CHAPTER VII

THE MAN IN THE LUGGER

I

The lugger came bowling on, one man in her stern.

"Diamond's bested em!" rose in a roar from the _Tremendous_.

And so it seemed.

The _Kite_ was making straight for the sloop, plunging giddily, as though wounded.

"All hands aloft!" roared old Ding-dong. "Back tops'ls!"

There was a scamper of feet along the deck; and up the shrouds a scurry of dark figures. Above was ordered bustle; from the deck a sounding voice ruled all, as God rules the world.

"Canst use a pistol, lad?"

The words, swift as hail, smote Kit's ear.

"I don't know, sir," babbled the boy, sick with excitement.

A minute back Hell had yawned, and he had peeped in. He was still aghast.

"Then find oot!" fierce as a sword. "Joomp into t'mizzen-chains, and pick off yon chap at the helm, as he cooms under ma counter."

He thrust a pistol into the boy's hands.

How limp the lad felt beside this masterful old man!

In another moment he was standing in the chains, the dark and giddy waters swirling beneath him. The blood thumped in his temples.

Was it to be his St. Vincent? his chance?

The lugger came tearing up. He could hear the swish of the waters, white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows, the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could see no man at the helm--only the jumping bowsprit, the thrashing foot, and that huge lug-sail, bellying over the water.

Suddenly his mind flamed. In the white glare of it he saw the thing to do, and had done it, before cold reason could check him.

He jumped.

The boat and giddy waters rose up to meet him. He fell as on to a mattress, full of wind. It was the lug-sail he had struck. Down it he sprawled to the deck, there to find himself upon his hands and knees, something soft beneath him.

One man was in the boat; and that man was staring him in the face.

There was no mistaking him. He was black, with diamond eyes. The moon was on his face; and about his lips a queer snarling smile.

Kit expected him to pounce; yet he did not, lolling back in the stern-sheets, very much at his ease. The tiller under his arm wobbled, and he wobbled with it. In spite of those staring eyes of his, there was a dreadful unsteadiness about the man. Was he wounded?--was he drunk?

Somehow the boy was not very much afraid. It was all too dream-like. He heard his heart thundering far-away on the remotest shores of being. He heard his own voice speaking, and was surprised at it--how steady it was, and how small!

It was saying,

"I'm a King's officer. That's a King's ship. There are about a thousand men on board. It's all no go. D'you give in?"

The man grinned sardonically. Then his head fell forward. He lurched horribly. The tiller slipped from under his arm. The lugger fell away, and lay on the water like a wounded bird.

Then Kit understood.

Black Diamond was dead.

II

The boy's mind relaxed like a burst bladder.

He began to laugh.

Where was he?

Alone on the deep with a dead man.

Well, well. It was not for the first time surely. A ghost, long-laid, walked again. A sudden lightning had flashed upon his past. In it he had seen and _remembered_. Something of a forgotten self floated to the surface. In turmoil, his Eternal Mind had thrown up on the sea of Time a memory from its imperishable hoard.

Slowly he recollected himself, and looked about him.

He was kneeling on something soft, and his hands were warm and slimy. He looked down, and jerked back with a scream.

He was kneeling on a dead man, and his hands were crimson.

A gust caught the lugger: she staggered forward with a flap and swing of her boom. Her master, her mate, was dead; and the spirit had gone out of her.

No time for the horrors! he must be doing.

In a moment he was at work with his dirk. The great lug came down with a rattle.

Forward under the boom, he cut the sheet of the jib. It fluttered furiously, streaming lee-ward. Then he stumbled aft.

The murdered helmsman still lolled in drunken stupor, smiling inscrutably.

Astern the sloop lay with tall clothed masts, swaying, a phantom on the troubled waters.

A boat had put off from her, and was bucking towards him.

"Lugger ahoy!" came a windy voice across the water. "Is that you, sir?--all well?"

"I'm all right," cried the boy, and was ashamed to find his voice cracked with emotion.

The boat bumped alongside. Reuben Boniface's face popped up over the side.

"Plucky thing, sir!" he cried, bobbing with the boat; then seeing the man at the tiller--"Ah, Bert! a fair cop."

"He's dead," said the boy with a sob.

"Dead!" cried the other, thrusting forward. "By thunder! so he is. Boys, Black Diamond's dead!" He took the dead man by the hand. "Poor old mate!" he continued in hushed voice. "Fancy that now. Diamond dead!"

Another head bobbed up.

"Did you kill him, sir?" asked an awed voice.

"No, I didn't. I think it was this man. He killed Black Diamond; and Black Diamond killed him back."

His heart was swollen almost to bursting.

A row of heads now bobbed all along the side, staring at the dead man. It awed them, this lay-figure with the dreadful stillness brooding about it, rocking with the rock of the sea. They spoke of it with lowered voices reverently.

"Funny thing--him so quiet. Don't seem nat'ral like."

"Warn't like that ten minutes since."

"That Black Diamond!--and can't lift his own hand now!"

"Ah, makes a change, Death, don't it?"

"One thing sure," ended a philosopher. "Like it or not--sooner or later--in this world we all gets our desarts."

So these solemn children, big of the sea, brooded over the Great Mystery. Here _they_ were in the dark, the night blind about them, the old sea roaming round; and here was _It_. Dimly they tried to apprehend _It_. Somehow _It_ made them feel strangely small, and somehow strangely great.

Reuben was still pumping the dead man's hand up and down, the tears coursing down his face.

"Poor old mate!" he kept saying. "He'd not ha been the same if things had been different--would you, old mate?--I wish I'd ha shook hands with you now, I do."

A shuddering voice spoke from the boat. It was the broken blockade-man.

"Ow much is he dead?" he asked.

"Why, dead as dirt," replied a matter-of-fact fellow, chewing his pig-tail phlegmatically.

"Sure he ain't learying?" came the voice of the man with the shivers.

"You fear'd on him still, Alf?" asked one curiously.

"Fear'd on him?--No, I ain't fear'd on him!" came a ghastly titter. "Got no cause, ave I?"

"He won't urt you," replied the other, soothingly. "He's dead all right--ain't you, Diamond?--You can tweak his nose, see?--and then go ome, and tell the gals what you done. Tweak Black Diamond by the conk!"

"You let him be!" growled Reuben. "Time was you'd ha crawled to him. Now any snotty little toad can make game on him."

Kit looked up at the rising voices.

A fellow had seized Diamond by the nose, plucking back his head.

The dead man's mouth gaped. Into the cavern of it shone the moon.

"One moment!" cried the boy; and hating himself, he thrust a finger and thumb into the opening, and plucked out the thing which gleamed within.

It was a cut-glass scent-bottle.

##