The buccaneers, lacking law and lawyers, hating both, proceeded to even matters according to their own judgment. They had paid five times too much for what they had already secured—therefore they would get four times as much on credit and for this they would refuse to pay, in gold, in hides or in boucaned beef.
Now the mercantile agency was in trouble. That was to be expected. The interference of their own governor, whose arrival from St. Kitts they had celebrated as proof that Tortuga was on the map—that was another thing. It complicated matters—matters that had come to a head.
Even Lucky Bart saw that; he was willing to knuckle down. Yet it was sure he had spent gold freely—unless he had a hoard stowed away. It must be close by or he would not have called for receipts. Perhaps he designed to pay the debts of all the buccaneers and so win them to his service. Still—
The officer pondered the pros and cons as the reading went on.
Bart was passing quietly round the circle, whispering in this man’s ear and that one, sliding an arm about another’s shoulders. The crowd gave out a distinctly jovial atmosphere as the long list of names was called. They cracked little jokes with each other. None murmured at the amounts, none disputed them.
“You have missed none of us,” said Bart as Trompette folded up his crackling warrants. “Eh, but they have good bookkeepers, have Messieurs les Sangsues!”
It was the first time the collector had heard the local epithet. He did not quite like it. Besides, there was no move toward the production of money.
“Now for the receipts,” said Bart. “Doubtless you have brought ink and pens. Sit you down and sign them. Bring him a log for table and another for chair, a torch to see by. Some sand, perhaps, to dry your writing?”
Bart’s tone had changed again. It was charged with derision. The collector looked about the circle. Every one of the buccaneers had somehow secured his musket and the officer had heard many tales of the marksmanship of the bull-hunters. These weapons, loaded and primed, had been brought to them through the shadows by their apprentices while Trompette read the roll. Barthelemy and his filibusters were palpably quick hands at fighting.
The collector felt sweat break out upon his brow underneath his hat as he fought against the emotion, calling up his own sense of importance, the protection of the governor, the royal sanction to the warrant. His will turned fear to bravery.
“I have yet to see the gold,” he said, facing Bart.
“Will no other metal suit you? There are three precious metals on Tortuga—gold, silver and lead. There are times when an ounce of lead, properly cast and carefully distributed, is worth a ton of gold. It seems to me this is one of them. Sign the receipts.”
The last sentence was a command. The mask was off. Bart’s knuckles had whitened to the grip on his weapons.
With an exclamation that was half-oath, half-prayer the collector snatched a pistol from his belt and fired at the freebooter. A feather fluttered from Barthelemy’s hat as the bullet clipped the clasp that held up the brim and secured the plume, and passed through the crown. Weapons were raised, the moon and fire shone on lifted barrels and blades; the circle became a threatening ring of death.
Bart’s great voice roared out with the full blast of his lungs, yelling an order not to fire, not to attack. He leaped to grasp the officer who drew his second pistol and snapped hammer on a spoiled priming, jumping back to draw his sword. Out came Bart’s rapier, licking swiftly about the other’s steel, wrenching it from his hand to send it into the fire, scattering red flakes.
“Yield!” shouted the freebooter. “Surrender, you fool; we’re three to one. Throw down your weapons if you want to keep your lives.”
It needed no order from the officer. The deputy collectors flung their pistols and hangers to the ground. Freebooters and buccaneers pressed in and quickly bound them, laying them on the ground in a long row like so many foot-roped calves.
Barthelemy himself secured the officer and held him until he could turn him over to two of his men who grasped each an arm and bore him back sputtering maledictions.
“Put them on the platforms in the boucans,” ordered Bart, pointing to a row of the curing huts.
“We surrendered,” protested the officer, his face white under the moon. “What manner of brutes are ye? Would you roast us alive? We but attempted our duty. I was the one who fired. If you must torture, ply your devilish trade on me and let the rest go.”
“There are no fires in those boucans—yet,” said Barthelemy. “Nor will there be if you sign those receipts. It is not convenient for us to make payments at present nor can we ever do so unless we put to sea. So, you see, we are between the deep and the devil, and we prefer the deep.
