Buccaneer (9 page)

Then he remembered the turtle crawl.

He slipped quietly out of the warehouse doorway and darted back into Sea Lane. Keeping to the shadows he retraced his steps until he reached the high street. There he turned to his right until he came to the empty stalls and tables of the meat market. It would be another two or three hours before the butchers and meat sellers arrived to prepare their booths. Finding his way to the ramp, Hector climbed over the low palisaded fence which surrounded the turtle pen. Removing his shoes and stockings, he walked barefoot down the slope until he felt the sea water on his feet. Treading carefully, he continued forward down the slope. He was in the shallows now, the water up to his knees. He put each foot down gently and slowly, anxious not to make any splashes. Suddenly his foot touched a hard round surface, which moved sluggishly to one side. He had trodden on a resting turtle. Cautiously he pushed forward with his leg until he found a gap between the animal and its neighbour. There must have been at least a dozen large turtles lying in the shallows, close-packed like flat boulders. Most of the creatures ignored him, but one of them rose up with a swirling surge that almost knocked him off his feet. Then he had reached the far end of the turtle pen, where the water was now up to mid-thigh. Floating, half submerged at the far end of the turtle pen was a small dugout canoe. He had noticed it on his previous visit, and supposed that the turtle men used it to bring their catch closer to the ramp, loading the captive turtles on the canoe rather than dragging them through the water.

Carefully Hector lifted one end of the canoe and placed it on the fence. Here the wooden palings projected less than two or three inches above the water. Slowly Hector eased the little canoe out over the fence, sliding it carefully across the obstruction. As soon as the canoe was on the seaward side, Hector clambered over the fence, and hauled himself aboard, straddling the dugout. He paused for a moment to check that the charts in his shirt were still dry, and then he lay back and pulled his legs inboard. The canoe was very small, barely longer than his own body and it fitted him like a narrow coffin. But that suited his plan.

He lay face up, the bilge water soaking into the back of his clothes. Dipping his hands into the warm water of the harbour on either side of his little vessel, he began to paddle gently. Barely moving, the dugout drifted forward, and Hector gently steered it towards the town quays.

He kept close to the shore where the looming bulk of the fort threw a dark shadow. Only someone standing right at the edge of the parapet and looking directly downward would have seen him. There was no warning shout, and as soon as he reached the wharves themselves, he pushed himself in amongst the wooden piles, sliding the little dugout into the space beneath the decking. Twice he thought that his progress was blocked by a cross brace, but he managed to find a way around. The fetid air under the quay stank of ordure, and he heard the rustle and squeak of rats. As he progressed, Hector counted the number of ships’ hulls he passed. The first one was obviously a ship of war, probably the frigate on the Jamaica station, for he heard the stamp and call of a sentry answering the officer of the watch. Then there were two more hulls, large merchant ships, too substantial to belong to Gutteridge who had said the
Jamaica Merchant
was his own vessel and Gutteridge was not a wealthy man. Hector eased past the next five hulls until he came to the last in line, the modest vessel he suspected being the
Jamaica Merchant
. The stem post was worn and chewed, and there was a patched area where the hull had been poorly mended.

Gently Hector eased the little canoe from under the wharf and around the rudder of the sloop. He could hear the gentle slap of wavelets against the timber. With one hand he fended off the hull as he paddled forward until he had brought the canoe to the farther side of the sloop, away from the dock. He sat up carefully and placed a hand in a scupper hole. Silently he blessed the fact that the little sloop was so small that it lay low in the water. Then, taking a deep breath, he stood up in the bottom of the canoe, feeling it tilt alarmingly beneath him. He reached up with his right hand and laid hold of the capping rail. Then he pulled himself aboard. As his foot left the canoe, he gave a gentle kick and it floated away out of sight. With luck it would not be found until much later, and such a worthless craft might not even be worth reporting.

