Sea Witch

by Hollick, Helen

  “Sod it Rue, I’ll cut my own throat if I sit here doing damn all much longer!”

  “Oui. I think there is a perfectly fine ship idling down in the ‘arbour. One which will be hard to match in the waters of the Spanish Main. I also think I would rather ‘ang after a few months of excitement, than sit ‘ere waiting for the next, god-alone knows ‘ow many years, going grey and rotting to dust, bored out of my skull.”

  “You thinking of taking the Sea Witch?” the younger man asked dubiously, his heavy brows frowning down over his eyes.

  “Oui.”

  “Jesamiah ready to sail?” Added quickly, “I’ll not commandeer her, I’ll not steal from him.”

  “Non. Nor would I, nor would I,” Rue placated, patting the air with his large hands. “I intend to tell ‘im tomorrow. No use now, ‘e is dead to the world. ‘E can come with us or stay ‘ere.”

  “Or,” Isiah suggested, speaking slowly as he mulled over an idea, “we could carry him aboard and hope he pulls himself together once we get to sea?”

  Rue frowned; that was possible. “Our first Chase, first Prize? Oui, action might snap ‘im out of the melancholy ‘e is wallowing in.”

  “We had best get word out for a crew, get her careened and provisioned,” Roberts said, tossing his unfinished meal into the fire and wiping his greasy hands on the seat of his breeches. “She’s been bobbing idle these weeks, bound to have barnacles sucking at her. Bit of worm too no doubt, although she has a right good copper-clad keel to protect her. It’ll not take long to see her ready.” He was grinning, eager at the prospect.

  Rue slapped his friend’s shoulder. Already he felt he was coming alive again.

  *

  Waking several hours into the fore noon to a thundering headache, Jesamiah staggered to his feet. He tottered to the door, peered out, squinting at the brightness of the morning sun. He dipped a wooden cup into the bucket beside the door, the water warm and brackish, but sufficient to slake his thirst. Not bothering to go into the bushes, directed his urine against the outside wall.

  “You would ‘ave threatened us with a flogging if we ‘ad been so lazy as to do that aboard ship,” Rue observed wryly from where he stood some yards away.

  “Well we ain’t aboard,” Jesamiah grunted adjusting his breeches. Wished the fellow would not shout so loud.

  Rue stepped forward offering a pewter tankard. “Drink this.”

  Hesitant, Jesamiah took and it wrinkled his nose at the foul looking liquid. “What is it?”

  “Old French recipe. Brandy, ground garlic with ‘alf a pint of ale. Deux œufs – fresh-laid is that cackle fruit – a pinch of gunpowder and melted pork lard.”

  Jesamiah sniffed again at the concoction, gagged at the stench. He poked a finger into it and picked out a piece of floating eggshell. “I don’t care for raw eggs.”

  “Just drink it.”

  Doubtful, Jesamiah raised it to his mouth. Changing his mind, offered it back. “Later perhaps.”

  Folding his arms, Rue ignored the tankard. “Isiah and me we are getting the Sea Witch ready to sail. You ‘ad ‘er refitted when first you came, she ‘as cannon and swivel guns, all of it wasted with ‘er sitting there in the ‘arbour. Isiah ‘as beached ‘er this morning and is already scraping ‘er keel. We ’ave got a crew volunteered as well. Très bien, good men.”

  He encouraged the tankard upwards. Jesamiah was staring at him, his expression blank. Sea Witch? To set sail?

  “Ecoute, mon gars,” Rue said finally losing patience. “Look, my friend, you ‘ave a choice. You lead us like the brilliant capitaine you are or we leave you ‘ere in this cursed-forgotten emptiness, with as many bottles of rum as you please. You can drink yourself into oblivion, with only this wind for company.”

  Jesamiah looked from Rue to the tankard. He hated the wind. Hesitant, he raised it to his lips. “It smells foul.”

  “‘The fouler the medicine, the quicker the cure, or so ma mère used to say.”

  “What was she? The village poisoner?”

  “One gulp. Straight down,” Rue advised.

  Taking a deep breath Jesamiah drank, much of it trickling down his chin into his scruffy, untrimmed beard. Rue held a finger against the bottom forcing him to finish it.

