His calm confidence left Rackham in no doubt that he could carry out exactly what he had promised. Yet because the pirate had more of principle than was usual in his kind, he hesitated.
‘It’s dirty,’ he said bluntly, and Rogers was almost amused.
‘Pitch defiles those who touch it, but its mark is less permanent than that left by a rope round the neck. That is your choice, and, on my soul, if you can pause over it I swear you’re over-nice for your trade.’
Frowning, Rackham considered; then he shrugged. ‘It seems there is no choice. I’ll do as you say.’
Rogers nodded to Dickey to take up his pen.
‘Since we are agreed,’ he said, ‘where is your ship?’
‘Five miles out. She comes in at midnight. There are four of us ashore. Our boat is beached in a cove a mile west of the town, and we meet the Kingston a mile offshore, due north.’ Master Dickey’s pen flew over the paper. ‘We carry thirty guns.’ He paused. ‘What else?’
Rogers had been nodding at each point mentioned. ‘Where will you hide to-night?’ he asked, adding: ‘There must be a hue and cry when you break away from here: it were best if we knew where the patrols must not look for you.’
‘We’ll be at the Lady of Holland,’ said Rackham, and Rogers inwardly approved the choice. It lay on the west of the town, in an unsavoury neighbourhood, convenient to the cove Rackham had mentioned. A few more questions he asked and glanced at the clock.
‘Then the sooner we set about it the better,’ he said. He looked at Rackham. ‘Let me remind you that it will not be to your interest at all to attempt to cross me in this. You walk on a tight-rope, Master Rackham; slip, and I’ll see you swing by it.’
With that he turned to Master Dickey. ‘There is a guard beyond the window who must be removed. Bid the sergeant bring him round into the house. Wait; not yet a moment. First slip the bar from the shutters so that Master Rackham may have free passage.’
Dickey obeyed, like a man in a trance. This night’s work was proving too much for him. Life as he knew it was not like this, with no decent interval between thought and action. It was inconceivable that such a hare-brained scheme, so hastily considered, should be put so abruptly into operation; he had yet to learn that in the Indies prompt decision was not so much a virtue as a necessity, and that to pause for second thoughts was to delay too long.
He removed the bar from the shutters and laid it down. Rogers nodded towards the door. ‘Call him now. Perhaps it might be best,’ he added to Rackham, ‘if you upset my secretary’s table as you pass,’ and the pirate nodded. Dickey was past being shocked: it was all of a piece with the rest and his only concern, he told himself morbidly, was to do as he was told.
He went to the door and called the sergeant, and as the soldier presented himself Rogers issued his orders.
‘This man to the guard-room, sergeant.’ He indicated Rackham. ‘Bring your sentry from the garden to make an escort with the others. I’ll take no chances with this gentleman: he is Calico Jack Rackham, the notorious pirate, so look to him closely.’
The sergeant’s eyes bulged at Rackham, and then he was bawling orders in the passage. There was a clatter of running feet and then a voice shouted outside the house. They heard a musket-butt grate on the gravel, followed by the sound of the sentry doubling round in answer to the summons.
The sergeant advanced purposefully on Rackham and was within a few feet of him before the pirate moved: Dickey would not have believed that a man of such size could be so nimble. Two quick strides he took before vaulting over Dickey’s table, and then the shutters were flung back and he was away. With a bellow of anger and surprise the sergeant lumbered forward.
‘Stop, you! Stop, thief!’ He ploughed across to the window. ‘You, there, sentry! Damn you, where are you? After him!’ He flung one gaitered leg across the sill and tumbled over on to the verandah. ‘Shoot, you bloody fool, there’s a traitor escaping!’
They heard the sentry’s blasphemous exclamation and then a babble of shouts and orders with the sergeant’s bellowings providing the central theme. A shot rang out, and then another before the sergeant succeeded in organising the pursuit. Rogers and Dickey stood listening as the noise of that hopeless search grew fainter, and they were still waiting when the sergeant returned and reported that the fugitive was nowhere to be found.
