Part 29

So, when the mist lifted its barriers and the gloomy stretch of sea was visible, Anthony began searching the east and northeast; rank on dismal rank stretched the green, fungus-grown hulks; the water in places seemed to lift itself in solid waves of rotting grass. But no sign of a standing mast was anywhere. As there was a possibility of one, unstepped or broken off, lying upon one of the decks, the mate took a boat's crew and set off; they were gone until nightfall and returned unsuccessful. Next day Anthony took up the venture; for hours the men strove with the thick sea and drifting wreckage; Anthony clambered from hulk to hulk; but he returned as Corkery had done, defeated. A week went by; in a few days there was a light wind, and the schooner, with all sail set and the _Rufus Stevens_ towing astern, made some small way around the crowding wrecks. But the last of the week saw Corkery chance upon a stout mast adrift amid the weed; by deal of effort it was brought alongside the ship and hoisted on board. With an adze and an ax Anthony trimmed the heel of the timber into the required shape; and Corkery served the stump of the _Rufus Stevens_ in a way that would be like to meet it. With a pair of spars erected as sheers, and blocks and lines, the mast was swung into place and lashed firmly to the stump, the braces were hauled taut, and the cleats made fast about the heel. By the afternoon of the next day the spars and sail were in place; also a bowsprit had been rigged and a pair of jibs added to the spread of canvas. By the following noon a sluggish wind had both vessels moving. The short spars and ill-fitting sails of the _Rufus Stevens_ gave her a slovenly look; but Anthony felt like a prince as he stood at her wheel and guided the great hull through the scum and desolation of that gloomy place.

"Keep outside the hulks," said Tom Horn, "well outside, and you'll have no great odds to contend with. You are now in the current; it moves slowly here, but will grow swifter later on. Days and weeks will pass, and all the time you'll seem to be burrowing deeper into this region's rotting heart; you will sicken as I did, but keep hope with you, for the end will be good."

Days did pass; and weeks passed, also. Each morning came the same: the banks of mist rearing from a sea to sky, a thin light seeping through, and then the first sparklings of the sun, and a wind that set the tendrils and banners of the fog a-tossing. Sometimes the direction of the breeze was favorable; the sails flapped as the grudging measures were poured into them, and foot by foot the great ship took her way. The sun traveled hot and red across the sky; the files of dead ships hung steadily upon their quarter. The filthy, vulture-like birds hovered about with hideous expectancy. And night settled, dark, silent, filled with a choking miasma, or burning with brittle stars, and with a quiet moon, spreading a corpse-cloth over the sea.

The _Roebuck_, with Corkery aboard, kept in the van; her sails took more of the wind, and her narrower bulk slipped along with greater ease. Then, well into one quiet night, they rode into clear water; Tom Horn heard the sucking pull under the ship's foot and raised a cry; the wind had a snapping vigor and smelled clean; there was a feeling of fine, leaping life in the world. And then morning came dancing toward them across the white, tufted seas; the vast, shining expanse lifted and lowered; and the spotted sky raced over them like charging horses.

"God's sun!" said Tom Horn. "God's sky, and God's sea! There is that in a man's soul which will always be the saving of him, if he trusts to it and keeps himself from fear."

After they had their breakfast, Anthony fixed their position by the sun; a few fair days sail would lift the Cape Verdes into view; so, signaling Corkery, in the schooner, he turned the ship west by a trifle south, meaning to skirt the Sargasso and fall into the sea roads traveled by ships working north from Rio or the Far East.

The sails drew badly and were hard to manage; nevertheless, the vessel made good time. The _Roebuck_ kept her well in view, stepping along under shortened canvas; at night the mate would draw the schooner off; but at daylight he'd creep up once more. One morning when Anthony came on deck he noted Tom Horn forward, with the glass, holding it steadily upon a point almost due west.

"A sail," said the clerk; "a spot only, and standing just above the line."

There was that in his voice which caught Anthony's attention: the man's hands were shaking; his face was gray.

"We'll meet many vessels from now on," said Anthony. "We are coming into the track of them."

But Tom Horn said nothing, holding the glass leveled. Another fifteen minutes lifted the sail into plainer view.

"She is a brig," said the clerk, "and, by her build and manner of wearing her rigging, she's American." He was silent for a few moments more; then he held out the glass very quietly to Anthony and said: "It was a brig we saw prowling off the coast of the Jerseys when we were there, I think."

Anthony took the glass and picked up the approaching vessel. She was brig-rigged and slackly kept; her dress of sails was shabby and patched, but the morning light caught and held in a foretopsail that was white and new.

