In six days we were north of Bermuda, turning steadily east as the westerlies filled to carry us home. Dasher joined in the work as though he'd always been a part of the crew. He scrubbed the decks and stood his turns at the wheel. But he never went aloft, and he never took the air from his wineskins. They made him fat and awkward, afraid to climb the rigging.
On the seventh morning, Butterfield aimed his bent sextant at the sun as it rose above the bowsprit. He stood with one leg stiff, the other bending to the Dragons roll. I waited with my book, ready to write down the angles as he called them out.
“Oh, my,” he said. “Goodness.”
“What's the matter?” I asked.
He lowered the sextant. He put his hand over his brow, and swayed on his feet.
“John, I feel poorly,” he said.
The next thing I knew, he was slumped on the deck, with the sextant lying beside him.
Chapter 23
A GENTLEMAN
OF FORTUNE
Uncle Stanley,” I said. It scared me to see him stricken so suddenly, and I became a child again, shouting for help, nearly crying as I pushed at his shoulders.
He trembled at my touch, sloshing in his clothes like a bag of water, as though all his bones were disconnected. His skin was hot and clammy.
“Help!” I cried again, and Horn came running. Dasher was closer, but he stopped short a yard away.
“Lord, he's dead. He's hopped the twig,” he said.
Horn pushed him aside. He knelt beside me and ran his hands over the captain's chest, up his neck to his cheeks, to his forehead. He pried the lids from Butterfield's eyes, and I saw the whites underneath—only the whites—and gasped at the shock of it.
“Steady, John,” said Horn. “He's got the fever. That's all it is.”
“The fever!” cried Dasher. He covered his mouth with his hand, pinching his nostrils shut. “How did he get it out here?”
“He didn't,” said Horn. “It's been inside him since Luis Peña Cay.”
“We all might get it,” said Dasher through his fingers.
Horn shook his head. “Not you, and not young John. But the rest of us, aye. The ones who went ashore at Luis Peña Cay.”
“Did you go ashore?” I asked.
“I did,” said he. And his next words struck me dumb. “You're the master now, Mr. Spencer.”
By the evening, two other men had been sent down to their hammocks with the shakes and the chills. Apart from Dasher, only Horn and I and the oxlike Mudge were left to work the ship. And the wind was rising as the sun went down.
“Should we reef?” I asked.
“You're the master,” said Horn again.
“But should we?” I said. It was my childhood game, but played in earnest now. Horn annoyed me with his silence.
“Tell me,” I said.
He frowned at the sails. “Who can say, Mr. Spencer? If you reef, you slow the ship; if you don't, you gamble with the wind. It's a decision for the master, not a sailor.”
“Then we'll furl the main,” I said, “and carry on.”
“Aye, aye,” said Horn. He smiled. “That's just what I would do.”
Dasher steered as we wrestled with the canvas. With Horn on one side of the boom, Mudge and I on the other, we dropped the main in its lazy jacks. And the Dragon, stripped of her largest sail, ran before the wind from twilight into darkness.
I sent Mudge below and gave the watch to Horn. “I'll look in on the captain,” I said.
The lamp was burning low above my uncle's chart table. It swung and squeaked and tossed its shadows through the cabin. But after the darkness on deck, the room seemed full of light to me, and I saw the captain very clearly, wedged behind the weatherboard that had been put in place to keep him in his bunk. White fingers clutched at the edge. A white face stared over the top.
“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was small and frightened.
“It's me,” I said. “It's John.”
“John?” he asked. “Come closer, boy. Come closer.”
I squatted by the bunk. His hand crawled up from the board and seemed to feel at the air. I saw that every move was agony for him, and he closed his eyes as he groped to find my shoulder. I took his hand; it was hot as embers.
“I'm cold,” he said. “So cold.”
I pulled the blankets round him as I held his hand in mine. His hair was matted with sweat, tightened into little curls. His face was so drawn that I couldn't bear to look at it.
