Captain Adam (17 page)

"That popinjay!"

" 'Tis a good thing he's far away when you say that. Captain."

He paid her no mind. Adam's blood was not the sort that is easily agitated by words alone; and this particular taunt he scarcely heard. For he was thoughtful, a whit sad, too. It was clear to him what he would have to do, and he didn't like it. But he could not pass a thing like this by. Kellsen would exploit the gift to the full, telling of it everywhere, trying to get Maisie to wear the thing, alerting others to watch her then, pointing, purring, pleased with himself. And on Providence, where so much depended upon prestige, if the men and even more the women fell to sniggering at you behind your back, then you might expect no favors, no leniency. On Providence, if they weren't afraid of you they despised you. It was not a matter of personal pride with Adam, though he had his pride, too, and he was angry; but it was rather a matter of getting a chance to escape.

Kellsen had taken an inch. If he wasn't pushed back, and that promptly, and with unmistakable force, he would try to take a mile. Then it would be too late.

Adam fingered the jacket. It was good velvet, expensive. He grunted. He thrust it behind his shirt, and went outside.

Resolved Forbes, as faithful as any cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, appeared at his elbow; and Adam, squinting, frowning in the sunlight, told him what he was about to do. The mate rubbered out his lips, shook his head.

"I don't like it, sir." io6

"I don't like it either. But it's got to be done."

"You— You ain't going to get killed now?"

"I hope not," Adam said soberly.

Nodding to acquaintances, right and left, as neighborly as all-get-out, Adam Long made his way to the marketplace; and there he came upon One-Eye.

Now this odiferous obnoxious cantankerous ugly man was disliked, but he was feared. He had standing as Kellsen's familiar. His bluster, his irascible, self-important squint, were not laughed at openly. He would carry any sort of tale, no matter how harmful, to the massive major, who, to do him justice, never failed to back this toady. Like the small fish that pilots the shark, One-Eye was nothing in himself, a great deal in what he represented.

"Where's your master?"

"We don't have masters here," said One-Eye. "We are the Brethren of the Coast. No man is the master of us."

"I can hear you. Parson. Stop singing hymns. Where's Kellsen?"

Men were gathering. It was easy to raise a crowd here.

One-Eye thrust his face close to Adam's face. It was a nasty habit he had. He grasped Adam's shirt.

"When you speak of Major Kellsen you will please give him his title, understand?"

"And when you speak to me, Mr. Skunk, you will please keep your hands to yourself," said Adam, and punched him in the mouth. "Understand?"

It was not a hard blow, scarcely more than a slap, but it brought a swift bubbling of blood to his lips. One-Eye gasped, his eye popping. His hand went for the hilt of his knife.

Then Adam stepped in and really jlid hit him.

One-Eye went backward, the croWd quickly parting to give him room to fall. One-Eye lay still.

Adam sighed.

"Reckon I'll have to seek the fool out myself," he said, and strolled on.

He was playacting, sure. He knew perfectly well that there was no need to hunt out Major Kellsen. The whole camp was abuzz by this time, jabbering, spitting, gesticulating, they were telling one another what had happened—and what would happen next. Kellsen was being informed, assuredly. And Kellsen would act. He'd have to.

They met in the middle of the marketplace—it seemed casually, informally, by chance—and the scene could not have been better set if they'd rehearsed it. Kellsen was all done up in what Bosun Gardner would have called his "damnation regimentals," a huge cherry-red coat with a vast amount of froggery, and trimmed with lace that was positively

frivolous. He carried a gold-headed walking stick almost as tall as himself. His periwig was stupendous; it must have cost fifty pounds. Adam wondered whom he had stolen it from.

He came to a graceful halt, his right foot slightly forward, garter ribbons dangling almost to his shoes. He flipped a lace handkerchief negligently at Adam.

"You sought me?"

"It's about my wife," said Adam.

He slightly stressed the word "wife" for the benefit of bystanders. In the four weeks since the taking of the Goodwill to Men he had more than once congratulated himself upon the presence of mind which prompted him to claim marriage to Maisie. He couldn't have conceived a more telling lie. The sacrament hushed the pirates. Though they professed, publicly and noisily, to hate all authority, even the authority of God, of which marriage was so clear an example, they must have had their doubts in the very presence of it. Though they jeered, they were filled with uneasy awe.

