The Buccaneers Read online

“But why?” His eyes never blinked, and I found it easier to stare at the chart than at them.

  “Well,” he said. “I took a fancy to see the Ivory Coast.”

  Butterfield rubbed his forehead. The tobacco box hurtled down the table and thumped against his elbow. I steadied myself, and Butterfield clutched his chair. Only Horn stood easily, so straight that he might have been nailed to the deck.

  “Blast that Mudge,” said Butterfield. Then, to Horn, “What ship are you from?”

  “Does it matter?” asked Horn.

  “It matters to me,” said the captain. “Look, this isn't a court of inquiry, man. We only ask what brings you here.”

  “Very well.” Horn stared fixedly ahead. “There was a packet bound for England. The Meridian Passage. “

  “What happened to her?”

  “I believe she perished.”

  Butterfield's eyebrows arched. “You believe she perished?”

  “It's safe to say she did,” said Horn.

  “When was that?” asked the captain.

  “Twenty-six days ago.”

  My jaw dropped open. We'd still been tied to our London dock twenty-six days ago. In all the gales we'd weathered, in all the sunsets and the dawns we'd seen, Horn had been sailing east in his little boat. It was a feat I could never do myself, nor ever want to do.

  “What did you eat?” I asked.

  “The sea is full of fish,” said Horn. “And the fish are full of water, so don't ask me what I drank. I squeezed them like lemons.”

  “Amazing.” Captain Butterfield shook his head. “No matter what you say, this is fortunate indeed. For me, if not for you.”

  “Why is that?” asked Horn.

  “I'll sign you aboard, of course.” The Dragon tipped; the tobacco box clouted the captain's wrist. He picked it up and pitched it onto his bunk. “You can work the ship through the islands and home to England.”

  Horn nodded. “As you wish. I suppose there's little choice.”

  The captain brought out his log, and a quill that he dipped in ink. He offered them to Horn, who bent almost double to reach the table. The book slid away; Butterfield pushed it back. Horn took the pen and made his mark, an elegant little albatross that he sketched with three quick strokes.

  Then the captain dismissed him. “I imagine you could sleep for days,” he said.

  “No,” said Horn. “I've had my watch below, and I'd rather stand for a while.”

  “Then you can stand a trick at the wheel.”

  Horn touched his forehead—a funny little quick salute. He ducked under the beams and went out through the door.

  As it latched behind him, Captain Butterfield said to me, “It's a rather strange story, John.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “But I think it's true.”

  “So why is he so mysterious?”

  I couldn't answer that. The captain's chair tipped sideways as the Dragon rolled. The hanging lamp jangled against its lanyard, and a locker flew open, its contents tumbling out. I tightened my shoulders, waiting for a crash of water above me. But it never came; Mudge could steer in a calm and make it feel like a gale.

  Butterfield rolled his eyes at the skylight. He glanced at the rubble in the corner, then back at his chart. With his finger, he drew Horn's passage across the ocean. “Against the wind,” he said. “Why?”

  For pleasure, I thought. From a fancy, just as he'd said. But I didn't tell Butterfield that, for I realized then that the lamp was no longer moving, that the curtains were hanging as straight as boards at the windows. And I looked up through the skylight to see that Horn had taken the wheel.

  Feet apart, hands on the spokes, he worked the helm so easily that it seemed the ship worked him, that the movements of her rudder came up through the wheel to drive his arms like cranks and cams. Handsome as a god, perfect in every way, he was born to steer a ship.

  Butterfield got up and started putting in order what Mudge's clumsy steering had thrown into disarray. It amused me to think how many times he must have done that in all the years they'd sailed together in the ships my father owned. He hung his double-barreled flintlock pistol back on its peg and returned his Bible to its place. I smiled when he plucked his socks from the locker's upper shelf and told me that he'd left them on a lower one. And when he cried out, “Oh, my poor sextant,” I laughed.

