Captain Caution (15 page)

He jumped into the rigging. "All hands tumble upl" he shouted. "Get axesl Cut the bow anchor cable! Cast loose the main and foretopsaill"

He rushed, spiderlike, down the ratlines; then leaped to the helm, putting it hard over and lashing it there. "Jib and fore-topmast staysailsl" he shouted. "Crowd 'em onl"

The waist and bow of the ship seemed alive with movement as the remaining men of the crew scurried over the bales and into the rigging to get sail on her.

Slowly the grey walls and roofs of Morlaix moved to starboard; and the tall Indian, Steven, came up over the bows, in his hand a cleaver from the galley, so that Marvin knew the bow cable had been cut.

He called the Indian aft. "When they've got sail on her," Marvin told him, "wait till she points for the bank. Then cut the stern hawser and jam her ashore. Ram her in anywhere! Get therel No matter howl"

The tall Indian flicked the cleaver into the deck. It stuck there, quivering, handy to his grasp. "What is she? A lobster box?"

Marvin shook his head and vanished down the companionway. The Olive Branch, pushed by the southwest breeze moved slowly against the incoming tide, hesitated, as if caught on a sand bar, while the loosed sails shivered noisily but to no avail.

Argandeau scrambled over the starboard bulwarks. "Haull" he snapped. "Haul those yards around! Never mind that schooner! Haull"

He looked quickly over his own shoulder. The schooner was on

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them so close that her long white jib-boom had the look of threatening the reluctant barque with a lashing; so close that Argandeau could see the moving lips of a whiskered seaman who leaned over the bows, a cutlass gripped in the fist that rested on the bulwarks.

The tall Indian at the helm jumped to the taffrail, slashed the stern hawser and hurled the cleaver at the towering schooner. The Olive Branch surged sluggishly toward the brown rocks that lay a half cable's length ahead.

"Dam" Argandeau called. "Dam"

Marvin burst from the companionway, spilling an armful of cutlasses on the deck.

"All hands aftl" he shouted, snatching up a cutlass. "All hands aft to stop boarders!"

"No goodl"Argandeau told him. "We don't make ill"

"Nor" Marvin shouted. "They can't do ill Hold 'em offl"

"No good, dear Dan," Argandeau repeated. "They cut us out. Look here, what they dol"

The schooner shot past the Olive Branch's stern, veering swiftly as she did so. Her bulwarks, Marvin saw, were packed with intent red faces, and as she veered, blue-clad men in shiny black tarpaulin hats swarmed into the fore and main chains and ratlines twenty of them, thirty of them.

She slipped between the Olive Branch and the haven of brown rocks. Her broad walls of canvas hung over the barque, seeming to Marvin to cut off from the Olive Branch all sun and light and air. Then she closed in; and even while Marvin waited for the rasping lurch that must come when she laid the Olive Branch aboard, there was a growling call of "Boarders awayl" from her stern. The bulwarks of the schooner spouted men, who hurled themselves into the Olive Branch like gargantuan blue locusts.

Argandeau caught Marvin's arm as a dozen British seamen converged on the quarter-deck. Two of them darted by Marvin. One went to the deck with the Indian; the other put the wheel hard over. Over the shoulders of the Britishers, Marvin saw that his crew, taken front and rear by the English, had dropped their weapons. Four of the seamen jumped suddenly at Marvin and Argandeau. A pistol butt struck Marvin's wrist and the cutlass fell from his hand.

The blue-clad Britishers, hitherto silent, burst into uproarious talk and laughter. "Easy as pickin' gripes!" one of them shouted. A sourvisaged officer, old enough to be an admiral, went to the Olive Branch's larboard rail and hailed the schooner's quarter-deck. "All

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clear, sir," he called to an elegantly uniformed youth who stood by the schooner's wheel. "Shall we run for the Nore?"

"What about the female?" the youth demanded pettishly. "Bring her up where we can see herl"

The officer turned on Marvin and Argandeau. "Where's the female that's supposed to be captain of this barqueP"

Argandeau raised his eyebrows. "Female?" he asked. "How does it happen you think we are supposed to have a female captainP"

The sour-faced officer took a quick step forward and swung the flat of his cutlass against Argandeau's upper arm. "Where is she, you swab?" he demanded.

