The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  He wondered, as he lay on his back looking out the big windows at the stars swaying overhead with the roll of the ship, how long she was likely to stay that angry. He wondered how Honeyman might be plotting to betray him, if Bickerstaff would remain forever disgusted with him and his clever manipulations.

  All the plunder in the Indian Ocean would be meaningless to him if he lost the love of Elizabeth and Francis. He wondered if he had not made an enormous miscalculation.

  CHAPTER 10

  Elephiant, Lord Yancy, looked around the clearing that had been hacked from the living jungle. It had been cleared years before his arrival and then left, and the jungle had quickly returned, like water rushing into a hollow in a cliff, before Yancy ordered it cleared once more. Fifteen miles along the length of the island, on winding, half-obscured paths from the great house and lands that he had by divine right inherited from Adam Baldridge. Fifteen miles through a deep ravine and then up along a knife-edge trail to the secret location, near the crest of one of the low mountains in the heart of the island of St Mary’s.

  It had been a long day’s hike to that place. Yancy, not as strong as he once was, had had to ask repeatedly that they stop, allow him to rest, before taking up the climb again. He waved off the others’ solicitous concern.

  Now, sitting on a stool in the shade, Yancy let his eyes move slowly over the small wood-and-wattle house, the high row of pickets that surrounded it, the deep, deep jungle beyond, a wall of coconut and banana and papaya. Like the big house, this smaller outpost had been built by Baldridge, and though not as opulent, it was still unstinting in the quality of the location and construction.

  For the first few years that Yancy had been king on the island, he had not even known of its existence. He might never have known about that secret place had one of his Malagasy wives not made an offhand reference to it and then, on his further questioning, led him there.

  It was in far worse shape than the big house, having been completely abandoned. The jungle was to a building what the sea was to a ship: left unchecked, it would work its way in, creep in through tiny openings, overwhelm and consume. The small house had been near to returning to a state of nature when Yancy found it.

  Baldridge had understood the need for secret places, escape routes, clandestine entrances, the advantage of having a place to which one could get away. A place that was hidden and easily defensible. Yancy understood that as well, and he took advantage of the preparations that Baldridge had made.

  He set his men to beating the jungle back once more, to repairing walls and roofs and the stockade that surrounded the house. It was slow going. He could put only his most trusted few to work, because he would not reveal the existence of the place to any of the others.

  It had taken months, but the place at last was set to rights. For several years it had been maintained that way, but rarely used. Yancy had no need to leave the big house. He did not wish to take his eyes off the activity on the harbor for very long.

  Atwood’s letter had changed that, had made it imperative that the small house be readied for occupation. The trusted few were set at it, urged on by Yancy, who expected every day to hear from his lookout at the top of the jungle-clad hills rising up behind the town that Press’s ship and tender were standing into the harbor, guns run out, armed men swarming the decks.

  But now it was done. Repaired, provisioned, armed. Yancy had casks of fresh salt beef and pork and dried peas stacked under cover. Barrels of powder and shot, muskets, a few swivel guns that could be mounted on the stockade. A natural spring came up right in the middle of the yard, which no doubt was why Baldridge had chosen that site.

  They were ready to hold out there as long as need be. And Roger Press had not yet arrived.

  ‘Good. Good,’ he said, nodding his approval. He pulled a red silk handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his brow. Looked up at Henry Nagel, looming over him. ‘And the weapons, Henry? You are sure of the weapons?’

  ‘Aye, sir. Seen every one of the muskets fired myself, just yesterday, to the number of fifty. Swivels as well. Two hundred rounds per gun.’

  ‘Good, good.’ They looked across the courtyard, enclosed by the stockade. Fifteen or so of the original Terrors were cleaning weapons and making repairs to the stockade and finishing up the last of the myriad details that would make the outpost comfortable and defensible.

  They would need their women, too, of course, at least a portion of their harems. That would make it crowded, to be sure, but it was impossible to think of holding out for any length of time otherwise. With no women it would be like life at sea, but without the constant work or threat or hope of a prize to keep minds occupied.

