The Buccaneers (11 page)

“Anyone aboard?” asked Butterfield.

“Yes,” I said. Three men stood watch, one on the main yard and one by the capstan, another at the wheel with his arms spread wide across the spokes. They seemed the most idle, shiftless crew; not one raised a hand or gave any sign that he saw us.

Then the ship was blotted out in my lens, hidden by the land again, and I snapped the spyglass shut. I was happy to think we wouldn't be alone.

Butterfield had the anchor dropped, and we sat to wait for the change in tide. It was at least an hour away, and the
Dragon
rocked so uncomfortably in the swells, and the fevered men moaned so pitifully, that I made an excuse to get off her. I volunteered to row the dory in with a line I could tie to shore.

“I can have it all ready,” I told Butterfield. “We can warp her right to the beach.”

As always, my uncle Stanley knew what I was really thinking. “If I were young and eager, I'd be anxious to get ashore too,” he said. “Well, off you go, and if you
happen
to speak to that brig, give my compliments to the captain.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I launched the dory, tossed in a coil of line, and then nearly broke my back rowing against the tide. It flowed from the harbor with the strength of a small river, whipped by the wind into quick little waves that seemed to leap from
the sea and into the boat. I soon had water up to my ankles, but I kept on rowing, for it was easier than stopping. I drifted back a foot for every yard I gained, was flung to my left and then to my right, until at last I passed the narrows and found the rowing easier.

I could see the bottom then, five fathoms down. Bright-colored fish flitted over sand that was white as silver, rippled by the current into tiny hills and valleys. I watched them as I rowed along, whole schools dashing past, dashing back, turning like a single animal. Suddenly they rose, and swarmed toward the dory. They came from either side, from ahead and behind, packing into the shadows of my little boat. There were so many fish that I could hear the ticking of their tiny fins against the planks. At first I was delighted.

Until I saw the shark.

It passed deep below, moving with a languorous twisting of its body. From head to tail it was twenty feet long, and in the slow twitching of its gills, in the lazy curving of its body, I saw such sinister purpose that it turned my blood to ice.

Just as quickly, it was gone. The fish darted back into the sunbright water, and I dug in the oars to hurry along.

Again the fish bunched at the boat. And behind me came the shark.

It was on the surface now, its curved fin slicing through the sea, rushing up the path of ripples that my oars had made. Steadily it came, a curl of water pushed before it, faster and faster, until it seemed it meant to cleave my boat in two. Then, inches from the stern, that wicked fin disappeared. And with a thrashing of its tail, a vicious swirl of water, the shark thumped against the boat and tipped it onto its side.

I grabbed for the gunwale, then reached frantically for an oar that was slipping through its pins. All the water in the boat weighed it down, and I feared it wouldn't come upright. Another thump, harder than before—hard enough to crack the wood—tossed the dory onto her other side. A second shark passed below the boat.

Suddenly there were three fins circling round and round my dory. The little fish clung to her shadows. I banged my oars on the pins, trying to scare the sharks’ food away, but they only tightened below me, like children at a mother's skirt. Full of terror, my heart pounding, I rowed harder than I ever had.

There was one more thump—at the bow, behind me. Something cold and hard scraped against my shoulder. I screamed, and raised my hands to push against it. The oars slid out and sailed away. And my arms closed on a cable, the great, thick rope that anchored the brig in the harbor.

I was so startled that I thrust it away. The dory spun past, under the bowsprit, and nudged against the brig's cutwater. I scrambled for a handhold before the current could catch the boat and sweep me out again. But the rigging was too high above me, and my hands only scratched at the planking.

I shouted for help, but not a man came to save me. With utter desperation I stood on the dory's thwart, balanced myself as it rocked and tipped, then leapt for the rigging.

I drove the dory under. It sank with a burble of air, then rolled upside down. And I dangled from the bobstay, staring down as a shark came flitting over the sandy bottom and, rising in a gray streak, ripped the dory in half.

The knowledge that no man was offering to help me
spurred me on to help myself. I found enough strength to swing up my legs and wrap them round the bobstay. Then I pulled myself along it, and over the rail to the deck.

