It was two days before Dex had another opportunity to go to Trevor Williams’ house. He'd made another trip to Castle Island on the supply boat, but had not wandered far from the dock for fear of another encounter with Lieutenant Mapes. In preparation for his next attempt to find evidence against Williams, Dex had found a small candle-lantern and fashioned a cover out of leather. He made a small hole in it and with a little adjusting it emitted only a small beam of light sufficient for reading but, he hoped, not bright enough to attract attention.
Dex did not think he had been recognized by Williams at his house but, taking no chances he stood behind the kitchen door on the evening of the third day waiting for him to arrive for the nightly meeting. Dex nervously checked to make sure he had his clasp knife and boning knife as he waited. He had the lantern in a small cotton sack along with an extra candle and a small piece of flint.
Concentrating on the front door, Dex jumped at the soft touch on his arm. “And why do you hide behind the door, boyo?” said Betty smiling at his alarm. “You look like a wee mouse waiting to bell the cat.”
“Ah, no,” Dex stammered. “I've, uh, I’ve got to run an errand for Mister Adams. I was just waiting to, er...” He was saved from further explanation by the arrival of Trevor Williams at the front door. “Well, I've got to go,” he said edging toward the kitchen's rear entrance. “I'll see you tomorrow.” Dex didn't see the look of puzzlement and concern on his friend's face as he left the inn.
Fifteen minutes later, Dex once again stood against the back wall of Trevor Williams' house. After a short wait, hearing no sound from within the house, he tried to open the kitchen door, only to find it locked against him. There was no key hole, but Dex had a vague memory of heavy iron bar-holders on the inside of the door from his last visit. Frustrated, he made his way up the right side of the house to check out the windows. The one in the dining room wouldn't budge, but the one in the front parlor slid up easily at his push. With a quick glance at the empty street, he brushed the curtains aside and pulled himself over the windowsill.
The parlor was dark, with only a faint red glow coming from the grate in the iron stove. Dex slithered behind a chair and lay quietly listening for long moments, but the only sound that broke the deep silence of the house was the harsh ticking of a mantle clock in the library reminding him that he didn't have any time to waste.
Dex got to his feet and, taking the lantern out of his bag crept over to the stove. He took the candle from the lantern and carefully opening the stove door, found coals hot enough to light the wick. With a thin beam of yellow candle light proceeding him, Dex slipped silently out of the parlor and crossed into the library.
Trying to ignore his nervousness, Dex went first to the desk and studied the papers and thin bound ledgers he found. Most seemed to deal with shipping and the buying and selling of farm produce, but with growing frustration Dex realized he had no way of telling if any of it was evidence of a crime. He moved to the table by the globe and found what seemed to be a map of Boston and the surrounding area. Peering closely, he noticed faint marks on the coastline north of the city as though the nib of a pen had rested there. There were also marks and some cryptic notations on other areas of the map. Perhaps this was the evidence he sought! Dex started to fold the map but then he heard voices from the front of the house and the sound of the front door opening. He looked around wildly for a hiding place dismayed that he was about to be caught the same way as before. Dropping the map, he jumped behind the heavy library door just as Trevor Williams and Lieutenant Mapes entered the room.
“The servants are gone as you demanded,” Williams was saying, “but I still don't understand why we must come here. I have done all that you ask, and you say the Dutchman awaits. Why are we not away?”
“I must be sure there is nothing here that would point the way for any that might pursue me. ‘Tis but a simple matter of tying off any loose ends.”
“For any that might pursue you?” Williams said. “Remember, I have as much at stake here as you. If pursuit there be, we run from it together.”
Mapes slowly shook his head and smiled. “No,” he said pulling a pistol from under his coat, “I run alone.”
Dex gasped aloud at the sharp crack of the shot. Reeling backward with blood already staining the front of his shirt, Williams groaned and fell across his desk and slid to the floor. After a moment, Mapes stepped forward and nudged the limp body with a booted toe and then, pulling a second pistol from his belt, casually walked over to the map table. As he picked up the map Dex had been examining he turned toward door and said quietly, “You may as well come out where I can see you. It will be easier that way.”
Dex stepped woodenly out into the room, hypnotized by the gaping muzzle of the pistol leveled at his belly.
