Captain Adam (45 page)

"Couldn't find a better cabin mate," Mr. Holyoake more than once told the hands. "Thoughtful. Tidy, too. I don't think he's worried about anything. I think it's just that he misses that Mr. Forbes, the man whose job I got, and maybe Bond and young Rellison, too."

An added consideration, Mr. Holyoake had pointed out, might be that hogshead lashed on the afterdeck during the pull up from the islands and unloaded with such care in London. It'd held rum all right—you could hear the gurgle—but it'd held more than that.

"A woman, from what they tell me. A beautiful red-headed woman. He never told me that. But he used to stand by the binnacle there, hour after hour, with his head a little to one side like as if he was listening to something."

A queer way, somebody had commented, to be moving a woman.

Whereupon Mr. Holyoake had snapped in a tone very similar to the tone Adam himself used on that scandalized sexton in the lovely little glade under the willows:

"How else you going to carry her five thousand miles, when she happens to be dead?"

Adam in fact was not depressed. The burying of Maisie had saddened him, but it was a sort of sweet sadness, a gentle melancholy. More sobering, though this, too, was in the nature of a relief from pain and strain, was the news of his birth. He had always assumed that he was a bastard but now he knew that he was only an ordinary bastard, and maybe this was better? No dead man's hands fastened themselves upon him now. He didn't have anything to live up to, except what he'd done for himself. He could join his fellow men on terms of equality.

True, the westward passage had been a lonely one. He had missed Resolved Forbes—John Bond and Abel Rellison, too, but most of all Forbes—more than he might have expected. He and that ascetic assistant would maybe not swap ten words a week, all through the months they had shared the tiny cabin together; yet it had been good, a sound feeling, to know that Resolved Forbes was on watch. They'd communicated to one another largely by means of grunts; but each had understood.

Adam's vanity was not pricked by the departure of these three. He didn't blame them. The China run was a long one but profitable, and they'd got themselves good berths. Resolved Forbes could look forward to the time when he might become a skipper.

"And you know I'd never be that here, sir. Not unless you was to drop dead."

Adam had grinned.

"Can't blame me, can you?"

"No, sir," Resolved Forbes had said, "I can't."

Adam had given the three of them his blessing, not to mention an extra month's pay. This was at the Hearth Cricket.

"You're all fools," Hal Bingham had cried. "Any man that goes to sea, if he don't have to, 's a fool." He had filled Adam's mug, touched Adam's shoulder. "Whyn't you stay in Lunnon, Captain? With what you know, being an agent for friends back in the colonies, and watching the lists at Lloyd's and all—why, you could make your fortune."

Adam had shaken his head.

"I've got to get home."

On the way down to the dock, after that party, he had been brushed aside by chairmen. He no longer turned to snarl at such treatment; and it was only by chance that he had looked up and seen the occupant of the chair, who, his eyes half closed, sniffed a gold-filigree pomander in order to protect his nose from the stench of the city. Sir Jervis Johnston, who did not see Adam, looked much the same, still determinedly languid. He was doubtless bound for Clark's; or was there some new place now?

No, Captain Long was not, properly speaking, depressed. It could even 278

be said, for all his seeming thoughtfulness, that there was joy in him. He was looking forward to Newport. For the first time in his life he was eager to get back. Yet he was worried. Did they still dislike him? How would he be greeted? Reports of his doings in the islands must have reached Newport by now, and Adam did have a disreputable background. Would Deborah Selden care to take such a man? And how would she refuse him—openly, so that everybody could see, in public? Or by means of a cold curt note?

Here was not the Captain Long they'd called the Duchess' brat, that swaggerer. Here was a frightened man. His facial features, his backbone, were rigid; but he was all jelly inside.

The behavior of Henry Pearson and Abe Moore did nothing to soothe him. In the cabin he produced rum. He paused a proper moment, then asked again what in thunderation was the matter.

Abe looked at the deck. Henry looked at the bottle.

"I wouldn't go back to Newport at all, Cap'n, if I was you," Henry said at last.

"Why not, man?"

"There's a royal warrant out for you. Minute you step ashore you'll be arrested."

"Arrested? For what?"

"Piracy."

