Pistoleer: Pirates

by Smith, Skye

  They were right. Their visit to Plymouth the next day was dull and uninteresting to the crew, especially compared to the good company of the Wampanoag of Nantucket. As a welcome, they were invited to a bible thumping meeting that went on for hours and hours. The Pilgrim men seemed to be in a contest to show how much of the bible they knew by heart. When the meeting finally ended, or rather, when the crew were finally allowed to leave the meeting, which continued long into the night, there was not even a feast set on for them.

  In truth there was a shortage of good food in Plymouth for the winter had been longer and colder than normal, and even the early cherries were not ripe on the trees yet. Another reason for the shortage of food was that English ships had been arriving every week carrying more and more English Puritans to the 'promised land'. As Plymouth was the main port to set the passengers down, Plymouth's food stocks were constantly under pressure. Last year a thousand new settlers passed through Plymouth, and this year even more were expected because times were getting harder in England due to Charlie's incompetence and his displeasure with Puritan parliamentarians.

  Plymouth was certainly a very different place from Barbados or Virginia. For one thing there were no plantations, and no professional managers appointed by overseas Lords. Most folk owned their own business, or their own small farm. The folk tended to be well literate and skilled at trades, and you could see that everywhere you walked. Anything that was needed was being made here. This was very different from Barbados and Virginia where everything seemed to come on a ship from England.

  Their own passengers were slowly disappearing from Plymouth as their families came to pick them up and take them to their new homes. When Edward and Anna came to say their goodbyes with a hug and a thank you, Daniel whispered to Edward, "I like what I see happening here in Plymouth. The life the folk are making for themselves here is far better than what is happening in Virginia or in the Caribbean. Still, I think you should move your family further south."

  "Why? The cold is not a problem here yet,” Edward replied, knowing how Daniel was on a quest to find a warm place to live, "and besides, there is plenty of firewood to keep us warm."

  "Aye, but think of how much better life would be for those folk further south, if you Pilgrims moved there and began running things. The first thing you would do is kick the plantation managers and the slavers out. You saw the incompetence and the greed that was ruining Barbados and Kitts and Virginia. Nothing that a few thousand pilgrims couldn't set right."

  The next morning, the reality of Plymouth's self sufficiency turned into a problem for the Swift. There were no interesting cargos to trade for, and very little coin in circulation to buy the Swift's cargoes. Plymouth seemed to create everything that they themselves needed, and nothing that could turn a tidy profit back in England. Even the salted cod from Plymouth seemed to cost too much considering that there was cod to be caught by the basketful off the shores.

  It was a local fisherman who explained that most of the cost of a barrel of cod was due to the cost of the barrels and the salt. Since the Swift was no longer carrying passengers, and therefore no longer carrying provisions for passengers or their possessions, she now had a hold filled with empty barrels. Two barrels in the hold were filled with the salt they had mined in the Virgin Islands. If they wanted to take barrels of cod back to England, they could catch and pack the cod for themselves. So it was that after barely three days of Pilgrim hospitality in Plymouth, the crew voted unanimously to sail back to Nantucket Island to fish.

  The one trade they did make was to trade the sassafras they had brought from Pamlico at Weston's suggestion, for some bales of beaver furs. The whole of Plymouth were pleased by this trade and their dour welcome finally turned warmer. There was still no feast laid on, mind you, but the entire crew were invited to the Sunday prayer meeting. Apparently it was to be a special meeting for now they had sassafras tea to drink at the meeting.

  The entire crew attended out of politeness to their onetime passengers, but mostly out of respect for Roberts's threats, and they attended clean and in their best clothes. The sassafras had a bitter sweet taste that was not unpleasant, but within a half an hour the true nature of the sassafras made itself known to them, for everyone at the meeting began to feel calm and happy.

  "This stuff is like the tea my women make from hemp flowers for serving at funerals,” Daniel told Robert, "but it tastes better. Does the same thing though. Lightens your mood and helps you see the spirits in all things."

