by Dudley Pope
The sun still hung low, and the mountains were a dull grey, with one side in shadow and the peaks seeming to hang above the horizon, not connected to the land, looking like thunderclouds forming in the distance. As the sun rose and lit their lower slopes they grew down to the land, and then slowly the peaks turned a bluish grey and formed more regular shapes as the sun lifted away the shadows on the western slopes.
Finally they could see, well over on the larboard side, the high land that surrounded Portobelo and made the port little more than an alley cut into the mountains. According to Thomas and Secco, Portobelo was nearly always airless – the high hills, mountains really, cut of the winds, and the inner part of the harbour ended in a swamp right beside what passed for a town. Four forts, four hundred people living in the town and normally a garrison of a thousand… Secco said that yellow fever was as common as ague in England and killed as many in Portobelo each year as were born, so that year after year the population remained the same.
Ned looked astern at his little fleet and once again was reminded of ducklings following their mother across a pond. Not that the Griffin was so much bigger, but the ships were spread out in a wide vee, as though they were the Griffin’s wake. Each ship, it seemed, wanted to be a little more to one side or the other than her next ahead, presumably to have a good view.
Saxby in the Phoenix stayed precisely on the Griffin’s larboard quarter, with Thomas in the Peleus on the starboard quarter, so that with the Griffin ahead the three of them led the rest like a wedge. Ned was pleased to see that the buccaneers were making an effort to keep in some sort of station; if one of them began to forge ahead, she reduced sail or eased a sheet to slow down. Thomas had previously warned that most buccaneer voyages comprised a farewell wave at the beginning and then a ragged rendezvous at the town to be attacked, and this had been the reason for many failures, because the irregular arrivals gave the Spaniards time to escape to safety with their valuables or prepare a defence.
Ned had been emphatic when he talked to the buccaneer captains. They could surprise the enemy by arriving off a Spanish town all together and deliver a real punch; arriving singly over two or three days meant they were merely giving the sort of gentle slaps that would startle but not kill a mosquito.
Aurelia came up on deck and stood with Ned. The sun had bleached her hair even more. In Barbados it had been the colour of an ash branch stripped of its bark; now it was silvery-blonde, emphasizing the deep golden tan of her face, shoulders and arms. Ned, excited at the enemy coast ahead and his ships astern, thought he had never seen such an attractive woman: she stirred him so that with his ships astern he felt he could conquer the world, but for the moment would be contented with taking her down to the cabin.
“That’s the Pan de Azúcar?” she asked, pointing over the larboard bow.
“Yes. Portobelo is just to the left of it. That line of lower hills form the western side.”
“Don’t you feel nervous? You slept well enough!”
“Excited, but not really nervous. Anyway, we won’t be attacking it for another two or three days.”
“I know, but I’m excited. Not over the prospect of fighting,” she said frankly, “but the idea of all that silver… Ned, supposing they’ve taken it all back to Panama?”
“Don’t,” he pleaded in mock dismay. “I’ve been trying to avoid thinking of that possibility since I first heard about it!”
“Is that armour as hot as it looks?” she said, pointing to some men on the foredeck who were wearing it and fencing with wooden swords, obviously trying to accustom themselves to the change of balance with so much extra weight above their waists and the movement of their heads and necks restricted by the helmets.
“I haven’t tried it, but I presume so,” Ned said. “The sun is so hot that touching a metal fitting on deck almost scorches you. It’s the helmet I’d hate.”
“Spanish armour has such a distinctive shape – like the Romans wore. I’ve seen them on coins, I think. Or paintings.”
“The distinctive shape is what gave me the idea,” Ned said.
Aurelia watched for several minutes. “You know, chéri, those men move as easily as if they had been wearing armour for years.”
“I hope Thomas and Secco have been training their men as well as Lobb has.”
“Do you trust this man Secco?” she asked suddenly.
“Yes, completely.”
“Why?”
Ned gave a dry laugh. “It’s quite simple. He has been a buccaneer for some years; he has raided many towns on the Main – I checked that.”
“But what makes you trust him?”
