The Jolly Roger Tales: 60+ Pirate Novels, Treasure-Hunt Tales & Sea Adventures. Лаймен Фрэнк Баум

call it, is justified neither by conditions nor by your own best sense. You yourself are far more English than you are anything else—you know it; you know how hard it is for white men to live with black men, and—to tell the truth—all they do for them. The mere smell of negroes is no more pleasant to you than it is to many other white men. Englishmen have exiled themselves, for absurdly small salaries, to try to make life finer and cleaner for those dark—and, I'll admit, pathetic—barbarians. You can't deny it. And you've too much sense to deny it. So, I'll say nothing about this, if you like" (pointing to the manuscript), "and if the wind holds, put you ashore to-morrow at Spanish Wells. I like you in spite of myself. Is it a bargain?"

      On this we parted, and, as I thought, with a certain friendliness on both sides.

      There was no sailing wind, so there was nothing to do but stay where we were all day. The boys fished and lay around; and I spent most of the time in my cabin, reading a novel, and, soon after nine, I fell asleep in a frame of mind unaccountably trustful.

      I suppose that I had been asleep about three hours when I was disturbed by a tremendous roar. It was Sailor (who always slept near me) out on the cockpit with a man under his paws—his jaws at the man's throat. I called him off, and saw that it was my pock-marked friend, with his right hand extended in the cockpit and a revolver a few inches away from it. So far as I knew it was the only firearm on the ship. "Let's get hold of that first, Sailor," I said, and I slipped it into my hip pocket.

      "It's too bad that we can't be decent to people, Sailor, isn't it? It makes life awfully sad," I said.

      Sailor wagged his tail.

      The stars were fading on the eastern islands.

      "Wake up, Tom," I called, and, "wake up, Captain!" Meanwhile, I took out the revolver from my hip pocket, and held it over the man I seemed to grow more and more sorry for.

      "We've not only got a mutiny aboard," I told the captain, "but we've got treason to the British Government. Do you want to stand for that? Or shall I put you ashore with the rest?"

      Unruffled as usual, he had nothing to say beyond

      "Ay, ay, sir!"

      "Take this cord then," I ordered him and Tom, "and bind the hands and feet of this pock-marked gentleman here; also of George, engineer; and also of Theodore, the deck-hand. Bind them well. And throw them into the dingy, with a bottle of water apiece, and a loaf of bread. By noon, we'll have some wind, and can make our way to Harbour Island, and there I'll have a little talk with the Commandant."

      And as I ordered, all was done. Tom and I rowed the dingy ashore, with our three captives bound like three silly fowls, and presently threw them ashore with precious little ceremony, I can tell you; for the coral rock is not all it sounds in poetry. Then we got back to the Maggie Darling, with imprecations in our ears, and particularly the promises of the pock-marked rebel, who announced the certainty of our meeting again.

      Of course we laughed at such threats, but I confess that, as I went down to my cabin and picked up the "manifesto," which had been forgotten in all the turmoil, I could not escape a certain thrill as I read the signature—for it was: "Henry P. Tobias, Jr."

      Chapter VI

       Table of Contents

      The Incident of the Captain.

      As we hoisted the sails and the sun came up in all his glory, the smell of Tom's coffee seemed to my prosaic mind the best of all in that beautiful world. I said: "Let's give 'em a song, boys,—to cheer 'em up. How about 'Delia gone!'?"

      At this suggestion even the imperturbability of the captain broke into a smile. He was a man hard to move, but this suggestion seemed to tickle him.

       Some gave a nickel, some gave a dime; I never gave no red cent— She was no girl of mine. Delia gone! Delia gone!

      seemed to throw him into convulsions, and I took the helm awhile to give him a chance to recover. The exquisiteness of its appeal to the scoundrels, so securely trussed there on the island we were swiftly leaving behind, seemed to get him to such a degree that I was almost afraid that he might die of laughing, as has been heard of. He laughed as only a negro can laugh, and he kept it going so infectiously that Tom and I got started, just watching him. Even Sailor caught the infection, his big tongue shaking his jaws with the huge joke of it.

      I don't know what they thought had happened to us, the three poor devils there on the jagged coral rock. At all events the laughter did us good by relieving the tension of our feelings, and when at last we had recovered and the captain was at the wheel again, once more sober as a judge, you couldn't have believed such an outbreak possible of him.

      The Maggie Darling was sailing so fast that it hardly seemed necessary to trouble to call at Harbour Island; but, then, the wind might go down, our adventure was far from over, and gasolene might at any moment be a prime necessity. So we kept her going, with her beautiful sails filled out against the bluest sky you can dream of, and the ripple singing at her bow—the loveliest sight and sound in the world for a man who loves boats and the sea.

      "Is there anything like it, Tom?" I asked. "Do you read your Bible? You should; it's the greatest book in the world."

      Tom hastened to acquiesce.

      "You remember in the Book of Job? Three things are wonderful to me, The way of a ship on the sea, the way of an eagle in the air, and the way of a man with a maid."

      "Ay, ay, sir," said Tom, "the way of a ship on the sea—but the way of a man with a maid—"

      "What's the matter with that, Tom?"

      "They're all very pretty—just like the boat; but you'll not find one near so true. We're better without them, if you ask my advice. A man's all right as long as he keeps on his boat; but the minute he lands—the girls and the troubles begin."

      "Ah! Tom," I said; "but I think you told me you've a family—"

      "Yes, sar, but the only good one amongst them is in the churchyard, this fifteen years."

      "Your wife, Tom?"

      "Yes, sar, but she was more than a woman. She was a saint. When I talk of women I don't think of her. No; God be kind to her, she is a saint, and I only wait around till she calls me."

      "Tom, allow me to shake hands with you," I said, "and call myself your friend for ever."

      The tears rolled down the old fellow's cheeks, and I realised how little colour really matters, and how few white men were really as white as Tom.

      And so that night we made Harbour Island, and met that welcome that can only be met at the lonely ends of the earth.

      The Commandant and the clergyman took me under their wings on the spot, and, though there was a good hotel, the Commandant didn't consider it good enough for me.

      Bless them both! I hope to be able some day to offer them the kind of hospitality they brought me so generously in both hands; lonely men, serving God and the British Empire, in that apparently God-forsaken outpost of the world.

      I liked the attitude they took toward my adventure. Their comments on "Henry P. Tobias, Jr." and the paper I had with me, were especially enlightening.

      "The black men themselves," they both agreed, "are all right, except, of course, here and there. It's fellows like this precious Tobias, real white trash—the negroes' name for them is apt enough—that are the danger for the friendship of both races. And it's the vein of a sort of a literary idealism in a fellow like Tobias that makes him the more dangerous. He's not all to the bad—"

      "I couldn't help thinking that too," I interrupted.

      "O! no," they said, "but he's a bit mad, too. That's his trouble. He's got a personal, as well as an abstract, grudge against the British Government."

      "Treasure?" I laughed.

      "How