The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  Giving over the tiller to his mate, Bart took a hand-stone and whetted his rapier delicately to razor edge, plucking a hair from his beard to test it. So with his knives.

  He fired the charges from his pistols and replaced them, carefully adjusting the priming in the pans.

  Then he proceeded to make his fighting toilet. He took off his boots, he stripped himself to the waist, discarded his silk scarf of ornament and tightened his belt.

  He bound a kerchief tightly over his curly poll with the ends hanging down like lop ears. He took the chain and its charm and tucked them into a flap pocket of the belt, carefully securing it. The scabbard of his rapier he tossed down the companionway into his cabin. His only actual article of clothing was a pair of short drawers, though, so dense was his hairiness, he seemed far less naked yet more terrible than any of his crew.

  Simon, ordered away from the guns, sulked and predicted failure, but nevertheless ground smooth the edges of a double-headed ax, and there was a glint of war-light in his twisted glance. The men sat on the deck for the most part, stripped for action as was Barthelemy; the new recruits followed the example of the crew, all hands preparing weapons, cutlasses, knives, axes, pikes and pistols. The pin-rails bristled with them, the sun glanced from the new-ground blades with flecks of light that flitted over planks and canvas.

  The Swan swam steadily on, Bart back at the helm with four pistols in his belt and two at the end of the sling over his shoulder—good for six lives, as he used them. They were weapons of his own design, and several of his crew had their duplicates.

  Once fired, in the turmoil of a boarding or repelling rush, a pistol was little good, save as a possible missile to be flung into the face of a foeman. To use the butt meant shift of grip, and a knife or sword was better. A pistol was only an encumbrance. One had no time to reholster in a fire-and-slash affair with the press all about you. Pistols were deck gleanings for the victor.

  But Barthelemy had a saw-blade attached to the support of the barrel, welded in one piece, an extension demi-bayonet that could hack through the mesh of a boarding-net, sever a cable or serve as a dagger. To balance the pistol he weighted the butt with lead. It was a touch of genius born of Bart’s concentrated joy in his profession.

  The galleon held to her chosen course, a little south of east. The Swan, twice as swift, five times as agile, closed in on an intercepting angle that would bring the two together well out from land. Bart wanted sea room for his maneuvers.

  Slowly the details of the Spaniard’s richly carved and ornamented hull revealed themselves: curving, gilded scrolls, elaborate iron work in the railing of the poop-ladders and the stern and sprit lanterns. Her buff bows lifted now and then with a dazzling flash as she felt the ground swell of the Caribbean. For the most part she seemed to ride on an even keel, her canvas unfluttering, her ensign stiff in the wind, the culverin muzzles unwinking in their regard of the swaggering Swan coming on pot-valiantly into the jaws of death.

  Poop and lower decks of the galleon were packed with crew and passengers, waiting for the spectacle that would show when the curtain of the broadside smoke had rolled up; the show of a pirate craft sinking, of pirates striking out feebly while their blood drained and stained the water with trails of paling crimson. A rare show—talk for the voyage—gossip to relate at the other end—a plume in the commander’s cap.

  To the Spanish all Europeans in the West Indies other than themselves were foes and outlaws. The buccaneers were not all the riffraff of the Old World, despite their occupation of butchering cattle. Many were men of good family and education, cadets of fortune. There were British university men among them and Dutch spendthrifts, adventurers from Germany, Scotch exiles, Irish rovers and many emigrant officers from France, disgusted with the iron rule of Louis. Nor was Barthelemy the only revolutionary Portuguese.

  Such men made good fighters and, now that they were beginning to graduate into filibustering and piracy, the Spanish deemed it a righteous and a necessary act to sweep from the seas these Brethren of the Coast. Here was a chance to use the broom. Aside from the sailors, the galleon carried a detail of marines, for she was a treasure ship and had right to government protection.

  The commander, Don Montalvo, was of noble blood; there were some wealthy, important merchants aboard, returning to Spain with their profits; there were friars; there were musicians. It was a varied and a gallant company in their contrasting robes and suits and uniforms. The gunners stood by their culverin, the slow matches handy but unlighted, the crews ready to haul and sponge and ram.

