Chapter III: A Caller in the Night

We sat late at dinner that night, for my father must needs have me repeat at length the tale of my experiences during the day, revealing a perturbation unusual in him, although Peter Corlaer ate on with placid solemnity, scarce a flicker of interest in his little eyes that were almost buried behind their ramparts of flesh.

“I have heard of this Colonel O’Donnell,” said my father when I had made an end. “He was in Scotland with Prince Charles--one of the Irish crew who bogged a promising venture, if what men say be true. I marvel at his temerity in landing here, for there must be a price upon his head in England. Doubtless he was consorting with some of our Jacobite sympathizers at the Whale’s Head--a fitting place for such an intrigue!

“The captain of the frigate called upon the Governor this morning, so Master Colden told me, with a cock-and-bull story of a mistake in his reckoning that took him north of his course. I smell the taint of a Jacobite plot! Your gloomy friend Jenkins had the right of it. Never trust a Spaniard when he comes with pretense of friendship.”

“Mistress O’Donnell said they were for the Floridas,” I protested. “Sure, they are not far out of their course.”

My father smiled for the first time.

“The little maid would have no knowledge of her father’s purpose. And if she did-- No, no, lad, I had my share of plotting in my youth. Our Jacobites are a pernicious lot.”

“Yet you, yourself, were one of them,” I pointed out, a thought maliciously.

His face darkened.

“True, and I learned by experience. Set that to my credit, Bob. Britain is greater than any king or any family. ’Tis the country, not the man, must be considered. And Britain fares better under Hanoverian George than she ever did under a Stuart Charles or James.”

I was still unconvinced.

“But certes, sir, ’tis in no sense strange for the Spaniards to dispatch an engineer to inspect their fortifications this side the Atlantic.”

“An Irish engineer officer?”

My father smiled again.

“’Tis to be wondered at. But there! In such a devious business we might not hope to reach the truth, nor am I greatly concerned thereat. Most Jacobite plots are ill-planned sallies by desperate, misguided men. No, boy, what irks me most is the tidings you had of the one-legged sailor. Silver, you called him? Yes, I like it not to hear the pirates are outside our harbor. It hath the look of daring beyond the ordinary. If Murray----”

The door behind me opened, and I saw my father’s jaw drop. Peter, at my right hand, let his eyelids blink, then went on quietly cracking nuts between his huge fingers.

“Did I hear you call me, Ormerod?”

The voice from the doorway had a chill, level quality that was as resonant as the tolling of a bell.

“‘If Murray’-- I _thought_ I heard my name?”

I screwed around in my chair. There in the doorway stood the most remarkable figure I had ever seen. A large man, straight as an arrow despite the years that had planted crow’s feet so thickly about his eyes, his square shoulders showed to advantage the exquisite tailoring of the black velvet coat he wore. His small-clothes were of a fine yellow damasked silk, and his stockings of silk to match. Diamonds flashed from the buckles of his shoes, his fob, his fingers and the hilt of his dress-sword. A great ruby glowed in the Mechlin jabot that cascaded from his throat. Over his arm hung a cloak, and under his elbow was tucked a hat cocked in the latest mode.

But it was the memory of his face that abided with you. The features were all big and strongly carved; the nose was a jutting beak above a tight-lipped mouth and a jaw that was brutally square; the eyes were a vivid black, flecked with tawny lights. His hair was of a pure, silvery whiteness and drawn back, clubbed and tied with a black ribbon. His cheeks and brows were furrowed by a maze of wrinkles, yet the flesh seemed as firm as mine. In every way he suggested breeding, gentility, wealth; but there was a combined effect of sinister power and predatory will, a hint of ruthless egotism which took no account of any interests save his own.

He acknowledged my prolonged stare with a slight bow, mildly derisive.

“Your son, Ormerod?” he continued. “My grandnephew? Robert, I think, you named him, for the redoubtable Master Juggins of London, who aided you to start life anew after you had contrived to wreck yourself upon the rocks of a foresworn Jacobite career.”

My father rose slowly to his feet.

“Yes, he is my son, Murray. It is neither his fault nor mine that he is also your grandnephew. As to his name, Robert Juggins was a better man than you or I, and you can not inspire my son against me by hinting at hidden chapters of my early life. He knows that I was deluded into serving the Stuarts, and lived to learn that country comes before king. We were talking of that before you entered.”

