To Have and to Hold

XXIII.

IN WHICH WE WRITE UPON THE SAND.

DAY after day the wind filled our sails and sang in the rigging, and day after day we sailed through blue seas toward the magic of the south. Day after day a listless and voluptuous world seemed too idle for any dream of wrong, and day after day we whom a strange turn of Fortune’s wheel had placed upon a pirate ship held our lives in our hands, and walked so close with Death that at length that very intimacy did breed contempt. It was not a time to think ; it was a time to act, to laugh and make others laugh, to bluster and brag, to estrange sword and scabbard, to play one’s hand with a fine unconcern, but all the time to watch, watch, watch, day in and day out, every minute of every hour. That ship became a stage, and we, the actors, should have been applauded to the echo. How well we played let witness the fact that the ship came to the Indies, with me for captain and the minister for mate, and with the woman that was on board unharmed ; nay, reverenced like a queen. The great cabin was hers, and the poop deck ; we made for her a fantastic state with doffing of hats and bowings and backward steps. We were her guard, — the gentlemen of the Queen, — I and my Lord Carnal, the minister and Diccon, and we kept between her and the rest of the ship.

We did our best, and our best was very much. When I think of the songs the minister sang; of the roars of laughter that went up from the lounging pirates when, sitting astride one of the maindeck guns, he made his voice call to them, now from the hold, now from the stern gallery, now from the masthead, now from the gilt sea maid upon the prow, I laugh too. Sometimes a space was cleared for him, and he played to them as to the pit at Blackfriars. They laughed and wept and swore with delight, — all save the Spaniard, who was ever like a thundercloud, and Paradise, who only smiled like some languid, sidebox lord. There was wine on board, and during the long, idle days, when the wind droned in the rigging like a bagpipe, and there was never a cloud in the sky, and the galleons were still far away, the pirates gambled and drank. Diccon diced with them, and taught them all the oaths of a free company. So much wine, and no more, should they have; when they frowned, I let them see that their frowning and their halfdrawn knives mattered no doit to me. It was their whim — a huge jest of which they could never have enough — still to make believe that they sailed under Kirby. Lest it should spoil the jest, and while the jest outranked all other entertainment, they obeyed as though I had been indeed that fierce sea wolf.

Time passed, though it passed like a tortoise, and we came to the Lucayas, to the outposts of the vast hunting ground of Spaniard and pirate and buccaneer, the fringe of that zone of beauty and villainy and fear, and sailed slowly past the islands, looking for our prey.

The sea was blue as blue could be. Only in the morning and the evening it glowed blood red, or spread upon its still bosom all the gold of all the Indies, or became an endless mead of palest green shot with amethyst. When night fell, it mirrored the stars, great and small, or was caught in a net of gold flung across it from horizon to horizon. The ship rent the net with a wake of white fire. The air was balm ; the islands were enchanted places, abandoned by Spaniard and Indian, overgrown, serpent-haunted. The reef, the still water, pink or gold, the gleaming beach, the green plume of the palm, the scarlet birds, the cataracts of bloom, — the senses swooned with the color, the steaming incense, the warmth, the wonder of that fantastic world. Sometimes, in the crystal waters near the land, we sailed over the gardens of the sea gods, and, looking down, saw red and purple blooms and shadowy waving forests, with rainbow fish for humming birds. Once we saw below us a sunken ship. With how much gold she had endowed the wealthy sea, how many long drowned would rise from her rotted decks when the waves gave up their dead, no man could tell. Away from the ship darted many-hued fish, gold-disked, or barred and spotted with crimson, or silver and purple. The dolphin and the tunny and the flying fish swam with us. Sometimes flights of small birds came to us from the land. Sometimes the sea was thickly set with full-blown pale red bloom, the jellyfish that was a flower to the sight and a nettle to the touch. If a storm arose, a fury that raged and threatened, it presently swept away, and the blue laughed again. When the sun sank, there arose in the east such a moon as might have been sole light to all the realms of faery. A beauty languorous and seductive was most absolute empress of the wonderful land and the wonderful sea.

We were in the hunting grounds, and men went not there to gather flowers. Day after day we watched for Spanish sails ; for the plate fleets went that way, and some galleass or caravel or galleon might stray aside. At last, in the clear green bay of a nameless island at which we stopped for water, we found two caracks come upon the same errand, took them, and with them some slight treasure in rich cloths and gems. A week later, in a strait between two islands like tinted clouds, we fought a very great galleon from sunrise to noon, pierced her hull through and through and silenced her ordnance, then boarded her and found a king’s ransom in gold and silver. When the fighting had ceased and the treasure was ours, then we four stood side by side on the deck of the slowly sinking galleon, in front of our prisoners,— of the men who had fought well, of the ashen priests and the trembling women. Those whom we faced were in high good humor : they had gold with which to gamble, and wine to drink, and rich clothing with which to prank their villainous bodies, and prisoners with whom to make merry. When I ordered the Spaniards to lower their boats, and taking with them their priests and women row off to one of those two islands, the weather changed.

We outlived that storm, but how I scarcely know. As Kirby would have done, so did I; rating my crew like hounds, turning my point this way and that, daring them to come taste the red death upon it, braving it out like some devil who knows he is invulnerable. My lord, swinging the cutlass with which he was armed, stood beside me, knee to knee, and Diccon cursed after me, making quarterstaff play with his long pike. But it was the minister that won us through. At length they laughed, and Paradise, standing forward, swore that such a captain and such a mate were worth the lives of a thousand Spaniards. To pleasure Kirby, they would depart this once from their ancient usage and let the prisoners go, though it was passing strange, — it being Kirby’s wont to clap prisoners under hatches and fire their ship above them. At the end of which speech the Spaniard began to rave, and sprang at me like a catamount. Paradise put forth a foot and tripped him up, whereat the pirates laughed again, and held him back when he would have come at me a second time.

From the deck of the shattered galleon I watched her boats, with their heavy freight of cowering humanity, pull off toward the island. Back upon my own poop, the grappling irons cast loose, and a swiftly widening ribbon of blue between us and the sinking ship, I looked at the pirates thronging the waist below me, and knew that the play was nearly over. How many days, weeks, hours, before the lights would go out I could not tell : they might burn until we took or lost another ship ; the next hour might see that brief tragedy consummated.

I turned, and going below met Sparrow at the foot of the poop ladder.

“ I have sworn at these pirates until my hair stood on end,” he said ruefully. “ God forgive me ! And I have bent into circles three half pikes in demonstration of the thing that would occur to them if they tempted me overmuch. And I have sung them all the bloody and lascivious songs that ever I knew in my unregenerate days. I have played the bravo and buffoon until they gaped for wonder. I have damned myself to all eternity, I fear, but there ’ll be no mutiny this fair day. It may arrive by to-morrow, though.”

“ Likely enough,” I said. Come within. I have eaten nothing since yesterday.”

“ I ’ll speak to Diccon first,” he answered, and went on toward the forecastle, while I entered the state cabin. Here I found Mistress Percy kneeling beside the bench beneath the stern windows, her face buried in her outstretched arms, her dark hair shadowing her like a mantle. When I spoke to her she did not answer. With a sudden fear I stooped and touched her clasped hands. A shudder ran through her frame, and she slowly raised a colorless face.

“Are you come back?” she whispered. “ I thought you would never come back. I thought they had killed you. I was only praying before I killed myself.”

I took her hands and wrung them apart to rouse her, she was so white and cold, and spoke so strangely. “ God forbid that I should die yet awhile, madam ! ” I said. “ When I can no longer serve you, then I shall not care how soon I die.”

The eyes with which she gazed upon me were still wide and unseeing. “ The guns ! ” she cried, wresting her hands from mine and putting them to her ears. “ Oh, the guns ! they shake the air. And the screams and the trampling — the guns again! ”

I brought her wine and made her drink it; then sat beside her, and told her gently, over and over again, that there was no longer thunder of the guns or screams or trampling. At last the long, tearless sobs ceased, and she rose from her knees, and let me lead her to the door of her cabin. There she thanked me softly, with downcast eyes and lips that yet trembled ; then vanished from my sight, leaving me first to wonder at that terror and emotion in her who seldom showed the thing she felt, and finally to conclude that it was not so wonderful after all.

