Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  Whole shops lay in the hold waiting to be nailed up and trading by dawn of their disembarkation. The missionaries of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge shuddered at the sorrowful sight of ladies’ torn clothing that floated by the head of the ship as they took their morning ablutions.

  This is what I have, thought John Coxon, and steeled himself as the black forest of masts began to fill his spyglass and the green and blue hills rose up from the sea.

  The flotilla approached from the south-east following the shore of Andros to the west and crawled past the treacherous coral reefs of the southern shore to make for the north and Nassau. Already they could see the sandbar that would prevent the Delicia from sailing inshore. This hazard was one of the island’s strengths, a natural barrier that halted any ship above three hundred tons.

  To the north-east lay a smaller island, a long flat spit that created the great shallow harbour of Nassau. Hog Island.

  Coxon took a moment to check his officers’ faces as he gave up counting the ships in the harbour. To his left and his right his lieutenants swept their spyglasses across the bay.

  They saw a solid mile of nothing but sloops, brigs and hulks. He saw them gulp and observed their foreheads break into a sweat that trickled onto the brasses clamped to their eyes.

  He slapped his three-draw scope closed, loud enough to break each officer from his study. They turned to the captain, glad to stop counting.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Coxon looked at each in turn. ‘Two pistols apiece. Five chosen men to your sides.’ He pulled his hat down at the brim and walked to the stair. There he turned and looked back – not at his officers but over the taffrail to the Delicia close behind.

  ‘I know each and every man on that island, lads. And so do you. They cleant your boots and touched their forelocks to you.’ He clumped down the stair, ‘Remember that, lads. Hands and backs, that’s all they were. And they fear your coming, mark me.’

  At the foot of the stair he met the young man with the coarse blond hair and cracked tan who had come aboard in Bristol, the one who had worn a burgundy three-cornered hat tied with leather cocks, far too gentlemanly for a sailor, that Coxon had forced him to remove. The man had winked at Coxon as he came through the entry port that day, and the captain had noticed the scarred and bony jaw of battle. Toombs, Seth Toombs, that was it. Something seditious about that one. Something in his eye. Or perhaps it was just the yellowing wound that marked him as a wrong’un.

  The man glanced up at him, tugged his forelock beneath his straw hat and returned to swabbing the deck around Coxon’s feet.

  Coxon lowered his chin in a snap and ducked aft to his cabin to record his morning watch. Soon he would take the gig across to Woodes Rogers, and try hard not to stare at a wound similar to Toombs’s, inflicted by a musket ball that had blown off half his jaw and now caused Rogers to suck saliva down his throat every finished sentence.

  Rogers was a privateer, a chartered pirate of war chosen like Harry Morgan before him to sweep his former brethren from the Caribbean. Yet he was a good man nonetheless, Bristol born and of solid Dorset stock, a sailor like Coxon and also like him no highborn gentleman. Rogers’ hands and face were cracked with salt and sun. He could pilot merely by the colour of the sea, using only sun and stars to confirm and satisfy his sailing master. His sword was worn and his pistols blackened.

  Coxon wrote briefly in his log: The island sighted. The appointment made with Rogers to plan their assault and proclamation of amnesty to the pirates that ruled Providence.

  His pen hovered above the page for a moment then he wiped the swan quill and replaced it in the crock holder, dusting his ledger and blowing it dry.

  The sailing master knocked and entered the cabin. Coxon ordered the shortening of sail so to come about and point the prow towards the island; and also to bring his gig from beneath the counter.

  He had not observed a black ship with a red-striped freeboard and grey sails. It was pointless to record its absence, however significant in his own eyes. The Shadow was not there but then who could say that Devlin still kept the frigate?

  He armed himself with pistol and cutlass and swathed himself in his boatcloak to meet his Commander.

  He had not sighted the ship. He would give no further thought to his former servant, not even recall his name.

  Coxon winced slightly as he pulled open his coach door. The pain he felt was from the tell-tale, star-shaped soft scar hidden beneath his sleeve. It was his souvenir from his last meeting with Devlin.

  He saw again the white flash of gunfire in his mind and felt the clashing of blades, the racing pulse and heaving breath of combat. His arm twinged again as Coxon stepped out onto his deck head down and walked impatiently to the entry port to see if his gig had appeared.

  An hour later and Woodes Rogers stood with his captains in his state room preparing the order of the day. A month they had waited for this dawn, weeks of expectation on the high seas that would culminate in the next few hours.

