Chapter XXVIII: The Taking of the Carack

‘What ails thee, melancholy wight?’

Brion gazed, with that smiling question, into Clerivault’s eyes. The ship was six days out on the broad Atlantic, running before a westerly breeze in hazy weather, and they looked over the gray unpeopled waste of waters and thought of home.

Clerivault heaved up his lean shoulders with a sort of renunciatory sigh.

‘Nothing ails me, sweetheart--and yet nothing may be a sad complaint.’

‘I’faith you’re cryptic. How does this illness of nothing take you?’

‘In the heart, Sir. It is a void, a blankness, an unfulfilment. It is the word for wasted opportunities, for frustrate hopes, for the thing that should have been but was not. I have known it much infecting the Law; and it may be I carried the seed of it in me to curse our high emprise.’

‘What stuff is this?’

‘Is it stuff?’

‘Fustian, I doubt not. Come, sad soul’--he put a hand cheerily on the poor fellow’s shoulder--‘be of good heart. These are empty humours, that come of nothing. The seed in thee was never no man’s curse.’

Clerivault shook his head. For some days past he had been in a curiously dejected mood, silent and low-spirited. Often Brion had caught him with his eyes fixed upon him in a yearning wistful way, the meaning of which he could in no wise interpret. But it made him uneasy. Was the dear man sickening for something, he wondered? The thought gave him a queer turn. He had never even put to himself what the loss of Clerivault might, would mean to him; he had never so much as associated the image of death with that tough, wiry constitution. Nor would he now: merely to think of it seemed to bring the Impossible within the bounds of startling Possibility.

‘You do not feel ill, do you,’ he asked anxiously--‘in body, I mean?’

‘Never sounder, Sir.’

‘Then, what sick fancy is this? Has our enterprise proved a failure? Ask our Admiral what he thinks of it.’

The wild eyes opened at that, with a spark of fury in them.

‘Hark ye, Sir. His England is not my England. I’ll not take his word for that success. What blows we have struck have been against, not for, _my_ England. Will her gentle heart not hate me for it?’

‘O, Clerivault, my dear! I see what haunts your mind. Well, we took no hand in those same felon blows.’

‘Should we not have rather--to counter and invalidate them?’

‘Ay, if we were resolved to meet with Master Doughty’s fate.’

‘So would our England at least have known us for her true lovers; so would the professed passion of our hearts for her have been vindicated. Now I return to her in shame, a discredited champion, whom she will never wish to trust again.’

‘O, this is foolish! What could we do in reason but what we have done? Treachery to our friends would not have sweetened England’s name.’

The paragon sighed profoundly.

‘That may be so,’ said he: ‘yet would I fain have struck one blow for her in our own right way, though I died for it.’

‘No need to talk of dying.’

‘What; would you miss me, sweetheart?’

‘Peace, thou dear old croaker!’

‘And my good master would miss me. Sometimes I think we should never have left him.’

Brion frowned. Those words touched a certain disquiet which had already more than once come to darken his own mind.

‘Well,’ he said, a little fretfully, ‘not the Fates can make us walk in our own footsteps backwards. If we have done wrong, we are speeding to retrieve it.’

‘Nay’--the eyes softened lovingly--‘I meant no blame to thee, sweetling. Yet that is a strange thought of thine. Is Death indeed returning to that home of Time from which we started; and Hell, perhaps, retracing all our sins in loathing of them?’

The look-out in the foretop shouted suddenly a sail. The two started and turned to the loud cry: and there, forged unexpectedly out of the mists on their larboard bow, rode a huge carack. She was so close, within a mile or two, that it seemed she must have blundered half-asleep into their ken; or perhaps, like some majestic leviathan, had disdained to alter her course for such insignificant fry. She swam as if deep-laden, flying the Spanish colours, and her burden was 300 tons, if an ounce.

In a moment the _Tiger’s_ deck was swarming, and the Admiral’s orders issued sharp and violent. He grunted with satisfaction, rubbing his hands. Here was amends for much inglorious trafficing for one who, according to a contemporary chronicler, was ‘very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,’ and who would always rather, in a question of acquisition, plunder than barter. Nor were those he commanded less excited over the prospect than himself. At a breath all peevish humours were forgotten, all mortuary moods and talk of death and failure. The light of battle sprang to Clerivault’s eyes; with a silent clap of his hand on Brion’s shoulder, he hurried below to equip himself for the coming fray. Russe passed him, hastening to his friend’s side. ‘Good sooth, a monster!’ he said: ‘and with a double row of teeth, like a shark. There will be some credit in capturing _her_.’ He never doubted the issue. It was the spirit destined to wrest from the Spaniard his long undisputed sovereignty of the seas.

