Peter Wicked

by Broos Campbell

  “Yes, sir.”

  I took a turn up and down the weather rail, hands clasped behind me. I’d never ordered a flogging before, but I guessed it was something I’d have to experience sooner or later. I didn’t see how I could get out of it, anyhow. Peebles was firm, and discipline required that I back him up.

  “I said he’d have a dozen, sir.”

  “Very well, Mr. Peebles. Call the hands to witness punishment. But just so you know—” I leaned close so only he could hear me. “I’m not flogging him for smoking. I’m flogging him because you said he’d be flogged.”

  With the Tomahawks toeing the line along the starboard rail, Horne led Hawkins to the upended grating and lashed his wrists to it. The big bosun, so recently a bosun’s mate and used to being his captain’s whip hand, took the cat out of the bag and ran his fingers through the white whipcord strands. He held his hand out, palm up, to show me that he hadn’t concealed any red ochre or anything else that might look like blood. I knew he wouldn’t show mercy on any man he was required to punish, but tradition must be observed.

  “Off hats! Carry on, Mr. Horne.”

  Horne slowly reared back his powerful arm and brought it round in a smooth arc. The strands cracked against Hawkins’s broad shoulders and left a red swath of closely spaced welts.

  I nodded at Peebles, standing an arm’s length away from Hawkins and Horne.

  “One,” he said.

  Horne swung again, laying a fresh line of welts alongside the first. The cords in Hawkins’s neck stood out as he strained to keep his mouth shut.

  “Two,” said Peebles.

  Again Horne swung his arm, and this time little dots of blood welled up in the streaks.

  “Three,” said Peebles, a little less crisply this time.

  Hawkins stood spraddle-legged, his head hanging. His broad shoulders twitched, the way a horse’s withers do while it’s waiting for the switch. Horne reared back and laid another stripe across his back.

  “Four,” gulped Peebles.

  Horne laid in the fifth stroke sidearm. The whistling strands scattered a mist of blood across Peebles’s face. “Fi—five,” he said, like his stomach was galloping. He took a step back.

  “As you were,” I roared. Pale beneath the spatter, he resumed his position.

  Horne combed out the wet strands with his fingers and laid in again. He did it with the full strength of his arm, as duty required.

  Peebles’s eyes bulged as he lunged for the rail. He hung there, his legs twitching as he puked. I felt like joining him.

  Hawkins had raised his head to stare dully at him.

  “Punishment completed, I think, Mr. Horne,” I said. “On hats and dismissed.”

  The morning after the flogging, Simpson threw a bucket of rotten turnip ends into the wind. It was a lubberly mistake and might’ve been laughed off if he’d born the brunt of it, but Horne and I happened to be walking by; the wind caught the mess and splattered it against our legs. It had to have been an accident. I was tempted to shrug it off with a rebuke, but I hated turnips. The watch on deck stopped their work to see what I would do about it. A few of the ex-Columbias nudged each other and grinned.

  I contemplated my spattered boots. My stomach churned at the thought of ordering up another flogging so soon.

  Horne coughed quietly into his fist. I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Flogging the man will do no good,” he muttered.

  “He’s a nation old enough to know better,” I shot back.

  He nodded unhappily. “But if the people need an example, sir, there’s Hawkins still in his hammock.”

  I spun on my heel. “For shame, Simpson,” says I. “That’s a sojer’s trick, and a sojer you shall be. Mr. Horne, give this man Marine duty.”

  American Marines did no work at sea beyond standing sentry. A sailor who’d never seen Marines in action might be forgiven for thinking they were shirkers, “in everyone’s mess and no one’s watch,” as is said. Howsomever it may be, custom had made sojer one of the worst insults that could be heaped on a sailor. Horne set Simpson to marching up and down the rolling deck with a handspike on his shoulder for a musket. The ex-Columbias continued to grin, but now they grinned at him, not me. The ugly mood disappeared, as if blown away by the wind.

  At last the clouds broke up and the steady trades returned. Our longitude no longer mattered much. Finding hospitable land was simply a matter of putting us on the known latitude of any number of English islands to the east until I sighted land. But I had other plans.

