The Anchorage
HOW CAPTAIN BARREL managed it, I do not to this day know. Somehow he bullied and cursed, threatened and pleaded, and his crew kept the Fury limping along, low in the water and threatening to sink at every third wave. My uncle and I went across several times to treat the wounded. Six of them died, and over the side went their bodies, with not so much as a prayer or a moment of silence.
When the water was swishing ankle-deep in the captain’s cabin, my uncle whistled and said privately to Barrel, “You ought to bring your men across as soon as may be. She cannot swim another day.”
“Swim or sink,” the old buccaneer said firmly, “I stay with the Fury, and so do the hands!” And he snorted so fiercely that I heartily believe not one of his sailors would have chosen to leave his vessel.
Even Captain Hunter admired the man. “By heaven, he has pluck,” he declared the next day, when we were scarcely seventy miles along and the poor Fury was wallowing like a dying whale. “Look how they pump! I wonder his men can even stand after so much effort.”
In the glittering sunlight, we could see jets of water shooting from the scuppers of the Fury. Captain Barrel himself was at the handles of the pump, and when another man relieved him at the end of his hour, he leaped to the bow of the Fury and gave us a cheerful wave.
That afternoon, the lookout sighted land, and as we drew near to it, Captain Hunter looked pleased. “It’s Cruzado,” he said. “Hardly more than a flyspeck on the ocean, and there’s no fresh water there but what falls from the sky, but it has a kind of anchorage.”
Cruzado was one of the more southerly Bahamas, entirely different from the mountainous Tortuga or Hispaniola. It rose very gently from the sea, and no spot on it could be much more than ten feet above high tide. Low and green it was, and at first sight quite deserted. But as we came in from the southwest, I could see a scattering of buildings, leaning crazily left and right and gray with weathering. Hunter conned us in to a sort of harbor, a half-circular bite out of the shore. Some men on the land glanced our way, but paid us little attention.
Boddin laughed, a deep musical sound. He was one of the twenty-odd former slaves in our crew, who all preferred a free but danger-filled life on the open sea to security and chains ashore. “The cap’n’s a fine navigator,” he said to me. “An’ he found this place not one minute too soon for the Fury.”
With all the speed she could muster, and that was no more than a fast walking pace, the Fury ran straight past us, up to the shelving shore, and grounded with a sandy sigh on the beach. She tilted to the left and came to rest, and from her worn-out crew I heard a weary cheer.
You would think that after all that, after the sea battle and the desperate run to Cruzado, Barrel would have rested, and let his men rest. But no—before half an hour had passed, her boats were busily ferrying her cargo ashore, lightening her so that later she could be hauled up and careened. Nor did the pumps stop working the whole time.
Indeed, it was three days before Barrel at last was able to see his craft high and dry. If the Aurora had borne an ugly hole from cannon fire, the Fury was all but a wreck. Her timbers were splintered and splayed, and amidships, as Abel Tate observed with a whistle, “She ’ad bloomed like a flower,” letting the sea in and almost sending herself to the bottom.
But Barrel cheerfully swore at the sight and set his carpenter to putting everything back to rights. The men ashore, I had learned, were pirates to a man. Desperate men they were, I have no doubt, and at sea as wicked as you would hope to meet this side of perdition. But Barrel was well liked among them, and they cheerfully agreed to sell him timber and other necessaries on credit.
Barrel came aboard the Aurora on the evening of the third day. Up close, I could see how exhausted the man was, and how his hands were cruelly blistered. “Well, well, Doctor,” he said with a gap-toothed grin as my uncle met him on deck. “And so I’m not like to lose more o’ my men, d’ye think?”
With a grudging smile, my uncle replied, “By the Powers, Captain Barrel, I do not think a man Jack of your crew would dare to die without your permission.”
Barrel threw his great head back and boomed out a laugh. Then he said, “I hear that Cap’n Hunter don’t mean to tarry long, so I’ve come to give him my thanks and to take leave of him.”
“Come along,” said my uncle, leading the way to the cabin. “I’m sure it’s pleased he’ll be to have a word with you.”
