“Mistress Rogers, I have mismanaged my words. No, I didn’t mean that. What I meant,” while he reached past her and lifted a Book of Common Prayer from the dressing table, “was that we should be wed right here and now, up on deck, in full sight of them all. That they’d credit.”
“Oh . . . you mean a mock marriage?”
“Yes. But they wouldn’t know that. They are aware in a general way that the captain of a ship at sea is authorized to perform the ceremony in certain circumstances, but they wouldn’t know those circumstances. And I will explain, learnedly and at length, that English common law assumes a contract per verba de presenti or per verba de futuro cum copula to constitute a complete marriage in itself.”
“I never went to school, I don’t know what that means.”
“Nor will they. But they’ll reason that if it’s in Latin it must be sound.”
“But you’re the captain of this ship! You can’t marry yourself!”
“I can deputize Tom Walker. This wouldn’t be regular, but again they won’t know that.”
“It seems to me, sir, that you are playing upon the ignorance of these men. And that’s not kind.”
“It seems to me, ma’am, that you are I are not in any position to look for kindness. Also, I’ll concoct a glittering paper.”
He related that it had been his knowledge of the law and his ability to spout thunderous legal phrases that got him into this trouble in the first place. He told her about the articles of companionship so laboriously framed on Jorobado. He pointed to the pirates’ reverence of documents, of long words.
“In this case the marriage contract will be written right before their faces. If nothing else did it, that alone should convince ’em.”
She took the prayer book from his hands.
“Captain,” she said at last, “I don’t question your honesty. But the conditions are unusual. You might have heard that I inherited a competence from my father, who was killed by the Spaniards? He got his lay of the enterprise all the same; my uncle saw to that. I am worth something over twelve thousand pounds. Did you know that?”
“No. And it wouldn’t have made any difference if I had.”
“Again, let me stress that I don’t call to question your honor. But I must guard what I have. And isn’t it possible that your family might later have a claim on my modest fortune? What I’m getting at, captain, is this: Are you absolutely sure that what you propose wouldn’t have any legal standing?”
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Nothing that happens on this vessel could have any meaning in law. These men are Hostis humani generis, enemies of the human race, by their own declaration. That removes them from law—any law—anywhere. The sloop itself doesn’t have legal status. Nobody here owns it or has any sort of authorization to sail it. It has no home port, no registration, no clearance. As for the marriage contract itself, I’ll give it to you to burn after it’s had its effect on the men. And remember, anyway, that I am an escaped felon. Nothing I sign could have any legality. Even if the contract was cum copula.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Never mind, now.”
“But—I’d have to sign as well?”
“You could say afterward that you’d acted under duress. Your life had been threatened. Or your virtue. Or both. And mind you, ma’am, that would be no more than the truth.”
“Yes. . .”
Thomas Walker, quartermaster, acting captain, had a forefinger as stubby as the butt of a hippopotamus. It budged with labor across the page, elaborately indicating each word.
The book itself, a tiny thing of ivory vellum with a gold-leaf cross and goldleaf title, in those huge hands looked like a beautiful small bird limned on a tangle of twigs. When it shook—for Tom was nervous—it seemed to be struggling to get away.
Tom could read, but just barely. The words came out lumps of lead.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together . . . to join this man and this woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honorable estate, instituted of God in the time of man’s innocence, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church . . .”
The men stood tense, heads bare.
George slipped a hand into one of Delicia’s hands.
“I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement . . . that if either of you know any impedient, why ye may not be lawfully joined together. . . .”
A breeze, halting at first, rustled the marriage contract that lay on the capstan beside them. The spritsail flapped. The maincourse flopped hollowly, and there was a rattle of reefpoints. For the first time in five days John and Elizabeth spoke at the bows.
It was an awakening, the termination of the trance. They were away from the doldrums! George squeezed Delicia’s hand.
“Those whom God hath joined let no man put asunder. I pronounce you man and wife. I guess that’s all. Amen.”
