The Buccaneers (10 page)

But I drove those thoughts from my mind. They had nothing to do with Horn, I told myself. They were just the ideas of an addled old gunner.

Horn straightened at the rail. “She's down in the water,” he said.

“How much?” I asked.

“Come and see for yourself.”

I lashed the wheel in place and hurried to the rail. The brightness of the stars and the blackness of the sea nearly made me dizzy, as though I were balanced at the edge of space with only a void below me. But when I leaned farther over the rail, I saw the water shimmering against the
planks, bright feathers and bubbles of green spinning past the hull.

“She's down an inch,” said Horn. “Maybe two.”

I couldn't tell the difference, but Horn had a better feel for the ship, a sense of her ways that I had envied from the beginning. I had to go up to the bow and out onto the sprit before I could see for myself. I watched the carved dragon taking bites at the sea—the water exploding into green around its teeth—and saw that he was right. The wooden jaws bit too deeply at the water. They barely spat a mouthful out before they dipped and took another. It was true; the
Dragon
was slowly sinking.

Horn went back to the wheel. I stopped in the waist and sounded the bilge. But the pole came up without a trace of water, and I could make no sense of it.

At dawn, we were both still at the wheel, both silent as we puzzled it out. The
Dragon
was growing heavy, but no water was sloshing about in the bilge. Not a drop, I thought. That was odd in itself, for every ship took on water, and there had always been half a foot or so slopping over the keelson. But now it seemed—quite impossibly— that the
Dragon
leaked it
out.
Or our cargo had somehow grown bigger. Or heavier.

“Coconut husks!” I shouted.

Horn frowned at me.

“The husks are sopping up water.”

I went down to my cabin and fetched the lamp from its holder. In its warm, smoky glow I went crawling through the ship, squirming to the depth of the hold. There I found bags chewed away at the corners and heard the rats retreating before me. Down I went, down to the bottom, where
water—too low and too hidden for even the sounding pole to find—slobbered and slopped in a sinister way. I could hear it coming into the ship, creeping over frames and ribs. My hand touched a sugar bag that was cold and wet, and the one beside it was the same, and the ones above them and below them too. And underneath, the coconut husks were as sodden as sponges.

I might have traced the wetness in the bags, and discovered where the hull was leaking. But all I could think of was climbing from the hold, away from the slop of the water and the dizzying roll of the ship and—worst of all—the squeal of the rats that raised terrible memories of my father's ordeal at the hands of the Cornish wreckers. I hurried away in such fear and haste that my lamp was still burning when I came up to the deck, to sunshine and a freshening breeze.

The captain was there, and Horn, and Abbey in the same old cloak I'd first seen him wearing. They leaned toward me with worried looks, as though I were a doctor bringing news from a sickroom.

I told them what I'd found: twenty sacks, at the least, ruined by the water. “We have to shift them out,” I said. “The whole lot. We have to empty the hold, then stop the leak.”

“With half the crew too sick to work?” asked Butterfield. He balled his hands into fists and knocked them together. “What if we ran for England, straight for home?”

“The cargo wouldn't be worth a penny,” I said. “I can't let my father down.”

He frowned and nodded. “Then we'll have to go back to Kingston. The dockyard there will do it.”

“Too far,” said Horn. “If-we run to Kingston, we'll have
to go on, clear to the Tortugas, or beat to windward all the way back. Put her on a beach, sir; that's what I would do.”

“There's Antigua,” I said. “It's closer.”

But again Horn argued. “We'll have to beat through the Leeward Islands,” he said. “Do you know where the reefs are? Where the sandbanks are?”

“The chart will show them,” said I.

“Some, perhaps. Not all.” Horn was dead set on his own idea. “A beach, sir. Just turn to the sun.”

Butterfield looked to the east, where the morning sun rose over the chain of cloud-wreathed islands. We could fetch them in a day: by morning at the latest. “But where?” he asked.

Horn's blue eyes stared at the compass. He didn't even bother to glance at the land. “I know a place,” he said.

Abbey laughed scornfully. “I'm sure you do.”

Butterfield reddened. “Mr. Abbey!” he said.

“Well, didn't he steer us to a place where half the crew might catch the fever?” said Abbey. “Didn't he steer us to that dead men's ship? Didn't he have the helm when the
Apostle
found us?”