“Because if the Spanish ever caught him they would – if he was lucky – garrotte him slowly as a traitor. If he was unlucky they might make it last a month. Any man who takes such risks obviously has an enormous hatred of his own country. He’s not going to betray us to them. The Brethren can make him rich; the Spanish can only kill him.”
Aurelia nodded her head. “Yes, of course, you are right. Of all the captains, we can trust Secco. What about the others – the French and the Dutch, and the English, too, I suppose?”
“We have to trust them all,” he said, turning to glare at the two men at the tiller as the Griffin luffed up slightly because of their inattention. “When you think about it, every one of the Brethren is hand-picked. The captains have nothing to gain by treachery, nor the men. Imagine a buccaneer who went to the Spaniards. Unless he spoke Spanish they’d garrotte him before he could tell them his news. But even if he managed to tell them, I’m sure most buccaneers would know what would happen once they’d sung their song. Instead of applause and a fat reward, they’d still be killed: the Dons feel very strongly about buccaneers and buccaneering, and the idea of getting information from a traitorous one and then executing him by way of reward would appeal to them.”
Aurelia shivered, despite the sun’s heat. “The cruelty of it all,” she said.
Ned turned on her. “Cruelty, yes. But remember there’d be practically none if the Spanish let people trade freely with the Main. They stick to ‘The Line’. Why the devil should they draw a line – or get a Pope to draw it for them – north and south just three hundred miles west of the Azores, and say only Spanish ships can cross it? And warn that any foreigner crossing it faces execution? ‘No peace beyond the Line’ – well, it hasn’t stopped foreign trade with the Main, because the Dons living there need goods and have to allow smugglers, as you know well enough.”
“I know, I know, I’m not making excuses for the Spaniards. It is just that my Huguenot blood makes me angry when I see religion mixed up with trade.”
“It’s a priest-ridden country,” Ned said, “though until a few weeks ago England, at the other extreme, was as bad.”
“Oh, Ned,” she protested. “Cromwell was never as bad as that!”
“No laughing on Sunday, no ornaments in churches, wrecking the inside of Ely cathedral, for example, no Catholic daring to raise his voice and most forced to flee along with Royalists… Whether Protestant or Catholic, the extremes always anger me. Why are most of us buccaneers? Because we wanted to be left in peace, but Cromwell’s Puritans and the Spanish king’s Catholics would interfere.”
“Think of the poor Spaniards,” Aurelia said. “Their king and government interfere with them out here, from what I hear.”
“Oh, yes. By law they have to live in communities; a man can’t just build himself a house in the hills. They can only buy goods from Spain – and the problem is that Spain can’t supply, so they have to go without. And one Spanish colony cannot trade with another: it has to go through Spain, which means crossing the Atlantic twice. And even if goods do arrive from Spain, they pay taxes on the value in the colony – which can be very high if no ships have come in for a year or so. That’s why most Spaniards welcome smugglers!”
“Amen,” Aurelia said. “Let’s change the subject. We both agree we don’t want to be subjects of His Most Catholic Majesty.”
“I love you,” he said.
Eight hours later the Griffin, led by a boat from the Peleus carrying Thomas as pilot, sailed into the lee of the island called Largo Remo, with Samba Bonita on her quarter and Galeta Island astern, and dropped an anchor in three fathoms of murky water.
Ned was not sure if it was the mangroves lining the bay and putting a fringe round each of the islands and cays, but compared with the clear water of Old Providence, Jamaica and Tortuga, the Bahia las Minas, big as it was, had the greenish brown of a village pond in England on a winter’s day.
Ned walked over to Lobb, who was standing on the foredeck, satisfied that the anchor was holding. “Very well,” he said, “now we must start getting the boats and canoes loaded.”
As soon as it was dark Lobb supervised the lighting of a carefully trimmed lantern and then hung it out on an oar over the Griffin’s transom, where it made a small pond of weak light.
