Cross of Fire (46 page)

The
Shadow
.

South to Bourbon. Perhaps some easy trade on the way. And why not? It was a pirate sea and there were no kings here save for them. Those regents were lording over the sugar, the slaves and the molasses another world away. They had forgotten the old oceans. Nations might have different flags, so long had it been since the
Shadow
had seen their colours.

The
Standard
.

‘From backstay and mainmast,’ Coxon ordered. ‘I want him to see us when we come.’

Jenkins pencilled in his book. ‘Why announce ourselves? To what end?’

Coxon clasped his hands behind his back. They were on the quarterdeck, watching the coop being moved to sit behind the skylight over the wardroom. The deck had become too damp for the health of the hens.

‘To what end?’ Coxon’s voice sang and he broke a smile for the first time in days. Coxon’s smile rare enough to shiver men’s sensibilities. It was the grin of the tavern before men unscrew their fixed teeth and put them to their pocket and put their watch to their boots and go outside together. ‘To make them
shit
when they see us of course, Mister Jenkins.’

He put his back to him and Jenkins tipped his hand to his forehead, aware that he had been dismissed, and went down to bellow at the bosun to raise flag and pennant.

Thomas Howard was the only other on the quarterdeck, by the lectern with the log and map. He had the traverse board for his study and to avoid Coxon’s eye.

The
Standard
was coursing east on a close-haul, the wind against them, tacking a course deep into the ocean. It was late afternoon, the morning of punishment not forgotten, and the sun was blanketed in a granite cast that fitted Howard’s mood and met the ocean at every corner; the customary dazzling blue had gone. There were whitecaps now, and even at four knots the starboard was a mist of spray. Every glass surface dripped, pair-case watches stopped in pockets. Howard held onto his hat as the wind clipped at his ears.

‘These are the sou’-sou’west monsoon winds,’ Coxon had startled him at his side. ‘They blow south of the equator down to the north-east of Madagascar. From April until October. For six months they come. It is the heat from the land masses that creates them, India and Africa batting them back and forth.’

‘Are we in danger, Captain?’ Howard steadied himself against the yaw of the ship. Coxon showed no such movement.

Coxon held up a hand, his fingers together in a pledge.

‘You see this, Thomas? It is the width of our outer planks. As Diogenes says, of those of us on the seas, we are only ever four inches from death.’ He put down his hand. ‘The Greeks know us well. They defined us as belonging to neither the living or the dead. Even when we walk the streets we sway and our clothes are of another place.’

‘But do we head for storms?’

‘Do we not always?’ Coxon said. ‘More ships are taken by hurricane than all the shot ever fired. You should consider if you have truly helped the pirate in releasing him in such a sea.’ He waved over the ocean.

‘You hear and see the white horses? They are coming.’

He moved away, left Howard to his traverse board and to contemplation on the white waters encroaching, surrounding like a sandbag wall growing ever higher by the hour.

Coxon had checked the binnacle and Howard’s board as he spoke, had glanced at the map clamped to the lectern. Six more hours at four knots would bring them to the tenth latitude. Cruise that for sixty miles and back again, a man with a glass at every bow and quarter, a lookout aloft to see into their past and future.

‘Mister Howard!’ he called back from the rail. ‘You remember my asking in Portsmouth about the oil?’

‘Aye, sir,’ Howard replied. ‘Six barrels. I did not forget.’

‘Good,’ Coxon did not turn from watching over the ship at work. ‘Good.’

Howard shook his head and placed another peg and string as the compass made another tack with the ship’s bow.

Mad, Manvell had said, and Howard had dismissed the idea. But the ship yawed, and the sky was a single cloud of slate. And his captain had asked him about whale oil.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Monday, 21 July 1721

First figure recommended fitting. Actual figures bracketed.

The Standard
. 40 (44)

Fifth Rate. English. 1716.

Burthen: 531 tonnes.

Length: 118 ft. Beam: 32 ft.

Gundeck: 20 x 12 pounders.

Upper gundeck: 20 x 6 pounders.

Quarterdeck: None.

Fo’c’sle: None.

Chasers: None.

Swivels: 2 x ½ pound quarterdeck. 2 x ½ pound fo’c’sle.

Complement: 160 (105)

Commissioned Officers: Capt. 1. Lt. 1 (2)

Warrant Sea Officers: Mr 1. Bts. 1. Gnr 1. Ctr. 1. Sgn. 1. Prs. 1.

The Shadow
26 (38)

Fifth rate. French. 1715.

Burthern: 400 tonnes.

Length: 100 ft. Beam: 26ft.

Weatherdeck: 18 x 9 pounders.

Quarterdeck: 4 x 9 pounders.

Fo’c’sle: 2 x 9 pounders.

Chasers: 2 x 9 pounders bow. 2 x 9 pounders stern.

