Greenbeard (9781935259220)

by Bentley, Richard James

  “I am sorry. You are right. I shall ask Miriam if a Catholic priest is acceptable to her,” said Blue Peter after a pause for thought, “and thank you, Captain, for taking the trouble.”

  “No trouble at all, I assure you. If I may risk giving you another piece of advice, Peter, propose the marriage to her upon your bended knee, no matter how foolish you feel – in fact, the greater fool you look the better she will like it, for women do love a man the more if he shall be prepared to make himself appear undignified to win them – and try to look worried, as though you are not entirely certain that she will accept you. Give her a ring, too, when she accepts, which I am sure she will. Gold, but not too gaudy. That is the latest fashion among the idle rich in France, or so my informants tell me. A ‘ring of engagement’ it is called. A token that you have plighted you troth, posted the banns, that sort of thing.”

  Peter scowled at the Captain again, his filed teeth and tribal scars making him look particularly irascible, but grudgingly nodded his agreement.

  There was a knock at the door. “Come in!” said the Captain. Bulbous Bill Bucephalus, Israel Feet and Mr Benjamin entered, grinning happily. Mr Benjamin was carrying a large glass pitcher on a tray with five glasses, the glass pitcher was making a tinkling noise.

  “Hee-hee! Here is a great miracle, Captain! A great miracle for your delectation!” said Mr Benjamin. With ceremony he placed the tray on the desk and poured the purple liquid. It tinkled into the five glasses. He handed the first glass to the Captain, still grinning like an ape.

  “Upon my life! It is as cold as ice! Why, it has ice in it!” Captain Greybagges drank. “By the bones of Davy Jones! That is extraordinary! And extraordinarily good, too! Where the devil did you find ice in this heat, Frank!”

  Blue Peter had his glass and was sipping at it, his eyebrows nearly on the top of his head with amazement. The three arrivals observed his and the Captain’s surprise with great satisfaction.

  “I made the ice, Captain,” said Mr Benjamin. “Is it not wonderful? Hee-hee!”

  “It is indeed! I confess myself almost beyond words!”

  “I had the big air-pump brought up from the hold, as you had asked, and got it set up upon the deck and had the six bully-boys work the handles. The bronze bottles get mightily hot as they are pumped up. I had noticed this phenomenon before in my experiments with the compressed-air cannon, so I had them placed in a tub of sea-water as they were filled, so that the heat would not weaken the metal, and the water did indeed become very warm. Then I had an idea, I thought, ‘why, if they become hot when they are pumped up, will they therefore become cold when they are emptied?’ So I put one of the pumped-up bronze bottles – one of the little ones the size of a quart flagon - into a bucket of fresh water and opened the cock so the air whistled out slowly, and it became so cold that it turned the bucketful of water to solid ice in a matter of moments! In this heat the next thing to do was obvious! In a trice Bill here came up with a recipe for an ice-cold punch – water, wine, sugar, lemon juice and rum – and there you are! Is it not the best thing in this heat? The very best damned thing you have ever tasted?”

  “In truth it is, Frank! And a very good omen indeed on this auspicious day…” said Captain Greybagges. “Let us go on deck, now it is a little cooler. I don’t feel entirely easy with the crew using the air-pump to freeze water without your supervision. One of them will surely have the notion to tie down the pressure-relief valve, thinking that will make for even colder ice, and one of those little bronze bottles could explode with the force of a grenado. Anyway, the crew will surely celebrate all night if we do not give them a broad hint by retiring with ostentatious yawns at midnight, or shortly thereafter. There is much still to do, and tomorrow will be another busy day.”

  Captain Greybagges, Bulbous Bill Bucephalus, Israel Feet and Mr Benjamin sat at a folding table on the quarterdeck, playing hands of penny-a-point whist by the light of a lantern, although the full moon’s brightness gave nearly enough light as it hung in the star-packed black-velvet sky. The honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze noise of the air-pump came from the foredeck, where eight of the younger pirates were trying to beat the time that the six bully-boys had taken to fill a bronze bottle, standing four to each side, working the long handles of the rocking frame up-and-down up-and-down until the pressure-relief valve hissed. Torvald Coalbiter was referee, counting the seconds with the Captain’s pocket-watch. There were over two hundred crew, and each wanted a mug of beer or sugared rum-grog with a lump of ice in it, so it was well to make a game of the labour needed to make the ice.

