Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four)

by Robert E. Howard

  A silence followed, then suddenly she said:

  “Zounds! Are we to stay pent up here forever? I’m growing hungry!”

  “Bide you here,” said I, “and I will go forth and fetch some fruit which grows wild here-”

  “Good enough,” she replied, “but I crave more than fruit. By Zeus! There is bread and salt pork and dried beef in the longboat and I have a mind to sally forth and-”

  Now I, who had tasted no Christian food in more than a week, felt my mouth water at the mention of bread and beef, but I said:

  “Are you insane? Of what good is a hiding place if it is not used? You would surely fall into the hands of those rogues.”

  “No, now is the best time for such an attempt,” said she, rising. “Hinder me not-my mind is made up. You saw that the five were together-so there is no one at the boat. The other two are dead.”

  “Unless the whole gang of them returned to the beach,” said I.

  “Not likely. They are still searching for me, or else have taken up the hunt for the temple. No, I tell you, now is the best time.”

  “Then I go with you, if you are so determined,” I replied, and together we dropped from the ledge in front of the cavern, splashed through the falls and waded out of the pool.

  I peered about, half-expecting an attack, but no man was in sight. All was silent save for the occasional raucous plaint of some jungle bird. I looked to my weapons. One of the dead buccaneer’s pistols was empty, of course, and the priming of the other was wet.

  “The locks of mine are wrapped in silk,” said Helen, noticing my activities. “Here, draw the useless charge and reload them.”

  And she handed me a waterproof horn flask with compartments for powder and ball. So I did as she said, drying the weapons with leaves.

  “I am probably the finest pistol shot in the world,” said the girl modestly, “but the blade is my darling.”

  She drew her rapier and slashed and thrust the empty air.

  “You sailors seldom appreciate the true value of the straight steel,” said she. “Look at you with that clumsy cutlass. I could run you through while you were heaving it up for a slash. So!”

  Her point suddenly leaped out and a lock of my hair floated to the earth.

  “Have a care with that skewer,” said I, annoyed and somewhat uneasy. “Save your tierces and thrusts for your enemies. As for a cutlass, it is a downright weapon for an honest man who knows naught of your fine French tricks.”

  “Roger O’Farrel knows the worth of the rapier,” said she. “’Twould do your heart good to see it sing in his hand, and how that he spits those who oppose him.”

  “Let us be going,” I answered shortly, for her hardness rasped again on me, and it somehow irked me to hear her sing the praises of the pirate O’Farrel.

  So we went silently up through the gorges and ravines, mounting the north cliffs at another place, and so proceeded through the thick trees until we came to the crest of the slope that led down to the beach. Peering from ambush, we saw the longboat lying alone and unguarded.

  No sound broke the utter stillness as we went warily down the incline. The sun hung over the western waters tike a shield of blood, and the very birds in the trees seemed to have fallen silent. The breeze had gone and no leaf rustled on any branch.

  We came to the longboat and, working swiftly, broke open the kegs and made a bundle of bread and beef. My fingers trembled with haste and nervousness, for I felt we were riding the crest of a precipice-I was sure that the pirates would return to their boat before nightfall, and the sun was about to go down.

  Even as this thought came to me, I heard a shout and a shot, and a bullet hummed by my cheek. Mike Donler and Will Harbor were running down the beach toward us, cursing and bellowing horrible threats. They had come upon us from among the lofty rocks further down the shore, and now were on us before we had time to draw a breath.

  Donler rushed in on me, wild eyes aflame, belt buckle, finger rings and cutlass blade all afire in the gleam of the sunset. His broad breast showed hairy through his open shirt, and I levelled my pistol and shot him through the chest, so that he staggered and roared like a wounded buffalo. Yet such was his terrible vitality that he came reeling on in spite of this mortal hurt to slash at me with his cutlass. I parried the blow, splitting his skull to the brows with my own blade, and he fell dead at my feet, his brains running out on the sand.

  Then I turned to the girl, whom I feared to be hard pressed, and looked just in time to see her disarm Harbor with a dextrous wrench of her wrist, and run him through the heart so that her point came out under his shoulder.

