Captain Adam

by Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981

  Captain Long, however, answered mildly.

  "Balance. Grant you it looks daft, but you throw that arm out and down when you lunge and you get in quicker."

  "Looks awkurd. Ever fight a man with one of them things, Cap'n?"

  "No."

  "Ever going to?"

  "Yes."

  The skipper sheathed. He spread his legs, fisted his hips.

  "Now let me ask you some questions—"

  Beach nodded. He had expected this.

  "You deserted from the Navy?"

  "I told you that, in Kingston."

  "Why?"

  "I'd been pressed, beat up, near broke me bloody jawr. After that 146

  they treated me crool. Not enough to eat, no rum at all. The quarters was wet. They worked you to the bone. They 'eld up your wiges. Didn't like my mites, either. Scum. And there was other reasons. But most of all I was afride of getting the cat again."

  "Flogging?"

  "Aye."

  "What had they flogged you for the first time?"

  "Last man down."

  "Down from where?"

  Puzzled, and as always suspicious, Beach looked at him.

  "Why, from the tops. I was a topper. We always riced mast aginst mast when there was any canvas to be mide or shortened. 'Smart' they calls it. 'Ad to be bleedin' acrobats, we 'oped to go on living. 'Op around like fleas up there, with the wessel rolling. Then when you'd worked an' pounded yourself barmy, with all them officers screechin' at you, then last one down rited two dozen. Every day. 'Cept Sunday. Our captain was a religious man."

  "But the last man down had probably been the first one up!"

  "Didn't mike no difference. 'E got two dozen. Wonst I saw a topper smash both 'is ankles, 'urrying to get down. Another time a messmite of mine get killed. But they still did it."

  The skipper glanced at the cabin hatch, which was closed, no doubt to assure himself that that juicy ripe redhead he had down there wasn't listening to all this rough talk.

  "How did you get to Providence?"

  "Why, aboard of a wessel."

  Adam Long looked at him. "Ax" for "ask," "fit" for "fought," and such possessives as "ourn," "hern," "yourn," and "hisn" he was familiar with, while other expressions this Londoner used were not wholly strange —for instance. Beach would say, "I wouldn't do it without I had some help," whereas a Rhode Islander would have said "wiihouten I had some help"—but the transposition of "w"s and "v"s never failed to bring him up short.

  Beach, who didn't fancy the look, stared at the horizon, and he swallowed yet again, making his Adam's apple fairly leap.

  "Well, I didn't expect you'd sxvum it," the skipper said at last. "But what boat? And where did you find out about it?"

  "At Walter's. The plice that press gang tried to nap me. It's where you go when you wants to find out anything about the lads that're on the account. That's what I was doing there. Looking for transportation. Thought I was sife, specially in the daytime."

  "I see," slowly. "You seem to have picked up a lot."

  "I got big ears. Always 'ad." *

  Beach, prodded, told him something about the political situation in Jamaica. The governor, General Selwyn, had died, and soon after that had come the fleet under Benbow, and then the news that William was dead and Anne was Queen. But the official notification of this had not yet arrived, any more than had the official news of the declaration of war. This was why nobody knew for sure whether the lieutenant governor, a rich and disagreeable planter named Beckford, who held his appointment of course from the late King William, had any right to be acting as governor. Beckford had many enemies; and it was customary for the local assembly to be at loggerheads with the governor and council anyway; but what really threw things nine ways from the middle was the arrogant attitude of Admiral Benbow.

  "What's this Benbow like, personally?"

  "Adisey, sir."

  "Yet you served on his ship and they flogged you."

  "Not the admiral didn't! That was the captain! When my back was patching and I couldn't go aloft they used me for a clerk—because I can write, y'know. Then there wasn't no flogging. Not that old Benbow wouldn't 'ave 'ad your 'ide off, 'e thought you was sodgering! 'E's a lamby, that 'un. When 'e gives a command it's thunderbolts, and when 'e grits 'is teeth there's sparks fly."

  "I see— And now you want to go to the continent?"

