Chapter 6 The Black Swan by Rafael Sabatini
The Partnership
Whether because they knew the name of this man who once had sailed with Morgan, a name which he announced in a tone to imply its high significance, or whether because his very manner; so cool and assured, had an intimidating effect upon them, those evil ruffians stood arrested, at gaze, their leader balancing a bloodstained machete in his powerful hand. Thus, whilst a man might have counted ten. Then, as they were beginning to mutter lewdly decked demands that this man who stood so boldly before them should explain himself, a fellow of middle height, whose body and movements held something of the lithe strength of the panther, came thrusting through them to the front. It was Tom Leach.
He was breeched in red, and his blood-smeared shirt hung open from neck to waist, the sleeves rolled high to display the powerful muscles of his long hairy arms. Black curls clustered about a low, animal brow; his nose, a thin, cruel beak, was set close between a pair of quick-moving eyes that were almost black. Instead of the cutlass or machete more generally favoured on boarding occasions by such men, Leach was armed with a rapier, a weapon with which to his abiding pride he was accounted of a deadly skill.
'What in hell's here?' he cried, as he advanced.
But when he stood clear and slightly ahead of that press of scoundrels, he checked as they had done before the elegant, commanding figure, so straight and tall that was confronting him. In his coppery face the little eyes flashed as if in surprise, and then narrowed like a cat's. He caught his breath for an ejaculation.
'May I be sunk into everlasting hell if it isna Topgallant Charley!' And he added a foul oath in token of his profound amazement.
Monsieur de Bernis took a step forward. He removed a hand from a pistol-butt, and proffered it.
'Well met, my friend. You were always to be found where you were wanted. But never more opportune than now. You come to save me trouble. You arrive just as I am on my way to seek you. On my way to Guadeloupe, for a ship and men to sail to find you. And behold, Tom! You have the complacency to drop from the skies to our deck. C'est charmant!'
With eyes still narrowed, his attitude slightly crouching, as if his muscles were gathered for a spring, the ruffian disregarded the proffered hand.
'Will ye cozen me, de Bernis? Thee was always a sly rogue, thee was. But not sly enough for Tom Leach.'
Born on the banks of the Lune, which he had quitted so as to follow a calling on the seas, which he had originally intended should be honest, his speech retained the broad burr of the north country, just as his nature retained its dour mistrustfulness. 'I last heeard tell o' ye wi' Morgan. Morgan's right-hand man ye was when ye quit th' Brotherhood o' th' Coast, along o' that treacherous turncoat.'
Monsieur de Bernis displayed the mild amusement he might bestow upon absurdity. 'Of course, I was given to choose,' he said with irony. 'A fine choice: between that and execution dock. As long as I was in Morgan's hands, I had to dance to the tune he piped. But you knew nothing of de Bernis if you supposed his heart was in the jig. I took my first chance to slip away and join you. And behold me.'
'To join me? To join me, d'ye say? I never knew as ye loved me.'
'We always love those we need. And, faith, I need you. And I don't come empty-handed. You're the only leader left with men enough and spirit enough for the enterprise I'm set on. I bring you fortune, Tom. Fortune such as ye may have met in dreams, but never waking. Something better than poor merchantmen like this, with paltry cargoes of hides and logwood, over which the French traders at Guadeloupe or Sainte Croix will impudently swindle you.'
Leach advanced a step, holding his rapier, like a whip, in his two hands at the end of his lowered arms. 'What's th' enterprise?'
'A plate fleet, Tom. No less. To sail in a month from now.'
There was the faintest kindling of interest tempering the mistrust in those watchful little eyes. 'Sailing whence?'
The Frenchman laughed, and shook his head. 'Nay, now. We'll leave that till later.'
Leach understood. But his lips tightened. 'I'll need to know more o' this or ever I says aught to it.'
'Of course you shall know more. Enough to make you sharp-set.'
The pirate's view of Miss Priscilla, partly screened hitherto by the bulk of Major Sands, happened to be left clear at this moment by a movement of the Major's. His eyes quickened evilly.
'Who be these? Who be th' doxy?' He would have advanced, but de Bernis stood resolutely in his way.
