The Pirate Round

by James Nelson

  ‘What’s acting?’ The captain of the battery came strolling up, his long shirt untucked from stained breeches.

  ‘Yancy says to blow yon ship out of the water. Really give it to her.’

  The captain squinted over at the ship, spit on the ground, squinted again, and grinned. ‘Yeah, we can do that,’ he said. ‘Come on, lads, we’ve business this morning!’ he called, and the others, muttering, got to their feet. They shuffled over to the low wall, looked out at the harbor. ‘Yancy says we’re to blow them out of the water,’ the captain told his crew.

  That perked up their interest and their spirits, and they fell to loading one of the great guns. There were ten of them on the gun crew, but that was as many as were required to work the one big gun.

  They moved slowly, deliberately, rolling back the gun, ramming home powder, shot. Stokes thought that, for men who had nothing to do but man the battery and be ready to fire the guns, they were not very organized or swift, but he held his tongue. They had time. The test would be how fast they could reload when the ship was within the arc of their fire.

  ‘Run her out!’ the gun captain called, and the men leaned into the train tackles, and the gun rumbled, squealed, moved under protest up to the rampart. The captain sighted down the barrel, ordered the gun trained around, fiddled with the elevation. ‘That’s good, lads. We’ll just let her sail into it.’

  Four minutes they waited in silence, the only sound the song of the birds and the buzzing of insects, the breeze in the thick foliage. The captain leaned over the barrel, grinned. ‘Ah, here she comes, lads, right to us, the stupid bastard. Give us the match, here.’

  One of the men handed the gun captain the match, and they all stepped back, making a circle of men two feet from the gun, safe from its recoil, ready to leap to and reload.

  ‘Come on, come on …’ the captain muttered, hunched over the barrel, the match hovering over the powder train.

  Men craned their heads above the wall, eager to see the damage the first shot would do. It was the most amusement any of them had had in some time.

  ‘Here we go …’ the captain said, and he straightened, shoved the match down into the powder. It hissed, crackled and then in one huge roar of flame and screaming metal and burning powder the great gun fired its thirty-two-pound shot, and the ten-foot, three-ton barrel exploded into a thousand shrieking fragments.

  Stokes, standing ten feet away, was hurled back, knocked from his feet, skidding across the flat paving stones. His head was buzzing and ringing, his chest and stomach hurting in a way that he could not think to describe, such that when he opened his eyes some moments later he was surprised not to find some creature sitting on him, clawing him apart, because that was how it felt.

  He had been tossed back into a half-sitting position against the oven. There were great rents in his chest and stomach, blood all over. He thought he could feel the bits of metal inside him, in his body.

  There was nothing left of the gun save for a small fragment of the barrel still sitting on the wreckage of the gun carriage. There was nothing left of the gun crew, save for pieces and great swaths of blood, impossibly red under the bright sun.

  Stokes slumped down, closed his eyes, prepared to join the others, wherever they were.

  Lord Yancy watched with great satisfaction the puff of smoke from the battery, the jet of water shooting up beside the ship. They missed, which diminished his pleasure somewhat, but not so very much. Stokes had made it to the battery in time, that was the point.

  As the ship closed the distance, the men at the battery would really hammer her. Five guns firing at point-blank range, thirty-two pounders with muzzle velocities of … a terribly high number … The Elizabeth Galley would be torn apart.

  Yancy folded his arms, began to count in his head, One and a hundred, two and a hundred, three and a hundred … curious to see how long it would take them to fire the next shot. He imagined that they had all the guns loaded and ready, would just go down the line, firing them off. They certainly had time enough.

  Thirty-four and one hundred, thirty-five … Yancy frowned. Apparently they did not have the guns loaded beforehand. Apparently they were reloading now. Such lack of foresight did not please him.

  Fifty-one and one hundred, fifty-two and one hundred … Yancy stopped counting. A minute to load a single gun? Lazy bastards, he would flog them all. The Elizabeth Galley was right under them, or appeared to be from the angle from which Yancy was watching. Now was the time to pound her. Another minute and the best shot would be lost. Another three and she would disappear around the island.