  “Tell me, Captain, if I may make so bold,” said Mr Benjamin, laying down the trey of trumps, “what are we celebrating? What lies down there on the bottom of the bay?”

  “Ah! be you patient, Frank! With a little ordinary luck, touch wood …” the Captain reached out to tap the quarterdeck rail, “… we shall raise it up in the next couple of days and then you shall see it with your own eyes.” He put down the five of trumps, then grimaced as Bill laid the ten upon it to take the hand.

  Captain Greybagges had noticed Blue Peter and Miss Chumbley slipping quietly below earlier, and now he saw them coming back on deck in the waist of the frigate. Miss Chumbley was holding Blue Peter’s hand but released it reluctantly as they came up from the companionway. By the light of the moon the Captain saw the gleam of a thin gold band upon her other hand, her left hand. He smiled.

  “Are you not afraid that we will be disturbed in these operations, Captain?” said Mr Benjamin. “By the Spanish, for instance?”

  “I do hope not, but Peter is keeping the guns loaded and their crews alert in shifts just in case. We may thank that fine fellow Francis Drake for the quiet of this bay, you know. Nombre de Dios used to be a prosperous town, but it lacks natural defences, so Drake raided it several times with impunity, the last time taking the legendary ‘Spanish silver train’, which was the mule-train that brought the silver bars to this bay for transport back across the Atlantic to Bilbao. After that loss the Dons moved their centre of operations east to Portobello – which is indeed a ‘beautiful port’ with strong defences – and abandoned this place to the jungle. The old priest here has no church, for it was burned down, and must perform his weekly mass under a shade tree in the square. The little town survives, just, upon fishing and a little logging. The few remaining citizens have no reason to annoy us, and every reason to keep us sweet, for they are as fond of a few coins as anybody else. If any of the townspeople think they may get a reward for informing the authorities that we are here they will first have to take a long walk, and a then long wait cooling their heels until the gobernador of Portobello will condescend to hear them, and then the Dons will react in their usual leisurely fashion, and we shall be long gone by then. I am mainly worried that other pirates may come here by chance and feel that we have something worth fighting for, since we are taking such pains in the getting of it. Pirates mostly come here to take on water or make repairs, though, so it’s unlikely that will be seriously challenged.”

  A concertina and a fiddle struck up a sprightly jig on the foredeck, although the two musicians seemed to be playing from entirely unrelated music-sheets.

  “Let us have another couple of hands of whist so that I may wreak my revenge upon Bill, then we must encourage the crew to go to their hammocks, for an early start will avoid at least some of the day’s heat.” The Captain dealt the cards. The honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze of the air-pump came again from the foredeck. “They are much taken with the pump and the ice it makes,” murmurred Captain Greybagges to his officers, “but I feel sure that they will loathe and detest the very sight of it before much time has passed.”

  By the time the sun rose over the jungle on the eastern side of the bay - the squawking of the monkey-birds echoing in the cool air to greet the dawn - the big raft had been dragged off the beach with hawsers and capstan and it and the Ark de Triomphe had been manoeuvred by kedging and sweep-oars out to the marker buoy, a
yard-long piece of timber painted bright red bobbing in the ripples of the bay. Before mid-morning the huge upturned wooden tub had been raised off the deck by the sheer-legs, blocks-and-tackles and much labour at the ropes, accompanied by traditional pulley-hauly chants. The tub was swung out over the side of the frigate – the canvas strips that had disguised the ship’s outline as a plump Dutch merchantman had been stripped away, the starboard rail dismantled and the timbers stacked tidily on the quarterdeck – and lowered gently into the water.

