“It’s him all right,” Walker said. “He must’ve enlisted the whole crew. How many would you say?”
“Fifteen to eighteen, from the looks of the forecastle.”
“They might’ve joined up with the proviso that Vane do in their officers. Likely enough it was that way. It usually is. I wouldn’t be here myself if certain officers had even once, even for a little while, treated me like a man. I guess not many of us would.”
“Look,” George said, pointing, “you’ve got the big one loaded, and you said a while ago that you could knock that gallot right out of the water inside of five minutes, is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, do it then. Go ahead and do it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
CHAPTER XIII
SPRITSAIL INLET looked like a good place to fish—but to fish only for fish. But Ezra Garde, the sailing-master, who had picked out and entered this all-but-indistinguishable slit in the dreariness that was the coast between Pamlico and Cape Fear, swore that he had often seen it clogged with pirate craft, while its beaches, blank today, swarmed with merchants and sounded to the clamor of selling.
The only noise now was a faint peevish clittering of palmetto fronds, the only motion theirs and that of the catspaws that sometimes skittered across the surface of the bay. No birds flew overhead. No smoke rose. If man had indeed peopled this place in days gone by, he’d left scant souvenir. No rock was in evidence, no hump or hill, nor any tall tree. A narrow spit strewn with myrtle, scarcely more than a sand bar, was all that divided them from the open sea, but there was in the air no sniff of brine, for the wind was off the land and held only the musty rotten stench of swamps.
To members of the crew, three times as many as would have been needed to man a vessel such as the John and Elizabeth, this was no time for rechecking, repainting, retarring—or repose. It wasn’t a vacation, but just another day. They gossiped listlessly. They smoked their pipes and cooked their food. A few fished. One doggedly worked an accordion, singing the while in a cracked baritone.
Since nothing might be expected from right or left, from north or south, and surely not from a wilderness that stretched wearily, the men kept their accustomed vigil only on the east side—the side toward the sea. That spit did nothing to block the view, being low. Even without going aloft, even without a glass, they could have seen anything larger than a rowboat making along this part of the coast.
George Rounsivel, however, like Ezra Garde, like Tom Walker, looked in the other direction, and sighed.
Patience was not a virtue rife among these scavangers of the sea. The voyage, so far, almost three weeks out of Jorobado, was going badly. In all that time they had not even known a chase, a thrill. Their only encounter had been with the Schatje, already stripped, and useless to them as a craft because she was so slow. Never another sail had they sighted. This, to be sure, was not the fault of the officers; but the officers would be blamed.
Stay-at-homes, in the security of their chairs, before their fires, were given, George knew, to gloating of this or that pirate hoard, imagining rich treasures. Such colorful rascals (the stay-at-homes fondly supposed) tossed diamonds like dice, gambling for drinks of rare wine by the light of candles that were affixed to massive branches of gold, the loot, no doubt, from some cathedral. The truth was different. Along the coast of the Carolinas, as everywhere too among the Antilles, the plunder was hardly so bright. The pirates in fact would take anything they could get, as witness the three poor devils of that gallot, who had been stripped of their very suits, their very underwear, before they were slaughtered.
Homeward-bound cargoes might consist of cocoa beans, coffee, molasses, mahogany, brazilletto, and other products of field and forest. Ships from England were likely to be loaded with small metal objects, such as nails, of which there were never enough in the American colonies, or else with clothing. Camlet, doeskin and drugget—these were great . prizes. They didn’t go bad; they could be sold almost anywhere; and the possibility of later identification was so slight as to be meaningless. Thus the pirates, actually preferred, say, eighteen or twenty cases of shoes to the finest chased chalice that ever decorated an altar. The shoes were easier to get rid of.
