The Buccaneers (20 page)

“If he's not already drowned,” said Dasher.

The foredeck ran with water. Black seas tumbled aboard, breaking against the capstan, gurgling at the hawse. I hadn't gone once that day to the door of the Cave.

“Just keep her before the wind,” said Horn. “The squall will pass by daybreak.”

I nodded. “Very well.” If Horn wasn't worried, there was no need for worry. I went below and filled a bucket with bread and cheese and scraps of meat. I added a flask of water, took a lantern from its peg, and carried it all to the doorway at the end of the Cave.

I hammered on the wood. “Captain Grace!” I shouted. “Get back from the door.”

His chains clanked. I set down my bucket and turned the latch. The door creaked open.

It was that moment I feared the most. I couldn't open the door without thinking that Grace would come crashing through it, loosed from his chains. I steeled myself to slam it shut again, then held my lantern out, and thrust it through the door.

The Cave stank of sweat and waste. It echoed with the
sounds of the sea and the creak of the timbers and the thunder from the figurehead. It was the vilest prison I might imagine, always moving, pitching, with the passage of the ship. Bartholomew Grace sat huddled at the edge of my lamplight, his back against the planking, his feet against the wall. His face seemed ghastly white; a week had passed without his seeing the sun.

He turned that face toward me. His lopsided eyes and burnt-away lips, the hole for his nose—I was always shocked to see them. But now I found a pity for him, within my hatred and my fear.

“I've brought you food,” I said.

His eyes shifted only briefly toward my bucket. “We've turned to the south,” he said.

It amazed me that he knew that.

“And you carry too much sail, so you must be short of hands.”

He seemed to wait for an answer, but I wouldn't tell him he was right. I pushed the bucket toward him.

Grace reached out to take it, his clawlike hand catching on the rim. I moved back from the door. “Is it the fever?” he asked. “Have you got it yourself?”

I shook my head. His horrible gaze studied me before dropping to the bucket. He took out the water and drained half the flask. Then he started on the food, and the bread bubbled in clots round his teeth.

“Has the captain got it?” he asked.

“Give me the bucket,” I said.

He nudged it a bare inch toward me. I would have to crawl into the passage to reach it.

“I hear him talking to himself,” said Grace. “He's gone
off his head, hasn't he?” He saw that I would give no answer. “Who's to navigate? Who's to find our way?” He took the cheese and gnawed at the edge. “Not you; I'll tell you that.”

The
Dragon
pitched violently. The empty bucket tipped on its bottom as a loud crack of timbers sounded from the bow. Grace turned his head, and I reached out and snatched the bucket. Something like anger blazed in the buccaneer's eyes.

“You'll stagger across the ocean, boy,” he said. “You'll be chased by one wind, followed by another, and you'll dare do nothing but run before them. Then you'll meet a gale, or a helmsman will let her broach, and you'll lose a mast or drive her under.”

“We'll take our chance,” I said.

“Rid me of these shackles, boy. Let me loose and I'll make a rich man of you. A gentleman of fortune.”

“I don't wish to be a picaroon,” I said.

The word incensed him. “Damn your blood!” he shouted. “You little cur. You'll bring the ship to ruin,
then
you'll come and fetch me. You'll beg me for my help.”

I drew back from the door. “Good day to you, Captain Grace,” I said.

He wrenched at his chains. He pulled so violently, with such a rage, that I was sure he'd tear the ringbolts from the deck. I retreated with my bucket and my lantern.

“Run!” he said, and clanked his chains. He laughed.

I closed the door on Bartholomew Grace. But his voice came clearly through the wood.

“I shan't be chained forever, boy. And my vengeance shall be terrible.”

I
n the hours before dawn, the ghost of our gunner went over the side. Poor Abbey's spirit, if it had ever come in by the windows, was gone by daylight, when we set the
Dragon
again on her proper course.

The squall had passed, without ever rising to the gale I'd feared. And we sailed on toward England, across a sea that was like a field of boulders, so round and jumbled were the waves.

Horn went below and tossed Mudge from his hammock. He pushed him up the ladder and kicked him down the deck. The fat sailor hopped like a toad, scratching himself awake, then wrapped his clumsy hands around the spokes of the
Dragons
wheel.

