Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (48 page)

The time passes very quickly.

When spring comes, Higgins and I go back to Waterford to ready the
Emerald
for her next cruise. We need to get the victuals on board, fresh powder and water and countless other things.

It is not long after we get back that I find that I have lost a member of my crew. Ian McConnaughey has gone off to London, and he does not come back.
Good luck to you, Ian. You are a fine young man and we will miss you.

***

Now that I have a fixed address that I can use, I write a letter to Ezra Pickering, my good friend and lawyer back in the States.

Jacky Faber
On Board the Ship
Emerald,
Moored at Swett & Daggett's Wharf
Waterford, Ireland

Ezra Pickering, Esquire
Union Street
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Dearest Ezra,

I hope this letter finds you healthy and happy and that you prosper in your business. I know that you are just the best of lawyers, so you must be doing well.

Well, like that bad penny, here's Jacky Faber turning up again. And this time she's got a ship, if you can believe that! That's right, Ezra, I have a ship! She's named the
Emerald
and she's one hundred and ten feet long, thirty feet in the beam, displaces two hundred and fifty tons, has a crew of thirty-nine, counting me, and is absolutely the most beautiful and graceful thing I have ever seen. Please enter her onto the books as an asset of Faber Shipping, Worldwide, and register her as American, since our company is based in Boston.

It is rather a long story as to how I got the
Emerald
and I would rather tell it to you over a couple of pints down at the good old Pig and Whistle. For now, suffice it to say that I have managed to get a Letter of Marque from the British Admiralty
and have used the ship as a privateer to seize some very good prizes.

I have made a lot of money, and I have put some of it to use in setting up an orphanage and school in my old neighborhood of Cheapside in London. Knowing my past as you do, you will understand why I would do that. Should you wish to write to me, address me there:

The London Home for Little Wanderers
24 Brideshead Lane
London, England

We sail soon to resume our raiding, but letters sent to me there will eventually get to me.

My funds are in the Bank of England and my lawyer here is a Mr. Worden of Newgate Street, London. Should you ever recover my money from Mistress Pimm, please forward it to Mr. Worden, as he is in charge of finances for the Home.

If you continue to see Miss Amy Trevelyne and she allows you to speak of me, please tell her that her book has made me go right famous in the nautical world and I wish her joy and success in that book and anything she might write in the future—I just hope it's not about me next time. I think I'm about as famous as I need to get. I know, though, that it is not likely she will do anything connected with me, it being that I brought disgrace to her and her family. I hope that she does not still hate me, but when I think back on how she betrayed me to Preacher Mather's men, I despair in that hope—not that I didn't have it coming, I mean. I generally do have it coming.

Anyway, give her my greetings, for what they're worth.

Thank you, Ezra, for all you have done for me in the past and I hope to see you soon. Maybe when this war is over I will
turn my ship to the transatlantic trade, and then I will see you often.

Until then, I remain,

Your Dearest Friend and Most Devoted Servant,
Jacky

We will go again to the coast of France, where last year we found the best pickings. If the pickings are scant, then we will head south to bother the Spaniards again, maybe even venturing into the Mediterranean, if we have to.

It will be good to get back to sea after the long winter, to feel the roll of the waves slipping under the
Emerald's
keel again, to once more look up at the white of the sails against the blue of the sky. It is good for a sailor to be at sea, for on shore we get soft.

It will be good to get back, too, for now I've an orphanage to maintain.

The Emerald could not be in better form, every sail tight, every line humming, as the good ship fairly rips along, the bow lifting and then crashing down into the waves to send spray over the fo'c'sle and into my face. Ah, it is good to be standing in my usual spot on the quarterdeck, the wind in my hair and my long glass under my arm, one booted foot on either side of the centerline, the better to feel the action of my beautiful ship.

"On deck there! Sail off port quarter!"

Ha!

Yes, it's good to be back.