  Morning four days later found us off Birds Island. It was a tidy piece of navigating, if I say it myself, but I allow we would’ve arrived sooner if the topgallants of a frigate away off in the northern distance hadn’t forced us to detour south before making our offing. She’d had a French look about her that I misliked.

  After a circumnavigation of the low heap of sand convinced me that it had remained uninhabited in our absence, we dropped anchors fore and aft in the little cove. The stores had not been touched, but best of all was a big feed of turtle eggs that Doc slung up for us. Water was still short, but there was a good deal of it in the disinterred casks, stinking and soupy with algae though it was. Allowing it to be mixed with the vinegary wine disguised the disagreeable flavor of both somewhat, and the men pronounced the “punch” more wholesome and beneficial than its constituent ingredients taken alone. And then, while digging up some of the cached stores, a party discovered a wooden shaft in the sand—the remains of a well. Once Horne had repaired it, it yielded a small but regular quantity of drinkable water. I raised the ration to three-quarters and had the excess put into casks.

  Once I’d had Horne set a couple of barrels of water aboard, he and Gundy had things so well in hand that there really wasn’t much for me to do except keep Peebles out of mischief; but I hated to ruin the men’s fun and his education, and I let him run loose. Our little hump of weed and sand was small enough that I could walk across it, and up and down it, and best of all around it, bathing my bare feet in the waves, and still be close enough to keep an eye on things and answer questions. Sticking to the shoreline also got me out from under the birds, mostly.

  If sand is what you’re looking for, Birds Island has a leg up on most places. As I walked around the leeward tip I felt like every windward inch of me was getting scrubbed with a wire brush. By the time I’d gained the weather gauge, I was surprised to have any hide left.

  But it was a glorious day. The Caribbean melded from sugary white to pale green to a piercing blue to deepest lapis as it stretched away to the unbroken horizon. Despite its loneliness, or maybe because of it, the island was a busy place. Birds, crabs, and who knew what all had left their thousands of tracks where the waves hadn’t reached yet. And here were some tracks that reminded me that I’d forgotten to eat my dinner: the digs and drags left by a turtle’s flippers and shell as it returned from burying its eggs before dawn. The marks disappeared at the water’s edge, and a while later I saw a leopard-spotted threefooter not a dozen yards offshore, flapping solemnly along with its armored fins. I thought of turtle soup, rich with Madeira and gooey with that stuff from under the shell, and proper turtle steaks and roast—a Chesapeake terrapin will give it a run for its money, but a sea turtle has got your snapper beat to hell and back, as far as I was concerned, and is a much more agreeable beast as well. You won’t find a more harmless and obliging fellow as a sea turtle. Set on his back and doused regularly with seawater, he’ll keep himself fresh for weeks. I made a note to myself to have the night watch catch us a couple.

  But I guessed maybe I was enjoying my laziness too much. Here we were, blessed with both the opportunity and the necessity for hard work, and it wouldn’t be right to waste it. I rubbed my hands and laughed at the pleasant thought of rousing out all the Tomahawk’s stores and guns, laying her on her side on the beach, and cutting and scraping and burning away the weeds from her hull.

  I looked to the sun. The day was getting old, but t
here was always tomorrow. Horne would be pleased. Bosuns and first lieutenants were demons for making men work. I could just see his face. “Let’s scrape her clean and bream her,” I’d say, and he’d reply, “Aye aye, sir,” and my work would be done. Command was a joy.

  A little sweat wouldn’t do Gundy any harm, neither. He’d been getting a little too full of himself and could benefit from some healthful exercise. I glanced around to see where he’d gone and was surprised to see the old rascal astride the Tomahawk’s main topsail yard, gone aloft to bathe his beard in the light of the evening sun, for all I could guess. I walked back down the beach and had myself taken aboard.

  “Mr. Horne!” says I, climbing over the rail. “Are you in? You there,” I said to Kennedy, knowing full well he wouldn’t understand me at all, “tell Mr. Horne I’ve come a-calling. Pray let me present my card, ha ha!” He looked at me like a mouse that had gone looking for cheese and found a cat instead. But then here was Horne, stuffing his long, matted braids into his stocking cap as he came rolling aft and saving the little wild Irishman the embarrassment of a reply. “Mr. Horne,” I said, and then Gundy sang out, “Sail ho! Ahoy the deck! Sail ho!”

  “Where away and what is she?”

