The Buccaneers Read online

  “You worry about sponges,” said Abbey. “ I'llworry about guns.”

  He went off on his business, but Horn's words must have had some effect, for the gunner came back with his spike and hammer. He drove in the wedge to raise the breech, and the muzzle levered down until the gun was nearly level. “We'll aim for the deck,” he said. “Let's see how the picaroons work with sixteen pounds of iron flying round them.”

  He stood behind me, peering over my shoulder as the Dragon shifted in the currents, in the wind that was steadily rising. I watched the muzzle waver across the brig, back toward the Apostle. The tiny knob at its mouth swung up the shrouds, then down toward the deck. It passed across the group of men who labored at the cannon.

  “Now!” cried Abbey.

  I pulled the lanyard. The gun leapt back in a burst of smoke and flames. The powder blew against us, hot and gritty in my eyes. I saw a splash close alongside the Apostle, then three others as the guns went off beside me. Two balls fell short and one—poorly made—flew far to the side.

  Abbey kicked the gun. “What's wrong with you?” he said, and gave the carriage a clout with his hammer. “You blasted little cannon.”

  We'd fired twelve rounds and had nothing to show for it but a single hole drilled through a sail. Captain Butterfield stopped his pacing. “Are you shooting at the sharks?” he asked.

  Abbey turned to me. “You fired too soon,” he said.

  “You told me to shoot,” I said.

  “But you didn't wait.” His eye twitched nervously. “Well, never mind. Now we've got the range, Captain. Now we'll blast them to smithereens.”

  Butterfield scowled. He waited until Abbey had left before he leaned close beside me. “The fellow's as blind as a bat,” he said. “He couldn't hit the sponge if it was still in the barrel, but still, I suppose he's doing his best.” Then he turned away, and followed Abbey down the row of guns.

  Even I could see that Abbey had driven his wedge too far, that the gun was aimed too low. I pulled at the wedge, trying to work it free. But all the weight of the barrel rested on that bit of wood, and I couldn't move it by myself.

  Horn put down his sponge. He stood beside me and worked his hands under the barrel. With a grunt he raised it up.

  The wedge, suddenly free, seemed to fly from the barrel. I pushed it in, then pulled it halfway out, trying to measure angles in my mind. The muscles stood out on Horn's neck; his face turned red below a grime of powder. But he didn't tell me to hurry; I imagined he didn't have a clue what I was trying to accomplish.

  “I've sailed under captains”—he took a breath—”who'd lash you for looking sideways.” His lungs emptied and filled. “Captains who never came out of their cabins.” His arm muscles doubled in knots. “All have their failings. And Butterfield's is kindness; he's too kind by half.”

  The wedge was only partly out when the barrel settled on it. “A little more,” I said, but Horn shook his head. He was puffing like a bellows. “That will have to do,” he told me.

  We loaded the gun and hauled it up to the rail. I crouched behind it, watching the little sight drop toward the water. The groundswell passed below us, and the sight came slowly up.

  Down the length of the gun, across the yards of water, I saw the buccaneers hauling at their cannon, a line of men pulling on a rope. I pulled the lanyard. The flintlock hammered down, its little spark turning all I saw to flames. The tackles sizzled past my feet as the gun recoiled. When the smoke cleared, the buccaneers had scattered.

  A cheer went up from our crew. Butterfield said, “Now that's good shooting.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Abbey, with a funny tilting of his head. “I've got us sighted in now, all right.”

  Horn sneered. He sponged the barrel, and the steam swirled round him. A gun went off beside me, another an instant later, and although the shots were wildly off the mark, they kept the buccaneers at bay. The long gun sat abandoned on the Apostle's deck, but on the brig a dozen men tramped around the capstan, and the gap between the ships grew wider.

  Horn rammed the ball down the barrel. “Give them the same again,” he said.

  I sighted down the gun, the lanyard in my hand. For a moment it dizzied me, the barrel seeming fixed in place as the ships and sky and trees soared across it. The aiming knob settled on the Apostle ‘s deck, on a group of men going boldly to their gun. But I didn't pull the lanyard.

  “Shoot,” said Horn.

  “I can't,” I said.

  “Don't think of what you're aiming at,” said Horn. “They won't give a damn when it's you they see at the end of their long gun.”

