Commodore Junk

The task was laborious, but he drew himself up and up, climbing slowly, and then he suddenly ceased, uttered a terrible cry, and once more there was a splash, the lapping and whispering of the water, and silence.

He was at the surface again, swimming hard in the darkness and striving once more to reach the place where he had climbed; but in the darkness he swam in quite a different direction, and his hoarse panting rose again, quick and agitated now, the strokes were taken more rapidly, and like a rat drowning in a tub of water, the miserable wretch toiled on, swimming more and more rapidly and clutching at the wall.

Once an inequality gave him a few moments’ rest, and he clung desperately, uttering the most harrowing cries, but only to fall back with a heavy splash. Then he was up once more fighting for life, and the vast tank echoed with his gurgling appeals for help.

Again they were silenced, and the water whispered and lapped and echoed.

There was a splash, a hoarse gurgle, a beating of the water as a dog beats it before it sinks.

Again silence and the whispering and lapping against the sides more faint; then a gurgling sound, the water beat once or twice, a fainter echo or two, and then what sounded like a sigh of relief, and a silence that was indeed the silence of death.

Suddenly the silence in that darkness was broken, for a hoarse voice said —

“Climb up!”

“Climb!” exclaimed Humphrey, who seemed to have recovered his voice, while his frozen energies appeared to expand.

“Yes. Climb. I can hold you thus, but no more. Try and obtain a foothold.”

Humphrey obeyed as one obeys who feels a stronger will acting upon him.

“Can you keep my hands fast?” he said. “They are numbed.”

“Yes. You shall not slip now. Climb!”

Humphrey obeyed, and placed his feet upon a projection; but it gave way, and a great stone forced from the wall by his weight fell down with a splash which roused the echoes once more.

Humphrey felt half-paralysed again; but the voice above was once more raised.

“Now,” it said, “there must be foothold in that spot where the stone fell. Try.”

The young officer obeyed, and rousing himself for a supreme effort as his last before complete inaction set in, he strove hard. The hands seemed like steel bands about his wrists, and his struggle sent the blood coursing once more through his nerveless arms. Then, with a perfect avalanche of stones falling from the crumbling side, he strove and strained, and, how he knew not, found foothold, drew himself up, and half crawling, half dragged by the buccaneer as he backed up the slope, reached the level part of the passage between the entrance and the doorway of the inner temple, where he subsided on the stones, panting, exhausted, and with an icy feeling running through his nerves.

“Commodore Junk,” he whispered hoarsely as he lay in the semi-darkness, “you have saved my life.”

“As you saved mine.”

Those two lay there in the gloomy passage listening to the solemn whisperings and lappings of the water, which seemed to be continued for an almost interminable time before they died out, and once more all was silent. But the expectancy remained. It seemed to both that at any moment the miserable would-be assassin might rise to the surface and shriek for help, or that perhaps he was still above water, clinging to the side of the cenote, paralysed with fear, and that as soon as he recovered himself he would make the hideous gulf echo with his appeals.

By degrees, though, as the heavy laboured panting of their breasts ceased, and their hearts ceased beating so tumultuously, a more matter-of-fact way of looking at their position came over them.

“Try if you can walk now,” said the buccaneer in a low voice. “You will be better in your own place.”

“Yes – soon,” replied Humphrey, abruptly; and once more there was silence, a silence broken at last by the buccaneer.

“Captain Armstrong,” he said softly, at last, “surely we can now be friends!”

“Friends? No! Why can we?” cried Humphrey, angrily.

“Because I claim your life, the life that I saved, as mine – because I owe you mine!”

“No, no! I tell you it is impossible! Enemies, sir, enemies to the bitter end. You forget why I came out here!”

“No,” said the buccaneer, sadly. “You came to take my life – to destroy my people – but Fate said otherwise, and you became my prisoner – your life forfeited to me!”

