She understood, and inclined a grave head, and put her hand on George’s arm.
In the corridor, necessarily, they were close, almost pressed against one another, and he could feel her trembling.
“You were wonderful,” he whispered. “Keep it up. I’ll get you out—somehow.”
He threw open his cabin door.
Actually, and amazingly, he had forgotten Anne Bonney. She was lying in the lower bunk, hers, largely naked, while she buffed her nails. There was a bottle of rum at her side. Between her painted lips protruded a small thin brown spiral of tobacco leaf, a thing the Spaniards called a cigaro, and the smoke from this filled the air.
“Come in, sister,” she demanded. “I don’t suppose one more bitch is likely to crowd this place.”
CHAPTER XV
THE DAYS that followed were dreary. An onlooker, had there been one, might have seen the John and Elizabeth as jaunty, her sails set, a trim craft scudding across that cerulean sea with pertness and joy. It was not so, as a closer look would have shown. Fear gripped the sloop. Suspicion stalked it.
The pirates were a volatile lot, who habitually went to extremes, and perhaps it was to have been expected that a mood of doubtfulness would descend upon them as a reaction from the over-exuberance that followed the seizure of the pink. But there could be no question that Caleb Hands, who had helped to bring it about, greatly quickened that mood. For all his grotesque attire, Hands, a tiny man, just at first was inconspicuous; when he protested the release of the pink nobody paid attention. Hands would have burned the thing, with or without those members of its crew who were reluctant to go on the account. The taking-over of goods at sea, he had pointed out, was as much a hanging offense as murder; so why leave any evidence? Scuttled, the pink might stay afloat for a long time, or else she might only half-sink, to be found later. Fired, the way the wind was, inevitably she’d be blown out to sea—and oblivion.
From this talk the others turned away. The last bit of looting had been done. It was dusk, and a flaming vessel would be a beacon-light for many miles. It would have to be watched against the possibility of rain: they had not forgotten the Dutch gallot Vane had failed to finish. As for prisoners, always excepting the Angel, whose value was unique, there simply was no room for them. Already the John and Elizabeth was overmanned, short of water and fuel, low on grub, tight for space. No, take the last chunk of metal from the Jamaicans, leave them a few crumbs of biscuit, half a keg of water, some sail-scraps, and to hell with them! This actually was done, without any formal vote, even without an order from the captain, who in any event was too much occupied with the women in the after-cabin to care. When last seen, as night eagerly closed in, the pink from Jamaica was limping south along the coast—the direction of Charles Town.
“And that’s right where she’ll go,” Hands bitterly predicted. “And she’ll make it, just barely. And next morning they’ll come swarming out of there like hornets out of a hive, those armed cutters. And they’ll start scouring the coast for us.”
They scoffed at this, for a little while, for they had been used to thinking of the Carolinas as friendly country. But Hands was emphatic. And when they heard what Jack Rackham said about him, and heard too that little Caleb Hands had witnessed the death of Blackbeard, being one of three men who had escaped alive from that battle at Ocracoke, probably presently the only survivor, they listened with more respect.
“I tell you, you don’t know the way folks in these parts look at us rovers of the seas now! It’s all different from what it was! They forget how much money the Brethren of the Coast used to spend in their shops. Now they keep saying we’ve got to be hanged because we spoil their trade. Everything’s trade! And I know this—I know I sure don’t want to be in this part of the Atlantic Ocean when the folks in Charles Town hear about that pink!”
It was a spirit that spread swiftly; and the council held on the foredeck that very night, a few hours after the departure of the pink, voted not to remain in the neighborhood, even for wood and water, as originally planned, not to run up the coast toward Philadelphia nor yet down toward the Florida Strait and, eventually, New Providence, but rather to drive right out to sea on a course due east.
George Rounsivel did not convene this council, and though he more or less presided over it, and though he was many times called “cap’n, sir,” an extraordinary courtesy on the part of men who had come to hate the very sound of that word “sir,” still he had but a single vote and could not have effected the decision. But far from being in opposition to the tactic George was delighted, forseeing as he did that it would take them out of the lane of unescorted merchant vessels flying the English flag, something he dreaded to meet.
Now if a Spanish or French vessel was encountered—that would be different. For the pink had brought from New Providence more than Delicia Rogers, some low-grade molasses, and a handful of recruits: it had also brought news that war at last was declared. True, the John and Elizabeth remained an outlaw ship, certainly not possessed of a letter of marque. But “privateering” was an elastic word; if a prize was big enough, and its military value important enough, much might be forgiven, at least unofficially.
A peril, as he heard it from Ezra Garde, who had opposed the out-to-sea movement, was that they might find themselves in the Horse Latitudes, a belt of alternate squall and dead-calm that strips the northern edge of the trades. But nobody, excepting Garde and George himself, his pupil, took navigation seriously. They could proceed by guess and by God, and they might get there—tomorrow.
So the sloop drove, gay to see, glum to inhabit. Her decks were slovenly, her standing rigging slack. There was no discipline, hardly any watches. It was necessary to ration both water and wood, and the water shortage was used as an excuse to broach more than one of the wine casks, so that drunkenness increased every day. The weather was chill and rainy. The helmsman always had to be watched: uninterested, he could not be made to steer small. Ezra Garde confessed, though only privately to his skipper, that he no longer had any clear idea of where they were.
