Chapter XIV: Part THREE: Chapter One (2)

The ketch now named _Diana_ had been careened for scraping, a labor completed yesterday, wearisome in the sun. Comfortable again in the deep water of the cove, she rode at anchor, waiting on sunrise that should summon a breeze, and rouse the man who ruled her (if he ever slept) and send her out wherever his desire commanded. The tide would be running fair an hour after dawn.

Her shadow begotten of the May moon stretched long across the still surface, in nearness sharply edged, then vague, then melting in the blackness of open water far out. The May moon, approaching the full, would be illuminating the letters on the starboard side. If Ben leaned over the rail he could glimpse the black sprawl of them: DIANA. But Ben Cory still thought of her as _Artemis_.

This was one private way to keep alive the integrity of a self. Another was to inquire: Where does the self end and the universe begin?...

Manuel was aloft. Manuel loved sleep, and could sleep anywhere, he shyly told Ben once--even at the masthead. But his fawn eyes would likely be open at present, searching the harmless night. If he drowsed up there, or if Captain Shawn or the second mate Marsh merely imagined he had, Manuel would be whipped, and then obliged to swab away any red drops that might have spattered on the sacred deck. A year ago Shawn had been quite kind to stupid Manuel. That ended after Cornelius Barentsz of the sloop _Schouven_ had been hanged, and Manuel had furtively tried to cut the body down from the yardarm.

However balmy the weather, however empty and flat the sea, a twenty-four-hour lookout must be kept on the _Diana_: Shawn's law. Even in harbor the men stood watch and watch, having learned not to grumble in the presence of Captain Shawn, who might seem not to hear the words at the time spoken, but would nurse them in his bosom a week or so, and bring them forth and quote them gravely while Ball or Marsh corrected them with a rope's end. The deck must shine spotless as a duchess's drawing room; the brass must be dazzling, the ropes coiled exactly so, and the powder dry.

Judah Marsh and the hunchback mute who possessed no name but Dummy were somewhere aft, idle as Ben. Marsh never invented work when nothing needed to be done. This was not from laziness, certainly not from any charity: human beings were simply not so important to Judah Marsh that he could derive much joy from dominating them. He executed Shawn's orders for punishment with satisfaction; the sight of Manuel bleeding deepened his fixed smile; but he seemed to find no pleasure in ordering big soft Manuel about and watching him fumble at meaningless tasks.

It was not in nature, Ben thought, that a creature could be devoid of all common impulses to mirth, compassion, generosity, recognizable lust, interest in his fellow men, and still walk about on two legs; but there Marsh was, unquestionably spewed up by the human race. Some man must have begotten the thing, some woman borne it in pain and maybe loved it a while. Marsh would not even eat like a man, but like a peevish dog, gulping the tedious food and returning to his one-eyed vacancy. For Daniel Shawn Ben had been obliged to learn hatred, a waiting, despairing hatred that even now might hold some tormenting elements of love or at least of searching. Before the stalking dead man Marsh, Ben could only recoil, watchful, glad that, except for the necessary rule of the starboard watch, Marsh let him alone.

Ben expected nothing to be required of him till after sunrise when the tide turned. Then it would be up anchor and away, if Shawn's intention held. It often changed. Shawn was in no triumph these days, after a year of frustration and trivial actions with nothing gained.

The tide should turn at about seven bells. The mate's watch would tumble up early to lend a hand at breaking out the anchor and making sail--unavoidable since, after a year, the ketch was still woefully undermanned. As always at such times, the mate Tom Ball would remind the men that better times were coming with the next prize--more hands, better food, another vessel maybe, riches to burn, and best of all probably a bit of amusement at the expense of the Spaniards and their women, say at Campeachy or Merida. They paid scant attention to that noise now when it came from Mr. Ball, though the mere word "money" gave Ball's thick Devon voice a special fruitiness as if the taste of it comforted him all the way down to the gut. ("Money is the thing, Ben boy," he said once with damp and genuine friendliness, pawing amiably at Ben's shirt. "Got gold, you got everything, take an older man's word for it--good food, good smocks, safe old age. Gi' me the money, other cods can have the glory." Then finding Ben's stare to be an incomprehensible cold lance, he grunted with the pained astonishment of a man who wants to be liked, and spat overside, and pushed his hands against the sides of his paunch to settle it better on the burdened pelvis, and waddled away.) Manuel might giggle at Ball's belching oratory, but French Jack would only shrug without chattering, and Matthew Ledyard's purple-stained face would freeze into a peculiar quiet. When Captain Shawn said nearly the same thing (without the women and Spaniards), standing tall in his green breeches and green sash, in that favorite spot of his where his left hand could stroke the larboard falconet while his other rubbed the copper farthing, they still listened. Or they seemed to. While pronouncing such words as "our company," "our enterprise," Shawn's splendid voice could briefly make it seem that the men gathered to hear him were indeed a company of some consequence, and not a tatterdemalion handful of sharkbait committed to the guidance of a lunatic dreamer.

Ben tried to lose himself in the tranquillity of black water out yonder, to make some temporary truce in the private struggle. A battle with arithmetic, in a way: how does one youth steal a vessel from seven grown men--not counting Manuel, who was rather less than a man?

