ELEPHIANT, Lord Yancy, looked around the clearing that had been hacked from the living jungle. It had been cleared years before his arrival and then left, and the jungle had quickly returned, like water rushing into a hollow in a cliff, before Yancy ordered it cleared once more. Fifteen miles along the length of the island, on winding, half-obscured paths from the great house and lands that he had by divine right inherited from Adam Baldridge. Fifteen miles through a deep ravine and then up along a knife-edge trail to the secret location, near the crest of one of the low mountains in the heart of the island of St. Mary’s.
It had been a long day’s hike to that place. Yancy, not as strong as he once was, had had to ask repeatedly that they stop, allow him to rest, before taking up the climb again. He waved off the others’ solicitous concern.
Now, sitting on a stool in the shade, Yancy let his eyes move slowly over the small wood-and-wattle house, the high row of pickets that surrounded it, the deep, deep jungle beyond, a wall of coconut and banana and papaya. Like the big house, this smaller outpost had been built by Baldridge, and though not as opulent, it was still unstinting in the quality of the location and construction.
For the first few years that Yancy had been king on the island, he had not even known of its existence. He might never have known about that secret place had one of his Malagasy wives not made an offhand reference to it and then, on his further questioning, led him there.
It was in far worse shape than the big house, having been completely abandoned. The jungle was to a building what the sea was to a ship: left unchecked, it would work its way in, creep in through tiny openings, overwhelm and consume. The small house had been near to returning to a state of nature when Yancy found it.
Baldridge had understood the need for secret places, escape routes, clandestine entrances, the advantage of having a place to which one could get away. A place that was hidden and easily defensible. Yancy understood that as well, and he took advantage of the preparations that Baldridge had made.
He set his men to beating the jungle back once more, to repairing walls and roof and the stockade that surrounded the house. It was slow going. He could put only his most trusted few to work, because he would not reveal the existence of the place to any of the others.
It had taken months, but the place at last was set to rights. For several years it had been maintained that way, but rarely used. Yancy had no need to leave the big house. He did not wish to take his eyes off the activity on the harbor for very long.
Atwood’s letter had changed that, had made it imperative that the small house be readied for occupation. The trusted few were set at it, urged on by Yancy, who expected every day to hear from his lookout at the top of the jungle-clad hills rising up behind the town that Press’s ship and tender were standing into the harbor, guns run out, armed men swarming the decks.
But now it was done. Repaired, provisioned, armed. Yancy had casks of fresh salt beef and pork and dried peas stacked under cover. Barrels of powder and shot, muskets, a few swivel guns that could be mounted on the stockade. A natural spring came up right in the middle of the yard, which no doubt was why Baldridge had chosen that site.
They were ready to hold out there as long as need be. And Roger Press had not yet arrived.
“Good. Good,” he said, nodding his approval. He pulled a red silk handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his brow. Looked up at Henry Nagel, looming over him. “And the weapons, Henry? You are sure of the weapons?”
“Aye, sir. Seen every one of the muskets fired myself, just yesterday, to the number of fifty. Swivels as well. Two hundred rounds per gun.”
“Good, good.” They looked across the courtyard, enclosed by the stockade. Fifteen or so of the original Terrors were cleaning weapons and making repairs to the stockade and finishing up the last of the myriad details that would make the outpost comfortable and defensible.
They would need their women, too, of course, at least a portion of their harems. That would make it crowded, to be sure, but it was impossible to think of holding out for any length of time otherwise. With no women it would be like life at sea, but without the constant work or threat or hope of a prize to keep minds occupied.
The men would get restless, and resentful of having to do the menial chores of cooking and cleaning. These, after all, were the elite of St. Mary’s, the founding fathers. They would not even be engaged in the tasks of repairing and provisioning the compound, were it not for the need for secrecy.
Yancy looked over the house, but his mind was still on the issue of his harem. Since receiving her letter, his thoughts kept wandering back to his first wife, the one he had left back in New York. Sometimes when he lay with one of his Malagasy wives he would close his eyes and picture her-Susan, that was her name-her lovely white skin and blond hair, like silk.
