There was an amazingly large number of these commercial-fringe men— fully half the camp, not counting their trulls, Adam had estimated.
It was these same trollops, indeed, who caused so much of the clamor, all out of keeping with their numbers. It is true that there was always a squabble somewhere, always a fight about to well up; but though the pirates were a touchy lot, unless they were too drunk to know or too angry to care, they ordinarily ceased to shout curses after a certain stage in any quarrel, and adjourned to another place, another island, from which at least one of the disputants never would return. Whether this was done out of respect for the women in the camp or whether it was because the pirates truly fancied themselves as something akin to quality folks after all, as they consistently pretended to do, and so aped their betters' ways, Adam Long did not learn—and didn't care. The women, on the other hand, wasted no time in cartels, challenges, seconds, least of all fair play, but were wont to fly at one another with teeth and nails bared, soon to be rolling, kicking, on the ground. Some pirates deplored this practice, though they did not venture to break up such fights—he'd be a stouthearted man who tried that!—hut others enjoyed them, and ran to it when they heard one making up, and watched, cheering, while they offered bets on first blood, first fall, final outcome.
Though he sought to be inconspicuous, if only in order to get more chance to look around for some possible means of escape, Adam found himself a much pointed-at man.
There were several reasons for this. One was Maisie, who, though he did keep her under cover as much as possible, would have attracted attention anywhere. The Providencers were dazzled by Maisie, and being human they gawped at the man who owned her.
Then there was the fact that Adam had helped to build a vessel of unusual design and prodigious speed, a vessel that even with a jury boom had almost heeled one of their own finest. The pirates took a great interest in speed at sea.
Another reason for Adam's popularity was purely fortuitous: the second morning he was on the island he was accosted by a personage into whose sash had been thrust no fewer than three pistols and two daggers, a sign of distinction at Providence. This man was older than most of his fellows, and clearly a personage. On his head was knotted a red silk kerchief.
"You're from Newport, Cap'n?"
Adam stopped.
"Aye," he said.
"Think I remember you. Used to work for a man named Sedgewick?"
"Aye. He's laid up now. Paralyzed."
The pirate kept staring at Adam.
"You were a heap smaller then. About this high— And Sedgewick's house was right near the public pillory."
"It's still there. Mr. Sedgewick's house, I mean. So is the pillory, for that matter."
"And you don't remember me, eh?" Slowly the pirate took the kerchief off his head. "Maybe this'll help you?"
His hair was scanty and long, and it was pasted hard to his head by sweat; but it wasn't remarkable. What caught Adam's eye were the holes in his ears—not those in the lobes, from which swung gold rings, but those in the upper part of the ear, small, old holes, scarcely more than pinpoints of white skin tissue.
"Sharpy Boardman!"
"That's right, lad. It was a long, long while ago, but I'll always remember the drink you brought me that night. It was the sweetest I ever drank. God bless you."
He held out his hand. There were tears in his eyes.
"I'll give you a drink now, lad, you come to my hut. It'll be the finest French brandy, but it'll never mean as much as the water you handed me that night fifteen years ago. Come on—meet some of my friends."
Sharpy had many friends. One of the oldest and richest of the pirates, he was a man of much influence on Providence, and he never tired of telling the story of how the little Long boy had brought him that jack of water when he was nailed to the pillory. "Stood to have the skin whopped half off him, they caught him doin' it. Mates, I tell you that took sand."
The shack assigned to Adam and Maisie, doubtless as a tribute to the first lady ever to visit this settlement, was, as Providence dwellings went, downright palatial. It had no floor, but the ground it enclosed was strewn with Oriental rugs. Walls and ceiling consisted largely of tarpaulins strung between spars sunk into the earth, but there was an actual, practicable, jalousied door, ripped, doubtless, from some once-gilded galleon. And when they ate it was from silver, and when they sipped wine or rum it was out of costly Venetian glass goblets. Certain of the amenities of civilization might have been lacking at Providence, but of loot there was always plenty.
As Adam approached it today he saw a man leaving this shack, a very large man who did not look back. Adam frowned. Major Kellsen was unmistakable, even at that distance.
The major had been much about, from the beginning. With some reason he considered them his personal prisoners; but it was not only this. The man was smitten with Maisie: his infatuation was obvious. And he was jealous of Adam Long.
Major Kellsen wished to be king of the colony, no less. Providence being what it was, a democracy, where each skipper and mate and sailing master was elected by popular vote at the beginning of each voyage, he sought personal popularity. Like a politician, he moved among the men making himself amiable. He had built up a following. He hoped to increase this.
The camp as a camp was more or less in a state of permanent anarchy. Easily its most powerful personal member, though he kept out of sight, was one van Bramm, a spiderlike figure, indefatigibly busy, though scarcely moving, a man who never sallied forth, seldom even raised his voice. Van Bramm had small dark reptilian eyes, and his skin, too, cold, shiny, dry, suggested a serpent. He smiled at all times—maybe even in his sleep, if he ever did sleep—a fixed meaningless half-smile that had thorns in it. As he was without warmth or wit, so he was without pity. He was no fool. He'd stop at nothing. If Major Kellsen was summoning forces with the purpose of snatching the leadership from Everard van Bramm—and it looked as if he was—then Kellsen was playing with sudden death. Kellsen himself must have known this.
A liaison or even the appearance of a liaison with the lovely Lady Maisie would go a long way toward building up Kellsen's prestige. And prestige was almighty important among the pirates.
Resolved Forbes came out of a neighboring shack. Forbes was always to be depended upon. Jethro Gardner, the bosun, had been left aboard the schooner as a sort of watchman, it being assumed that a one-legged man could not play much of a part in any plot to cut that prize out. Seth Selden, made much of as soon as his calligraphical accomplishments became known, had openly gone "on the account," and had given Adam a paper asserting that he, Adam, was the rightful skipper of the Goodwill to Men, to whom Seth was selling his one-eighth share for (though the price wasn't mentioned in the paper) twenty-five pounds. This was cash, gold, part of the money Horace Treadway had paid for the transportation of his cousin to New York. The reason Seth was willing to let his share go at such an absurdly low price was because he considered the schooner lost to the outside world, community property here on Providence now, where Seth intended to remain. Adam did not agree with this. Adam had plans to escape.
Carl Peterson and Eb Waters, too, while they had not gone over to the enemy as openly as had Seth, were fascinated by the life here on this Bahaman island, and it was clear that they'd sign on for a piratical jaunt one of these days. Good riddance.
John Bond was laid up with fever.
The Rellison boy, dizzied by the sunlight, blinking at the things he saw, was by no means sure of himself; and he couldn't be counted upon.