Revenge at the Maldives

Summary: After a raid on Cape Town, the senior clerk Igenlode has shipped aboard with pirate captain Dutch of the Horizon. They had some trouble getting away from the Navy, but finally the Horizon makes it to Madagascar, where it rejoins the rest of the pirate fleet led by Commodore Princess. Micawber, an instrument maker's apprentice from Cape Town, has also ended up on the Horizon during the raid. When trying to find a ship back to Cape Town, she discovers there is an outbreak of yellow fever, a very dangerous disease, on Madagascar. She joins the crew of the Horizon to get off the island and warns Dutch, who in turn warns the Commodore. They set sail as soon as possible, without informing anyone else, as this would cause great panic.

After the hardest work is done, and the Horizon is on her way, Igenlode leans against the bulwarks, panting like a dog. His first hours as a true sailor haven't been very enjoyable -- the hard work, the sun beaming bright on his unaccustomed skin, and his head still aching with the remnants of yesterday's rum. But he knows he'll get used to it all. Except for the rum, that is.

When Igenlode has caught his breath a little, he turns to Jones, who is nearby, still working. "So, where are we sailing?"

"We're going to take the Great Moghul's treasure ship." There is a sort of solemnity in the statement, after which Jones' face becomes as happy as that of a child's on Christmas Eve. "Riches beyond your wildest imagination, all stocked together on that one ship."

Igenlode is impressed, knowing as well as anyone the wealth of the Great Moghul of India. "But isn't it terribly hard to find a ship in the middle of the ocean?"

"Not now. We know she's leaving soon, we know where she's leaving from, and we know where she's going."

Igenlode nods. "That does help a great deal."

At that moment, Dutch walks by on her way back to her cabin. "Mr Clerk!" she mocks. "No slacking on my ship! Help Jones there, then find something else to do." She stops to take in the image of the sun-burnt clerk and grins. "Red really is a much better color for you than green."

The Captain continues and when the doors slap shut behind her, Igenlode shakes his head. "A better color..." he mutters to himself. "Well, I suppose both are indeed better than yellow."

Jones stops dead in his work. "Yellow?" He is a simple man, and while the risk of being killed in a fight never seems to impress him much, invisible dangers such as enormous sea serpents, monsters that live on the edge of the world, and also intangible diseases, scare him all the more. Horror stories of yellow jack quickly taking hold of entire crews, who all die miserably, their ships later found floating around or eventually crashing upon a distant shore, have left a vivid picture in his mind.

"Yes, the Captain was checking if I was all right." Noticing an increasing number of sailors turning to him for the story, Igenlode suddenly feels very uncomfortable.

Bo's'n Annie curses. "That's why we left so soon. There was yellow jack in Madagascar."

An unhappy murmur arises from amongst the pirates, spreading all over the deck.

When Dutch comes back through the doors, everybody immediately falls silent and stares at her. She halts, sensing the wall of animosity.

"What is it?"

Annie pushes aside some sailors blocking her way and steps forward. "There was yellow jack in Madagascar, wasn't there? That's why we left, not because of the bloody Moghul's treasure ship!"

The crew back her up with angry shouting, most of all Jones, who has only just realized that the treasure ship he was so anxious to loot was a lie.

Dutch doesn't feel like denying against so great an opposition. As calmly as she can, she says: "There is no yellow jack on this ship, is there?"

Her reply is a wave of curses.

"Silence!"

Almost surprisingly, the authority in Dutch's voice has the desired effect.

"There is no yellow jack on my ship! Now get back to work! We have a treasure ship to plunder, and I will not miss that opportunity because my crew prefered arguing over sailing!"

The pirates reluctantly do as they're told, but angry whispers continue. Dutch decides it's better to retreat to her cabin for a while and let it all blow over. By tomorrow, the crew will be focused on the treasure again, and yellow fever will be all but forgotten.

Once inside, she sits down at her desk. She removes her bandana and superfluously wipes her forehead with it. Bloody crew. What did they expect? Did they want a panic? She looks at some of the paperwork lying around, but the figures seem to be dancing on the pages. Ah, why bother? Igenlode can do that later. He'll be happy to have a diversion from the hard labor too. Dutch pushes herself up from the desk and climbs into her hammock. A little rest will be good. The situation will have cleared up by the time she wakes.

The fleet is fourteen days out from Madagascar before Dutch can be certain that they have escaped the fever; fourteen endless days of worry for the captain, fourteen long lazy days for the crew, as the pirate flotilla spreads out across the warm blue waters of the ocean, and dawn after dawn blossoms on the horizon without a break in the weather, succeeded in turn by the blowsy glories of sunset in the West. Igenlode has never known anything like it.

The ship rides steadily across the trade winds as the hours slip past, with barely even a touch on the wheel needed to hold her course. Every stitch of sail is set and drawing by day and by night, from the staysails flung aloft between her masts to the spritsail that swells bravely before her bows, and beneath her forefoot the foam of her passage runs merrily back, with the chuckling song that tells she is making her best speed. The sun is warm on her decks, but the breeze is pleasant, and the water all around a clear and almost cobalt blue, lifting in long rollers before the wind.

Strange and glorious fish swim in great shoals near the surface, or frolic across wave-crests through the air as if on wings; one comes aboard through an open gunport on the breeze one morning, and catches a sleeping Micawber squarely in the face. Luiz, laughing uncontrollably, has all he can do to convince her that it is no prank of his but a genuine mishap.

For Igenlode, entrusted for an hour with the helm, with the whole living ship answering to the slightest touch, or venturing for the first time out onto the bowsprit, with canvas straining above and below and the sea singing beneath, the two weeks' run is little short of heaven. The miles unreel almost without effort from the crew, in a countless bright stream through golden days and magical, luminous nights under moon or stars. There is nothing to do save learn the workings of the ship, under the amused tutelage of the 'old salts', or plunge below into the cool shade of the great cabin and the dusty tangle of the ship's records.

From time to time, half-shamefaced, the clerk even ventures to abstract a corner of parchment or a tattered leaf and sketch out a few halting lines of verse. The fate of such attempts is always the same -- to be shredded surreptitiously over the side, in a trail of fragments back along the Horizon's wake -- but the wonders all around are such that yet again hope overcomes experience, and the limping Muse calls once more.

If the word 'holiday' existed in the pirates' vocabulary, this would be it. Only Dutch seems careworn; and as time wears on, even the captain's preoccupation starts to lift.

Finally. Dutch looks out over the ocean at the sunset, her eyes drifting by all the other pirate ships, none of which are flying a yellow flag. Finally she can be sure that everything is alright. Finally everything is once again as it should be: she is the undisputed captain of the Horizon, the ship is in order, the crew is happy -- even Igenlode has gotten used to a sailor's life, much quicker, Dutch has to admit, than she had imagined possible. And the fleet is on its way again, the biggest pirate force in any of the seven seas. Though it is highly unlikely that they will happen to stumble across the Great Moghul's treasure ship, the Commodore will have devised a back-up plan by now, or at the very least has decided upon a different route to Singapore, with some useful ports along the way. Dutch doesn't care much. Their supplies will last them a good while longer, and everything is perfect as it is.

***

As Dutch returns to her cabin, she finds Igenlode scribbling on a little broken off piece of parchment. "What are you doing?"

It's only a friendly inquiry, but Igenlode jumps from the chair and hides the parchment behind his back. "It's just... I was..."

Dutch raises an eyebrow. If it were anyone else, she'd expect him to be fixing the books in order to take more plunder for himself. But Igenlode? The clerk is well on his way to becoming a pirate, but she doubts he would do such a thing.

Igenlode sighs. "It's poetry."

"Poetry?" Dutch can only grin.

"Yes, poetry. The beauty of the sea and of the ship..."

"You're making a poem about the Horizon?" She sort of likes the idea of having her beloved ship immortalized in writing.

"In a way. But it's not coming along too well."

"That's all right, love. You'll do it some time. But now, I'm going to sleep."

***

The next morning Dutch is awoken by a loud knock on the door of her cabin. She swings her legs over the edge of the hammock and rubs the sleep out of her eyes. "Come in!"

It is Micawber. "Captain, there's a sail on the horizon."

"Ship? How many cannons? English, French, Dutch...?" All the particularities Dutch wants to know stumble out of her mouth in a croaking voice, her mind still waking up.

But Micawber, although she too has become a fine sailor, doesn't know a lot about various types of vessels, and shrugs apologetically. "It's not flying any colors."

Dutch nods automatically, pondering the possibilities. "I'll be on deck shortly."

"That ship's a Dutchy, or I'm a bee-keeper," Jones is asserting as she comes on deck. Practically all the crew are gathered in an excited huddle leaning over the lee-rail, and as a result Dutch suspects the ship is heeling a trifle more than is natural. There is no danger to it, with this steady wind and the guns not run out, but the unseamanlike behaviour annoys her.

"Break it up there!" she says sharply. "What are you, pirates or a flock of chattering parakeets? Igenlode -- Johnson -- I thought better of you!"

The clerk and the sailmaker back away, looking as guilty as the rest, although they have a perfect right to come up on deck to see what is going on. But the captain is entitled to her whims, and within minutes the crowd has scattered across the deck, the crew all very busy of a sudden at various tasks that seem to command every ounce of their attention. Dutch knows it's only an act, but the show of deference calms her temper.

"I'll lay five to one she's a Dutchman," Jones is saying in what he thinks is an undertone, adjusting a row of belaying-pins. "Look at the shallow lines of her -- look how she drafts to leeward. She's a mud-hopper sure enough, built to slip round the coasts and the sandbanks easy as kiss-your-hand. Why, she's three times our tonnage, and draws not a foot more, if I'm the judge --"

"You're not," Dutch breaks in curtly, and achieves a few moments of blessed silence in which to train her spyglass on the newcomer and make her own inspection.

The distant vessel is a tempting enough sight. Ship-rigged, with square sails on all three masts and a high poop and foc's'le, to all appearances she is lumbering serenely on her way with a fair wind for Java or Sumatra and taking no heed of the Horizon's sails to windward. A fat prize indeed. Dutch is certain that her own ship, with her handy rig and the weatherly lines of her hull, can sail rings around the stranger... if she is what she seems.

Dutch glances suspiciously round the rest of the fleet, wondering why none of the other pirates have gone to snap up such tempting bait; but the Horizon is lying out on the far edge of the fleet, and the main body of ships are up to windward. It is entirely possible that she is the only one close enough to catch sight of the merchantman, as they happen to cross her course in the wide expanses of the Indian Ocean... The captain's heart begins to beat faster with the excitement of the chase as she makes her decision.

"Three points to starboard -- slacken off the braces! Man your guns, but don't run them out. Have the flag ready to send aloft. We'll take a run down to leeward to head our friend off."

The yards swing round as the wind fills the sails more fully, and overhead the mizzen gaff creaks over, with the creamy peak of its topsail above. Dutch thrusts aside the helmsman and takes the helm herself, watching the trailing sheets edge out far over the water as the tip of the boom swings out. With the wind almost dead astern, the Horizon is tearing down on the other ship at a tremendous pace, almost skittish under her captain's hands, and it calls for some judgement if she is not to broach-to. Even if the violent passage of the big spar did not reap a deadly harvest in its wake, the shock of it, on a jury-rigged mizzen, would probably be enough to dismast her.

"Shorten sail!" Dutch commands after a moment. Their quarry is rapidly approaching, and they have clearly been spotted. There is a bustle on the merchantman's decks, half-afraid, half-excited, according to whether the trim sloop bearing down on them may bear news and letters from home, or may have a more sinister purpose. Dutch scans the other ship narrowly, ready to veer off at the slightest indication that she may be transporting troops or Company soldiers. But there is no sign of uniforms aboard. There are four swivel-guns mounted at her rail which might serve to drive off a native canoe or a boat of would-be boarders from the shore, but stand no chance at all against the Horizon's nine-pounder broadside. The merchant vessel is completely defenceless.

"There be her colours!" someone yells, and Dutch trains her glass upwards, though they are close enough now to view with the naked eye. Like Jones, she has more than half-guessed it in advance; but here is the proof. The proud flag of the United Provinces breaks out at the merchant's yard-arm.

"Haul up the black flag, lads! Run out your guns -- draw your cutlasses on deck, there! Let's have a cheer fit to split the gates of Hell!"

The pirates yell with a will, teeth and blades flashing in a calculated display of menace that all but obscures the threatening black muzzles that thrust forth from the Horizon's side, and the merchant ship, certain at last of her peril, swings round wildly, sails shivering, in a vain attempt to escape.But there is nowhere for her to go. Her name shows brightly for a moment on her bow: Vrouw Anna.

Jones is chortling gleefully in the chains, leaning out one-handed to brandish his cutlass ferociously. "Look at her run! There's one Dutchy won't be hoisting a broom to boast of --"

"She never sailed with de Ruyter in her life, let alone broke the boom at the Medway," Dutch retorts sharply. "She's a merchant scow, you patriotic barrel of wind -- a helpless flat-bottomed slug of a ship! What else can she do but strike?"

And sure enough, as the pirate ship swings round into the wind and comes crashing alongside, a wave of men poised on her bulwarks to board, the Vrouw Anna's colours come fluttering down without a fight. Dutch nods approvingly. She likes a captain with good sense. For that, he can keep his ship -- and his life -- provided they can loot the cargo quickly enough to beat back up to windward and catch the rest of the fleet...

But there proves to be a slight drawback to this plan.

* * *

"Empty?" Dutch stares at her bo's'n. "What do you mean, empty? By the hairs of my grandmother's beard, I'll have that captain swinging from his own topmast-tree! What sort of game is this, Mynheer?"

"I told you," the captain says faintly, "we're in ballast -- outward bound. I gave you the key to the chest in my cabin -- those are all the valuables we have on board. I swear it!" His voice rises to a shriek as Dutch raises her hand -- his face is already bloodied from where Annie struck him down before dragging him aft to be questioned -- and Dutch catches sight of Igenlode from the corner of her eye, looking rather sick now the excitement of the chase is over.

"Get below," she snaps. The clerk's squeamishness could spoil everything. "Get down into the cabin and give me an inventory of everything in that chest and anything else of value. Move!"

She gives the nod to Luiz, who grabs Igenlode -- still at a loss where the layout of a strange ship is concerned -- and propels the two of them toward the main companionway.

"Now," she says softly to the Vrouw Anna's captain, tapping her naked weapon against the palm of her hand, "either you find us the money, or I'll lay your crew one by one across the main hatch --" she indicates the lip of the coaming that supports the hatch cover -- "and strike off their heads with this very blade, savvy?"

She nods at a great bull-necked lout of a fellow, held helpless at the tip of Jones' pistol. "Maybe I'll take that one first. I'd like to see how many blows it takes to hack through that thick neck of his... maybe I'll try a boarding-axe..."

