Corsair

by Dudley Pope

“I hope you didn’t reassure him too much,” Ned said laughingly.

  “No, I wasn’t sure what it was all about so I just gave a diabolical laugh and walked away.”

  “We’re keeping him, the bishop and the mayor in case we need hostages,” Ned explained, “but as things are now – after the news we have from Secco – I doubt if we’ll have any more use for them. So if the attack goes well and you get the chance, perhaps you can put the three of them ashore. Don’t waste time or take any risks, but just bear it in mind.”

  “I think that Sanchez will be quite disappointed if I don’t cut his throat on the beach,” Coles commented. “Perhaps he doesn’t fancy going back to his wife.”

  Ned held up his hand and called to the captains. “I haven’t made it clear,” he said, “that any of you are welcome to cut out the Spanish ships. Destroy or capture – whichever you like.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ned had the perspective glass to his eye, and Aurelia and Lobb were standing beside him. “There we are,” he said cheerfully, “there are the white cliffs near Taganga, the only ones like that along this coast. There’s the cathedral in Santa Marta – I can just make out the two domes. And behind the town, a dozen miles to the south-east, the Pico de Santa Marta. Pity the haze is hiding all the other peaks of the Sierra Nevada: we’d have been able to estimate our position a lot sooner, because you can see most of the Sierra Nevada for forty miles on a clear day.”

  “I seem to remember the town of Santa Marta itself is on a flat plain,” Aurelia said.

  “It is,” Ned replied. “The mountains start rising inland. There, the haze is clearing to the eastward: seems strange seeing snow on those peaks and yet it’s so hot down here.”

  Ned could imagine that every perspective glass in the flotilla was now being used. It was strange how the haze had hidden the land until a few moments ago, when it cleared between the flotilla and the shore as though someone had pulled aside a curtain.

  He looked round at the rest of the ships. Astern in their usual position were the Peleus and the Phoenix; then came the rest of the flotilla in no particular order, except that the three ships taken at Grand Cayman were in the middle, as though the other captains were protecting them, like mother hens with their chicks.

  They were being sailed well and Ned was thankful that, so far anyway, his idea of giving the commands to the bosuns of the Griffin, Peleus and Phoenix had proved a good one. With the prospect of bitter fighting, he was loth to lose Lobb, and he knew that Thomas and Saxby would be equally unwilling to give up their mates.

  Ned had spent twenty minutes with the bosuns, giving them copies of Secco’s chart and explaining what was expected of them. They had six men each, and they would soon be preparing their ships. They knew about getting to windward in the anchorage, and none of them underestimated the risks they were facing.

  It was a few minutes past noon and the sun, almost directly overhead, was like the open door of a furnace. The awning gave Ned and Aurelia some shade but the rays reflected up from the sea in dancing diamonds and the wind was hot; it sapped the energy when it should have refreshed.

  When Ned looked again, the snow-covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada had vanished as more haze appeared. Just as well, Ned thought to himself; it was tantalizing, when one was almost gasping for breath and everything was so hot, be it wooden decks or metal fittings, to see snow. Up in those peaks, Ned guessed, men could freeze to death… Down here they were being almost boiled like lobsters.

  The buccaneer flotilla was reaching along at about five knots. In two hours, perhaps two and a half, they would all be fighting for their lives. But this attack on Santa Marta had to be carried out in broad daylight: there was no moon, and trying to find nine ships (and the frigate) in complete darkness would be hopeless – and, with the alarm raised, there could be no second attempt the following night.

  “That new rigging has stretched,” Lobb commented, pointing aloft.

  The new halyards did not matter: as they stretched it was just a question of swigging them up tighter, but the shrouds were different. The lanyards at the lower end had to be tightened up, but this could only be done satisfactorily when the ship was at anchor. Now, with the shrouds a little slack, the mast could work, and it did, creaking at the partners.

  Ned watched for a minute or two. Yes, although the mast was working there was nothing to worry about. The mast was sound; in fact in the sunlight it still glistened from its recent coats of linseed oil.