/I? f\ Adam shook his head, a patient man.

\J kJ "I was never a pirate."

"Didn't say you was," Henry mumbled.

"Royal commissioners in town," Abe Moore said. "They're after the charter. And they got a good argument to take to London—if they can hang you."

"Wang me?" Adam started to laugh, but stopped. "They can't do that," he said firmly. "What kind of proof could they have?"

His visitors did not know. All they knew was that Newport had been in a hubbub when they departed, four days ago. They were sure that there was a warrant, that Boston men were in town, and that the customs house was agog with activity. Somebody, they didn't guess who, had collected affidavits down in the islands and presented these to the Crown-affidavits to show that Captain Long after his escape from the pirate colony at Providence had deliberately returned to that infamous place.

Sleep with dogs, they say, and you'll get up with fleas.

"That may be true, but it don't make me a pirate. Anyway I can prove I had an arrangement with—"

He stopped. Suddenly he had remembered something it was always hard to believe—that the frosty blue eyes of John Benbow no longer would glare at anybody anywhere. Those eyes had been closed in death, indeed, while Adam was marooned.

Oh, Adam had taken the precaution to frame an agreement with the admiral; but this, too, was gone. It was in London that Adam had learned of its fate. Some years back Port Royal had been largely destroyed by an earthquake—it was because of this that Kingston had been built on safer if less comfortable land across the bay—and now what was left of the town had been wiped out by fire. Back in the days of Henry Morgan, before the scum of the Antilles had betaken themselves to Providence island, Port Royal had been the hell hole. Pious folks said that the 'quake and now the fire were evidence of God's wrath. Be that as it may—and Adam hadn't thought on it enough yet to form an opinion—the fire had certainly destroyed all the papers in the Navy archives at Port Royal, among them the only copy of the Benbow-Long agreement.

Still Adam shook his head. He knew now who had gone to all the trouble and expense of getting those affidavits. Since witnesses were likely to be elsewhere in the world at the time of trial, admiralty cases were conducted in large part by means of depositions. Adam knew this. He knew, too, that by the judicious expenditure of money a man in Newport, if he had the right mercantile connections in the sugar islands, could collect such affidavits in regard to Captain Long. Such a man must hate or fear Captain Long very much. He may or may not have learned that Captain Long sometimes slept with his wife; but surely he had taken fright when Captain Long like a fool had let slip a reference to his knowledge of who was Thomas Hart's agent in Newport. This man, this bleak, slabsided stander-on-one-leg, understandably alarmed, fearful for his fortune, had sold out his interest in Captain Long's vessel, which might conceivably be seized in connection with the admiralty proceedings. Sure. Sure.

Another thought came to Adam now. Was this accusation and the ordeal it would mean a punishment for his sin with Elnathan? He had many times felt uneasy about that affair. And to say the least of it, it was not pleasant to reflect that Elnathan lived directly across the street from the girl he hoped to marry.

"Guilt by association don't count," he asserted flatly.

"Maybe it does when Colonel Dudley himself picks the jury."

"They got to have at least one specific accusation. You cant hang a man because he calls certain rascals by their first name."

"All we know is what we heard before we set out fishing. There was

something about a brig. French. They said you seized her and killed the crew and brought her in as a derelict."

Adam laughed, relieved. He reached across Henry Pearson and snicked open the secret panel he'd long ago built in the bulkhead. He was tolerably sure that nobody else knew of the existence of this panel and of the small compartment beyond. He had done a good job of it, afterward removing every trace of the work. It was conceivable that one of the helmsmen might have peered down through the hatch and seen him open this slide and examine the Quatre MotiUns affidavits; but it wasn't likely. Open a thing like that too often and it shows signs of wear. Adam hadn't touched it in months.

"Comes to that, I got affidavits of my own," he said.

He sprung the slide. He reached into the compartment.

It was empty.

Adam sat down on a bunk and stared at his hand as if something had bitten it and it was bleeding.

He was remembering Mr. Macgregor's extraordinary search of the schooner. But—no. If Mr. Macgregor, told of the hiding place, had taken the affidavits there would be no warrant. Adam always trusted his own judgment of men; and he believed that Mr. Macgregor, though admittedly a customs agent, was honest.

