Chapter XXIV: Home

A chorus of yelping certified to the invasion of the main cabin, but its note of triumph was changed to consternation as Silver’s bloodhounds discovered that their bird had flown.

“Gone!”

“The ---- knave’s scooped us!”

“Boats, lads; boats!”

And presently the dick-dock of oars behind us caused Darby and me to redouble our labors. We drove ashore several rods down-stream from the town on the shallow bluff, and we dared not wait to seek shelter within its log walls. Truth to tell, we doubted now that the town itself spelled safety for us. The _Walrus’_ carronades would make short work of such defenses as Savannah had to boast.

So we pelted up the bluff by a sandy path that debouched upon the cleared fields outside the stockade, urged on by that persistent oar-rattle and the shouts the pirates exchanged betwixt their several boats. Whether they were following us we could not discover, for the night was black as a cellar-vault; but we left nothing to chance, and ran hot-foot through the plantations of the citizens, overhearing, as we passed, the excited comments of the men on the firing-platforms of the stockade, who evidently anticipated an attack from their ugly visitor in the river. We never tarried for breath until we had gained the verge of the forest.

Peter was now in his element. He could find his way about a strange countryside by day or night as easily as a sailor could navigate the trackless wastes of the sea, and he led us in a beeline north and east in the general direction of the outlying settlements which intervened betwixt Savannah and the Carolinas. An hour or so after dawn we emerged upon a village in a clearing, whose inhabitants eyed us dubiously until Darby produced one of the golden doubloons from the store he had acquired during his reign as Flint’s favorite.

These people had never before seen gold, and for a doubloon and an onza they sold us an old but serviceable musket with bullet-pouch, powder-horn and store of ammunition, and deerskin garments for all of us save Ben Gunn, who stoutly refused to don what he regarded as only another kind of a “livery-shuit.” They also sold us a small quantity of salt and flour, and put us on the trail to Charleston in the Carolinas.

Of our journey thither I can say only that it was such an Odyssey as the frontier-dwellers of our provinces have long been accustomed to. To Peter and me its perils of forest and stream, red savages, and wild beasts, were far less formidable than those of the sea, and Moira and Darby thrived upon the experience--so much so that when at last, brier-torn and footsore, we entered Charleston’s sedate streets and found awaiting us an ample choice of packet-ships to the north we four were unanimous for continuing our journey by land.

“_Neen_,” said Peter. “I don’t ever go to der sea again, Bob.”

“Ah, who would be fool enough in his ignorance to be wandherin’ wet and bedraggled on the salt waves of the sea when he might venture the forests and be shootin’ at the red deer and the bears and the catamounts and it may be an Injun, if he was in the full tide o’ his luck?” snorted Darby.

“I seem to remember one was all for the sea, and would wave the skull and crossbones in anybody’s face,” I jeered.

“Troth, and I knew less then than I do now,” he replied unblushingly. “Them pirates was enough to break the heart of Pontius Pilate. Barrin’ Flint, there wasn’t a one of them would be able to hold his own against such as us.”

“Silver might----”

“He was a clever one, Long John; but he’ll be in throuble, you see if he’s not,” insisted Darby. “Too graspin’ he is by half.”

“I care not how much trouble he is in,” I said. “I want never to see him or any of his crew again.”

Moira, sitting beside me on the settle of the tavern-porch, twined her arm in mine with a slight shudder.

“Never again!” she cried. “And if it will be the same to you, Bob, we’ll stay off of the sea. I like fine the clutch of the earth on my feet and the whispering of the trees. Men may be cruel on the land, but faith, they’re never so cruel as the cruelest of the seafarers. And all my days when I hear the rumble of the surf and the suck of the tide running out I’ll be thinking of himself that lies so far and lone under the Spyglass--and of Master Murray, God rest his poor bones, and many another. The sea had them all! Ah, Holy Virgin, what a hunger it has for men!”

But Peter shook his head solemnly.

“_Neen_,” he said. “Der sea did not take them all. They died from der greed dot cankered in their hearts. I do not like der sea, but der sea is der same as der landt. It works Gott’s will.”

We were silent for a space, looking out upon the busy life about us, the negroes in their bright bandanna headdresses, the planters passing on half-thoroughbreds, the decent townsfolk in hodden-gray.

“And you, Ben Gunn?” I said to the steward who sat across the porch from us. “Will you come north with us? My father----”

He jumped up, writhing and twisting in an excess of embarrassment, aye, and with something of fear in his face.

“’Twas yourself was promisin’ me I’d not ha’ to wear a livery-shuit,” he protested. “And before that ye said as how ye’d find me a berth as a real, tarry sailor-man, a-pullin’ on ropes and standin’ tricks at the wheel. Yes, ye did, Master Ormerod; and I believed ye, I did--though there’s a many think naught o’ foolin’ poor Ben Gunn.”

“I’ll not fool you, Ben,” I answered. “If you would go to sea, to sea shall you go.”

