The Guns of Tortuga

by Brad Strickland

  Mr. Adams left us then, for he was only in it for the mathematics. But I shall never forget the light in his face. He had made his first step toward being a lieutenant, and somehow I felt then that he would not stop until he had reached his goal.

  Pirates’ Den

  FOR DAYS WE LIMPED toward the island of Tortuga, just north of the bigger island called Hispaniola. Even with the leak plugged, the men pumped for hours every day. In the cabin one morning, as Captain Hunter was writing up the ship’s log from hasty scribbled notes, I asked him and my uncle what the islands were like.

  In answer, Captain Hunter crumpled a piece of paper into a wad and tossed it onto the table. “Like that,” he said. “Rugged and broken and mountainous.”

  “And of old a haunt of pirates,” added my uncle.

  So on the morning that the lookout in the maintop called down, “Land ho!” I was prepared for what I saw: a dark, humped island on the horizon, looking very much like that wad of crumpled paper.

  “Trim the sails, lads,” Captain Hunter called out. “Make her look sweet and innocent.”

  “As innocent as a battered Frenchman with twenty-eight guns can look,” Uncle Patch muttered under his breath.

  Hunter turned to him with a grin. “It’s all in the attitude, Patch! Where’s your sense of adventure, man?”

  “I left it behind in Dublin, where I should be as well!” snapped my uncle with a glower.

  The Fury was far ahead as we sailed eastward along the rugged northern coast of Hispaniola. Finally, the morning after our landfall, we sailed straight into the open arms of Tortuga Harbor, bold as brass and twice as bright.

  We followed a pilot boat through one of the two channels that led into the harbor. I could see batteries of cannons on either side of the headlands and the great fort on its hill over the town, in turn dwarfed by a more distant mountain that towered above it. The fort looked sullen and old and humorless. The sunlight barely illuminated its guns, black and hidden within the shadows of the fort’s walls. I felt they were staring at me. The town itself, called Cayona, was a ramshackle collection of stone houses and driftwood huts, the waterfront thronging with jostling crowds.

  “Looking for real pirates, Davy?” Uncle Patch rumbled with disapproval behind me. “Just keep an eye peeled, and you’ll see ’em all around you.”

  The harbor was thick with ships and boats of all shapes and sizes. Many were small sloops and brigs, clustered around the wharves and piers, but some were larger, including two merchantmen whose shabby sides were rough with peeling paint. One, at least, was well armed, for she had new gun-ports cut into her old sides.

  “Pirate ships?” I asked, and my uncle nodded. “How can you tell?”

  Shaking his head so that his red ponytail swayed, Uncle Patch replied, “Saints, it would be easier to tell which ones aren’t, for there are not so many of them. Not so many years ago, Tortuga was wide open. The place made Port Royal look like a monastery. Then the French and the Dons signed a treaty saying piracy was a bad thing. And all the blessed piece of paper did was make the pirates less obvious. You can still buy anything and sell anything, no matter how crookedly come by, so long as you don’t ask or answer questions about the goods.”

  By noon, the Aurora was tied fast to one of the wharves, the Fury penned in front of us. Captain Barrel stamped around her deck, lashing out with his fist and delivering kicks with his wooden leg to encourage his crew. Then he stood on the Fury’s stern and grinned up at us.

  “Ahoy, Cap’n Hunter!”

  “Ahoy yourself, Captain Barrel!” Captain Hunter called back. “Here we all are, living proof that the good Lord has a love for scoundrels.”

  Barrel roared with laughter. “Aye! And at least we’re honest enough as scoundrels go. If ye wants to see a son o’ Satan, though, just cast an eye to larboard!”

  Our eyes followed his pointing hand. A galley, a vessel about the size of a sloop and equipped with long oars, was making its way across the harbor toward us. She was crusted with gilt, and I saw a huge French flag snapping from her single mast.

  Barrel called out, “I’ve sent a man in to say a good word for you, so p’rhaps Monsieur du Pont will leave you your small clothes!” He gurgled with laughter, then wiped his eyes and looked more serious. “Aye, for piracy you need nerve, but for real thieving you need a port official!”

  “Wonderful,” muttered Hunter, staring as the oarsmen moved the galley toward us. “Whoever Monsieur du Pont may be, Captain Barrel’s description doesn’t bode well.”

