by Tim Severin
‘Don’t be surprised if some of your colleagues decide to break away on their own when conditions get more difficult,’ Peralta continued. ‘Your shipmates are easily swayed and can be pitiless.’
To change the subject Hector showed the Spaniard a new backstaff that Ringrose had fashioned.
Peralta watched him slide the vanes of the backstaff along its wooden shaft.
‘It seems a more complicated instrument than usual, more movable parts,’ observed the Spaniard.
‘Ringrose assures me that it will allow us to calculate our latitude position even where the sun is so high in the sky at noon that a normal backstaff is inaccurate. See here . . .’ Hector handed Peralta the instrument so he could inspect the extra vanes. ‘They allow readings even when the sun is at ninety degrees overhead.’
‘Fortunately I don’t depend on such a device for finding my position. I know the coast from here to Lima and beyond,’ the Spaniard answered dryly. ‘And if I am in doubt I turn to the pages in my derotero, my pilot book, and then I know where I am.’ He allowed himself a sardonic smile. ‘That’s your new commander’s real dilemma. He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s up against, and sooner or later his men will realise it too. They are a wolf pack, ready to show their fangs, and their leader may turn out to be equally ruthless.’
HECTOR RECALLED Peralta’s warning in the third week of August when Trinity overhauled another small coaster. Unusually, her crew put up a fight. They draped waistcloths along the bulwarks in order to conceal their numbers, and men fired old-fashioned arquebuses at the approaching galleon. The battle lasted only half an hour and the outcome was never in doubt. Trinity was by far the larger vessel and mustered three or four times as many marksmen. Yet two buccaneers were badly wounded by enemy bullets before the bark dropped her topsail in a sign of surrender and her survivors cried for quarter.
‘Search and sink her, and be quick about it!’ Sharpe shouted angrily as he watched the canoe which served as Trinity’s cockboat being lowered into the water. He was in an evil humour. The enemy’s fire had cut up Trinity’s newly overhauled rigging which would have to be spliced and mended, resulting in further delay, and it was three weeks since they had last taken any plunder.
The canoe made a dozen trips between the two vessels to ferry back the captive crew, who would now be held for ransom or obliged to work as forced labour aboard the galleon. On the final trip the buccaneers were crowing with delight and holding up leather bags and glass bottles. The bark was carrying five thousand pieces of eight as well as a generous stock of wine and spirits. Trinity’s quartermaster, Samuel Gifford, lost no time in distributing the loot at the foot of the mainmast, and each man came away carrying his share of the coins in his hat. Every fourth man, drawn by lot, also received a bottle.
‘Here you!’ said Sharpe beckoning to Hector. ‘Find out from the prisoners why they resisted when they had no chance against us. ’
‘Who is your captain?’ Hector asked. Only a handful of the captives wore the clothes of working sailors. He guessed they were the bark’s sailing crew. The majority – some thirty men – were too well dressed to be mariners and looked more like minor gentry. There was a priest among them, an elderly red-faced friar who was clutching his gown close around him as though he feared some sort of profane contagion.
A small man in a brown doublet and a stained but costly shirt stepped out of the group.
‘My name is Tomas de Argandona. I am the mestre de campo from the town of Guayagil over there.’ He gestured vaguely towards the horizon.
‘I need a list of everyone’s names and where they come from,’ explained Hector.
‘I assure you that will not be necessary,’ said the little man, a touch pompously. ‘We are aware that you pirates are accustomed to asking ransom for your prisoners, and we have agreed among ourselves not to participate in that sordid practice.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ demanded Sharpe. There was a nasty edge to his voice.
Argandona was speaking again. ‘We were looking for you.’
‘Looking for us . . . ?’ said Hector, startled.
‘The entire coast is aware that you are sailing in these waters aboard the Santissima Trinidad which you have stolen. My colleagues and I offered our services to His Excellency the Viceroy of Peru. We intended to seek you out, and then inform his Excellency exactly where you might be found so that he could direct the armadilla to seek and destroy you.’
