The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  At the forwardmost end of the ship, way out on the little round spritsail top, two hands were bending and hoisting the ensign of the Honorable British East India Company, a flag consisting of red and white horizontal stripes with the red Cross of St George on a white field in the canton. At the very aftermost part of the ship, two more hands were bending a flag onto the ensign staff, similar in design to that on the spritsail topmast but three times the size. At fore, main, and mizzen mastheads long red and white horizontally striped pennants whipped around in the blessed breeze.

  Two hundred yards off the starboard quarter, the Speedwell showed the same bunting. Her master, Israel Clayford, Press’s first officer during the privateering days, was well acquainted with his plans for St Mary’s. They had had plenty of opportunity to discuss them as they wallowed off the Cape of Good Hope.

  Press trusted Clayford as much as he had ever trusted any man. Clayford was a vicious brute, driven entirely by his two base needs: lust and avarice. Press understood what drove the man, and so he could predict Clayford’s behavior. Press knew that Clayford regarded him as the quickest means to his own ends.

  They stood on through the morning and into the afternoon, St Mary’s growing larger before them, St Mary’s at last. If there was anyone watching from the island – and Press knew there would be – the two ships would look to be East Indiamen, heavily armed and lightly manned, posing no threat. Yancy would not fire on them with his shore batteries. He would think them too valuable as trading partners or prizes for him to drive them away.

  By midafternoon the open roads and small island at the head of the harbor at St Mary’s were under their bows, and the two ships stood in, furling sail as they went, never giving any indication of their bellicose intentions.

  Press ran his glass over the big house on the hill. Built by Adam Baldridge a decade or so before. Now the home of the upstart Elephiant Yancy, or so he was told by several reliable informants.

  Not taking bloody good care of it, he mused. He could see that there had been a fire there, and not so long ago. A good part of the thatched roof was gone in a great charred hole.

  Yancy. He had wanted to get his mangled fingers around that prancing little bugger’s neck for ten years. And now he would, and he would enjoy it.

  Past the island and its abandoned battery and in toward the anchorage, the nearly deserted anchorage, to a place one hundred yards from the shore where they dropped their hooks, ship, and tender, and came at last to a stop in three fathoms of water.

  ‘On deck! Boat’s putting off!’ the lookout called, jerking Press from his contemplation of the dearth of shipping in the harbor.

  He had envisioned St Mary’s as crowded with vessels – Roundsmen, merchantmen, smugglers – all those who knew how to profit from the sea-lanes. He was going to pull Yancy out like a rotten mast from a ship’s hull, put himself in his place. Press would enjoy his portion of the extraordinary wealth that flowed through the island. And all of it funded by those fat, rich bastards in London.

  He had expected more in the way of commerce, there in the harbor.

  Bloody stupid Yaney, run it right into the ground, I wouldn’t fucking doubt, Press thought as he found the approaching boat with his glass. Well, I shall just have to fix what he has made a hash of

  The boat was pulled by four men with no apparent enthusiasm for their work. A fifth man sat in the stern sheets, but he was still too far away to see. It might well be Yancy, and that meant that he could not let himself be seen. He did not want to spoil all the fun.

  ‘Tasker, see to some kind of side party. Whoever this is, welcome him with some sort of ceremony. I shall watch from aft.’

  With that, Press hurried back under the quarterdeck, back to the point where the bulkhead to the great cabin would have been had the ship not been cleared away, fore and aft. From there he could see the waist and the gangway, but no one out in that bright sunlight could see him in the gloom.

  He waited while Tasker assembled a side party, going about the business with more care and efficiency than Press had intended. At last Press heard the boat bump alongside, and Tasker called his men to attention in two rows, making something of a path from the gangway to the middle of the waist.

  A portly man stepped through the gangway, nodding his approval of the side party in a supercilious way. Press moved forward, still keeping to the shadows. It was not Yancy, that was certain. A bigger man than Yancy, lacking Yancy’s nervous, squirrel-like motion.

