The Buccaneers (21 page)

Dasher stared at my finger, then squinted at the sea. “I've been to France,” he said. “It didn't look like this.”

I'd put us in the middle of Europe. “I can't do it,” I said.

“We'll just carry on until we bump into land,” said Dasher. “How far wrong can we go if-we aim for Ushant?”

“But we don't know where we are,” I said. “That's the
problem. How can you aim at something if you don't know where you're aiming from?”

“You can't miss all of Europe,” said Dasher. “You have to hit the land.”

“Yes,” I said. “Like Admiral Shovell.”

“Who?”

“Sir Clowdisley.” He had been taking a squadron home to England a hundred years before. A sailor had warned him that he'd lost his way and all the ships were in peril. Admiral Shovell hanged the sailor for his trouble, then kept his course, straight onto the Scilly Isles. “Four ships were lost,” I said. “And all their men but two.”

Dasher tugged at his wineskins. He patted them to test their fullness. “Then you'd better learn,” he said.

I took a dozen sights and went through the reductions step by step. The
Dragon
sailed along, seven miles in every hour, seven hundred feet per minute. I heard the water rushing past her hull, swirling at the counter, and I knew I had to get it right or all of us might perish.

G
et back from the door,” I shouted that evening as I stood at the entrance to the Cave with my bucket and my lantern. I waited for the clank of chain, but there was no sound from within.

“Captain Grace!” I kicked the door. “Answer me,” I said.

There was only silence. The
Dragon
lay slightly on her starboard side, holding a course to the east in a northerly breeze. My lamp cast shadows on the tilted planks and seemed to lean precariously when I set it flat on the deck.

I put my ear to the door and listened. I heard breaths, steady and slow, as though Grace had his own ear to the other side. My heart quickened at the thought of him waiting there, just an inch away. Then the deck tilted sharply and the breathing changed its pattern. I thought it was only the sea that I heard, the faint surge of-water carried through the wood.

“Captain Grace,” I called again. I drew the latch as quietly as I could and threw the door open. Grace sat just where I'd left him, staring at me from the edge of the lamplight. His nose was a gaping hole in the shadows, but his eyes shone like fires.

“Why didn't you speak?” I said.

“I had nothing to say” he told me.

He sat on top of his chains, the ringbolts in the deck hidden by his coat. I had a sudden thought that he wasn't chained at all.

“I brought you a treat,” I said, reaching in the bucket. “An orange.”

He smiled grotesquely, with nothing but malice. “You're too good to me,” he said.

I held it up. “Move back. I want to see your chains.”

He barely shifted his hips. “Farther,” I said.

He snarled. It was a terrible sound, brimming with evil. But he shuffled back, and I smelled the dampness in his coat, the salty air rotting the cloth from his back. He moved away until I saw the chains and the bolts, everything in place, and he glared at me with utter loathing.

I rolled the orange toward him, and he snatched it up like a beast. He held it in his burned hand and tore the peel away with his teeth.

“Who's navigating?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Where are we?”

“I can't tell you that,” I said.

He snorted. “You don't know. And you brought me an orange hoping that I'd tell you how to work a sight.” He spat out a chunk of peel. “You little whelp; you're holding the ship as far to the north as you can. You're afraid you'll miss the Channel.”

He'd guessed close enough to the truth. We were keeping to the north to be sure of sighting England instead of France. And I
was
hoping he'd help me.

“You'll stumble on the land, in the dead of night as like as not. You'll see a point all tossed by surf and you won't know if it's Ireland or England or France.”

“We'll know,” I said.

“You won't.” He tore off another chunk of orange. “The weather's changing, boy. By the time another day has passed, you won't see the sun for clouds. You'll never see it again. The north winds will push you into the Bay of Biscay, onto a lee shore as wild as any. Claw your way off that?” He crushed the orange in his fist. It crumpled inward, spurting juice. “You'll wreck her, boy. You'll kill us all.”

I stared at the orange in his hand. He squeezed it harder, until it was just a crumpled bit of skin that he cast down on the deck. It rolled over as the
Dragon
heeled. The wind was already rising.

