Captain Adam

by Chidsey, Donald Barr, 1902-1981

  and his one problem, as he saw it, was to face the beach and keep his eyes from closing.

  Time can do curious things; and pain, too, is a trickster. Adam might have fallen asleep in the conventional sense, or he might have been brushed by a wave of unconsciousness, as he had been that morning when he suffered the sunstroke. When next he became aware of anything at all it was not of opening his eyes—as far as he could tell he had never closed them—but of the brightness of the beach. The moon was up, the breeze had fallen. And ten feet away, looking right at him, was the biggest turtle he had ever seen.

  What he had thought the previous night when he'd glimpsed the monster slipping back into the sea might well have returned to him now, for there was much that was diabolical in the appearance of this turtle; but it didn't.

  The head was low, about on a level with Adam's own, and flat on top though jowly beneath, made up of leathery triangles, and it was extraordinarily wide when you looked right at it, as Adam was doing: it must have been fully a foot across. Though the rest of the beast was the color of mud, the feet and even more the head were scaly, shimmering, iridescent. The tip of the snout was a black shiny pinpoint, very sharp. The mouth, all floppy with folds at the corners, was hooked back in a grin of unspeakable malice. Most compelling were the eyes, small but extremely bright, hard, feline, like the mouth unadulterated evil, in the moonlight glittering sometimes green but sometimes a bright light red.

  The turtle did not move. Conceivably it was as astonished to see Adam as Adam was to see it.

  Adam felt a tingling all along his body and down his legs. Would he be able to spring up? Would he be able even to get up?

  The turtle moved one paw. Adam heaved himself to his feet. The whole world rocked like a tippy canoe and he put his arms out right and left to balance himself. The turtle turned, and started for the water. Adam somehow ran after it.

  The beast was amazingly fast. At any other time its retreat would have been ludicrous; it was heavy, clumsy, yet it could cover the ground.

  It was within a few feet of the water's edge when Adam stooped and caught it under the plastron, or lower shell. He heaved, all his muscles shrieking in pain.

  Jaws that could nip a man's hand off clacked loudly. A flipper struck Adam's wrists: it was like being hit with a sack of wet sand. He dropped the turtle, which immediately started for the water again. Adam got to it barely in time. He caught it further forward this try, about in the middle. He lifted.

  Thrashing, the turtle tipped up. Its weight forced Adam to his knees. He got a better grip. His temples were pounding, ears and eyeballs, too. He drew a deep breath. If he didn't make it this time he was dead. He rose, inch by slow inch, while blackness, roaring, swam toward him.

  The turtle went over. Adam dropped to the sand.

  After a while, when some of his breath was back, Adam looked sideways. The turtle, like Adam himself, was on its back, all its flippers going furiously, while the tip of its bright shiny black nose, upside-down, was no more than inches from the edge of the sea. It couldn't cover those inches: it was helpless. There was rage in its breathing, a deep tubular sound. Grotesquely, all the time it grinned. It glared at Adam, who watched it for a long while.

  At last the flippers ceased to work, though the green-sometimes-red eyes were lit still with unabated fury.

  "I'm sorry," Adam said in a quiet voice, meaning it. "I reckon it had to be you or me and naturally I'd rather it was you."

  The turtle glared.

  Adam was thinking of that blood. He sat up, and slowly took off his belt. With his thumb he felt the tolerably sharp tip of the buckle's tongue.

  "It's going to be almighty hard," he said sadly to the turtle. "I hope I don't hurt you too much."

  When they rescued Captain Long, some four weeks later, about the only things left of that turtle were the carapace, the upper shell, which was inverted and in the bottom of which a few gills of rain-water yet remained, while over it as protection against the sun the gummy lower shell was set. The head, the feet, all the bones, had been sucked and gnawed until there was no taste of sustenance left on them, and very little shape. The intestines had been eaten. There was no blood left, not even a stain. Everything had been licked, again and again.

