Heart of Steele

by Brad Strickland

  But Davis died before Uncle Patch could even remove the splinter, and a moment later we were dealing with a man who had a fractured skull and concussion of the brain.

  Hours passed in this bloody work. Even with five lanterns hung, the light was bad, and my uncle’s eyes soon grew nearly as red as cherries from the strain. We lost no more patients, though, and in the small hours before dawn we were down to broken arms and ugly bruises that were spectacular but not dangerous.

  We were dealing with the worst of these, a sailor named York with a broken arm, when I became aware of someone behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Captain Hunter had come below. His face was pale as he stared at my uncle, who was well-nigh drenched with blood.

  “Davy,” Uncle Patch said sternly, “strap him down.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to cut, are ye?” asked York, clearly terrified that he was going to lose his arm.

  “No, lad,” my uncle assured him. “This is going to hurt like the very devil, though, and ’tis better if you can’t thrash about.”

  I fastened the buckles of the big leather straps and put a length of leather between York’s teeth. “Bite on that when it hurts.”

  “Ready?” asked Uncle Patch. He wrenched the broken arm back into shape. York’s whole body arched, and he bit down hard on the leather. A high-pitched eeeee, almost more a whistle than a cry, escaped from him, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he passed out.

  “He’s fainted,” I said.

  “That’s a mercy, anyway,” shot back Uncle Patch, feeling the arm to make sure the bones were in position to knit together. Then, working with a speed that few surgeons could equal, he splinted the arm and bound the splints tight with bandages. He raised his head and glared at Captain Hunter. “Four men dead already,” he said in an accusing voice. “William, what d’ye think you’re about? Steele’s a butcher! When are you going to put an end to his capers?”

  Roughly Captain Hunter snarled, “As soon as ever may be.”

  “It should have been long before now,” grumbled Uncle Patch. “Before he slaughtered that town. Before he led us into his bloody trap!”

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. What bothered me was something I had been thinking ever since I had first heard the word “trap” back in San Angel. Had the drunken sailor been a spy, too? Was his babbling meant to lure us to destruction? If so … if so, then I was to blame for the deaths of those men, for I had given the word to Captain Hunter to sail to San Angel.

  “I don’t need a lecture, Doctor,” the captain said in such a cold voice that I looked at him in surprise. His eyes were level and unblinking. There was something of a serpent’s stare in those eyes.

  “Ye need something!” my uncle growled as he tied off the last bandage.

  “Not from you!” Captain Hunter’s words were like the lash of a whip. “I tell you, Doctor, that I shall kill Jack Steele. If I have so much as a plank to sit on, a rag to hoist as sail, and one cannon to fire, I will kill that man or die myself.”

  “William—,” began Uncle Patch.

  “Give me the report!” Hunter snapped. “What is the butcher’s bill?”

  With his own weary face set in hard lines of anger, my uncle said through clenched teeth, “Sixteen wounded, three in danger of death. Four dead—Davis, Pondoo, Jones, and Sawyer. The rest I will answer for, if their wounds do not mortify.”

  “I will enter that into the log.” The captain turned on his heel and stalked away.

  We had only one more patient, a man with a broken finger, and that was set easily enough. Then we made the rounds and checked on the men we had treated. Uncle Patch had given them all rum with the alcoholic tincture of opium added, and all were asleep, or rather, unconscious. “I believe we may turn in for this night of Our Lord,” murmured Uncle Patch.

  We washed ourselves as well as we could in basins, though my uncle had to scrub hard with a pumice stone to remove the caked blood from his forearms and fingers. At last we crept into the small booth of the sleeping cabin that we shared. He rolled into his cot, and I climbed into my hammock. “Prayers,” Uncle Patch said, and I whispered my evening devotions.

  He blew out the single lantern, plunging us into darkness. After a few moments, I asked, “Did I cause all this misery, then, by being fooled by the drunk in the King’s Mercy?”

  “No, lad,” came my uncle’s kind voice. “Who knows if the drunkard’s tale was true or false? Not I, nor the captain. Jack Steele is cracked in the brain, I think. Perhaps someone in San Angel looked at him the wrong way, or smiled when he should not have. Or, yes, it could have all been a deep-laid trap to murder us and take William off his trail. ’Tis no shame if that’s the case, for older heads than yours were misled.”

