"Ninnes!"
The other started as if a shot had struck him between the shoulders, and then his head snapped around. Fitz came into the room and slammed the door before Jules could follow.
"You " The word was only a whisper but its impact stopped Fitz.
"I escaped," he answered a bit feebly. He was startled by what he saw in that white face before him. All Ninnes' ruddy tan had been bleached away, his bones almost cutting through the skin which bore lines of pain never to be erased.
"I might have known you would turn up!" There was something in that voice so raw and naked that Fitz could not identify it.
A jerk brought the lieutenant out of his chair. He crossed the room shakily to the nearest window, catching once at the edge of a chest to steady himself. There he stood, his back to Fitz.
"Crofts?" asked the Marylander uncertainly.
"He left for Paris before daylight this morning. There is a chance that the Commissioners may find him another command."
"And we—you are to wait him here?"
Ninnes’ shoulders shook with a spasm of what might have been hysterical laughter.
"What is there left for me nowadays except waiting?"
He swung around with a force which made him lurch almost to the table. As his tortured eyes met Fitz's, he thrust out his left arm.
There was no hand below the plain ruffle of his shirt-sleeve.
18
"Marine Come Aboard, Sir"
Captains! once more hoist your streamers,
Spread your sails, and plough the wave;
Tell your masters they were dreamers
When they sought to cheat the brave.
—new song, 1773
FlTZ, FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE LEFT WITHOUT ANY READY word, stood where he was. He had never liked Ninnes —in fact there had been times in the past when the antagonism he had felt since their first meeting had come close to real hatred. But at that moment he found himself feeling nothing but pity. Yet any indication of such a feeling, he sensed, would be salt laid in an open wound. He forced himself to pull out a chair, to sit down and face Ninnes, apparently unmoved by the other's somewhat melodramatic disclosure.
“You escaped too," he stated rather than asked in the same indifferent tone he had always used when speaking to the lieutenant.
Ninnes came back to the table and threw himself into the chair he had quitted a few minutes before. With his hand he took up the bottle standing within reach and sloshed part of its contents into a glass.
"Escaped?" He had schooled his voice down from the hysteric heights of a moment before. "Oh, no—not escaped. You can understand that the lobsterbacks have little use for a cripple. Our worthy doctor was well able to talk them out of having to feed another mouth in prison. When I could keep my feet we came over together. We got here yesterday."
He took a long pull from the glass and drew his right hand across his lips. There were drops of moisture beading on his forehead, trickling down to the dark stains below his hot, restless eyes.
"Watts is here now?"
Ninnes swallowed and coughed. "Aye. He's in the town, looking out supplies "
"Captain Crofts is sure of a ship?"
"He's still got his luck—or he wouldn't have come safely out of England. And he knows the Channel. The Commissioners won't look the other way when he walks in. Like as not they'll want a share in any venture he'll command."
"What about a crew?"
"He can ship any man he wants. There're a power of privateersmen—escaped prisoners and survivors of lost ships—hanging around, panting like hound dogs, for the Captain to take his choice of. And Matthews got through safe. Oh, he'll do well enough for men when he gets the planking to ship them on. All day long they've been coming up our stair to ask kindly when the Captain will be back and how many men he'll be wanting when he is. I haven't heard anything but that since I've been here. A new ship and a new crew "
Ninnes set down the glass and gave the bottle a furious push. It fell on its side and rolled away, dribbling a thin stream on the table. His eyes were hard and dark in his ravaged face, and the fingers of his hand clawed at the edge of the table as he faced Fitz across its scarred top.
"And now," he added, his lips twisting in a tortured little half-smile, "he's got him a marine officer, too. Just the one he would ship if he had his choice. Get out! Get out where I don't have to see that smooth gentry face of yours! You damned up-country horse rider! Get out!"
He grabbed for the neck of the rolling bottle. But Fitz was at the door. He couldn't fight Ninnes—not now.