  They had to carry Captain Long to the boat, and later they had to carry him ashore at Providence to Sharpy Boardman's tent. But he was conscious; and they did tell him that the pardon order had been issued by Everard van Bramm himself. Because of Captain Long's condition they did not tell him what the price of that order had been. When he learned the price he wished they had left him on the island to die.

  •^^Kwn^:

  PART ELEVEN

  Vengeance Is Mine

  r? O The way they fussed about him, it was funny. Each of these

  KJO ruffians had a price on his head and was an avowed outlaw; yet to see them as they clucked and puttered around Sharpy Boardman's tent—tiptoeing ponderously here and there, forefingers raised—you could think of nothing but a barnyardful of ruffled fat old hens.

  Adam Long did not laugh. At first he was too weak, in mind and body alike; and on the fifth day he saw something that made him believe he would never laugh again.

  From time to time he asked them about van Bramm. What did the scoundrel seek? Why had he thrown a fit of forgiveness? The whole thing hinged on whether Adam had agreed to join the Brethren of the Coast before he slipped away, and since van Bramm had already taken one side, a side so much to his advantage, and since there were no vdtnesses save Adam himself to gainsay him, why should he switch? He might have supposed, as most of them had, that Captain Long already was dead; but even then where would be the profit in fetching back the corpse of a man whose friends were his, van Bramm's, most dangerous enemies? Everard van B. was no fool. He must have been paid to do what he did. What had the price been?

  They evaded the question so querulously put. They were forthright men ordinarily, blunt, and not given to delicacy of feeling; yet they waxed embarrassed and strove to change the subject whenever Adam asked who had paid, and with what, for his return. Nor could Adam persist, angry though he was. He hadn't the strength.

  Once when he thought that he was dying—more definitely and immediately, indeed, than he had ever thought this while on the key—he begged them to take him to Tarpaulin Hall, so that he could look again at the place where he and his love had been happy. They side-stepped this request, turning their heads away, mumbling something. He raged, or tried to, in a voice he couldn't raise above a whisper. It was useless. They pretended that they did not understand; and after a while he fell back, sobbing.

  Again, clearer, though still pitifully weak, he demanded that Mistress Treadvvay be notified that he was alive. They could surely get word to her through Walter's. He was very earnest about this, sitting up and staring hard at them. They nodded, averting their heads. They muttered that the lady would learn, sure.

  In all other matters they were attentiveness itself, fairly fawning upon him. He was never alone. They crowded into the tent, plaguing his self-appointed nurses with requests to be allowed to speak to him, even just to look at him. He was a hero, no doubt of it. He was the man who, in a vessel of his own designing, and with one of his booms a jury at that, had given them the chanciest chase in the history of the settlement; who had killed Major Kellsen; who had lordily instructed Captain van Bramm to wait; who'd slipped away under the fire of the fort's cannon, only to return alone of his own free will; and who, finally, had survived for more than a month an ordeal that would have killed any other man inside of three days. The makings of a myth were here; and the pirates of Providence, always childishly fascinated by miracles, took up the tale with avidity.

  It came out soon enough what they wanted of him. Here was his revolt, ready-made. Hatred of van Bramm had reached a new high. Those pirates who had been sent on a trumped-up mission in order that they might be absent when their friend Captain Long was tried, back now, resented this; and they and other
s sought somebody who would lead them against the chief. The colony indeed seethed with dissatisfaction. Its financial affairs were not going well. Booty there was, but truly useful supplies were scarce. There were fewer women, fewer merchants. The buyers and sellers were clearing up their books and on one excuse or another sailing away. They were the ones who caused the camp to function. The complaint of the corsairs themselves, who didn't understand matters economic, was that van Bramm, the dirty whoreson, was snatching too big a share of the spoils. This, they thought, explained everything. And the logical way to cure this was to kill van Bramm.

  The man, however, would take some killing. He wasn't an ant you could step on. The disaffected, having seen him in action, were not afraid of their chief, but they were wary. They wished to be sure of themselves—sure, that is, that they were properly led—before they started. One misstep was all you were allowed on Providence.

