Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  But he had no support. The verdict was for the dice, and a seaman brought Ringan a little ivory box, which he held out to the prisoner. The latter took it with shaking hand, as if he did not know how to use it.

  “You will cast thrice,” said Ringan. “Two even throws, and you are free.”

  The man fumbled a little and then cast. It fell a four.

  A second time he threw, and the dice lay five.

  In that wild place, in the black heart of night, the terror of the thing fell on my soul. The savage faces, the deadly purpose in Ringan’s eyes, the fumbling miscreant before him, were all heavy with horror. I had no doubt that Cosh was worthy of death, but this cold and merciless treatment froze my reason. I watched with starting eyes the last throw, and I could not hear Ringan declare it. But I saw by the look on Cosh’s face what it had been.

  “It is your privilege to choose your manner of death and to name your successor,” I heard Ringan say.

  But Cosh did not need the invitation. Now that his case was desperate, the courage in him revived. He was fully armed, and in a second he had drawn a knife and leaped for Ringan’s throat.

  Perhaps he expected it, perhaps he had learned the art of the wild beast so that his body was answerable to his swiftest wish. I do not know, but I saw Cosh’s knife crash on the stone and splinter, while Ringan stood by his side.

  “You have answered my question,” he said quietly. “Draw your cutlass, man. You have maybe one chance in ten thousand for your life.”

  I shut my eyes as I heard the steel clash. Then very soon came silence. I looked again, and saw Ringan wiping his blade on a bunch of grass, and a body lying before him.

  He was speaking — speaking, I suppose, about the successor to the dead man, whom two negroes had promptly removed. Suddenly at my shoulder Shalah gave the hoot of an owl, followed at a second’s interval by a second and a third. I suppose it was some signal agreed with Ringan, but at the time I thought the man had gone mad.

  I was not very sane myself. What I had seen had sent a cold grue through me, for I had never before seen a man die violently, and the circumstances of the place and hour made the thing a thousandfold more awful. I had a black fright on me at that whole company of merciless men, and especially at Ringan, whose word was law to them. Now the worst effect of fear is that it obscures good judgment, and makes a man in desperation do deeds of a foolhardiness from which at other times he would shrink. All I remembered in that moment was that I had to reach Ringan, and that Mercer had told me that the safest plan was to show a bold front. I never remembered that I had also been bidden to follow Shalah, nor did I reflect that a secret conclave of pirates was no occasion to choose for my meeting. With a sudden impulse I forced myself to my feet, and stalked, or rather shambled, into the light.

  “Ninian,” I cried, “Ninian Campbell! I’m here to claim your promise.”

  The whole company turned on me, and I was gripped by a dozen hands and flung on the ground. Ringan came forward to look, but there was no recognition in his eyes. Some one cried out, “A spy!” and there was a fierce murmur of voices, which were meaningless to me, for fear had got me again, and I had neither ears nor voice. Dimly it seemed that he gave some order, and I was trussed up with ropes. Then I was conscious of being carried out of the glare of torches into the cool darkness. Presently I was laid in some kind of log-house, carpeted with fir boughs, for the needles tickled my face.

  Bit by bit my senses came back to me, and I caught hold of my vagrant courage.

  A big negro in seaman’s clothes with a scarlet sash round his middle was squatted on the floor watching me by the light of a ship’s lantern. He had a friendly, foolish face, and I remember yet how he rolled his eyeballs.

  “I won’t run away,” I said, “so you might slacken these ropes and let me breathe easy.”

  Apparently he was an accommodating gaoler, for he did as I wished.

  “And give me a drink,” I said, “for my tongue’s like a stick.”

  He mixed me a pannikin of rum and water. Perhaps he hocussed it, or maybe ‘twas only the effect of spirits on a weary body; but three minutes after I had drunk I was in a heavy sleep.

  CHAPTER 9. VARIOUS DOINGS IN THE SAVANNAH

  I awoke in broad daylight, and when my wits came back to me, I saw I was in a tent of skins, with my limbs unbound, and a pitcher of water beside me placed by some provident hand. Through the tent door I looked over a wide space of green savannah. How I had got there I knew not; but, as my memory repeated the events of the night, I knew I had travelled far, for the sea showed miles away at a great distance beneath me. On the water I saw a ship in full sail, diminished to a toy size, careering northward with the wind.

