Captain Crossbones

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by Donald Barr Chidsey


  Pausing a moment, pensive, he looked aft. The officers’ cabin was no more than a clump of shadows; he heard not a sound from it, and saw no fight. Was Anne Bonney there? Probably. Rackham would be sure to keep her as much could be from the others. Was Calico Jack himself there? Probably, again. They might even be making love, right at this instant, scarcely more than a few feet from where George Rounsivel stood. Well, he would do everything he could to keep from disturbing them.

  As he started for the forward deck he sensed rather than saw Robinson reach the top of the Jacob’s, slither over the gunwale, drop to the waist. George did not reach out to guide the man with a hand. He had already described, to the last tiny detail, the waist and forward deck. Robinson could do it alone.

  George climbed.

  The forward deck, even more than the waist, on an ordinary night would have been cluttered with the figures of men who slept. George could see but one, immediately. Though he did not think so, for he heard no snores, there yet might be others further forward, where, as the gunwales converged, the shadows were thicker.

  The one he could see was lying full-length on the gun platform, his head cradled in a pile of oakum. Undoubtedly he was the gunner of the evening, who would fire another shot when he woke—or was jogged. Would somebody come down from forward to shake him? Or would Jack Rackham come up from aft?

  George knelt, leaning low, squinting. The man was a tall scrawny wagtail, Ellis Hunt by name. He had been an assistant to Walker, who like George despised him, for he toadied shamelessly to Jack Rackham. He lay on his back, and out of his open mouth from time to time came a thin, throaty whistle. His adam’s apple, a large one, trembled

  George slipped out his knife.

  It might not be necessary to kill. Perhaps if he held the point at Hunt’s throat and then roused him with a gentle shake—

  But the man might scream even then, in sheer fright. George sheathed, and worked from a pocket one of the tompions. Heavy as a rock, held in the open hand, this could be slammed against the head just over an ear—

  Even then there would be the chance of a groan. It would be safest to make a swift search of the deck first, before Robinson got up here. Crouching, George did this. He found nobody.

  There was the faintest of thuds, a catch-up of breath, the scrape of bare feet. George wheeled; what happened he saw only in silhouette, which however was enough.

  Robinson had kicked the prone Elhs Hunt, whether by accident or contemptuously, having assumed that George already had killed the man. Whatever the reason, Hunt, astounded, had sprung to his feet, staggering back, away from Thomas Robinson, whom he might have taken for a specter.

  And Robinson swung the maul.

  As a stroke it was brilliant. Perhaps too in the long run it was merciful: likely enough Ellis Hunt never knew what hit him. At any rate, Hunt uttered not so much as a squeal. The only sound—and it sickened George—was that of the maul striking the head. This was hollow, a liquid plop, as if somebody had squashed a pumpkin.

  George had been running forward, thinking to strike with his tompion, and he was in time to catch Hunt from behind, under the armpits, and lower him to the deck. It made a ghastly corpse. The whole side of the head was a pulp, and blood and brains and wet chunks of scalp bubbled out on George’s breast as he let the thing down.

  He hauled it underneath the barrel, where it would be out of the way, and scampered around to the far side of the platform. There, as he had expected, he found the gunner’s implements laid out—wormer, sponge, linstock, ladle, scraper—also the passing box, three balls, a bag of powder, and the match.

  He smelled powder, and his hands told him that the box had not been fully closed, while the top of the bag too was a little open. No doubt powder was scattered about the deck. Any stray breeze could do it. This was arrant carelessness, and never would have happened while Tom Walker was in charge. Perhaps they had been firing the twelve-pounder too often? Perhaps they had been groggy, or drunk?

  The match at least was as it should have been. A tiny tongue of unwobbling light, it rose from the end of a wick wick fastened to a disk of cork in several inches of whale oil at the bottom of a tub. Except for a small hole in the middle, a hole barely large enough to admit a linstock, the top of the tub was covered, so that the match gave off the faintest of glow. The tub itself was heavy, of course, against the possibility that it should be upset.

  Robinson already had worked one of the marlinspikes out of his pocket and was fitting this into the touchhole. However, it was part of the plan that before Robinson started to hammer the spike George should determine whether or not the cannon was loaded. For this purpose George seized the ladle.

  True, the twelve-pounder should not have been left loaded; but men who were so careless that they would leave a gun-powder bag uncovered might do almost anything.

  The ladle was long, and like the cannon, brass. Five-sixths of it was nothing but a narrow rod. The rest was the scoop, which precisely fitted the bore of the cannon and would hold a measured charge of powder—powder that could be left in the lower end of the gun by a mere twisting of the ladle before it was withdrawn.

  George did not need to twist, since he would deposit no powder. He simply slid the thing its full length into the mouth of the cannon, and his fingers told him when the end had struck metal.

  There was no ball in there, no powder. The gun was empty.

  He withdrew the ladle and started to cram tompions into the muzzle. They went hard: he had to knock them with the heels of his hands. He had three, and when he had stuffed the third one in he seized the ladle again, reversed it, and started to use it as a ramrod, punching the tompions still further in.

