The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  But Thomas understood, and he knew that Honeyman understood, that a sailor was not a soldier. He would not risk his neck if there was no reward for it. Loyalty was a precarious thing with men who moved easily from one ship to another.

  ‘Very well, tell the men that it is an extra shilling for every man for tonight’s work.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ Honeyman betrayed no reaction to this, just turned and went forward.

  Bickerstaff stepped up beside him. ‘You must bribe the men to do your bidding?’

  ‘If the bidding smacks of the threat of arrest, yes, I do. On the open sea I could bully them more, but I can do only so much with the shore two cable lengths away.’

  Marlowe paused for a moment, watched as Honeyman passed the word of his offer of a bonus, saw faces brighten considerably. ‘If there was nothing … questionable about what was acting, then the threat of being accused of mutiny would keep them in line. It is my damned luck that these villains always seem to have the upper hand because I always seem to be doing something that skirts the law.’

  ‘Your “damned luck”? I think luck has very little to do with it, my dear Thomas. I should look more to your own natural tendencies.’

  ‘Whatever it might be, we need their cooperation. If they desert and we lose this tobacco, we are done for.’

  ‘Done for indeed. Whatever did Honeyman mean by “maybe for the Red Sea”?’

  ‘The Lord knows. I think that Honeyman is something of a rogue. I am sorry now I shipped him aboard.’

  Marlowe turned slightly until he could feel the light breeze on his cheek, glanced aloft at the rig and then over the taffrail at the vessel moored astern of them. In his mind he could see the fore topsail set aback, the helm over, the Elizabeth Galley turned downwind and tide. They were close to the vessel astern, but once they had pulled up to the anchor, there would be room enough for that turn.

  In his mind the whole evolution was a done thing. He had now only to make the ship follow his vision.

  ‘Mr Dinwiddie, hands aloft to loosen tops’ls, and then let us haul up to the best bower,’ he called, and Dinwiddie relayed the orders. He had been impressed with the need for quiet, so he modified his volume, though his tone did not change, with the result that it sounded like listening to Peleg Dinwiddie from a far way off.

  The men moved fast up the ratlines and out along the yards – a single shilling could buy a lot of pleasure along the London waterfront – and a minute later the topsails were hanging in big baggy folds under the yards.

  Down to deck again, and the capstan bars were shipped and the swifter rigged and the men in place, ready to heave ’round.

  Marlowe glanced fore and aft. Haul up to the anchor, set the fore topsail, break out the anchor, and away they go, lost in the fog. Find a safe place in the river to hide, and then deal with the money he was owed. Simple.

  ‘Very well, Mr Honeyman, heave ’round!’ he called.

  ‘Heave ’round!’ Honeyman called, soft but clear, and the men began to move in their slow circle, the cable began to come in, black and dripping through the hawsepipe, and Marlowe tried to contain the very uneasy feeling churning in his guts.

  CHAPTER 7

  Stumbling, cursing, Roger Press ran down the road that bordered the river. Ten minutes of searching, with the fog like a veil that he could not push aside, and he managed to find one of the few hired boats still operating at that hour. The boatman was asleep on the thwarts, snoring obscenely, as was his one-man crew, until Press gave him a sharp poke with his sword.

  The man bolted awake, furious and ready to fight, an emotion that died an untimely death with his first look at Press’s wet, bedraggled clothing, bright sword, and pocked face, twisted in an anger that the boatman could not hope to match.

  ‘Where to, sir?’ was all he said as he snatched up his oar and gave the other man a sharp kick, venting his anger at Press on his helpless mate.

  ‘Queen’s Venture,’ Press said as he climbed into the stern sheets. There was no need to say more. Everyone who worked on the water knew the Queen’s Venture and the cruise for which she was fitting out. Sailors, indentured servants, second and third sons of the aristocracy looking for adventure in an officer’s berth – they all were flocking to Press with the hope of joining in the noble expedition and its promise of huge rewards. Press had had his pick of the best mariners in London, and that meant the best in the world.