  For a fleeting instant he stood erect, mouth gaping stupidly, as if upheld by the blade. Blood gushed from that open mouth and, as she withdrew her sword with a marvelous show of wrist strength, he toppled forward, dead before he touched earth.

  Helen turned to me with a light laugh.

  “At least Mr. Harmer,” quoth she, “my `skewer’ does a cleaner and neater job than does your cleaver. Bones and blades! I had no idea there was so much brain to Mike Donler.”

  “Have done,” said I sombrely, repelled by her words and manner. “This is a butcher’s business and one I like not. Let us begone; if Gower and the other two are not behind these, they will come shortly.”

  “Then take up the pack of food, imbecile,” said she sharply. “Have we come this far and killed two men for nothing?”

  I obeyed without speaking, though truth to tell, I had little appetite left, for my soul was not with such work as I had just done. As the ocean drank the westering sun and the swift southern twilight fell, we made our way back toward the cavern under the falls. When we had topped the slope and lost sight of the sea except such as glimmered between the trees in the distance, we heard a faint shout, and knew that Gower and the remainder of his men had returned.

  “No danger now until morning,” said my companion. “Since we know that the rogues are on the beach, there is no chance of coming upon them unexpectedly in the wood. They will scarcely venture into this unknown wilderness at night.”

  After we had gone a little further, we halted, set us down and supped on the bread and beef, washing it down with draughts from a clear cold stream. And I marveled at how daintily and with what excellent manners this pirate girl ate.

  When she had finished and washed her hands in the stream, she tossed her golden curls and said:

  “By Zeus, this hath been a profitable day’s work for two hunted fugitives! Of the seven buccaneers which came ashore early this morn, but three remain alive! What say you-shall we flee them no more, but come upon them and trust to our battle fortune? Three against two are not such great odds.”

  “What do you say?” I asked her bluntly.

  “I say nay,” she replied frankly. “Were it any man but John Gower I might say differently. But this Gower is more than a man-he is as crafty and ferocious as any wild beast, and there is that about him which turns my blood to ice. He is one of the two men I have ever feared.”

  “Who was the other?”

  “Roger O’Farrel.”

  Now she had a way of pronouncing that rogue’s name as if he were a saint or a king, and for some reason this rasped on my nerves greatly. So I said nothing.

  “Were Roger O’Farrel here,” she prattled on, “we should have naught to fear, for no man on all the Seven Seas is his equal and even John Gower would shun the issue with him. He is the greatest navigator that ever lived and the finest swordsman. He has the manners of a cavalier, which in truth he is.”

  “Who is this Roger O’Farrel?” I asked brutally. “Your lover?”

  At that, quick as a flash, she struck me across the face with her open hand so that I saw stars. We were on our feet, and I saw her face crimson in the light of the moon which had come up over the black trees.

  “Damn you!” she cried. “O’Farrel would cut your heart out for that, were he here! From your own lips I had it that no man could call me his!”

&
nbsp; “So they say, indeed,” said I bitterly, for my cheek was stinging, and my mind was in such a chaotic state as is difficult to describe.

  “They say, eh? And what think you?” there was danger in her tone.

  “I think,” said I recklessly, “that no woman can be a plunderer and a murderess, and also virtuous.”

  It was a cruel and needless thing to say. I saw her face go white, I heard the quick intake of her breath and the next instant her rapier point was against my breast, just under the heart.

  “I have killed men for less,” I heard her say in a ghostly, far away whisper.

  I looked down at the thin silver line of death that lay between us and my blood froze, but I answered:

  “Killing me would scarcely change my opinion.”

  An instant she stared at me, then to my utter bewilderment, she dropped her blade, flung herself down on the earth and burst into a torrent of sobs. Much ashamed of myself, I stood over her, uncertain, wishing to comfort her, yet afraid the little spitfire would stab me if I touched her. Presently I was aware of words mingling with her tears.

  “After all I have done to keep clean,” she sobbed. “This is too much! I know I am a monster in the sight of men; there is blood on my hands. I’ve looted and cursed and killed and diced and drunk, till my very heart is calloused. My only consolation, the one thing to keep me from feeling utterly damned, is the fact that I have remained as virtuous as any girl. And now men believe me otherwise. I wish I. . .I. . . were dead!”

