Introductory material (continued 6)

“What colour are you trying to get?” Margaret asked.

“One of them bright greens the Indians get.”

“You never will, cap,” said the helmsman. “Them Indians use moss; a kind of tree moss. I’ve seed ’em do it.”

“Well, if this don’t turn out a green, I’ll wash in it.”

“What’s the matter, Stukeley? Is anything the matter?” Stukeley had burst out laughing without apparent reason.

“Nothing’s the matter,” Stukeley answered. “I was thinking of my interview with the Governor.”

It was high noon when they arrived at Tolu Road. They hoisted a white flag, and stood in boldly till they were a mile to the south-west of the town. Here the sloop was hove-to, while the men prepared for their journey. The six oarsmen of the whale-boat stuffed loaded pistols within their shirts, and laid their muskets in oilskin cases below the thwarts. Margaret and Stukeley sat in the sternsheets, both wearing their swords. Tucket, who steered with an oar, was armed with pistols. A flag of truce was hoisted in the boat. Tucket told his mate to keep a sharp look out in the sloop, and to run in to pick them up “if anything happened.” Then the little lugsail was hoisted, and the boat began to move towards the town.

Margaret was disappointed with himself as the boat crept on towards the town. He had so often lived over this adventure in his fancy that the reality seemed tame to him. He was disappointed with the look of the city; it seemed but a mean place; a church, a fort, a few stone houses, a gleam of red pantiles against the forest, and a mud wall ringing it in. The bell tinkled in the belfry, tinkled continually, jerked by a negro who had had no orders to stop. It seemed to Margaret that a bell was out of place in that half-savage town. It was not a Christian town. Those were not Christians on the beach. They were Indians, negroes, convicts, runaways, half-breeds. They needed some bloodier temple than that old church in the square. They needed a space in the forest, lit by fires in the night. They needed the reek of sacrifice and the clang of gongs. And this was the place he had sailed to. Here his life’s venture was to be put to the touch. Here, in this place, this little old squalid city between the sea and the jungle. All the long anxieties were to be resolved there. There on the sand, beyond the spume of the breakers, the doubts were to end. He could not bring himself to care. His thoughts ran on the pale face of Olivia, on her words to him, on the possibility of a new life for her.

“Stukeley,” he said, speaking very quietly in his hearer’s ear, “look here. I want to say this. After this business, if you care, would you like to settle in Jamaica or somewhere? Or in France? You and Olivia? You could draw on me, you know. We could start something together.”

Stukeley seemed to measure the distance between the boat and the shore. He looked at Margaret with a gleam of humour in his eyes.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll think it over.”

“Very well,” Margaret said. “There comes the captain. What strange little horses. Are they imported, Captain Tucket?”

“No, sir. This country horses. Imported horses die of the heat, or the change of grass. Beyond Carta-yaina there’s very good horse country.”

The rabble on the beach drew back now towards the town, handling their arms. Half a dozen horsemen rode as though to meet the boat, almost to the lip of the sea. One of them, a negro, who held his stirrups with his toes, carried a pennon.

“The lad on the pinto’s the capataz,” said Tucket in his beard. “Stand up with the flag in the bows there. Down sail. Let your oars swing fore and aft in their grummets, ready to back her off. Wave your flag of truce, Ed. Don’t shake your pistols out though. Stand by, Captain Stukeley.”

“Are they friendly, do you think?”

“Sure.”

“Oh, Stukeley,” Margaret said. “This little case contains a ring for the Governor. Say that you trust that it may have the felicity to fit.”

“I will,” said Stukeley. “They carry some plate on their headstalls, don’t they?” He put the case in his pocket.

The bow man waved his flag of truce, then lowered it, and knelt, waiting for the shock of the grounding. Very gently, in the wash of little waves and slipping shingle, the boat’s nose took the sand. Captain Margaret stepped across the thwarts, holding a white cloth in his hand. Watching his time, he leaped nimbly beyond the water, and uncovered. Stukeley followed him, jumping clumsily. It seemed to Margaret, as he turned sharply, thinking that the man had fallen, that a book in Stukeley’s inner pocket was surely Cammock’s map-book. It half jolted out as the coat flew open. It was a glimpse, nothing more. Perhaps he was wrong. The two men stood uncovered before the horsemen, who watched them with the grave eyes of animals. An elderly man among the riders rode forward for a pace or two, uncovering with a gesture full of dignity. He had the bearing of a soldier. It seemed to Margaret that the gesture explained the might of Spain. Stukeley advanced towards the horseman with his hat beating against his knee. He spoke quietly in Spanish. After a few words, the elderly man dismounted, and the two walked to and fro together, talking with a grave politeness, which seemed to extend to the listeners, whether they understood or not.

Presently Stukeley bowed very low to the captain, and walked jauntily to Margaret. “It’s all right,” he said. “I think they’ll do your business for you. They’re very friendly. They’re going to take me to see the Governor.”

“Am I to come?”

“Only one man, he says. I may have to stay to dinner.”

“You think you run no risk? I’m willing to come if you think you run any. I ought to share it.”

“They’re all right. There’s no risk. But he offers a hostage.”

“One of those cut-throats?”

“It ain’t very polite to accept. Eh? I’ll go alone. He knows you’ve a commission. I’ve shown him that duplicate. It’s all right. I’ll go off now. So long, my Maggy. Con Dios, caballero. Try and keep warm on the sands here.”

He saluted the boat’s crew, gave Margaret a queer glance, and rejoined the capataz, who bowed to them gravely. The negro with the pennon led the dismounted horse. The capataz walked with Stukeley, followed by the other troopers. They went slowly towards the gate of the city. The troopers made their horses curvet and passage, clashing their silver gear. Margaret stood at the lip of the water, watching them, till they had passed within the gate, followed by the rabble.

The boatmen held that it would not be politic to return to the sloop. “It might seem as we didn’t trust them,” Tucket said. So they rigged the boat-rug as an awning over the sternsheets, and whiled away the time, suffering much from the heat. It was a stifling day. The time passed slowly, with many calls for the water-breaker. They made their dinner of plantains, then smoked, exchanging stories, longing for Stukeley’s return. Margaret found the time less irksome than he had expected; for Tucket began to talk, out of a full heart, about the subjects dear to him. He had never had such a listener before. Margaret drew him out, with his usual sympathy, till the man’s inmost life was bare before him. Such woods would take a polish, and such other woods would take a stain; and such and such resins, why should they not stain a wood to all colours of the rainbow, if treated with care in the right way? It would be fine, Captain Tucket said, to be a chemist, and have nothing else to do but to watch your dye vats all day long. Vats of indigo, of anatta, of cochineal, all the lovely colours, and—— Say. If one could get a green that showed the light in it, like the water breaking on a reef. The hours passed; it was nearly three o’clock; but still no Stukeley.

“The Guv’nor dines late,” said one of the men.

“I guess it’s difficult to get away from the donnas,” said another. The others laughed; for Stukeley’s faults were well known.

“I dunno, sir,” said Tucket. “It seems a bit odd.”

“He seemed very sanguine about it,” Margaret answered.

“I ain’t much charmed with your friend myself,” said Tucket. “I don’t trust that Master Stukeley.”

“You don’t think he’s deserted? Is that your meaning?”

“Well, I wouldn’t a trusted him to be my interpreter,” Tucket answered, with the growl of one whose superior wisdom, now proved, is proved too late. “We could a give you Thomas Gandy. He’d have done as good. He knows Spanish just like a book, Tom do. And you could a trusted Tom with your life. Now you ain’t on too good terms with the Mr. Stukeley feller.”

“Shall I go into the town, then? To see if anything’s wrong?”

“Why, no, sir. That’s putting your joint in the fire to hot your soup. Stay here, sir.”

“Well, we’ll wait a little longer. What d’you say to bathing?”

“It’s not really safe, sir. There’s cat-fish on this coast. Besides, we better not get all over the place like shifting backstays. Them Dagoes might come some of their monkey-tricks.”

“The town is quiet enough.”

“Siesta time,” said one of the men. “They likes a doss in the afternoon.”

“I dunno what to think,” Tucket said. “But ’t’ain’t too wholesome, to my mind.”

“He said he might be kept for dinner.”

“He could a sent word. Or they’d a sent dinner here. I’ve knowed Dagoes do that. You got good eyes, Ed. What d’you make of the woods there, back of the sand?” He turned to Margaret. “He’d been with the Indians three or four years, Ed done. He sees things in brush like that, just like an animal.”

All hands stared into the wall of green, which rose up eighty yards away, beyond the line of the sand. The trees towered up, notching the sky with their outlines. The sun blazed down upon them, till they flashed, as though their leaves were green steel. They made a wall of forest, linked, tangled, criss-crossed, hiding an inner darkness. A parrot was tearing at a blossom high up on a creeper, flinging out the petals with little wicked twists of his head. He showed up clearly against the sky in that strong light.

“Nothing wrong there,” said Ed. “Look at the parrot.”

They looked at the parrot, and laughed to hear him abuse the flower.

“They’re the kind you can learn to speak, sir,” said a seaman. “I’ve known some of them birds swear, you would think it was real. Some of them can do it in Spanish.”

“The Spaniards don’t swear,” said another man.

“They’ve got caramba,” said the first. “Caramba. That’s the same as God damn is in English.”

“Funny way of saying it,” said the other.

“Some one’s in that brush,” said the man called Ed. “See the paharo?”

Something had startled the parrot. He leaped up with a scream from his liane, made a half-circle in the air, and flew away, wavering, along the coast. One or two other birds rose as quietly as moths, and flitted into the night of the wood. A deer stepped out on to the beach daintily, picking her steps. She sniffed towards the town, listened, seemed to hear something, caught sight of the boat, and fled. Then came a sudden chattering of monkeys, a burst of abusive crying, lasting only for a moment.

