The Buccaneers Read online

  With a sigh, I resolved to wait. But I soon came to see that I could only gain by waiting; if the ships tangled when the tide was full, the buccaneers might be trapped for the next change of the tide as well. I had to admit that Dasher was right; I had acted too quickly, and my hurry had put him in danger.

  I settled deep in the ferns and watched through a curtain of fronds as the buccaneers readied the brig for her voyage. They lashed the sails along the yards, first the courses, then the topsails. They let them hang in place, and the shadows of the workers were cast sharply on the canvas until a ghostly second crew seemed to emerge, writhing on the sun-bleached cloth that filled and emptied in the breeze. Giant phantom sailors—long-legged and black of skin—they rode within the sails, and their voices were the snap of rope, the crack of hardened canvas.

  I watched them spin and leap to the drumbeat of the thudding sails, to the chanting of the buccaneers, and all the tales of cannibals that I'd ever heard filled my mind anew. I was like Robinson Crusoe, alone on my island, stricken with terror at the sight of dancing figures. I didn't know which was worse: to sit with my back to the dreaded jungle, or to turn away from the buccaneers. So I sat, all atremble, glancing again and again into the tangled growth around me. I had never felt so lonely, so full of a terrible pity for myself. I had been on the island for a little less than a day, but I ached to get off it.

  As though to add to my misery, a fog came in from the sea. It covered the sun and blotted out the shadows on the sails. It touched the treetops, then crept among the bushes where I sat. Cold and clammy, it beaded water on every leaf and fern; it soaked me to the bone.

  The ships grew faint and hazy; the voices of the buccaneers seemed to come from the island instead of the ship. And through the jungle, in the fog, swirled mysterious shapes that, the harder I stared, looked more and more like savages. The drip of-water, the rustling of ferns, sounded to me like bare feet padding slowly closer. Here a spike of ferns appeared to be the feathers in a cannibal's crown; there a knothole white with sap was a human eye turned toward me.

  When I could bear it no longer, I took Dasher's knife and cut through the lashing. The brig turned slowly, and the mooring line uncoiled from the tree like a great white snake. It slithered through the ferns, twisting and sliding down toward the water. Then the breeze, or a shift in the currents, took hold of the brig, and the line leapt through the last of the bushes.

  I heard a shout, an oath, and then a roar of startled voices. The brig swung through the fog with her sails spread like wings, her yards crawling with men. There was a groan of wood, a shriek, the startling twang of breaking rope. A yard gave way, spilling men who tumbled in gray shapes like swooping birds; I heard the splashes as they hit the water, their high, short screams as the sharks found them there. Then the brig came to a stop, her sails fluttering.

  I hadn't thought out what would happen next. I squinted at half-hidden shapes, trying to see what damage I'd brought. A shiver went through me at the sound of oars coming through the fog.

  They thumped and creaked; the rowers grunted. A voice said, “Watch it!” And a boat scraped against the sand nearby.

  I judged that it was very close; I dared not move. To my left, my bearded, skeletal friend came tramping along the beach, bent forward as he dragged a line that stretched out from his shoulder. Behind him came another, walking backward with the same line in his hands, hauling it along, his heels kicking into the sand. The rope vanished into swirls of mist as though the men were pulling at the fog itself, trying to clear it from the ships.

  Whether this was the same line that I'd cut or a new one, I could not tell. But I was sure the men would tie it to the stoutest tree they could find—and take great care doing it— so that the brig might be warped free from her embrace with the Apostle. I kept silent and still as the pair went by, then moved down to the beach and followed their tracks in the sand.

  After just a few paces I saw the boat at the water's edge. Still floating, the oars laid neatly in place, it seemed to be waiting for me. I ran to the bow and was surprised to find no anchor, no line, nothing at all to keep the boat where it was. I pushed; it slid off from the sand. I waded after it and heard a dribble of water.

  The sound came from the trees. Startled, I looked up to see the larger of the two men with his back toward me, a dark little river spreading down through the sand. Idly, he turned toward me, buttoning his trousers.

  My feet might have been stones, so heavy did they feel. They anchored me there, and the man came running forward.

