The Snow Driver/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
PETER INTERPRETS AN OMEN
“AND now,” quoth Peter closing one eye and laying a finger along his massive nose, “we be our own masters, ye being captain and I mate, as it were. In a year from now we'll be living at our ease, a-riding in coaches and a-swearing hearty at our own serving knaves, like gen'lemen to the manor born.”
They were then sitting at their ease in the Wardhouse hall which seemed bare and gloomy despite a roaring fire, since the departure of Chancellor and his company.
“You sang another tune, Peter,” responded Thorne with amusement “two days agone.”
For two days the boatswain had worked like a Trojan, carrying up from the shore the gear and arms left them by Burroughs—a serviceable harquebus with three barrels, a hand gun for Thorne, who now wore a sword. Peter had his own cutlas, and had gleaned from the Edward a small keg of powder, and a cutty ax.
They had a cask of brandy in addition to a butt of the familiar and detested beer, which, nevertheless Peter preferred to water, salt fish in plenty and a little beef, with a liberal allowance of biscuit and cheese and olive oil.
All this they had stowed in the hall. They had taken turns climbing the peak to keep watch on the sea and cutting firewood, which Thorne stacked inside the palisade.
“Well,” ruminated the boatswain, drawing himself a mug of brandy, “that was afore Master Dickon cut us adrift. When we sailed along of him I obeyed orders and kept my tongue between my teeth. But all the while I had tidings of that which will make us rich as lords.”
“On this island?”
“The take this island! Nay, here's the lay, Master Ralph. Gold and silver to be had for the picking up. Or else to be traded for—a knife or piece of pewter, look ye, for a fair pound of red gold.”
Thorne hitched nearer the blaze, for the chill of the place touched his back with invisible, icy fingers.
“We are a long way from Cathay,” he yawned.
“'Tis not Cathay.”
Peter took a sip of the brandy and licked his thick lips.
“I've sailed the seas I have, with the Portingals. And evil shipmen they be, but full o' knowledge and tidings of the unknown world. At Fermagosta I first heard tell of this gold. Then at the Texel, when the Dutch merchants had looked too long on the cup. By reason of what I heard, I shipped along of Master Dickon.”
He drained the mug and tossed it over his shoulder.
“Here's the tale. Both the Spaniards and Hollanders talk of a certain prince whose dom-inions he between Christiandom and Cathay. A long way it is to this prince, and now the Polanders and other pagans and the Easterlings be at war, one with another. So the way by land is closed. The name this prince bears is Ivan.”
Expectantly, he paused, seeing that his companion was giving close heed to his words.
“Ivan,” he repeated. “And in the Texel ale shop 'twas said that Ivan's land o' gold and silver lieth south by southeast from this Wardhouse.”
“Southeast!” The armiger sat up abruptly. “Why, so lieth the course given Durforth by my lord Renard. How distant is this land of—of gold?”
“A mooh's journey.”
“Not so far. Durforth's reckoning”
After considering the matter, Thorne related to his companion all that he knew of Renard and his agent. And the boatswain's prompt reply surprized him.
“Sweet doxies and dells! It fits like a merlyn-spike in a man's fist. Look ye! The Spaniards may not adventure to Prince Ivan by land, so one is sent by sea. For the Spaniards are not wont to endure peril without reason. Wherefore, you and I will set forth this day week, to seek the land of gold.”
“Set forth? How?”
“Why in a week we may build us a fair raft of dried wood, secured with rope and pegs of wood. We'll take the gear and victuals and the firelocks. 'Tis no more than two leagues to the main. Sweet lad, we'll trade with the pagans of this outlandish prince and make our fortunes.”
His red-veined eyes gleaming cheerfully, he rolled to his feet and filled two mugs at the brandy cask. One of these he held out to Thorne who was sunk in a brown study by the fire.
“What, bully lad! Here's luck. May good Saint Dunstan guard us from the Horned One!”
Under his breath he added, remembering that he stood, perhaps, on unhallowed ground—
“May the deal with us inkindly wise.”
“With what would you trade, Peter?”
The big shipman jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the bales of goods that had been found with the book of one John Andrews. Placing his finger against his nose again, he tossed off his brandy and heaved a pleasant sigh.
“With yon.”
“Softly, my shipmate! That is not ours for the taking. And how would you add goods to gear, and carry the same overland?”
Peter's face fell and he scratched his head. His imagination ran no farther than reaching the coast with all the spoil.
“Welladay, one thing at a time, Master Ralph. Belike, fortune will aid us one way or another.”
“It will not, for the reason that I will abide on this island, having pledged my word.”
“Now, the plague take ye for a dolt,” muttered the boatswain earnestly. ”If Sir Hugh come not he lieth at the bottom of yonder sea. Or else treachery hath been brewed against us and Master Dickon.”
BUT argue as he would, and he did right soulfully, Peter could not budge Thorne from his decision a whit. He ended by swearing up and down that he would go in search of the promised land alone. But the next day he showed no signs of readiness to set out; in fact felt sulky and sat in the house hunched over the fire.
Thorne did not appear to notice his ill behavior, but labored at the wood until he judged it midday; then he bade Peter briefly to take a turn on the lookout.
With an ill grace and much grumbling the boatswain obeyed, and set out for the “masthead,” as he termed it. But within an hour he hove into sight again, much more rapidly than he bad departed. He was panting from the depths of his lungs and stumbling over the rocky ground.
“Stand by, Master Ralph!” he bellowed hoarsely. “Look aloft. The sweet Mary aid us—look aloft!”
Thorne put down his ax and glanced at the hill, then at the fringe of firs and the misty gloom of the rock gullies.
