Captain Caution (14 page)

Sir Austin's breath made faint popping sounds as it broke from his slack lips, and Slade's eye gleamed with satisfaction. "They're on the list," he said suavely. "Those names are there with yours, and the names of their vessels as well." He cleared his throat. "You're slow to make laws, you British, but when you make 'em, you make 'em too severe, to my way of thinking! Of course, we've got a law against importing slaves into America had it before you made your law, because of the way you were glutting our markets with blacks but our law's nothing like as strong as the law you passed last year."

With his tongue he made clicking noises of commiseration. "To think it's a felony in England since last yearl A felony to deal in dirty blacks, when everybody knows your cane fields can't be properly cultivated by anyone but niggersl Yes, sir; a felony, and punishable with transportation! Why, sir, it just doesn't seem within the bounds of reason that if that document should fall into Duckworth's hands, you'd be torn from your family and that daughter of yours, and transported to Botany Bay along with common thieves and drunkards and diseased womenl" His shoulders shook with silent laughter. "It might be, in time, your family could join you out there, if you behaved yourself. I think your family'd be permitted."

Sir Austin looked at him piteously. "I suppose you want some

thing." I Slade drew from his pocket the paper he had received from Ad-|

it:

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miral Duckworth, glanced closely at it, and handed it to Sir Austin. "I want two things," he said, "and considering I saved the Narcissus for you, it's little enough. I want fifteen thousand pounds advanced on that piece of paper, and I want a vessel. I want the fifteen thousand pounds in cash, and I want it tomorrow. And when I say I want a vessel, I don't mean any vessel. I mean a brig, a fast brig a fast armed brig. She's got to have fourteen guns at least, and two of them long guns long ~4's. She's got to have quarters for a crew of a hundred and forty, and she's got to be trim and taut and ready for sea."

"Preposterous!" exclaimed Sir Austin, and he blew out the word as if it burned his tongue. "Why, where would I get such a sum and such a brig? How could I - "

Slade fixed his one good eye on him fiercely. "I've made myself clear," he said. "That's what I want and that's what I propose to have! You know it's worth that to you and Penhallow and Cottrell and Trevor and Batt to be saved from Botany Bayl You can tell them for me they're on the list, and the list will be in Duckworth's hands if I don't get what I want the money tomorrow and the brig within a month. You know as well as I do that Liverpool has enough fast brigs hidden away to fight every sloop-of-war in the British Navyl Where would you get it, indeed Who should know better than you that there were two hundred and fifty slave brigs out of Liverpool less than ten years ago? Two hundred and fiftyl Go there and get onel You've got the money and you've got the influencel You own slave ships, and Liverpool was built on the profits of the slave trade. A man of your influence can get whatever he wants in Liverpooll

His laugh was like the rubbing together of two bricks. "Doesn't the sheriff come here to dinner? Don't you have bishops to dined'

. . . When at last Captain Slade emerged from Sir Austin Braymore's small white-walled study, triumphantly rolling his glittering black eye from the Turkey carpets on the floor to the silver in the great pagoda cabinet, his modest little lady was asleep on the love seat in the hall, the tips of her brown slippers barely reaching to the floor and her lips parted as innocently and sweetly, in her childlike slumber, as the petals of a rose.

: She opened her eyes as he gazed down at her; then, after a cloudy - moment, recognition came back to her. "You're a sweet man," she ~said "a sweet man to stand and smile at me so kindly." i "My dear, I wasn't," Slade told her as she rose and they moved

toward the door. "I was smiling to myself to think how vastly I bet- tered myself in so short a time. Five days why, it's genius!"

;

XIV

BY FIVE DAYS Captain Slade meant the five since he had left the Olive Branch in the harbor of Morlaix, where that patient barque still lay with all her cargo, and a great deal of perplexity aboard her.

There were times when Marvin, eager to break bulk and see the cargo of the Olive Branch safe ashore, fell into such a rage that he talked bitterly to Argandeau.