  He didn't shout, he growled. It was a wordless cry, a savage sound that was low and full of rage. He came leaping over the beach in his ragged clothes. The shock of it freed me. I pushed the boat and clambered in; I snatched up a heavy oar.

  The man bounded after me, over the sand, into the water. I poled with the oar. The boat slid out to deep water, but the man lunged forward and clutched the bow. He levered himself up as the boat slewed sideways. I pushed with the oar, deeper and deeper, until I could only barely touch the bottom.

  The man's head rose over the side, and I saw a bloodied bandage wrapped tightly round his face. It was the man Grace had slashed across the cheeks; the growls were the only sounds he could make.

  His elbow hooked across the gunwale; his shoulders lifted up. And he began to heave himself aboard.

  Chapter 19

  IN THE GUNSIGHTS

  He was a big, powerful man. His arms were as thick as my legs. He hauled himself up from the water with a dreadful gleam in his eyes.

  I thrust the oar down to push off again, and was horrified to feel no bottom below me, nothing to push against. Then the oar twisted in my hands, shoved from below with enough force that I was nearly levered from the boat. At the bow, the buccaneer's eyes bulged out; the blood-stained cloth twisted on his face. And he vanished from the gunwale. He disappeared without a sound, snatched away in a sudden boiling of crimson water. A shark's fin rose in the fog, then sank again, and all that was left was the bandage.

  I sat and rowed, sobbing with fear. I worked the boat along the shore, cringing at the noise my oars made as they banged and rumbled in the pins. Built to be rowed by four strong men, the boat was more than I could handle. But I bent to my task until my arms ached and my back seemed hot with fire.

  The dark shapes of the tangled ships passed on my left, the jungle on my right. I found a current close to shore, and rested as it pulled me on. Then I met the flood at the harbor entrance, and waited for the tide to turn.

  Shouting started onshore, and carried to the ships. It began with a man's name and ended with a volley of oaths back and forth across the harbor. For the buccaneers, it was a mystery; one of their crew and one of their boats had simply disappeared. I grinned at the thought of the confusion I'd caused, the fear I'd put in their hearts. Like all sailors, they'd be superstitious men. They would search through their blooded souls and conjure all manner of madness from the fog and the island and the corpses they'd left in their-wake.

  When at last the tide turned in my favor, the ships were still entangled, the men still shouting in confusion. I kept myself clear of the shore, and let the currents carry me over the bar. Then again I set the oars between the pins, and started rowing to the west.

  My boat pitched in the swell. The ebb pulled me to the east, toward the open ocean, and I struggled against it, afraid that if I once lost sight of the land I would never find it again. I rowed mindlessly, mechanically, thinking of nothing but the bump and creak of the oars.

  In an hour I'd gone only a hundred yards, but at last I'd cleared the island's southern point. The sandy beaches where I'd walked with Dasher stretched beside me, until the fog closed them in. The ebb that had held me back now carried me on, through swirls of fog that swept down from the slopes of the island.

  I judged the direction to Luis Peña Cay, and pulled toward it. Soon the fog broke into the long bands and canyons that I'd seen from the Dragon on our outward journey. And I rowed
along, through sun and shadow, until I

  Felt I couldn't possibly lift the oars for another stroke. Wearied to the bone, I rested a moment—only a moment, I thought.

  I woke without knowing I'd fallen asleep. The boat rocked like a cradle, wrapped tightly in fog. I had lost sight of the sun, and all direction. I had no idea how far I had drifted.

  With a groan I took up the oars. I turned the bow toward the waves, then bent forward and dug in with the blades. I dragged them back, pushed them forward; I felt as though I'd rowed forever, and still had years to go.

  Little whirlpools spun behind me. Then the fog seemed to break; it dissolved, revealing a sail. A hull emerged below it, huge and black. At the bow was a figurehead: a dragon.

  It was Horn who pulled me aboard, Horn who came down from the martingales, shouting, “Starboard! Starboard!” at the helmsman, to steer the ship toward me. He grabbed my collar and pulled me up; he plucked me from the boat and left it there to drift along. The oars slid from their pins; the little boat smacked against the schooner, dipped, and filled with water.

