by Barry Sadler
"Now, ain't you a pretty sight?"
The fat pirate who met Casca as he climbed up the ship's ladder and came aboard didn't know what he was getting himself into. He was big, mean, and strong, a mixed race hulk of a man naked to the waist, with big, ham hands and small, cruel eyes. He was very drunk, and in addition, all the ship's officers were below decks with the captain, so the sight of the elegantly dressed Casca signaled fair game to him.
Casca had looked around the deck when he came aboard, and the slow match of his anger was becoming a short fuse. The ship's deck was incredibly filthy. Even as Casca came aboard one of the crewmen was taking a shit in the scuppers. Another had just finished a bottle, and instead of throwing the empty over the side, had deliberately thrown it at the mast where it broke, spreading shards of glass on the dirty deck. All the crewmen in sight were obviously drunk. How they could have handled the ship so smartly just a little while ago was a mystery to Casca. But what wasn't a mystery was the mess on deck. Give him five minutes with these bastards and he'd have them off their asses and cleaning things up. It was not that Casca was squeamish. Hell, he'd spent his share of the time in battle and in a lot of unpleasant places. But, dammit, his training had made him revolt at anything that kept a fighting machine from battle readiness.
But the fat pirate didn't know any of that. All he saw was a dandy somebody he could have some fun with.
When Casca ignored him, he waddled forward, eyes dark. "Hey, pretty boy, I'm talking to you."
Casca sighed, looked forward momentarily to taking out his bad humor on the fat man, then thought better of it. After all, what happened on Blackbeard's ship was none of his business. What he wanted to do was carry out McAdams' project, and get the girl and then get on to America. Damn the interruptions. Frowning at the drunk pirate, he reached into the leather purse hanging at his waist, intending to pull out a piece of eight. His fingers brought out two. Casca threw one down on the deck in front of the pirate. "Go ashore and buy yourself a bath," he said, turning toward the hatch. He still had the other piece of eight in his right hand.
Several things happened at once.
The fat pirate was mad now, and drew the cutlass he carried around his waist out of its sheath. At the same time, the aft hatch cover was pushed violently open, and the officers of the ship, coughing and cursing, burst out into the sunlight. With them a thick pall of sulfurous smoke boiled up.
There was something else, too, something in the open hatch that caught Casca's eye but he was too busy at the moment to pay attention to it.
The fat pirate lunged toward him, swinging the cutlass, no longer interested in just making fun of Casca. Right now he was making a tremendous slash, intending to chop Casca right down the middle.
As for Casca, he was caught off guard, his attention finally drawn toward the opening hatch, never dreaming the fat pirate was really drunk enough to come at him. So the steel flashed in the sunlight, aimed straight for his skull, and when Casca tried to dodge it, his left foot slipped in some filth on the deck, throwing his body directly toward the pirate.
Damn!
The cutting edge of the cutlass was not much more than a foot from his head, too close to avoid, so Casca continued his forward fall, using the purchase of his right foot to aid his lunge, and balling up his right fist.
The punch he threw had all his weight and force behind it, and it landed exactly where he aimed; at the fat pirate's nuts.
The pirate was still driving forward, and the momentum of his rush coupled with the force of his cutlass blow and the lowered target of Casca's bent over body rolled him up into the air, big and fat as he was, and he slammed into the bulwark, head first, body tilted down, screaming with pain from the blow to his genitals.
Casca was pissed off for having to slug the fat bastard's nuts with his naked fist, so now he used his booted right foot to repeat the blow. At the same time he grabbed the pirate's cutlass hand and jerked it backwards so hard that there was a crack of breaking bone before the pirate dropped the weapon. And, to add insult to injury, Casca continued his swing and then pushed. The pirate was already off balance. He was teetering on the rim of the bulwark. Now Casca's push flipped him all the way over, and slowly at first, then with speed, he described a rough cartwheel in the air and dropped toward the ocean.
Casca stepped back to avoid the falling cutlass, then spat over the bulwark. He was red in the face, more with anger than with the exertion.
