Chapter VIII: Part FOUR: The Fire on the Beach (2)

There was a dry stirring in the bushes at his right--a sound half-yawn, half-hiss, like the hiss of an angry cat. He froze. In his mind he could feel the blunt, cool, deadly head of a moccasin against his thigh. Indians, too,--he remembered the Indian he had seen peer out of a bush and vanish. "Mustn't run," he repeated to himself with a gulp. It was very dark now. When he got back in a house, he would never let it be dark. He would sleep with a dozen candles flaring in his room and buy a slave to keep them tended all through the night. A bough stung his cheek. "Mustn't run," but, insensibly, he knew his pace had increased.

He plunged through a little thicket that seemed full of fish-hooks and came out upon an open space. Where was Sebastian? He couldn't hear Sebastian behind him any more. He stood trembling on the edge of the clearing like a beaten hound. He did not dare call to Sebastian--there might be no answer. If there were no answer, he would go quite mad.

"Mustn't run," he advised himself for the last time, and then, tearing the pack from his shoulders with a jerk, began to run blindly across the clearing on drunken feet, moaning to himself as he ran. Things struck at him with springy clubs, but he kept on, thrashing his arms against them like a drowning man. Then at last the ground itself betrayed him and gave way beneath him, and he was rolling into a hidden pit where Fear and Night lay crouched like twin spiders, ready to swathe him in suffocating, innumerable folds of glutinous, dark silk the moment he touched bottom.

His next conscious memory was of a dark, concerned face, grinning down at him through a red shadow. "_Amigo_," said the face, "_Amiga. Que tal, señor_?" He grinned, back at the face. It was Carlos, the boy he had given a Spanish dollar, years ago. He sat up, feeling his head spin. "Where's Sebastian?" he said.

"Sebastian!" called the boy, joyously, "Sebastian!" and now Sebastian came running out of the red shadow with a wooden bowl in his hand. He set the bowl down, and dropping beside Andrew, kissed him solemnly and smackingly on both cheeks, while Carlos clucked his approval. For a nervous moment Andrew thought Carlos was going to kiss him, too, but he did not. He trotted back toward the campfire that made the red shadow, calling something as he went. Then Sebastian had picked up the wooden bowl and was feeding Andrew hot, tasty bits of pepper-stew with his fingers.

Their luck had turned at last. The Minorcans had heard him shouting in the woods, and thinking one of their stragglers had lost his way, had sent out a party which came upon him as he rolled into the road like a shot rabbit. He had missed Sebastian because Sebastian, a little behind him, had seen firelight through the trees and had stopped to make sure. Then Sebastian had called to him, but his ears had been too full of his own terror to hear the call.

Revived by the stew, he listened eagerly to the news from New Sparta. A house-boy who had been unable to get away with the main body of the Minorcans had caught them up toward evening on a stolen horse. Of the post of eight soldiers, only the lugubrious corporal and a badly-wounded private remained. Dr. Gentian had been hurt in the fight but was alive, and Mrs. Gentian and the sub-overseers now ruled the wreck of the plantation. It was she who had checkmated Cave with a handful of her favorite Greeks--at the last moment there had been jealousy between the Greek and Italian sides of Cave's forces and the Greeks had finally decided to betray the revolt, just in time to save Dr. Gentian's life.

The Italians--what was left of them--were cowed. Some of them had managed to get hold of the sloop and take it half-way down the inlet, but there, having no sailors among them, they had stranded and decided to throw themselves on Mrs. Gentian's mercy. The colony was still unsettled and apprehensive, but Mrs. Gentian was definitely in the saddle and she rode with a tight rein. The man did not know what policy she intended to adopt towards the Minorcans--three messengers at least had ridden for St. Augustine, but two of them had already fallen into the Minorcans' hands, not unwillingly--and she could not afford to send many more.

Andrew asked for the other news, hesitatingly. About Miss Gentian he did not know--she was nursing her father, he thought. The words offered Andrew an incredible picture. He saw Dr. Gentian nightcapped, in a curtained bed, taking a cup from Sparta with a weak hand. They were looking at each other with blank, acquiescent eyes. That the cup contained more than beverage seemed improbable. Both understood, both hated, but both were under the whip, for the tall woman with the proud nose and the secret mouth had come to her kingdom at last and bound them equally, without compunction or passion. While she lived, they would live as she willed, now. They had the strength of beauty and violence and wit, but she had the strength of silence, and her strength engulfed theirs, as the well of darkness under the world engulfs its fallen stars.

