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Davies gave him a wolfish grin. "When did any of us worry about what we'd be blamed for? The Carmichael is my ship, and I want her back; and I think Ed Thatch is soon to be King of the West Indies, and I want to be sitting high when the smoke clears. It's too bad some of you are old enough to remember the peaceful buccaneer days, because those days are long gone - the summer's over and empire season is here, and in a few more years it probably won't be possible anywhere in the Caribbean to just sit in the sun and cook scavenged Spanish livestock over the buccan fires. It's a new world, right enough, a world for the taking, and we're the ones who know how to live in it without having to pretend it's a district of England or France or Spain. All that could hold us back is laziness."
"Well, Phil," the man said, a bit baffled by this speech, "laziness is what I do best."
Davies dismissed him with a wave. "Then obey orders - stick with me and you'll eat and drink your fill, or be dead and not care." He pulled Shandy along toward the nodding bow, and when they got there he fumbled under a pile of canvas, and, with a glad cry, produced a bottle. He pulled out the cork with his teeth and handed the bottle to Shandy.
Shandy took several deep gulps of the sun-warmed liquor; it seemed to consist of vapor as much as liquid, and when he inhaled after handing the bottle back, it was like taking another sip.
"Now tell me," said Davies after swigging quite a bit of it himself, "why did you shoot Wilson?"
Shandy spread his hands. "He was going to kill you. Like that midshipman said, it would have been murder."
Davies peered intently at him. "Really? That was the entire reason?"
Shandy nodded. "Yes, God help me."
"And when you got your new clothes, and said you were a forced man and no real pirate ... was that sincere?"
Shandy sighed hopelessly. "Yes."
Davies shook his head in wonder and took another sip of the warm rum.
"Uh," said Shandy, "who's ... was it Peachy Bander?"
"Hm?"
"Could I have a bit more of that? Thanks." Shandy took several gulps and handed the bottle back. "Percher Bandy?" he said, a bit dizzily. "You know, the one who told you something about Captain Wilson, and was it true?"
"Oh!" Davies laughed. "Panda Beecher! He was - still is, maybe - a spice wholesaler, and he always got Navy captains to carry his goods in the holds of Navy ships; it's illegal as hell, but a lot of merchants do it - they can pay the captain enough to make it worth his while, but still come out lots better than if they had commercial captains do it, what with either their extra insurance charges or the twelve-and-a-half percent of the cargo charge for an official Navy escort to keep pirates away. I was in the Navy myself for twenty-four years, and I know of many a Navy captain who's made extra cash by dealing with Panda and his sort, even though being caught at it would mean a nasty court-martial for the captain. I learned the captain's name from one of the men in the boat, so I pretended to remember him. It seemed not too long a shot to hope that Wilson had had such dealings, and would believe I knew of 'em. Then too, back in the nineties, Panda ran a couple of whorehouses that particularly catered to Royal Navy officers, and I've heard that the ... stresses of Caribbean service led some of the young officers to prefer oddities - boys, you know, and whips, and Oriental variations - and there was the possibility that Wilson might have been one such."
Shandy nodded owlishly. "And you phrased your question so that it could seem to refer to either business."
"Exactly. And one barb or the other did, sure enough, seem to strike home, didn't it? We'll never know now which one it was."
Skank shuffled up, handed Davies a foul-smelling canvas bag and then hurried away aft, wiping his hands on the rail. Davies pulled out an end of black sausage and took an unenthusiastic bite. "You see," he went on, chewing, "after the damned Utrecht Treaty left the privateers jobless, and ruined sailoring as a legal livelihood, and I turned pirate, I promised myself I'd never hang. I've seen too many hangings, over the years. So," he reached for the bottle and gulped quite a bit more, "I was thankful to have thought of that Panda Beecher question ... in the same way that a man marooned on a barren reef is thankful to be left with a pistol."
Shandy frowned at the intricacy of this; then his eyebrows went up in comprehension. "It was suicide!" he exclaimed, too drunk to be tactful. "You wanted him to kill you when you said that."
"Preferred it, let's say. To a trial and eventual noose. Yes." He shook his head again, clearly still astounded by Shandy's action. "Just because it would have been murder?"
Shandy waved back at the other men in the boat. "Any of them would have done the same."
"With assured safety on the other hand?" Davies laughed. "Not ever. Not one. You remember Lot?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Lot - the fellow with the wife who was made out of salt."
"Oh, that Lot." Shandy nodded. "Sure."
" 'Member when Yahweh came over to his house?"
Shandy scowled in concentration. "No."
"Well, Yahweh told him he was going to stomp the town, because everybody was such bastards. So Lot says hold on, if I can find ten decent lads will you let the town alone? Yahweh huffs and puffs a bit, but finally allows as how yeah, if there's ten good men he won't kick the place to bits. Then Lot, being crafty, see, says, well, how about if there was three? Yahweh gets up and walks around, thinking about it, and then says, all right, I'll go three. So Lot says, how about one. Yahweh's all confused by this point, having had his heart set on wrecking the town, but at last he says all right, one decent man, even. And then of course Lot couldn't find even one, and Yahweh got to torch the town anyway." Davies waved at the other men in the boat, a gesture that managed to take in the Carmichael, too, and New Providence Island, and perhaps the whole Caribbean. "Don't, Jack, ever make the mistake of thinking he'd find one among these."
BOOK TWO
Cut off from the land that bore us,
