The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  “So I tell him to get some of his pals with a car that we’ve used for shifting the booze. That’s as far as I have to go. I got Lyman. Lyman took a long chance and went overboard. You know all that. I got the rest of your talks via the same route before I started for Panama and Honolulu. I was pretty sure then you’d call at Suva, but I wanted to make sure. I thought by that time young Newton here might have got on to the figures and Stevens pumped him. It’s dry work talking. You can figure out the rest of it. Simple enough. I knew when Lyman slipped off he’d given me the wrong position. Guessed he had from the first when I meant to take him along. There you are, miss; there’s my end of it. How about my answer? I don’t know what you may have wired or written back.”

  “On my honor and to the best of my belief,” said Kitty, “Mr. Foster knows nothing of the figures.”

  “Good. Then here’s my proposition. They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, but I’ve got one bird here in the bush that is worth a whole lot more to me than a chance scramble after pearls. Young Foster’s father made a small mint out of blankets and such like with his mills during the war. Now’s his chance to help equalize things again. I don’t know how high he values Newton here. I’m setting half a million on him as a minimum. Personally I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for him. I’ve got him sized up as a lightweight, but his daddy may consider him the apple of his eye and fruit’s expensive in my market. He’s all the old man’s got and folks are foolish about their kids. Seem to figure because they are theirs they must be wonderful. I’m goin’ to give Stephen Foster a chance to prove up on his love and affection. If folks was as wise as the dog-breeders they’d kill off all the runts soon as they were born. Old Man Foster has made a show dog out of his boy here. Not bad looking on points, I grant you, but a wise judge would give him the gate. Same as you have, miss.

  “So—I go away and leave you on the island. Cheng scuttled your schooner an’ she’s at the bottom of the lagoon. I’m goin’ to take your landing boats with me. Three of my men and Cheng have gone across the island to get the Shark an’ bring her round here. Tomorrow morning we’ll be off. Month or more from now, I get in communication with Stephen Foster and offer to sell him the position of this island so he can send out a relief expedition to take you all off. That won’t cost him much more than a cable to Suva and your passage home. Just so he won’t think I’m pulling his leg, I’ll take him a note from you, young Foster, telling him how you feel about bein’ cooped up here for the rest of your natural.”

  Newton, sharing drinks with Swenson, growing more surly at the depreciation of his merits by the rum-running blackguard, sat sullen and silent.

  “Better get busy, young feller,” said Swenson. “You can use the fly leaf of one of those books, that’ll be convincing evidence. If I’d thought of all this I’d have brought a camera along and taken a flashlight of the crowd of you. But the book’ll help. I’ll loan you a pencil.”

  “What if I don’t?”

  “Ah!” The exclamation wiped out all the good-natured banter from Swenson’s face. It grew evil, repulsive. “If you don’t? For one thing you’ll stay here, anyway. Maybe to rot. Maybe not. This old hulk would make a rare bonfire. Keep your hand off your gun, Lyman. I’ve come unarmed. Shoot me and you can imagine what would happen to you—and to the ladies. You’re inside this hulk and my men are out. You haven’t got any water to speak of, don’t forget that. Now it’s up to young Foster, and I want it settled. His father bunked the government out of the money he rolled up on war contracts. Half a million don’t mean any more to him than a hundred would to most men. It’ll hurt him a little, like taking off a patch of skin might. But the graft’ll save his son from a life down here. Lucky it ain’t you, Lyman; you’d be apt to be contented with the lady here. Regular Paradise for two. But not for the rest of you. What d’you say, Foster?”

  “Give me your pencil.”

  Swenson chuckled and took another drink as Newton got a book from the shelves that had the name of Captain Avery and his ship on the fly leaf and began to write. Swenson finally read it aloud.

  My Dear Father:

  Swenson will tell you his story. I write this in the cabin of the Golden Dolphin to corroborate this much of his story. The Seamew is sunk; we have no boats and the trip has fizzled out. The pearls are not on board. So far there is no trace of Captain Whiting. If you do not meet Swenson’s blackmail I see nothing for it but for us to stay on this damned place until we die.

