Читать книгу The Black Swan (Historical Novel) - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 7

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In the great cabin, Miss Priscilla and Major Sands broke their fast, happily ignorant of what was coming. They marvelled a little at the absence of the Captain, and they marvelled a little more at the absence of their fellow passenger. But rendered sharp-set by the sea air, and having waited a reasonable time to satisfy the demands of courtesy, they yielded to Sam's soft invitation to table, and with the Negro to wait upon them fell to with an appetite.

They saw the soft-footed Pierre enter and pass into his master's cabin, bearing a bundle. To the question Miss Priscilla addressed to him, he answered after his usual laconic fashion that Monsieur de Bernis was on deck and would breakfast there. He collected from Sam some food and wine, and went off, to bear it to his master on the gun-deck.

They thought it odd, but lacked curiosity to investigate.

After breakfast, Miss Priscilla went to sit on the cushioned stern-locker under the open ports. Monsieur de Bernis' guitar still lay there, where last night he had left it. She took it up, and ran inexpert fingers carelessly across the strings, producing a jangle of sound. She swung sideways upon the locker, and turned her gaze seaward.

'A ship!' she cried, in pleased excitement, and by the cry brought Major Sands to stand beside her and to stare with her at the great black ship driving forward in their wake.

The Major commented upon the beauty of the vessel with the sun aslant across her yards, lending a cloud effect to the billowing canvas under which she moved; and for some time they remained there, watching her, little suspecting the doom with which her black flanks were pregnant.

Neither of them observed the altered course of the Centaur, obvious though it was rendered by the position of the sun. Nor at first did they give heed to the sounds of unusual bustle that beat upon the deck overhead, the patter of feet, the dragging of tackles, or again to the noisier movements in the wardroom immediately underneath them, where the two brass culverins that acted as stern-. chasers were being run out under the orders of Monsieur de Bernis.

Down there in the sweltering gloom, where men moved bowed like apes for lack of head room, the Frenchman had been briskly at work.

The ten guns with which he was to challenge the Black Swan's forty, waited, their leaden aprons removed, their touch-holes primed, all ready to be touched off.

De Bernis had laid them himself, approximately, so as to fire high and sweep the shrouds of the pursuer. The broad target of her sails offered him an infinitely better chance of crippling her than he could hope to achieve by a shot aimed at her hull of which so little would he presented to him. If he could thus injure her sailing power, it would afterwards be theirs to elect whether to be content to escape, or whether to stay to tackle her with the advantage of unimpaired mobility.

From the wardroom ports astern, crouching beside one of the brass stern-chasers which had moved his scorn, Monsieur de Bernis watched the pirate racing after them and rapidly lessening the gap between. Thus an hour passed, counting from the moment when the Centaur had gone about. The Black Swan was overhauling its prey even more swiftly than Monsieur de Bernis had reckoned possible. Very soon now she was less than half a mile astern, and Monsieur de Bernis judged that they were within range.

He sent the wardroom gunner forward, to warn Purvey to stand ready, and waited in growing impatience for Bransome to put up his helm. But moments passed, and still the Centaur held to her course, as if Bransome had no thought but to continue running.

Then from below the pirate's beak-head came a white bulge of smoke, followed half a heart-beat later by the boom of a gun. A shower of spray was flung up by a round shot, taking the water fifty yards astern of the Centaur.

To de Bernis this was like a call to action, and so he judged that it must be to Bransome. Quitting his observation post, he sped forward to the gun-deck, where the matches glowed in the gloom, as the gunners blew upon them. And there he waited for the Black Swan to come into view of the larboard gunports.

In the cabin above, that single shot had disturbed the complacency of the watchers on the stern-locker. They stared blankly at each other in their uneasy surprise, the soldier vehemently desiring his vitals to be stabbed. Then Miss Priscilla sprang to her feet, and together they went on deck to seek an explanation.

