CHAPTER THREE
Seventeen days later, on the twenty-fifth of April, the Markham flotilla and their captures, having beaten their way through the Mona Passage against over a week of blustery weather, lay on the larboard tack to the north of Puerto Rico, bound still for the neutral Spanish harbor of San Juan, which they expected to make the following day. After days of wet blankets and dripping hammocks, shifting winds and dangerous currents, the day was again clear, with a fresh, brisk wind blowing from the northeast; off the starboard bow of Cossack, Puerto Rico was visible only as a row of wispy clouds hanging over the invisible land, their bottoms reflecting the green of the island’s vegetation.
Ellyat’s Ferret, cruising ahead of the convoy as scout, had made two more captures, both swift luggers taken with the aid of the captured British signals. Ellyat being out of prize crews, Malachi and Jehu had each provided one, and the luggers added to the outrageous total of twelve prizes cut out of the convoy by the Markhams, bringing their prize bag to fourteen. With the two taken by Nubian Pride— which, when last seen a week ago, had fallen far astern trying to beat up the Mona Passage— the craft lost to the British, as a result of Yankee privateers in the Caribbean, had reached at least sixteen for the month of April.
Malachi calculated that left nine thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four vessels yet to capture before the Yankees could claim to have swept the British merchant marine from the seas.
Malachi sat in his day cabin, lingering over the remains of his dinner; he was dressed in an almost-clean black coat and a fresh silk cravat, one hand lying on an open page of the Bible and the other holding a beaker of wine. It was a Sunday, and Malachi was obliged by tradition, at least on New England ships, to conduct Divine Service. No doubt on Josiah’s schooner the Divine Service ran for the length of the forenoon watch and on into the afternoon, skipping dinner: Josiah had once expressed admiration for the Reverend Gill’s ability to preach for six hours at a stretch. Malachi, in his turn, preferred to delay the service until two bells of the afternoon watch, by which time the hands had been served their dinner and liquor, and were inclined to be merry. His standard practice was to lead them in singing half a dozen hymns, read a text or two of scripture, and then fire a gun to alert the Almighty that the formalities had been observed. The hands were then dismissed drill for the rest of the day: they generally spent the time doing their laundry.
Malachi swallowed a mouthful of wine and contemplated Verse 28, Chapter 27 of the Acts of the Apostles.
And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day.
Malachi was undecided whether or not to use it. The text, ending as it did with a shipwreck, was depressing and a little ominous, but at least it was nautical. Malachi took another mouthful of wine. There was a knock on his cabin door.
“Come in,” he said, and marked the place in the Bible; Verse 28 would do as well as anything. McVie, the bosun, came into the cabin, ducking his head to clear the beams.
“Beg pardon, Captain,” McVie said. “The hands are assembled for Divine Service.”
“Have the Papists finished theirs?” Malachi asked. He allowed the Roman Catholics among the crew— a large percentage of the Caribbeans were Catholic, or thought of themselves as such— to conduct their own service or rites or prayers or whatever it was they did in the fo’c’sle, while the rest were at dinner. “License to plot,” Josiah would have called it, who did not trust the Pope an inch.
“Aye, sir, they’re eating their dinner now.”
“I’ll be up directly,” Malachi said. “Thank you.”
McVie nodded and backed from the cabin, still stooping, mindful of the low beams. Malachi’s cabin had, in fact, a respectable amount of headroom for a ship of Cossack’s size; Malachi could stand without stooping, and Josiah and Jehu could stand tolerably straight.
Malachi finished his wine and the last bit of cheese, stood, took the better of his two hats, and walked up the short passageway to the deck. The hands, with the exception of the lookouts and the helmsmen, were mustered in the ship’s waist, forward of the mainmast; they shuffled into a semblance of alertness as Malachi came on deck with his Bible tucked under his arm.
“Off hats!” Malachi ordered, tucking his own in his armpit in place of the Bible, which he transferred to his hand.
“Take off your hat, you damned poxy son of a bitch-dog’s fleas!” The master’s bellow floated up from the waist.
“Thank you, Mr. Martin,” said Malachi, glowering at the dwarf through slitted eyes. He opened the Bible to the place he’d marked, and began, “Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 27, Verse 28 . . .”
He was interrupted by a long, sibilant cry from the head of the mainmast, a lookout with an opera-singer’s tuneful tenor. “Deeeeck tharrrr! A Saaaaiiil! Off the staaaar-boooard beam! Tweeeellve mile!”
Malachi snapped shut the Bible, put on his hat, and ran to the poop all in one easy motion; he dropped the Bible on top of the flag locker and snatched a glass. Finch Martin, snapping hot oaths as heedlessly as a volley gun fires its slugs, was beside him, training another telescope through the lee shrouds. Whatever it was the lookout had seen, neither Malachi nor the master could find it, even with the aid of their telescopes. Malachi handed his glass to Martin, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted to the lookout: ”Masthead there! Are you sure?”
“Deck thar! I can see her t’gallants; she’s ship-rigged, sure enough!”
“Ferret may have already seen her and passed her by,” Martin said.
“Masthead there!” Malachi roared. “Can ye see Ferret? Whereaway?”
“Off the larboard bow, sir! Eight mile or more!”
“That’s good enough for me,” Malachi said. “Ferret can’t have seen her; the cutter’s mast isn’t high enough for the lookout to have seen that sail so far to leeward. Put your helm up and call the hands to unfurl the courses and t’gallants. I’ll likely call for royals.”
“Shall I make a signal, Cap’n?” Martin asked.
“Aye. Make the signal for ‘strange sail to leeward.” Red flag at the mainpeak and two guns to leeward.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said Martin as he returned the telescopes to the rack and stalked down the starboard companionway to begin giving his directions to the helmsman. “A short service, eh?” he grinned.
“The Lord will understand,” said Malachi calmly.
The other Markham ships, busy with the shepherding of fourteen prizes, each with its original crew still aboard and presumably willing to recapture their livelihood, preferred not to investigate the strange sail; instead, they and the prizes altered course to the southward, keeping in visual contact with Cossack in order to support Malachi should he need it.