“Lord Yancy?” Nagel interrupted his reverie.
“What?” Yancy snapped, a response that would have made other men wince, but Nagel, too dumb or too unafraid, did not react, and it made Yancy suspicious.
“It’s only, sir… do you means to hide out here? Forever, like? If I might be so bold, sir, what is your plan?”
“Plan?” Yancy coughed into his handkerchief. “I have no plan, Henry. What can we do against Press, with his great band of loyal men? These”-he indicated the others with a wave of his arm, “these are the only men I can trust. Precious few. No, Henry, I fear that all I can do is see that my beloved Terrors are safe, off in this paradise where Press cannot find you.”
“Us, sir,” Nagel corrected.
“Pardon?”
“Us. Where Press cannot find us.”
Yancy was silent for a moment, watching the activity in the courtyard. “Oh, yes, yes. Us, of course.”
Foul weather, above and below.
Seven days since the meeting in the great cabin, and Elizabeth was still sulky, still giving Marlowe only the most perfunctory of greetings, at first silent during dinner, and then abandoning dinner altogether, eating in the sleeping cabin, forcing him to sleep on the locker. Further apologies had been of no avail, attempts to cajole her out of her funk had been met with angry looks.
It seemed incredible to Marlowe that she should be so angry over one simple lie. Not even a lie, really, a mere omission of information. It was his money, his responsibility. His contrition was turning to anger as Elizabeth held tenaciously on to her grudge.
Bickerstaff, too. He did not sulk, was not the sulking kind, but neither did he try to hide the certain coolness he felt toward Marlowe.
It was something Marlowe had anticipated, something he had worked into the calculation. Bickerstaff detested pirates. Years before, when he had been Marlowe’s prisoner-or, more accurately, Malachias Barrett’s-Marlowe had forced him to sail in the sweet trade. But he had never forced him to commit piracy, had allowed him to stay below and out of any fight, had defended Bickerstaff against the other men on board the ship who thought him a coward.
It was not for want of courage that Bickerstaff stayed below. He was not wanting at all in that area. It was because of his moral revulsion with piracy. Marlowe knew he would not wish to sail the Pirate Round. But he knew as well that practical considerations and concern not for Marlowe’s social standing but for Elizabeth’s, whom he loved, would lead him to countenance it at least, if not participate.
Marlowe knew from the beginning that Bickerstaff would not be pleased to find out the extent to which he had planned out the entire thing. Still, he was surprised by how very displeased Bickerstaff seemed to be.
Honeyman went about his duties as ever, if perhaps a little less taciturn and a little more conciliatory, which only served to annoy Marlowe more. Dinwiddie grew more surly by the day, not pleased to find himself a first officer with less real authority than the quartermaster.
And overhead a thick blanket of gray cloud, through which the sun made not even the ghost of an appearance, not even a bright disk to hint at where it was. Below the solid cover, darker clouds raced along, driven fast by winds that were flowing in a direction different from that of the wind over the water.
The seas were big and growing bigger, gray, lumpy, with stark whitecaps as the tops broke on the bigger waves. The atmosphere was moody, hostile, threatening. Tense.
Marlowe sat at the table in the great cabin, stared out the salt-stained windows aft. A wet tablecloth spread across the tabletop held pewter plates from sliding around with the roll of the ship. On the plates the half-eaten meal shifted slightly with the bigger seas.
He was alone at the table. Elizabeth was in the sleeping cabin, eating, sleeping, praying that God strike her husband down-he did not know and was beginning not to care. The surfeit of ill will was numbing him to it.
Bickerstaff took his meals with Dinwiddie and Flanders and Honeyman. Marlowe guessed that they were not a particularly jovial group. Better to eat alone.
The Elizabeth Galley rolled hard to larboard, and the wide-bottomed tankard of wine toppled over, sending a dark red stain spreading across the already-wet tablecloth, but Marlowe could not muster the energy to do anything more than look at it, then turn back to the seas beyond his window.
