Captain Adam

by Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981

  Yet they would veer the other way at any shift of wind, any mishandling of the sheets; for if there was anything that could be said with certainty of these pirates it was that their emotions and beliefs, jiggled and jogged by this and that, were unpredictable; they were never sure of themselves. On Adam Long, then, ironically, rested the responsibility of standing for an institution of which in fact he was only a false representative. He must now defend the wifely honor of a woman who wasn't his wife at all.

  "Ah, the charming Mistress Maisie! Charming!"

  "Aye, but it'll be enough if she charms me. She don't have to charm you, too."

  Nobody breathed. Kellsen's eyebrows started to seek his wig.

  "You, uh, have some specific objection, perhaps?"

  "Yes," said Adam, "this!" and he threw the brown velvet jacket into Kellsen's face. "My wife," he added, "does not accept gifts from a thief."

  He turned and started to walk away.

  He did not know what to expect. He might be slaughtered in this instant. But he did not think that Kellsen would discharge a pistol in such a crowd, and if he drew he would probably be restrained.

  What came was no more than a voice, but it brought him up.

  "A moment, pray. Captain Long."

  Adam turned.

  "Yes?"

  Kellsen had not stirred. The brown velvet jacket lay in the dust at his feet: nobody cared about it any longer, for it had served its purpose. Kellsen might have been disappointed, having hoped for craven, ex-

  ploitable compliance, rather than a fight. But he did not show this. His eyes were cast down almost shyly.

  "It is my thought that we might pursue this matter further, Captain, you and I."

  "Any time you say."

  "Would, uh, would now be too soon?"

  "Now'sfine."

  Kellsen nodded. He turned, leaning on his cane.

  "On the beach, then, in a few minutes," he drawled over a shoulder.

  He left the marketplace slowly, with his handkerchief flicking away flies.

  For all the men save two the trip was a picnic. There was no touch of ceremony, and the scramble at the beach was a joyous one. Half a hundred longboats and dories and similar craft there must have been, each overfilled, overweighted, showing precious little freeboard. Everybody was laughing, splashing. All they needed was fireworks and paper streamers to make it look like the royal barges on the Thames when the court was out for a frolic.

  Chattering, they rode out among the anchored vessels, virtually all of which were unmanned at the moment. They passed the Goodwill to Men, and it was then that Adam felt his chest get tight for the first time. He did not look much at the Goodvnll, three-sixteenths his now, only a glance; but he did see Jeth Gardner, forearms on the taffrail, watching this mass of boats, doubtless wondering what it was all about. Jeth did not see Adam, who was looking down after his one glance. Adam had seen casks on the deck, forty or fifty of them, and he wondered what they were. Not from the hold: they were smaller than the barrels of molasses from Horace Treadway's plantation, most of which had been rolled overside during the chase anyway. But things up there had looked in good condition. Even with one leg, and the stump so raw, Jeth Gardner would keep the Goodwill shipshape. Jeth had his orders. The schooner was one of the furthest out, near the pass; and Jeth was to stand by, with everything squared away, ready at any hour of the day or night, until such time as Captain Long and Mate Forbes saw the chance to sneak aboard, axe the cables, hoist canvas, and be off. GoodvAll still carried a jury boom on her fore, but even so, given any kind of start she could probably walk away from the fastest craft the pirate fleet could show. Beyond doubt it was that broken boom which kept the schooner in the

  bay here. Once properly equipped she would be taken outside in search of prizes. They'd pile some greasy guns aboard her first, of course. And they'd dirty her decks with their dirty feet. Meanwhile she waited, incomplete, for her master.

  Adam had already learned that the outlaws of Providence, incorrigibly poor business men, suffered from certain chronic shortages. Gorged with rum and rare wines, they had difficulty getting fruit, and even ship's biscuit was sometimes hard to come by. Of gold and silver plate they had vast quantities; yet of simple ironwork of the sort so badly needed to equip their vessels—for clasps, clamps, and such—as well as lead sheathing, an imperative in those parts—they were rather more than likely, at any given time, to have none. Any one of them might have produced for you altar plates, a triptych, candlesticks, gem-studded chalices, each one a work of art, worthy of a velvet cushion in a museum; but none could have produced a single simple nail, a plank or spar.