  "Aye, sir."

  "Providence too rough for you?"

  "Too dishonest, sir. I don't mind a bit of thievery now and then, but they was thieves all the time! It don't seem right."

  "It ain't," Adam agreed. "Some one of these days somebody's going to stamp that nest out. Maybe it'll be your Benbow. He'd sure like to! It's costing him warships for convoy. And yet if they go clear around the other end of Cubic they're likely to run into Spaniards."

  He saw the cabin hatch move, and he straightened.

  "Well, you seem a good enough worker. Stay aboard of us—if they don't get you in Kingston."

  "I won't go ashore, sir."

  "And no wages. By rights I ought to make you pay for transportation, but we'll take that out in work."

  "Thankee, sir."

  The hatch cover slid open, and the lady emerged, wearing a blue that shamed the sea, smiling a smile that shamed the sun.

  "You've met Admiral Benbow," Adam said to her a little later, as they strolled the deck. "WTiat sort of man is he?"

  "A duck, my dear. Gentlest, sweetest thing you ever met. Why?" 148

  "I'm thinking of a scheme," Adam said. "But it can wait."

  "Money?"

  "Money."

  Q C) The mist writhed as though in agony, its ribbons butting <->' ^ without sound against the Goodwill, tumWing away baffled. It did not blot out objects—Jeth Gardner in the Moses was visible—but it blurred and distorted them. It was not fog; you don't get fog off Jamaica. As near as Adam could make out it must have been a ground mist wafted out from the low mucky land back of the plantation at the foot of the hills, the swamp into which slaves sometimes escaped. Yet it didn't smell of rotting vegetation. There was an acrid nip to it. Pearly —for this was before dawn—it was tinged with blue.

  ". . . twenty-two," Jeth called. "Twenty-one and a half . . ."

  The lead flashed high, tumbling mist away from it, and fell after a clean lone loop, "sploosh!" into the water.

  "Twenty-two . . . twenty-two . . ."

  "What's the bottom?" Adam called.

  "Sandy. Gray."

  Across the deck, trailing mist, creating tiny whirlpools of it, a whispy wobbly wake, came the Honorable Maisie. She wore a long, light blue mantua, and her hair was caught behind with a yellow ribbon. She said no word to Adam but leaned, as he was doing, on the larboard gunwale.

  ". . . twenty-three and a half. . . twenty-three . . ."

  Goodwill barely moved. The whisper at her bows was the sort of "shush" made by somebody who holds a finger to his mouth.

  "Adam—"

  "Yes, dear?"

  "I hope you ain't counting too much on Horace lending us money. You know, he—he's a very hard man."

  "I know that."

  The mist wandered past. It could have been smoke now. Adam shook an impatient head. Danged if he wasn't obsessed by the thought of smoke, always seeming to smell some, ever since he'd boarded that brig.

  "He'll drive a hard bargain."

  He smiled a little, and put a hand over one of her hands.

  "I'm used to hard bargains," he said.

  "But I mean—maybe he'll ask for security?"

  Where was the profit in trying to explain to her? On the not infrequent

  occasions of the past when she'd needed money she had of course obtained it by simply taking it, or else by giving in exchange a smile, a glib promise, the wave of a hand. The idea of working for it had never occurred to her.

  But nobody had ever given Adam Long anything for nothing. Nobody, that is, until Maisie Treadway gave herself—wholly, gladly—and the though
t of that gift humbled him, clobbering his throat.

  "And I've no jewels left at all, Adam. What could we offer?"

  "The derelict, if the admiralty will clear her in reasonable time. If not, and if I have to, my share of the schooner here."

  "Adam! It would hurt you horribly to risk that!"

  "It would."

  "Why mightn't you collect on the derelict right away?"

  He hawked, and spat.

  "Admiralty courts don't work like that. But if you was just to speak to your friend Benbow—"

  "I'll speak to him."

  "Eighteen and a half," chanted Jeth Gardner. "Seventeen . . ."

