by Scott Cook
“Is there some reason you’ve kept this secret all my life?” I asked.
“Not really,” Pops said. “Although… there is something in her papers that could… just could, mind you… have a bearing in today’s world.”
“Ooh…” Lisa said, rubbing her palms together. “Buried treasure?”
Nana laughed, “Not exactly. But there is a map. A map that supposedly leads to El Dorado.”
I scoffed, “Not that dusty old legend! Europeans tried for centuries to find the fabled city of gold and never did. I’m sure that if such a place exists, it would’ve been found by now.”
“You never know,” Pops said, holding up a cautionary finger. “Yet the map Katie got her hands on wasn’t just another bullshit map to El Dorado. It was… or maybe still is… a map to a piece of deeded land in Columbia. A huge tract of land that was once occupied by the Muisca and the Incas. Supposedly, it could be claimed and nearly a hundred thousand acres would have to be turned over to the deed holder.”
“And nobody ever claimed it?” Lisa asked.
“I don’t think so,” Nana said. “I think Katie stowed it away and either forgot about it or just lost interest.”
“Cool,” I mused. “But it could hardly still be relevant, right?”
Pops shrugged, “I’m not entirely certain… the Columbian government would have to honor it, of course. Yet think of it… prime land up in the Andes. Both remote and fertile. Imagine what you could do with that land. Probably loaded with gems and gold still… and as I said, good farming from what I understand.”
At first I didn’t get it, then the pieces tumbled together, “Coca plantations, you mean. A private piece of land where somebody could plant and raise cocaine plants without being bothered.”
“At the very least,” Pops said. “But based on the documents that go with it, the land is more than just a free parcel… because its ancient holy Indian territory, the owner of that land would himself or herself be considered an Incan ruler by some old Columbian law and some obscure historical precedent of today. Basically, once claimed, the land would be a sovereign Inca nation. Get my drift?”
I nodded, “whoever controls it could do whatever the Christ they wanted and nobody could say a damned thing about it. Wow… so how come we haven’t made this claim for ourselves?”
“We’re not Indians,” Pops explained. “The person who claims the land must be able to prove to a reasonable extent that they’re both Columbian and that there’s some Indio blood in their family line. It’s an interesting conundrum, but honestly, nobody knows about it but us. Just an odd historical curio.”
I shrugged, “Well, it’s pretty intriguing. I’d love to hear more.”
2
October 10th, 1797
It took only three seconds, yet in that time, a shocking amount of devastation was wrought on both sides. Not nearly as much as Woodbine could’ve hoped for, however. His first shot, the forward starboard focs’l carronade went slightly high, managing only to punch a hole through the schooner’s massive outer jib.
An unfortunate stroke to be sure. That eighteen-pound ball was worth three of his main deck guns and could’ve easily shot the schooner’s great bowsprit clean away, virtually guaranteeing Whitby Castle’s victory. It wasn’t going to prove to be so easy, however.
When the main broadsides were exchanged, the effect was middling at best. Certainly the brig’s grape shot wrought considerable devastation on deck, killing no less than ten men. Again, though, Woodbine’s vessel would be deprived of the effect of her final quarterdeck carronade. While the schooner had only ten six pounder guns, her large crew of mercenaries were well armed with muskets. From the rigging and from relatively sheltered positions on deck, they peppered the upper deck of Whitby Castle and did far more damage to men and morale than all of her pop guns combined.
Jenkins, stationed at the forward carronade was hit directly in the heart and died before he struck the deck. David Kent, having just made his way aft of the last gun was hit no less than three times, the seventy-five caliber balls shattering the bone of his upper right arm, burying deep in his belly and snapping his spine and plowing through the bones of his face and into his brain, leaving an appalling wound that the young man mercifully never felt.
Now the two vessels were shooting apart, the gap between them widening by twenty-two feet with each passing second. For several of those seconds, no one on either vessel took any notice of their course. They were fully occupied with the task of attempting to recover their wits after a very rapid but shattering exchange. An exchange that, while reaping a horrific toll on men, did very little in the way of damage to either vessel.
