The Buccaneers (6 page)

“It's done,” he said.

“What's done?” I asked.

From behind his back he brought out a bottle, and a sight that made my knees feel weak. Inside, a little schooner heeled to a lively breeze. Black-hulled, white-winged, the
Dragon
flew through gouged-out waves.

T
he bottle glowed from the sun. Horn offered it to me, but I wouldn't take it. The curse of all his other ships suddenly seemed too real and too close. But neither could I look away. And the closer I studied his model, the more I saw that it wasn't right. The topsail was too big, the deck carved flush with only a small quarterdeck. The gaffs peaked higher than they ought to.

I said, “You've got it wrong.”

“I don't,” said Horn.

“The
Dragon
doesn't look like this,” said I.

“Well, it's not the
Dragon
, then.”

He sounded annoyed; I had hurt him with my-words. But I felt such a strange relief that I took the bottle and told him, “It's a fine little ship.”

“My last one,” said Horn. “That's just as she was when I left her.”

“The
Meridian Passage?”
I asked.

“No.” Softly, he added, “She was a packet.”

“And packets don't count,” I said, repeating his earlier phrase.

“They don't.” He reached for the bottle but I wouldn't give it up.

“What's her name?” I asked.

“You wouldn't know her,” said Horn.

“I might.”

“You wouldn't.” His hands moved fast as lightning as he snatched the bottle from me. “I shouldn't have shown you this.”

“Then why did you?” I asked, hurt by his tone.

“I thought we were shipmates,” said he.

“We are,” I cried.

“Then leave me in peace,” said Horn. His arms trembled; his fist squeezed the bottle. “That's what shipmates do. They don't badger each other like this.”

I couldn't understand his sudden mood. “I only asked the name of your ship.”

“Good day, Mr. Spencer,” he said with a snarl. He turned on his heels and stalked away.

“Wait!” I shouted, but he didn't stop. I sat for a while, confused by his outburst, trying to see what I'd done to offend him. I went back to the dory and scraped at its planks as I wondered how much I knew about Horn. Precious little, I soon saw—only that he'd set off in a lifeboat from a packet called
Meridian Passage
, and that he once had sailed on a ship that looked much like the
Dragon.
Then I thought of the young lieutenant who had asked about the ill-fated
Prudence.
“We thought you might be her,” he had said. “Until we saw that great beastie on your bow.”

I nodded to myself. The
Prudence
was a navy ship, and it
made sense that Horn had been in the navy. In the last nine months, after England and France signed their peace at Amiens, thousands of sailors had been turned ashore. Horn could have been among them, or even among the thousands of others who had stayed in the navy, for the peace had not seemed likely to last. There had been talk of another war long before the
Dragon
had departed a cold and wintry England for her voyage to the Indies.

Was it only a coincidence that the
Prudence
was reported lost just as Horn appeared in his lifeboat? His navy-built lifeboat? I felt as though I was getting close to the truth, but I had no time to think it out. Our holds were empty at last, and a man arrived just then to measure us for a new cargo.

He was blond and fat, sunburned to a red crisp on his face and his hands. He looked like a strawberry sitting in his boat. And he heaved himself up at the shrouds, gasping breaths through his nose. He called me “boy.” “Who's in charge here, boy?” he asked.

“I am,” I said.

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows, and the burnt skin on his forehead wrinkled. “And who are you?”

“John Spencer,” I said.

He grunted. “Are there any
men
about?”

“None who'd care to talk to you.” I didn't like the man at all.

For half an hour he paced through the holds with small and awkward steps. He carried a little red notebook, and a pencil stub that he licked over and over. The wind picked up, thick with its odors, before the
man climbed out again. He took a moment to catch his breath.

“Well, she's small,” he said, to himself more than to me. “But she'll do, I suppose.” He picked a bit of skin from his cheek. “You'll have to be fitted for it, of course, and you won't carry half as many as the
Island Lass
over there.”

With a small tilt of his head, he showed me where the
Island Lass
lay, and I turned to look, expecting to see a ship as pretty as her name. But I found instead the one that had arrived with the stench and ghastly moans.

