CHAPTER XXX
THE CRUISER

Matterson, Gleazen and the trader, Arnold, Abe and I, and the white girl and her great black servant, all were crowded into a frail dugout, which must long since have foundered, but for the marvelous skill of the big Fantee canoeman and the sureness and steadiness with which the girl had wielded her paddle. And now the girl sat with her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking as she sobbed; and the big black, awed and frightened by the nearness and strangeness of the good Adventure, was looking up at the men who had crowded to the rail above him. As the brig came into the wind and lay beside the canoe, her yards sharply counter-braced, the long seas rose to the gunwale of our heavily laden and waterlogged little craft, and she slowly filled and settled.

We should have perished there and then, within an arm's length of the solid planks that promised safety, had not Gideon North acted promptly. As the canoe settled and the water rose, I suddenly found myself swimming, and gave the bottom of the canoe a kick and plunged forward through the water to reach the girl and hold her up. At the same moment, indistinctly through the rush of the waves, I heard Captain North giving orders. Then I saw Abe beside me, swimming on the same errand, and heard someone spluttering and choking behind me; then I came up beside the girl and, seizing one slender wrist, drew her arm over my shoulder and swam slowly by the brig.

There was no excitement or clamor. The canoe, having emerged half full of water from those vast breakers on the bar, yet having made out to ride the seas well enough until the girl and the negro stopped paddling, had then quietly submerged and left us all at once struggling in the ocean.

Blocks creaked above us and oars splashed, and suddenly I felt the girl lifted from my shoulders; then I myself was dragged into a boat. Thus, after ten days on the continent of Africa, ten such days of suffering and danger that they were to live always as terrible nightmares in the memory of those of us who survived them, we came home to the swift vessel that had belonged to poor Seth Upham.

To the story that we told, first one talking, then another, all of us excited and all of us, except Arnold Lamont, who never lost his calm precision and the girl who did not speak at all, fairly incoherent with emotion, Gideon North replied scarcely a word.

"The black beasts!" Gleazen cried in a voice that shook with rage. "I'd give my last chance of salvation to send a broadside among them yonder."

"Ah, that's no great price," Matterson murmured sourly. "I'd give more than that—many times more, my friend. Think you, Captain North, that a man of spirit would soon forget or forgive such a token as this?" And he pointed at the raw wound the spear had left on his face.

Gleazen stepped close beside him. "Hm! It's sloughing," he said.

"It's hot and it throbs like the devil," Matterson replied.

Arnold also came over to Matterson and looked at the wound.

"It needs attention," he commented. "It certainly is not healing as it should."

Matterson raised his brows angrily. "Let it be," he returned.

With a slight lift of his head, Arnold faced about and walked slowly away.

As Matterson angrily glared from one of us to another, the group separated and, turning, I saw our guest standing silently apart.

"Captain North," I said slowly, "this lady—"

He did not wait for me to finish.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am," he cried. "You shall have my own stateroom. I should have spoken before, but that sail troubles me."

Thereupon others turned to study the sail, which was bearing down on us, although still some miles away; but I continued to watch the guest whose presence there in the Adventure seemed so strange as almost to savor of magic, as she tried to thank Gideon North.

"Don't say a word," he cried. "Not a word! Remember this: I've a wife and daughters of my own, and I wish they were on board to make things comfortable for you. But all we can do, I'm afraid, is give you a chance to make yourself comfortable. Our cabin boy's gone. He went ashore with those damnable villains yonder and never came back."

"A little boy?" she suddenly asked.

"Aye."

"A wicked little rascal?" A strangely roguish light flashed across her face and she smiled as if in spite of herself.

Gideon North's chuckle grew into a wide grin. "Ma'am, that's Willie MacDougald to a T. But what do you know of him?"

"He ran away from them, and came to us when they had gone up-river, and said that they were going to beat him, and told a terrible story of the wrongs he had suffered. But he could not abide our ways any more than we his,—such a time as he led us with his swearing and thieving and lying!—and when a boat from the American cruiser came ashore while you were gone, he told the men such a story of your search for slaves and of all your gear and goods, they vowed to capture you if they lay off the coast a year and a day, and they laughed at his wretched oaths and made much of him and took him on board. And then—then—" It seemed the thought of all that had happened since swept upon her in a wave almost as overwhelming as one of those breakers through which we had fought our way; for she suddenly turned white and tried to fight back her tears, and for the time could speak no more.

"Come, Joe, look alive now!" Captain North roared, trying to mask his kind heart and lively emotions with a pretense of fierceness. "Fetch hot water from the galley to my stateroom! Have the cook bring aft hot coffee and a square meal. I'll take you below myself, ma'am, to show you the way, and I now order you to help yourself to all you need for comfort. Off with you, Joe!"

All this time the cook had been gaping from the galley door at what had been going on aft; and so eager was he to get a nearer view of the young lady who had come mysteriously out with us from the river, and to gather up new threads of the extraordinary story Abe Guptil had told forward, that, although he was the laziest Yankee who ever commanded a galley stove, he set out at a dead run aft, with a coffee-pot in one hand and a pail of hot water, which at every moment threatened to spill and scald him, in the other.

Captain North at once came on deck again and found the rest of us still intent on the approaching ship, which with all her canvas spread was bearing down upon us like a race-horse. The cook, on his way forward, paused to survey her. The watch, now glancing anxiously aft, now studying the stranger, was standing by for whatever orders should be forthcoming.

"Sir," said Arnold, "she means trouble."

"We've waited too long already," Captain North replied. Raising the trumpet he cried, "Call up all hands, there, Mr. Severance!"

A moment later he looked keenly at Matterson. "Mr. Matterson," he said, "you are exhausted."

"I am a little peaked," Matterson said thoughtfully, "a little peaked, but not exhausted."

"Will you take your station, sir?"

"I will." Still in his wet clothes and cautiously touching his inflamed wound, Matterson went forward to the forecastle. There was something soldierly in his promptness. It was so evident that his strength was scarcely equal to his task, that for his hardihood, little as I liked him, I freely gave him credit.

"Mr. Gleazen," said Captain North, "I am afraid we must show her our heels."

"If I could lay my hands on the lean neck of William MacDougald," Gleazen growled, "I'd wring his head clean off."

"She unquestionably is bearing down on us."

"She is."

"And she knows—"

"She knows," cried Gleazen, "all that Willie MacDougald can tell her of casks and farina and shackles and lumber for extra decks."

"And of false papers with which you so carefully provided yourself?"

Gideon North's face all this time was as sober as a judge's, but now I saw that he was deliberately tormenting Gleazen with the various preparations the man had made for that unholy traffic in slaves.

Although Gleazen himself by now perceived it, his wrath turned on our erstwhile cabin boy rather than on Gideon North. He swore vilely. "Aye," he cried, "we must run—run or hang. And all for the word of a prying, cursing, eavesdropping young rooster that I might have wrung the neck of, any day for months past. If ever I lay hands on his ape's throat—"

"I gather, sir," Captain North dryly interposed, "you'll use him harshly."

With that he turned his back on Gleazen and raised his trumpet:—

"Lay aloft and loose the main to'g'l'ants'l.—Man the to'g'lant sheets and halyards.—Some of you men, there, stand by the clewl'nes and braces." For a moment he stood, trumpet at lips, watching every motion of the men; then, as those on the yards loosened the sail, he thundered, "Let fall!—Lay in!—Sheet home!" Then, "Hoist away!—Belay the halyards!"

As we crowded on sail, the brig leaned before the wind, and for a time we hoped that we were gaining on the stranger; but our hopes were soon dispelled.

It seemed queer to run from our own countrymen, but run we did all that afternoon, through the bluest of blue seas, with white clouds flying overhead and low lands on the horizon.

In another sense I could not help feeling that Gideon North himself showed quite too little anxiety about the outcome of the race. Yet, as time passed, even his face grew more serious, and all that afternoon, as we braced the yards and so made or shortened sail as best to maintain our speed at every change of wind, an anxious group watched from the quarter-deck of the Adventure the swift vessel that stood after us and slowly gained on us, with her canvas spread till she looked on the blue sea for all the world like a silver cloud racing in the blue sky.

The nearer she came, the graver grew the faces about me; for, if the full penalty of the law was exacted, to be convicted as a slaver in those days was to be hanged, and in all the world there was no place where a vessel and her men were so sure to be suspected of slaving as in the very waters where we were then sailing. The track of vessels outward bound from America to Good Hope and the Far East ran in general from somewhere about the Cape Verde Islands to the southeastern coast of Brazil; that of vessels homeward bound, from Good Hope northwest past St. Helena and across the Equator. Thus the western coast of Africa formed, with those two lines that vessels followed, a rough triangle; and looking toward the apex, where the two converged, it served as the base. In that triangle of seas, as blue as sapphire and as clear, occurred horrors such as all human history elsewhere can scarcely equal. There a slaver would leave the lanes of commerce, run up to the coast one night, and be gone the next with a cargo of "ebony" under her hatches, to mingle with the ships inward or outward bound; and there the cruisers hunted.

