"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.
The Frenchman stared at it, scratching his nose. "No," he said at length, "that name means nothing in Roscoff."
Slade motioned to the fat woman for another tumbler, filled it for the Frenchman; then sighed and pondered, his lids downcast in vague regret. "Too badI" he said. "Too badl My friend Captain Chater told me Henry Potter worked regularly between Roscoff and Plymouth, and would set me across."
"You know Chater?" the Frenchman asked. He swallowed half his tumbler of brandy, shivered violently, and stared hard at Slade out of watery eyes.
"I knew him," Slade said. "He had the fever in Fernando Po. The damned fool wouldn't close his ports at night."
The Frenchman grunted. "Fernando Pol" he growled. "That is another thing, then! Strange Englishmen are not welcome in this town, but men from Fernando Po - "
Slade drew papers from his pocket, and as he waited for the Frenchman to examine them, he heard the humming and buzzing of the room mount again to its former violence.
The Frenchman pushed back the papers. "Yes, I will tell you. You know about Dunkirk?"
Slade shook his head.
"The Emperor Napoleon, he has turned over a section of the city
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to the English free traders, so that our poor country may take a few millions from the rich Goddams. All the time there are in that port five hundred sailors from across the ditch" he jerked his head toward the Channel "and if you go there, I think you find Pottaire." He finished his brandy, shivered again and pulled pensively at an earring.
"It's too far," Slade said. "Anyway, those that run out of Dunkirk wouldn't be going so far west as Devon; they'd be for Kent and Sussex. It's Plymouth I'm for."
Seemingly lost in thought, the Frenchman sniffed at the brandy bottle and pushed it toward the fat woman in black. "This Cousin Jacky is for export to England," he growled. "Spill none of it on your dress, lest it eat a hole. Give us a measure from the keg of '97."
Grumbling, the mustached woman produced a second bottle, from which the Frenchman poured two half tumblers.
"And," Slade reminded him, "I want to come back the same way in four days. I thought I'd pay in advance on this side, and leave the return money with madame here, to be paid when I come in again paid with a hundred-franc bonus."
The Frenchman put an arm around Slade's shoulders and breathed heavily on his neckcloth. "Ah, but this is something we arrange at once. I am arrive here this morning, and I do not go back for four days, because every Englishman in the world either carries lace and Cousin Jacky, or wishes to buy it! There is the English of it for youl They make a law; then all of them work day and night to break ill Now there are so many of us that unless we take our turn, we bump into each other in mid-Channel! It is a hard thing for poor France that so many English should take the bread out of our mouths, no?" He patted Slade's shoulder and seemed to weep a little.
"It's tonight I want to go to Plymouth," Slade said.
"Yes, yesl But not Plymouthl Polperro, Yealm, Dartmouth, Cawsand, Looe yes; every night there are tuggers to those places, but not to Plymouth. Plymouth, it is too full of war vessels. Listen now to me. Here is what we do: Tonight four loggers go to Whitesand Bay, between Looe and Plymouth two English and two French. I send you with an Englishman Captain Vincent, cutter Lottery; he is very intelligent man. If there is something to be found out" he raised his eyebrows suggestively "by those fools in the army who are forever studying and daily growing stupider, Captain Vincent, he will deliver even a general anywhere in England in two days, entirely safe. You go with him to Whitesand Bay tonight and be nicely in Plymouth for breakfast; then in four days you come with a
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friend of Captain Vincent to Whitesand Bay once more, and we return here like two larks."
The cutter Lottery, laden with one hundred ankersof cognac, five hundred pounds of tea, seven thousand yards of lace and thirty bales of silk, ran due north from Roscoff on the night tide; and Captain Vincent, nursing the tiller of his swift vessel as easily with one hand as though he navigated a ship's dinghy in a canal, held Slade's gold pieces to the dim light of the binnacle; then stuffed them into the pocket of his breeches and cast a quick glance under the mainsail
"You came to the wrong place for a Plymouth vessel," he told Slade, staring at him innocently out of clear blue eyes, "and if you wasn't a stranger, you'd 'a' knowed it. It takes money to shut up the Excise and Preventive officers in a port that size, and pay off a dozen revenue-cruiser captains to boot; and us little fellers, we ain't got it. It's only the big Scotch and French and Dutch and English companies that can pay that high for protection; and if we nose in on their preserves, it's a knife in the ribs or a bullet in the back, like as not, for those of us as does."
