge and carried his head to one side when he fired that first shot. There was the crash of a body through the hedge. And then a silence.

"You got him, I think," said Captain Blaise.

I had been spun half around by the shock of something or other, and now I was once more facing the path squarely, and a thought of those red and blue and gold uniforms jammed in there gave me an idea. "Ready, men!" I called out. "Steady! Aim!--and be sure you fire low." No more than that, when in the Governor's guard there was the wildest scrambling and trampling to get to the rear.

And we left them falling rearward over each other and ran for the landing. The men were waiting on their oars. We leaped in, and Captain Blaise took the tiller ropes. "Give way!" he ordered.

Mr. Cunningham was lying on cushions in the bottom of the boat. I was still laughing, and he rolled his head, I thought, to look at me.

"Where did that skunk get you, Guy?" asked Captain Blaise.

"Why, I didn't know that he got me at all."

"Feel on your cheek."

There was blood, not much, trickling down my right cheek.

"You'd better attend to it."

"Yes, sir."

Warm fingers met mine. It was her silk scarf which she was pressing into my hand. I thrust it in my left breast, then took my own handkerchief and held it to my cheek.

I was chuckling to myself as I fancied the Governor's guards tumbling over each other in their retreat, when Captain Blaise broke in on me. "Aren't you laughing rather soon? You're not over your troubles yet."

"Troubles, sir? Troubles?" It was not at all like him, and his voice, too, was unwontedly harsh. "Troubles?" I almost laughed aloud again. He did not understand--I had only to lean forward to gaze into her eyes. I had only to reach out to clasp her hand. Troubles? Well, possibly so, but I smiled to myself in the dark.

IV

Ere we had fairly boarded the brig they were in chase of us. We could see lights flitting along the lagoon bank and hear the hallooing of native runners--the Governor's, we knew. And for every voice we heard and every light we saw, we knew that hidden back of the trees were a dozen or a score whom we could not hear or see. And on the black surface of the lagoon, paddling between us and the bank, as we worked the ship out, were noiseless men in canoes. We could not see them, but every few minutes a mysterious cry carried across the silent water, and the cry, we knew, was the word of our progress from the Governor's canoe-men to the messengers on the bank.

The lagoon emptied on the south into the Momba River, which twisted and turned like so many S's to the sea; on the north was the passage by which we had come, that which led to the sea by way of the bar. But there was to be no crossing of the bar for us that night. Ten miles inland we had smelled that sea-breeze and knew what it meant; but Captain Blaise, nevertheless, held on with the Bess toward the bar. We could hear their crews paddling off and shouting their messages of our progress until they were forced by the breakers to go ashore. Their parting triumphant shouts was their word of our sure intent to attempt the passage of the bar.

When all was quiet from their direction, we put back to the lagoon and headed for the river passage. But one ship of any size had ventured this river passage in a generation, and the planking of that one, the brig Orion, for years lay on the bank by way of a warning. "But the Orion was no Dancing Bess," commented Captain Blaise. Surely not, nor was her master a Captain Blaise.

The top spars of the Bess had been slung while we were ashore, and by this time we had also knocked away the ugly and hindering false work on bow and stern, so that with her lifting foreyards which would have done for a sloop-of-war, and on her driving fore and aft sails which could have served the mizzen of a two-thousand-ton bark, the Bess was now herself again. And she had need to be for the work before her.

Captain Blaise ordered her foresails brailed in to the mast to windward and her foreyards braced flat, this that she might sail closer to the wind.

Entering the narrow passage, she was held to the edge of the low but steep bank to windward; so close that where the low-lying reeds grew outward we could hear them swishing against her sides as we passed on.

Miss Cunningham, having seen her father comfortably established with Ubbo in the cabin, had come on deck, and Captain Blaise, busy though he was, took time to make her welcome. No need for him to boast of his seamanship--the whole coast could tell her that; but how often had a beautiful girl a chance to see the proof of it?

