Crab Reef/Chapter 8

and the Turtle and the blacks ate hearty breakfasts, Penny and Henry in particular devouring broiled snapper and roasted yams and plantains, and topping off with luscious mangoes and swigging rum and water with the air of men who had achieved a laudable task and deserved well of the world. Only Griffon and the girl were indifferent to the good food. Between the powerful emotions of joy and disgust, their appetites were entirely upset.

They sat side by side, hand in hand, now gazing each into the other's eyes, now whispering one into the other's ear words of bewildered and incredulous delight, now starting and trembling at a thought of the nature of Caleb Stave's death. They felt nothing of pity for that old beast—the Angel of Mercy himself would have felt no pity for that vile crusher of human hopes and breaker of human lives; but the memory of the screams they had heard, the one in the open boat and the other in the cave, shook them with loathsome horror.

Old Sailor Penny was in high spirits. The patience of long and perilous years was rewarded, the work of years was crowned, his dream through years of heartache and fear and humiliation and hardship was on the verge of realization. The score had been paid. Hell had been fed by way of the black reef. Hate was satisfied. The days of his exile were numbered and wealth was in his hand, and he saw the green Berkshire downs and the weathered thatches of Pennyfold again with eyes of youth.

Within a week or two, or a month at the most, a good ship would appear in the offing flying a signal. Fate, chance, luck—call it what you will—had played his game at the last with both hands. Not only was he himself avenged, but the son of the high and unfortunate friend of his youth was avenged. Not only was wealth recovered, but the daughter of his own son was discovered and reclaimed from the unknown. Not only had he retaken much of the worldly treasure of which Caleb Stave had robbed him years ago, but with it he had taken the far greater treasure of jewels which Stave had stolen from the governor. He was in high spirits.

Breakfast was finished and cleared away. The Turtle went aloft to gather fruit and vegetables and to scout around. Henry rolled over on his back and fell asleep; and, after regarding him admiringly for a few minutes, two others of the fugitives followed his example. Old Penny and the lovers and Big Tom moved to the front of the cave and made themselves comfortable on couches of old sails in the line of a breeze from the sea. The rusty grating had been removed from the long crack; and waves and sky flashed with celestial tints beyond the frame of dark rock. From their low seats nothing was to be seen of the tragic reef.

The old man's eyes were glistening as if he had never lost an hour's sleep in his life. His smile was as bright as his eyes. His leathery visage fairly shone with benevolence and content. He puffed on a thin roll of tobacco which he had lit before leaving the cooking fire, expelling the azure smoke through his nostrils. He took his granddaughter's disengaged hand in one of his, laid it on a knee of his tarry breeches and patted it affectionately.

"Ye'll wed her, lad?" he queried, stooping forward and turning the twinkling glance of his startlingly blue eyes upon Peter Griffon.

"I—I believe—with reason, I trust—she will do me the honor of—becoming my wife," replied Griffon with embarrassed dignity.

Sailor Penny chuckled. "I have enough for us all, lad," he said. "I'll set ye up agin in the high place they dragged yer father down from in the days o' the old king. Pennyfold be all I want for meself—an' maybe a chair at the dinner table of High Hall."

"Is your wealth so great, my friend?" asked Griffon. "For I doubt if the usurpers will give up those broad lands without a struggle," he added.

"It is great enough, and there be a new king now on the throne. Aye, lad, it was considerable afore the last venture; and now with me own back from Caleb Stave or sufficient to cover interest on it for all these years, anyhow—an' the grand treasure that chanced to fall along with, an' atop o' that, we be rich men, Master Peter Griffon."

"Your wealth is no affair of mine, except so far as your kind and generous heart may prompt you to befriend me with it. You have already proved a friend in need, and you were my father's friend; and I would no more question the sources of your riches than I would weigh your gold and silver and demand a portion of it for your son's daughter. I know that you come justly by the strong box of old Caleb Stave, to which same I pointed you the way, my friend. There was justice; and if you had his shop an' his ships an' all his household gear to boot, 'twould be no more than your honest due. But what of the treasure of gold and jewels from Fort Royal Hill—of the governor's fortune?"

"That, too, goes into our common purse, lad. The giant's share o' that will be for yerself an' yer lady—my Sally there—have no fear! Danes's Ride an' High Hall an' Griffonstun 'll find the old man at Pennyfold a generous gran'daddy, ye kin lay to that! An' ye'll never hear me deny that it was yerself p'inted me the way to it along with the strong box o' Caleb Stave."

