On the Account/Chapter 3

ULL, sunless noon found the pirates’ sloop in a welter of gray sea that matched the leaden scurry of the sky above them. They had long since dropped the chase and had made shift to double-reef the mainsail but they were in sorry case. The cabin accommodations were scanty and sixty of them were forced to make shift for themselves upon the spume-swept deck. The water was fairly warm but they were drenched and endeavored to offset their misery by copious drafts of rum.

As the afternoon wore on darkness came rapidly with an increasing gale and it was all they could do with tackles to the goos neck of the tiller, two men at the wheel and two in the combination gunroom and cabin, to keep the ship’s head to the sea. The waves ran riot, charging in a maelstrom. The sky turned slaty-black, illumined with sheets of lightning that lit up the seething yeast of the tortured ocean and the claps of thunder kept up an incessant peal.

On deck the men answered the storm with blasphemies that were swept aft in a jumble of imprecation. The sloop staggered under the blows of wind and water. In the cabin the billows pounded at her stern as if a giant beat upon a mighty drum.

The place was reeking with foul air and the lamp shone dimly through trailing tobacco smoke. At the head of the table Bane held place, having given over the deck to the quartermaster, “Scarry-Dick” Denton. His eyes were set and his beard was soaked with liquor spilled by the tossing of the sloop as he tried to quaff it.

“Sink or swim,” he shouted, “we’ll go through bravely. Blood and fire, listen to the thunder!”

He rose, swaying, as the cabin glared blue in the lightning that poured in through port holes and skylight, and held to the breech of a gun, securely lashed behind its closed port.

“The gods are drunk with us in their tipple and have gone together by the ears. Death and fury, an’ we could, I’d run out the guns and return ’em a salute. The king’s men have run for cover but we are bound for the open. Blow, ye, blow. The wind’s from all quarters. I’m for the deck.”

He made his way over the sodden bodies of some of the crew and reached the deck as one of the short and furious seas broke upon the poop, tore away the taffrail and swept the two men from the wheel, driving them into the boarding netting that had been stretched above the coaming for safety lines. Bane jumped to the tiller and put his strength to it while the men on the watch-tackles heaved with him.

A maddened gust of wind roared at the sloop and seemed for the moment to lift her clear of the seething water. Her stern crashed down, the reefed staysail broke clear and whipped out of sight like a storm-herded gull. Scarry-Dick, clinging to the netting, fought his way forward and, with three men, worked at the furl of the thrashing jib. A tiny lull saved them from the trough and the pirates managed to set enough headsail to keep the sloop from broaching to.

The carpenter clawed his way out of the cabin and clung to Bane, shouting in his ear. Water was working in, already above the line of bilge. As the quartermaster came back Bane signaled for him to take the helm and dived below, kicking the drunken men in the cabin into sensibility and buffeting them before him.

It was impossible to open the forehatch but they dragged a spare spar aft and rigged it with a funnel of canvas, striving like demons until they had got it clear of the bowsprit and dropped it into the sea as the mainsail came down on the run and was smothered by twenty men. The sea-anchor filled, the sloop swung head on, bare-poled, backing before the storm, but riding it, while the carpenter and his assistants strove to stanch the leak where the oakum had worked out of a seam.

It was the last flurry of the storm. The wind died away with howls of baffled rage, the sullen seas slowly subsided and, in the west, the sky lifted to a pale streak of chrome. Upon the luminous background showed the lifting topmasts of a big ship, apparently a merchantman.

“There’s our next craft, lads,” cried Bane. “In with the sea-anchor and up sail again. She heads this way. ’Tis two glasses yet to sunset. We’ll sleep aboard of her to-night.”

The merchantman came slowly on while the clouds still lifted, trailing skirts of the fast disappearing hurricane. The air was sweet, the sea, still rough and covered with catspaws, a brilliant indigo. The sloop sailed on to meet her, the crew crowding the cabin and lying flat upon the decks, covered with spare canvas. Pistols were Stuck in sashes, there was a cutlas for every right hand, a keen knife ready for each left.

Bane had hauled down the shreds of his black ensign and now flew a jack at the peak, upside down in signal of distress. With her torn taffrail, the decks apparently cumbered with dismantled canvas, only three or four men visible, the sloop, going sluggishly, streams of water issuing from her pumps, gained the sympathy of the commander of the merchantman.

The pirates could see him on the poop, speaking-trumpet in hand, and Bane caught the bellow of his voice, borne down wind, shouting for the smaller vessel to come-up and stand-by for a boat.

“She’s no beauty,” said Bane, “but she will serve. She’s gulled! She sees the jack! Not a man of ye moves till I give the word. Then aboard! We’ll need no guns. Keep them hidden behind the ports.”

