PIRATE: Privateer

by Tim Severin

  The tender made one final trip to the Sainte Rose, carrying away the Kergonans’ share of booty and returning with four sets of leg irons and lengths of chain. These were used to shackle Hector and his comrades together at the ankle, while the free end of the chain was padlocked to a ring bolt on the foredeck.

  ‘What are you looking so smug about, Jacques?’ growled Jezreel as the ex-galérien tore off a strip of his shirt and wrapped it around his ankle under the leg iron to prevent it chafing.

  ‘That padlock – typical government rubbish made by the cheapest contractor. Give me a spike and I could open it in less than a minute.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Hector quietly. He was watching the prize crew tie off the tender to Morvaut’s stern. He counted five of them in addition to the petty officer in charge.

  ‘Much more treatment like this, and I’ll lose patience. Then someone will get hurt,’ Jezreel said. He was rubbing a bruise on his shoulder where one of the prize crew had struck him with a musket butt when he moved too slowly.

  ‘Just hold on for a while,’ said Hector. Already he was beginning to wonder if there might be some way of escape.

  The distant shrill of a bosun’s whistle came across the water. The Sainte Rose was getting under way again. Her topsails were being braced around, and the main courses sheeted in.

  ‘Goodbye to our silver,’ said Jacques. ‘That’s already in de Graff’s own pocket or shared out with his crew.’

  Aboard the Morvaut the petty officer was telling his men to hoist the mainsail.

  ‘You there!’ he shouted at Hector’s group. ‘Make yourselves useful. Get the foresail up.’

  The length of their leg chains allowed the prisoners to shuffle as far as the foresail halyard.

  ‘Jacques,’ Hector said under his breath, ‘can you get yourself a pick-lock?’

  ‘Nothing easier,’ said the Frenchman. ‘See that little runt-like fellow with the red cap. He’s from Paris. I recognize his accent.’ He called out a string of words which sounded French but Hector found completely incomprehensible.

  The man in the red cap replied similarly.

  ‘What’s that all about?’ Hector asked.

  ‘Street beggar’s slang. Told him that if they didn’t have a decent cook, I could do the job.’

  ‘And his reply?’

  ‘He said he would check with his boss.’

  Some time later the Parisian came to the foredeck, unlocked Jacques’ chain, and led him to the cook box. The boy looped the chain through the handle of a large iron cauldron and closed the padlock. ‘Let’s see if you can cook as well as you claim,’ he said to Jacques. ‘The last time I was on a prize crew, it was aboard a Dutch fluyt, and I got sick of bean soup and stockfish stew.’

  ‘I’ll do better than that,’ Jacques assured him, and within the hour had served up a gratin of peas, biscuit and crumbled cheese. When he was returned to the foredeck, he silently pulled a fork out from his shirtfront. ‘Any time you want us free of our chains, Hector, just let me know,’ he said with a grin.

  Hector waited until well after dark when everyone was settled for the night. The moon was showing through rents in the cloud cover and gave enough light to see the outline of the Sainte Rose. The frigate was under reduced sail and half a mile upwind, keeping pace with the pinnace. Whatever happened aboard the Morvaut would have to be done without alerting the warship.

  The petty officer and three of his men, their stomachs full of Jacques’ gratin, had gone to sleep on the main deck. Two men were left on watch, one as helmsman and the other as lookout. From time to time they were passing between them a bottle that Jacques had taken care to half-fill from the small keg of looted rum and leave on view. Anne-Marie was not to be seen. The only time she had opened the door of the cabin was to accept a plate of food.

  Around him Hector could sense his friends awake and ready for his word.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he whispered.

  Jacques wriggled across to the ring bolt and, using the fork, worked at the padlocks, one by one, until all the prisoners were free. Dan wrapped a length of chain around his hand, slithered away to the rail and crouched there, waiting. Without raising his head, Hector watched the two sailors at the helm. The next time he saw the bottle pass between them he reached out and tapped Dan on the ankle. In one quick movement the Miskito half rose, slid over the windward rail and disappeared overboard.

