–” he kicked Rooke savagely “– and hale the fighting cock on deck.”
The scene which met Avery’s eyes may be old stuff to you if you saw “The Black Swan”, but it was new to him – a helpless merchantman in the talons of the hawks of the sea. Chaps in hairy drawers and coloured hankies staggering about, draped in loot, letting off pistols, getting beastly drunk, singing “Blow the man down”, throwing bottles around, and manhandling hapless prisoners. Firebeard had thrust Vanity sprawling on the deck in her scanty night-rail, to the accompaniment of wolf-whistles and cries of “Hubbahubba!”; she scrambled up, trying to look haughty, which isn’t easy when there’s nothing between you and the goggle-eyed rabble except a wisp of brushed nylon and a few ribbons. “Shake it, blondie!” they chorused, and Avery clenched his teeth in fury.
Looking down from the quarter-deck was the stalwart figure of Calico Jack, the barbaric splendour of Akbar, and the slender finery of Happy Dan, who viewed the scene through his quizzing-glasses and exclaimed Froggishly.
“What is what is this what? I am aboard. I look about myself. Zut alors donc! What a doll, that! What talent! Ah, ma chérie, mon coeur est toujours à toi! How about it, hein?” He minced and bowed and fluttered his fingers at Vanity, while Akbar’s eyes glowed with strange fires, and Rackham threw up a hand to silence the motley mob swarming beneath – bearded white faces, coal-black Nubians, slant-eyed Chinese devils, swarthy Asiatics, squat and evil Malays – the usual lot on pirate ships in those days. Now among them glided Black Sheba, her glance dwelling darkly on the bound figure of Avery ere she took her place, lounging on a convenient capstan.
“Camarados, brothers!” cried Rackham. “We ha’ ta’en this fine ship, and released our dear comrade and fellow-skipper Sheba from durance shameful and doom o’ hellish slavery! (Cries of ‘Hear, hear!’, applause, breaking of bottles, and an attempt by the little Welsh pirate to lead a chorus of ‘We’ll keep a welcome in the valleys’.) And we ha’ ta’en also captives o’ rank and quality – a Lord Admiral, no less –” Yells of hatred and blowing of raspberries, with Firebeard bawling: “Hang him up! Rip his guts out! He’s an honest man – I hate him!” He rolled on the deck in a frenzy of rage, and the pirates cheered amain. Bilbo sauntered forward, sporting his shabby finery, his tight boots squeaking painfully.
“All in good time, lambkin,” quotha. “But, by y’r leave, Brother Rackham, I ha’ matter to impart to the company. (Cries of ‘Order, order!’ ‘Chair, chair!’.) I learn that there is some precious ‘thing’ aboard this vessel, and that this –” he flicked a tiny poniard from his sleeve so that it quivered in the mast by Avery’s ear; a shocking show-off, Bilbo was “– fortunate fellow is privy to its whereabouts. Shall we inquire, ha?”
“Aye, aye!” roared the pirates. “Go on, ask him; it can’t do any harm.”
“Well, bully?” said Bilbo silkily. “What is’t, and where, eh? Discourse, friend, and discover. Don’t be shy.”
This was the chance that Avery had been waiting for. Jumping on tables, pinking adversaries, was all right in its way, but this is the kind of moment he is in the book for, really. His handsome head came up, his contemptuous glance swept from sinister Bilbo to frowning Rackham to swarthy Akbar to epicene Happy Dan, to the ring of hideous snarling ruffians, dwelt softly for an instant on Vanity, beauteously pale, got contemptuous again, and finally settled back on Bilbo with unfaltering disdain. Avery’s lip curled, and his perfectly-modulated voice might have been addressing a careless servant as he spoke with the calm good-breeding of his kind.
“Up yours,” he said crisply. He had no idea what it meant, but he had heard it hurled at the Moors by an officer refusing to surrender one of the Tangier bastions, and had rather liked the sound of it. Brief, punchy, and definite.
