Captain Crossbones. Donald Barr Chidsey
wants to be sure she’s in her own hammock when it gets dark.”
Vane belched again, then sampled the bumboo and made a face.
“I hope he don’t find her with her breeches down,” he said, “or we’ll have another murder in this camp.”
“Wouldn’t she take ’em down for you, skipper?”
“Shut up.” He had noticed Monk Evans. “They hang?” he asked.
“Aye.”
“All of ’em?”
“All except this man here. He’s a lawyer.”
“You mean a real lawyer? Not just a sea lawyer?”
“Aye, that he is, captain.”
Charles Vane put down his mug, making a little hole in the sand with it, and then, the heels of his hairy red hands pressing his knees, he regarded George Rounsivel.
These pirate captains or chiefs were known as “kings.” There was nothing regal about Vane, and surely nothing that suggested a court about the place in which he sat. Yet the man’s very massiveness could impress. A brute, a beast, he was not without cunning, and it was clear that he was used to being obeyed.
Now he hiccupped thoughtfully. He started to pick his nose.
“All right,” he said at last. “We’ll take you. Now you sit right down and draw me up some articles of comradeship. And don’t forget to put in there that the captain’s supreme—even over the quartermaster, and in fact especially over the quartermaster.”
“No,” said George Rounsivel.
That word jolted Vane forward like a blow between the shoulder blades. He gawped, temples throbbing, while his face became so dark as to be almost purple. Somebody sniggered. Vane heaved himself to his feet, fists clenched.
Fatigue lent insolence to George Rounsivel, who knew anyway that boldness would be the best policy here.
I’ll write your God damn’ paper for you,” he added, “but not now. Why, I’m whipped for sleep! I couldn’t hold a pen in my hand!”
“Oh,” said Vane.
“Besides that,” George went on, “I haven’t had anything to eat all day.”
Vane sat down again. He waved his hand.
“Feed him,” he commanded.
The men of Jorobado might be fussy about their personal possessions, such as trinkets, bits of treasured loot, but it was clear that their food was communal. They ate any time, anywhere, and as much as they pleased.
George was handed two calabashes, one for food, one for blackstrap, and these were kept full despite his protests. The blackstrap was rum and chowder beer spiced with nutmeg. The food was better. There was a salmagundi of uncooked herbs mixed with oil, leeks, garlic, and hard-boiled green-turtle eggs; there were, as he’d expected, bananas; there were chunks of cane for chewing, chunks of coconut too, and there was a great deal of tender white meat which George at first mistook for some notably tasty fowl. By the time he learned that he had been eating iguana he was too tired to care.
His early supposition that he had scarcely been noticed proved wrong. Two minutes after his interview with Vane every man in camp knew that George had been captured and sentenced to hang but had escaped, and that he was a lawyer, a real one. These facts enormously interested them, and they plied George with questions.
Silent, sagging, George shook his head. He was filled with loathing of these greasy uncouth scoundrels who jabbered for details about the killing of their own kind, and with the same breath made suggestions for the articles he was to draw up. But he knew that he could not let this contempt show. Pirates, as he had already learned, are a touchy people, ludicrously easy to insult. Outcasts, they were forever in a position of furious defense. So he kept his head averted, wolfing the salad and meat.
At last he got away and made for the hill. This was wooded and might afford some protection in case of a shower, but his real reason for going there was to be alone.
It had been his first thought to flop down anywhere just outside the camp. He soon saw that this wouldn’t be wise. There was no latrine; while some of the pirates performed right where they were, causing the fires to spit and splutter, others, more fastidious, would retire to the edge of the camp at a call of nature. A man sleeping in the darkness there might be wakened most rudely.
So George climbed, dragging his feet.
When he stepped among the trees it was almost as though somebody had whuffed out a lamp. He paused, waiting for his eyes to get used to the darkness. Overhead the tree branches were javelined by the sun’s last rays, but immediately around him it was hard to see anything.
“Looking for a blanket?”
The speaker was seated, almost at George’s feet, as he saw with a start, and was indeed on a blanket. He was a slim slight lad, pale. Smiling, he moved aside.
“Thank you,” said George.
The blanket looked thick, the boy clean, and they were deep enough in the wood to be safe from prowlers George fell full-length.
Sleep did not seize him instantly, as he’d expected Probably the pain accounted for this. His limbs shrieked, the joints too, as though he were being stretched on a rack; his head was all flame.
“You’re the one that came back with Monk Evans,’ the lad said, his treble voice reaching George as though from far away.
George made an effort to be polite.
“I suppose you’re going to ask for some special article too?”
“Yes. I think you ought to write in a provision against prostitutes. You see, I don’t want any competition.”
George’s face was turned away, and he grimaced. “Good God, one of those!” was his thought. But he was too tired to move.
“You don’t know who I am?” the lad pursued. “I’m Anne Bonney.”
Oh, fine! He was so far depraved that he let them call him Anne!
“Why ‘Anne’?” George asked coldly. “That’s a woman’s name.”
The other giggled. George heard a string drawn, a button popped. Then his hand was lifted from his side and placed over something soft and warm.
“And what do you think this is, mister—a mosquito bite?”
He sat up, gasping, snatching his hand away. His eyes told him now what that hand already had reported. Despite the dim light, despite the male clothes, beyond all doubt this was a woman who sat by his side. She laughed softly, and exposed her other breast.
“There are two of them,” she whispered.
“There usually are.”
She reached for the belt that held up her trousers.
“Would you like to see more?”
George groaned, falling back on the blanket.
“Save it, sister,” he advised. “I’m too tired. Besides, I haven’t any money with me.”
He had in his pocket the purse the governor had given him, but it was his experience that the quickest way to get rid of a trollop is to tell her you are cashless. He expected this one to relapse in a huff. Instead she slapped him, hard.
The slaps stung, one on each cheek. Startled, he opened his eyes.
Anne Bonney, girlish, slender, blonde, might have been easy to look at in any light, in any mood too. Now, furious, her eyes flashing, she was lovely. As she leaned over him her mouth worked in rage.
“By God, I’ll teach you to call me a whore!”
“What else was I to think?”