Buccaneer

by Dudley Pope

  “Keep me covered,” he muttered to his musketeers and glided across the sand, crouching low as he emerged from the shadow of the palm trees making for the jetty. Landcrabs scuttled away in their curious sideways gait to disappear down holes; mosquitoes buzzed round his face. The sand was soft, creaking and giving slightly underfoot. He held his pistol canted so that the priming powder covered the touchhole and slid his thumb on to the doghead, ready to cock the piece.

  Five yards to the jetty he realized his shoes would sound on the planking. He knelt and pulled them off and then continued moving. Four yards and the jetty met the sloping beach, the piles low this far in. Three yards, two – and then he was stepping up on to the planking, the land to his right, the jetty pointing seaward to his left, the Griffin halfway along it. And between him and the Griffin eleven horses, all facing the rail on this side of the jetty. Eleven horses and one man standing in the moonlight facing the Griffin. He wore dark clothing but a white slash ran diagonally across his back. It was Wilson with his right arm in a sling – to ease the pain of the wound in the heavy muscles above the shoulder blade.

  Grains of sand on the planking grated beneath his feet because the cloth of his hose was clogged with sand and if he was not careful he would sound like an old man shuffling. Two paces along the jetty, three, four…

  He dare not look over his shoulder to see if another cloud was approaching the moon in case his feet snagged a knot in the wood, but any moment the provost marshal or Saxby might start shooting.

  Wilson was standing still but the nearest horse to Yorke was restless, probably sensing his approach, and he was afraid Wilson might turn to calm it.

  Saxby was hurling abuse at the provost marshal and daring him to move one pace nearer the Griffin; the provost marshal seemed to realize his only possible course of action was to make the best of his legal position and possibly overawe the men.

  “Hand over Edward Yorke and you can all go free,” the provost marshal shouted. “I’ll let you go back to the estate without taking names. Just hand over Edward Yorke.”

  “And my wife,” Wilson suddenly shouted, startling Yorke who was within five yards of the man.

  “Yes, and Mrs Wilson.”

  “Don’t know an Edward Yorke nor any Mrs Wilson,” Saxby shouted back. “Now get off the jetty or you’re dead men and the landcrabs’ll pick over your bones.”

  “My wife, get my wife!” Wilson blustered. “Provost marshal, do your duty! Arrest Edward Yorke and free my wife. Remember the hue and cry!”

  “Yes, Mr Wilson,” the provost marshal called back, his voice full of doubt. “On board there, you have one minute to produce Edward Yorke. After that I am coming on board in the governor’s name.”

  “You try,” Saxby said grimly, “and we’ll shoot you down in the Prince’s name!”

  “Half a minute gone!” the provost marshal shouted.

  Immediately a flash and a bang showed that a pistol had been fired on board the Griffin and a shot whined out to sea in ricochet, indicating that the gun had not been aimed at the provost marshal.

  “That’s just a warning,” bellowed an excited Saxby. “Get back to your horses and go away or you’re dead men.”

  Yorke heard men in the group muttering to the provost marshal. Yorke guessed that they were drinking friends of Wilson’s who had ridden along to enjoy some sport baiting “that Royalist fellah”. Now they were realizing that whoever commanded the Griffin was not to be frightened. But the provost marshal, either fearful of the governor’s wrath or too proud to retreat, began shouting back.

  At that moment Yorke reached Wilson and selected the exact spot in the back of his neck, where his hair fell either side and revealed skin which seemed silvery in the moonlight.

  Yorke pressed the muzzle into the neck and pulled back the doghead, cocking the gun… Wilson must have felt the metallic click go all the way to his feet: he froze as a familiar voice whispered in his ear: “You should have stayed in bed like a good boy… Keep still or this pistol will separate your head from your shoulders… Now tell the provost marshal to order his men to put their guns down on the jetty… Now!”

  Yorke pressed a fraction harder and then felt the man take a deep breath and push his head back a fraction to shout. Realizing that a sudden jerk might cause him to squeeze the trigger, Yorke pulled the pistol back an inch.

  “Stevens! Stevens!” Wilson shouted. “Hold on! Tell your men to ground their arms! At once!”

