by Sally Watson
“And you can wash your hair first thing,” he told her with unflattering candor, frowning at it. “It looks sticky with salt half the time.”
Jade at once challenged him to a duel.
The sea was liquid light, patterned purple and green by shoals, with opal-tinted fish swimming among the coral. St. Catherine’s was indeed a paradise, edged with crystal sand and palms, filled with shaded dells and mangrove clusters and scarlet flowers and an occasional flamingo to match. The Queen Royal floated at anchor on almost invisible water, in the shimmering morning light; and the pirates (except for half a dozen still ashore and sleeping it off) clutched aching heads and muttered that it had been a wonderful party, and looked enviously at the bright eyes of those who hadn’t been to it. Even Joshua was looking unhappy, and Jade gave him no sympathy whatever.
“Well, you asked for it, didn’t you?” she said tartly. “People know what’s going to happen if they drink too much, don’t they? So they’ve got no complaint when it does, do they?” And she hefted the armful of clothes that would be the better for a wash and airing at a nice pool they knew of, and smiled at him crookedly. “Come ashore and walk it off.”
But Joshua shook his head cautiously, and Domino appeared beside him.
“Him work it off,” she explained.
“While you lazy creatures idle among the flamingos,” Rory grinned, joining them, “we will be hoisting sails and turtles. Here, how about washing a shirt for me, too?” And he calmly added it to the pile in Jade’s arms.
Jade sizzled briefly, then decided that he wasn’t really treating her as a mere female, but as a friend, and that he’d do the same for her. In fact, she’d see that he did. She hesitated just an instant, almost tempered to stay aboard for the run over to the Cuban coast. Then Anne called for the longboat. The lovely shore beckoned.
“Oh, all right,” she grumbled without much conviction, and scrambled down the chains after Mary and Tom. They cast away from the ship, Anne throwing kisses at Michael as if he’d be gone for weeks instead of only a few hours. Jade shook a wondering and slightly scornful head. Really!
It was a lovely little spring, its water so soft and pure that things almost washed themselves. Out in the cove the Queen Royal raised sail and anchor, and soared majestically away over the translucent water. Jade bent again to her work, and presently looked up with a sense of astonished indignation. The sun was gone! The perpetual Caribbean sun; it was too annoying! How could anyone dry—
She squinted up at the sky and forgot the washing. The sun was gone indeed, and most alarmingly! The whole sky was scabbed with diseased-looking clouds, and growing blacker by the minute; and a malevolent stillness sat brooding over sea and island, pressing down like a baleful hand, silencing every bird and insect.
Jade glanced uneasily at Anne, whose red head had reared itself tautly erect, and at Mary and Tom. They all knew the thing that Jade was only guessing.
“Hurricane,” whispered Mary, and the word was torn away by the howl of wind swooping across the island and on toward Cuba.
“Michael!” whimpered Anne, a frightened girl. “The Queen Royal! And a lee shore!”
The wind, incredibly, was still increasing, lashing and beating them so that Anne’s hair was a bright horizontal banner, and Jade could feel her own standing straight out. Her loose cotton trousers and shirt stopped whipping and stood stiff as wood at the point where they could go no further without tearing. Palm trees fell all around without a struggle—one directly in front of them. Jade hardly noticed. She was fighting her way to the water’s edge, Anne at her shoulder, to stare hopelessly out at the blind black maelstrom of the sea.
“Michael!” screamed Anne. “I’ve got to reach him!” “Don’t be crazy!” Mary yelled as a renewed frenzy of wind blew them all flat on their faces. Jade, nearly choked by the flying sand that cut wherever it hit, and hit everywhere, found herself being dragged crazily along the ground, kicked and buffeted by the gale. Something large and dark sailed over her head, and then she hit a not-yet-uprooted tree with such force as to knock her breath out. She hung there, caught like a weed on a snag in a swift river, until there was a slight easing of the wind. Then Tom’s voice bawled in her ear.
“Tavern cellar! Take Anne. Help.”
