The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “Avast cooking, and bring me up the Very pistol, and a handful of red cartridges. Look smart.” Doing as I was told, I found him gazing seaward. “Your friends are coming back from wherever they’ve been all afternoon.” Indeed, the green fishing boat, Lamprey, was approaching again, this time from the east. He loaded his old brass flare gun.

  “Why the flares?”

  “They’re to hand.”

  “Hey, hi again, how’s it going?” called the same man as before. He wore sunglasses and had a big moustache.

  “Just about to have supper,” said the captain.

  “Hey, c’mon, let us tow you outta all this traffic. What are friends for? Can’t go back and face Mathew and tell him we didn’t help you out. C’mon.”

  “Very kind of you, but we’ve a rendezvous here later on, and it wouldn’t do to be gone when our friends show up.” He thanked them for their concern, assuring them we were quite safe, had lots of flares for any emergency, plus our radio, and would keep an alert lookout all night. With a friendly good-bye wave, he went below, where I followed. They hovered for a few moments, then shot away in the direction they had just come from.

  “Who do we have a rendezvous with?” I wanted to know.

  “Just whatever people I’ve planted in their minds,” he said, watching their departure through a porthole. “Ah, supper!” He made a plate of the food I’d prepared, and took it above. We ate in silence. It was early evening, and there were not so many wakes as earlier, but my mind was busier than ever. I was ready to concede the peculiar behaviour of Mathew’s friends.

  “They were very odd,” I said after a while.

  “Odd? Not at all. Think back. You’re them, and you’re out here to get us. We’re inconveniently situated right off Boston Harbor, so in the morning you try to seduce us into taking a tow out to someplace more private for your purposes. It doesn’t work. You beetle off to Marblehead or somewhere for pinball and beers, and talk it over. Maybe we’ll be softer after bouncing around without wind off the Graves all afternoon. So you come back, and we still won’t go. What do you do next?” He had me into his game.

  “Come back at night. Late. Sneak up without lights, and take us by complete surprise.”

  “Quite. Well done. Have you ever handled a pistol?” I had, my grandfather’s .22 calibre revolver, sinking bottles that floated into the inn’s cove behind the dock. “Good. Then I’ll issue you this . . .” He lifted the flintlock pistol out of Merry’s decorative display of ancient weapons, handing it to me. “And I’ll use old Frith.” He took down the blunderbuss.

  “Frith?”

  “After Hezekiah, chap I got it from. It’s a bit old, but still effective, as you and Grendel’s ghost can testify, eh?” I had learned very well that the captain’s innocent display of antique naval weapons comprised a deadly arsenal, hidden in plain view. “But you only get one shot, so you don’t use it until your attacker is too close to miss. When you’ve fired it, you throw it or drop it, and use this,” he placed the cutlass on the table. “Remember the straight thrust.” In case we were attacked, his own backup weapon would be Merry’s spike-tipped boat hook, plus the flare gun. It could be quickly reloaded, unlike the flintlocks, with their powder, balls, wads, ramrods, and priming. Still, I didn’t see what chance we would have against three attackers with modern guns.

  “Only the surprise of not being surprised. That should fend ’em off, anchored where we are now. Gunfire might bring attention, which they do not want. With luck, we’ll not be needing these little darlings,” he indicated our weapons. “But here they are; here’s how you load ’em.” A lesson followed, with gunpowder from a tea tin with an old label: GUNPOWDER TEA—BY APPOINTMENT TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, and a portrait of Victoria, with a battle going on in the background. On top of the powder, my pistol got a lethal half-inch lead ball.

  “The reason that old Alex Selkirk was the most famous maroon of all was because Daniel Defoe got hold of him.” Darkness had fallen, but the entire sky to the west glowed orange with the light of Boston, perfectly reflected on water like black glass. Most of the wakes were gone, except for the occasional deep-sea vessel heading through the North Channel. I had the first watch, from eight to midnight. The captain was keeping me company. “Robinson Crusoe was Defoe’s version of Selkirk—chap on the beach with happy dog, Man Friday, umbrella, all of that, but Defoe missed the meat of it, y’see, because what actually happened with Alex—we called him the governor—was a lot better story.” I had triggered this with an offhand comment about feeling marooned by having no wind. “Defoe fancied he knew a bit about the brotherhood, but he never got within smelling distance downwind.”

