CHAPTER XV
THE GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA
THE Governor of Jamaica was much interested in the visit of Kate Bonnet, whom he saw alone in a room adjoining the public apartments. He had met her two or three times before, and had been forced to admit that the young girls of Barbadoes must be pretty and piquant in an extraordinary degree, and he had not wondered that his friend, Captain Vince, should have spoken of her in such an enthusiastic manner.
But now she was different. Her sorrow had given her dignity and had added to her beauty. She quickly told her tale, and he started upright in his chair as he heard it.
"Do you mean," he exclaimed, "that that pirate, after whom I sent the Badger, is your father? It amazes me! The similarity of names did not strike me; I never imagined any connection between you and the captain of that pirate ship."
"That's what Captain Vince said when I last saw him," remarked Kate.
"It must have astounded him to know it," exclaimed the Governor, "and I wonder, knowing it, that he consented to obey my orders; and had I been in his place I would have preferred to be dismissed from the service rather than to sail after your father and to destroy him. If I had known what I know now, my orders to Captain Vince would have been very different from what they were. I would have told him to capture your father, and to bring him here to me. It cannot be that he is in his right mind!"
Now Kate was weeping; the terrible words "destroy him," and the assurance that if she had thought sooner of appealing to the Governor, much misery, or at least the thought of misery, might have been spared her, so affected her that she could not control herself.
The Governor did not attempt to console her. Her sorrow was natural, and it was her right.
When she looked up again she spoke about what she had come to ask him for; the authority to bring back her father wherever she might find him, and to defend him from the attacks of all persons, whoever they might be, until she reached Jamaica. And then she told him how she would seek for her father on every sea.
The Governor sat and pondered. The father of such a girl should be saved from the terrible fate awaiting him, if the thing could possibly be done. And yet, what a difficult, almost hopeless thing it was to do. To find a pirate, a fierce and bloody pirate, and bring him back unharmed to his daughter's arms and to reasonable restraint.
He spoke earnestly. "What you propose," he said, "you cannot do. It would be impossible for you to find your father; and if you did, no matter who might be with you, and no matter how successful you might be with him, his crew would not let him go. But there is one thing which might be done. The Badger will report at different stations, and her course and present cruising ground might be discovered. Thus I might send a despatch to Captain Vince, ordering him not to harm your father, but to take him prisoner, and to bring him here to be dealt with."
Kate sprang to her feet.
"An order to Captain Vince!" she exclaimed, "an order to withhold his hand from my father? Ah, sir, your goodness is great, this is far more than I had dared to expect! When I last saw Captain Vince he left me in a great rage, but, knowing that he would respect your order, I would dare his rage. If his revengeful hand should be withheld from my father I would fear nothing."
"I beg you to be seated," said the Governor, "and let me assure you, that in offering to send this order to Captain Vince I do not in the least expect you to take it. But there is one thing I do not understand. Why should the captain have left you in a great rage? Perhaps I have not a right to ask this, but it seems to me to have some bearing upon his alacrity in setting forth in pursuit of the Revenge."
"I fear," said Kate, "that this may be true; I do not deem it improper for me to say to you, sir, that Captain Vince made me an offer of marriage, and that in order to induce me to accept it he offered, should he come up with the Revenge, to spare my father and to let him go free, visiting the punishment he was sent to inflict upon the rest of the people in the ship."
"I am surprised," said the Governor, "to hear you say that; such an action would have been direct disobedience to his orders. It would have been disloyalty, which not even the possession of your fair hand could justify. And you refused his offer?"
"That did I," said Kate, her face flushing at the recollection of the unpleasant interview with the captain; "I cared not for him, and even had I, I would not have consented to wed a man who offered me his dishonour as a bribe for doing so. Not even for my father's life would I become the bride of such a one!"
"Well spoken, Mistress Bonnet," exclaimed the Governor, "your heart, though a tender, is a stout one. But this you tell me of Captain Vince is very bad; he is a vindictive man and will have what he wants, even without regard to the means by which he may get it. I am glad to know what you have told me, Mistress Bonnet, and if I had known it betimes I would not have sent, in pursuit of your father, a man whose anger had been excited against his daughter. But now I shall despatch orders to Captain Vince which shall be very exact and peremptory. After he has received them he will not dare to harm your father, and would cause him to be brought here as I command."
