by Tim Severin
Towards the end of the second month, just as Dan predicted, the number of nesting turtles began to dwindle. Fewer and fewer came ashore and those that made the journey returned to the sea while it was still dark. The castaways had to content themselves with following the deep tracks the flippers had gouged in the sand until they reached the nest. There they dug for the eggs. They retrieved so many that Hector was tempted to try his hand at pottery. Hoping to make the bowls or jars which they lacked, he made his clay by mixing fine sand and the yolks of turtle eggs. But each time he baked the moulds in the ashes of the fire, they cracked and fell apart.
So the weeks dragged by, and the four castaways fell into the regular habit of sitting together at sunset on a sand dune behind their campsite, close to the spot where they first came ashore. It was a convenient place from which to watch the empty horizon and at the same time observe the setting of the sun and the rhythm of life around them. The same squadron of pelicans flew past in the same direction at much the same hour. The same two pairs of white terns wheeled and called in the sky above them. The same armies of tiny crabs emerged from their burrows and scurried across the wet sand after each retreating wave. It seemed that nothing would ever change.
‘It’s now three months without the sight of a sail,’ observed Jezreel one evening. He placed his hand gently down on the sand so that a tiny grey-brown lizard could crawl on to his palm. The creatures had become their pets. They showed no fear, running up the humans’ arms and legs, crawling in their hair.
‘Let’s see how far the little rascal can jump,’ said Jacques. The Frenchman extended his arm towards Jezreel. Obligingly the lizard leaped across the gap. ‘Bravo! Now go back the other way!’ Jacques exclaimed. On cue the lizard sprang back to where it had come from.
‘We’d make a fortune if we could train a whole troupe of these and take them back as a sideshow in the circus,’ said the Frenchman.
‘Or rent them out in the mosquito season,’ said Jezreel. The lizard, now on his shoulder, had snapped up a flying insect.
‘I’d advertise them as pygmy crocodiles,’ said Jacques. ‘That should bring in the crowds.’
Hector lay back on the sand and stared up at the sky. He was beginning to doubt his decision to stay at their original campsite. Perhaps it would have been better to have based themselves on the southern shore, looked for water there, watched that side of the island for passing ships or the return of the salt rakers. Or maybe they should be taking turns to patrol the coast rather than meeting together for the evening ritual. A ship might make a brief stopover, just for an hour or so in a neighbouring bay, and they would be none the wiser for it.
The light was fading fast. The first evening stars were appearing in the sky. He wondered if Maria was looking up at them, and he pictured her, still waiting for him in Tortuga. Every evening at the same time he treated himself to this moment of imagination. It allowed him to leave the island behind, to see the expression in her eyes as she saw him return, and to recall what it was like to hold her in his arms. He was never in doubt that she was waiting for him. They had been apart for far longer in the past, and he knew in his bones that he would find his way back to her. It was a moment of comfort and reassurance.
‘Goodnight,’ he heard Jezreel say. The big man rose to his feet and headed off for their little hut. Jacques and Dan preferred to sleep out on the sand.
Hector felt a slight tickling sensation as one of the little lizards ran across his face and jumped off. The creatures always disappeared at dusk and came back the following afternoon. A few feet away, Jacques began snoring softly.
For perhaps an hour Hector lay awake, watching the stars wheel slowly across the sky and thinking about Maria. Then, unable to sleep, he got up and quietly made his way down to the shoreline. There he stood for a long while, watching the wavering path of moonlight on the waves and listening to their sound as they lapped the strand. There was enough light for him to see his way so he turned and began to walk slowly along the shore. It was a familiar path that he and his companions had taken every dawn searching for turtles. He knew every inlet, every cluster of rocks, every undulation of soft beach sand.
