Kitabı oku: «The Shoes of Fortune», sayfa 5
CHAPTER XI
THE SCUTTLED SHIP
When I went on deck next morning there was something great ado. We were out of sight of land, sailing large, as the old phrase went, on a brisk quarter breeze with top-sails atrip, and the sky a vast fine open blue. The crew were gathered at the poop, the pump was clanking in the midst of them, and I saw they were taking spells at the cruellest labour a seaman knows.
At first I was noway troubled at the spectacle; a leak was to be expected in old rotten-beams, and I went forward with the heart of me not a pulse the faster.
Risk was leaning over the poop-rail, humped up and his beard on his hands; Murchison, a little apart, swept the horizon with a prospect-glass, and the pump sent a great spate of bilge-water upon the deck. But for a man at the tiller who kept the ship from yawing in the swell that swung below her counter the Seven Sisters sailed at her sweet will; all the interest of her company was in this stream of stinking water that she retched into the scuppers. And yet I could not but be struck by the half-hearted manner in which the seamen wrought; they were visibly shirking; I saw it in the slack muscles, in the heedless eyes.
Risk rose and looked sourly at me as I went up. “Are ye for a job?” said he. “It’s more in your line perhaps than clerkin’.”
“What, at the pumps? Is the old randy geyzing already?”
“Like a washing-boyne,” said he. “Bear a hand like a good lad! we maun keep her afloat at least till some other vessel heaves in sight.”
In the tone and look of the man there was something extraordinary. His words were meant to suggest imminent peril, and yet his voice was shallow as that of a burgh bellman crying an auction sale, and his eyes had more interest in the horizon that his mate still searched with the prospect-glass than in the spate of bilge that gulped upon the deck.
Bilge did I say? Heavens! it was bilge no more, but the pure sea-green that answered to the clanking pump. It was no time for idle wonder at the complacence of the skipper; I flew to the break and threw my strength into the seaman’s task. “Clank-click, clank-click” – the instrument worked reluctantly as if the sucker moved in slime, and in a little the sweat poured from me.
“How is she now, Campbell?” asked Risk, as the carpenter came on deck.
“Three feet in the hold,” said Campbell airily, like one that had an easy conscience.
“Good lord, a foot already!” cried Risk, and then in a tone of sarcasm, “Hearty, lads, hearty there! A little more Renfrewshire beef into it, Mr. Greig, if you please.”
At that I ceased my exertion, stood back straight and looked at the faces about me. There was only one man in the company who did not seem to be amused at me, and that was Horn, who stood with folded arms, moodily eying the open sea.
“You seem mighty joco about it,” I said to Risk, and I wonder to this day at my blindness that never read the whole tale in these hurried events.
“I can afford to be,” he said quickly; “if I gang I gang wi’ clean hands,” and he spat into the seawater streaming from the pump where the port-watch now were working with as much listlessness as the men they superseded.
To the taunt I made no reply, but moved after Horn who had gone forward with his hands in his pockets.
“What does this mean, Horn?” I asked him. “Is the vessel in great danger?”
“I suppose she is,” said he bitterly, “but I have had nae experience o’ scuttled ships afore.”
“Scuttled!” cried I, astounded, only half grasping his meaning.
“Jist that,” said he. “The job’s begun. It began last night in the run of the vessel as I showed ye when ye put your ear to the beam. After I left ye, I foun’ half a dizen cords fastened to the pump stanchels; ane of them I pulled and got a plug at the end of it; the ithers hae been comin’ oot since as it suited Dan Risk best, and the Seven Ststers is doomed to die o’ a dropsy this very day. Wasn’t I the cursed idiot that ever lipped drink in Clerihew’s coffin-room!”
“If it was that,” said I, “why did you not cut the cords and spoil the plot?”
“Cut the cords! Ye mean cut my ain throat; that’s what wad happen if the skipper guessed my knowledge o’ his deevilry. And dae ye think a gallows job o’ this kind depends a’thegither on twa or three bits o’ twine? Na, na, this is a very business-like transaction, Mr. Greig, and I’ll warrant there has been naethin’ left to chance. I wondered at them bein’ sae pernicketty about the sma’ boats afore we sailed when the timbers o’ the ship hersel’ were fair ganting. That big new boat and sails frae Kirkcaldy was a gey odd thing in itsel’ if I had been sober enough to think o’t. I suppose ye paid your passage, Mr. Greig? I can fancy a purser on the Seven Sisters upon nae ither footin’ and that made me dubious o’ ye when I first learned o’ this hell’s caper for Jamieson o’ the Grange. If ye hadna fought wi’ the skipper I would hae coonted ye in wi’ the rest.”
