by Mark Keating
‘All’s well?’ his voice croaked to Palgrave.
‘I don’t think so, mate.’ Palgrave looked at the path where Devlin and his men had vanished into the night. ‘I most definitely do not think so.’
Woodes Rogers’ bedroom door flew open at the words and he appeared dressed in his cambric nightshirt, his cropped hair betraying a restless night. The soldier jumped at the sudden sight.
‘What do you mean the pirates have escaped? How?’
The guard stuck to the doorframe as Rogers reached for his coat and keys. ‘Don’t know, sir. Captain Tolliver is getting the barracks together to give chase.’
Rogers swept into the corridor and headed for the stairs and the yard outside where Tolliver would gather his men. ‘Give chase? The barracks? For six men?’
‘No, sir,’ the soldier tipped his hat back. ‘Others came to the fort. Least twenty of them. We led them up here from the beach. All his, sir. All Devlin’s.’
Rogers stopped and glared back, needing to hear no more. The idiocy of the army. Marlborough had clearly been a miracle. ‘Palgrave too? Has he gone?’ He resumed his stomping to the stair.
‘Don’t know, sir,’ the soldier dogged Rogers’ heels. ‘Don’t know why Devlin should want to escape: he’d be free this morning.’
Rogers froze at the words, then changed his course instantly to bolt for his office.
The corner turned, they were confronted by the corpse of John Hamlin and its caved-in bloody skull. Rogers flew to his door and took the key from his coat, his hands shaking as he rattled the lock again and again with no effect. He shot a look at the soldier and received a shrug in reply.
Rogers removed the key and knelt to press his eye to the metal plate. The room beyond lay in darkness but Rogers only needed to see one thing. His vision rolled to the floor, and in answer two sparks of red glinted back. He sprang up at the sounds of Tolliver’s men’s cantering outside beginning to fill the morning. His voice spoke to no-one.
‘He came for the gun. Devlin. For the papers. Just for the papers.’ His words trailed too feebly for the soldier to hear, but his next ones were louder as he stormed to join Tolliver, wiping a sliver of frothing drool from his sunken mouth.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Escape
To the beach. To the boats and oars. A chink of dawn showed on their left, the night still their greatest aid against the law that would grind them into the earth. To the law they were a band of cut-throats, devils in lead and steel, spitting powder. The reek of death seeped from them, drunk and rapacious, these villains of blood – as long as night remained.
Daylight would shatter them, remove the hooded cloak, reveal barefoot sailors ingrained with grease and pitch, clothed in dirty slops and harlequin waistcoats, drunkenly slurring with dull eyes above, the scrapings of the sea. Daylight was for knights in glinting armour not for alley dogs who were wolves in the darkness but pitiful rats at noon.
But their weapons shone like jewels. Pistols were waxed and oiled, the screws tight as nuns. Muskets stayed dry, their priming pans gleaming like virgins and treated with just as much tenderness. One shot fired, one man dead. They would show nothing of the clumsiness of the mutton-handed soldiers bearing down upon them, blinking as they shot, muskets rising high with the lurch of the trigger. Pirates milked their triggers and fired with their shoulders not their hands. They marked men like sewing needles, their bullets threaded through their enemies’ eyes. As long as the night remained. As long as the legend stood.
Five of Devlin’s men sheltered among the trees, a rear guard checking the approach from the town, shuffling back to the next tree like hunchbacks, scuttling through the ferns and spreading out like a hand waiting for the herd of soldiers to come lumbering forth.
They sweated and heaved, out of breath, but their barrels remained steady as if separate from the tired, anxious forms, the pimple of a gunsight waiting for a pale English face to appear through the gloom.
Silence.
Nothing.
They move back again to the next tree downhill, then wait again for five more breaths, knowing that their brothers are creeping back with them, unseen, to the beach and the boats, beside them somewhere in the dark.
Then it came. A rumble of leather, brass, buckles and ammo boxes under thumping boots, and at once a crow’s call echoed its way to Devlin and Bill whilst the five men of the rear guard pulled back the hammers of their guns and held their breath.
Devlin was on the beach now, beholden to Bill to lead. The white of the surf was welcoming, crashing around the two boats.
