Scarface (2 page)

“How can I? Cheap is kind enough to collect my share of plunder for me—and that is the last I ever see of it.”

“One might think that he could name you son,” hazarded Pym.

To his surprise the other turned on him to show green eyes wrathfully ablaze in his marred face. “Not even you, Pym, can name me so! Rather would I fall into the hands of those red devils of coast Indians and be plucked apart yet living as was L’Olonnis. I am no son to Cheap! That I will swear to right heartily—even if I never know my sire.”

“Your humble pardon,” Pym’s return was quick and without mockery. “But it is strange that he should so interest himself in your affairs, keeping you ever at his side. ’Tis not for love of you—”

“Hardly!”

“Then it must be from hate. For only love or hate can so govern a man. It is as if he has some plan—”

“Plan?” Scarface was all alert attention. “I wonder—? I can remember naught save Cheap and the ship and that drab Liza who keeps his house here in Tortuga.”

“Did you ever question her? Mayhap she could spin you a tale worth the hearing.”

“She does naught but snap at me nowadays. But I’ll try—I’ll try this very night!” Hooking his fingers into his sash he set off at a brisker pace. Pym panted.

“Must you run the legs off me, lad? I’m getting to be
of those safe middle years when a man's more fond of the pipe and the bowl than of using his legs.”

“And yet you contrive to teach the sword,” laughed the boy.

“That is a matter of business,” observed Pym. “And Liza now will not take wings and fly, even if you do not seek her ’til sundown. Come sup with me.”

“Not tonight.”

They came into the main street of the dingy town where it was necessary to dispute the right of way with foraging hog and mangy dog as well as staggering drunkard. By a wine shop they parted, Pym to seek refreshment within and Scarface to hunt out his master—and his master's cook.

“Tomorrow, lad,” Snelgrave reminded the boy. Scarface nodded.

But it was to be a full two years before Pym Snelgrave laid eyes upon Scarface of Tortuga again.

The boy went on down the dirty lane. Once away from the row of water-front grog shops and merchants’ warehouses there were divers small white coral block houses, each within a scrap of yard. In one of these Captain Cheap was pleased to establish himself when his
Naughty Lass
was in port. For Cheap considered himself a man of birth and fashion and protested that the noisome odors of ship and harbor were not to his liking. Not that the perfume of the town was any more fragrant, thought Scarface, as he pushed past a slave woman, a haunch of still dripping meat balanced on the wooden tray on her head.

He had not eaten since midmorning, but he lost all hunger as he watched the cloud of green flies following
the cook along the narrow alley. Then she turned in through a gate and was gone and Scarface padded on alone.

Scarlet poinsettias were bloody hands spiked in the hedge of gray branches which guarded Captain Cheap's retreat.There were two stunted and crooked orange trees in the front yard, one of which bore green and sourish fruit. The other was dead.

Scarface went on around the house to the gate which opened into the patio. Liza should be there hunched over her sooty pots. And there she was, right enough, her draggled shawl over her head and the fleck of red which betokened ill temper in her eyes.

As to who Liza was or from whence she had come Cheap mayhap had a clue. But to the rest of Tortuga she was but an ill-tempered virago with no pretense to looks and no interest beyond her pans and the rum bottle. Her tangle of unwashed hair still showed yellow in the sun, and when she aroused to answer at all it was with the tongue of a Thames-side fishwife. Whatever Liza might have been in her youth, she had not been born under the Southern Cross.

At the sight of Scarface she glowered sullenly.

“Th’ marster ’as bin a-arskin’ fur ye,” she grunted.

“Well, here I am.”

“’E'll tan yer ‘ide fur ye!”

“Mayhap. Let me carry that.” He took from her the heavy pail she was lifting.

“Purty gen'lem'n, ain't ye?” she jeered as he set down his burden within the kitchen. “Foine manners, jest loike that liddy wot wos yer mither!”

“What?” Scarface demanded. “What did you say?”

“Nobut!” she countered. “Git out o’ my sight, ye long-legged loon!” With a scream of rage she reached for a greasy platter on the table.

