On Caicos, Remo slipped into his tourist role again and played it to the hilt. He hoped. They would be closer to the pirates now, if there were any pirates to be found, and he hoped they had scouts in port looking for easy marks for future looting. If they had him marked, however, the sea raiders gave no sign.
In the morning Remo dawdled on departure, wasting time to make it seem as if he had a hangover. Chiun came on deck briefly, eyeing his performance like an off-off-Broadway director.
"Why have you not been attacked by the pirates yet?" Chiun demanded.
"Hey, I'm trying," Remo protested. "What do you want me to do? Rent a megaphone and start yelling for them to come and get me?"
"This voyage is tiring."
"Huh. Tiring," Remo said. "Seems to me that I'm the one doing all the work."
"I mean it is monotonous," Chiun clarified condescendingly.
"Yeah. I bet." Remo didn't buy that, either. In fact, he had a sneaking suspicion that Chiun was enjoying this little trip. He was a little too enthusiastic about the Melody. He hoped the little Korean didn't get any ideas about moving out of their Connecticut duplex. He didn't want to live on something that floated.
Late morning found them heading south-southeast, for Puerta Plata. They were getting closer to their target zone. The pirate's nest. Remo hoped the pirates came and got them quick before Chiun started thinking about yachting catalogs.
"YOU LIKE 'EM, EH?" Billy Teach asked.
"I would have liked them better if I'd had first pick," said Thomas Kidd, making no effort to disguise the irritation in his tone.
"Um, well, that is..."
Kidd pinned his first lieutenant with a glare that had been known to make men soil themselves. It wasn't that he snarled or threatened; rather, Kidd had learned through years of practice to project pure venom through his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, so that the object of his anger knew exactly what the stone-faced buccaneer was thinking. You could see death in those slate-gray eyes, and it wasn't a quick death, never clean.
When he had made his point, Kidd turned to face the three young wenches once again. His cold expression altered slightly, not quite softening. It was a matter of degree, and those unused to dealing with him may have missed the change entirely. That was quite all right with Kidd, since he wasn't concerned about the nature of his first impression on three female hostages.
The wenches had been naked when Teach brought them from the Ravager to Kidd's land quarters-corrugated metal and a sheet of rotting plywood for the walls, a thatched roof overhead and dirt beneath his feet. Kidd had immediately ordered clothing for the three, and one of Teach's raiding party had gone off to fetch the mismatched remnants they were wearing now: two pairs of cutoff jeans, one pair of gaudy boxer shorts, a paisley halter top and two men's shirts. None of the garments fit, and none of them was clean, but dressing had allowed the three young prisoners to face him squarely, rather than with downcast eyes.
There would be time enough to strip them once again, pass them around, when they had learned the rules. Kidd was a firm believer in the notion that you followed certain steps to see a job done properly the first time, deviating only at your peril.
He wasn't afraid of the three wenches. That would have been ridiculous. What troubled Thomas Kidd was that his second in command had not been able to restrain his crew from having at them on the journey back to Ile de Mort. That lack of discipline was dangerous to all concerned. Suppose they had been short of lookouts on the trip back, for example, and patrol boats took them by surprise while three or four of them were busy with the women down below? More to the point, suppose the notion got around that Kidd's strict orders could be flaunted with impunity? What then?
Still looking at the women, Kidd addressed himself to Billy Teach. "Who gave the order for the sharing out?" he asked.
Teach swallowed the obstruction that had suddenly appeared in his throat, half-choking him. "Th-there was no order, Captain," he replied.
"I see." Worse yet. Teach had allowed his crew to run amok, when there was sailing and potential fighting to be done. "In that case, who was first to touch the wenches, in defiance of my rule?"
A sidelong glance at Billy Teach showed Kidd that his lieutenant had begun to sweat. It was uncomfortably warm inside Kidd's hut, but Teach had long since grown accustomed to the temperature on Ile de Mort. This sweat sprang from his nerves, the knowledge that his captain was preparing an example, Billy praying to forgotten gods that he would not be chosen as a lesson to the brotherhood.
"Answer!" Kidd snapped, and Billy jumped as if someone had poked a hot dirk in his arse.
"It's hard to say, Captain." The words came out as if Teach had to squeeze them from between clenched teeth. Both hands were fisted at his sides, not reaching for the pistol in his belt. If it came down to that, Teach knew he wasn't fast enough to win the draw.
"In other words," Kidd said, "you weren't paying attention to your crew."
"It isn't that," Teach said defensively. "We had a second vessel to be manned, and we were heading back."
"Which means you needed every man jack of your company at work or watching out for trouble, yes?" the captain said.
"Aye, sir." Reluctantly, but there was no escaping it. Kidd saw his first lieutenant's shoulders sag, the grim weight of responsibility descending on him. It would take only a little extra pressure to crush him flat.
"There's an example to be made," Kidd said.
"Aye, sir." From the expression on his face, his tone of voice, Teach had almost resigned himself to death.
"I want the first man who made sport with one of these," Kidd said. "If it's a tie, pick one at random. I don't care how he's selected. You've got fifteen minutes to produce a man for punishment, or you stand in his place."
Teach didn't dare to smile, but he was visibly relieved. "Aye, sir!" he snapped and waved one hand in what would pass for a salute if he were drunk and suffering from palsy. Then he rushed from the hut to choose a crewman who would be his scapegoat for the latest breach of discipline.
"I won't apologize for what has happened to you," Thomas Kidd informed his three nubile prisoners. "It would have happened anyway and will again before you're done. I wager one or two of you may even find you have a taste for it, if you can just relax. Most wenches do, I've found."
The three were staring at him now, as if he had emerged from underneath a mossy rock, some kind of slimy grub that had no place in daylight. Kidd wasn't offended by their attitude, since they were new to hostage life. They would be broken in due time and learn their proper place.
"I'm choosing an example for the men because they violated discipline, you understand?" The wenches stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, arms wrapped around themselves as if they felt a chilly draft inside the hut. "Orders must be obeyed at any cost. If I allow my crewmen to defy me, we'd have anarchy in no time."
Billy Teach was back within five minutes, standing in the doorway to Kidd's quarters. "Found him, sir!" Kidd's second in command announced.
That hadn't taken long. For Billy's sake, Kidd hoped the sacrificial goat had been selected fairly, and that he wasn't a man with many friends among the brotherhood. Otherwise, Teach still might find a dirk between his ribs one night, when he was least expecting it, and Kidd would have to find himself a new lieutenant to command his troops.
"Outside," Kidd told the women, shooing them ahead of him as he rose from his makeshift throne-the fighting chair removed from a sport-fishing boat and mounted on a stump, dead center in his hut. Teach led the way, Kidd trailing as his rank dictated, to the center of the camp, where every member of the scurvy brotherhood except for posted sentries had turned out to witness the punishment.