The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Story of Jack Ballister's Fortunes, by Howard Pyle

JACK BALLISTER’S FORTUNES

[ front]

“‘SPEAK UP, BOY, SPEAK UP,’ SAID THE GENTLEMAN.”
(SEE PAGE [90].)

THE STORY OF
JACK BALLISTER’S FORTUNES

BY

HOWARD PYLE

BEING THE NARRATIVE OF THE ADVENTURES
OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF GOOD FAMILY,
WHO WAS KIDNAPPED IN THE YEAR 1719
AND CARRIED TO THE PLANTATIONS OF THE
CONTINENT OF VIRGINIA, WHERE HE FELL
IN WITH THAT FAMOUS PIRATE CAPTAIN
EDWARD TEACH, OR BLACKBEARD: OF HIS
ESCAPE FROM THE PIRATES AND THE RESCUE
OF A YOUNG LADY FROM OUT THEIR HANDS

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1895

Copyright, 1894, 1895, by
The Century Co.

THE DE VINNE PRESS.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

JACK BALLISTER’S FORTUNES

JACK BALLISTER’S FORTUNES

INTRODUCTION

ONE of the most important problems that confronted the Virginia plantations in the earlier colonial days was the question as to how to obtain sufficient labor to till the soil and to raise tobacco for the English market.

Some of the colonial planters of Virginia owned thousands of acres of the richest tobacco land in the world—whole tracts of virgin earth where the priceless loam lay open to the rain, the air, and the warm sky; bountifully fruitful loam, only waiting for tillage to be coined into vast tobacco fortunes for the princely owners. All that was needed was human labor to dig the earth, to plant, to hoe, to cultivate, and to prepare the tobacco for market, for there was not a hundredth part enough labor to turn the waiting soil, that lay ready to yield at any time its thousands of hogsheads of tobacco, and the question was, where and how labor was to be obtained.

The easiest and quickest solution of the question appeared to be the importation of negro slave labor from Africa.

The introduction of such slave labor began almost in the earliest days of the provinces. Hundreds of shiploads of African negroes were brought across the ocean and set to work digging and hoeing in the tobacco fields, and slave trade became a regular traffic between the west coast of Africa and the Americas.

But the African slaves, when imported, were found only fit to do the very rudest and simplest sort of labor. They were poor, ignorant savages, who, until they were set to work on the plantations, knew almost nothing at all about such labor as was practised by civilized mankind. When they were told to dig the earth, they dug, but they labored without knowing either why they worked or wherefore. They did just as their masters or their overseers bade them, and nothing more. Beyond this they could be taught little or nothing, for not only were those earlier savages like children, incapable of learning much of anything; but, in most instances, they could not even speak a single word of the language of their masters, and so could not understand what their owners wanted of them. They were of use only to work as a dumb animal might work, and not as white men could work.

So the Virginia plantations were still without that intelligent labor which white men alone could bring to the tilling of the soil; labor that knew what it was about when it dug the earth, and which, when told to do so, could turn its hand to other things that might be required of it. And so it was that every means was used to bring English men and women to the Virginia plantations.

Even in the last part of the seventeenth century those immigrants who afterward developed our great country into what it now is, were beginning to pour into the colonies. But, of this immigrant labor, the best and the most intelligent did not come to Virginia or other of the southern provinces. It drifted to the New England or the Pennsylvania provinces rather than to those in the South. There, in the North, any man could obtain a farm for himself by hewing it out of the wilderness. In Virginia the land was nearly all owned by the great tobacco planters. Hence it was that only the poorest and least ambitious of these white men and women could in the earlier provincial days be induced to go thither, and hence white labor was so much more in demand in the South than in the North.

A certain class of the immigrants of that time were called “redemptioners” or “redemption servants.” They were so called because they had to redeem by their labor the cost of their passage across the ocean from England to America. Upon their arrival in the New World they were sold for a term of years—seven, eight, nine, ten, as the case might be—and the money received from such sale was paid to the ship captain or the merchant who transported them from the Old World to the New. Thus their debt was redeemed, and hence their name.

Those who came thus as redemption servants from England were generally the poorest and most wretched of its people—paupers, outcasts, criminals—unfortunates who were willing to do almost anything to get away from their surroundings into a new life, where they hoped something better might be in store for them than that wretchedness which they had had to endure at home.

Thousands of such people were sent across the ocean to the Virginia and other plantations, where, poor and miserable as they often were, the demand for them grew ever greater and greater as the wilderness became more and more open to cultivation.

Every year higher and higher prices were paid for such servants, until, at last, a ship-load of redemptioners (provided the voyage across the ocean had been speedy and no contagious disease had developed aboard the vessel) became almost the most profitable cargo exported from England.

When the transportation of servants became thus so remunerative, the crimps who supplied them to merchants or to ship captains were oftentimes tempted, when other means failed, to resort to kidnapping, or man-stealing, to supply the demand.

During the earlier fifty years of the last century, thousands of men, women, and even children were stolen from England and sent away to the Americas, perhaps never to return, perhaps never even to be heard of again. In those days—“The kidnapper will catch you!” were words of terror to frighten children and gadding girls on all the coastways of England.

CHAPTER I

THE AMERICA MERCHANT

HEZEKIAH TIPTON had been a merchant in the America trade for upwards of forty years. He had shipped hundreds of servants to the Americas; they were as much a part of his cargo as tea or broad-cloth or books or silk stuffs.

Maybe he was not always scrupulously careful to know whence came some of the servants he thus transported. He was reasonably honest in his dealings, as the times went, and he would not often buy a servant from a crimp if he knew positively that the crimp had kidnapped the man. But if he was not positively sure, he would not go out of his way to inquire into things that did not concern him. He would either take the servant offered for sale, or else he would not take him; but he would not trouble himself to ask how the crimp obtained the man, or whether the man himself was or was not really willing to emigrate to the colonies.

There was, for instance, a good deal of talk at one time about three men whom Hezekiah had sent to South Carolina. A Dutchman had brought them into the harbor in his lugger. He said that the men desired to emigrate, and Hezekiah, who at that time had a ship just clearing for Charleston, expressed his willingness to pay the captain something for them, if he did not demand too much. Two of the men were stupefied with drink, and the third had a bloody clout wrapped around his head, and was cut and bruised as though he had been beaten with a club or a belaying-pin. It was an evident case of kidnapping, but nevertheless Hezekiah paid the Dutch captain for the men, and had them sent directly aboard the ship. One of the three men was sober the next morning. Hezekiah had come aboard the ship, and as he was rowed away toward the shore the man leaned over the rail above, shouting out curses after the old merchant, swearing that he would certainly come back to England some time and murder him. “You think you’re safe,” bawled the man after the departing boat,—“you think you’re safe! Wait till you feel my knife in your back this day twelve-month—d’ye hear?—then you won’t feel so safe.” The men rowing the boat to the shore grinned and winked at one another. Old Hezekiah sat immovably in the stern, paying no attention to the man’s threats and imprecations, which continued until the captain of the ship knocked him down, and so silenced his outcries.

This affair created, as was said, a good deal of talk at the time.

In the year 1719, beginning in February and ending in November, Hezekiah Tipton sent away to the American colonies or plantations in all over five score servants.

One day early in March, a company of nineteen men who had volunteered to emigrate to the Virginias was brought up from London to meet the brig Arundel at Southampton. They were quartered at the Golden Fish Inn, and during the morning the old America merchant went to look them over. The men were ranged in a row along by the wall of the inn yard, and the old man walked up and down in front of the line, peering at each man with half-shut eyes and wrinkled face, while a few people from the inn stood looking on with a sort of inert interest. He did not seem very well pleased with the appearance of the servants. There were only nineteen, and there should have been one and twenty. The agent explained that there had been twenty-one of them when he wrote from London, but that one of them had run away during the night, and that another would not sign the papers. “‘Twas,” said he, “as fine, good a young lad of sixteen or eighteen as ever you see. But his mother, methinks it was, comes in crying at the last minute and takes him away from under our werry noses, so to speak.” Hezekiah grunted a reply as he walked up and down along the row of grinning, shuffling men, looking them over. The big knotted joints of the old man’s fingers gripped the cracked and yellow ivory head of his walking-stick, which he every now and then tapped, tapped on the stones of the court-yard. “That man,” said he, in his cracked, querulous voice, poking his walking-stick as he spoke at a lean little man standing in the line—“that man—why did ye bring him? How much d’ye think he’ll fetch in the Virginias? I’s warrant me not fifteen guineas.”