“D’ye see anything, Ed?”

“There’s plenty of ’em, cap, I guess.”

“Can you hear ’em? Lay your head on the ground.”

“The wash of the sea’s too loud. I can’t hear nothing.”

“They’re coming from the town, are they?”

“Sure.”

“Is there a road at the back of that wood?” Margaret asked.

“No, sir. I guess not. The Dagoes use the beach as a road.”

“Yes,” said a seaman. “They go to Covenas. A town along there. They always go by the beach.”

“Do you know this place, then?”

“I worked on them walls a year, once. I’d ought to know it.”

“D’ye make out anything more, Ed?”

“They’re not far off yet, I guess, cap.”

“Do you think it’s an ambush, Captain Tucket?” Margaret asked.

“No saying, mister. May as well make ready,” he answered. “We’ll lay out our boat’s kedge to seaward, so as we can warp off in a hurry.”

They rowed the boat out into the bay, dropped their kedge, and backed her stern-first to the beach. They struck the awning, hoisted sail, and laid their oars in the thole-pins. They waited for another half-hour, watching the mysterious forest.

“I guess we’ll go off to the sloop, cap,” said a seaman. “He’s give us the flying foretopsail.”

“Them paharos is back among them berries,” said Ed. “I guess it was boys come for plantains.”

“I dunno,” said Tucket. “It’s odd our man ain’t come.”

“I must go up to the town to find out about him,” Margaret said. “I can’t wait like this.”

“I wouldn’t, sir,” said Tucket. “What do you say, boys?”

“No,” said the men. “No. It wouldn’t do.”

“But I got him to go. I can’t let him get into trouble through me. I’m responsible. I must see about him. I can’t go back without him.”

“He’s give you the foresheet, sir,” said one of the men.

“Yes. The son of a gun. I guess he has,” said another.

“There’s some one in that brush,” said Ed. “Them paharos has topped their booms for keeps.”

“Well,” said Margaret, taking out his white cloth, noting the wild, frightened flight of a half-dozen parrots, “I’m going to the some one, to find out.” He leaped from the sternsheets into the shallow water, and began to wade ashore, holding his cloth.

“Don’t you try it. You come back, sir,” called Tucket.

Margaret heard some one (he thought it was Ed’s voice) saying, “He’s brave all right,” and then, behind him, came the click of gunlocks. He glanced back, and saw that two of the men in the sternsheets had taken out their guns, while a third man laid other loaded guns ready to their hands. Ed called to him as he turned.

“You come back, sir.” Then, seeing that his words were of no avail, he leaped into the water and caught him by the arm. “Back to the boat, sir,” he said. “It’s not you only. It might be us.”

“I must find out about my friend,” said Margaret. “I can’t leave him as he is.”

“Bring him back, Ed. Make him come back,” called the boatmen.

“Now you go back,” Ed repeated, grinning, “or I’ll have to put you.” He looked up suddenly at the forest. “My Santa Marta!” he cried. “Into the boat. Here they are.” He thrust Margaret backwards towards his fellows, and instantly bent down to shove the boat clear. Both were up to their knees in water at the boat’s side. Some one, it was the man who had worked in Tolu, leaned out and grabbed at Margaret’s collar.

“Look out, sons!” cried Tucket.

At the instant a swarm of men burst from the edge of the forest. One or two of them who were mounted charged in at a gallop. The others ran down, crying, firing their guns as they ran. The water about the boat was splashed violently, as though some one flung pebbles edgewise from a height. Margaret drew his sword and turned. He saw a horse come down within twenty yards of him. Some one shouted “Crabs” derisively. Half a dozen fierce faces seemed staring on him, rushing on him, their mouths open, their eyes wide. There was a crack of guns. Men were falling. Then the wildness passed; he was calm again. A Spaniard, the rider of the fallen horse, was in the water, thrusting at him with a lance, calling him cuckold and bastard in the only English words he knew. Margaret knocked the lance aside with difficulty, for the man was strong and wild. His thoughts at the moment, for all the danger, was “I can’t be both.” He wondered in that flash of time whether a man could be both. All the beach seemed hidden from him with smoke and fire and the hurrying of splashing bodies. Where was Ed gone? It was all smoke and racket. He was being hit. Something struck his left arm. Striking at random at a voice in the smoke, his sword struck something. He dragged his sword back, and slipped with the effort. He was up to his waist in water for an instant, below the smoke. He saw men’s legs. He saw water splashing. Then there was smoke everywhere. Smoke of a hundred guns. A racket like the chambers shot off at the end of Hamlet; exactly like. A wave went into his face. Some one fell across him and knocked him down again. It was Ed.

“Hold up, you fool,” Ed cried. The voice was the high, querulous voice of the hurt man.

“You’re hit, Ed,” he said, catching him about the body. His arm stung along its length with the effort. “Where are you hit, Ed?”

“Abajo. Vete al carajo, hijo de la gran puta. Cabron! Mierda!” The words came out of the smoke like shots. The roar of the battle seemed to be all about him. He backed, staggering, to get out of the smoke. A half-tamed horse’s teeth ripped the sleeve from his hurt arm, knocking them both down again. Some one jabbed him with a lance in the shoulder. He struck the horse as he rose half choked, still clutching Ed. The horse leaped with a scream. The smoke lifted. It was all bright for a moment. A mad horse; a trooper swearing; Ed’s body like a sack with blood on it; a smoke full of fiery tongues. There was the boat though. Then the smoke cloaked it. Bullets splashed water in his face. The butt of a flung lance banged him on the side of the head. The horse reared above him, screaming, floundering in foam, then falling heavily. He was almost out of his depth now, half swimming, half dead, lugging a nether millstone. Blood was in his eyes, his sword dangled from his wrist, his free hand tried to swim. He clutched at the boat, missed, went under, gulping salt. He clutched again as the white side slid away. His fingers caught upon the gunwale, near the stroke’s thwart. He made the boat sway to one side a little. “Trim her,” said Tucket, as he hauled, face forward, on the warp. He did not look round; merely trimmed her mechanically, flinging the warp’s fakes aft. “Away-hay-hay-i-oh,” he sang. “Lively, Jude,” said another. “If you fire like you load, your bullets has moss on them.” Two of them were firing sharply, lying behind the backboard. “Cut,” cried Tucket. There was a shock of chopping on the gunwale. A hand sculled way upon her with the steering-oar as the sail filled. The midship oars were manned.

“Give me a hand here, please,” said Margaret weakly. “Catch Ed.”

“Lord. I thought you were in,” said Tucket. “Up with him. Ed’s gone. Don’t capsize the ship, you. I’d forgot you two.”

Margaret managed to scramble in, helped by the boatmen. Then he collapsed in the bottom of the boat over Ed. He had had a moving time. He came-to quickly, with the taste of rum in his mouth and a feeling of intense cold. His teeth chattered; he was weak and sick. “Land and bring off Stukeley,” he said. “I can’t leave Stukeley.”

“We’ll be in the sloop in a minute,” said one of the men. “We’ll shift him there. He got a prod in the shoulder.”

“How is it, Ed?” said another voice. “You’re all right.”

“What’s wrong with Ed?” said one of the rowers.

“Got a bat with a stone, I guess. I can’t see no shot hole. Hold up, Ed. You ain’t dead yet.”

“I’m all right,” said Ed weakly. “That Margaret fellow fell all across me and knocked me down.”

“He pulled you quit of the mix,” said Tucket. “Don’t you forget it.”

“He did, hell,” said Ed.

Margaret rose up in the boat. “I can’t leave Stukeley,” he said. “Pull in, Captain Tucket, and bring him off.”

“You lie down, sir, and stay quiet,” said Captain Tucket. “We’ll be there directly.”

One or two of the men tittered. Margaret tried to raise himself to look at the land. He heard the roar of cannon from somewhere astern. “That’s a heavy gun,” he said. “Who’s firing a heavy gun?” Then he felt suddenly very tired, the boat and the guns became blurred to him, he felt that there were ships sailing into action, firing their guns in succession, shaking with the shock. An array of ships was sailing. There were guns, guns. Guns that would never cease firing. There was water roaring. No. Not water. Horses. Horses and ships. Roaring, roaring. They were calling some one “Puta.” When he came-to, he was lying below in the sloop, with a cold mess on his arm and a fiery pain along his shoulder.

“Is Mr. Stukeley on board?” he asked.

“No, sir,” said Tucket, drying his hands. “Mr. Stukeley’s ashore. It’s my belief our Mr. Stukeley put that ambush on us. Mr. Stukeley’ll stay ashore.”

“I must bring him off. Land me, captain. There’s his wife.”

“You just have a lap of this lemon-drink,” said Tucket. “We had about as near a call as may be. Ed got a bat on the head. You been pretty near killed. There’s a pound’s worth of paint knocked off the boat. Jude’s got a slug in his pants. The sail’s like a nutmeg-grater. If we’d not laid that warp out, the land-crabs would be eating us at this present. There’s a couple of hundred soldiers on the beach; besides the guns.”

“They came at us in a rush,” said Margaret. The words seemed not to come from him. His meaning had been to ask Tucket what had happened.

“That’s why they fired so wild,” said Tucket. “They rushed. They saw you and Ed, and thought they’d take you.”

“But Stukeley. We must get Stukeley. They may have killed him.”

“He’s all right. You settle off.”

