The Buccaneers Read online

  Dasher shook himself. The night breeze purred through the jungle canopy, and I heard the hushed pulsing of the surf.

  “He'd been on the island all the time, with that black ship of his anchored on the eastern shore, and you can't see that from here. He was scratching for treasure along the beaches, just sticking a shovel in wherever he pleased; he'd been at it for years, I think, off and on.”

  So Horn had been right. I cursed myself for siding with Abbey instead.

  “I was down in the hole,” said Dasher, pointing at the pit. “Grace was up here, and oh, he cut a fine figure in his gold and his feathers, the wind at the tails of his coat. And that face of his glaring down—I thought it was Death himself standing above me.”

  We sat at the edge of the pit, our backs to the jungle. I kept looking behind me, to the left and the right, but Dasher kept his head down, staring into that hole.

  “He killed us all, John. Every man on the ship, every man in the pit. You poke about in that dirt there, you'll find their bodies fast enough. There's not more than a scraping on top of them. John, it was awful. I don't like to think of the things he did.”

  “But he spared you,” I said.

  “Well, I joined up with them, John. I told you that. ‘Hold on!’ I said. ‘I'm Dashing Tommy Dusker.’ Oh, I talked a blue streak, and they saved me in the end, because I joined up with them.”

  “I would never do that,” I said.

  “Better a pirate than a corpse—my mother's own words. And I thought I'd be rid of them soon enough, until we got down to the harbor and I saw what they'd done to the watch on the ship. Men nailed to their posts, the sharks in a frenzy. ‘You're in a fix now,’ I told myself. ‘You've come out of the pan and into the fire, you have.’ “

  Dasher kicked his heels at the edge of the pit. “That very day we set to work carrying the treasure down, and there was no one carried it faster than Tommy Dusker. I'm strong as an ox, you know that.”

  I nodded; he was easy to please.

  “There were forty kegs of powder buried here, and cases of arms, but I only carried the treasure. Every trip I made, I stopped at the barrel and had a drink, dropping in a little something for myself: a pocketful of jewels, a few doubloons, those blasted Froggy coins. I filled that barrel until there was just enough room for the ladle. Then off we went to bring the ship round, and what do we see but the Dragon standing off the harbor.”

  He grinned and shook his hair. “You came after me, didn't you, John? You heard the stories, and thought you'd throw in your lot with Dasher again. Oh, all of London must be abuzz about me now.”

  That was all he'd ever wanted, to be famous for his deeds. I hadn't the heart to tell him that he'd been the farthest thing from my mind. With my silence I let him believe what he wanted.

  “So where is she?” he asked. “Where's the Dragon now?”

  I shrugged.

  “You don't know?”

  “No,” I said. I told him how I'd come to be on the island, starting with my dory ride and ending with my last sight of the Dragon sailing round the point.

  “No matter,” said Dasher when I'd finished. “She won't have gone far, and we'll see her at daybreak. Grace will clear off on the evening tide, and we can slip in and get my barrel. It's not as much as it might have been, but still it's a fortune, John. A handsome little fortune.”

  “Bartholomew Grace will take it,” I said.

  “He won't,” said Dasher. “It's just a leaky old barrel to him.”

  His confidence raised my spirits slightly, and we sat to wait for dawn. It came swiftly, as it always does in the tropics, and we watched the sun rise from an endless ocean. The tide was low and rising, and I saw every reef and rock and cay painted white with surf. But the Dragon wasn't there.

  To the south, the harbor was open below us. The Apostle and the brig lay side by side, and the buccaneers’ boats were like little toys rowing to and fro. But we didn't watch for long; we went down the northern face of our hill, and crossed the island to the western shore.

  We came to a huge, flat sandy beach, and the bright blue of the Caribbean sea. A mile off, or a little more, was the humped island of Luis Peña Cay. And above its trees, thin as sticks, poked the masts of the Dragon. They were slanted far to the side, and the topsail yard made them look like a fallen cross.

  “Good Lord,” said Dasher. “They've gone aground. They've wrecked themselves out there.”

