Commodore Junk

“Hist! What’s that?” said Dinny, starting up, and then catching at Bart’s shoulder to save himself from falling. “Head swims,” he said, apologetically.

“Ay, you’re weak, lad,” said Bart, helping him back to his seat. “Why, the boat’s back!”

He hurried on deck, to find a boat alongside, out of which four men climbed on deck, while Jack Dell, who had just heard the hail, came hurrying up.

“Well?” he said. “What news?”

The one spoken to turned away and did not answer.

“Do you hear?” cried Jack, catching him by the shoulder as a heavy-looking man came on deck, lurched slightly, recovered himself, and then walked fiercely and steadily up to the group.

“Bad news, captain,” said another of the men, who had just come aboard.

“Bad – news?” said Jack, heavily.

“Bad news of the Commodore!” said the heavy-looking fellow, who was now swaying himself to and fro, evidently drunk in body but sober in mind.

“Yes,” said the man who had first spoken, “bad news.”

“Tell me,” cried Jack, hoarsely, as he pressed forward to gaze full in the speaker’s face, “what is it? They have not sent him away?”

The man was silent; and as the rest of the crew, attracted by the return of the boat, clustered round, Jack reeled.

“Stand by, my lad,” whispered Bart at his ear. “Don’t forget.”

The words seemed to give nerve to the sturdy, broad-shouldered young man, who spoke hoarsely.

“Tried and condemned,” he said, in a hoarse, strange voice.

“They’ve hung him – ”

“What!”

“In chains on a gibbet.”

A hoarse, guttural sound escaped from Jack’s throat as he clung tightly to Bart’s arm.

“The gibbet’s on the low point by the mangrove swamp,” said the man. “They’ve cut down two palms about a dozen feet and nailed another across, and the captain’s swinging there.”

“A lie!” yelled Jack; “not my brother!”

There was a dead pause of utter silence for a few moments, and then the man said slowly:

“Yes, we all saw it and made sure;” and a murmur of acquiescence arose from his three companions, who had been in the boat in search of far different information to that which they had brought.

“But not my brother?” groaned Jack.

“Yes,” said the man. “It was Commodore Junk.”

As a dead silence once more fell upon the poop, the dark, heavy-looking man stood swaying to and fro for a few minutes, gazing down at Jack, who had dropped into a sitting position upon a water-keg, his arms resting upon his knees, his hands hanging, and his head drooped; while Bart stood by his shoulder with his face wrinkled and a pained expression upon his brow, just illumined by the bright glint of the stars.

The heavy man nodded and seemed about to speak, but remained silent for a time. Then patting Jack on the shoulder:

“Brave lad! Good captain! For time of war!” he said. “But never mind, my lads. We’ll pay them for it, yet.”

He lurched slightly and walked slowly toward the captain’s cabin, unnoticed by Jack and Bart; but Dinny’s eyes were sharp enough to read what all this meant, and he turned to his comrade Dick.

“Look at that, now!” he whispered.

“Ay, I was looking. What does it mean?”

“Mane!” said Dinny, scornfully. “It manes that Black Mazzard thinks he’s captain now.”

“Then if the throat-cutting scoundrel is, I’m off first chance.”

“An’ I’m wid ye,” said Dinny, earnestly. “I’ll go and lade a virtuous life.”

“And leave the skipper’s brother and Bart?”

Dinny pulled off his cap and rubbed his head viciously.

“Now, why did ye want to go and say that?” he cried. “Iverything was as aisy as could be, and you go and upset it all.”

“Poor Abel!” said Jack at last, softly.

“Ay, poor old Abel!” said Bart, with a groan.

“You here?” said Jack, starting up and catching the rough fellow by the arm.

“Here? – ay!” growled Bart, slowly. “Where did you think I was, lad?”

“I didn’t think, Bart, or I shouldn’t have said that,” cried Jack, earnestly. “Where would you be but at my elbow if I was in trouble, ready to be of help?”

“Ay, but there’s no helping you here, lad,” said Bart with a groan.

“No helping me! But you can, Bart. Do you wonder that I hate the world? – that I see it all as one crowd of enemies fighting against me and trying to crush me down? Not help me! Oh, but you shall! My poor brother! They shall pay heavily for this!”

“What’ll you do, lad?” said Bart, despondently.

