Wilderness of Spring Part 53

But Shawn was not at all angry. "I say, you cannot share in prizes, but while aboard you will be fed and clothed like the others, and for this perhaps you might make some return in labor, if only for _Artemis'_ sake?"

"I suppose I must, as a captive slave, if I wish to live. But I will do no act of piracy, I will do no violence to anyone except in defense of my life, and I will escape you when I can. I believe any slave has that privilege."

"Then I'll require of you no act of violence, only the labor of a foremast hand--can I say more? You have my word on it. And tell me something--have you ever spoken in this fashion to any man before?"

"I never did. I never had cause."

"Knowing quite well that by a lift of my finger I could have you put to death? Human life is nothing to these men, you know. And there'll be muttering a-plenty because you haven't signed."

"Knowing that, of course."

Shawn's hand swung out and gripped Ben's upper arm, not with intentional cruelty, Ben guessed, but he could feel the nerves of his forearm going numb. "Ben, Ben, do you not also hear a voice, sometimes behind your shoulder as it were?--saying now for instance, 'Resist old Shawn, resist him even if you die for it!'" Shawn shook him impatiently. "Is there not such a voice?"

"I don't understand you."

"Tell me the truth!"

"I hear my own mind--heart, conscience, whatever you wish to call it. It serves me as well as it may, and I listen to it."

"Strange! You are not a believer, I think? Do you pray?"

"I haven't truly prayed since my father and mother were murdered.... Is not conscience enough?"

Shawn released him and sighed and turned away. "You spoke of slavery.

Ah, Beneen, don't you see, all this is but prologue? I serve a great end. I spoke to you of the western sea and the new lands, and I did see the thought strike fire in you, don't try to deny it. Why, I'd not go on the account, nor meddle with this rabble, nor do violence to anyone, if I could help it. Mother of G.o.d, two or three fine ships, a handful of brave men, say fifty, sixty--it needs no more. We need no women--we'll take us native women in the new lands and raise up a new breed of men, and they shall be like G.o.ds. You must see it, Beneen, the way I have no choice?"

"I do see--as my father and my mother taught me, as I learned from my tutor and my great-uncle, and above all from my brother, whose understanding is better than mine--I do see, Mr. Shawn, that you cannot serve a good end by evil means."

"Ochone!--a Puritan indeed but very young, now that's no lie. I know that talk, that doctrine, Ben, know it of old, a stick to beat the young and no truth in it, and so I deny it altogether."

"I will affirm it while I live. d.a.m.nation, Mr. Shawn, it's no article of faith, only a plain observation any man can make. Your great end lies in the future, but the future grows from the present. The evil you do in the present can only generate evil in the future and not the good end you dream of."

"Puritan and philosopher! Now I have seen flowers growing from a dunghill."

"They grow from the seed of other flowers and would do so in common ground. The dunghill itself only makes a stink."

"Feeds them, does it not?"

"I dare say nothing's purely good or purely evil. What's good in the dunghill feeds them, the rest is a stink."

"d.a.m.n the thing, blind and stubborn as you are, I like you, Ben Cory....

Do you play chess?"

"A little."

"I found a set of men in the cabin. We must play now and then."

"If you like...."

"Nothing left then, Beneen, of the friendship I hoped there was between thee and me?"

"I don't know how to answer that. I don't see how there can be friendship if one man enslaves another, if one man does what another must hate and reject."

"You're very bitter, boy."

"I don't possess my own life, if it can be destroyed at your whim, a lift of your finger. I think his life is all any man owns. I think that's cause for bitterness, Shawn. I refused as soon as I understood, the first day. There've been three nights when you could have stood in to sh.o.r.e and let me swim for it." Shawn laughed a little, silently. "I know--you couldn't have me spreading word of you. And it's true, I would have done so at once."

Shawn said slowly: "I could not destroy your life, I think. I spoke as if I might, only in hope of persuading you, opening your eyes. I keep you with me for the same reason, now that's no lie. The friendship abides in me, though you've turned against me. And now you have my word on this: when I have won my little fleet, and my men, and am ready for the regions where none will follow me, I will be finding some means to set you free, and you still unwilling to go with me. I'll put you aboard some other ship, or leave you in a foreign port if I can. You have my word on it--yet I think you may go with me. And for the present I do be asking nothing of you but a seaman's labor, no violence. No violence, Beneen."

Ben knew somehow that, even in that moment, when brown stains were still visible on the deck in spite of all the scrubbing and washing down, Shawn's sorrow at Ben's rejection of him was quite real, quite honest and deep, and so was his belief that Ben's mind would change and that he himself could change it. A most divided man, who could condemn war and practice it. One could picture him sheltering a fallen nestling in his hand, while his heel pressed on the b.l.o.o.d.y corpse of one of his own breed. But Ben was forced to understand after a while that such insane division is not, by most men, called insanity. They call it necessity.

For a year now, Shawn had kept his word. No violence was required of Ben. When action approached, as it did hardly more than a dozen times in the whole year, Ben was tied, not cruelly, down in the forecastle, and saw only the aftermath.

It seemed to Ben now as he watched the tropic glory of the May moon--this fading slowly, for morning was not far away--that it was true enough, as was said in the Book of Proverbs: _For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he_--and maybe, Ben speculated, any madman is merely one who believes a thing which the one who names him mad is forced to call a lie.

