Strange Yesterday (10 page)

“Well,” he shrugged, “I killed him.”

“I gathered as much,” Mr. Cortlandt pronounced sagely. “Why?”

“Because it was the only thing to do, the only way out. So long as he was on board, he was a death warrant. The agreement was to divide the gold into seven parts, one which he was to take, one for Mr. Brooker, one for myself, and two each for you and Mr. Mitchell. Do you imagine he would have been contented with that? He would have betrayed us first time opportunity presented itself. He would have led us into a noose. It was entirely logical to kill him. Now there will only be six parts in which to divide the gold.” In a cold-blooded manner, he stated the thing, his voice quiet and unhurried.

“I don't like it,” Mr. Cortlandt muttered. “There is the crew.”

“Nor do I,” said Mr. Mitchell. “The girl remains to be considered. If there is one thing worse than having a Finn aboard ship, it is to carry a woman. No ship with a woman ever came to a good end. A few words from her would hang the lot of us.”

“But she will not,” smiled John Preswick.

“How do you know?”

“Do you realize what she is worth—let us say in Tunis, or in Algiers, or in Oran, or even in Venice?”

Slowly the faces of the other three lighted up, and they nodded in agreement. It was such a simple and obvious way out! Mr. Brooker said: “It will be a mercy. With a woman's blood on my hands, I could never sleep again.” Mr. Cortlandt turned to the dead man's cupboard and fetched a bottle of rum. It was as though a weight were off their minds. Only the face of Mr. Mitchell retained some of its former glumness—Mr. Mitchell was a ruthless man, his trade necessitating that—but he did not approve of murder, although under certain circumstances he reluctantly condoned it. He did not approve of this murder, but he was just a bit in awe of Mr. John Ridge. He was glad that for almost three years he had fought at the side of Mr. Ridge, and that he could so implicitly trust him.

9

T
HEY
were finishing their drinks when some one pounded upon the door. Mr. Cortlandt motioned for John Preswick to open it. Liveright, the bo's'n, stood in the passageway, hesitating whether to enter the room.

“What is it?” Mr. Cortlandt demanded.

“Sail on the port bow, sir.”

“What of it?”

“She's keeping to our course, our wake, you might say.”

“What manner of a sail?”

“She's a bit of a distance off, so it's a little too far to say. But I should judge a ship of some sort.”

“I'll be on deck. How is the wind?”

“A bit on the south.”

“Crowd canvas. I'll be on deck.”

The bo's'n gone, he turned to Mr. Mitchell: “Come along!”

With less haste, John Preswick and Mr. Brooker followed them out. John Preswick went directly to his cabin and threw himself, clothed, upon his bunk, pistol still in hand. In a few minutes the pistol slid to the floor. He was asleep.

It was almost dawn when he was aroused for his watch. Dashing some water into his face, he climbed on deck. He felt curiously lethargic; and the air, gray and soggy, did little to dispel the sensation. Standing upon the poop-deck, he could see the sail behind him. Now that dawn was almost at hand it was not difficult to distinguish the outlines. Undoubtedly it was a ship, and a large one—if a war vessel, probably a frigate. But it was not yet light enough to discover what standard she flew.

The
Angel
was crowding all canvas, including staysails and studdingsails. She was trimmer than the average brig of the time, but still built upon lumbering lines. Though she kept her distance from the ship on her tail, she was not gaining. That carried out John Preswick's surmise that it was a vessel of war, for in that case it would be so low in the water as to lose what superiority in speed it might have over a brig like the
Angel.
As he leaned across the stern rail, the sun poked above the water, slanting its rays to his side. The
Angel
was standing off her course to grasp every whiff of wind, distrusting herself upon a tack with the larger vessel behind. A white lash of foam bubbled away from her stern. Leaning over, John Preswick could see them unlashing the ports that covered the stern-chasers. It depended, in the end, upon whether the ship was merchant or man-of-war, and of what nationality.

Then the sun burst free. It had drawn itself up with a web of cloud across its face, but now, even as it stood clear of the water, it released itself and netted the air with daylight, burnishing the waters. The sea glowed; the wake of the
Angel
was a lacy shredding of amber froth. The moisture in the air shook itself and disappeared.

