Captain Adam (14 page)

He looked back. The sloop had changed course as quickly and easily as though she ran in a greased groove and was being towed by Goodwill to Men. Her studdingsails had to come in, of course: Adam had counted on that. On the other hand, Goodwill, with her jury boom, found the tacking laborious.

The vessels, then, stayed about the same distance apart. It was a bit more than gunshot.

Adam tried half a dozen tricks, changing course, shifting rig. In ordinary circumstances he knew Goodwill's sailing qualities perfectly—knew what he could expect of her, just when she'd start to strain, when he ought to drive her. It was different now. An outside skipper, miraculously placed in command of Goodwill at this stage of the chase, would not have been so greatly troubled as Adam Long was, and wouldn't have felt the need to try so many sailing points. It was precisely because Adam did know this schooner so well, having assisted at her birth, having sailed her lovingly all the years of her life, that he found it difficult to adjust himself to the way she handled with that short foremast boom, the less-than-half foresail, the heavy coarse storm jibs. It was as if a man knew his wife completely, or thought he did, and understood and loved her, but then she got taken sick and fell into a fever and started raving, yammering things he should never have overheard. And what could that man do? He could only bear with her, tut-tutting and pooh-poohing her, not permitting himself to be drawn into a quarrel, and praying all the while that they'd pull her through. That man would love his wife the same way when she'd got well again, and try to forget the things she'd shrieked in delirium. But while she was feverish he'd have a hell of a time. It would be harder on him than it could ever be on an outsider.

This was the way it was with Adam Long and the Goodwill to Men.

He looked back.

The sloop was having no trouble with spar or canvas. Her sails were white—not notably clean, but still white, refusing to be pearled by the dawn. There was never a furrow in them. Adam reckoned he had never seen sails like that. Linen all right. He wondered where they came from. The Low Countries"? Folks who had been to New York told him that the Dutchers have the best canvas in the world.

For the rest, the sloop wasn't anything remarkable. She was a Ber-mudian, sure enough fast, with a raking mast, very tall, carrying a lot of topsail, precious little jib. The most remarkable thing about her were those high bulwarks forward, and the fact that no hands were in sight. Adam Long wondered if the men aboard of her truly thought that they were fooling anybody.

She was well handled. She came about and fell away as neatly and quickly as Goodwill herself: it was as though the two vessels were doing a well-rehearsed drill.

She was a triRe closer now.

Lady Maisie came halfway out of her cabin, the upper half of her. She awarded Adam a smile that was carefully polite—after all there were

hands everywhere—but he thought that she was blushing a httle; and his heart stopp>ed.

"Get below," he said.

In the spreading light the faint sweep of freckles across her nose looked burnished. When she glanced astern her eyes were enormous, lighted a little with fear. Then she looked forward.

"Why are they throwing water on the sails. Captain?"

"Make 'em wet."

"But why should they be wet?"

"Speed."

"How can wet sails make a boat go faster?"

"I don't know, ma'am. But they do. Now—go below!"

He was satisfied that she had not been seen from the sloop.

It was afternoon before she addressed him again, and then it was in a quiet voice, from the depths of her cabin, while Adam stood on deck near the partly opened hatch.

"Is it truthfully pirates?" in a whisper.

"Aye."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

"Will they catch us?"

"Reckon so. Keep away till sundown, we might have a chance. But I don't guess we can."

"What's that rumbling sound I hear?"

"Hands hauling the cargo out of the hold. Hogsheads of molasses from your cousin's plantation."

"What're they doing that for?"

"Pitch 'em overboard."

"Oh— Isn't it rather a shame to lose the cargo?"

"If that's all we lose," muttered Adam, "we're lucky."

