Captain Adam

by Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981

  "That's right." 138

  "Well, wasn't that your best judgment? You're bringing the boat itself back, which is more than most skippers would do."

  "The Providencers should never have been allowed to get so close. The man on watch should have spotted 'em earlier."

  "Who was the man on watch?"

  "Me."

  "Oh."

  "And I was the only one. And I was down here."

  He turned back to the ladder.

  "But, Adam, who knows that you were down here?"

  He looked at her, open-mouthed. He had been about to blurt: "Why, God does." This seemed to him prefectly natural. It might not seem so to Maisie. It might sound sanctimonious to her. Some folks had odd notions about God and how you should think of Him.

  "Well— Well, anyway, that's how it is."

  The slide was pushed back. Resolved Forbes was there, discreetly upright, not bending forward to thrust his head in.

  "Sail on the starboard quarter. Over Cubic way. A two-sticker."

  "What rig?"

  "She ain't got no rig. She looks—well, sort of lost."

  O f When a knave has kissed you (goes an old saying), count «_-/ J your teeth. A skipper becomes cautious down there in Scaredy-Cat Sea; and Adam had his nose atwitch, ready to smell a trick.

  On this fine clear morning there was no land in sight, though as the mate had said Cuba would be off the starboard bow, which is where the derelict, if it was a derelict, was.

  It was riding high, as if empty. It might have been fifty feet on the waterline, and didn't look fast, being somewhat puffy at the bows, while its two masts, though stout, were not notably tall. These sticks, all un-sparred, were about the same height, so that the vessel at least was not a ketch or a schooner. The only canvas showing was a jib, but half-sheeted home, which flopped to this side or that, as though the vessel had its own whims, couldn't make up its mind, or did not care.

  Nobody was to be seen aboard. The tiller flumped listlessly.

  Adam would study this sight for a while through the glass, then with his naked eye. Then, like as not, he would search the seas elsewhere with a suspicious scowl. He couldn't help thinking that somebody was

  aiming to trip him up—that if he reached for this purse in the pathway it would be yanked away by a string, if he kicked this old hat, he'd sprain his toe on the rock inside.

  It was just too good to be true.

  He began to tack. He wouldn't take in an inch of canvas. He wanted to be ready to get away when the trick was discovered.

  Maisie appeared at his side and asked to borrow the glass. Break-fastless, she yet was bright, and there was not a wrinkle in her frock. She studied the strange sail with delight, uttering little cries. It might have been a new dress model, a latest-mode bonnet.

  "Can it really go on sailing itself?"

  "Until some weather makes up, or it drives aground."

  "And if nobody's there, who owns it?"

  "Whoever brings it in. It's not the vessel that finds it, it's the vessel that brings it in."

  "Oh— The owners get it all, then?"

  "Depends on what the skipper's arrangement is. In this case, no. In this case the owners'd get only one-tenth, all of 'em together."

  "And you're three-sixteenths of the owners, after all."

  "Aye. Then the mate gets a tenth and the crew gets a tenth. All this is after expenses have been taken out. And provided the towing vessel ain't had her hull strained coming in. In that case her owners'd have a claim for more."

  "Who gets the other seven-tenths?"

  He couldn't help grinning.

  "I do."

  She kissed him right then and there, smacko on the mouth.

  "Adam! Then you'll be rich!"

  "Well, not exactly rich. You got to accept the admiralty's estimate. And the lawyers'll get a big share, of course. But I ought to clear enough to keep your creditors quiet for a while anyway."

  Tears came swiftly to her eyes. They didn't fall, but they glittered there.

  "You think of me—first."

  "I think of you all the time," he pointed out matter-of-facdy. "Just can't help it."

  They did a deal of hallooing as they approached, but there was nothing to show that they'd been heard. Twice they passed the stranger, in real close, one on each tack, but they saw no sign of life. Not until then did Adam give the order to heave to.

  He still didn't like it. He kept expecting something to explode in his face.

  The other sail trailed no line, and neither did it show any anchor, spar, 140

  or gig. Its deck, what they could see of it—for the other vessel was the higher-sided—was as clear as though swept by a hurricane. Yet there was no hint of damage about this idle saunterer of the sea: nothing showed stove in, the sticks were upright, the bowsprit jaunty.

