Caribbee

by Thomas Hoover

  *

  Rain now, all about them, engulfing them, the dense Caribbean torrent that erases the edge between earth, sky, and sea. Winston felt as though they were swimming in it, the gusts wet against his face, soaking through his leather jerkin, awash in his boots. The earth seemed caught in a vast ephemeral river which oscillated like a pendulum between ocean and sky. In the Caribbees this water from the skies was different from anywhere else he had ever known. The heavens, like a brooding deity, first scorched the islands with a white-hot sun, then purged the heat with warm, remorseless tears.

  Why had he come back to Oistins? To chance his life once more in the service of liberty? The very thought brought a wry smile. He now realized there would never be liberty in this slave-owning corner of the Americas. Too much wealth was at stake for England to let go of this shiny new coin in Cromwell's exchequer. The Puritans who ruled England would keep Barbados at any cost, and they would see to it that slavery stayed.

  No. Coming back now was a personal point. Principle. If you'd go back on your word, there was little else you wouldn't scruple to do as well.

  Maybe freedom didn't have a chance here, but you fought the fight you were given. You didn't betray your cause, the way Anthony Walrond had.

  "There look to be lighted linstocks up there, Cap'n. They're ready." Edwin Spurre nodded toward the tall outline of the breastwork up ahead. It was a heavy brick fortification designed to protect the gun emplacements against cannon fire from the sea. The flicker of lantern light revealed that the cannon had been rolled around, directed back toward the roadway, in open view.

  "We've got to see those linstocks are never used." He paused and motioned for the men to circle around him. Their flintlocks were still swathed in oilcloth. "We need to give them a little surprise, masters. So hold your fire as long as you can. Anyway, we're apt to need every musket if the Windwards realize we're there and try to counterattack."

  "Do you really think we can get up there, Cap'n?" Dick Hawkins carefully set down a large brown sack holding spikes, hammers, and grapples—the last used for boarding vessels at sea. "It's damned high."

  "We're going to have to circle around and try taking it from the sea side, which is even higher. But that way they won't see us. Also, we can't have bandoliers rattling, so we've got to leave them here. Just take a couple of charge-holders in each pocket. There'll not be time for more anyway." He turned and examined the heavy brick of the breastwork. "Now look lively. Before they spot us."

  Hawkins silently began lifting out the grapples—heavy barbed hooks that had been swathed with sailcloth so they would land soundlessly, each with fifty feet of line. Winston picked one up and checked the wrapping on the prongs. Would it catch and hold? Maybe between the raised battle­ments.

  He watched as Hawkins passed the other grapples among the men, eighteen of them all together. Then they moved on through the night, circling around toward the seaward wall of the fortification.

  Behind them the first contingent of volunteers from the Barbados militia waited in the shadows. As soon as the gun­ners were overpowered by Winston's men, they would ad­vance and help hold the breastwork while the guns were being spiked.

  In the rainy dark neither Winston nor his Seamen noticed the small band of men, skin black as the night, who now edged forward silently through the shadows behind them.

  They had arrived at the Defiance earlier that evening, only to discover it afloat, several yards at sea. Then they had watched in dismay as Winston led a band of seamen ashore in longboats, carrying the very muskets they had come to procure. Could it be the guns were already primed and ready to fire?

  Prudently Atiba had insisted they hold back. They had followed through the rain, biding their time all the five-mile trek to Oistins. Then they had waited patiently while Winston held council with the branco chiefs. Finally they had seen the muskets being primed . . . which meant they could have been safely seized all along!

  But now time was running out. How to take the guns? It must be done quickly, while there still was dark to cover their escape into hiding. Atiba watched as Winston and the men quietly positioned themselves along the seaward side of the breastwork and began uncoiling the lines of their grapples. Suddenly he sensed what was to happen next.

  Perhaps now there was a way to get the guns after all. . . .

  "Wait. And be ready." He motioned the men back into the shadows of a palm grove. Then he darted through the rain.

  Winston was circling the first grapple above his head, intended for the copestone along the top of the breastwork, when he heard a quiet Portuguese whisper at his ear.

  "You will not succeed, senhor. The Ingles will hear your hooks when they strike against the stone."

  "What the pox!" He whirled to see a tall black man stand­ing behind him, a machete in his hand.

  "A life for a life, senhor. Was that not what you said?" Atiba glanced around him. The seamen stared in wordless astonishment. "Do you wish to seize the great guns atop this fortress? Then let my men do it for you. This is best done the Yoruba way."

  "Where the hell did you come from?" Winston's whisper was almost drowned in the rain.

  "From out of the dark. Remember, my skin is black. Sometimes that is an advantage, even on an island owned by the white Ingles."

  "Briggs will kill you if he catches you here."

  Atiba laughed. "I could have killed him tonight, but I chose to wait. I want to do it the Ingles way. With a musket." He slipped the machete into his waistwrap. "I have come to make a trade."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look around you." Atiba turned and gestured. Out of the palms emerged a menacing line of black men, all carrying cane machetes. "My men are here. We could kill all of you now, senhor, and simply take your muskets. But you once treated me as a brother, so I will barter with you fairly, as though today were market day in Ife. I and my men will seize this branco fortress and make it an offering of friendship to you—rather than watch you be killed trying to take it your­self—in trade for these guns." He smiled grimly. "A life for a life, do you recall?"

