“THERE, there, Master Dick, don’t fluster yourself so; ’twill only smart your arm the more.”

Anny spoke timidly and shrank behind one of the high-backed seats in the old Ship’s kitchen as Black’erchief Dick, his eyes dark with anger, raved up and down the room. It was some three weeks after the affair with the Preventative folk and the Island had once more regained its usual serenity.

“You are bewitched, girl; what are you to refuse the love of a man like me?” Dick said angrily, and then as she did not answer, he continued more softly, “Why not come with me, beautiful Ann of the Island? We will leave this God-forsaken mud heap and sail away to Spain, cross the great river to the beautiful country beyond, where all the grass is green and all the plants have bright flowers. What is there about this rum-sodden drinking hut that you will not leave it for Utopia?”

“I never heard of Utopia and Mersea is good enough for me,” said Anny stolidly. “Besides, if you want to marry me, why not tell everybody and have a proper wedding by the parson from the West, but even then I wouldn’t marry you; I don’t love you, sir!”

The Spaniard paused suddenly in his walk up and down and looked at her.

“Never has a woman said so much to me before,” he said slowly, his voice soft and smooth as ever.

Anny shrugged her shoulders.

“’Tis time then one should,” she laughed. “Rest your arm, sir, and leave worrying a poor girl that has work and enough to do, now that Mistress Sue be for ever out along the beach with Big French.” She turned away.

The Spaniard was beside her in a second and his slim white fingers fastened round her wrist.

“Oh, you silly little wench,” he said with a laugh in his voice, “do you think you can turn off Dick Delfazio easily like that? Mistress, I am of some account on the Island. Is a man who kills six Preventative folk single-handed to be stayed in his heart’s desire by a little serving-maid, think you?”

“What would you do?” Anny, her big green eyes wide with apprehension, and her back against the wall, jerked out the question fearfully.

Black’erchief Dick looked at her in admiration, and, swinging her toward him, he put his arm round her waist, and Hal, passing the window at that moment, suddenly changed his mind about entering the kitchen and marched off down the garden coughing and swearing to himself.

Anny freed herself in a moment and stood with her arms akimbo.

“An you were not wounded and a customer, I should smack you across the mouth,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

Dick laughed.

“Come, we should not quarrel, sweetheart,” he said. “When you are aboard the Anny——”

“I pray God I shall be dead before,” the girl interrupted angrily, her tears overflowing and rolling down her cheeks.

Dick caught her hand again and looked at her fiercely.

“I have played enough, lass,” he said. “You must come off secretly with me or——”

Anny laughed.

“Must?” she said. “Must, indeed! And whyfore? I tell you, sir, I hate you, and if you pursue me more I’ll have the landlord at you.”

“The landlord!” Dick sneered.

Anny was desperate.

“Or Hal Grame,” she said.

Dick threw back his head and laughed aloud.

“A tapster! Oh, pretty, pretty little wench, you are very amusing!”

The girl wrenched her hand away.

“Master Black’erchief Dick,” she said slowly, her little face very white and grave, “will you understand please that I do not love you, I do not even like you, and I will never go anywhere with you of my own will?”

The Spaniard stepped back a pace or two. He seemed to have realized at last that she was speaking the truth, for he looked at the earnest little face in front of him with a mixture of amazement and anger.

“You do not like me?” he said, his voice losing all its music and becoming almost childish in its extreme surprise.

Anny nodded.

“No, I don’t like you. Will you please go away and leave me to my work, sir?”

Dick’s anger rose up and boiled over in a moment.

“I tell you, you shall come, you pretty little fool,” he swore. “Or——” he paused suddenly. “Is there some other man you love? Tell me, tell me!”

Anny cowered before his angry, distorted face.

“No, sir, of course not, no, sir!” she lied vehemently. “Let go my wrist, sir. Marry, how you hurt me!”

“This great hulking French, now, have you set your heart on him? Speak out, girl!”

“No, sir, of course not!” Anny’s amazement was too genuine to be mistaken.

“Yet you will not marry me?” Dick spoke sharply.

“No—no—no, sir! Go away!”

Dick turned on his heel and went to the door.

“By this knife,” he said, turning on the threshold, “you shall come with me. I wish it, and never yet have I been prevented from my desires.”

“Lord! you’re mad!” Anny flung after him.

“Ay, mad for you, mistress.”

