Free Martin Hyde by John Masefield Page B

through sheer weariness, I fell asleep. In the morning, as I cleared away breakfast, from the cabin-table, I told Mr. Jermyn all that I had heard. The Duke seemed agitated. He kept referring to an astronomical book which told him how his ruling planets stood. "Yes," he kept saying, "I've no very favourable stars till July. I don't like this, Jermyn." Mr. Jermyn smoked a pipe of tobacco (a practise rare among gentlemen at that time) while he thought of what could be done. At last he spoke.
    "I know what we'll do, sir. We'll sell this man as carpenter to the Dutch East India man. We'll give the two of them a sleeping draught in their drink. We'll get rid of them both together."
    "It sounds very cruel," said the Duke.
    "Yes," said Mr. Jermyn, "it is cruel. But who knows what the sly man may not pick up? We're playing for high stakes, we two. We've got many enemies. One word of what this man suspects may bring a whole pack of spies upon us. Besides, if the spies get hold of this boy we shall have some trouble."
    "The boy's done very well," said the Duke.
    "He's got a talent for overhearing," Mr. Jermyn answered. "Well, Martin Hyde. How do you like your work?"
    "Sir," I answered, "I don't like it at all."
    "Well," he said, "we shall be in the Canal tonight, now the wind has changed. Hold out till then. I think, sir," he said, turning to the Duke, "the boy has done really very creditably. The work is not at all the work for one of his condition."
    The Duke rewarded me with his languid beautiful smile.
    "Who lives will see," he said. "A King never forgets a faithful servant."
    The phrase seemed queer on the lips of that man's father's son; but I bowed very low, for I felt that I was already a captain of a man-of-war, with a big blazing decoration on my heart. Well, who lives, sees. I lived to see a lot of strange things in that King's service.

 
    CHAPTER VII
    LAND RATS AND WATER RATS
    I WILL say no more about our passage except that we were three days at sea. Then, when I woke one morning, I found that we were fast moored to a gay little wharf, paved with clean white cobbles, on the north side of the canal. Strange, outlandish figures, in immense blue baggy trousers, clattered past in wooden shoes. A few Dutch galliots lay moored ahead of us, with long scarlet pennons on their mastheads. On the other side of the canal was a huge East Indiaman, with her lower yards cockbilled, loading all three hatches at once. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was so bright that all the scene had thrice its natural beauty. The clean neat trimness of the town, the water slapping past in the canal, the ships with their flags, the Sunday trim of the schooner, all filled me with delight, lit up, as they were, by the April sun. I looked about me at my ease, for the deck was deserted. Even the never-sleeping mate was resting, now that we were in port. While I looked, a man sidled along the wharf from a warehouse towards me. He looked at the schooner in a way which convinced me that he was not a sailor. Then, sheltering behind a


bollard, he lighted his pipe. He was a short, active, wiry man, with a sharp, thin face, disfigured by a green patch over his right eye. He looked to me to have a horsey look, as though he were a groom or coachman. After lighting his pipe, he advanced to a point abreast of the schooner's gangway, from which he could look down upon her, as she lay with her deck a foot or two below the level of the wharf.
    "Chips aboard?" he asked, meaning, "Is the carpenter on board?"
    "Yes," I said. "Will you come aboard?"
    He did not answer, but looked about the ship, as though making notes of everything. Presently he turned to me.
    "You're new," he said. "Are you Mr. Jermyn's boy?" I told him that I was.
    "How is Mr. Jermyn keeping?" he asked. "Is that cough of his better?" This made me feel that probably the man knew Mr. Jermyn. "Yes," I said. "He's got no cough, now." "He'd a bad one last time he was here," the man answered. For a while