AT GRIPS AT LAST
In Gravesend they spent a busy hour. While Boulter bought a small sea-chest at a marine store, Gollop purchased cutlasses for the watermen and a stout staff for Martin: Hopton fortunately had brought his club. A visit to a slop shop provided sea-jackets and hats for the two boys, and so disguised they might have been taken for cabin boys ashore. The cutlasses, wrapped in sacking, were laid in the chest.
“We’d better wait for the dusk,” said Gollop. “How about the tide, Boulter?”
“ ’Twill turn at dusk or thereabouts,” replied the waterman. “But the wind’s dropping, so we mustn’t bide too long or the barque will slip us.”
“True; but we’ll have time to fill our holds, which I mean to say our stomachs. An empty man’s only half a man, and every one of us will have to make two to-night, or I’m a Dutchman.”
Repairing to the Three Tuns inn, the little party made a good meal; then they returned to the wherry and set off on their adventure. The tide was still running up, but the force of the wind had sensibly diminished, and they made good progress toward their destination.
The sun was setting behind them, and a slight haze crept over the river. Presently the Santa Maria hove in sight.
“All’s quiet on deck,” said Gollop, looking eagerly ahead. “They feel pretty snug: so much the better.”
The approach of the wherry was apparently not noticed on board. It had drawn under the vessel’s quarter before Boulter raised a hail.
“Santa Maria ahoy!” he called.
A dark face showed itself above the gunwale.
“Captain aboard?” said Boulter.
The man nodded.
“I want a word with him,” the waterman continued.
There was no answer: the man simply stared.
“Speakee capitano,” said Boulter, as if obligingly suiting his language to the comprehension of a foreigner.
In a few halting words of broken English the man declared that the captain was at supper and must not be disturbed.
“What you want?” he concluded.
“Never you mind,” said Boulter. “Bring capitano: maybe he’ll understand plain English.”
After some further colloquy the man was prevailed upon to seek the captain, and Martin felt a cold trickle along his spine when he saw in the fading light the face of Blackbeard looking down from the poop. Instinctively he shrank down on his seat.
“What you want?” demanded the captain, with his foreign accent.
“A gentleman wishes a passage in your vessel, captain,” said Boulter, persuasively. “He must get aboard at once: a foreign gentleman, you understand: can pay well: fifty pounds, say.”
“It is impossible,” said Blackbeard bluntly. “There is not cabin room for passenger. No; impossible.”
Another face was peering over his shoulder, and Martin effaced himself more thoroughly as he recognised Slocum. The goldsmith threw a searching glance over the boat. Martin saw him start, pluck Blackbeard by the sleeve, and draw him out of sight.
“Did he see me?” thought Martin, quaking a little.
In a minute he was reassured. Blackbeard returned alone, and Martin noticed that his eyes at once sought Mounseer, who was sitting on a thwart next to Gollop.
“I have considered,” he said. “Perhaps for one. You said one?”
“Yes: one gentleman: a Frenchman,” said Boulter. “London is not safe for the French. He was beset in the street.”
“Very well; he shall come. And quick: soon will the tide turn.”
He called up a seaman, and bade him lower a rope-ladder from the waist. Mounseer got up, and staggered.
“He is old and weak,” said Boulter. “Some of you help him, there.”
According to the plan previously arranged, Martin and Gollop each took one of the Frenchman’s arms and led him to the ladder. Martin climbed nimbly to the deck, then turned to assist Mounseer, who ascended slowly, Gollop following. To all appearances the Frenchman was feeble, exhausted; he tottered and swayed between the others when all three were on board. Meanwhile Boulter’s two watermen friends were proceeding to carry up the sea-chest, which might be supposed to contain the passenger’s baggage.
“Come with me,” said Blackbeard. “We will make bargain.”
He led the way towards the round-house, a sort of cabin on the upper deck. Martin and Gollop led Mounseer between them. Slocum had disappeared; the only persons visible were Blackbeard, the dark-faced seaman, and some members of the crew who were lying outstretched on the planks, resting, no doubt, after their exertions in towing the vessel.
