The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

the fish from whom they were all descended. Had it not been prophesied that I should come?

      “So I have lived with them and made laws for them and striven to make them wiser. Twice we have visited this island and I abolished the sacrifice of human flesh. I was ill with a fever when the flotilla left to take the strange craft they had sighted, or I would have forbidden it. For while they have given me all power, they are loath to loose me. I have had no chance to escape.

      “When they came back that time with the corpses of white men in canoes almost swamped after two days and nights of paddling, bewildered by the rain and carried offshore by the great waves following, I told them it was the anger of the gods against their act. And to think that ever since you must have been here!

      “I have always told them I should leave them some day. They will not dispute me after this miracle of your presence. For I will threaten to bring back the volcanic fires that have not flowed since I came with them. You see my godship has been precarious. But—it ends well. And now, tell me your story.”

      * * * *

      “Jim,” said Captain Avery Whiting, as the Golden Dolphin, under a jury rig, bore sluggishly, but surely, on her way for Suva, while the peak of Lukuba—no longer beckoning—dimmed and diminished, “Lynda Warner tells me that you are in love with my daughter. She tells me also that Kitty is in love with you. I have told you what I think of your behavior. I have no son. I have often wanted one.”

      Jim stood silent, the two at the taffrail alone.

      “Well?”

      “Kitty is an heiress, sir. I—”

      “You have a share in the pearls.”

      “If I must take that, it is to be divided with the others who stood by.”

      “Tut! You talk like a very young man sometimes, Jim. What are pearls? Would you deny Kitty for pearls? If that is what lies between you and her happiness I will fling them all overboard, and regret that I ever heard of them or brought them from the stranded Golden Dolphin. I am getting to be an old man, Jim. I had hoped to retire. Let me keep my pearls, or what they bring, for my old age. I may live long enough to see grandchildren. If so, I promise to let them be the inheritors. You see we are both talking foolishly and you are eaten up with a very false pride.”

      “Perhaps,” said Jim, “I am willing to be convinced.”

      “Then go and talk to Kitty. She has bragged all along of your courage. Of late she must be beginning to doubt it. Wait—stay here and I will send her up to you.”

      A SET OF ROGUES, by Frank Barrett (Part 1)

      CHAPTER I.

      Of my companions and our adversities, and in particular from our getting into the stocks at Tottenham Cross to our being robbed at Edmonton.

      There being no plays to be acted at the “Red Bull,” because of the Plague, and the players all cast adrift for want of employment, certain of us, to wit, Jack Dawson and his daughter Moll, Ned Herring, and myself, clubbed our monies together to buy a store of dresses, painted cloths, and the like, with a cart and horse to carry them, and thus provided set forth to travel the country and turn an honest penny, in those parts where the terror of pestilence had not yet turned men’s stomachs against the pleasures of life. And here, at our setting out, let me show what kind of company we were. First, then, for our master, Jack Dawson, who on no occasion was to be given a second place; he was a hale, jolly fellow, who would eat a pound of beef for his breakfast (when he could get it), and make nothing of half a gallon of ale therewith—a very masterful man, but kindly withal, and pleasant to look at when not contraried, with never a line of care in his face, though turned of fifty. He played our humorous parts, but he had a sweet voice for singing of ditties, and could fetch a tear as readily as a laugh, and he was also exceeding nimble at a dance, which was the strangest thing in the world, considering his great girth. Wife he had none, but Moll Dawson was his daughter, who was a most sprightly, merry little wench, but no miracle for beauty, being neither child nor woman at this time; surprisingly thin, as if her frame had grown out of proportion with her flesh, so that her body looked all arms and legs, and her head all mouth and eyes, with a great towzled mass of chestnut hair, which (off the stage) was as often as not half tumbled over her shoulder. But a quicker little baggage at mimicry (she would play any part, from an urchin of ten to a crone of fourscore), or a livelier at dancing of Brantles or the single Coranto never was, I do think, and as merry as a grig. Of Ned Herring I need only here say that he was the most tearing villain imaginable on the stage, and off it the most civil-spoken, honest-seeming young gentleman. Nor need I trouble to give a very lengthy description of myself; what my character was will appear hereafter, and as for my looks, the less I say about them, the better. Being something of a scholar and a poet, I had nearly died of starvation, when Jack Dawson gave me a footing on the stage, where I would play the part of a hero in one act, a lacquey in the second, and a merry Andrew in the third, scraping a tune on my fiddle to fill up the intermedios.

      We had designed to return to London as soon as the Plague abated, unless we were favoured with extraordinary good fortune, and so, when we heard that the sickness was certainly past, and the citizens recovering of their panic, we (being by this time heartily sick of our venture, which at the best gave us but beggarly recompense) set about to retrace our steps with cheerful expectations of better times. But coming to Oxford, we there learned that a prodigious fire had burnt all London down, from the Tower to Ludgate, so that if we were there, we should find no house to play in. This lay us flat in our hopes, and set us again to our vagabond enterprise; and so for six months more we scoured the country in a most miserable plight, the roads being exceedingly foul, and folks more humoured of nights to drowse in their chimnies than to sit in a draughty barn and witness our performances; and then, about the middle of February we, in a kind of desperation, got back again to London, only to find that we must go forth again, the town still lying in ruins, and no one disposed to any kind of amusement, except in high places, where such actors as we were held in contempt. So we, with our hearts in our boots, as one may say, set out again to seek our fortunes on the Cambridge road, and here, with no better luck than elsewhere, for at Tottenham Cross we had the mischance to set fire to the barn wherein we were playing, by a candle falling in some loose straw, whereby we did injury to the extent of some shilling or two, for which the farmer would have us pay a pound, and Jack Dawson stoutly refusing to satisfy his demand he sends for the constable, who locks us all up in the cage that night, to take us before the magistrate in the morning. And we found to our cost that this magistrate had as little justice as mercy in his composition; for though he lent a patient ear to the farmer’s case, he would not listen to Jack Dawson’s argument, which was good enough, being to the effect that we had not as much as a pound amongst us, and that he would rather be hanged than pay it if he had; and when Ned Herring (seeing the kind of Puritanical fellow he was) urged that, since the damage was not done by any design of ours, it must be regarded as a visitation of Providence, he says: “Very good. If it be the will of Providence that one should be scourged, I take it as the Divine purpose that I should finish the business by scourging the other”; and therewith he orders the constable to take what money we have from our pockets and clap us in the stocks till sundown for payment of the difference. So in the stocks we three poor men were stuck for six mortal hours, which was a wicked, cruel thing indeed, with the wind blowing a sort of rainy snow about our ears; and there I do think we must have perished of cold and vexation but that our little Moll brought us a sheet for a cover, and tired not in giving us kind words of comfort.

      At five o’clock the constable unlocked us from our vile confinement, and I do believe we should have fallen upon him and done him a mischief for his pains there and then, but that we were all frozen as stiff as stones with sitting in the cold so long, and indeed it was some time ere we could move our limbs at all. However, with much ado, we hobbled on at the tail of our cart, all three very bitter, but especially Ned Herring, who cursed most horridly and as I had never heard him curse off the stage, saying he would rather have stayed in London to carry links for the gentry than join us again in this damnable adventure, etc. And that which incensed him the more was the merriment of our Moll, who, seated on the side of the cart, could do nothing better than make sport of our discontent. But there was no malice