The Buccaneers (15 page)

“We
can't
keep the brig where she is,” I said. “It's impossible.”

“I've been telling you that,” said Dasher.

“But we
can
cut her loose.”

He looked at me as though I'd gone feeble in the head. “John, she's anchored. She won't go very far.”

“Far enough,” said I, and Dasher frowned before he grinned.

“Why, they'll tangle like toms in a catfight,” he said.

Suddenly he was keen to try. He led the way, in a wide circle behind the buccaneers’ camp, then back toward the water. In high spirits again, he imagined the glory of saving the fleet.

“It's a lark,” he said. “It's a grand scheme, right enough. We'll be famous, John. We'll get knighted, I wager. Sir Tommy Dusker. Sir
Thomas
Dusker. Aye, aye, Sir Thomas, whatever you say.’ Just think, John; we might be written up in books someday.”

“I'm
trying
to think,” I said. “Once we've cut the line, what will happen then?”

“Why, we'll go to Buckingham Palace and kneel before the king,” said Dasher. “He'll touch us with his sword, and say, ‘Arise, Sir Thomas.’ He'll ask me how I got my fortune. ‘To tell you the truth, I stole it,’ I'll say. ‘I'm a thief in the
knight
, Your Majesty.’ And, oh, how the ladies will fancy me then.”

He was too full of his dreams to think of
how
we would do it. I followed him through the jungle, his red coat moving before me like a dark hole that kept opening in my path. I

Decided we would cut the line and make our way back to the western beaches, and wait there for the
Dragon.
But the thought still nagged me: would the
Dragon
float again? What if half the crew had succumbed to the fever, and the rest—too weak to sail her—had driven the schooner ashore? Once we cut the line, our course would be set. At best we would gain only twelve hours, until the tide flooded again in the night and Bartholomew Grace sailed off for Kingston.

Dasher and I found the end of the mooring line turned twice around a coconut palm and seized at the bight in a cow hitch. We needed only to cut through that thin lashing to let the brig pull herself free.

Dasher took out his knife.

“Wait,” I said.

The last of the boats were only then setting out from shore. In two of the three, pulling roughly at the oars, were ragged crews as much like apes as men. Sunlight sparkled on cutlasses and earrings, on the barrels of long muskets. But in the third came Grace, his straw-hatted, blue-ribboned men rowing like a racing crew, with one in rags in place of the wretch called Miller. The captain stood in the stern, one hand on the tiller, the other behind his back. With the glare on the surface, the golden sand below, he seemed to walk across the water. The sharks went with him, round and round his boat.

He would pass very close. I looked at Dasher and my heart gave a jump. In his red coat, with the sunlight filtering through the trees, he looked as bright as flames. If Bartholomew Grace so much as turned his head, he would surely see us there.

“Quiet,” I said. “Not a sound.”

The boats came on. We heard the thump and splash of oars, the chuckle of water at the bows. We heard the tiny flutter of the ribbons in the rowers’ hats.

And with an awful screech, and a bloodcurdling yell, Davy Jones the parrot came hurtling through the jungle.

T
hree fathoms down!” the parrot cried. “Three fathoms more.” He came in gaudy flashes of yellow and red, low to the ground and high in the trees, then swooped with his thrashing wings and landed on Dasher's arm.

Dasher, startled, shouted out. “Get off!” he cried, shaking his arm. The parrot hopped up to his shoulder.

The boats turned toward us. The long guns lifted up to shoulders. Cutlasses gleamed like rows of sharks’ teeth, razor sharp. In half a minute they'd be upon us.

“Run for it!” I said.

But Dasher pushed me down. He took one glance at me, then stood in his coat of flaming red. The parrot was pecking at his ear.

“Help yourself to my barrel,” he whispered to me. “Good luck to you, John.” Then he dropped his knife at my feet, and started down toward the water.

I wanted to run after him, but I couldn't. Dasher gave himself up so that I might stay hidden. And to my shame, I didn't move.

“It's only me,” he shouted at the boats. “It's Dashing Tommy Dusker.”

He went down to the shore, talking all the way. “I feared you'd maroon me,” he said. “I went after that cove what came off the brig, and I hunted him down, mateys. I killed him, fair enough; I sliced his throat from ear to ear. Mateys, I done him in.”