‘They’re coming.’ Devlin cocked his musket, Dandon filtered in behind him, cradling the bamboo tube in his arms.
Bill spied the brazier on the sands, smouldering red and shrunken now but with white coals still waiting for food. An idea began to form in his mind, but it was shattered by the sound of the first shots from inland.
It was the smooth wafting crack of partridge shot from the rear guard. Not one bullet but a weight of lead grain, a shotgun spread, inaccurate and short of range but murderous to a cluster of bodies funnelled along a narrow path.
Ten lobsters dropped their guns and howled. Eyes were peppered, uniforms flayed and skin burnt. Checking for wounds their comrades buckled to their knees and fired blind into the dark whilst Tolliver ducked and counted his fallen men.
He had heard the crash of five shots, yet almost a dozen of his fifty men limped backwards. He went for his sword to beat them back, but his hand found only an empty scabbard. Devlin. In the end he pushed the wounded down to the beach with kicks and curses.
‘We’re to row to Hog Island, Cap’n,’ Bill said as he dragged Devlin away from the snaps of gunfire. ‘The Shadow is on the other side.’ He pulled his captain along, Devlin’s survival the honour of these last hours, but something would have to be done to stop them becoming fish in a barrel as they rowed away.
Bill yelled for those with canvas satchels of fireworks – bottles, iron grenadoes, anything loaded with scrap, powder and nails – to jump to his back. ‘Dump your load around the brazier, boys!’ Then he led them down to the shore as cracks of musket fire spat out from the dunes. Devlin watched as men threw their loads to the brazier and understood, but still he crouched and raised his musket to the path, Dandon at his shoulder. This had been the beach he had come upon that afternoon. The same beach where Rogers had landed over a month ago now. To his left he saw the pile of dead pirates due to be burned in the morning. Seth Toombs lay somewhere within the stack.
‘Should we not retire to the boats, Patrick?’ Dandon ducked as the rear guard appeared and a spark above the beach sent a musket ball humming past his head.
‘Just hold the letters, Dandon,’ Devlin spoke over his shoulder. He fired back at the spark then stood and ran, biting into a fresh cartridge. Dandon huffed and fell in behind him again as Devlin knelt and fired like an archer into the white waistcoat of a lobster running down the path. Dandon began to slap him in approval but Devlin was already up again, falling back, and Dandon quickly followed behind.
At the boats men were already scrambling aboard. Oars rifled through thole pins.
‘Devlin!’ Bill yelled back, throwing himself into one of the boats. ‘Come now, Captain!’
Redcoats began to pile from the path onto the sand, spreading left and right, going down on one knee, bringing up muskets to shoulders, but the glow of the brazier shielded the boats just enough. Devlin fired once more, his last act on Providence, and sloped to the surf before the powder cleared, Dandon running by his side, a storm of bullets following them.
They leapt aboard the boat just as the sea pulled them back into its bosom. But slow, too slow despite the power of the oars and now Tolliver was on the beach, looking up and down his line of thirty guns ready to fire.
‘Down!’ Devlin ordered but those pirates with loaded muskets still aimed their guns at the land.
‘Fire!’ Tolliver bellowed and his men slammed their dogheads ho
me, mouths of fire tearing along the beach.
Wood splintered around the boats, lead sang off thole pins and musket barrels, thudded into oars and flicked the water like rain. The pirates stood and ignored it all. They shot at each other daily for sport; they grazed on lead. Tolliver heard them laugh as they fired back and saw five of his men topple to the sand.
‘Shoot the fireworks, lads!’ Bill roared but Devlin held up his hand to halt them, looking only to Hugh kneeling beside him in the boat, his musket already raised and loaded.
‘Hugh,’ he said slowly. No order. No expectation.
Hugh Harris nodded, kissed his thumb and leant into the shot. The brazier was his beacon, a green bottle glowing beneath it his target, the roll of the waves mere impetus. His cheek pressed against the stock of his musket and sweat dripped coldly on his arm; the brass sight was the extent of his world as he closed his left eye and fired.
The bottle exploded and old powder shivered into flame, glass and nails whistled and the powder hungered as the rest of the crock and glass bottles ignited.
