Captain Caution (16 page)

Corunna stared at him. "What do you say?"

"You ask me what I say, Corunna? I say what's incredible; much harder for you to believe than for me, though I thought I knew him. My dear, I sha'n't blame you if you can't believe it. I think there was a time, before you knew me, when you liked him very well."

"Marvin?" she whispered. "Why, yes, I did!"

Slade touched her shoulder gently; he looked kind and wise and good. "I knew. I understood, because from the first I understood you. I knew you'd been very close to giving your heart to him, my dear, and that but for some vital flaw, some ugly defect in his character he'd betrayed to you, you would have given it; and so you'd have been lost to me. Isn't that so?"

"Why, yes."

"I knew," he said in a low voice, full of pain; then smiled, as in a lover's noble forgiveness. "Thank God that's past, and you did see that defect. It's your having seen it for yourself that makes it easier for me now to tell you how that base metal in him runs through the whole fabric of his character, so that he could do what every man in Roscoff knows he has done."

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"Knows he has done - " she repeated uncertainly. "Lurman, you're telling me - "

"See here," he said. "I don't want to tell you. Do you think me a man not too proud to put a defeated rival in a false positionY'

"No." She swallowed. "But Marvin Dan Marvinl Marvinl"

"Marvin," Slade burst out bitterly, as if the truth leapt from his lips despite him. "Good God! Why, he handed over the Olive Branch to the British without a blow, either for you or for his shipl Without a blowl When he lay in the black hole with us, didn't he try to slip out to traffic with 'em? I never told you this before, Corunna, but he dial Why, you must have seen him currying favor with the commander of the Beetle, on the pretext of obtaining medicines for a common seamanl Medicines! Good Godl I don't know what scheme he has, but you saw he was forever against anything that meant fighting the British. Oh, ayel The dog would ever keep his record clean with them! Forgive me if I'm bitter, but when I think what he's done to you, I forget you once held him for a friend."

"To me?" she said. "You think Dan Marvin would - "

"Corunnal Corunnal How did the English know just where to come and what to do? Why, my dear, there's not a man in Morlaix, aye, or Roscoff either, who doesn't know the Olive Branch was delivered to the British by her officers and for a consideration. Do you think that Marvin couldn't have run the barque safe on shore if he'd had a mind to? Pahl You know better yourself You're too good a seaman not to know. I wish to God I'd struck him dead at your feet, before he should have done this to you."

She rose suddenly and went to the window, where, square-shouldered and Hat-backed against the pale October sunlight, she stared down into the noisome courtyard below.

"How could they know?" she asked faintly. "How could all these people know that Dan sold his soul to the English?"

Slade sighed, and his sigh seemed freighted with compassion. "Such things are always known, Corunna." He shook his head sadly. "Always, my dear."

"But he didn't want to come here in the beginning! He said the way to go home was to go home."

"Yes," Slade assented, "and when you overruled him, he was sour and sore, and now he's paid you for that overruling. You asked me how these people knew. Corunna dear, it's life and death to every smuggler on the coast to know what goes on in the British Navy to the last detail; and they do know, believe mel They know Marvin

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sold the Olice Branch to the English, and they know he'll not only get money in return but a British commission to boot."

"Ah, he wouldn't," she whispered.

"He'll have a commission from them if he wants it," Slade insisted, "and most of them here think he'll be a wise man to take it. Ayel They say he knows that America, with only fifteen cruisers, can make no stand against England with her thousand ships of war, so that England must win, and America be a colony of England's once more. That being so, Marvin will not only have money but hell keep his lands in America, and be high in favor with the British as well." He shook his head and cocked his eye at Corunna. "Yes, he's a cautious man," he reminded her. "I think I've heard you speak of that, my dear; but now we both know, to our cost, it was something more than caution in him."

Corunna seemed to choke, looking down into the courtyard. "Nor" she exclaimed. "Nor"

Slade came close beside her. "My dear," he said softly, "we none of us know what's in a man's mind, and I could almost forgive him for turning against his country, if so be those are his principles. IYs what he's done to you that I shall never forgive. To turn from a woman more beautiful than any Queen on her throne, and with the brain of a Decatur or a Nelson thaPs what shows him in his true colorsl" He touched her hand gently. "To think he left you here as destitute as any beggar in the streets! Left you here without a cent, without a ship, and, so far as he knows, without a friend!"

