The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  There was a stone causeway half hidden in the bush, an ancient road with some of its mighty flags upheaved but still passable. It led straight up, with steps here and there to the summit of a flat hill where there stood a pyramid of faced stone, and on its top an altar of three stones, like those of Stonehenge. It seemed placed so as to receive the first rays of the rising sun and allow them to pass through an opening in the pillars. Beneath the flat top was a block of lava that in turn held a stone chalice. Whatever was placed in this cup must bathe in the sunbeams. The bottom of the pyramid was a charnel house of bones: ribs, pelvises, skulls, and leg- and arm-bones, flung pell-mell. The stone cup was black with sinister stain that had splashed and dripped all about.

  Some of the bones, most of them, were bleached and disarticulate. Others bore unmistakable signs of comparative recent dumping. They were unbleached, hair clinging to the scalps, grisly details of a not too thorough cleansing of tendon and sinew. That the flesh had been stripped by man and not decay, was hinted by the ground at the back of the pyramid showing plainly the signs of fires, of fire pits where sacrificial meats were wrapped in leaves, and steamed on hot stones, after the sacred portions had been offered to the gods.

  Yet nowhere could they find actual signs of very recent visitation. The land was fair, the sea full of fish, the bush of fruit and wild pigs. Here and there the girl came across crumbling stone platforms built on ledges, the foundations of grass houses long vanished; vanished long before some of those skeletons had been flung down by the priests, in Jim’s opinion. A pestilence, a hurricane, a tidal wave greater than that which flung the Golden Dolphin ashore might well have made the place tabu. There might be an occasional pilgrimage from the other island to placate the gods.

  He tried to turn the discovery into a certain sign of immunity, but it was hard to be convincing. From that day on someone stood watch on a high point that commanded the channel between their island and the next. They stored provisions in a cave where fresh water dripped, and where they might make a valiant stand, and prayed that they might get away before any canoes appeared in sight. There were days when the tortured cable threatened to break, when a sunken rock rose up beneath the keel and had to be dug away laboriously. But, foot by foot, and fathom by fathom, as Jim had predicted, the hull crept closer to the lagoon.

  They made numerous repairs. They worked with increasing vigor as the sick men mended. Sanders and Walker, his cracked pate sound again with the exception of violent, but decreasing, spells of headache, sewed on jury sails made from scraps of the Shark’s tattered canvas, or spliced ropes. The foremast was made ready for sloop rig, shears prepared to hoist it into place, the broken rudder repaired, with Jim Lyman hardest worker and foreman of them all, unceasing in vigor and determination to overcome all obstacles. He was the idol of the Fijian boys, who called him in their own language The-Quick-Thinking-Strong-Armed-White-One, a title that Kitty made him translate and kept secret for her own edification.

  The year rolled slowly round. December came and found the Golden Dolphin thirty yards from high tide. Jim began to talk of a launching by Christmas. Then one day Moore, whose turn it was at the lookout, came racing down with evil news. A flotilla of canoes was in the channel, winging toward the island. He had counted ten craft and figured they would arrive by noon. With one impulse they rushed to the lookout and saw the dread confirmation of all their fears, after long weeks of labor, with victory almost in sight.

  To fight off the landing of so many scores of warriors would be impossible. They had already seen how little they cared for gunfire. To retreat to the cave, to trust that the Golden Dolphin might be overlooked, was their only hope—and a slight one. The ship stood out on the beach, visible from the reef entrance. The sight of it surely meant a swift search all over the island, with destruction of the precious ship as the least of calamities. The best they might do was not to be taken alive.

  They stayed until the canoes, profusely decorated, streaming over the quiet sea, were lost to sight behind the headland of the landing bay, then hurried with their weapons to the cave. From it they could view, through a gap in the jungle, a section of the stone causeway. In the entrance they waited with grim fortitude, resolved to give stern account of themselves, to die as white men and white women should. Kitty, of her own accord, stood close by Jim. He smiled at her and she smiled back wanly.

