CHAPTER XVII
MISS PRINGLE CALLS ON MR. CLEGGETT
But the rushing onset of events struck them apart. Out of the nightleaped danger, enhancing love and forbidding it. From the starboardbow Captain Abernethy shrilled a cry of warning, and the heavy,bellowing voice of Loge shouted an answer of challenge and ferocity.The wind had fallen, but the lightning played from the clouds nowalmost without intermission. Cleggett saw Loge and his followers,machete in hand, flinging themselves at the rail. They lifted a hoarsecheer as they came. The fire from the Jasper B. had checked theassault temporarily; it had not broken it up; once they found lodgmenton the deck the superior numbers of Loge's crowd must inevitably tell.
Loge was a dozen feet in advance of his men. He had cast aside thelight sword which belonged to Cleggett, and now swung a grim machete inhis hand. Cleggett flung down his gun, grasped a cutlass, and sprangforward, his one idea to come to close quarters with that giganticfigure of rage and power.
But before Loge reached the bulwark on one side, and while Cleggett wasbounding toward him on the other, this on-coming group of Cleggett'sfoes were suddenly smitten in the rear as if by a thunderbolt. Out ofthe night and storm, mad with terror, screaming like fiends, withdistended nostrils and flying manes and flailing hoofs, there plungedinto the midst of the assaulting party a pair of snow-whitehorses--astounding, felling, trampling, scattering, filling them withconfusion. A rocking carriage leaped and bounded behind the furiousanimals, and as the horses struck the bulwark and swerved aside, itsweight and bulk, hurled like a missile among Cleggett's staggered andstruggling enemies, completed and confirmed their panic.
No troops on earth can stand the shock of a cavalry charge in the rearand flank; few can face surprise; the boarding party, convinced thatthey had fallen into a trap, melted away. One moment they weresweeping forward, vicious and formidable, confident of victory; thenext they were floundering weaponless, scrambling anyhow for safety,multiplying and transforming, with the quick imagination of panicterror, these two horses into a troop of mounted men.
This sudden and almost spectral apparition of galloping steeds andflying carriage, hurled upon the vessel out of the tempest, flung, apiece of whirling chaos, from the chaotic skies, had almost asstartling an effect upon the defenders. For a moment they paused, withweapons uplifted, and stared. Where an enemy had been, there wasnothing. So doubtful Greeks or Trojans might have paused and staredupon the plains of Ilion when some splenetic and fickle deity burstunannounced and overwhelming into the central clamor of the battle.
But it is in these seconds of pause and doubt that great commandersassert themselves; it is these electric seconds from which the herogathers his vital lightning and forges his mordant bolt. Genius claimsand rules these instants, and the gods are on the side of those whoboldly grasp loose wisdom and bind it into sheaves of judgment.Cleggett (whom Homer would have loved) was the first to recover hispoise. He came to his decision instantaneously. A lesser man mighthave lost all by rushing after his retreating enemies; a lesser man,carried away by excitement, would have pursued. Cleggett did not relaxhis grasp upon the situation, he restrained his ardor.
"Stand firm, men! Do not leave the ship," he shouted. "The day isours!"
And then, turning to Captain Abernethy, he cried:
"We have routed them!"
"Look at them crazy horses!" screamed the Captain in reply.
The animals were rearing and struggling among the ruins of the brokengangplank. As the Captain spoke, they plunged aboard the ship, and thecarriage, bounding after them, overturned on the deck--horses andcarriage came down together in a welter of splintering wheels andbroken harness and crashing wood.
A negro driver, whom Cleggett now noticed for the first time, shotclear of the mass and landed on the deck in a sitting posture.
For a moment, there he sat, and did nothing more. The pole broke loosefrom the carriage, the traces parted, and the two big white horses,still kicking and plunging, struggled to their feet and free from thewreckage. Still side by side they leaped the port bulwark, splashedinto the canal, and swam straight across it, as if animated with theinstinct of going straight ahead in that fashion to the end of theworld. Cleggett never saw or heard of them again.
"Bring a lantern," said Cleggett to Abernethy. "Let's see if this manis badly hurt."
