Buccaneer (20 page)

The
guarda costa
sliced up a bow wave that glittered in the sunshine like scattering diamonds and Ned watched her, knowing that this must be how a rabbit watched an approaching stoat. Whatever Saxby intended, he knew this was no time to interrupt him with questions, but sailing along like this with not a man at the guns seemed the same as surrendering.

Was that what Saxby intended doing? Now, the stocky figure was peering over the taffrail, watching the
guarda costa
and calling an occasional order to the men at the tiller, but he was planning some sort of trick, not surrender.

That was the only advantage of fighting the Spaniards. Against the French or Dutch one could, if completely outnumbered, surrender and know that as a prisoner one would be treated reasonably well. As a prisoner of the Spanish, the choices were the salt mines or the stone quarries for the rest of one’s life, or being handed over to the Inquisition. Three alternatives to which an honourable death in battle was preferable. Which made him wonder what Saxby intended doing.

The
guarda costa
was approaching fast and he could see heads watching over the starboard side and the stubby black fingers of the guns poking out of the ports. The red and gold flag of Spain streamed out, and for a moment he wished the
Griffin
was flying her colours. Perhaps it was better that a ship and her crew without a country fought – if this was called fighting – without colours.

Fifty yards…forty…thirty… He could picture the Spanish gunners poised with their linstocks, ready to dab the glowing end of the slowmatch into the touchhole. Twenty yards…now the
guarda costa
’s jibboom was level with them as they stood at the taffrail…

Suddenly Saxby darted to the tiller, yelling at the two men, and heaving against it with his shoulder. He screamed at Yorke to duck down.

The
Griffin
turned with what seemed to Yorke to be a curious mixture of maddening slowness and awful majesty right across the path of the
guarda costa
, whose jibboom and bowsprit came over the
Griffin
’s afterdeck like an enormous lance.

There was a scattering of guns firing, but Ned realized they were probably set off by gunners careless with their linstocks as they tried to avoid being flung down by the impact. Then he heard a curious crackling, like a tree collapsing under a woodman’s axe, and he turned right aft to see the
guarda costa
’s bowsprint sliding off the
Griffin
as her mast slowly toppled over: falling sideways as though it had all the time in the world, with shrouds parting under the strain and sounding like horse whips and the great sail splitting diagonally and then flapping like a big tent collapsing.

Saxby’s roar of triumph overriding the cheers of the two helmsmen brought Yorke back to the present: the
guarda costa
was lying dead in the water, her sails now fallen over her like a shroud, her mast in two pieces like a broken twig of greenwood, the stump still sticking up vertically from the deck but the rest in the water, an end held to the stump by rigging, halyards and sail.

More important she was being left astern while the
Griffin
slowly turned westward to run before the wind, her mainsail beginning to slam as Yorke ran to ease the sheet.

Saxby shouted: “On deck everyone! Come on, Mrs Judd, get back to your wounded!” Just as Burton led a rush up the companionway, he paused to look round for the
guarda costa
and was nearly knocked down in the crush of men and women doing the same thing.

Because of the height of the taffrail and the fact that the companionway they were using was so far forward, the
guarda costa
was out of sight for them. Burton ran to the larboard side and peered out of a port – and let out a cheer. Within a few moments the whole crew were surging aft, cheering Yorke, who promptly pointed to Saxby. “He did it; I had my eyes shut!”

Saxby was unimpressed by the cheering. “Get the wounded below and sew those dead men up in hammacos with a shot at their feet. All of you ought to be weeping, not cheering. Not a bloody gun fired by you – and the Dons hit us with two broadsides. Tinkers and tailors, that’s what you are! Canecutters and sons of whores! I’d put you all back in the Bridewell if I had my way!”

As soon as he paused for breath Mrs Judd’s penetrating voice came across the deck. “Any more of that Saxby, an’ you sleep on your own!”

The threat was more than enough to silence the master, who bustled forward, calling for his assistant Simpson to come with him to inspect the damage.

Suddenly he was shouting again. “Carpenters, where are those bloody carpenters? Quick, get below and sound the well, we might have taken a shot ’twixt wind and water and be sinking!”