  Outside a man was seated whistling a cheerful tune. I got to my feet and staggered out to clear my head in the air, and found the smiling face of Ringan.

  “Good-morning, Andrew,” he cried, as I sat down beside him. “Have you slept well?”

  I rubbed my eyes and took long draughts of the morning breeze.

  “Are you a warlock, Mr. Campbell, that you can spirit folk about the country at your pleasure? I have slept sound, but my dreams have been bad.”

  “Yes,” he said; “what sort of dreams, maybe?”

  “I dreamed I was in a wild place among wild men, and that I saw murder done. The look of the man who did it was not unlike your own.”

  “You have dreamed true,” he said gravely; “but you have the wrong word for it. Others would call it justice.”

  “What sort of justice?” said I, “when you had no court or law but just what you made yourself.”

  “Is it not a stiff Whiggamore?” he said, looking skywards. “Why, man, all justice is what men make themselves. What hinders the Free Companions from making as honest laws as any cackling Council in the towns? Did you see the man Cosh? Have you heard anything of his doings, and will you deny that the world was well quit of him? There’s a decency in all trades, and Cosh fair stank to heaven. But I’m glad the thing ended as it did. I never get to like a cold execution. ‘Twas better for everybody that he should fly at my face and get six inches of kindly steel in his throat. He had a gentleman’s death, which was more than his crimes warranted.”

  I was only half convinced. Here was I, a law-abiding merchant, pitchforked suddenly into a world of lawlessness. I could not be expected to adjust my views in the short space of a night.

  “You gave me a rough handling,” I said, “Where was the need of it?”

  “And you showed very little sense in bursting in on us the way you did! Could you not have bided quietly till Shalah gave the word? I had to be harsh with you, or they would have suspected something and cut your throat. Yon gentry are not to take liberties with. What made you do it, Andrew?”

  “Just that I was black afraid. That made me more feared of being a coward, so I forced myself to yon folly.”

  “A very honourable reason,” he said.

  “Are you the leader of those men?” I asked. “They looked a scurvy lot. Do you call that a proper occupation for the best blood in Breadalbane?”

  It was a silly speech, and I could have bitten my tongue out when I had uttered it. But I was in a vile temper, for the dregs of the negro’s rum still hummed in my blood. His face grew dark, till he looked like the man I had seen the night before.

  “I allow no man to slight my race,” he said in a harsh voice.

  “It’s the truth whether you like it or not. And you that claimed to be a gentleman! What is it they say about the Highlands?” And I quoted a ribald Glasgow proverb.

  What moved me to this insolence I cannot say, I was in the wrong, and I knew it, but I was too much of a child to let go my silly pride.

  Ringan got up very quickly and walked three steps. The blackness had gone from his face, and it was puzzled and melancholy.

  “There’s a precious lot of the bairn in you, Mr. Garvald,” he said, “and an ugly spice of the Whiggamore. I would have killed another man f
or half your words, and I’ve got to make you pay for them somehow.” And he knit his brow and pondered.

  “I’m ready,” said I, with the best bravado I could muster, though the truth is I was sick at heart. I had forced a quarrel like an ill-mannered boy on the very man whose help I had come to seek. And I saw, too, that I had gone just that bit too far for which no recantation would win pardon.

  “What sort of way are you ready?” he asked politely. “You would fight me with your pistols, but you haven’t got them, and this is no a matter that will wait. I could spit you in a jiffy with my sword, but it wouldna be fair. It strikes me that you and me are ill matched. We’re like a shark and a wolf that cannot meet to fight in the same element.”

  Then he ran his finger down the buttons of his coat, and his eyes were smiling. “We’ll try the old way that laddies use on the village green. Man, Andrew, I’m going to skelp you, as your mother skelped you when you were a breechless bairn,” And he tossed his coat on the grass.

  I could only follow suit, though I was black ashamed at the whole business. I felt the disgrace of my conduct, and most bitterly the disgrace of the penalty.

