He did not carry a sword. There were ten or a dozen court swords on Hunchback Key, and George might have had his pick of them for this mission, but he refrained . . . for two reasons. He had tested them all and didn’t like any, for he was fussy about swords. More important, the carrying of such a weapon, as distinguished from cutlass or ordinary hanger, indicated a gentleman. There were precious few gentlemen, or even men who tried to look like gentlemen, at Nassau in the Bahamas. George would not call attention to himself.
He had in truth no weapon at all, save his wits.
Thus it was that in the middle of that morning, the promising young barrister, scarlet-faced, covered with dust, strode into Nassau and made straight for Government House.
This pretentiously named structure was the only two-story building in the Bahamas, excepting the captain’s tower at the fort. It was also the only one that had ever been painted. Square, stolid, in color a liverish brown, it stood in the very center of the town, surrounded by a small and not notably private garden. It was also surrounded, unexpectedly, by a trim white picket fence.
The governor would be either there or at the fort. Government House was the nearer of these two places. It was also, for George, the less perilous. At Fort Nassau he might be recognized by guards.
To the left of the gate stood a bulletin board, a somewhat ambitious thing, since there were no publications in the Bahamas, where seldom any ship put in with mail, and most of the residents were unlettered anyway.
Two militiamen guarded the gate, one on each side. George glanced at them but once, and decided that he had nothing to fear. In the first place they were in a fluster of self-consciousness and not likely to pick individual faces out of the crowd, and in the second place they were new recruits, such oafs as would not have been permitted even to do guard duty at Fort Nassau.
George walked past them to the bulletin board.
It contained but a single item, and that limp and torn, having been washed by rains, baked in the sun, a pathetic thing. It was a copy of the King’s proclamation “for Suppressing of Pyrates” dated 15 September, 1717, applicable until 5 January, 1719. It had almost expired—this was but two days before Christmas—and no doubt the intention was to keep it in full and fair sight until that time.
“Whereas we have received Information, that several persons, Subjects of GREAT BRITAIN, have, since the 24th Day of June, in the Year of our Lord, 1715, committed divers Pyracies and Robberies upon the High Sea, in the West Indies or adjoining our Plantations, which hath and may Occasion great Damage to the Merchants of GREAT BRITAIN and others trading in those Parts . . . we do hereby promise and declare, that in Case any of the said Pyrates surrender him or themselves, to one of our Plantations beyond the Seas, every such Pyrate or Pyrates. . . . And we do hereby strictly charge and command all our Admirals, Captains, and other Officers at Sea, and all our Governors and Commanders of any Forts, Castles, or other Places in our Plantations, and all our Officers, Civil and Military, to seize and take such of the Pyrates, who shall refuse or neglect to surrender themselves accordingly. . . . God save the King!”
George shrugged. A man beside him also shrugged.
“Not good much longer, eh?” the other observed.
“No.”
It was then that George noticed that the proclamation wasn’t alone on that bulletin board after all. Lower down, and much less conspicuous, was a small written notice to the effect that a reward of £50 would be given for the person (dead or alive) of the escaped pirate GEORGE ROUNSIVEL. No questions, it was added, would be asked.
“They hold me cheap,” George muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” George glanced up at the house, the front door of which was being opened from the inside. “You wouldn’t happen to know whether Governor Rogers is here now or is he at the fort?”
“The governor? The captain-general? Oh, he’s not here at all.”
“Oh?”
“He sailed a couple of hours ago for a visit to some of the other islands. Won’t be back for four-five days.”
“I see.”
“The man that’s acting governor—why, here he is now, coming out through that door, coming toward us Captain Robinson his name is. Thomas Robinson. And if you was to ask me—”
The man turned, having become aware that he was alone, and he scowled indignantly after a fast-retreating back.
“Now that was bloody rude of him,” he said.
