First off, we had packed them all into the brig, there being only about twenty of them, but they were so packed in there that they could only stand and not sit. Drake worked furiously with the shipfitters and carpenters to fashion a larger prison down under the fantail, on the lowest deck down, and that's where they are now. It's pretty foul but they won't be down here long. They don't know that, though. They probably think they're going to be taken to England to be hanged, and I let them think that, but I won't really do it. Harkness had asked me about it, about why we didn't just send the prisoners back in the hold of the Emilie, but I said that they were just sailors like us and I didn't want to see them jailed or hanged just for doing something that we might be doing ourselves someday. He snorted and asked me what I was going to do with them then, and I said I'd decide later.
Damn! There're so many details to this plundering business.
I look them over and they seem healthy enough. I ask them in French if they have been fed and they sneer and say that yes, they have been given what we English would call food. It galls them all the more that I am a girl, but I am not down here to enrage them, merely to observe, so I leave. But not before I notice that one of them, better dressed than the others, stays far back in the pack, like he doesn't want me to notice him. He was a passenger and we tossed his room but could find nothing except for some clothing. On his person, he just had a small pistol and a little money, I recall, all of which we took.
Something about him strikes me as curious, is all.
I go back up the three levels to the deck, confident that the smugglers are secure, and emerge into the light. I hear the sound of chatter and look up and see that the ship's boys are playing follow-the-leader with Tucker in the lead. The little deck apes are going hand over hand over the fore-topgallant brace, high over the deck, goading each other on. Georgie is the third one in line, right after Eli. A few more days, Georgie.
"Higgins," I say. I don't see him anywhere around, but as soon as I say his name, he appears at my elbow. I've found he is very good at that.
"Yes, Miss?"
"Will you ask Mr. Drake if he will join me for a little shooting on the fantail? Then bring up my pistols and the bottles we saved from last night's dinner."
Peter Drake shows me how the pistols are loaded and primed and we set up the empty bottles on the rear rail of the fantail, the stern of the ship. He shows me how to aim and asks me if I have ever fired a gun before.
"Only once, when I killed a pirate in a skirmish when I was on the Dolphin."
I fire, missing all the bottles. I try the other pistol and miss again.
"It must have been a very unlucky pirate," says Drake, drily.
"He was that," I say. "But then, he was a lot larger and a lot closer."
I reload and try again, trying to hold the gun steady as I sight across the barrel, and this time I get one, shattering it off into the ocean. The fact that it was not the one I was aiming at does not diminish my pleasure in seeing it go.
Peter and I trade shots and I find that he is a dead shot. I would not want to face him in a duel.
I upend the black powder horn and recharge, tamping it down, then ramming down the wad, and then the ball, and then another wad to hold it in. Much like a cannon, I'm thinking.
I fire again and hit another bottle and I hear something from the boys in the rigging overhead.
"What's going on?" asks one who was plainly below when we started all this and has just come up.
"The Captain's shooting bottles off the fantail, is what," comes the casual reply from Tam Tucker, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Chapter 19
"On deck there! Sail standing out from the harbor!" I leap into the rigging with my glass, my heart pounding. Another one, and it's a fat one! I exult with all the larceny that's in me. It's a two-masted brig, a little smaller than we are, but not by much. What could she be carrying?
My Sailing Master is up next to me in a flash.
"Same drill, Lieutenant?" he asks.
"Same drill, Mr. Jared. Let her slip over the horizon, then after her!"
He stands a little too close to me and gives me his cocky look, his face in mine. He's the first man I've met who can swagger standing still. "Like shooting fish in a barrel," he says with a grin.
"May it be ever so, Mr. Jared. But let us not grow too confident. Let us attend to our duties," I say. Then I turn and shout, "Beat to Quarters, boys! We've got another one!" and my Werewolves fly to their stations, every eye fixed on the prize, every greedy heart beating in joyous anticipation of more wealth, more excitement, more ... well ... fun.
***
Her name was the Jan Wemple and she was even easier to take than the Emilie. Her Dutch Captain was too astounded to get off even a shot at us when we put a couple over her bow, or to put up any kind of fight as we lashed the two ships together.
We swarmed aboard with me in the lead and all the Werewolves howling like banshees. The completely terrified crew of the smuggler was quickly rounded up and taken aboard the Wolverine, and Harkness and I went below to examine the cargo.
Putting my hand on the latch, I feel like a child at Christmas. Stop that now, you greedy girl. You get giddy and you are lost. You are doing this for your men, your country, and to get yourself out of a tight spot. Now settle down. I open it and go in.
I see stacks and stacks of boxes. "What is it, Jack?" I ask of Harkness as he pries up a board and looks inside a crate.
"Looks like dishes. Crockery, like. Dutchy stuff," he says.
"Let's get Higgins over here to see what he thinks it's worth. If anyone aboard knows, it'd be him."