They were two days out of sight of land. After having made the decision to turn Red Sea Rover, they had stood in for Penzance on Mounts Bay, Cornwall, at the very western tip of England, to provision for the long voyage to Madagascar.
The Cornish people were well known for their casual disregard for Admiralty law. They asked no questions about the unarmed privateer victualing in that out-of-the-way port. They showed no curiosity about the Spanish gold with which Marlowe paid, just accepted it gladly.
Three days later the Elizabeth Galley stood out of Mounts Bay with food and water and firewood enough in her hold to see them around the Cape of Good Hope and on to Madagascar.
Marlowe sighed, abandoned his dinner for the quarterdeck. Had it been blue skies and calm seas, he might have stayed below, but the weather now was to his liking. Dark, ugly skies, cold wind, spitting rain and spray-it was like stepping right into his own confused and angry mind.
He stopped at the weather rail, turned his back to the wind. His cloak beat against his legs, and his hair, long enough finally to be bound in a queue, was flung forward over his shoulder.
The bow of the Elizabeth Galley went down into a trough between big seas, and the quarterdeck seemed to fly up in the air, like one end of a giant seesaw. Marlowe felt his stomach left behind as the after end of the ship rose, hung for a second, then plunged down again as the wave passed under. An odd sensation, but he had been too long at sea for it to bother him.
Dinwiddie and Honeyman and Burgess were everywhere, seeing storm gaskets passed around furled sail, double-gripping the boats, inspecting the tarpaulin covers over the hatches, rigging lifelines down the length of the deck.
As much as he thought Honeyman was vermin, a sea lawyer, and as much as Dinwiddie was becoming a malcontent, as surly as Burgess was, still Marlowe had to admit that they were seamen who knew their business. The storm that was building around them would be a bad one, he could tell. At that moment he would not have traded the first officer and the quartermaster and bosun for the cheeriest sycophants on earth.
The bow plunged down again and this time slammed into the oncoming wave, some quirk of timing that made the vessel shudder and sent a huge plume of water bursting over the fore rail, like surf against a rocky shore. Marlowe saw the water douse Honeyman and Dinwiddie, saw them hunch their shoulders against the cold deluge as they worked their way aft along the gangway and back to the quarterdeck.
“Deck’s secured, sir,” Dinwiddie said, loud, to be heard over the rising wind. “T’gallants?”
“Aye!” Marlowe said. It was time to get the topgallant masts and yards, the highest and weakest of the spars, down from their place aloft and stowed safely on deck. “Once you’ve struck them down, let us have the deep reef in the topsails. Mr. Honeyman, I reckon we have men enough to rig rolling tackles while the topgallants are being struck?”
“Aye, sir, should do.”
“Very well, then. Let us get that all snugged down. I think this night will be something of a shitter.”
“Reckon so, Captain!” Dinwiddie shouted, and then the two men went forward again to carry out the last of the preparations for the building storm.
Gray, dim, watery. For all the stormy afternoon the sky seemed never to achieve full daylight. The seas built, bigger and bigger, rising up around them to the level of the gunports, then the cap rails, then the quarterdeck rail, so that in the trough between the waves there was nothing but water roiling around, as if the Elizabeth Galley had been tossed down into a hole in the ocean.
And then she would rise again on the waves, up so high it seemed she must topple off such a fine perch, and then down once more.
The topgallant masts and yards were lowered to the deck and lashed to the main hatch. The topsails were reefed, the top half of the sail lashed to the yard from which it hung, leaving only a portion of the canvas still exposed to the wind. Rolling tackles that kept the heavy yards from slamming side to side as the ship rolled were rigged and bowsed taut. The Elizabeth Galley plunged on.
There was one good thing about that wind, only one, and that was that it was northeasterly, blowing the Galley south and west, the very direction that Marlowe wished her to go. South and west, they would cross the Atlantic almost to the continent of South America, drift through the equatorial doldrums, and then pick up the westerly trades south of the line that would fling them back across the Atlantic and around the southern tip of Africa. A long voyage. A desperate and final attempt at salvaging his gentleman’s fortune.
