His beard ran heavy down the strong throat to join the mat that showed on his chest where the wide-collared shirt lay open.
His skin was Indian red with exposure and the whites of his roving eyes gave emphasis to his glances as he called the buccaneers by name while they seated themselves ready for the feast. He had the nose of a hawk and his chin showed prominently for all its bushing. On one finger a great diamond shot iridescent rays. A golden neck-chain caught the light. Instead of cutlass he wore a rapier at the end of an elaborate belt hanger. There were pistols with carven butts ornamented with silver in his belt between silken scarf and leather, pistols in the silken sling across one shoulder.
There was little said for a time as the pig was carved at will by the ready knives while good wine went gurgling down brawny throats from bottle-necks. Every little while Lucky Bart would roar a pledge across the fire to some one of the buccaneers, his jewel spraying fire as he raised his hand. Between the huts the Indians devoured their portion of the feast.
At last the dogs were fed, the last of the wine was drained and long crude cheroots of Trinidad tobacco lighted. In complaisant humor the men sat about the fire.
“A song!” cried Bart jovially. “Who’ll tip us a stave? What, no volunteers? Then here’s one for you. ’Tis good, for I made it myself.”
He roared it out in a lusty bass and the men who had come with him joined in the refrain with a will, timing the lilt, beating out the rhythm with closed fists on their thighs or imitating the inhaul of ropes as they sat, like performers in a South Sea hula.
“The galleon’s hold was filled with gold:
Oh-ho, let the wind blow!
As she put out to sea,
The breeze did stream athwart her beam,
Jamaica on her lee.
Yo-ho!
Jamaica on her lee.
“Yo-ho, let the wind blow!
Let it blow high, let it blow low,
But blow right steadily.
North or south, or east or west,
Any breeze that blows is best
For our good Company!
Yo-ho!
For our good Company!
“Her captain’s gay in silk array;
Oh-ho, let the wind blow!
A sparkling jewel he wears.
But, oh, his face is turning gray
As up the wind he stares.
Yo-ho!
As up the wind he stares.
“Yo-ho, aloft and below!
Haul on the sheets, let the ship go.
And man the battery.
Prime your pistols, whet your steel;
Fast we glide on tilted keel.
Yo-ho the Company!
Yo-ho!
For our good Company!
“The scuppers’ wash is red with blood;
Oh-ho, let the wind blow!
The air is filled with groans.
We fling the corpses in the flood
And hoist the skull and bones.
Yo-ho!
And hoist the skull and bones!
“Yo-ho, let the wind blow!
The galleon’s captain’s gone below
To sup with Davy Jones.
Gold galore to spend ashore,
Then to sea to gain some more
Beneath the skull and bones;
Yo-ho!
Beneath the skull and bones!”
Roars of approval greeted the song. Bart’s followers chanted over the last stanza and Bart, unfolding a bundle he had carried under his arm, displayed a sable flag on which was stitched the death emblem.
Some one brought a bamboo pole. In a trice the banner was fastened to the staff and the filibuster stood waving it. The moon silvered the device, the glow of the fire tinged it with sinister crimson. The final note found the whole company grouped about him, shouting in enthusiasm born of the feast, the wine, the song and the infection of Lucky Bart’s enthusiasm.
“That’s the flag to fight under,” he cried, “Death to our enemies! Death to all Spaniards unless they hand over the loot they have robbed from the Indians. We’ll let ’em off then, if they’re humble enough, but we’d rather cross blades. Eh, lads?
“There are three things to warm the blood—wine, women and a good fight! There are three things that smell sweet to a real man, the scent of a woman’s hair, the perfume of wine and the reek of burned powder! Three things that are good to hear, the laugh of a girl, the clink of gold and the clash of steel!
“Join in with Lucky Bart, my hearties, and we’ll give you all of them. Why, look you, a year since and I was toiling through the brush on Hispaniola with a collar of raw beef around my neck, lucky if I earned enough to stay overnight in a tavern once a month. Now—” he made the big diamond flash—“a don, a hidalgo of Spain made me a present of this ring. He had no further use for it.”