Ledyard was a man; little Joey Mills had at least a memory of manhood. One or even both might be allies, if there were any way to reach Ledyard. But all year long, Ledyard had seldom acknowledged Ben with more than a grunt, a stare and a turning of the back. He offered no other unkindness; he merely made it plain that Ben's existence distressed him somehow, while chattering Joey Mills tried to explain to Ben that Matthew was a grieving man who meant no harm by it. Ledyard, Ben knew, was deeply involved in Shawn's declaration of war against the world. Ledyard had shot the mate Hanson and one of the seamen in the taking of _Artemis_. Ben could imagine how Matthew Ledyard might still cling to the thought of the new lands in the western sea, and might forget (sometimes) that if ever he arrived there his own conscience would arrive there with him, to speak with him in the night and burn down on him in the noonday sun.

Ben had grown acquainted with a saving reasonableness in the very monotony of shipboard, in the endless daily things that must be done for the vessel's survival and one's own, without much thought, certainly without argument. Not too unlike the labors of a frontier farm--but the earth can be kind, with many shelters for one in extremity. In the open sea you've only to glance over the rail, and understand.

There is another sort of reasonableness in the status of a slave. Maybe, Ben thought, most men accept a little of that status because they must: but when you begin to accept it willingly, you begin to die.

("_Benjamin Cory, I would wait for you a thousand years...._")

After eight bells, breakfast. Hardtack, and stew built on a wild slimy formula unknown to any mortal but French Jack, and a dark tragic fluid that Jack called _café arabique_. The stew originated in Bahaman goat and wild pig, shot by Ledyard and Ball not long ago but too long for comfort. Nothing remained of the good provisions taken in a midnight raid two months ago on a coastal settlement at Martinique. Shawn might try another such raid before long; if not, back to the salt cod.

Shawn had not even considered trying to dispose of that honest cargo of Mr. Kenny's at one of the Caribbean ports where he could have sneaked in to bargain with no questions asked. Tom Ball had urged him to do so, waving his stumpy arms, his voice climbing to a reckless howl of despair. Shawn merely grinned at his copper farthing, and let Tom sputter out like a fat candle, and then remarked that one day soon they might be most happy to own such a handy supply of dem'd wonderful fish. Ben Cory had never regarded himself as a poet, but he thought sometimes that if he ever saw home again, there was one original composition that he could recite to Reuben in a decent glow of authorship. It went like this:

Old boiled cod.
O God!

As for the _café arabique_, Captain Shawn had been heard to say that he supposed Jack made it from a secret crock of hog manure hidden in the hold. Ben more charitably suspected an infusion from scraps of old leather salvaged maybe on the field of Blenheim.

Red-haired Jack claimed to have fought gloriously there under the banners of Marshal Tallard until the surrender, when a great light burst around him, and God told Jack that Louis the Fourteenth was no mortal king but an incarnation of the fiend Asmodeus who cut up little girls and ate them. Well--Jack could have been at Blenheim; far more likely he wasn't. Peter Jenks, captain in 1705 of the ship _Iris_, had happened on French Jack in Barbados, and being in sore need of a cook, had signed him on, with Jenks' usual massive disregard of authorities and formalities--Jack doubtless had the status of a prisoner of war, but he was somehow at large on the island, he seemed to be declaring that he knew how to cook, and that was good enough for Jenks. ("I say to dat captain, I am so big man, so good man, me, I am _coq du village, coq de la paroisse_, me. He say strong, 'You coq?' I say coq, he not know nut'n, nor me not more. I fool, I crazy, me--he big fool, strong crazy, go to hell.")

Somewhere, before then, Daniel Shawn might have known the man. At any rate French Jack, as well as Ball and the carpenter Ledyard, had been a part of Shawn's conspiracy. When Shawn took _Artemis_ by deceit in broad daylight, it was French Jack who loomed up behind Peter Jenks with a capstan bar and struck him down.

Ben could still see that--Jenks reeling, clutching at the mizzenmast, missing it and going down--as almost a year ago he had seen it in reality across a gap of shining water, the sunlight of that May sparing Ben nothing of it as he writhed at the rope that held him and gnawed the gag in his mouth. Everything had been well planned that day, in the clear Atlantic, the island of Nantucket just over the rim of the world. If Ben had been able to struggle free, a scream of warning would likely have done no good: Jenks was down. The strangely methodical skirmish came to an end with the prim grace of a minuet--but that was no dance, that shifting and interweaving of pigmy man-figures over there in the sunlight. That was plain murder, like the death of Dyckman.... Then Manuel lashed the tiller of the sloop and came to Ben, removing gag and rope, patting his hands, troubled in his soft way by Ben's unhidden loathing, but grinning with a dazzle of white teeth and explaining: "Iss good, got ship now. All be ver' rich, much gold, much women. You like women, boy, so pretty? You like gold?..."

Very shrewdly planned, even to the tarpaulin spread over Ben and covering him up to the eyes.

The sloop from Harkness' wharf had stolen a long time without lights through the depth of a May night until fog closed in around her. Then she crept on most gently, slowly, under mainsail and jib, head on to a leisured march of smooth rollers, her captain aware that _Artemis_ would be fogbound too. Ben had known nothing of that. Ben was asleep.