  My arm was too short to make a fighter of me, and I could only strive to close, that I might get the use of my weight and my great strength of neck and shoulder. Ringan danced round me, tapping me lightly on nose and cheek, but hard enough to make the blood flow, I defended myself as best I could, while my temper rose rapidly and made me forget my penitence. Time and again I looked for a chance to slip in, but he was as wary as a fox, and was a yard off before I could get my arm round him.

  At last in extreme vexation, I lowered my head and rushed blindly for his chest. Something like the sails of a windmill smote me on the jaw, and I felt myself falling into a pit of great darkness where little lights twinkled.

  The next I knew I was sitting propped against the tent-pole with a cold bandage round my forehead, and Ringan with a napkin bathing my face.

  “Cheer up, man,” he cried; “you’ve got off light, for there’s no a scratch on your lily-white cheek, and the blood-letting from the nose will clear out the dregs of Moro’s hocus.”

  I blinked a little, and tried to recall what had happened. All my ill-humour had gone, and I was now in a hurry to set myself right with my conscience. He heard my apology with an embarrassed face.

  “Say no more, Andrew. I was as muckle to blame as you, and I’ve been giving myself some ill names for that last trick. It was ower hard, but, man, the temptation was sore.”

  He elbowed me to the open air.

  “Now for the questions you’ve a right to ask. We of the Brethren have not precisely a chief, as you call it, but there are not many of them would gainsay my word. Why? you ask. Well, it’s not for a modest man to be sounding his own trumpet. Maybe it’s because I’m a gentleman, and there’s that in good blood which awes the commonalty. Maybe it’s because I’ve no fish of my own to fry. I do not rob for greed, like Calvert and Williams, or kill for lust, like the departed Cosh. To me it’s a game, which I play by honest rules. I never laid finger on a bodle’s worth of English stuff, and if now and then I ease the Dons of a pickle silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty’s troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal? If I’ve a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded. But maybe the chief reason is that I’ve some little skill of arms, so that the lad that questions me is apt to fare like Cosh.”

  There was a kind of boastful sincerity about the man which convinced me. But his words put me in mind of my own business.

  “I came seeking you to ask help. Your friends have been making too free with my belongings. I would never complain if it were the common risk of my trade, but I have a notion that there’s some sort of design behind it.” Then I told him of my strife with the English merchants.

  “What are your losses?” he asked.

  “The Ayr brig was taken off Cape Charles, and burned to the water. God help the poor souls in her, for I fear they perished.”

  He nodded. “I know. That was one of Cosh’s exploits. He has paid by now for that and other things.”

  “Two of my ships were chased through the Capes and far up the Tidewater of the James not two months back,” I went on.

  He laughed. “I did that myself,” he said.

  Astonishment and wrath filled me, but I finished my tale.

  “A week ago there was a ship ashore on Accomac. Pirates boarded her, but they took nothing away save a sum of gold that was mine. Was that your doing also, Mr. Campbell?”

  “Yes,” he said; “but the money’s safe. I’ll give you a line to Mercer, and he’ll pay it you.”

  “I’m much obliged to you, Mr. Campbell,” I said, choking with anger. “But who, in Heaven’s name, asked you to manage my business? I thought you were my friend, and I came to you as such, and here I find you the chief among my enemies.”

  “Patience, Andrew,” he said, “and I’ll explain everything, for I grant you it needs some explaining. First, you are right about the English merchants. They and the Free Companions have long had an understanding, and word was sent by them to play tricks on your ships. I was absent at the time, and though the thing was dirty work, as any one could see, some of the fools thought it a fair ploy, and Cosh was suffered to do his will. When I got back I heard the story, and was black angry, so I took the matter into my own keeping. I have ways and means of getting the news of Virginia, and I know pretty well what you have been doing, young one. There’s spirit in you and some wise notions, but you want help in the game. Besides, there’s a bigger thing before you. So I took steps to bring you here.”

  “You took a roundabout road,” said I, by no means appeased.

