Edgar Pangborn by Wilderness of Spring

Author:Wilderness of Spring
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Reuben watched the glittery ink-blots of Mr. Derry’s little brown eyes; heavy brows above them danced for Reuben’s troubled amusement like busy moths. “Another name was mentioned—a new bosun, Tom Ball—will that mean bosun of your ketch Artemis, Mr. Kenny? And could you or the Captain tell me anything of him?”

“I’ve met him only to shake hands. Peter?”

“Good sailor,” said Captain Jenks thickly. “Obeys orders, works hard, keeps his mouth shut—more’n that I never ask of my men.”

Except, Reuben thought, their souls and their lives. But how can a captain demand less than that even if he would? Reuben tried to put the thought away, and succeeded, because now every nerve of observation in him had grown taut to the edge of agony, and the focal point was not Captain Jenks. Something in this crowded room was wrong as a rattlesnake in a flower bed. It became a severe effort not to look toward the blue eyes of Daniel Shawn. Reuben forced his attention back to what the Constable was saying—something more about Tom Ball, maybe not important. “Another thing, Mr. Kenny, and I’ll be on my way. Have you ever heard tell of one named Jack Marsh, or some say it should be Judah Marsh, or Judas?”

“Why, that name—it doth echo somewhere….

“Think back, sir, ten or eleven years. Eleven it is—‘96. An occasion when a certain Captain Avery, or Every, alias Bridgeman and sometimes called Long Ben, was allowed to enter Boston, and that openly, to dicker for the sale of his plunder gotten under the black flag. To the great scandal, I must say, of any man who can tell a privateer from a gallows-bird, but so it was, Mr. Stoughton being acting Governor.”

Mr. Kenny peered down his nose with the lopsided half of a smile, perhaps suspecting Mr. Derry of humorous intent in linking holy Stoughton with dreadful Avery. Malachi Derry appeared quite innocent. “Mph, yes, and m’lord Bellomont as Governor had his Captain Kidd, yes yes. Of course, Mr. Derry, I remember Avery, as who would not?”

“We suffered much odious brawling in the town by Avery’s men.”

“I recall it.”

“One of them, known then as Judah or Judas Marsh, did have his left eye gouged out in a brush with—umph—some of the ruder element.” A glint in the brown eyes suggested he might not be wholly innocent after all. “It happened near my establishment, though I didn’t witness it.”

“And I recall the roustabout who blinded him was flogged, and Marsh—(but wasn’t it March, Mr. Derry?)—nursed the wound at the Alms House as an idle, drunken and disorderly person.”

“And escaped.”

“Oh?—that I’d forgotten. So many have done so, and we still continue to use the Alms House, damn the thing, because the House of Correction is not in fit posture to restrain ailing rats. And by the way, Constable, if the Meeting shall ever instruct the Selectmen and Justices in this particular, I predict nothing will come of it. Go on, pray.”

“Amen, sir. Yes, Marsh escaped after Captain Avery had gone his way.

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