The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  Bart enjoyed their mystification as he swigged down the wine they brought him, cup after cup of it. He was his own man again. His prestige had returned. The freebooters quit work and crowded round him.

  “How did you know I was to be hanged?” he asked. “You seem to have been here for two weeks at least.”

  “We have one of your men here with us. He came in an Indian canoe, escaping from the galleon that took you off Cape Antonio.”

  “A man of mine? He must have jumped overboard.”

  “He did. Wounded though he was. An old veteran with eyes that seem to look only at the tip of his nose. Though he misses little.”

  “Simon? My gunner? Swivel-Eyed Simon?”

  “That is his name. A canoe picked him up. They knew of our being here. He came easier than you did.”

  Bart’s jaw dropped. Simon, whom he thought dead and drowned, the more certainly since his own luck, so close to breaking utterly, had begun to mend. Then he laughed. His charm had been potent against Simon’s crossfire optics.

  “Where is he?” he asked.

  Simon came to answer the question, creeping out of a palm shelter, yawning, half-curious, half-annoyed at the general commotion.

  “Ha, croaker!” called Bart, gobbling beef without regard to starvation precautions. “Hast some luck of your own, ’twould seem. And here I am, for all your voodoo talk. Luck is still with me. I have my grip on her wrist. She’s like any other woman—force her first and she’ll love you afterward.”

  Simon looked at his leader as if half-dazed, shaking his head doubtfully.

  “Who told you I was hanged,” demanded Bart, “since you rolled off deck before we reached Campeachy?”

  “The Indians—they know everything that goes on. How, I know not. But they told me you were taken, that the gallows was building and that you were to be swung in iron hoops at the harbor-mouth.”

  “Oh-ho! Racine, now you have fed me, will you go further? Will you put me in the way of recouping my own fortunes?”

  “Surely. What I can do. Weapons, half the contents of my pocket, though that is not heavy-laden at present. First, some clothes.”

  “Anything will do. For the present. There is a certain crimson suit that I fancy. It fits me fairly and it is my favorite color. I left it behind me at Campeachy in the cabin of the galleon where I escaped. It is in my mind to go back for that one.”

  They looked at him in amazement, yet with admiration and a growing belief in the prowess of this man who had safely made a trip that none of them would have attempted and now sat in the sun, forgetful of sting and bruise, his fever overmastered by the joy of achievement, packing his paunch with solids and drinking heady wine like water.

  “To go back and put your head into the mouth of the lion? Eh, that would be a simple trick,” said Racine.

  “Simple enough. Are all these men of your own crew? They seem over many for her size. As I remember.”

  “The Falcon lies on the reef off Purgatory Point. She was my consort, and a cursed galleon swept her with a starboard broadside, killing Jean Vaurin, her captain, and eight others. The rest ran her ashore. We did not take the galleon; but we made her sheer off, for all her metal. I picked up what was left of Vaurin’s crew and came here to careen. I was dragging a fathom of weed on my keel.”

  “Which are Vaurin’s men?”

  Racine gave an order, and seventeen stepped out to one side. Bart surveyed them complacently. They were an average lot, but they would serve. Added to Racine’s complement all was well in time of plentiful provisions and no loot to divide; but if food were scarce or if a prize were captured the regular crew would with cause grumble at their lessened shares. Racine would be glad enough to get rid of them; they would sense their own position.

  “What say you?” asked Bart. “Racine here will give us a long-boat, I make no doubt. ’Tis some fifty leagues by sea to Campeachy. You have your arms. We’ll lay off, send some one ashore to con the chances, and at the end of the night, ’tween gray and red, we’ll take the galleon and be outside and bowling for Jamaica before the lubbers are awake. They sleep like stuffed dogs at Campeachy. Listen, and I’ll tell you how readily I befooled them.”

  If they had any hesitation they were lost the moment they began to listen. Bart was a born storyteller, and he had a great first-handed yarn to spin. With him they broke irons, struck down the taunting sergeant-hangman, floated ashore on the jars, lay in the swamp and struggled through cayman-haunted streams and mangrove thickets until at last they rafted across the final river. Bart was no boaster; neither did he hide his light under a bushel.

