Captain Crossbones

by Donald Barr Chidsey

  He believed in the use of symbols, visible tokens of power, especially when dealing with a simple people, as was the case here.

  Yet he did not belittle these criminals. That a man had the mind of a child would make no difference to you if he stabbed you to the heart. A musket in the hands of an idiot would kill as quickly as one in the hands of an intellectual giant. Again and again George Rounsivel had to remind himself that his educational superiority counted for little, and that too much confidence might cause him to crash. Because he could outtalk these pirates did not mean that in the event of a slip they wouldn’t turn on him.

  It was not so much that the men of Jorobado were stupid, it was that they were over-emotional. They were forever flying into a passion of one sort or another, for they wept as readily as they screamed with rage. They were intensely suspicious of everybody, attributing a base motive to the most innocent of deeds, yet in the same breath, and fervently, they would protest everlasting devotion to the gang, to their comrades. The settlement of squabbles, some of them over ludicrously small matters, but all of them dangerous, made up the greatest part of George Rounsivel’s work. His decision in each case was final, and was accepted as such. Ever since the council a few hours after the fight with Rackham had elected him king—at the same time electing Tom Walker quartermaster, at George’s own request—that his wisdom was superlative was taken for granted.

  But how long would this last? Could a man, any man, keep on being infallible? Enthusiasm for the Philadelphia lawyer, the conqueror of Calico Jack, sooner or later was sure to fade. These outcasts never would follow any leader for a long time. Could George hold them together well enough to lay plans for his own escape?

  He never knew what the pirates might do or say. They were more than merely volatile; they must have been at least a little mad. Ruling them was like juggling a large number of loaded, cocked pistols. It left a man little time in which to relax.

  Still, there were compensations. Though his title was captain, and most of the men referred to him as the “skipper,” a word they had picked up from Dutch sailors, he was not called upon to display any sort of seamanship. Despite the rum, work on the John and Elizabeth went briskly along, with George doing no more than now and then calling a word of encouragement. The carpenter, known as Chips, was in charge of scraping and caulking, while the maintenance and replacement of the cannons was in the hands of Tom Walker, who when he became quartermaster had not ceased to be chief gunner. The canvas and all standing rigging was the province of the sailing-master, who once the vessel was floated again would also navigate. All the king was expected to do was keep the others from killing one another and when the time came lead them into battle.

  This left him leisure, and he spent it, generally, in the Palace, which he had appropriated. Though subject to call at any hour of the night or day, he did enjoy a certain amount of privacy in the Palace. At least it had been stipulated that nobody was to approach that shack without first crying out a request. It was the only spot in all Jorobado that was held proof against marauders. To a man of George Rounsivel’s temperament this was a boon beyond rubies, rarer than gold.

  Besides the Spanish saber, he had that other, that equally efficacious symbol, Anne Bonney. She cooked for him and at night he commanded her to stay indoors, but in the daytime more often than not he sent her away, for he liked to be alone, pondering upon the position in which he found himself.

  Time after time he came back to the same thought, which occasionally made him sigh but more often, regretably, caused him to chuckle: If they saw me now what would my friends in Philadelphia say?

  Man loses dignity, at least in his own eyes, when he is always being jostled. To the others privacy was unthinkable, unnatural. To George Rounsivel it was precious. He could only really laugh when he was alone.

  Anne was a mixed blessing, if she was one. She could be good company; she’d lost none of her skill, and her flesh was as soft and sweet as ever. But the edge had gone from her ardor. She was the only woman on this island, the personal possession of the king, which was as it should have been; yet Anne was a perverse little devil. She was morbid. If she flirted with men it was less because she was a minx than because she flirted in fact with death, which she liked. What she had done with George a little while ago, up in that glade, had held all the delight of peril. Caught, they would have been slashed to ribbons, both of them. Now George was legitimate. It was as though, from her point of view, she and George had been formally married. To some women marriage might prove the beginning of romance, but Anne Bonney was not one of those.

  She was discontented, a more or less normal condition with her but one that boded ill nonetheless.

  What’s more, George believed that she sometimes saw Jack Rackham.

  Rackham still lived. That was one of the amazing things at the camp on Cayo Jorobado. Calico Jack himself must have been the most astounded of all by it. He had thought to die, as George knew from the light in his eyes when George knelt beside him with a knife. He had expected to have his throat cut. It was what he would have done to George if their positions had been reversed. And indeed George had believed that he really did die, who in truth only swooned. Friends had climbed the hill a little later intent upon burying Jack Rackham. They had been astonished, and at first frightened, to find him alive. They had brought him back to camp, and for a little while had tried to keep him hidden; but there could be no secrets in a place like that, and soon the word spread.

  When George himself heard it he merely shrugged. He did not go to see Rackham. A visit would be taken as a sign of weakness, something he must avoid. Already it was counted against him, he felt, that he had failed to cut Rackham’s throat. In piratical opinion that was a soft spot; no king could afford to be soft.

  George never mentioned Rackham, but he worried about the man. Rackham was hardly one to forgive and forget, and he still had friends.

