The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “Why, steady as she goes, Joey Mills! I shall make it one, Mother of God, and you kissing his boots one day.”

  Ben forced himself around. In the act he lost the mast somehow, the sloop gravely but mirthfully tossing his feet elsewhere. He fetched up against the larboard rail and grasped it with all his power, retching. The cackler was another mass of gray, small, hunched at the tiller, an old man and shriveled, who observed Ben’s situation with an uncommunicating, not unfriendly eye, and cackled again and spat astern.

  Shawn—the same Shawn and somehow not the same—was coming forward, the green coat flapping about him as he swayed with perfect casual ease to the sloop’s leaning and rise and fall. “Your head’ll be paining you, Beneen, I know it and sorry I am for it, but without a bit of persuasion you’d never have consented to come with old Shawn at all, I could see that, the way I was forced to it entirely. O the poor landside dreams that do hold a man, the pull of a hearthstone and the clutch of women! You’re free, Beneen—old Shawn hath set you free. Never you mind all that now. Back below, man dear, and tell Dummy I said to give you a jolt of rum. You’ll not be standing watch the day. Tomorrow you shall, beginning with the forenoon watch, that’ll be eight o’clock of the morning the way you measured time in the old days, man dear, the old days you was a landsman, but now you go with Shawn, now you go with old Shawn that knows the brave heart of you, and that better than you’ll be knowing it yourself, now that’s no lie.”

  The Irishman was virtually singing. It penetrated the whirling agony of Ben’s head—a little. He mumbled uncomprehendingly, not understanding with his brain, but understanding the event in his marrow maybe as clearly as he had ever done in the year since then. Shawn watched him, smiling, firm on the crazy deck like a weighted doll: let the world swing upside down, that’ll stay upright, no fear. “It was the drinks. You drugged me,” said Ben, not believing it, praying for denial.

  “Ben, go below!” Shawn said that firmly but softly, not unkindly, and moved away forward in rolling ease, the green back vanishing beyond the mainsail, the dark riddle of him immediately replaced by the black riddle of someone else. This also Ben would not believe, this gaunt thing striding aft, its black eye-patch and its frozen smile. With no effort, the one-eyed man of the Lion Tavern detached Ben’s hands from the rail. “Captain said go below,” said Judah Marsh, and struck him in the face.

  Ben tumbled sprawling into the cabin. There Dummy supported him kindly and fed him rum. There, presently, Ben understood how Jan Dyckman had died. He began, a little, to understand why.

  The gray haze of that day wore itself out to evening with no questions answered except in the privacy of Ben’s mind, and those without finality. Rain was falling when he went on deck again. The headache was receding, his body learning balance. He could not find the sun that would have told him what way the sloop was bound. Now and then Shawn passed him on the deck as if totally unaware of him. No one indeed acknowledged his existence at all except a bulky black-haired man, smooth-faced and young, who grinned at him in vacuous amiability. The others called that man Manuel. But when Ben dared to ask him: “Where are we bound?” Manuel shrugged and grinned and spread his hands, and shook his head until Ben feared he might be another mute, and then said at last: “Rain stop soon.”

  Manuel was right. Toward evening the drizzle ended, the overhanging clouds receded, and a white ball appeared—low in the sky and standing, as Ben faced the bow, on Ben’s right hand. Manuel at that time was at the helm, and Shawn stood near him, arms folded, disdaining any support. He had been gazing off to the southwest, but now, since the blue-eyed stare had swung around to Ben, Ben asked: “Mr. Shawn, are we tacking?”

  Shawn cocked his head at Manuel in some understanding, and Manuel grinned. “Now why would we be tacking, Beneen?”

  Ben’s nerves crackled and snapped. “Don’t call me that!”

  “I may not then?” Shawn displayed no anger, though Ben had almost hoped for it. The blue eyes dilated a little, perhaps in hurt, but he did not cease smiling. “Well—well, Cory, why would we be tacking, and a good little westerly breeze on the sta’board quarter that do be sending us where we wish to go?”

