The Pirate Story Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  “Farewell,” he cried again and left the cabin, running heavily across the clearing. Margaret watched him with eyes from which the glaze of fever had lifted to show exaltation struggling with weariness and saw him plunge into the bush path with a hasty wave to her. Then she turned back into the cabin and leaned above the small bundle on the bed behind the screen.

  “Babe, babe,” she breathed softly. “Your father, whom ye have never seen and who has never seen your little straight limbs and his own image in your eyes and shape, is coming home again.”

  And the pattering, saving rains told the beads of her prayers.

  When the great negress came softly in she found Margaret Graeme asleep on her knees beside the bed, continuing her grateful petitions in her dreams.

  V

  Fox And Hounds

  For the third time the Scourge, with mutiny mounting in the hearts of her crew, headed up for Skull Cay, Pugh’s rendezvous in the delta of the River Plate. For the third time the chagrined lookout in the top saw through his glass the king’s ship in the offing, visible to him by her higher spars and canvas. Behind them, outdistanced for the time, more by luck than speed, for the Scourge’s bottom was fast gathering a drag of weed, Pugh knew the Thetis, sloop-of-war, was following relentlessly.

  Somewhere below the sea rim her consort was cruising. And they were all after the Scourge. The hunt for Pugh was on, and these three indomitable, untiring gaze-hounds of the sea had viewed him and never had one of them, or two, failed to loom on the horizon at nightfall and again at dawn.

  Once, after a gale that blotted sea and sky, a frigate had shown so close to them in the swift clearance that the bullies of the Scourge could see from their deck the yellow hull with its blue top-works and the scarlet gun-ports that opened eagerly to belch a broadside that came skipping and scattering across the waves. Pugh had run for it, out-metaled by this frigate of the fourth class but not outsailed. Then the sloop-of-war had appeared, heading them off, and Pugh and his bullies fought a smashing encounter.

  The sloop had them inshore and the frigate was plowing along far astern, so that there was nothing for Pugh to do but run the gantlet of the sloop’s broadside until he could forge ahead on his superior speed. This the Scourge had finally accomplished, but not until showering round-shot had taken toll of the crew and damaged the gear so that Pugh had to fish his fore-topmast. Five bullies went overboard to the ground sharks, seven still tossed and groaned in the stuffy cockpit, their jagged wounds attended by the leech with the rough surgery of those times.

  Their best suit of sails had been sadly rent by the iron hail and they had been given no time to patch, only to change foresail and two of the jibs for extra canvas, well worn and none too sound. Altogether they were in evil case. Their bottom was fouling rapidly so that already they could note the difference of speed and answer to the helm. Their water was low and beginning to smell musty. Worst of all, the powder was running short.

  They had made but a brief stay at Porto Bello on account of the tip given Pugh by the tavern-keeper concerning the gold-ship and they had been unable to buy munitions there. They had missed the gold-ship, or the tip had been false, the men were tired and lacked sleep, the grog was none too plentiful and Simon Hart assiduously encouraged the idea that it was all the fault of Pugh, that the captain’s luck had gone, that he had had his day and that the passing of the “black spot” was in order. Such whisperings went about without any knowing who started them.

  Pugh sensed the trouble, sensed too that the quartermaster was the brewer and cursed the day that he had taken among his crew a man who knew navigation. So far the common peril kept the snake of rebellion coiled and only sleepily resentful. Once out of it, Pugh determined that Simon Hart must die, in such fashion that the crew should not suspect Pugh of the deed. And Hart read the wish and the will in Pugh’s demeanor so that the two went warily, watching each the other.

  It was the continuous presence of one or other of the king’s ships in the Plata Gulf that gave Pugh greatest uneasiness. True, he might, at nightfall, slip into one of the many mouths of the Plate and work his way through the labyrinth of creeks, but it was vital to refit and careen and to reach the stores and powder in the magazines at Skull Cay, but it seemed evident that the enemy knew of the existence and location of that rendezvous.