Gradually the green mountains of Puerto Rico rose above the horizon, topped by the inevitable cloud, and the strange sail appeared below, first an intermittent fleck indistinguishable from a white-capped wave, appearing fitfully and then vanishing again; and then gradually mounting above the horizon, first a light dapple on the horizon that resolved itself into three distinguishable topgallant sails, braced round to the wind and sailing almost due west.
“She’s a West Indiaman, right enough,” the lookout called from his advantageous perch, where he could see the hull that rolled beneath the masts.
“But whose?” Malachi demanded.
“By the cut of her jib I’d reckon her English, but there’s no way o’ knowin’,” the lookout cried.
“Damnation! What would a British Indiaman be doing so close inshore of Porto Rico?” Malachi wondered. “She must have sailed from San Juan; there’s no other way of explaining her track so close to the coast; but why would she be in San Juan to begin with?”
“I’d not put the bastard English past a scurvy trick,” offered Martin from his post by the wheel. “That parcel o’ rogues wouldn’t stop at nothing.”
“Just like Yankee privateers, eh?” asked Malachi with a wink. Martin gave a rueful grin. “We’ll find out sure enough: raise the red flag with the white cross at the maintop and the Dutch jack at the mizzen, and fire three guns to windward— we’ll see if she replies.”
The Indiaman, when the signal was given, replied with the correct response: white flag at the main and three guns fired to leeward; she also made the identification indisputable by raising the Union flag at her stern. Malachi whistled.
“We’ll return the compliment,” he said. “Raise the Blue Ensign— no, the White Ensign, that’s what Melampe flew at St. Thomas. And clear the ship for action, but do it quietly. I’ll require a twenty-man boarding party, armed with cutlasses and pistols. Hide them under the fo’c’sle. And pass the word for McVie.”
McVie, who had been calmly mending a shirt on the on the capstan during Cossack’s approach, appeared on the poop with the shirt bunched in his powerful hands, and a threaded needle hanging casually from the corner of his mouth. “I’m going to take that Indiaman by boarding,” Malachi said. “You’re to command the boarding party, twenty men hidden in the fo’c’sle.”
“Happily, Cap’n,” McVie grinned, square white teeth flashing in his brown face.
“At my signal, you’ll rush out and board the enemy, shouting for all you’re worth,” Malachi said. McVie nodded. “But I want no shots fired unless the British resist,” Malachi cautioned. “Your men’s pistols will be unprimed: I want you to see to that personally. No fighting unless they begin it, understand?”
“Aye aye, sir,” said McVie. “Unprimed pistols, no man shot unless they begin it. As you order, Cap’n.”
“Very well. Go and tell your men.”
They were but half a mile from the Indiaman, approaching her from her starboard beam. Through his telescope Malachi could see the fished mainyard, and no telescope was necessary to see the new canvas of glittering white on the mainmast, contrasting with the weathered, tanned canvas elsewhere aloft. It was evidence of storm damage, a maintopmast sprung or smashed in a gale, probably the same one that had kept the Markhams in the Mona Passage for over a week. In the unprotected ocean north of Puerto Rico, the gale would have been more severe. The Indiaman had been forced to repair its damage in San Juan: that was why it was so far from the normal British trade lanes, within ten miles of the coast of the Spanish colony.
Malachi walked from the poop to the fo’c’sle, where the crews of the nine-pounder chasers, stripped to the waist, scarves tied around their ears to keep themselves from being deafened by their ordnance, stood proudly by their baking guns. “Fire me a shot across that Britisher’s bow,” Malachi told the grinning gun captain of the starboard gun. “Fire it well in advance of her jib boom; we’re supposed to be a friendly, remember.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said the gun captain. “I can do that right enough.”
The gun went off with a bang before Malachi had quite returned to his station on the poop, and the effect was almost immediate: the Indiaman wore ship and came into the wind, hove to, passively awaiting the disguised Americans. Malachi clewed up his sails and continued under driver, jib, and foretopsail down on the helpless target.
Dashing up the larboard companionway came red-haired Shaw, Malachi’s sword and pistols in his arms, shouting, “Captain, you forgot your weapons!”
“Christ!” swore Malachi. “And I’m still in my best coat! Here, take the coat and the silk stockings, and bring me the blue jacket and the everyday stockings. Leave the shoes. Smartly now!” Shaw hastily gathered up the discarded garments and ran for Malachi’s cabin, Malachi muttering curses under his breath as he buckled on his sword and tucked the pistols into the waistband. There was less than two hundred yards separating the two ships. Malachi seized a speaking trumpet and raised it to his mouth.
“Grapple her stern as we touch, gentlemen: I’ll not give you such a nice prize again else! Enough of this damned British Ensign, hoist our true colors!”
The astonishment on the faces of the cluster of officers that congregated on the Indiaman’s poop was plain to see, as Cossack’s main chains ground into the British ship’s fine gingerbread-work simultaneous with the hoisting of the Rattlesnake Flag above the privateer’s poop. Grapnels were hurled aboard the helpless target, locking the ships together as the foretopsail and jib were let fly.
“Run out the larboard battery!” Malachi bellowed into the speaking trumpet. “Not a shot until my word! Boarders away, boarders awaaaaaayyyyy ...!” McVie’s screaming band of cutlass-waving seamen stormed out of the forecastle as the larboard battery rumbled from their ports, each iron barrel of the twelve-pounders trained on the Indiaman. Malachi turned his speaking trumpet to the officers on the Indiaman’s poop. He saw a flash of bright silk and a lace parasol running down the Indiaman’s gangway: lady passengers aboard, running forward to safety!
“Strike, gentlemen, for God’s sake strike!” Malachi shouted. “Your position is helpless! If you resist we’ll blast you to splinters!”
McVie and a few men had climbed the grapple lines to the stern gallery; they were smashing windows, preparing to break into the quarterdeck. The British officers huddled in a mass on the poop, each watched by a Yankee privateer with a musket or swivel gun; one broad-shouldered man detached himself from the group and walked without haste to the ensign staff, took the halliards, and quietly lowered the rippling symbol of England’s power and majesty.