CHAPTER VI
A PASSENGER on the Barkus brig, a man who on a previous voyage had sailed into Nassau Bay, once described this town as resembling “five or six acres of unmade bed” The description had amused George, who however at the time put it down to a desire to be amusing. Now George granted its accuracy.
The settlement that sprawled near Fort Nassau was sloppy; it was disheveled, and it was, truly, like a just-left bed, permeated by the flat stale odor of sweat and skin many times magnified.
Though startled, George was not unduly dismayed to learn that Woodes Rogers was away. True, it was a possibility that had not occurred to him, for he did not think that the governor of so explosive a colony would stir from his home base, at least at first. But George had another string to his bow. He wasn’t cornered, yet.
Jack Rackham had given him the name of a person, one Ellison, who was to be trusted. If anything went wrong, if George needed advice or assistance, or for that matter a hiding-place, he should seek out Peter Ellison. That was all. There was no estate name, no street name even. But everybody knew Pete Ellison. Just ask for him.
George did.
The first man did not answer at all, but scurried away like an almost-stepped-on crab. The second rubbered out his lips, lowered his head, seized the loose of his chin between thumb and forefinger before he spoke.
“What d’ye want of him?”
Smiling, George refused this information. The man nodded sadly, as though he had expected such a refusal. At last he jerked a thumb toward the south edge of the town, up a slope.
“Next to the last hut on the right,” he said, and hurried away.
Chez Ellison was no mansion. Its uprights were coconut trunks stuck into the sandy earth, its roof thatch, its walls in part dark rough splintery porous shingles of the sort that in Pennsylvania would have been called “shakes,” and in part plain tarpaulin, which was not in good condition. A stiff breeze would have blown it down. There was about it an air of desolation and decay. The fireplace in front was cold.
When George rapped on the jamb—there was no door—he was answered by a grunt of annoyance. Then:
“Who is it?”
George called: “Peter Ellison live here?”
The grunt this time was one of astonishment. Something that might have been a bottle clacked upon something that might have been a table, and a chair squeaked.
The curtain was pushed aside, revealing a man in the uniform of the governor’s guard. George had often seen this soldier at the fort.
“Now look here—”
He was very large, slovenly, and not a little drunk. He surveyed George with small, red-rimmed, piggish eyes.
“What do you want of Ellison?” he grumbled.
“No, no, not Ellison. I said Jameson. Peter Jameson.”
The soldier wiped his mouth with a hairy hand, but all the while he kept staring at George. He seemed to be puzzled by something far back in his fussy memory, something muffled in rum fumes.
Rackham had been right. Nobody would think of meeting an escaped felon so near to the scene of his escape. All the same, this man was beginning to believe, if groggily, that he had seen George somewhere before. His mouth slacked open, but the deep-set eyes were gimlets.
Jack Rackham had been right too about his friend Ellison, and probably too right. It occurred to George, thinking fast, that Ellison had got into trouble with the colonial authorities. Something must have happened recently, to explain the way the mention of his name had been received. No doubt the g
uardsman had been posted here to arrest anybody who came looking for Peter Ellison, and he had whiled away his time with Ellison’s rum. But his head was clearing. He took hold of George’s sleeve.
“Ellison’ll be back pretty soon. Come in and have a drink.”
George Rounsivel’s politeness was instinctive, not simply acquired, and he knew that though it was bad manners to refuse a drink anywhere it was especially serious in some blistered outpost like Nassau. All the same he snatched himself free, laughing an apology. He was mortally sure that the guardsman sought to detain him only so that he could study George’s face, fumbling in his memory for a clue.
“Sorry,” he cried. “I’ve got to get this man Jameson. It’s important. Captain Robinson’s orders.”
And he started down the slope toward the bay.
He walked rapidly, resisting an impulse to run. He was tense, expecting at any instant to hear footsteps behind him.
The soldier did call “Hey, you! Hey, come back here!” but George kept walking, pretending that he had not heard.