They luffed and made for the stranger, overhauling her hand over hand. In the light wind blowing they sailed two knots for her one. Every soul on board stood at the prick of expectancy; each gunner waited at his piece, linstock in hand. At long range they bore up and held away, running parallel with, but a little abaft, the carack, which kept her course, as if in stately indifference. At that distance she towered above them, a very behemoth of the deep. Suddenly there was a double flash from her sides, a slam, and a rending crash. A spout of splinters went up from the _Tiger_, almost under Brion’s feet, it seemed. A human scream or two, mingling horribly with the uproar, for an instant rocked his heart; and then fury and fire, as if over some damnable wickedness, blazed in his blood. He saw red, and screeched with frenzied triumph as the _Tiger_, shooting abeam of the other, ran up her blazing ensign, and simultaneously delivered her whole larboard broadside into the quivering hull of the monster; then yawed, and, letting the enemy forge ahead, passed under her stern, and gave her the other broadside full through her cabin windows, raking her fore and aft, and making her stagger as if she had struck on a rock.

And now was witnessed an example of the tactics which afterwards came to be used to such profit in the English game of sea-war; the nimble-heeled _Tiger_ manœuvring so deftly about her unwieldy adversary as to allow her no breathing time for reflection, or power to shift her range, so that most of her shots, sped wildly, flew over her indefatigable tormentor, or, at best, smacked through her rigging, while every broadside driven home into herself tore her vitals to pieces. It was the game of the whale and sword-fish--seamanship versus mere weight of wood and metal, and had the inevitable ending. In the thick of the fury, when coming about for another swoop and stab, a roaring cheer went up from the _Tiger_; and there was the Spaniard’s ensign fluttering down, and the mighty prize was won.

As the noise subsided, the Admiral bade Master Thomas Candish, who was his shipmaster, to put his helm up and slip under the quarter of the carack; and thereat a lamentable discovery was made. For it appeared that the very last shot which the enemy had fired had carried away the best part of the _Tiger’s_ rudder, so that she would not answer to her helm, and was become virtually unmanageable. Slowly, as the reek and fume of the guns dissipated, the ships fell apart--_and the Tiger had not a boat left to her name_. The Admiral stamped and swore like a maniac. By God, he would not lose her, though every member of the crew had to swim to take possession. He cursed in a very frenzy, striding up and down the deck, like some maddened marooned thing, watching the distance widen--when someone had an inspiration. Why not an extempore raft? He jumped at the suggestion, roaring at the man who had spoken to start and give effect to his idea, instead of gaping there like a bran-stuffed quocker-wodger. In a moment planks and empty chests were being hurried up, and lowered into the water, and bound into some hasty semblance of a raft. It was a crazy insecure contrivance, but enough for the temper of the moment. Before it was well finished Sir Richard was on board, and Brion and Tony had tumbled down beside him. A score of others followed, and the frail craft put off, urged on its way by hurriedly improvised sweeps. The waves jeered at and buffeted it, it laboured and wallowed; but still it made way. If the Spaniards had had any evil left in them, they might have sunk it with a single shot. But they had lost, it seemed, all stomach for the fight. The ridiculous thing lobbed on, sluggish and scarce manageable. It began to gape and cast its lashings--still it lobbed on. Its boards were actually parting as it drifted, rather than was directed, against the Spaniard’s side, and ropes and ladders were lowered for its crew to board by. To such a right and chastened frame of mind had terror of English guns and seamanship brought the once overbearing Don.

The prize proved to be the _Santa Anna_, homeward bound from Hispaniola, with a full cargo of mahogany, dye-woods and cotton, and carrying also a quantity of pearls and specie--altogether a very valuable seizure. She was in a dreadful state from the guns--dead and mangled bodies lying everywhere, and all the splendour of her interior fabric knocked into blackened splinters. The sight revolted Brion, and cured for the time being his battle-fever. But he was not allowed long to be affected by it, for the Admiral sent him off in one of the ship’s boats to desire Mr Candish to take command of the _Tiger_ during his absence, for that he himself purposed to remain on the prize and navigate her into port. The young man was glad to escape, and without stipulating that he should be permitted to return and rejoin his leader on the _Santa Anna_. He preferred the thought of the _Tiger_, even without the companionship of Anthony Russe.

He had boarded, and given his message to the shipmaster, when some one came to him to say that Master Clerivault, who had been wounded in the fight and lay below, was incessantly crying for him, and that if he wished to see the man alive he had better come at once.