The man in the doorway nodded his head.

“I seem to remember that became a topic of some interest to you--after the Jacobites hounded you from France and the Hanoverians drove you from England. Ah, well, I can commend a philosophical adaptability in face of adversity. ’Tis a trait I have had occasion to practise, myself.”

He let the door swing to, and stepped behind me to the left side of the table, where there was a vacant chair.

“I would not seem discourteous,” he remarked suavely. “I note another old friend, Ormerod--or perhaps I should say an old enemy. Permit me to observe, Corlaer, that you wear well with the years--as well as myself, indeed.”

Peter squeezed a hickory-nut between his forefinger and thumb and looked up vacantly into Murray’s face.

“_Ja_,” he said.

“Lest you should be tempted by some misapprehension,” pursued Murray, “I may inform you that I have every reason to suppose myself safe from any measures you might take against me. I know well the dangerous swiftness of wit Peter conceals beneath that flat face of his, and I should not like to see him hurt----”

“_Ja_, you bet,” giggled the Dutchman.

“I assure you such is the fact,” answered Murray. “I hope to do what I have come here for tonight without injuring anybody, and if you gentlemen will listen to me quietly for a few moments I am confident that the issue will be harmless for all of us.”

He cast his cloak and hat upon a chair by the fire, and put his hand upon the vacant one betwixt my father and me.

“May I?” he asked.

My father, still standing, said nothing; and Murray, with a shrug, accepted the silence for consent, sank gracefully into the seat and drew a golden snuff-box, studded with brilliants, from a pocket.

“With your permission,” he said, springing the cover.

A fragrant whiff of snuff-tobacco tickled my senses as he offered it generally.

“’Tis excellent stuff,” he remarked. “Ripe Rip-Rap. What? None of you? Ah, then----”

He dusted a pinch under his nostrils, inhaled and daintily used his handkerchief, a lace-edged morsel such as women carry.

My father leaned forward across the table, a blaze of hatred in his face.

“’Tis true, then!”

Murray regarded him in some surprize.

“True? My dear sir, I assured you ’twas Rip-Rap.”

My father turned to Peter and me.

“After I told you--about this man, Robert--I hoped that I was wrong--that I had done him an injustice. But now he has convicted himself out of his own lips.”

Murray gently deposited the snuffbox upon the table in front of him.

“Ah,” he murmured. “I see! You were referring to my nickname, or, shall we say, _nomme de guerre_?”

My father laughed bitterly.

“_Nomme de guerre_! Name of a pirate! But let us have it, fair and openly, Andrew Murray. Are you Captain Rip-Rap?”

“I suppose most people would agree with your description,” replied Murray; “although personally I prefer the word buccaneer. It is susceptible to so much wider use, and there is about it a suggestion of---- However, we are not interested here tonight in the more abstruse branches of etymology. I am the person popularly known on the high seas as Captain Rip-Rap, and I fancy I might have logical grounds for arguing that if any disgrace adheres to me by that admission, ’twas you, Ormerod, who drove me to the practise of what you call piracy.”

“’Tis like you to take that tone,” said my father. “I drove you from the practise of what amounted to piracy on the land. There is no difference in the way you earn your livelihood today, Murray. You were an outlaw, and you are an outlaw.”

“I fear you are incapable of doing me justice,” sighed Murray. “You should know that I have always labored to serve higher ends than the mere sordid pursuit of money, such as has possessed you and those like you.”

He wagged his head sadly.

“I had hoped better of you, Ormerod. You are of good blood, man. ’Sdeath, do you never think on what you lose by playing the small colonial merchant here?”

“I think better of the estate I won unaided, with my bare hands and wits, than of the manor I lost in England through youthful folly,” rejoined my father. “But I never thought to hear a pirate prate of the blessings of birth. Phaugh!”

Murray’s face purpled, and a Scots burr crept into his speech.

“No man challenges my birth,” he shouted. “I am of better blood than you. I trace my lineage to James V. I quarter my arms with the Douglases, the Homes, the Morays, the Keiths, the Hepburns, aye, and with the oldest clans beyond the Highland Line!”

“I have heard so before,” commented my father drily.