The grenadoes of halved musket balls and twine, the iron-and powder-filled balls, gave in to the heat and the brazier itself burst into flame, sending a storm of ash and sand thirty feet into the air and a hail of glass, nails and shrapnel blazing towards pirates and soldiers both.
Tolliver raised himself from the back-turned crouch he had adopted when the brazier went up. He coughed through the cloud of powder, trying to wave it away but seeing only a wall of fire and smoke, the boats rowing away no longer visible.
He thought of Woodes Rogers, of facing him and explaining his failure, his lost sword, his lost prisoners. He screamed at his men to get down to the shore through the blinding fire and the choking sulphur. Instead they stood, turned their eyes from him and wandered back to the path with their muskets trailing: it would soon be breakfast and they had lost hours of sleep. Tolliver was just one captain of many and did not Rogers deal them out like cards? Perhaps another was already waiting in the wings. The men had done their duty.
Tolliver was left alone to meet the dawn and listen to the laughter rolling off the tide and echoing along the beach. He ran his hand along his empty scabbard. Tell him I took your sword. Nothing you could do. And Tolliver had almost thanked him. He began to walk back, then prised something from the hours past and stopped in his tracks.
Coxon. John Coxon.
Eleven o’clock Coxon had sailed, hours past now, and would be somewhere north of the island, this little Isle of Wight island, long gone now. But the fact was that Coxon was out there, patrolling. His duty was not done. All the way back to the fort Tolliver began to build in his mind the importance of the man he had only seen count the pineapple plants off the ships after they had first landed. The horizon began to glow white. A hot day in August was just beginning.
Fear no more the heat of the sun. Tolliver’s recollection of Shakespeare vague and weak but relevant nonetheless. He tramped up the path behind his men. ‘And fear no more the frown of the great.’
Chapter Forty
END GAME
Log entry of Captain John Coxon:
His Majesty’s ship Milford under order of His Governor of New Providence, Eleuthera, Harbour Island and Abaco August 1718
Hauling round Goulding Cay in the morning. Light airs. Land trend away NWBW. Some places around the ship 3 or 4 fathom of water. In some places not quite so many feet. Got up main topmast and main yard. Got the sail ready for fothering the ship. Put it over under the starboard.
4 am. Following coast ascertaining threat to islands of possible pyrate landings. The known pyrate Devlin apprehended on Providence. Assume pyrates may attempt rescue. Full traverse of island by 10 am expected.
Sail sighted 1 league out of Simm’s Point. Head NEBN to intercept.
Coxon handed the glass to his First, his head weary and eyesight blurred. ‘What make you, Rosher? Sail there.’
Rosher put the telescope to his eye and saw the ethereal light of the hour before dawn grow slowly in his view. They stood at the raised fo’c’sle of the Milford beneath the stays and rippling jibs, elbows and backs jostling around them, oblivious to their presence but still making sure not to brush the officers on the crowded deck.
Rosher swayed with the tide and waited for the murky image miles distant to steady itself. ‘A sloop,’ he said at last, confident in the sight of the lateen sails between the two masts and the flush deck beneath. ‘She’s hauling fast,’ Rosher lowered the glass and looked at Coxon, then up to their fore- and mainsails at forty-five degrees, the deck lee-lurching to larboard beneath his feet as they tacked painfully north-east. ‘Fast before the wind. Faster than us at any rate.’
Coxon looked down at his watch, waiting for more Rosher felt, or perhaps gauging the other ship’s speed by invisible points along the gunwale.
‘What else make you?’ Coxon asked without looking up and Rosher breathed in and raised the glass again, taking the moment of re-sighting to consider what his captain might be looking for. The little sloop soon obliged as Rosher caught the forestay in his eyepiece and saw the black pennant playing on the wind.
Rosher’s back snapped up straight and he stretched out to the sea.
‘A pirate! A black flag from her forestay, Captain. A pattern upon it.’
Coxon clicked his watch shut. The speed made. He had been measuring the sloop against his Milford. Too fast. Too far. The Milford like a whale to a seal. ‘What pattern do you see, Rosher?’ he asked idly, already resigned to the chase, but never the capture. Maybe he could stab at her with the chasers to keep her from the shore.