"What's the matter with these Frenchmen?" Marvin demanded. "The crew of the Formidable went ashore long ago, and the English wounded have been safely put in jail, God help 'em, so that we're harmless enough; and we've shaken hands with a hundred officials and officials' clerks, and Corunna spends half her time on land, signing all the papers that anyone brings her; and we've paid money to every soul in Morlaix, I do believel Everyone except the priest and the schoolmaster! Yet every day they think up another reason why our goods must stay under hatches! Why, they're worse than the Chinese, these Frenchmenl"

Argandeau raised his shoulders helplessly. "No, not" he said. "You do not understand them. They have had many years of war, and many years of democracy, when every man claimed to be as good as every other man, but privately knew himself to be better; and now they have Bonaparte and a dozen spies to watch each one of them, so they must be careful, poor people."

"Careful!" Marvin exclaimed. "Do you call a thief careful when he makes you turn out the same pocket twenty times?"

"Eh, oh?" Argandeau cried. "'Thief' is a strong wordl The trouble is merely that some important man has not yet received what he should receive. He is afraid, perhaps, to tell us what he wants; or perhaps he is waiting to find out what all the others have received from us, so that he may be certain he will not receive less than any many

"A body'd think," Marvin told him, "that we were their enemies, instead of helping them to fight the English. Don't they ever say what they mean? Are they always bowing and smiling and talking about friendship, and then doing everything they can to ruin us, like

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your idiot Admiral D'Estaing who talked so loud about helping us whip England in the Revolution?"

Argandeau examined him calmly. "I think you are excited, dear Marvin. It is true that D'Estaing was not a lion in battle and was something of a hen as a seaman, but if I had been in his boots, I would have won that little war for your thick-skulled countrymen in two weeks maybe three."

Marvin reached over and caught Argandeau by the shoulder. "Of courser Of courser I am sure that it is so, my dear friendl How much easier it will be, then, for you to win an even smaller war with people even more thick-skulledl"

Argandeau lifted his eyebrows. "What is this you say, dear Marvin?"

"Go ashore!" Marvin exclaimed. "Go ashore and tell Corunna to stop signing papers; that you'll arrange this thingl We must make a start at landing this cargo todayl I tell you I don't like Iying here with no way of maneuvering, and not enough crew to fight off any gang of frog eaters that takes a fancy to come aboard. I don't feel easy. There's a change coming! If you're as good as you think you are, go ashore and make these Frenchmen stop squabbling over their pennies long enough to let us tie up to a dock and get our goods on land. Tell 'em we want less politeness and more friendliness."

Argandeau elevated his shoulders. "But we must be patient! These poor people will not understand if we are rude to them; and I am sure that when our little rabbit returns, she will have the permission to begin tomorrow or the next day to unload."

"So that's what you think, Admiral," Marvin inquired, with an exaggerated air of urbanity. "I scarcely knew you at first, but now you've finished speaking, I recognize the D'Estaing accent. How well I remember your skill at doing nothing, Admiral, when we needed help the mostl"

Argandeau laughed softly. "Be quietI" he said. "That tongue of yours, it is too busy! I'll do what you wantl I'll see that rabbit of ours at the Hotel de Ville in ten minutes and tell her I arrange to do what you wish, but only do it to save myself from the clacking of your voice."

Marvin watched him being rowed ashore. "Do not look so serious!" Argandeau shouted back to him. "Argandeau, he arrange everything! This afternoon you toss your cargo about, eh, and tonight we have fried eels and two bottles of brandy maybe threel I bring them back with met"

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The boat moved in toward the wharves of Morlaix and the dismallooking buildings of grey stone that rose steeply above them. Marvin, confident that Argandeau, brought at last to the point of speaking his mind to his countrymen, would be successful in his mission, went forward to the bow, where those that were left of the crew were dividing their time between the catching of eels and the exchange of hoarse pleasantries with the occupants of small boats engaged in the sale of onions, checked shirts, Hatfish, apple brandy, red wine, lace and mussels.

With reluctance they abandoned their fishing, removed the hatch and fell to swaying bales on deck in preparation for the afternoon's unloading. Marvin, having put them to work, inspected the galley and the forecastle, examined the guns with a mind to having them scraped and repainted; then, still with the thought of painting in his head, went aft to the cabin to look for spots that would be better for a brushful.

