The Pyrates

by George MacDonald Fraser

  No wonder Avery wears an expression of smug nobility, a pleased smile touching his chiselled lips, hand elegantly rested on placid rapier-hilt; even his ruffles stir complacently in the night breeze.

  “I tell thee what, Colonel,” he observes contentedly, “I'm feeling not bad. Who says all doth not come up roses? Here's mission accomplished, duty done, honour restored, sweet Vanity to be claimed presently, young Meliflua delivered, Lardo clobbered (pity I didn't fix his waggon personally, but you seem to have done a competent job), Spanish devilry foiled, our settlements saved, the Coast Brethren under wraps, and a golden future ahead. I wish I knew where that blighter Mackintosh-Groonbaum has got to,” he added, frowning. Little does he guess. “But that's a trifle, and shall not mar my merited satisfaction.”

  “Hip-hoo-bloody-ray,” grunted moody Tom. “Fine for some – what's in it for me, after all I've been through, eh? Who saved Meliflua, slipped it to Lardo, and looked after your hoity-toity piece, will ye tell me? But you finish up wi' the girl, the credit – an' the profit, devil a doubt! Great! Congratulations!”

  “Little beef hast thou!” retorted Avery warmly. “After the way you've carried on – renegading, chickening out, betraying, making passes, and generally behaving like rascal stinkard. All right, ye ha' done some service -reluctantly – but let me point out that as anti-hero you ought by rights to be stiff and stark at this stage of the story—”

  “Burn your impudence!” cried indignant Tom. “Who says so?”

  “You know perfectly well,” said Avery coldly, “that you should ha' perished in the final assault, making proper amends for sundry villainies. Struck down by a chance shot, say, or stabbed in the back by someone like Sheba in a fit of passion – by the way, I haven't seen her since we landed, have you?”

  “No, an' it can stay that way!”

  “Odd, that,” frowned Avery. “I'd have thought she and the other pirate rogues would have been sidling up by now, knuckling their foreheads and reminding me about their pardons. However … yes, Blood, by all the canons you should have bought your deserved lot, and died in my arms, making repentance in tones right piteous, smiling last rueful smile and begging me to take the news to your dear old mother in Wicklow—”

  “Galway, rot ye!”

  “Naturally, I'd have forgiven you, and said I could ha' spared a better man – although I can't think of one offhand – and doubtless ere Vanity and I walked off into the sunset she'd have been soft enough to drop something on your grave – a glove, an old hair-grip, a tear, even. As it is,” said Avery censoriously, “since you hadn't the decency to die in character, here you are, all in one inconvenient piece, and we'll just have to make the best of it, I suppose—”

  “Right, that did it!” roared Blood, and yanked out his sword in a fury. “I've just about had it up to here wi' you, Captain Benjamin Smartass – aye, wi' you and your six foot two of nose-in-the-air park-saunterin' blow-waved ruffle-shirted public-school poncin' airs an' graces! I should ha' blitzed you on the Twelve Apostles or on Dead Man's Chest when I was sentimental mug enough to take pity on your Dartmouth College ignorance, so I was! So I should ha' died, eh? Right, me bucko, here's your chance! Pluck out your iron!”

  “Frenzy,” snapped Avery. “Rhodomontade. Middle-aged spread.”

  “Oh, I'll give you middle age – permanent! On guard, ye great long streak o' wind an' water!” He flourished furiously.

  “Oh, calm down! And be careful with that thing—”

  “Nervous, are ye? Here's the cure, then! Draw, ye gallery-playin' jackanapes – or d'ye need a female audience to show off to? Is that it?” sneered the raging Colonel.

  “Show off?” cried Avery, stung. “Nay, now you've gone too far! On your head be it, then!” And he whipped out his rapier, meeting Blood's lunge. The blades clanged – is this where Blood finishes up à la Rathbone, you ask, with the surf washing through his curls? Not a bit – a few passes and Avery had jumped back, lowering his point in angry disdain.

  “Oh, pack it up!” quo' he. “This is just too silly for words. I can't fight you … not after … not at this stage of the game …”

  “Oho!” crowed Blood. “An' why not, ha? Pangs o' conscience, is that it? Because ye know ye'd never ha' got this far wi' out me? Hey?”

