Captain Adam (43 page)

"So there's our answer," muttered Adam.

He drew.

"Well, come on, ye heefwits! D'ye want to live forever?"

He sprang over the barricade.

f~\ t^ ^° ^^^^ ^^^ ^^"^- ^^ could hear his own feet strike the hard \-J*~^ earth as he ran. He didn't know whether anybody was following.

They'd blasted at the first man who showed himself, and now they were frantically reloading—pouring the powder, ramming the cut bullets home, stuffing in the wads, priming.

It is always good to learn that your enemy's a fool.

Adam ran on.

There was a sound like that of two boards being clapped together from his right—that is, from the warehouse—and then there was another. Something touched him on the top of his right shoulder.

He heard a shout behind him. Now they were coming! There was a good deal of that clapping sound. Adam reached the door of the shack.

This was a real door, but it was not a good one, not strong. Adam had no doubt that he could smash it, but he didn't know what to do when he had. They'd be in the dark, in there, while he would be framed against the drizzle of dawn.

He threw himself upon the door, and so flimsy was it that he thought for a moment that it would go slamming in, himself on top. He backed away. He kicked it twice, hard. The second kick tore the hinges out, but it also caused Adam to stagger back. He caught himself. He faced an open space now, a rectangle of blackness.

What he did then he did without thinking. He dived in head-first-leaving his feet, flinging himself full-length.

There was a great shattering explosion that seemed to take place right on top of his head, and then he was on the floor scrabbling among the legs of stools and tables he couldn't see. Something slished the air close to his face—a knife? a saber?—and he rolled away from that. He'd worked his own sheath knife out.

Rolling, he struck somebody's legs. He threw both arms around these, and the man fell hard, cursing. Perhaps because the breath had been knocked out of him, he didn't start to struggle; but Adam took no chances, and used his knife several times.

He got to his knees, then to his feet.

Through the doorway he could see his men coming now. They were about halfway from the barricade. That's how fast everything had happened.

Then he found himself on hands and knees again. It was curious.

He didn't know he'd been hit, yet it seemed unHkely that he had fainted.

He could have lost consciousness only for a second. When he looked up again, the men were bursting through the doorway.

Something fell on him.

Next thing he knew was smoke. It stung his eyes and scraped his throat. It prickled the inside of his nose. Shaking his head, weeping, he started for the doorway.

"There's another one of the rats!"

"No, no!" he cried.

"My God, it's Captain Long!"

They hauled him out, forbearing to carry him lest they lose too much time. Near the door he bumped a corpse. It was like two tenders, moored side by side, bumping in the wash of a vessel that had passed nearby. The corpse had no weapon. Its face was all blood and blackened flesh. Its pockets had been turned inside-out.

Down the beach a little, out of musketshot, they paused to survey the situation. Foureau gave Adam a few gulps of rum, which helped.

The sparks rose straight and swift, in a fixed column, to a point about twenty feet above the van Bramm shack, and there they broke ranks to swoop and swing inland with the joyous abandon of children bursting out of school. The flames crackled and spat.

Van Bramm and his followers must have taken refuge in the warehouse. This was not an unexpected move, the warehouse being a structure firmly built of real timber, the only one of its sort on the island. The surprise lay in the fact that they had not clung to the shack, if only for comfort's sake, at least for a while, keeping the warehouse as a last resort. Instead, van Bramm appeared to have left no more than a forlorn hope in the shack, thinking perhaps to enfilade the attackers from the shelter of the warehouse, if the first charge was broken, but making sure all the same that arrangements to fire the smaller building were complete.

There had only been four men in that shack, Foureau averred. They were still there.

"You're sure they're dead?"

"They're dead all right."

The transfer to the bigger, stronger building had been made at night, of course, in order that it should not be observed and taken as a sign of weakness. With the shack leveled, there would be no cover from behind which to attack the warehouse.

"Change of wind," somebody muttered, "and the big un'd go, too."