“Well, well. You do turn up in the most interesting places, boy,” Mapes said. “I would like to know your part in this, but it is past time that I took my leave. A pity you must stay with Mister Williams.”
Gulping in fear, Dex closed his eyes as Mapes raised the pistol and drew back the hammer, but the expected shot did not come. Instead, there was a tremendous crash of breaking glass along with a heavy thud and a grunt of pain from Mapes.
“Run, Dex,” yelled a familiar voice.
Dex opened his eyes and jumped for the doorway. He had a fleeting glimpse of Mapes writhing on the floor amid a welter of broken window glass, torn curtains and a large piece of firewood as he sprinted into the hall. Remembering the barred rear exit, Dex ran down the hall to his left and smashed through the front door. A hard shove from unseen hands against his back steered him toward an alley across the street and again to the left at its end. Running freely, Dex was guided through a maze of back streets and alleys by his unknown rescuer until finally a hand on his shoulder pulled him to a stop at the edge of a stand of trees. “I think we're safe now,” panted Tobias Masters, “but you do seem to have some high times, Master Dex”
Chapter 15
“From what Tobias tells me, I would guess you've had your fill of shore leave in Boston Town,” Captain Campbell chuckled. “I don't know how you manage to attract so much trouble, but I would sorely love to hear the tale.”
Dex and Alan Davis were with Captain Campbell in his cabin aboard the White Shark. It was late morning of the next day and after only five hours of fitful sleep, Dex was still tired. After their escape from Mapes, Tobias had led him on a long jog through the night to a deserted beach at the far northeastern edge of the city. Uncovering a small dory hidden under loose brush, they cast off and rowed toward a wooded island a couple of miles offshore. As they rounded its northern tip, the White Shark had come into view, at anchor and darkened except for a single light at the stern. As willing hands lifted them aboard Dex had felt the last of his strength drain from his body, and he barely remembered being helped to his cabin. When he awoke, the cabin was empty but for the cat Oliver who growled and glared balefully from Tobias' bunk.
Gathering himself, Dex related his story from the time he'd left Davis at the Emerald Inn. When he told them of Bint Miller's attack, Campbell glanced sharply at Davis who nodded and left the cabin.
Speaking of his friendship with Sam Adams and remembering his feeling of contentment among those at the Emerald Inn, Dex held nothing back. He told of the plot he had uncovered and his efforts to find the evidence that would prove it. Somewhere in the telling, Alan Davis came back into the cabin and neither he nor the Captain interrupted, but Dex could sense their building excitement as he told what he had seen and heard. He finally ran down as he struggled to remember the final moments of his return to the White Shark the night before.
Captain Campbell pursed his lips and looked at Alan Davis. “Well, first things first, if you will, Mister Davis,” he said.
Davis got up and went to the door. Moments later a struggling Bint Miller, bound tightly at the hands and arms, was dragged through the door by two large seamen and shoved in front of the Captain. Miller's eyes widen
ed as he saw Dex, and he slumped against the table.
“I can see by your manner that the lad's tale is true,” said Captain Campbell. I would know why you would do such a deed.”
“I meant naught but to get him off the ship,” the big man muttered. “I feared having a witch aboard.”
“So you would bash his head and him a shipmate after all, and leave him on a strange shore, perhaps to die?”
“Nay, Captain. I only hit him to prevent his escape, and I made certain of his safety before I left him. I only sought to have him held ‘til after we sailed.”
Captain Campbell stood in swift decision. “You've served the White Shark well, Miller,” he said, “but I've no place for a man who would abandon a shipmate, nor one who fears witches as a girl fears the boogeyman. We're five miles offshore; you'll be put overboard to sink or swim as God wills.”
Miller's shoulders slumped and he hung his head in mute acceptance of his fate, but Dex knew that few of the White Shark’s crew could swim and was suddenly sickened at the thought of Miller drowning because of him.
“Please, Captain,” he said. “Don't put him overboard. I... I'm,” Dex struggled for words. “It's not his fault,” he finally blurted. “It isn't right... he doesn't know...”