“Three cheers for Captain Markham!” shouted Finch Martin, dancing out onto the maindeck in a twisted hornpipe; and as the privateers rang the ocean with cheers for Malachi Markham, who had gained them another bloodless fortune; McVie, in the act of forcing the door leading from the stern gallery to the English captain’s day cabin, turned in surprise at the unexpected sound of the cheers, and then joined them himself, waving his bright cutlass over his head.
Malachi ran down the larboard companionway to clap the master on the back, staggering him. “Mr. Martin, a fine piece of work!” he shouted over the crew’s cheers. “ ’Twas neatness itself, the way you lay alongside her so gentle.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Martin. “It was the best I could do with these soft-handed gruel-suckers that call themselves privateers.”
“You can take Cossack to San Juan, can you not?” Malachi asked. “I’ll take the prize in with my people and McVie’s.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Martin’s face wrinkled in an inharmonious leer, the closest he could arrive to a proper grin. “It will be a pleasure, I’m sure, making the acquaintance of them lady passengers.”
Malachi grinned, knowing better than to protest his innocence. He clapped Martin on the back again and ran for the larboard bulwark; he swarmed up a grapnel line past the stern gallery, rolled neatly over the taffrail, and rose to his feet, straightening his sword. McVie and his men had preceded him and were grouped about the Indiaman’s officers. They were a cluster of men in gold-laced uniforms, standing aloof on the poop, enduring as well as they could the Yankees’ insinuant grins.
They seemed mostly middle-aged, quite dignified in their blue coats and powdered hair. One, a very short man, had four-inch heels on his shoes, wore a strange tall wig powdered a peculiar blue, a tiny macaroni tricorne, and had affixed a heart-shaped beauty spot to his larboard cheekbone. He had an eyeglass on the end of his cane. Malachi grinned. Beau Didapper, come to life, he thought. Walking up to the officers, he touched his hat.
“Captain Markham, of New Hampshire,” he said. “You have just fallen to the American privateer Cossack.”
A grim, burly individual, the English ensign draped over one arm, separated himself from the rest and bowed. “Captain Crichton,” he said, with as much dignity as possible, “of the Anegada, the Merchants’ Company of Plymouth.”
Captain Crichton’s shoulders were broad as those of a laborer, and his hands callused; he still seemed a powerful man, and assured of his own physical strength even if his ship was powerless and in the grip of an enemy. His face was lined and brown, and had probably been handsome once; now it was merely weathered. Sweat dripped onto his lace collar from beneath his elegant three-cornered hat.
Malachi returned his bow. “I’ll be obliged to you, Captain,” he said, “if you would muster your ship’s company in the waist. And any passengers, if you have any.”
“We have several ladies aboard,” Captain Crichton said carefully. “They may be, er, fearful for their safety. If they could have your assurances ...?”
He thinks I’m a pirate, Malachi thought grimly. It is time to sink that notion here and now.
“Any man who harms a lady will answer to me,” Malachi said, glaring into Crichton’s flinching eyes. “No matter whose crew he may belong to, Captain.”
Crichton’s face hardened, anger flashing into his countenance before he swiftly suppressed it. A few of his officers were not nearly as controlled, rage and hatred plain on their faces— all save the gentleman Malachi had christened Beau Didapper, who raised his cane to gaze at Malachi with evident curiosity through its gold-rimmed eyeglass.
“You jumped-up son of a bitch!” one of the officers shouted, shaking a fist. Malachi’s teeth ground as he restrained his initial impulse to strike the man to the deck then and there; instead, after a deep breath, he turned to Crichton.
“I’ll be obliged to you to keep your crew under control, Captain,” he said, “as I do mine. You are a lawful prize of war, and if I hear any more insults from that gentleman or any other, I’ll have them in irons.”
Crichton slumped down, all light and pride vanishing from his eyes, a defeated man. “Very well, Captain,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I shall send below for my sword, and for the passengers.”
Malachi nodded curtly toward the other officers. “I will have these gentlemen’s swords as well,” he said, his frozen glare stifling even the hint of rebellion.
“Yes,” said Crichton. “Of course.”
Malachi nodded and let the man go about his distasteful work. Captured without a shot fired in their defense, he and his officers had much to answer for. His company’s directors might not see the case clearly: approached by a ship Crichton had every reason to believe was an English man-of-war—Cossack was escorting a convoy, after all, now plainly visible on the northern horizon— heaving to when asked to do so, Crichton had no choice but to surrender once Cossack had crossed his stern and grappled. But all the other company’s directors might see was a fool and a coward, who had first let himself be tricked and then ignominiously surrendered his ship and his entire cargo. Malachi felt a rush of sympathy for the man: Crichton might never command again.
“That I should ever live to see my ship struck to a bearded, barefoot pirate!” said one officer, the man who had waved his fist, as he was led down the companionway to the main deck. He was speaking to the beau with the blue wig, but his speech carried to Malachi and Crichton; the British captain reacted as if slapped. Crichton recovered swiftly, pain in his eyes, and continued giving orders in a quiet voice.
The crew, mustered in the waist of the ship, was composed of at least eighty men— a fighting crew that should have been able to put up a formidable defense. They were dressed in a uniform of sorts: white trousers, blue-and-yellow-striped jerseys, black neckerchiefs, a short blue jacket, and the universal tarred hat. Their dress bespoke a wealthy captain, who could afford to clothe his crew at a whim. Malachi’s sympathy for Crichton dropped a notch.
The passengers filed out onto the quarterdeck, standing in a quiet line in front of the seamen: there were four women, two Europeans with a colored maidservant apiece, all four of them hiding behind fluttering fans. The beau had a manservant that was even shorter than he, and one of the women had an arm around the shoulders of a little girl of ten years or so, who hid behind her skirts and covered her face with her fan, and yet could not resist peeking out at the strange, swaggering American sailors. Ranked with the passengers was a young man of seventeen, dressed severely in a black coat and waistcoat, holding himself firmly erect, shoulders thrown back, glaring at all who came near: a preacher-to-be, perhaps, or a subaltern out of uniform.
Malachi descended to the waist of the ship to be introduced to the officers by Captain Crichton. Two were his lieutenants, one of them the man who had shaken his fist; a third was introduced as “Captain Masterson, one of our company directors.” Masterson looked down at Malachi with clear disdain, and at Crichton with contempt. Crichton would get little sympathy at his court of inquiry from that man, Malachi thought.
