The Guns of Tortuga

by Brad Strickland

  But even the greatest terrier can be outnumbered by rats. Although ships were sinking all about the Concepción, the cannonballs that had pounded into her began to take their toll. A lucky or well-aimed shot brought down her foretopgallantmast. Seeing her crippled, the remaining pirate ships began to haul away to the west, leaving their shattered sisters to founder and burn around their destroyer. For his part, Don Esteban seemed to sense that the day was his and that he need seek no further glory. The Concepción turned slowly, delivering another broadside at the fleeing pirates, and then caught the breeze and stood away, south by southwest, with the wind almost on her stern, making for the Windward Passage. More cannon fire broke out. The pirate crews, still unsure of each other, tended to blaze away at any craft that ventured too close.

  Mindless of the risk, I stood at the taffrail staring backward as the paths of the vessels diverged and the remnants of battle fell behind us. Of all of us aboard the Aurora, I was the only one to see the sleek red galley pull away, leading a string of survivors behind her. The oars flashed, and a red silk flag with a laughing skull fluttered from her mast. For just a second I thought I saw a flash of white that might have been a long white wig. Then she was hidden in the smoke, my view further blocked by the fleeing vessels around her.

  But I could guess where she was going and what great crimson ship she was to meet up with out there on the darkening seas. I had met the king of the pirates. I had no wish to meet his Red Queen, for if she had arrived beforehand, even with the Concepción, the battle would have been in doubt.

  And then my uncle was bawling for me. We had some injuries to attend to—nothing serious, but he needed my help. So I turned away from the rail.

  Farewell, Captain Steele, I thought, until we meet again.

  The Anchorage

  HOW CAPTAIN BARREL managed it, I do not to this day know. Somehow he bullied and cursed, threatened and pleaded, and his crew kept the Fury limping along, low in the water and threatening to sink at every third wave. My uncle and I went across several times to treat the wounded. Six of them died, and over the side went their bodies, with not so much as a prayer or a moment of silence.

  When the water was swishing ankle-deep in the captain’s cabin, my uncle whistled and said privately to Barrel, “You ought to bring your men across as soon as may be. She cannot swim another day.”

  “Swim or sink,” the old buccaneer said firmly, “I stay with the Fury, and so do the hands!” And he snorted so fiercely that I heartily believe not one of his sailors would have chosen to leave his vessel.

  Even Captain Hunter admired the man. “By heaven, he has pluck,” he declared the next day, when we were scarcely seventy miles along and the poor Fury was wallowing like a dying whale. “Look how they pump! I wonder his men can even stand after so much effort.”

  In the glittering sunlight, we could see jets of water shooting from the scuppers of the Fury. Captain Barrel himself was at the handles of the pump, and when another man relieved him at the end of his hour, he leaped to the bow of the Fury and gave us a cheerful wave.

  That afternoon, the lookout sighted land, and as we drew near to it, Captain Hunter looked pleased. “It’s Cruzado,” he said. “Hardly more than a flyspeck on the ocean, and there’s no fresh water there but what falls from the sky, but it has a kind of anchorage.”

  Cruzado was one of the more southerly Bahamas, entirely different from the mountainous Tortuga or Hispaniola. It rose very gently from the sea, and no spot on it could be much more than ten feet above high tide. Low and green it was, and at first sight quite deserted. But as we came in from the southwest, I could see a scattering of buildings, leaning crazily left and right and gray with weathering. Hunter conned us in to a sort of harbor, a half-circular bite out of the shore. Some men on the land glanced our way, but paid us little attention.

  Boddin laughed, a deep musical sound. He was one of the twenty-odd former slaves in our crew, who all preferred a free but danger-filled life on the open sea to security and chains ashore. “The cap’n’s a fine navigator,” he said to me. “An’ he found this place not one minute too soon for the Fury.”

  With all the speed she could muster, and that was no more than a fast walking pace, the Fury ran straight past us, up to the shelving shore, and grounded with a sandy sigh on the beach. She tilted to the left and came to rest, and from her worn-out crew I heard a weary cheer.