We sailed on, — southwards to Cuba, then north again to the Lucayas and the Florida straits, looking for Spanish ships and their gold. The lights yet burned, — now brightly, now so sunken that it seemed as though the next hour they must flicker out. We, the players, flagged not in that desperate masque; but we knew that, in spite of all endeavor, the darkness was coming fast upon us.

Had it been possible we would have escaped from the ship, hazarding new fortunes on the Spanish Main, in an open boat, sans food or water. But the pirates watched us very closely. They called me “captain" and “ Kirby,”and for the jest’s sake gave an exaggerated obedience, with laughter and flourishes; but none the less I was their prisoner, — I and those I had brought with me to that ship.

An islet, shaped like the crescent moon, rose from out the sea before us. We needed water, and so we felt, our way between the horns of the crescent into the blue crystal of a fairy harbor. One low hill, rose-colored from base to summit, with scarce a hint of the green world below that canopy of giant bloom, a little silver beach with wonderful shells upon it, the sound of a waterfall and a lazy surf, — we smelt the fruits and the flowers, and a longing for the land came upon us. Six men were left on the ship, and all besides went ashore. Some rolled the water casks toward the sound of the cascade ; others plunged into the forest, to return laden with strange and luscious fruits, birds, guanas, conies, — whatever eatable thing they could lay hands upon ; others scattered along the beach to find turtle eggs, or, if fortune favored them, the turtle itself. They laughed, they sang, they swore, until the isle rang to their merriment. Like wanton children, they called to each other, to the screaming birds, to the echoing bloom-draped hill.

I spread a square of cloth upon the sand, in the shadow of a mighty tree that stood at the edge of the forest, and the King’s ward took her seat upon it, and looked, in the golden light of the sinking sun, the very spirit of the isle. By this we two were alone on the beach. The hunters for eggs, led by Diccon, were out upon the farthest gleaming horn; from the wood came the loud laughter of the fruit gatherers, and a most rollicking song issuing from the mighty chest of Master Jeremy Sparrow. With the woodsmen had gone my lord.

I walked a little way into the forest, and shouted a warning to Sparrow against venturing too far. When I returned to the giant tree and the cloth in the shadow of its outer branches, my wife was writing on the sand with a pointed shell. She had not seen or heard me, and I stood behind her and read what she wrote. It was my name. She wrote it three times, slowly and carefully ; then she felt my presence, glanced swiftly up, smiled, rubbed out my name, and wrote Sparrow’s, Diccon’s, and the King’s in succession. “ Lest I should forget to make my letters,” she explained.

I sat down at her feet, and for some time we said no word. The light, falling between the heavy blooms, cast bright sequins upon her dress and dark hair. The blooms were not more pink than her cheeks, the recesses of the forest behind us not deeper or darker than her eyes. The laughter and the song came faintly to us now. The sun was low in the west, and a wonderful light slept upon the sea.

“ Last year we had a masque at court,” she said at length, breaking the long silence. “We had Calypso s island, and I was Calypso. The island was built of boards covered with green velvet, and there was a mound upon it of pink silk roses. There was a deep blue painted sea below, and a deep blue painted sky above. My nymphs danced around the mound of roses, while I sat upon a real rock beside the painted sea and talked with Ulysses — to wit, my Lord of Buckingham — in gold armor. That was a strange, bright, unreal, and wearisome day, but not so strange and unreal as this.”

She ceased to speak, and began again to write upon the sand. I watched her white hand moving to and fro. She wrote, “ How long will it last ? ”

“I do not know. Not long.”

She wrote again : “ If there is time at the last, when you see that it is best, will you kill me ? ”

I took the shell from her hand, and wrote my answer beneath her question.

The forest behind us sank into that pause and breathless hush between the noises of the day and the noises of the night. The sun dropped lower, and the water became as pink as the blooms above us.

“ An you could, would you change ? ” I asked. Would you return to England and safety ? ”

She took a handful of the white sand and let it slowly drift through her white fingers. “ You know that I would not,” she said ; “ not if the end were to come to-night. Only — only ” — She turned from me and looked far out to sea. I could not see her face, only the dusk of her hair and her heaving bosom. “ My blood may be upon your hands,” she said in a whisper, “ but yours will be upon my soul.”

She turned yet further away, and covered her eyes with her hand. I arose, and bent over her until I could have touched with my lips that bowed head. “ Jocelyn,” I said.

A branch of yellow fruit fell beside us, and my Lord Carnal, a mass of gaudy bloom in his hand, stepped from the wood. “ I returned to lay our firstfruits at madam’s feet,” he explained. his darkly watchful eyes upon us both. “ A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam.” He dropped the flowers in her lap. “ Will you wear them, lady ? They are as fair almost as I could wish.”

She touched the blossoms with listless fingers, said they were fair ; then, rising, let them drop upon the sand. “ I wear no flowers save of my husband’s gathering, my lord,” she said.

There was a pathos and weariness in her voice, and a mist of unshed tears in her eyes. She hated him ; she loved me not, yet was forced to turn to me for help at every point, and she had stood for weeks upon the brink of death and looked unfalteringly into the gulf beneath her.

“ My lord,” I said, you know in what direction Master Sparrow led the men. Will you reënter the wood and call them to return ? The sun is fast sinking, and darkness will be upon us.”

He looked from her to me, with his brows drawn downwards and his lips pressed together. Stooping, he took up the fallen flowers and deliberately tore them to pieces, until the pink petals were all scattered upon the sand.

“ I am weary of requests that are but sugared commands,” he said thickly. “ Go seek your own men, an you will. Here we are but man to man, and I budge not. I stay, as the King would have me stay, beside the unfortunate lady whom you have made the prisoner and the plaything of a pirate ship.”

“ You wear no sword, my Lord Carnal.” I said at last, “ and so may lie with impunity.”

“ But you can get me one ! ” he cried, with ill-concealed eagerness.

I laughed. “ I am not zealous in mine enemy’s cause, my lord. I shall not deprive Master Sparrow of your lordship’s sword.”

Before I knew what he was about he crossed the yard of sand between us and struck me in the face. “ Will that quicken your zeal ? ” he demanded between his teeth.

I seized him by the arm, and we stood so, both white with passion, both breathing heavily. At length I flung his arm from me and stepped back. “ I fight not my prisoner,” I said, “ nor, while the lady you have named abides upon that ship with the nobleman who, more than myself, is answerable for her being there, do I put my life in unnecessary hazard. I will endure the smart as best I may, my lord, until a more convenient season, when I will salve it well.”

I turned to Mistress Percy, and giving her my hand led her down to the boats; for I heard the fruit gatherers breaking through the wood, and the hunters for eggs, black figures against the crimson sky, were hurrying down the beach. Before the night had quite fallen we were out of the fairy harbor, and when the moon rose the islet looked only a silver sail against the jeweled heavens.

XXIV.

IN WHICH WE CHOOSE THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS.

The luck that had been ours could not hold ; when the tide turned, it ebbed fast.

The weather changed. One hurricane followed upon the stride of another, with only a blue day or two between. Ofttimes we thought the ship was lost. All hands toiled like galley slaves ; and as the heavens darkened, there darkened also the mood of the pirates.

In sight of the great island of Cuba we gave chase to a bark. The sun was shining and the sea fairly still when first she fled before us ; we gained upon her, and there was not a mile between us when a cloud blotted out the sun. The next minute our own sails gave us occupation enough. The storm, not we. was victor over the bark ; she sank with a shriek from her decks that rang above the roaring wind. Two days later we fought a large caravel. With a fortunate shot she brought down our foremast, and sailed away from us with small damage of her own. All that day and night the wind blew, driving us out of our course, and by dawn we were as a shuttlecock between it and the sea. We weathered the gale, but when the wind sank there fell on board that black ship a menacing silence.

In the state cabin I held a council of war. Mistress Percy sat beside me, her arm upon the table, her hand shadowing her eyes ; my lord, opposite, never took his gaze from her, though he listened gloomily to Sparrow’s rueful assertion that the brazen game we had been playing was well-nigh over. Diceon, standing behind him, bit his nails and stared at the floor.