Captain Campbell shot Dex a quick frown and began to pace the cabin floor. “Do you believe a witch would spare you thus?” he asked Miller after a few moments. “Would beg mercy for the man who might have had him killed?”
Miller lifted his head and looked from Dex to the Captain and back to Dex in confusion. “I, I...” he stuttered.
“Furthermore,” Campbell persisted, “do you believe a witch would be taken in and cared for by our friends ashore and then return to this ship with news of a treasure great enough to make a rich man of all aboard? Do you not recognize a friend when you see one?”
Miller shook his head in surrender. “No, Captain,” he said. “I... I see the truth of your words. Mayhap he be only a clever wizard and a friend to this ship after all.”
Campbell sighed and stepped up face to face with Miller. “Then hear this,” he said prodding the burly sailor in the chest with a stiff finger. “This lad is no witch. Wizard or no, he is a member of this crew and you will treat him as your mate, nay, as your friend because he has done you a great kindness. Furthermore, you will see that there is no further talk of witches or Jonahs below decks. Do you agree?”
Miller drew himself up to his full height. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” he said and then with honest dignity to Dex, “I beg your pardon, mate. I'm sorry for what I did and I’m glad you're safe back aboard.”
When they were once again alone, Dex looked from Campbell to Davis, puzzlement on his face. “Thank you for convincing Miller I'm not a witch,” he said, but, I don't know anything about a treasure.”
Campbell laughed. “You know more than you think,” he said. “The man Lieutenant Mapes is to meet, the man you call the Dutch man, is no man at all, but rather a ship, and not just any ship at that. The Dutchman is the fiercest pirate raider in the Atlantic Ocean. Her Captain is a degenerate named Anders DeJong, but he and the ship together are called the Dutchman. She's a twenty-four gun frigate, with a crew of more than two-hundred cut-throats.”
Dex frowned. “So the Dutchman has a treasure?”
“The Dutchman preys on anything afloat, so there's a good chance of treasure in her hold but, that aside, we know your friend Mapes is bringing a fortune aboard, and we know they are headed from Boston to Jamaica.” Captain Campbell turned to Alan Davis. “Full sails. Take us around the cape and steer south by southeast.” To Dex, “The Dutchman is bigger, but we're faster and they won't be expecting us. As Davis went to carry out the orders, Campbell called after him, “And pass the word that there's ten pounds and a bottle of rum for the first man who sights the Dutchman before she spies us.”
-----
Anders DeJong cast a judicious eye aloft as he paced the quarterdeck of the frigate Dutchman. Originally commissioned as the Aeolus by the Royal Navy in 1768, the 6th rate warship had come into DeJong’s possession after being captured by the Dutch Navy. Damaged and stripped of her armament she had been put up for sale in Amsterdam. DeJong’s aristocratic appearance and innate salesmanship skills had allowed him to secure enormous amounts of financial backing for a proposed new shipping company. His glib description of the ship’s refit as a merchant vessel and her proposed far flung trade routes attracted patronage from greedy businessmen anxious to grab a piece of the worldwide trading pie which and been started by the vaunted Dutch East India Company more than a century before.
DeJong’s personal history was as shadowed as his plans for the ship he had renamed the Dutchman. Born late, the third son, to an Austrian Baron and a Dutch Countess, he was largely ignored by his aging parents, his upbringing left to a nurse whose earliest memories were of the satanic rituals practiced by her mother and older sisters. A quick study at his schooling, his tutoring in the gentlemanly arts of fencing, shooting and riding and the nurse’s more secretive arcane instructions, young Anders grew to be a youth of social privilege, different from his peers only in his willingness to use any and all means to achieve his goals. He became adept at hiding his ruthless competitiveness behind a smiling urbane demeanor. At the age of eighteen, DeJong stole his father’s money chest and his nurse’s most cherished talisman, an ornate jade ring, and left home to make his way in the world.
