Читать книгу Biggles Flies West - W E Johns - Страница 7

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Overhead, from horizon to horizon, the sky was the deep azure blue of the tropics, unbroken except in the distant west, where, high above the misty peaks of Hispaniola, a fleecy cloud was sailing slowly eastward. Nearer, a snow-white albatross swung low on rigid wings, its shadow sweeping the limpid surface of the sea, clear aquamarine, with little purple shadows here and there between the ripples that lapped gently at the Santa’s stern, or broke when a school of dolphins hurried by.

This scene of grace and colour was well matched by the splendour of the Spanish ship, a stately galleon, her counter red and silver, her towering poop all gold-encrusted, her sails, now loosely furled, rich cream and crimson, bright pennants streaming from her mastheads to the coats-of-arms that lined her sides above the bristling guns.

Only the Rose, belying her name, looked out of place, as out of place as a tramp on the threshold of a palace. Her sea-stained canvas, torn and shot-holed, lay in piles about the foot of her broken and splintered mainmast, or trailed with twisted skeins of cordage over her sides. From her bluff, Bristol-built bows to her sweeping stern she was painted black, a fitting colour, for about her well-scrubbed decks, in a welter of fast-congealing blood, lay her crew, their glazing eyes upturned to the grim emblem of piracy that hung limply from the galleon’s peak—a sable flag with a white device: the dreaded skull and crossbones.

The scene was all too common in the days when Charles the Second was king. The Rose of Bristol, a barque of two hundred and fifty tons, homeward bound from the Spanish Main, had fallen in with the Santa Anna, lately captured by the most notorious pirate on the costa: Louis Dakeyne, leader of the Brethren, half French, half Dutch, half man, half devil, whose name was execrated wherever sailors met between the Old World and the New; for he spared neither man nor maid, or old or young of any nationality. His latest exploit, so it was rumoured, had been the capture, off Cartagena, of the galleon Santa Anna, to which, after subjecting her captain to unspeakable tortures, he had transferred his cut-throat crew. So when at dawn the foretop of the Spaniard had appeared above the clear horizon, John Chandler, Master of the Rose, had clapped on sail and fled, knowing that, outmanned and outgunned, he stood no chance against the monster with its heavy metal and swarming crowd of villains. And for a time it seemed as if he would escape, for the barque was the better sailer of the two; but then the breeze that could have saved him passed him by, and while he had lain becalmed the bigger vessel with its enormous spread of canvas had crept slowly nearer, and with sinking heart the English captain knew his hour had come. With steady voice he had called his crew to prayer, then bade them die like men.

He had fought to the end, refusing to strike his colours, firing his one small piece of ordnance until the pirates poured aboard. Then, with his loyal crew around him, he had made his last stand near the mainmast, neither asking nor giving quarter. Cutlass in hand, the name of his God on his lips, he had done all that one man could do while his gallant hands were beaten down and slain, and only he remained, to fall at length under a foul blow from behind....

But not to die at once. Sorely wounded, he was dragged aboard the galleon while his ship was looted. This done, he was questioned by Dakeyne about other ships in harbour, soon to sail for England; but he set his lips in an obstinate line and not a word came from them. At that they flogged him until he swooned, but they could not make him speak. And now, the pirate’s patience soon exhausted, he stood upon the fatal plank, looking death in the face, with his hands tied behind his back.

A sudden silence fell, a hush broken only by the plaintive cry of the seabird, now circling very near, and the gentle murmur of the water far below.

Well might it have been for Louis Dakeyne, Louis le Grande, self-styled, or Louis the Exterminator, as many called him, had he dispatched his prisoner there and then, for the English mariner had still one card to play, and he played it with such deadly calm that those who heard his words turned pale, knowing that one on the point of death must speak the truth.

Turning from the end of the plank that hung far over the limpid sea so that he faced his ship, he regarded the grinning mob, his captors, with steadfast eyes that held not fear, nor hate, but scorn and triumph. For a moment he stood thus while a bead of blood crept down his ashen brow, crossing a cut so that a cross of red was formed.

The omen did not pass unseen, and a low mutter, like breakers on a distant beach, ran through the mob. It died away to silence as the stricken captain spoke.

‘Harken unto me, black hounds of hell,’ he cried, in a clear, ringing voice. ‘Harken at these my words, for they will be in the ears of each and all of you when your hour comes, as it will, before another moon shall wax and wane.’

A howl of derision rose into the sun-soaked air.

‘Shoot him,’ screamed one, a coal-black negro.

‘Perro! Vamos a ver,’ snarled a renegade Spaniard.

‘Swing him by the heels,’ roared a one-eyed monster.

‘Woodle him,’^[1] bawled another.

‘Silence!’ At the pirate captain’s sharp command the imprecations ceased. He was watching the doomed man with a peculiar expression, not far removed from fear, upon his face.

‘Amongst the gold that you have taken from my ship and put with yours,’ went on the English captain dispassionately, ‘there is one coin, a gold doubloon, that carries all your fates, for it is cursed. When Joseph Bawn, a red-haired thief whom some of you may know, was brought to the scaffold at Port Royal this day last week, that coin was in his pocket. And there, within the shadow of the gallows, he spat upon it thrice. And as he spat he cursed the God who made him, and every one into whose hands the gold should fall.’

A shudder, like the sound of the wind in leafless trees, ran through the superstitious audience.

‘That piece was put upon my ship because it was the king’s and had to go to England,’ continued the captain relentlessly. ‘Mark well my fate, and see how true the curse is working; then contemplate your own that soon must follow. For you cannot escape. The piece is in your hoard, and to disown it you must throw your treasure overboard, which you have not the heart to do.’

There was no more laughing. Upon the faces of the pirates were frowns and scowls; upon their lips were oaths, but in their hearts cold fear.

John Chandler lifted his blue eyes to the blue sky. ‘With my last breath I beseech my God to strengthen now that curse until——’

He got no farther. Dakeyne’s pistol blazed. A stream of flame and sparks leapt from its gaping muzzle and ended at the sailor’s breast.

For an instant he remained standing, eyes upturned, lips moving. Then his knees bent; his body sagged limply and plunged down into the void.

At the sound of the splash the pirates rushed to the side of their ship, eyes seeking the corpse. But all they saw was an ever-spreading ring of ripples that circled slowly outwards from a crimson stain. And as they stared aghast an icy slant of wind moaned through the rigging.

‘What’s that?’ muttered Dakeyne, white-faced.

‘The bird! It was the albatross!’ cried Jamaica Joe, his quartermaster.

The pirate’s eyes flashed round the sky. ‘The bird has gone!’ he gasped. ‘Look!’

There was a sudden hush as all eyes followed his quivering forefinger.

Far to the west, from north to south, across the sky, an indigo belt was racing low towards them, blotting out the blue.

The pirate’s voice scarce rose above the hubbub. ‘All hands aloft,’ he croaked through lips that were suddenly dry.

[1] ‘Woodling’ was a barbarous form of torture favoured by buccaneers to induce prisoners to divulge the hiding-places of their valuables. (Naturally, in the sacking of a ship, or town, those who possessed gold or jewels hid them in the hope that they would not be found.) Woodling, the process employed to make them speak, consisted of tying a piece of cord round the prisoner’s brows, and then screwing it up with a piece of wood, like a tourniquet.