“A life you dare not take!” cried Humphrey, sternly. “I am one of the king’s officers – your king’s men.”

“I have no king!”

“Nonsense, man! You are a subject of His Majesty King George.”

“No!” cried the buccaneer. “When that monarch ceased to give his people the protection they asked, and cruelly and unjustly banished them across the seas for no greater crime than defending a sister’s honour from a villain, that king deserved no more obedience from those he wronged.”

“The king – did this?” said Humphrey, wonderingly, as he gazed full in the speaker’s face, struggling the while to grasp the clues of something misty in his mind – a something which he felt he ought to know, and which escaped him all the while.

“The king! Well, no; but his people whom he entrusts with the care of his laws.”

“Stop!” cried Humphrey, raising himself upon one arm and gazing eagerly in the buccaneer’s face; “a sister’s honour – defended – punished – sent away for that! No; it is impossible! Yes – ah! I know you now! Abel Dell!”

The buccaneer shrank back, gazing at him wildly.

“That is what always seemed struggling in my brain,” cried Humphrey, excitedly. “Of course, I know you now. And you were sent over here – a convict, and escaped.”

The buccaneer hesitated for a few moments, with the deep colour going and coming in his face.

“Yes,” he said, at last. “Abel Dell escaped from the dreary plantation where he laboured.”

“And his sister!”

“You remember her story!”

“Remember! Yes,” cried Humphrey. “She disappeared from near Dartmouth years ago.”

“Yes.”

“What became of her – poor girl?” said Humphrey, earnestly; and the buccaneer’s cheeks coloured as the words of pity fell.

“She joined her brother out here.”

“But he was a convict.”

“She helped him to escape.”

“I see it all,” cried Humphrey, eagerly; “and he became the pirate – and you became the pirate – the buccaneer, Commodore Junk.”

“Yes.”

“Good heavens!” ejaculated Humphrey. “And the sister – your sister, man the handsome, dark girl whom my cousin – Oh, hang cousin James! What a scoundrel he could be!”

It was the sturdy, outspoken exclamation of an honest English gentleman, and as the buccaneer heard it, Humphrey felt his hand seized in a firm grip, to be held for a few moments and then dropped.

“But he’s dead,” continued Humphrey. “Let him rest. But tell me – the sister – Oh!”

A long look of apology and pity followed the ejaculation, as Humphrey recalled the scene in the temple, where the long coffin lay draped with the Union Jack – the anguish of the figure on its knees, and the passionate words of adjuration and prayer. It was as if a veil which hid his companion’s character from him had been suddenly torn aside, and a look of sympathy beamed from his eyes as he stretched out his hand in a frank, manly fashion.

“I beg your pardon,” he cried, softly. “I did not know all this. I am sorry I have been so abrupt in what I said.”

“I have nothing to forgive,” said the buccaneer, warmly, and his swarthy cheeks glowed as Humphrey gazed earnestly in his eyes.

“And for the sake of brave old Devon and home you spared my life and treated me as you have?”

“Not for the sake of brave old Devon,” said the buccaneer, gravely, “but for your own. Now, Captain Humphrey Armstrong, can we be friends?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Humphrey, eagerly, as he stretched out his hand. “No!” he cried, letting it fall. “It is impossible, sir. I have my duty to do to my king and those I’ve left at home. I am your prisoner; do with me as you please, for, as a gentleman, I tell you that what you ask is impossible. We are enemies, and I must escape. When I do escape my task begins again – to root out your nest of hornets. So for heaven’s sake, for the sake of what is past, the day I escape provide for your own safety; for my duty I must do!”

“Then you refuse me your friendship?”

“Yes. I am your enemy, sworn to do a certain duty; but I shall escape when the time has come, I can say no more.”

