Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (15 page)

Lewis saw that he was a tall man, easily the tallest aboard that ship from either crew; he was tall and lean in his tallness, long-limbed with a hungry but easy cat-like gait.

His eyes were heavy-lidded and deep-set, but their pale blueness shone out from the shadows. He wore no hat, but had a red scarf tied about his head. Gold earrings hung from his earlobes and gold armlets glistened on his wrists and biceps.

‘Now then, lads,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll talk straight and not veer from that course. We’re all mariners here. Your ship has been taxed by Tobias Reeve. Some of you might know me as Blackheart Reeve.’

A murmur ran through the crew. Everyone had indeed heard that name; all who worked the seas from Maine to Panama were taught to fear its mention.

‘Blackheart,’ he continued, clearly well rehearsed in this speech, ‘on account of the death’s head and black heart flag we flies . . .’ Here he paused for effect and his grin widened. ‘And likewise on account of my reported cruel nature.’

Lewis remembered the tales he had heard in bars and taverns, stories of piracy and of the merciless killing ways of Blackheart Reeve himself. The word was he had already killed a hundred men and showed no signs of stopping.

‘Now I said I’d steer a straight course and a true one, and I won’t tell you I ain’t killed more than my fair share, but I ain’t never hanged a man like those Navy cowards do, nor flogged a man to death neither. Every man I killed looked into my eyes before he met his maker, and that’s the God’s honest truth.’

Lewis could see that the crew did not take these words as any special comfort, but he found himself in secret admiration of this pirate.

‘I’m sure you are all brave men and might feel it your duty to resist us as we relieve your vessel of any valuables as might be aboard. We are fighting men ourselves and we understand that and we respect it – don’t we, boys?’

The pirate crew murmured in assent.

‘But it is
my
duty to tell you that any resistance will be fatal to those who do the resisting.’ Blackheart smiled a wide and generous smile. ‘Think of your wives and sweethearts and leave us to go about our business. You have my word that none will be harmed who do not stand in our way.’

So it was that the pirates went about their work, stripping the
Fox
of anything they thought of value. When they had taken everything they wanted, Blackheart clapped his hands together with a loud crack.

‘Now then, my good fellows,’ he said. ‘We must bid you a fond adieu. It is a tradition with us that we ask the crew of any ship we take if there be any among their number who would sail with us. Well, boys? Is there any of you who wants to be a free man?’

‘I think I speak for my crew,’ said the captain of the
Fox
, ‘when I say that none here would sail with you, even if their very lives depended on it.’

‘Is that so?’ said Blackheart. ‘Is that true, lads? Ain’t there a man among you who wants to live the buccaneer life, where each man gets his honest share of all we take and each man gets a fair say in how we go about our business?’

‘I have given you our answer –’ began the captain until a cocked pistol interrupted him.

‘I’m asking these men, not you,’ said Blackheart.

‘I’ll sail with you, sir,’ said a man to Lewis’s left, a man from Newfoundland called Green.

‘Welcome, brother,’ said Blackheart. ‘And you need never say “sir” again. “Captain” is good enough for me or any man.’

‘I’ll see you hanged for this, Green,’ said the
Fox
’s captain. ‘This is mutiny. This is –’

‘Shut your mouth or it’ll be you that’s hanging from your own bowsprit,’ Blackheart snarled.

‘I thought you did not hang people,’ said the captain.

‘Nor do I, friend.’ Blackheart grinned. ‘It will be your own men that do the deed. Now quiet – before I lose my patience with you. Anyone else who wants to live the free life?’

‘Aye,’ came another voice – a voice it took Lewis a moment to realise was his own.

‘Lewis,’ hissed the captain. ‘What are you doing?’

The pirates laughed as Lewis stepped forward, but Blackheart waved his pistol and bade them leave off.

‘Now then, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘I reckon that if this lad has the balls to speak out, we should have the balls to take him on. Welcome to the good life, Lewis.’

Blackheart turned back to the crew of the
Fox
.

‘There ain’t much in the way of vittles, but we’ve left you enough water to last you until you get back to shore.’

‘I suppose we should be grateful, then?’ said the
Fox
’s captain.

Blackheart’s grin disappeared in an instant.

‘You should be grateful I don’t blow your ear off, for I don’t take kindly to being talked to in that fashion. You shall apologise.’

‘I don’t think I shall,’ said the captain.

‘You’re a brave man, I’ll give you that,’ said Blackheart. ‘Ain’t he brave, boys?’

The pirates murmured their assent as always. Then Blackheart raised his pistol and pulled the trigger, and the captain dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Lewis stared at the fallen body and then followed the pirates to the boat that would take them to his new ship, the
Firefly
.

‘That bother you, boy?’ said Blackheart later as the pirates sailed away. ‘The shooting of your captain back there?’

‘No,’ said Lewis. And though it was bravado when he had formed the words, it was the simple truth by the time they left his lips. He had not been bothered at all. Excited, perhaps – thrilled even – but not bothered. ‘He was a mean man, quick to flog. Good riddance to him.’

Blackheart grinned and slapped him on the back. ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘You’ll do.’

And so began Lewis Jackson’s career as a pirate. No apprenticeship was served, for only minutes after he and Green were elected to become part of their crew, the
Firefly
was speeding towards another ship.

It was a ship bringing families from old England to a better life in New England. Lewis could feel fear and hatred emanating from the passengers and crew like heat, and it felt strange: not pleasant, but not wholly unpleasant either.