  “You find it funny?” he asked, whirling on me. “I'm surprised at you, John.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  “He's bent the arm, I think. He's given it a good whack, at any rate.” Butterfield cradled the sextant like an injured child. “Don't you see what this means?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, chagrined. I only dimly understood the process that let him aim the thing at the sun or the stars and determine our position anywhere on earth. Yet I saw quite clearly that a damaged instrument was no good at all. If we couldn't trust it, we were lost in every way there was.

  “If I didn't know better,” said Butterfield, “I'd say there is a Jonah with us now.”

  Chapter 3

  A JONAH'S JOB

  Horn made a place for himself in the crew, fitting in with the men like a stray dog who'd found a home. He “went at every task with a will, with the strength of three men. And he was always at the wheel when the sun went down, for he loved to steer us from the day to the night, toward the first of the stars that we saw.

  The spot at the foot of the foremast became his, and his alone. There he sat by day and by night, working away with his knife and his bits of wood, as though set to a lonely task of the most pressing importance. But whenever a hand was needed, Horn was the first on his feet.

  Not one of the crew was really his friend, but only Mr. Abbey hated him. The gunner whispered rumors through the ship that it was a Jonah's job Horn was doing at the foot of the mast. He told stories of the enormous sea chest and the contents that shifted sometimes—-when the Dragon rolled—-with a sound that carried to the deck.

  I felt almost sorry for Abbey. The Dragon raced along in the sunshine and the spray, but the gunner lived in a gloom cast by his vision of a coffin. He spent hours standing at the rail, either staring at the sea or glaring daggers at Horn.

  Then there came an afternoon when we'd been at sea for thirty days or so. I passed the helm to Horn, and for once he started to talk about idle things in a way that any shipmate might, but in a way he'd never done himself.

  “Have you ever been to the Indies, Mr. Spencer?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “But you've been to sea.” He held the wheel lightly, and I felt the Dragon surge along. “It's written all over you, Mr. Spencer. She's in your blood, the sea.”

  This was the highest praise of all, coming from Horn. “I've been to the Mediterranean,” I said. “And once across the Channel, that's all.”

  “It's more than many,” he said. “And farther than most. Why, I've seen men cross puddles in the street and look back to see what a voyage they've made.”

  I grinned at the thought of that. But I didn't tell him that my first time at sea had ended in a wreck on the Tombstones, nor that my second had nearly led to the loss of a second ship—the Dragon herself.

  “Well, you're lucky, Mr. Spencer,” said Horn. “You've got a lively ship, and a pleasant captain, too. He seems kindly.”

  “He is,” I said.

  “Have you known him long?”

  “All my life,” said I. “When I was a boy, I—”

  “Why, you're still a boy,” said Horn.

  “When I was a child, then, I called him Uncle Stanley.”

  “Did you?” Horn smiled, his blue eyes as bright as the sea.

  “He's not my real uncle,” I said. “He was a partner in my father's business. But he didn't care for the office and the books, so he went to sail the ships instead.” It pleased me that Horn wanted me there, where he always stood alone. “When I was a child, I wished that he were my father, or that my father were more like him.”

  “An
d that's how you come to be sailing on his ship?”

  “It's how he comes to be with me,” I said. “My father owns the Dragon. I chose the captain, and together we chose the crew. They've all been hands on my father's ships.”

  “Except the gunner.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Except for him.”

  The wheel turned and his arms moved, and I thought that if a ship could love, the Dragon loved Horn. She fairly flew with him at the helm.

  “He's scared of the sea,” said Horn.

  “Mr. Abbey?” I asked.

  “Your captain.”

  “He is not,” I said.

  “He keeps his cabin darkened, his curtains drawn.”

  “He's always been a sailor.”

  “A coastwise sailor,” said Horn.

  He was right. Stanley Butterfield had done all his sailing close to land. “But he's not afraid,” I said.

  “We'll see, Mr. Spencer,” said Horn.

  He turned his face up to the sails, and it was clear that he meant to say no more. I made my way forward and sat at the bow, my favorite spot on the ship. The enormous carved dragon that once had plucked me from the sea chewed the waves in wooden teeth, and spat out foam and spray.