He grinned and the crowd guffawed.
“Another gave me this Toledo blade.”
He whipped out the supple blade of bright steel from its sheath, making a hissing circle before he took the point and curved the rapier until end touched end within the jeweled guard. As it swung back to true, quivering, sending off rays of dazzle reflected from moon and fire, it seemed like a sentient thing, live as an adder’s tongue.
“Booty, my lads! Spoils of war! Taxes on Spain! Yours for the collecting. Who’ll join? I’ve a stout ship though it’s small. I’ve four cannon. We’ve done well with them, but we must do better. We must fly at bigger game. We need men. We’ll be crowded for a few days until we find a ship big enough to hold us with comfort. We’ll take that as we’ve taken all the rest.
“Follow Barthelemy’s Luck, my men. Every cast wins. Luck’s a handsome jade, but she’ll pout and she’ll flout you if you do not read aright the look in her eyes. Run after her and she’ll leave you bogged, like a will-o’-the-wisp. But when she walks within your grasp, look you, seize her, woo her, flatter her and she’ll give you all she has, being a woman, to be wooed and won.”
“Aye, and the jade will fling you aside as she’d toss away a frayed ribbon, when she’s put you through all your tricks.”
There was a laugh at this and Bart twisted to see the owner of the voice, pushed forward by his comrades in jest.
“So, old growler, Luck jilted you, did she? In faith ’tis no wonder, with those swivel eyes.”
Lucky Bart swiftly traced the sign of the cross in the air, shrinking a little, for all his boldness and the knowledge that every one was observing him.
“Swivel-eyes or no,” retorted the other, a gray-bearded, bald-headed veteran in whose shrunken flesh the muscles still stood out efficiently; “they can sight cannon perier and culverin as well as any ordinary pair. Nay, they are rightly set for that same trick of sending a shot true to the mark. Every man squints when he sights along a barrel. I do it without effort.
“I fought against the Spaniards in ’24 when the French chased them out o’ the Val Telline. I fought ’em in the Netherlands in ’21. I’m not too old to fight ’em yet, give me the chance. I’ve no son of my own, let me adopt one of those four cannon of yours and I’ll warrant it’ll speak for me!”
The old man, half-drunken with the unaccustomed amount of wine he had drunk at Bart’s expense, was working himself up into a fury. Barthelemy, quick to recognize his quality as a recruiting agent, let him talk.
“They got me once, in Madrid. I was there to—never mind that,” he muttered, “but the friars caught me for a Frenchman and a heretic. They tried to save my soul by squeezing my body. Look at those twisted arms.”
He tore off his tunic, exposing misshapen arms, distorted shoulders and scarred ribs.
“They gave me the rack and the boot; they took the nails from my fingers and toes in their sweet zeal. They made me walk in procession with yellow and red flames on my robe—pointing upwards, mark you. I was handed over to the seculars; I was to be burned to ashes.
“But I escaped their deviltry. There was a girl in the city. My eyes were
straight then. Never mind that. Now the Bishop of Cuba is Inquisitor General with full power of fine and fetter, dungeon, torture and the stake. The Inquisition of the Galleys covers the friars aboard all Spanish ships of war. Give me a chance to aim your cannon against Spaniards, Lucky Bart, and I’ll call it the biggest luck that has come to me in twenty years.”
Bart clapped him on the back.
“I’ll give you your chance,” he said. “If there is ill fortune in your crossed sight, fire it at the Spaniards with your priming.”
The talk had been all in French, the common language of the buccaneers, though the crowd was a mixture of French and English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh and Dutch with Barthelemy himself a Portuguese and sworn enemy to Philip of Spain. A short, rotund man who had joined lustily in the singing, put the question to the newly appointed gunner:
“You’ve not said what crossed your eyes, Simon? Was it making love to two wenches at once?”