"Run," taunted the other. "Run, you half-Tory landlubber! God help me if I ever set eyes on you again. You've got all the luck in the world "
Fitz stepped outside where the indignant Jules hovered ready to seize him. But he waved off the Breton and remained at the door crack. There had been something in that last outburst from Ninnes—something ugly. He could not go away and leave the lieutenant alone. Watts should be back. Fitz began to long for the calm capability of Watts the way a fever patient would long for cold water.
Jules pulled at his arm and growled in the patois of the docks. But Fitz remained at his post. He tried to give the Breton an explanation, that there was a sick officer within who had to be watched until the doctor returned. If Jules wished, he could stay below on the doorstep—Fitz would not leave. Apparently his honest concern made an impression on the Malouin, for Jules grunted an assent and clumped down the stairs. Fitz coaxed the door open an inch or so. Now the crack gave him sight of a small sliver of the table and a few inches of Ninnes' chair.
But the lieutenant was not in that seat. Fitz could hear him across the room as he returned to the table. The room was still then, so still that the pound of blood in his own head beat with drum rhythm. Fitz dared to pull at the door again. Now he caught the gleam of metal, heard the faint of its meeting wood.
On the portion of the table within sight lay a boarding pistol, a neat little weapon, deadly and sure.
A boarding pistol, an officer's sidearm—meant to be used at close quarters for defense—or for
Fitz moved. He was inside the room before Ninnes could stir. And he grasped that weapon before the other moved—seconds too late.
There were runnels of sweat rivering down the lieutenant's worn cheeks. A loose lock of hair was plastered to his forehead by it. And he looked up at Fitz with the snarl of a cornered wildcat.
He made no protest, but his harsh breathing filled the room. Then his eyes dropped from Fitz to the pistol in the marine's hand, and he laughed.
"Clumsy! I forget I'm a clumsy one-handed fool now." His voice fell into a dreary monotone. "I might have guessed you weren't gone! You've always been my ill luck, Lyon. How the devil must have laughed himself sick on that afternoon we met in Baltimore."
For a moment the drab walls of the room were gone and Fitz again saw that other, younger Ninnes, eager and strong, a brightly coated officer using his voice to pull in the recruits his captain needed. That was so far away now
"First you lost me Crofts' favor." With his forefinger Ninnes drew designs in the spilled wine which trickled across the table. He spoke wearily, an odd lost note in his voice.
"First you lost me Crofts' favor," he repeated, "and now you take from me a fighting man's way out. Because I can not try that again—I'll never have the courage "
"It's not courage " Fitz tried to protest.
But it was as if Ninnes could not hear. "What is there about you, Lyon," he continued, quietly enough, as if he were honestly puzzled by a problem beyond his solving. "You hold in two hands all I've ever wanted— and through no contriving of your own.
"When you were jumping about before that fencing master of yours, I was selling fish on the wharves. I got my learning a bit at a time—I was no gentleman's son to take my ease at my books. I got what I had the hard way. But you "
Fitz sat down in his old seat across the table. The bitterness of the other's jealousy was so nake
d that he felt scorched by it. But he knew that Ninnes was ridding himself of a poison which had burned in him a long, long time. It was as if the lieutenant could not master it any more—that he had resigned himself to defeat, to a hopelessness of never competing again with the man he so resented.
"But I have nothing for you to envy," Fitz cut across the monologue with a voice loud and steady enough to catch the other's attention. "If I am taken again by the English I may hang for murder—I fought a duel with my cousin and left him dying, I think. I have discovered during these past weeks that Lyon is an evil name which has been dragged through mire until it stinks in decent company (Lord, Fitz thought to himself, here I am declaiming like a parson, but at least he's listening now) and the only kinsfolk of whom I can be proud have no right to the name. As for Maryland —I'm landless and friendless there too. My uncle always resented my being at Fairleigh. He'll not welcome me if I try to go back. I've been a hanger on all my life and eaten charity bread—which is damned bitter stuff, even if it does fill the belly. I have nothing—not even a trade. But you have that—and a good one!"