  I loved the fury of it, the smash of water breaking in the open mouth. The secret hatch in that dragon's throat was sealed forever now, the compartment behind it reached only from inside the hull. That space, a relic from the Dragons smuggling past, was so dark and cramped that we called it the Cave. But it still echoed all the thunder of the sea and gave a voice to the Dragon, a deep and constant roar. I settled there at the bow, to watch and listen, and the last person I wanted beside me was Roland Abbey. But he sat at my side. “You were talking to Horn,” he said.

  “What of it?” I asked.

  “Oh, it's nothing to me,” said the gunner. “Myself, I'd rather talk to the fish. I'd get more answers from them.”

  “You don't like him,” I said.

  “I don't trust him,” said Abbey. “Do you know what he's called in the fo'c's'le?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Spinner. He'll spin you a fine little yarn any moment you please.” Abbey bared his teeth in something less than a smile. “He spins lies into truth, that Horn. He weaves whole pictures from lies, until you'd swear what you see is the truth.”

  “What lies has he told?” I asked.

  “What truths has he told?” countered Abbey.

  The sea frothed toward our feet as the Dragon met a wave. The great carved head disappeared, then rose again in a churn of froth.

  “Did he tell you why he turned away when he saw us?” asked Abbey. “Eh, Mr. Spencer? Did he tell you that? Or how he fled from a packet in a boat that was built by the navy? Or who it was that took a lash to his back?”

  “I didn't know that anyone did,” I said. I hadn't seen the man without a shirt.

  “If he says it was the cat, he's lying.” The sun gleamed in Abbey's glass eye. “The cat-o-nine-tails doesn't do a thing like that to a man.”

  “A thing like what?” I asked.

  “Butchery.” He spat the word. “It's something Henry Morgan might have done. Or Captain Kidd, to while away a Sunday.”

  “The buccaneers?” I said.

  “Aye. It's their sort of work.”

  “But they're dead.”

  Abbey cocked his head. “Are they?” he asked mysteriously.

  “Well, aren't they?” I snapped.

  He looked at me with his blind eye open, his good one closed, and I didn't know if he meant to squint at me or wink. “It's not so long ago that Kidd went to the gallows. Why, the last of his shipmates died not six months ago.”

  “He must have been more than a hundred years old,” I said.

  “Aye, he looked it, all right,” said Abbey. “He died hard, ranting away about blood and bones and buried treasure. Died at low water, the old parrot he had squawking like a dervish, a parade of fools come to learn the secret of Captain Kidd's treasure.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the Indies, of course.”

  I felt a twinge of excitement, a tingling in my breast. From the tales I had read of the buccaneers I imagined the islands were riddled with treasure pits. “Where in the Indies?” I asked.

  “Maybe Spinner can tell you.”

  I turned toward the wheel, leaning sideways to see round the masts. The sails cast big, square shadows on the deck, but a shaft of sunlight fell on Horn where he stood on the quarterdeck, more like a god than ever.

  “Look at him,” said Abbey. “Thinking he's better than anyone else. Telling me how to care for my guns.”

  “Ah,” I said softly. I understood then why the man disliked Horn so much. Nothing would anger the gunner more than being told how to look after his cannons.

  “He told me to load them with chain,” said Abbey. “Chain! When it's roundshot that you-want against pirates.”

  His fierceness alarmed me. “What makes you think we'll be fighting pirates?”

  “Well, there's always a chance,” he said, and looked down at the sea. “My guns are getting hungry.”

  I nearly laughed at the tone of his voice. It was all he wanted, I could see—to get a crack at a pirate ship, to relive a bit of the glory from his years long past. I remembered the day he'd come aboard, wrapped in his tattered cloak, a beggar boy at his heels to carry his canvas duffel. “Who's that old blind man?” I'd asked my father, and he'd laughed an embarrassed sort of laugh. “Why, that's your gunner,” he'd said.

  I looked at Abbey now, and had to squint against the glare in his glass eye. “Are there still pirates?” I asked.