With the ease of long practice Scarface dodged and the plate shattered to fragments against the wall. Liza's screams grew wilder as he backed hurriedly out of the door. There was no use in trying to bring her to reasonable speech now. But it was plain that Pym had been right—she did know something of the past.

Treasuring that thought, the boy turned to the front of the house where Cheap awaited him.

Chapter Two

“I SAY—BARBADOS!”

JONATHAN CHEAP lounged in his great chair, his well-booted feet cocked up on a bench before him. Nature had been kind to Captain Cheap. She had bestowed upon him a strong and goodly body and a pallidly handsome face. Also of wit he had a rich store and possessed a steady deadly courage. But there her benefactions had ended, for he had no heart, and charity he considered a weakness of the basest sort. And yet more than half of Tortuga hailed Jonathan Cheap as a proper sort of gentleman and he never lacked for a crew.

As Scarface came in the worthy Captain was smoothing his new flowered waistcoat and considering critically the polish on his boots. For coolness he had put off his heavy black periwig, displaying in this, the privacy of his home, his closely cropped, graying hair. He was a vain man but not a foolish one. What he had of the world's comforts he had taken at sword point. If his hands were not clean of blood—well, they were still shapely and well cared for. And now he was approaching the summit of all his years-old ambitions, so satisfaction was imprinted in his slightly pouting lips, his half-closed eyes.

“You were asking for me, sir?” Scarface measured with his eyes the level of rum in the decanter on the table. For by that barometer might the Captain's mood be foretold.

“Aye, you hang-dog rogue. Where have you been?” Cheap's features did not lose their pleasant openness, but the boy knew the threat which lay just beneath the surface of the Captain's good humor.

“Out in the hills. When a man's ashore—”

“A man? You spindle-shanked brat—dare you call yourself a man? Do you hold yourself above correction? I would have you know that I am still master in my own house! Do you dare to trifle with me—?”

Cheap was deliberately working himself into one of those rages with which Scarface was painfully familiar. It was almost as if Cheap were sometimes two different men—one raging and the other cool and unruffled standing aside to watch with curious interest the excesses of his baser self. The only answer was to stand unreplying and let the Captain's anger wash where it willed until the two men
were one again. But today Cheap put rein to his rage himself.

“Go to,” he reached for his half-filled glass. “You're gallows' meat and will come to that end. Like father, like son.” He laughed, a low, evil and yet curiously sweet laugh which was his alone, the tinkling of which would ring in Scarface's ears for all his life. “Since you have at last remembered your duties, you'd best be about them. Get my sea chest down to the ship—we sail with the tide. Do not show me a long face now, 'tis time for us to
be asea. The land air grows thick in my throat.” He sniffed delicately at the scent on his fine handkerchief.

Without answer Scarface tramped back through the house to the Captain's bedchamber, summoning the black slave to shoulder the chest. Errand boy he might be, but he was a freeman and as such he did not appear in the lanes carrying his master's boxes.

Back again through the patio they went. Liza had returned there and was squatting in her favorite seat by the ever dry fountain, mumbling to herself, her eyes fast upon the forepart of the house where the Captain took his wine-bought ease. She was slitting red peppers into long tongue-shaped strips with a knife, but she little resembled a cook at honest employment. At the boy's passing she looked up at him with a grunted farewell of her own fashioning.

“Off be ye, eh? An' a rope at th' end, loike enough.”

“Like as not,” he replied as carelessly. “ 'Tis the usual end of those of our trade. Like man, like master though, Liza. If you foresee that end for me, you'd better hunt you another sty for I sail with Cheap and captains hang as easily and as high as their men.”

For a moment her knife was still as she peered at him intently through the filthy ropes of her hair. Then with a boom of laughter she reached for another pepper. “ 'Twill take a man t' 'ang th' Cap'n!”

“One like Sir Robert Scarlett?” asked Scarface idly.

To his surprise the pepper fell from her fingers and blood welled from a cut on her thumb where the knife had slipped. But to this or to the pepper in the dust she paid no heed. Her attention was all for the boy standing over her and for once in her life she found no words.

“Wot d'ye know o' Scarlett?” she croaked at last.