He must have gone about half a mile when a movement ahead of him and farther along the beach caught his eye. He stopped short. The hair on the back of his neck rose up. In the distance something black and formless was coming towards him, weaving from side to side. Hector was so accustomed to the notion that he and his companions were the only large living creatures on the island that he felt a sudden tingle of fear. His heart thumped wildly as he tried to make sense of the advancing shape. Sometimes it was almost the height of a man. Then suddenly it halved in size. Now it was coming towards him, the next instant it had halted. Occasionally it veered off as if about to plunge into the sea, but then came back and was advancing in his direction.
Hector stood stock still, his throat dry. He considered making a quick dash for cover. There was a low sand dune to his right and if he crouched down behind it he would be out of sight and away from the creature’s path. But as he hesitated, he understood what he was seeing in the moonlight. Coming towards him was a man moving at a staggering run. He had his head down and was able only to see the ground just in front of him. Occasionally he fell to his knees, and once he tripped and sprawled on the ground. Each time he got unsteadily back on to his feet and came on, lurching from side to side. As he came closer, it became clear why he was bent forward. His hands were tied behind his back.
The running man was now near enough for Hector to hear his laboured breathing. When he was five yards away, he tripped again and came crashing down on his knees. He must have sensed Hector’s presence, standing motionless just in front of him, for he raised his head and looked up. His face was stark, the eye holes black and the lips distorted by the moon shadow. ‘Ayudame!’ he wheezed, and then again in English, ‘Help me!’
Hector saw a young man, slightly built, with dark hair, and dressed in a torn white shirt and breeches. He looked shocked and desperate, and there was an ugly, ragged streak down one side of his face, black in the moonlight. Hector guessed it was blood.
‘Ayudame!’ repeated the stranger.
Hector stepped forward. Putting an arm round the young man’s waist, he helped him back on his feet. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you back to camp, but let me undo that rope first. Stand still a moment.’
As Hector worked at the knots, he felt the young man’s wrists trembling with exhaustion. Finally the rope was loose, and the stranger was able to lower his arms to his sides. He gave a moan of pain.
‘Who are you?’ Hector asked.
‘Baltasar Corbalan, until very recently the master of the bark Los Picos.’
Hector noted that he spoke educated Spanish. ‘What happened to you?’
‘My crew mutinied. They intended to kill me. But I managed to escape.’
‘Let’s get you to camp. Put one arm over my shoulder, and I’ll help you along.’
Haltingly they made their way along the beach, Hector holding up the young man whenever he stumbled.
Dan heard their approach long before they arrived at the camp and had woken Jacques and Jezreel.
‘This is Baltasar Corbalan. I met with him about a mile along the beach. He’s in a bad way,’ said Hector to his friends as he eased the young man to the ground. Corbalan sat gazing around him, clearly confused. The unexpected sight of his rescuers, heavily bearded and wild-looking in their ragged clothes, must have seemed almost as terrifying in the moonlight as Hector’s first glimpse of the young ship captain.
‘We have been stranded here for the past three months,’ Hector explained, switching to Spanish. ‘You are the first person we have seen in all that time.’
Corbalan lifted a hand and touched the side of his head. He winced with pain. ‘I hope you can assist me,’ he said in English, heavily accented but clear.
‘Tell us exactly what happened,’ said Jezreel.
‘I was outward
bound on a trading voyage when my crew seized the vessel and stole the cargo. They attacked me and my sailing master and brought us to this place—’
‘Your ship is here now?’ Jacques broke in, a note of excitement in his voice.
‘Anchored just along the coast, in a small cove.’
Hector knew the place. It was a little more than two miles away. He and his friends had visited it regularly on their turtle-hunting trips. Normally there was no reason for a ship to anchor there because it lacked any source of fresh water nearby.
Baltasar was speaking again. ‘My sailing master was on watch when the crew knocked him down. They grabbed me when I came on deck to see what all the noise was about.’
‘How many of them are there?’ asked Jezreel.
‘Just four. We were sailing short-handed. If it had been my regular crew, we would have had no trouble. But these were men hired at short notice.’