The beau was introduced as “Mr. Albee, of Lloyd’s,” without any further explanation: Albee gave a formal, elaborate bow, returned by Malachi with a curt nod.
“Mrs. Crichton, my wife,” said Captain Crichton with a nod, indicating the lady with the girl clinging to her skirts. The Captain’s wife, her eyes downcast, her lower face hidden by her fan, curtsied, preserving the formalities. “Elizabeth, my daughter,” the Captain continued. “Hugh, my son.” The latter was the young man in black, who glared at Malachi, his face a cold mask of resentment. His clothes seemed strangely of military cut, from the jackboots into which he had tucked his gray breeches to the rigidly squared shoulders. The boots were Hessian, with tassels, and were the sort of affectation usually considered endearing by military men.
“Is your son a seaman?” Malachi asked, curious.
“He wishes to join the Navy,” Crichton said softly. “I wish it were otherwise.”
“Don’t bandy words with a pirate, Father!” Hugh cried, unable to contain himself. “We may be his prisoners, but we are not on such familiar terms, I hope!”
Crichton’s eyes fell to the deck, deeply ashamed. Malachi glowered into the boy’s eyes until Hugh Crichton reddened and turned away.
“Some day you may meet a real pirate,” Malachi said. “You may pray that you never do.”
He turned from Crichton’s family to the next passenger. “The Right Honourable Lady Georgina Spenser-Martin,” Crichton said, “passenger.” Lady Georgina did not cast her eyes down as the other woman had; she challenged Malachi’s glance with a frank, appraising gaze as she dipped in a barely civil curtsey. She was probably a few years older than he, Malachi thought, but still young, with green eyes, a clear forehead marked only by a smallpox scar partly hidden by the arrangement of hair above her left temple, and with the beginnings of a straight nose— the rest was hidden by her fan: she could have been the most beautiful woman in the world, or completely disfigured by smallpox, Malachi could not say. Malachi returned her gaze, and bowed in return— rather more deeply than he had thus far; then he turned abruptly and climbed the ladder to the poop, taking a speaking trumpet from the rack and putting it to his mouth.
“I am Captain Markham, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire,” he shouted. “I command the American continental privateer Cossack, and you and your ship have been taken a lawful prize. You will be taken into the harbor of San Juan to be condemned by the prize court there. You will be confined to the main gun deck during the term of the voyage. You will be allowed fresh air and your regular issue of food; you will not be allowed exercise, but the voyage will be a short one. Officers, upon giving their parole, will be allowed to retain their cabins and their personal effects; otherwise, they will be placed under guard. Passengers will be allowed to retain their cabins, their servants, and all their possessions. If there is any looting, by the crew of either vessel,” he said, giving a sharp look at the Indiaman’s officers, “kindly bring it to my attention, and the man responsible will be dealt with severely.
“As this ship will almost certainly be condemned and sold, you seamen will be cast loose in Porto Rico, probably without your pay,” Malachi continued. There was muttering among the Indiaman’s crew at this, and Malachi grinned behind the bell-shaped mouth of the speaking trumpet. “There is nothing I can do about this,” Malachi said, “but if you will see Mr. McVie, my bosun, after you are all safely ashore, he may be able to find you a place among our crew of privateers. The pay is good, and the prize money may make a prudent man wealthy by the end of the war. My compliments, Captain Crichton, you may dismiss your men.”
Malachi replaced the speaking trumpet as the Indiaman’s crew was herded below. They were lively, debating with one another concerning whether they would get paid, whether they would find themselves on the beach in San Juan, whether a privateer’s berth was superior to the charity of a Spanish governor. Malachi had intended that they debate such matters and smiled privately to himself.
“Beg pardon, Captain.” It was Shaw, his cabin servant, holding open his blue coat. “But I was called upon to help run out my twelve-pounder before I could bring you your coat and stockings.”
“Thank you anyway, Shaw,” Malachi said, slipping his arms into his coat, tugging out his long queue and letting it fall down his back. He stood on one foot and pulled on his right stocking, then exchanged feet and slid on the other; finding his buckled shoes in his trouser pockets, he dropped them to the deck and slipped his feet into them.
The two ships, still locked together, rolled gently on the swell, their yards swaying within inches of one another. The last of the crew was herded below, and the hatches slammed over them.
Malachi walked to the after taffrail and called down to Martin, “Reeve a sling through the main yardarm,” he ordered. “Hoist up two swivels and two musketoons. Then cut free and keep us under your lee until we pass El Morro.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” Martin called back. “And a good journey to you!”
“Beg pardon, Captain Markham,” said a voice. It was that of Captain Crichton, standing quietly on the poop deck, his hands full of rapiers. “You have forgotten your trophies.”
Malachi felt sudden shame for insisting on the possession of the officers’ swords, even though it was his right; and he felt anger for the other officers of the Indiaman, who had allowed their Captain to act as their hireling messenger.
“Give ’em to Shaw,” Malachi said abruptly. This was discourtesy, he should have taken them himself, from officer to officer; but he could not bear the prospect of Crichton handing them over one by one, the last shreds of his dignity with them. Crichton uncomplainingly handed them to Shaw, then quietly walked to the lee side of the poop— the weather half was reserved for the Captain, but that position had been usurped by Malachi— where he stood alone, watching the band of raggle-taggle Americans standing guard over the hatches that held his crew prisoner. Shaw stood behind him, his arms full of weapons, momentarily confused.
“Captain,” Malachi called. Crichton turned, his eyes alone reflecting his despair.
“You may have your sword back,” Malachi said. “I know you would have given a good account of yourself had it been possible.”
Crichton looked first at the swords in Shaw’s hands, than at Malachi. He shook his head slowly. “It’s not possible, Captain,” he said. “I regret to say that I cannot give you my parole.”
“Very well, Captain Crichton,” Malachi said. “I shall return it to you at the end of the voyage. In the meantime you shall be confined under guard.”
Crichton nodded sadly, then turned his eyes forward again, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.
Shaw turned to Malachi, utterly confused. “What shall I do with the swords?” he asked.
Malachi bit back an obscene reply, then said, harshly, “Ask the Captain to identify his sword, then give it to me; I’ll keep it until we’re in port. Throw the rest down to Martin and have him put ’em in my cabin.”