DeJong’s journey led him to the Amsterdam docks and from there to a succession of ships and voyages where he quickly learned to strike first, strike hard and control those around him through aggression and fear. By age twenty-four he was second in command of a pirate sloop preying on French coastal commerce when he lost his first important fight…to an ambitious underling with a razor sharp knife. Mortally wounded and cast overboard by an unfeeling crew, he washed up on a deserted spit of sand and would have died there had it not been for the old woman who found him the next morning and bent to steal whatever valuables he might possess. When she saw the ring he wore on a chain beneath his shirt, she paused and then called her son to help get him back to her hovel where she began the laborious process of bringing him back from the brink of death. DeJong stayed with the woman for six months, but of the first three weeks, he remembered only fragments of dreamlike scenes of grotesque figures, acrid smells and intelligible chanting as she guided him to his destiny. When he finally became lucid, she made him understand that death had been only been postponed and over the next weeks he came to understand his responsibilities in the pact that kept him alive. When the last, necessary, ritual consumed the woman and her hut in a cleansing fire, DeJong made his way back to Amsterdam, polished and hardened in his service to a new master.
Now, ten years later, Anders DeJong was the Dutchman, a man and a ship that had brought piracy and savagery to new heights of invincibility and evil in the north Atlantic. He reviled in whispered superstitious rumors of the dark arts and pacts with the devil, and his ship enjoyed speed and firepower unrivaled by all but the larger ships of war. Amongst the crew, both the man and the ship were believed to be invincible.
DeJong completed his inspection of Dutchman’s sails and smiled thinly as he contemplated the game awaiting him on the American coast.
-----
Dex found it easy to slip back into life aboard the White Shark. When he left the Captain's cabin, he made the familiar climb up the main mast to find Tobias at watch on the observation platform.
“I didn't get a chance to thank you for getting me out of Boston,” Dex said. “I don't know how you came to be there, but I sure appreciate it.”
“I’d been looking for you for three days,” Tobias said. Found you once at that house the other night, and I tried to follow you when you lit out but you just disappeared.” He grinned slyly. “Maybe you are a witch at that.”
“Dex laughed. “That was you? I thought the whole neighborhood was after me.”
“I suspected you were staying at
the Emerald Inn,” Tobias said, “but I didn't dare go there for fear of meeting my old master, so I waited around that house, hoping you'd come back.”
Dex sobered at the thought of slavery, an ugly reality of this time. “I brought you a gift,” he said reaching into his pocket and holding out the clasp knife. “I thought you might use it for carving.”
Tobias admired the knife, turning it over in his hands and then opening it and testing the blade against his thumbnail. “Thank you, Dex” he said, “I've never had such a fine thing.”
In contrast with Tobias' friendly demeanor, Weldon Quill was visibly unhappy at Dex's return. “Any but the captain's pet would face the lash for missing the ship,” he snarled in response to Dex's greeting at the noon meal.
For two days, the White Shark raced to the southeast before a fresh north wind that hinted at the coming coolness of autumn. With the real prospect of action in the offing, the crew did not object to the morning and afternoon cannon drills ordered by Captain Campbell. A grindstone was set up against the fore-peak bulkhead and one man was detailed to sharpen a pile of cutlasses and boarding axes. Sand buckets were filled and set by the cannons ready, Dex learned with a renewed sense of unreality, to provide traction on a blood-soaked deck, and water butts were brought up from below and lashed to the masts in case of fire. As a final prelude to battle, large rope nets were brought up from the holds and rigged so that they could be quickly raised over the deck to protect the crew from falling rigging shot loose by enemy cannon fire. The crew’s hammocks were also hung on nets over the center of the deck as splinter shields.
Determined to carry his own weight, Dex worked hard to master his part as a powder monkey in the cannon drills, learning to slide quickly down the companionway to the powder magazine, and climb back up without using his hands. The five pound cloth powder bags were unwieldy but Dex could manage four of them at a time. When cannonballs were called for however, he had all he could do to carry two of the solid eighteen pound cast iron balls that were usually required. Dex also learned to recognize grape shot, which was a bunch of one to one and a half inch balls sewn into a bag that was fired out of the cannon to clear the decks of an opposing ship, much like a giant shotgun, and chain shot which was two cannon balls connected by a two foot length of iron chain and used to bring down enemy masts and rigging. Dex was sprawled tiredly against the mainmast the after the morning drill on the second day when Quill stepped up and kicked him painfully in the ankle. “Get up, lubber, the Captain wants you.”
Bystander in Time Page 8