“What think you of this plan? If yon cruiser does not follow us in too closely—”
“She’ll not do that,” said Skinner. “We’ll creep in on the last of the flood, if this wind holds. They’ll have the ebb to stem, and the tides run fast and strong. Let us get in and I’ll warrant us being let alone till morning.”
“Good.”
“We’ve had luck, so far.” Skinner went on. “It may hold. The glass is uncertain. This is the hurricane season. ’Twould not surprise me to see it blow before morning, and we’ll find a good lee anchorage in case of it. But your plan, Raxon; what of it?”
“’Twas suggested by a word of yours, Captain,” said Raxon with a sly wink at Tremaine, whereby he established with the latter the fact that he flattered Skinner for policy and for peace. “There is a pinnace hangs above the stern window on its davits. A small boat, but large enough for four, together with provisions, and yet leaving room for—let us say—a chest. It has seemed to me not altogether fair that we should glean the booty and leave the crew no share—though they have indeed had and spent their share of it and what we take is but for our pains and trouble to see that the wives and children of Swayne and Hoyle are not left to penury.
“Yet, I say, I have a tender conscience, like the both of you. It irks me to feel that each is not left well treated at the last and I think we have agreed that this is like to be the last of the Brethren of the Coast for a whiles.
“So, why not let us provision this boat? Let us leave with the crew our blessing and the ship for their own uses and devices while we go see the loot. For this a small boat will serve as well, perhaps better. Gibbs can row when the wind is not favorable. And, since these foolish fellows might not appreciate the fairness with which we mean to treat them, it might be as well to depart sometimes in the night, this or the next or when it seems most suitable. Or we might go ashore to seek for fresh water and not be able to find our way back. The point is, we make the crew a gift of the good ship Gauntlet and all she holds.”
“Sink me!” cried Tremaine, clapping his great hand on his thigh with a report like a pistol. “Sink me, Raxon, if you ain’t a fox!”
“Nay, give credit where credit is due. I but work out the details from the ideas that the captain, here, sets in my brain.”
Skinner chuckled in high good humor. It struck his fancy to leave the crew to wait the inevitable attack by the King’s men, holding the empty sack. That was a rare joke and, since he had been given the credit of it, he laughed the more. The touch about the wives and children also amused him.
“We’ll see how all works out,” he said. “Here is the chart with the sea islands lying close as eggs in a basket, yet with waterways between that are fairly navigable. We’ll work up inside close to Saint Helena Sound, yet carefully, lest the corvette’s consort meet us there. Then we’ll take boat at midnight. I would give much to see their faces next morning when they find us gone. As for finding us, had they the spirit, as soon discover a pin in a haystack.”
“Where’ll we go,” asked Tremaine, prac-tically, “after we get the loot?”
“Make up the coast for Charles’ Town itself. There will be none to positively identify us with the Gauntlet. We need show no more of value than will pay our way, or, should there come necessity, ’tis said the governor doth greatly admire the palm of his hand when ’tis gilded. He gets nothing from the cruisers and he has seen more than one buccaneer. Or we can go on to the settlement at Georgetown, or further still, by inland waters, to Albemarle on the Chowan River, where men from Virginia have established themselves. We can trade the small boat for a larger to some logwood trader, perchance, either by purchase—or other-wise.”
* * * *
As the day waned the breeze grew more and more fitful and at. last failed altogether. Now the corvette had the advantage of a breeze further out and came bowling along until her hull lifted.
Skinner ordered the boats out for towing so that they might cross the bar and get fairly into the river before the tide turned. The men refused.
He argued with them for a few minutes, pointing out the necessity of taking advantage of the turn of the tide against their pursuers, of the probability that, if they did not take out their boats, the seaward breeze would bring the corvette close enough to send shot plumping aboard.
“It’s fight or pull, you dogs!” he told them at last. “Take your choice. You can sit and handle oars, but I’m damned if there’s one of ye sober enough, to stand upright or see straight, let alone fight. Row, and to-night we’ll rest easy, to-morrow we’ll feast. Stay here and the most of ye’ll be stewing in hell by midnight—and I’ll be the first to send some of ye there to tell the devil the rest are coming.
