The Merry Men | Page 9

by
the letter M - misery, mercy, marriage, money, and the like - I was
arrested with a sort of start by the word murder. I was still considering
the ugly sound and fatal meaning of the word, when the direction of our
walk brought us to a point from which a view was to be had to either
side, back towards Aros Bay and homestead, and forward on the ocean,

dotted to the north with isles, and lying to the southward blue and open
to the sky. There my guide came to a halt, and stood staring for awhile
on that expanse. Then he turned to me and laid a hand on my arm.
'Ye think there's naething there?' he said, pointing with his pipe; and
then cried out aloud, with a kind of exultation: 'I'll tell ye, man! The
deid are down there - thick like rattons!'
He turned at once, and, without another word, we retraced our steps to
the house of Aros.
I was eager to be alone with Mary; yet it was not till after supper, and
then but for a short while, that I could have a word with her. I lost no
time beating about the bush, but spoke out plainly what was on my
mind.
'Mary,' I said, 'I have not come to Aros without a hope. If that should
prove well founded, we may all leave and go somewhere else, secure of
daily bread and comfort; secure, perhaps, of something far beyond that,
which it would seem extravagant in me to promise. But there's a hope
that lies nearer to my heart than money.' And at that I paused. 'You can
guess fine what that is, Mary,' I said. She looked away from me in
silence, and that was small encouragement, but I was not to be put off.
'All my days I have thought the world of you,' I continued; 'the time
goes on and I think always the more of you; I could not think to be
happy or hearty in my life without you: you are the apple of my eye.'
Still she looked away, and said never a word; but I thought I saw that
her hands shook. 'Mary,' I cried in fear, 'do ye no like me?'
'O, Charlie man,' she said, 'is this a time to speak of it? Let me be, a
while; let me be the way I am; it'll not be you that loses by the waiting!'
I made out by her voice that she was nearly weeping, and this put me
out of any thought but to compose her. 'Mary Ellen,' I said, 'say no
more; I did not come to trouble you: your way shall be mine, and your
time too; and you have told me all I wanted. Only just this one thing
more: what ails you?'

She owned it was her father, but would enter into no particulars, only
shook her head, and said he was not well and not like himself, and it
was a great pity. She knew nothing of the wreck. 'I havenae been near
it,' said she. 'What for would I go near it, Charlie lad? The poor souls
are gone to their account long syne; and I would just have wished they
had ta'en their gear with them - poor souls!'
This was scarcely any great encouragement for me to tell her of the
ESPIRITO SANTO; yet I did so, and at the very first word she cried
out in surprise. 'There was a man at Grisapol,' she said, 'in the month of
May - a little, yellow, black-avised body, they tell me, with gold rings
upon his fingers, and a beard; and he was speiring high and low for that
same ship.'
It was towards the end of April that I had been given these papers to
sort out by Dr. Robertson: and it came suddenly back upon my mind
that they were thus prepared for a Spanish historian, or a man calling
himself such, who had come with high recommendations to the
Principal, on a mission of inquiry as to the dispersion of the great
Armada. Putting one thing with another, I fancied that the visitor 'with
the gold rings upon his fingers' might be the same with Dr. Robertson's
historian from Madrid. If that were so, he would be more likely after
treasure for himself than information for a learned society. I made up
my mind, I should lose no time over my undertaking; and if the ship lay
sunk in Sandag Bay, as perhaps both he and I supposed, it should not
be for the advantage of this ringed adventurer, but for Mary and myself,
and for the good, old, honest, kindly family of the Darnaways.
CHAPTER III.
LAND AND SEA