Swivels: 2 x ½ pound quarterdeck. 2 x ½ pound fo’c’sle. 2 x ½ pound larboard qtr. 2 x ½ pound starboard qtr. 2 x ½ pound tops.

Complement:

Pirates.

There was a halo around the moon the night before and sun dogs had appeared with the rising dawn. Devlin did not see the signs but they were recounted to him in the hushed tones of omens, as sailors give them in their profundity.

‘Bad weather,’ Peter Sam joined him at the rail as noon came, the sun gone into the sheet of grey when it should have been sighting their mainmast.

‘That’s sea dog’s wisdom for you,’ Devlin said. ‘The only old salt I know wouldn’t shake on my eggs this morning. Sign enough for me.’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Peter Sam scratched his beard, ‘I puts gunpowder on mine.’

‘Heathen.’ A hearty slap to the big man’s back.

Devlin left him for the stair where John Lawson, the bosun, waited at the foot.

‘Set deadlights to the cabin,’ Devlin ordered, and Lawson fumbled for his pencil and book as Devlin carried on.

‘Storm sheets and stop sails. We’ll brail them loose. Fighting sail, bald-headed. Bring one boat in, leave the others trailing.’ He moved on without waiting for a word back, swept to Hartley, the gunner, a drunk of great endurance and miraculously still alive, the oldest of them now that Will Magnes had stayed on at Madagascar. That was three years gone. Hartley was ancient at more than fifty. He craved rum and lime, lambswool and sponges and wood nails for his baize curtain to protect the sanctum of his magazine. He had no care for English powder, only Porto and Frog. You did not have to sift it from swindler’s practice and he could range his nine-pounders as good as twelves with it. He had been a warrant officer in two wars, assigned to a ship when she was built. Devlin had asked once how he had become a pirate.

‘I was drunk,’ he said as if that were all.

‘Sight for masts,’ Devlin said and then Hartley answered a question from someone else.

‘Six barrels of white, thirty-nine sacks, eighteen coils and garlands of balls ready, Cap’n. Been making grape for weeks.’ He reeled below, Devlin usually only ever got to see the top of the man’s head.

‘
Cap’n
!’ A cry from the fo’c’sle, urgent for a pirate and Devlin dashed, and heads looked up to follow.

A hand over the bow at the bowsprit. Devlin ducked under the jibs and needed no other word.

It was an actual curtain, on the horizon and up to heaven. It had folds, it mushroomed where the sun should be and it meant hard work in the hours when Indian rugs should be laid and punch and hens set out.

Somewhere out there fishermen had pulled into their islands, took their drying catch into their huts with their families and dug up their buried food. This was the time. It meant no fishing but it would be good water to drink and it was how their fathers had taught them. Only their fathers had not seen the giant wooden ships that did not fish and dared the wind. Their washed up bodies had made their pigs fat for generations. The sea gods were always giving and there was no sin in taking those who did not respect.

Devlin held out his hand, his fingers apart and over the dark fore. He counted as Peter Sam came up.

‘A storm then,’ Peter Sam said. ‘What’s she doing?’

Devlin took down his hand.

‘About sixty times faster than us and just as wide. She’s cutting right across us. “Tufan”, the Indians call them. “Typhon” if you want Greek. Fucking big storm in English.’

‘We should have stayed on the island, Pat.’

Devlin looked up at the big man.

‘Well, fuck you now, Peter Sam.’

Peter looked about.

‘White horses. Half-sail?’

‘Already done. Storm set.’

‘Turn back?’

‘Take half a day in these swells. We’ll slow and watch her pass.’

Peter Sam studied the pulsating cloud. The water beneath sat smooth as glass as the rain flattened the waves. ‘There’s no lightning.’

‘She’s warning us. If we time well, keep slow, she’ll go afore us.’ He looked up. ‘We’ll get wet is all. Dandon can wait another day or two. We got nothing to hurry for.’

A shout from the larboard quarter. Devlin’s second time to run.

‘
Sail
,
sail!
’
and already the quarter was full and Peter Sam had to elbow heads away, his captain in front of him.

Devlin put his hand behind and a spyglass slapped into his palm.

He had not set a man aloft. Men took that post willingly on a pirate for he would have first choice of pistols if they met a prize. The heat had whittled down the volunteers and so he had lost the scope of perhaps twelve miles all around. At the gunwale they had maybe five. Devlin had kept the bell as his only discipline. A mistake now, he knew.

This was how pirates fell, how Blackbeard fell and the fall of all the rebels from Providence. They traded up to larger ships, left their hidden inlets and shallow waters. And then the navy came creeping over the horizon, their crews not drunk. But not Roberts. Devlin had heard he kept to English order, to articles of conduct fit for Protestants, tea his only drink. As the war-ship rode the glass Devlin’s only curse was for his own culpability, his own failure. The spyglass was his punishment, silently bringing closer to him his ineptitude.