Eleven
BLANKET OF NIGHT
As James had predicted, he made us disappear. On the other side of the ridge he’d pointed out, was a cove where we weighed anchor and loaded twenty men into two longboats. The sky was growing darker by the minute and although we couldn’t see them, I believed every star in the sky was aligned perfectly.
“No extras lads; pistols and blades only. She’s got plenty of whatever else we’ll need aboard. Master Green, I’ll go in one boat and you in the other,” Rasmus said as we launched the boats and rowed across the channel toward the Belle.
The mission in front of us was daunting. The plan was, for now, a matter of opportunity and taking advantage of the panic stricken crew of the Belle. After all, they weren’t going anywhere for a while. I imagined them frantic and racing about, uprighting things after their tilt to portside. I was concerned that whatever load they carried would shift and pull them all the way over. As of yet, it hadn’t, and the Belle just sat there, leaning to one side. However, based on what I saw through James’s spyglass, her bottom was buried in at least ten feet of sand and mud.
As I pulled my oar in the now moonless night, the sea began to churn beneath us. The storm was bearing down, and despite the nearly two thousand pounds of men in the boat, by the time we reached the halfway mark, we were soaked by the spray, and the swells were reaching two feet.
“Ivan, ye said ye saw men leaping from her as she went aground?” Rasmus asked. He was seated behind me and leaned into my right ear, breathing his warm, salted breath on my cheek.
“Aye Cap’n. I don’t even know how many. I didn’t count them, but there were plenty.” I leaned back to pull my oar and crashed into his breath again. This time, his mouth accidentally brushed against my neck. The oar almost slipped from my hands, and I lost my rhythm with the men.
“Good,” he whispered, patting me hard on the shoulder, and then he leaned back.
“Avast men,” he said. “We’re close enough.”
“Close enough?” one of the men called out.
“Well, we can’t just row up to the Belle and knock on the door, can we?” I barked back.
“Yer right there, Razor. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be invited in for a pint.”
“No, sir, Captain.” I looked forward and two rows ahead of me was Fin. He glanced back at me with a terrified expression. I cocked my eyebrow at him to ask what was wrong.
We were close enough now to make out most of the ship in the shrouded moonlight. I hoped we’d find her preoccupied in her distress, and that in the hour that had passed since we’d run her aground, she believed us long gone. I was right to believe and hope, because Rasmus’ plan was perfect…except for one problem.
“Captain, sir, me only concern is the water is gettin’ rough. Is there a way we can maybe come at her from the island side? I mean, it may take us a few minutes longer, but a lot of the fellas ain’t very good swimmers,” Fin said, having finally found his voice.
The boat fell silent but for the constant sloshing and slapping of the water against it. Most of these men and boys had spent the better part of their young lives aboard a sailing vessel in some capacity, and yet they’d never learned to swim a stroke, let alone even float. The girls and I had learned as children from Uncle William, and it hadn’t crossed my mind that lifelong sailors wouldn’t know how to save their own lives if they found themselves overboard. However, I knew Rasmus was brilliant, and I didn’t doubt for a second he hadn’t considered this would be a problem.
“Something I am unfortunately aware of, Mister Fin,” Rasmus finally replied.
A few more precarious minutes of rowing and we were fifty yards or so to the Belle’s port side on the beach of the barren island, in water—although rough and choppy—only chest deep when we slid from our tenders. We anchored our longboats in the black shadows of the trees, just as the first fat and heavy raindrops began to fall.
“Not a sound. Not even a heavy breath, men,” Rasmus whispered as we waded through the marshes of the shore.
I looked up at the peculiar sight of her, leaning towards us as we pushed through the muck, until we at last reached the smooth, sandy bottom of the sandbar. Rasmus was leading us on. Staying on our feet as the water rose and fell and shoved us this way and that, was no simple task, but I followed behind our Captain, who appeared to simply be taking an afternoon stroll on the beach.
