P. G. Wodehouse - "Tales of St. Austin's"

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - "The House of Life"

Elmer U. Hoenshel - "My Three Days In Gilead"

Stella G. S. Perry - "The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition"

To Have and To Hold:

M >> Mary Johnston >> To Have and To Hold:




The King's ward endured all without a murmur. She was cold, she
was worn with watching and terror, she was wounded; each
moment Death raised his arm to strike, but she sat there dauntless,
and looked him in the face with a smile upon her own. If, wearied
out, we had given up the fight, her look would have spurred us on
to wrestle with our fate to the last gasp. She sat between Sparrow
and me, and as best we might we shielded her from the drenching
seas and the icy wind. Morning had shown me the blood upon her
sleeve, and I had cut away the cloth from the white arm, and had
washed the wound with wine and bound it up. If for my fee, I
should have liked to press my lips upon the blue-veined marble,
still I did it not.

When, a week before, I had stored the boat with food and drink
and had brought it to that lonely wharf, I had thought that if at the
last my wife willed to flee I would attempt to reach the bay, and
passing out between the capes would go to the north. Given an
open boat and the tempestuous seas of November, there might be
one chance out of a hundred of our reaching Manhattan and the
Dutch, who might or might not give us refuge. She had willed to
flee, and
ILLUSTRATION
we were upon our journey, and the one chance had vanished.
That wan, monotonous, cold, and clinging mist had shrouded us
for our burial, and our grave yawned beneath us.

The day passed and the night came, and still we fought the sea, and
still the wind drove us whither it would. The night passed and the
second morning came, and found us yet alive. My wife lay now at
my feet, her head pillowed upon the bundle she had brought from
the minister's house. Too weak for speech, waiting in pain and
cold and terror for death to bring her warmth and life, the knightly
spirit yet lived in her eyes, and she smiled when I bent over her
with wine to moisten her lips. At length she began to wander in her
mind, and to speak of summer days and flowers. A hand held my
heart in a slowly tightening grip of iron, and the tears ran down the
minister's cheeks. The man who had darkened her young life,
bringing her to this, looked at her with an ashen face.

As the day wore on, the gray of the sky paled to a dead man's hue
and the wind lessened, but the waves were still mountain high.
One moment we poised, like the gulls that now screamed about us,
upon some giddy summit, the sky alone above and around us; the
next we sank into dark green and glassy caverns. Suddenly the
wind fell away, veered, and rose again like a giant refreshed.

Diccon started, put his hand to his ear, then sprang to his feet.
"Breakers!" he cried hoarsely.

We listened with straining ears. He was right. The low, ominous
murmur changed to a distant roar, grew louder yet, and yet louder,
and was no longer distant.

"It will be the sand islets off Cape Charles, sir," he said. I nodded.
He and I knew there was no need of words.

The sky grew paler and paler, and soon upon the woof of the
clouds a splash of dull yellow showed where the sun would be.
The fog rose, laying bare the desolate ocean. Before us were two
very small islands, mere handfuls of sand, lying side by side, and
encompassed half by the open sea, half by stiller waters diked in
by marshes and sand bars. A coarse, scanty grass and a few stunted
trees with branches bending away from the sea lived upon them,
but nothing else. Over them and over the marshes and the sand
banks circled myriads of great white gulls. Their harsh, unearthly
voices came to us faintly, and increased the desolation of earth and
sky and sea.

To the shell-strewn beach of the outer of the two islets raced long
lines of surf, and between us and it lurked a sand bar, against
which the great rollers dashed with a bull-like roar. The wind
drove us straight upon this bar. A moment of deadly peril and it
had us fast, holding us for the waves to beat our life out. The boat
listed, then rested, quivering through all its length. The waves
pounded against its side, each watery battering-ram dissolving in
foam and spray but to give place to another, and yet it held
together, and yet we lived. How long it would hold we could not
tell; we only knew it could not be for long. The inclination of the
boat was not so great but that, with caution, we might move about.
There were on board rope and an axe. With the latter I cut away
the thwarts and the decking in the bow, and Diccon and I made a
small raft. When it was finished, I lifted my wife in my arms and
laid her upon it and lashed her to it with the rope. She smiled like
a child, then closed her eyes. "I have gathered primroses until I am
tired," she said. "I will sleep here a little in the sunshine, and when
I awake I will make you a cowslip ball."