At the waterfront he turned into the nearest rumshop. He was hungry. Also, he thought it might be well to keep cover for a while.
The place was called Mahogany Charley’s, and clearly it was one of the fancier establishments, for there were four tables, a counter for standing-drinking, and no fewer than five women. There had even been a certain attempt at decoration—twisted strips of red and green paper hanging from the ceiling and bunched into rosettes here and there around the walls. The rum—there was nothing else to drink—was so-so; but the house specialty, boiled turtle eggs with pimento sauce served on biscuit soaked in goat’s milk, was excellent. George sat in a corner, having brushed the bawds away.
It was nearing noon and he’d accomplished nothing, yet he was not discouraged. He believed that, given reasonable luck, and if he kept away from the fort, he would be safe enough. True, the situation had its somber side. The news that Robinson was in command had been a blow. Except for Robinson, George might have surrended himself anyway, trusting to the deputies to hold him until Woodes Rogers’ return. But Robinson, given this particular prisoner, would hang him out of hand.
George was sure of this. He had seen Thomas Robinson for not more than two minutes, but they say that there is no better way to get acquainted with a man’s essential nature than by crossing steel with him.
This was a time of crisis. The Bahamas were under martial law. The commanding officer on New Providence could do away instantly with a convicted pirate, an escapee, and he would. He’d even have as excuse, when the governor came back, that he had acted in an emergency—that it would have been poor military policy to permit such a dangerous prisoner to remain alive when the news of his incarceration was all over town and might raise a mob.
As George saw it, the best thing for him to do was wait until nightfall, remaining as unobtrusive as possible. Then he would set forth for Boar’s Bay and the periagua. The distance was about seven miles, but the way was not rocky or steep, and after the sun had gone down it might even be rather pleasant. He would whistle for John Hay and return to Jorobado.
He had gone voluntarily to the pirates’ camp in the first instance, and voluntarily he would return. If he had not been present at the oath-taking this morning it was only because of the command of the king. He could tell Calico Jack that a single day at Nassau was not enough. He could readily explain his immediate return. John Hay, not notified, might have loitered too long in or just off Boar’s Bay, and been captured. The governor’s absence had caused a shift in the routine, making it awkward for George to get military intelligence. The arrest or near-arrest of Ellison (here he would be guessing, but it would be an informed guess, a shrewd one) had caused a stir among possible pirates, resulting immediately in a tendency to look hard at every stranger. And there were other excuses. George was sure he could talk Rackham into giving him the same assignment again, a week hence, when Woodes Rogers would have come back.
Meanwhile he would drift from rumshop to rumshop, drinking as little and overhearing as much as ever he could.
Mahogany Charley’s was too popular a place for George’s purposes. George paid his chit and left.
As he’d guessed, there were few secrets in this town. Everybody knew that the governor had gone away for a few days, but they did not curse him as vehemently as they did the captain of his guard. Most of them were angered or frightened by the execution of eight members of the Augur gang, whose bodies, George was gratified to note, had been cut down. Nobody even mentioned George himself. Charles Vane often was spoken of. News of the change-over of power had not yet reached Nassau, where indeed George gathered that nobody dreamed of the pirates being as close as Jorobado.
On one subject sure to be of interest to Jack Rackham, the fortifications, George was fairly flooded with data. It appeared that Woodes Rogers, desperate, all his arts of persuasion having failed, had used his extraordinary power to call up laborers. Indignation over this was noisy, yet, many of the complainants nevertheless had gone to work. From their wailing George learned a great deal about this work.
Thus it was that when the shadows were long and the sun low George Rounsivel felt that he had not wasted his afternoon. There were any number of small rumshops that he had been able to enter and leave without fuss, working his way gradually from the water front up to the southern edge of town, the edge nearest the shore to which he meant to go. He planned to leave this place just as quietly. He called for his total.