‘But surely you must have known that your vessel was no match for us.’
‘We never expected to confront you,’ answered Argandona condescendingly. ‘Only to observe and report. But once we were challenged, we as gentlemen, ’ – and he emphasised the word gentlemen – ‘could not decline the battle. Our honour was involved.’
Hector translated this defiant reply to Captain Sharpe who gave a dangerously mirthless laugh. ‘Ask the coxcomb if his honour will allow him to tell us exactly what the Viceroy and his armadilla are proposing.’
To Hector’s increasing amazement, the mestre de campo’s response was utterly frank. ‘His Excellency the Viceroy disposes three great warships in the Armada del Sur but, sadly, all of them are unfit for sea at this time. So he has ordered an equal number of merchant ships to be armed with their brass cannon and placed seven hundred and fifty soldiers aboard them. He has also sent extra guns to defend the ports. In our town of Guayagil we have mustered more than eight hundred soldiers to defend our property and constructed two new forts to guard the harbour.’
‘He’s trying to scare us off,’ grated Sharpe when Hector relayed the information to him. ‘I don’t think so,’ said Hector quietly. ‘I think he is being truthful. It’s a matter of his honour.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ said Sharpe. Looking round, he saw Jezreel standing nearby. Taking a pistol from his sash, Sharpe handed it to the giant. ‘Point this at the belly of that sneering priest over there, and make it look threatening,’ he ordered. In a lower voice he added, ‘It’s charged with powder but not ball. I want to scare the pompous little shit.’
Turning back to Hector the buccaneer captain said, ‘Now inform the puffed-up runt that I don’t believe him, and I’m calling his bluff. If he doesn’t change his story I’ll send his priest to the hell he deserves.’
The Spaniard was quivering with a combination of fright and indignation. ‘Your captain is a savage. I have already told him the truth.’
‘Pull the trigger,’ snarled Sharpe.
A moment later there was a loud explosion and, to Hector’s horror, the friar was thrown backward and fell to the deck. A great stain of blood spread across his gown. Jezreel, standing with the smoking pistol in his hand, looked down at the weapon in disbelief. He was too shocked to speak.
‘A genuine mistake,’ said Sharpe smoothly. Stepping forward quickly he took back the pistol. ‘I thought the weapon was charged but not fully loaded.’
Hector had gone forward to where the priest lay. A dark red rivulet, glinting in the sun, was trickling from under the body and seeping its way to the scuppers. He knelt down and placed his hand on the man’s chest. Through the thick brown cloth he could detect a faint heart beat. ‘He’s still alive!’ he called out, looking around frantically for a surgeon. A moment later Ringrose was at his side, his fingers gently probing for the entry wound. ‘Gut shot,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘He’ll not live.’
‘Get out of my way!’ ordered a hoarse voice. Hector was aware of a shadow falling over him. He looked up. It was a crew man by the name of Duill who had always seemed to him to be particularly uncouth and brutish. He had enormously wide shoulders, a short body and a neck that seemed too long to support a small round head. It was as if he had been put together from the body parts of strangers. ‘Bugger off!’ growled Duill. His speech was slightly slurred, and Hector smelled the reek of brandy on his breath. ‘This is what we do to Papists.’ He leaned down and, pushing Hector aside, took the priest by the shoulders and began t
o drag the dying man towards the ship’s rail.
‘Here, give me a hand,’ he called out. A second crew man, obviously one of Duill’s cronies, ran forward. He stumbled momentarily, and gave a whooping laugh. The two drunks took the priest by the shoulders and feet and began to swing him back and forth between them like a heavy sack. ‘One, two and away,’ they chanted, and with a drunken cheer heaved the body over the rail and into the sea. Then they toppled against one another and broke into boozy laughter.
‘Savages!’ murmured Ringrose. He had risen to his feet and had gone pale.
‘The priest was still alive,’ groaned Hector. He felt that he was going to vomit.
Ringrose gripped his arm. ‘Steady, Lynch. Remember where we are. Look at the men.’
