Authors: Mark Keating
'Davies, Gregory,' he said calmly, 'run for your guns. Cut him down.'
Silently, Davies and Gregory calculated the drop Devlin had on them, with the black eye of his pistol steadfastly and faithfully readied against their tomorrow.
'Best not, Captain,' Gregory mumbled. Then, 'He would fire upon you first, I'm sure.' Honour retained.
Coxon held out his right hand. 'Your cutlass, Gregory,' he commanded.
'Sir?'
'Hand it to me.' Coxon's eyes fixed on the silhouette of the pirate.
Gregory protested, reminding all to draw attention to the pistol opposing them.
'Your cutlass,' Coxon continued. 'I have the measure of this man. Naught else but a coxcomb. He will not shoot me.' The crude wooden hilt slid into his fist. 'For then you would go for him. He would have no ransom.'
He weighed the cutlass with a dip and rise of his wrist. No balance. Blade heavy. A butcher's cleaver. 'He needs me alive far more than I can stand to look at him living.' Already Coxon had left their side, stepping up the beach towards the pirate.
Devlin's palm tightened around the pistol, then grew looser as Coxon's steps came near.
'Hold, John,' he voiced. 'I will drop you yet.'
'Face me now, Patrick!' Coxon yelled. 'If your men come, I'll show them your head!' His blood was in his temples now, his skull a boiling cauldron.
Devlin's belt took the pistol, its bulk pressing into his gut. His hand passed to the French-made cutlass, its lighter blade almost flying free.
He stepped back, arms open, cutlass almost behind him, inviting Coxon to dance. He lowered his head, part crouched, keeping his weight low and spread wide. He did not speak. He saved his air as if about to dive from a sinking deck. The two began to pace a circle in the sand, measuring out their area of quarter.
'This is folly, John.' Devlin smiled. 'We have no bones against each other.'
Coxon felt peace now, as if decision, the realisation of imminent death, brought tranquillity. He stopped. A body's length from Devlin.
'You will find, Patrick' - he checked his blade, the sun dull upon its grey metal - 'that men have very little against one another. Yet they kill.' He dived towards Devlin's left side, a feint attack to bring the pirate's sword arm into a defence.
Devlin edged back from the thrust, keeping his sword aside. Coxon raised his, stepping closer, sideways to Devlin's blade as he spoke.
'That is
my
cutlass, Patrick. I will take it from you.'
"Tis not the first of yours that I have taken. Although that one be with my ship upon the bed there.'
Before the end of Devlin's words, Coxon sprang forward, sword swinging.
The chime of steel sang across the beach as Devlin met the blow. They pushed each other back silently, shared one sharp breath and clashed again and again, faster now, spinning across the beach, etching their brawl with the sliding and dancing of their feet into its white powdery sand.
Gregory and Davies stood and watched the display, inched together, whispering as if gossiping behind fans at the edge of some ballroom.
Gregory looked idly to the musketoons, being kissed slightly by the lazy Caribbean tide. 'We could get the guns. That'd settle it, don't you think?'
Davies threw a fleeting eye to the weapons and tipped back his straw headpiece. 'Best not confuse the thing, Mister Gregory. A gentleman like Captain Coxon would most likely settle us for disturbing a matter of honour. Or whatever it is he's doing.'
Both men looked up as a thud and a curse indicated that blows from legs and fists had now come into the battle. A scuffle ensued, then broke, clumsily, reluctantly, as if unseen arms had heaved them apart.
Swiftly, in the heat, in the hunger and the thirst, the fury began to seep away. Coxon and Devlin circled, their nostrils flared, their chests heaving, swords dragging them down.
'Surrender to me now, Patrick,' Coxon gasped, 'and I'll let you be drunk when they hang you. There is no ship. You have put your trust in pirates.'