“Why, Master Tipton,” said the agent, referring to a slip of paper which he held in his hand, “there you are mightily mistook. Maybe, like enough, that man is worth more than any of ‘em. He’s a skilled barber and leecher, and a good man he is, and knows his trade, to be sure, and that werry well. Just you think, Master Tipton, how much he might be worth as a vally or body-servant to one of them there Virginia planters.”

“Humph!” grunted the old man, and he shook his lean head slowly from side to side. “I’ll tell you what it is, Master Dockray,” he said again, after a while, “they be not nigh so good as those I had last—and only nineteen where there should have been one and twenty.” The agent made no answer and the old man continued his inspection for a while. He did not say anything further, and by and by he turned away and, with the agent at his heels, entered the inn to receipt the papers, and with his going the inspection came to an end.

Finally, in making you acquainted with old Hezekiah Tipton, it may be said that he was a notable miser of his time. To see him hobbling along the street in his snuff-colored coat, threadbare at the seams, and here and there neatly patched and darned, one might take him, perhaps, for a poor decent school-teacher of narrow means, but certainly not for one of the richest men in the county, as he was reputed to be. There were a great many stories concerning him in Southampton, many of them doubtless apocryphal, some of them based upon a foundation of truth. One such story was that every Sunday afternoon the old man used to enter into his own room, bolt the door, and spread gold money out on the floor; that he would then strip himself and roll in the yellow wealth as though taking a bath. Another story was that he had three iron chests in the garret of his home, each chest bolted to the floor with iron bolts. That the one chest was full of Spanish doubloons, the second full of French louis d’ors, the third full of English guineas. The Southampton tradesmen used to say that it was more difficult to collect their bills from Hezekiah Tipton than from almost any one in the town.

CHAPTER II

JACK BALLISTER

JACK BALLISTER at this time was a little over sixteen years old, and had now been living with his uncle Tipton something over two years.

Jack’s father at the time of his death had been vicar of Stalbridge for nearly nineteen years, so that Jack, until he had come to Southampton, had never known anything but that part of Wiltshire which immediately surrounded Stalbridge and Stalbridge vicarage. The only other inmates of the vicarage were old Janet, the housekeeper, and a farmer’s daughter who helped about the house, and old Giles Cobb, who came up now and then to work in the garden.

There was, by the way, always a singular charm to Jack in the memories of this garden. Some of his earliest recollections were of playing out in the tangled sunny reaches while old Giles bent, with stooping shoulders and rounded back, over his work, digging and planting and picking about at the weeds in the brown, loamy beds. There was a yew hedge, and two bee hives that stood under a cherry tree, and a row of two or three cucumber frames that lay bright and shining, reflecting in their glassy surface the clouds and the warm sky above. There was always an association of flowers, of birds, and of warm yellow sunlight about the tangled, flowery space, and in the years afterwards, when Jack visited the old vicarage, one of the first places he went to was the garden. It looked strangely familiar yet strangely unfamiliar. It seemed more unkempt and uncared for. The birds were singing in the trees over beyond the hedge, but the two straw-thatched bee hives were gone. Nevertheless he could almost fancy that old Giles with his hunched shoulders and his smock frock might at any moment come in through the gate, trundling his squealing wheel-barrow before him.

Jack was not quite four years old when his mother had died. It seemed to him that he could remember her, yet the image he held in his mind might not have been an actual memory, but only some strong association connected with things that Janet had told him about her. Yet it seemed to him that he really did hold a mental impression of her in his memory of early things, an impression of a large, tender, shadowy figure, dressed in black, and with a white kerchief or shawl around her shoulders. He could almost fancy that he could remember a peculiar fragrance that lingered about the folds of her dress—a fragrance like that of the old lavender chest where Janet kept the house linen. This recollection of his mother might have been only an image conjured up out of what had been told him concerning her, but, as was said, it always seemed as though it were a real and living memory. It is sometimes difficult to tell where fancy ends and memory begins in those broken fragments of recollections of early childhood.

It seemed to him that the same figure was present in the memory of a certain time when he, as a little, little boy, had fallen down the steps and cut his chin. It seemed to him that it was she who had comforted him, singing to him while she scraped a crisp half-apple and fed him with the pulp from the point of a knife. Janet had said that that fall had not happened until the year after his mother’s death, but it seemed to Jack that it was his mother’s presence that had filled the memory of the accident, and he always felt that maybe it was Janet who was mistaken, and not his own recollections of the trivial event.

He often thought of his mother, as a motherless boy is apt to think of that missing presence, and it seemed to him that if she had only lived he would have loved her very much, and that his life would have been much sweeter to him.

Janet often talked to him about her. His grandmother, Janet told him, had adopted her as a little girl, and had brought her up with her own daughter, who was now Lady Arabella Sutton. She had been, Janet said, more of a companion than a waiting-maid. Of these stories of by-gone times, that children so delight to have told to them, Jack would make Janet tell him most often of the great family quarrel that had happened when his father had told the others that he and Anne Tipton were going to be married. Janet always made the most out of the story, embellishing it more and more as the years passed by, and as her imagination suggested new details. “Indeed,” she would maybe say, “you should ha’ seen him stand up before your grandmother, as grand as you please, with his arms folded so. ‘A Ballister, madam,’ says he, ‘can marry where he chooses.’”

Jack could not imagine his father as the hero of any such scene, still less could he image him as riding post-haste to Southampton when his mother had been sent away home from Grampton Hall.

He often heard people say that his father was a great scholar. The vicar was always silent and preoccupied, sometimes deep in his books, sometimes scribbling away with a busy pen, a litter of papers scattered all over the floor about him, and his wig pushed back awry from his smooth, round forehead; sometimes walking up and down the garden paths with his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent forward, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He used especially to walk thus while he was formulating in his mind the outlines of one of the pamphlets he used to write. Jack could not imagine that any one so absorbed in his books and his studies could ever have been the hero of such romance. And then he always seemed so very, very old to Jack. It was hard to imagine that such a dry and sapless life could ever have had the ichor of romance flowing through it.

Before Janet had come to Stalbridge she had been one of the dependents of the other Ballisters. “They be grand, grand folks,” she would sometimes say, “and hold their heads as high as ever the Duke of Newcastle himself.” She sometimes told Jack that if his father had not set his family all against him, he might have been a bishop as like as not. “I’d never come to Stalbridge only for your mother, poor soul,” said she. “But she was fond of me, and I was fond of her, and so I came.”

It seemed to Jack that he could hardly remember the time when his father did not teach him Latin and Greek. One of his first recollections as a little, little boy was of his father teaching him the Greek alphabet. He learned little or nothing else than the two languages, and it is not likely that his father thought anything else was worth learning. Jack once overheard the vicar say to old Sir Thomas Harding, “Sir, I will make the boy the best scholar in England.” The words remained fixed in Jack’s memory as such fragmentary speeches do sometimes fix themselves, for no especial reason, in the mind of boyhood. The promise of great scholarship was, however, never to be fulfilled, for Jack was only fourteen years old when the vicar died, and in the neglected two years at Southampton he never went to school a day, or studied six words of a lesson, or read a page of Greek or Latin, except one or two times when Mr. Stetson made him read a passage or two of Greek as a matter of curiosity.

Jack’s father never said anything to him about his mother or his relations. His uncle Tipton had come up from Southampton just before his father’s death, but that was the only time that Jack had ever really seen one of his own kindred.

During the fall of the year in which Jack’s father had died, a messenger on horseback, with great jackboots and a suit of green livery turned up with scarlet, rode up to the vicarage and delivered a packet to Janet, who presently brought it in to the vicar, where he sat in the sagging wainscoted study, writing in the midst of a litter of papers scattered on the floor. The vicar set his pen in his mouth and took the letter, and Jack watched him as he broke the great red seal and began reading the packet, now and then frowning, either in the effort of reading the written words or else at the purport of the words themselves. When he had finished the letter he laid it to one side and resumed his writing where it had been interrupted. The messenger who had brought the letter did not immediately go away. Jack could hear now and then the jingle of his bridle or spurs, and now and then the sound of his whistling, as he lounged in the warm sunlight outside. Then there was the noise of voices talking together—the voices of Janet and the messenger—and presently the housekeeper came into the study to say that the man wanted to know when he could have his answer. The vicar looked up with the bewildered air he always wore when he was interrupted. “Eh!” he said, “eh! what d’ye say? Answer? Who wants an answer?” Then remembering, “oh, aye, there’s no answer to send. You may tell him, there’s no answer.” And then presently the messenger rode clattering away whence he had come.