Chapter Thirty

Dinny’s History

“No, sor,” said Dinny, one morning, “the captain thought that as two of ’em had got their doses there ought to be no more killing. Faix, he behaved like a lion when he came up that day. There was Black Mazzard and five-and-twenty more of ’em as had been over-persuaded by him, all shut up with plenty of firearms in the powder magazine. ‘Don’t go nigh ’em – it’s madness,’ says the captain; but he goes into his place and comes out again with a couple of pishtles shtuck in his belt, and his best sword on – the one wid an edge as you could show to your beard and it would all come off at wanst, knowing as it was no use to make a foight of it again’ such a blade, as a strong beard will against a bad rashier. And then he sings out: ‘Now, my lads, who’s for me?’”

“And they all rushed to his aid!” said Humphrey.

“Well, you see, sor,” said Dinny, “it wasn’t quite a rush. Lads don’t go rushing into a powdher-magazine when there’s an ugly black divil aside as swears if annybody comes anigh, he’ll blow the whole place up into smithereens.”

“They never let him go alone?” cried Humphrey.

“Well, no, sor,” said Dinny; “it wasn’t exackly alone, bekase old Bart run up, and then two more walked up, and another one wint up to him in a slow crawl that made me want to take him by the scruff o’ the neck and the sate of his breeches, and pitch him down into that great hole yander, where that blagguard was drowned. ‘Oh, ye cowardly cur!’ I says to him, quite red-hot like, sor – ‘Oh, ye cowardly cur! I says, you as was always boasting and bragging about and playing at Hector an’ Archillus, and bouncing as if ye were a big ancient foighting man, and ye goo crawling up to yer captain that way!’ And then he whispers to me confidential-like, he does: ‘Och, Dinny, owld lad!’ he says, ‘it isn’t the foighting I mind; but I’m thinking of my poor mother,’ he says. ‘Ah, get out, ye coward!’ I says; ‘ye’re thinking of yerself.’ ‘Divil a bit!’ he says; ‘it’s the powdher I’m thinking of. I’d foight anny man, or anny two men in the camp; but I can’t fale to care about an encounter wid tin tons o’ divil’s dust!’ Oh, I did give it him, sor!”

“You had better have gone yourself than stood preaching to another,” said Humphrey, indignantly.

“That’s jist what I said to meself, sor,” cried Dinny; “but the baste wouldn’t listen. ‘Och!’ he says, ‘what would my mother’s falings be if she was to hear that instead of dying properly of a broken head she heard that I was blown all into smithereens, widout a dacent-sized pace left for the praste to say a blessing over?’ ‘Ah, Dinny Kelly!’ I says, ‘that’s a mane dirthy excuse, because ye’re afraid; for the divil a bit wid your mother care what became of such an ill-looking, black buccaneer of a blagguard as ye are!’”

“Why, you’re talking about yourself!” cried Humphrey.

“For sartin, sir. Sure, there isn’t another boy in the whole crew that I dare to spake to in such an onrespectful way.”

“Why, Dinny, man, you did go?”

“Yes, sor, I wint, but in a way that I’m quite ashamed of. I didn’t think I was such a coward. But there! I niver turned back from a shtick in me loife, and I faced the powdher afther all; but oh, it’s ashamed of meself intirely I am! A Kelly wouldn’t have felt like that if it hadn’t been for the climate. It’s the hot weather takes it out of ye, sor. Why I felt over that job as a man couldn’t fale in me own counthry.”

“Well, go on.”

“That’s what I did, sor. I stuck close to the captain’s tail as he wint sthraight up to the door – ye know the door, sor, where the owld gintleman’s sitting over the porch, looking down at ye wid a plisant smile of his own.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Go on.”

“Well, sor, I did go on; and there stood Black Mazzard wid the two biggest pishtols we have on the primises, wan in each hand and the other shtuck in his belt. ‘Kim another shtep,’ he says, ‘and I’ll blow the place about your heads!’ Och, and I looked up thin to ask a blessing on meself before I wint up in such a hurry that I hadn’t time to confess; and bedad there was the owld gintleman expanding his mouth into the widest grin I iver saw in me life!”