'My wife and her brother. I was taking them to Guadeloupe, to await there my return.'
The foolish Major cleared his throat to repudiate a relationship which offended him. But Priscilla, intuitively guessing the mad intention, warned him against it by a violent clutch upon his arm.
'Your wife?' The pirate's manner was a trifle daunted. His glance turned sour. 'I never heard tell you was married.'
'It happened lately. In Jamaica.' Airily de Bernis dismissed the matter. 'It's not important, Tom. We have this other business to settle now that we are met, so oddly opportune.'
Tom Leach considered him. 'It'll need a deal to make me believe you're honest, de Bernis. And if I find ye're not...'
De Bernis interrupted him. 'Suspicion makes you stupid, Tom. It was always the flaw in your nature. What manner of fool must I be not to be honest with you when I'm in your hands?'
Still considering him, Leach stroked his thin nose. 'Maybe. Maybe. But, by God, Charley, if thee looks to get spry wi' me, thee'll end by wishing thee'ld ne'er been born. D'ye call to mind Jack Clavering? He was just such another dawcock as thee, Charles, and thought he could make a fool o' Tom Leach. Ye may ha' heard tell how I plucked his feathers, until the poor bastard screamed to be let die. Thee's clever, Charley. Morgan always reckoned thee was clever. Artful as Old Nick hisself. But I's artful, too. Thee'd best remember it.'
'Ye're wasting breath,' said de Bernis contemptuously.
'Maybe. An' I've ways o' wasting other men's, too.'
Nevertheless, his resolve was taken, as he now showed. Abruptly he turned upon the ruffians waiting like hounds in leash behind him.
'Away wi' y' all. All but you, Wogan. And tell Mike to go through th' cargo so as he'll report to me when I come up.'
They went out noisily. Leach watched them depart, then he advanced to the table, pulled out a chair and sat down, laying his slim sword on the board before him. 'Now, Charley. We'll hear more o' this plate fleet o' yours.' Yet as he spoke it was not at de Bernis that he looked, but at Miss Priscilla, over by the stern-locker with the Major; and his glance was neither nice nor reassuring.
Behind him stood Wogan, the buccaneer with the machete, who had led the invasion of the cabin: a tall, powerful, flat-featured scoundrel, black-bearded, with greasy black curls fringing the red scarf about his head and the bluest of eyes under thick black brows. He wore a gaping red shirt and loose breeches of rawhide, in the belt of which he carried a brace of pistols.
Monsieur de Bernis, entirely at his ease, moving with the authority of a man in his own house, went to open the door of one of the starboard cabins.
'Come, Priscilla,' he said quietly. 'And you, too, Bart.'
Instantly, and in relief, she moved to obey him.
Tom Leach stared annoyance and grumbled. 'What's this? Who says they shouldn't stay here?'
'By your leave, Captain,' was all that de Bernis answered him, with a chill dignity that seemed to exclude all argument. He held the door for his supposed wife and brother-in-law; and he closed it after they had passed out.
'Eh, by God!' said Leach, with an unpleasant little laugh. 'Seems you give yourself airs, like. Act as if thee was master here. Give orders, eh?'
'Only where my wife is concerned,' said the Frenchman quietly. He pulled a chair to the table, and paused by it to address his waiting servant. 'The rum, Pierre.'
The buccaneer's malevolent, suspicious eyes followed the loose-limbed half-caste as he moved to the carved buffet set against the forward bulkhead.
'Be you another member o' thee family?' His sneering tone seemed to carry a menace.
De Bernis did not appear to observe it. 'He is my servant.' He sat down so as to face the buccaneer across the table. His air as he talked now was entirely genial, the air of a man chatting with friends and associates.
'We're in luck, Tom. That's plain. Otherwise you and I wouldn't be sitting here now in the cabin of the Centaur. If she had been handled by a man with fighting experience, if I, now, had been handling her today, ye'ld never have come board and board with her.'
'Would I not? Clever, isn't he, Wogan? Ye reckons ye can fight a ship better than me, eh? Thee's o'ermodest, Charley.'