After some hours of quiet, Margaret rose up, feeling very weak. The cabin was hot and foul, so he dressed, and went on deck for the freshness. The boat’s crew were telling the sloop hands exactly what had happened. Margaret knew from the way in which they spoke to him, from the plain words of “Good evening, sir,” and “I hope you’re better, sir,” that he was, for some reason, the hero of the moment. His shoulder pained him, so he sat down, with his back against the taffrail. A sailor placed a coat behind him, so that his rest might be easy. Tucket was steering. The lights of the Broken Heart were visible a couple of miles ahead, against the mass of Ceycen, which hid the stars to the north-eastward.

“Are you dead yet?” said Tucket.

“I’m well, thanks. I’m thinking of Mr. Stukeley.”

There came a sort of growl of “Stukeley” from the seamen about him. “Stukeley,” they said. “He’s a mother’s joy, the Portuguese drummer’s get.”

“Stukeley,” said Tucket. “He put that little quiff on us on the beach. I ain’t goin’ to drown no one, shedding tears for Stukeley.”

“Nor I,” said the man called Jude. “I’d only bought them pants a week.”

“Pants,” said Tucket. “You’d not a wanted many pants if Ed and Mr. Margaret hadn’t been in the water. Them two in the water made ’em rush. If they’d come slow, you’d a been a hit in the neck with that chewed slug, my son. Don’t you forget it.”

“Did anybody see Mr. Stukeley?” Margaret asked. “Was he in the rush? Could anybody see in the smoke?”

“No, sir. No one saw him.”

“Then why do you think he, he prompted the raid? What makes you think that?”

“They’ve always received flags of truce before,” he answered. “And you’d a commission besides. You aren’t like one of us. Why didn’t they shoot when we put the son-of-a-gun ashore? I’ll tell you. They thought we were ordinary flag of truce. That curly-headed gentleman’s son put ’em up to it, after dinner. Why? I know. That’s why.”

“I can’t see your point,” Margaret answered. His thought was that he would have a bad hour with Olivia. The thought had no bitterness; it occurred to him simply, as a necessary part of the pain of moving from the sloop. His shoulder gave him pain; the thought of climbing his ship’s side gave him pain. He had a blurred feeling that he would have to stand painfully, explaining to a nervous woman. He would never be able to do it, he thought. He was too stupid with pain. He was feverish. He was tired. He would have to stand there, trying to be tender and sympathetic, yet failing, stupid, blunt. They would have to rescue Stukeley. Rescue him. “Yes,” he said to himself, “I’ll rescue him for you. I’ll bring him back to you from Tolu, Olivia.” He mumbled and muttered as the fever grew upon him. “I wish all this had never happened,” he said aloud.

“You’re goin’ off into the shakes,” said one of the men, putting a blanket round him. “You want to take bark in a sup of rum, sir, and then turn in.”

“Every one with a green wound gets the shakes in this country,” said another man. “Now up in Virginia you can go from September to May and never have ’em once.”

“There’s a light in the cabin,” said Margaret, with his teeth chattering.

“That’s your ship all right, sir. Ahoy, you! Broken Heart ahoy-ah!”

“Ahoy, you!” came out of the night. “Is that the Happy Return?”

“We’re the jolly come-backs.”

Bells were beaten from somewhere in the darkness. To Margaret’s throbbing brain the strokes seemed to be violent lights. He thought in his fever that all physical objects were interchangeable, that they all, however indifferent, expressed with equal value (though perhaps to different senses) the infinite intellect that was always One. He thought that the boat was a thought of a thought; and that a ship and a house were much alike, very worthless the pair of them. One should get away from these thoughts of thoughts to thought itself. The Broken Heart loomed large above him.

“Send down a chair, Lion,” some one said. “Mr. Margaret’s had a nasty clip.”

“Easy now with the chair,” said Cammock’s voice. “Is Mr. Stukeley there?”

“He’s swallowed the killick,” said Tucket, with a hard laugh.

“He’s got my map-book, then,” said Cammock. “He’s gone with my map-book.”

“Yes,” said Margaret, getting out of the chair. “Your map-book. It’s in his pocket. I think I saw it there.”

“Lean on me, sir,” said Cammock. “The lady’s expecting you. She’s sitting up in the cabin.”

“Let me go. You turn in. I’ll break it to her,” Perrin said.

“No. I must go,” Margaret answered. “How has it been here, captain?” Feverish as he was, he felt that he had been away for many days. The ship was strange to him.

“I’ve been throwing the ship overboard, looking for my maps,” Cammock answered. “How is your hurt, sir? When you talk to the lady, you had better have a drop of something. Just stop at my cabin for a moment.”

He fetched wine and bark from his cupboard. Then the three men entered the cabin, where Olivia stood expectantly, her cheeks flushed, waiting for her husband’s return. She had made the most of her beauty for him. She had decked herself out with an art that brought tears to Perrin’s eyes. She had done her best, poor beauty, to keep the heart which, as she thought, she had won back again. Looking at her, as she stood there, Perrin learned that Stukeley had commended a slip of black velvet round her throat, that he had praised her arms, that he liked the hair heaped in such a fashion, with a ribbon of such a tone of green. He guessed all this at a glance, telling himself that he must never again speak of these things to her. And the poor girl had rouged her cheeks, to hide the paleness. She had pencilled her eyebrows. She had drunken some drug to make her eyes bright. In the soft light of the lamp she looked very beautiful. She stood there, half-way to the door, waiting for the lover of her love-days to take her to his heart again.

“Where is Tom?” she said. “You’re hurt, Charles. Where’s Tom? He isn’t killed? He isn’t killed?”

“He went into the city,” said Margaret dully.

“He went into the city.” His teeth chattered and clicked; he seemed to have been repeating his phrase for hours. “Into the city,” he repeated. He was ill, really ill. He was in a dream of fever. He was dreaming, he was in a nightmare, giving a message in that dream-speech which none comprehend save the speaker.

“He went into the city,” said Olivia slowly. She sank backwards, till she leaned against the bulkhead, her arms straying out along the beading. “But he came back. He came back.”

“No, ma’am,” said Cammock gently. “He didn’t come back.”

“He’s not killed? Not dead? Oh, can’t one of you speak?”

“I don’t know,” said Margaret. “We waited. He went into the city with them.”

“They made friends,” said Perrin. “Your husband went with the Spaniards.”

“Oh, won’t you tell me what has happened?”

“They waited in the boat, ma’am,” said Cammock. “But your husband didn’t come back. And then the Spaniards attacked the boat. Captain Margaret was wounded.”

“And you came away without him?”

“Yes, Olivia. He’s in the city.”

“Oh, my God, my God. But don’t you know if he is dead or alive?”

“No, Olivia,” said Margaret.

“Charles was landing to find him when the Spaniards attacked,” said Perrin. “He was wounded. They wounded him, Olivia.”

“You left him, alone, Charles. Alone. To be killed.”

“We’ll bring him back, Olivia. We can win him back.”

“Oh, but he may be killed. He may be killed. He may be dead now.”

“Beg pardon, ma’am,” said Cammock. “We think he’s gone over to the Spaniards, with my book of charts as Basil draw.”

“You think he’s left, left us. You think, Charles. Do tell me. Tell me.”

“They think he’s gone into the city, Olivia,” Margaret said, “to tell the Spaniards of our plans. Into the city, Olivia. We saw him go into the city a long time before. They think he caused the attack on us. In the water. It was like a bad dream. Don’t. Don’t. I’ll bring him back, Olivia. We’ll bring him back to-morrow.”

“I’m quite calm, Charles,” said Olivia in a shaking voice. “I’m quite calm. Look at my hand here. You see.”

“Sit down, Olivia,” Margaret said. “There. In this chair. I want to say this. He went into the city walking with the captain of the garrison. The negro had his stirrup in his toes. They were to dine with the Governor. They were friends. He told me himself. Your husband told me they were friends. After the siesta they ambushed us. Oh, my God. They offered a hostage even. And your husband advised me to refuse it.”

“And you think,” Olivia said, “that Tom, my husband——” She paused. Then gave way to the running gamut of shaking sobs, her head on the table. “Oh, Tom, Tom, come back to me. Come back to me.”

“It was after he had dined with the Governor that they ambushed us,” Margaret repeated. “And I saw Cammock’s map-book in his pocket.”

“But he’d no thought of it,” she cried. “Only this morning. Only this morning. It was so sweet. Oh, he’d no thought of it this morning. None. You know he had none.”

“Of course, no one knows,” said Perrin. “He may be only a prisoner.”

“They never kill prisoners,” said Cammock. “Be easy as to that.”

“And he’s left me,” she sobbed. “Oh, but I know he loves me. It’s not that. I know he does. I know he does. Oh, Charles. What makes you think. I’m quite calm again. I can bear it all. I’m calm. What makes you think that he’s gone?”

“One or two things he asked. He was asking about life with the Spaniards. And his manner.”

“Charles, did you suspect him? Did you expect this when you chose him? Chose him yesterday?”

Margaret sat down at the table, looking at her stupidly, his face all drawn.

“Charles, you didn’t suspect him? You thought of this.”

Margaret burst out crying, with the tearless grief of an overwrought man. “I wish all this had never happened,” he said. “I wish it had all never happened. Never happened.” He checked himself, half aware, in the misery of his fever, that he had to answer Olivia. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me to-night,” he said. “I’ve got such white hands. Such white hands, like a girl.” He laughed in a shrill, silly cackle. “You must think me a silly girl,” he said.