  Robert looked around him at the crowd of pilgrims. "It is as if the tea has put them into a trance, all of them in the same trance. Look at them." As they watched some one began to chant rhythmically, and the crowd began to sway in unison to the chanting. They even seemed to be breathing together, in and out at the same time. A while later some of them began to shake about as if they were possessed. That or they were very cold.

  Strangely enough there was no endless reading of the bible, which was what they had expected at a Sunday meeting. Some were chanting quotes from the bible, and these quotes were echoed with yays and moans and general mystical agreement. This went on for hours, until the effects of the sassafras root seemed to wear off a bit. One by one they stopped swaying and chanting and shaking and dropped to the ground in personal prayer.

  Late that afternoon once the meeting was finished, and with the pilgrims still starry eyed and peaceful, the crew meandering lazily towards the Swift. Daniel took the words out of Robert's mouth when he said, "Perhaps we should have taken on more of this sassafras root for trading in England." His thought was interrupted by loud voices coming from the Swift. They rushed to investigate.

  Some of Plymouths finest men had stormed aboard the Swift and were physically dragging a struggling Tom Weston down the gang plank. Quickly Daniel and Robert moved to the foot of the plank and blocked their way. "Oy, what is this then?" Daniel asked. He would do the talking, not Robert, so that Robert could take on the role of judge, if there was a judgment to be made. "Explain and be quick about it, else I'll rouse the crew against yee."

  "This man is a cheat and a wastrel and he is to be hanged!" exclaimed an important looking man who had not been at the Sunday meeting.

  "And who are you, and by what authority would you hang him?"

  "I am Myles Standish, the military commander of this cittie, and he will be hung for not delivering cannons necessary to our defense. He is a traitor."

  "You've seen the cannons, Daniel, tell him,” Weston sputtered in a panic. "They are in use at the fort at the mouth of the James River in Virginia. The Virginians took them from me seven years ago for their own use. The little they paid me was stolen from me when I tried to buy replacement cannons for Plymouth."

  "Aye, he speaks the truth,” Daniel added but kept his words short for Weston's sake. "He was known in Virginia for selling them cannons." He didn't continue to say that the cannons were dangerous to fire, or that the Virginians also wanted to hang the man. "Since that was over six years ago, is your claim against him still valid?"

  The question of validity stopped Standish in his tracks. "There is no time limit on treason."

  "There is no treason," Daniel countered, "for the cannons in question now protect an English fort. Did anyone lose their life for lack of your cannons?"

  Standish was getting visibly redder in the face at being foiled. He felt like punching this tall fair man in his pearly white teeth but the crew of the ship were gathering around and every one of them looked like a dangerous men. He stared into the calm blue eyes of Weston's defender and said, "This should be settled before a court in Plymouth."

  Sensing victory Daniel announced. "If there was no death and no treason, then there is no case. You have no right to take him, or do you of Plymouth not abide by the English Statute of Limitations of 1623." Daniel knew that statute well for a few years ago it had saved one of his clan elders from debtors prison.

  The man holding Weston's other arm spoke out. "He's right Myles. We've
never had a need of those cannon. Ten thousand or more Englishmen have arrived on these shores since then, so the French are no longer a threat to Plymouth. Ships cannons are now what we need, to put aboard our ships."

  Weston also now sensed victory and he stopped struggling. "Myles, you must believe me that I purchased cannons on your behalf in good faith, but they were forcibly taken from me. The pittance I was paid for them in Virginia was not enough to buy you more. And it is not like I profited from the business. The seven years have been hard on me. I now am cursed with bad-air fever and I have not seen my family in all that time. This captain takes me home to Bristol out of charity to a sick man. Please forgive me so that you can be freed from your anger, and so that I can be freed of my remorse."

  Standish said nothing, so finally Daniel spoke. "You have no case Myles Standish. It was the fates who cheated you, not this man." This despite his own suspicion that Weston had purposefully waited seven years before passing this way again.