The letter lay where the vicar had left it until the next afternoon, and Jack, impelled by curiosity, managed to read a part of it. It was from his grand-aunt Lady Dinah Welbeck. She said that she was very ill, and she asked the vicar to come and see her before her end, and that all should be forgiven. The vicar did not go, either because he did not think of the message again, or else because he did not choose to resume his correspondence with his family. The letter lay about until the vicar tore a great strip off from it with which to light a candle in the next room, and the next day the written sheet was gone.

Some time after Lady Dinah Welbeck’s death another communication, long and bulky, was brought to the vicarage. The vicar read it but paid no attention to it. Then another letter came and another. The last letter the vicar did not even open for several days. He was very busy at work upon a pamphlet, and the letter lay neglected upon the writing table until one morning Janet brought it and thrust it into his hand. “Eh!” said he, as though suddenly awakening to things about him, “what is this! what is this?” He took the letter and looked at it. “Why, this letter should have been given me three days ago,” he said.

“So ’twas, master,” said Janet, “but you did not read it.”

“Did I not so?” said Jack’s father, and then he broke the seal and read it. But still he paid no attention to it.

No doubt the vicar’s family would long since have received him back among them if he had cared to have them do so. He and they had drifted far apart in the nineteen years that had passed. During that time all ill feeling—at least on the part of the family—had faded away and died. There was no intimacy, hardly any acquaintance, between the vicar and his brother, Sir Henry, neither was there any longer rancor between them.

Some of the letters written at this time had been written by Sir Henry, and after a number had been sent without eliciting any reply, the baronet sent the Grampton lawyer down to Stalbridge. The attorney and the vicar were closeted together for a long time, and when they at last came out of the study the vicar was very angry. It was the only time that Jack had ever seen him so. “They may keep it all!” he was saying in a great loud voice. “They may keep it all! I want none of it, I say. All that I want of them is to let me alone as I let them alone. I want, I say, none of their money or nothing that belongs to them. They may keep all for themselves.”

Jack was leaning out of an upper window in the sunlight, looking down upon their heads, as they stood just below. Their voices came up to him through the warm air very distinctly.

“But, sir,” said the lawyer, “do you not then consider the welfare of your own son?”

“Sir,” said the vicar in the same loud voice, “that, I believe, is not your affair. I will look after my son’s welfare mine own self. I tell you, sirrah, that those who sent you may e’en keep all of the money for themselves. I want nothing of them, and neither shall my son take aught from them.”

“But, sir,” said the lawyer, “you forget that the money hath been left to you individually. In taking it you do not take anything from them. It was not left to your brother, it is not a gift from him or, indeed, from any one, and it does not belong to any one but you. Your family cannot even receive it from you without process of law, and you cannot help taking it.”

“Aye, but I can help taking it,” cried out the vicar.

“Sir, sir!” said the lawyer, “pray be calm, sir. Pray look at this matter reasonably. Here is this money—”

“I will not hear anything more,” cried out the vicar, “only I tell you I shall not touch a farthing of it.”

Then the lawyer lost his temper. “Sir,” said he, “I must needs tell you that you are the most unreasonable man that ever I met in all of my life.”

The vicar drew himself up to his full height. “Sir,” said he, “sure you forget yourself and to whom you speak. You forget who I am, sir. You are welcome to think as you choose about me, but you are not welcome to tell me your opinion of me. Who are you, sirrah, to speak so to James Ballister?” And then he turned upon his heel back into the house, shutting the door behind him.

Jack, as he still leaned out into the sunlight, looking down from above, saw the stranger stand irresolutely for a while, then turn and go slowly out of the gate and mount his horse and ride away.

That winter the vicar died, and Jack went to Southampton to live.

Perhaps one of the bitterest days in Jack Ballister’s boyhood life was the first evening after his arrival at his new home. His uncle had had the parlor opened, as though to do some honor to his coming. Jack sat for nearly an hour on the stiff uncomfortable chair, saying almost nothing, but just sitting there by the dim light of a candle. Old Hezekiah had tried to talk, but the conversation had lapsed and dwindled away into silence. Now he sat winking and blinking in the light of the candle, looking as though he were trying to think of something more to say, but yet saying nothing, and Jack, too miserable and depressed to talk, ventured nothing upon his own part. He was very glad when at last he was permitted to creep away miserably to bed and to yield himself fully to the luxury of hot tears and of utter loneliness and homesickness.

It seemed to him that night as though he never would be happy again, but even by the next morning he found himself awakened to a new and fresh hold upon his life. Things appeared bright and cheerful again in the fresh sunlight of a new day, and after he had finished his frugal breakfast he went out into the streets and down to the harbor, full of interest in the new surroundings in which he found himself placed. The harbor and the ships at anchor there seemed very wonderful to the boy fresh from the inland country. There was a great high-pooped battle-ship lying at anchor in the harbor that morning, and its sloping decks, whence came the distant rattle of a drum, seemed to teem with bustling life, lit every now and then by a spark of sunlight glinting on the slant of a musket-barrel. As Jack stood and gazed, he forgot how lonely he had been the night before.

In a little while—in a few weeks—his life had drifted into all these new circumstances, and had become one with them, and he presently found himself looking back to that old life at Stalbridge as a thing gone by and done with forever. All that remained was the memory of those things as episodes ended and done.

It is wonderful with what ductility life fits itself into new circumstances, becoming so accustomed to them, even in a few days, that they no longer seem to be new.

After that first formal reception in the musty, stuffy parlor, old Hezekiah seemed to consider his duty to his nephew as ended. Thereafter Jack was allowed to go where he pleased and to do as he chose. The old man hardly ever spoke to the lad excepting now and then in some dry and constrained fashion. Old Deborah, the housekeeper, used to send him on errands occasionally, but excepting for such little demands upon him, he had no ties to bind him to his new home except as it was a place wherein to eat his meals and to sleep at night.

He spent nearly all his time lounging about the harbor front, for there was a never-ending delight to him in the presence of the great ships and the rough sailors, who would talk of strange foreign countries—of having been to Calcutta, or to Shanghai, or to Jamaica, or to the Americas or the Brazils, as Jack might have talked of having been to the Isle of Wight. They spoke of the Caribbean Sea, or of the Indian Ocean, as he might speak of the Solent.

He often used to strike up an acquaintance with these sailors an acquaintance that would become, maybe, almost intimate for the two or three days that they were in the harbor.

It was an idle, aimless, useless life that he lived at this time. Sometimes—maybe when he was running on some petty, trivial errand for old Deborah—a sudden feeling of almost nauseating shame for his useless existence would come upon him and weigh him down with a leaden weight. It seemed almost as though an inner voice, as of conscience, would say: “Fie upon you! A great, big, hulking fellow like you to go carrying a little crock of yeast through the streets like this!” Generally when such an inner voice as of conscience would speak, he would satisfy himself by replying as with an inner voice of his own: “Oh, well, ’tis Uncle Hezekiah’s fault. If he’d only set me work to do, why, I’d do the work, and be glad enough of the chance.”

Mr. Stetson, the rector, used sometimes to talk to him almost like an echo of that inner accusing voice. “’Tis a vast pity, Jack,” he would sometimes say, “that such a great, stout fellow as thou art should live so in useless idleness. If nothing else better, why do you not study your books?” And Jack would be very uncomfortable with the heavy feeling that he had left some part of duty undone.

He used often to go to supper at the rectory. He felt more at ease there—less big-jointed and clumsy than almost anywhere else. And besides, he very heartily enjoyed the good things he had to eat at such times, for Deborah set a very poor and skimpy table at his uncle’s house. They generally had preserved ginger and thin sweet cakes at these suppers at the rectory, and Jack used sometimes to contrive to slip a couple of cakes into his pocket to nibble after he got home.

Sometimes, especially if there were visitors present, the good old rector would insist upon talking to Jack about his uncle the baronet, or about Lady Dinah Welbeck, or about his aunt Lady Arabella Sutton. “Indeed,” he would maybe say, “Jack’s poor father was a very learned man, a very learned man. His pamphlet on the apostolic succession was the best that was writ at the time of the controversy. ’Tis, methinks, impossible for a man to be so perfectly ripe a scholar unless he hath good blood in his veins such as that of the Ballisters or haply of mine own. Why should it not be so? To be sure, you cannot make as good wine out of gooseberries as you can out of currants. Mine own father used often to say to me: ‘Andrew, never forget that you have the blood of Roger Stetson in your veins.’”

