The Buccaneers (19 page)

He seemed to sink within the ship. The men followed him down, and there was only the echo of his voice, and a chill that descended on us all.

Dasher clapped his hands. “Right, then. Who's the captain here?”

Butterfield looked surprised. I imagined that his ears— like mine—still rang with the haunting curses of Bartholomew Grace.

“Speak up,” said Dasher. “Who's the Captain Hackum, eh? Who's the lucky cove?”

Uncle Stanley frowned. “I'm Captain Butterfield,” he said.

“Bless your heart,” crowed Dasher. He was grinning widely. “You'll thank your stars for the day you pulled me from the sea.”

Butterfield's frown deepened into furrows. “And who the devil are you?”

Dasher looked at me, his grin fading. “Didn't you tell them, John?”

“I did,” said I. “Captain, this is Dasher.”

Butterfield smiled. He shook Dasher's hand. “Sir, I'm in your debt,” he said.

“Not ‘sir,’ “ cried Dasher. “Not yet. Now, take me back to the island and I'll line your pockets with so much silver you'll need a cable to hold your trousers up.”

“The island?” asked Butterfield.

Dasher nodded. “I'll hop ashore and fetch the silver.”

“The tide's on the ebb,” said Butterfield.

“Well, won't it turn?”

“Aye, and then turn again. We'd be trapped in there for a day or more.”

“A boat,” said Dasher. “I'll nip in with a boat, fetch the silver, and nip out again.”

“In that?” Butterfield pointed to the shattered longboat. It was the only one we had. “Make all sail,” he shouted, turning his back on Dasher. “We're bound for England.”

“Captain!” Dasher cried. “John, tell him about my treasure.”

I followed on Butterfield's heels down the companionway.
“Sir,” I said. “It's true. He's got a barrel full of gold and silver.”

Butterfield stepped into his cabin. He bent over his chart table and picked up his pencil and parallel rules.

“Couldn't we wait and get it?” I asked. “We've time enough for that.”

“I'm sorry, John.” He laid a course between the reefs, then walked his rule toward the compass rose.

“But, sir,” I said. “It means everything to Dasher.”

“Which is precisely why we'll leave it where it lies.” He marked his course in pencil, then clapped the rule together. “You know what the Good Book says about money.”

“It's the root of all evil,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, John. The
love
of money is the root of all evil. And a truer word was never written.” He looked up at me, his kindly face worn by worry. “Think of the misery that's tied to that treasure. The horror in collecting it; the deaths from searching for it. I think it best we leave it-where it is, don't you?”

He looked at me across the table, and smiled sadly. “You disagree. Well, we
shall
leave it where it is. No matter what you think.”

I went up on deck and found Dasher at the rail. He was staring at Culebra as it passed beside us. I told him we wouldn't be stopping.

“I thought not,” he said. “I had a feeling in my bones.”

The chain dangled from his wrist, tapping on his boots as the
Dragon
rolled. Our guns were drawn up to the rails, lashed in place with heavy lines. Horn and another man were throwing the remains of the longboat over the side.

“I'll never get rich, I won't,” said Dasher. “Blast my luck.”

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Oh,” he sighed. “I suppose I'll pick a few pockets, try to set up a stake. Maybe I'll buy one of those dancing bears and go waltzing across England. Maybe I'll take to the stage; I'd make a fine actor, don't you think?”

“You would,” I said.

“And at least I've had my fling. I've had my grand adventure.”

“There's still the glory,” I said.

“Well, your Captain Hackum will get that now. His little ship and his little guns rid the sea of pirates…. There's glory for you. Yes, I've lost that too.”

“And your parrot,” I said. “I'm sorry.”

“That blithering little idiot? I'm glad to see the last of him.”

Dasher turned his back on Culebra. He went off to find a chisel and a hammer, and we sailed on, south around the island, north past Luis Peña Cay. The mosquitoes there were so thick that I saw them from half a mile away, a gray smudge above the beaches. We left all the land astern, then hove to in the open ocean, to bury our dead in a sad little ceremony.

Captain Butterfield read from the Bible. The dead helmsman and Roland Abbey lay on the deck, the sun shining on their shrouds of white canvas. I squeezed the old gunner's shoulder and hoped he was already in Fiddler's Green, among his taverns and his trees. Then I walked away so that I wouldn't have to watch him sink into such a depth of water, and I covered my ears to keep from
hearing the splashes. For the first time, I cried for poor Mr. Abbey.

