When Rebecca appeared above the cellar-way with a flagon that reamed to a beaded top, the keys were back on the wall.
"I was overlong," panted Rebecca, with eyes averted as of old to the folds of her white stomacher. "'Twas a stubborn bung and hard to draw."
"Dear little cheat! God bless you!--and bless you!--and bless you, Rebecca!" I cried.
"It--it--it was not all a lie, Ramsay," she stammered. "The bung was hard--and--and--and I didn't hasten----"
"Dear comrade--good-bye, forever!" I called from the dark-of the step.
"Forever?" asked the faint voice of a forlorn figure black in the doorway.
Dear, snowy, self-sacrificing spirit--'tis my clearest memory of her with the thin, grieved voice coming through the dark.
I ran to the wharf hard as ever heels nerved by fear and joy and triumph and love could carry me. The passage I easily engaged from the ship's mate, who dinned into my unlistening ears full account of the north sea, whither Captain Gillam was to go for the Fur Company, and whither, too, Master Ben was keen to sail, "a pirateer, along o' his own risk and gain," explained the mate with a wink, "pirateer or privateer, call 'em what you will, Mister; the Susan with white sails in Boston Town, and Le Bon Garçon with sails black as the devil himself up in Quebec, ha--ha--and I'll give ye odds on it, Mister, the devil himself don't catch Master Ben! Why, bless you, gentlemen, who's to jail 'im here for droppin' Spanish gold in his own hold and poachin' furs on the king's preserve o' the north sea, when Stocking, the warden, 'imself owns 'alf the Susan and Cap'en Gillam, 'is father, is master o' the king's ship?"
"They do say," he babbled on, "now that Radisson, the French jack-a-boots, hath given the slip to the King's Company, he sails from Quebec in ship o' his own. If him and Ben and the Capiten meet--oh, there'll be times! There'll be times!"
And "times" there were sure enough; but of that I had then small care and shook the loquacious rascal off so that he left me in peace.
First came the servants, trundling cart-loads of cases, which passed unnoticed; for the town bell had tolled the close of Sabbath, and Monday shipping had begun.
The cusp of a watery moon faded in the gray dawn streaks of a muffled sky, and at last came the chairmen, with Jack running alert.