  Someone had blabbed, Pugh knew not who. There were moments when Simon Hart wondered if the dancing witch had played him false, but he could see no reason for such vindictiveness toward himself, and her hate of Pugh he set down to a woman’s whimsy, a flare-up that would die as swiftly as it had flamed. Nor did it curb his ultimate ambition to displace Pugh and see himself as a master buccaneer, a swaggering, colorful figure to be sung of ashore and at sea.

  Meanwhile they were in jeopardy. They were closer to the land and to their haven than the frigate, but the Scourge lay in a belt of alternate calm and sudden, forceless catspaws that sent the schooner surging forward for a little footage, then died away to leave her with slapping canvas and jerking rigging as she pitched on the ground-swell. But the frigate was coming in on a full breeze. All her courses were set and studdingsails had been spread in her captain’s eagerness to head off the chase.

  On she came, lifting higher and higher until they could see the gleam of her wet side, its airy roll as it lifted, and the creaming rush at her bows. And still the sharp line of the wind, dark against the sluggish shore waters, showed sharp and clear and steady, two miles seaward of the Scourge. Presently the frigate ran out of the breeze, her studdingsails hung idle, course after course wrinkled from their bellied fullness and the crew began to take in some of the useless kites. Under her own impetus she glided into the calm belt that girdled the schooner and lay there heaving to the swell.

  Pugh looked at the distant land and at the haze that hid the crests of the range. He looked at the sky that was a blue flame and he looked at the sea about him, a sea of greenish brass. He looked at his crew and at Simon Hart and gritted his teeth as he walked his quarterdeck.

  “May their souls crisp in hell!” he muttered, and the oath included king’s men and his own.

  He was trapped. He had less than thirty able men and presently boats would drop over from the king’s ship, filled with fighting men, two at least to his one, and they would come swinging over the swell with the bosun’s pipe of “boarders away” still ringing in their ears. His men, if they could be called his, would fight hard and well, but there would be no spirit in them, only the sullen, desperate courage of the cornered pirate while the king’s men would swarm over and through the nettings with cheers.

  He leveled his glass. Already tiny figures were swarming at the davits of the frigate. Pugh snapped the telescope shut.

  “Lay aft here, all hands,” he roared. “Men, we’re in a tight box. See to it they don’t nail the lid down on us. The devil’s own luck is in the weather, and, hear me all, I’ll serve a mass to Satan an he’ll but send us enough wind to slide by that frigate! We’ve got to beat off their boarding-party. So up double-nettings and fight like the devil’s own. Gunner, I’ll lay Long Tom myself. Double-shot your carronades. Use partridge and canister. Lively, all of ye, or ye’ll be squirming on hell’s griddles in an hour.”

  Pugh went forward and saw to the loading of his long bow-chaser, one hand fondly on the sleek metal skin of his barking serpent while he hung over the breech, watching the foremost boat from the frigate as it came up on the long surges of the ground-swells and hung on the crests for a moment, the oars of the men dipping in rhythmic man-of-war sweep, making the four craft that had been dispatched against them look like water beetles, straddling on top of, rather than in, the water.

  Little specks of white light broke out from the weapons of the fighters, soon the pirates could see the gay colors of the uniforms, the figures of the officers in the stern sheets, urging their rowers on in the gallant race for the honor of being first aboard the chase. They could see the spurts of foam from the quick, even catch of
the ash blades, working with toy-like precision. The little flotilla split apart, they were going to attack on both sides.

  The pirates worked like fiends, raising a double-net above the rail, piling up their ammunition, setting handy pike and double-ax and pistol and musket. Many were armed with Pugh’s special boarding pistols, he himself carried a variety of small arms in his belt and slung from a sash that ran across his bare and matted chest.

  Every man was nude to the waist, belts were taut and kerchiefs wrapped tight about their brows and each man’s face was grim for the encounter. Swabs stood beside the inhauls of the carronades and buckets of water ready to cool the heated metal, By the foremast they were taking turns at a grindstone, edging their cutlasses afresh and the sparks shone orange in the sun before they died.

  And still Pugh waited, calculating the range and the lift of the water before he fired. He was the master-gunner of them all, and their only hope lay in smashing at least one boat, no easy mark as it raced on. The leading cutter poised on the rounded summit of a swell and Pugh, squinting through the sight, dipped the glowing linstock to the powdered touch-hole. The Long-Tom roared and white smoke cauliflowered up from the muzzle in the still air. Pugh, peering through the screen, saw the shot souse into the sea beside the boat, shearing off the blades of the port oars and throwing the crew into temporary confusion.

