LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

wanted and even the navy wouldn’t have. There was not much about their appearance to point at a military past. They weren’t alert, they lounged, and they snoozed on sentry-go. If ever these miserable totterers were called upon to defend the enfeebled walls of Fort Nassau the result would be sure. The buccaneers were a rabble, granted; they were unorganized, stupid, and in many ways unskilled men, besides being prodigiously lazy and very often drunk; but when stirred to action they could be furies, and they knew every dirty trick in the game.

      Corporal Pugh was aware of this. When he had been assigned to stand sentinel at the cell door, on this night of all nights, he knew that if the rumshops suddenly were emptied and the pirates came storming into the fort, here was the spot they’d head for. He had no dream of making an heroic stand. He had, therefore, marked out in his mind a route of retreat, and instead of standing smack before the door he had hunkered down in the shadows thrown by a charcoal bin twenty feet away. There, alas, he had all but fallen asleep. At the sound of Delicia Rogers’ step he had sprung to his feet with an abruptness that brought from her that involuntary scream.

      They grinned sheepishly.

      “Ma’am, you shouldn’t ought to be out on a night like this. You should be at Government House, where you got a guard.”

      “And what a guard! All of them hiding their heads like ostrichs—like you here, for that matter!”

      “Now, ma’am—”

      “No matter. I’ve been talking to my uncle, and I think I have at last persuaded him to reconsider the case against Rounsivel.”

      “Good. That lad’s innocent. He just got into the wrong company, that’s all. You have a let-pass?”

      “Here—”

      The light was poor. Pugh could not read anyway, but he did know the governor’s signature, and he made a show of spelling out the words.

      “Yes, that’s right. But I’m not going in there alone, ma’am.”

      “The men are all chained!”

      “Aye, but they’re desperate. I’ll call out the guard.”

      He did this, and he summoned the armorer as well, and for a few minutes he made a deal of bustle. He even went into the cell—with the armorer and two others.

      “To what am I indebted for this service?” asked George Rounsivel as they knocked the chain off his ankle-ring.

      “Show you when we get outside,” muttered Corporal Pugh.

      There was no need to extend this information. Rounsivel saw the girl the instant he stepped through the doorway.

      “Oh,” he said softly. He went to her, and made a small stiff bow. “You pleaded for me after all? Thanks. You’ve been kind.”

      “Sir, not kind, only human. I saw you in court, and heard you.”

      “I shall remember it, whether or not your uncle relents. I’ll know at least that somebody spoke up.”

      She hung her head—not at all in shame but shaking it a bit, as though irked to find herself at a loss for words.

      “Master Rounsivel, my . . . my uncle is an extraordinary man.”

      Here was an understatement. Woodes Rogers stood alone. A mariner in Rounsivel’s position might have said: “I am about to meet the finest seaman alive.” A merchant: “Here’s the fellow who on an investment of less than £14,000 came home with loot of more than £800,000, the most profitable privateering trip in history.” A patriot: “The Spaniards fear him more than anybody since Drake.” He of literary tastes could be awed by the prospect of meeting the author of that classic: A Cruising Voyage Round the World.

      George Rounsivel’s reaction was different. He wasn’t thinking of past glories. He was about to meet, not an author, a navigator, a maker of money, but the captain-general of the royal plantations of the Bahamas. He was not asking himself. What kind of man is this? He was asking. Will this man let me off?

      “I don’t know what he’ll say to you, Master Rounsivel. I think he might ask you something.”

      “Ask . . . me?”

      She nodded, mute for the moment.

      Surely there was nothing sleek about this young woman, Tonight, with the worriment that was upon her, and her earnestness, she showed rather tousled. But her small smooth head was adorably shaped for caresses, so that, seeing it, you were tempted to try to pick it up, like a separate thing, a warm, pulsating thing, and fondle it, the way the aged Chinese fondle their jade fingering-pieces.

      Standing there a few feet from her in the fitful light, George Rounsivel had all he could do to keep from reaching out, with tender fingers, for the sides of that head. Pugh and the other soldiers, of course, had their hangers out, and they would have cut him down if he took a step toward her.

      She, on her part, could hardly be harboring a wish to fondle him, he reflected grimly. Smudged, ashen, hollow-eyed, his wigless pate covered by no more than a fuzz, while the stench of the cell was upon him, he was no figure of romance.

      “You must realize that the governor is in . . . well, in a position of great peril, Master Rounsivel.”

      “For that matter, so am I.”

      “Yes, but in your case it is but your own life—”

      “The only one I happen to have.”

      “—while in the case of my uncle it’s his career. It might mean his life as well . . . and the lives of all who are dear to him.”

      “Meaning yourself? You shouldn’t be abroad on a night like this.”

      They had been whispering, as though in church, but he said this last aloud, Corporal Pugh nodded a meaningful agreement.

      George stared down at a small shapely head, and he was all one marvel inside. A short while ago she had seemed so crisp and sure of herself, and now, though her shoulders didn’t sag, she had about her an air of helplessness. She was extremely feminine.

      “Ask me?” he repeated, dropping his voice again. “Ma’am, forgive me, but until now I had supposed that the purpose of this interview was to get me a chance to ask him for something?”

      He did not, properly, mean a pardon. Only the king could grant that. What he really meant—as he the lawyer knew—was a commutation of sentence pending royal decision on an application for pardon. In other words, Woodes Rogers might have recommended that this one prisoner be freed, keeping him from the gallows until word came back from London. Such recommendations almost always were acted upon favorably. But this would have been difficult to explain to the small beauty who stood before him.

      Now she raised her head. There were tears in her eyes.

      “Master Rounsivel, my uncle is not made of putty. I know that he loves me, but even for me he wouldn’t have consented to receive you if he did not have something else in mind.”

      “What else?”

      “I don’t know. I’m not sure that I’d tell you if I did, but I don’t anyway. But whatever it is, I hope you’ll consider it. And as you consider it I hope you’ll think of his position.”

      “I am not likely to forget it, ma’am. Now . . . where do I go?”

      “This way, sir,” said a soldier.

      Delicia Rogers for the first time put out a hand.

      “Good luck.”

      He did not touch the hand, only bowed over it.

      “Thanks,” he said again, and he turned and went upstairs, a soldier before him, a soldier behind.

      One floor above the level of the court they paused. There was a door, but no light slid from around it. A light did glow, faintly, indirectly—for the

Скачать книгу