'I have no wish to kill you, John.' Devlin straightened, reversed his stride, his sword arm furthest from Coxon. 'We are fighting over nothing. French gold that your own precious board wanted to steal. If you lay down now to me, I'll grant you safety from my men. Drop your sword, John.'
'I have a great deal to fight about,
pirate!'
Coxon spat. 'The very least of which is that you
will
stop calling me by my bloody Christian
name!'
And he dived again for Devlin's side.
Devlin's left arm snapped out and latched on to the billowing sleeve of Coxon's thrusting arm, pulling the surprised captain through the air as he spun, Coxon's own momentum sending him rolling ungracefully into the sand, where he lay sputtering and cursing as Devlin walked slowly over.
'What is it about the gentlemen I meet of late and the powerful desire they have that I will not use their lawful name?'
His shadow fell on Coxon, who brought his left hand to his brow, half to shade his eyes, half to rub away the salty sand and silica. Devlin let his sword fall to the sand.
'This ends now,' he said. His words were followed by the drawing of his pistol. Coxon began to rise, his progress halted by the weight of a boot pushing him down; his eyes were gripped by the gaping barrel staring back at him. He opened his mouth to speak as Devlin pulled the trigger.
Gregory and Davies darted forward at the sound of the shot, then froze as they heard their captain cry out, more in anger than submission. They watched Devlin turn to face them with the smoking gun. Already his teeth were biting the paper off a cartridge. Coxon rolled up to his knees. His right forearm now sported a crushed red rose. He slapped his left hand to the rose, which suddenly grew a scarlet glove as the blood poured.
Gregory and Davies turned to the musketoons at the shore and scrambled to them, almost on all fours, their heads running away before their legs.
Their hands landed on the comforting wooden stocks a second later but pulled away just as fast, as both laid sight of the small boat rowing into shore, bristling with raised swords and muskets, hauled effortlessly along by the four giant Dutchmen.
Devlin looked up to the boat as he rammed the wad home upon the powder and ball. He turned to Coxon, who had dragged off his cambric necktie, placed one end between gritted teeth, and was tying it tight round his arm to staunch the blood.
'This ends now, John. I hold that you can live if you want to. Mark me.' Devlin's ears were deaf to the cursing and bile howling forth from Coxon's mouth as he calmly picked up both swords and walked to his men.
On the quarterdeck of the
Starling,
Sailing Master Dawson was the only soul still maintaining a sweep of the horizon. His head and eye ached from the bright light and the slight deviation of shade between the blue sky and the endless line of the earth. He looked out westward.
Below his gaze, he had missed the tiny boat of pirates creeping back to the island, looking only for the telltale triangle of white that might mark a sail miles distant.
In the darkness around his concentration and closed eye came the sounds of men hauling, wet feet slapping up and down the decks, the banging of wooden hammers that never seemed to stop as some soul spent forever repairing something, and amidst the sleepy creak of the rigging some fool had found the time to be piping a tune and, yes, of all things, there was the happy wail of a fiddle also.
Aware that somewhere near him Midshipman Granger would be standing erect and stiff, he spoke, never dropping his vigil.
'Mister Granger, is it apt that there be time for the men to be fifing at this hour?'
Granger swung round from his watch. 'I beg your pardon, sir?'
Dawson sighed and lowered the glass. 'A tune, man. Can you not hear that awful drone?'
Granger cocked an ear around the ship. 'I hasten to say I can hear nothing, Mister Dawson. What sort of tune?'
In truth, now his focus had shifted, Dawson could no longer hear the noise. He looked to the island in the distance. The bulk of it like a giant fortress rising out of the sea, sound could echo from it, to be sure, but the music was not from the island.
He passed his gaze over the busy deck, the heads of the crew, the furled sails, trying to filter out the annoying sounds of work, until the pitch carried back to him again.
'There!' he said. 'Plain as day, a pipe and a fiddle. A dancing tune, hear it now, man!'
Granger shook his head. 'I do not, sir. But I shall check below.'