XLIII

Mademoiselle Lafargue was reading at one of the windows of the main cabin when Anthony came in. He went to the arms-chest in one corner, threw up the lid, and stood glowering into it. She said nothing. He took out a musket, examined the lock, and snapped it; and he did the like with a half-dozen more. Then pistols: he carefully laid them upon a settle in a row--cold, shining, deadly; he loaded them, and the muskets, too.

Then she spoke.

"Something has happened," she said.

"There is a vessel ahead that I have reason to mistrust," said Anthony. "A slatternly-looking ship; the same that I saw going up and down the coast before you sent for me."

She put down her book and arose.

"They have found us!" she said, but she said it without a deal of fear. "What a strange thing, in all these seas, to have come to this one place!"

"It was no chance," said Anthony, scowling; "it is not in nature to hit a thing off as precisely as that."

"You have suffered," she said; "you have suffered a deal, and dared more; and now you are in a new danger when you thought to win safely home. I am sorry."

Yes, she was sorry; he saw it in her eyes. She was wistful, too, and it pleased him. To have a beautiful woman think so of one is no mean thing. But this was not all, and he continued to look at her. Sorrow did not make her hold herself so proudly; wistfulness did not keep her eyes so level; and neither of them gave her manner that serene sure quality.

It was confidence. His heart quickened as he understood: danger had come again, but nowhere in her mind was there a doubt but he'd make through it; she had no thought but that he'd keep her safe. Her silence was saying a thing to him any man would be proud of; and his mind was still listening to it when he heard voices hailing the ship, and the creak of blocks from very close at hand.

They went upon deck. It was crisp and blowing; the waves were short and tufted with white; the light gleamed on the sea; and the blue swept overhead and down into the west like a great cascade. The stranger brig was lying, with flapping sails, directly in their course; there was nothing for Anthony to do but throw his own ship out, and the two drifted and rose and fell within speaking distance, Tarrant stood at the rail amidships, a sneer upon his handsome mouth and victory in his look. Blake was near him. Both were watching the ship, and Blake's laugh came ringing over the water.

"Now hold to that," he said, "and we'll be aboard of you directly."

Anthony heard a splash at the stern of the brig; they had launched a boat. Two men pulled it around to the vessel's side, and Blake prepared to step into it. Anthony took up one of the muskets, and looked to its flint and priming; then he balanced it upon the high bulwark before him.

"If you value your peace of mind, you'll keep your distance," he said.

Blake gazed at him with a deal of good humor.

"What," said he, "are you still of the mind to carry yourself so?" Then, looking past Anthony, he roared with laughing. "So help me God!" he said, "it's mademoiselle! Well struck, sir! Mademoiselle, I congratulate you on a champion who keeps his pose, no matter how events point or carry."

Tarrant spoke, a bitter look in his face. Anthony could not hear the words, but the gesture motioned Blake into the boat, quite plainly. And the young men called across the place between the two vessels:

"Tarrant, if that man attempts to board me, I'll have his life."

With the same sneering, bitter look, Tarrant faced the ship for a moment, not stirring nor speaking; Blake, never heeding Anthony's words, leaped into the boat. Then a man appeared on the brig's after deck--a man who held his head well up and stepped with the sureness of a great cat. Anthony, the musket still on the bulwark before him, stared at sight of him.

"Captain Weir!" said mademoiselle. Her hand held tightly to Anthony's sleeve.

"How does he come aboard that vessel?" said the young man.

"He has ventured out, looking for us," said mademoiselle. "He is our friend."

There was a deep look in Anthony's eyes, as he frowned across the stretch of water between the two vessels.

"Yes, he is our friend," he said. "But still I ask, how does he come on board this ship, of all others?"

After a short word with Tarrant, Weir came to the brig's side and hailed the _Stevens_. Anthony replied.

"I desire to come aboard you," Weir said. They saw a smile on his face, as he added: "Have I your permission?"

"To you," said Anthony, "there is no objection. You will be welcomed."

Weir waved his hand, still smiling; but when he ordered Blake out of the boat his face was stern enough. After the pirate climbed aboard, Weir was seen standing bold upright before the two; and what he said to them must have cut like a whip, for Blake shrugged and turned away, and Tarrant lowered ill-favoredly.

In a short space Captain Weir stood upon the _Rufus Stevens's_ deck; he bowed to mademoiselle and shook Anthony by the hand.

"A most fortunate meeting," he said. "I've searched these seas for weeks in the hope of finding you."

"Why?" asked Anthony. "And what brought this particular region to your mind? And how did you come in this brig?"