“If luck is with us we may pay those claims or such charges as may be adjudged legal. There are two sides to every question. Since you give us no choice with those wondrous warrants of yours we must ask for receipts rather than argue with the guns of the fort.
“Sign. You will find it very unpleasant in the boucans after the charcoal gets properly started and the ammonia comes from the burning bones and hides.”
The collector strove to read the freebooter’s mind but could only decide that, whatever course it was set to, it was inflexible. His men, carried to the boucans; fully believing they were to be smoked to death, a credence strengthened by the coarse jests of the buccaneers, their cries drowned in laughter, appealed to him by name.
“If my second pistol had not missed fire,” he said desperately, “I would have settled your account in full—with a bullet.”
“Not you. Bart’s luck is not to be broken by a bill-collector.”
The freebooter touched his neck-chain lightly to feel the charm move against his flesh.
“I like you none the less for crowing with the knife at your throat. You are a gamecock. I take it you will sign?”
For full three minutes the doughty little officer cursed Bart with a tongue that never tripped, a facility of imagination that depicted the pirate’s ultimate end with precision and full detail, his temper lashed to eloquence by Barthelemy’s smile of open admiration. Then, his men within the huts, the buccaneers making a show of arranging the fire beneath the platforms on which they had been flung bound and helpless, he gave in and subscribed his name and titles to quittances against the trading company.
Bart called up the men and presented each with his receipt.
“’Twill serve as passport,” he told them. “Sooner or later our friends here will be missed. This will be one of the first places they look for them. Tortuga may not be healthy for any of us until we can return with plenty of golden salve to heal all offenses. The Swan will sail at sunrise. Who sails in her with me?”
The recruiting was absolute. Only the Indians had melted quietly into the bush, willfully blind to all that had happened, stoic to the white man’s affairs, resolved to have naught to do with them.
“We will give you a boucan to yourself,” Bart said to the collector. “I do not think you will stay here long. We’ll leave the hounds on guard for a bit, so do not be too anxious to get free. For the receipts, we thank you. We go to sea. I should suggest you return to France. You will not find your calling popular on Tortuga. Yet you are too good a man to be smoked. To a more fortunate hour!”
The sun was lifting behind the Caicos Islands and Turk’s Island Passage was a flood of golden splendor when the little Swan weighed anchor and stood out into the Windward Channel. The sunrise gun had been fired from the fort that loomed dark on its shadowed crags against the dawn. The waterfront patrol challenged Barthelemy on the wharves, but the sight of the receipts removed all suspicions from its sergeant if he had any, the half-dozen doubloons pressed into his palm by the jovial Barthelemy—his last coins—dissipated them into thin air. It was not for him to think of forgeries in connection with so generous a freebooter. He had no special instructions, merely an addition to general orders that none should leave Tortuga without a clean bill of credit from the French
West Indian Company.
There were thirty men all told besides Barthelemy aboard the Swan, and they overcrowded her space both above and below decks. The craft that Barthelemy proudly called his “ship” had been originally brought across from France and legitimately purchased by Bart when he decided to invest his small capital in freebootery under the black flag.
It was a bilandre type, of less than thirty tons, square-sail rigged on the mainmast with foresail and two topsails, with staysail, jib and flying-jib. Aft, there was a lateen-sparred, triangular mizzen acting both as spanker and driver. A mizzen-topmast stay allowed for a staysail when the breeze permitted. She was clinker-built, an alongshore craft capable of work in deep or shoal, sailing fast with the wind a trifle aft the beam, able to point high. Barthelemy could handle her as if she were a racing yacht. Her three-pounders peered through rail ports, two to an insignificant broadside.
“She is small, is the Swan,” cried Bart, “but that is her only fault. She has served me well enough. You shall not be cramped for long. We’ll trade her for the first Spanish vessel big enough to suit us. There is a rare breeze coming with the sun; we’ll use the mizzen staysail and shoot through to the Caribbean in rare style. Bells of Doom, there’s the fort!”
A second flash had spurted from the dark walls, followed by the boom of the discharge. It was no salute powder-burning, there was grim earnest in the charge, as the solid shot skipping through the water perilously close to the Swan attested.