  One man of ours has been killed; three more are badly hurt; Lyman is injured. Otherwise, we are all well, so far. To check Swenson’s figures I give them to you. For God’s sake, pay the blackmail and get us out of here.

  Affectionately,

  Newton R. Foster.

  “You write a cheerful letter, but you use better sense than I thought you had,” said Swenson. “That touch about the figures is a shrewd one but you haven’t put them down. Otherwise it’s a grand little note.”

  “What are the figures, Lyman?”

  Lyman gave them and Newton wrote them in long hand. Jim sat with head between his hands. His head throbbed abominably and he was weighed down by sense of failure. If the Seamew had not been sunk he was confident he could have got off the Golden Dolphin. Now… If only he had not been taken in by Cheng. Wood had been murdered in cold blood with Cheng, Wiltz, and Hamsun against him. And, by the irony of fate, it had been Wiltz who had warned Jim against Cheng before the wily Oriental won him over by a golden bait.

  “Thanks,” said Swenson dryly as he pocketed the book. “That ought to make it worth three-quarters of a million, at least. The pearls would not have brought that at a forced sale, and my men will want their shares. Also the hounds that came over from you, Lyman. Any of the rest of you like to add anything to the note? No? Nothing I can do for you?

  “Eh, Lyman? You seem downhearted. Fortune of war. It’s checkmate this time. No message I can deliver for you? To the widowed mother? Shall I have your engagement announced in the Foxfield Gazette society column?”

  “Damn you,” said Lyman. “I may beat you home yet!” Swenson laughed. “There are two things you could do for me. One is to get out of here before I give you another clip like the one I did off Cuttyhunk. The other is to give me two minutes with Cheng—barehanded.”

  “I’m going. As for Cheng, he had some idea of that sort, I think. Anyway, he elected to go with the others to fetch the Shark. We’ll be here the rest of today and tonight, so don’t try to interfere by coming on deck. You might get shot. I wish you good meals and pleasant dreams. Thanking you for the whisky.”

  He put the second bottle in another pocket, lifted the limp body of Stevens with infinite ease, though with utter disregard for the man’s comfort, and went up on deck where they heard him fling down the drugged body and roar out reproof and orders to his men.

  The day dragged. Walker grew delirious and Jim gave him a hypodermic of morphine. He did not think the skull was fractured but he could not be sure. Moore was swathed in makeshift bandages and adhesive plaster but full of fight. But the assurance that they would have to expose themselves to the fire of Swenson and his men bit into all of them. Newton helped to forage and they found cans of meat and even fruit, unspoiled. They roamed the hull and made many useful discoveries, including oil sufficient to fill one container, and an unbroken chimney.

  Toward dark, following a glare of afterglow high above them, a mass of heavy timbers was thrown across the skylight bars, suddenly shrouding them in blackness, Swenson’s voice called down through a crack.

  “You might start some monkey business, after dark, Lyman. I don’t quite trust you. The hatches are battened. After we’re gone tomorrow you can break your way through this. Meantime, pleasant dreams.”

  All through the smothering night they stayed awake, save for the sick men, who dozed off—Walker still under the merciful drug. And Lyman discussed plans.

  “If the kanakas come back to us—and they may—” he said, “I
can get them to dive to the Seamew; the depth is nothing for them. The hatches will be blown off. They can carry down a line and haul out the thick hawser. We’ll get this old hulk to sea. We can’t raise the schooner. That’s beyond us.”

  “But you can float this?” Newton’s contribution was an open sneer.

  “We can try.”

  “How?” asked Kitty.

  “Tide and sun. The lagoon’s on a lower level. We’ll clear away the bush—burn it if we have to. We’ll secure the end of the hawser on the reef and take up the slack with the windlass aboard. At high tide most of it will be covered. We’ll soak the rest by hand. As it takes in water it’ll shrink. Hydraulic power that will test the breaking point of the rope. We may have to dig out, but it can be done. It’ll move the Golden Dolphin, by inch and foot and fathom. At low tide the sun will make the hawser slacken. Then we take up the slack again. If only the hull is sound! And I believe it is.”