Yet they would veer the other way at any shift of wind, any mishandling of the sheets; for if there was anything that could be said with certainty of these pirates it was that their emotions and beliefs, jiggled and jogged by this and that, were unpredictable; they were never sure of themselves. On Adam Long, then, ironically, rested the responsibility of standing for an institution of which in fact he was only a false representative. He must now defend the wifely honor of a woman who wasn't his wife at all.

"Ah, the charming Mistress Maisie! Charming!"

"Aye, but it'll be enough if she charms me. She don't have to charm you, too."

Nobody breathed. Kellsen's eyebrows started to seek his wig.

"You, uh, have some specific objection, perhaps?"

"Yes," said Adam, "this!" and he threw the brown velvet jacket into Kellsen's face. "My wife," he added, "does not accept gifts from a thief."

He turned and started to walk away.

He did not know what to expect. He might be slaughtered in this instant. But he did not think that Kellsen would discharge a pistol in such a crowd, and if he drew he would probably be restrained.

What came was no more than a voice, but it brought him up.

"A moment, pray. Captain Long."

Adam turned.

"Yes?"

Kellsen had not stirred. The brown velvet jacket lay in the dust at his feet: nobody cared about it any longer, for it had served its purpose. Kellsen might have been disappointed, having hoped for craven, ex-

ploitable compliance, rather than a fight. But he did not show this. His eyes were cast down almost shyly.

"It is my thought that we might pursue this matter further, Captain, you and I."

"Any time you say."

"Would, uh, would now be too soon?"

"Now'sfine."

Kellsen nodded. He turned, leaning on his cane.

"On the beach, then, in a few minutes," he drawled over a shoulder.

He left the marketplace slowly, with his handkerchief flicking away flies.

For all the men save two the trip was a picnic. There was no touch of ceremony, and the scramble at the beach was a joyous one. Half a hundred longboats and dories and similar craft there must have been, each overfilled, overweighted, showing precious little freeboard. Everybody was laughing, splashing. All they needed was fireworks and paper streamers to make it look like the royal barges on the Thames when the court was out for a frolic.

Chattering, they rode out among the anchored vessels, virtually all of which were unmanned at the moment. They passed the Goodwill to Men, and it was then that Adam felt his chest get tight for the first time. He did not look much at the Goodvnll, three-sixteenths his now, only a glance; but he did see Jeth Gardner, forearms on the taffrail, watching this mass of boats, doubtless wondering what it was all about. Jeth did not see Adam, who was looking down after his one glance. Adam had seen casks on the deck, forty or fifty of them, and he wondered what they were. Not from the hold: they were smaller than the barrels of molasses from Horace Treadway's plantation, most of which had been rolled overside during the chase anyway. But things up there had looked in good condition. Even with one leg, and the stump so raw, Jeth Gardner would keep the Goodwill shipshape. Jeth had his orders. The schooner was one of the furthest out, near the pass; and Jeth was to stand by, with everything squared away, ready at any hour of the day or night, until such time as Captain Long and Mate Forbes saw the chance to sneak aboard, axe the cables, hoist canvas, and be off. GoodvAll still carried a jury boom on her fore, but even so, given any kind of start she could probably walk away from the fastest craft the pirate fleet could show. Beyond doubt it was that broken boom which kept the schooner in the

bay here. Once properly equipped she would be taken outside in search of prizes. They'd pile some greasy guns aboard her first, of course. And they'd dirty her decks with their dirty feet. Meanwhile she waited, incomplete, for her master.

Adam had already learned that the outlaws of Providence, incorrigibly poor business men, suffered from certain chronic shortages. Gorged with rum and rare wines, they had difficulty getting fruit, and even ship's biscuit was sometimes hard to come by. Of gold and silver plate they had vast quantities; yet of simple ironwork of the sort so badly needed to equip their vessels—for clasps, clamps, and such—as well as lead sheathing, an imperative in those parts—they were rather more than likely, at any given time, to have none. Any one of them might have produced for you altar plates, a triptych, candlesticks, gem-studded chalices, each one a work of art, worthy of a velvet cushion in a museum; but none could have produced a single simple nail, a plank or spar.