“He has two pounds of my money,” I answered; “at least I’ve saved the other two if we fail to reach Halifax.”
At that he laughed softly again.
“It might be as well wi’ Risk as wi’ the conger,” said he, meaningly. “I’m no’ sae sure that you and me’s meant to come oot o’ this; that’s what I might tak’ frae their leaving only the twa o’ us aft when they were puttin’ the cargo aff there back at Blackness.”
“The cargo!” I repeated.
“Of course,” said Horn. “Ye fancied they were goin’ to get rid o’ ye there, did ye? I’ll alloo I thought that but a pretence on your pairt, and no’ very neatly done at that. Well, the smallest pairt but the maist valuable o’ the cargo shipped at Borrowstouness is still in Scotland; and the underwriters ‘ll be to pay through the nose for what has never run sea risks.”
At that a great light came to me. This was the reason for the masked cuddy skylights, the utter darkness of the Seven Sisters while her boats were plying to the shore; for this was I so closely kept at her ridiculous manifest; the lists of lace and plate I had been fatuously copying were lists of stuff no longer on the ship at all, but back in the possession of the owner of the brigantine.
“You are an experienced seaman – ?”
“I have had a vessel of my own,” broke in Horn, some vanity as well as shame upon his countenance.
“Well, you are the more likely to know the best way out of this trap we are in,” I went on. “For a certain reason I am not at all keen on it to go back to Scotland, but I would sooner risk that than run in leash with a scoundrel like this who’s sinking his command, not to speak of hazarding my unworthy life with a villainous gang. Is there any way out of it, Horn?”
The seaman pondered, a dark frown upon his tanned forehead, where the veins stood out in knots, betraying his perturbation. The wind whistled faintly in the tops, the Seven Sisters plainly went by the head; she had a slow response to her helm, and moved sluggishly. Still the pump was clanking and we could hear the water streaming through the scupper holes. Risk had joined his mate and was casting anxious eyes over the waters.
“If we play the safty here, Mr. Greig,” said Horn, “there’s a chance o’ a thwart for us when the Seven Ststers comes to her labour. That’s oor only prospect. At least they daurna murder us.”
“And what about the crew?” I asked. “Do you tell me there is not enough honesty among them all to prevent a blackguardly scheme like this?”
“We’re the only twa on this ship this morning wi’ oor necks ootside tow, for they’re all men o’ the free trade, and broken men at that,” said Horn resolutely, and even in the midst of this looming disaster my private horror rose within me.
“Ah!” said I, helpless to check the revelation, “speak for yourself, Mr. Horn; it’s the hangman I’m here fleeing from.”
He looked at me with quite a new countenance, clearly losing relish for his company.
“Anything by-ordinar dirty?” he asked, and in my humility I did not have the spirit to resent what that tone and query implied.
“Dirty enough,” said I, “the man’s dead,” and Horn’s face cleared.
“Oh, faith! is that all?” quo’ he, “I was thinkin’ it might be coinin’ – beggin’ your pardon, Mr. Greig, or somethin’ in the fancy way. But a gentleman’s quarrel ower the cartes or a wench – that’s a different tale. I hate homicide mysel’ to tell the truth, but whiles I’ve had it in my heart, and in a way o’ speakin* Dan Risk this meenute has my gully-knife in his ribs.”
As he spoke the vessel, mishandled, or a traitor to her helm, now that she was all awash internally with water, yawed and staggered in the wind. The sails shivered, the yards swung violently, appalling noises came from the hold. At once the pumping ceased, and Risk’s voice roared in the confusion, ordering the launch of the Kirkcaldy boat.
CHAPTER XII
MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN
When I come to write these affairs down after the lapse of years, I find my memory but poorly retains the details of that terrific period between the cry of Risk and the moment when Horn and I, abandoned on the doomed vessel, watched the evening fall upon the long Kirkcaldy boat, her mast stepped, but her sails down, hovering near us for the guarantee of our eternal silence regarding the crime the men on her were there and then committing. There is a space – it must have been brief, but I lived a lifetime in it – whose impressions rest with me, blurred, but with the general hue of agony. I can see the sun again sailing overhead in the arching sky of blue; the enormous ocean, cruel, cold, spread out to the line of the horizon; the flapping sails and drumming reef-points, the streaming halliards and clew-garnets, the spray buffeting upon our hull and spitting in our faces like an enemy; I hear the tumult of the seamen hurrying vulgarly to save their wretched lives, the gluck of waters in the bowels of the ship, the thud of cargo loose and drifting under decks.