  “And where is that?”

  “Why, tomorrow, Cory, I fear you’ll see little except water—a great deal of it—but you’ll see tacking enough if that’s your wish, and you’ll be learning something about the handling of sail on small craft in the forenoon watch, I’m hoping, and later. And now and then, man dear, away far off up in the northwest or sometimes due north, you’ll find me a wee blue lump on the horizon—why, so faint and small that sometimes your eyes will say it’s not there at all, but it’ll be there. And it’ll be there the following day, and maybe the day after that, for we’ll be standing off and on. Now that’s a way of waiting, Cory, that’s the way a vessel must wait if she’s in the open waters and biding her time for a certain thing to happen—it’s the way of a hawk in the air, if you like, the way he must move about continually up there in the great sky, biding his time for a certain thing to happen.” He was coming to Ben, and his broad hands fell heavy on Ben’s shoulders. The blue stare dilated to black; Ben met it, refusing to shrink away. “That blue lump will be an island, Cory, a sprawling island where it happens I’ve never gone ashore, but I know how it lies. I’m of no mind to go there on my errand, do you see, because on land—why, on land I’m compassed about, I have enemies, Mother of God, and some of them are agents of—puh!—Her Majesty Queen Anne.”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “Easy, Cory, easy! You have a new allegiance. That I will explain later, not now.”

  “I have no new allegiance.”

  “Later, friend, I said. The name of the island is Nantucket. Now sooner or later—on the second, the third day, it doesn’t matter—a lovely small vessel will put out from Sherburne. We shall speak her, the island then being over the horizon.”

  “I think I understand your meaning,” Ben said. “I think I understood it when that murderer struck me in the face.”

  “I’m hoping he did not harm you,” said Shawn mildly. The eyes were altogether black; the smile remained. “No murderer, Ben. He acted at command of a certain voice—more of that later too, you wouldn’t be understanding it now. As for striking you—mere shipboard discipline, Cory. You might be thanking him for that one day, when you’ve come around to learning how to obey a captain’s orders.”

  “If I understand your meaning, I will have no part of it.”

  “Can you walk on water? Swim among the fishes?”

  “That’s not worth an answer,” said Ben, and he heard Manuel suck in his breath as if in pain, but would not look his way. “I met you last night in friendship. I came aboard here, and drank with you as a friend because I supposed you to be one. Oh, my brother.…”

  “Your brother?”

  Terror stabbed at Ben, and caution gave him wisdom. He had almost said: “My brother was right, and you no friend.” It was possible that some day Shawn would be ashore again, where Reuben was. “Nothing about my brother,” said Ben—“merely that he told me I ought not to set my heart on sailing, as I did. I told you how I had hoped for it, and you knew last night, you know this moment that I meant it honest—not this, not this—I say I’ll never have no part of it.”

  “But,” said Shawn peacefully, “I must have an answer to what I asked. Do you wish to live?”

  “Yes, like any man. Not at cost of betraying my own people or doing what my heart refuses.”

  “Why, that’s very bravely spoken.”

  “You thought I’d help you take Artemis?”

  “Oh,” said Shawn, and took out the copper coin and frowned at it. “Who’s to know all the whims of a green boy?”

  “Whims, Mr. Shawn? Well, not that or any other dirty piracy.”

  “Oh!” said Shawn again, and held
up the coin, turning it about in the gray light. His forehead was damp, perhaps from the spray. “A St. Patrick farthing, Beneen. From Dromore. Sometimes I’m wondering why I keep it. Not much there, ha, to make a man think of the green land?… Well, you’ll forget you said that—in time, time. Your heart, is it? And so, do you see, it’s your heart I must teach. I must change it, the way you’ll be breaking the old bonds and will sail with me to the new lands. Time—that’s all. The old gray mother’ll give you the truth of it, and I’ll change your heart.”

  “That no one can do.”

  “But I can,” said Shawn, and strode away smiling.…

  Artemis was overtaken on the third day.

