The Devil's Fire: A Pirate Adventure Novel

by Matt Tomerlin

  A report of thunder stole away his nostalgic thoughts and rooted him firmly in the present. Griffith was unfazed by the sound; he was keenly awaiting Cunningham's reply with an intense gaze, his convivial grin spread wide. "What say you, old friend?"

  "My lips are sealed," Cunningham answered.

  "We buried the treasure late last night," Griffith revealed at once, all business. "We must go now, while it's dark."

  "The sooner the better."

  "Good. Permit me a moment with Livingston. I must contrive a story to account for our absence. My crew cannot know of our dealings, and they are an untrusting lot."

  Cunningham nodded his understanding and said, "I’ll wait in your cabin." As he turned, he tripped on a loose plank. Griffith steadied him before he toppled.

  They shared a hearty laugh.

  By the time the two of them had rowed to the beach, a warm rain was falling in light sheets. They hefted the boat onto the sand and Griffith hefted a shovel and a sack. Cunningham pushed his dampened blonde locks out of his face and followed Griffith up the beach.

  They plunged into the jungle, which was as thicker inside than it appeared from the outside. Deeper and deeper they went, and in Cunningham's intoxicated state it seemed to him that every twist and turn was the same as the last. Griffith pushed ahead of him and in his wake massive wet leaves swung back to slap Cunningham in the face. As he pushed one leafy branch out of his way, another would bend to greet him. The rain fell harder and the mud they trudged through was sloppier with every step.

  They came to the end of the indistinct jungle, where the ground was rocky and inclined steeply toward the peak. Cunningham leaned back for a look, but the tip was shrouded in dark clouds. Griffith must have spied his grim look, because he said, "Don't worry. We go around it, not up it."

  Cunningham sighed. "Thank the powers for that."

  And around it they went. So windy and labyrinthine was the path through trees and rock that no one would stumble across this road unless they knew the route. It seemed half an hour before they came to an entrance into jungle, on what Cunningham presumed to be the western side of the island. They took the downward sloping path into the darkness and walked for a long time. The rain pattered the leaves above, but only a few wayward droplets made it through breaches in the densely thatched roof.

  When Cunningham's legs started to ache and his head began to clear of intoxication, he said, "I doubt I would remember this path if I tried."

  "That’s the idea, my friend," Griffith replied between heavy breaths.

  "How much further?"

  "We're almost there."

  After several more paces they came upon a small muddy clearing where the rain fell openly upon the ground. Griffith handed Cunningham the shovel and said, "I've dug and covered this hole once already and so I will again someday. I don't see a need to make it three times."

  Cunningham took the shovel and pushed it into the mud. It was another miserable hour, with thick droplets of rain patting the crown of his head, before the shovel's scoop struck metal. He fell to his knees in the three-foot hole he had dug and cleared mud from the top of the chest. He opened the lid. Even in the gloom the jewels and coins brightly ensnared what little light there was. Never in all his years of piracy had Cunningham looked on so abundant and beautiful a treasure.

  "And that's only one of thirteen chests," Griffith said from above. He tossed the sack down to Cunningham. "Take as much as will fill it."

  Cunningham was speechless. Once again, he realized with a slight smirk, Griffith was a step ahead.

  "It's strange," Griffith said, voice suddenly peculiar. "You think naught of treachery."

  Cunningham peered up at him. "Why would I expect treachery from an old friend?"

  Griffith's face was shadowed, but the curves of his cheeks were bent in a smile. And then, all around the edges of the hole, six pirates stepped into view. The only one Cunningham recognized was Edward Livingston. Too late Cunningham realized his folly. He wasn't certain which had been of greater influence, but both alcohol and greed had stolen his wits and successfully conspired against him. The inward admission of defeat did little to quell the rising terror in his gut. "You bring me all this way to kill me?"

  Griffith laughed. "You come to me spouting reformed nonsense, with words straight from the mouth of Woodes Rogers, yet here you are digging in the mud like a dog. You should see yourself from up here. The promise of treasure sets a sparkle in your eye, old friend, and no fool governor can extinguish it. Only pistol or blade may have that honor. You are a true pirate, Jack. Truer than I could ever hope to be. Now you will die like one; with your hands clasped to a treasure you will never spend. When next I come to this island to retrieve my rightful fortune, long after my pardon has been granted, nothing will remain but a wretched skeleton to mark your passing."