  “We'd given you up,” said Horn. “All of us had.”

  He hauled me up to the deck, then held me because I could not keep my feet. He walked me down toward the stern, and the captain ran to greet us.

  “John!” he cried, his arms wrapping round my shoulders. “Oh, blessed be!”

  Abbey came behind him, and the little gunner clapped me on the back. All three of the men were bugbitten, their arms and necks scratched and spotted. They took me below and filled me with hot, thick soup as they begged to hear my story, everything I'd seen.

  But first I asked about the Dragon. “You were driven off,” I said. “What happened then? Did they chase you? Is the cargo ruined? And Mudge; is he well?”

  “No, no, and yes,” said Uncle Stanley with a smile. “The Apostle sailed straight into the harbor, so we went no farther than the cay. We careened the ship, and Abbey found a bruised plank just below the waterline.”

  “Right where you told me to look,” said the gunner. “I wish I'd listened, John.”

  “And the fever?” I asked.

  “It ran its course,” said Butterfield. “We were blessed with good water at Luis Peña Cay.”

  “But the mosquitoes!” cried Abbey. “They're big as sparrows there.” He scratched his neck, and his fingers came off spotted with blood. “I've never seen the likes of it. Enormous big brutes.”

  “The devil with your mosquitoes,” said Horn. “I want to hear from the boy.”

  Uncle Stanley filled my bowl again, and I told them— between spoonfuls—all that I'd done and all that I'd learned. The last word was barely out of my mouth when Butterfield said, “We'll sail for Kingston.” He made a fist and rapped it on the table. “By George, that's what we'll do.”

  I looked down at my soup, at a bowl that seemed bottomless. It was no more empty than the moment when I'd started.

  “How does that sound, John?” asked Butterfield. “We'll sound the alarm, and the navy will deal with those rascals.”

  “What if Grace goes the other way instead?” I asked. “Wouldn't the fleet be packed just as tightly at English Harbour?”

  Butterfield looked at Horn, who nodded slowly.

  “I'm sure that's true,” said Horn. “But why would Grace go south? He doesn't know the Dragons here.”

  “Their line was cut,” I said. “Their boat disappeared.”

  “Why, they'd have to be witches to guess it from that,” said Horn.

  I stared glumly at my soup. I didn't want to put voice to my real fears, lest somehow it made them come true. But Dasher knew where the Dragon was, and I wondered if he would keep the secret if things went badly for him. I hated myself for leaving him in the hands of Bartholomew Grace.

  “What else can we do?” asked Butterfield.

  I watched the soup slosh in my bowl as the Dragon sailed along. Heading north and east, she put another dozen yards of water between us and Culebra with every moment that passed.

  “They're bottled up in there,” I said. “They're trapped. The brig is full of powder, and if we started shooting at it, wouldn't they surrender? Wouldn't they have to surrender?”

  No one spoke.

  “They can't even bring their cannons to bear,” said I.

  The Dragons hull creaked like an old chair. I felt the water passing, the distance to Culebra growing larger.

  Abbey coughed. “Blast me, I like that,” he said. “We can pound them to splinters. Knock the sticks down, and where are they then?” He fairly thirsted for a shot at the Apostle. “Dismast them, I say; then sail to Kingston.”

  “And they can't shoot back?” said Butterfield.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  It took him a long, full minute to think. “There's the cargo,” he said. “We have to think of that. It's our duty to carry it home. And there's the welfare of the men.”

  “Let's have a crack at them, sir,” said Horn. “If Grace gets out, only the devil can stop him.”

  Butterfield licked his lips. He touched his thin hair. “Oh, very well,” he said. “I hope it's the proper thing to do.”

  We turned the Dragon and eased the mainsail out. She rolled through the swell and ran steadily to the south-west, as though the ship herself had a will to get back to Culebra. I stood watch at the bow, with the great figurehead below me gnashing at the waves.

  The fog thickened as we neared the island; it lay like clots of cream oozing from the valleys, flowing to the shore. I felt an urge to brush it from my face, to clear a path that I might see through. Worried that we went too fast, Butterfield had the topsail furled, and no sooner had the men gone aloft than I sighted the island ahead. The gaunt coconut trees were like fingers reaching out, the jungle a blackness behind them. I felt an awful dread to see it all again.