  "The revolt you started is as good as finished, just like I warned you would happen." Winston peered through the rain. "You won't be needing any muskets now."

  "Perhaps it is over. But we will not die as slaves. We will die as Yoruba. And many branco will die with us."

  "Not with my flintlocks, they won't." Winston examined him and noticed a dark stain of blood down his shoulder.

  Atiba drew out his machete again and motioned the other men forward. "Then see what happens when we use these instead." He turned the machete in his hand. "It may change your mind."

  Before Winston could reply, he turned and whispered a few brisk phrases to the waiting men. They slipped their machetes into their waistwraps and in an instant were against the breastwork, scaling it.

  As the seamen watched in disbelief, a host of dark figures moved surely, silently up the sloping stone wall of the breastwork. Their fingers and toes caught the crevices and joints in the stone with catlike agility as they moved toward the top.

  "God's blood, Cap'n, what in hell's this about?" Dick Hawkins moved next to Winston, still holding a grapple and line. "Are these savages . . .?"

  "I'm damned if I know for sure. But I don't like it." His eyes were riveted on the line of black figures now blended against the stone of the breastwork. They had merged with the rain, all but invisible.

  In what seemed only moments, Atiba had reached the parapet along the top of the breastwork, followed by his men. For an instant Winston caught the glint of machetes, reflect­ing the glow of the lighted linstocks, and then nothing.

  "By God, no. There'll be no unnecessary killing." He flung his grapple upward, then gestured at the men. "Let's go topside, quick!"

  The light clank of the grapple against the parapet was lost in the strangled cries of surprise from atop the breastwork. Then a few muted screams drifted down through the rain. The sounds died away almost as soon as
they had begun, leaving only the gentle pounding of rain.

  "It is yours, senhor." The Portuguese words came down as Atiba looked back over the side. "But come quickly. One of them escaped us. I fear he will sound a warning. There will surely be more branco, soon."

  "Damn your eyes." Winston seized the line of his grapple, tested it, and began pulling himself up the face of the stone wall. There was the clank of grapples as the other men fol­lowed.

  The scene atop the breastwork momentarily took his breath away. All the infantrymen on gunnery duty had had their throats cut, their bodies now sprawled haphazardly across the stonework. One gunner was even slumped across the breech of a demi-culverin, still clasping one of the lighted linstocks, its oil-soaked tip smoldering inconclusively in the rain. The Yoruba warriors stood among them, wiping blood from their machetes.

  "Good Christ!" Winston exploded and turned on Atiba. "There was no need to kill all these men. You just had to disarm them."

  "It is better." Atiba met his gaze. "They were branco warriors. Is it not a warrior's duty to be ready to die?"

  "You bloodthirsty savage."

  Atiba smiled. "So tell me, what are these great Ingles guns sitting all around us here meant to do? Save lives? Or kill men by the hundreds, men whose face you never have to see? My people do not make these. So who is the savage, my Ingles friend?"

  "Damn you, there are rules of war."

  "Ah yes. You are civilized." He slipped the machete into his waistwrap. "Someday you must explain to me these rules you have for civilized killing. Perhaps they are something like the 'rules' your Christians have devised to justify making my people slaves."

  Winston looked at him a moment longer, then at the bodies lying around them. There was nothing to be done now. Best to get on with disabling the guns. "Dick, haul up that sack with the spikes and let's make quick work of this."

  "Aye." Hawkins seized the line attached to his waist and walked to the edge of the parapet. At the other end, resting in the mud below, was the brown canvas bag containing the hammers and the spikes.

  Moments later the air rang with the sound of metal against metal, as the seamen began hammering small, nail-like spikes into the touch-holes of each cannon. That was the signal for the Barbados militiamen to advance from the landward side of the breastwork, to provide defensive cover.

  "A life for a life, senhor." Atiba moved next to Winston. "We served you. Now it is time for your part of the trade."

  "You're not getting any of my flintlocks, if that's what you mean."

  "Don't make us take them." Atiba dropped his hand to the handle of his machete.

  "And don't make my boys show you how they can use them." Winston stood unmoving. "There's been killing enough here tonight."

  "So you are not, after all, a man who keeps his word. You are merely another branco. " He slowly began to draw the machete from his belt.

  "I gave you no 'word.' And I wouldn't advise that . . ." Winston pushed back the side of his wet jerkin, clearing the pistols in his belt.

  Out of the dark rain a line of Barbados planters carrying homemade pikes came clambering up the stone steps. Colo­nel Heathcott was in the lead. "Good job, Captain, by my life." He beamed from under his gray hat. "We heard nary a peep. But you were too damned quick by half. Bed­ford's just getting the next lot of militia together now. He'll need . . ."

  As he topped the last step, he stumbled over the fallen body of a Commonwealth infantryman. A tin helmet clat­tered across the stonework.

