On the Account

Front matter

ON the ACCOUNT

by

J. ALLAN DUNN

I. Old Providence Island

CHAPTER I OLD PROVIDENCE ISLAND

CAPTAIN BANE, gentleman of fortune, commander of the Swift Return, pushed the black bottle across the table to the little wizened man who faced him. The cabin overflowed with swaggering figures, their tarnished sea-togs enlivened with gaudy sashes and head-kerchiefs. Reckless faces peered down through the open skylight, backed by the starred sky of the tropic July night. The swinging lamp shone full on the rapacious, eager face of Bane.

It was weather-tanned to leather, save where the black beard that covered half his chest had protected it. His gaze held the fixed glare of lenses, deep lines showed between his brows, his curving nose twitched at the flanging nostrils, the bone of it pressing gray through the skin, flattened at the bridge; a fitting beak for a preying seabird.

“Come, Sawney, come Governor, down with four fingers of the stuff and out with your news! Rogers is off the bar, you say. Drink, man, and talk quickly!”

The trembling Sawney, derisively dubbed “Governor” by the pirates who had assembled upon the Island of Providence to await the king’s proclamation and pardon for all freebooters surrendering their ships and arms by the last day of August, 1718, gulped down the fiery schnapps, choked till the tears ran from his red eyerims and told his news.

“Mr. Woods Rogers, Governor and Vice-Admiral of the Bahamas,” he began and, warned by the blaze that shone in the captain’s eyes, broke into less ceremonious speech. “The fleet came at sunset,” he went on. “Richard Turnley is pilot and on his advice they lie by till morning.”

“Ah!” Bane’s tense features relaxed. “How know you this?”

“The Lings put off to the fleet from Harbor Island with vegetables. They came aboard the Rose man-of-war and saw the Governor and one Captain Whitney.”

“The canting, favor-currying rogues. What said they?”

“They told the governor that Ben Hornygold, with Davis, Burgess, Carter, yourself and others were on shore upon Providence, in all nigh to a thousand pi—” he checked himself with a gulp of fear—“a thousand gentlemen of fortune2”

Bane smashed his fist upon the table and guffawed.

“Nay, out with it, man. Pirates! ’Tis a brave word for those that fit it. So Dick Ling told that a thousand were waiting to cringe before Rogers and kiss the king’s foot and beg to be his men again. Told also, doubtless, that they were assembled about Nassau where the fort is tumbling for repair with but one nine-pounder. And the fleet lies off until tomorrow.

“Thanks, Sawney, I will remember this. Another drink and off you go. Not a word ashore that you have visited me. 2 you, drink, when I offer it.”

The little man swallowed perforce the tumbler that was poured out for him and stumbled up the companionway where rough hands set him into his dingey and saw him sculling drunkenly shorewards.

“A thousand pirates! A thousand lick spittles! A thousand mice-hearted cravens!” exclaimed Bane. “Blood and bones! What say you, men? Are you for kissing the king’s foot and going softly with sixpence in your pockets and calved in cotton, or are you for silk hose and gold guineas?”

“I was with Kidd.”

The man who spoke had a face the color of a ripe mulberry, seamed like a walnut-shell. One eye was sightless, like a bruised grape, the other gleamed between lids scar let-hawed as those of a dog. On one cheek powder had tattooed the badge of his calling. The end of his bulbous nose had been sliced and indifferently patched.

“Hanged he was,” he went on. “Strung up at Execution Dock seventeen years ago come last month. He swings in chains down the river yet with Churchill, How, Mullins, Parrot and the rest of the brave lads. Yet would I rather hang than go halting all my days at sight of a constable. A murrain on the Governor, say I.”

“Kidd was a canting coward,” said Bane. “What said he on the gallows? ‘For my part I am the most innocent of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.’ We want no Kidds nor his kind of cattle aboard, prating of chains. Silence, you dog!”

The old buccaneer was on his feet, his drink-palsied hand fumbling at his belt.

“Blood and wounds!” he cried. “No man calls me coward!”

But Bane had caught the uneasy shifting of his followers’ eyes at the talk of gallows and chains. He flung the black bottle and it smashed upon the other’s skull. He collapsed, blood streaming from a strip of scalp, mingling with the reek of the liquor.

