PIRATE: Privateer

by Tim Severin

  ‘They’re beginning to recognize that side of you,’ said Dan as Jacques pulled up his breeches and sat down again.

  ‘Just to make sure,’ Jacques replied. Hector and Dan were rowing steadily now, moving the skiff purposefully through the water. Some distance up ahead, a ship was sailing down towards them. Doubtless it was the Speedy Return coming to pick them up.

  ‘De Graff will kill you if he gets his hands on you,’ she warned Hector.

  He gave her the ghost of a smile. ‘And the hangman in Port Royal will probably string me up.’

  Anne-Marie had a sudden urge to shatter the young man’s calm self-assurance. ‘So let us hope that Maria does not watch you dangle there,’ she said meaningfully.

  She was pleased to note Hector missed a stroke. He went pale. ‘Is Maria in Port Royal?’

  The Breton shrugged. ‘When I last spoke with her, she intended to go there to look for you.’

  Hector appeared dumbfounded, even paler now. ‘You spoke with Maria? How did that happen?’

  ‘She came to Petit Goâve, looking for you. She had heard that the Morvaut was taken, and wanted to find out what had happened to you.’

  ‘And you told her?’

  ‘Not everything. I helped her find a boat, a smuggler, who would take her to Jamaica. She thought that was where you were most likely to be found.’

  Hector had stopped rowing. He stared at her. ‘When was that?’

  ‘About three months ago. Maybe more.’

  He began to row again, his expression thoughtful. Unexpectedly, he said, ‘Why did you decide to come away with us?’

  ‘I’ve been asking myself the same question,’ she replied. Then, feeling ashamed of the way she had been treating the young man, she added, ‘It was a decision on the spur of the moment. But I have been feeling vulnerable for some time.’

  He looked at her questioningly. ‘Vulnerable? That doesn’t sound like the person they call the Tigress?’

  She grimaced on hearing her nickname. ‘Captain de Graff was becoming a hazard. His constant attention was wearing me down. I needed breathing space.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have sailed with him,’ he said flatly.

  She shook her head. ‘The Governor of Petit Goâve made sure that I went to Providencia. De Graff needs me to help locate the place where we found the Spanish salvage when we were on the Morvaut.’

  ‘And how did the Governor persuade you?’

  ‘You remember my brother Yannick?’

  Hector nodded.

  ‘I shot and killed the man who knifed him. I could have been tried for murder. The Governor agreed to delay my trial.’

  Hector smiled thinly. ‘Then we have that much in common. I went in search of de Graff only because the Governor of Jamaica postponed my trial for piracy if I did so. The Spaniards are keen to have me hung for that incident when you and your brothers robbed the San Gil. I was an accomplice, you may remember.’

  He lapsed into silence. Anne-Marie felt a pang of remorse. ‘I’m sorry if you are in trouble for that reason. I hope you will set it against my help when you and your friends escaped from the Morvaut.’

  Jacques, sitting beside her, uttered a bark of frustration. ‘Will you two please stop discussing the past! Hector, if you don’t pay attention to your rowing, that launch will catch up with us and then de Graff can carry out whatever punishment he thinks we deserve.’

  TWELVE

  HAGGARD AND FROWZY, the crew of the Sainte Rose had seldom seen their captain so angry. De Graff came storming through the camp early in the morning, roaring that he wanted the frigate to be under way within the hour. Rapier in hand, he slashed through the cords of hammocks so their occupants crashed to the ground. Then he kicked them savagely until they rose to their feet. One slow-witted sailor groaned, rolled over on his face, and went back to sleep. The sword point prodded two inches into his backside.

  ‘What’s eating him?’ asked a carpenter’s mate. His guts were rumbling with a mix of rum and cheap brandy, three flagons of it from what he remembered of the night before.

  ‘His Breton woman’s run off,’ said his colleague. ‘The lookout reported she’s on a skiff and heading out to sea.’

  ‘Let’s hope that bastard brother of hers has gone with her,’ muttered the first man. His comment ended with a quick gasp of discomfort and a gush of yellow-green vomit as he threw up.

