Arrival in the Indies

Summary: Willem, the captured surgeon's mate, sends a message betraying the Horizon's location while she is careening on a coral island. But it is intercepted by Makepeace Fry, a rival pirate captain in alliance with the Sultan of the Maldive Islands, who arrives and captures all the pirates' gold (and Willem, who has been buried alive in the sand by Dutch as a punishment for his betrayal, and Igenlode, who stayed behind to try to rescue Willem). Then the Sultan and his men arrive, as arranged with Fry, and capture Dutch and her ship. But what the Sultan really wants is Fry's ship, the Belle-Marie, which is bigger and more impressive, and Dutch agrees to help him capture her. Using a cunning ruse Dutch and the islanders take the other pirates by surprise, and Dutch kills Fry herself in a one-on-one duel, although she is badly wounded. In order to get Willem to treat Dutch and save her life, the pirates promise to set him safely ashore instead of executing him. A storm drives the Horizon away from the other ship, during which Willem rescues an unconscious Igenlode from being washed overboard. Dutch, exasperated with Igenlode for disobeying her orders on the coral island, decides that the clerk will have to be put ashore along with Willem.

The captain had been right to fear further gales. In the first fortnight of her convalescence, while the natural vigour of a healthy body began to reassert itself, the Horizon has been driven southward by storm after storm, scudding before the wind beneath reduced sail or enduring the waves under bare poles. Two more men have died. The rest, like Dutch, begin to recover, youth and strength enabling them to shrug off injury with a speed that would amaze any physician to the Court.

Igenlode -- neither so youthful nor so fit -- continues to suffer for some time with aching joints and occasional pains to the head; but in what is becoming the daily ritual of struggling along the wave-lashed decks or clinging on aloft to clew up sodden canvas, there is little time or space for such considerations. A look-out is kept for any other ships of the fleet, but day after day passes with no sight of masts or of land. They have long since been driven past the farthest tip of the Maldives, and on the first day that Dutch appears on deck, a vote is held. The decision is all but unanimous. There is no point trying any longer to return to the coral atolls for the sake of a possible rendezvous. The Horizon will make for the Malacca Strait in the hopes of picking off some Spice Islands shipping on her own.

And as if in answer to this decision, the bad weather eases. Now the wind is steady from the north-east, and the pirate sloop is able to work gradually across it towards the great forested island of Sumatra. Huge shoals of fish can be seen swimming ahead, and sometimes, as the sun strikes down, whole patches of the sea seem to have turned to silver. Jones tells a story about a shipwrecked sailor whose boat was borne up and carried along on the backs of a shoal so dense that all he had to do each day was reach over the side and dip his dinner from the waves, but no-one else seems to believe him.

It is a time for stories, as the sun shines and the weary ship is bedecked with a vast assortment of cargo, clothes and stores, all spread out to dry. It is a time for yarning and tall tales, as those who have been to the Indies before -- Dutch among them -- vie with one another to produce the most incredible accounts to enrapture the rest. Willem claims the existence of a kingdom of maharajas so rich that they prove it by tossing a brick of solid gold into the sea each morning; Johnson caps that by asserting that further to the east live a race of bird-men with wings sprouting from their shoulders, who dwell in the tops of the mightiest trees; while a taciturn pirate by the named of Penang Pete, rarely seen without his extraordinary assortment of curved daggers, tells a detailed and gruesome story of capture by a cannibal tribe in what is quite the longest speech anyone has ever heard him string together. Igenlode has enough book-learning to guess at the truth of some tales and enough scepticism to take others with a pinch of salt. But there is no denying the sense of excitement that is spreading throughout the crew.

Igenlode had expected to be miserable. The little clerk is spending almost every waking hour on learning seamanship, not in some vague hope of becoming indispensable and thereby changing Dutch's mind, still less with any notion of shipping aboard some other vessel, but simply in order to keep from thinking about the future. Perhaps Willem's dismissive comments -- coming at a time when Igenlode has already improved as a sailor beyond all recognition since first arriving aboard -- had also stung more than the clerk is consciously aware.

But oddly enough, unlike on the voyage from the Cape, these weeks of sailing are not unhappy ones. The crew, unaware of Dutch's edict, are friendly as if to one of their own. There is work to do, and to do well. And perhaps most importantly of all, Dutch herself, whether secretly relieved at the prospect of being rid of her burden or genuinely amused by the clerk's conversation, is in a companionable mood. She is still pale from the amount of blood she lost, and tires quickly, but she spends most of the day seated up on deck, talking, overseeing the ship, or simply watching the sea go by.

Her hair is beginning to grow back, into a wild stubble covered with a kerchief, and Igenlode's own wig-neat crop has long since reached collar length, before they sight the mountains of Sabang and the entrance to the Malacca Strait, gateway of the Spice Isles.

"We have to go ashore."

"But Captain..." Annie is not too happy with the idea. Despite their dubious truthfulness, the stories of the other pirates have made her nervous about what might be found there.

"We must get food. We've already tried to dry what we have, but most will rot beyond recognition in a day or two." Dutch gestures to some supplies still on deck, that have turned into mush during the storms. "Just look! The biscuits are now one biscuit, and I doubt they've gotten tastier for the experience."

"If we ration wisely, we can make it to Singapore with what we have."

Dutch shakes her head. "Unlikely. There's no telling how long some of this will stay good. We can't risk running out of food. Besides, it will do the crew good to feast on fresh meat and fruit."

Annie can't argue with that. As soon as a good anchorage is spotted, a few dozen men will go ashore to find food.

Dutch is subconsciously scratching her head through the kerchief, a recent habit caused by the slight irritation of her hair growing back. Her eyes fall on Igenlode, who was working nearby, and having overheard Dutch and Annie's conversation seems rather excited at the idea of venturing out into unexplored territories. Good, thinks Dutch with a smile. Maybe he'll take a fancy to these parts of the world.

But the wind turns against them. The little sloop beats backwards and forwards for three days within sight of land, trying to enter the Strait, as contrary winds and calms frustrate all their attempts, and tempers -- and rations -- grow shorter. On the fourth day Dutch scowls and gives the order to put up the helm and turn away southward, down the outer coast of Sumatra where tiny islands jostle, offering shelter but scant shipping to plunder, and no great temples or palaces.

No-one is happy about this change of course, least of all the captain herself. But it is made inevitable by the discovery, that morning, that at least half the remaining water-casks have been contaminated with sea-water as their timbers flexed during the storm. The Horizon needs to replenish her supplies, and soon. Piratical exploits will just have to wait.

It is mid-afternoon before the ship comes round into the lee of a large island, and Dutch gives the command to drop anchor. The shores are steep and covered with forest down to the water's edge; but at one point a stream runs out into the bay, and a little strip of shelving sand offers a possible landing place.

"Shall I hoist out the tainted barrels, captain?" Annie asks, all poised to ship the empty casks ashore and wash them out by the side of the stream. But Dutch shakes her head.

"I don't trust these forests. You can't see a thing. The casks are too clumsy and too valuable to risk losing if we have to pull out in a hurry -- we'll send out a foraging party to make a reconnaissance first, check the coast is clear. The natives of these parts are none too friendly." She stares darkly over at the faceless jungle which clothes the flanks of the hills, but no movement on shore can be discerned.

Willem, of course, is adamant that Dutch's health cannot permit her even to consider going herself. Dutch, who until that moment had not in fact intended to form part of the expedition, is instantly equally adamant about going. She is also insistent that Willem stay on board, under close guard by Annie.

"Any tricks this time, and you know what to do," she warns the bo's'n, running the point of her belt-knife lovingly around the young Dutchman's neck so that he is forced to tilt his head back to keep the blade from his throat. Willem protests, but she ignores him and scrambles down to join the rest of the boat's crew. Luiz makes space for her beside him on the thwart, dark eyes dancing, and she allows him to slip an appreciative arm around her waist to guide her down, returning his smile. She reaches for an oar in defiance of Willem's strictures, feeling out-of-practice muscles ripple, and snaps out the order to "give way".

A dozen backs bend as one, and the boat shoots forward from the Horizon's side as the oar-blades bite. The sun is warm above them. Luiz' shoulders are pressed warm against her own as they reach forward and straighten together for each stroke, the whole crew working smoothly in unison. The scent from the shore is warm and musty-damp with unknown promise, the faintest hint of wood-smoke warning that the islands are inhabited. Dutch ignores the breath that is already beginning to catch painfully beneath her breast, and finds herself smiling broadly.

The boat touches the bottom for an instant as the surf ebbs about her, and Igenlode, pulling the bow oar, holds the next stroke back for a moment in obedience to the steersman's signal. Then the hull surges forward again as the next wave breaks and sweeps across the shore, the rowers give way with a will, and the forefoot runs up onto the beach with a highly satisfactory scrunch.

A foreign land. No flimsy coral atoll this, barely eighteen inches above its surrounding lagoon, but mighty shoulders of earth and rock rearing out of the open sea. Tumbling over the side with the rest of the crew to help thrust the boat up out of the edge of the surf, Igenlode feels a sudden unexpected leap of the heart that brings to mind nephew Tom's eager face, and his tales of adventure.

For a long time now, that memory has been one to avoid. But to the clerk's surprise, the pain of it has all but gone. The horror and tangled loyalties of that confrontation with Hecate have lost their sting. The two of them will in all probability never meet again, and Tom will be a man grown before that happens -- if ever it does -- with Igenlode pot-bellied and grey. But Hecate, though wounded, must have lived; and the Admiralty will look kindly on the little midshipman who fought the ship to the end, and then brought her limping safely back to port. It may even prove to be the making of the boy's career, Igenlode reflects rather ruefully.

But Tom's memory no longer hurts, and his stories of the sea have borne fruit beyond any that their fond hearers could once have dreamed. Storm and adventure and battle, halfway around the world from that humble little parlour on Market Street -- and not one, but two, friendships that would never otherwise have come to pass. It is just a pity, Igenlode admits with a sigh, that between them, scrupulous stiff-necked Willem and cynical, generous Dutch happen to detest one another quite so much...

Not, alas, a state of affairs that looks likely to be rectified soon. For it is now -- with the longboat hauled up at last out of reach of the sea, and the expedition barely so much as begun -- that Dutch is forced to admit that her unwilling doctor had been correct, and that she is already exhausted by the effort and in no fit state to carry on. She makes the announcement between gasps for breath but through gritted teeth, and no-one feels inclined to argue the question.

"Simmy, you're in command." She nods to a bow-legged little topman whose exit from His Majesty's Navy had been accompanied, as had his arrival therein via the Maidstone Assizes, by the theft of a pocket-watch. "I'll stay here to guard the boat -- I expect you back in an hour at most. Take a sweep up to that ridge there--" she indicates the skyline -- "and see what provender you can find. Keep and eye open. Watch your back."

She breaks off to cough, and fixes the little man with a pallid stare. "And Simmy... don't stir up any trouble."

"Who, me?" But the chuckle that runs around the rest of the group rather undermines this attempt at injured innocence, and Simmy bows right and left in acknowledgement with a shameless grin. Only Igenlode seems to notice Dutch take advantage of the moment's distraction to grope blindly for the support of the gunwhale behind her.

"Maybe someone else should..." The clerk's voice trails off in the face of a glare from Dutch.

"I'll stay," Luiz says, too quickly, and receives the full force of Dutch's indignation in his turn. The young man meets his captain's furious eyes with an air of complete equanimity as faint colour rises over her cheeks, then tips her the broadest of winks.

Dutch's colour deepens a little, but she can't help smiling. "All right." She thrusts a musket into Luiz' hands from the pile in the bottom of the boat, and leans over to start handing out the remaining weapons. "The rest of you, get moving. Remember, we've got a whole crew to provision for."

* * *

The hillside is steep, and the weight of the cutlass still unaccustomed at Igenlode's belt. There is time for only one glance back -- and a light-hearted salute from Luiz -- before the jungle swallows them up, and the beach is out of sight.

Mercifully, it is not too hot. Even so, within five minutes Jones is more red-faced than ever, and the portly pirate is not the only one streaming with sweat. The ten of them struggle upwards through trackless jungle, initial enthusiasm for exploration rapidly wearing off.

