The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) (21 page)

At X’s signal three of the rowers stopped and repositioned themselves so that Quid could take an oar in each hand and continue as the only rower. The first set of oarlocks had already been muffled with rags. Quid’s tattooed scalp glowed in the moonlight, the checkerboard pattern glimmering.

Quid steered the jolly boat toward the bow of the
Port Royal,
its anchor end, the cable drawn tight as the ebbing tide tried its best to pull the ship farther out to sea. Kitto stole a quick look behind him and saw that all the men but X had drawn pistols and rifles. Pelota and the pirate named Coop bit down on dagger blades. X held up the spyglass, scanning the deck as best he could for sign of a watch.

“Sleep, you lazy dog,” X whispered aloud. “There is nothing on the island to notice. And if you look out, it is to the sea you must look.
Oui, oui, oui.
Seaward, and not to starboard.”

They drew closer. Kitto chewed the inside of his lip,
his stomach doing flips now, and assessed the grim faces of the men around him. Van shook a fist to him, as if to bolster him. Ontoquas withdrew from her sash her straightest arrow and nocked it on the string. X motioned to the ship behind them to stay toward the bows.

X must have seen someone!
Kitto swallowed back his fear and tried to read X’s face for some indication, but the pirate’s pinched eyes revealed nothing.
Dear Lord, I will do anything. Anything.
Kitto wondered if God would still listen to him after what Kitto had done.

Know my heart, dear Lord. Please know my heart.

The hulking shadow of the ship loomed before them with a suddenness that made Kitto catch his breath. It seemed to glower down at them. Quid had steered expertly between the ship’s hull and the taut anchor cable, so that the jolly boat lay in deep shadow from the moon that now hovered in the northwestern sky.

Van stood and took the cable in his hands, holding the boat steady. Kitto reached toward the hull on the opposite side, making sure to keep the jolly boat clear from banging up against the oak planks.

From the stern Pelota rose and made his way soundlessly past X and Quid, the spine of a large dagger still clenched in his teeth. A coil of rope wrapped about his shoulders. Kitto recognized the black metal contraptions attached to the ends—grappling hooks. Pelota maneuvered around Van and took the cable in his hands. Kitto watched Pelota look back to X. The captain scanned the towering ship above them. He nodded to the young man.

Kitto remembered how difficult it had been for him to scale the anchor cable in Cape Verde. Pelota made it look as easy as climbing the ratlines. In just a few seconds he had reached the hawsehole. Setting the point of one hook against the wood, Pelota managed to flip himself upward so that he straddled the line, riding it like a horse. He set the hook higher up into the wood, taking the time to embed it well. Kitto blinked in astonishment to see that Pelota had managed to stand up on the cable, and just a few seconds later he had disappeared over the rail.

They waited, all of them, shrouded in shadow.

Ontoquas stood. The arrow she had nocked she removed and put between her teeth. She slipped her bow over her head and turned toward Van, who gave her a questioning look. X pointed with authority back at her seat, but Ontoquas paid him no heed. Then, without any signal and in blatant disregard of the plan that X had set out for them back on the island, Ontoquas sprang up and took hold of the cable.

No!
Kitto thought.
Let them do it. Do not take the risk!

Ontoquas did not pause to consider her actions, but climbed up with even greater agility than had Pelota, dodging a weak attempt by X to lay hands on her. She scaled the cable, and in a moment she was over the rail.

Morris slipped out of the hammock his men had strung for him between two palm trees overlooking the beach. He gave a perfunctory check on Spider huddled in the
hammock nearby, seeing only that the movements of his chest indicated he still lived. The cauterization had been messy work. It took three men to hold Spider down when the surgeon took the blazing iron to him. Spider had raved madly, talking all sorts of gibberish.

And why had he mentioned Exquemelin?
Morris wondered.
A guilty conscience perhaps?
he thought.
No, not from Spider. Just made insensible from the pain.
Morris had seen others do no less.

But it was not concern for Spider’s health that roused Morris from a restless sleep. He was there, on the island, and yet he did not have either treasure: neither the barrels of nutmeg, nor the fabulous riches from the
Santa Tristima
. Ah, the gold, the jewels, the handcrafted gold crucifixes. An incredible haul he had stumbled upon that day in the jungle while secreting off the nutmeg, only to have it and the nutmeg—and nearly his life—stolen from him by William Quick.

Had Quick time to peruse the treasure? Morris was sure he had, although Quick had not mentioned it when he had taken him and what remained of his crew into his custody. Would Quick know that Henry Morgan himself did not know about the second treasure?

William Quick must hang. Quickly. Before he comes out of his dazed stupor of loss and reveals all to Morgan.
Morris knew that if Morgan found out about his attempted treachery, his life would be in peril.

Morris stepped down onto the loose sand of the beach, noting his uneven shadow cast upon the rippling sands.