“Cross me, will you?” he shouted in fury. “Into those boats, you scum! Into them and pull yourselves sober.”
In an instant he was down among them, his sword, once Swayne’s, pricking and fleshing them, with Tremaine at his back swinging a cutlass and Raxon looking down from the rail of the poop. One man protested and Skinner shot him through the mouth.
“I’ll brook no mutiny,” he thundered. “You make me skipper and I’ll make ye skip. Look at the corvette coming up hand over hand, you mongrel fools.”
The breeze still with her, the cruiser was coming up fast. As they gazed they saw a small ball of white detach itself from her gleaming side and the boom of a gun came faintly over the water.
“That’s not for us,” said Skinner. “’Tis a signal to her consort. Now, you swabs, will you row and go clear, or stay and be bilboed and hung?”
The boats were outswung, manned and soon the Gauntlet began to move slowly but surely toward the shore. Another gun sounded from the cruiser. It was not likely that they were wasting ammunition on the chase at such a distance. The consort would inevitably heave in sight before long. Doubtless they could see her already from the corvette’s masthead.
“We’ll beat ’em yet,” said Skinner. He snuffed the air, looked high and low, scanned the horizon and then went into the cuddy for a look at his glass.
“There’ll be no hurricane to-night,” he told Raxon and Tremaine. “But we’ll make the bar half an hour before the turn. And then our dogs can tow us up the river and out of sight. To hell with the corvette and her consort, too. We’ll spend that money yet, fling it to the lasses an’ put a jewel on their fingers for a kiss. Eh, lads? We’ll ruffle it yet with the best in New York City or belike in London Town itself. We’ll pass for rich merchants and choose us each some wealthy wench to wed when we are tired of light-o’-loves!”
Raxon turned to hide the sneer he could not control at the idea of Skinner posing as a merchant, or wooing a rich man’s daughter. He had his own ambitions and on their horizon neither Tremaine nor Skinner showed.
The three had the deck to themselves with all the crew still slaving at the sweeps. Skinner put Gibbs at the wheel and the three took the chance to fully provision the stern pinnace, too small for use in towing. Now it was ready for their use at any time, the stowage covered with canvas long before the sweating and sobered men came aboard. The river had curved; the entrance was out of sight, the corvette lost in purple haze as the sun went down.
Still the wind proved freaky. With twilight, a breeze began to blow from the southwest, the prevailing wind of that latitude, coming down the valleys of the rivers that emptied into the isleted estuary. Skinner sought to take advantage of it and follow up the wide and seemingly deep channel. They could see banks of reeds backed by palmettos. Back of them, chinquapin oak, live oak draped with long streamers of moss and thicket plantations of pines. All was on low ground, much of it tidal.
Through the evening sky moved lines of cranes, great flocks of belated ducks coming in from the night. They saw buzzards wheeling and once, when the barkentine tacked, in the momentary silence before she came about, they heard the Carolina nightingale, the mocking bird, that knows no special hours of song. Fish leaped all about them; porpoises and dolphins rolled an
d the great rays leaped to fall with a resounding crash. Shut in from the sea, here seemed an inter-island paradise—save for the mosquitoes, hovering in clouds.
It was partly the mosquitoes, partly the terrific force of the ebb, increasing momentarily in power and violence as they advanced that proved their undoing. Skinner sought to find anchorage where the breeze would be the strongest and blow the pests from the ship. They passed two islands between which the tide came eddying and swirling to join the main stream.
There was a leadsman in the chains but the men had started drinking again with their supper when they came abroad from towing, and doubtless the man was incapable. The thing came about suddenly enough yet gently, as the Gauntlet, clutched by the tide, nosed on a bar of soft but clinging mud and sand, glided on until suddenly she came up with sails shivering, held fast.