“The
Lass
carries nearly a thousand, but I'll tell you, boy …” His lips moved as he read his numbers, loading the ship in his mind. “You might get two hundred in your little hold. A hundred in the fo'c's'le.”

“A hundred what?” I asked.

He looked at me as though I were stupid. “Slaves,” he said.

“People?” I asked.

“Slaves,” said he, as though there were a difference.

The
Dragon's
fo'c's'le was crowded with just our crew of eight. “How do you put a hundred people in there?” I asked.

“End to end,” he said. “In layers, boy. Pencils in a box.”

“They'd suffocate,” I said.

He sniffed. “Maybe two in ten.”

I thought of the
Dragon
stuffed with men and women, the howls that would come from the hatches. “Get off,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Get off my ship. Now.” I was livid, disgusted just by the sight of the sunburned man. “If I were bigger, I would throw you off,” I said.

He blinked at me, peeled-away skin flapping like doubled eyelids. “Now, boy,” he said, unruffled. “You need a cargo.”

“Not a human one,” said I. “I'll carry sugar, but I'll have no part in slavery.”

“And who do you think cuts the canes, boy? Who do you think loads the ship but slaves?” He smiled at me. “Whatever you do, boy, you'll be a part of it.”

“Then we'll take
no
cargo,” I said.

He laughed at the idea, at my foolishness. “Come, come, boy. You don't make money that way.”

“And I won't make money
your
way,” said I. I drove him from the deck like a great, fat pig and gave him a push to help him over the side. With a squeal he tumbled down to his waiting boat. When I looked away, Abbey was behind me, and he was grinning.

“Good for you,” he said. “Good for you, young John.”

News of what I'd done spread like a plague through Kingston. When Captain Butterfield came back to the
Dragon
in late afternoon, he knew every detail of it.

“So we're sailing empty,” he said. “All the way to Trinidad. Without so much as a ballast stone, is that right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Slaves loaded ballast stones.

He tried to scowl, but I could see humor in his eyes. “Well, you're as hotheaded as you always were,” he said. “As stubborn as your father. But I'll stand by your guns, John, if that's what you want.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We weighed anchor before the day had ended, passed the English fleet, and headed out to sea. Then we turned to the east and beat our way into the trades. With no cargo, with the guns on her deck, the
Dragon
was more like a boat than a ship. She lay to one side and then to the other, soaked in showers of spray. But the wind was crisp and clean, and I reveled in the change.

Jamaica fell astern; Hispaniola rose ahead. And for three wonderful days we followed its shore in a friendly current, as pelicans passed like flocks of flying clowns and dolphins leapt all around us. The sails never needed tending, and the men lounged on the deck while I picked away at the little dory's crust. Bits of weed and flakes of white flurried away from my fingers as I worked forward from the spade-shaped transom. I had bared the paint for nearly half her length when Horn came and sat beside me. He took out his knife and started working.

He pressed hard with his blade. It squealed along the wood, lifting a whole strip of growth
and
the paint along with it. “You want to get right down to the planks,” he said. “A fresh coat of paint and start anew, that's what you want.”

“But I hoped to keep her the way she was,” I said.

“No, you don't want that,” he told me. “You have to lift all the old paint. Every speck.”

I didn't see why. My knife kept scraping, lifting the crust of sea growth, leaving the paint undisturbed. I saw splotches of black on top of the white and knew I was looking at ghosts of old letters, at the name of the ship still borne on her dory. I picked away, baring a letter, baring another.

“Scrape harder,” said Horn. He elbowed in where I had been and scraped off all the paint, and the shadows of the letters. “Harder, I tell you.” He worked so frantically that his knife nearly took off my fingers. The weeds and the paint flew in a flurry, and the ghostly letters appeared and vanished as his blade flashed along the planks.

“Stop!” I shouted. I pushed at his arm, then brushed away the dried weeds, the flakes of paint. Then I stared in shock at the dory's planks, suddenly knowing why Horn had come to help, why he had tried to scrape off all the paint, why he had never wanted that dory brought aboard at all.

I knew it all, and I glared at Horn.

“It's not what you think,” he said.

“Where's the captain?” I asked, turning around.