He could see them living together for years--a devoted family--a pair of serpents under an iron bar, not daring to strike each other because the bar was mute and cold, and they could not tell what it would do if they struck. Some day Sparta, no doubt, would marry--her mother's man, this time. To the world they would present a united front. They would carry it off--oh, yes,--he trusted them for that.

He shuddered a little, seeing them all at table together, a year, five years from now. A curly-haired young man, dressed in the extreme of frippery, with a face as bland and foolish as a face painted on an egg, sat at Sparta's left, making table-talk to his new relations. Poor rabbit, thought Andrew, and smiled. The last shreds of youth's dearest delusion, the delusion that life will come to a climax of thunder and cease, fell from him silently. Only by accident was life as neat a workman as that. The climax might come a dozen times, but after each climax the workman would go on, like an idiot building a castle, adding story upon story to what was already complete.

His own life, by all canons of art and taste, should have finished when the last sand fell upon the mound on the beach they had left behind. Instead, here he was, eating pepper-stew, and relishing it, on the whole. If there were any moral inherent in the course of events which had happened to him, he had yet to descry it. But for accident he would be lying in the prison ditch with lead in his lungs, and Mr. Cave would be alive and roaring. Was he any better off as it was and Mr. Cave any worse?--he did not know. He felt that he was fast becoming a pagan and it hurt his sense of the fitness of things. Then the Scotch strain in him, that drop which with the Jewish drop and the Irish, can survive a dozen admixtures of blood to dominate a mind, reasserted itself and told him grimly that it was not his business to question the schemes of God, but to hold on dourly to a predestined path between damnation and damnation, and distrust the vain speculations of the Egyptians. He could not quite believe its voice--would it call Caterina a vain Egyptian, he wondered--but it sufficed to send him off to sleep as soundly as if he were hearing John Knox preach.

4.

The camp broke up before dawn. The women gathered up their babies and their cooking pots--the head of the column straggled out in the road--the dust began to rise--the day's march was on. Andrew watched perhaps a quarter of the column pass, spectral in the early light, with a sense of dream, before he fell in the ranks at Sebastian's side. He had always liked the Minorcans, but his ruling impression of them had been one of gravity; he was amazed to see how lightly they seemed to take this wild expedition. They had left the promised land they had labored on for five years behind them and with it the greater part of their few possessions. They were marching to an unknown future, perhaps to prison or death, but the general mood seemed that of children on a holiday, and ahead some boy was strumming a cracked guitar.

A child ran out of the ranks to pick a flower, was brought back howling, and given a slap and a sweetmeat. A mysterious Spanish joke on a plump young man was passed from rank to rank with an accompaniment of laughter and pointing fingers. Andrew could see the back of the neck of the young man in question, redden under its tan--then he turned to fling back a snorting expletive over his shoulder and the laughter grew ecstatic. One waddling matron frankly sat down in the middle of the road to laugh her fill and was promptly surrounded by a circle of arguing, encouraging relations. A girl and a boy had their hands locked together as they marched, and the ranks around them turned into one vast admiring family that tickled them with solemn or ribald advice, to which they paid not the slightest attention. A grave, white-bearded elder carried a trussed live chicken under his arm--it squawked incessantly and pecked at his sleeve.

They had few arms and scant provender--most of the men had no better weapons than clubs or rude wooden pikes. Sebastian was a person of great importance since he carried a musket. An Indian attack in force would mean massacre, a journey too long drawn out the hunger pinch, but they seemed to have considered these things and put them aside. Now Andrew began to understand the quality in them that had taken them across an ocean to live in a strange land for five years under a rod without losing heart. There was a hardness hidden somewhere under their grace that called up all the Scot in him to answer it and he found himself whistling "The Bonny House of Airlie" as he trudged along in the dust.

5.

Grief, autumnal color of the stained and fugitive wood, sad vesture of red and gold, severe counsellor, true companion--your hands touch at the heart as lightly and idly as a child's and leave it shaken, then like a child you depart, on light feet, idly. Honest playfellow, candid guest, your company is strict, but for young men, brief; no matter how straitly the spirit would detain you, mind and body and time are too strong to endure for longer than a terse and appointed term so reticent a visitant. The earth stirs in its mail of frost, the geese begin to fly North again, the fire dies in the chimney, it is time for you to go. The wind will blow over the field but your voice will be in it no longer, the rain fall from the sky in showers, no longer austere with the echo of your sober bells. Now only the old, discarded traveller in the hearth-corner keeps your shadow alive in his breast, stretching out cold, knotted fingers before a diminishing flame.