“ For myself I care not overmuch,” ended the minister. “ I scorn not life, but think it at its worst well worth the living; yet when my God calls me, I will go as to a gala day and triumph. You are a soldier, Captain Percy, you and Diccon here, and know how to die. You too, my Lord Carnal, are a brave man, though a most wicked one. For us four, we can drink the cup, bitter though it be, with little trembling. But there is one among us ” — His great voice broke, and he sat staring at the table.

The King’s ward uncovered her eyes. “ If I be not a man and a soldier, Master Sparrow,” she said simply, “yet I am the daughter of many valiant gentlemen. I will die as they died before me. And for me, as for you four, it will be only death, — naught else.” She looked at me with a proud smile.

“ Naught else,” I said.

My lord started from his seat and strode over to the window, where he stood drumming his fingers against the casing. I turned toward him. “ My Lord Carnal,” I said, “you were overheard last night when you plotted with the Spaniard.”

He recoiled with a gasp, and his hand went to his side, where it found no sword. I saw his eyes busy here and there through the cabin, seeking something which he might convert into a weapon.

“ I am yet captain of this ship,” I continued. “ Why I do not, even though it be my last act of authority, have you flung to the sharks, I scarcely know.”

He threw back his head; all his bravado returned to him. “ It is not I that stand in danger,” he began loftily; “ and I would have you remember, sir, that you are my enemy, and that I owe you no loyalty.”

“ I am content to be your enemy,” I answered.

“ You do not dare to set upon me now,” he went on, with his old insolent, boastful smile. “ Let me cry out, make a certain signal, and they without will be here in a twinkling, breaking in the door ” —

“ The signal set ? ” I said. “ The mine laid, the match burning ? Then ’t is time that we were gone. When I bid the world good-night, my lord, my wife goes with me.”

His lips moved and his black eyes narrowed, but he did not speak.

“ An my cheek did not burn so.” I said, “ I would be content to let you live ; live, captain in verity of this ship of devils, until, tired of you, the devils cut your throat, or until some victorious Spaniard hung you at his yardarm; live even to crawl back to England, by hook or crook, to wait, hat in hand, in the antechamber of his Grace of Buckingham. As it is, I will kill you here and now, I restore you your sword, my lord, and there lies my challenge.”

I flung my glove at his feet, and Sparrow unbuckled the keen blade which he had worn since the day I had asked it of its owner, and pushed it to me across the table. The King’s ward leaned back in her chair, very white, but with a proud, still face, and hands loosely folded in her lap. My lord stood irresolute, his lip caught between his teeth, his eyes upon the door.

“Cry out, my lord,” I said. “You are in danger. Cry to your friends without, who may come in time. Cry out loudly, like a soldier and a gentleman ! ”

With a furious oath he stooped and caught up the glove at his feet; then snatched out of my hand the sword that I offered him.

“ Push back the settle, you ; it is in the way ! ” he cried to Diccon ; then to me, in a voice thick with passion: “ Come on, sir ! Here there are no meddling governors; this time let Death throw down the warder ! ”

“ He throws it,” said the minister beneath his breath.

From without came a trampling and a sudden burst of excited voices. The next instant the door was burst open, and a most villainous, fiery-red face thrust itself inside. “ A ship ! ” bawled the apparition, and vanished. The clamor increased ; voices cried for captain and mate, and more pirates appeared at the door, swearing out the good news, come in search of Kirby, and giving no choice but to go with them at once.

“ Until this interruption is over, sir,” I said sternly, bowing to him as I spoke. “ No longer.”

“ Be sure, sir, that to my impatience the time will go heavily,” he answered as sternly.

We reached the poop to find the fog that had lain about us thick and white suddenly lifted, and the hot sunshine streaming down upon a rough blue sea. To the larboard, a league away, lay a low, endless coast of sand, as dazzling white as the surf that broke upon it, and running back to a matted growth of vivid green.

“ That is Florida,” said Paradise at my elbow, “ and there are reefs and shoals enough between us. It was Kirby’s luck that the fog lifted. Yonder tall ship hath a less fortunate star.”

She lay between us and the white beach, evidently in shoal and dangerous waters. She too had encountered a hurricane, and had not come forth victorious. Foremast and forecastle were gone, and her bowsprit was broken. She lay heavily, her ports but a few inches above the water. Though we did not know it then, most of her ordnance had been flung overboard to lighten her. Crippled as she was, with what sail she could set, she was beating back to open sea from that dangerous offing.

“ Where she went we can follow ! ” sang out a voice from the throng in our waist. “ A d—d easy prize ! And we ’ll give no quarter this time ! ” There was a grimness in the applause of his fellows that boded little good to some on either ship.

“ Lord help all poor souls this day ! ” ejaculated the minister in undertones ; then aloud and more hopefully, “She hath not the look of a don ; maybe she’s buccaneer.”

“ She is an English merchantman,” said Paradise. “ Look at her colors. A Company ship, probably, bound for Virginia, with a cargo of servants, gentlemen out at elbows, felons, children for apprentices, traders, spies, French vignerons, glasswork Italians, returning Councilors and heads of hundreds, with their wives and daughters, men servants and maid servants. I made the Virginia voyage once myself, captain,”

I did not answer. I too saw the two crosses, and I did not doubt that the arms upon the flag beneath were those of the Company. The vessel, which was of about two hundred tons, had mightily the look of the George, a ship with which we at Jamestown were all familiar. Sparrow spoke for me.

“An English ship ! ” he cried out of the simplicity of his heart. “ Then she’s safe enough for us! Perhaps we might speak her and show her that we are English, too ! Perhaps ” — He looked at me eagerly.

“ Perhaps you might be let to go off to her in one of the boats,” finished Paradise dryly. ” I think not, Master Sparrow.”

“ It’s other guess messengers that they’ll send,” muttered Diccon. “They ’re uncovering the guns, sir.”

Every man of those villains, save one, was of English birth ; every man knew that the disabled ship was an English merchantman filled with peaceful folk, but the knowledge changed their plans no whit. There was a great hubbub ; cries and oaths and brutal laughter, the noise of the gunners with their guns, the clang of cutlass and pike as they were dealt out, but not a voice raised against the murder that was to be done. Had they been buccaneers pure and simple, that English ship would have been spared, might even have been helped upon her way; but though, for their own convenience, they dubbed themselves Brethren of the Coast, they were as entirely pirates as any hellhounds of Algerines. I looked from the doomed ship, upon which there was no frantic haste and confusion, to the excited throng below me, and knew that I had as well cry for mercy to winter wolves.

The shore was no longer to leeward ; the helmsman behind me had not waited for orders, and we were bearing down upon the disabled bark. Ahead of us, upon our larboard bow, was a patch of lighter green, and beyond it a slight hurry and foam of the waters. Half a dozen voices cried warning to the helmsman. It was he of the woman’s mantle, whom I had run through the shoulder on the island off Cape Charles, and he had been Kirby’s pilot from Maracaibo to Fort Caroline. Now he answered with a burst of vaunting oaths: “We’re in deep water, and there ’s deep water beyond. I 'll carry ye safe past that reef were’t hell’s gate ! ”

The desperadoes who heard him swore applause, and thought no more of the reef that lay in wait. Long since they had gone through the gates of hell for the sake of the prize beyond. Knowing the appeal to be hopeless, I yet made it.

“ She is English, men!” I shouted. “ We will tight the Spaniards while they have a flag in the Indies, but our own people we will not touch ! ”

The clamor of shouts and oaths suddenly fell, and the wind in the rigging, the water at the keel, the surf on the shore, made themselves heard. In the silence, the terror of the fated ship became audible. Confused voices came to us, and the scream of a woman.

On the faces of a very few of the pirates there was a look of momentary doubt and wavering ; it passed, and the most had never worn it. They began to press forward toward the poop, cursing and threatening, working themselves up into a rage that would not care for my sword, the minister’s cutlass, or Diccon’s pike. One who called himself a wit cried out something about Kirby and his methods, and two or three laughed.

“ I find that the rôle of Kirby wearies me,” I said. “I am an English gentleman, and I will not fire upon an English ship.”