  Livingston tossed Griffith his pistol. Griffith cocked the weapon and aimed it at Cunningham's head. Cunningham blinked through tears and stinging rain as he strained to see the blackened face of his old friend, Captain Jonathon Griffith, who had forever been one step ahead.

  A bolt of lightning struck the island summit and the world burned white. In an instant the light faded and all was pitched in darkness.

  LIVINGSTON

  The shot was muted by a deafening crack of thunder. When lightning flashed again, it cast a ghostly white sheen over Cunningham's tomb, revealing for a split second his dead face, gaping in disbelief. Griffith let the pistol fall into the pit and stepped away. The crewmen that had accompanied Livingston moved in with shovels and began to heap dirt back into the hole from the wet mound Cunningham had piled.

  They had been trailing Griffith all night, per his request, after he informed Livingston that Cunningham had bribed him for a share of the treasure. All through the night Livingston and company maintained a safe distance, so as not to alert Cunningham to their presence. Livingston left the fate of the Abettor to the discretion of the crew, after enlightening them to Cunningham's treachery. He had no doubt that they would take appropriate steps in defending their fortune.

  Livingston's foul mood was somewhat lessened by the satisfying sight of Cunningham's corpse. He had never cared for the man, and he would've pulled the trigger himself, had Griffith not insisted on having that honor.

  Cunningham had been far too feminine in his ways, and there was no place in the world for a man with the fastidious mind of a woman. But far more disturbing was the lingering gaze that Cunningham too often fixed on other men. It had always made Livingston uncomfortable, particularly when it was focused on him.

  After the treasure was reburied, Jack Cunningham along with it, the pirates started the long trek back through the jungle. Griffith never uttered a word or even tilted his head to look at Livingston. The unspoken soreness between them remained, in spite of Livingston's assistance in the present matter. Their camaraderie had always been one that warranted no apologies, but something had changed. Livingston had little doubt as to who was responsible for Griffith's recent despondence.

  Two headaches removed, he realized. One left. Harbinger had been dispelled of Thatcher's stink and the sea had been relieved of Cunningham's unsettling femininity. Only Katherine Lindsay remained. Thus far, Livingston had been deprived of the kills. He would have to make up for that. Ever since Lindsay had denied him the pleasure of Thatcher's screams on the beach, his mind played out a feast of glorious tortures. The destruction of her pet, while momentarily gratifying, did little to placate his sweltering wrath. Lindsay had poisoned his blood with rage, and killing her would be the only cure.

  A pistol would be too fast for her. A cutlass was a true weapon. It did not murder unless it was instructed to. Perhaps he would plunge it into her nether-region and shuffle it around until it spilled her entrails, without allowing her life to quit. He would make her last.

  However, this torture would not be so easily granted while Griffith lived. And though he prayed that he would never lose his friend and capt
ain, with whom he had sailed for countless years, he feared for Griffith's future. If anything happened to him, powers forbid, Katherine Lindsay would weep for death before Livingston was finished with her. If ever he finished.

  He was thankful for the cover of darkness, as it concealed his growing smile.

  Livingston lost track of the hours it took them to make their way back to the beach. He began to think that they had lost their way. He was incredibly fatigued and wanted nothing more than to fall into a deep sleep and dream of the sweet agonies he could not yet inflict on Katherine Lindsay. The rain eventually stopped, but the black cloud cover remained. The air was hot and humid and caused him to sweat almost as terribly as the late Thatcher. His skin started to itch everywhere.

  When at last they emerged onto the eastern beach, Abettor was burning.

  NATHAN

  Spars crackled and sails danced as writhing flames raced up Abettor's masts. Heat rose from the decks in shimmering waves that coursed swirling trails of black ash into the starless sky. No rain fell to appease the fires.

  The screams of dying men had long since faded and their searing corpses smelled as sweet as the barbecue of the prior night. It made Nathan's mouth water and his stomach growl, but he was simultaneously sickened by the impulse. From that moment on the luscious scent of sweltering meat would be forever tainted.