"She's ashore," Marvin said quickly. "Is Captain Slade aboard your schooner?"

"Sladel" Argandeau cried. "Ah, my friendl You've hit ill How else could these British have known we lay here worth the taking, and could be taken? How else would they have heard we have a female captain? Sladel Yes; Sladel But we shall not find him on their schooner! He would not risk that Argandeau, in chains, should yet find means to bite him to deathl"

The sour-faced man turned to the rail to hail his youthful commander. "Ashore, sir! They say the female captain's ashore!"

The younger man laughed. "Ah, that's where the admiral said she was to be pull Nice of her to save us a bit of troublel Sorry to miss her, in a way, what? First American that ever did anything right, to my knowledge! Sorry to miss a freak like thatl" His voice became crisper. "Get right along," he called. "Take the barque to Sheerness, but not a foot farther, Cropsey. We'll go up to Chatham together."

The Olive Branch, manned by her British captors, sheered away from the schooner, which ran rapidly down the estuary ahead of them.

"Nah, then," said the sour-faced officer to Argandeau and Marvin, "we'll just clap you and your questions abaht Captain Slade into the cable tierl Captain Slade, eh? Well, if he's one of you hole-andcorner Americans, you'll probably meet up with him in the hulks, where all of you belong!"

xv

FHOM the courtyard of the Queen of Scotland tavern in the town of Morlaix there emanated at all times a powerful odor of badly cleaned stables, venerable wine casks and cheese; and when the sun appeared as it infrequently did above the chimney pots and jumbled tile roofs that surrounded the court, a singular penetrating fragrance of pickled herring rose in waves from the seemingly immaculate stone pavement of the court, and passed through the closed windows in the tavern as readily as though every window had been thrown open.

Since the sun shone brightly on this clear October day, and since, as a result, the fragrance of pickled herring was strong in every room in the Queen of Scotland, but particularly strong because of an opened window in the small fourth-floor room numbered "44," it seemed strange indeed that Corunna Dorman should sit huddled in a corner of that dim and cheerless chamber, staring fixedly at a knot in the floor a knot around which the soft wood had been worn away by the restless feet of countless vanished guests.

From the roundness of her eyes, there seemed to be little doubt that she had seen all of the knot there was to see, but long minutes passed, and never once did she look up not even when her black cloak, which hung in the center of a wall, moved jerkily and swayed from side to side, as if the evil spirit of the room, maddened by the smell of herring, had taken violent possession of it.

The cloak fell at last, revealing a small hole in the wall over which it had hung; and at its fall Corunna rose to pick it up and hang it over the hole once more. Having done so, she stood silent beside it, holding to the cloak's hem and staring with round eyes at nothing whatever.

She seemed, almost, to have lost her hearing as well as her vision, for when a light knock sounded upon her door, she still held to the cloak and stared fixedly into space. When, however, the knock was repeated and a woman's shrill voice called, "Open, please, ladyl" she turned quickly to the door, dragged a chest of drawers from before it and snapped back the bolt.

The woman who entered was short and fat. Her fatness spread

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outward from her bust, so that her shoulders had the look of being pressed upward by it, her eyes squeezed half closed by the surge of her enormous bosom, and her vast hips and thighs spread outward by the weight they carried. She breathed heavily and peered past Corunna into the room.

"You eat nothing! Why not you come down? I give bread and chocolat, and you need not think of monnaie not yet."

"Yes," Corunna said. "Thank you. I think I think I - " She stopped, swallowed hard, and contented herself with saying "Yes" once more.

The fat woman pushed past her into the room, jangling a cluster of keys attached to a brass ring, and stared at the large and elaborate bed. Her half-opened mouth had the look, in that enormous face, of a sort of buttonhole. She darted a quick, suspicious look at Corunna. "Don't you sleep sometime? You don't like this bed?"

Corunna reached out to her cloak and drew it to one side, revealing the hole beneath. "I slept in the chair."

By a movement of her eyes and upper lip, the fat woman gave the impression of raising her shoulders. She went to the hole, stooped a little and squinted through it; then, applying her lips to the aperture, she violently shrieked a veritable explosion of syllables. When she turned back to Corunna, she wagged her head solemnly. "Nothing! Think nothing about this! All rooms have these holes, and all men look through! What you expect?"

