The Pirate Devlin

by Mark Keating

  'Ah, now there's a tragic circumstance and no mistake,' Devlin sighed. Taking the time to check that the strange bundle of leather and cloth round Mendes's wrist was tight enough, he set out the position they now found themselves in.

  Devlin himself, he explained to Mendes, had persuaded the pirates that instant retribution was unfair. After all, Mendes was only defending himself against their attitudes towards him. He had behaved exactly as any one of them would have done. Rather more unfortunate was the fact that one of their late companions was close to Peter Sam, but that was as nothing compared to the loss of their captain. Revenge was inevitable: it had always been their way.

  'Because of this, Valentim, I must do what I must. Right was on your side: we all agree that and hold no more against you. But this is how it plays for you now.'

  Mendes suddenly became aware of the long black fuse that trailed down from his sealed wrist and along the ground.

  'What is this madness?' he asked, his voice faltering.

  'Our Hugh has been kind enough to make us a fuse. Hopefully, by his arm-lengths, he reckons it to be a ten-minuter.' Devlin carried the black length away with him a few steps backwards. 'The purpose of which is to blow up the grenadoe that you're holding in your left hand.'

  Mendes stared. Devlin continued, 'If providence is with you, Valentim, the fuse may burn out before it reaches its mark. But, for your bravery against us, we'll give you a pirate's chance as well.' At his closing words, Peter Sam slapped the short axe into Mendes's open right hand and stood away. Mendes's mind raced but still did not comprehend. 'You can't reach your ankles with it, but it should just afford you enough reach to do whatever you decide is best.'

  Mendes felt the weight of the hatchet in his grip and he lifted it to his eyes. It was old but sharp, maybe eighteen inches in all.

  'I understand none of this.' He spoke quietly.

  'It's plain as print, Your Grace.' Devlin bowed. 'You could wait the whole ten minutes and slap at the fuse with the axe hoping to put it out, or hope it dies itself - although I wouldn't like to count on that personally.' He took his unloaded pistol and placed the charred end of the charge against the pan, drawing back the head with a fateful click. 'Or you could take five minutes to hack at your own wrist. Once your left arm is free - minus your hand, naturally - you'll have more movement to escape. That is, if you're able to concentrate after all that.'

  Peter Sam chipped in, 'Don't gamble that the grenadoe would only take your hand anyways, Your Grace. I've seen Robert make them to take down three men. You'll be looking at all sorts of parts whilst you bleed to death tied to a tree.' He strolled away down to his brothers, some satisfaction growing within him.

  Devlin cocked his head to the half-naked soldiers on horseback. 'They may offer you some encouragement, Valentim. And the prospect, of course, of chasing us down before we reach the shore and all.'

  The other pirates had already started to move along the southern road back to Preguica. 'Goodnight, Your Grace,' Devlin whispered, and fired the gun. The fuse blazed into life, then calmly smoked and smouldered along its deadly path as Devlin let it fall. He turned his back and moved to join the others. He walked down to the road, expecting to hear the curses and pleadings of the man strapped to the tree. He heard nothing and he never looked back.

  Adão Mota was the captain of the black frigate in the bay of Preguica. He had come with her from Lisbon, commanding a collection of farmers and soldiers, none of whom had any worth at sea.

  For over a month they had stayed here, always waiting for more men, being inspected twice a week by the governor, with his unnatural bird perched menacingly on his shoulder.

  Proudly, A Sombra sat on the windward shore, her head to the sea. Immaculate with her new grey sails and freshly blackened rigging, and yet almost daily Adão would poke away cobwebs from between her shrouds.

  He was woken by one of his men shouting and rapping on his cabin door.

  'Capitão, Capitão! It is I, Estêvão! Awake!'

  Adão dragged open his eyes and brushed away a wayward sweaty lock from his brow. He looked to the stern windows at the dark and the moths planted on the glass. He quietened down the rapping with an even louder questioning of Estêvão's parentage before crawling from his cot for his blue coat of rank to accompany his nightshirt, which was also his dayshirt.

