It was for this reason that the pirates remodelled their sloops—“sloop” being a generic name for all smallish fast shallow-draft vessels, regardless of rig or the number of masts—with very high gunwales, especially forward, or, sometimes they erected false gunwales by means of stanchions between which sheets of canvas the color of the ship’s sides were spread. At the last moment, when the prey was near, and the demand to put about had been shouted, when the red flag had been run up, then the pirates themselves would be dramatically exposed, whether by springing to their feet or by the dropping of the false gunwales, and they’d scream and jump about, brandishing their weapons, a fearful sight. This, George was told, usually did the trick.
It was the same with the firing-pieces. The giant to which George had been tied, the twelve-pounder, was too big for the John and Elizabeth, from which it could only be fired as a chaser, not in broadside. Iron six-pounders, three to a side, were the real work-horses of the pirate artillery. These were on the beach now, while the sloop was careened, and each was draped in a tarpaulin, to be from time to time uncovered and wiped, the tompion changed. Finally there were the six brass guns, two-pounders. These were not much more than salutes; they might have been discharged while closing, but they could hardly have done much damage, even at point-blank range. Yet they were shiny, and made a brave show. Being fight, they had easily been hauled to the hump that formed the center of Jorobado, and there, while the sloop was being scraped, they served much the same purpose—that of show, menace. The top of the key was a natural platform made of soft coral rubble, roughly round, and about forty feet across. The brass guns were mounted at the lip of this little plateau, facing several ways; but in truth they could not be depressed so that they’d fire down the slope. But from the sea, especially on a sunny day, they set up a great glister.
These, together with a breastwork made of brush, might have led any person a slight distance away to think that Jorobado was protected by a sort of fort. Up there the aspect of the place was quite different. There was no magazine, nor had the guns been shotted. The “breastwork,” as flimsy as paper, was purely for the purpose of deception. Not only were there no bastions, no scarp or counter-scarp, there were no horn-works either. In fact, the only thing up there, besides the brass guns, was the wooden platform upon which all through the daylight hours a lookout was posted.
This platform, placed upon palmetto piles driven into the rubble, was square, about ten feet to a side, and about ten feet high. It was reached by rude steps cut into one of the palmettos. Ordinarily all it contained was a chair fashioned out of a barrel and canopied by a clumsy rawhide umbrella.
No lookout sat in that chair, under that sunshade, this morning. For the watch tower was to be the site of the fight.
“Two cutlasses, same heft, same length,” intoned Tom Walker. “Two daggers, same length blades. Two dags, with powder and cut ball and rammers on the side. Same length barrel, same weight butt.”
“Ain’t we going to leave ’em loaded, Tom?”
“No. Whichever gets up here first, if he thinks he has time to load one of ’em, that’s his affair.”
“Or they might get up here at the same time and each take one and pace off the distance and shoot it out proper.”
“They might,” Walker conceded, “but that’s up to them.”
This delicacy, the business of turning the top of the hill over to the contestants, was an unexpected feature of the arrangements, and one that touched George Rounsivel, who had not relished the prospect of performing in public like a trained bear or a pugilist. There were no seconds. Everybody in a sense was to be a participant, seeing to it that a fair start had been provided; but nobody was to be a witness.
A duel to the death, these ruffians reckoned, ought to be a private affair. Whatever happened up here under the broiling sun would be known only to Calico Jack Rackham, George Rounsivel, and their God. The others were to stay below, on the beach, to await the issue.
Two men would go up, but only one was expected to come down again.
“You want to jiggle the blades, Rounsivel? Or the guns?”
George shook his head.
“I trust you,” he said simply.
“You, Jack?”
Rackham just at first did not answer, for he was wrapped in his own black thoughts. What were these of? Probably not George Rounsivel. Probably they were of Anne. At last he snarled a negative, and turned abruptly and went down to the camp.
“He’s anxious to get started,” Walker deduced. “How ‘bout you, Rounsivel?”
“Why, yes,” said George. “By all means, let’s get started.”
There were two paths or trails up to the top, one opening upon each end of the horseshoe-shaped beach that bordered the bay. The slope was the same with each, the distance the same, this since the lookout structure was situated in the exact center of the space up there no preference could be descried. Nevertheless, and with a scrupulosity not always observable in them, the pirates insisted that straws be drawn.
Contemptuous, refusing to answer, Jack Rackham turned his back. It was a symptom of nervousness, George believed. He himself drew unhesitatingly, and even managed a smile as he did so. He drew the path to the west.
“Now go to your places. If either one starts to run before I fire off this musket he’ll be shot dead on the spot. I don’t care which one it is. Is that clear?”
They nodded, or George did, and, each escorted by a clump of pirates who were less like supporters than referees, walked to the two ends of the beach. Actually, so sharp was the curve of the horseshoe, so narrow the pass, that only a couple of hundred feet of water separated them; they were nearer to one another than either was to Tom Walker.
It was a glorious morning, scraps of the opalescence of dawn still clinging to things. The bay was a mirror, the jungle, unstirring, a coat of dark green paint upon the side of the hill.