There was a crash of cheering, and wine was brought out, also a cask of French brandy somebody until this time had kept hidden. “Kiss her, cap’n! Go on, kiss her!” The canvas had bellied out, stiff. The sloop was rolling.
George put his hands on Delicia’s shoulders, and he smiled fondly down into that small intent face.
“We ought to do it—what they’re yelling. I mean, for the sake of appearances.”
“Would it . . . would it be so painful?”
So they kissed, and the applause was such that for some moments nobody heard Peter Knight, the “boy” of the crew, who had gone forward and who came scampering aft now, flapping his arms, gawky as a stork.
“A sail! A Spaniard! It’s a sail!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAD WAS RIGHT. Muddle-headed about many things, a dolt, he did know his ships. He had called correctly when he proclaimed this one Spanish, as pirate after pirate soon averred. George, not so skilled in such matters, could get no man to explain why he was sure of the nationality, but he didn’t hesitate to make all preparation for attack as he ordered a change of course.
Certainly the newcomer was large—a three-decker, a galleon—but the wild hope that she might be a treasure carrier was early whiffed away. Not since the time of Drake in the Atlantic, Woodes Rogers in the Pacific, had the Spaniards permitted ships laden with bullion to travel alone. This one was slow, lumbering awkwardly across the sea like some wounded animal. Had it become lost? Was it seeking its escort? Yet this was not the time for shipping treasure, the season of the so-called Plate Fleet.
All the same, they went for it immediately. The sloop, happy in the new breeze, fairly leapt through the water. There was something exhilarating, a David-and-Goliath glint, about the scene.
“I wish you wouldn’t do it,” a voice behind him said.
His “bride” was there, gazing somberly at the vessel they neared.
“She’s Spanish, yes,” Delicia went on. “But you might think of me. What happens to me if you’re killed?”
He nodded as though to acknowledge a fair question, though like her, like everybody aboard of John and Elizabth, he was intently watching the galleon.
Running right before the wind, she might have been hard for even the pirate sloop to catch. But none of the topsails were in place, nor was there a jib, and clearly she was crank. She wallowed awkwardly on no fixed course. The likeness to a wounded animal was poetically sound. Had this galleon been crippled in some freak storm? Was her rigging wrecked, and had her tiller been damaged, or the whip-staff, or even the rudder itself?
Or perhaps—an explosion?
She swarmed with hurrying figures, though there were no shouts of defiance when the John and Elizabeth drew near, no brandishing of steel, as might have been expected. A gun-port was opened, then another, then a dozen at once, and guns were run out.
The yellow flag of Leon was hauled to the forepeak. That should have been a proud defiant gesture, but somehow it wasn’t; somehow it hinted of weakness.
Thoughtful, George Rounsivel watched.
<
br /> There was a touch of hysteria, he sensed, in the way those Spaniards were scampering back and forth.
“If I’m killed I shall be a hero,” he answered quietly, “and they will respect my ‘widow’—at least for a little while. But if I don’t lead them to a prize they’ll mutiny. Then anything might happen.”
“But you can’t capture that?”
“I wonder. We couldn’t hold her, if we did. But why does she look frightened?”
“She doesn’t look frightened to me.”
“She does to me. Excuse me, ma’am.”
He conferred a moment with Ezra Garde, then with Tom Walker, and returned to Delicia’s side. He was loading his pistols.
“You’d better go below. I’m sorry I had to choose so bold a thrust at a time like this, but as I see it boldness is our best chance.”
“This isn’t boldness, sir. This is suicide.”
“I don’t think so, quite.”