  Not kindness, no instinct of motherliness, but only that damnable morbidity of hers took Anne Bonney to her former lover’s side, if she went there.

  He was pragmatic about it, and felt no qualms of jealousy. He just wanted to stay alive.

  When less than a week after the fight the sloop was pronounced ready, and was launched, there was a tremendous celebration on Jorobado. The agreement was that there should be no drinking at sea—an agreement George was sure would be broken—and so the occasion called for a carouse the last night ashore. All that day, indeed, the pirates had been swilling, so that by nightfall there was little gayety, most of the men being stupified, scarcely able to move.

  This did not disconcert George Rounsivel. In his experience, so far, a drunken pirate was less of a menace than one with a hangover. They were touchy-tempered at best, but when in their cups, though they talked big, they tended to be fuzzy, amiable. They did not look upon liquor as a release from the daily grind but rather associated it with taverns ashore, with song and whores and laughter. When they could drink they drank as much as possible, for they knew that there would be weeks on end, and even months, when a swig of rum would be hard to come by.

  George found them dull when they were tipsy. All the same, he had his duties. No monarch, howsoever petty, can afford to consider only his own feelings. So George, having first locked Anne in the cabin of the John and Elizabeth, circulated, slapping backs, waving mugs, sipping, laughing. In this way he came upon Calico Jack.

  It was a clear night, and this was near the foot of the west trail, the place from which George had started to sprint that fateful morning five days ago. Rackham was alone in his bitterness, and had not heard George, who shuddered at what he saw.

  The man who had been chief for so short a time lay on his back. His eyes were open and he stared up at the stars. Though his lips still were puffed and bruised, as were his cheekbones and the bones above his eyes, the mouth, even so, showed a slit of cruelty, of murderous resolve. No, Jack Rackham would not forget. And he would never cease to fight.

  Georg
e could not see the cut made by the blow that had felled Rackham, for bandages covered it; but the glare of those eyes, the set of that mashed mouth, were enough. Rackham didn’t move a muscle and did not even blink as he lay there What was he thinking?

  George tiptoed away.

  CHAPTER X

  THE John and Elizabeth had a deep waist, and very little freeboard even when she rode empty. The waist however was not long, as the forward deck was. It was on the forward deck that most of the men spent most of their time, many even sleeping there in good weather, for the forecastle was hardly fragrant.

  The afterdeck was small and almost square. It was raised unexpectedly high, giving the John and Elizabeth something of the appearance of an old-fashioned carrack. The swing of the tiller covered a good part of this deck.

  Below it were two tiny cabins with a corridor between them so narrow that two thin men had to squeeze to pass. On the left was a two-bunk cabin, which George had taken over. On the right was a one-bunk cabin, where Tom Walker slept and which was visited also, from time to time, by the sailing-master, Ezra Garde, for the charts were kept there. These were the only persons who were permitted to go into the after cabins at all, except by special permission of the skipper

  As for Anne, she might go into the waist or up on the afterdeck, but she was not to go to the forward deck. Nor was Rackham—George passed this word quietly—ever to be assigned to the helm.

  It would be easier to keep track of Anne here. Nevertheless George was unquiet. Anything could happen in close quarters like that: there were more than forty men in a space twenty would have crowded.

  Aboard of the brig Barkus, on the run down from the mouth of the Deleware, George had kept his eyes open and had asked many a question, making note of the answers After all, he had already crossed the Atlantic twice, and he had used that time to advantage. He had not the slightest wish to become a seaman—God forbid—but he learned that it was easier for the passenger when he knew the queer lingo that sailors used among themselves.

  The first day out on his first voyage he had learned that if you speak of the right-hand side of a ship instead of the starboard side you make a dire mistake and every right-thinking seaman thereafter will despise you. George thought it rather silly to let names mean so much, but he also believed that when in Rome it is well to do as the Romans do; he had mastered the whole grotesque vocabulary. This knowledge, idly acquired, stood him in good stead aboard of the John and Elizabeth. Though he was not expected to touch one, if he had ever referred to a sheet, or a halyard, as a “rope’—though manifestly each was a rope—he would have lost all their respect and in consequence the leadership.

  Yet sailors on the whole, he had thought, were neat men, even prim. Properly officered, they made things fast, tucked in loose ends, folded, tightened, scrubbed, put away. “Shipshape” was a word often on their lips and “smart” was another. The pirates were not like this. For all intents and purposes they had no officers, and they were the most slovenly lot of men George Rounsivel ever had met. Nothing was taut. Nothing was in its place. They loafed, spitting on the dirty deck. As they had done in camp, they ate when and in whatever manner it pleased them, frequently bickering about who should use the stove. The only way in which they were alert was as lookouts. Somebody was always aloft, a glass at his eye. In addition, the men who lolled on deck would rise every now and then to saunter clear around the vessel, squinting at the horizon. It was not greed alone that prompted this vigilance, not just the pistol that had been offered as a reward to the man who first sighted a sail later taken. It was boredom. They had nothing else to do.