"No!" The captain falls to his knees and clutches at her desperately, piteous gaze searching the face of the pirates for a hint of mercy. But all present have seen this game played out before, and the ring of stony faces offers no hope. "No, please -- I beg of you -- the holds are truly empty, I swear to you it's the truth --"

Dutch looks at the pleading eyes and believes him. She gives him a sharp shove with her boot that sends him from his knees face-down into the scuppers, and turns away, disgusted. "There's more to treasure than silver and gold, Mynheer. This is a well-found ship: I see you carry spare spars stowed between decks. I'll take those. And spare blocks and rigging, everything you have. There's no dockyards open to a pirate, and my last spars went as a jury-rig after a little set-to with His Britannic Majesty's Navy..."

A barnyard sound catches her ear. "And I see you carry livestock. We'll take those too. Annie, see to it. I've a fancy for fresh milk from that goat -- and the fowls will be more than welcome plucked and hung."

By the time Luiz and Igenlode return to the deck, with a pitiful bag of coinage and trinkets and a written list, the Vrouw Anna has been stripped of everything Dutch can think of, right down to the spare anchor and a hogshead of coarse soap. Her terrified crew make no protest,convinced the pirates need only the slightest excuse to massacre them all, an impression aided by the patriotic Jones, who keeps running his finger longingly down the blade of his cutlass while eyeing the Dutchmen's necks in a manner far from feigned.

It is Johnson who makes the last discovery, down in the foc's'le. He bears up triumphantly a small black box. Within it, when the lid is flung back, are rows of phials and powders, forceps and saw, and all the rough-and-ready kit of nautical medicine.

Dutch glances along the row of prisoners, keeping her face carefully neutral. "Which of you is the owner of this?"

She gives the case a contemptuous kick, and a tall, lanky young seaman with a crop of sandy ginger hair grabs at it protectively.

"Bring him here," Dutch says instantly, and the unfortunate sailor is dragged forward. "Clerk, bring the Articles from my cabin. You're going to sign on with us, or I'll know the reason why."

"You can't take me as a pirate! I'm an honest man -- shipmates, as God is my witness --"

"I'll take what I like." Dutch hits him across the mouth with calculated strength, splitting his lip and temporarily silencing his protests. She turns away. "Bind his hands. Take him aboard."

* * *

"These are the pirate Articles," Dutch says quietly for the fourth time, sitting behind her desk and ignoring her captive's stubborn refusal. "Sign here -- or make your mark -- and you're one of us."

"Never!"

"You're a qualified surgeon's mate; the Horizon has a place for you. Think about it. Sign here, and you take a share of everything we get --"

"Everything you steal!"

"Everything we steal," Dutch agrees, smiling at the young ginger-head's insistence. "Think about it. Good food and wine, as often as we can find them. A pocketful of gold to spend on wenches and dice, in place of a few coppers for months of hard work. Tropic seas and coconut palms, in place of grey skies and mudbanks at home. A pirate ship's no tyranny like a merchant captain's domain; every man aboard has a vote in where we go and what we do, and who's to be captain over us. And all it takes is a mark on a piece of paper to pledge yourself to the Black Flag..."

The young seaman licks his lips, rubbing at his wrists where the ropes had cut into them. "You forced me on board here. You're going to force me to sign."

Dutch grins. "If that's what it takes to make your conscience happy... sure. We forced you. We'll swear to it in court if you like, if ever it comes to that -- isn't that right, lads?" She raises her voice on the last words, and gets a chorus of "Aye"s from the crew outside, where practically everyone is trying to eavesdrop.

"And your shipmates'll swear to it that we carried you off pleading and begging -- isn't that right?"

"Aye," comes the chorus. But it is the soft admission from across the table that she is listening for.

"So then." Dutch smiles at him, and gets an uncertain look back. "In the eyes of the law you're a forced man. Now sign as surgeon's mate of the Horizon -- and sign for freedom. Sign for wealth. Sign to be your own man, and no slave of the whip or the Company coffers. Sign for a short life, and a merry one. Be a pirate, man -- and join us. Will you?"

She dips the pen, and passes it. With a slightly stunned look on his face, as if the world has suddenly opened out before him, the young man traces a shaky 'X' at the foot of the Articles, pledging himself to an equal share in all their doings, and to abide by their laws. Then he stares down at it, the pen still in his hand.

"Welcome aboard, lad." Dutch gets up from behind the desk, grabs him by the shoulders, and kisses him ceremoniously on both cheeks before thumping him on the back. She raises her voice again. "Cast off, there!"

It is the last sign the pirates have been awaiting. Up on deck, grappling-lines are slashed through, oars and boat-hooks are used to fend off from the merchantman's side, and the foresails are sheeted home, beginning to turn the Horizon's bows away from those of her prize. As she pulls free, her sails catch the wind and start to fill, and the two ships rapidly draw apart, the Vrouw Anna drifting helplessly down-wind with all her rigging cut as the pirate heels over and begins the long beat up to windward.

Dutch watches the merchant ship recede from the stern windows of her cabin, dusts off her hands in token of a job well done, and turns back to her newest crew member. She looks down at the uneven mark at the bottom of the paper, preparing to write in his name alongside.

"Well, Red," she says, glancing up at the freckled face, "what are we to call you?"

The surgeon's mate looks down, avoiding her eyes. "Willem Andrieszoon."

"Willem..." Dutch writes it down as she says it. "What was that? Andrees..."

"Andrieszoon."

"Right." 'Andreesson' is written next to the more obviously spelled first name. "Welcome again, Will. That sorry excuse for a ship may have been somewhat disappointing, but you're a fine catch, I must say."

He seems uncertain whether he should be happy because of that or not.

Dutch continues, unaffected. "We were lacking good medical knowledge, and accidents do happen." She winks at the young man as she stands up and begins to lead him up on deck. "But there's no point waiting idly for them. Let's put you to work."

Willem remains silent on the way, pondering the situation he's in, the gravity of the 'accidents' the captain mentioned and ways to avoid them happening to himself.

"Everyone!" yells Dutch to get the attention of the crew as she swing the doors leading onto the deck open. "This is Will."

Some grins and a few greetings serve to welcome the young man.

"Annie, you put him to work."

As the Horizon battles up windward to rejoin the fleet, Dutch notices two other pirate ships that have broken away from the group. Apparently they spotted the merchant ship later, or perhaps they were intending to follow the Horizon to see where she was going. Either way, they are now going back as well, knowing the merchant ship has been stripped of all useful things. Dutch grins. Too bad, mates. You'll have to be faster than that.

Willem, in the meantime, is looking in the opposite direction, to the Vrouw Anna in the distance.

"Come here, boy." Annie roughly grabs him by the arms (his shoulders being a bit too high for the short pirate to get a good grip on) and tears him away from the last link to his old life.

* * *

After the hard work has distracted Willem from his misery a little, he looks around the ship, getting used to the environment that is supposed to be his life from now on. The pirates at first are just that to him: pirates, vile and dissolute creatures, all the same, more part of the scenery than anything else. But after inspecting the ship, he concentrates on the crew. One sticks out like a sore thumb: Igenlode.

Although he is beginning to get a tan and now wears clothes similar to those of the other pirates, the clerk is still ostensibly different. His thin figure makes him stand out from most other sailor and he looks more like someone dressed as a pirate than as an actual pirate. His behavior also varies considerably from that of the others.

Since he feels the need to talk to someone, Willem decides Igenlode is the best choice, and casually moves closer and closer to him until they are close enough for a private conversation.

"So," he says softly, attracting Igenlode's attention, "did they force you too?"

Igenlode is a bit embarrassed at the question. "Not really. But one could say that circumstances forced me." Proclaiming that he wanted to be a pirate seems too cruel to tell someone who was recently forced and perhaps needs a friend.

Thinking that over a while, Willem nods. Apparently he believes Igenlode is as decent a person as he'll find on this ship, and considers his excuse good enough. Willem's eye falls on Dutch, who is standing at the helm. "Can you believe this ship is run by a woman? Grown men being bossed around by that. I don't know why they stand for it."

"She isn't that bad," defends Igenlode. "And if the crew wouldn't be happy, they would vote for another captain."

"Hmm. I guess they're weaker than they look."

Igenlode decides not to argue, and goes to work again.

Willem helps him. "Any idea where we are going?"

"Singapore, eventually. I don't know if we are planning anything along the way."

"Singapore, eh?"

Willem is distracted by his thoughts, and Igenlode, not realizing this, continues to tie up a line and gets Willem's hand caught in it. Willem pulls it free with a somewhat exaggerated scream, which evokes some barely suppressed laughs from the crew.

"Careful there, Will!" shouts Dutch from the helm. "It'd be a shame to lose one of those hands, savvy?"

Willem glares at her, rubbing his painful hand, while Igenlode keeps apologizing to him.

"I see you've taken our new recruit under your wing, then?"

Igenlode chokes on a spoonful of pea soup as Dutch swings one long leg over the bench and sits down on the other side of the table, raising an eyebrow. "What, surprised to see me -- or is it just an over-tender conscience that's sticking in your throat, little friend?"

"I--"

But Igenlode is coughing too hard to get a word out edgeways. Dutch sighs, and leans across to administer a helpful slap between the clerk's shoulders. "Well?"

Both hatches are open, and the last rays of the evening sun are edging slantwise beneath the sails to paint odd corners between decks with a tawny tinge. There is a cheerful clatter of spoons -- pea soup for supper is a common favourite -- and a buzz of voices loud enough to cover a hundred indiscretions. Willem is sitting by himself at a bench on the far side of the foc's'le. As the ship rocks lightly to the waves, a stray shaft of light catches him from behind, brightening his hair like a splash of blood.

"You -- never eat down here," Igenlode manages in excuse. "You always dine in your cabin..."

"Ah." Dutch pulls her own bowl towards her, and dips a hunk of bread into it without looking down. "But 'never' is a long time, love. Longer than you've been on board."

"What is it?" Igenlode is looking across at Willem again. "What do you want?"

"Such suspicion," Dutch says mournfully through a mouthful of sopping bread. She wipes her mouth. "And how many meals have we shared? How many times --"

"Not that many, actually. And none that you went out of your way for," Igenlode points out drily, watching her. "Why don't we just skip the platitudes, and then you can tell me where I come into it?"

"You've been mixing with pirates too long, love." Dutch sighs, and gestures with her spoon. "Well... take our friend Will. He likes you."

Igenlode says nothing. The silence is obviously all too eloquent.

"Don't play the hypocrite with me," Dutch says sharply. "I didn't ask you to approve of all our doings -- it was you who asked to come on board, begged if you recall. I take what I want; whatever I need. I could have killed every man on that ship if she'd been worth the taking. But I wanted just one; and I've got him. And I want you to keep an eye on him for me."

"You didn't have to take him."

"He signed of his own free will," Dutch says quietly. "There's captains would have twisted a cord about his head until his senses gave way, or tickled him with a hot iron, for a man whose skill they needed. I've seen forced men who lost a foot to keep them from running. But Will's one of us now, and he'll be treated as such or I'll know the reason why.

"He'll be glad enough once he gets a taste of the free life, and his first sight of plunder. You've never served on a merchant ship, love -- a dozen men to handle all sail in a gale, with the poorest meat that can still keep body and soul together, all in the name of the owner's profit. A sailor'll never make a fortune, no matter how rich the cruise -- but a pirate just might."

"I doubt he sees it as a favour," Igenlode bursts out, and Dutch shrugs, taking another spoonful of soup.

"He'll come round... but till he does, I want you to watch him like a hawk."

"You want me to spy on him? Why? Why me?"

"Seems he's taken a fancy to you," Dutch says with a straight face. "Seems he thinks you're somehow better than the rest of us. More worthy of his trust. And if he gets any notions into his head about scuttling the ship or slipping a dose of heaven-juice into my cup -- why, it's you he'll ask for help, if I read him aright."

"You -- I --" Caught between two conflicting demands of conscience -- doubtless just as Dutch intended, the clerk reflects indignantly -- Igenlode is momentarily lost for words. Dutch continues eating calmly, as usual taking acquiescence for granted.

"We should make the Maldives some time this week, if my noontide observations prove correct," she observes a minute or two later, wiping out her bowl. "We'll lay in provision there -- turtles, dried fish, coconuts. Keep an ear out for the Arab traders. Once we pass the reefs, all we have to do is pick out a nice little uninhabited island or two apiece, and maybe careen the ships. I'll swear half the fleet's dragging a green beard of seaweed long enough to make a mermaid decent; that may do for a fat merchantman, but it won't serve for a pirate, savvy? It takes a fair turn of speed to show the Navy a clean pair of heels."

She swings her legs back over the bench and stands up, stooping automatically to avoid cracking her head on the deck-beams and then sweeping a sardonic bow. "Thanks for the company, love. And don't forget..."

Igenlode watches her go, achieving her casual trademark swagger even in the cramped space between decks, and for a moment contemplates hurling the empty bowl after her -- hard. How anyone can be so infuriatingly self-confident all the time...

But she's right -- as usual. If Will should take it into his head to do something stupid like poisoning the captain, there's no question as to which way Igenlode's own allegiances will fall. And if that means giving the young man a safe outlet and an understanding ear for any grievances, then so be it; but all the same, it feels uncomfortably like befriending him under false pretences.

The week goes by without any problems, to Igenlode's relief. Will avoids contact with all the other crewmembers, even the few who try to start a friendly conversation with him. He never so much as feigns interest in the stories of their adventures, and of their recent miraculous escape from the British Navy at Cape Town. But at least he does the work he was told to do, and follows Igenlode around, to Dutch's content.

Dutch too tries to make Will feel more comfortable and acts reasonably friendly, though mainly because she would feel more comfortable herself to know what he was thinking, rather than fear the worst of his silence. One day she summons him to her cabin, and asks him to explain the contents of the medical kit. It is an attempt to make Will feel he has a place aboard the Horizon as a surgeon's mate, as well as matter of curiosity and a precaution; that in case Will should disappear or otherwise become unable to perform medical procedures (the most likely reason for which, Dutch figures, would be marooning or having been thrown overboard as punishment for attempted homicide on the captain), she might have some idea for what the medicine could be used.

Maybe her suspicion is exaggerated. There is only one incident in the Maledives. The fleet has dropped anchor there and has bought the required victuals from the local traders. Most of the crew have been allowed to go ashore the rest of the day (which turns out to be a slight disappointment, as they can find no place to buy alcohol on the island), and Dutch has no good reason not to let Will go. The crew will stick together, and both she and Igenlode will be there to keep an eye on him. Nevertheless, in the busy markets ashore, they lose him. Dutch has rarely been so angry, and is just about to take it out on whoever is closest to her, when they find him again, just a bit back. He claims to have been separated from them by the masses, and there is no reason to doubt his word.