  “Jump to it, damn ye, jump!” he yelled, lending his strength to the inhaul of the gun, seizing the swab himself and plying it dexterously.

  The charge was set and rammed home with almost incredible swiftness and Pugh’s hawk eyes fiercely sighted the mark. The missile plumped fairly into the cutter, fragments flew and the sea was dotted with the black forms of struggling men, survivors of the deadly aim.

  The second boat swung in to the rescue and Pugh laughed.

  “A taste of our metal they didn’t relish,” he crowed. “We’ll try ’em again.”

  But his next shot ricocheted harmlessly past the target and a puff of white smoke from the bows of the frigate, followed by a hollow boom, sounded the recall.

  “Done! They’re done, the sniveling hounds!” cried Pugh.

  “No, by God, the wind is coming!” He had seen the flattened royals and skysails on the distant frigate puff and fall to puff again while a line of foam showed faint at her bows. The boats had turned with the men they had rescued from the wreck of the cutter and were speeding back. Twice more the Long-Tom roared without a hit.

  Seaward the sky had suddenly darkened, wind pouring out of gathering clouds as from a bellows, the swift riffle of it all about the frigate now and reaching toward the Scourge. The king’s men had to get aboard, which equalized to some extent the fact that the schooner was last to get the breeze. A fine haze had veiled the sky and tarnished the sun, a moan came out of the source of the wind, a hurricane was forward. It was not a Plate pampero, but a true sea-gale.

  “A black mass to thee, Satan!” shouted Pugh, “We’ll beat ’em yet!”

  The sudden unleashed gale grew in intensity. Aboard the frigate they were shortening sail as she rushed on toward the Scourge. But now the schooner had caught the breeze and was fleeing northward, the wind abeam, the sweet lines of her entry slicing the long rollers that had replaced the heave of the swell. The heavier frigate heeled, her bows deep to the catheads, her masts abend. A faint sound, like a pistol shot, came to the Scourge and an unfurled royal flew from the frigate like a bird. Yet her superior canvas, while it held, smashed her through the seas faster than the Scourge, which trailed a beard of weed along her keel, and she held the windward gage.

  The frigate did not fire. The distance was still extreme for her range and the pitch and toss of chaser and chased made targetry a waste of powder. But her canvas held in the bolt-ropes, the lighter sails having been furled before the full fury of the gale broke, and she gained, little by little. A drenching area of rain from an overswollen cloud passed between the two ships, hurrying to gain the shore with the remnants of its load and for a minute or so blotted out all view.

  Following it came a gusty squall and the wounded topmast of the Scourge smashed at the crosstrees. Still the frigate gained and now a long headland loomed up, barring the way. The schooner could not clear it, but Pugh held on to his tack until the last moment before he ordered—

  “’Bout ship!”

  The pirates hauled madly on the sheets as the Scourge spun on her keel and clawed a frantic way seaward into the face of the gale with the king’s ship, plunging like a bull, coming fast up. As the schooner crossed her bows the frigate yawed and fire spurted from her dripping sides. Round shot screeched through the rigging above the voice of the storm, round shot gouged the Scourge’s planks and tore away her rail, round shot slugged into her side-planks as she rose to the roll of the sea. Peak and throat halyards of the mainsail were torn away as the blocks came smashing down, the canvas drooped like the broken wing of a bird and the schooner fell off in the trough.

  Two men swarmed aloft with repair tackle, but as she rose to the pitch of the great waves another volley came and men dropped groaning while Pugh cursed at their impotence.

  “Satan take me, but send rain,” he bawled as he stood at the wheel astride the headless helmsman who had fallen at his feet in the last discharge.

  Above them an ebon cloud was rived with lightning, and from the gash a blinding torrent fell, hiding sea and sky, battering the deck and hissing in the scuppers, striving to flatten the rearing waves that ran and leaped uncontrolled as the hurricane reached its height.