"From my heart I thank you, sir," cried Kate, "give me the orders and I will take them, or I will——"
"Nay, nay," said the Governor, "such offices are not for you, but I will give the matter my present attention. On any day a vessel may enter the port with news of the Badger, and on any day a vessel may clear from Kingston, possibly for Bridgetown, where I imagine the Badger will first touch. Rely upon me, my dear young lady, my order shall go to Captain Vince by the very earliest opportunity."
Kate rose and thanked him warmly. "This is much to do, your Excellency, for one poor girl," she said.
"It is but little to do," said the Governor, "and that girl be yourself."
With that he rose, offered Kate his arm, and conducted her to her uncle.
When Mr. Delaplaine was made acquainted with the result of the interview, both his gratitude and surprise were great. He comprehended far better than Kate could the extent of the favour which the Governor had offered to bestow. It was, indeed, extraordinary to commute what was really a sentence of death against a notorious and dangerous pirate for the sake of a beautiful and pleading woman. An ambitious idea shot through the merchant's brain. The Governor was a widower; he had met Kate before. Was there any other lady on the island better fitted to preside over the gubernatorial household? But, although a man of high position could not wed the daughter of a pirate, a pirate, evidently of an unsound mind, could be adjudged demented, as he truly was, and thus the shadow of his crime be lifted from him. This was a great deal to think in a very short time, but the good merchant did it, and the fervour of his thankfulness was greatly increased by his rapid reflections.
As they were on their way home Kate's eyes were bright, and her step lighter than it had been of late. "Now, uncle," said she, "you know we shall not wait for any chance ship which may take the Governor's despatch. We shall engage a swift vessel ourselves, by which the orders may be carried. And, uncle, when that ship sails I must go in her."
"You!" cried Mr. Delaplaine, "you go in search of the Badger and Captain Vince? That can never——"
"But remember, uncle," cried Kate, "it is just as likely that I shall meet my father's ship as any other, and then we can snap our fingers at all orders and all captains. My father shall be brought here and the good Governor will make him safe, and free him, as he best knows how, from the terrible straits into which his disturbed reason has led him."
Her uncle would not darken Kate's bright hopes, ill-founded though he thought them. To look into those sparkling eyes again was a joy of which he would not deprive himself, if he could help it.
"Suppose he should capture our vessel," she exclaimed; "what a grand thing it would be for him, all unknowing, to spring upon our deck and instantly be captured by me. After that, there would be no more pirate's life for him!"
When Dame Charter heard what had happened at the Governor's house and had listened to the recital of Kate's glowing schemes, her eyes did not immediately glisten with joy.
"If you go, Mistress Kate," said she, "in search of your father or that wicked Captain Vince, I go with you, but I cannot go without my Dickory. It is full time to expect his return, although, as he was to depend upon so many chances before he could come back, his absence may, with good reason, continue longer, and I could not have him come back and find his mother gone, no man knows where. For in such a quest, what man could know?"
"Oh, Dickory will be here soon!" cried Kate; "any ship which comes sailing towards the harbour may bring him."
The Governor of Jamaica was a man of great experience, and with a fairly clear insight into the ways of the wicked. When Kate and her uncle had left him and he paced the floor, with the memory of the beautiful eyes of the pirate's daughter as they had been uplifted to his own, he felt assured that he could see rightly into the designs of the unscrupulous Captain Vince. Of what avail would it be for him to kill the father of the girl who had rejected him? It would be an atrocious but temporary triumph scarcely to be considered. But to capture that father; to disregard the laws of the service and the orders of his superiors, which he had already proposed to do; to communicate with Kate and to hold up before her terror-stricken eyes the life of her father, to be ended in horror or enjoyed in peace as she might decide—that would be Vince, as the Governor knew him.
The Governor knew well his man, and those were the designs and intentions of Captain Christopher Vince of his Majesty's corvette the Badger.