  It was an awful, awful silence that filled the next three minutes. Yancy felt his guts wrenching with his mounting fury, an emotion frightening in its intensity. He tried to quash it but could not. The Elizabeth Galley’s headrig was lost from sight around the northern end of the island, and still nothing from the battery. The trembling began again, moving through him.

  Nothing but silence from the battery. Yancy listened, his whole being concentrated in his ears. Insects buzzing, the raucous call of some bird. Feet shuffling, some whispered conversation. Nothing else.

  Half the Elizabeth Galley was lost from sight. Yancy was ready for the battery to open up. Didn’t want to sink her in the channel – he grasped at that straw. Waited till she was in deep water, didn’t want to make an obstruction of her, right in the channel…

  And then, like the sun dipping below the horizon, the last of the Elizabeth Galley’s stern section slipped around Quail Island and was gone.

  Yancy’s entire body was trembling now, uncontrollably. He clenched his fists and his jaw and his eyelids, tensed his muscles, tried to keep his brain from blowing apart. He could picture bulging veins, ready to burst, his heart swelling and growing fragile, like a soap bubble in his chest.

  And then from behind him a chuckle. It built until it was a laugh, a raucous shout of a laugh, an obscene sound, and Yancy thought at first he alone could hear it, the gods laughing at him because he could not imagine that anyone would actually dare laugh at that moment. Then he realized that it was Roger Press.

  He whirled around. Press’s gangly form was bent nearly double, and he was laughing, while around him the other men backed away as if he had suddenly dropped with plague.

  Yancy took a step toward him and stopped, did not know what to do. It was too incredible.

  Press straightened, wiped his streaming eyes, rolled his silver toothpick across the roof of his mouth. ‘Oh, Yancy, this is rich! I bring you four ships, I bring you the Great Mogul’s treasure and Marlowe and his bitch to boot, and you piss it all away! All of it! God, you are pathetic, you stupid little fuck.’

  Press put his hands on his hips, smirking, waggling his toothpick around. There were a hundred things that Yancy wanted to do and say, all at once, but all he could see was that damned toothpick. With three quick steps he crossed the space that separated them. His hand darted up, grabbed the accursed thing, yanked it from Press’s mouth and hurled it aside.

  Press’s smirk vanished. His eyebrows came together, his lips went down into a frown, and fast as a snake his right hand came around and slapped Yancy hard across the face. ‘Go pick that up, you little shit. You aren’t in command here anymore,’ Press hissed.

  Yancy staggered back a few steps. A blow! He could not recall having ever been struck, not since the age of fourteen. Certainly not by anyone who lived to brag of it.

  His hand wrapped around the hilt of his sword. He pulled it from the scabbard with a swishing sound. ‘Now you die,’ he said simply, taking a step toward Press, who took a step back.

  ‘Give me a sword!’ Press yelled to the assembled men, half of whom were his former crew. ‘Give me a sword!’ But no one moved.

  Yancy charged, two steps, saw the look of horror and surprise on Press’s face as he drove the sword into Press’s stomach, the razor-sharp blade meeting little resistance as it slid through his bowels, came clean out the back.

  Lord
Yancy drove the blade home, right up to the hilt. He saw Press’s eyes, wide with shock and pain, heard Press try to yell, but his throat was full of blood, and it was blood and not words that came from his mouth, blood running over the hilt of the sword, sticky and hot on his hands.

  Yancy smiled, made to pull the sword free, but Press lurched forward, wrapped arms like a spider’s legs around him, hugging him as if he were a dear friend. Yancy felt a surge of panic and revulsion, tried to push the horrible, bleeding thing away, but Press had strength left in his arms, and he held Yancy tight.

  Then Yancy felt Press’s right arm reaching down as the left encircled his neck, felt the bony hand under his coat, reaching for the dagger in the small of his back.

  ‘No, no, you son of a bitch!’ Yancy tried to push away, but Press held him tight. He could feel Press’s blood pumping hot over him, could smell the blood and the dried sweat on Press’s body, thought he would be sick. He felt the dagger clear the sheath, pushed away as hard as he could but he could not break Press’s grip. He screamed, closed his eyes, waited for the knife in the back.

