An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition

by Cartland, Barbara

  Rodney felt as if Barlow were reproaching him for the uncomplimentary things he had said when he heard that Francis was coming on board. He snapped back an answer and realised that Barlow thought him unjust and not ready to give credit where credit was due.

  It had not made him feel any more kindly towards Lizbeth and he wished that he could encounter some ship returning to England, in which case he had every intention of putting her aboard and sending her home. Lizbeth happily did not know of this intention, and as they sighted the Island of Dominica she was looking forward to their first encounter with the Spaniards as much as any of the men on board.

  She had been present when Rodney explained to his officers what his plans were. He would water his ship at the island and then catch the trade wind into the Caribbean Sea. Once there, he would make for Nombre de Dios, a small but important town, which was the terminus of the Panama gold route. The treasure was brought by Spanish ships from the harbours of Peru to Panama. There it was loaded on mules and carried across the Isthmus to Nombre de Dios on the Caribbean Sea.

  Drake had known of this sixteen years earlier in 1572 when he attacked the mule caravans, taking his crew over land to surprise them before they reached Nombre de Dios. He had made friends of the natives, who had helped him in every possible way, and he had left behind him a legend of kindness and justice which had never been forgotten.

  But the Spaniards, having lost cargoes of great value to Drake, had taken care to preserve their gold and now not only was Nombre de Dios an armed fortress, but the treasure ships were guarded all the way back to Spain.

  Privateers had given Nombre de Dios and the Caribbean Sea a rest in the past few years. It had been considered too dangerous to challenge the Spanish forces there, but Rodney thought it was worth trying to see if there was any chance of slipping into port and snatching some of the treasure before it was loaded.

  If he failed in this, he could cruise down the Darien coast where there was always plunder to be found. He had hopes that natives might help him with information, but like everything else in the chancy work of privateering, one could not make too many plans ahead. One had to wait and see what circumstances were and seize an opportunity when it came.

  The Sea Hawk reached Dominica late that afternoon and anchored in a small bay, sheltered by a high cliff. There was water in plenty, for the land was white with mountain streams. The crew were all itching to explore the tree covered hills, but Rodney insisted on the ship being watered first before anyone was allowed to stretch their legs or look for tropical fruit. He was well aware that it was dangerous to linger near these islands. The Spaniards might be on the look-out and he gave orders that the ship was to be kept ready to sail at any moment.

  Another reason for getting under sail as quickly as possible was that the inhabitants of the island, the Caribs, were cannibals. A cruel, ferocious, warlike people, they had made a stout resistance to the Spaniards and seamen of all nations calling at Dominica found it wisest to avoid any encounter with them.

  The place was lonely, with only the sea birds swirling and calling overhead. They stayed the night, raised anchor the next morning and sailed into the Caribbean Sea. For the next twelve days they were without a sight of land or the sail of another ship. It was very hot, and Lizbeth felt sorry for the men who must hurry about the decks, pulling on the ropes, lowering or raising the sails with the sweat trickling down their half-naked bodies.

  Yet the heat made her feel strangely sensuous. She longed for wild, impossible things which had never entered her head before. She dreamed strange dreams – dreams of Rodney, so that sometimes she blushed when she looked at him the following morning.

  Once, under a star-strewn sky in the airless heat of the tropical night, they had stood close together on the deck and Lizbeth had a mad desire to touch him, to make sure he was there and not a figment of her imagination.

  “What are you thinking about?” Rodney asked, and his voice was unusually deep.

  “You!” Lizbeth could not help speaking the truth.

  “And I am thinking of you!” he spoke the words angrily.

  “Why?” she hardly breathed the question.

  “Because I cannot help it, because I cannot be free of you,” he hurled the accusations at her.

  She stood very still, and the phosphorescence from the sea seemed to halo her hair.

  “Curse you!” Rodney cried, but there was no anger in his voice. She trembled at his words, yet it was a sweet ecstatic emotion which seemed to course through her veins.

