The Buccaneers (16 page)

In an hour I'd gone only a hundred yards, but at last I'd cleared the island's southern point. The sandy beaches where I'd walked with Dasher stretched beside me, until the fog closed them in. The ebb that had held me back now carried me on, through swirls of fog that swept down from the slopes of the island.

I judged the direction to Luis Peña Cay, and pulled toward it. Soon the fog broke into the long bands and canyons that I'd seen from the
Dragon
on our outward journey. And I rowed along, through sun and shadow, until I

Felt I couldn't possibly lift the oars for another stroke. Wearied to the bone, I rested a moment—only a moment, I thought.

I woke without knowing I'd fallen asleep. The boat rocked like a cradle, wrapped tightly in fog. I had lost sight of the sun, and all direction. I had no idea how far I had drifted.

With a groan I took up the oars. I turned the bow toward the waves, then bent forward and dug in with the blades. I dragged them back, pushed them forward; I felt as though I'd rowed forever, and still had years to go.

Little whirlpools spun behind me. Then the fog seemed to break; it dissolved, revealing a sail. A hull emerged below it, huge and black. At the bow was a figurehead: a dragon.

It was Horn who pulled me aboard, Horn who came down from the martingales, shouting, “Starboard! Starboard!” at the helmsman, to steer the ship toward me. He grabbed my collar and pulled me up; he plucked me from the boat and left it there to drift along. The oars slid from their pins; the little boat smacked against the schooner, dipped, and filled with water.

“We'd given you up,” said Horn. “All of us had.”

He hauled me up to the deck, then held me because I could not keep my feet. He walked me down toward the stern, and the captain ran to greet us.

“John!” he cried, his arms wrapping round my shoulders. “Oh, blessed be!”

Abbey came behind him, and the little gunner clapped me on the back. All three of the men were bugbitten, their arms and necks scratched and spotted. They took me below and filled me with hot, thick soup as they begged to hear my story, everything I'd seen.

But first I asked about the
Dragon.
“You were driven off,” I said. “What happened then? Did they chase you? Is the cargo ruined? And Mudge; is he well?”

“No, no, and yes,” said Uncle Stanley with a smile. “The
Apostle
sailed straight into the harbor, so we went no farther than the cay. We careened the ship, and Abbey found a bruised plank just below the waterline.”

“Right where you told me to look,” said the gunner. “I wish I'd listened, John.”

“And the fever?” I asked.

“It ran its course,” said Butterfield. “We were blessed with good water at Luis Peña Cay.”

“But the mosquitoes!” cried Abbey. “They're big as sparrows there.” He scratched his neck, and his fingers came off spotted with blood. “I've never seen the likes of it. Enormous big brutes.”

“The devil with your mosquitoes,” said Horn. “I want to hear from the boy.”

Uncle Stanley filled my bowl again, and I told them— between spoonfuls—all that I'd done and all that I'd learned. The last word was barely out of my mouth when Butterfield said, “We'll sail for Kingston.” He made a fist and rapped it on the table. “By George, that's what we'll do.”

I looked down at my soup, at a bowl that seemed bottomless. It was no more empty than the moment when I'd started.

“How does that sound, John?” asked Butterfield. “We'll sound the alarm, and the navy will deal with those rascals.”

“What if Grace goes the other way instead?” I asked. “Wouldn't the fleet be packed just as tightly at English Harbour?”

Butterfield looked at Horn, who nodded slowly.

“I'm sure that's true,” said Horn. “But why would Grace go south? He doesn't know the
Dragons
here.”

“Their line was cut,” I said. “Their boat disappeared.”

“Why, they'd have to be witches to guess it from that,” said Horn.

I stared glumly at my soup. I didn't want to put voice to my real fears, lest somehow it made them come true. But Dasher knew where the
Dragon
was, and I wondered if he would keep the secret if things went badly for him. I hated myself for leaving him in the hands of Bartholomew Grace.

“What else can we do?” asked Butterfield.

I watched the soup slosh in my bowl as the
Dragon
sailed along. Heading north and east, she put another dozen yards of water between us and Culebra with every moment that passed.

“They're bottled up in there,” I said. “They're trapped. The brig is full of powder, and if we started shooting at it, wouldn't they surrender? Wouldn't they
have
to surrender?”

