Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  A panting mass of men was charging to the opposite shore, hacking at the gnarled branches that blocked them and cursing at the sucking ground at their feet.

  Hog Island gave Providence its narrow harbour, the channel that stopped the men-of-war from coming close in. The channel had saved the pirates from many attempts to oust them and had allowed Charles Vane his avenue for escape a month before. Now it gave Devlin his as the day suddenly broke through the trees and he almost fell to his knees on the beach at the sight of the Shadow waiting in the cove.

  Anchored fore and aft, restless at her cables and bucking like a foal desperate for the field, she tugged at her lines as if chomping at the bit and pleased to see her master. Bill had plotted the hands to sail from the Delicia’s starbolin watch through the dark while it still covered them. She had sailed north-east, keeping three miles at least from the East Indiaman’s forty guns then turned and headed for Hog Island and the dawn. The Delicia was waking now, unaware that the pirate ship had crept past her in the night. Captain Gale was sitting in his nightshirt at his table sipping his first coffee of the morning.

  Dandon stumbled to Devlin’s side breathless from the run. Resting on his knees he gulped at the air and looked thankfully up at the black and red freeboard and the security of the three masts that promised strength and speed against anything that sailed to oppose them.

  He looked to his captain grinning at the sight of his frigate, high in the water, blistered by barnacles on her pale lower strakes. The smell of Dog Leg Harry’s peaberry coffee and egg-rice breakfast was already drawing them in: two boats lay on the shore waiting for them and cheers came from the deck as their brothers waved them on, hats tumbling and pistols firing into the sky.

  Bill brushed past Devlin and Devlin grabbed the Scotsman’s blue sleeve, turning to him.

  ‘Thanks, Bill,’ he said, acknowledging the slight blush above the beard and following the big man to the shore with Dandon, carrying the bamboo ransom, trailing behind.

  ‘Can we abandon this place, Patrick?’ Dandon panted, collapsing into the boat. ‘I have grown tired of the world of ordinary men.’

  ‘Aye. North to the lanes then to Peter Sam.’ Then he darkened at the remembrance of Ignatius and the promise of Valentim Mendes’s vengeance. At least the passage should be plain and smooth enough, if not the outcome. ‘At least we have beaten Teach to be sure. His face will be a picture when he finds it is us who has the letters.’

  Devlin permitted himself a smile.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Blackbeard brought down his scope and spat at the frigate toiling towards his wake.

  ‘Cap’n?’ Israel Hands followed his captain’s glare, anxious if not afraid, for such an expression did not bode well with the man beside him.

  ‘I reckon on that being the Milford. One of Rogers’ own. Over thirty guns against our ten.’ He raised the glass again. ‘She be heading for our stern but she be a third slower,’ he slammed the tube shut and spat again. ‘But that means we can’t make it to Providence. Not with him on our stern, Israel.’

  ‘We should never have abandoned the fleet and the Revenge, Cap’n. We’d have had a fighting chance then.’

  Teach reached down and lifted Israel like a pillow, his knees above the gunwale, Israel’s face wincing down at him, and Israel was not a small man.

  ‘I’m for the greater good, Israel! Eden wanted as few as possible to know about this cruise!’ He slung his quartermaster to the deck. ‘Question me, Israel, and the Devil will listen.’ He went back to his survey and spoke gruffly. ‘Get the plugs out of the guns and get me a speed: I want to know what an hour will do between me and this fool.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’ Israel scrambled to his bare feet and scuttled away but his footsteps halted with a skid at the cry from the topmast.

  ‘Sail! Sail! Deck there!’

  Blackbeard stomped to the shadow of the mainsail and called straight up the wood to the man’s feet. ‘Another one? Where away?’

  The man bent to the deck, hand cupped to his mouth. ‘Two points off head to starboard!’ He watched Teach almost leap to the starboard gunwale and arrow the scope over the water.

  A new sail. Bowsprit and jibs snaking out from the edges of North and Long Cays, then fully visible and showing her grey sails against the rising sun and the black and red paint of her freeboard. Another man-of-war, another frigate in the dawn, and Blackbeard the meat between the bread.

  ‘Who the devil?’ Teach counted the guns as his brain raced.