I lay on my back, panting like a dog. High above me stood the man on the mainyard, his head tipped down, his hands behind him to hold the mast. But he only stared; he made no effort to help me.

The man at the wheel was the same. His arms still spread across the spokes; he hadn't moved at all since the first time I'd seen him. Then I rolled onto my side and saw the man at the capstan, as uncaring as the others.

“Won't you help me?” I asked. “Won't anyone help me?” But he didn't even turn his head.

I got up and started toward him. I staggered from exhaustion, but made it close enough so that I could see him more properly. Then the horror of what I saw made me forget my own pains. The man was dead. He was nailed to the capstan.

I reeled away, going aft toward the wheel. I passed the mainmast and, glancing up, saw that the lookout there was dead as well, fixed to the mast by a great spike driven through his chest. I didn't bother going up to the quarterdeck, for I saw the dried blood that caked the helmsman's hands, and didn't want to go any closer than that to a man crucified to a wheel.

Panic struck me. I felt it in my legs and in my head, a dark rushing of blood that at once emptied me and filled me.

The brig rocked in a swirl of currents. The land slid past her shrouds and her masts, and I sensed that the tide was changing. When I whirled around toward the harbor
entrance, I saw the
Dragon
with her sails set, hauling off toward the south.

“Wait!” I screamed. “Wait!” But it was futile. I could imagine Abbey and Butterfield looking over the side and seeing my dory floating past, in shards and splinters. I could understand their thinking I'd been lost to the waves or the sharks. But I couldn't possibly imagine why they'd weigh anchor and give me up as soon as this.

A new rush of horror swept through my veins at the thought that I was now marooned on a ship manned by corpses. My own shouts seemed to echo in my head, for there was no sound at all in that wicked place. The ship was silent, and a stillness hung over the island. Not even a bird moved through the trees or the sky. The island was like a living thing—a beast with its breath the distant surf—that had risen and struck, and now lay quietly waiting.

Suddenly into that silence came a voice, old and cracked and creaky. It came up through the deck, up from below.

“Three fathoms down,” it said. “Three fathoms down. I'm Davy Jones.”

T
he voice taunted me, calling now from right below my feet, now from the foot of the mizzen. “I'm Davy Jones,” it said again. Then came a rustling, scratching sound before it called again from behind me.

“Three fathoms down. Three fathoms more.”

I whirled to face it, but stared only at an empty deck.

A screech, and an eerie, chattering laugh sounded. “Throw me a line, matey.”

“Where are you?” I shouted.
“Who
are you?” My voice was swallowed by the trees and the thrum of distant surf. There was only the stillness for an answer.

The sharks circled round the brig. The dead men stood their horrid watch. And I felt drawn to that one voice, that one life in an empty-world, for surely—-whatever it was—it was alive.

The companion-way was open, and I went down without a glance at the helmsman. I came into a ship that seemed to have been suddenly abandoned just hours before, yet oozed the desertion of an ancient ruin. In the captain's cabin, a pipe was set out on the table, atop an open pouch of tobacco, and by a candle sat a flint. In the galley I found
plates arranged on the table with knives and forks beside them, a huge pot of stew grown cold and jellied on the stove. I could see where a man had sat whittling; there was a footprint in his shavings.

“I'm Davy Jones!” the voice screeched, shocking me with its suddenness. The scratching and rustling came from up forward, and then a banging of wood.

I went toward the voice with my heart in my mouth. I ducked under a hanging lamp and came into a cabin so dark that I could see nothing at first, and then only shapes. By the depth of their shadows, I knew that berths were stacked on either side, eighteen in all, in narrow tiers of three. I could tell that in four of them lay sailors, all still and silent. But the cabin pulsed with a steady little ticking noise, as though all of them had watches.

I was afraid of what I'd find, of what I'd feel if I went groping through the dark. So I fetched the candle from the captain's table, and brought its flame to light the cabin.

The sailors were covered by gray blankets that had been drawn up around their heads and shoulders. The wool was thick with blood, and across the dark stains—their legs ticking furiously—crawled thousands of gleaming cockroaches.