As if in answer there came from our forecastle a flame and thunder of guns. The gunners there, intent upon their business, and now within range of the merchantman, had fired the three forecastle cnlverins. The shot cut her rigging and brought down the flag. The pirates’ shout of triumph was echoed by a cry from her decks and the defiant roar of her few remaining guns.

I drew my sword. “ I am captain and Kirby no longer! ” I cried. " I am the servant of the Company upon whose ship you have fired ! ”

The minister and Dicconmoved nearer to me, and the King’s ward, still and white and braver than a man, stood beside me. From the pirates that we faced came one deep breath, like the first sigh of the wind before the blast strikes. Suddenly the Spaniard pushed himself to the front ; with his gaunt figure and sable dress he had the seeming of a raven come to croak over the dead. He rested his gloomy eyes upon my lord. The latter, very white, returned the look; then, with his head held high, crossed the deck with a measured step and took his place among us. He was followed a moment later by Paradise. “I never thought to die in my bed, captain,” said the latter nonchalantly. “ Sooner or later, what does it matter ? And you must know that before I was a pirate I was a gentleman.” Turning, he doffed his hat with a flourish to those he had quitted. “ Hell litter ! ” he cried. “ I have run with you long enough. Now I have a mind to die an honest man.”

At this defection a dead hush of amazement fell upon that crew. One and all they stared at the man in black and silver, moistening their lips, but saying no word. We were five armed and desperate men ; they were fourscore. We might send many to death before us, but at the last we ourselves must die, — we and those aboard the helpless ship.

In the moment’s respite I bowed my head and whispered to the King’s ward.

“ I had rather it were your sword,” she answered in a low voice, in which there was neither dread nor sorrow. “ You must not let it grieve you ; it will be added to your good deeds. And it is I that should ask your forgiveness, not you mine.”

Though there was scant time for such dalliance, I bent my knee and rested my forehead upon her hand. As I rose, the minister’s hand touched my shoulder and the minister’s voice spoke in my ear. “There is another way,” he said. “ There is God’s death, and not man’s. Look and see what I mean.”

I followed the pointing of his eyes, and saw how close we were to those white and tumbling waters, the danger signal, the rattle of the hidden snake. The eyes of the pirate at the helm, too, were upon them ; his brows were drawn downward, his lips pressed together, the whole man bent upon the ship’s safe passage. Five minutes, and she would be out of danger. . . . The low thunder of the surf, the cry of a wheeling sea bird, the gleaming lonely shore, the cloudless sky, the ocean, and the white sand far, far below, where one might sleep well, sleep well, with other valiant dead, long drowned, long changed. “ Of their bones are coral made.”

The storm broke with fury and outcries, and a blue radiance of drawn steel. A pistol ball sang past my ear.

“ Don’t shoot! ” roared the gravedigger to the man who had fired the shot. “ Don’t cut them down ! Take them and thrust them under hatches until we’ve time to give them a slow death ! And hands off the woman until we’ve time to draw lots! ”

He and the Spaniard led the rush. I turned my head and nodded to Sparrow, then faced them again. " Then may the Lord have mercy upon your souls! ” I said.

As I spoke, the minister sprang upon the helmsman, and, striking him to the deck with one blow of his huge fist, himself seized the wheel. Before the pirates could draw breath he had jammed the helm to port, and the reef lay right across our bows.

A dreadful cry went up from that black ship to a deaf heaven, — a cry that was echoed by a wild shout of triumph from the merchantman. The mass fronting us broke in terror and rage and confusion. Some ran frantically up and down with shrieks and curses : others sprang overboard. A few made a dash for the poop and for us who stood to meet them. They were led by the Spaniard and the gravedigger. The former I met and sent tumbling back into the waist; the latter whirled past me, and rushing upon Paradise thrust him through with a pike, then dashed on to the wheel, to be met and hewn down by Diccon.

The ship struck. I put my arm around my wife, and my hand before her eyes; and while I looked only at her, in that storm of terrible cries, of flapping canvas, rushing water, and crashing timbers, the Spaniard clambered like a catamount upon the poop, that was now high above the broken forepart of the ship, and fired his pistol at me point-blank.

XXV.

IN WHICH MY LORD HATH HIS DAY.

I and Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead ; then I lived again, and was walking with the forester’s daughter in the green chase at home. The oaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the little wild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces, starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that ever bloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them to her she was no longer the forester’s daughter, but a proud lady, heiress to lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take the primroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly, and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a waveless sea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied to the stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came and looked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fierce pain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loud and deep murmur of the forest above. I lay therefor ages on ages before I awoke to the fact that the darkness about me was the darkness of a ship’s hold, and the murmur of the forest the wash of the water alongside. I put out an arm and touched, not the side of a grave, but a ship’s timbers. I stretched forth the other arm, then dropped it with a groan. Some one bent over me and held water to my lips. I drank, and my senses came fully to me. “ Diccon ! ” I said.

“ It’s not Diccon,” replied the figure, setting down a pitcher. “ It is Jeremy Sparrow. Thank God, you are yourself again! ”

“ Where are we ? ” I asked, when I had lain and listened to the water a little longer.

“In the hold of the George,” he answered. “ The ship sank by the bows, and well-nigh all were drowned at once. But when they upon the George saw that there was a woman amongst us who clung to the poop deck, they sent their longboat to take us off.”

The light was too dim for me to read his face, so I touched his arm.

“ She was saved,” he said. “ She is safe now. There are gentlewomen aboard, and she is in their care.”

I put my unhurt arm across my eyes.

“ You are weak yet,” said the minister gently. “ The Spaniard’s ball, you know, went through your shoulder, and in some way your arm was badly torn from shoulder to wrist. You have been out of your head ever since we were brought here, three days ago. The chirurgeon came and dressed your wound, and it is healing well. Don’t try to speak, — I ’ll tell you all. Diccon has been pressed into service, as the ship is short of hands, having lost some by fever and some overboard. Four of the pirates were picked up, and hung at the yardarm next morning.”

He moved as he spoke, and something clanked in the stillness. " You are ironed ! ” I exclaimed.

“ Only my ankles. My lord would have had me bound hand and foot; but you were raving for water, and, taking you for a dying man, they were so humane as to leave my hands free to attend you.”

“ My lord would have had you bound,” I said slowly. “ Then it’s my lord’s day.”

“ High noon and blazing sunshine,” he answered, with a rueful laugh. “ It seems that half the folk on board had gaped at him at court, and his spiriting away from Jamestown was yet a nine days’ wonder when they left England. All thought him dead, together with the lady who had sold herself to the devil for a hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and the desperate villain and traitor who had bewitched her into continued contumacy, — surely perished in the storm that followed their flight from Jamestown. Lord ! when he put his foot over the side of the ship, how the women screeched and the men gaped! He’s cock of the walk now, my Lord Carnal, the King’s favorite! ”

“ And we are pirates.”

“ That’s the case in a nutshell,” he answered cheerfully.

“ Do they know how the ship came to strike upon that reef?” I asked.

“ Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I did n’t take the trouble, — they would n’t have believed me, — and I can take my oath my lord has n’t. He was only our helpless prisoner, you know ; and they would think madam mistaken or bewitched.”

“ It’s not a likely tale,” I said grimly, “ seeing that we had already opened fire upon them.”

“ I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the culverins ! ” he cried, and then laughed at his own savagery.

I lay still and tried to think. Who are they on board ? ” I asked at last.

“ I don’t know,” he replied. “ I was only on deck until my lord had had his say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentleman who appeared most in authority. Then the pirates were strung up, and we were bundled down here in quick order. But there seems to be more of quality than usual aboard.”

“ You do not know where we are?”

We lay at anchor for a day, — whilst they patched her up, I suppose, — and since then there has been rough weather. We are still off Florida, and that is all I know. Now go to sleep. You ’ll get your strength best so, and there’s nothing to be gotten by waking.”

He began to croon a many-versed psalm. I slept and waked, and slept again, and was waked by the light of a torch against my eyes. The torch was held by a much-betarred seaman, and by its light a gentleman of a very meagre aspect, with a weazen face and small black eyes, was busily examining my wounded shoulder and arm.

