Across the Salt Seas. John Bloundelle-Burton
torn."
Then broke off and said: "Where am I? Give me to drink."
This the negro did, taking from out the drawer he sat upon a bottle of Hungary water, and pouring a draught into a glass, which, when the old man had tasted, set him off shrieking curses.
"Brandy!" he cried, "Brandy! French brandy, not this filth. Brandy, dog!" and as he spoke he raised his hand and clutched at the other's wool, "If I had you in Martinique-" then, exhausted, fell back on his pillows and said no more, forgetting all about the desired drink.
Now, that night, when I sat with the captain after supper, he being a man who had roamed the world far and wide, and had not always been, as he was now, a carrier of goods only, with sometimes a passenger or two, from London to the ports of France, Spain and Portugal, we talked upon that hoary-headed old sinner lying below in the after-starboard cabin; I telling him all that had passed in my hearing.
And he, smoking his great pipe, listened attentively, nodding his head every now and again, and muttering much to himself; then said:
"Spoke about two hundred crowns' worth of good wood being burnt, eh? That would be at Campeachy. Humph! So! So! We have heard about that. Told the black, too, that he wished he had him in Martinique, did he? Also knew Grandmont. Ha! 'tis very plain." Then he rose and went to his desk, lifted up the sloping lid and took out a book and read from it-I observing very well that it was his log.
"See," he said, pushing it over to me, "that's what he calls himself now. Yet 'tis no more his name than 'tis mine-or yours."
Glancing my eye down the column, I came to my own name-after a list of things by way of cargo which he had on board, such as a hundred and seventy barrels of potash, sixty bales of hemp, a hundred bales of Russia leather, twenty barrels of salted meat, twenty-eight barrels of whale oil and many other things. Came to my own name, Mervyn Crespin, officer, passenger to Cadiz. Then to the old man's:
"John Carstairs, gentleman, with servant, passenger to Cadiz."
"No more his name than 'tis mine-or yours," the captain repeated.
"What then?" I asked.
"It might be-anything," and again he mused. "Martinique," he went on, "Campeachy. A friend of Grandmont's. Let me reflect. It might be John Cuddiford. He was a friend of Grandmont's. It might be Alderly. But no, he was killed, I think, by Captain Nicholas Crafez of Brentford. Dampier, now-nay, this one is too old; also William Dampier sailed from the Downs three years ago. I do believe 'tis Cuddiford."
"And who then is Grandmont, Captain? And this Cuddiford-or Carstairs?"
"Ho!" said he, "'tis all a history, and had you been sailor, or worn that sword by your side for King William as you wear it now for Queen Anne, you would have known Grandmont's name. Of a surety you would have done so, had you been sailor."
"Who are they, then?"
"Well now, see. Grandmont was-for he is dead, drowned coming back from the Indies in '96-that's six years agone-with a hundred and eighty men, all devils like himself."
As he said this I started, for his words were much the same as those which the old man had used an hour or so before when he had spoken of something-a child, as I guessed-that had been four years old, and was now nineteen and "like to be a devil" like himself-Grandmont. It seemed certain, therefore, that this man, Grandmont, was a friend in life, and that now there was roaming about somewhere a son who had all the instincts of its father, and who was known to Carstairs, or Cuddiford.
This made the story of interest to me, and caused me to listen earnestly to the captain's words.
"Coming back from the Indies, and not so very long, either, after the French king had made him a lieutenant of his navy-perhaps because he was a villain. He does that now and again. 'Tis his way. Look at Bart, to wit. There's a sweet vagabond for you. Has plagued us honest merchants and carriers more than all Tourville's navy. Yet, now, he is an officer, too."
"But Grandmont, Captain! Grandmont."
"Ah! Grandmont. Well, he was a filibuster-privateer-buccaneer-pirate-what you will! Burnt up all their woods at Campeachy-the old man spake true-because the commandant wouldn't pay the ransom he and his crew demanded; also because the commandant said that when he had slaughtered them all, if he did so, he would never find out where their buried wealth was. Then he took a Pink one day with four hundred thousand francs' worth of goods and money on board, and slew every soul in the ship. Tied dead and living together, back to back, and flung them into the sea. Oh! He was a devil," he concluded. "A wicked villain! My word! If only some of our ships of war could have caught him."
"Yet he is dead?"
"Dead enough, the Lord be praised."
"And if this is a friend of his-this Cuddiford, or Carstairs-he must needs be a villain, too."
"Needs be! Nay, is, for a surety. And, Mr. Crespin," he said, speaking slowly, "you have heard his shrieks and singings-could you doubt what he has been?"
"Doubt? No," I answered. "Who could? Yet, I wonder who were the dead men looking down the stairs, as they came in from the garden."
"Who? Only a few of their victims. If he and Grandmont worked together they could not count 'em. Well, one is dead; good luck when the other goes too. And, when he does, what a meeting they will have there!" and he pointed downward.
CHAPTER II.
SECRET SERVICE
It seemed not, however, as though this meeting were very likely to take place yet, since by the time we were off Cape St. Vincent-which was at early dawn of the second morning following the old man's delirium-that person seemed to have become very much restored. 'Tis true he was still very weak, and kept his berth; but otherwise seemed well enough. Also all his fever and wanderings were gone, and as he now lay in his bunk reading of many papers which the negro handed to him from the open uppermost chest, he might, indeed, have passed for that same reverend minister which the captain had, at the beginning, imagined him to be.
Both of us-the captain because he was the captain, and I because I was the only other passenger-had been in and out to see him now and again and to ask him how he did. Yet, I fear, 'twas not charity nor pity that induced either of us to these Christian tasks. For the skipper was prompted by, I think, but one desire, namely, to get the man ashore alive out of his ship, and, thereby, to have done with him. He liked not pirates, he said, "neither when met on the high seas, nor when retired from business"; while as for myself, well! the man fascinated me. He seemed to be, indeed, so scheming an old villain, and to have such a strange past behind him, that I could not help but be attracted.
Now in these visits which I had paid him at intervals, he had told me that he was on his way to Cadiz, where he had much business to attend to; sometimes, he said, in purchasing goods that the galleons brought in from the Indies, sometimes in sending out other goods, and so forth. Also he said-which was true enough, as I knew very well-the galleons were now due; it was for this reason he was on his way to the south of Spain.
"So," said the captain, when I repeated this, "the devil can speak truth sure enough when he needs. To wit, it is the truth that the galleons are on their way home. What else has he said to you, Mr. Crespin?"
"He has asked me what my business may be."
"And you have told him?"
"Nay. I tell no one that," I replied, "It is of some consequence, and I talk not of it."
Yet here, and with a view to making clear this narrative which I am setting down, 'tis necessary that I should state who and what I am, and also the reason why I, Mervyn Crespin, am on my road to Cadiz on board a coasting vessel, La Mouche Noire-once a French ship of merchandise, now an English one. She was taken from that nation by some of our own vessels of war, sold by public auction, and bought by her present captain, who now is using her in his trade between England and Holland, and Holland and Spain-a risky trade, too, seeing that war has broken out again, that England and Austria are fighting the French and Spanish, and that the sea swarms with privateers; yet, because of the risk, a profitable trade, too, for those who can make their journeys uncaught by the enemy.
However, to myself.
I