As Shaw hastened to obey, Crichton identified his sword amid the bundle, and as Malachi strapped it on in place of his own, said, “Thank you, Captain Markham. I know you meant well.”
At sunset the wind had backed more to the north; this allowed Anegada to beat upwind closer to the rest of the Markham convoy. Malachi remained on deck, not wanting to deprive Crichton of his quarters as well as his ship, his convoy, and— in certain eyes, at least— his honor. McVie had fixed him a hammock chair on the poop deck, and Malachi would sleep there. His crew, in shifts, slept on the deck where they could.
A musketoon and a swivel gun had been mounted on the poop and fo’c’sle, with a man standing by each; pointing now, for safety’s sake, at the sky— they were capable of being trained on the waist of the ship, ready to blast the British crew should they attempt to retake the ship. They could do the job efficiently, though not prettily: the swivel gun was a short, squat cannon, less than three feet long, with an eight-inch bore and a wooden stock fixed to its breech to aim it; it was loaded first with a charge of grape-shot, twelve round shot in a wooden container, with a round of canister choked on top of it. The canister consisted of one hundred and fifty musket balls in a tin bucket: once fired, the swivel gun would sweep the deck with its contents, the musket balls and grapeshot, splinters of wood and jagged fragments of tin, at this range capable of knocking down dozens of men.
The musketoon, also mounted on a swivel, was a squat bell-mouthed musket loaded with a handful of lead slugs and old scrap iron; it was less effective than the swivel, but also less random—it would maim only a dozen close-packed men if discharged. To prevent Anegada from ever being in a position that such weapons might have to be used, armed sentries were standing over each hatch; the officers, all of whom had refused parole, were under guard; the spirit-room was locked, with the key in Malachi’s pocket; and the arms chests and magazine each had a sentry. Each privateer, even those off duty, kept his pistols and cutlass near him. But the night itself was peaceful. The trades blew brisk and steady from the north northwest, bringing with them the long rolling waves that kicked spray over the bluff bows of the Indiaman and wetly reflected starlight from the weather rigging.
Malachi sat on the weather taffrail, one arm hooked through the shrouds, his head turned aft. The two great stern lamps had not been lit— although each main yardarm held aloft the red lantern that marked all the Markham captures— and the water glowed with phosphorescence, Anegada’s wake blazing out for half a mile behind, an incandescent, cool green with gold and reddish flecks; green streaks also gleamed among the wave-tops, pointing ghostly fingers, Malachi knew, to Puerto Rico.
Four bells struck forward: halfway through the first night watch. McVie, a brace of pistols stuck in his waistband, climbed nimbly up the weather companionway. “I’ll be turning in now, sir,” he reported. “I’ll be ready for the middle watch.”
“Very well, Mr. McVie,” Malachi said. “Sleep well.”
“Thankee, Captain.” McVie, scratching his scalp, made his way forward to the fo’c’sle, where he’d managed to sling a hammock between the foremast and the belfry. The man standing by the musketoon glanced at Malachi, his eyes reflecting starlight.
“Woman’s on deck, sir,” he said.
Malachi dropped his feet to the deck and walked to the break in the poop: there was, indeed, a woman on the deck, one of the Europeans, dressed formally in a full skirt and wrapped in a colorful shawl— a new fashion Malachi had never seen. She stood near the weather stays and stared out at the flashing sea. Malachi descended the ladder and turned to where the wheel was sheltered beneath the overhang of the poop, the helmsman’s face gleaming a ghostly yellow in the light of the binnacle.
“Starboard a point,” Malachi said. “We don’t want to pass through the convoy in the dark.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” the helmsman responded, and ported his helm, his eyes firmly fixed on the binnacle compass. Malachi, hands in pockets, glanced casually around him. The woman turned toward him briefly, her lower face shaded by her fan, and then glanced hastily back to the ocean. Malachi walked forward to within a respectful five paces of her.
“May I be of assistance, ma’am?” he asked.
The fan fluttered before her face; she had a supple wrist.
“I wanted merely to take the air,” she said. Malachi realized as she spoke that she was Lady Georgina, the titled passenger.
“I am gratified that you would endure the company of pirates, my lady,” Malachi said with a smile. She glanced at him sharply with her green eyes.
“I would prefer the company of the dread Bartholomew Roberts himself to that of Mr. Paisley Albee,” she said with a slight shudder.
Malachi frowned. “If the man has been offensive,” he said, “I’ll have him stowed forrard with the crew.”
“He is not offensive,” said Lady Georgina. “He is merely interminable.”
“Paisley Albee,” Malachi said, curling his tongue around the words. “So that is his name. I had been calling him Beau Didapper.”
Lady Georgina’s shoulders hunched forward as she tried, and entirely failed, to suppress an unladylike giggle. “Ifackins,” she said, “if ever Beau Didapper walked in life, it is he.” She turned to him, her fan covering her lower face with proper modesty, but she could not entirely disguise the amusement that turned up the corners of her eyes. “He called you a ‘raggy-arsed brigand born for the noose.’ ”
Malachi threw back his head and laughed, a sudden sound that made the helmsman stare. Lady Georgina watched him quietly over the rim of her fan; Malachi could see it was made of ivory and lace.
“The very words my father used!” Malachi said. “Save that he often accompanied them with a flogging.”
Lady Georgina turned away, her eyes downcast to the sea. “Let us not speak of flogging,” she said quietly. “Nor again of hanging. It was cruel to repeat it.”
“I was not offended,” said Malachi with a grin. “I could not be offended by any such squinny-gut bastard as he.”
“I must beg your pardon, Captain,” she said. “The words reminded me of things best forgot.”
Malachi was silent, respectful of her memories. She spoke, still staring out to sea, refusing to face him again; he could tell that she had steeled herself forcefully even to speak.
“Tell me of yourself, Captain,” she said. “Do you own your own vessel?”
“I own a third of several such vessels,” Malachi said, glad to move her mind to other paths. “My family has been long in seafaring.”
“You are Old New England?” she asked.
