Adam and his friends were busy all day interviewing candidates, checking weapons, making and extracting promises. They were not yet ready to move upon van Bramm's house with their detailed demands.
No word came from that building, not even a sign that might guide the followers of the chief. Van Bramm the spider, the lurker in comers, had never been one for public appearances; but formerly had been heard from, directly or otherwise, every day. Now there was only silence. Could it be that he was so entoiled in the treasure he'd acquired, so busy in a bed strewn with stolen silks, also with bought flesh, that he didn't care? At any rate he remained mum.
Strength was flowing back into Adam's body. He ate voraciously, slept hard. He was on his feet all day, moving about the camp. The only time he'd stand still was when he was studying van Bramm's house. That building, whether by chance or design, stood alone; no other was near it—excepting the warehouse. The beach was wide and straight at this point, offering no cover in the form of rocks, dunes, vegetation. To the 262
right was the warehouse, a low, long, heavy building of timber, the solidest structure on the island. On the other two sides the camp was comparatively clear, the ground flat and hard. Not even a tent stood close to the van Bramm shack, a building that bore so marked a resemblance to Tarpaulin Hall as to bring tears to Adam's eyes.
When he watched this house, Adam tried to be in some inconspicuous place. This was not from fear of being shot at, but rather because he did not want his own men to see him in what might be thought a posture of weakness, eating his heart out for his lost love. The fight was to be theirs, truly, not his: he was no more than the agent for bringing it to a head. His grief was real, but it could be decent. He didn't seek to dramatize it.
He strove to think only of the military aspect of this matter, how to stage an attack; and not to think of Maisie at all; but of course this was impossible. There were times when the black hot thoughts that surged viathin him while he watched that house choked him and blurred his vision, so that he had to turn away, keeping his face averted in order that nobody should see his eyes.
When you were a leader, you were not supposed to be human. You must never show a weakness of any sort. This was lonely work.
Early on the morning of the fourteenth day after Adam had been brought back from the key, when the sky was not yet streaked with dawn, though the stars were bright, he was awakened by the sound of musketry; and when he tumbled off his cot and reached for cutlass and pistols, colliding with Sharpy in the darkness, he knew that this was the signal: the battle was about to begin.
It was easy to find the fight; nor was it worth the trouble to learn what had caused it. Nobody was dead. Two men had been hit, but not badly. There was a great deal of excitement, many bitter threats. The shooting had ceased. A barricade consisting chiefly of sandbags and rum barrels had been thrown up in a lane just below the marketplace, and from over the top of this the warehouse and van Bramm's hut stood stark in the starlight, no guards being visible. The seething fury of Adam's men and the silence and lack of action around the chief's house were ominously juxtaposed. This thing had gone too far. Something would have to break. Should they attack now, or wait until daylight?
Adam coaxed a large number of them back to the marketplace, where torches bobbed. Two cannons were there, brought down from the fort with great toil. It was true that van Bramm had the only expert gunners, true, too, that he controlled most of the gunpowder, which was stored in the warehouse. Additionally, all the balls in the fort had been rolled down the slope and into the bay, from which they could only have been salvaged with a great effort, requiring much time. Nevertheless these
cannons could be made to perform, after a fashion. Gunpowder could be collected from here and there—they'd need a lot of it: was this van Bramm's purpose in abandoning the cannons?—and nails, chunks of bullet lead, and even stones, could be pressed into service for a load. Adam was opposed to the use of the cannons. He had pointed out that too obviously van Bramm wished them used, which in itself ought to make the men wary. The truth was he feared that Maisie would be hurt; but he did not dare to admit this aloud.
Now he harangued the pirates. He'd supposed that he had no knack for this, certainly he'd had no experience; yet they listened, their faces upturned, earrings gleaming in the red light of torches.
Not to urge the men on but rather to hold them back was Adam's purpose. Far from being a firebrand, he tried to emulate the iceberg, being cold, crushing.
An attack might be repulsed. A siege was not to be considered. Even with a disciplined force it would have been difficult, for van Bramm had access to a dozen well-stocked vessels which could only be cut out one by one at night, and undoubtedly he had made other preparations for a siege. With these excited men it was unthinkable.
Adam had an alternative. He'd been thinking about this for several days.
"Charge? Don't be fools! Can't you see that's just what Old Baldy wants us to do? Are you going to play his game for him?"
Somebody yelled: "He'll getaway!"
"He won't get away," Adam said quickly. "He'd wanted to get away he could have done it long ago. Sneaked off at night."
"How d'ye know he hasn't?"
Here was a stumper. Adam, for the first time faced with this thought, grew cold all over. No notable vessel, no large one, had departed without careful preliminary scrutiny for the past week, before which time, however, a good many had sailed with decamping merchants. Van Bramm might have slid away in one of the smaller boats, just himself and Maisie. Or again he might have smuggled her and himself off more than a week ago—neither had been seen in that time.
Adam shook his head. He simply refused to believe it.
"Look—he ain't gone. And he ain't going, either! It'll be over my dead body if he does—and I mean just exactly that!"
This brought cheers; but still the men were twitchy.