  The men would get restless, and resentful of having to do the menial chores of cooking and cleaning. These, after all, were the elite of St Mary’s, the founding fathers. They would not even be engaged in the tasks of repairing and provisioning the compound, were it not for the need for secrecy.

  Yancy looked over the house, but his mind was still on the issue of his harem. Since receiving her letter, his thoughts kept wandering back to his first wife, the one he had left back in New York. Sometimes when he lay with one of his Malagasy wives he would close his eyes and picture her – Susan, that was her name – her lovely white skin and blond hair, like silk.

  ‘Lord Yancy?’ Nagel interrupted his reverie.

  ‘What?’ Yancy snapped, a response that would have made other men wince, but Nagel, too dumb or too unafraid, did not react, and it made Yancy suspicious.

  ‘It’s only, sir … do you means to hide out here? Forever, like? If I might be so bold, sir, what is your plan?’

  ‘Plan?’ Yancy coughed into his handkerchief. ‘I have no plan, Henry. What can we do against Press, with his great band of loyal men? These’ – he indicated the others with a wave of his arm, ‘these are the only men I can trust. Precious few. No, Henry, I fear that all I can do is see that my beloved Terrors are safe, off in this paradise where Press cannot find you.’

  ‘Us, sir,’ Nagel corrected.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Us. Where Press cannot find us.’

  Yancy was silent for a moment, watching the activity in the courtyard. ‘Oh, yes, yes. Us, of course.’

  Foul weather, above and below.

  Seven days since the meeting in the great cabin, and Elizabeth was still sulky, still giving Marlowe only the most perfunctory of greetings, at first silent during dinner, and then abandoning dinner altogether, eating in the sleeping cabin, forcing him to sleep on the locker. Further apologies had been of no avail, attempts to cajole her out of her funk had been met with angry looks.

  It seemed incredible to Marlowe that she should be so angry over one simple lie. Not even a lie, really, a mere omission of information. It was his money, his responsibility. His contrition was turning to anger as Elizabeth held tenaciously on to her grudge.

  Bickerstaff too. He did not sulk, was not the sulking kind, but neither did he try to hide the certain coolness he felt toward Marlowe.

  It was something Marlowe had anticipated, something he had worked into the calculation. Bickerstaff detested pirates. Years before, when he had been Marlowe’s prisoner – or, more accurately, Malachias Barrett’s – Marlowe had forced him to sail in the sweet trade. But he had never forced him to commit piracy, had allowed him to stay below and out of any fight, had defended Bickerstaff against the other men on board the ship who thought him a coward.

  It was not for want of courage that Bickerstaff stayed below. He was not wanting at all in that area. It was because of his moral revulsion with piracy. Marlowe knew he would not wish to sail the Pirate Round. But he knew as well that practical considerations and concern not for Marlowe’s social standing but for Elizabeth’s, whom he loved, would lead him to countenance it at least, if not participate.

  Marlowe knew from the beginning that Bickerstaff would not be pleased to find out the extent to which he had planned out the entire thing. Still, he was surpri
sed by how very displeased Bickerstaff seemed to be.

  Honeyman went about his duties as ever, if perhaps a little less taciturn and a little more conciliatory, which only served to annoy Marlowe more. Dinwiddie grew more surly by the day, not pleased to find himself a first officer with less real authority than the quartermaster.

  And overhead a thick blanket of gray cloud, through which the sun made not even the ghost of an appearance, not even a bright disk to hint at where it was. Below the solid cover, darker clouds raced along, driven fast by winds that were flowing in a direction different from that of the wind over the water.

  The seas were big and growing bigger, gray, lumpy, with stark whitecaps as the tops broke on the bigger waves. The atmosphere was moody, hostile, threatening. Tense.

  Marlowe sat at the table in the great cabin, stared out the salt-stained windows aft. A wet tablecloth spread across the table top held pewter plates from sliding around with the roll of the ship. On the plates the half-eaten meal shifted slightly with the bigger seas.

  He was alone at the table. Elizabeth was in the sleeping cabin, eating, sleeping, praying that God strike her husband down – he did not know and was beginning not to care. The surfeit of ill will was numbing him to it.

