“Judas!” spoke one of the buccaneers admiringly. “The lad hath the good right guts, even so! And what a flow o' speech, keelhaul me! Blast my lights and liver, cap'n, but –”
“Be silent,” cut in Sir George harshly, for his hatred ate at his heart like a rat. “Hollinster, you waste your breath. Not this time do I face you with naked blade. You had your chance and failed. This time I fight you with weapons better suited to your rank and station. None knows where you went or to what end. None shall ever know. The sea has hidden better bodies than yours, and shall hide still better ones after your bones have turned to slime on the sea bottom. As for you –” he turned to the horrified girl who was stammering pitiful pleas, “you will bide with me awhile in my house. In this very cellar, belike. Then when I have wearied of you –”
“Hadst better be wearied of her by the time I return, in two months,” broke in the pirate captain with a sort of fiendish joviality. “If I take a corpse to sea this trip – which Satan knoweth is a plaguey evil cargo! – I must have a fairer passenger next time.”
Sir George grinned sourly. “So be it. In two months she is yours – unless she should chance to die before that time. You sail just before dawn with the red ruin of a man I intend to make of Hollinster wrapped in canvas, and you sink the remains so far out at sea they will never wash ashore. (Though it's few will recognize the corpse after I am through with him.) That is understood – then in two months you may return for the girl.”
As Jack listened to this callous and frightful program his heart shrivelled within him.
“Mary, my girl,” he said weakly, “how came you here?”
“A man brought a missive,” she whispered, too faint with fear to speak aloud. “It was written in a hand much like yours, with your name signed. It said that you were hurt and for me to come to you to the Rocks. I came; these men seized me and bore me here through a long evil tunnel.”
“As I told 'e, maaster!” shouted the hirsute Sam with gloating glee. “Trust ole Sam to trick 'em! 'E come along same as a lamb! Oh, that were a rare trick – and a rare fool 'e were, too!”
“Belay,” spoke up a dark, lean saturnine pirate, evidently first mate, “'tis perilous enough puttin' in this way to get rid o' the loot we takes. What if they find the girl here and she tips 'em the lay? Where'd we find a market this side the Channel for the North Sea plunder?”
Sir George and the captain laughed.
“Be at ease, Allardine. Wast ever a melancholy knave. They'll think the wench and the lad eloped together. Her father is against him, George says. None of the villagers will ever see or hear of either of them again and they'll never look here. You're downhearted because we're so far from the Main. Faith man, haven't we threaded the Channel before, aye, and taken merchantmen in the Baltic, under the very noses of the men-o'-war?”
“Mayhap,” mumbled Allardine, “but I'll feel safer wi' these waters far behind. The day o' the Brotherhood is passin' in these climes. Best the Caribs for us. I feel evil in my bones. Death hovers over us like a black cloud and I see no channel to steer through.”
The pirates moved uneasily. “Avast man, that's ill talk.”
“It's an ill bed, the sea bottom,” answered the other gloomily.
“Cheer up,” laughed the captain, slapping his despondent mate resoundingly on the back. “Drink a swig o' rum to the bride! It's a foul berth, Execution Dock, but we're well to windward of that, so far. Drink to the bride! Ha ha! George's bride and mine – though the little hussy seems not overjoyful –”
“Hold!” the mate's head jerked up. “Was not that a muffled scream overhead?”
Silence fell while eyes rolled toward the stair and thumbs stealthily felt the edge of blades. The captain shrugged his mighty shoulders impatiently.
“I heard nothing.”
“I did. A scream and a fallin' carcase – I tell you, Death's walkin' tonight –”
“Allardine,” said the captain, with a sort of still passion as he knocked the neck from a bottle, “you are become an old woman, in very truth, of late, starting at shadows. Take heart from me! Do I ever fret myself wi' fear or worry?”
“Better if you went wi' more heed,” answered the gloomy one direly. “A-takin' o' break-neck chances, night and day – and wi' a human wolf on your trail day and night as you have – ha' you forgot the word sent you near two years ago?”
“Bah!” the captain laughed, raising the bottle to his lips. “The trail's too long for even –”
A black shadow fell across him and the bottle slipped from his fingers to shatter on the floor. As if struck by a premonition, the pirate paled and turned slowly. All eyes sought the stone stairway which led down into the cellar. No one had heard a door open or shut, but there on the steps stood a tall man, dressed all in black save for a bright green sash about his waist. Under heavy black brows, shadowed by a low-drawn slouch hat, two cold eyes gleamed like burning ice. Each hand gripped a heavy pistol, cocked. Solomon Kane!
IV THE QUENCHING OF THE FLAME
“Move not, Jonas Hardraker,” said Kane tonelessly. “Stir not, Ben Allardine! George Banway, John Harker, Black Mike, Bristol Tom – keep your hands in front of you! Let no man touch sword or pistol, lest he die suddenly!”
There were nearly twenty men in that cellar, but in those gaping black muzzles there was sure death for two, and none wished to be the first to die. So nobody moved. Only the mate Allardine with his face like snow on a winding sheet, gasped:
“Kane! I knew it! Death's in the air when he's near! I told you, near two years ago when he sent you word, Jonas, and you laughed! I told you he came like a shadow and slew like a ghost! The red Indians in the new lands are naught to him in subtlety! Oh, Jonas, you should ha' harkened to me!”
Kane's sombre eyes chilled him into silence. “You remember me of old, Ben Allardine – you knew me before the brotherhood of buccaneers turned into a bloody gang of cutthroat pirates. And I had dealings with your former captain, as we both remember – in the Tortugas and again off the Horn. An evil man he was and one whom Hell fire hath no doubt devoured – to which end I aided him with a musket ball.
“As to my subletly – true I have dwelt in Darien and learned somewhat of stealth and woodcraft and strategy, but your true pirate is a very hog and easy to steal upon. Those who watch outside the house saw me not as I stole through the thick fog, and the bold rover who with sword and musket guarded the cellar door, knew not that I entered the house; he died suddenly and with only a short squeal like a stuck hog.”
Hardraker burst out with a furious oath: “What want you? What do you here?”
Solomon Kane regarded him with a cold concentrated hate in his eyes; yet it was not so much the hatred that was blood chilling – as it was a bleak certainty of doom, a relentless cold blood lust that was sure of satiety.
“Some of your crew know me of old, Jonas Hardraker whom men call the Fishhawk.” Kane's voice was toneless but deep feeling hummed at the back of it. “And you well know why I have followed you from the Main to Portugal, from Portugal to England. Two years ago you sank a ship in the Caribees, ‘The Flying Heart' out of Dover. Thereon was a young girl, the daughter of – well, never mind the name. You remember the girl. The old man, her father, was a close friend to me, and many a time, in bygone years have I held his infant daughter on my knee – the infant who grew up to be torn by your foul hands, you black devil. Well, when the ship was taken, this maid fell into your clutches and shortly died. Death was more kind to her than you had been. Her father who learned of her fate from survivors of that massacre, went mad and is in such state to this day. She had no brothers, no one but that old man. None might avenge her –”