Galleon (26 page)

A slight movement on the lower slopes of one mountain showed a herd of cattle grazing and, a little higher, he could distinguish goats. Then he saw a village of half a dozen buildings tucked in the lee of a small hill, then another village at the end of a long beach had fishing boats pulled up to the mangroves. A few wisps of smoke, from cooking fires or
boucans
, were the only signs that people lived on the island.

The Dutch here must (apart from the salt) make their living by trading with the other islands: buying and selling goods that were brought out from the Netherlands. The Dutch, he admitted, were the best merchants in the Caribbee. They were also the most successful smugglers to the Spanish Main. Judging from their part of St Martin and from what he had heard about St Eustatius, just in sight as a grey lump on the southern horizon, the Dutch were more interested in trade than farming: on the British and French islands, from Grenada up to Guadeloupe, but especially Barbados and St Kitts and Nevis, sugar and tobacco ruled supreme. And cotton, of course. Three crops which together made men rich and then ruined all too many of them with the hot waters.

There was a dreadful irony, Ned mused, that a man devoted his whole life to his sugar plantation, getting from it wealth every time he sent a ship back to England laden with sugar and barrels of molasses. Nevertheless, that same sugar cane produced rumbullion, with which that same man drank himself insensible every night after passing the day in a drunken haze.

Slowly the drink would make him careless: careless about how his plantation was run, careless of his dress, his manners, his accounts, his honour and his wife. Slowly but quite inexorably his own rumbullion would kill him, and in the process would ruin the estate. In a way it was what had happened to Aurelia’s husband (although he was also a complete scoundrel). A man spent a brief lifetime digging his own grave after fashioning his own shovel.

Gradually Ned could distinguish the low tongue of sand marking the corner of the island and which stretched out to the west like a pointing finger. Somewhere back there they had passed an invisible line which divided the island, because this low area must be French. They had the best beaches and probably they were growing crops behind the mangrove forming a low barrier at the back of the sand.

As the
Griffin
came up to the sand spit Ned could just glimpse the western end of Anguilla seven or eight miles away on the far side of the channel between the islands. With the sheets hardened the
Griffin
came on the wind after rounding the spit and Ned saw Anguilla continuing to stretch away eastward into the Atlantic – and what a difference: that island was flat, reminding him of Romney Marsh and Dungeness.

As he looked at St Martin again he could see that the flat land was slowly beginning to rise again to the eastward, but there was no sign yet of the little town of Marigot – nor of the galleon.

Gradually, as the
Griffin
sailed hard on the wind towards the middle of the channel between the two islands, with the
Phoenix
and the
Peleus
following closely in her wake, Ned could see that the north-western coast of St Martin was scalloped by bays and short headlands, each a little shorter than its neighbour beyond. Sailing eastward, Ned noted, was like peeling skin from an onion: passing one spur revealed yet another bay and yet another spur. Some bays had small sandy beaches with one or two fishing boats dragged up well clear of the water.

By now the
Griffin
was a third of the way across the channel towards Anguilla. Once again Ned looked back at St Martin and across the top of a low spur, where the land dipped, he saw in the distance the white speckles of a small town, obviously Marigot. The galleon was supposed to be aground beyond it. If he could see Marigot (or part of it, anyway) should he be able to see the galleon?

Aurelia asked the question a moment later and, answering instinctively to delay disappointment, Ned said: “Not necessarily – there’s another much smaller bay just beyond the town. Remember, it is called Gallows Bay.”

“Ah yes, the Baie de Potence. Perhaps the people of Marigot don’t want to look out of their doors and see a row of gallows…
Quelle blague
, I can’t make up my mind whether I want the galleon to be here or not! Half of me wants it to be gone so we can go back to Jamaica; the other half wants it here so we can capture it…”

Ned laughed softly and made sure no one else could overhear him. “To be honest, that’s just how I feel. So I shan’t be disappointed whatever we find. Certainly, we’d all be delighted with a good purchase, but in my imagination that damned galleon gets bigger every time I think about it. If it’s as big as I think it is (assuming it’s still there!) our three ships don’t stand a chance, unless we can think of some trick to play on the Dons.”