  “Lizbeth!” It was the cry of a man hard-pressed, and then the ship’s bells brought them back to their senses. Without another word Rodney turned on his heel and went below, leaving Elizabeth alone, her hands to her breasts trying to quell the tumult within her.

  It was getting towards dusk on the twelfth day after leaving Dominica when the look-out shouted,

  “Sail ho!”

  Rodney forgot to be composed on this occasion and came running up from his cabin on to the quarter-deck.

  “Where away?” he asked.

  “On the port bow, sir. A carrack, I think, sir”

  “Yes, a carrack. sir,” shouted another from the foretop of the gallant masthead. “She’s right to windward under all sail, sir.”

  For a few seconds no one on deck could see anything, then Rodney saw a gleaming square of white rise for a second over the horizon and then vanish again. Minutes passed and now the sails were more frequently to be seen, until at last the ship was in plain view running goose winged before the wind.

  “She is flying the Spanish colours at the main, sir,” shouted the look-out.

  Rodney nodded. He had seen that some seconds earlier, but was afraid that, if he said so, his voice would betray his excitement.

  “She is at least seven hundred tons, sir,” Barlow’s voice said at his elbow.

  Rodney did not answer for a moment, he was watching the ship approach. He was well aware that her guns would outmatch his. She was big, and the ‘Spanish castles of the sea’, as they called them, could afford to carry very heavy guns and those of a long range.

  “Clear for action!”

  The bulkheads came down, the ship’s boys gave a cheer as they came running up with powder for the guns between which the black iron spheres were set ready for instant use. On the starboard side the guns were run out on their wooden trucks and loaded within a few seconds, on the port side the crews were ramming in the charges of shot and heaving the guns into position.

  “Cleared for action, sir,” said Barlow.

  Rodney opened his lips to speak, but the words were checked by a sudden shriek from the masthead,

  “Sail ho!”

  Rodney jerked his head upwards as the look-out continued, “On the starboard bow, sir. She’s right in the way of the sun – she’s a lugger!”

  All heads turned towards the starboard. They had been so busily engaged in watching the carrack on the port bow that the lugger had come straight over the horizon before they had seen her. She was two-masted, a pearling lugger from the Gulf of Panama, perhaps, but she would be armed and there was no question as to whose flag she was flying.

  Rodney began to calculate how long it would be before the ships closed on them. From the Sea Hawk’s masthead in the clear light of the Caribbean a ship could be seen from a distance of as much as twenty miles. But the gap between the ships and himself was shortening.

  He had not long to make up his mind and he knew that, if he dithered and did nothing, he would be crushed between the two of them. He saw the men looking at him as Barlow waited for the orders. He knew in that split second that there was only one order he could give.

  “Set the topsail, Master Barlow,” he said.

  He fancied there was the slightest hesitation before Barlow repeated the order.

  “Clap on more sail – ease the halliards,” Rodney added.

  Again Barlow relayed the order.

  “Keep her steady as she goes, Master B
arlow,” he said a moment later.

  There was a fresh breeze blowing which caught the sails. The men were scurrying about the decks, being cursed by Petty Officers as they sprang up the rigging. The crew was ready with the sheets and braces. Gun crews were waiting as a runner might wait to start on a race.

  Rodney stared across the water to the carrack. She was coming more quickly than the lugger, which was beating against the wind.

  “Wind shifting. sir,” Master Barlow said.

  “Keep her steady as she goes,” Rodney replied.

  “As she goes, sir?” Barlow repeated, the faintest question in his voice.

  “That was what I said, Master Barlow.”

  Barlow understood for the first time what was taking place. Rodney saw his face drop, the sudden quenching of the excitement in his eyes, and then as the Sea Hawk responded to extra sail and gathered speed, the seamen, too, realised that they were running away.

  A kind of groan went up which seemed to Rodney in that moment one of contempt rather than disappointment, but he appeared to hear nothing. He was watching the galleon approaching on one side and the lugger on the other. Sandwiched between the two there was not a chance for the Sea Hawk and yet he knew only too well what his men were feeling.

  “We could have tackled one,” he said to himself, “but not two.”

