Wilderness of Spring Part 51

Ben tumbled sprawling into the cabin. There Dummy supported him kindly and fed him rum. There, presently, Ben understood how Jan Dyckman had died. He began, a little, to understand why.

The gray haze of that day wore itself out to evening with no questions answered except in the privacy of Ben's mind, and those without finality. Rain was falling when he went on deck again. The headache was receding, his body learning balance. He could not find the sun that would have told him what way the sloop was bound. Now and then Shawn pa.s.sed him on the deck as if totally unaware of him. No one indeed acknowledged his existence at all except a bulky black-haired man, smooth-faced and young, who grinned at him in vacuous amiability. The others called that man Manuel. But when Ben dared to ask him: "Where are we bound?" Manuel shrugged and grinned and spread his hands, and shook his head until Ben feared he might be another mute, and then said at last: "Rain stop soon."

Manuel was right. Toward evening the drizzle ended, the overhanging clouds receded, and a white ball appeared--low in the sky and standing, as Ben faced the bow, on Ben's right hand. Manuel at that time was at the helm, and Shawn stood near him, arms folded, disdaining any support.

He had been gazing off to the southwest, but now, since the blue-eyed stare had swung around to Ben, Ben asked: "Mr. Shawn, are we tacking?"

Shawn c.o.c.ked his head at Manuel in some understanding, and Manuel grinned. "Now why would we be tacking, Beneen?"

Ben's nerves crackled and snapped. "Don't call me that!"

"I may not then?" Shawn displayed no anger, though Ben had almost hoped for it. The blue eyes dilated a little, perhaps in hurt, but he did not cease smiling. "Well--well, Cory, why would we be tacking, and a good little westerly breeze on the sta'board quarter that do be sending us where we wish to go?"

"And where is that?"

"Why, tomorrow, Cory, I fear you'll see little except water--a great deal of it--but you'll see tacking enough if that's your wish, and you'll be learning something about the handling of sail on small craft in the forenoon watch, I'm hoping, and later. And now and then, man dear, away far off up in the northwest or sometimes due north, you'll find me a wee blue lump on the horizon--why, so faint and small that sometimes your eyes will say it's not there at all, but it'll be there.

And it'll be there the following day, and maybe the day after that, for we'll be standing off and on. Now that's a way of waiting, Cory, that's the way a vessel must wait if she's in the open waters and biding her time for a certain thing to happen--it's the way of a hawk in the air, if you like, the way he must move about continually up there in the great sky, biding his time for a certain thing to happen." He was coming to Ben, and his broad hands fell heavy on Ben's shoulders. The blue stare dilated to black; Ben met it, refusing to shrink away. "That blue lump will be an island, Cory, a sprawling island where it happens I've never gone ash.o.r.e, but I know how it lies. I'm of no mind to go there on my errand, do you see, because on land--why, on land I'm compa.s.sed about, I have enemies, Mother of G.o.d, and some of them are agents of--puh!--Her Majesty Queen Anne."

"What's that you say?"

"Easy, Cory, easy! You have a new allegiance. That I will explain later, not now."

"I have no new allegiance."

"Later, friend, I said. The name of the island is Nantucket. Now sooner or later--on the second, the third day, it doesn't matter--a lovely small vessel will put out from Sherburne. We shall speak her, the island then being over the horizon."

"I think I understand your meaning," Ben said. "I think I understood it when that murderer struck me in the face."

"I'm hoping he did not harm you," said Shawn mildly. The eyes were altogether black; the smile remained. "No murderer, Ben. He acted at command of a certain voice--more of that later too, you wouldn't be understanding it now. As for striking you--mere s.h.i.+pboard discipline, Cory. You might be thanking him for that one day, when you've come around to learning how to obey a captain's orders."

"If I understand your meaning, I will have no part of it."

"Can you walk on water? Swim among the fishes?"

"That's not worth an answer," said Ben, and he heard Manuel suck in his breath as if in pain, but would not look his way. "I met you last night in friends.h.i.+p. I came aboard here, and drank with you as a friend because I supposed you to be one. Oh, my brother...."

"Your brother?"

Terror stabbed at Ben, and caution gave him wisdom. He had almost said: "My brother was right, and you no friend." It was possible that some day Shawn would be ash.o.r.e again, where Reuben was. "Nothing about my brother," said Ben--"merely that he told me I ought not to set my heart on sailing, as I did. I told you how I had hoped for it, and you knew last night, you know this moment that I meant it honest--not this, not this--I say I'll never have no part of it."

"But," said Shawn peacefully, "I must have an answer to what I asked. Do you wish to live?"

"Yes, like any man. Not at cost of betraying my own people or doing what my heart refuses."

"Why, that's very bravely spoken."

"You thought I'd help you take _Artemis_?"

"Oh," said Shawn, and took out the copper coin and frowned at it. "Who's to know all the whims of a green boy?"

"Whims, Mr. Shawn? Well, not that or any other dirty piracy."

"Oh!" said Shawn again, and held up the coin, turning it about in the gray light. His forehead was damp, perhaps from the spray. "A St.

Patrick farthing, Beneen. From Dromore. Sometimes I'm wondering why I keep it. Not much there, ha, to make a man think of the green land?...

