Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  “Yes.”

  Darkness came with never a sail sighted, and still they continued on, moving farther offshore to reduce the risk of sailing coastwise at night. Late in the forenoon watch the following day they rounded the headland that made up the eastern end of Dry Harbor and there saw two sloops riding at anchor. Calico Jack ordered the Pretty Anne hove to.

  “Captain Spenlow, lay aft, sir!” Jack bellowed from the quarterdeck, and Spenlow, who spent most of his time in the bow, as far from Jack as he could get, reluctantly stood and moved aft with his odd shuffling gait.

  “Yonder I see two birds in the bush, sir, so I have no further need of my bird in the hand! Fly away, little birdie!” The Pretty Annes were enjoying the show.

  “What mean you?”

  “I mean, you may go. Corner, pray get the boat alongside and carry Master Spenlow and his men back to the schooner. And relieve Fetherston of his command.”

  Fifteen minutes later Fetherston and his men were back aboard the Pretty Anne and Spenlow and his men were back aboard their schooner and setting all the sail they could, as swiftly as they could, and sailing a course as directly away from the pirates as the wind would allow.

  In the course of that fifteen minutes the pirates had cleared the sloop away for a fight, brought weapons on deck, and loaded the great guns and run them out. They backed the headsails and the Pretty Anne gathered way and the black flag snapped out at her masthead. The Pretty Anne rounded the point, tacked, and stood into Dry Harbor.

  When the forwardmost gun would bear, Harwood touched it off, blasting round shot and grape at the anchored sloops. They could see clearly the panic on board the anchored vessels as their people fell over one another to flee, tumbling into their boats and pulling for the dubious safety of the shore, followed by the pirates’ derisive laughter and curses and small-arms fire.

  The Pretty Anne rounded up and dropped anchor beside the larger of the two sloops, both of which they now considered to be theirs. The mood was high and jovial. No more fishing boats; they had managed one decent prize after another. They certainly harbored no ill will to the men forming up on the beach in some version of a line of defense.

  “Halloa!” Fetherston shouted, and his huge voice came back in the form of an echo which delighted him. “We are English pirates, but you need not be afraid! We desire you to come aboard us!”

  There was a moment of silence, once the echo had faded, and no response from the men on the beach. Then Fetherston added, “Pray, do not make us come to you!”

  That seemed to move the men on the beach. They pushed their boats back into the water and climbed in and slowly pulled for the Pretty Anne. Alongside, one by one, like men heading for their own executions, they climbed up the side.

  But the pirates were in far too jovial a mood to begin executing anyone, and instead they welcomed the men aboard with grand bonhomie, slapping their backs and handing them bottles of rum and wine which two days before had been the property of Thomas Spenlow.

  “Welcome aboard the Pretty Anne sloop,” said Jack, bowing deep. “I am Calico Jack Rackam. Delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  The men from the sloops, not certain how to react, gave weak smiles, nodded their heads, made noises that sounded like greetings.

  Anne Bonny, watching the show, did not know how to react either. Calico Jack was in rare form. His spirits were up, he was less drunk than he had been in a long time. Their little string of successes seemed to have done much to bring him back to being the man she had fallen for on New Providence.

  And yet, there was something out of place. He was not Calico Jack, not entirely. He seemed more like someone doing an impersonation of the old John Rackam, someone who had the act almost perfect, but was missing a certain indefinable element, so that the impression was not quite right.

  Oh, I am a deep cove, Anne thought. What is this nonsense?

  But still she could not shake the feeling. Try as she might to assure herself that nothing had changed, that things would get better from here, she could not quite believe it. If Jack was just playing at being the old, bold Jack Rackam, then she knew that she, too, was just playing at her former self, just pretending to harbor the same reckless optimism that drove the newly wedded Anne Bonny to Nassau and into Jack’s bed.

  “Such fine vessels you have here,” Jack was saying now, parading before the men from the beach, who did not even know if they were guests or prisoners. “Pray, which of you gentlemen are the masters?”