That even the deepest sorrow can be transient was, however, a fact which Andrew, like most people, had to learn for himself. At first Caterina haunted the march for him, sleeping or waking, but even twenty-four hours made a little difference, not in the honesty of his grief but in its power to obliterate the rest of the universe. Certain things must be done, certain motions gone through. The constant activity of body, the uncertain immanence of danger, left no time for that luxurious melancholy which feeds upon a full stomach and an empty mind. Enforcedly, he began to live in the world again--the resurrection was painful and gradual enough but, once begun, it continued implacably.

6.

Four days later, the picture on the highway had changed somewhat in details but not in the whole. The same slow stream of humanity clotted the road, taking it easy to all appearances, yet stirring the dust relentlessly with passing feet. A child had died, another child had been born. The dead lay buried by the roadside, four men carried the new mother and her charge on an improvised litter toward the rear of the column. Tomorrow, or the next day, she would be back in the ranks again. The talk was less continual, faces showed fatigue, feet went limping. But what talk there was seemed cheerful, and those who fell behind for a while straggled back into line eventually, some stronger impulse than fear urging them on.

Andrew and Sebastian were at the head of the column when they sighted the cavalry-patrol.

It was a small force, some twenty men in all, commanded by a tall, leathery captain with a London drawl, who kept blowing his nose on a lace handkerchief because of the dust and then looking around savagely at his men to try and catch a smile on their faces. He commenced to shout at the Minorcans in abominable Spanish when they were yet some distance away, and though both Sebastian and Andrew called back in English, it seemed to make no impression on his mind for a long time.

"Damn my boots, what a precious lot of ragamuffins!" Andrew could hear him saying to himself as they approached. "You can't talk their lingo, can you sergeant? I thought not--a pretty affair, damn my boots, to send a gentleman with his Majesty's commission to shepherd a pack of mutinous blackguards into town. If the governor were of my mind, he'd shoot down every last man jack of them in the ditch of the fort, by pox and thunder--don't you think so, sergeant? Hey, you there, the man with the dirty shirt--" he called suddenly as Andrew came nearer, "can you talk English? Damn my boots he's staring at me like a codfish--why don't you salute an officer, man? Stap me, the creature stinks in the wind like Billingsgate fish-market! Talk English, fellow! Parlay English, Anglish--yes--no?" he howled abruptly at Andrew from a distance of five paces, as if Andrew, being a foreigner, must be stone-deaf.

It did not surprise Andrew to be taken for one of the Minorcans. With a ten day's beard on his face and his skin burned by the sun, he could have passed for a scavenger. He was only surprised when the captain, after a few interchanges, grew fairly civil on the whole. He was like other English officers Andrew had known, apparently in a continual sweat of puzzled exasperation whenever he had a task to accomplish, and yet somehow getting the task done with a certain slack efficiency that seemed to surprise himself. His bloodthirstiness was entirely a matter of conversation. Andrew saw him later in the day with a fat Minorcan two-year-old on the saddle before him and an expression of weary fury on his face, muttering savagely, "Damn my boots, you think you're a fine whelp, don't you--a fine little piece of mutiny to boil for officers' soup--how he claws at me, damme sergeant! I think I'd better drop him in the road and break his head." But his arm was tightly clutched around the child, and the child was squeaking delightedly as it pulled at the horse's mane.

Andrew made himself as inconspicuous as possible during the rest of the march and did not attempt to interview the captain till it was ended. A year ago he would have done so at once, without thinking how strange his important talk of the house of Alexander Beard and Son would sound on the lips of a dirty, unshaven boy. Now he knew his cue was self-effacement till he could get to the Governor. From the talk of the patrol he gathered that His Excellency was at least not ill-disposed toward the Minorcans and intended to give them a chance to state their case. But he and Sebastian stood in a different position from the rest of the host.