Adam pointed to a paling sky.
"It'll be light soon. Now what I say is that as soon as it's light enough we hang out a white flag and demand a parley."
Boos for this, hisses. Adam raised both arms.
"Wait! I'll carry that flag myself, and what I'll insist on is that van 264
Bramm come out and meet me in the middle of that clear space in front his house. We'll have guns or swords or knives—or just our bare hands—I don't care. But he won't dare say no."
Now here was a proposal the pirates liked. It would be a show, sure. And it might well end in a free-for-all anyway.
There was only one dissenting voice: "What happens if he kills you?"
"That," said Adam Long, "is for you to worry about."
Word came up from the barricade that a white flag had been hung out of van Bramm's door.
"Good," cried Adam. "I'll carry ours. Here, give it to me."
To this, however, they objected. They cried that this might be a trick to get Adam to expose himself. Adam scoffed. But even he was won over when Sharpy Boardman pointed out that he couldn't carry his own challenge: it would not be regular.
"You're going to fight, you can't arrange it yourself. You got to do it like a gentleman."
Adam nodded slowly.
"I'll carry the bloody thing," said Boardman.
He was the oldest and after Adam, the best liked. He was less excitable than many, though he hated van Bramm with the most vehement of them. Adam looked into his seamed, rough face.
"Well, you know our terms, Sharpy. Nothing less."
"Nothing less."
They were down by the barricade now. Sharpy hoisted the flag, a square of exquisitely embroidered French linen nailed to a spar. Though certainly it could be seen from the van Bramm shack, there was no sound of acknowledgement.
"Any weapons or none. But it's to be to the death."
"To the death."
Holding the flag high above his head, Sharpy Boardman climbed a barrel to the top of the barricade.
There was a terrific burst of musketry. Sharpy spun c
ompletely around, as if he'd been hit by a club, and fell right back to the place he'd just quitted, by Adam's side. He landed on his back.
Adam looked down at him. The lower jaw was broken and hung crazily awry. Another ball had smashed the left cheekbone. The body, hit in six or seven places, was just beginning to bleed, the blood rising sluggishly, soaking the coat.
"So there's our answer," muttered Adam.
He drew.
"Well, come on, ye heefwits! D'ye want to live forever?"
He sprang over the barricade.
f~ t^ ^° ^^^^ ^^^ ^^"^- ^^ could hear his own feet strike the hard -J*~^ earth as he ran. He didn't know whether anybody was following.
They'd blasted at the first man who showed himself, and now they were frantically reloading—pouring the powder, ramming the cut bullets home, stuffing in the wads, priming.
It is always good to learn that your enemy's a fool.
Adam ran on.
There was a sound like that of two boards being clapped together from his right—that is, from the warehouse—and then there was another. Something touched him on the top of his right shoulder.
He heard a shout behind him. Now they were coming! There was a good deal of that clapping sound. Adam reached the door of the shack.
This was a real door, but it was not a good one, not strong. Adam had no doubt that he could smash it, but he didn't know what to do when he had. They'd be in the dark, in there, while he would be framed against the drizzle of dawn.
He threw himself upon the door, and so flimsy was it that he thought for a moment that it would go slamming in, himself on top. He backed away. He kicked it twice, hard. The second kick tore the hinges out, but it also caused Adam to stagger back. He caught himself. He faced an open space now, a rectangle of blackness.
What he did then he did without thinking. He dived in head-first-leaving his feet, flinging himself full-length.
There was a great shattering explosion that seemed to take place right on top of his head, and then he was on the floor scrabbling among the legs of stools and tables he couldn't see. Something slished the air close to his face—a knife? a saber?—and he rolled away from that. He'd worked his own sheath knife out.
Rolling, he struck somebody's legs. He threw both arms around these, and the man fell hard, cursing. Perhaps because the breath had been knocked out of him, he didn't start to struggle; but Adam took no chances, and used his knife several times.
He got to his knees, then to his feet.
Through the doorway he could see his men coming now. They were about halfway from the barricade. That's how fast everything had happened.
Then he found himself on hands and knees again. It was curious.
He didn't know he'd been hit, yet it seemed unHkely that he had fainted.
He could have lost consciousness only for a second. When he looked up again, the men were bursting through the doorway.
Something fell on him.
Next thing he knew was smoke. It stung his eyes and scraped his throat. It prickled the inside of his nose. Shaking his head, weeping, he started for the doorway.
"There's another one of the rats!"
"No, no!" he cried.
"My God, it's Captain Long!"
They hauled him out, forbearing to carry him lest they lose too much time. Near the door he bumped a corpse. It was like two tenders, moored side by side, bumping in the wash of a vessel that had passed nearby. The corpse had no weapon. Its face was all blood and blackened flesh. Its pockets had been turned inside-out.
Down the beach a little, out of musketshot, they paused to survey the situation. Foureau gave Adam a few gulps of rum, which helped.
The sparks rose straight and swift, in a fixed column, to a point about twenty feet above the van Bramm shack, and there they broke ranks to swoop and swing inland with the joyous abandon of children bursting out of school. The flames crackled and spat.