The sun in fact was large and low and just beginning to turn tawny when the following vessel, sure of herself, at last spoke. A flag was run to her top, a flag unequivocally black, without design or device. The false covering of a gunport, a piece of painted canvas at the starboard bow, was yanked aside, and a chunky brass culverin run out. At the same moment the false bulwarks were pulled down, and men rose to their feet all around the deck of the sloop, yelling, brandishing blades. Fifty or sixty of them by Adam's first count, but later he estimated there were nearer a hundred. The wonder was that such a small vessel could hold them all. Obviously she couldn't have taken them far. They were variously dressed, most of them gay, all of them dirty. They shouted and screamed, waving their weapons wildly. The plan seemed to be to show

as much steel as possible, with a barbaric abruptness, in the hope of scaring the quarry into surrender. Most of the weapons were cutlasses, but there were also some pikes and harpoons, a few daggers, a smattering of muskets. Some men even had two weapons, one in each hand.

The culverin coughed. A great white blob of smoke appeared at its mouth, to be scattered by the wind. Forward of the Goodwill to Men a spear of sea water rose into the air. Much too high, that shot.

The corsairs set up an even louder clamor. A few even fired their guns.

"Must have plenty of powder," opined Adam Long.

The culverin was run out again, and again it coughed, immediately afterward being blotted out by whipped-away smoke. This ball fell too low; the sea gulped it. But the space between the vessels had lessened alarmingly, and there'd be no darkness for at least an hour.

The pirates weren't very good shots, but it was a fact that their gun would reach now. Sooner or later they would get the range.

So Adam sighed—and struck.

Adam swung Goodwill clear up into the eye of the wind, so that the jibs cracked and slapped, and then he dropped fore- and mainsail; and suddenly the schooner loafed.

A long boat, expertly handled, was manned by at least thirty pirates, most of whom scrambled aboard. They showed no discipline but ran here and there, stretching their legs, waggling their cutlasses, asking questions, looking at things, kicking things, obviously delighted to get away from the cramped quarters of the sloop. At first they seemed to have no leader. They might have been a group of excited schoolboys. They scarcely glanced at the open main hatch, the empty hold, nor did they go aft; but they showed great interest in the rig of the Goodwill, testing sheets and lines, rattling goosenecks.

"Fast! You nigh to getting away from us! What kind of a vessel you call this anyway?"

"In Rhode Island this is what we call a schooner," Seth Selden told them.

"Why?"

"Don't know. Reckon she scoons."

" 'Scoons'? What's that? What's 'scooning'?"

"Don't you know what scooning is? Why, it's what a schooner does."

"Oh."

There was no scuffling. Possibly exhilarated by the chase, the pirates appeared in a holiday mood. Only one, a man somewhat older than the others, a man with a single eye, displayed any sense of responsibility. This one, a worried expression on his face, tried to quiet the others, who for the most part paid no attention to him. At last he accosted Adam.

"You the skipper?"

Adam nodded, not caring to commit himself any further than that.

"We'll take your cargo."

"No you won't," said Adam.

"Eh?" One-Eye bristled, backing a bit. His hands went to two iron pistols stuck in his sash. "You mean you'll—"

"I mean there ain't any cargo. Not any more." Adam glanced at the open hatch. "It's all in the sea."

"Look at me," commanded the pirate, his face working.

Adam obeyed, though only with an effort. The pirate did not wear a patch over his put-out eye, though he should have done so. Extraordinarily repulsive, he must have been sensitive about his appearance. He had seen too many men turn away, embarrassed, slightly sick. Now he put his face close to Adam's.

"Got rid of it all, eh?"

"Didn't want to.'

"What was it—rum?"

"Molasses."

One-Eye cursed.

"You can't sell molasses down in these islands!"

"I didn't aim to sell molasses down in these islands," Adam pointed out.

If he was standoffish, his nose high, his voice edgy, this was because he feared tears. He was about to lose his ship, his first. Also he was about to lose the woman he had just learned to love. If he kept up this colloquy his temper would snap; so he turned away.

Nobody asked him, now, for the papers. Nobody gave a hoot. Pirates don't need papers. They just take whatever it is they lack, without all the botheration of signing and sealing and endorsing; and what they most lacked in these waters were small fast sailing vessels.

"Is it the Devil himself ye've got hy the tail?"