De Bernis shook his head. 'I should never have stayed to fight. I'ld have shown you a dwindling counter, my lad. I'ld have beaten up wind; and foul and barnacled as you are, I'ld easily have outsailed you if it came to tacking. Ye've been overlong at sea, Tom. But it was always your way to take no risks except those you shouldn't take.'
Captain Leach opened wide now his wicked little eyes in genuine admiration.
'Thee's got good eyesight, by God, to ha' seen I'm barnacled.'
Pierre set before them a tray bearing a jack of rum, a jar of tobacco, pipes, a tinder-box, and three drinking-cans. Then he fell back to the buffet again, and remained there in attendance.
They poured for themselves in turn, and Wogan came to sit at the table's end, and filled himself a pipe of fine leaf. De Bernis did the same. But Tom Leach waved the jar disdainfully away when it was proffered to him.
'What's this business o' a plate fleet? Come, now. Let's have it.'
'Faith, it's soon told. Three Spanish ships due to sail for Cadiz in a month's time: a galleon of thirty guns as the treasure-ship, with two twenty-gun frigates to escort her. The treasure is as big as any that's ever been ventured in one bottom. Gold and silver worth over five hundred thousand pieces of eight, and bushels of pearls from the Rio de la Hacha, besides other baubles.'
Wogan stood arrested in the act of applying to his pipe the flame he had kindled. Both he and Leach stared with fallen jaws and faces almost awestricken at the mention of a treasure so fabulous. If this were true, there would be enough in their shares as Captain and mate to make them rich for life. At the end of a gaping pause, Leach vented incredulity in oaths. Then flatly he added:
'I's not believing it. Sink me into hell if I can.'
'Nor I, neither, on my soul,' said Wogan.
Monsieur de Bernis smiled his quiet scorn of them. 'I said it was something ye may have met in dreams, but never waking. But it's true, for all that. Perhaps you'll understand, now, why I should have been on my way to Guadeloupe to find a ship in which to seek you, so that you might bear a hand in this; and also why I should account it a bounty of Providence that we're met as we are, with the second ship we'll need for the venture ready found for us, here, under our feet.'
It was a question-begging argument, in which two equally unbelievable statements were urged each in support of the other. Yet to the buccaneers, dazzled by the vastness of the prize and the cupidity it aroused in them, each of the Frenchman's incredible allegations served to lessen the incredibility of the other.
Tom Leach pulled his chair closer to the table, and set his bare elbows on it. 'Let us know more o' this. How did ye come to learn of it?'
'By one of those chances--of which our meeting is another--sent by the gods to those they favour.' And he told his tale: a smooth, well-knit, convincing story.
A month ago he had been cruising off the Caymans with Morgan. Morgan was looking for Tom Leach at the time, and de Bernis was in command of one of two frigates that accompanied Sir Henry's flagship. At daybreak one morning, after a stormy night, some five or six leagues south of the Grand Cayman, they came upon a sloop so battered by the gale that her timbers had parted and she was foundering. They were no more than in time to take off her crew The men they rescued proved to be Spaniards. One of them was a gentleman of some consequence, a Spanish officer named Ojeda, who was in a frenzy to get to Hispaniola, whither the sloop had been steering when the gale caught her and blew her out of her course. This Spaniard's urgency was rendered the more desperate because he had been seriously injured the night before. A falling yardarm had pinned him to the deck. He swore that his back was broken. Anyway, he was certainly in great bodily pain and in almost equal pain of soul, for fear that he might not live to reach San Domingo and the Spanish Admiral there, for whom he had a message of the first importance.
'You'll be supposing,' said de Bernis, 'as I supposed, that the message must be fully as important as he announced it, to be giving so much preoccupation to a man in his desperate case. You'll understand that my curiosity was aroused. I offered to bear the message for him if he would entrust it to me, or convey it in a letter if he would write it. He repelled the offer with a terrified vehemence which only went to increase my curiosity. But the suggestion that he should write a letter remained working in his mind. Later in the day, persuaded that his end was near, he sent for me again, and begged me to fetch the master of the foundered sloop and to supply him with writing materials. I did this readily enough. I was not to guess that the cunning and scholarly don had hit upon a device that should render the letter meaningless to rude unlettered seamen, most of whom could not even read their own mother-tongue. He dictated it in Latin. I suppose that he must have spelled out each word to the master of the sloop, who must, himself, have remained in ignorance of what he wrote. It was crafty, and it must fully have succeeded but for that curiosity of mine.