The other Minorcans could come into court with hands clean of anything but a bloodless rebellion against an unjust employer. Sebastian and he had been charged with murder and treason--Sebastian had killed Mr. Cave--both had broken prison--to mix their grievance with the general one would only impair the latter's chance of redress. On the other hand, if the Governor were really Dr. Gentian's foe, Andrew's testimony, being that of an Englishman, might clinch the matter definitely in the Minorcans' favor. He had plenty of time to think the matter through from every angle, and decided finally, that his best course was to keep his identity hidden till the end of the march came.

7.

They were camped on the outskirts of St. Augustine at last. The captain had held a long interview with the prominent men of the colony. In the afternoon, the Governor would ride out to see them. Meanwhile, they must be patient. A small ration-party might go into town, but the main body was to remain in camp and fraternize as little as possible with the townspeople. He gave his word for the safe-conduct of the ration-party and his assurance that if these conditions were fulfilled, the Governor would grant them a fair and open hearing.

Then he solemnly posted sentries between the camp and the town. It was purely for effect--both he and the Minorcans knew that if the five hundred wished they could brush aside the sentries and descend on the town like locusts. But, being for effect, it served. Hemmed in by a larger force, the Minorcans would have begun to mill like frightened cattle. As it was they settled down quietly enough, the women to tending their children, the men to listen to the boy with the cracked guitar or to try and repair gear damaged on the road.

Now, thought Andrew, the time had come for him to make his stroke. He asked to speak with the captain in private and in a few words stated his name and his wish for an interview with the Governor.

"Damn my boots and breeches," said the captain, staring at him keenly, while his hand drummed on the pommel of his saddle, "I thought you spoke odd English for a Spaniard--but, body of hell, what a tale! I wouldn't have believed--to be frank, sir, even for a gentleman in straits, you make a damned queer appearance, if you'll excuse the remark."

"My grandfather carried a pack," said Andrew, deliberately, smiling. The dream of the Beards of Westmoreland departed forever as he said it, leaving no scar behind. He might play the exquisite again, when he had money and clean clothes, but never without a certain feeling of masquerade. In theory, one could always tell a gentleman, no matter how dirty he was--in practice, the matter seemed a trifle more complicated.

"Oh, well--" said the captain, apparently somewhat relieved. He stared at Andrew again. "It sounds so damnable odd," he confessed frankly, "Of course you'll have some acquaintance in the city to--." He waved his hand.

Andrew thought. He could hardly call on any of the gentlemen he had met at Judge Willo's to bear out his story--they were all Dr. Gentian's intimates.

"The Governor might remember me, if I were shaved," he said slowly, "and then--is the Pride of the Colonies still in port? Captain Stout would recognize me, I know."

"Oh, if that's your man!" said the captain, "Captain Stout's with the Governor now, I imagine--he's had the devil of a time getting cargo--and then the Governor's been holding him back to question him about this insurrection in the North. He sails this afternoon--you may catch him at the Governor's if you make haste. Sergeant--Sergeant--" he called peevishly, "where's one of those damned horses? I want to mount this man and send him to the Governor."

He turned sharply to Andrew. "You'll watch yourself in the town," he said. "They're going to burn some of your rebels in effigy in the square today--silly nuisance burning fellows in effigy, but looks damned well as an expression of loyalty in a report"--and he laughed like a fox barking.

"Sergeant--take this man into town with you and see he gets to His Excellency."

"Shall I tie him, sir?" said the sergeant, stolidly, saluting.

"Damn your boots, no. Why are you such a damned old fool? You can knock him on the head if he tries any tricks," he added thoughtfully, "but don't tie him now."

8.

So Andrew, for the second time, presented to the streets of St. Augustine a queer and disreputable figure, under the hot sun. But this time, though he was ragamuffin indeed, he cared not at all where at first he had cared so greatly. He scuffed his broken shoes in his stirrups, comfortably, and was only interested to note that a little tail of pointing, giggling children followed himself and the sergeant to the Governor's door.

"He see the Governor!" said a dewlapped Paunch with an amber-topped cane, regarding Andrew with evident disgust. "He can't see the Governor! Ridiculous, sergeant! The Governor's closeted--even if he were not--the fellow's far too foul."

"Captain Strahan's orders. To see His Excellency at once," repeated the sergeant metallically. Andrew gathered that he did not like the Paunch.

"Captain Strahan's orders?" yammered the Paunch, nervously. "Well, why didn't you say it was Captain Strahan's orders--if you'd said it was Captain Strahan's--"

The Paunch's importance had shrunk--he was bustling away through a door.