  “Oh!” said Kitty, a world of admiration in her voice. “I’ve seen the halyards tighten in a squall so that we had to let them up and take them up again when the sun and wind dried them. Taut as fiddle strings. Will the hawser stand the strain?”

  “I think so. There was a bark dragged two miles across the sands up in Hecate Strait, British Columbia. It wasn’t my idea. While we’re working, and waiting on the tide, the others can search the island for your father.”

  “Yes. You know I’m still certain that he is alive. Sure of it. Sure.”

  The morning found them without water. The sufferers had used it all. Their watches gave them the time by the light of the lamp. Newton Foster had been steadily drinking.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Kitty. “When we need all your manhood.”

  “’F you get off this dump it’ll be because my father comes through with a fortune,” he answered sulkily. “Not from any schemes of Lyman’s. Fine mess he’s made of things, so far.”

  On deck a bustle began. A voice hailed from the bush and Swenson answered. Then he pounded on the skylight covering.

  “Shark’s arrived. Good-by. If you hustle you may get out in time to wave to us.”

  Scuff of feet and then silence. They had found the rusted carpenter’s kit and two axes. Jim swung at the skylight barrier with crashing blows, standing on the cabin table. Newton, fuddled and surly, slumped on the transom. Moore tried to assist, but had no strength. Kitty seized the other axe and helped to strike and pry, Lynda relieving her. Jim wormed through the exit they achieved and Kitty handed him up the axe. With it he freed the companionway hatch, blocked by baulks of wood angled against it and across it. The two women came up.

  Above the jungle shaft the sky was gray, the treetops bending in a strong wind. All the bush shivered before the myriad tiny draughts of air that were forced through its mass from the sea.

  “It looks like a storm,” said Lynda.

  “Probably a downpour of rain,” said Jim. “They’ve gone. The wind’s onshore. They’ll be aboard by this time, but they’ll not have got far off the land yet, sailing close-hauled. Let’s get to the beach.” Newton came on deck.

  “Moore says he can look after Sanders and Walker,” he said. “Going down to the beach?” Nobody answered him.

  “I should have stayed off that liquor,” he said. “But the stuff gets me whenever it’s round. There’s a tug inside of me pulling for it. I’ve got to apologize all round, I suppose. I’m trying to do it. Swenson wasn’t far out. I’m not worth more than a plugged nickel. All I can do is to be sorry.” The women did not answer. Jim did.

  “I guess that’s enough, Newton,” he said. “We’ve all been strung up. Let’s forget it.”

  “That scheme of yours about the Golden Dolphin? Will it work?”

  “I think so, but it will take weeks.”

  “How about masts and sails? How about a compass?”

  “There are trees that would do at a pinch. We couldn’t build a seaworthy ship from them green, but they’ll serve for sticks. We can weave matting for sails. I know the stars well enough to get us back to Suva before a stern wind, as it would be.”

  “You’ve got the stiffening I lack, Lyman,” said Newton. “I—There they go, damn them.”

  They had broken through the edge of the bush to the beach and saw the Shark, close-hauled, beyond the tumbling breakers of the reef, clawing her way out to sea. Her canvas showed white against the slate-hued sky, where lightning was beginning to flicker. The sea was a tawny yellow. To the north a great black cloud lifted and grew, out of which javelined streaks of electric flame. The wind was strong. The sun struggled through masses of rolling vapor.

  “I wish a hurricane would fling them ashore,” said Newton.

  “It’s going to be a bad rain, nothing worse. Look out there, coming round the point. See them! War canoes. Get back out of sight. There are hundreds of them!”

  They found a hillock up which they struggled through the vines and trees, peering from their point of vantage that gave them clear view across the tumultuous reef. The sun shone on first one, then another and another—five all told—great curving sails, double peaked, lifting above catamaran craft of lashed canoes with outriggers, each carrying a platform and a small deckhouse of thatched grass. They came sliding over the ocean at incredible speed to cut off the Shark. Lower canoes and decks were close packed with savages, some paddling furiously in the wash of the canoes, though they could not have aided progress. Others brandished weapons that glinted in the pale sunshine at spearhead and arrow tip. The canoes were high-prowed and pooped, carved and inlaid with shell that occasionally winked in the light. The bows were decked with streamers. The wind bore a faint sound of savage yells.