"But what right have we to the governor's gold and jewels?"

"What right? What right, d'ye say? God's mercy—d'ye ax me what right? The right o' the robbed ag'in' the robber! The right o' the weak ag'in' the strong! The only right by which an honest man can have an' hold—aye, or keep the blessed spark o' life behind his ribs—in this world o' cheats an' thieves an' tyrants an' slanderers an' murderers!"

"Nay—say rather the right by which usurpers now sit in the halls of my fathers! Had the jewels belonged to Stave, well and good; but his theft of them did not make them his. To rob him—yea, to bring him to his death—was justice. My temper and my conscience are with you to the hilt in that affair; but to strip of his fortune a man with whom you have no quarrel is an act which I hesitate to call by its true name to my dead father's friend."

Sailor Penny stared at the young man incredulously for a little while, then with shocked amazement, at last with choleric and sneering disgust. The hot blue fire of his eyes would have daunted a less valiant fellow than Peter Griffon. He uttered a string of blistering sea oaths, then paused to note the effect.

Griffon continued to eye him calmly; the girl sat with bowed head; Big Tom reclined on an elbow with his gaze on Griffon's face. The old man drew a breath and burst forth again, his lips twisting, his head and shoulders trembling.

"What do I hear?" he cried. "Afeared o' a chance dimund! Afeared o' a rum-swillin' governor! 'Postles' bones! An' ye a soldier an' a gentleman! Strike me dead! Where be yer Griffon speerit? Did Caleb Stave lash it out o' ye through yer skin? Caleb Stave, the son o' the Wantage cobbler. Blood an' wounds!"

"Rave on, old man," replied Griffon, steadily but with a significant undertone of hardness in his voice. "I owe you my life, and more than my life. As to my spirit, it is here, unbroken, unhurt—the spirit of my fathers, Master Penny."

"D'ye say so? An' what of it? I sp'iled me enemy, an' yer enemy—the traitor an' disp'iler who'd ha' sent ye to the gallows for his own crime but for me'n Henry findin' 'e in the jungle—an' what I take I keep! D'ye cross me in me own cave, Peter Griffon—me who's been robbed an' betrayed an' hunted? Aye, an' what o' yerself—hidin' like a fox in his earth, with wounds in yer flesh an' scars on yer back! Yet ye cross me with talk o' right—rights o' property—all for a few colored stones! Where be yer own rights? Where was they when ye was soldierin' for yer king in Flanders an' they murdered yer father? What did kings an' governors an' rights o' property do for 'e then? An' d'ye reckon the governor came honest an' clean-handed by them dimunds an' pearls? Bah! If ye do ye're a fool!"

"I know nothing of the governor nor of how he came by the jewels of which you and Caleb Stave have robbed him. If the jewels are not his, that is his affair; but they are not yours or mine; and that is my affair. The governor may be a thief, but I am not."

"Here be pride! Sacred finger bones! The pride o' a dentured slave!"

"The self-respect of a gentleman."

"The pride o' a full belly! Let it pass! What would ye have me do with the governor's blunt?"

"Return it to the governor."

"I'll see it in hell first, an' yerself along with it, Griffon or no Griffon ! Hold to that course an' I'll sail away with the treasure an' me gran'daughter an' leave ye here to preach yer damn sermons to the crabs, so help me!"

"Old man, Penny or no Penny, there are two endings to that tale! I have admitted my obligations to you; but now I swear to you, by the blood of my father, that if you carry off those jewels it will be across my dead body. Make what you can of that! You'll find me hard to kill."

"You'll never take me away without him, not if you were fifty times my gran'father!" cried the girl.

"Me, too," said Big Tom. "Peter am my friend. If he fight, dis boy fight, too, master."

Sailor Penny screamed oaths at that. He waved his clenched hands above his head. He threatened the girl with a spanking, Big Tom with a hundred lashes, Griffon with everlasting damnation for a fool. Suddenly, speechless for want of breath, he burst into tears of rage and disappointment. They looked at him in silence, embarrassed by their pity and shame for him. He was certainly not a heroic figure, that mahogany-faced mariner in a tantrum of futile and lachrymose hysterics.