Captain Caution Read online

  Corunna Dorman stepped quickly from the companionway and walked between Marvin and the lieutenant, her arms, tight at her sides hidden in the billowing folds of a thin black dress. She swayed a little, staring at the lieutenant out of eyes like black flints. Marvin, watching her apprehensively, saw that one of her hands, deep in a pocket of her gown, clutched something, he knew not what. Filled with a sudden fear, he grasped her wrist. "Easy, Corunnal" he said. "We've been at war since June. At wart We've been at war with

  Englandl" ;

  She turned a somber glance on him. When he released her, she lifted sad eyes toward the boarding party from the British brig. Her hands, obscured no longer, were clasped before her. "My father - " she said, and on the word her voice broke and failed. "My father - " She drooped toward the lieutenant, and with that he caught and held her.

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  "Great regrets, meml"he said huskily. He cleared his throat and laughed in a way that he may have thought pleasant. "Didn't expect the pleasure ah, Gedl Frighfful pity, meml Not for worlds, oh? Do what we cam"

  She freed herself from the lieutenant's arm. "We knew nothing of ill" she said. "We left Canton in May. What had we what made you fire on us what - "

  The lieutenant laughed ingratiatingly. "You'll come aboard the Beetle, eh? Ged, mem, a pleasure! We're for the Azores with our prizes a slaver and a Frenchman, mem; and now you, thank Gedl"

  He turned to Marvin. "Get your men into boats and over to the brig. You've got five minutes to collect your dunnage. Don't take too much or we'll pitch it overboard."

  He turned back to Corunna. "Sorry sorry to cause you the in- convenience."

  .,

  IV

  FORTY seamen and twenty scarecrow marines crowded close around the crew of the Olive Branch as they scrambled over the bulwarks and into the waist of the Beetle war brig, spurred on by the fractious voice and intemperate words of the Beetle's red-faced, thin-shanked commander, Lieutenant the Hon. Vivian Strope.

  Lieutenant Strope himself followed hard on their heels, calling angrily for Mr. Benyon and Oddsly. Mr. Benyon, Marvin discovered, was a small child, attired in the white ducks, the glazed hat and the dirk belt of a midshipman. Marvin's discovery came about through being struck sharply in the small of the back and then brusquely elbowed to one side by Mr. Benyon in response to the lieutenant's call.

  "Mr. Benyon," Lieutenant Strope said, "if any of you young gentlemen happen to know where there's a prayer book, bring it at once. There's an ah lady on the prize and we kent do a thing with her until we've fed the old man to the sharks in a manner to suit her! In this heat I couldn't remember a word of the burial service, by Ged, even if I knew the demned thingl"

  The pale child saluted smartly and disappeared. His place was taken by the elderly, bald, disillusioned-looking sailing master in shrunken nankeen breeches and a gingham coat.

  "Oddsly," the lieutenant said, "send ten men aboard the prize, with one of the young gentlemen in command I think Mr. Jowkes. See to it, Oddsly, while I'm getting this Yankee overboard. They tried to fight us, Oddsly, the demned ruffians. Demnedest nuisance of all, Oddsly, is that one of 'em blew his leg offl Demned well wish it had been his headl Can't put him with the prisoners, demn ill See to it, and search the prisoners; then clap 'em in the hold. And just bear in mind, will you, that we've got to close with the other two prizes before nightfall?"

  Clutching a prayer book that Mr. Benyon had brought him, the lieutenant scrambled down into the boat once more; while a detail of marines, under the eye of the sailing master, searched Marvin and the crew of the Olive Branch, removing from them not only knives but even belt buckles, coins and every metal thing.

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  "Smartly, nowI" Oddsly told them, when this was done. "You'll go under guard in the main hold and we'll stow your dunnage where it'll be safe. You'll be allowed on deck in sections, starting as soon as the hatch comes off in the morning. Settle your differences peaceably if you don't want a bullet in your gizzards. We're overburdened with prisoners, and the guards have orders to take no chances not with such ugly brutes as you Yankees. Step lively, nowl"

  He stared arrogantly at the dejected group of seamen and jerked a thumb toward the hatchway. Marvin raised a protesting hand. "Leave us our dunnage," he said. "It's not right to clap these men under hatches half naked, as they are. They'll need clothes."