  “That’s the kind of a man I am,” he ended. “That’s the way I hang on when luck seems indifferent. And when she smiles, her smiles are golden. Eighty thousand crowns and more was the value of Montalvo’s galleon. This one will be richer picking. We’ll put her to sea and go find Montalvo. I have a grudge against him that still aches. Are you with me, bullies?”

  They gave him three cheers, and even Racine’s men seemed envious of the chances.

  “How about the longboat?” Bart asked. “I’ll pay you back her worth some day.”

  “Choose for yourself and never mind the payment,” said Racine. “I may be asking you for return favors before the year is out. Our trade has its ups and downs.”

  “So! Seventeen of you and myself. Pity ’tis not an even score.”

  His eye lighted upon Simon. With a perversion carried by this swelling wave of fortune on which he was launched, he laughed at any suggestion that Simon’s awry glance could menace success. Half-jestingly he took the baroque pendant and held the tiny horns tipped toward Simon.

  “Come on, Sour-Face! I’ll put you back of a battery yet. Here’s nineteen of us. Luck in odd numbers. It’s enough.”

  Arms were always plentiful. The survivors of the Falcon had not left their wreck without them. The longboat that Racine promised so readily had also come from the stranded ship. Racine contributed only some powder and ball, sidearms and muskets for Bart and Simon, wine and provisions. Without doubt he was glad to see them go.

  He had his own reservations as to the probability of Bart’s venture. Bart had nothing to lose beyond his life, everything to gain. If he won he would hold generous feelings toward Racine. If he perished there was a strong rival out of the road.

  Bart rested until evening, not that he felt the need of leisurely recuperation. He overhauled the longboat, saw to its equipment. He was keyed up to tune. The emotions of revenge ruled his body, quickened it with vitality. A fair wind promised; the longboat had a square-sail lug. He would make best speed with canvas or oar, timing the trip to make Campeachy after nightfall.

  About midnight, he calculated, was the best time to loaf along, to send two men ashore to some wine-shop to find out about the threatened galleon—how soon she was to put to sea, the numbers of her complement, how many were ashore. What was her cargo? The possibility of her having put to sea never entered his mind. He was convinced that he had forced his luck to loving obedience and sympathy for all his plans, from now on.

  His absolute faith communicated itself to his crew with the exception of Simon, who had little to say in the matter. Simon’s private belief in the vagaries of luck were somewhat shattered. The matter of the friars still stuck in his mind. To have let them off scot-free, perhaps to practice inquisition rites upon unfortunate prisoners, seemed to him like deliberately throwing pebbles in the face of Fate. Fate might have been blinded temporarily, but when it regained sight the smart of the flung grit would not be forgotten.

  He allied himself to Bart in this new enterprise because he had small choice in the matter. The men at the rendezvous had made small secret of the opinion in which they held a cross-eyed man, wizard though he might be as a gunner. They spat across the back of their hands and crossed themselves whenever they fancied him looking at them—wrongly nine times out of ten. They openly referred to him as a mascot du diable, a left-handed blessing. In the longboat they
still looked askance at him as he sat in the stern with Bart, his calf-wound, though nicely healing, releasing him from the oars. He was glad of Bart’s protection, on the whole.

  When they sighted Campeachy at last, it was after dark, the lights twinkling as they rowed softly on the tide and landed their two spies an hour before midnight with a gold piece to spend. They came back within two hours, smelling of strong liquors, rolling in their gait a little more than usual but coherent and full of prime news.

  The galleon was to sail the next afternoon.

  “I knew it. Bart’s luck!” exclaimed the leader.

  The recruiting of the crew was practically completed. It had been hard to get men. The two spies had been made an offer. The marines, being government troops, were an easier matter. They had been aboard for several days. The sailors were enjoying shore-leave up to the last moment. They had spoken with several of them, drunk with them. Some of them had never been off to the vessel, and the marines—the sentries—were therefore unacquainted with them by sight. The cargo was reputed the richest kind of merchandise.