He woke late that morning, his head throbbing wildly, in the stench of a dark hole in a universe which was swaying impossibly back and forth, and from side to side too, with a grand inexorable calm. In this pocket of dimness he found he was alone with a human-like thing that could bob its misshapen head, and grin, but not speak. He dimly remembered this creature from some faraway evening: it was harmless. Steps led out of the cavity to a grayness of daylight. The cavity--oh, it was harmless too, it was the tiny cabin of a sloop, one that Mr. Shawn had been hired to sail to the Banks for somebody named Harkness, all fair enough. But why, Ben wanted to know, why was she at sea now, and why was his head one great blind snarl of pain? Toward the daylight he reeled, asking questions. Up in wet salt air, he learned that everything was gray--under him a gray sliver of deck, above him muttering and sobbing canvas gray with damp, before him a shaft of gray wood--that was a solid mast, harmless, and he grabbed it frantically to save himself as gravity dropped away from his feet, and he could see all around him one heaving gray of ocean to the end of the world. Behind him a cackling voice inquired: "Mr. Shawn, sir, Mr. Shawn--be that there thing a sailor?"

"Why, steady as she goes, Joey Mills! I shall make it one, Mother of God, and you kissing his boots one day."

Ben forced himself around. In the act he lost the mast somehow, the sloop gravely but mirthfully tossing his feet elsewhere. He fetched up against the larboard rail and grasped it with all his power, retching. The cackler was another mass of gray, small, hunched at the tiller, an old man and shriveled, who observed Ben's situation with an uncommunicating, not unfriendly eye, and cackled again and spat astern.

Shawn--the same Shawn and somehow not the same--was coming forward, the green coat flapping about him as he swayed with perfect casual ease to the sloop's leaning and rise and fall. "Your head'll be paining you, Beneen, I know it and sorry I am for it, but without a bit of persuasion you'd never have consented to come with old Shawn at all, I could see that, the way I was forced to it entirely. O the poor landside dreams that do hold a man, the pull of a hearthstone and the clutch of women! You're free, Beneen--old Shawn hath set you free. Never you mind all that now. Back below, man dear, and tell Dummy I said to give you a jolt of rum. You'll not be standing watch the day. Tomorrow you shall, beginning with the forenoon watch, that'll be eight o'clock of the morning the way you measured time in the old days, man dear, the old days you was a landsman, but now you go with Shawn, now you go with old Shawn that knows the brave heart of you, and that better than you'll be knowing it yourself, now that's no lie."

The Irishman was virtually singing. It penetrated the whirling agony of Ben's head--a little. He mumbled uncomprehendingly, not understanding with his brain, but understanding the event in his marrow maybe as clearly as he had ever done in the year since then. Shawn watched him, smiling, firm on the crazy deck like a weighted doll: let the world swing upside down, that'll stay upright, no fear. "It was the drinks. You drugged me," said Ben, not believing it, praying for denial.

"Ben, go below!" Shawn said that firmly but softly, not unkindly, and moved away forward in rolling ease, the green back vanishing beyond the mainsail, the dark riddle of him immediately replaced by the black riddle of someone else. This also Ben would not believe, this gaunt thing striding aft, its black eye-patch and its frozen smile. With no effort, the one-eyed man of the Lion Tavern detached Ben's hands from the rail. "Captain said go below," said Judah Marsh, and struck him in the face.

Ben tumbled sprawling into the cabin. There Dummy supported him kindly and fed him rum. There, presently, Ben understood how Jan Dyckman had died. He began, a little, to understand why.

The gray haze of that day wore itself out to evening with no questions answered except in the privacy of Ben's mind, and those without finality. Rain was falling when he went on deck again. The headache was receding, his body learning balance. He could not find the sun that would have told him what way the sloop was bound. Now and then Shawn passed him on the deck as if totally unaware of him. No one indeed acknowledged his existence at all except a bulky black-haired man, smooth-faced and young, who grinned at him in vacuous amiability. The others called that man Manuel. But when Ben dared to ask him: "Where are we bound?" Manuel shrugged and grinned and spread his hands, and shook his head until Ben feared he might be another mute, and then said at last: "Rain stop soon."

Manuel was right. Toward evening the drizzle ended, the overhanging clouds receded, and a white ball appeared--low in the sky and standing, as Ben faced the bow, on Ben's right hand. Manuel at that time was at the helm, and Shawn stood near him, arms folded, disdaining any support. He had been gazing off to the southwest, but now, since the blue-eyed stare had swung around to Ben, Ben asked: "Mr. Shawn, are we tacking?"

Shawn cocked his head at Manuel in some understanding, and Manuel grinned. "Now why would we be tacking, Beneen?"

Ben's nerves crackled and snapped. "Don't call me that!"

"I may not then?" Shawn displayed no anger, though Ben had almost hoped for it. The blue eyes dilated a little, perhaps in hurt, but he did not cease smiling. "Well--well, Cory, why would we be tacking, and a good little westerly breeze on the sta'board quarter that do be sending us where we wish to go?"

"And where is that?"

"Why, tomorrow, Cory, I fear you'll see little except water--a great deal of it--but you'll see tacking enough if that's your wish, and you'll be learning something about the handling of sail on small craft in the forenoon watch, I'm hoping, and later. And now and then, man dear, away far off up in the northwest or sometimes due north, you'll find me a wee blue lump on the horizon--why, so faint and small that sometimes your eyes will say it's not there at all, but it'll be there. And it'll be there the following day, and maybe the day after that, for we'll be standing off and on. Now that's a way of waiting, Cory, that's the way a vessel must wait if she's in the open waters and biding her time for a certain thing to happen--it's the way of a hawk in the air, if you like, the way he must move about continually up there in the great sky, biding his time for a certain thing to happen." He was coming to Ben, and his broad hands fell heavy on Ben's shoulders. The blue stare dilated to black; Ben met it, refusing to shrink away. "That blue lump will be an island, Cory, a sprawling island where it happens I've never gone ashore, but I know how it lies. I'm of no mind to go there on my errand, do you see, because on land--why, on land I'm compassed about, I have enemies, Mother of God, and some of them are agents of--puh!--Her Majesty Queen Anne."