The daylight, such that it was, was nearly gone when Dinwiddie came aft. Marlowe stepped toward the first lieutenant, expecting him to report that all was secure for the night.
The two men maneuvered toward each other, hands on the cap rail, feet spread wide to the wild heaving of the ship, the decks wet with the spray that filled the air and the intermittent showers of rain.
“Honeyman’s getting a little large for his goddamned britches, Captain” was the first thing Dinwiddie yelled in his ear, over the shriek of wind in rigging. “Telling off men to rig the rolling tackles, arguing with me about the lead of the top rope, I won’t stand for his nonsense!” Not exactly the report Marlowe had hoped for.
“Pray, Mr. Dinwiddie, let us see if we live through the night, and then we’ll straighten it all out in the morning!” Marlowe shouted back. As if I need any more nonsense from these motherless chuckleheads, he thought.
“Aye, sir.” Dinwiddie bit off the words, and Marlowe saw that he would require some placating.
“You are right! Honeyman needs taking down, and I will see to it. Now, are we set for the night?”
“Aye, sir, all snugged down proper! Don’t know how long we can hold on to the topsails, though!”
Less than half an hour, as it turned out. The last vestiges of light were starting to go as Marlowe stood at the weather rail, looking aloft through the gloom, wondering about the topsails. He was braced against the wind as it tried to shove him forward, like temptation pushing him as he tried to resist. It was his nature to carry sail as long as he could, make every inch of distance if he was going in the right direction, but the canvas would not hold out much longer.
He had just decided it was time to take in sail, to run before the wind and seas under bare poles, when the fore topsail split. He was actually looking at the main topsail, contemplating the relative age and strength of the cloth, when he felt the wind give him a hard shove. He was pushed forward, grabbed at the rail, braced himself harder.
The Elizabeth Galley staggered as if she had been hit with a broadside, rolled hard to one side, the seas rolling up around her. She groaned, and the wind in the shrouds rose in pitch, and a thousand parts of her hull and rig clattered as she righted herself.
And then through all that chaos of noise Marlowe heard the telltale crack of splitting canvas, a sharp report, like a gunshot. He looked up again.
The main topsail was an unbroken field of taut, dull, wet canvas.
He bent down, looked forward and up. The fore topsail looked much the same, a sheet of light gray in a dark gray and black world. But just to starboard of the midpoint of the sail he could see the split, three feet long, from the bolt rope up. Just the one split, and for the moment it was getting no wider, as if the sail were fighting to keep itself together, just long enough for Marlowe to send help.
Honeyman was in the waist, and he also was looking at the sail. Marlowe thought to shout an order, realized Honeyman would never hear him, took a step forward-and then the sail let go.
Another crack, many times louder than the first, and when Marlowe had looked aloft again, the topsail was nothing but ribbons blowing out to leeward, long trails of canvas flogging like banners. The bolt rope, which had once reinforced the edges of the topsail, was still held in place, like the skeleton of the sail, as if it did not know that the canvas was gone.
Underfoot Marlowe felt the ship slew a bit as the balance of sail and hull suddenly changed. He whirled around, hand over hand on the rail, his eyes streaming tears as he took the wind full in the face, ready to issue orders to the helmsmen or take the tiller himself if need be.
But one of Burgess’s mates, another seasoned hard case of a seaman, was at the tiller, backed up by one of the strong young men from Marlowe House, and they had shoved the tiller over, just a bit, to compensate for the change, turning just how Marlowe would have ordered them to, so he let them alone and turned his back to the wind again.
Honeyman was charging forward, Burgess at his heels, grabbing men to come with him, pushing others toward the pin rails and gesturing. Clew it up! Clew it up! Honeyman’s meaning was clear, even from the quarterdeck.
“Good man!” Marlowe said out loud. But Honeyman was thinking only of the sail, and Marlowe had to think of the ship. The helmsmen could not hold the vessel forever with the sails out of balance. One wicked gust and she would spin beam on to the seas, and then over she would go.