  “I’ve never seen the captain that angry.”

  I heard a long, drawn-out sigh in the darkness. “Faith, Davy, I worry about my friend. His mother and father were both killed by Steele when William was hardly older than you are now. And just when William thinks he has the rogue in his hands, Steele slips through his fingers. Now all this death weighs heavily upon him. Sawyer was what they call William’s sea-daddy when William was just a midshipman. It was Sawyer who showed him the ropes and taught him to tie his square knots, bowlines, and sheepshanks. It’s as if …”

  His voice trailed off, and for long moments I thought that he had gone to sleep in midsentence, but then he spoke again. “As if William has been broken in some way. He’s a smart man, the smartest man I’ve known, but he’s aware of that intelligence within himself. When Steele out-thinks him, beats him at his own game, William blames himself. In some way his mind has been cracked by all this, and I fear the pieces no longer fit.”

  I suppose I must have slept in the few hours that remained of that night, but I cannot remember for sure. Indeed, all the next few weeks are a blur of action in my memory. The next morning Captain Hunter read the funeral service over the bodies of our shipmates, as he had done so many times before, and we dropped them into the ocean. Their bodies had been sewn into hammocks and weighted with round shot at their feet, and the four vanished into the depths of the water.

  Perhaps that day, perhaps the next, Captain Hunter ordered the men to throw off the Aurora’s disguise. Up went our topgallant masts again, and out came the black and yellow paint to restore her to her former looks. Our figurehead came out of the hold and returned to her place below the bowsprit.

  We took two ships in close succession, a French privateer first and then a Spanish one. Neither stood a chance. Our crew stripped them of powder, shot, and cargo, and Captain Hunter interrogated their captains in his cabin. From the deck we could hear his voice raised, almost raving, as he demanded to know any news of Jack Steele.

  A day later we overhauled a sloop flying the Jolly Roger. She seemed to strike her colors, but then as we drew alongside, she opened up with a broadside. Furious, Captain Hunter gave the order to fire into her, and our gunners pounded the little craft so hard that she keeled over almost at once. I saw bodies floating on the surface, but by the time we had closed the few hundred yards that separated us, the sloop had sunk.

  “Search for survivors, sir?” asked Mr. Warburton.

  “No,” Captain Hunter snapped. “Let ’em learn not to offer resistance if they hope to live.”

  I could not help thinking that Jack Steele must be very much like this. Somehow, Captain Hunter was becoming the very thing he hated most, losing his humanity in his desire to strike vengeance at Steele. The captain never laughed anymore, where once he was fast to roar out with the sheer joy of play-acting the part of pirate. Now his face was always cold, and his voice showed no touch of mercy.

  The captains of the ships we took always rowed back to their stripped vessels with speed born of fear. Indeed, more than once I thought that only Uncle Patch’s presence aboard the Aurora kept Captain Hunter from torturing his captives to see if they knew anything of Steele.

  The captain’s anger came to a head some days later. The
lookout had reported a sail hull-down and to windward of us. Captain Hunter altered course so that our paths gradually converged over six hours of sailing, and by that time we could see the other vessel plain: a bark flying the flag of an English merchant ship.

  “Veer off, Cap’n?” asked Mr. Warburton at the whipstaff.

  “Belay that!” shouted Captain Hunter. “We’ll take her.”

  “English, Cap’n?” asked Mr. Warburton uneasily.

  Uncle Patch was standing at the leeward rail. He came over with concern in his expression. “William, you cannot—,” he began.

  Captain Hunter whirled on him, his face flaming. “Cannot? Cannot, sir?” He looked forward and called, “Mr. Adams! To my cabin now!” And in a furious whisper, he said to my uncle, “You too, sir. We have a question to settle at once.”

  I followed. As soon as Mr. Adams had closed the door, Captain Hunter said to him, “Mr. Adams, as first mate of this vessel, kindly tell the doctor here who is the captain aboard this ship!”

  Mr. Adams blinked in surprise and unease. “Sir?”

  “Fire and brimstone, man! Who is the captain?” roared Captain Hunter.

  “Y-you are, sir,” said Mr. Adams.