“And the Commodore, what did he do?” cried Humphrey, impatiently.

“What did he do?”

“Yes – draw his men off?”

“Faix, he drew Black Mazzard’s blood off, for he wint shtraight at him, knocking one pishtol up in the air wid his hand as he did so. I niver saw annything so nate in me life, sor. I told ye he’d got his best sword on – the sharp one.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Well, sor, he seemed just to lift it up and howld it forninst him, as I’m howlding this knife – so; and it wint right through Black Mazzard; just bechuckst his shoulder and his neck; and as he pulls it out he takes him by the collar and drags him down upon his knees.

“‘Come out, ye mad-brained idiots!’ he shouts at the lads inside – ‘come out, or I’ll fire the powdher meself!’

“Bedad, sor, ye might have heard a pin dhrop if there’d bin wan there, but there wasn’t; and we heard Black Mazzard’s pishtol dhrop instead – the big one being on the pavemint, where it went off bang and shot a corner off a big shtone. But nobody came from inside the magazine, and the owld gintleman grinned more and more, and seemed to rowl his oies; and I belave he wanted to hear the owld place go up. And there you could hear thim inside buzzing about like my mother’s bees in the sthraw hive, when ye give it a larrup on the top wid a shtick.”

Dinny gave his head a nod, and went on. “That roused up the Captain, and he roars out – ‘Here, Dinny – Dick – Bart,’ he says, ‘go in and fetch out these idiots.’ And I shpat in me fist, and ran in wid the other two. ‘Now, Dinny, my lad,’ I says to meself, ‘if ye’re blown up it’ll be bad for ye, but ye’ll be blown up towards heaven, and that’s a dale better than being blown down.’ And avore I knew where I was, I was right in among the lads, about foive-and-twenty of them; and then talk about a foight, sor! Ah, musha, it was awful!”

“Did they make such a desperate defence!”

“Deshperate, sor! Oh, that don’t describe it! Bedad, I nivver saw anything like it in me loife!”

“Were there many killed? Were you wounded!”

“Killed! Wounded! Did ye iver see a flock o’ sheep when a big dog goes at ’em, sor?”

“Often, in Devon.”

“Ah, then it’s the same as it would be in Oireland. Bedad, sor, the name of the captain, and seeing Black Mazzard tuk, was enough. They all walked out and pitched their swords and pishtols down, in a hape before the shkipper and then stands in a row like sodgers; sure and it’s meself that had some of the drilling of them.

“‘Come here, Bart,’ says the shkipper then; and as Bart goes up, the captain gives Black Mazzard a shove like and throws him down. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘put your foot on this dog’s throat.’ Bart had it there before ye knew where ye were, and thin if the skipper didn’t go right up to the row of min and walks slowly along ’em, looking ’em wan by wan in the face wid his dark oi, sor. And he made ’em turn white and shiver, he did, sor, till he’d looked ’em all down, and then he shteps out, little shtiff fellow as he is, and he says:

“‘You fools, to be led away by a thing like that! How shall I punish ’em, Dinny?’ he says, turning to me.

“‘Sure, captain,’ I says, ‘they are all shtanding nate and handy, and if ye give me word, I’ll shtand at wan ind and send a bullet through the lot, and there’ll be no waste.’

“‘Pah!’ he says, ‘I don’t make war on the lads who’ve fought by my side. Go back to your quarthers,’ he says, ‘and if ye turn again me once more I’ll give ye such a punishment as ye disarve. You shall have your Captain Mazzard.’

“‘D’ye hear that, ye divils?’ I says, for I couldn’t stop meself, sor; and they give three cheers for the captain and wint off to quarthers; and that was all.”

“But Mazzard – what of him!”

