The Christmas Stories from Charles Dickens' Magazines - 20 Titles in One Edition. Charles Dickens

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      At ten, they put off; only one boat putting off at a time; another following in five minutes; both then lying on their oars until another followed. Ahead of all, paddling his own outlandish little canoe without a sound, went the Sambo pilot, to take them safely outside the reef. No light was shown but once, and that was in the commanding officer’s own hand. I lighted the dark lantern for him, and he took it from me when he embarked. They had blue lights and such like with them, but kept themselves as dark as Murder.

      The expedition got away with wonderful quietness, and Christian George King soon came back dancing with joy.

      “Yup, So-Jeer,” says he to myself in a very objectionable kind of convulsions, “Christian George King sar berry glad. Pirates all be blown a-pieces. Yup! Yup!”

      My reply to that cannibal was, “However glad you may be, hold your noise, and don’t dance jigs and slap your knees about it, for I can’t abear to see you do it.”

      I was on duty then; we twelve who were left being divided into four watches of three each, three hours’ spell. I was relieved at twelve. A little before that time, I had challenged, and Miss Maryon and Mrs. Belltott had come in.

      “Good Davis,” says Miss Maryon, “what is the matter? Where is my brother?”

      I told her what was the matter, and where her brother was.

      “O Heaven help him!” says she, clasping her hands and looking up—she was close in front of me, and she looked most lovely to be sure; “he is not sufficiently recovered, not strong enough for such strife!”

      “If you had seen him, miss,” I told her, “as I saw him when he volunteered, you would have known that his spirit is strong enough for any strife. It will bear his body, miss, to wherever duty calls him. It will always bear him to an honourable life, or a brave death.”

      “Heaven bless you!” says she, touching my arm. “I know it. Heaven bless you!”

      Mrs. Belltott surprised me by trembling and saying nothing. They were still standing looking towards the sea and listening, after the relief had come round. It continuing very dark, I asked to be allowed to take them back. Miss Maryon thanked me, and she put her arm in mine, and I did take them back. I have now got to make a confession that will appear singular. After I had left them, I laid myself down on my face on the beach, and cried for the first time since I had frightened birds as a boy at Snorridge Bottom, to think what a poor, ignorant, low-placed, private soldier I was.

      It was only for half a minute or so. A man can’t at all times be quite master of himself, and it was only for half a minute or so. Then I up and went to my hut, and turned into my hammock, and fell asleep with wet eyelashes, and a sore, sore heart. Just as I had often done when I was a child, and had been worse used than usual.

      I slept (as a child under those circumstances might) very sound, and yet very sore at heart all through my sleep. I was awoke by the words, “He is a determined man.” I had sprung out of my hammock, and had seized my firelock, and was standing on the ground, saying the words myself. “He is a determined man.” But, the curiosity of my state was, that I seemed to be repeating them after somebody, and to have been wonderfully startled by hearing them.

      As soon as I came to myself, I went out of the hut, and away to where the guard was. Charker challenged:

      “Who goes there?”

      “A friend.”

      “Not Gill?” says he, as he shouldered his piece.

      “Gill,” says I.

      “Why, what the deuce do you do out of your hammock?” says he.

      “Too hot for sleep,” says I; “is all right?”

      “Right!” says Charker, “yes, yes; all’s right enough here; what should be wrong here? It’s the boats that we want to know of. Except for fire-flies twinkling about, and the lonesome splashes of great creatures as they drop into the water, there’s nothing going on here to ease a man’s mind from the boats.”

      The moon was above the sea, and had risen, I should say, some half-an-hour. As Charker spoke, with his face towards the sea, I, looking landward, suddenly laid my right hand on his breast, and said, “Don’t move. Don’t turn. Don’t raise your voice! You never saw a Maltese face here?”

      “No. What do you mean?” he asks, staring at me.

      “Nor yet, an English face, with one eye and a patch across the nose?”

      “No. What ails you? What do you mean?”

      I had seen both, looking at us round the stem of a cocoa-nut tree, where the moon struck them. I had seen that Sambo Pilot, with one hand laid on the stem of the tree, drawing them back into the heavy shadow. I had seen their naked cutlasses twinkle and shine, like bits of the moonshine in the water that had got blown ashore among the trees by the light wind. I had seen it all, in a moment. And I saw in a moment (as any man would), that the signalled move of the pirates on the mainland was a plot and a feint; that the leak had been made to disable the sloop; that the boats had been tempted away, to leave the Island unprotected; that the pirates had landed by some secreted way at the back; and that Christian George King was a double-dyed traitor, and a most infernal villain.

      I considered, still all in one and the same moment, that Charker was a brave man, but not quick with his head; and that Sergeant Drooce, with a much better head, was close by. All I said to Charker was, “I am afraid we are betrayed. Turn your back full to the moonlight on the sea, and cover the stem of the cocoa-nut tree which will then be right before you, at the height of a man’s heart. Are you right?”

      “I am right,” says Charker, turning instantly, and falling into the position with a nerve of iron; “and right ain’t left. Is it, Gill?”

      A few seconds brought me to Sergeant Drooce’s hut. He was fast asleep, and being a heavy sleeper, I had to lay my hand upon him to rouse him. The instant I touched him he came rolling out of his hammock, and upon me like a tiger. And a tiger he was, except that he knew what he was up to, in his utmost heat, as well as any man.

      I had to struggle with him pretty hard to bring him to his senses, panting all the while (for he gave me a breather), “Sergeant, I am Gill Davis! Treachery! Pirates on the Island!”

      The last words brought him round, and he took his hands off. “I have seen two of them within this minute,” said I. And so I told him what I had told Harry Charker.

      His soldierly, though tyrannical, head was clear in an instant. He didn’t waste one word, even of surprise. “Order the guard,” says he, “to draw off quietly into the Fort.” (They called the enclosure I have before mentioned, the Fort, though it was not much of that.) “Then get you to the Fort as quick as you can, rouse up every soul there, and fasten the gate. I will bring in all those who are at the Signal Hill. If we are surrounded before we can join you, you must make a sally and cut us out if you can. The word among our men is, ‘Women and children!’”

      He burst away, like fire going before the wind over dry reeds. He roused up the seven men who were off duty, and had them bursting away with him, before they know they were not asleep. I reported orders to Charker, and ran to the Fort, as I have never run at any other time in all my life: no, not even in a dream.

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