"What's that you say?"

"Easy, Cory, easy! You have a new allegiance. That I will explain later, not now."

"I have no new allegiance."

"Later, friend, I said. The name of the island is Nantucket. Now sooner or later--on the second, the third day, it doesn't matter--a lovely small vessel will put out from Sherburne. We shall speak her, the island then being over the horizon."

"I think I understand your meaning," Ben said. "I think I understood it when that murderer struck me in the face."

"I'm hoping he did not harm you," said Shawn mildly. The eyes were altogether black; the smile remained. "No murderer, Ben. He acted at command of a certain voice--more of that later too, you wouldn't be understanding it now. As for striking you--mere shipboard discipline, Cory. You might be thanking him for that one day, when you've come around to learning how to obey a captain's orders."

"If I understand your meaning, I will have no part of it."

"Can you walk on water? Swim among the fishes?"

"That's not worth an answer," said Ben, and he heard Manuel suck in his breath as if in pain, but would not look his way. "I met you last night in friendship. I came aboard here, and drank with you as a friend because I supposed you to be one. Oh, my brother...."

"Your brother?"

Terror stabbed at Ben, and caution gave him wisdom. He had almost said: "My brother was right, and you no friend." It was possible that some day Shawn would be ashore again, where Reuben was. "Nothing about my brother," said Ben--"merely that he told me I ought not to set my heart on sailing, as I did. I told you how I had hoped for it, and you knew last night, you know this moment that I meant it honest--not this, not this--I say I'll never have no part of it."

"But," said Shawn peacefully, "I must have an answer to what I asked. Do you wish to live?"

"Yes, like any man. Not at cost of betraying my own people or doing what my heart refuses."

"Why, that's very bravely spoken."

"You thought I'd help you take _Artemis_?"

"Oh," said Shawn, and took out the copper coin and frowned at it. "Who's to know all the whims of a green boy?"

"Whims, Mr. Shawn? Well, not that or any other dirty piracy."

"Oh!" said Shawn again, and held up the coin, turning it about in the gray light. His forehead was damp, perhaps from the spray. "A St. Patrick farthing, Beneen. From Dromore. Sometimes I'm wondering why I keep it. Not much there, ha, to make a man think of the green land?... Well, you'll forget you said that--in time, time. Your heart, is it? And so, do you see, it's your heart I must teach. I must change it, the way you'll be breaking the old bonds and will sail with me to the new lands. Time--that's all. The old gray mother'll give you the truth of it, and I'll change your heart."

"That no one can do."

"But I can," said Shawn, and strode away smiling....

_Artemis_ was overtaken on the third day.

The weather shone fair, the winds themselves giving Shawn their favor, mild westerlies holding, shifting on the third day a little toward the northwest. The island, as Shawn had said, was a faraway thing, at times not visible, reappearing as the blue fragment of a dream. It was early morning, and Shawn, fortunate in this too, had tacked well away to the southeast of the island when the clean white of new sail first appeared. Shawn needed only a moment's study through his glass. His face, that had been smiling, changed to an ivory stillness, and he took the helm.

_Artemis_, gliding out of Sherburne, had clapped on all sail--jib and topsail and mainsail bellying taut, her fore-and-aft mizzen a great wing of purpose and of splendor. For her the northwesterly was a following wind, not her best wind but good enough; her low-slung bowsprit leaned joyfully to the sparkle of harmless whitecaps, outward bound.

Shawn's little sloop danced about, settling into the long starboard tack; it would intercept the course of _Artemis_--but not until the island was well below the horizon, and none to observe but the gulls that still dipped and wheeled above and around _Artemis_, careless angels in the sun. Shawn gave one order in one roared word: "Judah!"

It must have all been arranged long beforehand. Ben at that moment was trying to understand a snapped order from Judah Marsh. Trim something or other--he hadn't quite heard or understood, and was undecided whether to obey as he had tried to do yesterday or to choose this time for hopeless rebellion. Startled by that thunder from the helm, he turned his head to glance at Shawn--and was face down on the deck, his hands wrenched behind him and bound fast at the wrists. His threshing legs were secured at knees and ankles. The creature Dummy was doing most of this, as Ben knew from the moaning slobber at his ear.

He was tied then at the foot of the mast, by back and ankles, legs bent under him so that he could not lift his knees, a rag jammed in his mouth, a tarpaulin flung over him up to the eyes. He struggled a while, not in hope, merely in refusal to surrender, and dislodged the tarp. Judah Marsh noticed this, and fastened two corners of the canvas behind the mast. Ben could do nothing then but go limp, trying to lessen the torture of bent legs and keep the edge of the tarpaulin from slipping against his eyelids. He faced the starboard rail. He could glimpse _Artemis_ from time to time as the sloop rolled. She grew larger through the morning.