We followed the curve of the river's bank almost as the running stream itself. When we came to a sharp-jutting point, Captain Blaise himself, or me to the wheel, would let her fall away until her jib-boom lay over the opposite bank; and then, her sails well filled, it was shoot her up into the wind and past the point before us. Twenty times we had to weather a point of land in that fashion. Fill and shoot, fill and shoot, never a foot too soon, never a foot too late--it was a beautiful exhibition, and only a pity it was not light for her to see it better.

We were clear of the river at last; that is, we were in the river's V-shaped mouth, the delta. The south bank extended westerly, two miles or so farther to the sea, and the other bank north-westerly toward Momba Bar. Now we were able to get a view of the coast line, and northward to beyond the bar it was an almost unbroken line, we could see, of lights flaring from high points along the shore.

Captain Blaise hove her to until he should see a guiding rocket from the men-of-war which he knew were waiting. And presently one came, a blue and gold from due west, and another red and gold from the west-nor'-west, then a red and blue from north-west by west. Presently there was another, from abreast of and close in to the bar. And we knew there were more in waiting than had signalled. It was already a solid line across the mouth of the river.

If those ships guarding the river's mouth were only anchored, our problem would have been simplified; but they were constantly shifting, and as they showed no sailing lights, no telling where, after a signal flashed, they would fetch next up; and always, showing no signal-light whatever, would be the others guarding what they would like to have us mistake for an open passage in the dark.

Their sending up so many signals indicated a bewilderment as to our whereabouts. By this time they must have known ashore that we were not anchored inside the bar; and out to sea they must have known we had not foundered in the surf, and also by this time they had probably discovered that we were not in the lagoon.

"They will puzzle it out soon. Get your floating mines ready," ordered Captain Blaise. That was my work, and in anticipation of it I had knocked together two small rafts loaded with explosives and a large one with explosives and combustible stuff to burn brightly for half an hour or so.

"What does this mean?" Miss Cunningham was at Captain Blaise's elbow. She could not have asked a question more pleasing to him.

"It means that we are like a rat in a hole with half a dozen big cats guarding the exit. It is an acutely angled corner we are in, Miss Shiela, and a string of corvettes and sloops-of-war stretched, no knowing just where, across the narrow way out. So far they do not know we are here, but before long it is bound to occur to some of them that this is the Dancing Bess and that she has made the Momba River passage--and then they will crowd in and pounce on us. That is, if we don't get out before that."

"I see. I must go down and tell father. He's not worrying, but he wants to know what's going on."

He let the brigantine now run offshore, parallel with the southern bank, almost to the entrance. Then we doubled back on our course. As we came about he called, "Ready with your mines, Guy?"

"Ready, sir!"

"Let go!"

At the word over went the big raft. We sailed on for a quarter mile or so. "Let go!" Over went the second. A quarter mile farther and the third one went. Each mine had its time-fuse. In a very few minutes--the Bess was in by the corner of the delta again--the inshore mine exploded.

Following the noise and flame there was a quiet and a great darkness, and then from the southerly guard-ship a rocket, while from the shore burst forth new lights. If the surf had not been roaring, we knew that we could have heard those joyful yells from the watchers up that way. Everybody on the coast knew that the Bess carried two long-toms and no lack of ammunition for them. We could imagine their chuckling over our explosion.

Then came the second explosion, and five minutes later the third, and from her a great flame which continued to burn.

"Captain Blaise, I don't understand. Why that fire-raft?" Miss Shiela had reappeared on deck.

"Why? We are hoping that they will think that we are sailing out to sea in line of the explosions, just the opposite from what we are doing. If they will but think that that burning raft is our burning hold and that we are in distress, why--Look, Miss Shiela!"

Two war-ships were now signalling to each other recklessly, and their signals gave us a chance to reckon pretty nearly the course that they were steering. Both ships were headed straight for the burning raft. As they came on they uncovered their sailing lights, to prevent collision with each other, and watching these two ships' lights we might have picked a way directly between them. But if they happened to have another ship under cover in that apparently open water, we would be lost; and also, in passing between, we would have blocked off the lights of each in turn to the other and then they would have us.

