Captain Caution

by Kenneth Roberts

  "Hal" said Argandeau, and to Marvin his voice seemed somewhat breathless. "Not with carronades! You know what I think?" He made a faint sound of protest in his throat, as though he found some slight discomfort in the caked mud on which he rested.

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  "What?" Slade demanded, and his voice trembled with irritation. "Say it, damn itl"

  "What I think - "

  Again the mud beneath them jerked and shook, and continued to do so irregularly, as though the brig had burst into a spasm of gigantic coughs.

  Slade laughed harshly. "I should say they hadn t sunk her. That's random firing! That means the stranger's closing with us, and it's every gun crew for himself!"

  "What I think," Argandeau continued gently, "is that this stranger has one large long gun, and is maneuvering to rake the Griffons with

  it.n

  There was silence again in the hold. Marvin pulled desperately at Argandeau's arm. "Hoist me up again," he said. "I've got to try to see to try to see - "

  Somewhere astern, Marvin heard a grinding smash, the sound of timbers violently rent, and the heavy roar of a long gun.

  "Piffl" Argandeau exclaimed. "Close, that onel"

  The sound of cries came into the hold, and the spongy spatter of musketry fire. Marvin rose to his knees, only to be thrown down once more by the clangorous shock of the Beetle's broadside. The long gun of the enemy vessel bellowed a second time, so close that it seemed to Marvin he could almost feel the brig's planking bend before it like a beaten drumhead. Prisoners scrambled and tumbled over him, to stand cursing and screaming beneath the opening m the hatch.

  Argandeau grunted. "God be praisedI" he said. "They are aiming that pill bottle at the deck, like wise men! I tell you this, too: If they come closer, they will give their pills by hand instead of from the bottlel"

  In Marvin's throat there was a taste of brass, and his tongue seemed to him to lie as thick and lifeless in his mouth as the salthardened sole of a sea boot. What he was passing through, he told himself, could not be real; like evil dreams that he remembered, it had the semblance of something that would never end; of something so dark and so terrible that his strength and his wits had deserted him together, leaving him panting and palsied.

  The brig lurched suddenly and pitched forward a small movement by comparison with the hammer blows of her broadside; but to the Beetle's miserable human cargo it brought an even deeper silence than the guns had brought.

  Argandeau caught Marvin by the arm. "They boardl" he whis

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  pored. "They have turned on this brig and outsailed her, and they have laid her aboard at the stern. Ah, my Godl Now I sweat indeedl Compared with this, my other sweating was no more than the perspiration of a fleal"

  The uproar that arose on the Beetle's deck came to them like the closer and closer raging of a storm. Above the continuous rattle of small arms they heard the howling of men, the shouts of officers, the shrilling of whistles, the beating of a boarding drum, and a rush of feet like the scuttling of innumerable giant mice.

  And there was something more. From the opening in the hatch above Marvin's head there came a girl's voice the voice of Corunna Dorman. To Marvin it seemed to weep and to implore, as if in a frenzy of fear.

  "Herel" Marvin shouted. "Herel" He would have risen to his feet but for Argandeau's grip on his arm.

  "Softly! Softlyl" Argandeau said. "Something drop down in herel Who has that thing?"

  He was gone, then, from beside Marvin, but through the continued uproar from above, Marvin could hear him calling: "Who has that? Give mel Give mel"

  "It came through the hatchl" Slade told him, his voice shaking a little, as if from cold. "I heard it strike."

  Argandeau's soft voice was close beside them once more. "This is something wrapped in the clothes of a rabbitI" he told them. "I tell by the odor! Ahl" He exhaled ecstatically. "Wait now; I am unwrapping! Ah! Ah! Knives three knivesl . . . Wait, nowl . . . Four five knives; one pistoll We have one pistol; five knives!" He took Marvin by the shoulder with a hand that trembled. "You know about throwing the knife, eh?" he asked.

  "I never tried," Marvin said. "I'll stick to my fists."

  "Fists!" Slade cried derisively. "What good are fistsl Give me one of those knivesl I've thrown a knife since I was a babyl"

  "Now waitI" Argandeau said. "I am very fine with the knife very well and very quick! You ask any man in Hispaniolal" He paused, seemingly to listen to an outburst of hoarse cheering from above. Hard on the heels of the cheering came another thunderous roar from close astern.

