Captain in Calico by George MacDonald Fraser

Author:George MacDonald Fraser [Fraser, George MacDonald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802190796
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2015-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

12. UNDER THE BLACK

Overnight the weather changed and dawn came with a grey sky and showery squalls driving from the north-east. With sail spread the Kingston ploughed southward over Tongue of the Ocean, and two cables’ lengths astern Penner’s sloop danced in her wake like a puppy frisking behind a full-grown dog.

Rackham had been on deck since before first light. He had not slept during the night, the false refreshment of shaving and dressing in clean clothes had long since worn off, and he was red-eyed and tired.

They had made the rendezvous with Penner, and had lost no time in transferring twenty hands from the sloop to the brig so that the larger vessel should have a reasonable complement in the event of emergency. It had been a disquieting half hour for Rackham, however, partly by reason of Anne Bonney’s behaviour. Remembering how it had been necessary to drag her from Bonney’s house, he had expected to find her hostile; instead, to his surprise, she had been in a state of exultation when she greeted him as he boarded the sloop. Her animation was so far removed from the viciousness and anger she had displayed such a short while before that he wondered, not for the first time, if there was perhaps a streak of madness in her nature.

Her high spirits were not shared by Penner, who, in the brief spell of waiting off Salt Cay, had discovered grounds for anxiety aboard his sloop. While the men were being transferred to the Kingston he announced his fears to Rackham.

‘They’re asking questions. Of course, it was to be expected. They sign for a cruise with me, and here go twenty of them to the Kingston before we’re an hour out. They want to know why. I’ve told them to obey orders and be damned to them, but that won’t serve for long. They smell piracy in the very sight of you, John. These lads I’ve given you are old filibusters, but I’m thinking my gentlemen-adventurers may cause us trouble.’

‘How much trouble?’ asked Rackham.

Penner blew out his cheeks. ‘Who knows? There’s a dozen taking their cues from a smooth, plume-bonnet rogue of a captain that I suspect of honesty. He’ll not be made to play the pirate, for one.’

‘What of the rest, then?’

‘Och, most of the lads’ll as soon sail under the black as under the red, white, and blue. Sooner, when they hear what it can put in their pockets, But they’ll need to be told soon.’

‘They’ll be told to-morrow morning’, Rackham had promised. ‘You’ll need to send them all aboard the Kingston, but for a skeleton crew of safe men to sail the sloop. If your honest captain – what’s his name, anyway?’

‘Kinsman, Captain Alan Kinsman, late of the First Foot and be damned to you common sailormen.’

‘Aye, well, if he refuses to come aboard the Kingston, threaten to hang him for mutiny. And if the enterprise is too foul for his fancy fingers, so much the worse for him.’

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