Between the bar and the sailing lights of the inshore ship of the pair now bearing down, we knew there was another ship. We had seen her signal early, and that ship, we knew, would be held as close to the line of surf as her draught and the nerve of her commander would allow. Captain Blaise, reckoning where she should be, laid the Bess's course for her. "She's used to having a little loose water on her deck--let her have it again," he said, and at this time we had everything on her, and if I have not made any talk of it before, I'll say it now--the Bess could sail.

We were now heading about a point off the edge of the outer line of heavy breakers, and as the Bess had the least free-board of any ship of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her full allowance of loose water. Amidships, when she lay quietly to anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his fingers in the sea. Now, with the wind beam, over her lee rail amidships the heavy seas mounted. On the high quarter-deck we had only to hang onto the weather-rail, but the men stationed amidships had to watch sharp to keep from being swept overboard.

She was long and lean. It was her depth, and not her beam, which had held the Bess from capsizing in many a blow. Ten years Captain Blaise had had her, and in those ten years, whether in sport or need, he had not spared her. She was long and lean, and as loose forward as an old market basket.

Loose and lean and low, she was wiggling like a black snake through the white-topped seas. We had men in our foretop looking for the guard-ship, and because they knew almost exactly where to look for her, we saw her in time and swung the Bess inside her, yet closer to the breakers. Her big bulk piled toward us, her great sails reached up in clouds--shadows of clouds. Past our bow, past our waist, past our quarter. We could pick the painted ports and the protruding black muzzles of her port battery as she passed, a huge shapeless shadow racing one way, and we going the other way like some long, sinuous, black devil of a creature streaking through a white-bedded darkness.

We were by before they were alive to it. A voice, another voice, a hundred voices, and then we saw her green sidelight swing in a great arc; but long before then we were away on the other tack, and so when her broadside belched (and there was metal sufficient to blow us out of water), we were half a mile away and leaping like a black hound to the westward.

A score of rockets followed the broadside. Captain Blaise glanced astern, then ahead, aloft, and from there to the swinging hull beneath him. He started to hum a tune, but broke it off, to recite:

"O the woe of wily Hassan
When they break the tragic news!"

And from that he turned to Miss Cunningham with a joyous, "And what d'y' think of it all?"

She looked her answer, with her head held high and breathing deeply.

"And the Dancing Bess, isn't she a little jewel of a ship? Something to love? Aye, she is. And you had no fear?"

"Fear!" Her laughter rang out. "When father went below, he said, 'Fear nothing. If Captain Blaise gets caught, there's no help for it--it's fate.'"

And I knew he was satisfied. She had seen him on the quarter of his own ship and he playing the game at which, the Bess under his feet, no living man could beat him; and in playing it he had brought her father and herself to freedom. It was for such moments he lived.

The night was fading. We could now see things close by. He took her hand and patted it. "Go below, child, and sleep in peace. You're headed for home. Look at her slipping through the white-topped seas, and when she lays down to her work--there's nothing ever saw the African coast can overhaul us. No, nothing that ever leaped the belted trades can hold her now, not the Bess--while her gear's sound and she's all the wind she craves for."

"I believe you, Captain." She looked over the roaring side. Long and loose and lean, she was lengthening out like a quarter-horse, and he was singing, but with a puzzling savageness of tone:

"Roll, you hunted slaver
Roll your battened hatches down--"

"Good-night, Captain." She turned to me. She was pale, but 'twas the pallor of enduring bravery. There was no paling of her dark eyes. Even darker were they now. "Good-night--" She hesitated. "Good-night, Guy."

"Good-night, Miss Shiela," and I handed her down the companion-way. At the foot of the stairs she looked up and whispered, "You must take care of that wound, Guy." And I answered, "No fear," and then her face seemed to melt away in a mist under the cabin lamp.

Astern of us the dawn leaped up. It had been black night; in a moment, almost, it was light again. I remembered what Captain Blaise had said of a sunset in Jamaica; but here it was the other way about--a purple, round-rimmed dish, and from a segment of it the blood-red salad of a sun upleaping. And pictured clouds rolling up above the blood-red. And against the splashes of the sun the tall palm-trees. And in the new light the signal flambeaux paling. And the white spray of the bar tossing high, and across the spray the white-belted squadron tacking and filling futilely.