"A trade?" Ninnes asked scornfully. "Oh, aye, and who will hire a ship's officer with only one fist? I'm not minded to live on as a broken tavern lounger, swilling the beer some will buy to hear my tales—like Sandy Andrews who tramped back from the French war with the eyes gone out of his head!" His finger had painted in the wine a rude outline of a ship—a small, swift thing—in spite of the crudeness of the lines one could sense the speed—scudding along under full sail.
"You're not lacking eyes," Fitz pointed out sharply. "And I'll warrant Crofts has not found you useless. Has he said aught "
Ninnes rubbed out the drawing with his palm. "I will accept pity from no man!"
"Pity? Good Lord, man, who's offering you pity? You are an experienced officer—the kind any captain would be pleased to have under him. Come out of that black fog of yours and see the truth!"
He emphasized his point by whacking the butt of the pistol down on the table. Suddenly noticing with what he was hammering he put it down hastily. To his utter astonishment there came a sound out of Ninnes which was almost a giggle, a giggle which grew into choked laughter, laughter which Fitz, horrified, knew was close to something else. He went blindly to the window and stood staring out at a cat making its way daintily along the gutter of the neighboring building, trying not to hear those strangled gasps behind him. Ninnes might hate him for all time for being a witness to such a breakdown, but the lieutenant would not reach for the pistol again. And he might even look upon life with a healthier eye from now on.
"Ninnes, what is that blasted French fool doing looped halfway over the stairs?" Watts' voice preceded him into the room, and Fitz had time to get to the door in an impulse to shield his companion from the surgeon's shrewd scrutiny, until Ninnes had time to order his emotions.
“Oh " Watts put down the basket he had been been carrying and stood, hands on hips, looking at Fitz. "So the lost sheep has returned, and a bold piece of mutton it is, too. Where, my buck, did you obtain that dream of a waistcoat? From some of Crofts' honest smugglers?"
Fitz laughed at so typical a welcome. "My wardrobe is of a lady's choosing. And it may have saved my neck —so speak it fair."
Jules had pushed in with the surgeon, and now his floods of Breton-French drowned out all further questions. Watts grinned at Fitz.
"I gather from this storm that you are in debt to this creature. I suppose that your purse is empty?"
"Just so. He's the mate of the privateer which brought me in from the Channel. I've been informed I owe passage money "
"More than you're probably worth." Watts began bargaining. Since he still believed that raising his voice made his brand of French more intelligible, the room was soon a bedlam, and Fitz, reduced to helpless laughter, was warm inside with the peaceful feeling of having come home. Even Ninnes raised his head and listened to the row with a quirk of true amusement about his lips.
It was the lieutenant in the end who settled the business. Taking a purse from his pocket, he counted out a handful of coins which he pushed across the table into Jules' eager grasp. Watts shook his head as the Malouin clattered out.
"I fear you sadly overpaid that score "
Ninnes cut him short. "On the contrary, Doctor, I may still be in the fellow's debt." He looked to Fitz, and for the first time there was no hostility in his gaze. "We can but reward the one who returns our worthy commander of marines to the ship. I trust you have something in that basket, sir, which will aid us to celebrate this joyful occasion—this most fortunate reunion."
Watts stood by the table, and his searching eyes went from Ninnes to Fitz. A tiny line of puzzlement etched itself between his brows. The doctor was no fool, but he also knew when to hold his tongue and curb his curiosity. For he said nothing at all, even when Ninnes picked up the pistol, inspected its charge, and put it away.
"Can I promote some credit at a tailor's?" Fitz wanted to know after he had done more than justice to the dinner provided by their pastry-cook landlord. "Somehow I do not feel that my coat—or rather the lack of it—does anything for my dignity as a representative of our august arms."
"But are you?" asked Watts with apparent seriousness. "A representative of American arms, I mean? The last time we spoke on this matter I thought you were still moved by the idea that the life of a marine, having been forced upon you willy-nilly, did not altogether become you, and you were panting only to return to some fitter employment—say a saddle in a company of Light Horse."