  He took no part in the devastation of Abettor or the slaughtering of her crew, thus failing his recently appointed duty as first mate. While the ship smoldered behind them, the crew turned a collective gaze on him and stripped him of his rank with disenchanted eyes rather than harsh words. They blamed him for Harbinger's fourteen losses to Abettor's defenses.

  He didn’t care.

  Questions blazed in his mind as furiously as the inferno that steadily ate away at Abettor, questions that had not occurred to Harbinger's insatiable crew in their homicidal frenzy. And burning brightest, like a blinding spike that divided reason from madness, was the most flagrant question of all: how could Abettor's crew have possibly known of a treasure that was already buried? Was Jonathon Griffith so foolish that he had revealed the treasure's location to the Abettor's captain?

  There were no answers to such questions and there never would be. Griffith was a man beyond inquiry. No longer did his crew search for meaning in his schemes; the potency of faith had rendered logic irrelevant.

  Slowly the fires chewed through Abettor from the inside out, flames bursting from the seams and snaking up the hull on either side. At length she sunk into a shallow grave, and the water sizzled and steamed as it extinguished the fires that touched it. Her keel came to a rest with the water level just shy of her main deck. Blackened masts gave way and came crashing down, smashing through and caving the deck in, and out of that gaping wound exploded a cloud of orange embers that arced outward and cascaded down into the water like the branches of a weeping willow.

  The skeletal remains of the ship lurched and settled, and then all was silent and dark, water thinly smoking about the wreckage. Soon the fires would die and the last of the smoke would waft into the clouds above and disperse, and to a stranger it would appear as though the ship had rested there since the beginning of time.

  Nathan watched over the bulwark as Griffith and his company boated around the ruin of Abettor. Griffith boarded Harbinger in silence and vanished into his cabin. A sleepy-eyed Livingston exchanged words with many of the crew. "Fourteen dead," one of the Jamaicans informed him. The same man indicated Nathan with an accusing finger a nasty scowl. Nathan didn’t need to hear the man’s words to know what was said.

  Livingston approached with an unhappy look. Nathan fully expected to incur the quartermaster's infamous wrath, but he was unable to muster much concern. However, Livingston walked right past him, and under his breath he said, "You're not one of us and you never were." Strangely, there was not a trace of malice in his tone. "I'm going to sleep," he said over his shoulder. And halfheartedly he added, "Any man wakes me will get a knife in his belly."

  There was a nervous laugh all around that trailed into obscurity much too quickly. After what had happened to Thatcher on the beach, they were afraid of laughing too loudly at the quartermaster's jests, but knew better than to remain entirely silent.

  Nathan was thankful for Katherine Lindsay. She had done poor Thatcher a favor when others had been too cowardly to step in, but he feared that she had placed herself in mortal danger by doing so. Livingston’s bloodlust had been temporarily satiated, but his tenacity would find itself renewed in the coming days, as it always did.

  The clouds were dimly illuminated by the dullest of mottled grays. The sun was drawing near on the eastern horizon.

  By the same madness that had consumed the pirates on the prior night, a majority vote favored sailing Harbinger into the very storm that had tailed the late Jack Cunningham. Perhaps it was the ache of their loins that urged them so recklessly toward Nassau. The promise of a strumpet’s bosom was a powerful motivator; Nathan knew this above all others.

  Though he missed Annabelle terribly, he did not wish to drown in the attempt to reach her. He had cast his vote in favor of remaining moored outside of the island until the storm ended, but he was laughed at, spat at, and cursed for his trouble.

  And so Harbinger crested the pinnacle of the tallest wave that Nathan had ever looked upon. And as the ship tilted downward, with her bowsprit aimed into the thin air and her hull groaning under duress, he closed his eyes and filled his mind with the soothing image of Annabelle's smiling face. He desired more than all the fortunes of the world combined to take refuge in her soft embrace. He prayed to whatever powers were listening to bring him safely to her.