I grew cold and wondered what was wrong. I dimly saw Captain Blaise come running to me. "Guy! Guy!" he called. I remember also myself saying, "Nothing wrong with me, sir--and no harm if there is. It's sunrise on the Slave Coast and the Dancing Bess she's homeward bound!"

V

The blue-belted Trades! Day and day, week and week, the little curly, white-headed seas, the unspecked blue sky, and the ceaseless caress of the pursuing wind. No yard nor sail, never a bowline, sheet, or halyard to be handled, and the Bess bounding ever ahead. Beauty, peace, and a leaping log--could the sea bring greater joy?

Captain Blaise had located the bullet--the second shot it must have been--which had lodged under my right shoulder and cut it out. We were nearing home, and the fever was now gone from me, but I was not yet able to take my part on deck. "Perhaps to-morrow," she had said. And to-morrow was come, and I lay there thinking, and at times trying to write.

She had left me alone for a while. Her father had called her to hear another of the Captain's stories. Through the cabin skylight I could see her, or at least the curve of her chin, and her tanned throat and one shoulder pressing inward under the skylight shutters. Her face was turned toward Captain Blaise, whose head and shoulders, he pacing and turning on the quarter, came regularly within range. But she was not forgetting me; every few minutes she thrust her head beneath the raised skylight hatches and looked down to see that I wanted for nothing, and always she smiled.

I was propped up in an easy chair. Up to two days back I had been on a cot. Mr. Cunningham had improved so rapidly that for more than a week now he had been allowed on deck, and there he was now, as I said, listening with his daughter to the tales of Captain Blaise. His laughter and her breaths of suspense, I could hear the one and feel the other.

I took up my pad of paper and resumed my writing. And reviewing my writing, I had to smile at myself, even as I used to smile at Captain Blaise when he would submit his couplets or quatrains for my judgment. He might marshal off-hand a stanza or two of his vagabond thoughts, but here was I carefully composing with pencil and paper, and had been for a week now.

I had never been ill before, never for five minutes. And this illness had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think. I smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had even allowed him to read my thoughts of such matters. And now I could not recollect of his having ever killed or maimed except in defence of his life or property; and yet that night in Momba I had shot, caring not whether I killed or no. Self-defence? At the instant of shooting I had thought, had almost spoken it aloud: "There! There's for a channel to let the starlight into your unclean brain." Self-defence? Tish! The Governor's son desired, possibly loved in his way, a girl that I had known no longer than I knew him, and there it was--I loved her, too! Captain Blaise himself had probably never killed on less provocation; and meditating on his emotional side, on his many provocations, his life-long environment, I had to concede that the Captain Blaise I condemned was a less guilty man than I.

This, as I was beginning to see, was but an argument with myself for a final dismissal of my old life. Surely I should be ashamed to admit that in such fashion was my brain trying to fool my soul; but so it was. Remorse? I should have been worn with remorse, I know; but I was not. I tried to grieve for my hasty judgment of Captain Blaise: and I did. But for the Governor's son, not a qualm. I, too, like Captain Blaise, had become the creature of hereditary instincts and overpowering emotion. Never in all my life before had I thought that any sin or shortcoming of mine was ever to be anybody's business but my own. My salvation lay in the future, which, now that my conscience was awakened, I would have only myself to censure if it did not become what I wished.

But these serious thoughts were of previous days. This morning I was to have some little composition ready for her when she came down. I turned to my paper and pencil and began to write. But thoughts, such thoughts as I conceived would please her, came slowly. My new conscience or it may have been the voices of the quarter-deck,--her father's questions, Captain Blaise's muffled answers, her exclamations of delight and wonder,--all these diverted me. In despair I tried to catch, as I usually could, what Captain Blaise was saying, but to-day he spoke in so low a tone that I could not quite.

Ubbo came down for a chart, a particular chart which Captain Blaise has always kept apart from the others. I pointed out to him where he would find it. And my eye followed his figure up the cabin steps. In a sailor's costume Ubbo was proud but perspiring, though devotion shone out in every drop of perspiration.

