Scarlett

by Christopher C Tubbs

  “Well she ain’t yet but she will, you will see,” he insisted.

  There was a pause as the man behind him considered that.

  “What does ‘pyskadores’ mean?”

  “What?”

  The knife bit a little as the arm tensed.

  “It means ‘fisherwoman’ in Cornish. It’s just a joke,” he blurted.

  The knife was removed, and he turned around to see who it was.

  There was no one there but a voice came out of the darkness,

  “Joke not funny.”

  Was that Montoya? he thought and shivered as he went cold at the idea of having attracted his attention.

  Passing Guadalupe, they spotted a convoy of three ships heading Northwest, and closed to see who they were.

  “Three merchant galleys,” called down the lookout, “no flags, but they look Spanish.”

  “Steer to intercept, Jim,” Scarlett ordered the quartermaster, “make more sail!”

  They closed and when they got to within half a mile, they showed their colours. They were answered almost immediately by all three ships raising a similar black flag but with a heart pierced by a sword. They were apparently prizes held by a buccaneer.

  They came within hailing distance.

  “Ahoy there, who are you?” Steven called.

  “Prize crews from the Briseur de Coeur,” was the shouted reply in English with a French accent.

  “Their mothership is the ‘Broken Heart’,” Steven told Scarlett, “that explains the flag.”

  Scarlett called for Archie and asked,

  “Do you know that flag?”

  “Never seen it before or heard of a ship called that either,” he admitted.

  “Where are you headed?” Steven called again.

  “Tortuga,” came back the reply.

  “That seals it. No merchant would be heading there!” Steven concluded, but Scarlett wasn’t so sure.

  “Henry told me the names of all the main buccaneer ships and their captains and I don’t remember that one, and it is pretty distinctive.” She thought for a moment. “Tell them we will provide an escort as we are heading that way and it’s the least we can do for a fellow member of the brotherhood.”

  Steven shouted across the offer and there was a long pause before there was any answer. Scarlett could see a small group of men by the tiller who were obviously discussing it.

  “Fine, if you have nothing better to do, we welcome your company,” was the eventually shouted reply.

  Scarlett, meantime, was studying the crew with a telescope and smiling.

  “Something amusing?” Steven asked.

  “Oh, just admiring their fashion sense,” she replied without lowering the glass. “Move us up so we are on the windward side of the lead ship,” she ordered.

  Steven wondered what she found so fascinating as she scrutinised each ship as they passed it, but if she wanted to look at clothes then that was her business.

  As nightfall approached, Scarlett asked that extra lookouts be set and instructed that they concentrate on their neighbours. She gave Bill Martin, who had the watch, instructions to change them every hour and to make sure they stayed vigilant. She still didn’t enlighten Steven as they sat in her cabin eating their dinner. There was a knock on the door, and Bill stuck his head through and said,

  “Our chicks have turned towards the North.”

  “Match their course but drop back as if they have fooled us,” Scarlett ordered. She looked at Steven with a satisfied smirk on her face.

  “You obviously know something I don’t,” he stated flatly and sat back in his chair.

  “You mean you didn’t notice that all the men on the quarterdecks of those three ships were dressed in similar fashions and that the crew were dressed plainly like merchant crewmen do?” she answered with a raised eyebrow.

  “No, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Buccaneers are very individual, and in the main, flamboyant. Remember the men at the Captains Conference?” she prompted him.

  Steven frowned as he cast his mind back to the meeting,

  “Yes, all of them were dressed like peacocks and their men the same.”

  “Well, all the men manning those ships are dressed like ordinary sailors, not a bright colour amongst them and the officers in charge are all dressed in the same type of suit, functional, plain and typical of what your average Spanish merchant captain would wear. On top of that, there was no sign of any blood or damage on the decks at all.”

  “So you think…”

  “That they are trying to fool us,” she finished for him.

  “I will have the ship cleared for action before first light,” he declared before she could order it.

  The next morning saw them a mile behind the three ships, Scarlett dressed for war, and the Fox ready for action. All sail was set and they were catching the convoy rapidly.

  Absalom joined Montoya on deck watching in fascination as Steven organized three boarding parties and had men ready with grapnels along the side. He had now seen Scarlett in her full war paint for the first time and could see why Kefash thought she was on a spirit quest. He spent some of her off watch hours teaching her Carib. It was slow going but she was progressing.

  They sailed straight past the first two ships and closed in on the lead ship. The big bow chaser came into action as soon as they were able to line it up as they passed the middle ship. The shot was good and crossed diagonally across the ships deck, clipping their mainmast. A main gun was fired at the ship beside them and both ship’s sails were loosed and flapping almost immediately the colours lowered.

  They hove to, the boarding teams left in ships boats and hauled over to the now motionless ships. As soon as they were up the side and on deck, the Fox set sail again in pursuit of the third ship which was trying to escape to the Southwest with the wind on her stern.

  It took them a couple of hours to catch her but as soon as the bow chaser spoke, she struck, and the Fox was able to pull up alongside. They grappled her and Scarlett crossed over to approach the men on the quarterdeck,

  “Who is the man who answered our hail?” she asked politely. A man stepped forward and gave a half bow.