The cabin was divided into two sections, and it was the smaller of these that Corunna still occupied. At its door Marvin hesitated, but only for a moment. There seemed to him, when he entered, to be something of Corunna about this small white room with its standing bedplace and its wide lockers an air of sturdiness and crispness. Drawn over the bedplace was a patchwork quilt that almost glittered in the brilliance of its colors, and folded neatly on it lay her needle- work that worsted work of art representing the Holy Family gazing with suspicion at the towers of Jerusalem.

Marvin, touching it gingerly with his forefinger, smiled a little. From it there seemed to rise a faint fragrance of sweet grass and mallow, such as had come to him so often from the Arundel meadows on summer nights. He stared up at the ceiling and around at the white panels of this neat small cabin; then moved to the high locker against the after bulkhead a locker with a Chinese courting mirror over it, and a swinging whale-oil lamp of pewter and copper, with small paintings of her mother and father on either side.

The painting of her mother, Marvin thought, would be Corunna to the life if, in place of the low black dress, edged at the neck with wooden-seeming lace, the portrait showed her in a stained and darned Chinese jacket with a collar that came high up around her throat and fastened with three jade buttons.

He slipped the oval frame from its hook. Through the tightly drawn black hair gleamed a white ear tip; the lips seemed to tremble on the verge of a smile; in the smooth column of the throat, as Marvin studied it, there was almost the beating of a pulse. He touched the

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pictured throat gently with his finger. The scent of sweet grass and mallow came to him again; and the face at which he looked softened and became charming, as had Corunna's on that night off Rio. He lifted it toward his lips, but before it reached them, he guiltily raised his eyes to his reflection in the mirror.

Reflected also in the mirror was the stern window, and through the mirrored window he saw, far down the estuary, a tall black schooner beating up on the rising tide from the Channel, closehauled on the larboard tack.

He quickly hung the picture in its place, turned to the window and examined the rig and cut of the distant vessel. Despite the briskness of the southwest breeze, she rode stiff in the water, heeling over so little that no part of her copper showed, if indeed there was copper on her. She was, Marvin felt, too large for a smuggler; and he knew, as well, that there was scarce a smuggler in either France or England but used either a rugger or a cutter in his trade in preference to a schooner.

She might, he told himself, be a French privateer; but it was doubtful, since her top-hamper was lacking in delicacy, to his mind, for such a vessel. Even at that distance he could see, from the spread of her ratlines, that she carried more shrouds and backstays than Diron and Argandeau would consider needful; and it was plain that she was rigged for strength rather than for great speed. Furthermore, she showed no colors, which seemed to him unusual for a vessel entering a home port after a cruise.

Vaguely uneasy, but more curious than uneasy, he took Corunna's telescope from the rack beside her bedplace and went on deck, where a score of bales had risen from the hold to clutter the amidships section. Increasingly uneasy, he mounted to the mizzen top and focused the glass on the schooner, which had come about on the far side of the estuary. She was pointing downstream from the Olive Branch, but from the set of the tide it appeared to Marvin that when the stranger next came about, she would be abreast of the barque.

Through the glass he could see guns on her deck, which was nothing strange; and her ports were closed, with no crews to be distinguished near the guns, so that she looked peaceable enough. He was a fool, he told himself, to be disturbed over a harmless merchantman, running home, no doubt, with rum and sugar from Martinico; and with that he polished the lenses of the glass with a fold of his shirt and stared even harder at her.

From far behind him he heard a hail. A boat, he saw, was bobbing toward the Olive Branch from the direction of Morlaix a boat with

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three men in it. As he looked, the man in the stern sheets rose to his feet, pointing and waving toward the oncoming schooner, and hailed again. Marvin saw, with a faint trembling in the pit of his stomach, that the man was Argandeau. What it was that he shouted, Marvin could not hear, nor did he need to hear.

His thoughts churned in his head, like wheels spinning in butter. "If I can pile her up on shore," he thought, "she's safe. If I try to run her ashore, but don't have time, I'm making it easier to lose her." He cast a quick glance at the schooner. To Marvin, the mile-wide estuary seemed to have shrunk in size; the white cottages on the far shore, so distant until now, must, he thought, have drawn near to stare critically at him. The schooner, pushing a milky wave before her, had swelled beyond all reason. Already half across the estuary, she seemed to tower above the crinkled water like a giant among schooners.