The fleet has decided that as soon as they pass the Maldives, they will scatter so the ships can be careened, as Dutch had suspected. And so, after an incredible ammount of work -- unloading everything from the holds, as well as the cannons, and carefully heeling her over -- the Horizon now lies on the beach of a small, uninhabited island. The crew has been working hard to clean the bottom of the sloop. Some smaller vessels that are being careened on a nearby island are already done, and the Horizon's crew can just make them out in the distance, seeing them enjoy themselves night and day. It is not too good for moral, with so much work to be done still on their own ship. Nevertheless, they are already more than halfway, and the Horizon now lies on her other side. Dutch tries to keep everyone's spirits up and allows them some more time for amusing themselves. There is no point in hurrying anyway. There are ships in the fleet that are bigger than the Horizon, notably that of the Commodore, which will take longer to careen.

Much later, the careening of the Horizon is almost done. One more day, estimates Dutch, and then they can let her float again as she's supposed to, bring the supplies and cannons back on board and be on their way to Singapore.

But the next morning brings the worst of misfortune. Panic arises among the crew as the first to wake discover a ship sailing towards them, already getting close after being hidden by the darkness all night. It takes but a single look for them to determine that this is no sluggish merchant ship. This is big trouble. Big trouble with a British flag fluttering proudly in the wind.

Annie walks up to Dutch, who has lowered her spyglass and now stands still, staring at the approaching ship. "Captain, what do we do?"

Dutch's voice is soft, but determined. "We have to surrender."

"What?!"

"Well, what would you have me do?" The captain doesn't appreciate Annie questioning her. "We're sitting ducks here. There is no way we can get the Horizon afloat soon enough. If we resist, they'll shoot her to pieces and hunt us down. Look at that ship! She'll have quite a few men aboard."

Annie is getting desparate. "But the least we can do is try, and take some of those blasted soldiers with us! I'm not going to surrender!"

"If we don't surrender, we die," stresses Dutch impatiently. "Those soldiers don't even have to come for us. All they have to do is destroy the Horizon. This island is not big enough to sustain all of us, and hunger and thrist will kill us just as surely. If we surrender, at least we buy ourselves some time."

"Some time..." Annie shakes her head.

Most of the crew have been listening to the discussion, and no one can decide who's side they are on. Both options end in the same, unpleasant way.

As Dutch looks over the defeated faces, feeling like she has disappointed them as a captain, her gaze stops at an unexpected grin. Willem stares back at her, a satisfied look on his face. It doesn't take her long to realize what must have happened. He must have passed on a message in the Maldives. Suddenly it hits her that he has been helping Igenlode with all his work -- clearly he does knows how to write, though he chose not to when he signed the articles. Perhaps he was too nervous, perhaps signing his name would have made it official to him. Either way, it would have been easy for him to steal some parchment, and even easier to pass a message during those few unsupervised moments in the Maldives. Both the British and the Dutch would be all too happy to go after the pirate fleet, and both make regular stops on the islands.

But the where and how do not really matter to Dutch. Willem's smirk says it all. For a second, she only looks at him. Then she explodes, diving onto the unsuspecting man and hitting him with all her force, shouting loudly. Not much of her rant can be understood between the heavy breaths needed to keep the violence going, but several curses and mentions of "my ship" can be made out.

The crew for a while is too surprised to do anything, not understanding why Dutch is attacking the newest crewmember. And although it's not the first time the captain is angry, they have never seen an outburst like this. Finally some of the men come to their senses, and with great effort drag Dutch from her victim.

"Captain -- captain!"

Dutch, not listening, is glaring down at the young sailor who has betrayed them all. There is blood on the white coral sand, and her fists are as split and bruised as Willem's face, but he will never smirk again. One front tooth is hanging by a thread, and the other lies somewhere on the beach at their feet, among the scuffled clots and broken shells. He is hunched over, clutching his jaw, and spitting helplessly through bloodied fingers as his shoulders heave. Dutch draws back one booted foot and kicks him, hard, forcing him face-down onto the sand. Her lips are drawn back into an ugly snarl.

"Captain --" Johnson plucks at her elbow and almost gets a pistol in the face for his trouble, as she swings round furiously.

"What? Isn't it enough we've run halfway round the world, from Tortuga to the tip of India, only to be caught with our breeches round our ankles by the self-same British Navy?"

Johnson flinches but holds his ground. "Captain, I'll swear I know that ship. I was aboard with Captain Fry when we took her from the French, up by New Guinea; I set that patch in her main t'gallant with my own hands -- I'll lay those are the chequers on her side we helped paint, to rig her out warship-fashion --"

"Fry? That hell-ranter Makepeace Fry?" Dutch stares at the oncoming vessel as if all is explained, and then starts to laugh, wildly, with no humour in it. All around them on the beach men start to exchange nervous looks, and Annie tightens her grip on the hilt of her cutlass. Even Igenlode has heard of captains who've gone crazy, out at sea, when some disaster suddenly strikes.

"You mean," Dutch gasps between paroxyms, gesturing out to sea, "that's Fry's French Guineaman?"

Igenlode doesn't quite see the significance -- whoever owns the ship with the patched sail, she's still a big warship and clearly hostile, while their own Horizon is high and dry on the beach and helpless to save them -- but the rest of the crew are beginning to exclaim and break into eager chatter, their faces no longer numbed in defeat. Not all of them, however.

"I can't well see what manner of difference it do make," Jones says with a scowl. "Cap'n Fry be no friend of our'n -- why, he'd sail a hundred mile to work you an ill turn, begging your pardon, captain -- and seems here he have us truly caught."

"Why, man, he's a pirate -- as true-blue a canting Puritan pirate as ever lived!" Dutch sighs at having to spell it out. "He'd see us gladly at the bottom of the ocean... but it's not duty that drives him, it's gold. He'll never forgive that rich Mussulman I stole from under his nose, when last we were in these waters, but it's not necks for the stretching he wants -- not he! Now a Navy man would never turn aside for treasure while his duty called him on our trail, but I'll warrant Makepeace Fry has only one thought on his mind at this moment, and that's how to lay hands on... this."

She points to the pair of stout chests that hold all the more portable part of the Horizon's gains, and begins to chuckle again as a fresh thought hits her. "Why, I'll warrant our fine Hollander here sent out his message by the nearest island dhoani -- and straight into the hands of Fry and his Belle-Marie. We took her for a warship -- why should a poor fisherman do otherwise?"

She kicks Willem over onto his back, and calls for a shovel. "Get up. Get digging, my young friend -- and make the most of it, for it's the last hours of daylight you'll ever see. Your scheme's turned sour, and bitten the one who gave it birth. You'd be worse off on Captain Fry's ship than ever you were on mine, but you'll get no chance to try. You've got maybe twenty minutes; use 'em well!"

Willem raises a battered face in defiance, dragging the back of one hand across his mouth. He makes no move to take up the shovel thrust into his hands. "And what if I won't?"

Dutch cocks back the hammer of her pistol, taking aim between his eyes, and shrugs in a parody of unconcern. "Die now or die later, love... it's all one to me."

Willem's eyes flicker, and he looks away, beginning to dig down into the sand. Dutch waits until the hole is a couple of feet deep, glancing over her shoulder several times as the Belle-Marie comes steadily closer to the surrounding reef, and then calls her crew together. She sets one foot atop the treasure chests and crosses her arms, sweeping the crowd with her glance.

"Right, lads, the choice is yours. We'll put this to the vote. Now by the pirate Articles, every man has an equal say in what becomes of our spoils... so I put it to you: Fry and his men have us at a mortal disadvantage, thanks to a certain individual who's shortly to pay for that little mistake. Now, do we stand and fight, and maybe lose our ship as well as our lives? Or do we let him fool himself he's played a great trick on us and leave us be, at the cost of what he wants -- our gold?"

There is a puzzled murmur. "We don't rightly follow your meaning, captain," Halfpence Annie admits, and she is not the only one.

"It's simple enough," Dutch says. "We've landed our treasure. Now, either we ship it aboard, or --" she nods in the direction of Willem, who keeps digging, doggedly -- "we bury it. Depend on it, Fry will have a glass trained on us at this very minute. He'll note the spot, and snigger up his sleeve to think we believe we've fooled him. The treasure once buried, we'll cover our tracks and scatter -- and the Belle-Marie's boats will come ashore and dig it up without a shot fired, laughing all the while. Then they'll leave."

A swell of discontent rises among the pirates, and Dutch raises a hand. "Aye, they'll leave, thinking us fine pigeons for the plucking -- but we'll have our skins whole and our ship besides! Another day will see the Horizon back in the water, and all the riches of the Indies before us..."

"It goes mighty hard on a man to lie down and roll over to the likes of Makepeace Fry," Jones mutters, to a rumble of assent. "Why, we'll never hear the last of the tale till Michaelmas come this thirty year."

"We'll make him sing to a different tune presently," Dutch promises, her own face darkening at the thought of the tavern stories that could circulate at her expense. "We'll have the last laugh, lads, by hook or by crook -- but he's got us caught like rats in a trap, and the more we fight the worse off we'll be. One broadside through our sweet ship, and we'll be gnawing each other's bones before the rains come. Much good treasure will do you then. Why, half an hour back, you'd have given everything you owned to be free of the spectre of the noose!"

The truth of this strikes everyone forcibly, and the vote is taken in favour of the captain's ruse, despite many grumbles and a number of attempts to sneak out individual trinkets from the treasure. Igenlode can see the sense in this prohibition -- if one man has a pocketful of gold and another has none, the odds are the crew will end up knifing each other over what's left before they get off the island -- but the culprits clearly feel they are being very hard done-by.

The venom directed by all and sundry at the traitor Willem is brutal as a result. The young man, now up to his shoulders in the oozing bottom of the hole, is soon staggering and raw from a dozen 'accidental' blows or slips of the knife, and casually-kicked sand clogs his eyes and mouth with its stinging salt. Dutch does nothing to prevent it.

"Enough," she orders at last. But the command is directed at Willem, who lets fall his shovel with a gasp of effort. "Haul him out of there. Tie his hands and feet."

He makes no resistance as his wrists are bound roughly across one another and his legs noosed together, while the two precious chests are lowered down into the hole with many a whispered curse. "Lay the prisoner atop the chests," Dutch orders, and Igenlode, watching her face, knows what is going to happen and feels rather sick.

Willem, facing the same knowledge, manages a little laugh of contempt. "So it's true; I took that old custom for a barbarous tale... Then if you want a dead man to bury with your treasure you'd best fire quick, 'captain' -- before your fellow-pirate catches up with you!"

Dutch levels her pistol, deliberately, and the young seaman stares back in defiance, refusing to flinch. The moment stretches out.

Then Dutch begins to laugh, un-cocking her weapon and returning it to her belt. She picks up the shovel, cast aside, and starts to fill in the hole.

"No!" Willem's courage is broken. Sand patters down on his body as he starts to struggle, trying to shield his face. "No -- you can't -- you can't mean to --"

Dutch shovels steadily as he starts to scream. Even the crew stirs uneasily, looking away from the jerking shape buried beneath the sand. Igenlode's belly rebels suddenly, violently, bringing a rush of bile up from an empty stomach in painful retching. A moment ago the imminent shot had been something to be shrunk from; now it seems the greatest mercy in the world.

Groping for the pistol with a shaking hand, the clerk is back-handed aside almost casually with the end of the shovel, landing in a crumpled heap upon the sand. "Mutiny, my fine friend?" Dutch enquires softly, still filling in the hole. "Are you questioning what this man has done?"

"In God's name --"

Igenlode chokes, spitting sand. Imagination depicts all too clearly that suffocating embrace. "Not like this -- please -- not like this --"

"Waste powder and shot on mercy to the likes of him?" There is only the faintest hint of motion now visible in the half-filled shaft to betray the struggle beneath. Dutch nods sharply to a couple of pirates, who come forward and start sweeping the remains of the excavated sand back into place. There is no sound save the soft fall of the grains and the distant breaking of the waves on the atoll.

And then there are yells from the entrance to the reef as the Belle-Marie's longboats come into view, laden with men, and the big Guineaman swings round to present her broadside to the beach, and Dutch curses. "What are you staring at? Come on!"

The crew scatter in all directions into the trees, barely pausing to make a gesture towards concealing the grave. Bruised and sick, Igenlode is among the last to make it. From beneath the coconut palms, the curve of the beach seems peaceful and innocent of all harm.

Igenlode hesitates wretchedly, left alone on the fringe of the island. Every heartbeat seems to last an eternity of dragging breath. Then, with something like a sob, the little clerk turns and races straight down the beach, scrabbling at the buried sand.

It is easy enough to mark the place. All but impossible to dig, with the shovel gone, and nothing but fingernails and a pocket-knife with which to scrape shifting sand. Igenlode flinches back with a cry akin to horror when, a minute or so later, the first traces of sand-caked ginger hair can be felt at the bottom of the hole.

Willem has hunched his arms over his face. His features are distorted and he is horribly heavy to shift. When his would-be rescuer finally manages to cut the ropes and drag him free, he isn't breathing.

"Please -- please wake up..." The longboats are close now, and Igenlode doesn't know what to do. There is no sand in the boy's mouth or nose; the clerk tries blowing into it, desperately, from lungs that are themselves aching fit to burst. "Oh please, Will, please --"

The thought of handling a dead man brings a sudden revulsion. He has to live. He has to be alive, or this is a hideous parody of an embrace. Igenlode slaps the limp body hard between the shoulders, as if trying to force out a cough. "Breathe -- why can't you breathe, you stupid, stubborn fool --"

And then the miracle.

A gasp, as a splashing in the surf announces the arrival of the crew from the Belle-Marie. The young Dutchman's chest heaves, once and then again. Sand-clogged lashes flicker briefly, and then fall back as he begins to cough. He struggles to fling off Igenlode's anxious hands.

"It's all right, Will, it's over -- you're safe --"

"Willem." It is little more than a hoarse mumble between swollen lips. but the flash of spirit is there. "My name's Willem..."

"Well, well." A tall lean man with a scarred cheek speaks from behind them both, and Igenlode, looking up quickly, finds that they are surrounded. A circle of grinning faces stare down at the two exhausted prisoners, and the hole in the sand.

"Well, well," the tall man says again, adjusting the hilt of his sword where it rides against the skirt of his coat. "And what has the Lord sent us in his infinite bounty upon this day? Manna from heaven?"

"Captain Fry." Igenlode's voice is very low, but the scar-faced captain laughs with a sudden flash of teeth.

"Makepeace Fry, aye, by the Lord's mercy -- but who have we here? And what has that captain of yours striven to conceal from the hands of the righteous?"

