Captain Adam Read online

  After what seemed a long while Oliver rose and staggered to the house. He would have entered, not seeing the others, but Mr. Pendleton called out.

  Oliver turned; and he was a horrible sight to see.

  Something had been snicked out of his body, so that now he was all lax and limp, and he sagged woefully, his arms dangling like the arms of a cripple, while tremulous fear lit his eyes. His lips and cheekbones were puffed. But the thing that had been done to this man's spirit was the worst wound of all. He would never be the same again.

  "He— He wouldn't come."

  "Obviously. What did he say to you?"

  Oliver was obliged to make a mighty effort to remember.

  "Said to tell you if Cap'n Long wasn't down on the beach by the time he got aboard he'd bombard the whole plantation."

  Mr. Pendleton wheeled on Adam, who gazed out over the lawn.

  "I didn't know you had a cannon!"

  "Likely there's a heap of things you don't know."

  "Well anyway, he'll never reach us here—with a stern chaser. That tub down there couldn't move anything heavier."

  Adam said nothing.

  The Goodwill was moving in, propelled by sweeps—three long ash oars on each side. There was a good deal of stir aft. The Moses poked ahead, sounding. But the water wasn't shoal. At a point less than two hundred yards from the beach, the schooner was turned, and the men on the veranda at last had a look at the af terdeck.

  "Good Godl That's a tnvelve-pounder!"

  Adam still said nothing.

  Men had peeled a tarpaulin off a glittering black object. Somebody took a last swipe with a polishing cloth. Others were bringing up loggerheads, powder bags, wads, crows, sponges, a match tub from which smoke rose. Still others rolled black balls to a shot rack.

  Mr. Pendleton broke.

  "Get them away from here! Tell them not to shoot!"

  Adam wasn't worried about them shooting that thing, whatever it was, but a mite of anxiety wouldn't do the planter any harm.

  "I mislike being hurried," he drawled.

  He sauntered across the veranda, onto the lawn. He was seen, and a cheer rose from the schooner, while the Moses put out for shore.

  Adam paused at the table to take his hat. He picked up his half-finished cigano. He finished his rum in two slow smooth swallows.

  When at last he climbed to the deck he pumped the mate's hand with a vehemence that embarrassed them both.

  "Best job of jury-rigging I ever saw!"

  He beamed at the sawed-off spar, tarred and shiny, the carriage made of tarred barrel staves, the rickety "powder boxes," the wads improvised from undershirts. He whuffed out the light, a real one, in the match tub. He kicked one of the "cannonballs," which, trailing fresh black paint, clunked into several of its fellows: these were coconuts a planter had given Adam the previous day.

  "Only thing I can't figure—why did you stop short of the house?"

  "Saw your hat and thought I saw tobacco smoke, so I got out the glass," said Resolved Forbes. "Said to myself, 'If Adam Long leaves a half-smoked cigarro and a half-finished rum, then there must be something mighty queer going on, so I'd better fetch help.' "

  "Tarnation! For that I'll give you a drink free! Come on!'

  which may account for the fact that nobody saw Eb Waters and Carl Peterson slip over the side.

  Adam nearly resorted to profanity when they wakened him.

  "Serve 'em right if I let them stay here!"

  He looked at the land, a dark one, above which no smoke stood. There might be a plantation or two, orrfhree or four, tucked away in the folds of those hills, but he could not see any. There would be coves and creeks along such a coast, ideal hiding places for the small-boaters Captain Wallis had warned him against.

  "I expect they thought all they had to do is lie down and food'll fall right into their faces."

  "Aye," said Jeth Gardner.

  "While beautiful brown gals fanned 'em with palm fronds!"

  "Aye. They've never been down in these parts before."

  Adam sighed.

  "Well, they'll be back. Won't be able to stand it. But maybe that'll be tonight and maybe not till tomorrow. I don't want to wait that long, a spot hke this. I'll go after them. Prayers first. Bring me my Book. And the musket, too, long's you're down there."

  He wanted the gun not for signaling purposes—it never occurred to him that he might need to signal—but for protection against snakes. Adam had always been deathly afraid of snakes.