Rogers wasted no time on recriminations. He ordered a general alarm and at his dictation Dickey penned a note to the commander of the Fort to set a company on the hunt. Rogers signed it and handed it to the perspiring sergeant before dismissing him. Then he sat back in his chair.
‘So far, very well,’ he observed.
But Master Dickey, who had a gift for essentials, was pondering an uncomfortable detail which had been at the back of his mind for the past half hour – a detail which, it seemed to him, should have been causing the Governor much concern. He cleared his throat.
‘Ye’ll pardon me, sir,’ he began, ‘if I find a fault – or what seems tae me tae be a fault – in this scheme of yours.’
Rogers looked up. ‘Tell me.’
Dickey nodded towards the window. ‘This pirate, Rackham, is only lending himself tae your plan for one thing: tae get a pardon and marry. What’ll happen when all’s done and he finds oot the truth aboot – aboot Mistress Sampson?’
Rogers frowned, then shrugged. ‘Why, what should happen? He can do nothing: he will stand in a very tight place, to be sure, for if one breath of what has passed here ever reaches his associates Master Rackham’s time will be up. Oh, granted he will conceive himself cheated, but he can attempt nothing against me, for he will know that I have only to drop a word and he’ll be a dead man. So he must stew in his anger, I’m afraid.’
Master Dickey pursed his lips. ‘You would be a bad enemy.’
‘I’ve known worse. And his hands will be tied. No, I do not think we should fret over Calico Jack. He will have his pardon, which is more than he deserves.’
Master Dickey frowned and sighed in turn. ‘I’ll be happy to see it by and done wi’,’ he confessed.
‘You shall,’ Rogers promised him. ‘We hold the cards, from the ace down, and among them is the knave. A Calico Jack.’
3. SEA TRAP
The Lady of Holland enjoyed the doubtful distinction of being the least noisome drinking-shop on the waterfront. Rackham had chosen it because the proprietor was trustworthy – his confidence having been obtained by substantial payment backed by coldly delivered threats – and because it was convenient to the cove where the boat was hidden. Furthermore, the approach of any search party would be heralded by swift warnings running through the alleys like tremors through a web.
He strode through the lanes with elation mounting in his thoughts. He was nearer now to his ambition than he had been at any time in the past two years, and even the knowledge that a hazardous and highly dangerous twenty-four hours lay ahead could not depress him. He had set out for the Governor’s house that night with only a vague hope, but now the way seemed clear at last, and barring accidents he could count himself a free and pardoned man. He had no doubt that the Governor’s scheme would succeed – he knew something of men and Rogers had impressed him as one who did not permit his plans to go awry.
And then – Kate Sampson: the thought of her could send a thrilling urgency through Rackham’s veins. It had been a long time: two years, two ugly, hard years in which he had given her up and come near to forgetting her altogether until that chance meeting with Hedley Archer when he had learned that she was still unmarried. Then, in a few moments, all the old fire had been renewed, all the old memories reawakened, and with them the sudden determination to bridge the years of separation and take up again the course that had been so abruptly broken.
He did not for a moment doubt that he could win her back again, for he chose to see in the fact that she was still unwed an indication that she had found no one to replace him. He was ready to concede that appearances were against him – on the face
of it he had deserted her almost on the eve of their marriage – but he was confident that when she realised that he had been forced to leave her against his will and had thereafter supposed himself cut off from her irrevocably, she would understand and forgive him. Nor was this pure egotism on his part: he had truly loved her and knew that his love had been returned. Had it been otherwise their courtship would never have endured as it had done.
Her father, Jonah Sampson, had risen from the poorest beginnings to the control of broad plantations not only in the Bahamas but in Jamaica as well. His wealth was enormous, and in the circumstances it was to have been expected that he would use it to purchase for his only child a brilliant marriage to some nobleman of long pedigree and short purse. But Jonah Sampson was out of the common run of West Indian nabobs; he had spent his early life in the American colonies where ability was preferable to Norman blood, and had learned to put a low value on inherited nobility. Nor was he bound by any sentimental ties to his homeland; his life’s work lay in the New World, and it was his dream that the dynasty of commerce which he had founded should continue and expand long after his lifetime.
