“I’ll kill you with your own knife if you move an inch,” he said.
Cheatum gasped assent and relaxed. Jack picked the knife out of the deck and tossed it overboard. His gaze stopped on Smithers, who seemed uncomfortable with Quen-Li, Hansumbob, and Paul surrounding him.
“I’m ashamed of all of you,” Jack said, looking around for the first time. He walked in a wide circle, staring the sailors in the eye, standing in front of each until they dropped their gazes. There was a silence on the ship; what wind there was rocked the boat gently. “You’re grown men delighting in someone else’s scrap. I don’t care how long you been to sea or how old you are or how tough you think you are.”
Smithers stepped forward and addressed the group. “This young pip-squeak has the balls of a brass monkey, I’ll say that for him. But listen here, all of ya. Quince can’t lead and that’s clear. We’re a band of brigands, and we’ll be branded such as soon as we touch shore. I say we head for the Sunda straits, sneak into Jakarta, then head for the Cape of Good Hope. What say ya all?”
Mild shouts of ayes and nays; there didn’t seem to be a clear-cut margin one way or another. Regaining his strength, Quince stood, clutching his empty right sleeve.
“I may not be up to running this ship with an iron fist, so to speak,” he said. There was laughter and Quince grinned at his unintended pun. “But listen up—we can’t go directly through the straits. We need provisions. We got to think in the long term, not the short.” This seemed to make sense to the disgruntled men. Jack marveled, once again, at Quince’s sheer strength of will. He seemed to always be fair and firm, but uppermost in his mind was always the ship. “I propose the following: an equal split of the ship decided by the number of men here, excluding the Belauran boys, who understand they’re on salary, what say you?” The men all agreed.
Jack contemplated this. “I’d like to say that I want my share of the ship divided up amongst all of you if after the stop in South Africa, we head for Cuba, where I have a plan to make you all rich. As some of you know, my parents were murdered in Cuba, and I’m sure their plantation has been confiscated. I intend to retrieve it, and I make all of you this promise—you will be wealthy indeed. You have my word.”
“It’s generous of ya. But we would ’ave gone with ya anyway, ya id’jut,” Hansumbob said quietly.
Paul stepped forward. “To make my friend’s offer even more attractive, I’ll also forfeit my share of this vessel if we head toward Habana after Manila.” He bowed grandly at the group, and with a sweep of his arm backed away from the band of sailors, stumbling on a hatch coaming and landing butt first in a pile of coiled line. Jack thought Paul brilliant at finding just the right bit of levity to punctuate a moment of importance.
It was agreed they would indeed stop briefly in Manila for refitting, finishing repairs, reprovisioning, and arranging cargo for the passage to South Africa. Then on to Cuba.
After the meeting, Jack found Paul at the rail, peering at the bottomless ocean. He touched his friend’s arm.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence. I think that, coupled with your performance as a grandee-turned-joker, swayed the crew.”
“It was nothing, O one without learning. I was simply extending a helping hand to those less fortunate than myself. I believe in the adage—”
“Save it, Le Maire; but thanks anyway.”
“Incidentally, Cap’n, just what plan do you have to make all these men wealthy once we’ve reached Cuba?”
Jack looked to Paul with a certainty given only to youth. “I’m not sure. But I’ll do right by these men. Or die trying.”
23
MANILA
THE FOUND STAR encountered surprisingly little official folderol on its arrival in the port of Manila. Flying an American flag, neutral in the wars wracking Europe, and carrying an innocuous cargo of island trade goods, it attracted little notice. Manila was a racial potpourri and no one seemed to care about the presence of the islanders on the crew. The tattooed men simply returned the curious stares of the Spanish port officials, who eventually signed entry permits for the ship. The customs officers asked only that the several cannons be stowed in the bilge during its stay in port; they particularly wanted the bow chasers removed from open view on the deck. Several pieces of Dutch silver and some intricate wooden carvings from the islands speeded the process.
Jack went with Quince to help him find a prosthetic hook. Every few minutes the first mate would step out of a merchandise shop they’d find on the waterfront and show a new choice to the young man. Jack vetoed them all until Quince appeared with one of solid brass inlaid with ivory, as befitted a man of his stature. It was duly bought, and the two men went off to join their shipmates at the centers of libation.
The men of the Star absorbed the revelry about them as they wet their throats at the Boar’s Inn. It was their homecoming to European drinking establishments, and they were surprised how much they had missed the aimless, recreational patter of their own world. The talk had been about the battle of Trafalgar, but when Jack and Paul ambled to the edge of the throng of listeners, they attended to a sailor’s tale of shipwreck and piracy with great interest, for it seemed to involve islands of the West Pacific not far from where the Star had just sailed.
“Aye, the scuppers ran red with blood—I seen it with me own eyes. The Dutchman’s head, eyes gouged out, hung from the mainsail lower yard. If ever there was a ship where the devil played a bloody tune, it was the poor Mary Lee.” Jack had heard of the Mary Lee. It was a general cargo packet, under contract to a British missionary society, he believed, but never knew it flew a Dutch flag or had fallen prey to buccaneers.
“And the women were a sorry sight, enough to make a man cry. Tied over the cannon they were, naked, with their nether ends to the sky while the savages had their way with them until nightfall. Then they lit the ship on fire and you could hear their screams as the poor defiled lasses burnt to death.”
Jack wondered who could do such a thing.
“I’m telling you lads, Blackbeard was a man of the cloth compared to these blackguards—eat the heads of their victims, too. If you’re ever given the chance to kill yourself with a dull knife, take it—take it, I’m tellin’ ya, before you let yourself fall into the hands of Black Jack O’Reilly.”
Jack almost dropped his mug of ale. He stared open-mouthed at Paul.
Paul smiled. “Blimey, Jack, you never even shared those ladies with the rest of us.”
“It’s not funny… I mean… damn, the man’s daft.”
The bar suddenly quieted; Jack’s last comment, louder than he intended, was overheard by the storyteller.
“Daft is it? You numb-butted upstart. I’ll show you daft.”
The man walked toward Jack, groping clumsily for a dagger under his jacket. His comrades sized up Jack, Paul, and the table of swarthy men in the corner that had grown ominously quiet. “Easy there, Duncan,” a sailor said. “There’s no need for that. The lad meant nothing by it.”
Jack regained his composure, “Sorry, mate, meant no insult to you—’twas the bloke you were talkin’ about I was thinkin’ must be daft. Totally daft, and a murderer at that.”
Mollified, the storyteller let his comrades guide him back to a table with only a parting remark on the impudence of young sailors these days. Jack apologized again and bought the man and the house a round of drinks, the alcohol quickly dousing all flames of discontent.