“It’s just a plantation. More hard work, more following orders. But nobody’s firing cannonballs at you.”
“Reckon it’s got that to recommend it,” Preacher said dryly. He was getting drowsy as the pain in his back eased, the sun baked him, and the hardships of the day took their toll. He didn’t want to doze off just yet, though. He asked Tyler, “Are there more fellas in the crew who feel like you do, who don’t much cotton to bein’ here?”
“Sure. The cap’n . . . well, he’s a pretty hard taskmaster. And don’t tell anybody I said this . . .” Tyler lowered his voice even more. “He laughs and jokes all the time, but he’s got a real mean streak. Most of us are a little afraid of him. Maybe more than a little. But you didn’t hear that from me.”
“I sure didn’t,” Preacher agreed. He was very interested in everything Tyler had to say, though. From the sound of it, the seeds of a mutiny had already been sown. All he had to do was nurture them.
* * *
Preacher slept right there on the deck that night, and his slumber was very restless. Every time he moved a little, fresh bursts of pain shot through him. He was exhausted, too, and that helped to a certain extent in overcoming the discomfort.
Tyler brought him coffee, a chunk of bread, and a piece of salt pork for breakfast the next morning. Preacher sat up and ate. Moving still hurt, but the bloody stripes across his back had crusted over and as long as he was careful, the pain wasn’t too bad. The food and coffee made him feel better, too.
He was just finishing up the meal when Jabez Sampson came over. Tyler scurried off when the captain gave him a hard look.
Sampson put his hands on his hips and stared down at Preacher. “Are ye ready to get back to work?”
“Holystonin’ the deck? That ain’t my kind of chore.”
“And what did that attitude gain ye yesterday, my proud lad? Have ye already forgotten?”
“Not hardly,” Preacher said.
The look he gave Sampson made the captain frown and take a step back as if he’d realized that he had just stepped up to a grizzly bear and poked it with a sharp stick.
Sampson recovered quickly, though “I think your talents would be goin’ to waste wieldin’ a holystone. Maybe ye’d be better off as a rigger.” He pointed up into the sails with a thumb.
Preacher thought about words he had overheard the sailors calling to each other and said, “I don’t know a jib from a mizzen or any other blasted thing about sailin’. I can’t very well follow orders if I don’t have any idea what it is you’re yellin’ at me.”
“Ye don’t have to know anything except to climb the riggin’, hold on, and pull on the ropes that another rigger tells ye to pull on. Steady on your feet, are ye?”
“Tolerable so,” Preacher replied.
“Then head on up.” Sampson looked at Tyler, who had stopped a few yards away and was hanging around with an uncomfortable look on his freckled face. “Ye go up with him, boy. You’re still responsible for him.”
“That ain’t fair to the boy. I don’t want him punished because of me not knowin’ what I’m doin’.”
“Then listen close to the other riggers and pay attention to what they’re doin’.” Sampson jerked his thumb toward the sails again. “Up ye go!”
Preacher climbed to his feet and pulled on the linsey-woolsey shirt Tyler had brought him. The young man looked apprehensive about what was facing them, but he wasn’t about to argue with the captain. He told Preacher, “Follow me,” and led the way over to the mast, where he told the mountain man, “You’d better take off those boots. You’ll do better with bare feet.”
Preacher leaned against the mast to remove the high-topped moccasins he always wore with his buckskins. He had gone barefoot enough as a youngster that the soles of his feet were permanently callused. The mast had pegs driven into it that served as hand-and foot-holds.
“You’ve worked in the riggin’ before?” Preacher asked.
“Yes,” Tyler replied, “and I don’t like it. It’s the most dangerous job on the ship. But if you’re careful and don’t move too quickly, you should be all right.” He pointed to a man strolling back and forth on the deck and looking up into the sails. “That’s the sailing master, Mr. Holland. He tells the riggers how to adjust the sails. Just listen to him. Well, listen to me, I suppose I should say. I’ll tell you what he’s talking about. Watch what I do and try to do the same.”