“Someone bungled a job of tying,” shouted Bart, his face purpling with rage. “Those plaguey collectors have got to the governor! Le Vasseur would pistol the devil if he roused him from sleep before mid-morning. He’ll try to sink us. Lively, lads, strain on those topsail-halyards. Curse that gunner, he’s too wide awake this morning.”
A second shot came ricocheting, breaking water within a biscuit toss of the Swan’s taffrail. Bart’s own trained sailors jumped to their work, the buccaneers tailing on and lending main strength to the haul as they were directed by the mate and bosun. The wind blew strong and the bilandre heeled to the push and drive of it as the canvas went up and the sheets were belayed to Bart’s liking. He roared his orders from the tiller. His black rage had passed into more exultant mood as the Swan gathered way and went seething out of the harbor. The governor controlled no craft but a sailing-galley that could not hope to catch the Swan, even if its crew could be persuaded to cope with the pirate fighters.
“Bart’s luck!” he howled. “Good shooting for them, but better sailing for us. We’ll win clear.”
Flash after flash now came from the fort, alternating with the dull thunder of the guns. The sea geysered all about them. Once more the men jumped to his order and the Swan shot up into the wind and about on another tack as a cannonball split the waves where the handy vessel would have been targeted had it kept its course.
A short leg and he tacked again, zigzagging out across the channel while the range grew too great for the fort’s artillery. Then he brought her up, heading on a long reach down the channel, careening to the light gale, dancing over the crisp blue waves that were creaming as they raced with the ship.
“Up with the skull!” shouted Bart, and the bosun bent the flag to a whip and hoisted it, flaring on the wind, the grim device plain on its sable ground.
“I would we had those cannon aboard, Old Swivel-Eyes,” he said to the new-recruited gunner. “We’d send ’em back an answer. We’d give ’em a receipt, eh, Simon? Couldst do as well as they did? They aimed well enough, but we outguessed them. What do you think of Bart’s luck now?”
“’Tis well enough if you do not force it. But I fancy there’ll be trouble if ever you put into Tortuga again.”
“Trouble?” laughed Bart, his strong hands on the bar of the tiller, lending his weight to keep his course, his eyes on the taut canvas, watching the flag for his wind. “There was never trouble that could not be cured by gold-grease. Le Vasseur is not in Tortuga for his health. He has an itching palm. We’ll treat with him easily enough. If not, there’s Jamaica with rarer fun than ever was shown on Tortuga for men with money to chink. Who knows? If the luck holds we’ll sail back to Europe. Philip of Spain reigns over Portugal now, but we’ll see the Duke of Braganza on the throne before long. There’s insurrection brewing in Lisbon now. We could join Braganza’s crowd. There’ll be honor and loot to be won. A bold man can go far these times.”
He stopped talking and gazed ahead, withdrawn into himself, brooding over his ambitions, seeing himself at the head of a resolute band, with money to aid the cause, allying himself with the duke’s fiery wife, Donna Luiza. Knighted perhaps, a power in the field, lording it in Lisbon.
Tortuga diminished, faded and was lost behind the headland of Saint Nicholas as they sailed due southwest. The breeze held through that day and all the night. Dawn found them pointed west, Jamaica looming up to port. At sunset of the second day the course was changed again to northwest, clawing into the wind, making for the channel between Cape Cruz on Cuba and the Cayman group. Noon of the fourth day found them cruising along the islands called the Gardens of the Queen—Jardines de la Reina—the wind yet with them, far enough out for sea-room, all eyes searching for a sail that might turn out worth capturing.
Nothing hove in sight but fishing-craft and Indian pirogues and they held on, heading up into the Cazones Gulf, out again to sea between Cayos Largo and Rosario, rounding the Isle of Pines.
On the seventh day, with nigh to eight hundred miles of sailing back of them, Cape Corrientes looming ahead, they saw a great galleon sailing south and east, a whale to their sardine, a sea castle that would carry twenty guns at the least and probably have close to a hundred men aboard.