'That evening the don quietly died. He fell into his last sleep with a mind completely at ease, since he was persuaded that his death would leave no duty unfulfilled. A very gallant gentleman.
'That night the master of the Spanish sloop met with an accident that was never explained. He fell overboard. At least, so it was supposed next morning, when he could not be found. As no one but myself knew anything about the vital letter, his loss, whilst regretted, created no great excitement. But the letter was not lost. Fearing that some mischance might overtake him, I had taken the precaution of removing it from the lining of one of his sea-boots, where, for greater safety, he had stowed it.'
He was interrupted by the approving, crowing laughter of the two buccaneers. The delicate humour in which he had veiled an obvious deed of murder was of a kind they could savour fully. He smiled his acknowledgements of their appreciative understanding, and pursued his tale.
'It was then that I discovered the trick that the dead don had played us. I am not by any means an unlettered man, and once my knowledge of Latin was considerable. But at sea a man forgets these things. Besides, as I now know, the Latin used by the don was very pure and difficult--what scholars call classical. I could make nothing of it beyond some Roman numerals, which at first I supposed to be dates, and an odd word here and there. But back in Port Royal a week later, I sought a French priest of my acquaintance, and from him I had a translation of the document.'
He paused there and looked into those dark faces which his tale had rendered quick with eager interest. 'That should satisfy you,' he said, 'as to how the knowledge reached me. Once I possessed it, I saw that the time had come to quit Morgan and the service of the English Crown. But I should need assistance for what was to do, and at once I thought of you, and of how together we might reap this rich harvest. To old Morgan my tale was that I was hungering for France and home after all these years of wandering. And Morgan, suspecting nothing, let me go. I was sure that at Guadeloupe I should still find a few French adventurers willing to join me, and a ship that would serve to support you when I found you. And I also thought it likely that I should get a hint of your whereabouts. I knew, as Morgan knew, that you had been trading your prizes there of late.'
He ceased, and refreshed himself with a sip of rum.
Leach stirred on his seat, and took his elbows from the table. 'Aye, aye,' he growled, more in impatience than agreement. 'And th' information?'
'You have that already. A plate fleet, with the treasure I told you, sails for Cadiz in a month's time, when the trade winds will serve best. The letter giving the details, so as to impress the Spanish Admiral at San Domingo with the need implicitly to obey the request, desired him to hold two ships of war in readiness, further to strengthen the escort for the ocean crossing to Spain. That is all.'
'All, man? All, d'ye say? But where'll this plate fleet sail from?'
Monsieur de Bernis, in the act of taking up the tinder-box, smiled as he answered: 'From somewhere between Campeche and Trinidad.'
The pirate's brow grew dark. 'Why not say between the North Pole and the South?' His tone was angry. 'D'ye mean ye don't know? If so be, what good's rest o' thee knowledge?'
Monsieur de Bernis' smile became more bland. 'To be sure I know. But that is my secret. That is what I bring to the association.'
He struck flint and steel, kindled a match and applied it to his pipe, ignoring the scowls of the buccaneers, who were stricken speechless. 'One thing more,' he added presently. 'From what I know of them, the three Spanish ships will scarcely carry more than a total of two hundred and fifty men. With two such ships as we now possess and the following you have, we should be more than a match for them.'
''Tisn't that as bothers me. What I want to know, and at once, is where this fleet is to be looked for: north, south, east, or west.'
The Frenchman shook his head. 'Ye don't need to know that, because I am here to lead you to the spot, as I will so soon as the articles are signed between us.'
'Thee's sure we'll be signing articles.'
'If I were not, I must be sure that you're a fool, Tom. D'ye dream ye'll ever have the chance again of such a fortune?'
'And d'ye dream I'll go hoodman-blind into a venture?'
'There's no hoodman-blind in this. You know all that's necessary. If you refuse, if you haven't the stomach for it, put me ashore at Guadeloupe. I don't doubt I'll...'
