The Pyrates. George Fraser MacDonald

oars, or caught the phosphorescent glitter of ruffled water, or the grating of long-boat bows on shingle, the splash of bare feet and sea-boots in the surf, the glint of steel, the clatter of gear instantly hushed, or the shadowy passage of silent figures slipping through the palm-groves. No, the sentries were dreaming of distant Devon or half-caste wenches or beer or whatever sleepy sentries dream about, and by the time one of them glanced seaward it was too late, as usual, because the Menace was there, unseen, crouched in disciplined quiet beneath the very castle wall on the narrow path that skirted round to the open, inviting, torch-lit watergate and its deserted steps, where only a few convenient boats rocked unguarded at their moorings.

      Wolfish bearded faces in the shadows, earrings, head scarves, hairy drawers, dirty shirts open to the waist, bad breath, great buckled belts, cutlasses, knives and pistols gripped in gnarled and sweaty hands, and at their head, all in snowy white from breeches to head-kerchief, big as a house-side and nimble as a cat, Calico Jack Rackham, none other, cautiously edging his brutally handsome, square-chinned face round a corner of the watergate, grinning at the sight of the torch-lit empty tunnel, turning to his followers, motioning them to be ready for the assault, whispering his final orders. First among equals was Calico Jack, by reason of being literate and smart and able to navigate and do all things shipshape and Bristol fashion, look’ee, as his admiring associates often agreed. Also he was strong enough to break a penny between his fingers, which helps, and having served a turn in the Navy, he was reckoned dependable. In our day he would have been a paratroop sergeant, or a shop steward, or a moderate Labour M.P. He was a pirate because it offered a profitable field for his talents, and he was saving for his old age.

      First behind him came Firebeard, six feet both ways, barrel-chested, with hands like earth-moving equipment, and so covered in the fuzz that gave him his nickname that he looked like a burst mattress with piggy eyes glinting out of it. He was enormous and roaring and ranting and wild and so thick he had forgotten his real name; he had been dropped on his head at an early age and never looked back. Nowadays he might have been an all-in wrestler or a Hollywood stuntman or an eccentric peer – or, indeed, all three. His idea of living was to hit people with anything handy, grab any valuables in sight, and blue the lot on wenches and drink. He was a pirate for these reasons, and also because he enjoyed bellowing those hearty songs which John Masefield would write in course of time. His eventual claim to fame would be as the model and inspiration of Edward Teach, who would copyright the habit in which Firebeard was at that very minute indulging, of tying lighted fire-crackers in his beard to terrify the enemy. He always did this before action, fumbling and cursing as the matches burned his huge clumsy fingers, while his comrades coughed and fanned the air.

      “He’s at it again!” they, muttered severally. “Gor, what a kick-up!” “Thou lubberly guts, wilt set thy hair afire – fo!” “Turn it up, for God’s sake!” “They reek offends, thou smouldering ape – ’tis nauseous to rob i’ thy company!”

      This last contribution came from Bilbo; tall, lean, rakish Bilbo, pretending to elegance in his tawdry finery of embroidered coat, plumed castor, soiled lace ruffles, and fine Cordovan boots with red-lacquered heels. (Actually, they pinched him excruciatingly, having been taken from the corpse of a small grandee whom Bilbo had skewered at Campeche, but Bilbo knew they were the height of fashion, and hobbled grimly in them through skirmishes and boarding-parties innumerable.) He was a sad case, Bilbo, really, although he looked anything but. A Wapping guttersnipe, he yearned for gentility, having observed something of it as a bare-foot stable lad in a great household, and later as a page-boy – after his lithe young figure and raffish good looks had caught the jaded eye of his master’s wife. His amorous energies had led to similar posts in the houses of susceptible ladies of fashion, and some of the airs of the beau monde had stuck to him, along with the jewellery pilfered from the dressing-tables of his exhausted paramours. Among sea-scum he passed as a gentleman, having picked up a few tricks of speech from Congreve and Vanbrugh to supplement his gaudy wardrobe. He sneered and minced in sinister fashion, and made play with a rather grubby Mechlin kerchief, and wore a cut-price gem in his steenkirk. But don’t underrate Bilbo – he might be a social pretender whose feet were killing him, but he had won his captaincy in the Coast Brotherhood by cunning, courage, and fighting ability. He wasn’t called Bilbo for nothing – the long black rapier on his hip was reckoned the deadliest from St Kitts to Coromandel, with stoccata and imbroccata and punta rinversa, sa-ha! and he had a nice showy trick of spinning up finger-rings and impaling them on his flourished blade, like the Duke of Monmouth. Not easy. Nowadays Bilbo would have been a lion-tamer or an advertising executive. He hoped to make enough from piracy to buy an estate and title; for the moment he sneered at Firebeard’s efforts to get his crackers going, and took a pinch of snuff from the box proffered by Goliath, his faithful dwarf.

