With uniform torn and bedabbled with blood, face blackened with powder, and the red light of battle in his eyes, Humphrey Armstrong saw plainly enough that his case was hopeless, and that, with all her pomp of war and pride of discipline and strength, his sloop was prostrate before the buccaneer’s snaky craft, and in his agony of spirit and rage he determined to wait till the pirates boarded, as he could see they would before long, and then blow up the magazine and send them to eternity in their triumph over the British ship.
But it was to destroy his men as well, and he felt that this should be the pirates’ work when all was over.
“No,” he muttered between his teeth, “it would be a coward’s act, and they shall die like men.”
The schooner’s sides were vomiting smoke and flame, and she was close alongside now. She had been so manoeuvred as to sail right round the end of the reef, whose position seemed to be exactly known, so that from firing upon the sloop’s bows, and raking from stem to stern, the firing had been continued as she passed along the larboard side round to the poop, which had been raked in turn, and here it was evident that the final attack was to be made.
It was not long in coming. Hardly had Humphrey seen the enemy’s intentions and gathered his men together, than the schooner’s side ground up against the shattered stern of the sloop. Heavy grappling-irons were thrown on board, and with a furious yelling a horde of blackened, savage-looking men poured on to the bloody splinter-strewn deck, and coming comparatively fresh upon the sloop’s exhausted crew, bore down all opposition. Men were driven below, cut down, stunned, and driven to ask for quarter; and so furious was the onslaught that the sloop’s crew were divided into two half helpless bodies, one of which threw down their arms, while the other, which included the captain and officers, backed slowly toward the bows, halting at every spot where they could make a stand, but forced to yield foot by foot, till their fate, it was plain to all, was to surrender or be driven through the shattered bulwarks into the sea.
It was a matter of minutes. The fight was desperate, but useless – Humphrey Armstrong and those around him seeming determined to sell their lives dearly, for no quarter was asked. They had given way step by step till there was nothing behind them but the shattered bulwarks, and then the sea, when, headed by their leader, the buccaneers made a desperate rush; there was the clashing of sword and pike; and, as sailor and officer fell, or were disarmed, Humphrey stepped in a half-congealed pool of blood, slipped, and went heavily backwards, the buccaneer’s lieutenant leaping forward to brain him with a heavy axe.
There was a rush, a fierce shout, Black Mazzard was thrust aside, and the Commodore sprang past him to plant his foot upon the fallen officer’s chest, while, the fight being over, the rest held their hands – the conquerors and conquered – to see what would be the captain’s fate.
“Now, Captain Armstrong,” cried the buccaneer leader, “beg for your wretched life, you cowardly dog!”
“Coward!” roared Humphrey, raising himself slightly on one hand, as with the other he swept the blood from his ensanguined face. “You cursed hound! you lie!”
The buccaneer shrank back as if from some blow; his foot was withdrawn from the wounded officer’s chest, he lowered the point of his sword, and stood gazing at his prostrate enemy wildly.
“The captain shirks the job, lads,” cried a coarse voice. “Here, let me come.”
It was Black Mazzard who spoke, and, drunken with rum and the spirit of the furious fight, he pressed forward, axe in hand.
Humphrey raised himself a little higher, with his white teeth bared in fierce defiance as he prepared to meet the deathblow he saw about to fall.
But at that moment the buccaneer caught his lieutenant’s uplifted arm.
“Enough!” he cried, fiercely; “no more blood. He is no coward. Bart – Dinny, take this gentleman ashore.”
Humphrey Armstrong did not hear the words, for his defiant act exhausted his failing strength, and he fell back insensible to all that happened for many hours to come.
Chapter Twenty Three
Captain Humphrey comes to
Captain Humphrey lay upon his back staring at his conscience. He was weak from loss of blood, weaker from fever; and he would have fared better if he had had proper medical treatment instead of the rough but kindly doctoring and nursing of Bart the surgeon, and Dinny the hospital nurse.
This was after three weeks’ doubtful journey, wherein Dinny said “the obstinate divil had tried all he knew to die.” And it was so ungrateful, Dinny said, after the captain had saved his life, and that of all the prisoners who had not also been obstinate and died.
Humphrey’s conscience was a great stone god full twelve feet high – an object that looked like a mummy-case set on end, as far as shape was concerned, but carved all over in the most wonderful way, the grotesque and weird bas-reliefs almost destroying the face, hands, and feet of the figure, flowing over them as they were, so that at first sight he looked upon a great mass of sculpture, out of which by degrees the features appeared.