  So did I for the instant, until I was swept by an unutterable shame. Certainly the words I had used to her were not the act of a man. And now I was stunned at the removal of her mask of hard recklessness and the revelation of a surprisingly sensitive soul. Her voice had the throb of sincerity, and, truth to tell, I had never really doubted her.

  Now I dropped to my knees beside the weeping girl and, raising her, made to wipe her eyes.

  “Keep your hands off me!” she ordered promptly, jerking away. “I will have naught to do with you, who believe me a bad woman.”

  “I don’t believe it,” I answered. “I most humbly crave pardon. It was a foul and unmanly thing for me to say. I have never doubted your honesty, and I said that which I did only because you had angered me.”

  She seemed somewhat appeased.

  “As for Roger O’Farrel,” said she, “he is twice as old as either of us. He took me off a sinking ship when I was a baby and raised me like his own daughter. And if I took to the life of a rover, it is not his fault, who would have established me like a fine lady ashore had I wished. But the love of adventure is in my blood and though Fate made a woman of me, I have lived a man’s life.

  “If I am hard and cold and heartless, what else might you expect of a maid who grew up among daily scenes of blood and violence, whose earliest remembrances are of sinking ships, crashing cannon and the shrieks of the dying? I know the rotten worth of my companions-sots, murderers, thieves, gallows birds-all save Captain Roger O’Farrel.

  “Men say he is cruel and it may be so. But to me he has always been kind and gentle. And moreover he is a fine upstanding man, of high aristocratic blood with the courage of a lion!”

  I said nothing against the buccaneer, whom I knew to be the disinherited black sheep of a powerful Irish family, but I experienced a strange sensation of pleasure to learn from her lips just what their relationship was to each other.

  A scene long forgotten suddenly flashed in my mind: a boatload of people sighted off the Tortugas and taken aboard-the words of one of the women, “And it’s Helen Tavrel we have to thank, God bless her! For she made bloody Hilton put all we a-boat with food and water, when the fiend would ha’ burned us all with our ship. Woman pirate she may be, but a kind heart she hath for all that=‘

  After all, the girl was a credit to her sex, considering her raising and surroundings, thought I, and felt strangely cheerful.

  “You’ll try to forget my words,” said I. “Now let us be getting toward our hiding place, for it is like we will have need of it tomorrow.”

  I helped her to her feet and gave her rapier into her hand. She followed me then without a word and no conversation passed between us until we reached the pool beside the cliff. Here we halted for a moment.

  Truth, it was a weird and fantastic sight. The cliffs rose stark and black on either side, and between them whispered and rustled the thick shadows of the fronds. The stream sliding over the cliff before us glimmered like molten silver in the moonlight, and the pool into which it slipped shimmered with long bright ripples. The moon rode over all like a broad buckler of white gold.

  “Sleep in the cavern,” I commanded. “I will make me a bed among these bushes which grow close by.”

  “Will you be safe thus?” she asked.

  “Aye; no man is like to come before morning, and there are no dangerous beasts on the island, save reptiles which lurk among the swamps on the other side of it.”

  Without a word, she waded into the pool and vanished in the silver mist of the fall. I parted the bushes near at hand and composed myself for slumber. The last thing I remembered, as I fell asleep, was an unruly mass of golden curls, below which danced a pair of brooding grey eyes.

  The Second Day

  Someone was shaking me out of my sound slumber. I stirred, then awoke suddenly and sat up, groping for blade or pistol.

  “My word, sir, you sleep deep. John Gower might have stolen upon you and cut out your heart and you not aware of it.”

  It was hardly dawn and Helen Tavrel was standing over me.

  “I had thought to wake sooner,” said I, yawning, “but I was weary from yesterday’s work. You must have a body and nature of steel springs.”

  She looked as fresh as if she had but stepped from a lady’s boudoir. Truth, there are few women who could endure such exertions, sleep all night on the bare sand of a cavern floor and still look elegant and winsome.

  “Let us to breakfast,” said she. “Methinks the fare is a trifle scanty, but there is pure water to go with it, and I believe you mentioned fruit?”

