Читать книгу The Black Swan (Historical Novel) - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 6

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The historical truth of the situation, as it concerned Sir Henry Morgan and the notorious Tom Leach, emerges so clearly from that conversation in the cabin of the Centaur that little remains to be added by a commentator.

Morgan had certainly been shaken up by the authorities at home for his lack of zeal in the prosecution of the task entrusted to him of exterminating the sea-brigands who infested the Caribbean. He had been admonished with more severity than justice; for, after all, in the short time that had elapsed since his own retirement from the Brotherhood of the Coast, he had wrought miracles in the discharge of the duty assumed. The very force of his example had in itself gone far. The very fact that he had ranged himself under the banners of law and order, with the consequent disbanding of the buccaneer fleet of which he had been the admiral, had compelled the men who had followed him to drift back gradually to the peaceful arts of logwood-cutting, planting, and boucanning proper. Many more had been induced to quit the seas by the general amnesty Morgan had been authorized to proclaim, backed by a grant of twenty-five acres of land to every filibuster who should choose to take advantage of it. Those who defiantly remained afloat he pursued so actively and relentlessly as to have deserved better of the Government than a reprimand and the threat of deposition and worse. Because in spite of his endeavours there were some sea-robbers who still eluded him, the authorities at home did not scruple to suggest that Morgan might be playing a double game and might be receiving tribute from those who still remained at large.

Sir Henry was not merely enraged by the insinuation; he was fearful of a solid indictment being built upon it which might end by depriving him of his head. It made the old pirate realize that in accepting a knighthood and the King's commission he had given stern hostages to Fortune. And whilst he may have cursed the one and the other, he addressed himself fearfully to the business of satisfying his terrible taskmasters. The business was rendered heavy by the lawless activities of his old associate Tom Leach, whom Major Sands had named. Tom Leach, as crafty a seaman as he was a brutal, remorseless scoundrel, had gathered about him a host of those buccaneers who were reluctant to forsake their old ways of life, and with these, in a powerful forty-gun ship, the Black Swan, he was in strength upon the Caribbean and wreaking fearful havoc. Being outlawed now, an Ishmael with every man's hand against him, he practised none of the old discrimination of the Brethren of the Coast, as the buccaneers had been called. He was just a brigand, making war upon every ship that sailed, and caring nothing what flag was flown by the vessels he captured, stripped, and sank.

For four anxious months, Morgan had been hunting him in vain, and so as to encourage others to hunt him, he had put the price of five hundred pounds upon the ruffian's head. Not only had Leach eluded him and grown ever more defiant in his depredations, but two months ago off Granada, when two ships of the Jamaica squadron had cornered him, he had delivered battle so successfully that he had sunk one of the Government frigates and disabled the other.

Well might Captain Bransome have uttered his prayer that this evil villain should soon come to moorings in execution dock. The following morning was to bring him the urgent dread that, if the prayer was to be answered at all, it was not likely to be answered in time to be of profit to the Centaur.

Going early on deck to take the air and summon his fellow passengers to breakfast, Monsieur de Bernis found the Captain on the poop, levelling a telescope at a ship some three or four miles away to eastward on their starboard quarter. Beside him stood Major Sands in his burnt-red coat and Miss Priscilla very dainty in a gown of lettuce-green with ivory lace that revealed the lissom beauty of her milk-white neck.

The wind which had veered to the north had freshened a little since dawn, and swept the ship with a grateful coolness. With topsails furled, and a considerable list to larboard, the Centaur was rippling through the sea on a course almost due west. She was still some leagues south-east of Ayes, and land was nowhere in sight.

The master lowered his telescope as de Bernis came up. Turning his head, and seeing the Frenchman, he first pointed with the glass, then proffered it.

'Tell me what you make of her, Mossoo.'

Monsieur de Bernis took the glass. He had not observed the grave look in Bransome's eyes, for he displayed no urgency in complying. He paused first to exchange a greeting with Miss Priscilla and the Major. But when at last he did bear the glass to his eye, he kept it there for an unconscionable time. When he lowered it, his countenance reflected the gravity worn by the Captain's. Even then he did not speak. He stepped deliberately to the side, and setting his elbows on the rail for steadiness, levelled the glass once more. This time his observations were even more protracted.