"Silly old capon," said the sergeant, devastatingly, with the air of one who spits to relieve his mind.

The Paunch was back again, ushering Andrew along with fat, fluttering hands. The sergeant clanked after them.

"No tricks," he was muttering. "Captain's orders. No tricks at all."

Then a door was flung open and Andrew stumbled into a big, cool room where two men were facing each other across a desk. Both looked up as he entered. The next moment a chair went to the floor with a crash--and the hard paws of Captain Stout were gripping both his hands.

It was later. Andrew and the Governor were alone. He had told his story in detail, with certain suppressions, chiefly involving Sparta and the killing of Mr. Cave. The Governor had put a number of questions, most of them in regard to things that seemed to Andrew of little importance. Now at last he seemed satisfied.

Andrew had tried to gage him during the interview. He was a narrow man and a touchy one, but he seemed honest. Of his long-banked hate of Dr. Gentian there could be no doubt whatever--it showed in every line of his face when the name came up. Andrew's description of the conditions at New Sparta had seemed to shock him genuinely, though not quite in the way that Andrew had expected. He seemed much more shocked, for instance, at Dr. Gentian's failure to inform him fully that he had arrested Andrew as a traitor.

"It won't do," he kept saying. "Won't do; man must be mad. Political prisoners should be brought before me at once."

"Well, sir!" said Andrew finally, when there seemed to be no more questions the Governor wished to ask.

The Governor fiddled with his inkstand a moment. Then he looked at Andrew.

"You've put me in a queer position, Mr. Beard," he said at length. "Oh, I don't doubt your story. It only confirms what I've suspected, ever since the colony started--but my predecessor was a firm friend of Dr. Gentian's and--." He frowned. "Damn it, if I could only put you in the witness-box," he burst out. "As it is, I half-wish you'd never come to see me at all."

"I'm sorry," said Andrew. It seemed the only possible remark.

"Oh, don't apologize," said the Governor, worriedly. "After all you've done me a service. My mind's made up now. Oh, I've no doubt the Minorcans would have proved their point in any case, but your tale clinches it for me. They shall have their rights, Mr. Beard. I'll settle them here--God knows a couple of hundred good workers will be a godsend to the town. But now, Mr. Beard." He rapped on the desk. "What are we going to do with you?"

"I am quite at your disposal sir," said Andrew, drawing a vast breath of relief.

"No, no," said the Governor, querulously, "that's just what you can't be. If you stay here, some of Gentian's friends are sure to stir up trouble about that absurd charge of treason he's brought against you." He smiled. "Officially, Mr. Beard, I have not as yet, as I say, been informed of that charge through the proper channels. But if someone here should take it into his head to lodge a direct accusation--I should have to notice it--yes--I should have to notice it--I should have to hold you for examination, Mr. Beard--and then, damn it, the moment I do"--he exploded again, "the fat's in the fire and the whole Minorcan case is muddled with yours."

"Of course, sir, if you wish to"--began Andrew, slowly.

"Examine you? In God's name, why?" said the Governor, brusquely. "I know your father's name--Captain Stout's told me of the sacrifices he's already made for the Crown." Captain Stout had obviously omitted any mention of Lucius, and Andrew was very grateful. "If you were a traitor, why the devil would you be sitting here talking to me?" the Governor ended. The question seemed unanswerable, and Andrew himself began to wonder why.

"No, Mr. Beard," the Governor went on. "The charge against you is absurd, but it must not be pressed. I've no doubt Captain Stout will trust your father's son for a passage to New York. When you reach there, you will, naturally, join the army. They say De Lancey's raising a troop of loyalist horse--well, Mr. Beard, there's my advice, unofficially. Do you find it reasonable?"

"Most reasonable, your Excellency," said Andrew, with a slight smile. "I shall, as you say, return to New York at once--and join the army."

"Good," said the Governor, rising. "I shan't ask you for a deposition, Mr. Beard--it will be best if your name is not brought in at all. You'll find Captain Stout in the anteroom--and I should advise you going aboard at once, if I may suggest it."

"I have to say goodbye to a friend," said Andrew. "After that I shall go aboard as soon as possible."

"A friend?" said the Governor. "Oh, yes--the Minorcan boy who was in prison with you. I wish we could get him away too. He'll only serve to confuse things--and I want a clear case." He looked at Andrew.

