H.M.S Valor Page 24

  Crewmen on the Maiden tossed a lifeline to the survivor who released his desperate grip from the barrel that had kept him alive through the night. It took two tries until the hapless man could reach the line and at one point it appeared as if he would drown in the attempt, but he raised a victorious fist gripping the rope and the crew heaved to until he was close enough to climb a rope ladder they lowered. The man was in very poor shape and it took an inordinate amount of time for him to reach the deck of the Maiden. He finally climbed up the final rung, wheezing and heaving for breath on all fours at the feet of the crew who had saved him.

  “Who be you?” Chibs barked at the panting man.

  “M,M,my n,n,name is Geor Alton. I am the king’s governor of the Jamaica colony.” Alton stammered between gasps for air.

  “Pleased to meet you Governor. My name is King George, and this is the H.M.S. Make Believe! What kind of a fool do you think I am? What is your name?” Chibs rasped. His face was flushing as his temper flared.

  “I speak the truth to you good Sir. My name is Geor Alton…”

  “Yeah, yeah and you are the kings own blah blah, whatever and what have you. I’m too tired for games.” Chibs said as he turned away from the pleading man, “Take him below, lock him in the hold.”

  Several of the crew began to drag Alton away as he protested.

  “I am the Governor of Jamaica! Treat me fairly and you will be rewarded! I can pay. I can grant pardon. Please I beg of you…”

  Through the commotion, Captain James made his way forward from by the helm. He had been scanning the horizon keenly while the crew fished their new guest from among the wreckage. He strode over next to Chibs and pointed off to the northern horizon.

  “There Chibs. What do you see?” he asked.

  Chibs turned to see where James had pointed and squinted. A faint haze squatted over a small area of the edge where the sky met the sea and amid the bleary smudge of white and gray Chibs could make out a small white shape. He searched his pockets for a second and produced his telescope, he then fixed his gaze through it on the white shape.

  “That’s not the Shepherd, James. It’s not that American brigantine either.” Chibs replied, his look suddenly becoming even more fatigued.

  “I assumed the cannon fire was from the Shepherd when I heard it earlier. They followed after one of the Americans that abandoned the fight last night. I didn’t think anything of it then, but I suppose it is possible they were drawing her off to an ambush. Could it be?” James lowered his voice to not raise a panic.

  “It’s a possibility, sure. But likely any vessel they had wouldn’t sit idle while we sunk one of their own.” Chibs replied.

  “The American brig couldn’t have overcome the Shepherd.”

  “We will find out soon enough Captain. If Shepherd has been taken or sunk. Their next course will definitely bring them to us. The explosion from the Gazelle was big enough, I’m sure parliament in London probably felt it. I think we should push east, run with the wind at our backs and get as much distance between this mess and us as we can.” Chibs encouraged. His face was long and weary, his voice missing the usual gusto Lilith had grown accustomed to hearing.

  “We should run. But Trina and the Shepherd could be in trouble. She would sail to our aid Chib, we won’t leave them to whatever fate they may have encountered.” James was resolute.

  “Aye Captain. I’ll have the crew make ready, again.” Chibs said, making his way to prepare.

  Lilith, exhausted like everyone else aboard, lingered on the bow. She trusted and admired Chibs as well as Captain James, when they disagreed on matters, she found it most discomforting. There was little to be gained by inciting conflict between the Captain and his first mate, though on this particular issue she felt more aligned with James. Trina was a friend to Lilith; she was tough, and she had introduced Lilith to her new way of life. James had her heart, Chibs felt like the father she’d always longed for, but Trina was an older sister. Hard while still matronly, a friend when needed and a woman in the mix of a man’s world aboard ship.

  “You think we should be running? Like Chibs wants?” James asked, seemingly reading her mind.

  “No. I mean, we are all tired James. I want to run as much as anyone else. But if they are in trouble, James, we have to do whatever we can to help.” Lilith exclaimed.

  “We will. I won’t leave them to whatever fate throws their way. But I do hate to defy Chibs’ advice, if it weren’t for him, I would never have survived as long as I have.” James looked troubled, conflicted about his decision.