'Look'ee, Bernis, my stomach's high enough, as thee well knows. And ye should know, too, that I've ways to make men talk. Ye'll not be the first as I've woolded; not by a many. Or thee may have a match between toes if thee prefers it.'
De Bernis looked down his nose at him, and spoke with languid disdain.
'Why, you poor kestrel, if I were not a patient man, I'ld pistol you for that.'
'What d'ye say?' The pirate put a hand to the sword that lay on the table before him.
De Bernis paid no heed to the threatening movement. 'To suppose that I am of the stuff that is to be woolded into talking! If you want to lose your every chance of ever seeing a real of that treasure, talk to me again of woolding. I may be in need of you, but if the plate fleet tempts you at all, your need of me is far more urgent, and, perhaps, not only to lead you to it. I've told you I was on my way to Guadeloupe to find another ship for you. But since you've seized the Centaur, we have all we now require. That is, all but the man to command her. I am that man. You should know that I can fight a ship with anyone. So there it is. Will you take this chance of a fortune on which to quit? Or will you wait until the Jamaica squadron hunts you from the seas, or until Morgan sinks you, as he surely will if you wait long enough?' He paused, to add:
'Now, Captain, shall we talk of terms, like sensible men?'
Wogan at least was conquered. He moistened his lips with his tongue, and intervened. 'On me soul, Cap'n, Charley's none so unreasonable when all's said. Isn't he doing just what you'ld be after doing in his place?'
De Bernis sat back and pulled at his pipe, strengthened in the perception that the cupidity he had awakened would make the mate of the Black Swan an ally who would curb in his Captain excesses which might result in the loss of this fabulous chance. Already the Irishman's expostulation was not without its effect upon Leach.
'What terms d'ye propose?' he asked in a surly voice.
'For myself a fifth share of the prize when we have it.'
'A fifth share!' Leach got to his feet in his indignation. He loosed a bombardment of blasphemy at the Frenchman, then swung to Wogan. 'Is this your reasonable man, Ned?'
'The treasure,' de Bernis blandly reminded him, 'is worth perhaps a million pieces of eight. And it's not the sort of mangy cargo ye have to trade in Guadeloupe for a tenth of its worth.'
They fell to wrangling after that like a couple of hucksters, and they might have come to quarrelling but that Wogan, with his mind on the main issue, was intent upon keeping the peace at all costs. At long last, it was Leach who yielded, and this largely in consequence of Wogan's pacificatory persuasions.
Pen, ink, and paper were fetched, and Pierre was sent on deck, to summon any three men as representatives of the crew, to come and settle with the leaders, and to sign on the men's behalf, the terms of the articles, to be drawn in accordance with buccaneering custom.
Leach and his fellows all departed together when it was done, leaving de Bernis alone in the cabin to stay or follow as he pleased.
The buccaneer Captain went out in a villainous mood, with the sense of having been worsted in the deal, and recklessly he vented his humour upon Wogan whom he largely blamed.
'Och, now, Captain, darling,' the mate mollified him, 'would ye be growing hot about nothin' at all. If he'ld asked for a half share, I'ld have promised it, so I would. For what's a promise, now?'
Leach checked in the ship's waist, which was now a shambles slippery with blood. For the horrors spread there about the main hatch, he had no thought or care. He had long since grown callous to the sight of slaughtered men. His mind was entirely on what Wogan had just said.
He looked up questioningly into the tall Irishman's face. Wogan looked down at him and grinned. 'When we've gutted the plate fleet and the treasure's under hatches, sure it's another talk we'll be having with Master Charley. Maybe he'll be more reasonable then. And what odds if he's not? There's the doxy, too, Captain. A trim little craft, so she is. I saw ye'd an eye for her, small blame to ye.'
The Captain's close-set little eyes flashed evilly.
'The French,' said Wogan, 'have a proverb that all things come to him who knows how to wait. It's knowing how to wait is the art of it, Captain.'
'Ah!' said Captain Leach. 'I think I'll know how to wait. Seems to me as if we'd captured more nor a cargo o' hides