Athelstane Ford Part 7

"I sent word to him not to wait for you," he coolly replied, "as I thought maybe you'd rather stay with us."

"Rascal!" I shouted, taking him roughly by the arm. "What is the meaning of this villainy?"

"There's the captain; you'd better ask him," he answered.

And turning round as the sound of oars smote on my ears, I perceived a boat coming alongside, and seated upright in the stern the very man of all others whom I had never thought or wished to see again. It was my cousin Rupert.

He caught sight of me at the same moment, and a fierce scowl pa.s.sed across his brow.

"Whom have you got there, Tim?" he called out, standing up in the boat to get a view of me.

"Mr. Ford, sir, purser's a.s.sistant of his Majesty's s.h.i.+p _Talisman_."

At that moment the boat came alongside and my cousin leaped on to the deck, followed by four or five of the crew. He surveyed me with a glance of bitter hatred, mingled with triumph.

"So, cousin, I did not kill you after all! Never mind, I am glad you have remembered your old articles and are come to join us once more.

We have lacked a cabin-boy since your desertion, and if his Majesty can spare you, we shall be glad of your services."

I was too confounded to reply, or to take much heed of this mocking harangue. I had as firmly believed Rupert to be dead as, it seems, he had believed me. The truth, as I gathered it by degrees afterwards, seemed to be this: At the moment of my casting him out of the boat in which we had fought, the other boat was returning to find out what had been the result of the battle. They had first picked up Rupert out of the water, when he was on the point of death, and had then found me senseless, and to all appearance mortally wounded, where I had fallen.

They carried us both back with them, and finding Rupert revived, had concealed him on the _Fair Maid_ till she should sail. The boatswain, out of a kindness for me, and knowing the other's vindictive nature, had persuaded him that it was impossible for me to recover, and so they had left me.

As soon as I was able to collect myself I demanded to have speech with Mr. Sims, the captain.

"You will meet with Mr. Sims where you are going," retorted Rupert.

"In the meantime any business you have with the captain of this vessel may be transacted with me."

"Then I insist that you put me ash.o.r.e instantly," I said, with resolution. "Would you kidnap me under the very guns of his Majesty's fleet?"

"Not so fast," returned Rupert, keeping his temper, as he could afford to do, having the upper hand. "You have forgot your indentures, by which you are bound apprentice to the good s.h.i.+p _Fair Maid_, sailing under his Majesty's letters of marque and commission."

"Under a forged commission," I retorted hotly. "I refuse to be bound by indentures to a pirate!"

This outburst was, no doubt, what my cousin had been waiting for, to set the opinion of the crew against me. He now turned to his followers, very stern.

"Take this youth down to the forecastle and put him in irons. If he repeats his scandalous aspersions, I will bring him to trial as a deserter and mutineer."

I had no means of resistance, and his orders were carried out, the scoundrel who had tricked me into waiting for Rupert's return, taking especial pleasure to see that my irons were made secure. I scorned to question the dirty rascals further as to how my cousin came to be in command, but I guessed there had been some foul work on board since the vessel had left Yarmouth; and the next morning I learnt the whole story.

Old Muzzy, my firm friend, had been ash.o.r.e all that night, very drunk, but soon after dawn he came off to the s.h.i.+p, and hearing of my plight, at once betook himself to where I was imprisoned. He embraced me very heartily, and as soon as I had satisfied him as to my recovery and subsequent adventures, he disclosed to me the situation of the _Fair Maid_.

"You see it's like this, my boy. Mr. Sims is a good seaman, no one can't say he's not, but he's too much of a lawyer to handle a craft like this. Now that cousin of yours, though he be a bloodthirsty, revengeful beast, as you should know by this time, yet he's no lawyer.

Captain Sims, there, he was all for letters of marque and such, but then, once a peace breaks out, where's your letters of marque? They ain't no more use than so much ballast. Now when we came out here, the lieutenant he says, 'Let's go into Gheriah, and join the pirates there'--though according to him they aren't what you may call pirates, being under a king of their own, who has as much right to give them commissions as King George himself. But Captain Sims he wouldn't hear of it, the more so as there was a British squadron under Commodore Porter had been out from Bombay in the spring, and knocked some of their forts about their ears for them. But, you see, unless we joined them, we had nothing to do till such time as the war began again, unless we chose to take the risk of standing up and down the coast, as you may say, on our own hook. So the crew they sided with the lieutenant, that's your cousin, and the end of it was there was a sort of a mutiny, and Captain Sims he was carried ash.o.r.e at Gheriah and given up to the pirates, leastways to their king, and the lieutenant took his place."

"Then the long and short of it is that this is a pirate s.h.i.+p," was all I could say.

"Well, we are, and, in a manner of speaking, we aren't. When we want to come into Bombay here we sail under King George's flag, and when we're in company with the pirates we fly theirs. Any way, we've taken two Dutch s.h.i.+ps and an English one since we got out here, and that's put money in our pockets, which is more than Captain Sims would have done with his lawyering."

"And I suppose I am to be carried to Gheriah and given up to the pirates, like Mr. Sims," I said bitterly.

But this the boatswain swore with many oaths he would not permit.

Nevertheless I could see that he was strongly attached to my cousin's interest, and not disposed to venture anything openly against him.

Indeed, he tried very hard to persuade me to come into their plans, offering to reconcile me with Rupert if I would consent to do this. To these proposals, however, I would by no means consent, being more experienced by this time than when I had joined them at Yarmouth, and having a pretty shrewd notion of how Mr. Clive would regard my former comrades if they should fall into his hands. Finally, I besought the boatswain for news of Marian.