  Swearing as he pulled away, Jesamiah wiped his hand over his mouth, grimacing, gave Rue the empty tankard then swallowed hard. One hand went to his belly the other to his mouth. “You sodding…” He doubled over sinking to his hands and knees, retching and vomiting up the contents of his stomach. When nothing more was heaving from him, rolled on to his back, eyes closed, his hands covering his face. Managed to croak, “That was bloody disgusting.”

  “Cured your ‘eadache though, non?”

  Opening one eye Jesamiah glowered. “And how d’you figure that mate? It’s still thumping away as if three ‘undred crew of buccaneers are bouncing about in there, hankering after a Chase.”

  Rue offered his hand to pull him to his feet. Jesamiah accepted and stood, unsteady, the world wheeling past.

  “You will be so busy puking your guts up this next ‘alf ‘our, you will forget about your sore ‘ead.” He guffawed heartily at Jesamiah’s murderous expression.

  Nine

  November – 1717

  Sunrise. Sea Witch had run under easy canvas during the night and with nothing to slow her below the water line she bowled along under fore and main topsail.

  Jesamiah ducked from his cabin, a cup of steaming coffee in his hand. He wore a clean shirt and breeches, had tidied his moustache and beard, shaved the rest of his face, a nick of blood spotting his cheek from where the ship had heeled at an unexpected moment.

  The whisper went around, “Cap’n’s on deck!” They were a pirate crew but respected their captain. While Jesamiah listened and watched from the rail of the quarterdeck, language became cleaner and tasks were completed more efficiently.

  “Aloft there!” Jesamiah called, his dark eyes squinting up the height of the main mast. “Make anything more of that ship yet?”

  “She’s hull up, Cap’n, just sheeted full canvas an’ veering sou’ sou’ west. Reckon she’s spotted us.”

  Finishing his coffee and sending the dregs over the side, Jesamiah glanced at the compass. South-south-west. Noted the sand trickling through the half-hourglass, the trim of the sails. Isiah Roberts handed him the bring it close. “She’s over there, two points off starb’d.”

  Extending the brass telescope Jesamiah put it to his eye. Smiled. So she was.

  Sea Witch was a fine ship. During their long voyage across the Atlantic, running before the Westerlies, they had put her through her paces pushing her up to her limit and almost beyond, to see exactly what she was capable of doing. Discovered she was capable of doing a lot.

  They had not sailed from Madagascar, in the end, for another two weeks for with the return of enthusiasm, Jesamiah had decided to fit a bow-chaser gun to her forward rails and purchase two more nine-pounder cannons. Which meant two more ports to be cut and the other guns re-arranged to balance the weight. He then had her hull painted royal blue. Blue, the colour of his ribbons. Jesamiah Blue, as the crew called it.

  One hundred-and-twenty-five feet from stem to stern. Sea Witch. Three masts and twenty guns, two of them twelve-pounders. After these many weeks back in the Caribbean she was the talk of the Islands. Not all of it, from the merchants’ point of view, complimentary.

  By keeping an experienced eye on the set of her sail and the angle of the wind, Jesamiah could manage to squeeze that last vital knot of speed when it was necessary. He had pushed himself as hard to learn all he could about her during the Atlantic crossing, taking the helm himself for hours on end, climbing the masts, setting and trimming canvas. Exploring every inch of the below deck world, even to crawling through the vileness of the cable tier, where the hemp coils of the anchor cable were stored on slatted platforms in order for them to dry and not rot. A place where the rats scurried in the pitch black humidity of stinking bi
lge water, the very lowest part of the ship in both senses of the word. Methodically, Jesamiah had become familiar with every inch of her, observing and caressing as if he were investigating the intimate contours of a woman’s body while making slow, passionate love to her. Which in a way, he was.

  Sea Witch swayed with the tide and the wind; she sang or she moaned depending on her mood. Was mother, sister, wife and whore to the men aboard, but most especially to her captain, who by the very nature of his position of command served as her consort. And as with any capricious woman, to keep her sweet her chosen lover must indulge all her whims and fancies.

  Equally, Jesamiah was as meticulous about his crew. He wanted able men who knew their job and would do it with a will. Shirkers or mitherers he would not tolerate. The men were to work together as brothers and he insisted on a modified version of the Articles of the Pirate Code. Sea Witch was his, he was the law while aboard. There would be no electing a new captain, no voting for destination or enterprise. Rue was quartermaster, Isiah Roberts first mate. The rest of the Code he honoured; the scrupulously equal share of plunder, the sensible rules stating weapons must be kept in good condition, no smoking below deck and safe lanterns used, not an open flame. Gambling and fighting were entertainments to be kept for when ashore.

