Deadmen's Cave

By Leonard Wibberley

17th century pirates, swashbuckling action, and romance...

 

19-year-old Tom Lincoln is captured by the notorious pirate Henry Morgan and forced into a life of piracy. To escape and rescue another prisoner—the teenage niece of the Governor of Panama—Tom must unlock the secret of a mysterious cutlass he found in a cave filled with dead men on an uncharted island.

 

★★★★★ "Well-written, fast-paced, historically accurate, with a great story, wonderful characters, and an overall theme and message that lingers. Suitable for all ages. I have recommended it to adults (in their 40s and 50s) and they love it. Even 'modern' kids do/will. I cannot recommend it highly enough."—Goodreads Review

 

★★★★★ "This was one of my favorite books of childhood—a swashbuckling coming-of-age story with indelible characters. This is a masterful tale, and it is a shame it is not well-known. I highly recommend it."—Reader Review

 

Approximately 200 pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Duchy of Grand Fenwick
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223989240

Book preview

DEADMEN’S CAVE

by Leonard Wibberley

Deadmen’s Cave

Copyright © 1954, 1982 by Leonard Wibberley

First Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 by

The Estate of the Late Leonard Wibberley

leonardwibberleybooks (at) gmail (dot) com

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FOREWORD

Anyone who would write about pirates must himself practice piracy. This I have done, though not in a proper and bloody way by which a wide notoriety might be attained. My piracy has been of a bookish sort, clerkly and timorous, and has consisted of taking from pirates and those associated with them, some part of the record of their lives and times.

Especially I have plundered the work of one A. O. Exquemelin, who spent many years as a freebooter on the Spanish Main and formed part of the magnificent but tatterdemalion expedition of Captain Henry Morgan against the city of Panama.

Exquemelin wrote a book of his adventures called Buccaneers of America, which, though it suffered from brutal translations and editing, has been shown to be authentic in its accounts of the ventures of the pirates of his day. He was a remarkable man, for although a pirate and a lover of bloodshed and danger, yet he had many moral principles and did not agree with much in which he took a hand.

His greatest virtue, however, was that he was a close and accurate observer. Thus Exquemelin could give not only a vivid account of the battle for Panama, and the terrible march across the Isthmus to beset the city, but also a thirst-provoking description of how to make liquor out of manioc.

He was indeed an excellent man and I regret only that he was not hanged. He died, instead, in some action of a minor nature.

However, I acknowledge my debt to the old pirate and hope his bones rest easy wherever they may be. It is from him that I got much of the material for the march on Panama and the description of the sack of the city. And it is from him, also, that I received sufficient insight into the delights of the pirates to write of the carousal in Port Royal.

I have taken some liberties with his work, but then I am not all clerk and can boast, I trust, of a taint of piracy, though much subdued, in my own nature.

Leonard Wibberley

Hermosa Beach, California

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

—Samuel Johnson

CHAPTER ONE

EBENEZER PETERS lay in the stem of the longboat, sprawled across the sheets pretending to be asleep, but watching me out of half-closed eyes. He was waiting for a chance to get to the water cask, and I did not know how much longer, even with the aid of my pistol, I could keep him from it. We had been adrift for three days and two nights since the hurricane dismasted us off Hispaniola, and Peters was crazed with thirst and was a murderer to boot.

There were just the two of us in the longboat, myself, Tom Lincoln, nineteen, runaway servant turned seaman, from the town of Gloucester in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Peters, who had been captain of the brig Daphne. The Daphne was my second ship, but Peters, a big, red-bearded man in his forties, had been to sea since he was a lad, and according to rumor, had been a buccaneer and freebooter in Tortuga and Hispaniola before he got command of the Daphne. We had been bound for Barbados with a cargo of woolens, nails, timber and leather goods to trade for sugar. Then the hurricane struck and he and I and a Dutchman called Skyllens were the only ones to get away.

Skyllens had disappeared the night after the wreck—that would have been the night of December 22, 1670. I had fallen into a heavy sleep and fancied I heard some oaths and a struggle and then a loud cry. But I could not arouse myself.

When I did wake up, the first glint of dawn was already silvering the tops of the waves and the Dutchman was not aboard. Peters lay in the stern, drunk and smelling of brandy and wearing Skyllens’ red stocking-hat with an air of bravado. So I knew he had killed him for the liquor as he would kill me for the water, when he got a chance. And I could not stay awake another night.

Peters rolled over from his face to his side, and, pretending to wake up, shook his big red head and looked at me out of salt-swollen eyes.

Give me a pannikin of water before I croak, shipmate, he said.

One swallow at sundown is all you’ll get, I told him, leaning back against the thwart for a steadier aim in case he tried to rush me. At that he fell to cursing and then to arguing and at last to wheedling.