He saw the sloop's dory readied to go overside, long before _Artemis_ was in hailing distance, the life aboard her only a motion of midgets. Dummy, swift and excited as an ape, tossed into the dory a broad sheet of canvas. Judah Marsh and dry little Joey Mills climbed into the dory and disappeared. They would be a bundle under a rag; Ben ceased to wonder....

"Ahoy the _Artemis_!"

"Hoy!" The answer came back large and brazen over the mild water, Jenks with his megaphone no midget now but recognizable, massive at the rail and calm.

"I'm bearing a message from Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury."

Ben tried to yell. Nothing penetrated the gag--a strangled gurgling that would not be audible ten feet away. He gave it up, hearing a part of Jenks' answer: "--'bliged to you. Let me have it."

"A sealed message, sir--must be delivered to you safe hand, says he, no other way. Will you heave to, sir? I'll send me boat and delay you as little as I may."

The heavy clang of Captain Peter Jenks' voice cursed once or twice amiably for the record, and consented.

Shawn was right. He delayed _Artemis_ very little indeed.

Her shortened sail holding her to a crawl, the sloop was rolling more. Her rising starboard side would close away Ben's view, and then it seemed to him, not that his own bound body was being moved, his eyes turned in spite of him to the sun and empty sky, but that the sharp bright field of agony across the water had been thrust down, rejected and overwhelmed: sea and sky would not own it nor allow it. He supposed he was not quite sane. Then with each contrary roll the vision would return, plainer than ever, and he was sane enough.

Printed on his memory was a moment when Shawn and Jenks stood together on the deck of _Artemis_ in what seemed to be innocent palaver, the megaphone dangling idly from Jenks' hand, while the dory with Dummy at the oars was sliding astern--and then a roll of the sloop to larboard. Another moment--why, Jenks and Shawn had hardly moved, and Ben could recognize fat Tom Ball, and the carpenter Matthew Ledyard--but the dory had been made fast. Three rats like men were climbing. Surely the helmsman could see them! Or the red-haired man--yes, but what the devil was the cook doing on deck at a conference of captains, and with something black hanging from his right hand? Another roll to larboard--the sloop in her whimsy hung there, tormenting him through a time of sunny blindness and no breathing.

Then Ben discovered why the red-haired cook was present. The same glance embraced the helmsman--anyway a human creature wearing a green kerchief around his head such as the helmsman had been wearing--tumbling strangely from the stem of the beautiful slow-gliding vessel, striking the water with no great splash, floating briefly with no struggle as of life, and disappearing. The sloop rolled to larboard.

Ben in the sunlight could remember Reuben in the red gleam of burning houses, stricken and condemning himself because he had not prayed. _And I have not prayed. But--but...._

From the pain in his legs or the beating sun, Ben might have fainted for a while. Later he could recall no more of the dance of death; nothing until he was aware of the dory skimming back toward him, no one in it but Judah Marsh. Manuel came to release him.

Marsh troubled himself with nothing aboard the sloop, not even the sails; his only errand was to bring the dory for Ben and Manuel, and herd them into it with the lash of a word or two. Manuel was obliged to drop Ben into it, his legs being still numb and useless.

An hour later, as _Artemis_ sped southward, the sloop was still visible, yawing this way and that, making poor silly rushes downwind, dropping in a trough and swinging until caught aback. When Ben last glimpsed her, he and Manuel and Dummy were employed in holystoning the deck of _Artemis_, and Manuel laughed to see her, and nudged Dummy so that he might enjoy it too, even though Judah Marsh was standing by with a belt. Very comical was Mr. Harkness' sloop stumbling about back there, a puzzled pup ordered to go home. Ben could see that. To protest this present labor was to receive the buckle end of the belt; Ben could see that such a cause was not worth a protest--any deck should be made decent, one granted that. The stains were already browning in the sun, difficult to remove, but Captain Shawn would not gather his crew to hear, approve and sign the articles until that deck was clean....

"We here gathered, who have hereunder set our names, do declare ourselves prepared to undertake all such enterprises of discovery as our Captain shall design, and all acts of seizure, search, requisition, defense and warfare that may be needful thereto.

"We here and now and forever forswear all allegiance to any crown, republic, dominion, principality on the face of the earth.

"We here and now and forever swear loyalty unto one another, and to our Captain obedience in all things, and unto the following laws we do agree:

"1. That man that shall refuse any order of our Captain, or of
those to whom he may assign command, shall for a first offending
receive Moses' Law, that is forty stripes less one on the bare
back; for second offending his punishment shall be as the Captain
may direct; but for a third offending he shall suffer present
death.

"2. Of prizes taken, the Captain shall have one share and a
quarter; the mates, the gunner, the carpenter and the boatswain
shall have each one share and one eighth; and every man one share;
but that man that shall display devotion beyond the common unto our
endeavors, he shall have such additional reward as the Captain may
decide.

"3. That man that shall utter blasphemy or foul speech in the
presence of the Captain, or suffer any filth or uncleanness to
remain on the deck of the vessel or in the hold, shall receive ten
stripes.

"4. That man that shall snap his arms, or smoke tobacco in the hold
with pipe uncapped, or carry a lit candle without a lanthorn, or
strike flint or carry flame within three paces of gunpowder except
he be the gunner, shall receive not less than twenty and not more
than thirty stripes on the bare back.

"5. That man that shall offer to meddle with a prudent woman
without her consent shall suffer the loss of his tongue and both
hands, and shall be set adrift, or marooned, as the Captain may
direct.