"Get the Lieutenant's man over here," shouts Harkness to a man on the Wolverine and then follows me down into the cabins to search for more booty.
The Captain's cabin yields a good deal more money this time—probably earmarked for bribes, probably even some meant for Captain Scroggs. I'm just cuttin' out the middleman, I'm thinkin'. It was in a locked drawer that we smashed open, not wanting to stand on ceremony. Some other stuff in there, too. A miniature portrait of his wife. Letters from his daughters. Dear Papa...
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling a bit rotten now. Jared comes in and sees me and what I got in my hands and says, "'Tis the nature of the piratical business, lass, some gains, some loses."
I'm pondering on that when the shout comes from above.
"Captain! Here comes another one!"
In a flash I'm back on the deck, all soft thoughts gone. There is another ship heaving over the horizon!
Damn! She's seen us take this ship! She'll alert the others!
"Joseph!" I shout. "Get the men back to their stations! We've got to stop her!" But Jared is already back on the Wolverine and the sails, which had been hanging slack, are pulled tight and they fill, and we are again in pursuit.
Two ships, I'm thinkin' to myself, and no lights last night.
She was fast, but we were faster, and soon we grappled again. This one, the Heloise, tried to claw her way back to the shore when she saw us at our cherry-picking work, but we managed to catch her before she got back in sight of land. She tried a few shots at us and Harkness had to put a few balls through her sails to get her to heave to.
When we boarded her, though, the sight of me out front of the howling, cutlass-waving mob—me with my pistols in my belt, my hair flying free, and my own sword in my hand—was too much for the Captain, who swore something and lunged at me with his saber upraised. I managed to parry the blade on its way down, but it narrowly missed my arm as it swished by my side 'cause my parry was too weak. He lifted his sword again, no finesse, just brute male strength is all, and was about to bring it down on me again and I, in desperation, dropped the point of my blade and gathered myself for a lunge at his throat when Jared stepped up and dropped him with a belaying pin to the head.
The unconscious Captain was hauled off with the rest of his crew and we had ourselves another fine ship with its rich cargo of olive oil, cask upon cask of the stuff. I muse that tons of olives were grown in southern Spain, France's ally in this war, then they were carefully picked and pressed of their oil, the oil put in barrels and carried by donkey the length of Spain, up across the Pyrenees Mountains, up through France, onto a boat, and right into our hands.
Funny how things turn out, sometimes. The best-laid plans of mice and men...
"A busy day's work," says Jared, as we watch the two prizes sail off toward England.
"Hot work, too," I say. I'm thinking of how I shall dream some nights of that sword coming down and almost taking off my arm, and in those dreams I shall wonder if I really would have put the point of my sword through his throat. I don't know.
Harkness comes up to us and says the obvious, "We're gettin' stretched pretty thin, what with sending off two more prize crews." We sent the Heloise off under John Harper's command and the Jan Wemple off under Seamus Shaughnessy. Both of them'll be lookin' for Master's jackets soon, too. Too bad I won't be here to put them on their worthy backs.
"I know, Jack. I'm hopin' Robin gets back with the first crew and some word on how things are goin' with the Prize Court," I say, wearily. Details, details, details. If I'd have known command would be like this, I'd have stayed a ship's boy.
There's a line of people to report to me.
First is Higgins: Yes, the cargo of the Heloise is valuable. "Very valuable. The finest Delft, Miss. I took the liberty of taking a few settings for your cabin? Ummm?"
Then Drake: "We haven't got much more room for prisoners, Lieutenant. I'll have to build another cage. And it's getting pretty foul down there."
Christ! Like running a slaver! I think, and then say, "Right, Peter. There won't be many more, if any. And oh, by the way, do you remember that cove who was dressed as a gent on the first ship we took? The Emilie? Good. Have him taken out and put alone in the brig. Thanks."
Peter Drake and I go down into the hold where the cage of the brig sits. I am dressed in full pirate queen regalia, and Drake has pistols and sword lashed to himself as well. The formerly well-dressed cove, who had by now divested himself of his finer clothes in a vain attempt to fit in with the other seamen, sits on the bench, disconsolate.
Before coming down, I asked Peter if he would respond "Right away, Captain," to any outrageous request I might make of him. He cocks an eyebrow and agrees.
"So, Monsieur," I say in French, "what were you doing on that ship that tried to evade our noble blockade?"
"I am but a poor businessman, Mademoiselle, only doing my business," he replies, again in French. Something strikes my admittedly tin ear about the way he pronounces Mademoiselle, having heard it pronounced by experts back at the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls.
"A poor businessman, indeed!" I snort. "Come now, Monsieur, out with it! You know you are headed back to England for a noose, do you not? Why not make a clean breast of things?"
"But, Mademoiselle..." he says, shrugging, his palms up.
"Do you speak English?" I demand. I put the Lawson Peabody Look on my face: chin up, lips together, teeth apart, eyes hooded and absolutely devoid of pity.