The Stolen Heart (32 page)

 

 

But she could not think about that now. She had to be ready for the
night to come, and needed to convince Cooker that she was harmless.

 

 

She wondered if the men in the
Trident
were ready for the
night, and how they were faring. She was not so sanguine about the
sobriety of the prize crew as Delgado had been.

 

 

She had told the men to crack out the rum casks as soon as they had
gone, and it would be a truly dedicated and loyal sailor who could
resist
that
temptation. So long as the
Trident
men
did not get stewed themselves, they would be fine. She only hoped
her plan would not go awry.

 

 

Cook knew where she had hidden the laudanum, and as she cleaned the
aft area, she found in the mate’s small cabin the medicine chest,
with quinine for the crewmen with malaria, and silver salts for the
ones with venereal disease that had remained upon the
Trident
.

 

 

"She sighed. They never had got to port; had that been her fault?
Jared had been like a man driven to fill the hold and get them home
quickly. Yet she knew he loved the sea, was good at what he did.

 

 

She hated the thought of being left behind as he roamed the high
seas, but Jared was only gradually coming around to the idea that
she could remain on board the ship as a useful member of the crew.

 

 

Well, maybe not as a greenhand, she acknowledged, patting her
stomach as she thought of the child within. But navigating, keeping
the log, serving as steward? Why not? It could work, if Jared were
willing to try.

 

 

But first she had to get the ship back for him, and find him.
And
her father.

 

 

For as she listened to the crew talking about past ships taken and
the rewards of selling the cargoes, and leafed back through the log,
she at last discovered the exact coordinates where the
Calypso
had been seized eight months before.

 

 

Her father had made better time than she had thought returning from
New Zealand. Now proof of what had happened to his ship was there in
front of her. There were the coordinates, and mention of the fact
that all the crew had remained loyal to a man.

 

 

She only hoped he had not been killed outright in the hope of
eroding that loyalty. If her father was still alive, she would find
him, even if she had to sail the whole of the Pacific to do it.

 

 

But first Al had to help get the ship back, and for that, she needed
to use he head and bide her time. She tried not to act jittery
around Delgado and Cooker, for to betray any sign of nervousness
would make them suspicious, of that she was sure.

 

 

She doubted Cooker would care too much. He seemed to just be content
to have his freedom; who he worked for did not seem to make much
difference. He had worked on the whaler ever since having gone up
north via the underground railroad. So long as he was not picking
cotton on a plantation, and had three square meals each day, he was
happy.

 

 

But Delgado was another matter, for he seemed to be watching her
like a hawk. She was glad to take a turn on watch up in the mast,
for at least she was free of the piercing scrutiny of his dark eyes,
and he must have assumed there was little harm she could do up there
with only one of his crew for company.

 

 

But the man was a friend of Adrian’s, and filled in a great number
of details on what life had been like aboard the
Dolphin
.

 

 

“We had a goodly cargo. The mates tried their best to get us a
greasy voyage. When the Captain was drunk and passed out, he was
fine. It was when he woke up hung over that everyone had to jump. Do
you really think that you can get us off the charge of piracy?”

 

 

“We can only try. Where is the
Dolphin
now? And the mates,
the log book?”

 

 

“We destroyed the log when the Captain was killed. The mates did it,
but they were killed trying to defend the ship. The
Dolphin
was being emptied and refitted by the prize crew last time we were
in port, a few days ago. Once it’s re-christened, it’ll be sold on.
I don’t know how much of the cargo is left.

 

 

"It's pretty rough going over land to Santiago, so my guess is it is
still sitting on the docks waiting to be sold to a passing ship that
wants to fill up before heading home.”

 

 

And you’ll help us, Jim?”

 

 

He nodded. “I will. I want to get back home to New Bedford. Got a
sweetheart there. No more shipping out for me. A damned sight too
dangerous and too hard a life.”

 

 

“We take the ship, and you’ll have a good lay to get yourself set up
at home and marry. And as for the piracy, well, like I said, stick
to the same story, that Delgado killed Smith to sap your resistance,
and you'll all get off scot free, except in the eyes of the Lord, of
course.”

 

 

“Aye, but perhaps helping you and your decent crew an captain will
atone for it. You can count on us. Now we've had time to sober up
and think, well, we all want to go home. Tonight at ten it is.”

 

 

“Off you go down again. I see someone coming up, and we don’t want
Delgado to suspect us.”

 

 

"Don't you want to head down?"

 

 

"No, I need to think and want to avoid Delgado. You go."

 

 

“Right, Al. I'll send someone up to spell you at the end of the
watch. See you later.”

 

 

The next man up was a French-speaking crewman, so she had little
hope of gaining another ally. He seemed very uncommunicative in any
language, and had a small brandy flask for company.

 

 

So she enjoyed the silence, the better to reflect upon what had
happened to her, and to think about Jared, whom she missed terribly.

 

 

She also went over the plan in her mind once more. On board the
Trident
, Cook would try to drug as many of the men as possible, and
convince the others to abandon ship by laying down a false deck
which would appear to be on fire.

 

 

The whale oil would flare brightly, making what they hoped would be
a convincing spectacle. A second false deck with boards soaked in
seawater would be underneath, and they would have poured water
underneath onto the real deck as well.

 

 

With any luck, the pirates would see the huge, seemingly out of
control fire, and become so panic-stricken they would take to the
boats. Or they could be helped overboard.

 

 

Once they were gone, the crew would take the cutting in hoes and
drag the burning debris over the side, just as they had got rid of
the smashed boat which had landed on the deck during the great storm
around the Horn.