  “A point avore the staabard beam, me cabbun.” He pointed somewhat north of east. “Looks to be that vrigate us zaw yesterday.”

  Shit and perdition! If an enemy frigate knew we were here we wouldn’t have a chance, except to run away. My heart thumped in my chest, and I forced myself to think. Even if they did know about the island—whoever they were—it didn’t necessarily follow that they’d be able to find it. Or even that they were French, I thought, getting ahold of myself.

  I looked to the west. The sun was orange and already reaching down for the horizon. I’d wanted to load as much of the stores and sellable goods as we could carry, but working after dark was out of the question now. I dasn’t risk showing a light.

  “Douse all fires, Mr. Horne,” I said, as an unformed thought itched in the back of my mind. I grabbed a glass and ran aloft. “Shove over, Gundy.”

  He scrunched out a short way, and then stopped with the yard clutched between his thighs.

  “I said shove over, Gundy. You look as clenched up as a virgin on her wedding night.”

  He came all over shamefaced. “Wast said as I’d get to like it aloft, zur, but I never did. That’s the why of how I’ve made myself zo useful on deck.”

  “Then what the tarnal damnation are you doing up here in the first place?”

  “Ooh, there be too much blaam work alow, zur.”

  I turned to stare at him, but he just grinned. He raised his arm and pointed. “There, zur, about handsbreadth to la’board of that babby-rag of cloud.”

  Once I had it fixed in my glass, I could make out what looked like the topgallants and topsails of the same frigate as we’d seen the day before—and something ahead of her, smaller and hard to make out in the gathering sea-twilight.

  “She seems to have a friend.” I handed the glass to Gundy.

  “I wasn’t sure avore, zur,” he said, after he’d had a squint. He gave me back my glass. “But small ’un appaars to be a Bermuda sloop.”

  The sloop’s mainsail gleamed suddenly against the darkening sky as she wore around onto the larboard tack.

  “She heads zou’east, zur.”

  “Mmm.”

  Peter Wickett, leading the French to his island hideaway? But there was any number of similar sloops in the Caribbean, and her present leg would let her fetch Guadeloupe without touching a rope. And yet she could be the Breeze’s twin.

  And maybe I was being a daisy-pants. For all I knew they were strangers bound for Guiana from New Orleans, with nary a thought that there was an island or a Yankee man-o’-war anywhere around. Or they could have been blown off course by the storms, the same as us. Or maybe they were a British frigate and a prize.

  None of which meant the sloop wasn’t the Breeze. Pirates were fair game for all nations, and maybe Peter’s luck had run out.

  Something on the sloop caught my eye. There it was again.

  “Gundy,” I said, handing him the glass, “is the sloop flying colors?”

  “Iss, me cabbun. Johnny Crappo over Yankee Doodle.”

  That answered two questions at once: the frigate was French and had captured the sloop. And now I could make out the cross-shaped repair to the sloop’s mainsail. She was the Breeze for sure, and that her captors were flying our colors under their own meant they’d taken her as a prize of war, not as a pirate. At least they wouldn’t hang Peter; I surprised myself by being grateful for that. But that made my job just a little more difficult. Somehow I must separate the sloop from her escort.

  Resting my eyes before peering at the sloop again, I was distracted by a wobbling light on the now dark beach. Before I could say anything, however, Horne had bellowed, “You, douse that light!” and the guilty seaman had hastily blown out the candle in his lantern. And suddenly I had the solution to the problem.

  “Gundy,” I said, “you’re a Cornishman originally, ain’t you?”

  “Iss, zur, there and abouts.”

  “And you already told me you know a thing or two about the smuggling trade.”

  “About matters of moonshine? Aye, zur.”

  “Know what jibber the kibber means?”

  He bared the stumps of his teeth in a wide grin. “Ooh arr, zur, ’deed I do!”

  From offshore the bobbing lantern looked very much like a ship’s lantern—like Tomahawk’s own little stern lamp, I thought, as I sat in the jolly boat a few hundred yards offshore. But the motion was still wrong. I put my speaking trumpet to my mouth.

  “Handsomely!” The light slowed. “Stea-eady! That’s well your light! Let it sway!”