So Adam held his head dov\ai, and they kept going.

They passed the reef, after waving to the men who manned the cannon up in the old rebuilt fort. Other men, men who had not been able to get boats, were running out to the end of the point, to the fort, in order to get the news sooner when the flotilla returned.

The sea was a lake, the sky hadn't one cloud. It was just after noon.

In the holiday spirit the boats came together, separated, came together again, while men shouted back and forth in half a dozen different tongues. The talk had largely to do with betting; and as far as Adam could gather—the Brethren of the Coast had their own cant, not easily understood even when it was supposed to be English—the odds were three to one on Kellsen.

Nobody questioned for a moment, everybody knew, that the fight was to be a outrance, to the death. They took this for granted.

When the boats approached Cay Cucaracha—Cockroach Key the English called it—a silence fell over them, not all at once but gradually. The company broke into two parts, the smaller, the one Adam's boat was in, proceeding around to the far side.

It was tiny, an atoll, scarcely more than a raft of rubble supporting a few seared palmettos. It was round, perhaps a quarter of a mile across. The center was somewhat higher than the shore, but even the center was so low that a good-sized sea might have swept right over it.

However, there were no seas. When they landed on the sloping beach, the keel grating small coral stones, it was as easily done as bringing a canoe to the bank of a pond.

This was the only boat in sight that had come ashore. The others stayed some distance out.

Adam walked up and down, stretching his legs, his arms. There were no

six or seven men with him, not all of them men he knew, though he knew that they were all favorable to him—friends he didn't notably want, for him largely because they were against Major Kellsen. Adam had no wish to lead a faction in this trouble-spot. Now he paid little attention to the men.

They had become serious, even grim. One had a musket, one a cutlass, one a pistol. The one with the pistol snapped it two or three times to make sure of the spark. It was huge, with a brass barrel, no sights, a fishtail butt made of Circassian walnut. It was heavy. The others watching, the man poured in a measurement of powder, cut a large round ball, dropped the ball in, little-fingered a chunk of wadding into the muzzle, rammed this home with a ramrod. He rapped the barrel smartly on his heel, so that powder fluffed out through the touchhole and into the pan. He handed the pistol to Adam.

"Use it careful. It's the only shot you'll get."

"Make a good club," Adam said, and took it by the barrel and shook it.

" 'Sblood, beefwit! That's loaded!"

The man with the cutlass handed this to Adam, who took it in his left hand. It was exactly the same length as Major Kellsen's, the man said. They had measured them.

Adam asked: "Where is the major?"

"The other side of this island. He's got a pistol, too."

Adam looked around. The sun was almost directly overhead. The sand, the stones, the fronds of palmettos shimmered. The sea gave little love-taps to the shore at his feet.

A semicircle of boats, possibly twenty of them, was motionless a couple of hundred yards away. Other boats were coming around from the far side of the island, but staying well out.

"And where do we meet?"

"Wherever you run into one another. The major's right opposite here. He ought to be ready now. Are you?"

Adam wetted his lips. He did not have much spit. He wanted to swallow but was afraid that he couldn't. He looked toward the center of the island, where nothing moved.

He hoped that Maisie was all right. He hoped that if he was killed she would still escape. Poor girl! She'd had it so hard, she was entitled to a change of luck.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I reckon I'm ready."

The musket went off with a bang, and in spite of himself Adam jumped, not having expected it. Immediately afterward there was another musket shot from the far side of the island. It sounded a faint thin "pip!" The men scrambled into the boat, and pushed out.

"Good hunting," they called.

They rowed away.

Adam Long stood motionless a moment. He thought that if only he could pray he would feel better, but he feared to kneel just now. He kept watching the middle of the island. Nothing moved.

After a while he began to walk sideways along the shore, still watching the middle of the island, though from time to time he flicked his eyes right and left, the way he was going, the way he had come.