Another man rose from the gig alongside. This was a very big man, massy, though not fat. The first that was seen of him was his loose full-bottomed black periwig; then his face, large, larded white, with a patch over each cheekbone; and his cravat of fine if dirty lace, tied in the careful-careless Steinkirk mode; and at last, as he climbed aboard Goodwill, his long blue brocaded waistcoat, his white silk breeches, his blue silk stockings, and the silver buckles and red rosettes that all but hid his

shoes, which had red heels. This man displayed no weapon except his sword—not a cutlass but a small straight sticker, a court sword, showily scabbarded. He carried an enormous plumed tricorne under his arm.

Shrugging hugely, he took snuff. He had small eyes, large gross lips. He stood before Adam Long, looming over him, though Adam was no midget.

"I am Major Kellsen."

Adam only nodded. He wouldn't let on that he'd heard of the man.

"You move fast, Captain. We need speedy pilots. Come—no beating about the bush, eh? Join us."

Adam shook his head.

"Don't be a dolt," Kellsen rasped. "You can be forced, can't you? Let yourself be forced."

"I'll have no truck with piracy," Adam said.

One-Eye put in: "His majesty'd prefer to be marooned, no doubt?"

It was the classical piratical punishment. The freebooters avoided violence, fighting only when they had to, for they were in the business not for the fun of it but for the money. Their personal duels, though frequent, were as conventionalized as those of gentlemen. They never inflicted flogging, which would have reminded them of the days of discipline they loathed—for most of them were either Navy deserters or runaway white slaves, or both. Nor would they hang a man, since such an end might seem to foreshadow their own. A person they wished to dispose of, then, they marooned. That is, they left him on some bare, sunbaked, small island without any supplies; and there he could die of thirst or of hunger or even of sunstroke—they didn't give a hoot.

All the same, Adam shook a stubborn head.

The others of the crew were watching him. They had already been solicited. Members of the Brotherhood of the Main notoriously were disrespectful of authority, and in particular of authority at sea: that's why they were what they were. Wronged mariners, in their own eyes at least, they resented all skippers, and even mates, while they esteemed the forecastle hands to be natural allies, taking their sympathy for granted. Here aboard the Goodwill to Men they had already, in their irregular way, without method, asked Peterson and Seth Selden, Waters and John Bond and the boy Rellison to join then. They even asked Jethro Gardner, whose soggy stump they scarcely glanced at. Each of these in turn, without having conferred with any of the others—and of course Resolved Forbes did this, too—nodded toward Captain Long, indicating that he would do what the skipper did, not more, not less.

So now everybody was looking at Adam.

"Be forced," Kellsen urged. "You don't sign articles, you don't take shares. So if you're caught you don't get your neck stretched—maybe." 92

"Make up your mind," snarled One-Eye.

Adam buttoned his coat—he had put on his freedom suit for this occasion—and straightened his cap. He cleared his throat.

"I must seek advice," he said. "Excuse me."

Nobody made a move to stop him when he went aft. They watched him in wonder, but said nothing.

He paused at the scuttle, and looked around. Only the top half of the sun showed now, and the sea was gold. Goodwill to Men rocked and rolled, groggy, the tiller lurching like a drunkard. Scarcely a cable length away the sloop stood with flapping jibs, her deck crowded with watchers who no longer troubled to look ferocious, being by now just plain impatient.

Adam sighed, and pushed the scuttle fully open.

"Will— Will they kill usr" Maisie whispered.

Her voice wavered but it did not break.

Adam was impassive.

"Come up," he called gently, "and do just as I tell you."

She had been prepared. She must have readied herself to the last fluffy ruffle. How she could have done it in that small space—and having done it, how so garbed she could climb the steep ladder and emerge on deck with a genuine smile, a vision of loveliness in yellow and blue, ribbons and laces and furbelows, the neck of her bodice low and frilly over bare powdered shoulders—here was a thing that no man could know, a secret between the ladies and the Lord.

Adam Long made a leg. She dropped him a curtsey.

He took her hand and held it high as he turned her to face the men amidships, properly proud of her. They, and especially Major Kellsen, were all eyes.

"My wife and I," Adam announced, "have decided to join you."

PART FOUR

Life Among the Cutthroats

Is there anything dirtier than dirty snow, or more clumsy than a swan out of water? The man who called himself Carse had only two things to remind him, physically, of what he once had been: his right hand and his left.