The accumulated booty in the hold of the John and Elizabeth, all of it seized before George Rounsivel had joined the band, was a mixed lot—and unexciting. There were some staves, in not very good condition. There was a great deal of salted fish, which was beginning to stink: probably it would all have to be thrown overboard. There were twelve tierces of “clayed”—that is, semi-refined—sugar. Best of all there were sixty casks of claret, which might fetch as much as five or six eight-pieces each—if they didn’t go sour, or if the men did not broach them.
It was not the grabbing of these articles but the spending of the money they were sold for that gave piquancy to the routine of the corsair in West Indian waters The pirates lived for the time when they might swarm ashore at a protected port, their pockets jingling, sluts trailing them, tradesmen groveling as they passed. There had been a time, within living memory too, when those sprees had made up maybe a tenth of a pirate’s professional life, if he was lucky. Today it would appear that they made up rather less than a fiftieth. First, the boodle was harder to sell. Second, the towns in which pirates could carouse were few and very far between. Port Royal had been burned to the ground The Spaniards were watching Campeche and Trinidad as a cat watches a mouse-hole. Samana was doubtful today, and unsafe. Ash, Tortudos, and Petit Guaves, hot and unpleasant islands at best, and scantily stocked with women, would not be easy to hold against a surprise attack, and offered no notable hinterland. One of the reasons George had been able to persuade a majority of the Jorobado gang to make for the Carolina coast was that he believed, or had heard, that after they had sold their goods to the merchants who would be represented at Spritsail they would be permitted to roister, all unmolested, in Charles Town.
The first part of this promise, it would seem, had been rash. The second part of course depended upon the first. Cash was good in the grogshops, but not contraband. Once again this was as a result of no error on the part of George Rounsivel; but he would nevertheless be held accountable, and the men behind him were muttering among themselves.
“There’s somebody!”
“Yes, I saw him,” said George. “But just for an instant. He looked small. Almost like a boy.”
“He could at least tell us something.”
“Unless he runs away.”
George looked around. They were at anchor just inside of the spit, no more than a couple of hundred yards from the beach where he and Garde and Walker all had spotted that man skulking among the myrtle. The deck, though crowded, was hardly a scene of animation. Anne Bonney hadn’t even taken the trouble to come topside when the hook was let go. Some, disgusted, slept. Others kept watch to eastward. The accordionist pluckily pursued a ditty they all knew too well.
“My name was William Kidd, when I sailed, when I sailed.
My name was William Kidd when I sailed.
My name was William Kidd,
God’s laws I did forbid.
And so wickedly I did, when I sailed.”
“There’s for sure nobody else there,” Walker said. “No-body hiding.”
“That’s my conclusion too,” George said. “I’ll go ashore. But I’ll leave you two here. Put the smallboat over, Tom. And pick me a pair of hands for the oars.”
“Any preference?”
“Yes. I want Jack Rackham to be one of ’em.”
Anyone watching George Rounsivel as he was rowed ashore—seeing the way he sat, the jut of his jaw, the quiet confidence in his eyes, the firmness of the hands clasped each on a kneecap—would have cried: “There’s a man who knows what he is doing!”
Anyone would have been wrong.
The truth was that George had no idea what he was going to do next. He was sure of one thing only: that if he means to keep his crown, not to menti
on the head beneath it, a king must never seem to waver. So he sat serene, his chin high.
His primary purpose in urging a visit to the Carolinas was to get these desperados away from New Providence, get them at least to think about something else. Rejoined to Vane surely, and perhaps even by themselves, they could have taken New Providence. They had owned it once; why should they not own it again? Built up, properly fortified, it could be their capital, their base, their stronghold, best of all an open market for their loot. The possession of such a port would have been of incalculable advantage to the whole business of freebooting. It would draw pirates and piratical merchants from all over the world.