  Scratching his grey beard, he asked Estêvão abruptly why he had been woken from his dream of schoolgirls at evening song, only to be told in a rapid report that it was the two o'clock watch and that a boat was approaching from the shore.

  Cursing, Adão fumbled for his spyglass and stumbled barefoot and without breeches to the weatherdeck, followed by Estêvão. He hurried to the starboard gunwale and stared to the shore.

  A small boat was indeed coming across. From the lantern that one of its passengers was holding aloft he counted five soldiers, distinctive in their purple caps and breastplates.

  'What is this now?' Adão snapped the glass shut and slapped the chest of the soldier next to him. 'Tell me, Estêvão, has anything happened this evening?'

  'No, Capitão. Nothing has happened since the boat rowed to shore hours ago.'

  'Nobody else left that merchant ship?'

  The soldier shook his head. 'Perhaps they have run out of wine, Capitão?'

  'Who is on watch?' Adão moved to the forequarter to study the Lucy.

  'Just Damião and me, Capitão.'

  'You were right to rouse me, Estêvão. Maybe there is trouble. Grab your pike.' Estêvão departed to fetch one of the boarding pikes that stood guard around the mizzen mast.

  Adão raised the glass again and weaved it across the deck of the Lucy. All was still. Just before nine he had watched the boat carrying Alvaro Contes to the merchant ship, then saw it struggle away again with some foreigners aboard. Nothing unusual in that. Governor Mendes would often entertain visiting merchants and he had paid it no mind. Why was a party approaching his ship so early in the morning? Maybe it was for more wine, absurd as that seemed.

  Estêvão returned to his captain's side with his fearsome weapon, a ten-foot-long wooden shaft with an iron spike. His only other was his chipped rusty sword.

  'I will go and get dressed properly, Estêvão. Bring Damião and watch that boat,' Adão ordered. 'Call me when they are here if I have not returned. Let no one up without me.'

  He trotted back to the Great Cabin to clear some of the fog of slumber with a little Jerez wine, then paused as he reached the door and turned his head to Estêvão.

  'That ship, Estêvão, how many guns does she have?'

  Estêvão had counted them for the last three hours of his watch, apart from the hour of the rain when he had sheltered below.

  'Only eight, Capitão: she is a small boat.' Estêvão shrugged.

  Adão shrugged in return and ducked into his cabin. Eight guns were no match for his frigate's twenty-four. If there was trouble afoot he would not be found caught with his breeches down, and with a confident snort he looked about the cabin for where he had tossed them.

  From the top of the Lucy's mainmast, Sam Morwell watched the slow progress of the longboat. From almost eighty feet in the air it was like watching a play from the top gallery. He could see the trembling of the sea from the rowing of the oars and even the flickering of the lantern light as moths danced around its glass.

  On the deck of the frigate he watched the captain march to and fro, seemingly fretting. He watched him descend below, leaving two soldiers pointing out to each other the approaching boat. With a sigh, Sam Morwell slung himself down the shrouds. His feet gripped like fists, travelling down like a spider across his web.

  He jumped the remaining feet rather than slinging off the gunwale, and went to tell Bill what he had seen.

  Adão reappeared, a pistol stuck in his belt, a cutlass hanging at his side. He joined the soldiers at the bulwark. The boat was almost upon them, certainly within shouting distance. The only man facing them was the coxswain, holding the lante
rn on a pole. Adão decided to call first.

  'Ahoy! Why so late a visit? What occurs?' he yelled through cupped hands. There was no reply, only the slow waving of the lantern holder's free arm as acknowledgement. 'Well, we will just wait and see,' he said to Estêvão. 'I will have to have a late morning because of this.'

  A few minutes later and the narrow gap between the two boats had disappeared with a thump. A rope was thrown up from the dark. Estêvão belayed it to a pin and they watched the first of them climbing up the tumblehome.

  'Welcome aboard, soldier!' Adão exclaimed as the face of a common soul emerged over the side, smiling from beneath the purple sloping cap.

  'Ho, chum!' Hugh Harris grinned, and unloaded one of his long pistols into Adão's face. He fired his second into Estêvão's stunned mouth.

