«I thought that Pike would prove a minnow in the jaws of Easterling. It but remains for Easterling to swallow him, and faith, it's what he'll be doing.»
«Ye've said it, Captain. It's plaguey little o' that treasure me and my mates o' the Valiant or Captain Pike himself 'll ever see. The thirty that's left of us 'll be lucky if they gets away alive. That's my faith, Captain.»
«And mine, bedad,» said Captain Blood. But his mouth was grim.
«Can ye do nothing for the honour of the Brethren of the Coast and for the sake o' justice, Captain?»
«It's thinking of it, I am. If the fleet were with me I'd sail in this minute and take a hand. But with just this one ship…» He broke off and shrugged. «The odds are a trifle heavy. But I'll watch, and I'll consider.»
Cunley's opinion that it was a black day for the Valiant when she joined Easterling's fleet was now being shared by every survivor of her crew, and by none more fully than by Captain Pike himself. He had become. apprehensive of the final issue of the adventure, and his apprehensions received the fullest confirmation on the morrow of their sailing from the Chagres, when they came to anchorage in that lagoon of Gallows Key to which I have alluded.
Easterling's Avenger led the way into that diminutive circular harbour, and anchored nearest to the shore. Next came the Hermes. The Valiant, now bringing up the rear, was compelled, for lack of room within, to anchor in the narrow roadstead. Thus again Pike was given the most vulnerable station in the event of attack — a station in which his ship must act as a shield for the others.
Trenam, Pike's sturdy young Cornish lieutenant, who from the outset had been against association with Easterling, perceiving the object of this disposition, was not ashamed to urge Pike to take up anchor and be off in the night, abandoning Easterling and the treasure before worse befell them. But Pike, as obstinate as he was courageous, repudiated this for a coward counsel.
«By God!» he swore. «It's what Easterling desires! We've earned our share of that treasure, and we're not sailing without it.»
But the practical Trenam, shook his fair head. «That will be as Easterling chooses. He's got the strength to enforce his will, and the will to play the rogue, or I'm a fool else.»
Pike silenced him by making oath that he was not afraid of twenty Easterlings.
And his air was as truculent when next morning, in response to a signal from the flagship, he went aboard the Avenger.
He was awaited in the cabin not only by Easterling, arrayed in tawdry splendour, but by Galloway, who favoured the loose leather breeches and cotton shirt that made up the habitual garb of a boucan–hunter. Easterling was massively built and swarthy — a man still young, with fine eyes and a full black beard, behind which, when he laughed, there was a flash of strong white teeth. Galloway, squat and broad, was not apelike in build, with his long arms and short powerful legs, but oddly apelike in countenance, out of which two bright little wicked eyes sparkled under a shallow wrinkled brow.
They received Captain Pike with every show of friendliness, sate him down at the greasy table, poured rum for him and pledged him, whereafter Easterling came promptly to business.
«We've sent for ye, Captain Pike, because at present we're carrying, as it were, all our eggs in one basket. This treasure,» and he waved a hand in the direction of the chests containing it, «is best divided without more ado, so that each of us can go about his business.»
Pike took heart at this promising beginning. «Ye mean to break up the fleet, then?» said he indifferently.
«Why not, since the job's done? Roger here and me has decided to quit piracy. We're for home with the fortune we've made. I'll belike turn farmer somewhere in Devon.» He laughed.
Pike smiled, but offered no comment. He was not at any time a man of many words, as his long, dour, weatherbeaten face announced.
Easterling cleared his throat and resumed. «Me and Roger's been considering that some change in the provisions o' the articles would be only fair. They do run that one–third of what's left over after I've taken my fifth goes to each of the three ships.»
«Ay, that's how they run, and that's fair enough for me,» said Pike.
«That's not our opinion, Roger's and mine, now that we comes to think it over.»
Pike opened his mouth to answer, but Easterling, giving him no time, ran on:
«Roger and me don't see as you should take a third to share among thirty men, while we share each of us the same among a hundred and fifty.»
