The Brotherhood of Pirates

by William Gilkerson

  “Nor I. I meant that lot over there. How many of ’em do you think there are?” I guessed maybe a dozen. “Just so. There’s the owner and his wife; he went to bed a half-hour ago in the aft stateroom; his wife’s currently in the wheelhouse having a cigarette and a nightcap with the young captain. Then there are seven guests: three couples and a single girl, who’s currently dancing with the deckhand, who has taken off his shirt. There is also a steward, who’s exhausted but still on his feet, fraternising, serving, and drinking. All very chummy. Crew quarters forward, under the cabin deck. See the portholes? Four double cabins amidships for the guests. Are you following?”

  I was, but failed to comprehend his interest. He picked up his binoculars, zeroing in on the yacht again. “There goes Miss Single with Mr. Deckhand, and he has left his uniform jacket over the back of a chair. Couple number four is legless. Couple number two is gone, and I’d say in a half-hour or so—an hour maximum—everybody aboard that ship is going to be dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “To the world. Deep in the arms of Morpheus. Quite gone. Oblivious. Take a tidal wave to wake ’em up. And no deck watch. Very careless of ’em, what with all the jewellery those fine ladies will be taking off and throwing on their dresser-tops, and all the travelling cash those fine gentlemen have in their socks and money belts and wallets. Watches, studs.” Here I took his drift at last, and fell in with the joke.

  “We’ll board ’em! Blunderbuss and cutlass! Arrr, matey.” The thought did have a strong appeal. He grunted.

  “No weapons necessary. No commotion. Now I’ll tell you the plan.” This involved getting Merry’s dinghy quietly into the water and over to the yacht, which we would board, quickly looting its most convenient valuables, and escaping unnoticed. “The tide turns in our favour before dawn, and we’ll ride it and be gone. At sunup, with the westerly I think we’ll get, we should be off Cape Negro, and by the time the fog burns off, we should be blowing kisses to Cape Sable. It’ll take ’em days trying to figure out which one of their own gang stole everybody’s stuff, and by the time they realise none of them did, they won’t know where to turn.”

  “Unless they remember us,” I played the game.

  “Remember us? They’re in no condition to remember anything. They never even noticed Merry, except maybe out of the corner of their eye as a local old boat. That’s not the problem.”

  “What is?” This was fascinating.

  “Being quiet and thorough but quick, like Drake.” My role was to rifle the guest cabins, taking only valuables that were in sight or easy to find, and he told me how to best accomplish that using a masked flashlight. In the saloon, I would put on the white jacket the deckhand had left there, and if anybody did wake up, I would assure them all was well, and was only trying to find a first-aid kit.

  “The guests won’t know you’re not part of the crew.” If a cabin door was locked, he knew how to open it; he would loot the owner’s cabin, and if by any chance we did encounter anybody capable of standing, he would deal with them. “But we won’t,” he assured me, taking a swallow of rum. “What do you think?”

  I told him that for a joke, his plan sounded pretty realistic, although not as much fun as carrying a cutlass.

  “We only go if we both go, so it’s your call, mate. What do you say?”

  “Are you serious?” It suddenly crossed my mind that it was no game.

  “Serious? About a fatter, easier haul than anything Ned Low ever took here? And with a lot less fuss? Nobody even hurt? Call it suing ’em, like, for putting our lives in jeopardy this morning, and for being a bunch of bloody twits besides; likely the stay-at-home profiteers from the war, the folks your father died for. We sue, then we adjudicate, levy our fine, then we divvy up. Rules of the brotherhood—two shares for the captain, one for the crew, which is you.”

  I sat stunned—I would like to say horrified—except for a thrill that ran up my spine like an electrical current.

  “That . . . would for sure be against the law,” I whispered.

  “Yes indeed,” he agreed. “In point of fact, an act of piracy, although a very gentle one, as such things go. In any case, it’s one we’re going to have to do very soon, if we do it, which is up to you.” I tried to think clearly, struggling against an impulse that was welling in me to say ‘aye,’ when it dawned on me that he was putting me through another of his charades, baiting me with another test. Simultaneously I was overwhelmed by disappointment and relief. Then he struck a match to light his pipe, and I beheld again his eyes as black holes in his face, only for a moment, but just as unnerving as before, and no illusion. I caught my breath. The match went out.