  When he had withdrawn the ladle he didn’t drop it to the deck but carefully placed it there, lest it clang. Then he ran around the larboard side of the gun, stepping for a horrid instant on an outstretched arm of the body that lay underneath, and heaved himself up to a sitting position on one of the trunnions.

  This had been prearranged, for they knew that they would not dare to whisper.

  Robinson had worked the spike into the touchhole as well as he could, but it sagged there. George seized it. Robinson, who must have been standing on something steady on the other side of the gun, some keg or box, showed a huge black shadow from the hips up. He lifted the maul.

  What if he hits me? was George’s wild fleeting thought.

  Robinson swung with all his strength, and the blow landed flush on the head of the spike. It made a short but loud and carrying sound—the jumble of the Revenge revel instantly ceased—but George scarcely noted this for the pain that streaked up his right arm, the string of the blow to the hand that had held the iron spike.

  He released the spike. He had to, for he had no feeling in his right hand. The spike slanted and he straightened it with his left hand.

  Robinson swung again.

  George flinched, winced, but didn’t let go. The shock was stunning. With a sob, swaying, not feeling it, he let his left hand fall away. The spike this time stayed in place.

  Robinson lifted the maul again. He swung it high.

  This time he does mean me! thought George, and shoved with his knees against the gun, pushing his rump over the end of the trunnion, so that he tumbled backward.

  He heard that enormous hammer whistle past his head as though it had been a rattan. Meeting no resistance, it must by its very force have been torn out of Robinson’s hands, and George as he landed heard it crash to the deck.

  A door was flung open, aft.

  “Hunt!” It was Jack Rackham’s voice. “What the Devil are you doing up there?”

  On his back in the scuppers, both hands paralyzed for the moment by pain, George saw Robinson loom like an avenging angel above the twelve-pounder, and in silhouette saw him snick out his knife; and then Robinson sprang.

  George had all his wits about him. Though he’d struck the deck hard, on the back of his shoulders, he kept his wind. He would not take out hi
s knife, for he feared he couldn’t hold it, and, dropping it, would not be able to find it again; but for the rest he was ready for a fight. He rolled.

  Robinson’s leap, though fierce, was frenzied, clumsy. He jumped feet first, possibly hoping to land on George and knock the breath out of him. But George was no longer there. Robinson teetered, went to one knee, and had to put his hands on the deck to get his balance.

  Meanwhile George had rofled aft, to fetch up beside the gunner’s tools near the head of the waist ladder.

  Rackham appeared there, or his head did. He was climbing the ladder with one hand while he held a cutlass in the other. George heaved up his legs and kicked Rackham full in the face, and the pirate, who had been about to reach for another rung with his free hand, went over backward like a bowling pin.

  George got up. He kicked the powder bag, sending its contents everywhere. He reached for the top of the match tub.

  He could feel it! His hands were functioning!

  He tore the lid off. He did not try to overturn the tub, his first plan, for he remembered that not only were match tubs made very heavy but sometimes they were nailed to the deck to keep them from sliding. Instead he reached in, scooped up the burning wick, and threw this at the place where he had kicked the powder bag.

  There was a bright blue flash, not an explosion but a hollow flat slap as though two padded boards had been clapped together. Instantly little spears of flame started to run this way and that, sometimes catching seams to pursue those, sometimes helterskeltering wildly. There must have been gunpowder everywhere—not much of it in any one place, but widely scattered. These past few days there had been almost no breath of breeze to blow it away, so that it had found lodgement wherever it fell.

  George laughed. It felt good to have the feeling back in his hands.

  The flames swept past and around him, making remorselessly for the waist, not because there was any movement of air to push or suck them but seemingly because it was in this direction that they found their fuel. Some zigzagged crazily. Some almost died, then sprang high again, twisting back and forth as though trying to make up their minds which way to run. Had the stuff been spilled from leaky bags as it was brought up from the waist, from Revenge? Or had it been spilled all the way back from the John and Elizabeth’s magazine?

  Thomas Robinson had recovered his feet, and held his knife before him, point-out. He started for George.

  “Good,” said George, and drew his own knife, and ran to meet the man.

  The stage was set for ferocity and rash attack, for a quick ending; yet after the first encounter, in which each was cut, neither badly, the two, as if by mutual agreement—though they hadn’t said a word—fell into a cautious crouch. Sidestepping, edgy as racehorses, they circled one another, moving in general forward, away from the flames.

  They closed again, but not all the way, and immediately sprang back. George’s blade had cut, only superficially, the outer part of Robinson’s left upper arm; Robinson might not even have felt it. Robinson’s knife, slashing up, meant for George’s throat, had torn away the lower part of the left ear. It didn’t hurt, or even tickle, but George could feel blood ooze out of it to meander lazily down his neck and shoulder.

  George moved in a little.

  Robinson backed—and his buttocks met the top of the gunwale. He was in no kind of corner and could not possibly have felt panic, even a twinge of it. Nobody will ever know what Thomas Robinson did feel at that instant of time, except that he was reminded by the pressure of the gunwale against it of the spare marlinspike in his left hip pocket. He reached for this. Perhaps the movement was only one of irritability, or was made because of a nervous notion that the spike on that side somehow endangered his balance. More likely he thought to throw it at George with his left hand.