And on the morrow I found him a berth upon a Barbados packet, cautioning him to employ discretion in discussing his past life, lest he be handed over to the Admiralty officials as a former pirate. He was our last link with the infamous company that had owned the joint rule of my great-uncle and John Flint, and what became of him or of the remnants of Flint’s crew aboard the _Walrus_ I do not know to this day. But from the fact that the _Walrus_ was never reported again I have suspected that she must either have been wrecked or voluntarily abandoned by her people. She left Savannah within twenty-four hours of our landing there--so much I discovered by correspondence with a merchant of that town.

Did she put back to the Rendezvous and ransack the island’s surface for the treasure Flint had buried? Or did she try for the gold we concealed on the Dead Man’s Chest? Hopeless ventures, either of the two! As well search for a certain grain of corn in a heaping bin.

And what happened to Bill Bones? Did he elude the pursuit of his deserted comrades and seek an opportunity to lift Flint’s treasure for himself? I’ll swear that was his intent from the first--precisely as I’ll take oath that had Silver been first to get his hands upon Flint’s map he would have plotted so that only he and a small circle of his immediate familiars should have shared in the prize. Ruthless scoundrels, one and all! But perhaps Bones never won clear. Perhaps Silver fastened upon his trail and pursued him with that fantastic vengeance they called the Black Spot. I have often wondered what it might be.

As to the treasure, they are welcome to it or any part of it if they can find it. Moira and I talked over the desirability of notifying her Jacobite friends of the hoard that was buried on the Dead Man’s Chest, and for a time she leaned toward this course; but after she had dwelt a while in the Hanoverian prosperity of New York she revolted against the idea of taking any step which would embroil the peace of the realm, and any lingering doubts in her mind were dissipated by the titanic conflict of the Seven Years’ War, with its world-wide convulsion of nations that set armies marching to battle all the way from the parched plains of India to the forests of our wilderness country.

“Here is no time to think of Hanoverian or Jacobite,” said she. “We will all be English together.”

“Der Irish, too?” asked Peter gravely.

“Troth, the Irish will be the best English!” she cried. “Unless it be the Dutch.”

But I am galloping ahead of my story. Drop back across the years--’tis no more of an effort than it was for us to slide down the cable over the bow of the _Walrus_ that night off Savannah--to the settle on the porch of the tavern in Charleston. Ben Gunn was disposed of; our plans were made for the northward journey along the seaboard. All that remained to be done was to come by a priest to wed Moira and me; and that, it seemed, was impossible short of Baltimore, in Maryland. Yet at the last our luck held, for the day we were to start turned stormy and we delayed our departure; and that afternoon a French West Indiaman put into the harbor under stress of the weather. Among her company was a kindly Franciscan, and he readily agreed to perform the ceremony.

For the rest, we rode into New York about four of the clock on the afternoon of April the 24th, in the year 1755. My father was in the counting-room of our house in Pearl Street, and he came to the door at the sound of the horses’ hoofs on the cobbles. The sun was sloping out of the west full into his eyes; and for the time that it took me to dismount and swing Moira down from her saddle he stood dazed, fearful lest the dazzling light was playing tricks with him.

“Is it truly you, Robert?” he cried. “But it must be, for there are Peter and Darby.”

“Yes, father,” I answered. “And I have brought home another.”

He opened his arms with an eager smile.

“There’s room here for two of you, boy. Certes, you have but followed in my footsteps and fetched home a wife from your adventures.”

“She is the little Irish maid I----”

“Whoever she is, she’s more than welcome. But come in, come in, the pair of you. Safe and well--and with a wife! Robert, I can scarce credit it. After a whole year! Peter, God bless you! I knew with you he’d come to no harm. Ah, Darby, you have more sense in that red noddle of yours than when you left here; and if you stuck by Master Robert y’are forgiven. What a tale you’ll all have to tell!”

That night as I lay in the upper room I had occupied since childhood I was aroused by a distant clatter and jangling which became louder and louder. At the corner it broke off with a heavy clang, and a pompous voice proclaimed:

“Past twelve o’clock of a fine, bright night, and Master Robert Ormerod is home from his captivity amongst the West Injin pirates. God save the King and the worshipful magistrates of New York!”

’Twas Diggory the watchman; and, listening to him, I recalled how Silver had cozened him the night I was kidnaped, and thereat I fell a-chuckling until Moira stirred sleepily and complained--

“’Tis an ill thing if ye’ll not sleep the first night we will be in your own home, Bob.”

“No, no, sweetheart,” I said. “I was but thinking what an odd bundle of accident is this life we live. For if that fellow braying upon the corner had not been a stupid fool I should never have seen you after I took you to the Whale’s Head.”

“Do you think so!” she retorted. “Then ’tis you will be the fool, for if Captain Murray had not carried you after me I should have contrived to return to New York though it kept me treading the highways and byways of the world come fifty years. Now get you to sleep! I am none of your wives to encourage a husband in loose fancies and romantical longings. Your wandering days are by and done with, and the sooner you square your back on them the better will I be pleased. I’ll not let you forth again, and of that you may be prime confident!”

So I turned over and went to sleep.