  The man stepped through the ranks of drawn-up men, up to Tasker and took Tasker’s outstretched hand. Tasker said something that Press could not hear, but the fat man let go of the lieutenant’s hand and lifted his arms in an expansive gesture and boomed, ‘Welcome! Welcome, all, to my St Mary’s!’

  Who is this bloody horse’s arse? Press thought. Tasker, playing his role well, began to accept the welcome, but Press stepped quickly forward, his long legs rushing him along, silver toothpick clenched in his teeth.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded of the fat man, who could not hide his surprise at Press’s sudden appearance, his antagonistic manner.

  ‘I, sir, am Dinwiddie, Peleg Dinwiddie. I am lord of the island of St Mary’s.’

  That declaration earned a smile from Press. ‘Not any bloody more, you’re not,’ he said, and before the confused and increasingly nervous Dinwiddie could respond, Press said, ‘Where’s Yancy?’

  ‘Yancy? Yancy is dead, if you must know – ’

  ‘Goddamn it!’ Press stepped toward the fat man, but the row of sailors for the side party partially blocked his way. Press grabbed the nearest man, shoved him to the deck. ‘Dismissed, you whoresons!’ he shouted, and the two straight lines of the side party fell apart as the men scattered.

  Press grabbed Dinwiddie by the collar of his fine coat, pulled him across the deck until they were inches apart. Press towered over Dinwiddie. He was looking down into the man’s bloodshot eyes when he once again asked, ‘Where is Yancy?’

  ‘Yancy is dead!’ Dinwiddie insisted again, and then, spluttering with outrage, he grabbed Press’s wrists with strong hands – seaman’s hands – and shouted, ‘Get your damned hands off me, you bastard, or I shall have you in irons!’

  Another smile, and Press jerked Dinwiddie sideways and shoved, and Dinwiddie fell to the deck at his feet. He made to stand, but Press kicked him hard in the stomach, the face, the stomach again.

  Dinwiddie lay gasping, blood flowing from his mouth. Press leaned low.

  ‘How long have you been lord of St Mary’s?’ He said it with a sarcastic flourish.

  Dinwiddie had to think. ‘Four days,’ he said at last.

  ‘Where is Yancy?’

  ‘Dead …’

  ‘When did he die?’

  ‘Four days ago.’

  ‘You know where he is buried?’

  ‘No.’

  Press straightened, looked out over the water, toward the big house. Could it be true? It was entirely possible.

  But to die four days before they made landfall? Four days before he, Press, could arrive and kill him? A terrible irony, if it was true.

  Once again Dinwiddie was struggling to get up, and once again Press kicked him to the deck. He would give this idiot another hour of such treatment, and if, after that, he was still alive and still insisting that Yancy was not, then perhaps he would believe him.

  An hour later, with blood splattered in wild patterns across the deck, Press had to put a finger to Dinwiddie’s neck to check if he was alive. He frowned, felt around, and finally located a pulse.

  Dinwiddie looked soft and fat, but that appearance was misleading. He was a strong man, with a strong constitution. He had remained conscious for most of the time that Press had beaten him and kicked him around the deck, to the great amusement of the men watching from various corners of the Queen’s Venture’s deck and lower rig. The few times he had passed out under the treatment, a bucket of seawater had revived him, and he had endured more.
>
  But for all of that time Press could not elicit any answer about Yancy save the insistence he was dead.

  He took his finger from Lord Peleg Dinwiddie’s neck, stood up straight, the bleeding, motionless bulk at his feet, and looked across the harbor at the big Baldridge house.

  Perhaps Yancy was dead. There was no question that this idiot Dinwiddie thought so. Press had taken him well past the point where he would have continued to lie.

  He looked down, surprised to see the boat that had taken Dinwiddie out to the Queen’s Venture still floating alongside.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ Press demanded.

  ‘We was told to wait. Lord Dinwiddie told us wait for him,’ said the man at stroke oar.

  At that Press laughed out loud. ‘I’ll see to “Lord” Dinwiddie, never you fear.’