We left her in his care, and went below to sleep. But I stopped by the captain's cabin, where I found Butterfield wide awake, lying on his back on his bunk.

“John,” he said happily. “Come in.”

“Is there anyone with you?” I asked.

He frowned. “What a deuced silly question. Who could be with me, John?”

It cheered me greatly to see him back in his senses. He remembered nothing of the night, imagining that he had
slept right through it, and I didn't tell him that Abbey's ghost had made a visit.

“I'm tired,” he said. “And sore all over. But I'd like a bit of breakfast, I think.”

I looked up at the skylight. “Mudge is steering,” I said.

“Blast.” He took a long breath and sighed it out. “Well, perhaps I'll wait.”

I went to my cabin and fell asleep in an instant, rocked by the
Dragon
as she tumbled from wave to wave. I was still sleeping at noon, when Butterfield took a sextant sight and placed us twenty leagues south of our course. I slept until midafternoon, when I finally turned myself out and found Horn at the wheel again, humming his song. He nodded toward the skylight, and I looked down to see Butterfield feasting on cheese and jam-clotted bread. It didn't surprise me that Dasher was there, tucking in like a starving man. I felt a twinge of jealousy not to be with them.

“The captain looks better,” I said.

“For now,” said Horn.

His answer puzzled me.

“That's the way the fever works. A day from now, a week from now, he might be flat on his back again.”

I saw the truth in this as the days went by, as the miles passed under our keel. The sailors who had gone ashore on Luis Peña Cay recovered from their fevers, only to be stricken again. Then Mudge took to his hammock, claiming he had the chills.

Dasher suspected that he didn't. “It's a sham,” he said. “He's a cunning cove, isn't he?” He shook his head and set his hair flying around his shoulders. “Sharp's the word with him. Oh, Lord, I should have thought of it myself.”

But Dasher never shirked his duties. He steered the ship and trimmed the sails, always in his flowing coat, always in his wineskins. We couldn't cross the ocean fast enough for him, and he loved to learn our progress from noon to noon, then change it to a distance that he knew.

“A hundred and fifty miles,” he'd say, grinning. “Why, we've just gone from Ramsgate to Portsmouth. Maybe more.” And then, “Fancy that. I've never been to Portsmouth.”

He despaired in the calms and trembled in the squalls. He hated to see the
Dragon
turn from her course, but we always ran before the wind, when it rose, because Horn had doubts about the rigging.

“You see how the foremast shakes?” he asked me during one of the squalls. And indeed it did. When the wind was high, it trembled more than Dasher. It shook with a little rattle in its partners, where it came up through the deck, with a low hum that grew louder with each passing squall.

“Will it break?” I asked.

“Not if we run,” said Horn. “Not if we keep the wind astern.”

So we let the wind chase us, as Grace had said. The crosses on the captain's chart made a jagged line, and once a loop when the wind came suddenly from the east. But they inched toward England. And there were only three hundred miles to go— “Dover to Devon,” said Dasher, gloating—-when Butterfield took a turn for the worse.

I had just given Grace his evening meal; I was putting the latch into place when I heard the captain behind me.

“Who's that you've got in there?” he asked.

“Don't you remember, Uncle?” said I. “It's Bartholomew Grace.”

He repeated the name as though he'd never heard it before. “And why is he berthed in the Cave?”

I took his arm. “You said to put him there. He came from the
Apostle
, remember?”

“Yes, of course,” he said, though clearly he'd forgotten. “How silly of me.” He touched his forehead. “I'm afraid I don't feel quite right today.”

I led him back to his cabin and got him settled in his bunk. In the morning he greeted me warmly, much to my relief.

“John,” he said when I came to his door. “Come in, come in, young man. I have some news to tell you.”

I sat at the foot of his bunk. He looked tired but otherwise healthy.

“Listen, John,” he said. “Your father came by to see me last night.”

My heart sank, and it must have shown on my face. Butterfield laughed. “No, no,” he said. “It's not bad news. He could only stay a moment, just a moment, but he wanted to say how proud you have made him. He bids you Godspeed, and is anxious to see you again.”