Well, you'll forget you said that--in time, time. Your heart, is it? And so, do you see, it's your heart I must teach. I must change it, the way you'll be breaking the old bonds and will sail with me to the new lands.

Time--that's all. The old gray mother'll give you the truth of it, and I'll change your heart."

"That no one can do."

"But I can," said Shawn, and strode away smiling....

_Artemis_ was overtaken on the third day.

The weather shone fair, the winds themselves giving Shawn their favor, mild westerlies holding, s.h.i.+fting on the third day a little toward the northwest. The island, as Shawn had said, was a faraway thing, at times not visible, reappearing as the blue fragment of a dream. It was early morning, and Shawn, fortunate in this too, had tacked well away to the southeast of the island when the clean white of new sail first appeared.

Shawn needed only a moment's study through his gla.s.s. His face, that had been smiling, changed to an ivory stillness, and he took the helm.

_Artemis_, gliding out of Sherburne, had clapped on all sail--jib and topsail and mainsail bellying taut, her fore-and-aft mizzen a great wing of purpose and of splendor. For her the northwesterly was a following wind, not her best wind but good enough; her low-slung bowsprit leaned joyfully to the sparkle of harmless whitecaps, outward bound.

Shawn's little sloop danced about, settling into the long starboard tack; it would intercept the course of _Artemis_--but not until the island was well below the horizon, and none to observe but the gulls that still dipped and wheeled above and around _Artemis_, careless angels in the sun. Shawn gave one order in one roared word: "Judah!"

It must have all been arranged long beforehand. Ben at that moment was trying to understand a snapped order from Judah Marsh. Trim something or other--he hadn't quite heard or understood, and was undecided whether to obey as he had tried to do yesterday or to choose this time for hopeless rebellion. Startled by that thunder from the helm, he turned his head to glance at Shawn--and was face down on the deck, his hands wrenched behind him and bound fast at the wrists. His thres.h.i.+ng legs were secured at knees and ankles. The creature Dummy was doing most of this, as Ben knew from the moaning s...o...b..r at his ear.

He was tied then at the foot of the mast, by back and ankles, legs bent under him so that he could not lift his knees, a rag jammed in his mouth, a tarpaulin flung over him up to the eyes. He struggled a while, not in hope, merely in refusal to surrender, and dislodged the tarp.

Judah Marsh noticed this, and fastened two corners of the canvas behind the mast. Ben could do nothing then but go limp, trying to lessen the torture of bent legs and keep the edge of the tarpaulin from slipping against his eyelids. He faced the starboard rail. He could glimpse _Artemis_ from time to time as the sloop rolled. She grew larger through the morning.

He saw the sloop's dory readied to go overside, long before _Artemis_ was in hailing distance, the life aboard her only a motion of midgets.

Dummy, swift and excited as an ape, tossed into the dory a broad sheet of canvas. Judah Marsh and dry little Joey Mills climbed into the dory and disappeared. They would be a bundle under a rag; Ben ceased to wonder....

"Ahoy the _Artemis_!"

"Hoy!" The answer came back large and brazen over the mild water, Jenks with his megaphone no midget now but recognizable, ma.s.sive at the rail and calm.

"I'm bearing a message from Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury."

Ben tried to yell. Nothing penetrated the gag--a strangled gurgling that would not be audible ten feet away. He gave it up, hearing a part of Jenks' answer: "--'bliged to you. Let me have it."

"A sealed message, sir--must be delivered to you safe hand, says he, no other way. Will you heave to, sir? I'll send me boat and delay you as little as I may."

The heavy clang of Captain Peter Jenks' voice cursed once or twice amiably for the record, and consented.

Shawn was right. He delayed _Artemis_ very little indeed.

Her shortened sail holding her to a crawl, the sloop was rolling more.

Her rising starboard side would close away Ben's view, and then it seemed to him, not that his own bound body was being moved, his eyes turned in spite of him to the sun and empty sky, but that the sharp bright field of agony across the water had been thrust down, rejected and overwhelmed: sea and sky would not own it nor allow it. He supposed he was not quite sane. Then with each contrary roll the vision would return, plainer than ever, and he was sane enough.

Printed on his memory was a moment when Shawn and Jenks stood together on the deck of _Artemis_ in what seemed to be innocent palaver, the megaphone dangling idly from Jenks' hand, while the dory with Dummy at the oars was sliding astern--and then a roll of the sloop to larboard.

Another moment--why, Jenks and Shawn had hardly moved, and Ben could recognize fat Tom Ball, and the carpenter Matthew Ledyard--but the dory had been made fast. Three rats like men were climbing. Surely the helmsman could see them! Or the red-haired man--yes, but what the devil was the cook doing on deck at a conference of captains, and with something black hanging from his right hand? Another roll to larboard--the sloop in her whimsy hung there, tormenting him through a time of sunny blindness and no breathing.

Then Ben discovered why the red-haired cook was present. The same glance embraced the helmsman--anyway a human creature wearing a green kerchief around his head such as the helmsman had been wearing--tumbling strangely from the stem of the beautiful slow-gliding vessel, striking the water with no great splash, floating briefly with no struggle as of life, and disappearing. The sloop rolled to larboard.