Dick’s voice had grown soft again and he laughed unpleasantly as he strolled off down the yard. Anny watched him go and then turned back to her work.

“Now I wonder will I ever be married at all?” she said to herself, as she picked up a broom from the chimney-corner and began to sweep away the dirty sand which lay all over the floor.

Blueneck was sitting on the sea-wall, thinking regretfully of Habakkuk Coot, when Black’erchief Dick strode up and without speaking dropped down beside him.

Blueneck looked at his captain slily and without turning his head.

Dick was smiling sardonically and his knife slid in and out the slim white fingers of his right hand.

Blueneck considered it prudent to sit still and say nothing.

Dick did not speak for some time, and Blueneck began to get uneasy. Finally he rose to his feet as nonchalantly as he was able and started to stroll off down the beach.

Dick raised his eyes.

“Sit where you are, dog!” he said sharply.

Blueneck slid back to his place without a murmur.

The silence continued. At last, however, Dick put the knife back in his belt and turned his sharp eyes on his mate.

“The lass refuses me,” he said.

Blueneck shrugged his shoulders.

“These country wenches be mighty particular about marrying their husbands and so forth,” he observed.

Dick raised his eyebrows.

“I have said I will wed her,” he said stiffly.

Blueneck’s jaw dropped.

“Wed her?” he ejaculated. “Why, Cap’n, you must——” He broke off lamely.

Dick snapped out the question, “Must what?”

Blueneck did not vouchsafe an answer, and they sat in silence for a minute or two.

Dick began to speak, slowly and carefully, as though he was thinking out each word separately.

“There is a thing on this earth, my friend, called love. And a very vile and evil thing it is. It descends upon a man unawares like a shower of rain, and soaks through to his very marrow. It takes away his energy, his pride in his work and person,” he looked down at the lace ruffles at his cuff and stroked them lovingly, and then added, “and I have reason to think that great men feel it more sharply than others.”

Blueneck glanced quickly at the dapper little figure by his side, and shrugged his shoulders.

The Captain was showing signs of strain, he thought.

“Must the wench be willing?” he asked. “Why not carry her off?”

Dick shrugged his shoulders.

“I would rather she were willing,” he said.

Blueneck looked at him, exasperated.

“Well, if you can’t persuade her I don’t know who can,” he muttered, but Dick did not hear him. He was smiling, his eyes half shut.

Blueneck spat.

“Bewitched!” he commented silently to himself. Then an idea struck him and he turned to the Captain.

“There’s Pet Salt,” he said. “She might do much.”

“Pet Salt?” Dick turned to him quickly. “Who’s she?”

Blueneck told the story of his night on Ben Farran’s boat with as much credit to himself as was possible.

Dick listened in silence until he had finished; then he rose to his feet.

“I will go to see this crone,” he said grandiloquently. “Lead me, dog!”

Pet Salt sat on the deck of her boat mending a net. She was mumbling to herself, and her old knotted finger-joints cracked as she fumbled about with the rough twine she was using. Beneath the hatches she could hear old Ben swearing loudly as he hunted among the empty rum kegs for one that still contained a little of the precious stuff. To judge from his language he had been so far unsuccessful and the woman shifted uneasily as she sat thinking of the beating he would give her if he found nothing.

It was then that she heard a voice calling her from the beach.

“Pet Salt! Pet Salt!”

Noisily she scrambled to her feet and hobbled over to the side of the hull, and looked down.

Dick and his mate stood together staring up at her.

“Good morning, mistress,” Dick began in his best manner.

Pet stared at him open-mouthed, her yellow teeth looking like fangs. She had never seen such finery.

Dick, although himself rather taken aback at Pet’s appearance, could not but feel flattered at her evident approval of his own.

Pet’s bleared eyes now fell on Blueneck and a shade of recognition passed over her wrinkled, spirit-sodden face.

“Oh! it’s you again, ronyon, hey?” she cried in her cracked crooning voice into which an eager note had crept. “You have no rum kegs slung about you, eh?”

Blueneck waved his hand impatiently.

“Throw down the ladder, that we may come up and talk with thee, hag,” he ordered peremptorily.

Pet hobbled off to obey him without a word, and Dick turned to his mate in something like admiration.

“You have been well schooled, friend,” he said approvingly. “Yours is an excellent way of dealing with crones.”