Through the skylight I saw Captain Blaise take the chart from Ubbo, unroll and scan it. "I was right. Yes, here's the spot." He was addressing Shiela. "In red ink, see, and here's about where we are now--not ten miles from here, north by east."

Shiela was bending over the chart when "Sail-ho!" rang out from the lookout in the foretop. He had a grand voice, that man on watch.

With one hand Captain Blaise held the chart so Shiela still could read it; with the other he reached through the skylight opening for his long glass. After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative. By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him.

Shiela came below to see me. The traces of tears were in her eyes.

"It's a large ship to the northward," she said. "From something Captain Blaise whispered to father it may be a man-o'-war, though I hope not. But what have you done since I've been gone? You mustn't feel put out when I have to go on deck. It's an ungrateful girl, you know, who is not courteous to her host, especially when that host is Captain Blaise. Think what father and I owe him! And what a wonderfully interesting man he is! And what adventures he has had!"

"But what made you cry?"

"Captain Blaise was telling of a happening on this very spot almost. It was a ship from Cadiz for Savannah. She had taken fire. He picked up among others three people lashed to some pieces of wreckage--a man, a woman, and their baby. She was dead and he dying. He did die later aboard his ship, the predecessor of the Bess. The baby lived. Do you recall the story?"

"No, he never told me that one. And the baby?"

"The father had practically supported the baby in the water for four days--the baby was less than a year old--and the mother had nursed him till she died. For two days, the man said, with nothing to eat herself. She and he, they had practically killed themselves for the baby boy. She was a Spanish woman--a lady. The father died aboard Captain Blaise's ship. He was an American who had married abroad without consulting his father, and the old gentleman made such a fuss about it that the young man had stayed away--intended to remain away and renounce his heritage; but at last the father had sent for him, and he was then on his way home. But you should have heard Captain Blaise tell it. He made us feel that mother's love for her baby, that mother who was dead before he picked her up, and made us feel, too, what a man the father was. What an actor he is! I tried not to cry, but I did. But let me see--what have you there?"

I showed her some things. She picked up the nearest and read it aloud:

"I was walking down the glen--
O my heart!--on a summer's day.
He passed me by, my gentleman--
Would I had never seen the day!

"True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.
And his hair was silk as tasselled corn,
My heart alack--that summer's day!

"Oh, he wore plumes in his broad hat
And jewelled buckles on his shoon,
And O, the sparkle in his eye!
And yet his love could die so soon!"

"H-m. Suggests satin breeches and hair-powder, men who could navigate a ball-room floor more safely than the Trades, doesn't it? Wherever did you get such notions?"

I showed her a volume, one of Captain Blaise's, an anthology of the Elizabethan and Restoration poets. "I was trying to write like one of 'em," I explained. "And I thought it was pretty good."

"I don't--a poor girl believing that Heaven made her kind for the high people's pleasure. No, I don't like that. And 'hair as silk as tasselled corn!' Do you like tasselled corn hair?"

"Why, no--in a man. But my own being black--"

"Hush! Black's best. No, you're not intended for that kind of writing."

"But here--listen:

"'True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.'

"Don't you like that?"

"Something like it's been said so often. Why don't you put it in your own words?" She took up another sheet. "What's this about?"

"That's about a day and night at sea--a fine day in the Trades, such a day as to-day--and last night."

"It was a beautiful moon last night, wasn't it?" And she read to herself. Coming to the last stanza, she read aloud, unconsciously I think:

"The stars gleamed out of a purple light,
The moon trembled wide on the sea;
The Western Ocean smiled that night--
Sweetheart, 'twas a dream of thee!"

She paused. "But the ocean doesn't smile." "But it does. Smiles and frowns, and roars and coos, and coaxes and threatens, and strikes and caresses, and leaps and rolls--and so many other things. I've seen it. And Captain Blaise will tell you the same."

She looked strangely at me. In the deep sea I had seen, at times, that deep dark blue of her eyes--ultramarine, they call it; but hers softer. I almost told her so, but I was afraid.

