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They did not turn his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him.
The fusillade of bricks held them long enough for the merchant sailors to escape from the forecastle and this was an advantage more precious than Captain Wellsby had hoped for. What the pirates required was a leader to rally them for attack. Quicker than it takes to tell it, Ned Rackham had raced along the poop and leaped to the waist at peril of breaking his neck.
The second letter had been sent from Rackham Park, and in it Millie Splay wrote: "We have not heard from you for years. Will you be in England this August? We are trying to gather again our old Goodwood party. Both Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp will be home on leave. There will be no Goodwood of course, but there is a meeting at Gatwick which is easily reached from here.
With this small company he dared not go pirating on his own account and so had decided to rejoin Blackbeard. "Is Ned Rackham aboard the snow?" asked Peter Tobey of the boat's coxswain. "He is all o' that, matey, though the big bos'n of the Plymouth Adventure shoved a knife in his ribs to the hilt. He is flat in a bunk but he gives the orders an' it's jump at the word."
This score of recruits would make the venture worth undertaking. Men were essential. Given enough of them to handle the snow and a boarding party besides, and he would not hesitate to shift helm and bear away to sea again. "You will sign articles, then?" he demanded. "Aye, I can speak for all, Master Rackham. What else is there for us? Hold fast, I would except one man.
"It's funny there should be two bachelor owners in succession, isn't it? Rackham Coventry died unmarried, and both his younger brothers were killed one at sea and the other in a railway accident. That's how it was the property came to Eliot Coventry, who's only a cousin." Mrs. Hilyard suddenly went very white.
But the men were lacking for this heavy task, and the sailors of the Plymouth Adventure were too intent on fighting against fearful odds to pay heed to Joe Hawkridge's appeals. He had even skulked into the galley and was ready with a little iron pot filled with live coals which was hidden under a bit of tarpaulin. Ned Rackham was a young man and powerful, with a long reach and a skilled blade.
With forty men, Master Rackham, there's no occasion to bow to Blackbeard's whimsies. You can h'ist the Jolly Roger for yourself and lay 'longside a bigger ship to take and cruise in. I've heard tell of a great buccaneer that started for himself in a pinnace and captured a galleon as tall as a church." Ned Rackham's eyes flashed. Indeed, this was what he had in mind.
"But I don't," he protested. "That's the last thing to say about her." "I never said it," declared Martin Hillyard. "I should have lost my faith in you, if you had," rejoined Millicent Splay, even now hardly mollified. But she could not avoid the subject. Here was a new-comer to Rackham Park. She could not bear that he should carry away a wrong impression of her darling.
Into this country Martin Hillyard drove a small motor-car on a day of October two years afterwards. Until this week he had not set foot in his country of the soft grey skies since he had left Rackham Park. He had hurried down to Rackham as soon as he had reported to his Chief, but not with the high anticipation of old days. In what spirit would he find his friends? How would Joan meet him?
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