“Not in the way I believe you mean, my lady,” he said. “My great-great-grandfather, Tom Markham, deserted from a British man-o’-war in Boston harbor during the Dutch Wars and made his way to Maine where he became a fisherman. He prospered, as have all the Markhams since. My brother Jehu tells his friends that Tom was a naval man during the Dutch Wars, and leaves them to think he was an officer and a gentleman, but I don’t mind speaking the truth. A man shouldn't be held responsible for his ancestors.”
“Some of us are,” she said soberly, still staring at, or searching, the sea.
“My lady?” Malachi began. She nodded, briefly, acknowledging his presence; it was not a regal thing, the nod of a noblewoman to a commoner, but rather the nod of a person whose thoughts were far away, and who could not return whole to the present.
“May I see your face, my lady?” Malachi asked. “If you do not mind letting fall your fan for a raggy-arsed brigand?”
She turned to him without a word, her eyes dropping. The fan folded gracefully to one side, resting on her shoulder, and Malachi saw she was beautiful. The face was English in its proportions: high, wide cheekbones, a strong jaw, an evenly proportioned mouth. Malachi drew a breath; he had feared her face disfigured.
She slowly raised her eyes to his. He was warmly conscious of the fact that he had been staring, and nervously turned his own eyes seaward. “Beg pardon, my lady,” he said, “but you are lovely.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she said. “But I have no patience with compliments tonight; Beau Didapper, as you call him, was composing a sonnet upon the shape of my knuckles when I left him.” Her voice was low and melodious; and it bore an endearing lisp that she could not entirely control.
“I’m glad it was knuckles,” said Malachi. “And not something more familiar,” he was about to continue, but he bit it back. It would have been too presumptuous.
“Tell me more of your family, Captain,” she said quickly. “Your brother. Is he given to affectation?”
“In truth, I don’t know,” Malachi said. “Jehu is a hard man to understand, and I’ve only met him four times in my lifetime. My father sent him, the eldest of us, to England, to be brought up in school there, and later sent to Oxford, and made a gentleman. Jehu was to inherit the entire business, but in the late war with France my father outfitted three ships as privateers and sailed to The Nore with my other brother, Josiah, to make Jehu and Josiah officers of ’em. Jehu was called from Oxford in mid-term and met my father on the poop of the ship he was intended to help command. Here was Jay, with his Oxford accent and his lace cuffs; it soon becomes plain to my father that Oxford may have taught him to conjugate Latin verbs, but that Jay doesn’t know a backstay from his own backside— so away go the lace cuffs, and the tailored suits, and Jay was sent forrard as an ordinary seaman for two years, with my father hazing him throughout— until Jay learned the ropes, as we say. But Jehu ended up as a master of his vessel after all, the last year of the war, so he must have satisfied my father in the end.
“I don’t think my father was entirely happy with him, though,” Malachi continued. “He’d brought Josiah up on shipboard with him and knew he was steady and had a measure of his own brand of righteousness. He was suspicious of Jehu, whom he didn’t know at all. When my father died, we found that he’d scrapped his plan; Jehu and Josiah were each made full partners by the terms of the will, each with fifty percent of the business. I was working as chief mate of the old Curlew at the time, out of Antigua, and I was sent for— they wanted to make me a full partner, for they thought it was my right. And so I owe to my brothers my place in life, not to my father. It was more than generous of them; they could have made me master of a single vessel, and I’d have been satisfied.”
“You were not friends with your father?” she asked.
“Nay, my lady,” he said. “I was my mother’s son; she kept me by her until she died, and then my father took me to sea. I was nine.” He frowned at the memory. “He was a terrifying man, profane and righteous at the same time, and brutal when drunk. I soon found that I could not please him, so I determined to please myself. That, I think, infuriated him more than anything else could have. He had convinced himself that any impulse other than his own was inspired by Satan. He kept me in the fo’c’sle of his own vessel longer than he kept Jehu, and it was only because he did not relish my company for the long voyage to China that he considered giving me a berth elsewhere; I was made junior mate on Curlew and worked my way up to chief mate by the time he was killed eighteen months later. The master of that ship was Andrew Keith, who’s now first officer on my ship. He’s commanding a prize now; you’ve not seen him.”
He saw Lady Georgina’s eyes on him and grinned. “I’ve been gushing like a chain pump!” he said. “You’ve listened to more refined talk in your life, I’ll wager.”
“I did not mind,” she said quietly. “You speak well.”
“Thank you,” said Malachi.
“And Mr. Albee’s speech was the last refined talk I’d want to endure for some time,” she said, smiling. “Speak on, I pray you.”
“Nay, I’ve talked enough about myself,” Malachi said. “Your voice is finer than mine and has not yet sufficiently graced the night. Pray tell me of yourself.”
She sighed, and then spoke with reluctance. “There is little to say,” she said. “My mother died at my birth. My father was Duke of Okehampton; he died five years ago. Five years before that, my brother, who was to inherit the title, died of smallpox—the same epidemic that left me this, and this.” She pointed, with the tip if her folded fan, to the scar on her temple, and another near the corner of her mouth, a deep hollow Malachi had assumed was a dimple. “The title cannot be inherited through the female line,” she said. “It is now extinct.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The fan snapped open, hovering in front of her profile as she turned again to the sea. “I had interest in these isles,” she said. “I’ve lived in the Indies for four years now. We were traveling from Spanish Town to Port Royal when a storm took us, damaged the rigging, and forced us into San Juan. We left port yesterday, and today you found us.”
Malachi listened to this bare narrative, embroidering it with his own knowledge. Lady Georgina may not have inherited the title, but unless it was entailed on a male relative, she may well have inherited the wealth that went with it and the land. He might be speaking to a very rich woman. She would have a house in London, he thought, and probably a manor in the country— at least one manor. As for her interest in the Indies, that probably meant plantations, thousands of acres planted in coffee, cane, cotton, tobacco. And all of it harvested at incredible cost by slaves imported from Africa, who were expected to die of yellow fever, malaria, overwork, or brutal treatment while their owners lived in the healthier coastal towns and speculated with the profits bought by the lives of their laborers.
