Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): Obadiah"

Caesar - "Caesar's Commentaries [in Latin]"

Thomas Hardy - "Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses"

Arnold Bennett - "The Old Wives' Tale"

To Have and To Hold:

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




Her lips moved, but she did not speak. I knelt and kissed her
clasped hands. They were cold to my lips. "Where are you going?"
she whispered. "Into what danger are you going? I - I - take me
with you!"

I rose, with a laugh at my own folly that could have rested brow
and lips on those hands, and let the world wag. "Another time," I
said. "Rest in the sunshine now, and think that all is well. All will
be well, I trust."

A few minutes later saw me almost upon the party gathered about
the grave. The grave had received that which it was to hold until
the crack of doom, and was now being rapidly filled with sand.
The crew of deep-dyed villains worked or stood or sat in silence,
but all looked at the grave, and saw me not. As the last handful of
sand made it level with the beach, I walked into their midst, and
found myself face to face with the three candidates for the now
vacant captaincy.

"Give you good-day, gentlemen," I cried. "Is it your captain that
you bury or one of your crew, or is it only pezos and pieces of
eight?"


CHAPTER XXII IN WHICH I CHANGE MY NAME AND OCCUPATION



"THE sun shining on so much bare steel hurts my eyes," I said.
"Put up, gentlemen, put up! Cannot one rover attend the funeral of
another without all this crowding and display of cutlery? If you
will take the trouble to look around you, you will see that I have
brought to the obsequies only myself."

One by one cutlass and sword were lowered, and those who had
drawn them, falling somewhat back, spat and swore and laughed.
The man in black and silver only smiled gently and sadly. "Did you
drop from the blue?" he asked. "Or did you come up from the sea?"

"I came out of it," I said. "My ship went down in the storm
yesterday. Your little cockboat yonder was more fortunate." I
waved my hand toward that ship of three hundred tons, then
twirled my mustaches and stood at gaze.

"Was your ship so large, then?" demanded Paradise, while a
murmur of admiration, larded with oaths, ran around the circle.

"She was a very great galleon," I replied, with a sigh for the good
ship that was gone.

A moment's silence, during which they all looked at me. "A
galleon," then said Paradise softly.

"They that sailed her yesterday are to-day at the bottom of the sea,"
I continued. "Alackaday! so are one hundred thousand pezos of
gold, three thousand bars of silver, ten frails of pearls, jewels
uncounted, cloth of gold and cloth of silver. She was a very rich
prize."

The circle sucked in their breath. "All at the bottom of the sea?"
queried Red Gil, with gloating eyes fixed upon the smiling water.
"Not one pezo left, not one little, little pearl?"

I shook my head and heaved a prodigious sigh. "The treasure is
gone," I said, "and the men with whom I took it are gone. I am a
captain with neither ship nor crew. I take you, my friends, for a
ship and crew without a captain. The inference is obvious."

The ring gaped with wonder, then strange oaths arose. Red Gil
broke into a bellow of angry laughter, while the Spaniard glared
like a catamount about to spring. "So you would be our captain?"
said Paradise, picking up another shell, and poising it upon a hand
as fine and small as a woman's.

"Faith, you might go farther and fare worse," I answered, and
began to hum a tune. When I had finished it, "I am Kirby," I said,
and waited to see if that shot should go wide or through the hull.

For two minutes the dash of the surf and the cries of the wheeling
sea fowl made the only sound in that part of the world; then from
those half-clad rapscallions arose a shout of "Kirby!" - a shout in
which the three leaders did not join. That one who looked a
gentleman rose from the sand and made me a low bow. "Well met,
noble captain," he cried in those his honey tones. "You will
doubtless remember me who was with you that time at Maracaibo
when you sunk the galleasses. Five years have passed since then,
and yet I see you ten years younger and three inches taller."

"I touched once at the Lucayas, and found the spring de Leon
sought," I said. "Sure the waters have a marvelous effect, and if
they give not eternal youth at least renew that which we have lost."

