James Nelson - The Pirate Round

“Listen here, you men,” Marlowe began, an unnecessary injunction, he saw, since he already had everyone’s rapt attention.

Honeyman was sitting on top of the spare spars, the hard cases that he had recruited standing around him like his own personal crew.

Sundry others of the men before the mast stood scattered around the waist. Twenty-eight men. Not a large crew, not for a pirate vessel.

“You men know what happened in London, you know we can’t go back there. We would be taken, hanged for piracy, as unjust as that might be. The mariner doesn’t always get justice-foremast jack or master, it makes no difference. You know that better than anyone.

“So we have a problem. Our cargo is gone. We’ll see not one penny of profit for our labors. But there might be a way we can recoup our loss. Perhaps even make some profit. Perhaps even strike it rich. I propose we steer for Madagascar!”

That proposition received the response that Marlowe had expected: wild cheers, hats waved in the air, grins all around. Even the black men, who two months before probably had never even heard of Madagascar, cheered with enthusiasm, having no doubt been filled with tales of the Pirate Round by the more experienced seamen aboard.

“I take heart from your response,” Marlowe said. “Madagascar it is!”

“Hold a moment, Captain!” Honeyman stood up, took a step forward.

Oh, son of a whore, Marlowe thought. Must we hear from the sea lawyer now?

“I’m for Madagascar, much as the next man,” Honeyman began. “But it was a merchantman we signed aboard. Merchantman rules. If we are off on the Pirate Round, then it changes things.”

Marlowe leaned on the rail, glared down at Honeyman. “You men signed ship’s articles. You are bound by them.”

“Beg pardon, sir, and pray believe I mean no disrespect,” Honey-man continued, “but those was ship’s articles for a trading voyage to London and back to Virginia. Off to Madagascar… well, that changes it. We’re not bound by those articles. I say we draft articles anew, in the fashion of the Code of the Coast.”

Glare as he might, Marlowe could not silence the murmur of consent that ran through the men at this suggestion.

Then Dinwiddie stepped forward, the timidity he might have felt in the great cabin entirely gone now that he stood on the quarterdeck, his natural forum, and faced the sailors below.

“Damn you, you sneaking puppy!” he bellowed at Honeyman. “Captain has given orders, and they’re to be obeyed!”

Dinwiddie’s was a voice that would have cowed most men, but Honeyman persisted. “The captain will be obeyed in all things. I reckon the men will agree there be no voting on captain, nor officers, which is common among the Roundsmen, as you know well, Mr. Dinwiddie. I say only we need articles.”

The murmur of approval grew louder, heads nodded, eyes fixed aft. Well, it is out of the damned bottle now, and I shall never get it back in, Marlowe thought. Damn that man, Honeyman-he has hoisted me by my own petard.

Then up stepped Burgess, one of Honeyman’s hard cases, his gnarled, muscular arms folded, his gold earring flashing, his head bound in a red damask cloth. “I say we votes Mr. Honeyman as quartermaster!” he called, and that brought a renewed murmur of approval.

Marlowe clenched his teeth, felt the entire thing slipping from his grasp.

A quartermaster now, and new articles.

But that was the way of the pirates-he knew it better than any on board. He had hoped to have it all ways, to be captain of a Red Sea Rover without submitting to the crude democracy of the Brethren of the Coast. But now he saw that would not happen. Seamen as a tribe were too protective of their precious rights to let him off that easily.

Would they now vote him out of his captaincy? And if so, what could he do about it? It was he, after all, who had suggested piracy in the first place.

“Very well,” Marlowe said. He glanced behind him. Bickerstaff stood off to one side. He gave Marlowe a cocked eyebrow, an eloquent sermon on Marlowe’s misplaced self-assurance. “Let us vote.”

The polling did not take long, no more time than it took for Marlowe to say, “Who here would vote Duncan Honeyman as quartermaster?” and for every man aboard, including the former field workers from Marlowe House, to raise his hand.

That done, Honeyman stood on the main hatch, and all eyes turned from Marlowe to him. And Marlowe understood that he had just given up his supreme authority as a legitimate ship’s captain for the popular rule of the pirates, and he was not happy. The quartermaster of a pirate ship was the representative of the men, the bridge between great cabin and lower deck, and now that bridge was Honeyman, the sea lawyer.

How long has he planned this moment? Marlowe wondered. Since Norfolk, from the moment I first said “Madagascar”?

“See here.” Honeyman was talking now. “We said no vote on officers and Mr. Dinwiddie and Mr. Flanders are fine officers in any event, and Mr. Marlowe as good a captain as ever I’ve sailed with. I reckon we need only choose a new bosun, and we’re set up proper.”

They chose Burgess, as experienced and able as he was taciturn and piratical.

Honeyman and Marlowe retired to the great cabin, where they might work out the new articles in peace.

“Captain Marlowe,” Honeyman began, “I want you to know I mean no disrespect, nor no challenge to your authority, by this. It’s just… well, the way things are.”

“Yes, yes,” said Marlowe, impatient, wanting to be done with that distasteful job. Marlowe, the manipulator, did not care to be manipulated himself, and he had been. Played like a flute.

It took them no more than an hour to draw up the articles for the Elizabeth Galley. They both were familiar enough with the protocol of the pirate ship that they had only to write it down, with a little modification to fit their circumstances.

Every man to have a vote in affairs of the moment, save for those concerning the disposition of the Elizabeth Galley, of which Thomas Marlowe was recognized as the sole owner.

Every man to keep his piece, pistol, and cutlass clean and fit for service; any man who would desert the ship or his quarters in battle would suffer marooning; any man who would cheat his shipmates out of the value of one dollar would suffer marooning. The captain and quartermaster to receive two shares of a prize, boatswain and gunner and officers one and a half shares.

It differed from the standard agreement among the pirates in only a few points. An exception was made for Elizabeth in the clause banning all women from the ship, and the great cabin was recognized as her and Thomas’s private domain, a luxury not enjoyed by most pirate captains.

Honeyman looked on these concessions as thoughtful consideration, but Marlowe considered them patronizing and demeaning, and they made him angrier still.

When the ink was dry, they took the document out to the waist, where it was read aloud, and then every man, save for Bickerstaff, signed, and those who could only make their mark did so, and Marlowe wrote their name beside.

In just half a day, and with that single piece of paper, the Elizabeth Galley was transformed from an honest merchantman to a Red Sea pirate.

That night Thomas Marlowe slept on the lockers aft. Elizabeth made it plain that he was not welcome in her bed.

He wondered, as he lay on his back looking out the big windows at the stars swaying overhead with the roll of the ship, how long she was likely to stay that angry. He wondered how Honeyman might be plotting to betray him, if Bickerstaff would remain forever disgusted with him and his clever manipulations.

All the plunder in the Indian Ocean would be meaningless to him if he lost the love of Elizabeth and Francis. He wondered if he had not made an enormous miscalculation.