  The boat pulled through the fog, and soon Press could make out the Queen’s Venture, growing more distinct with each pull of the oars. They rowed under the ship’s high counter and then down her oiled side. Press was aware of heads peering over the rail above, a sudden burst of activity on deck as the anchor watch was informed that the captain was returning, as word was passed to Jacob Tasker, the Venture’s first officer.

  Press stared straight ahead, ignored it all.

  The boatman pulled up to the boarding steps, and the younger man hooked on to the chains, and Press was up and climbing even as the boatman said, ‘That’ll be … sir? A shilling, sir!’

  Press stepped through the entry port into the waist. As he expected, Tasker was there, in his nightshirt and breeches, still unbuttoned. He made to speak, but Press cut him off with ‘Pay that whoreson in the boat and meet me aft.’

  He left Tasker in the waist, let him deal with finding a shilling. He stamped up the quarterdeck ladder and peered out into the gloom.

  A moment later he heard Tasker pad up behind him. Without turning, Press said, ‘I met a pirate tonight. A murdering bastard named Malachias Barrett who goes by the name Thomas Marlowe now. I arrested him, and those idiots with me let him escape. Hanson is dead.’

  ‘Dead. Aye, sir.’ Tasker was smart enough not to inquire further, smart enough not to ask Press about his wet clothing or his lost hat or how he seemed to have had no part in Marlowe’s escape. That was why Press had shipped him as first officer.

  ‘Barrett is out there, on a ship. Close. And I intend to find him. I want the longboat brought alongside.’

  It would have to be a boat attack. Press would have liked to use the Queen’s Venture, his powerful warship, but she was in disarray, still fitting out. They were not slated to sail for Madagascar for another three weeks. It would take hours just to get her under way.

  The longboat, then. ‘Thirty men in the boat crew,’ Press continued. ‘Armed. Cutlasses and pistols. I want to be under way in …’

  Press paused, cocked his ear. He could sense Tasker tensing up with the gesture, but he ignored the officer, his concentration directed entirely outboard. Some little sound had caught his ear, some familiar tone.

  The Queen’s Venture’s rudder groaned below them, drowning out everything else in the muted night. And then it stopped, and then Press heard the sound again, a steady, mechanical sound.

  Clack, clack, clack … the sound of a capstan’s pawls, falling into place. He had heard it a thousand times before, and he could not mistake it, the sound as much a part of his life as his own voice. It was the sound of a ship getting under way. There was only one man he could imagine who was desperate enough to up anchor and move on a black, fog-shrouded night, in a river on a falling tide.

  ‘Damn it!’ Press slammed his hand on the cap rail, bit down hard on his silver toothpick. ‘Get that damned boat alongside now!’ he hissed between clenched teeth. ‘Do you not hear that? They are winning their anchor!’

  ‘Aye, sir!’ Tasker turned and ran forward, knowing better than to move at a pace slower than that. Into the waist, firing a broadside of orders, conveying both the intent and the urgency of the captain’s commands.

  Men ran in every direction. Handpicked, able seamen, they knew when it was time to move and move fast. Cutlasses came up from below and were handed out, pistols clipped to belts. The longboat, already in the water, pulled alongside, and the boat crew dropped into it and took up the oars.

  Four minutes from the moment he gave the word, Press climbed down into the fully manned, fully
armed boat. It could not have been done fast enough to please him, but neither could it have been done any faster than it had been.

  ‘Shove off. Give way,’ he growled, and’ the boat swung away from the Queen’s Venture’s side. The long sweeps came down and caught the water, and the boat shot forward, despite its being heavily loaded with men and arms.

  Press pushed the tiller over, aimed the bow in the direction of the capstan noise. He had not brought any kind of light, so he could not see the boat’s compass, and he cursed that fact and he cursed the fact that they had not had time to muffle the oars. The squeaking of the looms in the rowlocks seemed like the screaming of the damned in the quiet night. He was certain Barrett would hear it and be alerted to the pending attack.

  But it would not matter, Press assured himself. Surprise was not so crucial. In that light the boat could move faster than any ship under sail. And Barrett’s ship was a merchantman, twenty sailors at most. It was unlikely that they would be willing to fight and die for their captain. And even if they were, they would be no match for his band.

