The Buccaneers Page 14

  I joined in the cheering, as loud as any other. But in the waist, Horn and the captain were arguing. They stood chest to chest, until Butterfield turned suddenly away and stalked toward me. Horn came on his heels.

  “Strike the topsail!” shouted Butterfield as he came up to the quarterdeck. He stood beside me, taking only a glance at the body on the deck. “We'll go alongside, John,” he said.

  “Sir, please,” said Horn, lumbering behind him. “A-white flag means nothing to him, sir.”

  “It means honor to me,” said Butterfield.

  “But not to Bartholomew Grace.” Horn's face was wracked with anguish. “He'll board us, sir. He'll send fifty men over the rail, and what are we but six? The flag's a ruse, that's all it is. I've seen him do it before.”

  He stood square in front of Butterfield. His chest, with its muscles knotted in enormous lumps, would be all the captain could see. But Butterfield didn't turn away; he stared straight ahead, as though Horn weren't there. He said, “John, take us alongside.”

  “Don't,” said Horn.

  I looked across at the Apostle, at the white flag fluttering. Between us lay the brig, drifting down toward the buccaneers under a comet's tail of fire and sparks. I saw then why Grace had surrendered. The tides and the breeze, some strange force of attraction, were drawing the ships together.

  “They'll burn,” said Butterfield.

  “Let them!” cried Horn. Sweat dribbled from his forehead in long streaks through the powder. “Sir, I beg you.”

  “Enough,” said Butterfield. “We're Englishmen, not savages.”

  Horn clenched his fists even tighter. Shaking from head to toe, his face scarlet, he stepped toward me. I feared that he would knock me aside and steer us away himself. But he only swept past, and went hurrying down the companion-way.

  “What if he's right?” I said. “What if this is only a ruse?”

  “John, it's a white flag,” said Butterfield. But his tongue licked out and touched his lips, and he didn't look at all convinced.

  We passed upwind of the brig, through a wave of heat that stirred the air into wild ripples. Then we shortened down to jibs alone, and steered slowly toward the Apostle.

  Bartholomew Grace stood at the quarterdeck rail, the gold braid of his red coat gleaming in the sunshine and the firelight. I felt a lift in my heart to see Dasher beside him.

  Horn bounded up to the deck. He carried a spyglass and the captain's speaking trumpet, which he shoved into Butterfield's hands. “Tell them to take to the boats,” he said. “Sir, do that at least. We can pick them up from the boats.”

  Butterfield stared at the trumpet. Slowly he nodded. “Very-well,” he said. “Yes, that's fair enough.”

  “And begging your pardon,” said Horn, “but shouldn't we stay out of the reach of their guns?”

  “You'll take command yet, won't you?” said Butterfield. But again he nodded. “Pass astern, young John.”

  Horn stooped to the deck and lifted the dead man from it. He carried him the way he would carry a sleeping child, and laid him down again beside the rail. Then he stood at my shoulder as I steered toward the Apostle's stern.

  We could see Grace very clearly, and Dasher beside him with the old parrot perched on his shoulder. They looked a proper pair of rogues, each as wild as the other. But Dasher lifted a hand and waved with an odd and sad little gesture. His arm stiff, his fingers turning, he looked like a boy waving goodbye to his mother.

  Horn put the glass to his eye. “They're chained together,” he said.

  “Dasher and Grace?”

  “Aye.” He adjusted the spyglass. “Wrist to wrist. He looks frightened, your friend.”

  He offered me the glass, but I shook my head; I didn't want to see any more than I already could.

  Captain Butterfield wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then held the trumpet to his lips. “Do you strike your colors?” he shouted.

  Bartholomew Grace grabbed a backstay and stepped up on the rail. Behind him, Dasher's hand lifted on the chain. “We do!” said Grace, his voice barely reaching us. “Haul alongside, Captain.”

  “Take to your boats,” said Butterfield. “We'll pick you up from your boats.”

  Horn grunted. “He's angry, sir. The look he gave you could melt my glass.”

  “Do you hear me?” shouted Butterfield.

  Grace turned away to talk to his crew. With every gesture he made, Dasher's hand—like a puppet's—moved on the chain. We drew level with Apostle's stern, and I luffed up, the sails slattering.