The pirates went bananas at his defiance. They howled round him, hurling vile threats and making lurid suggestions for his interrogation. A heated debate broke out, the nub being to decide which torture would best satisfy the twin requirements of getting the information and providing an interesting spectacle. Happy Dan Pew’s proposal was finally carried, and a bucket of offal was hurled over the side to attract sharks, while Avery was lowered by one leg from the ship’s rail until his head was just above the water racing past the ship’s side.
This is a rotten position to be in, and it taxed even Avery’s powers to keep up a dignified appearance. He preserved a poker-faced nonchalance, of course, but this was wasted since no one could see it. The spray lashed through his hair, the salt water stung his eyes, and the rope round his ankle burned like fire; up on deck Vanity was swooning on the planks, and the callous villains holding the rope were saying grace. A yell of delight greeted the sight of two hideous dorsal fins cutting the water towards the ship’s side, at which point they lowered Avery so that his head and shoulders were immersed.
Our hero was now perturbed. Not on his own account – this, he told himself, as his keen eyes pierced the green murk and detected the great dark shapes homing in on him, was what he was paid three shillings a day for – nay, his concern was all for the fair and graceful figure which he had seen collapsing becomingly when they gave him the old heave-ho. What should become of her, when the sharks had retired burping gently to look for the sweet trolley, and all that remained of him was a sock and a buckled shoe? He must get out of this somehow, for her sake … and Captain Avery’s eyes narrowed underwater, his lips parted in that grim fighting smile as he observed the horrible monsters rolling neatly to get under him and come zooming up, their enormous jaws parting to reveal serried rows of glittering fangs. That gave him an idea – he would bite the brutes; it was the last thing they would expect …
But even as he prepared to meet them, tooth to tooth, he felt himself suddenly whirled upwards, into the fresh air, just as the first shark leaped and snapped its great jaws close enough to clip his hair. He banged painfully against the ship’s side, and then he was hauled brutally over the rail and dropped on the deck, opening his eyes to find a pair of Gucci boots bestriding him, and hear Black Sheba’s voice scorching the pirates who yet clamoured for his blood.
“Unthinking dolts! He’ll never talk! I know his kind!” And she flashed him a glance in which he seemed to read yearning admiration behind the feral glare of the amber eyes. “But he’ll sing like a canary if you threaten his friends!” she added spitefully, and Avery groaned inwardly as the ruffians roared approval and seized on the swooning Vanity with cries of “Now you’m talking! Heave the doxy over! Har-har, here be plumptious titbit for the sharks, wi’ a curse, an’ that!”
“Belay that!” snapped Sheba, and drawled cruelly: “We’ll find a better use for her mealy milksopishness, damn her! No … that one!” And she flung out a hand towards Colonel Blood.
You may have wondered what the Colonel was doing during all this excitement. Looking inconspicuous, that’s what, and wondering how he could pass himself off as one of the pirate gang. Even now he tried to look puzzled, glancing over his shoulder to see whom Sheba meant, but it was no go. They whipped the rope round his ankle, bundled him protesting on to the rail, and were about to launch him when he found his breath and wits together.
“What’s the hurry, now?” he wondered. “Let’s talk it over, boys … don’t do something ye’ll regret.”
Firebeard, gripping the Colonel’s shoulders, hesitated, growling and rolling his eyes. “What was it you were asking, now?” inquired the Colonel, and Avery, in sudden alarm, cried from the deck: “No! Blood, you cannot! You must not!”
“Och, be reasonable,” said the Colonel, slightly exasperated. “D’ye expect me to be a fish’s dinner for the sake of your bloody crown?”
Since the answer to that was “Yes”, but it isn’t the sort of thing that any self-respecting hero can say, Avery was silent, but the glare he shot at Blood would have curdled minestrone. His first instinct had been right – why, the blighter was a blighter, after all; when any decent chap would have been spitting in their eyes with a dauntless smile, he was actually perspiring shiftily and demanding:
“If I tell ye, will ye spare our lives?”
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