  “You have a little think about that, then we’ll do whatever suits you,” he said, puffing. Over on the yacht, the saloon lights went out, and all the portholes were dark except for one, making a small gold shimmer on the water, among the silvery reflections from the pale moon overhead. The captain’s pipe bowl glowed bright red.

  15

  Reflections During a Short Crossing

  AT SUNUP, CAPE Negro was just visible a mile to port, through the morning haze. Swept by the southbound tide, and favoured by a gentle westerly breeze, Merry was chuckling along in flat water. She was making good time under every sail she could carry, including her light topsail. Clearing Grey Island, we had tacked south and I climbed the lacings to throw the topsail foot over the peak halyard tackle.

  “Poppins did that job in a lot less time,” the captain commented when I returned to the deck. He was peeling masking tape off the lens of his flashlight. “Don’t you want to get a bit of kip?”

  “Kip?”

  “Sleep. You didn’t get much, and you’ve got the forenoon watch. That gives you a couple of hours. There’s a long crossing ahead of us.” I was not tired in the slightest, I told him. “Right. In that case, you’d better have a look at the lashings you put onto the gripes. I know you had to work in the dark, but it’s light now, and you should cinch ’em up some.” I did it, securing the dinghy on its cradle as tightly as before we had used it.

  “That’s better,” he approved. He was in a very mellow mood, having a rum at six o’clock in the morning, nibbling from an open jar of Mother’s solomongundy in the cockpit. Merry’s tiller was pegged. I looked at her wake, marking the way back to Roseway Bay. It was five miles behind us in the mist, getting farther by the moment.

  I mused aloud about the pirate Ned Low, who had taken thirteen vessels there. “What did he get from them?”

  “Fish, stores, water, rum—no jewellery, and not much cash.” He winked. “But useful supplies. He was on the move. He kept one vessel, took a few people off his captures and made for Newfoundland to pick up some more. A shorthanded buccaneer could always flesh out his crew in Newfoundland, as I’ve already noted. What’s that?” He squinted, looking forward. “Plops of paint on the deck?” It was, a pair of them, glistening in the morning light. “Better clean it up while it’s still wet. Use paraffin.”

  While I was getting the first kerosene of the day on my hands, I urged him to tell me more about Low. Piracy along the coast of Nova Scotia had taken on more than a schoolbook interest for me.

  “Low was a bloody rotter, one of the worst sods you can possibly imagine. Liked to cut off ears. Once he caught a ship whose captain threw eleven thousand gold moidores over the side just to keep it from being taken. Very injudicious. Low raved like a fury, swore a thousand oaths, and ordered the captain’s lips to be cut off, which he broiled before his face, and afterward murdered him and all the crew, being thirty-two persons. And he did lots of other things you don’t want to hear about. Or, if you do, look ’em up in my book.”

  “Your book?”

  “My copy of Johnson’s History of the Most Notorious Pirates. Haven’t I loaned it to you? Remind me to. Low was one of those evil-hearted villains who gave the whole brotherhood a bad name. Low was the English answer to L’Ollonais. D’ye remember L’Ollonais?” He checked the compass heading,
then had another nibble of solomongundy. Merry bubbled happily along. “Poor Low,” he commented. “He was so bad, he had a hard time keeping a crew.”

  “Poor Low’s victims,” I said, thinking what it would be like to have one’s lips cut off. “Why ‘poor Low’? What happened to him?”

  “Poor anybody who gets bad teachers. Out we pop, into this strange world, with everything to learn, which we drink up, whatever concoction we’re handed by the luck of the draw. Low slid out into a family of criminals in London. First thing he learned after not wetting himself was how to pick a pocket. His older brother taught him. Later got hanged at Tyburn.”

  “Low?”

  “His brother. With teachers like that, what chance did the poor sod have? Could have been a chicken-plucker. Here’s to our own better luck with our parents.” He took a swallow of rum.

  “Who were yours?” I asked him. He smiled.