Jack always felt a certain awkward constraint when the rector would talk in this way. It made him somehow feel ashamed, and he did not know just where to look or what to answer.

Sometimes Mr. Stetson would make him read aloud in Greek. “You should hear him read ‘The Frogs,’” he would maybe say, and he would almost thrust a copy of Aristophanes into Jack’s not very willing hand. Jack would read a page or two in a perfunctory sort of a way, while the rector would sit smiling and tapping his finger-tips on the table beside which he sat. “Thou hast the making of a fine scholar in thee, Jack,” he would perhaps say, “and ’tis a vast pity thy uncle Tipton does not send thee to school. I will have a talk with him about it when the time comes.”

Several times the rector spoke to old Hezekiah about his nephew. Once he walked all the way back from church with the old merchant, and almost into the parlor. But nothing ever came of such talks. “Hey!” said the old man; “go to school? What does he want to go to school for? Well, well! I’ll see to it, and think it over by and by,” and there the matter would rest.

Another friend whom Jack made was the attorney Burton. One day, as Jack was walking whistling along the street, the little lawyer came running out of his office and called after him to stop. “Master Jack! Master Jack! stop a little bit,” he cried out. “Master Jack Ballister!—I have a word or two to say to you.” He had run out bareheaded, and he was half breathless with his haste and his calling. He held an open letter in his hand. “Who d’ye think, young gentleman,” said he, still panting a little, “I have heard from? Why, from your uncle Sir Henry Ballister, to be sure. He hath writ to me asking about you—how you are, what you are doing, and how Master Tipton is treating you. What shall I tell him?”

“Why, you may tell him,” said Jack, “that I do very well.”

This was the beginning of Jack’s acquaintance with the attorney Burton. Several times afterward the little lawyer told him that Sir Henry had written about him. “He hath a mind, methinks,” said the attorney, “to be more particular as to what your uncle Tipton is doing for you. Indeed, he hath asked me very especially about what he does for you. I know what I shall tell him, for I have talked to Master Stetson about you, and he tells me what a famous scholard you are. But harkee, Master Jack, if ever you have need of advice, you come to me, for so Sir Henry advised me to say to you.”

Jack stood listening to the little man with a feeling of pleased and fatuous gratification. It was very pleasant to be so remembered by his grand relation. “Why, then, I take it very kind of Sir Henry, Master Burton, and of you, too, for the matter of that,” said he. “And if ever I do have need of your advice, why, I will come to you just as freely as you give me leave to do.”

As he walked away down the street, thinking over what the attorney had said, he almost wished that he had some definite cause of complaint against his uncle Hezekiah, so that he might call upon the aid of Sir Henry and the attorney. How fine it would be to have Sir Henry take his part! He fancied to himself a talk with his uncle Hezekiah, in which he made himself perhaps say, “Sir, you shall not treat me so, for I tell you plain that there are those now to take my part against you, and that it is not just a poor orphaned boy with whom you have to deal.” Boys love to build up in their imagination such foolish scenes and fortunate conversations that never happen. Sometimes such fancyings seem so like the real thing that, like Jack, one almost forgets that they are not really likely to happen. But by and by the time came when Jack really did appeal to the lawyer and when he really did come to an understanding with his uncle.

That spring a young cooper named Dan Williamson had a boat that he wanted to sell. It had belonged partly to his brother, who had died during the fall before, and Dan, who was one of that sort who always had need of money, was very anxious to sell it. Jack’s great desire was to possess a boat of his own. It seemed to him that Dan’s boat was exactly the one that would best suit him. He used to think with a keen and vivid delight of how glorious it would be to own Dan’s boat. And then she was so very cheap. If the boat were his he would give her a fresh coat of paint, and name her the Sea-gull. If he could only get twenty pounds from his uncle Hezekiah, he could not only buy the boat, but add a new suit of sails.

He talked so often to Dan about the boat that at last the cooper began to believe that he might be able to sell it to Jack. “She’s the cheapest boat,” said Dan, “that was ever offered for sale in Southampton.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Jack; “but I do believe that she’s a good boat.”

“Good!” said Dan. “She’s the best boat in Southampton to-day, and, what is more, she’s as cheap as the dirt under your feet. You’d better buy her, for you’ll never get such another chance as long as you live.”

Jack shook his head. “I do believe she is a good boat, Dan,” he said; “but how shall I buy a boat without money to buy it with? I have no money in hand, and am not like to have any.”

“Well, well,” said Dan, “to be sure, that’s too bad”; and then, after a little space, he continued: “But I’ll tell you what,—you come down with me, and I’ll take you out in her; then you may see for yourself what a fine boat she is.”

“I’ll go out with you,” said Jack; “but I can’t buy her, though. I wish I could.”

Then they went off together down to the cooper-shops where Dan kept the boat.

Jack helped Dan step the mast. Then they pushed the boat off beyond the end of the shed. As the sail filled, Dan put down the helm, and brought the boat out under the stern of a bark lying at anchor a little distance from the shore. The watch on deck, a tipsy-looking sailor with his throat wrapped around with a woolen stocking, stood looking over the stern of the bark and down at them as they sailed by. Jack looked up at the towering hulk above him. The name of the bark—the Prophet Elijah—was painted in great, fat letters across the stern. At one side there was a picture of the prophet’s head, with his long beard. There was a rushing sound of water under the stern of the vessel. Then they were out in the wide, shining harbor, the warm air blowing mildly and softly about them.

“Look, how she lies up to the wind,” said Dan Williamson; “why, I do believe I could sail her straight into the wind’s eye if I chose to. I tell ‘ee what ’tis, Jack, you’ll never find such another chance as this to get what you want.”

“Maybe I won’t and maybe I will,” said Jack; “all the same, I sha’n’t buy her, for why, I have no money to buy her with.”

“No money!” said Dan Williamson; “why, if I had as much money as belongs to you, I’d give up coopering and live a gentleman all my life, I would. Why don’t ye go and ask your uncle Tipton for eighteen pound straight and fair? Sure, the money’s your own, and not his. Why don’t ye ask him for it?”

“Ask him for it?” said Jack. “And what good would that do? Asking won’t do any good. The money’s mine, sure enough, yet I can’t touch a penny of it till I am of age.”

“‘T won’t do any harm to ask him, anyway,” said Dan Williamson. “Here, you come and take the tiller, and see for yourself how close up she sails.”

Jack took the tiller, and then they sailed along for a while in silence. By and by Dan spoke again. “I’ll tell you what ’tis, Jack, if I was you I’d go straight to Master Burton, I would, and I’d ask him about it. What did you say t’ other evening down at the Golden Fish? Didn’t you say that he told you to come to him if ever you wanted anything that your uncle Tipton wouldn’t give you, and that he said your t’ other uncle that’s a lord would get it for you? Well, then, why don’t you go to him and ask for eighteen or twenty pound? What you said was true, wasn’t it?”

“Why, yes, ’twas true enough, as far as that goes,” said Jack.

“Well, then,” said Dan Williamson, “there you are.”

Jack sat for a little while in silence, then he spoke.

“I tell you what it is, Dan, maybe you don’t believe what I told you, but it is true enough. I tell you what—I’m going to go to Master Burton this very day, and ask him about what you say.” He did not really entertain any hope, however, that he could get twenty pounds from his uncle Hezekiah.

As soon as he came ashore again, he went straight up to the little lawyer’s house.

The little man was in his office—a musty, stuffy little den of a place, smelling of stale tobacco smoke, and set around with dusty cases of worn and yellow-backed books and tin boxes.

The attorney sat in the midst of the litter surrounding him like a little gray mouse. He had black, beady eyes, a long nose, and a thin, leathery face.

He sat looking with his little twinkling black eyes at Jack as he stated his case. “Why, as for your fortune, Master Jack, I must needs tell you plain that it might as well be locked up in the church belfry for all the good it may do you now. For so it is locked up in your father’s will, tight and fast as if it were in a box, and your uncle hath the keeping of it for you.”

“And can I get none of my money of him, then?” said Jack.

“Why, as for that, I don’t say that, neither,” said the little lawyer. “It may be a hard matter to get it, and yet, after all, I may be able to get it for you. I’ll tell you what to do, Master Jack. Go you to your uncle and ask him plain and straight for what money you need. How much was it you wanted?”

“Well, say twenty pounds,” said Jack.

