James Nelson - The Pirate Round

Honeyman went about his duties as ever, if perhaps a little less taciturn and a little more conciliatory, which only served to annoy Marlowe more. Dinwiddie grew more surly by the day, not pleased to find himself a first officer with less real authority than the quartermaster.

And overhead a thick blanket of gray cloud, through which the sun made not even the ghost of an appearance, not even a bright disk to hint at where it was. Below the solid cover, darker clouds raced along, driven fast by winds that were flowing in a direction different from that of the wind over the water.

The seas were big and growing bigger, gray, lumpy, with stark whitecaps as the tops broke on the bigger waves. The atmosphere was moody, hostile, threatening. Tense.

Marlowe sat at the table in the great cabin, stared out the salt-stained windows aft. A wet tablecloth spread across the tabletop held pewter plates from sliding around with the roll of the ship. On the plates the half-eaten meal shifted slightly with the bigger seas.

He was alone at the table. Elizabeth was in the sleeping cabin, eating, sleeping, praying that God strike her husband down-he did not know and was beginning not to care. The surfeit of ill will was numbing him to it.

Bickerstaff took his meals with Dinwiddie and Flanders and Honeyman. Marlowe guessed that they were not a particularly jovial group. Better to eat alone.

The Elizabeth Galley rolled hard to larboard, and the wide-bottomed tankard of wine toppled over, sending a dark red stain spreading across the already-wet tablecloth, but Marlowe could not muster the energy to do anything more than look at it, then turn back to the seas beyond his window.

They were two days out of sight of land. After having made the decision to turn Red Sea Rover, they had stood in for Penzance on Mounts Bay, Cornwall, at the very western tip of England, to provision for the long voyage to Madagascar.

The Cornish people were well known for their casual disregard for Admiralty law. They asked no questions about the unarmed privateer victualing in that out-of-the-way port. They showed no curiosity about the Spanish gold with which Marlowe paid, just accepted it gladly.

Three days later the Elizabeth Galley stood out of Mounts Bay with food and water and firewood enough in her hold to see them around the Cape of Good Hope and on to Madagascar.

Marlowe sighed, abandoned his dinner for the quarterdeck. Had it been blue skies and calm seas, he might have stayed below, but the weather now was to his liking. Dark, ugly skies, cold wind, spitting rain and spray-it was like stepping right into his own confused and angry mind.

He stopped at the weather rail, turned his back to the wind. His cloak beat against his legs, and his hair, long enough finally to be bound in a queue, was flung forward over his shoulder.

The bow of the Elizabeth Galley went down into a trough between big seas, and the quarterdeck seemed to fly up in the air, like one end of a giant seesaw. Marlowe felt his stomach left behind as the after end of the ship rose, hung for a second, then plunged down again as the wave passed under. An odd sensation, but he had been too long at sea for it to bother him.

Dinwiddie and Honeyman and Burgess were everywhere, seeing storm gaskets passed around furled sail, double-gripping the boats, inspecting the tarpaulin covers over the hatches, rigging lifelines down the length of the deck.

As much as he thought Honeyman was vermin, a sea lawyer, and as much as Dinwiddie was becoming a malcontent, as surly as Burgess was, still Marlowe had to admit that they were seamen who knew their business. The storm that was building around them would be a bad one, he could tell. At that moment he would not have traded the first officer and the quartermaster and bosun for the cheeriest sycophants on earth.

The bow plunged down again and this time slammed into the oncoming wave, some quirk of timing that made the vessel shudder and sent a huge plume of water bursting over the fore rail, like surf against a rocky shore. Marlowe saw the water douse Honeyman and Dinwiddie, saw them hunch their shoulders against the cold deluge as they worked their way aft along the gangway and back to the quarterdeck.

“Deck’s secured, sir,” Dinwiddie said, loud, to be heard over the rising wind. “T’gallants?”

“Aye!” Marlowe said. It was time to get the topgallant masts and yards, the highest and weakest of the spars, down from their place aloft and stowed safely on deck. “Once you’ve struck them down, let us have the deep reef in the topsails. Mr. Honeyman, I reckon we have men enough to rig rolling tackles while the topgallants are being struck?”

“Aye, sir, should do.”

“Very well, then. Let us get that all snugged down. I think this night will be something of a shitter.”

“Reckon so, Captain!” Dinwiddie shouted, and then the two men went forward again to carry out the last of the preparations for the building storm.

Gray, dim, watery. For all the stormy afternoon the sky seemed never to achieve full daylight. The seas built, bigger and bigger, rising up around them to the level of the gunports, then the cap rails, then the quarterdeck rail, so that in the trough between the waves there was nothing but water roiling around, as if the Elizabeth Galley had been tossed down into a hole in the ocean.

And then she would rise again on the waves, up so high it seemed she must topple off such a fine perch, and then down once more.

The topgallant masts and yards were lowered to the deck and lashed to the main hatch. The topsails were reefed, the top half of the sail lashed to the yard from which it hung, leaving only a portion of the canvas still exposed to the wind. Rolling tackles that kept the heavy yards from slamming side to side as the ship rolled were rigged and bowsed taut. The Elizabeth Galley plunged on.

There was one good thing about that wind, only one, and that was that it was northeasterly, blowing the Galley south and west, the very direction that Marlowe wished her to go. South and west, they would cross the Atlantic almost to the continent of South America, drift through the equatorial doldrums, and then pick up the westerly trades south of the line that would fling them back across the Atlantic and around the southern tip of Africa. A long voyage. A desperate and final attempt at salvaging his gentleman’s fortune.

The daylight, such that it was, was nearly gone when Dinwiddie came aft. Marlowe stepped toward the first lieutenant, expecting him to report that all was secure for the night.

The two men maneuvered toward each other, hands on the cap rail, feet spread wide to the wild heaving of the ship, the decks wet with the spray that filled the air and the intermittent showers of rain.

“Honeyman’s getting a little large for his goddamned britches, Captain” was the first thing Dinwiddie yelled in his ear, over the shriek of wind in rigging. “Telling off men to rig the rolling tackles, arguing with me about the lead of the top rope, I won’t stand for his nonsense!” Not exactly the report Marlowe had hoped for.

“Pray, Mr. Dinwiddie, let us see if we live through the night, and then we’ll straighten it all out in the morning!” Marlowe shouted back. As if I need any more nonsense from these motherless chuckleheads, he thought.

“Aye, sir.” Dinwiddie bit off the words, and Marlowe saw that he would require some placating.

“You are right! Honeyman needs taking down, and I will see to it. Now, are we set for the night?”

“Aye, sir, all snugged down proper! Don’t know how long we can hold on to the topsails, though!”

Less than half an hour, as it turned out. The last vestiges of light were starting to go as Marlowe stood at the weather rail, looking aloft through the gloom, wondering about the topsails. He was braced against the wind as it tried to shove him forward, like temptation pushing him as he tried to resist. It was his nature to carry sail as long as he could, make every inch of distance if he was going in the right direction, but the canvas would not hold out much longer.