  ‘We’re owed a shilling for our service,’ the stroke oar insisted next.

  ‘What?’ Press shouted. Such audacity was not to be suffered. ‘Get out of here, you son of a bitch, or I will shoot each one of you motherless bastards!’

  The men in the boat needed no more encouragement than that. They shoved off, laid into the oars, pulled for the dock from which they had come.

  Press watched them go. ‘Tasker!’ he called out, and before the lieutenant could reply, he said, ‘We will be going ashore. Every able man is to go with the shore parties. Muskets and cutlasses.’

  He climbed back up to the quarterdeck, sat brooding as Tasker assembled his private army, preparing them to storm the island. He would tear the town apart looking for Yancy. If it turned out the bastard was lucky enough to be dead, he would have to find out where he was buried, dig him up, have a look at the whoreson’s face. Leave him for the crows. That was the only way he could be certain.

  He would be sorry to have missed the chance to kill him, slowly. He prayed that from the depths of hell Yancy would know that he, Press, was enjoying all the things that Yancy had worked so hard to build.

  At last the boats from the Queen’s Venture and the boats from the Speedwell were manned and loaded with armed sailors milling about between the two ships, waiting. Press stepped down from the quarterdeck. His steward stood ready with his sword and his brace of pistols, and he put them on with a slow, ritualistic precision.

  He looked down at Dinwiddie, who was starting to stir. ‘We’ll take that with us,’ he said, pointing toward the former lord of the island, then climbed down into the stern sheets of the longboat. With no more than a nod he ordered the boat under way, and behind them the other boats fell in, and the small army of invasion, their own scaled-down Norman Conquest, pulled for the shore.

  Press kept a sharp eye for any signs of anything. He had left no more than a skeleton crew aboard each ship, but he was not concerned with their being taken while he was ashore. He could see the batteries on Quail Island, or so the chart called it. Whoever commanded those guns commanded the entrance to the harbor, and by day’s end he intended to command those guns.

  Up to the rickety, half-rotten dock, and Press climbed out and stepped ashore, walked down the wooden pier toward the road, slowly waggling the toothpick in his mouth.

  He looked around, thought, Here I am.

  From the sitting room at Pall Mall to standing on the island as his own army unloaded behind him. Magnificent. The big house, the batteries, the high hills, the warehouses – all his. Press felt closer to happiness and contentment and satisfaction than he had felt in many years.

  It took fifteen minutes for the men to land and assemble, because Press had a big army with him, over two hundred strong. When at last they were formed up in columns as respectable as could be expected from sailors, Press stepped off, heading up the dirt road that led to the town, and met with the road that led uphill to the house. They passed through what must be considered the center of St Mary’s: a few dilapidated buildings, some big tents, and off to the left a few warehouses.

  Lining the street, the men and women of the town watched them pass. Sailors, pirates, whores, and natives, they did not interfere or even say a word. To a person, they had the look of a population that had seen much already, that was not impressed with the new arrivals, that knew to mind their own business and run before any new gale that blew through the island.

  They had no reaction to Press, and Press had no reaction to them as they tramped uphill. Rather, his attention was focused entirely on the house, alert for any possible trap. He looked sharp for movement of any kind – the glint of sun off steel, smoke, anything. But there was absolutely no indication that the house was occupied.

  Up and through the gate to the stockade, which hung open. Up the path to the house, and never a challenge, never a word, save for a hungry-looking dog that barked and barked at the new arrivals until someone shot it.

  Press pushed open the front door, stepped inside alone, looked around. The house was lovely, or had been once. It was in disrepair now. It had the look of a place that was patched up rather than cared for.

  There was none of the musty smell of disuse. Press’s keen nose caught the scents of men and food and smoke and excrement. The bitter smell of charred wood hung in the air. But for all that, there did not seem to be a person there.