"Maybe we ought to dump these muskets --"

"Don't even think about it," Simmy advises, shifting the heavy stock of his own weapon to the other shoulder. "Not unless you want the rough side o' the captain's tongue -- or worse."

"There is worse?" That gets a laugh, but Simmy is serious.

"Use your brain-box, Fisheye. Suppose -- just suppose, for example, we was being followed?"

Igenlode is not the only one to look back nervously at that. The clerk swallows. "You mean -- someone might pick it up?"

"Right, an' use it on us." The little sailor mimes a man being shot in the back, nearly loses his footing, and clutches onto a nearby branch. It comes away in his hand.

The pirates stare, and Fisheye gives a low whistle. "Well, will you look at that!"

A neatly-carved row of steps leads upwards across the hillside, every toe-hold hollowed and smooth like the steps before a cathdral from the passage of countless numbers of feet. Here and there whole tree-trunks have been cut away, and a densely-woven mass of creeper deliberately cultivated to hide the work of a heavy blade.

"If that isn't the answer to a prayer..." Fisheye breathes, and Jones, busy mopping his face for the umpteenth time with a limp kerchief, concurs.

"They do say as there be lost temples in these parts where no Christian soul ever set foot. Hidden in the jungle these hundreds of years, a-dripping with pagan idols and gems and precious offerings --"

"Village," Penang Pete says laconically, pricking this bubble with his customary economy of words. He points in the other direction down to the stream, as crestfallen faces stare at him in reproach. "Water -- see?"

Simmy shrugs it aside. "Well, I say we go up it anyhow and see what we can find. Don't know about you, but I've had a bellyful of jungle-bashing already, and I don't see no fruit or meat just waitin' to be picked up..."

This is clearly a popular sentiment, and even Igenlode has to admit that the prospect of travelling a cleared path instead of forcing their way through the undergrowth is very welcome indeed. The possibility of meeting the makers of the path coming the other way is brushed aside.

But their luck holds. A long, stiff scramble later, after passing a high stone wall that rekindles the hopes of Jones and several others, the little group from the Horizon find themselves unchallenged upon the top of the ridge, within the borders of a village... and what a village.

"D'you reckon they're giants?" Jones whispers, staring up at the massive houses linked on either side of the stone-paved street, for all the world like a city thoroughfare in Bruges or London town. If, that is, the houses of Europe were elevated on tree-trunks massive as the stone undercroft of some vast hall, topped with a curving veranda akin to the stern of the greatest Manila galleon. The roofs tower above the intruders looking up at them, as steeply-pitched as the side of a mountain, and Igenlode cannot imagine the networked timbers that must be needed within to support that soaring mass.

"Not giants." Fisheye points to their right, where the figure of a little Indian girl can just be seen, hiding behind one of the great carved stones like mounting-blocks that seem to line the street. He makes a sign against the Evil Eye with thumb and crooked forefinger. "Sorcerers, maybe..."

"Nah, they're just a pack of spear-waving savages," Simmy retorts, making a sudden grab for the child, who whimpers and twists out of his hand, disappearing into one of the houses. "See?"

"Head-hunters," Pete says softly, checking the priming on his pistol and glancing over his shoulder. He has seemed uneasy since they entered the village. "Better leave now."

Jones echoes the gesture, tugging at his collar as if it suddenly feels too tight. "They do say there be tribes on these islands with a taste for human flesh," he mutters. "Each warrior, he brings a head to woo his sweetheart, and if so be as he do bring fifty, why then those fifty skulls mean fifty wives. They do say they fatten their prisoners like kine put out to grass --"

"If they say one half of what you do, then they talk too much." Simmy, who had glanced round in his turn, has recovered his poise. "There's no-one here but women and children -- look!"

He darts into the shadow of the nearest house and catches hold of a young woman with a baby clutched to her breast, dragging her out by the wrist. Fisheye's face lights up, and he makes a grab for the woman, running his fingers covetously through her long black hair and down across her bodice as she starts to scream.

"Enough o' that!" Simmy yanks the bigger man away, pocketing his pistol before Fisheye's hand has even reached his belt. "Do you want to bring the menfolk down on us?"

"I'll be a deal happier if I knew where they were," someone from the back of the group says under his breath, and there is a general mutter of agreement.

"Better leave now," Pete says again, listening to a sound that only he can hear. "Best --"

"No, we don't." Simmy crosses his arms. "Not without some food -- an' I'll wager they got some stored away. It's like the busy, busy bees -- why break our backs groping for ourselves among the thorns when we can just harvest the hive?"

The women make no attempt to defend their homes. They simply shrink away, watching with frightened, hostile eyes, as the pirates strip the village of everything edible they can find, from baskets of roots to a whole half-pig slung across Jones' shoulder. Igenlode's hesitation is quickly overcome by a jab from Simmy's pistol, and the clerk is soon turning over the natives' stores as rapaciously as the rest of them. The grisly display of skulls in the largest house is enough to quench any stirrings of sympathy. "Maybe we ought to burn out the whole nest, have a bit of fun," Fisheye proposes, still eyeing the younger women, and for a moment Igenlode is as eager for it as any.

Only... the lust in the pirate's face is jolting. A man doesn't look at mere 'vermin' that way; and they don't stare back at him with the fear and contempt of any Christian housewife, and the darker promise of vengeful knives to come...

"Let's get out of here," Simmy says abruptly, clearly unnerved by the silent hostility in his turn, and the others, even Fisheye, follow with more haste than grace. Jones has produced a flask of rum and has clearly been partaking heavily of it, and soon several more of the group are lagging behind under their burdens, staggering on the steep path, and bolstering their courage with a slurring rendition of "Blow the Man Down".

"Can't you keep them quiet?" Simmy hisses to Penang Pete, at the rear; but it is to take a greater shock than Pete's heavy hand to do that.

* * * * *

They are halfway down to the beach when an unmistakable musket shot rings out from below, echoing flatly from the hill. Seconds later, there is a gurgling scream.

Igenlode, who, two minutes earlier, would have sworn to being laboured under an almost impossible load, begins without thinking to run. There are more shots, this time from the ship out in the bay, and shouts float up. A howl of challenge answers.

"The boat --" Fisheye gasps with a curse, long legs carrying him to the front. "Got us cut off --"

Luiz. Dutch. Igenlode's throat is too dry to speak. No wonder the village had been all but deserted. The men of the tribe had been down on the shore, and --

The beach comes into view at last from the final steep slopes. There are figures moving by the longboat, swift warriors with necklaces of pale tusks gleaming about their throats. They are lifting something heavy.

Luiz' embroidered sash still glints in the sun. His limbs are outstretched, doll-like, as if he had flung himself in front of Dutch. A musket lies tumbled where it must have slipped from his fingers, and his cutlass still dangles from his arm by its lanyard. But the sand where he lies is gouted in scarlet, and his torso flops raggedly as it is rolled aside. Dark eyes gape blindly from the hands of the victor, as the severed head is swung in triumph. The young man's jaw hangs ajar, lolling in its final scream.

Igenlode stops short, choking, as the scene becomes clear. The Indians are carrying something up from beside the boat now; something that kicks and doubles, showing pallid beside their burnished brown. There is a hand clamped over Dutch's mouth, and her clothes are in disarray, as if it is only the discovery of her sex that has saved her this far. But whatever tolerance is extended to female captives, her struggles are clearly exhausting its extent.

Then Simmy crashes through the brush at the far side of the stream, with half a dozen other pirates at his heels, too out of breath even to yell, and the pistol in his hand pops to send one of the Indians flying, a hand clutched to his breast. There is a howl of fury from the beach, and a surge of bodies forward along the sand; but a single word of command halts them. Another drops Dutch to her knees, head forced back by the remorseless hand across her mouth, while her captor raises a heavy iron blade. There is a moment of silence, as in a dream, in which the horrified clerk can hear the waves break.

Then the blade comes down with expert strength to slice through Dutch's outstretched throat.

A sudden series of blasts from the sea as the Horizon, seeing her warning shots ignored, fires some of her guns at the beach. There is an obvious risk of hitting their own, but Annie, having assessed the situation through her spyglass, decides it's a necessary one. The pirates are greatly outnumbered, and decapitation is hardly a pleasant fate.

The Indians, who have no idea what the sound means, are distracted at the repeated thunderous noise, and when the cannonballs hit, they are terrified. Some of them are struck directly, a few others get buried under stone debris as one shots hits the towering rocks on the Indians' side of the beach. The dust that comes free at that impact, and the sand thrown up by the other cannonballs, temporarily hide the scene of Dutch's imminent beheading.

Immediately after the large, lethal objects, appearing as if out of nowhere, have hit, the Indians run back into the jungle to escape this divine punishment, and the pirates, invigorated by their impending victory, chase them to the tree line. Only Igenlode breaks away and heads for Dutch. He really doesn't want to be the first to see her. In fact, he'd prefer not seeing her at all. But reason loses to instinct, and Igenlode only stops when the dust in the air settles, and he sees Dutch's body, face down in the sand. All sound around him seems to disappear, except for his heartbeat and the blood rushing through his head, both equally loud as the result of all recent exertion.

And then she moves. First only a little twitch of her arm, then coughing. Not without effort, she rolls to one side, giving the air an unobstructed passage to her lungs. Slowly, almost carefully, Igenlode approaches her.

"Are you all right?"

Even his words come out softly. They are certainly audible, but Dutch does not respond, her eyes fixed on an empty spot in the distance. Her breathing is now trouble-free, but very fast. As Igenlode helps her into a sitting position, she still seems hardly aware of her surroundings.

"Are you all right?" repeats Igenlode.

This time the message suddenly gets through, and Dutch looks up at him. "Fine," she replies with a hoarse voice.

Igenlode has realized a long time ago that for Dutch, anything but dead is "fine", but for now, every reply is a good one. A quick look at her throat reveals there isn't so much as a scratch -- the aid from the Horizon came not a second too soon. Dutch's only visible injury is a small wound in the corner of her mouth, caused no doubt by her struggles against the hand that was covering it. A small trail of blood flows down, which Igenlode, wanting to help Dutch somehow, gently wipes away.

When the other pirates, satisfied that the Indians have retreated, return, they're very happy to find Dutch in one piece.

"Close call there, eh, Captain?" grins one.

Dutch doesn't respond, but no one was waiting for an answer.

From the back of the group, Penang Pete walks up, proudly holding up his prize. The sight of Luiz' severed head this close makes Igenlode quickly turn away, nauseous. Dutch's eyes rest on it a bit longer. Tears well up, but she manages to pull herself together and blink them away.

"You did good, Pete," comments Fisheye. "Now we can bury him properly, all of him."

"No!" Dutch's loud command startles some of the crewmembers standing closest to her.

"Captain's right," says Simmy, as he glances at an Indian's body lying nearby. "Bury him here, and these savages will dig him up and take his head again. Besides, it'd take too long, and there's no telling when they'll be coming for us again. We should wait till we're at sea again, and give him a seaman's grave."

The rest of the crew nods their agreement, and there is a short, solemn silence.

"What are you waiting for then?" Simmy points in the direction they came from. "Get the food so we can leave this godforsaken place!"

"And water?" asks Igenlode when most of the pirates have already run off.

Now Dutch takes over again. "There's no time."

She stands up, and though Igenlode is sure at one point that her knees will buckle, she manages to stay erect, gulping away the tickle of an upcoming cough. "We'll have to collect some later, or somehow make do with what we have."

* * *

Not much later, the pirates return with most of the provisions they stole from the Indian village, leaving the heaviest and bulkiest items (including the half-pig, to Jones' disappointment) where they dumped them to ensure a quick departure. With everything loaded into the boat, they push off.

The number of rowers now uneven, Dutch sits idly in the back, neither capable nor very eager to exhaust herself further. Luiz' body lies at her feet, and her gaze rests on it most of the way back to the Horizon. Glancing him over, her eyes stop at his sash. She reaches down and grabs one end of it, her fingers playing with the fabric and feeling along the embroidery. A faint smile appears on her face as memories of good times resurface. Luiz had been in her crew longer than most others, and she had really liked the handsome Portuguese. The dead body in front of her is no longer that man, but, in a way, this sash, his trademark for quite a while, is. Bending down again, she gently removes it from the corpse and carefully ties it around her waist.