  When and if we did get wind, I thought, we were going to be late getting home by at least a couple of days beyond the inn’s deadline. He had been wrong with his weather prediction, or we wouldn’t have left our snug berth at the Navy Yard. So he was not perfect. What else might he be wrong about?

  “Defoe was no sailor, but he didn’t need a ship to be a pirate. He was in with the gang behind the South Seas Bubble. Big pyramid scheme to sell worthless shares in a colonial South Seas empire. Lots of poor sods got taken in and wiped out, as is the nature of bubbles. Shook up the whole government. In any case, Defoe’s writing was a big part of the pitch. Also, he made buckets of money by pirating Selkirk’s story.”

  As he went on, my immediate concern was the threat of an actual attack on Merry. He had made me nervous. I had suggested that we darken the boat, up-anchor, take down the radar reflectors, and drift clear of the Graves on the ebb tide. But the captain had made me light our anchor light, and had kept the reflectors, clearly identifying our presence. Everything was quite normal, except our weapons were within easy reach.

  “What do you do?” he interrupted my wandering thoughts. “You’re Selkirk. You’re twenty-eight years old, a bit of a grouch, hard to get on with, and you’ve just been dropped off on an entirely uninhabited island about four hundred miles west of the Chilean coast in 33 degrees south latitude. Very temperate climate. Your domain is about a dozen or so miles long, some seven miles wide, the remnant of an ancient volcano, with craggy peaks and cliffs. It has all kinds of springs, lush valleys, turnips, cabbages, pimentos, fruits, lobsters, shellfish, wild goats, cats, the occasional turtle, and other amenities. Much nicer than your native Scotland. That’s all to the good, because you might be here forever. Nobody comes to Juan Fernandez except ships like Dampier’s, looking for water. But they only come every five or ten years, on average. More likely you’ll get Spaniards, looking for the likes of you, meaning worse company than none at all. You’re Swiss Family Robinson (another steal from the Selkirk story), but without the family. You’ve got tools, books, bedding, all of that. What do you do?”

  During the next hour or two I learned in considerable detail what Alexander Selkirk did during his four years and four months of solitude, starting with building a hut covered with goat hides, goats being plentiful. From his concealed camp, Selkirk explored the rest of the island, finding a cosy cave that made better living quarters. Also, he learned all the goat paths crisscrossing the island. “The chatter of his own mind was his only companionship, and he was anguished with loneliness; couldn’t take his eyes away from the ocean, the wink of a sail that could show up any time, or never. It was all he had to hang on to. Every ambition, dream, loved one, plan, all gone. Unless there came another buccaneer.” With that obsession, Selkirk had prepared signal fires to light, interrupting his vigil only for the reading of his Bible, prayer, and killing goats. “But after eight months, tortured all that time from within, he got deliverance.”

  “A ship?”

  “Better. He let go. Freed his brains. Had a good look at them, got tired of the same thoughts over and over again, and got on with life. His gunpowder was running out, and his shoes were wearing out, so he took ’em off and learned to run barefoot well enough to catch wild goats. Got quite good at it. Kept track of how many goats he ate. Made fires by
rubbing sticks in dry tinder. Read every book in his little library with a studiousness not given to many scholars, and learned the world around him with a level of attention hardly given to anybody.”

  I think the captain might have been able to take me over the goat trails of Juan Fernandez with a lot more sense of reality, except for my own distractions, primarily looking out into the night for an enemy. Selkirk had seen ships, and they had turned out to be enemies—Spanish. He had almost been caught, a story within a story. Selkirk’s saga spun out like his stockings, which he unravelled for threads to sew a new shirt. After three years, his knife had been resharpened so many times, there was nothing left of it, so he fashioned others from barrel staves. Annoyed by rats, he made friends with feral cats, which did away with the problem. His main injury was a painful tumble down a mountain slope. Digestive problems were cured by a local black pepper that provided good wind. At last he lost the craving for bread and salt that had haunted him beyond all else.

