The Book of Wonder

  THE LOOT OF BOMBASHARNA

  Things had grown too hot for Shard, captain of pirates, on all theseas that he knew. The ports of Spain were closed to him; they knewhim in San Domingo; men winked in Syracuse when he went by; the twoKings of the Sicilies never smiled within an hour of speaking of him;there were huge rewards for his head in every capital city, withpictures of it for identification--_and all the pictures wereunflattering_. Therefore Captain Shard decided that the time had cometo tell his men the secret.

  Riding off Teneriffe one night, he called them all together. Hegenerously admitted that there were things in the past that mightrequire explanation: the crowns that the Princes of Aragon had sent totheir nephews the Kings of the two Americas had certainly neverreached their Most Sacred Majesties. Where, men might ask, were theeyes of Captain Stobbud? Who had been burning towns on the Patagonianseaboard? Why should such a ship as theirs choose pearls for cargo?Why so much blood on the decks and so many guns? And where was the_Nancy_, the _Lark_, or the _Margaret Belle_? Such questions as these,he urged, might be asked by the inquisitive, and if counsel for thedefence should happen to be a fool, and unacquainted with the ways ofthe sea, they might become involved in troublesome legal formulae. AndBloody Bill, as they rudely called Mr. Gagg, a member of the crew,looked up at the sky, and said that it was a windy night and lookedlike hanging. And some of those present thoughtfully stroked theirnecks while Captain Shard unfolded to them his plan. He said the timewas come to quit the _Desperate Lark_, for she was too well known tothe navies of four kingdoms, and a fifth was getting to know her, andothers had suspicions. (More cutters than even Captain Shard suspectedwere already looking for her jolly black flag with its neatskull-and-crossbones in yellow.) There was a little archipelago thathe knew of on the wrong side of the Sargasso Sea; there were aboutthirty islands there, bare, ordinary islands, but one of them floated.He had noticed it years ago, and had gone ashore and never told asoul, but had quietly anchored it with the anchor of his ship to thebottom of the sea, which just there was profoundly deep, and had madethe thing the secret of his life, determining to marry and settle downthere if it ever became impossible to earn his livelihood in the usualway at sea. When first he saw it, it was drifting slowly, with thewind in the tops of the trees; but if the cable had not rusted away,it should be still where he left it, and they would make a rudder andhollow out cabins below, and at night they would hoist sails to thetrunks of the trees and sail wherever they liked.

  And all the pirates cheered, for they wanted to set their feet on landagain somewhere where the hangman would not come and jerk them off itat once; and bold men though they were, it was a strain seeing so manylights coming their way at night. Even then...! But it swerved awayagain and was lost in the mist.

  And Captain Shard said that they would need to get provisions first,and he, for one, intended to marry before he settled down; and so theyshould have one more fight before they left the ship, and sack thesea-coast city of Bombasharna and take from it provisions for severalyears, while he himself would marry the Queen of the South. And againthe pirates cheered, for often they had seen seacoast Bombasharna, andhad always envied its opulence from the sea.

  So they set all sail, and often altered their course, and dodged andfled from strange lights till dawn appeared, and all day long fledsouthwards. And by evening they saw the silver spires of slenderBombasharna, a city that was the glory of the coast. And in the midstof it, far away though they were, they saw the palace of the Queen ofthe South; and it was so full of windows all looking toward the sea,and they were so full of light, both from the sunset that was fadingupon the water and from candles that maids were lighting one by one,that it looked far off like a pearl, shimmering still in its haliotisshell, still wet from the sea.

  So Captain Shard and his pirates saw it, at evening over the water,and thought of rumours that said that Bombasharna was the loveliestcity of the coasts of the world, and that its palace was lovelier eventhan Bombasharna; but for the Queen of the South rumour had nocomparison. Then night came down and hid the silver spires, and Shardslipped on through the gathering darkness until by midnight thepiratic ship lay under the seaward battlements.

  And at the hour when sick men mostly die, and sentries on lonelyramparts stand to arms, exactly half-an-hour before dawn, Shard, withtwo rowing boats and half his crew, with craftily muffled oars, landedbelow the battlements. They were through the gateway of the palaceitself before the alarm was sounded, and as soon as they heard thealarm Shard's gunners at sea opened upon the town, and before thesleepy soldiery of Bombasharna knew whether the danger was from theland or the sea, Shard had successfully captured the Queen of theSouth. They would have looted all day that silver sea-coast city, butthere appeared with dawn suspicious topsails just along the horizon.Therefore the captain with his Queen went down to the shore at onceand hastily re-embarked and sailed away with what loot they hadhurriedly got, and with fewer men, for they had to fight a good deal toget back to the boat. They cursed all day the interference of thoseominous ships which steadily grew nearer. There were six ships atfirst, and that night they slipped away from all but two; but all thenext day those two were still in sight, and each of them had more gunsthan the _Desperate Lark_. All the next night Shard dodged about thesea, but the two ships separated and one kept him in sight, and thenext morning it was alone with Shard on the sea, and his archipelagowas just in sight, the secret of his life.

  And Shard saw he must fight, and a bad fight it was, and yet it suitedShard's purpose, for he had more merry men when the fight began thanhe needed for his island. And they got it over before any other shipcame up; and Shard put all adverse evidence out of the way, and camethat night to the islands near the Sargasso Sea.

  Long before it was light the survivors of the crew were peering at thesea, and when dawn came there was the island, no bigger than twoships, straining hard at its anchor, with the wind in the tops of thetrees.

  And then they landed and dug cabins below and raised the anchor out ofthe deep sea, and soon they made the island what they calledshipshape. But the _Desperate Lark_ they sent away empty under fullsail to sea, where more nations than Shard suspected were watching forher, and where she was presently captured by an admiral of Spain, who,when he found none of that famous crew on board to hang by the neckfrom the yard-arm, grew ill through disappointment.

  And Shard on his island offered the Queen of the South the choicest ofthe old wines of Provence, and for adornment gave her Indian jewelslooted from galleons with treasure for Madrid, and spread a tablewhere she dined in the sun, while in some cabin below he bade theleast coarse of his mariners sing; yet always she was morose and moodytowards him, and often at evening he was heard to say that he wishedhe knew more about the ways of Queens. So they lived for years, thepirates mostly gambling and drinking below, Captain Shard trying toplease the Queen of the South, and she never wholly forgettingBombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on thetrees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before thewind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but assoon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became anordinary uncharted rock.

  They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast townsas of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and evenattached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they wouldplunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship waswrecked on their island of a night they said it was all to the good.They grew very crafty in seamanship, and cunning in what they did, forthey knew that any news of the _Desperate Lark_'s old crew would bringhangmen from the interior running down to every port.

  And no one is known to have found them out or to have annexed theirisland; but a rumour arose and passed from port to port and everyplace where sailors meet together, and even survives to this day, of adangerous uncharted rock anywhere between Plymouth and the Horn, whichwould suddenly rise in the safest track of ships, and upon whichvessels were supposed to
have been wrecked, leaving, strangely enough,no evidence of their doom. There was a little speculation about it atfirst, till it was silenced by the chance remark of a man old withwandering: "It is one of the mysteries that haunt the sea."

  And almost Captain Shard and the Queen of the South lived happily everafter, though still at evening those on watch in the trees would seetheir captain sit with a puzzled air or hear him muttering now and againin a discontented way: "I wish I knew more about the ways of Queens."