  Even so the carrack alone could out-class them, out-gun them, and even if they grappled with her and effected some damage, there was every chance they would find themselves at the bottom of the sea before she had finished with them.

  He had made his decision, unpopular though it was, and the Sea Hawk with every sail strained to the uttermost was running as fast as she could across the Caribbean Sea. He was concentrating so fiercely on watching the carrack that he did not at first hear a very quiet, soft voice at his side.

  “Rodney,” it said, “Rodney!”

  Even in his pre-occupation Rodney realised that Lizbeth was addressing him by his Christian name, contrary to her custom since she came aboard, of being strictly formal even in private.

  “What do you want?”

  The question was abrupt, almost rude.

  “I heard Master Hales say we are running away! It can’t be true. Surely you are going to stay and fight?”

  “With two Spanish ships? It would be madness.”

  He did not know why he troubled to answer her except that it was a relief to be able to express thoughts that were seething within his mind.

  “Are you afraid?”

  Lizbeth’s question was an impertinence which he could not allow.

  “Not for myself,” Rodney snarled, “but for my ship, for the men who sail with me – for you, if it comes to that.”

  “I would not have you play the coward on my behalf,” Lizbeth replied.

  “Play the coward!” Rodney repeated the words beneath his breath.

  Then suddenly he lost his temper. He turned and glared at Lizbeth with such fury in his expression that almost instinctively she took a step away from him.

  “Will you oblige me, Master Gillingham,” he said in a voice that was perfectly audible to those standing by, “by going to your cabin and staying there? Those are my orders, sir!”

  As he finished, he turned again to his contemplation of the carrack but he knew that Lizbeth had obeyed him. And yet somehow it gave him very little satisfaction. The wind was rising, but if that was an advantage to the Sea Hawk, it also gave the same advantage to the Spanish Ship.

  She was chasing them now. There was no doubt about the fact that she had altered course and her bow was pointing straight at them. She was gaining, too, and Roger calculated that in another hour she was likely to overhaul them.

  It was then he looked at the sky! Dusk was falling with the swiftness which in the Tropics turns a sunlit, cloudless day suddenly into night. It was their one hope, as he well knew. The darkness would cover their retreat and they might lose the Spaniards before the dawn.

  The lugger was being left behind on the starboard bow. She, too, had given chase, maybe in response to signals from the carrack, or perhaps she was not a pearling ship as he had at first suspected but one of the guarda costas which the Spaniards had creeping along the coast for just such an occasion as this.

  The breeze suddenly wavered and then renewed itself. Rodney watched the carrack to see if she too received the check. In the tropical waters one ship can have a fair wind while another only a few miles away can lie becalmed. Rodney began to be afraid that the wind would die away on him completely, but the Sea Hawk kept steadily on course while the carrack, with her greater breadth of sail, drew nearer and nearer.

  And then, as he watched he suddenly saw a disc of white appear on the side of the carrack. The disc spread and became a small cloud and six seconds after its appearance the dull thud of a shot reached his ears.

  “They’ll be carrying two devils from hell aft on the quarter-deck,” Barlow muttered.

  There was another burst of smoke from the Spanish ship and this time a spout of water rose from the crest of a wave a little to the starboard of the Sea Hawk. Rodney called Baxter to him.

  “See what we can do with our culverins.”

  Baxter bawled the order, but the Master Gunner shook his head doubtfully as he eyed the distance between the two ships. A cannon aft was sighted. He measured out the powder charge on the fullest scale, he trained the gun again and then stood, a length of smouldering match in hand, watching the heave of the ship. Suddenly he set the match to the touch-hole, jerked the lanyard and the cannon roared out.

  “Three cables short of her,” yelled a voice from the foretop.

  The Spanish ship was firing fast now. There was a sudden, splintering crash and a hole appeared in the quarter-deck bulwark amid a shower of splinters. Another shot skimmed along the planking of the fo’c’sle. A man fell with a crash and there was a sudden wave of crimson staining the deck. Rodney saw who it was as the man fell – it was Dobson, the ship’s surgeon.

