Only Life That Mattered

by Nelson, James L.

  Instead she settled on this new course, her sails hauled over on a larboard tack, her bowsprit pointing like an accusing finger right at the Pretty Anne.

  The Spaniards had seen them. They knew what the hidden sloop was about. They were coming now to pry them out of their hiding place like pulling a rotten tooth from a patient strapped to a chair.

  “Come up here, then, and kiss my arse!” Fetherston roared at the Guarda del Costa.

  “We’re dead men now, and that’s a fact,” said Billy Bartlett. “You done for us, Rackam, you and your little doxy.”

  Calico Jack jumped down from the rail. He landed on the deck and raced below with never a word.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  TEN MINUTES LATER, Jack Rackam, coming back on deck, paused at the scuttle, took a deep breath, and then stepped out into the open. He had two braces of pistols on ribbons around his neck, his best fighting sword on his hip. He was wearing his white calico coat with the little roses, the most audacious of his clothing.

  “All right, lads, now I am ready to meet these bastards proper!” he shouted, waving his sword, and he saw the looks of approval, blessed, blessed approval, on their faces.

  The taste of vomit was still sharp and bitter in his mouth, and his throat burned from puking. He had made it to the great cabin, had thrown up into one of his shirts and then disposed of the shirt out the great cabin window, lowering it to the water so it would not make a splash.

  He was frightened beyond reason by the Spaniards, and just as frightened that his men would discover him. The fear made him feel brittle, like he was frozen, like he might shatter, but he was hiding it well. He could see that.

  He snatched up a cup, filled it with rum, took a deep drink. The rough liquor felt good going down, and Jack hoped it would bolster his faltering resolve and cover the smell of the vomit on his breath.

  “Well, now, Captain,” Dicky Corner called out, “I reckon we’re into it now, and so you may pass orders as you will.”

  “Of course, damned bloody Dons,” Jack said, and could think of nothing else. He was expending such effort just holding his fear in check that it seemed too much by half to have to think of a plan as well. “Well, to arms, lads! Let us clear for action!” Yes, yes, there we go . . . clear for action, of course . . . and what else?

  “A spring, too, let us rig a spring so we might turn the sloop around and give these bastards their due!”

  The men hurried off to carry those orders out, clearing away their few inadequate guns and rigging a spring—a rope running from their anchor cable to the stern of the Pretty Anne that, when hauled upon, would turn the sloop so that she could present her broadside to the attacking Spaniard. For all the good it would do. The Pretty Anne had four 4-pounder guns per side. The Spaniard had twice that number, and they would be twice as big.

  But it was something for the men to do, and if they were busy, then they would not bother Jack for more orders, and they would not see that the fox was once again gnawing at his guts and that he would puke again if there was anything left for him to puke.

  Anne Bonny, standing on the quarterdeck rail, watched the first plume of smoke burst from the Guarda del Costa’s side, near the bow. It was lovely, lit up orange in the evening light. And less than a second after the smoke came the flat pow of the gun and the crash of foliage as the round shot plowed into the vegetation on the shore close by the Pretty Anne, and then the derisive howling of the pirates.

  They were all pretty well drunk, having turned to the rum and brandy with gusto once the guns were loaded and the spring rigged. They took up on the spring, swung the sloop broadside to the channel so that her guns would bear on the Spaniard, and, one gun at a time, they were taking aim and firing and cheering their own efforts.

  None of them thought the guns would have much effect. It was just something to do, a way to amuse themselves before the Spaniards battered them into a wreck and then captured whoever might survive.

  Another gun from the Spaniard and this time the ball screamed across the deck and shattered the boom in a great spray of splinters, and the pirates screamed and jeered and waved their swords and pistols. Anne loved their spirit and she shouted and cursed along with them. It was unlikely they would live another 24 hours, but they would not go quietly.