Then, the third morning, when the crew would at last have been willing to consent to a southerly course, they stumbled upon a convoy making northeast, and the warship escorting these vessels promptly gave chase. In ordinary circumstances this would be no more than a warning, a notice to run away. A Royal Navy unit could hardly hope to overtake a pirate. The skipper of this one—a sloop, and heavily armed, as they saw by means of the glass—evidently thought well of his charge’s speed, or was bored with his mercantile company, or both. At any rate, he kept after them all day, never drawing close but never shaken off either. For this reason, to get every ounce of speed out of the John and Elizabeth, with all canvas cracked on, they flew right before the wind. When darkness at last permitted them to make about on a more southerly course, they were a very long way from where they had been ten hours earlier.
By noon of the next day not only were they hopelessly lost—they were becalmed.
The air had become warmer, but it was wet. The sails hung limp. The very gunwales were beaded with moisture. There was never any sunlight, and the horizon was near at hand. Some pirates might have passed the time in sleeping on deck, but the squalls hardly permitted this. The squalls came with no warning in a yellowish-gray sky, pouncing out of the nowhere upon this pitifully small sloop, which for a few minutes would bob and spin like an eggshell while rain lashed it with all the insensate rage of a maniac wielding a whip. This would cease as abruptly as it had started, and the wind would fall away, the heat would return, while steam rose from every exposed surface, the sails, the spars, the very deck-boards reeking, so that it was difficult to breathe. This might happen six times a day.
Tempers were short in that suffocating atmosphere. Uncooked food—the firewood had given out entirely—did not satisfy the men, who were drinking too much claret. There were frequent fights. The five from Jamaica, those out of the pink, loudly and often regretted that they had quit a comfortable b
erth for such a fife as this. Even Caleb Hands couldn’t catch any fish. And the sun was not there to shoot, nor was there ever a star at night.
Bad as conditions might have been on deck and in the forecastle, conditions in the officers’ cabin were worse.
George had ordered Tom Walker out of the single-bunk room, occupying this himself. The quartermaster, a mountain of patience, made no complaint; but Ezra Garde squawked plaintively when his charts were ejected and he himself commanded not to use the after-cabin again on any pretext.
George, then, slept in the single cabin, when he permitted himself to sleep at all; the two women slept in the other, across the corridor. Because both doors were left ajar, for purposes of ventilation, George often could hear Anne Bonney’s voice, though he couldn’t distinguish the words. Delicia never answered.
Anne had not proved as receptive as first she’d seemed. She did not like Delicia, whose quiet disdain, not even cold, not even haughty, roiled her. They were natural enemies, those two, who would have hated one another no matter what the circumstances. Delicia took it out in silence, Anne in a steady low venomous line of talk, largely obscene, always insulting, from which Delicia could escape only by fleeing to the deck, though Anne sometimes followed her even there.
There was no delicacy about Anne Bonney, who with fine cunning used her coarseness to hurt Delicia, like turning a knife in a wound. Time and again in Delicia’s presence she would call out to George, reminding him of their relations, demanding to know why he never came to her bunk any more.
“What’s wrong—the heat sapping you? Or ain’t I good enough, now you’ve got a governor’s relation to make eyes at? She won’t mind. She can look the other way.”
“Shut your mouth,” George would wearily call.
“Or we could send her up on deck and tell her not to come back without knocking? Or to the forecastle—the boys there’d take on almost anything, the way they feel now. I’ve seen them looking at me—and for that matter, at her too.”
“Shut your mouth.”
He too had seen those looks, and they made him tremble. This couldn’t go on much longer. Somebody would run mad.
“I don’t like it,” he told Delicia.”
“I don’t either. Of course I pretend to ignore them. But I’m not, really. It . . . it’s almost as though they were putting their hands on me, under my petticoat.”
She never reproached George, even, as now, in the privacy of the women’s cabin. Yet, though impersonal, studiously nonintimate, she could be plain-spoken. Hers was a practical nature.
“You know, of course, that I’ll protect your honor with everything I have, including my life?”
There couldn’t have been anything less Galahadish. He said it dispassionately, seriously, as though he were discussing a law case. And she received it so, mclining her head in acknowledgement.
“Yes, I realize that. I don’t know why a man like you should. But—I’m sure you will.”
He spread his hands.
“But there’s only my life! And if that’s gone—what else? No, we’ve got to keep the peace, somehow. I could call out the whole pack of ’em when I see them looking at you that way. But that would be—the end.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Anne? I don’t want her to be talking to any of those men forward. She has a genius for stirring up trouble.”
Delicia shrugged. She didn’t like to talk about Anne Bonney, or even think about her.
“Whatever we’re going to do, we’d better do it soon,” George said. “Something’ll crack if we don’t.”
He rose.
“I’d better go see. You wait here.”
Anne was not on the afterdeck. She was not in the waist. George went forward.
Men were watching him. Conversations died.
She was not on the forward deck. She could only be down in the forecastle itself.