Time passed, and the groaning, trembling timbers still held
together. The wind fell, the sky became blue, and the sun shone.
Another while, and the waves were less mountainous and beat less
furiously against the boat. Hope brightened before us. To strong
swimmers the distance to the islet was trifling; if the boat would
but last until the sea subsided, we might gain the beach. What we
would do upon that barren spot, where was neither man nor brute,
food nor water, was a thing that we had not the time to consider. It
was land that we craved.

Another hour, and the sea still fell. Another, and a wave struck the
boat with force. "The sea is coming in!" cried the minister.

"Ay," I answered. "She will go to pieces now."

The minister rose to his feet. "I am no mariner," he said, "but once
in the water I can swim you like any fish. There have been times
when I have reproached the Lord for that he cased a poor silly
humble preacher like me with the strength and seeming of some
might man of old, and there have been times when I have thanked
him for that strength. I thank him now. Captain Percy, if you will
trust the lady to me, I will take her safely to that shore."

I raised my head from the figure over which I was bending, and
looked first at the still tumultuous sea, and then at the gigantic
frame of the minister. When we had made that frail raft no
swimmer could have lived in that shock of waves; now there was a
chance for all, and for the minister, with his great strength, the
greatest I have ever seen in any man, a double chance. I took her
from the raft and gave her into his arms. A minute later the boat
went to pieces.

Side by side Sparrow and I buffeted the sea. He held the King's
ward in one arm, and he bore her safely over the huge swells and
through the onslaught of the breaking waves. I could thank God for
his strength, and trust her to it. For the other three of us, we were
all strong swimmers, and though bruised and beat about, we held
our own. Each wave, overcome, left us nearer the islet, - a little
while and our feet touched bottom. A short struggle with the
tremendous surf and we were out of the maw of the sea, but out
upon a desolate islet, a mere hand's-breadth of sand and shell in a
lonely ocean, some three leagues from the mainland of Accomac,
and upon it neither food nor water. We had the clothes upon our
backs, and my lord and I had kept our swords. I had a knife, and
Diccon too was probably armed. The flint and steel and tinder box
within my pouch made up our store.

The minister laid the woman whom he carried upon the pebbles,
fell upon his knees, and lifted his rugged face to heaven. I too
knelt, and with my hand upon her heart said my own prayer in my
own way. My lord stood with unbent head, his eyes upon that still
white face, but Diccon turned abruptly and strode off to a low
ridge of sand, from the top of which one might survey the entire
island.

In two minutes he was back again. "There's plenty of driftwood
further up the beach," he announced, "and a mort of dried
seaweed. At least we need n't freeze."

The great bonfire that we made roared and crackled, sending out a
most cheerful heat and light. Under that genial breath the color
came slowly back to madam's cheek and lip, and her heart beat
more strongly. Presently she turned under my hand, and with a sigh
pillowed her head upon her arm and went to sleep in that blessed
warmth like a little child.

We who had no mind for sleep sat there beside the fire and
watched the sun sink behind the low black line of the mainland,
now plainly visible in the cleared air. It dyed the waves blood red,
and shot out one long ray to crimson a single floating cloud, no
larger than a man's hand, high in the blue. Sea birds, a countless
multitude, went to and fro with harsh cries from island to marsh,
and marsh to island. The marshes were still green; they lay, a half
moon of fantastic shapes, each parted from the other by pink
water. Beyond them was the inlet dividing us from the mainland,
and that inlet was three leagues in width. We turned and looked
seaward. Naught but leaping waves white-capped to the horizon.

"We touched here the time we went against the French at Port
Royal and St. Croix," I said. "We had heard a rumor that the
Bermuda pirates had hidden gold here. Argall and I went over
every foot of it."

"And found no water?" questioned the minister.

"And found no water."

The light died from the west and from the sea beneath, and the
night fell. When with the darkness the sea fowl ceased their
clamor, a dreadful silence suddenly enfolded us. The rush of the
surf made no difference; the ear heard it, but to the mind there was
no sound. The sky was thick with stars; every moment one shot,
and the trail of white fire it left behind melted into the night
silently like snowflakes. There was no wind. The moon rose out of
the sea, and lent the sandy isle her own pallor. Here and there,
back amongst the dunes, the branches of a low and leafless tree
writhed upward like dark fingers thrust from out the spectral earth.
The ocean, quiet now, dreamed beneath the moon and cared not
for the five lives it had cast upon that span of sand.

