Commodore Junk Part 33

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE GIBBET SPIT.

It had been a baking day in the town of Saint George, British Honduras, and the only lively things about the place had been the lizards. The sky had seemed to be of burnished bra.s.s, and the sea of molten silver, so dazzling that the eye was pained which fell upon its sheen. The natives were not troubled by the heat, for they sought out shady places, and went to sleep, but the British occupants of the port kept about their houses, and looked as if they wished they were dogs, and could hang out their tongues and pant.

Saint George, always a dead-and-alive tropic town, now seemed to be the dead alone; and as if to prove that it was so, the last inhabitant seemed to have gone to the end of the spit by the marsh beyond the port, where every one who landed or left could see, and there hung himself up as a sign of the desolation and want of animation in the place.

For there, pendent from the palm-tree gibbet, alone in the most desolate spot near the port, was the buccaneering captain, whose name had become a by-word all along the coast, whose swift-sailing schooner had captured vessels by the score, and robbed and burnt till Commodore Junk's was a name to speak of with bated breath; and the captains of ships, whether British or visitors from foreign lands, made cautious inquiries as to whether he had been heard of in the neighbourhood before they ventured to sea, and then generally found that they had been misled. For that swift schooner was pretty certain to appear right in their path, with the result that their vessels would be boarded, the captain and crew sent afloat in their boat not far from land, and the ship would be plundered, and then scuttled after all that attracted the buccaneers had been secured.

There had been rejoicings when the king's ship, sent over expressly to put an end to piracy, found and had an engagement with the schooner--one of so successful a nature that after the b.l.o.o.d.y fight was over, and the furious attack by boarding baffled, three prisoners remained in the hands of the naval captain, two of whom were wounded unto death, and the other uninjured, and who proved to be the captain who had headed the boarders.

Abel Dell's shrift had been a short one. Fortune had been against him, after a long career of success. He saw his ship escape crippled, and he ground his teeth as he called her occupants cowards for leaving him in the lurch, being, of course, unaware that the retreat was due to his lieutenant, Abram Mazzard, while when she returned through the determined action of Jack, it came too late, for Abel Dell, otherwise Commodore Junk, was acting as warning to pirates, his last voyage being over.

The heat seemed to increase on that torrid day till nightfall, when clouds gathered, and the flickering lightning flashed out and illumined the long banks of vapour, displaying their fantastic shapes, to be directly after reflected from the surface of the barely rippled sea.

"Hadn't we better give up for a bit? Storm may pa.s.s before morning,"

whispered the thick-set figure standing close by the wheel.

"No, Bart; we must go to-night," was the reply. "Is all ready?"

"Ay, ready enough; but I don't like the job."

"Give up, then, and let Dinny come."

"Did you ever know me give up?" growled Bart.

"'Tain't that: it's leaving the ship. Black Mazzard ar'n't to be trusted."

"What! Pish! he dare do nothing."

"Not while you're here, my lad. It's when you're gone that I feel scared."

"You think--"

"I think he's trying to get the men over to his side, and some on 'em hold with him."

Jack remained thoughtful for a few minutes.

"It is only lightning, Bart. There'll be no storm. We can get what we want done in six hours at the longest, and he can do nothing in that time--he will do nothing in that time if you put a couple of bottles of rum within his reach."

Bart uttered a low, chuckling laugh.

"That's what I have done," he said.

"Then we're safe enough. Where's Dinny?"

"Forward, along of d.i.c.k."

"Tell them to keep a sharp look-out while we're gone, and to be on the watch for the boat."

Half an hour later, when the schooner was deemed to be near enough for the purpose, an anchor was lowered down, to take fast hold directly in the shallow bottom, a boat was lowered, into which Jack and Bart stepped, the former shipping the little rudder, and Bart stepping a short mast and hauling up a big sail, when the soft sea-breeze sent them gliding swiftly along.

"He was asleep in the cabin," said Bart. "Soon be yonder if it holds like this. Do you feel up to it, my lad, as if you could venter?"

"Yes," said Jack, sternly.

"But it's a wicked job, my lad, and more fit for men."

"I've thought all that out, Bart," was the reply. "I know. It is my duty, and I shall do it. Are the pistols loaded?"

"Trust me for that," growled Bart. "They're loaded enough, and the cutlashes has edges like razors. So has my axe."

"Have you the tools?"

"Everything, my lad. Trust me for that."

"I do trust you, Bart, always."

"And how are we to find our way back to the schooner in the dark?"

"We shall not find our way back in the dark, Bart, but sail right out here as near as we can guess, and then lie-to till daybreak."

Bart kept his eyes fixed upon one particular light, and tried to calculate their bearings from its relation to another behind; but all the same, he felt in doubt, and shook his head again and again, when some blinding flash of lightning gave him a momentary glance of the sh.o.r.e.

But Jack did not hesitate for a moment, keeping the boat's head in one direction with unerring instinct, till the waves were close upon their left, and it seemed that in another minute they must be swamped.

Bart half rose, ready to swim for his life, as the boat leapt high, then seemed to dive down headlong, rose again, dived, and then danced lightly up and down for a few minutes before gliding slowly on again.

"Was that the bar?" he whispered eagerly.

"Yes. It is rough at this time of the tide," was the answer, given in the calmest manner, for Jack had not stirred.

Bart drew a breath full of relief.

"Be ready."

"Ready it is."

"Down sail."

The little yard struck, the sail collapsed, and, acting by the impetus already given, the boat glided forward some distance and then grated upon a bed of sand.

Bart shuddered slightly, but he was busy all the while arranging the sail ready for rapid hoisting; and this done, he carried the grapnel out some fifteen or twenty yards from the bows and fixed it cautiously in the sh.o.r.e.--He was about to return when a hand was laid upon his shoulder--a hand which seemed to come out of the black darkness.

Bart s.n.a.t.c.hed a pistol from his belt, and put it back with a grunt.