Sailors were notoriously touchy about the forecastle, their own quarters, their haven. George had heard that on many Royal Navy vessels, probably on most of them, it would be, literally, as much as an officer’s life was worth for him to descend unannounced into the forecastle.
He had no reason to think that the John and Elizabeth pirates were as resentful as all that, but he had hitherto made it a point never even to go near the forecastle hatch, which except in times of rain was left open. Now, however, he went there directly.
He didn’t call out. That would have been cowardly. Instead he climbed down.
This was something like descending into hell. The air was hot, wet. The place was very dark. It stank so that it made his eyes sting.
He stood at the foot of the ladder, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. A row of bunks stretched on either side, but immediately he could make out no figures. Yet he could hear the men catch up their breath at sight of him. And there was another sound he heard too, a slight slithering metallic sound. Had somebody drawn a knife?
“All right, Anne,” he said at last. “Come on. You know you’re not supposed to be down here.”
She was sulky, but she obeyed. He heard her stir, catlike, and then she sidled past him to the ladder. Nobody else moved. Nobody said anything.
She started up the ladder.
“Trouble with you,” she muttered, “you don’t want anybody else to have any fun. I came here because I thought you’d like to screw that black-haired tart in peace. But no, you have to—”
“Keep going,” said George Rounsivel.
After she had reached the deck he turned to the ladder and mounted. That was a terrible thing to do, turn his back to those unseen figures of the forecastle. Death or quick mutilation might have been immediate. But he heard never a sound.
The helmsman—the tiller was untended, having no motion—sat on the taffrail smoking a pipe. Further along the taffrail, glaring out over a flat oily sea, where the wake would have been if John and Elizabeth had had any way, was Anne Bonney.
George gave a general nod, and went below.
“I have been thinking it over,” he told Delicia, “and I’ve decided what we have got to do, you and I.”
“What?”
“We’ve got to get married—right now.”
They were all but breathing into each other’s faces, Her violet eyes widened, and they were lovely; her mouth trembled. She whirled away from George, and threw herself face-down upon the lower bunk. Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed with no sound.
It was a measure of her distress that she’d cast herself into Anne Bonney’s bunk. She hated that bunk.
George looked down at her for a long while, then quietly went away. He knew little about it, but his instinct told him that when a woman wept she should be left alone.
Thomas Walker, master gunner, was coming across the waist. He had heard of George’s visit to the forecastle, and sensed that something was afoot, that his services might be needed. His step steady, his dark face seamed, he was dependability, he was integrity, a man who had lived according to his lights as he could see them. If his duty was by the side of his skipper, then he would be by his skipper’s side. Blue eyes interrogative, he regarded George, who ever so slightly shook his head; and then Tom fell away like a cast-off tender.
Anne Bonney still glowered over the taffrail at a listless sea. This was a spot she favored, for in any sort of wind her body would be well outlined, and the men on the forward deck would be given something to hitch their imaginations upon. But this afternoon Anne looked drab, a spoiled slack woman. She was twenty. She looked thirty-five.
The helmsman puffed on, gazing at nothing.
George walked three times around the deck, then went below again.
Delicia had recovered. More, she’d fussed among the bottles and jugs on her dressing table, among the rosewater and perfume, and now as she sat waiting for him on the only stool the room afforded there was over her face no sign of a tear-stain.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “But it happens nobody ever pro
posed marriage to me before. This means something to a woman, the first time. And then—it was you.”
“A lawyer and an outcast,” he agreed. “An escaped prisoner.”
“You may be too harsh on yourself, sir. I don’t know. I only know that I think my uncle trusted you, and I love my uncle. But this is no time to go into that.”
“It isn’t. And I must be harsh on you too, for this is no time for gallantry either. Ma’am, you misread me. I was clumsy, the way I phrased it. I haven’t proposed matrimony.”
Now she did look up; fear edged her eyes.
“Sir, you mean—”
“No, I don’t plan to rape you. Quite the contrary. Didn’t I a little while ago say I’d give my life to protect your honor?”
“You did.” She managed a small smile as she regained confidence. “You who protest that you mean no gallantry!”
“ ’Twas sober, ma’am. And so is this.”
“And so is—what?”
“My suggestion that we appear to be married.” He flipped a thumb. “Those cutthroats might break all ten of the commandments every day, but I believe they respect certain civilized institutions. As my wife you would be free of lecherous hands, even lecherous looks. And I don’t mean simply out of fear of me, though I count on that as well.”
“I see . . . and it is kind of you to think of it, captain. But—then wouldn’t they expect us to sleep together?”
“Not with Anne here. She’d do everything she could to prevent it, and she’s a resourceful young woman. They know that.”
Now Delicia looked at her hands in her lap. When she spoke it was wryly, from a corner of her mouth.
“I—I almost wish you had been sincere, captain. This embarrasses me.”
“It embarrasses me!”
“The thought is ingenious. And for sure you’re better acquainted with these ruffians than ever I could be. But—is it conceivable that they’re so stupid they’d believe us to be husband and wife who met again by chance and didn’t take the trouble to announce our relationship until we had been at sea for almost a week?”
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