The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  They were drunk with their good fortune long before the wine they found affected them. Under a favoring wind they drifted on, carousing, shouting chanties, praising the luck of Barthelemy and toasting him again and again. The dead were forgotten; the wounds of the living, patched up in rude fashion, discounted in a golden dream. The galleon itself was worth a big sum, and Bart purposed to sell it to the best bidder and get himself a craft less cumbersome and with the speed his trade demanded.

  He almost regretted the Swan; but he knew that the fame of this his latest exploit would bring him recruits by the score. He had his fortune, but his ambitions had swelled. His luck was with him; there would be other strokes like this, easier victories with an increased crew of picked rovers.

  Simon was the only growler. The more liquor he consumed the greater became his grouch. The setting free of the friars was his main grievance.

  “’Tis forcing the luck,” he declared. “No good will come of it. Had we lost they’d have racked us, taken us to Cuba, burned us. Now they have set a curse on us.”

  “A murrain on their curses,” answered Bart. “Old Cross Eyes, next time you shall have a real battery to handle. My luck has but begun.”

  He had dressed himself in clothes belonging to Montalvo, in waistcoat and breeches of rich crimson, a red feather in his hat, a diamond cross pinned to a lace cravat, a ruffled shirt, bucket-topped boots with silver buckles, making a figure more barbaric than gallant, but a striking one, not without dignity. Now he felt to find his pendant charm in place and touched it with his fingers beneath the ruffles.

  “Time will show,” persisted Simon, gazing gloomily at his emptied bottle, reaching drunkenly for another.

  He had thrown the dice with ill fortune and been forced to take the refusal of the mixed loot, his share of which was tucked between his legs as he sat on the deck—not yet cleansed of battle stain—his back against the rail. Some of the others cast black looks at him and began to mutter about Jonah.

  “Let him alone,” said Bart good-naturedly. “His disposition but mates his eyes.”

  Before the laugh ended he started up a song and soon the chorus lifted to the stars as they surged slowly Jamaica-ward.

  * * * *

  The next day brought work of cleansing and restored discipline. Compared to the Swan the galleon sailed like a barge, and the winds that had served them hitherto so well, failed them. What breezes came to break the long calms headed them inevitably. Try as they would they could not make easting past the Isle of Pines. Every league of slow tacking into the wind, with the ship behaving like a tub when the yards were close-hauled, was more than lost by drifting in the offshore current that slowly bore them westward.

  While the wine lasted few cared but Bart. Their unleashed appetites finished this at last, and with fevered heads they took to water. The galleon’s butts were half-filled, carelessness spilled more and they were down to the last gallons.

  Bart made a forced landing on Cuba’s extreme western point, at Cape Santo Antonio, anchoring in a little bay. There were wounds that needed close attention, fevers running high in blood inflamed by drink; and he decided reluctantly on a rest ashore. Often he walked apart from the rest, fingering his charm, fighting against a disposition to lose faith in his luck, now and then eying Simon doubtfully.

  That croaker was in sorry case with the hole in his calf that would not heal. Bart could not quarrel with a man who was near death, as he fancied. He brought himself around to his normal confidence. The men were better for the laying up, eager to start back for Jamaica. One night the winds began to marshal and, as Bart paced the surf-edge, he resolved to sail the next morning.

  They worked out of the deep indent north of the hook of the Cape and headed for the Caribbean and Jamaica. They had barely cleared the point when it seemed that every able man was at the rail, staring and pointing to where, coming fast down upon them, converging on three tacks, with towering canvas, three galleons came on.

  For the first time Bart cursed his luck.

  With only fifteen men, half of them weak and unable, he could not hope to work the ship with any speed or precision. To fight against such odds was worse than foolishness.

  A hail came from the leading ship; flag signals were exchanged with the rest. Bart chewed his lips and gave the order to lie-to while a boat’s crew boarded him, an officer in the stern-sheets.

