To Have and to Hold Part 23

The light died from the west and from the sea beneath, and the night fell. When with the darkness the sea fowl ceased their clamor, a dreadful silence suddenly enfolded us. The rush of the surf made no difference; the ear heard it, but to the mind there was no sound. The sky was thick with stars; every moment one shot, and the trail of white fire it left behind melted into the night silently like snowflakes.

There was no wind. The moon rose out of the sea, and lent the sandy isle her own pallor. Here and there, back amongst the dunes, the branches of a low and leafless tree writhed upward like dark fingers thrust from out the spectral earth. The ocean, quiet now, dreamed beneath the moon and cared not for the five lives it had cast upon that span of sand.

We piled driftwood and tangles of seaweed upon our fire, and it flamed and roared and broke the silence. Diccon, going to the landward side of the islet, found some oysters, which we roasted and ate; but we had nor wine nor water with which to wash them down.

"At least there are here no foes to fear," quoth my lord. "We may all sleep to-night; and zooks! we shall need it!" He spoke frankly, with an open face.

"I will take one watch, if you will take the other," I said to the minister.

He nodded. "I will watch until midnight."

It was long past that time when he roused me from where I lay at Mistress Percy's feet.

"I should have relieved you long ago," I told him.

He smiled. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone upon and softened his rugged features. I thought I had never seen a face so filled with tenderness and hope and a sort of patient power. "I have been with G.o.d,"

he said simply. "The starry skies and the great ocean and the little sh.e.l.ls beneath my hand,--how wonderful are thy works, O Lord! What is man that thou art mindful of him? And yet not a sparrow falleth"--I rose and sat by the fire, and he laid himself down upon the sand beside me.

"Master Sparrow," I asked, "have you ever suffered thirst?"

"No," he answered. We spoke in low tones, lest we should wake her.

Diccon and my lord, upon the other side of the fire, were sleeping heavily.

"I have," I said. "Once I lay upon a field of battle throughout a summer day, sore wounded and with my dead horse across my body. I shall forget the horror of that lost field and the torment of that weight before I forget the thirst."

"You think there is no hope?"

"What hope should there be?"

He was silent. Presently he turned and looked at the King's ward where she lay in the rosy light; then his eyes came back to mine.

"If it comes to the worst I shall put her out of her torment," I said.

He bowed his head and we sat in silence, our gaze upon the ground between us, listening to the low thunder of the surf and the crackling of the fire. "I love her," I said at last. "G.o.d help me!"

He put his finger to his lips. She had stirred and opened her eyes. I knelt beside her, and asked her how she did and if she wanted aught.

"It is warm," she said wonderingly.

"You are no longer in the boat," I told her. "You are safe upon the land. You have been sleeping here by the fire that we kindled."

An exquisite smile just lit her face, and her eyelids drooped again.

"I am so tired," she said drowsily, "that I will sleep a little longer.

Will you bring me some water, Captain Percy? I am very thirsty."

After a moment I said gently, "I will go get it, madam." She made no answer; she was already asleep. Nor did Sparrow and I speak again. He laid himself down with his face to the ocean, and I sat with my head in my hands, and thought and thought, to no purpose.

CHAPTER XXI IN WHICH A GRAVE IS DIGGED

WHEN the stars had gone out and the moon begun to pale, I raised my face from my hands. Only a few glowing embers remained of the fire, and the driftwood that we had collected was exhausted. I thought that I would gather more, and build up the fire against the time when the others should awake. The driftwood lay in greatest quant.i.ty some distance up the beach, against a low ridge of sand dunes. Beyond these the islet tapered off to a long gray point of sand and sh.e.l.l. Walking toward this point in the first pale light of dawn, I chanced to raise my eyes, and beheld riding at anchor beyond the spit of sand a s.h.i.+p.