We steered for home with the trades blowing over the quarter. They blew so fair and so steady that our braces and sheets hardened in their blocks, for we never trimmed a sail. The
Dragon
seemed to run on rails, and a great current—a river in the ocean—swept us along our way.

It was a romp across a rolling sea. Our watches changed, and changed again, and our life was leisurely and content. I took on the task of caring for Bartholomew Grace, feeding him—like an animal—twice a day in the darkness of the Cave. I found him sulky at times, angry at times, but he would always thank me for what I'd brought him, and ask about our progress. I was careful not to get too close, and only prodded my offerings toward him.

In six days we were north of Bermuda, turning steadily east as the westerlies filled to carry us home. Dasher joined in the work as though he'd always been a part of the crew. He scrubbed the decks and stood his turns at the wheel. But he never went aloft, and he never took the air from his wineskins. They made him fat and awkward, afraid to climb the rigging.

On the seventh morning, Butterfield aimed his bent sextant at the sun as it rose above the bowsprit. He stood with one leg stiff, the other bending to the
Dragons
roll. I waited with my book, ready to write down the angles as he called them out.

“Oh, my,” he said. “Goodness.”

“What's the matter?” I asked.

He lowered the sextant. He put his hand over his brow, and swayed on his feet.

“John, I feel poorly,” he said.

The next thing I knew, he was slumped on the deck, with the sextant lying beside him.

U
ncle Stanley,” I said. It scared me to see him stricken so suddenly, and I became a child again, shouting for help, nearly crying as I pushed at his shoulders.

He trembled at my touch, sloshing in his clothes like a bag of water, as though all his bones were disconnected. His skin was hot and clammy.

“Help!” I cried again, and Horn came running. Dasher was closer, but he stopped short a yard away.

“Lord, he's dead. He's hopped the twig,” he said.

Horn pushed him aside. He knelt beside me and ran his hands over the captain's chest, up his neck to his cheeks, to his forehead. He pried the lids from Butterfield's eyes, and I saw the whites underneath—only the whites—and gasped at the shock of it.

“Steady, John,” said Horn. “He's got the fever. That's all it is.”

“The fever!” cried Dasher. He covered his mouth with his hand, pinching his nostrils shut. “How did he get it out here?”

“He didn't,” said Horn. “It's been inside him since Luis Peña Cay.”

“We all might get it,” said Dasher through his fingers.

Horn shook his head. “Not you, and not young John. But the rest of us, aye. The ones who went ashore at Luis Peña Cay.”

“Did you go ashore?” I asked.

“I did,” said he. And his next words struck me dumb. “You're the master now, Mr. Spencer.”

By the evening, two other men had been sent down to their hammocks with the shakes and the chills. Apart from Dasher, only Horn and I and the oxlike Mudge were left to work the ship. And the wind was rising as the sun went down.

“Should we reef?” I asked.

“You're the master,” said Horn again.

“But should we?” I said. It was my childhood game, but played in earnest now. Horn annoyed me with his silence.

“Tell me,” I said.

He frowned at the sails. “Who can say, Mr. Spencer? If you reef, you slow the ship; if you don't, you gamble with the wind. It's a decision for the master, not a sailor.”

“Then we'll furl the main,” I said, “and carry on.”

“Aye, aye,” said Horn. He smiled. “That's just what I would do.”

Dasher steered as we wrestled with the canvas. With Horn on one side of the boom, Mudge and I on the other, we dropped the main in its lazy jacks. And the
Dragon
, stripped of her largest sail, ran before the wind from twilight into darkness.

I sent Mudge below and gave the watch to Horn. “I'll look in on the captain,” I said.

The lamp was burning low above my uncle's chart table. It swung and squeaked and tossed its shadows through the cabin. But after the darkness on deck, the room seemed full of light to me, and I saw the captain very clearly, wedged behind the weatherboard that had been put in place to keep him in his bunk. White fingers clutched at the edge. A white face stared over the top.

“Who are you?” he asked. His voice was small and frightened.

“It's me,” I said. “It's John.”