  "Stand on and off. See anything you don't like—run. Don't stay and shout for me."

  "What if you're not back by dark?"

  "I'll be back."

  There was a skimpy shelly beach, backed by jungle that evidently had dismayed the runaways: their footprints showed that they had moved back and forth a little before plunging in.

  Indeed, entering that jungle was like walking into a solid thing, a wall. Even Adam Long caught up his breath when he did it.

  Then he paused, permitting his eyes to get used to the gloom. As he had expected, the trail was as plain as though made by oxen. Sailors ashore are the clumsiest of men.

  But Adam was so busy watching where he was going, where he put his feet down, that he soon lost the trail. He might have turned back to the beach, but he'd be seen from the schooner then and would appear

  41

  ridiculous. He kept on. He tripped over decayed stumps, sank calf-deep into holes. Creepers, pushed aside, sprang back to lash him from behind, and their spikes cut his neck and clothing. Several times he fell full-length, the heels of his hands squashing into the muck.

  He was panting. It startled him to hear it. Aboard ship his wind always had been sound. In this close dank place he was all but stifled.

  He cast to the right, taking it much more slowly; and when after a while he found no sign of the deserters there, he swung to the left.

  It was some time before he confessed that, ridiculous or not ridiculous, it would be better if he went back and started all over again. Then he found, to his flabbergastment, that he could not even follow his own trail back. He did not even know the direction of the beach! He sniffed earnestly, holding his head back like a hen that drinks water. All he got was the rank wet odor of rot, no brine.

  It outraged him, at the same time frightening him, to learn that this jungle, this sewer of suffocating stench, could blot out every trace of the sea near at hand, the clean sea. It didn't seem decent.

  Once he thought he heard a slippy noise near his feet, and he shied like a colt.

  There was another sound, a faint dripping; but when he moved stealthily toward this in the hope of finding a stream he could follow to the sea, it came from behind him; and when he turned, it came from one side or the other. Motionless, listening carefully, at last he decided that the dripping was all around him. It was almost inaudible—was in fact less a sound than a sense of motion, of disintegration, as though the forest were softly, wetly dropping to pieces.

  He prayed. When he had finished—and he was brief—he looked up, already with an idea.

  He would climb a tree.

  He must be still near the beach. No matter how queer this place was, it couldn't screen off a whole ocean.

  He placed his musket at the foot of the largest tree he could find, and started up. Vines and creepers came spewing down when he put weight on them. Some were too slippery to hold. Some had spikes. It was worse up there than it had been on the ground. It was thicker, trickier. He was never sure what was the true trunk of the tree and what parasite. There were mosses and twisted slimy flowers. Things came away in his hands, unclean things that made a soft sucking sound. Adam could clamber up ratlines as nimbly as any boy; but he knew when he was beaten.

  BafHed, having seen nothing, he climbed down again.

  He was within a few feet of the ground and about to drop the rest 42

  of the way, when he looked down in order not to land on the musket— and the sweat that larded his bo
dy turned cold.

  A snake lay across the musket. It had been in motion and was curved, but now it was still except for the raised head, which tilted slightly this way and that like some delicate flower stirred by a breeze.

  The snake was about six feet long, and very thin, and the head was small. It was bright green in color, a luminous, almost a phosphorescent green, with dark gray spiraling along its back.

  After a while, still holding its head high, it slithered away.

  Adam counted to five hundred, then dropped, snatched up his musket, and ran.

  When he had stopped, only because of lack of breath, he forced himself to be still and to think. Though he could neither hear breakers nor see the sun, it stood to reason that he had not gone far.

  He heard a high wailing behind him.

  He whirled around.

  He heard it again. It was some distance away, half a mile perhaps, though that was hard to estimate in soggy air like this.

  Now Adam Long was not superstitious. He didn't believe in ghosts much. With no hesitation at all, as the howling came to his ears again, nearer this time, he started to run toward it.

  Even if it was a ghost he would prefer it to a snake.

  At last he saw light ahead. He burst into a clearing.

  The howl rose again, that wail as of a banshee, right in front of him; and he made out the monsters.