  Israel bounced to his side, squinting at the ship in full sail skating along the glass surface of the white water. He tapped his captain’s shoulder and pointed to the black flag at the bowsprit. ‘Friend, Cap’n! A pirate for us!’

  Teach strained his eye to the dancing cloth, expecting little. Vane he trusted, even liked. Hornigold, his former commander, had sold his soul and become hunter. These were dark days for pirate allies. The brethren of the coast had short memories in a world that no longer had need of them.

  The flag billowed and waned. Teach clenched his jaw as the calico skull showed itself in all its grinning glory.

  ‘A skull in a circle! A compass rose!’ He yelled the description to those behind him and bodies stepped forward, necks craning over the side, watching the three masts. ‘Two pistols crossed beneath the death’s head.’ He turned, momentarily taken aback at the size of the crowd. Then he scowled and demanded an answer. ‘Who knows it?’ he bellowed. ‘Who knows that flag? Speak up now!’

  Looks passed amongst the crew, then a few whispers, a few lowered heads. A bronzed hand waved above the crowd, from a broad Dutchman come aboard in Martinique almost a year ago.

  ‘This is the flag of the piraat Devlin, Kapitein.’ He bowed away as the black pistol eyes fired at him from the bulwark. His brothers nodded at the Dutchman respectfully, letting him shrink back into their midst.

  Israel Hands noticed the swelling of his captain’s chest, the beard rising above the brace of pistols strapped across him, and he watched as Teach reached inside his coat for the stump of a spermaceti candle – some significance unknown to Hands. The candle disappeared as quickly as it was revealed.

  ‘So, Devlin is it?’ Teach said. ‘The pirate Devlin.’ He raised his spyglass and turned back to the black frigate, and more to himself than to Israel he muttered under his breath. ‘All the Caribbean and he has come to me. Off the very island I sent Palgrave. Off the very island where the letters lie.’ He let down the scope. ‘She’s high in the water,’ he yelled. ‘She’ll be fast. And where do you think she’ll be heading, Mister Hands?’

  Israel fiddled with his shirt hem and looked between the black ship and the black face of his captain. ‘Maybe she be bound for the Americas, Cap’n. Maybe for Charles Town?’

  Teach slammed his quartermaster in the chest, sending him flying back along the deck. ‘Of course she’s going to Charles Town!’ He faced them all. ‘As will we, boys! Devlin has saved us the task of surprising Rogers!’ He pushed through them all, elbows out to scuff their brains as he yelled. ‘Port the helm! Stand to and ride her lee! But slowly now boys. Stays at her larboard quarter, I don’t want those guns to us. Stand to!’

  Those too quick to have their heads knocked were already climbing to the top- and foresail or slipping the halyards from the belaying pins to haul up the main to half-sail, speeding their turn to shadow the Shadow, whilst Teach held onto the foremast stays, leaning against the falling-off and watching his bowsprit begin to sweep across the Shadow’s quarters half a league away.

  A race now. A King’s ship behind and Devlin to starboard, but the Adventure fastest of all. Teach almost regretted not having the Queen Anne and her forty guns but abandoning her and the bulk of his men had been part of the plan to side with Governor Eden. All the same such an act did not sit well with the chosen men aboard the Adventure, and only the rum and Teach’s aptitude for swelling their account kept their heads bowed, their voices still. Now Devlin, his name
rolling around the Caribbean since the year past, another one of the few not to take the pardon, and aboard a twenty-six gun frigate to boot, was leaving Providence hours after Palgrave had gone ashore, with Ignatius sitting on his bony arse in Charles Town waiting for someone to bring him his letters.

  Teach rubbed the stump of the candle sitting in his vest against his chest and thought about a long year ago, on a hot evening in The Porker’s End on Providence, and of how he had backed down when the smirking upstart had stopped him killing the yellow-coated pox-doctor. And Seth Toombs’s old crew was now with the pirate Devlin …

  But he had taken the candle stump to measure the last hour of Devlin’s life when the time came for them to meet again. That prospect of burning away his final hour had now almost come to pass.

  The sails backed, the bowsprit rose, the sloop gained and a rare glow of joy came over Edward Teach that had nothing to do with the cap of the sun growing on the horizon.