“Put him in the peak!” ordered Bane, and watched while his words were obeyed, his fierce eyes challenging his men. “Hurley! Long! Take your watches and guard the boats. No man leaves this ship save on my orders.”

“If they cannot cross the bar neither can we,” muttered a pirate and his opinion found echoing “ayes” from many of the rest.

“Then we go in the sloop,” said Bane. “What, my bullies, because Rogers has come a month too soon, are we to stay like rats in a trap and give up our freedom with our booty? Are you men or mice? Will you be governed like sneaking puppies by those who tamely submit to laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get with their knavery, 2 them for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls!

“They vilify us, the scoundrels, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. I am a free prince and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred ships at sea and an army of a hundred thousand men in the field.

“Shall I submit to be kicked about a deck at the pleasure of one who fancies himself my superior? Shall I, and you, free men all, give up our delights, the clunk of guineas and the clink of glasses, the kisses of women and our fellowhip, because, forsooth, Rogers says so?

“What if we leave the Swift Return behind us? I was a lad when first I ran away from the cursed merchantman to which they had bound me ’prentice. With six brave hearts we borrowed a canoe and stole away to the Grand Camanas, to go on the account. We took a turtling sloop and joined on other bullies until we gained an Irish brigantine. From that we took a Spanish trading stoop of six guns. From that, on the coast of Virginia, a New England brigantine bound for Barbados that yielded us a vessel of ten guns.

“Now there were eighty of us aboard. From the Bahamas to Guinea Coast and back we sailed, to Madagascar and the Arabian Gulf. We traded the brigantine for a galley of twenty-four guns and at the last we took a three-decker of Portugal, outbound from Brazil. Thirty-six guns she mounted but we took her, a hundred and eighty of us hearties, ripping off her upper deck, deep-waisting her by cutting down the gunwale and so made her the Swift Return. Shall we not start again in a sloop?

“I tell you, my bullies, that my star rises. Shall I screen it with the king’s parchment? Set me adrift with three logs, a palmetto sail and six good companions and within the year ye shall see me scattering gold in Puerto Rico and treading the deck of a ship that can fight and sail with any on the seas!

“Get out the pannikins and broach a keg of rum, boys. We have work before us.”

While the cabin-lads, dusky Bermudian natives, set out the liquor, Bane pressed home his arguments, made more potent by the effects of the strong, raw spirits.

“We will transfer into the sloop and be through the East Passage at daybreak and leaving these whining curs to await the governor’s pleasure. Follow me and I will undertake to shape a course that shall lead you to ease and plenty. Let the others lay down, they leave us the greater pickings. What is it, lads? The freedom of the seas—or will ye turn farmers?”

A red-headed ruffian, lacking one ear, cleft by a cutlass, roared out his answer as he drained his pannikin and passed it for more. The rest joined in his resolution.

“Aye, we’ll stand by you. A gold chain or a wooden leg!”

II. Through the East Passage

CHAPTER II THROUGH THE EAST PASSAGE

IT WAS within an hour of daybreak when the crew of the Swift Return sweating with their labor and the liquor freely served to them, had transferred themselves to the little sloop of fifty tons, carrying with them the possessions they most valued, and stores, with all the ammunition they could stow aboard.

The guns of the Swift Return were charged with double, round and partridge and the vessel set afire. The sloop dropped slowly down towards the East Passage, the crooked, shallow channel of which could not be attempted before dawn.

The broader harbor mouth was still blocked by the fleet though there was now sufficient water for the deepest-drafted ship to cross and it was Bane’s hope that the vice-admiral would send in some ships or boats to investigate the blaze.

“If luck holds she will burn down to them,” he said, “and scatter a few of them to hell. Since we can not use her, we’ll sink her.”

Faint shouts came from Nassau where the thousand pirates were celebrating the advent of the king’s pardon. The low-lying island of Providence was a blur against the skyline. A faint breeze wafted the sloop closer to the tortuous passage that formed the backdoor of the harbor, through which Bane meant to achieve his freedom.

