Crab Reef/Chapter 5

day passed, and another night, before the reappearance of Sailor Penny and his man Henry. The manner of their return was surprising to Peter and Big Tom.

The inmates of the cave had been awake only a few minutes, and the fire of dry vines had just begun to flame and crackle beneath the pot when a shrill whistle from somewhere underfoot caused the Turtle to lay aside his culinary tasks and hasten toward the front of the cave. The others followed him. When halfway to the seaward window—from which the grating had not yet been removed for the day—he stepped aside to a shadowy recess in the left-hand wall. He reappeared in a second with the end of a stout rope, to which a large iron hook was attached.

He stooped to the center of the floor of smooth rock, brushed a layer of stone dust away and lifted an iron ring from a little hole in the rock. Into this ring he slipped the hook. Then, after waving the curious spectators back from the center of the floor, he retired again into the dusky recess; and, next moment, they heard the creaking of a windlass, and then beheld a great square of the floor, a hatch of rock, rise slowly to a sound of grinding hinges.

The first thing to appear from those black depths—from which arose the slosh and sob of uneasy waters over weedy rocks—was the woolly pate of Henry. The rest of him followed swiftly. He bore on his back a light bundle wrapped in waterproofed canvas and securely tied. Sailor Penny rose close on his heels, empty handed, smiling genially around at the astonished company.

After breakfast Penny took Griffon forward to the crack in the living rock overlooking the lagoon and the reef and the bright sea beyond. He smoked tobacco, not in a pipe, but in a long roll of leaf after the Spanish style, and seemed to be in a high humor.

"We dealt yer enemy a rude shog, me lad," he said. "Even now Crabhole Alley rings from end to end with his lamentations, ye may lay to that! We robbed him of what's dearer to him nor his own immortal soul, did me an' Henry." At that he fell to chuckling; but suddenly his mood changed, his eyes darkened and his mouth hardened. "But the measure is not yet heaped to overflowin', the debt is not yet paid," he added grimly.

"What mischief have you done him?" asked Griffon.

"His gold and silver," returned the other. "For a piece of gold he would bear false witness against his brother; for a piece of silver he would cheat a friend; for a penny he would trick a blind beggar. We robbed him of his buried strong box and, along with it, of the treasure he stole from the governor, did me an' Henry. We found the blunt in the very spot you said, me lad."

Griffon stared at him, incredulous.

"And we digged it up," he continued. "Aye, an' we fetched it clean away—Caleb Stave's blood sweated money and the governor's bloody treasure!

"Griffon continued to stare, speechless, amazed. Sailor Penny waved a hand toward the sunshine and sea glimmer in front and below.

"And it lays there," he continued; "out there on that sweet bit o' reef, with a patch o' sailcloth an' a few coral rocks to hold it down—all them broad pieces an' flashin' rich gems!"

"Out there?" queried Griffon in a dazed whisper. "On the reef?"

"Aye, lad, as sure as the whip o' the tyrant has run red with yer blood—as sure as you an' me be exiles from our sweet English places, hidin' in our earths like hunted foxes—aye, as sure—" He ceased speaking, but continued to gaze out at the shine and glimmer with unwinking eyes.

"Is it true that you have robbed Stave?" asked the young man.

Penny turned to him and replied, smiling: "Have patience for a little while an' ye shall know. Ye shall see. The days of Caleb Stave are numbered. By his own black greed shall he be destroyed as surely as hell awaits him—as surely as he has proved faithless to every man who trusted him and blind and deaf to every one who ever asked mercy or succor of him."

"Who are you?" asked Griffon, strangely moved.

"A Berkshire man like yerself—aye, an' like Caleb Stave. Have ye forgot Pennyfold, the little farm on the downs? Griffon land, aye, but farmed by Pennies close onto two hundred years. Honest yeomen all—until the hunger for worldly place gripped my heart! I was an only child. I had schoolin' above my own father an' idleness above my station. I coursed hares on the downs with the squire's son. I was half a gentleman—God pity me! an' the ambition gripped me to be all of one. And the squire's son was my friend. He gave me money; an' so I went away from Berkshire an' clean away from old England to find a fortune.

"The master o' the first ship I sailed in was a thief an' a cheat—aye, an' worse—a spirit! He tricked fools into his power an' sold them to the plantations. He spirited away little English children an' sold them into slavery. But ye know the accursed breed of devil's whelps! His name was Hudderkin. He sold me in Virginia. I escaped within the year an' took to seafarin'. For twelve years I sailed those seas, an' south as far as Para, maybe, in divers companies, or hid ashore in stinkin' jungles; an' in that time I saw Hudderkin walk the plank, screamin'—an' that's enough said o' that stage o' my career.

I set up shopkeepin' in Port Royal. I waxed prosperous; I found me a wife, an' my fortune grew. And one day came a Berkshire man to my door, ragged an' robbed an' bleedin', beggin' sup an' crust an' shelter in the name of God's mercy—an' it was Caleb Stave, the son of Jerry Stave, the cobbler o' Wantage. Poor stuff, aye!—but a Berkshire man. Mean enough in the noses of honest yeomen Pennies but very dirt to the high Griffons. I mind him in the little hutch before his father's shop, an' me an' the squire's son ridin' by.

"But I took him in like a brother. I clothed an' fed him. Later I gave him work an' wage. I trusted him. I made him a partner in my business. I withheld nothing from him of my past or present. And we prospered together for years. And then he was revealed to me all of a sudden, in a flash—the devil he was, the false friend, the trickster and liar!"

In that flash I saw myself childless and poor—for he had estranged my children from me and robbed me of my worldly gear. I made to tear out his throat with my hands, but they dragged me away. Then he denounced me for a pirate an' sent for the constables an' the soldiers. But I escaped: an' for years I was back at the old life—the narrow seas an' stinkin' cricks an' jungles high an' low.

"The rich trader, Caleb Stave, moved from Port Royal. I know naught o' what befell my deluded children. But one day I found Caleb Stave on this island, in Crabhole Alley. That was years and years ago—but it won't be much longer, lad. Then we'll return to our sweet green places in Berkshire, Master Penny to Pennyfold and Squire Griffon to Danes's Ride an' High Hall an' Griffonstun an' Bustard Chase—for that first an' best friend o' mine was yer own dear father!"

"Bustard Chase," echoed Griffon, his voice shaken with yearning. "Danes's Ride, Griffonstnn [sic], High Hall. Man, you name the dead! There is no acre of Griffon land now under all the titles of those dear names. They all passed from us in the twinkling of an eye—nay, say rather in the flash of an ax edge! My poor father, that friend of your youth, made enemies high at court. They were land hungry and he was blood proud. He is a proud man, or else a very saint, who bows only to God Almighty. My father bowed only to God, and yet he was no saint. They goaded him to rashness, to defiance, to the utterance of wild and violent words at home and at court—and at last to a thing to which they gave the name of high treason. I was soldiering in Flanders when my father's head fell in the tower. I went home and faced his murderers—and you see me now!"

"I heard it," replied Sailor Penny. "I kept it clear in me mind an' hot in me heart. One o' them high murderers v'yaged abroad—an' him I sped with me own hand on a slippery deck. An' another died in his bed, I heard. An' now there sits a new king on England's throne. Have patience, lad. Scars heal, an' the sand runs out an' the glass is to turn once more, an' the wheel sags round."