They were allowed, however, to go no farther than the waist, where they were met by the grim faces of the mustered seamen. They needed no other confirmation of their fears that here all was not well. They received it, nevertheless, in the order to return at once below, roared at them by the Captain from the quarter-deck.

The Major's face empurpled. He spoke between remonstrance and indignation. 'Captain! Captain!' And then he added the question: 'What is happening here?'

'Hell is happening!' he was fiercely informed. 'Take the lady out of it. Get below decks, where she'll be under cover.'

The Major threw a chest, and advanced a step on legs that were stiff with dignity. 'I demand to know...' he began. And there the thunder of another gun interrupted him. This time the spray from the shot rattled against the timbers of their larboard quarter.

'Will you stay until a falling spar or worse strikes you across your foolish head? D'ye need to be told that were in action? Get the lady under cover, man.'

Priscilla tugged at the Major's red sleeve. She was very white, undoubtedly afraid. Yet all that she said to him was: 'Come, Bart. We embarrass them. Take me back.'

Despite simmering resentment of the tone the Captain had taken with him, he obeyed her without further argument. The suddenness of this troubling of their serenity bewildered him. Also, although Major Sands was brave enough ashore, he experienced here a daunting clutch at his heart from his sense of helplessness on an element that was foreign to him and in a form of warfare of which knew nothing. Nor did the presence of Miss Priscilla help to encourage him. The sense of responsibility for her safety increased his discomfort. Before he had reconducted her, a seaman standing by had muttered to him that they were being chased by that hell's bastard Tom Leach.

Back in the great cabin, staring once more from her stern-ports at the oncoming enemy, the Major dissembled his dismay with the laudable aim of reassuring Miss Priscilla. He strove to quiet her alarm with assurances in which he, himself, had no faith.

And at the same time, on the quarter-deck, de Bernis, who in furious impatience had come up from below, was demanding to know what Bransome might be waiting for, and peremptorily ordering him to reef his topsails and bring the Centaur up to the wind so that her guns might come into action.

'You're surely mad,' the Captain answered him. 'She'll be upon us before we can get under way again.'

'That's because ye've delayed overlong already. Ye've increased the risk, That's all. But we must take it. We stake all now upon my chance to cripple her sailing power. Come, man! There's no more time to lose. Never mind reeling. Put up your helm, and leave the rest to me.'

Between an instinctive reluctance to a manoeuvre that was a pure gambler's throw and resentment aroused by the Frenchman's hectoring tone, Captain Bransome was perversely indignant.

'Get off my quarter-deck!' he roared. 'Do you command this ship, sir, or do I?'

De Bernis clutched the Captain's arm and pointed astern. 'Look, man! Look!'

The pirate was lowering and raising her fore topsail. It was the signal to heave to. Instantly de Bernis' quick mind had seen what advantage might he taken of it.

'It's your chance, man! Heaven-sent! You've but to pretend to comply. She'll be off her guard.' He flung an arm upwards to point to the Union flag aloft. 'Strike your colours, and heave to across her bows. Then leave it to me to put a whole broadside athwart her hawse.'

The Captain, however, shared none of the Frenchman's eager hopes. He seemed only alarmed by a proposal so redolent of buccaneering treachery.

'By God's death!' he answered. 'She'll sink us in reply.'

'If I shear away her shrouds, she'll be in no case to bring her guns to bear.'

'And if ye don't?'

'Things will be not a whit worse than they already are.'

Under the Frenchman's dark, compelling eyes the Captain's opposition visibly weakened. He saw that this was their last desperate chance. That there was no longer any choice. As if reading his mind, de Bernis urged him once again.

'Heave to, Captain. Give the word.'

'Aye, aye. It's all that's left to do, I suppose.'

'To it, then!' De Bernis left him, leapt down to the waist, and vanished once more through the scuttle to the deck below.

Even as he disappeared, Tom Leach, grown impatient, sent a charge of langrel from his fore-chasers through the shrouds of the Centaur, so as to quicken her master's compliance with his signals. In a tangle of cordage, a couple of spars came crashing to the deck.