The faces of the crew were sober as the man-of-war, cracking on every stitch of canvas, came slowly up to us at the end of the afternoon. We all knew then that even to keep a safe lead until sunset, it would do us precious little good; for in a clear starlight night our pursuer could follow us almost as well as by day. Arnold Lamont was inscrutable; Gideon North was gravely silent; Matterson and Gleazen were angry and sullen; and the luckless trader, who had escaped from his ambushed caravan only to find himself in a doomed vessel, was yellow with fear. There was not a man, forward or aft, who did not know the incalculable stakes for which we were racing. Pedro with his monkey on and off his shoulder as he worked, Abe Guptil with his nervous, eager step, and all the others, each showing the strain after his own manner, leaped to the ropes at the word of command or fidgeted about the decks in the occasional moments of inaction.

Of our passenger I had thought often and with ever keener anxiety. How the fast-approaching end of our race would affect her future I could only guess, and really I was more anxious for her than for myself. But from the moment she went below neither I nor any of the others saw sign or glimpse of her, until, just at sunset, I ran thither to fetch the leather-bound spyglass whose lower power and greater illumination lent itself best to night work.

As I clattered down the companionway, I heard someone dart out of the cabin. But when I entered, the girl, as if she had been waiting to see who it was, came back again, so eager for news from above that she could no longer remain in hiding.

"Tell me, sir," she said, lifting her head proudly, "has the cruiser overhauled us yet?"

"Not yet," I replied.

She stood as if waiting for whatever else I had to say; but my tongue for the moment was tied.

"If they do?" she said as if to question me.

"Heaven help us!"

"Come," she cried with some asperity, "don't stand there staring like a gaby! Tell me everything. Have not I a right to know?"

"If you wish," I replied, stung by the scorn in her voice. "The chances are that, if we are caught, some of us will hang. Which of us and how many, is a debatable question."

She thought it over calmly. "That is probably true. I think, however, that I shall have something to say about which ones will hang."

That was a phase of the matter which had not occurred to me. It gave me a good deal of relief, until I met her eyes regarding me still scornfully, and realized what an exhibition of myself I was making. I had been assertive enough hitherto, and I had not lacked confidence where females were concerned; I remembered well the one who so long before had come into my uncle's store in Topham, and how Arnold had smiled at the scorn that I had accorded her. But this young lady somehow was different. She had a fine, quiet dignity that seemed always to appraise me with cool precision. She had shown, once at least, a flash of humor that indicated how lightly, in less tragic circumstances, she could take light things. Now and then she had dealt a keen thrust that cut me by its truth.

And yet she treated me kindly enough, too. She had seemed almost glad to have me at her side when we ran together from the mission.

"Mistress—" I began; then stopped and clumsily stammered, "I—I don't know your name."

"My name?" With the hint of a smile, but with that fine dignity which made me feel my awkwardness many times over, she said, "I am Faith Parmenter."

Another pause followed, which embarrassed me still more; then, awkwardly, I reached for the night glass. Things were not happening at all as I had dreamed.

"You're long enough finding that glass," Captain North growled when I handed it to him. "Aye, and red in the face, too."

I was thankful indeed that the approach of the ship, which had sailed so swiftly as to overhaul even our Baltimore brig, gave him other things to think about.

By now the race was almost over. I heard Gleazen talking of bail—of judges—of bribes. I saw the man Pedro twitching his fingers at his throat. I saw Arnold Lamont and Gideon North watching the stranger intently, minute after minute. Taking in our studding-sails and royals, we braced sharp by the wind with our head to westward. At that our pursuer, which had come up almost abreast of us but a mile away, followed our example, sail for sail and point for point, whereupon we hauled up our courses, took in topgallant sails and jib, and tacked.

When the stranger followed our manoeuvre, but with the same sail that she had been carrying, she came near enough for us to see that her lower-deck ports were triced up. When we tacked offshore again, she hauled up her mizzen staysail and stood for us; and fifteen minutes later she hauled her jib down, braced her headsails to the mast, and rounded to about half a cable's length to the windward of us on our weather quarter. We had already heard the roll of drums beating the men to their stations, and now Captain North, his glass leveled at her in the half light, cried gloomily:—

"Aye, the tampions are out of her guns already!"

"Ship ahoy!" came the deep hail. "What ship is that?"

"Train your guns, Captain North!" Gleazen cried fiercely; "train your guns!"

"Mr. Gleazen," Gideon North retorted, with a stern smile, "with one broadside she can blow us into splinters. Our shot would no more than rattle on her planks."

"Ahoy there!" the deep voice roared, now angrily.

"The brig Adventure from Boston, bound on a legitimate trading voyage to the Guinea coast," Captain North replied. "Where are you from?"

To his question they returned no answer. The curt order that the speaking-trumpet sent out to us was:—

"Standby! We're sending a boat aboard."

We were caught by a cruiser, and there was evidence below that would send us, guilty and guiltless alike, to the very gallows if the courts should impose on us the extreme penalty.

Up to this point we had not been certain of the nationality of our pursuers. Too often flags were used to suit the purpose of the moment. But there was now no doubt that the uniforms in the boat were those of our own countrymen.

With long, hasty strides, Gleazen crossed the deck to the captain. In his face defiance and despair were strangely mingled. He was nervously working his hands. "Quick now," he cried. "Haul down the flag, Captain North. Break out the red and yellow. Throw over the papers. Over with them, quick!"

"I am not sure I wish to change my registry," Gideon North quietly returned.

Gleazen swore furiously. "You'll hang with the rest of us," he cried,

"I think, sir, that I can prove my innocence."

"The casks and shackles will knot the rope round your stiff neck. Aye, Captain North, you'll have a merry time of it, twitching your toes against the sunrise."

In fury Gleazen spun on his heel. For once, as his teeth pulled shreds of skin from his lips, the man was stark white.

We heard the creak of blocks as the ship lowered her boat, heard the splash of oars as the boat came forging toward us, saw in the stern the bright bars of a lieutenant's uniform.

There was not one of us who did not feel keenly the suspense. So surely as the boat came aboard, just so surely would the searchers, primed for their task, no doubt, by that vengeful little wretch, MacDougald, find whatever damning evidence was stowed in the hold; and I was by no means certain that, in the cold light of open court, we who had fought against every suggestion of illegal traffic could prove our innocence. But to Gleazen and Matterson the boat promised more than search and seizure. Whether or not the rest of us effected our acquittal, for those two a long term in prison was the least that they could expect, and the alternative caused even Gleazen's nonchalance to fail him. It is one thing, and a very creditable thing, to face without fear the prospect of an honest death in a fair fight; it is quite another, calmly to anticipate hanging.

Still Gleazen stood there in the fleeting twilight, opening and closing his hands in indecision. Still Captain North waited with folded arms, determined at any cost to have the truth and the truth only told on board his brig.

The brig slowly rose, and fell, and rose, on the long seas. The men stood singly and in little groups, waiting, breathless with apprehension, for whatever was to happen. A cable's length away, the cruising man-of-war, her ports triced up, her guns run out and trained, rolled on the long seas in time with the brig. We had thought, when we escaped from the enfolding attack of the African war, that all danger was over. Now, it seemed, we must face a new danger, which menaced not only our lives, but our honor.

The boat now lay bumping under the gangway.

"Come, pass us a line!" the lieutenant cried.

Suddenly Gleazen woke from his indecision. Stepping boldly to the rail, he called down in his big, gruff, assertive voice:—

"You men had better not come on board. Mind you, I've given you fair warning."

"What's that you're saying?"

"You better not come on board. We've got four cases of smallpox already, and two more that I think are coming down."

The men in the boat instantly shoved off, and a dozen feet away sat talking in low voices. Obviously they were undecided what to do.

To most of us Gleazen's cool, authoritative statement, that the most dread plague of the African coast, the terror alike of traders, cruisers, and slavers, had appeared among us—a downright lie—was so amazing that we scarcely knew what to make of it. I must confess that, little as I liked the means that he took, I was well pleased at the prospect of his gaining his end. But Gideon North, as he had been prompt to shatter at the start Gleazen's first attempt at fraud, promptly and unexpectedly thrust his oar into this one.

"That, gentlemen, is not so," he called down to the boat. "We have as clean a bill of health as any ship in the service."

"Come, come, now," cried the young officer. "What's all this?"

"I'm telling you the truth, and I'm master of this brig."