  So Adam held his head dovai, and they kept going.

  They passed the reef, after waving to the men who manned the cannon up in the old rebuilt fort. Other men, men who had not been able to get boats, were running out to the end of the point, to the fort, in order to get the news sooner when the flotilla returned.

  The sea was a lake, the sky hadn't one cloud. It was just after noon.

  In the holiday spirit the boats came together, separated, came together again, while men shouted back and forth in half a dozen different tongues. The talk had largely to do with betting; and as far as Adam could gather—the Brethren of the Coast had their own cant, not easily understood even when it was supposed to be English—the odds were three to one on Kellsen.

  Nobody questioned for a moment, everybody knew, that the fight was to be a outrance, to the death. They took this for granted.

  When the boats approached Cay Cucaracha—Cockroach Key the English called it—a silence fell over them, not all at once but gradually. The company broke into two parts, the smaller, the one Adam's boat was in, proceeding around to the far side.

  It was tiny, an atoll, scarcely more than a raft of rubble supporting a few seared palmettos. It was round, perhaps a quarter of a mile across. The center was somewhat higher than the shore, but even the center was so low that a good-sized sea might have swept right over it.

  However, there were no seas. When they landed on the sloping beach, the keel grating small coral stones, it was as easily done as bringing a canoe to the bank of a pond.

  This was the only boat in sight that had come ashore. The others stayed some distance out.

  Adam walked up and down, stretching his legs, his arms. There were no

  six or seven men with him, not all of them men he knew, though he knew that they were all favorable to him—friends he didn't notably want, for him largely because they were against Major Kellsen. Adam had no wish to lead a faction in this trouble-spot. Now he paid little attention to the men.

  They had become serious, even grim. One had a musket, one a cutlass, one a pistol. The one with the pistol snapped it two or three times to make sure of the spark. It was huge, with a brass barrel, no sights, a fishtail butt made of Circassian walnut. It was heavy. The others watching, the man poured in a measurement of powder, cut a large round ball, dropped the ball in, little-fingered a chunk of wadding into the muzzle, rammed this home with a ramrod. He rapped the barrel smartly on his heel, so that powder fluffed out through the touchhole and into the pan. He handed the pistol to Adam.

  "Use it careful. It's the only shot you'll get."

  "Make a good club," Adam said, and took it by the barrel and shook it.

  " 'Sblood, beefwit! That's loaded!"

  The man with the cutlass handed this to Adam, who took it in his left hand. It was exactly the same length as Major Kellsen's, the man said. They had measured them.

  Adam asked: "Where is the major?"

  "The other side of this island. He's got a pistol, too."

  Adam looked around. The sun was almost directly overhead. The sand, the stones, the fronds of palmettos shimmered. The sea gave little love-taps to the shore at his feet.

  A semicircle of boats, possibly twenty of them, was motionless a couple of hundred yards away. Other boats were coming around from the far side of the island, but staying well
out.

  "And where do we meet?"

  "Wherever you run into one another. The major's right opposite here. He ought to be ready now. Are you?"

  Adam wetted his lips. He did not have much spit. He wanted to swallow but was afraid that he couldn't. He looked toward the center of the island, where nothing moved.

  He hoped that Maisie was all right. He hoped that if he was killed she would still escape. Poor girl! She'd had it so hard, she was entitled to a change of luck.

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, I reckon I'm ready."

  The musket went off with a bang, and in spite of himself Adam jumped, not having expected it. Immediately afterward there was another musket shot from the far side of the island. It sounded a faint thin "pip!" The men scrambled into the boat, and pushed out.

  "Good hunting," they called.

  They rowed away.