  “It had to be. D’you think I could come marching into James Town and collogue with you in your counting-house? Now that you’re here, you have my sworn word that the Free Companions will never lay hand again on your ventures. Will that content you?”

  “It will,” I said; “but you spoke of a bigger thing before me.”

  “Yes, and that’s the price you are going to pay me for my goodwill. It’s what the lawyers call consideratio for our bargain, and it’s the reason I brought you here. Tell me, Andrew, d’you ken a man Frew who lives on the South Fork River?” “A North Ireland fellow, with a hatchet face and a big scar? I saw him a year ago.”

  “It stuck in my mind that you had. And d’you mind the advice he gave you?”

  I remembered it very well, for it was Frew who had clinched my views on the defencelessness of our West. “He spoke God’s truth,” I said, “but I cannot get a Virginian to believe it.”

  “They’ll believe in time,” he said, “though maybe too late to save some of their scalps. Come to this hillock, and I will show you something.”

  From the low swell of ground we looked west to some little hills, and in the hollow of them a spire of smoke rose into the blue.

  “I’m going to take you there, that you may hear and see something to your profit. Quick, Moro,” he cried to a servant. “Bring food, and have the horses saddled.”

  We breakfasted on some very good beefsteaks, and started at a canter for the hills. My headache had gone, and I was now in a contented frame of mind; for I saw the purpose of my errand accomplished, and I had a young man’s eagerness to know what lay before me. As we rode Ringan talked.

  “You’ll have heard tell of Bacon’s rising in ‘76? Governor Berkeley had ridden the dominion with too harsh a hand, and in the matter of its defence against the Indians he was slack when he should have been tight. The upshot was that Nathaniel Bacon took up the job himself, and after giving the Indians their lesson, turned his mind to the government of Virginia. He drove Berkeley into Accomac, and would have turned the whole place tapsalteery if he had not suddenly died of a bowel complaint. After that Berkeley and his tame planters got the upper hand, and there were some pretty homings and hangings. The
re were two men that were lieutenants to Bacon, and maybe put the notion into his head. One was James Drummond, a cousin of my own mother’s, and he got the gallows for his trouble. The other was a man Richard Lawrence, a fine scholar, and a grand hand at planning, though a little slow in a fight. He kept the ordinary at James Town, and was the one that collected the powder and kindled the fuse. Governor Berkeley had a long score to settle with him, but he never got him, for when the thing was past hope Mr. Richard rode west one snowy night to the hills, and Virginia saw him no more. They think he starved in the wilderness, or got into the hands of the wild Indians, and is long ago dead.”

  I knew all about Dick Lawrence, for I had heard the tale twenty times. “But surely they’re right,” I said, “It’s fifteen years since any man had word of him.”

  “Well, you’ll see him within an hour,” said Ringan, “It’s a queer story, but it seems he fell in with a Monacan war party, and since he and Bacon had been fighting their deadly foes, the Susquehannocks, they treated him well, and brought him south into Carolina. You must know, Andrew, that all this land hereaways, except for the little Algonquin villages on the shore, is Sioux country, with as many tribes as there are houses in Clan Campbell. But cheek by jowl is a long strip held by the Tuscaroras, a murdering lot of devils, of whom you and I’ll get news sooner than we want. The Tuscaroras are bad enough in themselves, but the worst part is that all the back country in the hills belongs to their cousins the Cherokees, and God knows how far north their sway holds. The Long House of the Iroquois controls everything west of the coast land from Carolina away up through Virginia to New York and the Canadas. That means that Virginia has on two sides the most powerful tribes of savages in the world, and if ever the Iroquois found a general and made a common attack things would go ill with the Tidewater. I tell you that so that you can understand Lawrence’s doings. He hates the Iroquois like hell, and so he likes their enemies. He has lived for fifteen years among the Sioux, whiles with the Catawbas, whiles with the Manahoacs, but mostly with the Monacans. We of the Free Companions see him pretty often, and bring him the news and little comforts, like good tobacco and eau de vie, that he cannot get among savages. And we carry messages between him and the Tidewater, for he has many friends still alive there. There’s no man ever had his knowledge of Indians, and I’m taking you to him, for he has something to tell you.”