  The weather shone fair, the winds themselves giving Shawn their favor, mild westerlies holding, shifting on the third day a little toward the northwest. The island, as Shawn had said, was a faraway thing, at times not visible, reappearing as the blue fragment of a dream. It was early morning, and Shawn, fortunate in this too, had tacked well away to the southeast of the island when the clean white of new sail first appeared. Shawn needed only a moment’s study through his glass. His face, that had been smiling, changed to an ivory stillness, and he took the helm.

  Artemis, gliding out of Sherburne, had clapped on all sail—jib and topsail and mainsail bellying taut, her fore-and-aft mizzen a great wing of purpose and of splendor. For her the northwesterly was a following wind, not her best wind but good enough; her low-slung bowsprit leaned joyfully to the sparkle of harmless whitecaps, outward bound.

  Shawn’s little sloop danced about, settling into the long starboard tack; it would intercept the course of Artemis—but not until the island was well below the horizon, and none to observe but the gulls that still dipped and wheeled above and around Artemis, careless angels in the sun. Shawn gave one order in one roared word: “Judah!”

  It must have all been arranged long beforehand. Ben at that moment was trying to understand a snapped order from Judah Marsh. Trim something or other—he hadn’t quite heard or understood, and was undecided whether to obey as he had tried to do yesterday or to choose this time for hopeless rebellion. Startled by that thunder from the helm, he turned his head to glance at Shawn—and was face down on the deck, his hands wrenched behind him and bound fast at the wrists. His threshing legs were secured at knees and ankles. The creature Dummy was doing most of this, as Ben knew from the moaning slobber at his ear.

  He was tied then at the foot of the mast, by back and ankles, legs bent under him so that he could not lift his knees, a rag jammed in his mouth, a tarpaulin flung over him up to the eyes. He struggled a while, not in hope, merely in refusal to surrender, and dislodged the tarp. Judah Marsh noticed this, and fastened two corners of the canvas behind the mast. Ben could do nothing then but go limp, trying to lessen the torture of bent legs and keep the edge of the tarpaulin from slipping against his eyelids. He faced the starboard rail. He could glimpse Artemis from time to time as the sloop rolled. She grew larger through the morning.

  He saw the sloop’s dory readied to go overside, long before Artemis was in hailing distance, the life aboard her only a motion of midgets. Dummy, swift and excited as an ape, tossed into the dory a broad sheet of canvas. Judah Marsh and dry little Joey Mills climbed into the dory and disappeared. They would be a bundle under a rag; Ben ceased to wonder.…

  “Ahoy the Artemis!”

  “Hoy!” The answer came back large and brazen over the mild water, Jenks with his megaphone no midget now but recognizable, massive at the rail and calm.

  “I’m bearing a message from Mr. John Kenny of Roxbury.”

  Ben tried to yell. Nothing penetrated the gag—a strangled gurgling that would not be audible ten feet away. He gave it up, hearing a part of Jenks’ answer: “—’bliged to you. Let me have it.”

  “A sealed message, sir—must be delivered to you safe hand, says he, no other way. Will you heave to, sir? I’ll send me boat and delay you as little as I may.”

  The heavy clang of Captain Peter Jenks’ voice cursed once or twice amiably for the record, and consented.

  Shawn was right. He delayed Artemis very little indeed.

  Her shortened sail holding her to a crawl, the sloop was rolling more. Her rising starboard side would close away Ben’s view, and then it seemed to him, not that his own bound body was being moved, his eyes turned in spite of him to the sun and empty sky, but that the sharp bright field of agony across the water had been thrust down, rejected and overwhelmed: sea and sky would not own it nor allow it. He supposed he was not quite sane. Then with each contrary roll the vision would return, plainer than ever, and he was sane enough.

