by Tim Severin
‘White water to port!’ roared a sailor. He was pointing, open-mouthed with alarm. There was a foaming patch on the surface of the sea no more than a hundred paces beside Trinity. The galleon had sailed herself into a trap. There were reefs on each side and ahead, and little room to manoeuvre. ‘Bring her head to wind!’ snapped Sharpe to the steersman.
‘Lucky she’s so nimble,’ said Ringrose beside Hector as Trinity’s bow turned into the wind, the sails came aback against the mast in an untidy tangle of ropes and sails, and the galleon came to a halt, gathered sternway and began to fall off on the opposite tack.
‘Merde! Look there behind us! We sailed right over those rocks and never saw them.’ Jacques had arrived on the quarterdeck and was gazing back towards the expanse of sea which the galleon had just negotiated. That too was boiling up in a white froth.
Beside him, Dan began to chuckle. Jacques looked at him in astonishment. ‘What’s so funny? We’re boxed in by rocks!’
Dan shook his head. He was smiling. ‘Not rocks . . . fish!’
Jacques scowled at him and then turned back to stare again at the sea. One of the foaming reefs had disappeared, abruptly sunk beneath the waves. But another had taken its place, fifty paces from the spot. There too the water was boiling upward.
‘What do you mean . . . fish?’
Dan held up his hand, finger and thumb no more than three inches apart. ‘Fish, small fish. More than you can count.’
Hector was concentrating on a nearby white patch. It was definitely on the move and coming closer to the ship. A moment later he saw that it was formed of myriads of tiny fish, millions upon millions of them, weaving and flashing and churning in a dense mass which occasionally broke the surface of the sea in a white spuming flurry.
‘Anchovies!’ cried Jacques.
There was relieved laughter from all around Trinity as the crew realised their error. ‘Resume course!’ ordered Sharpe. He, as much as anyone else, had been misled, but he had noted how the crew had taken matters into their hands in the imagined crisis. They had not consulted him, nor waited for orders. It was time that he found something to distract them.
He sent for the gentleman prisoner, Tomas de Argandona. The Spaniard was much less self-assured now that he had witnessed the shooting of the priest, and Sharpe was waiting in his cabin with a pistol lying on his desk. One glance and Argandona told Sharpe what he wanted to know: the nearest town on the mainland was La Serena and wealthy enough to have five churches and two convents. It lay two miles inland and had neither a garrison nor a defensive wall. A watchtower overlooked the closest anchorage but there was an unguarded landing beach some distance away. Small boats could put men ashore there and it was no more than a three-hour march to reach the town.
The general council held on the open deck the following morning went just as smoothly. The men voted overwhelmingly in favour of a raid.
‘I propose John Watling to lead the attack,’ Sharpe announced after Gifford, the quartermaster, had counted the show of hands. ‘He lands with fifty men and takes the town by surprise. I then bring Trinity into the main anchorage and we ferry the plunder aboard.’
Looking on, Hector knew that Sharpe was being as wily as ever. Hector had seen little of Watling since the day they had been in the same canoe during the attack on Panama, but he knew Watling was popular with the men. He had sailed with Morgan and they would follow him without question. He was one of those rigid, grim, old-fashioned Puritans who detested Catholics and observed the Sabbath scrupulously. Also, as Hector had noted, Sharpe had never been able to cheat Watling at dice, because he never gambled.
‘LOOKS AS THOUGH we were expected,’ Dan said under his breath. He, Jezreel and Hector had come ashore with Watling’s raiders as soon as there was enough daylight to approach the landing beach safely. Now they were trudging along the dusty coastal track that would lead them to La Serena. Jacques had been left behind with a dozen men to guard the boats.
Hector followed the Miskito’s glance. From a spur of high ground overlooking the track a horseman was watching them. He made no attempt to conceal himself.
‘There goes our chance of surprise,’ Jezreel commented.