  There were two, collared, and to their collars were attached long leads, the other ends of which disappeared into the jungle. In appearance at least they were not fierce, these enormous dogs. They seemed tired, or bored. One had already flumped in disgust to the ground; the other, after a half-hearted growl, its snout tilted skyward, regarded Adam with a bleak bleary gaze, the while absently scratching a flea.

  Into the clearing, now, came a man in blue and pink. He stopped. He hauled out a pistol.

  Adam Long raised his musket.

  After a while, but moving with circumspection, watchful, tense, the men lowered their weapons a little.

  The bloodhounds took no interest in these somewhat silly proceedings. The second flopped down beside the first; it grunted, then fell asleep.

  The man was thin, thirtyish. His own hair, unpowdered, was caught behind in a sash of silk, unblushingly blue, and a blue velvet band decorated his hunting hat.

  "Zitt, alors! Dites-moi, que cherchez-vous ici?"

  "Can't you talk English?" plaintively.

  "But to be sure I can! You are the English, then?"

  "I hail from the continental colonies,"

  "Ah, a Yankee?"

  He pronounced it "Yawn-feee."

  "I reckon," said Adam.

  "And you seek water, it could be?"

  "Could be, but it ain't. I'm looking for two hands jumped ship."

  The bloodhounds lay motionless, except that now and then one of them would twitch its hide in order to shoo off flies. The Frencher regarded them with a fond paternal smile.

  Suddenly he remembered his manners.

  "Maitrejean, Monsieur, Jules de Marigny de Maitrejean."

  "Name's Long," said Adam. "From Newport."

  "The 'ounds and I, we 'ave sport together."

  "A runaway slave?"

  "Ah, yes. They are incorrigible, monsieur. Scarce a week passes but one slips away. I—I confess I make it easy for them to do so. Not en masse but singly. It provides a diversion. And it is exercise for Castor and Pollux here, also for me. Sport. You are shock', monsietv?"

  "Well, they say "WTien in Rome-'"

  "Assuredly, monsieur."

  Only I don't think I'd ever hunt a man with dogs, even in Rome, Adam reflected.

  "Your mariners, monsieur—it is likeliest that they will stumble out into one of my fields, and an overseer will then send them to the plantation house. Will you go there with me?"

  "Your nigger—"

  "Tomorrow will do as well."

  "Don't you ever lose 'em for good?"

  "Sometimes."

  He was an odd one, for a planter. He must have been wealthy; but if he was wealthy, then what was he doing in the islands?

  "In addition, monsieur, assuredly you need refreshment. The, uh, the forest has been unkind to you, eh?"

  "Looks like you came through it all right."

  "I am use' to it. I live here. Were we aboard a ship doubtless you would snigger at how I reeled."

  Adam didn't expect he'd snigger at anything just then, the wav he felt.

  They came out of the jungle abruptly, to find themselves at the edge

  of a cane field. There was no glimpse of the sea. Here Maitrejean paused to permit his guest to rest, though he himself showed not the slightest sheen of sweat, nor was he breathing heavily.

  "A bath, some brandy, and monsieur will be a new man, eh?"

  "Sounds good."

  "Monsieur must stay a while—a few days, a few weeks,"

  "Whoa! I got work to do."

  "Such as?"

  "Got eels to peddle, somewhere."

  The word was strange to Maitrejean, who said over and over, his brows knit: "Eels—eels—"

  Adam tried to elucidate but he could think of no other word for the pesky animals. Unused to waving and waggling his hands, nevertheless he strove to make a manual explanation.

  "Aha! But of course, monsieurl I will find you one!"

  He darted back into the jungle and began to run from place to place, scanning the ground. It was some time before Adam could catch up to him and persuade him that it was not snakes he sought.

  They returned to the edge of the cane field, where Adam tried with his hands again, this time however supplementing the mad motions with one of the few French words he did know, foisson, fish.

  Maitrejean brightened.

  "Ah, les anguilles! You carry a cargo of anguilles, Monsieur? But—it is for eating?"

  "Can't imagine what else you might use 'em for."

  "But—but this is sent by Heaven!"

  "Might not think so, you smelled 'em on a hot night with the hatches open."