And we did roam the sea, that spring and summer of 1805, a sleek, green, waterborne wolf on the prowl. We roamed and raided and plundered and sang and danced and roamed and raided some more. We began in our old hunting grounds and bagged us a few fat prizes, but the French soon grew wary and we headed south to bother the Spaniards again. When that grew tame, we became bolder as we pushed on into the Mediterranean and lurked around the Spanish ports and nailed ships coming out of their harbors and we sold them in Algiers, where no questions were ever asked. We pushed up to the east coast of France, to Nice, to Marseilles, and made many a captain sorry he had ever set sail and crossed our wake. We rocked and rolled across the waves, we chased ships and we caught them, and other ships chased us, but they never caught the
Emerald,
oh no, not my fast and nimble
Emerald.
We went to Italy, to Malta, and Corsica, and we changed our flag at the masthead from the British Union Jack to the American Stars and Stripes and, yes, even to the Jolly Roger, himself, anytime it suited us. We plundered the north coast of Africa and when things got too hot for us, we crossed the big pond and went to the Caribbean and came back with more Spanish gold. We drank and danced and caroused in ports from Kingston to Saint Vincent, from Palma to Naples, from Rome to Palermo, from Gibraltar to Cork.

In short, we prospered.

When September came we headed back to the west coast of France, from whence we had started. We prowled but came up with nothing. Then, when we were about to give it up, there came that welcome call from the masthead:

"On deck there! A ship! Off the starboard bow! A merchant by the looks of her!"

"Let's get her, Liam," I shout as I run to the rail to gloat over my next prize. "Higgins! My sword!"

We run her down without too much trouble and soon are aboard. The passengers are lined up on the deck, most of them, as usual, quivering with fear.

Most, but not all. One of them is definitely
not
scared. She is a little old woman, very much bent with age, but looking at me with such pure and unabashed hatred that I almost have to look away. Curiously, she has a rolled-up newspaper under her arm.

"Now,
grand-mere,
" I say in French, "there's no need to be afraid. We don't rob passengers of their personal things and we will not hurt you."

"Don't give me that
grand-mere
stuff, you piece of filth!" she snarls at me in accented English. "You, you take our boat, you take our life! We were only trying to get our tulips to market."

"All right now, Granny," says Padraic, taking her arm and leading her to the boat. She rips her arm out of his grasp and points the newspaper at my nose. I think she might even try to swat me with it.

"They're going to catch you and put you up on the gallows, you damned pirate! And I hope you twist a good long time before you go off to Hell!"

I put my sword back in its sheath and cross my arms over my chest. "But won't the French prefer to use the guillotine if they happen to catch me,
n'est ce pas?
" I say with a wide grin. "But, as the famous recipe for rabbit stew goes, 'First, catch the rabbit...'"

"The French? It won't be the French, it will be the English! Your own people will kill you,
chienne,
and then you won't be laughing."

I know the meaning of the things she is calling me and I am growing weary of this game. "Get them in the boat," I say to Padraic and turn to Liam. "What's in the cargo?"

"Tulip bulbs. Tons of tulip bulbs."

"Ah, good," I say and mean it. Tulips are the very rage of London.

But it seems the old woman is not yet done. "Here,
putain,
" she spits, and flings the newspaper at my feet. "Read your doom."

I am now
very
tired of this old woman. "Get her gone," I say to Padraic, and he hustles her off, spitting and cursing.

Carelessly, I pick up the paper and glance at it. I'm surprised to see that it is a London paper,
Lloyd's List and Shipping Gazette,
and only about two weeks out of date. The
Gazette
is full of nautical news—merchant ship departures and arrivals and such, and it also has news concerning the Royal Navy, promotions, sailings, policy, and the like. It's read religiously by Naval officers to keep an eye on who's getting ahead and who ain't. I look over an account of Lord Nelson chasing the French and Spanish Fleet to the Caribbean and back ... and Captain Locke has been made a Vice Admiral and that cheers me—
Good Captain Locke! I wish you the joy of your Flag, Sir.
And then my eye gets to the bottom of the page, and...

Good Lord!

"Liam! Get the men back on board! All of them!" I shout.

"But what of the prize?" asks Liam, looking confused.

"To Hell with it! Cast it off! Let them go!"

"What..."

"We have been betrayed. We've got to get out of here, fast!" I leap back on board the
Emerald.
"All men aloft! Make all sail! Liam! In my cabin!"