  Bart slapped his thigh as they floated in the blackness. All was falling out perfectly.

  “What did you hear about me?” he asked.

  There were a dozen stories. That he had been drowned trying to swim ashore—for they had discovered and recognized the jars—that he had starved in the swamp—that the devil had flown away with him. The governor had taken three of his men away from the friendly captain and hanged them to ease the Spaniards’ disappointment at losing the big offender. Bart exploded in great oaths at the news. That the sergeant he had felled with the irons had died did not console him.

  At almost precisely the hour when Bart had jumped overboard from the galleon with his jars, a longboat arrived alongside that vessel, gliding gently in with oars tossed inboard. The rowers had made little noise, but there was no especial attempt at concealment. A sentry, holding out a lanthorn, peering down at the dim faces looking upward, challenged them.

  “Hist!” Bart said softly. “There is no need to wake the ship, comrade. This is not a feast for officers. We have things in the boat that have paid no duty.”

  “You belong to the crew?”

  “Do you suppose we are making a present of ourselves and what we bring to a strange ship? Let us aboard, friend, we are late enough as it is, and we’ll sneak our stuff with us into quarters.”

  The sentry had a fellow sympathy with smugglers. He had no suspicions, only a desire to graft.

  “You will not forget me?” he asked as Bart swung up the rope ladder that was accommodation for shore-going sailors.

  “I have been thinking of you all the time,” Bart answered.

  He caught the astounded sentry by the throat with one hand and fetched him a tremendous buffet with the other. The man suddenly went slack and pitched to the deck.

  Up came the seventeen, with Simon tailing, because of his lamed leg. The deck-guard was smothered, three to one. With pistols clapped to their heads they were hustled under hatches for the time. Bart sped through the vessel from poop-cabins to forecastle, disarming, threatening, subduing. It was practically a bloodless victory. No shots were fired.

  With all Spaniards temporarily secured, Bart swiftly set to sea, sailing out between the ships at anchor, rousing no suspicions, if any sleepy guard bothered about them. They were two leagues from land when the sun lifted over Cuba. Bart assembled the galleon’s crew and made them set full sail. He had found his crimson suit tucked away in the chest of an officer and had donned it, the golden chain and charm about his neck beneath a ruff, certain rings and trinkets that had taken his fancy adorning him, the captain’s rapier at his side.

  The galleon’s officers stood shivering in the early morning in their underclothes, as they had been hurried out from sleep. The seamen were better clad, having turned in all standing. Sixty in all, counting marines. Inspection of the galleon’s papers had put Bart in high humor. Here, under foot, was not less than a hundred thousand crowns.

  “Thirty to a boat,” he said. “Give them one of their own and the longboat we came in. About two hours’ row, gentlemen, as the tide sets. ’Twill give you an appetite for breakfast. Give the compliments of Barthelemy Portuguese to the governor and tell him the next time I come to San Francisco Campeachy it will be with my own fleet. It is a sweet city and should pay a fine ransom. Tell him also to sleep in a halter nights to accustom himself to the feel of it. For when I come back I shall set up my own gallows. Over with you.”

  His words were not all vainglorious. Bart was not through with his grudge against Campeachy. First Montalvo, then the governor. To sack the city would be a profitable achievement. Then at last back home to Portugal to muster his bullies under Braganza’s banner.

  With folded arms he stood at the side and watched the chilled dignitaries get into the stern-sheets of the two boats while the crew and marines crowded on the rowing-thwarts. He had no especial grudge against them. He could be complacent in victory. The sergeant had deserved his fate. Montalvo and the governor were a different matter.

  He turned to Simon.

  “There is a battery for you, gunner,” he said. “Twenty-four guns. We are short-handed for this vessel, but it is as well to be prepared to bite. We may be pursued. See to it, Simon. Is there a sail-maker among ye?”

  A man stepped out.

  “Hunt the stores and make us a proper flag,” ordered Bart. “Black—with the skull and bones.”

