Captain Caution (8 page)

Argandeau placed his knuckles above his eyes, with the forefingers extended. "I would be willing to sail into any English harbor this minute," he said, almost with indifference, "and make horns at the Griffonsl" He wagged the forefingers.

"Of coursel" Diron exclaimed. "With all the English far from home, therefore, your barque can run safely into a French port, where there will be a ready market for her cargo. And if, on the way, you should be overhauled, you will have enough men aboard to fight off a heavy vessel."

Slade nodded thoughtfully. "We'll have enough men to take a vessel, if we should feel like it enough to take more than one, if they're not large ones."

Marvin stared at Slade and half rose to his feet, but sank back on his locker when Diron tapped him on the arm. "You see," Diron told him earnestly, "there will not only be the added safety of the route, but there will be these two fine seamen, Captain Slade and my friend, Captain Argandeau, to assist the lady with their knowledge and advice. Captain Argandeau, he knows the coast of France as he knows his own thumb."

"I know it better," Argandeau said. "There is no part of it that I could not recognize on the darkest night, which is more than I can say of this." He held up a grimy thumb and with it polished an imaginary spot before his eyes. "There is no port in all France where there are not at least several people related to me " he stopped; then added, with an ingratiating smile "by marriage."

Diron raised his eyebrows and held out his hands. "What more could one wish?" he asked Marvin. "I think it is great good fortune for the lady and for all of you that you encounter us."

"I admit it," Marvin said readily. "Still, there are a few small points that I might mention - "

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"Yes," Corunna interrupted, "you mightlOf course you mightl But you needn't! I consider myself fortunate to have the advice of these gentlemen, and I've taken itI"

"Yes," Marvin said patiently, "but what's Captain Slade doing aboard the Olive BranchP He's got a brig of his own a slave brig. That hasn't been destroyed, has it?"

"Mr. Marvin," Slade said a little ceremoniously, "I think I must ask you to use another tone of voice when referring to my occupation. After all, Mr. Marvin, John Paul Jones himself saw nothing wrong in officering a vessel on the Middle Passage."

"Is that an argument, Mr. Slade?" Marvin asked. "You can't make me respect the Portuguese by telling me that Vasco da Gama hailed from Portugall"

Slade's voice was harsher than his words. "Any man who's had experience in these waters knows that it's doing a kindness to yonder poor black men to let them exchange the cruelties and sufferings of Africa for the comforts of a plantation."

Marvin looked hard at Slade; then turned again to Corunna. "Why is it he's deserting his own vessel to travel on ours? He's got owners, hasn't he?"

"He's traveling on the Olive Branch for good and sufficient reasonsl" Corunna informed him. "I'll have you know that Captain Diron and Captain Slade are doing these things out of the kindness of their hearts, and to question them is outrageous!"

"I don't mean it so," Marvin said. "All I want, Corunna, is that you should give these things proper consideration. 'Tisn't in reason, Corunna, for Captain Diron to be asking favors of you for giving back the Olive Branch. She's yours anyway. He knows he couldn't keep the proceeds of her sale, because there isn't a prize court in America that would uphold him in it as long as you're alive to put in your claim."

Slade cocked his head on one side to look out from under his drooping eyelid. "A sea lawyer!" he exclaimed.

"'Tisn't so much that I mind going to France," Marvin continued. "What I mind is seeing you deprived of your freedom to do as you like when you need to do it. Here you're hampering yourself with promises you don't need to make, and weighing yourself down with a lot of wounded men, and you're setting off for a strange country to sell your cargo if you get there in a market that'll skin you if it has the chance."

"You are speaking of the French markets?" Captain Diron

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asked politely. "You have had unfortunate experiences with them, perhaps?"

"No," Marvin admitted, "but I never heard of a market that was in business for our benefit. There's another thing, too," he told Corunna: "You're entitled to hold any opinion of me that you wish, but you know my family, and you know that when your father needed help, he turned to my father, just as mine turned to yours when he needed anything. When all's said and done, Corunna, we're neighbors, and maybe that might still mean something to you. Now, I want no trouble with these gentlemen; but without meaning any offence, one of 'em's a Frenchman and the other's a slaver; and it seems to me, Corunna, that it's a strange thing when a girl from Arundel feels obliged to take advice from a slaver and a Frenchman both of them gentlemen she never saw before."