The two craft drew nearer, the sloop, close-hauled, held too close for her point of best speed by Bane; the ship surging along with yards squared to the following breeze, her forefoot dripping with brine, rising and falling heavily to the swash.

Bane grinned as he spun the wheel, timing his maneuver so that the sloop hung clumsily in the eye of the wind, almost missed stays and came about on the crest of a long roller, forging down under the side of the merchantman, apparently in imminent danger of being crushed like an eggshell. Bane knew that the backwash from the ship would hold him off long enough to execute his plan.

“Easy, you lubbers,” shouted the merchant-captain. “What sloop is that?”

“The Ranger. From the seas!” answered Bane in the slogan of the freebooters.

At the phrase the cabin of the sloop vomited men. The loose canvas was hurled aside and sixty pirates sprang to the rail. A volley of oaths accenting his swift orders sounded through the speaking-trumpet of the ship’s captain. A gun-port swung slowly open, then another, and the muzzles of carronades showed in the opening.

“Boarders away!” yelled Bane, leading his men in a spring for the rail of the merchantman as a wave lifted them to its level.

Grappling hooks were thrown and tangled in the standing-rigging, pirates swarmed through the open gun-ports and chased the panic-stricken servers. Bane’s pistol fire caught the captain in his shoulder. There were a few scattering shots, a clashing grind of steel on steel, a half-hearted resistance from half-armed men and the ship was a prize. Scarry-Dick took deck-command with a dozen men while the rest of the pirates swarmed through the ship.

THE wounded captain was brought before Bane, lording it in the usurped cabin, gulping port from a decanter. His men had broached some of the cargo and, in freebooting independence, stamped into the cabin, swathed in silks, laced hats upon their headkerchiefs, a bottle in each hand, boastful, anticking like masquerading schoolboys.

Bane glanced over the manifest that a trembling purser handed him.

“The Neptune, from Bristol, England, laden with bale goods and general merchandise,” he said. ’Tis a clumsy hooker, but ’twill serve our turn until a better-lined vessel comes along.” He scowled at the captain, pale from loss of blood, his hands bound behind him, faint but resolute. The brave look in his eyes provoked Bane’s unruly spirit to a gale of unreasoning fury.

“Well, you dog,” he demanded. “Why don’t you beg for your life?”

The captain smiled.

“You have already tried to take it, you murdering pirate. I ask nothing from your kind of cattle.”

Bane’s brows closed in a black smear of wrath.

“You swim for that, you rogue,” he cried.

“You have long since been damned,” said the other evenly. “And, as surely as I swim, so some day you will swing from the mast that knows no deck.”

Bane’s gaze could not hold the dauntless look of the prisoner. He hurled the decanter at him. It smashed against the wall as the captain swiftly moved his head and the rich perfume of the wine filled the room. Bane drew his pistol from his sash, his face convulsed with rage.

“Damned, am I? Then I will send you first to hell to greet me when I come!”

He fired pointblank in the other’s face so that the powder gas scorched it and the grains blackened it about the cruel hole between the eyes. The captain spun about and fell. Bane took a step and spurned the body with his foot.

“Over with that carrion,” he ordered. “It grows dark. Strip the sloop. Set those cravens aboard.” He nodded toward a group of shaking passengers. “Bring in the crew.”

The sailors of the Neptune were herded before him.

“Look ye,” said Bane. “I want no forced men aboard my craft. Free men and equal are we all. Join, and, as ye prove, ye get a full share. That—or aboard the sloop with ye.”

The men interchanged looks and shifted on their feet. Then one stepped forward and another until but a dozen remained, including the officers of the captured vessel.

“Good,” declared Bane. “Set these stubborn fools aboard. Send me the quartermaster.”

Night found the Neptune heading under the stars for Green Turtle Bay, the sea-scooped crescent of one of the smaller Bahamas, the leaking sloop far astern, the old buccaneer crooning at the wheel.

His voice broke off in a croak as he gazed upward. A star had fallen athwart the heavens.

“’Tis a bad omen,” he muttered. “A bad omen. To kill in fight, aye, that’s one thing. But to murder in cold blood spells evil. ’Twas not so in Kidd’s time. A falling star is a summoned soul!”

His superstition-ridden imagination saw in the meteor the spirit of the dead captain speeding for judgment.

“Tend your course, there, you one-eyed crab!” shouted Scarry-Dick as the Neptune swung off and the clews of the topsails shivered.

“Aye, aye, sir! Crab, am I?” he said beneath his breath as the quartermaster followed up his reprimand with a string of oaths. “Yet have I claws that can nip.”

He shifted the spokes, peering at the binnacle. He was the best helmsman aboard and he resented the rebuke. The shadowy sails rustled softly above him, he could hear the hiss of the wake above the songs and shouts of the carousing pirates below and presently he took up his own song again.