Tales of Terror from the Black Ship Page 10

  ‘Peter . . . I just meant to teach you a lesson,’ said Ben, his speech prepared. ‘I was never going to really . . .’ His voice tailed off as he looked at his brother.

  Peter was smiling at him. He was still covered from head to foot in foul-smelling mud, which trickled in slow gobbets down his face and dripped from his sodden clothes. Ben watched, horror-struck, as mud dribbled into his brother’s eyes and he did not blink.

  ‘For God’s sake, Peter,’ said Ben. ‘You look . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ gurgled Peter. ‘I’m here, brother. I’ll always be here.’ His mouth widened into a dimpled grin and mud oozed horribly between his teeth and down over his chin. He opened his mouth further and the mud flooded out, pouring down his chest in an unending, glutinous stream.

  Ben let go of the ropes to shield his face as Peter lurched towards him, and he fell backwards through the air, the scream dying in his throat as his head struck the deck with a sickening crack that stopped the whole ship’s crew like a musket firing.

  A fall from the rigging was not unheard of, but unusual on such a calm and gentle day. And though the broken face was hard to bear, many mariners had seen worse in their time. No, what drew puzzled and nervous glances from the onlookers was the fact that they were certain they had seen only one sailor fall, and yet here were the twins lying dead, lying on their sides, their knees bent to their chests as if still in the womb. Stranger still, a great swathe of foul-smelling mud covered the bodies, mingling with the crimson blood that seeped across the deck.

  *

  ‘What a horrible way to die,’ said Cathy when Thackeray had finished.

  ‘Which?’ he said with a grin. ‘In a muddy creek or falling from a ship’s mast?’

  ‘Either,’ said Cathy. ‘Have you ever killed a man, Thackeray?’

  ‘Cathy!’ I hissed. ‘What sort of question is that to ask a person?’

  But I was not concerned for the impropriety of the question, but by the dread of what answer might be forthcoming. To my horror, though not my surprise, Thackeray nodded slowly.

  ‘I have killed,’ he said. ‘But I take no pride in it. I was on a Navy ship and those I killed, I killed in battle. And war makes murderers of us all.’

  Cathy stared, wide-eyed.

  ‘Did you shoot them, sir?’ she said. ‘Or run them through with your sword?’

  ‘You’re a bloodthirsty maid, aren’t you?’ he answered with a chuckle. ‘That’s too much story-reading for you. It puts dark thoughts in your head.’

  ‘But it’s just so exciting.’

  ‘It may seem so,’ he said a little sadly.

  I listened to this conversation with mounting anxiety. I had been given strict instructions to let no one in, and now I discovered I had let a self-confessed killer – Navy man or not – into our house. Even when our father did return, what guarantee was there that he would be equal to the task of dealing with Thackeray?

  ‘You say “was on a Navy ship”, Mr Thackeray,’ I said. ‘Do you serve no longer? And why then do you still wear the uniform?’

  ‘I sail aboard a different ship now, Ethan,’ he answered. ‘I serve a different captain.’

  ‘You are a deserter, then?’ I said coldly. ‘Is that why you are so mysterious?’

  ‘No, Ethan,’ said Thackeray. ‘I’m no deserter. And I will thank you not to accuse me twice.’

  ‘I thought you said it wasn’t polite to pry into Mr Thackeray’s business, Ethan,’ said Cathy.

  ‘No harm done, miss,’ he said with what would have passed for a warm smile in a less frigid countenance. ‘I’m a stranger in your house. Ethan has every right to be suspicious.’

  ‘Yet still you do not answer, I notice,’ I said. ‘Why is it then that you wear the uniform of the Royal Navy?’

  Thackeray took a deep breath and sighed loudly as if running out of patience with a bothersome infant.

  ‘I was little more than a boy when I enlisted as a midshipman,’ he said. ‘And little more than a boy when I went into battle.’

  ‘It must have been horrible,’ said Cathy. ‘Were you very frightened?’