"Well, damn my eyes!"
The sound of the voice came as a shock. It came to Casca then that the events of the last few seconds had happened in total silence except for the sounds of his scuffle with the fat pirate and the pirate's screams. Now he turned toward the opened hatch just as the falling pirate's body splashed into the water.
"Thou art one fine son of a bitch of a fighter!" The booming voice came from the apparition that was emerging from the smoking hatch: an obviously very big, bearded man with laughing eyes that seemed larger than they were. But what made him seem so strange was the fact that the beard had been allowed to grow very long, and various ends of it were plaited together around burning strips of slow match, so his face was wreathed in dirty hair, glowing embers, fire, and smoke.
Blackbeard the pirate.
And it was obvious that he had taken a liking to Casca.
Ordinarily Casca was not one to take a disliking to anyone at first glance. He had been a soldier too long. His philosophy was live and let live.
Blackbeard the pirate was an exception.
Casca knew from the moment he saw the man that he would thoroughly dislike Blackbeard. There was just something about a man who plaited slow match into his whiskers.
Still...
It was really none of Casca's business. Blackbeard was just a carriage driver to get him where he was going.
"Aye, lad, thou art worthy to serve under Captain Teach. Has thou come to join my crew?" Blackbeard had come up to Casca now. And he was a big man.
Before Casca could answer him, the Dutchman, Big Jim, pulled a sealed letter from within his shirt and handed it to Blackbeard, grinning sillily, but saying nothing.
Blackbeard broke the wax seal, unfolded the document and read, slowly and silently. When he finished, he looked at Casca a little disappointed. "Duncan Tarleton, eh? Why, damn my eyes, Squire Cass Long, what else can you do besides fight?"
Blackbeard stunk. Maybe it was just the slow match. Maybe something else. Or maybe Casca had already decided nothing would make him like the bastard. An idea formed in his mind. His own particular sense of humor.
"I can find money in the damndest places," he answered, reaching up toward Blackbeard's beard. He still had the second piece of eight in his hand, and he palmed it as he reached up, and apparently plucked it from the tiny flame of one of the slow matches. "Like this." He held the coin in front of Blackbeard between his fingers, turning it slowly.
Blackbeard took the coin, examined it carefully, then looked searchingly at Casca. "Well, damn my eyes!"
It wasn't much of a trick. Casca had picked up the technique from a renegade Italian magician nearly five hundred years before. And after he had done it, he wasn't sure it had been a good idea.
Blackbeard was looking at him with an expression in his dark eyes that Casca couldn't read. Had he impressed the pirate?
Or had he just made an enemy of him?
CHAPTER FIVE
McAdams watched the sails of Blackbeard's ship head out to the blue water and nodded his head in satisfaction. Whether or not the man he had sent to Blackbeard for transport could do the job or not was in the hands of the gods. Yet he was content. One thing he knew from their short meeting together: wherever Cass Long went there would be trouble. And that was what he wished for Tarleton. Trouble to make up for what had been done to him. The girl was just the icing on the cake. This Cass Long was just the beginning of the trouble he planned for Tarleton. The dog would learn soon enough who his master was. Unless of course Squire Long put a
n end to the man a permanent end.
The brig stood out to sea. The shoreline of Jamaica, with the softened ridge of central mountains beyond, slipped into the haze behind them. Casca, who had nothing to do for now save let the sea miles slide by, stood at the taffrail, listening to the foaming bubbles of the sea slipping past the stern of the ship.