  The shore was visible now, a broken blue line not far away. The first rays of the sun were jabbing the mist, striving to scatter it.

  "Sixteen and a half . . . fifteen foot!"

  Adam slightly squeezed her hand.

  "Soon," he whispered. "It may take us a little while to get everything cleared up, but we'll do it. And we'll be together—soon."

  The sun then suddenly succeeded in prising up the white-blue stuff that floated in the air. As if by means of a stage trick, the shore, fuzzy a moment earlier, became clear in all its details. It was as though a gauze curtain had been lifted.

  Just at first, for half a minute there, Adam supposed that he had somehow found the wrong cove. This made him angry. He had a shore-line memory that he liked to think was infallible; and the very act of putting into such a small obscure place without waiting for sunup was a bit of bravado that might have backfired.

  For this could not be the Treadway plantation. Where was the house? The kitchen kiosk, slave quarters, mill? What had happened to the lovely gardens and the orchards? The warehouse? Well, yes, there was something there yet, where the warehouse had been. Not one stick of the building itself remained, but some of the cane that had been stored in it still smoldered sullenly.

  Now they knew the nature of that "mist." Now they knew why no pirogues had put out to guide them through the pass.

  Adam turned quickly to his companion and tried to get her away from the gunwale, but she'd already seen. 150

  "We— We've got to go there," she said in a small voice. "He may still be alive."

  "He w^on't be," muttered Adam.

  He wasn't. They found his grave, a cleared space in what had once been his garden. Somebody had stuck a wooden cross over it:

  "Horace Treadway, Gntlmn. Bn. 1668 Kid. 1702"

  While Maisie knelt, sobbing, Adam looked around. Decay and desolation lay everywhere. Near what had once been the house a large mass of charred chunks of furniture and scraps of bedding and of clothing had been piled, stuff that had long since ceased to send out smoke. The same men who had buried the planter—neighbors? soldiers from the capital?—clearly had made some attempt to clear up the garden. The flowering vines, representing years of loving work, had been slashed, uprooted; and the trellis over which they once trailed had been torn down. The rose bushes were flattened. What had been a hedge of hibiscus, the bushes so spaced as to alternate the diff^erent-colored flowers—ivory, pink, salmon, white, red—now was no more than a jagged trench. Even the seed sheds had not been spared; and the very garden gate had been ripped from its hinges.

  Over everything hung the dank smell of death itself.

  Adam looked back at the hills, which suddenly spoke.

  WL7MP-wump-wump! WL/MP-wump-wump!

  The Ashantis had paid their visit at last.

  Q Q Even Kingston, close to the stroke of midnight, with only a

  *D tLf few lights showdng, could look lovely. Four-fifths of the time

  the town was dust, the other fifth it was mud; but right now it was moonlight.

  The garden was fragrant with jasmine, and shadows were packed into it like jackstraws in a bowl. Flagstones zigzagged down to the gate in the wall. Even while Maisie and Adam stood there on the veranda, arms around one another, clinging, reluctant to part, a quartet of marines click-clacked past just the other side of that wall. The marines had been particularly active since the fleet under Admiral Benbow cleared out, the very day Goodwill to Men returned to town. The departure of that fleet, it had been accurately predicted, would lure do\ai from the Blue Mountains and in from distant plantations deserters who hoped to sneak away in unconvoyed merchantmen.

  "I'll make it back a-booming, you can count on that," he promised. "But there's a heap of things to do first."

  "Not including, I hope, sir, the solacing of some dewy-eyed Newport beauty?"

  He turned. He looked at her in amazement, and after a moment he laughed. He drew her to him, very gently.

  "The man that has you ain't a man to go around looking for somebody else," he said. "You've got everything that's good and fine and beautiful and true, right here"—he shook her affectionately—"so why should I go out seeking a smitch of it here and a smitch there, when you've got the whole thing? Even if I didn't love you already, that would be reason enough to."

  She didn't answer this with words, but looked up, her lips trembling, eyes shining with tears; and they kissed for a long time.

