On the Fox, Scarlett, Montoya, and her ex slaves gathered on the quarterdeck. The rest of the crew were ducked down behind the side between the guns, which had been elevated to the maximum by removing their rear wheels. As the two ships came together, she waited until the gleaming helmets of the Spanish soldiers appeared at the rail,
“Fire!” she screamed, and the guns were touched off.
Ball over grape blasted at point blank range through the Spanish ships rail and ripped through the massed ranks of soldiers.
Juan-Carlos Sebastian De la Montagne and his first lieutenant watched in pride as the soldiers advanced in four rows, then in horror as the shining ranks were ripped apart. Body parts and blood flew in every direction as men were literally ripped asunder.
The buccaneers swarmed up and over the side, firing hand cannon and pistols at the stunned crew as they made the deck. It soon became a bloody melee as man took on man in a dance that could only end in death.
A movement drew his attention away from the main deck. Grappling hooks suddenly appeared in the rigging and over the rail. This was ridiculous. Nobody attacked the aft deck of a warship. It was too high!
A hoard of screaming black men came over the rail followed by the woman and a Carib, overwhelming his quarterdeck crew in seconds. They were slaughtered to a man and he found himself face to face with a beautiful redhead with a painted face. He had only his first beside him.
“Surrender your ship,” the Carib ordered him, stepping forward.
“Never!” cried his first, who lunged forward, sword raised. The woman didn’t bat an eyelash, raised a pistol, and shot him in the face before he could get near enough to strike.
“Surrender your ship,” she snarled in terrible Spanish, but he understood and lowered his sword. Someone cut the lanyard of their flag, and it tumbled to the deck. The fighting ceased in a wave that went forward as the word was passed.
Scarlett counted the butchers bill as they transferred everything of value from the old Fox to the new one. She lost ten men with another twenty wounded. They killed all the wounded Spaniards and threw them over the side, much to the delight of the sharks. The officers were manacled and sat in a group between the fore and main masts. The soldiers were stripped of their armour and lined up along the side.
“We could put them ashore,” suggested Jim White, who stood beside Scarlett on her new quarterdeck.
“You want to guard them for that long?” Scarlett replied.
Jim shrugged. He didn’t care one way or the other but felt that someone should at least suggest it.
“Anyway, they still owe us for the Merlin.”
The two ships were two miles off the coast. The prevailing wind and current was carrying them Southwest and they were slowly coming up on the port of Arecibo. The prizes were hove to waiting for them.
The name board of the Fox was brought aboard, and two men were detailed to fix it to the stern. They had already painted out the old name. Their flag flew proudly from the main mast.
“Everything is across, Captain,” Bill Martin finally reported.
“Including the chest from my cabin?” Scarlett asked.
“Aye, Skipper. She’s been cleared,”
“Herd that rabble on to her,” Scarlett ordered, indicating the Spanish soldiers and crew.
The men were forced to board the caravel and as soon as they were all across, they cut her loose. A lone ship’s boy jumped the gap at the last minute and was manhandled up onto the deck.
Sail was set, and the Fox moved away from her namesake whose masts were bare of canvas, gun ports empty.
The boy climbed the steps to the quarterdeck, which on this Fox was significantly higher than on the old one. The sound of carpenters repairing the damaged rail echoed up behind him.
“Did you do it?” Scarlett asked.
“Yes ma’am,” the boy replied, looking over at his former home.
“Good lad,” Scarlett told him and ruffled his hair.
There were shouts from the other ship as the Fox sailed away. Scarlett looked back and saw smoke starting to billow out of the hold. She turned her back. The one hundred and twenty-two men on board would either handle it or die.
It made no difference to her. She offered the sailors the chance to join her and was disappointed when only twenty stepped forward. None of them were Spanish. There were a few Portuguese, several Italians, Moroccans, a Greek, and of all things, an Irishman. Several of the soldiers turned out to be mercenaries and made up the rest.
By the time they were on the horizon, the Caravel was ablaze and drifting into the bay of Aricebo. It was surrounded by sharks who fed better than they had for years. There were inevitably survivors and they told a story of a demon in the form of a beautiful woman who led a crew of devils that had no mercy and told them to remember Cartagena.
Chapter 14: Tortuga
Tortuga came into view, and the convoy slid quietly into the harbour. Inland, they could see the walls of Forte de Rocher. With its command of the harbour, it was easy to understand why it was considered a safe haven.
The harbour was little more than a bay protected by a reef with access via channels to the West and South. The town behind it was made up of wooden buildings, which seemed to be either taverns or brothels. The wind blew its stench across the harbour; sewage, alcohol, and unwashed bodies made up the perfume of this town.
Further inland, larger plantation style houses could be seen, and through her telescope, Scarlett could see slaves working the fields overseen by men on horseback.
There was no pilot boat, so they just anchored where it took their fancy, close enough to get ashore easily but far enough out to be secure. Scarlett, Montoya, and a four-man escort were rowed ashore where they were met by a small delegation.