He had company, the second mate of one of Blackbeard's subordinate captains. Casca had not caught the name, and really didn't care since it was no concern of his. The only good thing he could say about the man was that he was unusually clean for one of his ilk, and wore more sedate and refined clothing: a white shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled up past the elbows and dark blue breeches with plain three quarter boots. From his shoulders hung the inevitable brace of pistols, and a blade larger than a dirk but smaller than a short sword sat in a sheath at his waist. They were plain, efficient tools made for use, not show. He was about Casca's height and build, could have almost passed as a relative except for his excessively blond hair and deep blue eyes. There was also a look about his face that was different from Casca's. He was, in short, very much out of place on this pirate vessel, and Casca had briefly considered the oddity of such a "gentlemen". Blackbeard had introduced him to Casca as "another one of your damned gentlemen" being the mate of a pirate ship. But only briefly. Casca really didn't care. The sooner he got to Charles Town and America the better. Still, there was one thing he liked about the mate, aside from the fact that he didn't stink, he didn't talk much, and when he did it was the kind of talk you could go along with, like maybe he respected what you had to say and was willing to accept you. Besides, he had the look of a damn good fighter.
"Beautiful little island. Bloody beautiful. " He was puffing on a long clay pipe – a Dutch clay, Casca decided, though he was not really an expert on tobacco smoking which he had tamped full while standing beside Casca.
He wants to find out something from me, Casca thought, not taken in at all by the mate's elaborately casual manner. Well, that was all right. He ought to be finding out something about Tarleton Duncan. Only thing was, Casca felt lazy. He wasn't really interested in working right now.
"You've been up in those mountains, haven't you?" The mate used the pipe as a pointer, aiming at Jamaica's Blue Mountains now on the horizon.
Casca nodded.
"Ever known McAdams before?"
Casca shook his head.
"Richest man in the Caribbean. Bit of a mystery how he got started. Bit of a mystery, that." He puffed briefly on the pipe. "Understand you're a squire. You don't look English. You look Italian."
"One of my ancestors did a favor for King Richard during the Crusades," Casca lied. "The king was properly grateful. Gave a little land."
"You don't sound English when you talk, either," the mate said. "But, no matter. In our line of work, not good form to pry too closely into the past. Not good form at all." He took a long drag at the pipe. "The future, now that's a different matter. Understand you're going with Tarleton Duncan."
Casca nodded.
"Now, there's a queer one. All kinds of stories about that one."
"Such as?"
"Ah! Friend Cass Long, you'll be sailing with the man. 'Tis not for me to say."
"Good reputation? Or bad?"
"Depends on who you are."
"Does he know his craft?"
"Aye! That he does. More than enough to keep Teach worried."
"Teach?"
"Teach. Blackbeard. This ship's captain, he of the slow match posies in his beard."
"I take it you don't approve."
"Friend Long, I neither approve nor disapprove of what's none of my business."
"Why should Blackbeard be worried?"
"Because when you're the leader, there's always somebody under you who wants to take over."
"And you think Duncan will?" It was not likely that Tarleton Duncan would get the chance, Casca thought grimly. Not if he were successful in what he had contracted with McAdams to do. Still... Something bothered Casca, something in the back of his mind that he couldn't quite grab a hold of. He wasn't too sure he really wanted to kill this Tarleton Duncan he had never seen and deliver the woman to McAdams. The whole deal smelled. There was just something wrong with it. He should let McAdams do his own dirty work. Besides, Duncan could hardly be worse than Blackbeard. And as for the woman, hell! There were a lot of women in the world.
"Friend Long," the mate was answering him, "I don't think so unless there's something in it for me." The mate puffed slowly on his pipe. He seemed totally content despite the fact that not ten feet behind him two of Blackbeard 's pirates had gotten into a loud argument, the kind Casca recognized as a killing argument.
Apparently Blackbeard encouraged such behavior because when Casca looked aft he saw the pirate captain grinning with glee as he watched the two argue. Stupid! Casca didn't really know why his hatred for Blackbeard was so violent. He could give a lot of small reasons, but there was some big one that he couldn't quite put his finger on. What he did know was that he would gladly kick the shit out of the big pirate chief and that would take some doing because even though Blackbeard was a show off and a clown, he was also a big tub of a man. It would take a lot of cutlass swings to slash through that dirty gristle.
There was something else, too.
Casca had that same kind of restless feeling he had often known before when he was waiting out the coming of a battle. All this standing around doing nothing was getting to him. He was tempted to interfere in the brawl between the two pirates just because he was bored. To take his mind off of it, he looked out to sea. Nothing but blue deserted water under the hot sun, empty water going to meet an equally empty sky in a confused, hazy area where the two met.