He had ordered lights out and silence, for fear they might be boarded, and the crew sprawled on the over-crowded decks talking in whispers, fired with excitement and Jamaica rum. Bane stood near the tiller, gazing back at the flaming Swift Return.

A cutter put out from the Rose man-of-war and was rowed swiftly toward the land with instructions to investigate the cause of the red glow that pulsed behind the head-land fringed with palmetto that hid the Swift Return from the view of the fleet. The fire had reached the gun-deck and the starboard and larboard batteries were scattering shot across an area brilliantly illumined by the blaze.

Bane swore through his beard at the failure of his plan. Then he saw the cutter come into the radiance, pause and swerve widely about the Swift Return in a course that would bring them close to the sloop.

He gave a swift order and two boats bristling with men were soon in the water, making with swift, choppy, noiseless oar-strokes toward the cutter.

“We need a messenger,” said Bane, with a chuckle. “We’ll take the king’s officer and send him back to the fleet after we clear the passage.”

The cutter, making for the shore, was intercepted by the two boats that swept up, one on either side, from the darkness. The odds were fifty to ten. The lieutenant, seeing the gunwales gripped by twenty pairs of hands while a voice to right and left hoarsely demanded his surrender, disgustedly gave the word and the freebooters returned aboard triumphantly as the sky began to gray and showed the sullen rollers slapping on the sand spits and coral bars that guarded the passage.

The breeze strengthened and the sloop, close-hauled, nosed her way through the winding channel. The sun rolled up, leaping clear from the rim of the sea and showing the fleet driving under half-sail across the bar into the harbor, nearly a mile away,

“Up with the Roger and fire a gun,” shouted Bane. A black flag slipped up to the masthead and broke out its sable defiance as a twelve-pounder roared, scaring the breakfast-hunting birds. The cutter trailed at the stern.

“Into her and back to the fleet with you,” said the buccaneer to the sulky lieutenant. “Tell your commander and Rogers, the king’s jackal, that Bane and his lads are away. If they want to test the speed of our heels or the gage of our guns, let them come after us. It is a fair wind for a race and clear weather for sighting. Cast off there, or we’ll cut you loose!”

The king’s men were in their craft, dragged with lifting stem behind the sloop.

“Give us our oars,” called the lieutenant.

“Scramble for them and be 2 to ye,” cried Bane.

A cutlas-stroke severed the line as the oars were tossed into the sea and the pirates swarmed to the rail, mocking the crew of the cutter as they recovered, one at a time, their means of progress and, at last, setting a quick stroke, rowed back for the passage.

“Now lads, it’s ho, for Hispaniola!” cried Bane. “It will be an hour before those lubbers get after us. With the wind abeam and the good start we can laugh at them. It will not be long before we’ll take a better ship and then we’ll carry out what has long been in my mind.

“Now that those curs ashore have surrendered we’ll have the trade to ourselves. We’ll find some place among the Keys where we’ll set up a fort, some spot among the reefs that has a score of exits and but one entrance. That shall be our capital where we’ll all live as kings in our own principality and be in debt to no man.”

CHEER after cheer went up as the course was changed and the sloop, reaching faster and faster, headed for the Spanish Main. The gage was cast. They were outlaws now beyond redemption. Bane had voiced their prime ambition, to set up a kingdom to which they could go between raids, with loot and women, forced from prizes or picked up in Puerto Rico, hoydens as reckless as themselves.

There were plenty of towns where they would be made welcome when the coast was clear, to go swaggering, hip-booted, clad in silks and velvets, roaring out their songs, stampeding the citizens, boarding the taverns, paying freely for unlicensed privilege with broad pieces of eight, looting a quiet plantation, perhaps, and marching away to the crackling of the gutted buildings and the shrieks of women borne off across their shoulders. A gay life, a devil-may-care existence with hell for the hind-most!

A short fife and merry one until they danced the last jig with the hangman’s knot behind their ear or went down fighting on slippery decks. There would be an end to it, of course, but, while it lasted, they would crowd it with excitement and Bane was a lucky leader and a brave one. A man of good family, it was whispered, though none dared question him. They bowed to his superior education. It was good to have a captain who could sling the lingo as he did and who was the first across the rail when they laid alongside.