  “Nothing of the sort! It's just that… well, for one thing, suppose there was a sequel, you'd have to be in it, wouldn't you? And what the blazes do you want – can't you see we're busy?”

  This last was addressed to a small fat figure in prisoner-of-war garb who had come scampering down the beach, and was now cringing obsequiously at Avery's elbow. It was Enchillada, doing a Uriah Heep. Avery glared sternly.

  “You're Spanish – why aren't you in prison?”, he demanded, and the oily chamberlain fawned nervously.

  “Pliz, excellent 'ereteec señor! I got parole, honest! Thee beeg pirate in thee white threads, 'e geev me thees -' he held out a sealed note “ – an' say I mus' breeng eet to you, at moonrise, not beefore.” As Avery took the paper, puzzled, Enchillada scuttled away, and Blood, curiosity getting the better of his recent anger, came forward for a peek.

  “From Rackham?” frowned Avery. “Nay, what should this be?”

  “Probably a loyal address to the hero o' the hour,” said Blood sarcastically. “Or a whip-round to send Firebeard to university. What's it say?”

  Avery broke the seal, turned the paper to the moonlight, and read aloud the following:

  To Cap. Ben Everie, R.N., wi' all despatch. Honnered Sir (and Camarado).

  Wee want noe Pardones, nor ever dyd. Wee sayled wi' you for oure owne purposes onlie – viz., that in takyng Octipusse Roacke and o'erthrowing the Dons, soe we myght cum to possession of Lardo his Greate Treasure, the whych was Pyrate Monies i' the first place, soe are wee entytled.

  Thynke itt not amiss that wee looke to oure owne Profitt and trust nott to th'Admiral's bounty to rewarde us fyttyngly. Heard ye ever o' Ben Gunn, that was wi' Flint and John Silver and Billie Boanes and Hands and Merry and others o' the pyrate brig Walrus, that buried a greate bootie on a Certaine Island? Whereto in later yeeres came sundrie Gentlefolk, and digged upp the bootie, whych was nott theirs, surelie. Yett they enjoyed itt, and hadde rich use of itt, whiles Silver and his felloes (that had beene at the Paines of earning itt) got Naught, sayving a pittance to poore Ben Gunn that the Gentries gayve him as 'twere a Dole or Charitty. Now was this just, think ye? But 'tis ever the waye.

  Soe wee thynk to Mend our owne Fortunes as chance serves, nor trust to noe Pardones. And if ye looke presentlie o'er the loom o' the land, shalt see us at oure sayling. Come nott agaynst us, King's man, for wee goe south o' the setting sun to those other islands farther on, but gette ye to youre Ladie, and to that Fayme and Fortune whych wee doubt not ye shall fynde.

  Adios, camarado, and when the sun is over the foreyard – forget nott thy foes.

  Sygned this night, wi' all good fellowship an' be damned. Jno. Rackam. Jas Bylboe the Blacke. Fyrebeard, hys mark. Le Chevalier H.D. Pew. And the companie. Post-scriptum – wee clayme the Pardone for oure Camarado Sheeba, that sayles nott with us, having some enterpryze of her owne.

  A strange keening noise like a deflating football issued from Captain Avery. He stared at the missive, at Blood, and finally up towards the sea-gate, where the buccaneers had been singing round their fires. The fires still twinkled in the dusk, but all was silent, save for the Spanish prisoners snoring and champing in their lockups. Avery clutched his head.

  “The bounders!” he cried. “Oh, the ingrate, forsworn rotters! After all I've done for them! Why, dash it, Blood, they're just a gang of thieving pirates – that's two million quids' worth of government prize money they're pinching, not just any old loot! Well, they're not getting away with it – come on!”

  He legged it along the beach and up on to a small headland where he could look clear across the harbour to the open sea beyond, and as he gazed, with Blood panting at his elbow, out from the lee of grim Octopus Rock a t
all ship was gliding over the moonlit water, with creak of cordage and distant sound of triumphant revelry – hang it, he could even hear Firebeard blundering about roaring “Har-Har!”, and Goliath's shrill piping voice, and a babble of French irregular verbs, and Solomon Shafto gibbering crazily o' dripping unlimited, and on the poop, unless his straining eyes deceived him, an elegant black-coated figure, d'ye see, and another massive in calico white. And as the vessel heeled under the night wind that filled her sails, the tumult and cheering were blending into such a song as the Brotherhood sang when they went down to the sea – a sinful, ranting chorus, by the powers, all about dollars spinning, and drinking at an inn, and dying in their boots like old bold mates o' Harry Morgan, and laying 'em board and board, and swimming in rum to Kingdom Come; a godforsaken wanton singing, and ye may lay to that.