“I’ve sounded,” one of the carpenters said in an offended voice. “Just like you said after we’ve been shot at. Straightaway I sounded the well. You said –”

“What did you find, you whoreson?” screamed Saxby, thoroughly exasperated.

“None,” the man said crossly, and Mrs Judd, bending over one of the wounded, lifted her head to deliver an ultimatum.

“One more paddywhack like that Saxby and your hammaco’ll be as busy as a monk’s cell for the rest of this voyage.”

Grumbling to himself Saxby began to walk round the
Griffin
’s decks, noting shot-torn bulwarks, a dismounted gun, a deck scored deep by a roundshot that by chance came through the bulwark one side, gouged its way across the deck planks without hitting guns or fittings, and smashed its way out through the bulwark the other side.

Ned looked round for Aurelia, realizing guiltily that he had given her no thought from the moment Saxby had ordered everyone below. Now he saw her with Mrs Judd and the other women, bandaging the wounded while seamen waited to carry them below.

The only man on board with nothing to do, it seemed, was the
Griffin
’s owner. He walked aft and leaned against the taffrail, looking astern at the dismasted
guarda costa
, whose hull was now almost out of sight behind the swell waves pushed up by the Trade winds. Then he looked at the distant pearl-grey rippling mountains of the Spanish Main. He thought of Saxby’s first angry words when the men began cheering them. The man was right: every one of them, Ned himself included but leaving aside Saxby and Burton, were a sorry crowd of canecutters who had no business at sea until they had learned a great deal more.

While the
Griffin
steered westward towards Curaçao she skirted a chain of islands which, lying more than a hundred miles off the Main and parallel with the shore, stretched for five hundred miles. Saxby was careful to note down the names as they came in sight. Most of them were uninhabited cays, some great rocks and others patches of coral and sand. His slate already recorded Isla la Orchila, Cayo Grande, Cayo Sale and Islas de Aves when he warned the lookout to watch for Bonaire. This, the first of the three islands used by the Dutch, was the one they would see before Curaçao, and by the time Bonaire was in sight decisions had to taken.

The cabin appeared even smaller than usual. Aurelia swung in her hammaco, Ned sat crossways in the bunk, while Saxby and Burton sat on the cabin sole, their backs resting against the bulkhead.

None was cheerful; an hour earlier they and everyone on board the
Griffin
had attended the funerals of the four men killed by the
guarda costa
’s broadsides. Finding that in the rush to leave Barbados no one had remembered a prayerbook, Saxby had spoken as much of the funeral service as he could remember, and the hammacos with their now rigid contents had been slid over the side by tilting a plank.

Mrs Judd’s report on the fourteen wounded had been more hopeful: only one was in any danger; the other thirteen had been cut by flying splinters and five of them would be able to work next day with bandages protecting the wounds.

Yorke had earlier visited the men in their hammacos and at first found them shamefaced at having been wounded while the
Griffin
had not fired a shot in reply. They explained that by the time they had lifted out the half-portlids, primed the guns (they had been left loaded) and run them out, the
guarda costa
was alongside and firing. It would not happen again, they assured him; once their cuts were healed they were going to practise and practise so that even a seagull would not pass unscathed. Burton, as armourer and gunner, and the man responsible for the training so far, was equally shamefaced and obviously, it seemed to Yorke, took the entire blame for the fact that they had been caught unawares.

“It’s happened and we’ve learned our lesson,” Yorke said, but Burton was not to be consoled.

“I should have advised you and Mr Saxby that the ship’s company must be at general quarters when we’re sailing past a headland like that. It’s an obvious place for a trap. The fact is,” he admitted like a small boy owning up to scrumping a neighbour’s apples (Yorke was amused to find how easily the old Kentish word came to mind), “everything went so easily at Carúpano that I thought the Dons were glad to see us… They bought all they wanted and didn’t haggle too much.”

“It was that mayor, I’ll be bound,” Saxby growled. “Always beware of greedy people who smile: they’re really only showing their teeth. He sent a warning to them at Cumaná.”

