The Star Woman

by H. Bedford-Jones

Frontin gulped the wine, staggered up, and felt his jaw. He gave the captain one look from his glittering eyes, then shrugged.

“It’s nothing,” he said lightly, while the men gaped, expecting a fight. “Come, to work! We must get these chests and bags to the cove.”

So that matter passed over, for the moment, though more than likely it drew certain results in train.

Frontin showed them how to make a travois of poles, on which the chests might be dragged by two men. The first was loaded with a chest and sent off, and a second was made and sent off likewise, Frontin and the fourth man dragging it, while Vanderberg followed with one of the bags of small loot pulling from his wide shoulders.

When they neared the cove, the man who had gone to clothe himself now came running, with word that the tide was high and the ketch was floated from the shoal. Sure enough, they sighted the Irondelle on an even keel and drifting with the currents toward an inner ledge of rocks, though there was a drift of wind and rain offshore. Now, with the gold safely garnered, wakened thoughts of safety, and there was a wild race down to the cove. Tumbling into the boat, they rowed to the ketch and fell to work; she was a sorry thing enough, but better than naught, and there was no time to lose, the tide being at flood.

While Vanderberg fell to work with the hawser-lines they had brought back, bending them to the larboard bower, Frontin and another man got a butt sawed asunder and slung, while the other three loosed the fore-topsail, eased the buntlines, braced the yard and hauled home the sheets and sent the rotten, mended canvas up to catch the higher drift of wind. Leaving Vanderberg and another to brace up as required, Frontin and the three remaining men tumbled into the boat, took out a coil of the old feeble rope, spanned the boat from stem to stern, and set out the butts. The captain and his one man hauled in, the boat hung athwart, and with the dragging butts counteracted the pull of the current. So the ketch got a start, and the upper breeze caught her topsail, and she drew away from the rocky ledge. In two minutes she was moored again by one hawser and safe enough.

Then, with a pint stoup of raw rum all around, it was back to the shore again and all hands for the gold. By the time the six chests and the bags and what was left of the Spanish wine was got down to the cove, the six of them were reeling and staggering with maudlin weariness, and the afternoon half-gone. To get the gold aboard ship and finish their task, however, remained; and Vanderberg drove them at it. Racked and rain-soaked, weary to death, swigging more rum and cursing the gold and the rain, they made shift to row out the boat again and again, until at last the burden was on deck. Then there was a flicker of life as a chest was hammered open, and gold gleamed in little heavy bars all stamped with the Spanish seal; after this they dropped below like dead men and lay huddled in any shelter they could find, and slept.

Sometime toward morning Vanderberg wakened with cold; the rain had ceased and frost was come again with a clear sky. He got lanterns lighted and a fire going in the galley, and with the dawn all hands were about, the last of the food was set forth, and the click-clack of the pumps was heard. One of the blackamoors went down for more rum, but he came out of the hold with his face all grey.

“The devil has got us now!” he shouted out. “She’s all under water, and a butt started, and the seams opened by the pounding.”

“Then let her sink and be damned,” said Vanderberg, with a storm of oaths. “We’re in three fathoms and can’t hurt.”