“Well, Higgins, I’m beholden to you for setting me on his track, and here he is. He lifted his hand on me, and I felled him with a tap of my cutlass hilt. See if he’s hurt.”
Higgins, a man of few words, stared for a moment into his captain’s face, looked after the retreating figure of Gillian, and then kneeling beside his comrade fingered the wound awhile, mumbling, “Hurt, I should say! ’Tis a shrewd wound i’faith! A parlous cut! ’Tis life and death, and nigher death than life, to my mind.”
“Nonsense, man,” replied Cromwell a little uneasily. “A great hulking fellow like that don’t die of a tap on his numskull. Run you into the village and fetch a surgeon. Hasten, now, and when you’ve sent him, see about some sort of litter, that we may take him to Cole’s tavern.”
“’Tis no use,” grumbled Higgins, but still scrambled to his feet, and set off at such good speed that in half an hour Doctor Matthew Fuller, nephew and successor of our old friend Doctor Samuel, was on the spot and encouraging the wounded man’s efforts toward consciousness. But so soon as he could sit up and speak, Voysye, true to his nature, paid his surgeon’s bill with a curse, responded to his captain’s rough expressions of amity with sulky silence, and scorning the litter, or even the support of a friendly arm, staggered off toward the shore, and as soon as possible got aboard ship and comforted his wound with as much Santa Cruz rum as he could obtain, seasoning it with dire threats of vengeance against Higgins, who prudently kept out of his way.
“’Tis an ill wind blown over,” reported Cromwell to his sweetheart that night; and so it might have proved but that Voysye, waking next morning in the dispositions natural to a man who has a fevered wound across his head, and has gone to bed very drunk, insisted upon going ashore to find and fight with Higgins, who had, as he knew, reported him to the captain. In the captain’s absence all discipline had fallen into such disrepute that nobody opposed the half-delirious movements of the wounded man, who went ashore, roved around for a while, and finally, just as he had discovered Higgins and was pointing a pistol at his head, was seized with convulsions, and twenty-four hours later lay a dead man in an upper chamber of Cole’s tavern.
So serious a matter as this could not be suffered to pass unnoticed by the authorities, and with some grave expressions of regret and an assurance of honorable treatment, Captain Cromwell was placed under arrest and lodged in the strong-room of the Fort under guardianship of Lieutenant Holmes, while a messenger was dispatched to Captain’s Hill to summon Standish to a conference with the governor and the others of his council; for the sailor had requested to be tried by a court martial, and who but the General Officer of all the Colonies could organize and head it? With the great captain came Lieutenant Nash, and Ensign-bearer Constant Southworth, with Hatherley, Alden, Willett, Cudworth, and other of the Duxbury men, so that for some days Plymouth assumed the air of a garrisoned place in time of war, much to the delight of Gillian, and perhaps some other of the lonely maids of the almost deserted town.
The court martial, formal and dignified in its proceedings and absolutely just in its dealings, lasted for a whole day, and much testimony to Cromwell’s generous and humane treatment of his men was rendered, as well as a good deal most unfavorable to the character of the dead man, who seems to have been a very drunken and brutal fellow. The only possible testimony as to the rencontre was that of Gillian, and this she was most anxious to be permitted to give in person before the court; but here both Bradford and Brewster interposed, and insisted that a written affidavit made and sworn before the governor should be accepted, a course indorsed by Standish with great alacrity.
In the end Cromwell was acquitted, but not without an exhortation from Parson Rayner, the Chaplain of the Commission, to greater reverence and tenderness for human life, to which the prisoner listened respectfully, but Standish with a covert smile playing around the sadness of his mouth, as he recalled a similar reproach long ago made to him by John Robinson, now many years gone to his rest.
Perhaps as a mark of respect to the court martial that had tried and acquitted him, possibly as a late testimony to his tenderness for human life, Cromwell’s first act as a free man was to order a military funeral for Voysye, and to request the presence of the train band of Plymouth, to every member of which he presented a piece of black taffeta to make a mourning cloak.
“And now I will marry you,” said Gillian, when next she saw her lover alone; but he, with a queer smile, replied,—