  “I treasure Chibs as much as any of you, James. But I think you are making the right choice. Whatever the horizon holds for us, we can’t run forever.”

  “Just what does the horizon hold for us my dear?” James asked, locking his eyes onto hers. “Does the fair Lilith intend to spend her days sailing with a pirate crew?”

  “I can’t say James. Forever? No. But who knows what the future holds? For now, I am here. I will live my life as each day comes until I have a choice to make, I suppose.” Lilith replied breaking her eyes away, back to the sea.

  The two remained on the bow, watching the sail on the horizon without further exchange. Lilith felt a desperate anxiety to find out the fate of the Unholy Shepherd. Even under full sail, their progress felt like an agonizing slow crawl leaving nothing for Lilith to do but torture herself with the possibilities of what they would find of their sister ship.

  Battle Wreckage

  25 Sept 1808

  17 Degrees 14 minutes N, 76 Degrees 8’ W

  Consciousness came and went, the gentle roll of the sea occasionally brushed debris into the set of planks Tim had latched himself to, awakening him for fleeting moments before he drifted back into another realm. The smoke streaked his face and stung his eyes when he had tried to open them. Exhaustion permeated his entire body to the point where simply staying atop the planks was all he could do. When the sun had lifted from the horizon in the early hours of the day it brought a welcome warmth from the chill of the constant breeze over his soaked clothes.

  When the shadow of the pirate ship passed over him, he only noticed at first the missing warmth. Forcing his eyes open yielded only a glimpse of a moving wall of wood, he dared not move. If he was spotted, surely, they would fish him up only to end him, or worse, he would be taken captive. Sudden shouts from the deck above announced they had spotted a survivor of the carnage. Tim’s heart exploded in a succession of beats that each felt harder and faster than the last. He remained still, silently hoping they had mistaken one of the floating dead for a survivor.

  The Governor’s driveling pleas for mercy met Tim’s ears and a flame of anger kindled within him. One of the men mocked the Governor’s pleas and Tim almost smiled. He took a small comfort knowing that man would continue to suffer. Suffer you worthless incompetent swine, He thought, you’ve blundered everything and it was all handed to you so neatly. All the man had to do was follow instruction, do what he was told and collect his obscene payment. But he had been too timid to reassign the admiral, too greedy to keep from interfering in matters far above his understanding and too stupid and slow to execute anything with effect. Let him rot in a cell aboard the pirate ship, Tim resigned, I am as good as dead anyway. The floating corpses would soon bring sharks, if they didn’t kill him the exposure certainly would.

  The shadow passed from Tim as the pirates made sail again. His planks bobbed gently with the gentle swells of the sea. He drifted, through the cluster of flotsam and dead just as helplessly as the thoughts clouding his head. The Order, his meeting in America with their delegation. The task he had been given and all the riches he had been entrusted with, reputations and livelihoods hung in the balance. Power, those who held it and those who sought after it. Was this his end? Was this to be the culmination of everything he had worked for? The comforting warmth of the sun had grown more intense and its rays soon became another torment against him.

  Tim felt the edge of the
timbers he lay on and shifted his weight back toward the center. His movement shifted him just too far and the small platform that had sustained him from drowning capsized. Jolted from his lethargy by the sudden drop into the water, he struggled to recapture his tiny wooden savior. Opening his eyes, Tim looked around. Above him, just out of arms reach the planks bobbed along in the slight chop on the water’s surface. It looked like wrinkled glass, a ceiling reflecting the brilliant Caribbean blue sky with sun rays visibly protruding down into the water illuminating various shades of blue that darkened as he looked down further, until directly underneath him all that was visible was the abyss of the deep. It was near the edge of the darkness that Tim’s eye caught a glimpse of movement. He adjusted his focus and saw the figure move again, his heart fluttered and out of the corner of his eye he caught another moving figure. With what remaining strength he had, Tim pulled hard in a desperate attempt to reach the surface. His lungs burned, pulsating, crying out for a breath of air. His second stroke yielded him the surface and he gasped in air, just as quickly as he had surfaced, he found himself back underwater beneath a small swell. He pulled again, refusing to forfeit to the deep and his head broke free again. He scrambled, paddling himself to the floating oasis of wood. When his fingertips had just brushed the edge, just as he felt his salvation was at hand, something brushed against his leg. In a wild panic, Tim fluttered his feet kicking at the water until he had a solid grasp of the lifesaving timbers. He clawed at the wood, pulling his torso up as far as he could, reaching up he took hold again and with what seemed the last of his fading strength pulled himself the rest of the way up.