  "Hear me now," Argandeau ordered. "Come close, all who can. I want the red man from the captured barque."

  "Steven," Marvin said.

  "I'm here, Dan'l," said a voice from the thick dark.

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  "Yes," Argandeau continued, "Steven and Aubert and Jonneau and Marvin."

  Voices answered, close at hand.

  "Listen, now," Argandeau said, "and see that this is told correctly to those who cannot hear. We have knives here. Four tall men will make a ladder, and we will go up and take this stinkpot from the damned British. You hear me?"

  A rumble of voices answered him.

  "Yes," Argandeau said, "whoever is trying to take this brig has been beaten off once, but will try again; and if you do not want to rot here in this hole, frying with heat and eating filth and choking, you will come up and help us. On deck there will be dead men, and wherever there are dead men there are weapons to be had for the taking. I go up I, Captain Argandeau of the Formidablel When the English see me, they will be weak with terrorl You understands I go up first with Captain Slade. When we say come, step quickly on the shoulders of these four tall men, and there will be an end of this heron

  Marvin felt himself pressed against a group of men. "Lock the knees and brace the feet," Argandeau said. "Slade and I, we carry all the knives. Hold us at the height of your shoulders until we have drawn ourselves up; then push up the others. You understands Throw theml Do not delay. Soon there will be the ladder for the remainder; ropes also."

  "For God's sake," Slade protested, "stop talking!"

  "Come, nowl" Argandeau said. Again the vessel lurched and staggered forward. Far above them burst a storm of shouting and musket shots. Marvin hooked his knee inside Steven's, bracing his other foot against the flooring of caked mud. Slade, breathing heavily, stepped on their knees, then on their shoulders. Marvin saw his head against the dim greyness of the hole in the hatch, and beside it the bullethead of Argandeau. They crouched there silently, steadying them- selves; then rose upright together. Marvin felt Slade's feet press hard against his shoulder, and knew that he had thrown a knife. Immediately there was another quick pressure: then a sharp downward thrust as Slade leaped upward through the hatch.

  A man fumbled at his arm, caught at his hair and went on up. Sweating, Marvin seized another, and another. There was a thudding overhead; the hatch came slowly off and the ladder slipped down past Marvin's face. Marvin threw himself at it and scrambled panting into the half light of the berth deck.

  VII

  MARVIN followed close by Argandeau, scrambled silently into the glaring sunlight and uproar of the brig's gun deck. A sweating marine, close by the hatch coaming,spat a bullet into the muzzle of his musket and turned, as he rammed it home, to stare widemouthed at the mud-smeared scarecrows rising in his rear. Marvin's fist struck hard against his jaw. His open mouth and eyes snapped shut; his neck stretched, rubber-like; his body rose as if to balance on his heels. Argandeau reached forward quickly, snatching the musket from his nerveless hands. The marine fell heavily beneath their feet.

  On the quarter-deck a squirming throng of men struggled like animals packed tightly in a cage, howling and roaring as they fought. Jets of smoke stabbed from their pistols; cutlasses rose and fell spasmodically among them.

  Over their heads was thrust the bow and long jib-boom of a towering schooner, the tip of the
boom lodged and tangled in the Beetle's mainsail. At the schooner's main peak the American ensign fluttered in the burning southwest breeze.

  Half-naked men ran like ants from the schooner's bow, cutlasses in hand, to leap from the high bowsprit into the dense mass beneath. In the rigging of the schooner were men with muskets, jerking about like jumping jacks as they fired and loaded; while the ratlines of the Beetle were filled with marines whose muskets spat smoke and pale flashes at the teeming deck of the enemy vessel.

  At the taffrail, Lieutenant Strope held himself above the struggling men by clinging to the schooner's dolphin striker. Thus sustained, he thrust and hacked with a reddened saber at the men who hurled themselves, their faces contorted and their torsos adrip with perspiration, among the British seamen.