But I see and hear it all as in a dream or play, and myself someway standing only a spectator.
It seemed that Risk and his men put all their dependence on the long-boat out of Kirkcaldy. She was partly decked at the bows like a Ballantrae herring-skiff, beamy and commodious. They clustered round her like ants; swung her out, and over she went, and the whole hellish plot lay revealed in the fact that she was all found with equipment and provisions.
Horn and I made an effort to assist at her preparation; we were shoved aside with frantic curses; we were beaten back by her oars when we sought to enter her, and when she pushed off from the side of the Seven Sisters, Dan Risk was so much the monster that he could jeer at our perplexity. He sat at the tiller of her without a hat, his long hair, that was turning lyart, blown by the wind about his black and mocking eyes.
“Head her for Halifax, Horn,” said he, “and ye’ll get there by-and-by.”
“Did I ever do ye any harm, skipper?” cried the poor seaman, standing on the gunwale, hanging to the shrouds, and his aspect hungry for life.
“Ye never got the chance, Port Glesca,” cried back Risk, hugging the tiller of the Kirkcaldy boat under his arm. “I’ll gie ye a guess —
Come-a-riddle, come-a-riddle, come-a-rote-tote-tote —
Oh to bleezes! I canna put a rhyme till’t, but this is the sense o’t – a darkie’s never deaf and dumb till he’s deid. Eh! Antonio, ye rascal!”
He looked forward as he spoke and exchanged a villainous laugh with the cook, his instrument, who had overheard us and betrayed.
“Ye would mak’ me swing for it, would ye, John Horn, when ye get ashore? That’s what I would expect frae a keelie oot o’ Clyde.”
It is hard to credit that man could be so vile as this, but of such stuff was Daniel Risk. He was a fiend in the glory of his revenge upon the seaman who had threatened him with the gallows; uplifted like a madman’s, his face, that was naturally sallow, burned lamp-red at his high cheek-bones, his hale eye gloated, his free hand flourished as in an exultation. His mate sat silent beside him on the stern-thwart, clearing the sheets: the crew, who had out the sweeps to keep the boat’s bows in the wind, made an effort to laugh at his jocosities, but clearly longed to be away from this tragedy. And all the time, I think, I stood beside the weather bulwark, surrendered to the certainty of a speedy death, with the lines of a ballad coming back again and again to my mind:
An’ he shall lie in fathoms deep,
The star-fish ower his een shall creep.
An’ an auld grey wife shall sit an’ weep
In the hall o’ Monaltrie.
I thrust that ungodly rhyme from me each time that it arose, but in spite of me at last it kept time to the lap of a wave of encroaching sea that beat about my feet.
My silence – my seeming indifference – would seem to have touched the heart that could not be affected by the entreaties of the seaman Horn. At least Risk ceased his taunts at last, and cast a more friendly eye on me.
“I’m saying, Greig,” he cried, “noo that I think o’t, your Uncle Andy was no bad hand at makin’ a story. Ye’ve an ill tongue, but I’ll thole that – astern, lads, and tak’ the purser aboard.”
The seamen set the boat about willingly enough, and she crept in to pick me off the doomed ship.
At that my senses cleared like hill-well water. It was for but a second – praise God! my instincts joyed in my reprieve; my hand never released the cleat by which I steadied myself. I looked at Horn still upon the lower shrouds and saw hope upon his countenance.
“Of course this man comes with me, Captain Risk?” said I.
“Not if he offered a thousand pounds,” cried Risk, “in ye come!” and Murchison clawed at the shrouds with a boat-hook. Horn made to jump among them and, with an oath, the mate thrust at him with the hook as with a spear, striking him under the chin. He fell back upon the deck, bleeding profusely and half insensible.
“You are a foul dog!” I cried to his assailant. “And I’ll settle with you for that!”
“Jump, ye fool, ye, jump!” cried Risk impatient.
“Let us look oot for oorselves, that’s whit I say,” cried Murchison angry at my threat, and prepared cheerfully to see me perish. “What for should we risk oor necks with either o’ them?” and he pushed off slightly with his boat-hook.