He is looking at an iron-bound corner showing in the bottom of the hole.

"I am Igenlode, and that is Will... Willem," comes the dispirited reply. Igenlode glances at Willem, who is still half-lying in the sand, while his breathing tries to find its regular rhythm.

The question about the treasure doesn't require an answer, and it doesn't get one. Some of Fry's men, lacking the patience to wait for the order, are already pulling the chests out of the sand.

Fry doesn't show any interest in their names. Keeping an eye on the progress of the unearthing, he asks: "Am I mistaken, or was it that infernal Dutch woman that I spied standing on these chests?"

Not sure what the best thing to say is, Igenlode remains silent. Fry, already quite certain of the answer, is too preoccupied with the treasure to listen for it.

As the chests are opened, enthusiastic cries arise from among the men. "The Lord be praised," exclaims Fry as the sun illuminates the coins, jewellery and silver.

After the first rush of excitement wanes, the attention of the pirates turns toward their captives. Both are pulled up off the ground, and held by their arms, awaiting instructions from the captain, who, for now, is much more interested in the treasure. "And what has Dutch" -- a loathing emphasis on the name -- "done to deserve such a reward?"

Fry's eyes fall on Igenlode, who simply replies: "Cape Town."

"Rob the poor, pious people of such a devout place..." Fry shakes his head as if disappointed. "How dare she? No wonder that the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, has sent us here to take back what was so wrongfully stolen."

Somehow Igenlode doubts that Fry will return the valuables to the citizens of Cape Town, despite of his show-cased morals. If Fry had the chance to sack Cape Town, it probably wouldn't be a very devout city anymore either.

"Bring them aboard," shouts Fry.

The men near the chests happily comply and carry them to the boats. The men holding the prisoners aren't sure if the order was meant for them as well.

Catching their doubtful looks, Fry sighs. "Yes, and them. Lock them up, we'll see what best to do with them later."

While Willem was digging what was meant to be his grave, Dutch's crew moved a good part of the victuals into the woods for safe-keeping. What they left, plus three of the Horizon's cannon that lie on the beach awaiting their restoration, are taken too.

While his men move about, following his instructions, Fry stares into the darkness of the forest.

"Captain?" asks one of the pirates, trying to interrupt as softly as possible. "What about the sloop? Do we take her as well?"

A brusque shake of the head. "There is no time. We may have scared Dutch off for now, but she will return, as sure as the devil. She knows we will not fire a broadside with our own men standing here."

"Should we scuttle her then?"

Fry ponders his options. "No. They have food nor drink. They'll be dead soon enough, and can do us no harm. If they have the sense to try and prolong their miserable lives, they'll stay on this island. We'll sail by again in a month or so. The sloop will probably still be here, and intact, and she'll be ours for the taking."

The pirate nods and goes to help his crewmates, while Fry casts a final look into the trees where he knows Dutch lurks somewhere before he walks to the longboats. For some reason, Dutch's impending death doesn't give him the satisfaction he expected.

Hunched uncomfortably in the lazarette of the Belle-Marie, with the dark and the sound of the water outside, Igenlode cannot escape a painful sense of déja vu. Only the hold of the Horizon, while considerably more noisome, was at least tall enough to stand up in... and it had been Dutch who was the prisoner, and Dutch who had been in chains.

Well, there was no-one on board this time to rescue the rescuer, and no axe at hand to strike through the shackles -- though the iron loops were designed for stouter limbs, and might perhaps slip free. But there is no point in it. Indeed, Willem, clearly presumed too weak to make any such attempt, has not been shackled at all. The lazarette is a tiny, stoutly-reinforced space to the aft of the hold, that had doubtless once held the French captain's stock of wine and ardent spirits; and it has but one entrance. Immediately above Willem's head, outlined in lamplight, is the trapdoor that leads up into the great cabin itself. The only access to the prisoners' cell lies directly under the captain's nose.

Through the gloom, Willem's eyes appear to be closed, and he is breathing thickly through a bruised mouth, leaning up against one of the caskets of treasure with his head lying back along one arm. He has said not a word since they were brought aboard and shut away down here, save to rebuff all Igenlode's overtures. The clerk doesn't know what Fry has got in store for them, but it's unlikely to be anything pleasant... and the chances of Dutch stirring a finger to save either of them, after what happened on the island, seem hopelessly remote.

"Stop snivelling." Willem has clearly heard the catch in his companion's breath. He rolls over in the dark and kicks Igenlode's shackles, producing a wince of his own. "Just what kind of a pirate are you? I can't make you out. You're no sailor, no use in a fight -- and one minute you're eating at the captain's table, trailing round after her like some pet ape, and the next you're getting yourself captured for the sake of someone she hates...."

Igenlode flinches and starts a halting reply; but Fry's voice filters down from above, faintly audible through the planks. A couple of words stand out, and the clerk falls silent, straining to hear more.

"Of course that creature of Beelzebub, that scarlet woman, that --" epithets clearly escape Fry for a moment -- "that Jezebel won't stay on the island! We staved in all her water casks and carried off her provender; she has but one chance, to launch herself upon the bosom of the waves and find a fresh haven as quickly as she may."

"But then, captain..." A hesitant voice, with none of Fry's rabid intensity. "How will we find the ship to take her? You told the men..."

"I could scarce tell them I had promised the ship to Iskandar -- to that heathen tyrant of these fair isles of the East!" A clatter on the deck, as if the captain has thrust some object violently away. "Yet even the righteous among us must yield unto Caesar what is Caesar's, saith the Lord. And the almighty, most-renowned, wise and nobly born ruler, comparable to the moon and to the sun -- the heroic warrior Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, great King of the earth -- that accursed vainglorious Mohammedan has granted us the favour to sail in these waters, and reap what vengeance we will upon the unenlightened and the ungodly. For a price. For a small consideration, that we may profit by his favour. Even such is the power of the Lord, that an idolator may prove his tool and hold out the shield of his hand over us."

The sound of pouring liquid, and a deep breath from Fry as the empty tankard is clapped down. "But Iskandar, as you know, is much plagued by Malabar pirates, having but his lateen-rigged bangalas with which to defend his far-flung realm. And it seems he has a fancy to a Christian-built ship of his own, and casts greedy eyes on the Belle-Marie herself. You saw his fleet, perhaps, in our wake as we sailed southward? I sent him word that he should find a serviceable vessel to his purpose upon this very isle..." He chuckles, richly.

"I would not count upon any islander to launch a craft the size of the Horizon, when she was once beached. But the Sultan cannot claim we cheated him thus, for by my count and God willing, Dutch and her crew will have induced her to take the water by nightfall. And just at that hour Iskandar's fleet will find her, with no time to mount her guns and her crew plagued already by thirst. They may spill a little infidel blood, but the Sultan will have his ship ere the day is out -- and, praise be, at the cost of no man of ours."

A heavy sigh. "Alas, it is politic sometimes to trade a lesser evil against the greater. But it will go hard with the men to see that lovely ship a Mussulman's plaything, when we could have had the purchase price of her ourselves, to spend in Trincomalee or Batavia... and so we'll tell them when the deed is done, and not before."

Fry pours himself another tankard and drinks it off with every sound of enjoyment, and Igenlode, who is already beginning to feel horribly thirsty, unconsciously licks dry lips.

"What are we going to do?" It is an agonised hiss, and on the far side of the lazarette -- about three feet away -- Willem shrugs in the dark.

"'We'? I don't see that your precious Dutch's fate is any concern of mine -- and I don't see what either of us can do about it from here..."

A few hours later, Dutch's crew returns to the beach in small groups. They knew Fry would take as much as he could of what they left, but there is still some angry grumbling at the loss of the cannons, and vows to avenge themselves on him for taking their plunder.

"So, are you ready to take your revenge?" yells Dutch, one of the last to come back. After a chorus of consent from the men, she adds: "Get to work then! Let's finish careening, get the Horizon back in the water, and hunt down that cursed Fry!"

Actually, she hasn't yet decided what the best way to go after Fry is, nor what the best time. A direct confrontation would be a disaster. Still, for now her remarks have served their purpose to motivate the pirates, and they're working hard.

Dutch walks to the empty hole and stares in it. Fry has left it open, intending it to be a blatant laugh in her face for her presumed underestimation of his person. All that treasure... such a pity. Then she realizes what is missing as well: Willem. Dutch frowns. Why would they take a dead body? Was it possible that he was still alive? But there are more important things to consider now. Whatever happened to Willem is no concern of hers.

On her way back to the Horizon, she looks over the pirates, seeing if everyone is back yet. Some of them might linger in the jungle to avoid some of the heavy work lying in store for them. Everyone seems to be there, though. Everyone... except Igenlode. Dutch walks, then runs along the beach trying to find him. Her heart starts beating faster and faster as the inevitable conclusion presents itself: he isn't there. What happened? He may have run off into the forest, wanting no more part in the pirates' actions after she so cruelly buried Willem alive. But disagree as he may, he knows he would not survive long on this island. If he wanted to desert, surely he would have waited until the next port of call. Perhaps he was attacked by some beast in the jungle, or bitten by a venomous snake? She hadn't seen any such creatures on the small island, but you can never be certain.

Spotting Micawber, Dutch remembers seeing her run off in the same direction as Igenlode. "Mic!"

Micawber turns around, surprised at the hint of panic in Dutch's voice. "Aye?"

"Have you seen Igenlode? He went in the same direction as you, did he not?"

"He did, but..."

"But what?"

"He fell behind. I think he may have gone back to the beach."

"What?" Dutch is at a loss. "Why would he..."

Looking at Mic, the answer becomes clear.

Dutch's face goes very pale before turning a bright red. "That mutinous..." And then the realization. "He got himself captured."

Micawber stares at the ground. "Well, I haven't seen it, but one may assume..."

"That mutinous, filthy... clerk! Wait until we catch up with Fry. Just you wait. I'll find the perfect punishment for him. Or maybe we should postpone our revenge and let him rot on Fry's ship a while, that is some excellent punishment!"

Dutch's tirade continues with only a few interruptions throughout the day, as the Horizon finally gets ready to sail again.

The sun is just dipping in the ocean when the Horizon is afloat again. Some crewmembers cheer, and many touch or inspect their weapons, as if they're going to attack the Belle-Marie and take their treasure back from Fry that very moment.

"Patience, lads, patience," says Dutch, still thinking in the back of her head about what, if anything, to do about Igenlode's capture. "We set sail tomorrow, after we bring everything on board again and mount the guns."

Most of the pirates choose to spend their last night there on the beach, since they'll be experiencing the annoyances of living cramped together again soon enough. But some, including Dutch and Annie, decide to sleep aboard the Horizon, for love of the sloop and for the privacy of their cabins. A few men are ordered to come along to take the night watches, and Luiz is sent up into the crow's nest. The Horizon is not yet exposed to the dangers of the open sea, but if Fry should get it in his head to come for the sloop after all, Dutch wants to see him coming.

She is just about to walk through the doors leading below, enjoying the relaxing movement of the ship on the waves, when she hears Luiz' cry. He's nowhere near the crow's nest yet, but high enough to see outside the bay.

"Captain! Local boats of some kind -- a whole fleet!" He starts to climb down again.

She abruptly turns around. "Coming for us?"

"They're almost here already."

Dutch's mind is racing. This is not looking good. The boats can only have one goal, and if there are as many as Luiz says, the Horizon doesn't stand a chance. And in this case not fighting won't do any good either. As she runs to the beach side of the ship, the cannons lying in the sand are a painful sight. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouts: "All hands come aboard!"

The first of the bangalas are already entering the bay. There is no time for the men to even attempt to bring the cannon. All the pirates can do is stand together on the ship, defending their lives and the Horizon as long as they can.

Not long after the pirates from the beach have climbed aboard, the men from the bangalas attempt to do the same. Fire from the pirates' pistols causes some to fall back into the sea, but with the gunpowder and shot still on the beach, the pistols soon become useless. Cutlasses are then used to ward off the strangely dressed Muslims as they get close, but there are simply too many. Soon one gets on deck, then two, then more, and the pirates are forced to abandon their positions along the sides of the ship.

Oddly enough, the attackers aren't heavily armed, carrying only daggers and occassionally a curved sword. Their strength is in their numbers, and a lot of the pirates are quickly captured.

Dutch manages to keep the Muslims at a distance a long time, until, when she's fighting a man with a sword, something flashes by her eyes. Another man has gotten behind Dutch unnoticed, and pulls a cord tightly around her neck. She tries to get the fingers of her left hand under the rope to create some space for breathing, but to no avail. Her first assailant uses the distraction to strike hard against Dutch's cutlass and hits it out of her hand. He could kill her now, but instead walks off, apparently letting his companion do the dirty work.

Dutch's lungs are almost exploding, and black spots are dancing before her eyes. Unable to free herself of the rope directly, she bends her arms and rams her elbows into her strangler's ribs with all the force she has left. It works. With a groan, the man lets go of the rope. Dutch falls to her hands and knees, trying to breathe between loud coughs from her irritated throat.

A pair of fancy shoes enters her view. Still gasping for air, Dutch looks up along the heavily bejeweled figure to see his turbaned face looking down at her with contempt. Then the stretching of her neck becomes too much for her sore throat, and heavy coughs force her to bend over again. The man speaks a few words in an incomprehensible tongue, and two Muslims pick Dutch up by her arms and drag her away.

"Don't understand," Dutch says, trying to sound conciliatory, as one of her guards gives her a sharp prod to draw her attention to the fact that she has just been asked a question.

"Sorry -- don't understand," as he tries again in what is apparently another language. After about the third or fourth repetition -- as her interrogators work patiently through the entire repertoire of trading tongues in the East -- her anger against the absent Igenlode, who had handled all the market negotiations for her, is reaching boiling-point. The fact that the islanders are now starting to look at her as if she is a complete idiot isn't helping, either.

**

After an uncomfortable night spent under guard on the deck of their own ship, the Horizon's crew have been assembled together in the waist of the sloop, with turbaned guards on foredeck and poop covering the crowd with clumsy but effective-looking matchlock weapons. Some of the bigger two-masted boats have been worked in through the reef close to the pirate ship, and these too are moored with their cannon aimed across onto the Horizon's deck.

If they'd wanted, they could have massacred Dutch and her entire crew last night, the captain realises angrily. But despite the fact that a number of the attackers had been killed or badly injured, they'd gone to a lot of trouble to capture the pirates alive. She doesn't know why, but she has a nasty feeling she isn't going to like the answer.

"Don't understand," she says yet again, rather less politely as her impotent fury starts to get the better of her, and her interrogator snaps out a phrase over his shoulder in a tone of voice that indicates unmistakably This is a complete waste of time! The two guards who had pulled her forward out of the crowd for questioning tighten their grip on her arms, and Dutch, who has visions of being tossed casually overboard, begins to struggle.