The Horizon creeps slowly southward along the coast, like a laggard schoolboy awaiting the master's birch. Dutch is more silent than usual. Twice she takes the sloop in behind tree-clad islands to seize upon Arab trading craft, slender unarmed vessels whose vast raking lateen yards are unwieldy to turn across the wind. The merchants put up no resistance. From the second captain, whose cargo of camphor is all but worthless to the pirates but who proves eager to talk, she learns the name of their ill-omened landing: Nias Island. Igenlode fumbles to render the man's words for her, but the expression on the weathered face beneath the turban needs no translation. Neither does the swift gesture he makes across his throat.

But it is on that day that they finally put in for water, the two vessels lying side by side in a sheltered cove while the captains parley on the Horizon's quarterdeck. The big water-casks from the bottom tier of the hold are swayed ashore under guard, and Micawber can be seen clambering monkey-like across the hoops and staves to try to locate the site of the seepage. The casks are swilled out, rinsed, and filled again, while the Arab sailors, seated cross-legged on the deck of their ship while their mid-day meal is prepared in the cook-box that serves as a galley, look on in cheerful disdain. Finally the heavy load of water is hoisted back aboard, still with no sign of hostile action from the shore, and the bo's'n and her work-crew are able to breathe a sigh of relief. No-one present expresses any great eagerness to go exploring further ashore, and Dutch gives the order to make sail immediately, almost without waiting for her inadvertent 'guest' to return over the side.

"What now, captain?" Annie says at last, as the Horizon continues to work her way southwards in sight of the high mountains. "We'll catch no fat Indiamen this side of Sumatra. Do we beat up through Sunda Strait and make for Batavia? The trade wind's dead foul for that passage; we'll be hard put to it to work past Krakatoa."

"We've got money enough," Dutch says dully. Her mouth barely even twitches at the old pirate's expression of shock. A few months ago, she too would have been astonished at such a heretical concept. "With what we got back from Fry, we've got money enough from this last cruise, and a rich cargo below-decks besides. It's time for a share-out before our luck changes. We're looking for a port to trade in -- not a city to sack. It's a long way back to Tortuga, Annie, and gold's no good to a man lying idle in his pocket. The crew deserve a chance to spend their cash."

Halfpence Annie frowns. "How much is the share now?"

Dutch shrugs -- figures have never been her strong point -- and whistles for Igenlode. She watches the little clerk come eagerly down the rigging from the lookout's post in the foretop and smiles faintly, remembering back to the landlubber who had literally tumbled aboard at Cape Town.

She repeats the question, and Igenlode produces the figures with a fine little pedantic air, and rather more professional detail than was requested. Annie's eyes get wider and wider. "Why, a man could buy himself a fine plantation -- be set up for life with that!"

"Wasn't that always the plan?" Dutch says drily, thinking of the years it has taken her to get to this point. Odd... she'd always expected to enjoy the moment more.

"But we could lose half the crew." Annie clearly hasn't made the connection yet. By the terms of the pirate Articles, the ship's company is now free to dissolve. The captain is entitled to a double share.

Her entire life, since before she captured the Horizon, has been dedicated to reaching this point. Dutch doesn't know what she is going to do with it. She suspects most of the others don't either. Well, a good debauch on shore will be somewhere to start.

Despite the difficult passage, the vote about continuing directly to Singapore and split up the loot upon arrival turns out positive by a small majority. The rest of the voyage continues, uneventful. Dutch still seems uninterested in everything, and spends a lot of time alone in her cabin. Though her behavior is a bit uncomfortable for everyone else, it improves her relationship with Willem considerably. They are still by no means friends, but Dutch's passivity ensures there are no more arguments.

Until one time, when she overhears Willem remarking to Igenlode how incredibly distasteful it was for Dutch to steal something from a dead man that was supposed to be her friend. Willem is very lucky that Annie is with Dutch at the time. She tackles Dutch who falls flat on her face, the dagger in her hand clattering on the deck. This causes the enraged Captain to turn on Annie, but she uses only words against her loyal bo's'n, who takes them with an unmoved face until Dutch, run out of things to say and frustrated by the crew looking at her like she's insane, storms to her cabin again.

When the pirates finally arrive at their destination after an arduous journey, they can't wait to go ashore and celebrate. Igenlode helps the quartermaster to divide the swag into equal shares, which goes smoothly save for a little brawl between Penang Pete and Fisheye concerning the ownership of a small, but beautiful gold and ruby broach, which is quickly settled.

After a few unlucky men have been appointed by a roll of the dice to stay aboard and watch the ship, the rest of the crew goes ashore. A tavern is soon found, and most pirates stay together for now to drink and sing, while some trail off in female company. Dutch, who has come along to no little surprise of the crew, sits apart from the group, at a small table in the shadows, a bottle of "the strongest drink you have" in front of her.

Whereas Willem has disappeared with his share of the most recent plunder as soon as he sat foot on land, Igenlode, as yet without plans for the future, is joining in the festivities. Occasionally he shoots a look at the table where Dutch is sitting. In contrast to the pirates' animated celebrations, the scene hardly changes, except for the bottle slowly emptying.

After a good hour, his reservations washed away by a few drinks, Igenlode decides to join her. She doesn't react when he sits down opposite her. Her eyes remain fixed on the bottle, which now only contains a third of its original volume.

"You have been acting strange," says Igenlode, his voice slightly slurred.

Dutch picks up her bottle and takes a swig, ignoring his statement.

"What's wrong? You should be happy. You're rich now, and you can leave this miserable, dangerous life."

She nods, no emotion showing on her face. "It's what I've worked for all this time."

A confused Igenlode decides to drop the matter. "So what are you going to do now?"

"Back to the Caribbean. And then... buy a plantation probably, something like that." Again she reaches for the bottle.

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" The attempt to cheer Dutch up misses its goal.

"Is it?" She looks into his eyes, the most open, honest look he's ever seen from her. "A life like that, sitting around in one place all the time, no real work to do, the same day slowly passing over and over again until you're glad when death finally comes to get you..." She smiles a sad smile. "It's not for me."

"But wasn't that your goal?"

"Yes, I suppose it was. It was my goal because it was a logical goal, a goal everybody strives to achieve. But now I'm there..." Her left hand subconsciously plays with her sash as her right picks up the bottle. "I don't know. I never really planned this far. I was never sure I'd get there."

"And now?"

"Enough of all these questions," sighs Dutch. "What about you then? What will you do?"

Igenlode's eyes drift away. "I don't know either."

"Good! We're both adrift then!" Cheerfully Dutch offers Igenlode the bottle, which he politely refuses.

* * *

Out at sea, a newly appointed junior lieutenant stands on watch as HMS Bellingham sails into the harbor of Singapore. There has been an outburst of piratical activity thereabout, and although His Majesty has little interests in the area itself, the danger that the number of pirates, when not controlled, will continue to grow, and move to India and other pieces of British soil, is a very real one. But not one pirate ship has been identified during the long passage from Cape Town, leaving Tom's desire for revenge unquenched. As the sun is about to set, his eye suddenly falls on the silhouette of a sloop. He recognizes it immediately. Without delay, he hurries below deck to alert the Captain.

A heavy moon hangs over the ocean, painting the world in silver and black. Willem Andrieszoon stands on a rickety wooden porch and stares down into the gutter below, watching a dead dog wedged upside down amid the trickling mud. One withered limb juts stick-like from the corpse like a pike thrust into its bloated belly. Willem is barely even conscious of what he is seeing, or the squalor of his surroundings. His mind is consumed with the Horizon and her crew.

The money at his belt drags down like a shackle of conscience, stained with blood. Ben Warley -- he catches himself thinking of the pirates by name, as individuals, and scowls -- the pirate quartermaster had thrust it upon him as he'd tried to leave the ship. His share. For services rendered: for hauling on ropes and manhandling sails that thrust that wicked thing of grace across the seas into the path of her next victim, for doctoring the bodies of the sewer-scum who manned her, to keep them some few weeks longer from the long eternity of retribution that surely awaited them. For saving the life of that grasping queen-mantis they had chosen to rule over them.

Willem touches the pouch again, in an almost convulsive gesture that over the past few hours has become a habit. He can almost sense the slime of corruption that clings to his hands. For a moment, his fingers clench to rip the weight away and hurl it down into the stench below, to lie amid the rotting curs and nightsoil of this world where it belongs. But common sense, the common-sense that has kept him alive until now despite everything, tells him he cannot. He has to get away from here and clear his name, prove to the V.O.C. -- the East India Company -- that he held to his trust, that he is an honest man and no pirate, or he will never set foot on a Company ship, let alone ever see his home again. And to do that, in the venal world of the Indies, will take cash.

He stares down at the dockside quarter, where the lights burn late. Even from up here he can hear the faint sound of the raucous celebrations, where the Horizon's crew mingle with the rest in drunken hilarity and riotous debauch, gaming and wenching away their newfound wealth. No doubt some of them will be stabbed to death before morning, or vanished into the Chinese quarter under opium's slow embrace. They are contemptible, all of them, he tells himself violently, sick with distaste. All of them: slow Warley, genial fuddled Jones, Micawber with her high sweet whistle and nimble fingers, lanky brown Pete, grizzled Annie, Johnson with his needle and thread -- he catches himself up short again, forcing himself to see them once more as a faceless mass.

They are pirates. Men who have chosen to drain the life's work of others with violence and greed, to prey upon the honest man sooner than do a hand's turn of work for themselves. He would not lift one finger to save any of them.

And Igenlode, that queer little dazzled nonentity swept along in their wake, who would never quite belong -- Igenlode, who had all but promised to help him find his way to Java or the Spice Islands of the Moluccas and there prove his innocence -- Igenlode, supposedly in disgrace, was down there with the rest of them without a thought for Willem, doubtless busy hero-worshipping that swaggering bitch of a captain as ever. And carousing. A fresh wave of discordant song drifts up from the ramshackle roofs below, and Willem sets his teeth and stares out over the bay.

The tangle of countless yardarms out in the roadstead is a filigree of night against the silver, and Chinese junks, Arab booms and square-rigged galleons and carracks cluster together in wary truce. A larger shape out towards the point is a big warship that must have come in with the last breath of the onshore breeze just after dark. English, Willem decides, looking at the lines of her bow. A ship of the line, probably a seventy-four.

Something nearby catches his eyes out there on the water, and he frowns, trying to make it out. For a minute or two it eludes him, then he sees it again, further away from the warship's squat bulk. Something moving spidery, crabwise across the anchorage; another splash of pale water as a careless oar catches the surface tells him suddenly what it is he is looking at. Boats: one, two, three, four, five, six of them, heavily laden and rowing slowly. A brief flash of steel catches the moon as someone moves, and Willem recognises it as a musket-barrel.

Despite himself, his gaze is drawn along the line of their course to a small vessel moored close in to the shore, with a single riding-light slung low on her forestay. There are half a dozen other ships moored close by, any one of which could be the boats' intended target, but something keeps drawing his eyes back to that one little sloop. With all the swift lines of her hull slumbering, the Horizon lies quietly on the water, only a few discontented crewmen left to keep watch.

Without thinking Willem takes a step forward, almost stumbling into the street. There is a mesmerising inevitability about what is going to happen, and his own concerns are entirely forgotten.

For a while Willem keeps shifting his eyes from the boats to the Horizon and back, tension building as the distance between them becomes shorter and shorter. Then the first boat reaches the Horizon, and Willem's trance is broken. This could be it -- a chance to clear himself quickly.

Willem hurries down to the dock and takes a small boat that is tied up there, telling his conscience that he will return it later. Rowing to the Horizon seems to take forever, but it can't have taken long, as orders are still being given on deck, the return of the pirates apparently not yet expected. When Willem climbs aboard, he is almost shot by a soldier who is caught completely by surprise.

"No! Don't shoot!" Willem throws his hands up in the air.

A young officer steps up; Tom, who has almost begged his Captain to let him lead the takeover of the Horizon. It was easy, but up till now rather disappointing, only a few pirates found on the sloop.