  “But sir, they’re just about –”

  “At once!” Wilson screeched as Yorke once again pressed with the pistol and, careful that Wilson’s burly body hid his own from the provost marshal, murmured: “Tell him you are withdrawing all charges; that the hue and cry will be cancelled. Make sure you persuade him. Otherwise no one will notice the extra shot – least of all you!”

  “Stevens, Stevens,” Wilson almost wailed, “there’s been a terrible mistake. I’m asking the governor to cancel the hue and cry; I’ve no quarrel with Mr Yorke!”

  “And now,” Yorke said, “tell him to ride back to Bridgetown because you are walking up to the house – you know Mr Yorke must be there and you want to talk to him. And then we’ll walk off the jetty…”

  Wilson followed the instructions, and then muttered: “Do I walk now?”

  “Yes, follow me so that you hide me from Stevens. Six of my musketeers are covering you so don’t try to escape, raise an alarm – or attack me from behind.”

  With that Yorke turned and walked off the jetty with Wilson so anxious to hide him from the provost marshal’s eyes that the toes of his shoes kept kicking the backs of Yorke’s ankles. Once off the jetty Yorke knew they would both be hard to see against the bushes and clumps of sea grape at the back of the beach, and he swung round towards the palm trees. By the time they reached them, and Wilson found himself staring into the muzzles of six muskets, the provost marshal and his group were mounting their horses.

  Yorke listened to an argument. The provost marshal, knowing that he was not now to be put to the test, was full of noisy courage. “Why Mr Wilson did that I don’t know – why, in half a minute more I’d have taken the ship!”

  “You’d have got us all shot, you puffed up clown,” one of the group said bitterly. “You have the mind of a corporal and the legal knowledge of a cockerel. A capon, rather.”

  “There’s no call for that sort of talk, Mr Jeffrey. No call at all. I’ve got my duties and I hope I know –”

  “Do we follow Wilson up to the house?” another of the group asked.

  “We do not!” the provost marshal said emphatically. “He said return to Bridgetown, and to Bridgetown we go. Now, someone lead. The devil take the landcrab holes.”

  The horses clattered along the jetty and on to the sand, reaching the track where they were spurred on, their hooves thudding on the sunbaked mud.

  Yorke turned to Wilson and said evenly: “You could disappear at this moment, and no one left in Barbados would ever know what happened to you.”

  “But you –”

  “We could kill you and bury you here and the landcrabs would burrow down to find you. Or we could take you with us when we sail – and drop you over the side when we’re about five miles out, so that you could try to swim back –”

  “But I can’t swim!”

  “How unfortunate.”

  “You’d never murder me! Would you?” Wilson watched the shadowy figure standing facing him. The moonlight just penetrating the palm fronds, occasionally bright as a gust moved one a few inches, caught Yorke’s face, emphasizing the high cheekbones, the almost beak-like nose, and the eyes which looked like shiny black holes.

  Yorke shrugged. “Murder you? I don’t have to. You’re hated, and any of my men would be only too pleased –”

  “I’ll do him in, sir,” one of the musketeers sa
id eagerly. “Just say the word!” There was a rustle as he drew a sheath knife.

  “You see what I mean,” Yorke said to Wilson. “You had to ask the Governor to raise a hue and cry against me. I have only to nod my head to raise one against you.”

  “Think of Aurelia! She would…” Wilson suddenly stopped, remembering the scene in his own house a few hours earlier.

  No one spoke for two or three minutes. Yorke and his men knew their cruellest weapon against Wilson was silence: a silence which squeezed on him out of the darkness like an invisible garotte, a tiny world of silence surrounding him with an horizon of glinting eyes, a silence which existed despite the wavelets lapping a few yards away, the metallic rattling of tree frogs, the whine of mosquitoes and the occasional impatient snort of his own horse, still tethered to the rail of the jetty.

