Long Road to Madagascar

Summary: during the raid of a pirate fleet on Cape Town, Igenlode, senior clerk at a counting-house, ventures outside with a wish for adventure. He runs into the pirate captain Dutch, and, fearing for his life, takes her to the counting-house and orders the other clerks to give her the money. Dutch is caught by the owner of said counting house, but Igenlode saves her and begs her to take her aboard, uncertain as his life will be after his deed. She accepts, as he can divide the loot equally and knows several trading languages, besides having saved her life.

Meanwhile the pirates have taken over the city, but a Navy fleet has gathered and plans to attack. Igenlode's nephew, Tom, is on the Navy frigate Hecate. The pirates learn of the coming attack and sail away. But a few men aboard Dutch's lovely ship, the Horizon, judge their captain for this decision. They do not believe the Navy is coming, and her taking aboard a clerk who is unfit for any work aboard makes them doubt her abilities even further. A mutiny is underway, as the Navy approaches beyond the horizon.

Dutch's bo's'n, Jeremiah Binns, and three others capture Igenlode and Dutch when they are in her cabin.

The youngest of the mutineers, a boy with carved and inked whalebone pins plaited into his long pigtail, throws a rather embarrassed glance at his leader and gets a shove in return that sends him off-balance into the cabin.

"Get on with it, lad." Binns tosses a hank of cord in the boy's direction, watches him for a moment to make sure he is going to do as he is told, then grunts in satisfaction. "Here, Cherimee --"

He beckons with a jerk of his head, and the Indian lets go of Igenlode, who collapses against the edge of the desk, tugs at the sleeve of the third man, a heavyweight balding individual whose scarlet neckerchief clashes horribly with his perspiring face, and joins the bo's'n. They walk out together, Cherimee recoiling his garotte, and the other man follows, breathing heavily.

Judging by the loud creak that follows the locking of the door, the bald man -- Jones? -- then proceeds to lean his weight against it from the outside.

Igenlode is too busy struggling for regained breath to make any resistance as the boy fastens hasty bonds around the clerk's wrists and the arms of the chair. Tying up Dutch, however, is apparently a different matter, despite -- or perhaps even because of -- the fact that she is unconscious.

The young pirate reaches out rather tentatively towards her arm, looking highly uncomfortable at the idea of being asked to bind his captain hand and foot, however much he may disagree with her sailing orders. Dutch groans and puts one hand up towards her head, and the boy jumps back so quickly that it's almost funny. Her eyes open, squinting up as if flinching even from the flickering sunlight thrown up through the cabin windows from the sea below.

"Scrimshaw Adams, is that you? I thought you had more sense than to listen to Binns and his talk..."

The boy gives her a rather indignant look. "I've got a mind of my own, haven't I? And it's not right, what you did at Cape Town. The commodore promised us three days, and three days is what we're due."

Dutch tries to prop herself up on one elbow to glare at him, winces, closing her eyes briefly, and settles for screwing her head round so she can see him better. "Three days is about what you'll get if the Navy catch up with you, you clod. You and half a dozen others on this ship. The Navy doesn't take kindly to deserters."

Scrimshaw scowls. "So who says the Navy's coming? Cherimee says you picked the whole story up out of some babbling of Joe Smith. And we all know Smith -- moonshine and poppycock--"

"--and merrymaids," Jones puts in unexpectedly from outside the door, in a slow country accent.

"--and mermaids, yes, it's all one. But how can you pull the whole crew out of harbour on the cup-shotten ravings of a man who kisses mermaids?"

"I copped me a merrymaid once," the unseen voice muses again, in rich satisfaction. "She come up out of the water with her hair like black silk and her eyes like sloes a-dancing and her hands full of shells, and kissed me as good and willing as any sweetheart. Pearl-fishing she was, with a little pearl stud in her nose like the wen on Old Nick's face himself, only half the size and twice as handsome. And a fine bouncing prow she had on her, that I will say. Pert as a heifer's --"

"She was a native diver, you cod-brained beer-barrel," Dutch interrupts from the floor, exasperated. "Those Ceylon pearl-divers swim like eels and give away their kisses as brazen as any costermonger with a tub of rotten fruit. And they don't have tails!"

"Why yes, she up and under like a mallard-duck," Jones recalls with a chuckle. "Quite some tail she had on her. Rounded and plump--"

"Quite some guard you are," a deep voice says coldly from outside. Jones dries up almost miraculously in mid-flow and starts to stutter, but is brushed aside. The key turns in the lock, and Jeremiah Binns favours the three in the cabin with a sepulchral stare. "And young Adams. Dear, dear. Now I had me some notion you could be trusted, but seemingly I was wrong. Did you or did you not hear me tell you to tie her up?"

Scrimshaw, who had clearly allowed himself to become distracted by the argument, licks his lips nervously but still makes no move to bind Dutch. Evidently he is uncertain whether he is more in awe of the captain or the bo's'n.

"Seems we'd better find a safer place to lodge you, Captain," Binns says, knuckling his forehead with an obsequious grin. "Now I remember there's some chains down in the hold..."

"No!" Dutch comes abruptly to life at this, catapulting forward off the floor and making it most of the way to the door before her opponent blocks her way.

Binns smiles, showing teeth like tombstones. "Why, surely our dear Captain doesn't care for a few rats and a touch of stale water?" He grabs her arm and twists it, forcing her close up against him. For a moment it looks as if Dutch is going to struggle, but then a shadow of pain passes across her temple and she closes her eyes again, going grey beneath her tan.

"That's better," Binns purrs, frog-marching her out of the cabin. One of his big hands envelops her waist. Her bandana has come adrift in the struggle, and now it slips free, letting her hair fall across her face. Igenlode, hoping violently that she has forgotten that she has an unwilling audience for all this, is almost relieved not to be able to see her expression.

"Come, lad." The bo's'n nods to Scrimshaw, who trails after him along with Jones. Igenlode is left alone in the cabin, tied to the arms of the chair and apparently forgotten. In a way, it's even more humiliating to be dismissed as harmless.

* * * *

A cultured voice speaks out of the darkness as Jones is banging home the last rivet into the chains. "Excuse me, but where am I and why am I being kept here, if you would be so good as to tell me?"

No-one answers. Binns runs his fingers gently through Dutch's hair in the dark, and chuckles as she pulls away. "We've a ship's crew waiting, lads, let's give 'em what they want to hear..."

Footsteps echo away dully through the hold. With the lantern gone, it is totally black. Dutch tugs at her chains, remembering bitterly the last man she had fastened up down here. He'd got drunk and let off his musket prematurely during a night raid on a Spanish fort, alerting the garrison and nearly getting them all killed. And what had she done? Only tried to save the lives of her whole ship's crew, that was all.

"Excuse me," the voice begins again from somewhere near-by, and Dutch groans and tries to pull her battered wits together. She doesn't remember ordering any strangers flung into the hold. Maybe somebody had mistaken him for a drunk from her own crew and dropped him down here when they were rounding up the stragglers?

"So... be you pirate or honest man?"

Dutch leans back with a faint chuckle at the oddness of the question, which somehow seems even stranger in the current situation. "Pirate? Yes. Honest? Occasionally. Man? No."

The other gulps, unpleasantly surprised at some, if not all, of Dutch's answers. "I see."

To distract herself from her rotten position, and to allow her mind some time to get itself together, Dutch asks: "And you? Who are you?" Then, remembering the person's first words, adding mildly sarcastically: "If you would be so good as to tell me."

"Most people call me Micawber. I am an apprentice to Mr Belhaven, the renowned maker of fine instruments."

"Oh." For some reason Mr Belhaven's renown had not spread amongst pirates. "You're not a fighting man then, are you Mic?"

Micawber grins. "Fighting? Yes. Man? No."

Dutch automatically and abruptly turns her head to Micawber, even though nothing can be seen in the darkness. She regrets it immediately, her head pounding in protest to the sudden movement.

"My master was so kind as to teach me the noble art of fencing. He needed someone to practice with." Micawber takes a deep breath to mentally prepare herself before continuing. "And I am, in fact, a woman. I was an orphan. Boys had a much better change to find a home, and so the owners of the orphanage dressed me as one." A wan smile as she tries to make peace with her past. "I never told anyone, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore. Not here and now. Especially as you are a woman as well."

"So, lady Mic... How did you end up on my ship?"

"Your ship?"

"Yes, love. My ship. I'm just... having a bad day."

Micawber, protected by the dark, raises an eyebrow. "Ah. Well, I was on my way to pick up a violin that needed repairing."

Now it's Dutch's turn to raise an eyebrow. "During a raid on your town by pirates?"

"Yes! The gentleman had made an appointment." A fine store as Belhaven's Musical Instruments kept to appointments at all times. A pirate attack, Mr Belhaven had assured Micawber, was no excuse to break that habit (although he painstakingly avoided going anywhere near the door himself). "I was walking near the harbor... I don't really remember what happened then."

Dutch is about to offer the most likely explanation, when she notices a sudden increase of the sounds coming from above. Men shout and run down to the guns, their feet stomping above Dutch and Micawber's heads. "No!" Dutch frantically pulls at her chains, uttering every curse she knows.

***

Igenlode had tried to loosen his bonds, but quickly gave up. He sits and grimly awaits what will happen. Then, as his mind starts exploring the possible outcomes of the situation, he decides it is better to try to escape in vain, if only to distract himself. So, he cannot get rid of his bonds... What then? The door? The pirates hadn't locked it. Being tied to a chair between mutinous pirates wasn't much of an improvement from being tied to a chair in a cabin, but staying put would not help him either. With a rocking motion, throwing his weight into every push forward, Igenlode manages to slowly shove the chair forward. His happiness about his success comes to an abrupt end when he hears the sudden commotion on deck, and the hurried footsteps of men storming by the cabin. What is happening? Turning the chair a bit, Igenlode is just able to look out the windows. He squints, his eyes still sore from the strangulation by the Indian pirate. On the horizon, barely visible, are a few white specks.

Whether by intent or by coincidence, as the bo's'n harangues the crew and all attention is on Binns' eloquence and not on the vagaries of the wind, the Horizon has begun to slip further and further behind the rest of the fleet. She is still quite close to Cape Town, and the broad shoulders of Table Mountain dominate the skyline.

The general rule, in the loose-knit hierarchy of the pirate brethren, is "each man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost"; but under current circumstances, with the rich pickings of a half-looted port just behind them, the lagging Horizon is almost certain to attract attention from the other captains. Indeed, a squat pirate known as Halfpence Annie has just made that very point, in what is becoming an increasingly acrimonious debate.

"Aye, and what if they do? What if they do?" Binns' deep voice crashes over her, bearing her down. "Be it not the right of every crew to elect its own captain, by the choice of every man aboard? And be it not the right of any vessel to quit the fleet and venture for her own profit, if so be she pays over her needful share?"

"They'll not sit idly by and see Dutch set aside," Annie maintains. "No more will I, or a dozen others that stand by me. You're not captain yet, Jeremiah Binns, nor ever will be for any vote of mine. I'd cast no tally for a tallow-faced turncoat who keeps his captain in chains to sway his own election." And a rumble of agreement warns that a fair proportion of the crew are of like mind.

