by Dudley Pope
Saxby had the lantern alight and was mustering everyone aft so that he could begin reading out the new muster roll of the Griffin. What flag should she fly? Damnation, she’s English, Yorke said to himself; she is English, built in Rye, and my family were English and living under that flag for generations before these damned Puritans seized the country.
Yet out here among the Caribbee islands, the enemy was as much Spain as anyone else; in fact more so than anyone else. For the moment the Dutch were still the Dutch, and Cromwell’s war against them in Europe was over. Once again the Dutch were traders who bought and sold anything, whose ships appeared among ports and bays of the islands like waterboatmen on a village pond. The French for the moment were friendly, and providing a refuge for the exiled Prince.
But Spain…she was the enemy and had been since the first foreigner had dared to sail “across the Line” after Columbus into the Caribbean.
Two hundred years ago under the pressure from the King of Spain, the Pope had proclaimed a bull giving everything beyond a certain longitude west of the Azores to Spain, and since then Spain had tried to ensure that no one crossed the line without her permission. Of course, that meant no one was to sail or trade, let alone settle on any island in the Caribbean Sea or along the coast of the Main, and if they tried and were caught, they suffered the same fate as Sir John Hawkins’ men at San Juan de Ulua. If the Spanish mayor did not lock you in his jail for the rest of your life, using you to pound rocks for building fortresses and breakwaters, or dig salt from the salt mines, the Inquisition took you for a non-believer and killed you to save your soul, a price that Protestants begrudged paying.
Well, two centuries had seen some changes. Some, but not enough. Most of the eastern islands were now settled by the English, Dutch or French, but the Spaniards had the rest of the chain – Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba, and of course all of the northern mainland coast as far as Mexico. For all that, any foreigner caught today by the Spaniards knew that at best he would be sent to the salt mines (from which there was a slight chance of escape) but at worst would be handed over to the priests. Yet it was along the Main that bold smugglers could make fortunes.
The reason was simple enough: the Spaniards kept out foreign ships and forbade any trading, but could not themselves supply their own people with what they needed – which was almost everything from olive oil and wine to cooking pots and bodkins. So the Dutch, French and British traders smuggled in the goods, landing in deserted bays or (quite often) sailing into some out-of-the-way port after bribing the mayor and customs officer to go away for a few days’ hunting.
He saw Saxby put the lantern down on deck, fold up a piece of paper and, after clearing the Griffin’s bulwarks in a leap as graceful as an ox escaping from a pen, walk along the jetty to report.
“Forty-six men and women from Kingsnorth ready and anxious to sail, sir, plus Mr and Mrs Bullock, and you and – er…”
“And Mrs Wilson.”
“…Er, yes sir, and Mrs Wilson.”
“Very well, get ready to cast off, Saxby, and let’s begin our new adventure!”
“Yes, sir. Had you a…well, a particular destination in mind?”
“No. I suggest we start off by exploring the northern islands. That will also keep us out of the way of the Roundheads.”
Saxby ticked them off one by one. “La Grenade – too mountainous and too easy for the Spanish to attack from the Main, apart from being French. And the French have St Lucia and Martinique, Guadeloupe and Marie Galante. I don’t know who has St Bartholomew, but I know it’s small and mountainous. That leaves Antigua (last I heard, transported Irishmen and Norwegians were cutting each other’s throats), St Christopher, Nevis and Montserrat (don’t know anything about ’em), St Martin is divided between the French and the Dutch. The Virgin Islands – too dry for plantations…”
“The Royalists are said to be strong in Antigua,” Yorke said.
“Ah – and there’s plenty of land for plantations.”
“But it’s too Royalist for our purpose,” Yorke said. “Penn and Venables will clear them out; they are bound to go up there.”
Saxby rubbed his jaw, the stubble of his whiskers rasping. “I hadn’t thought of that. Antigua has three harbours, though. They could take their fleet into any one of them and land.”
