Captain in Calico Read Free Page A

him for a second, then shrugged and smiled crookedly. ‘As ye please,’ he said. ‘If ye’re bent on losing a fine ship and a hundred prime seamen for the King’s service it’s your own affair. Call them in and have done.’
    â€˜What’s this?’ Rogers came round the table to confront the pirate. ‘What ship’s this?’ He waved Master Dickey back to his chair.
    Rackham answered confidently: ‘My brig, the
Kingston
, with my lads aboard. Did ye suppose I swam to Providence?’
    There was a moment of dead silence, and Master Dickey watched fascinated the two men facing each other by the table. Somewhere out in the darkness of the sea beyond the rollers washing against Hog Island was a ship manned by desperate men, and Tobias realised that Rogers was faced with a remarkable and difficult situation. Rogers was realising it too.
    He put his hands behind him on the edge of the table and leaned against it.
    â€˜Where is she?’ he asked.
    â€˜Offshore.’
    Rogers’ eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve a mind to squeeze it out of you,’ he said.
    â€˜You could try,’ said Rackham. ‘And, as I said, ye could lose a ship to the King’s service. To say nothing of the men.’
    That was the point. Rogers’ commission to suppress piracy was of no greater importance than his duty to maintain a force of privateers for the safety of British possessions andthe enrichment of the Treasury. Hence a pardoned pirate enlisted as a privateersman was a double gain to the government. Suddenly the situation was utterly simple: a hundred outlaws seeking pardon on the one hand, and Governor Rogers, holding the power to pardon, and urgently requiring crews for his privateers, on the other. Both stood to gain and there was nothing to lose. It was all so convenient that Rogers distrusted it instinctively. Why, he wondered, this sudden zeal for an honest life on the part of a crew of scoundrels? Rogers had been next door to a pirate himself, he knew the pros and cons of life on ‘the great account’, and he knew that not since the days of Modyford and Morgan had the filibusters enjoyed such a fruitful harvest as now. With men and ships urgently needed for the fleets in European waters the Caribbean squadrons were stretched to their uttermost, and piracy was as safe as it could ever hope to be. And none would know that better than Calico Jack Rackham. This was not one who would exchange piracy for privateering without some powerful motive, and it was imperative for Rogers to discover what that motive was.
    â€˜We’ll leave the whereabouts of your brig for the moment. Be sure I shall find it when I desire.’ The Governor walked slowly round the table to his seat. ‘Of this request for pardon by yourself and your followers – you’ll do me the credit to suppose that it is not prompted by sudden reformation. Perhaps you will supply me some reason. Your own, personally.’
    Rackham’s answer was prompt. ‘Two years ago, just before you came to Providence, I was to have married – a lady here, in this town. You’ll mind that in those days I was quartermaster to Vane, who then commanded the
Kingston.
He refused the pardon, ye’ll remember, and fired on your vesselsas they entered harbour. As bad luck had it, I was aboard, and willy-nilly I must sail away with him. I had wanted that pardon – by God I had wanted it.’ He leaned forward as he spoke, and his dark face was suddenly grim. ‘But there it was. Every man aboard the
Kingston
was outlaw from that day forward, or so we supposed. Myself with the rest. But things have altered over two years. Vane is gone, and Yeates, too – it was Yeates that touched off the first gun against you in the harbour fight. And so, when I heard a few weeks back from a friend who had lately been in Providence that my lady was still unwed – for I’d never heard of her in