Binns shifts ground adroitly. "Why then, we'll set her adrift, let any ship take her in that will. Now who can say fairer than that? We'll give her a boat and a sail, and a flask of water besides, and let her choose her own navigation, whether to make for the coast or trust in her brother-captains to heave to and pick her up. But we'll turn back upon the instant, and make merry in the fleshpots of the Cape --"

The only excuse the masthead look-out could find to make, afterwards, was that he had been attending so devoutly the outcome of the debate below that it was only when the bo's'n flung out his arm in a wide gesture to the allures of the land behind them that the look-out's own gaze followed. But the truth was that from his lofty viewpoint he should have perceived the danger many minutes before it became visible from down on deck.

"Deck there!" His voice cracked in urgency. "Ships to the south -- three points abaft the larboard beam -- a dozen sail or more, flying British colours --"

For a moment, as panic overwhelmed the deck, Binns was almost ignored, a tall figure like a single rock in a sea of shoving bodies. But as the first commotion ebbed, he was the only one who kept his head.

"Mast there -- have we been seen?"

"Aye," came the shamefaced reply. "They're crowding on all sail - they'll be in gunshot range in two hours' time, maybe less --"

By dint of main force, the bo's'n' manages to control the panic enough to give his orders. Men are sent below to the guns (though if the Horizon's long nine-pounders ever come into action, it will be far too late for her survival against the lumbering broadside of a warship) and others are sent running aloft to spread every scrap of canvas the little sloop can carry. Frantic signals are hauled aloft to the rest of the fleet, now some miles ahead, and attention drawn to them by the flat bang of a musket.

An answering signal-gun from the Bright Bonny shows that the flags have been read, and the main fleet begins to scatter like sheep before a wolf-pack. With such a long start, the Navy haven't a hope of catching them all. They'll be lucky to corner even one. But as with sheep, it is the straggler at the tail of the flock who will attract their immediate attention...

"Cherimee," the bo's'n says under his breath, "you know this coast."

The old Malagasy pilot, who has stuck close by his confederate's side, nods slowly, with a non-committal grunt.

"What say you -- can we lead them into shoal waters?" Binns demands.

Cherimee says nothing. But with his eyes he follows the flash of a grizzled pigtail, as Halfpence Annie disappears through the double doors at the foot of the poop deck.

Binns, noticing Cherimee looking away, follows his look. A quick glance around the crew affirms his suspicion about who just passed through the still clapping doors, and her plans aren't difficult to guess. Binns' voice is subdued, but his face looks as if it's about to explode.

"Stop that blasted Annie! If she frees Dutch and we escape with her as Captain, the crew will never want to get rid of her!"

Cherimee does as he is told, while Binns resumes command of the ship.

But Halfpence Annie did not go down to the hold to release Dutch. As Cherimee runs by the Captain's cabin, Annie is standing on the other side of the door, a finger to her lips telling Igenlode to keep quiet. When the pirate pulls a small axe from under her belt, fear strikes Igenlode, but he quickly recovers as the ropes tying him to the chair are cut with two shift strikes. He rubs his arms, which, by the irritated sensation, seem to be protesting against the blood forcing its way through again. His mouth opens to thank her, and inquire about the state of things, but is shut again as he remembers her warning to be silent.

Annie then speaks softly but surely: "I cannot free the captain. Everyone is needed to make sure the Navy doesn't catch up with us, and there's no telling what Binns will do if he finds me missing. You'll have to do it."

"But..." Igenlode, not having the faintest idea about how to get Dutch out of her chains, nor about how to deal with any pirate he might encounter, spreads his arms, at a loss.

"Oh, right." Misinterpreting the showing of his empty hands as expressing the need for a weapon, Annie pushes her axe into Igenlode's right hand. He almost drops it, unprepared for the weight.

Halfpence Annie has a short listen at the door before sneaking back on deck, leaving Igenlode in Dutch's cabin, staring at the axe in his hand.

There has to be some mistake. For a moment, Igenlode is too numb to move. The pirate must have meant to find someone else -- someone who actually knew how to think up daring rescues, instead of just reading about them in books. Someone who knew how to use an axe, even if only to split wood with it. Someone who knew what a ship's hold looked like, and how to find it...

Unheralded and somewhat unwelcome, here the vision of the dark ladder leading down from the gun-deck presents itself, and Igenlode, incurably honest, flushes. All right, so that was the route to the hold, then. But the task was still quite impossible. How could anyone possibly be expected to get down to find Dutch without being seen, when the gun-deck was full of pirates?

Some of them, of course, might secretly be on the captain's side -- if nothing else, the surreptitious visit of the pirate with the axe had at least proved that. But they certainly couldn't be counted on to turn a blind eye at the appropriate moment to someone as obviously out of place as the captain's pet clerk.

What manner of use is a creature like that? Remembering the contempt in the bo'sun's voice, Igenlode cringes. Binns probably wasn't the only one, either. Dutch had risked more than she knew, taking on board a fugitive so totally lacking in all the brute qualities pirates like Binns and his kind could respect... or perhaps she had known. The thought breathes a little warmth back into courage of which even its owner had long been unaware, and wakes in turn a small flame of pride.

Perhaps she had known how they would react, these illiterate, half-savage scum of the seas, who couldn't tell Shakespeare from Cicero - or either from their own mother's laundry list. Perhaps Dutch had known exactly what they'd think... and gone ahead and done it anyway. The little clerk can almost picture the arrogant tilt of the captain's head, with its mane of salt-streaked, sun-bleached hair -- most unfeminine, of course, no demure ringlets or elegant braids, but then she doesn't seem to care for such things. None of the pirates do, for all their taste for gold ornament and ragged finery...

"What am I to do?" It is a signal of Igenlode's desperation that the words come out aloud, despite the need for caution. The thought of free-spirited Dutch -- even if she is a common robber who planted a dagger in the bullying Klaasz' back -- chained up and awaiting her fate like any tethered goat is almost too much to bear. But she needs a dashing rescuer, a roistering boon companion who can swing in on the end of a rope and hold off half-a-dozen pirates with the flash of the cutlass gripped between his teeth while backing down a ladder or inching out along the rigging. She doesn't need a sweaty-palmed clerk who hasn't got a hope even of creeping around the ship without being spotted instantly as an interloper. A groan. "What am I to do?"

But that thought itself brings the solution. "I can't," Igenlode whispers, appalled. "I can't... I must!"

The wig won't do. The short-cropped hair underneath won't do either, but a makeshift bandana -- from an authentically sweatstained and wrinkled stocking -- will go some way to conceal that.

Sober, mustard-coloured coat and waistcoat are clearly out of the question (Igenlode strips them off reluctantly, feeling ridiculous), as are the buckled shoes. Most of the common pirates seem to go barefoot. They also seem to have feet as horny as their hands. Wincing at the necessity, the clerk strips off the neat pinchbeck buckles and slips shrinking bare feet back into the desecrated footwear that results.

Dutch's sea-chest, left open in a corner from where Johnson had been using it last night, provides a somewhat ripped embroidered jerkin that is too tight in some places and embarrassingly ample in others, and a set of dangling earrings that have to be tied on with thread. It also provides a hand-mirror that serves to highlight one major problem with this disguise -- the little clerk's total lack of colour.

Seamen are tanned, most of them to a rich mahogany. Field-workers are tanned. Even the Cape farmers are tanned to a ruddy hue, from long hours trekking across country or overseeing their herds. But clerks and ledger-writers, who creep to work before the dawn and scribble by candlelight into the evening, are as white as a fine lady's dimpled arm -- and in the dark between decks, a ghostly-pale pirate is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

Walnut-juice, Igenlode thinks frantically. That's what they use in the stories, after all. But the chances of finding walnut-juice in the cabin of a pirate ship off the coast of Africa are vanishingly slim, and the lamp is the only possible solution.

The soot from the inside of the glass -- greasy lamp-black -- is the nearest stain available to hand: and, a number of smeary fingerprints later, an undersized and improbably black -- hands, shins and face -- pirate stares back out of the mirror. It's all too evident that it wouldn't fool anyone close-up, let alone by daylight. Swallowing, Igenlode prays that it won't have to.

The final touches, not so much for the sake of disguise but in the hopes that they will be useful to Dutch, are provided by the remainder of the captain's assortment of weapons from the various cabinets where she had left them. Various daggers, other odd-shaped blades, what looks uncomfortably like a fully-charged pistol, and a couple of native devices of unknown but lethal purpose all join the pirate's axe in Igenlode's belt. Swallowing one last time, the clerk falls back for encouragement out of long habit on a tag from an ancient author.

"Jacta alea est..." It is barely more than a whisper. Girding up metaphorical loins, Igenlode steps forward over the threshold; as decisively as ever Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Dutch wonders why Cherimee came to the hold. She asked him, of course, but he stayed silent as usual, shining a lantern into every corner of the hold before going back up the ladder. Whatever the reason may be, if something was in the way of Binns' plans, it was good for her. The looking around... For a moment a faint hope that Igenlode might have escaped. But there was no use clinging to something so unlikely. Dutch respected the clerk, liked him even (though she wasn't entirely sure why), but physical strength was just not his forte. How could he escape when he is tied to the chair, by strong sailors who are experts at tying knots? Dutch's deep sigh gets no reaction from Micawber. Their conversation has dried up since Dutch has regained most of her wits and started worrying about her ship, and trying to find a way to escape from the hold. Surprisingly, she had indeed thought of her ship first. Perhaps it was that if she would live, but the Horizon would be sunk, she wouldn't know what to do. Steal another ship, of course, but she knew the Horizon through and through and it was a good, fast ship. Perhaps it was more the way Binns had taken her ship from her that made her think of the ship before herself, a simple territorial matter.

Dutch is disturbed in her fruitless escape plotting by footsteps coming down the ladder. Cherimee again? Maybe she can find out what he wants this time. But the footsteps are soft and uncertain, and the lamp the person carries burns very low and swings to and fro as he struggles to not fall off the ladder with only one hand free. For a moment, Dutch wonders if the person might be drunk, but even Binns would not tolerate drinking when the navy is breathing down their necks. She would tell whoever's coming down the ladder to be careful not to drop the lamp and burn her ship down, but she is too occupied trying to identify the dark figure. A lamp... what was he doing with a lamp anyway? Surely a lantern would be the most obvious (not to mention safest!) choice for a portable light.

When the person finally reaches the bottom of the stairs, he turns up the light and, after a look around the hold, walks towards the prisoners. As her eyes adjust to the light, Dutch looks at the face, which seems familiar, but can still not be identified. It isn't until he stands in front of her and smiles uncomfortably that Dutch finally recognizes Igenlode. She wants to say something, but can only laugh, though she attempts to do so as quietly as possible to not attract any unwanted attention from above.

Micawber is utterly confused at the whole scene. "Excuse me, but what exactly is going on? What's so funny? Who is that?"

"That," grins Dutch, "is my most faithful crewmember."

Igenlode blushes invisibly under the lamp-black.

"Could you please remove my chains, love?"