Horn grabbed my shoulder. “Listen, Mr. Spencer. Let me tell you.”

“You knew that ship and her crew of mummies,” I said. “As soon as you saw her, you knew. You looked back at me because you wondered how much I knew myself.”

“No,” said Horn. “You don't understand.”

He tried to hold me down, but I twisted away, shouting for the captain. In my excitement I cried, “Uncle Stanley!” and faces looked up at the sound of a name they'd never heard, that I hadn't used myself in ten years or more.

Horn had me in his grasp, my wrist in one hand, his knife in the other. But he argued no more, and didn't try to stop me from pulling away. He only bowed his head, let go of my wrist, and put his hand to my brow.

Butterfield ran down from the quarterdeck. Mr. Abbey came too, drawn like a shark by the sudden commotion, by any sign of an attack upon Horn. They came and stared at the dory, at the name on her side, the remains of the letters that once had spelled
Meridian Passage.

S
o that was
your
ship we found,” said Butterfield, glaring at Horn. “Your
sunken
ship adrift on the ocean.”

“Sir, I said I
believed
she sank,” said Horn. “I never said she did.”

“And you never said that her men had been murdered. That they'd been triced to the rigging like slaughtered sheep.”

“Because I didn't know,” said Horn.

“You were on her,” snapped Butterfield.

“I wasn't,” said Horn. “And I never claimed that I was.”

Abbey almost danced a jig. “Spin us another!” he shouted.

“Won't you listen?” said Horn. His great arms bulged as he tightened his fists. “I saw her at sea, and I gave you her name because I couldn't tell you what ship I was really from.”

“And which was that?” asked Butterfield.

Horn's face twisted into something like agony. Then he sighed and said, “The
Prudence
.”

“Oh, there's a lovely yarn.” Abbey shrieked with his
cackling laughter. “He gets caught in his lie and tells us another. He gives us the name of the only ship we can never find to prove him wrong.”

Horn glared at the gunner. “What are you saying?” he asked.

It was I who answered. “She's lost,” I said. “The
Prudence
has vanished.”

“No,” said Horn. His brow was deeply wrinkled. “That can't be true.”

“Well, it is,” cried Abbey. “And you knew it already.”

I sided-with Horn. “No he didn't,” I said.

Horn had been in the rigging when the young lieutenant had come with the news of the missing
Prudence.
He couldn't possibly have known. Then I thought of his ship in the bottle. “That was the
Prudence
you showed me,” I said.

Horn nodded, still frowning. “She can't be lost already. There must be some mistake.”

“You're
the mistake,” shouted Abbey.

Horn ignored him. He spoke only to me. “It's too soon, John. They're never lost before I make the model.”

“You sound as though you meant it to happen,” I said.

“The pattern. It's according to the pattern.” He seemed confused, then quietly angry. “Well, I hope it's true. I hope she's gone, and that devil's gone with her.”

“What devil?” I asked.

He said the name slowly, with a hiss like a snake's. “Bartholomew Grace.”

Abbey laughed. “He's spinning yarn!”

“I'm not.” Horn raised his fists together, not to strike the gunner but to plead to the captain. “Sir, it's the God's truth,”

He said, and I could see that it was. No man in the world could lie as convincingly as that.

Butterfield, too, seemed to accept it. “So the
Prudence
is lost?”

“I don't know,” said Horn, in an anguished voice. “She was fit and healthy when I left her.”

“Then why did you choose to leave her?”

“It wasn't by choice,” he said.

“Good God!” the captain roared. “Must you always spin tales?”

Abbey was delighted, but Horn sounded desperate. “Every word is the truth,” he said. “I swear it.”

“Then how do you explain that dory?”

Horn looked down at the boat. We all did the same, standing beside it like mourners by a casket. It was a long time before Horn spoke. “It's complicated,” he said.

Butterfield sighed. For the second time in our voyage I went below with him and Horn, to hear a story as wild as any. We went to the stern cabin, now bright and airy with its open windows, and the captain and I sat at the table like judges at a trial. Horn stood before us, not under the skylight but below the beams, where his height was greater than the overhead. His bent neck and bowed shoulders made him seem small and meek.