  Chapter 17

  A STRANGE AMBITION

  T hey're not wrecked,” I said. “They've careened the ship.” But in my heart I feared he was right. Either way it made little difference, for we couldn't hope to reach the cay without a boat. No matter how I looked at it, we were stranded on the island.

  “We'll have to wait,” said Dasher.

  “Can you go back and get a boat?” I asked.

  “From Bartholomew Grace? Not a chance!”

  “Why not?” said I. “You told me you've joined them.”

  “Well, it was just a temporary join,” he said. “A bit of paste is all, not a mortise and tenon. If I showed my face at the pirate camp, they'd slice me up like a carrot.”

  “Then what do we do?” I asked.

  “We wait, like I said.” And with that, Dasher sat on the sand, his back against a coconut palm. “The tide's flooding now. When it turns to the ebb, Bartholomew Grace will weigh anchor for Kingston.”

  “Why Kingston?” I wondered.

  “Oh, he's got a plan,” said Dasher. “He's got a lunatic scheme. He's going to stuff our brig with all the powder that he found, with the grenades and the bombs and all, and he's going to set it off in the middle of the English fleet. He's going to blow them all to kingdom come.”

  My head reeled at the thought. I remembered the ships in their tight columns and rows, and I saw a fire raging through them, leaping from mast to mast, from ship to ship. Each one was full of powder; each would explode in turn, spreading the flames farther and farther.

  The fragile treaty that England had with France wouldn't last for very long. With her Indies fleet destroyed, England would be weakened everywhere. The peace was so tenuous that Grace might even break it by himself.

  “He could start another war like that,” I said.

  “Why, that's just what he wants,” said Dasher. “When a country's fighting, it doesn't bother much with buccaneers.”

  I prodded his shoulder. “Get up,” I said.

  Dasher tipped back his head. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the harbor.” I pulled on the strap of his wineskin. “We have to sink that brig.”

  “Not I. No, thank you, John.” He lowered his head to stare again across the sand, at the groundswell breaking in a steady heave of gold-stained water. “I'll stay here, I think. If what you say is right, and the Dragons just careened, she'll float up on the tide and we can signal to her then.”

  “The Apostle will be out,” I said.

  “But she won't. John, you don't think things through, that's your trouble. You're too quick to act, and you always were. Grace can't go out when the tide's on the flood.”

  He was right. I'd seen the way the current made a gate of the harbor entrance. It wouldn't open for Grace until the tide had peaked and was falling again. By then the Dragon would be floating.

  Or would she?

  “What if they careen the Dragon on the other side?” I said. “What if she really is wrecked?”

  Dasher shrugged. “You pays your money you takes your choice,” he said in his cavalier-way. “Maybe Grace gets out. Maybe he doesn't.”

  “Then he won't,” I said. “I'll stop him myself if I have to.”

  “Which you will,” said Dasher.

  “All the glory will be mine,” I added—rather slyly, I thought.

  “And the bloodshed too, I should think.”

  Dasher wriggled down into the sand. One by one, he took the pistols from his belt and bandolier, and arranged them in rows on the beach. He opened his coat, th
en closed his eyes and settled back on his elbows.

  “You won't help me?” I said.

  “Why should I? What has England ever done for me? Tell me that,” he said. “All she's done is bleed me dry from the taxes and the tariffs. She's made me a smuggler and a highwayman and a pirate too, just to make an honest living. And some fine day she'll haul me off to Scraggem Fair and put a noose round my neck.” He twisted his head violently, and gurgled in his throat. “The crowds will come that day, all the Mrs. Hickenbothoms and the Mr. Thingamabobs, and they'll cheer for me then, right enough. ‘There he goes,’ they'll say. ‘The cove that stole Kidd's treasure.’ Then the trapdoor will open, and they'll watch me come down with the hempen fever, and it will be the grandest hanging they've ever seen. That's how I'm going to die.”

  It was the strangest ambition I'd ever heard, though it wasn't the first time he'd told it to me. Poor Dasher wanted only to be famous, as much a rogue as Dick Turpin.

