William Shakespeare - "All's Well, that Ends Well"

Rudyard Kipling - "Stalky & Co."

Margaret Penrose - "The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake"

Louisa May Alcott - "Under the Lilacs"

To Have and To Hold:

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I do not know. Not long."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XXIV IN WHICH WE CHOOSE THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Naught else," I said.

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

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

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

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

"I am content to be your enemy," I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He throws it," said the minister beneath his breath.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's other guess messengers that they'll send," muttered Diccon.
"They're uncovering the guns, sir."

Every man of those villains, save one, was of English birth; every
man knew that the disabled ship was an English merchantman
filled with peaceful folk, but the knowledge changed their plans no
whit. There was a great hubbub; cries and oaths and brutal
laughter, the noise of the gunners with their guns, the clang of
cutlass and pike as they were dealt out, but not a voice raised
against the murder that was to be done. I looked from the doomed
ship, upon which there was now frantic haste and confusion, to the
excited throng below me, and knew that I had as well cry for
mercy to winter wolves.

The helmsman behind me had not waited for orders, and we were
bearing down upon the disabled bark. Ahead of us, upon our
larboard bow, was a patch of lighter green, and beyond it a slight
hurry and foam of the waters. Half a dozen voices cried warning to
the helmsman. It was he of the woman's mantle, whom I had run
through the shoulder on the island off Cape Charles, and he had
been Kirby's pilot from Maracaibo to Fort Caroline. Now he
answered with a burst of vaunting oaths: "We're in deep water, and
there's deep water beyond. I've passed this way before, and I'll
carry ye safe past that reef were 't hell's gate!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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