"Truly a potent aqua vit‘," he remarked, still with thoughtful
melancholy. "I see that it hath changed your eyes from black to
gray."

"It hath that peculiar virtue," I said, "that it can make black seem
white."

The man with the woman's mantle drawn about him now thrust
himself from the rear to the front rank. "That's not Kirby!" he
bawled. "He's no more Kirby than I am Kirby! Did n't I sail with
Kirby from the Summer Isles to Cartagena and back again? He's a
cheat, and I am agoing to cut his heart out!" He was making at me
with a long knife, when I whipped out my rapier.

"Am I not Kirby, you dog?" I cried, and ran him through the
shoulder.

He dropped, and his fellows surged forward with a yell. "Yet a
little patience, my masters!" said Paradise in a raised voice and
with genuine amusement in his eyes. "It is true that that Kirby with
whom I and our friend there on the ground sailed was somewhat
short and as swart as a raven, besides having a cut across his face
that had taken away a part of his lip and the top of his ear, and that
this gentleman who announces himself as Kirby hath none of
Kirby's marks. But we are fair and generous and open to
conviction" -

"He'll have to convince my cutlass!" roared Red Gil.

I turned upon him. "If I do convince it, what then?" I demanded. "If
I convince your sword, you of Spain, and yours, Sir Black and
Silver?"

The Spaniard stared. "I was the best sword in Lima," he said
stiffly. "I and my Toledo will not change our minds."

"Let him try to convince Paradise; he's got no reputation as a
swordsman!" cried out the gravedigger with the broken head.

A roar of laughter followed this suggestion, and I gathered from it
and from the oaths and allusions to this or that time and place that
Paradise was not without reputation.

I turned to him. "If I fight you three, one by one, and win, am I
Kirby?"

He regarded the shell with which he was toying with a thoughtful
smile, held it up that the light might strike through its rose and
pearl, then crushed it to dust between his fingers.

"Ay," he said with an oath. "If you win against the cutlass of Red
Gil, the best blade of Lima, and the sword of Paradise, you may
call yourself the devil an you please, and we will all subscribe to
it."

I lifted my hand. "I am to have fair play?"

As one man that crew of desperate villains swore that the odds
should be only three to one. By this the whole matter had
presented itself to them as an entertainment more diverting than
bullfight or bearbaiting. They that follow the sea, whether honest
men or black-hearted knaves, have in their composition a certain
childlikeness that makes them easily turned, easily led, and easily
pleased. The wind of their passion shifts quickly from point to
point, one moment blowing a hurricane, the next sinking to a
happy-go-lucky summer breeze. I have seen a little thing convert a
crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured
souls who - until the wind veered again - would not hurt a fly. So
with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or
kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine,
their sinewy hands that should have been ingrained red clasped
over their knees, or, arms akimbo, resting upon their hips, on their
scoundrel faces a broad smile, and in their eyes that had looked on
nameless horrors a pleasurable expectation as of spectators in a
playhouse awaiting the entrance of the players.

"There is really no good reason why we should gratify your whim,"
said Paradise, still amused. "But it will serve to pass the time. We
will fight you, one by one."

"And if I win?"

He laughed. "Then, on the honor of a gentleman, you are Kirby and
our captain. If you lose, we will leave you where you stand for the
gulls to bury."

"A bargain," I said, and drew my sword.

"I first!" roared Red Gil. "God's wounds! there will need no
second!"

As he spoke he swung his cutlass and made an arc of blue flame.
The weapon became in his hands a flail, terrible to look upon,
making lightnings and whistling in the air, but in reality not so
deadly as it seemed. The fury of his onslaught would have beaten
down the guard of any mere swordsman, but that I was not. A man,
knowing his weakness and insufficiency in many and many a
thing, may yet know his strength in one or two and his modesty
take no hurt. I was ever master of my sword, and it did the thing I
would have it do. Moreover, as I fought I saw her as I had last seen
her, standing against the bank of sand, her dark hair, half braided,
drawn over her bosom and hanging to her knees. Her eyes haunted
me, and my lips yet felt the touch of her hand. I fought well, - how
well the lapsing of oaths and laughter into breathless silence bore
witness.

