Caribbean (42 page)

“The slaves I’ve known,” Will said, “aren’t stupid. Get enough of them in one place, they’ll begin to fight for their rights.” Anticipating what that would mean, he told McFee one afternoon: “I’d not want to live on a Barbados like that,” and McFee, looking about before he spoke, said: “I’m not so happy living on this one.”

That exchange of two short sentences set in motion a chain of events which would carry the two conspirators far beyond what they contemplated when the more-or-less careless words were spoken, for McFee began to study carefully the operation of the Tatum estates and Will began hanging around the Bridgetown waterfront, noticing with a practiced mariner’s eye all sorts of developments and particularly which ships were coming from where, and it was as a result of this process that he renewed his knowledge of the Tortuga that Captain Brongersma had spoken about with such enthusiasm. It was a unique island, sailors said, lying close to the northwest shore of the great Spanish island Hispaniola, which Columbus had settled and ruled.

“It’s practically French,” said one grizzled veteran who knew it well. “Not half as large as Barbados. Supposed to belong to Spain, which tried to recapture it from time to time. But the French, they’re pirates, really … call themselves buccaneers.
Buccaneer
is how we English pronounce it. The French word is
boucanier
. Four years I served with them in Tortuga. Very excitin’ I can tell you. But as I was sayin’, these wild men, and they’re wilder than anything you see on Barbados … believe me, they live on two things. Huntin’ down small Spanish ships, killin’ the crew and stealin’ the vessel and whatever’s inside. And goin’ over to the forests on Hispaniola and killin’ wild hogs. They bring the meat back, cut it in strips, rub in salt and spices and roast it very slowly over a low fire … maybe four days.
Boucan
they call it, so that makes ’em
boucaniers
. They sell the meat for a tidy profit to Dutch and English privateers workin’ those waters against the Spaniards.”

“Do they really capture Spanish ships?” Tatum asked, and his ears pricked up when the old man said: “Many. You see, the hatred the buccaneers have for Spain and anything Spanish goes back to 1638 when there was a big
boucanier
settlement on Tortuga.” (He used the two versions of the word interchangeably, but he obviously preferred the latter.) “Spanish officials in Cartagena sent a big force up to Tortuga, and their savage soldiers killed every
boucanier
on the little island—men, women, children, even the dogs. And as I may have told you, the one thing in this world a
boucanier
loves is his huntin’ dogs. They can smell a wild boar at two miles. But hundreds of us were absent, huntin’ on Hispaniola, and when we sailed back the few miles to Tortuga and saw our friends’ bodies still unburied, we swore that before we died …”

“How do you join the buccaneers?” Will asked, and the old fellow said: “You just go there. Steal yourself a ship of some kind, sail to Hispaniola, avoid the Spanish on the south side of the island, and coast around to the northwest. You don’t need no papers to join. Frenchmen come, Indians from Honduras, Dutchmen who’ve fought with their captains and maybe murdered them and taken their ships, Englishmen, half a dozen from the American colonies …” The man would have said a great deal more, but Will had heard enough, and that night he began talking seriously with Angus McFee.

In daytime he did his best to look after the interests of his sister, noting with anxiety that her health was failing rapidly, and he discussed the matter with Ned, who said: “Mum knows. Told me she wasn’t long for this world.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” and the boy said: “She swore me to secrecy. Said you had your own problems.”

“We must do something for her,” and in a series of swift, loving moves he sold the store to a young couple just out from England, placed the money in the care of a trustworthy local businessman, added to it all his own savings, moved Nell into the home of a neighbor who could care for her, and even went to see Isaac to beg him to contribute to his sister’s upkeep. But with Lady Clarissa sitting primly beside him, Sir Isaac said: “She went her way, I went mine,” implying by his smug look that Will, too, seemed to have gone his own way, a dreadfully wrong way.

“But, Isaac, she’s dying. I can see it in her eyes. She’s worked herself to death,” and Isaac said: “That rambunctious boy of hers should get a job and not fool around that silly store.”

