The Guns of Tortuga

by Brad Strickland

  From talking to the crew every night after they returned from the ship, I knew that the search was not going well. The town, the port, the ships in the harbor—none of them yielded any news. Mr. Adams said that everything was just sealing up, like a great oyster protecting a pearl. “Something’s going on, though,” he concluded. “The people of Tortuga are afraid of something.”

  “Of what?” I asked him.

  “Aye, that’s the nub of it. What? I have the feeling that the people of town are so on edge, they barely are talking to one another, let alone to strangers.”

  The night that Mr. Adams said these words, I came to a conclusion of my own. The problem was they were sending men to do a boy’s job. So the people of Cayona were suspicious of English sailors, were they? I had an answer to that.

  I went through my uncle’s chest until I found a fine piece of parchment he had saved just because he truly hated to throw anything away. In his portable writing-desk I found a stick of red sealing wax. I carefully wrote out my message one more time, then neatly folded the parchment into three sections and closed it with a large dollop of the hot red wax. Before it could cool, I pressed into it the Spanish coin that Sir Henry Morgan had given me as a good-luck piece. When I took the coin away, the parchment looked like a sealed, official document.

  I calculated that the French of this island might not want to talk to a pirate, especially an English pirate. But a not-too-bright ship’s boy, afraid he’d be beaten if he failed to deliver his scrap of fine parchment with its fine seal, well, him they might talk to.

  My plan was simple. I would dress myself in my most ragged clothes, clutch my letter in my grubby hand, pull my hat down over my eyes, and just tell everyone I saw that I had a message for a British officer and did anyone know where one was?

  So the next day, I waited for my uncle Patch to go stamping out, had two hard-boiled eggs and a chunk of almost fresh bread for breakfast, and then boldly marched out the door and into the teeming life of Tortuga.

  For hours, it appeared that I would have no luck at all. Up to a likely-looking man I would go, tugging at my hat. “Beg pardon, monsieur, I am looking for an English prisoner. I have an important letter for—”

  A rattle of French, which most probably was, “Away with you, brat!” And sometimes I would have to duck a cuff aimed at my ear as I immediately vanished back into the crowd. I had not expected to succeed right away, but neither had I expected every third person I asked to try to thump me.

  A fat, sweating merchant, beaming after successfully haggling over some bargain, was my next target. I sidled up to him and said in an imploring voice, “Please, sir, an English officer? I have a letter to deliver, but I can’t remember the address. My master will beat me if—”

  This one spoke English. “Out of my way!” And he had a better aim than the others. He swatted me a good one as I turned away.

  “Monsieur!” I said, trying to sound as if he had nearly killed me. Truth to say, the kick hurt my pride more than anything else. I looked about for someone else to ask.

  The marketplace of Cayona Town was a sprawling, open square, with everything in the world for sale. Booths, wagons, and stalls served for shops, and some merchants did with even less, with a tray hung round their necks or with a blanket spread on the ground. Behind them every other building seemed to be a tavern.

  I stumbled over the rough cobblestones. A barrelchested horse snorted at me. He was hauling a cart loaded with kegs that smelled of rum. My idea had seemed so simple back at the Royale, but out in the chaos of Cayona, I began to feel discouraged. Still, when I thought of Captain Brixton and reflected that some other officer might be in the same condition, I did not want to give up. I would keep looking.

  Three more attempts, and no luck. Four. Five. Sure, and I was beginning to despair. At last I fetched up near a particularly villianous-looking tavern with a sheep’s skull nailed to a board. I had heard some of the sailors talking of the Ram’s Head, and that, I supposed, was where I was. By that time, it was afternoon, with the sun beating down and the people of the town going inside to escape the worst of the heat. Perhaps, I thought, I might have better luck if I went in as well, and so I crept into the tavern.

  The room was dark and hot and smoky. Coming from the blaze of day outside, I was nearly blind. I heartily wished I had lost my sense of smell as well. The place reeked of too many unwashed bodies and of much spilled rum and beer.

