The Wild Geese

by Stanley John Weyman

"Not a creed, my friend," Colonel Sullivan replied precisely. "But the result of a creed. The result, thank God, of more creeds than one."

Captain Augustin cast a wild eye at the straining, shrieking rigging; the sloop was lurching heavily. But whether he would or no, his eye fluttered back and rested, fascinated, on the Colonel's face. Indeed, from the hour, ten days earlier, which had seen him mount the side in the Bordeaux river, Colonel John Sullivan had been a subject of growing astonishment to the skipper. Captain Augustin knew his world tolerably. In his time he had conveyed many a strange passenger from strand to strand: haggard men who ground their shoulders against the bulkhead, and saw things in corners; dark, down-looking adventurers, whose hands flew to hilts if a gentleman addressed them suddenly; gay young sparks bound on foreign service and with the point of honour on their lips, or their like, returning old and broken to beg or cut throats on the highway—these, and men who carried their lives in their hands, and men who went, cloaked, on mysterious missions, and men who wept as the Irish coast faded behind them, and men, more numerous, who wept when they saw it again—he knew them all! All, he had carried them, talked with them, learned their secrets, and more often their hopes.

But such a man as this he had never carried. A man who indeed wore outlandish fur-trimmed clothes, and had seen, if his servant's sparse words went for aught, outlandish service; but who neither swore, nor drank above measure, nor swaggered, nor threatened. Who would not dice, nor game—save for trifles. Who, on the contrary, talked of duty, and had a peaceful word for all, and openly condemned the duello, and was mild as milk and as gentle as an owl. Such a one seemed, indeed, the fabled "phaynix," or a bat with six wings, or any other prodigy which the fancy, Irish or foreign, could conceive.

Then, to double the marvel, the Colonel had a servant, a close-tongued fellow, William Bale by name, and reputed an Englishman, who, if he was not like his master, was as unlike other folk. He was as quiet-spoken as the Colonel, and as precise, and as peaceable. He had even been heard to talk of his duty. But while the Colonel was tall and spare, with a gentle eye and a long, kindly face, and was altogether of a pensive cast, Bale was short and stout, of a black pallor, and very forbidding. His mouth, when he opened it—which was seldom—dropped honey. But his brow scowled, his lip sneered, and his silence invited no confidence.

Such being the skipper's passenger, and such his man, the wonder was that Captain Augustin's astonishment had not long ago melted into contempt. But it had not. For one thing, a seaman had been hurt, and the Colonel had exhibited a skill in the treatment of wounds which would not have disgraced an experienced chirurgeon. Then in the Bay the sloop had met with half a gale, and the passenger, in circumstances which the skipper knew to be more trying to landsmen than to himself, had maintained a serenity beyond applause. He had even, clinging to the same ring-bolt with the skipper, while the south-wester tore overhead and the gallant little vessel lay over wellnigh to her beam-ends, praised with a queer condescension the conduct of the crew.

"This is the finest thing in the world," he had shouted, amid the roar of things, "to see men doing their duty! I would not have missed this for a hundred crowns!"

"I'd give as much to be safe in Cherbourg," had been the skipper's grim reply as he watched his mast.

But Augustin had not forgotten the Colonel's coolness. A landsman, for whom the trough of the wave had no terrors, and the leeward breakers, falling mountain high on Ushant, no message, was not a man to be despised.

Indeed, from that time the skipper had begun to find a charm in the Colonel's gentleness and courtesy. He had fought against the feeling, but it had grown upon him. Something that was almost affection began to mingle with and augment his wonder. Hence the patience with which, with Kerry on the beam, he listened while the Colonel sang his siren song.

"He will be one of the people called Quakers," the skipper thought, after a while. "I've heard of them, but never seen one. Yes, he will be a Quaker."