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It seemed to him that every bit of the niceness, all the interest would go out of his life if he hadn't Dickory. In some ways he considered that Dickory was more to him than she was to Flossy. He wondered how Flossy could even talk of parting with her. He hoped sincerely she would fail in winning the lady's pity.
Dickory was quickly beside him with a tumbler of spirits and water, which, raising the fallen man's head, he gave him. In a few moments the eyes of Captain Vince opened wider, and he stared at the young man in naval uniform who stood above him. "Who are you?" he said in a low voice, but distinct, "an English officer?"
It was not an easy job, for she could see nothing and floundered terribly; but he seemed to like it, and half led, half carried her over a considerable space of uneven ground, until he came to the door of a small house, where stood an elderly woman with a lantern. "Dickory! Dickory!" shouted the woman, "what is that you are bringing home? Is it a great fish?"
Dickory looked after them and frowned, but he bravely comforted himself by thinking that he had been the one into whose arms she had dropped, through the blackness of the night and the blackness of the water, knowing in her heart that he would be there ready for her, and also by the thought that it was his shoes and stockings that she wore.
"Now there is my plan," said Kate, with something of cheerfulness in her voice, "if it so be I can carry it out. Do either of you know," glancing at the young men impartially, but apparently not noticing the bad weather, "if in a reasonable time a vessel will leave here for Jamaica?" Dickory knew well, but he would not answer; Kate had no right to put such a thing upon him.
'Yes, Peter, we'll run away, and we'll take Dickory. Where shall we take her to, Peter? 'Oh, I don't know, said Peter. 'We'll get her out of this, that's the first thing. How much money have you got, Flossy? 'A crooked halfpenny, said Flossy, in a decided voice. Peter sighed. He was older than Flossy, and he knew that a crooked halfpenny did not represent a large capital.
"Come, then, Greenway," said Bonnet; "you have troubled me so much on my own vessel that now, perchance, you may be able to do me some service on that of another. Anyway, I should like to have at least one decent person in my train, who, an you come not, will be wholly missing. And Dickory may come too, if he like it." But Dickory did not like it.
Of course he did not keep his great design from Dickory it was too glorious, too transcendent. He took his young admiral into his cabin and laid before him his dazzling future. Dickory sat speechless, almost breathless. As he listened he could feel himself turn cold. Had any one else been talking to him in this strain he would have shouted with laughter, but people did not laugh at Blackbeard.
In ten minutes Dickory was in his canoe, paddling to the town. When he was out of the little inlet, on the shore of which lay his mother's cottage, he looked far up and down the broad river, but he could see nothing of the good ship Sarah Williams. "I am glad they have gone," said Dickory to himself, "and may they never come back again.
Her eyes were closed, but they might as well have been open; there was nothing for her to see in all that blackness. Down she went, as if it were to the very bottom of black air and black water. And then, suddenly she felt an arm around her. Dickory was there! She felt herself rising, and Dickory was rising, still with his arm around her. In a moment her head was in the air, and she could breathe.
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