  You would think that after all that, after the sea battle and the desperate run to Cruzado, Barrel would have rested, and let his men rest. But no—before half an hour had passed, her boats were busily ferrying her cargo ashore, lightening her so that later she could be hauled up and careened. Nor did the pumps stop working the whole time.

  Indeed, it was three days before Barrel at last was able to see his craft high and dry. If the Aurora had borne an ugly hole from cannon fire, the Fury was all but a wreck. Her timbers were splintered and splayed, and amidships, as Abel Tate observed with a whistle, “She ’ad bloomed like a flower,” letting the sea in and almost sending herself to the bottom.

  But Barrel cheerfully swore at the sight and set his carpenter to putting everything back to rights. The men ashore, I had learned, were pirates to a man. Desperate men they were, I have no doubt, and at sea as wicked as you would hope to meet this side of perdition. But Barrel was well liked among them, and they cheerfully agreed to sell him timber and other necessaries on credit.

  Barrel came aboard the Aurora on the evening of the third day. Up close, I could see how exhausted the man was, and how his hands were cruelly blistered. “Well, well, Doctor,” he said with a gap-toothed grin as my uncle met him on deck. “And so I’m not like to lose more o’ my men, d’ye think?”

  With a grudging smile, my uncle replied, “By the Powers, Captain Barrel, I do not think a man Jack of your crew would dare to die without your permission.”

  Barrel threw his great head back and boomed out a laugh. Then he said, “I hear that Cap’n Hunter don’t mean to tarry long, so I’ve come to give him my thanks and to take leave of him.”

  “Come along,” said my uncle, leading the way to the cabin. “I’m sure it’s pleased he’ll be to have a word with you.”

  Captain Hunter did look pleased, and he offered Captain Barrel something wet. “I’d not say no to that,” Barrel told him. “It’s fair parched I am, and that’s no lie.” I brought out some brandy, and I stood in the corner as Hunter and Barrel drank a toast to the Brethren of the Coast—“them that’s above hatches, and them that’s shaken the devil’s hand,” as Barrel put it.

  After a second glass, Barrel wiped his mouth on his sleeve and shook his head. “Curse that Viper and her fool of a captain,” he muttered. “I’ve studied and studied on it, and ’tis plain what happened. That ’ere Concepción snapped her up an’ turned her into a fire ship.” He shook his head. “It fair broke up whatever Jack Steele was plannin’, ye may lay to that. But he’ll be back.”

  “It’s hard to kill a man like Steele,” Hunter agreed.

  “Aye,” agreed Barrel. He got up. “Well, fair winds to ye.”

  “Here,” Hunter said, tossing a leather sack across the table. It landed with the clink of coin.

  Barrel picked it up and dumped at least a dozen gold coins into his palm, not even a tenth of what the bag held. “Here. What is this?”

  Hunter shrugged. “You’re down on your luck. But you won’t be always, and when our wakes cross again, I might need help from you. Take it and welcome, for we’ve been prosperous this voyage.”

  Barrel shook with laughter. “That’s handsome, so it is! And I’ll not turn it down, neither. Ye know, Steele will be lookin’ for new captains now, what with the wicked wreck that old Spaniard made o’ his fleet. I’ll put in a word for ye, so I will, for ye’ve treated me an’ my crew fair.”

  “I would like that,” Hunter said.

  Soon Barrel left us, and we weighed anchor with the evening tide. As we glided away from the low, green island of Cruzado
, I stood on deck looking back. Night was gathering in the eastern sky, and already Venus hung there low and brilliant as a signal lamp.

  We were fairly at sea before Hunter and my uncle sat down to supper in the cabin. Hunter told me to sit too, and to share their meal. As he served us, he gave my uncle a quizzical glance. “Why so glum, Doctor?”

  Uncle Patch sighed. “I thought I had saved Captain Brixton,” he said. “Me with my sinful pride and my sneaking schemes! He was a brave man, for all that he was English.”

  “Thank you,” Hunter said with a twisted smile.

  My uncle waved a hand. “Not all of you are ranting, raving lunatics,” he said. “But poor Brixton, now—I dearly hope that he did not babble of us and our mission before someone cut his throat.”

