Pirates of the Timestream (22 page)

“Why, Irving!” Jason had grinned. “I thought you were the one lusting for adventure.”

Nesbit had had the grace to look abashed. “I’ve come to understand the classic literary definition of ‘adventure’: someone
else
having a horrible time hundreds of years ago and thousands of miles away.”

“With you sitting in an easy chair, reading about it and sipping a tall cool one,” Jason had finished for him. “But more to the point, Roderick has been able to assure us that the crew of
Satisfaction
got away alive. So for once, adventure should be risk-free.”

Nesbit had had no answer for that. So now Jason and the other eleven volunteers who crewed
Satisfaction
gazed ahead in the dawn as a strong wind out of the lagoon filled their sails and swept their ship and two others alongside it—including
Lilly
, with Morgan aboard—toward the waiting galleons. The smaller vessels,
Rolling-Calf
among them, followed slightly behind.

As they came into range, fiery broadsides belched from the Spanish ships, followed a second later by the crashing report of the guns. Cannonballs whistled overhead, punching through the canvass of the sails. Morgan’s ships returned fire, but the sound of their guns seemed weak and futile against the thunder of the Spanish broadsides. Nevertheless, they continued on down the wind, drawing closer and closer, even though deadly splinters were starting to fly as the Spanish scored hits.

As they approached, Jason allowed himself to feel relief. Despite all their precautions, a black captive who may have had knowledge of what they were about had escaped. (Mondrago was still fulminating about it, declaring that these people were unteachable.) But evidently the escapee hadn’t made it to the Spanish fleet, or if he had his warning had gone unheeded.

“It’s time!” Jason called out to the others as the Spanish flagship loomed ahead. No further steering was needed now; the wind could do it all. “Abandon ship!”

He scurried across the deck, amid the smell of tar, pitch and brimstone smeared over palm leaves. Men ran about, lighting the fuses of the “cannons”—logs filled with gunpowder—that jutted from the new gunports. Other men emerged from the hold, where the shipwrights had removed all superfluous partitions. They waited just long enough to hurl grappling hooks at the galleon
Satisfaction
was now almost touching, catching its rigging. Then, one by one, everyone jumped over the stern, out of sight of the Spaniards. Jason paused a second, smiling, and wished godspeed to the “crewmen” who were remaining aboard—the ones made out of combustible materials on wooden frames, with soft
montera
hats atop their heads and cutlasses propped at their sides. Then he went over the side into the water and swam to one of the canoes that
Satisfaction
had been towing at a distance.

Behind him, the two ships collided.

* * *

Don Alonzo watched through his spyglass with growing amazement as the pirate ships continued to bear down on
Magdalena
, making no attempt to draw away. His gunners had repeatedly lowered the muzzles of their guns as the range closed, and now they were firing point-blank. He could see the cutlass-wielding figures aboard Morgan’s new flagship, and even though they were heretics he had to admire their unmoving steadiness under fire. Yes, he had been right; they were going for a boarding action.

On and on the ship came, propelled by the stiff morning wind, heedless of the cannonade, until with a grinding crash it rammed into
Magdalena
, entangling the two ships’ rigging with the help of grappling hooks
.
The Spanish infantry, drilled to a high pitch of anticipation, didn’t wait for the pirates to board but swarmed forward with a shout, scrambling over the side onto the pirate ship’s deck . . . where they stood, bewildered.

Something is wrong
, thought Don Alonzo, watching from the poop.
Why aren’t they fighting?
He saw one of his men step up to a motionless pirate and tap his cutlass, which fell to the deck.

At that moment, the wind blew the smell of tar over palm leaves into his nostrils.

The day before, one of the informants from shore—a black who had escaped from captivity—had claimed that Morgan wasn’t really turning the Cuban merchantman into his new flagship. But when he had told Don Alonzo what the pirates
were
doing to it, the admiral had scoffed, for what he had described involved a specialized branch of naval expertise, surely beyond the capabilities of this scruffy rabble of pirates.

Now he remembered what that black man had told him. And with the recollection came the most dreaded word anyone could hear in the naval warfare of the Age of Sail:
Fireship!