The old artist who designed the idol had strange ideas of decorative effect. He had cut in the hard stone a fine contemplative face; but over it he had placed a gigantic headdress, whereon were stony plumes of feathers, wreaths, and strange symbols, while pendent in every possible direction about the body were writhing creatures and snakes, with variations of the human form, engaged in strange struggles, and amongst them human heads turned into bosses or decorations of the giant robe.
Humphrey Armstrong came partly to himself to see the cold, implacable face of this idol staring down at him from the gloom, ten feet from where he lay; and it seemed to him, by slow degrees, that this was his conscience sternly and silently upbraiding him for the loss of his ship and the lives of his men, destroyed by his want of skill as a commander.
Day after day, through his semi-delirium, did that great idol torture him, and seem, with its reproachful eyes, to burn into his brain.
Days passed, and by degrees he began to be aware that he was lying on a bed of comfortable rugs and skins, stretched in a curious room, whose walls were covered with hieroglyphics – thick, clumsy-looking hieroglyphics – not like those of Egypt, but carved with a skill peculiar to another race. Here and there were medallions of heads of gods or rulers of the land. Flowers of a peculiar conventional type formed part of the decorations or surrounded panels, in which were panthers, alligators, or human figures. In the centre of the wall to his right was a recess in which, clearly cut and hardly touched by time, were the figures of a king seated upon a leopard-supported throne – seated cross-legged, as in the East, and in a wondrous costume – while another figure presented to him what seemed to be the spoil of a number of dead and living figures who were trampled under foot.
The room was evidently a palace chamber, or a portion of a temple of great antiquity; and by degrees Humphrey realised that the ceiling was not arched or supported by beams, but by the great stones of which it was composed being piled one above the other, like a flight of steps, from the walls on either side till they met in the middle.
The floor was of stone, and there was a large opening on his left, facing the recess where the carving of the king ornamented the wall; and this opening, once a window, looked out upon the forest, whose dull, green, subdued twilight stole into the place.
It was a weird look-out – upon tree-trunks strangled by serpent-like creepers, which seemed to be contending with them for the life-giving light which filtered down from above through clouds of verdure; while other trees and other serpent-like creepers seemed in friendly co-operation to have joined hands against the walls of the building, which they were striving to destroy. Huge roots were thrust between the joints of stones and shifted them out of place. One liana waved a trailing stem through the window-opening as if in triumph, and to call attention to the feat of another creeper which had twisted itself completely round a great block, lifted it from one side, and held it suspended like a vegetable feat of strength.
For nature was asserting herself on every hand, the growth of the forest penetrating the chamber like an invading army of leaves and stems, and mingling with the works of man to their steady overthrow; while, facing it all, stern, implacable, and calmly watching the progress of destruction going on, stood the stone idol, the work of a race passed from the face of the earth, and waiting, as it had waited for hundreds of years, till the potent forest growth should lay it low!
For a time it was all a nightmare-like confusion to Humphrey; but with returning strength came order in his intellect, and he questioned Bart, who brought him food, and from time to time added carpets and various little luxuries of cabin furniture, which seemed strangely incongruous in that place.
“Who told you to bring those things here?” he said one day.
“Commodore Junk.”
“Why? Am I a prisoner?”
“Yes.”
“Am I to be shot?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where am I?”
“Here.”
“But what place is this?”
“Don’t know.”
“But – ”
“Want any more wine or fruit?”
“No; I want my liberty.”
“Belongs to the captain.”
“Tell the captain I wish to see him.”
Bart said no more, but took his departure.
The prisoner was more fortunate with Dinny, who could be communicative.
“That’s it, captain, darlin’,” he said one day. “Don’t ye fale like a little boy again, and that I’m your mother washing your poor face!”
“Don’t fool, my good fellow, but talk to me.”
“Talk to you, is it?”
“Yes; you can talk to me.”
“Talk to ye – can I talk to ye! Hark at him, mate!” he cried, appealing to the great idol. “Why, I’m a divil at it.”
“Well, then, tell me how I came here.”
“Faix, didn’t I carry ye on my back?”
“Yes, but after the fight?”
“Afther the foight – oh! is it afther the foight ye mane? Sure, and it was the skipper’s ordhers, and I carried ye here, and Bart – you know the tother one – he brought in the bed and the rugs and things to make ye dacent. It’s a bit damp, and the threes have a bad habit of putting in their noses like the pigs at home; but it’s an illigant bed-room for a gintleman afther all.”
“It was the captain’s orders, you say?”
“Sure, an’ it was.”
“And where are we?”
“Why, here we are.”
“Yes, yes; but what place is this?”
“Sure, an’ it’s the skipper’s palace.”
