The Pyrates. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ and her shirt little better than a rag. Her silver earring had gone into the pocket of her first jailer, and her hair was bound tightly behind her head, giving her face the appearance of a polished ebony mask from some Egyptian tomb. That, and her height, and the fact that she was struggling like fury with the sentries, made her a sufficiently striking spectacle to turn every head on quay and ship.

      The officer in charge grabbed her wrist-chain and hauled her forward so violently that she stumbled and fell, whereon he shouted “Get up, you slut!” and kicked her brutally, in approved romantic redcoat style. Which was a mistake, for she got up faster than he bargained for, blazing with rage and fetters whirling; the chain caught the officer across the face before the sentries hauled her back, writhing, and the officer dabbed blood from his cheek and swore most foully.

      “Thou black vermin!” he shouted. “Ha! Wouldst thou, eh? Shalt learn the price of raising hand to thy betters, thou snarling slattern, thou! Sergeant, hoist me her up and we’ll ha’ the cat to her!”

      The redcoats having come provided for such contingencies, as they always did in those days, in a trice Sheba was spreadeagled against the cart, her wrists lashed to it with cords, and the sergeant, a burly, grinning brute with bad teeth who hadn’t shaved (or washed either, probably), strode forward and tore away her shirt before flourishing the long cat-o’-nine-tails in a hand whose finger-nails would not have borne inspection. The spectators stared, and dainty Lady Vanity clutched at the Admiral’s arm in maidenly distress.

      “Nay, father – stop them! They mustn’t!” Her sweet soprano was tremulous wi’ entreaty. “Not in public! Can’t they lambast her behind a building or somewhere?”

      The sergeant spat a brutal stream of tobacco juice on Sheba’s bare back, saw her flinch, roared wi’ sadistic glee, and struck with all his might. Sheba choked a scream into a gasp as the tails tore at her skin, the officer gloated “Nice one, fellow!”, and the sergeant was winding up for another stroke – when the cat was plucked from his grasp and he spun round to face a reproachful Colonel Blood, who had vaulted nimbly from rail to wharf, and was shaking his head as he tossed the cat into the dock.

      “Wait till ye’re married afore ye do that sort o’ thing, son,” he reproved the sergeant. “Ye’re too young altogether.”

      The officer surged forward, raging. “Who the devil art thou to mar our discipline and condign punishment?”

      “Me?” said the Colonel innocently. “I’m a Tyburn hooligan, the kind that breaks up executions and gets spectator sports a bad name.” He beamed on the officer. “But I can see you’re a man of taste, and ye wouldn’t want to spoil anything as pretty as this, now, would ye?” And he ran an appreciative hand over Sheba’s shuddering bare shoulder.

      “Avoid, upstart!” hooted the officer, and Blood frowned.

      “Och, don’t be so hasty – sure it’s a teeny scrape she gave ye, an’ her just a slip of a girl! Use a little Christian charity,” coaxed the Colonel, “ye bloodthirsty bastard. Abate thy spite, an’ think on gentle things – apple pie, an’ Christmas, an’ little lambs a-gambol, an your own dear old hag of a mother –”

      “Damn thee, thou damned thing, thou!” shrieked the officer, fairly demented. “You’ll answer for this –”

      “Then so shall I!” rang out a crisp, clear, well-modulated, upper-class, R.A.D.A.-trained baritone, and down the gangplank strode Avery, all clean-limbed virtue. Sheba twisted her head to look, and forgot the smart of her back in a surge of relief (if ever you’re tied to a cart and they’re going to give you the business, an approaching Avery is just what you need).

      “You’re a disgrace to your commission,” he chilled the officer, “creating a scene like this with ladies present. Stand aside, sir!” And the officer stood. Avery strode to the cart, and where you or I would have stopped foolishly, wishing we’d brought a knife, he simply reached up and snapped Sheba’s bonds with two quick twists of his powerful fingers. Sheba regarded him with wonder, and as she turned from the cart he gulped and blushed, hastily averted his eyes, whipped a convenient cloak from the cart, and dropped it over her shoulders.

      “Off you go now!” he told her sharply. “Mustn’t catch cold. Aboard with you, and slip into something comfortable.”

      Sheba, stricken into an awe quite foreign to her, was suffering precisely the shock which Lady Vanity had sustained a few moments earlier – it was the sort of thing impressionable teen-agers used to feel when they saw Valentino or Paul Newman for the first time: that brave new world reaction of Miranda’s. She fumbled the cloak round her like one in a dream, and moved unsteadily towards the plank, staring back at the Apollo-like figure of her rescuer, who was withering the sullen officer with a final glance. As Sheba reached the plank, there was Blood, all casual charm, waiting to pat her wrist.

      “Don’t thank me, darlin’ – it was nothin’.” He smiled beguilingly at her, and she came out of her Avery-induced trance just long enough to spit in his eye, before refocusing on the splendid captain as he followed her aboard. So intent was she that she tripped on her ankle-chain and hit the deck with a blistering oath which caused the nearest seamen to press their knuckles to their teeth and stop their ears.

      Lady Vanity, looking down in disdain from the poopladder, was heard to remark: “Fie! what a disgusting creature!” and Sheba, sprawled on the deck like Cat Woman, glared up at her with diabolic venom.

      “You should pray, my lady,” said she in a sand-papered hiss, “that you never find out how disgusting I can be!”

      “How now, baggage o’ midnight – wilt bandy, ha?” Captain Yardley dragged her to her feet. “An’ wi’ lady o’ rank, look’ee, aye, an’ prime quality, as far above ’ee as truck be above keelson!” He frowned, considering – yes, the truck was above the keelson, he was pretty sure. He thrust her roughly towards the hatchway. “Stint thy hoydenish clack or we’ll ha’ thee in the branks – you there, down wi’ her an’ clap her in bilboes, wi’ a wannion!”

      He turned apologetically to usher his quality passengers to the poop, where they thrilled to the spectacle of the Twelve Apostles being warped from her moorings. Men threw ropes about, and dropped tardy wenches over the side, sails were unfurled and bumboatmen fell in the water, articles of all descriptions were clewed up, the crowd on the dock sang the seventeenth-century version of “Auld Lang Syne”, the stench of bilge mingled evocatively with the rotting refuse of the river, the jolly sailormen swung their pigtails and strained at the capstan bars wi’ heave and ho, Captain Yardley was quietly seasick in a corner, and only Blood spared a last glance (a leer, actually) for Black Sheba as she was hustled below. But even he missed her sudden start as a huge brute of a seaman yanked cruelly at her fetters with a coarse guffaw of: “Har-har, me fine lady – allow me to show ye yer quarters – a right dainty chamber, sink me!” He was a great bearded ruffian, all shaggy with red hair from crown to breast, and he quickly bundled Sheba out of sight. Blood sighed, and wondered where they would put her; maybe in some quiet corner where she’d be glad of a little company … provided she wasn’t guarded by daunting thugs like that red-haired gorilla. Big, tough rascal he looked. Come to that, these sailors were a pretty muscular lot; Blood’s eye dwelt for a moment on another seaman lingering by the hatchway, a clean-shaven heavyweight in spotless white calico who looked as though he could comfortably have taken three straight falls from Oddjob. Of course, the Colonel mused, sailors probably had to be large and fit in order to cope with squalls and doldrums and other nautical hazards; it stood to reason.

      He dismissed them from his mind, and set to studying how to cut in on Avery, who was explaining to a fascinated Vanity that the sharp end of the ship was at the СКАЧАТЬ