As broad and solid as a hogshead on two boulders, she stood and examined Corunna with scrupulous attention; but Corunna, again staring wide-eyed at the protruding knot, seemed oblivious of her presence.

"You don't know no way to get monnaieP" she asked at length. "You don't have no hilon no ring, maybe?"

Corunna shook her head.

"You don't know some friend in Paris, no? In Boulogne? In Lorient? Maybe in Brest or Nantes, eh? In Brest and Lorient come many Americans in letters of marque. Maybe you go there, and you find a friend who take you in America, when you kiss him nice."

Corunna looked up quickly at the fat woman, opened her lips; then closed them again and fell to staring at her clenched hands.

The fat woman jingled the keys on the brass ring and dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. "Is here an avocat who is think you can get monnaie from the government in Paris because you bring wounded men here on that poor ship the dirty British had the audacity to seize from you. Eh! What a terrible thing for our beautiful

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city of Morlaix that those English should be so sly and so bold as to come into our very harborin such a mannerl Now perhaps the Emperor will give us some fortification worth something! Herbal But it will not do you much good, poor little onel What you need, my child, is a protector. Come, you let me speak to our avocatl I will arrange it. You permit me to hint to him that you can be persuaded to go with him to Paris, and he will become eager. Oh, yesl When they are old, they are easily inflamed" She placed a pudgy finger beside her nose and smiled craftily at Corunna. "It will be a good affair for both of usl He is good man old and kind. I think he would be gentle, and you like his protection very much."

Far below them there was the sound of a slamming door, and of a stir a throbbing pulse that somehow seemed to bring new life into the stale and tainted air of this ancient tavern.

The fat woman surged past Corunna and stood listening at the threshold. A burst of speech came up the darkness of the stairway, together with the noise of quick footsteps footsteps that drew rapidly nearer.

The black bulk of the listening mistress of the Queen of Scotland shot through the doorway, plucked from her place by a violent hand, and where she had been stood Lurman Slade, slender and neat in his fine blue coat, his head thrown far back so that he might see clearly into the room, and a look of deep concern on his thin brown face.

"Corunnal" he cried hoarsely. "My poor Corunnal" He went to her quickly and took her by the shoulders. "My dearl I've been in a torment to reach youl If ever I'd known - "

He looked into her brimming eyes; then drew her suddenly against his breast, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly.

She drew a deep and quivering breath, like a child who has borne a heavy weight of suffering; then clung eagerly to him.

"You're herel You're herel" she said. "I didn't know I was afraid I thought you might never come! It was terrible! It was terrible! They were here, and then in a second they were goner" She shook her head wearily.

Slade kissed her eyes and held her tight. "Never comer" he whispered. "You thought I might never come! I'd have come to you across the whole world, my sweet my little sweetl"

She leaned backward in his arms to stare at the walls about her. "Why," she said, "it's been like an awful dreamt Everything gone everything swallowed up, and not a word from anyonel Not a wordl" She shivered.

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Sladetook her hands in his and kissed them; then led her to the one poor chair and knelt beside her. "My heart was like lead in me when I left you," he told her softly. "Like a stone, it wasl I could hardly eat for thinking of youl I came to you on the instant the news reached me. With all my heart in the search, I was seeking for the ship that would be your privateer, happy that I was working for you. Then, at a tavern in a little town I heard by chance of the cutting out of the Olive Branch, and thank God I did heart And so I am come to your"

"Yes," she said. "I'm glad you've come. I need somebody."

"Aye," he assented gravely, "you've needed somebody a long time, Corunna somebody that could protect you from your own simple trust in people. I don't think you yet know," he added, "how the barque was taken."

"Why, by the British!" she said, wondering. "They came in - "

"Aye, so they did," he agreed, looking at her pityingly. "In Roscoff it's known how the British did it, Corunna. Aye, they know who helped to do it! I blame myselfl What a fool I wasl I'm like you; I'm not suspicious either, dear. I never dreamed he was anything but a coward a sulky country coward! He's a cumbersome lout, half giant to the eye; and I was simple enough to think him an honest one, all brawn and no cunning."