  ‘I’m not ashamed to say I was, Miss Cathy,’ he replied. ‘There are no fearless men in a battle. Only a liar would say different. I have seen seasoned men – fighting men – vomit with fear as the enemy sailed into range and the cannons boomed. I have seen men – good men – reduced to bloody meat.’

  Once again Thackeray seemed lost in his memories. Or at least he affected the air of a man lost in memories. I was deeply mistrustful of all he said and did and I noted that none of his words went in any way to explain why it was he still wore a Navy uniform, or indeed what manner of sailor he now was.

  ‘Ah, look,’ said Cathy, clumsily endeavouring to change the subject. ‘The wind seems to be dying.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Thackeray, glancing at the window and then at me. ‘I do believe the storm is dropping off a little. Perhaps I may take my leave of you, then.’

  ‘No,’ said Cathy to my utter consternation. ‘It is still raining and it is still frightful. We wouldn’t hear of it, would we, Ethan?’

  Thackeray smiled at me in a most disturbing way.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And since you’re staying, Thackeray,’ said Cathy, ‘you can tell us another story.’

  ‘And what would you like a story about, Miss Cathy?’ he said.

  ‘Pirates!’ she answered without hesitation. ‘Have you ever met a pirate on your travels?’

  ‘Hush now, Cathy,’ I said, blushing at her foolishness. ‘How could he? The days of pirates are long gone.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Thackeray with an annoyingly patronising tone. ‘There’ll always be pirates, Ethan, as long as there are ships on the sea.’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ I said. ‘But I meant the real age of pirates, sir – the age of Rackham, Kidd and Blackbeard.’

  Thackeray smiled and his gold tooth winked.

  ‘You’re familiar with your pirates, then?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Cathy. ‘A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates is a special favourite of ours.’

  ‘You know the book, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘Captain Johnson’s book? Aye, I know it. A right scholarly account it is too, they say. But it is incomplete.’

  ‘Incomplete?’ I said.

  ‘Well, it must be, must it not?’ he said. ‘For there is no mention, I think I am correct in saying, of Captain Reeve.’

  Cathy and I exchanged a puzzled glance.

  ‘Who is Captain Reeve?’ asked Cathy. ‘Was he a pirate?’

  ‘Only the most fearsome pirate that ever sailed Neptune’s oceans,’ said Thackeray. ‘As a matter of fact I have a tale that concerns that very person. Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘I am sure we would,’ said Cathy, and I nodded my agreement.

  ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll begin . . .’

  The Monkey

  One fine June day the Fox, a small brig out of Boston, Massachusetts, was intercepted on its way to Hispaniola by a vessel flying a red flag featuring a skull and a black heart.

  The pirates boarded the Fox and herded the crew together on the weather deck. For what seemed like hours they were made to stand in the sun, their guards grinning at their discomfort as they lolled in the shade of the foresail and made a great show of studying their pistols and cutlasses.

  Among the Fox’s crew was a boy of about thirteen – he was never sure of his birth date; a boy called Lewis Jackson. He was watching the ransacking of the ship with great interest.

  A sudden hush came upon the ship, and the grinning guards lost their easy ways and stood to attention – or at least some rough, loose-limbed pirate version of a
ttention. Slowly, out of the deepest part of the shadows, walked the man who was their leader.

  Lewis saw that he was a tall man, easily the tallest aboard that ship from either crew; he was tall and lean in his tallness, long-limbed with a hungry but easy cat-like gait.

  His eyes were heavy-lidded and deep-set, but their pale blueness shone out from the shadows. He wore no hat, but had a red scarf tied about his head. Gold earrings hung from his earlobes and gold armlets glistened on his wrists and biceps.

  ‘Now then, lads,’ he said with a grin. ‘I’ll talk straight and not veer from that course. We’re all mariners here. Your ship has been taxed by Tobias Reeve. Some of you might know me as Blackheart Reeve.’

  A murmur ran through the crew. Everyone had indeed heard that name; all who worked the seas from Maine to Panama were taught to fear its mention.