Then I spied something so remarkable, I reached out and snatched him by the sleeve of his saturated shirt and pulled him to stop. “Captain, look there,” I said as the sky lit up with lightning, pointing at several lines which had been cast into the water from the deck above. Below them, we saw those unfortunate souls who’d leapt overboard in fear when she ran aground, thrashing around in the water trying to reach the lines. Obviously, our crewmen weren’t the only ones who hadn’t learned to swim. They were flailing and bobbing around in the breakers, trying to grab hold and climb back aboard. I also spotted two who’d already succumbed to the rising tide and who, through a choice they’d made out of fear, found themselves at last able to float, too late, straight into the afterlife.
His plan was sound. Making that choice to come towards her bow from the island instead of head-on at her stern, saved us from the breaking waves. They curled and crested at the sandbar and rolled easily over it, despite the now tossing current. Our bodies swayed in rhythm in the incoming surges, saving us from being swamped in the crashing surf. As we continued on a few more yards, the water was barely cresting at my thighs.
“What of them, Cap’n?” Green asked, flanking me on my left.
“Aye, what of them? Go for the lines, shall we gentlemen?” he answered, slapping the mixture of rain and saltwater away from his face.
“Shall we what? We can’t allow those men to climb those lines, Captain,” I said, pulling my cutlass from my waist.
“Razor, are ye suggesting we murder these men in cold blood?”
I, too, swiped away the water from my face and glared up at him. My eyes burned from the constant deluge of saltwater as it splashed up from beneath us when the rain struck it and bounced it back up into the night air. “For God’s sakes, we can’t stay out here all night, and if ye think they won’t kill us to keep us off those ropes, yer all addled. Hell, I’ll do it, if’n none of ye have the belly for it!” I shouted over the now deafening slap of water against water and the pounding thunder rolling in the distance.
As the words left my mouth, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky above the Belle, changing night to day for a few seconds, and in those few seconds, a mere twenty or so feet away, the eyes of at least a dozen men were staring back at us. The thunder came again and again, and each heavenly explosion was preceded by white flashes of the faces of men looking back at us as they scrambled wildly through the surf toward the lines.
Rasmus looked back over his shoulder at us and drew his broadsword out of the sea like Poseidon’s trident. Upon his action, every man among us followed, and we charged through the rolling surf. I stayed close behind him, with Fin behind me. Between the ribbons of light and the thunder and rain, we caught up to them just as they’d latched onto the wet lines. Rasmus raised his sword high out of the water and brought his left fist down hard on the back of the first man, knocking him from the line and back into the water. “Go!” he shouted at us as we too, found a man on the end of each rope…only some of these fools put up a fight.
“Go, I said!” he shouted again.
In the eerie white sparks and flares, their horrified expressions were made twice as haunting, even if their screams were silenced by the pounding rain and thunder as we slew them. Regardless of our races or colors, we were all like ghosts in the white light. Their faces were pale and wet with blood and water when the lights flashed for those few seconds. We fought like beasts arisen from the sea, slicing and pummeling any of them who had the balls to attack first. Their foolish wills to climb those ropes outweighed their reason to simply escape us to the safety of
the shore, which only made it easier to dispose of them. Those we didn’t kill, we beat with our fists until they fell beneath the rolling surf and disappeared.
The next thing I knew, I was underwater. Somehow I’d lost my footing in the sand. I was rolling beneath a wave and confused as to what was up and what was down. My chest felt like it was caving in, and the air in my lungs was pressed out of me. The screams and thunder were silenced, and my mouth filled with sea water. Just as I thought I’d drowned, Rasmus’s huge hand reached through my exhaled bubbles and pulled me up by the arm. I was hacking and spewing sea water as he shouted at me, “Razor, get yer ass on that line and go!”
I sheathed my sword, and he lifted me out of the water and pushed me forward onto the line. I looked back at him and shouted, “What do we do when we reach the deck?”
“Ye pull out your bloody sword and take the damn ship!”
Fin was on my heels beneath me as I pulled myself hand over hand up that line. The muscles in my arms were burning, but I wrapped my legs around the wet rope and pushed on. I glanced over at the other three lines, and my mates were struggling as well. Somehow, I felt better in seeing that the difficulty I was having had more to do with the wet line and the storm than with my being a woman. My Captain however, seemed to rise the length of his body with every pull. “Damn him,” I mumbled to myself and looked up, expecting to see waiting sailors armed with pistols and blades.