Shawn's blunders in chess were of a curious kind. Ben could beat him as a rule, with effort, and Shawn took it graciously except for a compulsion to curse at his own mistakes. Ben was reminded each time (but did not say) how Reuben could have given the man a handicap of a rook or better and still have beaten him in fourteen or fifteen moves.

Shawn would prepare a good enough attack--squatting by the board in the sunlight of the quarterdeck, on days of small wind when the _Diana_ held an even keel and no work needed to be done--and he would be cheerful in the beginning, a little excited, humming in his teeth, moving his pieces with a mirthful flourish. One could not think of him then as anything but a kindly, humorous, thoughtful man, almost a young man, a man on holiday. But in the decisive moment, when he must push through the attack or be d.a.m.ned to it, the humming would cease, the copper farthing would appear in his fingers, and Shawn would either abandon the attack for some meaningless scrimmage in another part of the field, or make one of his blatant errors--a piece left hanging unprotected, a reckless sacrifice gaining nothing. After that, Ben's limited knowledge was sufficient to demolish him. Daniel Shawn would never seem to understand just how this had happened, and Ben did not tell him.

The _Diana_ won no big prizes in that year of prowling up and down the Caribbean. True, she was woefully undermanned, reason enough for risking no lives on anything less than a flat certainty. All the same (said Judah Marsh in Ben's hearing), John Quelch would not have chased a French sloop for three days and then turned tail merely because the little rascal put about in despair and uncovered a gun she shouldn't have possessed. Shawn heard that too, and stared blankly at Marsh, rubbing the coin, until Marsh turned away; but Shawn turned away too, without a reply.

There were braver occasions, such as the breathless evening in July when the sloop _Schouven_ died. That was an open battle with everything risked. Tied securely in the stifling forecastle, Ben could hear as much for himself--the coughing thunder above him of the _Diana's_ larboard gun, presently a distant animal howling, a banging of small arms, a piercing squeal like a stuck pig that was French Jack's war cry. When Ben was released to come on deck the _Schouven_ was already afire, the _Diana_ leaving her behind in the gathering night. Tom Ball and Dummy and Jack were gaudily bleeding from minor wounds, but the _Diana_ had lost nothing. She had won about fifty pounds in silver, a month's provisions, a little long-tailed black monkey and a man--a tall, gray, soft-spoken scoundrel, Cornelius Barentsz, who was even then scrawling his name on the _Diana's_ articles with Shawn's blessing. The terrified monkey clung frantically to Dummy and found a friend....

Ben saw little of Barentsz, who spoke almost no English and was a.s.signed to Mr. Ball's watch, relieving French Jack of his occasional double duty for a week or so until Barentsz was hanged. Ben never altogether understood that. The execution was carried out with no ceremony in the silent hours of the first watch, when Ben was asleep below. Manuel at that time was serving on the larboard watch, and Joey Mills on Marsh's watch with Ben; the two changed places after the hanging, at the request of Mr. Ball, who said he didn't wish to be tempted to do violence to the dirty Portagee when the ketch was so short-handed. It was Matthew Ledyard, in one of his rare impulses to communication, who snarlingly explained the incident to Ben. Barentsz had been discovered in the darkness of the first watch trying to embrace poor giggling weakwitted Manuel like a woman. The articles of the _Diana_ were specific. A week later, though, after the body had been disposed of in the manner prescribed, Shawn asked in the middle of a chess game: "Do you know the true reason why that Dutchman was hanged?" And he set down a Bishop where it could not legally go.

"The piece can't be played there," said Ben.

"Ha?" Shawn stood abruptly and pushed the board aside with his foot.

"Devil with the game, my mind's not on it." He had already made his blunder. "You heard my question?"

"I can't say I know the true reason for anything you do."

"I did not hang him, Ben. His destiny hanged him. Nor I don't make much of poor Manuel trying to cut the body down, for 'tis Manuel's destiny to remain weak in the wits and no harm in him, except he may be used for harm by others. But--ah well, 'tis true enough what I told the men, I did find Barentsz so, and I'll have no such Devil's foulness under my command, now that's no lie. But"--he glanced about the sunny deck, where no one else was in earshot--"there was another reason, one I didn't wish the men to know. On second thought--on further instruction--it doesn't matter. You may even tell them if you see fit." He waited, the silence forcing Ben to look up at him at last. "It might be of especial importance to you, Ben Cory, to know that I know Barentsz's true reason for coming aboard my ketch."

"His reason! He was brought aboard a captive, that or be drowned."

"That was the seeming," said Shawn, rubbing his coin, looking gravely down with the sun behind him, his eyes all black. "Yet Barentsz could have gone with the others. They thought (not understanding the end I serve) that I would give them a boat. But no, this Barentsz chose to make a show of favoring my enterprise, so to deceive me and get himself aboard my ketch. Then soon enough, hearing what he muttered under his breath, I understood why."

"I could make nothing of what he tried to say in English."

"That's no matter."

"Do you speak Dutch?"

"Enough."

"Well?"

"You wouldn't care to say 'Well, sir?' or 'Well, Captain?'"