Black'erchief Dick

“Dangerous! Why, there’s no trade from here to the Indies more dangerous than ours. I’ve been about a bit, and mind you I know.”

Mat Turnby shifted his large body to a position of greater ease, tilted slightly the rum cask on which he was sitting, and leaned back against the fully rigged mast, balancing himself carefully in accordance with the gentle roll of the ship.

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Mat,” remarked a wiry, black-bearded man, who squatted on a coil of rope some six feet away. “I’ve been on this ship two years now, and how many fights have I had with the Preventative folk? Three! How many hands did we lose in the lot? Eleven! That’s not danger!”

“Ah!” said the other, wisely nodding his head, “maybe, maybe, Blueneck, but it’s some nine months since we last went foul them coastguards and since then we’ve been coming and going as though the damned old Channel belonged to us. Such scatter-brained tricks don’t pay in the end.”

“You be careful what you’re saying, Mat Turnby,” piped a shivering, miserable, little man, who was trying to protect himself from the cutting February wind with a ragged, parti-coloured blanket which he continually wrapped and unwrapped about his skeleton-like shoulders, “you be careful what you’re saying. All kinds o’ things on this ship have ears,” and he nodded once or twice significantly.

The big man moved uneasily on his unstable seat, but he answered boldly enough:

“I saying? Here, you mind what you’re saying, you snivelling rat! Saying? I’m not saying aught as I am ashamed of--I say these daring tricks don’t pay in the end--and--and--they don’t,” he finished abruptly.

“Oh! it’s not for the likes o’ us to talk about what the Captain does,” said the little man whiningly. He snuffled noisily and unwrapped and wrapped his blanket again. “Not for the likes o’ us,” he repeated.

“Who’s saying aught of the Cap’n?” roared Mat, bringing the cask to the deck with a thud. “Who’s saying aught of the Cap’n?”

“Oh! no one, no one at all,” said the shiverer, considerably startled. Then he added, as the big man slid back against the mast once more: “But if no one did--that’s all right, ain’t it? If no one did, I say.”

Mat swore a round of obscene oaths under his breath and there was silence for a minute or two.

They were nearly at the end of the trip. Indeed, another two hours or so would see them safely at anchor in the safest of all smugglers’ havens--the mouth of the River Blackwater, and their cargo easily and openly landed on Mersea Marsh Island.

The shivering little man smiled to himself at the thought of it. The warm kitchen at the Victory Inn, the smoking rum-cup, and the pleasant sallies of the fair Eliza appealed to his present mood, and he sniffled again and rearranged his blanket.

The green, white-splashed water lapped against the boat and a big saddle-backed gull flew over, screaming plaintively.

Mat began to talk again.

“I wonder why we do it,” he said slowly. “There ain’t anything in him--a weak, ugly little Spaniard, no----”

Blueneck interrupted sharply.

“Hush,” he said. “No good ever comes of talking about Black’erchief Dick, whatever is said.”

“Who said I was talking of the Cap’n?” said Mat quickly.

Blueneck looked uncomfortable, but he replied steadily: “Ah! Mat Turnby, you be careful!”

Mat laughed.

“I reckon you’ve got enough to do lookin’ after yerself--wi’out worrying about me, master Spaniard,” he said good-naturedly.

Blueneck shifted his position slightly.

“I reckon we git paid more than most sea-faring folk,” he said.

Mat snorted.

“Oh, yes!” he growled, “paid! We’re paid, all right, but how are we treated?”

Blueneck grinned.

“Like princes of the blood on the island,” he laughed.

“Oh! yes, on the island,” Mat’s voice rose, “but I say--on the brig? How then? Like dogs, men--like dirty, heathen, black-skinned dogs! And what I ask is, why do we do it? Are we men to be afraid of a brown-skinned, drunken little pirate of a Spaniard? Just because he owns a brig or two and smuggles as much rum in a year as any other man in the trade? What has he got about him that we should turn wenches and follow him, like the scum he thinks us? Save that he has a mighty plaguey way of turning fine words and----”

“The knife!”

The little man who had spoken huddled his blanket closer and shuddered again. The wind dropped for a moment and a tremor ran through the full sails, as though they also had shivered.

Mat Turnby laughed, albeit somewhat uneasily.

“The knife?” he said. “Lord, what’s a knife to a man who holds one of these?” He pulled a heavy flintlock pistol out of a pocket in the voluminous skirts of the sleeveless and brightly coloured coat which he wore over a rough homespun guernsey and held it on the palm of his open hand.

Blueneck smiled grimly.

“A precious great deal when the hand that holds the knife is Black’erchief Dick’s,” he said.

Mat Turnby laughed again contemptuously.

“Are you flesh and good red blood, or mud and pond slime, that you fear the foolish word of a Spanish sot? I tell you no knife held in a mortal hand can stand against a bullet from this.”

“Ay, in a mortal hand,” said he of the blanket, fearfully looking behind him.

The big sailor swore.

“Lord,” he said, “I knew not that I had come aboard a ship manned with a crew of beldames. I tell you this great captain of yours would be laid as flat as Mersea mud with one little lead ball from this.”