It was a story soon told. The captain had been away,--at Boston--at New York--and there were several other places,--all on the business of the house of Stevens. And when he returned he visited Anthony's lodgings in Sassafras Street; but Anthony had gone. He had been gone for some time. The captain then went to Pump Court; but Tom Horn was absent, also.

"Then," said the captain, "I thought of Christopher Dent, and went to his place, feeling he'd have some news to tell. But he would say little. He seemed to cuddle what he knew up in his mind and was as close-mouthed as a man could be. Yes, you were away from the city. He thought you were very far away. Tom Horn, too, was gone; he fancied Tom was with you, but as to that he was not sure. There was something in his manner that put an edge on my attention; and so," said Captain Weir, with his cold smile, "I questioned him in ways he was not used to, and in a little he let slip the fact that mademoiselle, too, was gone, that you had all taken ship and were venturing somewhere at sea."

"Poor Christopher!" said mademoiselle.

"As honest a soul as ever lived," said Captain Weir, still with the cold smile. "And, having got so far with him, I spoke of my close association with the house of Stevens, of my friendship with your uncle," to Anthony, "of my regard for yourself. I said your problems were mine; anything having to do with the business was for me to know; if an effort were being made that promised help in the firm's difficulties, I should be told. And then he told me."

"And then?" said Anthony.

"The chance that took you away," said Captain Weir, "seemed mad and slim; but, for all that, I set myself to get a ship and make after you."

He made inquiries at the exchanges, and almost at once heard of a brig, newly come into the river from a trading-venture along the coast.

"A trading-venture!" said Anthony, his eyes narrowed.

"Yes," replied Weir. "They said little about it; and, as they seemed disinclined to speak, I did not question them. The vessel was ready, provisioned, and manned; and as Tarrant is a good officer, and had voyaged with me more than once, I settled my terms, stepped aboard, and we made sail."

"In Tarrant you may have an excellent seaman, and in Blake the same, I'll not gainsay their skill," said Anthony. "But you have also in them two hectoring, damned ruffians whom I would trust with neither my throat nor my purse."

Captain Weir smiled, and seemed in no way troubled.

"I know Tarrant of old," he said. "And Blake's name and doings are common things. But they can handle a ship, and that's enough for me. If I'd kept from the sea every time a bully lifted his snout at me, I'd been a landsman all my life. Never bother yourself about this pair; for as I know them, so do they know me, and if they speak at all in any matter of importance, their voices will not be above a whisper."

Anthony took note of Weir--a careful note; and for the first time he saw in him the man old Rufus had chosen years before to master the ship he was giving up. And this note, too, had in it the suggestion of a wilderness cat, not only in the step but in the body's posture. The merchant captain who had won through hostile fleets with his goods, and beaten off attacking vessels of war, was in the steady, cold, green eyes; the red edges of the cutlass-stroke down his face spoke like lips of the deadly fighter who closed instantly with his foes; his manner was the still top of a vast depth of resolution, lashed up only on occasions. And Anthony looked at him; away at the back of his mind odd thoughts were forming.

All three vessels now dressed their idle sails to the wind; the brig followed the schooner and ship. Corkery, having had news of Weir's presence, paced the schooner's deck contentedly.

And mademoiselle was glad the captain was to remain on board the ship. For they had been so short-handed. Anthony and two men were not enough to handle that great vessel, for all her meager spread of sail; and the ship must get home safely. She must! for she carried the means of slackening the law's processes and easing many hatreds. The captain smiled when she said this. Anthony would have managed very well; there were few that would have ventured, as he had ventured, into that lonely sea, so feared and cursed by sailors, and whose place in the world's waters was so vague that no two charts gave it the same position. Oh, yes; Anthony was a man to carry a thing through when once he had begun it; and the captain's eyes were very cold and very steady, indeed, as they fastened upon the young man on the forward deck, adding his weight to a seaman's, hauling away on a line. And mademoiselle found herself looking at those eyes, so like hard, green agates; and she felt something like fear creep upon her.

They had breakfast. During its course, Tom Horn said never a word; indeed, he had not spoken since Weir had come into the ship; he ate and stared and listened, and sometimes he sat quite still, his eyes on the captain, and a queer down-drawn twitch to his lip. Weir gave them what news he had of the port; and Anthony laid out the ship's papers for him to see.

"Excellent traffic!" said the captain, over the items of cargo. He sipped his small glass of brandy. "Oh, excellent! Your uncle knew the East; he seemed to feel the levels where the rich things lay. It was a kind of genius with him. Here we have a shipful of value such as no other merchant could have collected." He finished the brandy. "And all in good condition, you say?"

Anthony had the hatches off after breakfast; and Captain Weir saw the merchandise for himself. He came out of the hold and dusted his fingers and clothes with a kerchief.