Captain Pike was swept by sudden passion. «Was, that why ye saw to it that my men were always put where the Spaniards could kill them until we're reduced to less than a quarter of our strength at the outset?»
Easterling's black brows met above eyes that were suddenly malevolent.
«Now what the devil do you mean by that, Captain Pike, if you please?»
«It's an imputation,» said Galloway dryly. «A nasty imputation.»
«No imputation at all,» said Pike. «It's a fact.»
«A fact, eh?» Easterling was smiling, and the lean, tough, resolute Pike grew uneasy under that smile. Galloway's bright little ape's eyes were considering him oddly. The very air of that untidy, evil–smelling cabin became charged with menace. Pike had a vision of brutalities witnessed in the course of his association with Easterling, wanton, unnecessary brutalities springing from the sheer lust of cruelty. He recalled words in which Captain Blood had warned him against association with a man whom he described as treacherous and foul by nature. If he had hugged a doubt of the deliberate calculation by which is own men had been sacrificed on Darien, that doubt was now dispelled.
He was as a sleepwalker who awakens suddenly to find himself on the edge of a precipice into which another step must have projected him. The instinct of self–preservation made him recoil from an attitude of truculence which might lead to his being pistolled on the spot. He pushed back the hair from his moist brow and commanded himself to answer in level tones.
«What I mean is that if my men have been reduced, they've suffered this in the common cause. They will consider it unfair to break the articles on any such grounds.»
He argued on. He reminded Easterling of the practice of matelotage among buccaneers, whereby every man enters into a partnership with another in which the two make common cause and under which each is the other's heir. In this alone lay reason why many of his men who were to inherit should feel defrauded by any change in the articles.
Easterling's evil grin gave way again to a scowl. «What's it to me what any of your mangy followers may feel? I'm admiral of this fleet, and my word is law.»
«So it is,» said Pike. «And your word is in the articles under which we sailed with you.»
«To hell with the articles!» roared Captain Easterling.
He rose and stood over Pike, towering and menacing, his head almost touching the ceiling of the cabin. He spoke deliberately. «I'm telling you things is changed since we signed them articles. What I says is more nor any articles, and what I says is that the Valiant can have a tenth share of the plunder. Ye'd be wise to take it, remembering the saying that who tries to grasp too much ends by holding nothing.»
Pike stared up at him with fallen jaw. He had turned pale from the stress of the conflict within him between rage and prudence.
«By God, Easterling…» He broke off abruptly.
Easterling scowled down upon him. «Continue,» he commanded. «Finish what ye has to say.»
Pike shrugged despondently. «Ye know I dursn't accept your offer. Ye know my men would tear me in pieces if I did so without consulting them.»
«Then away with you to consult them. I've a mind to slit your pimpish ears so that they may see what happens to them as gets pert with Captain Easterling. You may tell your scum that if they has the impudence to refuse my offer they needn't trouble to send you here again. They can up anchor and be off to Hell. Remind 'em of what I says: that who tries to grasp too much ends by holding nothing. Away with you, Captain Pike, with
that message.»
Not until he was back aboard his own ship did Captain Pike release the rage from which he all but bursted. And the sound of it, the tale he told in the ship's waist with the survivors of his crew about him, aroused in his violent followers a rage to match his own. Trenam added fuel to the flames by the views he expressed.
«If the swine means to break faith is it likely he'll stop half–way? Depend on it, if we accept this tenth, he'll find a pretext to cheat us of all. Captain Blood was in the right. We should never ha' put our trust in that son of a dog.»
One of the hands spoke up, voicing the feelings of all. «But since we've put it, we've got to see he keeps it.»
Pike, who was leaning by now to Trenam's despondent view of their case, waited for the chorus of angry approval to subside.
«Will you tell me how we are to do it? We are some forty men against three hundred. A twenty–gun brig against two frigates with fifty guns of heavier weight between them.»