  He let go of his guns as the bodies fell; they swung from his neck on a linen sling. He drew his cutlass to Damiao, who leaped backwards with his pike thrust forwards, his whole form quaking with shock. Andrew Morris swept over the side and put Damião at his ease by a shot to the head that showered his blood across the side of the longboat hanging above the deck.

  As the others clambered aboard, encumbered with weapons, Hugh and Andrew dashed fore and aft to the companion- ways to the lower deck, slamming their hatches down and battening them to the coaming. The crew were already shouting and moving below in the hot gloom.

  Devlin heard himself laughing as they took off the breastplates and caps of Valentim's guards. The subterfuge had worked well enough to get them to the Shadow, whilst the other three pirates laid low in the bottom of the boat beneath the sheets.

  The breastplates rattled to the deck, the lantern light from each mast shining off them. Peter Sam approached carrying the satchel of grenadoes across his shoulders.

  'That went well,' he said.

  'Didn't it, though?' Devlin agreed. 'Now for the rest of it.' He walked calmly to the main hatch and looked down through the grating into the dark, cautious of a possible shot from below. He could see and hear anxious movement in the dark, like the rustling of rats. He spoke loudly and slowly. 'English!' he said. Then, 'Pirata!'

  Panic spread below. Hugh shouted the same word above the closed companion aft, then chuckled wickedly at the response of cursing and prayers.

  Devlin carried on, 'It's early morn, gentlemen. If any of you know English you know pirates. That ship yonder: that's no merchant. That's an honest-to-sainthood pirate!' More prayers. 'There's thirty of us up here and another seventy over there and I have something for you.' He beckoned to Peter Sam to remove the battens.

  Lifting it a few inches, Peter bowled an unlit grenadoe into the dark, hearing it rolling delightfully below. The response rocked the ship as more than two dozen men ran scrambling through hammocks and each other to escape.

  'The next one won't be so still, lads!' Devlin shouted as the hatch slammed down again. Peter Sam took a small clay pot from his bag and dashed aft to Hugh.

  Devlin continued, 'I would be after suggesting that you take the trouble to escape as you can.' He signalled two of his men to the swivel guns, stanchion mounted on the quarterdeck rail, and they knuckled their foreheads and ran gleefully to it.

  Hugh unbattened the aft companion as Peter Sam lit the fuse of the clay pot from the wick of the mizzen's lantern. He hurled it down the hole; it smashed somewhere below and the 'stinkpot' ignited. It was a foul concoction of brimstone, tar, powder and rags, designed to cause fear and confusion with its noxious fumes and clouds of smoke. The effect was tremendous, as eddies of smoke wafted up through the hatch, and Devlin stepped back along the skidbeams to avoid the stench. The pirates controlled the only means upwards from the lower decks: Hugh and Peter Sam covered the companion below the belfry, Andrew Morris the forward one before the fo'c'sle.

  Hands began to poke up through the main hatch, waving like fishtails, voices pleading for saints. They would have to move swiftly now, before a brain began to form a plan below The sailors could reach the weapon locker; some martyr might run to the magazine. Darkness, confusion and fear were all the pirates had to their advantage against the numbers of the crew. They ran aft, shouting and cursing, stamping their boots and shouting to invisible comrades, raising the 'vapours', banging their steel against anything that rattled back, creating the same clamour that had panicked the otherwise formidable crew of the Noble.

  They opened the companion aft and by pistol and snarl dragged up the wide-eyed young men five at a time, kicking and beating them to the ship's waist, where the swivel guns from the quarterdeck kept them seated on their hands.

  They moved fast, viciously, until all were up and huddled in groups in the gangways on both sides, in order to separate them, whilst still allowing them to take in the bloody sight of their dead captain and comrades, lying like discarded marionettes across the deck. Less than two minutes had passed.

  Before the sweat had dried on the crew, three-quarters of them had been taken down to the boat waiting below, almost grateful that seven men had taken the responsibility of the ship from them. They pushed away from the ship, excited to be alive, even saluted their aggressors as they rowed to shore.

  'We'll need to flush the decks and hold,' Devlin spoke to Peter Sam. 'Make sure they're all out.'