There was no one on deck as he began to worm his way cautiously aft. If the little sloop was anything like
L’Arc-de-Ciel
this was where he would find the captain’s cabin. He still had no idea whether he was aboard the
Jamaica Merchant
or another vessel but now there was no turning back. When he came to the cabin door, he crouched down. Judging that it was another three or four hours until daybreak, he did not wish to alarm whoever was asleep inside. So he waited.

As the time passed, he became aware of soft snoring from within the cabin. That was reassuring. Sometimes a ship captain would choose to spend his nights ashore rather than on his vessel, but Hector had an idea that Captain Gutteridge, if he did not pay his bills, was not welcome in the local boarding houses. The young man squeezed himself more tightly into a corner behind a pile of sacks, hoping that he was not discovered by a sailor before he had a chance to speak with the captain.

The sky began to lighten, and he heard the sounds of the port awakening. There was the cry of gulls, the hawking and spitting of a longshoreman arriving for work, the mutter of voices as dockers began to assemble. He felt, rather than saw, Coxon’s watcher still on the quay, not ten yards away, still scanning the length of the wharves, waiting for him.

The snores behind the cabin door changed in pitch. They stopped, then started again, and Hector heard the sleeper turn over in his bunk. He was nearly awake. Softly Hector tapped on the door. The snores continued. The young man tapped again, and this time the snoring ceased altogether. A short while later he heard the sound of bare feet as someone came to the door, paused, and opened it cautiously. In the half light Hector was relieved to see that it was indeed Captain Gutteridge. He held a cudgel in his hand.

‘May I come in? I have your chart,’ Hector said, speaking in scarcely above a whisper.

Gutteridge looked down at him, and there was a flash of recognition in his eyes. He drew back the door, and Hector slipped inside. The captain closed the door behind him.

Inside the small cabin it was stuffy and airless. It smelled of unwashed clothes, and Gutteridge himself was dishevelled.

‘Here, I have your chart for you,’ Hector repeated, bringing out the charts from his shirt. ‘But Mr Snead will not be pleased.’

Gutteridge reached for the folded sheets, opened them, and gave the maps a quick glance. He looked up, a look of satisfaction on his face. ‘Serve the greedy sot right,’ he said. ‘What do you want in return? We never agreed a price.’

‘Mr Snead has men searching for me.’

Gutteridge gave him a penetrating look. ‘Mr Snead . . . or Mr Snead’s friends?’ he said grimly. ‘The word’s out that there’s an assembly off Negril. Several hard cases are recruiting for some sort of mischief. One of my own men ran off yesterday to volunteer.’

‘So you’ll be needing a replacement,’ said Hector.

‘Yes, but I wouldn’t want to make enemies of that lot.’

‘No one need know. You could conceal me aboard until your ship sails. Then I can make myself useful until we reach Petit Guave. That would be a fair price for the map.’

Gutteridge nodded. ‘All right. We have a bargain.’ He reached down and pulled at a trap door in the cabin floor. ‘This leads down to the aft hold. You can stay down there.’ He reached for an earthenware jug standing on the floor beside his bunk. ‘Take this water with you. It’ll be enough until I can get you some food later in the day.’

Hector sat down on the edge of the open hatch, his legs dangling into the dark space below. He looked up at Gutteridge. ‘And when do you expect to reach Petit Guave?’ he asked.

Gutteridge avoided his eyes and did not answer.

‘You said you were stopping there, to take on brandy,’ Hector reminded him.

Gutteridge was shamefaced. ‘No, I did not say that. I said only that I was thinking of stopping there on the way to Campeachy.’

‘But I have friends in Petit Guave . . . a Miskito and a Frenchman. This is why I want to join you.’

Gutteridge continued to look evasive. ‘Maybe on the return trip . . .’ he said lamely. ‘And if we bring back a good load of logwood, I’ll cut you in for five per cent of the profit.’

He gave Hector a gentle push with his foot, and the young man dropped down into the darkness, suddenly aware that he was unlikely to see either Susanna or Dan and his friends until his voyage to Campeachy was over.