 

 

That part of it seemed easy enough. The pirates would be drunk,
drugged, and petrified. No, the hard part would be theirs, for even
drugging a large portion of the men, they would still have a fight
on their hands if Delgado eluded them.

 

 

How she was to capture him she was not sure. As always, she would
simply have to take advantage of whatever situation arose.

 

 

She thought about his habits. And about the fear of fire on board
any ship, but particularly on one full of whale oil.

 

 

If Delgado thought he was going to lose his ship, what would he do?
Most captains would go up on deck, and some of their men could be
positioned and ready to seize him.

 

 

But with Delgado, she was not so sure. She had been cleaning the
cabin, and he had been watching her mistrustfully. Like a pirate
fearful of an enemy?
Or a miser fearful of a thief….

 

 

She closed her eyes and revisited his cabin in her mind’s eye. The
small private one would not yield many hiding places, but the main
cabin… The transom sofa? The seats were in sections. What better
place to hide treasure?

 

 

As soon as she came down the mast, she whispered her suspicions to
her brother hurriedly before he climbed aloft. “A good plan. We’ll
be ready,” he promised.

 

 

For Almira the hours could not have gone more slowly, but at last it
was dinner time, and she wandered in to see Cooker on the pretext of
trying to find some pepper for the captain. She had noticed he took
his food highly seasoned.

 

 

She held up what seemed to be an empty pepper cellar, and while he
looked at it, she poured all the laudanum into the stew pot.

 

 

It was eight o’clock. There would still be two hours until the
Trident
was prepared to make its move, but since this was not a regular ship
with watch and watch, in most cases very few people would notice or
even care if the crew began to fall asleep.

 

 

She was glad to see it was a grog night; even if the laudanum didn’t
work, the rum would sooner or later with the way they had started to
knock it back. It might not render them unconscious, but it would
certainly make them too sluggish to put up much of a fight.

 

 

The only other part of the plan was to work out the fire aspect. If
they set the galley on fire, it would not make anyone unduly
suspicious, but they could scotch it relatively easily by chopping
down the cabin. Except that the weapons store was also in the locker
on the other side.

 

 

It was not the best place to store powder, but then the pirates had
only recently commandeered this ship and had evidently take over the
pantry as a weapons locker without thinking about the foolishness of
what they had done.

 

 

Some of the pirates were obviously landlubbers, with no common sense
about the best shipboard practices. With any luck they would be the
first to panic and head for the boats to abandon ship.

 

 

She had also been deliberately conscientious about her chores in
order to locate all of the buckets and tools. She might well set the
brig on fire, but she did not fancy drowning, for the pirate ship
certainly did not carry enough boats for all the crew to get to
safety. Certainly not for the men of the
Trident
. It would
be every man for himself in the mad scramble to safety, especially
for those who couldn't swim.

 

 

One last problem were the mates, for they were still shackled to the
main mast, and would have to be got to safety quickly. But a good
solid ax wielded by Bob, who had apparently won contests for
splitting rails back home, ought to take care of that.

 

 

Three bells. She tried to take deeper breaths to calm herself. She
strode up the deck to the quarterdeck, and pretended she was getting
ready to turn in amid her blankets.

 

 

She rehearsed the plan over and over again in her mind. She would go
to the galley under cover of darkness, and set it afire. Then she
would head down to the cabin and wait for someone to raise the
alarm.

 

 

Fifteen more minutes had her on the move. It would take some time
for the galley to start to burn convincingly, and the last thing she
wanted was for Delgado to look over and see the
Trident
also
burning in the distance. Then he would know a plot had been put into
motion against him.

 

 

She peered around in the near darkness and spotted several cloths
and the laundry hanging over the fire. She tested them, and found
the garments were all dry. They made good tinder as she soaked them
with whale oil from one of the lamps.

 

 

She watched the fires crackle up the walls, and then ran out onto
the deck to listen. She heard a good deal of snoring, and no one
positioned to keep watch on the mates. She had no doubt that they
were not all asleep; she could hear some drunken singing from the
fo’c’sle.

 

 

But she and her colleagues could shut the hatch and batten it down,
trapping the men in there and leaving only those in steerage to
contend with. By the time the men in the front ever broke free, it
would all be over. One way or the other.

 

 

She saw Bob waiting in the shadows. As soon as she saw no one was
looking, she gave the signal to cut the mates free. They still sat
in place, but got ready to flee if the blaze went out of control.

 

 

As for the gun locker, all was ready. Adrian had cleaned all of the
powder out of it while the men had been eating supper below, so at
least it would not explode as the galley went up in flames.

 

 

Jim now handed them weapons, while Almira moved down the
companionway to join Adrian, George and Cole, who were in the mates'
cabin across the hall lying in wait for Delgado.

 

 

At last the long-awaited shout of “Fire! Fire!” came from above. She
recognized the voice as Cooker’s, and hoped he would not get injured
in the blaze.

 

 

As she had predicted, Delgado came running out of his private cabin,
but instead of heading on deck, he turned left and went into the
main cabin, looking around to the right and left before he did so.

 

 

Adrian peered through the chink they had made in the cabin door, and
nodded. “He’s off. Let’s go.”

 

 

Their pistols at the ready, the stormed out and caught Delgado with
the transom sofa open, and a false bottom lifted to expose a king’s
ransom in gold and jewels, which he was stuffing as best he could
into his pockets.

 

 

“Well, well, it would appear you’ve been holding out on us,
Captain,” Adrian drawled.