The leader was a middle-aged man dressed in a black frock coat, black breeches with white silk stockings, and black shoes. He wore a wig, powdered and curled, on his head. The other men were similarly attired but sported less fancy wigs.
“Ebenezer Squires, ma’am,” he introduced himself, “you must be Miss Scarlett Browning of the Fox.”
“You have the advantage of me,” Scarlett frowned as she didn’t like to be put at a disadvantage.
“Forgive me. I should say I am an acquaintance of Malakai Harwood. He wrote to me and told me to expect you at some time. He did say, though, that you sailed a caravel not a frigate.”
“A recent acquisition,” Scarlett smiled. “and who are these fine gentlemen?”
“We are the merchants who represent the trade to England in this den of iniquity: Mr. Solomon Ives, Mr. Patrick Delwynne, Mr. Abigail Saunders. Between us, we cover the entire range of goods that are brought here for onward transport.”
Scarlett looked around and observed,
“I can see there wouldn’t be much call for anything other than rum and ships goods here.”
“Don’t let the rough waterfront delude you,” Squires laughed. “More money changes hands here in traded goods than any other port except Port Royal.”
“Aye, and more money stolen from sailors who cannot hold onto it,” Scarlet responded, then asked, “do we do business here or is there somewhere more comfortable?”
Squires went to take her arm to lead her away but suddenly found Montoya at his side.
“Your famous bodyguards,” he noted, “Malakai warned me not to upset them as they have a propensity for ears. Would you kindly follow me and we will go to my home.”
As they walked, he asked about her latest adventures. Scarlett sketchily outlined the capture of the prizes and attempted deception by their former owners.
“That is the first time I have heard anyone attempting to do that!” he exclaimed and the crows, as Scarlett was thinking of them, all nodded and babbled to each other over it. “That flag belonged to a young French buccaneer who was rather a cocky young buck. We haven’t seen him for several months now.”
“Do you think he might have been sunk?” Scarlett asked.<
br />
“It’s possible. He wasn’t very experienced and had a tendency towards recklessness, not a great combination.”
“What type of ship did he sail?”
“Aahh, that was an unusual one. It was a converted galley of the Venetian style. He had some idea that the oars would give him an advantage.”
Scarlett had no idea what one of those would look like.
“I’m not familiar with that type of ship at all.”
“Strange looking thing had twenty oars to a side, and he had fore and after castles built on top. Two masts, a main, and a fore. No mizzen. It looked top-heavy and only had guns on the castles.”
“How did he get it over here?
“Sailed it. Got lucky and had fair weather all the way.”
Scarlett suspected he either took on too ambitious a target or bad weather just tipped his strange ship over. Either way, the Spanish merchants could have gotten their hands on his flag, or she had to admit, they just saw it and copied it.
They came up a well-tended path to a white painted house in the colonial style and were welcomed by a young woman of mixed parentage, judging by her coffee and cream coloured skin.
“My wife, Dianna,” Stuart introduced her to Scarlett’s surprise. She expected her to be a house slave. Her guards were shown to the kitchen to be fed and watered by a pair of slaves. Scarlett wondered what effect the presence of free black men would have on how they viewed their captivity.
Diana turned out to be intelligent and moderately well-educated for a young woman, which Scarlett immediately liked. She had a rich voice with an exotic accent and had a way of making Scarlett feel welcome.
They did business around the dining room table; Scarlett produced an inventory of the cargoes and other goods she wanted to sell and the merchants each made bids for the goods they specialized in.
The whale oil and bone got a good price. However, the offer for the ambergris was off the scale at seventy-five pounds a pound. Scarlett was astonished and asked why.
“Why, didn’t you know, m’dear? The perfumiers of Paris and Rome will kill to get ambergris of any quality and you have, what, some sixty-five pounds?”
Scarlett nodded.
“You can get four thousand, eight hundred, and seventy-five pounds for the Ambergris alone. Add that to the value of the oil and bone and you are looking at a round five and a half thousand pounds for that cargo.” Mr Delwynne smiled in a way that reminded her of a shark.
And you will make that again, she thought, but as I can’t ship it back myself, I have to pay the middleman.
“I think five thousand for the Ambergris sounds a much nicer price.” She smiled and wiped the smile of his face, but he knew how much he would make in London and reluctantly agreed.
The other cargos netted a couple more thousand and the hulls would be auctioned off along with the guns (excluding the bow chaser) from the old Fox, so it was a good payday all in all.
“Can you carry a letter back to England for me on the next ship?” she asked.
“Why surely,” Stuart answered, “just drop it off and we will make sure it gets delivered.”
Scarlett left but not before getting a promise from Diana to spend some time together.
Stuart, escorted by a group of heavily armed men, arrived by boat with the gold and the men spent the next few days unloading cargos and cleaning up the prize hulls for sale. They were placed into the hands of an agent, a slimy individual that Scarlett neither liked nor trusted, but he was the best of a bad bunch.
