Buccaneer

by Dudley Pope

  Aurelia stood up. “Shall I see the tallyman and the guards?”

  Ned nodded and Saxby opened the door and led the way on deck. Ned sat down on one of the two chairs, hot and weary and unwilling to admit that he felt very nervous. Or was it guilty? Perhaps apprehensive and guilty – the way he had felt as a small boy when he knew his tutor was going to discover some major misdemeanour.

  How would Whetstone feel if he was in this position? He suddenly saw the bearded buccaneer – he would be roaring with laughter and probably hoisting a naked and giggling Diana into the bunk, shouting orders that he was not to be disturbed for an hour.

  Ned knew he had to adopt the buccaneer’s attitude. Most tasks in life, he thought, involved individual attitudes. A man occupying a particular job adopted the attitude that went with it, as though it was a uniform. Did one ever see a cheerful-looking gravedigger? No, he would have a long face and mudcaked boots. A bishop had cope and mitre, round red face and an unctuous voice. A butcher had plump, pink cheeks, smiling face and waved the steel back and forth across the blade of his knife while listening respectfully to a customer giving an order. Puritan parsons wore frowns in the same way as highwaymen wore masks. Buccaneers – well, Thomas Whetstone was the first he had ever met, and if he was typical Ned knew he would never fit in yet would always feel at home with them.

  Ned knew he was avoiding thinking about the most important aspect of it. A buccaneer was free to choose his garb, his diocese (he chuckled at the choice of word), his ship and his mistress. How did he view his – was it a calling, a vocation, a habit, a weakness? By regarding it as privateering, and therefore as legally waging war against Spain, he found it affected him morally the same way as running a plantation: it was gambling. One planted seed and gambled that the weather would be good, that – in the case of sugar, for instance – the rains would come at the regular time and no hurricane would smash down the cane, or no drought turn the land into a scorched, brown and withered wilderness. With privateering you had a ship and a commission giving you permission to fight the Spanish, and (according to the law) any prizes or booty had to be legally condemned by an Admiralty court, with a percentage paid to the government. But if your ship was damaged, in battle or storm, you paid for the repairs; any seamen wounded were compensated on an agreed scale out of your pocket (or rather, the ship’s pocket).

  You were lucky or unlucky; like farming, buccaneering was a gamble. When it was compared with running a plantation, Ned found he could accept buccaneering as a similar sort of gamble. However, if peace with Spain was ever signed, he knew that would be when he and Thomas Whetstone would probably part company; to continue raiding and robbing the Spanish in peacetime would be simple piracy and no different from robbing one’s neighbour.

  Yet supposing the Spanish signed a peace treaty with England but still insisted that no foreigners had any right to be in the Caribbee, and sent to the mines any they captured. Supposing England was so weak, or France or Holland became so weak, that they had to agree to a harsh peace with Spain and could not insist that the treaty gave their own people the freedom of these seas? Would he then regard it as piracy? Or buccaneering forced on him by the behaviour of the Spanish? “No peace beyond the Line” had been the rule, or slogan, from the day the English first starting planting in Barbados and St Christopher; it had continued when the French and Dutch arrived and found that the Spanish harried them too.

  It meant, he realized, that it did not matter what happened in Europe. England could be at war with France, France with the Netherlands and Spain could be at peace with all three, but out here in the West Indies, Spain was always at war with the English, the French and the Dutch. And likewise the English, French and Dutch out here for the most part remained friends, no matter what their governments were doing in Europe, because they needed to be allies against the common enemy, Spain. So if England signed a peace with Spain, he admitted, he would probably continue to sail with Thomas and Diana…

  Aurelia returned to the cabin and put an end to the thoughts racing through his head like hens bolting through a hole in the hedge. She came over and held his face between her hands and then kissed him. “My man of two worlds!”

  He pulled her down so she was sitting on his lap. “Which two worlds had you in mind?”