Murray breathed deeply, obviously fighting for self-control.

“Let it pass!” he exclaimed with a magnificent gesture. “What doth it signify? I am what I am, sir--and the day comes when I shall stand as high as the highest.”

He drew himself up very erect in his chair, but my father answered with the same dry scorn:

“That too I have heard before. Once, I mind, you expected to be a duke by exploiting ill-gotten gains with Jacobite intrigue. Aye, you would have ruined your country, sold her to the French like enough, all for a peerage. Now, I suppose, you would do it again.”

“What would you?”

Murray flicked a pinch of snuff into his nostrils.

“The luck was against me, although you, yourself, and silent Peter there, know how close to success I came.”

“_Ja_,” squeaked Peter, still busy crushing nuts and slowly crunching their meats.

“I have had the Devil’s own luck,” Murray went on, heedless of the Dutchman. “In the ’45 I was half the world away, for there were too many cruisers abroad in the Caribbees for my comfort. Before I could get back the Prince had played and lost. A shame! With me----”

“With you he would have been sold to Government for the thirty thousand pounds reward that Cumberland offered.” said my father.

Murray looked hurt.

“I have been accused of much,” he replied; “but never of disloyalty to King James or his sons.”

“True,” assented my father; “you could never earn anything by it. Your opportunities all came from the other direction.”

“Your words are unjust, sir,” said Murray with a hauteur he had not shown previously. “Indeed, if matters fall out, as I anticipate, I shall soon give proof which can not be ignored of my devotion to the Good Cause. I am preparing a combination which----”

He swung around suddenly upon me.

“But I am forgetting my main purpose!” he cried. “Stand up, grandnephew, and let me have a look at you.”

I would not have heeded him, but my father said quickly:

“Do as he asks you, Robert. I’d not have him think you are crooked in the legs.”

So I stood.

“A likely build,” he remarked warmly. “You favor your father, I see--save in the face, it may be. There you are your mother, my maid Marjory. Ah, sweet chit, would she were with us now! A sad loss; a sad loss, lad!”

The expression which came to my father’s face was terrible in its intensity of passion. He leaned closer to Murray, white to the cheekbones, his nostrils pinched in.

“Murray,” he said, “make an end of such talk! As you value your life, mention her not again. I know not what cards you hold up your sleeve here, but if we all die in the next moment I will slay you as you sit if you profane her memory with your foul tongue.”

Murray stared up at him coolly and took a pinch of snuff.

“Ah, well, you were always prejudiced,” he answered. “I-- But it serves no purpose to reopen old wounds. I am of one mind with you there. Yet tell me this: Have you poisoned the boy’s mind against me?”

My father dropped back into his seat with a sour grimace.

“Poisoned his mind?” he repeated. “I told him no more recently than yesterday who and what you were. You brought that upon yourself by pursuing your rascally trade in these seas. Until then the boy did not so much as know that you existed--as his relative.”

My great-uncle--I was gradually beginning to think of him as such--pondered this news, head on one side, peering from my father to me and back again.

“I see, I see,” he murmured. “Humph! I fear his mind hath been corrupted. But I am not surprized. No, no! I prepared for this.”

“For what?” demanded my father.

Murray leaned abruptly across the table.

“I will be frank with you, Ormerod--and with Nephew Robert here. I am somewhat in difficulties----”

“If ’tis money--” began my father.

My great-uncle’s gesture was sufficient check to this.

“I am not in difficulties for money, although I am like to be in difficulties shortly in connection with an embarrassing quantity of it. In fine, sir, I am upon the point of launching the coup of my career, one which will entail consequences of a stupendous character, and in the end, I venture to predict, echo in throne-rooms and chancelleries. Aye, kingdoms shall----”

He broke off.

“It is not necessary that I should go into that. Suffice it for the present if I say that I am in the position of a man who has partially tamed an unwieldy band of wild animals. My own ship I can rely upon up to a certain point, but I have associated with me----”

“That would be Flint?” interjected my father.

“I am flattered by the knowledge of my affairs which you display,” replied my great-uncle with one of his courtly inclinations. “Yes; I had occasion, when I first went to sea, for a competent navigator. Flint served me in that capacity until I became independent, and I then fitted him out with his own ship. We have cruised in company since. I am not betraying a professional secret when I add that he is a man whose undoubted force of personality is offset by a certain turbulence and crudeness of wit which make him difficult to handle--increasingly difficult to handle, I may say. I foresee trouble with him in the future in connection with the coup to which I have already refered.”