  The only extra rule, no woman aboard a Chase was to be harmed. And as a concession to his belligerence in running his ship his way, he promised whoever crewed with the Sea Witch under Captain Jesamiah Acorne, would never be sorry for it.

  A promise he rigidly adhered to.

  Only once had he been tempted to give it all away, the twist of pain contorting his stomach into knots, and that had been at the very start as they had sailed by night past Cape Town. How he had wanted to give the order to bring Sea Witch around, ease her quietly into the harbour and steal ashore.

  To do what? To carry out his threat to Jenna? To find Tiola? Why? She was gone from him, had rejected him. If she had wanted him she would have come on the day he had commandeered his ship, or as soon as possible after. She had known where to find him. She had abandoned him and the suffering ache of it was eating him alive.

  With Cape Town’s distant lights on their starboard beam and Table Mountain a shadow against a star-emblazoned sky, Jesamiah had shut himself in his cabin and given temporary command to Rue. As they beat past the Bay and headed out into the Atlantic he had swallowed down an entire bottle of rum. By the time he was capable of standing again Africa and its inhabitants had been left far astern.

  Shutting the telescope with a snap and handing it back to Isiah, Jesamiah announced. “Full sail and then breakfast.” He grinned at the men waiting, watching him from the waist. “I doubt we’ll ‘ave chance to fill our bellies in an ‘our or two, eh lads?”

  The crew cheered, more canvas tumbled from the yards as willing hands hurried to backstays and sheets, while others hauled the topgallant halyards. With all sail set and drawing well Sea Witch leapt to life as eager to be about her business as her crew.

  Two hours later the other ship tried to make a race of it, to reach the safety of Antigua only fifteen miles ahead. She had no hope of succeeding, not against Sea Witch running steadily at more than ten knots. Straining to put distance between herself and the suspicious sail bearing down upon them, the Chase hoisted her colours. Dutch.

  “Humour ‘er Isiah. Run up a British ensign if you please,” Jesamiah was happy to follow the tradition of this charade. The Chase knew full well Sea Witch was a pirate.

  He was fully dressed now; buckram coat, three-corner hat settled comfortably on his head, his cutlass at his hip, his left hand resting lightly on the hilt, his right fiddling with his ribbons. A breakfast of pork chop, sliced ham, eggs and fresh coffee digesting in his stomach.

  Sea Witch was ready too, cleared for action; everything not required on deck stowed away below or tossed as jetsam overboard. The bulkheads in Jesamiah’s cabin were unbolted and removed, his mahogany table dismantled hoisted to the ceiling, out of the way to give more floor space for the gunners to run out the two stern cannons.

  Jesamiah drove his victim hard as if he were a cat playing with a mouse, until tiring of the game, and her bowsprit creeping towards the merchant’s stern, he ordered the final burst of speed, clewed up into fighting sail and brought Sea Witch level with her prize. She edged forward, the two vessels soon flying along on parallel courses two hundred yards apart and closing, their bow waves mingling in crazy swirls of foam.

  The Chase fired a feeble defence of her four guns, but her aim was poor and delivered in haste. Spumes of water fluted in the space between them as the shot fell short, only one ball striking along the Sea Witch’s rails amidships. Beyond gouging a few splinters, did no serious damage.

  “Run out the guns if you please,” Jesamiah ordered, unhurried. “And make sure your firing is better done than theirs! One shot across her bow on my command.”

  From his position on the quarterdeck he watched with satisfaction as immediately the gun ports were hauled open and the great weapons were run out. Each man, his heart racing with the build of blood-heat excitement, waiting in position for the word to fire.

  “Our correct colours, if you will Isiah,” Jesamiah indicated the superfluous British flag.

  With a wide grin, Isiah brought down the ensign, hoisted Jesamiah’s own pirate emblem of a lurid skull and two crossed bones white painted on a black background. Lifting his arm, Jesamiah waited, his experienced eye watching the rise and dip of his ship’s bow.

  “Number one gun, on the up-roll,” paused, brought his hand down. “Fire!”