‘What do they intend now?’
‘I heard them discussing their plan after they had overpowered us. They decided that they would come ashore here, bury the valuables taken from the ship, and kill me and the sailing master as the only witnesses.’
‘It would have been simpler to have dumped you overboard and sailed off,’ said Jacques.
‘Two of the mutineers have family back in Cartagena, our home port. They want to be able to return there. They were going to claim that the ship had been attacked by brigands operating in this area. They would say that my sailing master and I were killed in the fight, and the pirates had made off with the cargo. Later the mutineers would return here and retrieve the loot.’
Hector thought back to Lucas and his crew of cut-throats. The mutineers’ tale would have had the ring of truth.
‘Yet you managed to escape,’ prompted Hector.
‘We dropped anchor late in the evening. Two of the men brought me and the sailing master ashore intending to murder us. But they had helped themselves to the ship’s stores and were drunk. They amused themselves by saying they would give us a chance to live. They would let us make a run for our lives, one after the other. But first they tied our arms behind our backs.’
‘Did you both get away?’ asked Jezreel.
Baltasar shook his head. ‘My sailing master, Pedro, went first. They shot him in the back before he had gone five yards. They took a few more drinks before it was my turn. By then the light was fading and they missed their aim. One bullet just creased my head. It knocked me down and they thought I was dead, so they went back to the bottle.’
‘They will come after you in the morning when they’ve sobered up and can’t find your body,’ said Jezreel. ‘They can’t afford to let you get away.’
‘I know that,’ said Baltasar. ‘So I beg you to attack them first. Help me get back my ship.’
‘I’m afraid we have no weapons,’ said Jezreel heavily. ‘We are unarmed. We were stranded here without even a decent knife between us.’
Baltasar looked stunned.
‘You’re forgetting we have a musket,’ said Hector. ‘The one we found when we first got here. We’ve been using the flint for lighting our fire.’
‘But the gun itself is broken and useless,’ Jacques pointed out.
‘The mutineers don’t know that.’
Dan was quick to grasp what Hector had in mind. ‘So we bluff them.’
‘There’s a risk. The bluff won’t work if all four of the mutineers go searching for Baltasar as a group.’
‘Only the two men who brought me ashore will come looking for me,’ said Baltasar. ‘I’m certain of that. They won’t report to the others that they have made a mess of things.’
Baltasar paused for a moment as a wave of nausea overcame him.
‘Their ringleader is a vicious bully. If he thinks the two of them are trying to cheat him or are incompetent, things won’t go well for them. He might even abandon them here.’
‘Then we had better get going,’ said Hector, putting an end to the discussion. He had the details of his plan clear in his mind. ‘Dan, see if you can bind that broken musket together with fishing line to make it look in working order.’
He turned to Jezreel and grinned. ‘You’re the biggest and ugliest of us. You’ll be the one holding the gun.’
‘And where’s this bluff going to take place?’ asked Jacques.
‘As close to the ship as possible,’ said Hector. ‘The crew think the island is uninhabited. If they come across our camp or any trace of us, they’ll be on their guard. We need to carry the attack to them, not let them come to us.’
‘I must accompany you,’ said Baltasar.
Hector regarded the young man doubtfully. He looked about to faint.
‘I want to have my revenge on those murderous swine,’ insisted the Spaniard.
‘All right,’ Hector agreed. ‘But we need to be in position well before first light.’
*
ALL TOGETHER they set off along the beach. Half a mile from where Los Picos was at anchor, Hector turned aside. He led his little party up behind the crest of a low dune that overlooked the shoreline. Here he placed his ambush. Dan and Jacques were the first to take up their positions, well back where they would be out of sight. He stationed Jezreel, with the musket, closest to the anchorage, the direction from which they expected the searchers to arrive. Twenty paces away, farther on along the dune, a straggly patch of beach grass offered some slight cover. Hector scooped out a hollow in which he and Baltasar could lie concealed and from where he could see Jezreel and also have a clear sight of anyone approaching along the shore.