George had little loyalty for the town, which he had scarcely seen, and never really lived in, where he’d lain in durance. It could be razed to the last beam, burned to the last scrap of canvas, without a tear from him. But he did feel a certain obligation to the governor, with whom he had a contract, which, though verbal, and it could be contended made under duress, nevertheless was a contract. Woodes Rogers had undertaken a tremendous task, and any man should feel sympathy for such an official. Even more did George Rounsivel think of the Angel of Fort Nassau, the governor’s dark-haired neice, Delicia. She would not become the property of the king alone, if New Providence was stormed and sacked. She would be passed around.
Was she still there? By this time surely the governor would have returned from his trip to the outer islands, and would have heard of the chase after George, and of George’s disappearance. Thomas Robinson was not a reticent man. He might soft-pedal the account of his own activities in Government House that night, but it was sure he would report that Rounsivel had broken in. Would the governor guess why? Would he reason that George might have been in town to try to warn him? Would he sense the nearness of the pirate force, and foresee an early attack? The walls of Fort Nassau still were in no condition to withstand even a short siege. Whilst they were being strengthened and rebuilt, would the governor send his womenfolk away? George prayed that he had.
There was a secondary motive, one he didn’t always acknowledge. Tugging at his consciousness from time to time was the realization that he might be able to escape in the Carolinas. There would of course be shore parties, for wood and water if for nothing else, and as skipper he might lead any of these. Through no slip of his own he found himself in an insufferable position. Anywhere among the islands he was doomed. Sooner or later either the law would catch up to him or the pirates would learn that he was a spy. Really, in the long run, every man’s hand was against him. He was an outcast.
But they didn’t know this in Philadelphia. There were no cities or even settlements along the coast of North Carolina, but a fugitive from a pirate ship assumedly would be able to find his way inland to some plantation, and eventually, with cash, north. George had the cash. The purse of Spanish eight-real pieces, each worth about four shillings, still was more than half full. They were as acceptable as English minted money, and at least as common, in any of the American colonies.
Why shouldn’t he flee? He was under no true obligation. He had been most heinously imposed upon. In Philadelphia, where he had friends and position, the pirates would never get him. Woodes Rogers could have hanged him in New Providence, granted; but Rogers could not hang him in Philadelphia.
As for his employers, those moneymen at whose behest he had set forth on this strange voyage, couldn’t he report to them in all fairness, that he was convinced that the Bahama Islands, whatever their possibilities, at present had not reached a state of civilization sufficient to justify financial investment from outside.
And then he would be right back where he had started from.
Yet he didn’t like it, and for all his seeming serenity as he was rowed ashore his mind seethed with contradictions and doubt.
More immediately there was the approaching beach. He studied it.
Though he was certain that he had seen a man flit from one patch of palmetto to another, there was no sign of this now. When the boat grated upon a sandy shore it might have been touching an island never before viewed by mankind.
“Pull it well up.”
In addition to Jack Rackham he had under him one Si Simonson, a quiet young man, efficient, and seemingly unafraid. What Simonson’s personal opinion of the king was nobody but himself knew, but it was established at least that the man was no follower of Rackham; doubtless Tom Walker had picked him for that reason. He carried a cudgel. Rackham had a short cutlass and of course his knife.
Rackham was not defiant. Though he didn’t grovel, no touch of the old arrogance remained. His face had cleared, yet habitually he kept it averted, as his eyes were downcast. George was not fooled by this. The man bided his time. He waited for that misstep. There would only be one.
George had an increasing conviction that they were being watched. Still he studied the shore. Scrub-pine, palmetto and myrtle, offered plenty of places for concealment. He was, frankly afraid to plunge into that undergrowth. He was afraid to turn his back upon any part of it.
“You on this side,” he said to Rackham, “and you,” to Si Simonson, “on my left. Stay about ten feet away. Don’t beat the bushes. Just walk. And look.”
Was this a will-of-the-wisp they pursued? Several times they stopped, thinking that they’d heard something; but in a moment they would continue. The ground yielded no clue. Yet they were certain that a man was there—somewhere—near at hand.