  Adam Long stood motionless a moment. He thought that if only he could pray he would feel better, but he feared to kneel just now. He kept watching the middle of the island. Nothing moved.

  After a while he began to walk sideways along the shore, still watching the middle of the island, though from time to time he flicked his eyes right and left, the way he was going, the way he had come.

  He had some idea that Major Kellsen would do the same as he was doing—start circling the island, whether to right or to left.

  But suddenly he realized that the major, not new at this, was more likely to take a bolder course and charge straight across the island, hoping to reach him before he had found cover.

  In that case Adam would be utterly exposed, a sitting duck.

  He started to run for the palmetto. He didn't care what the men in the boats back there thought of him. He ran fast, bending low.

  What a fool he had been to waste that time!

  Gasping, sobbing, he threw himself into the first clump of palmetto. His heart was going like a triphammer, but it was the only thing that he could hear.

  He was more scared than he had ever been in his life.

  When he got to his knees and peered around, in all directions, cautiously, he saw little enough. He was in a slight natural depression between two dunelike mounds. It was a good place, and he was in no hurry to leave it.

  He prayed then. It was not an impassioned prayer. Simply and quietly he asked God to spare him a little longer, for the sake of Maisie, the hands, and the schooner, amen.

  It made him feel better, as he had known it would.

  He got to his feet, though he squatted, keeping his head low. Some of the powder had slipped out of the firing pan of the pistol, and he rapped the barrel with his left fist to joggle more through the touch-hole. He wiped his mouth. He took up the cutlass. He started to prowl.

  It was arduous work, and he felt a fool, though still frightened. He was not accustomed to stoop and crouch and bend, slithering from place to place like some obnoxious animal mankind sought to exterminate. Instinct screamed to stand up like a man, not skulk like a wildcat; but he crushed instinct and continued to crawl.

  He was careful not to knock stones together, not to rattle palmetto fronds. Whenever he elected to break cover he looked around first in all directions; then made a dash for it; then lay still, listening, panting.

  The ground was irregular, pockmarked like the surface of the moon. Adam sought out the low spots, avoided the high.

  It was a strain on his muscles and often he stopped to rest; but he remained alert.

  Was Kellsen doing the same thing? Was the Major crawling and creeping from place to place? Or was he a paragon of patience who could wait unstirring for hours until his opponent, restless, twitchy, exposed himself? Adam doubted this. The flamboyant clothes, the drawl, the insistence on supremacy, did not suggest a phlegmatic nature. Major Kellsen, Adam suspected, was out looking for him in exactly the same way he, Adam, was out looking for Major Kellsen.

  It was like a game of blind man's buff in which all the players staggered around with bandaged eyes—and the forfeit was the loser's life.

  Now and then he came in sight of the sea again, but it was impossible to tell on which side, so nearly round was the island and so much the same everywhere.

  More than once it occurred to him that what he really should do was lay out the island in his mind, make a mental diagram of it, and take care not to retrace his own footsteps—in other words, plot this prowl mathematically, so as to be sure that he covered every yard. Yet, again, where was the sense of that? It could only be a useful tactic if Kellsen sat motionless.

  They could of course go on creeping around like this for hours—Adam wondered what would happen when night came. Certainly he'd never dare to sleep.

  The pistol in his right hand, the cutlass in his left held low so that it should not reflect the sun, he lifted his head out of a clump of palmetto —and saw a strange man.

  This man was about fifty feet away and had his back turned. Clad in buff breeches and a brown shirt, neither of them silk, which would have glittered, and black wool stockings, he wore also a brown linen cap. He was large, but bent far over, apelike, his fists almost trailing the ground. His attitude suggested a steel spring: he was set to snap shut. His head jerked back and forth as he looked around. When he turned that head Adam's way, Adam ducked.

  A moment later Adam looked again. And Adam came to realize marveling, that this was in fact Major Kellsen. Shorn of periwig, froggery and bravado, this uncertain duelist, like Adam himself, tense, crept from place to place, fearful lest a finger, an unwitting toe, should turn over death.

