Ebenezer sighed. "I feared as much. I suppose he'll inflame the Ahatchwhoops farther."
"Aye." McEvoy displayed a new fishbone ring of the sort that had saved Ebenezer. "Chicamec gave me this for retrieving his son, and Dick Parker gave another to Bertrand, but I'd not give a farthing for its protection when the war comes — and 'twill come sooner now than before, with Master Cohunkowprets at the helm. I mean to sail out o' this miserable province the minute I have my freight, and Henrietta's going with me if I have to kidnap her." He blushed, for his last remark had chanced to fall into a pause in the general conversation and was heard by all.
"I hope you shan't need such measures." Ebenezer laughed. "Nor is't likely I'd permit you to treat my sister so unchivalrously!" He proceeded to dumfound his companion with the news of his relationship to Henrietta and the party's plans for the immediate future.
"I vow and declare, Eben, ye frighten me!" He looked at Henrietta with awe. "Nay, methinks I should steal her away all the sooner, ere ye discover me for your brother as well!"
As soon as all the salutation had been got over. Mrs. Russecks suggested that Bertrand be dispatched to summon the Captain for dinner as well as for protection from the pirates, against whose rumored presence the village had taken such a posture of defense. The valet was much alarmed by this last disclosure, but McEvoy scoffed at the idea.
"If there were any pirates about, they'd have taken us ere now; we were the only ship in sight from Limbo Straits to Church Creek! In any case, the Captain's not likely to be aboard; he wanted to recruit himself a crew that knows more about crewing than Bertrand and myself."
Everyone except Bertrand and Mrs. Russecks joined McEvoy in minimizing the threat of piracy, and upon Mary's offering, at dinner, to oversee the closing of the millhouse and the sale of the inn (which latter property she herself expressed some interest in), the party resolved to set sail for Anne Arundel Town that same afternoon if possible.
"The sooner I leave Church Creek behind, the better," Henrietta said, and McEvoy, perhaps less than altruistically, observed that Billy Rumbly's defection made it even more urgent to apprise Nicholson of the situation at once.
"Nonetheless," Roxanne declared, "I can't help trembling at the thought of pirates. All of us here, save Mary, have been captured once before and cruelly used, and escaped by the skin of our teeth: 'tis not likely we'll be so lucky a second time."
"Aye," the poet agreed. "But by the same token 'tis less than likely such a catastrophe could befall the same party twice in's life." He went on, partly in good-natured irony and partly to divert the woman from her fears, to speak of sundry theories of history — the retrogressive, held by Dante and Hesiod; the dramatic, held by the Hebrews and the Christian fathers; the progressive, held by Virgil; the cyclical, held by Plato and Ecclesiasticus; the undulatory, and even the vortical hypothesis entertained, according to Henry Burlingame, by a gloomy neo-Platonist of Christ's College, who believed that the cyclic periods of history were growing ever shorter and thus that at some non-unpredictable moment in the future the universe would go rigid and explode, just as the legendary bird called Ouida (so said Burlingame) was reputed to fly in ever-diminishing circles until at the end he disappeared into his own fundament. "The true and proper cyclist," he averred, "ought not to fear being taken again by pirates, inasmuch as his theory will loose him from their clutches as before; if you fear we'll be recaptured and done to death, 'tis plain you believe the course of things to be a sort of downward spiral — whether right- or left-handed I can't determine without farther enquiry."
By dint of these and like sophistical cajolements Mrs. Russecks was quieted; after dinner the women's trunks and chests were loaded onto Mary's wagon and drawn by Aphrodite through the desolate little village to a landing down on the creek, where Captain Cairn's sloop was moored.
"Hallo, where is the Captain?" Ebenezer asked.
"He said we were to wait aboard for him if he had trouble finding a crew," McEvoy said. "Methinks he'll have trouble finding anyone in yonder village!"
When they had transferred their gear from the wagon to the deck, Mary Mungummory declared with a wink at Ebenezer that, her errand in Church Creek having failed in its object, she too must needs address herself to the task of finding a crew. If she was successful, she said, her regular circuit of the county would bring her to Cooke's Point a few days hence, where she promised to plead the poet's case to Joan Toast, inquire as to the whereabouts of Henry Burlingame, and relay any news to Anne Arundel Town. She wished them all success in their embassy to the Governor, for her own sake as well as theirs, and after an exchange of the most affectionate farewells — especially with Roxanne, Henrietta, and Ebenezer — she returned up the path towards the settlement.
Ebenezer surveyed the familiar deck. "Thank Heav'n the weather's fine; my last voyage on this ship was a harrowing one!" He noticed that Bertrand, who had been unusually subdued throughout the day, now looked quite downcast, and asked him teasingly whether he had seen the Moor Boabdil in the myrtle bushes.
" 'Sheart, sir," the valet complained, "I had almost as lief be back with old Tom Pound as travel about in Maryland."
"Why, how is that?"
Bertrand replied that though he was eternally obliged to his master for, among other things, effecting his release from Bloodsworth Island, it was really a matter of frying-pan into fire, for old Colonel Robotham would surely do him to death upon discovering that Miss Lucy was wed not to the Poet Laureate at all, but to a servingman, whose astrolabe had already taken the alnicanter of her constellation.
"You've done the lass a great injustice," Ebenezer admitted, "but I'm scarcely the man to reprove you for't, and the Colonel is far from blameless in the matter himself. Methinks a marriage under such false pretense can be annulled e'en after consummation, and I've no great fear of Lucy's claim to Malden; but I pity the poor tart for being twice deceived with a babe in her belly. 'Tis your affair, of course; yet I could wish — God's body!"
From the stern of the sloop, where McEvoy had taken the ladies to wait for the Captain's return, came a tumult of shrieks, squeals, and curses. Ebenezer hastened aft to investigate and found himself confronted by a man whose appearance from the tiny cabin set his knees a-tremble and prostrated Bertrand upon the deck: a stout little man dressed in black from beard to boots, with a pistol in one hand and an ebony stick in the other
"Well, marry come up!" the fellow marveled. "Will ye look who's here, Captain Scurry?"
His counterpart emerged onto the stern sheets, also brandishing a pistol and supporting himself on a stick. "I'cod, Captain Slye, we've a bloody crew to go with our pilot!" He drew closer and smiled evilly at Ebenezer. "I say, Captain Slye, 'tis the very wretch that fouled his drawers in the King o' the Seas!"
"The same," said Slye. "And that craven puppy yonder is our friend the false laureate, that bilked us for a carriage-ride to Plymouth!"
The two rejoiced in the most unpleasant manner imaginable at having accidentally caught up with three old acquaintances — they had already recognized McEvoy as the redemptioner who had so plagued them on their last crossing. Captain Cairn, his countenance stricken, appeared on deck at their order, and the party was assembled in the waist of the vessel.
"God forgive me!" the Captain cried to Ebenezer. "I went to sign me a crew, and these rogues set upon me!"
"Now, now," Captain Scurry admonished, "there's no way to speak o' thy shipmates, sir! Our friend Captain Avery lies yonder in the lee o' James Island and wants a pilot up the Bay, and inasmuch as Captain Slye and myself was steering southwards, we promised to find him one."