  “Well, at first I knew Mr Yorke who owned Kingsnorth. A very quietly-spoken man who some thought shy and others withdrawn. A man of perfect manners, who seemed to have read more books than anyone else in Barbados knew existed. Yet a man who ran his plantation well and a man who rarely drank and had never been seen drunk. That was the gossip I heard. You were a man whose world comprised Kingsnorth. No hot waters – it was said you drank only the juices of fruit – and no wife or mistress, and an earl’s son. You were the most discussed bachelor in the island: there was not a wife who was not planning to have a younger sister out from England to stay in the hope of landing you, or a cousin or a friend’s daughter. In fact,” she said with an impish smile and kissing him again, “you had six such young ladies introduced to you after they arrived here to find husbands, you being the first choice, but you were very polite to them and that was all.”

  “No one knew,” he said, slipping his hand beneath her loose-fitting jerkin, “that I had long since fallen in love with a grey-haired, shrewish married woman!”

  “Shrewish? Shrew?”

  “Musaraigne is a shrew. We use it also to mean une mégère.”

  “Merci! A shrew, yes. But grey-haired?”

  “In some lights your hair is so blonde it seems grey. The very light grey of an ash twig.”

  “Yes, I can see that a poor lonely young man could fall into the hands of such a woman. She was English, I suppose; the skin of her face like calico.”

  “No, she was French.”

  “Ah, a scheming old French mégère,” she said. “No wonder those poor girls were turned away. That long voyage out here, and then back to England…what a waste.” She was unlacing his jerkin as he pulled the cord of hers through the last eyelet. “Put the bar across the door,” she murmured as she stood up and unbuckled her breeches.

  “You didn’t tell me about my second world,” he said.

  “Ah, that’s the one I like. The world of Buccaneer Yorke, who robs the Spanish and seduces helpless young French musaraignes.”

  Yorke stood with Saxby and Aurelia in the darkness on the Griffin’s poop watching the slightly higher land to the eastward on the other side of the river. Beyond the low-lying forest the tops of the lime trees were beginning to show up as though there was a distant fire behind them; as though some farmer was burning the brush and old grass on a hillside to ensure a good new growth when the rains came.

  The glow, more golden than red, spread as though worked by an artist’s brush until they could see the upper edge of a full moon. Then, with an almost startling suddenness, the complete circle was above the trees, lighting the peaks of the distant mountains.

  “They look like teats on a sow’s belly,” Saxby commented. “In daylight they don’t seem so regular.”

  Yorke looked over the Griffin’s taffrail. There was no one on the jetty nor anyone walking along the track passing the end of it. The last light in the town of Riohacha had been put out half an hour ago. The town slept.

  Below the level of the Griffin’s bulwarks next to the jetty there was an occasional movement. Finally Ned touched Saxby’s arm. “Time you were going, old friend.”

  They shook hands and Aurelia kissed him on the cheek.

  Saxby faced the men crouching inside the bulwarks and said hoarsely: “Carmens, follow me. Quiet now. Don’t forget, halyards, sheets and cast off fore and aft. And the springs!”

  He hurried barefooted through the entryport and Yorke watched him move deliberately across the jetty, disappearing against the shadowy Spanish ship as he went through her entryport. Behind him, like a sna
ke, two dozen men followed. One went aft and another forward to stand by the ropes holding the ship to the jetty.

  Yorke faced forward. “Griffins – man the halyards, see the sheets are clear for running. Get in both springs and stand by forward and aft.”

  The east wind, light as it was, blew the length of the jetty so that each ship could put her helm over the opposite way and sail off the jetty. Yorke saw that Saxby was luckier with the Carmen because although the river was not running very strongly it took the Spanish ship away from the jetty while pushing the Griffin against it. Still, scratched paintwork was to be expected; he could only hope he would not slam the Griffin’s stern into the stonework.

  He watched Saxby’s men hauling in the mooring ropes and saw the heavy gaff beginning to lift jerkily off the boom, halyards squeaking as they rounded blocks aloft. Then a flying jib raced up and was sheeted home, an almost perfect triangle with the flax pinkish in the moonlight. Another headsail went up as the gaff worked its way aloft, the mainsail unfolding beneath it, like a tailor displaying a roll of cloth. And he could see the Carmen’s bowsprit swinging away as the ship left the jetty and began to turn in the centre of the river, heading for the entrance.