Below, de Bernis heard the thuds and conjectured what had happened. He was not at all dismayed. The event, he concluded, must put an end to any lingering hesitation of Captain Bransome. He ordered his gunners to stand ready. Himself he snatched from one of them a linstock, and, crouching by the middle one of the five larboard guns, waited for the Centaur to go about.

Whilst he waited thus, he heard again the boom of cannon, and felt the vessel shudder under the heavy impact of a hit astern. Then he was flung violently against a bulkhead as the Centaur wildly yawed.

He recovered his balance, and for a moment his hopes ran high. She was heaving to. He perceived that she was veering. He saw the face of the waters shifting below. But he waited in vain for a sight of the pursuing ship. Only an empty sea confronted him. And at last he reached the exasperating conclusion that, in heaving to, Bransome had put his helm to starboard. Cursing him for a lubberly fool, de Bernis sped aft to the wardroom to verify his suspicion. Here he found a dismayed explanation of what was happening. That hit, of which he had felt the impact, had, by a monstrous chance, smashed the head of the Centaur's rudder, throwing her steering-tackles out of action. As if it did not suffice a malignant Fate that with damaged shrouds she should rapidly be losing way, now, with the helm out of control, she was left to yaw this way and that, as the wind took her.

Through the stern-ports the Black Swan was now visible to de Bernis, bearing down upon them at an alarming rate, and this, although she was already shortening sail, preparatory to boarding.

Bransome had waited too long to make the only throw that it was theirs to make. When at last he was willing to obey Monsieur de Bernis' persuasions, he suffered the common fate of him who will not when he may. A lucky shot from one of the pirate's powerful fore-chasers had rendered him helpless.

The wardroom gunner, a fair-haired, vigorous lad, returned a scared face upon Monsieur de Bernis when he came up to view the damage.

'We're beat, sir. They have us surely now.'

For a moment de Bernis stooped there, considering the tall ship that was scarcely five hundred yards astern. His lean, lined, swarthy face was set; his dark eyes steady and impassive. He went down on one knee beside one of the brass culverins, and laid it again. He laid it carefully, calm and unhurried, realizing that this slenderest of chances was the last one of which the Centaur still disposed. At this short range it was possible that the little brass cannon, which earlier had aroused his scorn, might be effective.

Rising, he took the smouldering match from the gunner's hand, blew upon it, touched off the gun, and stepped nimbly aside to avoid the recoil, But even as the gun went off, the Centaur yielding to a puff of wind, yawed again, swinging her stern a point or two alee. The Centaur fired her first and last shot into the void.

De Bernis looked at the young gunner, squatting there on his naked heels, and laughed in grim bitterness.

'C'est fini, mon gars. All is over. Next we shall have the grappling-hooks aboard, and then...' He shrugged, and tossed the useless match through the port.

White-faced, the lad swore through his strong young teeth. He raved a little about Tom Leach, desiring a red-hot hell for him.

'It looks as if it would be our turn first,' sighed de Bernis. Then he, too, broke out passionately for a moment. 'Ah! Sang de Dieu! What was needed here was a fighting seaman on the poop; not a lubberly merchant master. I should have stayed with him, and made him handle her as she should have been handled. Then any fool might have served these guns. But what use to talk now?'

He stood squarely in the port, in the space which the gun's recoil had left, watching the pirate's advance. She had further shortened sail, and she was creeping forward slowly now, but nonetheless surely, upon a prey no longer able to escape her. She held her fire, and waited to board, so as to do no further damage.

From where he stood, de Bernis could see the men on her bowsprit busy with the gaskets of her spritsail, and two others standing in the fore-chains holding the grapnels ready.

The gunner heard him muttering between his teeth. Then he turned, suddenly brisk.

'Up above with you, my lad, and bid the others on the gun-deck up with you. There's no more to be done down here.'

As for Monsieur de Bernis, himself, he took a short cut. He crawled out through the square port, steadying himself precariously against one of the stanchions of the shallow gallery over the counter.