Hector scanned the countryside. The day was promising to be overcast and very humid, and the raiders were advancing across rolling scrubland. Occasionally the path dipped into small gullies washed out by rainstorms. It was ideal terrain for an ambush, and there was a faint whiff of smoke in the air. He wondered if the Spaniards who farmed the area were burning their crops to prevent them falling into the hands of the raiders.
Suddenly there were shouts from the head of the column, and someone came running back, urging everyone to close up and look to their weapons. Hector brought his musket off his shoulder, checked that it was loaded and primed and that the ball had not been dislodged from the barrel, then placed the hammer at half-cock. Holding the gun in both hands he walked cautiously forward, Hector and Dan at his side.
The track had been no more than the width of a cart but now it broadened out as it entered a clearing in the scrub. The bushes had been cut back for a distance of some fifty paces, and at the edge of the clearing were several clumps of low trees.
‘Lancers over there, hiding in the woods!’ warned someone.
‘How many?’ called a buccaneer.
‘Don’t know. At least a couple of dozen. Form up in a square and look lively.’
At that moment came the sound of muskets, no more than a dozen shots. There were puffs of smoke from the bushes farthest from the column and Hector heard bullets flying overhead. But the shots went wide and no one was hurt. He dropped on one knee and aimed his gun towards a bush where he could see the haze of musket smoke still hanging above the leaves. He could not make out the man who had fired, and waited for him to show himself. Away to his right he heard several shots as the buccaneers saw their targets.
Hector’s arm was beginning to ache as he tried to keep his gun trained on the suspect bush. The muzzle was wavering, but he was reluctant to waste a shot. It would take a long time to reload, and in that interval the cavalry might show themselves.
Seconds later, the Spanish cavalry burst from the thickets. They crashed out in a wild charge and rode straight for the formation of buccaneers. There must have been about sixty or seventy of the riders mounted on small, light-boned horses. A few riders held pistols which they discharged as they came careering forward, and Hector glimpsed one man brandishing a blunderbuss. But the majority were armed only with twelve-foot lances. Whooping and cheering they galloped forward in a confused mass, hoping to skewer their enemy. Hector swung the muzzle of his gun to aim into the charging body of riders. None of the Spaniards wore uniform or armour. These were not professional troopers, but farmers and cattlemen seeking to protect their property.
He selected his target – a stout, red-faced cavalier astride a dun horse with a white blaze – and pulled the trigger. In the confusion and through the gun smoke he could not see whether his shot went home.
He rose to his feet, placed the butt of his musket on the ground, and plucked a new powder charge from the cartouche box on his belt. Beside him Jezreel was doing the same. Vaguely Hector sensed that the Spaniards’ attack had come to nothing. A scatter of horsemen was galloping back towards the shelter of the woods. One or two bodies had been left lying on the ground, and a riderless horse came tearing past, reins hanging loose, the bucket-shaped saddle empty. Hector charged and primed his gun, selected a musket ball from the bag hanging from his waist and dropped it down the barrel. He was about to tamp the bullet home with his ramrod when, beside him, Jezreel said, ‘No time for that!’ Hector watched his companion lift his musket a few inches off the ground and slam the butt down sharply so the bullet came up hard against the wadding. ‘Saves a few seconds,’ grinned Jezreel, as he dropped back on one knee and brought the weapon to his shoulder. ‘Now let them come at us again.’
But the skirmish was over. The Spaniards had withdrawn. The
y had lost four men, while not one of Watling’s group had been wounded. ‘Honour satisfied, I think,’ said Jezreel. ‘I feel sorry for them. One of their lancers was carrying nothing more than a sharpened cattle prod.’
