Beauty vowed to make fire a priority, however. They had flint, but finding dry leaves or wood was impossible. She sent several details out again to forage for food—anything they could eat. Other details scrounged for anything dry that would burn, or would burn one day if left in the sun long enough.
The food detail returned by early evening with a variety of possibilities, some small nuts and berries, some strange-looking fruit and—coconuts, by God! Now that was encouraging, and all hands gathered around to supervise the cracking of the coconuts and the sharing out of the rest. It was hardly a feast, but all agreed it was better than nothing.
A fire detail also had encouraging results, having found a cavelike hole under an overhang of fallen trees that contained dried leaves and twigs. They gathered up all they could carry and retraced their path to the camp where the men with flint began sparking and blowing for all they were worth and, eventually, voilà! a flame was produced, whispered to, blown upon, prayed over, and fed baby bites of wood until it made up its mind to become a fire.
Theo busied herself dividing the food into meager portions and passing them out to the men. The men’s spirits went up with food in their bellies and a general feeling of optimism took hold in the little camp.
They had shelter. They had food. They had a fire to cook the food. Now all they needed was a plan to get out of there.
FORTY-SEVEN
FALLON WANTED to write, but he hadn’t paper or pen or ink, so he wrote in his head.
Look to the sky tonight and find the
Brightest stars, for
Those are my eyes.
All night I will watch
You until the sun
Wakes you in the morning
Next to me, all along.
He swore to himself that he would say those words to Elinore one day, poor as they were. He thought of her often, going about her days, and wondered if she could imagine where he was at that very moment. No, he could barely imagine it, and he was living it.
Alvaron was improving daily, and his excellent spirits lifted his men’s spirits, as well. Fallon encouraged the capitán to move himself and his men into the village of St. Augustine where he could be more comfortable, but he refused.
“No, señor,” Alvaron said, “I want to be near your surgeon. We still have several wounded who are struggling. And I am enjoying your company, as well. My men are even learning to speak English! We are all in this together, my friend.”
“As you wish, señor,” replied Fallon, laughing with Alvaron because he knew his men were learning to speak Spanish as well. What a strange lesson this is, he thought.
But it would not last. One week later a real officer arrived, a coronel sitting on a fine horse and bejeweled with the decoration of his profession and accompanied by several aides. He was heavyset, of very dark complexion, and quite sure of his own competence. He saluted Alvaron stiffly, compared commissions with the capitán and, as the coronel was senior, quickly assumed command of the situation.
He immediately directed that the Spanish seamen be billeted in the village, away from the British prisoners, drawing a definite distinction between the two groups. Alvaron made to object, citing the wounded and the need for Crael’s attention. The coronel promised to find a doctor to look after the wounded Spanish seamen and the capitán’s leg.
Next the coronel visited the ships and ordered the gold and silver to be off-loaded at low tide. All the treasure that could be reached was located and brought ashore, but it wasn’t easy. The coronel had ordered a mule train to follow him to St. Augustine from his garrison to the west, and when it arrived the soldiers loaded the mules with the treasure and, under the command of the coronel, they left within two days for that same garrison, where an even more important officer would decide its fate. One thing seemed clear: The treasure would never get to France by going west.
The days dragged themselves into weeks at Fort Mose, and Fallon grew more restless and frustrated. The wounded men were almost healthy, but the rest were becoming indolent in spite of Jones’s best efforts, lulled into a stupor by their captivity and the heat and a growing sense that they might die there. Fallon sensed their mood but, given their remote location, could think of no words to combat it.
“Colston,” he said to the master one night as they sat contemplating a black sky awash in stars, “I want you to navigate us out of here. North to the United States. On foot. Can you do that?”
Colston paused. “I could do that if I had a map of the States and Spanish Florida, probably. But the best thing would be to just follow the coastline and hope. Assuming you could do that and get past the marshes and the thickets and the snakes and whatever else might kill you, and not starve, well, you would get there. Eventually.”