I stopped short and rubbed my eyes. She lay there on the sleeping ocean like a dream s.h.i.+p, her masts and rigging black against the pallid sky, the mist that rested upon the sea enfolding half her hull. She might have been of three hundred tons burthen; she was black and two-decked, and very high at p.o.o.p and forecastle, and she was heavily armed. My eyes traveled from the s.h.i.+p to the sh.o.r.e, and there dragged up on the point, the oars within it, was a boat.

At the head of the beach, beyond the line of sh.e.l.l and weed, the sand lay piled in heaps. With these friendly hillocks between me and the sea, I crept on as silently as I might, until I reached a point just above the boat. Here I first heard voices. I went a little further, then knelt, and, parting the long coa.r.s.e gra.s.s that filled the hollow between two hillocks, looked out upon two men who were digging a grave.

They dug in a furious hurry, throwing the sand to left and right, and cursing as they dug. They were powerful men, of a most villainous cast of countenance, and dressed very oddly. One with a s.h.i.+rt of coa.r.s.est dowlas, and a filthy rag tying up a broken head, yet wore velvet breeches, and wiped the sweat from his face with a wrought handkerchief; the other topped a suit of shreds and patches with a fine bushy ruff, and swung from one ragged shoulder a cloak of grogram lined with taffeta. On the ground, to one side of them, lay something long and wrapped in white.

As they dug and cursed, the light strengthened. The east changed from gray to pale rose, from rose to a splendid crimson shot with gold. The mist lifted and the sea burned red. Two boats were lowered from the s.h.i.+p, and came swiftly toward the point.

"Here they are at last," growled the gravedigger with the broken head and velvet breeches.

"They've taken their time," snarled his companion, "and us two here on this d-d island with a dead man the whole ghost's hour. Boarding a s.h.i.+p's nothing, but to dig a grave on the land before c.o.c.kcrow, with the man you're to put in it looking at you! Why could n't he be buried at sea, decent and respectable, like other folk?"

"It was his will,--that's all I know," said the first; "just as it was his will, when he found he was a dying man, to come booming away from the gold seas up here to a land where there is n't no gold, and never will be. Belike he thought he'd find waiting for him at the bottom of the sea, all along from the Lucayas to Cartagena, the many he sent there afore he died. And Captain Paradise, he says, says he: 'It's ill crossing a dead man. We'll obey him this once more'"--

"Captain Paradise!" cried he of the ruff. "Who made him captain?--curse him!"

His fellow straightened himself with a jerk. "Who made him captain? The s.h.i.+p will make him captain. Who else should be captain?"

"Red Gil!"

"Red Gil!" exclaimed the other. "I'd rather have the Spaniard!"

"The Spaniard would do well enough, if the rest of us were n't English.

If hating every other Spaniard would do it, he'd be English fast enough."

The scoundrel with the broken head burst into a loud laugh. "D' ye remember the bark we took off Porto Bello, with the priests aboard? Oho!

Oho!"

The rogue with the ruff grinned. "I reckon the padres remember it, and find h.e.l.l easy lying. This hole's deep enough, I'm thinking."

They both clambered out, and one squatted at the head of the grave and mopped his face with his delicate handkerchief, while the other swung his fine cloak with an air and dug his bare toes in the sand.

The two boats now grated upon the beach, and several of their occupants, springing out, dragged them up on the sand.

"We'll never get another like him that's gone," said the worthy at the head of the grave, gloomily regarding the something wrapped in white.

"That's gospel truth," a.s.sented the other, with a prodigious sigh. "He was a man what was a man. He never stuck at nothing. Don or priest, man or woman, good red gold or dirty silver,--it was all one to him. But he's dead and gone!"

"Now, if we had a captain like Kirby," suggested the first.

"Kirby keeps to the Summer Isles," said the second. "'T is n't often now that he swoops down as far as the Indies."

The man with the broken head laughed. "When he does, there's a noise in that part of the world."

"And that's gospel truth, too," swore the other, with an oath of admiration.