The Grip of Honor

"Not at all, sir," she replied trembling violently, but striving to preserve her self-control; "I presume you reserve me for a worse fate."

The young lieutenant started violently at the insult, and his face clouded darkly at her suspicion.

"I-no matter, I came to save you," he said, as he stepped toward her to assist her to make the leap.

"Please do not touch me," she answered disdainfully; "I am no fainting fool. Give me the rope. What is it you wish me to do?"

"Pass it around your waist. Allow me. Now stand there, madam, and when I say the word, jump!"

"Very well," she said, stepping upon the rail resignedly, where perforce he was compelled to hold her to keep her from falling.

How glorious and splendid she looked, he thought, with her unbound hair floating like golden sunlight in the wind against the background of the gray day, while her sea-blue eyes looked boldly over the black water from her proud, white, handsome face.

"Now!" he said, as the boat rose toward them. Without a moment's hesitation, she leaped into the air, and after a swift passage through the water she was hauled into the boat by the rough but kindly hands of the old sailor. Making the end of the rope fast around his own waist, O'Neill, watching his opportunity, sprang after; but he seemed fated for misfortune that day, for a bit of timber torn that moment from the wreck struck him in the head just as he touched the water, and it was a fainting, senseless man Price hauled into the boat. The old seaman laid his officer down in the stern-sheets where the young girl was sitting with her maid crouching at her feet. Necessarily he lay in a constrained position, – there was nothing to support his head but a boat-stretcher.

She gazed upon his pallid face with its disfiguring wounds; he was a murderous pirate, no doubt, and deserved it all, still he had saved her life; the Maidstone was breaking up; he was so handsome too, and he looked like a gentleman. She was a woman, well-then the womanly instincts of the girl asserted themselves, and she finally moved her position and lifted the head of the unconscious sailor to her knee. Taking a handkerchief from her neck, she dipped it in the salt water and bathed his head and then poured between his lips a few drops from the flask of rum which Price handed her, after the old man had insisted that she take a draught of the fiery liquid herself.

Under these pleasant ministrations O'Neill opened his eyes for a moment, gazed up into her face with a smiling glance, and closing his eyes immediately, lest she should release him, he lay quite still while the men pulled away toward the Ranger, and in that manner they reached her side. His heart was beating wildly; that look had been enough. She was his prisoner-but her captor was captured!

CHAPTER III

A Gentle Pirate

Eager eyes on the ship had noted the every movement of the whaleboat as she drew near the Ranger. Old Price saw that a whip and a boatswain's chair had been rigged on the main-yardarm to swing his passengers on board. The sight of the dangling rope awakened a fresh fit of apprehension on the part of the timorous maid, and it was with great difficulty that the amused seaman persuaded her that she was not to be hanged outright. Entirely unconvinced, but resigning herself to her fate, she finally sat down on the small board and was swung to the gangway.

Her mistress gently laid the head of the prostrate officer against one of the thwarts, and, leaving the handkerchief as a rest for it, followed the maid. Then the old coxswain secured the lieutenant to the chair, and when he had reached the deck, where he opened his eyes and recovered consciousness with incredible promptness, the boat was dropped astern, the falls hooked on, and she was smartly run up to her place at the davits, and the Ranger filled away. O'Neill was at once assisted below to his cabin, and his wounds, which were not serious, were attended to by the surgeon.

When the young woman joined her maid on the deck, her glance comprehended a curious picture. In front of her, hat in hand, bowing low before her, stood a small, dapper, swarthy, black-avised, black-haired man, in the blue uniform of a naval officer. He had the face of a scholar and a student, with the bold, brilliant, black eyes of a fighter. Surrounding him were other officers and several young boys similarly dressed. Scattered about in various parts of the ship, as their occupation or station permitted, were a number of rude, fierce, desperate-looking men, nondescript in apparel. None of the navies of the world at that date, except in rare instances, uniformed its men. On either side of the deck black guns protruded through the ports, and here and there a marine, carrying a musket and equipped in uniform of white and green, stood or paced a solitary watch.

"I bid you welcome to my ship, madam; so fair a face on a war-vessel is as grateful a sight as the sun after a squall," said the officer, elaborately bowing.

"Sir," said the young woman, trembling slightly, "I am a person of some consideration at home. My guardian will cheerfully pay you any ransom if you spare me. I am a woman and alone. I beg you, sir, to use me kindly;" she clasped her hands in beseeching entreaty, her beautiful eyes filling with tears.

At this signal the fears of the maid broke out afresh, and she plumped down on her knees and grasped the captain around the legs, bawling vociferously, and adding a touch of comedy to the scene.

"Oh, sir, for the love of Heaven, sir, don't make us walk the plank!" It would seem that the maid had been reading romances.

The seamen near enough to hear and see grinned largely at this exhibition, and the captain, with a deep flush and a black frown on his face, struggled to release himself.

"Silence, woman!" he cried fiercely, at last. "Get up from your knees, or, by Heaven, I will have you thrown overboard; and you, madam, for what do you take me?"

"Are you not a-a pirate, sir?" she answered, hesitating. "They told me on the ship that you-"

"No pirate am I," interrupted the man, proudly, laying his hand on his sword. "I am an officer, and, with these gentlemen, am in the service of the United States of America, the new Republic-this is the American Continental ship Ranger. You are as safe with us as you would be in your own parlor at home. Safer, in fact; there you would be surrounded by servants; here are men who would die to prevent harm coming to you- Is it not so, gentlemen?"

A deep chorus of "Ay, ay's" rang through the air. The captain continued with sudden heat, -

"'Fore God, madam, I don't understand how you could insult me with an offer of money!"

