"Shut your mouth, you fool, and let's see those shirts," growled Peabody.
"Yessir, yessir, immejately, sir," protested Washington. "Pity we haven't got a shirt of Chinee silk for the wedding, sir. And I haven't never seen the lady yet, sir, and — "
"Shut your mouth, I said!"
A little more of it and Washington would completely unsettle him — already Peabody was holding onto his self-control with a drowning man's grip. He had been two nights without sleep, and a third would leave him fit for nothing tomorrow, he told himself as he lay down on his cot in the sweltering night. He called up all his self-control, all his seaman's habits, to try to make certain of sleeping as soon as his head touched the pillow, grimly emptying his mind of all thoughts in the manner which up till now had proved infallible. Yet tonight sleep did not come at once. He turned over, once, twice, in his bath of sweat, fighting down the images which awaited their chance to flood into his mind like hungry wolves. He heard six bells strike, and seven, and it was Nature who decided the struggle in the end. At eight bells she asserted herself, struck him unconscious as though with a club, as she demanded her rights, her usurious repayment for the demands Peabody had made on her during the last forty-eight hours — forty-eight hours without sleep, of ceaseless activity, of continual mental strain of every possible kind. Once he was asleep his seaman's habits reasserted themselves to the extent of giving him every ounce of benefit from the six hours granted him.
So his hand was steady when he shaved next morning, and his eyes had not fulfilled their threat of being bloodshot, and he could listen without attention to Washington's ecstatic maunderings. He was as unobtrusively well clad a figure as heart could desire as he went down the ship's side and took his seat in the stern of the gig along with Jonathan and Murray, and Providence was kind, for the prodigious midsummer rain of Martinique held off during the short passage to the quay, although they were hardly inside the carriage which awaited them there when it roared down upon the roof thunderously enough to drown speech.
It was a pretty compliment which his men were paying him. The watch which had come on shore a few minutes earlier had resisted the temptation of drink and women — after eighteen weeks at sea! — and were waiting for him. They ran shouting and yelling beside the clattering carriage, whooping and capering in the rain, scaring the colored girls who put their heads out of windows. Cheering, they thronged the carriage when it halted, so that Peabody, smiling, had to push his way through them. Their cheerful antics directed the vast crowd of Martinique, of all ages, colors, and attire, who had come hurrying at the amazing news of the immediate marriage of the Governor-General's daughter. They crowded the vast audience hall, and their cheerful babble rose to a deafening height, to die away magically when everyone peered on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of Anne in white when she entered. The Marquis asked Peabody and Anne grave questions, first in French and then in English, as, in his capacity as magistrate, he carried through the civil ceremony.
Things grew vaguer and vaguer in Peabody's mind — he was only conscious of the warmth and perfume of Anne beside him, and then, with a slight shock of surprise, that Anne's brows were straight and level, black above the blue. It puzzled him that he had not realized before how straight they were.
There were more ceremonies; there was the signing of documents, there was a half-formal procession into the big room which he had last seen cleared for dancing. There were toasts and then there was laughter. There were endless presentations. There was a brief moment when he saw Jonathan across the room, wineglass in hand, laughing boisterously with Madame Clair.
It all passed, and he was back in the carriage with the rain thundering on the roof again, but this time Anne was beside him, and he was more delirious with happiness than ever before, even at his most drunken moments. There was a small house — what house it was he had no idea — where there were eager colored servants who giggled excitedly when Anne spoke to them in their queer tongue. There was a bedroom with a mosquito net hung over the bed in the vastest dome Peabody could ever remember seeing, and Washington was there, unpacking things and chattering feverishly about a variety of subjects, from his master's future happiness to the surprising differences between colored girls in New York and in Martinique — an endless flow of babble which only ceased when Peabody turned on him and hurled him from the room like Adam from Eden.
Anne came to him, and came to his arms like a child. Time was brief; life was short, and happiness was there to be grasped, as elusive as an eel and as hard to retain once caught. The little French words which Anne used were elusive too, and no drink he had ever drunk was as madly intoxicating. An hour before dawn he had, he knew, to start his preparations for leaving Anne for the day. He wanted to be on the deck of the Delaware at the first peep of daylight to attend to the work of the ship.
Chapter XVII
LIEUTENANT HUBBARD clearly had something unpleasant to report, after he had given an account of how the work on the ship had progressed. He held his lanky figure rigid as he stood in the stuffy cabin, and he looked over the top of Peabody's head as he said the words.
"Midshipman Jonathan Peabody, sir. Absent without leave."
"He didn't come back last night?"
"No, sir."
Hubbard was saying no more than the formalities demanded.
"He was with Mr. Atwell. What has Atwell to say about it?"
"Shall I pass the word for Mr. Atwell to report so that you can ask him, sir?"
"Yes."
Atwell's ugly face showed all the signs of anxiety.
"After the — the wedding, sir — "
"Yes, go on."
"We was all invited to another house. . . . Madame Clair's, sir — I don't mean that sort of house, sir."
"I know Madame Clair. Go on."
"I didn't see much of Mr. Peabody while we was there. To tell the truth, sir, there was drinking going on and skylarking."
"Yes."
"But at seven bells I thought I'd leave, sir, and I looked for Mr. Peabody and I had to look a long time. And when I found him — "
"Where was he?"
"He was with Madame Clair. She was very merry, sir. To tell the truth, she had her arms round him."
"Go on."
"I said it was time to go back to the ship. And he said — "
"Go on."
"He said he'd be eternally damned if he'd ever go back to the damned ship again. He said I could go back to hell on water if I wanted to, but he wasn't such a damned fool as me."
"What did you say to that?"
"I said I'd forget his insolence if he'd only come back with me. I'd let bygones be bygones. I could see he'd been drinking, sir."
"And he refused to come?"
"Yes, sir. I tried to make him, sir, but — "
"But what?"
"To tell the truth, sir, Madame Clair called the servants and — and I had to go without him."
"Very good, Mr. Atwell. No blame attaches to you. Thank you, Mr. Hubbard."
This was added bitterness in his strangely mixed cup. Jonathan had deserted in the presence of the enemy, and if Jonathan had his deserts he would be dangling at the yardarm if he could once lay his hands on him. If Jonathan came back voluntarily he would spare his life after the severest punishment he could devise — but he knew Jonathan had no intention whatever of coming back. Nor, in a neutral port, could any attempt be made to recapture him, for Jonathan could stand on the quay and merely laugh at them. Probably that was what he would do. Peabody reached for the log book and wrote in it. "Midshipman Jonathan Peabody deserted." Peabody's expression as he wrote reflected his mood; it was that same mood in which Cato put his sword point to his breast. He did not spare himself any of the agony.