"I am always the soul of caution, Higgins. Wherever did you get the idea that I am not? And besides, what would you have me do? Hide down below? Stay in port? What kind of example would that be to my merry band of brigands?"
"Hmmm," he says, "I had expected a response such as that. But do be careful, Miss, as there are many here who both love you and fear for your safety, and question your evident lack of a sense of self-preservation." Saying that, he takes his tray and goes below to take his station in the surgery.
Come on, Higgins. If you, yourself, had any sense of self-preservation, you sure wouldn't have teamed up with the likes of me, that's for certain. I've the sense that Higgins has a little bit more of a taste for the life of adventure than he lets on.
First Mate Reilly comes up and reports that the ship is manned and ready.
"Then let's have Long Tom send him a good-morning salute, John," I say, and raise my voice so the men at the forward gun can hear, "Sullivan! Fire one off to his side!"
There is a pause of a moment and the long nine-pounder barks out its greeting. The ball hits to the left of the schooner, abaft her beam.
"Well, we are within range," I say, and that fact is brought back to us when there is a puff of smoke from the stern of the prize. The ball whistles through our rigging, but hits nothing.
"Seems he's gonna put up a fight, Liam," I say, my knees starting to tremble a bit, like they always do when someone is shooting at me. Now they're shooting at my beautiful ship, too, and I've got that to worry about as well.
"Right," says Liam, squinting at the ship through his glass. "And it looks like he might have something serious mounted amidships. At our speed now I don't think he'll be able to bear on us again with the stern gun. He's lost the angle on that one."
We continue to gain on him and I call out to the starboard guns, "Chock 'em up as high as you can so you hit only the rigging! Don't hurt the hull! Sully, you may fire as they bear! Let's show him what an Emerald rolling broadside feels like! Boarding Party to the starboard rail! Crouch down out of sight!"
They do it and there is a crack! as that serious gun on the prize fires.
The ball hits the bowsprit of the Emerald, smashing part of her walkway and cutting loose both her jib and forestaysail. They flap wildly in the wind, but nothing can be done now, not in the heat of this encounter.
"Musket men!" I yell to the men standing in the foretop. "Pepper the ones around that cannon as soon as you can see them!" Muskets are lifted to shoulders. Soon I hear the flash and pop! of the rifles. That oughta worry 'em.... Hurt my Emerald will you?
We're almost broadside to him now and we could smash him to bits and put him down under the sea, but we don't want to do that, no we don't.
I put my hands on the shoulders of Ian and Denny as they crouch there behind the rail, cutlasses in hand. "Steady, boys, steady..."
There is a tremendous flash and boom! followed instantly by a crack! as the prize again fires his amidships cannon and the ball strikes a spar right behind me.
"Ow!" I cry as somebody slaps me on my butt, prolly that cheeky McBride, but I don't pay it any mind for it's time for me to shout, "Let's get him, lads! Get the hooks on him!" I draw my sword.
We get closer yet and Sully fires another of our guns, and the top gaff of the Frenchy's foresail shatters in a shower of splinters and the Captain gives it up. He goes back and pulls down his flag. About damn time, I'm thinking.
"Cease firing!" I bellow.
The ships are pulled together and over the rail we go. The Captain is on his gun deck—he's holding his flag and his sword. He looks at me with shock and, suddenly, real fear. La Belle Fille sans Merci...
"Padraic. Arthur. See what she's got," I say, and they plunge down into the hold.
I bow to the Captain—I think a curtsy would be a bit out of place here—and recite, in French, the little speech I had made up for these occasions to try to tone down my growing reputation as a bloodthirsty pirate.
"I am Jacky La Faber. Perhaps you have heard of me. I am a privateer who takes ships and their cargoes, but I neither harm nor rob the crews or the passengers of the ships I seize, no matter what you may have heard. You and your men will be put in one of your lifeboats and allowed to return to France."
I thought the "La Faber" was a nice touch.
He bows back and looks relieved, which is good. He presents his sword to me.
"Non. Please keep your sword. You led us on a merry chase and you fought gallantly."
Several more bows and back to business. The lads have come back on deck and Arthur McBride crows, "It's full of champagne! Enough for a hundred English New Years, or ten Irish ones! And we found this, too."
They have between them a well-dressed man of about fifty years, who don't look happy, no not at all. More spies? I would have thought they'd have learned their lesson by now. Well, must do my patriotic duty.
"Shake him down and see if he's got anything suspicious on him. I..."
There is a footfall as someone jumps down on the deck behind me, and I hear John Reilly cry out, "Jesus!"
I turn to see what the matter is and notice in passing that my right pant leg is bright red and my right boot is filling up with blood. How strange...
"Higgins! Come attend to your mistress! She's hurt!" Reilly roars out, and he scoops me up and jumps back over to the Emerald.
Higgins appears from the hatchway to the hold, takes one look at Reilly and his burden, and says, "Take her to her cabin. Put her on the table. I must get the bag." With that he ducks back down below.