"Returning early, are we?" The youth in the voice surprises Willem a little. "When may we expect your crewmates?"

"I'm not a pirate! I mean, I was, but they forced me! You have no idea what they did to me!" Indeed they didn't, thought Willem, but a little plea for sympathy couldn't hurt. "I never killed anyone, I never participated in an attack, I never so much as held a weapon, I swear!"

"I don't see anyone forcing you to return." Tom's voice is heavy with sarcasm.

"I... escaped. I saw your arrival. I want to help you catch these pirates. They must pay for their crimes, and for what they did to me. My name must be cleared, or I'll never be able to work on a respectable ship again." The British weren't the Dutch, of course, but the relationship between the nations was relatively peaceful at the moment. And even if word of Willem's aid in capturing the pirates that captured him didn't reach the V.O.C., a possible job on a British ship was still better than no job at all.

Tom believes Willem's story, but is still doubtful of his offer. "Just how are you planning to help?"

"I can tell you where the pirates are."

"What use is that? They'll come back here sooner or later."

"Not all of them. Their ill-gotten loot has been divided, and some will certainly search their luck elsewhere."

"If we wanted to find them, we could look for them ourselves. Military action ashore would be very risky here." Nevertheless, the possible escape of some of the pirates doesn't sit well with Tom.

"I'll witness against them! I know everyone -- their names, their duties... I know when and where this sloop has attacked other ships and ports... I know the system the clerk uses in his paperwork, which will make for additional evidence. Please! I'll do anything! I want them hanged, and I want my life back!"

Tom frowns. "What was your name? What was your old ship?"

The plausible-sounding answer comes swiftly enough, and Tom stares at him absently, one hand stroking his smooth chin in a gesture that unconsciously echoes Captain Hunter's close-shaven rasp. He believes Willem's story as far as it goes; but there's no denying the man looks a villainous lot, with his gap-toothed mouth and battered features.

That could be down to ill-treatment, of course. The grievance sounds fervent enough... a little too fervent for his liking. There's an almost religious ardour about Willem's urgency that reminds the young lieutenant of the Puritan 'Ranters', busy calling down hellfire to confound the spectre of the temptations that beset them. He doesn't doubt anything the sailor has said as such -- but if it came down to it, he wouldn't gamble the lives of his men on Willem's last-minute loyalties. He's pretty certain. Just not certain enough.

Besides, the man's clearly a Dutchman, a member of that accursed mercantile race. Tom is too young to have served in the last Dutch War, and their countries are nominally at peace, but the prejudices of the Navy are as stubborn as ever. The Dutch care nothing for conquest, they care only for trade, but their East India Company is as rapacious in its monopoly as the Inquisition.

Still, Tom decides, the man's testimony may be useful. Of course, he'll have to stand his trial along with the rest of the pirates. But if he is telling the truth about being forced aboard, and if he co-operates in giving evidence against the others, he will be released.

The young lieutenant turns on his heel and scans the pirate ship's deck. By comparison with the Bellingham or even the old Hecate the sloop is tiny, and despite the fact that half the boarding party is busy searching below decks, in the lantern-light she is very crowded with Bellingham's sailors and marines. Tom locates a nearby Corporal of Marines, and nods in Willem's direction. "Clap this man in irons."

For an instant, the Dutchman doesn't seem to understand what he has just heard; then he starts to struggle violently against the burly Corporal. "What? You can't! You can't do that. I'm on your side. I came here to help! I'm the only one who knows where the pirates are..."

"Take him away," Tom orders, his voice cracking in the attempt at authority.

Willem's voice recedes. "What do you think you're doing? What are you playing at? Where's your duty? What are you, some schoolboy dressed up in powder and a fine laced coat --"

"Shall I shut 'im up, sir?" the Corporal volunteers, indignant at this insult to an officer of His Majesty's Navy. A moment later, a massive fist has descended on Willem's jaw and the half-dazed man is being dragged off.

Tom, whose cheeks are flaming scarlet at the insinuation, takes a deep breath, willing his voice not to break into its childish treble. Rousting out the pirate crew from some den of vice or gambling-house by force is out of the question, not least because -- as he had no intention of disclosing to Willem -- he is under strict and specific orders not to provoke what could be a potential situation on shore. But if he could induce the pirates to return...

He has an idea of his own on that score which does not depend in any way upon Willem's aid, and which need not involve the authorities ashore in any manner, shape or form. He also has a pretty fair idea of what his commanding officer's reaction will be if his actions prove not to yield results -- the sloop herself is worth a fair bit of prize-money -- but he is prepared to risk that. After all, very junior lieutenants in a ship of the line get few enough opportunities to distinguish themselves, and he means to carve a career as an active and aspiring officer in the hope of attracting some patron of repute. And, although he doesn't consciously admit it, he wants to be the one to lay hands on the treacherous captain of this ship himself.

He takes another deep breath, looking around. The men will have to stay down out of sight, or lie off in the boats. Some slow-match will be needed, and a supply of tinder and rag. Best to pump a supply of water into the pirates' own unused jolly-boat, up on her chocks, just in case... With one final glance towards the nearby shore and a certain fluttering in the pit of his stomach, Tom Vereker begins to give his orders.

* * *

Most of the Horizon's crew are very drunk. Igenlode observes this with the tolerant eye of one who, while by no means cold sober, cannot be said to be more than two or three sheets in the wind. Fortunes have changed hands on the turn of a card or the cast of a pair of dice, doubtless to be forgotten by morning, and one crewman tried to offer a Malay serving-girl a hundred pounds to take off her clothes and dance in the centre of the table, only to be hustled indignantly out to the back and the private rooms for such affairs. Several have tried to start fights; but the crew of the Horizon so greatly outnumber the other patrons of the establishments round about that there have been few takers for such drunken challenge, and the pirates are now in more or less undisputed possession of the whole street.

Many of them have reached the maudlin stage, weeping over long-lost comrades and faithless lights'o'love in the tearful companionship of men who will go their separate ways upon the morrow. Dutch, having finished one bottle and continued to drink her way steadily down another, has reached the stage where she is splashing as much across the table as down her throat, and veering by turns between loose-limbed and uncomfortably physical affection and pugnacious distrust of all those around her. Igenlode wonders if it would be better simply to let her pass out on the table, as she seems to be inclined, or to try to get her to sleep it off in a more comfortable position.

The windows of their current tavern are small and covered by sheets of dirty horn. The faint tongues of fire leaping up, down in the bay, draw little attention. It is only Dutch, seized by a fit of suspicion, who frowns at the orange flicker for a moment and then stumbles to the door, swaying widely as the unaccustomed fresh air spills into the room.

"Fire!" It is a croak of disbelief from someone behind her. "Fire in the harbour..."

"That's my ship," Dutch manages thickly. "Why, those addle-brained no-good swabs of a deck watch --"

Words fail her. She gazes around with bleary eyes, espies a half-full water-butt in the shadows of a neighbouring alley, and plunges head and shoulders into the barrel before a shocked Igenlode can stop her. Stagnant water mingles with the wine-stains on her front as she comes up spluttering, and plasters her short fair hair to her scalp. A skeletal leaf clings to the gold hoop in one ear, quivering slightly in the night air.

She stares down at the anchorage, where isolated patches of flames can now be seen at several places in the ship's rigging. "Something... not right..."

But whatever warning instinct is struggling up through the spirituous haze in her brain is drowned out by the rush from behind her as the word spreads among her crew. A moment later a drunken mob of pirates is swarming down towards the waterfront to save the ship, bearing a dripping Dutch off in their midst.

Igenlode tries to plunge forward after them on legs that are unaccountably wayward, trips heavily, and crashes a swimming head against the doorpost. A sunburst of pain blocks out the rising sparks below; and then there is nothing but blurry dark oblivion. The little clerk joins several other patrons of the establishment in a slumped, heavy-breathing heap.

* * *

Lieutenant Vereker, in temporary command of His Majesty's Sloop-of-War Aurora, also known as the pirate ship Horizon, is kneeling in an undignified posture of excitement behind the bulwarks of his prize. The crowd of men pushing down towards the lanterns of the jetty is quite visible, even from here. Behind him, the sloop's decks are dimly-lit by the flickering light from the rags burning in her rigging, having been carefully cleared of anything that might cause suspicion. So far, his ruse has worked entirely. The slight land-breeze is in his favour, stirring his lures into vigorous life.

He can't keep himself from glancing up anxiously now and then, despite his excitement. Judging by the scent of burning tar, some of the flames are starting to spread to the neighbouring ropes, despite his precautions to damp everything down. If the pirates take too long to get here, the fire may have gained too strong a hold to be put out again. In that case, no matter how glorious the capture, he will be lucky to get off with a reprimand.

But it's too late to do anything about it now; and he is prepared to take that gamble. Frankly, if it weren't for his duty, this is one ship he'd be only too happy to see burning to the waterline in any case.

Despite their drunkenness, Dutch's crew is fast to arrive at the dock. Rowing the boats to the Horizon, however, proves a slightly more difficult task, each rower following his own rhythm until a few shouts from Dutch get them more or less synchronized. Several times during the short trip she shakes her head vehemently (one time almost falling overboard, her sense of balance dimished considerably by the alcohol in her blood), both to express her dissatisfaction with the crew and to try and clear her head. It has limited results.

The closer they get to the Horizon, the more certain Dutch is that something doesn't add up. Her eyes vaguely register the large ship in the distance, but she fails to recognize it, or even pay much attention to it, too busy worrying about her sloop.

***

The pirates climb aboard swiftly. Dutch is among the first of them, immediately cursing as she doesn't see the men that are supposed to be on watch anywhere. Maybe they sneaked ashore. But then what caused the fire? While she looks up at the rigging to assess the situation, the last of her crew steps on deck.

Then, out of nowhere, an unfamiliar voice: "Drop your weapons!"

Suddenly men appear all around, their bright red uniforms all too recognizable in the flickering of the flames, muskets aimed at the pirates.

A young lieutenant steps up. "I said: drop your weapons."

Reluctantly, the pirates do as they're told. A few of them glance at Dutch first to see if she has other plans, but they really have no choice. Dutch knows this too. And even if some ingenious escape were possible, she's in no state to come up with a plan. She is not so drunk that she doesn't realize this, which makes the situation all the more bitter.

While some of the soldiers begin to tie up the pirates one by one and send them below, the lieutenant singles out Dutch. "Are you the so-called Captain of this sloop?"

"My, they keep making them younger," says Dutch to no one in particular. "Yes, son, I am the Captain. Voted so by the crew and thus arguably more Captain than any Captain you've come across."

"I've met many a Captain better than you," Tom manages through clenched teeth. "Captain Hunter of His Majesty's frigate Hecate, among others."

Slowly the pieces fall together. "Ah... you're the imp!" A sudden wave of panic hits Dutch as she thinks about Igenlode and how terrible it will be for him to get recognized. She casts a worried look at the men still on deck (a look Tom registers, with some pleasure, as fear of him), but she doesn't spot the clerk. Then she realizes that she hasn't seen him in a while.

But there's not much time to worry about Igenlode. One of the soldiers now reaches Dutch and pulls her arms roughly behind her back. He starts to tie them together, but stops abruptly, reaches into a sleeve, and pulls out a small knife. He hands it to Tom before he continues to tie Dutch up. Tom studies the knife before glaring at Dutch.

"I'm terribly sorry." Dutch produces her most charming smile. "I completely forgot that was in there."

"I'm sure you did." The nerve of that brazen, drunken, murderous... Tom's anger gets the better of him, and he points the knife at Dutch's throat.

Dutch instinctively takes a step back, but the soldier is still there and holds her in place. After an annoyed glance over her shoulder, Dutch turns to Tom again. "Business before pleasure, love. Don't you think it's about time you prevent my ship from burning down?"

She's right. He should give orders, stop the fire... but not yet. He'll be damned if he takes advice from a pirate. "Maybe I won't," says Tom, his voice and his hand with the knife both trembling. "Maybe I will tell my men to get back in the boats and return to Bellingham, bringing only you along to stand trial, so you can watch your stolen ship burn down with all those despicable pirates in it."