“That he was once a pirate and then contrived to win himself a better place in the world. And that in consequence he is hated by the scum here.”

Liza's claw-hand closed about the boy's wrist, leaving a drabble of blood on his arm. “Wot else? I 'ave always bin friend t' ye, ain't I now?” she whined, drawing herself up by her hold on him. Her breath, sour with gin fumes, was hot on his cheek. “Iffen I ‘ave cuffed ye now an' again, ‘twas fer yer own good. Look ye, Justin—”

“Justin!” He shook off her grip and caught her by the shoulders. “Tell me, Liza, what mean you by naming me so?”

At his demand the veil of cunning dropped back across her pig eyes. She twisted free of him with a roll of her heavy shoulders.

“Wot would I mean, ye gutter-whelp? Git ye out ‘fore I call th' Cap'n.” She ended with a scream of rage and cuffed him across the face, a blow whose sting brought tears to his eyes.

His chance of learning anything was gone now and he
knew it. So, with a shrug of resignation, he left her there and followed the slave out of the patio.

Liza had called him “Justin” as if that were his name! What did the old drudge know? For a moment his own helplessness choked him. No one could make Liza speak if she chose not to, not even Cheap. And clearly she did not choose in this instance. Unless he could trap her into some admission next time they put in to Tortuga—

The swift dusk of the tropics was on the town. From the open doors of the grogshops came the raucous shouts and spurts of song where the Brethren were spending their spoils. Once or twice a shadowy figure slipped down the road, body pressed against the wall, untrusting eyes upon all comers. Tortuga after nightfall was only for him who could defend himself and any property of value which he might be carrying.

Down at the waterside Scarface hailed a halfbreed who had a dugout for hire and bargained to be set aboard the
Naughty Lass.
The ship seemed deserted as the clumsy craft nuzzled her side. She was still foul of bottom from voyaging in warm waters where bred weed and ship worms, but Cheap had given no orders to have her careened and refitted. Even the expedient of “boot-hosing” to remove the damaging stuff to the water edge had been neglected. Did Cheap think he was so good a seaman that he could go a-hunting in a ship as foul as the usual man-o'-war?

The boy clambered up by the dangling ladder and then tossed down a rope for the chest. Slave and box came up together and departed cabinwards while Scarface made his way to the quarter-deck. Despite the litter on her deck and the present uncleanliness of her keel, the ship had sweet,
true lines. Under another master, the boy believed, she might show her teeth to half the Main without fear.

Not that Cheap was a poor leader. When the rum was not afire in his brain he was as cool and keen as a king's admiral should be but seldom was. But the Captain was prone to fancy himself the better man in every engagement—sailing carelessly into a fight without first carefully reckoning one chance against another. 'Twas all right to be a raging fury in battle. But battle fury was not always enough. Straight and cool thinking was what salvaged a forlorn hope. Now take the time that they had attacked that Dutch brig off Curacao—that had been a bad guess on Cheap's part. The
Naughty Lass
had barely limped free and the Dutchman had bounced on as pert as you please. Not all merchantmen to be met in these waters were fowls for the pot—some were foxes with sharp teeth!

“Wot's t' do?” a vast bulk of man heaved out of the shadows.

“Captain's chest come aboard,” returned Scarface shortly.

“Eh? Who's—oh, 'tis Cap'n Scarface,” the thick voice became derisive. “We be oncommon 'onored, Cap'n—”

“You're drunk, Nat.” Scarface tried to edge away but a huge paw caught him fast.

“Drunk say ye? Wal, mayhap I be. Though drinkin' these plaguey French wines's loike drinkin' water.” Nat Creagh, sometime poacher and all the time thief, spat noisily into the sea and relaxed his grip so that the boy was able to wriggle free. “So Cap'n Cheap 'as 'ad 'is fill o' soft livin',” he continued, rubbing his hairy hand across the red brush on his jutting chin. A great body of a man, he had the ways and mind of a child, but like an evil child
he could be cruelly malicious and maliciously cruel—especially when he suffered from the torture of his loose and decaying fangs of teeth.

“We sail tonight,” Scarface told him now.