“Well, then, you ask him for twenty pounds, plain and straight, and if he says you nay, then come back to me, and I’ll see what I can do for you. Sir Henry hath asked me to look after you a trifle, and so I will do.”

CHAPTER III

JACK AND HIS UNCLE

JACK, following the attorney’s advice, had made up his mind to ask his uncle for the money that very night, but when he came face to face with doing it, it was very hard. They were sitting together over their poor frugal supper, and the old miser’s utter unconsciousness of what Jack had it on his mind to say made the saying of it very hard. At last he suddenly spoke. “Uncle Hezekiah,” said he.

The old man looked up sharply, almost as though startled at the sound of Jack’s voice. He did not say anything, but he sat looking at Jack as though inviting him to continue.

“Uncle Hezekiah,” said Jack again. He did not know in just what words to frame what he had to say. Then he continued: “I want to—to talk to you about a matter of business.”

“Hey!” said the old man, “business! business! What d’ ye mean—what d’ye mean by business?”

“Why,” said Jack, “I want some money to buy something. I went to see Master Burton to-day, and he told me I had best come to you and ask you for it.” Gradually Jack was becoming bolder as he became accustomed to the sound of his own voice. “Dan Williamson hath a boat for sale,” he continued. “He wants eighteen pound for it, and if I had twenty pound it would be just enough to fit her up as I would like to have her. I went and talked to Master Burton, and he told me I had best come to you and ask you for the money.”

The old man stared blankly at Jack, his lean jaw hanging gaping with speechless surprise. “Why! why! what’s all this?” he said, finding his voice at last. “Twenty pound! Why, I do believe you’re gone clean clear crazy. Twenty pound! What’s Roger Burton got to do with my giving you twenty pound, I’d like to know? You’ll not get a farden, and that’s the long and the short of it. Master Burton, indeed! What business is it of his, I’d like to know?” He sat looking at Jack for a little while, and then he slowly resumed his interrupted supper again.

Jack sat leaning back in his chair, with his hands in his breeches’ pockets, looking across the table at his uncle. His heart was swelling with a feeling of very choking and bitter disappointment and anger. It seemed to him that he had not expected much, but now that his uncle had denied him, his disappointment was very bitter. He watched his uncle as the old man continued eating in silence. “Very well,” said he at last, “then I know what I’ll do. I’ll go back to Master Burton again. He told me what to do, and that if you said me nay I was to go back to him again. He says that Sir Henry Ballister has been writing to him about me, asking how you treated me and what you did for me, and he told me if you would not give me what I asked for, I was to go back to him, and he’d write to Sir Henry and tell him all about it, and that he’d see if something couldn’t be done on my account.”

Old Hezekiah looked up again. “Sir Henry Ballister?” said he. “What’s he been writing to Roger Burton about, I should like to know! What’s he got to do with it? He’s not your guardeen, is he? I’m your guardeen, and the guardeen of your money as well. As for Sir Henry Ballister, why, he’s got no more to do with you than the man in the moon.” Then he went on eating again, and again Jack sat watching him in silence. In a little while Hezekiah finished his supper, chasing the fatty gravy around and around his plate with the point of his knife. Then he laid down his knife and fork, pushed away his plate, and arose from the table.

“Very well,” said Jack, breaking the silence, “we’ll see about all this business. I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to write to Sir Henry Ballister myself, and tell him about the way I’m treated by you. You never give me a farthing to spend, and as for being your own flesh and blood—why, I might as well be a dog in this house as to be your own kin. You keep all my money and use it as your own, and yet you don’t speak six words to me in a month.” Jack was dimly surprised at his own boldness in speaking. Now that he had made a beginning, it seemed very easy to say his say and to speak out all that lay on his mind. “I’m not going to be treated like a dog by you or by anybody,” he said.

“Yes, I do speak to you, too,” said Hezekiah, stopping at the door. “What d’ ye want me to say to you, anyhow?” he added. “Don’t I give you all you want to eat and drink, and never charge you a farden for it? What more d’ye want than that? You’re the most ungratefulest nevy that ever lived, so you are, to talk to me that way.”

Then he went out of the door, and along the dark passageway, and Jack heard him enter the office, and shut the door behind him. Then he began eating his supper again. He felt very bitter and very angry against the old man.

So he sat eating for a long time in lonely silence, broken only by the sound of Deborah clattering now and then among the pots and pans in the kitchen beyond. Suddenly he heard the office door open again, and the sound of his uncle’s steps coming back along the passage. He reached the door, and Jack heard his fingers fumbling for the latch in the darkness, and then the sharp click as it was raised. Then the door opened, and the old man came in. He stood for a moment, and then came straight across to the table where Jack sat. He stood leaning with both hands upon the table. Jack did not know exactly what to expect. He drew himself back, for the first thought that came into his mind was that the old man was going to attack him personally. “Lookee, Jacky,” said old Hezekiah, at last, “I’ve been thinking of that there twenty pound you was speaking of. Well, Jacky, you shall have that twenty pound, you shall.”

“What d’ye mean, Uncle Hezekiah?” said Jack.

“Why,” said Hezekiah, “I mean what I said. You shall have that twenty pound, Jacky. I’ve been thinking about it, and what you said, and I’m going to give you what you want. I can’t give it to you just now, for twenty pound is a deal of money, and I haven’t that much to give you straight away. But I’ll give it to you after a while, I will, Jacky. I’ll give it to you—let me see—I’ll give it to you on Monday next. Will that be time enough?”

“Why, yes, it will,” said Jack, “if you really mean what you say.”

“Aye,” said the old man, “I mean it sure enough; but don’t you say anything more to Roger Burton, will ye? Just you come to me when you want anything, and don’t you go to him. I mean to be a good, kind uncle to you, Jacky, I do,” and he reached out a lean, tremulous hand, and pawed at Jack, who drew instinctively away from his approach. “I do, Jacky, I do,” said the old man, almost whining in his effort to be affectionate. “But don’t you be writing to Sir Henry Ballister about me, will you, Jacky?”

“I won’t write to him if you’ll treat me decently,” said Jack.

“Aye, aye,” said the old man, “I mean to do that, Jacky, I do. Only don’t you be talking any more to Lawyer Burton. I’ll give you that twenty pound. I’ll give it to you on—on Monday next, I will.”

Then he turned and went away again. Jack sat looking after him. He felt very uncomfortable. He could not understand why the old man had yielded so suddenly. He did not believe at all that he had yielded, or that he would give him what he asked for. He felt sure, in spite of his uncle’s words, that he had been put off with a barren promise that would never bear fruit.

CHAPTER IV

CAPTAIN BUTTS

ON the evening of the next day a number of boys were gathered at the end of the wharf in front of Hezekiah Tipton’s warehouses. They were throwing stones into the water. Jack went out along the wharf to where they were. They were all of them boys younger than himself.

“Well, if that’s all the better you can throw,” said Jack, “to be sure you can’t throw well. Just you watch me hit yon anchor-buoy out there with this pebble.”

A brig had come into the harbor during the day, and now lay at anchor some distance off from the shore. The sails were half reefed and hung limp from the yards. The men were washing down the decks, and from the shore you could see them busy about the decks, and every now and then a gush of dirty water as it ran through the scupper-holes. A boat was just about putting off from the brig. Presently some one climbed down over the side of the vessel and into the boat, and then it was pushed off. Jack stopped throwing stones and stood looking. The boat came rowing straight toward the wharf where he and the other boys stood. It pulled in around the back of a sloop that lay fast to the end of the wharf, and was hidden from sight. Jack jumped down from the wharf to the deck of the sloop, and went across to see who was in the boat. It had come in under the side of the sloop, and two of the men were holding it to its place, grasping the chains. They looked up at Jack and the other boys as they came to the rail of the sloop and looked down at them. There were two men in the stern of the boat. One was just about to climb aboard the sloop, the other sat still. He who still sat in his place had a knit cap pulled down half over his ears. He held a pipe in his mouth and he had gold ear-rings in his ears. The other, who was about to climb aboard the sloop, was plainly the captain of the brig. He was short and thick-set. He wore a rough sea coat with great flapped pockets and brass buttons. One of the pockets bulged out with a short pistol, the brass butt of which stuck out from under the flap. He wore canvas petticoat-breeches strapped to his waist by a broad leather belt with a big flat brass buckle. His face and as much of the short bull-neck as Jack could see were tanned red-brown like russet leather, and his cheeks and chin were covered with an unshaven beard of two or three days’ growth. He stood up in the boat, with his hand resting on the rail of the sloop.