With his hands at his mouth Gleazen, half-pretending to whisper, called, "We're humoring him. He won't admit he has it. But what I've told you is God's honest truth."

Captain North started as if about to speak, then seemed to think better of it. Folding his arms, he let the matter stand.

I think he, as much as any of the rest of us, was relieved when the boat, after hesitating a long time, during which we suffered keenest anxiety, made about and returned to the ship. Still we dared not breathe easily, lest the commanding officer, refusing to accept his subordinate's report, order a search at all costs. But five minutes later it appeared that, whatever their suspicions may have been, they had no intention of running needless risks, for they came about and made off up the coast.

Small wonder that they acted thus! The bravest of captains must have stopped three times to think before ordering his men to dare that terrible disease, the worst scourge of those seas, the terror alike of slavers and cruisers, on the bare word of such as Willie MacDougald that he would find contraband.

I have often wondered whether Willie MacDougald was on board the ship, and whether he was responsible for the chase. In the light of all that I heard, I rather think he was, although none of us who searched the decks of the other vessel caught so much as a glimpse of him. But if so, it must have disappointed him deeply that his revenge failed to reach Cornelius Gleazen and Pedro's monkey; and seeing the monkey, which had eluded its owner and strayed aft, perched in the rigging and malevolently eyeing Gleazen himself, I laughed aloud.

Then I saw that it was no time for laughing, for Gleazen and Gideon North were standing grimly face to face, and Arnold and Matterson and the trader were gathering close around them.

Out of the rumble of angry voices, one came to me more distinctly than any of the others:—

"Mr. Gleazen, it is time that we settled this question once and for all. If you will come below with me, we can reach, I am sure, a decision that will be best for all of us in the Adventure."

It was Captain North who spoke. As he moved toward the companionway, I saw that Arnold Lamont was beckoning to me.

CHAPTER XXXI
A PASSAGE AT ARMS

Across the cabin table was spread the big, inaccurate chart of the west coast of Africa, on which Captain North had penciled the rat-infested island and the river.

Seeing it now for the first time since he had returned to the brig, Gleazen planted one finger on the picture of the spot where we had found the wrecked ship with the bones of the drowned slaves still chained to her timbers. "Pfaw!" he growled. "If only she was afloat! There was a ship for you! Given her at sea again, handsome and handy, two good men would never 'a' lost their lives. Given that she was not beyond repair, and we might yet kedge her off and plank her and caulk her and rig her anew."

"She's done," said Matterson languidly. "Forget her." He laid his head on the table and closed his eyes.

"Molly!" There was a new note of concern in Gleazen's voice. He leaned over and shook the man.

"Let me be," said Matterson.

"Gentlemen," Gideon North interposed, "we are dodging the issue."

"Well?" Gleazen angrily raised his head. "There is no issue. We'll sail for the Rio Pongo, lay off and on till the first dark night, then take the cargo that a friend of ours will have ready. Thence, Captain North, we'll sail for Cuba. I'll give the orders now, and you'll carry them out."

"How long," I cried hotly, "have you been giving orders on board this vessel?"

He turned and glared at me. "If you want facts, Joe, I'll give them to you: I've been giving orders aboard this vessel from the day we sailed from Boston until now—aye, and seeing that they were obeyed, too, you young cub. But if you want fancies, such as are suitable for the young, I've owned the brig only since Seth Upham went mad and got himself killed."

"You own the brig?"

"Yes, I own the brig."

"You lie!"

That he merely laughed, enraged me more than if he had hit me.

"You lie!" I repeated.

"Next," said he, "you'll be telling me that Seth Upham owned her."

"That I will, indeed, and it is a small part of what I'll be telling you."

"Well, he didn't."

The man's effrontery left me without words to retort.

"He didn't," Gleazen said again. "Him and I went into this deal share alike. Half to him and half to me and my partners. Ain't he dead? Well, then I keep my half and Molly, here, who is all the partner I've got left now, gets the other half. Ain't that plain? Of course it is. It would be plain enough if we'd got clear with the fortune that was ours by rights. And because we lost the fortune, it's all the plainer that we ought to get something for our trouble."

"But, Mr. Gleazen," Arnold interposed, "supposing there were a grain of truth in what you say,—which there isn't,—the rest of us, Joe and Abe and I, still have a sixth part in it all."

"That," cried Matterson, bursting into the controversy before Gleazen could find words to meet this new argument, "that is stuff. The sixth part was to come out of Seth Upham's lay; and Seth Upham is dead, so he gets no lay. Therefore you get not a bit more than the wages you signed on for; and if you signed on for no wages, you get nothing."

"I can promise you, Matterson," Gideon North said with a smile, "that nothing of that kind goes down under my command."

"Then you're likely not to keep your command."

The trader, glancing shrewdly from one to another, had edged over beside Gleazen, but now Arnold spoke, as ever, calmly and precisely:—

"Let all that go. About that we do not as yet care. It is a matter to be argued when the time comes. But—what will you take on board for a cargo at Rio Pongo?"

As if Arnold's question implied permission for him also to have his say, the trader spread both hands in a gesture of despair at such ignorance as it manifested.

"'What weel you get?' Ah, me—"

"Yes, what will you get?" Arnold reiterated, quietly smiling at the irony of his question.

"We'll get a cargo all right when we get there," Gleazen asserted. "We'll let it go at that. Captain North, bring the brig about on a course, say, of approximately west by north." He bent over the chart. "That will be about right. As for the wind—"

"Captain North," said I, "you will do nothing of the kind. Unless we can get an honest cargo, you will head straight back to Boston and sell the Adventure for what she'll bring."

"'What weel you get?'" the still amazed trader cried again. "You weel get—"

"As for you, Joe,—" Gleazen momentarily drowned out the man's voice,—"you'll get into trouble if you're not careful."

"For you, Mr. Gleazen, I don't care the snap of my finger. I'll have my property handled in the way I choose."

For a moment Gleazen glared at me in angry silence, and in that moment, the trader found opportunity to finish his sentence, which he did with an air of such pleasure in the tidings he gave, and all the time so completely unconscious of the subtler undercurrents of our quarrel, that to an unprejudiced observer it would have been ludicrous in the extreme.

"You weel get—niggers! Such prime, stout, strong niggers! It ees a pleasure always to buy niggers at Rio Pongo. Such barracoons! Such niggers!"

Although for a long time we had very well known the hidden real object of Gleazen's return to Topham and of the mad quest on which he had led us, this was the first time that anyone had frankly put it into so many words. The anger and defiance with which our two parties eyed each other seemed moment by moment to grow more intense.

"Well, there's no need to look so glum about it," said Gleazen at last. "Half the deacons in New England live on the proceeds of rum and notions, and they know well enough what trade their goods are sold in. You may talk all you will of the gospel; they take their dollars, when their ships come home. Your Englishman may talk of his cruisers on the coast and his laws that Parliament made for him; but when the bills come back on London for his Birmingham muskets and Liverpool lead and Manchester cotton, he don't cry bad money and turn 'em down. Why, then, should we? Where there's niggers, there'll be slaves. It's in the blood of them."

"Be that as it may," I retorted, "not a slave shall board this vessel."

"It appears," Gleazen slowly returned, "that this brig, which is a small craft at best, is not big enough for both of us."

"Not if you think you can give yourself the airs of an owner."

"Hear that, you! 'Airs of an owner!' Well, I am owner, I think—yes, I will give you a greater honor than you deserve." Suddenly he leaned over and roared at me, "Get down on your knees and apologize, or, so help me, I'll strike you dead on the spot."

Quicker than a flash I reached out and slapped him on the face—and as I did so I remembered the time when O'Hara had slapped Seth Upham.

With his hand half drawn back as if to seize a chair for a cudgel, he stopped, smiled, spun round and reached for the pair of swords on the bulkhead. Extending the two hilts, he smiled and said, "I shall take pleasure in running you through, my friend."

"Not so fast!" It was Arnold who spoke. "I, sir, will take first a turn at the swords with you."

"In your turn, Mr. Lamont," Gleazen retorted with an exaggerated bow. "Meanwhile, if you please, you may act as second to Mr. Woods."

"Come, enough of this nonsense," cried honest Gideon North, "or I'll clap you both into irons. Dueling aboard my vessel, indeed!" He looked appraisingly from one of us to the other.

"I will fight him," I coolly replied.

"You will, will you?"

"I will."

Soberly Gideon North looked me in the eye. Already Gleazen, Matterson, Arnold, and the others were moving toward the companionway. This happened, you must remember, in '27; dueling was not regarded then as it is now.

"I am afraid, my boy, it will not be a fair fight."

"It will be fair enough," I replied.

Rising, Captain North brought out his medicine chest.