She looked away and repeated softly:

"'The Western Ocean smiled that night--Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'"

It's pretty, but more like what men who cruise for pleasure would write. You're a sailor--have taken a sailor's chances. Why don't you write like a sailor? It is a sad sea, a terrible sea, despite all your beautiful blue Trades. Why don't you write of the tragic sea?"

"I knew that some time you would say something like that. I've seen it in your eyes before."

"You have?"

"Why, many times. And so, here." And from between the pages of Captain Blaise's book of verse I drew another sheet. At that time I would have been ashamed to let anybody else see these things, but I did not mind her. "Here," I said, "is one I felt. One night in the Caribbean we were caught in a tornado, and we thought--Captain Blaise said afterward he thought so too--that we had stood our last watch. And at the height of it--we could do nothing but stand by--one of the crew, a young fellow--I was only sixteen years old myself then--said to me, 'Oh, Master Guy, what will she say when she hears?' He meant his young wife. He'd been married just before we put out, and she'd come down to the ship to see him off. So listen:

"'The spray, most-like, was in my eyes,
He waved his hand to me--
The wind it blew a gale that day
When he sailed out to sea.'"

"Ah-h!" She leaned closer.

"It was a gale the day we put out. We had to get out--in Charleston Harbor it was--and they were hot after us--gale or no gale, Captain Blaise put out. I'm trying to imagine what she would think when she heard.

"'And now no spray is in my eyes,
No hand is waved to me--
But all the gales of time shall blow
Ere he comes back from sea!'"

"And she a bride! Oh-h, the poor girl!" She had leaned over my shoulder to read it for herself, and her breath was on my cheek.

"That is why, if I had--a wife, I should dread the sea."

"And that is why a woman--But how long have you been writing poetry?"

"Poetry? Or rhyme? Never before the day I saw you."

"But when did such ideas before take hold of you?"

"The other night I was lying here looking up, and after a time the moon shone through onto my cot, and you crossed its path--you had given me my night cup and I had pretended to be asleep; and I thought of you looking out on the moonlit sea and I got to wondering what you were thinking of. And I remembered a thousand such moonlit nights when you were not there. And I thought what a difference it would have made had you been there, and so when I say

"'The Western Ocean smiled that night--Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'

"you must not smile. I meant it; for if the ocean smiles and whispers and makes men dream of--"

"Oh-h!" her head had settled and now her cheek was against mine. "Go on," she said softly.

"It made me dream of her that was never more than a dream-woman until I saw you. No longer a dream--not after you stepped out onto the veranda of the Governor's house that night in Momba. I knew it again when, looking out from the shrubbery in the garden, you looked at me and said, 'And who is this?' And I knew it when with you in the long-boat, when I wanted to reach out and take your hand--"

"And why didn't you? I knew you were weak from your wound, and it would have been a charity in me to cheer you up."

"Divine charity--but I was not weak--not from any wound. I had not the courage. A sailor may shape his course by a star, but that does not mean that he ever thinks of reaching up and trying to grasp it."

"And you've heard the sea whisper, too, Guy?"

"Many a time. In the night mostly--in the mid-watch, when it's quietest. I've leant over the rail and heard it whisper up to me. People laugh at that, but they know nothing of the sea. And the day, or the night, comes to some men, when she whispers up to him and beckons with her wide arms and on her deep bosom offers to pillow him, and weary of the wrong-doing, mostly it's wrong-doing, or despair, when men hear it--weary, weary to death, they are glad to--"

"No, no--no, Guy--you must never go like that!"

"But when a man's alone?"

She rested her chin on my shoulder, she reached a hand down to mine. "You will not be alone, dear--never, never again."

A voice from above recalled me. "Guy! O Guy! If you can make shift to come on deck, you would do well. We are in close quarters and like to be yet closer."

I looked up, not in full time, but in time to catch a glint of his eyes. Pain in his voice, suffering in his eyes--never till that moment did it come to me that this whole cruise had been but a wooing of Shiela Cunningham. And I, who owed him everything in life, I had stood in his way. And even with Shiela there my heart ached for him.

