The Pyrates. George Fraser MacDonald

hurriedly pulled ropes and battened hatches and shouted through cupped hands and spat resoundingly – doing all those things needful, d’ye see, to get a ship under weigh.

      “Avast there! Get in the forrard plank!” yelled the red-faced man. “Yarely, an’ be damned, wi’ a pox on’t!” Plainly he was another Farnol graduate, one of that barnacle-crusted band whose natural ancestor is the bosun in “The Tempest” – the one who is responsible for the greatest stage-direction Shakespeare ever wrote: “Enter mariners, wet.” He rolled about the place, roaring and belaying, and then his eye fell on Blood again, and he bellowed – but with a certain respect for one well-dressed: “Now then, you, sir, blast me bollocks an’ by y’r leave! What, sir? What make ye, master? It’s go ashore or go to Calicut, or hoist me for a lubber, what?” And his gesture invited the Colonel to the gangplank – at the foot of which the fat gamester was plainly visible, craning his neck as he surveyed the crowded wharf. Colonel Blood had his choice, and took it.

      “But, captain,” said he, with desperate nonchalance, keeping under cover of the casks, “Calicut is where I wish to go. News came this morning … my rich uncle’s dead o’ the flux or the gout or the fever or somewhat. Shocking sudden, and the plantation going to the devil. I had your direction … and where the devil my man Jenkin is with the dunnage, God knows. Ye can give me passage, I dare swear?”

      “What, sir? Carry ye to Calicut, rot me? Why, sir, now, sir!” The captain rubbed grizzled chin wi’ horny paw and considered the appellant – rich lace, good coat, rakehelly genteel, dressed in a hurry … but then, he’d admitted as much. “Why, y’r worship, it might be,” he conceded. “A four-month passage, let’s see – I could make room at a pinch, for … forty guineas, now?”

      Above the ship’s noise a distant voice could be heard complaining: “… and the dam’ gallows-bait had my guineas, too!” Colonel Blood did not hesitate, but pulled the purse from his pocket and tossed it over negligently to the captain. “A bagatelle,” said he, and the roaring skipper promptly knuckled his hat, and beamed, crying “Thank’ee, y’r honour, I’ll see ye have a comf’table berth, y’r honour, crisp me liver if I don’t! Yardley’s the name, sir; Cap’n Yardley. Steward! Hell’s bells an’ hailstones, will ye lay aft, steward, damn ’ee?”

      The Colonel was too old a hand to regret his lost cash; it had been necessary. The question now was whether to kiss it good-bye and steal ashore later, or to avail himself of this unexpected magic carpet away from London – a place which might be uncomfortably hot for him. India? He had never been there, and had no great desire to go … on the other hand, he was one who had always lived where he’d hung his castor – why not? He’d have four months’ board and lodging in the meantime. As he considered, he lurked, and presently saw his baffled pursuers take themselves off; the resolve was forming in his mind … he’d quite enjoy a sea-trip, and the Indies, by all accounts, offered a fruitful field to men of his talents. He allowed himself to be shown his berth, shed his too-conspicuous coat, and sallied forth on deck again to view the orderly bustle of the ship as the final preliminaries to sailing went ahead right handily, with cheery yo-ho and bronzed backs bending to haul, pipes twittering, captain bawling, men hasting aloft, capstan turning, and that sort of thing, with salty baritones roaring:

      Where is the trader o’ Stepney Town? Clap it on, slap it on, How the hell should I know?

      And up the gangplank, striding tall, came a superbly handsome young man in a naval coat and hat, his buttons glinting keenly at his surroundings; he bore a polished oak box under one arm, and his sea-chest was wheeled behind by an awestruck urchin whom he rewarded with a groat, a kindly word, and a pat on the head. The urchin went off swearing foully at the size of his tip, but the skipper was all over the newcomer, crying welcome aboard, Cap’n Avery, look’ee, here’s j’y, or rattle me else! The young man nodded amiably, but looked down his classic nose when the beaming skipper presented him to his fellow-passenger.

