The Swallow, having passed through a gale in the Bay of Biscay — a gale which she weathered like the surprisingly steady old tub she was — rounded Cape Finisterre and so emerged from tempest into peace, from leaden skies and mountainous seas into a sunny azure calm. It was like a sudden transition from winter into spring, and she ran along now, close hauled to the soft easterly breeze, with a gentle list to port.
It had never been Master Leigh’s intent to have got so far as this without coming to an understanding with his prisoner. But the wind had been stronger than his intentions, and he had been compelled to run before it and to head to southward until its fury should abate. Thus it fell out — and all marvellously to Master Lionel’s advantage, as you shall see — that the skipper was forced to wait until they stood along the coast of Portugal — but well out to sea, for the coast of Portugal was none too healthy just then to English seamen — before commanding Sir Oliver to be haled into his presence.
In the cramped quarters of the cabin in the poop of the little vessel sat her captain at a greasy table, over which a lamp was swinging faintly to the gentle heave of the ship. He was smoking a foul pipe, whose fumes hung heavily upon the air of that little chamber, and there was a bottle of Nantes at his elbow.
To him, sitting thus in state, was Sir Oliver introduced — his wrists still pinioned behind him. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, and he carried a week’s growth of beard on his chin. Also his garments were still in disorder from the struggle he had made when taken, and from the fact that he had been compelled to lie in them ever since.
Since his height was such that it was impossible for him to stand upright in that low-ceilinged cabin, a stool was thrust forward for him by one of the ruffians of Leigh’s crew who had haled him from his confinement beneath the hatchway.
He sat down quite listlessly, and stared vacantly at the skipper. Master Leigh was somewhat discomposed by this odd calm when he had looked for angry outbursts. He dismissed the two seamen who fetched Sir Oliver, and when they had departed and closed the cabin door he addressed his captive.
“Sir Oliver,” said he, stroking his red beard, “ye’ve been most foully abused.”
The sunshine filtered through one of the horn windows and beat full upon Sir Oliver’s expressionless face.
“It was not necessary, you knave, to bring me hither to tell me so much.” he answered.
“Quite so,” said Master Leigh. “But I have something more to add. Ye’ll be thinking that I ha’ done you a disservice. There ye wrong me. Through me you are brought to know true friends from secret enemies; henceforward ye’ll know which to trust and which to mistrust.”
Sir Oliver seemed to rouse himself a little from his passivity, stimulated despite himself by the impudence of this rogue. He stretched a leg and smiled sourly.
“You’ll end by telling me that I am in your debt,” said he.
“You’ll end by saying so yourself,” the captain assured him. “D’ye know what I was bidden do with you?”
“Faith, I neither know nor care,” was the surprising answer, wearily delivered. “If it is for my entertainment that you propose to tell me, I beg you’ll spare yourself the trouble.”
It was not an answer that helped the captain. He pulled at his pipe a moment.
“I was bidden,” said he presently, “to carry you to Barbary and sell you there into the service of the Moors. That I might serve you, I made believe to accept this task.”
“God’s death!” swore Sir Oliver. “You carry make-believe to an odd length.”
“The weather has been against me. It were no intention o’ mine to ha’ come so far south with you. But we’ve been driven by the gale. That is overpast, and so that ye’ll promise to bear no plaint against me, and to make good some of the loss I’ll make by going out of my course, and missing a cargo that I wot of, I’ll put about and fetch you home again within a week.”
Sir Oliver looked at him and smiled grimly. “Now what a rogue are you that can keep faith with none!” he cried. “First you take money to carry me off; and then you bid me pay you to carry me back again.”
“Ye wrong me, sir, I vow ye do! I can keep faith when honest men employ me, and ye should know it, Sir Oliver. But who keeps faith with rogues is a fool — and that I am not, as ye should also know. I ha’ done this thing that a rogue might be revealed to you and thwarted, as well as that I might make some little profit out of this ship o’ mine. I am frank with ye, Sir Oliver. I ha’ had some two hundred pounds in money and trinkets from your brother. Give me the like and. . . . ”
But now of a sudden Sir Oliver’s listlessness was all dispelled. It fell from him like a cloak, and he sat forward, wide awake and with some show of anger even.
“How do you say?” he cried, on a sharp, high note.
The captain stared at him, his pipe neglected. “I say that if so be as ye’ll pay me the same sum which your brother paid me to carry you off. . . . ”
“My brother?” roared the knight. “Do you say my brother?”
“I said your brother.”
“Master Lionel?” the other demanded still.
“What other brothers have you?” quoth Master Leigh.
There fell a pause and Sir Oliver looked straight before him, his head sunken a little between his shoulders. “Let me understand,” he said at length. “Do you say that my brother Lionel paid you money to carry me off — in short, that my presence aboard this foul hulk of yours is due to him?”
“Whom else had ye suspected? Or did ye think that I did it for my own personal diversion?”
“Answer me,” bellowed Sir Oliver, writhing in his bonds.
“I ha’ answered you more than once already. Still, I tell you once again, since ye are slow to understand it, that I was paid a matter of two hundred pound by your brother, Master Lionel Tressilian, to carry you off to Barbary and there sell you for a slave. Is that plain to you?”
“As plain as it is false. You lie, you dog!”
“Softly, softly!” quoth Master Leigh, good-humouredly.
“I say you lie!”
Master Leigh considered him a moment. “Sets the wind so!” said he at length, and without another word he rose and went to a sea-chest ranged against the wooden wall of the cabin. He opened it and took thence a leather bag. From this he produced a handful of jewels. He thrust them under Sir Oliver’s nose. “Haply,” said he, “ye’ll be acquainted with some of them. They was given me to make up the sum since your brother had not the whole two hundred pound in coin. Take a look at them.”
Sir Oliver recognized a ring and a long pear-shaped pearl earring that had been his brother’s; he recognized a medallion that he himself had given Lionel two years ago; and so, one by one, he recognized every trinket placed before him.
His head drooped to his breast, and he sat thus awhile like a man stunned. “My God!” he groaned miserably, at last. “Who, then, is left to me! Lionel too! Lionel!” A sob shook the great frame. Two tears slowly trickled down that haggard face and were lost in the stubble of beard upon his chin. “I am accursed!” he said.
Never without such evidence could he have believed this thing. From the moment that he was beset outside the gates of Godolphin Court he had conceived it to be the work of Rosamund, and his listlessness was begotten of the thought that she could have suffered conviction of his guilt and her hatred of him to urge her to such lengths as these. Never for an instant had he doubted the message delivered him by Lionel that it was Mistress Rosamund who summoned him. And just as he believed himself to be going to Godolphin Court in answer to her summons, so did he conclude that the happening there was the real matter to which she had bidden him, a thing done by her contriving, her answer to his attempt on the previous day to gain speech with her, her manner of ensuring that such an impertinence should never be repeated.
This conviction had been gall and wormwood to him; it had drugged his very senses, reducing him to a listless indifference to any fate that might be reserved him. Yet it had not been so bitter a draught as this present revelation. After all, in her case there were some grounds for the hatred that had come to take the place of her erstwhile love. But in Lionel’s what grounds were possible? What motives could exist for such an action as this, other than a monstrous, a loathly egoism which desired perhaps to ensure that the blame for the death of Peter Godolphin should not be shifted from the shoulders that were unjustly bearing it, and the accursed desire to profit by the removal of the man who had been brother, father and all else to him? He shuddered in sheer horror. It was incredible, and yet beyond a doubt it was true. For all the love which he had showered upon Lionel, for all the sacrifices of self which he had made to shield him, this was Lionel’s return. Were all the world against him he still............