Buccaneer (28 page)

‘Well, what is it?’ he asked gruffly as he and Hector moved out of earshot of the gamblers.

‘There’s a risk of a prisoner uprising,’ Hector told him.

‘Why so?’

‘Because we don’t have enough men to supervise the prisoners properly.’

The captain looked hard at Hector. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes. It’s not just the numbers of prisoners. We’ve been keeping back those who are wealthy or were officers on the ships we captured.’

‘Of course. They were the only ones worth holding.’

‘They are the ones most likely to organise an uprising.’

Sharpe made no reply, but looked out across the sea. The sinking sun had coloured the underbellies of the clouds a deep and angry red. It was as though a great fire had been lit beyond the horizon. It reminded Bartholomew Sharpe of the unsatisfactory outcome to the raid on the mainland a fortnight earlier. The Spaniards had already retreated into the hills, taking their valuables with them. He had threatened to burn down their houses and farms unless protection money was paid, but the Spaniards were astute. They dragged out the negotiations until they had gathered enough soldiers to chase the buccaneers back to the beach. In their frustration the raiders torched the farms anyhow. A few days later forty members of his crew, dissatisfied with the poor progress of the venture, had left
Trinity
. They had sailed away on a captured bark, heading north on the return journey to the Caribbean. Barely a hundred members of the original expedition remained, and that was not enough to deter a revolt among the prisoners.

‘What do you propose we do?’ he asked Hector.

‘Set the prisoners free.’

Sharpe gave Hector a calculating glance. Here was an opportunity to gain the young man’s trust. The captain was aware that he and his friends were suspicious and resentful of him. But the trick with the loaded pistol had been a necessity. It had impressed the crew and cowed the Spaniards.

‘Are you suggesting this because you are friendly with Captain Peralta?’

‘No. I think it would be a prudent action.’

Sharpe thought for a moment. ‘Very well. Next time we come to land, you will see that I can be generous, even with my enemies.’ In fact he had already decided several days earlier to rid himself of the captives. No one seemed willing to pay a ransom for them, and they had become so many useless mouths to feed.

‘Rocks! Rocks! Dead Ahead!’ the lookout suddenly bellowed. Sharpe looked up in surprise. The note of alarm in the man’s voice indicated that he had been dozing at his post and suddenly seen the danger. ‘Reefs! Breaking water! No more than a quarter mile away.’

‘Ringrose!’ Sharpe shouted. ‘What do you make of it?’

‘Impossible! We’re thirty miles off the coast,’ exclaimed Ringrose who had taken a sun sight earlier in the day. He jumped up on the rail and shaded his eyes as he peered forward. ‘I wish to God we had a decent chart. This groping about in the unknown is madness. One night we’ll run ourselves full tilt onto a reef in the dark and never know what happened.’

‘Rocks to starboard as well!’ The lookout’s voice was shrill with panic. This time his shout caused a surge of activity aboard
Trinity
. There was the noise of running feet as men appeared on the deck and rushed into the bows and gazed forward trying to identify the danger. ‘Bear away to port,’ Sharpe called out to the helmsman, ‘and reduce sail.’ The order was unnecessary. Men were already easing out the main sheets and bracing round the yards. Others were standing by the reefing tackles.

‘White water to port!’ roared a sailor. He was pointing, open-mouthed with alarm. There was a foaming patch on the surface of the sea no more than a hundred paces beside
Trinity
. The galleon had sailed herself into a trap. There were reefs on each side and ahead, and little room to manoeuvre. ‘Bring her head to wind!’ snapped Sharpe to the steersman.

‘Lucky she’s so nimble,’ said Ringrose beside Hector as
Trinity
’s bow turned into the wind, the sails came aback against the mast in an untidy tangle of ropes and sails, and the galleon came to a halt, gathered sternway and began to fall off on the opposite tack.

‘Merde! Look there behind us! We sailed right over those rocks and never saw them.’ Jacques had arrived on the quarterdeck and was gazing back towards the expanse of sea which the galleon had just negotiated. That too was boiling up in a white froth.