Fallon considered. Much of Somers’s salt trade was with the southern American ports, the closest being Savannah. And though hostilities with the United States had ceased years ago, he couldn’t be sure of the reception there if 75 ragged British seamen suddenly showed up. Certainly there would be questions to answer, and memories of British control during the War for Independence might provoke latent animosity. Still, there were better odds of finding an English ship in Savannah going—somewhere—than if they stayed in Spanish Florida. He wondered if reaching the United States was even possible. Long odds, he reasoned, traveling along a strange coastline on foot with bays and wide-mouthed rivers to cross, constantly scrounging for food and fresh water.
First, of course, they would have to escape, and stay escaped; they couldn’t exactly walk away. The sergeant and his men, a ragtag bunch though they might be, had a few horses and no doubt knew how to follow a trail. That was the problem on land versus sea, you left a trail.
FORTY-EIGHT
BEAUTY NEEDED to pace, and so sought out the hardest sand on the beach; anywhere else her peg leg sank to its length. She had divided up tasks for the crew, and everyone was doing something. She sent Theo out with a detail to scrounge for all the food they could find. Other crewmen untwisted massive ropes to get workable strands of fiber. Others measured boards and arranged them by size, and still another group wrestled with dead trees, dragging them by brute strength to the beach, using whatever they could fashion for tools to strip the branches. They needed the trunks.
Loyal to the last, dying slowly so they might live, Sea Dog had given them most of what they needed to build rafts. It would have been poetic to a more poetic person, but Beauty hadn’t a poem in her body. It was strip the ship and get on with it. The men worked with the seaman’s ingenuity, fashioning the rafts patiently, using what they had or could scrounge, accepting that they would be leaving the relative safety of land in the coming weeks for the vagaries of life on the sea again, this time with no ship. But it seemed like the only real option to a seaman: Get to sea.
Beauty had a rough idea where Harp had gotten to, and she remembered from the charts that St. Augustine had a harbor. She had no idea what was there, or even if Fallon was there, or if anyone aboard had even survived the bar, but get to sea her instincts told her.
“Kendricks,” she said quietly to the master, “I have in mind to use the northwards current to float us toward St. Augustine. Can you get us there?”
They were sitting under a tree, the men scattered about in the noon heat, waiting for cooler temperatures to resume working. “Yes,” Kendricks said. “And if Captain Fallon is not there I think we can get up the entire east coast of America, assuming we stay alive. Judging from what I know the current moves at about five knots.” Kendricks did some calculations in his head. “I figure we’re a good deal south, if I remember the chart. Figure several days to St. Augustine, with good weather and luck.”
It was much as Beauty had suspected. Try as she might, she could see no other plan. To stay where they were, hoping for divine intervention, was a short-term solution to staying alive, at best. At least at sea there was always the chance of seeing a ship, even an enemy ship, and being rescued. It wouldn’t be her preferen
ce to serve out the war in prison, but it couldn’t be much worse than where they were.
She set a date to leave: two weeks.
FORTY-NINE
IT WAS A famous legend in Cuba, probably true, that years ago some thirty Spanish soldiers planned an attack on an aboriginal camp on the other side of the river from their port settlement. They hired local Cuban fishermen to row them across, but the fishermen betrayed them and purposefully overturned the boats midstream. The Spanish soldiers, burdened by their heavy armor, sank like stones. The port was thereafter called Matanzas, Spanish for massacre.
Time had burnished the legend, though Cubans in Matanzas still had a lingering resentment of Spain. Matanzas women cut their hair to signify their independence and opposition to Spanish rule, in an open rebuff to Spanish officials in Havana, and there were minor protests and demonstrations against tariffs imposed by the Mother Country. The revolt by the British Colonies against Great Britain was well known and served as a fresh example to Cuban loyalists that their dreams of an independent country could perhaps be realized one day.