"Yes, yes of course. But..."

"That axe will do."

Nervously, Igenlode lines up the axe so it will cut off one side of the rivet on one of Dutch's chains, praying he does not cut off her hand as well.

"Steady and swiftly, love. I hope Binns and his consorts are too busy to notice the sounds, but you can never be sure." Dutch smiles when Igenlode takes a deep breath. "You can do it."

Feeling more certain with Dutch's reassurance, Igenlode strikes. The two parts of the rivet fall to the ground, where they roll around a while before coming to a halt. Success! Igenlode proceeds with the other chains, and soon Dutch is free.

"Thank you."

Igenlode blushes again. "You're most welcome."

"Could you free me as well, please?" Micawber sounds a bit unpatient.

Igenlode moves to comply, but Dutch stops him. She isn't certain what best to do with Micawber. Dutch needs everyone who would fight for her to make sure she takes her ship back out of Binns' clutches, but what then? There's no telling what a law-abiding citizen might do if the navy fleet will catch up (which is becoming very likely) and it comes to a fight. And if the navy sees Micawber on deck with a weapon and the pirates lose the battle, she will be hanged with the rest of them, whether she acted against the navy or not. On the other hand, it doesn't seem right to leave Micawber here, in chains, and every sword is indeed highly needed.

The first sight that meets the old pilot's eyes as he returns to the main deck, puzzled and not a little annoyed, is the straining back and arms of Halfpence Annie by the bulwarks in the waist of the ship, among the labouring group constantly tallying onto the braces as the bo's'n orders the sails trimmed to every vagary of wind. Overhead, the yards creak under the strain of canvas as the hands haul to ease them round, and the jaws of the big mizzen gaff groan with the slightest shift in wind. The Horizon is leaping along at her fastest speed, making light of the big ocean rollers, and every inch of her rigging is thrumming with life.

A heavy hand falls on Cherimee's shoulder from behind.

"A fine help you are, dashing off on a wild-goose chase for a breath of suspicion!" The words are contemptuous, but the tone is almost jovial. Binns brushes his confederate's angry account of the empty hold aside with barely a shrug. He has clearly been inspired by a fresh idea.

"See there, lads --" The bo's'n gestures to the little group gathered around him at one side of the deck, directing their gaze aft. All eyes turn to the beautiful -- and deadly -- sight behind them. The Hecate has outdistanced both her smaller consorts and the heavy line-of-battle ships, and is plunging across the sea in fast-gaining pursuit, a line of foam streaking back from her bluff bows where the gilded flash of her figurehead is dimly visible. A fountain of water rises suddenly behind the Horizon to starboard in an eerie silence before being whipped away by the wind, and the sound of the cannon reaches them an instant later. Another white splash follows, further back.

"Nine-pound shot, by my reckoning," Binns says calmly. "The same as we carry -- only her pair of long nines are aimed forward, where their range can do some good, and our little broadside can't touch her until we swing round within range of the eighteen-pounders on her gun-deck. I'll wager she mounts twenty a side or more. That's four times the weight of metal we can throw. With the whole fleet to hand we'd soon send her packing, and maybe one on one in coastal waters we'd still have a chance... but with the big two-deckers coming up behind, and our own ships scattered, there's only one course of action I can rightly see to take."

"And what's that, Captain?" Scrimshaw Adams chips in obediently as Binns pauses. The big bo's'n grimaces slyly at the compliment, but shakes his head as hackles rise among the other pirates.

"Nay, lad, not 'Captain' yet. When we're out of this, why then we'll put it to the question among the whole crew -- eh, Cherimee?"

Cherimee nods, himself grinning, but glances back at the frigate coming up astern. Her three masts are towering with all the sail she can carry, and the topsails set above the Horizon's mizzen gaff and the spritsail beneath her bows are not enough to make up the difference. If they were beating up to windward against light airs, the advantage would all be to the pirate sloop, with her flexible rig; but with this much wind in a straight stern chase, the heavier square-sailed ship has the heels of them.

"So what will it be, Jeremiah?" he asks, wondering why his old friend still looks so cheerful. "What's our chosen course?"

"Why, to strike our colours and surrender!" Binns leans back, roaring with laughter at the expressions of those around him. "Come now, it's the last thing they'll expect..."

"Have you lost your wits -- or merely your nerve?" a one-armed pirate snaps, glaring up at the bo's'n. "Why, they'll have us in irons within the hour, and dangling in chains for a warning before the week is out! There's no surrender for pirates such as we, not with half the Caribbean behind us ready to swear to our names and faces --"

"Peace, lad, peace." The bo's'n finally recovers from his fit of laughter, and grabs Hooky Jack by his good hand, shaking it vigorously. "Nay, the day a pirate cannot laugh in the face of the Navy is his last, and we'll have the last laugh yet. There are those among us who've served in a King's ship and know their ways... you, Adams, for one." He grins at young Scrimshaw, picked up with the marks of a flogging on his back in Jamaica after he had jumped ship and fled.

"Now," he continues to the boy, "we gave them a bloody nose off Cape Town and they'll want some revenge to show for that. They've a chance to take the Horizon, but they don't need a whole fleet to do that -- more's the pity. They want pirate prizes, like old Sandbar's little Antigua, captured a twelvemonth back with all her crew hanged from the yardarms like a bellyful of grapes dangling..." Cherimee finds himself fingering the tight coil of his garotte, and many of the others, listening, have dropped a hand to knife or cutlass as their blood boils.

"Ay, they want prizes, and the more the better," Scrimshaw confirms. "The Governor at Port Royal'll pay dearly for them, and even a lowerdeck share's a fortune to a poor sailor-man, let alone the captain's portion."

"They want prizes," Binns nods. "Now while we run, they'll come after us as the easiest prey. But if we haul down our colours and heave-to -- say, in that little cove over there --" he points downwind, to a tree-fringed bay just visible beyond a headland "-- why then, they'll leave a ship to take care of remaining business (that's us, lads) and be off after the rest of the fleet for another prize or maybe two. I'll warrant they'll catch them none that way, but that's not our affair."

He coughs. "Our choice and our chance is to pick our ground and lull 'em out of suspicion, see? Now Hooky, you're a fair swimmer for all that iron hand of yours, and young Adams, you can slip through the water and still swarm a ship's side at the end of it -- as we pass the point, we'll land half a dozen men from the longboat while our far side's out of sight. We'll let you slip astern, and you're to make for the shore as quick as may be, see, and wait for the ship that comes in after us. I'll warrant it's that one --" he gestures to the approaching Hecate -- "but if not her, it'll be something smaller, and that's all to the good. The old Bellingham and her like have bigger fish to fry; they'll not come in to take a little sloop's surrender, though they'll blow her out of the water if she dare to bark defiance."

"There's a reef at the mouth of the cove," Cherimee puts in, picturing the layout of the coast in his mind's eye. "The ship will moor short of that -- under the cliffs."

"All the better." Binns laughs. "And we'll heave-to and feign to anchor, while our captors come in... and six stout pirates slip under her tiller cables and light a fuse on a pound and a half of gunpowder packed in oilskin. With no steerage, she'll fall off the wind and maybe drift aground, and the explosion itself will draw all eyes -- and that's our cue. We'll be ready to slip our cable and make way again on the instant, creeping out past her and away to the open sea, with maybe a broadside for old times' sake, and the Navy away hunting mare's nests after the rest of the fleet. Lads, we'll blow off her rudder--"

Another, violent splash right alongside, as a nine-pound ball ploughs into the top of a wave and a gust of spray soaks everyone on deck. The Hecate is within range.

The bo's'n grins, showing cavernous teeth fiercely. "--just as she'd like to blow away ours!"

And then something wooden whips past Cherimee's cheek like the hiss of a blowpipe, as the most almighty crash sounds from the pirate ship's stern. Binns has broken off, and is swearing most foully, one hand clapped to his right forearm where another great splinter has laid him open to the bone. The Hecate's second bowchaser has finally struck home.

Blood is streaming from between Binns' fingers, but he shoves the old Malagasy aside as Cherimee instinctively tries to help. "Strike the colours! Take in canvas and strike the colours, you babble-headed loon! Can't ye see Lady Luck when she smiles? Make for shore -- Hooky, Adams, get your men ready -- this be our best chance to surrender!"

"You'll do no such thing," an icy voice says from behind them. "Stand away from that halliard, Cherimee, if you want to keep that hand. Leave that flag where it flies."

Dutch has two foot of naked steel in her hand, and a cocked pistol in the other, and a young civilian is standing behind her with a very competent-looking blade. "So," she says in tones of uttermost contempt, "you steal my ship -- and then you want to surrender her?"

Binns wants to explain his plan, but the shock of Dutch's escape and the pain from the wound in his arm distract his thoughts, preventing him from being coherent. "Yes! Well, yes, we should surrender. I didn't steal your ship, just kept her going until the voting. But I... We have to go--"

"Silence." A calmly given order. Dutch points the tip of her blade at Binns' throat, with a nudge of her head telling Micawber to keep an eye on Cherimee. "If you have such a death wish that you would surrender yourself to the Navy, I'll be happy to help you myself right now."

Binns' eyes drift from Dutch to her cutlass to his neck. He tries to hide his nervousness, but it sounds through in his voice. "It's not like that. Look..." He takes a deep breath, trying to organize his thoughts. "If we keep fleeing, the Navy will blow us to pieces. If we pretend to surrender, we'll only have one ship to deal with. We go to the cove that's coming up, some of us climb up to the Navy ship that will follow us with some gunpowder and we blow her rudder to pieces. It's the only chance we have at an escape."

Dutch looks at him for a while, letting it all sink in. As much as she hates Binns, he is right. There's no point just sailing on, being shot at until the Horizon finally sinks. Binns may be a filthy dog, but he's bo's'n for a reason. His plan is brilliant. "All in favor of surrendering say 'aye'."

A wave of soft ayes rises, the crew favoring the plan, but not wanting to offend their reinstated captain in case she is opposed.

"Very well. Excellent plan, Binns." Dutch lowers her blade and puts away her pistol, carrying on as if nothing has happened. "Make for the cove, mates, and fast. We don't want to be sunk before we get there."

As the crew goes back to work, Dutch leads Binns behind the doors for a private conversation, Micawber standing on guard outside in case Cherimee or young Scrimshaw Adams should feel like doing something stupid. "We'll settle our business later. In the meantime, if you so much as think of stealing my ship again, or of clapping me in irons, I will cut you into very small pieces and feed you to the sharks. As you've found, the crew is on my side. You and your consorts would be wise to remember that."

Binns nods, automatically more than sincerely.

"Good. Now, as I've been sort of tied up lately" -- an accusatory glare -- "what can you tell me about the ship closest to us? Will she be the one following us to the cove?"

"Most likely, yes. She's a frigate, about forty guns. The Hecate."

A sudden sound. Dutch and Binns simultaneously look to the open door of the captain's cabin, where Igenlode is having little luck trying to remove the ridiculous looking lamp-black from his face and body. Hearing the name of the ship his nephew is on, he dropped the mirror he was using to inspect the meager results of his scrubbing.