"6. That man that shall secretly bring a lewd woman aboard this or
other vessel of our company, with intent she shall remain aboard,
the vessel being at sea, shall be bound to his doxy by wrists and
ankles and they both be cast into the sea beyond sight of land.

"7. That man that shall be found in liquor during his hours of duty
or in the presence of an enemy, shall receive Moses' law for three
succeeding days; but for a second offending he shall suffer death.

"8. That man that shall display cowardice in battle shall be hanged
by the neck from the yardarm until dead.

"9. That man that shall practise the vice of Sodom or other
unnatural lust shall be hanged by the neck from the yardarm in
presence of the entire company, his body there to remain for the
space of three days, when it shall be quartered and cast into the
sea.

"10. If it shall become known that any man, woman or child hath
entered aboard this or other vessel of our company as a spy or
agent of the Crown of England or any other foreign power, such spy
or agent shall be put to death in whatever manner the Captain shall
direct; but if such spy or agent be one who hath signed these
articles and presented himself to be an honest member of our
company, he shall before his dispatch be nailed by the hands to the
foremast for the space of five days without meat or drink.

"This shall be your Decalogue," said Daniel Shawn, "and you agreeing. And yet if any man among you be not agreeable, I do not rightly know what we shall do with him the day, seeing I cannot spare a boat, and the distance to the mainland may be something tedious to the best of swimmers."

They laughed. All seven, even Judah Marsh, for the dry grunt that came from him was certainly meant for a laugh. The laugh of Tom Ball, who had taken over the helm during the ceremony, rolled forward like greasy bubbles. Ben Cory, an eighth man who stood apart from the group by the larboard gun and had not been summoned by Shawn to join them, was reflecting that though the life of his body might continue for a while, the part of it that had known laughter was surely ended; reflecting also that his presence here was, in part and obscurely, a result of his own actions. Drugged and kidnapped, yes, but ever since the morning when Reuben had spoken out against Shawn, some part of Ben had understood that his brother was right; another part, swift to deny it, had been stronger in him at the time, and so--so the drinks in the cabin of the sloop, and the waking.

And so perhaps a man's every act is but in part his own, in part a yielding to the thrust of other forces. And perhaps a man is strong in just so far as his actions may be called his own; and so--little gray Joey Mills had begun to sputter words, no one preventing him--and so where is the way where light dwelleth? "Gawd, sir, that part there--I mean----"

"What part, Joey Mills?" Shawn asked that not loudly, and he spread the paper against the bulk of the mainmast, his left hand restraining it against the breeze. Manuel stood by him holding an inkstand and goose quill from the cabin. So much, Ben thought, for the fireside legends that such documents were signed with the heart's blood. Or maybe they were. "Some article you wished to question, Joey Mills?"

"Oh no, sir, nothing like that, sir. I only thought--that there part about forswearing allegiance--well, sir----"

"You wished it more strongly expressed, belike?"

"Well, sir, you see, sir----"

"Ah, I have it!" Shawn beamed in a great glow of generous satisfaction. "You're not the big man, Joey Mills, though sure it's the heart of a gamecock under your old hide, so do you make yourself the greater by coming forward now and being first to sign, ha? Come, Joey! Let me behold your handwrite plain and large!"

Ben noticed no tremor in the grimy fist. That might have been because Joey Mills clutched the quill like a rope, his whole arm toiling in the grave task of shaping the letters, his tongue protruding from clamped lips, his brows a cat's cradle of distress, while Shawn's right arm spread kindly over his sparrowy shoulders. "There, sir! And now, sir----"

"Whisht, man!--time to speak of all things, but now you've signed, and happy am I to have your pledged word in writing, but now, man dear, you must step aside for others."

Joey Mills gave it up and stumbled away, his glance meeting Ben's rather wildly. He seemed almost to be imploring Ben, of all people, for something or other, an impression soon blotted out by a weakly apologetic chuckle. As Joey Mills then scuttled aft to relieve Tom Ball at the helm, Ben thought of Jesse Plum....

Matthew Ledyard the carpenter, last to join the group, had stalked forward--from the captain's cabin, Ben thought--and had halted, demoralized with astonishment at sight of Ben. Ben had supposed Ledyard was murdered with the others, yet there he stood in the sunlight, gaunt face flushed to the eyes under the broad birthmark, lips moving without words. Shawn had drawn him aside for a word or two that seemed to calm him. He had listened to the articles with a sleepwalker's gaze at nothing, and now was the second to sign, shaking his head afterward like a man who hopes to understand something sometime but cannot do so in the present.

After him came Manuel and Dummy and French Jack, these three guided by Shawn's hand to make their marks, and he wrote their names for them with amiable flourishes. Tom Ball then signed, a remarkable lightness and delicacy in his fat fingers.

Judah Marsh wrote slowly but steadily with a savage gouging, his writing a pattern of cutlass gashes. Shawn took the quill from him, regarding the point in sorrow and the man who had nearly ruined it. Some current of understanding was flowing between them, no affection in it and no mirth. Shawn signed his name, handsome and large and bold, pocketed the folded paper, and flung the quill dartwise over the side. "Stay as you be, men," he said--"we'll choose the watches presently." He jerked his head for Ben to follow him, and went forward to the bow, leaning there idly at the rail, the wind at his back. "Cory, I did not require you to sign. Men go with me of their own will, one way or another."

"And so I'm to go overboard?"

"You seem not to be shaking.... I've not been so instructed."