"It could not be snugger nor better," he said. He looked at mademoiselle. "Yes, we must get her safe, supercargo; no chance must take her from us now."

The wind kept brisk for days, and it blew the three vessels before it; then it shifted and came out of the northeast with a shrill cut, a whipping of the water, and a racing of clouds. The schooner and brig stripped close to keep in the crippled ship's company; and Anthony, with Weir's help, added more braces to the makeshift mast. One morning, at dawn, after a blowy night, and with the Barbados somewhere ahead, they saw the brig tossing away to the south and the schooner nowhere visible. All that day the gale lashed and raved and drove into the southwest; the sky was like lead and seemed to touch the wild waters. In the first dog-watch the ship, slow to mind her helm, was struck by a great sea; the man at the wheel was washed overboard, and Captain Weir was dashed against one of the boats and carried below with a broken leg. And so Anthony was left to work the ship with one man, for Tom Horn had little power in his body and no sea-going skill in his hands. For three days and nights the young man slept only while mademoiselle held the wheel at quiet spaces in the storm; he kept sail to the vessel, and ran her, upright, before the shock of the wind. Then the storm died down, and the sea raced itself out; and Captain Weir, stretched on his bed, gray with pain but with steadfast eyes, said:

"Is the brig still in sight?"

Anthony bowed, and, grim and tired, stood in the cabin doorway.

"She's hung to us like a limpet," he answered. "I've said a deal against Tarrant and Blake, and I feel I'll say more. But they can manage a ship, and they keep to their purpose; and I trust God Almighty will hold those things to their credit when they finally stand before Him, stripped and sorry and ashamed."

Captain Weir eased his hurt leg, held tight between bits of scantling.

"You need sleep," he said to Anthony. "You cannot work the vessel yourself, with a single man. Get a message to the brig; have them send two hands aboard of us."

Anthony frowned.

"I have no liking for that ship, as you know," he said. "And I'd rather keep her people from my deck."

"Is it not time to put our dislikes aside?" said the captain. "Should we not think of the ship, and what getting her home means? Have we any fear of two foremast men, no matter what vessel they come out of?"

Mademoiselle was at the wheel when Anthony came heavily on deck. The ocean was heaving in long, smooth swells, green and wonderful. A signal was made to the brig, and the two vessels bore toward each other. It was Blake whom Anthony spoke to; and when he asked for the men the pirate laughed cheerfully and agreed. He came with the boat, his big body laid against the tiller-handle; and it was he who caught the rope flung by Anthony and made it fast; and the two men, able-looking fellows and active, came nimbly over the side.

"Good fortune," said Blake, as he cast loose, and made away again. "Your mast still stands, and you've seen the worst weather you're like to see. With this wind we look to convoying you to your dock in less than ten days' time."

Anthony pointed the ship to the northwest; as level as a gull's flight, the blunted bowsprit held to Henlopen. Then he gave the wheel to one of the new hands and pointed to the compass.

"Hold her so," he said.

Captain Weir asked to be brought upon deck; he lay on a mattress under the stump of the mainmast, his leg straight and stiff and dead-looking; and ready to his hand lay a pair of loaded pistols.

"Now," said he to Anthony, "you may get some rest, all of you. I keep watch on deck until you've slept the clock at least half around."

Tom Horn stood at the foot of the companion-ladder when Anthony came below; the man's face looked wan in the half-light, and the pale glow of his eyes had the cold melancholy of the moonlight.

"The deck," said he, "is held by the brig's people. And the brig is not your friend."

"Captain Weir is there," said Anthony tolerantly.

"Are the hawks to be trusted when the swan come down the wind?" asked Tom Horn mildly.

"The captain will see to us," said Anthony.

Mademoiselle, worn and faint from the long battle with the storm, stood by.

"The captain is hurt; he is held fast to his bed," she protested.

"He will hear," said Anthony, dull with sleep. "An old fox, and with the blow of a bear. The brig will not approach while he is there; never fear."

"But," said mademoiselle, a vague dread in her heart, "if she should? If the men on deck should overpower him?"

"Then," said Anthony, "I shall hear. For all I am so full of sleep, I'll be keen enough, if wanted."

He went into his cabin, and in a moment they heard the cords of his bed straining under his weight as he threw himself down.

"How tired he must be!" said the girl. "Day and night he fought for our lives. Oh, I trust there will be nothing more to try him."

"Hark!" said Tom Horn, as he held up his hand and she listened. There was a creaking of blocks, a humming among the cordage, a crowding of wind into the sails. And the seas were heard leaping monotonously at the great prow like running wolves at the throat of a buck.