  The flag was in place before sunset, with the galleon heading south toward Cape San Antonio, bound for Jamaica to recruit, bowling along at eight knots, undermanned but with all things in her favor. In the poop-cabin, masquerading in silk and velvet like so many peacocks, gaming, screaming out snatches of song, spilling wine as they swilled it, Bart’s buccaneers went wild.

  Bart himself drank measure after measure without effect. He sang his share of songs, he stayed until, one by one, the rest succumbed, sprawling on transoms or the heavy rugs, sodden and fumed with liquor.

  Bart went on deck to find the helmsman dead drunk. Shifting the helpless body with his feet, he took the tiller himself, elated but not intoxicated, master of a prize, master of a crew, master, he told himself, of his fate.

  The wind hummed through the rigging, coming up behind, bellying out the sails that the defeated crew had set, a moon silvered the sea that broke into bright splinters under the galleon’s bows. Barthelemy Portuguese was his own man again. Luck was surely perched on his bowsprit.

  He was not quite so certain that Fortune was his figurehead after a day had passed. In some ways all went well. No sail appeared astern. If they had been followed, as seemed inevitable, they had shaken off their pursuers. Probably because they were carrying greater stress of canvas than was entirely wise, even for a man fleeing from the gallows.

  But these seventeen men of the wrecked Falcon were not as his own crew of the Swan had been. In action Bart might have handled their forward inclinations; in comparative idleness they were hard to manage. Their late captain must have been somewhat slack in most things. Given time, Bart could have whipped them into line; but reaction had set in upon him. Strong as he was, his reserves had been burned up in the fearful trip to Golfo Triste. Excitement had offset the wine the first night, the liquor had given a fuel to his laboring engine that had produced a spurt of energy and, passing, left little but ashes.

  A tremendous lassitude of body and mind took possession of him. The slightest movement, even to think, without action, was a strenuous matter. Nature, too far stretched, was inevitably relaxing. The supreme essence of the man, his spirit, had dwindled, the steam was low, the water low, the draft bad. He forced himself to eat a meal or so, and when that nauseated him took to wine.

  All the crew were drunk—aggressively, humorously, sulkily drunk, according to their natures. Simon went round naming his twenty-four culverins, cuddling them, talking to them, polishing, swabbing, trying to make up guns’ crews, cursed out and buffet
ed by those he addressed, but persistent, half-crazed with liquor. As the men grew maudlin they lost control of their muscles. They could neither understand an order nor execute one.

  Long observation and habit feebly asserted itself from time to time in Bart. The wine slowed him down, dulled his eye, broke up coordination, but he was conscious of increasing pressure, of lowering temperature, mounting winds and clouds piling, piling up to windward until they seemed like the toppling walls of a mountain; of blue seas that turned gray and lost their buoyancy, chopping at the ship rather than lifting it.

  To shorten sail with his eighteen, less than half of whom could be really termed sailors, would have been a slow but entirely possible process. Now they were tipsy beyond redemption, wallowing on deck or in the cabin, laughing inanely at him when he sought to enforce an order, or dead to the world in the scuppers.

  Bart cursed the fancy he had conceived of making the Spaniards set full sail off Campeachy, though it had been the saving of them at that time, distancing pursuit. He had not spared them from sprits to mizzen. All told there were thirty sails with all their infinite detail of bowline and brace, clewlines, buntlines, tacks and sheets, as complicated to the sodden brains of the drunken men as cat’s cradle to a newborn babe.

  Harder and harder blew the wind and heavier the seas as they rounded San Antonio and drove for the Isle of Pines. To go inside, to thread the archipelago between that and the mainland, while it might give them some lee, was impossible. Bart could not tack and navigate with drunken sailors, far too few at any time properly to handle the big galleon. He could only drive.

  Before the wind they sped, with the canvas straining at clew and tack and sheet, blowing up to a hurricane. There was no one to take the helm but Bart, and he stayed on deck with the bottles and broken meats he brought up gradually littering the deck about him.

  At times he slipped the tiller into a becket and dozed off. One by one the crew gave way to stupor, overcome by alcoholic fumes. They would sleep it off after a while and would begin to come slowly back with their poisoned blood making them feel as if they had been clubbed, nauseated, weak.