Beside him, Dan began to chuckle. Jacques looked at him in astonishment. ‘What’s so funny? We’re boxed in by rocks!’

Dan shook his head. He was smiling. ‘Not rocks . . . fish!’

Jacques scowled at him and then turned back to stare again at the sea. One of the foaming reefs had disappeared, abruptly sunk beneath the waves. But another had taken its place, fifty paces from the spot. There too the water was boiling upward.

‘What do you mean . . . fish?’

Dan held up his hand, finger and thumb no more than three inches apart. ‘Fish, small fish. More than you can count.’

Hector was concentrating on a nearby white patch. It was definitely on the move and coming closer to the ship. A moment later he saw that it was formed of myriads of tiny fish, millions upon millions of them, weaving and flashing and churning in a dense mass which occasionally broke the surface of the sea in a white spuming flurry.

‘Anchovies!’ cried Jacques.

There was relieved laughter from all around
Trinity
as the crew realised their error. ‘Resume course!’ ordered Sharpe. He, as much as anyone else, had been misled, but he had noted how the crew had taken matters into their hands in the imagined crisis. They had not consulted him, nor waited for orders. It was time that he found something to distract them.

He sent for the gentleman prisoner, Tomas de Argandona. The Spaniard was much less self-assured now that he had witnessed the shooting of the priest, and Sharpe was waiting in his cabin with a pistol lying on his desk. One glance and Argandona told Sharpe what he wanted to know: the nearest town on the mainland was La Serena and wealthy enough to have five churches and two convents. It lay two miles inland and had neither a garrison nor a defensive wall. A watchtower overlooked the closest anchorage but there was an unguarded landing beach some distance away. Small boats could put men ashore there and it was no more than a three-hour march to reach the town.

The general council held on the open deck the following morning went just as smoothly. The men voted overwhelmingly in favour of a raid.

‘I propose John Watling to lead the attack,’ Sharpe announced after Gifford, the quartermaster, had counted the show of hands. ‘He lands with fifty men and takes the town by surprise. I then bring
Trinity
into the main anchorage and we ferry the plunder aboard.’

Looking on, Hector knew that Sharpe was being as wily as ever. Hector had seen little of Watling since the day they had been in the same canoe during the attack on Panama, but he knew Watling was popular with the men. He had sailed with Morgan and they would follow him without question. He was one of those rigid, grim, old-fashioned Puritans who detested Catholics and observed the Sabbath scrupulously. Also, as Hector had noted, Sharpe had never been able to cheat Watling at dice, because he never gambled.

‘L
OOKS AS THOUGH
we were expected,’ Dan said under his breath. He, Jezreel and Hector had come ashore with Watling’s raiders as soon as there was enough daylight to approach the landing beach safely. Now they were trudging along the dusty coastal track that would lead them to La Serena. Jacques had been left behind with a dozen men to guard the boats.

Hector followed the Miskito’s glance. From a spur of high ground overlooking the track a horseman was watching them. He made no attempt to conceal himself.

‘There goes our chance of surprise,’ Jezreel commented.

Hector scanned the countryside. The day was promising to be overcast and very humid, and the raiders were advancing across rolling scrubland. Occasionally the path dipped into small gullies washed out by rainstorms. It was ideal terrain for an ambush, and there was a faint whiff of smoke in the air. He wondered if the Spaniards who farmed the area were burning their crops to prevent them falling into the hands of the raiders.

Suddenly there were shouts from the head of the column, and someone came running back, urging everyone to close up and look to their weapons. Hector brought his musket off his shoulder, checked that it was loaded and primed and that the ball had not been dislodged from the barrel, then placed the hammer at half-cock. Holding the gun in both hands he walked cautiously forward, Hector and Dan at his side.

The track had been no more than the width of a cart but now it broadened out as it entered a clearing in the scrub. The bushes had been cut back for a distance of some fifty paces, and at the edge of the clearing were several clumps of low trees.

‘Lancers over there, hiding in the woods!’ warned someone.

