"Captain Adam, San' Domingo is good as ours! We sail—to-night! And now I shall be happy to make trial of your wine—if you, being buccaneer of such exalted virtue, will stoop and dare to drink with pirate so completely damned as Black Bartlemy?" Adam merely rang his silver bell whereat appeared Jimbo bearing a large tray on which stood bottles of many shapes and sizes; setting these in orderly array he goggled at their notorious visitor, bowed and vanished.
"Do we drink—together, sir, ay or no?" enquired Bartlemy.
"Ay!" answered Adam, taking a bottle at random. "Pray make your choice." This Bartlemy did and with some care; then, having filled his glass, enquired again:
"Come now, shall black Villainy pledge peerless Virtue, or spotless Virtue pledge Villainy? Do you drink to Bartlemy, sir?"
"No!" answered Adam, lifting his glass, "I drink—not to Bartlemy the Black, but to that younger Bartlemy his mother loved to kiss."
Then Adam raised glass to lip, but, instead of doing likewise, Bartlemy sat motionless, staring down into his wine as if he saw a vision there.
"Captain Adam," said he at last and very softly, "I grieve infinitely that I did not kill you!"
"So then," retorted Adam, as softly, "doth remorseful memory bite so deep? Thus might the angels yet have hopes of thee."
Slowly Bartlemy lifted his head, laughed savagely, made as if to hurl his wine at Adam's face, drank it instead and rose.
"'Tis then agreed," said he, reaching for his jewelled hat, "we sail this night. I'll away to give the needful orders."
CHAPTER XLIV
TELLS HOW THEY FOUND ABSALOM TROY
Night riven by the red flashes of gunfire. Thunderous broadsides of dim ships answered by the heavier artillery of the town from lofty parapet and looming castle;—and Adam seeking high and low for Antonia a last word, when he is checked by a hand plucking his sleeve, for he wears no armour, and turning, beholds a strange man who flashes a sword at him,—instinctively he reaches for his own, hears a bubbling laugh and stands aghast to see this threatening stranger is Antonia.
"So, I shall pass!" said she. "And in your clothes again, my dear, but these much more splendid and a little tighter, alack—than those of four years ago."
"But ... Antonia, this is madness! And the boats manned and waiting me."
"And so you behold me ready ... to fight beside you," said she, making a graceful, dexterous pass in the air with her sword. "I've never forgot your lessons, Adam, to bear my point—so! And parry close—so!"
"Now God help me!" he exclaimed desperately. "Here's a wild extravagance, mad folly and needless risk."
"Then, dear man, fool I'll be, but I'll make thy perils mine, and if Death challenge me I'll greet him with a kiss and thine arms about me, I pray God. Yes, to-night 'stead of cowering in lonely safety, I'll live with thee—or die! So come ... my beloved!"
Down into the foremost boat they went, with none to heed or recognize her in the darkness; then seated in the stern-sheets of the leading boat, with Antonia close beside him, Adam gave word and they moved off into the sombre waters of this Ozama river.
"Are you forrard there, Joel Bym?"
"Ay, sir, along o' Tregenza——"
"Here's me too, sir, if you please!" piped another, and most unexpected voice. "And I've brought Moa along, seeing as how us be your bodyguards, sir."
"I gave orders you were not to come, Smidge!"
"Ay, but not to me personal, sir, seeing as me and Moa was hid in the boat awaiting—we couldn't nowise let you go to battle wivout your special own seadogs, Cap'n Adam, sir."
"Oh, bless his heart!" murmured Antonia.
Soft ripple of vague water stretching before them into gloom and a gathering darkness as the flash of roaring artillery gradually faded behind them. Shadows to left and right, the one topped by mighty walls and battlements, the other crowned by mazy thickets and dense woodlands, and the dark river winding between. Bubble and hiss of muffled oars strongly plied, rippling murmur of cleaving bow,—on and on until gun-flashes were hidden and their roar grown faint with distance,—until at last spake Joel Bym in harsh whisper:
"Easy all—so! Larboard, hard a-larboard!"
The boats turned in towards the bank, and grounded softly; with scarce a sound their crews landed and ranged themselves beneath a massive wall up-soaring into darkness. Then with Joel leading and Adam and Antonia close behind, the silent company followed this wall until Joel halted to fumble in the darkness and whisper harshly:
"Yere we be, by cock! Follow me, Cap'n."
Up they clambered, by jagged and broken masonry, up to a narrow cleft, there to take breath, and so—over and a blind scrambling down—into a wide vagueness where trees loomed and leaves rustled faintly in the gentle night wind. Here they mustered in rank and followed whither Joel led ... by a narrow street ... past silent buildings ... until before them rose a dark mass that was the embattled West Gate. Forward they crept into its deeper shadow where Adam, whispering, halted them and with Joel to left and Jimbo to right of him, stole where a light beamed from the half-open door of a guardroom in which two sentinels (made lax and faithless to their watch by long security) snored in unison, despite the distant tumult, an empty wine-flask on the table between their unconscious heads.
"Pistol-butts!" whispered Adam; the three crept forward and so dealt with these unwary sleepers that their slumber became more profound and they were left securely gagged and deftly pinioned.
Then the great gates were swung wide to their shipmates waiting outside, an eager company led by Sir Benjamin, Sir George and Ned Bowser grasping his ponderous boarding axe.
"Yo-ho!" bellowed Sir Benjamin. "Whereaway, Adam?"
"The prison of the Holy Office. Lead on, Joel."
So on they went at speed, careless now of what sound they made, for the battle roared louder as they advanced. They reached the prison which no man guarded, all being gone to defend the city or fled into hiding. They broke the gates, they burst open the doors, they forced bolt and bar and chain of gloomy cell and noisome dungeon. So they freed the prisoners and by Adam's order, mustered them in the spacious Hall of Judgment. Here lamps and tapers had been left burning whose light showed the black-draped seats of the Inquisitors ranked below a noble painting of the Holy Virgin who seemed to look down upon these misused, woeful prisoners with a sweet compassion; or so thought Adam as, with Antonia beside him, he glanced at these many faces pallid with long prisonment and haggard with suffering. But amongst these miserable ones he saw nothing of Absalom or Captain Smy until came Joel bearing in his arms a—something ... a half naked shape so twisted, scarred and shrunken that Adam recoiled a step, while Sir Benjamin gasped a whispered oath and Sir George turned away, covering his face.
"Shipmates—ahoy!" shrilled Smy, in thin, quavering voice, "what, dost not know me, Adam? Dost not recognize what Papish devils ha' left of me? Well, now ye be come I cry 'Glory—Alleluia'. For I know the Lord hath spared me to see His vengeance on this wicked city. Let it flame to Heaven! Let it go up in the smoke of its abomination! Let it be blasted from the earth——"
"Old friend," said Adam, clasping these bony hands, "thank God we find thee alive to our cherishing."
"Nay, Adam lad, I want no cherishing save the Lord's hand to stay and still my heart and His good earth to hide this poor ruin the torment hath made o' me."
"Prithee, old friend, where may I find—Absalom?"