VI

When I made the deck I saw that off each beam was an American frigate, and ahead was the land--the coast of Georgia.

No doubt of what they were after. The Bess was a much-desired prize, and known as far as a long glass could shape her lines or pick her rig. "But there is yet time, sir," I suggested, "to put about, run between them, and escape to the open sea."

"There is time," he answered curtly. He had not looked fairly at me since I came on deck. "But I am going to land our passengers, and without risk of their capture."

I thought that he had in mind to hold up for the mouth of the Savannah River, and run on up the river to the city. He could do that, though it would mean the final abandonment of the brigantine and, most likely, the identification of Captain Blaise with Mr. Villard of Villard Manor.

Though these were two fast-sailing frigates, we were outrunning them, not rapidly, but sufficiently to make it certain, while yet we were a mile offshore, that we would easily make the river entrance, if such was his intention. But evidently not so, for he now ordered the gig ready for lowering and had Mr. Cunningham's strong-box brought on deck.

"Shall I also take that package you spoke of?" asked Mr. Cunningham.

"Surely. It is ready in my room." And he went below and came up with it, a great beribboned and bewaxed envelope, saying, "Deliver it when the time comes, Gad. Or wait, let Miss Shiela do it," and handed it to her instead.

She blushed vividly and placed it in her portmanteau. "Thank you, sir," she said.

I had difficulty in keeping my eyes off her, even though I was again acting as first officer of the Bess, and my first duty just now was to keep an eye on the two ships and render judgment as to their intentions.

"That fellow to the south seems to have decided to bid up for the Savannah River entrance on the next tack, sir," I reported.

"Yes." He was busy with the Cunninghams and spoke absently, though it was also likely that he saw better than I did what the man-o'-war would be at. "That's good. Let him stretch that tack all he pleases."

"Then we are not to stand in yet, sir?"

"Not yet, not till the northerly fellow comes into stays. We'll tack then, but not for the river."

The frigate to the north came into the wind, and as she did we wore ship and stood up; not a great divergence from our old course, but enough to make them think we might yet come about and try for the open sea. The ship to the south of us took notice then and came into the wind, and while they were hanging there we eased off and headed straight for the white beach to the north of the river.

Both ships, after the loss of some minutes in irons, once more filled their sails and made straight for our wake. Now they seemed to say, "Another half-mile on that leg and you won't make either the river or the open water."

As we neared the white shore an inlet opened up before us. "There's something, Gad, no chart will show you," observed Captain Blaise. "There's a channel, carved round an island since the last government chart was plotted. They're doing some puzzling aboard those war-dogs now, I'll warrant. They're thinking we're going to beach and abandon her, I'll wager."

The Bess held straight on. It was an inlet which went on for half a mile or so before turning obliquely to the north. It was wide and deep enough for us--plenty; but a frigate's tonnage would have her troubles, if she tried to follow.

We weathered the first bend. Before us was another bend. I remembered now that years before, when I was a little fellow, I had come in and out of this very place. I began to recollect dimly that after a while it came to the open sea again some miles to the north.

We were almost to the other entrance when he ordered the Bess hove-to and the gig lowered. Into it went the strong-box and the Cunninghams and Ubbo. "And you, too, Guy." He was looking at me queerly. "Mr. Cunningham is still weak. And Shiela, brave as she is, is only a woman--a girl. Will you see that they are landed safely? That is the main shore. See that their luggage is carried up to the top of that hill. In the creek beyond that hill is an old darky who will take them in his little sharpie by way of a back river to Savannah."

And so I was to have a few more minutes with her. At the gangway he took my hand and held it while he said, "You're weak yet--don't hurry. Those two frigates won't follow us in here." I remember wondering why only Ubbo was in the boat besides ourselves; but I was too excited at the thought of so soon landing her to think logically. As I was about to step into the gig he whispered, "Take good care of her, won't you, Guy?"

"Why, of course, sir."

"That's the boy." He pressed my hand.

We shoved off, Ubbo rowing. In two minutes we were on the beach. I was still too weak to be of much help to Ubbo with the strong-box, and so it took us some time to get it to the top of the hill. We covered it with sand and brush to guard against a possible landing party from the frigates. Shiela's idea that was, and it delayed us another few minutes.

