Captain Adam

by Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981

  Hands on hips, he surveyed the giant.

  "He may be a Turk, for all I know, but he's no American. And everything else you've said here is a passel of lies, too."

  Adam would have walked away then, had not the pitchman, fearing that he planned to linger, tried to scare him off.

  Raising his voice: "Maybe if my fine jack-a-dandy here would like to swap a few buffets with Cyossetta he'd prove that a city-bred Englishman is physically superior to this product of the colonies?"

  It was a threat. He was saying: "Be off—or I'll sic Samson on you!"

  "I might, at that," Adam said.

  Once again, there was no reason in it. This wasn't his cause, or shouldn't be. If the authorities of London permitted such goings-on, what was that to Adam?

  Maybe he just felt like fighting? Maybe his blood still boiled from that encounter with the coach guards?

  Anyway, he unstrapped his sword belt. He looked around for somebody to take it.

  There was a thin, fragile-seeming youth, himself sworded. He was dressed in blue and silver, mighty jaunty, and on his mouth and in his eyes was a quizzical smile. Adam went to him.

  "Would you be kind enough to guard my effects, sir?"

  "Don't be a fool, sir," the young man said in a low voice, but smiling all the while. "That clod could crush you flat."

  "I thank you kindly, sir," said Adam, "but I think I'll fight."

  The man shrugged. He had thin shoulders. He took snuff from a gold case; but he also, in a moment, took Adam's sword, coat, hat. Adam had learned something about lace in Providence, and he'd have bet sixpence that that was real point d'Alengon at the young man's throat.

  "God be w'ye. You'll need somebody's help."

  "I don't think that this is any time," Adam said, "to be taking the name of Our Lord in vain."

  The man opened his eyes very wide.

  "Well, I'll be damned," he whispered.

  Adam smiled, to show him there was no hard feeling, and then Adam turned and strode to the center of the circus.

  A ~ It would not be like hitting a man. This was not a man, truly.

  -■- -L It was some beast curiously manlike in appearance. The re-

  cruiter was more frenzical than ever, bobbing and leaping about, sweat bright on his face, while his wicked little eyes glittered. He spoke to Cyossetta, who gave over his yammering and came out with a real remark, his first, though nobody could understand anything either of them said. Likely enough they spouted a prearranged gibberish calculated to awe most listeners, or it could have been thieves' cant. Anyway, it wasn't Narragansett. Adam Long knew Narragansett.

  Swinging his arms slowly, purposefully, Cyossetta shambled forward. Adam's breast tightened, his scalp tingled. Inside the hug of those arms any man would be crushed.

  The brute stopped. He reached out, hands open, palms up. It was the gesture of a lazy Goliath. He seemed to be saying: Come here and let's get this over with; let me squash you like a melon, little man.

  Standing his full height, Adam went in between those arms—but he went in fast. He punched right and left. He sprang back.

  Cyossetta grunted. Blood stood out on his mouth.

  "Clout 'im, yer ludship!"

  "Bash'is beak in!"

  "First claret's yourn! Now catch 'im a conker!"

  Adam's fists hurt. Cyossetta seemed the same, except for the blood. He came shuffling in, his hands a little lower now, his shoulders hunched forward. His head was low, too, the chin on his chest. From somewhere behind that tangle of hair two small eyes regarded Adam: they might have been serpents watching from a bush.

  Adam sprang again. He struck but one blow this time, a rounder with 178

  the right fist, but he landed it just where he wanted it—a trifle to the left of the point of the chin. Then he danced back.

  Any other man on earth, he thought with a sob, would have been stopped by that punch. It stung all down Adam's arm, and the fist itself had been set aflame. But Cyossetta came on in.

  Adam retreated. He had to.

  He ducked low, and went in with head down, hooking right and left. He butted the belly, swung for the groin, missed, slipped. Something that could have been an elbow struck the back of his head, and a knee came up and caught him on a cheekbone. He was down, but his head was clear. He had time to spring to his feet and scrabble away from Cyossetta's charge. Baffled, Cyossetta came to a stop. Adam jumped in and plopped a fist spang on the nose. The blood fairly gushed out, slobbering all down over Cyossetta's fur togs. Cyossetta paid it no mind. He simply shook his head, the impatient gesture of a man who has walked into a cobweb in the dark, and came shambling on.

