The crew’s first appearance was fierce enough, though almost grotesquely comical, the nine of them looking like so many beggars. When I’d seen them on the day we went to sea they seemed unkempt. Now they looked destitute, their clothing torn and dirty, their faces unshaved, their expressions contorted with fear and fury. Of the nine only Zachariah was not armed. The rest were. Some carried pistols. I recall two having swords. Dillingham had an ancient cutlass in hand, Barlow a knife.
Hardly had they flown out upon the deck than they perceived the captain standing on the quarterdeck, one musket pointing directly at them, the other leaning against the rail within easy reach. They stopped frozen.
If they had rushed forward, they might have over whelmed the three of us. But it was now Captain Jaggery—and the muskets—that held them in check.
With a start I realized there was a tenth man standing below us. He was muscular and stocky, with a red kerchief tied around his neck and a sword in his hand. As I looked at him in astonishment I saw that he had but one arm.
I recalled Zachariah’s tale of the sailor the captain had so severely punished—the man whose arm was so beaten it had to be amputated. Standing before us was Cranick himself! It was his face I had seen in the top cargo! The stowaway!
I gasped.
Captain Jaggery stepped swiftly to the rail and spoke.
“Ah, it is Mr. Cranick!” he said boldly, holding his musket aimed directly at the man’s burly chest. “I wondered where you’d gone. Not to hell as I’d hoped—but here. May I,” he went on with heavy sarcasm, “be the last to welcome you aboard the Seahawk.”
The man took a shuffled step forward. He was clearly the crew’s leader. “Mr. Jaggery,” he began—pointedly declining to say “Captain”—«I said we would be revenged upon you, did I not?”
“I heard your usual brag, Mr. Cranick, if that’s what you mean,” the captain replied, “but I paid no more mind to it then than I do now.”
At that Cranick lifted his one hand and, still managing to hold the sword, savagely pulled a paper from where it had been tucked into his trousers. He held the paper up.
“Mr. Jaggery,” he called, his voice ragged, “we’ve got a round robin here, which declares you unfit to be captain of the Seahawk.”
There were murmurs of agreement from behind him.
“And what do you intend to do with it, Mr. Cranick?” the captain retorted. “I should think even you, in your mongrel ignorance, would know the days of piracy are long gone. Or do you have that much desire to bring back the practice of hanging in chains, of letting men rot so that crows might peck upon their putrid eyes?”
“No piracy for us, Mr. Jaggery,” Cranick replied with a vigorous shake of his head. “Only justice. We could not get it on land. We shall have it at sea.”
“Justice, say you! Under whose authority?” the captain demanded.
“All of us! Our authority!” Cranick cried and made a half turn to the men behind him. There were murmurs and nods of approval.
“And what kind of justice do you offer?” the captain asked. “Nothing precisely legal, I presume.”
“We demand you stand before us in a trial of your peers,” Cranick answered.
“Trial! Peers!” the captain cried mockingly. “I see nothing but ruffians and villains, the scum of the sea!”
“Then we proclaim ourselves your peers,” Cranick cried. With that he flung down the paper and took another step forward. “You can have anyone you want defend you,” he persisted. “Have that girl, if you like. She seems to be your eyes and ears. Let her be your mouth too.”
It was at that exact moment that Captain Jaggery fired his musket. The roar was stupendous. The ball struck Cranick square in the chest. With a cry of pain and mortal shock he dropped his sword and stumbled backward into the crowd. They were too stunned to catch him, but instead leaped back so that Cranick fell to the deck with a sickening thud. He began to groan and thrash about in dreadful agony, blood pulsing from his chest and mouth in ghastly gushes.
I screamed. Mr. Hollybrass moaned. In horror, the crew retreated further. Captain Jaggery hastily dropped his spent musket, picked up the second, and aimed it into their midst.
“Who shall be next!” he screamed at them.
To a man, they looked up with burning, terrified eyes.
“Let Cranick lie there!” the captain continued to shout. “Anyone who moves forward shall receive the same!”
The crew began to edge further away.
“Leave your guns and swords,” the captain shouted. “Quickly now! I’ll fire upon the first who doesn’t.”
Pistols, swords, and knives dropped in a clatter.
“Mr. Hollybrass! Collect them!”
The first mate scurried down the steps and, while glancing upward, began to gather the weapons. It was clear he feared the captain more than the crew.
“Their round robin too!” the captain called to him.
Too shocked to speak, I could only watch and feel enormous pain.
Cranick had stopped moving. The only sign of life in him were the small pink bubbles of blood that frothed upon his lips.
It was then that I saw Zachariah slip from the frozen tableau and move toward the fallen man. He held his hands before him, waist high, palms up, as if to prove he carried no weapon. He kept his eyes on the captain.
“Let him be, Mr. Zachariah,” the captain barked. “He’s a stowaway. He has no claim to any care.”
The old man paused. “As a man,” he said in a voice wonderfully calm midst the chaos, “he claims our mercy.”
The captain lifted his musket. “No,” he said firmly.
Zachariah looked at him, then at Cranick. I may have imagined it but I believe he may even have looked at me. In any case he continued on with slow, deliberate steps toward the fallen man.
I watched, terrified but fascinated, certain that the angry captain would shoot. I saw his finger on the trigger tighten, but then . . . he relaxed.
Zachariah knelt by Cranick and put his hand to the man’s wrist. He let it fall. “Mr. Cranick is no more,” he announced.
The stillness that followed these words was broken only by the soft, sudden flutter of a sail, the tinkling toll of a chain.
“Get him over,” the captain said finally.
No one moved.
“Mr. Zachariah,” the captain repeated with impatience. “Get him over.”
Once again Zachariah held out his open hands. “Begging the captain’s pardon,” he said. “Even a poor sinner such as he should have his Christian service.”
“Mr. Hollybrass,” the captain barked.
The first mate, having unloaded the crew’s pistols, had returned to the quarterdeck. “Sir?” he said.
“I want that dog’s carcass thrown over.”
“Cannot Mr. Zachariah say a few words—”
“Mr. Hollybrass, do as you’re ordered!”
The man looked from the captain to the crew. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said softly. Then slowly, as if a great weight had been cast upon him, he descended to the deck. Taking hold of the fallen man by his one arm, he began to drag him toward the rail. In his wake he left a trail of blood.
“Mr. Zachariah!” the captain thundered. “Open the gate.
Zachariah gazed at the captain. Slowly he shook his head.
For a moment the two merely looked at one another. Then the captain turned to me.
“Miss Doyle, open the gate.”
I stared at him in shocked disbelief.
“Miss Doyle!” he now screamed in a livid rage.
“Sir ...” I stammered.
“Open the gate!”
“I . . . can’t . . .”
Abruptly, the captain himself marched down the steps, pistols in hand. When he approached the railing he tucked one gun under his arm and quickly unlatched the gate so that it stood gaping above the sea.