“Commodore Junk’s?”
“Yis.”
“And what place is it – where are we?”
“Faix, and they say that sick payple is hard to deal wid. It’s what I’m telling you sure. It’s the skipper’s palace, and here it is.”
“My good fellow, you told me all that; but I want to know whereabouts it is.”
“Oh-h! Whereabouts it is, you mane!”
“Yes, yes.”
“Why, right away in the woods.”
“Far from the shore!”
“Ah, would ye!” cried Dinny, with a grin full of cunning. “Ye’d be getting all the information out of me, and then as soon as ye get well be running away.”
“Yes,” said Humphrey, “If I can.”
“Well, that’s honest,” cried Dinny. “And it’s meself would do it if I got a chance.”
“No,” said Humphrey, sadly; “I could not do that and leave my men.”
“Faix, and they’d leave ye if they got a chance, sor.”
“How are they all!”
“Oh, they’re getting right enough,” said Dinny. “Ye’ve been the worst of ’em all yerself, and if ye don’t make haste ye’ll be last.”
“But tell me, my lad, why am I kept in prison!”
“Tell ye why you’re kept in prison?”
“Yes.”
“An’ ye want to know! Well, divil a wan of us can tell, unless it’s the skipper’s took a fancy to ye bekase ye’re such a divil to fight, and he wants ye to jyne the rigiment.”
“Regiment! Why, you’ve been a soldier!”
“And is it me a sodjer! Why, ye’ll be wanting to make out next that I was a desarther when was only a prishner of war.” Humphrey sighed.
“Sure, and ye’re wanting something, sor. What’ll I get ye! The skipper said ye were to have iverything you wanted.”
“Then give me my liberty, my man, and let me go back to England – and disgrace.”
“Sure, and I wouldn’t go back to England to get that, sor. I’d sooner shtop here. The skipper’s always telling Bart to look afther ye well.”
“Why?” said Humphrey, sharply.
“Why?” said Dinny, scratching his head; “perhaps he wants to get ye in good condition before ye’re hung.”
“Hung?”
“Yis, sor. That’s what Black Mazzard says.”
“Is that the man who tried to cut me down with a boarding-axe?”
“That’s the gintleman, sor; and now let me put ye tidy, and lay yer bed shtraight. Sure, and ye’ve got an illigant cabin here, as is good enough for a juke. Look at the ornaments on the walls.”
“Are there any more places like this?”
“Anny more! Sure, the wood’s full of ’em.”
“But about here?”
“About here! Oh, this is only a little place. Sure, we all live here always when we ar’n’t aboard the schooner.”
“Ah, yes! The schooner. She was quite destroyed, was she not?”
“Divil a bit, sor. Your boys didn’t shoot straight enough. The ship ye came in was, afther we’d got all we wanted out of her. She was burnt to the wather’s edge, and then she sank off the reef.”
Humphrey groaned.
“Ye needn’t do that, sor, for she was a very owld boat, and not safe for a journey home. Mak’ yer mind aisy, and mak’ this yer home. There’s plinty of room for ye, and – whisht! here’s the captain coming. What’ll he be doing here?”
“The captain!” cried Humphrey. “Then that man took my message.”
“What message, sor?”
At that moment the steps which had been heard coming as it were down some long stone corridor halted at the doorway of the prisoner’s chamber, someone drew aside a heavy rug, and the buccaneer, wearing a broad-leafed hat which shaded his face, entered the place.
“You can go, Dinny.”
“Yis, sor, I’m going,” said Dinny, obsequiously; and, after a glance at the prisoner, he hurriedly obeyed.
There was only a gloomy greenish twilight in the old chamber, such light as there was striking in through the forest-shaded window, and with his back to this, and retaining his hat, the captain seated himself upon a rug covered chest.
“You sent for me,” he said, in a deep, abrupt tone.
Humphrey looked at him intently, the dark eyes meeting his, and the thick black brows contracted as the gaze was prolonged.
“You sent for me,” he repeated, abruptly; “what more do you want?”
“I will tell you after a while,” said Humphrey; “but first of all let me thank you for the kind treatment I have received at your hands.”
“You need not thank me,” was the short reply. “Better treatment than you would have given me.”
“Well, yes,” said Humphrey. “I am afraid it is.”
“Your cousin would have hung me.”
“My cousin! What do you know of my cousin!”
“England is little. Every Englishman of mark is known.”
Humphrey looked at him curiously, and for the moment it seemed to him that he had heard that voice before, but his memory did not help him.
“My cousin would have done his duty,” he said, gravely.