“ It passeth belief,” he said in a singsong voice, “ how often wounds, with naught in the world done for them outside of fair water and a clean rag, do turn to and heal out of sheer perversity. Now, if I had been allowed to treat this one properly with scalding oil and melted lead, and to have bled the patient as he should have been bled, it is ten to one that by this time there would have been a pirate the less in the world.” He rose to his feet with a highly injured countenance.

“ Then he’s doing well ? ” asked Sparrow.

“ So well that he could n’t do better,” replied the other. " The arm was a trifling matter, though no doubt exquisitely painful. The wound in the shoulder is miraculously healing, without either blood-letting or cauteries. You ’ll have to hang after all, my friend.” He looked at me with his little beady eyes. “ It must have been a grand life,” he said regretfully. “ I never expected to see a pirate chief in the flesh. When I was a boy, I used to dream of the black ships and the gold and the fighting. By the serpent of Esculapius, in my heart of hearts I would rather be such a world’s thief, uncaught, than Governor of Virginia!” He gathered up the tools of his trade, and motioned to his torchbearer to go before. " I ’ll have to report you rapidly recovering,” he said warningly, as he turned to follow the light.

“ Very well,” I made answer. “ To whom am I indebted for so much kindness ? ”

“ I am Dr. John Pott, newly appointed physician general to the colony of Virginia. “ It is little of my skill I could give you, but that little I gladly bestow upon a real pirate, What a life it must have been! And to have to part with it when you are yet young ! And the good red gold and the rich gems all at the bottom of the sea ’ ”

He sighed heavily and went his way. The hatches were closed after him, and the minister and I were left in darkness while the slow hours dragged themselves past us. Through the chinks of the hatches a very faint light streamed down, and made the darkness gray instead of black. The minister and I saw each other dimly, as spectres. Some one brought us mouldy biscuit that I wanted not, and water for which I thirsted. Sparrow put the small pitcher to his lips, kept it there a minute, then held it to mine. I drank, and with that generous draught tasted pure bliss. It was not until five minutes later that I raised myself upon my elbow and turned on him.

“ The pitcher felt full to my lips ! ” I exclaimed. “ Did you drink when you said you did ? ”

He put out his great hand and pushed me gently down. “ I have no wound, he said, “ and there was not enough for two.”

The light that trembled through the cracks above died away, and the darkness became gross. The air in the hold was stifling; our souls panted for the wind and the stars outside. At the worst, when the fetid blackness lay upon our chests like a nightmare, the hatch was suddenly lifted, a rush of pure air came to us, and with it the sound of men’s voices speaking on the deck above. Said one, " True the doctor pronounces him out of all danger, yet he is a wounded man.”

“ He is a desperate and dangerous man,” broke in another harshly. " I know not how you will answer to your Company for leaving him unironed so long.”

“ land the Company understand each other, my lord,” rejoined the first speaker, with some haughtiness. “I can keep my prisoner without advice. If I now order irons to be put upon him and his accomplice, it is because I see fit to do so, and not because of your suggestion, my lord. You wish to take this opportunity to have speech with him,—to that I can have no objection.”

The speaker moved away. As his footsteps died in the distance my lord laughed, and his merriment was echoed by three or four harsh voices. Some one struck flint against steel, and there was a sudden flare of torches and the steadier light of a lantern. A man with a brutal, weather-beaten face — the master of the ship, we guessed — came down the ladder, lantern in hand, turned when he had reached the foot, and held up the lantern to light my lord down. I lay and watched the King’s favorite as he descended. The torches held slantingly above cast a fiery light over his stately figure and the face which had raised him from the low estate of a doubtful birth and a most lean purse to a pinnacle too near the sun for men to gaze at with undazzled eyes. In his rich dress and the splendor of his beauty, with the red glow enveloping him, he lit the darkness like a baleful star.

The two torchbearers and a third man descended, closing the hatch after them. When all were down, my lord, the master at his heels, came and stood over me. I raised myself, though with difficulty, for the fever had left me weak as a babe, and met his gaze. His was a cruel look ; if I had expected, as assuredly I did not expect, mercy or generosity from this my dearest foe, his look would have struck such a hope dead. Presently he beckoned to the men behind him. " Put the manacles upon him first,” he said, with a jerk of his thumb toward Sparrow.

The man who had come down last, and who carried irons enough to fetter six pirates, started forward to do my lord’s bidding. The master glanced at Sparrow’s great frame, and pulled out a pistol. The minister laughed. You 'll not need it, friend. I know when the odds are too great.” He held out his arms, and the men fettered them wrist to wrist. When they had finished he said calmly : "'I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him. but he could not be found.’ ”

My lord turned from him and pointed to me. He kept his eyes upon my face while they shackled me hand and foot; then said abruptly, " You have cords there : bind his arms to his sides.” The men wound the cords around me many times. " Draw them tight.”

There came a wrathful clank of the minister’s chains. " The arm is torn and inflamed from shoulder to wrist, as I make no doubt you have been told ! ” he cried. " For very shame, man! ”

“ Draw them tighter,” said my lord between his teeth.

The men knotted the cords, and rose to their feet, to be dismissed by my lord with a curt " You may go.” They drew back to the foot of the ladder, while the master of the ship went and perched himself upon one of the rungs. “ The air is fresher here beneath the hatch,” he remarked.

As for me, though I lay at my enemy’s feet, I could yet set my teeth and look him in the eyes. The cup was bitter, but I could drink it with an unmoved face.

“ Art paid ? ” he demanded. “ Art paid for the tree in the red forest without the haunted wood Art paid, thou bridegroom ?

“ No,” I answered. “ Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in the twilight beneath the guest-house window.”

I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently he put it up.

“ She is come to her senses, he said. “Up in the state cabin are bright lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have been singing to the lute, to them — and to her. She is saved from the peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the King’s Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetters which she now shudders to think of ; that the King and one besides will condone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her eyes are stars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the verses of my song, she smiled and sighed and blushed. She is again the dutiful ward of the King, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh — she hath askc-d to be so called ” —

“ You lie,” I said. “ She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in the state cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh with her lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold.

As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strong that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. He looked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with hands clenched. “ Embrace her heart, if thou canst,” he said, in a voice so low that it came like a whisper from the realm he might have left. “ I shall press my face against her bosom.”

Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break ; then he turned and went up the ladder. The seamen and the master followed. The hatch was clapped to and fastened, and we were left to the darkness and the heavy air, and to a grim endurance of what could not be cured.

During those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the man who sat beside me. His hands were so fastened that he could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for him to give me ; but he could and did bestow a higher alms. — the tenderness of a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God. I lay in silence, and he spoke not often ; but when he did so, there was that in the tone of his voice — Another cycle of pain, and I awoke from a half swoon, in which there was water to drink and no anguish, to hear him praying beside me. He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw his breath hard and his great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharp sound of breaking iron, and a low “Thank Thee, Lord! ” Another moment, and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. “ I will have them off thee in a twinkling, Ralph,” he said, “thanks to Him who taught my hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel.” As he spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers.

I raised my head and laid it on his knee, and he put his great arm, with the broken chain dangling from it, around me, and, like a mother with a babe, crooned me to sleep with the twentythird psalm.

XXVI.

IX WHICH I AM BROUGHT TO TRIAL.

My lord came not again into the hold, and the untied cords and the broken chain were not replaced. Morning and evening we were brought a niggard allowance of bread and water ; but the man who carried it bore no light, and may not even have observed their absence. We saw no one in authority. Hour by hour my wounds healed and my strength returned. If it was a dark and noisome prison, if there were hunger and thirst and inaction to be endured, if we knew not how near to us might be a death of ignominy, yet the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the toad ; for in that time of pain and heaviness we became as David and Jonathan.

At last some one came beside the brute who brought us food. A quiet gentleman, with whitening hair and bright dark eyes, stood before us. He had ordered the two men with him to leave open the hatch, and he held in his hand a sponge soaked with vinegar. “ Which of you is — or rather was — Captain Ralph Percy ? ” he asked, in a grave but pleasant voice.

“ I am Captain Percy,” I answered.