One can only imagine the Matanzans’ surprise when a British warship plunged into their harbor seeking shelter from a hurricane. Well, it had been a massive storm, to be sure. And the warship—Avenger was her name—had been badly knocked about and her sails all but shredded. She definitely needed aid and shelter, but the ship was British, which made her the nominal enemy of Spain, Cuba’s governing country. So, of course, every short-haired Matanzas woman turned out to help, most dragging their men along.
Well, every woman didn’t drag a man along. Paloma Campos was an ardent Cuban loyalist, brown skinned, brown eyed and, even by Cuban standards, strikingly beautiful. She had been among the first of the Matanzas women to cut her long hair, throwing her severed locks into the sea to float to Spain. A message.
Paloma was in the crowd of women and men who greeted Davies when he came ashore. It was she who stepped up boldly to welcome him to Cuba and to offer the help he so obviously needed. Davies, being a man with eyes in his head, immediately fixed them on the beautiful woman with the fire in her personality, the obvious leader on the beach, but her own eyes did not linger on him.
Davies had expected hostilities, but instead he was welcomed like royalty by the local people, and he was promised every able-bodied tradesman in the port. There was much to do to set Avenger right. The worst shot holes closest to the waterline had to be patched, along with the gaping hole at the bow. Spars had to be replaced and a new suit of sails bent on. And, of course, stores needed replenishing, at least enough for two months’ duration, which is what Davies planned to spend trying to find Harp and Sea Dog. It was all on him, and in fact would likely bring severe disapproval or even court-martial from the Admiralty, but he would face that problem later. His problem now was finding his fellow captains and friends, either their ships, their bodies, or, God willing, their living, breathing selves.
Day after day tradesmen came down to the shore bearing the materials Avenger needed to be set right. Paloma was often with them, and in the way of things she and Davies became friends—her English was only as good as his Spanish, but it was enough. As Kinis was in charge of the shipboard work, Davies and Paloma could often be seen walking the streets of Matanzas, a dusty bazaar of a town with busy shops selling their wares and music coming from deep inside alleys that wound around the backs of the little homes and buildings.
Of course, like every Cuban town, Matanzas had Spanish informants. These informants had horses, and they rode them straight away to Havana to inform the authorities of the goings-on in Matanzas with a British warship, Holy Madre de Dios!
The authorities in Havana considered what to do, slept on the problem, ate dinner over the problem, and in the end decided to do—nothing. Their reasoning was simple: The British ship had more firepower than all the guns in Matanzas, there being no militia at the fort there, and as there was no Spanish warship in Havana to send, what could they do?
After four weeks of hard work, Avenger was nearly ready to sail. Davies had paid generously for all the work, of course, but he felt compelled to show his personal appreciation to the townspeople who had provided aid, so he and his officers met them at a small café near the beach for a celebration. The rum soon had everyone in excellent spirits, some even past excellent, and when the music began the Cuban culture went on full display as women pushed the wooden tables aside and led their men to the dance floor. Eyes flashed and skirts were whirled and lifted and the men—Cuban and English—did their best to follow along, some game enough to try to dance, while most stood still and watched the zephyrs move around them.
Toward the end of the evening, Paloma and Davies left the heat of the café and stepped outside for air. There was a light breeze from the east, the wind soft and suggestive. Certainly Davies wanted to suggest something, but he felt he lacked standing to do it. He and Paloma were friends, nothing more, and he wondered at it. Usually, in his experience, by this time things would have progressed along a bit further. Clearly this was a woman who did not want a brief dalliance, with a sailor no less, or perhaps it was just him. Still, being with her so much had caused something to happen to him, something he didn’t really understand but which he liked.
“You’re wondering about me, señor. I can feel it,” she said as they stopped on the sand.
She was exquisite in the moonlight, and obviously perceptive, and Davies was quite at a loss as to what to say. He wanted to at least take her hand, but he didn’t dare ruin this moment. Finally, he decided to say something stupid, but true.
