Captain Adam Read online

  The whole crew was there this noon. There was a spitted goat Mr. Treadway had given them as a farewell gift. It had been roasted a luscious golden-brown. Yet when Adam was first offered some he shook his head. He was studying these men.

  At first he thought of Seth Selden, who, in his middle forties, was, with Jeth Gardner, by far the oldest person aboard. Seth was spry, but no man at that age could nimble it like an ordinary hand. Which is to say, Seth could be spared, except in a blow. But could Seth be trusted in a lady's bedchamber? Probably not. Not off soundings anyway.

  Adam then went to the other extreme, his gaze falling upon Abel Rellison, who at thirteen was really a boy and was only being paid a boy's wages, though often enough he did the work of a man. Abel was a good lad, earnest, not flip. Adam stabbed a finger at him.

  "You!"

  "Aye, sir," and Rellison rose.

  'Tou're the valet de chamhre."

  "What's that?"

  "I don't know. Go to the cabin and find out. Don't forget to knock before you go in. And after that do whatever she tells you to."

  "Empty her pottie, I expect," said Seth Selden.

  This was in plain truth what Abel was told to do, for Lady Maisie had brought wdth her, among so many other things, a private close-stool, a contraption that folded in an ingenious manner, not looking at all like what it was; but so long as he was there, she had set the lad about other duties as well, helping her ladyship to get the cabin straightened up. When he returned he was agog.

  "Never saw so many bottles of perfume! Shelves of 'em! And there's all kinds of jars and bowls of stuff that looks like bear grease, only it don't smell that way. Now she wants the steward. Who's he?"

  "You again, I guess," Adam said. "You seem to be doing all right."

  "Sure!" And he raced aft.

  "Why not take her a handful of goat?" somebody called.

  She came up on deck two hours later. How all the unguents and ointments and patches and powder had been disposed, Adam was sure he did not know; for though she did smell sweet—it could have been her natural smell, at that—surely she had not painted her face like the wicked Jezebel, who got thrown out of a window for it. There might have been a smitch of powder, but there was no pigment. Adam looked.

  She was dressed in drugget—a flaring bodice, a wide-spreading skirt, the color of salmon—and wore a white petticoat swagged with rosep)oint. She wore dark green doeskin gloves. Her head was bare.

  The Rellison boy had been sent away some time before. He was still telling the crew about it. Adam himself was at the tiller, for two reasons. He feared that a seaman stationed there might be tempted to peer down past the scuttle into the cabin, spying out the wonders Abel Rellison had prated of, maybe spying something else, too. The other reason was that Adam Long wanted to peer down there himself and see if he couldn't find out what she had done to his cabin. He believed he could do this without appearing to, but he didn't want any witnesses while he tried.

  She had some difficulty getting up, what with the hoop-petticoat, and he helped her. She was wearing dark green stockings and small soft yellow shoes with crimson velvet roses at the instep.

  She thanked him cheerily. He did not bow. He had thought this.out. If he bowed every time he encountered his passenger—well, he'd be bowing a good part of the time. And bowing was not so easy when you were bowling along on a careless sea with a tomboyish wind behind you.

  He was not accustomed to bare-headed women, and the sight fussed him even more than the sight of her stocking had done.

  They stood there for a time, talking of this and that, Adam didn't rightly remember what. She told him that she was sure she was going to be comfortable and that she did hope she wasn't putting them to any inconvenience; and he cried "Oh, no!" She said that this seemed the pleasantest part of the boat, right back here where they were; and Adam said he would rig an awning for her here tomorrow.

  Adam raised his eyes, but they encountered the upper part of the lady's bodice, which, very low, was trimmed with muslin, maybe not enough of it; and his temples pounded, and sweat sprang out around his mouth, so that he put his gaze down to the deck again in a hurry.

  "The sailors—didn't I hear them singing a while ago?"

  "There was a chantey, while they were having the hook up."

  "It was a charming little thing. So— So pastorale."

  "Well-"

  "D'ye suppose they could sing it again?"

