James Nelson - The Pirate Round

Johnson went down in the boat, and last came Thomas and Elizabeth, who had exchanged her skirts for slop trousers and her straw hat for tarpaulin. They sat on the farthest thwart aft, the aftermost rowing station, facing Johnson in the stern sheets.

Marlowe lifted up his oar, held it straight up. “Take up your oar, dear. Hold it like this,” Marlowe said to his wife softly. Elizabeth grabbed the oar that lay across the thwarts and with some difficulty lifted it so that like the others she was holding it straight up and down. With the wide-brimmed hat she wore, Marlowe did not think Elizabeth would be seen for what she was, not in the dark.

Dark. Marlowe glanced up. It was night still, but only just. He thought he could detect a general easing of the blackness, the first hints of light. It would be gray dawn in an hour.

Thomas Marlowe was well armed-the sword he had taken from the guard, a short sword, two braces of pistols-but he did not hold a gun on Johnson. Johnson was on his side now, and there was a tacit understanding that in case of betrayal he was the first to die.

Marlowe nodded to the man, and Johnson called, “Shove off! Ship oars! Give way!” and the bowman pushed the bow off. Elizabeth lowered her oar, slowly, until the weight became too much, and then she dropped it with a thump between the tholes. She cocked her head toward Marlowe and watched him and imitated his movements. Lean forward, blade down, pull and lean back, blade up, forward, down. She looked by no means as if she were an old hand with an oar, but she did well enough that she would not stand out.

They pulled slow for the Queen’s Venture to make it easier for Elizabeth to keep the rhythm and to give the others more time to pull around the far side of the rafted ships.

The Queen’s Venture appeared at last on the edge of Marlowe’s vision, facing aft as he was. They made for the boarding steps, and Johnson called, “Toss oars!” and all the oars came up at once, save for Elizabeth’s, as the order had taken her quite by surprise. But she managed to get the oar aloft before it caught on the side of the ship, and there was no comment made.

The boat glided against the Venture’s side, and Johnson climbed up the side and disappeared from Marlowe’s view. Marlowe had given him careful instructions to make his report to Brownlaw there on the gangway, within earshot. “The minute I can’t hear what you are saying, we board,” he said, the threat there, the placement of the first bullet.

But Johnson had the fidelity of a true Roundsman, loyal to whoever could do him the most good, and from the boat Marlowe could hear him clearly. “Mr. Brownlaw, sir! Lord, I had thought to never be speaking to you again! Those prisoners, I finally smoked it, knew of a secret way out of the hold. A passage through the forward bulkhead, sir. They bided their time, till they knew all but the anchor watch was asleep…”

Johnson talked loud and fast, a man excited by the events of the night, not letting Brownlaw get a word in, not letting him ask why the others did not come aboard, not letting him hear the sounds of the other boats.

But Brownlaw was not the only man awake. From across the deck, from the Elizabeth Galley, a shout of surprise, someone yelled, “Hey, there!” and another “Boarders!” and a gun went off and another, and Marlowe was on his feet.

“Now, men, away! Away!” he shouted, then grabbed on to the boarding cleats, scrambled up the side, and burst through the gangway.

Johnson, unarmed, was standing to one side. The fellow that Marlowe guessed was Brownlaw was charging across the deck, waving his sword and shouting, “To me! Queen’s Ventures, to me!”

There were a lot of men on deck-nearly sixty of Press’s horde, Marlowe guessed. But he had as many, and he had surprise.

The men from the boats were swarming over the far side, rushing along the Elizabeth Galley’s gangplanks and meeting her defenders with sword and pistol. The flashes of the muzzles lit up the place like a washed-out painting of a battle, men frozen in various attitudes: aiming, hacking, defending, falling, and then swallowed again by the dark.

The twenty-five men from Marlowe’s boat were all aboard. “Come along! Shout like the devil!” Marlowe called, racing forward, along the Queen’s Venture’s gangway, rushing around to the side made fast to the Elizabeth Galley and into the fighting there.

“Death, death, death, death!” Marlowe’s men screamed, their voices curling up to a wild, inhuman, piercing shriek, and they fell on the backs of the men who just a second before had not even known they were there.

Press’s men on the gangway turned, raised pistols and swords, were shot down, driven back by the onslaught. Marlowe was the first there. A pistol in his hand, he discharged it into the mob, reached for another, but before he could pull back the firelock, he found himself sidestepping a hacking cutlass that swished past him and hit the deck.

Marlowe let the pistol fall, lunged with the sword in his right hand, found only air. The man he was facing came at him and Marlowe parried the attack, pulled his short sword, which he held in his left hand, stood ready.

Another lunge, and Marlowe beat down the blade with his sword, lashed out like a snake with the short sword, caught the man in the shoulder. The man shouted, drew back, and Marlowe hit him again with his sword, stepped into him, shoved him hard off the gangway.

With flailing arms the man plunged down into the waist, and Marlowe heard the thud that he made on the main hatch as he turned to meet the next man.

A big man, he loomed in front of Marlowe, cutlass moving as if it were made of paper. Marlowe met the blade, felt the ringing shock go through his arm, stepped back from the counterstroke. A dangerous one. Marlowe took a step back, held the short sword ready.

The big man was no subtle fighter. He plunged at Marlowe, cutlass cleaving the air. Beside him someone fired a pistol, lit the man up from below.

“Hesiod!” Marlowe shouted, thoughts of further betrayal crackling in his head, but Hesiod stepped back. “Marlowe?”

“Aye!”

“ ’Vast fighting! ’Vast fighting!” Hesiod and Marlowe shouted together, and the sounds of the fight faded. The Elizabeth Galleys had pressed the defenders between them, scattered them, run into one another.

“Some of them fellows has gone aloft!” a voice shouted from the dark, then Honeyman’s voice: “Some has gone down the after scuttle.”

“Very well, we’ll ferret them out directly.” The deck that a second before had been a battlefield was now quiet, waiting on Marlowe.

From the other side of the waist, Johnson’s voice: “Brownlaw, you stupid bastard, give it up!”

Marlowe turned, they all turned. The figure of a man-Brownlaw, apparently-stood on the foredeck opposite, near the bow. He was little more than a silhouette, but Marlowe could see the sword he held in his hand.

Billy Bird stepped forward. He had a knack for sounding like the universal friend, the cheerful voice of reason. “Come along, there,” he called. “The ship’s taken, but you and your men won’t be hurt if you give us some cooperation here. Not so much to ask.”

They watched the figure of Brownlaw backing away, the sword held up.

“Come on,” Billy tried again. “Not bloody much you can do with that sword!”

Then Brownlaw turned, and with three wild strokes he cut away the fothered sail.

“OH, THAT’S bloody done it,” Billy Bird said.

With a curse Marlowe pushed through the men, raced down the gangway and across the foredeck to where Brownlaw was backed up against the bulwark, sword held uncertainly before him. The frayed ends of the lashings lay limp on the deck.