Chapter V

Ben Rossiter came battling his way with Nora along the cliff-path, after setting his lantern on the cliffs above his land-locked harbour. He could see the other light shining wickedly from Norland Point, and young strength ran in his old veins as he hurried forward. He had ever been a lover of ships that sailed the seas, and murder was in the doing here—murder of the craft struggling gamely out yonder in the tossed havoc of the gale—the craft heading fast as wind could take her to the face of Norland Cliff.

Nora would be carried no longer under shelter of Ben’s storm-coat. “As if I was a baby,” she said, struggling for freedom. “And Dick would laugh at me.”

“It’s fierce and gusty. Best stay where you are.”

She was so sure of some danger near to Dick—he called so clearly to her—that she fought in earnest to get free.

“Well, have it so, little wild-cat,” grumbled Rossiter—“but, Lord love us, you’ve got to keep a hand fast in mine. This sort o’ gale would make no more of you than a fluff o’ thistledown.”

They went toward the light on Norland Point—the burly man and the little, elf-like maid—and constantly glanced out to sea, where the ship raced for the cliffs.

“Oh, hurry,” panted Nora, as she had done at the start of their wild journey.

90“I’m hurrying with old bones, and you with young ’uns. Doing my best, I am, like you.”

They were running now—running to quench the lantern that glowed on Norland Point—and as they neared it, the moonlight showed them Jake, striding up and down beside his Wreckers’ Light. Then they saw Dick start from the heather, and kick the lantern over, and disappear again below the cliff.

“Faster,” muttered the old man, watching Jake begin to throw rocks down the precipice.

Before they could reach the Point, Jake himself had disappeared, and under their feet they heard that awful cry ring out, of Garrowby—Black Garrowby.

Rossiter felt Nora’s hand slip from his grasp. She had come to his cottage not long since, half-fainting from terror of a half-mile journey. Yet now, with the cry ringing in her ears, she seemed to have no fear. Twin called to twin. If one was down and spent, the other must keep heart alive.

Before he guessed her purpose, the girl had slipped away from him and was already down the first steps of the rock-stair. Rossiter had fancied his head too old for precipice work; but he followed Nora without a thought of danger. She was too frail to be left alone with the rough mercies of the rocks.

Stepping gingerly, he turned a corner of the track; and there was Dick, lying face down, and Nora whispering to him. In all his knowledge of these two, he had never understood till now the queer bond that linked them. Dick got to his feet, and swayed unsteadily for a moment. Then, as he saw the girl waver, too, and glance at the heaving seas below, he gripped her hand and led her up the track.

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Dick got to his feet.

92Rossiter reached down an arm that held them both; and when they stood safe among the heather on the cliff-top, he snapped out a question:

“Where’s Jake? I heard him screeching Black Garrowby’s name.”

“Jake?” said the boy, his voice quiet and awed. “He followed his lantern into the sea. That’s all I know about it.”

They looked out to sea, all three of them, to know how it went with the little ship, and Rossiter shouted with glee.

“She’s not lost any longer—not tacking about as if she’d no soul of her own to be saved. She’s heading straight for the light on top of my own cove—and she’ll be there before us.”

Dick fell silent as they crossed the moor, and Nora pinched his arm.

“Morose?” she laughed, glad to be free of terror and to know the little ship went safe down there where the seas boomed at the cliffs.

“Yes,” said Dick. “You found me face down on the rocks—a chit of a girl—and helped me up.”

Ben Rossiter laughed again, from his heart upwards. “Oh, bless you, lad, you’re young to fear—the sort that goes after storm. Why, there’ve been times in my seafaring days when I’ve been nigh sick with fear.”

“You, Ben?”

“Ay, me—but always before and after a fight—not while it was on, you understand. We’re alike that way, Master Dick.”

Rossiter saw how it was with the lad, and his whole good-natured soul was set on guiding these two through the aftertime that follows adventure such as they had shared to-night. As they went along the cliff-track, Ben hitched his trousers 93and settled the quid of baccy more firmly in his cheek. He was readying himself for a brave tale of what had, or had not happened in the time when he sailed foreign seas.

Old Ben’s Story of the Pirate King

94“It was this way,” he began, with Parson’s Twins on either side of him, holding his hands tight. “There was a terrible plague of pirates out in the Pacific. They swarmed thick as bees round a honey-pot, and the English Admiral says to me, ‘Ben,’ says he, ‘you’ve a neat little clipper of your own, and none but you can save us.’ ‘How’s that?’ says I. ‘Well,’ says the Admiral—and a marvel he was to see, in his gold-buttoned coat—‘if we get the King of the Pirates, we get the whole gang o’ them. What you’ve to do is to nose him out, wherever his ship happens to be, run up the Black Flag, same as if you were a pirate yourself, and trust to your wits.’ That’s what Admiral said to me, plain as I’m talking to you now.”

“Oh, Ben, go on,” whispered Nora, as he paused in the middle of his tale.

“I never could bide to be hurried, as you know. Besides, my memory’s not what it was. But, so far as I recall, the mate of my ship—name o’ Drinkwater, because he drank so little—said he knew where the Pirate King was skulking. So we went and found him just where Drinkwater had said, in a bay full of crocodiles below and cocoa-nut trees above. You could hear the nuts busting as they fell on top of the crocodiles’ thick backs.”

“Go on,” said Dick, with cheery derision. “Nora believes it all.”

“Seeing’s believing, as you’ll know if you ever come to sail into the Pacific. As I was saying, we found the Pirate King there. His ship was flying the Black Flag, with the skull and cross-bones on it. So was mine.”

95The tale got no further; for a big, broad-shouldered man came over the moor to meet them. He was drenched from head to foot, and the twins left Rossiter to jump into his arms. Tough as Rossiter was, he felt a sense of awe, somehow, as he understood that Parson himself had sailed in the little ship that was nearly wrecked on Norland Point not long ago.

The Parson was not in the best of tempers. “Why did the men set two lights on the cliffs?” he snapped, chilled and tired by the exposure. “We got into the thick of it, coming home from the Island, and made for a cliff-light. Then another light showed to eastward of it.”

“Ay,” broke in Rossiter. “I’ll tell you the tale of it to-morrow. It all came of the twins listening to a sailor-man’s tales that you never relished. You’d best get them up to Parsonage, and tuck ’em up in bed. They’ve done more for you——”

“What have they done?” broke in the Parson.

“That’s to-morrow’s tale, as I told you.”

Rossiter watched them go along the cliffs, and presently Nora came running back to him.

“Ben,” she asked, “what happened to you and the Pirate King!”

“That’s to-morrow’s tale, too,” said Rossiter. “It’s bedtime, Parson’s maid.”

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