'No…' Dawson moved in front of Granger, dreamlike in concentration. 'It's not on the ship…' He raised his glass to the eastern cape of the island. His vision was swamped by luscious green at first, until he drew it over to the seascape.
The din became magnified by the scope by some magical anomaly, and it was all Dawson could hear now. Then, as if it had always been there, a black bowsprit swam before his eye followed by the jibs. His eye filled with the rush of rigging and bodies and the scope fell and he stared in horror at the masts and full grey sails speeding from behind the island, swathed in hideous green smoke, the row of cannon peering at him like the black eyes of some monstrous sea-creature.
'Oh, my God!' Dawson ran, as his space was taken by Granger, who gawked at the black ship that had come from out of the sea itself to be within a thousand yards of the
Starling.
She was fully revealed now, billowing supernatural smoke that shielded the spirits on board, a devil's dirge drifting across the gap between them, mocking them.
Granger bellowed, 'Sail
there!'
He spun to the deck, where others joined in the cry as they all saw the black ship at once. Dawson flew to Acting Lieutenant Davison at the fo'c'sle as the cries followed him.
Breathless, he panted the very late news to Davison. 'A ship… the pirate frigate… she is on us!'
Davison was not listening. He stared at the ship that smoked as if ablaze. He had seen pirate ships before. Always skulking on the horizon as the
Starling
sailed home from the East. Schooners and sloops hanging back. Luffing peacefully, waiting for a gap between them and their fat East India consort. Never daring to come close on the English guns.
He had heard too of the 'vapours', the noise and show the pirates put on to instil fear in their victims, to break the will to fight before a touch-hole had been lit. They must have ovens on deck, he thought, burning something, boiling something, to make that green cloud. My God, if they can fight through that smoke? And music? A jolly tune even! Are they mad?
'Mister Davison!' Dawson snapped him out of his slumber. 'This morning you were a midshipman. This afternoon the ship is yours. Orders, if you please,
sir?'
Davison came back with a start, then gathered himself in a heartbeat. 'We will beat to quarters!' he yelled, and somewhere the drum rattled and men ran. He looked to Anderson's and the other boats, less than fifty yards away. Good, they had heard the drum, or they could see the ship; either way they were rowing pell-mell back to the ship.
Davison's instinct was to turn larboard, away from the pirates. The
Starling's
bow faced the island, but he risked two dire events: drowning Anderson and the others in his turn, and giving his stern to the pirates' starboard guns.
No. It would have to be starboard and turn their bow towards them, before the pirates crossed their stern. He barked now at the impatient William Dawson, 'Topsails and gallants, Mister Dawson. Spanker and all jib. Hard to starboard.'
'Aye, aye, sir.' Dawson trotted off to his ropes, his order blasting across the decks. 'Hands to braces! Hard to starboard! Bosun! Slip cable!'
On a good day, when not beset, it took eight minutes to beat to quarters. Marines went into the fighting tops. Cartridges were brought from the magazine. Tables cleared and away, hammock nettings piled along the gunwale, guns cleared for action. Earlier Coxon had prepared as much as possible. Shot garlands were brought up, water to dowse the barrels, weapon lockers readied, and the boats were already free to save them being shattered by shot and spearing all in their path. Not too shabby; Davison thanked himself and spared an eye to the pirate ship.
By God, it moved fast! Already it had passed their starboard quarter, the viridescent smoke trailing behind and off the water like a rolling fog.
Granger joined him now, pointing out that in turning they would delay Anderson coming aboard. Rather that, Davison asserted, than do nothing and show their arse to the pirate guns. How many men to a gun did the
Starling
have? Four would make a two-minute reload. Two men to haul the nine- foot lump of iron, two to load. Six men was a luxury for wartime. Four would do.
Sail fell, throwing darkness and a cool breeze across their heads. Granger and Davison were suddenly swamped by a rush of brown-skinned, bare-backed men running to the jibs.