For Anne had quite lost her mind. She was, she said, going to swim out and get Michael. It took the three of them and a ferocious new violence of wind blowing in the right direction to get them at last, blinded and crawling, into the swaying tavern, which was announcing its intention of going to sea almost at once. They reached the hurricane cellar just before it did so, and joined the silent huddle of refugees.
Among them were Calico Jack, who was almost sobered by the shock of the storm, and his four drinking companions, who weren’t. And there they all crouched while the storm tore the lovely island to shreds. Anne still had to be held while she shrieked defiance at the winds, but Jade hunched lonely in a corner, saying nothing and staring at nothing.
In all the months of fighting and laughter, of competition and companionship and study and jeering at romance, how was it she had never suspected until now, too late, that she loved Rory?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
No Quarter
The little sloop waved her single mast against a gentle sky, and the sea was pale satin. Jade, one hand on the tiller, stared with angry eyes and tight lips at the beauty about her.
There was nothing left of the Queen Royal but smashed and mangled wreckage scattered pathetically along the coast of Cuba. For days Jade and Anne and the other survivors had searched in a borrowed sloop, not daring to hope for survivors—and quite rightly. There was only death. Only a thousand bits of spar and timber and carved mahogany, only here and there a pirate who would never be hanged now. They found little Sam Clarke, and Pierre with the drenched fur of Jezebel’s body clinging pitifully around his neck—but there was no life; no life at all. Even birds lay dead and battered amid the uprooted trees, and it was altogether mad to hope that anyone could have survived, and the sea was atrociously the richer.
Even Anne had to face it at last. The sloop’s owner went back to St. Catherine’s with it, and the stricken handful of surviving pirates were left to pick up the pieces of their lives. But Jade had no pieces. Joshua was gone, and Domino—and Rory! Mary still had her Tom, and was going to have his child as well. Even Anne had had a few weeks of happiness with Michael—and she was going to have a baby, too. Only Jade had nothing; nothing but a belated knowledge, a great emptiness, and a haunting question. Had Rory loved her, too? Had he, perhaps, discovered it in the same instant she had? She would never know. Oh, it wasn’t fai—
She stopped herself roughly on the thought, jerking a defiant chin at the blind sky. She would not whine, or ask for quarter like a coward fencer who can’t stomach defeat! . . . or break, like Anne . . . It was pride, more than courage, that kept Jade going.
Her stomach growled hungrily, and she tightened her lips again. There was no food. Fishing lines hung empty, and turtles had apparently ceased to exist. As for piracy, they might contrive to take a banana from a child, but not much more; not reduced as they were to a tiny stolen sloop manned by a crew of nine—five of whom were the most worthless scum of the Queen Royal—and armed with little more than cutlasses. Even then, Anne Bonney might have led them once more to brillant success, but the hurricane had blown out her spirit with Michael’s life.
The jib flapped on the dying breeze. Jade ported the helm a little, and turned to scowl blackly at the tall figure who appeared to relieve her. Flame of the Caribbean, indeed! A gutted candle, a shell, a thing whose eyes had gone out and whose hair seemed less red. Jade surrendered the tiller and then stood for a moment glaring.
“Crybaby!” she blazed out of the savagery of her own grief. “Poor loser! Just because you don’t like the way the game’s going, you quit playing!”
Anne looked at her with dull surprise. “Why shouldn’t I? It isn’t my game, and I don’t like it, so why
should I be a good sport?”
It was a blow at the roots of Jade’s code. She clutched. “But—you have to! It’s what it’s all about! I mean, the only way you really lose is if you snivel and quit.” Anne just looked at her. “And—and it has to be fair play in the long run, or else God would be a devil.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “He is.”
“Coward!” yelled Jade, appalled lest Anne be right. “You liked it well enough when you were winning! Cheat! Rotten sport! If I acted like that, Rory’d come back and haunt me as long as I lived, and—” her voice choked humiliatingly. “—and he’d be right, too.”
Anne’s hollow eyes produced a flicker of interest, and she studied Jade for a moment. “You and Rory too? I’m sorry, Jade; I should have guessed. But you couldn’t possibly care the way I do.”
