The Great Quest Part 20

I repent! I repent!" And he tripped and fell with a crash.

As he fell, the coin flew out of his hand, and the monkey, seeing the flash of silver, leaped after it, picked it up, fled like a lean brown shadow through the door, and was gone we knew not where.

To this day I am not able to make up my mind whether the child's anger or his fear was the greater. Turning like a flash, he saw what it was that had attacked him; yet he made no move to pursue the beast, and from that time on he regarded it with exceedingly great caution and nimbly and prudently betook himself out of its way.

Canny, scheming, selfish Willie MacDougald!

At peep of dawn we got up our anchors and set sail and put out to sea, carrying with us heavy knowledge of perils and dangers that encompa.s.sed us, and sad memories of our old home in Topham, of our old friends in trouble, of high hopes that had fallen into ruin.

It comforted me to see Abraham Guptil working with the crew. He stood in good repute with every man on board, from Matterson and Gleazen to little Willie MacDougald, who now was in the steerage watching with great, round eyes all that went on about him. Good Abe Guptil! He, at least, concealed no diabolical craft beneath an innocent exterior.

I thought of Sim Muzzy. Poor Sim! Since he had disappeared that night in the clutches of the press-gang, nothing that we had been able to do had called forth a single word of his whereabouts. He had vanished utterly, and though neither Arnold nor I had ever felt any great affection for the garrulous fellow, we both were sincerely grieved to lose an old companion thus unhappily.

Now, as our sails filled, we swept past the Merry Jack and Eleanor, and the sight came to me like a shock of ill omen. The black disgrace of her lawless trade, the brutal men who manned her, the sinister experience that had followed so closely our call upon her captain, all combined to make me feel that the shadow she had cast upon us was not easily to be evaded.

It was good to turn back once more to solid, substantial Gideon North, firm, wise Arnold Lamont, and kindly, trustworthy Abe Guptil.

On them and on me Uncle Seth's fortunes and my own depended, if not indeed our very lives.

Mr. Matterson handled the brig from the forecastle and handled her ably. Not even Captain North, who watched him constantly with searching eyes, could find a thing of which to complain. His almost feminine voice took on a cutting quality that reached each man on board and conveyed by its hard, keen edge a very clear impression of what would happen if aught should go astray. But there was that about him which made it impossible to trust him; and Gleazen, seeming by his airs far more the owner than my poor, cowed uncle, stood by Gideon North and looked the triumph that he felt.

So we pa.s.sed between the castle and the battery and showed our heels to Cuba and set our course across the sea and lived always on guard, always suspicious, yet never confirming further our suspicions, until, weeks later, the lookout at the masthead cried, "Land ho!"

The low, dark line that appeared far on the horizon, to mark the end of an uncommonly tranquil pa.s.sage, so pleasantly in contrast to our voyage to Cuba, deepened and took form. There was excitement forward and aft. Gleazen and Matterson clapped hands on shoulders and roared their delight and cried that now,--they were vile-mouthed, profane men,--that now neither G.o.d nor devil should thwart them further.

Through the s.h.i.+p the word went from lip to lip that yonder lay the coast of Guinea.

It had become natural to us in the cabin to align ourselves on one side or the other. Gleazen and Matterson stood shoulder to shoulder, and Gideon North and Arnold Lamont and I gathered a little farther aft. We acted unconsciously, for all of us were intent on the land that we had raised; and my poor uncle, apparently a.s.suming neither friend nor enemy, leaned against the cabin all alone. His face was averted and I could catch only a glimpse of his profile; but I was convinced that I saw his lip tremble.

Yonder, in truth, lay the coast of Guinea, and there at last every one of us was to learn the secret of that mad expedition which had so long since set forth from the little New England town of Topham.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IV

THREE DESPERATE MEN

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XV

THE ISLAND

To the dark land on the sky-line, we swiftly drew nearer, and presently saw a low sh.o.r.e where a thread of gleaming white, which came and went, told us unmistakably that great seas were breaking.

Of the exact point that we had reached on the coast we still were in doubt, for our charts were poor and Captain North suspected the quadrant of having developed some fault of a nature so technical that I neither understood it at the time nor now remember its name; so we hove to, while Gleazen and Matterson and Gideon North, and eventually Mr. Severance, of whom I saw less and thought more seldom than of any other man in the cabin, put their heads together and argued the matter.

Mr. Severance was a good enough man in his place, I suppose, but he was too indolent and self-centred, and too sleepily fond of his pipe, to command attention.

For all the headway that the four seemed to be making, they might have argued until the crack of doom, as far as I could see, when from the masthead came the cry, "Sail ho!"

Matterson and Gleazen faced about, as quickly as weasels on a stone wall, and Gideon North was not much behind them.