George tightened his belt, took off his hat. He had already removed coat and waistcoat, and now he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He took off his shoes and his stockings.
His trail, the west one, led right up through the glade where he had dallied with Anne. A coincidence? It could have been.
Most of the pirates stayed in the center. A little behind Walker, further from the water, the Palace stood alone, without sign of life, the flap down. Nor had Anne Bonney joined the crowd.
George looked around for a place to pray.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.”
“All right,” they mumbled, turning away.
George was brief. An Anglican, he did not believe in supplicatory prayer, only formal prayer. He soon rose
“Thank you,” gravely. “Now—is Captain Rackham ready?”
“They just gave their signal. You want we should give yours?”
George was brushing off his knees.
“Why, yes,” he said. “Go ahead.”
Somebody raised an arm full-length. Almost instantly, as if that gesture in itself had pulled the trigger, the musket was fired.
It made a loud hollow “boom” and from its muzzle a gray blob of smoke rose.
George put his head down and started to run.
It was dark under the trees, after the blazing reflection of sun upon white sand. There was a certain nightmarishness about it. George did not really feel afraid, but he knew a choked, baffled sense of outrage. It was as though he sped on a treadmill. Even when he jumped over the place on the ground where he had lain with Anne Bonney it felt as though he was getting nowhere.
It had not rained the previous night. Jorobado was a generally dry key. Yet his feet seemed to slip and slide. This added to the illusion of nightmare, the leaden-limbed feeling.
As he got near the top he wondered whether, if he stopped a moment, he would hear Jack Rackham thrashing through the thicket at his right; for the trails all but converged at the summit, emptying into the open only about twenty feet from one another. But he did not stop.
At last he cou
ld perceive a blur of light ahead. This broadened, brightening.
Then he was in the open, running evenly up the last slope, bare of undergrowth, that led to the breast-work. The breastwork itself he crashed through rather than tumbled over, losing no time.
He landed on the stones that, loosely scattered, formed the floor of this “fort.”
At that instant, as neatly as though they had rehearsed it, Calico Jack tore through the breastwork facing him, and like George started to run for the tower, and the weapons.
It was a matter of yards, but it seemed miles. George thought that a man who falls a great distance, keeping consciousness, knowing that the crash will soon come, and death, praying for it, must feel like this.
For all his show of nonchalance he had been laying plans.
He was tall, but Rackham was slightly taller, somewhat longer in the limbs too. Rackham was thicker of build, with large wrists, large ankles, broad hips, and almost certainly he weighed more. George moreover was a practiced runner, one who had often taken part in holiday sport events along the bank of the Deleware. It was for this reason that he believed he would win the race to the tower. He might not get there in time to ascend the rude steps to the platform where the weapons were, but surely he would get there in time to prevent Rackham from doing this.
If Rackham got to those weapons, then he, George, was dead.
The pistols could never be loaded in time. A pistol was a desperate resort at best, there never being any assurance that it would go off.
George knew nothing about the management of a knife. In London he had studied fencing, and he had continued the practice in Philadelphia. Physically he was well equipped as a swordsman, being fast and in fine condition. But his weapons were a gentleman’s—the small or court sword (the despised “bird spit”) and the Spanish rapier. He had toyed with back sword and shearing sword, also with the German Diisacks and Schlaegers; but as for falchion, saber, cutlass, he had never so much as swung one.
Rackham, on the other hand, might be assumed to be as much at home with a cutlass as he was with his beloved cudgel.
So—George must get there first.
Yet he saw that he was no more than a stride ahead, if that.
And suddenly Jack Rackham did an unexpected thing, and did it very adroitly indeed. Without the slightest break in his run, it would seem without any effort, he stooped, scooped up a fist-size piece of coral, and hurled this at George.
It struck George on a shoulder, causing him to swerve.
Rackham threw another, and another.
The second missed, but the third clacked against George’s left ear, cutting the skin. Dazed, he ducked. And Rackham ran on.
The toe holds cut into the palmetto would have made precarious footing at best. The pirate king was not halfway up, and had just grabbed the rim of the platform with out-stretched hands, when a recovered George Rounsivel reached him.
George grabbed the ankles, and pulled.
Even as he fell Rackham was kicking—kicking viciously like a mule. He had not taken off his shoes, as George had done, and the kicks, when they hit, hurt.
Striking the ground, both men rolled. It happened that they rolled away from one another.
They rose. George was the nearer to the tower now, but he did not dare to jump for it. Instead, without waiting to catch his breath, he raised his arms, the fists with knuckles out and palms in, and started toward Jack Rackham.
Here, to his own surprise, he found himself at something of an advantage. Weaponless, Rackham was maladroit, perhaps even a mite frightened. Apparently he had never before fought with his fists.
George had only slightly more experience, but he strove to make the best of this superiority. He had taken a few lessons from an itinerant pugilist at the fencing academy in London, soon to give it up as a disgusting sport, if it could be called sport at all; but he had at least, in that time, learned to block. His very posture, as he approached, appeared to unsettle the pirate. George had spread his feet far apart, and he kept them that way as he moved forward with tiny cat-steps. His knees were bent, his heels were firm on the ground. His elbows were high, about on a level with his chin, his fists higher still.
