On the Account/Chapter 5

HE big room of the Golden Galleon at Santo Domingo, the principal port on the southern coast of the island of the same name, rang with the repeated last line of the piratical ditty. Bane’s men were ashore with gold to spend and ardent appetites to be appeased. That morning they had sighted a man-of-war sailing north through the Windward Passage between Santo Domingo and Cuba, scouring the Caribbean on false information, and they were secure in their revels.

Women cajoled the freebooters, returning rough caresses with rude blows of affected coyness, there was a constant call to the uneasy landlord and his staff for more liquor, the place was foul with the reek of rum and tobacco and, as the song ceased, a discordant babble of screams and laughter, rough entreaties and shrill protestations took its place.

A fiddler was dragged forward and set in a chair upon a table. A clear space was made for unwieldy dancers. The fiddler scraped until his last string snapped and some one plucked the chair from under him, sending him toppling to the floor amid shrieks and guffaws as he scrambled for the broad pieces that were flung to him.

At a table by the open staircase that led to the upper story sat the one-eyed buccaneer, tankard in hand, spinning his tedious yarn to a tall fellow whose dress held none of the splashes of finery distinguishing the buccaneers from the half-fearful, curious natives.

“Aye, ’tis the only life,” said the freebooter. “Never have I seen the time when I could not rub one gold piece against another, and that, mark you, means everything. Show me a wench here that I can not cajole, ugly and old and lop-eyed though I be. That for the land. As for the sea, an ye are a seaman and no qualmy-stomached landsman, show me a better sport.

“Ye seem a man of mettle. Look ye, the captain runs the ship, ’tis true, but the quartermaster, Scarry-Dick Denton, he is our tribune. The captain can undertake nothing that we, through Denton, do not approve. Thirty shares for Bane, the rest for us, divided man for man with an extra share for Scarry-Dick. Why, lad, ’tis the life!

“I was with Kidd in the 'Adventure Galley', thirty guns and eighty men, when he sailed out of Plymouth in May, sixteen-ninety-six. Soon we were a hundred and fifty-five. To New York we sailed, then to Madeira and Cape Verd and so to Madagascar, Malabar and Johanna.

“Two hundred pounds apiece we got out of the Queda Merchant alone. I left him at Amboyna and so saved my neck, I grant ye, for they took him at New York and sent him back to England with his lads. But a man must take a chance and I am sixty. Aye, ’tis the life. Easy come and easy go. The lasses love ye and the rest, blast them, toady to ye. Boy! Bring more o’ that rum!”

“I pay for this shot,” said the other. “Nay, man, I insist. I am half-seas over now with your bounty. I like your talk.” His eyes narrowed and he nudged the pirate’s elbow. “Ye spoke of women, now. Do ye meet with any that are young—not these painted bawds—but fresh and dainty. Eh, tell me that?”

The one-eyed buccaneer slapped him on the back.

“Aye, ’twill be the girls for you and the gold for me. Yet one is gone as soon as the other. But with Bane ’tis business at sea and lasses left for shore. Fresh and dainty, ask ye? They come not willingly to our net which makes them the greater prizes if ye gill them.

“There was one lass on Green Key who took her own life, mark ye, rather than join and share the captain’s cabin. She had a husband, she said. She could have had her choice of a dozen out of all the crew. A plucked one she was, with red-gold curls and a skin as white as foam.”

He checked his drunken maundering at the quickly arrested exclamation of the other.

“What ails ye, man? Is the rum not to your liking?”

“Nay, it tastes well enough. Green Key, said ye? I know the place. I have piloted and turtled amid the Bahamas from Little Abaco to Turks Islands. I know them all. I could tell your skipper of a passage through the Jumento Cays, a passage from the northwest to a lagoon with an islet in the center. ’Twas shown to me by a Carib Indian for a turtling ground. I dare swear ’tis known to no white man but me. And, to the south and east, an outlet.”

“A passage through the Jumentos from the northwest! Now, you are the lad for us! Bane drinks above with Denton and the mates. They are set in gambling but they will listen to such a tale. Will ye go, cully? Will ye join us. Will ye go on the account?”

The tall man finished his rummer and tossed the reckoning on the table.

“‘On the account’, say ye? ’Tis a good phrase. Take me to Bane.”

THE pirate captain lifted the leather cylinder from the dice and swept a dozen gleaming coins toward the heap in front of him before he looked up.

“Nine—and the main!” he called triumphantly. “The third nick running.”

“The devil’s own luck is with you to-night,” grumbled Scarry-Dick. “I’ve thrown out every time I held the box.”

