Captain Adam (23 page)

I croak like a tarnation frog, he told himself.

He looked around. Everything was still. Holding the rapier point low, his hand sticky with sweat now, he stepped into the hatch and started down the ladder.

Not much sunlight, and none of it direct, got into the forecastle. He had a hard time even seeing the bulkheads, at first.

There were six bunks. Allowing that there was room for two men to 142

sleep on the deck between the rows of bunks, and allowing, too, for two watches, that could mean a crew of sixteen.

Four of the bunks he could see clearly, once his eyes got used to the gloom. They were utterly empty—no bedding, nothing.

He had started toward the two darker bunks, which were located far up in the bows, one on either side—when the slide was slammed over the hatch.

It was as if a lamp had been blown out. The forecastle was thrown into utter darkness.

Adam scrabbled up the ladder, hurled himself against the slide. He might have been screaming. He'd lost all control of himself.

The slide went back, and once again he was bathed in sunshine.

The slide opened, closed, opened again, as the brig lolled in a warm and friendly sea. Aboard of the Goodwill they saw him again, and waved.

He exhaled, sobbing, exasperated. He wiped his face, sheathed his sword. If it had been possible to march down a perpendicular ladder he would have marched back into that forecastle; but anj^way he did go back there, and searched every inch of it.

And he found nothing. There wasn't so much as a shred of clothing, a grain of tobacco, a candle stub.

Going aft, the cargo hatch was next, amidships; but though it was not battened dov^m, it was in place, and too heavy for one man to move, so he passed it by and went to the cabin.

This hatch was small and opened like a door, for a foot or so of the cabin was above the level of the deck. The hatch was not fastened, but it was stuck. It came free at last with a clack.

It was not until then that he realized what had happened.

His nose told him, and then his stomach, which wambled. There was no smoke to see, yet the cabin reeked of smoke. There was no flame, but it smelled of burnt wood. The air that came out was hot, angry, and it caused him to cough, and stung his eyes.

He did not go down, being afraid that he might keel over, but he did hold his breath and stick his head in. The cabin was not so dark as the forecastle, and being square it was easier to scan. It was black—black from smoke, probably, rather than from fire, though there had been a fire. The only objects were a table, which being fastened to the deck couldn't be moved, and some charred corners of mattresses.

Adam withdrew his head and gratefully breathed real air. It was, he reflected somberly, like coming up out of Hell. He closed the hatch. Let air circulate in there and the fire might yet break out again. It should be thoroughly wetted dovwi first.

Well, it was plain what had happened. Coasters had caught this brig

off Cuba, as a few months ago they had almost caught Goodwill. They had butchered everyone aboard and tossed the bodies overside. They had stripped the vessel of everything movable, except, inexplicably, that one jib. They had set fire to a pile of bedding in the cabin and had departed for their own shore, confident that the flames would eat all traces of their crime.

The jib, gallantly if not speedily, had carried the brig away from the shore at the same time that their oars had pushed the coasters in. When no flames showed, the coasters must have deduced what had happened: the hatch had been rocked shut by the motion of the vessel, had got stuck there, and had kept air from the cabin, so that the fire smudged itself out, choked. By the time they learned this it had been too late for the coasters to do anything about it. It had probably been night then, and the brig had been standing well out to sea; while the coasters, already gorged with loot, and possibly not liking the looks of the weather, did not care to venture too far from their beach.

"Are— Are you all right, sir?"

Adam went to the gunwale and looked down at the honest anxious face of Abel Rellison. It touched him to see the boy there. He swallowed.

"I'm all right," he muttered. He nodded toward the schooner. "Tell 'em we've catched a prize. And fetch 'em, one by one. And fetch writing materials, too.

"What happened to the crew, sir?"

"It's best not to think about that."

