The Captain`s Vengeance

'Hmmm… hear any other names, lads?' Lewrie asked them.

' Think the one played Toby in my clothes woz called Lanc'shire or some-thin' like that, sir,' Mr. Towpenny told him, 'Lanes… Lang-thingummy?'

'Lotta first names, mostly, sir,' Toffett offered. 'Pierre an' Jacques, Pedro an' Pablo… nicknames? Mister Jugg said one o' their off'cers might o' been called 'Hungry,' an' t'other'un 'Fierce,' didn't ye say, Mister

Jugg?'

'Feroce, meanin' 'Ferocious' in Frog,' Jugg corrected gloomily, 'and L'Affame. Means 'Hungry,' aye. Never heard their real names, so which woz which, well…' the man trailed off with a confused shrug.

'No one's heard either nickname, I take it?' Lewrie probed them. 'Nothing associated with a past, a repute, associated with either? '

'Nossir, sorry t'say,' Mr. Towpenny said, after silently polling their ignorant expressions and helpless shrugs.

'Probably named themselves to better their odds at recruiting sailors,' Lewrie said, sighing and shrugging himself. 'That would be just like a gasconading Frenchman, t'claim he's successful. Well, let me say that I'm damned relieved to find you all relatively healthy and alive, men. We've spent the last two months runnin' down the Windwards searching for you. That prize be-damned, 'twas you we wanted to get back, and you can bet your last farthing, soon as you're able to come back aboard, your shipmates'll give you all a welcome worthy of the Prodigal Son. We'll have a 'Make or Mend' day and kill a fatted calf, the Purser's accounts no matter!'

That cheered them considerably, and they raised a hearty Three Cheers and a Tiger for Lewrie and their pending celebration.

'I'll just look in on Mister Burns, then go back aboard to let everyone know that you're alive,' Lewrie said, basking in their cheers.

'Er, uh…' Mr. Towpenny gloomed up. 'Ye can't, sir. Mister Burns is dead, sir.'

'Them bastards killed him, sir!' Toffett barked.

'They bloody what?' Lewrie roared. 'When? How? Did you see which of 'em did it?' His self-congratulatory mood had gone to ashes.

'Well, sir,' Mr. Towpenny began, after another communal look and a sour swallow of bile that, as senior hand, it would be his forlorn duty to complete the sorry tale. 'They set us ashore on the island… run us up th' beach at gun-point, an' this Balfa feller give us a few, um… things, 'coz even he said t'others woz 'crazy-mean,' and that he 'd give us a sportin' chance, at least, almost like a Christian, he did, though I 'spect he woz a slave t' Popery. 01' leather bag o'… stuff, an' he wished us good luck, an' they woz shovin' off, had oars in th' water an' was nigh onta a long musket-shot off, a'strokin' for their ship, when one o' them buggerin' high an' mighty sods aboard th' schooner just up an' shot him, sir! For the hellish fun of it, damn his blood! Pardon me French, sir.'

'In his leg, sir,' Toffett luridly described, grabbing his groin to show where the bullet had struck, 'right close t'his weddin' tackle. Weren't nothin', we could do for Mister Burns, sir, with one ol' rusty knife that Balfa bugger'd left us. Ball was still in him, an' none of us with a lick o' doctorin', sir. Nought but seawater t'wash out th' wound with, so…'

'Lasted three days, he did, 'fore he passed over, sir, and wee Mister Burns, he went hard, sorry t'have t'tell ye, Cap'm,' Towpenny gravelled, looking as if he'd tear up, as if it had happened just this morning, and not a week or more before. 'No shelter, hardly any water t'drink, 'cept for rain squalls, an' that foul.'

'Sucked outta our shirts an' such, sir,' Toffett recalled with a grimace, as if in aftertaste. 'Caught in 'at ol' wash-leather bag. Nought but a dram or two 'twixt th' six of us, was all it amounted to. Turtle blood… fish blood, and some gulls we knocked down with driftwood planks, sir? Ugh!'

They had dug with a grey-wood board in search of a fresh water seep but had hit porous limestone moist with saltwater. Amazingly to Lewrie, this Balfa creature had left them a cracked magnifying glass, a stained linen handkerchief and a flintlock tinder-box, that rusty knife, so a fire could be kindled once they'd found enough driftwood and sun-dry pine needles and palm furze. Most nights, though, they had shivered in the wind-swept chills in the dark, saving firewood for a beacon to any passing ship.

