Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
petrified, scarcely so much as daring to breathe; and then, observing
that his mouth was agape, he moistened his dry and parching lips, and
drew his jaws together with a snap.
Again there fell the same loud, insistent knock upon the panel,
followed by the imperative words, "Open within!"
The wretched Jonathan flung about him a glance at once of terror and
of despair, but there was for him no possible escape. He was shut
tight in the room with his dead victim, like a rat in a trap. Nothing
remained for him but to obey the summons from without. Indeed, in the
very extremity of his distraction, he possessed reason enough to
perceive that the longer he delayed opening the door the less innocent
he might hope to appear in the eyes of whoever stood without.
With the uncertain and spasmodic movements of an ill-constructed
automaton, he crossed the room, and stepping very carefully over the
prostrate body upon the floor, and with a hesitating reluctance that
he could in no degree master, he unlocked, unbolted, and opened the
door.
The figure that outlined itself in the light of the candle, against
the blackness of the passageway without, was of such a singular and
foreign aspect as to fit extremely well into the extraordinary tragedy
of which Jonathan was at once the victim and the cause.
It was that of a lean, tall man with a thin, yellow countenance,
embellished with a long, black mustache, and having a pair of
forbidding, deeply set, and extremely restless black eyes. A crimson
handkerchief beneath a lace cocked hat was tied tightly around the
head, and a pair of silver earrings, which caught the light of the
candle, gleamed and twinkled against the inky darkness of the
passageway beyond.
This extraordinary being, without favoring our hero with any word of
apology for his intrusion, immediately thrust himself forward into the
room, and stretching his long, lean, birdlike neck so as to direct his
gaze over the intervening table, fixed a gaping and concentrated stare
upon the figure lying still and motionless in the center of the room.
"Vat you do dare," said he, with a guttural and foreign accent, and
thereupon, without waiting for a reply, came forward and knelt down
beside the dead man. After thrusting his hand into the silent and
shrunken bosom, he presently looked up and fixed his penetrating eyes
upon our hero's countenance, who, benumbed and bedazed with his
despair, still stood like one enchained in the bonds of a nightmare.
"He vas dead!" said the stranger, and Jonathan nodded his head in
reply.
"Vy you keel ze man?" inquired his interlocutor.
"Indeed," cried Jonathan, finding a voice at last, but one so hoarse
that he could hardly recognize it for his own, "I know not what to
make of the affair! But, indeed, I do assure thee, friend, that I am
entirely innocent of what thou seest."
The stranger still kept his piercing gaze fixed upon our hero's
countenance, and Jonathan, feeling that something further was demanded
of him, continued: "I am, indeed, a victim of a most extravagant and
extraordinary adventure. This evening, coming an entire stranger to
this country, I was introduced into the house of a beautiful female,
who bestowed upon me a charge that appeared to me to be at once
insignificant and absurd. Behold this little ivory ball," said he,
drawing the globe from his pocket, and displaying it between his thumb
and finger. "It is this that appears to have brought all this disaster
upon me; for, coming from the house of the young woman, the man whom
thou now beholdest lying dead upon the floor induced me to come to
this place. Having inveigled me hither, he demanded of me to give him
at once this insignificant trifle. Upon my refusing to do so, he
assaulted me with every appearance of a mad and furious inclination to
deprive me of my life!"
At the sight of the ivory ball the stranger quickly arose from his
kneeling posture and fixed upon our hero a gaze the most extraordinary
that he had ever encountered. His eyes dilated like those of a cat,
the breath expelled itself from his bosom in so deep and profound an
expiration that it appeared as though it might never return again. Nor
was it until Jonathan had replaced the ball in his pocket that he
appeared to awaken from the trance that the sight of the object had
sent him into. But no sooner had the cause of this strange demeanor
disappeared into our hero's breeches' pocket than he arose as with an
electric shock. In an instant he became transformed as by the touch of
magic. A sudden and baleful light flamed into his eyes, his face grew
as red as blood, and he clapped his hand to his pocket with a sudden
and violent motion. "Ze ball!" he cried, in a hoarse and strident
voice. "Ze ball! Give me ze ball!" And upon the next instant our hero
beheld the round and shining nozzle of a pistol pointed directly
against his forehead.
For a moment he stood as though transfixed; then in the mortal peril
that faced him, he uttered a roar that sounded in his own ears like
the outcry of a wild beast, and thereupon flung himself bodily upon
the other with the violence and the fury of a madman.
The stranger drew the trigger, and the powder flashed in the pan. He
dropped the weapon, clattering, and in an instant tried to draw
another from his other pocket. Before he could direct his aim,
however, our hero had caught him by both wrists, and, bending his hand
backward, prevented the chance of any shot from taking immediate
effect upon his person. Then followed a struggle of extraordinary
ferocity and frenzy--the stranger endeavoring to free his hand, and
Jonathan striving with all the energy of despair to prevent him from
effecting his murderous purpose.
In the struggle our hero became thrust against the edge of the table.