  The small wooden platform barely longer than he was tall and only inches wider than his frame was enough to keep him from drowning, but just barely. With his weight on it, the chunk of deck stayed just below the surface. Every movement he made threatened to capsize him again. Propping up his head slightly, Tim searched around for any signs of other survivors. Broken barrels and other chunks of wood were scattered all around him, smoke still rose from several spots of still burning oil on the water’s surface. Every direction he looked Tim found more corpses, none that he recognized, most were burned or disfigured beyond recognition anyway. As he shifted his head sideways to look out over his shoulder, the water’s surface exploded in a rush of gray motion. A corpse that floated only yards from his improvised raft disappeared in a violent splash. Panic grabbed Tim like a giant hand, squeezing him at his armpits until he felt he couldn’t breathe. He began to pull his limbs away from the edges of the wooden planks, only to feel his balance shift, then he froze. Every fiber in every muscle of his body tensed, his senses sharpened, and his heart raced. A shiver seemed to grip his spine in defiance of the heat from the sun and every perceptible movement flooded his body with another wave of panic.

  It seemed that he lay in a state of hyper alertness for hours, while the sun plotted its course toward the western horizon. His entire being was beyond exhaustion, staying balanced on the wooden boards had drained him to the point he was sure that if he slipped over again, it would be his end. Each time he began to relax his anxieties he would hear thrashing somewhere in the water surrounding him. He dared not move, even the slightest lean to gain perspective could tip his fragile balance and the platform keeping him afloat was his only barrier against whatever predator the seas had sent. He could only lay along the boards, tortured by the thought of what awaited him should he capsize again. All through the late afternoon he listened to the sporadic thrashings as the corpses disappeared from the surface down into the depths. Eventually he succumbed to his exhaustion, drifting out of conscious thought.

  PART THREE

  A Fitting Betrayal

  Chapter 11

  H.M.S Endurance

  25 Sept 1808

  17 Degrees 32 minutes N, 76 Degrees 12’ W

  Rowing into the floating carnage left behind by the pirate ship they had just sunk gave the men in Will’s longboat a transparent uneasiness. At sea, all sailors are subject to many of the same risks and hardships. It fosters a kinship unlike other occupations, even between enemy nations and enemy vessels. The same crew that would blow your ship full of holes and set it ablaze was just as apt to risk their own lives to rescue imperiled men in a storm. It didn’t help, William thought, that sailors are the worst kind of superstitious. He had long ago learned not to fight against it, it was often better to work around the lion’s share of their ideas about luck and bad luck.

  “The dead care nothing for your fears boys. Pay them no mind and they will do the same in return.” Will said softly, trying to ease their gaunt expressions.

  “There’s women mixed up in them Sir. Have you ever heard of a woman pirate?” a sailor asked while pulling on an oar.

  “Yes actually. There were several notable female pirates in the last century.” Will replied as he looked over the body of one they passed. “But I’m not sure I’ve heard of an African lady pirate before. Hold stroke lads.” Will looked over a woman, floating face up just feet from the longboat. She was young, perhaps in her early twenties, with a shot wound high in her abdomen and another near her shoulder. Her face had a strong beauty, even in death with her soaked braids floating around her head like Medusa’s snakes, she had a defiant look even in unconsciousness.

  “Fish her over to the boat,” said Will, drawing a bewildered look from all aboard.

  “That’d be frightful luck Sir…” said the sailor who had been asking about women pirates.

  “You wanted to know about a female pirate, now you can have your look. Just pull her in next to us with an oar, I want to see something.” Will said.

  “I’d thought you would’ve probably already seen it by now Sir,” another sailor jested, drawing a nervous chuckle from several others.

  “Just bloody well pull the woman’s corpse over to the damn boat.” Will said resisting a laugh himself.