A new voice breaks in, with a tone of command that stops everyone, including Dutch, in their tracks. She looks up. The richly-dressed man who is clearly the commander of the expedition has raised a hand, halting the proceedings. Now he is leaning forward and addressing her himself in a language that's somehow familiar. His advisors are looking rather shocked. And she still can't understand what he's saying...

"Captain -- captain!" It's Luiz. Dutch recognises the voice, even though the guards won't let her turn round. "Captain, he speaks Portuguese --"

The leader of their captors raps out a curt phrase over Dutch's head, interrupting, and Luiz replies. A few harsh exchanges later -- this local bigwig may speak Portuguese, but he clearly doesn't like Luiz' countrymen very much -- a somewhat subdued Luiz, his good looks for once marred by the spectacular bruise across his cheek acquired when he'd been pulled down from the rigging the previous night, is dragged out from the crowd and thrust to Dutch's side.

"All right, what does he say?" Dutch demands, shifting uneasily. She can feel the older man's dark eyes watching them both, shrewd and assessing. His short beard is grizzled, and he has the weather-beaten, lined face of an old campaigner. Despite the gaudy -- even by pirate standards -- display of jewellery and clothing, he doesn't look like a pampered pocket-courtier. He looks like an experienced and dangerous opponent.

"He says you're his prisoner -- we're all his prisoners."

"I know that." Dutch can't keep the bitterness from her voice.

"He says the ship is his now."

"I know that too," Dutch growls.

"He says the infidel captain -- he means Captain Fry -- told him where to find her."

"What?" Dutch's head jerks up sharply, and she meets her opponent's gaze for the first time. There is a hint of calm amusement in his eyes. He speaks again.

"He says he is the Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar of the house of Utheemu, ruler of these islands," Luiz translates slowly, "and he wants you to sail the Horizon for him, to help him capture Captain Fry's ship for himself..."

Dutch's jaw drops. She sees the look of amusement spread on the Sultan's face and hastily shuts it again. But in that moment of mutual perception, she understands suddenly that this Eastern potentate of a foreign land happens to dislike the pious Captain Fry every bit as much as she does.

"Very well," says Dutch, regaining composure. She's back in the game now, and can't afford to show any weakness. "Tell the honorable Sultan that we'll be more than happy to help..."

Luiz translates, and the Sultan looks very self-content.

"... but there will be some conditions."

As Luiz finishes, Iskander's face darkens, and his next words are uttered in an angry tone.

"He says there will be no negotiating with prisoners. You will follow his orders or die."

"Is that so?" Dutch stares back at the Sultan without any emotion. "That's too bad for him then, because it means he can kiss his pretty ship goodbye. And if he takes the Horizon, he'll run her aground before he ever gets out of the bay."

Luiz, uncomfortable at being the messenger of bad news, translates softly.

A loud order from Iskander, and a man with a matchlock comes stand next to him and aims his weapon at Dutch's chest.

She raises her eyebrows, not looking away from Iskander. "It's your decision." After a brief pause during which nothing happens, she continues. "After we take the Belle-Marie, my crew and I will sail away in the Horizon. You will not attempt to stop her. You will not keep any of the crew. There are some things of ours on the Belle-Marie, and we will take those with us. For the rest, you can do anything you like."

The nervous Luiz almost smiles at the audacity of the last remark, but manages to restrain himself. He softens the words as much as he can in his translation.

For a while, it seems things can go either way. But the Sultan knows he has no choice. He agrees to Dutch's terms, and the Horizon's crew cheers despite of their rough night, happy at the prospect of taking their treasure back from Fry. Dutch pulls her arms free from her guards, who make no effort to hold her, and grins.

"Now, if his highness would tell his men to get to work? We have provisions to load and guns to mount."

* * *

Before long, the Horizon is sailing after Fry, amongst a multitude of bangalas. Iskander, who likes to keep track of everything going on in his realm, had been informed by Fry where he was headed. The pirates had watched what direction the Belle-Marie sailed away in, and it would seem that the information Fry gave Iskander was correct. Dutch hopes this is true, because if that sneaky Puritan decided to change his plans for some reason, their chances of finding him are very slim. Which in turn could make the future of the Horizon and her crew far more troubled.

Iskander himself and a few of his men have stayed aboard the Horizon, keeping an eye on Dutch and the guns in particular. Apparently they are not at all sure that the pirates won't try to escape. If there was a chance it would work, Dutch may indeed have made an attempt, but floating in the middle of a fleet, even one that is not too heavily armed, it would be suicide. And besides, the odds of getting even with Fry are much better working with Iskander.

The Sultan is getting on Dutch's nerves. He stands in the same spot, continuously watching her, and two of his men walk along with her wherever she goes. She decides to be very careful. She's not entirely sure she can fully trust Iskander, though for the moment their interests are the same. Unfortunately, all the plans she comes up with to ensure a free exit after attacking the Belle-Marie won't work, as she realizes all too well. If Iskander chooses not to let the Horizon go, the crew are caught like mice in a trap.

And then there is the continuing worry: Igenlode. Dutch wonders if he's still alive. She is even less certain about what to do with him if he is. She doesn't expect him to like everything she does, but he goes against her so openly that it undermines her authority. There's already been one mutiny, which, though in no way his fault, used him as part of the excuse. Dutch doesn't much feel like going through another. A serious chat is the very least he'll be getting.

Annoyed that her mind once again drifted to the clerk, she tries to concentrate on the matter at hand: attacking the Belle-Marie and getting away after that.

After spending the best part of a day and a night shut up in the lazarette, with only the briefest of moments permitted on deck, both the prisoners' appearance and their resolution are beginning to suffer. It is a sorry-looking pair who are finally haled up into the great cabin to face Captain Fry, although there is a mulish set to Willem's bruised mouth that augurs ill for his chances of conciliating their captor.

Fry looks them up and down, his scarred cheek stretched in a sidelong smile as if at some private joke. He quickly dismisses Igenlode and spends a few moments longer surveying Willem, scanning him narrowly as if contemplating bidding on a steer at market.

"There is no place aboard this ship for those who toil not, nor do they spin," he announces abruptly, helping himself from a dish of nuts that stand to one side upon a table, and glaring at both prisoners as he cracks the shell between strong teeth. "There is no leisure for the idle mouth, nor yet for the clever tongue that preys upon its neighbours. You'll earn your keep, or you'll dance with Davy Jones before the dawn!"

Willem's lips tighten. "I'll never fight for any pirate," he proclaims, despite a frantic nudge from Igenlode. "I'll--"

"It was he who sent the message that brought you here," the clerk interrupts desperately, observing thunderclouds of Biblical proportions begin to gather upon Fry's brow. "You owe every florin of that treasure to him, sir -- why, he hates Dutch even more than you do." An 'accidental' side-step onto Willem's foot manages to silence him just in time.

"Of what avail is that, now that the creature has gone at last to her just deserts?" Fry retorts, unknowingly turning the knife in his prisoner's breast. "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction; and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth --"

As it happened, there was. But of the two of them, it was only Willem whose jaws were grinding together. "She's dead?" Igenlode's voice shakes on the last word, despite every effort to hide it. "Dutch is dead?"

Fry's lopsided smile widens as he notices the clerk's distress. He gets up and gestures with mock courtesy towards the windows at the rear of the great cabin, like a showman inviting his audience to behold the wonders he has personally prepared for their edification. "The day of the Lord upon her has come. As she has done, so shall it be done unto her; her reprisal shall return upon her own head..."

Even Willem gasps. There, only a mile or two distant across the sea, the Horizon can be seen sailing directly towards them. But her mastheads stream now with banners bearing a star and crescent, her bulwarks are lined with lithe figures in sarongs, and she is surrounded by a whole fleet of graceful lateen-rigged vessels, from the smallest one-man dhoanis, no larger than a ship's gig, to sturdy ocean bangalas with the black muzzles of guns jutting beneath their raking masts.

But high above all the rest, one sight is all too clear. Dangling from the topmost yardarm, twisting with a faint macabre grace as the ship pitches over the waves, is a lolling figure swinging by the neck. At this distance, the face is no more than the hint of a pale patch, where the head has fallen forward. But the afternoon sunlight strikes unmistakably upon a mane of tawny hair.

* * *

"I'll kill him!" Igenlode's curses are punctuated by heavy, sobbing breaths as the clerk struggles to force the shackles free across bleeding hands in the dark. "I'll kill him -- I swear I'll kill him for this --"

Whatever Captain Fry had planned for his prisoners, his intentions had been cut short by a summons on deck. The two survivors from the Horizon had been thrust hastily back into their confinement to contemplate their mortality, the bolt banged home above them, and the cabin door slammed on its hinges as Fry's footsteps hastened overhead. They could hear it now, creaking open and shut with the roll of the ship.

"I'll kill him," Igenlode repeats, one hand coming free with an involuntary gasp of pain. "I'll kill him if it's the last thing I do!"

"Wait." Willem flings out a hand in the darkness, finds a thin shoulder and grips it. "Wait -- do you mean that? Are you serious?"

For a moment the two of them are motionless in the dark.

"Yes." Igenlode sounds numbly surprised. "Yes, I mean it. Makepeace Fry has just betrayed everything I had left in the world -- everything I had left to care for. I've just seen the wildest, most beautiful free creature I ever knew hung up like the carrion on a gamekeeper's gibbet. I'm trapped here on this whited sepulchre of a ship under the command of a raving maniac, with nothing to look forward to save cruelties received or inflicted -- I don't have a lot left to lose, Willem." The clerk's voice is shaking badly now, and it threatens to lurch completely out of control. Igenlode swallows, hard, trying not to break down. "I don't care much what happens to me, if I can just get even with him before the end --"

"That makes two of us." Willem's other hand finds his companion's forearm; grips it. "Look, I can't pretend I'm sorry about Dutch -- you wouldn't believe me if I did. But I'll tell you this: I'd have trusted her in a moment before I'd trust this canting hypocrite of a captain, with scripture on his lips and a devil in his heart. And I saw something through those windows it seems he didn't see -- or else his gloating blinded him. The Horizon had her guns run out, and chain slings on all her yards. This Mohammedan ally of his isn't coming to give him the time of day, or to thank him for his help. He's coming to attack this ship -- and that means the powder magazine will be open."

"Both of them." Igenlode's voice is a whisper in the dark. "If we wait until they lay the Horizon alongside... one spark cast into the magazine here could send her to the bottom along with the Belle-Marie. The man who gave the order... and the savages who did the killing. We can send her to the bottom and wash her clean of the blood of her crew..."

"Two fewer pirate ships in the world; that's how I look at it," Willem says drily. "But if you're willing to help --"

There is a sharp clatter against the deck as Igenlode wrenches the other hand free and discards the shackles. "The bolt's not fastened," the clerk says softly, beginning work upon the leg-irons. "It was shot home too hastily -- it's half out of its socket. And the cabin door is open -- I can hear it from here. One good thrust up on the trapdoor should splinter it --"

"Here, let me do that." Willem feels along the shackles, locates Igenlode's foot, and twists the limb swiftly, tugging downward. His companion cries out involuntarily at the sudden pain; but the iron loop comes free.

"You'd better do the other one," Igenlode says after a moment through gritted teeth, breathing hard. "Then we can slip out of the cabin while the coast is still clear, and set about destroying the ship."

The clerk's cheeks are still wet with forgotten tears; but there is a steely resolution in the thin face that would have surprised Willem Klaasz, had he been alive to see it, very much indeed.

* * *

There is a fresh breeze across the Horizon's deck, filling her sails into great gilded curves in the light of the westering sun. It strikes somewhat cold on the nape of a newly-shorn neck. But the owner of the head in question is very far from repining.

"You know, your highness," Dutch says, looking up at the swinging dummy the Sultan has set up overhead, embellished with her favourite boots and bandana, as well as her own cheerfully-sacrificed hair, "has anyone ever told you you've got a really great sense of style?"

She grins, slapping a chuckling Iskandar on the back as Luiz translates. "He won't suspect a thing until it's too late. You were wasted on a throne, love -- you should have been a pirate..."

"But Captain," one of Fry's men says nervously, "look! Her guns are run out!"

"And so Iskander is obviously planning an attack? He couldn't just be showing off his newly acquired force?" The sarcasm in Fry's voice is unmistakable, but thinking about it, the idea seems more and more plausible. After all, what trust could he place in that heathen?

"All right," he continues finally. "Man the guns, but don't run them out yet. If that Saracen Sultan's intentions are peaceful, we don't want to bring war upon us."

While his men follow his orders, Fry looks warily at the approaching Horizon and her fleet.

***

Iskander has ordered that the guns will be fired at as late a moment as possible, to not cause any more damage to 'his' ship than absolutely necessary. And as Fry doesn't seem to realize he is being attacked, that moment is not until the Horizon comes alongside the Belle-Marie. After the peace is broken by the cannon fire from the Horizon, her crew starts shouting as they throw their grapples and start making their way to the other ship. On the Belle-Marie's other side, men start climbing up from Iskander's boats, unnoticed on deck.

Dutch is eager to have her revenge on Fry, but first thing's first: she has to prevent her ship from being blown to pieces. Fighting her way through the crowd on deck in order to get to the Belle-Marie's guns would be risky, and she doesn't want to get distracted by running into Fry. Then another option dawns on her: there is a large hole in the ship's side, where one of the Horizon's cannonballs has hit. After climbing over to the Belle-Marie, she lowers a rope and climbs down, followed by Micawber and Luiz.

Sooner than should have been possible, the Belle-Marie fires back, causing destruction on the Horizon. Dutch, now hanging not too far above the gun ports, instinctively clutches the rope even tighter, having no real way to protect herself. A small splinter from her own ship hits not far from her leg. She curses softly while she climbs further down. As the cannons are run inside to be reloaded, Dutch decides to go in through the nearby gun port instead of climbing further and risking getting wounded on the ragged edges of the hole.

She slides in, legs first, and pulls two pistols from under her belt as soon as her feet hit the floor. The men at the guns are caught completely off-guard. Some are already lying on the ground, wounded or dead, after the Horizon's broadside. As Micawber and Luiz come in behind Dutch, they start tying up Fry's men, whose services will be required by the Sultan.

* * *

When Igenlode and Willem have finally made their way out of the lazarette, which took longer than they had hoped, they perform a quick search through Fry's cabin. While Willem keeps an eye on the door to make sure nobody's coming, Igenlode searches for weapons. All he finds is a flintlock pistol. It is unloaded, and not much defense in case they run into homicidal pirates or muslims, but it can be used to spark the fire in the powder magazine. They are in no hurry. As long as the fight hasn't started yet, the powder magazine will be closed.