  The passengers of higher degree joined the officers of the ship on the poop, the marines stood idly to arms, their light helmets flashing, their superiors smoking, listening to the music of fife and tambour, jesting at the audacity of the little square-rigger standing up to cross their bows.

  The Swan’s speed served Barthelemy well. She had the weather gage of the galleon and she came up on a slant that kept her out of anything but the extreme range of the heavy culverin. These were not swiveled, they projected only a set distance beyond the ports, they were practically a fixed arm with their direction changed only when the galleon shifted. Bow-guns they did not have.

  The Swan headed its course, stuck its nose into the wind and hung there, sliding slowly down as the galleon lumbered up. Bart held on as long as he dared; then, when collision was imminent, he bellowed orders for the jibs to be backed as he flung his weight against the tiller-arm. The Swan spun on its keel and caught the wind as the crew inhauled the sheets, shooting with a burst of speed toward the starboard side of the galleon under a rattle of small arms that made no damage beyond boring the sails. It was a bold maneuver, cleverly conceived and smartly carried out.

  The astounded Spaniards looked over rail to see the Swan, blanketed out of wind by the bulk of the larger vessel, but with way still on, making for the side of the galleon, a score and a half of men, armed to the teeth, where they carried their spare knives, standing by the rail, ready to spring, while the thirty-first, black-bearded, hairy, of naked torso, gripped the tiller and howled defiance and encouragement. The top-hamper glided by with the streaming skull and bones flaunted in their very faces.

  The broadside roared out with flame and billowing smoke; the ten balls went whistling through the reek of black-powder gases; the breeze piled back the vapors to fog the galleon’s middle deck. There was a splintering crash of the Swan’s topmast. The black flag toppled, disappeared. Then came the bump of the smaller ship, and out of the smoke shot grappling hooks that caught in the galleon’s rigging and tied the craft together.

  Bart left the tiller with a prodigious leap, his men already scrambling up by the easy path of the galleon’s strakes, the carved port sills, the hot muzzles of the guns; silent, because of the steel they lipped, eager to slay, pouring over the rail, jumping down to tackle the swiftly formed resistance of the marines with their musketry, the baffled gunners with their rammers and the Spanish officers, springing into the fray with flashing swords. Bart retrieved his flag and severed it from the whip, binding it about his left arm, roaring as he scrambled upward. There was the crack of pistols and the bark of muskets, lunge of pike and grating of cutlass against sword in the sharp rally, muffled shouts and cries of desperate men fighting in the drift of smoke. Bart’s bosun fell from the rail, shot through the throat, toppling against Bart, who caught at a shroud to steady himself. Three of his men were a-sprawl on the deck. The rest had barely got their footing and were fighting with their backs to the high bulwarks, one against two.

  Swiftly he discharged his pistols and saw his targets fall or go staggering back. His rapier gleamed as he poised himself for the jump to the deck, his last pistol still in his left hand. He saw a marine on one knee, aiming a musket at him pointblank, and he flung his weapon. The saw-edged knife caught the man fair in the throat and the blood spurted from the severed jugular as Bart joined his men, yelling the war-cry of the filibustering buccaneers—

  “From the s
eas!”

  The odds were too great, fight as they would. The musketry fire was too galling. Eight of the thirty were down in the first five minutes. The Spanish commander had established a firing squad on the poop, aiming over the heads of their own men at the bunched pirates. Furious, reluctant, yet prudent, Bart’s great voice boomed out ordering the retreat.

  Overside they dropped, sheering off, Bart at the tiller again, the panting, bloodied crew cursing as they hauled. The Swan caught the wind, clawed off, got way and came about before the starboard battery could be reloaded and order reestablished in the galleon.

  Now Bart gave; full vent to his wrath, his face convulsed, his lower lip bitten through, froth on his beard. More than a fourth of his little company lay on Spanish planks, dead or wounded. Repulse to him was like the sting of a banderilla to an Andalusia bull. His pounding, furious blood stimulated his brain to new tactics.

