CHAPTER I
OLD PROVIDENCE ISLAND
CAPTAIN BANE, gentleman of fortune, commander of the Swift Return, pushed the black bottle across the table to the little wizened man who faced him. The cabin overflowed with swaggering figures, their tarnished sea-togs enlivened with gaudy sashes and head-kerchiefs. Reckless faces peered down through the open skylight, backed by the starred sky of the tropic July night. The swinging lamp shone full on the rapacious, eager face of Bane.
It was weather-tanned to leather, save where the black beard that covered half his chest had protected it. His gaze held the fixed glare of lenses, deep lines showed between his brows, his curving nose twitched at the flanging nostrils, the bone of it pressing gray through the skin, flattened at the bridge; a fitting beak for a preying seabird.
“Come, Sawney, come Governor, down with four fingers of the stuff and out with your news! Rogers is off the bar, you say. Drink, man, and talk quickly!”
The trembling Sawney, derisively dubbed “Governor” by the pirates who had assembled upon the Island of Providence to await the king’s proclamation and pardon for all freebooters surrendering their ships and arms by the last day of August, 1718, gulped down the fiery schnapps, choked till the tears ran from his red eyerims and told his news.
“Mr. Woods Rogers, Governor and Vice-Admiral of the Bahamas,” he began and, warned by the blaze that shone in the captain’s eyes, broke into less ceremonious speech. “The fleet came at sunset,” he went on. “Richard Turnley is pilot and on his advice they lie by till morning.”
“Ah!” Bane’s tense features relaxed. “How know you this?”
“The Lings put off to the fleet from Harbor Island with vegetables. They came aboard the Rose man-of-war and saw the Governor and one Captain Whitney.”
“The canting, favor-currying rogues. What said they?”
“They told the governor that Ben Hornygold, with Davis, Burgess, Carter, yourself and others were on shore upon Providence, in all nigh to a thousand pi—” he checked himself with a gulp of fear—“a thousand gentlemen of fortune”
Bane smashed his fist upon the table and guffawed.
“Nay, out with it, man. Pirates! ’Tis a brave word for those that fit it. So Dick Ling told that a thousand were waiting to cringe before Rogers and kiss the king’s foot and beg to be his men again. Told also, doubtless, that they were assembled about Nassau where the fort is tumbling for repair with but one nine-pounder. And the fleet lies off until tomorrow.
“Thanks, Sawney, I will remember this. Another drink and off you go. Not a word ashore that you have visited me. you, drink, when I offer it.”
The little man swallowed perforce the tumbler that was poured out for him and stumbled up the companionway where rough hands set him into his dingey and saw him sculling drunkenly shorewards.
“A thousand pirates! A thousand lick spittles! A thousand mice-hearted cravens!” exclaimed Bane. “Blood and bones! What say you, men? Are you for kissing the king’s foot and going softly with sixpence in your pockets and calved in cotton, or are you for silk hose and gold guineas?”
“I was with Kidd.”
The man who spoke had a face the color of a ripe mulberry, seamed like a walnut-shell. One eye was sightless, like a bruised grape, the other gleamed between lids scar let-hawed as those of a dog. On one cheek powder had tattooed the badge of his calling. The end of his bulbous nose had been sliced and indifferently patched.
“Hanged he was,” he went on. “Strung up at Execution Dock seventeen years ago come last month. He swings in chains down the river yet with Churchill, How, Mullins, Parrot and the rest of the brave lads. Yet would I rather hang than go halting all my days at sight of a constable. A murrain on the Governor, say I.”
“Kidd was a canting coward,” said Bane. “What said he on the gallows? ‘For my part I am the most innocent of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.’ We want no Kidds nor his kind of cattle aboard, prating of chains. Silence, you dog!”
The old buccaneer was on his feet, his drink-palsied hand fumbling at his belt.
“Blood and wounds!” he cried. “No man calls me coward!”
But Bane had caught the uneasy shifting of his followers’ eyes at the talk of gallows and chains. He flung the black bottle and it smashed upon the other’s skull. He collapsed, blood streaming from a strip of scalp, mingling with the reek of the liquor.
“Put him in the peak!” ordered Bane, and watched while his words were obeyed, his fierce eyes challenging his men. “Hurley! Long! Take your watches and guard the boats. No man leaves this ship save on my orders.”
“If they cannot cross the bar neither can we,” muttered a pirate and his opinion found echoing “ayes” from many of the rest.
“Then we go in the sloop,” said Bane. “What, my bullies, because Rogers has come a month too soon, are we to stay like rats in a trap and give up our freedom with our booty? Are you men or mice? Will you be governed like sneaking puppies by those who tamely submit to laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get with their knavery, them for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls!
“They vilify us, the scoundrels, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. I am a free prince and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred ships at sea and an army of a hundred thousand men in the field.
“Shall I submit to be kicked about a deck at the pleasure of one who fancies himself my superior? Shall I, and you, free men all, give up our delights, the clunk of guineas and the clink of glasses, the kisses of women and our fellowhip, because, forsooth, Rogers says so?
“What if we leave the Swift Return behind us? I was a lad when first I ran away from the cursed merchantman to which they had bound me ’prentice. With six brave hearts we borrowed a canoe and stole away to the Grand Camanas, to go on the account. We took a turtling sloop and joined on other bullies until we gained an Irish brigantine. From that we took a Spanish trading stoop of six guns. From that, on the coast of Virginia, a New England brigantine bound for Barbados that yielded us a vessel of ten guns.
“Now there were eighty of us aboard. From the Bahamas to Guinea Coast and back we sailed, to Madagascar and the Arabian Gulf. We traded the brigantine for a galley of twenty-four guns and at the last we took a three-decker of Portugal, outbound from Brazil. Thirty-six guns she mounted but we took her, a hundred and eighty of us hearties, ripping off her upper deck, deep-waisting her by cutting down the gunwale and so made her the Swift Return. Shall we not start again in a sloop?
“I tell you, my bullies, that my star rises. Shall I screen it with the king’s parchment? Set me adrift with three logs, a palmetto sail and six good companions and within the year ye shall see me scattering gold in Puerto Rico and treading the deck of a ship that can fight and sail with any on the seas!
“Get out the pannikins and broach a keg of rum, boys. We have work before us.”
While the cabin-lads, dusky Bermudian natives, set out the liquor, Bane pressed home his arguments, made more potent by the effects of the strong, raw spirits.
“We will transfer into the sloop and be through the East Passage at daybreak and leaving these whining curs to await the governor’s pleasure. Follow me and I will undertake to shape a course that shall lead you to ease and plenty. Let the others lay down, they leave us the greater pickings. What is it, lads? The freedom of the seas—or will ye turn farmers?”
A red-headed ruffian, lacking one ear, cleft by a cutlass, roared out his answer as he drained his pannikin and passed it for more. The rest joined in his resolution.
“Aye, we’ll stand by you. A gold chain or a wooden leg!”