“And is it your idea,” inquired my father sarcastically, “that we should undertake to assassinate this man for you--out of the kindness of our hearts, as it were, and to stimulate the practise of piracy?”

Murray shook his head, wholly undisturbed.

“I never remove a man I can use,” he answered. “Flint is still useful. No, I require a young man to stand at my elbow and assist me in curbing unruly spirits. I promise a great future for such.”

“Command of his own pirate craft, no doubt?” pressed my father.

“That would be an offer to draw most stout youths,” returned my great-uncle. “Bah, what is piracy, that you and your kind prate against it, Ormerod? Is it any worse in character than four-fifths of the business practised in this world? What are you and those like you but men who seek to deprive others of their lawful gains that you may add to your stores what the others possessed? I take from the wealthy, who can afford to lose, what they have dishonestly got, more often than not, and much of what I win I contribute to the Cause to which you gave your first loyalty.”

“An admirable code of ethics,” observed my father.

“’Tis as good as any I have discovered,” agreed Murray smoothly. “You called me an outlaw a few minutes past. I can not deny it. I am an outlaw because I worked in my own way to reëstablish my lawful king. You, who once served that king in exile, turned against him and ruined me, made an outlaw of me. Well, I do what I may; and since Morgan’s day no man has played the game so successfully, as any seaman would tell you.”

“I’ll vouch for that,” said my father. “But come to the point. What will you have? That I should apprentice Robert to you to be indentured a good, honest, trusty and skilful pirate?”

“Even so.”

My father sat back in his chair.

“I’ll not,” he said.

Murray treated himself to a pinch of snuff.

“What does our young man himself say?” he asked.

“I say that you offer me no inducement,” I answered as shortly as I could.

“’Odslife,” he swore. “No inducement? My dear nephew, I offer you an open, bracing life--for a brief space; a share in a brave venture; an opportunity to rehabilitate your family, to rise to place, title and honor.”

“On a pirate’s deck?” I jeered.

“From a pirate’s quarterdeck,” he corrected me gravely. “I am on my last cruise. The _Royal James_ is to vindicate her name. Aye, in years to come she will be regarded as a shrine of loyalty and devotion, and to have sailed with Andrew Murray in her---- Why, sir, who remembers to-day of Robin Hood aught but that he was true to King Richard in adversity?”

The man’s surety was amazing.

“This passes all reason,” said my father wearily. “You must be insane.”

“Not at all,” retorted my great-uncle. “I am the leading practitioner of my profession. Winter, Davis, Roberts, Bellamy, all the more noted--ah--pirates of recent years, were small fry compared to me. You would find it difficult to credit me did I inform you of my takings----”

“Blood-money!” roared my father. “Thieves’ money!”

“Ah, that unfortunate point of view of yours again,” protested Murray. “I tell you, Ormerod, you stand in the boy’s way.”

“He is not a boy, but a man,” snapped my father. “And able to judge his own course.”

“So be it.”

My great-uncle turned to me once more.

“It appears this decision is left betwixt us two, Nephew Robert,” he said. “So I must inform you that I am determined to have your aid in any event--by force, if you will not accompany me reasonably.”

There was a snap as a Brazil-nut split apart in Peter’s grip. Murray waved an airy hand in his direction.

“’Tis true that you are the most powerful man I ever met, Corlaer,” he remarked; “yet I urge you not to attempt violence. I have sufficient men in the house to overpower you, and I should not hesitate to slay Ormerod or you at need. The boy is the only one of you three whose life hath value to me.”

“He means it, Peter,” said my father. “Keep your hands down.”

“_Ja_,” squeaked Peter.