Somewhere deep inside Dutch, a small voice of reason is screaming not to respond to this whelp who feels he has something to prove, as no good can come of it. But the voice is quickly drowned, Tom's suggestion too grave for Dutch to simply let it pass, especially in her current condition. "You don't want to be doing that, son. Do that, and I will sail around the world killing off every single person you ever knew, until you will finally beg me to kill you. And I will start..." Dutch adopts a pensive look, which she quickly replaces with a malicious grin. "... in Cape Town, with your mother Johanna."

For a moment, absurdly enough, it is the insult to his manly independence that stings the most. Then a sense of violation at the intimacy of it enraging him, as if he had caught a pickpocket with her hand inside the breast of his coat. How dare this creature, this strumpet, this unnatural jade presume to speak of herself in the same breath with any decent woman, let alone one he loves?

Then, finally, cold fear at the suggestion, despite everything common sense can do to stop it. She's not bluffing, Tom recognises grimly, staring back at the drunken bravado beneath the ragged convict-crop. It wasn't -- couldn't have been -- a guess at random. She knows his home, his family and where he comes from. And he remembers his mother as he had last seen her during those brief two days' leave before he was posted to the Bellingham, black-veiled and weeping, poking through the ruin of Igenlode's empty rooms with a little helpless gesture as if there were no point even in trying to begin.

As in all the other houses in the street, the pirates had wrecked everything. What was not stolen had been ripped apart or simply overturned, wigs daubed with soot or plastered with a mockery of mud, wickerwork splintered, the precious casket of books forced open in search of cash and then scattered across the floor in disgust. There was something indescribably pathetic about those fluttering pages, once cherished so much. His mother, who could not herself read a word, had sunk down amid the debris in a billow of skirts and burst into tears he had not known how to comfort.

And then there had been the unspeakable rumours against their family from the Klaasz banking house. He had put paid to those, at least. There had been enough death and destruction at the hands of the pirates without any need to slander the memory of those who had fallen victim in their turn. But his mother, so gentle and feminine, had been left alone and bereaved with her son's slender wage as her sole support, and that tiny sum won only at the cost of the duty that compels him to sail again and leave her.

Tom remembers his father's death, when he was ten. Remembers the months of weeping, of darkened rooms, of Igenlode's patient visits and coaxing that had gradually brought the roses back to her cheeks and the spring back into her step as before. And now there would be no-one for her to turn to. Igenlode, dreamy and bookish, had never hurt anyone -- but that hadn't helped when random violence came calling. As with so many others that day, there hadn't even been a body to lay to rest.

Perhaps, by now, a swollen corpse has come in on the tide, to be given the proper rites, or been unearthed down a well -- Tom, who has been in battle, flinches from the thought. Perhaps Johanna has the consolation of the ritual of burial, of flowers, of her own frail beauty 'pale and interesting' as mourner-in-chief -- he has never grudged his mother her little vanities, and can guess at the comfort she would derive, almost without knowing it, as the cynosure of all eyes at the graveside. But their little family has been torn apart once already by the brutality of casual, felonious sea-robbers like the drunken vixen who stands before him and brags of murder. Now she dares to threaten the one being who is left to him?

"Toss her over the side."

To his fury, his voice shakes, and he scowls at the amazed soldier who gawps back at him. "Didn't you hear me? Fix a rope to her wrists, and drop her overboard -- let's see if salt water will quench that scolding tongue..."

Judging by the way she's swearing, Tom deduces with satisfaction, the woman evidently can't swim. It doesn't surprise him. Not one in twenty of the sailors and marines now crowding round eagerly to see the ducking can make headway in the water either -- few enough seafaring men can, in a profession where drowning takes place out of sight of land, and swimming can only preserve life a few handfuls of painful minutes longer. In any case, he doesn't mean to drown her outright -- though she may not thank him for it, when they yank her up by the rope that binds her hands behind her back...

* * *

It would have gladdened Willem's heart a great deal more to see the pirates bound and thrust below -- wine-sodden beasts that they are, he notices sourly -- if he had not been in chains himself. As it is, he is able to take only an academic pleasure in the sight. Despite his furious disavowals, which his former shipmates seem determined to do their utmost to undermine by muzzy and affectionate greetings addressed in his direction, he can't manage to persuade the marines guarding him that he is nothing to do with the rest of the prisoners and should be released, or at the least kept in separate quarters. They persist in treating him as one of Dutch's knavish crew and remain stolidly deaf to all protests, even when he attempts to point out the unmistakable aroma of smoke that is starting to drift down the hatches.

From all around, he can hear the sounds of Chinese junks raising sail and Malay trading craft hastily hauling in their mooring-lines, in what any sailor could tell is an evident attempt to sheer away from the floating death-trap this sloop will become if the apparent fire is allowed to spread any further. Soon the entire anchorage will be in a panic. Most of his fellow-prisoners are too drunk to notice, but Willem's imagination depicts to him only too vividly what will be the fate of anyone trapped below-decks in such a case. He had planned to set light to the powder-magazine of the Belle-Marie. If the Horizon's powder takes light, burning to death will be the least of their problems.

But the marines, held deaf and blind to reason by the dictates of their duty, refuse to listen to the pleas of a man in irons and continue to stand on guard, covering all exits. Despite himself, Willem is brought to scanning the dispirited pirates in search of some potential ally to back him up. He notes with private and somewhat shamefaced relief that Igenlode is not among those captured -- despite misguided loyalties, the little clerk doesn't deserve to hang.

He also notes, with rather more perturbation, that Dutch is not present either. It's not so much that he needs her as a potential aide in any escape -- although fairness drives him to acknowledge in all justice that she would probably be a useful choice in such a role. It's simply that the unpleasant future which appears to be forthcoming is going to be considerably less bearable without the consolation of watching her take that same ugly road before him.

* * *

In the great cabin of the Bellingham, the table is set for seven. Bright cutlery embellishes the snowy white cloth, and the decanter glows serenely amber in anticipation of the toasts at the meal's end. But at present, the diners are tucking into the soup course with a good will and a hearty appetite that has suppressed the normal buzz of conversation -- Captain Sir Edward Petterbridge rejoices in the possession of an excellent cook, and for the officers of the wardroom to be invited to share the captain's table is not only a privilege but a pleasure to be appreciated to the full.

Indeed, the company is so absorbed in the nourishment of the inner man that the unobtrusive entrance of the officer of the watch initially goes unnoticed. Lieutenant Porthwaite, unlucky enough to be on duty while his peers partake of the captain's generosity, shifts his feet and coughs again, deferentially.

Petterbridge looks up, raising an impatient grey brow. "Well, what is it, Mr Porthwaite?"

"Sir Edward..." Porthwaite hesitates, then plunges on. "It's the sloop, sir. The pirate sloop. She's on fire there, across the harbour."

"Is she, by George?" All around the table, chairs are thrust back.

Petterbridge, who has remained seated, shoots a glare at his officers and fixes Porthwaite with a penetrating stare. "Are you sure, Mr Porthwaite? It could be a ruse."

"Quite sure, sir. Her cordage and spars are well alight, and the flames have taken hold on the foc's'le. I've had my glass on her these past few minutes..."

"And our boats? Our men? What's young Vereker doing out there? He's got all my boats and a fair part of my crew!"

"He's..." Porthwaite swallows. "He's aft, sir. Questioning a prisoner."

The captain scowls, no doubt recognising the euphemism. "This isn't the time for that sort of thing, by thunder! If the word gets round we were responsible for a fire-ship on the loose in the harbour here -- as well it might, if Certain Powers were to see advantage in it -- we could have a major diplomatic incident on our hands. Clear the guns away aft; we may have to send the sloop to the bottom ourselves, before every ship in the offing gets into a panic. And make a night signal to Lieutenant Vereker: Return at once. If he's got prisoners, I want 'em in the boats and over here before the hue-and-cry starts. Confound the boy, why couldn't he keep a better watch on his prize? The Admiralty would have bought her back into the service, and at a pretty sum, or I'll eat my wig..."

* * *

Willem batters furiously on the hatches with fettered wrists, to no avail. There is little doubt enough now that the ship is on fire, and the smoke has become sufficient to prevail upon their guards to abandon their duty and seek out further orders; but evidently their sense of obligation does not extend to leaving prisoners unlocked in the process. Whatever is going on up on deck, the stationed marines have yet to return. Willem strongly suspects that they have been ordered to seek refuge over the side in the British ship's boats, and the pirates left to perish with their ill-gotten vessel, either inadvertently or of intent.

He and the others have been forgotten -- or abandoned. He hears the dull boom of a signal gun in the distance, and guesses that the big warship is indicating her displeasure. If he knows anything of the Navy, that whippersnapper lieutenant won't be doing well out of this night's work. The thought is some consolation, but not much. He glares round at his companions. But they have not so much as a wet cloth between them against the smoke.

Igenlode's eyes flutter open at the blast out in the harbor, audible enough so close to the door. There's a face hovering above him that belongs to a young woman he doesn't know. But before he even realizes where he is, the face disappears, pulling along a hand that was feeling around in Igenlode's pockets. He lies still for a while, letting the cool air flowing into the tavern clear his head a little.

A tavern... right. Slowly memories of what happened come back, and the significance of the gun shot hits him.

Oh no. First the fire on the Horizon, now this... Igenlode isn't sure yet how it all fits together, but it can't be good. He works his way to a standing position, and, still dizzy from the blow to his head, slowly makes his way to the docks, using walls and whatever else is at hand for support.

The sight of the Horizon is hardly reassuring, the fire spread far beyond the few isolated patches in the rigging. Igenlode tries to make out the shadows of people on deck, but he can't identify anyone from this distance. Then he notices the man-of-war, and suddenly feels sick.

* * *

Most of the soldiers aboard the Horizon are getting very nervous about the fire, but Tom seems blissfully ignorant, and they can't take any action without him saying so. They are relieved when the Bellingham fires a warning shot: that should finally make him come to his senses again. But there is no reaction from the lieutenant, who, intoxicated by his position of power, is absorbed in punishing Dutch for her unforgivable insinuations.

"Pull her aboard." Tom seems almost disappointed to give the order, but it has to be done. No bubbles have broken the water surface for a while now, and it is already the third time the pirate has been ducked. The first time was clearly not long enough, Dutch cursing and kicking as soon as she was out of the water. The second attempt was a lot better, but Tom was not yet satisfied, thinking he heard "mother" somewhere in Dutch's tirade. Now there is sound nor movement at the end of the rope. It isn't until Dutch lands, rather roughly, on deck, that a small stream of water comes out of her mouth, and she can attempt to breathe again, gasping between watery coughs.

The soldiers, previously amused by seeing Dutch's struggles and the wet clothes sticking to her body, are too worried about their own lives now to pay much attention.

"Lieutenant..." starts one.

"Silence!" Tom rounds on Dutch again. "Have you finally learned your lesson, pirate?"

Dutch's shoulder, though her wound there is long healed, hurts immensely from the way she was harshly pulled up by her wrists, and she is exhausted from fighting for air. Nevertheless, she can't resist commenting. "My ship..." She breaks off, coughing. "... idiot!"

"Lieutenant, she's right," whispers a soldier urgently into Tom's ear. "It's too late to save the ship, and the Bellingham has already fired a warning shot. If we don't go back now, they'll not only blow this ship out of the water, but us along with it."

This finally gets through to Tom. But before he can decide what to do, there is a loud crack from above, as part of a burning spar breaks off and falls down.

The boy crumples slowly, looking almost surprised. The charred section of wood, still trailing its massive block -- upper topsail yard, Dutch identifies automatically, without thinking -- crashes to the deck between Dutch and the rest, barely even slowed by the glancing blow. For a moment, shock seems to hold motionless all those present.

Then Dutch moves, dragging the rope from the hands of the marines who hold her and darting free into the only refuge left: the inferno that is the foredeck. Flames surround her within seconds, licking across her dripping clothing and hair and hiding any pursuers from view, but she ducks her head and stumbles on, aiming blindly for the darker sanctuary of clear deck beyond, where the fire has not yet reached past the bowsprit chain. The trailing rope snags and almost trips her, leaving her gasping in burning air from which the breath itself seems to have been drained. She jerks it loose with hands whose backs are already bare and shiny in the heat, to gain a few precious yards up to the rail before it jams again and catches her. Fire is starting to lick hungrily up along the unsoaked end.

