James Nelson - The Pirate Round

“You are right. I am loath to say so.” If they are loyal to anyone, Marlowe thought, it is Honeyman. For all the good that will do me.

“Perhaps you should slip away,” Bickerstaff suggested. “Go down the starboard side with a float as Press comes up the larboard. I do not think he will molest the others if you are gone.”

“Do you think I would be so craven?”

“No, but it is a prudent suggestion, and so I thought it my duty to make it.”

“And I appreciate that, but I cannot.” He looked back at the boat. Almost up with the after end of the Elizabeth Galley.

Marlowe felt a gust of wind on his neck, and the Elizabeth Galley heeled a bit, and the water gurgled around the cutwater. Hope surged up as he looked astern, saw the longboat disappearing again in the mist and dark. And then the gust passed, and the ship came down on an even keel, and the sound of the water died away. They had gained fifty feet. It would take Press four minutes to make up the distance.

“Perhaps we can fend them off,” Marlowe said, and then he ran down the quarterdeck and along the gangway over the waist. “Mr. Honeyman, get a gang to unlash those spars!” He pointed amidships to the top of the main hatch, where the spare yards and topmasts were stored, long, massive tapered timbers like a giant bundle of kindling. “Roust out that main topsail yard! We shall fend these dogs off!”

“Come on, come on, you heard the captain! Go! Go!” Honeyman shouted the orders, and the men reacted, casting off the lashings, arranging themselves along the length of the heavy spar. They moved to Honeyman’s orders and because Marlowe had hit on just the right degree of resistance-keeping the boarders off without bloodshed, avoiding the possibility of shooting at a queen’s officer, if such he was, or being shot by one.

But they would not enjoy that neutrality for long, Marlowe understood. They might boom Press off once or twice, but then Press would start shooting, and then the Elizabeth Galleys would have to reexamine their loyalties.

The men hefted the heavy spar, twenty-five feet long and three hundred pounds, and maneuvered it so it was lying crosswise on the ship, ready to be tilted over the side and used like a giant poker to push the boat away.

How long will we be able to do that? Marlowe wondered. Not very long.

And then Honeyman was there, at his side, and Marlowe wondered what fresh request the men had at that critical juncture. But Honeyman just nodded and said, “Spar’s ready for fending off, Captain.” He hesitated, just a beat, and then added, “I was thinking, we might hoist it aloft with the stay tackle. Get it more vertical.” He looked Marlowe in the eye, and there was a wicked expression on his face. “Of course, if we do that, there’s a chance we might drop it. If you get my meaning.”

It took Marlowe a few seconds before he did, but when he saw what Honeyman was suggesting, he grinned as well and said, “A fine idea, Honeyman. Sway her aloft.”

Honeyman rushed off, called, “Let us get the stay tackle on this spar, make it easier to maneuver!”

The stay tackle, a block and tackle that hung between the masts, directly over the main hatch, was used primarily for hoisting cargo and supplies in and out of the Galley’s hold. Now eager hands grabbed the end of the tackle and made it fast to the middle of the spare topsail yard, and Honeyman shouted, “Sway away!” The men hauled together, and the long, tapered spar rose up in the air.

The longboat had regained the distance lost to the cat’s-paw of wind, was pulling over the last stretch to the Galley’s side, twenty feet off and closing.

Across the water Marlowe heard Press shout, “Pull, you whoresons!” though he could see the men were already pulling with all they had.

Damn it, damn it, too bloody late, Marlowe fretted as his men hauled away on the tackle and the yard rose up, up, wavering and tilting in the air.

Marlowe’s eyes moved between the yard rising up overhead and Press’s boat flying toward them. A pistol banged out, the ball thudded into the mainmast-Press giving the men of the Elizabeth Galley a taste of things to come if they did not comply-and the message struck like the bullet.

The lower end of the yard was resting on the Galley’s rail, pointing down at the water, and the upper end was twenty-five feet above him, pointing at the sky, the whole thing nearly vertical.

Ten feet away Marlowe saw the longboat, a dim shadow in the mist. He could make out the crew giving one last pull, the men unshipping their oars again and snatching up weapons, poised, ready to board. There was the bowman again, a dark shape, once more reaching out with the boat hook. There was Press, in the stern sheets, unmistakable. Marlowe could see him run his eyes along the Galley’s rail, looking, no doubt, for Malachias Barrett.

Marlowe grabbed the low end of the yard, shoved it along the rail until it was hanging directly over the place where Press’s boat would strike the Elizabeth Galley’s side. He was astounded that Press had not yet smoked his intentions.

And in that instant, Press did. The longboat hit the Galley’s side with a shudder, the men poised to board, and Press shouted, “Shove off! Shove off, damn it!” and over Press’s voice Marlowe shouted, “Honeyman! Let go!”

The yard jerked from Marlowe’s hand as Honeyman let go of the end of the stay tackle. The huge spar plunged down, down over the side, down like a great lance aimed at Press’s boat. Marlowe watched the long wooden shaft rush past, heard the sound of thin planks shattering as the lower end of the three-hundred-pound yard smashed right through the bottom of the boat and kept going.

Overhead he could just make out the end of the quivering spar as it stopped, sinking itself into the mud of the Thames.

He heard shouts of surprise, screams of outrage, saw the panicked boat crew shrinking away from the water that flooded in through the shattered bottom of the boat.

The line from the stay tackle spun through the blocks and then fell into the water. Already astern, the spare topsail yard was sticking straight up from the river like a giant pin, and skewered on that pin was the longboat that held Roger Press and his stunned, shouting men.

And then the mist enveloped them, and they were lost from sight, and only the shouting remained. In a minute that, too, was gone.

The Elizabeth Galley drifted on a mythic river, her own black and forlorn River Styx, alone.

Marlowe looked around the deck. The men were smiling, talking in low voices, laughing. There was no remorse for what they had done, no fear of reprisal. It had been too good a trick for any second thoughts.

Peleg Dinwiddie stepped up to him, grinning as broadly as the others. “I guess you done for them, sir,” he said.

“I reckon they’ll stay put, for the time being,” Marlowe agreed.

“You’d said we was to drop downriver a mile or so. It’ll be dead reckoning for that, sir, and not so accurate on such a night, I fear.”

“Oh.” Marlowe had already forgotten that plan of dropping down-river. “As to that, I reckon you may as well steer for the open sea. Our business here is done, like it or not.”

THE ISLAND of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, three hundred miles off the southeast coast of Africa. As if half of Mozambique had cracked off and drifted away, fetching up at last in that place. On a chart one can see where the island would still fit clean against the African coast, snapping into place like a puzzle piece or the perfectly tooled part of some machine.

But for all that kinship to the Dark Continent, the Madagascar of 1706 was a world unto itself, supporting a culture almost entirely unique in the world. It was the advance base, the dockyard, the chandlery, the marketplace, and in many cases the home of the men who sailed the Pirate Round.