“No. It was trying to make a Welshman look me straight in the face.”
In the roar that went up the Welsh quizzer backed out of the front rank of the circle surrounding Bart. Simon reverted to the leader’s first sentence.
“’Tis true Luck jilted me at the end,” he growled out, emboldened by his acceptance as gunner. “So she will all. And when she’s tiring of you and seeking a new favorite, see that you force her not, Lucky Bart. That’s my word to you, and a wise one.”
“I’ve a charm to keep her favor, Simon. But for that, good gunner as you are, I’d not have risked the evil eye aboard my ship. I took this myself from the beard of an oyster that I brought up in fourteen fathoms. It has been with me ever since.
“There’s Bart’s luck for ye, come out of the sea as a sign from Neptune himself. Whiles that’s above my heart I have no fear of forcing my luck, nor need those who sail with me.”
He hauled up the gold chain about his neck and displayed its pendant in his broad, horny palm as they crowded in. The pendant was a baroque pearl that had been tipped by some clever artificer with gold-work. The same clever craftsman may have used his tiny chisels to emphasize the natural design. That was hard to determine, for the nacreous luster was perfect.
Baroques are freakish things, and this bit of pearl, thrown off by a sick shellfish, about the size of a man’s thumb-nail, showed plainly the modeling of a face with hooked nose above a grinning and wide mouth, with cavernous eyes suggested beneath beetling brows; the semblance of a satyr exquisitely wrought in miniature. Strangest touch of all were the horns that sprang from the temples. These may not have been matched, for they had been tipped with gold, accentuated perhaps until projected forward, curving slightly inwards above the sardonic face.
As they looked at it in superstitious awe, Bart, with the fore and little fingers of his left hand, made the sign to ward off evil that the Italian fishermen call gettatura, the gesture common to all the Mediterranean coast. Tiny branches of coral that suggest such horns are treasured and worn as charms. Many in that crowd had seen them, some possessed them, but never had they seen a charm like this, a veritable diabolus.
Swayed as they were by their common hatred against Spain, by the growing scarcity of cattle that had backed Bart’s arguments for freebooting, by the prospects of following the notable example of Pierre le Grand, nothing could have cemented them like this. It was incontrovertible, miraculous. They watched in strained silence as Bart put the baroque back into his hairy chest and nodded at them triumphantly.
So tense was the momentary hush that even Bart started when every hound gave deep-throated warning in a sudden clamor that heralded a small party of men, advancing authoritatively into the clearing; belted, booted and armed with pistols and hangers, dressed with a certain uniformity. Bart wheeled to face them.
“Now what the deuce is this?” he demanded as the newcomers halted, standing close as if uncertain of their welcome, yet determined to maintain their mission. One of them stepped forward.
“We come by virtue of the warrant of the governor,” he said. “We seek certain buccaneers whose names are set forth in these warrants against the sums long overdue the French West Indian Company for goods and other provisions and supplies. Moreover we act under special authority from his Majesty Louis the Thirteenth, who graciously granted the charter to the said trading company, and by whose order we have come overseas to protect the traders in their lawful enterprise which hath been imperiled by the refusal of these buccaneers to take up payment of these accounts.” He stopped for breath and to gather his resources, somewhat scattered by the attitude of these debtors of the French West Indian Company, by the presence of Bart and his men, whom he had not expected to find on this collecting expedition to the chief rendezvous of the beef-smokers. Bart stood with folded arms, but a hand grasped a pistol to right and left and the filibuster was grinning contemptuously.
“I will read the warrants—and the names,” said the officer. “In the name of the king—”
“Spare your breath, you may want it when you go down the mountain,” said Bart. “We’ll take it that most of us here are on the books where we are charged such prices as would bring a millionaire to beggary. I’ll venture mine is there. Mayhap you have heard of it? Lucky Bart, they call me, or Barthelemy Portuguese, of the Swan, sometime buccaneer, now turned freebooter. There is not one of us but has paid the company twice what their goods are worth at a high profit. How do you propose to collect your money, my man?”