His first concern was that Kate’s husband should be what Master Sampson called a man; and Rackham had passed the test, despite his pirate trade. The second point was that Kate obviously adored him, and Sampson respected her judgement, child of seventeen though she was then.
To a civilised world his decision would have seemed monstrous, but the Bahamas of those days were only half-civilised, and no hard and fast line could be drawn between those who lived within the law and those who lived beyond it. More than one notable fortune had been founded with a cutlass edge wielded within the loose limits of legality in the days of the buccaneers, and because those limits had been tightened of recent years did not, in Master Sampson’s view, make those who now lived by plunder one whit worse than their predecessors. At any rate, buccaneer or pirate, Jack Rackham was a likely lad and good enough for him.
So the wooing had prospered until that night of blood and fire when the King’s ships had sailed on Providence, and the next dawn had seen Rackham at sea with Vane, a hunted fugitive. But now Vane was dead, and Rackham felt that he was within an ace of completing a circle and coming back to Kate and the life they had planned together.
Three members of his crew awaited him at the Lady of Holland: Bull, the huge, yellow-bearded Yorkshireman, whose strength and courage matched his name; Malloy, a wrinkled old sea-rover, a little simple these days, but of such great experience that his voice was listened to in the Kingston’s councils; and Ben, Rackham’s lieutenant, steady, dependable, merchantman turned pirate. When Rackham had crossed the darkened common-room of the inn, picking his way among its snoring occupants, and tapped softly on the inner room door, he was admitted with a speed and smoothness that bespoke his comrades’ long practice in conspiracy and secret business.
A rush-light flickered, and he saw Ben and Bull on either side of the door and Malloy beyond the table with a taper in his hand. He pushed the latch to behind him.
‘What’s the word, cap’n?’ Malloy came round the table.
Rackham leaned his shoulders on the door and looked round at the three faces. He shook his head, and speaking softly so as not to be overheard in the outer room, told them what had befallen at the Governor’s house – told them, that is, all but the plan that Woodes Rogers had concerted. He embroidered, for their benefit, the account of his own escape, and painted a picture of Woodes Rogers which was perhaps more severe than the Governor deserved. They heard him out, Malloy with unconcealed disappointment, Bull with occasional angry rumblings in his throat and muttered imprecations, and Ben with unmoved attention. But there was no question that they believed him.
When he had done Bull flung down on a bench and cursed Woodes Rogers with vicious fury. Malloy sat dejected, and Ben went over to the table and poured out a drink for Rackham. Holding out the pannikin he said: ‘You was lucky.’
Rackham took the pannikin. ‘Lucky enough. As close to hanging as I ever hope to be.’ That at least was true.
‘Aye, well, and now what?’ Bull’s tone challenged him. ‘What’s to be done?’
Rackham applied himself to his drink before surveying his questioner.
‘What else but to go back aboard the Kingston? To-night, when Bennett brings her in.’
‘Hell, and is that all? And we’re to sit here in this poxy kennel all day and wait for the sojers to nab us? Mebbe they’ll find our boat, by God, and then we’ll be on a lee shore proper.’ He swore and slapped the table. ‘We should never ha’ come: I knew it when there was first talk o’ this pardon. Pardon! What bloody hope was there we’d ever smell pardon?’
Ben turned contemptuous eyes on the speaker but said nothing. Rackham answered calmly.
‘There was hope until we knew what manner of man this Governor was: others had been pardoned, and so might we if we had not carried such a wealth of silver in the Kingston. Now we know where we stand, and ye’ll remember it was I who found out, and came near paying for it with my neck while you sat snug here.’