  They did, and with glee. They sat along the taffrail and kept time with their hands, and for the most part they remembered never to start the verses that were not proper to this occasion, though at least once they slipped.

  "Magnifiqiie!" cried the passenger, and she laughed so hard that they all had to laugh, too. She and Adam were seated on the scuttle, and she put her head on Adam's shoulder a moment.

  She had a mouth that seemed small in repose, though it was not often in repose; yet when she laughed it was seen to be large, but at all times it was well formed, full; and she had exquisite teeth.

  "La, la. Captain, 'tis good for the gizzard not to have to be a lady of ton quite all the time!"

  She pulled away, patting his arm and looking up at him, laughing. She had a mouth—

  "Must be," said Adam.

  "You there, Rellison. In my room you'll find a brace of bottles of French brandy, in the locker on the left. Fetch 'em up. I want you to give them to the boys, as a reward for their singing."

  Oh, they loved her—that first night.

  It was the next morning that the trouble started.

  Adam was up at first light, his heart high in his chest. At dawn it was always like this. Given visibility, the Goodwill could keep away from anything that swam the seas—except maybe oared harbor boats in a time of calm—but each time the sky grayed, and especially if the night had been moonless, you looked around, staring so hard that your eyeballs ached, fearful lest some warship or worse should loom out of the murk all too close. Ships didn't show lights and they seldom struck bells when they were hunting. You might find yourself within gunshot of pretty near anything. You could even be in the middle of an enemy fleet. It had happened.

  This morning the horizon held only a brig, but it was a large one, dead ahead. It was Spanish; and they fell off. The Spaniard, following them, was easily outpaced; but he was in sight until early afternoon. And no sooner had they made about on a northeasterly course again than they raised another vessel, a Frencher, which went for them with the velvety silent swiftness of a cat.

  Between these raisings Adam was sent to take a look at Eliphalet Mellish.

  Eli was a Newport boy, gnarled, never said anything, no beauty but a good worker. Now he had the fever, bad. His face was so hot it burned your hand, and it was steamed with sweat. He rampaged from side to side as though determined to break the bones of his own body. His eyes were shut. He didn't seem to hear anything you said.

  Nobody knew when he'd been taken. He had stood his watch, night before. He'd attended prayers. But then, he was always a quiet one.

  Eli had been ashore at Mr. Treadway's. But—here's the realization that douched them—they all had been, every man-jack of 'em. His breathing was horrid to hear, a sort of rattle.

  They washed his face and neck and they loosened his clothing. There wasn't much else they could think of. John Bond suggested burning one of the big sulphur candles, but Adam shook his head.

  "They're for purifying the air, and it takes two-three days with everything battened dowoi. They'd kill him, you burn 'em in here."

  An hour later, when Lady Maisie came on deck, after having breakfasted below, Adam made no mention of Eliphalet Mellish. Some j>eople, he knew, were superstitious.

  She herself seemed in the best of health, though Goodwill was standing about a bit, the seas being tolerably high.

  They chatted by the taffrail. She was not a high-and-mighty lady, really. She was easy to talk to. He let her hold the tiller, and showed her how to watch the compass, and how t
o make the schooner come around to the compass card rather than try to make the compass card come 'round to fit the schooner, as your landsman customarily did. This entertained her, and while she did it he rigged the awning he had promised.

  Once she looked back. She couldn't have been wearing a heap of clothes under the gown, for just turning thrust out the curves of her breast and hips. Her neck was sheer cream and he wished he could kiss it. This morning she wore a black lace scarf over her head, tied beneath her chin, a Spanish-looking thing. A few strands of hair had leapt loose and were flipping and curHng.

  "What's that boat behind us. Captain?"

  "Came from Petit Guave way. A Frencher. She likes the looks of us."

  "We're not running away from them?"

  "Sure are."

  "By this compass it says we're going almost straight south?"

  "That's right, ma'am."

  "But New York is north of here, isn't it?"