  Oddsly's reply was contemptuous. "No they won't! Not here they won'tl This brig ain't Buckingham Palacel The state bedrooms were overlooked when she was launched, and you'll find your quarters somewhat restricted." He laughed appreciatively at his own facetiousness and swung himself down the ladderway at the main hatch.

  Marvin, waiting for the men to follow the sailing master into the darkness below, cast a look astern. The Beetle's crew had mounted to the carronades and the hammock nettings to watch the Olive Branch, wallowing under the brig's lee, her slack sails a bright pink from the setting sun. Between the shoulders of the British sailors, Marvin could see small figures on the barque's quarter-deck, and as he watched, a grey lump fell from the larboard rail, half turned in mid-air, struck the water with a clumsy splash and vanished as if it had never been.

  "'He bringeth them out of their distresses,'" Marvin quoted, thinking of kindly Captain Dorman and how he had come to stand close beside him, not an hour since, and speak of his and Corunna's needs. At the thought, Marvin laughed, but at the sound, which was more of a croak than a laugh, he licked his heat-cracked lips and passed his hand across his face, which seemed to him stiff. His eye ran quickly along the brig's armament along the eight stubby carronades to a side, and the two long guns, twenty-four pounders, that had been run out of the larboard bow ports preparatory to raking the Olive Branch if the need had arisen. His shirt, drenched with perspiration, seemed to become even wetter when he contemplated what must have happened aboard the barque if those two guns had loosed their double loads of ball and grape at close range. He groaned aloud at the recollection of the words Corunna Dorman had spoken to him when, by his quickness, death and destruction had been averted. "'Sneaking, cowardly, turn-tail ratl"' he repeated to himself. The words reformed themselves in his hot brain and spilled

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  unbidden from his parched lips. "Cowardly, sneaking, turn-tail rail" he muttered. "Turn-tail, cowardly, sneaking ratI"

  The voice of the sailing master roared at him from the hatch: "Well, for God's sake! Are you coming along, or are you thinking of taking a berth in the gun room?"

  "Could I have some water?" Marvin asked hoarsely.

  "Come down that ladder," the sailing master snapped, "or you'll get a musket-butt behind the earl"

  Marvin descended the ladder hastily, stooped to avoid the beams of the berth deck, and moved forward to a second hatch. As his eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he saw, crouched on each side of the hatchway, two grotesque marines, looking, in that hot half light, like the guards of some dark inferno.

  Out of a small square hole in the hatch protruded a ladder, and from the hole there came the sound of many voices, and a stench as evil as it was powerful.

  "Down with your" the sailing master said with what almost seemed like enjoyment. "We'll be at the Cape Verdes before you know it."

  Seeing that there was no help for it, Marvin laid hold of the ladder to go down, but as he did so, a man rose through the hole in the hatch to block his way. He had a thin face, long and palely yellow, framed in lank black hair; a face that had, at no distant date, been cleanly shaved, but that was now shaded by a growth of black stubble. As he rose higher on the ladder his garments were revealed to be as darkly grey as a Quaker's coat. He glanced quickly at Marvin from under an eyelid that drooped heavily, but spoke to the sailing master in a hoarse voice that seemed to Marvin to have a singularly pleasing resonance.

  "I believe, sir," he said, "that unless you let some of us on deck you'll have a pile of corpses on your hands tomorrow."
/>   "You know the rules, Slade," Oddsly said brusquely. "Nobody goes on deck when we're hove to, or in chase of a sail. It's nothing you can't stand. You mustn't judge white men by the blacks you've carried."

  Slade looked carefully at the sailing master, tilting his head backward as though to see him more clearly from under his drooping eyelid; and Marvin saw that the greyness of the man's shirt was due to a crust of mud upon it.

  He turned to Marvin then. "You're joining us, I think. Lurman Slade, if you'll permit me, captain of the Graceful Kate brig."

  "SIaverl" Oddsly said scornfully.

  Again Slade tipped back his head to stare at the sailing master.

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  "You repeat yourself," he said. "I think this gentleman probably understood your first reference. He's not an Englishmanl"

  He smiled and nodded at Marvin, backing slowly down the ladder; and Marvin, after a final glance at Oddsly's grim features, followed Slade into a hot, foul blackness that seemed to rise about him like the steam from a witch's cauldron; then to close over his head as he descended.