  Scarlett looked at Steven.

  “Manners, who would expect that from a buccaneer,” she quipped. “But you are not buccaneers, are you?”

  “Non, madam. It was but a ruse de guerre,” he replied.

  “It might have worked if you paid attention to detail,” she complemented him. “Are you French?”

  “Oui madam, I am working my passage ‘ome from Trinidad and these gentlemen were heading in the right direction.”

  “Stand over there with my men,” she instructed him, “you can join my crew.”

  “Now, you are the captain?” she asked the eldest of the rest of the group. Montoya translated.

  A shorter, younger man stepped forward and said in Spanish,

  “No, I am. He is my sailing master.”

  Her sword came out and the point was suddenly at his throat.

  “I am tempted to slit your throat for wasting my time, but you have actually provided me some entertainment.” She lowered her sword and said to Montana, “You can have his ears instead,” turned, walked back to the side, and returned to the Fox with the man’s screams ringing in her ears.

  They beat back against the wind to rendezvous with the other two prizes. It took the rest of the day. When they finally met up with them and they compared notes, they found they had acquired:

  One cargo of whale oil, whale bone, and ambergris.

  One of sugar, molasses and rum, and

  One of cocoa, coffee, and cereals.

  This was a rich haul, and they headed to a sheltered cove on the island of St Croix, where they could anchor up and carry out a detailed inventory and search the ships thoroughly for hidden riches. They put the Spanish crews ashore and left them there at the mercy of the locals. It was a French island but there was still a signific
ant indigenous population of Arawak Indians who the Spaniards would have to avoid if they were to get back to civilization.

  The ship with the whale products turned up a chest of bullion in a hidden storeroom on the cargo deck. Daniel Brown found it when he was inventorying the cargo and something about the layout didn’t ring true. He started measuring the internal dimensions of the ship and found an anomaly.

  The room was six foot to a side and made of four-inch-thick oak. They found the entrance, which was cunningly concealed in the captain’s cabin beneath his desk. The hatch was just thirty inches by twenty inches and set into the deck so snugly that you had to really look for it after you moved the desk.

  The chest was heavy enough that two men had to drop down into the hidden room and lift it up. One of the keys to its locks was found in the captains desk the other in the master’s cabin. They had gone to great pains to protect it.

  Scarlett thought it best to let the men decide whether they wanted the chest’s contents to be distributed or added to the stash, so they had a gathering on the main deck and put it to the vote. She was surprised by the heated debate it caused with men from both sides of the argument standing up and having their say.

  Ballots would have to be cast by placing grapeshot in similar casks; one for ‘share it’ painted in white, the other for ‘stash it’ in black. The master and Scarlett took responsibility for the weighing in that would be carried out in plain view. A beam scale had been constructed and tested. The casks were attached to either end, and the beam set low enough that they both sat on the deck. The whole thing would be raised once the last vote was cast.

  They finished the ballot. Every man and boy had voted. Scarlett cast hers last into the stash cask and signalled for the beam to be hoisted. Silence fell over the deck as the chosen men hauled on the rope, the strain came on and the beam lifted.

  The white cask left the deck first, ‘stash it’ won the vote by a goodly margin. The bullion chest would be stowed on the Fox and the next time they were in St Lucia, it would be added to the horde. It was placed in the hidden compartment in Scarlett’s cabin and she and the surgeon took a key each.

  Inventory and recrewing complete, they set sail to the Northwest around the East end of the Island of Vieques on Puerto Rico’s Eastern point and then along its Northern coast.

  Scarlett suddenly realized she missed the scent of flowers that was all around them when they sat in the bay. The sea couldn’t compete with that no matter how lovely she was. She looked astern and couldn’t help thinking that the prizes looked like three little chicks following mother goose or rather, she smiled to herself, like three cubs after mamma fox.

  San Juan was the main port and town and as they came up on it, she could see why the island’s name translated to Rich Port. The main town was in a fortified enclave on the Western end of an islet that sealed the North side of the bay. It had a strong wall all around it, the Castillo del Moro at the West end dominating the deep-water entrance and the smaller Castillo de la Perla on the North coast, which fired a cannon to warn them to keep their distance.

  Several fishing boats and a merchantman were scuttling towards the entrance and as they passed the entrance, another cannon was fired from the Castillo del Moro.

  “That was a big gun!” Steven exclaimed as the shot sent up a plume of water about a cable from their bow.

  “Aye, a culverin extraordinary if I’m not mistaken,” Daniel offered and examined the castle wall with their biggest telescope. “The wall is lined with them. We are about a mile and a half out and they reached us easy.”

  “You would be decimated if you tried to force the entrance,” Steven concluded.

  Scarlett wasn’t looking at the fortifications. She was counting masts in the deep-water harbour behind them. It was full of ships, some of which looked to be galleons. Once they were past San Juan and all there was to look at was the rocky coast, she retired to her cabin to think.

  She sat at her desk in the light from the open transom windows, enjoying the slight breeze that came down from the open skylight. She had a large-scale chart of the Caribbean spread out and she made a careful note above the island of Puerto Rico about what she had seen at San Juan. There were existing notes on all the places they had visited or looked in on with one in red over Cartagena that promised retribution at some future time.

