The Pirates and the Nightmaker (2 page)

In the event, both Mr Wicker and I were wrong about the men putting the deed off until nightfall.

Their desperation could not, in the end, wait for darkness. It was in the late afternoon, when in the wake of some further hurried muttering, Jacob Stone once more rose to his feet.

However, this time, his concern was not with the horizon, his object was me.

Despite Captain Lightower’s increasingly urgent orders for him to sit down, Stone stood there crazed and determined, swaying from side to side, but, with the natural balance of a seaman, at no time in danger of toppling, nor of upsetting the boat. His sweat-striped face was reddened by the sun, and his shirt flapped in the light breeze as he reached beneath it for his dagger, which he now raised, stretching out sideways with his other arm to purchase balance. He stood there for several seconds, looking like a bird of prey, wings outstretched. The boat lurched with him as he swung a step towards us. Then he paused and looked balefully at the stranger.

‘Move aside,’ he said savagely. ‘My purpose is not with you.’

‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Mr Wicker, not at all intimidated by this, ‘for your manner is both threatening and foolish. However, since I have offered this boy shelter, your purpose
is
in fact with me.’

The stranger’s slightly amused calm stopped Jacob Stone in his tracks. However, his greater need soon took over and he lurched towards us raising the dagger as he did so. The boat, like a physical echo, lurched with him and all on board were rocked from side to side.

I flinched against the inevitable attack. The stranger, on the other hand, making no effort to shift from his sprawling position in the bow seat, simply glanced up with amusement, an amusement which now goaded Stone to fury.

In response Mr Wicker merely lifted a hand as if to remonstrate with the sailor.

However, the hand of Stone, by some miracle — I do not
know how — was, in that instant, turned into a hand of stone. And not just the hand, but the whole body of Stone was at that very moment frozen as if into a statue. He stood there, somehow transformed into marble, arm held back, hand clutching the dagger, expression fixed in a grimace of hatred; and then, because of his being utterly paralysed, he was unable to adjust to the pitch and roll of the boat, and slowly at first, but with gathering speed, he toppled off the boat and into the sea.

It was as if Jacob Stone had been transformed into his own name. He immediately slipped beneath the surface and was lost to view, and lost — there could be no doubt of this — to all earthly existence.

As I peered from behind the stranger, it looked to me for a moment as if the others had been turned to stone as well, for they sat stunned, as if what they had witnessed had, like the gorgon’s stare, petrified them.

The first person to break this ghastly silence was my master who, no doubt emboldened by the rum, all at once shouted, ‘Man overboard!’

And as if that were a signal of release, the other men rose, heedless of the risk, and rushed to the port side where Stone had disappeared. The boat swayed dangerously with this stampede while the captain roared ineffectually at them to stop.

There was nothing to see. Not even a bubble rose to the surface. The blue-green water sparkled in the sunlight. It was as if a glittering curtain had been drawn across the final act.

Wonderingly, nervously, the men retreated to their places
in the boat. I do not think that they were responding to the barking of the captain. I believe it was because they had witnessed something strange, mysterious and frightening, something that had been caused by the raised hand of the stranger, a person who himself became suddenly mysterious and frightening.

I didn’t know what to think.

I had considered the man was suffering from too much sun.

How could he, simply by raising a hand, turn a man to stone?

Perhaps the oddest thing of all was the stranger’s own reaction or, rather, lack of reaction. While the others on board were gazing at him with fear and horror, he merely settled back in his seat in the prow, turned to me, and remarked, ‘Isn’t it peculiar? I imagine it won’t be long before he who thought he was about to feed is about to be fed upon.’

I understood what he meant and shuddered.

‘I imagine, too,’ he murmured, ‘that the sharks will recognise one of their own and like Stone himself, have no scruples about devouring a fellow creature.’

This cold-blooded meditation chilled me and I could not help but imagine the picture he was drawing.

The stranger glanced towards the stern of the boat. With Stone gone, there was an even wider gap between the two of us in the prow and the other men. The recent events had silenced them and, for the time being, put an end to the famished gazes. The stranger turned to me and whispered,
‘They are sufficiently cowed for the moment and Stone has bought us some time. I don’t really think any of these craven curs will attempt to follow his example, at least not until their desperation drives them to forget.’

I gave him a tight little smile of gratitude. It was like a shepherd thanking a tiger who had chased a dog from his flock.

‘However,’ he added, ‘I must say I am sore sick of this heat, this blasted boat and its crew.’

I agreed. I was sore sick of it as well. I was sore sick of everything.