He scanned the tall black hull of that distant ship and the black beak-head carved in the shape of a swan with a gilded crest. He attempted to count the gun ports on her larboard flank as far as this was revealed by the course she was steering. With the same leisureliness he surveyed the mountain of canvas under which she moved, with every sail unfurled, and above which flew no flag.

So long was he in this inspection that at last the Captain's hard-held patience slipped from him.

'Well, sir? Well? What dye make of her?'

Monsieur de Bernis lowered the glass again, and faced his questioner. He was calm and smiling.

'A fine, powerful ship,' he said casually, and turned to the others. 'Breakfast waits in the cabin.'

The Major, whose appetite was never feeble, required no further invitation. He departed, taking Miss Priscilla with him.

As they disappeared into the gangway leading aft, the smile left the face of Monsieur de Bernis. Solemnly his long dark eyes met the Captain's uneasily questioning glance.

'I desired not to alarm the lady. It is as I think you already suspect. Tom Leach's ship. The Black Swan.'

'Ye're certain?'

'As certain as that she's steering to cross your course.'

The Captain swore in his red beard. 'And this on my last voyage!' he complained. 'Fate might ha' let me end my sailing days in peace. Ye think...D'ye think she means to attack me?'

Monsieur de Bernis shrugged. 'It is Tom Leach. And he steers to cross your course.'

The Captain fell to ranting and swearing as a man will who is spirited and yet conscious of impotence when beset. 'The black-hearted, blackguardly swine! What's your fine Sir Henry Morgan doing to leave him loose upon the seas? What for did the King knight him and make him Governor of Jamaica?'

'Sir Henry will get him in the end. Be sure of that.'

The Frenchman's calm in the face of this overwhelming peril served only to increase the Captain's fury. 'In the end! In the end! And how will that help me? What's to be done?'

'What can you do?'

'I must fight or run.'

'Which would you prefer?'

Bransome considered, merely to explode in exasperation. 'How can I fight? She carries twice my guns, and, if it comes to boarding, her men outnumber mine by ten to one or more.'

'You will run, then?'

'How can I run? She has twice my canvas.' Bransome was grim.

In the waist some of the hands newly descended from aloft were shading their eyes to survey the distant ship, but idly, without suspicion yet of her identity.

De Bernis returned to the study of her through the telescope. He spoke presently with the glass still to his eye. 'For all her canvas, her sailing's laboured,' he pronounced. 'She's been overlong at sea. Her bottom's foul. That's plain.' He lowered the glass again. 'In your place, Captain, I should come a point or two nearer to the wind. You'ld beat up against it a deal more nimbly than will she in her present stale condition.'

The advice seemed to exasperate Bransome. 'But whither will that lead me? The nearest landfall on that course is Porto Rico, and that over two hundred miles away.'

'What matter? If this breeze holds, she'll never gain on you to windward. She'll sail her worst close-hauled. You may even outsail her. But if you do no more than keep the present distance, you are safe.'

'That's if the breeze holds. And who's to warrant me the breeze'll hold? It's an unnatural wind for this time o' year.' He swore again in his frenzy of indecision. 'If I was to go about, and run for Dominica again? It's none so far, and safest, after all.'

'But it's down wind, and down wind, with all her canvas spread, she'll overhaul you quickly for all her foulness.'

Bransome, however, was rendered obstinate by panic, and another hope had come to vitiate his reasoning. 'Towards Dominica we're likeliest to meet other shipping.' Without waiting for the Frenchman's answer, he stepped to the poop-rail and bawled an order to the quartermaster at the whipstaff to put down the helm.

And now it was de Bernis who departed from his calm. He rapped out an oath in his vexation at this folly, and began an argument which Bransome cut short with the reminder that it was he who commanded aboard the Centaur. He would listen to advice; but he would take no orders.

With a lurching plunge the Centaur luffed alee, then came even on her keel and raced south before the wind.

The seamen in the waist, who had fallen agape at this abrupt manoeuvre, were ordered aloft again to unfurl, not only the topsails which they had just come down from furling, but also the topgallants. Even as they sprang to the ratlines, in obedience, the great black ship, now left astern on the larboard quarter, was seen to alter her course and swing in pursuit, thus dispelling any possible doubt that might have lingered on the score of her intentions.

At once it became clear aboard the Centaur that they were running before an enemy. Unaccountably, as il seemed, realization spread through the ship. The hands came tumbling from the forecastle in alarm, and stood about the hatch-coaming in the waist, staring and muttering.