  ‘Tasker!’ The lieutenant was at his side. ‘Divide the men up under the other lieutenants. Clayford’s men with him. Spread out, search every inch of this place. Keep a care for traps. Lieutenants report to me.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  Press stepped farther into the house. Tasker was capable of organizing the search, so he did not even listen as the first officer gave his orders to his juniors, assigning each a division of men and a section of house.

  There was a big staircase that led up to a second floor. Press ran his hand over the richly carved banister and looked up. It was an odd feeling, like walking around Atlantis perhaps, after one had spent a lifetime searching for it. Baldridge must have been an extraordinary man. It was revolting to think of Yancy in that place, a pretender to such glory. He, Press, was the natural heir to the island.

  He headed up the stairs, taking each slowly, listening to the sounds of his men searching the house, waiting for the sound of a fight, taking in everything that he could see.

  Up to the second floor, and he could see where the hall came out on a landing that opened onto a wide veranda. He walked through the doors, which hung open, and across the flagstones to the low wall that edged the space. From there he could look down on the harbor, on his ships floating placidly, on all of his new kingdom. Magnificent.

  He stood there for some time, and one by one the junior lieutenants came to report that they had found nothing, save for half a dozen drunk pirates, who were paraded before Press, and two dozen servants and native girls. The pirates he ordered flung from the house. He had a good idea of the capacity in which the natives, men and women, had served Yancy, and Dinwiddie, he supposed. He and his men could make use of them in the same capacity. They were told to stay.

  Along with the occupants, the searchers found the kitchen and the larder and the liquor stores, and soon Tasker was seeing to food and drink and the men were finding their place in their fine new home.

  Press and Clayford sat on the big veranda, drinking rum, saying nothing. From that vantage point Press could see the hundred men he had detached as they stormed buildings and tents in the town below, pushing people into the street, searching for Elephiant Yancy. He could hear screams and the occasional gunshot.

  He had instructed them that they were not to be polite or gentle. Weakness would not locate Yancy; courtesy would not reinforce the truth that he, Roger Press, was now in charge.

  Press pulled his eyes from the town and considered the flat stones that paved the veranda. There were great swaths of dried blood on the stones that had been imperfectly washed away, and Press was wondering about those. Was this the result of something Dinwiddie had done? He could not imagine.

  The thought of Dinwiddie conjured up the fat face in his mind, and h
e found something tugging at him. That face, there was something about it that he recognized, but vaguely, one of those memories that might have been a dream or might have been real.

  Stupid fat bastards, they all look alike, Press thought, but he found he could not dismiss it that easily.

  ‘Pass the word for Tasker,’ he said to the man who stood sentry near the veranda door, and he heard the name echoing around the house. A minute later Tasker was there.

  ‘Lieutenant.’ Press looked up at him from the chair in which he sat, his spindly legs thrust out before him, already at home. ‘That imbecile, Dinwiddie, was he brought ashore with us?’

  ‘Aye, Captain. Lieutenant Block, he found some prison cells, down at the western foundations to the house, and we locked him up there.’

  ‘Good, good. Bring him to me.’

  Ten minutes later Dinwiddie was kneeling in front of him. Press looked hard at the man’s face, but he had beaten him so badly there was little recognizable about it now. He tried to picture the face as he had seen it when first Dinwiddie came aboard. Cursed himself for making such a mess out of the bastard.

  He pulled the toothpick from his mouth, used it as a pointer. ‘Tell me your name again,’ Press demanded.

  ‘Peleg Dinwiddie …’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘First officer on a privateer, sailing the Round …’ His voice cracked as he spoke. His tongue moved over parched, battered lips.

  ‘Who was the captain?’

  Dinwiddie paused and spit blood on the veranda. He looked up at Press with one eye. The other was swollen shut. ‘Thomas Marlowe.’

  Press felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. He jerked upright.

  Now he remembered! He had seen Dinwiddie’s fat, stupid face peering down from the side of Marlowe’s ship a second before that topsail yard had plunged through the bottom of the boat. It was no wonder that his memory of Dinwiddie had a dreamlike quality. That whole affair still resonated like a nightmare.