Captain Hunter did look pleased, and he offered Captain Barrel something wet. “I’d not say no to that,” Barrel told him. “It’s fair parched I am, and that’s no lie.” I brought out some brandy, and I stood in the corner as Hunter and Barrel drank a toast to the Brethren of the Coast—“them that’s above hatches, and them that’s shaken the devil’s hand,” as Barrel put it.
After a second glass, Barrel wiped his mouth on his sleeve and shook his head. “Curse that Viper and her fool of a captain,” he muttered. “I’ve studied and studied on it, and ’tis plain what happened. That ’ere Concepción snapped her up an’ turned her into a fire ship.” He shook his head. “It fair broke up whatever Jack Steele was plannin’, ye may lay to that. But he’ll be back.”
“It’s hard to kill a man like Steele,” Hunter agreed.
“Aye,” agreed Barrel. He got up. “Well, fair winds to ye.”
“Here,” Hunter said, tossing a leather sack across the table. It landed with the clink of coin.
Barrel picked it up and dumped at least a dozen gold coins into his palm, not even a tenth of what the bag held. “Here. What is this?”
Hunter shrugged. “You’re down on your luck. But you won’t be always, and when our wakes cross again, I might need help from you. Take it and welcome, for we’ve been prosperous this voyage.”
Barrel shook with laughter. “That’s handsome, so it is! And I’ll not turn it down, neither. Ye know, Steele will be lookin’ for new captains now, what with the wicked wreck that old Spaniard made o’ his fleet. I’ll put in a word for ye, so I will, for ye’ve treated me an’ my crew fair.”
“I would like that,” Hunter said.
Soon Barrel left us, and we weighed anchor with the evening tide. As we glided away from the low, green island of Cruzado, I stood on deck looking back. Night was gathering in the eastern sky, and already Venus hung there low and brilliant as a signal lamp.
We were fairly at sea before Hunter and my uncle sat down to supper in the cabin. Hunter told me to sit too, and to share their meal. As he served us, he gave my uncle a quizzical glance. “Why so glum, Doctor?”
Uncle Patch sighed. “I thought I had saved Captain Brixton,” he said. “Me with my sinful pride and my sneaking schemes! He was a brave man, for all that he was English.”
“Thank you,” Hunter said with a twisted smile.
My uncle waved a hand. “Not all of you are ranting, raving lunatics,” he said. “But poor Brixton, now—I dearly hope that he did not babble of us and our mission before someone cut his throat.”
“I knew him well,” Hunter said quietly. “I cannot see him spilling our secrets. Not even if he were not in his perfect mind.”
Uncle Patch nodded gloomily. “Then there’s this, too: Brixton was one of the very few men who knew that we are not truly pirates. I feel as if we’ve lost a lifeline with him gone.”
Hunter smiled. “Come, it isn’t so bleak. Sir Henry Morgan knows what we are, and he’s safe in Port Royal, or at his plantation in Port Maria. And as far as that goes, King James himself knows about us, for it was his hand that signed our commission. As long as our letter of marque is safe in the cabin here, we need not fear the hangman. You surprise me, Doctor. I thought the Irish were braver than that.”
Uncle Patch said quietly, “’Twas not for myself that I was concerned.”
He did not look at me, but I caught his meaning. My uncle might seem big and bold, and he might give me the sharp edge of his tongue. But for all that, we were family. Somehow I knew that if it came to that, he would lay down his life to save mine. As I write this now, I wish that I had found words to tell him so. I don’t know, though. He probably would have snarled, “Now ye’re being a sentimental Irishman. Hush!”
Outside the great windows, night had fallen. Stars hung in the dark tropical sky, brilliant in their light. The Aurora, sound and whole, frisked in the evening breeze as if she were a living creature, and glad to be alive.
Captain Hunter put his hand on my uncle’s forearm and gave it a friendly shake. “Come on, Patch,” he said with a grin. “We broke up Steele’s armada, and now Barrel will give a good report of us to his master. Take my word for it, the plan is unfolding well. Well live yet to see Jack Steele go down to Davy Jones’s locker.”
“I hope so,” my uncle said. He glanced my way and softly repeated, “I hope so.”
And knowing I was the one for whom he wished all the good fortune in the world, I looked down at my plate and did not speak.