  And Sea Witch roared into smoke and noise as her larboard cannon belched its hideous power and slammed into the bowsprit of the Chase, ripping away spars, sail and shrouds all in the one shot. The gun crew were already running in, swabbing and loading as the powder monkey boys scurried forward with fresh powder. If the Chase did not see sense and heave to, surrender, there would be a another shot and a third. Even the dread of a broadside.

  No pirate wanted to destroy a ship if it could be taken by insistent persuasion. Unfortunately, not all merchant captains held the same view of passive domination.

  The second gun was ready, loaded with chain shot. Fired at maximum elevation it brought down shrouds and rigging, the air choked with the thick drift of smoke. The Chase’s fore topmast shattered, toppled. She slewed to larboard and then her foresail ripped away in a great tear of sound.

  With a nod of his head, Rue acknowledged Jesamiah’s next order and put the helm hard over, Sea Witch responding by inclining her bow towards the panicking merchant. The pirates were chanting the regular, haunting sound that would bring terror into the very Devil himself.

  “Oi, oi, oi, oi!” Beating their pistols and cutlasses, belaying pins, anything which came to hand, on the rails, keeping the rhythm of their shout steady. Their bare feet pounding on the deck. “Oi, oi, oi, oi!”

  A wolf pack, Jesamiah thought, watching them with detached approval. A wolf pack running in full cry on the scent of its foundering prey. And he was the leader of the pack. The wolf king, it was for him to call them off or send them into the kill. What was it Tiola had said once, long ago now? Something about standing on the shore of Table Bay with Mr William Dampier, comparing a pirate to a sleek-pelted wolf? He could not remember. He brushed the unwelcome memory aside. Did not want to remember.

  The gap between them closing to less than one hundred feet, Jesamiah gave the last order to fire once more, grape shot – small cast iron balls bound together in a canvas bag, and langrage, jagged pieces that spread and scattered tearing through rigging, sails and men alike. Foul stuff if you were on the receiving end of it.

  Sea Witch rocked as the gun sent this next taste of death into the merchant, her crew of twenty or so men foolishly beginning to mass along the rails to defend their ship against boarding. Lead shot tore through them. Two of their guns were now useless and the ship had holes gaping in her side; her torn shrouds dangled like a m
arionette’s severed strings, her canvas was shred to pieces. And the chant from the foredeck of the Sea Witch was joined by the gun crews in the waist, the pace and words altering to something more sinister as the distance between them closed to fifty yards. To twenty-five.

  Caught in its intoxicating excitement, Jesamiah pulled out his pistol and used the butt to thump on the quarterdeck rail, adding to the chanted rhythm. Joined his voice with the sound all merchantmen feared.

  “Death! Death! Death!”

  Bow first, Sea Witch smashed into the Chase and the men on the foredeck were going over the rails, yodelling their murderous intent, the pop, pop of pistols firing; the cries of the wounded and dying.

  Isiah Roberts took over the helm, Rue leapt atop the quarterdeck rail, ready to jump across to the mizzen shrouds, waiting beside Jesamiah as the Sea Witch’s stern swung inwards.

  “With care, mon ami,” Rue said, setting one hand momentarily on Jesamiah’s arm. “You have been taking too many risks of late when we board.”

  “If I was to take care, Rue,” Jesamiah answered having to shout as he grabbed for the shrouds, the Dutch hull grinding against Sea Witch, “there would be no sense in my being here or doing this.”

  He had no intention of being careful. The quicker someone shot him through the heart or the head, the better. That was all he wanted, to end it all, to end the long nights of loneliness when only a rum bottle offered comfort. Rum was not the same as Tiola’s smile, or her laugh or her love. Or her intimate response beneath his touch. Nothing made up for the loss of Tiola.

  Aboard the Chase the fight was bloody and over in five minutes. Both his pistols fired, one after the other and meeting their mark, Jesamiah had soon drawn his cutlass and was working his way steadily towards the quarterdeck where he found the officers making a last stand of defiance. Damn fools!

  Rue was beside him, his cutlass swinging almost in unison. He saw the Dutch captain take careful aim and fire his pistol; heard Jesamiah gasp, saw him falter and stumble to one knee. Rue stopped and bent down, alarmed, ducking his head as another shot whistled past his ear. All around him, the frenzied sounds of fighting, the bang of firearms the clash of steel.