Woodbine gaped at his deck. Six men lie dead. Kent nearly at his feet, Jenkins sprawled out near the foot of the foremast and three men near number four gun, which had been dismounted and overset, having crushed one of its crew. Even a puny six pound cannon weighed nearly nine hundred pounds without factoring in the weight of the gun carriage.
A final body was that of Horris, the sailor who’d seconded the quartermaster at the wheel. A shocking butcher’s bill already and the battle had just begun. Woodbine knew he’d be required to come up with the schooner again and he absolutely must shoot away a spar for his lumbering vessel to have any chance of escape let alone victory.
“Bear up, bear up!” he called to the single man at the wheel. “Get her as close as you can on the starboard tack, Wade! All hands! All hands, there! Weather braces, heads’l sheets now! Brace up and haul!!”
The ship began to turn up into the wind and the remaining hands on deck, hardly more than two dozen, scrambled for their sail handling positions, leaving the guns for the moment. Woodbine bit his lip. He simply didn’t have enough hands to fight the ship effectively. The Frenchman had easily twice as many and a far simpler fore and aft rigged ship to handle and less guns as well. Somehow, Woodbine needed to trim sails, steer and ready his starboard broadside again as well as at least load the larboard battery. Number four gun should be remounted as well, which would take a party of no less than half a dozen.
Then there were the bodies… in battle, there wasn’t the luxury of preserving dead men for a proper burial. The corpses were in the way, and the sight of their maimed fellows was understandably disheartening to any man. Particularly on a merchant vessel where the crew hadn’t been hardened by previous actions. It was necessary, therefore, to heave the dead over the side during an engagement.
“On deck there!” Shouted the lookout still in the main top. “Enemy is coming about and settling on the starboard tack!”
Easy enough to see. The schooner was now no more than a mile away and she’d done the same thing the brig had. Turned sharply up into the wind, heading a little north of east. More northerly than Whitby could point. It meant that in short order, the converging triangles of their courses would bring the two combatants into range again.
“Sir! Sir!” A powerful voice roared through the wind and rain that now blew sideways from just forward of the starboard beam.
Woodbine turned to see a man, a tall man, leap from the open companion, a gleaming sword in one hand and a brace of pistols jammed into the belt synched tightly around an oddly narrow waist.
No… not a man at all! Although the figure was six feet tall and looked broad in the shoulders, a closer inspection revealed that beneath the Hessian boots, rain soaked white trousers and white silk shirt and tailored blue coat was the lithe and very female form of a young woman. Her generous bosom was clearly distinguishable beneath the light jacket and shirt and the narrow waist and flared hips of a woman were all the more obvious in the tightly fitting britches. Of course, her remarkably pretty face and main of wild brown hair, streaming out behind her right shoulder would’ve made her gender plain enough in all events. The sudden actinic blue-white flare of a lightning flash seemed to light her in stark relief, as if to dispose of any uncertainty.
“Mistress Cook!” Woodbine said, recollecting himself. “Yo
u must go below. This deck is no place for—“
“Goddammit, sir!” Catherine Cook shouted, her long powerful legs carrying her across the deck with admirable steadiness. “You need every hand you can, and I’m no stranger to fighting nor especially ships! I can use this hanger, sir, and I can hand, reef and steer! Not to mention that I’m as strong as any man! Now for God’s sake, put me to use, captain!”
He had to admit she was certainly formidable looking. Although her shoulders were broad for a woman, they weren’t in any way masculine. Yet her great height had given her a commanding presence coupled with substantial physical strength. He’d seen firsthand how she could heave on a line and when their anchor had been nearly lost in Bermuda, she’d come on deck, taken a place at the capstan and heaved like a jolly tar.
All that being said, though, his Georgian manners and upbringing balked at letting any young lady of seventeen, even if she was the great Cook’s own flesh and blood granddaughter, as he well knew, do man’s work. On the other hand, the grayed-out specter of the looming American built French privateer drawing ever closer, combined with the sight of his friend and first mate lying dead with his blood flowing over the deck left him little room for chivalry.