He spat over the side. "Of course, them that has to make port in all weathers, maybe they need protection; but Whitesand Bay is all I need; no questions asked and labor plenty. You'll see 'em turn out tonight, with four vessels unloading! We pay 'em well; and every farmer and shopkeeper and blacksmith in the town, they'll be out to help; yes, and the women and children and the parson. And why shouldn't they, when it comes to that? What right's a government got to say a poor man sha'n't have his tot of Cousin Jacky, if so be he needs itI"
"It's all the same to me where I land," Slade said, "so long as nobody throws me into jail for being American. Going on an errand of mercy, the way I am, I wouldn't want to be branded as an enemy and all that." He laughed. "I'm no more an enemy of England than you're an enemy of France, but we'd both be hard put to it if it came to explaining!"
Captain Vincent nodded, gazing round-eyed at Slade. "Aye," he said, "I was thinking the same. It's likely you'd have no trouble, with your head cocked up on account of your eye, and so looking important and mean, like an English gentleman. It's likely you wouldn't; only there's no telling there's no telling." He brooded for a time. Then: "You said it was Bristol you were making for?" he asked.
"To carry poor Chater's watch and seals to his mother," Slade said.
Captain Vincent nodded. "If I was you, I'd make sure. Better be
352 CAPTAIN CAUTION
safe than sorry, 'specially if you can enjoy yourself doing it. It'll cost some money, but you'll find it'll be worth it, more ways than one that is, unless you got objections to traveling around with a young female."
"It depends some on the female!" Slade tilted back his head to look at Vincent, and his teeth, as he laughed, were tight together, so that his laughter had more the sound of soft and eager breathing than of mirth.
"Well, I tell you," Vincent said, "this female's all right. She's young and she's sensible looking. Nothing flash about her, see; nothing to set people watching her all the time; nothing that'd oblige you to be fighting some young buck every few minutes to keep him from trying to cut her out; but she's sharp as a whip, and buffs better'n any female ever I see! Now, if you should get th
is female and take her around as your wife, she'd do all the talking, and nobody'd suspect you of not being an Englishman. Most Englishmen act tongue-tied when they're with their wives, anyway."
Slade cleared his throat. "I've had the same idea in mind for some time," he said frankly, "but I thought of visiting a house of entertainment where I could make a selection. I'm a little particular about my women."
"I'll tell you how it is," Vincent continued quickly. "There's plenty of females in Plymouth and Portsmouth and every other port nowadays, what with the men of the deet to take care of, and the regular run of trade, and prisoners coming in to be looked after; but I tell you right now, you have to watch out for yourself There's plenty in Portsmouth that'll stay with a prisoner fresh aboard a receiving hulk right out of the cable tier of a frigate, two shillings for a full night's work; but you know what happens if you take up with one like thatl"
Slade laughed, a hoarse and racking laugh.
"Yes," Vincent went on, "but this female, she's nothing like thatl There's admirals that've enjoyed associating themselves with this female, and haven't hardly been able to wait to get back off their stations so they could get hold of her society again. Admiralsl"
The two of them chuckled.
"How's it sound to you?" Vincent asked.
"Not badl" Slade said. "Not bad, provided she doesn't get to thinking I'm made of money. How much would I have to pay her?"
"I'll tell you how it is," Vincent said. "There was a few of us fitted up two houses in Plymouth not the regular run, but high-class houses of entertainment. Some of the females we brought over from France for entertaining purposes, just the same as the Duchess of
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Portsmouth was brought" they chuckled again "and some we found closer home; but they're all of 'em ladies, fit to be presented at Court, or to spend a week visiting in Buckingham Palace. Now, if this female goes stepping off with you, it hurts the profits, as you might say; so you'd better pay me enough to cover that end of it, and then you can fix up with her. Maybe she'd come too high for you. Whenever she puts in considerable time entertaining a gentle- man, she has to have two new dresses, one for day and one for night, and five guineas a day. Too much, ain't it?"
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