  My uncle shook his head. “William, no port official bodes well. That must be the man himself standing in the prow. Smile for the greedy son of a rum-puncheon!” And so we did, myself included, as the galley came alongside and the port admiral of Tortuga hauled himself onboard.

  “Captain Hunter,” the man said, spreading his mouth in a smile and looking around. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am Charles du Pont, at your service.” From where I stood behind my uncle, I thought that M. Charles du Pont had an uncanny resemblance to a toad. He was short, with a flabby, round body, and had a wide, lipless mouth and bulging eyes. There was an oily slickness to him that all the embroidery and lace in the world could not hide.

  With him was a harassed-looking little man armed with a heavy ledger and a bedraggled quill pen. His murmuring voice droned behind the port admiral like a mayfly’s buzz: “Harbor fee … wharf fee … cordage tax … water shipage … careenage … victualing fee …”

  Ignoring him, Captain Hunter bowed politely, a fixed grin on his face. “Monsieur du Pont, we are in your hands. I’m Captain William Hunter. Welcome aboard the Aurora.”

  The bulging eyes swiveled in the fat, round face. The man seemed incapable of blinking. He inclined his head a bit on his heavy neck and said, “Alas, you arrive at a most inopportune time, Captain Hunter. Tortuga is very crowded.” He waved a hand at the harbor, his thick fingers wiggling like sausages on a toasting fork. “You see the way the ships are packed in. Repairs may be”—he waggled those fingers—“unfortunately slow.”

  Captain Hunter’s smile had become so fixed, it looked nailed on. “Well, that’s bad for us. We hit a … reef and stove in our bow below the waterline. We badly need to careen the ship to get at the leak.”

  “A reef?” M. du Pont’s blank gaze swiveled to our forecastle. Despite everything Chips had been able to do, it still showed damage from cannon fire. “Yes. Reefs can be most treacherous.”

  “We’ll need new planking,” Captain Hunter said. “And I’m sure we’ll have to recopper some of the hull.”

  My uncle added, “And I need to buy medicines. To my shame, my medical chest is almost empty.”

  The bulging toad eyes swung back at us. I felt like a bug. Slowly, the port admiral’s pudgy right hand came up, and his clerk’s buzzing drone—“lumber … new copper …”—trailed off into silence.

  Looking my uncle up and down, but speaking to Hunter, du Pont said, “I take it this is your ship’s doctor?”

  “Alas, for my poor manners!” Hunter bowed again, as elegantly as he might have done before King James himself. “Monsieur du Pont, I beg to present to you Dr. Patrick Shea, ship’s surgeon of the Aurora.”

  The lipless mouth smiled, which made Uncle Patch scowl even more. “So many ships that put in here have no surgeon at all. And are you well schooled as a surgeon, Monsieur Shea?”

  “Tolerably well,” said my uncle. “I took my training at Trinity College in Dublin.”

  “Impressive. It is not often that a real doctor visits our outpost.” The port admiral’s smile grew wider, until it looked as if it were going to touch his ears. “Let us have a talk, Captain. I think I see in your physician here a solution to problems, both mine and yours.”

  The two men walked away, almost arm in arm, followed by the now silent clerk and his ledger, leaving Uncle Patch and me standing alone on the deck.

  “There he goes,” muttered my uncle sourly. “And, by all that’s holy, ’
twill be lucky for us if the smooth-talking Monsieur du Pont leaves us with a plank for our ship and a rag for a sail!”

  Three hours after the captain and du Pont had their talk, my uncle and I were in a carriage rolling through the rutted streets of Cayona, my uncle cursing at each jolt of the wheels. “That misbegotten—never trust an Englishman, Davy!” he snarled.

  “’Twas a fair bargain, you know,” I told him.

  “I know nothing of the sort!” he returned.

  I sighed heavily and leaned back into the cracked leather. Uncle Patch would rail against Captain Hunter until his voice gave out.

  But I was remembering what M. du Pont had said to Mr. Hunter: “The expenses could be lower, Captain Hunter. Call it a favor for a favor. A rich man here in town, Monsieur Gille, a good friend of the governor, has a … special guest. Like your vessel, this guest has suffered an accident, has run upon a reef, so to speak. His life is despaired of, but if your ship’s surgeon can save him, then I believe I can guarantee speedy repairs and fair prices.”