“Do!” cried Jack, with a savage laugh – “do what poor Abel always hung back from doing, and stopped Black Mazzard from many a time. I don’t read my Bible now, Bart; but doesn’t it say that there shall be blood for blood; and my poor brother’s cries aloud for vengeance, as they shall see!”

“No, no, my lad,” whispered Bart, hoarsely; “let it stop here. It seems to me as if something said: ‘This here’s the end on it. Now get her to go back home.’”

“Home!” said Jack, with a fierce laugh. “Where is home?”

“Yonder,” said Bart, stolidly.

“No! Here – at sea. Bart, there is no other home for me; no other hope but to have revenge!”

“Revenge, lad?”

“Ay, a bitter, cruel revenge. I could have been different. I was once full of love and hope before I knew what the world was like, but that’s all past and dead – yes, dead; and the dead yonder is looking toward me and asking me to remember what we have suffered.”

“But think.”

“Think, Bart? I have thought till my brain has seemed to burn; and everything points to revenge, and revenge I’ll have!”

“It’s the end of it all now,” said Bart, solemnly. “Let’s go back.”

“The way is open, Bart Wrigley. I have no hold upon you, and I can work alone. Go!”

“You wouldn’t talk like that,” said Bart, huskily, “if you was cool.”

“What do you mean, man?”

“’Bout me going,” said Bart, in a low, husky voice. “There’s only one way for me, and that’s where you go, lad. It allus has been, and it allus will be till I’m took. What are you going to do?”

The question was asked in a quick, decisive way, very different to the despondent air that had pervaded his words before, and the manner was so marked that Jack laid his hands on his companion’s shoulders.

“It’s my fate to be always saying bitter things to you, Bart, and wounding you.”

“Never mind about that,” said Bart, huskily. “Long as I’m the one as you trusts, that’s enough for me. What are you going to do next?”

There was no answer for a few minutes, and then the words whispered were very short and decisive.

“And let ’em think it’s scared us, and we’ve gone right away?” said Bart.

“Yes.”

Bart gave a short, quick nod of the head, walked sharply to the forecastle and yelled to the men to tumble up. The result was that in a very short time sail after sail was spread till a dusky cloud seemed to hover over the deck of the schooner, which heeled over in the light breeze and began skimming as lightly as a yacht eastward, as if to leave the scene of the Commodore’s execution far behind.

Chapter Seventeen

The Gibbet Spit

It had been a baking day in the town of Saint George, British Honduras, and the only lively things about the place had been the lizards. The sky had seemed to be of burnished brass, and the sea of molten silver, so dazzling that the eye was pained which fell upon its sheen. The natives were not troubled by the heat, for they sought out shady places, and went to sleep, but the British occupants of the port kept about their houses, and looked as if they wished they were dogs, and could hang out their tongues and pant.

Saint George, always a dead-and-alive tropic town, now seemed to be the dead alone; and as if to prove that it was so, the last inhabitant seemed to have gone to the end of the spit by the marsh beyond the port, where every one who landed or left could see, and there hung himself up as a sign of the desolation and want of animation in the place.

For there, pendent from the palm-tree gibbet, alone in the most desolate spot near the port, was the buccaneering captain, whose name had become a by-word all along the coast, whose swift-sailing schooner had captured vessels by the score, and robbed and burnt till Commodore Junk’s was a name to speak of with bated breath; and the captains of ships, whether British or visitors from foreign lands, made cautious inquiries as to whether he had been heard of in the neighbourhood before they ventured to sea, and then generally found that they had been misled. For that swift schooner was pretty certain to appear right in their path, with the result that their vessels would be boarded, the captain and crew sent afloat in their boat not far from land, and the ship would be plundered, and then scuttled after all that attracted the buccaneers had been secured.

There had been rejoicings when the king’s ship, sent over expressly to put an end to piracy, found and had an engagement with the schooner – one of so successful a nature that after the bloody fight was over, and the furious attack by boarding baffled, three prisoners remained in the hands of the naval captain, two of whom were wounded unto death, and the other uninjured, and who proved to be the captain who had headed the boarders.

Abel Dell’s shrift had been a short one. Fortune had been against him, after a long career of success. He saw his ship escape crippled, and he ground his teeth as he called her occupants cowards for leaving him in the lurch, being, of course, unaware that the retreat was due to his lieutenant, Abram Mazzard, while when she returned through the determined action of Jack, it came too late, for Abel Dell, otherwise Commodore Junk, was acting as warning to pirates, his last voyage being over.