The work done, the haul was distributed by shares, and as usual, some men took it all and some asked that Scarlett hold some back. Scarlett kept meticulous records, aided by Daniel Brown, and they made a duplicate copy, which would be left in a sealed pouch of oiled canvas with Malakai when they stopped over in Port Royal. The men needed some down time, so she planned to stay in port for a week or so.
That gave her time to escape from being Captain Scarlett and to just be a girl again. In that time, she formed a genuine friendship with Diana Stuart. She discovered that Diana was classified, by her own admission, as a Mulatto, a person with one black parent and one white parent. Diana was a font of knowledge and Scarlett learned a lot about being a slave and what that meant.
She discovered that not all slaves were black. There were some unfortunates that were sold into slavery for debt or because they had no other way of surviving. Then she realised that the system of indenture in England was just another form of slavery by a different name.
The girls didn’t talk about slavery all the time. Scarlett talked about the men in her life, and the gossip about Henry Morgan would have turned his ears red. They talked clothes and jewellery, and Scarlett planned to gift her a gold link bracelet from her hoard for her birthday.
Stuart had a woman on his staff, the wife of one of the indentured men, who was a better than average seamstress, and Diana persuaded her to get some dresses made as they had a stock of exotic fabrics in wonderful colours that were ‘obtained’ over the years. Her favourite was a sumptuous dress of emerald green with lace adornment that set off her auburn hair to a tee.
She also had a pair of the latest fashion shoes given her by Diana as they were of size. When she attended a dinner party for the planters and merchants, she looked stunning.
She grew very fond of Diana and revelled in just being Scarlett for a while, but all good things must come to an end, and it was soon time to set sail again.
Steven was industrious and recruited a number of new men to help top up the crew of their new, bigger ship. They weren’t fully up to strength yet, but it was a step in the right direction.
Scarlett wrote a letter to her father and family bringing them up to date on what was going on. She sent an estimate of their share and suggested that they invest in a couple of ocean-going merchant ships and start a shipping concern as they could double their profits if they could ship their loot directly back to England without a middleman. She gave it to Stuart to send to England on the next available ship.
Chapter 15: Campeche
The Fox came free of her anchor and picked up the ever present North-easterly trade wind, took the Western passage out of the harbour, and set course for Port Royal.
It should’ve been a relatively easy run downwind, which would enable them to bed in the new crew members. There was the inevitable moment when one of the new men questioned the right of a woman to be captain but that was resolved by the lower deck, and Scarlett didn’t have to kill anyone to make her point.
“She has a foul bottom,” Steven observed as he lent over the side to see the strip of hull exposed by the heel of the ship in the wind.
“We can careen her at Port Royal. There is a beach set aside for that,” Scarlett responded.
“Aye, and we can replace those soft planks the carpenter found in the hull at the same time,” Steven concluded. The carpenter, Frank van der Molen, took the time in Tortuga to carry out an extensive inspection of the hull from the inside and found some ‘soft’ planking that was either badly protected by tarring or was attacked by teredo worm. There was some caulking that needed to be replaced as well and he had been heard muttering about ‘typical shoddy Spanish work.’
The ship itself wasn’t old. According to the papers, they found, she was no more than five years off the stocks. They hull was tarred, but it was no real protection and only slowed down the inevitable attack by the sea going pest and all they could do was replace any planking that had been too badly affected.
Port Royal was just as they saw it last time, and they took their Spanish officer prisoners and marched them to the governor’s residence.
Scarlett was granted immediate access to Sir Christopher’s office.
“Good afternoon, Scarlett,” he greeted her and offered her a seat. Scarlett sat, taking her time to arrange the dress her and Diana chose as day wear. “What can I do for you today?”
She gave him the full effect of her smile and dimples.
&nb
sp; “I have a ship that needs careening and some Spanish military prisoners who I want to exchange.”
“Prisoners? I thought you didn’t take any,” he quipped.
Scarlett didn’t answer; just stood, walked to the window, and pulled back the curtain.
“These will be worth money,” she replied and invited him to look with a gesture. The officers were lined up on the grass outside his window, manacled together with slave chains.
Sir Christopher took in their bearing and the quality of their rather dishevelled uniforms.
“They presumably all come from good families?”
“So they maintain.”
“What happened to their ship?” he asked, guessing what the answer would be.
“It’s in the harbour waiting to be careened,” she answered.
“And its crew?”
“We cast them adrift in the old Fox,”
He didn’t ask anymore as he knew that the old ships were traditionally burnt by the crew as it was seen as bad luck not to give them a decent send off, and to be honest, he rather enjoyed the idea that Scarlett was that ruthless.
“I will give orders for the careening yard to give you priority. What type of ship did you get?”
“A thirty-six-gun, two deck frigate. Culverins on the lower deck and demi-culverins on the upper,” she replied.
“You took it with your Caravel? I’m impressed,” he praised, “there’s not many who could pull that off.”
Scarlett held her peace. He didn’t need to know the details and she didn’t trust this government man no matter how in favour of the privateers and buccaneers he was.
“I will send a message to the Spanish in Havana about your captives. That is where the admiral is based. How much do you want for them?”
This was something Scarlett already agreed with the crew on.
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