James Nelson - The Pirate Round

He thought of Yancy, and Press, and their struggle to be king of the island. Idiots. Like the moth beating itself against the glass of a lantern, they fought for power and money and did not even understand why they wanted those things.

What they wanted, in truth, was exactly what he had here at Marlowe House, and they did not know it, and neither did he, until that moment. The lesson had come at the highest price he had ever paid, but he had learned it at last. He had reached the confluence of two streams: what he wanted and what he had. He stood now where those floods met, and by those waters he would live his life.

THE SLOOP Mercy of Newport stood into the harbor of St. Mary’s island. On her quarterdeck, Captain Patrick Quigley surveyed the batteries that leered out at him from Quail Island, big guns that could blow his vessel to bits before he had even cleared the headlands.

There was an unusual silence on deck as the others, the fifty men who had sailed with him, also stared up at those vicious guns, waiting.

There was no smoke from the battery, no flags flying from the flagpole. Nothing moving that he could see. He felt himself relax, just a bit.

As much as he tried to project a fierce and piratical nature, he was new to this sort of thing, this Red Sea Roving, and he was not at all certain of what his reception might be.

He had been informed by others, who knew, that St. Mary’s was the place to call for provisions, powder, shot, information on where one might be most likely to intercept the Great Mogul’s ships. He had envisioned a lively place, bustling with people, crowded with shipping, a sort of buccaneer’s version of Newport, with rum flowing and buxom young women willing to do whatever a sailor far from home might wish.

He was surprised, for that reason, to find the harbor seemingly deserted. A few decrepit ships drifted at their anchors, another was half sunk and another appeared to have been hove down on the beach and left abandoned.

“Stand by with your anchor, there!” Quigley called out to the mate up by the cathead, then to the helmsman said, “Round up, right over there.”

The Mercy rounded up into the wind, the topsails came aback, and the anchor was let go in five fathoms of water.

Captain Quigley stood aloof as the men bustled around the deck, squaring things away. He looked over the town with his telescope. He could see a few people moving around, no more than that. He looked up at the big house on the hill. Part of the roof was charred, it looked as if it had caught fire at one point, but not recently. It had never been repaired.

He started to get an uncomfortable feeling in his gut. He had expected to be greeted with saluting cannons and dipped flags and all that sort of formality. He had expected a boat to come out, inquire of who he was. “I am Captain Patrick Quigley, of the sloop Mercy of Newport. We are bound away on the Pirate Round!” He had been practicing those words for two months, but now it looked as if no one was going to ask.

The mate directed the hands to get the longboat over the side, and the armed boat crew took their places on the thwarts, and when they were ready, Captain Quigley climbed down and sat in the stern sheets. They pulled silently across the harbor for the old wooden dock, all eyes darting around, the men waiting for something, they did not know what. Something.

But there was nothing, nothing in the way of human greetings. Now Quigley could not even see those few figures he had seen earlier through his glass, and he began to wonder if he had really seen them at all.

The boat pulled up to the dock, and Quigley stood and hooked a shoe on the creaking ladder and climbed up fast, then stepped aside for the others.

At first he thought that someone had dropped a bundle of clothes on the planks and had left them where they fell. He took a step closer, sucked in his breath, whispered, “Goddamn my eyes…”

Two skeletons, still bearing the remnants of their clothes, shoes still slipped over bony feet, lay across one another. A sword through one, a dagger through the other. Quigley might have retched at the sight, but the bones had been so long exposed that they were picked clean and bleached white and had more or less collapsed into a heap, largely undisturbed, so that one could see clearly how the pair had fallen, taking each other to hell.

Quigley smiled, amused by the folly of such men. What had they gained? Around him the rest of the boat crew climbed up and spread out on the dock and gazed at the strange and morbid sight.

Patrick Quigley, having seen as much of the skeletons as he wished to see, stepped back and looked up the road to the big house on the hill. It was impressive, even from a distance, but he could see the signs of neglect: the charred roof, the wild grass sprouting around the stockade fence that was fallen down in places. Such a fine house. What a waste that it should be abandoned thus.

And then he felt the stirring of an idea, and he looked around, as if he might see whether the others were thinking as he was. He had fifty armed and loyal men with him. Not a terrific force, but stronger than any the island could muster, as far as he could see.

How hard would it be to take St. Mary’s for his own? Who was there to resist him?

He had thought to sail the pirate wind, take some rich prize in the Red Sea, head for home a wealthy man. But what were the chances of that? He’d be damned lucky even to find a treasure ship, and even if he did, there was every chance that he would end up like old Thomas Tew, holding in his bowels with his hands.

But here, here he could set up as a middleman of sorts, buy and sell from the Roundsmen and the legitimate merchantmen who plied those waters. That was real wealth, and it did not depend upon luck or exposing oneself to flying shot.

He had an image of himself in that big house, looking down on the harbor just as he was now looking up. Native girls in attendance-he had heard of their legendary compliance. Suddenly the thought of returning to Newport, bitter cold, windswept, wintry Newport and his scrawny shrew of a wife and unpleasant children seemed unthinkable.

Unthinkable, certainly, in light of the realization that he had only to march his armed band inland and take the island. Then he could set up as the lead merchant there. A governor of sorts.

Governor? No, lord of the manor. Quigley smiled to himself. Lord, hell. He would be king of St. Mary’s.

Why had no one else ever thought of this?

Thanks, as is always the case, are due many people. Thank you to Barry Clifford, Ken Kinkor, and especially Paul Perry for the information on St. Mary’s on Madagascar’s coast, a happy coincidence that they were researching the place-and going there-at the same time I was writing about it! Thanks as ever to Nat and Judith for all their help and support, and to Nancy Becker for the swordplay. And with deep appreciation I extend my thank-you to David Semanki at Harper-Collins and to Hugh Van Dusen, one of the last of the Renaissance men.

JAMES L. NELSON has served as a seaman, rigger, boatswain, and officer on a number of sailing vessels. He is the author of By Force of Arms, The Maddest Idea, The Continental Risque, Lords of the Ocean, and All the Brave Fellows-the five books of his Revolution at Sea saga, as well as The Guardship and The Blackbirder, the first two books of the Brethren of the Coast trilogy. He is also the author of Glory in the Name: A Novel of the Confederate Navy. He lives with his wife and children in Harpswell, Maine. His website is found at www.jameslnelson.com.