by Mark Keating
Guinneys beckoned to one of the sailors. A canvas bag was opened and a spyglass passed silently to him. He swept it across the Lucy until the blinding glare of another dazzled back into his eye, causing him to curse.
Almost at the same moment, the white and gold pennant began to fall, and the ship became naked of colour save for the boulting cloth amongst the rigging.
'They have given up the pretence,' Guinneys acknowledged proudly. He passed back the brass instrument and strode across the sand to Devlin and Coxon, close enough to smell the wine on Devlin and the damp from Coxon's clothes.
'Master Coxon?' He grinned. 'I hold you to mark this pirate.' Without waiting for a response he turned to Devlin. 'Pirate, I intend to board your vessel. To retrieve the gold. Your men have no doubt seen you as our prisoner. I wish to know if they would resist now all is lost?'
'See for your own mind, Captain.' Devlin looked over Guinneys' head to the Lucy, and Guinneys looked in turn to see the gig being lowered hurriedly over the larboard side.
Guinneys' joy was almost holy. 'They flee! How very so! My, they fulfil my expectations of dogs!' He swung back to Devlin. 'What souls you gather around you, pirate.' He abandoned them both and ran to the larger group, shouting as he pounded over the sand. 'Scott! See they are not taking the chest! Cole! The women and the doctor to the longboat. Back to the ship. All to me and to the boat! Marines!'
Coxon watched the two marines gather like bridesmaids at Guinneys' shoulders. Cole bustled the women to the coxswain, avoiding Coxon's eye, every whore winking, whistling or curtsying to a bowing Devlin as they skipped past.
'They run, Patrick,' he said. 'They always run.' More solemnly he added, 'I cannot save you, you know? You will hang.'
Devlin gave no answer other than the clenching of his jaw as he watched the boat descend and his crew scrambling into her.
Guinneys was next to Scott now, the excitement of near victory running through him, his hands nervously toying with one of his fine pistols.
'They are running, Richard!' he declared. 'Escaping on the gig! Can you believe such folly?'
'Perhaps they know something we do not, William,' Scott replied ambiguously.
'They know the Starling will run them down otherwise, man. I have an admiration for a man knowing he is whipped!' He slapped Scott's shoulder. 'We have the gold, Richard! To the boat. We'll board and run them down with their own guns.'
He turned to weigh up his band. The marines would board with him and Scott. Williams would return a pistol to Coxon to guard the pirate Devlin, then return to the ship with the women, the French doctor and Cole. The two remaining sailors, his company of old, Davies and Gregory, he recalled, would remain with Coxon.
'There's no chest with them anyways,' Scott observed with a shading palm to his brow. 'They have probably filled their pockets with what they can, William.'
'As will I, Richard, have no fear. To it, man! They are lowering the gig!'
The two of them flew to the quarterboat, dogged by the two lumbering marines.
Coxon and Devlin watched silently. They were some distance from the rest of the crowd. Williams appeared in front of them, handing Coxon his pistol and repeating Guinneys' orders that he was to stay along with Gregory and Davies as guard to the pirate.
'What's to happen when Captain Guinneys secures the ship, Williams?'
'Don't know, sir. We're returning to the ship with that French doctor and those… ladies. Guessing the captain will come back after. Once the ship and gold be ours.' He smiled uncomfortably. 'Excuse I, sir. I best get that doctor aboard.' With that he turned and went humbly to Dandon.
Dandon bowed at Williams, who obliged him by picking up his chest. Dandon passed by Devlin and Coxon and bowed again, returning upright without spilling a drop of wine or breaking his stride as he ambled to the longboat, now full of cackling women.
Devlin could not read him. He accepted that he might be lost to him, but without blame. Somehow Dandon was close to saving his own skin, and Devlin imagined this was how it had always been with the yellow-coated scoundrel.
'Filthy brute that one' - Coxon watched Dandon's back recede - 'even for a Frog.'
The sound of the quarterboat running into the surf with a bounding of legs brought them back to the matter of the Lucy. Devlin and Coxon watched for a moment as the two officers rowed, whilst the marines half crouched with their muskets high, ready to lower and fire in a moment if need be.
