"You, Tobias, with Tregenza, Vardon and Morris were raising a mutiny against me, I know it ... so you may as well confess. Speak, rogue."
Tobias nodded again instead.
"And for this, your penalty is to be swung, kicking and choking, to the mainyard as warning to like rogues. Have you aught to say?"
"No, sir, since you know all about it,—only this ... I'd ha' ye to know, likewise, 'tis myself is the ring-leader, and so begs kinder treatment for Morris, Tregenza and pore Vardon as lost his starboard eye in the galley and as you tended so kind.... And lastly, sir, I'd rather be shot than hung if 'tis all the same to you, sir."
Adam took a slow turn across the deck, and when Tobias looked again, his hands were empty, the pistols had vanished.
"What then ... captain ... is it ... the rope?" he questioned, in broken voice.
"This depends on yourself, Drew. To-day I promote you to Master Carpenter, to-morrow I may promote you yet higher—in a noose if you so deserve. Meanwhile, I trust you to play the honest man with me and be worthy my clemency."
"Carpenter...? Sir, did ye ... say ... Oh, Captain, do you ... am I——"
"Go forward now and report you to the Master."
"But, sir, I——Captain, d'ye mean ... am I to——"
"Go! And bid Vardon and Morris here to me. Come now, despatch!"
Then Toby Drew squared his brawny shoulders, saluted so vigorously that he quivered from heel to head, and strode away like different man, for he bore himself erect now and shambled no more; and little dreamed he how the small, fierce Captain who watched was praying, with a dumb fervour, that this change might endure. Yet when, after some while, two other furtive-looking men reached the poop, they were met by one whose eyes were a savage menace and whose biting words pierced even their cynical brutality, because they had once been honest men and English sailors.
"So ho, my beastly rogues and right bloody-minded villains, ye plot mutiny and murder, do ye! You that were born of English mothers to be their joy are become their blasting shame, to die like dogs."
"Ha, then there's been Toby Drew peaching on us, curse him!" snarled one, an evil, pock-marked, one-eyed fellow. "Sam, us'll slit his dirty weasand for this!"
"Not you, Will, nor yet me, b' the looks o' Master Adam. Well, what's it to be, master? You've got us fair caught, I'll not deny. So, if we're doo for to swing, carry on! We don't betray our poor messmates for to save our necks like yon Toby Drew, blast his deadlights."
"Speak for your ownself," cried Vardon, laying hand on the knife in his belt, "belay or I'll bowel ye! If Toby can win free his way, I can—this!" So saying, he flashed out his knife and leapt full at watchful Adam,—to be met by flame and smoke, and crying once, in thin, bubbling voice, he dropped to his knees, sank to his face and lay still,—and the decks below athrong with startled faces.
"Up with this carcass—up, I say!" quoth Adam, gesturing at Morris with smoking pistol. "Heave and hang it across the rail that all like rogues may see a rogue dead of mutiny."
So Vardon's unlovely, dead body was lifted and propped across the carven poop-railing, and all men staring in such awed silence they might hear the quick patter of his life blood on the deck below.
"Look now!" cried Adam, tapping this still form with smoking pistol-barrel. "Here is man would have murdered the Captain o' this ship, wherefore he is dead. Let any like rogues beware. Bo'sun, send two men for this body, let it be prepared for burial. This day at sunset we will commit William Vardon's carcass to the ocean, beseeching God's mercy on his everlasting soul. Dismiss!"
"And now, sir, what ... what o' me, if y' please?"
Adam turned to look into the speaker's pallid face, noting the level glance of his grey eyes, the resolute set of mouth and chin, despite the sweat that trickled upon haggard brow. Thus stood Adam a while, pinching his chin.
"You are Samuel Morris, I think?"
"That same, your honour."
"And guilty as your mate Vardon. You and others were biding a chance to kill me, as well I know."
"Then sich being so, I says nought,—only——"
"Well?"
"Though wishful for to take the ship, I was agin killing you. Bible Oath, sir!"
"Also you refused to betray your fellow rogues to save that roguish neck o' yours."
"Yessir! I did and I do. And there's plenty of 'em."
"Well, they see I'm prepared to meet murder day or night. Now tell me, Sam, if you can be so true, so faithful, to these mutinous fellows, why can you not be as true and faithful to your duty and me?"