When the Horizon's broadside hits, they leave the cabin and slowly go on their way, avoiding the pirates, who fortunately are rather preoccupied. Waiting until after one of Fry's men comes out of the powder magazine, they sneak inside. They open one of the kegs using the handle of the pistol and scatter its contents around, flinching during the progress at the unexpected sound of the Belle-Marie's cannon fire. There is a strange silence when they are finished.

"So this is it," says Igenlode, remarkably calm. Willem just nods. Both stare at the flintlock in Igenlode's hand. Suddenly a silhouette appears in the doorway, and Igenlode aims the pistol. "Stand back!"

"Be careful where you're pointing that thing, love. You could hurt somebody."

The familiar voice from the unfamiliar silhouette hits Igenlode hard in his guts. He wants to speak, but can't. His legs start trembling, and for a while he's barely able to keep standing. Then, as the first shock passes, he throws himself in an embrace on Dutch, who stumbles back a little, unprepared for such a welcome.

"You're alive!" he manages between sobs.

"Calm now," says Dutch in a friendly tone. She grins briefly. "I take it you saw our little masquerade. I'm sorry it upset you."

Igenlode takes his distance again, looking at her changed appearance and shaking his head in disbelief. "You're alive." It is now a soft, solemn, reassured tone.

Willem, on the other hand, isn't quite as happy. He leaps fowards and grabs the pistol out of Igenlode's hand, but Dutch, seeing it happen, jumps on top of him and forces the flintlock out of his hand. At that moment Micawber comes in, and she helps Dutch to tie Willem's hands.

Dusting herself off as she stands up, Dutch begins: "Really, Will..." Then she suddenly understands what they were doing. "You were blowing yourselves up with the ship? You have more courage than meets the eye, love," she says to Igenlode with a smile. Then to Micawber, indicating Will: "Keep an eye on that one. I'll go to see to it that Makepeace Fry meets his maker."

***

Seeing his men being overwhelmed by their attackers, an angry Fry goes to his cabin, to try and throw as much of the treasure as possible out into the sea. He will not let it end up in the hands of that heathen.

Just as he reaches the companionway, the doors swing open. Fry is terrified, never having seen a ghost before. But there stands Dutch, her head shorn as that of a corpse, and strangulation marks still visible on her neck.

Dutch notes, with interest, how the colour is ebbing from Fry's lean cheeks, until the old scar down his face stands out a livid purple against the grey. He swallows, obviously unable to believe his eyes, and begins to babble under his breath, backing away from her towards his cabin. She can't make out most of what he is trying to say -- unlikely, in her opinion, to be any great loss -- but phrases such as "fire and brimstone" and "unclean spirit" reach her ears, confirming the gratifying nature of the reaction her appearance has produced. Not to mention the effectiveness of the gunpowder bruise-marks brushed onto her neck, plus the sulphurous fumes she happened to pick up while swinging into the gun-deck.

Dutch grins. It's wonderful what a bit of theatrical flair can do for an uneasy conscience. She is tempted to let out a hollow moan or two, just to see what will happen.

But the grin is a mistake. Obviously, the sort of ghost Fry expects to see doesn't go in for smug expressions. The blind panic in his face is overlaid by a hint of suspicion, and Dutch remembers, too late, that however tenuous Fry's grip on sanity may sometimes seem, he is no fool. She makes the best of it and tips him a wink, enjoying the look of outrage thus produced as the true state of affairs begins to dawn on him.

"Why, you brazen jade --"

He claps one hand to his sword-hilt and shows signs of storming towards her, and Dutch levels a pistol -- empty, since she fired them both while attempting to subdue the gun-deck, but Fry isn't in a position to know that. "Careful, love -- not a step closer, or you might not get time to regret it..."

Fry obeys; but the look of blind, fanatical hatred in his eyes is enough to shake even her for a moment. "You," he says, and the one word holds an eternity of hell-fire. "You..."

"Well, I suppose you could say we got off on the wrong tack from the first," Dutch speculates. She strolls forward to lounge in the door-frame, forcing him back towards the centre of his cabin. But for all her studied nonchalance, she is making sure to keep a very close eye on him indeed. "Of course, I always believe in letting bygones be bygones --"

"An eye for an eye." Fry's voice begins to rise. His knuckles are clenched white around the hilt of his sword, but he hasn't made a move to draw it... yet. "A tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand --"

"A ship for a ship?" Dutch suggests with an interrogative lift of an eyebrow, gazing around the Belle-Marie's sumptuous great cabin -- she has always wondered what the inside of a French Guineaman looked like, and for all his preaching Fry clearly hasn't scrupled to avail himself of all the French captain's luxuries. "Oh, not the Belle-Marie --" as Fry's eyes, following the direction of her gaze, begin to bulge out to a degree that looks likely to bring him to an apoplexy -- "I'm afraid she's already spoken for elsewhere.

"Actually, I was thinking of that speedy little spice-trader we snapped up off the Malabar coast when I was last in these waters, a few years back; and the iron broadside you put through her hull before we could get her back to port, when you learned that someone else had dared to pluck a fat pigeon or two in your territory. Of course, if you'd've had this ship then, you'd probably have sunk the pirate as well as the prize -- but then, if we'd had the Horizon in those days, you'd never have caught up with us in the first place." She is observing him with the sweetest of smiles; but her angelic expression is very far from being returned.

"The Lord gave that ship into my hand." Fry is almost screaming, his once-ashen cheeks now suffused with purple. "The goings out of it shall be at the salt sea, for this shall be my land, with the coasts thereof round about, and everything within it the Lord of Hosts hath delivered to the grasp of the righteous --"

"Actually, I think you'll find that was due to your cosy little agreement with the doubtless righteous but decidedly Mohammedan Sultan Iskandar," Dutch points out. "And somehow I get the impression that particular deal has rather back-fired, hasn't it? Or didn't it occur to you that a man of the Sultan's rank was hardly going to be content with a ship the size of the Horizon when he had one as rich as the Belle-Marie in his sights?"

She pauses to let the self-inflicted nature of the current situation sink in, then looks up brightly as if she has just remembered something. "Oh, that reminds me. I do hope the Sultan's generosity will extend to letting us have back those guns you took. Decent naval nine-pounders are so hard to come by out here, and I can't abide a lopsided broadside -- can you?"

Whether it is the utter insolent charm of the expression that accompanies this friendly enquiry, or simply the slow-dawning realisation of how far he had underestimated Iskandar that ultimately pushes her opponent over the edge, she will never know; but it is at this moment that fury finally gets the better of him. Completely disregarding the empty threat of her pistol, Makepeace Fry draws his sword with a half-choked cry and lunges at her.

Dutch, who has been waiting for just this move since the start of their verbal exchange, dodges him easily. She thrusts the empty pistol back into her belt for recharging later ("never toss a gun aside," old Ekyard Watts used to caution her, "for you never know when you may have time to load a second shot") and draws her own cutlass almost without thinking, smashing aside Fry's straight-thrusting blade.

She aims slash after slash at him, driving him back from the close quarters of the doorway. But in the centre of the great cabin, with clear space all around him as if to cool his heat, Fry steadies and seems to regain his head, using his skill instead of fighting in blind rage.

Dutch curses inwardly, unable to spare the breath to taunt him any further. Fry knows the smallsword. He's good. And he's got the extra reach over her with the straight blade, flickering thrusts in and out where she can only try to beat them aside and dance back. A stinging trickle of blood down one shoulder betrays at least one instant when she had sprung aside a fraction too late.

This is no good. Dutch scowls, launches a roundhouse blow beneath her opponent's guard that threatens to reap him off at the knees before he parries it, and takes advantage of the distraction to dart sideways towards a certain chest she's noticed. There, behind the lid, is a promising tangle of straps... Her hand, reaching down in the second before Fry is again within range, finds a familiar shape amongst the leather and snatches the sword-hilt up.

For a moment, with belt and scabbard trailing from her arm, she is all but trapped against the wall of the cabin. Then she blocks Fry's attack against the guard of her cutlass with a jar that nearly numbs her arm, steps swiftly back and to one side, tossing the sword-harness free with a flick of her left hand that forces her opponent to pause a moment or risk entanglement, and switches blades from left to right in that brief breathing-space, hurling the cutlass in the direction of Fry's head. It misses him by a mile and thuds into a beam to the left of the door, vibrating.

Now they are evenly matched; save that Fry still has the longer reach. But Dutch is used to fighting men who are taller than she is, and in any case she doesn't have to worry about hitting her head on the deck-beams above. To her way of thinking, this gives her the advantage.

She concentrates on Fry's face, watching his eyes, letting her reflexes deflect and entangle his blade almost without thinking, so that the two swords scrape and lock together before disengaging with a knife-rasp of steel that sets her teeth on edge. He has scaled back his attacks, feeling for the weak point in her new style of swordplay. He is probably the better swordsman. However, Dutch is in control of the ship, so she means to win; if necessary, by running away and letting the Sultan's musket-men shoot him down. She is a pirate, not a fencing-master, which means she has absolutely no qualms about honour or fair play.

Both of them are breathing hard, and Dutch snatches a moment to try to blink the trickle of sweat out of her eyes, only to leap back as Fry seizes his chance and almost skewers her. Of course, he's a pirate too.

Dutch grins, slips the little throwing-knife from her sleeve, and curses as the left-handed toss falls short at the last minute. The next moment, she barely dodges in time as Fry catches up what turns out to be a snuff-box from a neighbouring table and hurls the contents at her face, filling the air between them briefly with a cloud of tobacco. Dutch has to hold her breath as the outer edges of the shower settle on her clothing like a fine powdering of grey-brown snow. With a sudden inspiration, she reaches out and jerks a small brass bowl from the table in her turn as she retreats around it, scattering the contents under her opponent's feet.

The nuts roll and splinter, and Fry loses his balance, parrying rather wildly as she comes back onto the attack. Blood blooms brightly in the wake of her blade, and he springs back with a snarl, clapping his free hand instinctively to the long gash that licks around his ribs.

Now the remains of the nuts lie in Dutch's path, and the two duellists pause for a moment, each waiting for the other to make the first move. The air is painful in Dutch's throat, and she guesses that Fry probably isn't in much better condition either, from the way he is hesitating. She feints to the left, thrusts low and parries the riposte, and lunges recklessly, feeling nutshells scatter under her heel. The tip of her blade wavers and slides askew, and she ends up down almost on her knees, completely exposed to his counter-stroke. There is a frozen moment.

Then something clatters to one side, out of her line of vision, and as she half-turns to see Fry's weapon spin slowly to a halt across the deck, a heavy weight drags her own weapon from her hand. Fry sags, tips backwards, and finally sprawls full-length across the polished boards, arms flung wide. His mouth is moving silently as if he is trying to form words, but no sound comes. Her sword stands up, foreshortened, from his throat.

For a while, Dutch stands still, not sure she can believe what she sees, as Fry's lips slowly stop moving. When she is convinced that he is really dead, she walks to the door, pulling her cutlass out of the beam next to it before continuing to the companionway.

Time seems to go slowly after the hectic fight, and the short walk to the deck takes Dutch rather long, or so it feels. As the adrenaline level in her blood drops, the painful stings in her wounded shoulder become increasingly severe. But Dutch ignores them, with some success. First she has to make sure the treasure, supplies and guns are brought aboard the Horizon, then she has to sail off. If the wound still hurts after that, she will take care of it then. She is feeling a little light-headed, but blames it on inhaling the tobacco.

When Dutch opens the doors to the deck, Iskandar's men and the Horizon's crew have taken over the Belle-Marie. Fry's men are tied up by the mainmast.

Everybody gazes at Dutch with wide eyes. Slightly annoyed because she isn't sure what to make of their look, she states: "He's dead."

But that isn't their concern. Igenlode hastens to Dutch. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." She has no idea what the clerk is talking about. Then she notices he is looking at her shoulder, and follows his eyes. Blood has soaked a large portion of her clothes, already darkening as it dries to a crust. Utter surprise. Her shoulder doesn't even hurt anymore. It must be Fry's blood, though she cannot recall the occasion where such an ammount spilled on her.

She stares at the wound, incredulous. "I'm fine," she repeats, but her own voice sounds like it's coming from far away.

Then her body gives up, and she collapses against a horrified Igenlode.

***

After he has laid Dutch on her back on the deck, panic briefly prevents Igenlode from figuring out what to do. The rest of the crew doesn't do anything either. For some reason they never realized there was a possibility that Dutch could die, or even come this close.

When a look at the pirates, who he feels should know what to do, proves fruitless, Igenlode's mind finally starts working again, and he has a small epiphany.

"Willem!" There is no reply, but he wasn't really expecting one. "Bring Willem!" Luiz pushes a bound Willem forward out of the crowd.

Without asking, Igenlode grabs a dagger from the belt of a nearby pirate and cuts the rope that ties Willem's hands.

He points at Dutch. "Heal her!"

The simplicity of the words would be funny if he wasn't so serious.

Willem's answer isn't smug. It isn't even defiant. Just a simple yet devastating statement of the truth.

"No."

Frustrated, Igenlode brings his hands to his head. "You must! Please! You're the only one who can."

"Why would I want to heal her?" Willem looks down on Dutch as if she is dirt lying in the street. "Besides, I'm not sure I could."

Desperate, Igenlode blurts out: "You'll go free."

"What?"

"Heal Dutch, and you may leave the ship once we get to Singapore."

The pirates that are watching are not sure whether they like this arrangement. Igenlode has no authority to decide Willem can go. But nobody has a better idea, and they suppose it doesn't really matter if they kill Willem or free him; they're rid of him either way.

Willem thinks this over a second, before his head starts nodding. "Alright." A relieved smile flashes over Igenlode's face.

Then Annie, who has been standing near the prisoners, comes to her senses again and starts shouting her orders. "Luiz, Jones: get the Captain to the Horizon!" She indicates two groups of pirates. "You: get the treasure. You: get the cannon. The rest comes to the Horizon and gets her ready to sail. Move!" Finally the pirates come into action.

As Annie passes Willem, she briefly stops and looks him in the eyes. "You better try hard. If she dies, you die."

From the pirates' casual reaction to the task, Igenlode had assumed that transferring the missing cannon across to their own ship would be a matter of moments; but in fact, it takes up most of what remains of the afternoon. The Horizon's guns may be small by the standards of a frigate like Hecate, let alone a ship of the line, but judging by the way the slings and derricks creak as the long bronze shapes are swayed gingerly into the air, not to mention the unsettling angle of the Belle-Marie's deck as the weight swings out to its furthest point, they have to weigh about a ton apiece. Unloading them with the ship beached firmly on her coral island had been one thing. Transferring them between two ships at sea turns out to be quite another matter.