‘So,’ said the stranger. ‘I must call upon your assistance little Loblolly Boy. You must help me out of this …’

Once again, I felt the sun must be getting to him, that he was possessed by some tropic madness. All the same, there was a nagging doubt pecking at me. I had already seen that this stranger, this Mr Wicker, did have — what did he call them? —
certain abilities
. Truly, with these
abilities
he had stopped Master Stone in his tracks, had petrified the man merely by raising a hand. I had never known such magic. Was he capable of more?

I was soon to discover.

It was the year 1740 when, through the good offices of a seafaring relation who had been a shipmate of my father, my widowed mother was hoping to have me articled as an apprentice to a ship’s surgeon in the king’s navy. My father had been a kind of navy man. He had sailed on the ships that worked their way down the coast carrying coal from Newcastle to Portsmouth. I never knew him. Somewhere off Grimsby he had been lost at sea in a storm. I was only a small boy at the time.

I suppose you could say then that the sea was in my blood. Portsmouth, our home, was a great naval port and I would haunt the island and the docks getting to know the tall ships. I loved it especially when they headed out to open water under full rigging and with all flags flying.

I had hoped one day to become a midshipman, perhaps, and rise through the ranks to be a great seaman and an officer like Admiral Vernon, but I was too young, too small, and Uncle Jack’s influence was not really powerful enough for that. However, my size seemed to be an advantage as a
ship’s surgeon’s mate, although I was soon to discover that even ship’s surgeon’s mate was too exalted a title for what I was to be.

I was not even to be an articled apprentice.

I was to be a loblolly boy.

‘You’ll do,’ said Dr Hatch, looking me up and down as if I were a chicken at the market.

We were in a tavern not far from the docks: my mother, Uncle Jack, Dr Hatch and me. My mother and the two men sat at benches, the men with long pipes and tankards of ale in front of them. My mother sat opposite her cousin and the doctor, and I stood at her shoulder. As I’ve said, I was not yet grown. Even when she was sitting, I barely reached my mother’s bonnet.

‘But what
will
he do?’ asked my mother.

Dr Hatch was a tall thin man with long thin fingers. His face was creased, red and veined, I thought then from the weather but I know now from the drink. He was wearing a blue navy jacket, white uniform trousers, grubby white stockings and an ill-fitting grey periwig which he often had to adjust as it would slip to one side.

‘Do, madam?’

Dr Hatch, took a deep draught of his ale, brushed foam from his mouth and moustache with the back of his hand, and said, ‘All manner of things, madam. I expect him to wipe up, clean up, sup up and shut up — that’s about the here and now of it.’

‘Wipe up?’ asked my mother.

‘Wipe up,’ said the doctor, giving me a leering grin, ‘the
usual spew, spit, blood and gore, and of course faces and arses and all in between!’

‘Mister Hatch!’ protested my mother.

‘He’d better get accustomed to it, madam,’ said the doctor, ‘for he’ll be wiping up the real thing, not the words. Then of course he’ll deliver the gruel and where necessary spoon it down their throats, and do the same with a wooden peg and rum in the event of any surgical work as might become necessary.’

To hammer his point home, the doctor mimed his sawing technique, and my mother put her hand to her mouth.

‘Goodness, Doctor Hatch,’ she whispered, ‘but you think my Jeremy …’

‘Make a man of him, madam,’ said Dr Hatch, tipping a wink at Uncle Jack. ‘He’ll grow up, I’ll warrant, before you’ll know it.’

Before my mother knew it, too, everything was settled and I was signed, sealed and delivered to the doctor. Within a day, in fact, I found myself walking up the gangplank and onto His Majesty’s Ship, the
Firefly
, my bundle over my shoulder.

Portsmouth was in a flurry at that time with the war over poor Captain Jenkin’s ear. King George had despatched Admiral Vernon and his fleet to the West Indies to bloody as many Spanish noses as possible for their insult at cutting off the ear of an innocent English sailor and telling him to take it to his king. It was an act of typical Spanish brutality and the need for revenge stirred every loyal, warm-blooded Englishman with a heart of oak.

The
Firefly
was to follow the fleet and join with a small flotilla in Kingston, Jamaica, and then take the war to the Spaniards. I felt my own heart grow stout at the prospect and my blood stir too. I hoped my courage would not fail me and that whatever happened I would bring credit to my mother and the memory of my father.

The drunken Dr Hatch quickly changed all that, and my one brief interview with Captain Lightower chilled my blood.

‘Where on earth did you find this undersized pup, Hatch?’ he asked, when the doctor sought leave to show me to the captain.

‘Portsmouth Town, sir,’ said Hatch. ‘I’ll grant you he’s small, but he’ll not take up much room and he’ll not be needing much in the way of victuals, I’ll warrant.’