  He stood, Marvin felt for in the darkness of the hold he could see nothing on a tier of water casks that had been covered with a layer of mud, so that a second tier of casks might be placed in it and prevented, by its stickiness, from shifting. The stench of the place caught him in the throat and the pit of the stomach, as if those outraged organs fought silently against the unendurable; and the uneasy swaying of the brig seemed suddenly to sweep off into enor- mous arcs that momentarily threatened to become dizzying revolutions. He caught at the collar of his shirt and heard it rip in his hand; then, choking, he turned and fumbled again for the ladder.

  A hand caught him by the arm. "No use to go up," Slade's hoarse voice told him. "The marines push you back. Lie down here between us. This corner of the hold is the officer's mess, anyway."

  Dripping with perspiration, Marvin did as he was told, only to find himself wedged tightly between Slade and a hulk of a man whose outthrustshoulder, arm and hip had the feel of a seaweedcovered ledge. He groaned and heaved as Marvin pressed against him; but when Slade, leaning over Marvin, softly said "Argandeau," the hulk of a man was gone as quickly as though he had silently exploded. A moment later he spoke softly from above them: "Some

  body call me?"

  "I did," Slade said. "You'd sleep through hell, if you had to go there."

  "Ah," the soft voice said, "you don't wake me to tell me about hell, I hoper"

  "Why, no," Slade said. "I woke you so you'd give our guest some room."

  "Hoi" Argandeau said. "So the Griffons took another! Soon we begin to be crowded, I think."

  Against the dim light that filtered through the hole in the hatch Marvin saw Argandeau mount two steps up the ladder. "Mr. Griffonl" he called mildly. "Ho, Mr. Griffonl Rig the wind saill I feel we are under wayl"

  A sentry's face appeared at the hatch. "Oo the 'elf you calling Mr.

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  Griffin?" truculently. "We bloody well had enough of your Grifflningl"

  "Yes, well, you rig the wind sail," Argandeau said. "We choke to death here in this black sewer."

  He came down the ladder, crouched beside Marvin and felt for his shoulder. "They are all Griffons, the English," he declared mildly, "with ugly, hairy faces like the hunting griffons of the Vendee. Similar as to whiskers, but less dependable and less aristocratic parentage. This ship of yours, what was she?"

  "Barque Olive Branch," Marvin told him. "Three hundred and thirty tons, twenty-five men, ten six-pounders, of and for Arundel, from Canton."

  "Six-pounders!" Argandeau exclaimed. "Good for nothing but shooting flying fish! Why you run from this cruiser? Don't you know she can knock you into fireplace wood?"

  "I thought you were asleep during the chase, Argandeau," Slade interrupted.

  "Ho," Argandeau said carelessly, "I hear in my sleep. I hear, even, that although you decide to fight and run, you do neither. Pfool Bangl And in one minute you are here, eh?"

  Marvin cleared his throat. "Yes," he admitted uncomfortably, "yes. The only gun we fired blew up, and there was - " He checked himself. "There were important lives aboard. I don't mean my own particularly I mean I think if there had been more time I mean, I could have rigged a pendulum in the gangway. Even through the smoke I could have cleared her decks if I could have rigged a pen- dulum. With a pendulum we could have fired from an even keel, always. It was too late when it occurred to me a pendulum - "

  His voice died away. The silence that followed was broken by a faint, hoarse laugh from Slade. Marvin felt Argandeau's hand on his shoulder. "Yes, yes," the Frenchman said soothingly. "You have had an experience! I understand quite well! You rest now, and I speak to you of my Formidable. You say in English Formidibi1bble, I think, eh?"

  "Formidable!" Marvin said wearily. "How did you come to call her Formidable when she wasn't?"

  "No, not" Argandeau murmured. "You be quiet. Do not speak of pendulums, or of anything, even. When word arrives in any port that Lucien Argandeau approaches in his Formidahle, the ladies of that port, they flame with feeling! In every place even in Martinico and Hispaniola the girls cheer for the Formidable when she come, and weep for her when she gol For me they flame; for my Formidable

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  they scream in exultation. She is gallant swift like the frigate bird swifter! Swooping on her enemies like the hawk, piffl In her I would fight any vessel, sailing in circles about those too large to take; laughing at them, ha-hal"

  "Yes, and here you arel" Marvin told him wearily. He buried his head in his arms and thought again of the words Corunna Dorman had spoken to him.

