Peterson and Eb Waters, like Seth Selden, had outspokenly joined the pirates. Adam could see them now, laughing. Seth with his Adam's apple gleefully abounce. Adam wished he could see Seth apart, if only for a moment, to ask him about Zephary Evans' connection with the late Thomas Hart: but there'd be no time for that now.
"Think of it, your honor," the man under the chamberpot was declaiming, "he is in love with his wife!"
"Hang him," somebody shouted.
"Bastinado him!"
"Burn him in oil!"
Adam glanced at Resolved Forbes, who slipped away unnoticed.
"Order in the courtroom!" The judge used his hatchet. "This here is a very serious case, as the worthy prosecutor so worthily said. Prosecutor, produce the dastardly person who is accused of doing this dastardly deed. Order in the court! Oyez!"
Adam Long rose with a reluctance he tried to conceal.
"Let the prisoner be sworn in."
"No swearing around here," cried the judge. "God damn it, I won't stand for it!"
Adam was caused to place his right palm upon a bundle of stolen ships' papers, whilst his left hand was raised.
"Do you solemnly swear that you will tell lies, the whole lies, and nothing but the lies, so help you the Devil?"
"I do."
"That's a lie! You don't at all!"
Through the applause Adam kept a sheepish smirk fastened on his mouth, but his eyes were still busy. Yes, the entire population of Providence must be here. The beach, a scant half-mile away, no doubt was deserted. Likely enough all the ships were deserted, too. And the moon wouldn't rise for more than an hour.
He hoped that Maisie was all right. Maybe it had been wrong of him to fail to tell her what he planned; but she'd have wanted to take this piece of goods and then that piece of goods, and skirts and stuffs, and more and more and more—and anyway he did think that the fewer as knew a secret the better.
"Prisoner at the bar, you have heard the heinous offense of which you stand accused. What say ye? Are you guilty or not guilty?"
"Well, comes to that, I reckon I'm both, your dishonor."
"Order in the court! The prisoner will please display some sense. God damn it, you can't be both guilty and not guilty!"
"Why not? This is a free country, ain't it?"
He was a success. Oh, he was the star performer! Conceivably, he thought with bitterness, I should have become a strolling player? Perhaps the stage lost a distinguished ornament when I took to trade?
When at last he could make himself heard again, the judge asked Adam what he had to say for himself. Not only was he accused of loving his wife, but it began to look as though his wife loved him as well, which was a pretty state of affairs. Why else, asked the judge, pointing with the hatchet, should she have followed him into court?
Adam wheeled.
The Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadway-Paul came toward him, murmuring apologies as she weaved in and out among the pirates, ignoring the black looks and fruity obscenities of the whores. Such of her hair as escaped from under a muslin cap showed a brighter red than ever in the red light of the torches. Her eyes were huge. She was smiling, though it was a mannered smile, a fixed, ceremonial one.
"What have you got to say to that, prisoner at the bar?"
"I've got this to say to it, your dishonor—"
He drew. He ran toward her. Several of the men in that vicinity reached for their cutlasses, sensing a brabble, but Adam only used its flat to clear a space and capture a cask. He sheathed then, and made for the cask with Maisie, resisting furiously, in his arms. She had tried to say something to him in a low voice, but he was too angry to heed. He sat on the cask and threw her across his knees, face down.
She kicked and screamed. She clawed at his legs, and even ti'ied to bite him, while the pirates roared with laughter.
Adam laid it on hard, resoundingly. Eight, nine, ten times he whammed those buttocks with a big flat horny right hand. The crowd went wild.
He rose, Maisie in his arms still struggling.
"If your dishonor pleases, I've got other business—"
"The court excuses the defendant temporarily and I only wish I could have some of that business myself," shouted the judge.
Carrying her, trying to hold her still, while she beat his breast and reached with fingernails for his face, he ran through the cheering crowd. He was given plenty of advice, but nobody followed him.
Clear, he ran among empty tents and huts. He passed Tarpaulin Hall. He put Maisie down.
She slapped his face, first right, then left. He shook his head impatiently.
"No, no! Don't waste time! We've got to—"
"Before all those niffiansl"
"Why'd ye come then? I told you to—"
"You're one of them! You're the worst one, yourself!"
She slapped him again.
"Tarnation," muttered Adam. "We could go on like this all night."
He swept her up into his arms again. He ran to the beach.
It was dark. He had picked the place well. He raced around the end of the island's only warehouse, a ramshackle structure one end of which was right at the edge of the sea, and found the Goodwill's tender there, as planned. Resolved Forbes also was there—but he wasn't alone. "You are leaving so soon, Captain?" asked Everard van Bramm.
They can be mighty odd, the thoughts you have in an instant of peril. They can shame you with their incongruity, their triviality.
Adam Long's first thought as he faced van Bramm, who was backed by Cark, each of them with a pistol in his fist, was: Well, I'm glad he's got a shirt on at last.
He heard Maisie gasp. Until now—as had been the case with Adam until a few hours ago—she had but glimpsed Everard van Bramm from a distance. To be in the very presence of the monster was a shock.
Adam made a low mocking bow. A bold approach, he'd learned, was the best for van Bramm. Also, he could use time to study the situation.
"Surely you wouldn't seek to detain me, Captain van Bramm. Haven't I always been told that a gentleman never imposes his company upon another gentleman? If either of us could be called that."
The pistol van Bramm held was a large brass one. It was cocked, and there was powder in the priming pan.
The man went on smiling. But then, he always smiled. The Spaniards, who knew him too well, called him El Sonriso, The Smiler.
"Detain you. Captain?" His voice made you think of something scaly slithering across the stones of a cellar floor. "Certainly not! Indeed, sir, I am delighted to have you go."
Just then, as though at a signal, it began to rain. Here was no torrential tropical downpour, but a warm clean easygoing rain that fell with a tinkly sound on the bay and chuffed apologetically into the sand at their feet, kicking up small silvery spears. There was a land breeze, just right for the schooner.
Van Bramm was wearing a broad-brimmed yellow hunting beaver. He pulled the pistol in close to his body, to protect the powder under that brim as roof. His hand was utterly steady.
Cark, slightly behind him, had turned a bit so as to face Resolved Forbes, who stood right where he had been surprised by these two, ankle-deep in water, the painter of the Moses in his hands. Cark was not so sure of himself.
It was dark. There was nobody else in sight. There was no sound from the settlement save the distant rumble-bumble of laughter and shouting at the mock trial, none from the bay excepting the thin discouraged squeal of timbers as this vessel or that lackadaisically rocked. The rain prattled, pert, gay.
"There is only one thing I feel I should object to," said van Bramm.
Adam flicked a glance at Resolved Forbes. The mate, motionless, was not looking into Cark's face but at Cark's pistol, staring not as though fascinated but as though he aspired to fascinate it. The pistol wobbled. Resolved Forbes, seemingly so relaxed, in truth, Adam knew, was taut as a bowstring. Adam was glad that it was Forbes here. There wasn't any man he'd rather have on his side in a fight.