Martin looked curiously about the round-house as he entered. It contained a well-spread table, two chairs and two berths; the walls were lined with racks containing arms of all kinds: firelocks, picks, swords, pistols.
At a gesture from Blackbeard the Frenchman sank into one of the chairs.
“Now you go,” the captain commanded, turning to Martin and Gollop. “I will finish the bargain with this gentleman.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” said Gollop quietly, “but afore I go it is in a manner of speaking——”
“What you mean?” said Blackbeard, truculently. “I say you go: there is no more for you: you have done; the business is with this gentleman.”
“So it is, to be sure,” returned Gollop unperturbed. “Leastways a part of it. But afore I go, it is in a manner of speaking my duty as an officer of the law to show you a dokyment——”
He had drawn from his pocket the warrant signed by Mr. Pemberton and was proceeding to unfold it. But something in his manner had aroused suspicion in the captain, who made a quick sidelong movement and snatched at a pistol in the nearest rack.
Then the Frenchman, who had appeared so weak and faint, showed a marvellous alacrity for a man of his years and impotence. He sprang up from his chair, whipped out his rapier from under his cloak, and had its point within an inch of Blackbeard’s throat while his hand was still closing over the pistol butt.
For a second or two there was silence as the men faced each other. Martin, quivering with excitement, took in the details of the scene: Gollop flourishing the paper in his hand; Blackbeard, his hand outstretched, his nostrils dilating, his eyes glaring; Mounseer cool, smiling, watching the other as a cat watches a mouse.
Then the silence was broken. The Frenchman, wearing his inscrutable smile, said gently, in a tone not above the conversational pitch:
“Monsieur recognises—is it not so?—that he must render himself?”
Blackbeard made no answer in words, but his eyes narrowed, his fingers tightened on the pistol, and he made an almost imperceptible movement. The Frenchman read the intention in his eyes. The smile disappeared, giving place to a look of grim resolution. One twist of the wrist, and the rapier point, an instant before at the man’s throat, flickered like a flash of lightning and pricked him in the forearm. He winced; the pistol fell clattering to the floor; and he let out a cry, a loud wild cry that must have rung through the ship from stem to stern: a rallying cry to his crew.
Next instant a door at the farther end of the round-house, which had stood ajar, was flung open, and a water-bottle hurtled across the room. It missed the Frenchman’s head by an inch, and crashed against the wall. Through the door rushed two men, one behind the other. In the foremost Martin recognised Mr. Seymour, the tenant of the upper floor whose dealings with Blackbeard had first awakened his suspicions. It was he who had thrown the bottle; the second man was for the moment hidden from view behind him.
Between the table and the wall on either side there was only a narrow gangway, partly obstructed by the chairs. As he dashed forward, Seymour snatched at a cutlass hanging above the rack of arms. He grasped it, but by the blade, for the hilt was higher than his head. To make effective play with it he must needs lift it from its nail and reverse it: even then the narrow gangway would allow him no room to swing it, nor the low roof space in which to bring it above his head: he could only give point.
But before he could reverse the weapon and grasp the hilt Gollop had found himself. Dropping his warrant, he flung himself forward with a leonine roar. Recalling the fight afterwards Martin wondered how the burly constable had managed to squeeze himself between the table and the wall to meet the attack. The chair went clattering along the floor; a blow from Gollop’s sledge-hammer fist, with sixteen stone of brawn behind it, caught Seymour clean between the eyes and sent him hurtling over the broken chair upon the man behind. He dropped; his companion staggered, recovered himself, and, shouting a furious curse, sprang forward cutlass in hand.
Protected in some degree by the huddled form of Seymour, he made a desperate lunge at Gollop, who had been carried forward by his own momentum, and could now neither advance nor retreat. At this critical moment Martin seized the second chair, and, gathering his strength, hurled it at Slocum. It took him at the level of his belt and doubled him up.
Then from without came a medley of shouts and the rustling thud of bare feet upon the boards.