Florio leaned over the side of the bridge and said to a seaman, “You might’s well lower your davit cables.”
The launch came alongside and wallowed in its own wash.
Looking down, Florio saw the helmsman, Gantz, his face pasty white. “What’s wrong?” he asked, but Gantz did not reply.
The other men had their backs to the ship as they snapped the davit cables into the eyes.
The winches whined; the launch rose.
The two boys looked tense, worried, their hands tucked under their arms. From under one of the canvas covers, a braceleted forearm protruded.
“Are those bodies under there?”
The television crew, camera rolling, shoved their way to the railing as the launch reached deck level.
“What the hell . . .” Florio started down the ladder.
Canvas covers flew back.
Something slammed into Florio and knocked him cartwheeling off the ladder. The perplexing vision that followed him into darkness was of a man whose head was engulfed in a halo of flame.
The sounds of gunshots slapped across the water, and Maynard felt them slap his ears. There were screams, too, but from this distance they sounded faint and innocuous.
The launch and the pinnace were on the leeward side of the ship. Maynard paddled to windward, to stay out of sight.
He had no specific plan. If Nau and his people were killed, then he was saved. If Nau won, well . . . he was no worse off on the ship than he would have been on the island. They wouldn’t think to look for him on the ship. If they scuttled it with him aboard . . . he couldn’t think that far ahead.
The shooting stopped. In all, no more than a dozen shots had been fired.
Maynard grabbed the ship’s anchor chain. He tied the pirogue to one of the chain links, to keep it from drifting to leeward into view from the ship and shinnied up the chain and peeked through the chain port. The forward deck was empty. He slithered up onto the deck and crawled beside a bulkhead, where he rested.
He heard footsteps below, and scraping noises, as if things were dragged across the metal decks. Then there was laughter, and Maynard knew how the battle had ended.
In corroboration, Hizzoner’s voice intoned from the stern, “The crimes you have committed are known to you and to God . . .”
Grasping with his toes and fingertips, Maynard scaled the sloping face of the wheelhouse, slid over the top of the bridge, and dropped soundlessly to the bridge deck.
“. . . so I suppose I need not tell you,” Hizzoner went on, “that the only way of obtaining pardon and remission of your sins from God is by a true and unfeigned repentance and faith in Christ . . .”
There were scuppers on the bridge, and Maynard could look through them down onto the afterdeck of the ship.
Two bodies were jammed into a corner. One was a pudgy bald man in a dark business suit, the other younger, handsome, in a tan leisure suit.
Nau and the two boys stood in the stern. Rollo and Jack the Bat and the other men were loading food and weapons and ammunition into the launch and the pinnace.
Hizzoner’s sermon was directed at a knot of six men by the port railing. Two were civilians, four wore Coast Guard fatigues. A seventh man, an officer, lay on the deck behind the others. He was alive, but he had been shot in the hip, and he pressed a handkerchief to the hole to stem the bleeding. Maynard looked hard at the officer, for he was sure he knew him.
“If now you will sincerely turn to Christ Jesus,” Hizzoner said, “though late, even at the eleventh hour (Matthew 20:6-9) he will receive you.”
He’s coming to the end, Maynard thought. His eyes searched the bridge. Did they stow weapons up here? Did they carry weapons on board? He knew nothing about military ships. He stared at a canvas-covered piece of machinery mounted on the side of the bridge.
“I only heartily wish that what, in compassion to your souls, I have now said to you upon this sad and solemn occasion . . .”
A machine gun.
Maynard crept to the farthest corner of the bridge and hauled himself over the side. He edged his way around the bridge superstructure until he found a foothold on a narrow ledge beneath the machine gun.
The pinnace was directly in front of him. The men loading it had their backs to him, but if one of them turned around, he could not help but see Maynard.
Maynard unclipped the gun cover from the bulkhead and slid it off and set it on the wheel-house roof.
The gun was enormous. He had seen photographs of these big .50s, but he had never had his face close to one: It was like sighting down a cannon. A box of ammunition was attached to the side of the gun. He prayed it was full, for he didn’t dare open it to look. One hand reached for the cocking lever; the other found the trigger. He held his breath, yanked back on the slide, and let it go.
The shots came so fast that they were not distinct: They were a belch. In less than five seconds, the men in the pinnace and the men loading it were dead or twitching on the deck.
Without removing his finger from the trigger, Maynard swung the gun to the right. Rollo died in the passing spray. Jack the Bat took a step backward and was punched overboard by two bullets in his chest. Hizzoner squashed down in a heap of bloody robes.
Nau backed into the corner and held the two boys in front of him. He reached under Justin’s arm, took the Walther from the holster, and held it to Justin’s temple.
Maynard pointed the machine gun at Nau’s head and said, “Put it down.”
Nau smiled. “No, thank you.”
“I’ll kill you.”
“Me, yes. This one”—he nodded at Manuel—“yes. But this one”—he jammed the Walther hard against Justin’s temple—“no. You won’t. You should; I would. But you won’t. And if I die, this one dies with me.”
Maynard looked at Justin, and he saw a frightened little boy.