Igenlode can't help being aware that if even one of the ropes broke, that weight of metal plunging from above would be more than enough to smash straight through the ship, from deck to keel, and sink her instantly. It is hard to relax while each cannon is in the air, and even the transfer of the heavy gun-trucks and the cautious reunion of each gun-barrel and carriage is fraught with potential for accident.

But in a way, the distraction is welcome. It makes it harder to think about the sounds coming from below-decks, where Willem is plying his trade, not just upon Dutch but on the others wounded in the brief fight. Speed is everything in surgery, the clerk knows, speed and skill to carry out the operation before the patient can break free from restraint or before the body succumbs to shock, and two of the strongest pirates on board have been sent down to hold down the wounded men -- and, of course, unmentioned, to keep an eye on Willem.

It's said that the success of an operation can be gauged by the short duration -- or otherwise -- of the screams. If this is the case, then it certainly sounds as if Willem's surgery isn't going very well...

Surely Dutch won't be undergoing an operation, Igenlode thinks desperately. After all, she hasn't suffered a crushed limb, or a savage-barbed splinter wound like the one that had brought down at the last a man the size of Binns to the condition of a sobbing child. She's lost a lot of blood, that's all. And doctors regularly take blood from people in the ordinary way, to heal them of a fever or simply to rebalance the various bodily 'humours'. It's well known to be a sovereign remedy for almost any ailment.

But Dutch had collapsed in full sight of the prisoners and of her own crew, and no amount of convincing can explain that away into a little mild blood-letting. Nothing could have induced her to succumb to such a display of weakness while there was any strength left in her. Another scream comes from below, and even a nearby islander flinches.

Dutch had obviously come to some agreement earlier with the Sultan, for the sailors of his flotilla are all over the two pirate vessels, lifting, carrying, and investigating every nook and cranny. They may have little experience of square-rigged ships, but they are clearly practised and skilful seamen, and to a man who can swarm out along a slanting lateen yard without the benefit of rigging, the footropes and spars of the Belle-Marie are no kind of deterrent. A good half of Fry's old crew have evidently been recruited -- or captured -- from the Maldives or the Indian coast in the first place, during the years that he'd been out here, and Igenlode suspects that after a few weeks under the discipline of the Sultan's chosen captain it will be hard to tell the two components of the crew apart.

The transfer of the treasure, perhaps unsurprisingly, does not go so smoothly.

The pirates had counted on locating their own two caskets and claiming them back for the Horizon; but the caskets are nowhere to be found. Instead, it becomes gradually evident that Fry must have divided the treasure up among his own men, piece by piece, and scattered the remainder among all the considerable booty that is stored in the holds of the Belle-Marie. Igenlode's own inventories are pressed into service -- but the brief descriptions of each item listed there were only ever intended to distinguish among similar pieces of value: Item, one Candlestick, silver, having three Branches; Item, two Candlesticks as before, ornamented with a Coat of Arms; Item, one Candlestick in gold, the left Branch being somewhat bent; and it is, of course, quite impossible to determine what part of the treasure on board the big Guineaman can properly be said to have come from the Horizon, and what part was taken by Fry and now apportions to the Sultan, as her captor. Naturally enough, the Horizon's crew are inclined to take every advantage of the situation.

Igenlode doesn't know what kind of bargain Dutch had made with the Maldive Islanders; but from the steadily darkening frown on Sultan Iskandar's face, he, at least, clearly suspects that the pirates are not keeping to the agreed conditions. His men, at a hundred or more, easily outnumber the Horizon's crew. And if he chooses to arm Fry's crew as well, there could well be a massacre triggered by the pirates' greed.

Halfpence Annie is evidently thinking along the same lines. She beckons to Luiz, angrily removes a large emerald necklace from his grasp (stowing it into her own waistband, Igenlode notices), and the two of them go to exchange a few words with the Sultan. Shortly afterwards, they go below. Not, however, before the Sultan has issued a few curt orders to his musket-festooned personal guard in case he should not return that make Igenlode, at least, exceedingly nervous. Judging by the expressions of the rest of those on deck, everyone else is happily oblivious to what has just been said.

But the delegation is not gone long. "Now listen, you scurvy swabs," Annie announces, planting herself on the foredeck and giving orders in a voice that could cut through a gale, "our Captain and the Sultan have come to an agreement. Ben Warley, the quartermaster, will roust up two apple-tubs on deck that hold about the same as the caskets we lost. Every man on board will put in anything he's taken out of the Belle-Marie -- myself included. Any man found holding back money from the common store will suffer the usual punishment, to be set ashore to starve or swim. If there's more than will fit in the tubs old Ben provides, then you may choose for yourselves which pieces to keep and which to leave. If there's less, then the Sultan and myself will choose which part of Fry's treasure shall go to make up the pile. All those in favour say "Aye". All those against can ship along with the Mussulmen and take their chance of a better share -- or maybe a worse one. What's it to be, lads? Let's hear your choice."

There is a good deal of grumbling, but a chorus of reluctant "Aye"s. If the truth be told, Igenlode is scarcely listening. 'Our Captain and the Sultan have come to an agreement' -- can it be true? If so...

Twisting together palms that are suddenly slippery with sweat, the clerk approaches the majestic figure of the Sultan very nervously. "Your most excellent Majesty" -- Igenlode is uncertain of the correct honorific in the trading Malay they had used to bargain with the merchants -- "is it possible that You have witnessed the condition of our captain?"

Too late, it occurs to Igenlode that this question could be interpreted as not only impertinent but insulting beyond belief, by appearing to question the veracity of the Sultan's statements. Iskandar's black brows twitch together, and his unhappy interlocutor cringes, expecting a swift order to the guards. Then Iskandar raises an eyebrow.

"Ah, you are concerned for your captain's welfare?" he says in perfect Tamil, in what Igenlode suspects is a test. The clerk, whose own Tamil is far from accurate, stammers a few words and sees the royal eyebrow rise even further. "So... I don't believe I've seen you before?"

Igenlode manages, somehow, to explain the circumstances in which the two of them had been taken captive by Fry's men, and sees Iskandar relax. Clearly, this was the right answer. Switching back to Malay, the Sultan 'suggests', politely, that the clerk should carry out all further liaisons between members of his crews and the pirates, since a system of communication via Luiz and his own royal self is somewhat less than appropriate. It is clear from his tone that any wish expressed by the Sultan is very definitely expected to be a command.

And then, quite unexpectedly, with no change in expression, he adds: "Your estimable captain would appear in perfect health, if allowance be made for the pallor of her experiences. Certainly the decisive powers of her mind are not affected. A few weeks of the finest fish and sweet tea, and she will soon be restored to strength."

Igenlode, despite overwhelming relief, cannot repress a slight smile at the image of Dutch's probable comments if expected to regale herself on delicacies of the Maldives during convalescence, and misses the Sultan's next words.

"A most notable creature," he is saying in a thoughtful manner when the clerk's attention returns. "Why, I would gladly marry her myself for the duration of her visit..."

And Igenlode, having encountered the custom of "sailors' marriages" with local girls on the islands, is completely unable, despite considerable consternation, to tell whether he is joking.

Shortly after Iskandar, Annie and Luiz left, Dutch fell into a deep, much needed sleep. She awakes again when someone holds a cup to her mouth. The liquid against her lips reminds her body that it's thirsty, and she eagerly takes a few sips before realizing she doesn't recognize the taste. Forcing her eyes to open, Dutch sees Willem standing over her.

Panic overcomes her. She spits out the remains of the liquid in her mouth, and her right arm makes a poorly coordinated move meant to push the cup away. Although she lacks the strength to fend off Willem, her sudden revival makes him back up a little.

"Out!" shouts Dutch. She is surprised at how softly the order comes out. Willem doesn't move.

With considerable effort and even more pain, Dutch manages to sit up somewhat in her hammock. "Out, I said!"

There is a knock on the door, and Igenlode, just released from his daily duties by the Sultan, enters. The scene is rather confusing to him.

"Get Will out of here!" Dutch's face is glistening, and her short hair is sticking together with sweat. Despite of this, the impression she makes is far from weak. "He's trying to poison me!"

"I'm doing no such thing!" Willem turns to Igenlode. "You know I would gain nothing from her death. I was giving her something for the pain, and to keep the fever down."

Igenlode believes him, but, considering Dutch's state, asks him to leave anyway, taking the cup from him.

As soon as the door closes, Dutch lets herself fall back in her hammock, all energy drained by her little act of defiance. She's already almost asleep again when she hears Igenlode's voice next to her.

"You should drink this." The tone reveals he is far from certain that he'll be able to convince her.

Dutch gives a negatory grunt.

"Please," pleads Igenlode. "Willem wants to restore your health."

"Really? Why is that?" The words are slightly slurred, and Dutch's eyes remain closed.

Igenlode sighs. There's nothing else for it. "Because if you stay alive, he'll be allowed to leave the Horizon when we get to Singapore."

"What?!" Her eyes immediately open, piercing Igenlode.

"It... it was the only way." Igenlode tries to shake the irrational guilt he feels. Willem's care quite possibly saved Dutch's life, and she's complaining? "Drink it. Please?"

Looking up at the clerk, Dutch wonders why on earth she trusts him so much. But she does, and she hardly feels like arguing further.

"All right."

Relieved, Igenlode holds the cup to her mouth. Dutch is annoyed by being treated like an infant and considers taking the cup from him, but she doubts she could hold it up for long. As she drinks the medicine, Igenlode briefly relates the events of the day; the transfer of the cannons, the division of the treasure... Hopefully it will comfort her that everything on her ship is going fine without her.

Soon after the drink is finished, a pleasant numbness starts spreading from Dutch's stomach.

"There is one more thing." Igenlode turns around to put the cup away, taking the opportunity to not look at Dutch while telling her something so embarrassing.

"Hmm?"

"The honorable Sultan..." Igenlode adds the epithet without thinking, having used it frequently throughout the day. "He said he wants to marry you. Maybe he was joking, I'm not sure. But I wanted to warn you."

When it stays quiet behind him, he turns around. The sight of Dutch lying there so peacefully, her eyes closed, shocks him at first, but he is soon reassured by the slow, regular breathing. Igenlode smiles. Well, he can always tell her tomorrow.

It is dark. Dark, and spangled with stars against the nodding mastheads of the two tall ships, and the fleet of smaller craft moored up raft-like in their lee.

By the time the last of the Horizon's nine-pounders had been reunited with its truck, run up, and lashed back home behind its gun-port, the last of the light had already been fading in the westward sky, with all those involved both hungry and exhausted. If Dutch had been on deck to give the order, the pirate ship might have cast off from her larger consort and made sail in the gathering dusk, to gain a few hours' start, freshly-careened, on her onward voyage. But the captain was in a heavy stupor below, and Annie, gauging the mood of the crew, judged it too late to set out with no real gain to be made. Better to take the chance for all aboard to get a full night's sleep. The two ships -- still lashed together, mooring-lines running up to the Belle-Marie's higher bulwarks -- rise and fall gently on the long ocean swell, riding to the wind under a few token scraps of sail. They have miles of open sea under their lee. They can afford to drift down hove-to.

The deck is quiet and still. Once or twice, movement can be seen in the twin pools of lantern-light cast by the riding-lights in the rigging, as the handful of men on deck-watch stir weary legs, or take a turn along the foredeck to lean out across the water and watch the slow passage of the waves. On board the Belle-Marie, men sleep curled up on the ropes or in the break of the poop, sprawled serenely on the crowded deck as if in the embrace of their own dhoani. Down below, in the foc's'le, guards nod over their smouldering fuses, half-dozing with matchlocks across their knees, and Fry's sullen crew salve wounded pride in slumber. Unnoticed, far in the north, one by one the stars begin to go out.

By midnight, when the watch changes, the growing blackness fills half the sky, building ominous cloud as the ships begin to pitch more sharply to the wind, and the incoming deck-watch remarks upon it. "Aye, reckon we'll have a blow afore morning," Peppermouth Tom agrees, considering the matter for a moment before going off-watch. But in his mind he is already swinging in the warm fug of his hammock, and morning is a long way off.

It is crowded and warm below-decks, and Igenlode is as tired as the rest. Sleeping in a hammock instead of a bed is no longer a novelty, and the harmony of snores from the rest of the crew has long since become familiar and reassuring. The clerk's own quiet breathing never falters, even when the first light spatters of rain begin to rattle across the deck planking a few feet above, and drips start to find their way down through sun-shrunken caulking.

Above the ships now there are no longer any stars, and the only glimmer on the water is the yellow flicker of the riding-lights. The decks beneath glisten in swaying patches as the Horizon begins to roll more sharply in the rising sea. The cables securing her alongside the big Guineaman stretch and creak as the two ships are pitched up against each other, and down below the close-packed hammocks jostle in ever-increasing arcs, ending with a jolt against bulkheads or hull planking. Steady snores begin to break off into final, peevish grunts or sighs of annoyance, but most of the crew, inured by exhaustion and long experience, doze again fitfully or sleep on. Up in the rigging, the rising wind starts to hum.

Luiz, on deck-watch, shivers as a fresh squall of rain lashes across him. The ship heels violently to the force of the wind, and her few scraps of sail flap sharply as the gust veers round, taking her aback. She is rolling constantly and heavily against the Belle-Marie now, and the rounded curve of her sides is thumping and squealing against the other ship's timbers like that of some crazed and amorous leviathan. Another squall lays them over, and for a heart-stopping moment, as the Belle-Marie rolls back, her ponderous weight catches and bears the smaller ship's decks down, forcing her closed gun-ports below water.

Then the Horizon frees herself and rises with a shudder; but Luiz has seen enough. "All hands!" They will have to cut loose and run for it. "All hands on deck! All hands on deck!"

* * *

The first that Igenlode knows of any of it is that abrupt awakening, to a crazily tilted world, where water spills across beneath their feet. The deck is crowded with men tumbling from their hammocks, sliding and cursing, and the clerk is one of the last up the ladder.

Above-decks, with the rain sluicing down and the mounting waves tossing both ships, the scene has a confused nightmare quality. Flashes of lightning reveal the decks of the Belle-Marie swarming with men trying to reach or cast off their frail dhoanis, and a couple of the large two-masted bangalas are already fading aft into the storm. The gap between the two ships is opening and closing like the jaws of a gigantic vice. Crossing is out of the question, and neither Annie's shouts or any of her gestures can induce those aboard the Belle-Marie to cast off the Horizon's warps, fastened inboard.

"Axes!" the bo's'n yells across the deck, into the storm. She grabs the two nearest crew-members -- Igenlode and Johnson -- and shoves them aft, in the direction of the poop. Her voice carries only a few yards across the howl of the wind. "Break out the axes! Cut the cables!"