  The stinging pellets of rain brought him back to reality. Nathan was blinded by an arcing column of light that struck the deck. He heard the snapping of lines and cracking of wood. Someone screamed, "Get down!" and Nathan turned too late. The splintered end of a shattered spar plunged into the inner bend of his right arm. The force lifted off of his feet and spun him like a ballet dancer being tossed from one to another. There was no pain, just a sweeping nausea as he spiraled through the air. He caught glimpse of the spar stuck in his arm, jutting from his elbow. And then he landed, cheek slapping the planking, and his blood rinsed the deck.

  He awoke on the main deck to a blue sky that shone through breaking clouds. He tilted his head and saw that the fore topsail had been ravaged. The hemp was charred and tattered, whipping uselessly in the wind, and the starboard end of the topsail yard had snapped off.

  And then, in concurrence with a jolt of pain that peeled his lips from his teeth, he remembered his injury. Presently, Livingston was pulling the largest splinter of the yard out of Nathan's arm, with his heel pressed against Nathan's shoulder to secure him. Livingston fell backwards when the splinter finally gave way. Blood spurted all over him.

  Nathan shrieked. Two men held him down. The pain was unfathomable. Something shattered in his mouth as he clenched his jaw, and he felt as though his face had split in two. His head fell back and his skull smacked the deck. His breath caught in his throat as he inhaled, and he coughed blood and the white chip of a tooth.

  "Where the hell is Thatcher?" Livingston bellowed in desperation as he tried to force a chunk of wood in Nathan’s mouth for him to bite down on.

  Griffith stared apprehensively at the quartermaster. He seemed more worried for Livingston than he did Nathan. "Thatcher’s dead, Edward."

  The whites of Livingston’s eyes surrounded his irises. His pupils were tiny dots. "I know that!" he said at once. "You think I don’t know that?"

  "Of course not," Griffith said, placing a hand on Livingston’s shoulder.

  "I bloody did him meself," Livingston said, a grin forming. "I remember the stupid look on his face when I took his guts out."

  "The arm has to go," came the voice of One-Eyed Henry.

  "He's not a spar!" Livingston spat. "What would you know of it, carpenter?"

  "His arm is useless,
" Henry replied in the least offensive tone possible. "It will go black and the rest of him with it if we don’t take it off."

  Nathan glanced at his arm and was horrified by what he saw. He bit down on the chunk of wood and struggled to maintain consciousness. He did not want to wake up minus a limb.

  "You know shit," Livingston said, giving Henry a shove.

  "Edward," Griffith said. "Calm yourself."

  "We have to take it off," Henry insisted.

  "Let it be!" Nathan gasped, spitting the chunk of wood out of his mouth. "Let my arm be! It's fine!"

  "The boy wants to keep it," argued Livingston.

  "I want to keep it," Nathan agreed, nodding frantically.

  "He's out of his mind right now," said Henry. "I know what I know. If that arm doesn't come off above the elbow, it'll be the death of him."

  "Don't go into the storm," Nathan muttered, in accordance with his thoughts. "Don't go into the storm. Don't go into the storm, I said. I voted. I voted. Remember? Don't go into the storm. I voted. Don't go into the storm."

  "Take off the arm," said Griffith. The finality in his order allowed no dissent.

  "Didn't vote. Didn't vote." Nathan rolled his head to and fro and the sky and masts rolled with it.

  "Hold him down till I return," Henry said, and he took his leave. Nathan couldn't be sure exactly how long Henry was absent, as he stumbled in and out of consciousness several times. Henry finally returned with a fine-toothed saw and red-hot broadaxe.

  Nathan's eyes rolled back in their sockets. Pain washed through him like tides on a beach, and the thought of worse was incomprehensible. He fainted.

  He awoke to a sherbet sky, glorious in its palette. There remained not a single wisp of cloud. The sun had touched the horizon, a giant, shimmering sphere. The storm had passed. Harbinger was safe.

  His mouth throbbed and tasted acidic. He swallowed and winced at the sharp pain in his throat. He dug a finger inside his mouth, feeling around until his finger sunk between two teeth into a gelatinous hollow gum. He withdrew a bloody finger. I bit my tooth off, he remembered. Because of my arm. My arm! They were going to cut off my arm!