The column moved forward, more cautiously now, and two miles farther on arrived at the outskirts of La Serena. It was the first Spanish colonial town that Hector had ever entered, and he was struck by the mathematical precision of the place. Compared to the haphazard jumble of Port Royal with its narrow lanes and dogleg streets, La Serena was a model of careful planning. Broad straight avenues were laid out in an exact grid, every intersection was a precise right angle, each house stood at the same distance from its neighbour, and their frontages matched as if in mirrors. Even the town fountain was located at the geometrical centre of the market square. The two-storey houses were of pale yellow sandstone and most of them had carved wooden balconies, studded double doors and heavy shutters. Occasionally there was a glimpse of a garden or small orchard behind a boundary wall, or the ornate bell tower of a church rising above the red-tiled roofs. Everything was solid, neat and substantial. But what made La Serena seem to be an architect’s concept rather than a living township was that the town was empty. There was not a single living creature in its streets.
At first Watling’s force hesitated at each crossroads, making sure that a street was safe before they ventured across it, and they kept a watch on the balconies and roofs expecting the sudden appearance of an enemy. But there was no movement, no response, no sound. La Serena was totally abandoned by its people, and gradually the buccaneers became more confident. They divided into small groups and dispersed throughout the town, looking for valuables to carry away.
‘Why didn’t they lock up behind them when they left?’ asked Hector wonderingly as he pushed open the heavy front door of the third house he and Jezreel had decided to investigate.
‘Probably thought we would do less damage if we could just walk in,’ guessed his friend. He had a trickle of juice running down his chin from a half-eaten peach he had plucked in the garden of the house next door.
‘They must have had plenty of warning,’ said Hector. ‘They’ve removed everything that could be carried away easily.’
It was the same in every house they entered: a central hallway off which were large, high-ceilinged rooms with thick, whitewashed walls and deeply recessed windows. The floors were invariably of tile, and the furniture dark and heavy, too cumbersome to be moved easily. Halfway down this hallway stood a massive cupboard made from some dark tropical wood. Hector swung open the double doors. As he had expected, the shelves were bare. He wandered into the kitchen at the back of the house. He found a large stove against one wall, a place to wash the dishes, a huge earthenware jar used for keeping water cool, more empty cupboards, a tub for laundry. But there were no pots and pans, no dishes. The place had been stripped bare.
They crossed the entry hall and tried a door on the other side. This time it was locked. ‘At last, somewhere we are not meant to be,’ said Jezreel. Putting his shoulder to a panel, he barged it open, and went inside with Hector at his heels.
‘Now we know what the owners looked like,’ commented the big man.
They were standing in a large reception room which the owners of the house had failed to strip entirely. They had left behind a large table, several heavily carved chairs with uncomfortable velvet seats, a massive dresser that must have been fully nine feet wide, and a row of family portraits hanging along one wall. Hector presumed that the paintings in their ornate gilded frames were too big to be carried away.
He walked along the line of pictures. Dignitaries, dressed in old-fashioned doublets and hose, stood or sat gazing solemnly out at him, their serious expressions set off by wide lace collars. The men were uniformly sombre in their dress, and all wore narrow pointed beards except one man who was clean-shaven and had a priest’s cape and skull cap. The women were posed even more stiffly and looked self-conscious. They held themselves carefully so as not to disturb the folds of their formal gowns whose fabrics were very costly, silks, brocade and lace. All the women wore jewellery, and Hector wondered how many of the pearl necklaces, diamond pendants and gemstone bracelets were now safely in the hills or buried in secret hiding places.
He reached the end of the row of pictures and came to a dead stop. He was gazing into the grey eyes of a young woman. Only her face and shoulders were shown in the portrait, and she was regarding him with a slightly mischievous expression, her lips parted in the hint of a smile. Compared to the other portraits the young woman’s complexion was pale. Her chestnut hair had been carefully arranged in ringlets to show off the delicate sweep of her neck and the creamy skin, and she wore a simple gold locket on blue silk ribbon. Her bare shoulders were covered with a light soft scarf.
Hector felt a rush of dizziness. For an instant he thought he was seeing a portrait of Susanna Lynch. Then the moment passed. It was ridiculous to think of finding Susanna’s picture in the home of a prosperous Spaniard living in Peru.