“Charles,” Olivia cried.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right.” He pulled himself together with an effort. “Look here,” he said. “Here. I oughtn’t to have let him go alone. It was my fault. All my fault. Into the city alone. You say I thought of this. Never entered my head. Never. I’m talking like a drunk man. What’s the matter with you? No. It was my fault. But. Olivia. Olivia. Don’t. Don’t cry. We’ll get him back. We’ll take Tolu. I swear I’ll take Tolu. I’ll bring him back to you, Olivia. Only. You don’t mean what you said then.” He sank back in his chair. “I think I’m tired,” he added weakly.

Olivia was on her knees at his side, pressing his hand to her heart.

“Charles,” she said. “Charles, you’re hurt. You’re hurt. Wounded. I didn’t mean that, Charles. I was upset. But. Oh, you’ll bring him back. Bring him back to me.”

“I’ll bring him back to you, Olivia,” he answered, stroking her hand. “I’ll bring him back.” He raised her from the deck. “And I’ll help him to that. To what you talked of. This morning.”

“To?”

“The new life together,” he whispered. “Oh, Lord, Olivia. Stop those guns. Stop those guns. They’re red-hot.”

From very far away, in the heat of the battle, in the smoke and trampling, where the triumphing horses laughed, he seemed to hear Olivia’s voice.

“My God. I’ve kept him here. And he’s wounded. Edward. Edward. Is he dead?”

“Help me, captain,” said Perrin’s voice. “You’ve kept him on the rack, Olivia.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Lay him on my bed. That’ll be quieter. I must nurse him. Let me have some bark and limes, Captain Cammock. Lay him down there. Now some cold water.”

He was half conscious of being lifted out of the light, while a multitude of Spaniards charged him. He saw the faces, he saw the horses’ heads flung back, and the foam spatting their bit-cups. He was slashing at spear-heads, which pressed in a crown of points about his skull. After that, he fell into the wildness of fever, seeing that endless vision in his brain, the endless, disordered procession of soldiers, and guns, and ships, which shouted crabbed poetry, poetry of Donne, difficult to scan, exasperating:—

“Men of France,”

the procession shouted,

“changeable chameleons,

Spitals of diseases, shops of fashions.”

So he lay, for many hours, feverish and sick, rambling and incoherent.

He was ill for some days, during which Olivia nursed him tenderly. She found in the vigil a balm for her own sorrow, a respite from the anxieties which ate her heart. The uncertainty made it worse for her. She would fall asleep, sitting uneasily in the chair by the bed, to dream of her husband lying in the earth, among the roots of the creepers, the mould in his eyes. Or she would see him chained to a log, working in the gang, carrying mud bricks to the walls, or singing, like the man in Cammock’s tale, with whip-cuts on his body. Sometimes, in the worst dreams, she saw him with the veiled figure of a woman, and woke crying to him to come back to her, knowing herself deserted. She had at first prayed that the men would attack Tolu at once, to bring him back to her. The point had been debated among the captains. But Perrin, at his best now, with his quiet, clumsy sympathy, had shown her that this was not possible.

“And see, Olivia,” he said, “they must expect us. And we must run no risk of failure. You see, don’t you, what a danger it would be to him if we tried and failed? And the town will be full of troops for the next week or two, expecting an attack.”

There were other good reasons against instant action. Cammock was sure that the Spaniards would send a force against the lurking-places along the Main, now that they had his charts as guides. Other captains thought this possible; so the word was given to return to Springer’s Key. After their arrival, they prepared the fort against attack, and warned all privateers at the frequented anchorages. Then, having time, they careened the Broken Heart, washing her with lime till she had something of her old speed again. Other privateers joined them when they heard that they intended to take Tolu. Margaret, sitting in the cabin, a convalescent, talked of his plans with Olivia. Many of the buccaneers were employed ashore, making long “dug-out” canoas for the attack. He pointed to one of these, as it lay bottom up on the sand, while the seamen tarred it against the worm.

“I expect we shall bring your husband off in that one,” he said.

“Yes?” she answered. “But I’ve been thinking, Charles, that I shall never see Tom again.”

“What reasons have you?” he asked. “Look, Olivia, I’ve been thinking it over. There is so much possible to you. Your husband would be happy at a kind of life I’ve planned for him. On a sugar estancia in Jamaica. Or one of the big plantations here, as soon as the ground is cleared.”

“Charles,” she said, “the plantations here will never be cleared. You’ve been dreaming. I’ve been dreaming. And I shall never see Tom again.”

“You were always the despondent one in the old days,” he said lightly; then, growing grave, he added, “Olivia, all the voyage, I helped your dreams. I lied to you. All the voyage long, I lied. I longed to spare you. I could see no better way.”

“I was a great fool, you thought.”

“No love is folly,” he answered. “But now I see what is possible. After a wreck one finds the planks loose for a raft.”

“You think that, Charles? A woman finds no planks, as you call them. Do you think my life can be patched up by planks? Do you know why I pray for you to go to Tolu?”

“To restore your husband to you.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been thinking, Charles. I want you to go to Tolu to restore Captain Cammock’s book. That is the first thing. And to make you sure that he isn’t—that he wasn’t killed in your service. I know what you will find at Tolu, Charles. He’s not my husband now. I see him too clearly. He’s forgotten us all by this time. Oh, you know he has.”

“One has no right to say that.”

“It’s strange how a ship alters one’s judgments,” she said, with a little laugh. “I used to be afraid of you. I couldn’t bear——”

“We were in the way,” he answered.

“I was in a dream. A bad dream. Now it’s over.” She shuddered, turning her head aside.

“No, Olivia. Not that,” he said. “Life isn’t over. I can’t talk to you as I should. My wound makes me stupid. You don’t know men, Olivia. Men are selfish, brutal, greedy. You were never told that. You never saw that side of them. It’s only one side. I’ve no right to talk to you like this; but I’m your guardian here. Now suppose. Men, even lovers, aren’t single-natured, like women. Suppose a man saw a woman in his better moment, saw how beautiful and far above him she was, and loved her for that moment, truly, before falling back to his old greeds.”

“Love is not like that.”

“We’re talking about life, Olivia. The moment of love was worth while to both of them.”

“To myself and to my husband?”

“Yes. If you care to put it that way.”

“And now? What now?”

“Now that you know, Olivia, you know that it’s not all greed, any more than it is all love. You’ve seen a man’s weakness. His sin, even. You’ve seen the part of him he hid from you. We all have a skeleton to hide.”

“I’m not to be moved by sophistry, Charles.”

“Ship life tries the nerves, Olivia.”

“Are you pleading for him now, Charles?”

“Olivia, don’t let me hurt you by discussing your husband. But did you ever realize him?”

“Yes. I suppose I did.”

“He was unlike any man you had ever seen. Ah. Don’t answer. I know you too well, Olivia. I know all this.”

“It seems a long time ago,” she said coldly. She was pulling a little arnotto rose to pieces, petal by petal, crushing the petals till her finger-tips were stained and scented.

“You never realized him, Olivia. I never realized him. I did not know in Salcombe that day that he is a man with a frightful physical energy. On shore he could work it off. It’s not easy to say this. But at sea, in a ship, shut up here, it turned inward. Do you see, Olivia?”

“Does that excuse a man? That he has a frightful physical energy, and that it turns inward?”

“I’ve nothing to do with excuses. But, suppose that that was the case. Suppose, too, that he had but a moment to decide in Salcombe, between a lie, you, and the possibility of a new life, and the truth, arrest, and the certainty of disgrace. He chose you, the lie, and the possibility. He lied to you. The moment he told the first lie, you became, in his eyes in a sense, an enemy to beware of, an enemy who must be kept from the truth at all costs.”

“Yes. I have seen that, of course. And the lie grew all through the voyage.”

“He was afraid to run the risk of losing you, by telling you the truth.”

“That was not much of a compliment to me, was it?”

“All through that voyage, Olivia, we were in terror of being arrested on arrival. It was in our thoughts night and day. We used to sit in my cabin there, planning what we could do, if we found a warrant waiting for us. The strain made him reckless.”

“Why should it have made him reckless?”

“Because there was no one on board, except a few inferiors, who could console him. He could not confide in you. He had lied to you. We were not his sort. There was no one else to whom he could turn.”

“Except some inferiors, to whom he turned.”

“Yes, Olivia.”

“And you could watch this, without a word, without attempting to put the matter right.”

“Your husband wished to spare you, Olivia. We could not speak. We thought. We thought you were going to have a child.”

“Ah,” she said, breathing hard, “I understand now.”

“All through the voyage, your husband was probably thinking that you would soon learn, and that when you learned you would have nothing more to do with him. Imagination is rare in men. He could think of no other possibility. He made up his mind that you would cast him off, and therefore he cast you on without giving you a chance to do otherwise. Imagination is rare in women, Olivia, and you could not see his point of view, any more than he could see yours.”

“You think I was proud and unforgiving. I have. It. If he’d turned to me. And he left me that morning with a stolen book in his pocket, intending to see us no more.”

“Ah. We see now all that can come of a hasty moment.” He rose from his seat and stood before her. “Olivia,” he said, “I don’t extenuate. I’ve tried to explain. Perhaps neither of you saw very clearly. After Tolu, Olivia, there’s a life possible for you. You haven’t plumbed each other’s natures. You haven’t really lived yet. A fool’s paradise isn’t life. You don’t know what you may make of each other’s lives. He had not much chance, with that ghastly business hanging over him. You had none. Could you not start fair, after Tolu?” She pulled the remaining rose leaves from the arnotto, one by one. “It’s worth it, Olivia.”

“Thank you, Charles,” she said quietly. She walked slowly to her state-room.

“Yes,” he said to himself, after she had gone. “Yes. It’s the best thing.”

XII. THE END

“The rust of arms, the blushing shame of soldiers.”

The Tragedy of Bonduca.

