Captain Crossbones. Donald Barr Chidsey
your Excellency. But . . . one thing more. What if I should fail? What if I should be caught and hailed before your court?”
The governor nodded toward the gallows.
“That,” he replied.
“I see,” said George Rounsivel. “Thank you, sir.”
CHAPTER III
MOONLIGHT can be deceptive. Those cracks proved not nearly as deep as they had seemed, and the wall of the pineapple-shaped tower turned out to be much steeper than it had showed from above.
Given time, George was sure he’d make it, but already the wall whitened, and soon he would be visible for miles.
He moved as quickly as he dared, making every split-second count. Dreading dizziness, he would not let himself look down. If he fell he would land upon the ramparts, which this tower abutted. That was his immediate aim anyway. If then he toppled over to the ground—which was rock-strewn—he might crack his skull. Even if he managed to stay on the wall he could fear a turned ankle. They’d hang him all the same. One leg less to kick with, was his thought.
A sentry passed below, stumbling as though in weariness. George froze. The sentry did not look up.
Precious though the moments were, George made himself stay motionless a little longer against the fear that the sentry would return. The way he had gone, to George’s right, was a place on the wall where Spanish cannons had opened a breach. This breach was backed from the inside by spike-topped logs, a palisade intended only to be temporary, a stopgap. It was here that, as Governor Rogers had said, an agile man need only to slide to the safety of the ground outside, for the rubble had not yet been cleared away. A few planks had been thrown across this gap. George, breathless above, had not heard the sentry cross those planks; he paused. After a while, however, he started down again.
His hands were wet with sweat, making his grip unsure. He had taken off his shoes and left them in the governor’s chamber, just below the window, for he believed that he could climb down better in his stockinged feet. But the stone was spikey and cut his toes, which began to bleed. The pain was not great, but he was in an agony of suspense lest a foot slip.
He calculated that he was about two-thirds of the way down to the ramparts when the alarm was sounded.
It came from an unexpected quarter. George’s fear had been centered below. It was from above that he was challenged.
He heard the door of the governor’s room opened, and heard a step. It was not the walk of Woodes Rogers, for there was no limp in it.
The window was agape, and George’s shoes just below the sill could be seen by anybody in that room.
George looked up just as Thomas Robinson leaned out.
Robinson’s face was shadowed, but there could be no mistaking that periwig or the magnificent spread of rose-point at the throat.
The two faces were twelve or thirteen feet apart, George’s being bathed in moonlight.
“Stab me, the dog’s . . . The guard! Ho, the guard!”
Robinson’s head and shoulders vanished.
George drew a deep breath . . . and let go.
It was not far. He landed lightly, never in danger of tumbling backward over the rampart. He turned to the right and sped away.
Almost immediately he came upon the board bridge. At the far end stood a sentry, a matchlock in his hands. Startled, this man stared at George. The match lighted his face a little from underneath.
George dived for the space below the planks.
It was dark there. He took the word of Woodes Rogers that rubble was heaped high. For all he could see, he might have been pitching head-first into a chasm.
But here was rubble. It buffeted him. It caused him to cough. But it didn’t do much about breaking his fall. He felt that he was plummeting. His chest got tight.
Choking, gasping, spitting, he started to run.
He heard a gun, then another, and a little later he heard a third.
That a prisoner who had escaped from the persecutor of pirates would find welcome anywhere in Nassau went without saying. But George’s presence at a time like this might start a riot. The cry would go up: “Let’s take out the rest!” No more than a spark was needed.
He surmised that this fear of an explosion was the reason for the failure to chase him. Woodes Rogers would not risk sending search parties into Nassau. Indeed, he probably couldn’t have made them go there.
If the fort was taken Delicia Rogers would be taken too, and it did not call for much imagination to know what would happen to her. She was there instead of at Government House, he remembered, because of him.
So he altered his course, and made for the hills.
Doors were being opened, heads thrust forth, questions shouted. Nassau was no teeming metropolis. Many of the houses were mere shacks of thatch and braziletto. Others were tents. The only ones with floors and proper roofs were the rumshops, of which however there were many. The rumshops had been operating all night. Hundreds, womanless anyway, had stayed up to get in shape for the ceremony down by the beach. It isn’t every morning that you can see nine men strangled.
Figures loomed in the doorways, blurred by dawn. Men shouted at George, who shook his head and ran on. The truth is, he was at the end of his tether. At any moment he’d collapse. It was his wish to be far from everything—alone.
Soon he was behind the town, climbing, and nobody paid attention to him, their eyes being drawn, naturally, toward the fort.
George came to the corner of a sugar field. A less inviting spot for a nap it would have been hard to conceive, for the ground was bumpy and damp, the canes close together. George didn’t care. He plunged in, fought his way for a few yards, then fell, sobbing; a great empty roaring blackness, like that of the outer spaces, engulfed him.
The sound that George heard was not a keening, though it was high, as it was thin. A sea gull? He sat up, his head throbbing.
No, it was not a sea gull. It was not that . . . that . . querulous.
On hands and knees, groggy, George inched toward the sound.
The cane was thick. It was almost like poking his head out through a doorway when at last he came within sight of the man seated on the stone. This man was short, dumpy, a pudding. His lips protruded. His jowls waddled. His eyes were gooseberries. Across his lap lay a piece of canvas, and on this rested a cutlass. His left hand held the hilt, and with a stone in his right hand rhythmically he honed the edge. His movements were exact—yet he gazed toward the bay.
“Trouble?” asked George.
The man didn’t jump, he only turned his head; he put his hone away very carefully. The cutlass he simply held in his right hand.
“There’s trouble down there, yes,” he said, pointing.
Pain skittering through him like small bolts of lightning, George got to his feet, and straightened, and looked back toward Nassau.
He knew instantly that several hours had passed. The sun was well above the horizon, shining full and fierce.
The show was over. People already were leaving. He could see them drifting away, small and buglike from this distance.
The water was a blue not known elsewhere in this world. No catspaws ruffled it. The fronds of the palms were limp, like the black flag. There was not a wisp of breeze. The bodies of the men, too, hung motionless; they did not seem real.
“He can’t do that to us.” The pursy man, with a grunt, got to his feet. “I said he wouldn’t dare to, but he did. So I’m going away. What about you, stranger?”
“I . . . I’m going away too.”
The