[CHAPTER XVI]
THE HARBOUR OF REFUGE
It was up anchor and away, for they needs must flee ere the hunters find them. They stood along the coast with a light breeze in the early morning, when the sun was rising over the sea and tipping with gold the branches of the dark palms; but the Rose of Devon was a hawk with clipped wings.
A company of twenty-nine or thirty men in a staunch ship with a goodly number of brass cannon and with powder and balls in abundance (which provident merchants had bought to defend their venture against pirates!) might have done very well on a merchant voyage or fishing. If there are not too many to share in the adventure, a man can earn his wages by the one; or if he would go to the banks of Newfoundland or to Massachusetts Bay, his lay of a fishing voyage will doubtless bring him enough golden chinks to drink in strong ale or sack the health of every fair maiden of Plymouth ere he must be off to fill his pockets anew. Though the times be ever so hard, he is a feckless sailor who cannot earn in such a company the price of drinking the three outs. But to work a ship and lay aboard a rich prize, with perhaps need to show heels to a King's cruiser or to fight her, is quite another game; and the Old One and Harry Malcolm, who had their full share of the ill-temper that prevailed throughout the ship, cursed their fortune, each in his own way, and wrangled together and quarrelled with the men.
And indeed, among all the men of the Rose of Devon there were only two or three who that morning remained unperturbed by their misadventures of the night. One was Jacob, who sat in this corner or that and eyed all comers coldly and as if from a distance. A second was Philip Marsham, who did not, like Jacob, appear to lose his warmer interest in the ship and her company, but whose interest had been always less as for himself alone.
Meeting in groups of three or five, the men ripped out oaths and told of how one captain or another had once taken a ship or a town with vast bloodshed and plunder, and thus they stormed about the deck at intervals until an hour after sunrise, when Phil from the forecastle and Old Jacob from his corner under the quarter-deck, having observed them for some time putting their heads together and conversing in undertones, heard them crying out, "Yea, yea! Go on, go on! We are all with you!" Four of the men then started through the steerage room to the great cabin and the rest gathered in a sullen half circle just under the quarter-deck.
Jacob raised his head and listened; his face was very thoughtful and his small mouth was puckered tight. At the sounds that issued from the cabin, Phil himself drew nearer.
"Well," cried the Old One in a voice that seemed as full of wonder as of wrath,—they heard him plainly,—"what in the Devil's name mean ye by this?"
"We ha' lost a dozen men and our shallop by this foolish march, and from this rich town of which you have promised much we have got only blows and balls for our labour." The speaker's voice was loud and harsh, and he larded his speech with such oaths and obscene bywords as are not fit for printing. "We are of a mind to change captains. You shall go forward and Paul Craig shall come aft. Speak up, Paul! Tell your tale of no marching to wear out a man's feet—"
There came a string of oaths in the Old One's voice and a wild stamping and crashing; then out they burst, jostling one another in their haste, and after them the Old One with a clubbed musket.