  The longboat sent in pursuit of the fugitives was recalled. It was obvious that it could not catch the runaways before a small brig picked them up. It was the same vessel that had attempted to send in a fireship two days earlier. The Sainte Rose’s petty officers had caught their captain’s evil humour. They were bawling orders, cuffing and cajoling the bleary men to get on board the frigate and prepare to weigh anchor. Unwisely the master gunner asked for permission to send the longboat to retrieve the cannon from the shore battery. De Graff snarled that the guns could stay where they were. The frigate would return and pick them up later.

  The longboat picked up a towline and began hauling round the frigate’s bow so her sails could catch the last of the land breeze. A lucky fluke of the wind and the Sainte Rose overtook the longboat and would have sailed away without stopping if the coxswain had not grabbed a dangling rope and taken a turn around athwart. With a clatter of spilled oars and a slew of oaths the longboat crew scrambled up the side of the frigate. De Graff raged at them, shouting that the longboat was a hindrance and they should hoist it on board at once.

  The frigate’s crew went about their tasks, heads down, not daring to catch the eye of their fuming commander. De Graff had somehow found time to dress in his usual immaculate costume – dark blue coat lined with silk and edged with gold braid, white breeches and stockings, and tall bucket-top boots. He took up his position on the poop deck, scowling as he surveyed the crew’s frenzied activity, his lips clamped together under the extravagant blond moustache, with his rage subsiding to a cold, vicious anger.

  ‘Excuse me, captain,’ said a diffident voice. It was the first mate, a regular officer from the Navy. ‘This man has something to say that may be important.’

  De Graff wheeled round and glowered down at the sailor. A small scrawny man wearing a red cap, his ingratiating smile showed a mouthful of bad teeth. ‘What do you have to tell me?’ the captain demanded.

  ‘The men in that skiff, Your Excellency. I know them,’ said the sailor.

  ‘How?’ rasped de Graff.

  ‘I was with the prize crew you put aboard the pinnace we captured some months back. They were on that boat.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I’ve been with the gun battery these past few days. Two of those fellows were on the fireship, and again in the skiff this morning. I got a good look at them.’

  His words struck deep. De Graff could recall every detail of the capture of the pinnace. It was the first time he had laid eyes on Anne-Marie. He could still picture how attractive she had looked. He even remembered the name of the young man who had come aboard the frigate with her to be interviewed – Lynch, Hector Lynch, that was it. Half Irish, or so he claimed. There had been something unlikely and all too slick about the way Lynch and his companions escaped the next night, vanishing into the darkness from the pinnace. De Graff’s suspicions came flooding back. Anne-Marie Kergonan had claimed to know nothing about that escape. Now she was running off with the same man. The filibustier gritted his teeth with fury. The Breton woman had played him for a fool. He felt duped and, just as bad, he knew that he was jealous. He had always told himself that jealousy was an emotion reserved for weak people who could not control their emotions. To admit to himself that he was prey to jealousy made him even more ill-tempered.

  The first mate was trying to be tactful, humouring him. ‘We should catch that brig before nightfall. There’s no chance that she can outsail us.’

  De Graff treated him to a look of pure contempt. When it came to dealing with Anne-Marie Kergonan or Hector Lynch, nothing was a foregone c
onclusion.

  *

  ‘HOW LONG BEFORE the frigate has us within cannon range?’ Hector asked Bartaboa aboard the Speedy Return.

  ‘Normally, five or six hours. But she’s not fully rigged and can’t carry all her canvas.’ The sailing master had been observing the Sainte Rose for the past three hours as the frigate chased after the pink.

  ‘Can you stay clear of her until nightfall?’ Hector said.

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I’m counting on you to do so. We change course as soon as it is dark, as if to throw her off our track.’

  Bartaboa hesitated. ‘There’s nearly a full moon. I doubt that we’ll escape de Graff that easily. He could see our manoeuvre.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Hector, and before the sailing master could say anything more, he hurried down the companionway to the chart locker in the stern cabin.