I followed the others on deck, as if the little world in which I was moving were a world of unreality. All that I knew of swordsmanship, I had learned from Cornelius Gleazen himself; and though I felt that at the end of our lessons I had learned enough to give him a hard fight, it was quite another matter to cross swords that carried no buttons, and to believe that one of us was to die.

There was only starlight on deck, and Captain North stepped briskly forward to Arnold and Matterson, who were standing together by a clear space that they had paced off.

"Gentlemen," said he, "if they were to wait until morning—"

"There would be more light, to be sure," Arnold returned, "but the disadvantage is common to both."

Gleazen grumbled something far down in his throat, and I cried out that I would fight him then as well as any time.

"If a couple of lanterns were slung from the rigging," Matterson suggested. He moved slowly and now and then touched the hot skin around his wound; but although it still troubled him, he appeared to be gaining strength.

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when two men came running aft in response to Captain North's sharp order. Lanterns were lighted and slung, and Cornelius Gleazen and I, with sword in hand, faced each other across a length of clean white deck.

It was a long way from friendly combat on the village green at Topham to the bout I now waited to begin, and both for Cornelius Gleazen and for myself the intervening months had piled up a formidable score to be settled. Waiting in silence for our seconds, Arnold and Matterson, to clear away some coiled ropes, we watched each other with a bitter hate that had been growing on his part, I am convinced, since the days when first he had seen me working in my uncle's store, and on mine, certainly, ever since I had become aware of the growing conviction that the friendship he had so loudly professed for me was absolutely insincere.

He had cheated, robbed, browbeaten, and, to all practical ends, killed, my uncle. He stood there now, scheming by every means in his power to kill and rob me in my turn. And if he succeeded!—I thought of the girl to whom Gideon North had given up his stateroom. How much did she know of all that was going forward? There had been only one door between her and the quarrel in the cabin. And what fate would be left for her, if I should fall—if Gleazen should override Gideon North and Arnold Lamont? Truly, I thought, I must fight my best.

"And, sir," I heard Arnold saying, "if you are able to bear arms after your bout with Mr. Woods, it is to be my turn and you shall so favor me."

"That I will," Gleazen replied with a wry smile.

I know truly, although I do not understand the reason for it, that after an unusually dramatic experience it is likely to be some trifling, irrelevant little thing that one remembers most vividly. And singularly enough it is a tiny patch on Arnold's coat that I now most clearly recall of all that happened then. I noticed it for the first time when Arnold was speaking; I do not remember that I ever noticed it again. Yet to this day I can see it as clearly as if I had only to turn my head to find it once more before my eyes, slightly darker than the body of the coat and sewed on with small neat stitches.

Now Arnold was beside me. "Steady your blade, my boy," he said. "Fence lightly and cautiously."

The two swords circled, flashing in the lantern-light, and we came on guard in a duel such as few men have fought. The rolling deck at best gave us unsteady footing. As the lantern swung, the shadows changed in a way that was most confusing. Now we were all but in darkness; now the light was fairly in our eyes.

This, I thought, can never be the old Neil Gleazen with whom I used to fence. He was craftier, warier, more cautious now than I had ever seen him, and I took a lesson from him and restrained the impetuousness of the attack I should have launched had foils been our weapons. Now he lunged out like a flash, and all but came in past my guard. I instantly replied by a riposte, but failed to catch him napping. Again he lunged and yet again, and for the third time I succeeded in parrying, but all to no purpose so far as opening the way for a counter-attack was concerned.

Now I saw the spectators only as black shadows standing just out of the range of my vision. With every sense I was alert to parry and lunge. Now it seemed very dark except for the light of the lanterns, although before we began to fence, the starlight had seemed uncommonly bright and clear. The whole world appeared to grow dark around me as I fought, until only Cornelius Gleazen was to be seen, as if in the heart of a light cloud. Now I all but eluded his guard. Now I drew blood from his arm—I was convinced of it. I pressed him closer and closer and got new confidence from seeing that he was breathing harder than I.

For a moment,—it is a thing that happens when one has concentrated his whole attention on a certain object for so long a time that at last it inevitably wavers,—for a moment I was aware of those around me as well as of the man in front of me. I even heard their hard breathing, their whispered encouragement. I saw that Matterson was standing on my right, midway between me and Gleazen. I saw a sudden opening, and thrusting out my arm, drove my blade for it with all the speed and strength of my body. That thrust, too, drew blood; there was no doubt of it, for Gleazen gave a quick gasp and let his guard fall. Victory was mine; I had beaten him. My heart leaped, and lifting my sword-hand to turn off his blade, I attempted a reprise. I knew by the frantic jerk of Gleazen's guard that he was aware that I had beaten him. I was absolutely sure of myself. But when I attempted to spring back and launch the doubled attack something held my foot.

I gave a quick jerk,—literally my foot was held,—I lost my balance and all but went over. Then I felt a burning in the back of my shoulder and sat down on deck with the feeling that the lanterns were now expanding into strange wide circles of light, now concentrating into tiny coals of fire.

First I knew that Gideon North was bending over me with his medicine chest; then I took a big swallow of brandy and had hard work to keep from choking over it; then I felt cool hands, so firm and small that I knew they could belong to only one person in the Adventure; then I saw Arnold Lamont, sword in hand, facing Cornelius Gleazen.

Now why, I wondered, had I been unable to withdraw my foot. Matterson had been all but in my way. He must have thrust out his own foot!

"Arnold," I cried incoherently, "beware of Matterson! He tripped me!"

Arnold looked down at me and smiled and nodded.

"Sir," I heard him saying, as if miles away, "you have beaten a man years younger than yourself by a foul and treacherous trick. I shall kill you."

"Kill me?" Gleazen arrogantly roared. "It would take a swordsman to do it."

To that Arnold replied in a foreign tongue, which even then I knew must be Spanish. I was no competent witness of what was taking place; but cloudy though my mind was, I did not fail to see that Arnold's taunt struck home, for both Gleazen and Matterson angrily swore.

"In Spanish, eh?" Gleazen sneered. "So this is the leaky spigot! No more tales, my fine fellow, shall trickle out through your round mouth, once I have measured your vitals with cold steel."

Into my spinning brain there now came a sudden memory of my bout with Arnold long, long ago, when I had gone at him just as arrogantly as ever Neil Gleazen was doing now. I tried to cry out again and could not. I laughed, which was all my strength permitted, and wearily leaned back, and through eyes that would almost close in spite of me, saw Arnold advance under the swinging lantern so swiftly that his sword was like a beam of light flashed by a mirror.

His blade sped through Gleazen's guard: Gleazen dropped his sword, staggered, and fell with a crash.

I heard Arnold say, "Sir, I am more clumsy than I knew. The rolling deck has saved your miserable life, since I cannot kill a wounded man. But if my hand were in practice, no ship that ever rolled would have turned that thrust."

Then a great uproar ensued, and I knew nothing more until I opened my eyes in the cabin, where a hot argument was evidently in progress, since oaths were bandied back and forth and there were hard words on all sides.

"As representatives of Josiah Woods, who owns this brig," I heard Arnold say, "Gideon North and I will not permit you, sir, or any other man, to ship such a cargo."

The reply I did not understand, but I again heard Arnold's voice, hot with anger.

"We will not sail again to that den of pirates and slavers and the iniquitous of all the nations of the world, Havana. If you do not wish to go to Boston,—" he hesitated,—"we will use you better than you deserve. For a profitable voyage, we might compromise, say, on South America."

Of what followed I have no memory, for I was weaker than I realized, from loss of blood. The cabin went white before my eyes. The voices all dwindled away to remote threads of sound. I seemed to feel myself sway with the motion of the ship, and opened my eyes again and saw that I was being carried. Then I once more felt cool hands on my forehead, and leaning back, seemed to sink into endless space. I forgot Topham and all that had happened there; I forgot Africa and every event of our ill-fated venture; I even forgot the brig and the duel, and I almost forgot my own identity. But as I existed in a sort of dream-land or fairyland somewhere between waking and sleeping, I did not forget the girl who had come with me out of Africa; and even when I could not remember my own name, I would find myself struggling in a curiously detached way to connect the name Faith, which persisted in my memory, with a personality that likewise persisted, yet that seemed a thing apart from all the world and not even to be given a name.

At the time I did not know whether it was two days or ten that I lay in that borderland of consciousness. But as I emerged from it into a clearer, more real world, I saw now the girl, now Arnold, now Gideon North, passing before me and sometimes pausing by my berth. One day I found myself eating broth that someone was feeding to me. The next, I saw that the girl was my nurse. The next, I asked questions, but so weakly that I could no more than murmur a faint protest when she smiled and turned away without answering.

