Pirate Latitudes

“Come now,” Phips said loudly. “I call for a round in honor of Captain Hunter! A round!”

Hunter moved forward, toward Phips’s table. His soft footsteps on the dirt floor of the tavern were the only sound in the room.

Phips eyed Hunter uneasily. “Charles,” he said. “Charles, this stern countenance does not become you. It is time to be merry.”

“Is it?”

“Charles, my friend,” Phips said, “you surely understand I bear you no ill will. I was forced to appear on the tribunal. It was all the work of Hacklett and Scott; I swear it. I had no choice. I’ve a ship to sail in a week’s time, Charles, and they would not give me embarkation papers, so they said. And I knew you would make good your escape. Only an hour ago, I was telling Timothy Flint that very expectation. Timothy: answer true, was I not telling you that Hunter would be free? Timothy?”

Hunter took out his pistol and aimed it at Phips.

“Now Charles,” Phips said. “I beg you to be reasonable. A man must be practical. Do you think I would have condemned you if ever I believed sentence would be carried out? Do you think so? Do you?”

Hunter said nothing. He cocked the pistol, a single metallic click in the silence of the room.

“Charles,” Phips said, “it does my heart good to see you again. Come, have a drink with me, and let us forget-”

Hunter shot him, full in the chest. Everyone ducked away as fragments of bone and a geyser of blood blew outward from his heart in a hissing rush. Phips dropped a cup that had been raised in one hand; the cup struck the table and rolled to the floor.

Phips’s eyes followed it. He reached for it with his hand and said hoarsely, “A drink, Charles…” And then he collapsed on the table. Blood seeped over the rude wood.

Hunter turned and left.

As he came out on the street again, he heard the tolling of the church bells of St. Anne’s. They rang incessantly, the signal for an attack on Port Royal, or some other emergency.

Hunter knew it could have only one meaning - his escape from the jail of Marshallsea had been discovered.

He did not mind at all.

…

LEWISHAM, JUDGE OF the Admiralty, had his quarters behind the courthouse. He awoke to the church bells in alarm, and sent a servant out to see what was the matter. The man returned a few minutes after.

“What is it?” Lewisham said. “Speak, man.”

The man looked up. It was Hunter.

“How is it possible?” Lewisham asked.

Hunter cocked the gun. “Easily,” he said.

“Tell me what you wish.”

“I shall,” Hunter said. And he told him.

…

COMMANDER SCOTT, DROWSY with drink, lay sprawled on a couch in the library of the Governor’s Mansion. Mr. Hacklett and his mistress had long since retired. He awoke to the church bells and instantly knew what had happened; he felt a terror unlike any he had ever known. Moments later, one of his guard burst into the room with the news: Hunter had escaped, all the pirates were vanished, and Poorman, Foster, Phips, and Dodson were all dead.

“Get my horse,” Scott commanded, and hastily arranged his disarrayed clothing. He emerged at the front of the Governor’s Mansion, looked around cautiously, and jumped on his stallion.

He was unhorsed a few moments later, and flung rudely to the cobblestones no more than a hundred yards from the Governor’s Mansion. A contingent of vagabonds led by Richards, the governor’s manservant - and directed by Hunter, that scoundrel - clapped him in irons and took him away to Marshallsea.

To await trial: the nerve of the ruffians!

…

HACKLETT AWOKE TO the tolling of the church bells, and also guessed their meaning. He leapt out of bed, ignoring his wife, who had lain the whole night, wide awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to his drunken snores. She was in pain and she had been badly humiliated.

Hacklett went to the chamber door and called to Richards.

“What has transpired?”

“Hunter escaped,” Richards said flatly. “Dodson and Poorman and Phips are all dead, perhaps more.”

“And the man is still loose?”

“I do not know,” Richards said, pointedly failing to add Your Excellency.

“Dear God,” Hacklett said. “Bolt the doors. Call the guard. Alert Commander Scott.”

“Commander Scott left some few minutes past.”

“Left? Dear God,” Hacklett said, and slammed the chamber door, locking it. He turned back to the bed. “Dear God,” he said. “Dear God, we shall all be murdered by that pirate.”

“Not all,” his wife said, pointing a pistol at him. Her husband kept a brace of loaded pistols by the bed, and she now held them aimed at him, one in each hand.

“Emily,” Hacklett said, “don’t be a fool. This is no time for your silliness, the man is a vicious killer.”

“Come no closer,” she said.

He hesitated. “You jest.”

“I do not.”

Hacklett looked at his wife, and the pistols she held. He was not himself skilled with weapons, but he knew from limited experience that a pistol was extremely difficult to fire with accuracy. He did not feel fear so much as irritation.

“Emily, you are being a damnable fool.”

“Stay,” she commanded.

“Emily, you are a bitch and a whore but you are not, I’ll wager, a murderer and I will have-”