“Did you reef?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Don't worry.” I squeezed his hand and added, “She can handle her sails.”
I'd hoped to brighten him with our old game, but he was too far gone for that. “Of course she can,” he said. “She's a good ship. Just keep her running straight.”
“I will,” I said.
“And listen … listen, boy,” he said, as though my name escaped him. “See what Mr. Abbey's doing out there.”
“Out-where?” I asked.
“At the windows, boy. He's tapping at the windows.”
“He's not,” said I. “He's—”
“Quickly!”
I did as he asked; I saw no harm in it. I walked aft to the big stern windows, where the shadows of the lamp swayed across the curtains. I heard water rushing past the rudder and under the counter, the creaking of the steering ropes, a faint moan of wind through the rigging and the woodwork. The curtains shifted as the Dragon moved, and their weighted hems ticked and tapped against the windowpanes.
“Oh, bring him in,” said Butterfield.
I reached out to draw the curtains apart. And despite myself, I felt a twinge of fear. The fancy struck me that I would see Abbey there, his shroud falling off him, his bloated face grinning through the glass.
“Hurry,” said my uncle.
I snatched the curtains open. There was nothing there but the sea, a great darkness broken by ghostly swirls in the Dragons wake. A light splatter of spray fell across the glass. I turned the latch and pushed the windows open.
The wind came in, gusting at the curtains. It whirled through the cabin and breathed against the lamp until the flame grew large, then small. I smelled the salt water and a trace of the land far behind us. Then Butterfield said, “There, that's better. Where have you been, Mr. Abbey?”
I closed the windows and turned around. Butterfield had risen to his elbow and was staring off into the shadows by the bunk. “You're so wet, so white, Mr. Abbey.”
It sent shivers through me to hear the captain talking to a dead man. I tried to soothe him again, but he only waved me off. “Leave us, boy,” he said.
I went straight to my cabin, but sleep escaped me. The motions of the Dragon grew steadily worse until my bunk was like a seesaw. Above the sounds of the Dragon I heard the clanking of the buccaneer's chains from deep in the Cave. I heard Butterfield talking away, with long pauses between his sentences, and now a laugh and now an “Aye! That's right, Mr. Abbey.” Finally I dressed again and went wearily aloft.
Horn and Dasher both stood at the wheel. They leaned back, staring up, driving the ship—as she reared and plunged—like a pair of charioteers. Dasher's long coat flapped and tangled at the spokes.
The deck was a hill that I had to climb to reach them, then a slope that I staggered down. I grabbed the binnacle and stared at the compass. We were running south by east.
“I don't care for this,” said Dasher. “I don't care much for this at all.”
Horn smiled. “Oh, she'll do all right. It's only a squall.”
“And it's only a pond we have to cross,” said Dasher. “Lord love me, I'd rather be locked up in the madhouse right now. It's where I ought to be, I think.”
“And miss the sea?” asked Horn. “Miss the wind and the feel of a ship? Wouldn't you miss all that, my friend?”
“That's all I'd miss—the misses,” said Dasher. “But I'd still have idiots for company.”
The Dragon shuddered then, as the bow dug into the
sea. I looked up at the straining topsail. “I'd like to reef,” I said.
“But how?” asked Horn. “Mudge down below, just you and I and a landsman on the deck.”
“Who's the landsman, then?” said Dasher. But he laughed. He made no bones about his calling, and never shed his landsman's clothes—the boots and the flapping coat—nor the wineskins strapped tightly across his chest.
“There's Grace,” I said. “We could bring him from below.”
“No,” cried Horn, and for a moment his blue eyes burned. “Don't think of that, Mr. Spencer. He's like a witch, I tell you. If he's ever freed from those chains, if his feet ever touch this deck, he'll find a way to ruin us.”
“If he's not already drowned,” said Dasher.
The foredeck ran with water. Black seas tumbled aboard, breaking against the capstan, gurgling at the hawse. I hadn't gone once that day to the door of the Cave.
