Casca 15: The Pirate (5 page)

"Aye." The little seaman looked like a rabbit cornered, but he spoke up pluckily enough.

"Aye. Now what do you say to that, Captain Long?" Blackbeard leaned forward. "Look sharp, men. Let us hear what the good Captain Long has to say in his
defense." He dropped the two pistols and made an exaggerated gesture of cupping his ear to hear better. "What do you hear, gentlemen? What does he say?"

The two seamen grinned, then thought better of it when they saw the impassive faces of the two mates and of Israel Hands.

"I don't hear anything. Do you, Captain Hands?"

"Nay, Captain."

"Any of you other council members hear anything?"

Silence.

"Then let the record show that the spy, Captain Long, has nothing to say in his defense. As captain of this council I will pronounce sentence. One; says I, Captain Long, for being a spy, is to be hanged from the yardarm. Two, says I, sentence commuted to marooning, due to service rendered this command and due to the fact, well known by all in our Brotherhood, that in the commonwealth of pirates he who goes the greatest length of wickedness is a person of extraordinary gallantry and is therefore entitled to be distinguished by some high post, namely, promotion to captain in Master Long's case and, damn my eyes, if spying is not wickedness, then, says I, what is? And, three, says I, until Captain Long is marooned and upon his being marooned said Captain Long shall remain bound, hand and foot, and shall have no food, no drink until such time as he is set ashore, and when he is set ashore, says I, he will still be bound and gagged, and no food, drink, supplies, or weapons shall be set ashore with him. And that, says I, just for the hell of it."

Blackbeard grinned.

Two days later Casca lay in the bottom of the ship's boat being rowed to the island where he would be marooned. He was still bound hand and foot, and he was still gagged. He had no idea what island he was headed for. All he had been able to see from the deck when he was taken out and thrown into the boat before it was lowered was a quick glimpse of some island that had low hills and green trees.

"In the sunlight, damn it! Look sharp, men, and be quick about it. "

That order had come from Blackbeard himself. The only officer aboard the longboat was the boatswain, a silent man made even quieter by the fact that at the moment he was too drunk to do anything but stare stupidly dead ahead. Casca was lying at his feet, so the boatswain's drunk face was all he could see. Unlike most of the pirates, the boatswain was gaunt hungry looking. He paid no attention at all to Casca.

The oars slapped against the water, and Casca could feel the vibration of the boat's passage through the relatively mild surf. None of the pirates said anything. Some inner intuition told Casca they were apprehensive but that didn't make sense. Why fear an island?

As for Casca, his already strong hatred of Blackbeard was beginning to be reinforced by a definite desire to rip the blustering bastard's face off him. Casca had the feeling that the way he was being set up was just too damn smooth. It was as if the bearded bastard back there on the ship was making fun of him. Like the way a cat plays around with a mouse playing with it as though it wasn't worth anything. The drumhead court martial was one thing, but Casca might have been able to go along with that just because Blackbeard was a stupid bastard jealous to the extreme. But with the island showing up in less than two hours. Shit! Blackbeard had it all planned in advance. Whether it had something to do with Tarleton Duncan that Casca didn't know about, or whether it was just the way Blackbeard's twisted mind worked he didn't know. But it made no difference. Somehow, he was going to even the score.

Only trouble was, at the moment he wasn't in much of a position to do anything about it.

The boat beached, and the pirates pulled it up just enough on the smooth sand to keep it from going back into the sea. In silence, which by now had begun to bother Casca, they pulled him from the longboat and dragged him up the beach, not too far out of reach of the water, and propped him up against a rock in the sun. The rock was hot against his back. He was facing seaward. He could see the pirate ship lying off the shoal water, and he thought he could make out the figure of Blackbeard holding a spyglass on him. "Let's get the hell out of here."

The pirate who said it had a worried tone to his voice, and Casca could see that he didn't want to stay there a moment longer. It was the first words spoken by any of the pirates, and now they all hurried back to the longboat, pushed it into the water, jumped aboard, and began rowing quickly back toward the ship. They had, in fact, been in such a rush that when they dumped him on the sand one of the pirates had accidentally and unknowingly dropped a piece of eight he had apparently been carrying in one of his pistol holsters, and the coin had gone down into the folds of the cravat around Casca's neck.

