Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
one who is more wicked than the devil himself. So come, and let us get
away."
Thereupon he and the others, who had not spoken a single word for all
this time, rose from the table, and he having paid the scores of all,
they all went down together to the boat that still lay at the landing
place at the bottom of the garden.
Thus coming to it, our hero could see that it was a large yawl boat
manned with half a score of black men for rowers, and there were two
lanterns in the stern sheets, and three or four iron shovels.
The man who had conducted the conversation with Barnaby True for all
this time, and who was, as has been said, plainly the captain of the
party, stepped immediately down into the boat; our hero followed, and
the others followed after him; and instantly they were seated the boat
was shoved off and the black men began pulling straight out into the
harbor, and so, at some distance away, around under the stern of the
man-of-war.
Not a word was spoken after they had thus left the shore, and
presently they might all have been ghosts, for the silence of the
party. Barnaby True was too full of his own thoughts to talk--and
serious enough thoughts they were by this time, with crimps to trepan
a man at every turn, and press gangs to carry a man off so that he
might never be heard of again. As for the others, they did not seem to
choose to say anything now that they had him fairly embarked upon
their enterprise.
And so the crew pulled on in perfect silence for the best part of an
hour, the leader of the expedition directing the course of the boat
straight across the harbor, as though toward the mouth of the Rio
Cobra River. Indeed, this was their destination, as Barnaby could
after a while see, by the low point of land with a great long row of
coconut palms upon it (the appearance of which he knew very well),
which by and by began to loom up out of the milky dimness of the
moonlight. As they approached the river they found the tide was
running strong out of it, so that some distance away from the stream
it gurgled and rippled alongside the boat as the crew of black men
pulled strongly against it. Thus they came up under what was either a
point of land or an islet covered with a thick growth of mangrove
trees. But still no one spoke a single word as to their destination,
or what was the business they had in hand.
The night, now that they were close to the shore, was loud with the
noise of running tide-water, and the air was heavy with the smell of
mud and marsh, and over all the whiteness of the moonlight, with a few
stars pricking out here and there in the sky; and all so strange and
silent and mysterious that Barnaby could not divest himself of the
feeling that it was all a dream.
So, the rowers bending to the oars, the boat came slowly around from
under the clump of mangrove bushes and out into the open water again.
Instantly it did so the leader of the expedition called out in a sharp
voice, and the black men instantly lay on their oars.
Almost at the same instant Barnaby True became aware that there was
another boat coming down the river toward where they lay, now drifting
with the strong tide out into the harbor again, and he knew that it
was because of the approach of that boat that the other had called
upon his men to cease rowing.
The other boat, as well as he could see in the distance, was full of
men, some of whom appeared to be armed, for even in the dusk of the
darkness the shine of the moonlight glimmered sharply now and then on
the barrels of muskets or pistols, and in the silence that followed
after their own rowing had ceased Barnaby True could hear the chug!
chug! of the oars sounding louder and louder through the watery
stillness of the night as the boat drew nearer and nearer. But he knew
nothing of what it all meant, nor whether these others were friends or
enemies, or what was to happen next.
The oarsmen of the approaching boat did not for a moment cease their
rowing, not till they had come pretty close to Barnaby and his
companions. Then a man who sat in the stern ordered them to cease
rowing, and as they lay on their oars he stood up. As they passed by,
Barnaby True could see him very plain, the moonlight shining full upon
him--a large, stout gentleman with a round red face, and clad in a
fine laced coat of red cloth. Amidship of the boat was a box or chest
about the bigness of a middle-sized traveling trunk, but covered all
over with cakes of sand and dirt. In the act of passing, the
gentleman, still standing, pointed at it with an elegant gold-headed
cane which he held in his hand. "Are you come after this, Abraham
Dawling?" says he, and thereat his countenance broke into as evil,
malignant a grin as ever Barnaby True saw in all of his life.
The other did not immediately reply so much as a single word, but sat
as still as any stone. Then, at last, the other boat having gone by,
he suddenly appeared to regain his wits, for he bawled out after it,
"Very well, Jack Malyoe! Very well, Jack Malyoe! you've got ahead of
us this time again, but next time is the third, and then it shall be
our turn, even if William Brand must come back from hell to settle
with you."
This he shouted out as the other boat passed farther and farther
away, but to it my fine gentleman made no reply except to burst out
into a great roaring fit of laughter.
There was another man among the armed men in the stern of the passing
boat--a villainous, lean man with lantern jaws, and the top of his
head as bald as the palm of my hand. As the boat went away into the
night with the tide and the headway the oars had given it, he grinned
so that the moonlight shone white on his big teeth. Then, flourishing
a great big pistol, he said, and Barnaby could hear every word he
spoke, "Do but give me the word, Your Honor, and I'll put another
bullet through the son of a sea cook."
But the gentleman said some words to forbid him, and therewith the
boat was gone away into the night, and presently Barnaby could hear
that the men at the oars had begun rowing again, leaving them lying
there, without a single word being said for a long time.