So it went until a time when my voice was stronger and I would not be put off again. Seizing her sleeve and feebly holding it, I cried as stoutly as I was able, "Tell me—tell me where we are and all that has happened."

What she saw through the open port, I could only guess; if it was possible to judge by her face, she saw more than mere sea and sky, with perhaps a wandering sea bird; but she turned and quietly said, "We are at sea, now, and all is going well, and when you are stronger, I'll tell you more."

"Tell me now!" I demanded.

I would have said more, but I felt that my voice was failing and I did not wish her to perceive it.

She hesitated, then impulsively turned.

"Just this: you are getting well fast, and he is getting well slowly. We have gone from the coast and the Gulf of Guinea, and are off for South America."

Then she went away and left me, and I was troubled by the sadness of her face, although she had had enough, heaven knew! to make her sad.

"So," I thought, "we have really abandoned the trade at last! And so Arnold brought down Gleazen! And what of the trader and Pedro? And what are our prospects of profit from a voyage to South America? And what of Seth Upham and—"

Then it all came back to me, a thousand memories bursting all at once upon my bewildered brain, and I lived again those days from the hour when I first saw Neil Gleazen on the porch of the inn, through the mad night when we left Topham behind us, through the terrible seasickness of my first voyage, through the sinister adventure in Havana, through all the uncanny warnings of those African witch doctors, up to the very hour when Seth Upham threw wide his arms and went, singing, down to die by the spring. I remembered our wild flight, the battle in the forest, the race down the river, the fall of the mission, and again our flight,—the girl was with us now!—the affair of the cruiser, the quarrel, the duel, and the voices that I heard as I lay on deck. Then I came to a black hiatus. Memory carried me no further and I wearily closed my eyes, having no strength to keep them open longer.

Next I knew that good Gideon North was standing over me, his hand on my pulse; there was a sharp throbbing pain in my shoulder where Gleazen's sword had struck home; I was vaguely aware that the girl was sobbing.

Now why, I thought, should anything trouble her? It was not as if she, like me, had come up against a wall that she could not pass. I seemed actually to throw myself at that black rigid barrier which cut me off from every event that followed and—my delirious metaphors were sadly mixed—left me balanced precariously on a tenuous column of memories that came to an end high up in a dark open place, like the truck of a ship in a black, stormy night.

I heard Gideon North speaking of fever and my wound; then the picture changed and the girl alone was sitting beside me. She was singing in a low voice, and the song soothed me. I did not try to follow the words; I simply let the tune lead me whither it would. Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke my memory had succeeded in passing the barrier that before had balked every effort.

Now I remembered things that had happened while I lay in my berth in my stateroom. I put together things that had happened before and after my duel. It was as if I reached out from my frail mast of memories and found accustomed ropes and knew that I could go elsewhere at will. I felt a sudden new confidence in my power to think and speak, and when the girl once more appeared, I cried out eagerly, even strongly, "Now I know what, who, and where I am."

At my words she stepped quickly forward and laid her hand on my forehead. The fever had gone. With a little cry she turned, and I heard her say to someone in the cabin, "His face is as cool as my own!"

In came Gideon North, then, and in the door appeared Arnold.

"Bless me, boy!" Captain North cried, "you're on the mend at last."

"I think I am," I returned. "What happened to me?"

"Happened to you? A touch of African fever, my lad, on top of a dastardly stab."

"Where's Neil Gleazen?" I cried.

"Oh, he's getting along better than he deserves. Our friend Lamont, here, spitted him delicately; but he escaped the fever and has had an easier time of it by far than you, my lad."

He once more counted my pulse. "Fine," he said in his heartiest voice, "fine enough. Now turn over and rest."

"But I've been resting for days and days," I protested. "I want to talk now and hear all the news."

"Not now, Joe. Well go away and leave you now. But I'll have cook wring the neck of another chicken and give your nurse, here, the meat. She has a better hand at broth, Joe, my boy, than ever a man-cook had, and I'll warrant, two hours from now, broth'll taste good to you."

So I went to sleep and woke to a saner, happier world.

In another week I was able to be up on deck and to lie in the open air on cushions and blankets, where the warm sunshine and the fair wind and the gentle motion of the sea combined to soothe and restore me. It was good to talk with Arnold and Captain North, and with Abe Guptil, who, at my request, was ordered aft to spend an hour with me one afternoon; but why, I wondered, did I see so little now of Faith Parmenter?

She would nod at me with a smile and a word, and then go away, perhaps to lean on the rail and watch for an hour at a time the rolling blue sea, or to pace the deck as if oblivious to all about her.

On that night at the mission weeks before, when neither of us even knew the other's name, she had spoken to me with a directness that had even more firmly stamped on my memory her face as I had first seen it among the mangroves. On that terrible day when her father had gone out from the mission house to die, when dangers worse than death had threatened us from every side, she had cast her fortunes with Arnold's and with mine; in all the weeks of my pain and fever, she had tended me with a gentleness and thoughtfulness that had filled me with gratitude and something more. But now she would give me only a nod and a smile, with perhaps an occasional word!

Why, Arnold and even old Gideon North got more of her time and attention than did I. I would lie and watch her leaning on the rail, the wind playing with stray tendrils of her hair, which the sun turned to spun gold, and would suffer a loneliness even deeper than that which I felt when my own uncle, Seth Upham, died by the spring on the side of the hill. Could there be someone else of whom she was always thinking? Or something more intangible and deeper rooted? More and more I had feared it; now I believed it.

To see Cornelius Gleazen, his right arm still swathed in many bandages and his face as white almost as marble, eyeing me glumly from his place across the deck, was the only other shadow on my convalescence. With not a word for me,—or for my friends, for that matter,—he would stroll about the deck in sullen anger, for which no one could greatly blame him. He had no desire now to return to our home town of Topham; his bolt there was shot. We had refused him passage to the port of lawless men where no doubt he could have plotted to win back the brig and all that he had staked. Little grateful for the compromise by which he gained the privilege of landing on another continent, he kept company with his thoughts—ill company they were!—and with Matterson. But more than all else, it troubled me to see him watching Faith Parmenter.

As I would lie there, I would see him staring at her, unconscious that anyone was observing him. He would keep it up for hours at a time, until I did not see how she—or the others—could fail to notice it; yet apparently no one did notice it. The man, I now learned, and it surprised me, had a cat-like trick of dropping his eyes or looking quickly away.

As I grew stronger, I would now and then stand beside her, and we would talk of one thing and another; but without fail there was the wall of reserve behind which I could not go. She was always courteous; she always welcomed me; yet she made her reserve so plain that I had no doubt that it was kindness alone which led her to put up with me. Only once in all that westward voyage did I feel that she accepted me as more than the most casual of acquaintances, and I could see, as I thought it over afterwards, that even then it was because I had taken her by surprise.

It came one night just when the sun was setting and the moon was rising. The shadows on deck were long and of a deep umber. The mellow light of early evening had washed the decks and all the lower rigging in a soft brown, while the topsails were still tinted with lavender and purple. We were running before a southeast wind and—though I incur the ridicule of old sailors by saying it—there was something singularly personal and friendly about the seas as they broke against our larboard quarter and swept by us one by one. I know that I have never forgotten that hour at the end of a fair day, with a fair wind blowing, with strange colors and pleasant shadows playing over an old brig, and with Faith Parmenter beside me leaning on the taffrail.

We had been talking of trivial things, with intervals of deep silence, as people will, especially in early evening, when the beauty of the great world almost takes away the power of speech. But at the end of a longer silence than any that had gone before it, as I watched her slim fingers moving noiselessly on the rail, I suddenly said, "Why do you never tell me about your own life? In all this time you have not let me know one thing about yourself."

As she looked up at me, there was a startled expression in her eyes.

"Do you," she said, "wish to know more about me?"

"Yes."

She looked away again as if in doubt; then, with a little gesture, which seemed for the time being to open a gate in that wall of reserve which had so completely shut her away from me, she smiled and spoke in a low, rather hurried voice.

"My story is quickly told. I was born in a little town in Dorset, and there I lived with my father and my mother and nurse, until I was sixteen years old. My mother died then. The years that followed were—lonely ones. It was no surprise to me—to anyone—when my father decided to give up his parish and sail for Africa. We all knew, of course, how bad things were on the West Coast. People said our English ships still kept up the wicked trade. But they were ships from Brazil and the West Indies, manned, I believe, by Spaniards and Portuguese, that gave us the most trouble. There were Englishmen and Americans now and then, but they were growing fewer. We thought we were done with them; then you came. Even after you had come, I told my father that you were not in the trade; but my father already had seen him,"—she moved her hand ever so slightly in the direction of Gleazen, who likewise was leaning on the rail at a little distance,—"and he would believe no good of you. If only he could have lived! But you came. And here am I, with only you and an old black servant."

