in his brain nor any fever whatever. Perhaps, after all, I thought, 'twas but the French brandy and the Geneva he had been drinking freely of since we took him on board, and which he brought with him in case bottles, that had given him his delirium, and that the effect was gone now with his last shriekings and ravings.
But that which caused most my wonderment was that he was speaking in the French--which I had very well myself.
"What brings you here, Grandmont?" he asked, his eyes, of a cold grey, fixed on me.
"So," thinks I, "you are not out of your fever yet, to call me by a name I never heard of." But aloud, I answered:
"I have taken passage the same as you yourself. And we travel the same road--toward Cadiz."
Meanwhile the negro was a-hushing of him--or trying to--saying: "Master, master, you wander. Grandmont is not here. This gentleman is not he"; and angered me, too, even as he said it, by a scornful kind of laugh he gave, as though to signify: "Not anything like him, indeed."
But the old man took no heed of him--pushing him aside with a strength in the white coarse hand which you would not have looked to see in one so spent--and leaned a little over the side of the berth, and went on:
"Have you heard of it, yet, Grandmont?"
Not knowing what to do, nor what answer to make, I shook my head--whereon he continued: "Nineteen years of age now, if a day. Four years old then--two hundred crowns' worth of good wood burnt,--all burnt--a mort o' money! But we have enough left and to serve, 'tis true. A plenty o' money--though 'tis soaked in blood. Nineteen years old, and like to be a devil--like yourself, Grandmont!"
"Grandmont is dead," the negro muttered. "Drownded dead, master. You know."
This set the old man off on another tack, doubtless the words "drownded dead" recalling something to him; and once more he began his chantings--going back to the English--which were awful to hear, and brought to my mind the idea of a corpse a-singing:
"Fishes' teeth have eat his eyes; His limbs by fishes torn."
Then broke off and said: "Where am I? Give me to drink."
This the negro did, taking from out the drawer he sat upon a bottle of Hungary water, and pouring a draught into a glass, which, when the old man had tasted, set him off shrieking curses.
"Brandy!" he cried, "Brandy! French brandy, not this filth. Brandy, dog!" and as he spoke he raised his hand and clutched at the other's wool, "If I had you in Martinique----" then, exhausted, fell back on his pillows and said no more, forgetting all about the desired drink.
Now, that night, when I sat with the captain after supper, he being a man who had roamed the world far and wide, and had not always been, as he was now, a carrier of goods only, with sometimes a passenger or two, from London to the ports of France, Spain and Portugal, we talked upon that hoary-headed old sinner lying below in the after-starboard cabin; I telling him all that had passed in my hearing.
And he, smoking his great pipe, listened attentively, nodding his head every now and again, and muttering much to himself; then said:
"Spoke about two hundred crowns' worth of good wood being burnt, eh? That would be at Campeachy. Humph! So! So! We have heard about that. Told the black, too, that he wished he had him in Martinique, did he? Also knew Grandmont. Ha! 'tis very plain." Then he rose and went to his desk, lifted up the sloping lid and took out a book and read from it--I observing very well that it was his log.
"See," he said, pushing it over to me, "that's what he calls himself now. Yet 'tis no more his name than 'tis mine--or yours."
Glancing my eye down the column, I came to my own name--after a list of things by way of cargo which he had on board, such as a hundred and seventy barrels of potash, sixty bales of hemp, a hundred bales of Russia leather, twenty barrels of salted meat, twenty-eight barrels of whale oil and many other things. Came to my own name, Mervyn Crespin, officer, passenger to Cadiz. Then to the old man's:
"John Carstairs, gentleman, with servant, passenger to Cadiz."
"No more his name than 'tis mine--or yours," the captain repeated.
"What then?" I asked.
"It might be--anything," and again he mused. "Martinique," he went on, "Campeachy. A friend of Grandmont's. Let me reflect. It might be John Cuddiford. He was a friend of Grandmont's. It might be Alderly. But no, he was killed, I think, by Captain Nicholas Crafez of Brentford. Dampier, now--nay, this one is too old; also William Dampier sailed from the Downs three years ago. I do believe 'tis Cuddiford."
"And who then is Grandmont, Captain? And this Cuddiford--or Carstairs?"
"Ho!" said he, "'tis all a history, and had you been sailor, or worn that sword by your side for King William as you wear it now for Queen Anne, you would have known Grandmont's name. Of a surety you would have done so, had you been sailor."
"Who are they, then?"
"Well now, see. Grandmont was--for he is dead, drowned coming back from the Indies in '96--that's six years agone--with a hundred and eighty men, all devils like himself."
As he said this I started, for his words were much the same as those which the old man had used an hour or so before when he had spoken of something--a child, as I guessed--that had been four years old, and was now nineteen and "like to be a devil" like himself--Grandmont. It seemed certain, therefore, that this man, Grandmont, was a friend in life, and that now there was roaming about somewhere a son who had all the instincts of its father, and who was known to Carstairs, or Cuddiford.
This made the story of interest to me, and caused me to listen earnestly to the captain's words.
"Coming back from the Indies, and not so very long, either, after the French king had made him a lieutenant of his navy--perhaps because he was a villain. He does that now and again. 'Tis his way. Look at Bart, to wit. There's a sweet vagabond for you. Has plagued us honest merchants and carriers more than all Tourville's navy. Yet, now, he is an officer, too."
"But Grandmont, Captain! Grandmont."
"Ah! Grandmont. Well, he was a filibuster--privateer--buccaneer--pirate--what you will! Burnt up all their woods at Campeachy--the old man spake true--because the commandant wouldn't pay the ransom he and his crew demanded; also because the commandant said that when he had slaughtered them all, if he did so, he would never find out where their buried wealth was. Then he took a Pink one day with four hundred thousand francs' worth of goods and money on board, and slew every soul in the ship. Tied dead and living together, back to back, and flung them into the sea. Oh! He was a devil," he concluded. "A wicked villain! My word! If only some of our ships of war could have caught him."
"Yet he is dead?"
"Dead enough, the Lord be praised."
"And if this is a friend of his--this Cuddiford, or Carstairs--he must needs be a villain, too."
"Needs be! Nay, is, for a surety. And, Mr. Crespin," he said, speaking slowly, "you have heard his shrieks and singings--could you doubt what he has been?"
"Doubt? No," I answered. "Who could? Yet, I wonder who were the dead men looking down the stairs, as they came in from the garden."
"Who? Only a few of their