  Along her entire length Morvaut was girdled with a rubbing strake, a thick plank that acted as a fender when she was docked. This plank protruded nearly two inches from the hull, and Dan had said it was enough for him to get a purchase with bare feet. Now, with one hand grasping the rail to prevent him falling into the sea, he was invisible from the helm as long as he stayed crouching down. Only if the lookout walked right to the edge of the vessel and looked overboard would the Miskito be seen.

  Hector watched the rail. Once or twice he had a brief glimpse of Dan’s hand, moving like a crab as the Miskito inched his way aft, using the rubbing strake as a ledge.

  Minutes passed, and Hector could only hope that Dan had successfully reached the stern, and was hanging there waiting for his opportunity.

  After what seemed like an age, the helmsman’s comrade left his post. The rum bottle was empty and he came aft to pour a refill. He reached the cook box and bent down to remove the bung from the rum keg. At that moment Jezreel rose and in two strides he was above the sailor. He smashed his clenched fist down on the back of the man’s head. The stunned sailor toppled forward; Jezreel caught him and eased him gently to the deck.

  The commotion had not caught the attention of the helmsman when Dan dropped quietly over the gunwale behind him. In a single smooth movement the Miskito whipped a loop of chain around the helmsman’s neck and choked off any sound. The man thrashed from side to side in anguish. Grimly Dan tightened the garrotte. Now was the most dangerous moment. The tiller swung free and the pinnace, unchecked, swung up into the wind. There was a lurch and then a slap of canvas loud enough to wake a light sleeper. Stepping closer to his victim, Dan twisted the noose more fiercely until the choking helmsman’s legs gave way. Even as he collapsed unconscious to the deck, Dan grabbed for the tiller and hauled it towards him, steadying the pinnace and bringing Morvaut back on course. The little boat sailed on quietly.

  Hector’s attention had been focused on the petty officer and his three men. If they awakened now, the plan was to overpower them. But none of them moved.

  Already Jezreel was filling a sack with some hard tack, a piece of dried fish, the remainder of the peas. Jacques and Hector tiptoed across and joined him. Each of them lifted a jar of water. Silently they edged their way along the deck with their loads, cautiously skirting past the sleeping men. Once on the poop deck, Hector laid down his burden and took over the helm from Dan. He kept the boat on course so the Miskito could stuff a dirty rag into the mouth of the unconscious helmsman and tie the gag in place. Jacques and Jezreel were at the stern and hauling in the tender by its painter.

  Not a word had been spoken since Hector had given his first order. Everything had gone exactly as the four friends had discussed that afternoon.

  Jacques lowered himself into the tender, and Jezreel began handing down the food and water. Hector looked anxiously towards the Sainte Rose. As far as he could tell, the frigate was continuing on her way as before. She was too far away for a lookout to have seen the scuffle, but he feared that someone might notice that the pinnace’s tender, normally towed on a long painter, was now fastened close under her stern.

  In another couple of minutes they were ready to leave. Jezreel had joined Jacques in the tender, and Dan had passed down the oars and a roll of tarpaulin.

  All that remained to do was to lash the tiller so that the pinnace stayed on course for as long as possible and allow them to get clear. Dan found a length of line and took a loop around the windward rail and then two turns around the tiller. Carefully he adjusted the tension to his satisfaction and tigh
tened the knots. A moment later he was gone, climbing lightly over the taffrail and dropping into the waiting boat.

  Hector turned to follow him, and had not taken two paces when he heard a muffled grunt. It came from the helmsman lying where he had fallen. The moon appeared from behind the clouds, and the sudden flood of moonlight showed the man was about to spit out his gag. Hector could see his jaws working. Another moment and he would raise the alarm.

  Hector spun round, knelt, and brutally crammed the wad of cloth deeper into the man’s mouth. Then he tightened the gag fiercely. He was about to rise to his feet when a shadow fell across him.

  He froze.

  Someone was standing on the deck above him. It took a moment for him to realize that it was Anne-Marie. Her cabin was directly below the poop deck, and the commotion overhead must have disturbed her. He wondered how long she had been standing there, and why she had not cried out.

  He got slowly to his feet and faced her.