  “What do you want?” Wilson whispered. “Money? I have a thousand pounds. It’s yours now. I never really wanted Kingsnorth: Aurelia drove me to it. She loved it and wanted it for herself – you know how selfish the rich are. I promise you I’ll speak to the Governor. You’ll be able to stay here: don’t sail, there’s no need. You’ll be safe at Kingsnorth: just let me go into Bridgetown…”

  “Be quiet,” Yorke snapped, “you disgust me.” He turned and pointed along the beach to the southward. “Start walking. It’s five miles before you reach your home. Or maybe,” he added sarcastically, “you would sooner go straight to Bridgetown. Come on,” he said to his men, and began walking towards the Griffin, picking up his shoes on the way. He cut the reins and unstrapped the saddle from Wilson’s horse, giving them to one of the men. “Go to the end of the jetty and toss them into the sea.” He touched another man on the shoulder. “Lead this beast up to the track, head it northwards towards Mr Alston’s plantation, and give it a sharp crack across the rump.”

  Back on board the Griffin an excited Saxby wanted all the details but he groaned when Yorke ended his story by describing how he had set Wilson walking back home along the beach.

  “You should’ve put him away, sir; cut his throat. If you didn’t want to dirty your hands, one of the others would’ve obliged.”

  “It’s not as simple as that.”

  “I know sir, talking to Mrs Wilson knowing you’ve had her husband done in,” he said, and Yorke was grateful for the man’s choice of the word ‘talking’, “but that man can be the death of us all.” Saxby’s voice showed the depth of his hatred and fear of Wilson.

  Yorke said reassuringly: “We’ll be sailing in an hour, just as soon as a breeze picks up, and we’ll never see him or the island again.”

  By now his six men were back on board the Griffin and asking Saxby what to do with their muskets and pistols. “Leave them with the others by the mast. Make sure they’re not cocked,” the master said. “We’ll unload and grease them once we’re at sea.”

  Aurelia, cross from being told by Saxby to stay below in Ned’s cabin and alarmed by all the shouting, seemed to have given up hope of ever seeing him again and when Ned tried to tease her into relaxing said flatly: “Not until I say goodbye to Barbados. Walter escaped even though you tied him to the bed. He raised the you and cry.”

  “Hue,” he corrected gently. “But it doesn’t matter: we’re sailing soon.”

  “Why not now? Why do we wait?”

  “For some wind. There’s hardly a zephyr at the moment.”

  She held his arm, as if seeking reassurance. “The wind – it will come before daylight?”

  Ned smiled. “We can’t command the wind, but it is increasing. In an hour we’ll have enough to take us clear of the coast. Be patient, beloved; only one more hour…”

  Ned was on deck talking to Saxby, the two men watching the clouds as they passed the moon and feeling the wind on their cheeks. Both agreed that it had increased slightly and, with clouds becoming more frequent, there would soon be a sufficient breeze to cast off.

  “One thing about going,” Saxby commented, “we don’t have to rebuild this jetty.”

  “It’s creaking enough with us alongside, even though there’s no wind!”

  “Aye sir. If we had to be alongside in a stiff breeze, t’wouldn’t surprise me if we carried the whole jetty away with us.”

  “We’d arrive at our destination with our own jetty alongside. Might be useful!”

  “Jokin’ apart, sir, I wasn’t looking forward to drivin’ new piles. Enough trouble building this one. But the ship worms have chewed it so bad that most of the piles are three quarters eaten through. That provost marshal was lucky; he moored up his horses at the end where the piles don’t get wet so the ship worms haven’t been at ’em. If they’d come ten yards nearer the whole thing would’ve collapsed under ’em.”

  The first they knew of the shots was a row of red eyes winking at the end of the jetty and a moment later a popping like a dozen corks shooting from bottles of fermenting wine. Then the musket balls hit the Griffin’s side, some sounding as though a man was punching the planking, others whining away in ricochet after hitting metal fittings with the loose noise of a blacksmith shaping a horse’s shoe.

  Both Ned and Saxby instinctively dropped to the deck, below the level of the bulwarks.

  “The provost marshal,” Ned muttered angrily, sliding over to the pile of muskets and pistols beside the mast. “He ran into Wilson, stopped once he knew we no longer heard the horses’ hooves and then doubled back along the beach.”