  “But it's Dasher,” I said.

  Directly in my sights, as though he stood atop the knob, was Dashing Tommy Dusker. Like a bright red shield, he'd been brought before the gun, flanked by a pair of buccaneers. It was a twisted little shield he made, hunched down to be as small as he could, but he seemed enormous to me.

  “Shoot!” cried Horn.

  Chapter 20

  A PRICE TO PAY

  The Dragon rolled in the swell. The muzzle lifted, zooming up the Apostle ‘s masts. Then slowly it steadied and started to fall, and Dasher's red coat slashed across the aiming knob. When I pulled the lanyard, there was nothing but water in front of my gun. And the ball fell so pathetically short that a hoot of disdain swelled up from the harbor.

  It was a terrible waste of a shot. Horn belittled me with a grim look of anger. “There'll be a price to pay for that,” he said.

  I glared back at him. “Dasher saved my life.”

  “For what?” asked Horn. “Do you think he'd stand there now and want you not to shoot?”

  “Yes,” I cried. He would be a frightened, trembling shield, never believing that I could aim a cannon toward him.

  Horn rolled his eyes. “I'm on a ship of fools,” he said. “We'll never stop that long gun now.”

  He was right, but not entirely through my doing. At that moment the brig came free from the Apostle. For an instant the two ships leaned together mast to mast. Then they straightened as the brig's long yards untangled from the schooner's shrouds. Within a minute the warping lines were cut, the anchor cable severed. Her courses and topsails were sheeted home and—carried by the tide and wind—the brig came sailing from the harbor.

  A mass of men scrambled from her deck. They leapt across the growing gap to the Apostle's rails or took to the boats she had in tow. But they fled from the brig in a tumbling rush. Then only the dead man was left, his arms nailed in place to keep the ship on her course.

  Up from the hold came a thin thread of smoke. It twisted through the rigging, swirled around the masts, and rising to the belly of the courses, puffed like little breaths from the edges of the sails.

  “They've fired her,” said Horn, his back toward me as all of us watched that ship sailing on under a dead man's hand. He whirled round from the rail. “Aim high!” he shouted. “Aim for the masts.”

  At each of our guns the wedges came out. The barrels lifted like animal snouts, muzzles gaping toward the topsails, which towered higher above us at every moment. Beyond them, deeper in the harbor, the Apostle was raising sail.

  Abbey came down his line of four little guns, sighting each in turn, giving words of encouragement—not to the men but to the cannons themselves. “Hit her in the sticks,” he said. “Shoot straight, you little murderers.”

  We had time for only one broadside, and we fired the guns as they bore. The sound made a single, ragged clap, the smoke one great, thick cloud. The brig was so close, so big, that it seemed we couldn't possibly miss.

  But we did. Two of the balls soared over the ship and one splashed close beside her. The fourth drilled through the topsail but hit nothing but canvas, and the brig came sailing down toward us, wrapped in a thickening smoke. We heard the crackle of the flames, the little bangs of burning timber. We smelled the powder and the wood, the paint and tar. The deck split open down the middle, and the flames—amid a crimson hail of embers—lea
pt from the holds in a hot and maddened rush.

  “Cut the anchors!” shouted Butterfield. “Fore and aft. Abbey, cut them loose.” He gazed at the brig, his head tilting higher and higher. Through the hole in her topsail, the smoke blew out in puffs. “Raise the jib,” he shouted. “John, you take the helm.”

  Our small crew scattered throughout the ship. Only Horn was left at the guns, and I saw him bending to his sponge, his broad back taut with muscles. The smoke from the burning brig welled across us, and he vanished in the black and putrid mist.

  I ran up to the wheel. I felt the bow swing round as the first anchor was cut away. Then the stern fell free, and the Dragon drifted in the currents. She seemed lifeless in my hands.

  The brig came swiftly on, so hidden by the smoke that only her mastheads thrust above it. Her courses caught on fire with bursts of yellow flames. Ash and embers rained upon us.

  At last I felt the Dragon tremble. The jib, filling with wind, gave her life and movement. She slid ahead, and I turned the wheel to meet her.