  To lie was ridiculous. The great cabin showed plainly all the signs of nightly debauches. There was not a man among them who could speak Spanish without an accent. To a nautical, observing eye, traces of the fight were everywhere, aside from the bandages yet worn by the freebooters. More boats’ crews came aboard, and a muster was made from the three ships to man the recaptured galleon. Bart and his despondent men were taken aboard one of the ships, stripped of all they possessed except their drawers, flung into the lowest hold, foul with stinking bilge; slavery, torture, perhaps execution ahead of them. Stale crusts were flung down to them, a jar of impure water lowered and the hatch clamped down.

  They sat in silence, pitching to the heave of the ship. A croak came out of the dark.

  “Said I not so? You forced your luck when you set free the friars. Now—”

  Simon squeaked as Bart gripped him by the windpipe.

  “I’ll choke the voodoo out of you,” he said savagely. “That, or you keep silence. We’re not dead men yet.”

  He fumbled with the band of his drawers. In the deep hem he had run his chain and charm when he knew capture certain. In the blackness he felt the outlines of the tiny face with its horns that held off evil, and felt comforted. While that remained his luck was with him. As to forcing it—peste, one must be the master of one’s fate!

  The galleons, merchantmen all, it seemed by a chance word caught before they were thrown into the hold, were bound for San Francisco Campeachy. That lay to the north. In the hold they had no sense of direction, and on the second day a storm struck the flotilla. Bart and his men were tossed until they lay bruised and exhausted, caring for nothing. By some strange perversion Simon’s wound had ceased to suppurate and commenced a healing process that all the roughage did not check.

  When, not so much from sympathy but in the desire to preserve his prisoners alive for judgment, the captain had them taken on deck after the storm subsided, Simon disguised his convalescence easily enough. None of them appeared to have much more than a spark of life left in him. They lay on the planks in the waist, gasping the fresh air like out-hauled fishes, filthy, cramped, pounded to apathy.

  The captain picked out Bart to be revived with wine. Quick to snatch at any straw, Bart bestirred himself, showing bravado enough and telling his tale with such a devil-may-care good humor that the captain gave him back his crimson clothes and took him into the cabin. Montalvo, it turned out, was no favorite of his. The daring of Bart and his little band roused in him a certain admiration.

  “What they will do with you at Campeachy, I know not,” he said. “My consorts have separated in the storm. If we arrive first, beshrew me if I do not claim you for myself.”

  “I know not how to behave well as a slave,” said Bart.

  “There are degrees of slavery. Any, I should think, are better than the rope or block. If you are ordered to Havana or Santiago, look you, there may be the Inquisition. You are a subject of Spain. That might or might not mend matters.”

  “I spared all lives after the ship was captured,” said Bart, dodging the issue of citizenship.

  “True. I wonder where Montalvo landed. There will be jests at his expense. He will pay us salvage on his gold and goods. Come, if I can compass it to keep you aboard, will you join my crew? I could use you and some of your men. Maybe all.”

  Things looked a little brighter to Bart. Not much. He had not given his name, but he might well be recognized at Campeachy. Barthelemy the Portuguese was known, and not favorably, to many merchants. If he acquiesced there might be a chance to escape.

  “We’ll wait till we reach Ca
mpeachy,” he said. “Let us find out if we have eggs before we plan an omelet.”

  The captain nodded and then chilled hope.

  “I will provide you better quarters,” he said. “But I must keep you under heavy guard. Take another glass of wine. I would give a butt of Xeres to have seen Montalvo’s face.”

  Bart went out with his escort to the deck. Land was in sight. The next morning would see them off Campeachy. His pendant was still in the hem of his drawers, for he did not know when he would lose his fine clothes again. His men were on their feet, being driven forward. A figure lay prone in the scuppers, face downward.

  “It is the cross-eyed one,” an under-officer said to the captain. “He is near death. Shall we throw him overboard?”

  “See if he comes to later. If not, tie a round shot to his feet and launch him.”

  The captain spoke carelessly, passing on, sealing the fate of Simon, but in a fashion he had not intended.

