Corsair

by Dudley Pope

  “Now what can I do for you gentlemen?” Sir Harold asked ingratiatingly.

  “Nothing,” Ned said firmly. “We were going to offer to do something for you.”

  “Oh, indeed?” Sir Harold said warily. “What had you in mind?”

  “There’s just one question first,” Ned said. “Where do you want to start negotiating with the Spaniards?”

  “Bless my soul,” Luce said in surprise, “I hadn’t thought about it. Where do you suggest? Santiago de Cuba? Santa Marta? Or even Cartagena?”

  “What about Santo Domingo?” Thomas asked.

  “That would do as well as anywhere,” Luce said. “It seems an excellent place. But why do you ask?”

  “We might be able to find you a ship to carry General Heffer,” Ned said cautiously. “All negotiations with the Dons would be up to Heffer. We just provide a ship.”

  “But that would be capital, just capital,” Luce exclaimed, hardly able to believe his luck. The frigate was sailing in five or six hours: there would just be time to write another despatch for the Privy Council and get it out to the frigate captain, and substitute it for the one he had written last night, reporting his inability… Luce shuddered: it would be a close-run thing.

  “When would this ship be ready to sail?” Luce inquired.

  “Three or four days – just as soon as she has taken on water and provisions. How many would there be in General Heffer’s party?”

  “Well, the General, and I expect he would like a couple of ADCs, and a secretary, and a translator. I assume there’s someone available who speaks fluent Spanish. We don’t want to rely on the Spanish trying to find someone who speaks English.”

  “There are many who speak Spanish in Port Royal: that’s no problem.”

  “Then I will tell General Heffer,” Luce said. “What ship have you chosen?”

  “Perhaps my own ship, the Griffin,” Ned said. “Sir Thomas will be coming in the Peleus. General Heffer will go in one or the other.”

  “What sort of fee had you in mind for this – ah, this charter?”

  Ned shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve never done anything like this before, so there’ll be no charge.”

  “Tell me,” Luce said unexpectedly, “do you think General Heffer will make a good envoy?”

  “You haven’t much choice,” Ned said bluntly. “Anyway, there’s no negotiating to be done. Just a straight question to be asked. I should have thought Heffer could do that.”

  “I had in mind…” Luce hesitated, as if trying to pluck up courage. “I was thinking that if you are prepared to take your ship to Santo Domingo, perhaps you would do the negotiating.”

  “No,” Ned said firmly. “I’ll take whoever you choose as your envoy, but he does the negotiating.”

  And takes the blame, Ned thought. It would be very useful for Luce to have someone else to blame for failure – someone who was not himself or his deputy. If the former leader of the buccaneers came back to report failure (whoever came back would be coming empty-handed, there was not much doubt about that) then Luce would very soon twist the story round to imply that the failure was deliberate; intended to make sure there was no friendship with the Spanish. Ned felt quite pleased with himself: he was (thanks to watching Heffer over the past years) now able to think like a politician or a diplomat: at last he could understand duplicity, and although he was never going to practise it himself, it enabled him to spot it in others. Luce breathed duplicity as other men breathed fresh air.

  “I hope that you’ll act as an adviser, then,” Luce said lamely. “Not many people on this island have your experience in dealing with the Spanish.”

  Ned shook his head. “I’ve dealt with the Spaniards from behind a sword or musket; I’ve never negotiated with them.”

  He almost laughed at the thought of telling Luce about the recent voyage to Riohacha: supposing Luce was told that the governor of the province of Colombia, the bishop of Colombia, and the mayor of Riohacha were all within a mile of this room, on board the Argonauta, Dolphyn and Secco’s ship?

  Ned stood up. “Very well, Your Excellency; tell General Heffer and his staff to be ready to embark in three days’ time.”

  A week later Ned stood with Aurelia and Lobb, the mate, on the afterdeck of the Griffin as she surged to windward with Hispaniola passing close on the larboard hand and the Peleus a mile astern in her wake.