The straw-hatted rowers ground their boat ashore. Bartholomew Grace strode between them, then stepped up on the prow.

“Oh, Captain Grace, he was a wicked-fast runner,” said Dasher. “I chased him clear across the island, but I ran him down in the treasure pit. So here I am, and if you think I've only been shirking my duty, then put me to work. Just give me a rope, Captain, and I'll pull it or tie it; whatever you please.”

Grace looked at him for the longest time. Then Davy Jones hopped up to Dasher's head and started plucking at his hair.

“And see; I've got my parrot back,” said Dasher with a strange laugh that nearly broke my heart. “Oh, mateys, isn't this grand?”

They took him off in the boat. I saw his red coat climbing up the side of the brig; then it was lost in the swirl of men. Only later would I learn what task Grace had in store for Dasher. But if I'd known it earlier, I wouldn't have let him go.

His knife had vanished in the undergrowth. I groped through the ferns, slowly at first and then frantically, until I found it trodden into the ground, and my hand closed
around the blade. With some sadness, I saw that Dasher had blunted the tip.

His pistols, I knew, were never loaded with balls. They were packed with enough powder to make a great noise and a fine show of flames, but they were no more dangerous than firecrackers. For all his bluster and talk, Dasher was a harmless soul with a great dislike for suffering.

I took the thick rope in my hand, touched the blade to the lashings. Then I stopped, and stared down through the trees at the harbor.

What would happen to Dasher, I wondered, if I cut through the lashing? He had only just emerged from the jungle; surely, if the brig came free right then, the buccaneers would believe he had done it.

With a sigh, I resolved to wait. But I soon came to see that I could only gain by waiting; if the ships tangled when the tide was full, the buccaneers might be trapped for the next change of the tide as well. I had to admit that Dasher was right; I had acted too quickly, and my hurry had put him in danger.

I settled deep in the ferns and watched through a curtain of fronds as the buccaneers readied the brig for her voyage. They lashed the sails along the yards, first the courses, then the topsails. They let them hang in place, and the shadows of the workers were cast sharply on the canvas until a ghostly second crew seemed to emerge, writhing on the sun-bleached cloth that filled and emptied in the breeze. Giant phantom sailors—long-legged and black of skin—they rode within the sails, and
their voices were the snap of rope, the crack of hardened canvas.

I watched them spin and leap to the drumbeat of the thudding sails, to the chanting of the buccaneers, and all the tales of cannibals that I'd ever heard filled my mind anew. I was like Robinson Crusoe, alone on my island, stricken with terror at the sight of dancing figures. I didn't know which was worse: to sit with my back to the dreaded jungle, or to turn away from the buccaneers. So I sat, all atremble, glancing again and again into the tangled growth around me. I had never felt so lonely, so full of a terrible pity for myself. I had been on the island for a little less than a day, but I ached to get off it.

As though to add to my misery, a fog came in from the sea. It covered the sun and blotted out the shadows on the sails. It touched the treetops, then crept among the bushes where I sat. Cold and clammy, it beaded water on every leaf and fern; it soaked me to the bone.

The ships grew faint and hazy; the voices of the buccaneers seemed to come from the island instead of the ship. And through the jungle, in the fog, swirled mysterious shapes that, the harder I stared, looked more and more like savages. The drip of-water, the rustling of ferns, sounded to me like bare feet padding slowly closer. Here a spike of ferns appeared to be the feathers in a cannibal's crown; there a knothole white with sap was a human eye turned toward me.

When I could bear it no longer, I took Dasher's knife and cut through the lashing. The brig turned slowly, and the mooring line uncoiled from the tree like a great white snake.
It slithered through the ferns, twisting and sliding down toward the water. Then the breeze, or a shift in the currents, took hold of the brig, and the line leapt through the last of the bushes.

I heard a shout, an oath, and then a roar of startled voices. The brig swung through the fog with her sails spread like wings, her yards crawling with men. There was a groan of wood, a shriek, the startling twang of breaking rope. A yard gave way, spilling men who tumbled in gray shapes like swooping birds; I heard the splashes as they hit the water, their high, short screams as the sharks found them there. Then the brig came to a stop, her sails fluttering.