  “I knew him well,” Hunter said quietly. “I cannot see him spilling our secrets. Not even if he were not in his perfect mind.”

  Uncle Patch nodded gloomily. “Then there’s this, too: Brixton was one of the very few men who knew that we are not truly pirates. I feel as if we’ve lost a lifeline with him gone.”

  Hunter smiled. “Come, it isn’t so bleak. Sir Henry Morgan knows what we are, and he’s safe in Port Royal, or at his plantation in Port Maria. And as far as that goes, King James himself knows about us, for it was his hand that signed our commission. As long as our letter of marque is safe in the cabin here, we need not fear the hangman. You surprise me, Doctor. I thought the Irish were braver than that.”

  Uncle Patch said quietly, “’Twas not for myself that I was concerned.”

  He did not look at me, but I caught his meaning. My uncle might seem big and bold, and he might give me the sharp edge of his tongue. But for all that, we were family. Somehow I knew that if it came to that, he would lay down his life to save mine. As I write this now, I wish that I had found words to tell him so. I don’t know, though. He probably would have snarled, “Now ye’re being a sentimental Irishman. Hush!”

  Outside the great windows, night had fallen. Stars hung in the dark tropical sky, brilliant in their light. The Aurora, sound and whole, frisked in the evening breeze as if she were a living creature, and glad to be alive.

  Captain Hunter put his hand on my uncle’s forearm and gave it a friendly shake. “Come on, Patch,” he said with a grin. “We broke up Steele’s armada, and now Barrel will give a good report of us to his master. Take my word for it, the plan is unfolding well. Well live yet to see Jack Steele go down to Davy Jones’s locker.”

  “I hope so,” my uncle said. He glanced my way and softly repeated, “I hope so.”

  And knowing I was the one for whom he wished all the good fortune in the world, I looked down at my plate and did not speak.

  Sometimes I think I am the biggest fool alive.

  Pirate Hunter 2:

  The Guns of Tortuga

  Much of this book is based on truth. The golden age of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1600s. Spain claimed all of the West Indies, Central America, and most of South America. In the opinion of the king of Spain, no other nations had any right to send ships to these areas.

  But the Spanish settlers in the colonies did not want to pay the high prices that Spain charged for goods and supplies. The colonists eagerly traded with Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English ships. To the authorities in Spain, these were pirate vessels. The traders, though, thought they were performing a service for the colonies and making a living for themselves.

  On the island of Tortuga, north of what is today Haiti, a group of tough cattle drovers sprang up in the early 1600s. These men hunted wild cattle or raised and slaughtered domesticated cattle to provide meat for the Spanish and other sailors. Because they smoked the meat on frames called boucans, these men, mostly French, became known as boucaniers. The English called them buccaneers. When English leaders like Sir Henry Morgan set out to make war against the Spanish, they recruited these rough buccaneers as soldiers. Morgan was a privateer himself. He had a commission from the governor of Jamaica that allowed him to fight the enemies of the king of England, including the Spanish.

  But the Spanish considered Morgan and his buccaneers pirates, of course. By the time of our story, 1687, Spain had signed treaties with the French, Dutch, and English. As part of the treaty agreements, the governments were supposed to disband the buccaneer groups. Many of these men had grown accustomed to their plundering way of life, and they had no intention of changing. The difference was that, without their governments’ permission to attack Spanish ships and colonies, now the buccaneers were outlaws. These were the true pirates. Even Sir Henry Morgan, an old buccaneer himself, worked to hunt down these pirates and to bring peace to the West Indes.

  It took many years. The high point of piracy in American waters was between the late 1680s and about 1740. The names of the pirates of that time are still well known: Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonney and Mary Reade (two women pirates!), Major Stede Bonnet, Captain William Kidd, and of course Edward Teach—Blackbeard. Our Jack Steele is a little like them. He is different, too, because most American pirates sailed small vessels, sloops or brigs, and were loners. Jack Steele, a natural leader, sails a mighty warship and is seeking to become the Pirate King of the New World.