  “Then, four and a half years later, when he’d truly settled in, gotten used to his new life, was enjoying it, the fates must have noticed, because—wham!—that’s when a couple of British privateer ships show up. The very dream he’d given up on, come true at last. It was Woodes Rogers in the old Duke, twenty-eight-guns, sailing with Duchess, twenty-six, both of ’em from Cape Horn, bound north. It was 1704, and Queen Anne’s War was still on.

  “Selkirk was hardly able to speak, at first, having lost practice at it. When he recovered, he made himself immediately valuable, showing his rescuers to the springs and natural supplies of the island, also charming them with a likability that had previously evaded him in his life. With Rogers was William Dampier, who had known Selkirk as a good navigator, so that he was taken aboard Duke as sailing master. To the squadron, he was known as “the Governor.” Re-adapting to his former world took a while. He got used to the clothes of an officer and gentleman again, but could not wear shoes for some months, going barefoot.

  “Rogers’s ships were headed north, in Drake’s wake, and on the same business. The Dons could never tend their Pacific coasts. They were as badly defended as ever, with good pillage all the way up to California, where Rogers planned to pluck the plum of all plums, any buccaneer’s dream, the Manila galleon. Every November, give or take a week or two, it came down the California coast on the last leg of its voyage from Manila, bound for Acapulco, loaded with loot. Rogers had sailed twenty thousand miles to ambush the grandest prize of all.”

  The captain paused for a sweeping look around the surrounding waters. I had been keeping a sharp eye out as well, seeing nothing. I asked if they had taken the galleon.

  “They did, off Cape Saint Lucas, and then attacked a second one, which was so big and heavy, their six-pound cannonballs wouldn’t penetrate, so they got badly shot up.”

  “Selkirk?”

  “Just about everybody except the Governor, who was untouchable. Otherwise there was a heavy butcher’s bill. Rogers had a big piece of his jaw shot away, and part of his foot. Then he got a mutiny to deal with, which he did, and sailed the rest of the way ’round the world, and back to Blighty with the richest haul since Sir Francis himself. He inspired your Admiral Anson chap to do the same thing thirty years later. In any case, everybody got rich. The Governor’s share came to eight hundred pounds sterling plus a silver plate, which was a tidy little sum then, and he found himself lionised, more famous than Rogers himself. Great literary figures were eager to talk to him, later praising him. And what do you suppose the Governor does next?”

  I had no idea.

  “He goes back to Scotland, to his father’s house in the country. It has a bit of land with a hillside, which he digs into until he’s got a cave like the one he lived in on his island, and moves in with the relics he’s saved from Juan Fernandez. He’s having a bit of a problem getting back into the ordinary world, y’see. Quite terrifying. So he becomes a complete recluse.”

  “For the rest of his life?”

  “No. Whatever from his island the Governor wants back, he has to let go all over again. Gets married, which doesn’t go well; goes back to sea for a living; gets married again; and dies on a voyage in 1721. Frances gets the house, and . . .”

  “Frances?”

  “The Governor’s widow. She remarried pretty quick, and her new husband filled in Alex’s cave, and that was that.”

  “Poor Selkirk.”

  “Poor Selkirk? I’d call the Governor the luckiest buccaneer of the whole bloody lot. For only four years and four months invested, he got half of a whole salvation handed to him on a plate; a silver plate at that, plus his eight hundred quid from Rogers’s loot.”

  “What’s half a salvation?”

  “Twice as good as none, and ten times better than usual. As for Rogers, this voyage makes his career, and gets him the assignment of wiping out the brotherhood in the Caribbean once and for all, which is their final story.”

  “Does he wipe them out?”

  “More or less. Like Mainwaring all over again, but not tonight.” The captain stepped up onto the deck, made a pillow of his boat cloak, and stretched out to nap for the rest of the watch. When the cabin clock started to ring eight bells, he was up and alert before the chimes ended. The middle watch, now starting, would be our most likely time of peril, if peril there was to be.