  ‘Two ships upon us?’ Devlin came from the Great Cabin at Bill’s urgent call and stepped up to the quarterdeck. ‘Where away?’ but he had already seen the white sloop gleaming in the rising sun, perhaps fifteen cables behind.

  ‘That’s Blackbeard’s flag upon her,’ Bill pointed to the black square billowing off the forestay of the sloop. ‘He be after the letters you spoke of.’

  ‘Aye,’ Devlin said peacefully, as if the sight had been expected.

  In the half a glass it took them to sail away from Hog Island and out amongst the cays Devlin had enlightened Bill as to the man Ignatius, Valentim, and the letters that would free Peter Sam.

  Bill listened as Devlin changed, ate, loaded two fresh pistols to replace his left-locked one and grew taller before his eyes with a strange blend of anger and anticipation which, by the end of the tale, made Bill feel he had known Devlin all his life; his joys, his woes, forever mixed.

  Bill looked beyond the sloop to the square sails and yards of the man-of-war, still emerging out of the dawn mist like a phantom. ‘That I know is the Milford,’ he said. ‘I plotted her thus.’ He began the slow loading of his first and best pipe of the day before speaking again to Devlin, standing silently beside him. ‘Cap’n Coxon be her master.’

  ‘I know. He’s got my pistol. Has buried what’s left of our coin. Teach will be heading to Charles Town. Coxon will be at us.’

  Bill shielded his eyes and watched the two ships. ‘We could destroy Teach with our girl. But heading him off will bring Coxon to us all the quicker. To the maps, Cap’n, I say.’

  Devlin agreed. ‘I’m going up,’ he looked up at the mainmast. ‘I need to see my world.’

  He stepped up to the gunwale and mounted the shrouds to ascend the mast, Bill watched him climb and others scattered around the deck followed their captain’s walk to the lubber-hole circling the mainmast amongst the tops.

  Across the waves the second cry to the deck from eighty feet above had shocked even Coxon. He looked up to the arm pointing over the bow and the man’s speaking trumpet echoed down again. ‘Ho yo! Deck there! Another pirate! Three masts! Pirate two points off the head!’

  Rosher went for the scope sat in its becket beside the binnacle but stopped when he saw Coxon speed from the deck to the mainmast and heard him call to the man aloft to describe the flag. Coxon, not waiting for the reply, had grabbed for the larboard shrouds and hauled himself up the rigging.

  It had been a long time since John Coxon had taken the walk and his thighs burned after the first five steps while the sounds of the deck began to be whittled away by the wind about his head. The ghostly voice of the man at the maintop was more normal now as Coxon made the first forty feet and closed upon his loft.

  ‘I make it a skull in a circle, Cap’n!’ he yelled down from the topmast shrouds above the platform where he had moved to give his captain more room. ‘Crossed pistols underneath I believes.’

  Coxon shouted back. ‘It’s a compass not a circle!’ The Milford rolled to leeward as the tide fell back against her and Coxon gripped the uprights as the sea appeared beneath his heels from below, the deck gone and his whole body leaning over the water for a moment before she rolled back and the small men below came back into view.

  His hands, now pale and tight, carefully moved higher again another five times, knee to elbow, knee to elbow, over the ratlines until the mast and the hole around it were beside his face and the sailor pulled him up to his cramped loft.

  ‘I reckon you be right, Cap’n,’ the man saluted, shouting above the whistling of the wind all around them. ‘A skull in a compass rose so it is.’

  Coxon thanked him for his hand and took the spyglass from him. He had to see for himself, so brushed past the fellow and put the hard vellum tube to his eye. The world swam before him for a moment, sky, sea and horizon all blurring together, then the picture cleared as if standing back from a painting and the black and red ship bucked before him; an inch to his left and there was the mocking cloth for an instant and then gone as the mainsail powered into view and then the mast and top, and a dark figure hanging off the futtocks just below it.

  Coxon stiffened as a figure pulled himself to the top and stared back, only without a scope. Just the outline of a man leaning on the platform and staring back at him through the wind and the canvas. His eyes followed the ship, unable to look away from the dark figure.

  Him. Coxon’s thoughts howled within him as much as the wind beating on his eardrums, and he could feel the same word echoing back from the black ship. Him.