We piled driftwood and tangles of seaweed upon our fire, and it
flamed and roared and broke the silence. Diccon, going to the
landward side of the islet, found some oysters, which we roasted
and ate; but we had nor wine nor water with which to wash them
down.

"At least there are here no foes to fear," quoth my lord. "We may
all sleep to-night; and zooks! we shall need it!" He spoke frankly,
with an open face.

"I will take one watch, if you will take the other," I said to the
minister.

He nodded. "I will watch until midnight."

It was long past that time when he roused me from where I lay at
Mistress Percy's feet.

"I should have relieved you long ago," I told him.

He smiled. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone upon and
softened his rugged features. I thought I had never seen a face so
filled with tenderness and hope and a sort of patient power. "I have
been with God," he said simply. "The starry skies and the great
ocean and the little shells beneath my hand, - how wonderful are
thy works, O Lord! What is man that thou art mindful of him? And
yet not a sparrow falleth"-

I rose and sat by the fire, and he laid himself down upon the sand
beside me.

"Master Sparrow," I asked, "have you ever suffered thirst?"

"No," he answered. We spoke in low tones, lest we should wake
her. Diccon and my lord, upon the other side of the fire, were
sleeping heavily.

"I have," I said. "Once I lay upon a field of battle throughout a
summer day, sore wounded and with my dead horse across my
body. I shall forget the horror of that lost field and the torment of
that weight before I forget the thirst."

"You think there is no hope?"

"What hope should there be?"

He was silent. Presently he turned and looked at the King's ward
where she lay in the rosy light; then his eyes came back to mine.

"If it comes to the worst I shall put her out of her torment," I said.

He bowed his head and we sat in silence, our gaze upon the ground
between us, listening to the low thunder of the surf and the
crackling of the fire. "I love her," I said at last. "God help me!"

He put his finger to his lips. She had stirred and opened her eyes. I
knelt beside her, and asked her how she did and if she wanted
aught.

"It is warm," she said wonderingly.

"You are no longer in the boat," I told her. "You are safe upon the
land. You have been sleeping here by the fire that we kindled."

An exquisite smile just lit her face, and her eyelids drooped again.
"I am so tired," she said drowsily, "that I will sleep a little longer.
Will you bring me some water, Captain Percy? I am very thirsty."

After a moment I said gently, "I will go get it, madam." She made
no answer; she was already asleep. Nor did Sparrow and I speak
again. He laid himself down with his face to the ocean, and I sat
with my head in my hands, and thought and thought, to no
purpose.



CHAPTER XXI IN WHICH A GRAVE IS DIGGED


WHEN the stars had gone out and the moon begun to pale, I raised
my face from my hands. Only a few glowing embers remained of
the fire, and the driftwood that we had collected was exhausted. I
thought that I would gather more, and build up the fire against the
time when the others should awake. The driftwood lay in greatest
quantity some distance up the beach, against a low ridge of sand
dunes. Beyond these the islet tapered off to a long gray point of
sand and shell. Walking toward this point in the first pale light of
dawn, I chanced to raise my eyes, and beheld riding at anchor
beyond the spit of sand a ship.

I stopped short and rubbed my eyes. She lay there on the sleeping
ocean like a dream ship, her masts and rigging black against the
pallid sky, the mist that rested upon the sea enfolding half her hull.
She might have been of three hundred tons burthen; she was black
and two-decked, and very high at poop and forecastle, and she was
heavily armed. My eyes traveled from the ship to the shore, and
there dragged up on the point, the oars within it, was a boat.

At the head of the beach, beyond the line of shell and weed, the
sand lay piled in heaps. With these friendly hillocks between me
and the sea, I crept on as silently as I might, until I reached a point
just above the boat. Here I first heard voices. I went a little
further, then knelt, and, parting the long coarse grass that filled the
hollow between two hillocks, looked out upon two men who were
digging a grave.

They dug in a furious hurry, throwing the sand to left and right,
and cursing as they dug. They were powerful men, of a most
villainous cast of countenance, and dressed very oddly. One with a
shirt of coarsest dowlas, and a filthy rag tying up a broken head,
yet wore velvet breeches, and wiped the sweat from his face with a
wrought handkerchief; the other topped a suit of shreds and
patches with a fine bushy ruff, and swung from one ragged
shoulder a cloak of grogram lined with taffeta. On the ground, to
one side of them, lay something long and wrapped in white.

As they dug and cursed, the light strengthened. The east changed
from gray to pale rose, from rose to a splendid crimson shot with
gold. The mist lifted and the sea burned red. Two boats were
lowered from the ship, and came swiftly toward the point.