‘A red heart,’ Rosher said beneath the scope. ‘A tall skeleton pulling at it … no … I see blood dripping from the heart … he’s piercing it … piercing it with some sort of spear I believe, Captain. Something in the skeleton’s hand … Can’t make it.’
Coxon shook his head. ‘It’s an hour-glass. It means our time is running out. Such vanity from such filthy coats.’
Rosher brought down the telescope and was back to the world of men in slops who rushed by, always busy, always dipping their heads at him. ‘Should we not record the flag, Captain?’ Rosher sounded rather too excited for Coxon’s liking. ‘’Tis my first pirate sighting to be sure!’
A King’s Letter boy, thought Coxon, the promising younger sons thrown aboard as minors. Six years at sea to be made lieutenant at no younger than twenty. He might just have seen the last edge of the war.
Coxon swung away from the young man and took two steps to the rail above the deck.
‘Listen up, lads!’ his hands gripped the rail as if trying to pull up the ship, and he raised his voice, commanding all to abide his words. ‘Who amongst the pirates shows a skeleton stabbing a bleeding heart for his putrid black flag of colour? What say you now?’
The crew looked at each other, unsure what their answers might betray to their captain and also unsure what the lack of an answer might summon otherwise. A mop handle rested for a moment on a chest and an arm was raised gingerly.
Coxon’s finger shot out towards the sailor, pointing like a priest’s at a blasphemer. ‘You, sailor! Tell us all and young Rosher here. Who sails under such a flag?’
The man looked about his mates, who ducked away from his silent pleas as if he were standing knee-deep in his grave. He looked back to Coxon high above him and spoke louder than he thought he ever could. ‘That be Blackbeard’s colours, Cap’n. Blackbeard I believe, Cap’n.’
Coxon whisked his hand back. ‘Bosun! Pint of rum to that man whenever he chooses to take it. Blackbeard it is.’ He wheeled back to Rosher. ‘No need to mark it, Rosher. That’s a bold sod to wave his presence without a challenge. You have the watch. All sail to make him if you can.’
‘Aye, Captain,’ Rosher pulled the front cock of his hat, but paused before descending. ‘But what of Devlin, Captain? Was it not his frigate we were expecting?’
Coxon leant on the gunwale and stared at the stern of the pira
te turning her heels to him. ‘Birds of a feather, Rosher. You can watch the tree and wait for the fruit to fall soon enough. Or you can take a bloody great stick and knock the shite out of it.’ He heaved himself away from the spray as the ship turned and straightened his coat. ‘We will set sail to chase. Send a boat back with my regards to Governor Rogers that I intend to do so. Send the Master to me, Mister Rosher.’
The young man tipped his hat again, his turn of shoulder stopped by Coxon. ‘And Mister Rosher?’
‘Aye, Captain?’
‘Hoist the colours. Rabbits run from hounds’ teeth.’ He winked and turned to follow the horizon from westward over his shoulder to Blackbeard’s sloop bobbing against the cap of the sun in the east. Unashamedly, to Coxon’s senses, the sloop appeared quite beautiful under the faint amethyst sky of the dawn. Fine artists had painted less.
Devlin had not been seen. His Shadow remained elusive. Perhaps he had joined with Teach, with Blackbeard, for there was Blackbeard and Devlin had been taken on Providence only hours before. Coxon felt sure that the Delicia would keep Devlin’s men from coming in south. If the Shadow were here, or were on her way, north would be her waters.
A glint flashed in the dawn before him and his imaginings were suddenly wiped away by the gleam of a gold band blinking at him across the leagues – the reflection of a telescope’s brass ring off the morning light. He moved to the stair and left the watcher to his study of the Delicia’s coming on.
Hog Island was a swampy, boggy stretch of almost-land barely four miles long and not even half a mile wide, so that you could nearly see to its other shore through the palms and fronds upon it. A hundred years before, some Spanish or Porto traveller had marooned several sanglier, some wild chestnut pigs, letting them run free and breed, to rule the island alone, the only price of their freedom to submit to being hunted on occasion by the residents of Providence. Travellers well knew the spot and its mouth-watering indigenes. Now the lords of the island grunted and squealed away from the crash of the pirates passing through their home.