Leaning far over the rail, John Preswick stared through his glass at the other vessel, and as he stared a standard fluttered up and gave itself to the breeze. A while he studied it, picking the rippling colors one from another, until at last he was sure of its identity. To Mr. Brooker, who stood upon the main-deck, he cried: “British!”

Mr. Brooker woke to action, and his calls echoed through the ship; then he ran aft, pounded up to the poop and placed himself at Mr. Ridge's side. Together they stared at the pursuing ship, which was, obviously, a frigate of war, probably one of forty-four guns or so. Mr. Brooker made rapid calculations. He muttered: “If only the wind will hold.”

John Preswick shrugged his shoulders. “If it does, they will drop water or lighten in some other manner. Sooner or later, unless by the goodness of God it rains—we will be taken.” He was thinking of the girl, as was Mr. Brooker, and what a pretty noose she would spin for their necks when the English ordered their cargo searched. Only the way out did not appear to him, as to Mr. Brooker, ridiculously simple. Somehow, he could not entertain the thought that was coursing through the active mind of Mr. Brooker, that of cutting her throat and slipping her overboard with two twelve-pound shot at her feet. “Perhaps,” John Preswick mused, almost to himself, “we can run before her until night, and then slide away on the tack.”

Mr. Cortlandt joined them, venturing a remark that was both philosophical and optimistic. At the time they were flying no colors at all, and Mr. Cortlandt suggested that the frigate might indeed be one of the Americans riding beneath British colors, which was by no means unusual, now that war was upon the very horizon. He gave the order to run up the Stars and Stripes; but no sooner had the American pennant unfolded itself from the masthead than the frigate opened with a range shot from one of her long bow-chasers. Though it fell far short, Mr. Cortlandt ground his teeth in rage.

“Pirates!” he cried. “Damned pirates! There is no war to justify that! They did not even ask for our colors! They are going to run us down and sack us!”

“Perhaps,” John Preswick considered, “war has been declared in England.”

“No! If any one declares, it will be America, and if it had the news would have been in New York before we sailed! This is the rankest piracy!”

As Mr. Cortlandt ordered the decks cleared for action—their armament had increased to nine guns—John Preswick shrugged. It was a hopeless bit of bravado. As soon as the bow-chasers of the frigate came into range-long eighteens they would be in all probability—it would be over—all over. There was the girl.

Why could he not see the reason of the matter—see that where the girl was concerned there was only one course to follow, that it was her life for the dozens aboard the ship, that she was as clear a death warrant, especially for the four officers, as could be found upon these waters? So apparent was the entire business that the officers did not even discuss it among themselves. When the time came they would kill her and drop her over the bow rail.

What did it mean to him? Who was the girl?—and what if her name was Preswick? In America, surely, there were many Preswicks. He said to himself:

“Why, John Preswick, did you murder Lennox?” And he said:

“Why, John Preswick, did, you lie so brazenly and so cheerfully to your three senior officers?”

Now he had time to think. Standing upon the poop-deck, watching the progress of the ship on their tail, he had much time to think. And yet he thought of only one thing, the girl—whom, it seemed, he had always known, and whose voice was wonderfully and strangely familiar. He could picture her as she had been the day before, crouching taut in the shadow of the poop, holding himself and Lennox at bay, chanting out with childish pride the valor of her name. He wondered what her reaction would be were she to know that the name was also his. He said to himself that she would never know. In her worship of that name there was something strangely beautiful—something he could not quite understand.

It would hurt her, and he did not want her to be hurt. The night in the dining-hall, if she had screamed, he would have shot her through the heart, or in a place far more painful. He would have shot her mother with as little feeling. To him death was a very matter-of-fact thing, always a means to an end. While he rarely went out of his way to kill, he never went out of his way not to. As cheaply as he valued other lives, he valued his own. They played a game of doomed men. That they had played it for so long, was a gift from Goddess Luck.; now the game was over, for with sails bloated a British man-of-war stood behind them. He insisted to himself that the murder of the girl would not, could not, be a way out.