Ned and Aurelia stood together on the afterdeck looking over the
Griffin
’s starboard quarter while Marigot opened up. As he had guessed, it was in a wide moon-shaped bay. The western half comprised just a rocky headland; then it curved round to a flat beach backed by mangroves: with the glass, Ned could just distinguish small fishing boats hauled up in front of huts, and brown specks on the sea turned out to be small logs cut from palm trees, obviously markers for fish pots.

The bay’s eastern curve ended at the town of Marigot, which was built at the point where the first of the mountain peaks (the north-western end of the ridge running across the island) sloped down to form the flat western corner. A rocky hill, like a redoubt, stuck out in front of the town and a much smaller bay, presumably Gallows, began. On top of the cliffs forming the side of the hill – Ned strained his eye, refocusing the glass – there was a flat platform, a ledge surrounded by a rough stone wall. A gun battery to defend Marigot and its anchorage? From there guns could fire along the low beach to the west, northwards over the shallow Marigot Bay, and also round to the north-east, into Gallows Bay itself.

All right, he told himself, now he had to take a careful look. He had quite deliberately started his inspection from the west, slowly creeping up, as it were, on Marigot. Now he had inspected the low coast and the ridge of peaks coming down in a series of valleys behind Marigot like waves breaking on a beach. He had looked at Marigot, the rocky bastion in front and its gun platform. Now for Gallows Bay itself.

The galleon, bow to the west, her stern to the Atlantic end of the channel, was aground and heeled towards them, to the north. Heeled slightly – just enough to notice, but so little that if she had been afloat the master could have corrected it by shifting some cargo to the other side.

He handed the glass to Aurelia and waved to Lobb, who was standing on the fo’c’sle, watching the colour of the sea ahead of the
Griffin
and making sure there was no reef in their path that the Spanish chartmaker had missed. Lobb was also inspecting the island of Anguilla, noting as best he could from this distance the positions of bays and their usefulness as anchorages. The chart showed the main port was on the north side of Anguilla, simply a village at the head of a deep bay.

When Lobb joined him, Ned pointed at Gallows Bay and Aurelia, having finished her inspection, gave Lobb the glass.

“So it’s still there,” she said to Ned. “And enormous. I’ve never seen such a big ship. But why are all the yards down on deck? The masts look so
bare
, like trees without boughs. And she’s heeled towards us.”

Ned gestured towards Lobb. “Let’s wait and see what explanations John has to offer!”

Lobb finally shut the glass with a snap and turned to Ned, grinning cheerfully. “So she’s still there. Bit o’ luck that. I’ll bet Sir Thomas and Saxby are rubbing their hands, too.”

“What do you make of her?”

“Well, without having taken soundings all round her and judging from what we’ve seen of this channel so far, I reckon she’s stuck there for good. Because she’s heeled towards us we can’t see just how much more water she needs to float – that’ll be obvious once we get a look at her other side – but from the angle of heel I reckon she needs four feet. The rise of tide round here must at the most be a foot at Springs. She probably drove up a foot or more – perhaps at the top of the Springs – before they could furl the sails, and I reckon there’s been some strong northerly winds and swells that have pushed her up another foot or so. I’m sure that’s why all her yards have been sent down – to reduce windage and because the swells were making her roll badly. Rolling gets her further on to the sandbank – her keel acts as a lever, like someone rolling up a beach, using his elbows.

“I see four boats at her bow. She hasn’t got a boat boom rigged, so that’s probably been carried away. Anyway, with this easterly wind she’s got to hang ’em off the bow, not the stern. All her boats – I reckon four are as many as she carries – are there, so presumably all her people are on board. And–” Lobb lifted the perspective glass again, adjusted the focus and had another look at the galleon, “–yes, it’s even clearer as our bearing changes. All her gunports are open – on the upper-deck anyway – on the landward side, and I’m certain the guns are run out.”

“That
could
be just to get weight as far outboard as possible because she’s heeled the other way,” Ned said, not because he thought that was the actual explanation but he was interested to hear Lobb’s reply.

