CHAPTER VI
THE KISSING PALMS
FAR down the wind a ship blazed furiously, the flames, pale in the afternoon sun, fanned by the mounting breeze. Three miles to the south sped the Venture, her decks yet cumbered with the spoils of the prize. And, after her in swift pursuit, with all the sail that her slender spars could bear, raced H. M. Corvette Juno, overhauling the pirate fathom by fathom.
Captain Sawtrell, commander of the king’s ship, walked his deck and whistled softly for a continuance of the wind. His first lieutenant saw the puckered lips and guessed their meaning with a smile. It was yet three glasses to darkness. The chart showed that the chase was heading straight for the Jumentos, less than seven sea-leagues distant. If the Juno could get within gunshot before sunset, as seemed inevitable, he had metal enough aboard—new guns out from England—to blow the brigantine out of the water.
The corvette was flush-decked and schooner rigged. She had but one tier of guns but they were handled by a picked crew. The vice-admiral had grown tired of chasing Bane with craft slower than the brigantine and he had requisitioned Sawtrell and the Juno to rid the seas of the Venture. As long as Bane was free to ravage, others were likely to emulate his example.
There were plenty of men among those recently pardoned at Providence who itched for the old life and made a hero out of Bane, laughing in their sleeves at Rogers for letting him escape from Nassau. Sawtrell’s orders were explicit, he was not to return until Bane was captured, and already the end of the cruise seemed in sight.
“What’s wrong with the fool?” Sawtrell asked his officer. “There’s no passage through those cays?”
“None marked. The water shallows to six fathoms a league from the line of breakers. I’ve sailed along their front and seen naught but spouting reefs. Maybe he plans to beach her, since we have the heels of him.”
“We’ll pound him to pieces before he can get his men out of her, he does. We can try a shot soon. We must have caught him napping, too busy looting to keep a lookout. Better get the bow-guns ready. Hardy; we’ll try for his spars. He keeps his course, the rogue.”
Aboard the Venture, Bane measured the decreasing distance with an anxious eye. The brigantine was foul-bottomed and the corvette was entirely too fast to his liking. The merchantman had been richly laden and all hands had worked to transfer the cargo. The lookout had taken the corvette for a trading-schooner until she was close enough to show her white gun-ports and a tack had revealed the red ensign.
The brigantine, according to British nomenclature, was the same type as an hermaphrodite brig, square-rigged forward and schooner-rigged aft. With the wind as it was, slightly forward of the beam, sailing on a broad reach, the corvette with her fore-and-aft rig had the better of the Venture. Before the wind the craft would be on fairly equal terms; close-hauled, the corvette would still hold the advantage.
The wind was westerly. To run would bring the brigantine into the angle where the Jumentos joined Long Island on a course between the reefs and the guns of the corvette. So Bane kept on the steady line for the center of the Jumentos. He was taking a chance on Tom the Turtler, who now stood at the wheel.
They had been out from San Domingo a week. Todd had performed his duty with thoroughness. But he was not popular aboard. Bane welcomed him as a perfect helmsman as well as special pilot, a man who could get the last fraction of a knot of speed and keep his course high-pointed by the trim of the sails and the feel of the wheel. But, with the pirates, Hampton, the man who had sailed with Kidd and sponsored him, was practically his only associate.
Todd had tried to mix with the rest, pending the development of his hazy plans of revenge, but the grim determination that invested him looked out of the eyes that Denton had said were like those of a shark and the reckless pirates seemed to sense him as one even more desperate than themselves but not one of them.
There were whispers of his being a Jonah. The practical jokes that were played upon a newcomer fell flat before perpetration, checked by Todd’s steady gaze. Sometimes a pirate crossed himself and muttered about the “evil-eye” when Todd looked at him.
Scarry-Dick Denton watched him with suspicion, he knew that. Any day that danger might break and the quartermaster remember him as the Turtler of Green Key who had shot hogs. Todd’s vengeance had not assumed a definite plan. Circumstances perforce guided him. He found it hard to mask the hatred in his eyes when he spoke to Bane and his fingers itched to close about the pirate’s throat.