  “Are the brave ladies completely sure that they understand the use of the bronze bottles? And the signals to be tugged on the message-line?” Captain Greybagges asked Miss Chumbley earnestly.

  “I believe they are, Cap’n,” said Miss Chumbley, who seemed to be trying to adopt a nautical way of speech. Captain Greybagges noticed that the elder island woman was nodding too, and that one of the younger island women touched the bronze bottle hanging from her waist when he said ‘bronze bottle’. They are absorbing the English language a little, he thought, and that is a good thing in these circumstances, for I am sure that their own tongue does not have words for ‘air-pump’, ‘fathom’ or ‘shackle’.

  “Then let us proceed,” he said, in a crisp and confident voice.

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” said Miss Chumbley, stopping herself from saluting him with an obvious effort.

  The island women and Miss Chumbley went down the ship’s side into the longboat. The huge upturned wooden tub had sunk beneath the surface and was now barely discernable deep in the slightly-turbid water, its supporting ropes taut and creaking.

  “Tell me again, Captain, how this will work,” said Mr Benjamin at the Captain’s shoulder.

  “The tub descends to a fathom above the bottom of the bay. The ladies swim down to it. Inside it is a bubble of air, much squeezed by the water’s force. The ladies enter the tub from below and open the taps of the bronze bottles, adding to the air. They tie the empty bottles to a line and send them back up, and a full bottle is lowered to them. With the tub full of air they have a refuge to breath whilst under the water. The air will become stale, but they will know because the candle that they shall light in there will grow dim and flicker, then they signal for more bottles of air. From the tub they can swim out and attach the cables to … the prize. Then we shall raise it up.”

  “Could they not have worked just from the longboat, swimming down and back up again?”

  “That would slow their work. The cables will have to be wormed under the … object … through the sand of the ocean-floor and that may take some digging and ingenuity. To work from the surface would take a month, maybe longer. The less time we spend here the better I shall like it.”

  “You do not wish to name it, whatever it is, do you, Captain?” smiled Mr Benjamin.

  “I feel it would be unlucky to put a name to it just yet, although that is but foolish superstition, I know. It is not to torment you, Frank, although I admit I get a childish pleasure from keeping it a surprise.”

  The tub-support ropes stopped descending, and the pulley-hauly crews tied off the ends to bollards, double-knotting them. Israel Feet checked the ropes, then gave a thumbs-up. Captain Greybagges waved to the longboat and the island women rolled backwards over the gunwales and slipped beneath the sea. Captain Greybagges and Mr Benjamin watched them from the quarterdeck. From the foredeck came the never-ceasing honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze of the air-pump filling bronze bottles.

  It took the island women three days to complete the underwater work. The crew were very impressed by their skill and determination, making their appreciation plain by small gestures of kindness when the women boarded the frigate exhausted from several hours on the ocean’s floor. Miss Chumbley lost her temper several times when too many pirates crowded round the women as they were going to their cabin for raw fish, hot tea and a lie-down, and again astounded even the old pirates by her fine grasp of the technicalities of personal abuse. The air-pump never stopped its honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze during that time, and the Captain’s prediction was proved correct as the crew started to regard it as an instrument of torture.

  In the early morning of the fourth day the lifting began. The huge wooden tub had been raised already and placed on the deck. The lifting cable was reeved through the block on the sheerlegs, then through other blocks lashed to samson-posts until it came to the capstan, where sweating grunting pirates heaved, two to each capstan-bar. Extra force was applied by nipping ropes to the cable from blocks-and-tackles to the mainmast. At first the object would not move, and the winching only made the frigate heel over slowly. Captain Greybagges and Israel Feet were considering how to take a hawser from the mainmast cross-trees to an anchor off the port side to oppose the list when the frigate slowly rolled back upright again, swashing and lurching gently.

  “It was stuck in the sand of the bay,” breathed the Captain thankfully. “It is not too heavy.”

