Читать книгу Pirates on Dinosaur Island - Mark Edwards - Страница 8

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Of ships and surgeries and an accidental amputation.

Captain Jonathan Hakes was insane, by any standard other than that of the fighting men who sailed. He would attack a ship of double the Worcester's guns, since he had long before decided that the fighting qualities of an Englishman were worth thrice that of a Spaniard or free booter. By the time we had reached our cruising ground on the Main, we had already taken four ships, and there had been much work for my needle, scalpel, and bone saw. Hakes was a brave man of considerable generosity and wit who believed himself invincible, as did many of our crew. He was good company to your narrator.

When we met Baltizar's Smoke ‘n’ Oakum, a ship of thirty-eight guns and a crew of five-score buccaneers, somewhere in the latitudes south of Cuba, the arithmetic of odds offset the triple courage of our English tars. Captain Hakes was also unaware that the Smoke ‘n’ Oakum was rotting from keel to the gunwales, and the crew was fighting desperate to take a ship that wasn't sinking.

I performed surgery for sixteen hours after the Worcester was taken. I became so exhausted that I required the surviving ship's boy to mark wounded limbs with an X so I would not amputate the wrong ones. The Worcester had gone into battle with a crew of fifty-two, twenty-eight of whom were now dead, including Hakes and his first mate. Twelve more were severely wounded.

Of the pirates, fifty-three were dead or overboard, and another score had need of my skills—a high price for their new brig. Another eighteen men from both parties would die that night, some on the table before me, some in the mortal hour before dawn.

While I did my work across a bloody slab made from three sea chests, the buccaneers transferred stores from their failing craft to the Worcester and repaired the damage to the ship, spars, and sails, putting our own hale crew members to work. The dead, including Captain Hakes, were wrapped in sailcloth and dropped overboard with cannonballs tied to their shrouds. The screams of my patients were punctuated by the shuffle of goods and men on deck, and the occasional splash of the dead dropping into the sea.

When I came on deck at dawn, I saw a transformed vessel, as near to trim as it had been before battle, except that our sailors were now replaced by buccaneers dressed in a mix of rags and finery. Here the long coat of a sea officer over ragged drawers, no shirt, and a brace of pistols; there a fellow in an embroidered gold jacket with a filthy kerchief on his toothless head. I knew enough by then to see that they were a seaworthy bunch of villains.

The man in the motley coat approached me where I stood by the starboard rail, and nodded in a kindly way. As I remarked at first sight of him, he was of cheerful visage and was a well-knit fellow of about thirty, with long moustaches and a crooked smile.

“All sew'd and bandag'd, yours and ours?” said he.

“Yes, I've done what can be done.”

He drew his pistol, “Then you're done.”

There is something to be said for exhaustion: it creates a sanguine acceptance, a carelessness. I struck the pistol from his hand before I knew what I was about, and was bearing him to the deck before he knew what I was about. He was the stronger, and despite my advantage from being on top, he was strangling me.

I still had a lancet thrust into my belt. I drew this and slashed at him, more to frighten than to harm, and he frantically threw me off. He rose, half-drawing a dirk, and I fearfully swung the small blade at him again. He staggered back, blood flowing down the hand he'd clapped to his face, and we both stared stupidly at his nose, which lay on the deck.

I became aware of the crowd around us, including the Captain, who picked up the fallen pistol and aimed it at my belly. He pulled the trigger.