Dutch, deciding the noise was nothing serious, continues. "And you're sure some men can climb aboard with enough gunpowder to do some real damage?"

"Yes. Her rudder will definitely be gone, and with some luck, there will be a fair few losses among her crew as well."

In the cabin, Igenlode sinks to the ground. Good God, what now?

Captain James Hunter of His Majesty's forty-four gun frigate Hecate dusts off his cuffs and closes his spyglass with a snap as the big two-deckers sweep past, in pursuit of the scattering pirate fleet. Bellingham, Vengeance, Torminster... and trailing behind at the end of the starboard column, the little Leicester and Bonaventure that had formed part of his own detached command. That memory still rankles. To be driven off by a motley collection of pirates -- and almost to have lost the Marietta into the bargain! The handy little snow could have cut a pretty swathe through coastal shipping in pirate hands, her nine guns per side more than enough to overwhelm a merchant vessel three times her size.

Nimble, shallow-draught ships like the Marietta were the lifeblood of the Navy in the unending struggle against piracy; they could penetrate up the most secluded creeks, venture across the most taxing shoal waters, and as miniature warships, carried a weight of men and metal quite disproportionate to their size. But by the same token, if captured, their worth to the pirates themselves, compared to some converted coaster or frail trading schooner, was immeasurable.

Looking at the ship now limping ahead of them, James Hunter finds himself almost grinding his teeth in fury. Despite her coat of gaudy paint, he is almost certain he recognises her as just such a loss -- the sloop of war Aurora, long since reported as missing. Once protector, now turned predator... a traitor to the very shipping she had been commissioned in order to guard. It was as if one were to glance into the face of a street-walker and recognise beneath the raddled glaze the features of one's own lost sister or sweetheart: a sense not only of shock, but of revulsion. He would rather have known the Aurora ripped apart on the unforgiving rocks than have encountered her again like this.

He knows a momentary impulse to disobey orders -- to have Hecate's main armament run out again and smash the avenging weight of iron through the sloop's dishonoured timbers in a storm of shot like the cleansing whirlwind. Let the sea wash her gently clean, as it cradles the bones of her victims...

But a King's officer is not paid for sentiment, even over ships. The pirate vessel will be recaptured and taken back into service. Her crew, after a full and fair trial -- unless any of them can prove that they were taken aboard by force, or have played no part in the pirates' vile practices -- will be hanged like the dogs they are. And the Hecate will sail on serenely, to rout out another nest -- and another -- and another...

This time the grinding of the captain's teeth is positively audible. Tom Vereker, standing obediently ready at his side, gives him a sidelong glance; but, accustomed by now to his commander's vagaries, the oldest of the midshipmen wisely keeps his tongue to himself.

"Why don't they haul their wind?" Hunter explodes suddenly. "Make the signal again, Mr Vereker -- and this time with a warning shot!"

The flat report of the gun brings results all right; but not of the kind requested. A string of flags rises to the pirate's yard-arm in reply, and breaks out into the wind.

"They say they're making water fast and intend beaching the ship in the shallows, sir," the signal midshipman reports. "They're heading directly for land --"

"I can see that for myself, thank you!" Hunter cuts him off irritably and begins tapping his spyglass against his open palm. After a moment he sighs. "Very well, Mr Vereker. You know this coast, I believe? What are the conditions in that inlet?"

"Plausible, sir. The shore shelves gently, and with the wind in this quarter it'll be sheltered."

The captain purses his lips for a few seconds, considering, then nods. "Very well. We'll take them at their word -- it wouldn't do to let a prize sink in open water -- but we'll keep a close eye on them. I want to know the instant they make a false move. Is there deep water beyond that point?"

"Yes, sir, close in under the cliffs."

"Good. We'll hold them under our guns while the boarding party goes across to take charge of the prisoners and patch the damage. If needs be we'll let her settle to the bottom in shallow water and send a salvage brig after her later."

He strokes his chin. "That was good shooting from the bowchasers. Mr Tennant!"

The senior lieutenant turns.

"Have my congratulations sent to the gun-layers -- and an extra issue of rum each tonight."

"Aye aye, sir." Tennant speaks a few words to a nearby seaman, who hurries forward.

Ahead, the sloop is approaching the headland. Hunter lifts his spyglass again, watching narrowly as their quarry's hull disappears behind the promontory; but her headsails remain visible, continuing their slow progress with no hint of hesitation.

"Mr Vereker, go forward and assist the leadsman in the bows. They draw some feet less than we do -- but if they think they can lure us unpiloted into shoal waters, they're mistaken."

The Hecate is approaching the point herself, and the pirate ship is just coming back into view, lying close in to the beach. Her longboat trails empty behind her, and Hunter frowns, briefly puzzled. Perhaps they were laying out the anchor?

"Mr Vereker!"

The midshipman, also engaged in staring across at the sloop, jumps a little guiltily, and scampers off. "Aye aye, sir."

"Mr Tennant, have the guns run out and trained on the enemy's decks and upperworks. We'll risk no funny business while the boarding party take possession. Prepare to lower away ship's boats."

As young Vereker had predicted, the cove is sheltered. The frigate glides gently round the final turn on an even keel, her sails hanging almost flat. On board the other vessel, the pirates are stripping off weapons, carrying up great armfuls from below decks, flinging down cutlasses and even muskets to the planking. The dark mouths of her gun-ports are closed, her nine-pounders run in and silent. Hunter frowns. The ship looks undamaged -- but they seem almost eager to surrender. Instinct tells him something is amiss.

It is at this moment that a quiet but distinct splash from astern his own ship reaches his ear. The captain strides to the rail and leans over, just catching sight of a dark head submerging. On the far side of the cove, a boy is already being helped up the pirate's sides. Another man comes to the surface behind him.

Every fibre of Hunter's body is shrieking alarm. What were these men doing beneath his stern gallery? "Tennant! MacPhair!"

Both the lieutenants hasten to his side as he leans out over the rail, craning to catch sight of the damage. The faintest whiff of smoke reaches his nostrils.

Then the world disintegrates forever in blast and agonising flame...

* * * * *

"Got him! By Erzulie, we got him!" Halfpence Annie, no respecter of persons, is pounding Dutch on the back, grinning all over her crumpled face. "Take a look at that, now -- what do you say we storm across and turn the tables? Board her and take her -- what a flagship she'll make for the fleet! And you'll be commodore for certain --"

The Hecate is not so beautiful or so menacing now, with a black and ragged hole in her stern and a trickle of blood from her scuppers. Her crew seem momentarily stunned by the explosion that has robbed them of all their senior officers in one freakish blow; many are still picking themselves up. For a moment Dutch can see it all: a wave of pirates pouring aboard, the black flag jerking its way to the masthead, the eighteen-pounders below decks speaking at her command --

"Treachery!" It is a boy's voice from over the water, cracking in outrage. "Treachery! They attacked under flag of surrender! Fire!"

The command is high and wavering on the verge of tears; but it is the familiar voice of authority. The gun-deck responds almost automatically. The frigate's broadside rakes the bay, aimed high, smashing across the other ship's decks in a nightmare of splinters and hot iron and crashing spars. Miraculously untouched, Dutch hears the deep groan that signifies the collapse of the mizzen mast, gaff and boom trailing over the side in a welter of foam as the Horizon, responding to her earlier command, begins to gather way. Surrounded by hell, the pirate captain is almost blinded by brief tears of fury.

From beneath her feet, she hears the angry rumble as their own nine-pounders thrust forth without orders to blare their response, the shots, haphazardly aimed, splashing around the bigger ship or punching into her timbers. A body slumps against Dutch from behind, its loaded musket clattering to the deck. Without looking round, she shoves the limp limbs back, grabbing up the weapon. For all her damage, the Horizon is creeping forward beyond the helpless frigate's line of fire. In a moment or two, out of control, the Hecate will be aground.

"I'll get that hell-spawned imp, anyhow." The words are jerked out between clenched teeth as she takes aim on the slim figure of the boy, gesturing desperately on the quarter-deck. "I'll teach him to scour the decks of my ship --"

"No!" Someone grabs at the trigger from beside her, yanking the gun round as it goes off. Unbraced, Dutch is knocked backwards by the recoil against her arm. Something grates in her shoulder, painfully, and she snatches up her knife with her left hand, thrusting upwards at her assailant, snarling. She pulls the blow just in time.

Igenlode, face streaked with blood from a flying splinter in spite of strict orders to stay down in the hold, is pulling at the gun, black-smeared cheeks wet with disregarded tears. "No -- please, don't shoot -- that's Tom, my sister's Tom -- he's only sixteen --"

"Only sixteen!" Dutch lets go of the musket, sending Igenlode staggering back. Something rattles beneath their feet. She turns to pick it up, feeling the whale-bone beneath her fingers plaited into the bloodsoaked hair. It is Scrimshaw Adams' head, lying in the scuppers a few feet from his mutilated body. The broadside has smashed it from his shoulders. The clerk goes ashen grey and looks ready to vomit.

"Scrimshaw here was only fourteen when your Navy flogged him to the bone. Only fourteen when I found him on the dockside in Jamaica where he'd jumped ship, starving and all but dead of the wound-fever. Do you think he chose this life for fun -- for adventure, my fine pen-pusher? Do you think any of us did? Do you think we live hand to mouth for pleasure?"

"Please." Igenlode cannot meet her eyes. "Please -- Tom --"

Aboard the Hecate, where not a gun will bear, the midshipman has somehow gathered together a little knot of marines. A ragged volley rings out, and a musket-ball plucks at Dutch's sleeve. Beside her, the clerk falls abruptly silent, staring down at a spreading patch of blood beneath appalled fingers, then crumples slowly to the deck as the wounded leg gives way.

Despite the dragging spars, the Horizon has reached the mouth of the cove. If she so chooses, Dutch thinks, she can pour broadsides from here into the frigate's crippled stern, with not a shot fired in return -- smash all resistance into bloody rags. But there will be nothing left worth having of the ship afterwards. And the moment for easy victory by boarding has passed. The Hecate's crew will fight now; inch by stubborn inch.

Dutch sighs, looking back at that small, stiff figure receding on the quarter-deck, out of musket range now. She has waited too long. To fire a broadside now, she will have to put about and work back. A thin trail of smoke is still rising from the frigate's timbers. On impulse, she cups her hands to her mouth as the Horizon passes the point.

"Tell them a pirate ship showed more mercy than you had in store for us! Tell them we could have destroyed you all -- but held back!"

Her voice echoes thinly between the cliffs, and she cannot make out the answering hail. But the tone of defiance is unmistakable.

Dutch shrugs, the impulse to fury already passing. Let the boy make his boasts, if it pleased him. He'd never know why it was he was still alive -- and that, perhaps, if Igenlode's stiff-necked nephew had half the contempt for pirates she thought he had, was the greatest mercy she could show either of them.

The clerk is unconscious, still bleeding. Others are groaning on the deck, or lying ominously still. She sighs, and raises her voice.

"Get the wounded below, there! Cut away the topping-lifts -- free that wreckage aft! We'll find an island, fix up a jury-rig -- then it's off to Madagascar and the East. Jump to it! We've a rendezvous to make..."