He looked at me with attention. “ I have heard of you before,” he said. “ I read the letter you wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys, and thought it an excellently conceived and manly epistle. What magic transformed a gentleman and a soldier into a pirate ? ”

As he waited for me to speak. I gave him for answer, “Necessity.”

“ A sad metamorphosis,” he said. “ I had rather read of nymphs changed into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you, sir, before the officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if you have aught to say for yourself, you may say it. I need not tell you, who saw so clearly some time ago the danger in which you then stood, that your plight is now a thousandfold worse.”

“ I am perfectly aware of it,” I said. “ Am I to go in fetters ? ”

“ No,” he replied, with a smile. “ I have no instructions on the subject, but I will take it upon myself to free you from them, — even for the sake of that excellently writ letter.”

“ Is not this gentleman to go too ? ” I asked.

He shook his head. “ I have no orders to that effect.”

While the men who were with him removed the irons from my wrists and ankles he stood in silence, regarding me with a scrutiny so close that it would have been offensive had I been in a position to take offense. When they had finished I turned and held Jeremy’s hand in mine for an instant, then followed the newcomer to the ladder and out of the hold ; the two men coming after us, and resolving themselves above into a guard. As we traversed the main deck we came upon Diccon, busy with two or three others about the ports. He saw me, and, dropping the bar that he held, started forward, to be plucked back by an angry arm. The men who guarded me pushed in between us, and there was no word spoken by either. I walked on, the gentleman at my side, and presently came to an open port, and saw, with an intake of my breath, the sunshine, a dark blue heaven flecked with white, and a quiet ocean. My companion glanced at me keenly.

“ Doubtless it seems fair enough, after that Cimmerian darkness below,” he remarked. “ Would you like to rest here a moment ? ”

“Yes,” I said, and, leaning against the side of the port, looked out at the beauty of the light.

“ We are off Hatteras,” he informed me, “ but we have not met with the stormy seas that vex poor mariners hereabouts. Those sails you see on our quarter belong to our consort. We were separated by the hurricane that nigh sunk us, and finally drove us, helpless as we were, toward the Florida coast and across your path. For us that was a fortunate reef upon which you dashed. The gods must have made your helmsman blind, for he ran you into a destruction that gaped not for you. Why did every wretch that we hung next morning curse you before he died ? ”

“ If I told you, you would not believe me,” I replied.

I was dizzy with the bliss of the air and the light, and it seemed a small thing that he would not believe me. The wind sounded in my ears like a harp, and the sea beckoned. A white bird flashed down into the crystal hollow between two waves, hung there a second, then rose, a silver radiance against the blue. Suddenly I saw a river, dark and ridged beneath thunderclouds, a boat, and in it, her head pillowed upon her arm, a woman, who pretended that she slept. With a shock my senses steadied, and I became myself again. The sea was but the sea, the wind the wind; in the hold below me lay my friend ; somewhere in that ship was my wife; and awaiting me in the state cabin were men who perhaps had the will, as they had the right and the might, to hang me at the yardarm that same hour.

“ I have had my fill of rest,” I said. “ Whom am I to stand before ? ”

“ The newly appointed officers of the Company, bound in this ship for Virginia,” he answered. “ The ship carries Sir Francis Wyatt, the new Governor; Master Davison, the Secretary; young Clayborne, the surveyor general; the knight marshal, the physician general, and the Treasurer, with other gentlemen, and with fair ladies, their wives and sisters. I am George Sandys, the Treasurer.”

The blood rushed to my face, for it hurt me that the brother of Sir Edwyn Sandys should believe that the firing of those guns had been my act. His was the trained observation of the traveler and writer, and he probably read the color aright. “ I pity you, if I can no longer esteem you,” he said, after a pause. “ I know no sorrier sight than a brave man’s shield reversed.”

I bit my lip and kept back the angry word. The next minute saw us at the door of the state cabin. It opened, and my companion entered, and I after him, with my two guards at my back. Around a large table were gathered a number of gentlemen, some seated, some standing. There were but two among them whom I had seen before, — the physician who had dressed my wound and my Lord Carnal. The latter was seated in a great chair, beside a gentleman with a pleasant active face and light brown curling hair, — the new Governor, as I guessed. The Treasurer, nodding to the two men to fall back to the window, glided to a seat upon my lord’s other hand, and I went and stood before the Governor of Virginia.

For some moments there was silence in the cabin, every man being engaged in staring at me with all his eyes ; then the Governor spoke : “ It should be upon your knees, sir.”

“ I am neither petitioner nor penitent,” I said. “ I know no reason why I should kneel, your Honor.”

“ There ’s reason, God wot, why you should be both ! ” he exclaimed. “ Did you not, now some months agone, defy the writ of the King and Company, refusing to stand when the marshal called upon you to do so in the King’s name ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Did you not, when he would have stayed your lawless flight, lay violent hands upon a nobleman high in the King’s favor, and, overpowering him with numbers, carry him out of the King’s realm ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ Did you not seduce from her duty to the King, and force to fly with you, his Majesty’s ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh ? ”

“ No,” I said. “ There was with me only my wife, who chose to follow the fortunes of her husband. ’

He frowned, and my lord swore beneath his breath. “ Did you not, falling in with a pirate ship, cast in your lot with the scoundrels upon it, and yourself turn pirate ? ”

“ In some sort.”

“ And become their chief ? ”

“Since there was no other situation open, —yes.”

“ Taking with you as captives upon the pirate ship that lady and that nobleman ? ”

“ Yes.”

“ You proceeded to ravage the dominions of the King of Spain, with whom his Majesty is at peace ” —

“ Like Drake and Raleigh, — yes,” I said.

He smiled, then frowned. “Tempora mutantur,” he said dryly. “ And I have never heard that Drake or Raleigh attacked an English ship.”

“ Nor have I attacked one,” I said. He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. “ We saw the flame and heard the thunder of your guns, and our rigging was cut by the shot. Did you expect me to believe that last assertion ? ”

“No.”

“ Then you might have spared yourself — and us — that lie,” he said coldly.

The Treasurer moved restlessly in his seat, and began to whisper to his neighbor the Secretary. A young man, with the eyes of a hawk and an iron jaw, — Clayborne, the surveyor general, — who sat at the end of the table beside the window, turned and gazed out upon the clouds and the sea, as if, contempt having taken the place of curiosity, he had no further interest in the proceedings. As for me, I set my face like a flint, and looked past the man who might have saved me that last speech of the Governor’s as if he had never been.

There was a closed door in the cabin, opposite the one by which I had entered. Suddenly from behind it came the sound of a short struggle, followed by the quick turn of a key in the lock. The door was flung open, and two women entered the cabin. One, a fair young gentlewoman, with tears in her brown eyes, came forward hurriedly with outspread hands.

“I did what I could, Frank!” she cried. “ When she would not listen to reason, I e’en locked the door ; but she is strong, for all that she has been ill, and she forced the key out of my hand ! ” She looked at the red mark upon the white hand, and two tears fell from her long lashes upon her wild-rose cheeks.

With a smile the Governor put out an arm and drew her down upon a stool beside him, then rose and bowed low to the King’s ward. “ You are not yet well enough to leave your cabin, as our worthy physician general will assure you, lady,” he said courteously, but firmly. “ Permit me to lead you back to it.”

Still smiling he made as if to advance, when she stayed him with a gesture of her raised hand, at once so majestic and so pleading that it was as though a strain of music had passed through the stillness of the cabin.

“Sir Francis Wyatt, as you are a gentleman, let me speak,” she said. It was the voice of that first night at Weyanoke, all pathos, all sweetness, all entreating.

The Governor stopped short, the smile still upon his lips, his hand still outstretched, — stood thus for a moment, then sat down. Around the half circle of gentlemen went a little rustling sound, like wind in dead leaves. My lord half rose from his seat. “ She is bewitched,” he said, with dry lips. “ She will say what she has been told to say. Lest she speak to her shame, we should refuse to hear her.”

She had been standing in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped, her body bowed toward the Governor, but at my lord’s words she straightened like a bow unbent. “I may speak, your Honor?” she asked clearly.