It was then that he became conscious of somebody looking at him, looking hard. It was a curious feeling. It shook him. He had to lift his head from the total. He had to lift his eyes.
Directly before him, not ten feet away, sat Monk Evans. The instant he saw George’s face he sprang to his feet.
“That’s him! That’s Rounsivel! Grab him!”
George was granted no time in which to piece this together. Men were leaping up, their mouths open, as they reached for knives or cutlasses. Monk Evans, cheeks purpling, dewlaps atremble, stabbed with an accusatory arm.
“It’s Rounsivel, I tell you! There’s fifty pounds reward for him!”
This was madness, a scene of insanity. George as he rose swept the stool from under him and hurled this at Monk Evans, and then he ran for the door.
Luck, not forethought, had placed him near that door. He was in the open before anybody could put a hand on him.
There his luck ran out.
The cooking pits of Nassau were as helter-skelter as any other feature of the town. Invariably they were outside of the habitations, some before, some behind. At a given time there were always fires, for regularity of eating was not the custom. Just now, just after the click of sunset, there was a prodigious number of them. Charcoal spat softly, wood snipped, and as sparks went toward heaven smoke swirled lazily. The street in which George found himself was lighter than it had been twenty minutes before, when he quitted it.
To his left, south, the direction in which he had intended to turn, he saw four large gawky sailors. They might have been drunk. Certainly they were startled, and like one man they snicked out their knives.
He did not dare to try to plunge through them. Instead he whirled about and ran down the slope toward the bay.
“They hold me cheap,” George had said before the bulletin board. He was mistaken. Fifty pounds was a lot of money in a Nassau whose inhabitants had been deprived of an easy if illegal way of living, and forced to work instead. Fifty pound! He heard it right and left, back and forth, as he ran. Fifty quid! The news went faster than he could, spreading out in all directions. Catch him! He’s worth money!
Behind George they massed, and increased; the roar grew louder. On either side as he sped down toward the bay he saw in the jumpy light of fires men who leapt to their feet or popped out of tents and huts. Their teeth gleamed, their eyes glittered as they joined the chase.
Ahead too the mob-sound rose. The waterfront hells were emptying, and men swarmed up
the slope.
He might plead. He might throw himself to his knee, babbling for mercy, crying out that he knew Rackham, that he’d all but been hanged with John Augur. It was not likely that they’d heed, or even hear. They were ravening, and reason was not in them.
For a split-second he was alone. He stopped, his heart beating furiously, body all soggy with sweat. A hare, not merely pursued by yammering hounds but actually surrounded by them, he knew panic.
He swung sharply to the left, and began again to run.
He came upon a low white picket fence. Government House! This must be a side of it, the side toward the fort. With no hesitation he vaulted the fence and dropped to the ground behind an oleander bush.
Logic, if it had been absent, gratefully returned. This, he told himself, was the same lions-mouth tactic that he had planned, though in reverse. The garden of Government House would be the last place a mob would seek an escaped prisoner.
The building behind him was touched by a dab of light only here and there, and it was quiet. He saw no sentries.
The earth smelled damp and clean, a good smell. He pressed his cheek against it, panting.
His ears told him that the two main groups had met halfway down the slope. Doubtless they were comparing notes, learning that the quarry had somehow slipped away from between them. They would fan out, then, to curry the whole settlement.
It had been George’s hope to get behind one of those irregular groups and to slip unnoticed into their midst, later to lose himself when the excitement subsided. It was not probable that anybody save Monk Evans really knew George on sight; and Monk—George could hear his strident voice over there, urging the search ahead—could not be everywhere at once. On the surface George Rounsivel was not remarkably different from many another who rampaged here tonight except for one thing: He had no weapon.
In the daytime this hadn’t mattered, for others would suppose that he carried a knife or pistol beneath his coat. Now it would make him stand out. Tonight any man who ventured abroad in Nassau was taking his life into his hands if he didn’t have a weapon there.
Captain Crossbones Page 6