“Mr. Dinwiddie!” he shouted to the first officer who had staggered up from the lee side. “We must get the main topsail off her!”
Dinwiddie nodded, nearly fell as the Galley’s bow, now lost in the dark, slammed into an unseen wave. He stumbled against the bulwark, grabbed hold, turned to Marlowe.
“You get some hands to the leeward gear!” Marlowe continued. “I shall see the weather clews manned! Tell Flanders to get a gang together to lay aloft and stow!”
Dinwiddie nodded again and shouted the orders back, though now Marlowe could hardly hear him for the wind, even from two feet away. He lurched off, calling, waving for men to follow, while Marlowe gathered up hands to help with the weather rigging.
They cast off clewlines and halyards and heaved away, hauling the main topsail yard down, inch by inch. Men clung to the clewlines, pulled, swayed with the bucking of the ship, slammed against the bulwark, pulled again.
At last the yard was down and the sheets were cast off and the sail was hauled up. It filled with wind and bucked and fought like a wild animal, but finally it was subdued through strength of arm and the mechanical advantage of block and tackle.
Then, one by one, the men climbed into the weather shrouds and worked their way aloft, moving slowly, a single careful step at a time, as the rolling ship tried to fling them into the sea. Up, up the main shrouds, over the main top, and up the topmast shrouds. From there it was step onto the foot ropes strung under the yards and shuffle out to where they could claw the canvas into submission.
Marlowe watched them go aloft. He had no business joining them. As captain, his place was on the quarterdeck, where he could see the entire situation, fore and aft. Indeed, it would have been a dereliction of duty for him to abandon that place and lay aloft with his men. But still, even after all the years he had had command of ships at sea, he could hardly bear to send men aloft into such peril while he remained behind.
Bickerstaff, he saw, was with them. He had been on deck through most of the day, bearing a hand, ignoring Marlowe. He worked by choice. He had no official duties on board. In fact, he was something of a nonentity, having refused to sign the ship’s articles, leaving him with no vote and no right to any prize taken.
But for all that, Bickerstaff was not a man to shrink from labor, not the kind to use his status as a gentleman to avoid hauling side by side with the men, especially in a crisis such as the building storm. And so he hung from the clewlines like the others, heave and belay, and made his careful way aloft to save their precious topsail from the wind’s terrible grip.
And Marlowe wished fervently that Bickerstaff would not die before he had a chance to redeem himself in his friend’s eyes.
For over an hour the men fought with the main topsail. At last it was stowed and what was left of the fore topsail lashed in place and all the men back in the relative safety of the deck.
Full night was on them, complete blackness, which meant that every big sea that rolled up from the dark took them by surprise, sometimes breaking over the stern, sometimes seeming to pause in front of them so that the bow pounded into the wall of water again and again.
A wild, hellish night of mounting wind and bitter-cold spray, a night where men and gear were tossed around the deck by the capricious seas, and water coming over the bow and through the gunports in the open waist would run two and three feet high over the deck.
But still Marlowe was sanguine about it all. Years of experience told him that they were at the height of the storm, that dawn would bring a slacking of the wind, a diminishing of the seas. And they were secure now, the sails stowed away, everything on deck lashed down, the pumps working well. It was all hands on deck, too rough for anyone to get a watch below, but the men were not exhausted or starved, and they were showing what a solid and coordinated crew they had become.
The Elizabeth Galley was moving fast under just bare poles. The sail area that her masts and yards alone presented was enough to drive her at six and seven knots before the gale. Under their bow, over three thousand miles of open ocean. And best of all, and most unusual given the seemingly malicious nature of storms at sea, they were being driven in just the direction they wished to go.
Cold, wet to the skin, tired, throat burning from swallowing salt spray, Marlowe was still feeling largely optimistic as he struggled down the ladder to the waist and, bouncing off the doors in the alleyway, stumbled aft to the great cabin to check on Elizabeth.
He found her in her bunk-their bunk, their former bunk-flat on her back, moaning with each wild swing of the hanging bed. It took quite a bit to make Elizabeth seasick, but the storm was giving quite a bit that night.