Then, facing inwards, his bare feel upon the sill, he drew himself upright, and raised his right arm, so as to clutch one of the posts, which was within easy reach. Then, with the strength and agility of an ape, he swung clear and hoisted himself until he could bring his left hand to clutch the gallery rail. He heaved again nimbly, and his right hand followed. Another heave, and his elbow was on a level with the rail. He threw a leg over it, and so disappeared from the view of the amazed young gunner below.

To Miss Priscilla and the Major came then the most terrifying of all their experiences of that dreadful morning, when they beheld this half-naked figure clambering through the stern-windows of the coach.

The Major, who had meanwhile armed himself for eventualities, laid a hand to his sword, and would have drawn it had not the Frenchman's speech made it known to them that it was indeed he, taking this shortest way to reach his cabin. His aspect was terrifying, with face and hands and naked torso befouled by sweat and powder. His voice came harsh with scorn.

'The fight is fought. The lubberly Bransome was well advised to think of turning farmer. He should have thought of it before. Better for him, and better for those who sail with him. The fool never gave me a chance to use the guns. In God's name, why do such men go to sea? It's as if I took holy orders. Leach is saving gunpowder because he wants the ship. That's plain. He's going to board.'

From what he had told them, they were left to surmise the part which the momentarily forgotten Frenchman had played in the action.

Miss Priscilla, assuming that her only resource now lay in the help of Heaven, fell on her knees to pray. The Major looked on, helplessly, foolishly fierce.

Monsieur de Bernis, however, displayed in this desperate pass neither fear nor helplessness.

'Ah, but courage, mademoiselle. Compose yourself. I am here. It may be that you are in no danger. It may be. I can do things sometimes. You shall see. Have faith in me. A little faith.'

He flung away on that, into his own cabin, calling for Pierre, who was there, awaiting him.

Priscilla rose from her knees to question the Major.

In his heart Major Sands could not suppose that the Frenchman was anything but vaingloriously boastful. A theatrical fellow who would attitudinize in the very face of death. But he made gallant shift to stifle that conviction, so as to comfort her distress.

'I do not know what he can do. Stab me, I don't. But he seems confident. A resourceful fellow, I should judge. Remember, too, that he has been a buccaneer, and knows their ways. Dog don't eat dog, they say.'

Thus, vaguely, he mumbled on, though in his heart there was no hope. From what they had heard as lately as last night of the ways of Tom Leach, he could only assume that death would be his portion, and only pray that it might be a swift one. Fearful as the prospect might be, yet a deeper agony clawed him on behalf of Priscilla Harradine. Beholding her, so sweet and lovely in her distress, he feared for her the worse fate of being allowed to live, the prey of such a beast as Leach. It even crossed his agonized mind to kill her where she stood, considering this, in the pass to which things were come, the highest and noblest proof he could give of his love and reverence. But the thought took no root in his will. Inert he remained standing by the locker on which she sat, conscious for once of his own utter futility, and offering her cheerlessly vague words of comfort.

Thus, until the sunlight was eclipsed for them by the bulk of the great black ship. She came, her bulwarks lined with men, gliding up astern on their larboard quarter, and so cast her chilling, sinister shadow athwart the stern-ports where Miss Priscilla sat. Across the short gap of water came a trumpet call from the pirate's deck. They heard, too, the roll of drums, and presently there was a volley of musketry.

It brought Miss Priscilla quivering to her feet, and urged the Major to set a protecting arm about her slimness.

And then from his cabin Monsieur de Bernis re-emerged at last followed by his servant. He came now, not merely cleansed of his grime, but restored to his normal courtly habit. He had resumed his curled black periwig, his fine ruffled shirt, and his doublet of violet taffetas with its deep cuffs reversed in black and the buttonholes richly laced with silver. In addition, he was booted in fine black Cordovan leather, and he had armed himself, not only with a long rapier, but with a pair of pistols, slung before him, after the fashion of the buccaneers, in the ends of a stole, which, like his baldrick, was of purple leather stiff with silver bullion.