He felt as though his back were breaking, and became conscious that in
such a situation he could hope to defend himself only a few moments
longer. The stranger's face was pressed close to his own. His hot
breath, strong with the odor of garlic, fanned our hero's cheek, while
his lips, distended into a ferocious and ferine grin, displayed his
sharp teeth shining in the candlelight.
"Give me ze ball!" he said, in a harsh and furious whisper.
At the moment there rang in Jonathan's ears the sudden and astounding
detonation of a pistol shot, and for a moment he wondered whether he
had received a mortal wound without being aware of it. Then suddenly
he beheld an extraordinary and dreadful transformation take place in
the countenance thrust so close to his own; the eyes winked several
times with incredible rapidity, and then rolled upward and inward; the
jaws gaped into a dreadful and cavernous yawn; the pistol fell with a
clatter to the floor, and the next moment the muscles, so rigid but an
instant before, relaxed into a limp and listless flaccidity. The
joints collapsed, and the entire man fell into an indistinguishable
heap upon and across the dead figure stretched out upon the floor,
while at the same time a pungent and blinding cloud of gunpowder smoke
filled the apartment. For a few moments the hands twitched
convulsively; the neck stretched itself to an abominable length; the
long, lean legs slowly and gradually relaxed, and every fiber of the
body gradually collapsed into the lassitude of death. A spot of blood
appeared and grew upon the collar at the throat, and in the same
degree the color ebbed from the face, leaving it of a dull and leaden
pallor.
All these terrible and formidable changes of aspect our hero stood
watching with a motionless and riveted attention, and as though they
were to him matters of the utmost consequence and importance; and only
when the last flicker of life had departed from his second victim did
he lift his gaze from this terrible scene of dissolution to stare
about him, this way and that, his eyes blinded, and his breath stifled
by the thick cloud of sulphurous smoke that obscured the objects about
him in a pungent cloud.
V
_The Unexpected Encounter with the Sea Captain with the Broken Nose_
If our hero had been distracted and bedazed by the first catastrophe
that had befallen, this second and even more dreadful and violent
occurrence appeared to take away from him, for the moment, every
power of thought and of sensation. All that perturbation of emotion
that had before convulsed him he discovered to have disappeared, and
in its stead a benumbed and blinded intelligence alone remained to
him. As he stood in the presence of this second death, of which he had
been as innocent and as unwilling an instrument as he had of the
first, he could observe no signs either of remorse or of horror within
him. He picked up his hat, which had fallen upon the floor in the
first encounter, and, brushing away the dust with the cuff of his coat
sleeve with extraordinary care, adjusted the beaver upon his head with
the utmost nicety. Then turning, still stupefied as with the fumes of
some powerful drug, he prepared to quit the scene of tragic terrors
that had thus unexpectedly accumulated upon him.
But ere he could put his design into execution his ears were startled
by the sound of loud and hurried footsteps which, coming from below,
ascended the stairs with a prodigious clatter and bustle of speed. At
the landing these footsteps paused for a while, and then approached,
more cautious and deliberate, toward the room where the double tragedy
had been enacted, and where our hero yet stood silent and inert.
All this while Jonathan made no endeavor to escape, but stood passive
and submissive to what might occur. He felt himself the victim of
circumstances over which he himself had no control. Gazing at the
partly opened door, he waited for whatever adventure might next befall
him. Once again the footsteps paused, this time at the very threshold,
and then the door was slowly pushed open from without.
As our hero gazed at the aperture there presently became disclosed to
his view the strong and robust figure of one who was evidently of a
seafaring habit. From the gold braid upon his hat, the seals dangling
from the ribbon at his fob, and a certain particularity of custom, he
was evidently one of no small consideration in his profession. He was
of a strong and powerful build, with a head set close to his
shoulders, and upon a round, short bull neck. He wore a black cravat,
loosely tied into a knot, and a red waistcoat elaborately trimmed with
gold braid; a leather belt with a brass buckle and hanger, and huge
sea boots completed a costume singularly suggestive of his occupation
in life. His face was round and broad, like that of a cat, and a
complexion stained, by constant exposure to the sun and wind, to a
color of newly polished mahogany. But a countenance which otherwise
might have been humorous, in this case was rendered singularly
repulsive by the fact that his nose had been broken so flat to his
face that all that remained to distinguish that feature were two
circular orifices where the nostrils should have been. His eyes were
by no means so sinister as the rest of his visage, being of a
light-gray color and exceedingly vivacious--even good-natured in the
merry restlessness of their glance--albeit they were well-nigh hidden
beneath a black bush of overhanging eyebrows. When he spoke, his voice
was so deep and resonant that it was as though it issued from a barrel
rather than from the breast of a human being.
"How now, my hearty!" cried he, in stentorian tones, so loud that they
seemed to stun the tensely drawn drums of our hero's ears. "How now,
my hearty! What's to do here? Who is shooting pistols at this hour of
the night?" Then, catching sight of the figures lying in a huddle upon
the floor, his great, thick lips parted into a gape of wonder and his