  Myles spat in Weston's face, but he let go of his arm. "Step off this ship Tom, and I will have your neck." He then pushed between Robert and Daniel and stomped ashore. His two men followed him.

  "Do you have enemies in every port?" Daniel asked Weston. "I fear to think of what awaits us in Bristol." But he knew there would be no trouble in Bristol. Weston had family there, and only a true rat messes in his own nest.

  Weston just smiled, well pleased for himself. Now there was nothing between him and his family in Bristol other than three thousand miles of northern seas.

  * * * * *

  The Swift's second visit to Nantucket Island was for four days, and it was a mixture of happy times with the happy locals, and the hard work of catching, cleaning, smoke-drying, and salt packing codfish into every empty barrel. Meanwhile they sent some of the crew off on a hunting trip with some of the natives, over to the mainland Cape. They were hunting for deer, for there were no deer on Nantucket, not with so many living on it.

  The hunting party bagged only two deer, but luckily the sachem allowed the Swift to have both since they were beginning a long sea voyage. In return for the sachem's generosity, Robert offered a purse of wampum, which were small beads made from the small end of one of the local sea shells. The shells had come to his purse in dribs and drabs whenever they met natives along the New England coast.

  Instead of the wampum, the sachem asked after metal arrow points. He told Robert that wampum was becoming less and less valuable because some English settlers were over harvesting the shell for the purpose of creating trade beads. For a minute Robert had wrestled with his conscience. Would a gift of metal points cost some Englishman his life? Not from these gracious and friendly people, he decided, so he gave the sachem the last of the ships points. The sachem was so overjoyed by the gift that he ordered his own fishermen to help fill the Swift’s barrels with cod.

  Once they left Nantucket bearing south, the only other stop they made along this coast was at Pamlico to trade Alf for some more barrels of sassafras root, and to tell him that the measles that had decimated Pamlico had been the Virginian, Taylor's doing. They had sailed south because Daniel had requested that they visit Bermuda on their way home, so once they left Alf's hospitality the left Cape Hatteras and set an easterly course across the great current, and out into open sea and clouds.

  The Dutch astrolabe that had come as a fitting with the Swift was far superior to the English astrolabe they had liberated from the slaver ship in Africa, but even so Robert was unsure that he was sailing at the correct latitude for them to find Bermuda. He had followed the instructions in the log exactly, or as exactly as the constant push of the great ocean current allowed him, but still he had the feeling that they would pass by Bermuda without ever seeing it.

  Robert spent hours a day searching the empty horizon through his looker, always hopeful of seeing an island. It was hopeless, of course, for any of the clouds along the horizon could hide an island. Or at least it was hopeless to expect to find an island using the looker, but he did see something else. A sail. He yelled a new course to Daniel and then in explanation said, "There is a ship ahead, roughly on our course. Let's hope she knows the way to Bermuda, for we are going to follow her."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 9 - Bermuda in August 1641

  "It's the end of the world,” Rodney, the young lad from Lyme, said with a quiver in his voice as he stared out at the dark mass that hid the western horizon.

  "Nay, lad, it's just a big storm cloud,” Daniel replied as he made a slight correction to the course by turning the Swift's wheel away from him. The wind stretched the sails and they strained against the mast and the lines.

  "I've never seen a storm cloud that big before,” said the lad.

  What could Daniel say? Neither had he. The storm cloud had been moving northward towards them since yesterday, and no matter how quickly the Swift sailed eastward towards Bermuda, or at least, towards where they hoped Bermuda was, they could not seem to get out of its path. It was just that big. As big as a kingdom, and dark and threatening and the top of it flashed with the glow of lightening.

  Every hour it seemed to have grown larger as if it were getting closer and closer to them, and yet the waves and the winds around the Swift were not turning wild, as you would expect. "Go and fetch the cap'n,” Daniel told the lad, "and tell him to bring the spectacle looker."