  A marine, clinging to the foremast ratlines, spied the mud-stained horde emerging from the hatch and raised a faint, thin cry of warning. In the very moment of its utterance, Argandeau threw the knife that lay along the palm of his right hand. It passed through the ratlines with the swift flight of a swooping bird and buried itself in the glistening breast of the marine, who ceased his outcry to spread his

  CAPTAIN CAUTION 317 arms apart and stare down in blank amazement at the knife hilt. So staring, he toppled slowly backward and vanished soundlesslyl below the bulwarks. One man, and then another, turned from the press that swarmed and milled at the break of the quarter-deck, to stare in horror at the swelling array of prisoners; then, shouting hoarsely, pulled at the3 arms of their fellows. Marines leaped from the ratlines, wrenching at their cumbersome swords. "Haul down! Haul dowel" Argandeau shouted. Swinging his cap- tured musket by the muzzle, he leaped toward one of the advancing marines and brought it against his head with such force that the wooden stock split. Almost from between the legs of the advancing Englishmen darted the diminutive Mr. Benyon, clutching in both hands an enor- mous horse pistol. "No quarter!" he screamed. "No quarter!" He snapped the pistol in Marvin's face and, when it missed fire, strove to hurl it at him. Over-balanced in the attempt, he sprawled ignominiously on the deck. Marvin lifted him by the belt and tossed him backward, over the heads of the yelling prisoners. "Haul dowel Haul dowel" Argandeau bellowed again. With the stockless musket he smashed the arm of a man whose cutlass was swinging toward his head. "We kill alll Haul dowel" Armed by now, the shouting prisoners hurled themselves on the English who, falling back before the sobers, gun rammers, muskets and belaying pins wielded by these mud-caked figures, were pressed into a mob so dense as almost to prevent the use of weapons. "Haul dowel" they roared. "Haul down!" Empty hands rose in the air beyond Marvin. "QuarterI" cried an English voice; and the word was repeated here and there like the drops of a rainstorm; first slowly, then with a sudden burst. There was a movement of the blood-red ensign at the Beetle's mainpeak. "She's struckI" Marvin cried. "Belayl She's struck!" Beyond the upraised hands of the Beetle's men, Marvin saw the thin, stooped figure of Lieutenant Strope. His hat was gone, his face the color of canvas fresh from the storeroom. The single epaulette on the shoulder of his coat was shorn in two, and the arm beneath it hung useless. He shook the hilt of his upraised saber at the men who reached with eager hands for ensign halyards. "Not" he shouted, in a voice that quavered and broke. "Put it backl I say not I say not" A seaman on the bowsprit of the enemy schooner caught at a stay, swung forward and brought down a cutlass on the lieutenant's un 8 CAPTAIN CAUTION

  protected head, shouting angrily, as he did so, "Tais toil" The lieutenant slipped from Marvin's sight; and amid an ecstatic screaming that seemed to him almost feminine, the British ensign came down on the run.

  Marvin turned quickly to push his way through the howling prisoners toward the hatch from which they had emerged, when he was caught by the neck in an embrace so violent that he could think of nothing save that there was further fighting to be done.

  "Ah, ah, my brave childl"Argandeau shouted in his ear. "Don't we make these Griffons wish they have not rubbed mud into the beard of Argandeau, eh?" The Frenchman whirled him about, took his face between two sweaty hands and kissed him on the lips. "I see you hit that gentleman like a horse kickl I take you to fight with me anywhere! Ha, hal We serve the Griffons mashed and en brochette, eh? You with the fist and me with the knife, no?" Holding Marvin by the shoulders still, he danced lightly before him; then kissed him again with fervor.

  Marvin pushed him away. "Where's Corunna?" he demanded.

  "He means the rabbitI" Argandeau cried. "Why have you not told me she is yours? Ah, but she is more pigeonl A true pigeonl You know where we are this minute now, if that sublime pigeon had not helped us? We are down there in that stinkpot with mud in the ear, and nothing to look forward to but mud in the other earl Oh, but Holy Christophe, Marvin, there is a pigeon whom I would be willing to acknowledge as the mother of my children!"

  He drew up his shoulders, then, and smiled affectionately. "Why you look angry because I make a graceful compliment?" he asked. "I tell you there are women who have sickened and died for lack of one kind word from Argandeaul Not more than one hundred times in my life have I paid such a tribute as I have paid to your pigeon! In Hispaniola men go for miles to look with admiration at a rabbit of whom Argandeau has been known to say that he would be willing to acknowledge her as the mother of his children."

  "We don't need to go into that," Marvin said.