She looked up at me with a sudden gesture of confidence that made my heart leap.

"I am glad you came," she said.

Her hand lay on the rail beside mine, but so much smaller than mine that I almost laughed. She turned quickly with an answering smile, and impulsively I tried to cover her small hand with my larger one.

Deftly she moved her hand away. "Are you so silly?" she gravely asked.

At that moment I was quite too shy and awkward for my own peace of mind. She seemed suddenly to have stepped away from me as on seven-league boots. I certainly felt that she was angry with me, and I ventured no more familiarities; yet actually she merely moved her hand away and stayed where she was. There was that about her which made me feel like a child who is ashamed of being caught in some ridiculous game; and I think now that in some ways I was truly very much of a child.

For a long time we watched in silence the rolling seas, which had grown as black as jet save for the points of light that they reflected from the stars, and save for the broad bright path that led straight up to the full moon. But when the moon had risen higher and had cast its cold hard light on the deck of the brig, Cornelius Gleazen edged closer to us along the rail.

"Good-night," she murmured in a very low voice, and gave a little shudder, which, I divined, she intended that I should see. Then, with a quick, half-concealed smile, she left me.

All in all, I was happier that night than I had ever been before, I believe, for I thought that we had razed the wall of her reserve. But lo! in the morning it was there again, higher and more unyielding than ever; and more firmly than ever I was convinced that she had not told me all her story; that there was someone else of whom she was thinking, or that some other thing, of which I knew nothing, preyed upon her.

CHAPTER XXXIII
THE DOOR OF DISASTER

On the morning when we sighted land, I saw the big Fantee canoeman standing in the waist and looking with eager eyes at the distant shore. I suppose it was because I was still so weak that it did not thrill me as my first glimpse of Africa had thrilled me. We had known for some time that we were off the La Plata River by the changed color of the water; but the shores that we now saw were mere sandy beaches and low hills, which stretched, Captain North said, from Cape St. Mary up the river itself; and I, having somehow got the notion that I should see grand cliffs and mountains, was sadly disappointed in them.

At about nine o'clock in the morning of that first day we passed an island on which there were more seals than I had ever seen in any one place; and at about eleven we came to a small town, whence with light, fair winds we continued on our way up the river toward Montevideo.

For our venture into unfamiliar waters we could not have desired better weather than thus far prevailed; but about sunset the wind rose and a dense fog blew in; whereupon Captain North decided to haul off shore a few miles and anchor for the night, which we did about fifteen miles below the city. The wind, meanwhile, was rising to a gale. At eight o'clock, as it was still rapidly increasing, we paid out a considerable length of cable, and the Adventure rode with much less straining than before; but Captain North, I could see, was by no means well pleased with our situation, and as we went below to supper I overheard him say to Matterson, who continued to hold the berth of chief mate, "Tend the cable with care, Mr. Matterson, and keep a good lookout."

Whatever Matterson's reply, I lost it; but to this day I remember his giant figure as he stood there on the quarter-deck, his jacket buttoned tight up to his throat, his arms folded, with the wind racing past his gray stubble of a beard. His strength was still impaired by his wound, although at last it had healed clean; but there was no sign of weakness in his bearing. In the dim light and the rising gale he loomed up big, bold, and defiant.

Small wonder that I remember him as he looked then! It was almost the last time I ever saw him.

We were five at the table that night,—Captain North, Gleazen, Arnold, Faith, and I,—and Abe Guptil served us as steward.

With Mr. Severance in his own quarters asleep during his watch below, and with the trader whom we had rescued sent unceremoniously forward to keep company with the cook, we should have had a pleasant time of it but for the presence of Gleazen, whose sullen scowl dampened every word we spoke. Why the fellow ate with us instead of waiting for Matterson, I am sure I do not know, unless it was sheer perversity. Not one of us had a word to say to him, yet there he sat, with his arm in a sling and the folds of bandages showing through his waistcoat as broad ridges, now glaring at Arnold, now eyeing Faith Parmenter; and his few words could have brought little comfort even to him.

"How she pitches!" Arnold exclaimed, as wine from his glass fell in a red blot on the cloth.

"This wind," said Gleazen gloomily, "puts me in mind of that little yell Seth Upham gave when they got him." His voice sank almost to a whisper.

Now, as the brig plunged, Abe Guptil stumbled while crossing the cabin and fell to his knees, yet made out by a desperate effort both to hold his tray upright and to keep the dishes from sliding off against the bulkhead.

"Bravo!" cried Gideon North.

"Yes, sir," Abe replied, brightly, "that was a clever one and I'm proud of it."

It had been impossible to teach him the manners of his new work, but we cared little about that.

"Hark!" said Faith. "What was the noise?"

"Nothing, so far as I know," Captain North replied. "How she pitches and jumps! Give me a ship under sail, steadied by the wind abeam."

"I've heard Bud O'Hara use them very words," said Gleazen.

Again silence followed the man's ill-chosen remark.

"When we have put our passengers ashore," Arnold began with a significant glance at Gleazen, "shall we—"

"Captain North!"

Matterson's light voice calling down the companionway brought the old mariner to his feet.

Gleazen, who had seemed to be on the point of making some ill-tempered retort, slumped back in his chair as Captain North rose.

"What will you have, Mr. Matterson?"

"I wish you'd come on deck, sir," came Matterson's reply. "I'm in doubt whether or no we're drifting."

"Drifting?"

The old man went up with haste, and I followed close at his heels.

"I don't like the feel of the lead," he remarked, when, after gaining the deck, he laid hands on the lead-line. "But what with the current of the river and our pitching, I can't be sure. Are those breakers to leeward?"

"I think, sir," Matterson replied, "that they are only the white tops of the waves."

Matterson showed more genuine deference now than I had ever seen in him before, which in itself went far to convince me that affairs were going badly.

"They may be," the old man replied, "but I'm inclined to doubt it." And with that he went aft over the stern into the boat.

Evidently the nearer view convinced him that they were indeed breakers, for he returned with surprising agility.

"Call 'em up, Joe," he hoarsely cried, "every living soul. We're in a bad way. You, Mr. Matterson, get ready another anchor and send men to clear the cable tier below. Quick now."

I heard those in the cabin start to their feet when I called, and a moment later Gleazen burst out and up the ladder. Behind him came Faith, whom he had passed in his rush to the deck; then, a moment later, Arnold, who had stopped to shake Mr. Severance out of a sound sleep.

The white crests were nearer now, and approaching at a startling speed. The roar alone told us they were breakers. A wave curled along the rail and a torrent of foam cascaded over the bulwark, washed the length of the deck, and eddied for a moment above the scuppers.

The breakers were upon us and all about us. Their deafening roar drowned out every sound in the brig. Then we struck. The man at the wheel was thrown to his knees, but held his place. One or two men succeeded in clinging to the rigging. The rest of us went tumbling up against the rail.

I really did not understand the expression on Gleazen's face. I simply could not yet comprehend the terrible danger in which we were placed. To me, being no sailor, anything would have seemed possible at sea; but now, when we were so near port,—indeed, actually in sight of land,—it seemed utterly incredible that we could be in deadly peril. But it was a terrible lesson that put an end to my folly. A second blow followed the first shock of our striking, then a third still heavier, then a sea broke clean across our bows, carrying one poor wretch overboard and driving two more back to the quarter-deck. With a fearful, despairing yell the luckless fellow went past us and down, and as he did so I saw clinging to his shoulders a frightened animal and knew that we had seen the last of Pedro and his monkey.

The next sea broke over the whole weather side of the good Adventure, and only by clinging fast to the rigging did any one of us manage to retain his hold on the pounding wreck, which, desperate though her plight was, represented our one chance for life.

Now in a voice that rose above the roar of the tempest Gideon North thundered, "Cut away the masts! Cut away the masts!"

A lull followed, and for a moment we dared hope that, once the brig was freed of all weight aloft, she would right herself and go over the bar in such a way that we could let go our anchor on the farther side and so bring her up again into the wind. But the lull brought us only despair when the carpenter answered him by shrieking at the top of his voice, "The axe has gone overboard."

So swiftly and so mightily had the succession of seas burst over us that of all hands only ten or a dozen were left on board. I could see them in a line clinging precariously to the weather-rail. At first, in dazed horror, I thought Faith Parmenter was not there; then, seeing someone drag her back through the wash of the sea, I myself strove to reach her side. Another sea broke, and again she almost went overboard; then I saw that it was Abe Guptil who was holding her with the strength of two men. Then the great black figure of the Fantee canoeman worked along the rail ahead of me and took a place beside her, opposite to Abe, and helped to hold her in the brig.

