The Pyrates. George Fraser MacDonald

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and what service ye have seen.”

      “Your majesty,” said Captain Avery respectfully, “is gracious. I am twenty-two years old, and have had the honour to serve your majesty these five years. Lately I commanded one of your majesty’s warships, and have fought ’gainst the Dutch, the French, the Spaniards, and the corsairs of Barbary, having the good fortune to take ten prizes and two fortresses, as well,” he added dismissively, “as three wounds. I am a bachelor of arts of Oxford, where I made some study of Mathematicks, Physicks, and the other Natural Sciences, tho’ less than I could have wished. If my service permits, I hope to repair that and take my Master’s Degree in time. Other than that,” he concluded, “there is little to tell.”

      Mr Pepys was watching the royal pair to see how they received this catalogue, and was gratified to see the Duke blink; his majesty, more experienced, made a nice recovery.

      “Physicks, eh?” he said. “Have you perchance, captain, studied Master Newton’s De Analysi, of which there is much learned talk?”

      Try that on for size, thought Mr Pepys triumphantly; trust old Charley to return serve. He looked to see Captain Avery confess ignorance at last, and indeed the captain was frowning, his handsome face turned to the King’s.

      “The method of fluxions,” he said gravely. “Indeed, sire, I have considered it briefly, but with indifferent profit on such short acquaintance. What is your majesty’s opinion of the calculus?”

      Bloody hell, thought Pepys, and his majesty may have been similarly moved, since he had listened to Newton’s explanation in a fog, and had just been name-dropping. “Ah, well,” he said, improvising gamely, “there is much to be said for it; aye, indeed, and will be. But tell me, captain, what shall you make of these Indies pirates?”

      Captain Avery looked surprised. “If such should come in my way,” he said, “I shall hope to do your majesty’s service upon them.”

      “To be sure, to be sure,” said the King hurriedly. He was beginning to find such simple self-assurance daunting, especially from one who was two inches taller than he was. He wasn’t used to either phenomenon, and like Mr Pepys, was beginning to suspect that Captain Avery was too much of a good thing. But he mustn’t be hard on the lad; maybe it was just another case of meeting-royalty nerves.

      “Well, well, captain,” he said heartily, “we wish you a prosperous voyage. Is there aught ye need?” he added almost hopefully.

      “You majesty is kind,” said Avery, “but I have my sword and your majesty’s trust. I need no more.” And he bowed with deferential calm, leaving the King as disconcerted as it was possible for that sophisticated gentleman to be.

      “No,” said the King, rather wistfully, “I don’t suppose you do. Aye, well.” He looked about helplessly, and became aware that his spaniels were busily chewing the rosettes on his shoes. “Stop it, you little bastards,” he said irritably.

      “If your majesty pleases,” said Avery, and glancing at the dogs he gently snapped his fingers. As one spaniel they stopped chewing, and hid behind the King’s legs. The captain transferred his gaze from them to the astonished monarch, and bowed for the last time. “Your majesty, your grace, Mr Pepys,” he said, and backing gracefully away, turned and strode off across the lawn. They watched him go in a stunned silence, until his majesty murmured, almost in awe: “Well, God help the Indies pirates!” and sighed. And then their wonder changed to interest, for as Captain Avery reached the gravel walk, there swayed into his path the opulent red-haired beauty whom his majesty had remarked earlier on the arm of Lord Danby. She had, in fact, been eyeing the captain hungrily for the past five minutes, and thinking, wow! there’s a boy who needs an experience, and I’m going to be it. Subtle in all the amorous arts, she now undulated towards him, shooting him a smouldering glance from shadowed eyes, pouting seductively, and drawing a flimsy lace kerchief from her heaving bosom. She dropped it artlessly in the captain’s path, and he stopped, glanced at it, and at the heavily-breathing lady.

      The King, the Duke of York, and Mr Pepys waited entranced; the lady sighed and fluttered her eye-lids; Captain Avery, his face impassive, glanced round, observed a serving-man, snapped his fingers, and indicated the fallen kerchief. The servant shot forward to retrieve it, Captain Avery indicated the lady, gave her the briefest of bows, and strode majestically on, leaving Beauty fuming in frustration and Royalty looking at each other in astonishment.

      “That fellow,” said the King in wonder, “is just a walking mass of virtue and genius. Rot me,” he added, “if he isn’t. Well, thank God he’s going to the Indies, for if he stayed here he’d make us feel mightily inferior.”

      “What’s a fluxion?” asked the Duke of York, but if the King answered, Mr Pepys did not hear it; he had become suddenly conscious that he was chewing the end of his wig.

      As it chanced, Captain Avery’s departure was less speedy than his majesty had supposed. He was to travel out with Admiral Lord Rooke, the new commander of the East Indies Squadron, but his lordship had the misfortune to trip over a chamberpot at a wayside in while travelling up to Town, and broke his ankle. So while the veteran salt convalesced, roaring at the doctors and being reproved by his domineering daughter (who suspected, quite rightly, that he had been tight), Captain Avery kicked his perfectly-shod heels in London for over a month. This entailed returning his precious cargo to the Admiralty for the moment, and since Pepys had lost the receipts, there was wrath and bad language, not lessened by Captain Avery’s maddening forbearance. At last, however, all was ready; word came that Lord Rooke was on his way, Avery collected the Madagascar crown again, and on that very day, two interesting events occurred in the great city …

      Deep in a noisome hold in Newgate Prison, Black Sheba was pacing the slimy floor like a great cat, her fetters jangling as she strode. She was in a passion, and no wonder. We left her resisting the advances of horrid jailers at Fort St Bartlemy, remember; it might have gone ill with her womanhood there, for the garrison had remarked her beauty, and hung around outside her cell muttering and slavering: “Ar, a choice black pullet it be, a plumptious piece for lovesome sport an’ ravishment, mates, har-har!”, but fortunately the senior surviving officer at the fort was a fairy, and wasn’t having any of that sort of thing. Scenting publicity for himself in the capture of the notorious pirate virago, he had sent her home by fast frigate, and she had lain like a great black beast in the foul lazarette, eyes gleaming in the dark, fed on slops, her fine silk attire reduced to rags – she was in a sorry state of unkemptitude by the time they brought her ashore in the Pool, and thence she was haled to Newgate, where they made a show of her, with fashionable society flocking to see the savage sea queen caged at last. Fine ladies smirked and gloated, and their gentlemen stared and thought “Cor!” while Sheba watched them from behind her bars with red sparks glowing in her amber eyes, and dreamed of them suffering torments indescribable.

      They looked for a grand spectacle at her trial, and she gave it them, fighting like a spitfire all the way to the dock, raking her warders’ faces with her nails, so that they had to chain her to the bar. She spat at the spectators, snarled threats at the jurors, and even screamed filthy abuse at Jeffreys himself. And he, like Lord Foppington, remarked in an aside to his fellow-judges that he would not have missed such a trial for the salvation of mankind. But when he came to pass sentence on her, for piracy, murthers, robberies, slaughters, arson, putting in fear, and operating without a Board of Trade certificate, there was amaze, for he put aside the black cap and said, in that famous dry whisper:

      “Richly though ye ha’ merited death a thousand times over, yet for that ye are a woman – as indeed is plain for all to see, heh-heh! (laughter and whistles) – and for that his majesty’s plantations are in need of labour, it is the merciful sentence of this court that ye be transported to the East Indies, and there sold in bondage СКАЧАТЬ