  "You conceive, monsieur, I have seventy blacks, and more on the way from Guinea. They must be fed. But our Navy— You have 'ow many barrels, monsieur?— Ah!— And you demand?"

  "Five pounds," Adam said glibly, raising the price on the spur of the moment. "That's English pounds, of course."

  "But I do not have any English money!"

  "Well, I don't know about French money—"

  "I do not 'ave francs either."

  "Then molasses. I'd have to sample it. Make sure of the grade. I can supply staves and hoops, you lend me a cooper."

  "I have three coopers. You'll see their shop soon, when we reach the top of this rise. But I have not the molasses, monsieur."

  "Umph— Well, I'll take clayed sugar."

  "But I do not have clayed sugar. No, nor raw sugar either. At this

  moment, alas, I am all out of both. Observe—there is my crushing mill, and there's the cooperage beyond it. We'll come in sight of the house itself soon. No, I have no sugar, monsieur."

  Here we go again, thought an embittered Adam Long.

  "But I do have silver, monsieur. Not gold, no, but silver. Spanish eight —real pieces. Would they suffice?"

  Adam Long squinched shut his eyes to conceal the joy that must have leapt in them. Thunderation! Pieces-of-eight suffice? Why, they were better than sterling! He cleared his throat thoughtfully.

  "Could be they'll do— Could be-"

  Very light slaves, octaroons likely, metis the French called them, bathed Adam, while others dried and brushed and mended his clothes. He was shaved. He was even sprayed with scent. He must have smelled like a bawdy house when he rejoined his host on a terrace, but all the same it felt good.

  It was mid-morning now and very hot. On the air hung thick sweet ribbons of smoke from the kettles. Back in the hills a road twisted, coming into sight, vanishing again; and they could see that a horseman was descending toward the sea; dust stood behind him.

  "A cour
ier from Gonave," Maitrejean said.

  He clapped his hands, and slaves brought a brassbound box.

  They were sure-enough pieces-of-eight, Spanish coins. Adam tested several with his teeth and clanked others on the stones of the terrace.

  An overseer arrived with Waters and Peterson.

  Now here was a pitiful pair, lacerated, bloody, muddy, too. When they saw their skipper the delight on their faces was touching. Once surly, now they groveled. They begged to be taken back.

  "Don't know's I want you," Adam growled.

  Inside, he felt bad about the business. Maybe he had been too harsh? What right did he have, after all, to be sitting in judgment? Who was he to be waited upon, a pile of silver at his elbow, while foremast hands cringed before him? His common sense repeated that these two were no-goods; but there is more to a man than common sense.

  "Lash 'em?" asked the Frenchy.

  "Eh?"

  "I'd have it indoors then, monsieur. You, uh, you understand? The example—"

  Adam shook his head.

  "You islanders," he muttered. "Like living in a powder magazine."

  "It is precisely like that, monsieur."

  Adam said to the deserters: "You found your way here, now find your way back. And tell Mr. Forbes to get ready to unload."

  "Do we have to go through them woods again?" Waters quavered. 46

  "A fine pair," Adam said scornfully. "Take a little walk among the trees and you look as if you'd been run through Mister Maitrejean's crushing mill here. And scared half to death."

  "It— It was like the Dark Place," Waters whispered.

  "We'll have no blasphemy! Go back to the schooner!"

  Adam and the planter discussed the deal. Maitrejean sent for his coopers. He caused hands to be called in from the fields.

  There was no written contract—after all, this was an illegal transaction —but the agreement was perfect. The two men rose to seal the bargain with a handshake.

  A servant announced the arrival of the courier from Gonave. Maitrejean excused himself.

  Adam sat down again, his hand still unshaken. He was filled with relief. He had in fact fallen to thinking, after so many failures, that this voyage might be bewitched. There could be a spell over the whole enterprise; and if this was the case suspicion pointed at Deborah Selden as the raiser. Adam didn't like to think this of Deborah, a woman he admired mightily. It must be a terrible thing to be possessed by the Devil, your soul doomed to everlasting torment. But until a little while ago it sure looked as if that might be the case with Obadiah Selden's dark-eyed daughter; and Adam shivered at the thought. Now, however, everything was all right.