Captain Caution (11 page)

"Then it's to Morlaix that we'll go," Corunna said. She looked ruefully at the elbows of her gray, water-stained Chinese jacket; elbows so crossed and recrossed by now with silken darns that they had the look, almost, of embroidered pads fixed to her sleeves. "And high time, too," she added, "unless I'm to do my sailing in a skirt with a band of grapeshot sewed to the bottom."

Slade touched her arm gently. "All the finery in France," he assured her, "can be no more beautiful than this."

She shook her head and smiled; and almost to Marvin's horror it came to him that there was a misty softness in her eyes that had not been there since the day her father died. He rose so noisily to his feet that both Corunna and Slade looked around at him in disapproval. "I'll go on deck," he said. "Somebody's got to be there if the rest of you want to talk dress all day."

Argandeau, following him on deck, laughed softly at him. "I think you are all alike, you Americans without subtleness with your woment Look now what you have done] You have barked at this rabbit, so she will move her nose and sit where she is, to show you she does not wish to be barked all To me it is a strange thing, dear Marvin, that any woman in your country consents to become married to an American man, when even your language of love consists of barks and growls, eh? We in France, we are subtle! We hunt always for the heartstrings of a woman, and we play softly on them, so that she is moved to do our will. You should learn from well, I will not say from whom, but from someone whose words of love are like the whispering of spicy winds among roses."

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"No doubtI"Marvin said bitterly. "No doubtl Slade must have taken lessons from a Frenchmant"

Argandeau looked condescending. "Perhaps. He does very well, too, though one would never mistake the little chameleon for the superb tree he strives to imitate. However, ladies are sometimes pleased with those little creatures, the chameleons."

There was anger in Marvin's voice. "You mean she's pleased with this one now?"

'Well, she's taking her time to listen to him. No?"

Marvin made no reply to this inquiry; and the two men, one meditative and the other moody, began to pace the quarter-deck in silence.

The Olive Branch had rounded Ushant and stood off to the eastward along the brown-spired nose of the cruel dragon's head of Brittany before Corunna came on deck again.

"Why not say it?" Argandeau said in a low voice to Marvin.

"Why not say whatP"

"What you are thinking, my friend. Eh? WhaYs that? Why, that I was right about that damned chameleon!"

It was late afternoon of a chill October day when the barque skirted the tumbled rocks of Roscoff and, with her bulwarks and rigging studded thick with sea-weary sailors, ran close-hauled for the high-banked estuary at the end of which lies Morlaix.

When darkness fell she lay at anchor three miles up the estuary. The stone walls of the Chateau du Taurau were far astern and the lights of the Happy Horse cabaret winked at her from the near-by shore. She was one hundred and forty-eight days from Canton and as even Marvin admitted safe at last.

Corunna, coming on deck the following morning, found Marvin bargaining with the bumboat men whose small craft, laden with horse-meat, water kegs and newly-caught marine delicacies such as mussels and squid, were clustered at the waist of the Olive Branch like squash seeds floating beside a segment of their parent squash.

Corunna gazed contentedly aloft and about her. The Olive Branch's yards were squared; a brilliant sun shone on the deck, still damp from holystoning, and on the brass-work at which the crew still scrubbed. The estuary lay glassy blue in the morning calm. At the small end of the estuary the town of Morlaix nestled peacefully at the bottom of a deep cleft in the green French hills a true haven,

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Corunna thought, from the trials and dangers of a troubled world. Marvin, seeing her, came quickly to the quarter-deck. "If it's all the same to you, Corunna," he said, "I'd like to run out the sweeps and move a little nearer to the town. These boatmen say there's enough water closer in."

"What's wrong with this anchorage?" Corunna demanded. "Mr. Slade and I settled on it last night. Perhaps it isn't safe enough for you, but it is for us."

When Marvin was silent, she laughed scornfully. "You can't admit it, can you, Danl Just because I'm a woman, you won't give me credit for doing what you said I couldn't do! You said I wasn't a captain; but I've brought this vessel safe to port, and no captain could do more. Yet you're too stubborn to acknowledge itl"

"No," he said slowly. "I'm not too stubborn. No man could have brought her in smarter, Corunna. Your cargo's safe, and there's no sick aboard. It's a miracle, almost."