On the other hand, if in some manner Zephary Evans had got possession of those papers—

"There's witnesses," he muttered.

But—who? Maisie was dead, Seth Selden was dead. Waters and Peterson were outlaws, whose testimony, even if obtainable, would count for nothing. John Bond and the boy Rellison and Resolved Forbes, China-bound, might be gone two, three, even four years.

"Jeth Gardner was here then. Nobody in Newport's going to doubt the word of Jeth Gardner."

"Jury won't come from Newport. This ain't colonial, this is admiralty. Only reason Dudley wants to try you in Nevvrport is because he wants to scare us. But he won't take any chances with the jury."

AU the same, nobody from anywhere, even Boston, could question Jeth Gardner.

Henry Pearson took a drink. Abe Moore was looking at the deck.

"Adam, I hate to tell you this but Jethro Gardner suffered another stroke last week. He ain't going to testify for or against anybody. He can't write. He can't talk. He can't even recognize you when you put your face right in front of him."

"Oh— I'm sorry to hear that."

"We all were, Adam."

But there had been another one aboard of Goodwill at that time.

Let's see now— Aye! That runty Londoner, the one who whined, the Navy deserter he had rescued from a press gang in Kingston.

"In that case," said Adam, "I would demand that WiUis Beach be summoned as a witness in my behalf."

They stared in astonishment.

"Why, man, Beach is a crown witness! Why, he's the whole crown case! He's the man who's bringing the charge of piracy against you!"

^ f\ In the drizzle of dawn they picked up Sachuest Point, and / \J a little later they could make out Cormorant Rock and Coggeshall's and the whole southern part of the island.

Captain Long had not changed his course by one foot as a result of the news the fishermen brought. Even if Deborah Selden hadn't existed, he would have headed straight for Newport. That was his tov^m, for better or for worse. If the folks there disliked and distrusted him so much that they would believe what was said about him by the little Londoner Willis Beach—who obviously had been threatened with a return to the Navy and was willing to sing any song the Queen's commissioners called for—then that was just too bad. He wasn't going to try to tell himself that he didn't care. He did care. He was heartsick about it. But he kept his course.

They had been seen. Goodwill's rig was unmistakable. They were being watched. Horsemen rode back from the beach and over the folded hills toward -town, rode along the shore, too, and the crowds on foot grew throughout the morning. Past Brenton's Reef, past Graves Point, and all along the east shore of the passage going up into the bay a mass of humanity moved evenly with the schooner.

"Going to be quite a welcome," Captain Long muttered. "Reckon I better put on my red coat."

When they came into sight of the town he used his glass to pick up the Selden house, but he couldn't see Deborah.

Now the crowd was enormous, more people than Adam had supposed to be in the whole danged colony. The town was black with them—and not just along the waterfront but up the hill past the pump, past the new tavern on the road to the tannery, all up Jew Street, too, clear as far as the cemetery.

He put away the glass.

"I'll go ashore first thing," he told Mr. Holyoake. Aye, aye, sir. 282

The gig was smart now, varnished. Adam sat in the sternsheets, his hands on his knees, his chin held high. Must have been a thousand pairs of eyes watching him, he reflected. Morbid curiosity? They wanted to witness the arrest of a man who might be hanged? Or was it more personal, so many folks having waited so long for a chance to see the Duchess' brat get his comeuppance.

He kept himself cold. He did not try to pick individuals out of the crowd, for that might suggest that he was nervous. He wouldn't give 'em the satisfaction. The faces were a blur to him.

Nor would he avoid or evade anything. He'd land at the Wharf and make directly for the customs house, as he had always done.

He stepped ashore, straightened, looked up.

The crowd burst into a cheer.

They were wild with enthusiasm. The town, the whole bay, rang with their shouts. Hats were thrown. Barrel tops were beaten. Women waved kerchiefs. There were even a few muskets fired off.

An instant after Adam had straightened himself to glower at his enemies he learned that they were in fact his friends. He was surrounded by men who thumped his shoulders, pummelled his back, sought out his hands, babbled glad greetings. He had all he could do to keep his footing and was nearly congratulated off the end of the Wharf.