The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

primed, we went presently to the sitting-room above, and the drawer shortly after coming to say that two gentlemen desired to see Don Sanchez, Jack and I seated ourselves side by side at a becoming distance from the Don, holding our hats on our knees as humbly as may be. Then in comes a rude, dirty fellow with a patch over one eye and a most peculiar bearish gait, dressed in a tarred coat, with a wool shawl about his neck, followed by a shrewd-visaged little gentleman in a plain cloth suit, but of very good substance, he looking just as trim and well-mannered as t’other was uncouth and rude.

      “Well, here am I,” says Evans (whom we knew at once for the master mariner), flinging his hat and shawl in a corner. “There’s his excellency Don Sanchez, and here’s Mr. Hopkins, the merchant I spoke on yesterday; and who be these?” turning about to fix us with his one blue eye.

      “Two gentlemen related to Mrs. Godwin, and very anxious for her return,” replies the Don.

      “Then we being met friends all, let’s have up a bottle and heave off on this here business without more ado,” says Evans; and with that he seats himself in the Don’s chair, pokes up the fire with his boots, and spits on the hearth.

      The Don graciously places a chair for Mr. Hopkins, rings the bell, and seats himself. Then after a few civilities while the bottle was being opened and our glasses filled, he says:

      “You have doubtless heard from Robert Evans the purpose of our coming hither, Mr. Hopkins.”

      “Roughly,” replies Mr. Hopkins, with a dry little cough. “But I should be glad to have the particulars from you, that I may judge more clearly of my responsibilities in this undertaking.”

      “Oh, Lord!” exclaims Evans, in disgust. “Here give us a pipe of tobacco if we’re to warp out half a day ere we get a capful of wind.”

      CHAPTER V.

      Don Sanchez puts us in the way of robbing with an easy conscience.

      Promising to make his story as short as he possibly could, Don Sanchez began:

      “On the coming of our present king to his throne, Sir Richard Godwin was recalled from Italy, whither he had been sent as embassador by the Protector. He sailed from Livorno with his wife and his daughter Judith, a child of nine years old at that time, in the Seahawk.”

      “I remember her,” says Evans, “as stout a ship as ever was put to sea.”

      “On the second night of her voyage the Seahawk became parted from her convoy, and the next day she was pursued and overtaken by a pair of Barbary pirates, to whom she gave battle.”

      “Aye, and I’d have done the same,” cries Evans, “though they had been a score.”

      “After a long and bloody fight,” continues Don Sanchez, “the corsairs succeeded in boarding the Seahawk and overcoming the remnant of her company.”

      “Poor hearts! would I had been there to help ’em,” says Evans.

      “Exasperated by the obstinate resistance of these English and their own losses, the pirates would grant no mercy, but tying the living to the dead they cast all overboard save Mrs. Godwin and her daughter. Her lot was even worse; for her wounded husband, Sir Richard, was snatched from her arms and flung into the sea before her eyes, and he sank crying farewell to her.”

      “These Turks have no hearts in their bellies, you must understand,” explains Evans. “And nought but venom in their veins.”

      “The Seahawk was taken to Alger, and there Mrs. Godwin and her daughter were sold for slaves in the public market-place.”

      “I have seen ’em sold by the score there,” says Evans, “and fetch but an onion a head.”

      “By good fortune the mother and daughter were bought by Sidi ben Moula, a rich old merchant who was smitten by the pretty, delicate looks of Judith, whom he thenceforth treated as if she had been his own child. In this condition they lived with greater happiness than falls to the lot of most slaves, until the beginning of last year, when Sidi died, and his possessions fell to his brother, Bare ben Moula. Then Mrs. Godwin appeals to Bare for her liberty and to be sent home to her country, saying that what price (in reason) he chooses to set upon their heads she will pay from her estate in England—a thing which she had proposed before to Sidi, but he would not hear of it because of his love for Judith and his needing no greater fortune than he had. But this Bare, though he would be very well content, being also an old man, to have his household managed by Mrs. Godwin and to adopt Judith as his child, being of a more avaricious turn than his brother, at length consents to it, on condition that her ransoms be paid before she quits Barbary. And so, casting about how this may be done, Mrs. Godwin finds a captive whose price has been paid, about to be taken to Palma in the Baleares, and to him she entrusts two letters.” Here Don Sanchez pulls two folded sheets of vellum from his pocket, and presenting one to me, he says:

      “Mayhap you recognise this hand, Mr. Knight.”

      And I, seeing the signature Elizabeth Godwin, answers quickly enough: “Aye, ’tis my dear cousin Bess, her own hand.”

      “This,” says the Don, handing the other to Evans, “you may understand.”

      “I can make out ’tis writ in the Moorish style,” says Evans, “but the meaning of it I know not, for I can’t tell great A from a bull’s foot though it be in printed English.”

      “’Tis an undertaking on the part of Bare ben Moula,” says the Don, “to deliver up at Dellys in Barbary the persons of Mrs. Godwin and her daughter against the payment of five thousand gold ducats within one year. The other writing tells its own story.”

      Mr. Hopkins took the first sheet from me and read it aloud. It was addressed to Mr. Richard Godwin, Hurst Court, Chislehurst in Kent, and after giving such particulars of her past as we had already heard from Don Sanchez, she writes thus: “And now, my dear nephew, as I doubt not you (as the nearest of my kindred to my dear husband after us two poor relicts) have taken possession of his estate in the belief we were all lost in our voyage from Italy, I do pray you for the love of God and of mercy to deliver us from our bondage by sending hither a ship with the money for our ransoms forthwith, and be assured by this that I shall not dispossess you of your fortune (more than my bitter circumstances do now require), so that I but come home to die in a Christian country and have my sweet Judith where she may be less exposed to harm than in this infidel country. I count upon your love—being ever a dear nephew—and am your most hopeful, trusting, and loving aunt, Elizabeth Godwin.”

      “Very well, sir,” says Mr. Hopkins, returning the letter. “You have been to Chislehurst.”

      “I have,” answers the Don, “and there I find the estate in the hands of a most curious Puritanical steward, whose honesty is rather in the letter than the spirit. For though I have reason to believe that not one penny’s value of the estate has been misemployed since it has been in his hands, yet will he give nothing—no, not a maravedi to the redemption of his mistress, saying that the letter is addressed to Richard Godwin and not to him, etc., and that he hath no power to pay out monies for this purpose, even though he believed the facts I have laid before him—which for his own ends doubtless he fains to misdoubt.”

      “As a trader, sir,” says Mr. Hopkins, “I cannot blame his conduct in that respect. For should the venture fall through, the next heir might call upon him to repay out of his own pocket all that he had put into this enterprise. But this Mr. Richard Godwin, what of him?”

      “He is nowhere to be found. The only relatives I have been able to discover are these two gentlemen.”

      “Who,” remarks Mr. Hopkins, with a shrewd glance at our soiled clothes, “are not, I venture to think, in a position to pay their cousin’s ransom.”

      “Alas, no, sir,” says Jack. “We are but two poor shopkeepers of London undone by the great fire.”

      “Well now, sir,” says Mr. Hopkins, fetching an inkpot, a pen, and a piece of paper from his pocket. “I may conclude that you wish me