Now why are they in such a rush? Shit! I've got myself involved with madmen
, he thought. Already the sun was beginning to make him uncomfortable. What Blackbeard had in mind, of course, was to have him broiled alive out here. However...They had tied him up with tarred ship's rope. The heat of the sun would soften the tar plus the pirates who had tied him, either by accident or design, had left some slight slack. He watched the longboat reach the ship and be taken aboard. The sails were unfurled. They caught the brief wind, and
The Queen's Revenge
stood out to sea. By the time she would be hull down on the horizon and beyond spyglass range he could have himself untied. No big damage done except for postponing his voyage to America a bit longer.

He began flexing his wrists and felt the rope give slightly. There was still the problem of how to get off this damn island but, first things first.
He worried slightly because of the pirate crew's apparent fear of the island. But only for a moment. After all, what could happen to him on a deserted island?

What he didn't know was that the island wasn't deserted...

Six pairs of very dark eyes were watching Casca. The eyes of six men. Spaniards.

The island on which Blackbeard had marooned Casca happened to be one tiny spot of land in a wide area of the Caribbean. Actually it was the top of an extinct volcano but none of the men on it knew that. Not even Casca.

It was not on the British Admiralty charts. Nor any other charts. But it was known by quite a few pirate captains, Spanish as well as those of Blackbeard's Brotherhood.

And, over a period of time, Spanish pirate captains had marooned malefactors. Several dozen, as a matter of fact, but not more than a baker's dozen had survived.

Brotherhood captains had also marooned men on the island. And, since they were enemies afloat, they remained enemies ashore. So, when Casca was put ashore there were thirteen Spanish maroons and fifteen Brotherhood maroons, organized loosely into two groups fighting each other. Since they had neither guns nor swords they had to fight with rocks and sticks. They also made crude bows from tropical trees that were really too soft for the purpose and wooden spears, points hopefully hardened in campfire flames. The lack of good weapons made killing each other off rather difficult, but, given enough time, both sides had managed. It was helpful to discover as in Casca's case a new maroon of the other side since it was much easier to kill him. The six Spaniards in the cover of the vegetation at the forest's edge were not in for a bit of fun. The Brotherhood maroons, they knew, were encamped on the other side of the island, held there by ineffective but intimidating archery fire from the other seven Spaniards. These six would have the pleasure of killing Casca. Since life on the island was boring there was enough fruit to eat, but nothing else to do killing was a nice break from the everyday routine.

The Spanish leader
– by temporary sufferance only; there was no discipline among the maroons – checked the horizon to be sure the ship was not coming back, and then signaled his men. They came out into the open, but then stopped when the leader held up his hand, then pointed at Casca.

That one, unaware that he had company, was busily engaged in wriggling out of his ropes. He was making progress but it was going slow. Watching him provided some amusement for th
e Spaniards. They were going to kill him anyway. Might as well enjoy watching him struggle. So all six hunkered down, on the sand and, grinning, waited for him to either succeed or give up.

It took him the better part of a quarter hour, but he succeeded. Finally free, he stood up, rubbed his wrists, stamped his feet to bring the circulation back, and removed the gag. Then he turned around.
And, as he turned, the six Spaniards rose to their feet, clubs poised.

Casca stared at them.

"Bastard son of an English dog," the Spanish leader greeted him in Spanish. “Bastardo. Desecho. Lechon." The Spaniard was not very imaginative, and his remarks on Casca 's lineage were far from original. Casca had heard much better from amateur English whores. He smiled and that infuriated all six Spaniards who began shouting obscenities at him, clubs raised.

Casca laughed.
After Blackbeard and his twisted thinking it was such a pleasure to see normal men even if they were ready to kill him that Casca felt a warm glow of pleasure. “By the blood of the Virgin, Herself!" he exclaimed in Spanish. "You bastards are the best things I've seen in days."

"
Que? You speak Spanish, Englishman?" The Spanish leader looked confused.

Spanish? Hell, it was only bastard Latin
. Casca did not explain, but he did grin.

The Spanish maroons hesitated and got into an argument amongst themselves. The net result, though, was that since he had come from Blackbeard's ship he must be an enemy.

It took a little while, but Casca convinced the Spaniards that he would make a better recruit than a target. That settled, there was one other problem.

