Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/81

pushed Henry soothingly along the deck in front of him.

At last the boy found his voice. “Tim,” he cried, “Tim. They're selling me, Tim. Oh, Tim, come to me!” But there was no answer. Tim heard, and he was sobbing in his hammock like a small, whipped child.

And Henry, as he climbed over the side ahead of his new master, felt nothing at all. But for a little catching in his throat, there was no sharp feeling in him—only a heavy, sodden dullness.

So Henry Morgan came to be living in Barbados by authority of a white paper which forced his life and soul and body to kneel before the pleasure of one James Flower, planter.

James Flower was not a hard man, and certainly he was not a very brilliant man. His whole life had been a hunger for ideas—any ideas—the creation of them. He wanted to conceive ideas, to warm them to throbbing life, then to hurl them on an astonished world. They would go bounding like Stones started down a long hill, awakening an avalanche of admiration. But no ideas came to him.

His father had been a stout English curate who wrote stout sermons which were actually published, though very few ever bought them. His mother wrote poetry which was a kind of summary of the sermons. Her verses were appended to the volume