  The brig sailed on, ablaze from end to end. I saw the helmsman at the wheel, his ragged clothes rippling in the tremendous rush of heat. His head, sunk on his chest, lifted for a moment, and the flames caught his clothing, and the smoke welled up to hide him.

  The masts, like giants’ candles, burned along their lengths. The main yard tilted, broke, and tumbled to the deck. The fire roared with a deafening thunder like a thousand miles of surf rumbling every instant, a thousand rattling carriages on a thousand wooden roads, and all the crowds of London shouting all at once.

  The Dragon quickened as her foresail filled. She heeled to the hot blasts of wind that came from the brig, driven by the fire itself. I felt the tremble in her rudder and her masts and it seemed to me that she was frightened.

  The brig barely missed us. She passed down our port side, so close that I could have leapt and caught her bowsprit. I cringed from heat, from the sound of the fire. My head down, my eyes nearly blinded by smoke, I didn't know who shouted at me; maybe no one did. In all the din and rumble of the fire, the voice that screamed, “Look aloft!” might have come only from my thoughts. But I looked up, and saw the main yard, a flaming sword, slashing for our backstays. I spun the wheel hard and turned us to starboard. The Dragon tilted heavily. The brig's long yard scraped across our shrouds and stays.

  The yardarm snapped off, hanging by a smoldering brace. Then the fire was behind us, and we sailed from the smoke into sunshine. And directly ahead was the Apostle.

  She was nearly free from the harbor, bearing down on the wind with her topsail bulging, her boats in tow behind her. On the yard rode her men, brandishing cutlasses that shone in the sun. At her wheel stood Bartholomew Grace. And up in the bow was that long gun, its barrel pointed straight toward us.

  In the Dragons waist, Horn worked alone at the little four-pounder. From sponge to powder, to ball and ram, he went silently through his labors as others raised the topsail.

  The Apostle's black hull plunged through the tide rips on the shallow bar. White water leapt at her bow, and high on her yards rode the buccaneers, with tiny glints of gold in their earrings. Above them, the crimson flag stiffened and curled and stiffened again. Below them, the gunners hauled their long gun up to the rail.

  Horn threw down his ram and took up the tail of his tackles. He wrapped the rope around his shoulders and, leaning to it, dragged the little cannon forward.

  A howl came from the Apostle, a cry from the men on her yards. In the steady roar from the burning brig, it was a faint and distant-sounding cry, as though from a pack of dogs running on a moor.

  Our topsail filled, the canvas falling, snapping open. It urged the Dragon on, and every instinct told me to turn the wheel and put our stern toward that big, black schooner. But Horn, with the smallest gesture, told me to keep her on her course. He lowered his head, and pulled again at the tackles.

  When the sails were set, the crew turned from sheets and braces to man the cannons instead. A sailor came aft to take the wheel. “The captain wants you at the guns,” he told me.

  I ran to the waist. Horn let go of his tackle and stooped to sight the cannon. But Abbey shouldered him aside. “They're mine,” he shouted. “You don't know my guns.”

  Horn stared down at him. His hands, in fists, were as big as sledgehammers. “I was a gunner's mate,” he said.

  Abbey didn't look up from the sights. “Tell us, Spinner.”

  “Damn you,” said Horn. His voice was low but touched with rage. “For three years I was gunner's mate for that devil, that Bartholomew Grace. Now stand away from that gun, you bloody little fool.”

  Abbey straightened. It seemed that he meant to give up his place, to surrender his beloved gun. But I saw his hand reach for the lanyard. And I threw myself at him. We fell against the rail as Horn stepped in behind the barrel.

  “Hurry,” I said.

  Horn smiled faintly. “There's no hurrying this, Mr. Spencer.”

  The Dragon trembled at the height of a roll; then the deck fell away and the water rushed up to meet us. One hand behind his back, one on the lanyard, Horn sighted down the gun.

  Over his shoulder I saw the Apostle. Barely a hundred yards away, her bow rose from the swell, pushing foam at either side like rows of gleaming teeth. A puff of smoke burst from the long gun and, on the instant, Horn pulled his lanyard.

  The muzzle was right beside me. I was deafened by the noise, blinded by the flames and smoke. I felt the shock of the gun as it crashed back against the tackles. Suddenly there was blood on my arms, and a man was screaming.

  “Chain shot,” said Horn. “They fired chain at us.”

