War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 11
LACHLAN McDONALD sat in Captain Lance Falcon's cabin on the brig Good Fortune. Across the table sat Falcon, and between them stood the same silver wine pitcher that upon another occasion had served Lachlan as an effective weapon at close range. It was half full of red wine now, but Falcon, smiling grimly, picked it up and held it in his hand, testing its weight.
"Odds Fish!" he exclaimed, "the marvel is you did not kill me. 'Twas my hat saved my life. And your own head? How does it feel?"
"There was some pain," answered Lachlan soberly, "but it has passed. It must have been some hours ago that I was struck down."
Falcon poured wine for himself and pushed the pitcher towards Lachlan.
"It was on Sunday morning," he said, "and this is Monday forenoon. Meanwhile, you have enjoyed a long sleep here on my brig, and I rejoice to see that you have awakened refreshed and quite yourself again. When I bade my men bring you here to my cabin from your sleeping quarters in the hold, I did not know whether they would bring a live man or a dead one. On the whole, I hoped for the former, so I felicitate myself as well as my guest."
He sipped his wine; then, pushing back his chair, swung his booted legs up on the table. He was in high good humour evidently.
"You must admit," he said pleasantly, "that my little plan was skilfully conceived and that I worked fairly fast."
He paused as though expecting a reply, but Lachlan held his tongue. There was little for him to say. He knew only that he had awakened in the dim hold of a ship at sea; that presently two seamen had brought him food, which had not only assuaged his savage appetite but had also in large measure stilled the throbbing of his head; that, hours later, two other men had conducted him from the hold to the deck whence he could see far away to the right a long low line of forest marking the coast; that he had been led without delay to the ship's cabin beside the door of which stood Captain Lance Falcon.
He knew then what he already suspected—that he was a prisoner on Falcon's brig; and he was not deceived in the slightest by the elaborate courtesy with which Falcon had ushered him into the cabin to a seat at the same table where he had sat once before. His head still ached slightly, but his mind was very active, very clear. He knew as he took his seat that the man opposite him meant to kill him.
"It was a pretty plan," Falcon continued, "yet I owed something to luck. Perhaps you have not yet quite grasped all that has happened to you?"
He paused, his eyebrows lifted, and, at Lachlan's nod, proceeded briskly:
"Of course, it was necessary for me to lay hold of you at once. It was a clever game that you played as Don Ruy Ortiz and you played it well; aye, and fought well, too, they tell me, after you had put me to sleep. In truth, it grieves me to interfere with the designs of so promising a young man. But you learned too much here in this cabin that night, and, although you could hardly prove your tale, I thought it best to get my hands on you before you could go to the Governor with your story of Captain Lance Falcon as an agent of the Spaniards. In the nick of time, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke's black boy, who is in my pay, brought me word that at a certain hour yeu would be in the Stanwicke garden. This was a stgoke of fortune. It is a secluded secret place, safe from the public eye. I regretted the necessity of rough work in the lady's presence, but that could not be helped."
He refilled his glass and drained it; then, perceiving that Lachlan's glass stood empty, he leaned forward and filled it also.
"Drink, sir," he exclaimed with a gleam of strong white teeth under his thick, reddish-brown moustache. "Drink while you may! Since no travellers return from that mysterious country, we do not know whether or not they quaff wine there to the thrumming of the angels' harps."
He smiled more broadly. "Your pardon," he said, "for the intrusion of an unpleasant thought. To continue my explanation of how you happened to become my guest—I have in my crew three Indians of the Mohawk nation who, long ago, while I lay in New York harbour, foreswore the forest for the sea, but who still retain their skill in woodcraft. They were the very men for my little enterprise, being expert in the laying of ambuscades and having the Indian faculty of moving soundlessly through shrubbery where an Englishman would make as much noise as a cow. Besides, I did not wish to appear in the affair myself, and I did not wish the lady to know that my men were concerned in it. She knows only that, while you sat talking with her in her garden, you were set upon by three Indians who leaped suddenly from the bushes. Being new to Charles Town, and thinking us even more barbarous than we really are, she had no difficulty in believing that your assailants were Indians of some tribe hostile to the Muskogee nation, of which I understand you are a chief."
Lachlan had followed the narrative with close attention. He frowned. The plan had been well made indeed. Yet there were details as to which he felt a certain curiosity.
"I congratulate you, Captain Falcon," he said steadily, "upon your strategy. You have been frank in telling me how the trap was set and sprung. One thing more. After your Mohawks had knocked me down, what happened then?"
"The lady rushed into the house, crying for help," Falcon answered at once, "but for some minutes she could find no one, and when she returned, you and my fellows had vanished. I had, of course, foreseen the difficulty of getting you through the streets to the river front in full daylight. Townspeople who saw my Mohawks pass perceived that they were carrying on their shoulders a small boat's mast and sail. None knew that under the folds of the sail a handsome youth was lying unconscious."
Lachlan nodded. The story was complete, and he detected no flaw in the execution of the plan, no mischance upon which he might hang some faint hope. Almayne might suspect what had become of him, but Falcon had covered his traeks well.
Falcon, eyeing him keenly, seemed to read his thoughts.
"You observe," he said gravely, "that the business of getting you away was managed exceedingly well. This was the difficult part and it is disposed of. The rest is both simple and safe. If I now decide to let my men drop you into the ocean, I can do so without fear of embarrassment later on."
Lachlan poured a glass of wine and swallowed it. His hand shook a little, sweat stood on his forehead. Falcon had lowered his legs from the table and sat upright, staring at him intently; and suddenly something in the man's eyes, some expression of hateful, triumphant expectation, stabbed Lachlan like a sword.
He had been near to failure. He had held himself in check until now; but now at last his tautened nerves threatened to give way. Falcon was waiting and watching for this, was expecting it. It was the look of expectancy in the man's eyes, the cool confident look of triumph and of faint scorn which stabbed and stung Lachlan like a knife or a whip.
A sudden hot anger blazed in him because this man had expected him to falter, anger which was all the hotter because he knew that for an instant he had faltered. He was afraid, but he knew now that fear would not master him, and with this knowledge a savage, reckless happiness surged in him.
He leaned across the table and struck Falcon across the mouth with the back of his hand.
"You call yourself a soldier," he said hoarsely. "If you have a soldier's pride, you will wipe out that stain before your seamen throw me to the sharks."
Falcon did not move. There was a fleck of blood upon his mouth, but the lips were smiling. At last he brought his open hand down upon the table with a crash.
"Well done, Lachlan McDonald!" he cried. "Well done, and well spoken, and a happy, happy thought—a flash of inspiration, no less! A thrust through the heart or lungs in fair fight is not murder, and it is a more gentlemanly way of killing a man than dropping him overboard."
He rose and, still smiling broadly, bowed; then suddenly extended his long arm across the table and tapped Lachlan's chest with his forefinger.
"An hour from now, sir," he said, "I shall take great pleasure in placing my sword-point there."
Again his forefinger tapped Lachlan's chest above the heart.