The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (5 page)

“How do we choose?” Smith asked.

Blaine shrugged and wandered off to his cabin, to
his bottle.

In the end they simply selected the biggest – it
seemed obviously fair and liable to cause least trouble among those rejected –
they knew there was a reason for the choice made, that it was not whim or favouritism.
They took twenty-four, having found that many hammocks tucked away in the
purser’s stores – not that they had a purser, as such, the cook doubling for
one. Small boys hanging around the dock – there were always dozens of them
scrounging for the odd penny or crust – were sent to find mothers and sisters
to collect the men’s down payment of five guineas – it might have been a little
too trusting to have sent them off, coins in hand, with instructions to return
first thing in the morning, though most of them would have turned up, they
thought.

Tom was called to audience with Blaine and Smith
later in the day.

“We need a petty officer, as it were, Andrews,”
Blaine announced. “These new boarders will have to be kept under control
somehow. They ain’t seamen, and we haven’t got the wherewithal to train them –
no men, no time – so they can’t be watched – best they should be held together,
as waisters, like marines, you might say. You to lead them, showing them how to
handle their cutlasses properly the while.”

Blaine broke off, poured himself a water-glass of
gin, almost making eye-contact with Tom as he raised it to his lips.

“Thing is, you see, Andrews, what we have in mind,
is for these people to lead, as it were, to be in the front of any boardings,
our original boarders to back them up, following on behind, you might say.”

“So, if there should be any dying, they can do it,
sir?”

Smith winced at such deplorable lack of tact – there
was no need to say such things aloud, he believed.

“Quite, Andrews. No need to waste seamen, after all,
we haven’t got so many to spare.”

Tom shrugged – they were volunteers, freemen, had
begged, in fact, for the opportunity.

“And you want me to lead them sir, to be your petty
officer?”

“Yes, Andrews, exactly. Four shares?”

It was more than fair – the going rate for a leading
hand was three shares, he had been told.

“Thank you, sir. When do we sail?”

They left harbour on an afternoon’s tide, very
publicly in view and heading ostentatiously south down the island chain; with
darkness, they turned their head easterly to gain sea room and then commenced a
series of tacks to take them northabout, eventually to cruise the coast of
Cuba. There was always the chance of information leaking from Antigua –
literally dozens of island boats made port every week, tiny droghers carrying a
few tons of sugar or copra or sweet potatoes from who-knew-where and returning
unchecked and unnoticed to English or Dutch or Danish or French or Spanish
harbours as trade and whim took them – they could not be controlled and they
talked, often casually, without malice or payment, and the word of sailings
spread quite randomly throughout the whole Caribbean. It was better, Blaine
thought, in one of his rare moments of clarity, to act with a little caution.

Unfortunately, despite their care, the waters about
Cuba were empty – in the first week they saw nothing bigger than a fishing
boat, but the boats saw them; ships big enough to be prized simply evaporated
from their view. At the end of eight barren weeks there was no alternative,
they turned their head for Martinique and the islands south – despite the
obvious risks – they had to earn eating money. The ninth week saw them north of
the island and cutting off an eighty ton schooner, very heavily laden and struggling
to claw off the lee shore where they had trapped her at dawn.

“Over-burdened,” Smith commented, “poorly sailed as
well, very amateur, do you see, Tom, tacking a couple of minutes too early – he
could have delayed until he was half a cable closer to the point there. If he
had just shaved it he could have gained a cable on us because we need deeper
water than him. Repeat that and he might gain enough on us to cross our bows
and escape. But he won’t unless he learns his trade
very
quickly
indeed.”

They soon decided that the schooner was thinly
manned as well – strain their eyes as they might they could see no more than
three men handling the sails and a fourth at the tiller. They closed
inexorably, at half a cable called for her surrender; she responded with a
single musket shot.

“Silly bugger! Chaser! Warning shot, if you please.”

Blaine had retired to his cabin, uninterested in a
tiny capture without the prospect of a fight.

The six pounder fired and put its ball through the
schooner’s mainsail which, boomed hard over, ripped itself to shreds in
seconds. Star drew alongside the wallowing coaster and Tom led his boarders
unhurriedly over the rail – three men were not going to fight two dozen, he
believed. Two men were trying to bundle up the mainsail, raised their hands
instantly and stepped back to the rail obediently. Tom sheathed his hanger –
much more elegant than a cutlass he felt, he was proud of his stolen sword –
and walked quietly to the stern, putting a hand out for any weapons they had to
surrender. They looked like father and son he thought and then jumped and
ducked just in time as the younger slashed overhand at him with the knife he
had been holding behind his back; the blade scored his left cheek from eye
socket almost to his mouth instead of burying itself in his throat as had been
intended. He swore, staggered back as the young man stumbled, dragged out the
hanger and lunged forward, straight into his chest, withdrawing and taking a
roundhouse swing at the older man as he, possibly equally surprised, started
forward. There was a great fountain of blood as the old man’s head flopped onto
his shoulder, attached only by a rag of skin.

“Over them!”

The boarders obeyed the shout of the youth at their
head, a tall man of eighteen or so, standing more than six feet, wiry in build
and very fast on his feet, a quick intelligence showing on his tanned face. He
had claimed that his grandfather was Carib, his father a captain in the army,
his mother a free lady with a small farm of her own; his name was Joseph, he
had offered no surname.

The two bodies splashed over the side, followed by
the two captives – there had been no distinction made in the order and they
probably felt better safe than sorry. The blood spread in seconds, followed by
sharks inside a minute; if mistake it was, there was no opportunity to remedy
it. The boarders started a quick search of the small boat while Joseph ripped a
length of cotton from Tom’s shirt and held it to his cheek to stop the bleeding
before dipping a bucket over the side.