  Printed on his memory was a moment when Shawn and Jenks stood together on the deck of Artemis in what seemed to be innocent palaver, the megaphone dangling idly from Jenks’ hand, while the dory with Dummy at the oars was sliding astern—and then a roll of the sloop to larboard. Another moment—why, Jenks and Shawn had hardly moved, and Ben could recognize fat Tom Ball, and the carpenter Matthew Ledyard—but the dory had been made fast. Three rats like men were climbing. Surely the helmsman could see them! Or the red-haired man—yes, but what the devil was the cook doing on deck at a conference of captains, and with something black hanging from his right hand? Another roll to larboard—the sloop in her whimsy hung there, tormenting him through a time of sunny blindness and no breathing.

  Then Ben discovered why the red-haired cook was present. The same glance embraced the helmsman—anyway a human creature wearing a green kerchief around his head such as the helmsman had been wearing—tumbling strangely from the stern of the beautiful slow-gliding vessel, striking the water with no great splash, floating briefly with no struggle as of life, and disappearing. The sloop rolled to larboard.

  Ben in the sunlight could remember Reuben in the red gleam of burning houses, stricken and condemning himself because he had not prayed. And I have not prayed. But—but.…

  From the pain in his legs or the beating sun, Ben might have fainted for a while. Later he could recall no more of the dance of death; nothing until he was aware of the dory skimming back toward him, no one in it but Judah Marsh. Manuel came to release him.

  Marsh troubled himself with nothing aboard the sloop, not even the sails; his only errand was to bring the dory for Ben and Manuel, and herd them into it with the lash of a word or two. Manuel was obliged to drop Ben into it, his legs being still numb and useless.

  An hour later, as Artemis sped southward, the sloop was still visible, yawing this way and that, making poor silly rushes downwind, dropping in a trough and swinging until caught aback. When Ben last glimpsed her, he and Manuel and Dummy were employed in holystoning the deck of Artemis, and Manuel laughed to see her, and nudged Dummy so that he might enjoy it too, even though Judah Marsh was standing by with a belt. Very comical was Mr. Harkness’ sloop stumbling about back there, a puzzled pup ordered to go home. Ben could see that. To protest this present labor was to receive the buckle end of the belt; Ben could see that such a cause was not worth a protest—any deck should be made decent, one granted that. The stains were already browning in the sun, difficult to remove, but Captain Shawn would not gather his crew to hear, approve and sign the articles until that deck was clean.…

  “We here gathered, who have hereunder set our names, do declare ourselves prepared to undertake all such enterprises of discovery as our Captain shall design, and all acts of seizure, search, requisition, defense and warfare that may be needful thereto.

  “We here and now and forever forswear all allegiance to any crown, republic, dominion, principality on the face of the earth.

  “We here and now and forever swear loyalty unto one another, and to our Captain obedience in all things, and unto the following laws we do agree:

  “1. That man that shall refuse any order of our Captain, or of those to whom he may assign command, shall for a first
offending receive Moses’ Law, that is forty stripes less one on the bare back; for second offending his punishment shall be as the Captain may direct; but for a third offending he shall suffer present death.

  “2. Of prizes taken, the Captain shall have one share and a quarter; the mates, the gunner, the carpenter and the boatswain shall have each one share and one eighth; and every man one share; but that man that shall display devotion beyond the common unto our endeavors, he shall have such additional reward as the Captain may decide.

  “3. That man that shall utter blasphemy or foul speech in the presence of the Captain, or suffer any filth or uncleanness to remain on the deck of the vessel or in the hold, shall receive ten stripes.

  “4. That man that shall snap his arms, or smoke tobacco in the hold with pipe uncapped, or carry a lit candle without a lanthorn, or strike flint or carry flame within three paces of gunpowder except he be the gunner, shall receive not less than twenty and not more than thirty stripes on the bare back.

  “5. That man that shall offer to meddle with a prudent woman without her consent shall suffer the loss of his tongue and both hands, and shall be set adrift, or marooned, as the Captain may direct.

  “6. That man that shall secretly bring a lewd woman aboard this or other vessel of our company, with intent she shall remain aboard, the vessel being at sea, shall be bound to his doxy by wrists and ankles and they both be cast into the sea beyond sight of land.