The heat seemed to increase on that torrid day till nightfall, when clouds gathered, and the flickering lightning flashed out and illumined the long banks of vapour, displaying their fantastic shapes, to be directly after reflected from the surface of the barely rippled sea.

“Hadn’t we better give up for a bit? Storm may pass before morning,” whispered the thick-set figure standing close by the wheel.

“No, Bart; we must go to-night,” was the reply. “Is all ready?”

“Ay, ready enough; but I don’t like the job.”

“Give up, then, and let Dinny come.”

“Did you ever know me give up?” growled Bart.

“’Tain’t that: it’s leaving the ship. Black Mazzard ar’n’t to be trusted.”

“What! Pish! he dare do nothing.”

“Not while you’re here, my lad. It’s when you’re gone that I feel scared.”

“You think – ”

“I think he’s trying to get the men over to his side, and some on ’em hold with him.”

Jack remained thoughtful for a few minutes.

“It is only lightning, Bart. There’ll be no storm. We can get what we want done in six hours at the longest, and he can do nothing in that time – he will do nothing in that time if you put a couple of bottles of rum within his reach.”

Bart uttered a low, chuckling laugh.

“That’s what I have done,” he said.

“Then we’re safe enough. Where’s Dinny?”

“Forward, along of Dick.”

“Tell them to keep a sharp look-out while we’re gone, and to be on the watch for the boat.”

Half an hour later, when the schooner was deemed to be near enough for the purpose, an anchor was lowered down, to take fast hold directly in the shallow bottom, a boat was lowered, into which Jack and Bart stepped, the former shipping the little rudder, and Bart stepping a short mast and hauling up a big sail, when the soft sea-breeze sent them gliding swiftly along.

“He was asleep in the cabin,” said Bart. “Soon be yonder if it holds like this. Do you feel up to it, my lad, as if you could venter?”

“Yes,” said Jack, sternly.

“But it’s a wicked job, my lad, and more fit for men.”

“I’ve thought all that out, Bart,” was the reply. “I know. It is my duty, and I shall do it. Are the pistols loaded?”

“Trust me for that,” growled Bart. “They’re loaded enough, and the cutlashes has edges like razors. So has my axe.”

“Have you the tools?”

“Everything, my lad. Trust me for that.”

“I do trust you, Bart, always.”

“And how are we to find our way back to the schooner in the dark?”

“We shall not find our way back in the dark, Bart, but sail right out here as near as we can guess, and then lie-to till daybreak.”

Bart kept his eyes fixed upon one particular light, and tried to calculate their bearings from its relation to another behind; but all the same, he felt in doubt, and shook his head again and again, when some blinding flash of lightning gave him a momentary glance of the shore.

But Jack did not hesitate for a moment, keeping the boat’s head in one direction with unerring instinct, till the waves were close upon their left, and it seemed that in another minute they must be swamped.

Bart half rose, ready to swim for his life, as the boat leapt high, then seemed to dive down headlong, rose again, dived, and then danced lightly up and down for a few minutes before gliding slowly on again.

“Was that the bar?” he whispered eagerly.

“Yes. It is rough at this time of the tide,” was the answer, given in the calmest manner, for Jack had not stirred.

Bart drew a breath full of relief.

“Be ready.”

“Ready it is.”

“Down sail.”

The little yard struck, the sail collapsed, and, acting by the impetus already given, the boat glided forward some distance and then grated upon a bed of sand.

Bart shuddered slightly, but he was busy all the while arranging the sail ready for rapid hoisting; and this done, he carried the grapnel out some fifteen or twenty yards from the bows and fixed it cautiously in the shore. – He was about to return when a hand was laid upon his shoulder – a hand which seemed to come out of the black darkness.

Bart snatched a pistol from his belt, and put it back with a grunt.

“I didn’t know it was you,” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Lightning seems to make it darker. Where away?”

“Fifty yards south,” said Jack, quietly.

“Then look here, my lad. I don’t want to disobey orders; but I’m a man and you’re only a – ”

“Man,” said Jack, quietly.

“Then you stop by the boat and – ”

“Bart!”

“Nay, nay, let me speak, my lad. Let me say all I want. You can trust me. If Bart Wrigley says he’ll do a thing for you, he’ll do it if he’s got the strength and life in him. So let me do this, while you wait for me. Come, now, you will!”

“No! Come with me. I must be there.”

Bart drew in a deep breath, and muttered to himself as he listened to the peculiarly changed voice in which his companion spoke.