  The Guarda del Costa closed to within a quarter mile, close enough that their shot hit as often as it missed, but then the wind began to fail them. The Spaniards put a boat over the side, towed their ship in toward the land, but the light was going, too. It was a race to see if the Spaniards could get to a place where they might batter the Pretty Anne to splinters while there was still light enough to do it.

  The sloop that was with them, the unfortunate English sloop, had disappeared east around the island. No doubt the guard ship’s captain did not care to risk injury to his valuable prize.

  Another shot from the Spaniard and the Pretty Anne jarred underfoot, and then Fetherston fired off one of the four-pounders and the world was lost in the great rush of noise and smoke. It was exhilarating. There was no other word for it.

  Anne thought back to the night when she had married James Bonny, the delicious taste of danger and excitement and abandon. Or walking brazenly into the Ship Tavern. Or humping Jack while her husband was watching. This was like those moments, only many, many times more.

  She savored the insane thrill of it all, understood now what went on in George Fetherston’s mind. She thought it would be all right if she died that night, because she did not know if she could tolerate even one mundane second again, after this crystal intensity of emotion.

  She looked up at Jack, who was standing on the rail watching the Spaniard, and she could tell that he was not enjoying this fatal circumstance as she was.

  Poor, dear Jack, Anne thought, so much on his mind. It’s easy for us to love this so, without the weight of responsibility.

  She reached over and ran her hand up his calf and he jerked in surprise, scowled down at her, and she smiled up at him.

  “Never you fear, Jack, my love, we shall do for these bastards yet!” she shouted up at him. It was in the spirit of the thing, to make such bold and improbable predictions, but Jack just grunted and turned back to watching the enemy’s inexorable approach.

  “Jack, we shall have their ship. What say you?” Anne called, and when Jack did not respond she said, “Jack, do you attend?”

  Jack scowled down at her again. “Yes, yes, goddamn it, I bloody heard you!” he hissed in a voice that startled Anne.

  “Jack.” Anne spoke as soft as she could and still be heard over the noise. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “The matter?” Jack gave a humorless laugh. “We are about to be captured by the Dons, you stupid, mindless bitch! Or do you not realize that?”

  Anne stepped back. She could not have been more shocked if Jack had slapped her. Suddenly all of the chaos of the battle was lost to her. She could no longer hear the cannon, the shouting, the beating of blades on the rail, the distant sound of the Spaniard’s guns. She could hear nothing but those words—stupid, mindless bitch— and she heard them over and over again.

  A minute before, her life had been reduced to the purest simplicity, a fight to the death; nothing could be more clear and unequivocal, and she loved it.

  Now all that was gone. Now the world that she had embraced and come to love did not seem quite real, as if she suddenly realized that all along she had been watching a play. Now she suspected that she did not understand a thing.

  Mary stood on the main hatch, just behind the guns, and handed out cartridges of gunpowder to the gunners and cheered and howled with the men because she understood the value of enthusiasm and unity. She handled the cartridges because it was helpful and because as long as she was doing it, then none of the others—such as Harwood with his lit pipe clenched in his teeth, or Fetherston, who was repeatedly snapping the flint of his unloaded pistol, to what end Mary did not know—none of them could blow the Pretty Anne to eternit
y before the Spaniards had their chance.

  “Powder monkey! Here!” John Howell shouted from the aftmost gun. Mary slipped the tight-filled canvas bag from the leather cylinder and tossed it gently to him.

  The evening was settling down on them, the flashes from their guns and the Guarda del Costa growing brighter in the failing light. The Spaniards had lost this evening’s race. They would not be able to work themselves into a position to devastate the Pretty Anne before the darkness deprived them of a target. The pirates had a nine-hour reprieve, and then at dawn they would be slaughtered.

  The others drifted away from the great guns as the Spaniard ceased firing. Without the flash of their cannon, the enemy was all but lost in the gloom. The rum and brandy flowed, the shouting and cursing did not let off, but now they were just waiting. One more night and then the end.