"A miracle!" she cried. "Why is it a miracle? Why can't you admit it was seamanship, and be done with it? Mr. Slade says - "

"What do I care what Slade saysl" Marvin interrupted. "He'd say anything! Common sense ought to tell you thatl If he'd captain a slaver, he'd do anything too! AnythingI"

It seemed to him then that Corunna's smile had malice in it. "Wasn't it you, Dan," she asked, "who jawed so much, not long since, about women doing things for personal reasons? Maybe you dislike Mr. Slade, Dan, because he's kind to me; not because he's a slaver. And after all, Dan, there's worse things than a good slaverl Why, think how much better off the negroes are in the Sugar Islands than they are in Africa, killing and eating each other."

"Yes," Marvin said. "I've heard that before. Slade told me. ThaYs how I know he'd say anything. He'd say a squirrel was better off in a cage than up an oak tree, where it might get hit on the head with a limb! If he says you're a captain, he's saying it to curry favor with you! Where's your common sense?"

"What?" Corunna cried fiercely. "You'll see whether I'm a captain or notl"

"How'll I see that?"

"Listen and I'll tell you," Corunna said deliberately. "As soon as this cargo's sold, I'm outfitting a privateer against the English, and Mr. Slade said he'd be proud to serve under mel"

Marvin stared at her, his lips pressed tight together. "You'll not do that, Corunnal"

"Won't I? Watch and seer"

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"Well," he said doggedly, "you can sail a ship, but you're not a captain! You're a woman, and you count on ill You're going into a venture without being willing to pay if you loser You're banking on taking prizes without doing any of the fighting yourself; and if you're captured, you're counting on being treated like a woman, instead of being sent to the hulks like your officers and crew."

She swallowed twice and drew a deep breath. "What if I am?" she said at last. "What else can I do? What can I do when you talk to me this way? You wouldn't talk to Mr. Slade the way you talk to me, because if you did, he'd have a knife in you before you knew it. Just because I'm a woman I have to listen to you. Why shouldn't I take advantage of being a woman when I get a chance especially against those that killed my father?"

Marvin stared down at his knuckles and slowly closed and unclosed his left hand. "Corunna, there's nothing so hard to answer as a woman's arguments, mostly because there's no sense to 'em. I could tell you that nobody's a proper captain unless he forever runs more risks than the men he leads; but you wouldn't listen to me. As for not being willing to talk to Slade, I think I can dispose of that argument, even to your satisfaction. I've been promising myself to say a few things to him as soon as we reached a safe anchorage, and it looks to me as if now was the time. Will you call him up here, or would you prefer to see me drag him up?"

"Dear mel" Corunna said. "Dear mel You're mighty brave all of a sudden, now that Mr. Slade has gone ashore."

"Gone ashore!" Marvin cried. "Why, how could he go ashore?"

Almost as though he had popped, like a djinn, out of the water butt, Argandeau rose suddenly from under the break in the poop. "Somebody saying Mr. Slade went ashore?" he asked softly.

Corunna looked from Marvin to Argandeau and back again. "Why, yes. What's wrong with that? I sent him ashore late last night, after you had turned in, according to plan."

"You sent him ashore?" Argandeau whispered. "I am sorry you have not spoken to me about needing something on shore at such an hour. I would have been honored to go, eh? And maybe, in spite of having some relatives by marriage here who have a mistaken opinion of me, I think I should have contrived to be back on the ship by now."

"Oh, there was no question of returning quickly," Corunna assured him. "Mr. Slade felt that the sooner we started hunting for a privateer, the sooner we'd be able to set out against the British."

"Ah, yesl" Argandeau said, almost happily. "Mr. Slade reminds you

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of this, and so you send him. That is very nice, but it is a little pity he would not speak to me before he go, because I might tell him where to look for this privateer. I am surprised, too, that he know Morlaix so well as to be able to ask confidentially about such an expensive vessel as a privateer."

"Not in Morlaix," Corunna said. "That was why we thought it best for him to land at night. Then he could be well out of Morlaix before daylight, so that no official him, and reach Roscoff in good season. He has acquaintances in Roscoff, I think."