An instant hand of ice seemed laid on Brion’s heart. He stared as if he were the victim of some shocking insult. In the fury of the contest he had lost all sense of individuality or personal association: he had not given one thought to Clerivault since that cry of the foretopman had sent them apart to prepare for the crash. Since, if he had assumed anything, it was that his old friend and comrade was somewhere near him, following in his footsteps, sharing his blood-drunken enthusiasm. And instead----

All the melancholy and foreboding of the last few days rushed back upon him with overwhelming force. To this it had tended, then; thither had the fatal finger, that he would not recognize, been pointing all the time. With a long-drawn gasp, he motioned to his informant, and the two hurried below together.

They had laid him on a table in the forecastle, near by where he had received his injury. It had come with the first guns fired, and the cry shocked from him had been one of those which had sickened Brion’s senses. To think of it!--to think of it! And he had gone on his way unheeding. A round shot had shattered all the poor creature’s lower body, and only a little space of time remained to him. He had passed long ago, but for the will in him to live to see his darling. He greeted Brion’s appearance with a white and ghastly smile. They had covered his lower limbs with a cloak: he was from the first beyond the reach of their rough surgery.

With hot and burning eyes the young man stooped over his friend, and took and pressed one chilling hand to his breast.

‘Clerivault!’ he whispered.

He would not ask him not to go and leave him, lest it should but add a futile pang to that mortal passing. The blue lips moved, and he bent to them.

‘Lower, sweetheart.’

‘Here, Clerivault.’

‘Lower--I had much to say--but there is only a moment--left. I must use it--to confess.’

‘What, dear?’

‘Is it only you that hears? I have--lied to you.’

‘How?’

‘I am not really--of English blood--I have not a drop of it--in my veins.’

‘Dear Clerivault; I knew. What then?’

‘You knew? And yet--would let me speak--for England--claim--to represent her?’

‘O, Clerivault, Clerivault! Whatever your blood, you have an English heart. You have loved England and died for her. Now are you for ever more one of her dearest sons.’

A radiance came into the fading eyes; the dying man rose with a sudden powerful effort from his pillow. ‘England!’ he cried hoarsely. A rush of blood rumbled from his mouth, and he fell back dead.

* * * * * *

They dropped him the next day into the blue sea, with a shot at his feet. Brion looked on with tearless eyes and a numbed brain. It was all right, he supposed, and they could do nothing else; but he wished they had lashed them together first, and ended the whole business then and there. He had a curious feeling of being half-dead himself, as if a moiety of his vitality had been withdrawn with that dear inseparable comrade. How could he ever care for life again without Clerivault? His love, and now his friend? Surely Destiny had dealt with him unduly at so early an age. He was sad and alone--no longer with any definite object in the world.

So he thought in his unhappiness, poor soul. He had gone forth so radiantly, and only, after all, to find Desolation. With that he was returning to face the desolate house, his home; with that to vindicate his desertion of a trust and duty. His dead comrade’s words returned upon him with a pitiful force which shook his heart. Ought he to have allowed himself to be tempted away? A fever was upon him all at once to be back in England--in Devonshire; a mad longing to cancel the intervening space which lay between him and surety.

So, in his loneliness and despair, there returned to him, and with a wonderful new sense of restfulness, a thought which had already half troubled, half bewitched his mind. He knew in what soft and gentle bosom he could find, if he would, the welcome and the comradeship his soul so longed for. Why not abandon the struggle, yield for once and for all his scruples, and so turn the tables on the fate which had thought finally to bereave him? The very reflection was balm out of sickness. It steadied the agitation of his nerves and induced in him a feeling of tranquil resignation. Thenceforth the turmoil in his mind subsided, and he set himself to face with sober philosophy the weary days of the voyage which yet lay before him. He was no longer in any hurry to reach home; which testified to the rationality of his resolve, if it did not to any compelling force of passion behind it.

Until the 10th September the _Tiger_ and the _Santa Anna_ ran in company; when, foul weather intervening, they were cast apart, and the lighter ship so gained on the other as quickly to lose sight of her in the murk. Nor was she to see her again during the remainder of the run, which for her part she completed some twelve days ahead of her consort. Of this time there is nothing of interest to record; the finish of the voyage was uneventful, and on the 6th of October the _Tiger_ fell in with the Land’s End, and the same day cast anchor at Falmouth, where Brion parted from her, and went ashore.

It was six months near to a day since he had left his native land; and with what varied emotions he set foot again on her dear soil may be imagined. He made no stay in the town--which indeed was little better than a fishing colony--but took boat that afternoon for Plymouth, where he was to put up for the night before completing the rest of his journey, which he was resolved to do on the morrow. Only he did not. Something intervened.