This told. Indeed it was of the very marrow of the matter; for complaints that van Bramm was not giving a proper accounting of the loot, that he had illegally allocated large portions of it for his own personal use, were the cause of the unrest in the first place.
"Blow that building up," Adam warned them, "and you'll never find out how rich you once was!"
They mumbled and muttered in acquiescence. But Foureau moved among them, waving his arms. The big Frenchman was angry. He'd tasted power, and he didn't like to see his lovely plan punctured.
"All right, all right! But answer me this. Captain: What are you going to do then? They got rum and food in there enough to last a month. Are we going to just sit here on our arses?"
"Sure not," said Adam. "We'll smash in. There's that mast they ain't stepped back into the Marty. It'd make a first-rate ram."
"But there's no room to go to that door with it, without you go right through the fire!"
"All right then, we'll go right through the fire." Adam pointed to the blazing shack. Another wall had just fallen in. Tarry materials were burning and there was more smoke than ever. "They won't expect us. They can't see us coming." He faced the men again. "Well, what's the trouble? You're not afraid of a little fire, are you?"
It was like Hell. There were few high-tossing tongues of flame left, but thousands of little ones licked and leapt around their feet, darting here and there, blue, purple, bright pink. There was a great deal of smoke. As they charged through the still-burning ruins of the shack they kicked up a prodigious number of sparks, which jumped at them, or seemed to, stinging faces and exposed hands. The men had submerged themselves, clothes and all, in the waters of the bay; and when the sparks spat up they hissed as though in rage, sending forth steam. Despite this precaution, several of the men caught fire.
They burst through the shack yelling like Indians, and with no pause went right at the door of the warehouse. It might have been made of bamboo, the way it splintered. They scarcely felt the shock.
They dropped the mast and stormed inside.
Adam Long was the first. In the sudden gloom of the warehouse, after the brightness of the fire, unable for a moment to see anything at all, he dropped to one knee, ducked his head, drew his cutlass.
There was almost no musket fire. The defenders scarcely had a chance to draw their steel. Many backed away at the first onrush, and a few turned and fled—whether to get weapons, to secrete their own shares of the booty, or simply in fright, was not clear.
Adam saw a huge dark blurred figure coming at him. He rose, raising his blade. The man turned and ran deeper into the warehouse, possibly because he had seen others back of Adam. Adam ran after him, not so much in pursuit as because he believed that it would be deeper in this building that Everard van Bramm and van Bramm's prisoner would be found. He did not know what he sought—an inner office perhaps, a cur-tained-off sanctorum. There would be something like that.
Without windows, the warehouse got its light in part from slits and broken places in the walls and ceiling, through which sunlight slanted in thin eager bright planes, and also, now, from the violated doorway which opened upon the fire, making everything around it a jumpy red. That crimson light shone, too, on uplifted swords and upon the faces of men who cried for quarter or else cursed. Though the defenders had not had their guns ready they had apparently been about to see to this chore; or perhaps they had been preparing to assemble grenades; at any rate, the floor was scattered here with a few grains of gunpowder, there with a whole pile of it, while spillings, strips, went every-which-way. These caught fire, possibly from flaming bits of clothing, and in a moment were helter-skeltering about, running in crazy spurts, darting, stopping, swerving, swaying: they might have been so many incandescent imps whirling and cavorting in diabolical glee.
Adam, however, had turned his back upon these pyrotechnics. He was running between high-stacked sacks of sugar, twisting in and out among piles of tapestries, altar clothes, crisscrossed crucifixes, and all manner of half-seen silverware. He bumped with a knee a small brass-bound box atop a chest, and it fell to the floor, coins cascading from it. Rounding a corner, he kicked another, smaller box. Pearls—large and small, egg-shaped, pear-shaped, oblong, round; pink pearls and gray ones, brown, ivory, dead white—went clinking and clattering in all directions, so that they crunched under his feet as he ran.
Now all around him the feuds these fools had been having flared up. The invaders, braced for a bitter battle, had been monstrously triumphant almost from the beginning; and the release was heady. Few of the defenders at first stood to fight it out. Most ran, ratlike, for some unseen cover. Bellowing, remembering old grudges, Adam's men tore after them. In obscure comers there were squeals, there were scufflings, sometimes a scream, where men were being killed.
Adam tripped over something, thought it moved, wheeled upon it with raised blade. No, Seth Selden was still—and would be so forever. His head had been hacked half off: the neck was a slobber of blood, flesh, windpipe. Cynically, having no preference, Seth had elected to remain loyal to van Bramm—with this result. Adam Long had never loved the little man, but after all he did come from Newport, he was Deborah's uncle. Seth's eyes were uprolled, so that the pupils could not be seen. His lips, parted, were twisted not as though in pain but rather as though in a sneer. Likely enough he had been saying something sarcastic, something bawdy, at the instant he was killed.
The noise was deafening. Men were shouting that the building was afire, that the magazine would soon go up; and a few scampered out; but most, certainly, lingered to slake their lust for slaughter, or, a little later, when they saw it, for treasure. If they gave over the chase it was not because they were gorged with blood but rather because they were greedy. Seeing the glitter of gold, they forgot about gore; and they loaded their arms with plunder from many a forgotten ship, and staggered outside-only to return in a little while for more.
The roof caught up. It made a high crisp spitty sound; and burning bits of it began to fall, tumbling like autumn leaves, trailing smoke.
Adam ran around a pile of coats, wigs, swordbelts, and silk sashes—and collided with Everard van Bramm.
Each had been running, and it knocked the breath out of them. Van Bramm was the first to recover. Stripped to the waist, as Adam had first seen him, he showed the more naked because of his bald head, which gleamed now in the light of the flames. In his right fist he gripped a cutlass. He was of course smiling. He stank of sweat and French perfume.
What Adam had expected this man to do he couldn't have said; but certainly it was anything but what van Bramm did do. He turned and ran.
Adam ran after him. It wasn't far. Still another door was slammed in Adam's face, a latch was thrown; but this was a flimsy affair, the portal of a rickety thin inside partition, a small house or hut, jerry-built, within the warehouse. Adam could see it clearly now, for the fire was spreading.
Adam didn't favor this with his cudass. Instead he seized the nearest article at hand—a large branch of candlesticks, silver, heavy. The first two blows splintered the top panels. The third shattered the bolt. The door flew open.
Van Bramm had been bending over something on a bed, not ten feet away. He had a pistol in his hand, and he was turning this toward Adam.
Here it comes, thought Adam.
Then he saw that there was smoke languidly rising from the muzzle. He saw, too, that the thing on the bed was Maisie—or had been.