  The shadow stepped closer. ‘Here take this,’ Anne-Marie whispered. She was holding out something in her hand. Hector reached out and felt the butt of a pistol. ‘Like I said, it might come in useful.’

  ‘But why . . . ?’ Hector began. He was too stunned to say more.

  ‘Go!’ she hissed. ‘There’s someone waiting for you on Tortuga. I’ll make sure that the Morvaut stays on course.’

  Hector’s legs were shaking as he stumbled to the taffrail and lowered himself into the tender. Dan had found a knife and was in the bow waiting to cut the rope. He was reaching forward, blade in hand, when a bundle – a roll of tarpaulin – dropped from above and into the boat with a soft thud.

  He jerked back in surprise. The towrope then went slack and the free end, unfastened from the Morvaut’s stern, dropped into the water.

  Outlined against the sky was the figure of Anne-Marie standing at the taffrail, a hand silently raised in farewell.

  Released from her tether, the tender fell away rapidly as the pinnace sailed on. Hector waited for a shout of alarm, but none came. He looked away to his left. The Sainte Rose was maintaining her course.

  Jezreel had seated himself on the central thwart and set the oars in place and was ready to begin rowing. ‘Which way?’ he enquired in a whisper though already the pinnace was far out of earshot.

  Hector looked up at the sky. He stood up in the little boat, extended his arm to full stretch and turned to face the Pole Star. He clenched his fingers and placed the lower edge of his fist on the horizon beneath the star. His hand spanned the gap between star and sea almost exactly. It was a trick he had learned from an Arab merchant captain who showed him how to measure the height of a star by the width of his hand or fingers. They were in 16 degrees north or thereabouts. After weeks exploring the Vipers he carried a chart of the area in his memory. Jamaica must be north-west, some hundred and fifty miles away. Saint-Domingue and the French colonies would be twice that distance in the direction that the Morvaut and the Sainte Rose were now disappearing in the darkness.

  If he had judged de Graff correctly, losing his captives would hurt the man’s pride. Driven by an angry captain, the frigate would turn around and hunt down the fugitives. Logic would dictate that they had fled north-west towards Jamaica, and that was the direction where de Graff would search.

  Hector swivelled round and faced the opposite horizon. Sirius was clear and bright, low in the sky. ‘Towards the Dog Star,’ he said to his companions. Jezreel dipped the oar blades in the water and began to row south-east.

  FOUR

  THE GOVERNOR OF SAINT-DOMINGUE, Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, stood loitering in the shade of a palm tree on the beach of the French settlement at Petit Goâve. A frail-looking man with a head that seemed too large for his body, he was dressed as usual in a light coat and loose breeches of white cotton, and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat. As a tobacco planter on the island for twenty years, he was accustomed to the climate, but today was exceptionally hot and it would be at least another hour before Major de Graff came ashore. Besides, the Governor enjoyed watching the Sainte Rose work her way into the anchorage. De Cussy was not a sailor himself, but he could appreciate competent ship handling when he saw it, and he was relieved that the frigate was back in port. He worried every time Sainte Rose set sail, fearing that de Graff’s opportunism would get the better of him and the filibustier would end up losing the ship in a rash battle with the English or Spaniards. An even worse nightmare for the Governor, though he never breathed a word of it to anyone else, was that de Graff would steal the ship and go off on his own account with his crew, half of whom had earlier served with him as sea robbers. As far as de Cussy was concerned, de Graff was still a pirate at heart.

  The frigate was now almost on top of her mooring in a sheltered cove at the western side of the bay. De Cussy saw the splash as her main anchor went down. Squinting against the glitter of the sun on the water, he tried to identify the small pinnace that accompanied the frigate. Something about the boat was familiar. Then he recognized it as the Morvaut, owned by the Kergonan family on Tortuga. The Governor knew the Kergonans by reputation. It was common knowledge that they ran illegal cargoes to the Spaniards and perhaps traded with the English in Jamaica as well. But he had yet to catch them red-handed. For a moment he wondered if de Graff had intercepted just such a smuggling run and arrested them. The thought gave de Cussy a brief glow of hope. But on reflection he decided it was unlikely. The captain of the Sainte Rose would actively encourage smuggling, not prevent it, if there were a profit to be had.