The crew of the Trinity were staring at the patch of blood on the deck. Many of them were silent and thoughtful. But at least a score of them were grinning broadly. Suddenly Hector remembered Peralta’s warning. They were like a wolf pack gloating over a kill. They had enjoyed the spectacle.
‘OF COURSE he knew his pistol was loaded,’ said Jacques. It was just after sunset on the evening of the murder, and the four friends were gathered by the lee rail to discuss the atrocity. ‘In the toughest Paris gangs the leader would select one of his men at random and order him to slit a throat or break an innocent head. If the man refused or delayed, then he was likely to suffer that same fate himself. That was the gang leader’s way to gain respect and impose his authority.’
‘But I was tricked,’ said Jezreel.
‘Sharpe’s more cunning. He has shown the crew that he’s ruthless, and at the same time made sure that he does not have blood on his own hands.’
‘So why did he pick on me?’ added Jezreel. His face set hard. ‘Why was I the one selected to do the job?’
‘Because he wants to bind us to him,’ said Dan quietly. The others looked at the Miskito in surprise. It was rare for him to make any comment. Immediately, he had their complete attention. ‘Remember when Coxon refused to include Hector in his group returning to Golden Island? We stuck together, Coxon was made to look a fool, and several of the other men came over to our side. Sharpe doesn’t want that happening to him when he is in charge.’
Hector was beginning to understand the point that Dan was making. ‘So you think Sharpe was making sure we stay on Trinity?’
Dan nodded. ‘Several men have already approached me to ask if I was satisfied with Sharpe as general. They are plotting to depose him by vote. If that fails, they are planning to leave the expedition.’
‘You mean that if we went with them back to the Caribbean, word of the priest’s death is sure to get out and Jezreel could finish up on the gallows in Port Royal.’
‘Sharpe knows that we stay together as a group, and he needs us,’ Dan said, and his unhurried manner of speaking gave his words all the more weight. ‘Consider who we are. When it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, no one aboard this vessel is more skilled than Jezreel. The men look up to him. They like him to be on their side when we send out a boarding party. Hector is the best interpreter. Plenty of others can speak some Spanish, but Hector has a knack of getting along well with the Spaniards, men like Peralta. They confide in him.’
‘What about Jacques, surely there’s nothing special about him?’ said Jezreel showing a glimmer of his usual banter.
Dan gave a faint smile. ‘Surely you know that on a ship a good cook is more valuable than a good captain.’ The smile vanished, to be replaced by a solemn expression. ‘As for myself, there are only two Miskito strikers left with the expedition. Without us the company would be even hungrier than they are now. And starving men are discontents.’
That was true enough, thought Hector. Finding enough food to satisfy Trinity’s large crew was a constant problem.
‘Capitan Peralta said to me as far back as Panama that the expedition would disintegrate,’ he said.
‘This is worse than when I killed a man in a prize fight,’ said Jezreel glumly, looking down at his hands. ‘At least that was in a fit of rage. This time I have been made a dupe.’
‘The situation is not hopeless,’ Hector comforted him. ‘Given enough time, the death of the priest will be forgotten or perhaps Sharpe’s double-dealing will be exposed. But for the moment our general holds the advantage. However unwilling we may be, he has bound us to him, just as Dan says, and we must wait until matters right themselves.’
TWELVE
HECTOR WATCHED Bartholomew Sharpe throw himself a double four. Passage was a brutally simple game of dice but well suited to the gamblers aboard Trinity. They wanted to wager their loot with the least effort and the quickest results. The rules were straightforward: three dice and two players. The first player to get a double using only two of the dice, then threw the third. If the total on all three dice was more than ten, that man won. Ten or under and he lost.
The captain threw again, a five, and reached out to sweep up the coins wagered by his opponent. As he transferred his winnings into a purse, he became aware of Hector standing behind him. ‘What do you want?’ Sharpe asked brusquely, turning to glare at the young man. Hector detected a moment of unease in his captain’s eyes and the briefest flicker of dislike. It was enough to make him wonder if his new captain might become just as much a threat as Captain Coxon, as dangerous but more subtle.