Igenlode slowly opens his eyes. As the images come through, his mind begins to work again. He's in a cabin on a ship. The ship is moving, but he is not. Then, looking away from the ceiling, Igenlode notices he is lying in a hammock. Good, that explains it. But this isn't Dutch's cabin, and the unfamiliar territory makes him nervous. He tries to sit up, but that isn't very easy in a hammock, and a sharp pain in his leg quickly reminds him why he is lying there in the first place. He lets himself fall back again, breathing heavily. It seems that was already more effort than was good for someone who had just been shot. But he can't resist the urge to look at the wound. Raising the rough sheet that covers him, there's not much he can see of the leg, which is bandaged thickly, a small dark spot where the blood has soaked through the various layers of cloth marking the approximate location of the wound. Too much. This is all too much of an adventure. Igenlode closes his eyes, answering his body's plea for rest.

***

The door is swung open loudly, roughly awaking Igenlode. His startled eyes find Dutch standing in the doorway.

"Oh good, you're awake." She closes the door behind her. "So, do you like your new accommodations?"

Igenlode's mouth opens, but Dutch doesn't await his reply.

"This cabin belonged to a man who won't be needing it anymore, thanks to the efforts of your innocent young nephew."

He cringes, both because of the criticism in the remark and the idea of lying in a dead man's bed.

Dutch swings back the sheet to look at Igenlode's wounded leg, but he quickly pulls it over himself again, embarrassed to be seen half naked. Dutch raises an eyebrow. "I'm sure it's nothing I haven't seen before, love. But never mind. I'm sure you'll heal soon enough. You've lost a lot of blood, but there was little damage, you'll be glad to know."

Igenlode flushes. So the wound has been seen already.

"Anyway, I just came by to inform you of our plans. We're approaching a small island, where we'll fix the Horizon enough to safely sail on to Madagascar. There we'll get her properly repaired. You will help with any translations or negotiations necessary. Binns will leave the ship there, if he knows what's good for him. I've promised Micawber to help her find a ship that will sail her to Cape Town, if she wants to go back. She's still deciding. You will be on that ship as well."

"What?"

Igenlode's surprise doesn't sit well with Dutch. "There is no place on my ship for a hypocrite, my esteemed senior clerk." The words come out as if they are the worst of insults. "Your beloved nephew deserved to die for what he did to my crew and my ship. That he's related to you makes no difference. Every man is someone's child. The Navy's goal is to kill us, and I am glad when I can return the favor. He would have killed you!"

"That is not the same," protests Igenlode weakly, looking away.

"It is exactly the same. Just because he's got the law on his side doesn't make it any better! The Navy is just as cruel as any pirate fleet, or worse." Dutch forces herself to calm down somewhat before continuing. "I made a mistake taking you aboard. You're not fit for a pirate's life."

"It is my choice..."

"No, it is not! It was my choice then, and it is mine now. You will leave my ship at Madagascar."

Dutch storms out the cabin, slamming the door shut. She's not angry at Igenlode, but at herself. Angry for doing something so incredibly stupid as to take aboard a clerk. Angry that Binns was right. Dutch slams her hand into an undeserving wall in frustration. That bastard Binns was right, and she was wrong. She was wrong, and now Igenlode had been shot. The many pirates that died or got wounded at least knew the risks they were taking, but Dutch doubts that Igenlode thought everything through properly in his split-second decision to escape his dreary life. She should have known that, and refused to take him aboard. He could have died, and it would have been her stupid fault.

The days that follow are among the most miserable in Igenlode's hitherto uneventful life. There is no time or tolerance for unskilled extras getting in the way, during the all but impossible labour of setting up a new mast with no equipment other than the ship's own blocks and stays, and no leverage other than the height of the surviving main-mast. The island Dutch has chosen is not only uninhabited but uninhabitable, with no springs or streams, and only a dry and scrubby layer of vegetation rooted in its thin soil. The pirates are only too eager to leave for the fabled forests of Madagascar, and inclined to curse anyone who causes the least unintentional obstruction to their work.

It takes only a few attempts for Igenlode to abandon any idea of somehow becoming useful; but sitting around in idleness, when even Dutch is stripped to bare arms and shoulders and sweating along with the rest of them, is no route to popularity. Half a day's exploration is enough to blight any hopes of botanical or scientific discovery in the barren interior of the island, and the labour of dragging a wounded leg across the stones, even with the aid of a stout crutch, is enough to reduce any previously sedentary individual to complete exhaustion.

It is one thing to run away to sea, with the vivid and all too familiar prospect of the hangman's noose dancing before you in payment for connivance at the death of Willem Klaasz, banker. It's one thing to cast away home and family, and laugh at the unexpected reappearance of one's own best china in a pirate's hands. Even battle at sea, once the bowel-churning anticipation is over and death is all around and yet passing by, is tolerable. Being shot is rather less romantic than in ballads and books, where the hero fights valiantly on (and at the least does not pass out from shock), or lies pale and interesting on the bosom of his lady-love without apparent ill-effects; but living with it afterwards, on the whole, is no worse than enduring an acute attack of gout or a chronic case of dyspepsia. But complete ostracism is all but unbearable.

Dutch has barely spoken a word to her former protegé in days, and the crew, of course, follow her lead. Micawber, although a fellow outsider, is in high favour with the pirates due to her instrument-maker's skills with tools and fine work, and is as absorbed in the rigging-out as any of them. In her brief free moments she is always with Dutch in what seems almost a case of deliberate monopolisation, the two women swapping free and easy chatter with a lack of constraint that Igenlode, cold-shouldered in all directions, cannot help but envy.

The only member of the crew who has any time to spare for the unhappy clerk is the boozy and amiable Jones. In his case, however, it is all too probable that he simply lacks the perception to recognise the general consensus of hostility, rather than making any particular stand in its victim's favour... Igenlode tries to be grateful for these small moments of human contact; but Jones is as busy as the rest, and they really have very little in common -- the pirate's idea of conversation tending toward crude but poetic reminiscences of women he has, at one time or another, 'known'.

Of his surviving fellow-mutineers, Binns is morose and brooding. He seems to be suffering both from his arm, which is threatening to fester despite Cherimee's frequent attention, and from an attachment to the Horizon as strong as that evinced by Dutch herself. The idea of being forced to quit the ship at their next port of call clearly rankles, and twice he challenges Dutch to settle the matter "the old way", if she so dares -- hand to hand and to the death.

On the first occasion, the response is a cold refusal to fight a wounded man; on the second, when he demands that she settle her over-nice scruples by fighting with one hand tied behind her back, Dutch retorts flatly that the bo's'n has missed his chance. "You chose to fight foul when I gave you that choice, Binns. Well, now you can live with it -- and think yourself lucky to be living at all. Madagascar or the sharks: take it or leave it."

And if Binns goes, at Madagascar, then Cherimee has made it clear enough he will be going too, back to his home in the tree-drenched Malagasy highlands, though he seems more dogged than enthusiastic at the prospect. ("Reckon he do have an old woman with a sharp tongue a-waiting this many a year," Jones speculates, chuckling.) Faced with the prospect of losing the best pilot in her crew, Dutch simply shrugs and makes no demur. Cherimee is no fool led by the nose into mutiny, and she evidently no longer trusts him.

But at least Cherimee is going home, even if to a reluctant family and an ague-ridden old age. Crouched in a sheltered corner of the deck in what is fast becoming a familiar isolation, as Dutch thrashes the re-rigged Horizon as hard as she will go around the Cape and up into the glorious waters of the Indian Ocean in a bid to recover lost time, the little clerk gives way in turn to an almost agonising longing for home; for the old, dull, gentle life on an even keel, where the joys were few and far between, but misery was likewise small and seldom. The little house on Market Street, with its casket of page-worn tales and romances. The blue-sprigged china, washed and put away in the dresser. Sweet, feather-brained Johanna, taking off her bonnet in the parlour and pausing to pat down her ringlets and talk with maternal pride of her beloved Tom...

Igenlode winces from the thought of Tom. Tom, abandoned on a crippled ship with the death of the captain he had so admired and the lives of over a hundred men in his hands. Tom, whom Dutch had tried to kill in cold blood (no, honesty corrected, remembering the look on the pirate captain's face in that terrible hour, not in cold blood). Tom, who would never, ever understand how anyone he loved and trusted, any member of his own family could possibly end up aboard a pirate ship. Tom, who was lost now for good, along with the rest of that old safe and sane existence... and who had all unwittingly put an end to all that had been of value in the new: to the fragile, unlikely friendship between a cynical pirate captain and a timid middle-aged clerk.

Hunched against the bulwarks, Igenlode tries to keep out of the way of those with work to do; and is ignored.

* * * * *

"Land ho!" The call comes faintly down from the masthead. "Bearing two points on the starboard bow!"

There is a sudden hum of excitement on the deck, and even Igenlode takes notice. It makes a change from the long days of voyaging.

"Must be Madagascar for sure," the one-armed pirate Hooky Jack tells his companion, scratching at a healing scar that curls around his ribs. "I'll lay you ten to one we're lying-to in St Augustine's Bay before the day is out." There are no takers. Evidently no-one is prepared to wager money against a certainty.

In a way, it is a relief. Anything will be better than Dutch's contemptuous silence.

"I wonder if the rest of the fleet will still be there?" Igenlode ventures in the direction of a passing pirate, trying to scramble upwards in a hurry with the aid of a hand in the nearby rigging, and almost losing balance as the wounded leg gives way with a twinge. It is an ungainly performance that can often be relied upon to raise a reluctant laugh, even if it fails to open a conversation. "We've made up a good deal of lost time, don't you think?"

Then the clerk finally makes it to both feet and gets a clear look at the pirate, who stares back coldly. As ill luck would have it, it is the captain herself.

"Of course we have. I told you my ship is the best you'll ever see."

Igenlode wishes he could disappear. As painful as being ignored by Dutch was, this kind of confrontation is even worse, rubbing in the apparent lack of any friendship.

"We'll be arriving this evening. You will leave tomorrow morning, unless we need you longer. If you have any preparations to make, I suggest you get to it." Having given her orders, Dutch goes below deck, towards her cabin.

Igenlode cannot take the situation anymore. Thinking nothing that he says could possibly make their relationship worse, he follows Dutch as best he can, struggling with his crutch as he tries to squeeze through the double doors. "But what am I to do? I can't go back to Cape Town, I'll be hanged!"

"Then go somewhere else."

As Dutch enters her cabin, she wants to slam the door shut behind her, but can't bring herself to throw a door in a wounded man's face. And so Igenlode follows her inside, standing on the other side of the table as she sits down to it, unrolling a map and pretending to be busy.

Igenlode doesn't know what more to say. Rather, he has nothing more to say. He realizes all too well that there aren't any reasons for Dutch to keep him on the ship. But he still stands there, desperate, not knowing what else to do.

After a while, Dutch looks up at him with a sigh. "Look, if there is anything you need... Food, drink, a good dagger..." Dutch smiles inwardly at her dumb remark. A dagger -- that was almost funny. "Let me know and you will get it. I'm not trying to get you killed." Quite the opposite, in fact, nagged an inner voice.