  Yorke looked astern along the jetty. No figures running out with swords and pikes; no horses thundering up the track from the town.

  “Cast off forward, cast off aft,” he called to the two men standing on the jetty. Then, facing forward, he said: “Up mainsail…now, watch the throat halyard!”

  For some unknown reason, despite plenty of tallow, the block on the mast through which the throat halyard first rendered sometimes jammed, and it was a type for which they had no spare.

  Half a dozen men were pushing the Griffin away from the jetty using sweeps, and from the way the bow was trying to pay off to larboard the river was ebbing gently.

  The moment the Griffin’s stern was clear of the end of the jetty he gave a series of orders, the first of which had the men hauling the sweeps on board out of the way while the second started the headsails soaring up.

  He snapped an order to the helmsman to bear away another point, so that although the Griffin was heading away from the river entrance her sails filled better and she gathered speed. Yorke wanted to be sure that when he tacked the ship turned fast enough to avoid being caught in irons, stopped with the wind blowing down both sides of the sails. If that happened, it would take only moments to lose control and drift ignominiously aground on the far side of the river.

  The moonlight showed the curving canvas of the sails and he could hear the water swept aside by the Griffin’s bow. Now was the time to tack, and as he gave the first orders he had a moment to glance over the larboard beam. Saxby had the Carmen abreast the town and in the middle of the channel, heading for the entrance. There was no flash of a musket or pistol.

  Slowly the Griffin’s bow swung to larboard; the jibs thumped as they were blown across on to the other tack and sheeted home, and then the mainboom slammed across with a noise Yorke thought must be heard in Cartagena. The Griffin seemed like an excited horse galloping towards a fence represented by the river entrance.

  “They sleep well here,” Aurelia said, in a quiet voice which startled Ned more than a musket shot would have done: the concentration of sailing the Griffin out of Riohacha had driven every other thought from his mind.

  “Yes. Saxby must have reached the open sea. It is difficult to judge distance in the moonlight: the shadows are deceptive.”

  Aurelia obviously waited until they had passed Riohacha and the Griffin was beginning to pitch gently as she reached the open sea before she said: “The treasurer was trying to cheat us, but we’ve ended up cheating him!”

  Ned held out his hands in imitation of a Spaniard. “We intended to rob him, but as a buccaneering attack I think we failed.”

  Aurelia looked crestfallen. “Failed? In what way? You have all the maize you wanted, and an extra ship!”

  “Yes, I forgot the value of the ship. But we paid the price asked for the 250 tons we have on board the Griffin – four times what that scoundrel could get in Cartagena, so he has made a handsome profit on that grain. Admittedly he has lost his ship – if indeed he owned her – and the cargo. But we could have rowed in during the night and cut out the Carmen.”

  “Well, we must be the only buccaneers who pay bills!” Aurelia said contentedly.

  “I shall not make a habit of it,” Ned said firmly. “Ah – Saxby’s bearing away. We should meet Thomas in five or six hours’ time. He’s going to be surprised to see two ships.”

  “It saves us rowing more than five thousand bags over in boats,” Aurelia said thankfully. “That would have taken weeks. I’m looking forward to telling Diana what we’ve done! We qualify as proper buccaneers now!”

  “I think you really glory in that,” Ned teased. “You would make such an elegant mistress of a great plantation. Now you are just the mistress –” he rubbed his hand over his chin “–of an unshaven buccaneer.”

  “I know which I prefer! Now every day is new and exciting and I look forward to it. In Barbados I dreaded going to bed because it meant waking up to the ennui of yet another day…”

  Ned turned and said sharply to the men at the helm: “You are supposed to be following Mr Saxby!”

  “Sorry sir,” one of them said, “but the Carmen is yawing a lot. They’re having to get used to the way she steers.”