“Exactly. We want somewhere that won’t turn us away, where we can buy land, but which is not so Royalist that it will attract the fleet.”
“We’d better discover our own island, sir,” Saxby said, obviously completely disheartened.
“We’ll get under way,” Yorke said, realizing that, standing in the darkness, the apparent hopelessness of their situation was almost overwhelming him too. He did not want to seem unsure of himself in front of his people, and certainly not before Aurelia, who always seemed to sense his moods long before he said a word; almost before she saw him.
He walked back down the jetty for the last time, turning to look back at the house, large in the moonlight but seeming taunt without a light at any window. It had been lonely living there – but only because Aurelia had been five miles away. Five, fifty, five thousand – it had made no difference. Now, because of events more than four thousand miles away, all their lives had changed; had taken a sudden and irrevocable turn, like a file of soldiers wheeling on a battlefield or a squadron of cavalry executing a caracole.
Kingsnorth was lost – but in exchange he had Aurelia. Had her company, anyway, even if she was not yet his wife. He had the ship, too, and a loyal crew; he had cargo that could be turned into capital, and he had his life. The Yorke family, he thought bitterly, have simply gone away; my father and George have said goodbye to Godmersham, Saltwood and Ilex; Edward is this moment making his farewell to Kingsnorth.
There was a movement beside him and a hand crept into his. “We say goodbye to it, Edouard.”
“You have never really said hello.” He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice, yet did not know what drove him to say it.
He felt her fingers tighten. “Where am I now, Edouard?”
“What do you mean?”
“Am I with Walter, or with you?”
“Well, with me, of course.” Again, why had he such a grudging note in his voice? It was as if a stranger was talking.
“And for how long?”
“For ever, I hope.”
“So if I never really said ‘hello’ to Kingsnorth, do you not think that…”
He turned and kissed her; a kiss that left them both dizzy so that they had to clutch at each other on the narrow and rickety jetty.
“Yes,” he murmured, “but I’m jealous of every minute we’ve wasted until now.”
As he held her he felt rather than heard a faint drumming, almost a distant rumbling. It was probably an earthquake: the noise would approach and get louder if it was passing nearby but be no more than the rumble of a cartwheel if distant. A few moments later he was sure it was an earthquake (he had often experienced them and they never did any damage here) but then he realized it was approaching too slowly: the drumming seemed to remain constant.
Aurelia noticed his tension: “What is it, chéri?”
“There – can you hear it? A faint drumming. Sounds like an earthquake.”
“No, it’s not an earthquake.” After a few moments she said: “The noise of an earthquake comes through the ground. This I can hear through the air. Horsemen galloping on hard ground. Several of –”
“Quick, get on board!” He dragged her after him along the jetty, shouting, “Saxby! Horsemen! Get those muskets and pistols loaded! Take the lantern down below with the women!”
By the time he finished shouting orders he was abreast the ship and helping Aurelia over the bulwark. He heard Saxby shouting instructions in the darkness and the metallic clank of muskets being thrust up the companionway
. Someone bellowed for the magazine key and Saxby said the box of Apostles had not yet been stowed.
By now the drumming was loud enough to warn of a band of horsemen galloping along the track running parallel with the beach and about a hundred yards inshore. Galloping horsemen on a night like this could mean only one thing; a party come to arrest him. But there was no breeze so it was pointless to cut the Griffin’s lines and hope to drift clear.
Yorke saw Aurelia safely down the companionway and turned to find Saxby hurrying towards him holding two muskets and a pistol in his arms and a couple of bandoliers, each strung with a dozen Apostles, round his neck.
“Musket or pistol, sir?” he asked cheerfully.
“Pistol.”
Saxby put down the two muskets and handed Yorke the pistol. “There’s the spanning key – and,” he grunted, removing a bandolier and passing it over, “the Apostles loaded with pistol ball and the right measure of powder. And,” he added, groping in a capacious pocket, “a flask of priming powder.”