  They kept hallooing—and getting no answer.

  They did pick out the name, Quatre Moulins. It was a French name, Maisie said. Did it mean anything? She shrugged. "Four Mills"—that was all.

  There was nothing else on the counter. No home port was given. But since to give the name of such a port was the exception rather than the rule, they thought little of this.

  "Put over the Moses," Adam said.

  "Who'll go?" Resolved Forbes asked.

  Now this was exactly what Adam had been asking himself for more than an hour.

  Jeth was out of the question because of his leg. Resolved Forbes might be thought the logical one, but Adam was determined to go himself and one of these two should remain. Maisie pleaded to be taken, but Adam shook his head. John Bond still burned a bit with fever. The new hand, the tiny Londoner Willis Beach, might have been willing, but Adam didn't know him well enough to trust him. That left the boy, Abel Relhson. Adam nodded to him.

  "Take the oars."

  There was no port through which they might peer, and even by standing in the stemsheets Adam could not see anything of the deck.

  Rellison rowed clear around the vessel, but there was no movement except the groggy swing of the tiller, the flap of the jib.

  There was no line, no ladder, but Adam had prepared against this with a length of knotted line to which had been tied a grappling hook. He threw this. It caught the first time. He tested it.

  He drew his sword, the beautifully damaskeened Toledo that Carse had given him, and put it between his teeth. He might look tarnation silly, scrambling up the side of a strange sail with that thing in his mouth; but there was nobody to see him—he hoped—excepting his own men and Maisie.

  As soon as he'd dropped to the deck he took the sword out of his mouth and held it in his hand.

  He looked around.

  The deck was singularly clean—that is, not clean as though it had only just been holystoned, but clear of gear, unlittered. Except for the shrouds and the single jibsheet, the vessel was all unrigged. There wasn't so much as a single block knocking around. There was no line coiled or laid. Not only were there no halyards, there were no bits for halyards

  to be made fast to. It made Adam think of unrigged ships he'd worked on in the yard where Goodwill was built, though this vessel was not as clean and fresh as all that, nor was there any odor of just-sawn wood, just-planed chips.

  It did not take him long to search the deck. He did this alone, having commanded Abel Rellison to stand by in the Moses.

  The poop was only a bit higher than the waist. He went there. The binnacle was smashed, the only sign of damage. He examined it. The compass had been ripped out. This must have taken a good bit of work, his carpenter's eye told him. If it was done before the ship was abandoned, that event couldn't have been marked by much haste.

  Then he saw the stain. It was on the deck, in the waist, near the larboard rail, a few scant feet indeed from the point where Adam had stepped aboard. It was a large stain, roughly round, perhaps eight or nine feet across. Adam knew right away that it had been caused by blood.

  He couldn't have said how he knew thi
s. Bloodstains are not necessarily red—in fact, they seldom are—but can be brown, black, blue, purple, depending on how long ago the stain was made, the nature of the material stained, the condition of the blood itself, and temperature, moisture, half a dozen other things.

  This stain was a darkish brown, and it was beginning to peel at the edges and in a few places in the middle. But it was blood all right.

  It wasn't just the blood of any one man either. One man doesn't have that much.

  He went forward. He could walk anywhere on this deck without being obliged to pick his way, for it had been stripped clean. It would never have been taken to sea like this, and he doubted that it would have been so stripped even at anchor or alongside a dock. From various marks on the masts and from the nature and condition of the chafing gear on the shrouds Adam deduced that it had probably mounted three square on the fore, a fore-and-aft and a square topsail on the main: a brig then.

  The forecastle hatch was open, though it slid back and forth vdth the unenthusiastic pitching of the vessel. Adam wetted his lips.

  "Ahoy down there!"

  There was no answer.

  I croak like a tarnation frog, he told himself.

  He looked around. Everything was still. Holding the rapier point low, his hand sticky with sweat now, he stepped into the hatch and started down the ladder.

  Not much sunlight, and none of it direct, got into the forecastle. He had a hard time even seeing the bulkheads, at first.