No one spoke.

“They can't even bring their cannons to bear,” said I.

The
Dragons
hull creaked like an old chair. I felt the water passing, the distance to Culebra growing larger.

Abbey coughed. “Blast me, I like that,” he said. “We can pound them to splinters. Knock the sticks down, and where are they then?” He fairly thirsted for a shot at the
Apostle.
“Dismast them, I say;
then
sail to Kingston.”

“And they can't shoot back?” said Butterfield.

“No, sir,” I said.

It took him a long, full minute to think. “There's the
cargo,” he said. “We have to think of that. It's our duty to carry it home. And there's the welfare of the men.”

“Let's have a crack at them, sir,” said Horn. “If Grace gets out, only the devil can stop him.”

Butterfield licked his lips. He touched his thin hair. “Oh, very well,” he said. “I hope it's the
proper
thing to do.”

We turned the
Dragon
and eased the mainsail out. She rolled through the swell and ran steadily to the south-west, as though the ship herself had a will to get back to Culebra. I stood watch at the bow, with the great figurehead below me gnashing at the waves.

The fog thickened as we neared the island; it lay like clots of cream oozing from the valleys, flowing to the shore. I felt an urge to brush it from my face, to clear a path that I might see through. Worried that we went too fast, Butterfield had the topsail furled, and no sooner had the men gone aloft than I sighted the island ahead. The gaunt coconut trees were like fingers reaching out, the jungle a blackness behind them. I felt an awful dread to see it all again.

With Horn at the helm, we groped past the point where the shore was steep-to, so close to land that the men on our topsail yard slid above the coconut fronds. The harbor beyond it was a white mass of fog that hid the ships inside, but not the voices of the buccaneers. Their shouts, their chantey, the clacking of their capstan, came disembodied from that fog-filled bay, as though we'd sailed through the skies, from the earth to a world of the dead.

The stern anchor went down, pulling the cable behind it with a sound like a burning fuse. Then we let the bower go,
and snubbed ourselves between them, fixed in place across the harbor entrance, with our broadside looking in.

Abbey went straight to his guns. He greeted them like old friends who had just stopped by to see him. At his direction, we moved the starboard pair across to port, pulling and pushing with rope and spikes. “Come along,” Abbey told them. “Come along, my little man-eaters.”

His glee chilled me, as did the awful rumble of the carriages, the strain of rope. The sounds would carry through the fog; the buccaneers, I knew, were hearing it, and would know exactly what it meant. Each time we paused to take up the line, I heard the very same sounds coming back through the fog. In this grim and spectral way, our battle was already joined.

The fog began to lift as we brought up the powder and balls for the guns. It thinned along the water, first to the south where the reefs appeared in their petticoats of surf, and then along the island's shore. I saw the rocks at the point, the trees above them, then the dark, hulking shapes of the brig and the schooner. Bows toward us, side by side, they lay not quite together.

I heard the
clack, clack, clack
of a capstan, steady as a clock—unnerving with its rhythm—then saw the men marching round it as the fog lifted over the decks. They warped the brig sideways, on a web of lines stretched to the shore. And the gap between the ships slowly widened; already they were nearly free.

On the
Apostle
, some of the crew were moving one of the long guns toward the bow. Behind it walked half a dozen men, thrusting with their spikes at its wheels, as they might poke at a slow and awkward beast to urge it on its way.

The fog bared the courses on the brig, and then the topsails. It bared the men who worked aloft, repairing the damage I'd caused to rigging and spars. And last of all, before it melted into sunshine, the fog bared the flag atop the
Apostle's
mainmast, the bloodred flag that meant no quarter.

I stood by at my gun, the lanyard at the ready. As Butter-field paced behind the guns, Abbey sighted each cannon in turn, adjusting the aim with spike and wedge. He laid his cheek against the barrels, squinting with his one good eye straight toward that flag. Then he stepped back, and at his word I tugged the lanyard. The gun leapt toward me as our broadside shuddered through the ship, throwing her sideways like a fighter reeling from a punch. Smoke boiled from the cannons, scattered in the breeze, and wafted back across us with its thick, rough taste of powder. I saw the shot, like four small birds, crashing into the jungle beyond the
Apostle
, one curving off to the right. Abbey had missed, with every ball.