  “At the last, Jim, you won’t leave me alone?” He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

  Suddenly they heard shouts. The canoes had landed. Then, to their surprise, a mighty chanting mingled with the beat of drums, the shrilling of flutes and the belching roar of conch shells. Whatever the reason for the visit, it was stronger than the curiosity that the inevitable sight of the ship set out upon the beach must have excited. The sounds came nearer, mounting. There was a procession coming up the causeway to the hill of sacrifice. Their discovery was delayed. Some vital ceremonial was forward.

  They waited breathlessly. They had brought binoculars with them on their first landing and Jim trained the glass on the strip of causeway. They could have picked off some of the savages with rifles but to commence a fight was to invite annihilation. The music, if such barbaric rhythm might be so termed, grew steadily louder. The leaders of the procession came into view, weird, leaping fantastic figures of naked men who wore high headdresses of feathers fluttering on frames that extended five feet above their bushy hair, itself tied with strips of gaily colored fiber. They were striped and patched in red and white and yellow, their faces hideously daubed. Some had picked out in white their ribs and the bones of their arms and legs. On their necks and all their limbs were strings of shells and teeth. Each held a drum shaped like an enormous wooden stein on which they beat as they sprang and shouted.

  Then came file after file of warriors, armed with spears and clubs, with bows and arrows, painted like the rest, leaping along in unison to the throbbing, screaming drum and whine and roar of the unseen orchestra.

  He handed the glass to Kitty at her request.

  “I wouldn’t look at it, if I were you,” he said.

  “I’m not afraid of them,” she said.

  She slightly changed the focus of the glass. A litter came by, a platform borne by six enormous cannibals, so braced that it could easily be carried horizontally along the ramp. On it, beneath a canopy supported by poles, reclined a figure of commanding pose. His upper body seemed to be covered with light pigment; the lower was kilted with patterned cloth of native pounding from inner bark.

  Jim heard an indrawn sigh from Kitty. The binoculars fell from her hands to the dust of the cave, and her face glowed with some strange ecstasy. Instinctively he put out his hand to restrain her but she swerved and leaped from the cave mouth to the tiny trail they had contrived. She flew down it with arms extended, sounding a glad, impossible cry of, “Father! Father!”

  For a heart-beat Jim thought she was demented; then he raced to overtake her, gun in hand. The others followed. The procession had halted. The man in the litter was looking toward the direction of the voice that had reached him above the clamor. The music stopped at a lift of his hand. He spoke to the savages in a high, imperious voice. Kitty fled on the wings of love. For all his efforts Jim could not reach her before, light as a fawn, she broke through the mask of green that ended the trail and was out by the side of the litter, reaching up her arms, sobbing and laughing—“Father! Father!” And to Jim’s amazement, the man stretched out his arms, and in a broken voice called back to her.

  He ordered the litter carried aside and waved the astounded procession on and upward. They obeyed, casting half fearful glances at him, looks of chained hatred at the little group of whites, Lynda among them, that gathered round the litter as the bearers set it down. Kitty was in her father’s arms and they drew to one side as the files passed—rank upon rank of warriors, priests carrying a strange representation of a fish in wickerwork frame, painted red and black; then the musicians with conches and panpipes and la
rger drums slung between four carriers, two men beating. As they passed their white leader—for such he plainly was, if not their god—they started once more to play their savage instruments. The chant recommenced and they went on up the hill. Last of all came men bearing baskets in which was flesh, the carcasses of pigs. Others carried giant yams. There was also another great wicker fish, red and black, toiling blindly along with two men inside of it, their spotted legs, red on black, showing strangely beneath the fetish.

  Jim turned to Captain Avery and saw on his breast the same emblem, a fish tattooed in red and black.

  “I saw my ship on the beach,” said Captain Avery, “and I marveled. I thought it might have been the work of the men who were killed some months ago by the tribe—without my knowledge—though I wondered why they should have salvaged it. After the ceremonial I should have investigated, of course. But nothing is allowed to interfere with this sacrificial visit.

  “This is the island of Lukuba. We came today from the island of Tudava where I am half chief, half god, the impersonation of Lono.

  “The Golden Dolphin was flung up on Lukuba by a tidal wave from a marine earthquake. The islands are both volcanic. At intervals there are shocks; on Tudava an occasional eruption and overflow from a crater.

