Chapter 328: Homeward Bound

A ship’s bell struck the watch, and the topmen climbed out along the yards to let the canvas down.

The sails fell in great claret sheets, hung for a moment, then caught the wind with a crack loud enough to be mistaken for cannon fire. The Rose took the wind on her starboard beam and leaned into it, her ox-blood hull throwing long white walls of water over the bow.

The Eel was well ahead, scouting, small and bright against the water. The Whydah followed the Rose, tall and heavy, with freemen packed across every rail, while the Marianne held the flank and skipped over the swell as a flat stone.

Andros stretched along their starboard side, all green pine, sand, and a white line of surf. The afternoon sun shone across the island from the port beam, and the wind brought the smell of wet earth and pine sap out to sea.

The merry fleet was heading north, with the open water on one side and an entire island on the other, the ships sailing between them in a long line as a spear thrown straight at its mark. Every hull had sailed through a row of waterspouts and come out the other side, so no one was about to complain about an afternoon swell.

High in the foretop, a boy hooked one arm through the shrouds and drew a breath. It was Kit, who began beating a rhythm against the timber with a belaying pin and launched into the shanty.

"Ships may come and ships may go, as long as the sea does roll!"

The whole deck joined in the song, stamping hard enough to shake the planks.

"But a sailor lad just like his dad, he loves a flowing bowl!"

At his table beside the main hatch, Hobbs raised his cup on flowing bowl and took a drink, then gave Pete, who was singing the last word with his entire face, a surgeon’s inspection.

"Palate intact. Uvula present and, jaw hinges nicely, I see."

He sat back and retrieved his cup.

"Nothing wrong with yer ugly mug whatsoever, Peter. More’s the pity."

"Oi! I heard that! I heard ye, ye blood-ladlin’, leg-sawin’ butcher!"

Behind them, Doyle held up a jar of green liquor, letting the sunlight shine through it. "Grog in the jar, ye pagan heathens, and the finest drop in the whole of the Caribbean sloshin’ about in it, so there is! Not a drop of it for the likes of ye, mind, so keep yer filthy paws where I can see ’em!"

The stamping continued straight into the next verse, and Kit swung into it.

"Oh women on shore he does adore, a girl who’s plump and round!"

"And your money’s gone, it’s the same old song!"

"Get up Jack! John, sit down!"

The deck shouted the refrain, and when they reached sit down, Pete’s eyes wandered toward the foremast. Briggs stood there with his arms folded and his mouth shut, keeping time with one boot.

That was the only part of him that moved, and Pete brought his knees together.

Enzo leaned out of the galley door, a dishcloth over his shoulder and his cold clay pipe between his teeth. "Plump and round! Ah, Madonna mia, this Jack, he is a man of culture, a man of taste! A woman, she must be round, round as a good loaf from the oven, soft in the middle, warm, where a cook can find her!"

He kneaded the air with both hands, eyes shut in devotion.

"The skinny ones, pah! These are for the rats and the poets!"

Rook sat on a cask with his slate resting on his knee. "Odds, gents, odds! I’m layin’ odds the quartermaster don’t sing a note! Ye couldn’t pull a tune out o’ that man with pincers and a priest! Step up, step up, ye cowards, who’s for a flutter?"

Twice nodded, and the wager was settled.

Kit brought the refrain around again. Cudjoe passed across the deck with his slate under his arm, singing it without changing his dry tone or missing a beat.

"Get up Jack. John, sit down."

Rook groaned and paid out. "Flat as a bleedin’ plank, the whole thing! A man can’t sing worse than that and still claim he’s singin’, can he? I’ve been robbed, I have!"

Then the whole deck took up the chorus.

"Come along, come along, You jolly brave boys, there’s lots of grog in the jar."

"We’ll plough the briny ocean line, with the jolly roving tar."

The Whydah heard them and joined in, her freemen singing across the rails while her captain took off his hat and held it out at arm’s length.

The Marianne’s crew picked up the stamping, and soon the song was passing from one ship to the next. By then, a sailor could have heard it along the whole coast of Andros.

"When Jack ashore, he’ll make his way, to some old boarding house."

"He’s welcomed in with rum and gin, likewise with pork scouse."

Kwaku sipped his tea, a chain coiled over one shoulder.

"I have eaten scouse. It was warm and filled the belly. That is the whole of the review."

Kit went into the next verse with all the mischief he could manage.

"He’ll spend and spend and never offend, till he’s lies drunk on the ground!"

"When the money’s gone, it’s the same old song!"

Pete struck the planks on ground and threw his arms wide, making a corpse of excellent quality, and the deck shouted the refrain down at him.

"Get up Jack! John, sit down!"

The corpse remained where he was, and Briggs stepped over him without missing a beat.

A voice came across the water from the Whydah, warm as a pulpit and twice as loud.

Black Sam stood at her wheel with his hat in his fist. "When the money’s gone, sings the lad! Aye, and so it do go, me handsomes, so it do! Runnin’ out of silver as water from a cracked cask, and a sorry sight it be! So pour it out, I say! Pour it on the hungry, afore the cask runs dry and the Lord asks what ye did with the wine!"

