Chapter 3 #2
Looking down, he spotted the women swabbing the decks.
The convict women had been put to work in shifts, though they didn’t seem to mind if it meant being allowed above deck.
He glanced at the other men, who watched the women with only a bit of interest. After spending last night in port, the men were still sated enough from whoring not to feel an urgent need for the convict women.
But it wouldn’t last. And strangely enough, two weeks of protecting the convicts had made him regret that soon they would have to suffer the sailors’ advances again.
“Hey, matey,” called the sailor who was posted as lookout in the crow’s nest. “I gotta take a piss. Will you relieve me for a minute?”
Nodding his agreement, Petey replaced the sailor in the crow’s nest. He scanned the horizon with the spyglass, then surveyed Santiago as the Chastity cleared the last outcropping of rock.
It was a perfect day for sailing. Though the Chastity would reach the calm of the Equator in a day or two, today a playful wind filled her sails, pressing her south along the coast of Africa.
He settled back against the crow’s nest, his thoughts returning to little Ann. Welsh, she was, judging by her speech. And a pretty woman, too, with creamy skin and teeth white as ivory. He wondered what she could’ve done to end up with that crowd of criminals. It didn’t seem right.
Mayhap it was because of lasses like Ann that the earl’s sister risked so much to help the convicts.
Miss Willis tormented the captain something sore to improve their conditions and spent every waking moment down in the orlop deck, learning them their letters.
Only two weeks out of London, and the women already talked about her as if she were a bloody saint. Perhaps she was.
Picking up the spyglass, he searched their surroundings, taking in the sweep of water and benign clouds with a practiced eye. He’d just made a complete span of the ocean and was scanning the islands they’d left behind when something arrested his gaze. Focusing the spyglass, he drew a sharp breath.
A ship had emerged from the windward side of Santiago.
She’d come out of nowhere, and the sight gave him an uneasy pang.
It was as if she’d been lying in wait for them.
To be sure, it looked to be approaching the Chastity.
His heart beat faster. A sailor knew to be wary of meeting another ship at sea, especially one that slid out from behind an island.
“Ship to starboard!” he called down to the first mate.
The first mate sauntered beneath the mast. “What sort of ship?”
Petey trained the spyglass on the ship. He watched until the distant blur of sail and timber separated itself into a right good schooner, bristling with guns. The sight of so many guns alarmed him. This was no merchantman, to be sure. He scanned the outline for a flag, but could see none.
“Well, Petey?” the mate called up impatiently. “What do y’ see?”
“I’m tryin’ to make it out. ’Tis a fast schooner. Two masts. Lots of guns.”
The first mate scowled, obviously all too aware of what that might mean. “What’s the flag?” His cry was seconded by the captain, who’d already been called on deck by the bosun.
Petey swung the spyglass along the ship’s fearsome flanks again, until finally he saw a flag being hoisted. “God protect us all,” he muttered when he caught sight of it. Black as tar, it bore a grinning white skull and crossbones. A pirate’s flag.
“Pirates!” he shouted. “Pirates approachin’!”
“All hands on deck!” cried the captain as the bosun scurried to ring the warning bell. “Get the women below, and tell the lads to show a leg!”
Never had the ship’s crew moved so quickly, swinging into their duties like marionettes at a county fair. Ignoring the women’s questions, two sailors hustled them down the hatches as the captain barked commands and other sailors rushed to unfurl the top sails and man the ship’s few guns.
“Full sail!” the captain shouted to the first mate, who repeated the order. “We’ll outrun them!”
Petey thought that unlikely. He kept the spyglass trained on the ship, looking for signs of weakness and finding none.
The schooner was American-made by the look of her, and her light draught made her faster than any English frigate.
Schooners manned by American privateers had been a sore trouble to English merchant ships during the War of 1812.
Though the war was long over, many privateers had turned to pirating, and he feared that was the case with the ship that dogged them.
Perhaps when they saw there was no booty to be gained from the capture, they’d let the Chastity go. It had happened before, or so he’d heard.