  Someone passed a trumpet up to Grace. “Captain,” he said. “You'll have to come alongside.”

  “The devil take you, sir,” said Butterfield. He lowered the trumpet. “John, steer clear.”

  I turned the wheel. We started forward, gathering way.

  “Heave to!” shouted Grace. “You'll not sail away on me.” His voice rose to a scream. “Heave to, I tell you.”

  We carried on, slipping through the water as the strengthening tide bore us all to the east. Another burst of embers flurried from the brig as the mizzen collapsed in a fiery web of rigging. Horn swiveled with his spyglass as we left the Apostle astern.

  “Watch it,” he said. And then, “John! Come about.”

  I turned us into the wind. Horn snapped his glass shut and sprinted down the deck. He ran to the cannons, calling for Butterfield to help him. I looked aft to see the Apostle turning, her useless sails suddenly sheeted and braced, her rudder, which I'd thought broken, swinging her round in a fury. She cast away her boats, and a dreadful howl rose from the crew as the buccaneers came after us.

  I saw the guns poking out, half-naked men crouching behind them. I held the wheel over, battling tops, our masts tilting steeply. If we'd waited a moment later, her whole broadside would have faced us. But still she got two guns to bear, and the balls—with frightening shrieks—hammered into the longboat atop our cabin. Horn fired with his last shot, straight toward her stern. Even Abbey couldn't have missed, and I watched her transom and her rudder shatter into pieces.

  Our jibs came across and we bore away, through a narrowing gap between the Apostle and the brig. We'd sailed just a hundred yards when the fire ship exploded.

  Chapter 22

  BOUND FOR ENGLAND

  Awall of heated air knocked us onto our side. Planks and spars soared aloft in a tumbling cloud, and the grenades ignited like a rumble of thunder. A ball of fire spread from the brig as one explosion followed another, and the blazing wreck vanished from the world. It left the Apostle mastless and sinking, a smoking hulk already down to her deck in the sea.

  The sharks came, and the water seemed to bubble round her. It rose over the rail and swept among the guns; it gushed in spouts from her hatches. Then the Apostle tilted up at the stern and slid forward with an awful quickness, as though the sea were pulling her in. The boats went down behind her, and by the time we turned the ship, there was nothing left but scraps of floating wood.

  Huge eddies came up from below, dark swirls that opened like funnels. They tossed the Dragon to port and to starboard, and the sharks raced round and round. There wasn't a man to be seen.

  “The suction,” said Horn. “It will hold them all down. Davy Jones won't give up one of that lot.”

  But he did. A head bobbed from the water, then a mass of red. And Dasher floated beside us with his wineskins inflated. His crimson coat was like a whirl of blood, into which he sank, then rose again. Bartholomew Grace was beside him, his face hidden by the drooping brims of his hat. They were still chained wrist to wrist.

  A familiar voice, so cheery that I almost wept, shouted from below, “Lively, lads. Haul away, boys. It's Dashing Tommy Dusker you've got, and he'll make rich men of you all.”

  Hands reached over and dragged him up over the rail. His big wineskins were bunched around his shoulders. They squeaked as he tugged them down with his one free hand. He posed for a moment, as sodden as a rat, then knelt and kissed the deck.

>   It was meant to be a show of great drama, but his chained arm was pulled behind him, and poor Dasher only toppled forward until his nose was squashed against the planks. “Oh, the Dragon,” he said. “The blessed Dragon, come all this way to find me.”

  No one paid him any mind. We dragged Bartholomew Grace aboard, and let the buccaneer tumble over the rail. He landed with a thud, his fine clothes in disarray, his feathered hat crushed below him. He braced himself-with a horrid hand, a crab's claw scorched long ago to nothing more than skin and bones.

  “That one you can throw back,” snarled Butterfield. “Davy Jones won't rest until he has him.”

  The anger in my uncle Stanley's voice surprised me. Even more did the lack of anger in the voice of Horn, who—alone among us—begged to keep the buccaneer aboard. “It's my only chance,” he said. “He has to stand trial.”

