Wilderness of Spring Part 58

"Ya-ah--maybe I do know it. Maybe I wished to learn if you could ever be angered any way at all."

"I can." Ledyard's heavy brows lifted; his brown eyes in the sun squeezed down to little fires. "I can, and since you're a-mind to speak to me at last, I'll say this: the hope was never fair, it was rotten in the beginning, and I told him so. He lets me live because he imagines he can change me into one like himself, no other reason. He cannot. As for me, I swallow the puky food and haul on the ropes and jump to Marsh's orders because I wish to live, no other reason. I'm not Shawn's man."

"Whose then?"

"My own."

"That'd be the hard thing to prove in the sight of G.o.d."

"And you shall be your own man, nothing less."

"Shall I so?" Ledyard winced heavily and turned his face away from the beating of the sun at last, but Ben tightened his grip. "How could that be, now? You don't know, boy, you don't know----"

"Why, I say it shall be."

"And who a devil's name are you? A boy--a----"

"Benjamin Cory, son of Joseph Cory of Deerfield, adopted son of Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury, who owns this ketch. Look back at me!"

Ledyard did so, plainly with great effort--changed; certainly without wrath, perhaps even without curiosity. It seemed to Ben that what he must say was only something that Ledyard would surely have been saying to himself, and for a long time. "You will believe it, Matthew Ledyard, so now listen to me. She is not the old b.i.t.c.h. She is the ketch _Artemis_ out of Boston, and the man who's a second father to me, whom you served well for nearly the length of my life--he had a hand in designing her. My brother and I climbed about on her ribs when she was a-building up the Mystic River--you were there. Since those days I have loved her, as Kenny's vessel and mine, sir, _mine_--and you were her carpenter, and Peter Jenks is her captain." Ledyard groaned at the sound of that name and jerked his hand away and pounded it on the rail. Ben reached out quickly and tapped his purple cheek. "Look back at me, I say! Chips--what's the name of this ketch?"

"The ketch is the _Artemis_," he said, harshly and choking on it. "Step away from me, Cory, or they'll notice us from the quarterdeck."

Ben did so, instinct urging him to wait, to look away, to lounge at the bow in the semblance of idleness till Ledyard's whisper came: "What will you do?"

"Who would be with us?"

Dubiously the whisper said: "Joey Mills. But he's old and puny."

"Are you sure of him?"

"Sure enough. We--have spoke of it. But----"

"I've seen him wear a pistol sometimes. I suppose he could use it?"

Ledyard grunted. "I suppose he might even bear a message from me to Captain Jenks?"

"Oh, my G.o.d!... You mean it, don't you?"

"I will ask you to cease doubting it. Now, how many men would it require, to get _Artemis_ home to Boston?"

"G.o.d!... Three or four hands could do it somehow." He sounded calmer.

Glancing at him again, Ben found his face no less a battlefield, even more perhaps, but it had grown sharp with intelligence. "On such a thing as that, Mr. Cory, you'd be obliged to play it timid, understand me?

Reef in at the first hint of dirty weather, if you'll take an old seaman's word for it. Comes fast, do you see? You remember we rode out a bad one off Grenada last year, and it was all hands hop to it, and even then it near-about caught us. Now imagine two or three men trying to get her snug in the time we did it then! Remember you got to keep one at the helm. All the same--all the same, sir, three or four hands could do it.

That--is your intention?"

"It's my intention to try. What about Dummy?"

"Shawn's dog. Jack's another dog, a mad one."

"That's mostly show, I think. It makes others let him alone."

"Maybe, but don't trust him, Mr. Cory. He's not--with us."

"Manuel?"

"Can neither fight nor hold his tongue.... If you--if we can take care of Shawn and the others, you would release the Captain?"

"Certainly."

"Then I ... Mr. Cory, I'll beg you for your word on a--on two things, if I may."

"What?"

"If we can do it, and if Captain Jenks is free, put in a word for me.

Let him know that whatever else I did, I tried to change back to what I was. Let him know I went back. Those would be the words, Mr. Cory. Say to him, if so be I can't say it myself, say that Matthew Ledyard went back."