“Let’s sit together thus, and, as we sit,

Feed on the sweets of one another’s souls.”

A Wife for a Month.

“A fair end

Of our fair loves.”

The Elder Brother.

Ten weeks passed before they felt the time ripe for their attack. By that time Margaret had made a good recovery; his wound was well healed over; he could even use the arm a little. Before leaving the anchorage, he put more guns in the fort, and chose out a garrison to fight them. He had every reason to be pleased with his success. A large part of Springer’s Key had been cleared, under his direction, for plantain-walks and vanilla-patches, as well as for Indian corn. More than a hundred more privateers had come to him, and he had planned with Tucket to load the Broken Heart, on his return from Tolu, at a new logwood forest, never yet cut, on the banks of the Azucar. He felt happier than he had felt since leaving England; for now his way seemed clear. His old suspicion of Pain had gone. Pain’s men had worked like slaves to clear the key for culture. It seemed to him that he was going to succeed after all, and that he would, as he had planned, make something of the wasted energies of the men of the account. He had even started Tucket on a dye-works, with half a dozen cauldrons, and a bale of cotton for experiments. The huts of the Indians had been altered and enlarged. Springer’s Key Town was now a walled city, with a few wooden shops, where the Broken Heart’s goods were sold for gold-dust. His thoughts ran much upon gold-dust; for the rivers were full of it, according to the privateers. He went up the Conception River with some Indians and a party of Pain’s men, during the last of the weeks of waiting, to look for gold-dust in the sands. They washed with sieves in several likely places, finding about six ounces in all. The Indians said that there was more higher up, in the rapid upper reaches, in the torrents of the Six Mile Hills, away to the south. On the way downstream, he cut a bundle of mangrove, thinking that the bark might be of use to tanners in Europe, since the Indians dressed hides with it. The damp heat of the Isthmus overcame him. He saw that nothing could be done there. No Europeans would ever do much in such a climate. But at sea in the bright Samballoes, where the winds blew steadily, never dying to a calm, he felt that much could be done. He offered bounties to all who would clear patches for tobacco, arnotto, cochineal, and indigo. Tucket, a steady, shrewd man, who saw a chance of doing what he had always longed to do, helped him ably. The dye-works occupied their mornings together. The rest of the day, after the noon heat, was passed in the supervision and encouragement of the citizens. The brush at Tolu, and the bringing off of Ed, had made him popular. He found that the privateers were fairly well disposed towards him. Even the inscrutable Pain seemed friendly.

It was not an easy matter to rule such citizens. He began by making a rough division of labour. Those who loved hunting went in parties daily to the Main to hunt. Those who liked to work in the islands cut and cleared jungle, planted plantains, tobacco, or arnotto. Others took boats and fished. Some built huts or canoas. Some dug wells and trenches to supply the plantations. Many Indians came to them. Springer’s Key knew a few weeks of bustling prosperity. Margaret began to worry about another problem—the sex problem, the problem of wives for his settlers. Where was he to get white wives for three hundred men? How was he to avoid the horrors of the mixed races? He remembered in Virginia the strange and horrible colonial mixtures, the mixtures of white with red, white with black, black with red, red with all the mixtures, black with all the mixtures, creatures of no known race, of no traditions, horrible sports, the results of momentary lusts, temporary arrangements. One could buy white transported women in Jamaica at thirty pounds apiece. One could buy redemptioners in Virginia for the same sum. Many of the men at work about him had done so, during their lives in the colonies. But how was a nation to be born from convicted thieves, petty larcenists, bawds, procuresses, women burnt in the hand, branded women? He resolved to hurry home as soon as the plantations began to bear, as soon as the Spaniards began to recognize his rights. He must get settlers, honest, reputable settlers. He would have to search England for them, hundreds of them, so that the bright Samballoes might become the world’s garden. He began to know the islands now. He saw them in all their beauty, Venices not yet glorious, sites for the city of his dream. They shone in their blossoms, hedged by the surf, splendid in their beauty. Among these hundreds of islands, these sparkling keys, were homes for the poor of the world, food for the hungry, beauty for the abased, work for the stinted, rest for the exhausted. For an army could feed from them in the morning, and pass on, yet in the evening there would be food for another army. The earth brought forth in bounty. All the fruits of the world grew there. The trade winds smelt of fruit. The bats from the Isthmus darkened the stars at twilight as they came to gorge the fruit; yet in the morning, when they flew screaming to their caves, it was as though they had scattered but a husk or two, scattered a few seeds, a few sucked skins. The sea gave a multitude of fish. The woods were full of game. It was an earthly paradise. It went to his heart to think that he was almost a king here. To the Indians he was more than a king: he was a god.

He loved the Indians. He loved their dignity, their pride in the white man’s friendship, their devoted service. It reminded him of his life at school and of the devotion of small boys to their captain. During his convalescence he had had many talks with an Indian prince, whom the seamen called Don Toro. He had learned from this man to speak a little in the Indian tongue, enough to draw from him something of the Isthmus. He wished to clear the Isthmus of its poisonous tangle of forest, so that the shore might become savannah land, as at Panama. He longed to see the jungle go up in a blaze, in a roaring, marching army of fire, that would cut a blackened swath to the hills, leaping over tree-tops, charring the undergrowth, making good pasture for cattle, for the great, pale Campeachy cattle which his ships should bring there from Sisal. He tried to make Don Toro understand his wish, but failed; for Don Toro was a woodland Indian; the forest was his home. That stroke of policy, the bonfire, would have to wait till he could bring the Indians to help him, and till the logwood on the banks of the rivers had all been cut and shipped. But he wished that all those miles of wood were lying in blackened ashes. It was now the bright, dry season, when the woods were pleasant, musical with bell-birds, sweet with blossoms. In a few weeks there would come the rains, the months of rain, the streaming months, when the trees would rise up from a marsh, when the sound of dropping would become a burden, the months of the white-ribbed mosquito and the yellow fever.

He loved Olivia still. His passion was his life, his imagination. While that fire burned in him the world was a metal from which he could beat brave sparks. He was not sure how she felt towards her husband. He had done his best for her husband. He could not say that there was much chance of a happy life for her. It had been hard to counsel her, doubly hard, for when she spoke gravely her voice thrilled, the tone burned through him like a flame. A little more, and honour would be thrown aside like a rag; the words would come in a rush, sweeping him away. She had never seemed more beautiful than now. She was pale, still; her eyes had dark rings; but she had never seemed more beautiful. She was still mysterious to him, though he knew her better than he had ever known her. She was an exquisite mystery, beautiful, sacred, unthinkable; but not for him, never for him. She would only be a shy friend to him, giving a little, hiding much, never truly herself before him. So much he could see, hating himself for his clumsy walk, for his gravity, for whatever it was, in him, which kept her away. He saw that she was timid, fearful of all rough and rude things, a shy soul, refined, delicate. He guessed that his love for her made her timid of him. Then came the thought of Stukeley, the torment and hate of the thought of Stukeley. He was to restore Stukeley to her, after all these agonizing weeks. They had been bad weeks, weeks of doubt, weeks of wicked opportunity. Had he followed his own heart, during those weeks, he might have wrought upon her, till the thought of Stukeley was loathsome to her. He could see no possible happiness for her in a life with Stukeley, if Stukeley were restored. She might find peace of mind in having him again beside her; but never happiness. He remembered an old phrase of Perrin’s, that women did not wish to be made happy, but to have the men they loved. It seemed true; possibly it explained many horrible tales of faithfulness. It had been a bitter task to plead for Stukeley. It would be bitter to bring him back, and to watch the new peace broken, as he knew it would be, himself making time and place. Still, it had been the right thing; the right was a better thing than love. He bit his lips for loathing when he thought how very far from the right his love for this woman had led him.

Was he right, he wondered, in attacking Tolu, in an attempt to win back Stukeley? The ambush on the beach had been sufficient declaration of war. They had shown that they wished for war. He had put his hand to the plough; it must drive on to the furrow’s end. But how many of his men would fight for a righteous cause when the issue was tried? To help the Indians, ancient lords of America, was a righteous cause, though the ancient lords lay in bones in the caves, dead long ago. Only their grandsons, servile degenerates, or men not yet dispossessed, now lived. And if he helped the Indians, beating the Spaniards, was his colony to sail away, or to have the fruit of their toil? If they were to stay, how soon would the clash come? How soon would the white men burn the forest, so that they might possess the land? When he asked himself this question, he could not honestly say that he was fighting for the Indians’ sake. His men were fighting for loot, like a gang of robbers on a road. And yet. If by their means he broke a corrupt power, so that the islands might become the world’s garden and granary, another Venice, a home of glory and honour, as he prayed, as he truly believed, it was right, the end justified him. Only he must see to it that the Venice rose from all this noisomeness. That was his task. That alone could keep his sword bright. This must be no colony, no refuse heap, where younger sons might work with their hands unseen, and the detected family knave escape his punishment. It must be other than that. When they sailed home from Tolu he would proclaim the republic of the keys; they would agree upon laws together; they would send their first-fruits home. He used to lie in his bunk at night in a trance of prayer that he might make these islands all that he had hoped. It might be, he thought. But there was much to do, and little could be done at once. When they came home from Tolu; perhaps, then, he would see his dream made real. Now and then, in the night watches, he asked himself whether his men would stand success. He remembered how Cammock had said that they would not stand failure. Thinking of Olivia, he knew which was the real test. He began to tremble for the moment of power. St. George became John Bull directly he had killed the dragon. His fine standard in the arts of life made him pray that he might never succeed in that way. Better fail. Failure is spiritual success. What is heaven to those who have the earth.