‘Snug?’ Bull rose in a towering rage. ‘Ye’ll tell me, perhaps—’
‘Be still,’ said Rackham coldly. ‘The thing’s done and there’s an end. We’re no worse off than we were before, the soldiers won’t find us here if they hunt till doomsday, and there’s a boat-load of silver out yonder to play with when we’re clear away from here. So sleep on that and think yourself lucky.’
Bull was silenced; as Rackham said, they had lost nothing and the risk had been his. While the three others might be disappointed they could accept the situation with the fatalism of their kind. It was the code by which they lived; gentlemen of fortune they styled themselves, and sudden success or failure were no more than tricks won or lost in a game which was unpredictable and in which there was no ultimate goal.
To-morrow was another day, and would find them back at sea again. And they still had the silver. So the three slept soundly enough, while Rackham lay on the hard boards, staring up into the darkness, contemplating his treachery and finding that he felt not the least qualms about what he intended to do. As Rogers had said, his followers would never have hesitated to betray him, if their interests had demanded it. He had only to think of Kate, and the plot he had concerted with Rogers seemed morally right enough. So presently he too slept, while the eastern sky lightened outside, and the patrols which scoured the town left them undisturbed.
They slipped out of a side door of the inn that evening, and made their ways separately to a little alley on the edge of the town. Before them spread the broad silver sweep of the beach, as smooth and dazzling as a snow-field. To the right it was washed gently by the surf; to the left it merged through varied-hued shadows into the inland undergrowth.
The cove where their boat lay concealed was a mile to the westward and their path ran just within the belt of palms and bushes fringing the sand. Here they were hidden and could move swiftly and silently, Ben in the lead, Malloy and Bull together, and Rackham in the rear. Moonlight slanted in ghostly rays between the tangled stems, making little pools of silver in the darkness; it was very still, but there was a hint of wind coming from the sea, and before their journey was over the moon had slid behind the cloud-wrack.
It was as well, Rackham thought. Woodes Rogers’ trap would spring all the better in the dark, provided his cutting-out party could find the Kingston when she stood in. It would take a good seaman to do that, but Rogers would have a good seaman.
Counting his steps Rackham had reckoned just over sixteen hundred when a parrot squeaked in the darkness ahead. That was Ben signalling that he had reached the cove, and a few moments later the four of them were crouched in the lee of a little cliff with the water lapping at their feet. Between the two small bluffs at the end of the cove lay the open sea, and close by was their boat, beached beneath the overhang of a great boulder and artfully screened by loose bushes. Since they could hardly hope to float her withou
t some noise they sacrificed silence to speed, flinging aside the branches and running the boat between them over the loose sand to the water’s edge.
With Ben and Bull at the oars, Malloy in the bow, and Rackham in the stern, they poled the boat out of the shallows and were soon scudding out between the bluffs to the sea.
With the exception of Malloy, who was to look out for the Kingston, they watched the shore receding behind them. The black mouth of the little creek grew smaller, flanked by the vaguely glimmering beach. Then darkness closed in on the little boat, bringing with it a sense of unprotected loneliness: Malloy fidgeted in the bows, casting anxious glances astern until Rackham bade him keep watch in front of him. Ben and Bull, pulling strongly, were sending the boat through the water at a fair speed, and when Rackham calculated that they must be fifteen hundred yards from the shore he ordered them to cease rowing. They rested on their oars, listening while the boat rode the light swell, their ears straining for the tell-tale creak of cord and timber which would herald the presence of the Kingston. But no sound came, save the gentle slapping of the waves against the boat and the occasional scrape of the oars in the rowlocks.
Rackham felt the light drift of spray on his cheek. The wind was freshening and blowing almost dead inshore. Ben noticed it at the same moment.
‘It’s going to be easier for the Kingston to come in than to stand out again,’ he muttered.
‘What d’ye say?’ Bull’s head came up. ‘Bigod, ye’re right!’ He strained his eyes into the darkness seaward. ‘She’s beginning to blow, the windy bitch!’