  “I’m Thomas Dillon, and I’m master of the Sarah, which is the sloop just alongside here. T’other sloop’s the Mary.”

  “Ah! And who might be the master of the Mary?”

  A pause, then one of the men, who was wearing a long blue coat as the only distinction between himself and the other deckhands, said, “I am. John Spears.”

  “You?” Jack turned on him. “You seemed damned backwards in speaking, John Spears. Are you reluctant to tell us what we ask?”

  “No,” said the man, reluctantly.

  “I should hope not, and we such great friends and all. Will you not drink with us?”

  “Aye. I will.”

  “‘Aye’ indeed. Then drink, man, drink!” Jack pointed to the rum bottle that Spears held in his hand, a bottle he had reluctantly taken from Fetherston after coming aboard. Spears hesitated, looking around at the others.

  “I said, drink.”

  John Spears raised the bottle to his lips and began to drink, to the cheering of the pirates. Two big swallows and he lowered the bottle and Jack held his sword under the man’s chin and said, “Drink!”

  Spears tilted the bottle up again and Jack stepped forward and grabbed it and held it so the man could not lower it from his mouth.

  “Drink! Drink, goddamn your eyes!”

  With eyes wide, choking, gasping, spilling rum down his shirt and coat, Spears quaffed the bottle of rum, and when it was gone, half down his throat, half on his clothes, he staggered back, gasping and retching.

  “Don’t you puke on my deck!” Jack shouted, holding the sword level with the man, and seemingly by sheer will Spears kept the rum down, leaning back against the rail and swallowing air.

  When that fun was played out, Jack turned back to Thomas Dillon. “You are to be commended, sir, on keeping so fine a sloop. And I will do you the honor, the great honor, of choosing your vessel as my prize. Do you think that an honor, sir?”

  Dillon looked around at the grinning pirates and nodded his head. “An honor,” he agreed.

  For the rest of the afternoon the crews of the two sloops were made to unload all of the cargo of any value from the hold of the Mary and stow it down aboard the Sarah, which Jack had decided to take for their own. Once again the pirates enjoyed the kind of day that made piracy so attractive to seafaring men: lazing away under the tropical sun, eating and drinking their fill, while other men worked at transferring booty to their newly acquired vessel.

  With the sun an hour or so from setting, the Pretty Annes won their anchor. Fetherston and his prize crew took command of the Sarah, leaving the Sarah’s former crew aboard the Mary, and together the two vessels stood out of Dry Harbor and made for the open sea. Once clear of the dangers of the shore, they turned and again ran west before the unfailing Trade Winds.

  Soon after sunrise on the following day the pirates reached the end of the island, the westernmost point of Jamaica, a headland called Negril Point, a green hump of land, and beyond that, only open water.

  The Pretty Anne, with her prize on her leeward quarter, rounded Negril Point and stood into the little sheltered place there, surprising the crew of a small pettiauga who took to their boat pulled ashore, then fled into the jungle to escape what they rightly presumed to be pirates.

  The two sloops came up into the wind and dropped their anchors, and not long after, the pettiauga’s crew reappeared on the beach, curiosity having apparently got the better of them.

  Fetherston called to them from the Sarah’s deck.
“Halloa! We are Englishmen and we would desire you come aboard and drink a bowl of punch with us!”

  There seemed to be some conferring among the men on the beach, but they made no reply. “I shall go get these fellows and have them drink with us!” Fetherston announced, and he and several others climbed down into the sloop’s canoe, which had been pulled alongside, and in it they rowed to shore. Ten minutes later they returned aboard the Pretty Anne with the pettiauga’s crew.

  There were nine men from the pettiauga, big bearded men, with cutlasses and muskets, and they looked as near to pirates as men might look without actually being on the account. They had bought the pettiauga, to go a-turtling, they explained, and were grateful for the pirates’ hospitality, as their own liquor was all out.

  “Come below, then, come below!” Jack roared, and he led the nine men, along with the Pretty Annes, down the scuttle. A minute later, the once-crowded deck was all but deserted, and in the wake of the raucous insanity, only Anne and Mary and Jacob were left behind.