“Do you know where Master Hezekiah Tipton lives?” he asked in a hoarse, rattling voice.

“Why, yes, I do,” said Jack. “This is his wharf, and I’m his nephew.”

“Well, then,” said the man, “I wish you’d show me to him.”

As Jack accompanied the other up the stony street to his uncle’s house, he turned to look at his companion every now and then.

“Where do you hail from, captain?” said he.

“I hail from the land where every man minds his own business,” said the other in his rattling voice. “Where do you hail from, my hearty?”

Jack did not know just what to reply at first. “Oh, well,” he said, “if you don’t choose to give me a civil answer, why, then you needn’t.”

After that they walked in silence till they reached the house. Jack looked into the office, but Hezekiah was not there. “If you’ll come into the parlor,” said he, “I’ll go and tell him you’re here, only I don’t know who you are, to be sure.” He opened the door of the room as he spoke, and showed the captain into the darkened parlor. It always smelled damp and musty and unused, and the fireplace had a cold, dark look as though no comforting fire had ever burned there.

“Tell Master Tipton ’tis Captain Butts of the Arundel wants to see him,” said the stranger, laying aside his hat with its tarnished gilt lace and wiping his partly bald head with the corner of his red neckerchief. All the time he was looking strangely about him at his unfamiliar surroundings.

There was the sound of a knife and fork rattling against a plate in the distance, and Jack, following the sound, went along the passage to the room beyond, where he knew Hezekiah was sitting at supper.

“There’s a man in the parlor,” said Jack, “would like to see you. He says his name’s Captain Butts of the Arundel.”

Hezekiah was looking at Jack as he spoke. He laid down his knife and fork immediately, and pushed back his chair and arose. Jack followed him back to the parlor. He stood outside of the door, looking in. The stranger arose as Master Tipton came in, holding out to the old America merchant a big, brown, hairy hand with a hard, horny-looking palm.

“How d’ye do, Master Tipton?” said he in his rattling voice. “I be mightily glad to see you.”

“Well, then, Master Captain Butts,” said Hezekiah, giving him a limp, reluctant hand, “I be mightily glad to see you, too,—more glad than you are to see me, like enough, for I’ve been looking for you these three days past, and wondering where was the Arundel. There be them nineteen servants down at the ‘Duck and Doe’ that should have been took away yesterday morning. Their lodging at the inn is a matter of ten pence a day each. Now, who do you think’s to pay for that there?”

“Well, well, Master,” said the other, “‘tweren’t no fault of mine that I weren’t here yesterday. Wind and tide be to blame, so whatever ye lose ye may just charge up ag’in’ them. We can’t sail without wind, can we? and we can’t sail ag’in’ the tide, can we? As for the men, why, the sooner I get my clearance papers and the men aboard the better ’twill suit me. The tide turns at eight o’clock, and if the wind comes up, as ’tis like to do, why, I’ll drop out and away with the turn o’ the water.”

Master Hezekiah looked around. Jack was still standing in the doorway. “You go in and get your supper, Jacky,” said he, and then he got up and closed the door, and Jack went back into the supper-room.

All the time that Jack sat at his meal old Deborah scolded him ceaselessly for being so late.

“’Tis always so,” said she, her voice growing shriller and shriller. “You be always late, and think of nobody but your own self.”

“No, I’m not always late, neither,” said Jack; “I wasn’t late to breakfast, or to supper either, yesterday.”

“But you didn’t come home to dinner at all,” said old Deborah, “and I kept it for you, and I kept it for you, and the ’taties all like wax in the oven, and not fit to eat.”

“I didn’t want any dinner,” said Jack. “I had something to eat down at the wharf.”

“Well,” said old Deborah, “you might just as well have been late as not to come at all, for I kept a-waiting and a-waiting for you till it was all dried up and wasted—aye, all wasted, and it what many a pore body ’u’d’a’ been glad enough to ’a’ had, too.”

In the interval of her scolding Jack could occasionally hear the distant rumbling of Captain Butts’s voice in the office.

It grew darker and darker in the twilight gloom of the kitchen, until Jack could hardly see the food upon his plate.

“I wish you’d bring a candle, Deborah,” said he, “I can’t see to find the way to my own mouth.”

“A candle!” said Deborah; “if you’d come to your supper in time you’d not need a candle to see. Now you may just go without.”

“Very well,” said Jack, “I don’t care, for I’m done.”

“Then, if you’re done, you may go down to the pump and fetch back some water.”

Jack took the pail and went off with it. He was gone a long time, and the night was fairly settled when he came stumbling back into the kitchen, slopping the water upon the steps and the floor.

“Why,” said Deborah, “I thought you was never coming. Your uncle’s asking for you. He’s over in the office now, and he wants to see you there.”

“Very well,” said Jack, “if I’d known that, may be I’d hurried and may be I wouldn’t.”

In the office he found Captain Butts seated at the tall desk, with a bottle of Hezekiah’s old Jamaica rum before him. They had been looking over some papers, and the Captain had evidently been helping himself very freely to the rum. He smelt strong of the liquor. He was leaning over the desk, his chin resting upon his fists. He looked up at Jack with his keen gray eyes from under his bushy eyebrows. “Is this the boy?” said he. Hezekiah, who sat opposite to his visitor, nodded without speaking.

“Come hither, my hearty,” said Captain Butts, beckoning to Jack. Jack came forward slowly. “And so ye’re a hard one to manage, be ye? By blood! if I had ye aboard the Arundel for a few days, I’d manage ye.”

“Who says I’m hard to manage?” demanded Jack, indignantly.

“That does your good uncle,” said the Captain. As he spoke he reached out suddenly, and catching Jack by the arm held him tight, feeling up and down the length of his arm. “Ye be well put together, my hearty,” said he; “ye’d make a valuable servant in the tobacco-fields,” and he winked tipsily as he spoke. “Now, being as ye’re so hard to manage, how’d you like it if you was to take a cruise to the Americas with old Benny Butts?”

Jack could smell the rum heavy upon the captain’s breath, and he saw that he was a little tipsy. He jerked his arm away from the other’s grasp.

“I am well enough off here as I am, thank you, Master Captain,” said he, “and I don’t choose to go to the Americas at all.”

The Captain burst out laughing. He fetched a thump upon the desk before him that made the bottle of rum and the tumbler hop and jingle. “Harkee to that, now!” said he, “he don’t choose to go to the Americas,” and he gave another roar of laughter.

Master Hezekiah sat looking on at the two, resting his forehead upon his lean fingers, his hand shading his eyes from the light of the candle. Suddenly he cut into the talk. “Come, come, Captain Butts!” said he tartly, “let there be an end to this! Sure you forget what you’re saying. Come hither,” said he to Jack. Jack came around to him, and the old man lifted the lid of the desk and brought out a bundle of papers and a little bag of money. He counted out a few coins, which he made into a little pile. Then he untied the tape and chose a paper from among the others. Jack stood watching him. “Here be a list of the America servants down at the Golden Fish,” said Hezekiah, “and this”—here he chinked the money between his fingers as he gave it to Jack—“is fifteen shillings ten-pence. I want you to do something for me, Jacky. I want you to go down to the Golden Fish and pay Landlord Evans his account, and then give this release to Dockray, who hath the America men in charge. After that I want you to take them down to the wharf and deliver them over to Captain Butts, and get his receipt. D’ye understand?”

“Why, yes, I do,” said Jack; “but why do you want me to do this when the crimp can serve you so much better than I?” He could not understand why his uncle, who had never before made any demands upon him should suddenly prefer such a request as this.

“Why,” said Hezekiah, “you ask me for money t’other day, didn’t ye? Well, then, if you want money you must begin to do something for to earn it. What I want you to do now is to take these servants down and deliver them over to Captain Butts.”

“Oh, well,” said Jack, “I’m willing enough, but I don’t see why you should choose me to do it. What am I to do with them? Tell me again.”

“You’re to take them down to the wharf, d’ye understand? Then Captain Butts will give you a receipt for ‘em. Then you’ll have nothing more to do with the business.”

“Very well,” said Jack; “methinks I understand. And now if the Captain is ready to go, why, I am, too.”

As he and Captain Butts walked together down the street in the darkness, Jack said again: “I don’t see why he wants me to take his servants down to the wharf. He never asked such a thing of me before.”

Captain Butts, for reply, burst out laughing, and fetched him a clap on the shoulder that jarred him through and through. “Well, I do suppose you’ll find out some day why he sends you on his errands,” he said.

