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Book of Pirates-Part25_Howard Pyle(1853-1911)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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harbor--shattered, wounded, her forecastle splintered, her



foremast shot half away, and three great tattered holes in her

mainsail. The mate with one of the crew came ashore in the boat



for help and a doctor. He reported that the captain and the cook

were dead and there were three wounded men aboard. The story he



told to the gathering crowd brought a very peculiarthrill to

those who heard it. They had fallen in with Blueskin, he said,



off Fenwick's Island (some twenty or thirty miles below the

capes), and the pirates had come aboard of them; but, finding



that the cargo of the schooner consisted only of cypressshingles

and lumber, had soon quitted their prize. Perhaps Blueskin was



disappointed at not finding a more valuablecapture; perhaps the

spirit of deviltry was hotter in him that morning than usual;



anyhow, as the pirate craft bore away she fired three broadsides

at short range into the helpless coaster. The captain had been



killed at the first fire, the cook had died on the way up, three

of the crew were wounded, and the vessel was leaking fast,



betwixt wind and water.

Such was the mate's story. It spread like wildfire, and in half



an hour all the town was in a ferment. Fenwick's Island was very

near home; Blueskin might come sailing into the harbor at any



minute and then--! In an hour Sheriff Jones had called together

most of the able-bodied men of the town, muskets and rifles were



taken down from the chimney places, and every preparation was

made to defend the place against the pirates, should they come



into the harbor and attempt to land.

But Blueskin did not come that day, nor did he come the next or



the next. But on the afternoon of the third the news went

suddenly flying over the town that the pirates were inside the



capes. As the report spread the people came running--men, women,

and children--to the green before the tavern, where a little knot



of old seamen were gathered together, looking fixedly out toward

the offing, talking in low voices. Two vessels, one bark-rigged,



the other and smaller a sloop, were slowly creeping up the bay, a

couple of miles or so away and just inside the cape. There



appeared nothing remarkable about the two crafts, but the little

crowd that continued gathering upon the green stood looking out



across the bay at them none the less anxiously for that. They

were sailing close-hauled to the wind, the sloop following in the



wake of her consort as the pilot fish follows in the wake of the

shark.



But the course they held did not lie toward the harbor, but

rather bore away toward the Jersey shore, and by and by it began



to be apparent that Blueskin did not intend visiting the town.

Nevertheless, those who stood looking did not draw a free breath



until, after watching the two pirates for more than an hour and a

half, they saw them--then about six miles away--suddenly put



about and sail with a free wind out to sea again.

"The bloody villains have gone!" said old Captain Wolfe, shutting



his telescope with a click.

But Lewes was not yet quit of Blueskin. Two days later a



half-breed from Indian River bay came up, bringing the news that

the pirates had sailed into the inlet--some fifteen miles below



Lewes--and had careened the bark to clean her.

Perhaps Blueskin did not care to stir up the country people



against him, for the half-breed reported that the pirates were

doing no harm, and that what they took from the farmers of Indian



River and Rehoboth they paid for with good hard money.

It was while the excitement over the pirates was at its highest



fever heat that Levi West came home again.

III



Even in the middle of the last century the grist mill, a couple

of miles from Lewes, although it was at most but fifty or sixty



years old, had all a look of weather-beaten age, for the cypress

shingles, of which it was built, ripen in a few years of wind and



weather to a silvery, hoary gray, and the white powdering of

flour lent it a look as though the dust of ages had settled upon



it, making the shadows within dim, soft, mysterious. A dozen

willow trees shaded with dappling, shivering ripples of shadow



the road before the mill door, and the mill itself, and the long,

narrow, shingle-built, one-storied, hip-roofed dwelling house. At



the time of the story the mill had descended in a direct line of

succession to Hiram White, the grandson of old Ephraim White, who






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