Sir Mortimer
CHAPTER III
THEY were not far north of the Canary Islands, when the sky, which for several days had been overcast, grew very threatening, and the Mere Honour, the Cygnet, the Marigold, and the Star made ready to meet what fury the Lord should be pleased to loose upon them. It came, a maniac unchained, and scattered the ships. Darkness accompanied it, and the sea wrinkled beneath its feet. The ships went here and went there; throughout the night they burned lights, and fired many great pieces of ordnance,—not to prevail against their enemy, but to say each to the other: "Here am I, my sisters! Go not too far, come not too near!" Their voices were as whispers to the shouting of their foe; beneath the rolling thunders the voice of cannon and culverin were of less account than the grating of pebbles in a furious surge.
Day came and the storm continued, but with night the wind fell and quiet possessed the deep. The sea subsided, and just before dawn the clouds broke, showing a waning moon. Below it suddenly sprang out two lights, one above the other, and to the Cygnet, safe, though with her plumage sadly ruffled, came the sound of a gun twice fired.
The darkness faded, the gray light strengthened, and showed to the watchers upon the Cygnet's decks the ship in distress. It was Baldry's ship, the little Star. She lay rolling heavily in the heavy sea, her masts gone, her boats swept away, her poop low in the water, her beakhcad high, sinking by the stern. Her lights yet burned, ghastly in the dawning; her people, a black swarm upon her forecastle, lay clinging, devouring with their eyes the Cygnet's boats coming for their deliverance across the gray waste. Of the Mere Honour and the Marigold nothing was to be seen.
The swarm descended into the boats, and all pushed off from the doomed ship save a single craft, less crowded than the others, which waited, its occupants gesticulating angry dismay for the one man who had not left the Star. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure outlined against the livid sky.
The watchers upon the Cygnet, from Captain to least powder-boy, drew quick breath.
"Ah, sirs, he loved the Star like a woman!" ejaculated Thynne the master, and, "He swore terribly, but he was a mighty man!" testified the chief gunner. Robin-a-dale swung himself to and fro in an ecstasy of terror. "He rides—he rides so high!" he shrilled. "Higher than the gallows-tree! And he stands so quiet while he rides!"
Upon the poop young Sedley, standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked sidewise at Sir Mortimer Ferne.
"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of that terra incognita to which he goes forbid the duello."
"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with calmness. "As I thought—"
The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the Star into the waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as themselves—a ship dying alone.
"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat grimly,
Copyright, 1903, by Mary Johnston. All Rights Reserved