Reilly carries me across the deck past Liam who says Damn! and follows us down into my cabin. My pistols are taken and I am put facedown on the table. In a moment I see Higgins come in bearing the medical bag I had put together back when we were rigging out the Emerald. He also has a pail of steaming water.
"Thank you, gentlemen," says Higgins. "Now I believe it would be best if you left us alone." Liam and Reilly nod grimly and leave, closing the door behind them.
Higgins goes around behind me and I feel him pulling off my boots. Then he unloosens my sword belt and slips that off.
"Excuse me, Miss," he says as he reaches in under my belly and undoes the buttons of my pants and then the drawstring of my drawers. Then I feel both pants and drawers tugged down off of me.
"How bad does it look, Higgins? I hardly felt anything."
"We'll see, Miss. Here, let me put this pillow under your middle ... there, that's it. Now, let's look."
Putting the pillow under my h*ps puts my bum up in the air, but I suppose that's what he wants, so as to get a clear shot at the problem. I wait. Then I feel a hot wet cloth cleaning off the area under scrutiny.
"Hmmm...," he says. "It is a splinter, but the end of it is visible, which is good, as we won't have to go digging for it, if it comes out all in a piece. One moment..."
I hear him rummaging through the medical kit for what I know will be pliers, and then he comes back.
"Steady now," and I feel the cold pliers against my cheek. "It would be better if you don't clench your buttocks when I do this, and now..."
"Yeeeoowww!"
I had intended not to cry out as an example to my crew as to my bravery, but I did anyway. Higgins carefully puts the withdrawn splinter on the table next to my nose. It is about two inches long and sits there glistening wetly.
"It seems to be relatively smooth and free of burrs. I think it all came out in a piece."
"Good Emerald oak," I manage to say.
"Indeed," he says, drily. "I am sure you will have it mounted on a bronze plaque, given your usual sense of the dramatic." I think about the joke I made about splinters last night down in Reilly's cabin. Strange how things always come back at me.
"The wound is deep, but not wide," he continues. "I think it will heal up quite nicely. The bleeding has already stopped. I don't think there will even be a scar, so when you present yourself to your husband on your bridal bed, I am sure he will not even notice." His tone is joking, but I know he's just trying to put me at my ease—he's worried about infection, as am I. I've heard of people who've died of a mere blister on their heel.
"Dammit, Higgins, I told you there ain't gonna be no bridal bed and no ... oh, the hell with it. Get the spirits of wine ... right there in the brown bottle. Pour it on." I grit my teeth again.
"I suppose that is good, Miss. Then you won't have to explain to him about that tattoo."
"EEEEEEEeeee..." I keen as the pure alcohol hits. I don't know for sure that it helps keep off the infection, but I hold that if it hurts, it's got to be good. It's the Puritan in me. Higgins takes a cloth and is cleaning up the mess of blood and water and spirits when there's a knock on the door.
"Jacky," comes Liam's voice from outside. "Are you all right? We've got a situation here."
"Not yet, Captain," pleads Higgins. "Please, we've got to get a bandage on this first."
"No, Higgins, we've got to take care of business first. Just throw something over me and open the door." I can tell from the feel of the ship that we haven't cast off the prize and gotten under way yet, and that puts us in a precarious position. We ain't the only privateers about—there's French and Dutch and even Danish ones, too—and it would be a shame to lose both our prize and ourselves by being surprised in a weak condition like this.
When I feel the cool sheet float over my backside, I call out, "Come in, Liam."
The door swings open and Liam enters, followed by Padraic and Arthur holding the French passenger between them. I get up on my elbows.
Upon seeing me stretched out on the table with my legs spread out and my bum in the air, Liam reddens and says, "Put him in the chair and then get out, both of you."
The boys push the man down into the chair at the head of the table and then leave. As they go Padraic looks at my face with great concern, and Arthur looks at the rest of me with great merriment, as if he can barely keep from making a fine joke concerning my current state. I'll get you, Arthur, my glare tells him.
"What's this, then?" I ask.
"This is what it is," says Liam. "We found these on him."
Liam opens a leather bag and pours its contents out onto the tabletop in front of me and I gasp and gape in wonder. Are those rubies, diamonds? And can that big one be an emerald? I look up at Higgins who is himself looking down at the pile of glittering stones. "A king's ransom, Miss," he murmurs.
The French gentleman, for gentleman he plainly is, sits straight in his chair, but there is a look of utter defeat on his face.
"No other things on him? Nothing that looks like spy stuff?"
Liam shakes his head.
The man looks up, surprised. "I am not a spy," he says in English, looking offended at the notion. Then he looks back down. Ah. That will make things easier.
"How came you by these baubles?" I ask, carelessly running my finger through the pile. "I am sure you will tell me they are nothing but glass."
"No, they are not. They are very valuable. For a long time, I felt desirous of leaving my native land and so I cashed in all my assets into this form. I am, or I was, before the Glorious Revolution, the Marquis de Mont Blanc. I had sent my family to England while I remained behind to settle our accounts. And now I have lost everything."