At the Marianne’s wheel, Williams’s gold tooth caught the sun. "Sam, listen to yourself! A boarding house has a price, and the hungry, they’ve no ceiling! You fill one belly and there’s ten more behind him with their bowls out!"

The Rose’s chorus drowned him before either could get started.

"Come along, come along, you jolly brave boys!"

Grey stood at the rail with a chart flattened against the wind under both thumbs, as he inspected a coastline that refused to stay where it belonged.

"Then Jack will slip aboard some ship bound for India or Japan!"

"Then in Asia there, the ladies fair, they all love a sailor man!"

"He’ll go ashore, and he’ll not scorn to buy some girl a gown!"

"When his money’s gone, it’s the same old song!"

"Get up Jack! John, sit down!"

Jim sprang into the middle of the deck with arms flung wide, as if he meant to embrace the whole Pacific. "Japan! Ah, Japan, lads! I’ve been there, I have! Sailed right up to it! Bought a lass a gown in the place, grand silk, red as a wound, and it were off again afore the shopkeeper’d finished givin’ me change! Fastest bit of business in the whole Orient!"

The deck groaned as a ship caught in a seaway.

"Japan! He’s never been past bleedin’ Nassau!"

"Stow it, Jim, ye brass-faced liar, before I stow it for ye! Japan!"

"He couldn’t find Japan wi’ a map!"

Grey kept his eyes on the chart. "There’s no way, Jim. This chart has Japan twice, once past India and once somewhere off Brazil, and I drew it myself, and I can’t tell ye which one’s right!"

"Certainly," said Wesley.

Up in the foretop, Kit began to slow the tune, and the deck slowed along with him.

"When Jack is old and weather-beat, too old to cruise about!"

"They’ll let him stop in some rum shop till eight bells calls him out!"

"Then he’ll raise his hands high, and loud he’ll cry!"

"Thank Christ! I’m homeward bound!"

All across the Rose, hands rose. open to the afternoon sky, calloused, tarred, and empty, while Tomás crossed himself when they reached Thank Christ.

"Of all the verses, only this one has any theology."

Kwaku put down his tea. Across the water, the Whydah’s freemen carried homeward bound in their deep voices, stretching the words until they seemed to settle over the sea, and every eye on the Rose turned toward the green island to starboard.

The story had promised to reach the quarterdeck eventually, and now it was climbing the ladder.

Behind it, the deck roared through the final refrain.

"Get up Jack! John, sit down!"

Above the noise, a woman laughed from the stern.

James stood at the wheel, the afternoon sun on his face and hands on the spokes.

His face had regained its hue, though it remained lean, and his black hat sat at its tilt. [Discretion] lay across his shoulders, [Verdict] hung at his hip, [Counterargument] bound at his chest, and the braided charm ticked against the wood on his left wrist.

The Rose answered his hands, as familiar as ever.

Anne leaned against the rail beside him, her copper hair whipping loose in the wind. She laughed at the end of the refrain, her head thrown back, and the wind carried the sound out over the water.

"Get up, Jack, says the song. Well, would you look at you, upright and steerin’ like you’d never been laid out at all, and it only took the whole bloody Caribbean to take the hint."

"Aye, and John sat down grand, lass, no bother at all. A far better patient than I was, I’ll grant you."

Her eyes travelled from his hat to his boots and back again.

"What you said when you came back to us, you great eejit, was it me you were callin’ for, or the damned ship?"

"Och, I’d a mouthful of fever, lass. It might’ve been porridge."

She laughed and let the matter go.

"Porridge. Aye. Sure it was, Jack. Sure it was, and the sea’s made of buttermilk."

Her hand came down over his on the spoke and stayed there.

He let it stay, and for once made no joke about it.

James looked toward the horizon. The open sea ahead was bright and enormous, spray came over the bow, the sun warmed his shoulders, and the Rose sailed easily beneath his hands.

Below them, the song stopped in the middle of a line.

Kit had shut halfway through a word. The deck noticed the missing voice, and heads began turning toward the foretop.

He was hanging from the shrouds with one arm stretched out and his mouth still open.

"Masts!"

His voice cracked clean in half.

"Cap’n! Masts across the coast! Four frigates an’ a man o’ war big as a bleedin’ hillside, sloops all round ’em, an’ more fat boats behind than I’ve fingers an’ toes!"

The masts appeared over the horizon first, a black hedge against the sky.

Then the hulls came into view beneath them, stretched across the channels in the coast.

The British flag flew over every one.

James kept his hands on the spokes. Anne pushed herself away from the rail, her fingers settling on the hilt of her cutlass.

"Aye, that’s our home they’re sat on, lads."

James voice spread down the Rose and out across the water, his grin spreading as wide as it had ever been, though his eyes remained dead on the island.

"Colors up, and we’ll ask them to shift!"

The deck shouted to him the only answer it knew.

"COME ALONG, COME ALONG, YOU JOLLY BRAVE BOYS! GET UP JACK! JOHN, SIT DOWN!"

The roar passed from the Rose to the Whydah, then the Marianne and the Eel, travelling from hull to hull as gulls lifted from the surf all along the shore.

At the masthead, the black flag climbed into the wind and snapped open.

The skull and the crimson rose stood out against the sky.