"I will."

"And one other thing. If we can do it, then when we raise the Cape or--my G.o.d, better if it might be Rhode Island, but I suppose there's no hope of that--aid me, if you can, to get away in the boat. It's a thing, Mr. Cory--I've got a fear I wouldn't hang decent. Sooner drown. Would it sit fair with your conscience to help me run for it? Would you do that much, if I can help you in this thing?"

Ben said: "It sticks in my conscience that hanging never mended anything, and I will do that if I can. It'll mean deceiving Captain Jenks, helping you steal the boat, but I will do it. Matthew Ledyard, I'm eighteen, with less than a year at sea against the many that you've served. Can you take orders from me?"

Wonderingly, Ledyard said: "Yes, sir, I can."

"Bide the time then. It will be soon. I must speak with Mills and do one or two other things."

Ben spoke quickly--already he heard the commotion of Dummy lurching up from the forecastle with his monkey, and he was dizzy with the first full understanding of what had taken place. _Well, d.a.m.n it, I was wis.h.i.+ng to make things happen!..._ As he moved away from Ledyard the man's whisper followed him: "Don't forget, those are the words, Mr.

Cory--Matthew Ledyard went back...."

The monkey had begun to ail when the fruit gave out, after the _Diana_ left the Bahamas, although she had endured other periods of poor eating without harm. This morning she looked half dead in the great hairy cradle of Dummy's arms. Dummy squatted with her at the foot of the mainmast, crooning hopelessly. Sometimes in the last few days she had swallowed a bit of sea biscuit if Dummy chewed the miserable stuff first to soften it. This morning she would not, but only s.h.i.+vered in spite of the sullen heat and twisted her wise black head away from the repulsive ma.s.s. Ben on his way aft paused to consider them, aware that of the two sorrowful ape-faces, Dummy's held the greater pain. The little black beast was merely dying.

She had been lively and delighted with her new home after her capture from the _Schouven_, learning every corner of the ketch--including the galley, where she could engage in shrieking encounters with French Jack.

Since she returned continually, and never got anything there except missiles and rhetoric unsuited to the tender s.e.x, Ben deduced that because of her streak of hoyden she must relish war for its own sake.

Jack never once scored a hit. Best of all she loved soaring in dizzy flights all over the rigging, and hanging by her tail from the crosstrees to contemplate the sky and the ocean and the ways of man. She would come quickly down out of that for Dummy if he smacked his lips, but not for anyone else--except, occasionally and with the air of granting a favor, for Ben.

Now it seemed likely that her airy journeys were ended. Dummy gazed up at Ben with the grieving eyes of an ape-mother, and Ben could find nothing worth saying, but touched his finger to the tiny black bullet head that paid him no heed. Dummy smiled in his loose bewildered way, and Ben moved on.

Joey Mills was scuttling down the short companion ladder. Ben wished to detain him, but Shawn had noticed Ben and called to him. Ben whispered hastily: "I've spoke with Ledyard--he'll inform you what pa.s.sed between us. Tell him I said he was to do so--and wipe that surprise off your face, quick!" Ben climbed to the quarterdeck, not glancing back to see how much Joey had understood. Shawn in this reeking glare of morning light looked old. No wrinkle, no scar of smallpox was spared, and none of the white dust at his temples. His hand had a fine tremor and he needed shaving.

"Mr. Ball," he said in a voice of weariness, "go below and get your breakfast."

"Yea, sir--but it be'n't yet eight bells, and you'm not eat a bite since yesterday noontime."

Shawn spoke with ugly patience: "I said go, and will I be explaining? I wish to speak with Cory alone."

"Yea, sir." Ball made a vague motion at his forelock, and waddled past Ben with a glance of remote dislike, muttering under his breath.

Shawn watched Ball's back out of sight. "Even he would desert me, had he anywhere to go. He was not so fat and sullen when he sailed with John Quelch--and escaped Quelch when I did--and listened when I told him of the western sea, and seemed, like you, to be understanding it. I suppose time's gone over all of us, and I alone faithful to the vision. Did I not say they were all phantoms, all but you and me?"