This gave them pause until another bold one spoke. «He says a tenth or naught. Our answer is a third or naught. There's honour among buccaneers, and we hold him to his pledge, to the articles upon which the dirty thief enlisted us.»
As one man the crew supported him. «Go you back with that answer, Captain.»
«And if he refuses?»
It was Trenam who now thought he held the answer.
«There's ways of compelling him. Tell him we'll raise the whole Brotherhood of the Coast against him. Captain Blood will see that we have justice. Captain Blood's none so fond of him, as he well knows. Remind him of that, Captain. Go you back and tell him.»
It was a powerful card to play. Pike realized this: yet he confessed that he did not relish the task of playing it. But his men turned upon him with up–braidings. It was he who had persuaded them to follow Easterling. It was he who had not known how to make a stand against Easterling's encroachments from the outset. They had done their part. It was for him to see to it that they were not cheated of their pay.
So back from the Valiant at her anchorage in the very neck of the harbour went Captain Pike in the cockboat to convey his men's answer to Captain Easterling, and to hoist the bogey of Captain Blood and the Brethren of the Coast, upon which he depended now for his own safety.
The interview took place in the waist of the Avenger before an audience of her crew and in the presence of Captain Galloway, who was still aboard her. It was short and violent.
When Captain Pike had stated that his men insisted upon the fulfilment of the terms of the articles, Easterling laughed. His crew laughed with him; some there were who cheered Pike ironically.
«If that's their last word, my man,» said Easterling, «they can up anchor and away to the devil. I've no more to say to them.»
«It'll be the worse for you, Captain, if they go,» said Pike steadily.
«D'ye threaten, by God!» The man's great bulk seemed to swell with rage.
«I warn you, Captain.»
«You warn me? Warn me of what?»
«That the Brethren of the Coast, the whole buccaneering fraternity, will be raised against you for this breach of faith.»
«Breach of faith!» Easterling's voice soared in pitch. «Breach of faith, ye bastard scum! D'ye dare stand before my face and say that to me?» He plucked a pistol from his belt. «Be off this ship at once, and tell your blackguards that if the Valiant is still there by noon I'll blow her out of the water. Away with you.»
Pike, choking with indignation, and made bold by it, played his master card.
«Very well,» said he. «You'll have Captain Blood to deal with for this.»
Pike had reckoned upon intimidating, but neither upon the extent to which his words would achieve it, nor the blind fury that follows panic in such natures as that of the man with whom he dealt.
«Captain Blood?» Easterling spoke through his teeth, his great face purple. «You'll go whining to Captain Blood, will you? Go whine in Hell, then.»
And on the word, at point–blank range, he shot Pike through the head.
The buccaneers standing about them recoiled in momentary horror as the man's body went backwards across the hatch coaming. Easterling jeered coarsely at their squeamishness. Galloway looked on, his little eyes glittering, his face inscrutable.
«Take up that carrion.» Easterling pointed with his still smoking pistol. «Hang it from the yard–arm. Let it serve as a warning to those swine on the Valiant of what happens to them as gets pert with Captain Easterling.»
A long–drawn cry, in which anger, fear and pity were all blended, went up from the deck of Pike's ship when her crew, crowding the larboard bulwarks, perceived through the rigging of the Hermes, the limp body of their captain swinging from the yardarm of the Avenger. So intent were these men that they paid no heed to the two long Indian canoes that came alongside to starboard, or even to the tall gentleman in black and silver who stepped from the accommodation ladder to the deck behind them. Not until his crisp dry voice rang out were they aware of him.
«I arrive a trifle late, it seems.»
They turned and beheld him on the hatch–coaming, his left hand on the pummel of his rapier, his face in the shadow of his broad plumed hat, his eyes hard and cold with anger. Asking themselves how he came there, they stared at him as if he were an apparition, mystified, incredulous, doubting their vision.