“The sky,” croaked Peter, staggering through the gate of the stockade, “yonder to windward.”
Thinking that his companion had glimpsed a sail or had been beset by enemies of some kind, the armiger surveyed the horizon eagerly. And presently, having beheld what Peter had seen, he frowned. Arching high over their heads, a rainbow stood against a cloudbank in the sky. But this rainbow was inverted, glowing with a myriad colors where it circled almost to the tree tips, and fading into nothingness where its ends merged with the clouds. He had never seen its like before.
Being unable to account for this phenomenon, he held his peace while the shipman struggled to regain his breath.
“Master Ralph, I have seen the Southern Cross over a ship's mast; I have seen the eye of the Big Bear; but never a rainbow capsized. 'Tis an omen—daddle me else.”
“'Tis a rainbow, no more.”
Peter eyed the youngster with dark triumph.
“Master Ralph, the mariners o' the Esperanza saw a mermaid come up out of the waters. Aye, an omen, that, as ever was. And where be they now?”
Seeing that his companion was no whit cast down by this comparison, Peter went on stubbornly.
“And now our time is come. What d'ye think on it?”
“Think? That you have guzzled the brandy overmuch.”
“Now, shiver my soul else, that is ill said. Look you here, Master Know-All: When I came down from the masthead yonder, the very beasties of the wood were up and about. Aye, they know when an ill wind is to ward. Wolves and bears, they were a-capering and a-rushing all about me, through the trees.”
“There are no wolves, nor bears on this island,”
“I laid my deadlights on them. They were hiding, crafty-like, a-slipping and a”
“Nonsense—”
“On two legs, Master Ralph. A-peering at me they were.”
THORNE was puzzled by Peter's statement, stoutly reiterated when he questioned the boatswain anew that he had seen bears on the path to the lookout. He reflected that Sir Hugh's men had made only a casual examination of the island, and such animals might have remained unseen in the patches of woods.
Bear's meat would add splendidly to their larder, and he decided to try his hand at hunting.
Taking up the crossbow with its winder and a few shafts—this weapon being both handier and more accurate than the harquebus—he left the palisade.
A heavy mist was blowing in, and the chill of it struck through his light cloak. It swept like smoke athwart the line of the forest, rendering him for the moment subject to the illusion that the pines and the rock gullies were moving past him while he was standing still.
Under the mesh of the wood the fog did not penetrate, and he walked hard and fast to stir up his circulation. The gale whined overhead, and the piping of curlews and croaking of gulls filled the space with tumult.
The wood opened out in time, and he passed through a labyrinth of scrub oak, all bent in one direction by the winds of countless years. Until now he had not known that he had come a full two leagues to the other end of the island. But for the moment he paid no attention to his surroundings.
High and clear and yet faintly a voice was to be heard, a human voice, dwarfed by the note of the wind. It reached him in snatches, and he could not be certain of its direction until he reflected that it must come down the wind.
As he rounded a mass of rocks, coated with moss, he heard it clearly and stopped in his tracks. The voice was a woman's, and she was singing an old ballad:
“As I was walking all alane
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other did say,
'Where sail we gang and dine to-day?'
“'—In behint yon auld fail dyke
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.'”
A woman's voice was the last thing he had expected to hear, and Thorne paused to wind his crossbow and fit a shaft in the slot. Where a woman was, in this island of the Ice Sea, men must be, and it behooved him to draw near with care.
He pushed between two boulders and looked out into a mist-shrouded glen. On the far side, in some high bracken and fern he made out the form of a deer, with its antlered head pointed fairly in his direction.
Surprize and excitement brought his crossbow to his shoulder. He pressed the trigger when the stag moved—the eagerness of the hunter strong upon him. The shaft sped and the deer vanished, not bounding away, but sinking, as it seemed to him, into the ground.
"“Many a one for him make mane,
But none sail ken where he is gane;
O'er his white bones, when they are bare,
The wind sail blaw for evermair.”
The voice stopped on an unfinished note and there fell the familiar silence with its monotone of the gale overhead. Thorne ran forward, and sought eagerly in the ferns for the prey that he thought he had slain.
He found nothing, neither deer nor shaft. Nor, indeed, any sign of the singer, though he hunted through the broken ground until he came out on the shore and saw the line of surf an angry white under the leaden gray of the mists.
“Are you friend or foe?” he called and, after waiting a moment, “I'll harm you not.”
But the only response was the impatient and mocking calling cf the birds.
Taking his way home, his eye fell on a shaft half buried in the ground, and he took it up believing it was the bolt he had shot. It proved, however, to be an arrow, such as he had never seen before. It was a small shaft, feathered with black crows' feathers and bearing two small iron heads. After inspecting it, he thrust it into his belt and charged his crossbow anew.
For a while he quested along the ridges, until, the mist thickening, he knew his search vain and turned to the Wardhouse.
When he told Peter all that had taken place on the shore, the boatswain nodded indifferently.
“Aye, it were a pixie or a wood troll, or mayhap a Robin Goodfellow. Faint and clear it sung, say ye? Why, it were anhungered. Ye should have left it a bit of a sup.”
“But I saw naught, Peter.”
“And why should ye, Master Ralph? 'Tis sartain and sure that pixies dwell in cromlechs, which is to say hollow mounds, beneath the sod. Where rocks stand, like a circle, with linden trees, keep your weather eye out for trolls and such-like.”
Thorne was far from satisfied with this. Had a ship come to the island? If so, where was it anchored? Were there natives, pagan folk, about the Wardhouse, and were they invisible? He could have sworn there were no deer on the island, which was too small for a herd; yet he had seen one.