“That's enough!” shouted Butterfield.

“He's a Jonah, I tell you.”

“Now listen,
Mister
Abbey.” Butterfield pointed a finger at the gunner. “My ship is leaking, my cargo's going to ruin, half my crew are sick as dogs, and if Horn knows a place where we can get this repaired, that's good enough for me.”

Abbey turned to me. “Tell him, John. Tell him what I dreamed.”

“The devil take your dreams!” shouted Butterfield. And
he too appealed to me. “John, are you willing to let Horn lead us?”

Why it was put on
my
shoulders, I didn't understand. Perhaps the captain was having doubts of his own, for it was true that Horn had always steered us to our troubles. Wherever he took us, bad luck followed, as though he had the devil for his shadow. I looked at Horn, and he seemed very sad, so melancholy that I almost pitied him. But I dreaded to think where he might take us next, and I let the gunner have his way. I said, “
I
know a place. And it's right over there.”

“Where?” asked Butterfield.

I lifted my hand, surprised to find the lantern still dangling from it. I pointed vaguely toward the east. In truth, I had no idea what lay among the islands there, but I was sure I could look at the charts and pick a spot. And I decided I would rather do that than follow Horn to his choice.

“Come below,” said Butterfield. “You and Abbey, come below.”

We went down to the cabin and found it so gloomy that I saw only then that my lamp was still burning. Poor Mudge huddled on the captain's bunk, and the light that I carried fell across his face. The rash had spread over his yellowed skin, which was so bright with sweat that he looked like a great, oozing slug. And he moved no more quickly than that as he raised a hand and mumbled something at us.

There was a bucket on the deck beside him, a sponge floating on the surface. He groaned most pitifully.

“Maybe he wants his decks swabbed down,” said Abbey.

I stepped closer, hoping to help. I lifted the lamp, and Mudge mumbled more loudly.

Butterfield was bent over his table, his back toward me. “It's frightfully dark in here,” he said. “But the light sends swords through his eyes, the poor soul.”

“Oh,” I said, chagrined. I took the lamp to the table, and Mudge settled back into a restless sleep.

“So where's this island of yours?” asked Butterfield.

We stared at a maze of little islands, each one as foreign to me as Siberia. I had hoped to see a place where the water was shallow and sand-bottomed, sheltered from the trades. But that hope was dashed on the instant, for Butterfield had chosen a chart that showed all of the Caribbean Sea, and the islands were no bigger than peas.

“Just point it out,” he said.

I moved my hand across the chart. “Now, let me think.”

“Come, come. We're not as far to the south as that,” the captain said. “Here's where we be.”

He put his finger on the chart in the curve of the Leeward Islands. The lamp made a huge, black shadow behind it. And I saw with dismay that my hand hovered over a spot nearly half a thousand miles away.

I moved it quickly north, up the chain of islands. But I could see it was no use; I couldn't hope to pick a spot. We would have to go wherever Horn might choose.

But Abbey came to my rescue. “I know where the lad is thinking of,” he said. “It's here.” He touched a big finger to the tangled islands just east of our position. “It's called Culebra—isn't it, John?—and it's as fine a careenage as you'd hope to see.”

I looked at him, his face shadowed in the lamplight.

“Yes,” I said. “That sounds right.”

Butterfield laughed. “You surprise me, the pair of you,”

He said. “I didn't think you'd carry your game as far as this.” He lifted the chart, and underneath it was the one I'd hoped to see, showing the islands in all their detail. “Now, where's this Culebra?”

Abbey pointed it out, and it was a wonderful island with a deep and sheltered harbor, and beaches on the western shore, all ringed by coral reefs.

“You've been there before?” asked the captain.

“Yes,” said Abbey.

“Very well,” said Butterfield. “Go and tell Horn to steer for Culebra.” He got his rulers out and marched them to the compass rose. “Tell him to steer nor'east.”

Horn met me at the deck with one of his long and burning looks. “Well?” he asked. “What's it going to be?”

“Steer nor'east,” I said. “We're going to Culebra.”

I saw his jaw tighten. “Whose idea was that?”

“It's the captain's decision,” I said.

“Is it?” asked Horn. “I would have thought it was Roland Abbey's.”

