The culverin coughed. A great white blob of smoke appeared at its mouth, to be scattered by the wind. Forward of the Goodwill to Men a spear of sea water rose into the air. Much too high, that shot.
The corsairs set up an even louder clamor. A few even fired their guns.
"Must have plenty of powder," opined Adam Long.
The culverin was run out again, and again it coughed, immediately afterward being blotted out by whipped-away smoke. This ball fell too low; the sea gulped it. But the space between the vessels had lessened alarmingly, and there'd be no darkness for at least an hour.
The pirates weren't very good shots, but it was a fact that their gun would reach now. Sooner or later they would get the range.
So Adam sighed—and struck.
Adam swung Goodwill clear up into the eye of the wind, so that the jibs cracked and slapped, and then he dropped foreand mainsail; and suddenly the schooner loafed.
A long boat, expertly handled, was manned by at least thirty pirates, most of whom scrambled aboard. They showed no discipline but ran here and there, stretching their legs, waggling their cutlasses, asking questions, looking at things, kicking things, obviously delighted to get away from the cramped quarters of the sloop. At first they seemed to have no leader. They might have been a group of excited schoolboys. They scarcely glanced at the open main hatch, the empty hold, nor did they go aft; but they showed great interest in the rig of the Goodwill, testing sheets and lines, rattling goosenecks.
"Fast! You nigh to getting away from us! What kind of a vessel you call this anyway?"
"In Rhode Island this is what we call a schooner," Seth Selden told them.
"Why?"
"Don't know. Reckon she scoons."
" 'Scoons'? What's that? What's 'scooning'?"
"Don't you know what scooning is? Why, it's what a schooner does."
"Oh."
There was no scuffling. Possibly exhilarated by the chase, the pirates appeared in a holiday mood. Only one, a man somewhat older than the others, a man with a single eye, displayed any sense of responsibility. This one, a worried expression on his face, tried to quiet the others, who for the most part paid no attention to him. At last he accosted Adam.
"You the skipper?"
Adam nodded, not caring to commit himself any further than that.
"We'll take your cargo."
"No you won't," said Adam.
"Eh?" One-Eye bristled, backing a bit. His hands went to two iron pistols stuck in his sash. "You mean you'll—"
"I mean there ain't any cargo. Not any more." Adam glanced at the open hatch. "It's all in the sea."
"Look at me," commanded the pirate, his face working.
Adam obeyed, though only with an effort. The pirate did not wear a patch over his put-out eye, though he should have done so. Extraordinarily repulsive, he must have been sensitive about his appearance. He had seen too many men turn away, embarrassed, slightly sick. Now he put his face close to Adam's.
"Got rid of it all, eh?"
"Didn't want to.'
"What was it—rum?"
"Molasses."
One-Eye cursed.
"You can't sell molasses down in these islands!"
"I didn't aim to sell molasses down in these islands," Adam pointed out.
If he was standoffish, his nose high, his voice edgy, this was because he feared tears. He was about to lose his ship, his first. Also he was about to lose the woman he had just learned to love. If he kept up this colloquy his temper would snap; so he turned away.
Nobody asked him, now, for the papers. Nobody gave a hoot. Pirates don't need papers. They just take whatever it is they lack, without all the botheration of signing and sealing and endorsing; and what they most lacked in these waters were small fast sailing vessels.
"Is it the Devil himself ye've got by the tail?"
Another man rose from the gig alongside. This was a very big man, massy, though not fat. The first that was seen of him was his loose full-bottomed black periwig; then his face, large, larded white, with a patch over each cheekbone; and his cravat of fine if dirty lace, tied in the careful-careless Steinkirk mode; and at last, as he climbed aboard Goodwill, his long blue brocaded waistcoat, his white silk breeches, his blue silk stockings, and the silver buckles and red rosettes that all but hid his shoes, which had red heels. This man displayed no weapon except his sword—not a cutlass but a small straight sticker, a court sword, showily scabbarded. He carried an enormous plumed tricorne under his arm.
Shrugging hugely, he took snuff. He had small eyes, large gross lips. He stood before Adam Long, looming over him, though Adam was no midget.
"I am Major Kellsen."
Adam only nodded. He wouldn't let on that he'd heard of the man.
"You move fast, Captain. We need speedy pilots. Come—no beating about the bush, eh? Join us."
Adam shook his head.
"Don't be a dolt," Kellsen rasped. "You can be forced, can't you? Let yourself be forced."
"I'll have no truck with piracy," Adam said.
One-Eye put in: "His majesty'd prefer to be marooned, no doubt?"
It was the classical piratical punishment. The freebooters avoided violence, fighting only when they had to, for they were in the business not for the fun of it but for the money. Their personal duels, though frequent, were as conventionalized as those of gentlemen. They never inflicted flogging, which would have reminded them of the days of discipline they loathed—for most of them were either Navy deserters or runaway white slaves, or both. Nor would they hang a man, since such an end might seem to foreshadow their own. A person they wished to dispose of, then, they marooned. That is, they left him on some bare, sunbaked, small island without any supplies; and there he could die of thirst or of hunger or even of sunstroke—they didn't give a hoot.
All the same, Adam shook a stubborn head.
The others of the crew were watching him. They had already been solicited. Members of the Brotherhood of the Main notoriously were disrespectful of authority, and in particular of authority at sea: that's why they were what they were. Wronged mariners, in their own eyes at least, they resented all skippers, and even mates, while they esteemed the forecastle hands to be natural allies, taking their sympathy for granted. Here aboard the Goodwill to Men they had already, in their irregular way, without method, asked Peterson and Seth Selden, Waters and John Bond and the boy Rellison to join then. They even asked Jethro Gardner, whose soggy stump they scarcely glanced at. Each of these in turn, without having conferred with any of the others—and of course Resolved Forbes did this, too—nodded toward Captain Long, indicating that he would do what the skipper did, not more, not less.
So now everybody was looking at Adam.
"Be forced," Kellsen urged. "You don't sign articles, you don't take shares. So if you're caught you don't get your neck stretched—maybe."
"Make up your mind," snarled One-Eye.
Adam buttoned his coat—he had put on his freedom suit for this occasion—and straightened his cap. He cleared his throat.