"Ah, Roscoffl" Argandeau breathed. "It is too bad, if he has acquaintances there, that he was so eager we come here rather than to Roscoffl"

"Well, land alivel" Corunna exclaimed angrily. "It's beyond me why you should make such a mountain out of a mole hilll Why shouldn't he have friends in RoscoffP"

"Why shouldn't he have told ArgandeauP" Marvin demanded.

"Good reason!" Corunna declared. "He knew you hated him, and that you'd do whatever you could to hinder his attempts to help me. And so you would, both of your"

"He set off to buy a privateer," Marvin said thoughtfully, "so he must have had a deal of money with him."

"To hunt for a privateer, I saidl" Corunna told him.

"But he must have had money to go traveling," Marvin persisted. "You didn't have any. It's all tied up in the cargo. You'd be needing money to get the cargo ashore and buy supplies. Perhaps he had enough himself; perhaps even enough to lend you some."

"Is that your affairs" Corunna asked. She strode to the larboard rail and marched up and down the deck, staring sternly at the small white houses on the far bank of the estuary and the little brownsailed tuggers that were slipping slowly out to sea before the vagrant morning airs.

Argandeau laughed gently. "By now he is in Roscoff," he told Marvin, "and there is nobody in Roscoff except all of the best smugglers in the world, by which I mean all of the worst ones; so we will hope that someone take him for a spy and stuff him in a brandy keg."

XII rat

CAPTAIN SAME in Roscoff, however, was far indeed from perishing, as the vivacious Argandeau desired, inside a brandy barrel; though it might well be of record that in his few hours of residence in that estimable town he placed within himself no inconsiderable quantity of the contents of such a barrel. His capacity was notable; no one who saw him could have guessed what he contained.

There was something disarming about his drooping eyelid; for when he tilted back his head to see the better, and smiled his quick and knowing smile, there was a look to him as though with the raising of the eye he lifted the curtain that hung before his mind, and permitted the world to gaze in on his sincerity and honesty. Even the hoarseness of his voice seemed proof of his candor; for on the face of it, no man would dare indulge in guile or fabrication in such rasping tones, lest his fraudulence be at once detected.

There was little indeed about the appearance of Captain Slade to inspire anything but amiability in those who saw him as he swung down the narrow streets of Roscoff on a warm October morning and entered the square that bordered the graystone inner basin. Clearly he was a somebody. There was distinction and urbanity in his bearing as he scanned the host of tuggers, cutters and schooners that thronged both the inner and the outer harbors; and the rakish forward tilt to his fine beaver hat indicated a generous disposition and a well-filled purse.

It may have been the backward slant of his head that made him seem to inhale with pleasure the somewhat powerful odors of Roscoff; it may have been the stout cane held so carelessly beneath the arm of his light blue coat that gave him his air of harmless affability; but whatever it was that did it, there was that about him which drew a tolerant growl from the swarthy Frenchmen who sat along the basin's rim, scratching themselves and looking resentfully at the cloudless sky.

Moving thus in an atmosphere of honesty and good cheer, Slade eyed a tall and narrow tavern fronting on the basin a tavern whose siguboard was blazoned with a round red object bearing a faint resemblance to the face of King George III, together with the words

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"Biftek Rouge." What Slade saw appeared to please him; for he swaggered jauntily through the door of the Biftek Rouge into a long room so full of men and of smoke as to give the impression that the floor itself was smoldering,and the men attempting to prevent a fire by sitting on it. The room buzzed with conversation when he entered, but as he stood by the small counter at the entrance, surveying the occupants, the buzzing died away and was succeeded by a heavy silence.

Slade laughed and cocked his eye at the fat woman in black who sat knitting behind the counter. "Brandy, madame," he said, smiling blandly at her small black mustache. "Fine de la maison." He fum- bled in the breast pocket of his coat and brought out a slip of paper. "You saver cet homme ici Capitaine Henry Potter? Pottaire, ehP'

The mustached woman set a bottle and a tumbler before him; then studied the paper, front and back, without emotion. From a near-by table, a French sailor, gold earrings dangling on his cheeks and a canvas petticoat over his breeches, lurched forward to the counter and spoke quickly to the fat woman, who looked noncom- mittal, raised her shoulders to the level of her ears, and passed the slip of paper to him.