  Bickerstaff took his meals with Dinwiddie and Flanders and Honeyman. Marlowe guessed that they were not a particularly jovial group. Better to eat alone.

  The Elizabeth Galley rolled hard to larboard, and the wide-bottomed tankard of wine toppled over, sending a dark red stain spreading across the already-wet tablecloth, but Marlowe could not muster the energy to do anything more than look at it, then turn back to the seas beyond his window.

  They were two days out of sight of land. After having made the decision to turn Red Sea Rover, they had stood in for Penzance on Mounts Bay, Cornwall, at the very western tip of England, to provision for the long voyage to Madagascar.

  The Cornish people were well known for their casual disregard for Admiralty law. They asked no questions about the unarmed privateer victualing in that out-of-the-way port. They showed no curiosity about the Spanish gold with which Marlowe paid, just accepted it gladly.

  Three days later the Elizabeth Galley stood out of Mounts Bay with food and water and firewood enough in her hold to see them around the Cape of Good Hope and on to Madagascar.

  Marlowe sighed, abandoned his dinner for the quarterdeck. Had it been blue skies and calm seas, he might have stayed below, but the weather now was to his liking. Dark, ugly skies, cold wind, spitting rain and spray – it was like stepping right into his own confused and angry mind.

  He stopped at the weather rail, turned his back to the wind. His cloak beat against his legs, and his hair, long enough finally to be bound in a queue, was flung forward over his shoulder.

  The bow of the Elizabeth Galley went down into a trough between big seas, and the quarterdeck seemed to fly up in the air, like one end of a giant seesaw. Marlowe felt his stomach left behind as the after end of the ship rose, hung for a second, then plunged down again as the wave passed under. An odd sensation, but he had been too long at sea for it to bother him.

  Dinwiddie and Honeyman and Burgess were everywhere, seeing storm gaskets passed around furled sail, double-gripping the boats, inspecting the tarpaulin covers over the hatches, rigging lifelines down the length of the deck.

  As much as he thought Honeyman was vermin, a sea lawyer, and as much as Dinwiddie was becoming a malcontent, as surly as Burgess was, still Marlowe had to admit that they were seamen who knew their business. The storm that was building around them would be a bad one, he could tell. At that moment he would not have traded the first officer and the quartermaster and bosun for the cheeriest sycophants on earth.

  The bow plunged down again and this time slammed into the oncoming wave, some quirk of timing that made the vessel shudder and sent a huge plume of water bursting over the fore rail, like surf against a rocky shore. Marlowe saw the water douse Honeyman and Dinwiddie, saw them hunch their shoulders against the cold deluge as they worked their way aft along the gangway and back to the quarterdeck.

  ‘Deck’s secured, sir,’ Dinwiddie said, loud, to be heard over the rising wind. ‘T’gallants?’

  ‘Aye!’ Marlowe said. It was time to get the topgallant masts and yards, the highest and weakest of the spars, down from their place aloft and stowed safely on deck. ‘Once you’ve struck them down, let us have the deep reef in the topsails. Mr Honeyman, I reckon we have men enough to rig rolling tackles while the topgallants are being struck?’

  ‘Aye, sir, should do.’

  ‘Very well, then. Let us get that all snugged down. I think this night will be something of a shitter.’

  ‘Reckon so, Captain!’ Dinwiddie shouted, and then the two men went forward again to carry out the last of the preparations for the building storm.

  Gray, dim, watery. For all the stormy afternoon the sky seemed never to achieve full daylight. The seas built, bigger and bigger, rising up around them to the level of the gunports, then the cap rails, then the quarterdeck rail, so that in the trough between the waves there was nothing but water roiling around, as if the Elizabeth Galley had been tossed down into a hole in the ocean.

  And then she would rise again on the waves, up so high it seemed she must topple off such a fine perch, and then down once more.

  The topgallant masts and yards were lowered to the deck and lashed to the main hatch. The topsails were reefed, the top half of the sail lashed to the yard from which it hung, leaving only a portion of the canvas still exposed to the wind. Rolling tackles that kept the heavy yards from slamming side to side as the ship rolled were rigged and bowsed taut. The Elizabeth Galley plunged on.

