Commodore Junk Part 10

"Bart!"

"Oh, it won't hurt much. Not worse than being drownded, and much quicker."

"Oh, Bart, Bart!"

"Don't cry, my pretty one, only don't forget us. You won't forget Abel, of course; but--I never felt as if I could talk to you like this before--don't forget as Bart Wrigley was werry fond on you, and that, if he'd been a fine hansum chap, 'stead of such a rough un, with his figure-head all set o' one side, he'd ha' stuck up and said as no one else shouldn't have you."

"Oh, Bart, Bart!" sobbed Mary, piteously.

"Ay, la.s.s, that he would; but he often says to himself, 'It wouldn't be kind to a girl like that to hang on to her.' So, good-bye, my pretty lady, and I'll tell Abel as he's the blind, thick-headed fool if he says it was you as got us into this hole."

Bart had to wind up his unwontedly long speech very quickly, for a couple of turnkeys had entered the stone-walled room, to conduct the big fellow back to his cell, and show Mary to the outside of the prison.

"Good bye, dear Bart, dear old friend!"

"Good bye, my pretty lady!" cried the big fellow? "You called me 'dear Bart' again."

"Yes, dear Bart, dear brother!" cried Mary, pa.s.sionately, and, raising his big hand to her lips, she kissed it.

"Bah!" growled Bart to himself, "let 'em hang me. What do I care arter that? 'Dear Bart--dear Bart!' I wouldn't care a bit if I only knowed what she'd do when we're gone."

Then the time glided on, and Mary heard from one and another the popular belief that the authorities, rejoicing in having at last caught two notorious smugglers and wreckers red-handed in a serious offence, were determined to make an example by punishing them with the utmost rigour of the law.

The poor girl in her loneliness had racked her brains for means of helping her brother. She had sold everything of value they possessed to pay for legal a.s.sistance, and she had, with fertile imagination, plotted means for helping Abel to escape; but even if her plans had been possible, they had been crossed by her brother's obstinate disbelief in her truth. His last message was one which sent her to the cottage flushed and angry, for it was a cruel repet.i.tion of his old accusation, joined with a declaration that he disbelieved in her in other ways, and that this had been done in collusion with Captain Armstrong to get him and Bart out of her way.

"He'll be sorry some day," she said on the morning before the trial, as she sat low of spirit and alone in the little cottage.

"Poor Abel! he's very bitter and cruel; poor--Yes, do you want me?"

"Genlum give me this to give you," said a boy.

Mary excitedly caught at the letter the boy handed to her, and opening it with trembling hands, managed with no little difficulty to spell out its contents.

They were very short and laboriously written in a large schoolboy-like hand for her special benefit by one who knew her deficiencies of education.

"It is not too late yet. Abel will be tried to-morrow and condemned unless a piece of sea-weed is received to-night."

"And I used to love him and believe in him!" she cried at last pa.s.sionately, as her hot indignation at last mastered her, and she tore the letter in pieces with her teeth, spat the fragments upon the ground, and stamped upon them with every mark of contempt and disgust.

Then a change came over her, and she sank sobbing upon a stool, to burst forth into a piteous wail.

"Oh, Abel!--brother!--it is all my doing. I have sent you to your death!"

CHAPTER TEN.

A DARING TRICK.

The laws were tremendously stringent in those days when it was considered much easier to bring an offender's bad career to an end than to keep him at the nation's expense, and when the stealing of a sheep was considered a crime to be punished with death, an attack upon the sacred person of one of the king's officers by a couple of notorious law-breakers was not likely to be looked upon leniently by a judge well-known for stern sentences.

But a jury of Devon men was sitting upon the offence of Abel Dell and Bart Wrigley, and feeling disposed to deal easily with a couple of young fellows whose previous bad character was all in connection with smuggling, a crime with the said jury of a very light dye, certainly not black. Abel and Bart escaped the rope, and were sentenced to transportation to one of His Majesty's colonies in the West Indies, there to do convict work in connection with plantations, or the making of roads, as their taskmasters might think fit.

Time glided by, and Mary Dell found that her life at home had become insupportable.

She was not long in finding that, now that she was left alone and unprotected, she was not to be free from persecution. Her contemptuous rejection of Captain Armstrong's advances seemed to have the effect of increasing his persecution; and one evening at the end of a couple of months Mary Dell sat on one of the rocks outside the cottage door, gazing out to sea, and watching the ships sail westward, as she wondered whether those on board would ever see the brother who seemed to be all that was left to her in this world.

That particular night the thought which had been hatching in her brain ever since Abel had been sent away flew forth fully fledged and ready, and she rose from where she had been sitting in the evening sunshine, and walked into the cottage.

