Martin Conisby

And now, nothing heeding my defenceless situation and the further horrors that might be mine aboard this accursed pirate ship, I nevertheless knew great content for that, with every plunge and roll of the vessel, I was so much the nearer Nombre de Dios town where lay prisoned my enemy, Richard Brandon; thus I made of my sinful lust for vengeance a comfort to my present miseries, and plotting my enemy's destruction, found therein much solace and consolation.

I had crept into a sheltered corner and here, my knees drawn up, my back against one of the weather guns, presently fell a-dozing. I was roused by a kick to find the ship rolling prodigiously, the air full of spray and a piping wind, and Captain Belvedere scowling down on me, supporting himself by grasping a backstay in one hand and flourishing a case-bottle in the other.

"Ha, 's fish, d'ye live yet?" roared he in drunken frenzy. "Ha'n't Black Pompey done your business? Why, then--here's for ye!" And uttering a great oath, he whirled up the bottle to smite; but, rolling in beneath his arm, I staggered him with a blow of my fettered hands, then (or ever I might avoid him) he had crushed me beneath his foot: and then Joanna stood fronting him. Pallid, bare-headed, wild of eye, she glared on him and before this look he cowered and shrank away.

"Drunken sot!" cried she. "Begone lest I send ye aloft to join yon carrion!" And she pointed where Job's stiff body plunged and swung and twisted at the reeling yard-arm.

"Nay, Jo, I--I meant him no harm!" he muttered, and turning obedient to her gesture, slunk away.

"Ah, Martino," said Joanna, stooping above me, "'twould seem I must be for ever saving your life to you, yes. Are you not grateful, no?"

"Aye, I am grateful!" quoth I, remembering my enemy.

"Then prove me it!"

"As how?"

"Speak me gently, look kindly on me, for I am sick, Martino, and shall be worse. I never can abide a rolling ship--'tis this cursed woman's body o' mine. So to-day am I all woman and yearn for tenderness--and we shall have more bad weather by the look o' things! Have you enough knowledge to handle this ship in a storm?"

"Not I!"

"'Tis pity," she sighed, "'tis pity! I would hang Belvedere and make you captain in his room--he wearies me, and would kill me were he man enough--ah, Mother of Heaven, what a sea!" she cried, clinging to me as a great wave broke forward, filling the air with hissing spray. "Aid me aft, Martino!"

Hereupon, seeing her so haggard and faint, and the decks deserted save for the watch, I did as she bade me as well as I might by reason of my fetters and the uneasy motion of the ship, and at last (and no small labour) I brought her into the great cabin or roundhouse under the poop. And now she would have me bide and talk with her awhile, but this I would by no means do.