At last young Trenam sprang towards him, his eyes blazing with excitement in his grey face. «Captain Blood! Is it indeed you? But how — ?»
Captain Blood quieted him by a wave of the long supple hand emerging from the foam of lace at his wrist. «I've never been far from you ever since you landed on Darien. I know your case, and this is no more than I foresaw. But I had hoped to avert it.»
«You'll call a reckoning from that treacherous dog?»
«To be sure I will, and at once. That hideous gesture demands an instant answer.» His voice was as grim as his countenance. «You have men here to lay the guns. Get them below at once.»
The Valiant had been swinging with the first of the gentle ebb when Blood stepped aboard; she stood now. In the line of the channel, so that the operation of opening the gun–ports could not be discerned from the other ships.
«The guns?» gasped Trenam. «But, Captain, we're in no case to fight. We've neither the men nor the metal.»
«Enough for what's to do. Men and guns are not all that count in these affairs. Easterling gave you this station so that you should cover the other ships.» Blood uttered a short stern laugh. «He shall learn the strategic disadvantages of it, so he shall. Get your gun crew below.» Then he gave other orders briskly. «Eight of you to man the longboat. There are two canoes astern well–manned to assist you warp your ship broadside when the time comes. The ebbing tide will help you. Send aloft every man you can spare, to loose sail once we're out of the channel. Bestir, Trenam! Bestir!»
He dived below to the main deck, where the gun crew was already at work clearing the guns for action. He stimulated the men by his words and manner, and received unquestioning obedience from them; for, without understanding what might be afoot, they were stirred almost to enthusiasm by their confidence in him and their assurance that he would avenge upon Easterling their captain's murder and their own wrongs.
When all was ready and the matches glowing he went on deck again.
The two canoes manned by Mosquito Indians and the Valiant's longboat were astern under her counter and invisible to those aboard the other two ships. Towing–ropes had been attached, and the men waited for the word of command.
At Blood's suggestion Trenam, did not wait to take up anchor, but slipped his cable, and the oarsmen bent to their task of warping the ship round. Labours which would not in themselves have sufficed were made easy by the ebb, and slowly the brigantine began to swing broadside across the channel. Already Blood was below again, directing the hands that manned the starboard guns. Five of these were to be concentrated on the rudder of the Hermes, the other five were to swee
p her shrouds.
As the Valiant swung about and the warping operations became apparent to the men on the other ships it was assumed by them that, panic–stricken by the fate of their captain, the crew of the brigantine had resolved on flight. From the decks of the Hermes a derisive valedictory cheer rang out. But scarcely had it died away, and just as it was being taken up by the Avenger, it was answered by the roar of ten guns at point–blank range.
The Hermes rocked and shuddered under the impact of that unexpected broadside, and the fierce outcries of her men were mingled with the hoarse voices of the startled sea–birds that rose to circle in alarm.
Blood was on deck again almost before the reverberations had rolled away. He peered through the rising cloud of smoke and smiled. The rudder of the Hermes had been shattered, her mainmast was broken and hung precariously suspended in her shrouds, whilst a rent showed in the bulwarks of her forecastle.
«And now?» quoth Trenam in uneasy excitement.
Blood looked round. They were moving steadily if slowly down the short channel, and were already almost in the open sea. A steady breeze was blowing from the north. «Crowd on sail, and let her run before the wind.»
«They'll follow,» said the young mariner. «Why, so I trust. But not yet awhile. Take a look at their plight.»
It was only the that Trenam understood precisely what Blood had done. With her broken rudder and shattered mainmast, the Hermes, whilst being herself unmanageable, was blocking the way and making it impossible for the raging Easterling to get past her and attack the Valiant.
Trenam perceived and admired, but was still far from easy. «If you've invited pursuit, it's true that you've certainly delayed it. But it will surely come, and we shall be as surely sunk when it does. It's just what that devil Easterling desires.»
The Chronicles of Captain Blood cb-2 Page 22