"You help us fight the English. Now we beat hell out of them bastards." The Spanish leader grinned.

"English? What English?" Casca asked.

"On the other side of the island."

"You mean you aren't the only ones on this island?"

"
Pero, no, mi amigo
." The Spaniard proceeded to explain to Casca about the marooned Brotherhood pirates and about the continuing war between the two groups. Casca looked at him and at the other five. They were all in rags, and they were all skinny. Casca didn't know too much about these little islands, but he guessed there was probably fruit to eat and not much else. Even if there were wild goats or such these maroons were too busy fighting each other to hunt.

"How many?"

“
Que?
”

"You. Spaniards. And the others."

"Ah..." The Spaniard started counting on his fingers.

But another one of the pirates, a young fellow with a very skimpy beard, said: "Twenty
-eight. You make twenty-nine."

Twenty
-nine men. Casca thought about that, his eyes watching the far horizon of the blue ocean.

"What you see?" the Spaniard sounded suspicious.

"How to get off this island," Casca growled.

Twenty
-nine men. That meant two things. One, a lot of pirate ships must stop here to maroon that many men, Brotherhood or Spanish. Two, twenty-nine men were a large enough crew to sail a captured ship...

He turned back to the Spaniards and explained what he had in mind.

"No! It would not work! We will not make peace with the English dogs!"

"Suit yourself," Casca shrugged. "But I'm getting off."

"No!" The clubs came up.

"Oh, shit!" Casca grumbled, and made one quick movement forward and to the side. It was something he had learned long ago, taught by that old friend from the land of Chin. The next thing the Spanish leader knew there was a swift kick in his gut, low down, very low down, that temporarily interrupted his interest in the proceedings. There were other movements, too. A blow to the side of the throat of the oldest bearded Spaniard. A twisting motion here. Another there.

They had the clubs, but Casca had the ability. Hell, not one of them could have lasted five minutes in a Roman arena. In half that time Casca had four Spaniards out and a fifth backing away. Only the young Spaniard with the skimpy beard still faced him, still holding a club, but not moving not scared, but with an appraising look in his young eyes.

Casca had not bothered to pick up any of the clubs that now lay on the rocky ground on the border between underbrush and beach. He, too, had an appraising look in his eyes, studying the young Spaniard.

"See what I mean?" Casca said in Spanish, not moving on the youngster.

"
Si.
"

Casca looked down at the leader.

"Have we got a deal?"

"A
h...

"Look, dammit, I could have ripped your face off and smashed what little brains you have if I had wanted to. And that goes for the rest of you bastards. I didn't, you sons of bitches, because we need each other if we're going to take the next damn ship that puts in here."

"But we have no swords, no guns...”

"So? With twenty nine men I can take any ship's boat that puts in here."

Which really wasn't exactly true, but it sounded like it to them if not to Casca.

Casca 's Spaniards
– he was beginning to think of them as his own private squad – took him over the mountain to the other side of the island. It was a night's long march under a bright full moon, and the Spaniards apparently had no fear of being ambushed by the discarded members of the Brotherhood.

"The fort," the young Spaniard explained when Casca asked him.

"Fort?"

"
Si
."

They were walking a well
-worn path under the trees surprisingly open for the tropics, and the silver moonlight dappled the way. Casca reflected upon other hills he had walked as a young boy, younger then than his erstwhile guide was now. But he liked the young man very much. There was a clean quality to him that was not found often in the world. He wondered what ‘crime’ had brought him to this sorry state. Of course there were times when the innocent passengers of ships taken by the pirates were not killed but left abandoned on deserted isles. This might have been the case with his young guide.

Julio, the young Catalonian, explained about the fort and gave Casca a rundown on the relations between the English and the Spaniards. It was what was to be expected. They didn't get along worth a shit.

As for the fort, none knew who had originally built it or why. They would have liked to have known because whoever it was had to have had an axe or at the very least some kind of adz to cut and shape the logs. Such a weapon in their hands now could mean control of the island. At any rate some long dead castaways had built a small fort of logs over a spring on the east side of the island. Whoever controlled the fort, with its continuous water supply, had the edge when the time of no rains came, which occurred with great frequency. As it was, the fort was now in the hands of the maroons left here by the Brotherhood.