Skinner swore volubly but, beneath his cursing, made up his mind that this was the night for their desertion of the barkentine and the crew. On the falling tide they could not hope to get the Gauntlet off, nor was there much chance of getting off by kedging and warping, even on the top of the flood, so deep had she keeled into the stuff that would hold her faster yet before the tide changed. But he did not announce this. After his first outburst, mainly directed at the man with the lead, he made light of the situation.
“It’s only soft bottom. No damage. This is a good place to stay till she floods again. Right in the breeze.”
He got two fiddles going, had rum brought up and before two hours the deck was a pandemonium that might almost have been heard outside at sea.
If the corvette had sent in boats then the barkentine would have been an easy conquest. To the tunes of the fiddles men howled ribald ditties and danced clumsily, locked with each other like bears broken into a distillery. Raxon watched all from the poop rail, Tremaine beside him, while Skinner mingled at first with the men, edging them on to the intoxication that would presently turn to maudlin daze and then oblivion.
The eyes of the ex-scrivener’s clerk glittered, his nostrils dilated. He seemed almost to quiver with repressed activity, like the weasel he was. His brain was busy with many things. Tremaine, big, stolid, leaned his great forearms on the broad rail. Gibbs hovered in the background, waiting orders to bring fresh mugs of wine for the quarterdeck gentry. Tremaine swigged down some rare Xeres as indifferently as if it had been small beer. Raxon drank more appreciatively, more sparingly. He liked the warmth of the wine, the flavor, the effect that charged his courage. But he wanted to keep his head clear.
“Have you had any words with Skinner?” he asked Tremaine.
“Me? None. What of it?”
“Nothing. Tremaine—” he hesitated a moment—“mark you, you are my friend and with them I play fair to the last drop, the last coin. I may be wrong but Skinner seems to grudge you your share in this loot. He seems to fear that you will give us away by your behaviour after we get clear. Nothing outright, mind you, but little doubts that are close to slurs and put, so I think, to sound me as to whether I agree with him. Skinner will bear watching, Tremaine.”
“’Stap me, but if I catch him in treachery I’ll wring his neck. I’ll tear the windpipe out of him and make him chew on’t,” growled the giant.
“Go easy, man. I’m not sure. If I am, at any time, I’ll tell you. Meantime you and I are with each other. We’ll pledge to that. Gibbs!”
His face hidden in his cup Raxon grinned, knowing he had sown the swiftly developing seeds of unrest and mistrust in Tremaine’s simple mind.
* * * *
Two hours after midnight they were away. The crew lay about the decks in stupor as Raxon and Skinner came up to the poop and lowered the pinnace without a splash. Then, from the stern window, all four swarmed down the ropes and cast off. Gibbs took the sculls and, pulling athwart the current, rowed them up a creek, though he protested against landing there.
“Too dahk fo’ to see,” he said, “but plenty ’gator lie on dem bank. Swish you wid tail an’ you go into wateh—dat end of you. Bimeby, flood come, dey all go into hole undeh wateh. Betteh wait till flood come erlong, wait till sun come up.”
“It’s a good idea—curse the mosquitoes!” said Raxon. “Think you. the corvette will be in on the flood, Skinner? If so we might lay low and watch what happens.” He chuckled in the darkness as if he were looking forward to witnessing a play.
Skinner could match that mood and did so. Tremaine said nothing. Whatever he might have thought concerning the treachery of their desertion was overbalanced by the glitter of gold and jewels that was ever before his eyes.
They all smoked constantly to protect themselves from insect bites, swigging occasionally at the liquor they had brought along, dozing off until the negro wakened them. Dawn was in the sky; Vs of ducks were aflight with the strings of cranes and herons. The tide was high up in the reeds and still rising fast.
Gibbs’s eyes showed bursting; his ears seemed to be pricked forward.
“I hear plenty rowing,” he said in an awed whisper.
They all listened. Plain to their accustomed hearing came the click-clack of oars in the pins, sounding across the water, far off. They knew it did not come from the Gauntlet, did not threaten themselves. Down along the reeds to the exit of the creek they hauled with their hands. Before they quite reached it the sound had ceased but they saw a little flotilla of four cutters, oars shipped now and lugs set to the light wind. Swiftly the cutters came on the incoming tide, making for the barkentine where the buccaneers snored on in drunken sleep. They could see the level sunlight catch and twinkle on weapons, on accoutrements of the officers.