  After the kiss: "If there's any worrying to be done, I reckon it's up to me. You'll be bored here. Kingston ain't London."

  "I'll think of you all the time. That's what I'd do anyway."

  Never having officially left the colony, Maisie had not officially returned. Smuggled out, she had been smuggled back in. The same legal restraints remained upon her. These were complicated, having to do with a multitude of unpaid debts, and Adam did not essay to understand them; but he did know that money would cause them to evaporate, and he hoped to have money soon. He had borrowed enough to buy a full cargo for Goodwill, getting this at twelve per cent on the security of Maisie's expected inheritance—for it was known that she was one of her cousin's heirs—from Maisie's lawyer, Mr. Cartwright, "the jew who isn't a Jew," as he liked to call himself. Mr. Cartwright, too, was to handle the Quatre Moulins matter, though nothing could be done there until either a true unquestioned governor was commissioned and confirmed and sworn in, or Admiral Benbow came back. In addition, Maisie had re-cendy had still another paper served on her, this one forbidding her to leave the colony until such time as she had appeared before a yet-to-be-appointed court of inquiry into the death of the late Horace Treadway. That inquiry would be an intense one. The massacre on the other side of the island had shaken the colony, and while three or four parties were still out, with bloodhounds, beating for the fugitives, traders and officials alike realized that in spite of the war and the confused condition of the local government, something had to be done about the present slave system—a general study and overhaul was in order. Though it might be embarrassing to explain why she was not at the Treadway plantation when the blow fell, Maisie did not greatly fear this court of inquiry; and she reasoned that if she avoided it she might hold up still longer the settlement of the estate and conceivably even jeopardize her 152

  own share. This was why they had rented the house out on the road to Constant Spring.

  Yet Adam Long couldn't Hve there with her indefinitely. He had business in Newport, business in England, too.

  "And when Benbow comes back, you play every trick you know to persuade him to clear that prize. Don't forget one single wile."

  "I'll enthrall him, my chick. I'll seduce him."

  "Well, no need to go's far's that. If he's taken du Casse I reckon he'd clear the whole thing for a smile. If not, maybe not."

  "Will he take du Casse?"

  She often asked him questions like this, as though he owned the ocean.

  "Well now, that's something only God and Admiral Benbow know— and maybe only God. Be a great thing if he did. Come close to ending the war right then and there."

  "Why?"

  "Du Casse is convoying this year's Spanish treasure to Europe. They do say he's got six million eight-pieces in that fleet. Even Spain couldn't take a loss like that—and stay in the war. And if Spain drops away, France will, too."
>
  "Won't du Casse fight?"

  "Oh, he'll wriggle and run, but if he's trapped he'll fight, yes. If Benbow attacks him. And from what I hear tell of Benbow, he will."

  "He seemed like such a quiet little man."

  "From what I hear tell of him, he'll attack all right."

  Her forehead rested on his chest as she leaned toward him, and she poked tentatively, teasingly, with a finger.

  "Let's not talk about Admiral Benbow. Or, in fact, about anything."

  "Darling!"

  It could have been the moonlight, or the fragrance of the jasmine, or conceivably even the tilt of the garden away from the house, the zig-zagginess of the path, but anyway Adam Long felt plain outright drunk as he made for the gate half an hour later. Positively he staggered—though he'd had no more than two or three noggins of rum since supper.

  He turned in the gateway.

  Maisie still stood on the veranda, the light of a hurricane lamp silhouetting her. It made him want to run back up there. He could not see her face. She lifted her right hand a little when she saw him turn, but she dropped it quickly, as though afraid otherwise to move, afraid of tears.

  "I'll be back," Adam muttered as he went out, "sooner'n you expect."

  PART SIX

  Home Is the Sailor

  Cy A It was raining, a chill irascible rain that seemed to hurl itself

  t^ J^ diagonally at you no matter which way you faced, when they raised Montauk, and, immediately afterward—for though it's further to larboard it's higher—Block Island. These looked cold.