James Nelson - The Guardship

“ Oui, farirez plus de voiles , we make sail at the first of the ebb.”

LeRois’s eyes moved across the beach to the narrow strip of water between New Providence and Hog Island that constituted Nassau Harbor. The Vengeance was riding at a single anchor, her sails drying to a bowline. She looked like a wreck from that distance, hardly good enough for the breaker’s yard. It was time for LeRois to change ships, his men’s attitude, his own fortunes.

And now there was a plan. A great partnership. Set up through the conduit of his former quartermaster, Ezekiel Ripley. As much of a plan as LeRois’s mind was capable of formulating after twenty years of violence and disease, near starvation, and the most abject debauchery.

But that was no matter. The finer points were the purview of those ashore. He just had to plunder the helpless merchantmen who carried their cargoes throughout the Caribbean. And that he was certainly capable of doing.

It was well past noon when they began to ferry the men out to the Vengeance . The longboat had been unwisely hauled up on the beach and left to bake under the tropical sun. The planking had dried and shrunk, opening up the seams and requiring those not pulling an oar to bail.

All save LeRois. He was captain, he would have none of that. He caught the few askance looks thrown aft at him by those of the ship’s company who resented his assumption of superiority. Ignored them. They would learn soon enough who was in charge, and those who did not would die.

It took seven trips back and forth before all of the Vengeance’s men were aboard. The preponderance of them were English and French, but there were Scots and Irishmen too, and Dutchmen and Swedes and Danes. One hundred and twenty-four men all told, three quarters of them white, representing nearly all of the seafaring nations of Europe.

Black men made up the other quarter of the crew. Some were escaped slaves who had learned all there was to know about cruelty on the sugar plantations of the Caribbean. Some had been on their way to the auction houses when they were taken from the Vengeances’ victims, brought aboard to do the menial tasks aboard the pirate ship-cooking and manning the pumps, tarring rigging and slushing down masts-and had earned their way into the pirate tribe through hard use in battle.

However the black men had arrived, they were now Brethren of the Coast, full members of the ship’s company. The only place in the Old World or the New where black men and white stood side by side as equals.

And they were, all of them, black men and white, heavily laden with weapons. And they were all drunk.

“Ship the capstan bars, rig the swifter,” Darnall called from the waist, and the crew of the Vengeance shuffled off in various

directions to perform those tasks. They could do them just as well

drunk as sober. It was how they generally did them.

“Rig the messenger! Nippers, stand ready!”

It was half an hour of shuffling, tossing gear aside, and digging more gear out from the piles of junk that littered the deck before the capstan was rigged for weighing anchor. “Heave away!” Darnall shouted, and the pawls began their steady click click click as the men stamped the capstan around.

In the bow, the nippers lashed the heavy anchor cable to the messenger, shifting their nips as the eight-inch thick rope came inboard and was fed down the hatch.

The job of stowing the wet cable away on the cable tier, wrestling the tons of rope into neat coils, was a hot, filthy, horrible job, and since there were no slaves or captives aboard to do it, it was not done. Rather, the cable was allowed to pile up where it fell, and if it rotted from being stowed wet it was no matter. Every ship had anchor cable aboard. They could always take more.

LeRois stood aft on the quarterdeck, arms folded, watching, saying little. Gave the occasional order to the men on the helm. Darnall was the quartermaster and he was running the evolution, just as he ran all the mundane aspects of the Vengeance’s operation.

LeRois had only one thing to do, and that was to give the order for their destination. He wondered how receptive the Vengeances would be. Wondered if he would have to kill anyone to get his orders obeyed. Perhaps it would be best if he did, get things off on the right foot. The incident on the beach had left him anxious for blood.

“Anchor’s a-peak!” Darnall called out. “Hands to the sheets and halyards! Come along, you bloody laggards, haul away all!”

The Vengeance’s sails had never been stowed, since they were prone to rot when stowed and, more to the point, stowing them was a great effort that would just have had to be undone once it was time to get under way. For that reason the Vengeances had only to sheet topsails home and haul away on the

halyards, then heave a pawl on the capstan to break the anchor loose and they were under way.

“Fall off, fall off, meet ’er,” LeRois growled at the helmsmen as the bow of the Vengeace swung off. Forward, the men at the braces heaved away, trimming sail to the new course with never an order shouted, never the least bit of confusion. Lazy drunkards that they were, the Vengeances were prime seamen to a man, like most pirate crews, and they knew their business.

The Vengeance steadied on her course, sailing west out of Nassau Harbor, as more and more canvas was spread to the trade winds: courses, topgallants, the lateen mizzen, the spritsail and spritsail topsail, set and trimmed with all the speed and efficiency an expert though drunken crew could display.

The ship itself was a pathetic sight. Running gear piled in heaps along the waterways and on top of the six pounder guns that lined the weather deck. The long quarterdeck and forecastle that she had sported when LeRois and his men had first taken her had been cut back to give more fighting room in the waist. It had not been neatly done. The jagged edges of hacked-off planks still protruded here and there. The wood on the once-covered areas of the deck was altogether darker then that of exposed places. Great white patches showed in the standing rigging where the tar had worn away. The paint was blistered by the sun and flaking off.

The Vengeance needed a great deal of work, a fact that was entirely ignored by the men aboard her.

Once the ship was under way, and sails trimmed, each man claimed for himself a piece of the deck on which to sit and continue the drinking and gambling and sleeping that had been interrupted by the afternoon’s work.

LeRois stepped up to the quarterdeck rail. “Ecoutez! Ecoutez! Listen here, you men!”

Men put bottles down. Heads turned aft.

“We’re going to the British colonies on the American coast, do you hear?” LeRois said. “I am setting course for there.”

The men looked at one another, some nodding agreement, some shaking heads. A low murmur ran across the deck.

The bosun was the first to speak. LeRois had expected as much. He was a sea lawyer. A new man, volunteered from one of their last victims. He would die by LeRois’s hand in the next minute if he objected too strongly. Set a good example. “I reckon there’s fair pickings down around Panama way, or south of Florida.”

“Perhaps,” said LeRois, “but we go to the American coast.”

Silence swept like a cat’s paw across the deck. The bosun coughed, stood up from where he had been leaning on the fife rail around the mainmast. “Reckon we should vote. Says so in the articles.”

There was a gentle murmur. “Reckon he’s got a right to ask,” someone said, just audible.

LeRois stepped forward and down the ladder to the waist, moving slowly. He said nothing. The bosun’s face swam before him. He felt the excitement rise as he closed with the man. LeRois the master was back, LeRois the Devil.