King’s Ransom – Three Stories by Robert Carse

Book Details

Haiti, the Caribbean, slave revolts, rum and voodoo; these are the elements that Robert Carse weaves his stories around in King’s Ransom.

Seven Came By Sea (1939) – Haiti, 1791: In the dark hills the drums began softly, but before that night of flame and terror was over, they had pounded out a protest against tyranny that shook the Empire of France. A novelette in four chapters.

Beach Comber (1931) – For ten years Downey had been trying to leave the little banana republic where he had become a drink-soaked derelict; and now, with success in his grasp, he found a revolution blocking his path

King’s Ransom (1934) – An ancient treasure, a white king with a mad dream, and two thugs await Burt James on a Caribbean isle
Chapter I – Island Jungle
Chapter II – Cold Reception
Chapter III – Beach Battle
Chapter IV – The Serpent
Chapter V – “Go And Get Him!”
Chapter VI – “I’ll Tell.”
Chapter VII – The Ransom

Robert Carse (1902-1971) was first published around 1928 and most frequently published in Argosy Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post. He was a prolific writer of French Foreign Legion stories as well as swashbuckling pirate stories.

King’s Ransom – Three Stories has 7 illustrations.

King’s Ransom – Three Stories is also available at Barnes & Noble

Files:

1. Carse-KingsRansom.epub

Excerpt: Seven Came By Sea

Chapter I

THAT was the year 1791 and no man’s ship was safe in the Western ocean. Henry Gregg went aloft himself when the foretop lookout hailed the deck. To the southward the sea lay smooth, fired to a brilliant sheen by the noonday sun.

Upon it the wreckage lay motionless. Only the sharks moved, and one or two of the men hanging to the shattered spars. The men were black; their naked backs showed sharp as they kicked a spume to keep the sharks from them.

The lookout man squinted around at Henry Gregg. “Somethin’,” he said, “from last night’s snorter, Cap’n.”

“Keep your eye on ’em,” Henry Gregg told him and swung sliding down a side-stay to the deck.

He brought the tall ship right in beside the wreckage, then sent his longboat away. The sharks had come in very close. They shunted against the boat and the big Connecticut men at the oars struck out with fierce loathing at the rolling gray forms.

There were twelve men the boat-crew helped aboard. Four were already dead and another was dying. All of them had suffered extremely from immersion and exposure, and just one, a little man, could sit up to talk. He studied Henry Gregg and the red-striped ensign at the gaff peak. “Donvorro,” he mumbled. “Big wind take ship . . .”

“Right,” Gregg said in his terse New England way. “What ship you out of?”

The black man simply touched his shoulder where the slavers’ iron had burned the great scar deep.

Behind Gregg the mate stirred and cursed. “Look at where the leg irons grabbed ’em,” he said.

“I’ve looked,” Gregg said. “They’re from a Middle-Passage ship out of Africa. Get back on your course now, mister. She must have gone down in that storm last night.”

He sat near them there in the mainsail shadow during the rest of the sun-heavy hours. He and the carpenter sewed up the dead men. At dusk he read, the burial service and they were tipped into the sea.

The little black man and another were conscious to watch it. The other was very tall and strong, with the cicatrices of his tribe’s facial markings broad along his upper jaws and brow. He stood and spoke and the cracking snap of his voice was like a whip. The rest of the blacks roused and swayed to stand beside him. But it was the little man who addressed Gregg:

“This feller, Yubu, like for know where cap’n bound. Him son big fellar Africa. Him no care come ‘longside for be slave.”

“Henry Gregg looked full into Yubu’s eyes. It was like looking at a wild animal, at a lynx that had been caught in a trap. He had seen a lot of fighting men, he thought, and here was a real warrior. This one hadn’t been born to be a slave. “Tell Yubu,” he said to the little man, “that I’m bound for Cap Francois, in French Hispaniola. But tell him, too, that I’m not the kind who trades in slaves.”

Yubu raised a huge hand when he understood. He silently saluted Gregg. Then he moved away to the rail and stood staring at the pale glimmer of the horizon. All the blacks followed him except the little man. He remained before Gregg. “Them fellar be happy,” he said.

“I reckon that,” Gregg said. “But how about you?”

The little man’s brine-puffed face tightened. “Me fellar long time ‘longside slave factory, Senegal. Ship me out when other fellar sick.”

Gregg mildly cursed. “You stand real lucky, then,” he said. “What they want at Cap Francois is big, tough men like Yubu.”

MR. TOWER, the mate, was nervous. He was a widower with four small children living with a sister in Stratford, and he kept to the sea only out of necessity. “Never liked this coast,” he muttered to Henry Gregg. “Never liked this island. Frenchies live here like rats in a powder keg. Right now us carrying blacks ain’t a good thing. You might ha’—”

“Me,” Henry Gregg said, “I got dealings here. So pipe down. Get your ladder over for the pilot and forget the blacks. I’ll take care of them.”

Past the low, brass-green line of the Tortuga the main island reared magnificent over the sea. Cloud was about the crags and cliffs of the upper slopes. Sun broke through it unevenly to touch the coastal plain with quivering radiance. The smoke from the cane-fires rose in blue, straight pillars and the massed white town gleamed.

Haiti, that was what the first folks here, the Caribs, had called it, Henry Gregg remembered. The word meant a high place, and it was high and it was lovely. But there was shoal water in by the forts, and the French pilot knew more about rum than soundings.

Excerpt From: Robert Carse. “King’s Ransom: Three Stories.”