"Aye," Ninnes was filling a pipe and making something of a job of it, but doing it himself, "this is an excellent time to make the change. Though our prize money is not yet in hand you can borrow against your prospects and pay your passage home. There are a number of America-bound ships which touch here from time to time. You have fulfilled your part of the original bargain."
Fitz wrinkled his nose at the rank clouds of tobacco smoke which both of his tablemates were contributing to the close atmosphere of the room. They were right —too right. St. Malo was the end of the road which had opened in Baltimore. He could no longer dally without leaving the Retaliation when she had left him. None of them could guess how successful Crofts would be in his quest for a new command. They only trusted in their captain's proverbial luck. And the thought of Crofts' luck brought another question to his lips.
"How did the Captain get back here?"
Watts puffed out a ball of smoke. "Crofts? Well, he seemed to avoid your more spectacular exploits. He kept to the road that night, made a coaching inn by morning, and had an uneventful trip to London. There he had no difficulty at all in meeting your so-elusive Mr. Norwood, and was sent on his way overseas. All in a very orderly and quiet manner, without any of the color of your own attempts to set His Majesty's government by its outstanding ears. Some of his luck must have rubbed off on you."
"Aye." Ninnes tapped his pipe on the table. " 'Tis out of a romance—the moor bell, your meeting with your grandfather—the press gang "
Fitz was inclined to bristle at that, until he saw that the lieutenant was not being ironic, but sincerely meant his comment on the story which the Marylander had sketched out for them while they had dined.
"So you had no liking for Starr Court? It is the famous show place I have heard " Watts said slowly.
"And I am like to provide the show in it if they lay hands on me again," Fitz pointed out. "I should like mightily to know "
"If you did deal permanently with Farstarr?" the doctor interrupted. "It could be arranged. Crofts' fly-by-night smuggling friends are only too glad to bring out suitable bits of information for a guinea or two. We'll see what can be done in that quarter."
And so right was the surgeon, that some two months later Fitz received a dirty scrap of paper bearing a single scrawled sentence which informed him that, in spite of his efforts to the contrary, he had not fought a fatal duel. The heir to Starr still remained above ground to disgust the wi
de circle of his enemies.
Through the days which followed, Fitz did not make up his mind about the future, avoiding that problem as long as he could, even in his own mind. Instead he threw himself into the business of the others, joining Watts in checking supply lists and prowling the waterfront taverns with Ninnes in search of news of a suitable ship and crew.
While Fitz knew that close friendship might never be possible between them, Ninnes and he slipped without any words into a sort of workable relationship, so that if they became shipmates ever again they would form a crew, willingly and amiably. Ninnes ignored his missing hand now, acting as if the loss did not matter, practicing to get along without it. He was a demon for work and drove himself and Fitz about the streets of St. Malo as if by their united efforts alone they could set Crofts afloat once more.
Late one evening, when the heavy heat of the town had driven the three of them out onto the ledges of the open windows, and they sat, their shirts unbuttoned to let in any breezes which might exist, Fitz asked a question.
"Will the Captain try Channel cruising again?"
Watts pulled at his lower lip reflectively. "I don't think so. He had another bee buzzing about his head when he rode off to Paris."
"The Indiamen," Ninnes broke in. "He is thinking of striking south—down off the Canaries—and catching the homebound Indies fleet. There's a fortune waiting for the ship that can do that."
"More gold than Frankie Drake pulled out of Panama no doubt," Watts drawled. "Of course, the brace or two of frigates on patrol around that fleet will be as dust on our sleeves. Any tub we pick up in this port to take us to sea won't be the Retaliation. We'll be lucky if we can waddle out into the ocean without starting every seam under her water line. The French aren't going to give anything really good to a parcel of out-at-the-elbows foreign adventurers "
"If the Captain wants a ship, he'll get her." The old half-worshiping confidence was warm in Ninnes' voice.