Ye’re a likely lad, he said, as I knew when I first clapped me deadlights on ye at Gloucester. Master I were then and you, ordinary seaman. But I said to meself when I saw you, ‘Now there’s a likely lad,’ I said. ‘A sea-going bullycock,’ I said to meself, ‘as would call down Cap’n Morgan on his own quarterdeck.’ Aye, and not an easy man to call down is Cap’n Morgan. Violent, ’e is. A man that’s a mite careless about spilling blood. I’ve seen him kill many a man in a way no Christian can bear to look at—by smoking them, d’ye see. And with the garrotte. And sometimes by burning and sometimes by staking out.

‘But ye’re the bullycock,’ I said to meself, ‘that could face up to Morgan and make him touch his forelock to ye!’

He ran a swollen tongue over his parched lips and moved his eyes for a minute from me to the water cask. I lifted the pistol up slightly and the movement was enough to bring his attention back to me. I knew the Morgan he meant—Captain Henry Morgan, once a slave in Barbados and now admiral of the buccaneer fleet in the West Indies, with his headquarters at Port Royal, Jamaica, and Sir Thomas Modyford, Governor of Jamaica as his best friend, if rumor was to be believed.

But I wanted to know more about Morgan and Peters’ connection with him, for there were some aspects of the wrecking of the brig Daphne that needed explanation. So I decided to question him further.

You know Morgan? I asked, with a pretense at innocence.

Know him? cried Peters. I served with him ten years from Campeche to Trinidad. Seen him meek as a lamb and roaring like a lion, bloody as a butcher. Aye, and I’d be with him now if it weren’t for tales best not told.

He lapsed into silence for a while. The longboat rocked on the Caribbean swells and the sun beat down unmercifully on us. I longed to lie down for a minute in the bilge and rest my aching bones and get out of the blinding light. But I knew that if I so much as stood up, Peters would try to rush me, and against a man of his size, for he was built like an ox, I had no chance.

You can tell your tales-best-not-told now, Master Peters, I said, interrupting his reverie. For there’s only a pannikin or two of water left apiece and after that we must both die. So talk on, if you care to. But don’t make a move nearer, or you’ll die before your appointed time, which by my reckoning is in a day or two.

He looked at me through half-closed eyes as if debating something and then ran his hand over his big red beard two or three times.

Aye, a bold one, ye are, he growled at length, a match for Morgan any hour of the watch. Here I be a-dying, ye might say, a man that’s cut more throats than I like to think on at this time. And there be you, a prentice boy or servant, that’s been to sea but once before, holding me, yards taken aback, at pistol point. Now, there never was a man—nor boy neither—that could do that to Ebenezer Peters! Not in Santo Domingo, nor Port of Spain, nor Porto Bello—though there’s many of them have tried that are whited bones now.

He paused and seemed to be thinking of all the men he’d killed. There was no repentance in his look, but rather an air of mild interest mingled with a little pride.

And why do ye think I lie here in the bilboes with ye keeping me from the water cask with ye’re roarer? he continued. "Well, it’s not for fear o’ dying and ye can lay to that. It’s the other tack, ye might say. It’s the want to keep on living.

And why should I want to keep on living?

He raised a hand and slowly put a finger to the side of his nose and tapped it deliberately.

Secrets, he said. Tales best not told.

He seemed mad, and indeed I believe he was. I wondered idly whether I should shoot him and try to eke out my own life a few days more with the water. But I knew even while I thought about it that I could not kill him in cold blood, though he planned to dispatch me as soon as I fell asleep. I wondered, wearily and ponderously what special reasons he might have for wanting to live that would not let him take any chances of losing his life. And as I thought of this and of his secrets best not told, it occurred to me that I could force him to help me to sail the boat. I had the pistol and could make him obey me, and I was surprised that I had not thought of it before. It was his admission of a compelling reason for living that made my command over him clear to me.

Peters, I said, I’ve no mind to die any more than you. And so I plan to try to live. I don’t know what part of the ocean we’re in, yet land, if there is any, must lie to the west.

He looked at me calculatingly.

Aye, he agreed slowly, the Isthmus of Panama will lie to the west. But more leagues away than will do us any good.

That may be so, I replied. Yet this morning I saw clouds low on the horizon westward. They are still there. What would you make of clouds out on the open sea?

Why, said Peters, clouds are but clouds and signify clouds.

You lie, I said. I’m not as long at sea as you, though long enough to know that clouds that do not move mean high land, and clouds such as those, there, likely mean an island.

Better than Morgan, remarked Peters with a sneer. He’s a master mariner before he’s learned to sail to a taut bowline.

I’m no master mariner, I replied. "But I’m not of a mind to lie here and die, either. I’ve no love for you, nor you for me. However, I cannot save myself without saving you. So save you I must. Now mark what I say, for these will be the last words you’ll hear this side of Davy Jones’ locker if you disobey me in one jot.