The officer drew himself to his meager height. His voice shook with sudden rage as he answered the titter that echoed Bart’s speech while his men held off the suspicious hounds that snuffed at their calves.
“I have heard of you,” he said. “And for you and your pirate crew there is especial mention in the warrants. Unless these bills are met, not one of you nor any man whose name is written, shall leave the island under penalty of imprisonment in the fortress. So says the governor. The guns of the forts will back his words. None shall put to sea nor cross the channel. Attempt it without showing a receipt and the Swan, or any other craft, will be blown out of the water.”
“You hold a strong hand,” said Bart, and his tone had mellowed. “The company seems to have a friend at court as well as one at the fort. Yet how shall we pay unless we ply our trade? What we make we spend. We do not hoard our gold. It is gone. How shall we pay?”
“That is your concern.”
“Are you empowered to give such receipts? Will your signature satisfy the governor?”
“Without doubt. The company but wants its lawful rights.”
“Good. Prepare the receipts.”
“You said just now your gold was gone.” The uneasiness of the collector increased. It seemed to him he saw meaning looks passing between Bart and his crew.
“By the seven winds, do you think because my gold is spent I am a beggar? Can I not borrow from my friends? I have no desire to have the Swan blown out of the water. And Le Vasseur is a man of his word. My four three-pounders are popguns against his cannon. What I ask you, my friend, is this: Have you the authority to sign for these moneys? Have you the forms for receipt?”
Bart’s grin had lost its mockery, his voice had softened still deeper. The collector stiffened. After all, he had counted on the weight of the governor’s pronouncement. And there were fees attached to each bill.
“I have the forms and the authority to receipt and to collect,” he said. “It is all set down in the warrants.”
“Then read them to us,” said Bart. “My own memory is short. I may have forgotten certain items. It will suffice if you read off the totals against each man’s name. I warrant few of us are forgotten.”
“Then call off your dogs. Trompette, read the warrants.”
A few harsh commands sufficed to send the hounds back. The buccaneers farmed a circle about the officer and his guard, listening attentively to Trompette reading his warrants and then the list of names with the debts set down against them.
Soon after Tortuga was won f
rom the Spaniards by the buccaneers, a governor was sent over from St. Kitts, a fort built and some order established; the rumor flew overseas to certain canny French merchants, Gascons, many of them, that on this West Indian islet named after the sea turtle, Tortuga del Mar, the buccaneers thought no more of a doubloon than a seashell. Colonists were pouring in, men of doubtful character, women of whose character there could be no doubt at all. Tortuga was a place where there was a golden harvest for the shrewd storekeeper.
The buccaneers bought only the best, without asking the price. Boucan beef was in high demand with all ships. The cattle were wild and cost nothing for breed or feed. The buccaneers found money easy come and easy go. They had too much of it. More than was good for them. They had gold fever. A little judicious gold-letting would be as efficacious in diseases of this sort as blood-letting in fevers of the sanguine fluid. Peste! It would be a charity not to let this money flow too freely into the hands of keepers of brandy-shops and brothels.
So the French West Indian Company was formed under royal charter. Storehouses were built, trade shipped. Good wine, groceries, firearms and clothes—above all fine raiment—were provided. The prices were high, but seldom mentioned. The buccaneers stayed in the bush weeks at a time. They came out with physical and mental appetites stimulated to the nth degree by enforced abstinence. They reveled until those appetites were sated. When this happened they found themselves head over heels in debt to the company, little better than bound-men.
And for the credit they paid five prices. They were careless, but they were not entirely fools. They coined a name for the officials of the French West Indian Company—Les Sangsues—which may be translated either as leeches or bloodsuckers. The characteristic of man and animal was the same—once attached, they never let go until they had more than they could hold.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 241