On the Account. J. Allan Dunn
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rag, maudlin with the rum that Bane sent him as a salve for his cracked pate. He was a favorite aboard for his tales of earlier raids and he was greeted with rough jests as he made his way aft to where Bane stood at the taffrail watching for signs of pursuit. The captain greeted him evenly.
“Well, old dog, can your tongue still wag?” The man’s one bloodshot eye gleamed without resentment.
“Waste no more good liquor on the outside of my head, Captain,” he said.
“I sent you a pannikin. So then, there’s no 'ill-will. You had these fainthearts wavering with your prate of Kidd in chains. Blood and fury, man, must you conjure up a croaking vision to spoil good sport in the making?”
“I am nigher the end than you, maybe, though ’tis likely to be a short shrift for boy and graybeard in this calling, Captain. So we are to sea again, with yon poltroons in Providence on their marrows before Rogers. The sea is ours. There is but one life, look ye, and that’s the life of a rover. No ill-will, Captain, that another pannikin will not soak up.”
He rolled forward, growling in a husky bass a song that his fellows took up in chorus.
The Roger to the peak and the ocean to our lee.
A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree.
And it’s ho, for the life of a rover.
The landsman lies a dying with the parson by his side.
The freeman goes a sailing at the turning of the tide.
Give me a sheet that’s trailing, a breeze that follows fleet.
A cutlas in my good right band, my boots upon my feet.
For that’s the way to die, sirs, not with a canting sigh, sirs.
The Roger flaunting at the peak, the ocean to the lee;
A-sailing down the coast of the High Barbaree.
Yo ho, for the life of a rover!
The sloop heeled to the strengthening wind with a rush of foam along her sides that seethed in at the scuppers. The low land was but a line behind them. Clouds had come scurrying up with the dawn and the sun seemed to rush through the masses of scud that promised dirty weather ahead.
A shaft shot through a rift and picked out the triangle of sail that was making its way out of the East Passage. The pursuit was on. Bane called for his glass and pulled out the long telescope.
“It’s but a sloop,” he announced. “She sails fast and she’s a gut of men aboard. Fight or run, there’s a storm brewing. Break out a keg, bullies all. The sloop’s stanch, no need for a reef. Double-shot the guns in case we need ’em. Take the tarpaulin off the stern-chaser!”
A furious blast swooped down and tore the woolen cap from his head as he stood by the rail, clinging to the stays.
“Hell’s loose, lads. May the devil serve us!”
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