But she did not possess the characteristics he had come to expect from the Indies plantation aristocracy. Almost to a man, they were callous and arrogant, ignorant of the islands, ignorant of the ways of the blacks who labored for them, and ignorant even of the tropical diseases that killed the Europeans in droves. He knew of one man— he’d smuggled the planter’s coffee crop into New England during days of peace— who’d imported foxes from the mainland in order to have something to hunt with his dog pack; he’d ridden with his friends and pack over his small island, rampaging through the fields, destroying the small farmers’ crops, part of his own coffee harvest, the planting the slaves did for their own sustenance. In the end, the planter had died of it; he’d caught yellow fever from spending too much time inland, away from the healthier coast, and vomited and beshat his way to eternity. The foxes got loose, and bred, and caused havoc on the island until they were finally hunted down and exterminated by gangs of slaves.
And the women, he thought, were worse, attempting, in their pestholes, to maintain the absurd refinements of European salon culture; they seemed without exception pretentious, devoid of wit, and full of affectation. Malachi had preferred the company of black women to the female sugar aristocracy, who were always babbling about the latest fashion from France, or how they were forced to import a new harpsichord every year because the old ones always rotted—any seaman could tell them how to assist the preservation of their furnishings in that climate, but they didn’t want to know; the rot furnished them an excuse to buy new furniture every year, and without the annual exchange of furniture and fashion they would have precious little to talk about. Certainly their husbands, with Malachi, seemed to prefer the open hospitality of the black women, as was certainly testified by the enormous number of quadroons, octoroons, and other “bright” blacks who shared the islands.
Malachi hated the planters. Their nationality didn’t seem to matter: the Dutch were as bad as the British, the Danes as supercilious as the Spanish. He hated all pretension and arrogance; he hated the assumption that a man whose ancestors had gained their wealth, and their descendants a title, by piracy and banditry, and who maintained his fortune through smuggling and slavery, should look down his nose at those fated to labor for a living. That was why he would have fought for the Patriot cause in this war whether he could find profit in it or not, or even if it was clean against his interests; it was time, he felt, a Republic was established without the plague of hereditary nobility lording over it, free of the vices of pretension and slavery.
And yet the Right Honourable Lady Georgina Spenser-Martin scarcely behaved with a planter’s affectation; she did not seem to object bandying words with a privateer on the weather bulwark of a captured Indiaman. She could easily have ignored him, or turned him aside with a curt phrase, as so many of the island gentility had done, they with their bewigged black footmen and matched carriage horses . . .
“You seem disappointed, Captain,” she said. “Please do not frown at the details of my poor life; I cannot be held responsible for the ordinariness of most of it.”
“Beg pardon, my lady,” Malachi said. “I was distracted a moment.” He could not tell her his thoughts; they were too unflattering to her class and would sound graceless coming from his tongue. “I thought I saw a cay,” he lied, “but it was merely a cat’s paw.”
“A cat’s paw?” she asked. “At sea? What is it?”
“A cat’s paw is a gust of wind,” Malachi said. “It ruffles the surface of the water, and at night the darker water can look like an island. ’Tis a common illusion.”
“Are there many illusions at sea?” she asked. She pointed with her fan toward the ocean, the sparkling phosphorescence that occasionally winked its ghostly light from wave-top to wave-top. “That iridescence, for example,” she said, “and that in the wake of our ship. Is that an illusion?”
“That’s phosphor, my lady,” said Malachi, “or so I have heard it called. We seamen say on such nights as tonight that the sea is alive, for it looks it; you can see deep into it, and watch it surge and move as if it were a living thing. But what phosphor is, I don’t know, save that it’s not an illusion. I can find my way by its beacon.”
“Please do not jest,” Lady Georgina said. The fan was open at her breast, waving gently beneath her chin.
“I do not make sport of thee,” said Malachi. “I’ll show you, if you will join me at the lee bulwark.”
She coolly turned and linked her arm in his. Malachi stifled his surprise and walked with her across the ship’s waist, under the eyes of the men at the swivel guns and musketoons, past the shadowy figures of the guards at the mainhatch, passing before the ghostly countenance of the helmsman. She kept her arm linked in his even after they had reached the lee side, and Malachi begun pointing to the waves and their spectral lights.
“They point to land,” Malachi said. “Each streak will point roughly to shore; all taken together will give a more firm direction. Here they point south, to Porto Rico; and I can tell that there is land under my lee, though I can’t see it.”
“I cannot see that they point anywhere,” said Lady Georgina.
“You don’t have seaman’s eyes, my lady,” Malachi said. “With practice, and once you knew what to look for, you’d see it.”
“Who taught you to read the sea so well?” she said, turning to him with curiosity. He tried not to stare back; he could not entirely disguise the uncertain heat of the sensations running through him; his admiration of her beauty; his awareness of her scent, warm, tropical, and female, which the brisk northerly breeze could not entirely extinguish; and the painful fact of his own arousal at the touch of her arm. Malachi was not used to dealing with women of quality; he could not distinguish in them what was flirtation and what was innocence: if he should take her in his arms, would she melt or would she fly screaming to her cabin? For some reason, he was apprehensive of both possibilities, while he had never been afraid of either before. But then he had never considered making love to a duke’s daughter before. He tore his eyes from her and turned them back to the sea.
“That I found for myself,” he said. “My father used to send me into the sprit rigging as punishment, where I’d have to straddle the jib boom and endure the weather and spray. I had precious little to do but watch the sea; and over the years I saw that the lights formed patterns, and that in the morning there was always land where the patterns pointed, and if there wasn’t land there in the morning, then it would appear by afternoon. When I gained my own command, I began to navigate by the phosphor and by the other signs.”
“What other signs?” she asked, peering at the sea, blinking as she tried to make sense out of the seemingly random display of light.
“All sailors know that clouds form over land and that the clouds can be seen before the land can,” Malachi said. He knew better than to describe for her the method by which he could feel the motion of the waves. That was for later—much later, if at all. “The bottom of the cloud will reflect the green of the land in many cases,” Malachi continued. “There are also currents that must be learned, and tides. Some are easy, but then there’s the north’ard current through the Yucatan channel, which has many eddies and which is mixed by the winds that move across it— that’s treacherous. The tides are easy to learn, particularly in the Caribbean, where the greatest tide might reach two feet; but in the Bay of Biscay, as an instance, the tides can be enormous, mixed as they are with continual foul weather that can drive a ship down upon a lee shore before its master knows he’s within a hundred miles of land.”