  He got the marlinspike out, and raised it. But he raised his knife, perhaps unwittingly, at the same time.

  And George lunged.

  He went in very low, thrusting up, indeed as though he had been holding a sword, save that he was much closer than a swordsman would have been. Also, he ducked his head as he went, meaning to get under the other’s knife, which could have ripped his face open. So that he did not see where he struck. But he felt it—and it was soft.

  Robinson, doubling up, fell upon him. George twisted, and twisted again, but he never ceased to stab. And when at last he rose, panting, he knew that there was no quiver left in the body of Captain Thomas Robinson.

  There was a great deal of blood. Not only was George’s knife wet and red, but his whole fist was, even his wrist And blood still dribbled doggedly from his ear.

  Thirty feet away, near the head of the waist ladder, Calico Jack Rackham was jigging like a marionette swung on strings as he tried to stamp out the flames. There was another of those muffled slaps, as of two boards banged together, and a hundred new flames leapt to life. A second bag?

  Rackham, already burned, saw that he could not possibly put out the blaze alone. He was sobbing as he tumbled down the ladder to the waist. The flames, some blue, some red now, leaping higher and higher, pursued him: whether because of the air movement when he ran, or because it was in the waist that they found more to feed on, those flames, bending his way, fairly leapt after him, eager, avid, reaching, like the furies in a Greek tragedy as they yammer at the heels of the doomed.

  George could not have got past that place alive. He didn’t try. He dropped his knife, put a hand on the gunwale, yelled “Peter, here!” and vaulted head-foremost into the sea.

  It was so mild that he scarcely knew when he entered it, but he knew a moment later when his head popped free.

  John and Elizabeth burned angrily, streaming with sparks. The moon was rising, and by its light George could see a longboat being lowered from Revenge. Nearer, gawping, was Peter Knight and the Moses. Peter helped him to scramble aboard.

  “Captain Robinson—”

  “He’s not coming,” gasped George. “Now row like Hell!”

  When the sloop blew up they were not more than two hundred feet away. The very water was jolted, as though by a subterranean blast. They ducked, covering their heads with their arms, and all around them, after a few seconds, they heard things fall with a hiss into the sea, some loudly, some very quietly, as though in apology. None fell into the boat.

  The moon had rolled high by the time they reached the shore near Fort Nassau, and George, standing, looked back. There was no sign of the sloop, not even a bit of smoking wreckage. And Revenge was leaving. Every inch of canvas raised, the brig was making for the mouth of the bay. The pirates who held her were giving up. They’d had enough of these waters.

  CHAPTER XXI

  IT WAS ONLY four months later, amazingly, when the governor of His Majesty’s Bahaman possessions, having summoned his legal advisor, who also was the captain of the guard, passed over to this personage a paper that had just come from home.

  “I thought that this might interest you.”

  George Rounsivel read it twice, the first time hastily, the second time with scrupulous care, nodding his head in approval.

  It was an affirmation of his pardon—that is, it was the pardon itself.

  “Well set forth,” he declared at last. “Hardly a word I would have changed.”

  “Whitehall no doubt would be glad to hear that.”

  “Admirable . . . yes . . .”

  Suddenly he threw the document into the air, and whirled on his heel. “Excuse me, sir!” And he rushed downstairs, calling for Delicia.

  Woodes Rogers smiled, something he seldom did. He picked up the pardon and put it into the proper drawer Giving them time, he took snuff. He rose and hobbled to the window, from where he looked out on a bay where vessels of all sorts came and went. The fort was firm now, and well cannoned; he no longer feared attack by the Spaniards. The town was spreading, and small plantations too were springing up. Nobody even talked of piracy any longer. In so short a time it had become nothing but an evil memory. Only the pr
evious day the captain-general had received word from his opposite number in Jamaica that the last hold-out among the so-called brethren of the coast, the once redoubtable Charles Vane, had been captured there—and hanged.

  After a while, thoughtful, he went downstairs. He found the two of them near the gate, and was in no wise startled by their announcement.

  “Now that I’m legally qualified to at last, sir, I have proposed marriage to your niece. And she’s accepted.”

  Delicia looked lovelier than ever, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. She always reminded him—and it always hurt him—of his younger brother, her father. As for Rounsivel, the captain-general reflected, he looked no more silly than any other young man in the circumstances.

  “My congratulations,” Woodes Rogers murmured. “You know full well that you have my permission, Indeed,” he added bluntly, “I would not even have made protest if you’d consummated the previous contract some time ago.”

  “We will make this one nunc pro tunc” George said solemnly, “That is to say ‘now for then’.”

  “I see. And you will be leaving here?”

  “Your excellency must forgive us that. We can visit you, we hope, from time to time? But Miss Rogers and I are agreed that we would do better in some quiet, less violent place.”

  “Philadelphia?”

  “Yes, sir. Philadelphia.”

 

 

 


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