“You’d better be careful up there, too. You fall, and I’ll be plumb lost up yonder.”
“We’ll both be careful,” Tyler said.
He began climbing the mast to join the other riggers already aloft. Preacher watched how he did it and followed his example. The climbing itself wasn’t difficult, although every time he reached above his head for a new grip, his back twinged. The wind seemed to blow harder the higher he climbed, although he knew that might be his imagination.
Above the deck, though, it smelled fresher, and when he looked around, he got a real sense of the immensity of the sea. He was accustomed to being able to gaze across vast distances from the mountains that had become his home. That perspective always made him aware of just how puny humankind was, compared to the world on which they dwelled. The sensation up in the rigging was much the same, although the view was more monotonous. Just mile after endless mile of restless blue-green water under a sweeping blue sky broken up here and there by towering white clouds.
Some fellas were natural sailors, Preacher supposed, and responded to such sights. He was impressed by the vista—but the sea wasn’t his home and never would be.
“We’re high enough,” Tyler called to him over the soughing of the wind. “See those ropes running out from the mast to your right?”
“Yeah.”
“Hold on to the top one and put your feet on the bottom one and work your way out along them. Keep your body as straight as you can so the rope you’re standing on won’t swing back and forth and unbalance you.”
Preacher took a deep breath, shifted one hand and foot onto the ropes, then the other hand and foot. Those ropes, narrow lifelines that they were, along with his own strength, were all that separated him from a likely fatal plunge to the deck.
Suddenly, facing a horde of bloodthirsty Blackfoot warriors didn’t sound quite so bad.
CHAPTER 29
That morning was one of the longest of Preacher’s life. By the time he and Tyler climbed back down at midday, Preacher’s muscles were trembling from the exertion of holding himself aloft in the rigging and hauling on other lines to adjust the sails. The swaying, bobbing deck felt as good under his feet as solid ground would have.
The good news was that while the wounds on his back had seeped enough blood to stick to the shirt in places, he no longer felt much pain from the results of the flogging. His iron constitution was already working its usual wonders.
The sea air, always on the move, had swept the last of the cobwebs from his brain, too. He was able to think a lot more clearly—and that meant beginning to make plans for turning the tables on his captors.
A cup of water and another chunk of bread formed their midday meal.
As they sat cross-legged on the deck to eat, Tyler said, “Tonight there’ll be lemons and oranges to ward off scurvy, beans and salt jowl, and a bit of rum. Better than what you can scrounge from the alleys of New Orleans, like I told you.”
“Not as good as pan bread and an antelope steak seared over an open fire in the mountains, though,” Preacher said.
Tyler shook his head. “I’ve never seen a mountain, except on some of the islands we’ve come across, and they’re not really that big. I can’t imagine an entire range of them stretching for hundreds of miles, like I’ve heard they have out on the frontier.”
“More like thousands of miles, from up in Canada clear down across the border into Mexico.” Preacher smiled. “And I’ve trekked over most of ’em at one time or another.”
“Isn’t it frightening, being out there all by yourself wh
en you’re surrounded by wild animals and bloodthirsty savages?”
“After climbin’ around up there in that riggin’, the frontier don’t seem so bad.” Preacher looked pointedly toward the rear deck where Captain Sampson stood with Abner Rowland. “Besides, I reckon the sea’s got its share of wild animals and bloodthirsty savages, too.”
“Well, I can’t argue with you there,” Tyler muttered. After a moment, he went on wistfully. “I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing the frontier one of these days. Who knows? I might discover that I like it.”
“You might,” Preacher said. “Maybe if things work out right, I’ll take you along with me sometime.”
The young man gave him a pitying look. “I’m not sure that’ll ever be possible. I think you’re supposed to stay on the plantation from now on.”
“I ain’t never been good at doin’ what I’m supposed to. Of course, that gets me into a mite of trouble sometimes.”