  Did the brute have no point of vulnerability? Adam backed away, backed away— He tried to maneuver himself to a point behind Cyossetta, or even to one side of him; for the giant, waving his hands the way a lobster waves its claws, like a lobster again could only hold off a head-on attack. If Adam couldn't knock him down, perhaps he could throw him, spill him suddenly? Once Cyossetta was down, his head could be kicked against the cobbles.

  Whether from instinct or reason, Cyossetta did not permit this. He turned as Adam moved.

  When Adam would stand still for a moment, Cyossetta would start toward him. Cyossetta never appeared to be in a hurry.

  Adam retreated, felt a wall behind him, stepped to one side, felt another wall. Then he couldn't swallow; for he realized that he had let himself be cornered. Intent on the giant's face, performing a series of quick retreats, never worried about the onlookers, who were careful to keep out of his way, he had given no thought to what might be behind him. It had appeared, initially, as though they had plenty of room. But though the houses that made up this circus were close together, in most cases touching, and though generally they presented a smooth wood-and-plaster front to the pavement, there were projections, irregularities. And Adam was in a corner now.

  He took a deep breath. He bumped his buttocks against the wall, pushed forward with a foot, too, and hurled himself against Cyossetta.

  It was like pummeling a tree, trying to make it go dowoi. Adam swung from side to side, evading those enormous hands, hooking in punches as hard as he could—and as fast.

  He couldn't have told you, afterwards, when it was that he missed Cyossetta. Men cooed and chittered reassuringly at him, a whit afraid to reach out and touch him, and after a while he caught himself stumbling around looking for the face he was to punch, not finding it.

  Once he had seen a cock, a shakebag, hackles high, gaffs wet, one eye torn out while the other was flooded with blood, stagger around the pit, furious, tearing the air, blindly seeking its enemy—which lay dead. Adam must have been something like that.

  He stopped, feeling a little foolish. He looked around.

  Cyossetta the oak tree had been felled at last, and lay motionless. The spirit kicked him twice in the side of the head.

  "Y' bleedin' fool," he screeched, accurately enough. "Yer carn't even

  iightr

  He kicked Cyossetta again, then slipped into the crowd.

  Adam Long went to the young man in blue and silver, and bowed briefly, murmuring thanks.

  "You were right, sir. It was more than I'd bargained for."

  " 'Twas a damned fine show, sir. Here—permit me to help you on with the coat. Will you share a bird and a bottle with me, sir?"

  "Well— Do you know any place we could go?"

  "La, I know 'em all."

  Together then, the slim and elegant young man carrying his hat, which was cocked all around and had blue feathers, they departed daintily from the circus. Their swords swung at their sides.

  yi Cy The young man's name it turned out was John Chumley, J- ^ and it was necessary for him to carry his hat because he wore so big a periwig, a massive full-bottomed affair.

  At the Crimson Cockatoo the host fairly slavered, and half a dozen customers bowed and called greetings.

  "You are from the American colonies, sir?" politely,

&
nbsp; Adam stared at him.

  "Now how did you know that?"

  Chumley smiled, and talked of something else.

  He spoke slowly, indeed he drawled, yet it was not easy to understand him. His speech sounded to Adam even further from straight English than that of Willis Beach. In some respects, and notably in the use of "a" for "o"—he said "lard" when he meant "lord," for instance—it re-

  minded Adam of the speech of Maisie Treadway. It had been purposely perverted. It was a class mark.

  "What do you think of London, then?"

  "Well, it seems mighty—crowded."

  He stole a look at his companion, who, having demolished two partridges and a bottle of St. Julien, was picking his teeth.

  "You must know a lot of folks in this towTi."

  "I know everyone worth knowing."

  "There are two men I'd like to meet. Something I want each of them to explain. I want satisfaction."