  There was the sudden roar of the Sea Hawk’s cannon and a flash of flame, vivid and glowing, which told Rodney that darkness had nearly fallen. In a few moments it would be completely dark. Another shot splintered below.

  “Cease fire!” he shouted.

  He imagined, rather than saw the surprise on Barlow’s face.

  “Cease fire, sir?”

  “At once, Master Barlow.”

  It was too late to prevent another shot, and a second later they saw an answering flash of fire from the Spanish galleon. Rodney knew that the Sea Hawk could no longer be seen, for he could only locate the Spanish ship by the fire from her guns.

  The wind was freshening and as he felt it blow upon his cheeks, Rodney made the second momentous decision of the evening. If they kept straight ahead, he argued with himself, the Spaniard would be able to follow them, overhaul them and keep firing where she expected them to be.

  What was more, she would be near at hand, when dawn broke, to finish the destruction she had already begun. Nights were short in the Caribbean – they would not have many hours in which to get away from her. To do this and to escape he had to try methods other than the obvious. He decided to alter course and to turn nor’west, which would give them a less favourable wind but which would be the last thing the Spaniard would expect them to do.

  He gave the order and knew that Barlow and the helmsman thought he was demented. He was blessing the darkness, blessing the chance of saving his ship – that was all that mattered for the moment, that the ship should be saved, and even if they had run away, they would all live to fight another day.

  They had been but a few moments on their new course when there came a flash in the darkness and a shot splashed into the sea two cables to their starboard bow.

  “Steady as she goes, Master Barlow,” Rodney said.

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Barlow’s voice was less doubtful now. He understood what Rodney was trying to do.

  The breeze was growing stronger and then, even as Rodney
gave a sigh of relief, there was a crash which made the ship shudder from stem to stern.

  For a moment Rodney felt himself reel on the quarterdeck.

  “Are you hurt, sir?” Barlow asked.

  “No, keep her going.”

  It was a wide shot that should have missed them completely. Rodney’s instinct told him that what he had done was right in principle, but the Sea Hawk had caught it broadside on and he knew a great deal of damage must have been done.

  The next shot was half a mile away from them, and the next, and the next. It was lucky that the masts had survived and the Sea Hawk could still scud away from her oppressor. But the shot which had hit them was by no means an insignificant one. Rodney wanted to go below and assess the damage, but he knew that for the moment he must stay on deck and correct their course-a course which must take them out of reach of the Spanish guns before the dawn broke.

  6

  Dawn came with a magical suddenness in the Caribbean Sea. One moment all was dark save for the stars twinkling overhead, and the next instant great pink hands swept the sable from the sky and it was day.

  Haggard and hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, Rodney’s expression, as his eyes swept the sea, was echoed by every officer and man on deck and the sigh of relief which welled up in every breast was as audible as the splash of the waves against the ship’s side and the creak of the rigging as the sails bellied out above them.

  There was nothing in sight. Rodney heard Barlow ejaculate, “ Praise the Lord!” and while he felt inclined to say the same, he managed to keep a dignified silence, for all that he longed to shout aloud his joy and relief.

  It had been a night of unending anxiety. Almost as soon as it was dark, the wind began to blow heavily from the south-east. Rodney altered course again so that the Sea Hawk was carried in the direction of the American coast but at the same time there were innumerable dangers in proceeding at such a speed in the darkness in those practically uncharted seas.

  There was every likelihood of their running into an island, rocks or sandbanks that were not marked on the charts, apart from that, at the rate at which they were going they might easily reach the main shore itself. But the risk had to be taken. The Spanish ship would be on the look-out for them as soon as the dawn broke, and what was more, there was always a chance of their encountering other ships as they got nearer to the coast. In the hours of darkness Roger had felt a depression settle upon him more intense than anything he had ever known in his life before. He had faced death hundreds of times in the past ten years, he had known sickness and had felt despairingly that he would never reach home alive; but this agony of anxiety seemed to be a foretaste of hell.