'Tell me now, Patrick,' Coxon said, checking the pan on his pistol. 'Out of the merest nod to our history. Are there any more of your men on this island?'
Devlin watched Dandon and the longboat creep slowly away.
'I am the only pirate here, Captain. And you'll live if you want to.'
Coxon could contain himself no longer. The sanctimony of Guinneys; the impudence of his former man turned brigand, shaming his patronage. He stopped the examination of his pistol to bring its brass cap up like the kick of a horse under Devlin's jaw. His right foot then adopted his finest shooting stance, before he cocked the pistol and levelled it at Devlin's writhing form upon the sands.
'How dare you! How dare you, dog! To speak to me! To speak of death to me!' He felt himself being pulled backwards by the rough hands of Davies and Gregory, who had come up silently to wrestle him away.
'Easy now, sir,' Davies begged in his hollow Welsh tones. 'Don't be denying a man a living by shooting him now.'
Devlin rolled up, his head reeling. His eyes were fixed on the Lucy, and on the quarterboat, a cable-length from her now. He spat onto the sand a small wad of blood and smiled wickedly.
'Row, you swabs!' Hugh Harris yelled at the four Dutchmen. 'Row!' His yells were unnecessary, the broad blond men could row up a mountain, and already the Lucy had begun to shrink. They aimed for the rocks, to get round the corner of the island where the mangrove trees hung over the waters, away from any guns, away from everything.
Sam Fletcher sat giggling, clutching the bundles of maps and oilskins from the cabin. Dan Teague had two pistols in his hands, his eyes watchful on the Lucy's deck. Rattling around the pirates' feet beneath the sheets were as many swords and firearms as they could throw into the gig, a man's-weight worth, and more stashed around every fold of clothing.
'Ho!' Sam Morwell cried with a pointing hand. 'They're aboard!'
All looked to their ship wistfully, at the sight of strangers upon her; then all yelled at the Dutchmen to row faster.
The quarterboat, pushed by the tide, and pulled like a magnet to the Lucy's hull, had banged home. There was the usual ungraceful fumbling of pushing and heaving, until Scott scampered up the freeboard and belayed the boat and one by one each man clambered through the entrance port.
They spread out, the four of them, weapons drawn, moving slowly across the deck, expecting some form of trap. Scott looked scornfully at the unkempt nature of the ship, the swab buckets rolling empty, the mess of broken ropes and untidy sheets. The only sounds were the living creak of the rigging, the faint rattle of chain and the anxious chattering of the hens in the coop behind the mainmast.
'The ship is ours, gentlemen!' Guinneys grinned. He ran to the larboard gunwale, to spy the gig rolling away, already out of pistol shot. 'The cowards! Scott, let's give them a taste.' His eyes fell to the six-pounders either side of him, the gig perfectly framed between them. Scott joined him, then gave him the bad news.
'They've spiked them all, William. Tompions in every one. The starboard guns also.'
Guinneys swore inwardly, then yelled behind, 'Musket! Marine to me!'
'They be out of range, sir!' Fellowes, a Guildford man, now regretting his move to Portsmouth, carried his gun forward.
'I did not ask for your opinion, man!' Guinneys snorted, and grabbed the weapon, instantly, expertly, familiarising himself with its length and weight, and brought it to his shoulder.
He sighted through the narrow V and brought the bead down on the mass of bodies in the gig. His breathing stopped. The gig ro
cked up and down before him, bobbing like a reef marker, and on the down roll he fired.
His eyes smarted as the saltpetre smoked. His reward being only the small splash of water more than fifty yards short of the gig. Cursing, he threw the gun back at Fellowes's chest.
'Never mind, lads.' He stepped back and turned his gaze to the open, inviting cabin. All with the same thought, to a man, they rushed to its dark interior, skidding into the open cabin.
It did not take long to surmise the cabin that had belonged to Seth Toombs. It was bare, scattered with papers and broken ship's lamps. The air hung with the smell of cordite, damp and a mist of smoke, as if a spirit with a pipe had stepped past them and onto the deck.
Only one object remained: the table, which in the dim light had taken on the form of an altar.