  Later, as we ate, she said in a brooding manner:

  “it stirs my blood most unpleasantly at the thought of John Gower gaining possession of the Mogar treasure. Although I have sailed with Roger O’Farrel, Hilton, Hansen, and le Ban between times, Gower is the first captain to offer me insult.”

  “He is not like to find it,” said I, “for the simple reason that there is no such thing on this island.”

  “Have you explored all of it?”

  “All except the eastern swamps which are impenetrable.”

  Her eyes lighted.

  “Faith, man, were the shrine easy to find, it had been looted long before now. I wager you that it lies somewhere amid that swamp! Now listen to my plan.

  “It is yet awhile before sunup and as it is most likely that Gower and his bullies drank rum most of the night, they are not like to be up before broad daylight. I know their ways, and they do not alter them, even for treasure!

  “So let us go swiftly to this swamp and make a close search.”

  “I repeat,” said I, “it is tempting Providence. Why have a hiding place if we do not use it? We have been very fortunate so far in evading Gower, but if we keep running hither and yon through the woods we must eventually come on him.”

  “If we cower in our cave like rats, he will eventually discover us. Doubtless we can explore the swamp and return before he fares forth, or if not — he has nothing of wood craft but blunders along like a buffalo. We can hear them a league off and elude them. So there is no danger in hiding awhile in the woods if need be, with always a safe retreat to run to as soon as they have passed. Were Roger O’Farrel here-”she hesitated.

  “If you must drag O’Farrel into it,” said I with a sigh, “I must agree to any wild scheme you put forward. Let us be started.”

  “Good!” she cried, clapping her hands like a child. “I know we will find treasure! I can see those diamonds and rub
ies and emeralds and sapphires gleaming even now!”

  The first grey of dawn was lightening and the east was growing brighter and more rosy as we went along the cliffs and finally went up a wide ravine to enter the thicker growth of trees that ran eastward. We were taking the opposite direction from that taken the day before. The pirates had landed on the western side of the island and the swamp lay on the eastern.

  We walked along in silence awhile, and then I asked abruptly:

  “What sort of looking man is O’Farrel?”

  “A fine figure with the carriage of a king,” she looked me over with a critical eye. “Taller than you, but not so heavily built. Broader of shoulder, but not so deep of chest. A cold, strong handsome face, smooth shaven. Hair as black as yours in spite of his age, and fine grey eyes, like the steel of swords. You have grey eyes, too, but your skin is dark and his is very white.

  “Still,” she continued, “were you shaved and clad properly, you would not cut a bad figure, even beside Captain O’Farrel-how old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “I had not thought you that old. I am twenty.”

  “You look younger,” I answered.

  “I am old enough in experience,” quoth she. “And now, sir, we had best go more silently, lest by any chance there be rogues among these woods.”

  So we stole cautiously through the trees, stepping over creepers and making our way through undergrowth which rose thicker as we progressed eastward. Once a large, mottled snake wriggled across our path and the girl started and shrank back nervously. Brave as a tigress when opposed to men, she had the true feminine antipathy toward reptiles.

  At last we came to the edge of the swamp without having seen any human foe and I halted.

  “Here begins the serpent-haunted expanse of bogs and hummocks which finally slopes down into the sea to the east. You see those tangled walls of moss-hung branches and vine-covered trunks which oppose us. Are you still for invading that foul domain?”

  The only reply she made was to push past me impatiently.

  Of the first few rods of that journey, I like not to remember. I hacked a way through hanging vines and thickly-grown bamboos with my cutlass, and the farther we went, the higher about our feet rose the stinking, clinging mud. Then the bamboos vanished, the trees thinned out, and we saw only rushes towering higher than our heads, with occasional bare spaces wherein green stagnant pools lay in the black, bubbling mud. We staggered through, sinking sometimes to our waists in the water and slime. The girl cursed fervently at the ruin it was making of her finery, while I saved my breath for the labor of getting through. Twice we tumbled into stagnant pools that seemed to have no bottom, and each time were hard put to get back on solid earth- solid earth, said I? Nay, the treacherous shaky, sucking stuff that passed for earth in that foul abomination.