Hal put his hand over his own wound and, shrugging his shoulders, a gesture which cost him a great deal of blood, went off to find Anny and beseech her to attend to his rival’s arm.
Late the same evening a tumbril borrowed from a neighbouring farmer carried a gruesome burden from the Ship door down to the beach, and along the road it stopped from time to time to collect additions to its load.
A little later a party of men in three rowing-boats loaded a terrible cargo into a lonely ship which rode at anchor not far from the shore where a brig lay aground, and then that same lonely ship sailed off out of the bay, and later, after three boats had left her side, broke into flames.
And later still widows and children in Brightlingsea wept to see charred spars and planks cast up on the beach outside their homes.
CHAPTER XVII
“THERE, there, Master Dick, don’t fluster yourself so; ’twill only smart your arm the more.”
Anny spoke timidly and shrank behind one of the high-backed seats in the old Ship’s kitchen as Black’erchief Dick, his eyes dark with anger, raved up and down the room. It was some three weeks after the affair with the Preventative folk and the Island had once more regained its usual serenity.
“You are bewitched, girl; what are you to refuse the love of a man like me?” Dick said angrily, and then as she did not answer, he continued more softly, “Why not come with me, beautiful Ann of the Island? We will leave this God-forsaken mud heap and sail away to Spain, cross the great river to the beautiful country beyond, where all the grass is green and all the plants have bright flowers. What is there about this rum-sodden drinking hut that you will not leave it for Utopia?”
“I never heard of Utopia and Mersea is good enough for me,” said Anny stolidly. “Besides, if you want to marry me, why not tell everybody and have a proper wedding by the parson from the West, but even then I wouldn’t marry you; I don’t love you, sir!”
The Spaniard paused suddenly in his walk up and down and looked at her.