  ‘Blackheart,’ he continued, clearly well rehearsed in this speech, ‘on account of the death’s head and black heart flag we flies . . .’ Here he paused for effect and his grin widened. ‘And likewise on account of my reported cruel nature.’

  Lewis remembered the tales he had heard in bars and taverns, stories of piracy and of the merciless killing ways of Blackheart Reeve himself. The word was he had already killed a hundred men and showed no signs of stopping.

  ‘Now I said I’d steer a straight course and a true one, and I won’t tell you I ain’t killed more than my fair share, but I ain’t never hanged a man like those Navy cowards do, nor flogged a man to death neither. Every man I killed looked into my eyes before he met his maker, and that’s the God’s honest truth.’

  Lewis could see that the crew did not take these words as any special comfort, but he found himself in secret admiration of this pirate.

  ‘I’m sure you are all brave men and might feel it your duty to resist us as we relieve your vessel of any valuables as might be aboard. We are fighting men ourselves and we understand that and we respect it – don’t we, boys?’

  The pirate crew murmured in assent.

  ‘But it is my duty to tell you that any resistance will be fatal to those who do the resisting.’ Blackheart smiled a wide and generous smile. ‘Think of your wives and sweethearts and leave us to go about our business. You have my word that none will be harmed who do not stand in our way.’

  So it was that the pirates went about their work, stripping the Fox of anything they thought of value. When they had taken everything they wanted, Blackheart clapped his hands together with a loud crack.

  ‘Now then, my good fellows,’ he said. ‘We must bid you a fond adieu. It is a tradition with us that we ask the crew of any ship we take if there be any among their number who would sail with us. Well, boys? Is there any of you who wants to be a free man?’

  ‘I think I speak for my crew,’ said the captain of the Fox, ‘when I say that none here would sail with you, even if their very lives depended on it.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Blackheart. ‘Is that true, lads? Ain’t there a man among you who wants to live the buccaneer life, where each man gets his honest share of all we take and each man gets a fair say in how we go about our business?’

  ‘I have given you our answer –’ began the captain until a cocked pistol interrupted him.

  ‘I’m asking these men, not you,’ said Blackheart.

  ‘I’ll sail with you, sir,’ said a man to Lewis’s left, a man from Newfoundland called Green.

  ‘Welcome, brother,’ said Blackheart. ‘And you need never say “sir” again. “Captain” is good enough for me or any man.’

  ‘I’ll see you hanged for this, Green,’ said the Fox’s captain. ‘This is mutiny. This is –’

  ‘Shut your mouth or it’ll be you that’s hanging from your own bowsprit,’ Blackheart snarled.

  ‘I thought you did not hang people,’ said the captain.

  ‘Nor do I, friend.’ Blackheart grinned. ‘It will be your own men that do the deed. Now quiet – before I lose my patience with you. Anyone else who wants to live the free life?’

  ‘Aye,’ came another voice – a voice it took Lewis a moment to realise was his own.

  ‘Lewis,’ hissed the captain. ‘What are you doing?’

  The pirates laughed as Lewis stepped forward, but Blackheart waved his pistol and bade them leave off.

  ‘Now then, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘I reckon that if this lad has the balls to speak out, we should have the balls to take him on. Welcome to the good life, Lewis.’

  Blackheart turned back to the crew of the Fox.

  ‘There ain’t much in the way of vittles, but we’ve left you enough water to last you until you get back to shore.’

  ‘I suppose we should be grateful, then?’ said the Fox’s captain.

  Blackheart’s grin disappeared in an instant.

  ‘You should be grateful I don’t blow your ear off, for I don’t take kindly to being talked to in that fashion. You shall apologise.’

  ‘I don’t think I shall,’ said the captain.

  ‘You’re a brave man, I’ll give you that,’ said Blackheart. ‘Ain’t he brave, boys?’