A black cloth lay upon it, almost to the floor, in much the same way as the green velvet cloth covered the dining table in the quarters of the unfortunate Captain Bessette.
Unsettled by the black sight, Guinneys and Scott cocked their pistols, and all moved to look down at the grinning white skull almost filling the table. Vaguely they realised that the skull sat in a compass rose, the cardinal points spiking viciously outwards and a pair of bone-like pistols crossed beneath.
'Their flag, I presume?' Scott asked the room.
'Undoubtedly,' Guinneys agreed, his eyes now drawn to the silver tube that lay on the side of the table, the only other object upon it.
Cautiously, as if it might bite, he picked it up. 'What the devil is this?' Not acknowledging the humour in his words, he noticed the smiling horned engraving staring back at him. He opened it, revealing nothing within. An empty, pointless cylinder. 'How odd,' he said. 'Wonder what it's for'
Guinneys looked up to Scott, who looked around the room as if following the path of a fly. 'What do you suppose this is, Richard?'
'Sorry, William?' Scott's face was perturbed; then he looked at the silver tube. 'I don't know, William. Can you hear that noise?'
The two marines also looked anxiously about them, as the crackling hiss slowly began to fill the room.
Guinneys noticed it then, directly around the table, at his very feet. His fist closed on the tube and he bent to the floor as the source of the sound most definitely emanated from beneath the table.
As one might lift the linen from the face of the deceased in a parlour to pay final respects, Guinneys raised the black cloth from the floor, then swept it up as the horror came upon him.
He stood back, his eyes widening. The others stared in cold mortification at the six white oak barrels of powder that were slowly sucking in the coiled fuse, the one that Hugh Harris had wrapped around his elbow and hand for fifty counts. Fifty lengths, to time for one quarter-hour, or five hundred yards of distance between himself and the kegs.
Thomas Howard stood by the larboard gunwale, watching the longboat on its almost painful crawl back to her home. The boy was dwarfed by Midshipmen Granger and Davison, two years his senior but two years beneath his commission; and so although at table they tweaked his ears and put salt in his tea, on deck they stood out of his shadow and followed Midshipman Howard's word, after that of Lieutenant Anderson, who stood with the glass to his eye at the fo'c'sle, watching all that occurred on the beach almost a mile distant.
Once, some years ago now, before the sea, Anderson had been at a party, in Woolhampton, at the vile home of some wildly successful cheesemonger, the daughter of whom had had a very vivacious chaperone that Anderson had chosen to attend to.
He recalled how there had been a show by some local chap, in which a large black cylinder placed upon a gaming table had been rotated by crude handle and with great enthusiasm. Somehow, when a lighted candle was placed inside the cylinder, and all were seated in fascination before the spinning drum, one could see the form of a horse running as fast as life before one's eyes, flickering in motion, through narrow vents cut in the cylinder's sides.
Anderson had applauded, along with everyone else, and participated in the exchange of smiles, but between himself and the chaperone he confessed that he had found the flickering motion detracting from the miracle. The horse had jerked before his eyes, moving in rapid stages rather than flowing like a rippling beast in nature.
The explosion of the Lucy before his isolated eye behind the scope reminded him of the movement of the horse. As if a hand were ripping it away, the quarterdeck flew skywards from the small ship, almost intact before his eye, sawing the mizzen in two, followed by a cloud of black smoke and spiralling wood cascading through the air like straw.
Anderson's left eye opened in awe; he lowered the scope, and was instantly removed from the scene that he had momentarily been a part of.
The sound hit then. A distant thunder roll, hastily chased by a momentous crack that tore the air of the bay and pulled all the sound from his ears, so he stood in a world of stillness and calm.
The little ship ducked almost beneath the water as another explosion ripped through the main deck, accompanied by the terrifying sight of the cannons imploding, for they had only been spiked after being double-shotted and crammed with powder, sending a golden bloom of fireworks into the air.
A third tremor ripped through the bowels of her keel, the updraught of which kept the Lucy's sails billowing around the whole spectacle, held tight by the stubborn mainmast that had always forbidden itself to let go even through the hardiest storms. The bowsprit catapulted free, only to be snapped back like a whip by the elderly mainstay, for that had also learned long ago from the mainmast never to give in.