The men, mystified, do what I say, and the ships begin to drift apart. I see the old woman, in command of her boat again, standing with feet apart on her deck, fists on hips, laughing. "Run,
saloup,
run for your worthless life!"

Liam and I pile into my cabin and I tell him what the paper says.

"But what of your Letter of Marque?" he asks, "Surely..."

"Worthless, now," I growl. "Gather the men."

Liam leaves the cabin and I hand the paper to a mystified Higgins. He reads it and looks up, greatly concerned. "We'll have to get lawyers on this," he says.

"First, we have to get away, then we'll see about lawyers," I say and go out on deck. The men have assembled and I read out the notice posted in the
Gazette:

AN ORDER TO ALL OF HIS MAJESTY'S SHIPS:
A Warrant is hereby issued for the arrest and containment
of one Jacky Faber, a Female, and her crew aboard a ship
calling itself the
Emerald,
this ship having been taken
unlawfully from His Majesty's Prize Court by said Female.
She has in her possession a Letter of Marque that was
obtained under Fraudulent Circumstances and has been
revoked by Order of The First Lord of the Admiralty. She
has been seen harrying ships in and about the Channel.
She is to be considered a Dangerous Pyrate, and a
reward is offered for her Capture:
Alive, Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds Sterling.
Dead, One Hundred Pounds.
Either she, or her Head, is to be delivered to the
Admiralty for trial or disposition.

The men stand stunned when I am done. There is more to the notice—a description of me right down to size, weight, scars, and tattoo, but I don't bother to read that.

Then the rumbling starts ...
Damned two-faced English bastards ... too good to be true, I knew it all along ... try to take our Jacky, will they ... over my dead body...

"Men," I shout, "we have to keep calm, and we've got to keep our wits about us, but most of all we've got to get out of here and away from the English fleet. When we've got some sea room, we'll have some time to think about what we're going to do. As for now, bend on all the canvas we've got—skysails, scudders, anything she'll hold!"

She will hold quite a lot of sail, it seems, for even as I shout the order, the wind dies and the sails hang limp and there we sit, becalmed, not twenty miles from the British fleet on the blockade, every one of them now knowing that my ship is a pirate and that there is a price upon my head.

Lieutenant James Emerson Fletcher
On Board HMS
Wolverine
On Patrol off the Coast of France
September 23, 1805

Dearest Jacky,

If ever I had thought that news of you, my wild lost girl, would always be a welcome thing, I was dead wrong. Today we received a message from the Flag informing the entire fleet that there is a price on the head of one Jacky Faber, Female Outlaw and Pirate, and that she is to be hunted down and destroyed with all dispatch.

It seems that when you were, incredibly, in command of the
Wolverine,
you took four French ships as prizes but turned in only three of them to the Admiralty. How clever of you, but then you were always oh so very clever, weren't you? You have certainly outdone yourself this time, though—a ship, Jacky, an entire ship! How could even one such as you, willful, headstrong, reckless, and wildly impulsive as you are, have thought you would get away with something like that? Did you not
think that the Admiralty would eventually find out about your deception? Did you not think the First Lord could do simple math? And piracy to boot, my God ... I choose not to believe the
Belle Fille sans Merci
stories, for I know you to have a good heart and could not have done those things. But the taking of prizes on very shaky grounds, well, I have no choice but to believe that, as it is so widely reported.

Could you not have just quietly gone back to school or to some other worthy and peaceful pursuit after leaving the
Wolverine,
having already had many more adventures than any man has in a lifetime, let alone a girl of your tender years? No, I suppose not...

Oh yes, and the sum of Two Hundred and Fifty Pounds is offered for your head, if that stupid head is still attached to the rest of you; One Hundred Pounds, if it is not. Interesting, that—apparently the Admiralty would like to talk to you before they hang you, but they will take the head either way, it seems. Two hundred and fifty pounds is a princely sum. I am sure every captain in the fleet is licking his chops. You will be actively pursued, count on it.

Jacky, I can only hope with all my heart that you get wind of this before you are caught and that you take both yourself and your ship to the other side of the world and live out your life happily there, for there is no life for you here. Not a long one, anyway.

Oh yes. I passed for Lieutenant.