Goaded, to fury, Jade slapped her. And then felt worse than ever when Anne—murderous, hot-tempered, imperious Anne Bonney—didn’t even slap back. Jade gritted her teeth, stormed from the tiny quarter-deck, and ran into Jack coming up from below.
She looked ready to eat pirates for breakfast, and something behind the arrogance of his face winced. Annoyingly, Jade found she couldn’t take out her rage on him, after all. She didn’t even hate him anymore; felt only a tolerant contempt without rancor. How could you hate a great, cocky, not-very-bright dog who tried so pitifully hard to hide his weakness from himself that he all but wagged his tail at a kind word?
Not that he wasn’t a great nuisance these days, lording it around the Juanita, acting the captain with great noise and swagger, now that Anne no longer bothered to sit on him. He never noticed that it was Mary who had quietly taken over the real command, with Tom as her loyal support. Ironically, there wasn’t a strong-willed man aboard. Now, if Rory were here—Jade turned with a wrench, and made herself smile at Jack, lest he suspect she was almost in tears.
Jack all but wagged his tail. “There’s Harbour Island up ahead,” he told her, expanding his chest. “Mary says she remembers a fishing village on it, and we’re heading there for food.”
Jade nodded. Now they were reduced to raiding fishing villages, were they? Well, why not? They were hungry.
The villagers, it turned out, were very much annoyed about the whole thing. Not that any of them were hurt: they were merely herded into one of the huts and kept there while the raid was on. But such is the perversity of human nature that they resented it more bitterly than if some of them had been killed.
So, too, did the lone woman whom they met paddling back from a nearby plantation in a canoe filled with fresh provisions. She walloped Jade smartly on the side of the head with her paddle—the flat of it, fortunately—and poked it in Ned Bixby’s stomach. Jade, her head ringing, hastily prevented his instant vengeance by giving him another blow in his stomach, this time with her elbow.
“Ooof!” said Bixby, doubly aggrieved.
“Leave her alone!” ordered Jade. “I don’t blame her a bit! In fact, I’d be hitting even harder.” And she ducked another vigorous swing of the paddle, laughing . . . and surprised at her own laughter.
She laughed again, without much mirth, when they looked over the loot later on. The loot! There it lay—or squealed or clucked: four pigs, six chickens, a sack of rice and one of sugar, a basket of yams, a pot of potatoes snatched cooking from the fire, a quarter of beef, a side of salt pork, three loaves of bread, and a nice bag of crusts intended for chicken food.
Still, food was more welcome than gold. They ate that night. And they ate again in Hispaniola, by the straightforward process of going ashore and killing some wild cattle.
But luck was determinedly against them now. Every boat small enough for them to take turned out to be empty of cargo. A rich-looking French schooner—heroically taken against superior numbers—provided them with nothing but one meal, some rum, and two more hungry mouths named Besneck and Cornelian who insisted on joining them and who inevitably ate more than they contributed.
“Never mind,” said Mary philosophically. “Once we’ve collected enough men, we’ll be able to take a larger boat and work up the way we did before, until we have a big ship.” And with this in mind, they headed back to Jamaica.
October proved to be a highly distressful month for the Jamaicans. A schooner, two fishing sloops, and a whole series of coastal villages sent indignant messages to Governor Lawes, demanding that he instantly capture the rampaging pirates. Anne Bonney again, and with two more female pirates, they informed him darkly, causing the governor to tear off his elaborate wig and stamp on it furiously.
“I’ll see that woman hanged if it’s the last thing I do!” he yelped for at least the hundred and fortieth time.
Nor was he the only one to express such an intention. Most of the pirate’s victims did—and to their faces, too. And with impunity. The youngest of the female pirates saw to that, shouting that she loved courage, and anyone brave enough to defy pirates to their faces deserved to get away with it.
“Fine reputation you’re giving us,” grumbled Jack. “Next thing, they’ll be robbing us.”