  It was a lovely evening, warm and still, with the island itself shielding the bay from the steady Trade Winds that swept Jamaica along her whole length, east to west. The sloop hung at the end of her gently curving anchor cable, riding over the low humps of the waves that worked their way around the point and rolled in from the sea.

  To the east, directly astern of them, the island loomed up and up, tier upon tier of thick jungle climbing away from the white beach to reach its pinnacle somewhere in the wild interior.

  The sloop’s jib boom pointed west, toward the lovely sunset building over the straight line of the horizon. The thin sea haze was lit up pink and orange and red as the sun moved toward the edge of the world, the edge that was visible from the sloop’s deck.

  Mary was sitting on the bulwark, one hand on the shrouds, staring forward at the lovely yellows and oranges in the sunset.

  Jacob was stretched out on the main hatch.

  Against the base of the single mast, Anne Bonny reclined, a pistol in her hand. She pulled back the cock, pulled the trigger, watched the shower of sparks fall to the deck and then blink out. Then she pulled out powder and shot and loaded the weapon.

  She and Mary were still dressed out in men’s clothing. They had dressed for fighting that morning. By tacit agreement they had remained in those clothes.

  From down below, muffled by the deck and the scuttle, the sounds of building riot, the cadence of men yelling, laughing, singing, though those on deck could not make out the words.

  “Very well, Mary,” Anne said, getting to her feet, “where would we go?”

  “Pardon?”

  “If we were to give up the sweet trade, where would we go? What would we do?”

  “In my life I have known only soldiering, sailing, piracy, and innkeeping. Of those, I should say innkeeping was the best of the lot. We’ve had a bit of luck, as of late. Perhaps our share of what we have taken would buy us a little inn. Say in Charles Town or Norfolk.”

  Anne smiled. “Not Charles Town, dear. There is no welcome for me there.”

  “Yes, of course. How could I have forgotten? Very well, then, perhaps Newport, in the colony of Rhode Island. A liberal place, as I hear it, where the people are not given to much inquiry as to the source of another’s fortune.”

  “Too bloody cold,” Jacob offered.

  Mary nodded. “You are right. Too bloody cold.”

  From down below, a burst of laughter, a shout. Something crashed into something else and then there was a pistol shot. The three on deck froze, listened, waited for the sounds of an all-out brawl, in which case they would have felt obligated to dive below and join in. But the gunshot was followed by more wild laughter, more shouting. Mary shook her head.

  Anne began to prowl the deck, back and forth. Even without asking, Mary knew the thoughts rolling around in her head. They had not known each other so very long, she and Anne, but it had been an intense time, decades of living crammed into the past year.

  Anne was not one to worry about the future. She had never felt the need to seriously consider what course she might take, or the consequences of her decisions, and now that she had to consider such things, she did not know how.

  Back and forth she paced and Mary loved to watch her. She was such a beautiful woman. There was such strength and grace in her stride. It was catlike. There was no other way to describe it, no other simile that so perfectly described Anne Bonny in motion. Catlike. Mary did not think that Anne could make an awkward motion if she tried.

  The rough men’s clothes did not disguise her beauty, her perfect face, her thick reddish blond hair tumbling down her back, her lithe body. It was no wonder, Mary thought, that men had died for her. Mary knew that she would die for Anne as well, if it came to that.

  It is time to set this girl on the right path, Mary thought.

  Jack was lost to them; he would not come back. Mary had seen it before. There was only so much that a man could endure, even a brave man, which Jack was not. Like a sail, there was a limit to the pressure under which a man could hold together, and when that limit was exceeded, he blew apart. The encounter with the Guarda del Costa had been Jack’s fatal gust and it had torn him to ribbons.

  If Anne did not come to understand these things, then Jack would bring her down with him.

  Mary had held her tongue in this matter, recalling how little Anne appreciated her unsolicited advice. But time was short. I must speak to her, whether she wishes to hear it or no.