“His duty!” cried the captain, bitterly. “Your country has lost a treasure in the death of that man, sir.”
“Good heavens, man! What do you know – ”
“Enough, sir. Let Captain James Armstrong rest. The name is well represented now by a gentleman, and it is to that fact that Captain Humphrey owes his life.”
The latter stared at the speaker wonderingly.
“Well, sir, why have you sent for me!”
“To thank you, Commodore Junk, and to ask you a question or two.”
“Go on, sir. Perhaps I shall not answer you.”
“I will risk it,” said Humphrey, watching him narrowly, “You spared my life. Why?”
“I told you.”
“Then you will give me my liberty?”
“What for? – to go away and return with another and better-manned ship to take us and serve the captain of the schooner as I have served you?”
“No. I wish to return home.”
“What for?”
“Surely you cannot expect me to wish to stay here!”
“Why do you wish to go home to meet disgrace?”
Humphrey started at having his own words repeated.
“To be tried by court martial for the loss of your ship! Stay where you are, sir, and grow strong and well.”
“If I stay here, sir, when I have full liberty to go, shall I not be playing the part of the coward you called me when I was beaten down?”
“You will not have full liberty to go, Captain Armstrong,” said his captor, quietly. “You forget that you are a prisoner.”
“You do not intend to kill me and my men?”
“We are not butchers, sir,” was the cold reply.
“Then what is your object in detaining us. Is it ransom?”
“Possibly.”
“Name the sum, then, sir, and if it is in my power it shall be paid.”
“It is too soon to talk of ransom, Captain Armstrong,” said his visitor, “you are weak and ill yet. Be patient, and grow well and strong. Some day I will talk over this matter with you again. But let me, before I go, warn you to be careful not to attempt to escape, or to encourage either of your men to make the attempt. Even I could not save you then, for the first man you met would shoot you down. Besides that risk, escape is impossible by land; and we shall take care that you do not get away by sea. Now, sir, have I listened to all you have to say?”
“One word, sir. I am growing stronger every day. Will you grant me some freedom?”
“Captain Armstrong is a gentleman,” said his visitor; “if he will give his word that he will not attempt to escape, he shall be free to go anywhere within the bounds of our little settlement.”
Humphrey sat thinking, with his brow knit and his teeth compressed.
“No,” he said; “that would be debarring myself from escaping.”
“You could not escape.”
“I should like to try,” said Humphrey, smiling.
“It would be utter madness, sir. Give me your word of honour that you will not attempt to leave this old palace, and you shall come and go as you please.”
“No, sir, I will remain a prisoner with the chances open.”
“As you will,” said the buccaneer, coldly; and he rose and left the chamber, looking thoughtful and absent, while Humphrey lay back on his couch, gazing hard at the great stone idol, as if he expected to gain information from its stern mysterious countenance.
“Where have I seen him before?” he said, thoughtfully; and after gazing at the carven effigy for some time he closed his eyes and tried to think, but their last meeting on the deck of the sloop was all that would suggest itself, and he turned wearily upon his side.
“He seemed to have heard of our family, and his manner was strange; but I can’t think now,” he said, “I am hot and weak, and this place seems to stifle me.”
Almost as he spoke he dropped asleep – the slumber of weakness and exhaustion – to be plunged in a heavy stupor for hours, perfectly unconscious of the fact that from time to time the great curtain was drawn aside and a big head thrust into the dim chamber, the owner gazing frowningly at the helpless prisoner, and then entering on tiptoe, to cross to the window and cautiously look out before returning to the couch, with the frown deepening as the man thought of how narrow the step was which led from life to death.
He had advanced close to the couch with a savage gleam of hatred in his eyes when Humphrey Armstrong moved uneasily, tossed his hands apart, and then, as if warned instinctively of danger, he opened his eyes, sprang up, and seized a piece of stone close by his side, the only weapon, within grasp.
“Well,” said Bart, without stirring, and with a grim look of contempt, “heave it. I don’t mind.”
“Oh, it’s you!” said the prisoner, setting down the stone and letting himself sink back. “I was dreaming, I suppose, and thought there was danger.”
He laid his feverish cheek upon his hand, and seemed to fall asleep at once, his eyes closing and his breath coming easily.
“Trusts me,” muttered Bart. “Poor lad! it ar’n’t his fault. Man can’t kill one as trusts him like that. I shall have to fight for him, I suppose. Always my way – always my way.”
He seated himself at the foot of the couch with his features distorted as if by pain, and for hour after hour watched the sleeper, telling himself that he could not do him harm, though all the time a jealous hatred approaching fury was burning in his breast.