The least enviable lot, so far as he could see, was that of seven ladies trussed hip to hip over the Cyprian's starboard rail in classic pirate fashion, so that their heads, and upper bodies hung over the somewhat lower shallop: yet even these, despite the indignity and clear discomfort of their position, were not entirely overwhelmed with misery. One, it is true, appeared to be weeping, though she was not being molested at the moment, and two others stared expressionless at their arms, which were lashed at the wrist to the bottom of the balusters but the others were actually gossiping with Carl the sailmaker, who smoked his pipe on the shallop's deck before them! At sight of Ehenezer, who came up beside him, they were not in the least abashed.
"Oh dear," said one, feigning alarm, "here comes another!"
"Ah, now, he seems a likely lad," said her neighbor, who was older. "Ye'd not do aught unchivalrous, would ye, son?"
Even as they laughed, a drunken pirate reeled up behind them.
"Ouch!" cried the one to whom he made his presence known. "Tell him, Carl, 'tis not my turn! Hi! The wretch takes me for a roast of mutton! Tell him, Carl!"
The sailmaker, by reason of his age, had some authority among his shipmates. "Have at some other, matey," he advised. The pirate obligingly moved to the tearful youngster on the end, who at his first touch gave a cry that pierced Ebenezer to the heart.
"Nay, ye blackguard, don't dare jilt me!" cried the woman first molested. "Come hither to one that knows what's what!"
"Aye, leave the child in peace," another scolded. "I'll show ye how 'tis done in Leicestershire!" Aside to her companions she added, "Pray God 'tis not the Moor!"
"Ye asked for't," said the pirate, and returned to his original choice.
"Marry, there's a good fellow!" she cried, pretending pleasure. " 'Sheart, what a stone-horse, girls!" To her neighbor she said in a stage whisper, " 'Tis not the Moor by half, but Grantham grueclass="underline" nine grits and a gallon o' water. Aie! Gramercy, sir! Gramercy!"
The other three were highly entertained.
"Your friend is yonder in the cabin," Carl said to Ebenezer. "Hop to't if ye've a mind for the ladies, for we shan't tarry here much longer."
"Indeed?" Ebenezer shifted uncomfortably; the women were regarding him with interest. "Perhaps I'd better see what mischief Bertrand is about."
"Ah, 'sbood, he doth not care for us," one of the women said. "He likes his friend better." The rest took up the tease, even the one being wooed, and Ebenezer beat a hasty retreat.
"I cannot fathom it," he said to himself.
Though he had dismissed entirely the notion of stowing away aboard the Cyprian and had little or no interest in his valet's present activities, he borrowed courage enough from those two motives to board the brigantine, having first walked aft to escape the women's remarks. He could not deny, however, his intention to stroll back in their direction from the vantage point of the Cyprian's deck, at least out of curiosity. He climbed to the rail and grasped the brigantine's mizzen shrouds to pull himself over. When by chance he happened to look aloft, the moonlight showed him a surprising sight: high in the mizzen-rigging the Moor's first conquest still hung, forgotten by all; her arms and legs stuck through as though in stocks. One could not judge her condition from below: perhaps she maintained her perch out of fear, hoping to escape further assault: or it could be she was a-swoon — her position would keep her from falling. Neither was it impossible that she was dead, from the bite of her great black spider. Assuring himself that only his curiosity wanted satisfying, but in a high state of excitement nonetheless, Ebenezer swung his feet not to the deck of the Cyprian but onto the first of the mizzen ratlines, and methodically, in the manner of Boabdil, climbed skyward to the dangling girl. .
His ascent caused the shrouds to tremble; the girl stirred, peered downwards, and buried her face with a moan. The poet, positively dizzied with desire, made crooning noises in her direction.
"I shall have at thee, lass! I shall have at thee!" When he had got but halfway up, however, Captain Pound stepped out from the cabin below, and the Moor ordered all hands back to the shallop. The men responded with loud protests but nevertheless obeyed, taking desperate final liberties as they went. Ebenezer doubled his rate of climb. "I shall have at thee!"
But Boabdil's voice came up from below. "You in the mizzen-rig! Down with ye, now! Snap to't!"
The girl was literally within reach. "Thou'rt a lucky wench!" he called up boldly.
She looked down at him. In the moonlight, from the present distance, she bore some slight resemblance to Joan Toast, the recollection of whom had fired his original desire. There was a look of horror on her face.
Weak with excitement, Ebenezer called out to her again: "A minute more and I had split thee!"
She hid her face, and he climbed down. A few minutes later the pirates had cast off the grapples and were doing their best to make sail. Looking back over the widening stretch of ocean. Ebenezer saw the women of the Cyprian untie their colleagues at the rail and set free the crew. Up in the mizzen-rigging he could still discern the white figure of the girl, his desire for whom, unsatisfied, began already to discommode him. The relief he felt at the accidental rescue of his essence was, though genuine, not nearly so profound a sensation as had been his possession in the rigging, which he could not begin to understand. Surely, he insisted, there was more to it than simple concupiscence: if not, why did the thought of the Moor's attack, for example, make him nearly ill with jealousy? Why had he chosen the girl in the ratlines instead of those along the rail? Why had her resemblance to Joan Toast (which for that matter he may only have fancied) inflamed rather than cooled his ardor? His whole behavior in the matter was incomprehensible to him.
He turned away and made for his cell in the rope-locker, both to assure himself of the safety of his precious manuscript and in some manner to alleviate, if he could, his growing pain. Even as he lowered himself down the fo'c'sle com-panionway a sharp, shrill female cry rang out through the darkness from the brigantine's direction, followed by another and a third.
"Their turn, now," said someone on the shallop, and a number of the pirates chuckled. The blood rushed from Ebenezer's brain; he swayed on the ladderway and found it necessary to pause a moment, his forehead pressed against an upper rung.
"She's but a whore; a simple whore," he said to himself, and was obliged to repeat the words several times before he could proceed with his descent.
Whether because he thought he had put it away for safekeeping before boarding the Cyprian or because he was too drunk on returning to notice its absence, Captain Pound did not disclose the loss of the Journal fragment until after noon of the following day, by which time Ebenezer had found an even better hiding-place for it. Thinking it imprudent to trust his valet too far, he had waited until Bertrand went on deck that morning and had then transferred his prize from under his pallet to a fold in the canvas of a brand new sail which lay at the bottom of a pile of others on a large shelf near at hand. Thus when in the afternoon he and Bertrand stripped to the skin with the rest of the crew and stood by while Boabdil and the Captain combed the ship, he was not alarmed to see them throw aside the rag-beds in his celclass="underline" for them to unfold and refold every spare sail on the shelf would have been unthinkable. After a two-hour search failed to discover the manuscript, Captain Pound concluded that someone from the Cyprian had sneaked aboard to steal it. All that day and the next the pirates raced to find the brigantine again, until the sight of Cape Henlopen and Delaware Bay put an end to the chase and forced them back to the safety of the open sea.