  I stood blinking until the room became visible. The ceiling, like the door, was low and supported by long, heavy beams salvaged from some wreck. The smoke came from a dozen or so crude candles stuck on various surfaces. Men slumped around rough tables, playing cards or drinking. At the far end, almost lost in the gloom, was a long bar composed of boards laid across four barrels. One of the largest men I’ve ever seen was behind it, wiping tankards with a grubby towel. I squared my shoulders, put on my simplest look, and marched up to him. If I kept my distance, he couldn’t hit me from across the bar.

  “Ex … excuse me, sir,” I began.

  “Get out of my tavern,” the man said, his voice revealing him to be Irish, though he had picked up an outlandish French accent that made his words strange. “Shame on you, coming in a place like this!”

  “Ah, I swear by the saints that it’s not for drink that I’ve come in,” I said, putting as much of Ireland in my own voice as I could. “Saints help me, but ’tis lost entirely I am.”

  “Aye, so are we all. We’re but lambs in the wilderness, so Father Finnegan used to tell us.”

  Was he making fun of me? I could not tell. Still, he had made no motion to hit me. “’Tis a letter I’m to deliver, to an Englishman, a naval officer he is. Needing help from his friends, so he is, and him a prisoner among these French and all. My master gave me a silver penny to put this letter from his friends into his own hands, but his name I’ve forgot, and the place I’ve forgot. The parchment doesn’t have the blessed address written on it, nor the name. I dare not open it, for ’tis sealed. So if it pleases your lordship, p’rhaps ye could help a poor Irish lad, so his English captain may not beat him cruelly?”

  Small, sleepy eyes regarded me out of that vast face. On the Louisa on the trip over from England, a great whale had surfaced near us and I had seen those same eyes. They had a deep-buried intelligence that told you to mind your manners or something would get stove in. I gulped and babbled to a stop.

  “Where was the place of your birth, lad?” the tavern keeper asked me.

  “Brighton, in England,” I said, knowing somehow that it was not worth lying. “But my father and my mother were both from County Clare, him a Shea and my mother a Sullivan, and they grew up within a good day’s walk of the Ciffs of Moher.”

  “County Clare, is it?” he said. “Hm. I’m a Doolan, myself, and I do remember some Sheas and Sullivans.” He leaned across the bar. “A Royal Navy officer, say ye? And your master’s an Englishman, is he? Beat ye if ye fail in your errand?”

  “I fear so,” I said.

  He sighed again. “Well, I’m probably a gran’ fou. But if you’re a Shea from County Clare—well, ye heard it not here lad, but if I was lookin’ for an English prisoner hereabout, I’d go to the Commodore’s.”

  “That was the place,” I said, letting relief flood into my face. “Now, where would I find it?”

  Something like a smile flashed across that wide face. “Oh, a clever lad like yourself will have little trouble finding it. Anyone can tell ye that.”

  I thanked him and bolted from that vile place, but I felt his deep, heavy eyes on me the whole way out—and halfway down the street, truth be told.

  The tavern keeper was right: It was easier to get directions than answers. In short order, I was standing outside of the Commodore’s. It was a grim, forbidding fortress of a house, dating from the brief English occupation of Tortuga. There were no windows on the ground floor, and the ones on top were more like gun slits than true windows. A wall made of the cement-and-shell mixture c
alled tabby surrounded it, pierced by an arched gateway in which two swinging iron-barred gates were set. Two men in sailor garb lounged up against the rough tabby wall with the studied slouch of guards everywhere.

  I was trying to figure out what I should do next when a loud banging came from inside the house. One of the guards shrugged, produced an iron key on a chain, and laboriously unlocked first the gate, then the door. It was pushed open, and a scarecrow stumbled out.

  At least it looked like a scarecrow. The boy who stood between the two guards was short and almost painfully slim. He was dressed in midshipman’s togs about two sizes too large for him. His outfit was topped by a straw hat, like the ones the canecutters wove to keep the sun from their heads in the field. That covered most of his face. On his shoulders was a yoke from which dangled two wooden buckets.