I hadn't thought out what would happen next. I squinted at half-hidden shapes, trying to see what damage I'd brought. A shiver went through me at the sound of oars coming through the fog.

They thumped and creaked; the rowers grunted. A voice said, “Watch it!” And a boat scraped against the sand nearby.

I judged that it was very close; I dared not move. To my left, my bearded, skeletal friend came tramping along the beach, bent forward as he dragged a line that stretched out from his shoulder. Behind him came another, walking backward with the same line in his hands, hauling it along, his heels kicking into the sand. The rope vanished into swirls of mist as though the men were pulling at the fog itself, trying to clear it from the ships.

Whether this was the same line that I'd cut or a new one, I could not tell. But I was sure the men would tie it to the
stoutest tree they could find—and take great care doing it— so that the brig might be warped free from her embrace with the
Apostle.
I kept silent and still as the pair went by, then moved down to the beach and followed their tracks in the sand.

After just a few paces I saw the boat at the water's edge. Still floating, the oars laid neatly in place, it seemed to be waiting for me. I ran to the bow and was surprised to find no anchor, no line, nothing at all to keep the boat where it was. I pushed; it slid off from the sand. I waded after it and heard a dribble of water.

The sound came from the trees. Startled, I looked up to see the larger of the two men with his back toward me, a dark little river spreading down through the sand. Idly, he turned toward me, buttoning his trousers.

My feet might have been stones, so heavy did they feel. They anchored me there, and the man came running forward.

He didn't shout, he
growled.
It was a wordless cry, a savage sound that was low and full of rage. He came leaping over the beach in his ragged clothes. The shock of it freed me. I pushed the boat and clambered in; I snatched up a heavy oar.

The man bounded after me, over the sand, into the water. I poled with the oar. The boat slid out to deep water, but the man lunged forward and clutched the bow. He levered himself up as the boat slewed sideways. I pushed with the oar, deeper and deeper, until I could only barely touch the bottom.

The man's head rose over the side, and I saw a bloodied
bandage wrapped tightly round his face. It was the man Grace had slashed across the cheeks; the growls were the only sounds he could make.

His elbow hooked across the gunwale; his shoulders lifted up. And he began to heave himself aboard.

H
e was a big, powerful man. His arms were as thick as my legs. He hauled himself up from the water with a dreadful gleam in his eyes.

I thrust the oar down to push off again, and was horrified to feel no bottom below me, nothing to push against. Then the oar twisted in my hands, shoved from below with enough force that I was nearly levered from the boat. At the bow, the buccaneer's eyes bulged out; the blood-stained cloth twisted on his face. And he vanished from the gunwale. He disappeared without a sound, snatched away in a sudden boiling of crimson water. A shark's fin rose in the fog, then sank again, and all that was left was the bandage.

I sat and rowed, sobbing with fear. I worked the boat along the shore, cringing at the noise my oars made as they banged and rumbled in the pins. Built to be rowed by four strong men, the boat was more than I could handle. But I bent to my task until my arms ached and my back seemed hot with fire.

The dark shapes of the tangled ships passed on my left, the jungle on my right. I found a current close to shore, and
rested as it pulled me on. Then I met the flood at the harbor entrance, and waited for the tide to turn.

Shouting started onshore, and carried to the ships. It began with a man's name and ended with a volley of oaths back and forth across the harbor. For the buccaneers, it was a mystery; one of their crew and one of their boats had simply disappeared. I grinned at the thought of the confusion I'd caused, the fear I'd put in their hearts. Like all sailors, they'd be superstitious men. They would search through their blooded souls and conjure all manner of madness from the fog and the island and the corpses they'd left in their-wake.

When at last the tide turned in my favor, the ships were still entangled, the men still shouting in confusion. I kept myself clear of the shore, and let the currents carry me over the bar. Then again I set the oars between the pins, and started rowing to the west.

My boat pitched in the swell. The ebb pulled me to the east, toward the open ocean, and I struggled against it, afraid that if I once lost sight of the land I would never find it again. I rowed mindlessly, mechanically, thinking of nothing but the bump and creak of the oars.