Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/51

Rh Captain Baldry cast his lot with the Mere Honour, he listened, then gave unexpected check.

"Faith, his berth upon the Cygnet liked him well enough, and though he thanked the Admiral, what reason for changing it? In fine, he should not budge, unless, indeed, Sir Mortimer Ferne—" He turned hinaself squarely so as to face the Captain of the Cygnet.

The latter, in the instant that passed before he made any answer to Baldry's challenging look, saw once again that vision of the other morning—the flare of dawn, and high against it one desperate figure, a man just balancing if to keep his life or no, seeing that for the thing he loved there was no rescue. Say that the doomed ship had been the Cygnet—would Mortimer Ferne have so cheapened grief, have grown so bitter, be so ready to eat his heart out with envy and despite? Perhaps not; and yet, who knew? The Cygnet was there, visible through the port windows, lifting against serenest skies her proud bulk, her castellated poop and forecastle, her tall masts and streaming pennants. The Star was down below, a hundred leagues from any lover, and the sea was deep upon her, and her guns were silent and her decks untrodden He was wearied of Baldry's company, impatient of his mad temper and peasant breeding, very sure that he chose, open-eyed, to torment himself from Teneriffe to America with the sight of a prospering foe merely that that foe might feel a nettle in his unwilling grasp. Yet, so challenged, when had passed that moment, he met Baldry's gloomy eyes, and again assured the adventurer that the presence of so brave a man and redoubted fighter could but do honor to the Cygnet.

His words were all that courtesy could desire: if tone and manner were of the coldest, yet Baldry, not being sensitive, and having gained his point, could afford to let that pass. He turned to the Admiral with a short laugh.

"You see, sir, we are yoke-brothers— Sir Mortimer Ferne and I,—though whether God or the devil hath joined us! Well, the two of us may send some Spanish souls to hell!"

With his yoke-brother, Arden, and Sedley he returned to the Cygnet, and that evening at supper, having drunken, much sack, began to loudly vaunt the deeds of the drowned Star, magnifying her into a being sentient and heroical, and darkly wishing that the luck of the expedition be not gone with her to the bottom of the sea.

"Luck!" exclaimed Ferne at last, haughtily. "I hate the word. Your luck—my luck—the luck of this our enterprise! It is a craven word, overmuch upon the lips of Christian gentlemen."

"I was not born a gentleman," said Baldry, playing with his knife. "You know that, Sir Mortimer Ferne."

"I'll swear you've taken out no patent since," muttered Arden, whereat his neighbor laughed aloud, and Baldry, pushing back his stool, glared at each in turn.

"I know that a man's will, and not a college of heralds, makes him what he is," said Ferne. "I have known churls in honorable houses and true knights in the common camp. And I submit not my destinies to that gamester Luck: as I deserve and as God wills, so run my race!"

"Oh, every man of us knows our Captain's deserving!" quoth Baldry. "Well, gentlemen, on that occasion of which I was speaking, the devil's own luck being with me, I sunk both the carrack and the galley, and headed the Star for the city of Panama—"

On went the wondrous tale, with no further interruption from Sir Mortimer, who sat at the head of the table, playing the part of host to Captain Robert Baldry, listening with cold patience to the adventurer's rhodomontade. When spurred by wine there was wont to awaken in Baldry a certain mordant humor, a rough wit, making straight for the mark and clanging harshly against an adversary's shield, a lurid fancy dully illuminating the subject he had in hand. The wild story that he was telling caught the attention of the more thoughtless sort at table; they leaned forward, encouraging him from flight to flight, laughing at each sally of boatswain's wit, ejaculating admiration when the Star and her Captain fairly left the realm of the natural. One splendid lie followed another, until Baldry was caught by his own words, and saw himself thus, and thus,