Just as the word flashed through his brain, Hell erupted.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Spanish boarders were literally blown aloft as
Satisfaction
went up in a veritable fireball, and a shower of flaming debris rained down into
Magdalena
’s flammable sails and rigging. The canvas sails and fat-covered ropes caught fire immediately, and the strong south wind swept the conflagration over the decks and up the masts. Fleeing, screaming men were wrapped in flame before they could jump overboard.

“Fight the fires!” roared Don Alonzo, who had ordered barrels of water placed on the decks for this very purpose. “Cut the grappling lines and push off! Throw planks overboard for the men in the water!”

But his orders could not be carried out in the roaring inferno that
Magdalena
was swiftly becoming. As the fire began to engulf the stern, the flag captain turned to him. “
Almirante
, you must abandon ship before you are trapped by the flames! I will have a rope ladder lowered for you.”

Heartsick, Don Alonzo nodded.

* * *

From their canoe, Jason and the men with him watched the incredible Spanish debacle unfold as the sun rose higher in the smoky sky.

They saw the burning
Magdalena
go down bow-first in a hiss of steam, and as she did, chaos and confusion infected the rest of the Spanish squadron.
Soledad
, the smallest Spanish ship, tried desperately to break off from the vicinity of the fire, but her rigging grew so tangled that she soon ceased to be navigable. Unable to maneuver, she was soon swarmed by buccaneer craft led by
Lilly
and a wave of boarders led by Morgan himself poured up her sides as her panic-stricken crew jumped overboard. The third galleon,
San Luis
, headed for the protection of the fort’s guns, but ran aground. Her crew began to frantically offload as much of her provisions and munitions as possible.

And, in the same direction, they saw a longboat making for San Carlos, carrying a passenger wearing a splendid, if bedraggled and soot-stained cloak.

“It must be the Spanish admiral!” someone in another canoe shouted. “After him!”

Jason and the others grasped their paddles and started in pursuit. But the longboat had too great a head start, and the canoes had to pull away as Don Alonzo stumbled ashore on the beach under the fortress walls. Shortly afterwards, smoke began to rise from
San Luis.

* * *

“Yes,
Almirante,
” reported the captain of
San Luis
, “I scuttled my ship and burned her down to the waterline.”

“Good,” said Don Alonzo, looking out from the fort’s battlements. “That’s one ship Morgan won’t have.” He could barely force the words out through a throat choked with fury as he saw Morgan’s flag flying from
Soledad
. He also saw pirate boats clustered where
Magdalena
had sunk, and divers plunging down into the waters to retrieve loot from the wreck.

By a supreme effort of will, he forced both rage and depression from his mind, clearing it for what must now be done. He turned and looked down into a courtyard crowded with the crew of
San Luis
and whatever survivors of the other two ships as had made it ashore, as well as with the garrison. All were milling about, stunned.

“We must get these men in order immediately,” he told the fort’s castellan, “and prepare for an attack. Morgan will undoubtedly mount one as soon as he is able, for he knows he must take this fort.” He drew himself up and gazed sternly at the semicircle of dejected officers before him. When he spoke, it was as though they heard the ringing voice of the old Spain, the Spain of the
Reconquista.
“Remember:
we still have Morgan trapped!
He still must pass through this channel, which our guns command. The messengers we sent out a week ago must have reached Mérida and Caracas and their other destinations, which means that ships and men are on their way. All we have to do is keep Morgan bottled up until they arrive. Time is on our side, gentlemen!”

* * *

“Time is on their side,” Henry Morgan admitted that night as he and his captains met under the stars on the quarterdeck of
Soledad.
(“I’ve had a lot of flagships lately,” he had quipped.) Elsewhere, the buccaneers were celebrating the miraculous annihilation of the Armada de Barlovento
.
But here the mood was, if not precisely sober—there was too much rum flowing for that—certainly somewhat subdued.

“We’ve seen that storming the fort from the beach isn’t going to work,” he continued. “Isn’t that right, Jason?”

“Aye, captain.” Jason had been part of a landing force Morgan had put ashore late that very afternoon, hoping to ride the momentum of his incredible victory at sea and take the fort while its defenders were still demoralized. “The Spanish admiral must have put heart into that garrison. We tried to rush the walls at dusk. But we could do nothing, with only muskets and fire-balls.” The latter, the primitive grenades of the period, were favorite pirate weapons. But they had proven ineffectual against the blistering fire from walls that this time were fully manned and resupplied with artillery. “We lost thirty men dead and a lot more wounded before returning to the ships.”