‘C
HRISTMAS
,’ said Captain Gutteridge cheerfully, ‘is the best season to take up logwood.’ He was leaning over the rail as his vessel edged slowly along a low swampy coast. Beyond the swamp a cloudless sky came down to the horizon in a pale harshness that made Hector’s eyes ache. The land was so flat that all he could see was the endless dark green barrier of mangroves on their tangled mud-coloured roots and the feathery top of an occasional palm tree. It had taken less than ten days to sail from Port Royal to the Campeachey coast, and Gutteridge was in good humour. ‘You’ll be back in Jamaica before you know it,’ he was saying. With Hector’s stolen chart in hand, he was carefully tracking their progress. ‘Logwood fetches a hundred pounds a ton on the London market, and with your share of the profit you can begin to make your fortune.’

Everyone in the Caribees, Hector thought to himself, was ready with advice on how to make vast great riches. Earlier it had been Robert Lynch, now it was the threadbare captain of a worn-out trading sloop. He no longer resented Gutteridge for his dishonesty over the mythical trip to Petit Guave. It was three weeks since Hector had last seen Dan, Jacques and the two Laptots, and he had accepted that whatever had happened to them in the French colony it was too late for him to make a difference. As for his yearning to see Susanna again, perhaps the captain was right. The niece of Sir Thomas Lynch would be more impressed with a rich suitor than a penniless admirer. Maybe a lucrative trip to the Campeachy coast would be his first step on the road to making a fortune.

He turned his attention back to the shoreline. ‘The logwood cutters call themselves Bay Men and they live scattered all along the coast,’ Gutteridge told him. ‘Maybe five or six of them live together in a shared camp. They could be anywhere, so we cruise quietly along the shore until they spot us and make a signal. Then we drop anchor and they’ll come out to trade. They’ll exchange their stock of logwood for the goods we bring. Our profit is rarely less than five hundred per cent.’

‘How do we know what they want?’

The captain smiled. ‘They always want the same thing.’

‘But wouldn’t they get a better price if they brought their logwood to Jamaica themselves?’

‘They can’t. Too many of them are wanted by the authorities. They’d be arrested the moment they set foot ashore. Many of them are ex-buccaneers who failed to come in and surrender when there was an amnesty. The rest are knaves and ruffians. They like the independent life, though I can’t say I envy them.’

Now Gutteridge was staring fixedly at a stretch of mangrove. ‘Is that smoke?’ he asked. ‘Or are my eyes playing tricks?’

Hector looked carefully. A light grey haze was rising from the greenery. It might be smoke or a patch of late-morning mist that had not yet cleared. ‘They hide themselves like fugitives. Surely the authorities would not send ships here to arrest them,’ he said.

‘It’s the Spanish they are afraid of,’ Gutteridge explained. ‘The Spaniards claim all of Campeachy as their territory and regard the Bay Men as trespassers who steal the timber. If the Spanish patrols catch the loggers, they are carried off to the cities where they are thrown into prison or auctioned off as slaves.’

He was shading his eyes with his hands and staring long and hard. He gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Yes, that’s smoke all right. We stop here.’

He despatched Hector with a sailor into the ship’s hold with orders to bring up a barrel of rum. Stooping under the deck beams, Hector noted that the cargo space was three-quarters empty. In one corner were stacked a few rolls of cloth. Elsewhere were several cases of hammers, axes, cutlasses, wedges, crowbars. Against a bulkhead several more chests contained blocks of refined sugar. But the bulk of the sloop’s cargo was three dozen barrels and casks of varying sizes, ranging from a little eighteen-gallon rundlet to a massive puncheon. He checked their contents. Perhaps a quarter of them were kegs of gunpowder, the rest held rum, great quantities of it. With the help of his companion, Hector rolled a rum barrel to the companion-way, and rigged a block and tackle to raise the cask on deck. There a rough table had already been made by laying planks across yet more barrels, and was set with loaves of ship’s bread, ham and salted beef.