The Buccaneers Read Free

steadied myself, and Butterfield clutched his chair. Only Horn stood easily, so straight that he might have been nailed to the deck.
    “Blast that Mudge,” said Butterfield. Then, to Horn, “What ship are you from?”
    “Does it matter?” asked Horn.
    “It matters to me,” said the captain. “Look, this isn't a court of inquiry, man. We only ask what brings you here.”
    “Very well.” Horn stared fixedly ahead. “There was a packet bound for England. The
Meridian Passage. “
    “What happened to her?”
    “I believe she perished.”
    Butterfield's eyebrows arched. “You
believe
she perished?”
    “It's safe to say she did,” said Horn.
    “When was that?” asked the captain.
    “Twenty-six days ago.”
    My jaw dropped open. We'd still been tied to our London dock twenty-six days ago. In all the gales we'd weathered, in all the sunsets and the dawns we'd seen, Horn had been sailing east in his little boat. It was a feat I could never do myself, nor ever
want
to do.
    “What did you eat?” I asked.
    “The sea is full of fish,” said Horn. “And the fish are full of water, so don't ask me what I drank. I squeezed them like lemons.”
    “Amazing.” Captain Butterfield shook his head. “No matter what you say, this is fortunate indeed. For me, if not for you.”
    “Why is that?” asked Horn.
    “I'll sign you aboard, of course.” The
Dragon
tipped; the tobacco box clouted the captain's wrist. He picked it up and pitched it onto his bunk. “You can work the ship through the islands and home to England.”
    Horn nodded. “As you wish. I suppose there's little choice.”
    The captain brought out his log, and a quill that he dipped in ink. He offered them to Horn, who bent almost double to reach the table. The book slid away; Butterfield pushed it back. Horn took the pen and made his mark, an elegant little albatross that he sketched with three quick strokes.
    Then the captain dismissed him. “I imagine you could sleep for days,” he said.
    “No,” said Horn. “I've had my watch below, and I'd rather stand for a while.”
    “Then you can stand a trick at the wheel.”
    Horn touched his forehead—a funny little quick salute. He ducked under the beams and went out through the door.
    As it latched behind him, Captain Butterfield said to me, “It's a rather strange story, John.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said. “But I think it's true.”
    “So why is he so mysterious?”
    I couldn't answer that. The captain's chair tipped sideways as the
Dragon
rolled. The hanging lamp jangled against its lanyard, and a locker flew open, its contents tumbling out. I tightened my shoulders, waiting for a crash of water above me. But it never came; Mudge could steer in a calm and make it feel like a gale.
    Butterfield rolled his eyes at the skylight. He glanced atthe rubble in the corner, then back at his chart. With his finger, he drew Horn's passage across the ocean. “Against the wind,” he said. “Why?”
    For pleasure, I thought. From a fancy, just as he'd said. But I didn't tell Butterfield that, for I realized then that the lamp was no longer moving, that the curtains were hanging as straight as boards at the windows. And I looked up through the skylight to see that Horn had taken the wheel.
    Feet apart, hands on the spokes, he worked the helm so easily that it seemed the ship worked
him
, that the movements of her rudder came up through the wheel to drive his arms like cranks and cams. Handsome as a god, perfect in every way, he was
born
to steer a ship.
    Butterfield got up and started putting in order what Mudge's clumsy steering had thrown into disarray. It amused me to think how many times he must have done that in all the years they'd sailed together in the ships my father owned. He hung his double-barreled flintlock pistol back on its peg and returned his Bible to its place. I smiled when he plucked his socks from the locker's upper shelf and told me that he'd left them on a lower one. And when he cried out,