I didn’t see that at all. I almost started to laugh when I heard the first voice call out, “Come on then! Don’t take all bloody day, or we’ll leave ye to the sharks.” Not only that, they were pulling up the goddamned line. I held on tight with my left hand and, again, swiped the water from my face as I turned to my right and met Rasmus’s bright blue eyes in a bolt of lightning that came so close I froze, and my whole body trembled for at least thirty seconds. My reaction wasn’t from the fear of possibly being struck, but rather from having been grazed by the damn echo of the strike. My heart sped up, and I felt lightheaded to the point that I thought I’d faint. My hands slipped, and I slid at least a foot before grasping the line again, nearly giving poor Fin a kick in the head.
When I regained my senses, I again looked over at Rasmus, who appeared shaken as well. I could see the whites all around the blue irises of his big eyes, and his long arm was outstretched still, as if he thought he could reach me if I fell. I nodded to him, signaling I was fine, and again we climbed, as whoever we were about to meet at the end of the line continued inviting us aboard with their heave-ho’s.
The end was near. Rasmus was a few feet lower than me now. Fin and our two brethren below us watched as Rasmus drew his sword. We all followed suit and prepared for the moment we’d fought so hard to reach. There were only ten of us on the lines, and we didn’t know if our remaining crew would ever be able to reach us. When I looked down for the last time, it appeared they’d abandoned the plan to climb, since the lines were being pulled, and they were most likely headed back to the beach to wait with the longboats.
I held my head low, when, at last, the main deck was within reach of my hands. When I’d pulled my sword, I held it blade down and out of view, but as I clutched the side of the ship and pulled myself over, I flipped it in my hand to meet the round, fat face of the first sailor I saw—the one at the end of the line.
“Thank you for the leg up, brother; however, this here ship is under attack by the Captain and mates of the Lady Jade. Pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said as I leapt to the deck, backing him up towards the main mast with the tip of my cutlass.
Right behind me, I heard the shouts and howls of my brothers carrying out the same deed. My heart began racing again, but this time it raced with a hot, wet thrill that took every bit of self-control I could muster to hold back. The man was sliding and losing his balance on the angled deck, and his feet flew out from beneath him, sending him hard onto his ass in front of me. “Stay down there!” I shouted at him, holding the point of my dripping sword inches from his nose.
Within seconds, we were met by a large group of sailors who’d obviously been alerted or had seen from the distance what was transpiring. We herded the ones we’d surprised into a group, with our blades at their backs, and placed them between us and the now angry, encroaching men.
“Who are you, and what is the meaning of this?” A big-bellied, black-haired man stepped forward through the crowd, shouting.
“I am Captain Rasmus Bergman of the Lady Jade, sir, and my mates and I are here to rob ye.”
“Pirates? What pirates? I know every pirate in these waters, and you, sir, I have never met!” the man shouted in bursts of breath. He shook his finger at Rasmus, who smiled with the corners of his mouth and held his sword firmly en garde.
“Who is the captain of this vessel?” Rasmus asked.
“Why, I am, of course. No other would address you as I have. These men all work for me. They wouldn’t dare speak on my behalf.”
“Oh, so they only speak when you allow them to, I see,” Rasmus said, “Well then, I believe you, and I have some things we need to discuss, Captain…?” Rasmus waved his hand as if he were coaxing the man to give his name.
“Captain Archibald Lancaster, sir, and our discussion is now over.” The rotund man’s jowls jiggled as he shouted at Rasmus. His thin hair was soaked and pressed in stringy salt and pepper ribbons on his head. I held my sword at the backside of the man in front of me, but my hand flew to my mouth as I felt a giggle bubbling up. “The colossal gall of you and your…your hoard of thieves, grounding such a fine vessel as my Belle. How dare you, sir?”
“Oh, your Belle, is it? I believed she was the property of the Virginia Shipping and Trading Company,” Master Green stepped forward and said as Rasmus took a step towards the man, who promptly backed away.