  "God's blood! What . . ." He peered through the half- light at the other bodies littering the platform, then glared at Winston. "You massacred the lads!"

  "We had some help."

  Heathcott stared past Winston, noticed Atiba, and stopped stone still. Then he glanced around and saw the cluster of Africans standing against the parapet, still holding machetes.

  "Good God." He took a step backward and motioned to­ward his men. "Form ranks. There're runaways up here. And they're armed."

  "Careful . . ." Before Winston could finish, he heard a command in Yoruba and saw Atiba start forward with his machete.

  "No, by God!" Winston shouted in Portuguese. Before Atiba could move, he was holding a cocked pistol against the Yoruba's cheek. "I said there's been enough bloodshed. Don't make me kill you to prove it."

  In the silence that followed there came a series of flashes from the dark down the shore, followed by dull pops. Two of the planters at the top of the stone steps groaned, twisted, and slumped against the stonework with bleeding flesh wounds. Then a second firing order sounded through the rain. It carried the unmistakable authority of Anthony Walrond.

  "On the double, masters. The fireworks are set to begin." Winston turned and shouted toward the seamen, still ham­mering in the spikes. "Spurre, get those flintlocks un­wrapped and ready. It looks like Walrond has a few dry muskets of his own."

  "Aye, Cap'n." He signaled the seamen who had finished their assigned tasks to join him, and together they took cover against the low parapet on the landward side of the breast­work. Heathcott and the planters, pikes at the ready, nerv­ously moved behind them.

  Winston felt a movement and turned to see Atiba twist away. He stepped aside just in time to avoid the lunge of his machete—then brought the barrel of the pistol down hard against the side of his skull. The Yoruba groaned and stag­gered back against the cannon nearest them. As he struggled to regain his balance, he knocked aside the body of the Com­monwealth infantryman who lay sprawled across its barrel, the smoldering linstock still in his dead grasp. The man slid slowly down the wet side of the culverin, toward the breech. Finally he tumbled forward onto the stonework, releasing his grasp on the handle of the lighted linstock.

  Later Winston remembered watching in paralyzed horror as the linstock clattered against the breech of the culverin, scattering sparks. The oil-soaked rag that had been its tip seemed to disintegrate as the handle slammed against the iron, and a fragment of burning rag fluttered against the shielded touch hole.

  A flash shattered the night, as a tongue of flame torched upward. For a moment it illuminated the breastwork like midday.

  In the stunned silence that followed there were yells of surprise from the far distance, in the direction of the English camp. No one had expected a cannon shot. Moments later, several rounds of musket fire erupted from the roadway be­low. The approaching Barbados militiamen had assumed they were being fired on from the breastwork. But now they had revealed their position. Almost immediately their fire was returned by the advance party of the Windward Regiment.

  Suddenly one of the Yoruba waiting at the back of the breastwork shouted incomprehensibly, broke from the group, and began clambering over the parapet. There were more yells, and in moments the others were following him. Atiba, who had been knocked sprawling by the cannon's explosion, called for them to stay, but they seemed not to hear. In sec­onds they had vanished over the parapet and into the night.

  "You betrayed us, senhor." He looked up at Winston. "You will pay for it with your life."

  "Not tonight I won't." Winston was still holding the pis­tol, praying it was not too wet to fire.

  "Not tonight. But soon." He shoved the machete unsteadi­ly into his waistwrap. Winston noticed that he had difficulty rising, but he managed to pull himself up weakly. Then his strength appeared to revive. "Our war is not over." Amid the gunfire and confusion, he turned and slipped down the landward side of the breastwork. Winston watched as he dis­appeared into the rain.

  "How many more left to spike, masters?" He yelled back toward the men with the hammers. As he spoke, more mus­ket fire sounded from the plain below.

  "We've got all but two, Cap'n." Hawkins shouted back through the rain. "These damned little demi-culverin. Our spikes are too big."

  "Then the hell with them. We've done what we came to do." He motioned toward Heathcott. "Let's call it a night and make a run for it. Now."

  "Fine job, I must say." Heathcott was smiling b
roadly as he motioned the cringing planters away from the wall. "We'll hold them yet."

  While the seamen opened sporadic covering fire with their flintlocks, the militia began scrambling down the wet steps. When the column of Walrond's Windward Regiment now marching up from the seaside realized they were armed, it immediately broke ranks and scattered for cover. In moments Winston and Heathcott were leading their own men safely up the road toward the camp. They met the remainder of the Barbados militia midway, a bedraggled cluster in the down­pour.

  "You can turn back now, sirs." Heathcott saluted the lead officer, who was kneeling over a form fallen in the sand. "You gave us good cover when we needed you, but now it's done. The ordnance is spiked. At sunup we'll drive the Roundheads back into the sea."

  "Good Christ." The officer's voice was trembling as he looked up, rain streaming down his face. "We'd as well just sue for peace and have done with it."

  "What?" Heathcott examined him. "What do you mean?"

  "He was leading us. Dalby Bedford. The Windwards caught him in the chest when they opened fire." He seemed to choke on his dismay. "The island's no longer got a gov­ernor."