“How are you, my dear?” he asked, trying to sound tender and sensitive, which was hard, as he had practically to yell over the cacophony of creaking timbers and the waves and the howl of the wind.
She looked up at him, her face waxy in the light of the lantern, which also swung in wild arcs, throwing crazy shadows around the small sleeping compartment. Her long hair was tangled and matted, and it looked as if she had not been entirely successful in keeping it clear while she vomited.
For a moment her expression was pleading, vulnerable, and Marlowe thought she was going to express her unfailing love for him, there on what she might believe to be her deathbed. But she did not. Instead she flopped onto her back and closed her eyes as the ship rolled and the bunk swung so hard that it thumped on the overhead.
When the Galley had come upright again, she said simply “Go to hell, Thomas,” so soft Marlowe could scarcely hear.
Well, damn you, then. You shall be sorry, you ungrateful wench, if we all die this night, Marlowe thought, and without another word he turned and left her there.
Back down the alleyway and into the waist, past groups of men huddled in what shelter they could find. Nothing to do at the moment, no sail to trim, and the ship seemed to be standing up to the storm’s onslaught. Only the helm to man and the pumps to work, and beyond that there was only to stay awake and alert, because their happy stasis could be torn away by a single rogue wave or gust of wind.
For all that black night Marlowe prowled the quarterdeck, standing sometimes in the lee of the cloth lashed up in the mizzen shrouds, sometimes talking with the helmsmen or with Dinwiddie or Honey-man to see how the vessel fared, sometimes making his way down into the waist to give the men some encouragement and to see that nothing had been overlooked. But the Galley was strong and well set up, and the crew he had managed to piece together was competent and able, if not so numerous as he might have wished, and all was well.
Two bells in the morning watch, five A.M., and Marlowe realized that the pumps were sounding louder. It took his fatigue-shrouded brain a moment to realize that this was due to a lessening in the wind, a diminishing in the omnipresent howl that had tormented them all the dark hours.
With that realization came the awareness that the sea was settling down a bit. It was still a mad, pitching, rolling, yawing ride through the big swells, but Marlowe realized it was not as bad as it had been an hour before, and an hour hence, he had reason to hope, it would be better yet.
Dawn came around four bells, no more than a gray version of the night, with the sun entirely hidden behind the impenetrable cloud. The sea was the color of lead, rising up all around, row after row of watery hillocks that obscured everything beyond as the Elizabeth Galley sank down in the space between them and then gave a brief glimpse of the horizon as she rose up again. But the menace of the night was gone, the tension that came with not knowing when the next wave would be on them or how big it might be.
Dinwiddie sent lookouts forward and to either beam, there now being some hope that they might see something, if there was anything to see. Marlowe doubted there would be. They had been running fast away from the English coast all night. Nothing was under their bow now but open water, clear to the Americas.
He sat wearily down on a quarter bitt. His legs ached, and his skin was chafed raw in several places from his salt-water-soaked clothing. He was thinking about breakfast.
Then the forward lookout shouted, “Son of a bitch!” his voice edged in panic.
Marlowe shot to his feet, leaped up on the bitt, hand on the mizzen shrouds, looking forward. Water, nothing but water.
“What is it, you poxed whoreson?” Dinwiddie shouted.
“Ship! Damn me! A wreck!” was all the lookout could splutter. The Elizabeth Galley came up again as the sea passed under. There, below her now, unseen in the trough of the waves until that moment, was a ship, or what was left of one.
Dismasted, half sunk, lying almost on her beam ends, her bottom toward the Galley, her deck on the far side. Glistening in the dull light, water breaking over her. A ship, lying at a right angle to the Galley, like something that had risen up from the grave, her stern under the Galley’s bow, directly in their path.
“Starboard your helm! Starboard!” Marlowe shouted. The helmsmen shoved the tiller over. The Galley began to turn as the wave passed under and the wreck rose up above them. And then the next roller had the Galley, driving her forward, and the two ships struck.