The captain grunted, looking at me again with undisguised contempt. ‘Be that as it may, Hatch, he’ll have a job to do, a man’s job, and he does not look of a size to do it.’

‘Oh, he’ll do it, Captain. There are ways and there are ways.’

‘There’s only one way, Hatch,’ said the captain, ‘and it has nine tails.’

I paled. He meant the cat-of-nine-tails. I had been switched often enough by my mother when I was smaller, and even when I was not so small. But I had heard hideous stories of the cat-of-nine-tails from Uncle Jack. A flogging with it would take the flesh from your back; a severe flogging could kill you.

‘Take him away then,’ added the captain, ‘and don’t let
me see him again. On your shoulders be it.’

The captain turned and strode away without even waiting for the doctor’s hurried ‘Your servant, sir,’ and I was led off.

We had been on the quarterdeck, the only time I would be permitted there, and as I followed the doctor I noticed that a tall man in a black greatcoat had just reached the top of the gangplank and was approaching the captain. As a porter followed him carrying a cabin trunk, it appeared the tall man would be sailing with us. This seemed a little odd to me as the man did not look as if he was a sailor. I desperately wanted to ask the doctor about him, but I had learnt already that as far as my master was concerned I was only to talk when spoken to, and that to ask questions out of turn would result in a box around the ears for an answer.

So I had to be content with a curious glance. That was enough to confirm that the man moved with an air of great authority and that the expression on his face was dark and brooding. I wondered what he was doing on such a ship as ours. Perhaps he was an agent of the king, for he did look a gentleman and somebody of wealth and importance.

But there was no time for any more than this brief examination, for I must follow my master and not dawdle. Dawdling too was a sin worth a box around the ears, one of an already long and growing list.

I soon discovered why the doctor was happy to have such a small boy as his assistant. It was my fate to have to share his small cabin where I had been given not a hammock but a narrow straw mattress to sleep on. I had thought
that I might have had to berth in the tween decks with the other sailors, but I must share with my master. He (and I with him, I discovered) was one of a small company on board who were not required to stand watch and were thus regarded as idlers.

That was perhaps the only advantage that came to me by way of dossing with my master. There were disadvantages aplenty. He was, I soon found out, much given to gin and to rum and had a large store of this last for ‘medicinal purposes’. He did not water the rum into grog either, but drank it direct, often enough straight from the bottle, believing the time and effort needed to pour it into a mug an unnecessary interruption to the main purpose. With some men, I know, and women too I’ll warrant, drink makes them merry, given to song and good-fellow-feeling. My new master, unfortunately, was one of those whose already sour temper was made sourer, more vicious, and I suffered sorely as a result.

Then again, the drink made him snore and led him into nightmares in which he moaned, groaned and cried piteously through the night. I lay beneath his swaying hammock, my hands clenched over my ears, through endless hours of snoring, roaring and sudden fearful yelps.

I could not imagine how my world would be when the
Firefly
left port and tossed and pitched itself across the vast Atlantic Ocean. Departure would not be long off, that was certain. The provisions for the journey were piling into the holds and most of the company was already on board.

I was shown to the cook from whom I would fetch the
gruel and porridge if and when we had a patient to tend to. The cook, Mr Meek, was also an idler, and proved it by giving me a shallow copper cannikin, a ladle and a small sack of oatmeal to take with me back to the doctor’s cabin aft.

‘How will I cook it?’ I asked.

‘Do not bother,’ he said, ‘it won’t make much difference one way or the other.’

Dr Hatch showed me the great medicine chest, even unlocking it to reveal the store of numbered drugs and potions. ‘It’s simple,’ he said, ‘just remember the number I give you and if you lose the key you’ll search for it overboard.’

I swallowed and nodded. It was one of many dozens of things I would only have one chance to remember.

And then, all we were waiting for was the tide and a good wind.

Eventually, on a cold, crisp morning in early November, the tide was right and a fair wind blew. As if to prove he was not utterly a tyrant, my master allowed me onto the upper deck to watch as the moorings were cast off. I looked over the gunwale to the wharf, and to my great surprise saw my mother wrapped in a black shawl, and Uncle Jack standing there. They must have heard news in the town that the
Firefly
was about to leave.

I saw them and waved. I could not shout because I felt too choked up. They saw me and waved back even as the ship was cast off and sailors were manning the yards to set sail.

I saw my mother wipe her eye, and with a last wave, I
rushed away to the other side of the ship before I gave way to tears.

Not long after, the
Firefly
was clearing the harbour and, shortly after that, heading out into the English Channel bound for the West Indies and I knew not what.