  Adam shook a groggy head, refusing to discuss this subject. It scarcely made sense to him, the way he was.

  Here was no fever, yet it was like fever. His body was not hot, he didn't sweat, but things were blurred in his vision, having a tendency to seem very far away, or, less often, startlingly close at hand. Voices 258

  reached him as though from a great distance. He was incredibly weak. They had to feed him with a spoon.

  The morning of the fifth day he woke with an uneasy conviction that somebody had just been bending over him. Men were moving about, the usual ones. They were silent, and it seemed to Adam that they were furtive, avoiding his eyes. He sat up. He could actually smell something! And what he smelled, he swore, was Maisie Treadway.

  He sank back. Of course this was only his imagination, which had been playing strange tricks of late. It was no more than another touch, if a singularly cruel one, of the fever-that-wasn't-a-fever. It would be no use to speak to Boardman or any of the rest about what, for a little while there, he'd thought he smelled. It made no sense. Tarnation! Love ain't a toilet water! Anyway, they had all been hush-up on the subject of Maisie. Whenever he mentioned her they would turn the talk to something else.

  He was stronger and clearer-headed this morning, he thought; yet that feeling of uneasiness persisted.

  The camp was curiously quiet.

  "Open the flap," he commanded.

  Sharpy Boardman complied without a word, and he and Frenchy Foureau, his tentmate, lugged Adam's cot to the entrance.

  Ordinarily, even at this hour, the lane would be crowded. Now there was nobody in sight. The sun was fully up but not yet warm—otherwise he wouldn't have ventured to loll in it like this—and the dew was disappearing, to leave dust. Not even a mongrel gave movement to the scene; yet Adam sensed that behind tarpaulins and tent flaps men were watching, waiting. For what?

  Adam turned. Boardman was just behind him; Foureau on the other side, near. They, too, were expecting something. They scarcely breathed.

  This tent was the unofficial headquarters of an unofficial plot, and as such it was suspect by the orthodox. Doubtless somebody watched it, night and day, though Adam could see nobody now.

  No, there was somebody! Far down near the beach a person in yellow had appeared. Gay colors were commonplace on Providence, but this was a remarkable yellow even here.

  A woman? Yes. He saw now that it was a woman, and that there were men behind her.

  He sat up. He peered, his heart beating fast.

  It was more than just a woman—it was Maisie!

  He might have shouted something. He must have tried to rise, for he became aware that Foureau and Boardman were holding him from behind, one grasping each elbow.

  Was he raving? Had he gone mad entirely? He closed his eyes. Gasp ing, he kept them closed for a full two minutes.

  When he opened them, Maisie was only fifteen or twenty feet away, still coming toward him. She was a vision of frills and furbelows, and her glorious hair was piled higher than ever and surmounted by a rickety but magnificent commode. There were rings on her fingers, where diamonds sparkled, and around her neck was a triple string of pearls. Her lips were painted, and there was rouge on her cheeks, patches, too, on her chin. She w^as laughing.

  Adam sat motionless, fascinated, a rabbit before a snake.

  He had previously noticed that Maisie was not alone, but he saw now that in addition to the men who trailed her, men who carried cocked pistols, there was a man on whose arm she leaned. She was talking to this man, whose earrings glittered, whose bald head shone in the sun, this squat, toadlike Everard van Bramm.

  The monster squeezed her arm tight in his, and she smiled at him.

  "There's nothing you can do, it's all over now," Sharpy Boardman whispered. "It's the bargain she made."

  The Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadway-Paul saw Captain Long, and she beamed at him. Captain van Bramm bowed.

  Adam just looked at them.

  "There's nothing you can do— She heard about the marooning somehow, and she got in touch with us through Walter's."

  "She— She set the price herself," Foureau whispered.

  The men with the pistols were watching Adam. They walked slowly. Here was a prearranged event, a dramatic demonstration of who owned the English lady, as formal as a court masque and easier to understand.