  “'Tis the Santa Umbriago right enough!” cried Blood. “Don Lardo's great treasure ship – wi' a fortune in her hold.”

  “Those blighters,” quo' Avery, gritting from incisors to molars, “will be singing another tune presently, and it won't be ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’, I warrant ye. Run out on me and a royal pardon, will they? We'll see about that! What, shall I not hunt them down, where-soe'er they venture, and bring all to book, and chance it—” He was interrupted by a hand laid on his arm.

  “Easy, boy,” said Colonel Blood. “Prithee hold on but a moment. Ye'll mind,” said he weightily, “that on Dead Man's Chest I said I'd stand by ye an' see ye through the wickedness o' the world, wi' sound advice and good counsel?”

  “Ha! We know what came o' that! First crack out of the box you were chummying up to my betrothed and oozing off with Akbar's cross and—”

  “Tut-tut,” reproved Blood. “Mere trifles – this is your Uncle Tom talking, for your own good, and I'm tellin' you—” he nodded in the direction of the treasure ship, standing out now to the open sea. “Let 'em be. Forget it. Not because 'twould be perilous pursuit, or revenge too dearly bought, but just for your own peace o' mind hereafter. Never mind what we were debatin' a minute since, whether I'd been of service to ye or not; that's no matter. But ask yourself,” and he looked our hero in the eye, “where would ye ha' been without them?” He nodded again towards the Santa Umbriago. “Not on Octopus Rock, and all well.”

  Avery blinked, and a thoughtful frown crossed his handsome features. Conflicting emotions traded punches in his finely-tuned brain. He glanced at the distant ship, and gave a sharp intake of breath as a faint “Har-har!” floated across the water. He sighed heavily – but what he would have said we'll never know, for at that moment a silvery soprano was calling his name, and he was wheeling round like a pointing gun-dog to gaze enraptured towards the castle.

  There she was, framed in the gateway, a shining vision in cloth of silver, blonde hair elegantly shampooed and set – she'd had all day to get glamoured up, and had made the most of it. Now, as her sparkling eyes discerned the distant figure of her lover, her voice tinkled again like a crystal chandelier in a high wind.

  “Ben! Ah, Ben, darling! Where on earth have you been? See, 'tis I – thy Vanity!”

  “Vanity!” Avery's ecstatic baritone quivered with longing. “My own! Hang on, beloved, I'll be right—”

  “Capeetan Ben! Ah, eet ees yoo indeed! Ah, caro mio, eet ees I, Meleeflooa! You 'ave com' back for mee!”

  Avery, on his mark and about to bound towards the castle gate, checked as though hit by three wing forwards. From a sally port in the castle wall, hidden from Vanity, a small and dainty figure was tripping down a flight of stone steps, waving as she came. Even at that distance he could see the love-light suffusing the face of the beauteous little hidalga. But there was more to come.

  “Barracuda!” The throaty, exultant contralto throbbed through the tropic evening, and he turned in disbelief to see a magnificent figure in a leopard-skin track suit sashaying across the rocks. (Sheba always kept a spare leopard-skin track suit in the secret passage, for just such emergencies as this.) Beneath her plumed picture hat he could see the brilliant gleam of teeth as she strode towards the little hill on which he stood. “Barracuda – at last!”

  Captain Avery did a stricken triple-take of the gorgeous trio advancing on him from different directions. By his calculation, if he stood rooted (which seemed likely) they ought to arrive simultaneously, in approximately sixty seconds. Hero that he was, his classic features went distinctly pale.

  “Oh, lor'!” he said.

  “As ye said yourself,” murmured Blood sardonically, “some fellows ha' it; some ha'nt. An' the best o' British, brother!”

  “Blood!” Avery seized his arm. “Tom – don't go! I need thy sound advice and good counsel! What am I going to do? I mean … most embarrassing – what'll I say? You're a man o' the world, Tom old chap – couldn't you take at least one of them off my hands, dash it all? Not Vanity, obviously, but …”

  “The trouble is,” said Blood apologetically, “I don't speak Spanish all that well – and as for Black Beauty …” He shivered. “Besides, I've had this fancy to slip down to Roatan an' pay me respects to Mistress Bonney – more my style, d'ye see?” He patted the distraught captain on the shoulder. “Sorry, ould joy, but ye're on your own this time. Tom Blood bids ye good luck an' good-bye.”