  George Rounsivel understood, and even sympathized. It had been with trepidation, and only because he could not think of any way to avoid it, that he undertook to lead a band of sea robbers. He didn’t yet know what he would do if they overtook a British ship and he was called upon to fire at his own flag or be struck down from behind. But at least he had pictured life on a pirate vessel as exciting. It wasn’t. That first week, at least, it was almost unbearably dull.

  Telling as his judgment was in every minor case, accepted like a pontifical edict, he had but a single vote in council when the band’s policy was made. Charles Vane had fallen in large part because of the machinations of Calico Jack Rackham, but a lack of boldness had been the immediate excuse, the springboard. These men were poor. They wanted booty, which meant that they wanted action.

  George had presided at the council on the beach, and in time his will had prevailed—but just barely.

  It chilled his heart when he learned how many of them were in favor of an immediate descent upon Fort Nassau. He had not expected this. Their reasons were logical enough: not so much the sack of the town, where there was precious little left to sack, but the capture of the fort before it could be strengthened and used against them, the establishment of a base—and incidentally the most savage punishment possible for the man who had dared to crimp their dominance in these parts, Woodes Rogers the governor, and all of his family as well. Though George alone had seen them, those eight bodies dangling from the gallows on the beach just outside of Fort Nassau had made a deep impression upon the outcasts. An eye for an eye was their law. It was a matter of pride to them, even a matter of honor, to crush the governor—and to expose his corpse in a public place.

  Appalled, George had immediately contended that they were much too weak even to think of attacking New Providence. They must first treble their strength.

  The pirates replied that if they didn’t get there first Vane would. The presence in New Providence of Vane’s confidant and spy, Monk Evans, as reported by George himself, was proof of that. Monk had undoubtedly been doing the same thing George was doing—looking over the fortifications and testing the temper of the populace with the possibility of a descent by sea in his mind.

  If indeed that had been the case, George replied, then Evans must have reported that an attack at this time would be impractical. He knew, George said. He had seen the condition of the fort, and not just from the outside. They should stay away, at least for a little while.

  At this point they wavered, and George had thrust in an alternate plan, striving to deflect them from thoughts of Fort Nassau. Why not, he suggested, run up to the Carolina coast? The pickings there were reported to be good. The trading vessels would not be convoyed by warships, as virtually all the British merchantmen in these waters were, or as heavily gunned and manned as the Spanish and French vessels. Moreover—and this was important—the loot could be disposed of, the crown officials in those parts being notoriously eager to turn a dishonest penny. Finally, George had added, both Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach were known to be operating along that coast of narrow inlets and shallow coves, ideal for the concealment of pirate vessels. Perhaps they could take up with one or both of those celebrated operators, and then, a much larger force, descend upon Nassau.

  This advice prevailed at last, but there were sullen ones, and George had been obliged to compromise to the extent of agreeing to make a long southward loop down toward Cuba first, from thence proceeding directly up the Florida Straits, ready to pounce upon anything that showed itself—and that was weak enough. This involved beating a considerable distance against the trades, tacking four or five miles for every mile forward, and furling all canvas at sundown excepting only a spritsail for way, because of the tiny treacherous keys not easily heard in the dark.

  Nor did they see anything in the daylight hours. It was slow work, and wearisome. After a week of it the men were getting twitchy. Bottles were beginning to appear, surreptitiously at first, then in a more open manner. George pretended that he didn’t see them.

  George took up navigation, giving Ezra Garde something to do, and busied himself with charts and figures, with astrolabe and cross-staff and compass.

  Lying alone in his cabin—there was hardly room to stand—he tried to justify his position to himself, falling back upon law. Though he came from one of the great ports of the world, it happ
ened that he knew little about maritime law. Piracy of course was one of those crimes that could only be classed as mala in se, evil of itself. But, was it piracy to attack and loot a ship from a nation with which your own nation was virtually at war? A Dutch vessel, an English vessel, an American colonial coaster—those should be left alone, of course. Nor would George Rounsivel tolerate murder even among the crew of a Frencher or Spaniard. It was true too that the pirates carried no letters of marque and reprisal. But people in those parts sometimes made up their laws as they went along, as George already had seen. It might be that in time he would be able to work out a justification, satisfactory at least to his own conscience, for attacking Spanish and French ships. One thing at least was certain: if Great Britain was at war with one by this time she was at war with both, since their thrones held them together, regardless of their peoples. When George left Philadelphia, more than two months ago, it had been considered a sure thing. Everybody said that the very next ship would bring news of war. Had it? Would George be morally right in assuming that it had? It would take some time to figure this out. He hoped he’d be allowed that time.

  He heard something beneath him, and looked over the edge of his bunk to see that Anne had slipped into the lower bunk. Entoiled in his legal speculation, George had not heard her enter. It was a very hot afternoon, and she was lying there with nothing to cover her nakedness save a strip of linen across her middle. A week ago, even a few days ago, before the bruises had faded from her back and shoulders, she would not have let George see her thus. It was not that she was personally modest—she was, and with good cause, proud of her body—but the sight of those blue marks shamed her. Then, she would only undress for George in the dark. It was different now.