“You have traveled much?” she asked. Her arm was still in his; he could feel the breathy flutter of her warm speech on his cheek. Her bright Indian shawl reflected warm colors, orange and amber.
He swallowed uncomfortably, and continued, “Aye, but not as greatly as many sailors have. I’ve spent half my life here in the West Indies; I’ve been to England, Holland, Sweden, France, and Spain. But I’ve seen only harbor towns; I’ve never seen the great capitals. Or,” he admitted, “talked so freely to a duke’s daughter.”
“If duke’s daughters spoke more often to sea captains,” said Lady Georgina gravely, “our breed might well be improved. Pray speak on. Tell me about your brothers.”
And Malachi, at her bidding, and conscious throughout of the warmth clinging to his arm, spoke on, describing his brothers, their adventures, and ambitions. He described their ships, their allies, their hopes for privateering; he spoke of the neat cutting-out action performed on the British convoy off Hispaniola. The watches changed quietly, new men at the helm and swivel guns. Malachi completely forgot he had promised to wake McVie. As the new men took their posts, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder; Malachi stammered and then continued speaking, energy coursing through his body, rousing his blood. Within a few feet of them, his jacket tucked under his head for a pillow, a seaman snored out his off-duty watch within easy reach of his cutlass and pistols.
His head swimming, Malachi babbled on: He described the sea in all its faces and moods, the inhabitants of the islands he’d seen, customs of the sea and land, people he’d met— he bit back a mention of Roxana, whose name came readily to his tongue. He stammered then and fell silent, Lady Georgina’s head rocking on his shoulder with the motion of each wave, feeling furiously aware of his own frustrated arousal. She stirred.
“Do you hate us, Captain Markham?” she asked. “We English, whom you fight?”
“I hate no man but those who have done me harm or harmed my family,” Malachi said. “Yet the English have done much mischief in my country, and I would wish them gone.”
“I, too, have no reason to love my countrymen,” she said, her voice drowsy. “But I see no greater proportion of good men in any other race.” She raised her head from his shoulder and looked at him directly, her eyes frank in a way that made his bones shiver. “Are Americans better than the men of other nations? Is that why you fight?”
“There are no lords in America, my lady,” he said, cursing himself for lacking Jehu’s polished elegance, his calm ability to handle any situation. “I’m sorry if that offends you; I meant no such offense.”
“I know that you did not,” she said. She leaned her cheek on his shoulder a moment more, and sighed. The ship’s bell rang six times. “What time was that?” she asked.
“Six bells of the middle watch,” he said. “That would be three o’clock in the morning.”
“Mm,” she said. “I must return to my cabin and prepare for tomorrow. My belongings must be packed, and I must be fresh to seek lodgings.” Her head came erect; she unlinked her arm from his. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “It was a most interesting night, and you speak well.”
“May I see you to your stateroom door?” he asked, mentally flailing himself again. Jehu would have said this much better, with far more elegance and style; Jehu would have finessed her through her cabin door and into bed without once ceasing his flow of polished words. .
“No, but thank you for your courtesy,” Lady Georgina said. “I can make my own way.”
“As my lady wishes,” said Malachi, grinding his teeth.
“You are a most interesting man, Captain Markham,” she said, looking at him with curiosity. “I wish we could continue our talk sometime. Good night.”
“Good night, my lady,” said Malachi.
She walked aft and vanished under the poop, followed by the frank stares of the guard at the poop ladder. Malachi, still aware of the lingering warmth of her head on his shoulder, her scent still hanging in the air, turned and strode blindly to the fo’c’sle, where he shook McVie from his hammock.
“Six bells,” he said. McVie jumped to his feet with a curse. “I was awake,” Malachi said, “so I didn’t bother waking you. I’m going to sleep now; call me if anything occurs.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n,” said McVie. Malachi controlled an oath. Why was everyone staring at him tonight?
He went aft to his hammock chair and dropped into it. Despite the weariness that instantaneously flooded his limbs, his mind was more than awake; it seemed perfectly ready to take him on a voyage into the world of fantasy, into might-be and might-have-been, resolving outrageous outcomes for the evening’s adventure. Malachi as wealthy landowner, the husband of a duke’s daughter, riding to hounds in England with highborn companions; Malachi as a kept man, a mere island gigolo, all pride and self-reliance gone; and— the worst because it was more immediate— Malachi even now enjoying the body of Lady Georgina Spenser-Martin in the private darkness of her cabin.
It was an uneasy night, unreal fantasy mixed with disturbingly real phantoms of the lady’s presence, memories of her warmth, her scent, the touch of her arm and cheek. “Christ!” he’d shouted once, coming out of a dream, startling tall McVie, officer of the watch, who stood quietly on the poop trying tactfully to keep from disturbing his captain. It was not until the sun rose in the east, and the lookouts called to McVie that the massive fortifications guarding San Juan harbor were visible on the starboard bow, that Malachi gave up his struggle with sleep and began to pace the weather quarterdeck.
The next few hours were busy ones: the Markham convoy, all twenty vessels, had to be worked into San Juan harbor past the guns of El Morro and San Cristobal, and into quarantine. The wind had veered three or four points during the early hours of the morning, requiring the fleet to tack continually. Malachi was on deck the entire time, shouting himself hoarse in a constant stream of orders, helping to man the braces himself in order to get the ship across the wind, shaking his fist at a Spanish lugger that sailed boldly under his bows, threatening collision. Stanhope, the third officer, managed to run his prize clear out of the plainly marked channel and aground; Josiah had to work Piscataqua in and tow him off. The passengers were kept below decks, lest they get in the way; and Malachi found there was little time to think of duke’s daughters, little time for anything but sweating and hauling and shouting and furious base emotion. Each Markham privateer fired its salute to the Spanish flag; the signal guns of El Morro were conspicuously silent, the Spanish government not having recognized the American commonwealth.
At last the great anchor roared into the clear green waters of the bay, and Anegada swung peacefully on its cable. Malachi sent McVie ashore with a note for Pérez, his agent, and then called for Shaw to bring him some water and soap.