  Proper jibbering—or kibbering, whatever the right word was—required a horse with one of its forelegs tied up and the lantern dangling around its neck, but Doc with his peg-leg unshipped and another man, carrying the lantern on a line between them, might do.

  “That be the right way, zur,” said Gundy.

  I squinted at the wobbling glow on the dark beach, convinced at last that it might actually deceive someone, as for instance a French frigate captain tearing down on what he mistook for another American prize. The moon wouldn’t be up for hours yet. Even then it would be only a sliver; and with the cloud cover, the surf and sand did not shine too much.

  “Give way.” Kennedy and O’Lynn rowed us over to the Tomahawk, and I sent them back to the beach. “Make sail,” I called as I climbed over the rail. “All hands to make sail! D’you hear the news, there? We’re off to hunt Johnny Crappo.”

  Most of the Tomahawks were ashore with Horne, floating the twenty-four-pounder carronades on water-cask rafts around to the weather side, the reef side, of the island. In addition to Peebles, I took with me Eriksson the Swede and Wright the Boston water-only man for working aloft, the waisters Simpson and Hawkins for hauling the halyards and manning the braces, and old Gundy for steering. They were all I’d need to be successful. If I failed . . . well, that was about as far as my head would let me think.

  I regretted my comment about hunting as soon as my lips had stopped flapping. It began to rain, and the island soon lost itself in the gloom, but I had embarked on this course of action and had to back up my mouth with results. Figuring that the sloop and frigate had miscalculated how far west they had come and were hauling to windward along the island’s line of latitude, I stood to the east and as north as we could point the schooner, climbing up the wind toward Guadeloupe.

  We saw no lights that night. We didn’t see anything at sunup, neither, and I was toying with the idea of giving it up, when we come across a Yankee bark that’d lost her main-topmast and smashed her compass during the last storm. When her skipper come aboard with his papers, I gave him his present position and a glass of whiskey.

  “Eighteen days—I say, eighteen days out of British Honduras with a load of mahogany,” he boomed in
a voice you probably could’ve heard halfway to Jamaica. “Y’ever deal with them pirates? That’s what them woodcutters are on that coast, y’know. Pirates.” He drained his glass and set it hopefully on my desk. “Name’s Lamb. Don’t take me for a sheep, though—that’d be shear folly. That’s a joke, son. Say, you’re a little young, ain’t ye?”

  “There’s a French frigate prowling hereabouts, Captain Lamb,” I said, pouring him another dose. “She got an eight-gun sloop with her. Seen ’em?”

  “No, sonny, I aren’t seen ’em,” he retorted. “I wouldn’t be here by myself if I had, now would I? And I don’t intend to wait around for ’em, neither.” He wiped the tobacco juice off his beard with his sleeve and shook his head. “You’re sorrowful ignorant to be looking for unnecessary trouble. Damn ye for a dog, why don’t ye escort me to a safe harbor?”

  I looked at him wasting my good corn. He had more men and guns than I did. “I mean to catch that frigate.”

  “And when ye go fishing—” He stopped to laugh. “And when ye go fishing, do ye use yourself as bait?”

  I laughed along with him. “Pretty much. What’s it to you?”

  A calculating look came into his eye. “Ye’ll not be needing your provisions for much longer.”

  “I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought I was going to fail, Cap.” I drank off a dram while I thought. It was in my orders to protect American commerce and treat the vessels and people of all nations with civility and friendship. I was pretty sure that was a direct quote from the Secretary. “What do you need?”

  “Why, I—” Suddenly he put his hand on my arm. “Look, sonny, I aren’t so low as to do ye that way. I was only fooling.”

  “I ain’t,” I said. “I calculate I can give you a barrel of pork and another of water. Want ’em or not?”

  “Well, now, the water’d be grateful. And a little pork, flour, anything ye can spare. But don’t do yourself short, son.”

  Eriksson ran a whip up to the mainyard, and Simpson and Hawkins pulled up their britches and spit on their hands by way of getting ready to hoist the barrels aboard the bark. I watched the first barrel settle on her deck and listened to the earnest voices—handsome does it, lads, handsome does it—and suddenly I wanted to take my jackknife and slash the hoist and stave the bark’s deck in, because they could go home and be safe while we had to go see someone get dead. At last the second barrel stood on Lamb’s deck, his crew cast off the tackle, and we got it in.