But the negro was not injured. He rose to his feet as the Captainbrought the light--the storm was now subsiding, and the lightning wasless frequent--and stood revealed as a person of surprising size andunusual blackness. He was, in fact, so black that it was no wonderthat Cleggett had not seen him on the seat of the carriage, for unlessone turned a light full upon him his face could not be seen at allafter dark. He was in a blue livery, and his high, cockaded coachman'shat had stayed on his head in spite of everything.
Even sitting down on the deck he had possessed an air of patience.When he arose and the Captain flashed the light upon his face, itrevealed a countenance full of dignified good humor.
"Where did you come from?" asked Cleggett.
The negro removed the hat with the cockade before answering. He did itpolitely. Even ceremoniously. But he did not do it hastily. He hadthe air of one who was never inclined to do things hastily.
"From Newahk, sah," he said. "Newahk, New Jehsey, sah."
"But who are you?" said Cleggett. "How did you get here?"
The negro was gazing reflectively at the broken carriage.
"Ah yo' Mistah Cleggett, sah? Mistah Clement J. Cleggett, sah, theownah of dis hyeah boat?"
"Yes."
The negro fumbled in an inner pocket and produced a card. He gave itto Cleggett with a deferential bow, and then announced sonorously:
"Miss Genevieve Pringle, sah--in de cah-age, sah--a callin' on MistahClement J. Cleggett."
He completed the announcement with a dignified and courtly gesture,which seemed to indicate that he was presenting the ruined carriageitself to Cleggett.
"You don't mean in that carriage?" cried Cleggett.
"Yes, sah," said the negro. "Leas'ways, she was, sah, some time back.Mah time an' mah 'tention done been so tooken up wif dem incompatiblehosses fo' some moments past, sah, dat I cain't say fo' suah ef sheadheahed, or ef she didn't adheah."
He glanced speculatively at the carriage again. Cleggett sprangtowards the broken vehicle, expecting to find someone seriously injuredat the very least. But, from the ruin, a precise and high-pitchedfeminine voice piped out:
"Jefferson! Kindly assist me to disentangle myself!"
"Yassum," said the negro, moving forward in a leisurely and dignifiedmanner, "comin', ma'am. I hopes an' trusts, Miss Pringle, ma'am, yo'ain't suffered none in yo' anatomy an' phlebotomy from dis hyeahrunaway."
With which cheerful wish Jefferson lifted respectfully, and with acertain calm detachment, the figure of a woman from the debris.
"Thank you, Jefferson," she said. "I fear I am very much bruised andshaken, but I have been feeling all my bones while lying there, and Ibelieve that I have sustained no fractures."
Miss Pringle was a woman of about fifty, small and prim. Prim with anunconquerable primness that neither storm nor battle nor accident couldshake. If she had been killed in the runaway she would have lookedprim in death while awaiting the undertaker. She must have been wetalmost to those unfractured bones which she had been feeling; her blacksilk dress, with its white ruching about the neck, was torn andbedraggled; her black hat, with its jet ornaments, was crushed and hungaskew over one ear; nevertheless, Miss Pringle conveyed at once anddefinitely an impression of unassailable respectability and strongcharacter.
"Which of you is Mr. Cleggett?" she asked, looking about her, in thelantern light, at the crew of the Jasper B., as she leaned upon the armof Jefferson, her mannerly and deliberate servitor.
"I am Mr. Cleggett."
"Ah!" Miss Pringle inspected him with an eye which gleamed with a hintof latent possibilities of belligerency. "Mr. Cle
ggett," shecontinued, pursing her lips, "I have sought an interview to warn youthat you are harboring an impostor on your ship."
At that moment Lady Agatha joined the group. As the light fell upon herMiss Pringle stepped forward and thrust an accusing, a denunciatoryfinger at the Englishwoman.
"You," she said, "call yourself Lady Agatha Fairhaven!"
"I do," said Lady Agatha.
"Woman!" cried Miss Pringle, shaking with the stress of her moralwrath. "Where are my plum preserves?"
And with this cryptic utterance the little lady, having come to the endof her strength, primly fainted.
Jefferson picked her up and carried her, in a serene and statelymanner, to the cabin.