  “Very good. You may go.”

  And when Mr. Adams had left us, Captain Hunter said to my uncle, “You are never—never—to stand upon my quarterdeck and tell me what I can or cannot do, Doctor. If you do so even once more, I shall have you clapped in irons. Is that plain?”

  “Aye, sir,” said my uncle stiffly.

  We did not try to take the English vessel, for she suddenly seemed aware of us. She had the wind gage—that is, the wind was blowing from her direction toward us—and so her captain could decide whether to let us approach or not. Something about the Aurora must have stirred his suspicion, for suddenly the bark made all sail and stood away from us. She was smaller, lighter, and faster, and by sunset it was clear she would outrun us. We gave up the chase in the gathering twilight.

  From that day the mood aboard the ship changed. A ship is like a little village, with people so used to one another’s ways and words that nothing goes unnoticed or unremarked. I felt a kind of tension in the air, and it did not take long to realize that it was between the old buccaneers who had belonged to Sir Henry Morgan’s crews and the smaller number who were navy men. The latter were appalled at Captain Hunter’s intention to attack a British ship. The former seemed happy with the change. “More to chink in our pockets, mates,” one of them said with a chuckle.

  But a third party of Morgan’s men was deeply upset. “If this ’ere captain goes off ’is ’ead an’ sinks English ships,” one of them complained, “why, ye can kiss our pardons good-bye, and ye may lay to that!” He rubbed his neck. “I don’t fancy doin’ a hangman’s jig at the end of a rope, not I.”

  I hated to bother my uncle with my fears and worries, but it seemed to me that Captain Hunter was within an ace of turning pirate for real. And then what would become of us all?

  For many days we had been making our way north and east, heading, I guessed, to the little low island called Cruzado in the southern Bahamas, between Inagua Island and the Caicos and Turks Islands. A band of pirates had made a small settlement there, and we needed to replace our damaged foremast before a storm could rise and break it in two.

  Captain Hunter nursed the ship along. His navigation was usually good, but this time his reckoning was off. We were too far south and east, and we came within sight of a ragged scattering of small islands, hardly more than rocks. Toward sunset, Mr. Adams climbed to the maintop to scan them with his telescope, and when he returned to the deck, he said, “I think the island in the far distance is Salt Cay, sir. We must be south of Grand Turk.”

  Captain Hunter cursed at that. “Then we have to come about. Our course must be northwest by north, and—”

  “A ship!” cried the sailor on lookout duty.

  “Where away?” the captain called back.

  “Fine on the larboard bow,” the lookout answered.

  I could see nothing from the deck. Captain Hunter scrambled up the shrouds, though, and stared off to the east. “It’s the Fury,” he called down at last, and I breathed a little easier. The Fury was a sloop under the command of John Barrel, a right, true buccaneer and a friend of ours from back in the early part of the year.

  Captain Hunter slid down a backstay like a boy, dropped to the deck, and ordered, “Clear for action.”

  I could not believe my ears. The one-legged John Barrel had been loyal to us when we were under heavy fire in Tortuga Harbor. It would be monstrous to repay his loyalty with cannon fire.

  But then I realized that Barrel knew Steele—had even sailed with him—and that he was just the sort of connection to Steele that the captain wanted. I ran below to my uncle, who was reading by the glow of a lantern, and gasped out the news.

  “The devil!” he exclaimed, clapping his book shut. “Let me have a word with William.”

  We hurried back to the deck. The men had run out the larboard cannons, though they looked uneasy and unsure of themselves.

  “Let him come within pistol-shot range,” Captain Hunter ordered. “Then we shall take him.”

  I looked over the rail. The Fury had closed fast, coming down with the wind. She was only two hundred yards away.

  And then, with surprising speed, she shifted her sails, spun about to show us her broadside, and opened fire!

  Fury Attacks

  GRAPESHOT RIPPED ACROSS our decks, shredding men and lines and sails. Railing flew into splinters and one of our guns was thrown over, crushing half of its crew under two tons of iron. Men screamed and cursed, and a dazed Captain Hunter stood there, his cutlass limp in his hand. Uncle Patch yanked him around and shouted into his blank face.

  “Awake, William!” he roared. “The devil’s dealt new cards and you haven’t even picked up your hand!”