O 1 The man from London saw his skipper come up, strapping

<--' J on a sword, and he swallowed in nervousness. He was a

lonely little man, this Willis Beach. Slum streets had been his hearth, his parents pickpockets, and he'd begged and stolen—and run away from things—as long as he could remember. He was good at escaping, at wriggling out of trouble. He'd sneaked out of the English Navy itself, by God! And now if they napped him he wouldn't be lucky enough to get off with a hanging. When you're hanged, you die. Beach, who had never found life a song, was not afraid to die. What he was afraid of was the cat. He had taken twenty-four once—he could still feel the welts when he wriggled in his hammock—and he was damned if he'd take any more. Never again would he let them rip the shirt off his back and drag him to a grating, while marines stood wooden-faced, and the officers in their fancy uniforms looked solemn on the poop, and your messmates 144

and the boys and like enough everybody else aboardship stood around watching you and making bets on which stroke would start you screaming. He wasn't going to have the quartermasters seize him up, so that he hung from his wrists; or look in horror over a shoulder to see some monstrous muscular bosun's mate take the cat out of a red baize bag and run it through his fingers, caressing each of the slugs that soon would be all sticky with blood and shreds of skin. No. He would kill himself first. He meant that.

A natural fugitive, Willis Beach was not a man to look far ahead or behind, being concerned always with an immediate dilemma. When he saw Captain Long coming toward him, he began to wonder whether he had done right in trusting himself aboard this colonial hooker.

It was the sword. Beach had liked this Yankee skipper when he met him in Kingston; and that he was alive now, indeed, he owed, beyond all doubt, to Captain Long. But now the skipper had taken to wearing a sword, and Beach didn't like that. A man with a sword was an officer, and an officer was somebody to avoid—to defy if it seemed safe, to buck, to bewilder, or betray—but best of all to avoid. Beach looked upon a man with a sword as his medieval ancestors had looked upon a man on a horse, or the naked savages of America had looked at first upon the plate-armored conquistadores. These were creatures of a different species, and it was but the part of wisdom to whine before them as it was to disobey and if possible to hamstring them when their backs were turned. There could be no friendship with a man who wore a sword. Make no alliance udth him, even for an hour! You could no more understand him than he could understand you, and it was better not to try.

Beach touched his cap. The skipper nodded. He looked at the compass. He scanned the sea. For three days and nights they had towed the Quatre Moulins brig, an axe being right here beside the helmsman to enable him to cut the cable in case of trouble. And hour ago, now that they were off the north coast of Jamaica, and after leaving the mate and the boy, together wdth some spare spars and canvas, aboard of the brig, they had cast her off. The Quatre Moulins was to proceed around to Kingston and report herself a prize, while those aboard the schooner were to conduct—well, some other business.

The skipper turned suddenly. He drew. Willis Beach swallowed, shifting his feet. He glanced over the taffrail at the wake, God knows why: they were a good twelve miles from shore and he couldn't swim anyway.

The skipper shook his head.

"Dad-blamed smoke! I can smell it still, seems as if."

Beach swallowed again, and turned his gaze toward the brig. The skipper had been commendably careful there. Not a one of them was to

get ha'penny—the skipper got it all—but he'd had them take a good look around the brig first, one by one, and then he had each one sign or make his mark under a statement of what he had seen. Willis Beach approved. You couldn't be too careful when you were dealing with port officials, admiralty lawyers and affiliated vermin. As for the stink of the scorched cabin. Beach hadn't much minded it, not any more than he had minded the stain on the deck. He supposed that he was sorry for the poor blokes who'd had their throats slit; but that had been some days ago, some miles back.

"Aye, aye, sir," he said, all the time eying the sword.

The skipper pinned a fluff of wool to the top of the taffrail, and then from a considerable distance he began thrusting at this. It looked gawky, the way he lunged, his palms up, his head back, feet flat on the deck; but he was good; he skewered the thing every time.

He was still breathing easy when he straightened.

"Why do you hold your left hand over your head like that, before you rip loose?" Beach asked.

Immediately afterward he gasped at his own temerity. Aboard a man-of-war had he dared to ask so flip a question of any officer the dreaded cry "Start that man!" would rise, and a bosun's mate would came on the double to beat him all about the head and arms with a rattan. It could be almost as bad as the cat. Beach had seen a man's left wrist broken that way once, and he'd heard of a man who had one of his eyes put out when he looked up to plead for mercy. It was against regulations; but it was done all the time. Not only the officers but even the bosun and bosun's mates, the master-at-arms, the marine sergeant, the ship's corporals, were just as likely to hght into a hand they didn't like with a cane or a knotted rope.