CHAPTER V

KIDNAPPED

AT THE END of the court the two parted, the Captain going on down to the wharf and Jack up to the Golden Fish. He found the crimp and gave him Hezekiah’s release, and then the redemptioners immediately began to make themselves ready. There was something pitiful in the meagerness of their preparation. One or two of them had nondescript bundles tied up in handkerchiefs, and one had a pair of stockings wrapped up in a piece of dirty paper. Beyond this they had nothing at all to take with them to the new world to which they were bound. But they seemed to borrow very little trouble on that score. They were very restless and turbulent at the near prospect of sailing. They had somehow contrived to obtain some liquor, and two or three of them were more than half drunk.

The crimp brought them out into the court of the inn and arranged them in some sort of order, two by two, by the dim light of the lantern. They jostled and pushed one another, and leered in the lantern light at Jack as he stood looking at them helplessly. “I’ll never be able to take them down to the wharf by myself,” said he.

“Oh, you’ll be able to take us,” said a big, bull-necked fellow; “a baby’d lead us wherever he chose for to go,” and then they all laughed.

“Well, I don’t know,” said the crimp, shaking his head as he looked them over; “like enough I’d better go with you as far as the wharf. I don’t know why he should have sent you to take ‘em, anyhow. Lookee!” said he to the huddled line of servants, in a suddenly-changed voice; “I won’t have none of your tricks, d’ye understand? D’ye see this?” and he fetched a bludgeon out of his pocket and showed it to them. “The first man as tries any of his tricks, I knocks him on the head, d’ye understand?”

“Why, master,” said one of the men, “you wouldn’t hurt us, would you? We be your lambs.”

“Never you mind,” said the crimp, shaking his head. “Don’t you go trying any of your tricks on me. Come along now, march!”

“Hurrah for the Golden Fish and Johnny Waddels!” cried out one of the men.

The others gave a broken and confused cheer as they marched away out of the court, the crimp walking beside the first couple, and Jack coming after to keep a lookout upon them. They marched along for a while, first down one street and then another until they had come to the water-front. The wind was blowing chilly. The bull-necked fellow had begun to sing. They walked along for some little distance and then crossed the street. Here the storehouses stood dark and deserted as they passed by them. At last they came to the wharf, across which the night wind swept without shelter.

“Well,” said the crimp, “I’ll leave you here. ’Tis no use my going any further.”

“Yes,” said Jack, “I can manage them very well now by myself, I suppose.”

“I’ll just wait under the lee of the shed here,” said the crimp, “till I see you’re all right.”

“Very well,” said Jack. “Come along,” said he to the men as they stood shivering in their thin, ragged clothes. The bull-necked fellow had ceased his discordant singing. At Jack’s bidding they now marched out along the wharf. There were lights out in the darkness at the end of the wharf, where the sloop lay black and shapeless in the night. When Jack came to where the light was he found two dark figures standing waiting for him on the wharf. One of them was Captain Butts, the other was the man in the knit cap, who now carried a lantern hanging over his arm. There were two or three men, two of them also with lanterns, standing on the deck of the sloop. Jack knew that the boat that had brought the Captain off from the brig was lying in the darkness beyond, for he could hear the sound of voices, and then the sound of the rattle of an oar.

Captain Butts had twisted his handkerchief well up about his throat. “Well,” said he, “I thought you was never coming.”

“I came as soon as I could,” said Jack.

“Just bring the men out to the boat, across the sloop here,” said the Captain; and at Jack’s bidding the men, one after another, jumped down from the wharf to the deck of the sloop below. Jack followed them, and the Captain and the man with the lantern followed him. “Where’s your list?” said the Captain, and then, as Jack gave it to him: “Hold the lantern here, Dyce. That’s it.” He held the list to the dull light, referring to it as he counted the shivering transports who stood in line. “Sixteen—seventeen—eighteen—nineteen—nineteen all told. That’s right. Now, then, look alive, my hearties, and get aboard as quick as you can!”

Jack stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the chill night breeze. The wharf and the sloop, deserted in the night, seemed a singularly dark and lonely background to the dimly moving figures. The water, driven by the wind, splashed and dashed noisily around the end of the wharf. One by one the redemptioners clambered clumsily over the rail of the sloop and down into the boat alongside, stumbling over the thwarts in the darkness and settling themselves amid the growling and swearing of the sailors. “Are you all right?” asked the Captain.

“All right, sir,” said Dyce.

Suddenly the Captain turned sharply toward Jack. “Now, then,” said he, “you get aboard too!” Jack gaped at him. “You get aboard too!” said Captain Butts again.

“What do you mean?” said Jack.

“I mean that you’re going aboard too,” said the Captain, and as he spoke he reached out and caught Jack by the collar. “That’s why you were sent here,” said he, “and that’s what I’m bound to do. I’m bound to take you to the Americas with me.”

Then Jack saw it all in a flash. He stood for one stunned instant, and then he began struggling fiercely to loosen himself from the Captain’s grasp upon his collar. The next instant he felt himself jerked violently backward and he heard the Captain’s voice saying: “You get into the boat down there! You’ll do as I tell you, if you know what’s good for you!”

Jack twisted and struggled desperately and frantically, but still the Captain held him in a grip like a vise. “Let me go!” gasped Jack. “Let me go!”

“Into the boat, I tell ye!” he heard the Captain’s voice growling in his ear, and at the same time he found himself flung forward violently toward the rail of the sloop. The boats and the dark waters were just below. He saw dimly, his sight blurred with the fury of his struggles, the dark figures of the men in the boat below. He flung out his feet against the rail, bracing himself against the Captain’s hold; at the same time he clutched hold of the stays. “Here, Dyce, loose his hand there,” said the Captain’s voice, panting with his struggles. “The young villain! What d’ye mean, anyhow?”

The man with the knit cap sprang forward at the Captain’s bidding, and, still holding the lantern, began to pluck Jack’s fingers loose from the stays. Then suddenly Jack screamed out, “Help!—Help!—Help!” three times, and at the same time he kicked backward violently against the Captain’s shins.

“You will, will you!” wheezed the Captain. As he spoke he jerked Jack violently backward. Jack had just time to see a whirling flash in the light of the lantern. Then there came a deafening, blinding crash. Ten thousand sparkling stars flew whirling around and around him. He felt a hot stream shoot down across his face, and he knew that it was blood. There was another crash, this time duller and more distant, then a humming that droned away into stillness—then nothing.

“By blood! Captain,” said Dyce, “I believe you’ve killed the boy.”

The Captain thrust the pistol with which he had struck Jack back again into his pocket. “The young villain!” he said, panting with his late efforts. “He’ll kick me, will he? And he’d’a’ had the town down on us if I hadn’t shut his noise.” He lowered down upon Jack’s figure lying deathly still and in a dark heap on the deck. Dyce bent over the senseless form, holding the lantern to the face. Jack’s eyes were upturned. His legs and body twitched; his head was streaming with blood and his face was bloody. Captain Butts stooped over him. “Oh! he’s all right,” said he roughly; “he’ll come to by and by; he’s only stunned a trifle. Get him aboard and be quick about it! There’s somebody coming along the wharf now. Here; here’s his hat. Catch it there.”

[f42]

“‘HE’LL COME TO BY AND BY; HE’S ONLY STUNNED A TRIFLE,’ SAID THE CAPTAIN.”

CHAPTER VI

ABOARD THE ARUNDEL

FOR a long while Jack was very light-headed and sick. He did not seem to have any strength. It seemed to him that several days passed while he lay in his berth, now partly waking, now partly sleeping. When he was partly awake his mind seemed to wander, and he could not separate the things he now saw from the things he had seen before. Both seemed grotesque and distorted. It seemed to him that his father was nearly always with him. He had a line of Greek to construe, but he could never get the words correctly. He kept trying and trying to get the words in their proper order, but always, when he would get the line nearly correct, it would fall to pieces, and he would have to begin all over again. He felt that his father was very angry with him, and that he was driving him on to complete the line, and he felt that if he could only finish the task he would have rest and be well again. But there were three words that never would fit rightly into the line, and he never could make them fit into it. With these several fancyings there commingled the actual things about him. His father seemed to him to be waiting and waiting for him to complete his task; but at the same time he saw the sloping deck of the vessel and the berths upon the other side, and could feel the brig rising and falling and rolling upon the sea. There was ever present in his ears the sound of creaking and groaning and rattling and sliding, and there were men talking together and smoking their pipes, the pungent smell of the tobacco helping to make him feel very sick. If he could only fit these words together into the line, then his father would go away, and he would be well and could go up on deck. Oh, how his head ached! He wished he could get away from these words that would not fit into the sentence.

