Chapter XVI: Treachery

The candles burned with a steady, spear-shaped flame, undeviating, motionless, so that the shadows were cast upon the paneling of the cabin walls in solid blocks like streaks of a darker coloring in the polished woodwork. The air was so still that we could hear the sea-birds calling down the inlet, the seethe and suck of water about the rudder, the splash of a fish, the patter of the feet of the watch.

Mistress O’Donnell had retired to her stateroom, with the appearance of the wine, for both her father and Murray held punctiliously to the polite usage of society in this respect, Colonel O’Donnell, I think, because he dreaded lest she should witness one of his periodical bouts when he would saturate himself to a state of insensibility, and Peter and I must carry him to his berth, as we had done the first night he came aboard the _Royal James_.

My great uncle, for want of other diversion, had undertaken to teach Peter to play chess, with some saturnine advice and comment from the Irishman; and to my amusement--as likewise to Murray’s, I must admit--Peter proved himself a most redoubtable tyro, and once he had been coached in the rudiments presented a shrewd defensive gambit.

“Check at last!” exclaimed my relative, sinking back in his chair--of the four of us, he alone wore coat and stock and still contrived to maintain an air of cool well-being in that humid atmosphere. “You pushed me, Peter. Stap me, but you did! I’d not like to match my game with yours six months from now. Had you developed your queen’s knight eight moves back-- But ’tis futile to argue concerning what might have been. As well seek to prognosticate the future of our own lives.”

Peter giggled and muttered that he was “no goodt, _neen_.”

“I would we might say, ‘Check!’ in this weary coil we are caught in,” grumbled O’Donnell. “I see not that we are any farther forward with your confederates yonder.”

He waved his hand out of the stern-window.

“They carried away their four hundred thousand pounds, but every man of them was as glum in the face as though ’twas so many bodeens instead of a prince’s ransom. St. Patrick! When I think of what four hundred thousand pounds would do with the English Parliamentmen that will be selling their souls to whoever bids them the highest!”

“We have paid a price, _chevalier_,” returned my great-uncle. “If we receive what we purchased, well and good. If not----”

He spread out his hands in deprecation.

“I am bound to concede, however, that I do not augur the best from what little information we have to go upon. Have you noted, gentlemen, that still as is the night, we hear no sounds of carousing aboard the _Walrus_?”

’Twas true, and had been true since the last boatload of treasure was transferred to Flint’s ship shortly after dusk.

“You think he will fight then?” I asked from my seat under the stern windows, whence I could see the lights of the _Walrus_, dimly yellow in the thick, velvety, tropic darkness.

“I hope he will fight, my dear nephew,” my great-uncle corrected me. “I fear Captain Flint has outlived his usefulness to me, and if my fears are well founded, the sooner we can smash him the better I shall be pleased. But I make it a rule never to think on the possibilities of the future. Rather I prepare for whatever eventualities may arise and let it go at that.”

“And are ye prepared tonight for treachery if this fellow Flint will be turning upon ye?” demanded O’Donnell.

Murray indulged himself with a pinch of snuff.

“Within reason, _chevalier_, yes. We have a strict watch, and the battery hath been cast loose and provided. More I can not do. The one advantage which Flint possesses is that I must wait upon whatever line of conduct he devises or his crew dictate to him.”

The Irishman downed a goblet of brandy in a single gulp.

“Bah!” he cried. “’Tis easy enough for you to be talking the like of that. But I tell ye I am thinking we’d maybe better choose the now whether we’ll push the fighting to Flint or pass out to sea.”

My great-uncle shook his head.

“That would be poor tactics, either way. A fight means loss of life and ship damage, and if it can be avoided without loss we are by so much the gainer. Also, the seas are dangerous for us, as you should know, _chevalier_--and for another reason, Martin agrees with me the weather is working up for a violent storm.”

“St. Patrick aid us!” protested O’Donnell. “I’m not able at all to make out how ye stand, Murray, and that’s the naked truth. One moment you’re crying for a fight with Flint, and the next you say to avoid it, if that can be managed.”

“Quite true, _chevalier_,” assented my great-uncle calmly. “And I fail to see that my position is a false one. I prefer not to force the issue. My policy is summed up in that.”

“But you don’t know what der _Walrus_ will do, dat’s der trouble,” said Peter, looking up from the chessmen with which he had been toying on the table-top.

“And that, too, I have admitted, friend Peter,” answered Murray.

“One night Bob andt me swam in der water from der _Walrus_ to der _James_,” pursued Peter as if my great uncle had not spoken. “Maybe we could do dot again, _ja_.”