Aurelia coughed delicately – far too delicately for Ned not to look up inquiringly. “I was thinking,” she said gently, “that we know what happened and why, and we sold about a tenth of our goods at Carúpano for a good price. We are sailing westward, I know, but where are we
really
going? What are we going to do until we learn a great deal more about smuggling or buccaneering, or piracy – the name hardly matters? We cannot sail on and on… We lose the,
comment dit-on
, the weather page.”

“Gage. Yes, you are quite right and you’ve put it fairly,” Ned said. “It was no one’s fault – certainly not yours, Burton, and but for you, Saxby, that damned
guarda costa
would have kept on circling us like a dog worrying a sheep until she’d sunk us. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me – I own the ship and I started off something about which I knew nothing…”

“I suggested smuggling,” Aurelia said.

“And I proposed piracy,” Saxby added.

“And I agreed to both,” Ned said, “and no doubt if someone else had suggested barratry I’d have agreed to that too, though I’m not quite sure what it means.”

“The master or crew stealing from the cargo,” Saxby said.

“Hmm, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Anyway,” Ned said firmly, “from this moment any blame rests on me and no one else.”

“No one answered my question,” Aurelia observed.

Ned looked at Saxby. “Do you have any ideas?”

“None, sir. We could call at Curaçao and see if the Dutch will buy any of our goods.”

“True, but once we have sold our goods we are back with Mrs Wilson’s question of two days ago: then what do we do? Although we didn’t answer the question then, we seem to have had it answered for us now.”

Saxby looked puzzled. “I suppose so, sir, but…well, what was the answer?” He shook his head like a bull confused by a small barking dog which would not be still for long enough to provide a target.

Ned looked at Aurelia. He found that more frequently he was turning to her not so much for advice as for comments and criticisms that showed a different point of view. Her womanliness and her Frenchness seemed to provide a calm logic that the rest of them lacked. Perhaps it was simply that she was a woman; the French logic was, in his experience, a cloak Frenchmen draped over themselves when they indulged in what anyone else would call sneering.

“We are not at war with the Dutch,” she said. “Why should we not call at Curaçao and see what we can learn from them?”

“The mynheers don’t give away owt for nowt!”

Aurelia’s eyebrows raised at Saxby’s comment and he gave a rumbling laugh.

“Owt for nowt?” she repeated.

Ned said, “Comes from ‘aught for naught’, but they pronounce it differently in the north of England. What he’s really saying is they do not give away anything for nothing; they need something in return.”

“They are good tradesmen!”

Burton said diffidently: “Perhaps it would help if we went in to buy something. We have spare money now!”

“Water is what we want,” Saxby said. “Water and salt meat.”

“The Dutch will be selling salt fish,” Ned said. “They buy salt from the Spaniards, take it back to Holland, salt down the herrings they catch in the North Sea, and bring them back and sell it to the Dons.”

“Fresh herrings,” Saxby said wistfully. “Fried in a nice batter. This fish out here – no guts to it!”

“That is true, Edouard,” Aurelia said, as though Ned was disputing it.

“Yes. The reason is simple. The colder the water the tastier the fish. All the fish you French catch in the Mediterranean is so tasteless you have to hide it in a strong sauce. Out here in the tropics it is much worse – most of the fish are utterly tasteless, and no one bothers with a sauce.”

“There is much about food that is beyond my understanding,” Aurelia said. “White meat and red meat, for instance. In England and out here, white meat is considered fit only for the servants, and red meat is for their masters. Why? I like poultry. A slice of turkey or a slice of beef –
pour moi
the white meat!”

“Me, too,” said Saxby. “That’s one of the reasons I prefer to eat with the servants.”

“Ha – tongue seasoned with herbs, a kid ‘with a pudden in its belly’, a fricassee of pork, sucking pig, a loin of veal stuffed with limes, oranges and lemons,” Ned said. “You’d exchange all that for a scrawny fowl?”

“Curaçao,” Aurelia said. “Will we be able to buy water there?”

Saxby shook his head doubtfully. “From what I’ve heard, it’s all flat and sandy, covered with divi-divi trees and goats, and it rarely rains.”

“That’s why the Spaniards don’t bother with it, I suppose,” Burton commented. “But there’s no need for us to know they’re short of water until after we’ve arrived. We can have a good look…”