Once Hawke and Ambrose had made themselves comfortable up on deck, Hawke continued the story of his illustrious ancestor.
The old pirate, upon hearing that the king’s men were in the courtyard, now knew he was not to be spared the hangman’s noose. Collapsing back upon his tattered cot, he uttered one word, “Lost.”
The parson knelt on the cold stone beside him and put his hand out to the man. “Repent with me now, and make your final journey with peace in your soul. I beg of you to—”
“Innocent!” Blackhawke bellowed. “How does an innocent man repent? The king himself long encouraged piracy to fill his coffers. Now that damnable East India Company decides pirates are discouraging the mercantile trades, and suddenly our heads are on the block!”
“Alas, ’tis true.”
“My friends at court, my crew, one and all betray me to save their own skins! It’s these foul traitors must repent their treachery, not Captain Blackhawke!”
“Alas, ’tis true twice over,” the parson said. “Let us go now, and speak with the Lord.”
On their way to the courtyard, the parson took the hapless pirate into the prison chapel for one last chance at redemption. They sat for a moment in the gloom on a long hard pew facing a single coffin draped in black. As was tradition, the doomed prisoners had been forced to sit before the symbolic coffin, quite empty, for hours each day, supposedly doing their penance.
Thick incense floated to the high, vaulted ceilings, but it couldn’t mask the pervasive stench of urine rising in every dark corner; nor could the chants and mournful prayers of the condemned hide the sounds of those wretched souls fornicating on the back benches.
Blackhawke stared silently at the draped coffin, quietly sipping his grog.
“It’s no use, Parson,” he said finally. “It ain’t in me, repentance. Nary a bit of it. I’ll step off into the next world and take me chances as I am.” He pulled the spyglass in which he’d hidden the map from his cloak and slipped it into the parson’s hands.
“This glass is all that’s left to me in this world,” Blackhawke rasped. “ ’Twas a gift from my wife when first I went to sea. Now I want her to have it as a poor remembrance of her husband. I beg you to see that it makes it safely into her hands. I’ve four gold doubloons sewn into me coat here that are yours, if you’ll give me no more than your sacred word. It’s my last wish.”
“Consider it done, Captain,” the parson said. And Blackhawke ripped open the seam in his coat, withdrew the doubloons, and slipped them to the fellow.
The parson and the pirate emerged into the courtyard.
“I warn you, Parson,” Blackhawke said, angrily eyeing the crewmen who’d betrayed him, some of whom were already in the cart. “I warn you this. An unarmed man full of vengeance is the most dangerous of men. I warrant I’ll rip their treacherous hearts out!”
But in the event, riding in the king’s cart, Blackhawke merely drank grog all the way to the dock. He was simply too tired and too weak and too full of rum to wreak his vengeance. He was thus oblivious to the merry shouts and taunts of the crowds lining the streets leading to the River Thames. By the time he and the other condemned arrived at the place of execution, the parson had to help the old man stagger up the steps to where the hangman waited. The notorious pirate captain would be the first to go.
He stood, with the noose finally around his neck, and looked out over the noisome crowd. He had arranged for some few remaining friends to stand below the gallows and witness his departure. Theirs was a mission of mercy. Since the drop itself seldom did the job, his mates were there to leap up, grab his heels, and yank down to end Blackhawke’s agony quickly.
As it happened, the rope parted, and Blackhawke tumbled to the ground with little more than a bad rope burn round his neck. The dazed man had to be carried once more up the steps to repeat his agonizing departure.
By now, however, the rum fog had dissipated a bit, and it was a much-sobered Blackhawke who had one final revelation. Standing once more upon the precipice, he felt suddenly alive, breathing, conscious. Even the sting of the rope burning around his neck was something to be cherished, and, oddly, the crowd ranged below him now seemed to be cheering. A joyous sendoff for one last epic and uncharted voyage! Yes!
His mind allowed him to stand once more on his quarterdeck, shouting orders fore and aft. Lines cast off, sheets loosed, sails filled with an evening breeze. Bound for the far horizon. Men scrambling like monkeys in the rigging, all color and glory. Bound for that fat yellow moon floating just over that far, far horizon.
Farewell.
Well. This is it then. Torches burning along the riverbanks. The dusky glow of London Town shimmering across the water. Lovely night. Been a good life, hasn’t it, after all? Strongly lived. Well fought and well rewarded. Left the treacherous Caribee and tedious humdrum of the New World’s penny-pinching merchants far astern, hadn’t he?
Been a young man then, still, when he’d taken up the pirate’s adventuresome ways. Loved the endless roll of the boundless blue sea, he had, really. Loved every league and fathom of her, for all his life.
A small sigh escaped his lips and his mates below drew forward, hushed now. All the crowd below quiet now. He would go into the next world unarmed. But he was unafraid and had no doubt he’d conquer the next as he’d done the present.
He’d given some serious thought to his parting shot, looking for a defiant farewell, and he uttered those words now, raw and raspy, but still strong.
“The man without sword is oft the deadliest enemy,” Blackhawke bellowed. “Hear me, Death, and lay on!”
There was a resounding huzzah from below.
He brought the curtain down on this world, squeezing his eyes shut and remembering just as hard as he could:
And the cannons’ thunder, too, and the blood, and the plunder. Loved it all and no regrets now, none save the sweet wife’s face hanging out there in mid-air now, beckoning, all her tears falling like soft rain on the upturned faces below. His wife, his children, lost to him, too, and all that buried booty and —
He sucked one last draught of sweet air into his lungs and then—stepped off into forever.
The next morning they hung Blackhawke’s corpse from a post on the riverbank, in plain view of the passing river traffic. It rotted there for some months, sloughing off flesh, blacker and smaller with every sunrise, a stern and daily reminder of the fate awaiting those foolhardy enough to consider the pirate’s adventuresome ways.
In the end, there was little left of Blackhawke but legend. That, and his sun-bleached bones, tinkling gaily in the wind off the river.
Hawke was silent a moment, having finished his tale. He drained his port, then he stood and raised the empty glass to his friend.
“Hear me then, Death, and lay on!” Hawke said, and flung his glass far out into the nighttime sky.
“Hear! Hear!” Ambrose said, and, getting to his feet, he flung his glass over the rail as well. “Now we’ve sent Captain Blackhawke off to his reward, I’m for bed myself. Good night, Alex. Sleep well.”
“Good night, Ambrose,” Alex said. “Thanks to you, old soul, I’ll no doubt be dreaming of pirates tonight.”
But of course he dreamt of them every night.