Bransome, now on the quarter-deck, whither de Bernis had followed him, remained a long while with the telescope to his eye. When at last he lowered it, he displayed a face of consternation, from which most of the habitual ruddy colour had departed.

'You was right,' he confessed. 'She's overhauling us fast. We'll do better, though, when the topsails are spread. But even so we'll never make Dominica before that hell-hound is on our rudder. What's to do, Mossoo? Shall I go about again?'

In the obvious urgency of his need, humbled by the realization that if he had taken de Bernis' advice in the first instance, he would now be in better case, he appealed again to that experienced fighting seaman.

Monsieur de Bernis took time to answer. He was plunged in thought, a heavy frown between narrowed eyes. Bransome assumed him to be making mental calculations, and the assumption seemed confirmed when the Frenchman spoke.

'It is too late,' he said at last. 'Consider the time you would lose, and the way, whilst she with the weather-gauge of you, would need to veer but a point or two so as to steer athwart your hawse. No, Captain. You are committed to your present course. It means now that you must not only run, but fight.'

'God of Heaven! In what case am I to fight? To fight such a ship as that?'

'I've seen victory snatched against longer odds.'

Bransome took heart from the other's grim calm. 'And, anyhow,' said he 'with his back to the wall, a man has no choice but to fight, no matter the odds. Have ye anything in mind, Mossoo?'

Thus plainly invited, Monsieur de Bernis became brisk and authoritative.

'What hands do you muster?'

'Twenty-six all told, including quartermaster and bo'sun. Leach'll have three hundred or more.'

'Therefore, he must be allowed no chance to board us. Give me charge of your guns, and I'll show you how a main deck should be fought, so long as you provide me with the chance to fight it.'

The Captain's gloom was further lightened. 'I'm in luck, at least, in having you aboard, Monsieur de Bernis.'

'I hope it may prove as lucky for me in the end,' was the sardonic answer.

He summoned Pierre, the half-caste, from the bulkhead below against which he was leaning, awaiting his master's orders.

'Tiens, mon fils.' Monsieur de Bernis stripped off the sky-blue coat he was wearing, the fine cambric shirt with its delicate ruffles, his hat, his periwig, his shoes and stockings, delivering all to Pierre with orders to bestow them in his cabin. Then, naked above the waist, displaying a lean, muscular brown torso, and with a scarf tied about his cropped head, he was ready to take the command of the gun-deck which Bransome so very gladly made over to him.

By this time the crew was fully aware of what was coming. The steadiness of the men, displayed when Sproat, the bo'sun, piped them to their quarters, was at least encouraging.

Eight of them, with Purvey, the master-gunner, were told off to compose a gun-crew. Captain Bransome addressed them briefly. He informed them that Monsieur de Bernis would take command on the gun-deck, and that it was upon the gun-deck that this fight would be fought, so that the safety of all was in their hands.

Monsieur de Bernis, now sharply authoritative, ordered them at once below to clear the gun-tackles, to load and run out the guns. Before following, he had a last word with the Captain. Standing by the ornately carved rail of the quarter-deck, at the head of the companion, he spoke incisively.

'You've placed the responsibility on us. I will do my part. You may depend on that. But it rests with you to give me the opportunity of doing it. Here timorousness, caution, will not serve. The odds are heavily against us in this gamble. That we must accept. We stake all--your ship, our lives--upon a lucky shot or two between wind and water. Handle your ship so as to give me every chance of it you can. You will have to take great risks. But take them boldly. Audacity, then, Captain! All the audacity you can command.'

Bransome nodded. His face was set, his air resolute. 'Aye, aye,' he answered.

Monsieur de Bernis' bold dark eyes pondered him a moment, and approved him. A glance aloft, where every stitch of canvas now wooed the breeze, a glance astern, over the larboard quarter where the pursuing ship came ploughing after them, and de Bernis went down the companion and crossed the waist, to lower himself through an open scuttle to the deck below.

He dropped from the brilliant blaze of a cloudless day into a gloom that was shot at regular intervals by narrow wedges of sunlight from the larboard gunports.

Under the direction of Purvey, the guns were being run out and made fast.

Stooping almost double in that confined space, with the reek of spun yarn in his nostrils, de Bernis busied himself in taking stock of the material with which he was to endeavour to command the fortunes of the day.