"Why do you wish to join the Brotherhood?"
For a moment Casca thought of the Brotherhood of the Lamb, something he sure as hell wasn't about to join! Then he realized that the mate was talking about piracy. Before he could answer, though, the mate said: "Did you get bored? That was it with Stede Bonnet. Got tired of a nagging wife. You married, Friend Long?"
"No."
"Well, there they go." The mate pointed with the stem of his pipe at the two ships that had been with them, but were now turning away. "On their way to Charles Town."
"Charles Town!"
"Yes. Didn't you know?"
Casca swore. In Latin. To himself.
The mate was looking at him appraisingly, puzzled by his reaction. "Charles Town," he repeated. "As a matter of fact that's where we're headed – Captain Teach. My captain's ship will be there, too. That's why I'm along."
"I thought–"
"That we were going to meet Tarleton Duncan? We are. Teach will put you aboard then. Duncan and the ships with him are going to raid south. We're going up through the Straits."
"To Charles Town?"
"Charles Town." The mate looked puzzled as Casca hurried off aft toward Blackbeard.
Casca had the sudden feeling that he'd best be rid of McAdams' proposition and should go on with his original plan. As for the money, he'd never been able to hang on to it anyway.
"You do? Well, damn my eyes, Master Long, we can accommodate you. Aye, me bucko, consider yourself signed on as of this very moment." Blackbeard was still grinning. Casca's request to join his crew rather than Tarleton Duncan's had only served to spread Teach's red lips a little further apart. But there was the shadow of a slightly shrewd look in his eyes that bothered Casca. Like perhaps he wasn't quite sure about Casca and would be watching him. That and the flowery speech put him on his guard. "Aye, by damnation and perdition we'll make a proper freebooter out of ye, Master Long."
Casca groaned inwardly. Why didn't the cloying bastard just say what he had to say and leave out all the extra words? But if Blackbeard was going to Charles Town, he could put up with it for a while. He knew of course that switching crews meant he was going to suffer a loss of honor. Damn! he thought, I'm getting as bad as the people around me.
"Sail ho! Two points abaft the port bow!"
The lookout cry from the top of the mast broke into Casca's thought. Blackbeard, standing beside him, roared orders. Suddenly the brig boiled with a confused mass of men running to stations, shouting.
Casca tried to sight the vessel, but as far as he could tell she was only a shapeless mass in the confused line between sea and sky, though, as he watched, she grew rapidly larger, sails taking shape first, then the dark blob of the hull.
"What do ye make of her?" Blackbeard roared at the lookout.
No answer.
"Damn you! What is she?"
Another pause. Then, just as Casca heard Blackbeard draw in his breath for another roar, the lookout yelled:
"Spaniard! She's a damn Spaniard!"
Blackbeard roared. The mates shouted. Men ran to their stations. The brig came about. They went in for the attack.
With all sails crowded on, and having the advantage of the weather eye, the pirate brig bore down on its quarry. Casca had found himself again beside the passenger mate with whom he had been talking. Only now the mate had put up his pipe and was looking intently out at the target ship. His right hand was on the hilt of his sword. Passenger or no passenger, when it came to a fight there would apparently be no non-combatants aboard a pirate ship. It occurred to Casca that this would be his first battle as a pirate. He was not exactly looking forward to it. His opinion of his "shipmates" was not all that high, and, as for his opinion of his "commander”, well...
"What's the standard tactic?" he asked the mate.
"Close, sweep their decks with grape, board."
"That all?"
"That's all there is to it."
Quickly they overtook the Spaniard, and when they were close, at the shouted order of the captain, they turned broadside to bring the guns to bear.
The sudden tilting of the deck made the mate beside Casca reach upward with his left hand to steady himself on the slanting deck. Casca saw the motion only casually, for he, too, had reached for the rigging. But a flash of silver on the mate's wrist instantly brought his eyes back.