"Where away?"

"Off the larboard bow!"

"What do you make her out?" Captain North demanded.

"As yet, sir, she's too far off to be seen clearly."

I had known that we were sailing dangerous seas, but nothing else had so vividly brought our dangers home to me as did the scene of desperate activity that now ensued. Hoa.r.s.e orders went booming up and down the decks. Men sprang to braces and halyards. For a moment the foresail, newly let fall, roared in the wind, then, clapping like thunder, it filled, as the men tailed on tack and sheet, and catching the wind, stiffened like iron. Wearing s.h.i.+p, we set every st.i.tch of our canvas, and with a breeze that drove us like a greyhound through the long, swiftly running seas, went lasking up the coast of Africa, as, intently training gla.s.ses across the taffrail, we waited to see more of the strange vessel.

Notwithstanding our feverish efforts to elude her, she had drawn slowly nearer, and we made out that she was a schooner and as fleet as a bird. For a time there was talk of the armed schooner Shark, which our own government was reported to have sent out to cruise for slavers.

It was with grim interest that we watched her every manoeuvre. Our men forward would constantly turn their heads to study her more closely, and those of us aft kept our eyes fixed upon her. Swift as was the Adventure, it was plain from the first that the schooner was outsailing her in a way that seemed almost to savor of wizardry.

"I swear I can see the hangman's knot in her halyard," Gleazen cried, and roundly braced his oath. "Never before did I feel such an itching on my neck."

At that Gideon North sternly said, "If she's a government vessel, gentlemen, I can a.s.sure you that we will not run from her. We have committed no crime; we carry no contraband. It is not government vessels I fear."

"There's reason in that, too!" Gleazen muttered. "Yes, I'd as soon swing, as go over the side with my throat slit." Then, caustically, he added, "No! Oh, no! We've no contraband, you say. So we haven't.

But we have enough water-casks for three hundred men, and lumber for extra decks, and shackles and n.i.g.g.e.r food."

Gideon North flamed red and started to respond angrily; but Matterson, with a sly smile, turned the argument off by saying lightly, "If she's the Shark she's sailing under false colors. See!

She's broken out the flag of Spain."

"Humph," Captain North grunted, "she's a trader at best--"

"In either case, Captain North, she is outsailing us, for all our Baltimore bow and grand spread of canvas," Matterson interposed.

"But never fear, Captain North, Gleazen and I have a way with us. We have no wish to meet with any s.h.i.+ps of war, but from mere pirates and slavers we are not, I beg to a.s.sure you, in any great danger."

"Humph! The devil looks well after his own."

"The devil," Matterson retorted with an ironical smile, "is not so bad a master as some men would make him out to be."

Leaning on the rail, we silently watched the swift, strange schooner. Above the horizon, so perfectly did the bright canvas with the sun upon it blend into the background of sky, we could see only the black shadows that appeared on the sails just abaft the masts and stays; but her hull made a clean, bright line against the vivid blue of the sea, and against that same blue the foot of her mainsail stood out as sharp and white as if cut from bone. She continued to gain on us surely all that afternoon, but our apprehensions, which grew keener as she drew nearer, were allayed when she stood out to sea and gave us as wide a berth as we desired. She was a rarely beautiful sight, when, in the early evening, still far out at sea, she pa.s.sed us; and remembering the Merry Jack and Eleanor in Havana harbor, I could not bear to think that so graceful a craft might carry sordid sights and smells.

After a time, as the light changed, her sails turned to a slate-gray touched with dull blue, and with a great blotch of purple shadow down the middle, where mainsail merged into staysail and foresail, and foresail into jib. So grim, now, did she appear in the gathering darkness, that I could have believed almost anything of her. And now she was gone! Lost to sight! Vanished into the distant, almost uncharted waters of the great gulf! Only the memory of her marvelous swiftness and of the changing light on her sails was left to us--that and the memory of one more angry encounter with Gleazen and Matterson.

That night, while we lay in those long slow seas which roll in upon the African coast, the two spent hours by the taffrail in low-voiced conversation, and Gideon North sat below over his charts and papers, and Arnold and I strolled about the deck, arm in arm, talking of one project and another. But my uncle, Seth Upham, the man who owned the Adventure, paced the deck alone in the moonlight, now with his head bent as if under the weight of a heavy burden, now with his head erect and with an air of what seemed at some moments wild defiance.

An odor of tobacco drifted back to us on the wind from where the carpenter and the sailmaker were smoking together, and we heard the voices of men in the forecastle.

When, at daybreak, we resumed our course up the coast, we knew that we were near the end of our journey, for Gleazen and Matterson were constantly conferring together and with Gideon North; and a dozen times in two hours, one or the other of them charged the masthead man to keep a smart lookout.