  In a moment, our crew had been reduced by two. Our helmsman fell to the deck, and the Dragon veered from her course. At the same instant, little Roland Abbey slumped against me with blood spurting from his neck. I staggered back and let him roll past me; I eased him down.

  “Did we hit them?” he asked.

  Horn was already sponging the barrel. The smoke cleared away, and I saw a great chunk torn from the Apostle's rail, the long gun tipped on its end. The black schooner was turning away.

  “Yes,” I said. “We hit them for six.”

  Butterfield knelt beside us. He pressed his hand on Abbey's neck, but the blood flowed up through his fingers.

  “Green,” said Abbey.

  “Hush.” I tightened his jacket, for he was starting to shiver. He had taken the shot that was meant to be mine; I had held him there like an offering for the buccaneers’ gun. Yet now he smiled at me, his good eye glazing over.

  “Green,” he said again. “It's the Fiddler's Green. I can see it now.” He shuddered and, still smiling, he was gone.

  Butterfield, his fingers wet with Abbey's blood, slid the gunner's eyelids closed. “John,” he said. “You'll have to take the wheel.”

  I turned away, but Horn called after me. “Mr. Spencer. Keep them off our larboard side. Whatever they do, keep our guns toward them.”

  Chapter 21

  THE FIRE SHIP

  Ihad to stand astride the fallen helmsman to take my place at the wheel. His cheek was pressed against the deck, and I was thankful not to see his face. But the way the sun touched his hair—the way his hands lay side by side—filled me with a great pity for the man—and for all of us, but myself most of all.

  We had four little cannons, all on one side, and not enough men to work them. The Apostle could sail circles round us. With a single broadside she could tear down our masts and leave us a hulk. What would happen then?

  I saw myself nailed to the wheel, my corpse steering a dead ship across the ocean as the worms ate it away, month by month. Then I heard, from the waist, the words of our song. It was Horn who started it, but the others joined in, and Butterfield too. In the stirring words to the old “Heart of Oak,” I felt my pity vanish. I shook myself and gripped the wheel in my fists.

  The Apostle was swinging toward us, her boats sledding out on their tow li
nes. I touched the wheel, and the ships began to circle.

  I could see Grace at the helm, the bright dot of his feather. I tried to put myself there, to make his thoughts my own. If I were in his place, I would spare my powder and my shot and herd the Dragon toward the reefs, where the sea might do my killing for me. I watched his topsail and saw it shiver, and hoped I'd guessed him right.

  I glanced toward the burning brig, then spun the wheel, round and round until the rudder met the stops. The Dragon swung her bowsprit across the island, across the surf and the open sea. Her deck at a slant, her sails full, she spun in place like a top.

  It caught Grace by surprise. We were like a little dog he was trying to chase toward a corner, suddenly turning to race between his legs. Our guns came to bear for only an instant, but Horn found his mark.

  The Apostle ‘s foremast snapped in the middle. It leaned and swayed, and the men on the yard clutched the rigging. With a groan and a crack, the topmast finally parted. It hung, for a moment, from the stays and braces. Men tumbled down like windfallen fruit, and half the mast went behind them, toppling into the sea. The flying jib went with it, and the Apostle slewed sideways, in a tangle of rigging and canvas.

  Like umbrellas held to the wind, the Dragons jibs were dragging her down toward the reefs. I straightened the wheel as our men moved from the guns to the sails. Only Horn stayed where he was, sponging and loading, ramming a new ball into the barrel.

  The buccaneers cut away their topmast; we freed our sheets and tacked the Dragon into the pall of smoke from the burning brig. We sailed right through it, and out to the clear, and the Apostle was there ahead of us. She fired a ragged broadside, and the balls whistled past. Again I threw the rudder over, and Horn bent down to his gun.

  I couldn't watch for the hit. The brig was carried by the current now, and I had to jibe to pass around her.

  But I heard the men cheering in the waist, and when I looked up, I saw the Apostle turned head to the wind, all her sails shivering. I guessed that Horn had hit her rudder or cut her steering cables. Certainly he'd struck a mortal blow, for the red flag was gone from her masthead, and up to its place rose a broad white banner mottled with stains of rust. Bartholomew Grace had surrendered.