  Ned moved his feet carefully. The pitch in the deck seams was so hot that it was sticky; one had to be careful to stand on the planks and not on the seams. Damn the heat. Then he thought about beating down the English Channel at this time of the year; there would be a strong south-wester, it would be freezing cold with no chance of getting warm, and the decks would be swept with spray, soaking you with no chance of getting dry. Soaking wet and freezing, or half roasted and nearly panting for breath? Give me the heat, he decided; it lasts only a few hours each day before cooling down for the night, but for the poor miserable seaman fighting his way down Channel night merely made it colder and the cold felt worse. No sane man who had sailed in the Caribbee ever volunteered to sail in northern waters…

  Now he could see the white cliffs and a hint of the cathedral without using the perspective glass, and the Pico de Santa Marta stood four-square like a signpost. In this wind a reach meant they could lay Santa Marta; unless there was a change in wind direction as they approached the land (not unknown, particularly in this weather) they should be able to sail straight into the Bahia Santa Marta without altering course.

  “When we get back to Port Royal,” Ned told Lobb, “you shall have a whole week to set up the rigging and change the old stuff you had to put back. You can worm, parcel and serve to your heart’s content.”

  “Thank you, but personally I’m sick of rigging,” Lobb said lightly. “‘Worm and parcel with the lay, turn and serve the other way’, ” he repeated parrot-fashion the rules for the work, a phrase dinned into a seaman from the time he first set foot in a ship as a boy.

  “It’s the stink of pitch and Stockholm tar that bothers me,” Ned said. “And madame grumbles about it, too.”

  “You’re lucky, it’s about the only thing I do grumble about,” Aurelia said. “Never a moan about the stink of the bilges or the smell of boucan…I am a treasure among women.”

  “And we all appreciate you,” Ned said lightly. “You and Diana – and Martha Judd: but for you three we’d be savages, tearing at our food with bare hands and wearing only the hides of beeves.”

  “True,” Aurelia said coolly. “You almost sound as though you mean it – about wearing hides, and tearing at food.”

  An hour later, using the perspective glass, Ned could make out the masts of the ships in the harbour, and he told Lobb to prepare the ship for action. The guns were loaded and run out, the grindstone hoisted on deck once again to give the men another chance of putting an edge on their cutlasses and a point on the boarding pikes.

  Ned looked at the three Grand Cayman prizes and was pleased to see the men bustling around on deck. They would be removing all the hatch covers and throwing them over the side, and then using axes to cut holes in the decks and bulkheads, to ensure that a good draught blew through each ship. And then they would scatter the chunks of pitch and, at the last moment, leave heaps of gunpowder joined by slowmatch and with the demijohns of spirits near powder which would blow them up and ignite the spirit, spreading the flames.

  Now he began to feel the apprehensions that always came before an action. Had he forgotten something that could endanger the operation or cost men’s lives? Would he be unlucky, as he was at Santa Lucia, and run aground at a critical moment? Would a raking broadside tear through the Griffin and kill Aurelia? Would a random roundshot tear off one of his limbs? Would the Cayman prizes be successful or would t
hey cause more harm to the buccaneer flotilla? Would – and this was much more likely – would the expedition find that the Spanish troops were already on board the Spanish ships, ready and waiting with musket and pike?

  “The largest is anchored up to windward: lay us alongside her,” Ned told Lobb. The whole of the Bahia Santa Marta lay open in front of them; the nine ships were anchored right across their bow. So far not a shot had been fired; it was as though the Spanish had not noticed them approaching.

  Suddenly a little wreath of smoke appeared at a gunport of the frigate, followed a moment later by several more. Ned heard the calico-tearing noise of shot passing overhead. Yes, the frigate quite sensibly was firing at the nearest ship, which happened to be the Griffin.

  All the Spanish ships were heading into the wind, which meant into the shore. The frigate, anchored by chance some distance from the other ships, was catching a different slant of wind so that she was almost broadside-on to the approaching buccaneers and could bring at least some of her guns to bear. But the approaching buccaneers could do nothing to fire back; they would be helpless with their guns unable to bear until they could get broadside-on, and that meant getting alongside.