“Oh, he’s putt away in as nice and plisant a place as a gintleman could wish to have, sor. It’s cool, and undherground, and the only way to it is down through a hole in a stone like Father O’Grady’s well, and Bart fades him wid food at the ind of a long shtick. He’s safe enough now. But sure and the best thing for everyone would be for him to doi by accident through Bart forgetting to take him his mate.”

“Starve him to death?” cried Humphrey.

“Faix, no, not a bit of it, sor. He’s a bad one anny way, and if he died like a sparrow in a cage, sure it would be a blessing for all of us.”

“And the widow Greenheys, Dinny!”

“Whisht! be aisy, sor, wid a lady’s name.”

“Dinny,” cried Humphrey sternly, “how long are you going to play fast and loose with me!”

“‘An’ is it me ye mane?’ Sure I couldn’t do it, sor.”

“Dinny, now is the time to escape, now that Mistress Greenheys is safe from the persecution of that scoundrel.”

“Oh, whisht, sor! whisht! Sure and I’ve grown shtrong again, and ye want to timpt me from the ways of vartue.”

“Nonsense, man! Your plan – the explosion!”

“Oh, faix! It was only me fun. I couldn’t do such a thing.”

“Do you want that man to escape or be set free, and lay claim again to that poor little woman?”

“Oh, the poor little crathur! no.”

“Then help me to escape.”

“Sure and ye’re good friends wid the shkipper and don’t want to go, sor.”

“I must and will escape, Dinny, and you shall help me for Mistress Greenheys’ sake.”

“Ah, and it’s touching me on me soft place ye are,” said Dinny pitifully.

“For her sake, I tell you, and you shall be happy with her at home.”

“Sure an’ I haven’t got an ‘at home,’” said Dinny.

“Then, as I promised you, I’ll make you one. Come, save her from that scoundrel.”

“Faix, an’ he is a blagguard anny way.”

“Who is?” said a deep voice.

“Yerself for wan,” said Dinny. “Sure, and Black Mazzard another; and I’m telling the captain here that he needn’t grumble and call himself a prishner, for he’s rowling in comfort; while as to Black Mazzard, ah, he should see his cell!”

Bart scowled and stopped till Dinny had finished and gone, leaving the prisoner alone with his thoughts, which were of liberty.

Chapter Thirty One

The Plan of Escape

Humphrey Armstrong sat gazing through the opening of his prison at the dark forest vistas and dreamed of England and its verdant fields and gold-cupped meadows.

The whole business connected with the Dells came back to him, and with it the figure of the handsome rustic fisher-girl standing as it were vividly before him, and with her his cousin, the cause of all the suffering.

“How strange it is,” he thought again, “that I should be brought into contact with her brother like this! Poor fellow! more sinned against than sinning; and as for her – ”

“Poor girl!”

There was a slight sound as of someone breathing hard, and the buccaneer stood before him.

He smiled gravely, and held out his hand; but Humphrey did not take it, and they remained gazing at each other for some few minutes in silence.

“Have you thought better of my proposals, Captain Armstrong?” said the buccaneer at last. “Are we to be friends?”

“It is impossible, sir,” replied Humphrey, quietly. “After what has passed I grieve to have to reject your advances; but you must see that it can never be.”

“I can wait,” said the buccaneer, patiently. “The time will come.”

Humphrey shook his head.

“Is there anything you want?”

“Yes,” said Humphrey, sharply. “Liberty.”

“Take it. It is in my hand.”

“Liberty chained to you, sir! No. There, place me under no further obligations, sir. I will not fight against you; but pray understand that what you ask can never be.”

“I can wait,” said the buccaneer again, quietly, as he let his eyes rest for a few moments upon his prisoner’s face, and then left the room.

Humphrey sprang up impatiently, and was about to pace the chamber like a wild beast in a cage when he heard voices in the corridor, and directly after Dinny entered. The man looked troubled and stood listening, then he stole to the curtain and went down the corridor, to stay away for quite a quarter of an hour before he returned.

