Captain Caution (6 page)

"I heard a rabbit!" Argandeau said. "That is something I make no mistake about, ever, because I have had great experience. I would not hear her unless she had come down the ladder."

"How did you know she was frightened?" Marvin asked.

"Rabbits are always frightened," Argandeau said calmly. "Also, this one is weeping, and she said to someone, 'Let me alone! Let me alonel' If you will listen, maybe you hear her."

"Hoist me up," Marvin said. "Let me climb on your shoulders."

"If you're thinking of trying to go up," Slade said, "you're madl You'll get a bayonet in the face and they'll clap the grating on the rest of usl"

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"Hoist me upl" Marvin repeated. "She's not frightened! Nothing ever frightened her. There's something here I don't understand."

They took him on their shoulders, steadying him by clutching his knees. He crouched just below the level of the hatch, listening. Beneath him the voices of the prisoners again swelled to a wild tumult of shouting. Marvin turned his head from side to side, striving to catch some sound from Corunna, but he could hear nothing save the cries of his comrades in misfortune, the lapping of the seas against the Beetle's bends and a rush of feet from the deck above.

Argandeau shook him impatiently by the ankle. "What you thmk you are doing up there? Picking coconuts?"

The words had scarcely left his lips when Marvin pitched sideways. The three of them fell in a heap. In the darkness of the hold the whole world seemed to reel and stagger. "Take caret" Argandeau said, and though his voice was gentle it almost echoed in the hold's dark stillness. "Guard yourselves! We luff to, and now will come something! Those who rest against the planking, move clear, unless you wish broken bones!" He quickly repeated the words in French.

Beneath them the brig steadied, only to burst at once into a paroxysm of gigantic jerkings and tremblings, accompanied by a thunderous roar. She had, Marvin knew, let off her broadside, which must mean that the Beetle had come to close quarters with her adversary; for he had seen that the bulk of her guns were carronades, useful only at short range. His muscles ached from the tightness that had come into them a tightness that grew ever greater as he waited for the enemy vessel to let off her broadside in return.

Into his mind there came a picture of the Arundel marshes, empty and silent within their walls of spruce and maple, and of a marsh hawk dropping with outspread claws on a helpless animal that could neither fight nor run, and so lay flattened against the marsh, waiting. He thought, too, how for years there had been glib talk of war in the shipyards and taverns of Arundel and a hundred other towns; and it came to him that not one of those who talked had ever thought of such a war as this a war in which men lay in the dark and hoped that death would pass them by.

"Do you think they sank her?" he asked Argandeau, and he hurried his words, to get them out before they should be smothered and lost in the crash of the stranger's guns.

"Hal" said Argandeau, and to Marvin his voice seemed somewhat breathless. "Not with carronades! You know what I think?" He made a faint sound of protest in his throat, as though he found some slight discomfort in the caked mud on which he rested.

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"What?" Slade demanded, and his voice trembled with irritation. "Say it, damn itl"

"What I think - "

Again the mud beneath them jerked and shook, and continued to do so irregularly, as though the brig had burst into a spasm of gigantic coughs.

Slade laughed harshly. "I should say they hadn t sunk her. That's random firing! That means the stranger's closing with us, and it's every gun crew for himself!"

"What I think," Argandeau continued gently, "is that this stranger has one large long gun, and is maneuvering to rake the Griffons with

it.n

There was silence again in the hold. Marvin pulled desperately at Argandeau's arm. "Hoist me up again," he said. "I've got to try to see to try to see - "

Somewhere astern, Marvin heard a grinding smash, the sound of timbers violently rent, and the heavy roar of a long gun.

"Piffl" Argandeau exclaimed. "Close, that onel"

The sound of cries came into the hold, and the spongy spatter of musketry fire. Marvin rose to his knees, only to be thrown down once more by the clangorous shock of the Beetle's broadside. The long gun of the enemy vessel bellowed a second time, so close that it seemed to Marvin he could almost feel the brig's planking bend before it like a beaten drumhead. Prisoners scrambled and tumbled over him, to stand cursing and screaming beneath the opening m the hatch.

Argandeau grunted. "God be praisedI" he said. "They are aiming that pill bottle at the deck, like wise men! I tell you this, too: If they come closer, they will give their pills by hand instead of from the bottlel"

In Marvin's throat there was a taste of brass, and his tongue seemed to him to lie as thick and lifeless in his mouth as the salthardened sole of a sea boot. What he was passing through, he told himself, could not be real; like evil dreams that he remembered, it had the semblance of something that would never end; of something so dark and so terrible that his strength and his wits had deserted him together, leaving him panting and palsied.