Would both treasures truly be in the cave, as William Quick had attested? Surely the man could not have been lying. He had nothing left for treachery. Morris allowed himself a small smile and sigh of pleasure as he made his way down to the beach. Seeing Quick so miserable was a pleasure he thought he might never enjoy.

But still his hands were empty, and until they cupped the riches he sensed must be tantalizingly close, sleep would not come.

“Anything I can get you, Captain?” Morris glared at the man who approached him. Hardly was he a man in fact, having just enjoyed his nineteenth birthday before he set sail with Morris back in New York. “Flop,” they called him, a scant figure, lanky, who moved with the unease of a teenager. Morris knew nothing about him except that he was an excellent shot, better even than Spider.

“No. You are the watch this hour, ah . . . ?”

“Flop, sir. Aye, sir. On watch until Simpson relieves me.” Morris pointed away from him down the beach.

“Go that way,” he said. Flop recoiled in obvious fear, realizing he had erred by approaching the man.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Morris watched the young man go, mildly disgusted. A captain should not be disturbed. The boy was too green to know even that. Morris had been too kind to these men; he would be sure not to spare the cat-o’-nine-tails on the final leg back to Jamaica. He turned to his left where the cliffs rose that hid the cave.

My fortune is hidden inside that rock with some demon guarding it,
he thought.
No matter. I, too, can be a demon.
Morris turned to face the sea and produced a spyglass from his coat pocket. He lifted it to his eye and picked out the
Port Royal,
its three masts nearly aligned from his vantage. The bow of the ship faced him.

Morris snatched the spyglass away for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed them, and lifted the instrument again. He squatted down on his haunches and stared some more. He stood again.

For the first time in years, John Morris broke into a run.

O
ntoquas set her feet against the smooth planks of the ship’s fo’c’sle deck, her arrow again nocked. Pelota saw her the moment she came over the rail, and if he was unhappy to see her there, he did not show it. He walked from the midship, bent at the waist, staying in the deepest shadows possible.

When he reached the girl, he said nothing, but held up two fingers. Ontoquas nodded.
Two men at the watch.

Pelota left Ontoquas and moved to the rail she had come over. The coils of rope and hooks lay in a pile on the deck. Pelota worked at unwrapping the first rope while Ontoquas made her stance. She shot best kneeling, so she bent onto her right knee and set her left foot firmly. She stared down the dark ship.

Yes, she could hear it now: two men talking in low voices. A faint yellow light shone toward the stern and then was gone.
Lighting a pipe.

Pelota had set the first hook and tossed its line over the rail when they both heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Pelota scrambled for the shadows, and
Ontoquas slipped behind the black pillar of the foremast.

The fo’c’sle deck of the ship was reached by a set of stairs leading from the main deck. The heavy scrape of boots on the stairs told them all they needed to know. Pelota crouched low, the dagger in his hands. He reached out and grabbed Ontoquas by the arm to pull her back. She was closer to the approaching figure than was Pelota, but Ontoquas shrugged him off.

The man wore a black tricorne hat. It was the first detail of him she saw as it came into view with each step he made up the stairs. Two more steps and she could see he was slight of build, probably tall, and that he wore a white shirt. She could see nothing of his shadowed face.

Ontoquas pulled back farther on the string and sent a prayer up to the ancestors looking down on her. She could feel the brush of her thumb knuckle against her cheek, and her mind flashed to the first deer she had taken. Hunting with her father.

Three steps before the fo’c’sle deck the man stopped. He bent forward slightly. He had seen something, but Ontoquas was nearly certain that he had not picked her out of the shadows. A grunting sounded behind her, and she knew without turning that the first of the pirates had scaled the line, and had come up over the rail at the worst possible moment.

The man took one step closer, still uncertain of what he was seeing, but now Quid was throwing a leg over the rail, his tattooed scalp clear in the moonlight. The man gave out a startled cry, then turned and bolted down the
stairs before Ontoquas could release her arrow.

She ran forward and reached the top of the stairs just as the man was stepping off them, running madly toward the stern. Ontoquas raised her bow and released her grip on the string. The arrow whiffled through the dim glow of moonlight.

There was a muffled thump as the arrow struck, and then the man collapsed into dark shadow. Before Ontoquas even had time to consider what she had done, Pelota darted past her, bounding down the stairs in two strides. The steel of Pelota’s dagger glimmered in the moonlight, and Ontoquas turned away, not wanting to see what he did with it.

So turning, she found that she was looking directly toward shore a few hundred yards away. Clearly outlined in the moonlight she could see the shape of three boats leaving the beach, just having cleared the breaking waves at shore.

Van and Kitto were the last two left in the jolly boat. All the others had either scaled the ropes that Pelota had dangled, or came up the rope ladder that Quid had tossed over the starboard rail once Pelota had subdued the second sentry. Sarah had strapped Bucket to her torso with a long cloth she wrapped about her, and she huddled now with Ontoquas and the baby in the stern. Exquemelin paced about the deck barking orders. Silence was no longer necessary. The element of surprise had been lost, and they must make sail.