A hush that was like the hush of death descended upon the colony. The marketplace, once a hubbub, stood empty save for an occasional crablike, sideways-looking figure, who scurried. There was no life on the beach. Not many men passed along the lanes, and when they did they gave one another leery looks, their hands on the handles of their knives. The fort was deserted, the cannoneers, all van Bramm men, having been called in to guard the chief's residence and the adjoining warehouse. As it happened, no new sail appeared; and none of those men who elected to remain would even have agreed to discuss a foray out into the Bahama Channel. There was a general agreement that this matter of leadership had to be settled. No shots were fired; nor were many faces punched or slashed, not as many as usual. The men were saving their savagery, storing it.
Adam and his friends were busy all day interviewing candidates, checking weapons, making and extracting promises. They were not yet ready to move upon van Bramm's house with their detailed demands.
No word came from that building, not even a sign that might guide the followers of the chief. Van Bramm the spider, the lurker in comers, had never been one for public appearances; but formerly had been heard from, directly or otherwise, every day. Now there was only silence. Could it be that he was so entoiled in the treasure he'd acquired, so busy in a bed strewn with stolen silks, also with bought flesh, that he didn't care? At any rate he remained mum.
Strength was flowing back into Adam's body. He ate voraciously, slept hard. He was on his feet all day, moving about the camp. The only time he'd stand still was when he was studying van Bramm's house. That building, whether by chance or design, stood alone; no other was near it—excepting the warehouse. The beach was wide and straight at this point, offering no cover in the form of rocks, dunes, vegetation. To the right was the warehouse, a low, long, heavy building of timber, the solidest structure on the island. On the other two sides the camp was comparatively clear, the ground flat and hard. Not even a tent stood close to the van Bramm shack, a building that bore so marked a resemblance to Tarpaulin Hall as to bring tears to Adam's eyes.
When he watched this house, Adam tried to be in some inconspicuous place. This was not from fear of being shot at, but rather because he did not want his own men to see him in what might be thought a posture of weakness, eating his heart out for his lost love. The fight was to be theirs, truly, not his: he was no more than the agent for bringing it to a head. His grief was real, but it could be decent. He didn't seek to dramatize it.
He strove to think only of the military aspect of this matter, how to stage an attack; and not to think of Maisie at all; but of course this was impossible. There were times when the black hot thoughts that surged viathin him while he watched that house choked him and blurred his vision, so that he had to turn away, keeping his face averted in order that nobody should see his eyes.
When you were a leader, you were not supposed to be human. You must never show a weakness of any sort. This was lonely work.
Early on the morning of the fourteenth day after Adam had been brought back from the key, when the sky was not yet streaked with dawn, though the stars were bright, he was awakened by the sound of musketry; and when he tumbled off his cot and reached for cutlass and pistols, colliding with Sharpy in the darkness, he knew that this was the signaclass="underline" the battle was about to begin.
It was easy to find the fight; nor was it worth the trouble to learn what had caused it. Nobody was dead. Two men had been hit, but not badly. There was a great deal of excitement, many bitter threats. The shooting had ceased. A barricade consisting chiefly of sandbags and rum barrels had been thrown up in a lane just below the marketplace, and from over the top of this the warehouse and van Bramm's hut stood stark in the starlight, no guards being visible. The seething fury of Adam's men and the silence and lack of action around the chief's house were ominously juxtaposed. This thing had gone too far. Something would have to break. Should they attack now, or wait until daylight?
Adam coaxed a large number of them back to the marketplace, where torches bobbed. Two cannons were there, brought down from the fort with great toil. It was true that van Bramm had the only expert gunners, true, too, that he controlled most of the gunpowder, which was stored in the warehouse. Additionally, all the balls in the fort had been rolled down the slope and into the bay, from which they could only have been salvaged with a great effort, requiring much time. Nevertheless these cannons could be made to perform, after a fashion. Gunpowder could be collected from here and there—they'd need a lot of it: was this van Bramm's purpose in abandoning the cannons?—and nails, chunks of bullet lead, and even stones, could be pressed into service for a load. Adam was opposed to the use of the cannons. He had pointed out that too obviously van Bramm wished them used, which in itself ought to make the men wary. The truth was he feared that Maisie would be hurt; but he did not dare to admit this aloud.
Now he harangued the pirates. He'd supposed that he had no knack for this, certainly he'd had no experience; yet they listened, their faces upturned, earrings gleaming in the red light of torches.
Not to urge the men on but rather to hold them back was Adam's purpose. Far from being a firebrand, he tried to emulate the iceberg, being cold, crushing.
An attack might be repulsed. A siege was not to be considered. Even with a disciplined force it would have been difficult, for van Bramm had access to a dozen well-stocked vessels which could only be cut out one by one at night, and undoubtedly he had made other preparations for a siege. With these excited men it was unthinkable.
Adam had an alternative. He'd been thinking about this for several days.
"Charge? Don't be fools! Can't you see that's just what Old Baldy wants us to do? Are you going to play his game for him?"
Somebody yelled: "He'll getaway!"
"He won't get away," Adam said quickly. "He'd wanted to get away he could have done it long ago. Sneaked off at night."
"How d'ye know he hasn't?"
Here was a stumper. Adam, for the first time faced with this thought, grew cold all over. No notable vessel, no large one, had departed without careful preliminary scrutiny for the past week, before which time, however, a good many had sailed with decamping merchants. Van Bramm might have slid away in one of the smaller boats, just himself and Maisie. Or again he might have smuggled her and himself off more than a week ago—neither had been seen in that time.
Adam shook his head. He simply refused to believe it.
"Look—he ain't gone. And he ain't going, either! It'll be over my dead body if he does—and I mean just exactly that!"
This brought cheers; but still the men were twitchy.
Adam pointed to a paling sky.
"It'll be light soon. Now what I say is that as soon as it's light enough we hang out a white flag and demand a parley."
Boos for this, hisses. Adam raised both arms.
"Wait! I'll carry that flag myself, and what I'll insist on is that van Bramm come out and meet me in the middle of that clear space in front his house. We'll have guns or swords or knives—or just our bare hands—I don't care. But he won't dare say no."
Now here was a proposal the pirates liked. It would be a show, sure. And it might well end in a free-for-all anyway.
There was only one dissenting voice: "What happens if he kills you?"
"That," said Adam Long, "is for you to worry about."
Word came up from the barricade that a white flag had been hung out of van Bramm's door.
"Good," cried Adam. "I'll carry ours. Here, give it to me."
To this, however, they objected. They cried that this might be a trick to get Adam to expose himself. Adam scoffed. But even he was won over when Sharpy Boardman pointed out that he couldn't carry his own challenge: it would not be regular.