The Governor, who had looked askance at the working face of the man beside him, slightly bent his head and leaned back in his great armchair. The King’s favorite started to his feet. The King’s ward turned her eyes upon him. “ Sit down, my lord,” she said. “Surely these gentlemen will think that you are afraid of what I, a poor erring woman, rebellious to the King, traitress to mine own honor, late the plaything of a pirate ship, may say or do. Truth, my lord, should be more courageous.” Her voice was gentle, even plaintive, but it had in it the quality that lurks in the eyes of the crouching panther.

My lord sat down, one hand hiding his working mouth, the other clenched on the arm of his chair as if it had been an arm of flesh.

XXVII.

IN WHICH I FIND AN ADVOCATE.

She came slowly nearer the ring of now very quiet and attentive faces until she stood beside me, but she neither looked at me nor spoke to me. She was thinner and there were heavy shadows beneath her eyes, but she was beautiful.

“ I stand before gentlemen to whom, perhaps, I am not utterly unknown,” she said. “ Some here, perchance, have been to court, and have seen me there. Master Sandys, once, before the Queen died, you came to Greenwich to kiss her Majesty’s hands ; and while you waited in her antechamber you saw a young maid of honor — scarce more than a child — curled in a window seat with a book. You sat beside her, and told her wonderful tales of sunny lands and gods and nymphs. I was that maid of honor. Master Clayborne, once, hawking near Windsor, I dropped my glove. There were a many out of their saddles before it touched the ground, but a gentleman, not of our party, who had drawn his horse to one side to let us pass, was quicker than them all. Did you not think yourself well paid, sir, when you kissed the hand to which you restored the glove? All here, I think, may have heard my name. If any hath heard aught that ever I did in all my life to tarnish it, I pray him to speak now and shame me before you all! ”

Clayborne started up. “ I remember that day at Windsor, lady ! ” he cried. “ The man of whom I afterward asked your name was a most libertine courtier, and he raised his hat when he spoke of you, calling you a lily which the mire of the court could not besmirch. I will believe all good, but no harm of you, lady! ”

He sat down, and Master Sandys said gravely : “ Men need not be courtiers to have known of a lady of great wealth and high birth, a ward of the King’s, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else, I think, ever heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what became a daughter of her line.”

A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning forward from his seat, his wife’s hand in his, gravely bent his head. “ All this is known, lady,” he said courteously.

She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King’s favorite, and the circle waited with her.

“ It is known,” said my lord.

She smiled proudly. “ For so much grace, thanks, my lord,” she said, then addressed herself again to the Governor : “ Your Honor, that is the past, the long past, the long, long past, though not a year has gone by. Then I was a girl, proud and careless; now, your Honor, I am a woman, and I stand here in the dignity of suffering and peril. I fled from England ” — She paused, drew herself up, and turned upon my lord a face and form so still, and yet so expressive of noble indignation, outraged womanhood, scorn, and withal a kind of angry pity, that small wonder if he shrank as from a blow. “ I left the only world I knew,” she said. “ I took a way low and narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way that I — alone and helpless and bewildered — could find, because that I, Jocelyn Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. Why did you follow me, my lord ? You knew that I loved you not. You knew my mind, and that I was weak and friendless, and you used your power. I must tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor compassionate, nor brave ” —

“ I loved you! ” he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across the table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was a fierce yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and outstretched arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the pageant, evil and magnificent, of his life.

“You loved me,” she said. “I had rather you had hated me, my lord. I came to Virginia, your Honor, and men thought me the thing I professed myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they wooed me as such. This one came and that one, and at last a fellow, when I said him nay and bade him begone, did dare to seize my hands and kiss my lips. While I struggled one came and flung that dastard into the brook, then asked me plainly to become his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in his voice. I was wearied and fordone and desperate. . . . So I met my husband, and so I married him. . . . That same day I told him a part of my secret, and when my Lord Carnal was come I told him all. ... I had not met with much true love or courtesy or compassion in my life. When I saw the danger in which he stood because of me, I told him he might free himself from that coil, might swear to what they pleased whistle me off, save himself, and I would say no word of blame. There was wine upon the table, and he filled a cup and brought it to me, and we drank of it together. We drank of the same cup then, your Honor, and we will drink of it still. We twain were wedded, and the world strove to part us. Which of you here, in such quarrel, would not withstand the world? Lady Wyatt, would not thy husband hold thee, while he lived, against the world ? Then speak for mine ! ”

“ Frank, Frank ! ” cried Lady Wyatt. “ They love each other ! ”

“If he withstood the King,” went on the King’s ward, “ it was for his honor and for mine. If he fled from Virginia, it was because I willed it so. Had he stayed, my Lord Carnal, and had you willed to follow me again, you must have made a yet longer journey to a most distant bourne. That wild night when we fled, why did you come upon us, my lord ? The moon burst forth from a black cloud, and you stood there upon the wharf above us, calling to the footsteps behind to hasten. We would have left you there in safety, and gone ourselves alone down that stream as black and strange as death. Why did you spring down the steps and grapple with the minister ? And he that might have thrust you beneath the flood and drowned you there did but fling you into the boat. We wished not your company, my lord; we would willingly have gone without you. I trust, my lord, you have made honest report of this matter, and have told these gentlemen that my husband gave you, a prisoner whom he wanted not, all fair and honorable treatment. That you have done this I dare take my oath, my lord ” —

She stood silent, her eyes upon his. The men around stirred, and a little flash like the glint of drawn steel went from one pair of eyes to another.

“ My lord, my lord ! ” said the King’s ward. “ Long ago you won my hatred ; an you would not win my contempt, speak truth this day !

In his eyes, which he had never taken from her face, there leaped to meet the proud appeal in her own a strange fire. That he loved her with a great and evil passion, I, who needs had watched him closely, had long known. Suddenly he burst into jarring laughter. “ Yea, he treated me fairly enough, damn him to everlasting hell ! But he’s a pirate, sweet bird; he’s a pirate, and must swing as such ”

“ A pirate ! ” she cried. “ But he was none! My lord, you know he was none ! Your Honor —

The Governor interrupted her: “He made himself captain of a pirate ship, lady. He took and sunk ships of Spain.”

In what sort did he become their chief? ” she cried. “In such sort, gentlemen, as the bravest of you, in like straits, would have been blithe to be, an you had had like measure of wit and daring. Your Honor, the wind before which our boat drave like a leaf, the waves that would engulf us, wrecked us upon a desert isle. There was no food or water or shelter. That night, while we slept, a pirate ship anchored off the beach, and in the morning the pirates came ashore to bury their captain. My husband met them alone, fought their wouldbe leaders one by one, and forced the election to fall upon himself. Well he knew that if he left not that isle their leader, he would leave it their captive: and not he alone ! God’s mercy, gentlemen, what other could he do ? I pray you to hold him absolved from a willing embrace of that life! Sunk ships of Spain ! Yea, forsooth; and how long hath it been since other English gentlemen sunk other ships of Spain ? The world hath changed indeed if to fight the Spaniard in the Indies, e’en though at home we be at peace with him, be conceived so black a crime! He fought their galleons fair and knightly, with his life in his hand ; he gave quarter, and while they called him chief those pirates tortured no prisoner and wronged no woman. Had he not been there, would the ships have been taken less surely ? Had he not been there, God wot, ships and ships’ boats alike would have sunk or burned, and no Spanish men and women had rowed away and blessed a generous foe. A pirate ! He, with me and with the minister and with my Lord Carnal, was prisoner to the pirates, and out of that danger he plucked safety for us all ! Who hath so misnamed a gallant gentleman ? Was it you, my lord ? ”

Eyes and voice were imperious, and in her cheeks burned an indignant crimson. My lord’s face was set and white ; he looked at her, but spoke no word.

“ The Spanish ships might pass, lady,” averred the Governor; “ but this is an English ship, with the Hag of England above her.”

“ Yea.” she said. “ What then ? ”

The circle rustled again. The Governor loosed his wife’s fingers and leaned forward. “ You plead well, lady! ” he exclaimed. “You might win, an Captain Percy had not seen fit to fire upon us.”

A dead silence followed his words. Outside the square window a cloud passed from the face of the sun, and a great burst of sunshine entered the cabin. She stood in the heart of it, and looked a goddess angered. My lord, with his haggard face and burning eyes, slowly rose from his seat, and they faced each other.