The ruffian against whom I was pitted began to draw his breath in
gasps. He was a scoundrel not fit to die, less fit to live, unworthy
of a gentleman's steel. I presently ran him through with as little
compunction and as great a desire to be quit of a dirty job as if he
had been a mad dog. He fell, and a little later, while I was engaged
with the Spaniard, his soul went to that hell which had long gaped
for it. To those his companions his death was as slight a thing as
would theirs have been to him. In the eyes of the two remaining
would-be leaders he was a stumbling-block removed, and to the
squatting, open-mouthed commonality his taking off weighed not a
feather against the solid entertainment I was affording them. I was
now a better man than Red Gil, - that was all.

The Spaniard was a more formidable antagonist. The best blade of
Lima was by no means to be despised; but Lima is a small place,
and its blades can be numbered. The sword that for three years had
been counted the best in all the Low Countries was its better. But I
fought fasting and for the second time that morning, so maybe the
odds were not so great. I wounded him slightly, and presently
succeeded in disarming him. "Am I Kirby?" I demanded, with my
point at his breast.

"Kirby, of course, se¤or," he answered with a sour smile, his eyes
upon the gleaming blade.

I lowered my point and we bowed to each other, after which he sat
down upon the sand and applied himself to stanching the bleeding
from his wound. The pirate ring gave him no attention, but stared
at me instead. I was now a better man than the Spaniard.

The man in black and silver rose and removed his doublet, folding
it very carefully, inside out, that the sand might not injure the
velvet, then drew his rapier, looked at it lovingly, made it bend
until point and hilt well-nigh met, and faced me with a bow.

"You have fought twice, and must be weary," he said. "Will you
not take breath before we engage, or will your long rest afterward
suffice you?"

"I will rest aboard my ship," I made reply. "And as I am in a hurry
to be gone we won't delay."

Our blades had no sooner crossed than I knew that in this last
encounter I should need every whit of my skill, all my wit,
audacity, and strength. I had met my equal, and he came to it fresh
and I jaded. I clenched my teeth and prayed with all my heart; I set
her face before me, and thought if I should fail her to what ghastly
fate she might come, and I fought as I had never fought before.
The sound of the surf became a roar in my ears, the sunshine an
intolerable blaze of light; the blue above and around seemed
suddenly beneath my feet as well. We were fighting high in the air,
and had fought thus for ages. I knew that he made no thrust I did
not parry, no feint I could not interpret. I knew that my eye was
more quick to see, my brain to conceive, and my hand to execute
than ever before; but it was as though I held that knowledge of
some other, and I myself was far away, at Weyanoke, in the
minister's garden, in the haunted wood, anywhere save on that
barren islet. I heard him swear under his breath, and in the face I
had set before me the eyes brightened. As if she had loved me I
fought for her with all my powers of body and mind. He swore
again, and my heart laughed within me. The sea now roared less
loudly, and I felt the good earth beneath my feet. Slowly but surely
I wore him out. His breath came short, the sweat stood upon his
forehead, and still I deferred my attack. He made the thrust of a
boy of fifteen, and I smiled as I put it by.

"Why don't you end it?" he breathed. "Finish and be d-d to you!"

For answer I sent his sword flying over the nearest hillock of sand.
"Am I Kirby?" I said. He fell back against the heaped-up sand and
leaned there, panting, with his hand to his side. "Kirby or devil," he
replied. "Have it your own way."

I turned to the now highly excited rabble. "Shove the boats off,
half a dozen of you!" I ordered. "Some of you others take up that
carrion there and throw it into the sea. The gold upon it is for your
pains. You there with the wounded shoulder you have no great
hurt. I'll salve it with ten pieces of eight from the captain's own
share, the next prize we take."