  An eight-oar launch pushed away from the Sainte Rose and set off across the bay towards the landing stage on the near side. The Governor left the shelter of the palm tree and began to stroll along the beach towards the wooden jetty to greet his frigate captain.

  Anne-Marie, seated beside de Graff in the launch, recognized the figure of the Governor moving along the shoreline. Occasionally he had come on an official visit to Tortuga, which was nominally a French possession, but he never stayed on the island for long. She had met him once, and very briefly, because her brothers tended to make themselves scarce whenever the Governor was around.

  The hard shape of the small pistol hidden in her sash brought her thoughts back yet again to Hector. The weapon was the pair of the one she had given him, and she had been regretting for the past four days that she had allowed Hector to slip through her fingers. He was a most unusual young man. There was a quality about him that she had rarely encountered – a sense of honour. She smiled to herself as she recalled the shocked look on his face when she had put a pistol to the head of that young Spaniard on the urca. He had genuinely believed that it was an underhand way of getting the food and water they needed. Yet, according to his friends, Hector was no faint-heart when it came to a crisis. Jacques had told her something of their adventures in the Pacific and how they had survived as prisoners among the Moors. The loyalty of his three friends had impressed her greatly. They were a remarkably assorted bunch – prize-fighter, galérien and Miskito. Yet they accepted Hector as their leader and looked to him as a man they trusted to lead them in difficult times. Anne-Marie had seen for herself that he was level-headed and clever. And, besides, he was rather good-looking in a finely drawn sort of way, though he did not know it.

  She stole a sideways glance at de Graff on the thwart beside her. He too was handsome, though in a very different manner. The filibustier had a strong beak of a nose above the luxuriant moustache, and he carried himself with a swagger that had a definite appeal. Also he could turn on the charm at will. In some ways he reminded Anne-Marie of her former husband. She had been married for less than a year to an engagé, an indentured man who had come out to Tortuga from France hoping to make a new life hunting wild cattle and selling their hides. At first he had seemed affable and charming, but had quickly turned into a drunk and an idler, given to outbursts of violence. That was when she had learned to keep a pistol in her sash. She had not been sorry on the day he had died of the black flux. />
  She wondered how Captain de Graff treated his wife. He also had a violent temper. She had seen it on the day Hector and his companions had escaped. The petty officer in charge of the prize crew on Morvaut had woken to find the pinnace sailing along by herself, the tiller lashed, the helmsman and lookout tied up and gagged, the prisoners and the skiff gone. There had been shouts and yells, the petty officer kicking his men awake, a great deal of running to and fro, a musket fired to attract the Sainte Rose’s attention. She had emerged from her cabin at the sound of the musket, pretending not to know anything, and asked what was going on. She was fairly sure that she had fooled the petty officer, but when she was brought across to the frigate and questioned by de Graff, she looked into his grey eyes and saw mistrust and suspicion.

  She had noticed spots of blood on the frigate’s deck as she left that interview. Later Yannick told her that de Graff had already interrogated the petty officer. The filibustier captain had repeatedly slashed the unfortunate man about the face with a cane as he screamed his questions. Then he had ordered a flogging for every man on the prize crew.

  She could still sense de Graff’s anger at the prisoners’ escape now. He was staring straight ahead, his back rigid and jaw set, his face shaded by the wide brim of his hat with its flamboyant white ostrich plume. He was dressed in the full uniform of a frigate captain and she wondered if perhaps he had chosen this dashingly impressive wardrobe for her benefit.

  ‘The Sainte Rose makes a splendid sight, captain,’ the Governor called down from the wooden jetty as the crew of the launch caught hold of the pilings and steadied the craft. He watched Anne-Marie appreciatively as she came up the wooden steps. She had put on a simple working dress and a pinafore which accentuated her generous bosom.

  ‘Allow me to introduce Anne-Marie Kergonan of Tortille,’ said de Graff.

  ‘Perhaps we have already met briefly,’ replied de Cussy. It would have been difficult to forget such a shapely figure, he thought. ‘How are your brothers? Yannick and, er . . . ?’