"Pooil" Argandeau exclaimed. "Now the slush bucket is kicked overt"

Captain Diron shrugged his shoulders. "This poor young man," he said, smiling at Corunna, "I think he does not know he is being so what shall I sayP We call it gauche. It is a fault of your countrymen, I fear."

"Oh," Corunna said, "it's shameful! To insult these gentlemen how can you stand there and say such things of them they, who only want to help me."

"Wait, Corunnal" Marvin begged her. "Can't you see it must be themselves they're helping? It must be! You're the only one who stands a chance of losing anything! Why, if Captain Diron was so anxious to help you, he could convoy you home, couldn't he, instead of sending you off to France, near to four thousand miles?"

"Of course," Captain Diron remarked pleasantly, "it might be disturbing for you if the young lady should be removed from your protection. I think it is possible you argue for your own benefit, oh?"

Marvin pressed his lips tightly together. "Couldn't you?" he persisted. "Couldn't you convoy us home?"

"You make me ashamed for your" Corunna cried. "It isn't the first timer"

Slade's voice, it seemed to Marvin, set the chains of the hanging lamp to vibrating, so metallic was its harshness. "It's plain to see," he told Corunna, "that he considers himself your master."

Diron silenced him with a glance, and spoke courteously to Marvin. "Your question concerning a convoy, sir, is a fair one, but I have already answered it when I said that the Olive Branch is slow, and that English frigates are plentiful on your coast. You would

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hardly expect my schooner to engage a frigate. No schooner afloat would last five minutes, once she came within range of a frigate's guns."

"That's true," Marvin agreed, "but as you say, you fought the Beetle so you might get possession of the Olive Branch, and you must have ordered your prize crew to take her to Charleston rather than to France. Otherwise you would have made an argument out of it, I think."

Diron threw himself back in his chair, laughing heartily. "But you are suspicious, you Americansl" he exclaimed. "If you heard one of our French larks singing in the sky, you would say it was not a real lark."

"Well," Marvin said slowly, "I've never had much difficulty recognizing larks when I see 'em or when I hear 'em. Some time ago I heard one of you gentlemen mention the fact that if the Olive Branch sets sail for France, she'll not only have enough men aboard to fight off a heavy vessel, but even to take a small one. That's a suggestion I'm able to recognize as easily as I recognize larks. It's a suggestion that the Olive Branch be used to make prizes of enemy merchant craft or maybe of friendly ones." He looked hard at Slade, who tossed back his long black hair and coldly returned Marvin's gaze.

"If I'm not mistaken," Marvin went on, "that suggestion came from Captain Slade. He knows that none of us aboard the Olive Branch has a commission or a letter of marque entitling us to capture, burn, sink or destroy any enemy vessel. If we should attack one, we'd be in danger of being hanged at the yardarm every last one of us. What Captain Slade suggested is piracy. While I'm in command of the Olive Branch I'll allow no such thing and with Captain Dorman dead, I am in command."

Captain Diron placed his hand on Corunna's arm, as if to restrain her. "No, not" he said. "You do not understand. Here on this table are the papers of Captain Argandeau, you see. Here is his letter of marque, my friend, for the Formidable. With these papers the Olive Branch will be the Formidable if she has occasion to attack any vessel, and still she will be the Olive Branch at all other times, oh?"

Corunna shook off Captain Diron's restraining hand. "Yes," she said, and to Marvin her eyes had the hardness of agates, "and you have forgotten that I am the owner of the Olive Branch. Therefore I have made myself captain, with Captain Slade as first mate and Captain Argandeau as second mate."

"What did I tell you about the slush bucket?" murmured Argandeau softly. "Two mules together could not more completely kick it overt"

IX CORUNNA DORMAN impatiently pacing the weather side of the

Olive Branch's quarter-deck, watched the last boatload of wounded rocking uneasily toward her from the near-by Beetle, escorted amidships by lazy-seeming sharks that rolled their eyes upward at the long-boat like affectionate dogs. The wounded who had already made the journey, twelve of them, were ranged close under the larboard bulwarks, where they might have the benefit of the steamy, sweltering breeze. All about them was piled the dunnageof the seamen who had come aboard and now clung to shrouds and ratlines to see the last of the Decatur and the Beetle, while the litter resulting from the capture of the Olive Branch still cumbered her decks and gave her an air of slovenly dejection.