  “Yorke,” they heard him bellow. “I’ve warned you of the hue and cry so surrender yourself. You can’t sail with no wind. I’ll have a hundred men here in half an hour.”

  Saxby snatched up the speaking trumpet and already Ned could hear the pounding of feet as his own men rushed on deck, eager to get at the muskets and pistols.

  “Settle yourselves behind something proof against musket shot,” Ned warned them. “This may last a long time. You’ve two minutes before they’ll have reloaded.”

  “You want a musket, sir?” Saxby asked.

  “No. I’ll be dodging about. Pity we can’t use one of our minions to sweep the jetty.”

  “Ah,” Saxby said regretfully. “A few pounds of langrage would settle the provost marshal’s account.”

  By now the Griffin’s men were in position with their muskets and pistols. “Open fire when you’ve a target,” Saxby called.

  “That’s the trouble, sir, we can’t see no one,” a seaman grumbled. “They’re hidden in the shadows at the back o’ the beach. Now there’s more cloud coming up to hide the moon.”

  Another crash of musketry and the pummelling of the lead balls hitting the Griffin’s planking led to one of the Griffin’s musketeers shouting: “They’re all bunched up behind that clump of sea grape bushes in line with the end of the jetty.”

  “Fire at ’em, then!” Saxby bellowed. “Come on, let’s smell our powder!” He looked up at the sky and nudged Yorke. “Look up there, sir; there’s a few gallons of rain in that – we’ll have to be sure to keep our powder dry!”

  Low on the eastern horizon a broad band of billowing and tumbling dark cloud was approaching, bringing the heavy showers so frequent in the tropics between midnight and three in the morning.

  A single musket fired on board the Griffin, then a second and third. “They’re taking careful aim,” Saxby commented.

  “Could a shot penetrate our planking?” Ned asked.

  “Quick!” Saxby said. “Mrs Wilson – get her out of the cabin and put her forward with Mrs Judd: that transom won’t stop shot, leastways, the sternlights won’t.”

  Ned bolted for the companionway, just able to see his way from a single lantern. The cabin was deserted. He worked his way forward, calling her name and hearing her replying from amidships. He shouted back a reassuring phrase which was interrupted by yet another volley from the shore, and heard a shot ricocheting aroun
d the cabin he had just left.

  What the devil could he do? With no wind, the Griffin was sitting alongside the jetty like a crate of pigeons being shot at by a mad sportsman. His own men were firing spasmodically but he knew they were shooting at shadows. He felt hot with anger and embarrassment when he thought how the provost marshal had so successfully tricked him. Stevens was not the sort of man anyone should trust, even to collect a dozen eggs from a market.

  As he climbed back up the companionway he heard Saxby calling him urgently and by the time he reached the deck his ears had warned him of what Saxby would have to say. The drumming along the track at the back of the beach told him that dozens of horsemen were galloping up to help Stevens.

  While Saxby reported and gave his estimate of the number of extra men – he thought forty or fifty, basing his guess on the length of the column with two men riding abreast – Ned realized it was enough men to rush the ship: the Griffin had twenty-five muskets and twenty pistols. If they fired to order and with reasonable accuracy, that would mean a fusilade of forty-five shot. That did not mean forty-five of Stevens’ men hit, though: there was no way of avoiding two or three Griffins firing at the same man. Loading took so long that if Stevens led a determined group they would be hit by one fusilade but there would be no time to reload, so the Griffins would then be fighting along the bulwarks with cutlasses.

  He saw a figure up in the shrouds. “Who’s that?”

  “Me, sir, Bullock.”

  “What on earth are you doing up there?”

  “Lookout sir; seems I can see better in the dark than anyone else.”

  Feeling that events were happening so fast he was almost lost, Ned hurried over to the foreman. “I don’t know anything about ships and big guns, Saxby, but couldn’t we load the minions on this side so that as they try to board we fire and blow them off the jetty?”

  “I thought o’ that sir, but it’d take hours because we’ve never loaded ’em before and some of our people are bound to be hurt by the recoil. Be different if we’d ever exercised at the great guns. Between you and me, sir, the muskits and pistols is more our mark now.”