  "Yes, but that Frencher's north of here, too. We won't get back on our proper course till after dark. We can lose her then."

  "Why can't we go 'way over to the east or west?"

  "There's only just so far to go. I'll show you on the chart. Look— This

  is the Windward Passage here, between Hispaniola on one side and Cubie on the other. That's maybe fifty-sixty miles. And the French, they got havens at Leogane here and at Petit Guave. They're fast sailors, too."

  "D'ye think there's any danger, Captaini'"

  He shrugged.

  She asked: "These privateers—"

  "Ain't so much the privateers I'm worried about. The hands—they sometimes call this place Pirate Alley."

  "I see." She gave him a smile, the first real one that morning. "Well, with you managing us, Captain, I'm not afraid."

  "Thank you, ma'am. I try to do my best."

  She went below; and ten minutes later they came to tell Adam that the patient was dead. He had a hard time believing it. They all did. Crammed into the forecastle there, as many as could get in, leaning far over, they examined Mellish again and again, taking his shirt off, putting their ears against his chest. They could detect no heart beat, no pulse. The sweat was beginning to dry on face and neck, and indeed all over, but the skin was still furiously hot. The drying sweat, sort of slimy, stank.

  They didn't want to dispose of him until they were stone certain he was dead, but at the same time they didn't want to keep the corpse here if it really was a corpse. It was late June now, and most prodigiously hot, even for those parts.

  They were quiet, for they were all scared.

  They worked some threads out of a shirt and held these over his open mouth, and the threads did not stir—or most of them thought that they had not stirred.

  "If we only had a mirror," said Jethro Gardner.

  Adam said to the boy Rellison: "Go ask her ladyship if I can borrow a mirror. Don't tell her what we want it for."

  He was back in a few moments with a thing with a long handle, a cream-colored thing grotesquely out-of-place in the forecastle, the mirror part of it octagonal, the edges inset with nacre, the back an Arcadian scene, mostly shepherdesses, in pink and light blue. There were ribbons attached to it, for no ascertainable reason.

  "She says to tell you that the next time the handsome captain wants to look at his reflection why don't he come and borrow this himself? That's what she said."

  It was a harmless enough message—silly, yes, but given the circumstances, not in bad taste. It was only meant to be playful, you could even say gracious. After all, Maisie did not know that a man had just died up here. Adam felt like pointing this out to the others, who scowled; but he didn't.

  The mirror, held a long time over Eli Mellish's mouth, showed not the faintest film. Adam sighed and sent it back.

  "See he's sewed up. And seal his box. I'll get the Book."

  Late that afternoon, when she came on deck to watch a sensational sunset, she commented on the quietness of the crew. They were so subdued! Not at all like last night, when they'd been gay.

  Adam mumbled something. This was not because he was ill at ease. Physically she unsettled him; in her presence, even sometimes when she was not there, he suffered a prickling of the skin, all over, that could only be a yearning for the lusts of the flesh, and, recognizing this, he fought it. But socially he was comfortable with her. In the past he had more than once wondered what a lady would be like, to meet. He had pictured something formidable, difficult to approach or even to address. Maisie, now, was as hiiman as your next-door neighbor. Her smile was genuine—it wasn't a thing to be fished out of her reticule and fastened on her face from time to time as the occasion suggested. It came from inside.

  Adam guessed that she was not sure of herself. Sometimes she was shockingly bold, forward; but of a sudden she would come all over shy, and fall silent. No doubt she was forever reproaching herself about this. She wanted to be liked, maybe even loved. After all, don't most folks?

  "Don't look too chirk yourself," he commented. "Thinking of home?"

  Two things about her flummoxed him, being utterly different from what he had known, and these were her clothes and her manner of speaking.

  Never had he seen such clothes, even the time he'd been to Philadelphia: frills, flounces, furbelows—ribbons and laces galore—velvet, chine silk, drugget, sagathy cloth, colebatteen, holland, muslin, drap du Barre— As for colors, there were colors he had not known the existence of: yellow and Nile green or yellow and vermilion were her favorite combinations. She was not narrow in her taste, nor yet timid.