By and by one of those in Barnaby's boat spoke up. "Where shall you go
now?" he said.
At this the leader of the expedition appeared suddenly to come back to
himself, and to find his voice again. "Go?" he roared out. "Go to the
devil! Go? Go where you choose! Go? Go back again--that's where we'll
go!" and therewith he fell a-cursing and swearing until he foamed at
the lips, as though he had gone clean crazy, while the black men began
rowing back again across the harbor as fast as ever they could lay
oars into the water.
They put Barnaby True ashore below the old custom house; but so
bewildered and shaken was he by all that had happened, and by what he
had seen, and by the names that he heard spoken, that he was scarcely
conscious of any of the familiar things among which he found himself
thus standing. And so he walked up the moonlit street toward his
lodging like one drunk or bewildered; for "John Malyoe" was the name
of the captain of the _Adventure_ galley--he who had shot Barnaby's
own grandfather--and "Abraham Dawling" was the name of the gunner of
the _Royal Sovereign_ who had been shot at the same time with the
pirate captain, and who, with him, had been left stretched out in the
staring sun by the murderers.
The whole business had occupied hardly two hours, but it was as though
that time was no part of Barnaby's life, but all a part of some other
life, so dark and strange and mysterious that it in no wise belonged
to him.
As for that box covered all over with mud, he could only guess at that
time what it contained and what the finding of it signified.
But of this our hero said nothing to anyone, nor did he tell a single
living soul what he had seen that night, but nursed it in his own
mind, where it lay so big for a while that he could think of little or
nothing else for days after.
Mr. Greenfield, Mr. Hartright's correspondent and agent in these
parts, lived in a fine brick house just out of the town, on the Mona
Road, his family consisting of a wife and two daughters--brisk, lively
young ladies with black hair and eyes, and very fine bright teeth that
shone whenever they laughed, and with a plenty to say for themselves.
Thither Barnaby True was often asked to a family dinner; and, indeed,
it was a pleasant home to visit, and to sit upon the veranda and smoke
a cigarro with the good old gentleman and look out toward the
mountains, while the young ladies laughed and talked, or played upon
the guitar and sang. And oftentimes so it was strongly upon Barnaby's
mind to speak to the good gentleman and tell him what he had beheld
that night out in the harbor; but always he would think better of it
and hold his peace, falling to thinking, and smoking away upon his
cigarro at a great rate.
A day or two before the _Belle Helen_ sailed from Kingston Mr.
Greenfield stopped Barnaby True as he was going through the office to
bid him to come to dinner that night (for there within the tropics
they breakfast at eleven o'clock and take dinner in the cool of the
evening, because of the heat, and not at midday, as we do in more
temperate latitudes). "I would have you meet," says Mr. Greenfield,
"your chief passenger for New York, and his granddaughter, for whom
the state cabin and the two staterooms are to be fitted as here
ordered [showing a letter]--Sir John Malyoe and Miss Marjorie Malyoe.
Did you ever hear tell of Capt. Jack Malyoe, Master Barnaby?"
Now I do believe that Mr. Greenfield had no notion at all that old
Captain Brand was Barnaby True's own grandfather and Capt. John Malyoe
his murderer, but when he so thrust at him the name of that man, what
with that in itself and the late adventure through which he himself
had just passed, and with his brooding upon it until it was so
prodigiously big in his mind, it was like hitting him a blow to so
fling the questions at him. Nevertheless, he was able to reply, with a
pretty straight face, that he had heard of Captain Malyoe and who he
was.
"Well," says Mr. Greenfield, "if Jack Malyoe was a desperate pirate
and a wild, reckless blade twenty years ago, why, he is Sir John
Malyoe now and the owner of a fine estate in Devonshire. Well, Master
Barnaby, when one is a baronet and come into the inheritance of a fine
estate (though I do hear it is vastly cumbered with debts), the world
will wink its eye to much that he may have done twenty years ago. I do
hear say, though, that his own kin still turn the cold shoulder to
him."
To this address Barnaby answered nothing, but sat smoking away at his
cigarro at a great rate.
And so that night Barnaby True came face to face for the first time
with the man who murdered his own grandfather--the greatest beast of a
man that ever he met in all of his life.
That time in the harbor he had seen Sir John Malyoe at a distance and
in the darkness; now that he beheld him near by it seemed to him that
he had never looked at a more evil face in all his life. Not that the
man was altogether ugly, for he had a good nose and a fine double
chin; but his eyes stood out like balls and were red and watery, and
he winked them continually, as though they were always smarting; and
his lips were thick and purple-red, and his fat, red cheeks were
mottled here and there with little clots of purple veins; and when he
spoke his voice rattled so in his throat that it made one wish to
clear one's own throat to listen to him. So, what with a pair of fat,
white hands, and that hoarse voice, and his swollen face, and his
thick lips sticking out, it seemed to Barnaby True he had never seen a
countenance so distasteful to him as that one into which he then
looked.