“You’re master,” he said; “and I’m ready.”

“Yes. Take my hand, and speak lower. There may be watchers about.”

For answer Bart gripped his companion’s hand, and together they walked for some distance along the hard sand, where the spray from the rollers swept up. Then turning inland suddenly, they had taken about twenty steps to the west when a vivid flash of lightning showed them that their calculations had been exact, for there before them in all its horror, and not a dozen yards away, stood the rough gibbet with the body of a man pendent from the cross-beam, the ghastly object having stood out for a moment like a huge cameo cut in bold relief upon some mass of marble of a solid black.

“Abel! Brother!” moaned Jack, running forward to sink kneeling in the sand, and for a few moments, as Bart stood there in the black darkness with his head instinctively uncovered, there arose from before him the wild hysterical sobbings of a woman, at first in piteous appeal to the dead, then in fierce denunciation of his murderers; but as the last cry rang out there was a flickering in the sky, as if the avant garde of another vivid flash – the half-blinding sheet of flame which lit up the gibbet once again; and it seemed strange to Bart that no woman was there, only the figure of a short, well-built man, who stood looking toward him, and said in a hoarse, firm voice —

“We are not likely to be interrupted; but to work, quick!”

“Right!” said Bart, hoarsely; and directly after, a rustling sound, accompanied by a heavy breathing, was heard in the black darkness, followed soon after by the clinking of iron against iron.

There was a faint flicker in the sky again, but no following flash, and the darkness seemed to have grown more intense, as the panting of some one engaged in a work requiring great exertion came from high up out of the ebon darkness.

“The file, man, the file.”

“Nay, I’ll wrench it off,” came from where the panting was heard. Then there was more grating of iron against iron, repeated again and again, when, just as an impatient ejaculation was heard, there was a loud snap, as if a link had been broken, a dull thud of a bar falling, and the panting noise increased.

“Now, lad, quick! Can you reach? That’s right. Steady! I can lower a little more. Easy. A little more away. You have all the weight now. May I let go?”

“Yes.”

There was the clank of a chain. Then a heavy thud as if someone had dropped to the ground, and then the chain clanked again.

“No, no; wait a moment, my lad. Lower down. That’s it. Let’s leave these cursed irons behind.”

The rough grating of iron sounded again, the heavy panting was resumed, and another sharp crack or two arose, followed by the fall of pieces on the sand.

“That’s it!” muttered Bart, as a dull clang arose from the earth. “We needn’t have been afraid of any one watching here.”

“I’ll help.”

“Nay; I want no help,” panted Bart, as he seemed to be lifting some weight. “You lead on, my lad. Pity we couldn’t have landed here.”

The reason was obvious; for seaward the waves could be heard rushing in and out of a reef with many a strange whisper and gasping sound, giving plain intimation that a boat would have been broken up by the heavy waves.

“Shall I go first?”

“Ay; go first, lad. Keep close to the water’s edge; and you must kick against the rope.”

There proved to be no need to trust to this, for, as they reached the water’s edge, where the sand, instead of being ankle deep, was once more smooth and hard, a phosphorescent gleam rose from the breaking waves, and the wet shore glistened with tiny points of light, which were eclipsed from time to time as the two dark, shadowy figures passed slowly along, the first accommodating its pace to that of the heavily-burdened second, till the first stopped short, close to where the boat was moored.

It was plain to see, for the rope shone through the shallow water, as if gilded with pale, lambent gold; while, when it was seized and drawn rapidly, the boat came skimming in, driving from each side of its bows a film as of liquid moonlight spread thinly over the water beyond, where the waves broke upon the sand.

There was the sound of a voice as the figures waded in, one holding the boat, and the other depositing his burden there.

“What’s that?” whispered Bart. “Did you speak?”

“No.”

“Quick! Get hold of the grapnel. No. On board, lad, quick!”

“Halt! Who goes there?” cried a voice close by from where the darkness was thickest.

For answer Bart cut the grapnel line, made sure that his companion was in the boat, and then, exerting his great strength, he ran out with it through the shallow water, just as there was a vivid flash of lightning, revealing, about twenty yards away, a group of soldiers standing on the rough shore, just beyond the reach of the tide.

“Halt!” was shouted again, followed by a warning. And then followed a series of rapid orders; four bright flashes darted from as many muskets, and the bullets whistled overhead, the intense darkness which had followed the lightning disturbing the soldiers’ aim.