They sailed from Springer’s Key three hundred strong, packed in the two ships and three sloops. Fifty men remained behind to garrison the key. A party of Indians, under Don Toro, followed the fleet in a large periagua. Each ship in the fleet towed a bunch of canoas in which the attacking force would go ashore. They were very gay with flags when they left the anchorage. They fired guns, and sang, glad of the battle. In a few days a score at least of the singers would be dead in the sand, others would be stricken down, perhaps maimed. Margaret asked Cammock if they ever thought of this before a fight; but he answered, “No.”

“No one would ever fight if he thought,” he said. “I’ve been, now (with other fellows), in three big fights. We’d not got a chance in any one of ’em, if you’d asked before. I was at Panama, where we were all starved and worn, while they’d a fresh army, with a city to fall back on. I was at Perico, and five or six boats of us fought three big ships full of troops. I was at Arica, where about a hundred of us fought what was really a brigade of an army. I don’t think once I heard any say, or even think, as some would be killed and shot.”

“I was in the Low Countries,” said Margaret. “It was the same there. Each man thinks and hopes that it will be the other fellow. Sometimes I feel that if a man thinks with sufficient strength he really makes a sort of intellectual guard about himself. I mean, as faith saved the men in the furnace. What do you think?”

“Yes?” said Cammock. “A man who goes in thinking about himself like that isn’t going to do much with his gun. Besides, he couldn’t.”

“You see them sometimes.”

“Ay,” said Cammock. “You see ’em swaying from side to side to touch their next-hand man. For company. You see ’em all swaying in a row. Like this. Side to side. But the first shot locks the ranks. When they begin to fire they forget it all. They’ve got to manage their guns. And they get all hid in smoke. That’s another comfort. And they can shout, ‘Give ’em hell. Give ’em hell. Give it the hijos del horos.’ But afterwards. What about afterwards?”

“The dead and wounded? Yes,” said Margaret. “Poor wretches lying out without water. Ammunition carts going over them. Camp followers. The night after a battle. I remember my first. It was all still after the firing. Then one heard cries in the stillness, from all round one. Awful cries. Like wild beasts.”

“I never heard that, sir. But I’ve seen blood really running out of a ship’s scuppers. That gives you a turn. That was at Perico. She was coming past us full tilt, under all sail. Her decks were full of men; full. We were only eighteen of us in the long-boat. So we gave her one volley. It was like a deer dropping dead, sir. The ship broached to. There was scarcely a man left standing in her. Their matches set her on fire. I was aboard her afterwards. I never see such a sight.”

“And how many are over there, now, going about the town, to be killed in a few days, not seeing their slayer? Have you ever thought of the soul, captain? It must be startled to be driven from the body like that.”

“The faces are peaceful, sir.”

“Yes. Many are. But the faces one sees in a fight. I never saw a noble expression on a man’s face in a battle. I’ve seen fear, and sickness, and madness. I always feel a compound of all three. What do you feel? I don’t believe you do feel. You are always so wonderful. I wish I had your self-control.”

“I don’t know what I feel, sir. Fear of having my retreat cut off. That’s the thing I worry over. I tell you, sir, frankly. I don’t want that ever to happen to me. I don’t care who knows it.”

“About our battle, captain. We shall land in force to south of the town, while Tucket’s party makes a strong feint on the north wall. We shall creep up along the beach, and attack the south wall as soon as Tucket’s party draws their fire. We ought to be in the town by the time the sun’s at all strong. The canoas will follow us up, and lie below the sea-wall, ready for us. The ships will anchor within gunshot of the town as soon as we hoist English colours.”

“It’d be well to get all hands off soon, sir. They’ll get straggled, looking for loot, and there’s three garrisons—Lobos, Covenas, and Cispata—within an hour or two’s ride of the place. Another thing, they’ll likely take to drinking.”

“We’re not in the town yet, captain.”

“That’ll come, sir.”

“You know, captain, we may be taking our friend back.”

“Yes, sir. The lady, poor thing. She must be suffering now, sir. We’re anxious. But nothing to her, poor thing, wondering if that man’s alive.”

“I’m wondering if we are making more trouble for her by bringing him back to her.”

“He’s not been brought yet, sir.”

“In three days, captain.”

“Maybe so, sir. If you ask me, I say no. She’ll never see him again. I ask Mr. Perrin that. One always comes back to Mr. Perrin. They call him a fool, forward there; but he sees things shrewder than some of these wise ones that tried to drown the duck. He said, ‘No. You’ll never see him again. He’s married to a Spanish girl, and changed his religion, by this time.’ One never believes Mr. Perrin till one finds he was right after all. Then it’s too late.”

“Perhaps,” Margaret said. “He may be right. That may be it. He may be killed in the assault. He may have left the town. We may never see him again. It may be the end. I wonder what sort of life it is going to be for her if it is the end.”

“Life goes on much the same way, sir. Women feel it more than men; they live so cramped. But I always say a man’s a bigger thing than anything he makes. If he makes trouble he’d ought to be big enough to bear it.”

“And if the trouble’s made for him?”

“There’s always more than yourself in the world. Come, sir.”

“I think, captain,” said Margaret, “you’re the only one of us all who comes up prepared and calm, ready for everything. I ought to have been on the Main with you and Morgan, instead of learning Latin at a university. If I ever have a son, I shall send him abroad with you to be a buccaneer.”

They entered the gulf in the darkness of the new moon. They sailed in a clump together, Tucket leading. They sailed without lights, but for the night-lights in the binnacles. They moved in blackness on the sea, great fish making fire-streaks, lumbering whales with their brood. The men aboard them, waiting in the darkness for the word, struck their shins on guns and longed to be off. Few of them took their hammocks from the nettings that night. They passed the hours talking and smoking, in slow sea-walks to and fro, humming old tunes over their pipestems. They had made themselves ready many hours before. Their guns had been oiled and loaded, and their belts filled with cartridges, during the afternoon. All that they had to do now was to buckle on their water-bottles and snapsacks, and get into their boats. They heard the surf tumbling on the Mestizos. Setting stars, like ships’ lights, burned out into the sea. The seamen watched them as they shifted their tides, talking of the past, with its memories, of ships and women, its memories of life and the sun.

The word was given some four miles from the city, lest the Indian sentinels should sight the ships from the walls. The land was like a cloud at that distance, like a sharply defined blackness on the sky, shutting off the rising stars. It was a dark morning; but to the seamen’s eyes it was light enough. They had been on deck since the setting of the watch. They had grown accustomed to the darkness. It was now an hour before the dawn. It was to be a red dawn above Tolu.

Captain Margaret stood with Cammock at the gangway watching his men go over the side to the canoas. All the men of war, twenty of his crew, and a few Indians, fifty men in all, were coming with him from the ship. They loitered about the gangway like sheep at a gap, they seemed a great company. They did not talk much among themselves. One or two, the wags of the fo’c’s’le, made jests about “Tolu soup”; and the laughter spread in the canoas, where the men were packed tightly, like lovers on a bench. One or two of the men, the most intelligent among them, asked to shake hands with Captain Margaret as they passed him at the gangway side. Perrin touched him on the shoulder when about half of them had gone.

“Charles,” he said, “Olivia wants to see you. She’s in the alleyway.”

“In a minute,” he answered. “Good-bye, West.”

“Good-bye, sir.”

“Look after them, captain. Don’t let them shove off without me.”

In the darkness of the alleyway he found Olivia. He could see her great eyes in the oval of her face. She was trembling.

“Well, Olivia,” he said gravely. He took her hands in his, wondering, dully, if he would ever see her again. “I’m just off, Olivia.”

“I wanted to see you,” she said, in a shaking little voice. “I know I’ve only a minute. I tried last night. I want to thank you, Charles. You’ve been good. You’ve been very good to me. Whether you succeed. Or don’t succeed. I mean now. On shore. I. I thank you. Thank you. God keep you.”

“You, too, Olivia.”

He felt that this was the supreme moment of his life, this moment in the dark, with the forms of seamen passing across the door, and the white, beloved face half seen, strained up towards him. He knew that he might kiss her face. Their souls were very near together, nearer, he knew, than they would ever again be. There was the beloved face near his; there was his reward, after all these days, after all this wandering the world.

“Good-bye, Olivia.”

She did not answer, but her hands pressed his hands to her side for a moment.

“We shall be back in a few hours, Olivia.”

“Ah, not that. Not that,” she said, shuddering. “Never that again.”

“Perhaps, Olivia, he may be with us.”

“No,” she said faintly.

“I must go now, Olivia. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she murmured. “God keep you, Charles.”

He knew that he might kiss her face; but would not. He knew that it was the mood and the moment which brought them thus together. She should never reproach herself. He did not love for pay. He pressed her hands for an instant. “Good-bye then,” he said lightly.

“Thank you,” she said, so lowly that he could hardly hear her.

He knew that she stood there, leaning against the bulkhead in the dark, long after he had reached the deck. It was like waking from a dream to come on deck again.

“Good-bye, Cammock,” he said, putting his emotion from him. “We’ve got our bearings. Don’t stand further in for half an hour. If anything happens. Well. We’ve talked that out. Haven’t we? Good-bye, Edward.”

“Good-bye. Look here, Charles. Here are my pistols. I should like you to have them.”

“Very well,” he said. “Thanks. How do you put them on?” He slung the pistol-belt over his shoulder, in the sea-style. “Good-bye,” he said again. “Look after her.”

He passed quickly down the ladder to the waiting canoas, which still dragged at the gangway with their freights of armed men. A canoa was pulling towards them out of the night; her oars stroked the sea into flame. Gleams of flame broadened at her bows. Little bright sparks scattered from the oar-blades as the rowers feathered.