  He never saw her wear the same thing twice. He could not imagine how she had managed to stow all those stuffs and accoutrements into the one small cabin. They never showed mussed either, never wilted by the heat. It was an act of magic every time Lady Maisie came topside.

  As for her speech, some of her words were strange, maybe French. But not many. And he could always understand her if he listened carefully. Her voice, her intonation, rather than any choice of topics, ringingly proclaimed her station; yet she was anything but high-and-mighty. She had a few tricks of speech, of an exclamatory nature, that Adam reckoned were fashionable—leastways he could see no other sense to them. For instance, she'd cry "La!" or "Oh, la!" or maybe "La, la!" every now and then, almost as if she did not know that she was doing it, as though it 60

  were an unconscious uncontrollable physiological act, like a hiccup. She'd talk very fast, in spurts, with silences that came suddenly, as though she were catching her breath in, being frightened to realize how she'd rattled.

  This evening she was a touch bitter.

  "Home? No. Nor is anybody there thinking of me. They're too happy to be rid of me."

  He made no reply, and she stared at the sunset as though she thought it had no right to be as sensational as all that.

  "Oh, la! 'tis still dear-Maisie this and Maisie-my-love that, but the truth of the matter is they've been shunting me around like a poor relation—which is just what I am, come to think on it—ever since I lost my fortune. Horace back there"—she jerked her head in the wrong direction but Adam knew that she meant Jamaica—"was just the latest. No, he couldn't do anything for me either. Lacked even the influence to get me permission to leave the island. That's why I had to be smuggled out like a criminal. Unless Horace was willing to settle my debts, which he wasn t.

  "Oh," said Adam.

  "So now I go to New York, which I take it is a barbarous hovel, and 111 appeal to another cousin, a mighty remote one, I can tell you—a man I've never met and probably wouldn't consent to meet in London."

  She turned suddenly to him and put a hand on his arm. She looked right at him, close.

  "Forgive me, Captain. La, sir, you'll think me a sniveller. It ain't that I mind losing fifty thousand pounds—never did learn where it went—it ain't that."

  "No?"

  "It's the way my friends behaved. It's a blow on the head for any infatuated fool like me."

  "I can see where it would
be."

  "There was one was going to marry me. I believed him. I let him do things a lady shouldn't, Captain. And then he changed his mind. He forgot what he'd promised. That was one reason why I went to Jamaica."

  She turned back to the taffrail, and was silent a moment, swallowing.

  "I— I'm sorry, Captain. I won't do that again. Now let's talk about something else."

  "All right," said Adam.

  Hours later, after night had come, and Adam chanced to be alone on the afterdeck for a short time, he went to the scuttle and squatted beside it and cocked his head, listening. Yes. He nodded as he came away. Yes, she was sobbing down there in the darkness, the poor lovely woman, the lonesome one. She was sobbing as if her heart would break.

  For more than a week they beat up toward or into the Windward Passage, only to be chased back each time. They took chances, doing things Adam Long would not ordinarily have authorized. They sailed close to the shore of Cuba, close to the shore on the other side, near Mole St. Nick, a corsairs' crossroads if ever there was one; and more than once they tried to make it right smackety-blank up the center. The result was the same in every case. They had to run, hard. There was always a sail in the wrong place at the wrong time. The nights were too bright, the seas too rough. Even the winds, which might have been expected to be regular, came and went erratically in short gusty chuffs: it was as though God coughed.

  Captain Long, though he gave the necessary commands, was scarcely aware of this luck.

  He told Maisie: "It's different where I hail from. There ain't any ladies or gendemen there—only the men that have property' and the ones that don't, and even the ones that have don't have much. And everybody works, all the time."

  He told her: "Sure I quote the Book a lot. That's the best place to find an answer in. But even then you can't always be certain, I know I can't anyway. There's good on one side, there's evil on the other. That much I do know. What I'm not always sure about is, which side is which?"