How he guessed that, I couldn't imagine. But I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.

“I'll steer to Davy Jones if I'm told to,” said Horn. He turned the wheel and began to bring the
Dragon
round. “And if you ask me, Mr. Spencer, that's just where we'll be going.”

W
e came upon Culebra from the south, just as dawn was breaking. Ahead, and off our beam, the big Atlantic swells hurled themselves against the reefs with enormous spouts of creamy froth. And all around us was a deep and throaty roar, a silver mist of spray.

It was a small island, dark and mysterious, a hunch of green spotted by six pale hills, steep-sided and round, like the warts on the back of an enormous toad. In the spray and the dim of the dawn, it somehow bore a sense of ill-fortune, a feeling of misery. I couldn't rid myself of the thought that a tragedy had happened here, that the trees and the hills remembered a horror, that the island— somehow—was waiting for us.

The current ran fast, ebbing to the east, sweeping us closer to the off-lying rocks and the wild spouts of shattered waves. We had to turn, and turn again, to keep ourselves on course. And every time we turned, the island seemed to slide to the east, as though tempting us to chase it.

On the wind came a smell of weeds and poisoned rock, of surf on battered shores. It was a thick, foul odor, and
Butterfield hunched his shoulders against it. He held a spyglass, which he rapped on his palm. “I don't like this,” he said. “It seems an evil place.”

“Evil it is,” said Horn. “That's Davy Jones you're smelling.”

“It's a rookery you're smelling,” said Abbey. “That's all that is.” He was our pilot, but Horn was the helmsman. And it was clear to us all that Horn knew the waters well. He met every surge of current, every breaking wave, a moment before they touched us.

“You've been here before,” I said.

Horn nodded. “Yes.”

“Many times?”

“A few.” He turned the wheel, and the
Dragon
rocked in a swift eddy. “These were Kidd's islands. He buried his treasure somewhere here, then sailed up to New York with just a few chests of gold, hoping to buy his freedom.”

Abbey smirked. “You tell us, Spinner,” he said.

“It's not a yarn,” said Horn. “It's the truth I'm telling you. We took the longboat to every cay and every island, and the sun burnt the oarsmen to cinders. Aye, there's treasure here, and death as well.”

“Go on!” cried Abbey.

“You watch for that black ship,” said Horn. “You're as likely to find her here as anywhere.”

Abbey laughed. But there was no gaiety in it. “Then we're more likely
not
to find her here, aren't we?”

“Enough!” said Butterfield. He stepped between the pair, as though prying them apart with his spyglass. “If you've really been to Culebra, Mr. Abbey, please tell me: what
will
we find?”

“Water,” said the gunner. “Good, fresh water, sir. A place to careen the ship, and timber if we need it. A place to let Mudge and the others get ashore before another hour passes and another sack of sugar goes to ruin.”

Butterfield scowled at the shore. “It seems a most unpleasant place.”

“But safe,” said Abbey. “Safe as houses.”

I saw what he meant. The rocks and reefs that made our approach so treacherous would protect us once we had passed them. They would stand guard like watchmen, and let us see any vessel coming in our path.

“I vote for Culebra,” I said.

Butterfield smiled. “When did seamen get the vote?”

“I mean we don't have much choice,” I said, blushing. “We can stand off the harbor and—”

“I know what you meant.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I think you're right, John. Let's carry on, shall we?”

We shortened sail and readied the anchor. Harry Freeman took soundings, shouting his depths above a steady thrum of surf. The bottom came up from twelve fathoms to seven, then sharply to three. But Horn was unruffled, and with a touch of the wheel he brought us back to deep water.

The harbor opened before us, battered by surf at its entrance but peaceful and calm beyond that. It was somehow sad and lonely, and we were greatly surprised to see the masts of a ship that was anchored in there.

“A brig,” I said, squinting. “English, by the look of her.”

“Navy?” asked Horn.

“I don't think so.”

Butterfield pressed his spyglass into my hands. “Your eyes are sharper than mine,” he said.

I took it up and studied the little ship. Her yards were crossed, but not as neat as navy fashion. They were stripped of all sails, as though she had settled down for a long stay. Anchored at the bow, moored at the stern, she lay at a slant beyond the narrows, pulled by the ebbing tide.