as a cabin-boy at the age of twelve.”
“Ye’re still that cabin-boy’s daughter, m’dear,” chuckled the Admiral, bluff as anything, “even if they call me ‘me lord’ nowadays.”
He handed her aboard, and there were big introductions at the gangway, with Captain Yardley blistering and damning and apologising with great geniality, milording and miladying and bowing as far as his guts would let him as he indicated Avery, whom the Admiral hailed with delight.
“Why, young Ben! Good to see ye, lad!” He waved a great paw. “M’dear, this is Captain Avery, that fought wi’ me against the dam’ Dutchmen – m’daughter, Lady Vanity …”
Their eyes met, the brilliant maidenly blue and the clear heroic grey, and although the lady’s glance remained serene, and the young captain’s steady, atomic explosions took place in the interior of each. Captain Avery felt a qualm for the first time in his life; his knees may not have trembled, but they thought about it, and a great gust of holy passion surged up from his pelvis and thundered against his clavicle. Lady Vanity, normally careless of masculine adoration which she took for granted, suddenly felt as though her silken stays were contracting and forcing a flight of doves up through her breast to her perfect throat, where they elbowed each other in fluttering confusion. As he took her hand and bent over it, murmuring “Servant, ma’am,” his mind was saying, “Nay, not servant, worshipping slave – and master and protector, all these and more!’ And Vanity, whispering “Sir,” was thinking “Oh, dreamboat!” and feeling thoroughly ashamed of all the fan letters she had written in the fifth form to Prince Rupert (who had just sent a cyclostyled autographed picture, anyway). So they met, and as he raised his eyes to hers, and she for once shielded those haughty orbs ’neath fluttering lashes, their unspoken love was sealed like Bostik; beside them, Dante and Beatrice were nothing but a ted and a scrubber at a palais hop.
She never even noticed Blood, who was giving her his pursed, wistful leer. Her attention was all for Avery as she murmured softly: “We shall be companions on the voyage, sir. You shall tell me all about the ropes and anchors and keel-haulings and things,” and he replied “I shall be even more enchanted than I am now,” with such a look of fervent adoration that she dropped her reticule. Blood picked it up, and she never even looked at him as she said, “Thank you my man,” and passed on while Rooke drew Avery aside.
“Ye have it safe?” he asked, rolling an eye at the box containing the Madagascar crown, and Avery assured him that he had, and would bestow it secretly in his cabin. “Aye!” rasped the Admiral, in what he imagined was a conspiratorial whisper. “In y’r cabin! Secretly, that’s the word! But mum!” Possibly they heard him as far away as Chelsea, for he had a carrying voice; at any rate, Blood did, and made a note that the box which Captain Avery carried so carefully might be fraught with interest.
But his speculations were now rudely interrupted, by Captain Yardley thundering: “Make haste, then, bring her aboard, d’ye see, wi’ a curse!” and the passengers of the Twelve Apostles turned to see who this might be. A barred cart had drawn up on the quay, and from it two sentries with muskets were manhandling Black Sheba, her wrists and ankles loosely secured by lengths of chain. Blood stared with interest, for the fetters made up most of her attire, her fine red breeches surviving only as a pair of frayed shorts, and her shirt little better than a rag. Her silver earring had gone into the pocket of her first jailer, and her hair was bound tightly behind her head, giving her face the appearance of a polished ebony mask from some Egyptian tomb. That, and her height, and the fact that she was struggling like fury with the sentries, made her a sufficiently striking spectacle to turn every head on quay and ship.
The officer in charge grabbed her wrist-chain and hauled her forward so violently that she stumbled and fell, whereon he shouted “Get up, you slut!” and kicked her brutally, in approved romantic redcoat style. Which was a mistake, for she got up faster than he bargained for, blazing with rage and fetters whirling; the chain caught the officer across the face before the sentries hauled her back, writhing, and the officer dabbed blood from his cheek and swore most foully.