Now looking at his questioner, Morris saw (and to his wonder) how this lean face was no longer grim but sadly wistful and lit by eyes no longer fiercely accusing but very kindly appealing; and opening his lips to speak, Morris was dumb, and, being unable to meet this so unexpected look, hung his head.
"Have you no answer for me, Morris? Then go forward and talk the matter out with your fellows, and when you find answer, come back to me with any you will and tell me. Now, you may go."
"Go, sir? But ... but ... I thought——"
"Ay, go you and think, Samuel; think hard and talk with your messmates, asking yourselves,—if it be not better to live honest men all, faithful to the ship, to me, and to each other, rather than rogues I must kill, as I most certainly shall if forced thereto. Off with ye now and bring me answer for yourself and fellows when you have decided to be either honest sailormen I may trust or felons for certain chastisement." This said, Adam went below, leaving Sam Morris a free man and therefore a man greatly astonished.
May 5
This evening in the coach after supper with Sir Benjamin, Sir G. D'Arcy and John Fenn, Don Luiz having retired early, there is much talk concerning our crew and my shooting of this man William Vardon whose poor body now lies so deep and many miles astern. And though they all commend this act of mine as necessary to the well-being of the ship, yet my mind, then as now, is greatly troubled therefore. To kill, even of necessity, is dreadful business, and shakes me to the very soul, so that I begin to doubt I can ever hang any man howsoever guilty. And this do trouble me in another fashion, viz.: Lest being too unready to take life I thereby endanger the lives of all, and thus prove myself unfit to command and keep order and peace. And here (thinks I) what strange, paradoxical virtue is Peace if it may only be maintained by war or, force of arms! Sir G. D'Arcy now begins to question me whither we are bound and where I am taking the ship. "Though," says he, "being a fugitive and penniless, 'tis all one to me, Adam."
"Ay, or me either," groans Sir Benjamin, "seeing I am no more than poor naked, sorry wretch in no fit condition for return to England with that comely estate as befits a gentleman. So whither you take us, Adam, is no least matter, and yet we'd—fain know, since to be anyways ignorant is to be damned. How say'st thou, John Fenn?" And John (a steadfast, quiet man) replies by saying he has few friends in England and no family, and desires to share my fortunes foul or fair, so long as he may, the which, and from such right Englishman, greatly comforted me, as I told him.
"Ay," says Ben, "but whither do your present fortunes lead us, Adam?"
So I told them I was setting our course for Port Royal, in Jamaica, since 'twas there my good friend, Captain Troy, intended, and I was very fain to know if they had been spared to come safe thither.
"'They?'" says Ben. "You'll be meaning Absalom and your young brother, Anthony, he was taken into the pinnace with Troy I mind, a pretty lad, a dainty, young gentleman."
"Though," says George, "so shy and mighty retiring I saw less of his company than I would." Now here, to change the subject, I went on to say what little I knew concerning Jamaica, how that Port Royal is a resort of ships and merchants of many nations, and therefore a good market. At this word Sir Benjamin falls to bewailing his trade goods lost in the Adventuress and very mournfully. Now seeing these are trusty men all, and my very good friends, I told them (in some part) of the riches we carried aboard,—whereat Sir Benjamin soars from deeps of gloom to pinnacle of joy and so to a rhapsody, saying how he will to England forthwith and buy back his family estates and so to Court, as gentleman of fashion, whiles George and John and I follow our own thoughts, mine this, to wit: Could I but recall the past few hours, William Vardon should now be alive with chance to become, mayhap, an honest man or die of roguery by other hand than mine. And this thought so troubled me that I presently bade my cheery companions Good night, and so to my cabin. Yet even so, this memory haunted me so that, despite my prayers, sleep was long a-coming, and when at last it blessed me, I started up broad awake thinking I heard again poor William Vardon's wailing, childish death-cry. Now to comfort myself, I bethought me of the gentle Christ, and how He had said He came not to send peace but a sword. I thought also how He had buffeted the money-changers and kicked over their tables. And so again to sleep, only to dream of Vardon dead at my feet and myself looking down on him to see ah,—not his evil face but the lovely, oft-dreamed features of Antonia all marred and fouled with blood. And so, to banish these horrors, I got me dressed and went forth to meet the dawn.