Adam had already learned that the outlaws of Providence, incorrigibly poor business men, suffered from certain chronic shortages. Gorged with rum and rare wines, they had difficulty getting fruit, and even ship's biscuit was sometimes hard to come by. Of gold and silver plate they had vast quantities; yet of simple ironwork of the sort so badly needed to equip their vessels—for clasps, clamps, and such—as well as lead sheathing, an imperative in those parts—they were rather more than likely, at any given time, to have none. Any one of them might have produced for you altar plates, a triptych, candlesticks, gem-studded chalices, each one a work of art, worthy of a velvet cushion in a museum; but none could have produced a single simple nail, a plank or spar.
So Adam held his head dov\ai, and they kept going.
They passed the reef, after waving to the men who manned the cannon up in the old rebuilt fort. Other men, men who had not been able to get boats, were running out to the end of the point, to the fort, in order to get the news sooner when the flotilla returned.
The sea was a lake, the sky hadn't one cloud. It was just after noon.
In the holiday spirit the boats came together, separated, came together again, while men shouted back and forth in half a dozen different tongues. The talk had largely to do with betting; and as far as Adam could gather—the Brethren of the Coast had their own cant, not easily understood even when it was supposed to be English—the odds were three to one on Kellsen.
Nobody questioned for a moment, everybody knew, that the fight was to be a outrance, to the death. They took this for granted.
When the boats approached Cay Cucaracha—Cockroach Key the English called it—a silence fell over them, not all at once but gradually. The company broke into two parts, the smaller, the one Adam's boat was in, proceeding around to the far side.
It was tiny, an atoll, scarcely more than a raft of rubble supporting a few seared palmettos. It was round, perhaps a quarter of a mile across. The center was somewhat higher than the shore, but even the center was so low that a good-sized sea might have swept right over it.
However, there were no seas. When they landed on the sloping beach, the keel grating small coral stones, it was as easily done as bringing a canoe to the bank of a pond.
This was the only boat in sight that had come ashore. The others stayed some distance out.
Adam walked up and down, stretching his legs, his arms. There were no six or seven men with him, not all of them men he knew, though he knew that they were all favorable to him—friends he didn't notably want, for him largely because they were against Major Kellsen. Adam had no wish to lead a faction in this trouble-spot. Now he paid little attention to the men.
They had become serious, even grim. One had a musket, one a cutlass, one a pistol. The one with the pistol snapped it two or three times to make sure of the spark. It was huge, with a brass barrel, no sights, a fishtail butt made of Circassian walnut. It was heavy. The others watching, the man poured in a measurement of powder, cut a large round ball, dropped the ball in, little-fingered a chunk of wadding into the muzzle, rammed this home with a ramrod. He rapped the barrel smartly on his heel, so that powder fluffed out through the touchhole and into the pan. He handed the pistol to Adam.
"Use it careful. It's the only shot you'll get."
"Make a good club," Adam said, and took it by the barrel and shook it.
" 'Sblood, beefwit! That's loaded!"
The man with the cutlass handed this to Adam, who took it in his left hand. It was exactly the same length as Major Kellsen's, the man said. They had measured them.
Adam asked: "Where is the major?"
"The other side of this island. He's got a pistol, too."
Adam looked around. The sun was almost directly overhead. The sand, the stones, the fronds of palmettos shimmered. The sea gave little love-taps to the shore at his feet.
A semicircle of boats, possibly twenty of them, was motionless a couple of hundred yards away. Other boats were coming around from the far side of the island, but staying well out.
"And where do we meet?"
"Wherever you run into one another. The major's right opposite here. He ought to be ready now. Are you?"
Adam wetted his lips. He did not have much spit. He wanted to swallow but was afraid that he couldn't. He looked toward the center of the island, where nothing moved.
He hoped that Maisie was all right. He hoped that if he was killed she would still escape. Poor girl! She'd had it so hard, she was entitled to a change of luck.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I reckon I'm ready."
The musket went off with a bang, and in spite of himself Adam jumped, not having expected it. Immediately afterward there was another musket shot from the far side of the island. It sounded a faint thin "pip!" The men scrambled into the boat, and pushed out.
"Good hunting," they called.
They rowed away.
Adam Long stood motionless a moment. He thought that if only he could pray he would feel better, but he feared to kneel just now. He kept watching the middle of the island. Nothing moved.
After a while he began to walk sideways along the shore, still watching the middle of the island, though from time to time he flicked his eyes right and left, the way he was going, the way he had come.
He had some idea that Major Kellsen would do the same as he was doing—start circling the island, whether to right or to left.
But suddenly he realized that the major, not new at this, was more likely to take a bolder course and charge straight across the island, hoping to reach him before he had found cover.
In that case Adam would be utterly exposed, a sitting duck.
He started to run for the palmetto. He didn't care what the men in the boats back there thought of him. He ran fast, bending low.
What a fool he had been to waste that time!
Gasping, sobbing, he threw himself into the first clump of palmetto. His heart was going like a triphammer, but it was the only thing that he could hear.
He was more scared than he had ever been in his life.
When he got to his knees and peered around, in all directions, cautiously, he saw little enough. He was in a slight natural depression between two dunelike mounds. It was a good place, and he was in no hurry to leave it.
He prayed then. It was not an impassioned prayer. Simply and quietly he asked God to spare him a little longer, for the sake of Maisie, the hands, and the schooner, amen.
It made him feel better, as he had known it would.
He got to his feet, though he squatted, keeping his head low. Some of the powder had slipped out of the firing pan of the pistol, and he rapped the barrel with his left fist to joggle more through the touch-hole. He wiped his mouth. He took up the cutlass. He started to prowl.