John sat with his head in his hands, feeling low. His skull ached and his wounds stung, but all he cared for was that the girl hadn’t come back, and nobody seemed to have seen her.
“It’s on your own conscience,” said Dick Pettibone, shrill as a fishwife. “You ought to have known better than to have brought that poor child. She was half mad, after what she’d suffered. Then, to think of her being pawed by a great brute like you! And now, I don’t doubt she’s run mad in the forest, and will perish miserably.”
“Run mad maybe, but I doubt very much she’ll perish,” said Blackstone. “You didn’t see her fighting! A more bloodthirsting harpy I never saw.” He looked sidelong at John. “She’s left you, you great lout, and you ought to be grateful. Can’t you see that she kept with you only to serve her purposes? You got her where she wished to go, and then it was hail and farewell. If I were you I’d be grateful I still had my prick.”
“So you should,” agreed Jago, where he lay with his head in Jacques’ lap. “She fight like a devil, but they are heartless, heartless.”
“So
you
say,” said John.
“Men are more heartless than women,” said Bob Plum. “Do they think twice about deserting their faithful wives? Do they care for the helpless infants left to starve?
Oh
no, they go swaggering off to the arms of other women—or to ale houses—or the wars—perfidious, treacherous beasts!”
The others turned their heads to stare at him. Reverend Hackbrace, so bound up from a score of wounds he looked like a great long roll of bandage, shifted uncomfortably where he sat.
“Now, then, Bob, let us keep our tempers,” he said. “Scripture tells us—
“
Oui
, Scripture! What about the sin of Eve, eh?” said Jago. “Slut mother sleep with the Serpent and eat of the fruit, get us all thrown out of Paradise. And Jezebel. And Salome.”
“Delilah,” said Jacques.
“And Delilah!”
“That’s true,” said Bob, looking down at his feet. “I must bear in mind the counsels of Saint Paul. Women are of a more natural disposition to sin, alas. After all, there are no male whores.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Blackstone. “You have never been at Court, or you’d never say such a thing.”
“Ain’t you never heard of the Grand Turk?” John lifted his head. “ ’Course there’s boy whores.”
“There are?” Bob’s eyes were wide. The Reverend cleared his throat.
“The sins of the people of the plain, Bob,” he said. “The crime of Sodom.”
“Buggery,” said Blackstone. Bob’s eyes got wider.
“You mean people are
still
doing that?” he said. Jago began to snicker.
“Don’t be an imbecile, Bob,” said Pettibone waspishly.
“But—but why hath not the Lord rained down fire and brimstone upon them?” cried Bob.
“I often ask myself that question, in the still watches of the night,” said Blackstone.
“No doubt the Almighty is waiting His vengeance for the Last Trumpet,” said the Reverend.
“Yes, that must be the case,” Bob agreed. “How dreadful!”
“Perhaps a more edifying topic of conversation might be begun,” said the Reverend. John listened in wonder; it was the first time he had ever heard the Reverend say so much at one go, in his ruined-sounding voice. “For example, it might be pleasant to contemplate what we shall do with the riches awaiting us at Panama.”
“So it might,” said Blackstone. “For my part, I’ll set up as a planter. Build myself a grand house, live in style; perhaps in Virginia or Carolina. The weather is more temperate there, so I hear.”
“I thought of doing that,” said John. “Or setting up in a shop, you know. I was going to settle down with—” He choked back what he had been about to say, and hated himself for the hot tears that welled in his eyes.
“No, you wouldn’t have done,” said Blackstone, not unkindly. “You’ll spend it all on a spree, my friend, and go to sea again.”
“I ain’t like those poor, stupid bastards you see in the gutter,” John protested. “I could have been a bricklayer, you know.”
“Well, well perhaps you may yet. What about you gentlemen?” Blackstone looked at the Reverend and his mates. “But why do I even ask? Surely you’ll establish a mission for the conversion of the benighted Indian.”
“No, sir, we will not,” said Dick Pettibone. “The Reverend has humbly acknowledged that he lacks the patience for missionary work.”
“I am too great a sinner,” said the Reverend mournfully.
“Being as he is no gentle persuader, he is nevertheless a brilliant man of God,” said Pettibone. “We have resolved to buy a quiet country retreat where he will complete his great scholarly work, so unfortunately interrupted when we were obliged to fly from Yorkshire.”