  "She wouldn't take off her clothes for him till she'd seen you alive. She was here last night. She— She kissed you."

  Adam said nothing.

  The couple passed. Van Bramm took his arm away from hers and gave her a small possessive pat on the rump. She stiffened, and her step faltered; but soon she had her smile back in place, and she took his arm again, and they walked on.

  The lane was quiet once more. The sun was out in full now.

  "There's nothing you can do—"

  "Stop saying there's nothing 1 can do!"

  He swung his legs over the side of the cot.

  "I want everybody who's on our side called here right now."

  "Where are we going, Captain?"

  "We're going to call on Everard van Bramm."

  /!? A They persuaded him that he couldn't possibly mix it with

  Vy jT van Bramm right now. Why, he could scarcely stand, much less swing a sword! He nodded in glum agreement. Shaken though he was, and infuriated, he wasn't blind.

  At the same time his announcement was as dramatic as the midnight ringing of a bell. In minutes it was all over camp.

  That very night it was reported to Adam that the fort stood empty, the cannon untended. He did not smile.

  "Tell him, Thank you, I'm staying.'"

  The next night and the next the pass was left open, and there were many to take advantage of this; but these were traders and pimps and the like: none of the Long faction left.

  The fourth morning, early, a keg of gunpowder blew Sharpy Board-man's tent to smithereens, leaving, when the dust and the clitter-clatter of pebbles had settled, a great gaping crater.

  Of course it might have been an accident. Many of the pirates, deserters from some navy or other, were opposed to any manner of discipline, while most of the others were slipshod in their habits anyway. There were frequent fires. The wonder was that this town of boards and canvas had not long ago been wiped out.

  The explosion shredded the tent beyond repair but did no harm to any person. Adam and Sharpy and the Frenchman Foureau had reckoned that van Bramm would try some such trick; and though they made Sharpy's tent their daytime headquarters they were sleeping in another part of the camp.

  The camp in fact was rather two camps now. Already it was largely deserted. Not more than a hundred men remained; and no women at all —excepting, unseen, Maisie.

  It had apparendy been van Bramm's original intention to parade his purchase, and that daily. Was this pure vanity? Or he might have calculated that the possession of Maisie would lend him the semblance of added strength, as any item of prestige does, for after all she was not only expensive and spectacular but in her person she represented a triumph over the redoubtable Captain Long. Or it cou
ld be that he thought to shame Adam ofiF the island with displays too hard for him to endure. Conceivably, again, all three of these thoughts might have found lodgment in van Bramm's reasoning.

  Nevertheless, after that first stroll past the recumbent Captain Long,

  and one small additional saunter the following morning, van Bramm kept his prize indoors. Nothing whatever was heard from her, whose seclusion must have been positively Oriental. The chief's shack was scarcely more pretentious than any of the others in this shabby place, and there were no windows at which the lady might from time to time be glimpsed. None but the most trusted van Bramm followers were permitted to get anywhere near that particular shack, which was down on the beach, next to the warehouse.

  It was simply not safe for van Bramm and his doxie to be abroad, even with bodyguards. His trick had backfired. It did not enhance his own importance in the eyes of the others or degrade Adam Long to laughingstock status. It had had indeed almost the opposite effect. Many men who had vacillated before now plumped with the rebels. The sight of The Smiler paddling and pawing his purchase had been too much.

  A hush that was like the hush of death descended upon the colony. The marketplace, once a hubbub, stood empty save for an occasional crablike, sideways-looking figure, who scurried. There was no life on the beach. Not many men passed along the lanes, and when they did they gave one another leery looks, their hands on the handles of their knives. The fort was deserted, the cannoneers, all van Bramm men, having been called in to guard the chief's residence and the adjoining warehouse. As it happened, no new sail appeared; and none of those men who elected to remain would even have agreed to discuss a foray out into the Bahama Channel. There was a general agreement that this matter of leadership had to be settled. No shots were fired; nor were many faces punched or slashed, not as many as usual. The men were saving their savagery, storing it.