"Perhaps it can be managed," said Andrew, thanking his gods for the narrow strength of the Governor's hate of Dr. Gentian, that now blinded him to everything but the prospect of the latter's ruin. "Good day, your Excellency--and thank you."

"Good day, Mr. Beard, and a safe voyage," said the Governor, turning back to his papers, and Andrew bowed and retreated from the lion's jaws.

9.

He had arranged to meet Sebastian in the Plaza, near noon, if Sebastian could get leave from the ration party--and it was there he now proceeded with Captain Stout. The matter of his passage was settled--Captain Stout had offered it, before he had had time to speak. He mentioned Sebastian. "Body servant, too, I'm sure," said Captain Stout, amicably, and Andrew thought it best not to explain further at present. He looked at Captain Stout as they walked along, trying to read his political opinions in his face, but he could make nothing out of those weathered features.

Fooling the Governor or letting him fool himself was one thing; he did not like the idea of fooling Captain Stout. But then, even yet--was he quite sure of his own intent? He had been quite sure; but in the Governor's room, with its air of power and order long established, the old colors of things had crept back to them insensibly, making a world where rebels were rebels and no gentleman in his wits thought of fighting for anything but a king. He sighed, cursing himself for a vacillation he could not help--habit and custom are strong chains. But he was a shopkeeper's son, not a gentleman in his wits ... oh, well, look at the people in the streets and put off thinking for a while. The narrow streets were crowded with people going to the Plaza; when they came to the Plaza, it was crowded too.

"Is this a fiesta day?' he asked of his companion.

"Not exactly," said the captain, slowly. "They ware talking about burning some Guy Fawkses or something--I'm as glad my boys are on board except for the boat's crew--"

Then Andrew remembered. The demonstration of loyalty. He saw a pile of wood in the center of the square and was horribly reminded of another such pile of wood he had helped to build. His heart began to pound. He wanted to get away. But Sebastian must be found first--ah, there he was, standing in the mouth of an alleyway. Andrew threw up his hand and called out over the sea of heads. Sebastian heard him, turned, waved back, and started to worm his way toward them, as a ragged shout went up from the other side of the square.

A drum was beating, a voice was calling, "Make way! Make way!" The crowd chattered and jostled. From the cramped mouth of the street on the other side of the square a procession debouched, the crowd fell away before it. Andrew felt Captain Stout's grip tighten on his arm. Now the head of the procession was out in the square itself--a rout of men dressed in sorry rags of carnival. Some had faces blacked with soot, like boys on Guy Fawkes' Day, others wore painted ludicrous masks. They were singing and shouting--the crowd roared its approval--the front ranks pressed back on the toes of those behind to leave a clear path to the woodpile in the center.

Then Andrew heard himself saying, "Damn you! Damn you all!" in a hurried whisper, as the effigies came into sight. There were two of them, great lolling dummies of straw, absurdly garbed, borne high on the shoulders of the crowd. They had halters around their necks, before them marched a man with a butcherlike face, dressed in hangman's black. A rope was slung over his arm and he carried a placard on a pole--"Death to all traitors!" in Spanish and English. There were other placards in the crowd, and two signs flapped at the bellies of the dummies. Andrew could make them out now, "Jackie Hancock"--"Sammy Adams"--

A gratified whoop went up from the crowd at the sight of the dummies. A big, sweating woman with a large pink chamberpot in her hand skipped nimbly out of the crowd and flung the contents of the vessel in the face of the dummy marked "Adams," with a shrill, joyous scream, splattering its bearers.

Andrew wrenched himself loose from Captain Stout's hand. "Stop it--stop it--you Spanish bastards--" he was crying, with tears of rage in his eyes. He saw a thousand grinning faces turned toward him, and struck at the nearest wildly, fighting and going down.

10.

A young man with a newly-broken head lay in a tossing bunk in the cabin of a ship at sea, and began to feel the first qualms of seasickness taint his relative content. He stirred, and said as much.

"Means you've come out of it nicely," said Captain Stout, bending over him. "You'll be pleased to know, Mr. Beard--the man that hit you with the stick'll carry a thick ear some time yet," he added.

"I acted like a fool," said Andrew. "I don't see how you got away. But I couldn't stand the woman."