  Ned walked aft with Aurelia. “It’s the same with women; you have to get used to the way they steer.”

  The coastline was low, but suddenly Ned nudged Aurelia and pointed over the larboard bow. In the distance and well inland a group of mountain peaks were snow covered and the bright moonlight glinting on them made it seem that someone had thrown a handful of diamonds on to a piece of rumpled black velvet.

  Aurelia sighed and alarmed Ned, but she explained: “They are so beautiful. Who knows when we shall ever see them again in the moonlight. What mountains are they?”

  “The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, according to the chart. They must be a great help when making a landfall in moonlight or daylight.”

  Aurelia refused to go below; the moonlight flickering on the swell waves as they rolled past the Griffin in their endless procession to the westward, the curves of the sails making dancing shadows as the ship rolled, the excitement of sailing to find the Peleus – all this, she told Ned, meant she could not sleep anyway.

  The Nuestra Señora del Carmen was just rounding up to anchor, with the Griffin in her wake, when there was a flash in the dawn sky as the Peleus fired a gun and a roundshot ricocheted close under the Spanish ship’s bow.

  Ned froze as the noise of a cannon firing echoed across the bay, but he relaxed as he realized that Thomas Whetstone was taking no chances: Thomas was expecting the Griffin, but when she appeared led by what was obviously a Spanish ship, from the shape of her hull and the cut of her sails, he assumed the worst.

  It was still too dark to stand on the bulwarks and wave, so that Thomas would recognize individual people, yet to get closer to the Peleus would mean that Thomas would fire a broadside. Quickly he gave orders for the Griffin to luff up and drop her mainsail and jib, and while that was done shouted to the bosun to stand by to anchor. But the wind and current were carrying the Griffin close to the Peleus and if Thomas had any sense he would suspect a trap; the Griffin would be just the sort of Trojan horse to drift alongside the Peleus and pour out Spanish soldiers.

  The trumpeter! One of the carpenters could play a trumpet and often practised. Was he on board or had Saxby taken him in the Carmen?

  “Neal! Neal! Send Neal aft!”

  A moment later he was relieved to see a man running along the deck towards him and recognized the gawky shape of the carpenter.

  “Quick, get your trumpet! Aim it at the Peleus and play some English tune!”

&
nbsp; “What tune, sir?”

  “I don’t care!” Ned blazed, “but if you don’t start inside a minute we’ll get a broadside from the Peleus.”

  The man bolted below and a few moments later was back, scrambling up on to the bulwark. He balanced himself and the tune of “Early One Morning”, strident and piercing, seemed to ricochet across the bay. Almost at once Ned saw a lantern on the Peleus’ deck and it began flashing as someone waved his hand across the window.

  “Was he shooting at poor Mr Saxby?” Aurelia asked.

  “He was ready to shoot at all of us!”

  “But why? He must have recognized the Griffin.”

  “The Griffin, yes, but not the Carmen. It was our fault entirely; we should have made some signal, or anchored further away to leeward, where he’d know we could not attack him.”

  By now the Griffin was anchored and as soon as a boat had been hoisted over the side Aurelia said excitedly: “Come on, chéri, let’s go over and see them!”

  Ned called for the boat’s crew and ten minutes later he and Aurelia were climbing up a rope ladder to board the Peleus. Thomas was waiting at the top, far from his usual exuberant self. “Ned, how can I apologize? I thought you’d been captured and the Dons were using your ship against me. That other vessel is a Spaniard, isn’t she?”

  Whetstone was so shamefaced that both Ned and Aurelia burst out laughing. “Yes, she was Spanish, but you were firing across Saxby’s bow! She’s our prize, the Nuestra Señora del Carmen, with 350 tons of maize.”

  “Your prize? But…”

  “And we have another two hundred and fifty tons in the Griffin. Six hundred tons for Jamaica!”

  Diana, who had been standing in the shadows beside the mainmast, came forward. “I apologize again for Thomas. He was so sure you were Dons springing a trap on him.”