Prone on the sand they waited. When the first streaks of dawn appeared, Hector was pleased to see the line of footprints in the soft sand which Baltasar had left behind him as he fled from his enemies. His trail was easy to follow.
For some time the only sign of life was a flock of a dozen seagulls. They landed on the foreshore directly below the ambush and began to hunt for food. Baltasar lay with his eyes closed, fighting off the pain of his wound. The blood oozing from the deep gash in his head had begun to crust. A few flies settled on the feast. Every few minutes Hector parted the stems of the grass and gazed along the length of the beach towards the anchorage.
After about an hour he saw what he had hoped for: a lone man was trudging along the beach towards the ambush. He was wearing a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a musket. Hector nudged Baltasar, who struggled up far enough to take a quick look.
‘That’s Julio,’ he whispered. ‘It was his bullet that hit me.’
Baltasar slumped back on the sand, and Hector looked across towards Jezreel. The big man lay pressed against the ground, his face turned towards him. Hector gave a slight nod, then turned his attention back to the beach and kept very still.
The man with the musket came on. He was walking casually, feet sinking deep into the white sand as soft as sifted flour. He held his musket in both hands across his body, his attention fixed on the ground ahead of him. It was clear that he was following the track that Baltasar had left behind.
He passed the place where Jezreel was hidden. The flock of seagulls, alarmed by his presence, lifted off from the sand, flew a few yards downwind and settled again ahead of him.
Hector quietly raised his right hand.
Jezreel stood. In a couple of strides he was on the crest of the dune. He brought the useless musket to his shoulder. Unaware of the giant aiming a gun down on him, Julio had paused for a moment. He reached for the leather strap which held his cartridge box, and adjusted it so that it sat more comfortably across his chest. He was close enough for Hector to see the dark patches of sweat staining his shirt at the armpits. Irritably the mutineer swatted an insect that had settled on his cheek.
‘Stay right where you are,’ growled Jezreel, just loud enough to be heard by his victim.
The sailor spun round. The sight of Jezreel, wild and savage, pointing the musket at him made him freeze.
Hector sprang to his feet and careered down the slope of the d
une. He snatched the musket from Julio’s grasp. The mutineer gaped at him in astonishment. Hector stepped back to give himself room, cocked the musket, and pointed the gun at the man’s stomach. ‘Down on your knees,’ he snapped.
The terrified sailor did as he was told, even as Hector became aware that Baltasar was limping down the slope towards them. ‘You treacherous bastard,’ the Spaniard spat at their captive as he arrived in front of him. ‘Next time shoot straighter.’ Baltasar turned to Hector. ‘The swine tried to shoot me with my own gun.’
Hector glanced down at the musket in his hands. The polished stock was of fine walnut and the brass fittings were engraved with filigree patterns. The gunsmith had stamped his initials on the lockplate.
‘Where’s Luis?’ demanded Baltasar, glaring down at the kneeling sailor.
Their prisoner cringed. ‘I wanted no part in this. The others forced me. Luis is back there, waiting.’
Baltasar was bitter. ‘Waiting for what? For you to report back that you had shot me down like a dog. My father and grandfather were good to your family. And this is how you repay us.’ He turned away in disgust.
Hector prodded their captive with the muzzle of the gun. ‘On your feet!’ He took the pistol hanging from a hook on the man’s belt. ‘And hand over that strap and cartridge box.’ The man did as he was told, and as Hector slung the belt over his shoulder he noted that the cartridge box was also particularly fine. Riveted to the leather flap, a large silver medallion depicted a hunting scene – a shooter aiming at a wild boar.
Jacques arrived and lashed the man’s wrists together with a length of their home-made fishing line. ‘Take him away and stick a gag in his mouth,’ Hector told the Frenchman. ‘I expect his comrade will soon come looking for him.’