“Ha!” cried O’Donnell, smiting the table with his fist. “The very thing.”

But my great-uncle sat unmoved.

“It could be done!” I exclaimed. “And none besides ourselves have knowledge of it.”

Murray’s wonderful, tawny eyes settled upon my face.

“Aye, it could be done,” he agreed. “But there is danger, lad. ’Tis a still night. You can hear the fish leap.”

“And Flint’s people keep a slovenly watch,” I replied. “But Peter and I are good swimmers. We’ll not make a sound.”

Peter commenced to blow out the candles.

“_Ja_,” he said. “Me, I don’t like der water when it makes waves, but quiet it is nice.”

My great-uncle smiled in the dwindling light.

“I should be a hypocrite as well as a fool, did I refuse your offer, gentlemen,” he said. “’Tis not only our own lives are at stake, but Mistress Moira’s too.”

A groan came from Colonel O’Donnell.

“Ah, didn’t I tell ye the way we would be left to the mercy of your cutthroats and latch-drawers, Murray? And now ’tis yourself must admit it! A sorry business it is, and I wish to God I’d never heard your name or gone forth of Spain.”

Murray himself blew out the last candle.

“Well, well, _chevalier_,” he answered a little tartly, “forth of Spain you went, and aboard the _Royal James_ you are, and the one hope of life you have is that you stay aboard the _Royal James_--and this is saying naught of the obligations we owe to your friends on the other side.”

Peter’s great bulk glided by us.

“I go get a rope,” he squeaked.

“A rope!” hiccuped O’Donnell. “And if we don’t end in the noose of a rope, we’ll likely be walking the plank. I care little for myself. I’ll have seen my life and had my fling. But it was an ill day, Murray, you prevailed on me to fetch Moira along. I can’t think what was in your mind--a young maid in a pirate hold! ’Tis wicked past belief.”

“Tut, tut,” remonstrated my great-uncle. “My reasons were of the best, and have been vindicated by events. But here is Peter. You found the rope?”

“_Ja_,” answered Peter, and knotted an end around a leg of the table as I had done the night of our surreptitious entry.

O’Donnell sought solace in another glass of brandy. Murray assisted Peter and me to undress, and accompanied us to the stern windows.

“No needless risks, remember,” he whispered as I crawled over the sill. “And above all, avoid discovery. Better learn nothing than be found out.”

I had wrapped my ankles around the pendent rope and was prepared for a cautious slide into the water when a faint chuckle escaped him.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I was but thinking what a sturdy pirate you are become.”

He withdrew his head before I could answer, and I dropped into the tepid water, with care that there should be no splash. An instant later Peter was beside me, and we began to swim with long, slow strokes in the direction of the blobs of light which were the only indication of the _Walrus_, so impalpable was the texture of that breathless night. There was not even a star in the sky--and the sky itself was invisible.

The hull of the pirate ship did not take shape until we were under the sheer of the stern. A single, guttering lanthorn seemed to burn in the main cabin, which was tenantless. And we paralleled the sta’b’d side, attracted by a hum of voices for’ard.

Peter’s hand on my shoulder detained me as we swam beneath the heel of the bowsprit.

“Here you climb oop,” he breathed in my ear. “They are all on her deck. I t’ink dey smoke der pipe in council, _ja_!”

I trod water, and explored with both arms above my head.

“There’s no rope within reach,” I told him.

“Dot’s all right. I lift you.”

He was clutching the cutwater with both hands and bracing his feet against the swell of the bow.

“Come on,” he urged. “Oop on to my shoulders. I hold you, _ja_.”

“But if we splash?”

“We don’t splash. You go oop; I go down under der water. Dot’s all.”

I forged alongside of him and gingerly climbed his immense shoulders, using a grip on his hair for haulage. Then I reached overhead again, and this time got my hands upon a stay of the bowsprit which ran from midway of the spar to a turnbuckle on the bow.

“Steady,” I whispered. “I’m going to jump.”

“_Ja!_”

I threw my legs upward and twined them around the stay, hanging like a monkey from it, and Peter went under with a gurgling ripple which might have been made by a fish. Presently he came to the surface and swam beneath me.

“Can you climb, Bob?”

“I think so.”

“Goodt! I waidt.”

The stay was fortunately dry--had it been slippery-wet I could never have swarmed it--and I was able, after much effort, to secure a grip on the bowsprit and lift myself astraddle of it. From here ordinarily the deck should have been visible, but in that intense darkness I could see no more than a vague loom of spars and a blur of light in the waist. The hum of voices was more audible, but still indistinct.