“The store’s been sold,” and Clarissa said: “Well, then she does have some money,” and Will simply looked at the two misers, the skin around his scar flushing with the hatred he felt for them, and there was nothing more he cared to say. Stopping by McFee’s hut as he started back to town, he said with unhesitating resolve: “The plan we talked about the other night is right. We go.”

Sir Isaac, like many of the wealthier plantation owners, had a ship called
Loyal Forever
, in boastful memory of the defense of King Charles during the Barbadian troubles of 1649–1652. It was not large, for it was intended merely for the interisland trade with places like Antigua and for Carib hunting on All Saints, but it was sturdy, having been built by the best shipwrights in Amsterdam and brought by Dutch sailors to Barbados with a hold full of slaves. Sir Isaac had bought the ship, its charts and slaves in one big deal on which he had already made a huge profit, and this would double when he sold the
Loyal Forever
to some other planter about to enlarge his plantation.

In a series of secret meetings, McFee, Tatum, two other abused indentured servants, three trusted slaves of great ability and the boy Ned discussed plans for capturing the
Loyal Forever
, persuading as many of the crew as possible to remain on the ship, and sailing it to Tortuga to join the buccaneers. With a sharp needle Will punctured the left forefingers of his seven co-conspirators and made them dab a sheet of paper on which nothing had been written: “Your oath. If you betray us with even one word …” and he drew his own bloody forefinger across his throat.

When Will and Ned saw from their room ashore a signal that the ship had been taken with no gunfire, they walked down to the wharf to board her, moving slowly lest they attract attention. But at the last moment Ned broke away and ran back to the neighbor’s house in which Nell was staying. Rushing into the small room, he embraced his rapidly failing mother and whispered: “Mum, I’m off for a buccaneer! Me and Uncle Will.” Looking up at her son, so bright and promising, she said softly: “Maybe it’s better. Not much here for you two.” And she kissed him for the last time. “Be careful.” Leaving the house with never a backward glance, the young fellow strolled nonchalantly down to the stolen ship, trying to look like an indifferent old seaman.

It was more than a thousand miles from Barbados to Tortuga, and the would-be buccaneers chose what they judged to be the route least
likely to throw them into contact with other ships: through the St. Vincent passage and into the Caribbean proper, then northwest to Mona Passage between the Spanish islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, then along the north coast of the latter island, and into the channel that separated it from Tortuga.

During the first days of the trip, which took about three weeks, it was obvious that whereas McFee was a brave man and intelligent, he was no sea captain, but no one else wanted the job. Fortunately, Tatum and others aboard were seasoned sailors, and in Ned Pennyfeather, Will had an aide who had learned from a Dutchman how to use a remarkable but still primitive instrument, the astrolabe, for checking latitude whenever the sun was visible at noon or the North Star at night. They had left Barbados at near thirteen degrees and climbed the ladder of the latitudes to past twenty, and Ned delighted in telling Captain McFee the ship’s position twice each day: “Sixteen degrees latitude North and on course,” and so on. But since no ship at that time had a reliable way of determining longitude, he never really knew exactly where the
Loyal Forever
was. When they had made their way far enough north to be reasonably sure they had passed Hispaniola, they headed due west toward Tortuga.

As they entered the channel and Will saw how small Tortuga was, how low and unimpressive its hills, he had a moment of disbelief: How could this place be the wonderful center Brongersma told me about? And as McFee brought the
Loyal Forever
to its anchorage among nine or ten other ships, Ned said: “None of these ships are as big as even the small Dutch traders that sneak into Barbados.”

But when they went ashore, they saw a strange sight. This vital center of the Caribbean was not a town but a haphazard collection of houses, each duplicating the owner’s memories of his homeland: a famous Dutch pirate had used his enormous wealth to create a replica of his childhood home in Holland, complete with dormer windows and a windmill; an Englishman who would later hang at Tyburn had built himself a Devon cottage with a fenced-in garden and a flower bed; a Spaniard had a house of tile; but it was the French, who predominated, who contributed the wildest assortment of miniature chalets and country cottages.

But most of the living places were shacks of the meanest sort, with many tents and canvas lean-tos propped against trees, and there were trading spots but no real stores. Wherever one looked, there was an easy juxtaposition of considerable wealth and abject poverty.
Since a pirate’s standing depended upon his most recent capture at sea, and since most had gone months or even years without having taken a prize, Tortuga was not a handsome place.