“He’s gone, sor, safe enough. Faix, captain, dear, I fale as if I ought to be hung.”

“Hung, Dinny?”

“Yis, sor, for threachery to as good a friend as I iver had.”

“What do you mean, Dinny?” cried Humphrey, eagerly.

“Mane, sor! Why, that all the grate min in the world, from Caesar down to Pater Donovan, have had their wake side. I’ve got mine, and I’m a fallen man.”

“Speak out plainly,” cried Humphrey, flushing.

“That’s just what I’m doing, sor,” said Dinny, with a soft smile. “It’s Nature, sor. She was bad enough, and thin you helped her. Oh, there’s no foighting agen it! It used to be so in Oireland. She says to the little birds in the spring – choose your partners, darlin’s, she says, and they chose ’em; and she said the same to human man, and he chooses his.”

“Oh, Dinny, if you hadn’t quite such a long tongue!” cried Humphrey.

“Faix, it’s a regular sarpint, sor, for length, and just as desaving; but as I was saying, what Nature says in owld Oireland in the spring she says out here in this baste of a counthry where there’s nayther spring, summer, autumn, nor winther – nothing but a sort of moshposh of sunshine and howling thunderstorms.”

“And – ”

“Yis, sor, that’s I’m a fallen man.”

“And will you really help me to escape!”

“Whisht, sor! What are ye thinking about? Spaking aloud in a counthry where the parrots can talk like Christians and the threes is full of ugly little chaps, who sit and watch ye and say nothing, but howld toight wid their tails, and thin go and whishper their saycrets to one another, and look as knowing as Barny Higgins’s pig.”

“Dinny, will you speak sensibly?”

“Sinsibly! Why, what d’ye call this? Ar’n’t I tellin’ ye that it’s been too much for me wid Black Mazzard shut up in his cage and the purty widow free to do as she plases; and sure and she plases me, sor, and I’m a fallen man.”

“You’ll help me?”

“Yis, sor, if ye’ll go down on your bended knees and take an oath.”

“Oath! What oath?”

“Niver to bethray or take part in annything agen Commodore Junk, the thruest, bravest boy that iver stepped.”

“You are right, Dinny. He is a brave man, and I swear that I will not betray or attack him, come what may. Get me my liberty and the liberty of my men, and I’ll be content. Stop! I cannot go so far as that; there are my men. I swear that I will not attack your captain without giving him due notice, that he may escape; but this nest of hornets must be burned out, and my men freed.”

“Ah, well, we won’t haggle about thrifles, sor. Swear this, sor: – Ye’ll behave to the captain like a gintleman.”

“I’ll swear I will.”

“Bedad, then, I’m wid ye; and there’s one more favour I’ll be asking ye, sor.”

“What is it!”

“Whin we get safe home ye’ll come and give Misthress Greenheys away.”

“Yes, yes, Dinny. And now, tell me, what will you do?”

“Sure an’ there’s no betther way than I said before. I’ll have an oi on a boat, and see that there’s some wather and bishkits and a gun in her; and thin, sor, I’ll set light to the magazine, for it’ll be a rale plisure to blow up that owld gintleman as is always leering and grinning at me as much as to say, ‘Och, Dinny, ye divil, I know all about the widdy, and first time ye go to see her I’ll tell Black Mazzard, and then, ’ware, hawk!’”

“But when shall you do this?”

“First toime it seems aisy, sor.”

“In the night?”

“Av coorse, sor.”

“And how shall I know?”

“Hark at that, now! Faix, ar’n’t I telling ye, sor, that I’ll blow up the magazine! Sure an’ ye don’t pay so much attention to it when ye go to shleep that ye won’t hear that?”

“Of course I shall hear it,” said Humphrey, excitedly.

“Thin, that’s the signal, sor; and when it goes fizz, lie riddy and wait till I kim to ye, and thin good bye to the rover’s loife, and Black Mazzard will see the darlin’ no more. Whisht!”