"Will the fleet still be there?" Igenlode isn't planning to try to ship with another captain -- something tells him the chances of being taken aboard are pretty slim, and even with success there's no telling among what kind of people he would end up -- but he has to try to keep the conversation going. It's all he can do, with a faint hope that hidden somewhere lies an excellent reason why he should stay on the Horizon, which might come to light if only they talked long enough.

"Yes, I think so. I wonder if they're still expecting us to turn up. It'll be fun to see the looks on their faces if they think the Navy got us." Dutch grins to herself before realizing she was trying to ignore the clerk, not start a conversation. Quickly she feigns turning her attention to the map again.

"And you will continue to sail with them."

"I see no reason why not. Besides, it's been a while since I've been to the East."

A short, uncomfortable silence falls.

"Binns..." starts Igenlode, grasping at straws.

Dutch looks up annoyed at the mention of the bo's'n name.

"He doesn't want to leave, does he?"

"He has no choice."

"Indeed." Igenlode's eyes drift down aimlessly to the table. Dutch's remark has served its purpose, pointing him to the inevitability of his own fate. "Do you think he will accept it?"

"There's nothing he can do about it. He might have tried something, despite being wounded, and despite the fact that he wouldn't stand a chance even if he wasn't, but with the whole fleet present? They don't particularly like mutineers. A man who takes over a ship from a respected captain -- who can tell what he might do to the fleet? Cheat them, inform the Navy of their presence to limit the competition..." Dutch actually isn't sure at all that Binns will be smart enough to leave the Horizon without a fuss. He had been very stubborn in his insisting on fighting her, even with only one properly functioning arm against her two, in which case he wouldn't have stood the slightest chance. Dutch had racked her brain trying to come up with a way Binns would attempt to stay aboard, or even to take her ship again, but she couldn't come up with any, which made her nervous. At least knowing what he might do would give her something to prevent.

Igenlode gives up. There's nothing more to say. The thought of what might happen to him in an unknown place, let alone an infamous pirate haven like Madagascar, fills him with gloom. His future... well, he has none anymore.

Looking at the depressed clerk, Dutch can't help but feel sorry for him. "It'll be all right, love. It's for the best. We both made a mistake, and now's the time to fix it."

Still not looking at Dutch, Igenlode shakes his head. "For my part, it wasn't a mistake." With that, he exits the cabin, leaving Dutch in an even worse mood than before.

It is almost dark by the time the Horizon finally creeps into the bay, and an eerie stillness seems to have come over the forested slopes with the loss of the wind and the coming of night. Igenlode hesitates a minute or two on deck before going below, staring out across the black water, where the shapes of other ships at anchor can be dimly made out, towards the unknown isle. There is no half-expected clamour of tropical birds or howling of unseen creatures beneath the stars; only great wafts of alien scent drifting across the darkness that parts ship and shore, as if from the flowers of the Moon. For an instant Igenlode is almost enchanted into adventure.

Then memory of the morrow returns, and of the hopeless future that lies ahead. The magic of Madagascar ebbs, to be replaced by the predicted squalor of ale-shops and the grimy disrepute of natives and Europeans allied alike upon the outcast fringes of society, with neither dignity or civilisation left. What are the chances of survival for one cast up upon the water-front -- even with the 'good dagger' Dutch has so unthinkingly promised, let alone the missing 'share of booty' that was to fall due 'after our next action'? But the indignant twinge at that last thought ebbs just as swiftly. Igenlode would have wanted no part in any plunder taken from the Hecate, or from any other King's vessel; and in any case there had been none.

For a moment Dutch's bitterness over that episode, reckoned up by the ruthless profit-and-loss mentality that a pirate captain must needs maintain in order to survive, becomes almost comprehensible. In some ways, the gulf between a counting-house and a buccaneer's venture is not so very great; save that her reserves are smaller, and accounted not in gold but in cordage and spars, and the flesh and bone of her crew. Every investment, every drop of blood must yield its return, with no room for sentiment. She cannot afford for long to fight at a loss.

Faced with the prospect of being thrown friendless upon that foreign shore, Igenlode entertains fantasies of abandoning all pride, of going down on bended knee to the captain and begging to be allowed to remain, of craving abject pardon for whatever obscure transgression of pirate morality has earned this sentence. But Dutch's obstinacy is too familiar for that. She has made up her mind. And it will take more than grovelling to change it.

* * * * *

Neither Micawber nor Igenlode, by virtue of their somewhat unorthodox arrival, has much in the way of luggage to pack. In consequence, neither of them is up particularly early the next morning. Matters are otherwise with Binns; but for a while it seems he is not to leave at all.

"I don't believe it. He's shamming!" Dutch's furious bellow echoes through the entire after part of the ship. Cherimee, unmoved, answers in a lower tone, and Dutch explodes.

"I don't care about high fever or the loss of his arm -- I want that mutinous double-crossing dog of a Deptford dung-cock off my ship, and I want him off now! There's no wound-fever in his brain can account for his actions off the Cape, so don't throw that excuse in my teeth. I'll warrant this is naught but another plot between the two of you once all else failed..." And the sound of her booted feet storms past to the sick man's hammock, with Cherimee pattering at her heels.

Igenlode, whose unhappy musings have been thus unexpectedly overtaken by curiosity, dresses rapidly in what remains of the once-respectable mustard-coloured costume -- long since eked out for every-day with piratical rags -- and opens the cabin door a crack, eavesdropping without a qualm.

The big bo's'n is certainly delirious. Fragments of mumbled phrases drift between-decks, ravings against injustice combining oddly with appeals to a long-forgotten 'Margarethe' and fragments of nautical command. If the man's arm really has taken the dreaded 'wound-evil' (gangrene, the clerk's book-learning corrects automatically), then his prospects are very poor indeed.

Dutch had obviously been convinced of the genuine nature of his complaint, for her voice is softer. "But what do you want of me, Cherimee? We sail again within the week -- maybe even before the day is out -- and a hammock's no place for a raving man. If he's in no fit state to move, then it's certain sure he's in no fit state to stay. Why, you plan to ship ashore yourself, man -- and there's no-one else aboard can care for him, or will."

She sighs. "I don't trust you an inch, my fine Malagasy friend, but there's no denying your leechcraft has saved more lives than any barber-surgeon's meddling up in London Town. If anyone can save a man from a well-deserved end, I'll warrant it's those spirit-doctors of yours ashore, with their herbs and their hot water and their queer ideas of clean medicine -- and never mind the influence of the ancestors, or whatever it is they pray to. Leave him aboard and he'll die, I can promise you that."

Cherimee's words are inaudible, but his captain laughs, shortly. "Lose hope if he loses the ship? Why, the ship's mine, and I'd sooner lose my good right arm than lose my sweet Horizon to any man alive -- and Jeremiah Binns may count himself lucky if he does no more than lose both!"

Igenlode, picturing the horrors of rotting flesh and of amputation, shrinks back as the heavy tread of men carrying a burden echoes past and up onto the deck a few minutes later, as if the miasma of putrefaction has not already reached out its dread odour to all on board.

* * * * *

There is a thud, and shouts over the side as Binns is lowered into the waiting boat, and then the receding splash of oars. Dutch, returning to her cabin with the bills and lists of prices brought out from the rapacious chandler on shore, bumps headlong into Igenlode, who is looking somewhat more neat and tidy than has become usual of late.

As clumsy as ever in the narrow spaces on board ship, though. Her assailant springs back with some ridiculous apology, as if for defiling a fine lady's white bosom with the merest unworthy touch, but the damage is done. The grimy parchments are all over the floor. Dutch heaves an ostentatious sigh and stoops to pick the paperwork up, but the clerk is before her, twitching together loose leaves with the dexterity of long experience, and she folds her arms and waits.

Igenlode is frowning at the figures. "What's this?"

"Charges for victuals over the past six months, on demand," Dutch says patiently. "Believe it or not, I wasn't just planning to sail in and steal everything we want. We trade our plunder here, and in return they sell us supplies and give us a haven. It's a regular port of call, like Tortuga."

But the clerk's lips are moving silently, evidently engaging in some kind of mental calculation. "Six months? Have you kept any previous records of sale -- and of charges?"

This new competent, professional demeanour has a certain novelty value at least, Dutch thinks wryly, leading the way back into the familiar territory of her cabin and pointing out the dusty heaps of papers that constitute her entire financial system. Through the cabin windows, she can hear the sound of Micawber engaging in cheerful banter with the crew of the long outrigger canoe that has come out in turn to take her on shore, and the clatter of her sword-belt against the ship's side as she descends into the boat.

That's one passenger who won't have any difficulty looking after herself on her way back to Cape Town, Dutch thinks ruefully, without consciously acknowledging the comparison. She wonders if she ought to send Igenlode, now buried up to the ears in tattered parchment, up on deck to catch the canoe before it leaves. But an exclamation from that direction piques her curiosity.

"Well, what is it?" she demands after waiting a good few minutes, during which her patience is rewarded by nothing more coherent than 'Hum' or 'Tut', interspersed with the occasional 'Dear, dear'. The papers spread all over the tables appear to contain nothing whatsoever exciting. An ignoble suspicion dawns. "I warn you, if this is some kind of joke at my expense --"

"Expense?" Igenlode blinks, and raises dusty fingers in a habitual little gesture she has often smiled at, as if to tip back a vanished wig. "Expense is the word, I'd say. I suppose you know you're being cheated blind?"

Since Dutch has often harboured just such a suspicion, her laugh rings a little hollow. "Ever heard of a 'fence', love? Weatherby runs a risk with every cargo of ours he trades -- naturally he takes his mark-up."

"Naturally I've made allowances for that..." The contrast between the fussy legal tone and the highly-illicit subject under discussion is so incongruous that Dutch is finding it hard to keep a straight face. "But look here -- and here. He hasn't even bothered to cover up the discrepancies -- clearly counting on no-one's ever bothering to check back." This last said in accents of such academic disapproval that Dutch has a vision of the Lord High Chancellor ensconced in bewigged and be-capped glory in the midst of her cabin to admonish her, and chokes back a most undignified giggle.

"Look," Igenlode is repeating patiently, "here, and here, for example. You've paid for two barrels of twenty-four pounder shot that wouldn't fit any gun on board -- if it had ever actually been loaded, which I doubt. And on this sheet he's charged it up to your account again, to the same figure where everything else has changed. And here again -- do you see? And then again, the same pattern, on three bolts of No.7 canvas --"

"Wait a minute." Dutch frowns. "We don't use No.7. What does he think this is -- the King of Spain's own pleasure-yacht? Why, there's many a pauper woman on the streets would think herself lucky to make a chemise out of canvas that fine --"

The clerk reddens a little, although whether out of pleasure at this confirmation or in response to the indelicate allusion to female underclothing, she is not sure. "Well, I thought as much, from the price -- but I didn't know for certain. And then this cask of Madeira --"

"Madeira?" Dutch's fists clench. "Why, if that piss-poor thin streak of a wine Thomas Weatherby sells is anything better than arrack, then I'll gladly pickle in it myself! How long has this been going on?"

