The Buccaneers (22 page)

“Don't stare at that,” I said.

He whined, “There's nothing else to see.”

“Then you're not looking,” I said. “Steer by the wind or
steer by the sea. If you give the ship her head, she'll look after herself better than that.”

“I like to look at land,” he said.

I shook my head. “Where's Horn? Where's Dasher?”

He raised his eyes for only a moment. “Up there.”

I turned and looked aloft. Horn sat at the very masthead, high above the tiny topsail. Dasher was far below him, not twenty feet above the deck, clinging to the ratlines as if his life depended on it, his arms reaching past his bulging wineskins. He saw me and waved. Then he clamped his hand again to the rigging.

“Hello, John,” he shouted. “Look, I'm aloft.”

“What are you doing?” I said.

“We're inspecting the rig.”

I smiled to myself. Horn must have told him that.
We'll inspect the rig
, he must have said, and Dasher had climbed as high as he'd dared, though what good he was doing I couldn't imagine.

“You can see the world from here.” He talked at the top of his voice, but I could have heard him if he'd whispered. “Oh, it's grand to ride a tall ship when the sky is all you have for company.” He motioned briefly through the air; his hand was shaking badly. “If it was stormy now, I'd be higher than the waves, wouldn't I, John?”

“Indeed,” I said.

“Think of it!” he cried. “There's nothing to hold me up but a bit of rope, and we're miles and miles and miles from land.”

“A hundred and eighty,” I said.

“Think of that, my friend.”

And he must have thought of it, for he plucked briefly at
the worn ratlines and scrambled down as quickly as a spider. He was out of breath, his face as red as his coat.

Horn came behind him, swinging out from the mast into nothing but air. He slid down the lift to the tip of the yard, down the edge of the sail with only his fingers and thumbs to hold him, down the sheet to the deck: a long, long slide that made my stomach churn, though I had little fear of being aloft.

Even Dasher must have seen how it made his own adventures pale. But Horn clapped a hand on his shoulder hard enough to set the wineskins bouncing. “Good for you,” he said. “You'll be a topman any day.”

“I only wish the mast was higher,” said Dasher. It seemed he almost meant it. But then, Horn had a way of inspiring everyone.

And I thought with a pang of guilt that Horn wouldn't have snapped at Mudge as I had done; he would have shown him how to steer.

Horn's hand sat on Dasher's shoulder like a big, brown animal. He looked at me, at the chart in my hand. “Have you done it?” he asked.

I wanted to hear his praise. I knelt on the deck and spread the chart open. I pointed at the little crowd of marks I'd made.

Dasher stooped beside me. “You did it?” he asked.

“Yes. We're here,” I said. “Or at sunrise we were here. I'll stream the log and see how far-we've gone, but it's pretty close.”

I looked up at Horn. He peered at the chart and at the sea, as though he knew the oceans so well that he could judge if I was right. He said, “Then we're too far to the north. We have to harden the sheets.”

It was all he said. He went forward to trim the sails, and
he took Dasher with him. I was left by myself, my finger still touching the chart, a lump in my throat. He had praised Dasher for climbing a scant twenty feet into the rigging, but he hadn't even thanked me for finding our position.

I rolled the chart and took it aft; I stuffed it into the holder at the side of the binnacle. I took the log and the sandglass from their drawer. Mudge still steered by the compass, weaving us up and down the swells, sweating from his unnecessary labors.

“Bring us round to sou'east,” I said.

He flung the wheel hard over.

“Not like that!” I said. “Easy with it, man.”

He blinked stupidly, the look of a dog told to do something it didn't understand.

“Here.” I shoved him aside and took the wheel. The spokes were slick with his sweat. I sighed. “Look, you can
feel
her,” I said. “She wants to come into the wind; she'll always come into the wind if you let her. So you give her a touch whenever she turns.”

“To remind her, like,” said Mudge.

I shrugged.

“Like you're driving a plow horse.”

I'd never done that; I didn't know.

“You have to think ahead of her.”

“Yes,” I said. “Something like that.”

I gave him back the wheel and went aft with the log. I lowered it over the rail, into a wake that twisted and turned as wildly as it ever had with Mudge at the helm. But I'd done my best, I thought; I'd tried. And I turned the glass over to start the sand flowing through it, and let the line stream out astern.