Woodbine sighed, “Very well, Mistress Cook. Please assist Burgess here at the wheel!”
“It’s Kate or Katie if you like,” Kate said. “And the wheel be damned! You need that gun remounted and the larboard battery prepared and ready to fire! That frog-munchin’ son of a bitch out there plans to cross your hawse, rake us and range along our disengaged side, grapple on and board us!”
Damn her, she was right! Who was this girl?
“I’m afraid you’re in the right of it, Miss… Kate!” Woodbine relented, moved by her passion and the fire in her young and lovely sea-blue eyes. “Do you know anything about cannon?”
She grinned wickedly, “Just you watch, sir! I’d be obliged if you’d give the men orders, however. Not sure if they’ll follow a woman unless directed!”
Woodbine agreed and shouted forward that all hands were to obey Kate as if she were David Kent himself. She began shouting orders, gathering men around her to get the number four gun setup on its carriage again. Woodbine was more than a little amazed when none of the men argued. They set the gun carriage to rights, passed lines beneath the barrel and heaved the six pounder up, Kate guiding it so it’s trunnions would settle properly on the carriage pins. The train tackles, gun tackles and breechings were then refastened. All in less than two minutes.
Woodbine was astonished by her knowledge and by the way the men attended to her orders. Yet when she balled out for men to join her along the larboard side, no one moved from their starboard guns at first.
“Come on, lads!” Kate roared, her powerful voice, somehow designed to reach the length of a ship in a hard blow and yet still feminine. “You don’t want the Frogs to catch us with our britches down, do you!? Your starboard guns are ready, now let’s make the larboard battery ready as well! We’ll serve out Jean Crappaud with two broadsides this time, eh!”
They began to move then, in twos and threes, leaving their guns, braces and sheets, which had already been heaved round and belayed to follow her to the as yet unloaded larboard battery. A few men hesitated, standing by their readied starboard pieces and appearing thrown out or even downright defiant.
“Sankey! Jones! Danvers!” Kate roared, taking up a stout length of knotted line that had been discarded by the boatswain, he being among the dead. “Get your asses over here, ya’ hear me there! Those pieces are ready, but our balls are hanging out portside now! Jump across to your fuckin’ guns, Goddamn your eyes!”
Woodbine was nothing less than flabbergasted as she roared like a boatswain twenty years at sea. She plied her starter as well as she hurled curses and blasphemies, striking the two nearest men with a resounding thump that made them jump and then jump across the deck with lightning speed.
“Here!” The final man, Danvers, a big ill-natured sot who was either half-drunk most of the time or in such a foul taking that his mates kept him in spirits whenever possible just to make him tolerable, turned on the girl. Although he was barrel chested and stout, the young woman towered over him and didn’t so much as flinch. “Who you think you’ra orderin’ about! I don’t take orders from no—“
Woodbine might have drowned had his gaping jaw been left open any longer. With the speed of a viper, Cook dropped her starter and slammed the heel of her hand into the man’s right ear, hard enough for the captain to hear from forty feet away. She then sent another hard punch into the man’s belly, bending him over but not quite double. Then she spun him about, planted the heel of her right boot square on his stern and propelled him across the intervening twenty feet of deck where Danvers pitched onto all fours in front of the number three gun. The big girl bounded across the deck, clutched the collar of Danvers’ gurnsey frock in her left hand and hauled him to his feet. She then placed the line of the gun tackle in his dazed hands.
“Now, Danvers, you’ll serve this fuckin’ gun when I tell you and how I fuckin’ tell you, or by the living Christ, I’ll have the flesh stripped off your fat ass if it’s the last thing I do!” She roared almost in his ear.
“Jesus Christ…” Burgess gulped beside Woodbine.
The captain had to agree. She’d managed to get the guns manned and the dissenters cowed within ten seconds. Would that he had a dozen like this young lady. Cook’s granddaughter indeed!
“Cast loose ya’ guns!” Kate balled from the center of the six gun battery. “Out tampions! Level ya’ guns… In cartridge! Wads… ram! In shot! In wads! Ram home! Now prime ya’ guns! Captain, sir! Do we have any slow match?”