  He selected a map of the Caribbean. It was a match of the one that he had discussed with Lord Inchiquin, but faded and stained with much use. The Speedy Return had no chart table so he cleared a space on one of the bunks and laid out the map. Taking a pair of dividers, he walked them across the parchment, measuring the distance between Providencia and the graveyard of the Vipers. If the wind held, the pink should reach the reefs by noon the following day.

  He laid aside the dividers, found a clean sheet of paper and a pencil, and sat down. For a long while he sat motionless, eyes closed, seeing pictures in his head. Then he began to draw. First he marked a small circle off-centre. To the left of the circle and close to it, he added a few faint lines. He reviewed the result, was not satisfied, and corrected what he had drawn. After several false starts he became more confident. The pencil strokes were more certain. They extended farther and farther across the page. Gradually a random pattern of wavering lines emerged. He shaded in some of the empty spaces. Other areas he left plain, or inserted a question mark. With a ruler he marked several straight lines radiating from the first small circle he had drawn. Finally he went to the cabin door and called for Dan.

  When the Miskito appeared, he showed him the sheet of paper. ‘Do you recognize this?’

  Dan needed only one quick look. ‘That’s where we fished the galleon,’ he replied.

  ‘Have I left anything out?’ asked Hector.

  The Miskito picked up the sketch and inspected it for several seconds. ‘Not that I can think of. But I only know the area around the wreck itself.’

  ‘The rest is what I remember from when I rowed out with Jezreel looking for more wrecks,’ Hector told him.

  ‘You seem to have identified some channels,’ said the Miskito.

  ‘I intend to take the Speedy Return through them.’

  ‘And hope that de Graff tries to follow you?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Dan handed back the sketch. ‘The Vipers earned their nickname. Let’s hope their fangs can snag another victim.’

  ‘I’ll need you at the masthead,’ Hector told him. ‘You’ll have a copy of this drawing. When we try to run the reef, you con us through. I’ll stay by the helm.’

  As always, Dan was unruffled. ‘You’d better explain your plan to the rest of the crew. I doubt if they can imagine anyone piloting his way through the Vipers without putting his ship on the reefs.’

  *

  ALL THAT DAY the chase had gone on, the gap between the two ships steadily diminishing. The sun was already slipping below the horizon when an anxious-looking Bartaboa came to Hector with an apology: ‘I didn’t make enough allowance that the frigate is newly breamed. She’s gaining an extra knot from that clean hull.’

  ‘Keep us far enough ahead so our change of course looks credible,’ Hector told him. There was half an hour of daylight left. ‘If de Graff thinks he’s about to catch us, it will make him all the more eager. He’ll want to cripple and board so as to get his hands on us. He’s not interested in sinking the Speedy Return.’

  As he spoke there was an orange-yellow flash in the gathering gloom. De Graff’s gunners had tried a ranging shot. No one saw where it landed. The minutes crawled past and the night came on. The outline of the chasing frigate became increasingly difficult to see against the darkening surface of the sea. There was no more cannon fire.

  Hector waited until he was satisfied that the Speedy Return was almost invisible. ‘East by north,’ he said to the helmsman quietly. The crew of the pink adjusted the set of the sails, and when their ship had settled on her new track, he summoned them aft. They were little more than dark shadows as they clustered on the aft deck.

  ‘We wait until dawn,’ he told them. ‘Until then there is nothing to be done except keep a good lookout. By morning we will be close upon the reefs, where I intend to lure the frigate to her destruction.’

  ‘On to the Vipers?’ asked a sceptical voice he recognized as Bartaboa.

  ‘Yes. There are channels that we can slip through. Narrow but passable.’