  With Horn at the helm, we groped past the point where the shore was steep-to, so close to land that the men on our topsail yard slid above the coconut fronds. The harbor beyond it was a white mass of fog that hid the ships inside, but not the voices of the buccaneers. Their shouts, their chantey, the clacking of their capstan, came disembodied from that fog-filled bay, as though we'd sailed through the skies, from the earth to a world of the dead.

  The stern anchor went down, pulling the cable behind it with a sound like a burning fuse. Then we let the bower go, and snubbed ourselves between them, fixed in place across the harbor entrance, with our broadside looking in.

  Abbey went straight to his guns. He greeted them like old friends who had just stopped by to see him. At his direction, we moved the starboard pair across to port, pulling and pushing with rope and spikes. “Come along,” Abbey told them. “Come along, my little man-eaters.”

  His glee chilled me, as did the awful rumble of the carriages, the strain of rope. The sounds would carry through the fog; the buccaneers, I knew, were hearing it, and would know exactly what it meant. Each time we paused to take up the line, I heard the very same sounds coming back through the fog. In this grim and spectral way, our battle was already joined.

  The fog began to lift as we brought up the powder and balls for the guns. It thinned along the water, first to the south where the reefs appeared in their petticoats of surf, and then along the island's shore. I saw the rocks at the point, the trees above them, then the dark, hulking shapes of the brig and the schooner. Bows toward us, side by side, they lay not quite together.

  I heard the clack, clack, clack of a capstan, steady as a clock—unnerving with its rhythm—then saw the men marching round it as the fog lifted over the decks. They warped the brig sideways, on a web of lines stretched to the shore. And the gap between the ships slowly widened; already they were nearly free.

  On the Apostle, some of the crew were moving one of the long guns toward the bow. Behind it walked half a dozen men, thrusting with their spikes at its wheels, as they might poke at a slow and awkward beast to urge it on its way.

  The fog bared the courses on the br
ig, and then the topsails. It bared the men who worked aloft, repairing the damage I'd caused to rigging and spars. And last of all, before it melted into sunshine, the fog bared the flag atop the Apostle's mainmast, the bloodred flag that meant no quarter.

  I stood by at my gun, the lanyard at the ready. As Butter-field paced behind the guns, Abbey sighted each cannon in turn, adjusting the aim with spike and wedge. He laid his cheek against the barrels, squinting with his one good eye straight toward that flag. Then he stepped back, and at his word I tugged the lanyard. The gun leapt toward me as our broadside shuddered through the ship, throwing her sideways like a fighter reeling from a punch. Smoke boiled from the cannons, scattered in the breeze, and wafted back across us with its thick, rough taste of powder. I saw the shot, like four small birds, crashing into the jungle beyond the Apostle, one curving off to the right. Abbey had missed, with every ball.

  “Now, come on!” he said. It was our aim that was bad, but he kicked the nearest cannon as though to teach it a lesson. “You'll have to do better than that.”

  Horn leapt to the muzzle of my gun and rammed the sponge inside. We loaded and fired again. I could feel the sound, like a great thump against my chest and head. Abbey grinned. He capered through the whirl of smoke, shouting words I couldn't hear until the ringing left my ears.

  “That's the Dragons breath,” he cried. “That's her smoke and fire.” He shook his fist toward the harbor. “Take a-whiff of that, you picaroons!”

  A hole had appeared, as if by magic, in the topsail of the brig. But the men still worked aloft and, on the deck, the gun kept creeping forward.

  Horn was already sponging out the barrel. He glanced toward me with a look as close to fear as I'd ever seen on his face. “That's an eighteen-pounder they're bringing up,” he said. “It could sink us like a sieve.”

  He didn't mean for Abbey to hear. But the gunner did, and he barked up at Horn, “Keep your mouth shut. You know nothing of guns.”

  “But I've seen what they do.” Horn pulled the sponge back and rammed it in, his thick arms bulging. “And God save us if that long one is loaded with chain.”