“I have realized that I have no idea who you are. I know what you’ve done for me, for the ship, but each time we’ve been together I’ve revealed more of myself than you have of yourself. I don’t know all that I want to know. And now I have to leave.”
There, he’d said it, sounding like a schoolboy talking to his first girl. Oddly, that’s how he felt. For a rear admiral with fifteen hundred men under his orders all over the Caribbean, it was disorienting and even humbling to be so obviously not in command. Something was stirring here, something new to him. A sailor, completely and utterly at sea.
Paloma stared out toward the harbor, taking longer than she perhaps should have to form a response. When she did, it surprised them both.
She stepped toward him, rose on her toes, and kissed him deeply, her tongue searching every part of his mouth, moving lightly across his teeth before plunging again and again into his soul, a kiss meant to burn his mouth forever.
“You must leave, Harry,” she said as she withdrew. “But you can always come back.”
FIFTY
AS A BOY on the farm in Africa, Ajani had been confined to the house by day, cleaning and doing menial chores for the family who owned his family. His father and mother worked the fields but, even though they were outside most of the time, they were never allowed off the farm and were never unsupervised. This instilled a natural curiosity in the boy for what lay beyond what he could see from the windows in the house. As a consequence, he began nocturnal explorations, slipping out of his room in the slave cabin where his family lived to explore the edges of the farm and beyond. He learned to be vigilant and silent, keeping his exploits to himself lest his family forbid them or, worse, he be caught and punished.
That natural curiosity to know the world around him, to escape confinement, led Ajani to nightly forays outside the walls of Fort Mose. It was easy enough to slip away on dark nights, and neither the guards nor crewmen nor even Fallon knew he was gone. He made his way into St. Augustine and found the barn where Capitán Alvaron and his men were billeted and also located the soldiers’ barracks. He found fruit orchards and small gardens and shops and alleyways and a livery stable with mules and horses. St. Augustine wasn’t so big and he could return to Fort Mose before daylight, having satisfied his curiosity. And anyway, what were they going to do if they caught him, put him in prison?
As it happened, one night he was indeed caugh
t on a farm outside town, nabbed red-handed with eggs in every pocket and both hands as he stepped out of a henhouse. The rooster’s crow had given the alarm that something was afoot, and when Aja stepped outside it was into a circle of men looking at him curiously, their dark faces showing more curiosity than anger.
Apparently, not all freedmen had gone to Cuba years ago when Florida became British. Some had stayed and raised families, and when Spain once again owned Florida the freedmen could once again own land and scratch out a living as farmers.
Aja stood sheepishly in the circle of three of these old, hardworking farmers and slowly handed over each egg, apologizing for each one, looking into the farmers’ eyes as he did. In turn, they did something remarkable. They invited him inside their home.
It was a simple home with crude, handmade furniture and a rough kitchen table, which they sat around. One by one the three men introduced themselves as David, Ezekiel, and Samuel, three bachelor brothers. This was their farm, their whole life, and who was this boy who had come to steal their eggs from them, they wondered?
Aja sat before them humbled. They waited for an answer. Slowly, he told the brothers his life story, short as it was, about his childhood in Africa, his kidnapping and the slave ship, the slaughter onboard and how he had hidden below deck to escape being killed. Then the rescue by Fallon and the British crew, the battle with the pirate Clayton and the hurricane, ending with Harp’s wreck on the beach and the crew’s captivity at Fort Mose.
The brothers listened, their eyes staring in wonder, and muttered to themselves at such a wild, frightening story from such a young man.
Aja told them the eggs were intended for the prisoners at Fort Mose, and he had stolen them on the spur of the moment to take to the men but, in truth, the men at the fort were fed enough. “I should not have stolen,” Aja said meekly. “I…I have no excuse.”
The Bermuda Privateer Page 20
