Free The Buccaneers by Iain Lawrence Page A

and swept off his hat, stooping into a courtly bow. One knee bent, his black hair tumbling in tangled ringlets, he saluted us as our ships sailed on and parted. And when he lifted his face, it seemed at first as though he
had
no face. It was featureless, pale, just a mouth and a pair of dark eyes, and I remembered what Horn had told me.
Burned by molten tar.
    Then he was gone, traveling off toward those distant sails. The hat was back on his head, his hand on the wheel again. And the great, bloody flag rippled above him.
    Butterfield looked to leeward, toward the tower of white sails. “So that's it,” he said. “We're saved at the cost of those poor devils there.”
    “Maybe,” said Horn. “If-we're lucky.”
    “But we've got no cargo,” said I. “We're just an empty schooner.”
    “Full of powder and shot,” said Horn. “Grace always needs ammunition, new sails and new masts. If he decides to take them from us, then nothing will stop him.”
    “We'll set a new course,” said Butterfield. “As soon as we've put the horizon between us.”
    “Do what you please, it wouldn't make any difference.” Horn's pigtail swayed across his shoulders as he lifted hishead. “If he decides to chase us, you might as well strike the colors right now, and say your prayers while you can, for he'll catch us in the end. Turn east and you'll find him there. West, and that's where he'll be.”
    “He's only a man,” said Butterfield.
    “No, he's more than that,” said Horn. “Or less than that.”
    He gazed toward the
Apostle
, but his eyes were fixed on the distance. The merchantman lumbered along on her course, not yet in any fear or hurry.
    “Grace is everything we're not,” said Horn. “He has venom for blood. He's had us stalk a ship for days, towing barrels off the stern to slow us down, to let some lot of poor sailors think they might just get away.”
    “Then why do we run?” I asked. “We might as well turn and fight him now.”
    Horn put his hand on my shoulder. “Don't be in such a hurry, lad. By and by, your time will come.”

Chapter 11
T HE F EVER
    T he wind was too strong for our topsail, but we set it nonetheless. We raised the foresail and took the reefs from the main; we set a gaff above it. We bent on nearly every sail that we had in our hurry to leave the
Apostle
behind.
    No longer did we sing “Heart of Oak,” or any song at all. We felt like cowards, like traitors. When the sound of cannon fire reached us, faint as finger taps, we all pretended not to hear. Butterfield wrote in his log that day, “Sighted an unknown ship to leeward. God save their souls.”
    For nearly three hours we battered along on our course. When the sea was utterly empty, we turned sharply to the south, hiding in the waves like a mouse in a meadow.
    We ran and we ran, the poor
Dragon
groaning as though from pain. She rolled so fast and so far that three men came down with the seasickness, slumping on the deck with their faces green as limes. And with each roll, we heard a gurgle and a splutter from the hull, as seawater made its way in through the
Dragons
wounds.
    So we pumped as we ran. And it was two days before the sea settled enough to let Abbey go over the side.
    He sat in the loops of a Spanish bowline, and we lowered him from the rail. With the sea at his feet, and then at his shoulders, he prodded and banged at the planks. “Forward!” he shouted. Or, “Aft!” And we shuffled him back and forth until he let us know, with a cry, that he had found the damage done by the
Apostle's
cannons.
    I watched for sharks as he worked down there, hidden by the curve of the hull. Then, “Up!” he shouted, and a moment later he was sitting exhausted on the deck, his old face alarmingly red from his effort. We stood round him, solemn as priests.
    “They hit us twice,” he said.
    “I counted three,” I said. “Maybe four.”
    “Well, they
hurt
us twice. Far as I can see,” said Abbey. “In one place the planks are