"Oh, sir," said the girl, visibly relieved, "they told me that you were a pirate, and would murder us all. Are you not-"

"Captain John Paul Jones, at your service, madam," interrupted the little officer, with another bow, thrusting his hand in his bosom.

"Yes," said the young woman; "they said it would be you. Why, every news-letter in the land describes you as-as-"

"Pirate, madam, say it; you have not hesitated to speak the word heretofore. A rebel-a traitor-a pirate," he said, throwing up his head proudly, – "'tis a penalty which one pays for fighting for freedom; but you, at least, shall be able to speak unequivocally as to our character, for I pledge you my word you shall take no harm from us, though I doubt not my young gentlemen here will be raked fore and aft by the batteries of your bright eyes. Now will you vouchsafe me your name and some of your story, that I may know with whom I have to do?"

"My name is Howard, sir, – Elizabeth Howard," replied the girl, brightening as her fears diminished. "I am the ward of Admiral Lord Westbrooke, the governor of Scarborough Castle. I have no father nor mother."

"Another claim upon our consideration, ma'am."

"Sir, I thank you. I was going to visit friends in Liverpool when that unfortunate ship there was wrecked. Oh, what will become of me now?" she exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears again.

"Liverpool lies in our way, Mistress Howard, and 'twill give me great pleasure to land you upon some convenient point on the coast in a few days if the wind hold, and no mischance arise; and now may I present my officers to you, since we are to be fellow-passengers all."

Upon receiving the desired permission from the grateful girl, in whose pale cheek the color began to come again, the captain, who was a great stickler for etiquette, brought forward the little group of officers and introduced them one by one. There was much bowing and courtesying on the quarter-deck, which even the seamen seemed to enjoy.

"This is all, I believe," said the captain, having stopped with the smallest midshipman, who announced himself in his boyish treble, in comical imitation of his elders, as, "vastly honored, madam."

"The gentleman who brought me here?" questioned the girl, blushing faintly; "I trust he is not seriously injured?"

"Ah!" replied Jones, "my first lieutenant, Mr. Barry O'Neill, a volunteer with us, and an officer in the service of his most Christian Majesty, my friend, the King of France." On the ship O'Neill had elected to sink his marquisate.

"He is not much hurt, Mistress Howard, only battered about a bit and pulled down by the nervous shock and efforts he underwent-why, here he is now! Did I not warn you, sir, to stay below?" said the doctor, shaking his finger, as O'Neill, pale and languid, with his head bound up, came slowly up the companion-way.

"Oh, I am all right, doctor," said the lieutenant, rather weakly, but smiling with the audacity and gallantry of his race as he spied the girl. "Who would stay below with divinity on the deck? The thought of the presence of this lady above him would lift a crusader from his tombstone."

"Allow me to present you in due form to Mistress Howard, Mr. O'Neill," said the captain, somewhat severely, evidently very desirous of observing the proprieties now.

"Sir," said the young girl, looking gratefully at the Irishman out of her violet eyes, "I have to thank you for a most gallant rescue, made doubly hard by my perversity and foolish apprehension, which this gentleman," bowing to the flattered captain, "has most kindly removed."

"'Twas a pleasure to serve you, madam. May I continue to enjoy it. We would sink another ship for such another chance," said the Irishman, lightly.

"Now I propose to give up one of my cabins to Mistress Howard and her maid," said the captain; "and I presume that she will need to rest after the exciting incidents of the day until supper is served. If you are able, Mr. O'Neill, I should like to have you join us there, with Mistress Howard's permission, of course, since the ship is hers." He smiled toward her, and when he smiled he was irresistible.

"I am honored, sir," replied the girl, graciously. "And I thank you. Captain, I shall be delighted," continued the young lady, laying her hand in his own, as he led her aft to the cabin door in the break of the poop. Before she entered, she turned and made a graceful courtesy; her glance swept toward the young lieutenant-O'Neill from that moment was no longer a captive-he was a slave.

"Gentlemen, good-afternoon," she said, comprehending them in one brilliant look, and smiling again-it was enough; that glance had given O'Neill any number of rivals.

CHAPTER IV

Enter Major Coventry

Three days later the Ranger, under all plain sail, in a gentle breeze, was slowly ploughing along through the Irish Sea, off the English coast, near the mouth of the Mersey. The whaleboat, manned by six of the smartest seamen, armed with cutlass and pistol, and dressed in their best clothes, old Price being coxswain again, was just being made ready. The ship was presently hove to, and a side ladder was dropped overboard at the gangway where Miss Elizabeth Howard and her maid were standing waiting for the lowering of the whaleboat, and around which the officers of the deck speedily congregated.

They were a sorrowful lot of men, these impressionable sailors, for O'Neill was not alone in his captivity. True to his promise, Captain Jones had shifted his course, and was about to land his fair passenger. He had chosen to put her ashore upon a rocky beach four or five miles away from a fort at Birkenhead, which guarded the mouth of the river which gave entrance to the harbor, not caring to venture his ship in any closer proximity to the fortifications and the war-vessels probably in the river. It was a risky performance at best, but he trusted to the known speed of the Ranger and his own seamanship to effect his escape in case the ship should be discovered and pursued in force.

Once on shore, it would not be a difficult matter for the lady and her maid to procure a conveyance to take them to the city a little farther inland. The melancholy duty of landing the two women, by special request, had been allotted to the first lieutenant, much to the disgust of the various midshipmen who conceived that the matter of taking charge of boats appertained more properly to one of their number.