Igenlode half-stumbles down the companionway, under the wildly-swinging lamp. The sailmaker has already plunged ahead, into the cabin that was once briefly Igenlode's and now serves Warley, the quartermaster. Tumbled bedding on the floor bears witness to the haste with which he, too, was dragged from slumber up on deck.

The boarding-axes -- narrow-bladed, with a long spike on the far side -- are stacked with other weapons in a chest in the corner. On a Navy ship, Igenlode realises, it would doubtless have been locked. Here, with no cat-o'nine-tails and no pressed men aboard, it stands open, and Johnson flings back the lid and thrusts an armful of axe-shafts in the clerk's direction before grabbing up a selection for himself and thrusting past and out of the door. His feet can be heard hammering up the companionway out of sight, until the sound is lost in the howling clamour from up on deck as he emerges.

Igenlode follows, made clumsy by the burden and the wild lurches underfoot, Someone is calling out, from somewhere close at hand. An insistent, weak voice, behind closed doors. Dutch.

The clerk wavers for a moment, torn between duty and summons. But the sound of axes echoes from up on deck, sharp rhythmic blows like a plucked string that resonate through the ship, and Johnson's errand is clearly in hand. Igenlode turns and manages the few steps down towards the door of the captain's cabin, fetching up in the entrance with a rush as the Horizon rolls short.

Dutch's cabin is in darkness, but her face can just be seen in the light from the passage. She has hauled herself upright in her hammock and is clinging to its rope, still pallid with blood-loss. "Get me up on deck!" she commands when she sees Igenlode. "Get me out of here. Get me out of this bed -- if we go down, I'll not die trussed in my hammock with my boots off, like a passenger aboard my own ship --"

Igenlode, still clutching an armful of axes, stares at her for a moment. "I can't -- Dutch, you can't walk, and you're too heavy --"

"I can walk," Dutch says grimly, putting one wavering foot to the deck and beckoning her clerk impatiently across the width of the cabin as she tries to stand up. Igenlode makes it just in time to save her from complete collapse. The ship sways again, pitching Dutch forwards, and this time she gets an arm around Igenlode's neck and makes it upright onto both feet, feeling blindly for her sea-boots. The clerk's scrawny frame wavers beneath the burden, and boarding-axes cascade across the floor.

"Leave those!" Dutch snaps, clinging on for dear life and shuffling towards the door. "A captain's place is on the quarterdeck when the ship's in trouble -- rig me up a hammock-chair, lash it to the rail, but get me up there --"

Igenlode is certain that Dutch should not be trying to do this. But, short of physically disengaging her, manhandling her across the cabin, and tying her into her hammock, there seems no way of preventing it. Locked together, they reel through the doorway in a staggering parody of a dance. The captain's weight, dragging lopsided like a withered limb, is almost too much to bear. Afterwards, the clerk has no idea how they managed the companionway.

Dutch arrives up on deck just as the last of the mooring-cables is parting, and within seconds is shivering, soaked through. She doesn't seem to notice. So far as Igenlode can tell, there is nothing beyond sheer will-power keeping her on her feet.

Annie spots them at once, and directs a furious glare in the errant Igenlode's direction, obviously suspecting the clerk of having run away below to hide. The she catches sight of Dutch, and the direction of her frown shifts. "What the --"

"Storm jib and trysail," Dutch interrupts as soon as she can make herself heard. Her voice is so weak she is practically shouting into Annie's face. "Belle-Marie -- to leeward -- wind's got us pinned -- claw off --" She coughs, and transfers yet more of her weight to Igenlode, who begins to buckle at the knees. "Got to... draw ahead..."

"Set storm jib and trysail!" Even the bo's'n's voice cracks against the gale. The call is passed on up and down the deck.

Igenlode manages to stagger to the main hatch before collapsing completely, sagging sideways onto the deck. Salt water mingled with rain sluices across as a rush of feet comes past. Dutch has locked the fingers of her good hand through the hatch-cover and is holding herself upright by main force, issuing a string of orders inaudible even from down here. Halfpence Annie nods, and turns away to bellow again.

Slowly the motion of the ship changes. As the fore-and-aft sails are broken out, snatched instantly by the wind, the Horizon begins to edge forward, creeping free from the Belle-Marie and her death-embrace. She is no longer rolling wildly and helplessly, but rising and lying over to the choppy motion of the sea with a purpose. Already the other ship is drifting off fast to leeward, almost invisible in the driving rain.

Igenlode struggles up onto hands and knees on the leaping deck, and is promptly and horribly sea-sick.

With the Belle-Marie no longer a threat, there is time to help Dutch. On her order, a hammock-chair is quickly prepared on the quarterdeck. Two pirates carry her there, while Dutch occasionally moves her legs as if she were walking on them, both out of habit and because she doesn't want to admit that she can't walk by herself. Annie takes place beside the chair to pass on Dutch's orders. Meanwhile, Igenlode isn't doing too well. He's finally able to stand up enough to lean on the main hatch, but just as he does, a big wave sweeps across the deck. His unsteady feet suddenly slip away from under him, and he falls forward on the hatch, landing rather roughly on his chin, before sliding on the deck, unconscious.

Turning away from Annie, Dutch suddenly notices a figure lying on the main deck. She shouts: "Igenlode!" but no one hears her voice in the storm. Another wave washes over the deck, and he is carried along, hitting the scuppers sideways, then rolling back a little as the Horizon leans to the other side. Seeing his face, the rain beating down on it, Dutch frantically turns to Annie. Annie, however, is still giving orders, and has her back to Dutch. Desperate, Dutch wants to go down there herself, but she is stopped by the rope around her waist, intended to keep her firmly seated in her chair. She looks again at Annie, who is still facing the other way. Surely someone else must notice the clerk, but the question is if they will do so in time, as yet another wave splashes over the side of the ship.

Igenlode is vaguely aware of the sound of voices. The low murmuring has been going on for some time, as the little clerk drifts back up towards the awareness of a pounding headache, but somehow it doesn't seem important.

Then there is a loud splash from over the side, and a spattering benison of cold water brings Igenlode awake with a jolt, staring up into a scene that at first glance has barely changed at all. A dizzying array of ropes and bare spars wheels against a stormy sky, with only a few scraps of grey canvas slung between the masts. The deck -- or is it the deck? it no longer seems hard enough -- is leaping wildly, with the particular motion that means the ship is hove-to and making no progress. But somehow the gale doesn't seem so bad. It has stopped raining. And, most disorienting of all, it is now full daylight.

There is another loud and somehow final splash from somewhere close by. Igenlode, apparently no longer lying on the deck, but slung in a hammock alongside the bulwarks, struggles to get upright, wincing as the headache takes control. It is accompanied by a truly impressive selection of bruises, as if every ringbolt in the planking has left its mark. "What- ?"

"Funeral," Willem explains shortly, dawning into view like some unexpected comet. "-- lie still..." This last added as his patient, not unnaturally alarmed, tries to sit up and is almost spilled onto the deck by an unexpected lurch.

"Funeral?" The clerk clutches at Willem's sleeve, clinging on as he tries to turn away. Memory is coming back with an unpleasant rush. "No -- Dutch -- she --"

"She's fine. Much better than she deserves to be, after pulling a stupid trick like that." Willem's voice is dry. "Otherwise it would be my funeral -- remember? Your beloved bo's'n would have seen to it already..."

Igenlode flinches, remembering now that aiding and abetting Dutch's determination could easily have brought about young Willem's death as well as the captain's own. "Then -- who?"

Willem extracts his sleeve from the other's slackened grasp and folds his arms with a shrug. "Pirates." The tone conveys volumes. "Doubtless friends of yours. Hooky Jack for one -- the Belle-Marie's broadside smashed his other arm at the shoulder. Old Heatherfield didn't make it through the night either. They brought it on themselves when they went into this filthy business -- but then that means all the more share of treasure for the survivors, doesn't it?" But his voice holds all the bitterness of any doctor who has lost a patient.

Despite stiff and aching muscles, Igenlode has finally managed to swing round and sit on the edge of the hammock. This proves to be only one in a long line of invalid-beds lashed up on the windward bulwark -- evidently Willem is a believer in the healing qualities of fresh air. The clerk remembers the sound of the sloop's shot slamming into the side of the Belle-Marie, and wonders, for the first time, how many of Fry's men were wounded in those brief moments, and how many of those would have survived. All around, the horizon is a perfect, empty rim. During the unknown hours, the storm has evidently abated, although the sea is still running very high. But neither the big Guineaman nor the islanders' boats are anywhere to be seen. For all anyone aboard can tell, the Horizon's remaining crew may have been the only ones to have lived through the night.

"Willem?" Igenlode reaches out again, and with a sigh the sandy-haired young man turns back.

"Well?"

"What happened -- to me? I don't remember..."

"You got yourself knocked out last night and nearly washed overboard," Willem says patiently. His expression is full of unspoken disbelief that anybody can be quite so incompetent aboard ship. "I -- " He hesitates, clearly changing what he was about to say. "I nearly tripped over you."

Igenlode imagines being washed around the deck by last night's waves, and draws a sharp breath, no longer surprised at the number of bruises apparently acquired in the process. "Thank you."

The words are very quiet, but Willem shrugs them off with a scowl. "The captain wasn't in a fit condition to be on deck. I caught sight of her up on the quarterdeck, waving her arms around as if she were having some kind of seizure, and dropped what I was doing and went up to get her back into a sickbed -- by force if necessary. And then another big wave hit, and swept across the waist of the ship. I was nearly carried overboard myself. I told you, I all but tripped over you. That's all there was to it."

But Igenlode knows enough now about ships and sailors to guess at the full story behind the bare words. "So you saved my life," the clerk says very softly. "You paid your debt."

"I didn't ask you to save me," Willem points out sharply, and Igenlode grins.

"And I didn't ask you. So that makes us even." In fact, where Dutch is concerned, it's probably done the young man more good than any of his dutiful attendances on her own injuries; but Igenlode, who is still nervously awaiting repercussions once she has a free moment to work out just how Willem did escape from the beach, decides it would probably be better to avoid the subject.

But a glance around reveals the captain nowhere in sight. "Where is she?" Igenlode says without thinking, and gets a raised eyebrow from Willem.

"In her cabin." He doesn't ask who. "By some miracle, lying down -- as you ought to be doing, incidentally. Unless you're discharging yourself from the sick list... in which case, you can get aloft and help reeve new rigging. We carried away six blocks and a dozen halliards and braces last night. And the captain wants the topmasts sent down before the next gale."

Igenlode looks up... and up, to where a handful of men are clinging to the masthead trees as the ship rolls through almost a full arc; thirty degrees to one side and then a lurch, and back thirty degrees over to the other. The very thought is dizzying. "I -- I'll try."

Willem stares for a moment, then taps his head significantly. "Concussion. No doubt about it. Nausea, hallucinations, and delusions of grandeur."

He laughs, but for the first time there is a note of genuine affection in it. "Listen, you really don't know how to survive on board ship, do you? Never volunteer. Never volunteer for anything you don't have to do. It's not malingering, it's common sense. Why, if that captain of yours doesn't manage it first, if you ask me you'll do a fine job of getting yourself killed all on your own... Now, take a tip from a real sailor, and lie down while you've got the chance."

And Igenlode, whose head is pounding, is only too glad to obey.

Dutch's stubborn determination to go on deck in the storm did her no good, but since Willem is the only one who dares tell her what a stupid act it was, she doesn't admit it. Nevertheless, she has stayed in her hammock since she was dragged back to her cabin by Willem and Annie, who found Willem's insistence that this was for Dutch's own good a good excuse to ignore the Captain's orders. Dutch sleeps most of the time, only awoken when someone brings her a meal and gives her an update on the Horizon's progress as she eats it. Even eating requires enormous effort at first, but the sleep does Dutch good, and soon she is almost back to normal, at least during her waking moments.

One day her sleep is interrupted by a sharp pain in her wounded shoulder. She feels someone touching it, and even before her eyes open, her good hand lashes out and grabs the wrist of her assailant. There is little surprise when she sees it is Willem. He seems amused by her quick reaction.

"Guilty conscience?"

"Death wish?" counters Dutch.

Willem is somewhat shocked, but hides it well. "You wouldn't dare. Not now."

"Wouldn't I?"

Dutch glares at him a little longer before releasing his hand from her grip. Willem shakes his head in disbelief, and assures himself that he will get his freedom from the other pirates, if not from Dutch. Besides, he has no choice. Refusing care now would mean certain death.

When his hands once again move to her shoulder, Dutch raises an eyebrow.

"Look, I have to inspect the wound!" exclaims Willem.

"Then do it," replies Dutch casually.

Removing the bandages proves to be rather painful. Dutch tells herself Willem is making it more so than necessary on purpose, and tries not to show how much it hurts.

"Hmm..." Willem stares at the wound.

"What 'hmm'?!" snaps Dutch, her pain worsening her temper.

"It's healing very nicely."

"Good for you."

The rest of the time is spent in silence, while Willem redresses the wound. Only when he opens the door to leave does Dutch speak again.

"How is Igenlode?"

"As well as can be expected."

Dutch nods. "Good. Send him here."

Willem moves to leave, but reconsiders. He goes back into the cabin and closes the door.

"You can't punish him for saving my life."

"Don't you tell me what I can and cannot do."

"He was only doing what he thought was right." Willem seems genuinely concerned for Igenlode's fate. "Please don't..."

"Send him here," interrupts Dutch.

***

Igenlode's nervousness sounds through in the soft knock he gives on the door before entering.

"Yes, come in."

Seeing Dutch in what appears to be excellent condition briefly distracts Igenlode from his worries. "How are you?"

"Fine." Dutch manages a little smile. "And you?"

"Well enough." Igenlode's head still hurts quite a bit occasionally, but he doesn't feel like bothering Dutch with that information.

"We need to talk."

Igenlode pales. So this is the talk he was fearing.

"You went back to save Willem."

"Yes." Igenlode stares at the floor and hopes this will be over soon.

"I can't allow you to constantly disobey me. It has to stop."

"Oh, it will. I promise it will."

Dutch is unimpressed by Igenlode's sudden ardor. "It won't. It has already lasted too long, and I only see one way to end it. "

Igenlode looks up at her, his eyes big with fear. Surely she wouldn't actually kill him?

"You will leave the ship when we get to Singapore, together with Willem. You can help each other find your way from there."

Igenlode's relief that he will stay alive doesn't last long. "What? No! You said..."

"I said I would consider the money you saved me your passage fee. I didn't say it would last forever."

"But..."

"For rum's sake, don't you see?!" Dutch suddenly looks very tired. "If any other man had done such a thing, he would be long dead by now. Don't you bloody see the favor I am giving you, even now?"

With a big sigh, she lies back in her hammock and closes her eyes. "You will leave my ship in Singapore, and that's that."

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