  So Captain Hunter had made his bargain: Uncle Patch would treat this mysterious guest, and we wouldn’t have to sell the Aurora to pay her port fees. My uncle’s surgical kit was wedged between us and bounced back and forth, slamming our shins as we jounced from rut to rut. The streets were terrible, but the French only shrugged their shoulders. Le bon Dieu, they said, had ruined the streets with bad weather, and le bon Dieu could repair them, for no one else would.

  Cayona was a strange mix of substantial stone and tabby buildings and haphazard wooden shacks and canvas tents. Everywhere I heard French being bellowed, being shrieked, being flung upon the sultry air in what might have been jokes or curses, for all I knew. We left the town behind and rumbled up a twisting road between trees whose roots spread out over what looked like solid rock.

  Indeed, what it was that M. Gille grew on that stony ground I could not guess. The plantation house the carriage driver took us to was a stone affair, square and two-storied, with a red tile roof. To reach it, we had to pass through a barred iron gate in a tall stone wall. A silent servant opened it for us and closed it behind with a clang.

  Uncle Patch muttered, “Saints, but that bears a frosty sound, like the clapping to of a cell door!” Ahead, down a long lane lined with palm trees, stood the house. It had been whitewashed recently, and it fairly shone in the light of the afternoon sun.

  A purple-liveried servant met us at the door and silently gestured for us to follow. The driver walked behind us with the surgical kit. Our footsteps echoed on the cool tiles until we reached a low, dark room. I thought we were alone until a man emerged from the shadows.

  He was tall and slim and as pale a man as I had ever seen. The long white wig he wore made his face look even more bloodless. His suit was neat and well tailored but brown as cured tobacco and just as drab. His voice, however, was soft and smooth, like honey strained through silk, and it was an English voice, not a French one: “Good day to you, Dr. Shea. I am Robert Meade, Monsieur Gille’s estate manager. My employer sends his regrets but he is unable to attend to you personally. He hopes you understand.”

  “Perfectly,” snapped my uncle. “He’s a grandee and doesn’t want to spot his hands with the blood of this poor wretch I’m to treat.”

  Mr. Meade smiled a wintry smile. “It is good that we understand each other. Cesar will remain here. Your boy may carry your instruments. This way, if you please.”

  I didn’t see him move, but suddenly a section of wood paneling behind him slipped aside, revealing a dark room barely lit by candlelight. I took the case from the driver, and for the first time noticed that he wore a cutlass at his side. He stood with one hand on the hilt, as if he had changed from servant to guard.

  The hidden room was lit only by a single candle and one high, very narrow slit of window. There was a table, two chairs, and a long bed with a straw mattress. A man lay on this, moaning softly.

  Mr. Meade raised a hand to hold my uncle back. “A word first. You will speak to no one of your patient. You will treat him, doing whatever you feel necessary, and then you will report to me. Should you need any assistance, please inform Cesar.” He dropped his hand and walked out with a strange elegance that totally belied his dull attire.

  Uncle Patch went straight to the feverishly thrashing figure on the bed. The man was muttering in a voice that seemed oddly familiar to me, though what he said had no sense in it: “Steady as she goes, Mr. Twinings … bring her about, bring her about!”

  Uncle Patch snatched the candlestick from its table and held it up. “Saints in heaven!” he said, with a sharp intake of breath.

  In the candlelight I recognized the drawn face, flushed with fever beneath a bloody bandage around the head. It was familiar, but horribly changed, all sharp cheekbones and sagging skin. Empty eyes stared up at nothing, blank and blue as a West Indies sky. Captain Brixton? Could this wasted wax figure actually be the robust captain of the Retribution? The last time I had seen him he had been yelling curses at us as the Swift had fled from Port Royal. Captain Brixton was the only man, other than Sir Henry Morgan and King James himself, who knew we weren’t really pirates.

  He groaned and flung a hand over his eyes, still muttering as if giving commands: “Solid shot, Mr. Bellows … stand by, stand by … she’s firing on us!”