The skipper turned, struck down the hook, and snarled upon him. “Shut up, Murchison!” he cried. “I’m still the captain, if ye please, and I ken as much about the clerk here as will keep his gab shut on any trifle we hae dune.”
I looked upon the clean sea, and then at that huddle of scoundrels in the Kirkcaldy boat, and then upon the seaman Horn coming back again to the full consciousness of his impending fate. He gazed upon me with eyes alarmed and pitiful, and at that I formed my resolution.
“I stick by Horn,” said I. “If he gets too, I’ll go; if not I’ll bide and be drowned with an honest man.”
“Bide and be damned then! Ye’ve had your chance,” shouted Risk, letting his boat fall off. “It’s time we werena here.” And the halliards of his main-sail were running in the blocks as soon as he said it. The boat swept away rapidly, but not before I gave him a final touch of my irony. From my pocket I took out my purse and threw it upon his lap.
“There’s the ither twa, Risk,” I cried; “it’s no’ like the thing at all to murder a harmless lad for less than what ye bargained for.”
He bawled back some reply I could not hear, and I turned about, to see Horn making for the small boat on the starboard chocks. I followed with a hope again wakened, only to share his lamentation when he found that two of her planks had been wantonly sprung from their clinkers, rendering her utterly useless. The two other boats were in a similar condition; Risk and his confederates had been determined that no chance should be left of our escape from the Seven Sisters.
It was late in the afternoon. The wind had softened somewhat; in the west there were rising billowy clouds of silver and red, and half a mile away the Kirkcaldy boat, impatient doubtless for the end of us, that final assurance of safety, plied to windward with only her foresail set. We had gone below in a despairing mind on the chance that the leakage might be checked, but the holes were under water in the after peak, and in other parts we could not come near. An inch-and-a-half auger, and a large bung-borer, a gouge and chisel in the captain’s private locker, told us how the crime had been committed whereof we were the victims.
We had come on deck again, the pair of us, without the vaguest notion of what was next to do, and – speaking for myself – convinced that nothing could avert our hurrying fate. Horn told me later that he proposed full half a score of plans for at least a prolongation of our time, but that I paid no heed to them. That may be, for I know the ballad stanza went in my head like a dirge, as I sat on a hatch with the last few days of my history rolling out before my eyes. The dusk began to fall like a veil, the wind declined still further. Horn feverishly hammered and caulked at the largest of the boats, now and then throwing the tools from him as in momentary realisations of the hopelessness of his toil that finally left him in despair.
“It’s no use, Mr. Greig,” he cried then, “they did the job ower weel,” and he shook his fist at the Kirkcaldy boat. He checked the gesture suddenly and gave an astonished cry.
“They’re gone, Greig,” said he, now frantic. “They’re gone. O God! they’re gone! I was sure they couldna hae the heart to leave us at the last,” and as he spoke I chanced to look astern, and behold! a ship with all her canvas full was swiftly bearing down the wind upon us. We had been so intent upon our fate that we had never seen her!
I clambered up the shrouds of the main-mast, and cried upon the coming vessel with some mad notion that she might fancy the Seven Sisters derelict. But indeed that was not necessary. In a little she went round into the wind, a long-boat filled with men came towards us, and twenty minutes later we were on the deck of the Roi Rouge.
CHAPTER XIII
WHEREIN APPEARS A GENTLEMANLY CORSAIR AND A FRENCH-IRISH LORD
While it may be that the actual crisis of my manhood came to me on the day I first put on my Uncle Andrew’s shoes, the sense of it was mine only when I met with Captain Thurot. I had put the past for ever behind me (as I fancied) when I tore the verses of a moon-struck boy and cast them out upon the washing-green at Hazel Den, but I was bound to foregather with men like Thurot and his friends ere the scope and fashion of a man’s world were apparent to me. Whether his influence on my destiny in the long run was good or bad I would be the last to say; he brought me into danger, but – in a manner – he brought me good, though that perhaps was never in his mind.
You must fancy this Thurot a great tall man, nearly half a foot exceeding myself in stature, peak-bearded, straight as a lance, with plum-black eyes and hair, polished in dress and manner to the rarest degree and with a good humour that never failed. He sat under a swinging lamp in his cabin when Horn and I were brought before him, and asked my name first in an accent of English that was if anything somewhat better than my own.
“Greig,” said I; “Paul Greig,” and he started as if I had pricked him with a knife.