He glanced behind him. The frigate was no nearer; perhaps they had even gained a little; perhaps they were not so surely doomed as he had thought. Mr. Cortlandt was dropping water and cargo over the bow. If they continued to gain, even slowly, by nightfall they might be able to slip away; and then the girl would live. Never before in the years he had sailed with the
Angel
had he been so nervous and apprehensive; never before had he hung so longingly upon the outcome of a chase. Again and again he went over his mental calculations. Certainly they were holding their distance; certainly they were gaining….

The British ship tried another shot from a bow-chaser. As it fell short—short by a greater distance than before—the face of John Preswick broke into a smile. Leaning over the rail, he shook his fist at the frigate. Beneath him the stern ports were open and the blue muzzles of long guns peered impertinently forth…. If only the wind would hold!

The sun rose higher; the two ships flew on, one after the other, foam curling away in two white fountains from the bow of each. Little clumps of cloud scudded across the sky.

For a time John Preswick took the wheel. It gave him a feeling of purposeful effort to give his body to the pull of the spokes, to know that even a quiver of his arms would turn the ship from the wind. With his legs widespread, he stood, his head thrown back, his straw-colored hair free to the breeze. Like a giant vulture the spanker flapped above him, crossing his face with a long, oblique shadow; the song of the rigging—the hum of the wind as it tore through the shrouds—whined pleadingly in his ears. He had forgotten, for a moment, the girl. He laughed with the heat of the chase, with the obedience of the ship under his fingers.

He laughed, and his great form swayed. His shirt and his pantaloons were wrapped forward about his limbs. He seemed a very part of the straining vessel.

Then he felt her. He neither saw nor heard her, for she was behind him, and she was silent, but he felt her presence as surely as he felt the wind in his hair. His laugh died on his lips, and he crouched tense at the wheel. Why it was so he did not know, but he lacked the power to turn. For all of an hour he knew she was there, staring at his back, but he could not turn about, could not face to her, dared not. Like a whipped terrier he hung to the steering-gear.

The seaman came to relieve him. Giving up the tiller, he faced slowly about. Leaning against the stern rail, she was looking at him, a curious, thin smile fixed upon her lips. She said—Inez Preswick—as he came towards her:

“I am afraid you spend too much of your time upon the poop. If you had been forward this morning, you would have seen a burial at sea. But then, I do not suppose the gruesomeness of even so tragic a thing as that would affect you—Mr. Ridge.”

He could say nothing. Finding himself drawn, he continued to approach her, coming almost to her side, staring always into her face, noticing how large were her eyes and how tight her lips. He was almost frightened, seeing her in the full blast of the wind, for it wrapped her frock to the back of her form, showing her like a slim and frail reed. Why she should have given him an impression of strength he did not know, for she was, in reality, small and thin. But it might have been her hair, cast forward, parted by her neck, and blowing out in a manner that gave its strands to the sun, making them bright with red-brown fire. She went on:

“What you are, I do not know. I have read of such men as you, but I thought them to be drugged fancies of romanticists. That any human could be so cruel, so heartless, so calloused, is—” She broke off her words, catching her lips in her teeth. Then she said:

“You shot down Mr. Lennox. A man would not shoot down even an animal in that fashion.”

“Do you know that Lennox is responsible for—this?” he flung at her.

“Is that why you murdered him, or because—?”

“I love you,” he answered, his voice a harsh whisper.

He had never thought to see in the face of a woman such disgust, such dread. It came to him that she feared him now, say what she might; but he derived no satisfaction from the thought. She had turned away, and her back was to him. Puzzled, he stared at her, for he knew, now, why he had killed Lennox.

Coming to himself, he saw that the wind was dropping. From the main-deck, Mr. Cortlandt was beckoning him. As he went forward, Mr. Mitchell, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, joined them. “I don't like it,” Mr. Mitchell spluttered. “If it calms, we are through.”

The captain shrugged, and Mr. Mitchell threw a finger toward the girl, who could be seen at one side of the poop. “What about her?” he demanded.