Captain Long, however, answered mildly.

"Balance. Grant you it looks daft, but you throw that arm out and down when you lunge and you get in quicker."

"Looks awkurd. Ever fight a man with one of them things, Cap'n?"

"No."

"Ever going to?"

"Yes."

The skipper sheathed. He spread his legs, fisted his hips.

"Now let me ask you some questions—"

Beach nodded. He had expected this.

"You deserted from the Navy?"

"I told you that, in Kingston."

"Why?"

"I'd been pressed, beat up, near broke me bloody jawr. After that 146

they treated me crool. Not enough to eat, no rum at all. The quarters was wet. They worked you to the bone. They 'eld up your wiges. Didn't like my mites, either. Scum. And there was other reasons. But most of all I was afride of getting the cat again."

"Flogging?"

"Aye."

"What had they flogged you for the first time?"

"Last man down."

"Down from where?"

Puzzled, and as always suspicious, Beach looked at him.

"Why, from the tops. I was a topper. We always riced mast aginst mast when there was any canvas to be mide or shortened. 'Smart' they calls it. 'Ad to be bleedin' acrobats, we 'oped to go on living. 'Op around like fleas up there, with the wessel rolling. Then when you'd worked an' pounded yourself barmy, with all them officers screechin' at you, then last one down rited two dozen. Every day. 'Cept Sunday. Our captain was a religious man."

"But the last man down had probably been the first one up!"

"Didn't mike no difference. 'E got two dozen. Wonst I saw a topper smash both 'is ankles, 'urrying to get down. Another time a messmite of mine get killed. But they still did it."

The skipper glanced at the cabin hatch, which was closed, no doubt to assure himself that that juicy ripe redhead he had down there wasn't listening to all this rough talk.

"How did you get to Providence?"

"Why, aboard of a wessel."

Adam Long looked at him. "Ax" for "ask," "fit" for "fought," and such possessives as "ourn," "hern," "yourn," and "hisn" he was familiar with, while other expressions this Londoner used were not wholly strange —for instance. Beach would say, "I wouldn't do it without I had some help," whereas a Rhode Islander would have said "wiihouten I had some help"—but the transposition of "w"s and "v"s never failed to bring him up short.

Beach, who didn't fancy the look, stared at the horizon, and he swallowed yet again, making his Adam's apple fairly leap.

"Well, I didn't expect you'd sxvum it," the skipper said at last. "But what boat? And where did you find out about it?"

"At Walter's. The plice that press gang tried to nap me. It's where you go when you wants to find out anything about the lads that're on the account. That's what I was doing there. Looking for transportation. Thought I was sife, specially in the daytime."

"I see," slowly. "You seem to have picked up a lot."

"I got big ears. Always 'ad." *

Beach, prodded, told him something about the political situation in Jamaica. The governor, General Selwyn, had died, and soon after that had come the fleet under Benbow, and then the news that William was dead and Anne was Queen. But the official notification of this had not yet arrived, any more than had the official news of the declaration of war. This was why nobody knew for sure whether the lieutenant governor, a rich and disagreeable planter named Beckford, who held his appointment of course from the late King William, had any right to be acting as governor. Beckford had many enemies; and it was customary for the local assembly to be at loggerheads with the governor and council anyway; but what really threw things nine ways from the middle was the arrogant attitude of Admiral Benbow.

"What's this Benbow like, personally?"

"Adisey, sir."

"Yet you served on his ship and they flogged you."

"Not the admiral didn't! That was the captain! When my back was patching and I couldn't go aloft they used me for a clerk—because I can write, y'know. Then there wasn't no flogging. Not that old Benbow wouldn't 'ave 'ad your 'ide off, 'e thought you was sodgering! 'E's a lamby, that 'un. When 'e gives a command it's thunderbolts, and when 'e grits 'is teeth there's sparks fly."

"I see— And now you want to go to the continent?"