“Serve us right if they did,” returned Jade coldly, and went up the rigging to work off the enormous anger that still possessed her. By now she had learned to swing by everything but her tail, exercising hour after hour until she was tired enough to fall asleep without any time to lie and think. She stayed aloft while the Juanita nosed along the northwest coast of Jamaica in the westerning sun, nosing into every cove and inlet. Twilight fell, and swift darkness, and Jade came down, but still they ghosted westward in the tropical night, to anchor at last safely off the shoals of Montego Bay.
The green mountains of the Cockpit country shone fiery in the dawn, and Jade remembered how she had once toyed with the idea of trying to find Domino a refuge there. Well, Domino had found her refuge . . . under the sea. Jade shook her head violently and ran up the rigging to take her station as lookout. The anchor was hoisted and they set off again toward Negril Point.
But it needed no lookout to spot the fat little turtling boat wallowing just off shore. She was easy prey: shamefully easy—and she yielded all of four turtles and a barrel of rum which Jade felt they could easily have done without. It was a final ironic twist of fate, surely, that the five worst tipplers on the Queen Royal should have been saved by their own hangovers and thereby inflicted on the Juanita. Jade exchanged a glance of angry resignation with Mary as the rum barrel was discovered with yells of joy and transferred instantly to the sloop.
Mary shrugged and turned to the skipper of the plundered turtling boat. “As long as we’ve robbed you,” she suggested politely, “won’t you join us for the party?”
Jack scowled and Jade grinned knowingly. Three more to share the rum made that much less for each.
The skipper was clearly a philosopher. He shrugged wryly, nodded at his two assistants.
“Since we’re furnishing the food and drink, why not?” And they all came aboard.
It was a long and noisy party—especially for the four who hadn’t stayed more than twenty minutes after the food was gone. It went on, noisily, all night, penetrating easily to the cabin which Anne and Jade shared, and also, doubtless, to Tom and Mary’s. It was still going on, though feebly, when morning came. Jade looked with disgust at the staggering or sprawled figures and wondered anew how people could so degrade themselves. Her new compassion didn’t extend this far—not nearly this far; and she stood and watched with curling lip while the three fishermen tottered to the bulwarks, fell more or less by sheer good luck into their own boat, and set a wavering course around Negril Point. She would be surprised if they got very far. She would also be surprised if the Juanita got anywhere at all that day. Jack and his cronies were now leaning against one another in the waist singing a bawdy song—or, more likely, two or three different ones. Driven by a need to put as much space as possible between herself and them, Jade started up the shrouds again, and then paused, her eye fixed speculatively on the triangular sails just coming ar
ound the point.
“Deck, there!” she called down. “Sail rounding Point Negril!”
Anne glanced up without much interest, Mary frowned, Tom picked up a spyglass and peered.
“Just a sloop,” he pronounced. “Harmless enough.”
But Jade dropped uneasily back to the deck, and Mary had already leaped down into the waist and was kicking the lolling Jack smartly in the ribs. “Get up, you bilge-rat! Sail ho!”
Jack mumbled. Jade, catching Mary’s alarm, ran down and kicked Besneck, who looked the nearest awake. “Get up fool! Ship approaching!”
The men, awake now but exceedingly reluctantly, looked at their tormentors with hatred. “Leave’s alone,” they grumbled, and added a number of highly impolite remarks to put the point across.
And then Anne’s voice. The old Anne—the Anne of battles!
“Stand by to repel boarders!” she yelled, and Jade, whirling, saw that the harmless sloop had become an extremely harmful one, bristling with soldiers. In an instant it had crowded on sail, caught the breeze, and was swooping down on them, virtually brandishing a pair of four-pounder guns.
The world became a kaleidoscope in which incredible things happened all around, as slowly as if it were under water. A roar and a crash, and the mast lazily toppled, missing Jade by a full four feet—and felling Anne with a mass of tangled rigging. The drunken crew instantly became cold sober, leaped to their feet, and dived without hesitation into the doubtful shelter of the hold. Mary was screaming at them to come out and fight like men, while Jade ran to the unconscious Anne.
But things were happening too fast. The enemy sloop was now only a few yards away, grapnels already swinging. No time to help Anne! No choice! Jade and Mary and Tom must fight alone. They raced for the rail, the three of them, pistols and cutlasses ready.