The seas rose high above me, their round tops only now beginning to break. The stern rose above them, then dipped so low that the log line stretched above me, bent in a bow by the wind. I watched the sand trickle down through the glass, the line going slowly from its reel, then faster as we mounted a crest and slid to the trough. When the glass was empty, I gathered in the line, counting the knots to gauge our speed. Then I looked back at the wake; it stretched nearly straight behind us.

I worked my figures as I walked back to the wheel. Our speed times the hours: we'd gone thirty miles since dawn.

Mudge was smiling. He steered with one hand, pushing down on the wheel as the
Dragon
soared over the swells.

“I've got it now,” he said. Pride was all over his face. “I'm plowing the sea, Mr. Spencer. And behind us, that's my furrow.”

“Well, good for you,” I said, trying to sound like Horn. “Good for you, Mr. Mudge.”

“How far do we have to go?” he asked.

“A hundred and fifty miles,” I said. “We should sight England in the morning watch.”

My prediction spread through the ship; our whole little crew knew it by sunset. Even Butterfield understood, when I went to his cabin to tell him.

“In the morning?” he said. “That's splendid.” He was sitting in his chair, still in his Sunday clothes. “Put a lookout on the bow,” he said. “I'll give a guinea to the man who first sights land.”

“We haven't men to spare,” I said.

He fiddled with his tight collar. “But, John,” he said.

“What if we come on the land in the night? Surely it's only sensible.”

It pleased me to see he was right, and morning—I hoped—would find him back to his old self. We divided the crew into watches of two men apiece, and I stood the first myself, steering the ship as Dasher sat at the bow.

The wind continued to rise, and we fled to the east before the gathering storm. I felt the force of it high in the topsail; I heard it coming in a whine of rigging, like the voices of the buccaneers. It chased us toward England.

By the end of my watch, there were thirty knots of-wind aloft, and it was backing steadily to the south. Spindrift blew over the stern, and waves broke over the bow. Both Dasher and I were soaked to the skin when Mudge came to take my place, and Freeman sent Dasher below.

Mudge braced his feet. He spat on his hands and grabbed the wheel.

“Can you handle her?” I asked.

“Aye, sir,” he said. “I think so, sir.”

He leaned his considerable weight on the lee-ward spokes and shouted at the ship as he might at a horse. “Haw!” he yelled, letting the wheel come up, and “Gee!” as he bore it down. He was a strong helmsman, if a wild one, and I saw we were safe in his hands.

I watched the masts tilt and straighten, the guns snub up at their lashings. Horn had dressed the ship in a suit of small sails, and I was sure she could handle whatever the weather would bring. So I nodded to Mudge and went below, feeling content and free of-worries.

I put on the driest clothes I had and sat happily to a meal of cold fish and damp bread. The pots swung on their
hooks; the kettle rattled and the gimbaled lamp stood on its side. Out of the shadows came Butterfield. Leaning with the ship, he balanced at the same angle as the lamp, as though some strange power held him slanted on the deck.

My hopes that his fever had broken vanished at the sight of him. Sad and drawn, he walked past the table without a word, then touched the porthole, turned, and left again. I spoke to him, but he didn't answer. As long as I sat there, he wandered through the ship like a lost soul, in and out of his cabin, up to the deck and back below, with his Sunday suit dripping salt water. It made me think of the day my mother died and how he'd come to the house, fresh from the sea in those very same clothes. He'd walked from room to room, as silent then as now, his lips moving in conversations from years ago with a woman who no longer lived.

On his third trip through the galley I rose and took his elbow. I steered him to his cabin, and if he was even aware that I was there, then it wasn't me he walked with. He started talking, suddenly, about his days in Father's office. But when I settled him down, he fell asleep in a moment. “We're almost home,” I said. “You'll be better once we're home.”

I took a bit of bread to Captain Grace, and tossed it in through the door, as a zookeeper would. He had to scramble to catch it as it tumbled down the deck. His chains jerked taut at his ankles. “Is that all you'll bring me?” he asked.