  “Muskets, buccaneers!” he cried. “Now show those Spanish dogs how you can shoot. Pick off the gunners!”

  The Swan remained within short range, a tempting target. Bart’s original crew handled her, and she frustrated every effort of the galleon’s crew to work their clumsy vessel for effectual shots. There was wind enough, and the Swan’s sailing qualities, with Bart’s seamanship, did the rest.

  Wherever a Spaniard showed in porthole or rigging, or exposed on the poop, there sped a bullet from men expert in their arms, with skill gained in hunting the cattle or defending themselves against Spanish raids on the mainland. They crouched behind the rail and yelled whenever a shot found its mark. It was thrasher against whale.

  The wallowing galleon, out-maneuvered, floundered in the seas while, like wasps, the stinging missiles sought out the harassed sailors. Again and again the broadsides roared harmlessly, and the pirates yelled in derision. Hour after hour the long-distance fight went on while Bart kept rough tally of the Spaniards put out of the fight.

  He marked with satisfaction every time a sniper hit a man who exposed himself on the poop-deck. The passengers and all those not actually concerned with the working or fighting of the ship had gone to shelter. A man down on the poop meant an officer, an increasing demoralization of the galleon’s company. Two he had himself accounted for. Both wore corselets besides the morion helms, but this insufficient armor served as guide rather than hindrance to Bart’s sighting. One he shot in the face, the bullet ranging upward, the other in the armpit.

  He served out food to his men, and, at intervals, measures of rum. Their blood was kept at battle fever by the concentration of their shots, the excitement of hit or miss. Sweating, begrimed, gory, many with minor superficial injuries, they egged each other on, realizing the wisdom of Barthelemy’s stratagem, waiting for the time when they could once more attack.

  Bart gave the order in the middle of the afternoon. Pannikins of Jamaica rum were handed round and then the Swan, maneuvering at will, sailed up wind, paralleling the course of the galleon, forged ahead and drifted down again, repeating her first tactics. Out and up went the grappling-irons; again they swarmed the bulging sides, the skull and bones once more flying to the stump of the topmast.

  A man fights at his best on the tide of victory or with defeat cornering him. This time the Spaniards were no longer triumphant but desperate and lacking leaders. There was not a buccaneer of Barthelemy’s crew who had not had to fight his own battles in the bush, often back to back with his apprentice, holding off a troop of Spanish horse who feared the accurate fire of their muskets.

  They were accustomed to handle themselves as units. Boarding, after the first overside rush, was always an affair of every one for himself, and in this the freebooters were supreme.

  Bart pistoled three men before he reached the deck, stabbed another and ran through the second in command. The Spaniards had massed and the pistols, fired from the rail, did fearful execution. The howling pirates, swinging their cutlasses, herded the dons, broke them up and struck down man after man. They were not without their own losses, but their hardihood was the greater.

  Over thirty Spaniards were dead or dying. Wounded crawled into the scuppers where the blood collected to the swing of the ship or trickled back on the opposite roll, making the planks slippery with the crimson fluid, clotting in the sun. Dead men lay with arms outflung and legs drawn up, blind eyes looking to the sky. Couples were locked together from the final struggle. Not a fighter on either side but bore some wound.

  The buccaneers, more than half-naked, smeared with blood of both sides, appeared devils rather than men. Their ferocity was not to be withstood. The Spaniards retreated pell-mell to the poop, flinging down their arms and calling for quarter.

  Bart headed off his own men and stood before them with outspread arms, forcing his hoarsened voice to dominance of the uproar.

  “Back,” he shouted. “The ship is ours. Back, I say!”

  He faced them with his face a-snarl, his teeth showing white in his beard, red rapier in hand, threatening them as a hunter cracks whip over the heated pack, leaping for the kill. As they subsided unwillingly he picked out two and bade them stand guard over the huddled dons on the poop, ruefully surveying the bloody waist of the galleon where nearly fifty men lay helpless, gouting blood. Two more he told off to go through the lower decks, disarming all they met and at the same time relieving them of personal wealth. For this he picked his own men, choosing the cooler heads. The new recruits were the hardest to control. Simon stepped forward, panting hard, his right shoulder sliced, his calf torn with a pike, squinting horribly, like a Japanese devil-mask.