  They were giving up. Mary had seen it before. It was not a sullen and despondent kind of surrender, it was the fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable by bold men who always knew they would die a violent death, and here it was.

  But Mary was not ready for that, nor did she subscribe to their philosophy of a short life but a merry one. She was trained to combat and surrender did not come naturally. She wanted to fight back in a meaningful way.

  Oh, Lord, what shall we do?

  Jack was useless, the others were drunk. They were trapped under the Spaniards’ heavy guns. It was the wheat field all over again, and the French artillery and the officers blown from their mounts. If they were to be saved, then Mary knew she would have to do it, because she was the only one still thinking.

  What, what, what . . .

  They could not remain where they were. Even as night fell they could see the Spaniards moving their ship with their anchors, working the guard ship into a position to pound the English pirates to kindling.

  Very well, we must leave. We cannot get through the mangrove swamp, so we must leave by sea. For that we need a ship of some sort. The Pretty Anne is lost, and we cannot take the Spaniard, so what then . . . ?

  “Corner!” she called to the quartermaster, who was holding the breaker of rum in his arms and pouring the last of its contents into his cup and over the deck and hatch. “A word, pray!”

  Corner tossed the empty breaker over the side, picked up his cup, and staggered over on uncertain legs. “Aye, Read? Here, a toast to you, sir!” Corner grinned a big dumb grin and quaffed his rum.

  “Corner, see here, if you would live to see another night, I have had a thought as to how it might be done. It is our last shift.”

  “Eh?” said Corner, but Mary could see that she had his attention.

  “That sloop, the prize, the one that was under the Guarda del Costa’s quarter, they sent her off, and I reckon she is anchored on the other side of this island. It is the only thing that makes sense. The Dons will not see her as they warp into the channel.

  “What say we take to the boat, make our way down the channel and around the island the back way. We can fall on the sloop with cold steel and have her and be gone, leave only this crazy old hull for the Dons to fire into, come morning. The Guarda del Costa will never see us, the island will be betwixt us.”

  Corner was nodding as his listened, and it took a moment for Mary’s idea to work its way through the fog of rum, but as it penetrated, so his grin grew wider. “Ha ha, goddamn your eyes, Read, this is a fine thing! But why do you not tell it to Captain Jack?”

  “I think the captain has little regard for me. He won’t listen to any plan of mine,” Mary said, and that was true enough. At the same time, she did not think Jack had wits enough left to see the sense in what she was saying, nor courage enough to see it through.

  “Pray, you tell it to him,” Mary added, “and see he puts it into execution.”

  “Aye, that I will, Read, you whoreson!” He wheeled around, roared, “Jack, my dear, a word with you, sir!”

  Corner pulled Jack aside, talked into his ear, and Mary watched the play of emotions across Jack’s face: doubt, understanding, fear, resolve. He nodded, swallowed, cleared his throat, then stood up on the main hatch.

  “Listen here, you men! Here is our main chance! We might live yet, if you’ll listen to me!” he shouted, and the men gathered around.

  The Pretty Annes were fourteen in all, and they just managed to fit in the longboat. Every space was taken up, so that the people at the oars had barely room enough to work them, and the gunnel of the boat was a mere nine inches above the water, amidships.

  Mary was at her oar, holding it straight up, waiting for the order to ship oars. In the sternsheets sat Calico Jack and beside him, Anne Bonny, tight-lipped, looking away. Something had happened; Mary could see that, but she did not know what it might be.

  “Ship oars,” Jack said, in a raspy whisper, and Mary lowered her oar, adjusting it so that the cloth bound around the loom fell between the thole pins. The cloth would prevent the oar from creaking as they rowed. Silence, silence and cold steel was the order of the night.

  “Give way!”

  Mary pulled easy on the oar, felt the familiar resistance of the blade in the water and the motion of the boat as it gathered way. Up in the bow, Dicky Corner felt ahead with a long stick, poking at the sandy bottom in an effort to feel their way through the bars and shallows. It was a very dark night, no moon, and the stars afforded them just the barest visibility.