Mary had not been quite dead when he reached her. She had spoken a few words, enough to let him know that Bane had been the chief aggressor but to Todd’s fanatic mind, crazed with grief, the whole crew were guilty and were to be brought to the account. He could easily have killed Bane first, and after him, two or three more perhaps before they stopped him, but that was not enough to pay for the murder of his Mary, herded by the butchers to kill herself and save her honor.
He thought of blowing up the magazine at first but Bane knew his business and not only was it guarded, night and day, and during a fight, but, whenever Todd showed a disposition to go anywhere about the ship by himself, he found a pirate close beside him. He shrewdly suspected that, once he had shown the passage through the Jumentos, they would gladly rid themselves of him, by fair means or foul.
The suggestion of Jonah aboard such a ship was one that would not down. And he could not change his eyes. He tried to glaze them with indifference but his hatred showed. He caught sight of himself once in a triangle of looking-glass and almost started at the malignant countenance he saw, grim, relentless.
There was one man aboard who had tried to pick a quarrel with him, a half-breed, part Carib, part Spaniard; known as “Spanish” Jack, noted for his knife-play. Denton had interfered, threatening the man with irons and Spanish Jack had slunk away. Todd guessed that the quartermaster had interfered only to preserve the holder of the reef entrance and that sooner or later he would have to deal with Spanish Jack.
NOW he held them all in the hollow of his hand. He could wreck them and the sea would do the rest. But even then he was not sure of his vengeance and physically he ached to be an active instrument, to come to grips with Bane, at least, and let the life out of him in a red tide.
“One scrape of her keel and I blow off the top of your head!”
Scarry-Dick was beside him, openly suspicious, a pistol in his hand.
Todd smiled and glanced once at the quartermaster. It was the glance of a man without fear, thought the quartermaster. The look of one who did not value his life at a groat, a menacing look that seemed to hold the smoldering flame of a threat against all the world. Something had seared all the humanity out of it. It sneered, it seemed to read his mind, to seek out the dirty corners of his soul and regard its foulness with a scantily veiled contempt. It was the gaze of a man without a soul. The gaze of a devil.
Denton’s grip tightened on his pistol-butt. For perhaps the first time in his blustering life the quartermaster was afraid.
The skipper is a fool, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the corvette. There was a puff of white smoke from her bows that formed itself into a ring and blew away in rags to leeward. A round shot plumped into the sea, geysering up half a mile astern. The chase was closing.
Bane came up and sent a keen eye to the set of the sails, to the even wake that streamed greenish-white, like marble, behind them. The steering was perfect. The brigantine was at the limit of its speed.
“Once clear of this,” he said to Denton, “and we’ll careen. If we were not foul we could hold her. As it is”
“Land ahead,” came from the foremast where a man balanced himself in the top mast crosstrees. Another shot came from the corvette.
“Try her with the stern-chaser,” ordered Bane. “The water should begin to shallow soon. We’ll lead her on since we can not shake her off.”
The missile fell short. A third shot from the king’s ship, fired at extreme elevation, dropped within two hundred yards, fair in the tail of the wake.
“Zounds!” cried Bane, frowning. “They have good marksmen aboard. It’s touch and go. If she can once cripple us she can hold off and hammer us with those cursed guns of hers. Try her again, gunner.”
He looked doubtfully at Todd as the cannon roared out defiance.
“How close are we heading for that entrance of yours?” he asked.
“I can not tell yet. The course should bring us fairly close. There are few landmarks on this lowland and we must raise the palms before I dare shift.”
“We can not risk a tack,” muttered Bane. “Make no mistake, if you set any value on your life. Does the lookout know your bearings?”
“Aye. There are three palms, as I told ye. One each side of the channel with their branches bowed toward each other. The Kissing Palms, I named them. Another on the islet. We take the channel with the two in line at first. Then let them open and, when the islet palm shows even between the two, we make the final fairway.”
He stood confident, his lean brown hands deftly handling the wheel, his steering hung between three spokes, easing a little to the gusts that threatened a swiftly coming gale, his feet firm to the deck as the vessel heeled, apparently unconscious of Scarry-Dick’s menacing attitude.
Bane strode forward. The corvette was yawing a trifle to use her bow guns. The pyramids of water from her shot came ever closer to the counter of the brigantine. At the pirate’s command a man crept bare-footed, out over the jib-boom to the flying jib-boom spar, locked his legs in the stirrup-ropes and cast his lead. Bane watched the colored rags of the marks as the line cut the water and was swept back into the hissing rush from the cutwater, listening to the drone of the leadsman.
