Norton, Andre - Novel 08 (32 page)

 
          
 
He swung around with a force which made him
lurch almost to the table. As his tortured eyes met Fitz's, he thrust out his
left arm.

 
          
 
There was no hand below the plain ruffle of
his shirt-sleeve.

 
          
 
Captains!
once
more
hoist your streamers,

            
Spread your sails, and plough the
wave;

            
Tell your masters they were
dreamers

            
When they sought
to cheat the brave.

 
          
 
—new song, 1773

 
          
 
FlTZ, FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE LEFT WITHOUT ANY
READY word, stood where he was. He had never liked Ninnes —in fact there had
been times in the past when the antagonism he had felt since their first
meeting had come close to real hatred. But at that moment he found himself
feeling nothing but pity. Yet any indication of such a feeling, he sensed,
would be salt laid in an open wound. He forced himself to pull out a chair, to
sit down and face Ninnes, apparently unmoved by the other's somewhat
melodramatic disclosure.

 
          
 
“You escaped too," he stated rather than
asked in the same indifferent tone he had always used when speaking to the
lieutenant.

 
          
 
Ninnes came back to the table and threw
himself into the chair he had quitted a few minutes before. With his hand he
took up the bottle standing within reach and sloshed part of its contents into
a glass.

 
          
 
"Escaped?" He had schooled his voice
down from the hysteric heights of a moment before. "Oh, no—not escaped.
You can understand that the lobsterbacks have little use for a cripple. Our
worthy doctor was well able to talk them out of having to feed another mouth in
prison. When I could keep my feet we came over together. We got here
yesterday."

 
          
 
He took a long pull from the glass and drew
his right hand across his lips. There were drops of moisture beading on his
forehead, trickling down to the dark stains below his hot, restless eyes.

 
          
 
"
Watts
is here now?"

 
          
 
Ninnes swallowed and coughed.
"Aye.
He's in the town, looking out
supplies
"

 
          
 
"Captain Crofts is sure of a ship?"

 
          
 
"He's still got his luck—or he wouldn't
have come safely out of
England
. And he knows the Channel. The
Commissioners won't look the other way when he walks in. Like as not they'll
want a share in any venture he'll command."

 
          
 
"What about a crew?"

 
          
 
"He can ship any man he wants.
There're a power
of privateersmen—escaped prisoners and
survivors of lost ships—hanging around, panting like hound dogs, for the
Captain to take his choice of. And Matthews got through safe. Oh, he'll do well
enough for men when he gets the planking to ship them on. All day long they've
been coming up our stair to ask kindly when the Captain will be back and how
many men he'll be wanting when he is. I haven't heard anything but that since
I've been here. A new ship and a new
crew "

 
          
 
Ninnes set down the glass and gave the bottle
a furious push. It fell on its side and rolled away, dribbling a thin stream on
the table. His eyes were hard and dark in his ravaged face, and the fingers of
his hand clawed at the edge of the table as he faced Fitz across its scarred
top.

 
          
 
"And now," he added, his lips
twisting in a tortured little half-smile, "he's got him a marine officer,
too. Just the one he would ship if he had his choice. Get out! Get out where I
don't have to see that smooth gentry face of yours! You damned up-country horse
rider! Get out!"

 
          
 
He grabbed for the neck of the rolling bottle.
But Fitz was at the door. He couldn't fight Ninnes—not now.

 
          
 
"Run," taunted the other.
"Run, you half-Tory landlubber!
God help me if I ever
set eyes on you again. You've got all the luck in the
world
"

 
          
 
Fitz stepped outside where the indignant Jules
hovered ready to seize him. But he waved off the Breton and remained at the
door crack. There had been something in that last outburst from
Ninnes—something ugly. He could not go away and leave the lieutenant alone.
Watts
should be back. Fitz began to long for the
calm capability of
Watts
the way a fever patient would long for cold
water.

 
          
 
Jules pulled at his arm and growled in the
patois of the docks. But Fitz remained at his post. He tried to give the Breton
an explanation, that there was a sick officer within who had to be watched
until the doctor returned. If Jules wished, he could stay below on the
doorstep—Fitz would not leave. Apparently his honest concern made an impression
on the Malouin, for Jules grunted an assent and clumped down the stairs. Fitz
coaxed the door open an inch or so. Now the crack gave him sight of a small
sliver of the table and a few inches of Ninnes' chair.

 
          
 
But the lieutenant was not in that seat. Fitz
could hear him across the room as he returned to the table. The room was still
then, so still that the pound of blood in
his own
head
beat with drum rhythm. Fitz dared to pull at the door again.
Now
he caught the gleam of metal, heard the faint of its meeting wood.

 
          
 
On the portion of the table within sight lay a
boarding pistol, a neat little weapon, deadly and sure.

 
          
 
A boarding pistol, an officer's sidearm—meant
to be used at close quarters for defense—or for

 
          
 
Fitz moved. He was inside the room before
Ninnes could stir. And he grasped that weapon before the other moved—seconds
too late.