  “A mermaid and a porgy. As to your other question about Low, last I’m aware of him, he was decorating a gibbet at Martinique, and nobody mourned. Should have happened a lot sooner.” He brooded. “It’s the Lows and his lot who tickled the horrors of mankind, and got all the press. He wasn’t even a member of the brotherhood, but he blackened its name. When the brethren committed kindnesses, they weren’t nearly as interesting. Who wants to read about tenderhearted pirates, unless they’re that Errol Flynn chap in the flickers.”

  “Were there any?”

  “Oh aye, lots, but if it weren’t for Johnson, who’d know about ’em at all? Take Captain Tom White, working the Malabar Coast. Around 1713, he caught a small prize, out of which they took some stores, plus five hundred dollars. There was also a silver mug, and two spoons belonging to a couple of orphans on board, wee passengers, who cried and cried. When White learned they were crying because that was all they had in the world, he made a speech to his men, telling ’em it was cruel to rob the innocent children. So the little ones got back their mugs and spoons, plus a collection among the pirates that netted them another 120 dollars. Then they were sent on their way unharmed, in their undamaged ship. But who wants to read about that? Or the hundreds of ships that the brethren simply gave back? Some of ’em were hardcase ships, needier than the pirates who took ’em, and got provisioned by their captors, then sent on their way with blessings, sailors to sailors. We weren’t all Ned Low and L’Ollonais and those types.

  “We?”

  “You and me, mate. As I’ve said, there’s no such thing as ‘the pirates.’” Every one’s a different case. Now, you and me, you and I, we wouldn’t join up with a psychopath like Low, nor did anybody much who had a choice about it. Some of us sailed with gents like Tom White, who was a flautist.”

  “And he was hanged?”

  “Not Tom. Settled on Madagascar. Married a local girl who had six toes on her left foot, and raised a happy family in one of the prettiest little thatch-roof houses you’ve ever seen. Got on with all the neighbours. His wife played a native instrument like the flute, and she taught it to him, and they played duets. Kids and pet lemurs all over the place; also parrots, which I can’t abide because they make so much bird lime, and gnaw the woodwork, but Tom had ’em everywhere. They couldn’t resist earrings. You’d come in and take a seat, get comfortable with a jar of punch, and the next thing you know, here’s some bloody great cape parrot flapping down, landing on your shoulder, trying to tear your earring away from your head, which they’re capable of doing. Tom had to warn all of his mates who wore earrings.”

  “What happened to Tom?”

  “Captain White to you. He made another cruise or two, then hung up his cutlass, and settled into the bosom of his family. Died of a flux while in their arms, having made arrangements for his children’s education. His eldest son became a proper gent. But that’s a bit ahead of where we left off.”

  “Left off?”

  “Last night, before we got involved with other things. You made a fair summary of the history I’ve been teaching you, and now you’re properly equipped to meet the chaps you took a fancy to before we met, right?”

  “I feel like one of them.”

  “Then be one. Here’s your situation. After Kidd, the good old days are gone. There’s still opportunities, because Queen Anne’s War is on, with all the countries fighting each other, as usual, but in 1713 there’s the Treaty of Utrecht, and suddenly, for the first time in living memory, you’ve got the catastrophe of total peace.”

  “Catastrophe?”

  “For the brotherhood, the whole family. You’re all out of jobs, some four or five thousand of you, trained professionals with all kinds of properly equipped warships, and no other home or living. You can go back to the indentured slavery you got away from in the first place, or as a hand on a merchant ship, which could be worse than the Royal Navy. On a merchant ship, if you got a black-hearted master with a couple of mates that were like him, they could make your life as bad as anything you can ever imagine. Sailors’ rights are unheard of; seamen are exploited without mercy by fat shipowners, who get rich as Croesus in the new peace, and off the sweat and blood of you and your mates. No change there, since caveman times.”

  Suddenly he sounded like a communist, but, the way he put it, I couldn’t help agreeing it did seem like an unfair system that should be changed.

  “Changed? What’s to change? The way of the world? Mother Nature’s own balances? Unfair? Don’t overtax your brains with how things should be; you’re going to need all the brain power you’ve got just trying to figure out how things actually are.”

  “How are they?”