  Fire came billowing back into the captain’s eyes, and for a horrible moment I thought he was going to strike my uncle, and that would mean the end of us. Then something shiny and sharp came sailing over the larboard railing and bit into the black wood with a meaty thud. Both Uncle Patch and Captain Hunter stared at it.

  “Boarders!” Uncle Patch snarled with a curse.

  More of the silver hooks were flying up and over now just as the Fury emptied another broadside into our starboard. I ran to the side to see what was going on, only to be yanked back by my uncle after a glimpse.

  “Have ye gone brainless as well?” he thundered. “Down, ye young fool, down!”

  I was shoved down onto the deck, but I had seen what I had seen. Three longboats loaded to the gunnels with pirates were lashing themselves to our port side. While we had been concentrating on the Fury, they had crept up on us, silent as fever. And now they were roaring up our sides, all screams and steel.

  And every one of them had a strip of red silk tied to his right arm. It was a uniform of sorts, the red mark of men who sailed for Jack Steele.

  “No quarter, ye dogs!” a deep voice boomed from the deck of the Fury. “None asked, none given!”

  Now the grappling hooks came flying from the decks of the Fury as her crew fought to lash her tight to the Aurora. Men were leaping over and landing on our decks, cutlasses flashing in the fading light. And every one wore a strip of bright crimson silk.

  “They’ve hurt my ship,” said Captain Hunter in a voice lost in wonder. Then his eyes flashed with that old Hunter fire. “To me, Aurora! Repel boarders!” And he was rushing down to where his crew was just beginning to rally against the invaders.

  “Aye, just rush in and get your simple English brains knocked out!” Uncle Patch yelled over the clash of battle. “’Tis so much better knowing we have a plan! Mr. Warburton!”

  “Aye, Doctor?” rumbled our giant helmsman.

  “Watch my fool of a nephew! ’Tis his help I’ll be needing before all this is down and done! I’ve got to help Hunter!” He turned back to me and slapped a gully, a
sailor’s knife, into my hand. “Eyes, legs, liver, and lights—forget about honorable fighting! Any dog that attacks a boy doesn’t deserve it! Stab fast, get away, and run like the devil!”

  With these words, Uncle Patch drew his own sword and was about to leap down after the captain when he was stopped by a peal of cruel laughter from the decks of the Fury. He stared into the billowing cannon smoke and snapped a string of curses that made even Mr. Warburton step back.

  “’S blood! Not him!” Then he was down the stairs into the battle. I stared over to where that stout sloop rode, grappled tight against us. A man I momentarily mistook for John Barrel stood there, stripped to the waist and roaring with laughter. His head and body and arms were covered with blue tattoos that swirled and twisted over him like flat snakes writhing under his skin. And I knew why my uncle had sworn so. If I had had his talent for cursing, I would have done so myself.

  The man roared, “At them, ye bloodless swine! No quarter, says I! No quarter and the devil take the hindmost!”

  The last time I had seen him, Jessie and I had been running from a plantation house on the island of Tortuga and from a smiling, pale man we had known as Mr. Robert Meade. Robert Meade had turned out to be Jack Steele, and this grinning monster was one of his major lieutenants, the infamous pirate, Shark. I had thought him dead, for Captain Hunter had fired a pistol at him from close range, but the wound must not have been mortal.

  Even as I stared, the pirate captain grabbed a loose line, wrapped it around his arm, and swung flying across to the deck of the Aurora. His cutlass gleamed as he fell roaring into the mass of struggling, straining men.

  I wish I could give a clear account of the battle that raged that day, but in truth all that comes to me now as I write is a series of pictures, flashes of the fight. I will try to be faithful to them.

  The pirates had the element of surprise, but I’m sure they had no idea of who made up the bulk of our crew. Morgan’s old buccaneers shook off their shock in short order and came back at the invaders, nasty grins on their seamed brown faces. This wasn’t playacting, this was butcher’s work, and that was work they understood full well. I had a lord’s view of it all, there on the quarterdeck with Mr. Warburton towering over me, a monstrous sword in his massive hand. I know not where he found it. He might have taken it from a dead Viking, for all I knew. I clutched my gully in a death grip and prepared to sell my life dearly.