  “You know what I'm going to do when I get home?” he asked. “I'm going to take all my silver and gold and buy myself a lordship. And a cauliflower for my head. Then I'll ride in from the highway and sit in the House of Lords with my coat and my guns, and make laws that are fair. ‘You were caught smuggling tea, were you, lad? Well, good for you. What's that you say: pay duty? Why no, my fine fellow. You were only doing your duty.’ What a pistol I'll be. What a swashbuckler!”

  It was clear that he wouldn't help me. So I turned away and walked up the beach toward the narrow spit that I would cross to reach the harbor. The sand was hot and white and it squeaked below my boots; on my right the surf curled up and hammered at the beach.

  I'd gone a dozen yards when Dasher shouted, “Wait!” When I looked back, he was up on his feet, stuffing his guns into place. He ran toward me, staggering as he slipped in the sand. A gun fell loose; he stooped and took it up. And he hurried along beside me.

  “Do you think there's really glory in it?” he asked.

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Surely there is. It's the sort of thing they write ballads about, isn't it? ‘The English fleet he did save from the heat.’ “

  He stood breathing hard, his hair and his side-whiskers bright in the sun, a strange grin set crooked on his face. I could see that, for once, he wasn't thinking of himself. He was frightened—for me. That thought scared me more than anything else.

  “Let's go,” he said.

  We walked side by side up the beach, his big coat flapping at his legs. We made one shadow on the sand, like a two-headed eagle. Then we slipped through the gap and crouched in the undergrowth at the edge of the harbor.

  The buccaneers still labored with the treasure. Their boats shuttled back and forth, from shore to ship, carrying treasure onto the schooner and powder onto the brig. The crucified corpse stood his never-ending trick at the wheel, but the dead watchmen were gone from the yard and the capstan. The sharks circled lazily as the brig swung with the currents on the tether of her mooring line. She was deeper in the water by a foot or more, a floating bomb full of powder. But the mooring line stretched stiff one moment and hung loose the next as the tide boiled into the harbor. I knew I couldn't get out there; I could never get aboard her.

  The Apostle lay behind the brig, anchored fore and aft. The black hull was hidden from our view, and all the masts and yards seemed to belong to one enormous vessel.

  In four hours, or a little more, the tide would be full. It would turn to the ebb, and Grace would sail his ships out toward Kingston. I saw no way to stop him, short of chaining the brig to the shore. And then I laughed, for the answer came to me right away, and it was so simple that I should have seen it sooner.

  “We can't keep the brig where she is,” I said. “It's impossible.”

  “I've been telling you that,” said Dasher.

  “But we can cut her loose.”

  He looked at me as though I'd gone feeble in the head. “John, she's anchored. She won't go very far.”

  “Far enough,” said I, and Dasher frowned before he grinned.

  “Why, they'll tangle like toms in a catfight,” he said.

  Suddenly he was keen to try. He led the way, in a wide circle behind the buccaneers’ camp, then back toward the water. In high spirits again, he imagined the glory of saving the fleet.

  “It's a lark,” he said. “It's a grand scheme, right enough. We'll be famous, John. We'll get knighted, I wager. Sir Tommy Dusker. Sir Thomas Dusker. Aye, aye, Sir Thomas, whatever you say.’ Just think, John; we might be written up in books someday.”

  “I'm trying to think,” I said. “Once we've cut the line, what will happen then?”

  “Why, we'll go to Buckingham Palace and kneel before the king,” said Dasher. “He'll touch us with his sword, and say, ‘Arise, Sir Thomas.’ He'll ask me how I got my fortune. ‘To tell you the truth, I stole it,’ I'll say. ‘I'm a thief in the knight, Your Majesty.’ And, oh, how the ladies will fancy me then.”

  He was too full of his dreams to think of how we would do it. I followed him through the jungle, his red coat moving before me like a dark hole that kept opening in my path. I

  Decided we would cut the line and make our way back to the western beaches, and wait there for the Dragon. But the thought still nagged me: would the Dragon float again? What if half the crew had succumbed to the fever, and the rest—too weak to sail her—had driven the schooner ashore? Once we cut the line, our course would be set. At best we would gain only twelve hours, until the tide flooded again in the night and Bartholomew Grace sailed off for Kingston.