  “Twenty of us joined,” he cried. “Twenty, I say. Twelve of us are gone, and you would give quarter. Down with them! Let them walk the plank. Where are the friars? Let them go first.”

  He was mad with blood-lust and his own especial obsession against the priesthood. His cutlass had been shivered, and he held the jagged remnant of it in one hand, a stained knife in the other, crouching, ready to leap, like a savage beast that only half fears its trainer.

  “I am no murderer,” replied Bart. “Drop those weapons, Simon, or I shall tickle your ribs with my point. Drop them, I say. Who is captain here? I give the orders, sirrah.”

  He conjured up a fury that licked up that of Simon as a greater fire consumes the less.

  “Blood enough has been spilled,” he challenged. “Now we look for gold!”

  “Gold!”

  The word held them. The light in their eyes changed. In the rage of conflict they had lost sight of the prize. Bart saw the turn.

  “Gold!” he repeated. “Gold and jewels and wine! Silks and satins! Loot! Spread through the ship, you landlubbers, while we sailors handle it. The man who conceals a trinket gets the lash and shall be driven from the crew. All booty is to be brought to foot of the mainmast and distributed by lot. He who injures a Spaniard I will deal with myself. Send them aft to me.”

  Simon dropped his weapons, and, turning, followed the rest of the lately joined buccaneers, who ran whooping through the vessel, decking themselves extravagantly with snatched raiment, breadths of cloth and sashes, staining them, regardless of the drying gore on their flesh, breaking the necks of such bottles as came their way, cutting their lips in their haste, swallowing blood and wine together.

  Bart’s sailors came back, herding trembling prisoners. Then they went to work methodically clearing the deck of bodies, flinging overboard the Spanish, laying aside their own for later banal, covering them with a sail. They knew that Bart would take care of the loot, that there would be wine enough for all, that there were things that must be done before the feast was commenced.

  From the poop the affrighted survivors of the galleon watched the splash of the corpses, the feeble striking out of some who quickened when they struck the water. From the depths sharks, vultures of the ocean, came swarming, ravening, tearing at their meal.

  Don Montalvo, one arm rudely bandaged and slung, his head bound up, stood at the break of the poop. When Barthelemy fronted him he did no
t lift his head, but gazed up at his conqueror from under his brows.

  “Gather your wounded and all that is left of your company,” said Bart, “and go aboard my ship. I make you a present of it, or an exchange, as you will. She sails well, and I am loath to leave her. But we were somewhat overcrowded. I’ faith,” he went on a bit ruefully, “I take it that we shall be lost aboard this galleon, seeing I have lost half my company.”

  “And I more than half mine, sir. But I thank you for your courtesy and your mercy.”

  Bart grinned as he turned away and left Montalvo to salvage the forty left of all the complement. The pirate flag had been brought aboard and nailed to the truck by a freebooter, displacing the Spanish pennant. Now he gave orders to dismantle the rudder of the Swan.

  “I would not have them make shore too easily,” he said to his bosun. “They’d have half the fleet after us before we get off the horizon. By the time they have fixed a jury rig we’ll be well away. We’re for Jamaica. If the gold is sufficient we’ll send enough of it to Le Vasseur to square those receipts and get a general discharge from him. Enough of it will stick to his palm to set him in good humor, I’ll warrant.”

  The disabled Swan drifted off; the galleon headed east, the loot piled up at the foot of the main with Barthelemy superintending the division, the men casting dice for choice of lots as he apportioned them.

  There were seventy-five thousand crowns in money and a cargo of cacao worth five thousand more, besides the trinkets, watches and personal cash taken from the dons. It was a goodly fortune. Twenty thousand crowns to Barthelemy, four thousand crowns apiece to each of the fifteen survivors of his crew.