I was at sea! How often had I heard stories of the sea and of ships! Of my father’s battles with pirates. What was the man’s name? Bardle, Nick Bardle. There was another, too, but I had seen him, knew him from long ago when Yance and I had slipped aboard his ship at Jamestown and spiked his guns. A rare bit of action that and one that pleased our father, although it was done without his knowledge.
Jonathan Delve, that was the name. An evil man and one who hated our father.
Finally I dozed, rocked by the movement of the boat, and when I awakened again, it was fairly dark, and there was a darker line along the sky with a light showing low down near the sea.
“Are we there, then?”
“Yon,” our boatman said. “Would ye be landed?”
“Not if the Abigail is close by. I’d like to board her.”
“At night? They are a touchy lot aboard there and wary. I’d say you’d best be known to them if you’d board, but I’ll take you alongside. And there she lies, two points abaft the beam. I’ll bring her around, and we can hail her.”
There was a stern light showing and an anchor light in the chains. We edged in close, and a hail came from her. “Lay off there! Lay off!”
“Is John Tilly aboard? If he is, I’d speak with him.”
“The cap’n? Lay off there. Who be you?”
“The name is Sackett,” I said. “I think it will have a familiar sound.”
“Sackett?” The watchman exclaimed. “Well, I’ll be!” In another tone he called out, evidently to someone else on deck. “Joel? Call the captain. Tell him we’ve a Sackett out here.”
I saw light come into the darkness as the door yawned open; then there was a rush of feet, and a strong voice, which I knew at once, called down, “Sackett? Is it you, Barnabas?”
“It’s Kin,” I answered. “Kin Sackett, his eldest, and seeking passage to the Indies if it is there you’ll be going.”
“Come aboard, lad, come aboard!”
They dropped a ladder over, and I went up with Henry after me. My first time on a rope ladder, but I had the hang of it from words my father had spoken. The boatman had been paid, and there was naught to do but hoist our gear aboard, and little enough we had of it.
He was a strongly made man, his hair white and his beard neatly trimmed. “Ah, lad! It is good to see you! How is my old friend, your father?”
“He is gone, captain. The Senecas killed him … finally. Black Tom Watkins was with him, and they died well.”
“That he would do.” He paused for a moment. “So he is gone! It is hard to believe.”
“My mother is in England. She took Noelle and Brian there for their education.”
“Aye. I knew of that, and I have seen them both … in London. It was only a short time ago.”
“You saw them?”
“Aye. I had brought my ship up the Thames and sought them out. Your brother is a handsome lad, strongly built and something of a scholar. But your sister? She is a beauty, Kin, a beauty! I declare, lovely as your mother was. She will be even more beautiful when she becomes a woman, and she has not long to wait, believe me! Ah, what a handsome pair they are!
“Brian is a scholar. He has been reading for the law but much else besides. But there’s been trouble, too, over your land in the fens. William, of whom your father often spoke and who was by all accounts an honest man, died. His nephew fell heir to his holdings and has laid claim to your father’s land as well. I fear there will be trouble.”
“Brian will know what to do, and if it is help he needs, we will come.”
“Help is less important now than friends in positions of power. I do not know, Kin, what will happen.”
We walked aft together, and in the comfort of his cabin over a pot of coffee we talked long into the night of the old days and the new, and in the end I told him what I wished to do.
“To find one girl, Kin, I doubt if it can be done, yet you are your father’s son, and he was not a man to be stayed by doubt. What I can do I will do.”
“There is gossip alongshore; this I know. I want to know the gossip about the ships of Joseph Pittingel and what I can discover about a man named Max Bauer. I believe these stolen girls would be sold to outlying plantations where they could be kept unseen.”
“If it is waterfront gossip you will be wanting, then Port Royal is the place. They be a packet of rascals there but friendly enough if they like you, and you’ll have a good name among them.”
“I will?”
“Aye, they’ll know the name Sackett, for Barnabas made a name. Have you heard the story told of how he took the pirate ship in Newfoundland and then hung high the pirate Duval until he cooled down? Pirates favor a bold man, and your father was that, lad, he was all of that.”
He glanced at Henry. “A slave?”
“A friend. He volunteered to help. He’s an Ashanti.”
“I know them. He will find some of his people in the islands, but most of them have taken to the hills in what is called the Cockpit County, and the wise do not go a-searching for them. There be those who call it the Land of Look Behind because you’d better or they’ll be all over you. On Jamaica and elsewhere, too, they are called maroons.”
“They will receive me,” Henry said coolly. “I was a king among them.”
“But these are long from Africa, most of them,” John Tilly suggested. “Will they remember?”
“They will,” Henry replied, “and if not, I shall remind them.”
Fair blew the winds for Jamaica, and the good ship Abigail, named for my mother, proved a good sailer. Soon I was lending a hand at the sailing, learning the ropes, as the saying was, and taking a turn at the helm.
Each night we had a man or two back from the fo’c’sle to tell us what he knew of Joseph Pittingel, his ships, and of Max Bauer. Soon a picture began to come forth, a picture of a man both shrewd and dangerous, a man who had many friends or at least associates throughout the islands and along the coast of the mainland. A man even more formidable than we had assumed and a situation that must be handled with extreme care, for he had friends in important positions who could cast a man into jail or have him hanged.
That he was a slaver came as a surprise to many of those to whom we talked. This he had apparently kept from anyone, yet here and there a seaman would drop a word to let us realize that there were those who did know. A picture of the man became clearer, a picture of an adroit, cunning man who presented one picture to officials and to merchants and another entirely to those he considered menials.
John Tilly listened, asked a question or two, and when the last of the seamen had left the cabin, he said quietly, “This is no easy matter you have taken upon yourself, for if the man has the least suspicion of what you do, he will surely have you murdered or thrown into prison, and he will have the power, you can be sure.”
“I think of Noelle. What if it had been she?”
“Aye, and the poor lasses with no man to stand by them. It must be done, lad. It must be done.”
“First, to find that girl. Henry will help, for you know as well as I that there are no secrets from the slaves. He can go among them and among the maroons as I could not, for they would tell me nothing.”
Several times we passed ships at sea, but they were either too far off to be seen clearly or they made haste to seek distance. It was a time when piracy was rampant, and many a ship would not hesitate to seize another if opportunity allowed.
Wet blew the wind against our faces, leaving the taste of salt upon our lips. Much was the time I spent upon deck, my body growing accustomed to the dip and roll of the vessel and the sails overhead, all strong with wind. At times the rain beat against our faces like hailstones, but I could see how a man could grow to love such a life, and how easily he could come to live upon the sea.
There was a power there, a power in the roll and swell of the waves that told a man he was but tolerated here. This was a world of fish under the sea and gulls or frigate birds above it.