  “The thing be damned heavy enough, Cap’n,” said Israel Feet. “Squash me toes with a caulking-mallet if it ain’t!” He indicated the masts, which still tilted noticeably to the loaded starboard side.

  The lifting continued without a break. The pirates on the capstan and the blocks-and-tackles were relieved by fresh teams every half-hour. Captain Greybagges himself took a shift, as did his officers, so that all should share the brutal labour.

  In the late afternoon a pale disk began to be visible through the water, its diameter about eight paces. The chatter of the crew died away until only the grunting and loud breathing of the labourers was heard. When the object started to come clear of the water idle pirates moved to the starboard rail to see.

  “Stop, you lubbers!” shouted Bulbous Bill in his high-pitched voice. “Go you to the port rail, or the barky shall tilt the more! You will get to see it in time, sure enough!”

  Finally the object hung clear of the water. A lenticular metal vessel with a round hole in its top two paces across with jagged shards of glass around the edges of the hole. The metal of the vessel, where it was not obscured by fronds of seaweed and other marine growths, had a dull matte surface with a slight blue-green colour to its silvery metallic shine. The bully-boys manning the longboat towed the raft of tree-trunks underneath the strange vessel, and the capstan was backed and the blocks-and-tackles were loosed to lower it gently down. The lifting teams relaxed, breathing heavily, spitting on their blistered palms.

  “Har-har, me jolly buccaneers! You may look now, and satisfies yer curiosity!” roared the Captain. “Sees you what kind of little fishy we have landed ourselves today, har-har!”

  The pirates eagerly went to look, those that were not busy securing the raft and its load, but there was little talk, only a bemused hush. The island women only took a brief glance, as they had already seen it underwater. Miss Chumbley shoved herself through the press of pirates to the rail, not disdaining to use a judicious elbow-jab or kick. She stared at the strange vessel with narrowed eyes and pursed lips, lost in thought.

  “It is one of the extramundane saucer-craft that you told me about, is it not, Captain?” said Blue Peter in a low voice.

  Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges did not answer, but smiled a small smile and nodded.

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH,

  or Two Wonders.

  Jack Nastyface and Jake Thackeray sat on the mizzenmast mainsail cross-trees, legs dangling twenty feet above the deck. Below them the pirate crew dispersed and went about their tasks. After a short while the air-pumps re-started their endless honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze on the foredeck behind and below them. The first air-pump had been joined by a second which had been brought up from the hold, an even more devilish air-pump, a high-pressure air-pump that packed yet more air into the large bronze bottles, the ones the size of cannons, after they had been part-filled by the first air-pump. It was an air-pump that would act fairly to break the back and spirit of any man. Any man who was not a stout buccaneer, of course.

  “He does speak well, doesn�
�t he?” said Jake.

  “Old Soapy Syl the Shyster,” muttered Jack, under his breath.

  “What?” said Jake.

  “That’s what the old pirates call him sometimes, the ones who were with him before London. You didn’t hear that from me and don’t you ever call him that. Not ever. I’m not allowed to call him that, really, as I was only Jack Nastyface back then, even though I was there,” said Jack Nastyface.

  “But you are still Jack Nastyface, are you not?”

  “I am, but if this were a ship of the Royal Navy I would not be, and you would be Jack Nastyface instead. It is the customary name for the cook’s assistant.”

  “Ah, but then why were you Jack Nastyface to begin with, this ship not being a Navy vessel?”

  “Some of the old pirates were deserters from the Navy, so they just followed the custom notwithstanding, but many of them retired ashore at London and fellows like you joined us, and so I am stuck with Jack Nastyface for all time, I suppose.”

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “What is a ‘shyster’?” said Jake.

  “A lawyer,” said Jack.

  “And that is a bad thing?”

  “Certainly. A lawyer is a man of far less honour than a pirate, which is why you must not repeat what I just told you, and already regret telling you.”

  “The Cap’n was a lawyer, then?”

  “Yes, so they say. A man with a silver tongue, an artful tongue which was at the service of any who could pay his fee.”

  “And the Cap’n was good at the lawyering?”