Bart held to pirates’ rules. His men had a say in any venture and they gathered round the mast in consultation, discussing the stranger as she came on, her sails like a mass of pearly cloud, her hull crushing the waves, high-pooped and ponderous. They had not yet chosen their representative who would be given the run of the cabin and a right to speak with the captain at any time.
The fact that Barthelemy actually owned the Swan put matters on a footing somewhat different from the regular routine and scale of sharing of the Brethren of the Coast as the filibustering buccaneers were beginning to style themselves. His share of booty would be a quarter of the total taken, the remainder would be divided equally, a share to a man, with an extra share to the crew’s representative, with certain specified rewards for the man who first sighted a prize, the one who hauled down the enemy’s ensign, who uphauled the skull and bones on the captured vessel during the fight, the first boarder to cross the enemy’s rail; and fixed recompenses for wounds.
Simon the swivel-eyed, by virtue of his record as a fighting man, and his ready tongue was, it was plain, likely to be made spokesman for the crew. It was he who came finally aft to the tiller, his black eyes apparently gazing at the tip of his long, blue-veined nose as he essayed to look Bart in the face. Simon was grinning; he trod the deck resolutely and showed that he had sea legs and a sound stomach.
“Yon ship, they tell me—not being very sea-wise myself,” he said, “is not a warship of the fleet, but a merchantman. She is the more likely to be well lined, yet she is well provided for fighting. Twenty culverin show from her ports, ten to a broadside. There will be soldiers as well as mariners aboard, passengers as well as officers. One well directed broadside would make splinters of us while we were trying to dent her sides—trying, I say, for she would sink us long before we could get into range.
“But we have sailed a week without other prospect. It began to look as if Bart’s luck had failed at last. Now that this galleon shows and we can smell the gold in her hold we would be willing to risk a fight save for the great odds of her guns. It stands this way. Unless you press the matter we will not attack.”
“It was you who gave the advice about the guns, I take it?” answered Bart. “Think you that all prizes are won by cannon fire? This will be a fight where
you will have little to do as gunner, Simon. Down in Brazil, Simon, there are certain small fishes called piranhas, little longer than your hand. But they have jaws like bulldogs, their teeth are so sharp that the Indians use them for chisels to point their arrows. Once they taste blood they are merciless. They will tear to pieces man or beast within a few minutes. So—we are piranhas, the galleon yonder is a lumbering bull trying to cross the water. Call the men aft.”
They came with their eyes gleaming, shifting occasionally to the galleon, standing on, her big bulk and press of sail holding her to the water as if she was cargo-logged—so little did she lift or roll—compared with the quick motion of the Swan.
“Two thirds of you know naught as yet of filibuster ways,” said Bart. “You will know more before the sun sets, I’ll warrant. There was nothing ever won at any time, in any part of the world, without risk. Our, cannon are small use, we will take her with hot lead and cold steel. We’ll grapple with her and board her and then, ’tis up to you to fight like devils from the pit.
“We must risk their first broadside. These merchantmen are not overly practiced in gunnery. It is big odds they will miss us entirely. Once draw their fire and we’ll board. Bart’s luck will bring you through. That’s all. Stand by to wear ship. Then to your weapons. And, remember this, you buccaneers, a sharp edge cuts quickest and deepest!”
They went about before the wind and hauled off for the galleon. The black flag flaunted impudently at the masthead, the Swan, like a tiny, impertinent terrier dancing up to a mastiff that could make one bite and swallow of it. The galleon kept serenely on as if disdainful of them. Bart could see many men moving on her poop with now and then the flash of a steel morion, in the sun.
His mind was busier for the moment with the probable tactics of the Spanish commander than with his own. His seeming foolhardiness was calculated. He figured that the arrogant don would deem this a good opportunity to teach all pirates a lesson and would wait until he was within close range and then deliver a broadside. In Bart’s experience the Spaniards were good fighters but poor gunners; he thought the risk well offset by his luck. One or two of his men might be killed; the Swan might be sadly damaged; but even her sinking under them might work for the test. He remembered the glorious example of Pierre le Grand, who deliberately scuttled his boat to cut off his possible retreat.
The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales Page 242