  The mainsail, reefed close, rose again, and the stricken schooner gained headway. Pugh could not see the frigate for the storm and darkness, but he knew she too must have tacked to avoid the cape and was now using every effort to combat the gale. Out to sea they fought, foot by foot, under the inky pall of the sky, while the thunder pealed and the rain thudded down. Once only as a blue javelin split the clouds from the zenith did Pugh catch a glimpse of the laboring frigate.

  Hour after hour they beat out until they had struggled through to the skirts of the tempest, and at sunset sailed a troubled but subsiding sea without sail in sight or fall of land.

  VI

  Reprisal

  At midnight Pugh sat alone in his cabin. Neither his lieutenant, Folsom, the leech, nor Simon Hart, who slept in tiny cubbyholes that opened from the main cabin, had come aft since they had run out of the storm. All three were forward with the men, and though Pugh had closed transom and door against the sound, he was conscious of snatches of song and drunken shouting in the bows.

  For the first time he had lost control of his men. They had refused to clean ship after they had run out of the gale, and Pugh, swallowing his black wrath, had let the matter go under Simon Hart’s smiling excuse that the hands were dog-tired.

  It presaged trouble; Pugh realized that very plainly. He was not the man to brook tamely the taking away of his authority and a place forward among the hands with his share the same as the least among them. He could hardly believe that he had dropped the whip and lost the power over his bullies. They were all brainless—save Simon Hart. Left to themselves they knew naught but to drink, sing or listen to bragging, evil yarns. They never thought. A story-spinner could hold them, any one with initiative could get an audience, the last thought placed in their heads was the prime one, and Simon Hart, the crafty devil, had worked upon them as a modeler would handle clay until they were all of his pattern. With Hart out of the way, he, Pugh, could bring them ’round again.

  And he walked the cabin pondering the best way of disposing of Simon Hart. He might challenge him or start a quarrel?

  The medico came down the companionway and sank down unbidden on a chair at the table beneath the gimbaled lamp. His face was drawn and his tired eyes were set in black caverns.

  “‘Ranting Dick’ has gone,” he said. “Bates and Willett will go out with the dawn. I may pull Ames through, but he’ll lack a leg. And Bartlet is in evil case.”

  Pugh scowled
. Of all the crew Bates and Ranting Dick might have been depended upon to stand with him against the rest.

  “Stop your croaking,” he said angrily, then changed his note. “Nay Folsom, I meant it not. Ye need somewhat to bring back your own blood. Art white as a corpse. Mix yourself a rummer of grog. Mix one for me.”

  The leech looked craftily at Pugh as he mixed gin, water and the juice of limes with sugar into a cold toddy. There was malice in his eyes.

  “There’s trouble for’ard,” he essayed tentatively, and as Pugh did not forbid him, went on.

  “The men say that Pugh’s luck has broken, that ye have given your soul to Satan and that ye are accursed. They have held a council and they have voted to slip ye the spot.”

  He squealed suddenly like a rabbit when it feels the fetters bite, and his glass fell from his palsied hands as Pugh clutched him about the throat and shook him clear of the floor.

  “So, they will slip me the spot, will they? And they have sent ye sneaking aft to deliver it. You dog, you drug-pounding, treacherous dog. Ye dare to come to me and tell me I am to be deposed!”

  He flung the doctor from him with a crash and the leech landed in a huddle upon his hands and knees.

  “Nay, I bring nothing. I—I voted against it. I came to warn ye. They will slip ye the spot in the morning. I tell ye some wanted to see ye walk the plank but I would none of it.”

  “Aye, ye persuaded Simon Hart to mercy, I doubt not,” said Pugh grimly. “Get up, man, and finish your grog. Mix more. Now listen. Where are your drugs? In Hart’s cabin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have ye enough to mix a sleeping draft for the quartermaster, have ye enough to mix one so deep for Hart that he will wake up in hell? Listen, Folsom, do this for me and we will win through yet. We’ll slip through this cordon, we’ll repair ship and sneak back to Porto Bello or some other port and refit. We’ll get more bullies to replace our dead and you, Folsom, shall be my right-hand man. A double share for ye in all. We’ll set up another rendezvous and ye shall have a house there of your own, a house for your loot and your women. What say ye?