"How long since you looked at these papers?" is the guileless response, and for a moment it is very nearly a toss-up as to whether she will vent her fury on the head of Thos. Weatherby, Esquire, or on that of the innocent messenger of fraud closer at hand. Her better nature wins out.

"Come with me," she commands, preparing to arm herself to the teeth and ignoring the nervous look that results. "Bring all those bills. You're going to show that blood-sucker Weatherby exactly what you just showed me -- and then we'll see just how plump his purse is feeling in recompense..."

She runs a significant finger along the edge of a dagger, feeling the pull of razor steel as it catches against the skin, and slips it into her sleeve. "Hooky --" she raises her voice -- "I want the longboat. And a fully-armed crew!"

* * * * *

Confronted with hard evidence of the faked supplies, Weatherby, as she had expected, caves in. There is a potentially nasty moment when a couple of big loafers, leaning against the doorway of the ramshackle hut the chandler calls an office, show signs of moving in to his defence; but the presence of the Horizon's boat crew moving silently up behind them is enough to deter any ideas of valour they might have been nursing, and fat Weatherby pays up with almost effusive eagerness, showing untoward generosity in his haste to get the Horizon's captain out of his premises and away from the island.

"I dare say he's been putting the same tricks on every ship that calls," Dutch says cheerfully as the little group strolls back down the beach, clinking gently from every available opening. "He's terrified we'll get the notion to spread the word, and put someone else in his place. But he'll deal honestly by us from now on, if he knows what's good for him -- and as for the rest, they can take their chances where I'm concerned. After all, they don't have our secret weapon..."

Igenlode, clapped genially on the shoulder by a hand full of money-bag, stops dead and almost falls. "You mean -- you're not going to leave me here? You're not going to send me away? You're --"

Dutch -- who, if truth be told, had completely forgotten her plans for the clerk's welfare during the excitement of the past half-hour -- comes to an abrupt halt in her turn. All around them the boat's crew are staring. This is not the moment she would have chosen.

"Listen, I don't want you dead -- savvy?" she says finally, after a long moment in which all the hope and eagerness begin to drain out of Igenlode's face, into an almost naked despair that is painful to see. "You're no more fit to take care of yourself on a pirate ship than -- than that lizard over there."

She points at a slowly-ambling monstrosity that has clearly escaped from a nearby plaited basket, and is trying to ascend the doorpost of a tumbledown hut with the aid of its tail. It swivels one eye at her.

"You're... worried I might get hurt?" Igenlode isn't the only one with a dawning look of incredulity, and Dutch feels her cheeks grow hot. She glares at her crew.

"What are you waiting for? I told you to get that money down to the boat..." Money they all owe to Igenlode. But she can see they've already worked that out for themselves.

The laden pirates shuffle off across the loose sand, not without backward glances. Dutch lowers her voice.

"Listen, love, I was wrong to take you on board, that's all. You don't belong here with us --"

But something seems to have come back into Igenlode's eyes. "All this time -- you were worried about me?"

"Yes," Dutch says crossly, kicking herself for ever letting that weakness slip. "This isn't the life for you, we both know that -- and if you're caught in our company, you'll swing with the rest of us, clerk or no clerk. I knew a man was hanged once. It took him fifteen minutes to stop kicking -- but he had a sweetheart in town, and when they cut him down she smuggled the body off, and all but died of the fright when she found a breath of life still in him. But he didn't live long. Couldn't bear a cover over him at night, or any collar round his neck, or he'd go black in the face and start to choke just from the memory of it. And his dreams were something horrible. I had to put him ashore in the end, for none of the crew would sleep near him. They say he killed himself sooner than face trial -- put a bullet through his brain with the terror of the rope hard upon him..."

"I couldn't do that." The clerk has gone very white. "I'd be sure to make a mess of it..." A swallow. "But you could."

"I could -- what? Shoot you?"

"Well, if hanging's as bad as you say..." Igenlode mumbles, face flaming scarlet at her disbelieving tone.

For a split second, Dutch isn't sure if that's the bravest or the most ridiculous proposition she has ever heard. Then laughter gets the better of her, and she dissolves into helpless whoops. "Oh my dear -- my dear funny little friend --"

The look on Igenlode's face sends her off again despite everything she can do, and almost reluctantly the clerk's mouth begins to twitch in its turn. Soon they are clinging to each other like drunks on the dockside, laughing so hard together that they can barely stand up. Dutch thinks about the spectacle she must be presenting to the puzzled onlookers, and the mental image doubles her up in complete abandon, until it is all she can do to get her breath. She collapses onto the sand, still laughing.

"You just saved me over two hundred pounds sterling," she says at last, climbing to her feet and thumping a sputtering Igenlode on the back. "If you want to come that badly... we'll consider it your passage fee. Agreed?"

The shining look of trust in the little clerk's eyes is answer enough.

When Igenlode and Dutch return to the Horizon, Dutch still gets some funny looks, or so she imagines.

"What are you looking at?" But her stern look quickly dissolves into a grin. "Extra rations of rum for all! We have reason enough to celebrate, I should think."

The crew is all too glad to follow her order. They all know Igenlode is the reason for their recent fortune, and as much as he was ignored earlier, so much attention does he get now. It's something to get used to for the bashful clerk, but certainly much better, especially as he is now to stay aboard the Horizon and sail with her for Lord knows how long, which would not be very agreeable with as little human contact as he had on the way to Madagascar. Therefore Igenlode accepts all hearty pats on his shoulder with a smile, despite the fact that his shoulders quickly become rather sore, and he still isn't standing very firmly after being shot in the leg.

From amongst the happily drinking crewmembers, someone steps up to Dutch.

"Micawber?"

A somewhat apologetic smile is all the reply she gets, but more than was needed.

"The last I heard, you were on your way back to Cape Town." As if they had parted months ago, rather than that morning.

"I was. I am. Well, I would be." Mic looks down at the deck. "But there aren't any ships leaving for Cape Town anytime soon. Not for months, they say. And I have no idea what to do until then. I don't have much money..."

"You're welcome to stay aboard, but I don't know when we'll be leaving."

"Actually..." A deep breath. "I was hoping I could join your crew, at least for some time."

Dutch's surprised look moves from Micawber to Igenlode. "It seems we're quite a popular ship nowadays. Maybe I should raise the standards for crewmembers."

A few concerned looks from the crew are quickly winked away.

"Of course you can join the crew. We need some more men..." -- Mic raises an eyebrow, to which Dutch rolls her eyes -- "after our last venture anyway, and there's no doubt you have many skills. Welcome aboard!"

Dutch raises her tankard and Mic grabs another to answer the toast.

After some general conversation, Mic leans in a little. "I have to tell you something, but not in front of all these people."

Dutch's curiosity is disturbed when someone taps her on the shoulder. Mic jumps back a little, as if a great secret was about to be discovered.

"Captain, there's a message from the Commodore. She wants to see you."

After a deep sigh, Dutch turns her attention to Micawber again. "I'm sorry, mate. The Commodore calls and I must answer." Then in a lower voice: "Meet me in my cabin as soon I get back."

Micawber nods and watches Dutch leave the ship, a strange, serious face among the celebrating crew.

***

"I hear you've got some new crewmembers."

Dutch moves in her chair a little. She had an idea this would be an unpleasant talk, and this proves her right. "Yes, I have."

"Not sailors."

Dutch nods. "Not sailors."

Commodore Princess looks somewhat irritated at the lack of an apparantly expected explanation. "So why did you take them aboard?"

"One is an instrument maker who has excellent skills with tools and woodwork. The other is a clerk."

"A clerk?" It is not so much surprise as disdain that fills Princess' voice. There's no doubt she already knows of Igenlode, or this conversation wouldn't be happening.

Dutch appears unaffected. "He can calculate prices and profits like no other in the fleet." She decides not to tell Princess about the affair with Weatherby, as she hasn't proclaimed the chandler's dishonesty to the fleet. Seeing no harm in exaggerating, she adds: "He knows two dozen languages as well."

Princess gets up to pour herself a drink. "I hear there are other reasons why you want him aboard. I hear you were rolling on the beach together earlier today."

"What?" The shock of being spied upon equals that of being caught withholding information from the fleet. If someone was keeping an eye on them on the beach, they probably knew about Weatherby as well. Dutch shakes this thought, focusing on her outrage. "We were laughing. Having fun, if you know what that is."

An imprudent insult, but Princess ignores Dutch altogether.

"What do you care anyway? It's my ship and my crew. And I needed some new men after our little encounter with the Navy. You know, the one where I sank a frigate, which therefore didn't go after the fleet?" It's clear that Dutch is twisting the facts a little, but her main accusation stands.

"I care," says Princess calmly, sitting down again, "because I have to be able to count on every ship in the fleet. That means I need a solid crew on every ship."

"I can't believe this. How dare you criticise my judgement? My ship has been a strong and loyal part of the fleet for so long now, doing more damage than most of the others, collecting more swag and always helping the other ships if they get in trouble."

Princess' face is emotionless, and she doesn't try to contest the value of the Horizon and her crew in the past, which is undisputed.

This apathy really angers Dutch, whether because of her temper, her pride in her ship or the rum she had on the Horizon not long ago. "Fine. I don't care much for doing a good job and not being appreciated for it. If you want me to leave the fleet, just say so."

Dutch is still fuming as a couple of crewmen from the Commodore's ship row her back to the Horizon. The fact that her own ship's boat hadn't waited for her has done nothing to improve her temper. She hadn't specifically ordered them to stay... so of course they'd taken advantage of pirate liberties and returned before they could miss their share of the rum. She supposed it was entirely predictable; which made the fact that she'd been left to eat humble pie and beg a favour from Princess her fault, naturally. For two pins, she'd have stripped off coat and boots and swum back through the warm waters of the bay. But climbing back onto her own ship dripping wet was one thing. Arriving with one or more extremities missing was another matter -- she could have sworn she'd seen shark fins this morning.

So she sits decorously in the sternsheets of the borrowed boat with a couple of burly pirates rowing her, and scowls in silence. She has half a mind to take the Commodore at her word and pull the Horizon out of the fleet just to demonstrate her independence; but she knows that in the heat of the moment they'd both said things they will regret, and that in a couple of days Princess will have all but forgotten their argument. Storming out of the bay in a huff might make her feel better now, but won't do any of them any good in the long run. She swallows down her indignation, stands up on the thwart as they reach the Horizon, and scrambles up into the chains as the mainmast shrouds come within reach.

The tail-end of the celebration is still going on as she drops down onto the deck. Igenlode has evidently been cajoled into trying the rum, a spectacle which is producing great hilarity among the onlookers, although from here she can't see much of what is happening. If Princess were here now, she could accuse the whole crew of 'rolling around' with the clerk, Dutch thinks rather bitterly, the imputation still burning in her ears.

But the thought gives her an idea. There is something she can do about it after all. The loss of privacy will be a bit tough on Igenlode; but for anyone shy enough to blush at the very mention of a lady's undersmock, probably not so bad as the concept of having scurrilous rumours about you going around the fleet.