But now the decks were full of the crushing sea, and barrels had already begun to bubble upon the surface of the boiling water, covered by the gay flotsam of clothes and hammocks.
With an awful drawing howl like the moaning of a whale, the brigantine that had sailed new from Bristol to all the ports of Africa's slave coast, to unnamed islands of the Antilles, the archipelagos of the Americas and the frozen haunts of Nova Scotia, laid herself in pieces on the shallow shore of an unknown island somewhere north of the Caymans, south of Cuba.
The wave hit the Starling, sending water up to the gun ports, the splash of which awoke the young officers from the mournful sight that they did not understand.
It was Thomas Howard who spoke first. 'Did we not see Guinneys go aboard there, Mister Anderson?' He lifted his head fore.
'Aye,' Anderson agreed. 'We did indeed, Mister Howard.'
Anderson shivered, then gathered himself to look to the longboat still bobbing, oars motionless, frozen in time as her crew watched the mainmast of the Lucy hovering above the white, sandy water. 'Boat there! Row, and get those passengers aboard!' His first thought was to get back to the island. Coxon was there. Officers were dead. A ship had exploded before his eyes and he was sure Coxon had seen such terrors before.
There was a cold, unfamiliar feeling crawling over Mister Anderson's back and, in an unwelcome recollection, his father, Vice Admiral Anderson, grinned at him over his porter before a crackling peat fire and whispered about such a feeling, hoping his son would know it someday.
'Move, man! To me!' he shouted to Cole in the boat, who instantly put his back to work.
Dandon had been sitting quietly until the Lucy had shattered his solemnity. He watched now as the ocean calmed itself again and small blazing rafts of deck began to drift away from the wreck and the black smoke already wafted above the peaks of the island.
He turned to gaze behind him, away from the horrified ladies, to watch the play of tiny figures on the beach. A smile crept to his lips from behind his gold teeth as he looked up again to the almost volcanic cloud hovering over the island, climbing higher and higher.
He laughed, slapping his thigh. 'Aye, that'd do it! Sure enough, that'd do, God damn you, sir!' He suddenly felt like a dog locked in the butcher's shop to stop him eating the bread from the baker's next door. He cocked a wink at Cole, who had screwed up his brow at the colonial accent coming from the French doctor's mouth.
Devlin still sat. He had watched the explosion and the backs of the three men with him fold up in instinct. With a foul slap, something landed at his feet that resembled the poor man's delicacy of a dried, baked sow's ear.
He looked closer to see the row of white teeth grinning along its side, and he took that as the moment to stand and peel free the pretence of the knot that tied his wrists.
* * *
Chapter Seventeen
Devlin sang. He moved whilst the others still ducked as the black smoke trailed over the beach carried by the so'west breeze and they stared at him as at a madman.
Oh I have a house.
And I have some land,
And I have a daughter that shall be at your command,
If you sink her in that lonely lonesome water,
If you sink her in that lonesome sea…
His hands were outstretched, demonstrating their freedom. He had walked free of Coxon's side and crossed back to stand directly in front of him.
'I told you, John. You could live if you want to,' and he grabbed Coxon's pistol hand, tickling the weapon loose as swiftly as he used to tickle the salmon in days of old.
Gregory and Davies half watched the dying ship, half watched Devlin weave behind Coxon and stab the muzzle into his spine before they remembered they had weapons of their own.
'Have you completely gone, Patrick?' Coxon exclaimed. 'You have no ship! No men! Nothing! Unhand me!'
'Come, John, is this not how it's always been? Myself standing behind you?'
Coxon felt Devlin's hand grip his collar, his knuckles brush tense against his neck as he held him fast. 'Davies! Shoot him, man!' he ordered.
Davies and Gregory held their weapons waist high, their barrels pointed to the body of the two men, the dog-heads still resting against the pan, modestly threatening.
'Let the captain go now, lad,' Gregory growled, sure now that Coxon had been reappointed. 'There's nowt else left to do.'