The old ruffian who had prated of Kidd had come on deck, his head bound in a bloody rag, maudlin with the rum that Bane sent him as a salve for his cracked pate. He was a favorite aboard for his tales of earlier raids and he was greeted with rough jests as he made his way aft to where Bane stood at the taffrail watching for signs of pursuit. The captain greeted him evenly.

“Well, old dog, can your tongue still wag?” The man’s one bloodshot eye gleamed without resentment.

“Waste no more good liquor on the outside of my head, Captain,” he said.

“I sent you a pannikin. So then, there’s no 'ill-will. You had these fainthearts wavering with your prate of Kidd in chains. Blood and fury, man, must you conjure up a croaking vision to spoil good sport in the making?”

“I am nigher the end than you, maybe, though ’tis likely to be a short shrift for boy and graybeard in this calling, Captain. So we are to sea again, with yon poltroons in Providence on their marrows before Rogers. The sea is ours. There is but one life, look ye, and that’s the life of a rover. No ill-will, Captain, that another pannikin will not soak up.”

He rolled forward, growling in a husky bass a song that his fellows took up in chorus.

The Roger to the peak and the ocean to our lee. A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree. And it’s ho, for the life of a rover. The landsman lies a dying with the parson by his side. The freeman goes a sailing at the turning of the tide. Give me a sheet that’s trailing, a breeze that follows fleet. A cutlas in my good right band, my boots upon my feet. For that’s the way to die, sirs, not with a canting sigh, sirs. The Roger flaunting at the peak, the ocean to the lee; A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree. Yo ho, for the life of a rover!

The sloop heeled to the strengthening wind with a rush of foam along her sides that seethed in at the scuppers. The low land was but a line behind them. Clouds had come scurrying up with the dawn and the sun seemed to rush through the masses of scud that promised dirty weather ahead.

A shaft shot through a rift and picked out the triangle of sail that was making its way out of the East Passage. The pursuit was on. Bane called for his glass and pulled out the long telescope.

“It’s but a sloop,” he announced. “She sails fast and she’s a gut of men aboard. Fight or run, there’s a storm brewing. Break out a keg, bullies all. The sloop’s stanch, no need for a reef. Double-shot the guns in case we need ’em. Take the tarpaulin off the stern-chaser!”

A furious blast swooped down and tore the woolen cap from his head as he stood by the rail, clinging to the stays.

“Hell’s loose, lads. May the devil serve us!”

III. "From the Seas!"

CHAPTER III “FROM THE SEAS!”

DULL, sunless noon found the pirates’ sloop in a welter of gray sea that matched the leaden scurry of the sky above them. They had long since dropped the chase and had made shift to double-reef the mainsail but they were in sorry case. The cabin accommodations were scanty and sixty of them were forced to make shift for themselves upon the spume-swept deck. The water was fairly warm but they were drenched and endeavored to offset their misery by copious drafts of rum.

As the afternoon wore on darkness came rapidly with an increasing gale and it was all they could do with tackles to the goos neck of the tiller, two men at the wheel and two in the combination gunroom and cabin, to keep the ship’s head to the sea. The waves ran riot, charging in a maelstrom. The sky turned slaty-black, illumined with sheets of lightning that lit up the seething yeast of the tortured ocean and the claps of thunder kept up an incessant peal.

On deck the men answered the storm with blasphemies that were swept aft in a jumble of imprecation. The sloop staggered under the blows of wind and water. In the cabin the billows pounded at her stern as if a giant beat upon a mighty drum.

The place was reeking with foul air and the lamp shone dimly through trailing tobacco smoke. At the head of the table Bane held place, having given over the deck to the quartermaster, “Scarry-Dick” Denton. His eyes were set and his beard was soaked with liquor spilled by the tossing of the sloop as he tried to quaff it.

“Sink or swim,” he shouted, “we’ll go through bravely. Blood and fire, listen to the thunder!”

He rose, swaying, as the cabin glared blue in the lightning that poured in through port holes and skylight, and held to the breech of a gun, securely lashed behind its closed port.

