The last buccaneer

The next morning we weighed anchor and sailed round Cape Gracias à Dios to the Caratasca Lagoon, and there was the Blessed Endeavour, high and dry on the sandy beach, having her bottom scrubbed. You would think, now, that Brandon Pomfrett was rising on the crest of fortune’s wave: his ship recovered, with her hold full of treasure, the girl he admired in his company, and fixed to remain there. And yet, one look at Dawkins’s burly figure and old, sly visage was enough to poison expectation. You could no more put your trust in him than in a wild boar of the woods. You might try to imagine yourself doing so, and you would always fail. And it was a far cry to England from Caratasca Cays. But, what choice had we? None. We must even run the gauntlet. I think Brandon Pomfrett would have given his right hand, or, at least, his left, to carry off Morgan Leroux in the Modesty ship and pitch his owners’ interests overboard. Indeed, I suggested that he should do so, offering to remain aboard the Blessed Endeavour in his place. But he would not have it—such is the force of early training in the service of Madam Duty.

“No, no,” says he. “Where there’s three of us, Dawkins may play fair. With one alone—why, I leave you to guess the sequel. As it is, I don’t see how we’re to sleep of nights. We three—or at least the two of us—must keep watch and watch about and pistols primed.” And so we did. So long as we were shipmates with Captain Dawkins he never caught the trio napping; two waked while one slept, that was the arrangement; and Morgan Leroux took her spell fairly. I would not have married that wild wench for a king’s ransom; such desperate adventures were not for the quiet clerk; but he gave her full meed of admiration.

“And supposing Mistress Morgan Leroux is—is found out?” I said. “Because, you know, it’s sure to happen, sooner or later. And what then?”

“Ay, ay,” said the unhappy agent. “I tell you, the thought rides me like a nightmare. Well, you’ll see. I’ll contrive to cheat the devil there, too.”

“It’s not one devil, it’s ninety fiends of the pit you’ve to deal with, my son. Well, we’ll hope for the best—the longest liver takes all.”

You see, our supercargo had a weighty burden for green shoulders to carry. A man may bear almost any weight of his proper work, and never be the worse of it; but when a woman comes and gaily perches herself a-top, ’tis then his sinews begin to crack.

To the general council of officers, held that evening, Captain Dawkins in these words genially introduced the agent and his clerk.

“Gentlemen, here’s Mr Pomfrett and Mr Winter returned among us after their turn ashore, which I’m sure neither you nor I begrudge them. We’ve managed to carry on, by hook or by crook, and even done a little business on our own account, in the mean time. Now, here’s the supercargo, come to overhaul the Book of Plunder, as it’s only right he should, d’ye see, and he demands a dividend.”

Mr Dawkins’s insinuation had instant effect. One of the mates arose and requested some explanation of our absence from the ship. Was it to be understood, he desired to know, that we were to come and go as we pleased, while the rest of the ship’s company kept to their job, and then we were to return at our pleasure and overhaul their takings?

“Easy, my lad, easy,” said Dawkins. “What you’re a saying is disrespectful to me”—Mr Dawkins winked shamelessly—“and don’t you forget it, my son. If I’ve consented to accept Mr Pomfrett’s explanation, why, that’s enough, I should think. So let’s hear no more of it. Let bygones——”

“Stop!” cried Pomfrett. “Mr Dawkins, you know as well as I do, that I have to account to my owners in this matter, and not to you, nor to any man aboard.—Quartermaster!”

“Sir.” The grizzled old quartermaster jumped to his feet with an expectant alacrity.

“Take notice of what I say. Now, gentlemen! I’ll fight any man aboard this ship who calls my conduct in question.” He glanced about the ring of hostile faces. There was a dead silence.

“Come now,” said the quartermaster, rubbing his hands, “ain’t there any gentleman anxious for to oblige? Why, we ain’t had a spell ashore with the small-arms all the v’yage.”

It is the quartermaster’s business, by pirates’ law, to stand umpire in all quarrels involving a duel, which must always be fought on shore. But our friend was not to exercise his office on this occasion. No one took up the challenge.

“Very well,” said Brandon. “Then since we are not to fight, let us be friends. Now, I’ll tell you, we’ve not quitted the ship for our own pleasure, of that you may take your oath. We’ve been about the owners’ business; and if you want proof, there’s the little Modesty lying off the beach. That ship joins the expedition, gentlemen, and she’s not empty, either.”

Thus did the agent turn the tide in his favour; and everyone clamoured to hear the story of our adventures. But Dawkins, who had his own reasons for checking indiscriminate curiosity, hastily called the meeting to order. The dividend was duly declared; and, reserving the plate for the owners, there remained about an hundred pieces of eight, either in money or money’s worth, per share, the men taking a single share each, the officers more, in proportion to their rank. All Captain Dawkins’s winnings he handed to Pomfrett. This payment left him still in debt to us, on account of the compensation we demanded for the slave-dealing transaction.

“You had better remit the rest,” I said. “I would sooner have Dawkins in a good temper than the money, any day. You saw in the council how dangerous he is.”

“Ah, but I had the dog in hand,” said Pomfrett. “And I’ll pouch every penny, though Dawkins sweat blood for it.”