For several minutes he just stood without moving, trying to puzzle out why he had mistaken the portrait. Perhaps it was the smile which had reminded him of Susanna. He looked more closely. Or maybe it was the locket that the young woman in the picture was wearing. He was almost sure that Susanna had a locket just like it. He searched the details of the picture, lingering over them as he sought to identify the likeness between this young woman and Susanna. The more he tried, the less certain he became. He believed he could recall exactly how Susanna walked, the way she held her body, the whiteness of her arms, the slope of her shoulders. But when he tried to visualise the precise details of her face, the picture in front of him kept intruding. He became muddled and anxious. The beauty of the girl in the picture began to overlap and merge with his memory of Susanna. He felt uncomfortable, as if he was somehow betraying her.
His reverie was interrupted by a shout from outside. Someone in the street was calling his name. He was wanted in the plaza mayor.
Leaving Jezreel to continue searching, he found Watling and several buccaneers on the steps of the town hall. To judge by the small pile of silver plate and a few candlesticks on the ground before him, the ransack of La Serena was going very badly. Watling was glowering at a trio of Spaniards.
‘They rode into town under a white flag,’ Watling said. ‘Find out who they are and what they want.’
Quickly Hector established that the Spaniards were an embassy from the citizens and wished to discuss terms.
‘Tell them that we want a hundred thousand pesos in coin, or we burn the town to the ground,’ growled Watling. He was wearing a greasy and threadbare military coat that must have done service in Cromwell’s time.
The leader of the Spanish delegation flinched at the mention of so much money. The man was in his late fifties and had a long, narrow face with bushy eyebrows over deep-set brown eyes. Hector wondered if he was related to the family in the portraits, and the young girl.
‘It is a huge sum. More than we can afford,’ the man said, exchanging glances with his companions.
‘A hundred thousand pesos,’ repeated Watling brutally.
The Spaniard spread out his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It will take days to raise so much money.’
‘You have until tomorrow noon. The money is to be delivered here by midday. Until then my men will stay in possession of your town,’ retorted Watling.
‘Very well,’ answered the Spaniard. ‘My companions and I will do what we can.’ The delegation remounted and slowly rode their horses away.
Watching them leave, one of the buccaneers beside Watling asked, ‘Do you think they will keep their word?’
‘I doubt it,’ answered Watling bluntly, ‘but we need time to search the town thoroughly. I want those churches ransacked down to the gilded statue and side altar, and don’t forget to pull up the paving stones. It’s under them that the priests usually bury their treasures. Tonight we post double sentries in
case the Spaniards try to retake the town in the dark.’
FORTY-EIGHT hours later Hector was wondering if he and Dan would be accused of cowardice or desertion. They had slipped quietly out of La Serena without informing Watling and made their way back to the landing beach. There, with Jacques’s help, they had persuaded the boat guards to let them use a small canoe to get back aboard Trinity. As had been planned, their ship was now moored a few miles down the coast in La Serena’s anchorage and waiting to pick up the raiders and their booty.
‘Where’s Watling?’ Sharpe called out to them as the canoe came alongside.
‘Still in La Serena,’ Hector answered.
‘What about plunder?’ enquired the captain. He had seen that the canoe was empty.
‘Not much, at least by the time we left,’ said Hector as he and Dan clambered up the swell of the galleon’s tumblehome and onto her main deck.
‘But surely Watling and his men took the town?’
‘Yes, and with little resistance. The citizens agreed to a ransom of one hundred thousand pesos if our men would leave.’
‘Then what are they waiting for?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Neither side kept the bargain. That same night the quartermaster led out a raiding party of forty men, hoping to catch the Spaniards by surprise and rob them. The following day the citizens of La Serena opened the sluice gates of the town reservoir. We woke to find the streets a foot deep in water.’
Sharpe frowned. ‘I suppose they thought it would make it much more difficult to set fire to the town.’
‘Watling flew into a rage. When I left, the men were in the churches, scraping off any gold or silver leaf, smashing windows, overturning statues.’
‘You should be there with them.’