  “I wrote you, Kitty, from Suva, that I feared trouble among my crew. It was ripe when the wave caught us up. After we were crashed down and found ourselves alive, they were still resolved to get the pearls that I had secreted in my cabin. I would not tell them where they were and they prepared to torture me after they had killed one man who tried to warn me of their coming.

  “This island of Lukuba is slowly sinking into the sea. One time it sank twelve feet, with frightful landslides. Then the tribe deserted it. But, by the order of their priests, they visit it once a year to make sacrifice on their ancient altar to avert more disaster, for each shock affects both islands.

  “The pilgrimage had landed just before the wave that carried us ashore. Terrified, they had seen nothing of our landing, flung through the jungle on the crest of a wild wave as we were. But returning, they heard the noise of our struggle, for my men were drunk and reckless. And they found me stripped, about to be tortured by fire. Had I not been naked they would not have seen the fish of Udanwaga, the totem of their tribe, tattooed upon my chest.

  “This was the totem of Mafulu, my blood-brother, part of the fraternity ceremonial. The tribes of the Pacific are far-flung. They break up and migrate, but their customs and their sanctities hold. They gazed at me almost in awe, and when I spoke to them in their own tongue, they fell down and worshipped me. The others they killed. I could not prevent that. And they sacrificed them to their gods—in their own way.

  “Me they took back to Tudava, and as we crossed the channel the crater was spouting smoke and flame and a flow of lava smoked down toward their main village, firing the forests. Their priests made incantations, and at last they called upon me. It may have been coincidence or the holier manifestation of God, but when we reached the landing the flow stopped, the eruption ceased. It was attributed to my mana, the godlike power within me, the manifestation of Lono who wore the sacred badge of Udanwaga, the fish from whom they were all descended. Had it not been prophesied that I should come?

  “So I have lived with them and made laws for them and striven to make them wiser. Twice we have visited this island and I abolished the sacrifice of human flesh. I was ill with a fever when the flotilla left to take the strange craft they had sighted, or I would have forbidden it. For while they have given me all power, they are loath to loose me. I have had no chance to escape.

  “When they came back that time with the corpses of white men in canoes almost swamped after two days and nights of paddling, bewildered by the rain and carried offshore by the great waves following, I told them it was the anger of the gods against their act. And to think that ever since you must have been here!

  “I have always told them I should leave them some day. They will not dispute me after this miracle of your presence. For I will threaten to bring back the volcanic fires that have not flowed since I came with them. You see my godship has been precarious. But—it ends well. And now, tell me your story.”

  * * * *

  “Jim,” said Captain Avery Whiting, as the Golden Dolphin, under a jury rig, bore sluggishly, but surely, on her way for Suva, while the peak of Lukuba—no longer beckoning—dimmed and diminished, “Lynda Warner tells me that you are in love with my daughter. She tells me also that Kitty is in love with you. I have told you what I think of your behavior. I have no son. I have often wanted one.”

  Jim stood silent, the two at the taffrail alone.

  “Well?”

  “Kitty is an heiress, sir. I—”

  “You have a share in the pearls.”

  “If I must take that, it is to be divided with the others who stood by.”

  “Tut! You talk like a very young man sometimes, Jim. What are pearls? Would you deny Kitty for pearls? If that is what lies between you and her happiness I will fling them all overboard, and regret that I ever heard of them or brought them from the stranded Golden Dolphin. I am getting to be an old man, Jim. I had hoped to retire. Let me keep my pearls, or what they bring, for my old age. I may live long enough to see grandchildren. If so, I promise to let them be the inheritors. You see we are both talking foolishly and you are eaten up with a very false pride.”

  “Perhaps,” said Jim, “I am willing to be convinced.”

  “Then go and talk to Kitty. She has bragged all along of your courage. Of late she must be beginning to doubt it. Wait—stay here and I will send her up to you.”

  A SET OF ROGUES, by Frank Barrett (Part 1)

  CHAPTER I.

  Of my companions and our adversities, and in particular from our getting into the stocks at Tottenham Cross to our being robbed at Edmonton.