“This is wasting more of my time than I have to offer, Captain Lancaster. Now, stand aside while my men do what needs to be done.”
“Needs to be done? I will not surrender my ship. This simply will not happen,” Captain Lancaster said as he pulled his pistol from his belt and pointed it at Rasmus and Master Green.
“You’re either an expert shot, or a blasted fool, Lancaster,” Rasmus groaned and snatched the pistol from the man’s hand. He sounded as if he were only mildly inconvenienced, although he did raise his sword as our ragged, wet crew gathered around him, raising ours as well.
“I have an arrangement with the pirates of these waters. P…p…perhaps we may come to an accord as well, Captain Bergman?” Lancaster’s voice shook when he glanced around and appeared to realize his own men weren’t rushing to his aid.
“No agreement,” Rasmus barked into the face of the obviously terrified Lancaster. “Now tell your piddley crew to drop their weapons, and you’ll all get to sail away when we’re through.”
“Lower your weapons, and he’ll give us all quarter,” Lancaster told his men, who mostly gave a sigh of relief, and all did as they were told.
“Green, Razor, and the rest of ye, tie the good Captain to the main mast and get what’s left of these swabs secured as well, so we may take what we came for and be on our way. Fin, take one of these wet dogs and bring me the Captain’s log,” Rasmus said, pointing at the group of men who now stood with their blades pointed at the deck.
“Drop them if ye know what’s good for ye,” I said, waving my cutlass at them as several of our crew rounded up the weapons, herded the men into a tight circle, and pushed them onto their arses.
“You, let’s go,” I heard Fin say as he pulled one of the men out of the group and pointed his sword at the man’s throat. “To the Captain’s quarters, and I’ll be keepin’ this at yer back, so don’t go gettin’ noble ideas.”
Rasmus walked to Lancaster as Master Green was securing him against the main mast and asked, “What’s your cargo?”
“Lumber, tobacco, and cotton. That’s all. Nothing more. Why are ye doing this to me?” Lancaster lowered his head and mumbled, “This is bad. This is all so very bad
.”
“Yes, it is a terrible night, isn’t it, though? I suppose now would be a good time to surrender. Seeing as how none of yer mute crewmen wish to save ye,” Rasmus smiled. His sarcasm was amusing to me. I loved it and had been missing it. “By the way,” Rasmus leaned in and whispered to Lancaster, as I strained to hear him through the beating rain. “We both know you’ve more than wood, tobacco, and cotton on this ship, now don’t we? Suppose ye tell me where they are, so I don’t have to waste time looking. Wasting time is a worry I don’t need right now, and that little fella there with the scruffy white hair? He’s small, but he’s a short temper. Just thought I’d warn ye. Oh, and by the way, you’re officially out of the smuggling business. Tell all yer friends, too.”
“They don’t belong to me. The pirates will kill me if you…”
“I’ve heard enough. Green, signal the Jade now, and get her over here!” Rasmus shouted in Lancaster’s face and then turned to me. “Are ye ready to find what we came for, laddie?”
My heart swelled, and I strained to keep from releasing a squeal of excitement. “I am, sir.” I swallowed hard. “I most certainly am.”
“Here’s the log, Cap’n Bergman,” Fin said, rushing towards us.
Rasmus snatched the log from Fin’s hands and thumbed through it, then looked up at me and smiled wide. “Fin, take over for Razor. He’s coming with me.”
Twelve
THE SHINY LITTLE THINGS
The rain had now stopped completely, and the thunder rolled off and away like distant drums. We left Master Green in charge, and Rasmus led me from the main deck to the gangway leading down into the hold of the ship. We didn’t know where we’d find what we were searching for, but that wouldn’t stop us from looking. We kicked open doors and chased the few remaining crewman we found below out of our way, pointing our swords at them and threatening to cut their hearts out. One in particular we held onto after we questioned him as to the secret cargo, and he claimed to know exactly where we’d find them. We also needed someone to carry the lantern, as it was black as a tomb below decks.
Jaded Tides (The Razor's Adventures Pirate Tales) Page 9