  Grace rolled onto his side, and for the first time I saw his face close at hand. It was blotched with patches of livid white and patches of pink, like the skin of a plucked chicken. Melted by that long-ago fire, healed into a nightmarish blob, the villain's face had only a hole where his nose should have been, and shriveled black worms for lips.

  “There's still a fortune on that island,” said Dasher. “Riches tucked away. What say you, lads? Shall we go ashore and fetch it?”

  He might have been talking to himself. From the captain on down we stood and stared at Bartholomew Grace, and the hideous mask that turned to meet us. One of his eyes was higher than the other, but both seemed to bulge from his cheeks. He found Horn and looked up.

  “You,” he said. “I should have killed you outright. I should have torn your heart out and fed it to the fish.” He sat up, snarling like a dog. “You've lost the treasure and sunk the ship. What's next, Horn? What misfortune will you bring?”

  “The hangman for you,” said Horn. He bent down and stretched the chain between his hands.

  “And for yourself? A deserter.” Grace winced as Horn wrenched the chain to free him from Dusker. “If you're lucky, they'll only flog you round the fleet. A thousand lashes, until your yellow backbone's standing out for all to see.”

  Again Horn wrenched the chain violently. The links stretched and bent. With a grunt, he snapped the chain in two.

  “There's another way,” said Grace. “Come a-roving. All of you.” His terrible eyes shifted from Horn to Butterfield to Mudge, then to me. “Lad,” he said, “don't you wish for that? You'd be as free as the wind, the sea for your home. No man you'd call a master, no country to call you slave. You'd live a life full of riches, a journeyman of the sea with the cutlass and the cannon for your tools. Come buccaneering, boy; don't you dream of that?”

  “I dream of seeing you hanged,” said I, though in truth his little speech had stirred my soul. And by the shuffling feet of the men around me, I knew he'd touched others with the same vision.

  “It's a fine life,” he said, as though I hadn't spoken. He drew himself up until he sat with his back to the rail. He talked directly to Mudge. “Everyone's equal on a ship of fortune. There's no ‘aye, sir, no, sir’ when it comes to buccaneering.” He turned to Butterfield. “There's no slaving away for a company owner. Each is his own man.” To me he said, “You go where the wind takes you. Where a fortune waits for the finding.” And last he turned to Dasher. “If you've got the heart for it. If you're man enough to be a lord of the ocean.”

  There was danger in his words, in the way he somehow addressed them straight to the heart of every soul. If we'd given Grace his head, he might have turned us all to piracy, for other eyes began to glimmer at his words. But Butterfield cut him short.

  “You can tell all that to the jury,” he said. “Maybe they will care, but I don't give a fig.” He stepped back and motioned to a pair of men, George Betts and Harry Freeman. “Take the cur down below. Chain him in the Cave.”

  Bartholomew Grace put up no fight. But he shouted after Horn as the sailors led him away.

  “You'll hang with me,” he said. “Side by side; I'll see to that.”

  His shouts grew louder as Betts and Freeman hurried him off. “You think you can buy your freedom with me? Why, we'll swing in chains, Horn. We'll swing together, you and I.”

  His voice became a scream. “They don't forgive deserters, Horn.”

  He looked back for an instant as the men shoved him down the hatch. His clawed hand came up and pointed at us. “Damn this ship and every man. This I swear: you'll never see your homes again. By the laws of Oleron, I damn you all to Davy Jones.”

  He seemed to sink within the ship. The men followed him down, and there was only the echo of his voice, and a chill that descended on us all.

  Dasher clapped his hands. “Right, then. Who's the captain here?”

  Butterfield looked surprised. I imagined that his ears— like mine—still rang with the haunting curses of Bartholomew Grace.

  “Speak up,” said Dasher. “Who's the Captain Hackum, eh? Who's the lucky cove?”

  Uncle Stanley frowned. “I'm Captain Butterfield,” he said.

  “Bless your heart,” crowed Dasher. He was grinning widely. “You'll thank your stars for the day you pulled me from the sea.”

  Butterfield's frown deepened into furrows. “And who the devil are you?”

  Dasher looked at me, his grin fading. “Didn't you tell them, John?”

  “I did,” said I. “Captain, this is Dasher.”

  Butterfield smiled. He shook Dasher's hand. “Sir, I'm in your debt,” he said.