  So although our tale is fiction, it has roots in the truth. Piracy was not a fun occupation. It was dangerous, cruel, and dirty, and most pirates had short careers and short lives. Still, they were men who liked freedom and who hated the life of ordinary sailors. A Royal Navy sailor could expect bad food, hard work, and whippings for every mistake or every minor violation of a rule. Their pay was often months or even years late in coming. And merchant sailors had it even worse! At least a Royal Navy captain usually gave no more than one or two dozen lashes as punishment. A private captain could order any number. Some of them forced sick men to climb the rigging and work the sails, even though the effort sometimes killed the suffering sailors. When we read about such true stories and thought about the pirates of the West Indies, it seemed to us that the strange thing was not that honest sailors sometimes turned pirate. Odder still was that most of them did not!

  Welcome to the world of pirates and pirate hunting. It is a rugged world, and it does not have much glamour in it. But it offers excitement and adventure, and even humor of a kind. We hope you enjoy the voyage!

  —Brad Strickland and Thomas E. Fuller

  FEBRUARY 2002

  Biographies

  BRAD STRICKLAND has written or cowritten nearly fifty novels. He and Thomas E. Fuller have worked together on many books about Wishbone, TV’s literature-loving dog, and Brad and his wife Barbara have also written books featuring Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the mystery-solving Shelby Woo, and characters from Star Trek. On his own, Brad has written mysteries, science fiction, and fantasy novels. When he is not writing, Brad is a professor of English at Gainesville College in Oakwood, Georgia. He and Barbara have a daughter, Amy, a son, Jonathan, and a daughter-in-law, Rebecca. They also have a house full of pets, including two dogs, three cats, a ferret, a gerbil, and two goldfish, one named George W. Bush and one named Fluffy.

  THOMAS E. FULLER has been coauthoring young-adult novels with Brad Strickland for the last five years. They are best known for their work on the Wishbone mysteries as well as a number of radio dramas and published short stories. Otherwise, Thomas is best known as the head writer of the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. He has won awards for his adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, his original drama “The Brides of Dracula,” and the occult western “All Hallow’s Moon.” Thomas lives in Duluth, Georgia, in a slightly shabby blue house full of books, manuscripts, audio tapes, and too many children including his sons Edward, Anthony, and John and occasionally his daughter, Christina.

  READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF THE NEXT ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HUNTER AND THE CREW OF THE AURORA IN

  Heart of Steele

  “A SHIP!”

  The cry came drifting down from the maintop, almost like a leaf falling from a canvas tree. I lifted m
y head from the coil of rope where I lay dozing. The air felt hot and heavy, as it had been for more than a week. What breeze there was barely served to move the frigate Aurora forward. It was the summer of 1688 and the Caribbees simmered like a buccaneer’s barbeque.

  “On deck, there! A ship!”

  The cry came again and I squinted up the tall stepped lines of the mainmast to where wiry old Abel Tate stood watch in the crow’s nest. Around me I could hear other members of the Aurora’s crew bestirring themselves, struggling up from where they had lain languid in the heat. It was all I could do to haul myself to my feet, but the idea of anything that might offer escape from the usual dreaded doldrums finally got me out of my comfortable coil. I staggered over to where my friend Mr. Jeffers, the gunner, stood, shading his single good eye from the sun with one callused hand.

  “Devil can I see a thing,” he muttered. “It could be whale, rock, or ship for I might swear!” Even with the sweat pouring into my own eyes, I had to smile. If he were aiming his beloved cannons, Mr. Jeffers had the eyes of a sea eagle. Otherwise he was a blind as a bat in a well.

  I heard the stamp of boots on the quarterdeck above us and two voices—one light and laughing, the other rumbling and complaining. The laughing voice belonged to our captain, Mad William Hunter, the noted pirate hunter. The grumbling one was that of my uncle, Patrick Shea, the noted surgeon and pessimist. Once they clapped eyes on me, the two would think of one thousand and one errands and chores to keep me from anything dangerous—or interesting. I grasped an idea and felt energy start to flow back into my sweat-drenched body. Uncle Patch says idle hands are the devil’s workshop. That may be, but it takes a bit of inspiration to actually use the tools.