 
          
 
There were runnels of sweat rivering down the
lieutenant's worn cheeks. A loose lock of hair was plastered to his forehead by
it. And he looked up at Fitz with the snarl of a cornered wildcat.

 
          
 
He made no protest, but his harsh breathing
filled the room. Then his eyes dropped from Fitz to the pistol in the marine's
hand, and he laughed.

 
          
 
"Clumsy! I forget I'm a clumsy one-handed
fool now." His voice fell into a dreary monotone. "I might have
guessed you weren't gone! You've always been my ill luck,
Lyon
. How the devil must have laughed
himself
sick on that afternoon we met in
Baltimore
."

 
          
 
For a moment the drab walls of the room were
gone and Fitz again saw that other, younger Ninnes, eager and strong, a
brightly coated officer using his voice to pull in the recruits his captain
needed. That was so far away now

 
          
 
"First you lost me Crofts' favor."
With his forefinger Ninnes drew designs in the spilled wine which trickled
across the table. He spoke wearily, an odd lost note in his voice.

 
          
 
"First you lost me Crofts' favor,"
he repeated, "and now you take from me a fighting man's way out. Because I
can not try that again—I'll never have the
courage "

 
          
 
"It's not
courage
"
Fitz tried to protest.

 
          
 
But it was as if Ninnes could not hear.
"What is there about you, Lyon," he continued, quietly enough, as if
he were honestly puzzled by a problem beyond his solving. "You hold in two
hands all I've ever wanted— and through no contriving of your own.

 
          
 
"When you were jumping about before that
fencing master of yours, I was selling fish on the wharves. I got my learning a
bit at a time—I was no gentleman's son to take my ease at my books. I got what
I had the hard way. But
you "

 
          
 
Fitz sat down in his old seat across the
table. The bitterness of the other's jealousy was so naked that he felt
scorched by it. But he knew that Ninnes was ridding himself of a poison which
had burned in him a long, long time. It was as if the lieutenant could not
master it any more—that he had resigned himself to defeat, to a hopelessness of
never competing again with the man he so resented.

 
          
 
"But I have nothing for you to
envy," Fitz cut across the monologue with a voice loud and steady enough
to catch the other's attention. "If I am taken again by the English I may
hang for murder—I fought a duel with my cousin and left him dying, I think. I
have discovered during these past weeks that Lyon is an evil name which has been
dragged through mire until it stinks in decent company (Lord, Fitz thought to
himself, here I am declaiming like a parson, but at least he's listening now)
and the only kinsfolk of whom I can be proud have no right to the name. As for
Maryland
—I'm landless and friendless there too. My
uncle always resented my being at Fairleigh. He'll not welcome me if I try to
go back. I've been a hanger on all my life and eaten charity bread—which is
damned bitter stuff, even if it does fill the belly. I have nothing—not even a
trade. But you have that—and a good one!"

 
          
 
"A trade?"
Ninnes asked scornfully. "Oh, aye, and who will hire a ship's officer with
only one fist? I'm not minded to live on as a broken tavern lounger, swilling
the beer some will buy to hear my tales—like Sandy Andrews who tramped back
from the French war with the eyes gone out of his head!" His finger had
painted in the wine a rude outline of a ship—a small, swift thing—in spite of
the crudeness of the lines one could sense the speed—scudding along under full
sail.

 
          
 
"You're not lacking eyes," Fitz
pointed out sharply. "And I'll warrant Crofts has not found you useless.
Has he said
aught "

 
          
 
Ninnes rubbed out the drawing with his palm.
"I will accept pity from no man!"

 
          
 
"Pity?
Good
Lord, man, who's offering you pity? You are an experienced officer—the kind any
captain would be pleased to have under him. Come out of that black fog of yours
and see the truth!"

 
          
 
He emphasized his point by whacking the butt
of the pistol down on the table. Suddenly noticing with what he was hammering
he put it down hastily. To his utter astonishment there came a sound out of
Ninnes which was almost a giggle, a giggle which grew into choked laughter,
laughter
which Fitz, horrified, knew was close to something
else. He went blindly to the window and stood staring out at a cat making its
way daintily along the gutter of the neighboring building, trying not to hear
those strangled gasps behind him. Ninnes might hate him for all time for being
a witness to such a breakdown, but the lieutenant would not reach for the
pistol again. And he might even look upon life with a healthier eye from now
on.

 
          
 
"Ninnes, what is that blasted French fool
doing looped halfway over the stairs?"
Watts
' voice preceded him into the room, and Fitz
had time to get to the door in an impulse to shield his companion from the
surgeon's shrewd scrutiny, until Ninnes had time to order his emotions.

 
          
 
“
Oh "
Watts
put down the basket he had been been
carrying and stood, hands on hips, looking at Fitz. "So the lost sheep has
returned, and a bold piece of mutton it is, too. Where, my buck, did you obtain
that dream of a waistcoat?
From some of Crofts' honest
smugglers?"