“Well,” said Zenobia, “we’ll have to do something about that fort. You know damned well that the Spanish admiral sent for reinforcements as soon as he got here. We’ve got to leave before they arrive, and those guns would play havoc with us as we tried to run the channel.”

“True,” Morgan nodded, with a thoughtful swallow of rum. “But on the other hand, we have allies.”

“We do?” Roche Braziliano’s scowl deepened with perplexity. “Who?”

“Why, the good citizens of Maracaibo!” Morgan grinned. “They want us gone as soon as possible, with their city unburned. That means their interests are closer to ours than to Don Alonzo’s. I’ll send him a letter offering to leave the town standing in exchange for free passage out.”

“He won’t accept it,” one of the captains predicted. “He’d see a dozen Maracaibos burned rather than let us escape.”

“Of course he won’t. But at the same time I’ll tell the locals we’ll release the prisoners, spare the city and leave in exchange for a ransom. They’ll pay it—especially after I let them bargain me down a bit. But after they do, I’ll tell them that we
can’t
leave with the fortress guns commanding the channel, and that they have to send representatives to Don Alonzo and persuade him to let us go. To encourage them to do their utmost, I’ll keep their fellow townspeople as hostages.”

Zenobia’s teeth flashed white against her dark face in the light of the ship’s lanterns. “Very clever, Captain. Do you think it will work?”

“It’s worth a try.” Morgan finished his rum. “And now I have a guest awaiting me in the cabin: the pilot of
Magdalena
. We fished him out of the water.”

“Throw him back in,” grunted Roche Braziliano. “With his big toes tied together.”

“That would hardly be the act of a gentleman,” declared Morgan with a loftiness Jason thought he carried off surprisingly well. “I am treating him as an honored prisoner of war. And besides,” he continued, with a slowly spreading smile, “he’s so grateful for—and probably surprised by—his generous treatment that he’s proving a useful source of information on various things I need to know . . . such as how Don Alonzo de Campos y Espinosa’s mind works.”

* * *

The delegation of Maracaibo’s leading citizens cringed before Don Alonzo’s wrath.

“You contemptible, pusillanimous cowards!” the admiral roared, standing up behind his desk in the castellan’s office and leaning forward as though to intensify his glare. “You make me ashamed to call myself a Spaniard! Instead of standing and fighting when these pirates first arrived, you fled for your miserable lives. And now you’ve groveled at Morgan’s feet, paying the ransom he demands for sparing your wretched town.”

“Oh, no,
Almirante,
” one merchant denied timidly. “Rest assured, we didn’t pay the ransom he wanted. We got him down from thirty thousand pieces of eight to only twenty thousand. Alas, he wouldn’t budge on the five hundred beeves, but—”

“Silence, clown! I don’t want to hear about the haggling of greasy hucksters. In the end, you paid. And now you come crawling to me, begging me to forget my duty and let Morgan sail away with his loot. Your degradation is so complete that you’re willing to act as this heretic pirate’s spokesmen!”

“No,
Almirante
,” protested one man, bolder than the rest. “We speak not for Morgan but for our families and friends he is holding as hostages. They will be at Morgan’s mercy if you do not let his fleet go unmolested.”

“He can hang the lot for all I care! You have no one but your own craven selves to blame. Creep back to Morgan and tell him that I know my duty to my king, and that no threats to unworthy subjects like you will prevent me for carrying it out. Now get out of my sight! You disgust me.”

As the soldiers hustled the delegation out, Don Alonzo got his breathing under control and turned to the castellan. “Are my orders concerning the landward approaches to the fort being carried out?”

“Yes,
Almirante
. New trenches and earthworks have been prepared in those positions, and procedures for moving our artillery there on short notice have been put in place and practiced.”

“Good. We’ve repulsed Morgan when he attacked from the sea; he won’t try that again. And remember what happened at Portobello. He put his men ashore with those canoes of his and took the great fortresses guarding that city by assault from the land side, where they were most vulnerable. It’s a weakness of all our works, including this one—they’re designed to control sea approaches. But I don’t intend for that to happen here.”

“It won’t,
Almirante,
” the castellan stated emphatically. “You have my word: this fort will not be taken by a land assault.”

He turned out to be right.

