Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
and in those days. No doubt, had it come to the pinch, he might have
bought some of his tormentors out three times over.
Hiram White had suffered quite a financial loss some six months
before, through that very Blueskin who was now lurking in Indian River
inlet. He had entered into a "venture" with Josiah Shippin, a
Philadelphia merchant, to the tune of seven hundred pounds sterling.
The money had been invested in a cargo of flour and corn meal which
had been shipped to Jamaica by the bark _Nancy Lee_. The _Nancy
Lee_ had been captured by the pirates off Currituck Sound, the crew
set adrift in the longboat, and the bark herself and all her cargo
burned to the water's edge.
Five hundred of the seven hundred pounds invested in the unfortunate
"venture" was money bequeathed by Hiram's father, seven years before,
to Levi West.
Eleazer White had been twice married, the second time to the widow
West. She had brought with her to her new home a good-looking,
long-legged, black-eyed, black-haired ne'er-do-well of a son, a year
or so younger than Hiram. He was a shrewd, quick-witted lad, idle,
shiftless, willful, ill-trained perhaps, but as bright and keen as a
pin. He was the very opposite to poor, dull Hiram. Eleazer White had
never loved his son; he was ashamed of the poor, slack-witted oaf.
Upon the other hand, he was very fond of Levi West, whom he always
called "our Levi," and whom he treated in every way as though he were
his own son. He tried to train the lad to work in the mill, and was
patient beyond what the patience of most fathers would have been with
his stepson's idleness and shiftlessness. "Never mind," he was used to
say. "Levi 'll come all right. Levi's as bright as a button."
It was one of the greatest blows of the old miller's life when Levi
ran away to sea. In his last sickness the old man's mind constantly
turned to his lost stepson. "Mebby he'll come back again," said he,
"and if he does I want you to be good to him, Hiram. I've done my duty
by you and have left you the house and mill, but I want you to promise
that if Levi comes back again you'll give him a home and a shelter
under this roof if he wants one." And Hiram had promised to do as his
father asked.
After Eleazer died it was found that he had bequeathed five hundred
pounds to his "beloved stepson, Levi West," and had left Squire Hall
as trustee.
Levi West had been gone nearly nine years and not a word had been
heard from him; there could be little or no doubt that he was dead.
One day Hiram came into Squire Hall's office with a letter in his
hand. It was the time of the old French war, and flour and corn meal
were fetching fabulous prices in the British West Indies. The letter
Hiram brought with him was from a Philadelphia merchant, Josiah
Shippin, with whom he had had some dealings. Mr. Shippin proposed that
Hiram should join him in sending a "venture" of flour and corn meal to
Kingston, Jamaica. Hiram had slept upon the letter overnight and now
he brought it to the old Squire. Squire Hall read the letter, shaking
his head the while. "Too much risk, Hiram!" said he. "Mr Shippin
wouldn't have asked you to go into this venture if he could have got
anybody else to do so. My advice is that you let it alone. I reckon
you've come to me for advice?" Hiram shook his head. "Ye haven't? What
have ye come for, then?"
"Seven hundred pounds," said Hiram.
"Seven hundred pounds!" said Squire Hall. "I haven't got seven hundred
pounds to lend you, Hiram."
"Five hundred been left to Levi--I got hundred--raise hundred more on
mortgage," said Hiram.
"Tut, tut, Hiram," said Squire Hall, "that'll never do in the world.
Suppose Levi West should come back again, what then? I'm responsible
for that money. If you wanted to borrow it now for any reasonable
venture, you should have it and welcome, but for such a wildcat
scheme--"
"Levi never come back," said Hiram--"nine years gone--Levi's dead."
"Mebby he is," said Squire Hall, "but we don't know that."
"I'll give bond for security," said Hiram.
Squire Hall thought for a while in silence. "Very well, Hiram," said
he by and by, "if you'll do that. Your father left the money, and I
don't see that it's right for me to stay his son from using it. But
if it is lost, Hiram, and if Levi should come back, it will go well to
ruin ye."
So Hiram White invested seven hundred pounds in the Jamaica venture
and every farthing of it was burned by Blueskin, off Currituck Sound.
IV
Sally Martin was said to be the prettiest girl in Lewes Hundred, and
when the rumor began to leak out that Hiram White was courting her the
whole community took it as a monstrous joke. It was the common thing
to greet Hiram himself with, "Hey, Hiram; how's Sally?" Hiram never
made answer to such salutation, but went his way as heavily, as
impassively, as dully as ever.
The joke was true. Twice a week, rain or shine, Hiram White never
failed to scrape his feet upon Billy Martin's doorstep. Twice a week,
on Sundays and Thursdays, he never failed to take his customary seat
by the kitchen fire. He rarely said anything by way of talk; he nodded
to the farmer, to his wife, to Sally and, when he chanced to be at
home, to her brother, but he ventured nothing further. There he would
sit from half past seven until nine o'clock, stolid, heavy, impassive,
his dull eyes following now one of the family and now another, but
always coming back again to Sally. It sometimes happened that she had
other company--some of the young men of the neighborhood. The presence
of such seemed to make no difference to Hiram; he bore whatever broad
jokes might be cracked upon him, whatever grins, whatever giggling
might follow those jokes, with the same patient impassiveness. There
he would sit, silent, unresponsive; then, at the first stroke of nine
o'clock, he would rise, shoulder his ungainly person into his
overcoat, twist his head into his three-cornered hat, and with a "Good
night, Sally, I be going now," would take his departure, shutting the
door carefully to behind him.