Mary Dell's proceedings would have excited a smile from an observer, but the cottage stood alone. She had heard that Captain Armstrong was from home and not expected back for a week, and there was no fear of prying eyes as the st.u.r.dy, well-built girl took down a looking-gla.s.s from where it hung to a nail, and, placing it upon the table, propped it with an old jar, and then seating herself before the gla.s.s, she folded her arms, rested them upon the table, and sat for quite an hour gazing at herself in the mirror.

Womanly vanity? Not a sc.r.a.p of it, but firm, intense purpose: deep thought; calm, calculating observation before taking a step that was to influence her life.

She rose after a time and walked into her brother Abel's bed-room, where she stayed for some minutes, and then with a quick, resolute step she re-entered the cottage kitchen, thrust the few embers together that burned upon the hearth, took a pair of scissors from a box, and again seated herself before the gla.s.s.

The sun was setting, and filled the slate-floored kitchen with light which flashed back from the blurred looking-gla.s.s, and cast a curious glare in the girl's stern countenance, with its heavy dark brows, sun-browned ruddy cheeks, and gleaming eyes.

_Snip_!

The sharp scissors had pa.s.sed through one lock of the ma.s.sive black tresses which she had shaken over her shoulders, and which then rippled to the cottage floor.

_Snip_!

Another cut, and two locks had fallen. Then rapidly _snip, snip, snip_--a curious thick, sharp _snip_--and the great waves of glorious hair kept falling as the bare, sun-burned, ruddy arm played here and there, and the steel blades glittered and opened and closed, as if arm, hand, and scissors formed the neck, head, and angry bill of some fierce bird attacking that well-shaped head, and at every snap took off a thick tress of hair.

It was not a long task, and when the hair had all fallen, to lie around, one glorious ring of glossy black tresses, there were only a few snips to give here and there to finish off notches and too long, untidy spots, and then the girl rose, and with a cold, hard look upon her frowning face she stooped, and stooped, and stooped, and at each rising cast a great tress of hair to where the flames leaped, and seized it, torching the locks, which writhed, and curled, and flared, and crackled as if alive, while, as if to aid the idea that she was destroying something living, a peculiarly pungent odour arose, as of burning flesh, and filled the room.

An hour later, just as the red moon rose slowly above the surface of the sea, a st.u.r.dy-looking young man, with a stout stick in one hand--the very stick which had helped to belabour Captain Armstrong--and a bundle tied up in a handkerchief beneath his arm, stepped out of the cottage, changed the key from inside to outside, closed the old door, locked it, dragged out the key, and with a sudden jerk sent it flying far out into deep water beyond the rocks, where it fell with a dull _plash_! followed by a peculiar hissing sound, as the waves at high water rushed back over the fine shingle at the thrower's feet.

There was a sharp look round then; but no one was in sight; nothing to be heard but the hissing waters, and the splashing, gasping, and smacking sound, as the tide swayed in and out among the ma.s.ses of stone.

Then the figure turned once more to the cottage, gazed at it fixedly for a few moments, took a step or two away; but sprang back directly with an exceeding bitter cry, and kissed the rough, unpainted woodwork again and again with rapid action, and then dashed off to the foot of the cliff, and climbed rapidly to the sheep-track--the faintly-seen path that led towards Slapton Lea and the old hall, where the captain still stayed with his young wife, and then joined the west road which led to Plymouth town.

The risky part of the track was pa.s.sed, and the open and down-like pastures beyond the cliffs were reached; and here, with the moon beginning to throw the shadow of the traveller far forward and in weird-looking length, the original of that shadow strode on manfully for another quarter of a mile, when all at once there was a stoppage, for another figure was seen coming from the direction of Torcross, and the moon shining full upon the face showed plainly who it was.

There was no question of ident.i.ty, for that evening, after more than his customary modic.u.m of wine, Captain James Armstrong--whose journey had been postponed--had snubbed his young wife cruelly, quarrelled with his cousin Humphrey, who had been there to dine, and then left the house, determined to go down to Mary Dell's solitary cottage.

"I'm a fool," he said; "I haven't been firm enough with the handsome cat. She scratched. Well, cats have claws, and when I have taught her how to purr nicely she'll keep them always sheathed. I'll bring her to her senses to-night, once and for all.

"Who the devil's this?" muttered the captain. "Humph! sailor on the tramp to Plymouth. Well, he won't know me. I won't turn back."

He strode on a dozen yards and then stopped short, as the figure before him had stopped a few moments before; and then a change came over the aspect of the captain. His knees shook, his face turned wet, and his throat grew dry.

It was horrible; but there could be no mistake.

"Abel Dell!" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, as he leaped at the idea that the brother had returned in spirit, to save his sister from all harm.

"Out of my path!" rang forth in answer, the voice being loud, imperious, and fierce; and then, in a tone of intense hatred and suppressed pa.s.sion, the one word--"Dog!"