He was positive he could put a bullet between Nau’s eyes before Nau could pull the trigger and kill Justin. It was almost certain. Almost.
“You’re right; I won’t,” Maynard said. “So where are we?”
“I will take the lads ashore. You will wait here for the night. Some time in the night, I will make a passage with my people. Tomorrow, you will come ashore and fetch your men. I will not harm them. You have my word.”
“Your word isn’t worth shit.”
“True,” Nau laughed. “But you have no choice.”
“You’ll leave the boy, too.”
“I should tell you yes, but you know I cannot. I need him more now than before.”
Justin’s eyes widened and pleaded with Maynard.
Maynard said, “I might as well shoot him myself.”
“Not so. Better to have the knowledge that he is alive and well, free and merry.”
Maynard hesitated, stymied. “All right.”
“No!” Justin screamed. “Dad!”
“Roll with it, buddy,” Maynard said.
“No!” Justin tried to wriggle free, but Nau wrapped his arm around the boy’s throat and dragged him to the railing.
Nau told Manuel, “Take the helm.”
Manuel looked up at Maynard, and in his eyes, too, there was a plea.
The launch was directly beneath Maynard’s perch on the bridge. As the machine gun was mounted, it could not point straight down into the launch.
Nau saw that the big gun was no longer a threat to him, so he shoved Justin ahead of him into the launch.
Maynard didn’t think about what he was going to do, didn’t debate alternatives or weigh risks. He jumped, and as he sprang through the air he pulled Jack the Bat’s knife from his waist.
Nau heard the rush of air, or sensed the falling body, for he turned and looked up and tried to aim the pistol.
Maynard landed on Nau’s shoulders and stabbed wildly, blindly, savagely as Nau—grunting and cursing—tried to shake him off, pitching the pistol away to free both hands.
Nau stumbled, and Maynard rode him down between two forward thwarts. He stabb
ed again, and this time the knife caught between two of Nau’s ribs and would not come free.
Nau writhed onto his back, tearing the knife from Maynard’s hand, jamming Maynard beneath him.
Nau staggered to his feet and towered over Maynard. His chest and neck were pocked with blue puncture wounds; streams of blood crisscrossed and joined in a flow that dripped to the deck. The knife was wedged to its hilt, between the bottom two ribs on the right side. Nau grasped the knife hilt with both hands and wrenched it free. Leering at Maynard, he said, “Not yet, scribe.” Bubbles of blood popped between his lips. “I am a free prince. I will say when.” He raised the knife.
Maynard tried to back away but he was trapped, stuffed between the two thwarts.
Nau’s eyes swelled and bugged; his lips curled back in a snarl. He held the knife over his head—like an Inca priest before a sacrificial altar—and screamed, “Now!”
The arc of the knife flashed in the sunlight.
Nau plunged the knife into his own groin and ripped upward. Viscera oozed through the tear in his shirt.
He toppled to the right. His shoulder hit a thwart, and he rolled onto his back. The spring, binding him to life, snapped: The pupils of his eyes dilated, and, like a balloon suddenly released by a child, his chest squeezed out a squeaky, final blast of breath.
Maynard’s eyes left Nau and found Justin, rigid in the stern of the launch. He said weakly, “Hey, buddy . . .”
Justin’s eyes filled with tears. He walked aft and knelt down and took his father’s hand.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The literature on the buccaneers and pirates is vast, in both fact and fiction. In the course of preparing The Island, I consulted scores of books, and while I have endeavored to avoid any resemblance to real characters, I have tried equally hard to be faithful to historical reality.
Four books were particularly helpful: The Buccaneers of America, by John Esquemeling (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1967); The Funnel of Gold, by Mendel Peterson (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1975); A General History of the Pirates, by Captain Charles Johnson (London: Philip Sainsbury, The Cayme Press, 1925); and Pirates, An Illustrated History, by David Mitchell (New York: Dial Press, 1976).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PETER BENCHLEY was born into a family of authors and raised in a Manhattan brownstone. His father, Nathaniel, is known for his fine, funny short stories published by The New Yorker. His grandfather, Robert, has been described as being unsurpassed in the “ingenious technique of verbal humor” and “the most versatile humorist in America.”
After graduation from Harvard University, Peter Benchley took a year off and traveled around the world. The result of the trip was Time and a Ticket, a nonfiction book published in 1964. He later worked as a reporter for the Washington Post, as a radio-TV editor for Newsweek and as a speechwriter during the Johnson Administration. He then became a freelancer and took on assignments that included a stint as TV commentator with the Newsweek Broadcast Service and with WPIX-TV in New York.
In the early 1970s, his knowledge about sharks—much of it learned during boyhood summers on Nantucket—led him to blend fact and fiction in Jaws, a novel hailed by critics as “a stunning book” (Chicago Tribune Book World) and “a spectacular debut” (John Barkham). Benchley’s growing interest in history and marine archeology led to his second novel, The Deep.
Then, in 1977, some startling Coast Guard statistics came to Benchley’s attention: over three recent years, more than six hundred seagoing boats had inexplicably vanished, and with them, some two thousand people. Benchley began to research the problem, and slowly an idea for a new novel began to form. The result is The Island.
Peter Benchley, The Island
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