“Just keep her before the wind,” said Horn. “The squall will pass by daybreak.”
I nodded. “Very well.” If Horn wasn't worried, there was no need for worry. I went below and filled a bucket with bread and cheese and scraps of meat. I added a flask of water, took a lantern from its peg, and carried it all to the doorway at the end of the Cave.
I hammered on the wood. “Captain Grace!” I shouted. “Get back from the door.”
His chains clanked. I set down my bucket and turned the latch. The door creaked open.
It was that moment I feared the most. I couldn't open the door without thinking that Grace would come crashing through it, loosed from his chains. I steeled myself to slam it shut again, then held my lantern out, and thrust it through the door.
The Cave stank of sweat and waste. It echoed with the sounds of the sea and the creak of the timbers and the thunder from the figurehead. It was the vilest prison I might imagine, always moving, pitching, with the passage of the ship. Bartholomew Grace sat huddled at the edge of my lamplight, his back against the planking, his feet against the wall. His face seemed ghastly white; a week had passed without his seeing the sun.
He turned that face toward me. His lopsided eyes and burnt-away lips, the hole for his nose—I was always shocked to see them. But now I found a pity for him, within my hatred and my fear.
“I've brought you food,” I said.
His eyes shifted only briefly toward my bucket. “We've turned to the south,” he said.
It amazed me that he knew that.
“And you carry too much sail, so you must be short of hands.”
He seemed to wait for an answer, but I wouldn't tell him he was right. I pushed the bucket toward him.
Grace reached out to take it, his clawlike hand catching on the rim. I moved back from the door. “Is it the fever?” he asked. “Have you got it yourself?”
I shook my head. His horrible gaze studied me before dropping to the bucket. He took out the water and drained half the flask. Then he started on the food, and the bread bubbled in clots round his teeth.
“Has the captain got it?” he asked.
“Give me the bucket,” I said.
He nudged it a bare inch toward me. I would have to crawl into the passage to reach it.
“I hear him talking to himself,” said Grace. “He's gone off his head, hasn't he?” He saw that I would give no answer. “Who's to navigate? Who's to find our way?” He took the cheese and gnawed at the edge. “Not you; I'll tell you that.”
The Dragon pitched violently. The empty bucket tipped on its bottom as a loud crack of timbers sounded from the bow. Grace turned his head, and I reached out and snatched the bucket. Something like anger blazed in the buccaneer's eyes.
“You'll stagger across the ocean, boy,” he said. “You'll be chased by one wind, followed by another, and you'll dare do nothing but run before them. Then you'll meet a gale, or a helmsman will let her broach, and you'll lose a mast or drive her under.”
“We'll take our chance,” I said.
“Rid me of these shackles, boy. Let me loose and I'll make a rich man of you. A gentleman of fortune.”
“I don't wish to be a picaroon,” I said.
The word incensed him. “Damn your blood!” he shouted. “You little cur. You'll bring the ship to ruin, then you'll come and fetch me. You'll beg me for my help.”
I drew back from the door. “Good day to you, Captain Grace,” I said.
He wrenched at his chains. He pulled so violently, with such a rage, that I was sure he'd tear the ringbolts from the deck. I retreated with my bucket and my lantern.
“Run!” he said, and clanked his chains. He laughed.
I closed the door on Bartholomew Grace. But his voice came clearly through the wood.
“I shan't be chained forever, boy. And my vengeance shall be terrible.”
Chapter 24
A GHOSTLY VISIT
In the hours before dawn, the ghost of our gunner went over the side. Poor Abbey's spirit, if it had ever come in by the windows, was gone by daylight, when we set the Dragon again on her proper course.
The squall had passed, without ever rising to the gale I'd feared. And we sailed on toward England, across a sea that was like a field of boulders, so round and jumbled were the waves.
Horn went below and tossed Mudge from his hammock. He pushed him up the ladder and kicked him down the deck. The fat sailor hopped like a toad, scratching himself awake, then wrapped his clumsy hands around the spokes of the Dragons wheel.
