The Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea Part 11

Kit expected him to pounce; yet he did not, lolling back in the stern-sheets, very much at his ease. The tiller under his arm wobbled, and he wobbled with it. In spite of those staring eyes of his, there was a dreadful unsteadiness about the man. Was he wounded?--was he drunk?

Somehow the boy was not very much afraid. It was all too dream-like.

He heard his heart thundering far-away on the remotest sh.o.r.es of being.

He heard his own voice speaking, and was surprised at it--how steady it was, and how small!

It was saying,

"I'm a King's officer. That's a King's ship. There are about a thousand men on board. It's all no go. D'you give in?"

The man grinned sardonically. Then his head fell forward. He lurched horribly. The tiller slipped from under his arm. The lugger fell away, and lay on the water like a wounded bird.

Then Kit understood.

Black Diamond was dead.

II

The boy's mind relaxed like a burst bladder.

He began to laugh.

Where was he?

Alone on the deep with a dead man.

Well, well. It was not for the first time surely. A ghost, long-laid, walked again. A sudden lightning had flashed upon his past. In it he had seen and _remembered_. Something of a forgotten self floated to the surface. In turmoil, his Eternal Mind had thrown up on the sea of Time a memory from its imperishable h.o.a.rd.

Slowly he recollected himself, and looked about him.

He was kneeling on something soft, and his hands were warm and slimy.

He looked down, and jerked back with a scream.

He was kneeling on a dead man, and his hands were crimson.

A gust caught the lugger: she staggered forward with a flap and swing of her boom. Her master, her mate, was dead; and the spirit had gone out of her.

No time for the horrors! he must be doing.

In a moment he was at work with his dirk. The great lug came down with a rattle.

Forward under the boom, he cut the sheet of the jib. It fluttered furiously, streaming lee-ward. Then he stumbled aft.

The murdered helmsman still lolled in drunken stupor, smiling inscrutably.

Astern the sloop lay with tall clothed masts, swaying, a phantom on the troubled waters.

A boat had put off from her, and was bucking towards him.

"Lugger ahoy!" came a windy voice across the water. "Is that you, sir?--all well?"

"I'm all right," cried the boy, and was ashamed to find his voice cracked with emotion.

The boat b.u.mped alongside. Reuben Boniface's face popped up over the side.

"Plucky thing, sir!" he cried, bobbing with the boat; then seeing the man at the tiller--"Ah, Bert! a fair cop."

"He's dead," said the boy with a sob.

"Dead!" cried the other, thrusting forward. "By thunder! so he is.

Boys, Black Diamond's dead!" He took the dead man by the hand. "Poor old mate!" he continued in hushed voice. "Fancy that now. Diamond dead!"

Another head bobbed up.

"Did you kill him, sir?" asked an awed voice.

"No, I didn't. I think it was this man. He killed Black Diamond; and Black Diamond killed him back."

His heart was swollen almost to bursting.

A row of heads now bobbed all along the side, staring at the dead man.

It awed them, this lay-figure with the dreadful stillness brooding about it, rocking with the rock of the sea. They spoke of it with lowered voices reverently.

"Funny thing--him so quiet. Don't seem nat'ral like."

"Warn't like that ten minutes since."

"That Black Diamond!--and can't lift his own hand now!"

"Ah, makes a change, Death, don't it?"

"One thing sure," ended a philosopher. "Like it or not--sooner or later--in this world we all gets our desarts."

So these solemn children, big of the sea, brooded over the Great Mystery. Here _they_ were in the dark, the night blind about them, the old sea roaming round; and here was _It_. Dimly they tried to apprehend _It_. Somehow _It_ made them feel strangely small, and somehow strangely great.

Reuben was still pumping the dead man's hand up and down, the tears coursing down his face.

"Poor old mate!" he kept saying. "He'd not ha been the same if things had been different--would you, old mate?--I wish I'd ha shook hands with you now, I do."

A shuddering voice spoke from the boat. It was the broken blockade-man.

"Ow much is he dead?" he asked.

"Why, dead as dirt," replied a matter-of-fact fellow, chewing his pig-tail phlegmatically.

"Sure he ain't learying?" came the voice of the man with the shivers.