Raw turtle meat and blood, raw seabird flesh and gore doled out in meagre handfuls to last an entire day. The surf had been too heavy to 'grabble,' tickle, or spear fish… and the sharks too numerous and prowling almost into the glass windowpane of the waves that broke on their little beach. There'd been gulls' eggs for one afternoon, then the wonder of a hawksbill turtle that had crawled ashore to scoop out her nest in the sand. Craftily, they'd waited 'til she was crawling back to the water, totally spent, and had hammered, gouged, and pried her open with their bare hands and fist-sized rocks to kill her.

That night, they had lit a fire, to preserve so much meat; and had dug up her eggs like the Purser might dish out his rations, a bit at a time from the sandy 'larder,' a dozen apiece per day to assuage their raging hunger, and her massive, shield-like upper shell had made a catch-basin for the rare rain.

'Had t'bury th' poor lad there on th' island, sir,' Mr. Towpenny said, almost piping his eyes. 'Said wot words we had over him, put up a driftwood cross but we daren't risk th' knife t'carve his name on it. Poor little tyke. Warn't th' sort o' Midshipman like t'prosper in th' Navy, but he tried, I'll give him that. Weren't right, them bastards pottin' him like th' squire'd pot a rabbit, then leave him t'die. For th' fun o' it!'

'How long were you on that island, Mister Towpenny?' Lewrie asked, about as sorrowful as his sailors, after the dreary tale had been told of Midshipman Burns's sufferings before he'd died. 'And how were you rescued?'

'Nigh on ten days, sir,' Towpenny grumbled deep in his chest. 'Got picked up 'bout two weeks ago. Fin'lly saw a sail o' any sort up to th' North'rd, and figgered even th' Spaniards couldn't do us worse in one o' their prisons, so we lit a fire, and she seen us and hauled her wind t'come about.'

'Used our slop trousers t'make a big smoky fire, sir, just like Moses follered by day,' Seaman Luckaby said with an ironic chuckling noise. 'Stockings'd been burnt before, t'help cook that turtle.'

'You were picked up naked from your shirts down?' Lewrie said, more than glad to conjure up a happier picture of their long ordeal.

'Burnt our tarred hats, too, sir, an' wearin' our wool jackets like shawls,' Mr. Towpenny added, almost snickering, too, at the outre spectacle they had made of themselves.

'Thort 'at ship'd sail right past us, sor,' Ahern said from his sick-bed, wheezing with happy remembrance of their deliverance. 'But oncet 'at fire was blazin' good, wot with th' vairy last scrap o' wood on th' island, and God help us if she'd not come about!'

'Aye, and amen, i' faith!' his Proteuses chorused in cacophony.

'Sure, an' all 'at rum whooshed up like a fire-ship takin' light, sor, an'…' Ahern chortled, then blushed; silenced, he was taken by a fit of wheezing and coughing into his fist. And all of the other hands broke off from contributions and exultations, went red in the face, and found sudden interest in the floor or the odd strolling insect, their bare toes…

'The… rum,' Lewrie posed, a skeptical brow lifted in query.

'Ahem, sir!' Mr. Towpenny finally spoke up. 'D'ye see, sir, as I told ye, sir, that Balfa feller left us some… things, t'give us a sportin' chance, like he said, and, ah… one of 'em was a ten-gallon barrico o' rum, sir. Unwatered, d'ye see. Cruel! Oh, cruel it woz, that! Right, lads?'

'Oh, aye! Arr! Bastard!' came their enthusiastic remonstrance to that fiendish infliction. 'Us t'do a 'Drunken Jack,' like 'at pore ol' pirate got found on th' coast o' th' Carolinas, nothin' but bones, an' an empty cask! Hellish temptation! But nary a drap o' water?'

'Die we must, sure an' we'd all go blissful,' Ahern fondly speculated, 'a'dreamin' 'twoz Fiddler's Green an' not a desert?'

'We rationed it out, we did, sir,' Mr. Towpenny firmly stated, 'just enough t'keep our spirits up, an' it woz wet, after all… savin' it for a big bonfire, did a ship come, d'ye see, Cap'm,' he extemporised. 'Eased Mister Burns, too, it did, thankee Jesus, seemed like it kept his wound from festerin' quick as it might've… give him at least a day or more o' life…