  There being no plays to be acted at the “Red Bull,” because of the Plague, and the players all cast adrift for want of employment, certain of us, to wit, Jack Dawson and his daughter Moll, Ned Herring, and myself, clubbed our monies together to buy a store of dresses, painted cloths, and the like, with a cart and horse to carry them, and thus provided set forth to travel the country and turn an honest penny, in those parts where the terror of pestilence had not yet turned men’s stomachs against the pleasures of life. And here, at our setting out, let me show what kind of company we were. First, then, for our master, Jack Dawson, who on no occasion was to be given a second place; he was a hale, jolly fellow, who would eat a pound of beef for his breakfast (when he could get it), and make nothing of half a gallon of ale therewith—a very masterful man, but kindly withal, and pleasant to look at when not contraried, with never a line of care in his face, though turned of fifty. He played our humorous parts, but he had a sweet voice for singing of ditties, and could fetch a tear as readily as a laugh, and he was also exceeding nimble at a dance, which was the strangest thing in the world, considering his great girth. Wife he had none, but Moll Dawson was his daughter, who was a most sprightly, merry little wench, but no miracle for beauty, being neither child nor woman at this time; surprisingly thin, as if her frame had grown out of proportion with her flesh, so that her body looked all arms and legs, and her head all mouth and eyes, with a great towzled mass of chestnut hair, which (off the stage) was as often as not half tumbled over her shoulder. But a quicker little baggage at mimicry (she would play any part, from an urchin of ten to a crone of fourscore), or a livelier at dancing of Brantles or the single Coranto never was, I do think, and as merry as a grig. Of Ned Herring I need only here say that he was the most tearing villain imaginable on the stage, and off it the most civil-spoken, honest-seeming young gentleman. Nor need I trouble to give a very lengthy description of myself; what my character was will appear hereafter, and as for my looks, the less I say about them, the better. Being something of a scholar and a poet, I had nearly died of starvation, when Jack Dawson gave me a footing on the stage, where I would pl
ay the part of a hero in one act, a lacquey in the second, and a merry Andrew in the third, scraping a tune on my fiddle to fill up the intermedios.

  We had designed to return to London as soon as the Plague abated, unless we were favoured with extraordinary good fortune, and so, when we heard that the sickness was certainly past, and the citizens recovering of their panic, we (being by this time heartily sick of our venture, which at the best gave us but beggarly recompense) set about to retrace our steps with cheerful expectations of better times. But coming to Oxford, we there learned that a prodigious fire had burnt all London down, from the Tower to Ludgate, so that if we were there, we should find no house to play in. This lay us flat in our hopes, and set us again to our vagabond enterprise; and so for six months more we scoured the country in a most miserable plight, the roads being exceedingly foul, and folks more humoured of nights to drowse in their chimnies than to sit in a draughty barn and witness our performances; and then, about the middle of February we, in a kind of desperation, got back again to London, only to find that we must go forth again, the town still lying in ruins, and no one disposed to any kind of amusement, except in high places, where such actors as we were held in contempt. So we, with our hearts in our boots, as one may say, set out again to seek our fortunes on the Cambridge road, and here, with no better luck than elsewhere, for at Tottenham Cross we had the mischance to set fire to the barn wherein we were playing, by a candle falling in some loose straw, whereby we did injury to the extent of some shilling or two, for which the farmer would have us pay a pound, and Jack Dawson stoutly refusing to satisfy his demand he sends for the constable, who locks us all up in the cage that night, to take us before the magistrate in the morning. And we found to our cost that this magistrate had as little justice as mercy in his composition; for though he lent a patient ear to the farmer’s case, he would not listen to Jack Dawson’s argument, which was good enough, being to the effect that we had not as much as a pound amongst us, and that he would rather be hanged than pay it if he had; and when Ned Herring (seeing the kind of Puritanical fellow he was) urged that, since the damage was not done by any design of ours, it must be regarded as a visitation of Providence, he says: “Very good. If it be the will of Providence that one should be scourged, I take it as the Divine purpose that I should finish the business by scourging the other”; and therewith he orders the constable to take what money we have from our pockets and clap us in the stocks till sundown for payment of the difference. So in the stocks we three poor men were stuck for six mortal hours, which was a wicked, cruel thing indeed, with the wind blowing a sort of rainy snow about our ears; and there I do think we must have perished of cold and vexation but that our little Moll brought us a sheet for a cover, and tired not in giving us kind words of comfort.