“Have a care!” called Pet from above as she threw the rope ladder over the side. The end passed within an inch of Blueneck’s shoulders and he looked up angrily.

Pet was leering at him from the deck.

“Come up, ronyon,” she said coaxingly.

Blueneck scaled the ladder in a minute and clambered on to the rolling deck beside her.

Dick followed, more dignified but not a whit less agile.

Once on deck he looked about him in disgust. The worm-eaten boards, the empty kegs and other lumber, and the general filthiness of the place disgusted the little Spaniard. His own brig was always kept neat and fastidiously clean.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“A very vile place in truth,” he observed, and then, turning to Pet, he raised his hat as gallantly as if she had been a duenna.

“I would descend and talk with thee on the shore, if you please, mistress,” he said. “This ship distresses me.”

He went again to the ladder, picking his way daintily across the dirty deck; slowly he climbed down again. Pet and Blueneck followed him without a word on to the sand again.

“Prithee, mistress, be seated,” said Dick, indicating a bank of seaweed and seating himself on a breakwater some four feet away.

Pet sat down heavily and looked from Dick to Blueneck in a half-witted, puzzled way, her big loose mouth sagging open, on one side showing the large yellow teeth, which so irritated Blueneck.

Suddenly she stretched out a bony hand toward Black’erchief Dick and began in a droning whine:

“May the Lord bless ye, fine gentleman; could ye spare a drop o’ rum for a poor woman to take to her man who is dying of cold? Old Pet Salt knows you, pretty sir. Old Pet don’t forget a generous face when she sees one. Pet remembers when she came to the Ship and you gave her a keg. Could you spare a little, fine gentleman?”

Dick stared at her; he remembered her now, and instinctively drew a little farther away.

“Hold thy peace, hag, and hark to me,” he said sharply, “and much rum may come of it—nay,” he continued as the old woman struggled to get to her feet and come toward him, “keep thy distance and let thy dull wit take in as much of this as it can. You have a granddaughter?”

A cunning light crept into the old bleared eyes.

“Ah!” she said, putting on a pathetic whine. “I have, God bless her pure heart and body. One my man loves dearly! What would you have with her, fine gentleman?”

Dick waved his hand.

“Woman,” he said softly, his voice taking on that musical quality which his enemies knew so well. “It would be well if thou and I knew each other’s mind a little more clearly—rum is a precious thing to you, eh?”

Pet’s eyes glistened and her lips moved without sound.

“I have much rum,” Dick went on, looking at the old woman steadily, “and I would wed your granddaughter.”

“Wed?” The exclamation escaped her before she could stop it.

Dick went on as though he had not heard her.

“At your boat and by a priest that I shall bring with me, I would wed her.”

“Oh!” Pet said, and smiled knowingly.

“But so far the lass will have none of me,” Dick continued, noting Pet’s amazement, “and so, mistress, I would wish you to persuade her to wed me here secretly.”

“Ay, and if I do?” Pet broke in.

“If you do, you earn enough rum to keep you and your husband in liquor for the rest of your life.”

Dick put his hands on his belt and looked at the old wretch quizzically.

Pet began to laugh. It was a terrible sound, half a wheeze and half a choke.

“I’ll persuade her,” she muttered.

Dick quickly put up one white beringed hand.

“Nay, mistress, you must use no violence on her,” he said, “neither must you harm her with spirit charms or other bedevilments; I would not have her hurt.”

Pet Salt looked at him out of the corner of her eye.

“I’ll not hurt your love, master,” she laughed. “She shall marry thee—and by a priest you bring—ha—ha!”

Blueneck had never seen his captain blush before and he now regarded the little Spaniard with great interest. The usually sallow skin was stained with a vermilion as he turned on the woman in anger.

“Keep to your promise then and be silent,” he said softly, “or by Heaven I’ll blow your pig-sty of a rat-ridden hulk off the Island.”

The woman looked at him, frightened for a moment, but soon she began to laugh.

“She shall wed thee, my pretty, fine gentleman, she shall wed thee—I’ll see to that,” she said, scrambling to her feet—“and the rum shall be paid, you promise, master?”

Dick nodded.

“I swear it,” he said. Then he got up and beckoned to Blueneck to follow him.

“Good-morrow, mistress,” he said, taking off his hat.

Pet stood looking after them.

“I’ll coax her,” the woman called. “I’ll coax her,” and all the way as they went down the beach they could hear her cracked, horrible laughter.