"Here they are at last," growled the gravedigger with the broken
head and velvet breeches.

"They've taken their time," snarled his companion, "and us two
here on this d-d island with a dead man the whole ghost's hour.
Boarding a ship's nothing, but to dig a grave on the land before
cockcrow, with the man you're to put in it looking at you! Why
could n't he be buried at sea, decent and respectable, like other
folk?"

"It was his will, - that's all I know," said the first; "just as it was his
will, when he found he was a dying man, to come booming away
from the gold seas up here to a land where there is n't no gold, and
never will be. Belike he thought he'd find waiting for him at the
bottom of the sea, all along from the Lucayas to Cartagena, the
many he sent there afore he died. And Captain Paradise, he says,
says he: 'It's ill crossing a dead man. We'll obey him this once
more' " -

"Captain Paradise!" cried he of the ruff. "Who made him captain? -
curse him!"

His fellow straightened himself with a jerk. "Who made him
captain? The ship will make him captain. Who else should be
captain?"

"Red Gil!"

"Red Gil!" exclaimed the other. "I'd rather have the Spaniard!"

"The Spaniard would do well enough, if the rest of us were n't
English. If hating every other Spaniard would do it, he'd be English
fast enough."

The scoundrel with the broken head burst into a loud laugh. "D' ye
remember the bark we took off Porto Bello, with the priests
aboard? Oho! Oho!"

The rogue with the ruff grinned. "I reckon the padres remember it,
and find hell easy lying. This hole's deep enough, I'm thinking."

They both clambered out, and one squatted at the head of the grave
and mopped his face with his delicate handkerchief, while the
other swung his fine cloak with an air and dug his bare toes in the
sand.

The two boats now grated upon the beach, and several of their
occupants, springing out, dragged them up on the sand.

"We'll never get another like him that's gone," said the worthy at
the head of the grave, gloomily regarding the something wrapped
in white.

"That's gospel truth," assented the other, with a prodigious sigh.
"He was a man what was a man. He never stuck at nothing. Don
or priest, man or woman, good red gold or dirty silver, - it was all
one to him. But he's dead and gone!"

"Now, if we had a captain like Kirby," suggested the first.

"Kirby keeps to the Summer Isles," said the second. "'T is n't often
now that he swoops down as far as the Indies."

The man with the broken head laughed. "When he does, there's a
noise in that part of the world."

"And that's gospel truth, too," swore the other, with an oath of
admiration.

By this the score or more who had come in the two boats were
halfway up the beach. In front, side by side, as each conceding no
inch of leadership, walked three men: a large man, with a
villainous face much scarred, and a huge, bushy, dark red beard; a
tall dark man, with a thin fierce face and bloodshot eyes, the
Spaniard by his looks; and a slight man, with the face and bearing
of an English gentleman. The men behind them differed no whit
from the two gravediggers, being as scoundrelly of face, as great of
strength, and as curiously attired. They came straight to the open
grave, and the dead man beside it. The three who seemed of most
importance disposed themselves, still side by side, at the head of
the grave, and their following took the foot.

"It's a dirty piece of work," said Red Gil in a voice like a raven's,
"and the sooner it's done with, and we are aboard again and
booming back to the Indies, the better I'll like it. Over with him,
brave boys!"

"Is it yours to give the word?" asked the slight man, who was
dressed point-device, and with a finical nicety, in black and silver.
His voice was low and clear, and of a somewhat melancholy
cadence, going well with the pensiveness of fine, deeply fringed
eyes.

"Why should n't I give the word?" growled the personage
addressed, adding with an oath, "I've as good a right to give it as
any man, - maybe a better right!"

"That would be scanned," said he of the pensive eyes. "Gentlemen,
we have here the pick of the ship. For the captain that these
choose, those on board will throw up their caps. Let us bury the
dead, and then let choice be made of one of us three, each of
whom has claims that might be put forward" - He broke off and
picking up a delicate shell began to study its pearly spirals with a
tender, thoughtful, half-pleased, half-melancholy countenance.

The gravedigger with the wrought handkerchief looked from him
to the rascal crew massed at the foot of the grave, and, seeing his
own sentiments mirrored in the countenances of not a few,
snatched the bloody clout from his head, waved it, and cried out,
"Paradise!" Whereupon arose a great confusion. Some bawled for
Paradise, some for Red Gil, a few for the Spaniard. The two
gravediggers locked horns, and a brawny devil with a woman's
mantle swathed about his naked shoulders drew a knife, and made
for a partisan of the Spaniard, who in his turn skillfully interposed
between himself and the attack the body of a bawling well-wisher
to Red Gil.