“John?” he asked. “Come closer, boy. Come closer.”

I squatted by the bunk. His hand crawled up from the board and seemed to feel at the air. I saw that every move was agony for him, and he closed his eyes as he groped to find my shoulder. I took his hand; it was hot as embers.

“I'm cold,” he said. “So cold.”

I pulled the blankets round him as I held his hand in mine. His hair was matted with sweat, tightened into little curls. His face was so drawn that I couldn't bear to look at it.

“Did you reef?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Don't worry.” I squeezed his hand and added, “She can handle her sails.”

I'd hoped to brighten him with our old game, but he was too far gone for that. “Of course she can,” he said. “She's a good ship. Just keep her running straight.”

“I will,” I said.

“And listen … listen, boy,” he said, as though my name escaped him. “See what Mr. Abbey's doing out there.”

“Out-where?” I asked.

“At the windows, boy. He's tapping at the windows.”

“He's not,” said I. “He's—”

“Quickly!”

I did as he asked; I saw no harm in it. I walked aft to the big stern windows, where the shadows of the lamp swayed across the curtains. I heard water rushing past the rudder and under the counter, the creaking of the steering ropes, a faint moan of wind through the rigging and the woodwork. The curtains shifted as the
Dragon
moved, and their weighted hems ticked and tapped against the windowpanes.

“Oh, bring him in,” said Butterfield.

I reached out to draw the curtains apart. And despite myself, I felt a twinge of fear. The fancy struck me that I
would
see Abbey there, his shroud falling off him, his bloated face grinning through the glass.

“Hurry,” said my uncle.

I snatched the curtains open. There was nothing there but the sea, a great darkness broken by ghostly swirls in the
Dragons
wake. A light splatter of spray fell across the glass. I turned the latch and pushed the windows open.

The wind came in, gusting at the curtains. It whirled through the cabin and breathed against the lamp until the flame grew large, then small. I smelled the salt water and a trace of the land far behind us. Then Butterfield said, “There, that's better. Where have you been, Mr. Abbey?”

I closed the windows and turned around. Butterfield had risen to his elbow and was staring off into the shadows by the bunk. “You're so wet, so white, Mr. Abbey.”

It sent shivers through me to hear the captain talking to a dead man. I tried to soothe him again, but he only waved me off. “Leave us, boy,” he said.

I went straight to my cabin, but sleep escaped me. The motions of the
Dragon
grew steadily worse until my bunk was like a seesaw. Above the sounds of the
Dragon
I heard the clanking of the buccaneer's chains from deep in the Cave. I heard Butterfield talking away, with long pauses between his sentences, and now a laugh and now an “Aye! That's right, Mr. Abbey.” Finally I dressed again and went wearily aloft.

Horn and Dasher both stood at the wheel. They leaned back, staring up, driving the ship—as she reared and plunged—like a pair of charioteers. Dasher's long coat flapped and tangled at the spokes.

The deck was a hill that I had to climb to reach them, then a slope that I staggered down. I grabbed the binnacle and stared at the compass. We were running south by east.

“I don't care for this,” said Dasher. “I don't care much for this at all.”

Horn smiled. “Oh, she'll do all right. It's only a squall.”

“And it's only a pond we have to cross,” said Dasher. “Lord love me, I'd rather be locked up in the madhouse right now. It's where I ought to be, I think.”

“And miss the sea?” asked Horn. “Miss the wind and the feel of a ship? Wouldn't you miss all that, my friend?”

“That's all I'd miss—the misses,” said Dasher. “But I'd still have idiots for company.”

The
Dragon
shuddered then, as the bow dug into the sea. I looked up at the straining topsail. “I'd like to reef,” I said.

“But how?” asked Horn. “Mudge down below, just you and I and a landsman on the deck.”

“Who's the landsman, then?” said Dasher. But he laughed. He made no bones about his calling, and never
shed his landsman's clothes—the boots and the flapping coat—nor the wineskins strapped tightly across his chest.

“There's Grace,” I said. “We could bring him from below.”

“No,” cried Horn, and for a moment his blue eyes burned. “Don't think of that, Mr. Spencer. He's like a witch, I tell you. If he's ever freed from those chains, if his feet ever touch this deck, he'll find a way to ruin us.”