“Is that you, Captain Margaret?” said Pain’s voice. “I’ve sent Tucket’s party on ahead. They’ve got a mile further to pull than we got. We’re all ready ahead there. You’re all ready and loaded, and your guns flinted?”

“Yes. All ready here, Captain Pain.”

“Your oars are in grummets, ain’t they?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“And you’ve all got white scarves on your arms? Right. The word is ‘Up with her.’ ”

“ ‘Up with her.’ You hear that, all of you? The word is ‘Up with her.’ ”

“Up with her,” the men repeated. “We’ll rally her up for a full due.”

“We’ll shove ahead, then, cap,” said Captain Pain. “If any man speaks above a whisper, mind, we’ll deal with him after.”

“Silence in the boats,” said Margaret. “On a morning so still as this we may be heard a couple of miles off. Sound goes a long way over water. Remember, all hands. No looting. There’s to be no looting. After the city’s taken, we shall hold it to ransom. After the fight, the trumpeter here will sound the assembly in the Plaza. You will all fall in there. Understand?”

“Are you ready in the bows there?”

“All ready, sir.”

“Shove off. Give way together. Make it long, stroke oars.”

“Long and lairy, sir.”

“We’ll follow you, Captain Pain.”

“Right,” came the voice out of the darkness. The hulk of the Broken Heart fell away into the night. The ripple of flame at her bows died astern. The boats drew up into order, Pain’s canoa leading, the other fourteen following close behind, two and two together. There was silence in all the boats, a silence like the hush in a theatre. The wash of the hundred oars, and the slow breathing of the rowers, was all that could be heard. All that could be seen was the advancing oily swell of the water, the gleam where the oars dipped, the track of the great stars dancing on the swell. Dimly one could see the other boats. One could see the transom of Pain’s boat, a ghostly oval, dying away ahead, but never quite gone. Far in front, seeming slowly to climb higher, was the blackness of the shore, from which, very faintly, came the roll of the surf. So they rowed on, in the darkness, pausing sometimes to change their rowers, two hundred men, going to the presence of death.

Their first real sight of the shore was a twinkle of fire upon the beach, below the city. Some infected clothes had been set on fire there the night before. The fire had smouldered all night, and had then broken out, in little leaping tongues, lighting the town’s south gate. Those in the boat wondered when they saw it, thinking that Indians must be camped there, or travellers from Covenas, perhaps, arrived after the shutting of the gates. There was some anxiety lest it should be a signal; but the flames, lighting up the beach, showed them no watchers, and no answering signal shone in the south-west, either from shore or sea. They learned from the fire that they were pointing too near to the city. They swung off four points, and rowed to the south-east, into the shallow water off the mouth of the Pesquero.

They landed about three miles from the town, and at once formed for action. Some Indian scouts led the party, then came Margaret with a dozen axemen, all carrying powder-kegs, for the destruction of the gate. The Broken Heart men formed the vanguard. Pain’s men followed, in rough order. The boats, with a boat-guard of thirty or forty men, some of whom were leeches, pulled out into the gulf, to prepare lint and salves for the hurt. The landing party looked to their firearms. There was a little confusion and splashing, owing to the narrowness of the beach, which forced some of them to stand in the sea. In a few minutes they were all ready. They set forward, as silently as they could, keeping a fast walk, lest Tucket’s men, now hidden among rocks a mile to the north of the town, should grow weary of waiting. It was still dark night about them; but they knew from the faintness of the wind that it was near dawn. The macaws were waking in the forest. Strange cries, strange primeval noises, sounded in the forest. There were stealthy patterings, quick scuttering droppings, as some animal brushed among the scrub, knocking off the dew. The Indian who walked by Margaret knew what these noises meant. He paused at each sound, as though to make sure that they were really what they seemed. A chicaly-chicaly made her sweet, sharp cry, from somewhere ahead. It touched Margaret to the heart; it was so like the tolling of a cuckoo. The Indian bent his head back and replied, so exactly that the bird answered. Margaret had never before heard this done; though he had read of it. He wondered, as he marched, if all knowledge ranked alike, if all power, all imagination, ranked alike, and whether this Indian, who could apprehend the natures of all these creatures in the wood, were not really a finer product than himself. He could not imitate a chicaly-chicaly, he could not raise the devil, he could not see a three-days’-old track on stones. He wished that in the march to a full life one had not to forget so much. One should have all the powers, all the savage powers even, one should be a divine spirit of apprehension, one should inform the whole world, feeling the pismire’s want as keenly as the saint’s ecstasy. One should be able to apprehend the wild things, the things of the wood, as well as the spirit of a poet in his divine moment. True life is to be alive in every fibre to the divine in all things. He wondered whether the Indians communed with the beasts, getting from them something which the white men ignored; coming, through them, to secrets unknown to white men, secrets of nature, of the universal spirit, of the spirit which binds the herds of peccary, and slinks in the wild cat, and sings in the bell-voiced golden-comb. He thought little of the business in hand. His mind was blank about it. All that he could think of the coming struggle was that he must bring back Stukeley, find him and bring him back, or never go back himself. The men were all round him, some of them even ahead of him by this time, for, going fast as they were, often up to their knees in the sea, it was impossible to keep good order.

After half an hour’s march they forded the Arroyo Francesco and came to the broader sands. Here they all marched in the wash; for now they were within twelve minutes of the town. They could see the dark mass of the town ahead of them, a city of sleepers, no light burning, no one stirring, only a little fire near the gate, and a dog baying in the Plaza. The dawn was beginning to change the darkness; it was growing lighter. The screams of the macaws set the monkeys swearing. The men halted, formed into order, and hurried on for another half-mile. They paused again, only four hundred yards from the walls. The pioneers with the powder-kegs made ready for their dash to the gate. The fusemen, carrying many yards of match, now lit their fuses in the scrub. The army marked time, feeling the chill of the dawn, waiting for Tucket to begin. Margaret could feel that many of his men were nervous, waiting like that, with the light growing above them. They had timed the attack well; but to stand, waiting, while the precious moments passed, was hard. Very soon the sentinels would see them. A low growl of discontent muttered up and down the ranks. Voices urged Margaret to attack at once, without waiting for Tucket. “We shall be seen.” “What’s the good of waiting here?” “Why, Lord love us, we could have took the town by this time.” “Shove ahead.” “This is a bit of ‘up with her,’ I don’t think, waiting ’ere.” There was a tendency to edge forward, to press towards the front, to see what was going on. Margaret urged them back, and passed word to Pain to keep his rear ranks from firing into the backs of the storming party. The rear ranks were the eager ranks, as they always are. The front ranks are nearest to the bullets; they have their minds engaged.

Lighter it grew. There was colour in the sky now; the men were surging forward, swearing that they would wait no more. Then from far away, on the farther wall of the town, a cry arose, a cry like a death cry, a cry of alarm. Two shots followed; then yells, shrieks, oaths, the roar of many guns. “Up with her, Tucket,” said the waiting men. Cries sounded within the town, dogs yelped, one or two women screamed, as the firing increased. “Come on,” Margaret called to the pioneers. They splashed out of the water on to the sands, and started towards the city at a run. As they ran, they heard Pain keeping back the ranks till the charge should have been fired. The feet splashed behind them slowly, growing fainter. The fire on the beach grew brighter, they were passing it; the walls were before them, only a hundred yards away. “Against the door,” he said, panting. “Against the hinges. One keg spilled below.” The town was aroused now. They could hear the cries and hurry. Still no sign came from the walls. “Sentinel’s asleep,” said one of the men. “There,” said another. “Up with her. Up with her. We’re seen.” A man showed upon the wall by the gate. “Ahi,” he screamed. “Piratas. Piratas. Piratas. Cuidado. Cuidado.” He fired his gun into the air; the flash shot up like the flash of a blast-charge. There came cries and a noise of running. A few heads showed. The wall spouted fire in a volley. They were up against the wall, against the iron-plated door, piling the kegs against the hinges, tamping them down with sods and stones. Margaret snatched one keg and spilled it along the door-sill. “There,” he said. “There. Now your fuse, fuseman.” The quick-match was thrust into a keg. “Up along the walls, boys. Quick. Scatter. Pronto.” He thrust them sideways. They saw what he wanted. When the imaginations are alert there is little need for speech. No man could have heard him. The racket in the town was uproar like earthquake. The whole wall above them was lit with fire spurts. Mud and plaster were tinkling in a rain upon them. They ran fifty yards like hares, paying out the quick-match. “Now,” said Margaret. The match flashed. A snake of fire rippled from them. They saw the shards of pots gleam, then vanish. They saw old bones, old kettles, all the refuse below the walls. “Down,” he shouted. “Down.” They flung themselves down. The beach to their left flashed, as the pirates fired at the wall.

There came a roar, a rush of fire, a shaking of the land. Mud, brick, stone, shards of iron and wood, all the ruin of the gate, crashed among them, flying far among the trees, thumping them on their backs as they lay. After the roar there was a dismayed silence. A wail of a hurt man sounded, as though the wrecked gate cried. Then with a volley the privateers stormed in. From where he lay, Margaret could watch them plainly; the dawn had broken. He saw them charging, tripping in the sand, their gun-barrels glinting. An Indian led them, a screaming Indian, who danced and spun round, waving his machete. “Lie still,” he shouted to his pioneers. “Let them pass. They’ll shoot you down. Lie still.” With yells and shots the storming party swept up the ruin. “Up with her,” they shouted. “Up with her.” They were clambering over the wreck, tripping, stumbling, kneeling, to fire, clubbing at the guard. “Now,” said Margaret, drawing his sword. They rose up from their nest among the tip. They were with their fellows, they were climbing the heaped stone, amid smoke and oaths and fire-lit faces. Margaret was inside Tolu. The south wall was won.