Ned and Aurelia stood by the taffrail, and Aurelia held a large pin and a sheet of paper on which was written a list. Fish attracted by light came to the surface, jinking like silver swallows and never stopping for a moment, occasionally leaping clear of the water as a large predator attacked from below a prey outlined against the light above. A school of mullet cruised near the top of the water large-eyed, keeping formation like well trained cavalry executing a caracole. Tiny silversides, the minnows of the ocean, jumped like spray blown by a sharp gust, desperately trying to avoid capture. While mosquitoes whined in the inevitable descant of the Tropics, tree frogs kept up a monotonous metallic scraping from the island. An occasional swooping white object showed a seabird, roused by the lantern, which could see all the fish swimming in its light but was too confused by the shadows to risk a dive.
Ned heard the creaking of oars in rowlocks and then the bow of a boat nosed into the circle of light. There were perhaps a dozen men in it, the light reflecting from gleaming eyes and shiny teeth, but incongruously two wheels were lying flat on the thwarts forward with an axle and the trail on the floorboards, and some sacks stowed aft.
“Name – nom de vaisseau?”
Ned thought he could just distinguish the stocky, black-bearded French captain, Jean-Pierre Rideau, and a moment later the man stood up to call: “La Méduse!”
“I’ve pricked her,” Aurelia said, “She should be carrying a complete carriage and two hundred shot for a falcon.”
“How many shot?” Ned called, now able to see clearly the parts of the carriage.
“Two hundred for the falcon and five hundred musket balls.”
“Good – bon voyage: you can lead the way. Who’s that coming up now?”
“Leclerc,” Rideau said. “I will get out of his way!”
He growled an order to his men, who bent their backs to the oars.
One of the Perdrix’s boats then rowed under the Griffin’s stern. Leclerc had painted them yellow, but in the yellow candlelight from the lantern the boat now seemed almost grey and shapeless.
Leclerc stood up. “Perdrix’s first boat: two falcon barrels, five hundred roundshot, twenty-five muskets, two hundred musket balls, fifteen halberds, one barrel of powder.”
Aurelia had been pricking at her list. “He has more roundshot than we expected,” she commented.
“The more the better: the number I gave each captain was the minimum.”
“Bon voyage, Leclerc: follow Rideau. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous about dawn.”
Boat after boat came under the Griffin’s stern, reported its ship’s name and cargo, and rowed off eastward into to the darkness. As Aurelia pricked them on her list, Ned realized that all the boats were carrying more powder and shot than he had expected. The captains had taken to heart his warning that capturing four defended forts was not going to be child’s play.
Lobb, who had earlier hoisted out the Griffin’s two boats and three canoes, came up to report formally that they were loaded, reading from a list Ned had given him. One boat carried a complete falcon in pieces – barrel, wheels, trail and axle lashed out of the way of the oarsmen – plus roundshot and musket balls, in sacks and barrels. One canoe carried only powder, another only shot, the third drinking water, boucaned meat, a half cask of nails and several hammers, while axes and half a dozen saws, well greased and sharpened that afternoon, were stowed ready for constructing scaling ladders from whatever saplings, bamboo and timber could be found near the port.
Finally the last buccaneer boat, one from the Peleus and with Thomas on board, came out of the ring of darkness in which it had been waiting. Thomas sang out the contents and Aurelia checked them against her list. Like several of the other boats, this one carried drinking water and boucaned meat. Ned sent him after the previous boat, told Lobb to dispatch the Griffin’s canoes, and turned to Aurelia.
“Until noon on Wednesday,” he said. “Are you sure you can manage? Enough seamen? Shall I tell Lobb to stay on board?”
She sighed, an exasperated I-knew-you-were-going-to-say-that-sigh. “We’ve discussed all that a dozen times, mon cher. Go on, go now or I shall weep and embarrass everyone.” She kissed him fiercely and then hurried below, as if wanting to avoid watching him go down the rope ladder into the boat.
From time to time when rowing through pale-green patches of phosphorescence they could see the oar blades of boats ahead dipping into the water like blurred fireflies. Southwards on the starboard hand the coast was like a sleeping serpent, here curving out to within a few hundred yards, there swinging in to a mile, and always distinguishable as an uneven black band ending where the stars began.