“There’ll be rare fun soon,” said Skinner. “We’re well out of it.”
But there was little spectacular about the thing that happened, save for its ending. The cutters were close to the Gauntlet before some buccaneer with a splitting head and swollen tongue sought the water tub and sighted them, striving to arouse his stupefied comrades in time for a futile resistance. Hardly a shot was fired. From the creek mouth they could see the flash of blades and hear a few shouts promptly followed by hurrahs that were undoubtedly the cheers of British seamen. It was all over in a few minutes. Then the corvette appeared, following up her boats on the lifting tide, a signal weft flying. A cutter stroked back to her, received orders and returned.
The pirates were bundled overside into the sterns of the boats, huddled under the pistols of their conquerors, bound for judgment and the penalty of their acts as proscribed men. Had the Gauntlet been surrendered at Providence, any irregularities would have been winked at and, though probably any present loot would have been appropriated, past offences would have been assumed to have been committed under privateering custom against the King’s enemies. Letters of marque were readily enough obtained from venal commissioners and the surrendering buccaneers were given the benefit of a doubt as to their sincerity in adhering strictly to the articles of their commissions.
But these poor wretches were bound for Execution Point, there to swing as examples of those who had defied the King’s leniency. Skinner jeered at them and Raxon grinned silently, his tongue showing between his teeth. Tremaine, gold-blinded, looked on without comment. Only Gibbs muttered something in commiseration of his late comrades till Skinner turned fiercely on him.
“Quiet, you black dog! But for us you’d be with them.”
“They got ’em asleep,” said Raxon. “They’ve never missed us. They’d not ask for us by rank, knowing they killed Swayne. It may never come out till the trial that we got away. Look, they’ve set the ship afire!”
“Too much trouble to get her off for a prize,” said Skinner with a shrug, as smoke curled up from both hatches and swiftly increased. “That’s the end of her. Let’s be getting back into cover.”
Raxon began to laugh, silently.
“It is rare,” he said when his fit was over. “Yon corvette’s captain goes bragging that he has killed Swayne. The news goes to Swayne’s relatives—if he told the truth in
that matter—and they will presently come down to find the treasure—and find it gone.”
“Art so sure of finding it?” asked Tremaine.
“Aye,” answered Skinner with a snarl. “If we dig the island over.”
They did not dare show themselves in the open for fear their absence might be marked, the question of the loot brought up. For two days they did not dare to light a fire and, at the end of that time, they were lost in the labyrinth of the islands where blind channels led into marshes and baffled them fifty times. Reeds grew high above them in the passages and the rough chart was worse than useless. They saw no Indian pirogues nor sign of natives.
On the third day, their best edibles gone, they caught fish and found oysters, not daring to fire a shot at the game they saw. This time they landed and waded to high land to find wood and broil their catch. The mosquitoes plagued them by day and tormented them by night, despite smudges. The bites festered; fevers came on them with chills that held them gripped with ague and left them weak as children.
Gibbs climbed a tree and announced that he saw the main channel and no signs of the cruiser. So they worked their tedious way to open water and crossed it, veering north and seaward, bearing in mind the negro’s description of the two islands he had seen between him and the sea from the island of the screaming skull. Now they began to calculate how soon the dead captain’s relatives might come with explicit directions.
They were prepared to fight, to murder for the loot; but suppose they arrived too late? They had been ten days in the maze of marshes and islands that were separated and made true islands only at high tide. In the channels, masked by reeds and palmettos, the currents raced, as often against them as in the direction they wished to go, wasting their time. They grew morose in speculation of it. No longer were they three joined in one enterprise. Skinner seldom talked to them and Raxon ever stirred the poison he had brewed in the mind of Tremiane, with Skinner’s attitude to color his suggestion.
The Adventure Megapack: 25 Classic Adventure Stories Page 33