I worked down the bowsprit to the lift of the bows; but still I could see nothing, even on the fo’csle. ’Twas plain, however, that here was no watch to fear, and I dropped to the deck and crawled aft on my hands and knees toward the hum of talk, which I made certain now came from the waist.

The fo’csle was littered with spare cables, water-casks and other sailor’s truck, which I had to avoid displacing; but I had my reward, for as I advanced the hum of voices dissolved into words and phrases.

--“a foxy ’un, Murray is,” said a seaman’s voice.

“And they _James_ fellers’ll fight us, whatever ’ee say,” added a second.

“O’ course they will!”

This was Silver’s unmistakable oily speech.

“Who wouldn’t fight for the grandest fortune as any gentlemen adventurers ever had a chance at?”

I wriggled behind a chase-gun, and peered over its breech into the waist. Two battle-lanthorns were suspended from the mainyard, and their yellow glare revealed the _Walrus’_ crew squatted in serried ranks around the butt of the mainmast, where Flint, Bones, Silver and several others sat on upturned rum-barrels.

Flint leaned forward, wrathfully insistent, as I propped myself against a trunnion.

“Gut me if I thought to find such skulkers in my crew!” he snarled. “D’ye think to take any prize wi’out loss?”

“Aye,” said a third seaman doggedly, “but we ha’ never yet fought wi’ Murray. Them as does don’t ha’ luck.”

A murmur of assent answered him.

“Ah,” struck in Silver, “but there’s a first time always, mates. Murray’s like the rest o’ us. A ball or a cutlass-edge will finish him. And I say again, who wouldn’t risk death for more’n a million and a half o’ pounds in good gold and hard silver as’ll buy every man jack o’ us such pleasures as few men ever comes by, mates?”

“But there’s only as much aboard the _James_ as we ha’ here,” objected one of the first speakers.

“True for you, Tom Allardyce,” said Flint. “But the rest’s safe enough, ain’t it?”

“There’s only them few knows o’ it,” returned the man. “They said on the _James_ there was but the three men and the girl was landed to bury it.”

Flint’s answering laugh was horrible.

“And d’ye think that out o’ four people, not countin’ Murray--and one o’ the four a girl--we can’t make one talk? I tell ye, Tom, the stuff is as good as divided.”

“Ye ha’ first to catch Murray,” retorted Allardyce.

“And why won’t we?” demanded Silver. “Didn’t we take what he was ready to give us and thank him for it like blessed lambs? And if he does suspect, what good’ll it do him? On a night like this he’ll never know where we are until we’re on him. Two good broadsides, and then we’ll sweep his decks.”

Nobody spoke for a time.

“When does the ebb make?” asked Flint with a stretch and a yawn.

“Another two glasses yet,” said Bones.

“----, I must ha’ a bit of sleep,” growled the pirates’ captain. “Come to a vote, lads, and be done wi’ it. Will, ye go or won’t ye? Ye all know what mercy Murray’ll give ye, if he ever hears o’ this council--and there’s them, as would like to blab, be sure o’ that.”

Silver pulled himself erect, cuddling his crutch under his. arm.

“Quartermaster speaks for the crew,” he said. “And my view is as how the crew is for fightin’ for their just rights. The _Walrus_ has played second fiddle long enough, and here’s a chance as isn’t likely to come again.”

There was a second brief interval of silence.

“Nobody contrary,” announced the one-legged man cheerfully. “Council’s over! Keep quiet, mates. No drinkin’, no fightin’. There’ll be plenty o’ both later.”

The squatting ranks broke up into groups, and a number of men strolled for’ard toward my hiding-place. But I did not await them. From the shelter of the chase-gun I hunched myself back behind a water-cask, and so regained the bows, slipped overside and slid down the anchor-cable to the water.

A huge white shape floated up to me.

“Is dot you, Bob?”

“Yes. They’re for attacking the _James_ when the tide turns.”

He headed down-stream without a word. We were half-way to the _James_ before he spoke.

“Dot Murray, he is a lucky feller. Always he gets what he wants.”

“What does he want?” I panted.

“Now he gets rid of Flint andt der _Walrus_ crew, _ja_.”

“But he’ll lose their half of the treasure if----”

“Maybe; maybe he don’t. Andt after dot he gets rid of der _James_.”

“You’re crazy, Peter,” I said indignantly, trying my best to keep pace with him. “He’d be stranded here.”

“Oh, he don’t do dot here--maybe he don’t do dot at all; maybe der tdefil stops helping him, _ja_. But if he gets der chance, you watch him, Bob. He gets rid of der _James_, and maybe he gets rid of us, ja.”

“Well, why do we help him, then?” I snapped, recalling my great-uncle’s parting gibe.