  “A little to port, methinks, Jack,” Corner whispered, and Jack nudged the tiller and the boat moved down that dark avenue of a channel, with the looming shapes of mangroves passing on either side.

  For an hour they crept along in that black void, with only a wide strip of stars overhead, visible through the break in the jungle between mainland and island. Three times they ran the bow into a sandbar, once so hard that they had to tumble out of the boat into the waisthigh water to pull it free.

  That was when Mary was most frightened, standing in that black water, warm as blood, wondering what unseen things were circling her legs, finding their way into her loose-fitting trousers. It was a terrific relief for her to pull herself dripping over the gunnel and take her place again on the thwart.

  At last the motion of the boat changed from the smooth, millpond water of the channel to a more pronounced pitching and rocking, and then they were bobbing in the swells of open water. Mary swiveled her head, looked forward as best she could. The black corridor of the channel had opened up to a great canopy of stars, clear down to the horizon, and one bright white light that could not be a star but had to be an anchor light on the prize sloop.

  Jack put the helm over and pointed the longboat on a course directly for the light and it was lost from Mary’s sight.

  Mary could see grim faces now, grim and determined. This was the last ditch for them, the forlorn hope, perhaps the final gambit of their lives. If this game did not go their way, then it was execution, Spanish style, for the lot of them. Silently they pulled for the sloop.

  Five minutes, and Mary looked again and now they were coming up with their intended victim. Out of the night a surprised voice called out, something in Spanish that Mary did not catch. The voice called again, and this time Jack called back in his own easy Spanish and there was nothing more from the prize.

  “Toss oars . . .” Jack hissed, and the oars came up and suddenly they were alongside the sloop. Corner grabbed on to the chains with the boat hook and then they were up and over the side, moving by tacit consent, with never a word spoken.

  Mary leapt up, stepped up on the thwart and onto the boarding step on the sloop’s side. She felt taut and charged, she felt ready, all potential, like a loaded gun. She leapt up the three steps and onto the sloop’s deck, her cutlass in her right hand, pistol in her left, as more of them swarmed out behind her.

  To her left she saw the startled face of a Spanish sailor, wearing bits of what might have been an officer’s uniform—a young man, nineteen at most, a midshipman, Mary reckoned. The glow from the anchor light fell on his startled face a
nd his mouth flew open to shout, but Mary raised her pistol and pointed it at his forehead, five inches from the muzzle, and she said, “Shhhh,” and the officer closed his mouth.

  The rest of the Pretty Annes swarmed over the sloop and down below and a minute later three confused, partially clad Spanish sailors had joined their single officer in the bows, and that was all there was of the sloop’s defense. The vessel was theirs, with not a shot fired, not a single noise louder than a footfall.

  The men, Calico Jack’s men, slapped him on the back and grinned and praised his bold plan and wished him joy of his victory, and Jack smiled in return and thanked them. Mary watched this and she smiled because she found it genuinely amusing, but beyond that she did not care. She didn’t want congratulations or credit. She only wanted to live.

  “Let us slip the cable then and go,” Jack said once the adulation had died down some. A few of the men went forward, pushing the terrified former crew of the sloop out of the way as they pulled the loops of anchor cable off the bitts. Others cast off the lines holding the jib and the mainsail in place, and they hoisted those sails up until they were set and flapping gently in the light ocean breeze.

  Jack had a hold of the tiller. “Let the cable go!” he called forward, and Harwood took off the last turns and the heavy rope snaked out of the hawsehole and disappeared into the sea.

  The sloop, freed from the anchor’s hold on the bottom, began to buck in the waves. The bow turned slowly and the sails grew quiet as they filled with wind.

  It was like a magical thing, order from chaos, as the irregular motion of the drifting vessel, the clattering and banging of the disorganized sails and rigging, became the steady, silent, deliberate rhythm of a vessel under way. The sloop heeled further and the gurgling of the water along her side rose in pitch.