  Ned saw the three Cayman prizes now working their way up to windward, as he had instructed, so that they would get into a position where the Spanish ships were to leeward of them. The Peleus, following astern, was bearing away slightly, intending to tackle the second merchant ship to windward, and Saxby was obviously proposing to attack the third. The rest of the buccaneer flotilla was in no sort of formation; it was evident that each of the Spanish ships would be attacked by several buccaneers at once, which would be like a pack of dogs attacking a bull.

  The men were standing by at the guns; linstocks were being waved like wands, pieces of slowmatch wound round them, the glowing ends fitting into the Y-shaped crutches at the end.

  Beside the guns, cutlasses, pikes and muskets were lying ready for use. The Griffin’s buccaneers had strips of coloured cloth tied round their foreheads to prevent perspiration running into their eyes. Most of them were bare from the waist up, stripped so that they could move freely. All were barefooted although several of them fidgeted, finding the deck hot to stand on.

  Ned took one last look at the ship towards which the Griffin was heading and put the perspective glass back in the drawer. The soldiers were not on board – at least, they were not lining the bulwarks with muskets and pikes, nor was there any sign of troops on board the other eight ships.

  More guns fired from the frigate: the wind must have swung her a little more so that extra guns could bear. There were three thuds as shot hit the Griffin, but there were no shouts or screams from wounded crew. Now they would be reloading the guns in the frigate and Ned hoped the Spaniards were so excited that they slowed themselves down.

  The ship he was going to attack was painted a plum red and her masts were yellow. Yes, she had six gunports on this side, but the way she was heading not one of the guns could be brought to bear yet.

  Forty yards to go; at the moment the Griffin was steering directly for the ship; at the last moment she would have to luff up, furling sails at the same time, and slam alongside her, guns firing.

  And it was up to him to judge the exact moment when the Griffin luffed up. A few moments too early, and she would stop short of the ship and be blown away from her by the prevailing wind; a few moments too late and she would overshoot.

  There is, Ned warned himself, no second chance.

  Forty yards…thirty…twenty…ten… “Luff her!” he bellowed at Lobb. “Let fly the headsails sheets, furl the mainsail!”

  Now the Griffin was alongside the Spanish ship, whose bulwarks were six feet higher than the Griffin’s. Ned faced his gunners. “Fire when you bear!” he shouted and two of the guns spurted flame and smoke immediately, rumbling back in recoil.

  “Grapnels over!” Ned yelled at the men standing between the guns.

  More guns fired; then the Griffin was close alongside the Spaniard, her hull grinding against the other ship.

  “Board her!” Ned commanded as he ran for the bulwark, cutlass in his hand. Men left the guns, snatching up cutlasses and pikes and leaping on to the bulwarks and then clawing their way up the side of the Spaniard.

  Ned wriggled up a chain plate, swung himself on to the Spaniard’s bulwark and dropped on to the deck.

  There were thirty or forty Spaniards waiting there, some with boarding pikes poised and the others wielding cutlasses, but they stood away from the bulwarks as though the broadside from the guns had driven them back.

  Ned waited until he sensed that a dozen or more buccaneers were behind him and then, yelling “Griffins!”, ran towards the nearest group of Spaniards. One man lunged with a pike and Ned slammed it aside with his cutlass, turning the movement into a slashing blow so that the blade bit into the man’s skull. As he fell Ned was just in time to parry a cutlass blow from another Spaniard and was saved from a lunging pike by a buccaneer who drove the haft downwards so that the point stuck in the deck. While the bewildered Spaniard tried to wrestle it free from the planking Ned slashed at him and the man screamed as he crumpled.

  By now more buccaneers were pouring over the bulwarks, some with muskets. One fired so close to Ned that he was almost deafened and with his ears ringing he slashed his way into the same group of Spaniards.

  A wild-eyed man with long, curly hair screamed as he slashed at Ned with a cutlass, but he was not holding the blade square and it slid away as Ned parried, swung the cutlass up and cut down with it. The blade bit into the man’s shoulder and he reeled backwards and collapsed.