“Dot’s where he is smart, Bob. He makes it so we got to help him to safe our own skins, ja. Andt der little gal, too. For him and der Irisher dot drinks like a Lenape squaw I ain’t got no use. But you andt der little gal--dot’s different.”

“Do you mean he intends to sacrifice all of us? And carry away the whole treasure for himself?”

“I don’t know, Bob. Murray, he is a funny feller. Very funny! He likes you. He likes der little gal. Maybe he likes me--I don’t know. Andt he is honest about dot oldt king dot lifs in Rome. But if any of us come in his way, he would push us aside. Dot’s him now!”

The stern of the _Royal James_ rose before us, and in one of the open windows my great-uncle’s fine white head showed like a faded picture in a frame seen across a darkened room.

“Once before he planned too big,” Peter whispered on. “Maybe this time Gott speaks loud to der tdefil andt stops him.”

My great-uncle’s voice floated down, quietly distinct.

“They are gone overlong. Gadzooks, _chevalier_, if they do not shortly return I’ll slip my cable and take advantage of what remains of the flood to come at the _Walrus_ and finish matters off-hand.”

O’Donnell’s reply was simply a querulous echo from the interior of the cabin.

“That sounds as though he had some use for us,” I murmured to Peter, noiselessly treading water beside me.

“_Ja_. Use he has for us. Maybe he needs us when he gets rid of der _James_, eh? If der tdefil fails him, he can have use for honest men, Bob.”

“We’ll soon know,” I retorted, and twitched the rope which dangled by the rudder-post.

“Who is there?” challenged my great-uncle, instantly alert.

“Robert,” I whispered back, and commenced to climb.

Both Murray and O’Donnell--the latter for the time being stirred out of his habitual gloom--assisted me over the window-sill, and it affected me oddly to note my great-uncle’s unconcern for the water I dripped on his silken coat.

“You ha’ suffered no hurt?” he asked eagerly.

“No, no,” I answered. “Make haste to help Peter up. They are coming against us with the making of the ebb.”

He was betwixt me and the window, and I could see the faint smile of satisfaction on his face.

“’Tis what was to be expected of them,” he remarked. “We must improve our watch. ’Tis no compliment to our people that they failed to suspect aught of your going and coming.”

Peter squattered into the cabin like an enormous toad.

“Oof!” he squeaked. “I haf bubbles under my skin. We haf a fight tonight, Murray, _ja_?”

“Thanks to you and Robert, friend Peter, ’twill be rather in the nature of a chastisement than a fight,” he answered urbanely. “If you will pardon me, gentlemen, I will go and complete the necessary arrangements.”

A tinkle of glass told me that O’Donnell was refilling his goblet.

“What’s a fight to the likes of him?” muttered the Irishman dolefully. “Treachery and scheming and murdering, aye, it’s a fine night for such! Oh, blessed saints, where’ll we be this time the morrow?”

“Safe, beyond question,” I sought to encourage him as I drew on my breeches. “’Tis never the _Walrus’_ scaly crew will overcome us.”

“Be not too sure, Master Ormerod,” he retorted with unusual vehemence. “I am thinking there is the curse of high Heaven on this venture and all connected with it.”

Nevertheless he buckled on his sword and accompanied us to the deck when we were dressed. Men were scurrying silently to and fro, and from an open hatch came the whine of tackle as a piece was shifted on the gundeck. Aloft, squads of topmen were unfurling shreds of canvas to give the _James_ steerage way at need. On the poop my great-uncle was issuing his final orders to Martin, Saunders and Coupeau.

“You, Saunders,” he said, “will stand by the anchor-cable with a broad-ax and upon my giving the word hew it asunder. Your position, Martin, will be in the waist. Keep men on the fore and main yards, ready to make sail when the cable is cut. Coupeau, of you I expect an initial broadside of crushing effect and a second fire if circumstances permit. Now to your stations, and above all things instruct your men to preserve silence. The man who makes a noise I will blow from a gun forthwith, and let that be my declaration to Flint!”

The officers gave their acknowledgments and flitted away. Simultaneously Peter pointed up the inlet.

“See!” he exclaimed.

The _Walrus’_ riding-light winked out. An interval of minutes, and one of the waist-lights followed it. Another interval, and she disappeared completely in the black maw of the night.

My great-uncle sneezed delicately.

“In the dark one is clumsy,” he observed. “I fear I have abused my nose with an over heavy dose of Rip-Rap. Well, well! Perhaps there is a parable in the incident for such clever fellows as Captain Flint.

“I must ask you not to move about, gentlemen. We have the better part of a glass to wait for the ebb, but caution is our watchword!”