Marjorie Page 30

  CHAPTER XXX

  OUR FLAG COMES DOWN

  We lay still inside our fortalice for awhile, listening, as well as thethrobbing of our pulses would allow, to try and hear what our invaderswere doing.

  We could hear the sound of their voices down on the beach, and thesplashing they made in the water as they dragged their dead or woundedcomrades out of the water and hauled their boats close up to the shore.But beyond this we heard nothing, though the air was so still, now thatthe screaming of the birds had died away, that we felt sure that we musthear the sound of any advance in force.

  Lancelot whispered to me that it was possible that they might put offtheir assault until daybreak. They were in this predicament, that ifthey lit any of the lights which we made no doubt they carried, in orderto ascertain the plight that they were in, they would make themselvesthe targets for our muskets. But the one thing certain was that, underthe control of a man like Jensen, they would most certainly not resttill they tried to get the better of us.

  That Jensen himself was not among the disabled we felt confident, forLancelot, who had a fine ear, averred that he could distinguish thesound of Jensen's voice down on the beach, which afterward proved to beso, for Jensen, unable to distinguish in the darkness the amount ofinjury that his army had sustained, was calling over from memory thename of each man of his gang. Every pirate who answered to his namestated the nature of his wounds, if he had any. Those who made no answerJensen counted for lost, and of these latter there were no less thanthree.

  There was something terrible in the sense of a darkness that wasswarming with enemies. We were not wholly in obscurity inside ourenclosure, for we had a couple of the boat's lanterns, which shed enoughlight to enable us to see each other, and to look to our weapons,without allowing any appreciable light to escape between the timbers ofour fortification. Soon all our muskets were loaded again. Lancelotappointed one of the men who came to us on the raft, and who was stilltoo weak for active service, as a loader of guns, that in case ofattack we could keep up a steady firing. Happily for us, our supply ofammunition was tolerably large.

  For some time, however, we were left in peace. The blackness upon whichthe pirates had counted as an advantage had proved their bane. So therewas nothing for them to do but to wait with what patience they could forthe dawn.

  The dawn did come at last, and I never watched its coming with moreanxiety. Often and often in those days when I believed myself to befathom-deep in love I used to lie awake on my bed and watch the dawnfilling the sky, and find in its sadness a kind of solace for mine own.For a sick spirit there is always something sad about the breaking ofthe day. Perhaps, if I had been like those who know the knack of verses,I should have worked off my ill-humours in rhyme, and slept better inconsequence, and greeted the dawn with joy. Wonder rather than joy wasin my mind on this morning as the sky took colour and the woods stirredwith the chatter of the birds. For the pirates had disappeared! Theirboats lay against the beach, but there was, as it seemed to us at first,no visible sign of their masters.

  We soon discovered their whereabouts, however. They had groped, undercover of night, to the woods, and we soon had tokens of their presence.For by-and-by we could hear them moving in the wood, and could catch thegleam of their scarlet coats and the shine upon their weapons.

  In the wood they were certainly safe from us, if also we were, though inless measure, safe from them. As I have said, the wooded hill ran at asharp incline at some distance from the place where we had set up ourstockade, so we were not commanded from above, and, no matter how highthe pirates climbed, they could not do us a mischief in that way byfiring down on to us.

  They did climb high, but with another purpose, for presently we saw,with rage in our eyes and hearts, one bit of business they were bent on.Our flag fluttered down like a wounded bird, and it made me mad to thinkthat it was being hauled down by those rascals, and that we had no artto prevent them.

  Could we do nothing? I asked Lancelot impatiently. Could we not make asortie and destroy the boats that lay down there all undefended? ButLancelot shook his head. The way to the sea was doubtless covered by ourenemies in the wood. We should only volunteer for targets if weattempted to stir outside our stockade. There was nothing for it but towait.

  I think that it must have enraged the pirates to find us so wellprotected that there was no means of taking us unawares or of creepingin upon us from the rear. With the daylight they essayed to hurt us byfiring from the hill; but from the lie of the ground their shots did usno harm, either passing over our heads or striking the wall of ourstronghold and knocking off a shower of splinters, but doing no furtherdamage. We, on the contrary, were able to retaliate, firing through ourloopholes up the slope at the red jackets in the woods, and with thismuch effect, that soon the scarlet rascals ceased to show themselves,and kept well under cover. We felt very snug where we were, and fit tostand a siege for just so long as our victuals and water held out. Then,if the pirates remained upon the island, famine would compel us to asortie in the hope of clearing them from the woods, an adventure inwhich our chances of success seemed to kick the balance.

  But it did not come to that. About an hour before noon those of us whowere at the loopholes saw the shine of a scarlet coat among the trees onthe nearest slope, but before there was time to aim a musket somethingwhite fluttered above it. It was, as it proved, but a handkerchief tiedto a ramrod, but it was a flag of truce for all that, and a flag oftruce is respected by gentlemen of honour, whoever carries it.

  When the white flag had fluttered long enough for him who held it tomake sure that it must have been seen by us, the bearer came out fromthe cover of the wood and walked boldly down the slope. For all thedistance the sharp-sighted among us knew him at once for CornelysJensen, and it came into my mind that perhaps Lancelot might refuse toaccept him as an emissary. Lancelot, however, said nothing, but stoodquietly waiting while the man came nearer. But when he came within pitchof voice Lancelot called out to him to come to a halt.

  Jensen stopped at once and waited till Lancelot again called out to himto ask what he wanted. Jensen replied that he came under the protectionof a flag of truce; that he wished to come to terms with CaptainAmber--for so he called him--if it were by any means possible; that hewas alone and unarmed, and trusted himself to our honour. ThereuponLancelot called back to him to come nearer, and he would hear what hehad to say. We had driven some great nails that we had with us into oneof the posts of our wall to serve as a kind of ladder, and by thesenails Lancelot lifted himself to the top of the palisade, and sat therewaiting for Jensen's approach. I begged him not to expose himself, buthe answered that there was no danger, so long as Jensen remained withinshort range of half a dozen of our guns, that the fellows in the woodswould make himself a target. And so he sat there as coolly as if he werein an ingle, whistling 'Tyburn Tree' softly to himself as Jensen drewnear.