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"He said he would be ready for me at ten this morning. Now you've lost your turn, and there are three other ships." He turned away in a manner which told every one that Hanson had now become non-existent, pushed aside the Cygnet's papers, and searched the room once more. "Ah, good morning, Captain Hudson. You ready for me? Then I'll take you next."
Now the Star that he had loved was at the bottom of the sea; his men, a handful beside the Cygnet's force, must give obedience to her officers; and he himself, what was he more than a volunteer aboard his enemy's ship? Captain Robert Baldry, grinding his teeth, found the situation intolerable. Sir Mortimer Ferne, biting his lip in a sudden revulsion of feeling, was of much the same opinion.
Can the touch of the hand, scorched by the burning iron, feel pleasure in the softness of silk, or the light down of the cygnet's plume?
"Some of our most estimable colored fellow-citizens would attend her," said I, "and tempt her by their own prosperity and happiness in freedom, at the North, to cast in her lot with them and abandon her Southern home, her mistress, and her little charge, Susan; and her own little Cygnet's grave. They would send her, if she wished, free of charge, to Canada, and leave her there.
As they clambered over the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the Cygnet. The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the latest to set foot upon the Cygnet's deck. Her Captain met him with bared head and outstretched hand. "We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of the Star," he said, gravely and courteously. "We thank God that no brave man went down with her.
All things had been patiently cared for by the man who, selling his patrimony, had labored against wind and tide to the end that he might carry forth with him such an armament as scarce had been the Cygnet's own. Tier on tier rose the Sea Wraith's ordnance; she carried warlike stores of all sorts that might serve for battle by sea or land.
Ferne, erect against the break of the Cygnet's poop, drawing a cloth tight with teeth and hand above a wound in his arm from which the blood was streaming, smiled at the sound, knotted his tourniquet; then for the third time sprang upon that slanting, deadly bridge of straining ropes. His sword flashed above his head.
Then, timidly at first, he dipped, and catching Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper, Till on his breast the river's cheek was pillowed; And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet's bosom His white, round shoulder shed the dripping crystal.
Below it suddenly sprang out two lights, one above the other, and to the Cygnet, safe, though with her plumage sadly ruffled, came the sound of a gun twice fired. The darkness faded, the gray light strengthened, and showed to the watchers upon the Cygnet's decks the ship in distress. It was Baldry's ship, the little Star.
Darraja roused him at the din; And with loud voice to Tarfe spoke; He knew him from his cloak of blue, For he had given the Moor that cloak! Upon two mares both strong and fleet, White as the cygnet's snowy wing, Beneath Granada's arching gate Passed Tarfe and Belchite's King.
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