A windless night… Ned had prayed but never expected it. If the north wind had continued blowing on shore and strengthened, it would have made this an uncomfortable, perhaps impossible row, probably bringing heavy swells across the width of the Caribbee which would slide under the wind waves, driving up breakers to line this coast and make it impossible to land. Northers…luckily it was still early for them, but December and January would bring the cold north winds and the rough seas riding on the swells.
He mentally ticked off each part of the coast as he identified it: both of the Cayos Naranjos had slid past, low in the water; he had picked out the peak of Cerro Merced against a background of stars. The next six miles comprised a low shore, mangrove swamps blurring where the sea met the flat land, but gradually hills now appeared as the boat moved steadily eastward.
Then, stark against a part of the sky full of stars, Ned could make out the Pan de Azúcar and Las Palmas close to the shore, with the other three peaks, including La Machina, beyond them, well inland to the south.
The slop of the oar entering the water and the gurgle of it coming out again, the creak of the oar against the rowlocks, the grunt of the oarsman and the groan made by his weight on the thwart, the chuckling of the boat’s stem as the oars thrust it through the water, the occasional skittering of a fish, probably a gar or needlefish, startled and escaping by skating along the top of the water like a flat stone skimmed across a pond… The noises were monotonous and he felt dazed; a sort of sleep without being asleep.
That was the mouth of the Rio Piedras, a scoop in the land. They had covered about six miles from the last river, the Rio Grande, which in turn was three or four miles east of the Cayos Naranjos…which made it another two miles to Punta Gorda, cliffs sticking out into the sea like a semicircular balcony… Then four miles on to their destination, the Rio Guanche. He only hoped that Thomas’ memory was good, and the river entrance wide and the banks irregular enough to hide the boats without being so swampy that they could not get ashore.
The mosquitoes had attacked his wrists so that they were hot, itchy tubes of flesh a third thicker than usual. His face too, was so bitten and puffy that his eyes were swell
ing up; he must look like a battered prizefighter. Mosquitoes reinforced by the almost invisible sandflies that bit like sharp needles and could hardly be seen in daylight: the West Indies, he reflected ruefully, provided man with few if any really deadly natural enemies apart from disease but made up for it with many persistent irritations.
It took an enormous effort to concentrate as the Griffin’s boat worked its way to the head of the straggling column. No, he told himself, he was not so much sleepy as dazed. Too much sun during the day, he supposed and the monotony of the noises in the darkness. Ah, here at last was the leading boat, from La Méduse and with the bearded Rideau calling a greeting.
“We’re nearly there!” Rideau called. “I can just distinguish Punta Gorda. We might arrive before the mosquitoes eat me completely. No lard or smoke now,” he added ruefully.
No lard when moving about; no tobacco leaves which they burned on land to keep the insects away. The buccaneers, Ned realized, were changing. They had started, so many years ago, as refugees and were called “The Cow Killers”: Dutchmen escaping the Spaniards occupying the Netherlands; Frenchmen, many of them Huguenots like Aurelia, escaping from the Catholics; Englishmen (and Scots, Welshmen and Irishmen) escaping the Puritans. Yes, and the scoundrels of all nations, too, apprentices breaking their articles, debtors, murderers.
Yet the majority were men who wanted to be free, and over the years they had gathered in small groups along the coasts of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Cuba, killing the beeves and hogs that ran wild after being left by the Spaniards working their way westward, leaving island after island in their fruitless search for gold, and finally finding it waiting in unbelievable quantities in Mexico.
Curing the hides and selling them to passing ships, or exchanging them for powder and shot to kill more beeves, or hot liquors to swamp melancholy and drown their memories, the buccaneers had smoked meat in boucans to preserve it (getting the new name of boucaniers), and used some of the hides to make rudimentary boots, breeches, jerkins and hats: dried sinews became laces for boots or jerkins; small bones were sawn crosswise into discs and drilled as buttons. They saw how the Arawaks made canoes by burning out the inside of a log. As Rideau’s remark recalled, they smeared lard over the exposed parts of their bodies to ward off the dawn and dust attacks of mosquitoes and sandflies. On a plantation, of course, the wealthy planter always burned tobacco leaves so the smoke drifted across his hammaco or bed, noxious fumes which drove away the insects.