He turned her about, so that she faced him, and took both her hands. "Well, let him gol It's nothing to lose a vessell It's nothing to lose moneyl If I had you, there'd be nothing in the world, no matter how poor I was, that would keep me from whatever it was you wanted and needed." He kissed her fingers.

"All my life I've paid no attention to women," he went on. "Now that I've seen you and felt the touch of your hands and the softness of your lips, Ill hate all women but you for the rest of my days."

She smiled faintly and shook her head.

"It's sol" he insisted. "Why, tomorrow we could set off for Paris; and before you can have bought yourself a dozen gowns, I'll find a way to get you a vessel, and have half of Paris at the feet of the fairest bride in all France."

His voice was that of a loving friend who brings a brave gaiety to battle the despondency of his beloved. Tears seemed about to rise in his eyes tears of love and pity yet he smiled upon her in a

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valiant encouragement, and his hand came upon her shoulder with the touch of a hearty comrade.

"Eh, Corunna? We'll up and at 'em! Here's a pair of us that can look misfortune in the face. Now we're together, not all the bad luck in the world no, and not all the sneaking treachery of those we'd love to believe in, neither! ah, my dear, not all the evil in the world can keep us dowel"

Thus he swept her away.

XVI

IT WAS not discomfort that weighed heaviest on Marvin, as the violent Channel seas racked and rasped him against the harsh coils of the cable in the airless, wedge-shaped den of the cable tier, nor yet the lack of humanity in the British who had him in charge, but the almost certain knowledge that it must have been Slade who had sent His Majesty's schooner Sparrow to cut out the Olive Branch from the harbor of Morlaix, and the even greater certainty that Corunna, by this sudden and overwhelming disaster, had been left penniless and friendless in France, with no person to whom to turn save Slade himself.

He groaned, ill at ease mentally and bodily, and prevented by the deck above from rising even to a sitting position. "You could have stayed there," he reproached Argandeau. "You should have stayed therel"

"You think too much about this, dear Marvin," Argandeau told him gently. "When those smugglers come running to me in the Prefers office, doing me a kindness by saying that this schooner is a Griffon a Griffon who had already cut out one other vessel from Morlaix and two from under the batteries of Dunkirk, and must therefore intend wickedness to the Olive Branch, what can I do, eh? You know who I am in Morlaix? I am the brave Lucien Argandeaul Can I say to them 'Pool for your Englishman! I stay here and do nothing about himl' Can I say that? Not if I wish to remain the cele- brated Lucienl No, I must say, 'Hahl The perfidious Englishl Lucien Argandeau will show them something that will make them laugh out of the wrong mouthl He will go out alone and dispose of theml Thank you very welll' Another thing, dear Marvin: There was a chance, eh? a chance that if we were quick and fortunate, we could have got her ashore, so that this Griffon could have done no cutting out. Then your rabbit would have had money, and we could have shown the British some cutting out of our ownl"

He was silent, and Marvin as well, so that they heard nothing in the darkness of their lurching, coffin-like inclosure save the smashing and rattling of the seas against the bows.

"To show the British something!" Argandeau whispered yearn

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ingly."There is nothing else I want any morel Women and wine are pleasant, but I have had a large share so large a share that to count the favors ladies have shown me Eh! Can a man count the glasses of wine he has had? Only the English are a flame in my head. Nowhere can I get money for a privateer except through you or your rabbit, dear MarvinI"

His voice was as soft as the murmur of a gentle wind among small leaves. "It was apparent to me that if your rabbit was deprived of the Olive Branch, she also lost the power of purchasing a privateer for me or for anybody else. Therefore I was obliged to devote my efforts to saving the Olive Branch. Observe the clarity of my thoughts, dear Danl We French are logical above all other people; and when you say I should have stayed ashore to look after your rabbit, you are not logical! By the stomach of the Supreme Being, I did not even wait to go into the next building and tell her what was happening in the harbor. While there are Englishmen alive, I could not stay my feet! No, not Argandeau to the frayl Well, it was done, and now I grieve about your rabbit. I am sorry we have not tossed a knife into Slade before he made this trouble, but I am sorrier that we have lost our chance to privateer. These English, dear Marvin, there is nothing in the world like them; and now I wish nothing in this life except to be in a fast vessel again, so that I can rip their seacoast from end to endl"