‘How many?’ called a buccaneer.

‘Don’t know. At least a couple of dozen. Form up in a square and look lively.’

At that moment came the sound of muskets, no more than a dozen shots. There were puffs of smoke from the bushes farthest from the column and Hector heard bullets flying overhead. But the shots went wide and no one was hurt. He dropped on one knee and aimed his gun towards a bush where he could see the haze of musket smoke still hanging above the leaves. He could not make out the man who had fired, and waited for him to show himself. Away to his right he heard several shots as the buccaneers saw their targets.

Hector’s arm was beginning to ache as he tried to keep his gun trained on the suspect bush. The muzzle was wavering, but he was reluctant to waste a shot. It would take a long time to reload, and in that interval the cavalry might show themselves.

Seconds later, the Spanish cavalry burst from the thickets. They crashed out in a wild charge and rode straight for the formation of buccaneers. There must have been about sixty or seventy of the riders mounted on small, light-boned horses. A few riders held pistols which they discharged as they came careering forward, and Hector glimpsed one man brandishing a blunderbuss. But the majority were armed only with twelve-foot lances. Whooping and cheering they galloped forward in a confused mass, hoping to skewer their enemy. Hector swung the muzzle of his gun to aim into the charging body of riders. None of the Spaniards wore uniform or armour. These were not professional troopers, but farmers and cattlemen seeking to protect their property.

He selected his target – a stout, red-faced cavalier astride a dun horse with a white blaze – and pulled the trigger. In the confusion and through the gun smoke he could not see whether his shot went home.

He rose to his feet, placed the butt of his musket on the ground, and plucked a new powder charge from the cartouche box on his belt. Beside him Jezreel was doing the same. Vaguely Hector sensed that the Spaniards’ attack had come to nothing. A scatter of horsemen was galloping back towards the shelter of the woods. One or two bodies had been left lying on the ground, and a riderless horse came tearing past, reins hanging loose, the bucket-shaped saddle empty. Hector charged and primed his gun, selected a musket ball from the bag hanging from his waist and dropped it down the barrel. He was about to tamp the bullet home with his ramrod when, beside him, Jezreel said, ‘No time for that!’ Hector watched his companion lift his musket a few inches off the ground and slam the butt down sharply so the bullet came up hard against the wadding. ‘Saves a few seconds,’ grinned Jezreel, as he dropped back on one knee and brought the weapon to his shoulder. ‘Now let them come at us again.’

But the skirmish was over. The Spaniards had withdrawn. They had lost four men, while not one of Watling’s group had been wounded. ‘Honour satisfied, I think,’ said Jezreel. ‘I feel sorry for them. One of their lancers was carrying nothing more than a sharpened cattle prod.’

The column moved forward, more cautiously now, and two miles farther on arrived at the outskirts of La Serena. It was the first Spanish colonial town that Hector had ever entered, and he was struck by the mathematical precision of the place. Compared to the haphazard jumble of Port Royal with its narrow lanes and dogleg streets, La Serena was a model of careful planning. Broad straight avenues were laid out in an exact grid, every intersection was a precise right angle, each house stood at the same distance from its neighbour, and their frontages matched as if in mirrors. Even the town fountain was located at the geometrical centre of the market square. The two-storey houses were of pale yellow sandstone and most of them had carved wooden balconies, studded double doors and heavy shutters. Occasionally there was a glimpse of a garden or small orchard behind a boundary wall, or the ornate bell tower of a church rising above the red-tiled roofs. Everything was solid, neat and substantial. But what made La Serena seem to be an architect’s concept rather than a living township was that the town was empty. There was not a single living creature in its streets.

At first Watling’s force hesitated at each crossroads, making sure that a street was safe before they ventured across it, and they kept a watch on the balconies and roofs expecting the sudden appearance of an enemy. But there was no movement, no response, no sound. La Serena was totally abandoned by its people, and gradually the buccaneers became more confident. They divided into small groups and dispersed throughout the town, looking for valuables to carry away.