The brig lurched suddenly and pitched forward a small movement by comparison with the hammer blows of her broadside; but to the Beetle's miserable human cargo it brought an even deeper silence than the guns had brought.

Argandeau caught Marvin by the arm. "They boardl" he whis

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pored. "They have turned on this brig and outsailed her, and they have laid her aboard at the stern. Ah, my Godl Now I sweat indeedl Compared with this, my other sweating was no more than the perspiration of a fleal"

The uproar that arose on the Beetle's deck came to them like the closer and closer raging of a storm. Above the continuous rattle of small arms they heard the howling of men, the shouts of officers, the shrilling of whistles, the beating of a boarding drum, and a rush of feet like the scuttling of innumerable giant mice.

And there was something more. From the opening in the hatch above Marvin's head there came a girl's voice the voice of Corunna Dorman. To Marvin it seemed to weep and to implore, as if in a frenzy of fear.

"Herel" Marvin shouted. "Herel" He would have risen to his feet but for Argandeau's grip on his arm.

"Softly! Softlyl" Argandeau said. "Something drop down in herel Who has that thing?"

He was gone, then, from beside Marvin, but through the continued uproar from above, Marvin could hear him calling: "Who has that? Give mel Give mel"

"It came through the hatchl" Slade told him, his voice shaking a little, as if from cold. "I heard it strike."

Argandeau's soft voice was close beside them once more. "This is something wrapped in the clothes of a rabbitI" he told them. "I tell by the odor! Ahl" He exhaled ecstatically. "Wait now; I am unwrapping! Ah! Ah! Knives three knivesl . . . Wait, nowl . . . Four five knives; one pistoll We have one pistol; five knives!" He took Marvin by the shoulder with a hand that trembled. "You know about throwing the knife, eh?" he asked.

"I never tried," Marvin said. "I'll stick to my fists."

"Fists!" Slade cried derisively. "What good are fistsl Give me one of those knivesl I've thrown a knife since I was a babyl"

"Now waitI" Argandeau said. "I am very fine with the knife very well and very quick! You ask any man in Hispaniolal" He paused, seemingly to listen to an outburst of hoarse cheering from above. Hard on the heels of the cheering came another thunderous roar from close astern.

"Hear me now," Argandeau ordered. "Come close, all who can. I want the red man from the captured barque."

"Steven," Marvin said.

"I'm here, Dan'l," said a voice from the thick dark.

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"Yes," Argandeau continued, "Steven and Aubert and Jonneau and Marvin."

Voices answered, close at hand.

"Listen, now," Argandeau said, "and see that this is told correctly to those who cannot hear. We have knives here. Four tall men will make a ladder, and we will go up and take this stinkpot from the damned British. You hear me?"

A rumble of voices answered him.

"Yes," Argandeau said, "whoever is trying to take this brig has been beaten off once, but will try again; and if you do not want to rot here in this hole, frying with heat and eating filth and choking, you will come up and help us. On deck there will be dead men, and wherever there are dead men there are weapons to be had for the taking. I go up I, Captain Argandeau of the Formidablel When the English see me, they will be weak with terrorl You understands I go up first with Captain Slade. When we say come, step quickly on the shoulders of these four tall men, and there will be an end of this heron

Marvin felt himself pressed against a group of men. "Lock the knees and brace the feet," Argandeau said. "Slade and I, we carry all the knives. Hold us at the height of your shoulders until we have drawn ourselves up; then push up the others. You understands Throw theml Do not delay. Soon there will be the ladder for the remainder; ropes also."

"For God's sake," Slade protested, "stop talking!"

"Come, nowl" Argandeau said. Again the vessel lurched and staggered forward. Far above them burst a storm of shouting and musket shots. Marvin hooked his knee inside Steven's, bracing his other foot against the flooring of caked mud. Slade, breathing heavily, stepped on their knees, then on their shoulders. Marvin saw his head against the dim greyness of the hole in the hatch, and beside it the bullethead of Argandeau. They crouched there silently, steadying them- selves; then rose upright together. Marvin felt Slade's feet press hard against his shoulder, and knew that he had thrown a knife. Immediately there was another quick pressure: then a sharp downward thrust as Slade leaped upward through the hatch.