Corunna, looking around suddenly, saw Slade smiling gravely at her, one eye half hidden by his drooping eyelid. There may have been meekness and modesty in the way he quickly lowered his glance, but there was little of modesty in his words or voice. "You're in danger, ma'am," he said, "wearing what might put to shame an empress and a bride."

She turned from him and peered over the taffrail. "I want somebody in the main chains," she said; "somebody with pikes or boat hooks to watch that boatload of wounded. The sharksll have 'em over before we know it. I'll be obliged if you'll see to these things without having to be reminded of them, Mr. Slade."

Slade's exclamation seemed to have penitence in it as he jumped quickly for the vessel's waist; but quick as he was, Marvin was quicker. Almost as though he had heard Corunna's words, he came up the ladder of the main hatch, glanced at the approaching longboat, and at once swung himself around the main shrouds and into the chains, shouting for a sweep as he did so.

From Argandeau, at work with a crew on the wrecked carronade near by, there came a faint and abstracted humming.

"Aux filler de honnes maisons

Comme it avail su plaire, Ses sulets avaient cent raisons De le nommer leur pere,"

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he sang softly. Corunna stared severely at his widow's peak of close- cropped hair; but seemingly he was oblivious to everything except the task in hand.

"Mr. Argandeaul" she said.

Argandeau straightened. "You need me, lady?"

"Yes," she said, "and I don't like the sound of 'lady.' You can call me Captain while we're aboard ship."

Argandeau bowed so deeply that his bullethead seemed lower than his knees.

"When these wounded men are aboard," she continued, "tell MT. Slade to run up his jib and fore-topmast staysail and get under way. I want her kept north by west a half west. We'll pass to the westward of the Cape Verdes. Get the decks cleared and divide the men into watches. Then call the hands aft and send word to me. I want to speak to them."

"Yes, Captain," Argandeau said. "And Mr. Marvin? He is not an officer: therefore you let me choose him for my watch, perhaps. Then I give him lessons in many things." His gaze was candid. "When he has had a lesson or two from Argandeau, he will know how to throw the knife, how to be brave like a lion, how to make love so that every woman who sees him will pant for him." Modestly he added, "He has not had my advantages, poor fellow."

Corunna raised an indifferent eye to the clouds overhead. "I'm afraid Mr. Marvin must get along without your guidance for the remainder of this voyage," she said. "He's to be bos'n of this vessel."

"Ho-hol" Argandeau said softly. "You put him where he must exercise that patience of which he is so proud, eh nursing seamen and touching the hat to his betters! I think welll Very welll"

Corunna looked hard at him; then turned quickly and entered the cabin.

"Captain!" Argandeau murmured, skipping from the quarter-deck into the waist. "She is sugar caner Captain Sugar Canel With that to crunch, I would not recognize any other wife not for a very long timer"

He swung himself into the main chains beside Marvin, who was splashing the twenty-four-foot sweep up and down beside the Beetle's long-boat as the last of the wounded men came over the side.

"Pull your front hair and say 'sirl"' Argandeau told him. "Maybe you think this is a French vessel, Mr. Bos'n, and that we are all equal, eh? All perfectly equal?"

Marvin stabbed with the long sweep at a grey shadow that flickered beneath the long-boat's stern. "Bos'n, eh?" he asked. "So she

j

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decided to take me down a peal" The sweep rose from the water as lightly as a fishing rod, and fell again with a smack. "Well, it's all one to me," he continued, "provided she gets me to a place where I can do some damage to a little piece of England. I'm surprised she didn't make me ship's cook, so she'd never have to look at me."

"If she had, my friend," Argandeau assured him, "it would be what you deserve for saying to her that she must not do this and cannot do thatl That is something I learn about rabbits when I am six years old and in love for the first time, or maybe the second. They are like men, disliking to obey orders; and because they are built with nerves in the brain that we do not have, they explode, Pfoof inside the head, when they are forbidden to do this or that. If they are timid, they conceal the explosion; but later, when all is quiet, they take courage and do what they have been forbidden to do. If they are not timid, they snap the fingers in the face of those who forbidl Piffl" His fingers clicked contemptuously beneath Marvin's nose.