      “Blood?” he said, bowing perfunctorily. “I seem to have heard the name,” and his tone didn’t imply that it had been in connection with the last Honours List; plainly he was not enchanted with the Colonel (trust Avery to spot a wrong ’un every time). “You are a soldier, sir?”

      “Oh, here and there,” said Blood easily. “You’re a sailor?”

      “I am a naval officer,” said Avery coldly.

      “Ah,” said Blood wisely, and wondered: “Don’t they sail?”, at which Avery’s cuffs stiffened sharply as he favoured the Colonel with that steely glance employed by Heroes on mutinous troops, rioting peasants, and impudent rakehelly villains, who respectively quail, cower, or gnash their teeth when exposed to it. Colonel Blood met it with an amiable smile, and the two of them detested each other from that instant.

      A coach came rumbling along the cobbles, and Captain Yardley swore picturesquely, excused himself to Avery, and stumped off bawling: “Admiral’s a-comin’, damme! Ho, bosun, blister me bum, lay up here, d’ye see? Hands on deck!” And as the coach stopped by the gangplank, a massive-limbed figure with an order on his silk coat and a ruffled castor on his head, stepped ponderously down from it – Admiral Lord Rooke, with a face like a ham, brilliant grey eyes, grizzled head, weatherbeaten feet, tarred elbows, and all that befits a sea-dog of seniority and sound bottom. He was just what an admiral ought to be: tough, kindly, experienced, and worshipped by the salts of the Navy, who referred to him endearingly as Old Pissquick, in memory of the time he extinguished a lighted fuse accidentally at the intaking of Portobello, or the outflanking of Mariegalante, no matter which. He bellowed a command in a voice which had blown look-outs from their crows’-nests e’er now, and a lackey leaped from the box and quivered in his livery.

      “You’re not English, are ye, fellow?” growled the Admiral.

      “No, sair, pliz, je suis un Frog,” smarmed the lackey.

      “Just the thing!” cried the Admiral. “On thy knees, rat!” And as the lackey knelt on all fours in the mud, providing a step, a dainty foot emerged from the coach, shod with a trim spiked heel, and cased in white silk, and planted itself in the small of his back. A second dainty foot followed it, with a flurry of lace petticoat which revealed a modish velvet garter buckled with brilliants below a shapely knee, and there stood the Admiral’s daughter, Lady Vanity, her tiny gloved hand holding a parasol, waiting to be helped down.

      “Lower away!” bawled the Admiral, kicking the lackey’s behind, and the lackey subsided obsequiously into the mud, allowing Lady Vanity to step down to the cobbles, over which forehead-knuckling salts had laid a red carpet. Examine Lady Vanity for a moment.

      She was, of course, a blonde whose hair shone in sunkissed golden ringlets on either side of a roses-and-cream complexion which she knew to be dazzling. Her eyes were sparkling blue, her nose haughtily tip-tilted, her little chin imperious, her lips a cupid’s bow whose perfection was no way impaired by its provoking pout; practically everything about Lady Vanity pouted, including her shapely figure, which would have done credit to the Queen of the Runway. She was not tall, but her carriage was that of a fashion model who has been to a Swiss finishing school and knows she has the equipment to stop a battalion of Rugby League players in their tracks with the flick of a false eyelash. She was dressed by Yves St Laurent, in pleated white silk, and her jewellery alone had cost her doting father all his last cruise’s prize money. Lady Vanity was a living doll; even the plump little negress who was her maid was pretty enough to be Miss Leeward Islands.

      Captain Avery and Colonel Blood stood together by the rail, drinking her in – one in respectful worship, the other with thoughts of black silk bedclothes and overhead mirrors.

      “Will ye look at that, now?” invited the Colonel in an enchanted whisper. “Maybe there’s compensations to a life at sea, after all. I hope to God the old feller isn’t her husband … not that it matters.”

      Avery’s eyes blazed frostily at this lewd effrontery. This fellow’s foul tongue, he decided, must be curbed, and speedily.

      Lady Vanity was surveying the ship. “Are we expected to sail to India in that?” she cried petulantly.