  “Fifty men, at least, to each canoe,” said Jim. “Three more coming. Must be a whole tribe. The Shark’s doomed.”

  Flashes of guns showed from the rail of the schooner as the canoes raced up, and the big sails came down while the paddlers dug in their blades. Flights of arrows answered the firing. Then came detonations. A canoe seemed to break in half in a sheet of flame. Swenson was tossing dynamite. They could see his men at the rail, flinging the explosive, firing pistols, then driven back by the horde that poured in upon them, twenty or thirty to one. Cries and shouts blended. With the helmsman clubbed, the Shark swung off and wallowed in the trough, the wind slanting her until it seemed she would capsize. Then the canvas flapped loose, the sheets cut, and the mainsail came down with a run. Over its folds men moved, fighting like frantic ants. The yells changed to cries of unmistakable triumph. The canoes formed on the lee of the stricken schooner, refilling with men. Bodies in white clothing were handed down. The canoes forged off; smoke rolled out of the hatch of the Shark, smoke shot with flame that licked at the sails and rigging, enveloping the ill-fated ship.

  The watchers had not noticed the increasing darkness in the horror of the massacre. They saw the canoes disappearing around the headland, stroked hard, the great sails still furled. The wind had suddenly ceased, and out of the swollen black cloud came down a deluge that blotted out everything and drenched them to the skin in a moment. They struggled back to the stranded hulk as if to an ark of refuge. The barricade over the skylight was some protection and over the apertures they hung scraps of old canvas and tarpaulin before they went below, listening to the torrent battering on the deck, seeing and hearing again the sudden horrors of the massacre.

  It was hard to hear speech. The lamp was a comfort.

  “They may come ashore?” asked Kitty. Jim shook his head.

  “I think not. Not unless they are wrecked. They came from the other island. They must have watched the schooners arrive and come over in the night.”

  “Then they would know there were two ships.”

  “They may have only noticed ours.

  “They may have seen the Seamew sunk, and thought no one but the survivors of a white man’s feud left. I believe there’s a tabu of some sort on this island. Or there would be natives living here. And I’m almo
st certain none are.”

  He spoke bravely. He did think that the island must be tabued, but the dread of a visitation from the cannibal canoes would be ever with them. With Walker raving, the lamp failing, the rain pelting down like lead, the intolerable heat and the memory of the flaming ship, their souls were blanched with despair.

  VIII

  Udanwaga

  It was long before the memory of the massacre dimmed sufficiently for them to go about without the dread of a landing overshadowing them. The cry of a parrot would seem the yell of a savage sighting them, the rustle of a wild pig in the bush the rush of a spear-flinging warrior. But time seemed to bear out Jim Lyman’s theory and they came to accept the idea that the island might be tabu.

  The five Fijians came back to the stranded hull the day after the rain with many protestations of fealty and proclamations that they “had been make walk-along but mighty soon make getaway and come back.” Through them Jim recovered the hawser from the Seamew. With their aid as expert surfmen he recovered a lot of tackle from the half burned remnant of the Shark, impaled on the reef. They got her foremast, also, and some provisions. But her boats were burned or smashed. So the long task of clearing the way for the launching of the Golden Dolphin commenced and slowly progressed. The bush was burned and cleared with infinite labor after an examination had shown the planking sound. A trench was dug beneath her keel and the accumulated soil removed. At last the hawser was attached, and the trial made. With much groaning of protest the pull of the hawser, half drenched by the rising tide, half soaked by a hand-chain of buckets, tautened; the hull creaked, moved a stubborn prow, stopped, moved on again, almost imperceptibly, but nevertheless moving, a full two feet to one tide.

  Jim delegated two kanakas to accompany Kitty, and Lynda in the untiring search over the island for some trace of habitation; some clue that her father might have lived there, and be in hiding, perhaps for fear of savages. Burnt as brown as a native, with limbs scratched and bruised from struggle through the bush, the girl preserved, and one day came back with tidings, though not of her father. She refused to think of him in the grim connection she had uncovered.