She strolls up to the cheering ring of pirates, catches tall young Luiz by his embroidered sash and swings him backwards off his seat so she can get through, scrambles over the upended barrel he'd been occupying and taps Igenlode on the shoulder. "So... how's the leg today?"

The clerk gets up rather unsteadily and gives her an unfocused smile. "Can't feel a thing! Not a thing..."

Dutch chuckles. "That's the rum, love." A ripple of laughter runs round the crew.

"I'm -- I'm perfectly convalescent," Igenlode protests, with great dignity and an effort of almost immaculate enunciation.

"Good," Dutch says cheerfully, "you can move your things down into the fo'c'sle with the rest of the crew. Sorry, but there are only half a dozen cabins on the ship -- and I need to promote someone to take the place of the man who had yours." She could have left it a while longer, if Princess hadn't pushed matters -- she has already decided on Halfpence Annie to fill Binns' old place as bo's'n, but the others can wait -- but it's true enough that the position of captain's clerk wouldn't normally rank a cabin of its own, and it's occurred to her that this is a perfect way of silencing wagging tongues.

She feels a moment's compunction at Igenlode's stricken look; but the idea gets a raucous welcome from the rest of the crew, with offers of prime sleeping places: "right aft by the bulkhead" -- "nay, old Cummings had a main good berth athwart the galley stores" -- "don't you heed him none, but come along with me, and I'll see you set up proper". Listening to their manifest goodwill, the little clerk's cheeks have begun to go pink with the pleasure of acceptance; and when their eyes do meet, the smile that answers Dutch's enquiring eyebrow is muzzy with rum, but unfeignedly wide.

Convalescent or not, Igenlode's legs seem just at the moment to be decidedly uncertain. Dutch observes her protegé's meandering route down the deck, enabled only by clinging onto broad Annie as if the planks were lurching in the wildest fashion, and speculates wryly on the extent on the hangover that is likely to follow. With that skinny physique, the clerk clearly has no head for spirits at all.

The Commodore's insinuations come to mind again as she watches the improbable little figure recede, and for the first time she is able to laugh. For a captain to carry on with any member of her own crew -- let alone aboard her own ship -- would be complete lunacy, and she certainly doesn't need the Commodore to remind her of that. But with this one?

She lets her eye rest appreciatively on dark-eyed, vivid Luiz as he clambers back to his feet from the deck where she had tipped him, and grins ruefully at the comparison. She has to admit she's not sure she has ever encountered a less likely subject for a supposed infatuation. Poor Igenlode -- the very idea! But the crook of her mouth has affection in it, all the same.

* * * * *

"Captain." Micawber pulls at her sleeve.

Dutch sighs and follows the young apprentice down to the great cabin. She motions her to take a chair. "Well, what is it?"

"Yellow Jack."

The words are clipped and tense, and for an instant Dutch wonders what she is talking about. "Who?"

Micawber makes an impatient sound. "Yellow Jack -- vomito negro -- the fever! It's ashore -- half the villages up the coast are down with it. I went up to ask about ships back to Cape Town, and they couldn't get me out fast enough. They say a couple of gem-prospectors brought it back from the interior..."

Dutch swallows, not needing to ask why Micawber hadn't wanted to blurt her news out in public. In the narrow confines of a wooden hull, the merest whisper of plague would start a panic; and for good reason. Her own imagination could all too vividly picture Yellow Jack tightening its grip upon the Horizon. A drifting death-ship, her crew wasting away in fever and thirst, too weak to man the sails that would bring them to land... One whisper of this to the crew, and it would be each man for himself. Yellow fever could kill them all as surely as the old Bellingham's broadside, and in a manner far more unpleasant.

Dutch remains silent for a long time, thinking about all the possible scenarios that might take place, and hating Cherimee for being a cursed mutineer, his departure leaving the Horizon without much medical knowledge. Not that it matters much. Even his expert care would only prolong the crew's suffering if yellow fever should descend upon the ship.

"What do we do?" asks Micawber finally, breaking Dutch's trance.

"We sail."

"But if the fever strikes in the middle of the ocean..."

"Well, there's not much use staying here, is there? The crew will want to go ashore, and every man that does can bring the fever to my ship."

Suddenly it hits Dutch that she and some of her best men have already been ashore, when paying that cheat Weatherby a visit. Her stomach turns. "I'll go and inform the commodore." Dutch's voice doesn't come out half as self-assured as she would wish. "We must leave this wretched place as quickly as possible. Come with me."

Dutch gets up, but turns back just before reaching the door, causing Micawber to nearly bump into her, and picks up some random papers from one of the carefully organized stacks Igenlode left on the desk.

***

On deck the celebrations are almost at an end, most men having made their way back to their quarters, some others passed out on deck.

"Captain!" shouts Halfpence Annie with little control over her own voice, as she notices Dutch following Mic into a boat. "Where are you going?"

"The Commodore." Dutch waves the papers she brought. "This is what she wanted."

Igenlode's head pops up at the rustle of the paperwork. "Should..." He hiccups loudly. "Should I come and..." A pensive look as he digs into his mind for a word that matches the meaning he's looking for. "... and explicate?"

"No, love. You stay here and play with your new friends." Dutch directs herself to the rest of the crew that's still around. "Someone make sure he gets into a bunk."

A weak "Aye aye, Captain!" arises from some corners of the deck as Dutch lowers herself into the boat and pushes off.

*****

Dutch has left Micawber in the boat, as she is an unfamiliar face (not to mention one of her new crewmembers the Commodore was complaining about), but it still isn't easy to get to Princess. It's possible that she gave instructions to keep Dutch away for a while after their recent un-amicable encounter, or maybe Princess simply doesn't want any visitors at this time of day -- it is getting dark already. The few men who try to stop Dutch are roughly shoved out of her way, some more easily than others. When she finally reaches the Commodore's cabin, the last of them has just drawn his cutlass and storms at her. Dutch finds this reason enough not to knock, and slips in the cabin, quickly closing the door behind her. There is a loud thud as the man's cutlass lands in the strong wood on the outside.

Princess looks up from her dinner, unaffected by the commotion. "If you plan to argue and make a fool of yourself again..."

Dutch shakes her head. "I have something important to tell you."

The man has pulled his cutlass free and enters the cabin pointing it at Dutch, looking at Princess for permission.

"It's all right, David. Leave us."

After David departs, Dutch listens at the door until she can no longer hear his footsteps before walking up to the table. "There's yellow jack ashore."

Princess' mouth stops chewing in the middle of a bite of fresh poultry that was brought aboard from that very shore only that morning. She swallows it with a big gulp. "How do you know?"

"One of my men was wandering around to make some inquiries and he heard the stories," says Dutch, intentionally vague. "We have to sail as soon as possible. Give the signal first thing tomorrow, allow everyone some time to stock up with whatever they need if they haven't already -- we can leave midday."

"Midday? That's a bit hasty, don't you think?"

"Every minute we leave sooner may well save our lives."

"But people will be suspicious."

Dutch sighs impatiently. "They will be just as suspicious if we leave the next morning. If some captains ask an explanation, you can always say... say that you've heard the treasure ship of the Great Moghul is sailing back to India soon, and that we may just intercept it."

A brief smile on the Commodore's face shows her appreciation of the ruse. "Very well. I shall announce our departure at dawn."

When Igenlode wakes up, the deck beams are heaving.

A few inches above the hammock, they sway and recede in the most sickening manner. A thin patch of light splashing down from the fore-hatch burns like a flaming column, and the creak of the ship's timbers echoes with all the anguish of souls in torment. The clerk groans.

"Is it a storm?"

For response, there is only a clap of laughter that threatens to split aching temples asunder like a thunderbolt, and an agonising bellow from Jones. "Storm? Storm? Why, we're safe at anchor off Madagascar's shore, in a fine breeze and a fair day, with a fortune in gold and spices barely an arm's-length across the horizon --"

But here the unhappy sufferer's pleas for silence finally penetrate the pirate's understanding, and he subsides with nothing more than a chuckle and the broadest of winks, tiptoeing away with exaggerated caution.

His figure appears to swell and lurch with distressing regularity in time to the pounding of the rum in Igenlode's head; and with a fresh groan the clerk attempts to turn face-down, lurches horribly for a moment on the edge of the hammock, all sense of balance lost, and is precipitated limply onto the deck below. Confused memories of the previous day are beginning to come back, painfully.

No more rum. It is a heartfelt vow. Water or small beer, or the wine that is gentlemen's fare -- but no more rum...

The deck-planking is hard, but getting up is even harder. Half an hour later, Igenlode has drifted back into an aching doze.

"Sleeping on the floor again?" There is something familiar in the toe of the boot that accompanies the words, not ungently,and the grin that meets the clerk's blurry eyes.

"I -- ugh --"

"You'll be glad to know I haven't brought you any breakfast this time," Dutch says cheerfully, her grin widening at the evident nausea evoked by this reference. She crouches down, her hands more sympathetic than her voice. "Here. Drink this. Make the most of it -- the last of the water-casks are just coming on board, and we'll be out of sight of fresh water for a long time."

Suddenly, ravenously thirsty, Igenlode almost chokes on the proffered liquid and has to be helped to sit up by the captain, who sighs. "You really don't have any practice at this, do you, love?"

"No more rum..." It emerges in a croak, and Dutch rolls her eyes.

"No more rum for you," she agrees, running an expert hand across her patient's neck and forehead, and feeling for a pulse despite Igenlode's attempts to fend her off. She frowns. "I just hope it is only the rum..."

The last words are almost too soft to hear, but the clerk stiffens, sensing something wrong. "What..?"

"Stay still," Dutch commands, peering closely in the half-light of the foc's'le. She reinforces this order with a sharp shake which elicits a groan. Dutch ignores it. "Hmmm, no fever... you look more green than yellow to me... no aching muscles?"

"Is the head a muscle?" Igenlode manages weakly, and the pirate snorts, capturing one thin wrist and encircling it between thumb and forefinger as a demonstration.

"In your case, probably the only one you've got," she retorts, standing up in a single swift movement that serves to illustrate her own lithe strength but simply makes her victim feel sick all over again. She yanks the clerk upright.

"Enough malingering." She sounds relieved. "The breeze is fair from the north'rd and we'll be leaving this accursed shore as soon as the Commodore gives the signal. I want all hands on deck -- and that means you."

The prospect of setting sail is not, at present, an enticing one, but Igenlode knows better than to disobey. Ten minutes later, pale and sweating in the midday sun, the little clerk is among those bending double under bo's'n Annie's orders, to wind up the anchor from its bed of sand.

The last few yards of rather battered cable come free with a rush, and the topsails are set at Dutch's word of command. Gathering speed as the helm goes over, the Horizon glides across the water in the Commodore's wake, as all around her sails are sheeted in and ships begin to stir. At the end of the bay a small pirogue, paddled swiftly, is passing close to the shore, and further up the coast a thin stream of smoke rises from an unseen village. Elsewhere, the mysterious shores of Madagascar are quite still. Whatever secrets the island guards from incomers, it holds them yet.