  No, beating Marlowe was no problem. He had only to find him, to come upon this Elizabeth Galley on the river, and the rest would be simple. He toyed with the toothpick in his mouth, waggled it back and forth with his tongue, beat the gunnel of the boat lightly and rhythmically with his fist.

  The Elizabeth Galley inched forward, pulled against the tide as the men at the capstan hauled her up to the anchor in preparation for getting under way.

  ‘How much cable have you veered, Mr Dinwiddie?’ Marlowe asked, an irritable and unnecessary question.

  ‘Cable and a half, sir. We was to moor, you’ll recall.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Marlowe said, and paced away. A cable and a half, almost a thousand feet of rope to haul in. He was growing more anxious with each passing moment. The loud clacking of the capstan pawls was like some kind of torture. He was sure it was increasing in volume every minute.

  Elizabeth, who had gone below seeking the privacy of the great cabin to compose herself, returned to the quarterdeck. She gave Marlowe a half smile, an expression of support, then moved to the opposite rail and stood there, quiet and unobtrusive. Thomas knew she would remain in that place, ready to help if asked, not questioning, not interfering, and he loved her for that, for knowing what he needed in every instance and giving it, willingly.

  Then his mind moved on from those warm thoughts. He leaned on the rail and looked out into the night. Between the dark and the fog he could not see beyond twenty feet.

  Press is dead, he thought. If he had been able to swim, he would have got back into the fight.

  But he could not shake the gnawing worry. It was not the first time he had assured himself that Roger Press was dead.

  Clack, clack, clack …

  ‘Here’s the splice coming aboard!’ Duncan Honeyman called aft, sotto voce. The splice where the two cables were joined. That meant that they had hauled in one third of the cable they had let out. Marlowe pounded the cap rail softly with his fist.

  Clack, clack, clack … It was like a town crier announcing that they were slipping away, and Marlowe could hardly stand to listen to it.

  And then he heard another sound, a creaking, like any of a hundred creaking noises that a ship might make. But there was something about it that caught his attention, a certain rhythmic quality. What was more, it did not sound as if it came from the Elizabeth Galley but from somewhere out in the dark. He strained to listen.

  Again, there it was. Oars in tholes, he was certain. He crossed to the other side of the quarterdeck, listing in his mind all the reasons a boat might be out at that time of night – a drunken party returning to their ship, a bumboat looking for a late-night customer, even whores being ferried out to a ship – it was not unheard of. A hundred reasons a boat might be out on the water at that hour.

  He leaned on the starboard rail as the boat appeared out of the mist like some nightmare water bug, a longboat, oars double-banked, men crowded at the thwarts, just fifteen feet away before it was visible. In the stern sheets, too indistinct to see in any detail but unmistakable in his gangly form, sat Roger Press.

  Marlowe stood upright, gasped as if a ghost had suddenly materialized, and then Press’s voice shouted, ‘Backwater! What ship is that?’

  The men at the capstan froze, the clacking ceased. Marlowe flailed around for an answer, but before he could grab one, Peleg Dinwiddie, standing on the gangway and looking down on the boat, answered helpfully, ‘Elizabeth Galley! Who goes there?’

  ‘Give way,’ Press said to his boat crew. Then to Dinwiddie: ‘We are going alongside.’

  The Elizabeth Galleys seemed to have turned to stone. They stood, unmoving, unsure what to do, but Marlowe had no doubt.

  ‘Cut the cable!’ he shouted. No need for quiet now. ‘Cut the damned cable!’

  Still no one moved. They remained frozen long enough for a curse to build in Marlowe’s throat, and then Honeyman snatched up an ax and brought it down on the bar-taut anchor cable, one stroke, two strokes, the strands shredding with each blow.

  Marlowe leaned over the rail. The longboat was ten feet away, less than its own length, the crowd of men – armed men, he could see – ready to swarm up and into the unarmed, unprepared, and untrained men of the Elizabeth Galley. It would not even be a fight.

  ‘Pull! Ship oars!’ Press cried. He looked up, and his eyes met Marlowe’s. Press looked calm, no surprise on his face, as if he had known all along where he might find his old enemy.

