Captain in Calico. George Fraser MacDonald
silence to speed, flinging aside the branches and running the boat between them over the loose sand to the water’s edge.
With Ben and Bull at the oars, Malloy in the bow, and Rackham in the stern, they poled the boat out of the shallows and were soon scudding out between the bluffs to the sea.
With the exception of Malloy, who was to look out for the Kingston, they watched the shore receding behind them. The black mouth of the little creek grew smaller, flanked by the vaguely glimmering beach. Then darkness closed in on the little boat, bringing with it a sense of unprotected loneliness: Malloy fidgeted in the bows, casting anxious glances astern until Rackham bade him keep watch in front of him. Ben and Bull, pulling strongly, were sending the boat through the water at a fair speed, and when Rackham calculated that they must be fifteen hundred yards from the shore he ordered them to cease rowing. They rested on their oars, listening while the boat rode the light swell, their ears straining for the tell-tale creak of cord and timber which would herald the presence of the Kingston. But no sound came, save the gentle slapping of the waves against the boat and the occasional scrape of the oars in the rowlocks.
Rackham felt the light drift of spray on his cheek. The wind was freshening and blowing almost dead inshore. Ben noticed it at the same moment.
‘It’s going to be easier for the Kingston to come in than to stand out again,’ he muttered.
‘What d’ye say?’ Bull’s head came up. ‘Bigod, ye’re right!’ He strained his eyes into the darkness seaward. ‘She’s beginning to blow, the windy bitch!’
The little boat was beginning to rock appreciably now, and Rackham gave the order to commence rowing again. They must not drift inshore: if the wind strengthened they might find themselves hard put to it to stand out to the Kingston.
‘Where the hell are they?’ snarled Bull suddenly. He kept turning his head at the end of each stroke to watch for the Kingston.
‘Wait! In oars!’ Malloy, craning over the bow, flung out a hand behind him. ‘I hear something.’
They ceased rowing, and Rackham, straining his ears against the noises of the sea, leaned forward between them.
‘Listen!’ Malloy turned his head towards them. ‘D’ye hear nothing?’
Holding their breath, they listened, and sure enough from somewhere in the gloom ahead came the faint but unmistakable creak of a ship. Bull breathed a gusty sigh of relief.
‘Wait for the light,’ ordered Rackham. He alone knew that there were other vessels than the Kingston on the coast that night, and he was taking no chances.
For several minutes they sat motionless, the little boat riding the swell, waiting to catch the flicker of a lantern from the ship. Then Malloy snapped his fingers and pointed, over to starboard. Following his finger they saw it: a single murky glimmer in the darkness which vanished almost as quickly as it had come.
‘Pull,’ snapped Rackham. ‘Those blasted farmers are so far east they’ll be in Africa before we can catch ’em!’
But Ben and Bull needed no urging. They swung on the oars like men rowing a race, driving the little boat towards the spot where the light had vanished, and suddenly the great bulk of the ship loomed above them out of the blackness.
‘’Vast heaving,’ said Rackham. ‘It’s Kingston. Give them a hail, Malloy.’
Malloy stood up, one hand braced against the thwart, the other cupped to his mouth.
‘Kingston, ahoy! It’s Cap’n Rackham!’
And pat on the heels of his cry, like the voice of an actor on his cue, came back an answering hail. But it was not from the Kingston. Somewhere in the darkness to the eastward, a voice rang out: ‘In the King’s name!’
Even Rackham, prepared as he was for some intervention, was startled into an oath. That hail had certainly not been more than a quarter of a mile away, which meant that Rogers’ ship, somewhere out there in the darkness, had carried out its task to perfection.
Bull heaved himself up with a roar of blasphemous astonishment, stumbled against Malloy and nearly sent him into the sea. The boat swung out of control, with Bull’s oar floating away behind it, and then Ben brought her head round to the Kingston.
From the sounds that drifted down from the Kingston, the ship must have been thrown into utter confusion. A harsh New England voice which Rackham recognised as that of Bennett, his sailing master, was trying to issue orders through the tumult of shouts and fearful questions that had broken the stupified silence following that command from the darkness. And then the noise was stilled as though each man’s throat had been choked simultaneously.
A broad blade of flame licked out suddenly in the blackness to the eastward, dwindled, kindled, and blossomed into a great torch that illumined the sea and flung the Kingston into sharp silhouette against its crimson glare. While Rackham stared the drift of the boat carried them into the Kingston’s shadow and he realised that they were in danger of slipping out of reach of the ship, crippled as they were by the loss of an oar.
‘Pull!’ he shouted, and Ben flung his weight on the remaining oar. Rackham thrust the tiller over and they edged in towards the Kingston’s side.
Bull was shattering the night with his bawling. He was of the slow-witted kind who, when danger appears unheralded, must first of all identify it loudly for their own benefit and that of their fellows.
‘It’s the King’s men!’ he roared. ‘It’s the King’s men!’
The nose of the boat thumped the Kingston’s side. The arrival of the King’s force had been premature, and might have been disastrous with Rackham still in the boat when the success of Rogers’ plan demanded that he should be on the Kingston to supervise her surrender. Every second counted, for at any moment Bennett might open fire and ruin all. He swung himself on to the rail and took in at a glance the astonishing scene. Beyond the Kingston the sea was as bright as day, revealing three fully manned longboats within two cables’ lengths of the Kingston, and behind them, on the verge of that great circle of light, towering over the scene, a tall ship which could be nothing other than a man-of-war.
Rackham, gaining the deck, saw at once what had produced the dazzling light which illuminated the sea between the Kingston and the Governor’s little fleet. Between two of the longboats floated a large raft on which burned a great pile of lumber. Obviously they had towed it between them, and as soon as Malloy’s hail had been heard the order had been given to fire the highly combustible mass. Even as Rackham’s feet touched the deck another great tongue of flame shot up into the darkness, this time farther out to sea. A second raft had been set alight.
‘Stand by to go about!’ bawled Rackham. It was a hopeless order but at least it should give the Kingston’s crew proof of his intentions. ‘Lively, damn you! D’you want to be taken?’
It was Ben, acting promptly, who might have saved the situation for the pirates, and brought Woodes Rogers’ plans to nothing. Leaping among the bemused crowd of seamen on the Kingston’s deck, he cuffed and kicked them into some semblance of order, driving them aloft to work the ship while Bennett, taking authority upon himself, ran down to take what charge he could of the larboard guns.
Fortunately for Rackham and Rogers, the pirate at the wheel lost his head, and abandoning his charge, ran to take cover below. Rackham, bellowing an oath, scrambled up the ladder towards the poop, slipped intentionally and fell sprawling. He saw Ben coming across the deck, his face contorted with rage, but even as his lieutenant reached his side the boom of a gun rang out across the water and a shot whistled past the Kingston’s bows and whined away into the darkness.
Ben pulled up short, glaring over his shoulder towards the longboats.
‘Damn the drunk dogs!’ he shouted. ‘Cowardly bloody scum!’ For once his emotions had the better of him, and he raged and stamped, furious at the impotence