It was plain to every one of us what the outcome would have been had not a cross-current now thrown the pounding hull at a new angle, so that for a breathing-space those of us who were left alive had opportunity to take other measures for safety. But the very wave that did that also sent the masts by the board and, instead of lightening us, cluttered the decks with a hopeless snarl of ropes and canvas.

I was farther forward than the others, and so weak from my long illness that for a moment I could only strive to recover my strength and my breath. I saw them haul the filled boat up to the stern and, by sheer strength and audacity, raise her clear of the breakers, empty out half or two thirds of the water and let her go back again into the sea, where she rode sluggishly.

Into that rocking boat, first of all, sprang Matterson. Close after him scrambled the craven trader, and after him Neil Gleazen.

"Cast off!" I heard Matterson yell. "She'll founder with another soul aboard her."

And off they cast, those three men, abandoning every one of the rest of us to whatever end fate might hold in store.

That they should leave behind them those of us who had been from the first their enemies was not surprising; but that they should abandon thus, on a wreck that we all could see was doomed to break up in a few hours, if not literally in a few minutes, a girl who had done them no harm whatsoever, whose only fault lay in coming from quite another world than theirs, was contemptible beyond belief, if for no other reason than that she was but a young girl and they strong men.

I would not have believed it of even them. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw them go. But as if to deal them a punishment more fitting than any that we could devise, while the brig was pounding in the breakers, a wave, sweeping clean over her, wrenched the trysail boom about and parted the sheet and flung the boom in a wide half-circle squarely on top of the boat, which it crushed to kindlings. Whether or not it hit any of the three cowardly knaves a direct blow, it left them struggling like so many rats in seas that speedily carried them out of our sight into the darkness.

No doubt we should have seen more of their fate had our own plight been less desperate; but the boom, as it swung down on the boat, raked across the taffrail, and those of us who had been clinging there in a long line, losing our hold on what up to that point had represented to us our only chance for safety, threw our arms round the boom and clung fast to that and with it were swept away from the wrecked brig, straight through the breakers that foamed between us and the shore. Holding the boom itself with one arm, I struggled to give Faith what help I could with the other; but we must both have been washed off the leaping spar, had not the big black Fantee canoeman, who all this time had been working closer and closer to his beloved mistress, plunged under the boom and, coming up on the farther side, seized both her and me with a grip like a gorilla's. Meanwhile Abe Guptil, as strong as a bear, in a flash had seen how effective the Fantee's manoeuvre was, and had tried to duplicate it for himself, Arnold, and Gideon North, who had been washed to the farther end of the spar and nearly carried away from it. But he only partly succeeded, for to him the water was not nearly so natural an element as to the mungo, and he began his attempt later and completed it more slowly.

Coming up on the far side of the boom, gasping and choking from a wave that struck him squarely in the face, he clasped hands with Arnold and tried to do so with Gideon North; but as his outstretched arm groped for him, the sea tore the old sailor away and we five were left alone on the long spar, two of us on one side and three on the other, with arms and bodies locked around it.

Brave Gideon North! There was little time then to feel his loss; but it was to grow upon us more and more and more in the weeks and months to come. Stout-hearted, downright, thoughtful, kind—it is very seldom that one gets or loses such a friend.

The spar rolled and turned as it swept toward the shore. Now we were pounded and battered and almost drowned by the breakers; now we got a chance to breathe and regain our strength as we came into deeper, quieter water; now we were swept again through breakers that tossed us, half drowned, into surging shallows. And so, holding fast to one another, we were cast up on the shore in the darkness, where we crawled away from the long waves that licked over the wet sand, and sat down and watched and waited and watched.

Twice we heard someone calling aloud, and once I was sure that I saw someone struggling toward us out of the surge. But though we staggered down to the sea and shouted time and again, we got no answer. Slowly the conviction forced itself upon us that we five and some half a dozen sailors who had reached land before us were all who were left alive of the passengers and crew of the brig Adventure; that after all there was no hope whatever for Gideon North, that bravest of master mariners.

To such an end had come Cornelius Gleazen's golden dreams! Through suffering and disaster, they had led him to the ultimate wreck of every hope; his own catastrophe had shattered the future of more than one innocent man, and had caused directly the death of many innocent men.

It was a wild dawn that broke upon us on that foreign shore. The wind raged and the sea thundered, and black, low clouds raced over our heads. To watch by daylight the terrible cauldron through which we had come by dark was in itself a fearful thing; and beyond it, barely visible through the surf, lay the broken hull of the Adventure. So far as we could discover, there was no living creature in all that waste of waters.

My dream of being a prosperous ship-owner lay wrecked beside the shattered timbers of the Adventure; and knowing that, after all my youthful dreams of affluence, I now was a poor man with my way in the world to make, I felt that still another dream, a dearer, more ambitious dream, likewise was shattered.

If when I owned the brig and had good prospects Faith Parmenter had withdrawn behind a wall of reserve, if there had been someone else whom she held in greater favor,—of whom she thought more often,—what hope that I could win her now? Starting to walk away from the others, I saw that she was ahead of me, staring with dark, tearless eyes at the stormy sea. I stopped beside her.

"I suppose the time of our parting is near at hand," I began. "If I can in any way be of service to you—"

"You are going to leave me now? Here?"

There was something in her breathless, anxious voice that brought my heart up into my throat.

"Not leave you, but—"

"But the time of parting has come?" she said, with a rising inflection. "It has found us in a wild and desolate place,"—she smiled,—"more desolate and less wild than the place from which we sailed. You came to me strangely, sir; you go as strangely as you came."

"If I can be of any service to you," I blindly repeated, "I—"

Still smiling, she cut me short off. "I thank you, but I think I shall be able, after all, to make shift. If someone—Mr. Lamont, perhaps—will take me to some town where there is—an English church—"

She still was smiling, but her smile wavered.

Could she, I wondered with a sort of fierce eagerness, have told me all her story? Was there, then, really nothing hidden?

"If you—" I began, "if I—"

Then she covered her face with her hands and sobbed, and for the first time I dared guess the truth.

At what I then said,—the words that opened the gate to the life we two have lived together,—she smiled so brightly through her tears, that for the moment I forgot the dark shore, the stormy seas, and the terrible, tragic night through which we had passed.

There was a wealth of affection in Arnold's kind, thoughtful face when we joined the others, and Abe Guptil and the big Fantee, Paul, smiled at us—it was good to see their smiles after the sufferings and sorrow that we all had passed through.

"If only Gideon North and Seth Upham were here now!" Abe cried.

"Poor Seth!" said Arnold. "What a price he has paid for one passionate blow."

"What do you know?" I demanded.

Arnold gravely turned, "I know little," he said. "But I have guessed much."

"What have you guessed?"

"They say in Topham that Neil Gleazen left town in the night and Eli Norton was found dead in the morning."

While he paused, we waited in silence.

"That, my friends, is why Gleazen for twenty years did not come back. But I once heard Gleazen say, when the mood was on him to torment Seth Upham, let people think what they would, that at least he—Gleazen—knew who killed Eli Norton."

"And you think that Seth Upham—"

He interrupted me with a Latin phrase—"De mortuis nil nisi bonum."

My poor uncle!

"You four," said Arnold thoughtfully, "will need money before you once more reach Topham."

"But of course you are coming too," I cried.

"No, I fear that I should not be content to live always in Topham."

Taken aback by his words, I stared at him with an amazement that was utterly incredulous.

"You are not coming back with us?"

"No." Arnold smiled kindly and perhaps a little sadly.

Unbuckling a belt that he had worn since I first knew him, he drew it off and opened it, and I saw to my further amazement that it was full of gold coins. "This," said he, "will go far to pay your expenses."

"I cannot take gold from you," I cried.

"Do not be foolish, Joe. We are old friends, you and I, and this by rights is as much yours as mine."

He thrust the belt into my hands. "It is all for you, but there is enough for our good friend Abe, in case he parts from you before reaching Topham."

"But you—"

"I have more. I am not, Joe, only that which I have pretended to be in your uncle's store in Topham, where you and I have had happy days together."

At my bewildered face, he smiled again.

"My real name, Joe, is old and not obscure. I am one of the least illustrious sons of my house; but I myself have served on the staff of the great Bonaparte.

"And that—" I could scarcely believe that honest Arnold Lamont was saying these astounding things.

"That is why it has been necessary—at least advisable—for me to conceal for so many years my identity. A man, Joe, does not tell all he knows."

CHAPTER XXXIV
AN OLD, OLD STORY

It was spring when we came back to Topham. The sun was warm upon the pleasant fields and gardens, and the blossoms on the fruit trees were thick and fragrant. The loveliest days of all the year were enfolding the pleasant countryside of New England in the glory and peace of their bright skies and soft colors; and as the hired coach that brought us down from Boston, with black Paul, at once proud and uncomfortable in a new suit of white man's clothes, seated stiffly high beside the driver, rolled along the familiar roads, I pointed out to my bride the fair scenes among which my boyhood had been spent.