He tinned and stared at the intruders.

“A recruit, Cap’n,” hiccuped the man who had sailed with Kidd. “One who knows the Bank from end to end and can tell of secret havens. He can show ye a passage through the Jumentos and he’s keen to join us.”

Bane’s eyes challenged the stranger, appraising him. The man’s face was burned to coffee color and deeply lined. A short, thick growth of beard stretched from his Adam’s apple to his high cheek-bones and his untrimmed hair trailed on his shoulders. His eyes were bleak, almost sinister, with cold lights in them.

“What’s this talk of a passage through the Jumentos?” asked Bane.

Southeast of Florida, through Florida Strait, sometimes called the New Bahama Channel, down Santaren Channel and the Old Bahama Channel, ran the broad highway between Cuba and Santo Domingo of the Greater Antilles and the Bahama Islands. It was the main road of sea commerce from the Atlantic States to the West Indies. From it, through the Windward Passage, the way led to the Caribbean, to Puerto Rico, the Leeward and Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, to Venezuela, to Central America and the Isthmus.

West of the scattered islands of the long chain of the Bahamas lie the reefs of the Great Bahama Bank, curbing the Santaren and Old Bahama Channels. The currents swirl perilously about the tide-washed reefs. Midway, Jumentos Cays threw a crescent to the northwest. Bane was the lone sea-highwayman of this stretch, cruising amid the smaller islands and darting out upon the merchantmen. Vice-Admiral Rogers had sworn to chase him from the seas and it was rumored that a fast corvette, or sloop-of-war, was to be specially commissioned for this purpose.

A hidden passage through the Jumentos would provide the buccaneer with a powerful reinforcement. The cord of the bow was sixty miles or more. A channel would enable him to play the arrow, flying out on his prey and slipping back to safety, if needs be, under the very nose of any king’s ship. Such a game was to the supreme taste of Bane. To harry commerce and laugh at the Government, why, that was the ideal sport.

He watched the newcomer closely as he took up a tankard set aside on a smaller table, poured the dregs on the smooth mahogany and drew a map with wetted for finger, outlining the Jumentos Crescent, the scattering Bahamas and the mainland of Cuba as he talked.

“Seventy-five-eighty west, twenty-three-ten north,” he concluded, giving the approximate position of the channel. “And the bearings by the three palms, as I shall show ye.”

Bane nodded approvingly.

“If ye show us aright,” he said, “there shall be special reward for ye. Eh, Denton, what think ye? It suits. In the very mid-rib of the Bank, a rare hideout! And an isle to boot, for fort and magazine. Sixteen feet will see us clear with our shallow draft. The king’s ships draw no less than twenty, even if they dared to follow without knowing the bearings. Your name, man?”

“They call me Turtler Tom.”

Bane nodded. The lack of surnames was not uncommon with those who did not pretend to worry about the laws.

“So then, Tom the Turtler, you go on the account? Good! We sail at noon to-morrow, when our heads are clear. Report to Denton here. And there’s a piece-of-eight to drink to the new venture.”

Tom took the coin and pocketed it. His sponsor clapped him on the back once more as they went down to the common room.

“So ye are one of us. Now for a health. I warrant ye that was one of Denton’s pieces the skipper tossed ye. Did ye note the glum look he cast after it?”

Above-stairs Bane looked at the evaporating map.

“A good stroke, Denton,” he said. “We’ll play the fox with them all with this runway. And a good man gained. A bold eye, Dickon, and a strong arm.”

“A likely man enough, though I cared not for his eyes. They look too like a shark’s for my taste. And I have a fancy that I have seen him before. ’Tis your nick again. Take up the box.”

“I call a five,” said Bane, rattling the dice. “Shell out. I shall win all your stakes yet. This is my lucky night.”

Tom the Turtler glanced up at the lighted window as he left the tavern. The last round had put the old buccaneer to sleep. He walked down to the beach where the boats of the pirate lay. The brigantine was anchored in the bay.

He walked moodily along the edge of the tide, his hands deep in his pockets. Presently his fingers sought and found a coin, the piece-of-eight that Bane had given him as earnest-money. With a swift jerk he sent it skittering across the placid water, sending up tiny splashes of phosphorescence as it skipped.

“‘On the account.’ ’Tis an apt phrase,” he mused. “And the reckoning is a long one. But it shall be paid, to the full.”

He seated himself on a rock and looked at the trim hull of the Venture for a long time, motionless. But his eyes saw no vessel, but the vision of Green Key and the coral slabs above a lonely grave where the jungle vines had laid pitying fingers.