  Argandeau was silent for a time. "I know what you feel, young man," he said at length. "You are sick, here in this cesspool. You think of your clean shipl You think of your homer You remember some sweet rabbit who has held you close closer Your life drips out from you, here in the mudl You are all despair, eh?"

  PI can stand it," Marvin said.

  "Pooil Of coursel" Argandeau agreed. "On the sea, nothing is hopeless. We know that we who have seen men washed from a ship's deck into eternity by a wave, only to be washed back again by the next."

  "Got any water?" Marvin asked.

  "They bring it to us soon. You listen, now. I tell you about Lucien Argandeau, because I have pleasure in speaking American, and I like very much your people. You notice my speaking of American, oh?"

  "Yes," Marvin said numbly, "you speak very well."

  "But of courser I am friends for three years with a beautiful rabbit from Boston. You know Boston?"

  The words came slowly into Marvin's mind. "A rabbit? You were friends with a rabbit?"

  "Ha-ha!" said Argandeau, "a stylish rabbit, very neat, very affectionate; a true angel, so that when she speak of returning to Boston, I say she go back to heaven."

  "Oh, yes," Marvin murmured drowsily.

  "Yesl" Argandeau sighed gustily. "I learn from the best of dictionaries the sleeping dictionary. I have had a pocket full of them. Epatant et pas chere, comme on dit, 2 Parisl There is that about me, you understand, that is irresistible to rabbits! Now look: I tell you more about the brave Lucien Argandeau and his beautiful Formidable. In all the world, under my command, no vessel sail so fast. M-m-m-m-m-ml Like a bonito, she go Wheeshl Wheeshl Here, there, and then goner Pooil"

  At the hatchway above there was a stir and rattling. A faint breath of air, still hot, but less foul than the nauseous steam that filled the

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  hold, lightly touched Marvin's face, so that he knew a wind sail had been rigged. Argandeau's voice, droning out of a black void, fell soothingly on the ear. Marvin, dozing presently, dreamed that there were pleasant sounds, even in hell.

  v

  IN THE fetid hold of His Majesty's war brig Beetle there were close onto one hundred prisoners, forty-two of them Frenchmen from Argandeau'sprivateer schooner, thirty of them an unsavory lot from Slad
e's dark brig, and the remainder from the Olive Branch. Once a day one-third of all this sorry company were called from their filthy cavern, each man guarded by a marine with bayoneted musket. One by one, like dangerous beasts, they were herded and prodded upward, staggering and blinking, to the deck, where they were packed into a long-boat amidships and, ringed by sentries, allowed for a little time to rid their lungs of the effluvium that had poisoned them below.

  So heady and so sparkling was the air, after their long breathing of noxious gases, that it mounted in them like wine, some becoming ill or dizzy, and others waggling their tongues as if, Argandeau said, they had been spliced with whalebone.

  For two days the face of Argandeau remained a grey blur to Marvin a grey blur from which emerged soft-voiced scurrilities concerning their captors, the English Griffons, and endless references to the rabbits all of them rabbits of unrivaled beauty who had succumbed to his charm in a hundred ports. Not until the second day after his capture was Marvin permitted to clamber up the ladder, preceded by Slade and followed by Argandeau and something more than a score of prisoners.

  Accompanied by a marine as by a shadow, he went forward to the main hatch and emerged at last on deck. The sun beat down out of a pale sky, and the brilliance of its rays were so like an explosion in Marvin's eyes that he covered his head with his arms as he stumbled into the long-boat amidships.

  "Excuse, please," Argandeau said. "I hold your arm because it is easy to fall against carronades or something when you come from that place."

  When he could bear the light at last, Marvin cleared the moisture from his cheeks with hands that seemed to him strangely unsteady, and peered aft in the hope of seeing Corunna Dorman on the quarter-deck. The stern was screened from him, however, by the

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  swelling belly of the main course; and as Argandeau pulled him down on a thwart of the long-boat, he turned to look for the first time at his new acquaintance.