That was the terrible part of it, that uncertainty. The Spaniards have a phrase for the way these three walked: la barba sobre el hombro, the beard on the shoulder. They looked where they were going, but they looked too, and almost as much, back over the way they had come. They couldn’t have said why. They all felt the same.
In about twenty minutes—they had moved very slowly—they came upon evidence that some human being recently had been here, after all. It gave them no comfort.
It was a camp, if a rude one. There was a lean-to made of thatch, protecting nothing. There were stones assembled to form a crude fireplace, and the inside surfaces of these were warm.
But—who would dwell in this desolate spot? There seemed no reason for the existence of such a camp, mean though it was. Here was no hill, no ford. The camp did not command any manner of pass, road, trail. There was not even a spring.
Puzzled, they stood staring down at the meagre remains of a fire.
“Maybe we’d better—”
Out of a corner of one eye George Rounsivel caught a movement in the bush. He whirled around.
“There he is!”
He started to run.
He was fast, but the other was faster. A shadow, a wraith—and then there was nothing, not even a leaf or broken twig to show where the thing had been.
Threshing through the brush, sobbing with rage, George could hear Rackham and Si Simonson on either side, doing the same. It was humiliating that one man—for they were sure that there was only one—could throw them into such a fright. It was shameful.
Suddenly, as though at a signal, though none had been called, they stopped, all three. They heard nothing. Yet the fellow could not be far away.
“Why don’t you come out and say Tiello’?” George called.
They were ranged in a line, all facing the same direction, holding their breath.
“We won’t hurt you,” George called. “All we want is water.”
The voice, when it came, was unexpectedly loud and deep. It came too from an unexpected direction—behind them. They spun around.
“Ain’t that Calico Jack Rackham, the one on the right? Yes,” as the about-face was executed, “I see it is. So I reckon you’re all right. But a man can’t be too careful in these parts.”
What emerged could in truth have been a ghost or shade. He was small, a wasp, the only thing big about him being his voice. His hair was very long and so matted with dirt that its original color might have been hard to make out; the same could be said of his beard. His eyes were hollows of madness sunk dee
p into his head as though they’d been pushed there with a stick. Legs and feet were bare, like the head. The only garment this extraordinary creature seemed to wear was a long sad-colored linsey-woolsey shirt, many sizes too large for him, showing in fact more like a monk’s robe, an appearance heightened by the piece of rope knotted about his waist. For one so small and spry, and who lately had proved himself so fleet, he walked with an incredibly clumsy gait, feet spread wide, rolling his shoulders.
He stopped; and though he did not move he seemed poised like a suspicious bird, ready to dart away at any moment.
“Don’t ye remember me, Jack?” he thundered. “Caleb Hands. We was brethren under Cap’n England two years agone.”
“Hands! Scald my spit, man, of course I know you! Where’ve ye been all this time?”
“Working with Edward Teach, till they sabered him.”
“Teach is dead? Blackbeard himself?”
“Aye. Couple of Navy vessels came down from Virginny and bottled him at Ocracoke. Then they boarded him. Most of the men quit, right there on deck, once Teach was dead. But three of us got off, and we tried to make it along the coast, meaning to get to Charles Town. But the others fell away. I was the only one to reach this far, which I took it to be as good a place as any to sit and wait for somebody to come along that might be—well, friendly, so to speak.”
“Teach was run through, you say?”
“Aye. By a young lieutenant named Maynard. Skewered him five-six times. Teach didn’t even know he was dead, he was so drunk. I saw the fight, just before I went over the taffrail.”
“And the others?”
“Hanged ’em, I guess. Took ’em back to Virginny anyway.”
Hands was watching George Rounsivel and Si Simonson sideways, and now he appealed, deferentially, apologetically, to Rackham.
“Your, uh, your mates here, Jack . . . are they . . . well
“As stout a pair of pirates as you’ll find anywhere in the Little Indies,” Rackham promptly replied.
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