Then the night would come, and he would be partly asleep. Sometimes he would lie half dreaming for an hour or more, and in the darkness the things of his fancy were very real.

Very soon after he had been brought aboard he had a dim, distorted vision of Dyce, the mate, coming with a lantern to where he lay, bringing somebody along with him. It seemed to him that the two men had leaned over him talking about him while a number of other people had stood near. The man who had come with the mate must have been Sim Tucker, a thin, little man, with a long, lean chin, who was a barber-leech. Jack had felt some one trim his hair, and then do something that had hurt him very much. It seemed to be a grotesque nightmare that the barber-leech had sewed up his head. Afterward a bandage was tied around his head, and then he felt more comfortable.

Jack knew very well that it had all been a dream, and he was always surprised to wake up and find the bandage around his head.

Now and then Sim Tucker would come and speak to him. “How d’ye feel now?” he would maybe say.

“Why,” said Jack, “I would be all well if my father would only go away. But I can’t construe that sentence.”

“You can’t what!”

“I can’t get those Greek words right, and my father won’t go away.”

“Why, your father says they’re all right.”

“Does he?”

“Aye.”

“But there are those four words. They won’t fit.”

“Why, yes, they fit all right. Don’t you see?” Then it seemed to Jack that they did fit into the sentence, and for a little while he was more easy in his mind.

After a while he began to get better, and his head got clearer. Then one day he was so well that he was able to crawl up to the deck. He had not eaten anything at all and was very weak. He climbed up the companion-way and stood with his head just above the scuttle. He looked aft almost along the level of the deck. In the distance was the rise of the poop-deck, with a man at the wheel just under the over-hang. The first mate, Dyce, still wearing his knit cap pulled down half over his ears, was walking up and down the poop-deck, smoking. With the rise and fall of the vessel, Jack could catch every now and then a glimpse of the wide, troubled ocean, moving and heaving with ceaselessly restless, crawling waves, cut keenly and blackly at the sharp rim of the horizon against the gray sky. Every now and then there was a great rush of air from the vast hollow sails overhead, that swept back and forth, back and forth across the wide, windy sky. The sailors looked at him as he stood there with the bandage wrapped around his head. He began to feel very sick and dizzy with the motion of the vessel, and presently he crept down below, back to his berth again.

“Be you feeling better?” said one of the men, coming to him.

“Yes, I think I am,” said Jack, “only it makes me sick and faint-like to stand up.”

“Well, you’ve been pretty sick,” said the man, “and that’s the sacred truth. I thought the Captain had killed you for sure when I saw him hit you that second crack with the pistol. I thought he’d smashed your head in.”

Several of the other men had gathered about his berth and stood looking down at him. Jack wished they would go away. He lay quite still, with his eyes shut, and by and by they did leave him.

He felt very lonely and deserted. A great lump rose in his throat when he thought of all that had happened to him. “I have not a friend in the world,” he said to himself, and then the hot tears forced themselves out from under his eyelids.

When next he opened his eyes he saw that Sim Tucker was standing over him. “How d’ye feel now?” said the barber-leech.

“Oh, I feel better,” said Jack irritably. “I wish you’d go away and let me alone.”

“Let me look at your head,” said the leecher. He unwound the bandage deftly with his long, lean fingers. “Aye,” said he, “ye’re getting along well now. To-morrow I’ll take out them stitches. He must have hit ye with the cock of the pistol to make a great, big, nasty cut like that.”

CHAPTER VII

ACROSS THE OCEAN

THE next morning Jack was up on deck again for a while, feeling very much better and stronger than the day before. In the afternoon Mr. Dyce came down into the steerage and told him that the Captain wanted to see him.

Jack, although he was now out of his bunk, was still very weak, and not yet accustomed to the rolling heave and pitch of the vessel at sea. He followed the mate along the deck in the direction of the round-house, balancing himself upon the slanting, unsteady plane, now and then catching at the rail or at the shrouds or stays to steady himself. Everything was still very fresh and new to him, so that, even though his mind was heavy with leaden apprehension concerning the coming interview with Captain Butts—the thought which weighed down his spirit with dull imaginings—even though his mind was full of this, the freshness and newness of everything was yet strong in his consciousness—the tumultuous noise of the sea, the sun shining bright and clear, the salt wind blowing strong and cold. Every now and then a cresting wave would flash out a vivid whitecap in the sunlight against the profound green of the limitless ocean; the sky was full of clouds, and purpling shadows dappled the wide stretch of ever-moving waters. The brig, plowing its way aslant to leeward, plunged every now and then with a thunderous clap of white foam into the oncoming wave, and the broad shadows of sail and rigging swept back across the sunlit deck with the backward and forward sweep of the masts against the sky high overhead. Of all these things Jack was strongly conscious as he walked along the deck, wondering, with that dull and heavy apprehension, what Captain Butts was going to say to him.

Two men on the poop-deck were heaving the log, one of them keeping tally with a slate; a third, with a red bandana handkerchief knotted about his head, stood gripping the wheel, holding the yawing vessel steadily to its course. The man with the slate looked at Jack as he came along the deck, clinging to the rail for support.

Captain Butts was waiting in the round-house, leaning with elbows upon the table. A bottle of rum and a half-emptied tumbler stood on the table at his elbow, and the cabin was full of the strong, pungent odor of the liquor. A chart, blackened and dirty as with long use, lay spread out on the table. Part way across it stretched a black line which the Captain had drawn—probably the supposed course of the vessel—for Captain Butts sailed by dead reckoning. He looked up from under his brows as Jack entered, frowning until his partly bald forehead swelled with knotted veins, but he did not immediately say anything. Jack had come forward and stood at the end of the table. The mate, who lingered close to the door, had taken out his pipe and was filling it with tobacco. Jack did not know how pale and thin he was, how sick he looked; he was conscious only of the weakness that seemed not only to make him unsteady upon his legs, but to unnerve him of all strength of spirit. As he stood there now, facing the Captain, he felt an hysterical choking in his throat, and he swallowed and swallowed upon the hard, dry lump that seemed to be there.

“Well, my hearty,” said the Captain, breaking the silence at last with his hoarse, rattling voice, “well, my hearty, you got your dose that time, or else I’m mistook. By Blood!” he continued with sudden savageness, “I’ll teach you to play with Benny Butts, I will, and to kick at his shins. By Blood! When you’re dealing with me, you’re not dealing with your poor old uncle as ye can bully and blatherskite as you please. By Blood! I’ll break your back if you go trying any of your airs with me, I will.” And as his anger rose with his own words, he opened his eyes wide and glared upon his victim. Jack did not dare to reply. He stood looking down, holding tight to the edge of the table and striving to balance himself to the lurching of the ship.

“Your uncle told me all about you, he did,” said Captain Butts, beginning again; “how you threatened him with the law and tried to make mischief atwixt him and your t’other folks. He told me how you stole his money away from him for to—”

“I never stole a farthing in my life,” said Jack hoarsely.

“D’ye give me back talk?” roared the Captain, smiting his palm upon the table. “By Blood! if ye answer me any of your back talk, I’ll clap ye in irons as quick as look at ye. I say ye did steal money from your uncle.” Again he glared at Jack as though defying him to reply, and Jack, conscious of his utter powerlessness, did not venture to answer. “I say ye did steal money from your uncle,” repeated the Captain, “and that again and again. He might have sent ye to jail had he been so minded, and maybe he would ha’ done so only for the shame o’ the thing. Now I tell ye what you’re going to do. You ‘re going to the Americas to be put to work under a master who’ll keep you out o’ mischief for five years. That’s what you’re going to do. After you’ve served out your five years in the Americas under a master, why, then, maybe, you’ll know how to behave yourself arter you get back home again.”

The brig gave a sudden heaving lurch that sent the bottle and glass sliding across the table. The Captain caught them with a quick sweep of his hand, while Jack, losing his balance, partly fell, partly sat abruptly down upon the seat beside him. He was up again almost instantly and stood once more holding by the side of the table.

“Now, you listen to what I say. You behave yourself decent while you’re aboard this here brig, and you’ll be treated decent, but you go a makin’ any trouble for me, and by Blood! I’ll clap you in irons, I will, and I’ll lay ye down in the hold, and there ye’ll stay till we drop anchor in Yorktown. D’ye hear that?”

Jack nodded his head.