  They had fought once, on The Island. Cutlass steel and a pistol shot to Coxon’s arm whilst their ships had fought without them. Devlin had won the day. His damned grin belittling all of Coxon’s experience. But this now was wood and iron, sail and wind – Coxon’s world for two decades.

  Not this time, he thought as he ground his teeth under the spyglass: Not this time. Both of us are now upon the sea, not in some landlocked stockade where you commanded and connived like a fox but the sea. My sea.

  Not this time, Patrick. Not this time.

  ‘Full sail!’ he shouted below. He pushed away the speaking trumpet offered. ‘To him!’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Waiting

  A basement for Peter Sam, drier than the cell in Madagascar but sharing a similar narrow grating of light from the street above, and him wearing the same filthy smock rag on his back.

  There had been the weeks in the hold of the sloop, the comforting sounds of working men above his head, then the night passage to the tunnel, the drawing room of a wealthy man, Valentim Mendes somewhere, then the two weeks of this cell of straw and hard mud.

  He had glimpsed the sun briefly in Madagascar during the journey from the harbour to the sloop, but other than that he had only seen its short sweep along the floor as it crept through the afternoon. He would roll into its rays, basking on his floor like a turtle, relishing the burn of it upon his closed eyelids, and fearing its withdrawal which would signal the approach of the Scotsman; all the time the Scotsman, and the loathsome wait for food tainted with a beating if the mood came upon him. It had now become normal to measure happiness, even affection, by the absence of pain and degradation. Guilt with it. Gratitude without.

  The door at the top of the wooden stairs crashed open. Peter scrabbled at the sunlit straw, its warmth proving, assuring him, that the door opened too early, that someone had made a mistake, and he shrank from the sun and to his corner to panic about whatever it was he had done.

  With a drawn-out step the Scotsman’s buskins descended and met the straw. He threw a small smirk at the cowering bulk in the corner, then came a toss of the arm and a slap on the floor and Peter’s old leather jerkin and breeches had landed at his feet.

  Tentatively Peter poked a foot at the leather bundle, felt its familiarity but still sat frozen, wondering what he had done, what punishment the leather package signified. The Scotsman chuckled and moved closer.

  ‘Them is your old clothes, Peter, my boy.’ And he laughed again as P
eter shook his head. ‘You’re to put them on.’ He knelt, lowering his voice as he drew level with Peter’s eyes, shielded by his hugging forearms. ‘Time’s almost up. Been nigh on two weeks now, my boy. Time for us to have our revenge on that old captain of yours. If he’s coming.’ Hib Gow stood up to his full height, hair brushing the beams as he began to pace and wring his hands.

  ‘The things that captain of yours has forced me to do. Forced me to do for money to feed meself. And me an honest working man, Peter. The torments we have endured together for his vanity. The vanity of all men with power against us common hands.’ He dropped to his knees again, a moistness around his eyes – eyes shrunk like a pig’s against the broken and twisted horn of a nose. ‘But soon it will end for both of us, Peter Sam. Soon, just a few more days, I’ll make sure you get some meat and rum, and we’ll both be free.’

  Peter crept forward and ran a hand over his leather jerkin, fingering stitches of whale gut he had sewn himself, pockets where scrimshaw pipes and spare flints had nestled, and his sewing palm and whistle. All gone now, but the stitches were his. Startling Hib, he pulled it lovingly towards his face and breathed in the sea, the pitch and the smoke and with its aroma something flitted about his eyes that unsettled the Scotsman.

  Perhaps it was too early to give him his old clothes back, but Ignatius had insisted, in order to make him appear normal for the men that came for him. They were to provoke no more ill feeling than was warranted. Sam had been fed three meals a day for the last fortnight, albeit rice and cabbage, with a little pork fat for supper. But Hib disliked the eyes. His head swivelled around the basement. A bald path through the straw from one wall to the other. A round patch where Peter Sam basked and maybe exercised some? Sunlight gave hope. Certainly, as Peter stripped off the smock, Hib noticed the return of shadowy muscle around the arms and chest where once was flaccid yellow flesh that had taken weeks to cultivate. Hib rolled his own muscles beneath his shirt and sniffed as Peter held out his arms to him to remove the chains from his wrists so he could put on his clothes.