  The sun was bright; the clouds were startlingly white; the sky was so blue that many men knew they would make a fortune if they could create just the dye to produce a cloth of that colour. Blue, Ned thought; curious that it is the hardest colour to create. Good red dye came from the cochineal insects that lived on the cactus; but blue – that always created problems. Hard to dye cloth blue – and even harder to stop the blue fading in the sun.

  How was old Heffer? Was he capsized in his hammock, white and perspiring, wishing he could die instead of being seasick? Or was he on his feet, chattering away and boring Thomas and Diana, straining poor Thomas’ self-control?

  He was thankful that when they had flipped a piece of eight Thomas had lost the toss, so that he had to take Heffer and his party. Fortunately there had been no question of splitting Heffer’s party into two – Ned felt almost guilty at having pointed out that they all had to stay together in case something happened to the Griffin and Heffer would find himself without his translator and ADCs, or other members of his mission.

  Thomas had not been shrewd enough to counter that with the argument that the Peleus might be lost or delayed. Still, that was Thomas’ fault, and now he was paying the price: five days of Heffer’s company.

  “Why are you grinning to yourself?” Aurelia asked.

  “I was thinking of Thomas having to listen to Heffer!”

  “Spare a thought for Diana. She has to listen to Heffer, then all his staff agreeing with every word he says, and then Thomas trying to be polite. And no doubt all the time she’s afraid Thomas will explode.”

  “Thomas has more patience than me, so be thankful I won the toss and you don’t have Heffer under your feet.”

  Lobb coughed and Ned looked up. “That chart of Santo Domingo – do you think it is accurate?” the mate asked.

  “It’s old, that’s all I’m sure of, and we must allow for more coral growing on those reefs. What do they reckon – a couple of feet a year, for some of the corals? Best to trust your eyes and hope the sun is behind us when we go in.”

  The chart had come from Secco – a man who disapproved of the whole idea of the mission to Santo Domingo, though he had found the chart among his papers.

  Ned said: “The flags of truce – you have them sewn up ready?”

  “One for each yardarm, almost as big as the mainsail; and four for the two boats, bow and stern.”

  “I wonder if the Dons will take any notice of them,” Ned mused.

  “Why shouldn’t they?” Aurelia asked. “If a Spanish ship arrived off Port Royal and came in with a flag of truce, or sent in a boat, we wouldn’t shoot at it.”

  “Darling,” Ned said affectionately, “sometimes you are so reasonable I could hit you.”

  “The fact is,” Aurelia said patiently, “that you want old Heffer to fail. You’d hate it if he came back from the Spaniards and said everyone was free to trade.”

  “That’s not true,” Ned protested. “There’s nothing I’d like better than taking Heffer back with that news. It’s just that you know as well as I do that there isn’t a hope of the Spanish agreeing to trade, so we’re just wasting our time.”

  “Is that the last headland before Santo Domingo?” Aurelia asked.

  “Yes – one tack out, and the next tack back should bring us in.”

  “The flag of truce is going to work,” Aurelia said. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “If it doesn’
t you’ll hear roundshot whistling around your ears,” Ned said feelingly. “They say Santo Domingo is heavily defended.”

  Ned gestured to Lobb, who gave orders to put the ship on the other tack, so that the Griffin started out on the first leg of a zigzag which would take her away from the land and then, with the second tack, bring her back.

  “You can see Santo Domingo’s at the mouth of a big river,” Lobb said, pointing over to the larboard side. “Look, the water is getting muddy already.”

  “Probably there’s been a lot of rain up in the mountains,” Ned said. “I hope we’ll be able to see the bar.”

  “Once I can see the banks of the river, I’ll find the bar,” Lobb said. “Anchoring is going to be our problem. There’s a lot of mud, and the river flows out strongly – there’s a note on Secco’s chart that says it’s a couple of knots, and thrice that in the rainy season.”

  After about fifteen minutes Ned looked back to the north-east.

  “That must be the city coming clear of the headland,” he said. “There’s the savannah and the amphitheatre of hills that Secco said was to the west of it.”