"Instructed?--I don't understand you."

"Never mind. Time, time."

"We are strangers, Mr. Shawn, who never met before. You could have forced my hand to take the quill, maybe. I'd never sign such a thing any other way, and I will not serve you on this venture." Shawn's face did not change. "Are the others all dead?"

Shawn watched the ocean in the south. "Several died and no help for it," he said quietly. "Peter Jenks lives--not harmed, I dare say. A thick skull. He'll share my cabin for a while at least."

"Share----"

Shawn laughed, not musically but almost soundlessly, a thing Ben had not seen him do before. "Under restraint, Ben. Like all good vessels, _Artemis_, who must now be named _Diana_, carries irons for malefactors. I have had Chips staple a chain in the floor of the cabin for the leg irons. Unpleasant, but I'm obliged to question Mr. Jenks in certain particulars. Then no doubt he can be released."

"Released to go overside."

"Time, Ben, time. And so you will not serve me?"

"I will not."

"I like that stubborn will. Mother of God, what a power of strength it might be when you're a man!... Ben, those fellas back there, they are servants. Good men--chose 'em with much thought--but servants, cattle. You are not as they."

"If I did you any service aboard this vessel of Mr. Kenny's I'd be no better than they are."

But it seemed impossible for Ben to make Shawn angry. The man continued strangely gentle and reflective in all he said. "I grant I may have done Mr. Kenny some harm, but he's a wealthy man." About to protest that Mr. Kenny would be so no longer with _Artemis_ lost, Ben held his peace. "I do regret it. If you will not serve me--as yet--perhaps you will serve the ketch? A vessel hath many needs, Mr. Cory. An idle or unskillful hand may do her much harm, come tempest or other misfortune. You cannot expect to share in any prizes----"

"Do you fancy I ever would?"

"Shall we hope to soften this Puritan virtue to some degree?"

But Shawn was not at all angry. "I say, you cannot share in prizes, but while aboard you will be fed and clothed like the others, and for this perhaps you might make some return in labor, if only for _Artemis'_ sake?"

"I suppose I must, as a captive slave, if I wish to live. But I will do no act of piracy, I will do no violence to anyone except in defense of my life, and I will escape you when I can. I believe any slave has that privilege."

"Then I'll require of you no act of violence, only the labor of a foremast hand--can I say more? You have my word on it. And tell me something--have you ever spoken in this fashion to any man before?"

"I never did. I never had cause."

"Knowing quite well that by a lift of my finger I could have you put to death? Human life is nothing to these men, you know. And there'll be muttering a-plenty because you haven't signed."

"Knowing that, of course."

Shawn's hand swung out and gripped Ben's upper arm, not with intentional cruelty, Ben guessed, but he could feel the nerves of his forearm going numb. "Ben, Ben, do you not also hear a voice, sometimes behind your shoulder as it were?--saying now for instance, 'Resist old Shawn, resist him even if you die for it!'" Shawn shook him impatiently. "Is there not such a voice?"

"I don't understand you."

"Tell me the truth!"

"I hear my own mind--heart, conscience, whatever you wish to call it. It serves me as well as it may, and I listen to it."

"Strange! You are not a believer, I think? Do you pray?"

"I haven't truly prayed since my father and mother were murdered.... Is not conscience enough?"

Shawn released him and sighed and turned away. "You spoke of slavery. Ah, Beneen, don't you see, all this is but prologue? I serve a great end. I spoke to you of the western sea and the new lands, and I did see the thought strike fire in you, don't try to deny it. Why, I'd not go on the account, nor meddle with this rabble, nor do violence to anyone, if I could help it. Mother of God, two or three fine ships, a handful of brave men, say fifty, sixty--it needs no more. We need no women--we'll take us native women in the new lands and raise up a new breed of men, and they shall be like gods. You must see it, Beneen, the way I have no choice?"

"I do see--as my father and my mother taught me, as I learned from my tutor and my great-uncle, and above all from my brother, whose understanding is better than mine--I do see, Mr. Shawn, that you cannot serve a good end by evil means."

"Ochone!--a Puritan indeed but very young, now that's no lie. I know that talk, that doctrine, Ben, know it of old, a stick to beat the young and no truth in it, and so I deny it altogether."

"I will affirm it while I live. Damnation, Mr. Shawn, it's no article of faith, only a plain observation any man can make. Your great end lies in the future, but the future grows from the present. The evil you do in the present can only generate evil in the future and not the good end you dream of."

"Puritan and philosopher! Now I have seen flowers growing from a dunghill."

"They grow from the seed of other flowers and would do so in common ground. The dunghill itself only makes a stink."

"Feeds them, does it not?"

"I dare say nothing's purely good or purely evil. What's good in the dunghill feeds them, the rest is a stink."

"Damn the thing, blind and stubborn as you are, I like you, Ben Cory.... Do you play chess?"

"A little."

"I found a set of men in the cabin. We must play now and then."

"If you like...."

"Nothing left then, Beneen, of the friendship I hoped there was between thee and me?"

"I don't know how to answer that. I don't see how there can be friendship if one man enslaves another, if one man does what another must hate and reject."

"You're very bitter, boy."

"I don't possess my own life, if it can be destroyed at your whim, a lift of your finger. I think his life is all any man owns. I think that's cause for bitterness, Shawn. I refused as soon as I understood, the first day. There've been three nights when you could have stood in to shore and let me swim for it." Shawn laughed a little, silently. "I know--you couldn't have me spreading word of you. And it's true, I would have done so at once."