  The boat crew pulled hard, the boat shot forward, and the oars came up and were laid on the thwarts, out of the way, where they would not hinder the men from clambering aboard the Galley.

  The heavy boat bumped along the Galley’s side, its momentum carrying it fast, the bowman standing with the boat hook and reaching for the main chains, when the anchor cable parted under Honeyman’s ax. The wind and tide seized the Galley’s bow and swung it away. The bowman lunged, slashed at the chains, almost fell overboard as the ship turned beyond his reach.

  ‘Set the fore tops’l!’ Marlowe shouted. ‘Hands to the halyard, haul away! Sheet home!’

  The men in the waist burst from their reverie and raced to pin rails and halyard tackle. They might not have been men-of-war’s men, ready for a fight, but they were good sailors and they responded swiftly to those familiar orders.

  ‘Haul away! Sheet home!’ Dinwiddie took up the series of commands, and overhead the topsail yard began to jerk up the mast, and the men hauling on the sheets pulled the lower corners of the topsail out to the ends of the fore yard below it.

  The current had hold of the Elizabeth Galley, turning her so fast that Press and the longboat were already astern. The boat crew, caught right at the moment of preparing to board the Galley, were now struggling to lay down arms and take up oars again. It was a little cluster of chaos floating on the river, and it gave Marlowe a flash of hope, like a spark from steel on flint, but no more. The current would carry them both alike, and once the boat crew was straightened out and pulling again, they would move faster than the Elizabeth Galley could in that light air.

  ‘That’s well!’ Dinwiddie shouted, and then, ‘Damn me! Captain! Captain! Larboard bow!’

  Marlowe looked forward. The ship astern of them, which they would have missed if they had not cut their anchor cable short, was now right in their path, the river sweeping the Galley into her.

  ‘Larboard your helm! Hard over!’ Marlowe shouted to the helmsmen, who shoved the tiller hard to the larboard side. Such a shift of rudder would have had a dramatic effect on a ship moving fast through the water, but now it was the water that was largely moving the ship, and the rudder did little to alter her course.

  ‘Damn my eyes,’ Marlowe said as they dropped closer to the moored vessel, a slow, deliberate, graceful drift toward collision. ‘Shift your helm!’

  The helmsmen swung the tiller in an arc across the deck, all the way to starboard. The move had done some goo
d, Marlowe noted, had jogged the Galley a little way out of line with the ship astern.

  The bowsprit passed the moored vessel and then the bow, not five feet off, the two ships so close it would have been a simple matter to step from one to the other. Marlowe could feel the men on deck holding their breath as they watched the anchored vessel, deserted, ghostly in the mist.

  ‘Midships!’ he called to the helmsmen, and they moved the tiller to the centerline, and Marlowe saw that he had waited a second too long. The Galley’s stern was too close, and just as he decided that no further jogging of the rudder could help, the ships hit, the Elizabeth Galley’s larboard quarter slamming into the turn of the other vessel’s bow with a shudder that shook both ships, keel to truck.

  Marlowe watched the damage happen, a few feet from where he was standing. The Galley dragged down the side of the other ship with a chorus of snapping and cracking and wrenching. He heard glass break and knew that his beloved quarter galley was smashed to splinters.

  For long seconds the ships ground together as the Elizabeth Galley was carried past. Someone appeared on the deck of the moored ship, shouting curses, just as the Galley bounced off her main channel, wrenching it from her side, and then she was clear.

  There seemed to be a collective sigh of relief fore and aft, a second’s reprieve, and then a pistol shot rang out, and Roger Press’s voice was shouting, ‘Bring to! Bring to for a queen’s officer!’

  ‘Set the top mainsail!’ Marlowe called forward, as if he and Press were arguing over who was in command of the Galley. The men moved to obey, but slowly, and he could see eyes glancing outboard.

  ‘Bring to!’ Press shouted again, audibly closer. ‘Bring to for a queen’s officer, or you shall all hang!’

  That had the effect Press was hoping for. The men moved more slowly still, unwilling to disobey Marlowe, but by tacit agreement working with such hesitancy that they might be construed as obeying Press as well.