“In the tub neath the jolly boat, mum!” Sankey, a scrawny first-time voyager volunteered. “We’ve had it agoin’ since we first loaded.”
“Good man!” Kate shouted. “Larboard battery ready, sir!”
Just in time, too. The two ships were drawing closer now. Already they were within long musket shot. If only he could tack and rake the schooner… but it was risky. If they missed stays, which was very possible with so much sail now being carried… too much, really, but there hadn’t been time to strike anything… they’d be a sitting duck.
“But we can fall off…” Woodbine said.
At the last minute, they could turn hard to larboard when the Frog went to cross their hawse. It was the only thing they could do, really. Otherwise, they’d have to take at least two full broadsides, one abeam and one as the swift schooner shot across the brig’s bow to rake them.
“Kate!” Woodbine shouted. “I’m going to come hard alee! Get your men ready on the starboard guns! When she shoots by, we’ll harden up again and try and rake her stern!”
“Aye, aye!” Kate said. “Come on lads, let’s knock them Froggie sallauds on the head now!”
Meraux gazed dumfounded at the deck before him. It had all happened with shocking rapidity… The chase had worn round and come tearing down on them with a vengeance! The exchange of fire had lasted only a few seconds but the results were astonishing.
Fortunately the actual damage to the ship was light. A few pieces of railing shot away and that was about the extent of it. However, the ten bloody bodies littering the deck amidships made the young French captain’s gorge rise. This was his first battle and he hadn’t been prepared for either the shocking brutality nor the speed at which men could be slaughtered. Gallons of blood spread across the deck, thankfully already being washed through the scuppers by the rain. Yet some were dismembered, one had his head shot clean away… it was like peering into a charnel house.
Nearly as startling had been the enormous din! Even puny six pound cannon all roaring out together easily outstripped the volume of the wind, waves and thunder of the storm. The howl of shot flying, the screech-raaawwk sound of timbers being rent and the hideous shrieks of the wounded was unlike anything in Meraux’s experience.
The worst aspect was that this had only bee
n the opening volley of what looked to be a longer fight than he’d have thought. Only by the grace of the virgin had those two short stubby carronades on the brig not wrought more damage. Those two guns alone exceeded his own full broadside.
“He’s coming up to the wind!” Fournier, who was thankfully still with him at the tiller exclaimed. “I’m going to angle us so we cross his bows. In this way, our greater speed and ability to lie closer to the wind will let us rake him! Then we cut hard alee, luff up and grapple ourselves to his gunwale and carry her by boarding!”
It sounded acceptable to Meraux. He absently felt for the sword hanging in its scabbard at his hip and for the three pistols he had jammed into his belt. He then cupped his hands over his mouth and balled into the wind: “All hands! Man larboard guns! Brevois, get those men over the side! Vit! Vit!”
It wasn’t traditional for the French, who were Catholics after all, to heave their dead over the side in a battle. Meraux knew the rosbifs did this, and now that he was in a battle himself, he could clearly see the merit in it. Not only was there no time to tend to the dead, who were now an obstacle… there was another consideration less palatable.
The very sight of them churned his belly. It was a daunting sight, seeing broken bodies lying about one’s feet. If he felt that way, then surely some of these men, most of whom were as new to the sea as their captain, must feel it too.
“Sacré bleu…” Meraux muttered as half a dozen of the idlers began to pitch the mangled corpses into the roiling sea.
“Standby on your guns!” Fornier shouted as he watched the gap between the two vessels narrow rapidly.
Even Meraux could see that the schooner was quickly fore-reaching on the sluggardly English brig. In another minute or two, they’d be fifty or sixty meters ahead and could turn hard to the left… to port… and shoot across the brig’s bow, sending shot straight along her deck. Raking was one of the most devastating attacks a vessel could endure because it exposed her weaker bow or stern to direct fire, which would plow from one end of the ship to the other and often did horrific damage. It could overset guns, destroy important support members and masts… and slaughter men by the score.