“The gods are drunk with us in their tipple and have gone together by the ears. Death and fury, an’ we could, I’d run out the guns and return ’em a salute. The king’s men have run for cover but we are bound for the open. Blow, 2 ye, blow. The wind’s from all quarters. I’m for the deck.”

He made his way over the sodden bodies of some of the crew and reached the deck as one of the short and furious seas broke upon the poop, tore away the taffrail and swept the two men from the wheel, driving them into the boarding netting that had been stretched above the coaming for safety lines. Bane jumped to the tiller and put his strength to it while the men on the watch-tackles heaved with him.

A maddened gust of wind roared at the sloop and seemed for the moment to lift her clear of the seething water. Her stern crashed down, the reefed staysail broke clear and whipped out of sight like a storm-herded gull. Scarry-Dick, clinging to the netting, fought his way forward and, with three men, worked at the furl of the thrashing jib. A tiny lull saved them from the trough and the pirates managed to set enough headsail to keep the sloop from broaching to.

The carpenter clawed his way out of the cabin and clung to Bane, shouting in his ear. Water was working in, already above the line of bilge. As the quartermaster came back Bane signaled for him to take the helm and dived below, kicking the drunken men in the cabin into sensibility and buffeting them before him.

It was impossible to open the forehatch but they dragged a spare spar aft and rigged it with a funnel of canvas, striving like demons until they had got it clear of the bowsprit and dropped it into the sea as the mainsail came down on the run and was smothered by twenty men. The sea-anchor filled, the sloop swung head on, bare-poled, backing before the storm, but riding it, while the carpenter and his assistants strove to stanch the leak where the oakum had worked out of a seam.

It was the last flurry of the storm. The wind died away with howls of baffled rage, the sullen seas slowly subsided and, in the west, the sky lifted to a pale streak of chrome. Upon the luminous background showed the lifting topmasts of a big ship, apparently a merchantman.

“There’s our next craft, lads,” cried Bane. “In with the sea-anchor and up sail again. She heads this way. ’Tis two glasses yet to sunset. We’ll sleep aboard of her to-night.”

The merchantman came slowly on while the clouds still lifted, trailing skirts of the fast disappearing hurricane. The air was sweet, the sea, still rough and covered with catspaws, a brilliant indigo. The sloop sailed on to meet her, the crew crowding the cabin and lying flat upon the decks, covered with spare canvas. Pistols were Stuck in sashes, there was a cutlas for every right hand, a keen knife ready for each left.

Bane had hauled down the shreds of his black ensign and now flew a jack at the peak, upside down in signal of distress. With her torn taffrail, the decks apparently cumbered with dismantled canvas, only three or four men visible, the sloop, going sluggishly, streams of water issuing from her pumps, gained the sympathy of the commander of the merchantman.

The pirates could see him on the poop, speaking-trumpet in hand, and Bane caught the bellow of his voice, borne down wind, shouting for the smaller vessel to come-up and stand-by for a boat.

“She’s no beauty,” said Bane, “but she will serve. She’s gulled! She sees the jack! Not a man of ye moves till I give the word. Then aboard! We’ll need no guns. Keep them hidden behind the ports.”

The two craft drew nearer, the sloop, close-hauled, held too close for her point of best speed by Bane; the ship surging along with yards squared to the following breeze, her forefoot dripping with brine, rising and falling heavily to the swash.

Bane grinned as he spun the wheel, timing his maneuver so that the sloop hung clumsily in the eye of the wind, almost missed stays and came about on the crest of a long roller, forging down under the side of the merchantman, apparently in imminent danger of being crushed like an eggshell. Bane knew that the backwash from the ship would hold him off long enough to execute his plan.

“Easy, you lubbers,” shouted the merchant-captain. “What sloop is that?”

“The Ranger. From the seas!” answered Bane in the slogan of the freebooters.

At the phrase the cabin of the sloop vomited men. The loose canvas was hurled aside and sixty pirates sprang to the rail. A volley of oaths accenting his swift orders sounded through the speaking-trumpet of the ship’s captain. A gun-port swung slowly open, then another, and the muzzles of carronades showed in the opening.