“Hold still, Master Tom.”

Joseph did not bother to warn him that it would
hurt, he thought that that was fairly obvious. He washed the wound thoroughly,
then bound a brine-soaked pad across it.

“Leave that a few days, Master Tom, don’t let no
flies or dirt get to it and maybe it don’t rot.”

Tom said nothing – with bandages across one eye and
under his chin to hold the compress it would have been hard to speak anyway.

They both knew that wounds could become gangrenous,
often did in the Tropics, perhaps one in five catching the black rot, fewer at
sea than on land for some reason; the only treatment for the rot was amputation
at the first sniff of corruption, well back from the site of the wound – it was
not a practical cure in the case of a head wound.

The boarders came crowding back, shaking their
heads.

“Nothing boss, nobody else, but they’s two cabins
and both got plenty of blood on the deck.”

Tom followed them below, glad to be moving – it hurt
less to be doing something. He glanced at the stains, spoke thickly to Joseph.

“Three, would you say?”

They nodded and suggested that the four hands had
killed the owner and two others in a mutiny the day before, an act of piracy
for which they might have been hanged by the authorities of any country – hence
the foolish act of the boy with the knife, acting in desperation with nothing
to lose.

Tom agreed, but hardly cared – his face hurt.

They put four seamen aboard the schooner and sent
her back to Antigua – she was too slow, too heavily laden to remain in consort.
They found another pair of island boats, sixty ton yawls, just big enough to
bother with, fees being lower in the Antiguan Court, the next day and a larger
brig on the third; the brig was only part-loaded, told them that she was on
route to a plantation wharf at the north of the island, well clear of the
harbour at St Pierre, where she was contracted to pick up a cargo of about
eighty tons of sugar. There was no battery in the vicinity, no troops at all
within a day’s march, the captain and owner of the brig assured them, and if
they were to offer him the return of his vessel - his sole livelihood, he was a
poor man – he would lead them in, all unsuspecting, to pick up the cargo
themselves. The plantation slaves would act as longshoremen, they were used to
the task – forty strong young men who could load his hold in two hours.

Blaine agreed immediately, intimating to Smith that
when they sailed it might well be possible to take the slaves with them as well
– there had been very few traders from Africa in the last year of war, the
French having control of the Slave Coast, and a fit youngster could fetch two
hundred guineas at the block in English Harbour.

Smith passed the word, observed the avaricious grins
spread through the crew.

“Make the shore in late morning, sir?” Smith
enquired. “Load before dark and lose ourselves at sea in the night, just in
case there should be watchful eyes.”

They spent the night hove-to, all four vessels in
close company, formed a rough line behind the brig and closed the wharf in bright
daylight, innocently open, sailing together for fear of the privateer recently
active in local waters.

A small river came down off the mountains to form
the bay and make a break in the coral; over many years it had built a rich,
flat coastal plain a couple of miles long and extending inland up to half of a
mile, six or seven hundred acres of fertile sugar land, the lower slopes behind
good for food crops for the people – sweet potato mounds covering wide gardens,
pumpkin patches and okra and beans as well. The plantation house, bigger than a
typical English farmhouse but not a true mansion, Tom thought, was sat back
behind and looking over all, a little cooler, able to benefit from any onshore
breezes, probably sheltered by the hillsides from the worst of any tropical
storms; the slave cabins were nearly a quarter of a mile distant from the big
house, well separated. There was a wooden wharf and jetty extending a few yards
out, beyond the shallows, and a pair of warehouses directly behind, open-sided
sheds for the sugar boilers beside them. It looked a prosperous, well-run
place. The brig tied up to the jetty, knowing from past experience that there
was water enough for her; Star bellied up alongside her, decks empty, portlids
closed and hopefully hidden from casual view. The master of the brig started to
uncover his hatches, everything as normal, while overseer and plantation owner
strolled out along the wharf.

Tom’s face was sore and he had a bruised headache;
John Murray was taking his boarders onshore this morning, having volunteered,
with a little nudging from Smith.

The two men from the shore boarded the brig and were
met by a welcoming party of the boarders, pistols shoved in their faces; they
surrendered instantly, having very little choice in the matter, were tied and
dumped below decks for the while. The boarders swarmed onto the jetty, the
freemen heading for the warehouses and the working party of slaves, hustling
them into instant activity. The crewmen from port and starboard watches spread
out, half a dozen led by the Coles brothers making for the big house.

It took just the predicted two hours to empty the
warehouses, the brig’s hold quite full and a few sacks packed onto the pair of
yawls to finish off the take. The slaves were marshalled in the open yard in
front of the godowns, were rapidly sorted into two groups – older men,
children, pregnant and old women to one side; the young, fit and healthy to the
other, thirty-five men and twenty women.

Quick inspection showed that two of the women were
still nursing babies and they were sent back, rejected as unfit for sale; the
rest were pushed aboard the Star, hustled below decks in two groups under armed
guard. Tom was surprised to see the freemen taking their part in the process –
he had thought they might have felt a degree of sympathy for the slaves;
tentative enquiry of Joseph gave the exact opposite – the gulf between the
servile and the free was so great that there could be no fellow-feeling at all,
they were immeasurably superior to the ‘African monkeys’. Tom shrugged, it was
not up to him to judge, he felt.

“Tom, pull the lads back aboard, we can cast off as
soon as everybody’s back.”

Tom waved an acknowledgement to Smith, walked down
the jetty, beckoned to the crewmen he could see. The half dozen led by the
Coles had not returned, must still be at the plantation house; he reported as
much to Smith.