Rackham came in swinging wildly. George hit straight, choppy down-punches that hurt his hands—but hurt Rackham’s face even more.
Rackham roared, a wounded bull, and stepped back. George immediately attacked. Not for George were the finer points of the prize ring—the roundhouse, the flying mare, the cross-buttocks, the uppercut—but his rudiments at least stood him in good stead.
Rackham’s face was red now, and wet. The blood, George supposed, must have been smeared on his own fists, but he could not feel it there, and in fact, what with the punching and the blocking, he could feel little of anything in fists and forearms.
Rackham switched back to earlier tactics when he stooped to pick up a stone. But he had been stunned and was not so swift this time. George’s right fist caught him high on the nose, and he went over backward.
At this point George might have won the fight, if he had been fast enough. He could have run for the watch tower and climbed into it and got a cutlass. Or he could have jumped with both feet and all his weight on the belly of the prone Jack Rackham, knocking the wind out of the man. This latter assault was accepted practice in the prize ring; but George’s instruction had not gone that far.
He paused, an error. Rackham kicked up with both feet, and one of these caught George’s left kneecap, spinning him around.
Before George could right himself Rackham was up again and coming in with arms widespread like the arms of a catch-as-catch-can wrestler, his head wholly unguarded.
Backing away, George smashed that head again and again. It was like striking a stone wall. Once or twice Rackham gave an involuntary squeal, but he never ceased to bore in.
George sobbed, and stepped back. His foot met a round stone, and slipped, so that he teetered, his guard too high.
Jack Rackham closed.
They fell, Rackham on top, his chest pressing George’s chest. Black specks swam before George’s eyes. There was a great roaring in his ears. He was being suffocated. But some-how he rolled.
Indeed they rolled a great deal after that, blindly, back and forth, each striving to get on top; but while George’s effort was directed toward breaking the bear-hug that was crushing his very ribs, Rackham, more active, tried to bring a knee up into George’s crotch.
This was the way they were when they struck the “breast-work.” They went right through this and crashed down the slope toward the jungle.
As they did so there flashed into George’s mind, incongruously, the thought that today was Christmas. “Happy Christmas,” he mumbled to himself, slamming this way, slamming that. “Oh, merry Christmas!”
The slope was steep. There were no trees on it, but there had lately been many bushes, some of them exceedingly tough, which had been cut off in order to clear this space for defending musket fire and also in order to provide material for the sham breastwork. These stumps, struck hard, could be cruel. One stabbed George in the left side with a force that surely broke the skin; it drove out of him what little breath he had left, so that when they were stopped at the tree line by a bole he was for a moment unable to stir.
He heard Rackham jump up. He even saw Rackham start a kick at the place his knees had previously been trying to reach; but George could not do anything about that.
The pain seared him. Sweat sprang out on his face, and he believed that he screamed. His eyeballs were triphammers. All of his middle was afire.
When he rose he had to get to his knees first, and stay that way a moment, like a small child.
Jack Rackham was not in sight.
Lurching, sobbing, George ran up the slope, pushed again through the violated breastwork, ran to the tower.
Calico Jack was gloating. As he hefted a cutlass in one hand, a dagger in the other, he did not think to face the ladder, so sure was he that the fig
ht was finished. George had one foot on the edge of the platform before Rackham whirled around.
George dived for his knees.
The platform was not large, and they almost went over the edge. George hipped and shoulder-bumped away, snatching the other cutlass as he went, and somehow he got to his feet.
There was not much room between them as they faced one another. There would be no retreating. They stood straight, each with his guard high, depending on the basket-hilt to protect his hand, the blade itself to cover his head. They slashed right and left.
This was madness.
It was Rackham who tried a thrust—for George’s throat. George took a step back, extending his arm full-length as he brought the saber directly down.
Rackham looked startled, like a man who has heard a clap of thunder on a clear day. Blood began to gush out of his hair and run down each side of his face. His sword-arm dropped. His legs buckled. He still had that look of astonishment on his face while he swayed, and then toppled sideways.
George picked up a dagger. He kelt beside his mortal enemy. The head was back, the throat bare. The eyes flashed hatred at the approaching face of George Rounsivel. Rackham said something, a guttural sound. Then the eyes got glassy.
There were no cheers on the beach when they saw George. Scratched, slashed, shirtless, panting, he must have presented a frightful appearance.
A few advanced toward him, as though to tender congratulations. He brushed past these. He went to the Palace.
“Anne,” he called. “Come here!”
She crawled out, literally crawled. She must have known whom to expect when she heard that voice.
“Now, God damn it,” he said, “bring me a drink of rum!”
CHAPTER IX
GEORGE was to learn that waving a sceptre was not the all-in-all of kingship. He did have a sceptre of sorts, as a symbol of his authority. He spurned the whippy black cudgel that was associated with the personality of Jack Rackham, and used instead the long heavy Spanish cavalry saber he had snatched from the wall of Woodes Rogers’ drawing room. Its very size, though it made it clumsy, also made this weapon impressive.
Captain Crossbones Page 9