They could hear individual horses now and the snorting of animals and men that had galloped their fastest for several miles.
“What do we do now, sir?” Saxby asked. “I didn’t think they’d be here until long after dawn.”
“Wilson must have escaped and raised the alarm. How many horses?”
Saxby listened. “A dozen?”
“That’s what I estimated. They’ll want me. You stay on board and say you don’t know where I am. Let them search the ship. Don’t let them touch Mrs Wilson or the Bullocks. I want half a dozen men with muskets and cutlasses to come with me. Call for volunteers.”
“Where are you going, sir?”
“Not far: just an insurance.”
Saxby called for six men “To go with Mr Edward” and it seemed as if every man present gave an excited yell. Saxby took the six nearest who had muskets and sent them scrambling after Yorke as he hurried towards the landward end of the wooden jetty. The moment he reached the shore he turned to the right, jumping down on to the sandy beach and heading for a stand of palms thirty yards away and close to the track along which the horses were approaching.
Once hidden in the shadow of the palm trees Yorke stopped and looked back at the Griffin. She looked smaller than usual, a model on a silver tray, a random breeze pewtering the surface of the sea for a couple of moments and reflecting the moonlight. Her single mast looked too slender for its task; the rigging reminded him of strands of fishing net caught on a post.
The drumming was loud now. “Load your muskets,” he said to the six men. “And don’t drop your spanning keys!”
He reached down to the bandolier slung diagonally across his shoulder. Twelve small wooden cylinders, looking like peg dolls, hung down from it at intervals. He took the lowest of the cylinders, one of the Apostles, and pulled so that the lower part came away from the upper, which was secured to the bandolier by a strong cord. The lower section contained exactly the right measure of powder for charging the pistol and was slightly narrower than the bore of the barrel. Quickly he tilted it so the powder dropped into the pistol. He took a small wad of flannel and with the pistol’s rammer pushed it down on top of the powder, giving it a sharp tap. Then he took a shot from his pocket, put down the barrel and tapped it home with the rammer, added a wad and then slid the rammer back into its holder under the barrel.
Holding the pistol in his left hand he flicked back the pancover to reveal the priming pan, and using the small flask filled the pan with priming powder, the flask having a small lever fitted into the pourer which released only the correct measure.
After shutting the pancover, he tucked the flask back into his pocket. Priming powder, much finer than the ordinary powder which would propel the shot, was harder to get; anyone with a keg of good priming powder kept it in a safe place.
Now he took the spanning key, which had a socket at one end. This fitted on to a small projection at the side of the pistol – the spindle of the serrated wheel which the main spring would spin against the flint gripped in the doghead and, as the pancover slid back, shower sparks into the pan to set off the priming powder and send a spurt of flame down the touchhole into the breech.
The wheel would only spin if the spring attached to it was tensioned by the spanning key. Pistols with weak springs left spanned, or wound up, for any length of time often failed to spin the wheel fast enough to make sparks. Or, just as bad, the powder in the pan could have been shaken to the side away from the touchhole so that when fired the powder puffed but its flame did not race down to ignite the powder in the barrel. The pistoleer, now faced with a ‘flash in the pan’, was likely to find his opponent’s sword running him through.
A musket was no more reliable, Yorke thought, although if it misfired it made a useful heavy club.
“All charged?”
The men murmured that their wheel-locks were loaded and spanned and ready to fire.
“No one is to fire unless I give a direct order.”
The horsemen swung off the track towards the jetty. Yorke guessed that they could see the mast black against the western sky, its shape blotting out some of the lower stars. They slowed down as a cloud drifted across the moon. Yorke glanced up and saw several large cottons balls of cloud drifting over from the east, moving very slowly. Finally the horsemen were forced to stop, the leading rider dismounting and leading his horse, afraid of it stepping into one of the landcrab holes scattered across the foreshore; these were more numerous though slightly smaller than those made by coneys in England. The other horsemen followed in single file behind him.