A shout of acclamation arose that scared the sea fowl. They who
so short a time before had been ready to tear me limb from limb
now with the greatest apparent delight hailed me as captain. How
soon they might revert to their former mood was a question that I
found not worth while to propound to myself.

By this the man in black and silver had recovered his breath and
his equanimity. "Have you no commission with which to honor
me, noble captain?" he asked in gently reproachful tones. "Have
you forgot how often you were wont to employ me in those sweet
days when your eyes were black?"

"By no means, Master Paradise," I said courteously. "I desire your
company and that of the gentleman from Lima. You will go with
me to bring up the rest of my party. The three gentlemen of the
broken head, the bushy ruff, which I protest is vastly becoming,
and the wounded shoulder will escort us."

"The rest of your party?" said Paradise softly.

"Ay," I answered nonchalantly. "They are down the beach and
around the point warming themselves by a fire which this piled-up
sand hides from you. Despite the sunshine it is a biting air. Let us
be going! This island wearies me, and I am anxious to be on board
ship and away."

"So small an escort scarce befits so great a captain," he said. "We
will all attend you." One and all started forward.

I called to mind and gave utterance to all the oaths I had heard in
the wars. "I entertain you for my subordinate whom I command,
and not who commands me!" I cried, when my memory failed me.
"As for you, you dogs, who would question your captain and his
doings, stay where you are, if you would not be lessoned in
earnest!"

Sheer audacity is at times the surest steed a man can bestride. Now
at least it did me good service. With oaths and grunts of
admiration the pirates stayed where they were, and went about
their business of launching the boats and stripping the body of Red
Gil, while the man in black and silver, the Spaniard, the two
gravediggers, the knave with the wounded shoulder, and myself
walked briskly up the beach.

With these five at my heels I strode up to the dying fire and to
those who had sprung to their feet at our approach. "Sparrow," I
said easily, "luck being with us as usual, I have fallen in with a
party of rovers. I have told them who I am, - that Kirby, to wit,
whom an injurious world calls the blackest pirate unhanged, - and
have recounted to them how the great galleon which I took some
months ago went down yesterday with all on board, you and I with
these others being the sole survivors. By dint of a little persuasion
they have elected me their captain, and we will go on board
directly and set sail for the Indies, a hunting ground which we
never should have left. You need not look so blank; you shall be
my mate and right hand still." I turned to the five who formed my
escort. "This, gentlemen, is my mate, Jeremy Sparrow by name,
who hath a taste for divinity that in no wise interferes with his
taste for a galleon or a guarda costa. This man, Diccon Demon by
name, was of my crew. The gentleman without a sword is my
prisoner, taken by me from the last ship I sunk. How he, an
Englishman, came to be upon a Spanish bark I have not found
leisure to inquire. The lady is my prisoner, also."

"Sure by rights she should be gaoler and hold all men's hearts in
ward," said Paradise, with a low bow to my unfortunate captive.

While he spoke a most remarkable transformation was going on.
The minister's grave, rugged, and deeply lined face smoothed itself
and shed ten years at least; in the eyes that I had seen wet with
noble tears a laughing devil now lurked, while his strong mouth
became a loose-lipped, devil-may-care one. His head with its
aureole of bushy, grizzled hair set itself jauntily upon one side,
and from it and from his face and his whole great frame breathed a
wicked jollity quite indescribable.

"Odsbodikins, captain!" he cried. "Kirby's luck! - 't will pass into a
saw! Adzooks! and so you're captain once more, and I'm mate once
more, and we've a ship once more, and we're off once more

sail the Spanish Main

give the Spaniard pain,

ho, bully boy, heave ho!

By 'r lakin! I'm too dry to sing. It will take all the wine of Xeres in
the next galleon to unparch my tongue!"



CHAPTER XXIII IN WHICH WE WRITE UPON THE SAND


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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