"There," said the Captain, soothingly. "It's natteral. Young blood's hot. I wasn't too pleased," he went on. "No, we wasn't any of us too pleased with the goings on. Told 'em you were one of my crew with a touch of sun. They swallowed it. I wanted to tell them something else. But you'll thank your Spanish friend--I couldn't have got you off alone--let alone talk their jabber fast enough--"

"What happened to him?" said Andrew feebly.

"He's here." The Captain chuckled. "Ain't you, Spanish?"

"_Si señor_," came a voice from the upper bunk. "But sick as a soldier. How are you, my friend?"

"Much as you are," said Andrew, and laughed. "I'm glad you're here, Sebastian."

"_Gracias_," said the voice from above. "We changed knives--I follow my knife. Besides," he added, after a moment, "I, too, have a certain desire to help the donkey we spoke of kick off his rider. The rider wears too red a coat to suit me."

"What about you, Captain?" said Andrew, after a pause.

"Oh, we're all liberty-boys, now," said the Captain, with a casual chuckle. "Didn't say so before, you being your father's son; but we're all liberty-boys on the Pride now--if I didn't tell the Governor. Lord, I thought he'd have me a dozen times, but I never saw a soldier that wasn't a turniphead."

"Does my father know you're a liberty-boy, sir?" said Andrew, smiling.

"Not yet," said the Captain. "That'll go hard, it will. Well, I thought I'd do my duty by him, this last time. And then, if it's going to be as long a war as I reckon it, what's the harm in doing a bit of trading first?" He spat out the porthole. "Seem queer at the start, going counter to old King George," he added thoughtfully. "Not that I've ever seen the man, but I've always had a sort of picture of him. Well, life's unexpected and that's a fact." He seemed to take comfort in the truism.

"They've got a flag with a rattlesnake on it," he continued. "Liberty or Death. It'll be queer to raise it. The Pride's had British colors up ever since she was launched. She's used to them. Well, she'll have to learn new ways. I hope she'll like them, but I'm doubtful." He shook his head.

"We'll all have to get used to new ways," said Andrew. He stared into the future, trying to pierce it, but he could see nothing. It did not matter, his own course was plain.

"How long will it take us, Captain?" he said.

"Couldn't say, Mr. Beard, but the rumpus'll still be going when we get back. The lobsters think it won't, but it will. You see, King George Third's gone too far--and we mean to break loose now. That makes the difference."

"I suppose so," said Andrew, lying back and thinking of all that had passed since he last lay in a ship's bunk. What had he got from all of it--what had he done? The Minorcans had rescued themselves--he had not even killed Mr. Cave. Caterina--he had not thought much of that mound in the little cove since they had left it, he had not had time or strength. He thought of it now. She had saved him, her he had been unable to save. He had only been able to leave a part of his youth where she lay, for the wind to blow off like ash. Even now he was not sure that he had loved her, as he understood love--nor could he see her his, in life, by any fantasy of mind. There had been a spell between them--an incantation--it had worked itself out and passed--gone back beyond the moon. For the last time, as the ship tossed and the sea grew rougher, the shape of the Spanish bayonet arose in his mind, with its thorns and its white flower, incongruous, enchanted, pure.

Out of all the confused and brilliant turmoil of the past year that visionary semblance alone remained steadfast--that semblance and his friend Sebastian--perhaps they were enough.

Yet he trembled, hurt and aching, uncomforted by the knowledge that hurt and ache would pass, as in time they would, and become only a colored memory, a ghost of perfume. Now he only knew that he wanted to hear Caterina's voice, and that she was dead. But even at the worst of this bitterness, other thoughts came--New York--Lucius--a musket--a rebel army--a lion and a unicorn hunted through green Massachusetts woods. In a short while, unconsciously, he found himself seeing Sebastian and a boy with his own face cooking hominy on a griddle over a soldier's campfire. His inexperience of war lent the picture a plausibility, a charm almost. The risen sun cast a broad path of illusion at the feet of the two figures, the blue smoke of the fire fluttered, there was a smell of burning leaves in the air. Soon enough the drum would assert its sharp, monotonous scorn.

"Well, sir," said the Captain, "you'll be feeling better tomorrow." He was going now. "No objection to your Spanish friend bunking in with you?"

"No. He's my friend," said Andrew, as if in explanation of more than the question had asked. "Good night, Captain."

"Good night, Mr. Beard. You'll find dirty weather when you get up tomorrow--it's coming on to blow."

THE END