“Even if all those guns are run out it wouldn’t be enough to correct that heel. The master will long ago have shifted over the cargo and ballast, and if that hasn’t done the trick, then running out guns won’t help.”

“Why run them out, then?” Aurelia asked.

“To shoot at the French, I reckon. Or make the French think they will.”

Ned nodded. “That’s what I thought. They can probably train them round just enough to roll a few cannonballs through the streets of Marigot. The eastern side of it, anyway, because the hill with the gun platform on top protects the rest.”

“What about the gun platform shooting at the Spaniards?” Aurelia asked. “Surely the galleon is with range?”

“Within range, yes,” said Ned. “But do the French have any guns up there? When were they last attacked? Who do they have to fear? Even supposing they have two or three guns, when was that wooden platform built?”

Lobb said gloomily: “Or perhaps they’ve done some sums. They have at the most three guns but the Dons have at least a dozen on that side, probably more. The French can’t sink the galleon because she’s already sitting comfortably on the bottom. If she has two or three hundred men on board, all armed with swords, pistols and muskets, they’re probably stronger and far better trained and armed than all the able-bodied Frenchmen in St Martin…”

“Once he knows who we are,” Aurelia said, “the French mayor or Marigot should welcome us with open arms.”

“The situation certainly isn’t as I pictured it,” Ned admitted. “I’d expected we’d end up quarrelling with the French about who was going to capture the galleon. Anyway, we’ll soon see. You can tack in towards Marigot now,” he told Lobb. “We should be able to lay it nicely. We’ll anchor off the town, putting the hill with the battery between us and the galleon!”

By now all the
Griffin
’s seamen were on deck, lining the bulwark on the starboard side, and from the snatches of comment borne along in the wind the men were impressed by the sheer bulk of the galleon, though none seemed particularly overawed. For a moment Ned was irritated: like Lobb and Aurelia, they took the whole thing in their stride.
Mr Yorke will find a way
. That was the damned trouble; everyone expected Mr Yorke to perform miracles. Well, Santiago and Portobelo had been attacks on towns and forts. But what about that galleon? Did they expect him to cast a spell on her so that when they woke up tomorrow morning she would have shrunk to a quarter of her present size?

Ned watched the Governor General carefully. Charles Couperin was much younger than he had expected: perhaps a year or two past thirty, he was slim, with a face that verged on thin but was tanned, strong white teeth (a striking comparison with his deputy, who had a row of teeth protruding from a large mouth like a battered portcullis), a narrow hooked nose and ears which were pointed, adding the hint of foxiness.

Charles Couperin had started off being alarmed by their arrival: he had met them at the crude landing stage, politely wary as Ned introduced Thomas, Saxby and Aurelia. Obviously he had been watching Ned and Thomas more closely than the others. Aurelia in her split skirt and her hair crammed under a broad-brimmed hat which kept the glare of the sun out of her eyes had been taken for a man until Ned introduced her and Couperin, turning with a polite greeting, found himself staring at a beautiful woman who, smiling, answered in perfect French.

Couperin’s residence was a couple of hundred yards back from the jetty, a large, wooden-framed house recently whitewashed. If any women lived there, they had been ordered to keep out of sight. A male black slave dressed in what was intended as a livery modified for the Tropics took their hats, and Couperin led them into a large room which obviously he used as a parlour.

Both he and Ned had surprised each other: Ned had not enunciated his own name very clearly, and it was not until he began to describe their voyage from Jamaica that Couperin suddenly exclaimed, in good English: “The Buccaneers! You are the Admiral of the Brethren of the Coast! And this gentleman – you sir, must be the nephew of the late –
comment dit-on
?”

“Lord Protector,” murmured Aurelia, “Oliver Cromwell.”

“I am,” Thomas admitted, “but that was a matter of chance. Had it been up to me, I’d never have employed him as an ostler, let alone chosen him for an uncle!”

Couperin nodded but was too polite to smile, obviously trying to recall what an “ostler” was.

Finally, when all the formalities were completed, Couperin raised his eyebrows and asked politely: “Do you intend to stay long in St Martin?”