I had no pity for him. I blamed everything on Grace: my uncle's pitiful state; the death of Abbey; even the storm that chased us home. It was all his fault in my mind.

“I need water,” he said.

Already I was closing the door. “This time tomorrow we'll be in the Channel,” I said. “And soon enough you'll have all the bread and water that you like, when you're locked in the hulks at Chatham.”

Then at last I went to sleep. The sounds of the ship and the sea dissolved into a steady drone. The last things I heard were the latch on the captain's door and the steady tapping of Uncle's Sunday shoes as he wandered up and down the passageway.

For hours I slept, right through the watch and well into Horn's. But I knew he was steering when I dragged myself out of my bunk, for the
Dragon
slithered through the waves in an easy, rolling motion. Only Horn could do that when the seas were like this: wild enough that I had to stand with one foot on the deck and one on the wall.

The door crashed open when I touched it. I pulled myself through and staggered down the passageway. I heard fists bashing at the door to the Cave, but I didn't bother to look. I hauled myself up to the deck as a cold rush of water tumbled down on my shoulders. Then I climbed over the coaming and stared into the darkness at Horn.

He sat on the deck, his back to the binnacle. And towering behind him was Bartholomew Grace.

S
tay there!” shouted Grace. “Come no closer, I tell
you.
“.

He stood at the wheel as the sea raged behind him, his hair and his coat streaming forward in the wind. At his feet was Horn—half sitting, half crouched on the deck—his back rigid against the binnacle. He was tied to it, I saw, held there by his key string. If he moved from the binnacle, if he slipped on the deck, he would strangle on that bit of twine.

I looked for the other man on watch, but the night was too dark to see very clearly. I wondered if I could tackle Grace by myself.

As he had before, he seemed to know my thoughts. He reached into his coat and pulled out a flintlock. He aimed it, not at me, but at Horn. “If you take another step,” he said, “I shall send him to his Maker.”

It was the double-barreled gun from Butterfield's cabin, hung from a lanyard now at the pirate's neck.

“What have you done to the captain?” I asked, shouting into the wind.

“Why, nothing,” said he. “Kindness is as kindness does, my son.”

How I hated to hear that word from his lips. “Where is he, then?”

“In that fine little cabin that you appointed for my use. All the comforts that you gave me now are his.”

The noise I had heard—the bashing—it must have been Butterfield. “And the lookout?” I asked.

“Ah,” said Grace. “Well, he wasn't as kind.”

“He killed him,” said Horn.

Grace smiled, if such a wicked look could be called a smile. “Kindness is as kindness does, my son.”

I lowered my head as a blast of spindrift flew over the stern. The
Dragon
pitched forward and Horn slid away from the binnacle. He grasped at his string, hanging from it until he braced his feet again.

“What do you want?” I said.

That awful, melted face was looking down at Horn, studying his agony. “Well, I want you to go forward,” he said. “I want you to turn out the crew and wear ship.”

“In this weather?” I said. “You'll dismast her.”

“And I want you not to argue,” said Grace.

“But the mast,” I said. “Can't you feel how it shakes?”

He stepped to the side of the wheel. With a kick, he swept Horn's feet away and let him dangle on the tightened string. He grabbed the twine where it looped around the binnacle and gave it a turn with his fist. Horn groaned as it cut at his throat.

“Stop!” I cried. “I'll do it. Whatever you say, I'll do it.”

“Everyone comes up by the fo'c's'le,” said Grace. “First you and then the others.”

The
Dragon
ran at a terrible speed. I went forward through a waist that slopped with water, up to the foredeck,
then down through the hatch. The lantern glowed dimly below, its light absorbed by sodden, torn socks hanging there. I turned up the flame, then woke Dasher and Mudge, Freeman and Betts. I told them that Grace had taken the ship.

“Why?” asked Dasher, climbing from his hammock. He had slept in his coat and wineskins, but not in his boots. “What does he mean to do with it?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“We're going back to Culebra, I'd bet.” He wedged himself down by Horn's chest. His boots were stuffed behind it, and he pulled one on, over a sock so often darned that it was nothing but patches. “He's going after my barrel, the devil.”

“He's got Horn tied to the binnacle,” I said.

Dasher looked up. “He overpowered Horn?”