Quince called, “There’s compensation in this world, lad, and I think the time has come to get some of it. And you’re not alone, lad, there’s a bunch of us ready to pack our bags and head to hell with you, remember that. Even Black Jack O’Reilly, the devil himself, needs help in Habana.”
As Paul followed Mentor and Quince back into the Orchid, his thoughts were still with Jack. Green wounds. For some reason the term “green wounds” kept popping into his head. Totally engrossed in his thoughts, he passed a group of men clustered about a table where someone was earnestly holding forth on some subject in low raspy tones. Paul froze in his steps—he recognized that voice.
“That was him I tell you, the one the natives call Dyak. That knave you almost got into a row with is Jack O’Reilly.”
“Black Jack O’Reilly! He seems young. Are you sure?” The man nervously asking the question was the one who had threatened Paul.
“Of course I’m sure—I don’t forget people who shoot me. If this was a civilized part of the world, I’d have that wretch arrested and hung.” Heinrich De Vries looked much the worse for wear since Paul had last dealt with him aboard the Stuyvesant. He was just as pompous, but his reddened eyes and a twitch in his upper lip showed the strain of almost having his head blown off, losing a ship he shared responsibility for, and what must have been a grueling journey to some form of rescue in the islands.
De Vries continued: “That big rogue with him is their leader. I didn’t recognize him with that hook he’s now sporting for a hand.” Paul had edged close to the others in the group surrounding De Vries and looked into his face; he felt himself shaking with anger as the feelings of fear and humiliation swept over him from what the Dutch had done to him. De Vries had shrugged his shoulders when Arloon had ordered his finger broken, as if he couldn’t be bothered with such minor issues.
“So, Heinrich, who will it be?” The group parted as Paul loudly posed the question to De Vries.
De Vries’s look of annoyance turned to astonishment tinged with alarm.“What? It’s you! What did you say?”
“I said, who will it be? You know… friends, Romans, or countrymen? I mean somebody’s just got to lend you an ear—you’re looking awfully lopsided, old bean.”
The group of men were dumbfounded, but Quince and Mentor, finding where Paul had disappeared to, were happy to add to the conversation.
“Sweet Jesus,” blurted Quince. “It’s that ugly maggot of a Dutchman. Come on, Lord Le Maire, we’ll have to leave this establishment. A place that caters to blackbirders is beneath our standards.” He grabbed Paul by the collar and yanked him back to the table occupied by the Brotherhood, leaving De Vries sputtering in his wake.
“Paul, I’m going to wring your neck someday. We don’t need to advertise our presence any more than we already have.” Then to the rest of the shipmates, “Our banty rooster here is gonna get us kicked out of the foreign sector, or arrested. I don’t know what it’ll take to get the authorities here provoked, so drink up and it’s back to the ship.” He glanced back in the direction of De Vries’s table. It was vacated; the man must have left by the back door.
25
FIERY DEPARTURE
LYING HALF ASLEEP on the bunk in Quince’s cabin, Jack watched the first mate regard the stump of his right arm, then thrust the tip of his hook through a ring in the bottom of an oil lantern swinging from an overhead beam in his cabin. As the ship swayed, the prosthesis cast a bizarre shadow, a batlike creature circling the room… Jack imagined the creature lighting on Quince’s head.
The Found Star had undergone a remarkable overhaul at the hands of the Philippine craftsmen. Jack had marveled at the skill and speed of the workers. Many of the repairs the Americans had painstakingly made in the islands were efficiently fortified by the artisans in less than a week. Soon the keel, keelsons, and major structural elements of the lower hull were declared sound after inspection. Most of the energy from the explosion of the powder magazine had vented upward—due, they were told, to the damping effect of the water. The reinforcement of the stern superstructure and midships area was completed in less than a month.
A sweet sailer to begin with, the reborn Found Star retained her sleek lines where wood met water. Now she was freshly careened, sheathed below the waterline with copper, and trimmed in mahogany. Along with a less pronounced fantail, the changes gave her a dark, trim profile to match her performance. With her new rigging, lignum vitae blocks, and dark hemp cordage, the ship was a thing of beauty.
In a strange way, though, she looked “too damned much like what she is,” in Coop’s words. She seemed some sort of marine predator, a perception the men didn’t want to encourage in civilized ports. Through force of circumstance, the men of the Star had become sharks in a perilous sea; as a drunken Paul put it, they had chosen to “take up arms against a sea of troubles rather than bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” To the great relief and cheers of the Brotherhood, he had passed out before getting much further.
Quince clumsily shuffled aside the papers he had been examining earlier in the evening. He told Jack he really could feel his fingers sometimes. It didn’t seem fair a man should suffer the loss of a limb and still have to put up with aches and pains in his nonexistent extremities. He rummaged now though bills and receipts for services rendered and paid for. Jack promised to look them over, too.
The last of their spoils from the original Dutch owners had been spent on the repair, refitting, and reprovisioning of the Star. Smithers had chosen to take his share and melt into the bustling maritime world of Manila. He bore a gullet of ill will for his shipmates, and none were sorry to see him go, except perhaps Cheatum. What surprised Jack more than Smithers going was Cheatum staying.
The possibility of riches in Cuba was chancy, as all the men knew. A decision to stay with the Star was more an act of allegiance to their mates and the new way of life thrust upon them. The seafaring world of the Western Pacific was a place of high risk and uncertainty. News traveled slowly, and no one seemed to know who was fighting whom from month to month, what flag might be that of an enemy. Seamen were used like chattel; but the men of the Star had tasted something else. For better or worse, they were now all part owners of a ship, in theory more rich than they ever could have dreamed of becoming.
They had no legal status, but most of the successful merchant enterprises in the Pacific broke the law routinely. No one in Manila had challenged them for their act of piracy and, in fact, they sensed a measure of respect in their interactions with others once it was known they were men of the Star. Jack’s name was spoken with awe, but it seemed to make other seamen wary rather than hostile.
Now that the ship was almost ready for sea and obviously carried no cargo, the officials were becoming a little more tense. Twice in the last week they had asked Quince about his departure plans. He mused to Jack that in the twilight of his career as an honest seaman he was suddenly a figure prudent businessmen feared, a principal in an enterprise that caused foreign patrol sloops to be warily alert and nearby merchant vessels to double their night watches. And in a port as tough as Manila.
Well, they would be leaving soon enough. They would give no warning of their departure, he reckoned, but he knew that any flag vessel, not just Dutch, would be watching closely and might interfere before they could clear the area for open ocean. A well-armed, fast barkentine shipping out in ballast was suspicious enough; East India Company packets sometimes sailed long distances without cargo. But the Star was no company ship, and she was reputed to be under the command of Black Jack O’Reilly. Quince said there would be no fanfare; Manila would just wake one moment and the Star would be gone.