“Eight—by the mark—eight! Seven and—a half—a quarter! Seven! She shoals! Seven it is! Seven! By the mark six and a half. It holds!”
The lookout shouted. Bane went aft to where he could catch the back-swept syllables. Palms were in sight. He took his telescope back to the bows. Presently spidery lines, tufted at the top, came into the field above a havoc of white surf-line. The brigantine fell off a little. Tom the Turtler had judged his course to a nicety. They were above the passage. There was no tack necessary.
“Six fathom,” called the leadsman.
The seas were choppy. The brigantine, curbed by the exquisite humoring of the rudder by the steersman, fought with wind and wave to gain its head. A shot tore through the fore topsail, barely missing the boom, and dropped ahead. The Venture replied, almost in range. The wind increased and the masts bent like whips.
Bane snapped to his spy-glass. He had seen the bowed fronds of the Kissing Palms. If their pilot was true they would beat the corvette. Her captain could not risk his ship much longer in the shoaling sea.
THERE was a thudding crash. A shot had struck fair, just below the taffrail. The next tore through the planking of the deck within five feet of the wheel. Todd paid no attention to it. Denton’s pistol was within an inch of his skull as he set his strength to the stubborn spokes.
Ahead they could catch the roar of the breakers. There seemed no break in the leaping tumult that hid the low shore, above which the palm tops barely showed. They were in five fathoms now, only twice the draft of the brigantine.
The corvette had come up into the wind, firing a full broadside as she hung in stays. They had given up the chase. The king’s ship was deeper-keeled. Eighteen feet was her limit.
The balls hurtled over the Venture. Ropes were clipped, the topmast on the main faltered and broke, the topsail hanging as it flapped in a tangle of lines. The brigantine wavered but Todd straightened her and they rushed on toward the spouting reef.
It opened ahead, a mere break in a wall of spume and they sped down a lane of wild water, less than a fathom of freeway on either hand, urged on by great billows that mounted behind them in the narrow channel. The two palms came slowly into line and still they glided on, high-tossing seas raging over the rocks to right and left in streaming cataracts, Denton’s finger on the last ounce of trigger-pull.
The palms opened again. Todd gave orders to Denton who repeated them with a roar to the expectant men. A dozen leaped for every brace and sheet and the Venture shot up into the wind. The following breakers lost their crests and volume.
Ahead, a green hummock of an island showed, one lone palm crowning it that slowly shifted until it held the center of the frame formed by the Kissing Palms while the brigantine fell slowly off and passed at last between reefs half submerged and hissing with rapids into a central lagoon of which the tiny island was the hub to a rim of strips of land, reef-tops fringed here and there with palms and scrub. Todd brought the Venture to an anchorage off a tiny cove and the chain rattled out to sand in four fathoms.
Bane smote him between the shoulders.
“Well found, lad,” he cried. “Now let the king’s ship play patrol, an she will. We’ll stay inside till we are ready to leave, with two doors to our stable. Come below and prick it on the chart. There’s a tot for ye and for all hands besides. Give the order, Denton, and join us.”
Scarry-Dick cast a sour look at Todd. The man had saved them but he liked him none the better. He beckoned to Spanish Jack.
“What was your quarrel with him?” he asked, jerking his thumb at Todd.
The half-breed spilled a mouthful of ready oaths.
“A score of reasons. The man has the eyes of voodoo."
“Caught you cogging the dice, eh? Nay, frown not, man, I have no love for him. But ye know the rules. All quarrels must be settled on land. We stay here until tomorrow.”
A crooked smile distorted the face of Spanish Jack. He tapped the hilt of the long, thin knife that he wore in his sash.
“There are other games that I can play besides dice,” he said.
Denton nodded and went below. They wanted no kill-joys aboard, he told himself. The skipper had promised Todd an extra share for successful pilotage. There was none too much for sharing with the big crew.
I would that I could place the man, he thought. It is no pleasant memory he brings up, of that I’ll be sworn. The man hates himself and all the world. He’ll have the crew by the ears with-that skull-face of his. Beshrew me, but those eyes of his hold the look of a hangman.”