  "What a bloodthirsty one it is! Invades our fair isle for the purpose of skewering a couple of gents he don't fancy, and the first morning he's here he pummels the guts out of some Whitefriars Hercules with a name like a sneeze—just to keep in trim, I take it? 'Struth, Captain, is it really that wonderful air the spirit spoke of?"

  "Only one of them I'd fight," Adam said mildly.

  "Now would it be unmannerly if I was to ask the names?"

  "No harm. One happens to be the Earl of Tillinghast."

  "Why now, dip me down a jakes! You'd call out a fuddyduddy like that, a man old enough to be your father?"

  Adam flushed.

  "He ain't the one I'm going to call out. Uh, I take it he don't live here in London? Out in the country, in his own castle maybe?"

  "Well now, I wouldn't call Tillinghast a castle. Damned handsome shack though."

  "I mean, he's not here in the city now?"

  "Not now, no. He was, an hour ago."

  "Eh?"

  "Right this minute I'd say his lordship is just wondering what part of the river to heave his breakfast into. He just embarked. Ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary with love from Anne to Louis. What's that? We're at war with France? Why, so we are, man! And Tillinghast's being sent to Versailles exactly because Sarah Churchill wishes to be sure that we continue at war. There's been ugly rumors of a possible peace."

  "He—just sailed—you say?"

  " 'Bout an hour ago. I saw his coach trundling down toward the river just before you came along and started tilting at the dragon."

  "Is it— Is it yellow, that coach?"

  "Why, 'tis, truly."

  "Has it got a device on top—two wobbly white lines slantwise across a field of red?"

  "Dexter?"

  "Well, I guess so."

  "Must be. Hardly be sinister. Why, that's gules, two bendlets invested argent. Aye, the Tillinghast 'scutcheon."

  Adam touched his chest. He winced.

  It had been a memorable welcome.

  "The other one," he said, "is Sir Jervis Johnston."

  "Oh now, see here, you're not proposing to fight Jerve Johnston?"

  "I sure am. Reckon you could arrange it?"

  "La, I'd be an accessory before the fact in a murder case if ever I did. Why, Jerve'd carve you."

  "Well, he'll get the chance."

  "Yet you could call him out right enough, yes. All the formalities. Go to the field. Then an apology, last minute. It's been done."

  "I mean a real fight. I won't settle for anything less."

  "Tut, tut, Captain."

  "Can you arrange it?"

  "I could, yes," said Chumley, and put his toothpick back into its case and pocketed the case, "for a fee."

  He looked at the ceiling.

  "Why, uh, what I had in mind was an affair of honor."

  "Quite."

  Adam gawked. Chumley's eyes were opened very wide and a faint fond smile still touched the corners of his mouth.

  "Damn me, Captain, the surgeon'll get a fee. Why shouldn't I? I'm as much a specialist as any surgeon. A thing like this needs expert handling. But cheerily, I come cheap. Twenty yellow-boys. Twenty golden guineas, coin of the realm, eh?"

  "That's a lot of money."

  "Damn me, it's a lot you're proposing to buy with it, sir. Jerve Johnston's no frippery fop, I can tell you. A rencontre with a blade like that, why it'll be talked about in every coffee house from St. James's to the Tower for quite three days. Every detail will be discussed. Such a matter needs careful handling."

  "I see,"

  "There'll be other expenses as well. The surgeon I just mentioned. Chair hire for both of us: it ain't thought genteel to go to the field mounted, don't ask me why. Other items. But first of all, a new coat for you. Captain. La, I say nothing against the one on your back now! Don't call me out! But we must get you something special and splendid. You lack friends, you must make it up with finery."

  "That's the last thing I should have thought of."

  "It's the first thing I thought of."

  "Does so much depend on your coat, in this town?"

  Chumley took snuff. He flicked a speck of it off his cravat. "A hell of a lot depends on your coat in this town," he said.

  /| O It has been said that the kind of person who always remem-

  -I-1-^ hers everything seldom remembers anything worth remem-

  bering. Resolved Forbes was an exception. No man ever had a better mate. Adam Long signed the document he had written, sanded it, waved it, and then glanced up through the hatchway to where the Goodwill's second-in-command was supervising the unloading of the spars.