  The guard who’d opened the door snorted with derision. His English was so bad, I could hardly understand what he said, but I caught the words “another bath,” and the whole sentence sounded like a question.

  “Aye,” the boy answered in a high, rough voice. “The lieutenant said—”

  The other one shook his head and grumbled in French. Then he said, “Too much bathing, it makes the head soft!”

  The other guard laughed. “Then yours must be like a rock!”

  His friend made a rude gesture, then swept a hand at the boy. “Allez, allez!”

  The boy lowered his head and scuttled through the gateway. I moved to follow. Lieutenant! Not a pirate rank at all. I had found the mysterious prisoner. Now to make contact.

  I followed the boy up the street to a public fountain, where he set to work filling his buckets. No one seemed to pay him the least attention, so I came up beside him and whispered, “Are you English?”

  He froze as if turned to stone. Slowly, he nodded his head, staring resolutely into the fountain.

  “I come from an English ship,” I told him. “Tell me true—is there an English prisoner in that place you came from?”

  Still not turning around, he nodded again. For a second, I did not think he was going to speak, but then in a strange, rusty voice, he said, “My master is Lieutenant Fairfax. They keep him on the second floor.”

  I slipped my note into his hand. “Here. Hide this and give it to your master as soon as you get back. We will need to make plans—do they let you out other than to fetch water?”

  The boy gave a stiff nod. “Market,” he grunted. “Every midmorning.”

  “Then I shall met you at the market tomorrow. Have you a name? Mine’s Davy Shea.”

  He made a sound like a gulp. Then he blurted, “Michael. My name is Michael.”

  “I’ll see you in the market square tomorrow, then, Michael. Tell the lieutenant that friends are near.”

  I turned and hurried away toward the harbor. Behind me I could hear Michael filling his other bucket at the fountain. He was a strange one, for a fact. But being penned up in a prison with a fastidious lieutenant and surrounded by pirates might have had something to do with that. I doubted that I was still the same as I had been back in June, when I showed up at my uncle’s with only the clothes on my back.

  “Davy! Lord bless, me, but you’re in a power o’ trouble!” I spun around at the words, and there behind me stood Abel Tate. He was trying to scowl at me, but he could not keep a grin from twitching through. “Your uncle is that put out with ye, lad. He’s got half the crew searchin’ for his missin’ nevvy.”

  “Missing!” I said. “Sure, and I’m not missing at all, for here I stand.”

  Tate clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Try that on your uncle, an’ see what he says. Stand by for heavy weather, Davy. I’ve been dead and come back to life, and I’d not face him, he’s that wrathful.”

  As Abel Tate led me back to harbor, he told me of his and the other sailors’ adventures in the town. They hadn’t found the missing officer—in truth, I was not surprised at that—but they had learned a few things.

  Every ship in the harbor was victualing and loading powder and shot as fast as she could. It was as if an organized fleet was preparing to sail. Word was running through town that the Concepción, the great Spaniard we’d fought weeks ago, was patrolling the west end of the Windward Passage and had taken her fourth prize, an unlucky French privateer brig called the Chanticleer. She was effectively blocking the channel between the western tip of Hispaniola and the eastern shore of Cuba.

  And there were rumors of another warship lurking somewhere to the north of the island, a great shadowy shape seen running across the horizon. All those who had seen her could say for certain was that she was big.

  Anyone who had gone closer, Tate told me, had not returned to say anything at all.

  A Surprise Ashore

  THE NEXT DAY WE refloated the Aurora. Into the harbor she slipped, and there she rocked, strangely high in the water with all her cargo and guns still ashore. The first things back aboard were Captain Hunter’s table and chairs in the stern cabin, and there it was that my uncle, the captain, and I met to discuss my news.

  “We know two things,” Hunter said. “The first is that something is up in Tortuga. It’s plain that there are more pirates here and, more openly, than there should be. And the second is that we have two Englishmen to save.” He nodded at me. “And that’s entirely thanks to Davy, here.”

  My uncle gave me a fiery stare of displeasure. “Thanks to Davy, indeed! ’Tis a good thing you took the trouble not to tell me what ye were about,” he declared. “For, sure, I would have warmed your breech for you!”