“You'd be the first to drown,” I said.

Grace laughed. “First or last, what difference does it make? We'll all drown if you don't get a sight by morning.”

We glared at each other, the light shifting past me, flashing on his gold braid.

“Then tell me,” I said. “What am I doing wrong? What am I forgetting?”

“The one who brought us here, you and I. That's what you're forgetting.”

“Horn?” I asked.

“Give him to me.” He bared his teeth. “Give me Horn and a cutlass and a minute to settle my score. Then I'll help you. Then I'll get you home.”

“Damn you,” I said.

“You're too late, boy.” He laughed madly. “I'm damned already. I've nothing to lose.”

I emptied his food from my bucket, spilling it on the deck. I left it where it lay, though he'd have to stretch his chains to the last link to reach it. Then I left him in the darkness and hurried to the deck.

Horn was steering. He kept the
Dragons
head just north of east, turning with the gusts, bearing up when they passed. It was a job that would strain almost any helmsman, but Horn kept at it in his mechanical way, as if he and the wind and the ship were one and the same.

“Don't you fret,” he said. “Don't you worry, Mr. Spencer. You've got a good head on your shoulders, and you'll figure out the sextant right enough.”

“But the weather's changing,” I said.

“Aye, it is.” He turned the ship, and the wind plucked at his pigtail. “We'll have a ride before we're home.” He smiled at me with the most disarming warmth. “It's good you've seen that, sir. You'll make a fine master, Mr. Spencer. The type that's never short of crew.”

“Thank you,” I said, embarrassed. “But it was Grace who told me the weather was changing.”

“The devil can tell that from down in the Cave?”

I nodded.

“What else did he say?”

It was on my lips to tell Horn about the bargain that Grace had offered: my friend's life for the safety of the ship. But I looked at him, so solid and strong, so good in his soul, and I kept my silence. I was frightened that he would go straight below and offer himself in trade.

“He thinks we'll all be drowned,” I said. “He thinks we'll miss the Channel.”

Horn scowled. “What do
you
think, Mr. Spencer?”

“I think you were right, what you told me long ago.”

“What was that?” he asked.

“There's no vessel as safe as the one that has old Horn aboard.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” he said.

I was surprised to see him blush. Then he coughed and turned his head away, and his hand went briefly to his cheek.

I stayed with him until the sun went down. We talked about England—about London, really. All that Horn had seen of the city were the banks of the Thames and the roofs of the buildings that crowded around them. He asked about the streets and lanes, about palaces and parks, and I made myself homesick telling him about it. He longed to see it all himself, once his name was cleared and he could wander freely where he wanted, without a fear of press-gangs, or the hangman's noose that waited for deserters. He would walk through the city, he said: right through the city from one end to the other, then on to the west, through Reading and Marlborough, clear to the coast and his home near Bristol.

“I haven't been home in years,” he said. “I wonder if it's changed.”

The sky was nearly black, just speckling with stars. I stared up at the Big Dipper, and across at the wide wings of Cassiopeia. There, in those tiny lights, was all I needed to learn where we were and where we had to go. I took the sextant from its box again, and pointed it north to Polaris.

If I couldn't get a sight from the sun, I had little hope of doing it with the stars. But I shot Polaris seven times before the horizon disappeared and the black of the sea and the black of the sky became a single, solid sphere around us. Then I went below to my cabin, working away the hours on my bunk, until I fell asleep and dreamed of London.

I walked through the city again, from my father's office to his docks on the Thames. But all the buildings were made of numbers, of towering fractions and vast façades of Roman numerals. And they trembled and tumbled down around me, and I woke to find Captain Butterfield shaking me by the shoulder.

My lamp was still burning, my bunk covered with books. Butterfield took his hand away and stood beside me. He wore his Sunday clothes, a dark suit that smelled of mothballs.

“Aren't you coming ashore?” he asked.

I felt almost dizzy-with sleep.

“We're home,” he said. “We're lying to the dock.”

I had to drag myself from the ruins of the numbers onto a schooner leagues and leagues from England.