Then, to my utter horror, one of the blankets fell to the floor, shedding a mass of beetles. The sailor below it heaved a leg over the side of his berth. He rose to his feet and came staggering toward me.

His forehead was split right across, laid open to the bone by a cutlass. His skin hung over his eyes like a blindfold, dried to a hardness by clots of black blood. He reached out
his arms, and I moved back as he lumbered down between the berths.

“Mate!” he cried. “Are you my mate?”

“No,” I said, and he cowered back, his mouth in an awful grimace of fear.

“Then you're one of
them,”
he said.

“One of who?”

“Of them!” He tumbled forward, facedown on the deck. The cockroaches swarmed over him in a sleek, black carpet.

My candle went out. I turned and ran from the cabin, slamming my head on the lamp, crashing into the table with a rattle of dishes. I spun away from there, up to the deck and the sunlight, to the crucified man, who grinned at me with a leer that was all teeth with no lips.

I lay at his feet, on bleached planks warmed by the sun. And soon I heard the most welcome, the most wonderful sounds I had ever heard: a flapping of canvas; a ripple of water; the splash of an anchor going down. I got to my knees and saw first the square topsail of a schooner, then a black hull below it, then the name
Apostle
and the numbers
1219
scrawled across the side.

Her decks were packed with men, and she anchored so closely that I could see the faces of those who tended the cable. Black and blond, bearded and not, they seemed the cruelest lot who had ever sailed a ship. In rags and bright bandanas, bedecked in glittering gold, they snubbed the cable and brought the ship to a stop beside me, under the dead gaze of the man they had crucified.

I retreated to the companion-way. In the shelter of its hood, I listened as boats were lowered and oars fitted into
pins. Then, fearing that the buccaneers would return to the brig, I crept below to find myself a weapon.

That awful laughter greeted me, and that voice came from everywhere. “I'm Davy Jones. Throw me a line, matey.”

I sorted through the galley lockers, through drawers and shelves and bins. But the best I could find was a short, thick knife with a dull and rusted blade. Then I stood at the stove, digging clotted stew from the pot with my fingers, waiting for footsteps on the deck.

I resolved to fight until the end as bravely as I could, and hoped I might fall in a swift melee. I might take one or two of them with me, I thought, but I would not give myself up, no matter how they begged; I would not suffer the same terrible ends as my new shipmates.

But soon I grew teary-eyed at the thoughts of the coming battle. The stew sickened me until I could no longer eat; my hands and my legs trembled badly. I had to admit that I was scared—a coward at heart, I thought. And when I heard the boats going past in a chorus of rough voices and a splash of oars, I was more than immensely relieved.

I went to the stern cabin and, keeping myself to the shadows, peered out through the windows.

The brig had swung very close to shore. A thick mooring line drooped down from her stern, snaked through the water, and climbed again toward the trees. From the ship to the shore was a distance of less than fifty feet, but I thought of the sharks I had seen, and knew I'd never dare lower myself into that water.

The boats appeared below me, packed with men. Two passed side by side, then a third, and a fourth behind it. At
rough count there were sixty buccaneers, some in rags and some in finery, some with cutlasses and pistols, but most with no more weapons than I. They rowed toward a coconut grove, a crescent of golden sand.

Emboldened, I stood closer to the windows. The brig was drifting on the current, stretching out her mooring line as she swung across the bay. The cable lifted from the water, doubling my distance from the shore. But now I directly faced the coconut grove, and a crude sort of camp emerged from among the trees. There was a structure of logs, a firepit, a water barrel standing upright. And high on the sand lay a pair of ship's boats, once the complement—I thought—of my ill-fated brig.

The buccaneers spilled ashore, splashing through the shallows. With laughter and shouting and much hallooing, they swept up in a mass, and disappeared into the trees.

They left the beach deserted, their boats tethered to the coconut palms. Above me, the mooring line stretched as tight as a bar, and I thought that if I could pull myself along it, I might be able to reach the boats unseen and …