This had a fine sound, no doubt; but I thought it highly improbable that Mr Dawkins would indulge in any such painful exercise. And, indeed, so soon as the dividend had been declared, Mr Dawkins went about on another tack. He called another council to settle on our plan of action, and opened proceedings by roundly stating that the owners’ agent, after his secret transactions ashore—whatever they might have been—considered that enough had been done for the owners; that, as for the ship’s company, an hundred pieces of eight should surely content them; and that, in fine, we should sail for England. This was a method of stating the case which left Pomfrett nothing which he could openly challenge, since the statement was substantially true. He had to sit still under the implication, biting his nails, his face dark with passion, amid a clamour of protest. They would put to sea and cruise for the Spanish plate-ships; they would go southward, through Magellan’s Straits, and plunder the towns of the Pacific coast; they would do anything, in fact, and go anywhere; but they would never go home till they were glutted to the brim.

“Your proposition don’t seem what you might call popular, Mr Pomfrett,” says Dawkins, with a grin. “I reckon we’ll have to beat up for plunder yet, sir.”

“Lay your course, then,” says Pomfrett. “You’ll find me follow you, Mr Dawkins.”

So Dawkins laid his course, and the council agreed to follow it. Mr Dawkins would take boats up the river Coco, which flows out under Cape Gracias à Dios, and attempt the town of Cartagena. “It’s a rich town,” says he, “and never been taken before, that I know of. A virgin city, is Cartagena, and, by what I’ve heard, there’s diamonds in it, too.”

The resolution was carried by acclamation. The ship would not be ready for sea for a week; the men were tired of the beach, and here was a fine prospect of excitement, if no more. So some sixty men and officers embarked in the boats of the two ships, well furnished with small-arms and victuals, pulled out of the lagoon one morning, and vanished into the unknown. The agent, Morgan Leroux, and myself were left to finish the work of fitting the Blessed Endeavour for sea, with the rest of the men, to the number of twenty-five or thirty. There was plenty to be done, for, when the ship came to be examined for defects, it was evident she had never been properly overhauled before sailing from Bristol docks—another instance of the owners’ sinful negligence.

“These damned fat burgesses,” said the agent, with great bitterness, “would sooner see the whole expedition founder in sight of land than fetch a guinea out of their bursting money-bags.”

But, we gained three weeks’ respite by reason of this last bit of parsimony. The men worked fairly, after a fit of insubordination which brought six of them to the whipping-post the very day after Dawkins left. The agent stood by with a pistol in each hand and had three dozen well laid on, and there was but little trouble with them after that salutary example.

The Indians of those parts, a brown and peaceable folk, came out of the woods and trafficked fresh meat, hog’s flesh and turtle, yams and green stuff, for knives and beads and such toys. They made an encampment near by, and with their huts of branches and palm-leaves and our tents of sailcloth, and the camp-fires burning night and day, we made quite a settled little colony by the still waters of the great lagoon. As for Brandon Pomfrett, he followed Morgan Leroux like her shadow, greedily snatching a certain feverish pleasure in her society, though it is likely that the suspense in which we lived—except when we forgot all in the present, which happened oftener than you might suppose—infused a deal of discomfort into those tantalising relations. Soon or late, the inevitable Dawkins would come merrily back to us, with all his crew; ever the shadow of Murch menaced us from afar; there was the mysterious visitation at night of the strange boat, with its answering challenge, “Dead or alive,” still unexplained; and, looming ahead of us, the problem of the return voyage, sure to be long, hazardous, difficult, and very likely fatal. True, there was one solution, one way of escape, that Morgan Leroux urged us to follow—to set sail there and then in the Blessed Endeavour, with the crew we had, for the nearest port in English possession, fill up the complement, and away to England. But Pomfrett would not have it. He was bound, he said, to respect his compact with Dawkins.

“And do you suppose,” said Morgan, “that he won’t break faith with you, as soon as he gets a chance? I thought you had more sense.”

But the agent was firm. “Very well,” said Morgan, “you must even stay and be damned, if you’re so squeamish. But it’s hard on me, I’m bound to say, it’s hard on me. I never swore a silly oath to a treacherous old dog that couldn’t keep his word if he tried.”

“And what, in God’s name, does it matter who you swore to, if you did swear,” cried the wretched Pomfrett. And then they began to wrangle, and I left them to settle it between themselves. Be warned, ye bachelors, by this example; and when you ride with fortune, do not take a lady on the crupper. I think it likely that, if Morgan had persisted in her expostulations, Brandon would have yielded at last. Had she made a direct issue of the matter, and challenged him to choose between herself and Dawkins, between Morgan Leroux and his plighted word, I am sure he would have whistled his pledges down the wind and taken the lady; and I, for one, would not blame him. But Morgan never went so far; it was a temptation that must have allured her constantly, yet she never yielded. She had a good heart, this Morgan, as I always said. So we stayed, and in good time we were damned, even as Morgan had prophesied.

Dawkins and his party had been absent for three weeks; the Blessed Endeavour, all sound and seaworthy once more, had been warped off at high water, and lay out in the lagoon, moored fore and aft; and we were hoisting her heavy cargo in against Dawkins’s return, which we were hourly expecting. There was no watch kept; we were all extremely busy; and so, when there came the sudden boom of a heavy gun, fired somewhere close at hand, the echoes ringing from rock to rock, we were properly alarmed.

There, lying off the lagoon, was a great ship, the sun shining on her tower of canvas, turning her to a full-sailed ship of pearl. As we looked, the little black ball of a flag ran up the main halliards, broke free, and flew broad and black at the mast-head, flaunting its white device of the figure of death. It was the Wheel of Fortune. Murch had come at last.