Captain Crossbones. Donald Barr Chidsey

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СКАЧАТЬ along for adventure or simply to escape his creditors Whatever the reason, he was young and elegant. His shirt was silk, his manner silken. His wig hung almost to his waist, a notably narrow one. He wore blue velvet garters just below the knees, caught up at the side with gold buckles. The heels of his shoes were scarlet. Yet though he was a dandy it was evident at once that he was no coward. He smiled. He drew.

      “Stand aside,” cried George, shifting toward him, meaning to spring past him to the door.

      For answer Robinson swept into a long exquisite lunge. George’s parry, a left counter, was instinctive; it was barely in time.

      Robinson, who had recovered with the speed of a cobra, attacked again.

      Again George, though he did manage to parry, by reason of the other’s phenomenal speed could not get in a riposte. Choking with humiliation, he crouched low and began to move forward, his point going in small tight circles.

      Robinson still was smiling, though not so much.

      “That will do,” called the governor. He had not stirred, but his voice cut the air like a whip. “Captain Robinson, retire, please. Rounsivel, put my blade back where you found it.”

      He was obeyed. Eyeing one another warily, the swordsmen stepped back, each lowering his guard. Then Robinson gave a creditable bow, and sheathed, and departed.

      “He’s no fool,” panted George Rounsivel.

      “That’s more than I can say of you. Don’t you realize, man, that with one shout I could have had this place thronging with guards?”

      Miserably, “Yes.”

      Rogers made for the window on the shore side, moving with a limp, for his left heel had been shot away in another Pacific encounter. Despite this, he was lithe, and though thin certainly strong. George, a runner, a swimmer, a fencer, could appreciate this. Woodes Rogers had been well assembled, and was all of one piece, brain and organs, muscles and nerve-ends working exquisitely together. Though mild in his manner, he was possessed of a tremendous impatience, a power that it cost him all his strength to control. When he crossed a room he resented the strides necessary, the pieces of furniture to be circumvented; he wished to be there, instantaneously.

      “Lookee, Rounsivel. You can see it from here.”

      Fascinated, George went to the window.

      His first sight of the tropics will stun any man. The magic is quick to strike. The polychromatic unreality of the scene refuses to vanish when the eyes are blinked. The breath is caught up, never to be wholly released again, no matter how long the onlooker lives in those parts.

      George Rounsivel was seven weeks out of Philadelphia, but much of this time had been spent at sea. The pounce of the pirates under Augur had come almost as a relief after that monotony. They had, however, cooped George in a bilge-fragrant hold, where they kept him while they tried to decide what it was they wanted him to write—they never did make up their minds.

      Then they were surprised at Exuma by an armed sloop from New Providence, and captured, every one. George’s surge of hope was soon squashed. The leader of this patrol, the redoubtable Ben Hornigold, was not one to trust a pirate or anything even remotely resembling a pirate, possibly because he himself had for so long been on the account. Dazzled by the unaccustomed sunlight, hardly able to see anything—not that there was much to see at Exuma anyway—George had been hustled from one vessel to another, from one hell to a second, equally portholeless, and if possible even more vile. Nor had he been granted more than a glimpse of Nassau. Fearing that the sight of pirates being led through the streets in chains might raise a riot, the canny Hornigold had sneaked back under cover of darkness. Still protesting his innocence, George in the dead of night had been dumped ashore and hauled up to the fort without being given a chance to make note of his surroundings. Since then, except for a few hours in the court room, where the windows were blocked by morbid spectators, he had lain in a cell whose only outside opening was a grill far above his reach.

      Thus it was that after a month in these fabled isles he was being vouchsafed his first look at them.

      And he gasped.

      The moon was scounched low against an horizon outlined with cabbage palms and Spanish bayonet, and its light lay bland upon the bay. Wavelets were susurrant along the beach, which gleamed like molten gold, while arched above it, now gawky, now incredibly graceful, the coconut trees bobbed and flirted, their fronds atwinkle in the moonlight—pink, deep blue, orange, red, yellow, and most of all a giddy bright green. The boats at anchor did not rock, so tranquil was the water.

      “No, not out that way,” cried Woodes Rogers. “There!”

      George dropped his gaze—and saw the gallows. It looked incalculably strong, and it was tall. Nine ropes hung from it.

      “Those men deserve to hang, Rounsivel, and hang they shall. But how long d’ye think the townsmen back there are going to stay honest? They’ll watch this execution a few hours from now, and they’ll be impressed—for a little while. Then they’ll begin to mutter that I only got some small fry. And they’ll be right! It isn’t the John Augurs and Will Cunninghams I want. It’s the leaders. But . . . what can I get them with? You’ve seen the soldiers I brought. I’m organizing several companies of militia, but they’d desert to a man if some popular pirate sent in word that he wanted recruits.”

      “The Navy?”

      “I yield to no man in my admiration of the British Navy, sir. But I tell you the Navy don’t want to stamp out piracy in these waters. Lookee, here’s a map—”

      He hobbled to the table, George following him.

      “Here’s Panama. Hispaniola. Jamaica. And here we are. Any seaman will tell you how the trade winds blow in this part of the world. Vessels sailing home from Jamaica have to come near us here. They might use the Mona Passage to the east or hug Florida to the west, but either way they come close to this island. Right?”

      “I see.”

      “Now if the pirates have this place to themselves, the way they did before, then the merchants in Jamaica have to ship their stuff by convoy—with a warship.”

      “But I don’t understand why the Navy—”

      “Do you see any frigates out there in the bay, Rounsivel? No. The Navy keeps one stationed back in your Philadelphia, and they keep three at Kingston. But they never even drop in here to say hello. Why? Why, because the R.N. captains are being paid by the Jamaica merchants to guard their vessels in convoy. That’s the truth! They get as high as twenty per cent of the value of the combined cargoes. They’re waxing rich!”

      “Why hasn’t London been notified of this?”

      “London has been. But by the time somebody in Whitehall gets around doing anything about it we might be all dead here. Why, I can’t even get an answer from London!”

      “I see,” said George Rounsivel. “But what I don’t see,” he added, “is why you are telling me all this?”

      Woodes Rogers appeared not to have heard.

      “It’s the leaders I must lay hands on. Not the rank and file. Barrow’s loose, and so is Martel. Teach and Bonnet are in the Carolinas, but they’ll be back here if they hear that the place is wide-open. England’s gone СКАЧАТЬ