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Page 13
"If you had seen him, miss," I told her, "as I saw him when he
volunteered, you would have known that his spirit is strong enough
for any strife. It will bear his body, miss, to wherever duty calls
him. It will always bear him to an honourable life, or a brave
death."
"Heaven bless you!" says she, touching my arm. "I know it. Heaven
bless you!"
Mrs. Belltott surprised me by trembling and saying nothing. They
were still standing looking towards the sea and listening, after the
relief had come round. It continuing very dark, I asked to be
allowed to take them back. Miss Maryon thanked me, and she put her
arm in mine, and I did take them back. I have now got to make a
confession that will appear singular. After I had left them, I laid
myself down on my face on the beach, and cried for the first time
since I had frightened birds as a boy at Snorridge Bottom, to think
what a poor, ignorant, low-placed, private soldier I was.
It was only for half a minute or so. A man can't at all times be
quite master of himself, and it was only for half a minute or so.
Then I up and went to my hut, and turned into my hammock, and fell
asleep with wet eyelashes, and a sore, sore heart. Just as I had
often done when I was a child, and had been worse used than usual.
I slept (as a child under those circumstances might) very sound, and
yet very sore at heart all through my sleep. I was awoke by the
words, "He is a determined man." I had sprung out of my hammock,
and had seized my firelock, and was standing on the ground, saying
the words myself. "He is a determined man." But, the curiosity of
my state was, that I seemed to be repeating them after somebody, and
to have been wonderfully startled by hearing them.
As soon as I came to myself, I went out of the hut, and away to
where the guard was. Charker challenged:
"Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"Not Gill?" says he, as he shouldered his piece.
"Gill," says I.
"Why, what the deuce do you do out of your hammock?" says he.
"Too hot for sleep," says I; "is all right?"
"Right!" says Charker, "yes, yes; all's right enough here; what
should be wrong here? It's the boats that we want to know of.
Except for fire-flies twinkling about, and the lonesome splashes of
great creatures as they drop into the water, there's nothing going
on here to ease a man's mind from the boats."
The moon was above the sea, and had risen, I should say, some half-
an-hour. As Charker spoke, with his face towards the sea, I,
looking landward, suddenly laid my right hand on his breast, and
said, "Don't move. Don't turn. Don't raise your voice! You never
saw a Maltese face here?"
"No. What do you mean?" he asks, staring at me.
"Nor yet, an English face, with one eye and a patch across the
nose?"
"No. What ails you? What do you mean?"
I had seen both, looking at us round the stem of a cocoa-nut tree,
where the moon struck them. I had seen that Sambo Pilot, with one
hand laid on the stem of the tree, drawing them back into the heavy
shadow. I had seen their naked cutlasses twinkle and shine, like
bits of the moonshine in the water that had got blown ashore among
the trees by the light wind. I had seen it all, in a moment. And I
saw in a moment (as any man would), that the signalled move of the
pirates on the mainland was a plot and a feint; that the leak had
been made to disable the sloop; that the boats had been tempted
away, to leave the Island unprotected; that the pirates had landed
by some secreted way at the back; and that Christian George King was
a double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain.
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