“My father was a high-spirited man,” she continued, “and his disgrace embittered him against England and everything English. He soon left home, without saying where he was going, and when we next heard from him he was in Hong Kong. He corresponded with us regularly after that and in three or four years, when I was about fifteen, he wrote mother and me to take a P & O ship for Singapore, where we would find further instructions. When we got there father was waiting for us on a handsome yacht, the ‘Queen,’ which is the ship that you have heard so much about. I am still using her. He brought us to this island, which he had fitted out as a retreat. He had established a small settlement down on the lake and built a warehouse in which to store his goods, and a machine shop to facilitate repairs to his ship. He had taken great pains and put himself to a large expense to make his rendezvous secure from intrusion or discovery.
“Evidently this lake is in the crater of an old volcano which, when it subsided, left a high, narrow barrier between it and its old enemy, the sea. Down there,” pointing to the end of the lake opposite the village, “was a narrow opening into the lake, with a deep channel leading straight out to sea, though on both sides of it are rocks and shoals. Probably it was a fissure created by the volcano; anyway it served my father’s purpose perfectly. He had the opening closed up with rocks until it was just wide enough to admit the ‘Queen.’ The ridge there, you can see, is not more than thirty-five or forty feet high, so the partial closing of the gap was really not such a difficult task. Then he fitted into the opening that was left, a great double gate, which rolls back and forth, instead of opening outward, and though it weighs many tons its mechanism is so arranged that four men can operate it. The gate is strong enough to stand any storm but to avoid straining it we keep it open in heavy weather, unless ships are hovering about. From a watch tower on top of the mountain behind us we get a clear view of the sea in all directions, and a man is always on duty there. The ridge that cuts off the ocean rises toward the upper end of the lake and the village is entirely hidden behind it, as is the ‘Queen’ when her topmasts are housed. The island, as you can see, is very small and from the sea there is not a sign to indicate that it is inhabited. When the gate at the opening into the lake is closed it cannot be distinguished at a distance of an eighth of a mile, for it exactly resembles the rocks on both sides of it, but the channel which leads to it is known to no one save us and no other ship would dare to venture within a mile and a half of the shore on account of the rocks.
“I did not understand at first the meaning of all of these precautions, or some other things. Father went out on frequent voyages and returned with more or less cargo, which was placed in the warehouse, until it was full. Then father would change the appearance of his ship so that no one would know her and take cargoes out and sell them, until the warehouse was empty again. He always took mother and me along on these trips, though never on the others, and young as I was I learned much about navigation, for I had his love for the sea. On these trips we brought back books and magazines and so were able to keep a little in touch with the outside world.
“When I was not much older than nineteen father and mother were taken desperately ill and, believing that he would not recover, he called me into his room and made a confession. He said that in his hatred of the British he had turned pirate and had been for all those years preying on ships flying the flag he despised. He had also, occasionally, waged war on the native pirates and taken their loot from them, which explained why he had frequently come in with wounded men on board. He told me of how he had suffered from the act of injustice which expelled him from the navy and in the end he made me swear that if he died I would continue the work he had begun. He told me I could rely on Frank Deverell, his chief officer, whom he said he hoped I would some day marry,”—this last with just a trace of sarcasm. “My father died the next week and my mother three months later.
“That was four years ago. I have kept the oath which my love for my father prompted me to take, but the fulfilment of it has brought me increasing misery. My attacks on the British flag have been few—in fact I have given timely assistance to many more English ships than I have robbed, and hundreds of their passengers and sailors owe their lives to me, but I have preyed on the natural pirates of these waters as ardently, perhaps, as did my father. Yet I have no greater moral right to take from them what they have stolen than I have to rob a British or an American ship, nor can I excuse myself for the loss of life that goes with my attacks on them. I am much better armed than they are and it is nothing but cowardice, as well as thievery, for me to make war on them. I am, in fact, no better than they are, for I am in the same class with them—a pirate. My conscience has troubled me more and more until it has sickened me with the whole wretched business. A bad promise is better broken than kept; an oath is no more than a promise; and I am about ready to quit all of this robbery and butchery and try to return to decency and civilization. As to the other stories you have heard about me—they are simply lies.”
Toward the end she spoke rapidly and passionately and when she finished she was all a-quiver, and her eyes filled with tears. After a long pause, during which she regained control of herself, she said:
“Now, Captain, I have told you all. I am partly justified, if such a vow as mine can be pleaded as justification, but why are you in this business?”
Her sudden inquiry, following her bitter denunciation of pirates and those who preyed on them, surprised and embarrassed me. I told her that I was in it only because of the adventure of it; that I had been attracted to the China Sea by Norton’s stories, and that once there I had naturally fallen in with the exciting life and become a part of it; and that all of my fighting blood was aroused and my soul glorified by the fact that the great pirate chief had sworn to crush me.
“That is not a sufficient excuse,” she replied, promptly and decisively. “I had some reason for my actions, but you have none.” A moment later she added, gently: “I did not mean to pass judgment on you, for I have no right to do that. We must all be governed by our own consciences.”
Neither one of us cared to continue the conversation and I was glad when she suggested that she would have a servant show me to a smaller bungalow, a short distance away, where I was to stay, though taking my meals at the “palace.” She advised a walk through the village and around the lake during the forenoon, and said we would walk toward the top of the mountain after lunch. I looked over my comfortable quarters and then walked back to the lake and went in a boat, with Deverell and Fennell, the “Queen’s” second officer, to the entrance, in which I was much interested. I found it to be just as it had been described. There were two gates, one on each side, about twenty-five feet high, above low water, and fifteen feet wide. They ran on small wheels in grooves cut in the solid rock and had been put in place, evidently, by building a cofferdam around the entrance. Below the water line they were built of heavy iron lattice work, so as to give the tides free ingress and egress. Above the water they were constructed of thick timbers, covered on the seaward side with iron plates. When they were open they ran back into nests cut into granite rock. When they were closed they came together diagonally, in the shape of a wide V, with the apex facing outward, so that the action of the waves only locked them more firmly. It was possible for two men to operate each gate, though six made quicker work of it. Their construction was as fine a piece of elusive engineering as I have ever seen. Their height was so arranged that there was no break in the coast line and they were, as the Queen had said, indistinguishable at a very short distance. There was just room enough over the sill to admit the “Queen” at low tide, and a larger ship could not have gotten through the gates or over the bar.