“You were ever a wise man, Ormerod,” resumed my great-uncle. “I venture to congratulate you upon the soundness of your judgment. Now for you, Nephew Robert. Come with me you shall, but I prefer that you come willingly. Therefore I lay before you these inducements: Firstly, we sail upon a venture which hath a color of State business, although a strict legalist would denounce it piratical--you see, I endeavor to deal honestly by you after my fashion; secondly, no harm is intended to you; thirdly, the rewards of our project will be singularly rich; fourthly, I design to exploit the advantages which shall accrue to me solely for your benefit--you, Robert, are my heir, and if I have need of you in the execution of my coup, nonetheless I shall be able to repay you for whatever you do in my behalf a hundredfold, both materially and otherwise. I am, after all, your nearest kin after your father, and I say in all humility my assistance is not to be despised.”

From his manner you would have reckoned he was offering me the governorship of a province, at the least; and the undeniable charm of the man invested his words with a glamour which was augmented by the virility of his person--and this notwithstanding my fast-rising hatred of him.

“I won’t go willingly,” I answered. “Even did your arguments tempt me, I should resent your threat of compulsion.”

“Admirably spoken,” he applauded. “Egad, I perceive you have the proper spirit. You are exactly the lad I require.”

I rose, whipped to wrath by the insolence of his assurance.

“I am the lad you’ll not get,” I shouted. “Call in your bravos, and I’ll tear their throats out for you.”

“Gently, gently,” he remonstrated. “My bravos, as you term them, are not lambs, Nephew Robert, and I must warn you that the killings would not be all on the one side. If you value your father, stand fast.”

And he drew from a waistcoat pocket a silver whistle, which he placed to his lips. A thin blast piped through the room, and a dozen hairy seadogs surged in from hall and kitchen. Raps on the two windows indicated that others mounted guard outside.

Peter Corlaer’s little pig-eyes swept the invaders with a single glance, but he did not suspend for a second his steady crushing and munching of nuts. My father’s face was a mask of mingled rage and fear--not fear for himself, but for me. He stared at the savage figures, the bared cutlasses, the ready pistols, almost with unbelief in the reality of his vision. And certes ’twas a weird spectacle in that orderly house in the town we of the province looked upon as the most advanced in the colonies--and became to me the more weird as I glimpsed next the hall door a grim mahogany face and a hangman look beneath a skrim of black hair, and behind the two a familiar carroty head.

“Ho, there, Darby!” I called out. “What are you doing in such company? Did you know those men for pirates, when you drank with them at the Whale’s Head?”

“Sure, they ha’ taken me into their crew,” he answered brazenly.

“Have you turned pirate, Darby?” says my father, seeing him for the first time.

“Oh, aye,” said Darby with a swagger. “I’m as cruel wicked as any.”

“And ’twas you let them into the house and betrayed your master!” returned my father sadly. “I had not expected this of you, Darby. Have we not been kind to you?”

Darby wiggled uncomfortably.

“Oh, aye; main kind, Master Ormerod,” he admitted. “But they would ha’ had ye, whether or no. Sure, they’re a grand, tricksy crew. And anyway, ye see, I was born to be a pirate. My troth, I was!”

Murray laughed pleasantly.

“’Tis a valiant youth, and should go far,” he observed. “Moreover, he speaks the truth when he says we should have won our way in to you without his aid. The accommodation was convenient, but by no means essential.

“Where is Silver, Master Bones?” he added.

The man with the mahogany face touched his hat.

“John was seeing to it the sarvants was all secure, sir,” he answered. “Here he is now.”

A gap appeared in the ranks by the kitchen door, and the one-legged man I had met on the water-front that morning stumped in on his long crutch, as cheerfully serene as any honest householder.

“Was you askin’ for me, captain?” he said. “We just finished up behind there--all gagged and roped, Bristol-fashion, safe for a day, sir.”

And to me----

“My duty, Master Ormerod, and I hopes we’ll know each other better soon.”

“I find we shall need a cart, John,” said my great-uncle.

“Rambunctious, is he?” answered Silver with a wink. “Well, we has it all ready, and the tarpaulin over it, right here in the garding under the blessed apple-trees. ’Tis only a step to the boats, to be sure.”

My father turned very pale.

“You--you-- My God, Murray, you can’t kidnap the boy this way! Think! There are troops in Fort George. Once the hue and cry is raised you’ll be----”

“But it will not be raised,” replied Murray calmly. “I regret it, but we shall be obliged to tie up you and Peter so that you will be incapacitated until some kind friend happens to call on the morrow. By that time we shall be at sea.”

“You are mad!” cried my father. “Every frigate on the station will be after you.”