“Uncle Stanley,” I said. “We're miles at sea.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “Feel the ship, son. Feel her.” He stamped heavily on the deck. “You see?”

I sat upright. My lantern hung straight down from its hook, not moving at all. My ink bottle showed a level line of black. There was no sound of water, of wind. Butterfield stood so steady and straight that I wondered if he was right and I had slept away the voyage.

“Come along,” he said.

I followed him from the cabin. A faint red light came
down through the companion-way, and I went up toward it and saw that dawn was breaking. The
Dragon
sat on a huge, flat sea. Not a ripple stirred the water. Not a breath of wind touched the sails. I had never seen a pond as calm as that. And it frightened me.

There was no one at the wheel. Horn and Dasher stood at the foremast, gazing up. Two other men smoked their pipes by the capstan, and I recognized them as Betts and Freeman.

Poor Uncle Stanley looked around, and his face fell. He had a glimpse, I thought, of the madness that the fever had brought him. He stood there in his fine wool suit, in his fancy shore-going shoes, as out of place as a pauper in a palace.

He blinked at me. “I heard it,” he said. “The carriages and the crowds. I smelled the mud. The horses.” He pressed his fingers against his temples. “What's wrong with me?” he asked.

If he
knew
he was mad, he
couldn't
be mad, I thought. “Sir,” I said. “The sextant; it's bent.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Who bent it, then?”

“Mudge,” I said. “Remember? It fell from your locker.”

“Yes,” he said, with a look of terrible pain. “Yes, I do remember. It's off by three degrees.”

“Which way?” I shook him. “Uncle, please. Which way?”

He had no chance to tell me. Horn came up from the waist. “I'd like to change to storm canvas,” he said. “If you'll let me, sir.” He seemed unsure of whom to ask, of who was now the master. “I'd like trysails fore and aft.”

Butterfield rubbed his temples. “It's calm,” he said. “Flat as a field.”

“Not for long,” said Horn. He pointed to the southwest, and I saw the clouds filling in. They were black and smoky, swirling at the edges. “Sir, please.”

“Very well.” Butterfield closed his eyes. “Do whatever you like.”

He started away, but I grabbed his sleeve. “The sextant,” I said.

He looked utterly bewildered.

“What do I do with the error?”

“Add,” he said. “Add the error.” He wandered away, going slowly toward his cabin.

I turned to Horn. “I'll help you with the topsail.”

“No,” he said. “I think that—Beg your pardon, sir. But I think you'd better take your sextant sights.”

“It would be easier at noon,” I said.

“You won't see the sun at noon.” He glanced again to the southwest. “You won't see the sun again.”

It was just what Grace had told me; somehow Grace had known just what the weather would bring. I watched Horn go forward, gathering what little crew he could muster. Then I went back to the sextant, though I loathed the thing. I stood by the rail to watch the sun come up, the redness bleeding from the sky. The
Dragon
never moved and never made a sound; her deck was steady as a wharf. I shot the sun as it peeked above the horizon, and again as it balanced on that hard, flat edge.

Its light was hot and bright; it blazed across the ocean. I took another pair of sights, then turned to go below. And I saw the clouds building into towers, stretching out toward us. Horn was high above me, standing on a footrope that I couldn't quite see, as though he balanced on the clouds.

I
stood up from my bunk and stared at the chart. The marks I'd made, the little circles round my crosses, were bunched together like a clump of grapes. I stared at them and grinned. “There,” I said softly.
“That's
where we be.”

I snatched the chart from my bunk and carried it up to the deck. The
Dragon
, in her shrunken suit of heavy canvas, labored before a hot and fitful wind. Hours had passed since dawn, and the sea that Butterfield had called a field was now a range of round-topped hills. We mounted each in turn, shuddering to the tops, lurching down the slopes. The sun was a pale dot in a whitened sky, with an enormous wheel of light around it, as though God had marked it there as I had marked positions on my chart.

At the wheel stood Mudge, the farmer's son, the only man on deck. He glowered at the compass as it rocked and tilted in the gimbals. And he wrenched the wheel to port and then starboard, chasing the compass round its card.