Abner Rowland came along the deck then and said, “You’re finished eatin’. Get back up there, you monkeys.”
“Aye, sir,” Tyler answered without looking at the tattooed man. The youngster scrambled to his feet and took his empty tin cup back to the water barrel. Preacher stood up more deliberately and gazed coolly and defiantly at Rowland.
“You and me ain’t done, are we?” Rowland said.
“Most likely not, I reckon,” Preacher said as he straightened to his full height.
An ugly grin spread across Rowland’s face. “Next time, I’ll use that cat-o’-nine-tails to flay every inch of skin off of you.”
“It’s a lot easier when the man you’re dealin’ with is tied up and can’t fight back, ain’t it? That’s the coward’s way.”
Rowland clenched his fists and took a step toward Preacher as he scowled. “You’ll pay for that, you—”
“Preacher!” Jabez Sampson called from the rear deck. “Get back up in the riggin’! Now!”
“Reckon I’d best get to work,” Preacher drawled. He swung around, turning his back contemptuously on Rowland, and ambled toward the mast to join Tyler in the rigging. He felt Rowland’s hate-filled gaze boring into his back, but the tattooed man didn’t say anything else.
Preacher felt a little more comfortable working with the sails that afternoon, but he still didn’t like it, not one bit. He was glad when the long, grueling day was over. After supper—which wasn’t bad, as Tyler had promised—he stretched out again on the deck and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The next day was more of the same. The boredom and strain of the work was relieved only by the brief sight of a few small islands to the south.
“We should be off Cuba by tomorrow night,” Tyler told him.
“Will we be stoppin’ there?” Preacher asked.
“I don’t know. From the way the cap’n was talking, we’re supposed to head straight for San Patricio. We’ll probably put in at Havana on our way back to New Orleans and take on some cargo then. But you won’t be—”
The youngster stopped short, and Preacher realized Tyler had been about to say that he wouldn’t be on the Calypso by then. He would be enduring his brutal exile on San Patricio.
They’d just see about that.
In the middle of Preacher’s second afternoon aloft, the clouds began to thicken. A dark line appeared on the horizon to the southeast.
Tyler paused in what he was doing to peer toward it and muttered, “I don’t like the looks of that.”
Preacher heard his comment and asked, “Is that a storm of some sort?”
“Probably just a little squall, but some of them can get pretty bad.” Tyler looked around. “There are no islands close by, no cove where Cap’n Sampson could put in for shelter. We’ll have to ride it out.”
“Have you been through storms before out here?”
“I have. I don’t like them.”
The wind began to swing around, and the sails had to be adjusted so the ship could tack and continue to make headway. The onrushing clouds seemed to swallow the blue sky like a hungry beast. They thickened and darkened, and Preacher saw skeleton fingers of lightning clawing through them.
“Haul in!” the sailing master, Holland, called from below. The riggers began furling the sails so they wouldn’t be damaged by the strong winds that were undoubtedly headed their way. Crewmen inserted oars in the oarlocks and settled in to keep the vessel moving. It was slow going. They had to strain against the wind and waves.
Preacher leaned one way and then the other as the ship swayed in the growing waves. He almost slipped a couple of times but managed to hang on. His heart pounded. If he ever made it back to dry land, it would be just fine with him if he never set foot on a ship again.
Then he realized that sentiment wasn’t correct. Sooner or later, a ship would be required to take him back to New Orleans to finish the chore that had taken him there.
“We’re finished!” Tyler called to him over the wind, which was fairly howling. “Let’s get down from here!”
They worked their way back to the mast and began to descend with the other riggers. Preacher was glad to drop the last couple of feet to the deck. Tyler landed beside him.
The waves were high, and spray came over the sides.
Preacher felt it against his face and asked Tyler, “What do we do now?”
“Find something to hang on to!”
The blue sky had disappeared completely. The heavens were a mixture of black and leaden gray. The clouds looked to Preacher like giant fangs ready to reach down, snatch up the suddenly flimsy-seeming sloop, and chomp it to bits, along with every poor, luckless sailor on it.