But every dwelling did have two features: an open hearth topped by an iron spit for the slow smoking of
boucan
, and at least one dog, more often two or three. Those were the hallmarks of Tortuga.

When Captain McFee’s mutineers from Barbados anchored their
Loyal Forever
close to the shore of this small, wild island, none realized that this had once been part of the area governed by Christopher Columbus, for Tortuga had always been an appendage to Hispaniola and still was. Santo Domingo, the ancient capital and still a major city, lay far away, two hundred and thirty miles, but it faced the Caribbean while Tortuga had to battle Atlantic storms. That was fitting, for it was a tempestuous, unruly place, its chaotic appearance explained by the fact that at irregular intervals some Spanish governor in Cartagena would bellow: “Enough of those damned pirates in Tortuga preying on our ships. Destroy the place.” Then Spanish soldiers in helmets, brought north by a small fleet, would storm ashore, burn all the houses to the ground, kill everyone including the children and dogs, and leave only ashes. Tortuga would then lie desolated for a while, but soon a new gang of pirates would come ashore, sort through the still-warm ashes, and start to build their own preposterous dwellings.

When the Barbados men got there they found the island jammed with outlaws who had grudgingly conceded that they lived most easily if they submitted themselves to a rough form of government. They had even agreed upon a governor, of sorts, a Frenchman elected by his fellow buccaneers.

Tortuga, the island shaped like a turtle, hence its name, was a place of excitement and promise, and Ned was proud to be one of the youngest buccaneers. And because his uncle Will had insisted that Ned learn French and Spanish, he was enlisted in important negotiations regarding the
Loyal Forever
.

Two big and terrifying French pirates had services to offer which McFee and his Englishmen could not ignore, for as the two Frenchmen explained: “If you stole your ship standing out there, English patrols will be looking for you. If they catch you, the noose. Because you are now technically pirates.”

As McFee and Tatum listened to this blunt statement, Ned saw them wince, but then the Frenchmen made their offer: “We’ll take your ship and have our carpenters …”

McFee broke in: “Don’t you do the work?” and the Frenchmen laughed: “We arrange. Last Spanish ship we captured, we got ourselves eight experienced carpenters. We keep them as our slaves, you might say, but we do feed them well.” He summoned the carpenters, who exploded in a flurry of Spanish as they described how they would tear the
Loyal Forever
apart and rebuild it so it could never be identified.

“And,” said the Frenchmen, like thoughtful bankers concluding a loan, “we take your boat and give you ours, the one you see anchored over there. Not quite as big as yours, but not so vulnerable, either.”

The deal was arranged, and by midafternoon the Spanish carpenters were destroying practically everything on the
Loyal Forever
that might betray its origin, and building in its place a superstructure which created a new silhouette. After a week of intense labor the new ship looked longer, narrower, and had two masts instead of one. The ship they were receiving in exchange had also been sharply modified, and Ned wondered who had owned it before. As to its name, McFee asked the Spanish workmen to carve him a board to attach to the stern, and when it was in place, Ned asked: “What’s
Glen Affric
?” McFee told him: “A glen in Scotland where the angels sing.” Ned noted with satisfaction that their new ship had portholes for eight small cannon. “This
Glen Affric
will do some singing, too,” he predicted.

But the dream of a quick dash north to intercept a lone Spanish bullion ship on its way to Sevilla was rudely ended when McFee brought disappointing news: “No action till the Spanish ships go past in May. They want us to go ashore on Hispaniola to hunt wild boar,” and Ned was given a very long gun with a spadelike butt to jam against his shoulder, a high pointed cap to protect him from the blazing sun, a ration of tobacco and a big, rangy black female hunting dog that had belonged to a French buccaneer killed during a boarding fight. With this gear, plus a bowl made from half a coconut and a blanket rolled into a tube whose ends he tied about his waist, he was ready for the forests of Hispaniola, and when a small boat placed him and ten others on the shore opposite Tortuga, he was prepared for his initiation into the arcane rites of the buccaneer.