  “Well, you can’t go back to Port Royal, for starters. In fact, since the earthquake of 1692, there is no more Port Royal, but all the big ports that used to depend on the buccaneers are now closed off to you. You have to use secondary bases. There are still plenty of islands and hidey-holes in the world, but you can’t get a forty-gun ship into most of them, so you get smaller ships. You want a vessel with enough speed to get away from the Royal Navy, which you can’t outfight, but that can catch the fat merchantmen, which you’ve got the men and the guns to subdue. You want a fast little sloop that’s handy to weather, and can tuck into places like Roseway Bay where the king’s frigates can’t follow you.”

  “No more grand, big pirate ships?”

  “Some, but by and large they had to keep the sea, getting supplies and gear from the prizes they took. With no proper port open to ’em anymore for refits and repairs. When a ship got too foul or worn out, they’d have to move aboard another one, and repeat the process. Teach had a forty-gun ship that he disposed of in favour of a sloop.

  “Teach?”

  “Blackbeard. Edward Teach. He was one of the Nassau crowd.”

  “Nassau?”

  “Bahamas. Madagascar was still good, and the Seychelles, and there were still some Caribbean islands, but Nassau was the pirates’ paradise. England took it, claimed it, and sent out settlers, but abandoned the place during the war. The Spaniards and the French both raided it so much, it couldn’t be defended, and the governor went back to Blighty in 1709. So, after the war, the whole Bahamian archipelago was more or less up for grabs, and the brotherhood grabbed it. Lot’s of ’em settled there, having a go at honest professions such as smuggling, hunting, trading, what have you. Some sailed out to the Bay of Compeache, cutting logwood, which makes a valuable dye. Others went diving on the Spanish treasure fleet that was wrecked off the Bahamas in 1715. That was good work for a season, getting up pieces of eight and doubloons, before the Dons came and ran ’em off, and dove on it themselves.” He paused to glance at the compass.

  “Somewhere down below, I have a Spanish doubloon that Caleb Whitback pulled up out of one of those wrecks, which is the last we ever heard about him. Left a young widow in New York. I looked her up. Had the devil of a time finding her.”

  “Finding her?”

  “In historical records, dear boy. My studies. As to Nassau, the brethren came there in droves, built a little cit
y, out of mostly framed buildings covered with old sails. More watering holes than you can ever imagine. Good harbour tucked in behind Hog Island—lots of fish, turtles, pigs, rum, traders, women, whatever a chap could want. So the brethren fixed up a piece of the old fort, which had been blown up by the Spaniards, big enough to mount an eighteen-pounder on it commanding the approaches. And there they were, with their own establishment off the Caribbean for a little while.” I wondered just how much the local settlers liked their new government, but, by the captain’s account, these abandoned people welcomed the brotherhood, getting some protection for the first time in a while, as well as financial benefits from a boom in trade, and little forays, mostly against the Spaniards. “Under the rules of the brotherhood, Nassau enjoyed peace, prosperity, and freedom,” he added.

  Merry’s clock rang eight bells, marking the end of his watch. He reached for the chart. “I put us about here,” he made a tick-mark on the penciled line of our course. “Keep sou’-sou’west. By the end of your watch, we’ll be clear of Brazil Rock. Stay alert, and call me if anything happens that Merry can’t tell me about.” He turned to go below, having made no remark during the entire watch concerning the events that were churning in my mind.

  “Last night . . .” I started to say.

  “There is no last night. What there is, is Merry, and this breeze, and those sails, and that compass. Don’t hold a course that’s too tight, but don’t let her wander too far. That’s what is. Last night never happened, and tomorrow never comes.” He vanished below, leaving me with my restless thoughts, then popped his head out of the hatch a moment later.

  “Sail by the luff of your tops’l. Don’t let it shiver.”

  The following days brought winds relentlessly from the direction in which we wanted to go, but they were gentle compared to before. In a small boat, there is a world of difference between a head wind of twenty to twenty-five knots, and one of ten to fifteen knots. It is the difference between hard pumping while hanging on, dead wet, having to haul on lines that are stretched like bowstrings, sailing on your ear—and hardly having to pump at all, being able to live and move in a much more reasonable, graceful way, and cook, and enjoy the splash of summer seas, with hardly a whitecap in sight.