  Uncle Patch was moving methodically down the wasted body, checking and probing. “Instruments, Davy, He’s on fire with fever. I’ll need cold water, clean rags. And light! Tell them I need lanterns, candles, whatever they have!”

  I sprinted to the door and blurted out Uncle Patch’s demands to Cesar. He nodded, went to the outer door, and called in French. Before long, a silent servant brought in a bucket of cool well water and a bundle of clean rags. A second trip brought enough candles to light a cathedral.

  For what seemed like forever, I sponged the captain’s face and chest as we fought to bring his fever down. Uncle Patch poured various potions down his throat, shaking his head and muttering under his breath almost as loudly as the captain himself. His long fingers removed the bandage, and my uncle swore at what he saw. High on Captain Brixton’s left forehead was a depressed place, purple and ugly. My uncle muttered, “Davy, we have to go into this man’s skull. I hope you have the stomach for it.”

  First, though, he ordered the strangest thing I had heard yet: for a silver piece to be hammered thin. When Cesar brought one in, he tested it, found it unsatisfactory, and had it rehammered until it was a slightly rounded little dome. He nodded at that.

  And though I had seen terrible wounds, I was hardly prepared for this. Under the glare of candles, we lashed the captain to the bed. Then my uncle cut skin and flesh away, folding it back as I held the captain’s head steady with one arm wrapped around and my hand pressed beneath his chin. With my free hand, I swabbed blood. My uncle used a curious circular silver saw to cut away a disk of bone. I gasped as he lifted this away and a gush of fluid came forth, with a dark clot of blood at its center. Beneath that, pink and throbbing, lay Captain Brixton’s brain.

  Working quickly, my uncle fastened the silver dome to the skull with wonderfully tiny screws from his case, and then he stitched the scalp back. At last we untied our patient, and as soon as we were done, Uncle Patch patted my shoulder. “You’ll be a fine surgeon one day,” he said gruffly. Weary and sick though I felt, I assure you that kind word made me stand a bit taller.

  Captain Brixton lay easier, apparently deep asleep. My uncle was even more wrinkled than usual, his good black suit crusted with blood. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. He replaced his instruments in their case and strode to the open doorway, where Mr. Meade met us. “How is he?”

  Uncle Patch walked right past him. “I need air.” Mr. Meade made some signal to Cesar, and then he followed us to the front door. Night had fallen, and my uncle stood on the veranda of the house taking great breaths. At last he turned to Mr. Meade. “The man is to have rest and quiet. Turn him gently every three hours so
he will not be eaten up with bedsores. Change the dressing on the wound twice a day, and make sure the new one is clean.”

  Mr. Meade nodded. “It will be done.”

  My uncle puffed out his cheeks. “The man may be paralyzed down his right side, and probably blind in that eye. If he recovers, ’tis the Lord’s work, not mine.”

  Mr. Meade summoned the carriage, and my uncle and I stepped into it for our trip back to the harbor. But not before Meade’s long, slim fingers had slipped a small leather bag into my hand, with the weight and clink of gold.

  In the cabin of the Aurora, Captain Hunter leaped from his seat when my uncle told him whom we had operated upon. “Brixton!” he thundered. “Is he in danger?”

  “Mortal danger,” my uncle shot back. “And if he does live, by some mercy, he’s a mere wreck for the rest of his life, a hulk stove in and on the rocks.”

  “What happened to him?” Hunter demanded.

  “That I know not, for he’s not in his right mind, at all,” Uncle Patch said.

  “I believe I do.” We all spun round at the new voice. Mr. Adams stood in the doorway, his hat in hand. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but I’ve been going around town, listening, as you ordered. The Retribution got herself blown to glory off Santiago last week.”

  Hunter reached for his sword. “We have to rescue him.”

  My uncle seized his arm. “Whisht, you hotheaded Englishman, stop and think! How can you rescue a man you can’t move? His life is tied to his body by threads. If you move him, you’ll kill him sure!”

  Captain Hunter gave him the coldest stare I have ever seen. “Are we to do nothing?” He waved his sword.

  My uncle said impatiently, “Put that thing away, for I could not sew my own nose back on! We’ll do what we can. Listen, now: In three days’ time—four at most—I’ll know whether he is to be moved or be buried. Either way, Captain Alexander Brixton’s sailing days are over.”