  Adam's pistol was a cannon in miniature. He had seen the charge poured into it, a heavy one. He had seen the ball they'd cut—tremendous. Though it would not carry far with any degree of accuracy, this brass-and-walnut weapon could smash a man's head open, tear a man's shoulder

  off, crush his chest. And Major Kellsen, all unaware, made a perfect target.

  But Adam couldn't slay a man from behind. He had to say something, make some noise.

  He cleared his throat. Kellsen didn't stir.

  "Uh, ahoy!" cried Adam.

  Kellsen whirled around, his pistol raised. Adam fired.

  The explosion was terrific. The recoil threw his arm high. There was a great deal of smoke.

  But when the smoke had sauntered away, Major Kellsen still stood there. He looked thunderstruck, his eyes bugged out. But assuredly he had not been hit. And in a moment he began to grin.

  His pistol high, he started to walk toward Adam. He placed his feet carefully. He would be sure of himself when he shot.

  And all this while he was grinning. He was a very happy man, teeming with the joy relief brings, a relaxation of the tension. For now he had won the duel.

  His thumb cocked the pistol. It made a sharp "click!"

  He came on, and on.

  Adam Long might have turned and run, saving himself a few minutes of life, conceivably even a few hours; but where could he go? Kellsen, with but one precious ball, would hold fire until he could not possibly miss.

  Yes, Adam could have run, dodging from place to place, from hole to hole, like a rabbit. To hell with that! He was going to die, but he didn't have to die whimpering.

  He rose. He threw his pistol straight at Major Kellsen's face.

  There was an explosion, as Kellsen's foot slipped. His gun, like Adam's, had been hair-triggered.

  There was a great deal of smoke.

  And Adam Long, with a gurgle of delight, a throaty sound, realized that he was alive.

  He didn't grin. He laughed.

  It was not often that Adam Long laughed.

  He shifted the cutlass to his right hand. He fairly whooped as he made for the major.

  Kellsen was strong, and he had long arms, long legs, a reach longer than Adam's.

  This was a spirited fight, though a short one. It would not have gladdened the heart of a fencing master. The men were clumsy. But thev were fierce.

  Kellsen stood erect, hacking down. Adam went in low, crouching, his
guard high above his head.

  Three times they locked hilts, after a brave sparking and slapping of 114

  steel. Three times, by common consent, though without word of mouth, or even a grunt, each sprang back.

  The fourth time Adam went in lower than ever, but with his blade also low this time. He didn't try to slash. He swept into a straight classic lunge, as though it was a Spanish rapier he held. For you can lunge with a cutlass, which had a point as well as an edge. That is, you can if you don't mind exposing your whole head. Adam ran a terrible risk. If Kellsen was f ast—

  Kellsen wasn't fast. His sword never came down—except that it slipped out of nerveless fingers. He was slow in falling, like some colossal oak. Yet he died rapidly enough, coughing up great gouts of blood, quarts of it.

  Adam had trouble getting the sword out. He carried it, together with Kellsen's, down to the beach. It was a beautiful day.

  "All right, ye dogs! Come and take me away I"

  Adam knew from Newport how news travels fast in a small place; but the pirates of Providence had some system of their own for disseminating information, and it was a system that would have made the tongues of Rhode Island matrons seem slow. Long before the flotilla of small boats even got past the fort and into the bay the whole population of the island, including the Honorable Maisie de L'oin Treadway-Paul, lined up along the beach, knew the outcome of the contest on Cockroach Key.

  She had thrown herself into his arms with a fervor that took the breath out of him, embarrassed him, too, in front of all those people. Yet the others appeared to expect this, and there were even cheers for the lady mixed with the cheers for Captain Long. He put her aside, tut-tut-ting, near to tears because of what he saw in her eyes, the anxiety there, the love; and of course it wouldn't do to let anybody see him acting that way.