“God knows,” said the bewildered Brandon, staring upon the lighted eyes under the level black brows.
“Why, what but Morgan Leroux, who took you from slavery, you fool,” says she. “But there’s bounds to Morgan’s power, let me tell you. Now sign, and no more nonsense. I’ll be one witness, and Mr Winter, who can write, I daresay, if he can’t talk, will be the other. God bless me,” says Morgan, “signing away a ship that ain’t yours won’t hurt you!”
I record this trifling incident, because it showed us clearly, for the first time, in what a perilous strait we were, and how our lives depended upon the favour of this singular, plain-spoken, fiery exotic of a girl, Morgan Leroux. Pomfrett consoled himself by the reflection that, after all, Murch bore no spite against us.
“Unless you drive him to desperation with your sea-lawyer’s tongue,” I said.
“But I’ve got to think of my owners,” was Pomfrett’s eternal cry. He, the agent, was continually inspired to a sense of duty by the thought of Mrs A., the crabbed old woman with the black slave, his pompous uncle, and the whole hotch-potch of paunchy burgesses who snuffled and canted and sent poor seamen to starve at sea—a remembrance which was merely disgusting to the agent’s clerk. They had taken their chance, and lost it, in my view. And yet I, too, was uncomfortably haunted by a sense of responsibility. Once a trustee, always a trustee.
Now, from Barbadoes to Catoche Bay, in Yucatan, is fifteen days’ sailing with a fair wind, and I had anticipated, as, no doubt, had Master Pomfrett, fifteen days’ pleasant wooing of Mistress Morgan by the enamoured agent. But, somehow or other, I failed to remark the operation. From the moment when the swain clapped eyes on the lady in man’s attire, methought there was a change in his demeanour. Had Morgan not assumed protection of the agent so cavalierly, the change might have passed, but I doubt Mr Pomfrett could not stomach that improper reversal of their relations, in his helpless condition. He was bound to her by gratitude, or conceived that he was, and he sulked accordingly. Morgan forced him to run races with her round the ship, up to the cross-trees and down again, and beat him; made him compete with her in shooting at a mark, and beat him again; persuaded him to dance with her, and reviled his clumsiness with great freedom. Young Brandon began to think small beer of himself under this discipline; he lost a deal of dignity in the process, and conceived an immoderate desire to perform some exploit which should set him even with his tormentor. Yet this Morgan had nothing of the shrew, nothing of the virago. She was simply herself; she had no care, as Murch would say, to make any pretence. What she wanted to do, that she did, openly and freely; what she thought, that she said. Now this behaviour differed so extremely from the conduct of the English girls of Brandon’s acquaintance, that at first he was shocked. He thought, though he never said it, that she must be a bad woman, and this, I think, rather tempted him into her company. Be sure that Mistress Morgan knew what was in his mind. So the duel went forward between these two. I used to remark the boy’s square, guileless face beside the girl’s straight-browed, vigorous beauty, and wonder which would win.
As for Mr Jevon Murch, he left us much to ourselves, being entirely occupied in commanding the ship. If Mr Dawkins could sail a ship the way she ought to be sailed, so could Mr Murch. Yet he never took the chances that the jovial Dawkins risked so gaily. And while Dawkins cared nothing for the looks of the ship, and let the filth accumulate in heaps, Murch would have the decks like snow, the brass-work dazzling bright, the masts and yards scraped and varnished, the guns polished daily. The crew grumbled bitterly among themselves, and presently broke into open complaint. Murch had six men tied to the gratings, and gave them twelve dozen apiece. Their backs were cut to pieces. And thereafter, by a look here, a word there, now and again a blow that shook the offender for a week, Murch established discipline among that wild crew. How long they would have stood the strain I know not; for, so marvellous was Murch’s seamanship that we made Catoche Bay on the evening of the tenth day out, five whole days, or four at the least, before we were due, by all calculation. This was mysterious. But Murch kept the chart in a lockfast place, so we had no notion of where we were until he told us we were come “to our destination.” We had spoken ships almost daily, but there was never a sign of the Blessed Endeavour. Had she come and gone? That was the question. Murch wasted no time in solving it. It was dark when we dropped anchor; nevertheless, the captain went immediately ashore, taking with him his negro slave, twenty men, and five officers fully armed, and Mr Brandon Pomfrett. The ship was left in charge of Morgan Leroux, who had her instructions how to deal with Mr Dawkins, should he appear. The boatswain was second in command. I suppose that Murch took the officers with him to neutralize the risk of mutiny in his absence. It is of no use to steal a ship unless you can navigate her, and in his knowledge of navigation lies much of the secret of the officer’s ascendancy in the ships that sail on the private account. As for the humble compiler of these memoirs, he was left aboard as a kind of tame watch-dog.
When the day broke we found ourselves lying in a rocky bay, some two miles from the shore. I searched the coasts with a perspective glass, with intent to discover the marks described in the writing contained in Mr Dawkins’s bottle. “At a point on nothe mainland Yucatan two leagues due south from the hed of Catoche Bay having the red rocks where the river flows out in line with the extreemest projection of cliffe on west horn of bay.” Thus, Captain Grammont, the old buccaneer, to Captain de Graaf, his comrade. But I could see neither any red rock in particular, nor river flowing out. Here was another perplexity of this remarkable voyage.
The landing party was expected to return on the second day, but the second day passed, and the third, and still the long beach lay solitary, save for the myriad sea-birds, fishing and screaming. And the deep forest, climbing upon the tall mountains, grilled, silent and mysterious, in the sun, with no sign or sound of man. Morgan Leroux began to grow restless; her careless gaiety died away; a shadow dwelt upon her face. On the fifth day, in the morning watch, I was alone on the quarterdeck, in that still hour of the dawn, when I was aware of Morgan Leroux at my elbow. We both gazed shoreward for awhile, where the beach and the woods were whelmed in shadow and the tops of the far hills took the sunlight. Eastward, the dazzling half-circle of the sea shone clear and desolate. Still, no sign of the adventurers; stranger yet, no sign of Dawkins in the Blessed Endeavour.
“Mr Winter,” said Morgan, “I don’t like it. They went by a short way to the place—shorter than the river journey; they should have been back before this.”