  “Not ‘sir,’ “ cried Dasher. “Not yet. Now, take me back to the island and I'll line your pockets with so much silver you'll need a cable to hold your trousers up.”

  “The island?” asked Butterfield.

  Dasher nodded. “I'll hop ashore and fetch the silver.”

  “The tide's on the ebb,” said Butterfield.

  “Well, won't it turn?”

  “Aye, and then turn again. We'd be trapped in there for a day or more.”

  “A boat,” said Dasher. “I'll nip in with a boat, fetch the silver, and nip out again.”

  “In that?” Butterfield pointed to the shattered longboat. It was the only one we had. “Make all sail,” he shouted, turning his back on Dasher. “We're bound for England.”

  “Captain!” Dasher cried. “John, tell him about my treasure.”

  I followed on Butterfield's heels down the companionway. “Sir,” I said. “It's true. He's got a barrel full of gold and silver.”

  Butterfield stepped into his cabin. He bent over his chart table and picked up his pencil and parallel rules.

  “Couldn't we wait and get it?” I asked. “We've time enough for that.”

  “I'm sorry, John.” He laid a course between the reefs, then walked his rule toward the compass rose.

  “But, sir,” I said. “It means everything to Dasher.”

  “Which is precisely why we'll leave it where it lies.” He marked his course in pencil, then clapped the rule together. “You know what the Good Book says about money.”

  “It's the root of all evil,” I said.

  He shook his head. “No, John. The love of money is the root of all evil. And a truer word was never written.” He looked up at me, his kindly face worn by worry. “Think of the misery that's tied to that treasure. The horror in collecting it; the deaths from searching for it. I think it best we leave it-where it is, don't you?”

  He looked at me across the table, and smiled sadly. “You disagree. Well, we shall leave it where it is. No matter what you think.”

  I went up on deck and found Dasher at the rail. He was staring at Culebra as it passed beside us. I told him we wouldn't be stopping.

  “I thought not,” he said. “I had a feeling in my bones.”

  The chain dangled from his wrist, tapping on his boots as the Dragon rolled. Our guns were drawn up to the rails, lashed in place with heavy lines. Horn and another man were throwing the remains of the longboat over the side.

  “I'll never
get rich, I won't,” said Dasher. “Blast my luck.”

  “What will you do now?” I asked.

  “Oh,” he sighed. “I suppose I'll pick a few pockets, try to set up a stake. Maybe I'll buy one of those dancing bears and go waltzing across England. Maybe I'll take to the stage; I'd make a fine actor, don't you think?”

  “You would,” I said.

  “And at least I've had my fling. I've had my grand adventure.”

  “There's still the glory,” I said.

  “Well, your Captain Hackum will get that now. His little ship and his little guns rid the sea of pirates…. There's glory for you. Yes, I've lost that too.”

  “And your parrot,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

  “That blithering little idiot? I'm glad to see the last of him.”

  Dasher turned his back on Culebra. He went off to find a chisel and a hammer, and we sailed on, south around the island, north past Luis Peña Cay. The mosquitoes there were so thick that I saw them from half a mile away, a gray smudge above the beaches. We left all the land astern, then hove to in the open ocean, to bury our dead in a sad little ceremony.

  Captain Butterfield read from the Bible. The dead helmsman and Roland Abbey lay on the deck, the sun shining on their shrouds of white canvas. I squeezed the old gunner's shoulder and hoped he was already in Fiddler's Green, among his taverns and his trees. Then I walked away so that I wouldn't have to watch him sink into such a depth of water, and I covered my ears to keep from hearing the splashes. For the first time, I cried for poor Mr. Abbey.

  We steered for home with the trades blowing over the quarter. They blew so fair and so steady that our braces and sheets hardened in their blocks, for we never trimmed a sail. The Dragon seemed to run on rails, and a great current—a river in the ocean—swept us along our way.

  It was a romp across a rolling sea. Our watches changed, and changed again, and our life was leisurely and content. I took on the task of caring for Bartholomew Grace, feeding him—like an animal—twice a day in the darkness of the Cave. I found him sulky at times, angry at times, but he would always thank me for what I'd brought him, and ask about our progress. I was careful not to get too close, and only prodded my offerings toward him.