  Dasher and I found the end of the mooring line turned twice around a coconut palm and seized at the bight in a cow hitch. We needed only to cut through that thin lashing to let the brig pull herself free.

  Dasher took out his knife.

  “Wait,” I said.

  The last of the boats were only then setting out from shore. In two of the three, pulling roughly at the oars, were ragged crews as much like apes as men. Sunlight sparkled on cutlasses and earrings, on the barrels of long muskets. But in the third came Grace, his straw-hatted, blue-ribboned men rowing like a racing crew, with one in rags in place of the wretch called Miller. The captain stood in the stern, one hand on the tiller, the other behind his back. With the glare on the surface, the golden sand below, he seemed to walk across the water. The sharks went with him, round and round his boat.

  He would pass very close. I looked at Dasher and my heart gave a jump. In his red coat, with the sunlight filtering through the trees, he looked as bright as flames. If Bartholomew Grace so much as turned his head, he would surely see us there.

  “Quiet,” I said. “Not a sound.”

  The boats came on. We heard the thump and splash of oars, the chuckle of water at the bows. We heard the tiny flutter of the ribbons in the rowers’ hats.

  And with an awful screech, and a bloodcurdling yell, Davy Jones the parrot came hurtling through the jungle.

  Chapter 18

  PHANTOM SAILORS

  T hree fathoms down!” the parrot cried. “Three fathoms more.” He came in gaudy flashes of yellow and red, low to the ground and high in the trees, then swooped with his thrashing wings and landed on Dasher's arm.

  Dasher, startled, shouted out. “Get off!” he cried, shaking his arm. The parrot hopped up to his shoulder.

  The boats turned toward us. The long guns lifted up to shoulders. Cutlasses gleamed like rows of sharks’ teeth, razor sharp. In half a minute they'd be upon us.

  “Run for it!” I said.

  But Dasher pushed me down. He took one glance at me, then stood in his coat of flaming red. The parrot was pecking at his ear.

  “Help yourself to my barrel,” he whispered to me. “Good luck to you, John.” Then he dropped his knife at my feet, and started down toward the water.

  I wanted to run after him, but I couldn't. Dasher gave himself up so that I might stay hidden. And to my shame, I didn't move.

  “It's only me,” he shouted a
t the boats. “It's Dashing Tommy Dusker.”

  He went down to the shore, talking all the way. “I feared you'd maroon me,” he said. “I went after that cove what came off the brig, and I hunted him down, mateys. I killed him, fair enough; I sliced his throat from ear to ear. Mateys, I done him in.”

  The straw-hatted rowers ground their boat ashore. Bartholomew Grace strode between them, then stepped up on the prow.

  “Oh, Captain Grace, he was a wicked-fast runner,” said Dasher. “I chased him clear across the island, but I ran him down in the treasure pit. So here I am, and if you think I've only been shirking my duty, then put me to work. Just give me a rope, Captain, and I'll pull it or tie it; whatever you please.”

  Grace looked at him for the longest time. Then Davy Jones hopped up to Dasher's head and started plucking at his hair.

  “And see; I've got my parrot back,” said Dasher with a strange laugh that nearly broke my heart. “Oh, mateys, isn't this grand?”

  They took him off in the boat. I saw his red coat climbing up the side of the brig; then it was lost in the swirl of men. Only later would I learn what task Grace had in store for Dasher. But if I'd known it earlier, I wouldn't have let him go.

  His knife had vanished in the undergrowth. I groped through the ferns, slowly at first and then frantically, until I found it trodden into the ground, and my hand closed around the blade. With some sadness, I saw that Dasher had blunted the tip.

  His pistols, I knew, were never loaded with balls. They were packed with enough powder to make a great noise and a fine show of flames, but they were no more dangerous than firecrackers. For all his bluster and talk, Dasher was a harmless soul with a great dislike for suffering.

  I took the thick rope in my hand, touched the blade to the lashings. Then I stopped, and stared down through the trees at the harbor.

  What would happen to Dasher, I wondered, if I cut through the lashing? He had only just emerged from the jungle; surely, if the brig came free right then, the buccaneers would believe he had done it.