“They’re gainin’ on us!” Petey called to the captain, who then worked the sailors into a frenzy to get the ship moving faster. But there wasn’t much they could do. The same wind drove both ships, but the other ship was lighter and thereby faster.
Petey leveled the spyglass again. They were close enough now that he could see the flag in great detail. He squinted to get a better look at the skull. This skull didn’t look like the usual skull and crossbones. Something about the shape of the head …
The skull had horns. His heart sank. Only one pirate ship bore that flag. The Satyr.
To make sure, he looked for the figurehead. When he saw the telltale carving of the mythological half-goat, half-man, he groaned aloud. Then he lifted his glass and saw the black-haired man standing in the bow. It was the Satyr all right. And its demon owner, Captain Gideon Horn.
“’Tis the Pirate Lord himself!” he called out as he tucked the spyglass under his arm and shimmied down the main mast. “’Tis Captain Horn of the Satyr!”
As he reached the deck, the captain hurried to his side, his face white beneath his muttonchop whiskers. “Are you sure, man?Why would the Pirate Lord be after us? Our owner ain’t no nobleman, but a tradesman!”
The Pirate Lord’s peculiar choice of targets had given him his nickname. The first ship he’d attacked had been carrying its owner, a stupid earl who’d foolishly warned the pirate not to show such disrespect to “a member of the House of Lords.”
The witnesses to that first capture had immortalized the pirate’s retort: “In America, all men are equal, and even a pirate is a lord. So I bow to no one but God, sir, especially not a dandified English noble.” Captain Horn had stolen everything the earl possessed, down to the clothes on his back.
And he’d stolen a kiss from the man’s own wife as well.
All of the Satyr’s targets since then had been ships owned by English nobility or those carrying noble passengers, and it was rumored he took great delight in fleecing them. Some nobility had even taken to traveling incognito and hiding behind other partners to protect themselves and their ships.
With an uneasy lurch, Petey thought of Miss Willis. Surely the man wouldn’t attack them because of her. No one associated with the ship knew her noble connections.
“Are you sure the ship’s owner is a tradesman?” he asked the captain.
“Aye. ’Tis me cousin. There’s not a hint of nobility aboard this ship, I tell you.”
Except Miss Willis. Petey had better warn her to say naught of her brother if they were taken. When they were taken, that is. The capture seemed inevitable.
“P’raps the Pirate Lord will let us go when he sees we got no booty,” Petey murmured.
“He’ll slaughter us, that’s what he’ll do!” The first mate was at the helm, and tossed the words back at them as if Captain Horn himself had made the threat. “I heard tell he can flatten a man with one blow of his fist!”
Petey swallowed. He wasn’t afraid of many things.
But the Pirate Lord was one. Far as he knew, no one had ever accused the pirate of the kind of murdering and mayhem some pirates were wont to engage in.
But that didn’t mean Captain Horn mightn’t strike out in anger when he discovered the lack of booty on the Chastity.
“P’raps we should fight,” Petey suggested.
“Are you bloody crazy?” Captain Rogers snorted. “That’s the Satyr, man! They’d blow us to pieces! We don’t have the guns or manpower to fight off a well-armed pirate ship. Besides, if we fight, they’ll think we have something worth fighting for, and that’ll make it worse for us.”
“You can’t outrun ‘em,” Petey said. “He has the fastest ship on the seas.” As if lending credence to his words, the Satyr surged forward, hounding them like a demon on the heels of a sinner. In moments it would overtake them.
The captain glanced at his crew, then back to his first mate and Petey. “That’s our only choice, lads. Run or be taken. And I much fear that ’tis taken we’ll be unless a miracle come to save us.”
The miracle never came. Scant minutes later, the other ship hailed them, threatening to fire their guns if the Chastity didn’t halt to be boarded. And it was only as Captain Rogers gave the order to his crew to surrender that Petey remembered he hadn’t warned Miss Willis.