My great-uncle chuckled mildly.

“That is an old sensation. I have known it for twenty-odd years.”

I snatched up the chair upon which I had been sitting and brandished it over his head.

“Call off these scoundrels of yours or I’ll batter out your brains,” I snarled.

“John,” he said, ignoring me, “you will be so kind as to pistol the elder Master Ormerod if his son launches a blow at me.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Silver.

And he leveled a weapon at my father. I knew, without looking behind me, that Peter and I were covered by other men. It was Peter who spoke first.

“Put down der chair, Bob,” he ordered quietly.

The man called Black Dog cast the noose of a rope over his head and jerked his arms close to his side.

“_Neen, neen,_” objected Peter, and with no visible effort he snapped the hempen strands.

A gasp went up from the room, and there was a hasty retreat from his neighborhood.

“Pistol that man, if you must,” called Murray; “but use your cutlasses, if possible.”

“_Neen_,” said Peter again. “We don’t fight.”

“We might as well be killed now as let them carry off Bob,” said my father with a sob in his voice.

“_Neen_,” said Peter a third time. “Deadt, you stay deadt. Perhaps Bob gets away from them some time. Better he be with Murray than he be deadt.”

“Intelligently logical,” commented Murray. “I commend the sentiment to you, Nephew Robert.”

Peter’s little eyes glinted toward him.

“I go with Bob,” he said.

“No, no,” denied Murray quickly. “You were not invited, friend Peter.”

“If I don’t go, Robert don’t go,” replied Peter. “Andt you don’t go. Perhaps I don’t kill you, but if there is shooting you don’t get away. _Ja_!”

Murray contemplated this speech.

“Your proposition then,” he said, “is that you insist upon sharing my nephew’s new career or else will endeavor to secure the deaths of all of us, including his and your own?”

“_Ja_!” answered Peter.

“You may come,” decided my great-uncle. “Your muscles should prove useful. John, I fancy we shall require triple bonds on this prisoner.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” assented Silver. “We ha’ plenty o’ stout manila. One o’ you lads run back and get those coils I left by the stove. That’s the proper spirit, Darby. Always willin’. You’ll make a rare hand, you will. And how about makin’ fast that gentleman as is goin’ to stay behind, captain?”

Murray looked at my father, and from him to me.

“Have you reconciled yourselves to what I may justly style the inevitable?” he inquired suavely.

My father collapsed into his chair with a groan.

“If you will not suffer the boy to be hurt!” he exclaimed.

“My word of honor to that,” returned my great-uncle very seriously. “His comfort and safety rank ahead of my own, Ormerod, for I anticipate that he is to achieve all those triumphs which fate denied me. ’Tis true I hope to sample them briefly, but--” and for the first time a shadow clouded his face--“I am, as you doubtless know, in my sixty-fourth year, and a fickle Providence, regarding the divinity of which I am inclined to share the skepticism of the French philosophers, is scarce likely to indulge me in a very prolonged extension of life’s span. Nor indeed would I have it otherwise. I feel no inclination for the senility of extreme age.”

My father eyed him with unaffected puzzlement.

“You are a strange man, Murray. I would I might understand you.”

“You can not, so why concern yourself? Well, time passes. We must be off. Do you submit?”

My father bent his head.

“Yes--for his sake, ---- you! Robert, no violence. We are in a coil we can not escape for the present; but rest assured I will do everything I can to secure your release.”

My great-uncle motioned Silver forward.

“Make Master Ormerod as comfortable as possible, John,” he instructed. “Yes, tie him in his chair. By the way, Ormerod, touching your last observation, I would remind you that every shot fired at my ship will be as likely to strike Robert as another. Accept my advice, and leave well enough alone. Within a year, possibly--two, at most--the boy will be safe and advanced in fortune beyond your wildest dreams.”

“Let me have him back as he is--’tis all I ask,” groaned my father.

Murray took snuff.

“A highly correct attitude, sir,” he remarked. “Have you more to say? Very well, John; you may affix the gag. No, not that gunnysacking. Here is a silken kerchief will do. And now, friend Peter, we turn to you--and you, Nephew Robert. I would these precautions were unnecessary. Let us trust your inclinations will become more friendly toward me upon closer acquaintance.”