No-one has followed her. Dutch bears her teeth in grim amusement, unsurprised. With the commanding officer down, she wouldn't give that collection of lobsterbacks credit for enough initiative to follow her into the depths of a handy tavern, let alone to seemingly certain death.

And it will be certain, if she can't get herself free of these ropes. Even in the few seconds it has taken her to recover her bearings in the blaze, the space of clear deck has shrunk perceptibly, and her clothes are beginning to dry on her in the heat. Dutch sets her jaw and locates the one item she has been aiming for: the little water-breaker up on the rail beside the heads.

Festooned with loops of rope, the tiny barrel has never been used. It is secured there as a precaution, like its twin astern, and intended to be flung to a man overboard in a bid to keep him afloat. Beside it, to sever the lashings, is a knife secured with a twist of twine and kept razor-sharp. Dutch backs towards the weapon, feeling for the hilt of the blade with her bound hands as her lungs heave in the starved air, and praying as she has never done before that the fastenings will come free at a touch.

The knife comes loose into her hand, and she almost drops it in the wash of relief, feeling a chill break across her shoulders at the very thought despite the hell all around. Jam it in the lashings... that's right... She gets the hilt wedged firmly and hacks frantically at the bonds behind her back, sawing her wrists against the pressure despite the inevitable nicks and slices as the edge slips. She can feel the rope giving way and rubs even harder, yanking her wrists apart as the first exploratory flame licks up the side of her hand. It hurts -- but not half as much as the sudden release of the strain on her shoulders.

It is a moment before she can grab up the knife and slash the remnants of the knots free; a moment she spends in consigning the collective souls of the young lieutenant, his men, and the entire Royal Navy to the most inventively agonising version of the afterlife she can think of. Then she uses the knife to rip a long strip from the hem of her shirt against the smoke, and dives aft through a curtain of fire in escape from a refuge no living thing can much longer survive.

As she runs there comes a rending crash and a groan that shakes the ship to her very timbers, as if the Horizon herself is crying out in her death-throes. Dutch finds her face suddenly wet with tears. It has to be the smoke.

She expects to meet opposition when she bursts back down into the waist, knife at the ready; but the decks are all but clear, with the last of the Bellingham's men scrambling pell-mell down into the boats. Lying twisted across the ship, in a tangle of shrouds and blazing rigging, the wreck of the mizzen-mast bears mute witness to their flight. Several unmoving shapes lie crumpled beneath its length. The jury-rig inflicted by the Hecate's guns has finally given up the ghost... but not without a fitting revenge.

Dutch catches a glimpse of a pair of pistols jutting from the belt of the nearest body, and stoops for a moment to re-arm herself. She recognises the uniform coat an instant before she sees the face, white and twisted in pain. Tom Vereker's eyes drift open, unseeing.

"Help me." One hand scrabbles at the crushing weight that pins him, like a child trying to fend off a mountain, then brushes against the edge of her sleeve and clings. A trickle of blood from the blow that left him for dead still shows at his temple. "Help me... Mother, help..."

"Not on your nelly," Dutch retorts, recoiling. She jams his pistols into her belt and ducks under the fallen mast, desperate to reach her men. But she makes the mistake of looking back.

The little figure lies very still. For the first time, with the lines of pain deep across his face and his head thrown back, she can see the resemblance to Igenlode in the unformed features. Dutch bites her lip.

"Damn you," she says softly into thin air, a long moment later, and plunges back under the massive spar to try pull the boy free.

As it turns out, it's a decision that almost certainly saves her life.

* * *

A wave of heat breathes down between the heavy timbers of the forehatch, and drives Willem back. The underside of the upper deck is scorching, and he can hear nothing above save the crackle of flame. The Horizon's captors have evidently abandoned her as precipitately as they had come.

Drunken as they are, the pirates have caught the prevailing note of panic. Willem tries to keep calm. Without guards, there's no way to keep a large body of men imprisoned below hatches in harbour. It's just a matter of time before they break out. But with the fire raging, time is the one thing in increasingly short supply.

Most of the prisoners have their hands only roughly bound, and several have already managed to free one another. Halfpence Annie, who seems to have a harder head for drink at her size than Willem would have credited -- or has simply managed to drink less -- is trying to get them to untie the rest. All very well for them, the young Dutchman thinks sourly, but the keys to the fetters that fasten his own hands securely in front of him and hobble his legs are safely stowed on the naval lieutenant's belt and all too obviously out of reach. And while he wouldn't expect them to care about him, several of the pirates first captured are also in irons.

A crash from further aft, as someone gets a gun-port open -- finally, some sense! -- but then a dismayed babble. The decks are filling with smoke, and outbreaks of coughing make it almost impossible to hear.

"What's going on?" Willem struggles with the crowd, cursing his chains, as those at the back press closer and those at the front try to edge back. He almost falls, and is forced to cling with both hands to the shirt-front of a hulking yokel, known to all and sundry as 'Peppermouth Tom', who evidently fails to appreciate the gesture. The big man frees himself roughly, with a back-hander that leaves Willem's head ringing. The Dutchman bites his lip, only a tenuous sense of self-preservation enabling him to choke back a stream of profanity against all pirates across the Seven Seas, and towering English yokels in particular.

"What's going on? Why aren't you escaping? We've got to get out of here!"

"Boats..." someone protests, as Willem finally gets close to the front of the crowd. "The sea down below be full of guard-boats..."

And indeed Willem himself can glimpse the confusion of oars and uniform coats across the snatch of sea offered by the gun-port, as the sailors and marines who had boarded the ship attempt to pull hastily away from their doomed prize. But it is obvious, even at a glance, that they are far more interested in saving their own skins than in mounting guard around the Horizon.

"The more boats the better -- you wouldn't want to drown, would you?" Willem is practically grinding his teeth. Trying to get the pirates moving is like trying to row through treacle in some nightmare dream, and all the time there is the steady roar of the flames above, like a hissing fuse only he can hear. One spark in the powder magazine... just one spark... He wrenches at the irons on his wrists in an effort to pull loose, the association of thoughts bringing back despite himself memories of the Belle-Marie's lazarette. But his fists are big and raw-boned, far stronger and broader than Igenlode's slight, womanish hands, and unlike the clerk there is no way that he will ever be able to slip free.

"Get going, lads," Annie is urging, as a few of the pirates begin at last to thrust open other gun-ports and squeeze their way through. Splashes and flailing from outside mark their departure. "Why, those Jack Tars are so sentimental, they wouldn't turn away the rats from a burning ship--"

"Belike they'd fatten 'em up for the midshipmen's mess," some wag puts in, and the old jibe -- not without its grain of truth -- raises a drunken cheer. But at least they're moving now. The air is full of choking smoke, and little threads of fire are starting to drip from above as the deck caulking melts.

"You want rid of those gyves, Will mate?" Simmy is grinning up at him in a conspiratorial half-baked fashion, the fumes of arrack almost overpowering on his breath. Willem backs away a hasty, stumbling pace without thinking, but the little man's cheerful monkey-face follows him. "Magic Fingers, they used to call me... never a pocket, a lock, or a petticoat-lace unpicked..."

He is running his fingers up and down Willem's ankles with an air of sizing-up, and with an effort the young man keeps from flinching away. So that infernal women fills her crew with Newgate gaol-birds. He's probably been sharing quarters unbeknownst with rapists and wife-murderers as well as cracksmen, crooks and petty thieves... But Simmy seems to know what he is doing, even if his fingers are clumsy with drink and the beaming good-will of his tipsy grin is contorted with periodic anguish, as he drops the piece of bent wire he is using yet again among scuffling feet.

Willem endures, with an ill-grace, and even manages a few unwilling words of thanks as the shackles finally fall loose on the deck. The next moment, as the little Londoner reaches up to fumble at the lock on his wrist, a sudden backward surge of bodies sweeps them apart.

"What is it? What are you playing at, you fools? --" The words dry up in his mouth as Peppermouth looms again, an unstoppable force stooping beneath the beams. The big pirate's face is set in a mulish scowl.

"I'll not be robbed. Every penny I got is on board this here ship, where they took it from us and tied us up -- that be a fortune, mates, a true pirate ransom enough to keep a man in silks--"

"I'll lay treasure's no good to a dead man!" Annie, squat-legged bulldog to a charging ox, thrusts herself in his path. "Why, every last farthing of my share--"

And then, in a split-second, Willem hears from below the sound he has been dreading. The momentary hiss of gunpowder.

* * *

The whole dockside is in an uproar. It's practically impossible to find a boat that hasn't already been hired -- and practically impossible to find any boatman still for hire who will agree to row out towards the burning Horizon for love or money. Igenlode, with no idea what to do out there but only a desperate hope that being on the spot will bring inspiration for something, at least, that can be found to help, offers higher and higher bribes, but all without success.

At last an elderly Chinaman seated on a step nearby, who has been listening to the arguments with an increasingly avaricious look of interest, unfolds himself, rises silently to his feet, and taps the little clerk on the elbow, indicating that the foreigner should follow. Down in the mud at the edge of the anchorage, he unties a few tufts of covering reeds, and reveals an elderly and extremely battered sampan.

Igenlode swallows; but there is no choice. The would-be Charon of the East is holding up bony fingers in indications of a totally outrageous sum which will all but exhaust every last drop of the pirate gold, but apparently he is willing at least to make the hazardous trip. And if he is prepared to risk his life in the rickety craft in the expectation of payment, presumably he believes that it will remain afloat long enough to bring them both back.

Somewhat reluctantly, Igenlode spits into the Chinaman's proffered palm in token of a bargain accepted and grasps it tightly. The old man is already standing in his boat, and the shallow vessel wobbles alarmingly as his passenger tries to clamber in, but finally they are both settled amidships, and the ferryman begins to paddle out with surprising speed.

Igenlode grips the sides tightly, and tries to ignore the inches of water washing around in the bottom of the craft. Out in the harbour, the Horizon is burning like a livid, sullen star, swathed in banks of smoke as if from her own guns in a battle that can have only one end. Igenlode feels a sudden hot prickle of tears as the flaming spars start to crumple in upon themselves, like the ashes of a bonfire falling away, and the ship's raking grace is crippled to nothing more than a selection of burning stumps. The mizzen mast sags and falls forward, leaving the aft deck momentarily clear as flames engulf her bow.

A moving silhouette darts for an instant against the glow, her figure unmistakable, and without thinking Igenlode half-rises, setting the boat rocking violently. She is trapped on the burning deck -- now she is turning -- going back! Why doesn't she jump? Why doesn't she jump?

Then another, furious face blots Dutch's figure from view, all too obviously demanding payment in advance if such antics are to continue. Igenlode feels hastily for the gold, concerned only to pay the man off and get him to sit down.

The pouch is... empty. The clerk feels, in disbelief, along the ragged slit in its bottom edge. Remembers, too late, the girl at the tavern. Stares up at the ferryman, whose eyes have narrowed into black slits of anger as realisation begins to dawn.

"Please--" Igenlode wets nervous lips, holding out a hand in supplication that flinches instinctively into defence as the old man's paddle is lifted and swung back. The clerk drops down, hunching hopelessly against a blow that looks likely to smash its target's head into pulp. Even now it is hard to comprehend the sheer monstrosity of the disappointment after a lifetime of poverty and hoarding, the fury of the miser cheated. "Please -- don't--"

And then it is too late; too late for any of them, as the blast stuns and shocks the sky, and the Horizon's ribs buckle and open up in a blaze of rosy light as if the heart itself had been ripped from her. There is a dark weight toppling like a withered tree, as the little sampan quakes suddenly,treacherously, beneath her master's feet. Then Igenlode is flung back half-senseless upon the bottom-boards, and the old man is gone. Gone into the sucking, blistered sea, carried soundlessly by the force of his own blow.

Igenlode lies huddled for long minutes in the wash of the bilges, trembling, as the strained seams work open and the sampan begins to settle deeper into the waves, following obedient as ever in her master's path. But the cold of the water bites slowly home, and the little clerk raises a tear-stained face and begins to bail, numbly, reaching for a paddle. All around, fragments of timber lie shattered, bobbing, on the sea. Other things are floating there too, blackened and bloody.