Never, perhaps, was there a girl in the world had such a lover and
such a courtship as Sally Martin.
V
It was one Thursday evening in the latter part of November, about a
week after Blueskin's appearance off the capes, and while the one
subject of talk was of the pirates being in Indian River inlet. The
air was still and wintry; a sudden cold snap had set in and skins of
ice had formed over puddles in the road; the smoke from the chimneys
rose straight in the quiet air and voices sounded loud, as they do in
frosty weather.
Hiram White sat by the dim light of a tallow dip, poring laboriously
over some account books. It was not quite seven o'clock, and he never
started for Billy Martin's before that hour. As he ran his finger
slowly and hesitatingly down the column of figures, he heard the
kitchen door beyond open and shut, the noise of footsteps crossing the
floor and the scraping of a chair dragged forward to the hearth. Then
came the sound of a basket of corncobs being emptied on the smoldering
blaze and then the snapping and crackling of the reanimated fire.
Hiram thought nothing of all this, excepting, in a dim sort of way,
that it was Bob, the negro mill hand, or old black Dinah, the
housekeeper, and so went on with his calculations.
At last he closed the books with a snap and, smoothing down his hair,
arose, took up the candle, and passed out of the room into the kitchen
beyond.
A man was sitting in front of the corncob fire that flamed and blazed
in the great, gaping, sooty fireplace. A rough overcoat was flung over
the chair behind him and his hands were spread out to the roaring
warmth. At the sound of the lifted latch and of Hiram's entrance he
turned his head, and when Hiram saw his face he stood suddenly still
as though turned to stone. The face, marvelously altered and changed
as it was, was the face of his stepbrother, Levi West. He was not
dead; he had come home again. For a time not a sound broke the dead,
unbroken silence excepting the crackling of the blaze in the fireplace
and the sharp ticking of the tall clock in the corner. The one face,
dull and stolid, with the light of the candle shining upward over its
lumpy features, looked fixedly, immovably, stonily at the other,
sharp, shrewd, cunning--the red wavering light of the blaze shining
upon the high cheek bones, cutting sharp on the nose and twinkling in
the glassy turn of the black, ratlike eyes. Then suddenly that face
cracked, broadened, spread to a grin. "I have come back again, Hi,"
said Levi, and at the sound of the words the speechless spell was
broken.
Hiram answered never a word, but he walked to the fireplace, set the
candle down upon the dusty mantelshelf among the boxes and bottles,
and, drawing forward a chair upon the other side of the hearth, sat
down.
His dull little eyes never moved from his stepbrother's face. There
was no curiosity in his expression, no surprise, no wonder. The heavy
under lip dropped a little farther open and there was more than usual
of dull, expressionless stupidity upon the lumpish face; but that was
all.
As was said, the face upon which he looked was strangely, marvelously
changed from what it had been when he had last seen it nine years
before, and, though it was still the face of Levi West, it was a very
different Levi West than the shiftless ne'er-do-well who had run away
to sea in the Brazilian brig that long time ago. That Levi West had
been a rough, careless, happy-go-lucky fellow; thoughtless and
selfish, but with nothing essentially evil or sinister in his nature.
The Levi West that now sat in a rush-bottom chair at the other side of
the fireplace had that stamped upon his front that might be both evil
and sinister. His swart complexion was tanned to an Indian copper. On
one side of his face was a curious discoloration in the skin and a
long, crooked, cruel scar that ran diagonally across forehead and
temple and cheek in a white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a
livid blue, about the tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size
of a man's hand, lying across the cheek and the side of the neck.
Hiram could not keep his eyes from this mark and the white scar
cutting across it.
There was an odd sort of incongruity in Levi's dress; a pair of heavy
gold earrings and a dirty red handkerchief knotted loosely around his
neck, beneath an open collar, displaying to its full length the lean,
sinewy throat with its bony "Adam's apple," gave to his costume
somewhat the smack of a sailor. He wore a coat that had once been of
fine plum color--now stained and faded--too small for his lean length,
and furbished with tarnished lace. Dirty cambric cuffs hung at his
wrists and on his fingers were half a dozen and more rings, set with
stones that shone, and glistened, and twinkled in the light of the
fire. The hair at either temple was twisted into a Spanish curl,
plastered flat to the cheek, and a plaited queue hung halfway down his
back.
Hiram, speaking never a word, sat motionless, his dull little eyes
traveling slowly up and down and around and around his stepbrother's
person.
Levi did not seem to notice his scrutiny, leaning forward, now with
his palms spread out to the grateful warmth, now rubbing them slowly
together. But at last he suddenly whirled his chair around, rasping on
the floor, and faced his stepbrother. He thrust his hand into his
capacious coat pocket and brought out a pipe which he proceeded to
fill from a skin of tobacco. "Well, Hi," said he, "d'ye see I've come
back home again?"
"Thought you was dead," said Hiram, dully.
Levi laughed, then he drew a red-hot coal out of the fire, put it upon