A little table stood between us, on which there lay a book he had been reading when we were brought below, some hours after the Seven Sisters had gone down, and the search for the Kirkcaldy boat had been abandoned. He took the lamp off its hook, came round the table and held the light so that he could see my face the clearer. At any time his aspect was manly and pleasant; most of all was it so when he smiled, and I was singularly encouraged when he smiled at me, with a rapid survey of my person that included the Hazel Den mole and my Uncle Andrew’s shoes.
A seaman stood behind us; to him he spoke a message I could not comprehend, as it was in French, of which I had but little. The seaman retired; we were offered a seat, and in a minute the seaman came back with a gentleman – a landsman by his dress.
“Pardon, my lord,” said the captain to his visitor, “but I thought that here was a case – speaking of miracles – you would be interested in. Our friends here” – he indicated myself particularly with a gracious gesture – “are not, as you know, dropped from heaven, but come from that unfortunate ship we saw go under a while ago. May I ask your lordship to tell us – you will see the joke in a moment – whom we were talking of at the moment our watch first announced the sight of that vessel?”
His lordship rubbed his chin and smilingly peered at the captain.
“Gad!” he said. “You are the deuce and all, Thurot. What are you in the mood for now? Why, we talked of Greig – Andrew Greig, the best player of passe-passe and the cheerfullest loser that ever cut a pack.”
Thurot turned to me, triumphant.
“Behold,” said he, “how ridiculously small the world is. Ma foi! I wonder how I manage so well to elude my creditors, even when I sail the high seas. Lord Clancarty, permit me to have the distinguished honour to introduce another Greig, who I hope has many more of his charming uncle’s qualities than his handsome eyes and red shoes. I assume it is a nephew, because poor Monsieur Andrew was not of the marrying kind. Anyhow, ‘tis a Greig of the blood, or Antoine Thurot is a bat! And – Monsieur Greig, it is my felicity to bid you know one of your uncle’s best friends and heartiest admirers – Lord Clancarty.”
“Lord Clancarty!” I cried, incredulous. “Why he figured in my uncle’s log-book a dozen years ago.”
“A dozen, no less!” cried his lordship, with a grimace. “We need not be so particular about the period. I trust he set me down there a decently good companion; I could hardly hope to figure in a faithful scribe’s tablets as an example otherwise,” said his lordship, laughing and taking me cordially by the hand. “Gad! one has but to look at you to see Andrew Greig in every line. I loved your uncle, lad. He had a rugged, manly nature, and just sufficient folly, bravado, and sinfulness to keep a poor Irishman in countenance. Thurot, one must apologise for taking from your very lips the suggestion I see hesitating there, but sure ‘tis an Occasion this; it must be a bottle – the best bottle on your adorable but somewhat ill-found vessel. Why ‘tis Andy Greig come young again. Poor Andy! I heard of his death no later than a month ago, and have ordered a score of masses for him – which by the way are still unpaid for to good Father Hamilton. I could not sleep happily of an evening – of a forenoon rather – if I thought of our Andy suffering aught that a few candles and such-like could modify.” And his lordship with great condescension tapped and passed me his jewelled box of maccabaw.
You can fancy a raw lad, untutored and untravelled, fresh from the plough-tail, as it were, was vastly tickled at this introduction to the genteel world. I was no longer the shivering outlaw, the victim of a Risk. I was honoured more or less for the sake of my uncle (whose esteem in this quarter my father surely would have been surprised at), and it seemed as though my new life in a new country were opening better than I had planned myself. I blessed my shoes – the Shoes of Sorrow – and for the time forgot the tragedy from which I was escaping.
They birled the bottle between them, Clancarty and Thurot, myself virtually avoiding it, but clinking now and then, and laughing with them at the numerous exploits they recalled of him that was the bond between us; Horn elsewhere found himself well treated also; and listening to these two gentlemen of the world, their allusions, off-hand, to the great, their indications of adventure, travel, intrigue, enterprise, gaiety, I saw my horizon expand until it was no longer a cabin on the sea I sat in, with the lamplight swinging over me, but a spacious world of castles, palaces, forests, streets, churches, casernes, harbours, masquerades, routs, operas, love, laughter, and song. Perhaps they saw my elation and fully understood, and smiled within them at my efforts to figure as a little man of the world too – as boys will – but they never showed me other than the finest sympathy and attention.