  I resolved to keep him company. I was even ready for some more history, but the captain kept his own company, smoking his pipe, sipping coffee. Without the daytime traffic of shipping and airplanes, our anchorage was quiet but for the mournful horn that blew from the light station marking the Graves. A long, low, easy swell rolled in from waves made somewhere far away, and their die-hard remnants slid under Merry, until the gentle motion rocked me to sleep.

  18

  More Dangers

  I WAS AWAKENED by the captain’s hand gently shaking me. “What is it?” I was up like a shot, peering around us.

  “Nothing to get into a flap about, but take a look with your young eyes and tell me what you see.” Under the clear night sky, I saw the same myriad of lights as before. “Look west,” he said, and I focused on the brightest horizon, trying to see a light that didn’t belong. “Look for the absence of light.” Then I saw it, a shadow against the illumination of the city, a boat in silhouette, too dark to identify. “Watch it and tell me what you think.”

  I watched it for what seemed a long time until I was ready to say that the boat wasn’t changing its bearing, but seemed to be blotting out more light, which meant it was getting closer: drifting toward us on the ebb tide, maybe distant some hundred yards. “Right you are. They’ve positioned themselves up-current of us, killed their motor, lettin’ the tide bring ’em down on us. What do you do now, Master James Hawkins, son of noble family?”

  The thing I did was find my mind in a knot. I lunged for the flashlights and weapons.

  “Say after me . . .” he said, restraining me, “one does not flap.”

  “Flap?”

  “Say it.”

  “One does not flap.”

  “Quite. Now, what do you do?”

  On sober reflection, I proposed we crouch in the cockpit, and when they came alongside, rise up and give them a surprise volley. “If we can get two of them . . .” I started to say.

  “The third will murder us with his shotgun, or repeating pistol. If we get really lucky, and manage to wipe ’em out, what then? Coast Guards and police? Blood everywhere? Probably charges, and our money impounded during a long investigation while the inn sinks, and we’re in the slam, with poor Merry somewhere she doesn’t like? Lawyers? A pox on it. We’ll want your pistol, my Very pistol, both torches, and the speaking trumpet to hand.” I layed them out, learning his own plan. This called for making our move as soon as our attackers drifted within easy hailing distance, which was happening rapidly.

  “Now, let us make a joyful noise.” He gave the signal; I clicked my pistol onto full cock, pointed it at the sky, pulled the trigger, and
blasted a ball into space with a fine explosion. This was immediately followed by the captain firing a parachute flare, illuminating our surroundings in a sharp, red light, including the unmistakable form of Lamprey. While the flare drifted lazily down, we both clicked on our flashlights, and the captain bellowed through his trumpet: “Ahoy! I say, Lamprey! You’re adrift!” As the flare sizzled into the sea, he fired another, trumpeting his alert repeatedly until finally getting a response.

  “OK. Thanks,” came a shout, followed by the sputter of engines starting. Then the boat roared away into the night. A last call from the captain reminded them to switch on their navigation lights. When it was over, I was taken by the taste of victory, mixed with relief, and admiration for his plan.

  “Reload your pistol, and put the weapons back on their display board. We might get other visitors. We’ve just thrown up two distress signals.” Indeed, twenty minutes later, a Coast Guard launch went through the channel, darting a searchlight around, but never closer than a half-mile from us. He did not fire another flare, however, feeling that we would not be attacked again tonight. “Not here. Maybe offshore. Whenever we can get there. Depends on how much time they’ve got to devote to us, and how much they want us. These sods are weekenders, but they could take us as a challenge. Pirates are quite like fishermen. There’s the sporting side of it. Fishermen worked on shares, by the by, just like the brotherhood. You should put your head down again; get a bit of kip before morning watch.”

  Difficult as it was for me to go to sleep, I must have, because I had a vivid flash of dream in which I was crouching under an open hatch, cutlass in hand, knowing I was about to leap up and use it. Before it got that far, the captain awakened me. He had let me sleep, and it was getting light. A procession of outgoing fishing boats sent their wave patterns over water that looked like blue oil. “Wake me for breakfast,” he said, stating his preferences as to menu, then turning in down below. “Keep your eyes open, and call me if you see anything of interest.”