“Boarders away!” yelled Bane, leading his men in a spring for the rail of the merchantman as a wave lifted them to its level.

Grappling hooks were thrown and tangled in the standing-rigging, pirates swarmed through the open gun-ports and chased the panic-stricken servers. Bane’s pistol fire caught the captain in his shoulder. There were a few scattering shots, a clashing grind of steel on steel, a half-hearted resistance from half-armed men and the ship was a prize. Scarry-Dick took deck-command with a dozen men while the rest of the pirates swarmed through the ship.

THE wounded captain was brought before Bane, lording it in the usurped cabin, gulping port from a decanter. His men had broached some of the cargo and, in freebooting independence, stamped into the cabin, swathed in silks, laced hats upon their headkerchiefs, a bottle in each hand, boastful, anticking like masquerading schoolboys.

Bane glanced over the manifest that a trembling purser handed him.

“The Neptune, from Bristol, England, laden with bale goods and general merchandise,” he said. ’Tis a clumsy hooker, but ’twill serve our turn until a better-lined vessel comes along.” He scowled at the captain, pale from loss of blood, his hands bound behind him, faint but resolute. The brave look in his eyes provoked Bane’s unruly spirit to a gale of unreasoning fury.

“Well, you dog,” he demanded. “Why don’t you beg for your life?”

The captain smiled.

“You have already tried to take it, you murdering pirate. I ask nothing from your kind of cattle.”

Bane’s brows closed in a black smear of wrath.

“You swim for that, you 2 rogue,” he cried.

“You have long since been damned,” said the other evenly. “And, as surely as I swim, so some day you will swing from the mast that knows no deck.”

Bane’s gaze could not hold the dauntless look of the prisoner. He hurled the decanter at him. It smashed against the wall as the captain swiftly moved his head and the rich perfume of the wine filled the room. Bane drew his pistol from his sash, his face convulsed with rage.

“Damned, am I? Then I will send you first to hell to greet me when I come!”

He fired pointblank in the other’s face so that the powder gas scorched it and the grains blackened it about the cruel hole between the eyes. The captain spun about and fell. Bane took a step and spurned the body with his foot.

“Over with that carrion,” he ordered. “It grows dark. Strip the sloop. Set those cravens aboard.” He nodded toward a group of shaking passengers. “Bring in the crew.”

The sailors of the Neptune were herded before him.

“Look ye,” said Bane. “I want no forced men aboard my craft. Free men and equal are we all. Join, and, as ye prove, ye get a full share. That—or aboard the sloop with ye.”

The men interchanged looks and shifted on their feet. Then one stepped forward and another until but a dozen remained, including the officers of the captured vessel.

“Good,” declared Bane. “Set these stubborn fools aboard. Send me the quartermaster.”

Night found the Neptune heading under the stars for Green Turtle Bay, the sea-scooped crescent of one of the smaller Bahamas, the leaking sloop far astern, the old buccaneer crooning at the wheel.

His ribs shall make a cage for fish, His flesh a sea-snake’s meal, His eyes a mermaid’s dainty dish. His2

His voice broke off in a croak as he gazed upward. A star had fallen athwart the heavens.

“’Tis a bad omen,” he muttered. “A bad omen. To kill in fight, aye, that’s one thing. But to murder in cold blood spells evil. ’Twas not so in Kidd’s time. A falling star is a summoned soul!”

His superstition-ridden imagination saw in the meteor the spirit of the dead captain speeding for judgment.

“Tend your course, there, you one-eyed crab!” shouted Scarry-Dick as the Neptune swung off and the clews of the topsails shivered.

“Aye, aye, sir! Crab, am I?” he said beneath his breath as the quartermaster followed up his reprimand with a string of oaths. “Yet have I claws that can nip.”

He shifted the spokes, peering at the binnacle. He was the best helmsman aboard and he resented the rebuke. The shadowy sails rustled softly above him, he could hear the hiss of the wake above the songs and shouts of the carousing pirates below and presently he took up his own song again.

The broken blade that spilled his life. Lies rusting in the ooze; The maid that hoped he’d call her wife. Another love must choose; Yo-ho! Another love must choose.