* * *

“Well,” said Henry Morgan philosophically to the group on
Soledad
’s quarterdeck, “it was worth a try. And the time hasn’t been wasted. We’ve finished getting all we can out of
Magdalena.
” His eyes held an avaricious gleam. “Fifteen or twenty thousand pieces of eight—it’s hard to say exactly, since some of it was melted into globs of silver by the fire.” The gleam died, and he gave a disappointed headshake. “According to my friend the pilot, there was a total of
forty
thousand aboard. But that’s all the divers can reach.”

Mondrago leaned over and whispered in Jason’s ear. “He’s being awfully nonchalant for somebody who’s still bottled up here.”

“And who knows that time is against him,” Jason whispered back. “He must have something up his sleeve.”

Grenfell spoke hesitantly. “I think I’m beginning to remember . . .” But his voice trailed vaguely off.

“So what does that bring our total up to?” Zenobia wanted to know.

“Ah, yes!” Morgan’s eyes lit up again. “Counting that and also the ransom from the townspeople, it comes to at least 250,000 pieces of eight.” There was a collective gasp. “And that’s just the money and jewels; it doesn’t count the merchandise—of which there’s quite a lot—and the slaves.”

“That’s more than we got at Portobello,” someone breathed in a tone of what could only be called reverence.

“And more than L’Ollonais got when he came here,” rumbled Roche Braziliano, almost forgetting to scowl. Everyone else was speechless. This was a haul of legendary proportions.

“We’ll make the division now,” Morgan continued. “Each ship will carry its own crew’s share. Putting it all aboard one ship would be risky.” He didn’t elaborate on whether the risk was of storms at sea or of the one ship’s captain getting funny ideas.

Jason could keep silent no longer. “Ah, Captain . . . I hate to mention it, but this treasure won’t do us much good unless we can get home with it.” There was a general muttering as everyone came down from the clouds of cupidity with a bump.

“Oh, that,” said Morgan, as though voicing an afterthought with a Welsh lilt. “Well, I think I might have an idea. You see, I’ve been talking to the Spanish pilot about Don Alonzo. He’s told me quite a lot. For example, he’s confirmed that Don Alonzo never had any intention of honoring his promise of free passage.” He shook his head sadly, as though disillusioned to the core of his sensitive soul by the depths of human perfidy. “Anyway, between things he’s told me, and what our scouting boats have reported about the work the Spaniards have been doing on the landward side of the fort, it’s clear to me that they expect us to attack from that direction, the way we did at Portobello.”

“Makes sense,” nodded Zenobia. “Too bad their artillery would blow us to bloody rags.”

“Still,” Morgan mused, “it seems a shame to disappoint them. Here’s my plan . . .”

As he spoke, Grenfell’s eyes cleared and he began nodding excitedly.

* * *

Don Alonzo stood on the battlements in the afternoon sun and watched the parade of canoes through his spyglass.

The pirate fleet lay beyond gunshot, and there its ships loaded men into canoes—about twenty men per canoe. Then the canoes were rowed ashore to a spot toward the island’s far end, beyond a line of mangroves. Then they would return to the ships—slowly, for on the return trip they carried only a couple of oarsmen—to pick up another load of men. It had been going on for hours. Now it appeared that the last of the canoes were headed back to the ships.

“Have you kept a tally of canoes and men as I instructed?” Don Alonzo demanded of the castellan.

“I have,
Almirante.
The total number of men who have gone ashore and remained there comes to more than half of Morgan’s entire force.”

“And now they wait concealed behind those mangroves, from which they will undoubtedly emerge and attack us tonight,” said Don Alonzo with a satisfied nod, pleased at the confirmation of his prediction. “But we are ready for them.”

“Indeed,
Almirante.
” The two men looked down over the parapet, where the last of the great cannon, on its cumbersome four-wheeled garrison carriage, was being laboriously trundled along the ramp prepared for the purpose, and emplaced in its new position on the landward earthworks, to join all its fellows. It had been an exhausting task, and the men now rested beside their guns. Behind them were neat stacks of ammunition—not the ship-smashing round shot, but case shot whose spreading pattern of musket balls and scrap metal could shred whole squads of advancing infantry at short range. Companies of musketeers also rested at their stations along the line of fortifications. All that firepower was perfectly positioned to cover the cleared area that the attackers must cross.