  “He’s a brave lad, Patch,” Hunter put in with a smile. “While I was still planning and plotting, he took matters into his own hands, and did handsomely, I believe.”

  My uncle’s face flamed red. He turned on Hunter and loosed words at him like a broadside: “Aye, ye may grin and grin, and think ’tis fine sport to send Davy into danger, but mark me, Hunter, one of these days you’ll sail too close to the wind for your own good. ’Tis well enough to be careless of your own life—don’t throw Davy’s away as well.”

  “Now, now,” Hunter said calmly. His voice took on a note of authority that I had not heard there before. “Davy’s a part of the crew as much as I am—or you, for that matter. And crewmates stick together and act for the good of the ship, or else they all go to the bottom. Davy’s done no harm, and he’s done us a power of good. Now we have a name and a place for our mysterious captive.”

  “And what is the next step, sir?” I asked.

  Hunter was sitting at his table, back again in the Aurora’s cabin. Behind him, through the stern windows, I could see Tortuga Harbor, where dozens of sloops, brigs, and barks bobbed at anchor. If half of them were pirate vessels, I thought then, there must be thousands of pirates assembled here. Captain Hunter reached for pen, ink, and paper. “Now, Davy, you will take another note—”

  “That he shall not!” bellowed my uncle. “If it comes to that, I shall bear the note myself. Or send Adams, or one of the men—”

  Hunter shook his head. “But they wouldn’t get away with it, for we are watched, aye, and closely watched at that. Have you not noticed that the servant Cesar is always within sight when you are on land?”

  My uncle looked stunned. “He has been following me?”

  “Aye,” said the captain. “And I have my shadow, and Mr. Adams has his, and so on. When one of us sets a foot in Cayona, Monsieur Gille soon hears of it.”

  “But if we are all watched—”

  Captain Hunter shook his head. “Not all. Alone of us all, so far as I know, the boy is not.”

  Uncle Patch simply glared at him, his chest rising and falling. “And how do you know that?”

  Hunter began to scribble away. “I know it because as the French watch us, we are watching them, of course. Give me credit for some sense, Patch. Besides, what is one boy in a busy place like Cayona? I’d wager sovereigns to sand dollars that not one Frenchman ashore would even remember Davy’s face half a minute after passing
him by. To Gille, he is a servant, nothing more. You have never mentioned that Davy is your nephew, not in his hearing.”

  “He could learn that from any member of the crew,” insisted my uncle with a sullen, dogged air.

  “Aye, if he were interested in servants. But he is not, and my men would not tell. Nor will Morgan’s, I think, for Sir Henry chose the smartest heads among his old crews to fill our crew.”

  It took some wrangling, but when I pointed out that I was going only to the market square, not to the house itself, at last my uncle began to give in a bit. And finally I found just the way to cap off my argument: “Uncle,” said I, “you thought me man enough when I held Captain Brixton’s head still as you peeled back his scalp and sawed into his living skull. Am I not man enough then to run an errand?”

  Hunter had just finished his note. As he sprinkled sand on the page to dry the ink, he glanced shrewdly up at my uncle, who stood with arms crossed, leaning against a locker. “That was well said, Patch. And how do you answer?”

  Through clenched teeth, my uncle said, “To the devil with it! Have your way, then, for between the two of ye, you have not sense enough to have a care for your own skins. But no tricks, mind, Davy! It’s straight to the market you go, and put the blasted note into the hands of this Michael, and then whip back to the ship again!”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, but taking care not to make it a promise of any kind.

  Captain Hunter folded the message and reached for a stick of sealing wax. He melted this in the candle flame and sealed his paper. He held it up, waving it in the air. “Now, the first note I sent said nothing but that we were friends to this captive. This one makes a more open offer of aid. But look you, Davy, don’t say a word of our being anything, not pirate ship, not a letter of marque, nothing. We know nothing of this Lieutenant Fairfax, and the less he knows of us, the better it will be for all.” He handed over the letter.