  “Recreant!” cried Avery. “Ha, false to the last!” He braced himself, took a deep breath, and turned with dauntless bearing to meet them, arms outspread to Vanity, a glad smile on his lips. Perhaps if he pretended the other two weren't there …

  Colonel Blood walked down the hill towards the beach, whistling softly to himself. One backward glance he took, as the sound of female voices carried down to him, and then he was striding across the sands, and far out on the shining sea the tall ship was standing away down the moon's track with all her canvas spread, and very faintly across the water he could hear the pirates singing.

  Farewell and adieu to you

  Fine Spanish ladies,

  Farewell and adieu to you

  Ladies of Spain …

  And for all I know, they may be singing still.

  AFTERTHOUGHT

  lert readers may have noticed that in THE PYRATES occasional liberties have been taken with history, geography, seamanship, haute couture, French, archaeology, and even logistics – try sailing a small boat from Madagascar to the Isle of Aves and back, and see how long it takes. For this no apology is offered; you were warned on page 5. But where real historical figures have been press-ganged into the story, and used without scruple as the author thought fit, it seems only fair, now that it's all over, to set down the brief truth about them. Not the great names, like Charles II and Mr Pepys (although it should be noted that the Duke of York, later James II, and Paterson the blacksmith did represent Scotland at golf against two gentlemen of England – and won), but those lesser-known folk whose names have receded into the shadows of history.

  For example, there was a real Long Ben Avery (or Every, or Everie, and his Christian name may have been Ben or John or Henry), who came from Plymouth and is said to have been a naval officer before leading a mutiny and turning pirate in the 1690s. He was nothing like as splendid as our Ben, and probably not even mildly heroic, but he was the most celebrated sea-rover of his day, the subject of a play and a novel and countless broadsheets. For Long Ben Avery, now forgotten, set a world record which has never been broken: he committed the richest single crime in history. This was the seizure of the Great Mogul's treasure ship (and according to romantic tradition, of the Mogul's beautiful daughter -shades of Donna Meliflua), and since this one prize was worth close to half a million sterling of his day, it ranks far ahead of such petty larcenies as the so-called Great Train Robbery, the Brinks armoured car job, and even the recent Conduit Street gem theft (which involved, curiously enough, some Mogul jewellery).

  This spectacular coup won Avery a fame far greater even than that of his notorious contemporary, the unfortunate Kidd (who was not much of a pirate, really), but he got little good out of it. The s
tory runs that he was cheated of his spoil by Bristol merchants and died impoverished, like Israel Hands, that other real pirate whom R. L. Stevenson plucked from Blackbeard's crew and immortalised. Avery is said to be buried at Bideford; a hero he may not have been, but he provided a splendidly romantic name which it would have been a pity to neglect.

  The same is true of John Rackham (d. 1717) a fairly small-time sea-thief of the New Providence fraternity, whose nickname Calico Jack is pure deep-sea poetry, and entirely fitting for a pirate whose history was bizarre even by filibuster standards. It was his misfortune to fall in love with Anne Bonney, the illegitimate daughter of an Irish attorney; Rackham took her to sea disguised as a man, no doubt to avoid any objections from his followers, but unfortunately the lady was of a wanton disposition, and made advances to a handsome young member of the pirate crew – who proved to be another disguised female, Mary Read, former trooper in the British Army and lately landlady of the Three Horseshoes inn at Breda in Holland. She, in turn, had fixed her affections on a (presumably) male pirate in Rackham's following, and even fought a hand-to-hand duel on his behalf, killing her opponent.

  At about this time Rackham took to drink, which is hardly surprising, and when the pirate ship was finally cornered by a King's vessel, he and his fellows shirked the action, leaving the Mesdames Bonney and Read to put up a spirited fight alone. Taken to trial in Jamaica, Anne and Mary escaped the gallows by pleading pregnancy, and although Mary subsequently died of gaol fever, Anne appears to have been eventually reprieved. Rackham was hanged on Gallows Point, Port Royal.