  ‘Let’s hope de Graff doesn’t know about them too.’ This time it was the parson, Simeon Watson, who spoke from the darkness. There was a low murmuring as the plan was translated for the other sailors. Hector became aware of someone standing apart from the others, close to the windward rail. It was Anne-Marie Kergonan. She had been listening to his plan. He wondered what she was thinking of his makeshift crew and their chances of success. For a moment he considered asking her about de Graff. She might know whether the filibustier was familiar with the reefs and what he was likely to do. Then he rejected the idea for fear that she would answer that de Graff was well acquainted with the Vipers and had sailed the Sainte Rose across them safely. If so, his plan was worthless and he was leading his men into another debacle. But he no longer had a choice: he had committed his ship and his men. He alone would be responsible for what happened next morning.

  Before first light he was already perched high on the topmost main spar, watching the dawn slowly seep up from the eastern horizon, the sea turning from black to darkest indigo. He faced aft, straining his eyes for a glimpse of the Sainte Rose. To his disappointment it seemed that the frigate was no longer there. Then, as the light strengthened, he saw her hull down to the south-west. He felt a surge of relief. De Graff must have suspected that the Speedy Return could change course in the night, or his lookouts had seen the pink alter direction. He had kept his options open, shadowing the probable route of the pink, but keeping slightly to one side just in case he was in error, careful not to commit himself entirely.

  For some time Hector continued to scrutinize the distant vessel. After a while he saw the Sainte Rose spread more sail and begin heading towards the pink, resuming the direct chase. It was an unhurried, deliberate manoeuvre, and it reassured him. He climbed down the shrouds and regained the deck.

  ‘De Graff knows that the Vipers lie ahead,’ he told Bartaboa, who was waiting beside the helm.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ asked the sailing master.

  ‘Because he took his time in altering course to follow us. He thinks the Speedy Return is headed into a dead end and when we reach the Vipers we will either have to turn and fight or we run our ship on the reef. He sees no need for haste.’

  ‘What are your orders?’ asked the sailing master.

  ‘The same as yesterday. Draw him on. I want him close, yet not so near that his cannon disable us before we run the Vipers.’

  ‘How soon will that be?’

  It was a question that Hector could not answer with certainty. From the masthead there had been no sign of the reefs, and he had no way of establishing just how far eastward the pink had sailed in the night. The angle of the sun would tell him how far north or south he might be, but there was no known means of measuring a position east or west. He could only make an educated guess by calculating the course he had sailed since leaving Providencia and the pink’s speed through the water. But this took no account of the currents and the amount of sideways drift.

  He answered with more confidence than he felt. ‘Within three hours we should be
in sight of two small islands at the southern edge of the reefs. I will use them as my marker.’

  Bartaboa nodded. ‘I know them. Waterless places, the haunts of seabirds. You can go ashore to gather their eggs when the tide is right.’

  His mention of the tides reminded Hector how easily his plan could go wrong. If it was low water when the Speedy Return reached the Vipers the channels he hoped to use might be impassable. At high tide there could be local eddies and currents so powerful that they would sweep his vessel on to the coral.

  Hector put the worry out of his mind. ‘Hold this course while I go down and prepare a copy of the pilot chart for Dan.’

  He was adding the final details to the sketch when the cry came that land lay ahead. He hurried up on deck to find Dan waiting for him.

  ‘It’s the same pair of islands where we anchored when we were fishing the wreck of the galleon. I’m sure of it!’ he said to Hector.

  Hector handed the sketch map to his friend. ‘I’ve marked our channel, Dan. In places it’s not more than ten paces wide, and there’s an awkward dogleg halfway along. Get us to the entrance. After that, use your eyes to con us through. We’ll watch for your signals.’

  Without a word, the Miskito took the sheet of paper. Moments later he was climbing the shrouds.

  At the helm Bartaboa was still uneasy. ‘Hector, de Graff’s been within cannon range for some time. Yet he’s not pressing the chase. He’s slowed his ship to match our speed.’

  Hector studied the pursuing frigate. The Sainte Rose appeared alarmingly close. But he could see that de Graff had reduced sail. ‘He hopes that we are ignorant enough to run ourselves aground, do his work for him.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth and called up to Dan. ‘Can you see the reefs yet?’

  ‘White water, two miles ahead!’