A man fumbled at his arm, caught at his hair and went on up. Sweating, Marvin seized another, and another. There was a thudding overhead; the hatch came slowly off and the ladder slipped down past Marvin's face. Marvin threw himself at it and scrambled panting into the half light of the berth deck.

VII

MARVIN followed close by Argandeau, scrambled silently into the glaring sunlight and uproar of the brig's gun deck. A sweating marine, close by the hatch coaming,spat a bullet into the muzzle of his musket and turned, as he rammed it home, to stare widemouthed at the mud-smeared scarecrows rising in his rear. Marvin's fist struck hard against his jaw. His open mouth and eyes snapped shut; his neck stretched, rubber-like; his body rose as if to balance on his heels. Argandeau reached forward quickly, snatching the musket from his nerveless hands. The marine fell heavily beneath their feet.

On the quarter-deck a squirming throng of men struggled like animals packed tightly in a cage, howling and roaring as they fought. Jets of smoke stabbed from their pistols; cutlasses rose and fell spasmodically among them.

Over their heads was thrust the bow and long jib-boom of a towering schooner, the tip of the boom lodged and tangled in the Beetle's mainsail. At the schooner's main peak the American ensign fluttered in the burning southwest breeze.

Half-naked men ran like ants from the schooner's bow, cutlasses in hand, to leap from the high bowsprit into the dense mass beneath. In the rigging of the schooner were men with muskets, jerking about like jumping jacks as they fired and loaded; while the ratlines of the Beetle were filled with marines whose muskets spat smoke and pale flashes at the teeming deck of the enemy vessel.

At the taffrail, Lieutenant Strope held himself above the struggling men by clinging to the schooner's dolphin striker. Thus sustained, he thrust and hacked with a reddened saber at the men who hurled themselves, their faces contorted and their torsos adrip with perspiration, among the British seamen.

A marine, clinging to the foremast ratlines, spied the mud-stained horde emerging from the hatch and raised a faint, thin cry of warning. In the very moment of its utterance, Argandeau threw the knife that lay along the palm of his right hand. It passed through the ratlines with the swift flight of a swooping bird and buried itself in the glistening breast of the marine, who ceased his outcry to spread his

CAPTAIN CAUTION 317 arms apart and stare down in blank amazement at the knife hilt. So staring, he toppled slowly backward and vanished soundlesslyl below the bulwarks. One man, and then another, turned from the press that swarmed and milled at the break of the quarter-deck, to stare in horror at the swelling array of prisoners; then, shouting hoarsely, pulled at the3 arms of their fellows. Marines leaped from the ratlines, wrenching at their cumbersome swords. "Haul down! Haul dowel" Argandeau shouted. Swinging his cap- tured musket by the muzzle, he leaped toward one of the advancing marines and brought it against his head with such force that the wooden stock split. Almost from between the legs of the advancing Englishmen darted the diminutive Mr. Benyon, clutching in both hands an enor- mous horse pistol. "No quarter!" he screamed. "No quarter!" He snapped the pistol in Marvin's face and, when it missed fire, strove to hurl it at him. Over-balanced in the attempt, he sprawled ignominiously on the deck. Marvin lifted him by the belt and tossed him backward, over the heads of the yelling prisoners. "Haul dowel Haul dowel" Argandeau bellowed again. With the stockless musket he smashed the arm of a man whose cutlass was swinging toward his head. "We kill alll Haul dowel" Armed by now, the shouting prisoners hurled themselves on the English who, falling back before the sobers, gun rammers, muskets and belaying pins wielded by these mud-caked figures, were pressed into a mob so dense as almost to prevent the use of weapons. "Haul dowel" they roared. "Haul down!" Empty hands rose in the air beyond Marvin. "QuarterI" cried an English voice; and the word was repeated here and there like the drops of a rainstorm; first slowly, then with a sudden burst. There was a movement of the blood-red ensign at the Beetle's mainpeak. "She's struckI" Marvin cried. "Belayl She's struck!" Beyond the upraised hands of the Beetle's men, Marvin saw the thin, stooped figure of Lieutenant Strope. His hat was gone, his face the color of canvas fresh from the storeroom. The single epaulette on the shoulder of his coat was shorn in two, and the arm beneath it hung useless. He shook the hilt of his upraised saber at the men who reached with eager hands for ensign halyards. "Not" he shouted, in a voice that quavered and broke. "Put it backl I say not I say not" A seaman on the bowsprit of the enemy schooner caught at a stay, swung forward and brought down a cutlass on the lieutenant's un 8 CAPTAIN CAUTION