I’m going forward to hoist the jib. You take the helm and keep her before the wind. And if you move one foot towards the water cask, I’ll kill you.

Ye can make no more than two knots wi’ the jib, growled Peters.

Two knots is better than none at all, I replied.

We looked at each other—he challenging and surly and I commanding—with not a word spoken. Then he said, Aye aye, sir, steady before, and heaved himself upright and got the tiller under his arm.

The longboat was yawl-rigged. In moving up forward to hoist the jib, I was taking a risk that Peters might jump me. But his risk was greater than mine, since I had the pistol. So I inched my way forward, keeping my face towards him and my pistol aimed, until I found the jib halyard. It is no easy matter to raise such a sail with both hands for the job. I could spare but one and had to watch Peters as well. It took me the better part of half an hour, hauling with one hand and then holding the halyard in my teeth to get a new purchase, to raise the sail. Eventually, though, I got it up and sheeted home, and the longboat started to move steadily through the water, which tinkled against the sides, making a noise like someone tapping with his fingernails on a wine glass.

All this time Peters was watching me closely, with a sneer on his face. Once he moved when I had the sail half raised and was trying to hold its weight and the tug of the wind in it. The pistol, however, brought him back to the tiller, and he called out that I was captain, and he would do what he was bidden.

I came back, then, to the water cask, which was amidships, and told him to leave the tiller and raise the mizzen. I would have raised it myself, but it was a job for two hands and I could spare only one.

’Tis a waste of time and strength, he said. We’re sailing nowhere for there’s nowhere to sail to. We might as well drift and die as sail and die.

I laughed at him, for I was feeling light-headed after my exertion and exultant at having him under my command.

You’re a contrary man, Master Peters, I said. "First you say you want to live, and when I plan to get sail on the boat to give us a chance of living, you say we’re going to die anyway. Well, I think I know what’s running through your mind. You know there’s land near here—that cloud’s still there to the westward—and you want to reach it, but you don’t want me with you. So you plan on drifting until I fall asleep and then you can be rid of me. That way, you’ll have the water and the boat and can sail to the island by yourself, with none to be any the wiser.

But we’ll sail there together or we won’t sail at all. This is one shipmate of yours you won’t kill in the dark.

I know nothing of any island near here, Peters growled.

You’re lying, I replied. "You’ve known there was an island hereabouts since the day the Daphne was wrecked. Raise the mizzen, for I’m nearly persuaded to kill you."

At that he left the helm and hauled up the sail, cursing and glowering at me. While he was thus busy, I stole a glance forward and saw that the cloud towards which we were headed was already bigger and that there was a line of blue under it, as if some part of the ocean had been lifted a little to form a pedestal on which the cloud rested. Then I knew an island was there and we would make it by sundown.

What island is that? I asked, when Peters returned to the helm.

It could be one of a dozen, he replied.

Or just a particular one that you want to get to, eh? I asked. He looked up at the set of the mizzen but said nothing.

There was something I wanted to know, something I had been wondering about ever since the wreck, and I was going to pry it out of Peters if I could. Talking made my thirst worse, but it helped to roll back the weariness that was trying to envelop me. Every few minutes, it seemed, my whole body would be flushed with fatigue, and my hand would shake so badly that I came near to dropping the pistol. All this Peters watched with calculating eyes, his parched lips open to show his blackened lower teeth and the empty gums above.

Peters, I said, "was it to get to this island that you kept full sail on the Daphne, when every man aboard knew a hurricane was brewing, and so wrecked her?" He made no reply.

And was that why, when the shrouds gave and she lost her masts, you were already in this longboat, deserting your crew and casting off? Again he said nothing.

And was that why you killed the other man that got aboard—lest he should live and talk about it? Or was that to get the brandy?

I was always partial to spirits, dead or bottled, Peters remarked and croaked out a dry laugh at his own joke.

You’re a murderer, Peters, I said, a murderer to shame every felon that ever hung on a gallows. You took the lives of forty men to serve your own ends. I should kill you now and save the expense of hanging you.

A look akin to fright, if indeed it was not fright, crossed his face at that. He opened his mouth a few times to speak but could say nothing. I could see his hand tremble on the tiller, and my contempt for him increased. At length he was able to speak, and his voice now was coaxing and wheedling.

Don’t fret about the Dutchman, he replied. "He was a bilge-headed swab—not like you. He signed his own death warrant the day he went to sea. But you, you’re smart like I said and can make a fortune for yourself if ye’ll just sail the same tack wi’ me. We can be mates together, blood brothers, share and share alike—love, luck and treasure. Stow the pistol and give me your duke on it, and we’ll be rolling in doubloons, mark my words. Why, I know where there’s gold to be found—aye and gems, too—that will keep us like lords for the rest of our lives. Treasure for a king, and I know where it all is.