The horses’ harness was clinking now instead of jingling and a voice said: “That’s the Griffin all right, so he hasn’t left.”
Another voice, at the end of the file which Yorke recognized as Wilson’s, called urgently: “Perhaps we ought to go to the house. If the Griffin hasn’t sailed, he’ll be over there.”
“We’ll check here first,” the first voice growled, and Yorke thought he recognized the provost marshal, a crude bull of a man whose appointment was probably a reward from Cromwell because he had served in the Roundhead Army and could pillage a Royalist home with the best of them. “Dismount everyone, and secure your horses: we’ll go out along the jetty on foot.”
So the rest of the men were not soldiers: the provost marshal’s orders were not intended for men with military training. But what if they tried to board and search the Griffin and found Aurelia and the Bullocks? Wilson would certainly try to drag them off – or get his friends to. The pain in his shoulder would be forcing him to lift his tankard lefthanded for some time to come.
Because in the few moments he had to prepare there had been no chance of getting the women off the ship, Yorke had to rely on Saxby’s good sense and trust that the plan for his own half dozen men would work. There were eleven men in the provost marshal’s party – he had been able to count them in the last of the light before the cloud drifted across the moon. The eleven included Wilson, so only ten men could be armed. If Saxby knew that the last man in the file was Wilson, he would shoot him out of hand.
The men were busy securing their horses’ reins to the guardrail on one side of the jetty. They were too far away for Yorke to hear the provost marshal’s instructions but as the cloud thinned for a few moments he saw the group move along the jetty towards the Griffin, leaving one man with the horses. Wilson? It was likely: a man unable to fire a pistol or wield a sword would best be left minding the horses.
The cloud hid the moon again. “They’ve stopped, sir,” one of the men whispered. “I could hear their boots on the planking.”
Realizing the man had acute hearing, Yorke muttered: “Listen carefully and report anything.”
He watched the cloud, which at first seemed to have come to a stop, and saw the faint blur of the moon at a thin spot, like a distant lantern seen throu
gh threadbare curtains. The cloud was in fact moving slightly to the north-west, and now he could see the group starting to move along the jetty again, hearing the report of marching feet a moment later.
Suddenly, as they drew abreast of the Griffin’s stern, the tremendous bellow of Saxby’s voice, exaggerated by the silence and the big brass speaking trumpet he was using, ordered: “Halt! Don’t move a step forward or back!”
The sudden order hurled out of the darkness from an apparently deserted ship stopped the men as though they had walked into a wall. A minute or two passed before the provost marshal shouted back: “Who is that?”
“Doesn’t matter who I am: we have muskets aimed at all your gizzards. Get on your horses and ride back to Bridgetown!”
The provost marshal, voice solemn, intoned: “In the name of the Governor and Assembly of Barbados I order you to lay down your arms and surrender the person of Edward Yorke for whom a proclamation of hue and cry has been ordered and is duly proclaimed again here by me, the provost marshal, by order of the Governor and Assembly!”
“Well done!” Saxby shouted. “Now run home and have a wet; your throat’s parched.”
The cloud moved away slowly and the moonlight spread from the land along the jetty to the ship and moved on out to sea.
Yorke saw the provost marshal’s men were aiming their muskets at the ship. If they fired, Saxby’s men would sweep off the jetty with pistols and muskets and before the smoke cleared a couple of dozen men with cutlasses would follow. No swordsman could hope to fight off a canecutter armed with his cutlass: weeks spent cutting the springy cane made a cutlass, or machete, an extension of his arm.
Yorke tried to pull his thoughts together: there was an enormous difference between sailing from Barbados in his own ship with his own men to avoid arrest, and sailing out leaving ten men dead on the jetty, including the provost marshal who was the official guardian of law and order on the island. The only man to escape alive would be Wilson…
