Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

speak for the rest of the passengers. We are under your orders, sir,

and will fight as you direct. Thank God we have no women or children

aboard.”

But his gallant bearing had no effect upon his companions, who were

terrified. Indeed, it was the Captain himself who ran to the cord and

hauled down the colours.

“We can only treat with them so, and plead for our lives,” he

whispered.

“Faith, sir,” cried Syn, “I hardly think they’ll consider some of

them worth the sparing.”

“They will be short of hands,” said the Captain, trying to raise his

own spirit. “For my part I shall not be the last to turn pirate. We

only live once.”

“I thought you were religious,” said Syn, “and I hoped to hear you

say, ‘It is the Lord’s Will’. Also I fear your hopes of being recruited

are in vain. They do not seem so short of hands.”

Indeed, as the black flag had been run up with a cheer, the roughest

villains swarmed from hiding all over the decks. A shot was fired,

which struck with perfect marksmanship, bringing the sprung mast with a

hideous crash upon the deck, killing outright a member of the crew.

Then, on that quiet morning sea, a pandemonium arose. Boats were

lowered, and in a few minutes the deck of the Intention was alive with

the rascals. They w ere led by a gigantic Negro, gaudily dressed, who

cried out that his name was Black Satan and that he was Captain of the

good ship Pit of Sulphur. This was true, for Syn, who stood apart from

his cringing companions upon the poop-deck, had read this ridicu lous

name inscribed around the pirate prow.

“Come down and do homage, you lost souls,” cried Black Satan from the

well-deck.

Led by the craven New Englander, the Portuguese obeyed promptly, and

knelt before the great Negro abjectly, while he kept whi stling a naked

cutlass over their heads, and prodding their flesh with its point.

“I am the Captain of this ship,” faltered the New Englander. “I am

the best seaman and can navigate. I will join the Brotherhood.”

Captain Satan (for he was indeed the Captain, and notorious too as

the only Negro who had commanded whites on the high seas) now spat in

his prisoner’s face.

“You navigate?” he roared. “I never saw such handling of a ship. Take

him below, my bullies, and see that he shows you the ship’s treasures.

And you other, run out the black plank. The funeral plank, my lumbers.

We provide it for you as your undertakers. Empty their pockets, then

let ‘em walk. Tie up their eyes with their own kerchiefs.”

Then, among the lively cheers of the pirates, a gangway was opened,

and a black plank which they had brought for the purpose was run out

over the water.

“Spare us,” cried the wretches. “In the name of the saints.”

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“Talk not of saints to Satan,” cried the Negro. “Along the bridge, you

dogs, and down. The bridge that leads to hell.”

Blindfolded and pricked with cutlasses, they were hustled one by one

along that quaking, springy bridge. Steered by cold steel on either

side, most of them reached the end, stepped into air and fell into the

sea.

“Swim to the other ship,” cried the Negro, shooting down any who

clung to the hull of the Intention.

Those who could swim attempted this, but when half-across both ships

used them as targets for not only pistols, but cannon. By this time the

craven Captain was brought back from below, behind a procession of

robbers heavily laden with seachests, bales, barrels and casks, which

were quickly lowered to the boats and carried to the pirate ship. Now,

it so happened that amongst those chests were Doctor Syn’s, and he

watched it being lowered as he leaned over the bulwarks of the poop.

“Careful with you, you dogs,” he cried in Spanish. “It is of the

utmost value to me, I assure you. So see to it that I find it safe when

I come over with your Captain.”

Thinking that he must be a grandee who had saved his life by offering

sufficient ransom to Black Satan, the Spaniards in the boat called back,

“Si, Senor.”

Now, so engrossed were the others at their hellish work that no one

noted Doctor Syn, or, if they did, perhaps they did not relish closer

quarters with his long steel. By this time the whimpering captain of

the illfated Intention was dragged towards the plank.

“But I can navigate,” he pleaded.

“Then navigate yourself along that plank,” snarled the Negro.

“I will do anything to please you. I will be your slave in all

things only spare my life.”

Prodded without mercy to the end, he turned and made a last appeal.

As he stood there abjectly pleading to a nigger, Doct or Syn’s gorge

rose and when a facetious pirate shook the plank and the victim fell on

hands and legs astride the plank like a child on a rocking-horse, he

drew one of his pistols from his sash and wondered how long he should

allow a white man to demean himself before a nigger. A captain of a

ship should face death bravely. this was too undignified, and Syn vowed

it should not last.

The captain had not been blindfolded, and tears of self-pity and

terror rained down his cheeks. Syn took careful aim and fired. The

body crumpled and slipped from the plank into the sea.

“And who the devil are you to put him out of his misery without my

word of command?” demanded the astonished Satan, seeing Syn for the

first time.

“Come down here, you dog.”

“Bett er not call me a dog,” replied Syn, with a smile. “I once had a

dog that killed black beetles. As to putting that man out of his

misery, I intended no such thing. I shot him because I hate a coward,

and especially a white coward who can cringe to a nigger, and more than

all a cowardly captain who betrays his ship in the hopes of saving

himself. You are a captain, too, you say, though I can hardly think

that some of these white men fighting for you would not make a change.

The question is, Mr. Satan, if t hat’s your name, are you a cowardly

captain? That I intend to prove.”

With a bellow of rage Black Satan leaped for the poop companion

stairs, swinging his cutlass. What was his astonishment, however, when

he found a calm and elegant gentleman waiting for him with a thin blade,

which somehow all his lashings could not pass.

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“Get down upon that deck, for I have a mind to drive you out upon

your plank. You won’t? Oh yes, you will. Down with you, nigger.”

Chapter 12

Syn Buys a Body and Soul

Down on the well-deck they fought; and an ill-matched fight it was.

A giant of a Negro with a heavy cutlass which he swung murderously, but

with little skill, against a lithe parson whose thin point of steel kept

the scythe-like blade confronting him doing nothing but slashing the

air, so that although the Negro tried to attack and carry it by sheer

weight, the needle-point of Syn’s sword drove him back step by step.

When they perceived that the Negro’s sword was of no avail, Syn heard

the pira tes arguing whether or not they ought to interfere. The most of

them were for keeping to Brotherhood rules, which state that a fight

between two antagonists must be fought fairly, but to the death. One

rascal, disagreeing, tried to trip up Syn as he adva nced. Syn turned

like lightning; passed his sword through the man’s neck, and drew it

back just in time to meet the Negro’s next charge. He more than

expected that they would rush him for this, but was relieved to hear