‘A word in private, please.’
Sharpe treated his gambling victim to a shrug of false sympathy. ‘That’s enough for today. I’ve won back all the money I lent you, and you’ll need more plunder before we play again.’
He deliberately left his dice on the capstan head. It was not something he would have risked with more sophisticated gamblers in London or professional players though the three dice were masterpieces of the counterfeiter’s art. Two were paired delicately so they tended to come up with doubles. The other, of course, was adjusted so it gave a high number. It was that last dice which had a very slight discolouration of one of the pips, just enough for Captain Sharpe to recognise. Naturally he always took care that he lost several throws before he began to use the three dice in the correct sequence, and now after two months of gambling he judged that he personally held fully ten per cent of all the plunder taken on the cruise.
‘Well, what is it?’ he asked gruffly as he and Hector moved out of earshot of the gamblers.
‘There’s a risk of a prisoner uprising,’ Hector told him.
‘Why so?’
‘Because we don’t have enough men to supervise the prisoners properly.’
The captain looked hard at Hector. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. It’s not just the numbers of prisoners. We’ve been keeping back those who are wealthy or were officers on the ships we captured.’
‘Of course. They were the only ones worth holding.’
‘They are the ones most likely to organise an uprising.’
Sharpe made no reply, but looked out across the sea. The sinking sun had coloured the underbellies of the clouds a deep and angry red. It was as though a great fire had been lit beyond the horizon. It reminded Bartholomew Sharpe of the unsatisfactory outcome to the raid on the mainland a fortnight earlier. The Spaniards had already retreated into the hills, taking their valuables with them. He had threatened to burn down their houses and farms unless protection money was paid, but the Spaniards were astute. They dragged out the negotiations until they had gathered enough soldiers to chase the buccaneers back to the beach. In their frustration the raiders torched the farms anyhow. A few days later forty members of his crew, dissatisfied with the poor progress of the venture, had left Trinity. They had sailed away on a captured bark, heading north on the return journey to the Caribbean. Barely a hundred members of the original expedition remained, and that was not enough to deter a revolt among the prisoners.
‘What do you propose we do?’ he asked Hector.
‘Set the prisoners free.’
Sharpe gave Hector a calculating glance. Here was an opportunity to ga
in the young man’s trust. The captain was aware that he and his friends were suspicious and resentful of him. But the trick with the loaded pistol had been a necessity. It had impressed the crew and cowed the Spaniards.
‘Are you suggesting this because you are friendly with Captain Peralta?’
‘No. I think it would be a prudent action.’
Sharpe thought for a moment. ‘Very well. Next time we come to land, you will see that I can be generous, even with my enemies.’ In fact he had already decided several days earlier to rid himself of the captives. No one seemed willing to pay a ransom for them, and they had become so many useless mouths to feed.
‘Rocks! Rocks! Dead Ahead!’ the lookout suddenly bellowed. Sharpe looked up in surprise. The note of alarm in the man’s voice indicated that he had been dozing at his post and suddenly seen the danger. ‘Reefs! Breaking water! No more than a quarter mile away.’
‘Ringrose!’ Sharpe shouted. ‘What do you make of it?’
‘Impossible! We’re thirty miles off the coast,’ exclaimed Ringrose who had taken a sun sight earlier in the day. He jumped up on the rail and shaded his eyes as he peered forward. ‘I wish to God we had a decent chart. This groping about in the unknown is madness. One night we’ll run ourselves full tilt onto a reef in the dark and never know what happened.’
‘Rocks to starboard as well!’ The lookout’s voice was shrill with panic. This time his shout caused a surge of activity aboard Trinity. There was the noise of running feet as men appeared on the deck and rushed into the bows and gazed forward trying to identify the danger. ‘Bear away to port,’ Sharpe called out to the helmsman, ‘and reduce sail.’ The order was unnecessary. Men were already easing out the main sheets and bracing round the yards. Others were standing by the reefing tackles.