  The question in her mind was, where should they look after they had been to Tortuga? There was the Indian gold in Yucatan, merchant ships aplenty around Cuba and Puerto Rico, and of course the revenge she swore on Cartagena. Her crew was seasoned and enjoyed the success they had so far but to keep them onside, she knew she had to keep it up.

  A hail from the lookout drifted down through the open skylight. She caught that there was a sail to the North but didn’t catch the rest of the message. She stayed where she was. If it was important, they would tell her.

  She was dozing off when there was a knock at her door and young Peter Harding, one of the ship’s boys, announced,

  “Miss Scarlett, Master Steven told me to tell you that we have a Spanish warship bearing down on us.” Scarlett followed him up onto deck.

  “Looks like a sixth rate,” Steven was telling Daniel as she came up behind them. Steven had a telescope to his eye and hadn’t heard Scarlett approach so jumped when she said,

  “He has the weather gauge. What were you planning to do about it?” the Spaniard was obviously going to try and recapture their prizes and he was bigger and heavier armed than they were.

  Steven restored his equilibrium before answering,

  “We could sacrifice one of the prizes. That would slow him down enough for the rest to get away.”

  Scarlett snorted a laugh. “And the next time we take a prize, we will have to force them to man it. No, we will have to take him on and delay him enough for the prizes to get away.” She cast her gaze over the ship and saw the men were already, quietly, getting ready to fight,

  “Look at them. They don’t want to run. They believe they can beat them, order the ship to quarters.”

  The drum beat out, Scarlett had adopted the idea from Morgan, who told her how he ran his ship. She allocated one of the lads to be the drummer and had him learn the signals. The men responded with a cheer. The fact that the Spaniard was bigger didn’t bother them in the slightest. Scarlett would lead them to victory no matter what.

  With the prevailing wind, they had no option but to fall back to the end of their convoy and work their way out to the North as best as they could. What they hoped was that the Spaniard would go for the easy targets and that would let them get up to him.

  “Fire a gun,” Scarlett ordered,

  “What?” Steven replied in surprise.

  “Fire a fucking gun!” Scarlett repeated and when she saw the blank look on his face added, “it’s a challenge to do battle,” she didn’t add that this was another nugget she picked up from Morgan.

  Steven shrugged. He had never heard of that but was willing to give it a go and gave the order for the foremost gun to be fired on the starboard side.

  Scarlett turned to Daniel, who previously sailed with the Navy,

  “How many men do they carry?”

  Daniel looked at the Spaniard as the gun went off.

  “She’s a thirty-six-gun two decker, so probably about two-hundred and some. Navy’s don’t like to overman their ships.”

  “How will they fight? Will they go for our rigging or our hull?” Scarlett asked.

  “The Spanish like to board. They carry a lot of soldiers and fight like they are on land.”

  “Do they now,” she grinned, “then this is how we are going to play this…”

  The Spaniard was captained by Juan-Carlos Sebastian De la Montagne. He was the son of a count and his father bought his commission. He was captain of the Conquistador for two years and had been involved in one line-action in that time. He performed escort duty on two treasure convoys and was on his way back from the last one when they sighted th
is convoy of ships.

  Now that they were just three miles away they could clearly make out that there were three Spanish built merchants being escorted by a French Caravel. That plus the direction they were sailing could only mean they were Buccaneers headed back to the accursed island of Tortuga.

  His crew was tired from a rough Atlantic crossing, but the chance of some individual glory was more than he could resist. They were much bigger than the Caravel, and the Buccaneer would have lost crew to the prizes so she wouldn’t present much of a challenge. But he had the idea, as they had the wind, to take the prizes first.

  Suddenly, there was a puff of smoke from the side of the Caravel followed by the sound of a gun.

  “They dare challenge us?” he said to his first lieutenant.

  “It would appear so, Sir. Their ambition knows no end, it would seem,” the young blood replied. It was his first voyage as first on the Conquistador. His uncle, an admiral, got him the position after he spent two years on the three deck Natividad as third. He hadn’t seen action at all and was as cocky as a game bird.

  “Get the ship ready for action,” the captain ordered.

  They were just a mile away when his first said,

  “Captain, look at that! They have a woman in command.”

  He raised his glass and saw the unmistakable image of a red-haired strumpet dressed in a leather corset standing on their quarterdeck. Not only that, but she seemed to have a red stripe painted across her face. She must have sensed him looking at her because she looked straight at him and made a very rude gesture.

  He had the master make a course that would bring them up parallel with the Caravel so they could take down their rigging and board her. His soldiers were ready, their breastplates and steel helmets gleamed in the sunlight. They would board in ranks with their pikes to the front and push the sailors up against the opposite rail where they would be butchered or surrender.

  Everything went as planned; he didn’t even use his lower deck guns, he was so confident. The upper deck guns fired, and the bar and chain ripped through the Caravel’s rigging, disabling her. He did notice that they had a rather odd flag flying but then the hulls ground together, and the order was given for the soldiers to advance. The Caravel hadn’t fired a shot in reply.