Well, that was not likely. These were the trades. The thought, however, rendered them a dab grim. The warehouse was anything but fireproof. It boasted the only non-canvas roof on Providence, but that roof was made of cedar shingles, which would go up like paper. The ware-

house, too, contained the colony's magazine, which was not sheathed in metal. There were three tons of gunpowder in that magazine.

They watched the fire, not knowing what to do next. Only a little further down the beach—there wasn't room between the two buildings to work even a small battering-ram—was the door of the warehouse. This was the only door, and there were no windows.

The sparks leapt straight, and broke, and went rollicking across the island. There was a great deal of smoke. One wall of the blazing shack fell in, then another. The sparks were redoubled.

"We could make out to try to force the door and then one man slip around back and toss a torch up on the roof," Foureau said slowly, thoughtfully. "T^at'd flush 'em!"

Adam's blood ran cold at the thought; but the pirates seized the suggestion with whoops of delight. It was the sort of thing that appealed to them—bold, noisy, spectacular, superlatively stupid, and cruel. Each could picture in his imagination the van Bramm men rushing out of the warehouse—for they wouldn't dare stay there when it was afire—and one by one getting picked off. It would be a grand sight, and sport. Clamorous, they were for starting this; but Adam rose.

"Ye fools! Where would you get the timber for another building like that? It'd use up in one big poof nine-tenths of the gunpowder on this island, so how could you go adventuring again—or even put up a fight if some Navy ship comes along?"

It swayed them. They wavered.

"What's more," Adam pursued, "it would ruin most of the treasure. That's yours. You've all got shares in it, you've worked for it and fought for it. And maybe there's a lot more than you think? Who's been checking van Bramm's accounts all these months?"

This told. Indeed it was of the very marrow of the matter; for complaints that van Bramm was not giving a proper accounting of the loot, that he had illegally allocated large portions of it for his own personal use, were the cause of the unrest in the first place.

"Blow that building up," Adam warned them, "and you'll never find out how rich you once was!"

They mumbled and muttered in acquiescence. But Foureau moved among them, waving his arms. The big Frenchman was angry. He'd tasted power, and he didn't like to see his lovely plan punctured.

"All right, all right! But answer me this. Captain: What are you going to do then? They got rum and food in there enough to last a month. Are we going to just sit here on our arses?"

"Sure not," said Adam. "We'll smash in. There's that mast they ain't stepped back into the Marty. It'd make a first-rate ram." 268

"But there's no room to go to that door with it, without you go right through the fire!"

"All right then, we'll go right through the fire." Adam pointed to the blazing shack. Another wall had just fallen in. Tarry materials were burning and there was more smoke than ever. "They won't expect us. They can't see us coming." He faced the men again. "Well, what's the trouble? You're not afraid of a little fire, are you?"

f^f^ It was like Hell. There were few high-tossing tongues of v/v/ flame left, but thousands of little ones licked and leapt around their feet, darting here and there, blue, purple, bright pink. There was a great deal of smoke. As they charged through the still-burning ruins of the shack they kicked up a prodigious number of sparks, which jumped at them, or seemed to, stinging faces and exposed hands. The men had submerged themselves, clothes and all, in the waters of the bay; and when the sparks spat up they hissed as though in rage, sending forth steam. Despite this precaution, several of the men caught fire.

They burst through the shack yelling like Indians, and with no pause went right at the door of the warehouse. It might have been made of bamboo, the way it splintered. They scarcely felt the shock.

They dropped the mast and stormed inside.

Adam Long was the first. In the sudden gloom of the warehouse, after the brightness of the fire, unable for a moment to see anything at all, he dropped to one knee, ducked his head, drew his cutlass.

There was almost no musket fire. The defenders scarcely had a chance to draw their steel. Many backed away at the first onrush, and a few turned and fled—whether to get weapons, to secrete their own shares of the booty, or simply in fright, was not clear.

Adam saw a huge dark blurred figure coming at him. He rose, raising his blade. The man turned and ran deeper into the warehouse, possibly because he had seen others back of Adam. Adam ran after him, not so much in pursuit as because he believed that it would be deeper in this building that Everard van Bramm and van Bramm's prisoner would be found. He did not know what he sought—an inner office perhaps, a cur-tained-off sanctorum. There would be something like that.