The man in black and silver tossed aside the shell, rose, and
entered the lists. With one hand he seized the gravedigger of the
ruff, and hurled him apart from him of the velvet breeches; with
the other he presented a dagger with a jeweled haft at the breast of
the ruffian with the woman's mantle, while in tones that would
have befitted Astrophel plaining of his love to rocks, woods, and
streams, he poured forth a flood of wild, singular, and filthy oaths,
such as would have disgraced a camp follower. His interference
was effectual. The combatants fell apart and the clamor was
stilled, whereupon the gentleman of contrarieties at once resumed
the gentle and indifferent melancholy of manner and address.

"Let us off with the old love before we are on with the new,
gentlemen," he said. "We'll bury the dead first, and choose his
successor afterward, - decently and in order, I trust, and with due
submission to the majority."

"I'll fight for my rights," growled Red Gil.

"And I for mine," cried the Spaniard.

"And each of us'll back his own man," muttered in an aside the
gravedigger with the broken head.

The one they called Paradise sighed. "It is a thousand pities that
there is not amongst us some one of merit so pre‰minent that
faction should hide its head before it. But to the work in hand,
gentlemen."

They gathered closer around the yawning grave, and some began
to lift the corpse. As for me, I withdrew as noiselessly as an Indian
from my lair of grass, and, hidden by the heaped-up sand, made off
across the point and down the beach to where a light curl of smoke
showed that some one was mending the fire I had neglected. It was
Sparrow, who alternately threw on driftwood and seaweed and
spoke to madam, who sat at his feet in the blended warmth of fire
and sunshine. Diccon was roasting the remainder of the oysters he
had gathered the night before, and my lord stood and stared with a
frowning face at the nine-mile distant mainland. All turned their
eyes upon me as I came up to the fire.

"A little longer, Captain Percy, and we would have had out a
search warrant," began the minister cheerfully. "Have you been
building a bridge?"

"If I build one," I said, "it will be a perilous one enough. Have you
looked seaward?"

"We waked but a minute agone," he answered. As he spoke, he
straightened his great form and lifted his face from the fire to the
blue sea. Diccon, still on his knees at his task, looked too; and my
lord, turning from his contemplation of the distant kingdom of
Accomac; and Mistress Percy, one hand shading her eyes, the
slender fingers of the other still immeshed in her long dark hair
which she had been braiding. They stared at the ship in silence
until my lord laughed.

"Conjure us on board at once, captain," he cried. "We are thirsty."

I drew the minister aside. "I am going up the beach, beyond that
point, again; you will one and all stay here. If I do not come back,
do the best you can, and sell her life as dearly as you can. If I come
back, - you are quick of wit and have been a player; look that you
take the cue I give you!"

I returned to the fire, and he followed me, amazement in his face.
"My Lord Carnal," I said, "I must ask you for your sword."

He started, and his black brows drew together. "Though the
fortunes of war have made me in some sort your captive, sir," he
said at last, and not without dignity, "I do not see, upon this isle to
which we are all prisoners, the need of so strong testimony to the
abjectness of my condition, nor deem it generous" -

"We will speak of generosity another day, my lord," I interrupted.
"At present I am in a hurry. That you are my prisoner in verity is
enough for me, but not for others. I must have you so in seeming as
well as in truth. Moreover, Master Sparrow is weaponless, and I
must needs disarm an enemy to arm a friend. I beg that you will
give what else we must take."

He looked at Diccon, but Diccon stood with his face to the sea. I
thought we were to have a struggle, and I was sorry for it, but my
lord could and did add discretion to a valor that I never doubted.
He shrugged his shoulders, burst into a laugh, and turned to
Mistress Percy.

"What can one do, lady, when one is doubly a prisoner, prisoner to
numbers and to beauty? E'en laugh at fate, and make the best of a
bad job. Here, sir! Some day it shall be the point!"

He drew his rapier from its sheath, and presented the hilt to me. I
took it with a bow, and handed it to Sparrow.

The King's ward had risen, and now leant against the bank of sand,
her long dark hair, half braided, drawn over either shoulder, her
face marble white between the waves of darkness.

"I do not know that I shall ever come back," I said, stopping before
her. "May I kiss your hand before I go?"

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