“Now, come on!” he said. It was our aim that was bad, but he kicked the nearest cannon as though to teach it a lesson. “You'll have to do better than that.”

Horn leapt to the muzzle of my gun and rammed the sponge inside. We loaded and fired again. I could
feel
the sound, like a great thump against my chest and head. Abbey grinned. He capered through the whirl of smoke, shouting words I couldn't hear until the ringing left my ears.

“That's
the
Dragons
breath,” he cried. “That's her smoke and fire.” He shook his fist toward the harbor. “Take a-whiff of that, you picaroons!”

A hole had appeared, as if by magic, in the topsail of the
brig. But the men still worked aloft and, on the deck, the gun kept creeping forward.

Horn was already sponging out the barrel. He glanced toward me with a look as close to fear as I'd ever seen on his face. “That's an eighteen-pounder they're bringing up,” he said. “It could sink us like a sieve.”

He didn't mean for Abbey to hear. But the gunner did, and he barked up at Horn, “Keep your mouth shut. You know nothing of guns.”

“But I've seen what they do.” Horn pulled the sponge back and rammed it in, his thick arms bulging. “And God save us if that long one is loaded with chain.”

“You
worry about sponges,” said Abbey. “
I'll
worry about guns.”

He went off on his business, but Horn's words must have had some effect, for the gunner came back with his spike and hammer. He drove in the wedge to raise the breech, and the muzzle levered down until the gun was nearly level. “We'll aim for the deck,” he said. “Let's see how the picaroons work with sixteen pounds of iron flying round them.”

He stood behind me, peering over my shoulder as the
Dragon
shifted in the currents, in the wind that was steadily rising. I watched the muzzle waver across the brig, back toward the
Apostle.
The tiny knob at its mouth swung up the shrouds, then down toward the deck. It passed across the group of men who labored at the cannon.

“Now!” cried Abbey.

I pulled the lanyard. The gun leapt back in a burst of smoke and flames. The powder blew against us, hot and gritty in my eyes. I saw a splash close alongside the
Apostle
,
then three others as the guns went off beside me. Two balls fell short and one—poorly made—flew far to the side.

Abbey kicked the gun. “What's wrong with you?” he said, and gave the carriage a clout with his hammer. “You blasted little cannon.”

We'd fired twelve rounds and had nothing to show for it but a single hole drilled through a sail. Captain Butterfield stopped his pacing. “Are you shooting at the sharks?” he asked.

Abbey turned to me. “You fired too soon,” he said.

“You told me to shoot,” I said.

“But you didn't wait.” His eye twitched nervously. “Well, never mind. Now we've got the range, Captain. Now we'll blast them to smithereens.”

Butterfield scowled. He waited until Abbey had left before he leaned close beside me. “The fellow's as blind as a bat,” he said. “He couldn't hit the sponge if it was still in the barrel, but still, I suppose he's doing his best.” Then he turned away, and followed Abbey down the row of guns.

Even I could see that Abbey had driven his wedge too far, that the gun was aimed too low. I pulled at the wedge, trying to work it free. But all the weight of the barrel rested on that bit of wood, and I couldn't move it by myself.

Horn put down his sponge. He stood beside me and worked his hands under the barrel. With a grunt he raised it up.

The wedge, suddenly free, seemed to fly from the barrel. I pushed it in, then pulled it halfway out, trying to measure angles in my mind. The muscles stood out on Horn's neck; his face turned red below a grime of powder. But he didn't tell me to hurry; I imagined he didn't have a clue what I was trying to accomplish.

“I've sailed under captains”—he took a breath—”who'd
lash you for looking sideways.” His lungs emptied and filled. “Captains who never came out of their cabins.” His arm muscles doubled in knots. “All have their failings. And Butterfield's is kindness; he's too kind by half.”

The wedge was only partly out when the barrel settled on it. “A little more,” I said, but Horn shook his head. He was puffing like a bellows. “That will have to do,” he told me.

We loaded the gun and hauled it up to the rail. I crouched behind it, watching the little sight drop toward the water. The groundswell passed below us, and the sight came slowly up.