Without windows, the warehouse got its light in part from slits and broken places in the walls and ceiling, through which sunlight slanted in thin eager bright planes, and also, now, from the violated doorway

which opened upon the fire, making everything around it a jumpy red. That crimson light shone, too, on upHfted swords and upon the faces of men who cried for quarter or else cursed. Though the defenders had not had their guns ready they had apparently been about to see to this chore; or perhaps they had been preparing to assemble grenades; at any rate, the floor was scattered here with a few grains of gunpowder, there with a whole pile of it, while spillings, strips, went every-which-way. These caught fire, possibly from flaming bits of clothing, and in a moment were helter-skeltering about, running in crazy spurts, darting, stopping, swerving, swaying: they might have been so many incandescent imps whirling and cavorting in diabolical glee.

Adam, however, had turned his back upon these pyrotechnics. He was running between high-stacked sacks of sugar, twisting in and out among piles of tapestries, altar clothes, crisscrossed crucifixes, and all manner of half-seen silverware. He bumped with a knee a small brass-bound box atop a chest, and it fell to the floor, coins cascading from it. Rounding a corner, he kicked another, smaller box. Pearls—large and small, egg-shaped, pear-shaped, oblong, round; pink pearls and gray ones, brown, ivory, dead white—went clinking and clattering in all directions, so that they crunched under his feet as he ran.

Now all around him the feuds these fools had been having flared up. The invaders, braced for a bitter battle, had been monstrously triumphant almost from the beginning; and the release was heady. Few of the defenders at first stood to fight it out. Most ran, ratlike, for some unseen cover. Bellowing, remembering old grudges, Adam's men tore after them. In obscure comers there were squeals, there were scufflings, sometimes a scream, where men were being killed.

Adam tripped over something, thought it moved, wheeled upon it with raised blade. No, Seth Selden was still—and would be so forever. His head had been hacked half off: the neck was a slobber of blood, flesh, windpipe. Cynically, having no preference, Seth had elected to remain loyal to van Bramm—with this result. Adam Long had never loved the little man, but after all he did come from Newport, he was Deborah's uncle. Seth's eyes were uprolled, so that the pupils could not be seen. His lips, parted, were twisted not as though in pain but rather as though in a sneer. Likely enough he had been saying something sarcastic, something bawdy, at the instant he was killed.

The noise was deafening. Men were shouting that the building was afire, that the magazine would soon go up; and a few scampered out; but most, certainly, lingered to slake their lust for slaughter, or, a little later, when they saw it, for treasure. If they gave over the chase it was not because they were gorged with blood but rather because they were greedy. Seeing the glitter of gold, they forgot about gore; and they loaded their 270

arms with plunder from many a forgotten ship, and staggered outside-only to return in a little while for more.

The roof caught up. It made a high crisp spitty sound; and burning bits of it began to fall, tumbling like autumn leaves, trailing smoke.

Adam ran around a pile of coats, wigs, swordbelts, and silk sashes—and collided with Everard van Bramm.

Each had been running, and it knocked the breath out of them. Van Bramm was the first to recover. Stripped to the waist, as Adam had first seen him, he showed the more naked because of his bald head, which gleamed now in the light of the flames. In his right fist he gripped a cutlass. He was of course smiling. He stank of sweat and French perfume.

What Adam had expected this man to do he couldn't have said; but certainly it was anything but what van Bramm did do. He turned and ran.

Adam ran after him. It wasn't far. Still another door was slammed in Adam's face, a latch was thrown; but this was a flimsy affair, the portal of a rickety thin inside partition, a small house or hut, jerry-built, within the warehouse. Adam could see it clearly now, for the fire was spreading.

Adam didn't favor this with his cudass. Instead he seized the nearest article at hand—a large branch of candlesticks, silver, heavy. The first two blows splintered the top panels. The third shattered the bolt. The door flew open.

Van Bramm had been bending over something on a bed, not ten feet away. He had a pistol in his hand, and he was turning this toward Adam.