  A few minutes later Robert emerged from the command cabin that was beneath the deck of the steering castle. For another moment he arched the kinks out of his back and then stretched to his full height, which was a hand under six feet. He was the only man aboard who did not have to duck to use the cabin. Under one arm he was carrying a leather pipe.

  "It would be a fine day for sailing if not for that bloody great cloud,” Robert called up to his friend Daniel. "What's happened? Did you loose sight of the ship we were following?" Yesterday, at about the same time they first saw the dark cloud, they had spotted another ship rigged with triangle sails. Since the only land near their position was the island of Bermuda, and since the other ship was on roughly the same course, they had assumed she was also on her way to the island. Now they were following her, because no one on the Swift knew where Bermuda actually was.

  "I told you not to lose her. She was our best chance of finding Bermuda,” he complained gruffly as he climbed the stairs to the steering deck and went to stand on the other side of the wheel from Daniel.

  "I didn't lose her. She's still directly ahead and we gained on her during the night,” Daniel defended. "I wanted you to have a look see through the looker." The leather manuscript pipe that Robert was carrying did not contain papers and charts. It contained another, thinner pipe fitted to slide in and out of the outer pipe, and at the end of each pipe was a lens from eye spectacles.

  Robert braced his legs and then pulled the two pipes slightly apart and then spent a minute finding the exact length that would focus the horizon through the two lenses. Only then did he aim the pipe towards the looming dark cloud. Though very dark, and therefore carrying a lot of rain, the sunrise rays of light were turning the edges of it pink. "Oh God Almighty, save us,” he whispered as if in prayer. "Here, you have a look."

  Daniel waited until Robert had a firm grip of the wheel, before he took hold of the looker. He put it up to his eye, and changed the length slightly, and then looked at the cloud and gave out a low whistle. "The bitchin' thing isn't on this side of the horizon, she's on the other side." The only reason this was now clear was because of the sunrise effect on the clouds. "She could be a hundred miles away. The tops of her clouds must be scraping the stars out of the sky."

  Without lowering the scope, Daniel turned slowly around while keeping the horizon in the scope. When he stopped turning he was facing straight forward. Half of the ship they were following was hidden behind the Swifts main triangular sail but it was close enough to fill the lens of the
scope. "She's got no masts!" he exclaimed. He took hold of the wheel again and then handed the looker back to Robert.

  "You're right. It must be a trick of the fog, or a mirage, or something" Robert laughed nervously. "The sunrise glowing in the sea mist is hiding her masts from us so it looks like the yards that hold up her sails are floating in the air." A call from the main deck made him look down.

  It was the lad Rodney. "The bow watch says that we've been following a ghost ship. He says we should put about and steer clear of her."

  The crew on the deck all looked forward towards the ghost ship, and there was a growing murmour of voices. No one was more superstitious than seamen at sea, and one of the things they feared the most was meeting one of Hella's ghost ships. Other worldly ships manned by warriors who had died by drowning rather than by fighting.

  Hella was the Goddess of Hellheim, the nine lands of the inglorious dead. The ghastly warriors of a ghost ship could only escape the freezing waters of Hell if they offered Hella a replacement by causing the drowning of another warrior. The rest of the crew were waking up and tumbling onto the main deck to have a look. Though born and baptized Christian, at this moment everyone of them believed in Hella.

  "Ere, Danny,” one of Rodney's cousins, a Lyme fisherman of about thirty years, called out. "I see Hella's hand in this. A cloud as big as a kingdom is to the south of us, and a ship without masts is in front of us." The crew agreed with him. "Forget Bermuda, man, and make directly for England."

  Daniel was about to reply, but Robert motioned for him to stay quiet. "It's a true dilemma. Bermuda is the only land for a thousand miles in any direction, so if that cloud is just a big storm, then we would be fools not to seek shelter there. But what if the mastless ship is a ghost ship. Perhaps her plan is to drown us by scaring us away from Bermuda. But what if the monster cloud is controlled by Hella, and she is using it to force us into the hands of the ghost ship. There is no way of knowing which, so there is no right answer."