Shawn said slowly: "I could not destroy your life, I think. I spoke as if I might, only in hope of persuading you, opening your eyes. I keep you with me for the same reason, now that's no lie. The friendship abides in me, though you've turned against me. And now you have my word on this: when I have won my little fleet, and my men, and am ready for the regions where none will follow me, I will be finding some means to set you free, and you still unwilling to go with me. I'll put you aboard some other ship, or leave you in a foreign port if I can. You have my word on it--yet I think you may go with me. And for the present I do be asking nothing of you but a seaman's labor, no violence. No violence, Beneen."

Ben knew somehow that, even in that moment, when brown stains were still visible on the deck in spite of all the scrubbing and washing down, Shawn's sorrow at Ben's rejection of him was quite real, quite honest and deep, and so was his belief that Ben's mind would change and that he himself could change it. A most divided man, who could condemn war and practice it. One could picture him sheltering a fallen nestling in his hand, while his heel pressed on the bloody corpse of one of his own breed. But Ben was forced to understand after a while that such insane division is not, by most men, called insanity. They call it necessity.

For a year now, Shawn had kept his word. No violence was required of Ben. When action approached, as it did hardly more than a dozen times in the whole year, Ben was tied, not cruelly, down in the forecastle, and saw only the aftermath.

It seemed to Ben now as he watched the tropic glory of the May moon--this fading slowly, for morning was not far away--that it was true enough, as was said in the Book of Proverbs: _For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he_--and maybe, Ben speculated, any madman is merely one who believes a thing which the one who names him mad is forced to call a lie.

Shawn's blunders in chess were of a curious kind. Ben could beat him as a rule, with effort, and Shawn took it graciously except for a compulsion to curse at his own mistakes. Ben was reminded each time (but did not say) how Reuben could have given the man a handicap of a rook or better and still have beaten him in fourteen or fifteen moves. Shawn would prepare a good enough attack--squatting by the board in the sunlight of the quarterdeck, on days of small wind when the _Diana_ held an even keel and no work needed to be done--and he would be cheerful in the beginning, a little excited, humming in his teeth, moving his pieces with a mirthful flourish. One could not think of him then as anything but a kindly, humorous, thoughtful man, almost a young man, a man on holiday. But in the decisive moment, when he must push through the attack or be damned to it, the humming would cease, the copper farthing would appear in his fingers, and Shawn would either abandon the attack for some meaningless scrimmage in another part of the field, or make one of his blatant errors--a piece left hanging unprotected, a reckless sacrifice gaining nothing. After that, Ben's limited knowledge was sufficient to demolish him. Daniel Shawn would never seem to understand just how this had happened, and Ben did not tell him.

The _Diana_ won no big prizes in that year of prowling up and down the Caribbean. True, she was woefully undermanned, reason enough for risking no lives on anything less than a flat certainty. All the same (said Judah Marsh in Ben's hearing), John Quelch would not have chased a French sloop for three days and then turned tail merely because the little rascal put about in despair and uncovered a gun she shouldn't have possessed. Shawn heard that too, and stared blankly at Marsh, rubbing the coin, until Marsh turned away; but Shawn turned away too, without a reply.

There were braver occasions, such as the breathless evening in July when the sloop _Schouven_ died. That was an open battle with everything risked. Tied securely in the stifling forecastle, Ben could hear as much for himself--the coughing thunder above him of the _Diana's_ larboard gun, presently a distant animal howling, a banging of small arms, a piercing squeal like a stuck pig that was French Jack's war cry. When Ben was released to come on deck the _Schouven_ was already afire, the _Diana_ leaving her behind in the gathering night. Tom Ball and Dummy and Jack were gaudily bleeding from minor wounds, but the _Diana_ had lost nothing. She had won about fifty pounds in silver, a month's provisions, a little long-tailed black monkey and a man--a tall, gray, soft-spoken scoundrel, Cornelius Barentsz, who was even then scrawling his name on the _Diana's_ articles with Shawn's blessing. The terrified monkey clung frantically to Dummy and found a friend....

Ben saw little of Barentsz, who spoke almost no English and was assigned to Mr. Ball's watch, relieving French Jack of his occasional double duty for a week or so until Barentsz was hanged. Ben never altogether understood that. The execution was carried out with no ceremony in the silent hours of the first watch, when Ben was asleep below. Manuel at that time was serving on the larboard watch, and Joey Mills on Marsh's watch with Ben; the two changed places after the hanging, at the request of Mr. Ball, who said he didn't wish to be tempted to do violence to the dirty Portagee when the ketch was so short-handed. It was Matthew Ledyard, in one of his rare impulses to communication, who snarlingly explained the incident to Ben. Barentsz had been discovered in the darkness of the first watch trying to embrace poor giggling weakwitted Manuel like a woman. The articles of the _Diana_ were specific. A week later, though, after the body had been disposed of in the manner prescribed, Shawn asked in the middle of a chess game: "Do you know the true reason why that Dutchman was hanged?" And he set down a Bishop where it could not legally go.

"The piece can't be played there," said Ben.

"Ha?" Shawn stood abruptly and pushed the board aside with his foot. "Devil with the game, my mind's not on it." He had already made his blunder. "You heard my question?"

"I can't say I know the true reason for anything you do."