  Henry Nagel stood at the edge of the ring of men, Yancy’s men and Press’s, witnesses to the fast and bloody end of their leaders.

  He had been grudgingly impressed with Yancy’s quickness and the force he had applied to skewer Press. That took some strength of arm, Nagel knew.

  Henry had reckoned the stroke gave Yancy the final victory over Press, but he was wrong. Press still had something left in him, vicious bastard; he was not going to die alone. He found Yancy’s knife, pulled it, drove it into the back of his screaming enemy, pulled it free, drove it home a second time before the two men collapsed to the dock with arms around each other like lovers, blood pooling together.

  The ring of men stood silent and watched. Yancy made a sound like a long sigh, Press twitched a few times more, but nothing beyond that, and then they were dead. No one said a thing.

  After a moment of this, Nagel looked up, and at the same time so did Israel Clayford, the great brute who had been second to Press. Their eyes met, and each held the other’s stare, and then at last Nagel nodded toward the harbor, said, ‘Sloop’s fair shot up, but I reckon she’d make a fine Red Sea Rover.’

  Clayford nodded. ‘Brig, too. Could work together.’

  Nagel agreed. ‘Reckon we can put it to a vote, who captains what, quartermasters and the like.’ He looked around, spoke louder, addressing all the men there. ‘Any of you doesn’t care to join in, don’t want to sail the Pirate Round … well, you just walk away, and nothing will be said.’

  He waited a moment. No one moved.

  At last Clayford broke the silence. ‘Finch here’s a scholar, can write a fair, round hand. What say we set him to drafting articles, like?’

  ‘Reckon so.’ With that, Nagel turned, clomped down the dock, and the others followed behind. He looked up at the big house on the hill. He was ready for a wet. Ready to quit that place.

  Billy Bird had among his company a fellow that they called the Doctor. He was not, in reality, a physical doctor or a doctor of anything for that matter, but he had been an apothecary’s assistant, and through much trial and error among the Brethren of the Coast he had learned a few things about the surgeon’s art.

  Even as the Elizabeth Galley was standing toward the harbor entrance, Billy ordered the man to see Marlowe carried below and attended to. Billy had no real hope of Marlowe’s living. But then he didn’t really think any of them would live to see the open ocean.

  The breeze was good, but the tide was flooding, and they were having some trouble in stemming it. At the rate they were going, they would be under the Quail Island battery for fifteen minutes, long enough for the point-blank fire to sink them and then some. But Billy set the Doctor to work on Marlowe because he was by nature an optimist.

  The first shot did not surprise him, not as much as the fact that they missed. He did not see how they could. But they would get their range with the second shot, and then it would be a hailstorm of iron.

  He braced, waited for it, and waited some more. It was absolute torture. He felt like a mouse being toyed with by a cat. Looking straight into the muzzles of those big guns, he felt as though he were standing naked on the quarterdeck.

  The Indian Ocean was opening up before them and they were beyond the arc of fire of half the battery’s guns before Billy allowed a spark of hope to burn in his heart. Ten minutes later they were past the battery entirely, out of the harbor, with no pursuit that he could see and not one hit from the great guns on the island. Billy Bird did not know what had happened. He was not even very curious. He was just thankful.

  Forty minutes later the Doctor came topside, his apron covered with blood. He was holding something wrapped in a bloody piece of canvas, which he threw overboard, then ambled over to Billy Bird, wiping his hands uselessly on his apron.

  Billy pointed with his chin to the spot where the Doctor had thrown the bundle overboard. ‘Marlowe’s arm?’

  The Doctor nodded. ‘What was left of it.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  The Doctor shrugged. ‘He’s a strong one, and the arm come off clean. He’s got as good a chance as any. Better than most, I guess.’

  Billy nodded. He knew this routine well enough. The Doctor had done what he could, and now there was nothing for it but to wait, and Marlowe would live or he would not, and there was nothing more that they could do.

  Billy wondered if he might have some claim on Elizabeth’s affection, some chance with her for something more lasting, if in fact Marlowe did die. And then he flushed with embarrassment that he could think such a thing, cleared his throat and looked away, as if the Doctor might guess at the callous thoughts that had crossed his mind.