We left her in his care, and went below to sleep. But I stopped by the captain's cabin, where I found Butterfield wide awake, lying on his back on his bunk.
“John,” he said happily. “Come in.”
“Is there anyone with you?” I asked.
He frowned. “What a deuced silly question. Who could be with me, John?”
It cheered me greatly to see him back in his senses. He remembered nothing of the night, imagining that he had slept right through it, and I didn't tell him that Abbey's ghost had made a visit.
“I'm tired,” he said. “And sore all over. But I'd like a bit of breakfast, I think.”
I looked up at the skylight. “Mudge is steering,” I said.
“Blast.” He took a long breath and sighed it out. “Well, perhaps I'll wait.”
I went to my cabin and fell asleep in an instant, rocked by the Dragon as she tumbled from wave to wave. I was still sleeping at noon, when Butterfield took a sextant sight and placed us twenty leagues south of our course. I slept until midafternoon, when I finally turned myself out and found Horn at the wheel again, humming his song. He nodded toward the skylight, and I looked down to see Butterfield feasting on cheese and jam-clotted bread. It didn't surprise me that Dasher was there, tucking in like a starving man. I felt a twinge of jealousy not to be with them.
“The captain looks better,” I said.
“For now,” said Horn.
His answer puzzled me.
“That's the way the fever works. A day from now, a week from now, he might be flat on his back again.”
I saw the truth in this as the days went by, as the miles passed under our keel. The sailors who had gone ashore on Luis Peña Cay recovered from their fevers, only to be stricken again. Then Mudge took to his hammock, claiming he had the chills.
Dasher suspected that he didn't. “It's a sham,” he said. “He's a cunning cove, isn't he?” He shook his head and set his hair flying around his shoulders. “Sharp's the word with him. Oh, Lord, I should have thought of it myself.”
But Dasher never shirked his duties. He steered the ship and trimmed the sails, always in his flowing coat, always in his wineskins. We couldn't cross the ocean fast enough for him, and he loved to learn our progress from noon to noon, then change it to a distance that he knew.
“A hundred and fifty miles,” he'd say, grinning. “Why, we've just gone from Ramsgate to Portsmouth. Maybe more.” And then, “Fancy that. I've never been to Portsmouth.”
He despaired in the calms and trembled in the squalls. He ha
ted to see the Dragon turn from her course, but we always ran before the wind, when it rose, because Horn had doubts about the rigging.
“You see how the foremast shakes?” he asked me during one of the squalls. And indeed it did. When the wind was high, it trembled more than Dasher. It shook with a little rattle in its partners, where it came up through the deck, with a low hum that grew louder with each passing squall.
“Will it break?” I asked.
“Not if we run,” said Horn. “Not if we keep the wind astern.”
So we let the wind chase us, as Grace had said. The crosses on the captain's chart made a jagged line, and once a loop when the wind came suddenly from the east. But they inched toward England. And there were only three hundred miles to go— “Dover to Devon,” said Dasher, gloating—-when Butterfield took a turn for the worse.
I had just given Grace his evening meal; I was putting the latch into place when I heard the captain behind me.
“Who's that you've got in there?” he asked.
“Don't you remember, Uncle?” said I. “It's Bartholomew Grace.”
He repeated the name as though he'd never heard it before. “And why is he berthed in the Cave?”
I took his arm. “You said to put him there. He came from the Apostle, remember?”
“Yes, of course,” he said, though clearly he'd forgotten. “How silly of me.” He touched his forehead. “I'm afraid I don't feel quite right today.”
I led him back to his cabin and got him settled in his bunk. In the morning he greeted me warmly, much to my relief.
“John,” he said when I came to his door. “Come in, come in, young man. I have some news to tell you.”
I sat at the foot of his bunk. He looked tired but otherwise healthy.
“Listen, John,” he said. “Your father came by to see me last night.”
The Buccaneers Page 15
