Old Mars

“Put down your weapons, and I will do what I can,” I said. Her pistol did not waver.

“Give me your word of honor.”

Your Majesty, I find myself hard-pressed to describe the emotions that arose in me with those words. She stood outnumbered and outgunned, and she did not beg. Her words were not a request, but a demand. For years, my word of honor had been hardly worth the breath it took to speak it, and yet she insisted upon it as if it were a thing of value.

“I cannot offer what I do not have,” I said. “But I promise you will come to no harm.”

Her expression grew serious. She lowered her pistol, and as if continuing the same motion, crumpled to the deck. It was all that I could do to kneel in time to break her fall.

“Carter’s hurt,” Mister Darrow said. “Tried to part the miss there from her gold.”

“Seemed the right thing,” young Carter said.

“Will you live?” I asked, lifting the unconscious woman up.

“Will or won’t, sir,” Carter said. “Either way, crossing her’s a mistake I’ll not make twice.”

I left Mister Darrow in possession of the burning ship and transported the woman of whose name I was still ignorant to the Dominic and Doctor Koch. Your Majesty is perhaps aware of Doctor Koch’s somewhat unsavory reputation, and I cannot claim that it is undeserved, for we were unsavory men, but when I appeared at his cabin with an unfamiliar and unconscious woman in my arms, I can truthfully report that his oath as a man of healing lent him an expression of concern better fitted to a mother dog nuzzling her injured pup. He bade me leave her with him to have her hurts attended, and swore that he would call for me as soon as she came to herself. It was not a promise that he kept, but given the circumstances, I cannot hold the fault against him.

I returned to the deck in time to hear Darrow’s dry voice agreeing that the gold the Vargud had carried was a fair load. In the sunlight, the gold shone with a richness and beauty that I had never seen before, as if the metal were alive and aware. I have seen my share of treasures, but I sensed in that moment that the riches before me were of a different order than any I had known.

I gathered my breath to order it all taken below, when the cry Zeeah loy again interrupted the proceedings. I took the speaking trumpet and called up to Quohog. The first part of his reply—Zeeah een, Catin. Ghana.—was perfectly comprehensible to one who had shipped with him. A ship of the line, and worse, one that bore the personal flag that my old nemesis Governor Smith affected. The second part, however—Eeah mantu!—escaped me at the time. I was later to understand that my brave lookout had meant He has monsters. At once, my crew and I leapt to action. The planks laid between the Dominic and the Vargud were pulled back, the lines between us cut, and we hoisted sail.

I must presume that Your Majesty has not had occasion to spend some years aboard ship with the same crew. Allow me, then, to report that there is a rapport that grows between men in long association at sea, an unspoken comprehension that outstrips the mere anticipation of orders to a point where they become almost unnecessary. Please do not think I am boasting when I say that my crew worked as a single creature with a hundred hands and a single mind between us, for in this particular, as in everything I set down here, my sole ambition is to apprise you of the facts. When I say then that it was not five minutes of the clock before we were set free of the Vargud and under way, I am being generous. The Dominic claimed a shallow draft, a proud mast, and Mister Kopler’s expert hand at the wheel. It was a combination that had seen us safely through a dozen pursuits. And yet, when I looked back across that wide sea, the governor’s ship was closing fast. The wind was not high, and I had great faith that whatever fortunate current the governor had happened upon would soon fail him, and we would make good our escape.

I was mistaken.