There is a chance. Igenlode refuses to believe. There is a chance.

* * *

Dutch is floating peacefully face-down in the water, rocked gently to and fro every time a wave rolls past her. Rocked in the cradle of the deep... in the arms of Mother Ocean. Which only goes to show how completely out of it she is, since never in heaven would she normally be found dead thinking such a thing.

Wait a minute. Something like panic flickers across the back of her sluggish mind. Heaven... dead... I'm not... am I?

At which point, her desperate body, presumably giving up on the hopes of getting a message through to her brain, stages a pre-emptive revolt, and brings her upright in the water and gasping in air without any conscious understanding on her part at all.

Oh well, I was wet anyway, Dutch thinks inconsequentially, as her mind, still half-stunned, slowly takes in the situation. What --

A billow douses her, and she chokes, no longer floating atop the waves but fighting them in panic as the realisation dawns. Wait -- I can't swim -- help -- Help!

She flails wildly across the surface, trying to support herself as her head goes under again, and feels the wicked grasp of mermaids at her heels, the tentacles of the Kraken dragging her down, down, down... She yells and kicks out, only to hear an answering cry from somewhere near at hand.

"Help! Where are you? Help --" A retching mouthful of salt ocean cuts her short, and something is tangling is her legs, pulling her under. Black -- slimy -- knotted --

Knotted? Dutch blinks, and in the next moment glimpses something vast and dark looming nearby. Visions of the Kraken's massive limbs are chased down by the discovery that she's snared in a trailing drift of rope, tugging slightly as the long shape rolls. She claws her way sideways with a strength born of desperation, and touches smooth wood just as a faint sound answers her splashings.

"Help -- I can't hold on..."

Hold on? Dutch thinks indignantly, clutching at the slippery bulk of what she now recognises as the toppled mizzen-mast. Some people don't know when they're well off... Then a wild grab finally locks on to the protrusion of what turns out to be a ring-bolt, and she finds purchase with her other hand and hangs on for grim life, fingertips cramping as the mast wallows beneath her weight.

It is not much, but it is enough to keep her head and shoulders out of the water. After a minute, she is able to haul herself up until she is half-hanging over the floating spar, and in some danger of being ducked from the far side. If she can just work her way along to where the cross-trees must be --

Groping fingers come down on something cold and pallid in the gloom, and she recoils, almost losing her grip as the next wave nudges her refuge out from under her. A stifled exclamation from close by. Dutch reaches out again, more cautiously, and encounters a limp hand. No response. She's seen the aftermath of shipwrecks before... battered bodies, floating limbs...

"Are you there?" she whispers furiously, fighting the urge to snatch her fingers away from whatever it is she's touching, and gets an inaudible answer. Cursing, Dutch manages to work her way upwards until she can see over to the far side of the mast.

It's a hand all right, and an arm. A tangle of rope about the shoulders, and another arm trailing away. A pale face drifting in the dusk, barely conscious. The boy is cold to the touch, and clearly without the strength to support himself much longer. Only the shrouds caught around his body are keeping him clasped against the timber and, therefore, afloat.

"I might have known..." But Dutch says it under her breath. She sighs and reaches out. "Come on, then..."

She gets her hand around Tom's arm before the mast rolls under her weight and the boy disappears under the water. There is a sudden, brief struggle.

It takes all her strength, and the last of Tom's -- the other arm is broken, along with some ribs, she suspects -- before she has him securely gripped across the width of their dimly-seen refuge. The wood is taking some of his weight. It's no longer doing much good for hers, and her fingers are already beginning to ache from hanging on; but when she tries to drag on the broken arm the boy screams, the sound thin and horrible like a dying rabbit.

"Now you know how it feels," Dutch mutters crossly, but abandons her efforts. She doesn't know how long either of them are going to be able to keep this up.

What happened? she wonders for the first time. Powder magazine must have gone up. I meant to get in more powder tomorrow -- we were down to our last few kegs. Never thought I'd owe my life to a shortage of powder and shot...

She clings grimly to the boy's arm, feeling the solid heft of the big spar beneath them. She'd been actually down behind the mast when the magazine blew. Anywhere else on the deck, and she wouldn't have stood a chance. She owes him one for that, at least. And she wants to see Igenlode's face when she turns up with His Majesty's lieutenant slung helpless across her back... she wants to see Igenlode's face again... right now, she'd give a good deal to see anybody's face...

Tom's head is heavy on her shoulder, twists of short-cropped hair sticky with salt against her cheek. The waves wash gradually higher and higher up her body, numbing her, like a cold tide carrying her away. It can't be more than half a mile to land. Maybe, if she holds on long enough, the tide will carry them in. Maybe.

But she already knows that neither of them is going to be able to last out that long.

* * * *

A few flames are still flickering across the Horizon's shattered hulk, but there is little enough left of either the graceful ship or the inferno that once raged there. The explosion, it seems, has achieved the impossible. The fire is all but dead. Blackened timbers, still hot, hiss faintly in final extinction as the remnants of the ship start to slip gradually beneath the waves.

She is a charred rib-cage, gaping obscenely between bow and stern where the force of the blast has ripped the guts out of her. Here and there, single segments like jutting spikes of bone survive, pointing skyward in accusation, with a few twisted planks still clinging to their hold. Caught like a plummeting Lucifer between Heaven and Earth, Willem hangs suspended by his hands, one more crooked black shape against the night.

Every muscle aches, and a dried trickle of blood from his ears marks the great rushing silence that has him in its grip. The cuffs that link his wrists, caught up on the fragment of hull above his head, are biting into his hands with increasing pain as his full weight hangs from them. But he is alive, and conscious of the fluke of chance that has cast him up here untouched through the heart of the whirlwind, when others were not.

He remembers a split-second glimpse of the Bellingham's boats against the orange glare, as the main deck opened up in holocaust like a rose: scurrying black-beetles against the reflected light, the multiple crowding legs that were their oars twitching in a frenzied unison of escape. Had they made it? If there are voices down below in the water, rescuers or overturned oarsmen calling out, he cannot hear them. One great roar of sound, and then nothing. (Never again, fear tells him, never again...)

He kicks out, doubling up in an attempt to work the wrist-chain free. Something gives, and he drops a few inches closer to the water. There is movement below him; a few crawling bodies like flies on the carcase as the sea laps higher up the wreck.

Others are not moving. Simmy is there, flung up by the same blast that hung Willem on high; twisted and broken. Tough little Annie, who was by them when it came, lies with eyes staring wide in a scorched face and a body ripped to shreds. No sign of Peppermouth, living or dead. No sign of most of them. Ship and men are strewn in fragments to the wind, anonymous timbers and faces drifting whole or marred to land, to make -- or be made of -- what they will.

The ship settles, leaning. It's over, Willem tells himself, still numb. Over -- and by no hand of his. That woman will never gloat over him -- nor he over her. The Horizon is gone as if these months past have never been, and no-one now can prove who was on board her and who died.

Gone -- his mouth twists -- and all that is left is the share of her guilt still stowed away in the pouch tucked prudently within his waistband. A minor fortune no-one had ever searched him for; and, by what he had heard, the last of all those carried this very evening so raucously ashore.

Washed clean by blood, he tells himself. Washed clean by blood. They are dead, and he is alive, and his feet are unbound --

One last struggle to jerk himself clear as the wreckage lists, and he is free, falling. The black water comes up to receive him in silence.

Willem kicks out in the style of his childhood, both legs together, and breaks surface, swimming strongly. A little barrel bobs close to him -- empty, by the way it floats, and trailing loops of rope. He grips it against his chest between locked hands, and starts to put some distance between himself and the sinking Horizon. She may turn turtle before she goes under, and he doesn't want to be caught by the swirl when that happens.

When, some five minutes later, the wreck finally slips beneath the waves, Willem doesn't even look back. And when Igenlode, adrift and alone in a flat-bottomed boat, calls his name, he doesn't hear. It is not until the little clerk is actually helping him over the side that he seems to realise what is going on at last... and when he understands what Igenlode is hoping for, he very nearly refuses to give any help altogether. He has been through more than enough on that particular account already.

Willem sighs, meets his rescuer's imploring eyes with a nod, and picks up a paddle. With his chained hands.

* * *

"You took long enough, love." Not for anything is Dutch going to show how very, very glad she is to see Igenlode at this minute. Her voice is just a thread, and her arms have stiffened into a death-grip over whose clutches she no longer has any control, but she manages a sidelong grin that has the old mocking edge. She looks up into the clerk's worried face, looming over the edge of the boat from her restricted viewpoint. "I saved you a present, my fine friend..."

She watches Igenlode's eyes widen in complete shock as her fellow castaway's identity sinks in, and raises eloquent brows. "Carefully with the goods, love -- there's a broken arm there..."

A wince, as even Igenlode's gentle touch, lifting her, brings agonies of returning circulation. "By all the blazes he better be worth it," she adds drily under her breath.

Then her gaze finds Willem. "Oh, God --"

The young man's tone echoes hers. "You."

"What are you doing here?" Dutch menacingly waves her finger at Willem. "You didn't come here with us."

Us. Only now, with her own survival no longer a worry, does she fully realize what has happened. She casts a look over her shoulder, where the Horizon lay proudly in the water only hours ago, even though she knows what she will see. There is nothing left. Every last one of her men dead. Her ship gone. Only fragments of both still float on the surface of the water, mute witnesses to the tragedy. Dutch turns back around. She expects she should feel sorrow, anger... but she doesn't. She feels absolutely nothing, as if her emotions were blown up in the explosion. And why wouldn't they be? Everything else she had is gone.

In the meantime Igenlode has lifted Tom up so he's sitting next to him, carefully pulling him close with one arm to warm him up. His free hand strokes Tom's head, and he whispers to him as one would to an ill child. He doesn't know whether Tom can actually hear what he's saying, as he isn't responding in any way, but he seems to be calming down, whether because of Igenlode's words or because he is no longer struggling for his life in the water. If the soft, reassuring words aren't helping Tom, they are certainly helping Igenlode, distracting him from thoughts of his crewmates who have just died so horribly and from the worries about his own future.

When Dutch notices the scene, a smile briefly flashes over her face. She may have lost everything, but all is not gone. There are still things to take care of, things that will give her a goal to work to, if only for a while.

She looks at Willem, who is still glaring at her. "We're rowing, mate."

The sooner she'll do things as normal, Dutch figures, the sooner her body will be back to normal. After alternatively clenching and stretching her hands to get the blood circulating again, she grabs an oar. Willem, however, is not moving.

"Don't be an arse, Will. We've all had a hard time. Now get rowing."

Again there is no response, and Dutch is getting very irritated.

"I said: get rowing! Are you bloody d..." Then it dawns on her. Her anger immediately disappears, making way for a dry conclusion as she stares into his eyes. "Deaf."

Willem's silence says enough. He must have been very close to the explosion for it to make him deaf, Dutch thinks, but she doesn't know what to make of it. Her eyes drift to Igenlode for information, but he is still preoccupied with Tom and she doesn't want to disturb him. She nods, deep in thought.

"Alright, we'll figure this out later. But for now..." She shoves the other oar into Willem's chained hands and articulates the last word exaggeratedly: "... row."

* * *

When they arrive at the dock, Dutch marches directly to the tavern, not wanting to look back at the scene of the disaster again. Igenlode attempts to lift Tom out of the sampan by hooking his arms under Tom's armpits, trying not to put any strain on the broken arm. But the weight is too much for the clerk to carry safely by himself, and Willem grabs Tom's legs to help.

By the time they get to the tavern, Dutch is long there, bartering for a room with a man behind the bar, who seems to be the owner of the establishment. After a last glare at him, she turns to the new arrivals.

"He wants money up front." She looks disgusted by the suggestion. "Mine's gone."

"Mine as well," says Igenlode.

Dutch raises an eyebrow, but leaves it at that. "I suppose our patient isn't carrying huge wealth either, so you'll have to cough it up, Will."

Silence. For a moment, against all reason, Dutch wonders if Willem is only acting deaf to annoy her. If so, he's doing a terrific job. Her hand reaches out and snatches the pouch from him.