Van Bramm and his followers must have taken refuge in the warehouse. This was not an unexpected move, the warehouse being a structure firmly built of real timber, the only one of its sort on the island. The surprise lay in the fact that they had not clung to the shack, if only for comfort's sake, at least for a while, keeping the warehouse as a last resort. Instead, van Bramm appeared to have left no more than a forlorn hope in the shack, thinking perhaps to enfilade the attackers from the shelter of the warehouse, if the first charge was broken, but making sure all the same that arrangements to fire the smaller building were complete.
There had only been four men in that shack, Foureau averred. They were still there.
"You're sure they're dead?"
"They're dead all right."
The transfer to the bigger, stronger building had been made at night, of course, in order that it should not be observed and taken as a sign of weakness. With the shack leveled, there would be no cover from behind which to attack the warehouse.
"Change of wind," somebody muttered, "and the big un'd go, too."
Well, that was not likely. These were the trades. The thought, however, rendered them a dab grim. The warehouse was anything but fireproof. It boasted the only non-canvas roof on Providence, but that roof was made of cedar shingles, which would go up like paper. The ware-
house, too, contained the colony's magazine, which was not sheathed in metal. There were three tons of gunpowder in that magazine.
They watched the fire, not knowing what to do next. Only a little further down the beach—there wasn't room between the two buildings to work even a small battering-ram—was the door of the warehouse. This was the only door, and there were no windows.
The sparks leapt straight, and broke, and went rollicking across the island. There was a great deal of smoke. One wall of the blazing shack fell in, then another. The sparks were redoubled.
"We could make out to try to force the door and then one man slip around back and toss a torch up on the roof," Foureau said slowly, thoughtfully. "T^at'd flush 'em!"
Adam's blood ran cold at the thought; but the pirates seized the suggestion with whoops of delight. It was the sort of thing that appealed to them—bold, noisy, spectacular, superlatively stupid, and cruel. Each could picture in his imagination the van Bramm men rushing out of the warehouse—for they wouldn't dare stay there when it was afire—and one by one getting picked off. It would be a grand sight, and sport. Clamorous, they were for starting this; but Adam rose.
"Ye fools! Where would you get the timber for another building like that? It'd use up in one big poof nine-tenths of the gunpowder on this island, so how could you go adventuring again—or even put up a fight if some Navy ship comes along?"
It swayed them. They wavered.
"What's more," Adam pursued, "it would ruin most of the treasure. That's yours. You've all got shares in it, you've worked for it and fought for it. And maybe there's a lot more than you think? Who's been checking van Bramm's accounts all these months?"
This told. Indeed it was of the very marrow of the matter; for complaints that van Bramm was not giving a proper accounting of the loot, that he had illegally allocated large portions of it for his own personal use, were the cause of the unrest in the first place.
"Blow that building up," Adam warned them, "and you'll never find out how rich you once was!"
They mumbled and muttered in acquiescence. But Foureau moved among them, waving his arms. The big Frenchman was angry. He'd tasted power, and he didn't like to see his lovely plan punctured.
"All right, all right! But answer me this. Captain: What are you going to do then? They got rum and food in there enough to last a month. Are we going to just sit here on our arses?"
"Sure not," said Adam. "We'll smash in. There's that mast they ain't stepped back into the Marty. It'd make a first-rate ram." 268
"But there's no room to go to that door with it, without you go right through the fire!"
"All right then, we'll go right through the fire." Adam pointed to the blazing shack. Another wall had just
fallen in. Tarry materials were burning and there was more smoke than ever. "They won't expect us. They can't see us coming." He faced the men again. "Well, what's the trouble? You're not afraid of a little fire, are you?"
f^f^ It was like Hell. There were few high-tossing tongues of v/v/ flame left, but thousands of little ones licked and leapt around their feet, darting here and there, blue, purple, bright pink. There was a great deal of smoke. As they charged through the still-burning ruins of the shack they kicked up a prodigious number of sparks, which jumped at them, or seemed to, stinging faces and exposed hands. The men had submerged themselves, clothes and all, in the waters of the bay; and when the sparks spat up they hissed as though in rage, sending forth steam. Despite this precaution, several of the men caught fire.
They burst through the shack yelling like Indians, and with no pause went right at the door of the warehouse. It might have been made of bamboo, the way it splintered. They scarcely felt the shock.
They dropped the mast and stormed inside.
Adam Long was the first. In the sudden gloom of the warehouse, after the brightness of the fire, unable for a moment to see anything at all, he dropped to one knee, ducked his head, drew his cutlass.
There was almost no musket fire. The defenders scarcely had a chance to draw their steel. Many backed away at the first onrush, and a few turned and fled—whether to get weapons, to secrete their own shares of the booty, or simply in fright, was not clear.
Adam saw a huge dark blurred figure coming at him. He rose, raising his blade. The man turned and ran deeper into the warehouse, possibly because he had seen others back of Adam. Adam ran after him, not so much in pursuit as because he believed that it would be deeper in this building that Everard van Bramm and van Bramm's prisoner would be found. He did not know what he sought—an inner office perhaps, a cur-tained-off sanctorum. There would be something like that.
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