But, avoiding the sky-line, I ran along the hollows of the dunes, until I caught a glimpse of Mr Murch, far out on the vast stretch of sand, trotting heavily forward. The tide was low, showing no more than a delicate fringe of foam beyond a mile of wet sand, gleaming blood-red in the dying sunlight. Far to seaward, the dagger-point of a sail notched the glimmering waters. In the impenetrable shadow of the dark cliffs that rose beyond the brown plain of sand and ran bluntly out to sea, the ship, the goal of forlorn hope, lay still hidden from sight.
Murch was out of range when I came to the level sand, or I think I would have tried a shot at him. This indomitable old gentleman had been near twenty-four hours in the saddle, yet he kept ahead of me. His trot had fallen to a walk; he ploughed along with hanging head, yet he never stopped; while, as for me, I was fain to halt every few paces, and, even so, I thought I should have burst. A man could have crawled on his belly faster than Murch was going, and yet I could not gain upon him. There was but one chance left. When he came within hail of the ship there might be a delay while the men got a boat ashore. But even then Murch had as good a chance—or better—of shooting me as I approached, as I had of shooting him. Meanwhile, he was slowly, irresistibly drawing near the goal; to all appearance, the little black triangle of the schooner’s sail was hardly within the bay; and, keeping the same distance behind him, as though the space between us were enchanted, dragging one foot up and setting it down again, with an inconceivable effort, there came toiling the last hope of Brandon Pomfrett, of Mr Dawkins, of the merchants of Bristol city, and of Mrs A.
So we went, one behind the other, until the masts and yards of the Blessed Endeavour, lying beneath the crags, were dimly printed in the shadow. The schooner was behind us now, and the last flicker of hope died within me. The red ball of the sun hung immediately above the horizon; sea and shore were drenched with red light; a red mist swam giddily before my eyes, with the figure of Murch, a black dot, in the centre.
Suddenly, I saw the bowed figure halt and throw up its hands; the red mist cleared away, and I beheld Murch sinking to his knees, struggling in the sand. He cried out, with an accent of mortal terror dreadful to hear, and, as in a dream, when one strives to run and leaden weights clog the feet, so I struggled ineffectually towards the agonised figure, that seemed, in the red illumination, to be writhing in a lake of blood. The quicksand had him by the waist; he upreared his huge trunk, and I saw his face for one moment—not all the tides of time can wash out the remembrance. He flung himself this way and that, with gasps and groans that seemed to tear his heart. The ooze rose to his chest; his arms were swallowed to the elbow; he dragged them free with a bursting effort, and the slime rose to his chin. An inarticulate gabble of sounds broke from him; then, his mouth was choked with sand. The last I saw of the poor wretch was a hand that clutched at the air once or twice, then sank out of sight. A ripple agitated the wet, oily surface once and again, and all was still.
XXI
Mr Dawkins has the Last Word
I watched the sun visibly declining, until the glowing sphere was half submerged; and across the red semicircle slowly glided the black triangle of a sail. Presently, the sun vanished below the far sea-line, and the grey ghost of a schooner stole across the glimmering water and vanished into the gloom that was thickening under the Point. The voyagers might take their time, now, after so many thousand leagues of chasing; and so might the wretched chronicler of those travels, dragging himself towards the lights that glimmered in the darkness under the hill. But that night Pomfrett and Dawkins and I were sitting at supper again in our own cabin.
But I could not eat; the thought of Murch and his insatiate craving for food stuck in my throat.
“Sick, are you? Well, and I don’t wonder. I’m on’y surprised as a man of Murch’s education didn’t take warning from that there unnatural craving for victuals,” observed old Dawkins, shaking his head. “That was the grave-hunger, that was; the earth a-hungry for its nat’ral food. I seen it before, and never know’d the sign to fail. But it was fate, I reckon.”
My tale draws to its natural conclusion. I have but to seize the loose strands of the rope’s end, and it’s done. Pomfrett had the Blessed Endeavour repaired and floated off, before he touched upon the subject of the dividend to the ship’s company, and then he took a short way with those unfortunate buccaneers. He so contrived that they were all ashore together without boats. Then he sent for the quartermaster, and went round the ship with him, collecting every man’s possessions, which were piled in a heap in the waist. Next came the delicate question of the division of plunder. Since the ship had been stolen, Pomfrett might justly have taken possession of the whole cargo. But he had dipped his hands into the same bucket as themselves; he, too, had been a gentleman of fortune; and, moreover, he had no mind to incur the hazard of being blackmailed for the rest of his life by every stray desperado of Murch’s gang. So he decided to treat the booty gained by the Blessed Endeavour while she was under Mr Murch’s captaincy, as though the old pirate had commanded her in the interests of the rightful owners, but omitting from consideration dead-shares and compensation for wounds. Under this arrangement, himself and Dawkins and I profited with the rest, as though we had been aboard throughout the voyage. The owners, of course, had no part in plunder, as such, as I have before explained in Chapter II. To them belonged all coined money, bar gold and silver ingots, women’s ear-rings, pearls and precious stones, and loose diamonds. The plunder itself, then, including bedding, clothes, gold rings, buckles, buttons, liquors, provisions, arms, ammunition, watches, wrought silver or gold crucifixes, prisoners’ movables generally, and wearing apparel, was equitably divided by the supercargo.
“You’ve a pretty high way with you, hain’t you?” grumbled the quartermaster. “I seen many a dividend, but never a one like this here. Where’s the skipper? Why don’t we wait for Mr Murch, then?”