  “I wonder if the Spanish are watching us yet?” Aurelia said.

  “I doubt it – it must be pretty quiet along here. The last time they had any excitement was when Cromwell sent Penn and Venables.”

  “Tell me about them; I forget,” Aurelia said.

  “Well, General Penn and Admiral Venables were sent out by Cromwell and they were supposed to capture Santo Domingo. They came from the east and for reasons no one ever explained properly, let themselves get swept past, landing twenty or thirty miles down the coast. They then tried to march back to attack Santo Domingo, but yellow fever, ague and the Spanish beat them, so the survivors went back to the ships and they went on to Jamaica, which they captured instead.”

  “Well, they achieved something!”

  “The last person to capture Jamaica was a privateer, so taking the island with a force of thousands of men wasn’t so remarkable.”

  “Anyway, you think the Spanish have forgotten that by now?”

  “It’s one of the few victories they’ve ever had,” Ned said caustically, “so perhaps they still celebrate it.”

  Two hours later the Griffin, a large flag of truce streaming out at each yardarm, and closely followed by the Peleus, bore away and began to reach into the anchorage of Santo Domingo, both Lobb and Ned anxiously eyeing the muddy waters of the River Ozama.

  The harbour was easier than Ned had expected: the entrance to the river was wide and where it narrowed the city was built on each bank. The chart showed deep water close in to the land, and Ned took the Griffin in to the east bank and anchored to leeward of a square fort. The Peleus followed and anchored to windward of her.

  Through the perspective glass Ned had already seen that the fort had a small jetty, with a couple of boats secured to it. Further inshore there was a beach with twenty or more open fishing boats pulled up out of the water, each boat painted in bright colours, in contrast to the drab grey of the stone fort and the sun-bleached wood of a small shed from which were strung nets.

  With the anchor down and holding in six fathoms of water, Ned said to Aurelia, who was examining the coast curiously, “Now we have to wait.”

  “Will the Spanish come out to us, or do we send in a boat?”

  “Well, I deliberately anchored close to the fort. If the Spanish don’t come out soon, I imagine Thomas will send in a boat.”

  They waited an hour and nothing happened. Through the glass Ned could see Spaniards on the parapet of the fort, obviously curious about the two ships that had come in with white flags and anchored.

  “The trouble is that no Spaniard likes to do anything without orders,” Ned commented. “I expect they’ve sent a man on horseback to report to the governor and ask what to do.”

  Then Ned saw that Thomas’ patience had obviously given out: both boats were hoisted out in the Peleus, and oars were lashed vertically at bow and stern so that the white flags secured to them were unmistakable.

  The first boat left the Peleus, rowing for the fort, with four men sitting in it, among the rowers. “The translator, the two ADCs and his secretary,” Ned commented after inspecting it with the glass. “Heffer isn’t taking any chances.”

  It took ten minutes for the boat to get alongside the jetty, and by the time it arrived twenty or more Spanish soldiers were there to meet it, armed with muskets and pikes, and wearing helmets and breastplates. They stood back while the four men clambered out of the boat, and Ned watched them obviously listening while the translator made some sort of explanation. Then they escorted the four men into the fort.

  “Looks friendly enough so far,” Ned commented to Aurelia. “I suspect they arrived before the horseman has returned from the governor. Now they’ll have to send a second horseman!”

  He continued watching the fort and discovered a track leading from the fort and going towards the city. Fifteen minutes after the four men had gone into the fort he saw a man on horseback galloping up to the fort from the direction of the city.

  “Ah, here comes the messenger from the governor. Either the fort will open fire on us and toss the bodies of our four men over the parapet, or our fellows will come out and fetch Heffer.”

  An anxious Ned had to wait half an hour before soldiers streamed out of the fort and marched down the jetty again. Ned could just make out Heffer’s four men, who climbed back into the waiting boat and were soon being rowed back to the Peleus.

  “You worry too much,” Aurelia said. “I knew everything would be all right.”

  Ned grunted doubtfully. “You felt it in your bones, no doubt. You have the most sensitive bones in the whole Caribbee!”