“It is called
One Thousand Canonical Instances Wherein the Claim to Authority of the Bishop of Rome Is Refuted
,” said Bob proudly. “With appendices.”
“Really,” said Blackstone. “And what will the two of you do?”
“Why, keep house for him,” said Bob. “A-and perhaps engage in small farming.”
“I see,” said Blackstone. Jago coughed in a pointed sort of way.
“And take ourselves virtuous wives,” said Dick Pettibone. “Of course.”
“Now, what in hell do you need a wife for?” John asked.
“There is more to a marriage than swiving,” said Pettibone, with great dignity.
“Than what?” said Bob.
“Swiving,” said John, and called it by another name. Bob reddened and fell silent.
“What about the two of you?” Blackstone inquired of the
boucaniers
.
“We need nothing,” said Jago proudly. “Buy ourselves the
tabac
, buy the powder and shot. New muskets, belike, eh,
mon plus cher
? Go back to Tortuga, we got Paradise already.”
“Adam avant I’erreur,”
said Jacques, nodding.
“If you’ve such a damned Paradise, what are you out of it for?” said John crossly.
“The revenge,” said Jago, with a red light in his eyes. Jacques sighed and shook his head.
“On whom, exactly?” inquired Blackstone.
“All of them,” said Jago. “Spain specially. When I was little boy in Marseilles, my monsieur, he keep me in the golden cage. I wear the ribbon, like the kitten, eh? He feed me the candies, sweet rice, sweet wines. I sleep on his sheets, wear the perfume. Then he gamble away everything and English lord win me, give me to his lady to wear the turban. She make me stand in the livery by her door. But Sir Robert gamble too, and then Don Pedro win me. I am nothing, me, but the object.”
“C’était il y a un longtemps, mon cher,”
murmured Jacques.
“Don Pedro ship me off to Hispaniola. Poor little me, never before worked in the fields! I am beat half to death. When I get big, I kill him and run away. Steal the boat, go adrift, almost die of the thirst. Wash up on the little island. There was Jacques.
“My Jacques, he’s too poor orphan, steal the game on the rich man’s land. They catch him, make him row the prison galley. Galley taken by the pirates, Jacques set free, turn pirate. Spanish catch him and take him to be hanged. Beat him bad. But their ship goes on the reef off the little island, they drown, he swim ashore. When he find me, carry me to his refuge with great
tendresse
.
“My Jacques, he is the, the philosopher. He explain to me: the black, the poor, neither one creatures of reason, say the rich men. They make us only the beasts.
Eh bien
, then we are beasts, and free. We prey on them like the lions, like the wolves. What they have, we are free to take, if we can take; or die free. There is no, no
coupable
for the beasts. No sins.”
Jacques said something long and earnest in French, which Jago translated to mean that he and Jacques, playing at being animals, had found their way back into Eden: freedom, and true comradeship. Free air, the forest and the sea, all things held in common between true brothers, far from the jealous eyes of other men or wicked whores. He said further, that he hoped as how Jago might slake his thirst for revenge soon and give over his anger, so they could go back to their island. “It is indeed a noble idyll,” said Bob Plum, “but for being Godless.” They all looked at Bob in wonderment, except for Dick Pettibone, who hid his face in his hands, and the Reverend, who was gazing into the coals contentedly, as though he watched the damned burning there.
For a week they worked on the bastions of San Lorenzo, building them up with as much effort as they’d expended in bringing them down. John, who was reckoned able-bodied compared to some of the others, was sent into the jungle with a gang of prisoners to cut wood and haul logs back through the heat and stink. He searched the green shadows, shading his eyes with his hands, hoping to catch a glimpse of a white leg or a peering face; but he never saw his girl.
He worked with the grave-digging detail too, putting the wounded away in their eternal beds as they died, and he looked closely at each gray face as the dead were sewn into their shrouds; but none of them were the girl.
He wandered amongst the company in the evenings, from watch-fire to watch-fire, questioning all whether they’d seen a young lad in the fighting, no more than fifteen, wearing sailcloth breeches and a blue shirt. He said how the lad was his cousin, run away to the West Indies after listening to pirate tales, and how he’d felt obliged to look out for him for his mother’s sake. Some had seen the boy that night, and some hadn’t; some had seen him since the fighting, but couldn’t recollect where. None could tell him where to find her.