  An hour after nightfall, when the watches were being changed, Simon the cross-eyed slipped over the rail. He could swim like a seal. The shore was less than a league away. Fear of the friars made fins of his legs and arms. One watch thought the other had thrown his corpse overside. He was not worth mentioning. Once Bart thought of him as he gnawed his nails in the fore-room underneath the butt of the sprit.

  “That’s what he gets for croaking,” he told himself. “He’s no great loss, even to himself, I wonder if he crossed my luck, after all. We’ll find out at Campeachy.”

  They made a peep-show of the captured pirates at San Francisco Campeachy. A cage of wild men from Borneo could not have attracted more attention, or a band of tattooed cannibals. Bart was placed with the rest under the forecastle head where the townsfolk peered timidly through the windows at the pirates and asked questions of the sentries.

  There was one gleam of hope; the convoying galleons had not arrived. The galleon would sail in two days without waiting for them. They were not taking on cargo, but delivering.

  At noon the ship was cleared of sightseers and Bart breathed easier. To make a part of the galleon’s crew was not so bad a fate. With luck they might mutiny and take the vessel. In the mean time they would be subservient.

  A barge came alongside. The captain went to the gangway to receive a guest. Bart’s heart sank as he shrank back from the window. He knew this angry man. It was Montalvo.

  Soon two men came for him, bound his arms behind him and took him aft into the great cabin where they stood him by the butt of the mizzen, remaining on guard. Barthelemy faced the angry don, mustering all his fortitude.

  “I have pleaded with Montalvo,” said the captain of the galleon, “but so far with small use. In that he recovers his ship, his cargo; in that you are no Frenchman but a subject of King Philip and therefore an outlaw perhaps, but no foe; in that you gave him quarter, I thought he might be disposed to strike a bargain with me. I have even offered him a fair sum for your services.”

  “The man is a renegade,” said Montalvo.

  His arm was still slung; the scar of his head wound showed raw. And he manifested only a cold politeness toward his fellow captain.

  “A revolting Portuguese. He has so declared himself. Mine was not the first ship he has plundered—nor the tenth. His wickedness is known through the West Indies; there is no more bloody and desperate pirate in the world. He is a scourge to our commence, a villain who deserves only to be hung, and that speedily.”

  “Yet you thanked me for my courtesy and mercy, if my memory serves,” said Bart quietly. “I should be glad to return that compliment. I held off my own men from hanging you at your own yardarm or walking the plank, Don Montalvo. I furnished you a ship—”

  “After you had killed half my crew, you butcher and traitor. I made no treaty with you.”

  Bart shrugged his shoulders.

  “I doubt whether you would have kept it in any event,” he said.

  The swarthy Spaniard turned the color of a ripe olive, the scar on his brow swelled until it seemed it must reopen. He turned his back on Bart, addressing the captain.

  “Either give him up to me or I go to the governor,” he cried. “As for the vermin he commanded, keep them for galley-slaves an you will. This man deserves neither shrift nor trial. I hold you responsible.”

  The captain threw out his hands in a gesture of inutility. He had done his best.

  “Take him away,” he ordered.

  Bart was led back to the forecastle. He still had spirit enough left to laugh at his men’s commiseration.

  “When the rope is brought there is yet the noose to tie,” he said. “And the noose must tighten before one chokes.”

  He tapped at his charm.

  “I have seen a man lose all he had and all that he could borrow. I have known that man to go out into the street and pick up a battered piece of silver and so return and win every main. One thing is certain, luck never stays with a coward.”

  Montalvo did not return, but a guard came off from the governor, soldiers who hustled Bart into a barge and rowed him off to a great galleon that lay at anchor. They loaded him with irons so that he could barely walk. They thrust him down a ladder into a sort of lazaret and left him there. His crew they left on the merchant galleon. Before they clapped on the hatch the sergeant of his guard told him of his fate.

  “There will be no trial for you, pirate and traitor!” said the man. “Cuba has had enough of pirates. They will make a glorious example out of you, renegade Portuguese that you are. All Vuelta Abajo will be here in the morning. They are putting up the gallows in the public square. It is to be a holiday. You will tread air until sundown when they will take you down, dip you in tar and sling you in hoops of iron on the end of the mole.”