They stared at him in wonder. That he should have been at such pains with his toilet at such a time was surprising enough. But the ease of his bearing was more surprising still.

He smiled upon their wide-eyed wonder. He explained himself. 'Captain Leach is a great man. The last of the great buccaneers. He is to be received with ceremony.'

He was moving forward towards them when the deck under their feet shuddered to a thudding, crashing impact, followed by rending of timbers, the ringing-clank of grapnels, the snapping of spars, and the long, harsh rattle of volley upon volley of musketry.

Flung forward, Monsieur de Bernis clutched the table to steady himself. The Major dropped to his knees, whilst Miss Priscilla hurtling across the cabin, found refuge in the Frenchman's arms.

'Save me!' she gasped. 'Save me!'

Holding her, the man's tight lips under the little black moustache softened into a smile. One of his long shapely hands stroked the golden head that lay against his breast, and it may be that the firm calm touch of him soothed her more than his actual words.

'I hope to do so. It may well be possible.'

Deeply resentful of a situation which gave the Frenchman license for the intimacy of his attitude, the Major, gathering himself up, glared at him.

'Why, what can you do?' he growled ungraciously.

'We are going to see. Perhaps much. Perhaps little. But to do much, it is necessary that you obey me.' His manner became stern. 'Contradict nothing that I say, whatever it may be, and whatever you may think. Remember that, if you please, or you may destroy us all.'

Overhead a thunder of feet went rolling across the deck, to inform them that the pirates were aboard the Centaur. A babel of shouts and screams, mingled with a din of pistol shots and musketry fire, and, under all, the deeper diapason of the inarticulate muttering of men in conflict made up the hideous, terrifying sound of battle joined. Something dark and bulky flashed downwards past the stern-ports. They realized that it was the body of a man flung overboard from the poop. Another, and yet another, followed.

Miss Priscilla, in a fresh access of fear, clung yet more closely to Monsieur de Bernis.

'It will not last,' he said, his voice quiet. 'Leach has three hundred men at least; the Centaur little more than a score.'

His straining ears caught an approaching sound, and he added on a firmer note: 'You will obey me? Implicitly? Give me your word. It is important.'

'Yes, yes. Whatever you may say.'

'And you, Major Sands?'

Gloomily the Major gave the demanded promise. He had scarcely uttered it when along the gangway from the waist came the padding of a score of naked feet and a raucous mutter of voices quickly growing louder and nearer.

Overhead the sounds, if they had not diminished in volume, had changed in character, at least to the attentive, expert ears of Monsieur de Bernis. There were still the stamping and the shouting. But they were mixed now with sounds of horrible, obscene laughter, and a firing of muskets which de Bernis knew to be no more than wanton sporting, the triumphant joy-fire of the buccaneers.

The brief fight was over. The invaders had swept like a tidal wave across the decks of the Centaur cutting down all resistance.

The padding feet and muttering voices in the gangway, drowning now more distant sounds, announced to him the approach of those who came below to appraise the value of their capture, and to deal with any who might still be found alive under decks.

The cabin door was flung violently inwards upon its hinges to crash against a bulkhead. Through the dark gap swarmed a little mob of half-naked men, most of them with gaudily swathed heads, their sunburned, bearded faces alight with evil exultation. They came with weapons in their hands and foulness on their lips.

Beholding the four tenants of the cabin--for Pierre stood in the background, simulating impassivity, despite a greyness overspreading his deep tan--the ruffians checked a moment. Then one of them, at sight of the girl, loosed a hideous view-holloa, and on that they were surging forward again, when Monsieur de Bernis, calm to the point of seeming contemptuous, put himself in their way.

His hands were on the silver-mounted butts of the pistols in his stole; but the fact that he did not trouble to draw them lent him an added authority.

'Hold! I'll burn the brains of the first man who advances farther. I am de Bernis. Fetch your Captain Leach to me.'