By this time they had actually overtaken and passed the galleon and were making about to starboard, not more than four or five cablelengths away, so that if the wind held they should approach her a bit forward of the larboard beam, falling off all the while. It must have looked to those aboard the Spanish ship as though the pirates meant to ram, though this was unthinkable, truly, considering the difference in the size of these vessels. In fact it was part of George’s plan, if fired upon, to drive straight ahead until he was so close to the galleon that her cannons could not be depressed to hit so small a sloop, then to veer sharply starboard, passing close to the galleon, right under her counter. The John and Elizabeth in the hands of a good sailing-master could make almost directly into the wind’s eye, at least in moderate weather like this, and when they ran away they wouldn’t present much of a target.
George waved.
“Those guns are mounted for broadside firing, naturally. With carriages like that they can’t be aimed, excepting as the ship itself is. They can only be laid. Still, three or four of them could rake us from stem to stern for a few minutes as we drive in. If that happens everybody on this deck might be killed. That’s why I asked you to go below.”
“If everybody on deck is killed, how would I survive below anyway?”
“There’s logic in that. Well, watch out for splinters. Excuse me. Peter! Break out the rogers!”
The John and Elizabeth did not stock an extensive collection of signals. She had no national oriflamme, having no nationality. She had no fleet flag, not being a part of any fleet. She did not even have a distress flag. Who would go to the aid of outcasts?
Indeed, the only flags the John and Elizabeth carried were what the pirates called—nobody knew why—rogers, or sometimes jolly-rogers. There were two of these, both large. One was bright red, the other black.
Their messages were understood in these waters. The red flag said: “We are closing. If you make any resistance you will all be killed.” The black flag said: “You have had your chance. Now die.”
The black flag, was the flag of death.
“Raise the red one,” George commanded.
Anne Bonney minced up to him. She pretended not to see Delicia. She made a mock salute, but for all the levity her eyes were shining bright and her mouth had a lascivious twist.
“Cap’n sir, permission to join the boarding party?”
“No. Stay here. Or below. And keep out of the way of that tiller. We might have to put about almighty fast.”
Aboard of the galleon, movement had largely ceased, the antlike scurry had subsided.
Aboard of John and Elizabeth there never had been any outward show of excitement, no running around. The false gunnels had been raised the moment an alarm was given, and the men, armed to the teeth, some of them bearing knotted lines to which grappling hooks were tied, crouched behind these. Aside from George, the helmsman, and the two women on the afterdeck, young Peter Knight in the waist preparing to hoist the red ensign, and Tom Walker, a lin-stock in his hand, by the side of the big brass twelve-pounder forward, the Spaniards must have seen this as a ghost boat.
The cannon was the same that George once had been tied to. It was loaded now, but not shotted, being plugged only with wadding, for it was to be used as a warning, not as a weapon.
“Are we close enough?” George called.
“Count twenty,” called Tom Walker.
“Count it yourself. And then let fly.”
A graveyard silence, save for the speaking at the bows and the silken swish of the wake, held the world. Everything seemed petrified. Caught up in their fate, they were driving forward, or were driven forward inexorably, the mouths of twenty cannons gawping at them.
George checked his pistols and took a better grip on the saber he held.
Without moving his head, he looked right. Delicia Rogers was a statue, staring straight ahead, fascinated by that enormous wall of oak and all those grim round metal rings that leered from out of it. She was frightened; but she had told herself, he read, that she would not flinch, she would not close her eyes even when the fighting started.
George looked left. Anne Bonney was tense, her head out-thrust, her mouth working; she tingled with the thought of blood and death to come. Her right hand, like a separate thing a thing over which her mind had no control, was pawing at the top of her bodice.
“You keep that knife to yourself,” George said harshly. “And remember what I told you about staying away from the tiller.”
The twelve-pounder crashed, a deafening sound that seemed to jolt the sloop in its tracks. Smoke rolled back over those who stood on the afterdeck.
The red roger was raised.
The false gunnels were torn down, and the men behind them rose, yelling and yammering, making the air hideous as they waved knives, cutlasses, cudgels.
The two vessels got closer . . . and closer . . .