  Thus resolved, Mary hopped down from the bulwark and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, Anne cried, “Damn me!” and raced for the bow, her eyes fixed over the starboard side.

  “What, Annie? Whatever is it?”

  “Ship!” Anne cried, pointing toward the hulking Negril Point, and Mary followed her finger. A mile away, coming around the point, the bowsprit and headsails of a sloop, her canvas washed with orange in the setting sun.

  “Damn it!” Mary cried, and she felt a surge of panic, an unpleasant sensation. She raced aft, threw open the little doors to the scuttle. The noise of the frolicking men and the smell of rum and tobacco smoke swept over her.

  “Ship! A ship! Turn out! Turn out!” she cried, and her words managed to cut through the din and the noise fell off and the men came staggering up from below.

  Drinking was as much a part of the pirates’ life as ships and gunpowder. Mary had seen each of the Pretty Annes drunk before, she had been drunk herself with them, many times, but now they were more far gone than she had ever seen. The turtle fishermen were a rough lot, and Mary guessed there was some sense of pride and competition driving them all, to see who could consume the most rum and brandy. Mary had seen such things often enough in the company of men. It was not a lovely thing to look on.

  “There is a ship, standing in around Negril Point, and I think we might look to our guns,” Mary said.

  “Ah, damn them, damn their eyes!” roared Fetherston, tripping on a ringbolt and falling to the deck in a great flurry of coats and weapons.

  “Come then, let us clear away the guns!” Jack roared, infused with the courage he had found in his rum bottle. “Annie, Annie, fetch us up some powder, you little powder monkey!”

  The men fell clumsily on the guns and Mary opened up the powder chest and extracted a canvas cartridge since she could see that Anne, who did not appreciate Jack’s remarks, was not about to do so. She handed the gunpowder to Harwood, who stuffed it down the forwardmost gun, and fortunately no one asked for more, as she was not about to start handing out gunpowder in quantity to that crowd.

  The sloop had rounded the point by then, carried on the Trade Winds that were blocked from the Pretty Anne by the island, and was closing boldly, and Mary did not think that a hopeful sign.

  “Stand clear, stand clear!” Harwood yelled, and the men who were crowding the rail and shouting at the sloop moved out of the way of the gun. Harwood touched the match to the touch hole and the gun went off with a g
reat roar and the flames from the muzzle looked impressive indeed in the failing light.

  The echoes from the gun had not yet died away when the sloop put up her helm and tacked away, turning her stern to the pirate and beating back the way she had come. This brought a chorus of jeers and curses and threats from the drunken horde, who continued to shout until the sloop was lost from sight behind Negril Point.

  “Down below, lads, and back to it! Let us toast our bold victory!” Fetherston shouted, and once again the lot of them, pirates and turtlers, filed down below to continue with their grand frolic.

  Five minutes later it was quiet again on deck, and from below, the renewed sounds of the bacchanal, and it seemed to Mary as if the whole thing had never taken place—the sloop, the gun—as if it had all been a dream.

  I could wish for happier dreams, she thought as she resumed watching Anne and Anne resumed pacing, back and forth, her caged-tiger walk.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS FULL DARK, and the warmth was going out of the deck planks. Anne could feel the coolness of the wood, though her once delicate feet were now so calloused that she could easily climb barefoot up the thin, rough manila ratlines that ran like a rope ladder to the masthead.

  She paced, back and forth; she could not seem to stop herself. Sometimes she let her mind linger on the sensuous feeling of motion, of leg muscles rippling under her slop trousers, the tightness in her forearm as her hand gripped the hilt of her sword. Sometimes she let herself think on the beauty of the night, with the rising moon making blue shadows on the deck.

  Sometimes she spoke with Mary and tried to work up the courage to ask Mary for help. Tell me what to do, where we should go, do not let me make a fool of myself, she wanted to say, but she could not, not yet, not even to Mary.

  Then every few minutes she would go forward, climb up on the base of the bowsprit, strain to see past Negril Point, to see if there was an enemy coming in from the sea, some overwhelming force that would make all of her thoughts and worries of the future moot.