“ You told them not who fired those guns, who sunk that pirate ship ? ” she said. “ Because he was your enemy, you Held your tongue ? Knight and gentleman— my Lord Carnal — my Lord Coward ! ”

“ Honor is an empty word to me,” he answered. “ For you I would dive into the deepest hell, — if there be a deeper than that which burns me, day in. day out. . . . Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn ! ”

“ You love me so ?” she said. “Then do me pleasure. Because I ask it of you, tell these men the truth.” She came a step nearer, and held out her clasped hands to him. “ Tell them how it was, my lord, and I will strive to hate you no longer. The harm that you have done me I will pray for strength to forgive. All, my lord, let me not ask in vain ! Will you that I kneel to you ? ”

“ I fix my own price,” he said. “ I will do what you ask, an you will let me kiss your lips.”

I sprang forward with an oath. Some one behind caught both my wrists in an iron grasp and pulled me back. “ Be not a fool ! ” growled Clayborne in my ear. “ The cord ’s loosening fast: if you interfere, it may tighten with a jerk ! ” I freed my hands from his grasp. The Treasurer, sitting next him, leaned across the table and motioned to the two seamen beside the window. They left their station, and each seized me by an arm. “ Be guided, Captain Percy,” said Master Sandys in a low voice. “ We wish you well. Let her win you through.”

“ First tell the truth, my lord,” said the King’s ward ; “ then come and take the reward you ask.”

“Jocelyn!” I cried. “I command you ” —

She turned upon me a perfectly colorless face. “ All my life after I will be to you an obedient wife,” she said. “ This once I pray you to hold me excused. . . . Speak, my lord.”

There was the mirth of the lost in the laugh with which he turned to the Governor. “ That pretty little tale, sir, that I regaled you with, the day you obligingly picked me up, was pure imagination ; the wetting must have disordered my reason. A potion sweeter than the honey of Hybla, which I am about to drink, hath restored me beforehand. Gentlemen all, there was mutiny aboard that ship which so providentially sank before your very eyes. For why ? The crew, who were pirates, and the captain, who was yonder gentleman, did not agree. The one wished to attack you, board you, rummage you, and slay, after recondite fashions, every mother’s son of you ; the other demurred, — so strongly, in fact, that his life ceased to be worth a pin’s purchase. Indeed, I believe he resigned his captaincy then and there, and, declining to lift a finger against an English ship, defied them to do their worst. He had no hand in the firing of those culverins ; the mutineers touched them off without so much as a ‘ by your leave.’ His attention was otherwise occupied. Good sirs, there was not the slightest reason in nature why the ship should have struck upon that sunken reef, to the damnation of her people and the salvation of yours. Why do you suppose she diverged from the path of safety to split into slivers against that fortunate ledge ? ”

The men around drew in their breath, and one or two sprang to their feet. My lord laughed again. “ Have you seen the pious man who left Jamestown and went aboard the pirate ship as this gentleman’s lieutenant ? He hath the strength of a bull. Captain Percy here had but to nod his head, and hey, presto ! the helmsman was bowled over, and the minister had the helm. The ship struck : the pirates went to hell, and you, gentlemen, were preserved to order all things well in Virginia. May she long be grateful! The man who dared that death rather than attack the ship he guessed to be the Company’s is my mortal foe, whom I will yet sweep from my path, but he is not a pirate. Ay, take it down, an it please you, Master Secretary ! I retreat from a most choice position, to be sure, but what care I ? I see a vantage ground more to my liking. I have lost a throw, perhaps, but I will recoup ten such losses with one such — kiss. By your leave, lady.”

He went up to her where she stood, with hanging arms, her head a little bent, white and cold and yielding as a lady done in snow ; gazed at her a moment, with his passion written in his fierce eyes and haggard, handsome face ; then crushed her to him.

If I could have struck him dead, I would have done so. When her word had been kept, she released herself with a quiet and resolute dignity. As for him, he sank back into the great chair beside the Governor’s, leaned an elbow on the table, and hid his eyes with one shaking hand.

The Governor rose to his feet, and motioned away the two seamen who held me fast. “ We’ll have no hanging this morning, gentlemen,” he announced. “ Captain Percy, I beg to apologize to you for words that were never meant for a brave and gallant gentleman, but for a pirate who I find does not exist. I pray you to forget them, quite.”

I returned his bow, but my eyes traveled past him.

“ I will allow you no words with my Lord Carnal,” he said. “ With your wife, — that is different.” He moved aside with a smile.

She was standing, pale, with downcast eyes, where my lord had left her. “ Jocelyn,” I said. She turned toward me, crimsoned deeply, uttered a low cry. half laughter, half a sob, then covered her face with her hands. I took them away and spoke her name again, and this time she hid her face upon my breast.

A moment thus : then — for all eyes were upon her — I lifted her head, kissed her, and gave her to Lady Wyatt, whom I found at my side. “ I commend my wife to your ladyship’s care.” I said. “ As you are woman, deal sisterly by her! ”

“ You may trust me, sir,” she made answer, the tears upon her cheeks. “ I did not know, — I did not understand. . . . Dear heart, come away, — come away with Margaret Wyatt.”

Clayborne opened the door of the cabin, and stood aside with a low bow. The men who had sat to judge me rose ; only the King’s favorite kept his seat. With Lady Wyatt’s arm about her, the King’s ward passed between the lines of standing gentlemen to the door, there hesitated, turned, and, facing them with I know not what of pride and shame, wistfulness of entreaty and noble challenge to belief in the face and form that were of all women’s most beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the floor. She was gone, and the sunlight with her.

When I turned upon that shameless lord where he sat in his evil beauty, with his honor dead before him, men came hastily in between. I put them aside with a laugh. I had but wanted to look at him. I had no sword, — already he lay beneath my challenge, — and words are weak things.

At length he rose, as arrogant as ever in his port, as evilly superb in his towering pride, and as amazingly indifferent to the thoughts of men who lied not. “ This case hath wearied me,” he said. “ I will retire for a while to rest, and in dreams to live over a past sweetness. Give you good-day, gentles ! Sir Francis Wyatt, you will remember that this gentleman did resist arrest, and that he lieth under the King’s displeasure ! ” So saying he clapped his hat upon his head and walked out of the cabin. The Company’s officers drew a long breath, as if a fresher air had come in with his departure.

“ I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under restraint, both here and when we shall reach .Jamestown,” said the Governor. “All that the Company, through me, can do, consistent with its duty to his Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be done ” —

“ Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis I ” exclaimed the Treasurer, with a wry face.

The Governor laughed. “ Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be found. Your wife’s a brave lady, Captain Percy ” —

“ And a passing fair one,”said Clayborne under his breath.

“ I left a friend below in the hold, your Honor,” I said. He came with me from Jamestown because he was my friend. He had naught to do with the planning of that escape, and it was not he that the marshal called upon to stay. The King hath never heard of him. And he’s no more a pirate than I or you. your Honor. He is a minister, — a sober, meek, and godly man ’ —

From behind the Secretary rose the singsong of my acquaintance of the hold, Dr. John Pott. “ He is Jeremy, your Honor, Jeremy who made the town merry at Blackfriars. Your Honor remembers him ? He had a sickness, and forsook the life and went into the country. He was known to the Dean of St. Paul’s. All the town laughed when it heard that he had taken orders.”

“ Jeremy ! ” cried out the Treasurer. “ Nick Bottom ! Christopher Sly ! Sir Toby Belch ! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin ! ”

The Governor laughed. “ He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy where he ’ll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy ! Ben .Jonson loved him ; they drank together at the Mermaid.”

A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited for him without, — Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold, — and returned to my side to say, in a low voice, hut with emphasis : “ Captain Percy has been a long time without news from home, — from England. What would he most desire to hear ? ”

“ Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham,” I replied.

He smiled. " His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful. The Queen’s dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it pleaseth him. By this the dead is quite forgot, — and resurrections are unseemly things. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy. I incline to think your affairs in better posture than when you left Virginia.”

“ I think so too, sir,” I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy, and wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God, with my face in my hands and summer in my heart.

Mary Johnston.

(To be continued.)