“Thou black vermin!” he shouted. “Ha! Wouldst thou, eh? Shalt learn the price of raising hand to thy betters, thou snarling slattern, thou! Sergeant, hoist me her up and we’ll ha’ the cat to her!”
The redcoats having come provided for such contingencies, as they always did in those days, in a trice Sheba was spreadeagled against the cart, her wrists lashed to it with cords, and the sergeant, a burly, grinning brute with bad teeth who hadn’t shaved (or washed either, probably), strode forward and tore away her shirt before flourishing the long cat-o’-nine-tails in a hand whose finger-nails would not have borne inspection. The spectators stared, and dainty Lady Vanity clutched at the Admiral’s arm in maidenly distress.
“Nay, father – stop them! They mustn’t!” Her sweet soprano was tremulous wi’ entreaty. “Not in public! Can’t they lambast her behind a building or somewhere?”
The sergeant spat a brutal stream of tobacco juice on Sheba’s bare back, saw her flinch, roared wi’ sadistic glee, and struck with all his might. Sheba choked a scream into a gasp as the tails tore at her skin, the officer gloated “Nice one, fellow!”, and the sergeant was winding up for another stroke – when the cat was plucked from his grasp and he spun round to face a reproachful Colonel Blood, who had vaulted nimbly from rail to wharf, and was shaking his head as he tossed the cat into the dock.
“Wait till ye’re married afore ye do that sort o’ thing, son,” he reproved the sergeant. “Ye’re too young altogether.”
The officer surged forward, raging. “Who the devil art thou to mar our discipline and condign punishment?”
“Me?” said the Colonel innocently. “I’m a Tyburn hooligan, the kind that breaks up executions and gets spectator sports a bad name.” He beamed on the officer. “But I can see you’re a man of taste, and ye wouldn’t want to spoil anything as pretty as this, now, would ye?” And he ran an appreciative hand over Sheba’s shuddering bare shoulder.
“Avoid, upstart!” hooted the officer, and Blood frowned.
“Och, don’t be so hasty – sure it’s a teeny scrape she gave ye, an’ her just a slip of a girl! Use a little Christian charity,” coaxed the Colonel, “ye bloodthirsty bastard. Abate thy spite, an’ think on gentle things – apple pie, an’ Christmas, an’ little lambs a-gambol, an your own dear old hag of a mother –”
“Damn thee, thou damned thing, thou!” shrieked the officer, fairly demented. “You’ll answer for this –”
“Then so shall I!” rang out a crisp, clear, well-modulated, upper-class, R.A.D.A.-trained baritone, and down the gangplank strode Avery, all clean-limbed virtue. Sheba twisted her head to look, and forgot the smart of her back in a surge of relief (if ever you’re tied to a cart and they’re going to give you the business, an approaching Avery is just what you need).
“You’re a disgrace to your commission,” he chilled the officer, “creating a scene like this with ladies present. Stand aside, sir!” And the officer stood. Avery strode to the cart, and where you or I would have stopped foolishly, wishing we’d brought a knife, he simply reached up and snapped Sheba’s bonds with two quick twists of his powerful fingers. Sheba regarded him with wonder, and as she turned from the cart he gulped and blushed, hastily averted his eyes, whipped a convenient cloak from the cart, and dropped it over her shoulders.
“Off you go now!” he told her sharply. “Mustn’t catch cold. Aboard with you, and slip into something comfortable.”
Sheba, stricken into an awe quite foreign to her, was suffering precisely the shock which Lady Vanity had sustained a few moments earlier – it was the sort of thing impressionable teen-agers used to feel when they saw Valentino or Paul Newman for the first time: that brave new world reaction of Miranda’s. She fumbled the cloak round her like one in a dream, and moved unsteadily towards the plank, staring back at the Apollo-like figure of her rescuer, who was withering the sullen officer with a final glance. As Sheba reached the plank, there was Blood, all casual charm, waiting