  At that moment Ned felt an agonizing pain and out of the corner of his eye saw a pike: the point had caught his right arm. He wrenched himself away, punched the haft with his left hand and turned to slash at a man with a cutlass on his right.

  But before the blade drove home the man fell and a yelling Lobb grinned at Ned, waving the pike with which he had spitted his victim.

  Ned was conscious of gunfire on the starboard side of the ship: the rest of the buccaneers must be in action. Then suddenly he saw the smoke. Sailing down towards the anchored vessels, running before the wind, were three ships almost entirely enveloped in smoke: the Grand Cayman fireships!

  He dared not spend much time looking at them – a moment’s inattention had already seen him stabbed in the arm with a pike – but he could see flames beginning to lick at the hulls. They were being steered directly towards the smaller merchant ships anchored closer in, to windward of the others.

  By now the Spanish ship’s deck was a whirling mass of men shouting and screaming, slashing with cutlasses, jabbing with pikes, and one buccaneer was whirling a musket round his head, holding it by the barrel, and screaming defiance at the top of his voice as he launched himself at the nearest Spaniards like a spinning wheel.

  Ned realized that the fight was moving several feet away from him: the Spaniards were retreating fast and most of the men he could see were buccaneers, easily distinguished by the rags round their foreheads.

  The Spanish ship’s deck was now littered with bodies; blood streamed across it as though someone had been emptying it in buckets. Suddenly there was almost a silence, and Ned guessed the Spaniards had surrendered.

  “Griffins!” Ned shouted, knowing the buccaneers were quite likely to kill the remaining Spaniards in their excitement, not understanding Spanish and not caring much anyway.

  After several shouts the buccaneers stopped fighting and Ned saw that only six or seven Spaniards were left on their feet, and they had thrown down their cutlasses and pikes.

  “Secure the prisoners!” he told Lobb.

  Now Ned looked at the fireships. The first of them, shapeless from the flames enveloping it, was within a few yards of running into one of the anchored merchant ships. He could see a small boat pulling away
from it – the bosun and his crew escaping. The second fireship, a few yards from another ship, was gradually turning broadside-on in the wind, but she would still hit the bow of her target. The third fireship, with no flames coming from it yet, was a good forty yards from its target and still towing the boat which the crew would use to escape. And the target, Ned suddenly realized, was the frigate: the Spaniards were firing at it, but even as they did flames leapt up from the hatches, the boat was dragged up close, and the crew jumped into it, casting off.

  The fireship burst into flames as he watched and Ned realized that the roaring noise he could hear in the distance was the sound of the flames fanned by the wind. The fireship headed for the frigate as though drawn by a magnet and lodged across its bow just as the merchant ship caught by the first fireship began to blaze.

  Well, Ned thought, fireships worked for Sir Francis Drake against the Spanish Armada off Calais, and they are certainly working for us here at Santa Marta…

  Now to secure the ship they had just taken and go on to tackle the next. But one glance aft at the Peleus and the rest of the buccaneers showed him there was no hurry: each of the merchant ships had two or three buccaneer ships alongside: some had a ship on each side, with one more hanging on each quarter.

  Only then did he realize that the fort had been firing; the gunners were probably shooting at the fireships, unable to fire at anyone else in case they hit their own ships.

  By now the frigate was ablaze, looking as if she was holding the fireship in a warm embrace. The other two fireships had set their targets on fire, and Ned saw that the three boats, carrying the bosuns and the volunteer crews, were all rowing for the Griffin, the nearest ship.

  They were all brave men: Ned had warned the bosuns of the risks they would have to run, steering their ships for the targets while starting the fires, and there would be only moments left for them to scramble into the boats and row to safety. But the bosuns had laughed; handling fireships took the monotony out of life. And the crews were cheerful enough. Come to think of it, there was probably less risk in handling fireships than boarding a Spanish ship and, within moments, finding yourself in a life-or-death fight with cutlass or pike.