  The pirates murmured their assent as always. Then Blackheart raised his pistol and pulled the trigger, and the captain dropped to the floor like a rag doll. Lewis stared at the fallen body and then followed the pirates to the boat that would take them to his new ship, the Firefly.

  ‘That bother you, boy?’ said Blackheart later as the pirates sailed away. ‘The shooting of your captain back there?’

  ‘No,’ said Lewis. And though it was bravado when he had formed the words, it was the simple truth by the time they left his lips. He had not been bothered at all. Excited, perhaps – thrilled even – but not bothered. ‘He was a mean man, quick to flog. Good riddance to him.’

  Blackheart grinned and slapped him on the back. ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘You’ll do.’

  And so began Lewis Jackson’s career as a pirate. No apprenticeship was served, for only minutes after he and Green were elected to become part of their crew, the Firefly was speeding towards another ship.

  It was a ship bringing families from old England to a better life in New England. Lewis could feel fear and hatred emanating from the passengers and crew like heat, and it felt strange: not pleasant, but not wholly unpleasant either.

  A minister in a powdered wig waved his Bible at them and called them minions of Satan until Blackheart slapped him across the bridge of his nose with a pistol butt.

  ‘You are spawn of the Devil!’ the minister shouted at them as they left with their booty. ‘You’ll see the torments of hell!’

  Lewis laughed as heartily as any of the pirate crew as the minister’s voice faded away into the distance. They had had a good haul and no trouble from the crew or their saintly cargo. But Lewis was about to learn that not all ships give up their treasures quite so willingly.

  Two days after they fleeced the colonists, they came across a merchant ship heading for the Chesapeake Bay. Blackheart ordered them to give chase, and they closed in on their prize with ease. But the captain and crew of this ship had been boarded before and they were not about to let it happen again. They had cannons and they knew how to use them.

  The first blast struck the Firefly amidships, holing her at the waterline. The pirates stood agog, shocked to a man that their prey should bite back with such unexpected ferocity.

  The second shot struck the gunwales near the stern and knocked Lewis sideways. His ears roared with the noise and he pulled a four inch long splinter from his thigh. Green, the Newfoundlander who’d joined the pirates with him from the Fox, was not so lucky. Lewis saw his body lying in a pool of blood. He saw his head in another on the far side of the deck.

  The Firefly was mortally wounded, but luckily the ship they had sought to take was happy to escape to the safety of Chesapeake B
ay. The crew cheered and jeered as they sailed away, leaving the Firefly to limp along, licking its wounds.

  Blackheart knew full well that once news reached the authorities that his ship was crippled they would send the Navy to take him. They would all be hanging from a gibbet in Charleston if they did not put clear water between themselves and the shore.

  ‘We need a new ship, boys,’ said Blackheart. ‘And we needs her fast.’

  The Firefly headed south and was off the Carolinas when they spied a ship on the horizon. It was Lewis himself who had spotted it from his perch high up in the crow’s nest.

  Blackheart emerged from his cabin with the hungry look of a wolf. He had a telescope under one arm and, after seeing where the ship lay, he put it to his eye.

  ‘Look lively, then, boys,’ he said as Lewis climbed down on to the deck, trying to ready himself for whatever fight lay in store.

  Blackheart ordered a warning shot to be fired across its bow. He was taking no chances now. They had to be prepared this time. But all the same, he could not risk damaging what would be their new vessel if all went well.

  But the ship paid no heed. It made no move to surrender or escape. The sails were furled as if it were in port instead of out on the high seas. Lewis could see no sign of movement aboard the vessel at all and it was not long before the men about him began to mutter suspiciously.

  For all the tough and fearless ways of the pirate life, a buccaneer can be as superstitious as any other mariner, and it was hard not to be wary of this strange desolate ship.

  Blackheart was of a more rational disposition, however, and he began to suspect that this might be the bait in some unseen trap. He had men climb the masts and search the horizons, but there was not another ship in sight. The fleetest ship in all the Navy could not have caught the Firefly from such a distance.