  The sergeant held a lanthorn so that the light from the sputtery candle within sprayed through the holes punched in the tin and freckled the captive pirate’s face, hoping to read some sign of quailing. Bart looked at him composedly.

  “The meanest cur barks loudest at the caged wolf,” he said.

  “Cur, am I?”

  The sergeant hung up the lanthorn on a hook driven into a deck-beam.

  “Look you. There will be many to apply for the privilege of playing hangman to you, Bart the Unlucky. But I have seniority and a special claim. I shall put the noose about your neck. There is a good fat fee in it, besides much praise and satisfaction for a worthy act.

  “Long after your throat tightens up, never again to suck in air or swallow wine, I shall be slaking my thirst with good liquor bought for me by those who are anxious to clink glass with the man who hanged Barthelemy. I shall make good money selling the rope, besides. A crown an inch.”

  “You have a jovial way with you,” said Bart. “You go deep into details. You should have been a lawyer, my friend. Yet it is no news to me. I could have told that you were the executioner by your hang-dog look.”

  The sergeant scowled.

  “It remains with me whether you die swiftly or dance long, whether your neck is broken or you slowly choke to death,” he went on. “The people would rather see you dance with the ends of your toes just touching the planks as you swing. I have chosen a well-stretched halter for you. Your clothes are mine and all your valuables.”

  “The most valuable thing I have about me is my life. And I lose that I care not for the rest. But I was not born to meet death at such hands as yours, my friend. Make no mistake of that. You filthy scum, a brave man to bait a bull through the bars! A wine-swiller and a swaggerer! I suppose you will boast in the wine-shops how you made me wince at your words. Liar!”

  He wondered at the ferocity of the sergeant. While crowds would assemble to see a pirate swing, Bart knew that a subtle sympathy for the victim, a sneaking admiration of his defiance of the laws and his free life with its chances for riches or death, was predominant.

  This man was not merely callous, he was a deliberate torturer. It was no fault of his if his taunts failed to affect Bart as he desired. Inwardly Bar
t was burning with anger, but he was helpless as a toad filled with lead shot. They had enough irons on him to hold an elephant.

  “My brother was on Montalvo’s ship,” said the sergeant. “He was a corporal of the marines. You flung a knife at him and pierced his throat. That is why I applied for the hangman’s job tomorrow.”

  “Then let it keep for tomorrow and do not kill me tonight. Your words are far more annoying than any noose. I am weak with hunger and thirst, and since I do not suppose you will relieve those conditions it might be well to leave me to gain some rest or I may give a sorry exhibition in the morning.

  “As for your brother, he had his finger triggered to shoot me down. It was the fortune of war. Even you—an you had the courage to stand—may have killed in your time, though you prefer the rope to the musket, it seems. There is less risk.

  “Your brother and I were enemies. Because Philip lords it over Spain that does not make me a Spaniard. Because Portugal is subjugated it does not follow that all Portuguese are slaves. Now leave me. You weary me. I would sleep.”

  The sergeant drew off and looked at Bart, baffled. He could not understand this sort of man. His taunts were as useless as throwing mud against a stone wall to level it. More so, for the mud did not seem to stick.

  Since he could find no epithets that would rankle he ascended the rough ladder and before he closed the hatchway spat down at Bart, who dodged philosophically. He sat in his clanking fetters and racked his brains. He felt confident of being able to get out of his irons. They were clumsy as well as cumbersome. Some were locked and some riveted. The first he could pick, the others open by main force.

  His eyes, adjusting themselves to the dim light, made out a ring stoutly bolted to the floor. He could set foot on the ring and pull against the bolt-head on a fetter link. The lanthorn hook seemed secure. He could use that for leverage. He fancied he had talked the sergeant into forgetting the lanthorn. But he might come back.

  The galleon was larger than Montalvo’s ship. Bart’s glance had told him she was laden, almost ready for sea, waiting perhaps for a full crew, a lengthy process of late with labor growing scarce. That was why the captain had been so anxious to retain Bart and his men. It was probable that only the guard was aboard, and an anchor watch.