Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [65]
"Now you're not only breaking your brother's solemn covenant, but you're trying to deprive me of a chance to make a living," Langman said.
"Stow it," Captain Dean said. "Stow all that guff about solemn covenants. I'm breaking nothing and I'm depriving you of nothing. I'd be within my rights if I discharged you for insubordination; but even if I did, you'd get along anywhere on the Thames Estuary as long as you could scrape up little boys to catch whitebait for you. Go forward,
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Mr. Langman, and light a dozen sulfur candles in the foc's'la matter you should have attended to long ago, by the way. The place has enough bugs to stock half a dozen of those Woodes Rogers ships you're always talking about."
Langman stared at Captain Dean with that characteristic little one-sided smile of hisone that I soon came to recognize as a sneer: not a smile at all. "First thing I know," Langman said, "these passengers of yours will rank me. And if they do, I won't be first mate any more. Then you'll have broken your brother's solemn covenant again."
"Don't worry, Mr. Langman," Captain Dean said. "You're still first mate, but you'll be subordinate to these two gentlemen. Mr. Whitworth is supercargo and Swede here is first lieutenant, having served as captain of the foretop on one of Her Majesty's ships. As soon as I've got Mr. Whitworth settled in the cabin, I'll thank you to give him whatever help he needs to get our cordage aboard and stowed away. We've got to be out of this river in two days."
"She's not fit to sail," Langman said, "and you know it."
"I know nothing of the sort," Captain Dean said. "She's fit to sail as far as Ireland; and whatever needs doing, we'll have done when we get there."
"Four of our guns are worthless," Langman said. "You can't protect yourself if you get chased by a privateer."
Captain Dean looked surprised. "That's news to me," he said. "You fired all ten of 'em?"
"Well, not exactly," Langman said, "but I can tell."
"If they're guns and hold together," Swede said, "you only need to scale 'em and prick out their touch-holes. I'll make 'em worth something to you."
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"We've got no water," Langman protested.
"We've got enough water to take us to Donegal," Captain Dean said, "and the best mineral spring in Great Britain is at Killybegs. Do as I tell you and do it quick."
Captain Dean pushed us into the after cabin. "Thank God you're aboard," he said. "That damned Langman! I'll bet your father was right when he suspected Langman of being a buccaneer! Remember how he said 'most of these privateers are buccaneers, no matter what the law says'? That would account for the way Langman fights me at every turn. That's a buccaneer to the life. A privateersman has order aboard his ship, but buccaneers live without government, spend all the money they capture, make no distinction between captain and crew, and are forever changing officers and fighting among themselves like tomcats."
He introduced us to his brother Henry, contenting himself with saying that Henry was the gambler of the family, and traveling for his health: wishful, too, of studying the methods of American merchants. Henry was a smaller silent copy of the captain, done in weaker colors, and he was an epileptic.
"Where's my boy?" Swede asked.
"I've got him copying something," Captain Dean said. "I'll keep him at it until we're safe away. He laid awake all last night, gritting his teeth. I probably gritted mine, too, because I had a lot of thinking to dosome about Neal and Miles, but more about this Langman."
We stowed our dunnage as instructed. Captain Dean put me with Henry Dean in one of the three small rooms, Neal Butler in a second room with Swede. The captain bunked by himself in