  It had not taken Captain Long two hours to sell the spars. He reckoned it was because of the war that things cost so much. He could hardly believe it, the price he'd got. That was the last of the spars, being bumped out up there on deck right now. The schooner hands had been permitted to loaf at least half the time because the wharfworkers, though twice as numerous, couldn't keep up vdth them—or didn't want to. Adam was not paying for the wharfworkers, thank the Lord. They wouldn't be fiddlefaddling around like that if he was!

  The reloading would not take long, in part because it wouldn't require any Londoners, in part because the cargo consisted of small items. Adam had been choosey. The average skipper who touched at Newport tended to fetch whatever gimcrackery he could lay hands on, assuming, as he did, that the Americans were glad to get anything at all. Adam Long knew better. He had, had had for years, his own ideas about what would constitute the ideal westbound cargo. First: well-built things, solid things that would last. Not fine furniture, for it occupied too much space and anyway might take too long to sell. Not fancy clothes, for folks were ashamed to buy those from somebody they knew; and then there was the matter of fit, and the further very important matter of fashion, which could veer crazily. But to Adam's knowledge there had never been enough iron nails in Newport, and from what he'd overheard the women say there had never been enough needles either. So he bought a lot of these, and a lot of knives. Axes, too. An axe always had a certain value in a place like Rhode Island, where you seldom saw any actual cash. It was almost like money; and a Newport man would take it instead of a coin, even though he already owned a perfectly good axe, for he'd know that he would never have any trouble selling or trading it. Adam had also bought some luxury notions like candle snuffers and sad irons, but not many such. All these things, again because of the war, were hard to get; and in America anything made of metal was a prize. In physical bulk,

  though not in value, the greater part of the cargo would consist of assorted cloths and dress materials—not silks, satins, or crepe de chine, but plain perpetuana and plenty of it, deerskin, felt, camlet, linen, sagathy, drugget.

  In the profit from the sale of these articles, Adam as skipper would share. Additionally, he was filling personal commissions for fellow carpenters—augers, cleaving planes, molding planes, bench hook hammers, jointer planes, all sorts of saws, chisels, gouges, wimble bitts— There were never enough tools in N
ewport.

  Adam's own flyer, a rare bargain, stumbled into by chance, was four gross of real wax candles. These wouldn't go bad or go out of fashion; their price would not grasshopper around; and they'd be easy to store. If it was necessary to raise money on them, they should serve at least as well as nails. Wax candles were a luxury in Newport, where most folks used tallow or just bayberry; but they were a sound luxury, a respectable one. Man or woman might hesitate to buy silk stockings in Newport, and hesitate even longer about wearing them in public. But wax candles, while symbols of a solid financial position, were not extravagant, not ostentatious.

  There was another purchase that was personal to Adam, though it came out of the ship's fund—two suits of Dutch linen sails. Goodwill's canvas was dark, coarse, heavy, easily split. Dutch linen was not obtainable in America; and Goodwill deserved the best. Had Adam asked the Adventurers for permission to buy these, they'd raise their hands in horror. So he just said nothing—and went ahead and bought them.

  Adam, however, was not thinking of this when he sanded the document. He was thinking that he'd properly ought to leave something to the faithful and efficient Resolved Forbes.

  For this was Adam's will he had just written.

  It had never previously occurred to him to make out a will, and that for at least two reasons: i) he hadn't had anything to leave to anybody; and 2) he hadn't had anybody to leave anything to. But now his duty was clear. After all, he could get killed. And he did own seven-sixteenths of one of the sweetest little sailing vessels in any man's ocean. Zeph's shares had been paid for only in part, but Adam's personal profits from this voyage would make up the rest. It was little enough that Maisie had, there far across the sea, lonesome on that hot, disagreeable island: a basketful of bills, bitter memories, some claim to part of a ruined plantation, and the sworn word of a lover. That word at least was going to be good.

  So Adam had not needed the urging of John Chumley to make out a will, though Chumley had urged. 184