  There were six bunks. Allowing that there was room for two men to 142

  sleep on the deck between the rows of bunks, and allowing, too, for two watches, that could mean a crew of sixteen.

  Four of the bunks he could see clearly, once his eyes got used to the gloom. They were utterly empty—no bedding, nothing.

  He had started toward the two darker bunks, which were located far up in the bows, one on either side—when the slide was slammed over the hatch.

  It was as if a lamp had been blown out. The forecastle was thrown into utter darkness.

  Adam scrabbled up the ladder, hurled himself against the slide. He might have been screaming. He'd lost all control of himself.

  The slide went back, and once again he was bathed in sunshine.

  The slide opened, closed, opened again, as the brig lolled in a warm and friendly sea. Aboard of the Goodwill they saw him again, and waved.

  He exhaled, sobbing, exasperated. He wiped his face, sheathed his sword. If it had been possible to march down a perpendicular ladder he would have marched back into that forecastle; but anj^way he did go back there, and searched every inch of it.

  And he found nothing. There wasn't so much as a shred of clothing, a grain of tobacco, a candle stub.

  Going aft, the cargo hatch was next, amidships; but though it was not battened dov^m, it was in place, and too heavy for one man to move, so he passed it by and went to the cabin.

  This hatch was small and opened like a door, for a foot or so of the cabin was above the level of the deck. The hatch was not fastened, but it was stuck. It came free at last with a clack.

  It was not until then that he realized what had happened.

  His nose told him, and then his stomach, which wambled. There was no smoke to see, yet the cabin reeked of smoke. There was no flame, but it smelled of burnt wood. The air that came out was hot, angry, and it caused him to cough, and stung his eyes.

  He did not go down, being afraid that he might keel over, but he did hold his breath and stick his head in. The cabin was not so dark as the forecastle, and being square it was easier to scan. It was black—black from smoke, probably, rather than from fire, though there had been a fire. The only objects were a table, which being fastened to the deck couldn't be moved, and some charred corners of mattresses.

  Adam withdrew his head and gratefully breathed real air. It was, he reflected somberly, like coming up out of Hell. He closed the hatch. Let air circulate in there and the fire might yet break out again. It should be thoroughly wetted dovwi first.

  Well, it was plain what had happened. Coasters had caught this brig

  off Cuba, as a few months ago they had almost caught Goodwill. They had butchered everyone aboard and tossed the bodies overside. They had stripped the vessel of everything movable, except, inexplicably, that one jib. They had set fire to a pile of bedding in the cabin and had departed for their own shore, confident that the flames would eat all traces of their crime.

  The jib, gallantly if not speedily, had carried the brig away from the shore at the same time that their oars had pushed the coasters in. When no flames showed, the coasters must have deduced what had happened: the hatch had been rocked shut by the motion of the vessel, had got stuck there, and had kept air from the cabin, so that the fire smudged itself out, choked. By the time they learned this it had been too late for the coasters to do anything about it. It had probably been night then, and the brig had been standing well out to sea; while the coasters, already gorged with loot, and possibly not liking the looks of the weather, did not care to venture too far from their beach.

  "Are— Are you all right, sir?"

  Adam went to the gunwale and looked down at the honest anxious face of Abel Rellison. It touched him to see the boy there. He swallowed.

  "I'm all right," he muttered. He nodded toward the schooner. "Tell 'em we've catched a prize. And fetch 'em, one by one. And fetch writing materials, too.

  "What happened to the crew, sir?"

  "It's best not to think about that."