“Is this one of them hurricanes I’ve heard about?”
Tyler shook his head. “No, this is just a little blow.”
With no warning, the sea seemed to drop out from under the Calypso. The ship’s bow tilted down and she dropped for a couple of seconds that seemed longer. Then with a bone-jarring jolt, the ship struck the bottom of the trough between waves that had climbed to what seemed to Preacher to be towering heights. With nothing to grab hold of on the open deck, the men lined the rails and clung to them. Preacher and Tyler took their places.
Preacher looked aft and saw Jabez Sampson still on the elevated deck. He had the tiller, although trying to steer the ship in the wild seas seemed a hopeless task.
If this was just a little blow, Preacher thought, he didn’t want to experience a big one.
So far the storm had been just wind and waves, but then the rain struck, huge, slashing drops that pelted painfully against Preacher’s skin, followed immediately by blinding flashes of lightning and thunder that rolled like the volley of a thousand cannon. In a matter of seconds, Preacher was soaked to the skin. When the rain hit his back, it felt like he was being flogged again. He bellowed a curse that the wind snatched away.
The rain fell in such heavy sheets that when he looked over, he could barely see Tyler clinging to the rail right beside him. He leaned over closer to the young man and shouted, “How long . . . does a storm like this . . . last?”
“Maybe . . . half an hour! Maybe . . . longer!”
With the pounding the waves were giving the Calypso, Preacher didn’t see how the ship could hold together for even a quarter of an hour, let alone longer. But she had been sailing the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean since the days when Catamount Jack LeCarde was her captain, he reminded himself, so evidently the sloop was pretty sturdily built. In that time it must have come through dozens of storms like this one, maybe even worse.
Preacher had been able to tolerate the ship’s motion without getting sick, but the constant, dramatic rising and falling, and the tilting back and forth was different. He felt his stomach begin to roil. For some unfathomable reason, it was important to him that he not look like a landlubber. He tried to suppress the sensation, but after a while it was impossible for him to do.
Almost before he knew what was happening, he hung his head over the railing and began
unleashing the contents of his stomach. Everything he had eaten that day and, seemingly, for the past month or so went into the sea.
Sick as he was, and as hellishly loud as the storm was, he almost didn’t hear Tyler cry, “Preacher, look out!”
His instincts took over and he twisted his body around fast enough that he saw a huge, bulky figure looming up in front of him. Powerful arms shot around Preacher’s waist, lifting and heaving so his bare feet came off the deck and he felt himself going up and over the rail toward the angry sea below.
CHAPTER 30
Preacher flailed out with his right arm, and his hand slapped the railing. In desperation, he clamped his fingers around it as his attacker let go of him and he started to plummet toward the waves.
All his weight hit his arm, causing pain to shoot from his hand up to his shoulder and then into his back. But his grip held fast on the slick wood, and that was the only important thing. Preacher was a strong swimmer, but no one could survive a sea like the one raging below him. It would swallow him up and never spit him out.
The big man who had thrown him overboard loomed at the railing. Through the sluicing rain, Preacher caught a glimpse of him drawing his foot back. The man kicked at Preacher’s right hand in an attempt to knock the precarious grasp loose and dump him into the sea. Preacher grabbed the railing with his left hand and let go with the right just in time to avoid getting his fingers smashed. At the same time, he kicked upward with his right leg and hooked his ankle over the rail.
Someone shouted, but Preacher couldn’t make out the words in the middle of all that infernal commotion. He saw the would-be murderer struggling with someone. The two figures swayed back and forth.
That had to be Tyler, Preacher thought. The young redhead was probably the only one on the whole ship who would even attempt to come to his aid.
The attacker—Preacher had no doubt in his mind it was Abner Rowland, seizing the chance to get rid of him—flung the smaller figure away after a moment. But Tyler had provided enough of a distraction to give Preacher time to pull himself up and roll over the railing onto the deck.
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