Captain Crossbones by Donald Barr Chidsey

Author:Donald Barr Chidsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781479439942
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2017-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

SHE CARRIED no canvas, which is the reason the lookout had not spotted her until they were very near. This vessel, rocking a little in the lazy seas, was small, a squat apple-cheeked boat, probably flat-bottomed, certainly slow. Because she showed no sails—indeed, as they saw when they got closer, no standing rigging of any sort—it was difficult to classify her. There were three spars on her mainmast. She carried no foremast, and the mizzen, a small one, was in the extreme stern and seemed about to topple out of the ship. She might have been what the Dutch called a gallot, a sturdy if unexciting trader generally used for coastal work.

Aboard of the John and Elizabeth the false gunwales had been run up forward, and the crew gathered there, arms being passed out. But, as there was clearly to be no chase, and no sign of life showed in the other vessel, it seemed stupid to crouch in hiding, and one by one the pirates rose, intently studying their prey.

“I don’t like it.”

“Couldn’t get me to go aboard of her.”

“Plague, you think?”

“Might be.”

George made known that he himself would visit the derelict, if such she was. He strapped on a cutlass. He loaded two large pistols and thrust them behind his belt. He had the Moses boat put overside.

“If she really is a derelict she belongs to us,” he told Tom Walker, who was to be left in charge.

“She does anyway. But do we want her?”

“You’ve got the big fellow shotted?”

“I have. And laid. In this sea the helmsman can easily hold ns on, and if there’s any hanky-panky I could blow that tub out of the water in five minutes.”

“Better wait till I leave it first.”

He sat in the sternsheets, paying little attention to the two rowers, who were constantly looking ahead, over their shoulders, not liking to have their backs turned to a ghost—if that’s what it was.

George had his own doubts. Perhaps a full boarding party would have been better, in the longboat. There was a possibility that the crew of the gallot, having seen the John and Elizabeth before the pirates saw them, and having guessed the nature of their business, had hidden themselves below in deadly fear. It was unlikely, but it was conceivable. They might have armed themselves below in preparation for one wild rush.

George could read the name on the counter now, Schatje, which looked Dutch, confirming his first impression, but still there was no stir. No smoke rose from the galley. The tiller swung back and forth, untended. That tiller and a section of Jacob’s ladder hanging conveniently over the side George approached.

He reached the vessel from windward, and it was not until he had climbed to the deck that his nose told him the terrible story.

A plague ship? Say rather a charnel house!

He staggered, gasping, as though he’d been struck in the chest, the stench was so strong, so abrupt.

“Are you all right, cap’n?” one of the men in the Moses called.

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