I found them fascinating at night; I found them much the same at morning, which is the test of the thing in youth, and straightway made a hero of the foreigner Thurot. Clancarty was well enough, but without any method in his life, beyond a principle of keeping his character ever trim and presentable like his cravat. Thurot carried on his strenuous career as soldier, sailor, spy, politician, with a plausible enough theory that thus he got the very juice and pang of life, that at the most, as he would aye be telling me, was brief to an absurdity.
“Your Scots,” he would say to me, “as a rule, are too phlegmatic – is it not, Lord Clancarty? – but your uncle gave me, on my word, a regard for your whole nation. He had aplomb – Monsieur Andrew; he had luck too, and if he cracked a nut anywhere there was always a good kernel in it.” And the shoes see how I took the allusion to King George, and that gave me a flood of light upon my new position.
I remembered that in my uncle’s log-book the greater part of the narrative of his adventures in France had to do with politics and the intrigues of the Jacobite party. He was not, himself, apparently, “out,” as we call it, in the affair of the ‘Forty-five, because he did not believe the occasion suitable, and thought the Prince precipitous, but before and after that untoward event for poor Scotland, he had been active with such men as Clancarty, Lord Clare, the Murrays, the Mareschal, and such-like, which was not to be wondered at, perhaps, for our family had consistently been Jacobite, a fact that helped to its latter undoing, though my father as nominal head of the house had taken no interest in politics; and my own sympathies had ever been with the Chevalier, whom I as a boy had seen ride through the city of Glasgow, wishing myself old enough to be his follower in such a glittering escapade as he was then embarked on.
But though I thought all this in a flash as it were, I betrayed nothing to Captain Thurot, who seemed somewhat dashed at my silence. There must have been something in my face, however, to show that I fully realised what he was feeling at, and was not too complacent, for Clancarty laughed.
“Sure, ‘tis a good boy, Thurot,” said he, “and loves his King George properly, like a true patriot.”
“I won’t believe it of a Greig,” said Captain Thurot. “A pestilent, dull thing, loyalty in England; the other thing came much more readily, I remember, to the genius of Andrew Greig. Come! Monsieur Paul, to be quite frank about it, have you no instincts of friendliness to the exiled house? M. Tête-de-fer has a great need at this particular moment for English friends. Once he could count on your uncle to the last ditch; can he count on the nephew?”
“M. Tête-de-fer?” I repeated, somewhat bewildered.
“M. Tête-de-mouche, rather,” cried my lord, testily, and then hurried to correct himself. “He alluded, Monsieur Greig, to Prince Charles Edward. We are all, I may confess, his Royal Highness’s most humble servants; some of us, however – as our good friend, Captain Thurot – more actively than others. For myself I begin to weary of a cause that has been dormant for eight years, but no matter; sure one must have a recreation!”
I looked at his lordship to see if he was joking. He was the relic of a handsome man, though still, I daresay, less than fifty years of age, with a clever face and gentle, just tinged by the tracery of small surface veins to a redness that accused him of too many late nights; his mouth and eyes, that at one time must have been fascinating, had the ultimate irresolution that comes to one who finds no fingerposts at life’s cross-roads and thinks one road just as good’s another. He was born at Atena, near Hamburg (so much I had remembered from my uncle’s memoir), but he was, even in his accent, as Irish as Kerry. Someway I liked and yet doubted him, in spite of all the praise of him that I had read in a dead man’s diurnal.
“Fi donc! vous devriez avoir honte, milord,” cried Thurot, somewhat disturbed, I saw, at this reckless levity.
“Ashamed!” said his lordship, laughing; “why, ‘tis for his Royal Highness who has taken a diligence to the devil, and left us poor dependants to pay the bill at the inn. But no matter, Master Greig, I’ll be cursed if I say a single word more to spoil a charming picture of royalty under a cloud.” And so saying he lounged away from us, a strange exquisite for shipboard, laced up to the nines, as the saying goes, parading the deck as it had been the Rue St. Honoré, with merry words for every sailorman who tapped a forehead to him.
Captain Thurot looked at him, smiling, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Tête-de-mouche! There it is for you, M. Paul – the head of a butterfly. Now you – ” he commanded my eyes most masterfully – “now you have a Scotsman’s earnestness; I should like to see you on the right side. Mon Dieu, you owe us your life, no less; ‘tis no more King George’s, for one of his subjects has morally sent you to the bottom of the sea in a scuttled ship. I wish we had laid hands on your Risk and his augers.”
But I was learning my world; I was cautious; I said neither yea nor nay.