Orders to re-load were heard; but the boat was well afloat by now, and Bart had crawled in, the tiller had been seized, and the sail was rapidly hoisted, the wind caught it at once, and by the time another flash of lightning enabled the patrol to make out where the boat lay, it was a hundred yards from shore, and running rapidly along the coast.

A volley was fired as vainly as the first, and as the bullets splashed up the water, Bart laughed.

“They may fire now,” he said. “We shall be a hundred yards farther before they’re ready again.”

They sailed on into the darkness for quite two hours, during which the lightning ceased, and the mutterings of the thunder were heard no more. But though a careful look-out was kept – and Bart felt that they had pretty well calculated the position of the schooner – they could not find her, and the sail was lowered down.

“We’ve gone quite far enough,” growled Bart. “Where’s that light that Dinny was to show?”

There was no answer, and no light visible from where they lay for the next three hours, waiting patiently till the first faint streak of dawn should show them the waiting vessel, and their ghastly burden could be carried aboard ready for a sailor’s grave.

“It is a trick, Bart,” said Jack at last, as he glanced at their freight lying forward beneath a spare sail.

“Ay, I felt it, my lad,” said Bart, frowning. “I felt it last night. Black Mazzard hain’t the man to leave alone; and what’s a couple o’ bottles o’ rum to such as he?”

“The villain – the coward!” cried Jack, bitterly. “At a time like this!”

“Ay, it’s a bad time, my lad,” said Bart, “but we’ve done our work, poor chap; and the sea’s the sea, whether it’s off a boat or a schooner. You mean that, don’t you, now?”

“No,” said Jack, fiercely, as he pointed to the back-fins of a couple of sharks.

“Ugh!” ejaculated Bart. “What, then, my lad?”

“To find the schooner first, and if not, to make for one of the little islands, where we’ll land.”

“Little more to the west, my lad,” said Bart, after they had been sailing in silence for some time. “You’ll land at the Sandy Key, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Jack, shortly, as he sat there with eyes fixed and frowning brow.

“Poor old Abe!” said Bart to himself, as he gazed in turn at the ghastly object in the bottom of the boat. “One never used to think much of dying in the old days; but if one did, it was of being drowned at sea, washed ashore, and buried decently in the old church-yard atop of the hill. And now, old mate, after being a captain out here, we’re a-going to lie you over yonder in the warm, dry sand, where the sun always shines and the cocoa-nuts grow; but you’ll have no tombstone, lad, and no words writ, only such as is writ in her heart, for she loved you, Abe, old mate, more than she’ll ever love me.”

A sharp look-out was kept for the schooner; but though the horizon was swept again and again, she was not in sight.

“It’s one o’ Black Mazzard’s games, lad,” Bart said at last, as a faint, cloudy appearance was visible on their bow; “but we shall find him yonder.”

Jack bowed his head in acquiescence, and the boat skimmed rapidly on, till the cloudy appearance began to take the form of a low island, from whose sandy shore cocoa-nut palms waved their great pinnate leaves, looking lace-like against the clear blue sky.

In a couple of hours they were close in, and the boat was run up in a sandy cove sheltered by a point, with the result that, instead of the tide setting in heavy rollers, there was just a soft curl over the waves, and a sparkling foam to wash the fine pebble sand.

“No,” said Bart, speaking as if in answer to his companion.

“Never mind,” said Jack, quietly. “We shall find the schooner by-and-by. Let’s land.”

Bart assisted to draw the boat well ashore, waiting till a good-sized wave came, and then running the boat on its crest some yards farther up the sand.

He looked up then at Jack, who nodded his head, and the canvas-draped figure was lifted out and borne up to where the sand lay soft and thick, as it had been drifted by the gales of the stormy season.

As Bart bent beneath his burden he nearly trod upon one of the great land-crabs, with which the place seemed to swarm, the hideous creatures scuffling awkwardly out of his way, snapping their claws menacingly, and rolling their horrible eyes, which stood out on foot-stalks far from their shelly orbits, and gave them a weird look as they seemed to be inspecting the canvas-wrapped bag.

“Here?” said Bart, as they reached a smooth spot, where a clump of palms made a slight shade.

“Yes,” was the laconic reply.

“No tools,” said Bart, half to himself; “but it don’t matter, Abe, old lad. I can scratch a grave for you, and cut your name arter with my knife on one o’ them trees.”