"Why, of all the Joe-fired—"
"I mean every word of that. Captain."
He did, too. He was a weak man, but a wildly desperate one. Pasty, skinny, he wasn't going to depend on himself alone. A huge quadroon, the biggest man Adam Long had ever seen, now was standing beside Adam's chair. He must have slipped out of the house, at a signal.
"Well?"
"Go to the Devil! I don't do business that way."
Mr. Pendleton was stubborn as only a weak man can be.
"Your boat's coming in now. If you'll just give the order to unload, I'll pay you everything I've got."
"Go to the Devil," Adam said again, "if he'll have you."
"It means Kingston, Captain. They're touchy about such matters, especially right now. I happen to have some influence there, and I think I can promise that you'd be impressed into the Navy. It might be years before your story got out—if it ever did."
Here was no empty threat. The English Navy was taking whatever it could get, without asking questions; and the port officials at Kingston would be in a lather about Goodwill. They had paid him no mind while he was there, but when they found him gone without proper permission their rage would know no bounds. They'd splutter that he had offended against the dignity of the Throne, when in fact it was their own dratted dignity they thought of. If folks started laughing at port authorities, where would port authorities be? The times being what they were, and sent-out clerks what they were, a man in Adam Long's position might well lose his cargo and vessel, his liberty to boot. Be a smuggler if you must, a corruptionist, even a pirate, but for God's sake don't venture to sneer at the third assistant deputy custodian of the royal high colonial admiralty seal! It is a fact attested by men of sense everywhere that of all pompous asses in a world overcrowded with same, the most vindictive by far is the port official.
Adam rose.
"Reckon I'll go back aboard, where it don't stink so much."
The quadroon stiffened. Mr. Pendleton drew from underneath his waistcoat a walnut-and-blue-steel horse pistol.
"We had better step inside, Captain. You and Oliver and I."
They went only as far as the veranda, where they were screened by long let-down jalousies. Mr. Pendleton watched the sea. Oliver watched Adam Long.
The Moses boat had been beached and two sailors loafed beside it. A third man was walking toward the house.
"From his clothes. Captain, I take it that we are about to be honored by a visit from one of your mates? "
Adam nodded. He had recognized Resolved Forbes. It had not been a part of Resolved's orders to come ashore in person, and the fact that he had done so might argue that he was suspicious—or just that he was bored.
Mr. Pendleton waggled the pistol.
"This will make it the more persuasive. The skipper and the mate."
Resolved Forbes came on. His gait rolled, as a sailorman's should, and he had his thumbs looped into the top of his breeches.
A hundred yards away he halted; and for a long moment he studied the arbor, the chairs, ashtray, glasses, Adam's hat, the still-smoking cigarro.
Mr. Pendleton cocked the pistol, a loud sound.
Resolved Forbes stood as though in thought, then drew a small telescope from one of his pockets and put this to an eye.
After a while he turned back.
"Get after him! Bring him here!"
Oliver was away like a great ungainly ape, bounding with enormous strides across the lawn, down the path. The sailors by the boat saw him and shouted to Resolved Forbes, who turned.
Adam Long was proud of his mate in that moment. Resolved was tall but not thick-thewed, and he couldn't have weighed much more than half of what Oliver weighed. Nevertheless he knew what to do.
It happened very fast. The sailors had started to run up from the beach but it was over before they could get there.
Feet firm. Resolved Forbes swayed sideways, ducking the arms, and hooked his right fist into the pit of the giant's stomach. Oliver, caught off balance, gave forth a thunderous hollow gawp, and doubled over; and when he did this Resolved Forbes closed in, using his fists as much for pushing as for punching, using his elbows, his knees.
Oliver, screaming, went over backward, Resolved Forbes on top of him. A moment later, when the Goodwill mate rose, Oliver lay motionless.
Forbes waved back the sailors, who had started up the path.
He leaned over Oliver, with his left hand grabbed the quadroon by the hair, and lifted the groggy, pulped head. Twice his right fist punched Oliver in the mouth: they could hear each "splap" clear up on the veranda. Then, shaking the man's head. Resolved Forbes started to talk to him slowly, earnestly. At last he slammed Oliver's head down again, wiped the blood from his hand, and set off for the beach. A few minutes later he was being rowed out to the schooner.
After what seemed a long while Oliver rose and staggered to the house. He would have entered, not seeing the others, but Mr. Pendleton called out.
Oliver turned; and he was a horrible sight to see.
Something had been snicked out of his body, so that now he was all lax and limp, and he sagged woefully, his arms dangling like the arms of a cripple, while tremulous fear lit his eyes. His lips and cheekbones were puffed. But the thing that had been done to this man's spirit was the worst wound of all. He would never be the same again.
"He— He wouldn't come."
"Obviously. What did he say to you?"
Oliver was obliged to make a mighty effort to remember.
"Said to tell you if Cap'n Long wasn't down on the beach by the time he got aboard he'd bombard the whole plantation."
Mr. Pendleton wheeled on Adam, who gazed out over the lawn.
"I didn't know you had a cannon!"
"Likely there's a heap of things you don't know."
"Well anyway, he'll never reach us here—with a stern chaser. That tub down there couldn't move anything heavier."
Adam said nothing.
The Goodwill was moving in, propelled by sweeps—three long ash oars on each side. There was a good deal of stir aft. The Moses poked ahead, sounding. But the water wasn't shoal. At a point less than two hundred yards from the beach, the schooner was turned, and the men on the veranda at last had a look at the afterdeck.
"Good Godl That's a twelve-pounder!"
Adam still said nothing.
Men had peeled a tarpaulin off a glittering black object. Somebody took a last swipe with a polishing cloth. Others were bringing up loggerheads, powder bags, wads, crows, sponges, a match tub from which smoke rose. Still others rolled black balls to a shot rack.
Mr. Pendleton broke.
"Get them away from here! Tell them not to shoot!"
Adam wasn't worried about them shooting that thing, whatever it was, but a mite of anxiety wouldn't do the planter any harm.
"I dislike being hurried," he drawled.
He sauntered across the veranda, onto the lawn. He was seen, and a cheer rose from the schooner, while the Moses put out for shore.
Adam paused at the table to take his hat. He picked up his half-finished cigano. He finished his rum in two slow smooth swallows.
When at last he climbed to the deck he pumped the mate's hand with a vehemence that embarrassed them both.
"Best job of jury-rigging I ever saw!"
He beamed at the sawed-off spar, tarred and shiny, the carriage made of tarred barrel staves, the rickety "powder boxes," the wads improvised from undershirts. He whuffed out the light, a real one, in the match tub. He kicked one of the "cannonballs," which, trailing fresh black paint, clunked into several of its fellows: these were coconuts a planter had given Adam the previous day.
"Only thing I can't figure—why did you stop short of the house?"