“Then 'e'd best be a-gittin' th' men ‘ere. Nigh all o' 'em are ashore. Where be we a-goin' this time, Scarface?”

“How should I know? Cheap does not confide in me—he'll choose his own road.”

“We should try fer Panama, that's whar Harry Morgan took 'is great 'aul. Git us a Don's treasure ship an' live fat fer th' rest o' our days!”

“Or swing on the gallows—which is more like.”

Nat turned fiercely on the boy. “Don't ye be a-talkin' o' th' gallows! 'Tis unchancy, 'tis. Would ye spoil our luck?”

“Faith, Nat,” the boy forced a laugh, “why would I do that? Seein' as how my neck would be stretched along with yours. No, here's to Lady Luck herself and may she ever perch on our bowsprit. We'll doubtless need her favors,” he added to himself, remembering Cheap's proposed descent upon Barbados. “You've sailed with Cheap, these many years, have you not, Nat?” he asked.

“Aye, we've bin messmates, 'im an' me, a long time,” returned the big man proudly. “Seems loike it war only yester morn since 'e clum o'er th' rail an' asked fer th' Cap'n—pert as ye please—an' 'im without a stitch to cover 'im! But that wos a long time since.”

“Where did he climb from?” Scarface had never heard this story before.

“Out o' th' sea. Aye, 'e came out o' th' sea an' into it 'e'll go. That's wot that nigger wench tole 'im once. Out
o' th' sea—into th' sea.” Nat sighed, the wine within his great paunch making him wax sentimental.

“But how did he get into the sea?” protested Scarface.

“ 'E said 'e wos wrecked loike,” Nat laughed. “But thar 'ad bin no storm, mind ye, only calm an' fair winds. An' wot ship flounders in a smooth sea? But we wos a mile off Barbados an' they 'ave white slaves thar—call 'em ‘Red Legs' 'cause their skin be so burnt loike. Iffen a man, look ye, 'as th' courage t' beat out t' sea in a stolen canoe, I'd not be one t' send 'im back t' th' 'ell o' th' cane fields. An' th' Cap'n wos o' a loike mind—'e'd bin a slave 'isself. That wos Cap'n Trebor, 'im wot commanded th' ship
Valor.
Good t' Cheap loike a brother 'e wos, 'ad ‘im into th' great cabin an' at table with th' rest o' 'is officers. Trebor wos a ‘ard man, but thar wos rich pickin' fer ‘em as sailed under ‘im. That wos nigh twenty years ago. Cheap warn't much more o' a man than ye be now. When Trebor went Cheap took command an' I've served ‘im ever since. Ain't a better boatswain on th' coast then I be—even iffen I did leave me ears in England!” Nat chuckled and thumped the boy on the back.

“Ye war right,” he added a moment later. “Cheap means to sail. ‘Ere comes th' boys.”

Boats had put out from shore, heading toward the
Naughty Lass
and, by the light of a lantern in the nearest, Scarface made out the dapper person of Captain Jonathan Cheap.

When her master came aboard the ship awoke to furious activity. Cheap did not waste words—or men. The
Naughty Lass
raised anchor and stood out for the open
sea, her sails bent to catch the last cupful of wind. Down to the curling water curtseyed the smirking figurehead which named her, curtseyed and arose again with the heave of the swell.

Scarface watched the lights of Tortuga dim. He wondered if Pym was eating his solitary supper in his fusty lodgings or in the wine shop. Now they were swinging past the headlands where he had been that afternoon.

The sea was laced with foam and flashes of blue-green phosphorescence tipped the waves. Through the cordage sang the brisk song of the trade winds. A smooth sea beneath and a fine wind behind them. And before—all the Spanish Main for their plucking.

“Scarface, ye devil's meat!” roared a voice from below. “Whar be ye?”

With a sigh the youngster swung down to the waist and faced the shouter. “Here, Nat.”

“Git t' yer work below, ye lubber!”

Dodging the blow aimed at his head, the boy darted into the narrow galley and reached for the silver tankard which was Cheap's prized property. With this in his fist and a squat bottle under his arm Scarface went into the great cabin where the Captain sprawled at ease, his officers facing him, seated like a row of sullen school boys on the stern locker.