A minister in a powdered wig waved his Bible at them and called them minions of Satan until Blackheart slapped him across the bridge of his nose with a pistol butt.

‘You are spawn of the Devil!’ the minister shouted at them as they left with their booty. ‘You’ll see the torments of hell!’

Lewis laughed as heartily as any of the pirate crew as the minister’s voice faded away into the distance. They had had a good haul and no trouble from the crew or their saintly cargo. But Lewis was about to learn that not all ships give up their treasures quite so willingly.

Two days after they fleeced the colonists, they came across a merchant ship heading for the Chesapeake Bay. Blackheart ordered them to give chase, and they closed in on their prize with ease. But the captain and crew of this ship had been boarded before and they were not about to let it happen again. They had cannons and they knew how to use them.

The first blast struck the
Firefly
amidships, holing her at the waterline. The pirates stood agog, shocked to a man that their prey should bite back with such unexpected ferocity.

The second shot struck the gunwales near the stern and knocked Lewis sideways. His ears roared with the noise and he pulled a four inch long splinter from his thigh. Green, the Newfoundlander who’d joined the pirates with him from the
Fox
, was not so lucky. Lewis saw his body lying in a pool of blood. He saw his head in another on the far side of the deck.

The
Firefly
was mortally wounded, but luckily the ship they had sought to take was happy to escape to the safety of Chesapeake Bay. The crew cheered and jeered as they sailed away, leaving the
Firefly
to limp along, licking its wounds.

Blackheart knew full well that once news reached the authorities that his ship was crippled they would send the Navy to take him. They would all be hanging from a gibbet in Charleston if they did not put clear water between themselves and the shore.

‘We need a new ship, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘And we needs her fast.’

The
Firefly
headed south and was off the Carolinas when they spied a ship on the horizon. It was Lewis himself who had spotted it from his perch high up in the crow’s nest.

Blackheart emerged from his cabin with the hungry look of a wolf. He had a telescope under one arm and, after seeing where the ship lay, he put it to his eye.

‘Look lively, then, boys,’ he said as Lewis climbed down on to the deck, trying to ready himself for whatever fight lay in store.

Blackheart ordered a warning shot to be fired across its bow. He was taking no chances now. They had to be prepared this time. But all the same, he could not risk damaging what would be their new vessel if all went well.

But the ship paid no heed. It made no move to surrender or escape. The sails were furled as if it were in port instead of out on the high seas. Lewis could see no sign of movement aboard the vessel at all and it was not long before the men about him began to mutter suspiciously.

For all the tough and fearless ways of the pirate life, a buccaneer can be as superstitious as any other mariner, and it was hard not to be wary of this strange desolate ship.

Blackheart was of a more rational disposition, however, and he began to suspect that this might be the bait in some unseen trap. He had men climb the masts and search the horizons, but there was not another ship in sight. The fleetest ship in all the Navy could not have caught the
Firefly
from such a distance.

Blackheart then turned to consider the notion that the crew of the mysterious ship had seen their approach and, guessing their intention, had hidden themselves out of sight, ready to attack them once they began to board. Even now, there might be hidden cannons ready to be blasted.

It was a dilemma to be sure. The
Firefly
was struggling. Water was filling the holds and she was beginning to list perilously. Blackheart had no choice. This ship was their only chance.

He ordered a boarding party to man the small sailing boat they sometimes used to lead an attack and he himself would take her across. Lewis watched them arm themselves to the teeth with swords and axes and pistols, and he could see by their faces that they were preparing themselves for death or killing. Then Blackheart told Lewis that he was to be one of the boarding party.

‘Me?’ said Lewis. ‘But –’

‘Come on!’ said Blackheart, thumping him in the chest. ‘Your first boarding! Best day of your life. I can remember mine like it was yesterday!’

There was nothing more to be said. Lewis knew he had no choice. He picked out a hatchet that he felt looked especially menacing and climbed aboard the boat with the others.

During the whole of the short journey across to the ship, Lewis was flinching as if a shot or cannon blast was forever about to strike the boat, and he avowed that if he was ever part of another boarding, he would pay more attention to the seating arrangements and not be foolish enough to sit in the prow.

If sailing across was fraught with apprehension, then climbing aboard the ship was doubly so. Blackheart was fearless and bounded aboard as if he already owned the ship and had every right to stand on her decks. He halloed in his loudest voice, but there was no reply. He halloed again. Nothing.

Lewis could see that this was no usual boarding. The pirates were as wary as he was, clearly fearing an ambush. Blackheart sent a small party down into the holds to search for crew members, telling them in a loud voice to cut the throat of the first person they found unless the rest of the crew made themselves known that instant. But nothing stirred and the pirates found no one on their search. The ship was deserted.

The pirates regrouped on the weather deck, each man wearing the same puzzled and apprehensive expression.

‘What’s goin’ on, Cap’n?’ said a man called Murnau.

‘I don’t rightly know,’ said Blackheart.

Suddenly there was a great rending sound and the
Firefly
keeled over and began to sink with shocking speed. They heard the cries of their crewmates as she went down and those who fell clear were dragged under by the sinking vessel.

‘Damn it!’ shouted Blackheart. ‘But I loved that ship!’

Lewis could only think about the drowned men and how close to going down with her he had been. Like most of the men aboard the
Firefly
, he had never learned to swim.

Blackheart rallied his men. A seaworthy ship was treasure enough on this occasion, but that did not stop the pirates from searching for more and once again they moved about the strange deserted ship.