  'Aye.' Peter Sam nodded. 'Time enough.'

  'True,' Devlin agreed. He faced the six remaining crewmen, their eyes magnetised by the sword in his hand, which motioned to the capstan aft of the mainmast. 'I'll assume the hawser is still hooked up, gentlemen, so I expects you to move it for me now. Move! Up anchor!'

  His actions were clear and they rose. They moved along the starboard gangway as if chained together and were grateful for the familiarity of taking hold of the capstan's shafts as they began to push, their heads down.

  Devlin and Peter Sam stood shoulder to shoulder and looked above to the rigging. 'Get a couple of souls aloft. Fore course and main course will get us to the Lucy. The new lads can warp us along in the boats or we'll never get out with the wind to us,' Devlin said.

  'Aye, Pat.' Peter nodded, then he looked Devlin hard in the eye. 'Once we're back with the others you can tell me about that gold. All of it. And be sure I believe you.'

  'That I will, mate, surely.' Devlin slapped the big man's shoulder. 'Now, let me stand to the fo'c'sle and get Bill to take a look at me. Let him know it's us upon him.' He wheeled away, confident about Peter Sam's ability to muster the small crew to make sail.

  It had been a long night. Devlin took out his pipe and tobacco, which he had secreted well enough to keep dry. He looked almost mournfully at the silver tube with the devilish face engraved upon it. Once it was empty he would return to tapers and tinderbox or lanterns for lighting his pipe. He remembered how the pinewood sticks dipped in sulphur and phosphorous were a gift, so Coxon had told him, to Coxon's father, from a man of science named Boyle. He could purchase no more. They were a curious but useful tool and now there were only six left.

  He was cold now. He had left his coat on the shore when they changed into the soldiers' garments. Drawing on his pipe, he looked back to the deck at the lifeless body of Adão and the fine, heavy dark coat he wore. Before the body went over the side, he would remove it from him: the coat made a difference.

  They would search the ship for any treasures she offered, but the greatest treasure was surely the Shadow herself. A frigate, no less. A man-of-war. Twenty nine-pounders to bear. Coming to her from the shore, he spied two more at her stern and now, as he stretched himself over the bow, two chasers to match.

  As soon as he had laid eyes on the Shadow he had craved her, and it was as if the night's events had drawn him irrevocably towards her.

  Watching the main course drop and crack against the wind, he thought of the men he had fallen in with. They were brave and resourceful, drunken and dissolute, but he had met men like that before. It had taken months of being with them and this evening to seal his opinion of why they were different, why the ship was different.
r />   All along it was there: in their food, their drink, their work, their loyalty to one another. They were equal. They were free.

  For weeks Devlin had wanted to return to the servitude and drudgery that had been his whole life, living from hand to mouth and day to day, like everybody else. Hanging out of the pocket of another man. For what purpose?

  Now men who would have ordered or pitied him would lie dead at his feet. His pockets would hang heavy with what they owned or had taken from the sweat of others.

  He watched the terrified Portuguese sailors secure the anchor to the cathead under the watchful eyes of Peter Sam, who next pushed them to lower the longboat and the gig in order to warp the ship to the Lucy. The morning would have them signed on to the crew, six more men gone from whatever life they had before to wind up their sheet either rich or dead.

  The approaching dawn would also bring the prospect of the French gold ever closer. On seeing the Shadow, it had rekindled the flame of the idea within him. The folded parchment had provided him with a chance of greatness. The possibility of a wealth he and his kind should never know, only marvel at in tales of Tew and Avery and their fabled riches pirated from sultans and treasure ships. But just like them, he could not gain it alone.

  He drew long and hard on the meerschaum pipe, standing alone on the fo'c'sle and listening to the splash of the oars as the six Portos began the effort of warping the behemoth away. He would need these ships. He would need these men.

  'Opportunity makes a thief.' He recalled the words from some page somewhere far behind in another world, and he glowed from the sense of it and from the warmth of his pipe.

  Come the dawn, nothing could stop him.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  Letter from Father Carlos Barrios, Ribeira Brava, São Nicolau, Nossa Senhora Da Luz to General Phipps, Cape Coast Castle