“The fleet!” roared the lookout. There was a rush to the wall, to stare out at the wide sea. The crowd parted to let Captain Norman through, with his spyglass, but the sharper-eyed had already made them out: the foremost of Morgan’s ships, hull-down yet on the horizon. Norman closed his glass with a snap, and looked ever so relieved as he said: “Bleeding Jesus, not before his time. Run up the colors!” So the flag was hoisted up, the English colors true and plain. A shot was fired, and in the anchorage below, the
Mayflower
and her sister ships, which had been brought down the coast after the victory, ran up their colors too.
The fleet came on under a following wind, swift as gulls gliding across the sea, and how it gladdened the hearts of them on the walls to see the size of that armada! Morgan’s own ship the
Satisfaction
came foremost of them all.
“There’s the Admiral himself, by God!” said John, waving his hat. “See him, on the quarterdeck?”
“What a brave fellow he looks!” said Bob Plum.
“Do you suppose he’s wondering where his little sweetheart got to?” said Blackstone at John’s elbow. John shivered, and it seemed to him that Morgan turned his dark face up just then and looked him in the eye, a sober questioning sort of look.
“What are they about?” said a seaman on John’s other side. “They’re making dead for the reef!”
“Hard over to starboard!” shouted Captain Norman, waving like a madman.
But the
Satisfaction
came on straight into the harbor, with all her crew whooping and calling from the waist like a pack of merry-andrews, and only Morgan, with sudden alarm in his countenance, reading the faces above him. He turned and shouted an order, and the helmsman seemed to wake up and tried to put her hard over. No use; the
Satisfaction
ploughed into Laja Reef,
smash!
Over went her foremast, yards and shrouds and blocks and all, onto her bowsprit, dangling, as the waving apes on her deck were thrown off their feet.
And while John and his mates were gaping from the castle walls, hardly able to credit what they’d just seen, here came the stately
Port Royal
, and where her helmsman’s eyes were was anybody’s guess, for she sailed straight into the reef too. Then two more of their number followed close behind, as the sea slewed the
Satisfaction
and the
Port Royal
around, so the newcomers pushed them forward across the reef as across a tabletop, with an almighty grinding of keels. In less time than it takes to tell, the four were one knotted wreck together. There was an appalled silence.
Morgan still stood on his tilted quarterdeck, staring, clutching the rail. He glanced upward at Captain Norman. He bared his white teeth in a grin, though John thought it looked more like a grimace of pain; then, quite deliberately, he threw his head back and shouted with laughter. The sound of his merriment echoed off the great rock, loud, long peals, as who should say it was a prime joke!
Uncertainly at first, the men began to laugh with him.
“Damnation, there’s a bold-faced bastard!” said Blackstone. He applauded, and all around the men began to cheer Harry Morgan.
And in cheers and laughter they brought him off the wreck of the
Satisfaction
, as the rest of the fleet steered carefully to safe anchorage, and led him up to see what good work they’d done.
By nightfall it was all transmuted to Morgan’s Luck; for hadn’t they managed to get all the stores he’d brought them out of the holds of the wrecks, good beef and corn, and rum too? And only one person killed on the reef, think of that! (And that was only the old, mad Welshwoman, who, finding herself unwatched, had crept below to partake of spirits in a quiet corner, and been too drunk or amazed when the water rushed in to save herself.)
And the ships were only ships, after all—soon enough Harry Morgan would take new ones from the Spanish. And if a lot of good fellows had died in the taking of Chagres Castle, well, that was the way of war, and there’d be a greater share of plunder for everyone else. At least Bradley had hung on long enough for Morgan to take his hand, before breathing his last.
John cheered with the rest, even as he labored up the narrow stair cut in the face of the rock, laden down with sacks of dried beef from the
Satisfaction’s
hold. Only one thing made him uncomfortable, and that was that Harry Morgan had spotted him in the crowd, as they’d brought the Admiral into Chagres Castle. He sore regretted now all the effort he’d expended making sure Morgan knew his name and face. His mother’s voice told him Morgan knew everything he’d done, and he was for the rope’s end. He replied in short words, telling his mother’s voice to hush.