  They had poured some rum down Marlowe’s throat, prior to the operation, and mostly by reflex he had gagged it down. Three men had held him while the Doctor did his business with knife and saw, pulling the arteries out with a tenaculum and tying them off and then covering the stump with a clean wool cap.

  Marlowe passed out halfway through the procedure. Elizabeth sat at his other side, holding his still-intact hand, staring at his face through her tears. Had he been awake, she would have forced herself to be more stoic, but as he was not aware at all of his surroundings, she let her grief and her fear go, and those feelings made her eyes brim over with tears, which ran down her cheeks, soaked into her cotton shirt.

  Soon after the operation was complete, the fever set in. The Doctor came below every hour, felt Marlowe’s forehead, took his pulse, tried to say something encouraging to Elizabeth, who remained at his side. But he sounded less and less optimistic.

  Elizabeth swabbed Marlowe’s brow, spooned broth into his mouth, sang softly to him as she would have to a sleeping child. The fever raged on, and Marlowe remained unconscious.

  He was unconscious when Madagascar disappeared below the horizon.

  He was unconscious when they wrapped Francis Bickerstaff’s body in old sailcloth, two round shot at his feet, his Bible and his folio of Hamlet clutched to his chest. Those were the two books, Elizabeth knew, that he would have wished to have with him for eternity, and even if Francis himself would have scoffed at the idea of such things accompanying one’s earthly remains untold fathoms to the bottom of the ocean, still she felt better for doing it.

  In the early-morning overcast they hove the ship to and buried those who had died during their final run from St Mary’s, and last of all was Francis Bickerstaff. Marlowe, racked with fever, did not see Elizabeth reading the sermon, did not see her break down halfway through, doubling over as if the weight of her grief were pushing her down, Billy Bird stepping over to her, gently taking the Bible from her hand, placing his arm around her, and pressing her weeping face into his chest as he read the last of the words.

  ‘We commit to the deep the body of our friend, Francis Bickerstaff. May God have mercy on his soul.’

  More ceremony than was common among the Red Sea Rove
rs. Billy didn’t really know this Francis Bickerstaff, had only met him the month before in the Gulf of Aden, but from the looks of genuine grief on the faces of the men who had sailed with him, and Elizabeth, her hand twisting his cloak, sobbing against his chest, he reckoned this was some man going over the standing part of the foresheet.

  He closed the book, nodded, and the men at the inboard end of the plank lifted it high.

  Marlowe did not see the body of Francis Bickerstaff slide off the plank, splash into the Indian Ocean, a dull white spot, circling down and finally swallowed up by the blue-black depths. He did not see it, and that was a blessing as far as Elizabeth could figure, because the grief would have killed him faster than the fever ever would.

  Marlowe remained in a state of burning delirium for another week, sweating and shivering, racked by wild, disjointed dreams with profound overtones of guilt and loss, liquid dreams that made no sense save for the horrible emotions suspended within them.

  Elizabeth stayed by his side, feeding him, bathing him, talking and singing to him, sleeping in a cot set up at his side. The Doctor came regularly, checked Marlowe’s condition, bled him and applied poultices and administered Peruvian bark.

  Overhead, on the brightly lit deck, the ship settled into a routine of sorts, Billy Bird in command of the Elizabeth Galley, Honeyman elected quartermaster, the crew shaken down to their watches. But Elizabeth saw little of it, sequestered below in her twilight netherworld, stinking of disease and medicine and bilge.

  Just after noon on the tenth day, around thirty-three degrees forty-five minutes south latitude, Marlowe’s fever broke. His mind was suddenly clear, and his skin felt cool. Not the unhealthy chill that led to trembling and chattering teeth, but cool, comfortable. He opened his eyes, turned his head, and he was looking at Elizabeth and she was looking at him, and tears streamed down her cheeks, and he wanted to reach out and comfort her.

  He reached his right hand over to her, but there was something wrong because move as he might he could not see his hand, or his arm. He looked down, puzzled, looked to Elizabeth for some explanation.