"Slade must have gone to Roscoff and crossed with a smuggler," Marvin murmured, seeming to have heard none of Argandeau's words. "If I'd got sail on her two minutes earlier if those damned Frenchmen had let us haul in to the dock - "

"Ifl" Argandeau protested. "You are stuck full of 'ifsl' You will 'if yourself into a sickness! You did everything very quick and with no slip. No man could do more. Duguay-Trouin, he could not have done more. Tom Souville could not have done more. My scull Argandeau himself could not have done morel You dwell too much on thisl You must sleep, eh? Sleep will wipe out the regrets that are false. You listen to me! In Spain, when I am younger, I learn Spanish from a Spanish lady, very beautiful. She teach me a proverb for everything in the world. 'An "if' in the mind is as bad as a banJerillo in the hide of a bull,' she say. A1SO7 she tell me, 'Two hours' sleep is better medicine than two hundred years of tears.' Whatever she wish to prove, she can prove with a proverb."

There was an end, at last, to the dizzy gyrations of the hole mto which they were packed, and the prisoners, foul with the slime of

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the cable tier and sore from head to foot because of the bed of wet and stinking rope on which they had lain interminably, clambered weakly up the companion-ladders to find the barque hove-to under heavy skies in the lee of the crowded dockyard of Sheerness, at the mouths of the Thames and the Medway, and under the guns of two lowering forts.

The gray-faced officer watched them brought on deck; then, with a faintly sour smile, he warned them against shouting or the making of unnecessary noises if they wished to enjoy the benefits of the open air.

Doubtful concerning the quality of the smile, Marvin pressed forward. "With your permission," he said, "we'd like to take our private belongings with us our clothes and some small articles."

"What articles are those?" the aged lieutenant asked.

"There's the picture of a lady in the small cabin - " Marvin said.

"No such thingl" the lieutenant snapped. "There's no picture of any kind on this vessell If there was, it would do you no good to take it; there's no room for such trumpery on the hulks."

"Our clothes - " Marvin again ventured.

"CIothesl" the lieutenant exclaimed in disgust. "There's nothing I'd call clothes aboard this craftl Nothing but dirty Yankee ragsl I suppose you'll be trying to say you had something wearable, and that these men of mine stole theml You'll be provided with clothes aboard the hulks, so let me hear no more drivel about your filthy dudsl"

Marvin shivered. His muscles tightened until his back and his neck ached from the strain of them. Argandeau tapped him on the shoulder and sighed gently. "I tell you they are a flame in my head, these Englishl"

Two hours later, followed by the ironic cheers of the English seamen who had cut them out from Morlaix, they were packed into the waist of a government tender, with boarding nettings at both bulwarks and a squad of marines before and behind them; and thus guarded, they bore off to the westward, into the curving channel of the River Medway a river with flat low shores and a wealth of mud banks from which there rose wisps of mist, smelling of decay.

It was near dusk of that grey October afternoon when the tender, rounding a wide bend in the river, came into an expanse of water so broad that it had the appearance of a lake. Ranged along the center of this lake, and bulking mountain-like above the flat expanse of water and the low fields beyond, floated fifteen structures that

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seemed to Marvin to have the look of giant coffins, but coffins sadly misshapen by pipes and platforms and warts and knobs that protruded from them in a thousand places and at a thousand angles.

"So there they are." Argandeau sighed. "There are the hulks, that have been more terrible to France than any hell." He drew a deep breath, and then another. "Breathe deep, dear Marvin, while you can. There are Frenchmen in those coffins who have not breathed pure air for six long years."

The tender drew abreast of the rearmosthulk. She was, Marvin saw, the defaced and dirty remnant of what once had been a shipof-the-line of what once had been more beautiful, with her tiers of gun ports, her symmetrical sweep of hull, her glistening paint, her towering masts, her web of rigging and her cloud-like spread of canvas, than any other structure fashioned by the hand of man.