"That's mine!" protests Willem, but with his hands still holding Tom's ankles, there's not much he can do.

Dutch sighs. "Yes, love. That's the point."

Her fingers reach inside the pouch, careful not to reveal its contents to onlookers, and pull out a gold coin, which she lays on the bar. The owner of the tavern greedily reaches for it, but Dutch is quicker and puts her hand over it. "Us four, a room and food for a week." She has no idea how long they'll be staying, but this will solve their problems for now.

The man starts shouting in his own language, acting offended, but Dutch remains unmoved and simply stands and waits, ignoring the fact that Igenlode and Willem can probably not carry Tom much longer. Finally the owner gives in, nodding. Dutch smiles her most charming smile at him and slowly removes her hand.

"Right, lads," she says, following the tavern owner to their room, "let's give the boy some medical care."

With Willem's reluctant help, they get the boy stripped to his shirt and tucked in between the sheets. Tom still hasn't said a word. He doesn't react to her face or voice, and she isn't entirely certain he recognises Igenlode either, although he does seem to find some kind of reassurance in the familiar touch. Dutch wonders if the boy is running a fever or if it is just shock. Either way, it's probably just as well. He could make a lot of trouble for them all if he wakes up and starts demanding explanations. She wonders how long it's going to take Tom to work out that he's effectively her prisoner now.

Dutch sighs, running her fingers through hair that is drying in sticky rivulets down the side of her face, and asks herself why on earth she is doing this. One look at Igenlode's face -- transfigured, like a mother over her baby -- gives her the easy answer. Out in the harbour, where there is a hollow in her heart in the place of her beloved ship, lies the other reason, in all its irony. She hasn't forgotten what Tom has done to her. But she has had the habit of command too long now to be ably to sit idly aside when there is a task that needs doing, and organisation to be done. She may not have much of a crew, but the old instincts are in full force.

She looks around for Willem to examine the boy's injuries, and catches him, to her amazement, pawing through Tom's discarded effects apparently in search of any valuables he may be carrying. He has already found and set aside a netted purse with a couple of guineas in it.

She grabs him by the shoulders, yanking him round, and faces him down, hands on her hips. "Now see here, Master Will, which of us is supposed to be the pirate?"

Willem looks at her as if she is a half-wit, and displays his fettered hands in front of her face. For the first time, it dawns on her why he has been scowling quite so much at the unfortunate Tom.

"Oh no. Oh, that's too rich --" Despite herself, Dutch goes off into a helpless peal of laughter. "Will, love, you've got to learn not to get in the bad books of everyone you meet --"

For a moment, she thinks the young man is going to strangle her; but she can't stop laughing. Instead, Willem turns his back pointedly and resumes his clumsy search for the key. Knowing his luck, Dutch decides, it's probably at the bottom of the bay.

Now that she sees him for the first time in lamplight, she realises what a mess he's in. He had always made a great show of keeping himself neat and tidy on board her ship, resolutely refusing to throw together ill-matched garments in the style of all the rest. Now his clothing is blackened and ripped as if he has been through a tornado, and the skin beneath is grazed and bruised as far as she can see.

She wonders if she looks as bad. There isn't a mirror in the room, which is probably just as well. She can feel an almighty hangover tickling at the edges of her skull.

Even Igenlode seems to have managed to acquire a spectacular black eye and is mudstained and dripping. Between them they must look like the most complete gang of ruffians, she realises, still chuckling, remembering the tavern-keeper's reluctance to house them. Right now she could really, really do with a glass of rum...

Willem gives a sharp exclamation and straightens up with a long iron key in his hand. He thrusts his wrists in her direction again, and raising an eyebrow, Dutch ceremoniously unlocks him. She tosses the cuffs in one hand thoughtfully, pocketing the key, and eyes him and Tom. "Hmm, maybe we'd better keep these..."

But Willem isn't paying any attention to her. He glares in the direction of the bed for a moment, and then, as if drawn by the innocent expectancy in Igenlode's eyes, takes the reluctant steps that bring him to Tom's side and starts running his hands along the boy's ribs and arm, assessing his injuries.

"I expect you'll need a stick to set that broken arm with," Dutch says brightly, stooping to pocket Tom's neglected purse. She expects -- and gets -- no response, and grins. "I'll just go and see what I can find, then..."

She makes a dart for the door, almost colliding with the tavern-keeper, who -- not in the least to her surprise -- is listening in the short passage outside.

"Just the man I wanted." She jingles the coins discreetly in her pocket. "You know, surgery always makes me queasy -- what do you say to a bottle of your finest spirits to drive out the ghosts and steady the stomach?"

She isn't sure it's possible to get drunk enough to cope with tonight, but she plans to be passed out flat by dawn, whatever happens. Liquor is the only way she knows to forget.

* * *

Lieutenant Porthwaite bites his lip, staring down over the bulwarks at the coxswain of the ship's gig. "What do you mean, no prisoners? I saw them coming out like fleas from the sides of the prize with my own eyes!"

"Well, there was a few laid hold of us." The coxswain's gaze doesn't quite meet the officer's face. "But then we was swamped, you see, when the magazine blew. Shipped a lot of water. So I couldn't rightly say what became of them, being poor shipwrecked souls, in a manner of speaking. On account of we was too busy bailing out, sir. Ain't that right?"

He glances round the boat for confirmation, and gets an over-ready chorus of "Aye, that's right, Bill" and "Seen it with my own eyes".

"And I suppose the cutter and the longboat didn't bring back any prisoners either?" The lieutenant's voice is a little shriller than he intended, and he tastes blood as he gnaws his lip again in frustration.

"Couldn't say, sir," stroke oar says stolidly. "Reckon as you'd have to ask 'em, begging your pardon."

But Porthwaite's gaze has become fixed in the flickering lantern-light. "And who, pray, are these two men in the stern-sheets?"

The oarsman clears his throat. "Oh, them's poor sailors as was on their way in to land, quiet-like, when their skiff went over in the blast. 'Course, they caught it pretty bad-like, being so close, an' we couldn't ha' left 'em there to drown, so we brought 'em along, a-begging of your pardon, sir. On account of there's a crying need for good 'fore-mast hands, which the Captain said himself, sir, if I might be so bold, and we couldn't lay 'em ashore in foreign parts, a-wounded as they are..."

"This is a King's ship, blast it, not a floating hospital!" Porthwaite is seething. He can't very well call the man a bare-faced liar in front of the entire boat's crew, or contradict Sir Edward's frequent and loudly-expressed opinion that the ship is scandalously short-handed. But he also knows what the captain would say about allowing probable pirates on board without a prisoner to show for it. In short, he is caught in a cleft stick, and someone is going to smart for it before morning or he will know the reason why.

"I'll stake my life on it they'll make good 'ands, zur," another seaman volunteers unnecessarily, and the lieutenant explodes.

"That's exactly what you'll be staking if I catch them fomenting trouble in the foc's'le, Tregarron! Do you expect me to believe that you pulled all those prisoners out of the water and then lost them?"

"Can't zay, zur," comes back the stonewall reply, and Porthwaite's much-tried patience breaks.

"I'll see you get two dozen at the gratings tomorrow for dumb insolence! Anyone else here can't say how it happened?" The gig's crew remain wisely dumb, while Porthwaite, who is quite certain they allowed the shipwrecked men to escape, curses once again the confounded sentimentality of the British sailor. If he orders the wounded men put in chains he'll probably have a riot on his hands. The odds are, from what he can see, they'll die anyway. If they don't -- well, they can shape up to be good 'fore-mast hands. Or else. He's going to be keeping his eye on them.

It doesn't help his temper to know that similar pragmatic decisions are probably being taken aboard half a dozen or more merchantmen across the bay at this very moment.

"Have those men swayed up, there," he orders at last through gritted teeth. "Boat's crew, report to the waist. You on the hoists, prepare to retrieve the gig."

He tries to imagine the report he is going to have to compose for the Captain's ears, and cringes. Tomorrow morning, he tells himself, tomorrow morning he will have the entire waterfront scoured for survivors. By hook or by crook, the Navy is going to claw back some return out of this whole sorry affair...

When Dutch after quite some time still hasn't returned with something to set Tom's arm with, Igenlode goes to look for himself. He's not happy about leaving Tom, but Willem is still busy taking care of his patient, and Igenlode wouldn't know how to tell him to go and look for a stick anyway.

On his way out, walking straight to the door, Igenlode doesn't notice Dutch. And even when he returns shortly thereafter, carrying a stick that he hopes will make a good enough splint, he doesn't pay enough attention to the people in the tavern, his mind preoccupied with Tom. Just as he's about to walk up the stairs, there's a loud shatter among the regular tavern noise as a bottle breaks, followed by a long string of curses in a voice that is all too recognizable. Igenlode immediately spots Dutch, who is already getting another bottle from the owner himself, in return for some coins from a purse. Tom's purse.

For a moment defending his nephew is more important than getting his arm set, and Igenlode walks to Dutch's table, slamming the stick down on it. Dutch's eyes linger on the stick for a while, before looking up at Igenlode with a vacant expression.

"You said you were going to find a stick." Igenlode clenches his teeth, trying not to shout.

"I got distracted," explains Dutch, unimpressed by his temper, before taking a swig from the unidentified clear liquid in the bottle.

"Oh, that's perfectly alright then."

"I was just about go get one, alright? I had more urgent business to take care of first."

"So I see."

Dutch has always liked sarcasm, but not when it's directed at her. Her left hand points a threatening finger at Igenlode while her right clutches the bottle. "Don't you dare speak to me like that! If you're in such a hurry to take care of that blasted nephew of yours, you can do it yourself. He's your nephew, not mine. I'm taking care of my own first as well. Which is me. Because in case you hadn't noticed, I have nothing else. My ship is gone." Her voice suddenly starts trembling, and for a moment, Igenlode fears she'll burst into tears. "And my men..." Another quick drink helps Dutch regain control over herself. "It was your bloody nephew who did that. But I saved him. For you."

Igenlode doesn't know what to say. He's still angry with her, and disgusted by the state that she's rapidly drinking herself into again, but she's telling the truth. He just doesn't know what to think of it, conflicting emotions raging through his body.

Staring up at the unresponsive clerk makes Dutch feel even more stupid for saving Tom. The one good thing to come out of the disaster; her making Igenlode happy, and even that seems lost effort. "You're very welcome, love," she mumbles, staring at the bottle.

That's it. Igenlode doesn't want to deal with this now. Tom needs him, and that's a lot more urgent, not to mention more important than a pirate voluntarily drinking herself into oblivion. He grabs the stick and storms up the stairs to the room, leaving Dutch alone with her bottle. Fine, she thinks. They can do it themselves then.

Not long later a loud, high-pitched scream from upstairs can be discerned even in the hubbub of the bar, as young Tom's broken arm is forced into a straight position against the stick. It sends shivers down Dutch's spine. Yes, she definately made the right decision staying here.

* * *

Her eyes barely register what they see, and it takes a while for Dutch to realize that it is indeed the first morning light that can be seen through the tavern windows. She curses the fact that she is still conscious, and blames it on Igenlode disturbing her. In fact, she blames everything on Igenlode at the moment. It may not make sense, but sense is not what she's looking for. She's looking for a reason for everything that's wrong, and has decided it is Igenlode.

Thinking of Igenlode takes her thoughts back to the room; to Tom, who must be quite a sight now, all bandaged up; to Willem... Willem. She still hasn't figured out how he ended up on the Horizon. But this is not the time to think about that. This is the time for drinking. If she needs someone to blame, Igenlode will do just as well.

Suddenly she notices a red blob in her view, getting bigger and bigger. Trying hard to focus, she can make out the crawling mass outside the window. Just like big red ants. It is only the mental connection with stinging ants that makes her understand, with a jolt, the danger of the uniforms that are gathering at the dock. She stands up, leaning heavily on the table. Her legs, though unsteady, still work well enough, and she makes for the stairs. These, however, are a much bigger obstacle than the level, if somewhat wobbly, floor. Only a few steps up, she misplaces a foot and slides back down on all fours. She vaguely registers that it should have hurt a lot more than it did, and wonders just how drunk she is, before attempting to get up the stairs again.