The land-breeze, very faint now, drifted the smoke slowly. He could see little. He could see in glimpses the whitewashed houses, the line of the south road, a man with his back to a wall, a woman fallen, figures rushing. He could see enough to know that the enemy were making no stand. He ran on up the road to the Plaza, one of a mob. Windows opened above him. People fired from the windows. Women were flinging pots, tiles, braziers. Some one had begun to ring the alarm bell in the church. The broken clang sounded out above the screams and the firing. Now it was all clear before him. He was in the Plaza, shouting to his mob to form. There in front of him the troops were mustering. They were running from their quarters, half clad, in rags, just as they had started from sleep. Heavy fire was rolling at the north wall. Troops were running thither. In the centre of the Plaza, about a cotton tree, a score of Spaniards were forming in line. A halberdier was dressing them. They stood firm, handling their guns, hearkening to their capitan. Margaret saw them clearly, and praised them in his heart for the flower of soldiery. They were of the old Spanish foot, the finest troops in the world. Even as he looked he saw them falling forward. He was among them. His sword jarred him to the shoulder as it struck on a gun-barrel. He saw them about him. They were breaking. They were gathering into clumps. They were being swept into the mob of citizens flying to the east gate.

Half an hour later the newly risen sun showed him a captured town. In the streets, in the Plaza, everywhere, lay the dead and dying. They lay in heaps in some parts. All the clutter and wreck of war, the clouts, the cast arms, the gear flung away by the fleeing, lay littered in the sands. The walls were chipped and starred with bullet marks. The stink of powder was everywhere. Women still screamed. Wounded men wailed where they lay, with the pitiful whimpering cry, like that of a beaten hound, which sickens all who hear it of the glory of war. Firing was still going on; but the fight was over; the town was in the hands of the privateers.

Margaret found himself at the east gate with Pain. About a dozen of the crew of the Broken Heart stood by him, waiting for orders. He took their names, and told them off to look out at the city gates, and to spike the guns on the sea-wall.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house there, to look for my friend,” he said. “Where’s my trumpeter? Sound the assembly, trumpet. Muster your men, will you, Captain Pain?”

The assembly sounded. The men fell in, answering to their names. The boat-guard with the doctors landed. The captains checked off their lists, scanning the ranks closely whenever a man failed to answer. The men were powder-blackened; some of them were wounded, many were cut about the head. They sent the boat-guard with the doctors to search the streets for the dead and hurt. Thirty-three men were missing, all of them, save one, from the party which had stormed the south wall.

“Strengthen the guards at the gates,” Margaret said. “Captain Tucket, you take the north gate. I’ll see to the east. Captain Pain, will you send a dozen to the south? Keep a sharp look out.”

He picked his own guard and sent them off to their duty. The other gate-guards fell out unwillingly. Some of the privateers were eating their breakfasts in the ranks.

“I’m going to the Governor’s house now,” he said to Pain. “Call me at once if the Spaniards send a trumpet. No straggling. No looting, mind.” As he turned towards the Governor’s house he heard the men behind him snigger. He heard a voice ask Pain if this was to be the new rule, now that Springer’s Key was full of college gents. Pain told the man to take a severe turn.

Margaret drew his pistols as he came near the house; for though most of the inhabitants had fled, a few poor men and slaves still lounged in the streets, having nothing to lose. A single man, richly dressed, might tempt these gangrels. He hailed a negro, who sat in the sun in the Plaza, sucking a wound in his wrist.

“Ho muchacho,” he said in his schoolboy Spanish. “Donde esta la casa del Gobernador?”

The negro waved his unhurt hand towards the house with a gesture full of dignity. Then he continued to suck his wound, like a dog licking a hurt paw.

“Gracias,” Margaret answered. “Pero el hombre Inglès. Donde esta?”

Again the negro waved his hand towards the house, pausing in his suction exactly like a dog. “He,” he said; then bent to suck again.

The house of the Governor fronted the Plaza. It was a big house, with a patio. The lower story had no outer windows, no door. Margaret had to climb the stone steps to the balcony, where a chained monkey leaped up and down in the sun, between bites at a plantain. The door leading to the inner part of the house lay open, just as the fugitives had left it. A woman’s shawl was on the floor. One runner had upset the monkey’s saucer of water. A chair had been upset. As Margaret entered the house, with his pistols cocked, he saw something beneath the chair, something bright, which he took to be a snake. It was the scabbard of a sword, flung aside in a soldier’s hurry. Margaret, pausing on the threshold to listen, wondered if Stukeley had flung it there. He listened intently, expecting to see Stukeley coming from the darkness of the corridor. His mind was busy with the thought of Stukeley. What was he to say to him? What was he to do to him? Suppose Stukeley came out fighting? “I must bring him back,” he repeated. “I must bring him back. He must be brought back.” A step sounded on the stairs behind him. It was West, one of the Broken Heart’s seamen.

“Beg pardon, sir,” the man said, “may I come with you? There’s maybe some of these Dons in the house.”

“Yes,” Margaret answered. “Listen.”

They listened in the doorway for a moment; but the house was still, save for the chinking of the monkey’s chain.

“Gone, sir, I guess,” said West.

“Come on, then,” Margaret said. “Cock your pistols and come on.”

They passed through the littered hall into the left-hand corridor. The jalousied shutters were shut on the patio side; but the doors of some of the rooms were open, giving light to the passage. It was a barely furnished house, hung with very old Spanish leather, ant-eaten and mothed and mouldy, falling to pieces. In the first room, a sleeping-room, the mosquito-nets had been torn from the cots, and lay wrecked on the floor with a silver chocolate service. In another, a chair stood against the wall, where a man had stood to snatch arms from a trophy. In another sleeping-room they found the clothes of a man and woman by the cot-sides just as they had been laid the night before, when the couple retired. It was like being in the presence of death to walk that house. It was as though they were looking on the corpse of a house, on a house dug up from the sands, the life of it gone and forgotten, only the pathetic husks left, that had once been helps to men. They opened a shutter and looked out upon the patio. A goat was tethered there, crying to be milked. They heard the stamping of horses. One horse was scraping with his forefeet against the floor of his stall. There was no sign of Stukeley there, no trace of him, nothing to mark his presence.

“Now the other corridor,” Margaret said. They retraced their steps, walking on tiptoe, listening intently. The first room in the other corridor was a dining-room, furnished with heavy Spanish furniture of the great period. A lute lay on the table, among wineglasses half full of wine, a box of Peruvian suckets, a box of candied quinces, a dish of avocat pears. Some one had been playing the lute, the night before. The unknown player had fitted a new string. The broken string lay among the litter where it had been thrown. Flies were black among the suckets. The air smelt of the stale gums which had burnt out before a crucifix on the wall. A shaft of sunlight came through a broken shutter. The dust quivered in it. On the floor, in its road of glory, a column of ants marched, stumbling over crumbs. There was much silver in the room. Over the side-board was a Zurbaran, too full of personality to be religious. Margaret looked at it, sighing, thinking that only lesser artists could save their souls. There was no trace of Stukeley here. “Let’s get out,” he said. “He’s not here.”

“There’s three more rooms,” said West. They entered the Governor’s office.

It was a barer room than the others. It contained a table and a few chairs. There were papers on the table; a locked account book, a list of resident Indians, a list of citizens capable of bearing arms, a diary in cipher. Under the table, in a coffer, were more account books, Cammock’s portolano, and a copy of the same, traced from the originals, now nearly finished.

“You see, West,” said Margaret. “You bear witness that I take these two books?”

“Yes, sir,” said West. He walked over to a corner and picked something up from a chair.

“Isn’t this Mr. Stukeley’s, sir?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, crossing over swiftly. “It’s his hat. And there’s his sword-belt.”

They stood together, looking at the things, wondering how lately the owner had flung them there, as he came in, hot, for the onzas. They felt him to be very near them there. It was as though he were coming sneering towards them, his fine teeth showing. His very words came into Margaret’s mind, with their exact inflections. “Found much? Eh?” Those were the words he would use.

“Hark,” said West suddenly. They listened.

“What did you think you heard?”

“There’s some one speaking in the next room, sir.”

“Listen.”

In the hush, they heard a sound like a sob, a low murmur of words; then a rustling, chinking sound.

“Like some one praying,” West said.

“Careful now,” said Margaret. “Come on after me.” They crept from the office on tiptoe, their pistols ready. In the corridor a board creaked beneath them. They paused guiltily, straining their ears to listen. They heard some one cross the room quietly. Then the door was flung open, letting a glare of light into the corridor. A priest stood before them, holding up a crucifix. Within was a bed. A woman knelt by the bed. Some one lay on the bed, covered with a cloth. Margaret raised his hand, and the priest stepped back, looking at their faces curiously.

“Donde esta el caballero inglès?” Margaret asked. “El señor Stukeley?”

A faint smile showed upon the priest’s mouth.

“Here,” he said in good English. He twitched back the bed-cloth reverently, to show the body of Stukeley lying dead. The face was a dull yellow, the mouth was inflamed. There was no need for further words.

“Vomito,” said the priest.

“Yes,” Margaret said, uncovering. “Vomito.”

“This morning,” the priest said.

The woman rose from the bedside, as though to drive them away. She was a black-eyed, hawk-nosed woman, of a crude and evil beauty. She was dressed in red and brown, in an outlandish style. She spoke in gasps, dreadful to hear; using broken English, laced with oaths and Spanish words. “Damn,” she said. “Damn perros. Cabrones de piratas.”