  There was one good thing about that wind, only one, and that was that it was northeasterly, blowing the Galley south and west, the very direction that Marlowe wished her to go. South and west, they would cross the Atlantic almost to the continent of South America, drift through the equatorial doldrums, and then pick up the westerly trades south of the line that would fling them back across the Atlantic and around the southern tip of Africa. A long voyage. A desperate and final attempt at salvaging his gentleman’s fortune.

  The daylight, such that it was, was nearly gone when Dinwiddie came aft. Marlowe stepped toward the first lieutenant, expecting him to report that all was secure for the night.

  The two men maneuvered toward each other, hands on the cap rail, feet spread wide to the wild heaving of the ship, the decks wet with the spray that filled the air and the intermittent showers of rain.

  ‘Honeyman’s getting a little large for his goddamned britches, Captain,’ was the first thing Dinwiddie yelled in his ear, over the shriek of wind in the rigging. ‘Telling off men to rig the rolling tackles, arguing with me about the lead of the top rope, I won’t stand for his nonsense!’ Not exactly the report Marlowe had hoped for.

  ‘Pray, Mr Dinwiddie, let us see if we live through the night, and then we’ll straighten it all out in the morning!’ Marlowe shouted back. As if I need any nonsense from these motherless chuckleheads, he thought.

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Dinwiddie bit off the words, and Marlowe saw that he would require some placating.

  ‘You are right! Honeyman needs taking down, and I will see to it. Now, are we set for the night?’

  ‘Aye, sir, all snugged down proper! Don’t know how long we can hold on to the topsails, though!’

  Less than half an hour, as it turned out. The last vestiges of light were starting to go as Marlowe stood at the weather rail, looking aloft through the gloom, wondering about the topsails. He was braced against the wind as it tried to shove him forward, like temptation pushing him as he tried to resist. It was his nature to carry sail as long as he could, make every inch of distance if he was going in the right direction, but the canvas would not hold out much longer.

  He had just decided it was time to take in sail, to run before the wind and seas under bare poles, when the fore topsail split. He was actually looking
at the main topsail, contemplating the relative age and strength of the cloth, when he felt the wind give him a hard shove. He was pushed forward, grabbed at the rail, braced himself harder.

  The Elizabeth Galley staggered as if she had been hit with a broadside, rolled hard to one side, the seas rolling up around her. She groaned, and the wind in the shrouds rose in pitch, and a thousand parts of her hull and rig clattered as she righted herself.

  And then through all that chaos of noise Marlowe heard the telltale crack of splitting canvas, a sharp report, like a gunshot. He looked up again.

  The main topsail was an unbroken field of taut, dull, wet canvas.

  He bent down, looked forward and up. The fore topsail looked much the same, a sheet of light gray in a dark gray and black world. But just to starboard of the midpoint of the sail he could see the split, three feet long, from the bolt rope up. Just the one split, and for the moment it was getting no wider, as if the sail were fighting to keep itself together, just long enough for Marlowe to send help.

  Honeyman was in the waist, and he also was looking at the sail. Marlowe thought to shout an order, realized Honeyman would never hear him, took a step foward – and then the sail let go.

  Another crack, many times louder than the first, and when Marlowe had looked aloft again, the topsail was nothing but ribbons blowing out to leeward, long trails of canvas flogging like banners. The bolt rope, which had once reinforced the edges of the topsail, was still held in place, like the skeleton of the sail, as if it did not know that the canvas was gone.

  Underfoot Marlowe felt the ship slew a bit as the balance of sail and hull suddenly changed. He whirled around, hand over hand on the rail, his eyes streaming tears as he took the wind full in the face, ready to issue orders to the helmsmen or take the tiller himself if need be.

  But another of Burgess’s mates, another seasoned hard case of a seaman, was at the tiller, backed up by one of the strong young men from Marlowe House, and they had shoved the tiller over, just a bit, to compensate for the change, turning just how Marlowe would have ordered them to, so he let them alone and turned his back to the wind again.