“But Old Israel would never give up Dick Wilkes. He kept coming and coming to our house, and what he called ‘wrestling for Dick’s soul.’ Sometimes he went away pleased, thinking he had gotten the upper hand. Then the little light man would come again, and there was Dick just as bad as ever. ‘Backsliding’ was what Israel called it, and a good name, I say, for then the job was all to do over again from the beginning. But it was the Adversary that carried off Dick Wilkes at the long and last.”
“Ah!” came a subdued groan from all the kitchen. Boyd gloomily nodded his head.
“Yes,” he said, “’tis a great and terrible warning to Bridget, and so I tell her. ’Twas the night of the big meeting at the Tabernacle, when Israel kept it up for six hours, one lot coming and another going—the Isle o’ Man fleet being in—that was the night of all nights in the year that Dick Wilkes must choose for to die in. Aught more contrary than that man can’t be thought of.
“It happened just so, as I say. About four o’clock we were all of us shut up in the kitchen, and by that we knew (Jerry and I, at least) that Dick Wilkes had company—also that so far as repentance went, old Israel’s goose was cooked till he had another turn at his man. And then after six we heard him shouting that he was going to die—which seemed strange to us. For we could hear him tearing at his sea-chest and stamping about his room, which is not what is expected of a dying man.
“But Dick knew better. For when we went down and peeped at the keyhole, he heard us, and called on us all to come our ways in. And—you will never guess in a thousand years—he had routed a flag out of his sea-chest. The ‘Wicked Flag’ it was,—the pirates’ flag—black, with the Death’s Head and cross-bones done in white upon it, the same that he had hoisted on seas where no questions were asked, when he commanded the old Golden Hind. And wrapping himself in that, he said, ‘Tell old Israel that I died so!’ And we, thinking it was, as one might say, braving the Almighty and his poor old servant, kept silence. And then he shouted, ‘Promise, ye white-livered rascals, or I’ve strength to slit your wizzards yet. Tell him I died under the Black!’
“And Bridget, who was feared herself, said, ‘Whist, for God’s sake, do not bring a curse on the house!’
“And then he just cursed the house from flooring to roof-tree, and so went to his own place!
“Dead? Well, yes—dead and buried is old Dickie Wilkes. But poor Israel Kinmont is quite brokenhearted. He says that Dick was the first that ever broke away, and that he is not long for this world himself now that he has lost Dick. It was always cut-and-come-again when you were converting Dick.
“But Israel has an explanation, poor old fellow.
“‘It was not Grace that missed fire,’ he says, ‘but me, the unworthy marksman. And for that I shall be smitten like the men who, with unanointed eyes, looked on the ark of God that time it went up the valley from Ekron to Bethshemish, with the cows looking back and lowing for their calves all the way. I were always main sorry for them cows!‘ old Israel says.”