  As if to himself Argandeau murmured, "He means I may think about his pigeon, but must never say what I thinkl" He shook his head despairingly, then added, "You wish now to know the whereabouts of your pigeon? Well, look therel" And he pointed to the hatch where Slade, bending so low that his long black hair fell forward over his face, was at that instant helping Corunna to the deck.

  "Why," Marvin said, with bewilderment in his voice, "why, he didn't fightl" He stepped toward the two at the hatch, only to be

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  stopped by Argandeau once more. "Wait one little minute!" Argandeau ordered. "You do not please anyone by saying he did not fight, because he did. Oh, yeslHe is very agreeable man with a knife; not complete artist, like me, but I think very good very welll"

  The tumult on the Beetle's quarter-deck grew louder and more shrill; and Argandeau, turning to cast a quick glance over his shoulder, stood staring at the man who picked his way almost daintily along the bowsprit of the victorious schooner.

  He had an air of fragility to him, this man, that seemed to come less from his stature than from the snugness with which his creamcolored small clothes fitted around his slender waist and hips, and from the dark shadows beneath his black eyes. His face was palely brown; his head held high by the tall stiff collar of his fine blue coat.

  "Look here at thisl" Argandeau murmured, with a quality in his soft voice that turned Marvin's eyes from Corunna's flushed face. "Here is something wonderful! Out of this American schooner arrives one of the great men of Francel"

  Argandeau took Marvin by the arm and hurried him toward the quarter-deck. On the bowsprit, which hung like a suspended sword above the conquered British brig, stood the fragile, shadowy-eyed man, staring down at the howling, blood-stained throng who cheered him, and at the dead and wounded who lay among them and ringed them round. He spoke brusquely to those beneath, and at once dropped lightly to the deck to stand beside the body of Lieutenant Strope.

  "This brave gentleman," he said in a penetrating, nasal voice, "is deadl Who commands here?" He looked sharply about him; then nodded slowly at the young officer who stepped forward. "I am Captain Diron," he said. "Private armed schooner Decatur, Charleston. I think I have been assisted in taking this vessel."

  The young officer laughed abruptly, but there was no amusement in the sound. "If it hadn't been for that rabble," he said, moving his head contemptuously toward the vessel's bow, "we'd have cut you to pieces!"

  Captain Diron studied him attentively. "Ah, yesl" he agreed. "No doubtl" The seamen behind him set up a growling, at which he abruptly wagged a finger in their faces. "LoyselI" he called
. "Loysell Be quickl Attend these English wounded and our own. Take what men you needl Mr. Safifth! Take charge of this brig and place her in order for the prize crew. Mr. Wasbornl Cast loose the schooner and lay her alongside."

  Argandeau sniffed suddenly, and Marvin saw that although he

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  was smiling almost proudly at this brown-faced, fragile captain, there were tears in his eyes and wet smears on his mud-incrusted cheeks. At the sound of the sniff, the eye of the Decatur's captain fell on Argandeau.

  "Sol" Diron exclaimed. "You are the onel"

  Argandeau lifted an eyebrow and shook his head. "With the help of these lion-hearted men it was nothing, Dominiquel A lark huntl"

  Diron came quickly to him and kissed him first on one cheek, then on the other. Someone among the silent spectators laughed loudly.

  Diron stepped back from Argandeau and swept the crowded quarter-deck with a hard black eye. "Get forward, those without business herel" he ordered.

  The seamen about them thinned like smoke before the wind, and as they swirled and scattered, Slade moved from behind them, followed closely by Corunna Dorman. At the sight of her, Diron whipped off his hat, held it tight against his breast and bowed abruptly, with a questioning side glance at Argandeau. "Madame," he said, "your servant! I am most unhappy I do not know sooner that - "

  "Yes," Slade said hoarsely. "Captain Argandeau might have mentioned her before." He pushed back his long black hair with a sweep of his hand. "We'd be down there yet if she hadn't brought us knives."

  Argandeau smiled pleasantly at Slade. "Piffl You touch mel It should have been my duty to tell this thing with my first breath!"

  Diron bowed again to Corunna. "Then you are a brave lady, I think. I have been in debt many times, but never to one so young and beautiful."

  She made him the shadow of a curtsy. "Why," she said, "you'll owe me nothing if you get back the Olive Branch for me. Did you retake her?"