The thought struck me—I couldn't help it—that my father had died, that his ghost, like Abbey's, had come aboard the
Dragon.
“Did you let him in by the windows?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Butterfield. “What rubbish you speak. He came through the skylight, John.”

I left his cabin feeling troubled and sad. But Dasher greeted me on deck with a hearty laugh.

“Oh, ho!” he said. “Why the long face? You'll trip on your chin if you don't lift your head.”

“It's the captain,” I said.

“What's wrong with him?”

“Go and look for yourself.”

So Dasher went below, and even he came back disheartened. “Your Captain Hackum's lost his wits,” he said. He mocked Butterfield's voice: “ ‘Dashing Tommy what?’ Strike me dead, you'd think he never heard of me.”

For the first time in our homeward voyage, noon came and went without Butterfield's taking a sextant sight. Dasher ached to know how far we'd gone, and asked me, “Can't you do it yourself?”

“No,” I said. “I never learned.”

“Get Horn to do it, then.”

That was his answer to everything, and somehow it annoyed me. But I called Horn aft and told him our problem. “Will you take the sight?” I asked.

“You're the master, Mr. Spencer,” said Horn. “I'll do anything you tell me, but I can't do that.”

“Why not?” I snapped.

“I'm lost when it comes to numbers.” He lowered his head. “I'm just a seaman, Mr. Spencer. Just a lowly seaman and never more than that.”

“You said—”

“Yarns, Mr. Spencer. I was too thick to make an officer.”

Suddenly he seemed smaller, less than perfect, just a model of the man I'd known.

“But you do know how to navigate,” I said. “You were steering your boat for Africa.”

“Was I on course?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Nor do I.” He shrank even more. “I can't read, Mr. Spencer. I can't even write my name.”

I remembered the bird hed drawn in the log, the albatross that now seemed real enough to be hanging round my neck.

“Why, I could no more find our way to England,” said Horn, “than I could dance a quadrille at Windsor Castle.”

Dasher laughed. It was his high, sickly laugh, which I'd heard only in moments of peril. “Well, that's a fine kettle of fish,” he said. “There's a pretty piece of business for you.”

“Be quiet,” I snapped. It seemed everything we'd done, every action we'd taken, was like a domino stood upon a table. There was Horn coming aboard, and Abbey with his guns, the slave trader in Jamaica, and the
Apostle
in the storm. And they were falling now, one knocking against the other, our whole voyage tumbling into ruin.

“Who's to navigate?” asked Dasher, echoing the words of Bartholomew Grace:
Who's to navigate? Who's to find our way? Not you; I'll tell you that.

“Well?” he asked. “What about Grace?”

His question hung in the air. What about Grace?

“Put the sextant in his mitts and point him at the sun, I say.” Dasher's wineskins squeaked as he shrugged. “What choice do we have?”

Horn shook his head slowly. His face was a picture of agony, as though he blamed all our misfortune on the single fact that he'd never learned his numbers. He quoted a Bible verse, perhaps the only one he knew. “ ‘The wolf… shall dwell with the lamb.’ “

I finished it for him. “ ‘And a little child shall lead them.’ “ I was no longer a child, though I wasn't half the age of either Horn or Dasher. But I would have to do it, I thought. I would have to learn.

I went below and brought up the sextant and chronometer, the tables and books. I brought the broad chart of the North Atlantic, and I spread it all out on the deck, the books to weight the chart in place. Then I took the sextant from the box and held it like a talisman. I willed it to tell us where we were.

Butterfield had made it look so easy. In seconds, he could find the sun in the sextant's little telescope, moving its image in the mirror until it balanced on the skyline. But I stood there for an hour as everything I saw zoomed and tilted in ways I wouldn't have thought possible. I no sooner brought the sun down to the horizon than it slipped away and I had to start all over.

Every move of the ship seemed doubled in the sextant, then reversed by the mirror, and I nearly came to tears before I suddenly got it right and read the angle from the scale. Then I did it again, and a third time, just as Butter-field would have, and took the middle of the three.

All my life, my father had trained me for his business. I had worked-with numbers and loathed them. I had fought against him, determined to get to sea and escape the prison of his office. Now I blessed him for his teachings as I puzzled my way through the almanac and logarithms. Finally I said, “Handy-dandy, here's where we be,” and touched the chart.