"I take it that all the people of my class admire America, and most of them wanted her to win."
"You amaze me. I wonder how they'll feel after the third war. Then we won't be busy with Napoleon, and the outcome may surprise all admirers of America. I remind you that no revolt against the throne ever endured for long, from the peasants' uprising under Watt Tyler, through Monmouth's, through the Civil War, clean down to the peasants' rebellion under Washington. The latter has lasted forty-two years. That seems a long time—but the mills of the gods grind slowly. We shall see."
Dick sprang to his feet, his face darkly flushed.
"I drink to a ship that did her part in teaching traitors a lesson," he cried. "To Our Eliza."
"I'll join you in it, but let it go at that," Lord Tarlton replied.
"I remember meeting one of her crew," I said when the table had stilled again.
Again it stilled until the nobleman spoke. "Is that possible?"
"He was an East Indian who had settled in Africa," I went on. "Before then he had been a lascar, serving under you on the sloop of war Our Eliza. He had learned to speak English and told me of the battle."
"He did?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Is that where you got the impression that the Saratoga sank on the following evening? For I thought you said it was some sort of letter—"
"I had disremembered, as we say in Tavistock."
"I doubt if the expression is Devon. It sounds more like Yankee."
"Puran told me that two other survivors of the fight were in Africa," I went on. "Both were American Tories who became officers under you. One, Hamed Reis, became a pirate captain under the Sultan of Morocco. The other, called Murad Reis, served the Pasha of Tripoli. It was he who ambushed and sank the American schooner the Vindictive off the Aegadian Isles. Her course had been betrayed to him by someone in Malta."
Harvey turned slowly pale, Dick had a witless stare, and I could not look at Sophia. But Captain Godwine, Lord Tarlton, sat gracefully in his chair, a look almost of beauty on his face, his lips pursed a little, as though from thought.
"You've picked up some odd stories in your comings and goings about Africa, Mr. Blackburn," he remarked at last.
"I'll try to remember them in detail on a later occasion."
"If I'm not mistaken—Sophia will correct me in that case—the Vindictive was the ship on which her suitor—the one she called Homer —was lost."
Sophia stared at her plate. "Shake not—your gory locks—at me," she gasped, her hand at her throat.
"If you can't talk sense, Sophia, please don't talk at all."
"Then I won't talk at all. I never have." She leaped up and ran away, weeping.
"Didn't you speak too harshly to her, my lord?" I asked. "She was merely quoting Shakespeare. You remember the speech, I know— Macbeth's to the ghost of Banquo."
"I remember it well. You're a very cultivated man. Now if you'll excuse me, I'll see about my daughter."
With his cane in his small white hand and his feet straight before him, he walked out of the room as might a phoenix newly risen from ashes.
"Now there's nothing to stop us from having a good old-fashioned brandy bout," Dick told Harvey.
CHAPTER 28
Ghosts Walking
The bout had lasted only a round or two when both contestants took the count, one with his head pillowed on his arms on the table, the other gently sliding from his chair to the floor. The hired footmen lugged them to their beds. Jim did not have to touch them.
They were down at nine, helping themselves liberally to the kidney pudding, fried herring, curried eggs, and other breakfast dishes, none the worse for their dissipations, indeed, remarkably fresh of face and bright of eye. It was doubtful whether they remembered some discomforting remarks I had made at the dinner or wondered if they had dreamed them. Sophia looked wistful and touching and quite beautiful. It seemed that she kept away from me when I stood alone, but invariably came up when I talked to Harvey in ill-hidden protectiveness.
Lord Tarlton appeared in half an hour, blaming the years on his back for his tardiness, but by all sign impervious to their weight-graceful, pretty, and courtly. No concern over last night's events appeared to cross his mind. He spoke of the good food and the fine wines without mark of study. I could be sure he would not speak of the long past until again I raised the subject; and only if he were brought to bar before a jury of his peers need he answer questions. But he could not deny that terrifying possibility—he did not know my weapons or my intent—and I was not troubled by his seeming complacence, and felt an inkling that all went well.
My guests had dressed for the field. When I had placed them in butts behind a hedge in a stubble field, a line of boys beat out a wide strip of partridge cover, flushing out the coveys which settled in thick woods. Their task was now to close in, and advancing slowly and carefully under the direction of the keeper, to drive them over the guns. Each guest had a pair of double-barreled pieces and a loader. As before, Lord Tarlton was attended by Pike.
"Blackburn, aren't you going to set us a good example?" he asked when I hung back of the butts.
"I may shoot a little when the drive's well underway."
"In the meantime I'll ask a favor, I shot badly yesterday afternoon —I didn't think I was flinching from the trigger, but perhaps I was. Will you seat yourself about ten feet back of Pike and watch a few shots? I think you're gunner enough to spot my fault."
"I doubt it, but will try, with pleasure."
I did not sit down but crouched, and not more than six feet behind the stocky tar. Firing at the first flight, the nobleman jerked at the trigger, missing with both barrels.
"You flinched rather badly that time, my lord," I said.
"I was afraid so. See if this is not better."
Firing again, he flinched at the first shot, but got off the other smoothly and dropped his bird. As flock after flock came over, he shot with varying smoothness, cursing when he missed, greatly elated when he killed clean, meanwhile questioning me as to his form. It seemed a remarkable exhibition of his personality and, under ordinary circumstances, I would have found it intensely interesting. But these circumstances were not ordinary; and I gave him only the outer fringe of my attention.
A scene pregnant with terrible event may have a strange beauty. Covey after covey of partridge broke from the woods in search of shelter; trustfully they flew until they came suddenly in sight of the guns; at this betrayal by their familiar haunts, they swerved in terror, some of them surviving to fly again, some darting into the unseen swishing pellets. I remembered the grapeshot's terrible sound as it broke over a deck. I saw the birds ineffably alive, borne swiftly on God-given miraculous wings, and I saw that life end, all over in an unguarded and undreamed instant, innocence and beauty ceasing; and I heard the thuds on the frost-hardened ground. The shots rang out with a kind of festiveness. Two of the shooters became wildly animated, calling back and forth, but the naked trees stood one and one, incommunicant with one another, and looked drear.
I felt sure the moment I was waiting for was near. It was not undreamed and unguarded like the instant of the partridges' sudden darkness and downward pitch. Lord Tarlton had fired one barrel and was holding the fire of the other until a target offered; Pike had finished loading the alternate gun, but was fingering the hammer and mumbling to himself.
He turned his head and spoke to me.
"Your honor, have ye got a penknife?"
"Yes."
"Loan it to me, your honor." Meanwhile he was turning toward me, the gun held in both hands. "There's a piece of trash stuck "