  “Picaroons!” he said, using an ancient word as though that alone diminished them. “It's all that's left, and not many of them. Keep clear of Hispaniola, stay away from Cuba and New Orleans, and you'd find a kangaroo before you'd see a picaroon.”

  It was hard to tell if he saw this scarcity of pirates as a pleasure or a disappointment. But then his rage at Horn bubbled again to the surface. “Chain!” he said. “If you're close enough for that, the battle's lost.”

  He knocked his fist on the deck and cursed. “It will be a grand day when we fetch Jamaica and Horn goes ashore for good.”

  “He's not going ashore,” I said.

  The gunner looked up. “You didn't sign him aboard, did you?”

  “Yes,” said I. “He made his mark, an albatross.”

  “The man's an albatross.” Abbey grunted. “Never touches land. Watches everything and seldom speaks. Listen, Mr. Spencer: no good has ever come from an albatross. No good at all. And ill befall the one who harms him.”

  Chapter 4

  A DEATH SHIP

  The stories of Horn and his sea chest flew round and round the ship like birds through a house of glass. I heard from George Betts that the box was full of pistols, and from Harry Freeman that it was shaman's bones that rattled in there. But in the end, the story that Abbey told was the one that came to be seen as the truth, though neither he nor anyone else had ever lifted the lid of that strange and wonderful chest.

  “I don't need to see inside it,” Abbey told me one day. By his own account, he was the expert on Jonahs. “I know what's in there.”

  “Then tell me,” I said. And I listened to his story, then went below to tell it again to the captain.

  It was just after noon on Horn's twelfth day aboard, and we sat in the shadows of the curtained cabin while Butter-field worked out his sextant sights.

  “Abbey says he knows what Horn keeps in his chest,” I said.

  “Does he?” Butterfield was thumbing through his almanac. “And what does he say, exactly?”

  “That it's full of bits of ships,” I said. “That Horn travels from one to another and takes something from each.”

  The captain sniffed. “What a strange pastime. Why would he want to do that?”

  I tried to tell him in the same words that I'd heard from Abbey. I remembered how the sun had glinted in t
he glass eye, and how that wizened head with its helmet of gray hair had turned up toward me. “All those pieces of wood, those bits of metal, they're his Jonah charms. He uses them in voodoo magic,” I said.

  The captain laughed wholeheartedly. “Jonah charms! You don't believe that rubbish, do you?”

  “No, sir,” I said, though in truth I had started to wonder. “But I'm afraid others might. I'm afraid Abbey will turn their heads.”

  Butterfield jotted numbers on a bit of paper. “What would you do about it, John?”

  “We could have Horn open the chest and show us what he keeps in there.”

  “And lose his trust?” said Butterfield. He turned to his reduction tables, to such long columns of numbers that I felt dizzy to see them. “No, it's best to let this run its course.”

  “But where will it end?”

  “It will just peter out, I should think.” He ran his finger down the columns. “Our Mister Abbey's got his nose out of joint. The crew have never looked up to him, much to his dismay. It's no wonder he doesn't like Horn.”

  The captain got down to his business then, his strange mathematics. He turned his sextant angles into a real place on earth, and that—to me—was voodoo magic. Every day for twenty days I had listened as he'd tried to teach me. But I'd never had a head for numbers, and hadn't learned a thing. So we had both given it up as a hopeless task, and this was the first time that I'd seen him do the sights in all the time that Horn had been aboard.

  Now I watched as he worked out his time and his distance, and I waited for the moment when he would take up his pencil, make a mark on the chart, and tell me, “Handy-dandy, here's where we be.” Twenty times I had heard him tell me that. And at last he said it again.

  But this time there was a terrible doubt in his voice. And he added, “Or it's fairly close, I hope.”

  I looked at the chart and saw that his crosses didn't line up. They marched in a nearly perfect line out of the Channel, south to the trades, and west across the ocean. But then they took a dogleg, a sudden bend that seemed very odd to me, and carried on with greater space between them. I counted back along the crosses, and saw that the break in the line marked the day that Mudge had sent the sextant flying from the locker.