  O 1 The man from London saw his skipper come up, strapping

  <--' J on a sword, and he swallowed in nervousness. He was a

  lonely little man, this Willis Beach. Slum streets had been his hearth, his parents pickpockets, and he'd begged and stolen—and run away from things—as long as he could remember. He was good at escaping, at wriggling out of trouble. He'd sneaked out of the English Navy itself, by God! And now if they napped him he wouldn't be lucky enough to get off with a hanging. When you're hanged, you die. Beach, who had never found life a song, was not afraid to die. What he was afraid of was the cat. He had taken twenty-four once—he could still feel the welts when he wriggled in his hammock—and he was damned if he'd take any more. Never again would he let them rip the shirt off his back and drag him to a grating, while marines stood wooden-faced, and the officers in their fancy uniforms looked solemn on the poop, and your messmates 144

  and the boys and like enough everybody else aboardship stood around watching you and making bets on which stroke would start you screaming. He wasn't going to have the quartermasters seize him up, so that he hung from his wrists; or look in horror over a shoulder to see some monstrous muscular bosun's mate take the cat out of a red baize bag and run it through his fingers, caressing each of the slugs that soon would be all sticky with blood and shreds of skin. No. He would kill himself first. He meant that.

  A natural fugitive, Willis Beach was not a man to look far ahead or behind, being concerned always with an immediate dilemma. When he saw Captain Long coming toward him, he began to wonder whether he had done right in trusting himself aboard this colonial hooker.

  It was the sword. Beach had liked this Yankee skipper when he met him in Kingston; and that he was alive now, indeed, he owed, beyond all doubt, to Captain Long. But now the skipper had taken to wearing a sword, and Beach didn't like that. A man with a sword was an officer, and an officer was somebody to avoid—to defy if it seemed safe, to buck, to bewilder, or betray—but best of all to avoid. Beach looked upon a man with a sword as his medieval ancestors had looked upon a man on a horse, or the naked savages of America had looked at first upon the plate-armored conquistadores. These were creatures of a different species, and it was but the part of wisdom to whine before them as it was to disobey and if possible to hamstring them when their backs were turned. There could be no friendship with a man who wore a sword. Make no alliance udth him, even for an hour! You could no more understand him than he could understand you, and
it was better not to try.

  Beach touched his cap. The skipper nodded. He looked at the compass. He scanned the sea. For three days and nights they had towed the Quatre Moulins brig, an axe being right here beside the helmsman to enable him to cut the cable in case of trouble. And hour ago, now that they were off the north coast of Jamaica, and after leaving the mate and the boy, together wdth some spare spars and canvas, aboard of the brig, they had cast her off. The Quatre Moulins was to proceed around to Kingston and report herself a prize, while those aboard the schooner were to conduct—well, some other business.

  The skipper turned suddenly. He drew. Willis Beach swallowed, shifting his feet. He glanced over the taffrail at the wake, God knows why: they were a good twelve miles from shore and he couldn't swim anyway.

  The skipper shook his head.

  "Dad-blamed smoke! I can smell it still, seems as if."

  Beach swallowed again, and turned his gaze toward the brig. The skipper had been commendably careful there. Not a one of them was to

  get ha'penny—the skipper got it all—but he'd had them take a good look around the brig first, one by one, and then he had each one sign or make his mark under a statement of what he had seen. Willis Beach approved. You couldn't be too careful when you were dealing with port officials, admiralty lawyers and affiliated vermin. As for the stink of the scorched cabin. Beach hadn't much minded it, not any more than he had minded the stain on the deck. He supposed that he was sorry for the poor blokes who'd had their throats slit; but that had been some days ago, some miles back.

  "Aye, aye, sir," he said, all the time eying the sword.

  The skipper pinned a fluff of wool to the top of the taffrail, and then from a considerable distance he began thrusting at this. It looked gawky, the way he lunged, his palms up, his head back, feet flat on the deck; but he was good; he skewered the thing every time.

  He was still breathing easy when he straightened.

  "Why do you hold your left hand over your head like that, before you rip loose?" Beach asked.

  Immediately afterward he gasped at his own temerity. Aboard a man-of-war had he dared to ask so flip a question of any officer the dreaded cry "Start that man!" would rise, and a bosun's mate would came on the double to beat him all about the head and arms with a rattan. It could be almost as bad as the cat. Beach had seen a man's left wrist broken that way once, and he'd heard of a man who had one of his eyes put out when he looked up to plead for mercy. It was against regulations; but it was done all the time. Not only the officers but even the bosun and bosun's mates, the master-at-arms, the marine sergeant, the ship's corporals, were just as likely to hght into a hand they didn't like with a cane or a knotted rope.