I turned to go. Shiela, she was nervous too, but smiling. "Shiela--"

"You're not going back to the ship?"

"But I must--I must."

"No, you're not--and you must not. Here." She had taken the bewaxed and beribboned package from her little handbag. It was addressed to "Guy Villard, Esq., Villard Manor, Chatham County, Ga."

"But who is he?"

"Who is he? Who are you?"

"Guy Blaise."

"No, you're not. Open it and read. Or wait, let me read it."

And it is true that not till then did I suspect. I thought that I might have been his son, or the son of some wild friend, born of a marriage on the West Coast or other foreign parts. But of this thing I never had a suspicion.

I was the baby boy picked up in the wreckage of the burning ship. There were the marriage certificates of my father and mother, and the title deeds to the Villard estate. It had been a great temptation--he the next of kin, my father's cousin, and no one knowing. And he, too, feared the strange blood. But watching my growth, he had come to love me, and wanted me to love him, and feared my contempt if I should learn. All this was explained in a letter in a small envelope, written recently and hastily. Together, Shiela and I, we finished the reading of it:

Though I'm not so sure now that you shouldn't thank me for withholding your inheritance until the quality of your manhood was assured. It is true that I imperilled your mortal body a score of times, but through fifty-score weeks I nurtured your immortal soul, Guy.

And now I am going back to that sea wherein I expect to find rest at the last, and let my friends make no mourning over it, Guy. 'Tis a beautiful clean grave, no mould nor crawling worms there. But if it be that the sea will have none of me, and the metalled war-dogs drive me, and spar-shattered and hull-battered I make a run of it to harbor in my old age, I shall come in full confidence of a mooring under your roof, Guy. And who knows that I won't be worth my salt there?

You have won her, Guy. I knew you would from that night in Momba when you sat in the stern sheets and laughed. 'Twas in your laugh that night, though you did not suspect it. But I know. The tides of youth were surging in you. Beauty, wit, and courage--with these in any man I will measure sword; but the tides of youth are of eternal power.

I should like to dance your children on my knee, Guy, and lull the songs of the sea into their little ears. I've a fine collection by now, Guy--you've no idea--ringing chanties to get a ship under way, and roaring staves of the High Barbaree, ballads of the gale, and lullabies of west winds and summer nights. And your children, Guy, will grow up none the less brave gentlemen and fine ladies for the strengthening salt of the sea in their blood and the clearing whiff of the gale in their brains. So a fair, fair Trade to you and Shiela--the fair warm Trades which kiss even as they bear us on--and do not forget the tides of youth are flooding for you. Take them and let them bear you on to happiness and wisdom.

I felt weak and dizzy, but I rose to my feet and started down the hill. Shiela caught me and held me. "Look!" She was pointing out to sea.

There she was, the Dancing Bess, holding a taut bowline to the eastward. And there were the two frigates, but they might as well have been chasing a star.

"Look!" She handed me the glasses. I looked and saw her ensign dipping. I took off my hat and waved it, hoping that with his long glass he could see. He must have seen, for the ensign dipped three times again, and from the long-tom in her waist shot out a puff of smoke. We waited for the sound of it. It came.

Farewell that meant. I watched her till her great foresail was no larger than a toy ship's. Then I sat down and cried, and had no care that the negro slave and servant, Ubbo, saw me.

Mr. Cunningham came and sat beside me. "Guy," he said, "don't worry about him. He'll come through all right. He has great qualities in him."

"He's good, too--too good to me."

"Great and good," exclaimed Shiela. "He could love and was lovable. And what's all your greatness to that?"

It may be that she who knew him least understood him best. She was crying too.

When her great square foresails were no more than a gull's wing on the hazy horizon we waved her a last salute. Then we made our way to the creek and sailed up Back River, past Savannah, and on to Villard Landing. And hand in hand Shiela and I walked up between the row of moss-hung cypress trees to the manor-house and--Home.

[The end]
James B. Connolly's short story: Captain Blaise

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