He drew a grave face at this name.

"Athelstane, lad, I would rather you'd ask me any other question than that. Plague take the girl, she was the cause of all the mischief between you and the lieutenant! Forget her, lad, forget her, she's not worth your troubling after."

But he might as well have pressed me to forget who I was, and the situation into which my eagerness to hear of Marian had brought me.

Finding me resolute to know about her, he told me this much:--

"She came aboard while the _Fair Maid_ was in the river, to nurse your cousin as he lay ill of his wounds. But I believe he had been tempting her before that to come out to the Indies with him, and she held back for him to go to church with her first, and this he didn't care enough for her to do. Anyhow, it ended in his getting round her to trust herself with him, and he swore he would carry her straight to Calcutta and hand her over to her people there. When we got out here, and she found he had no such purpose, but meant to keep her in the fortress as long as it suited his pleasure, there was a terrible business betwixt them. But you know what the lieutenant is, and that it ain't a few tears from a woman that'll turn him from anything he has a mind to do.

So he just set her ash.o.r.e by force, and there she is, as much a prisoner as Mr. Sims himself."

I was overcome with the horror of this news, though I suppose it was what I should have expected from my cousin's character.

"Good heavens!" I cried out in my distraction. "Do you mean that she is in the hands of the pirates at Gheriah?"

"That's about what it comes to. And the sooner you give up all thoughts of her the better for you, says I."

Before I could frame any answer--and, indeed, I know not what answer I could have made--there was a great noise and trampling upon deck, and a man came down to tell us that the vessel was about to weigh anchor, and that the boatswain was wanted to attend to the service of the s.h.i.+p. Whereupon he left me, in the company of bitterer thoughts than a man can have more than once in his life.

I pa.s.s over the dreary time spent by me in that dismal confinement during our voyage. Old Muzzy visited me pretty often, and once Rupert himself came down and made offers towards a reconcilement.

"Say that you will join us honestly, and I will take off the irons, and rate you as one of the crew. And when occasion serves, I will cause you to be made lieutenant under me," he promised, "for after all you are my own kinsman, and blood is thicker than water."

Whether he was sincere in this, or was compelled to it by my friend the boatswain, I do not know. But I had only one reply to give him.

"And Marian, what of her?" I said indignantly.

A dark look came on his brow.

"Leave that business alone," he said. "It were better for you, I warn you fairly. That woman is mine, and I will not suffer the Almighty Himself to come between us."

At this blasphemous avowal I turned my back on him, and would entertain no further proposals. However, I knew from the boatswain that Rupert was first for throwing me overboard; and when Muzzy, who had much authority with the crew, would not consent to that, he was for putting me into the castle at Gheriah, along with the late captain. But this my st.u.r.dy champion also opposed, and the end of it was that I was left in my present quarters when the _Fair Maid_ arrived in the pirates' harbour, and brought them the news that a British squadron was on its way to besiege the place.

This intelligence Rupert had acquired before leaving Bombay, and it was this which had caused him to set sail with so much haste. Becoming very busied in preparations for the defence, I luckily slipped somewhat out of his mind, and the boatswain took advantage of this to soften the rigour of my imprisonment, allowing me to take the air on deck, and even going so far as to release me from my irons.

I was thus enabled to gain some idea of the place I had been brought to. When I first came up from below, after so long a time pa.s.sed in obscurity, the daylight proved too much for my eyes, and I was obliged to close them, and accustom myself to the glare by degrees. As soon as I was able to look about me, however, I perceived that the _Fair Maid_ was lying in a very s.p.a.cious river, not far from the mouth, and over against a sort of rocky islet or peninsula, joined to the left bank of the river by a strip of sand. On the rock there was built a very strong castle, having a double wall and towers to protect it, but the cannons of rather poor calibre. Alongside of us lay the fleet of the pirates, composed of strange-looking vessels, having for the most part two masts, one very much in the stern, and rigged with a huge sail, the peak of which came much above the top of the mast. The prows of these vessels stretched a great way forward out of the water having the appearance of a bird's beak. The larger of these vessels, of which there were about ten, are called grabs, and the smaller, of which I counted upwards of sixty, gallivats. These latter are managed with oars as well as sails, and when there is no wind they are employed to tow the grabs behind them, so that in light weather it is easy for them to overtake the s.h.i.+p of which they are in pursuit. They were all armed with cannon, the grabs carrying as many as twenty or thirty 12-pounders, and the gallivats swivel-guns of 6 or 9 pounds.

We had lain in this position for more than a month, and I was beginning to be afraid that Admiral Watson had altered his intention of coming to reduce the pirates' stronghold, when one evening, as I sat on the deck, just at the time that the wind changed and began to blow in from the sea, I discerned a great commotion on sh.o.r.e in the fortress, and turning my eyes towards the river's mouth I beheld a most welcome sight, namely, a fleet of no less than fourteen s.h.i.+ps, arranged in two lines, with the _Talisman_ at their head, sailing proudly in, with the British flag flying at their peaks, and their tops all full of men, their guns run out through their portholes, and their decks cleared for action.

As silently and as orderly as if they were in mid-ocean without a foe in sight, they came sweeping up the river, doubled the rocky point, and anch.o.r.ed one after the other, within two hundred yards of the north wall of the fort.

CHAPTER VII