  The boat reached the Peleus, and ten minutes later the second boat left her and started pulling towards the Griffin. Ned recognized Thomas’ bulky shape sitting in the stern.

  He climbed on board the Griffin and greeted Ned. “I thought I’d come over and tell you what’s happening. The translator’s just come back and Heffer is to go to the fort at noon tomorrow to be taken into the city to see the governor. At least, I presume it’ll be the governor. He’s to take a translator with him, but the Spaniards say only two people.”

  “What does Heffer think about it?”

  Thomas laughed and waved towards the land. “Heffer hates being at sea so much he can’t wait to get his feet on dry land again, even if the land is Spanish!”

  “What sort of voyage did you have with him?”

  “Oh, he was sick for a couple of days, but once he’d recovered we couldn’t stop him talking. He had to tell his fellows all about meeting us when we first arrived in Jamaica, then the raid on Santiago to get him guns…the man’s a bore; even Diana was losing patience at the tenth telling of every story.”

  “The poor man,” Aurelia said unexpectedly. “This is the first time for years that he’s been able to talk freely and he’s been thoroughly enjoying himself.”

  “He’ll soon be able to talk his head off with the Spanish,” Ned said sourly. “Let’s hope the governor of Santo Domingo has as much patience as Diana. Maybe he’s like Heffer – has no one to talk to.”

  “By the way,” Thomas said. “I thought you anchored rather close to the fort – if they get cross with us, we’re well within range of their guns.”

  “I did that deliberately,” Ned said. “The fact that we’re right under their guns should persuade the Spanish that we’re not planning any tricks. Anyway, the fort is to windward so if we cut our anchor cables we’ll soon drift out of range.”

  Thomas nodded. “Yes, and there’s quite a strong current, too. I reckon a couple of knots, so even if it was windless we’d soon be clear.”

  “Has old Heffer with all his gossip indicated he’s prepared what he’s going to say to the
Dons?” Ned asked.

  “No. That meeting is about the only thing he’s not talked about – at length! But presumably Luce told him what to say.”

  “I wouldn’t rely on that,” Ned said. “My impression was that Luce is very anxious to carry out his instructions but hasn’t much idea how to do it.”

  “All that energy,” Thomas said. “It’s a pity we can’t point him in the right direction; he might then turn into a good governor.”

  “The brothels are going to be the death of him,” Ned said soberly. “I think we’ll get back to find the first of the buccaneers have already left for Tortuga, taking some ladies with them. Luce will find his kingdom comprises a row of closed-down bordellos.”

  “Although I’m sure that his wife was behind the bordellos affair,” Thomas said, “one mustn’t forget that Luce was a Puritan. He probably still prays to my sainted uncle; closing down some brothels in memory of Oliver Cromwell is just the sort of thing one would expect from a reformed Roundhead.”

  Thomas pulled out his watch. “I told Diana I wouldn’t stay long, because she wanted to come over. By the way, one of Heffer’s party was so seasick all the way that we had to throw a bucket of water over him after we anchored.”

  “Who was that?” Ned asked.

  “One of his ADCs, a Captain Irons. He looked like a rusty ghost – hasn’t eaten for five days…”

  Next morning Ned watched as Heffer and the translator left the Peleus and were rowed to the fort. Later he saw four horsemen, two of whom were Spaniards, the sun glinting on their helmets, and one was certainly Heffer, who sat a horse better than Ned expected.

  Watching the horsemen ride along the track stirring up a cloud of dust, Ned found himself looking at the fishing boats drawn up on the beach. They had pronounced sheers and high bows, and as he looked through the perspective glass he noticed that the nets were not still draped over the small shed he had seen the previous day. Not only that, he realized, there were many more boats now drawn up on the beach: they extended well beyond the shed. Another dozen? More, probably. Yet, apart from two or three men walking along the beach, there was no sign of fishermen. When did the extra boats arrive? They must have come during the night because he had not seen any fishing boats being rowed about during daylight.