  The sailors awkwardly reached out with two oars and as gently as they could, moved the body closer in toward their longboat, shuffling in their seats to the far side as she drew near. Will, reached down and took the woman’s hand in his, pulling her arm slightly out of the water. He gingerly pulled back her loose shirt sleeve, exposing her wrist. Closely inspecting the wet skin of her wrist revealed scars, not fresh scars, old wounds from being bound that had healed long ago. Gingerly, he lowered her arm down and then pulled up the other repeating his inspection to reveal similar scars. As he was about to lower her arm back down, Will felt the hand in his grasp tighten with such slight force that it might have been a whisper. It was like he had been bolted by lightning he almost threw the arms away it gave him such a startle.

  “She’s alive!” he exclaimed. “She’s alive, help me haul her in lads, come on.”

  The crew in the longboat tried as gently as they could, to lift her from the water. But as they lifted her from the tug of the sea the woman let out a painful groan.

  “It’s ok miss, we’ll get you some help.” A sailor said.

  “Why would we nurse her to health? So we can hang her as a pirate?” another quipped, cutting him short.

  “She is an escaped slave lad.” Will said in a stern tone, “She’s probably been through hell and back. We will nurse her to health if we are able. On my order, if you need a reason, but I would expect your humanity would suffice you.”

  “She’s a pirate Sir. Slave or not, if we don’t hang her, it’s our necks,” the sailor grumbled.

  Will felt his face flush red, the line of conversation was gradually raising his blood in anger. He reached to his waistband and pulled his cutlass from its scabbard.

  “She stays aboard, on my order. Now row for their longboat so we can finish this sortie lads.” Will said in a low tone.

  Looks were exchanged aboard the longboat, some of the men seemed unsure of their situation, others seemed unsure of the challenges their Lieutenant was receiving. Will reminded himself that these men, most of them, were not of his crew from the Valor. Even if they were
, the Valor had mutinied, tossing Captain Grimes overboard to leave him for dead. As the longboat approached the boat of dead pirates, Will felt completely and utterly alone, clasping the grip of his cutlass as if the crew would rise against him at any moment. Among the dead bodies, most of them African Will noted, was a chest. The sailors painstakingly hauled it aboard, its weight requiring the full strength of two able bodied men. The exchange of begrudged looks halted when Will lifted the lid of the chest, his eyes growing wide in glorious surprise.

  The afternoon sun cascaded into the chest as Will lifted the lid open, throwing the bright glow of gold against his face. Looking up at him from the inside of the chest was a stack of brilliant gold bars. Will reached in and hefted one, its weight cemented what he was experiencing as genuine and not some wild fever dream from the hot sun.

  “Dear Christ in a manger,” a sailor said over his shoulder. “That’s more gold in one place than I’ve ever seen in my life!”

  Will was dumbfounded, he had never seen that much gold, collectively, in his life. He reached in and examined another bar, each one felt to weigh about five pounds. The chest was full of them, Will’s head started to spin as he mentally tried to tally how much value sat in front of him. He could buy a ship, an entire fleet with the contents of this chest. It was a fortune that would last a man his entire life and that of his children, likely even his grandchildren. This was the kind of fortune men would kill for, risk life and limb to steal away, or even mutiny against their commander over.

  “Row for the Endurance men. We need to get out of here.” Will ordered giving the handle of his cutlass a squeeze.

  They rowed in silence toward the Endurance, through the debris and floating dead. There was no more grumbling of bad omens or cursed luck from the crew as flotsam and dead bodies bumped against the hull of the longboat. Will caught several looks between the rowing sailors that set his hair standing. The chest they had discovered was going to be a problem. At best, the position he was holding aboard the Endurance was fragile. In a matter of a few days all the senior leadership of the fleet had been lost. If Will could not maintain order aboard the Endurance, things would devolve into chaos beyond recovery. As they approached the shadows of the masts on the water’s surface Will looked aloft to see a scurry of activity. Sailors in the rigging were pointing to the opposite side of the ship and shouts drifted down. The bell aboard the Endurance started a frantic succession of rings, followed shortly by drums signaling all hands to their battle quarters.