      “A barbarous affectation,” he lisped. “Thou vulgar big birk.”

      “At least I don’t have a bloody goblin in tow,” growled Firebeard, and Goliath, who was all of two feet tall and had a wooden leg, hopped and gibbered in rage. Suddenly the fire-crackers took light, and Firebeard chortled while the air turned blue.

      “All ready?” whispered Calico Jack, and a fierce chorus of “Aye, aye, cap’n, we’m ready for sart’n” answered him, with the odd “Belike” and “Look’ee” as an afterthought from the more eager spirits. And as they crouched for the assault, up from the rear came the fourth leader of that desperate enterprise, cat-footed and stately, and those hairy ruffians fell back, eyeing her askance with lustful respect as she stalked by, hips swaying, with a trace of Pierre Cardin lingering on the sultry air as she passed.

      Six gorgeous feet she was, from the heels of her tight-fitting Italian thigh boots (from Gucci, undoubtedly) to the curling plume of her picture hat, breeched and shirted in crimson silk that clung to her like a skin, lithe and sleek and dangerous as a panther – Sheba, the black pirate queen, looking like something out of Marvel Comic with her lovely vicious face and voluptuous shape, her dark eyes flashing against her ebony skin, smouldering silently as she unsheathed her dainty rapier with its Cartier hilt, and posed with the contemptuous grace of a burlesque star, indifferent to the ecstatic sighs and groans of her besotted followers. She had that sort of effect on men – it was notorious that when, in boarding a galleon, her shirt had been ripped off by an enemy pike, her entire crew had had to go on bromide for a fortnight. She never walked, she prowled, exuding menace and sex-appeal at every step, but none was so hardy as to presume on her femininity, for Sheba was as cruel and deadly as she was beautiful, and her scorn for men was proverbial. (True, in the focsle they breathed rumours of sizzling orgies in her secret fortress on Octopus Rock, with prisoners who were afterwards done diabolically to death, but that’s focsle gossip all over.) Born a Barbados slave, she had clawed her way to power in the Coast fraternity by a piratical genius and ruthless ferocity that had made her the toast of women’s liberationists all along the Main. Her fellow sea-wolves respected her, had astonishing fantasies about her, and went in terror of her, and she despised them all with a curl of her shapely lip and a lift of her perfect Egyptian nose and a low-lidded glare from her smoky slanting eyes, fingering her one long silver earring the while. Only to Rackham did she show the respect due an equal, and the big man treated her as a brother. Three centuries later Sheba would have been on the cover of Vogue, or leading a soul group; she was a pirate because she hated the world for enslaving her, and took a sadistic pleasure in killing – men, for choice, but women given half a chance, and quite small animals.

      All round, they were a happy little gang of eccentric cut-throats who crouched in the shadows under Fort St Bartlemy’s massy walls that balmy tropic night, waiting for the word from Rackham – and then they were storming up the passage, yelling bloody murder, while sleepy sentries above fired futile warning shots and ran about with their muskets at the high port. By then the pirates were slicing up the guards at the strong room, forcing the door, bursting open the first chest in a cascade of gold coin, into which Firebeard, exploding all over the place, threw himself bawling:

      “It’s the dollars! A bloody fortune! Har-har! Calico! Sheba! Bilbo! We’m rich!” He always shouted this on taking a prize, whatever its value, while his fire-crackers set his hair ablaze and those nearest choked and spluttered. A tiny Welsh pirate crouched by the open chest, eagerly counting the coins: “One, two, three …” until someone yanked him aside.