There was a borborygmus grunt, as though some fat man had turned over in his sleep, and a blob of smoke stood out at the mouth of one of the cannons, to be instantly whipped sternward. About halfway between galleon and sloop a geyser rose, and stood a moment, shimmering, and suddenly collapsed.
The yellow flag of Leon came tumbling down.
The Spaniard had struck.
The captain, his head in his arms, wept convulsively. A huge man in sky-blue silk, silver lace, red heels, and a hat with an eight-inch plume, he should have represented gaiety rather than grief; yet the grief was real. The captain was having a run of bad luck.
His bottom needed scraping; yet he’d been given no time to have this done, the galleon being called up to complete a convoy. News of war had reached Panama, and all Spanish ships, not simply the treasure galleons, were ordered to cross in convoy. He was undermanned, having scarcely three hundred sailors, many of them sick. His cargo, largely bulk salt, was cheap, vulgar, and hard to handle. Worst of all were his passengers, about whom he was given no choice. Don Fernando de Floridabianca, was both bumptious and well-connected. He had with him a small army of relations and servants, and believed that his position entitled him to call upon the captain for anything that any of these persons might happen to desire.
Six days out, and while they were hove-to at night, another vessel had fouled the rudder of the Nostra Signiora de Victoria (she had been Portuguese originally: the name was never changed), and next morning when by flag the captain had sought permission to put into St. Jago, Cuba, he was curtly told to continue his course, repairing as he went. This he had done, making much progress, when two days later in the Florida Straights he had looked around one dawn to find himself alone, having lost the lights of the others. He had decided to take advantage of this and put back for Cuba after all—when a British frigate appeared from the south; and the Nostra Signiora of necessity fled.
The chase, lasting all day, had been touch-and-go. When darkness came to reprieve the Spaniard the frigate was almost within gunshot. His jury-rudder well in hand now, under cover of night the galleon captain had headed straight out to sea, despairing o
f ever making Cuba or of rejoining the convoy, but hoping in this way to shake off the Englishman.
Then came the storm, a day and night of it, tossing him all but on his beam-ends, smashing three of his hatches, flooding his cargo, carrying away much of his rigging, and ruining once more his rudder.
And after the storm—a sail astern!
Assuming with a great sigh that it was the frigate—had he not heard of the persistence of those English?—and knowing that further flight was impossible, he had prepared to resist. It would have been a token resistance.
But now he learned that more than his cargo had been spoiled by sea water. The whole magazine had been flooded. He didn’t have a dry crumb of gunpowder aboard of that whole great ship.
Worse still was in store, the worst of all. The craft that was catching up to them was not the frigate but a miserable pirate. And Don Fernando, apprised of the situation, had insisted that they strike. The single shot they had fired—they’d not even been sure that it would explode—was no more than a ceremony pop meant to save the honor of Spain.
And so the captain sobbed, while George Rounsivel let coins cascade between his fingers, and, paying no heed to them, surveyed this gorgeous, this truly splendid cabin. George never before had been aboard of a ship this size.
He who wept had not told George this story directly, for he could speak no English. A disdainful young officer in scarlet, a toothpick with an unbelievably long name, had interpreted. Gestures too had done a great deal, for the captain was an expressive man. And George’s knowledge of Latin had helped.
These three were the only ones in the cabin. There might easily have been thirty more.
“Um-m . . .” said George, still looking around. “And this, you say, is the ship’s money complete?”
“Every piece of it, señor!”
It was a large chest, oak bound with brass, and full to the top with coins. There were thousands of these; George, letting them dribble between his fingers, felt the fascination of cash, hard cold clicking cash. They testified not only to the immense wealth of the Spanish Indies, but also to the varied nature of the trade there, despite government restrictions, for the coins were of many national enstampments. Some were silver—shillings, testers, ecus, pistolets, eight-real pieces—but the great majority were gold—Louis d’ors, guineas, moidores, maravedis, doubloons, especially doubloons.
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