From Montevideo, which we reached on the evening following the wreck,—there an old English clergyman married us,—we had sailed to New York as passengers in a merchant ship; but first we had taken leave of those two good friends, Arnold Lamont, whom we were never to see again, and Abe Guptil, who had bravely insisted on setting out to build anew his fortunes by shipping as second mate of an American bark then in port. From New York a second ship had given us passage to Boston, whence we came over the same road to Topham that I had traveled so long before with Arnold and Sim and Abe and Neil Gleazen and my uncle.

We ought, I suppose, to have been a properly anxious young couple, for of the great sum in gold that Arnold had so generously advanced us only a small part remained, and what I should do in Topham, now that Uncle Seth's store was in other hands, I had not the slightest notion. The tower of golden dreams that poor Seth Upham had built in idle moments had fallen into dust; Neil Gleazen's unscrupulous quest had brought only ashes and bitterness; it was from the shadow of a great tragedy that we came into that golden morning in spring. But great as had been those things that Faith and I had lost, we had gained something so deep and so great that even then, when in discovering it we were so happy that the world seemed too good to be real, we had not more than begun to appreciate the wonder and magnitude of it.

Thus I came back to Topham after such a year and a half as few men have known, even though they have lived a full century—back to Topham, with all my golden prospects shattered by Gleazen's mad adventure, but with a treasure such that, if all the gold in the world had been mine, I would eagerly have given every coin to win it.

With my bride beside me, her hand upon my arm, I rode into sleepy little Topham, past my uncle's house where I had lived for many happy years, past the store where Arnold and poor Sim Muzzy and I had worked together, past the smithy where even now that old prophet, the blacksmith, was peering out to see who went by in the strange coach, and after all was failing to recognize me at the distance, so changed was I by all that had befallen me, up to the door of the very tavern where I had first seen Cornelius Gleazen.

There I handed my dear wife down from her seat in the coach, dressed in a simple gown and bonnet that became her charmingly, and turned and saw, waiting to greet me, the very landlord whom last I had seen reeling back from Gleazen's drunken thrust.

At first, when he looked at me, he showed that he was puzzled; then he recognized me and his face changed.

My fears lest the good man bear me a grudge for my share, small though it was, in that villainous night's work, vanished there and then. "You!" he cried, with both hands outstretched; "why, Joe! why, Joe! We thought you were long since lost at sea or killed by buccaneers—such a story as Sim Muzzy told us!"

"Sim Muzzy?" I cried. "Not Sim!"

"Yes, Sim!"

Then I heard far down the road someone calling, and turned and saw—it was so good that I rubbed my eyes like a child waking from a dream!—actually saw Sim Muzzy come puffing and sweating along, with a cloud of dust trailing for a hundred yards behind him.

"Joe, Joe," he cried, "welcome home! Welcome home, Joe Woods!"

And as I am an honest man, he fell to blubbering on the spot.

"Things are not what they used to be," he managed at last to say. "The new man in the store don't like the town and the townspeople don't like him, and I've been living in hopes Seth Upham would come home and take it off his hands. But who is this has come back with you, Joe, and what's come of Seth Upham?"

At that I presented him to my wife, who received him with a sweet dignity that won his deepest regard on the spot; and then I told him the whole sad story of our adventures, or as much of it, at least, as I could cram into the few minutes that we stood by the road.

"And so," I concluded, "I have come back to Topham with not a penny to my name, save such few as are left from Arnold's bounty."

Sim heard me out in silence, for evidently his own trials had done much to cure him of his garrulity, and with a very sad face indeed he stood looking back over the village where we had lived and worked so long together.

"Poor Seth Upham!" he said at last. "Well, there's nothing we can do for him now. And as for Neil Gleazen, he's better dead than back in Topham, for here he'd hang as sure as preaching. Jed Matthews, they say, never moved a muscle after Neil hit him on the head. But as for you, Joe, you're no penniless wanderer."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked.

"There was all of fifteen thousand dollars on board the brig."

"What makes you think that?"

"Didn't I help Seth store it in his trunk? 'You're simple, Sim, and honest,' he says to me. 'I'll not have another soul besides you know this, but you're as honest as you are simple,' Them's the words he said, and I was that proud of 'em that I've treasured 'em ever since."

I thought of the papers and bags we had stored in the wagon that night when we fled from Topham.

"He hid it well," I replied. "But even if he had not hidden it so well, I fear that it would nevertheless be at the bottom of the La Plata River, just as it now is, with the brig, and all the goods that were on board her, and many men that sailed in her, good and bad alike."

"But that is not all."

"Not all? What do you mean?"

"Seth Upham left money in the bank, and I've seen his will with my own eyes. 'Twas found in the safe after we left town, and turned over to Judge Fuller."

"But surely, what with buying the brig and taking all his papers, which I looked over myself in the cabin of the Adventure and which were lost, every one, when she broke up, he had nothing left. Why, the brig must have cost a pretty penny."

"That may well be, Joe, but there's money in the bank, for all that. Seth Upham had more money tucked away than most people would have believed."

I thought this over with growing wonder. "I do believe, my love," I said, "that we shall be able to make a fair start in the world after all, and, which is more, repay certain debts at once."

Faith smiled as she looked up at me; then she turned and looked at the quaint old town, which was spread before us in the sun.

CHAPTER XXXV
EHEU FUGACES!

Sim Muzzy's tale, when he bethought himself to tell it to us, was a lively one in its own way, although it did not, of course, compare with our African adventures. The press-gang that set upon us in Havana had rushed him away to a Spanish ship, where he was kicked about and cruelly abused, until, at peril of his life, he dropped overboard in the dark and swam to an American schooner, whose captain, hearing his story, took him on board and hid him in the chain-locker until they were well on their way to Boston. Thence Sim had set out on foot for Topham, where he had hired himself once again to tend the store and had led a dog's life ever since.

That Sim was right about Uncle Seth's bank accounts and his will, which left all to me, I learned before sunset that very day. The sums were not large in themselves, and taken all together they were small enough compared with the golden dreams my poor uncle had lived in; but they assured Faith and me of comfort at least; and when that evening I called upon the new storekeeper and found him so eager to escape from a town where his short measures and petty deceits had made him unpopular and discontented, that he was not in the mood to haggle over the bargain, I bought back the store on the spot.

"There'll be happier days ahead, Sim," said I when I came out.

"O Joe, I'm sure of that," he replied, his face bright with smiles; for he had overheard considerable of our discussion.

Within the week the papers were signed, and before a fortnight was up Faith and I went out, arm-in-arm, on the old hill road and saw the men break ground for the new house that we were to build.

Whether any of the others, unknown to Faith and me, had made their way ashore on the night of the wreck, we never learned; but it was virtually impossible that they should have done so without revealing themselves to those of us who had ranged all that bleak coast the next morning. For honest Gideon North we mourned as for one of the dearest of friends, and of the rest we thought sometimes in the years that followed. But none of them, except our own Abe, ever came to Topham, nor did I ever go back to the sea.

Three letters at long intervals brought us news of Arnold Lamont; and to the address that he gave in the first we sent with our reply a draft for the sum that he had so generously lent us when on that wild South American shore we four had set out to begin life anew. They were good letters, and there was no note of complaint in them; yet as I read them and thought of the Arnold Lamont whom I had known so long and, all things considered, so intimately, I could not but feel that in the cities of South America and, later, of Europe he failed, whatever compensations there may have been, to find anything like the peace and quiet happiness that he once had found in our New England town of Topham.

The week before the walls of our new house were raised, Faith and I drove together along a road that I had tramped on an autumn afternoon, to the farm where Abe Guptil had lived in the days that now seemed so long ago. We carried with us certain papers, which changed hands in the kitchen where Abe and his little family had slept the night when I was their guest; and so it happened that, when Abe returned from his voyage and came to see me at the store full of honest joy at my good fortune, I sent him off to his own old home with the assurance that the terms by which he was to buy it were such that he need never fear again to lose it.

As the town of Topham has grown around us, Faith and I have grown into the town and with it; and although the black Fantee, Paul, who remained the most faithful of servants, was a nine days' wonder in the village, there now are few people left, I imagine, who know all the wild, well-nigh unbelievable, yet absolutely true, story of the year when we first met. A royal fortune may have been lost with Seth Upham and Neil Gleazen in Gleazen's mad quest, but I can say in all sincerity that from his quest I gained a fortune far beyond my deserts.

THE END

THE COURSE OF THE BRIG ADVENTURE

McGrath-Sherrill Press, Boston