  On the table encircled by the four captains Rogers had laid the King’s Proclamation. Beside it were some tracts from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The small books, typeset in an octavo format, were to be handed out to each pirate who took the King’s pardon. The society had even brought along a printing press, should they require more copies.

  Rogers stood in a fawn-coloured great coat with a long elegant waistcoat to match but a simple calico shirt beneath, which was cooling in the close warmth of the cabin. His captains wore dark heavy wool coats and waistcoats, garments too heavy for the Mediterranean let alone the Indies.

  The new Captain General and Governor-in-Chief over the Bahama Islands in America poured a glass of port for his gallant commanders.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he raised his glass. ‘To our endeavours.’

  They sipped in silence, broken only by the scuffling of feet above their heads. Rogers put down his glass beside the Proclamation. He began to speak as if he was already halfway through his forthcoming address.

  ‘Last year the Proclamation Act came to Providence. A pardon for all Englishmen who had turned to piracy. You may know that the pirates burnt the ship it came in on. Her captain and crew were never heard of again,’ he paused to allow his audience to dwell on the fact. ‘We therefore are delivering it once again. Personally. And with a bit more iron to back it up, eh? Our aim is to colonise this hole. Turn these scoundrels into farmers. Build two more forts to protect against the Spanish mongrel. I know some of you, probably all of you, would rather be at the war, out in Sicily or wherever, but this has metal too!’ He banged the table, dragged a fingernail along the map secured there, from Bermuda to Providence and up to the Carolinas. Spanish Florida lay just a couple of inches away.

  ‘This island must be taken! It sits precisely at the point where one enters the Caribbean or leaves it to reach the Americas. Bermuda and Providence are like watch-towers for the provinces and they will be held! They will remain English!’

  No-one spoke. No huzzahs or rapping of knuckles against wood commenced, only some sniffing of port and nods of approval. Rogers went back to the map.

  ‘The Shark and the Rose will sail into the harbour as soon as practicable, gentlemen. Let our colonists know that we are here in force. Meet any party who comes out with grace. I will row in with Captain Coxon, the keels of Milford and Delicia being too deep for these sands. The Buck will stay as a rear guard.’

  Cawford, the Shark’s young commander, nodded confidently to them all and drained his glass. ‘I’m sure we will find some good men still abroad.’

  Whitney, captain of the Rose and a seasoned sailor, eyed Cawford with raised brows. ‘I hear there may be as many as two thousand pirates, Cawford. Where do good men hide from such a force?’

  ‘As I understand it,’ Cawford returned, ‘there be the shopkeepers, the tavern owners and such.’

  Whitney sniffed and finished his port. Rogers continued.

  ‘These are the ringleaders we mus
t seek out, my lads.’ He passed out a note to each, in his own hand, hardly pausing to let them read as he reeled out the names himself from memory: Barrow, Burgess, Jennings, Hornigold, Vane, Teach, Martel, Fife and a dozen more. As he spoke Rogers sucked at the saliva draining from his ruined mouth.

  ‘These are the ones who must take the pardon. If they fold, their crews will follow. I will offer the principals, Barrow, Burgess, Jennings and Hornigold a place within us. As privateers. I will flatter them that I need their service. And in truth perhaps I do.’

  Coxon was no longer listening. He had reached the bottom of the list.

  ‘Governor Rogers?’ he spoke for the first time since he had entered the cabin. Rogers swallowed some more saliva and lifted his head. ‘Yes, John?’

  Coxon drew a breath and held out the waxy paper. ‘I do not see the pirate Devlin’s name here, Governor.’ He looked at the eyes watching him. ‘I assumed he would be among such a band. His name is not here, Sir.’

  Rogers looked at the list, ‘Quite right, Captain. There is no Devlin listed. Were you expecting him to be?’

  Coxon looked over Rogers’ shoulder to the lapping sea outside the stern windows. ‘I had thought that after all … after his notoriety, he would be one of the main. That is all.’ He dropped his eyes back to the paper.

  ‘I see,’ Rogers said quietly. ‘My intelligence does not deliver me any knowledge of Devlin being on the island. Although I agree he would be a bird to bag, Captain Coxon.’ He smiled politely. ‘Perhaps we will be fortunate, eh?’

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Coxon folded the paper and slipped it into his coat. ‘Fortunate we may hope.’

  Whitney elbowed Coxon. ‘Perhaps he will join you again, eh, John? Perhaps he misses starching your breeches!’

  The others grinned and showed their white teeth. All except Rogers, who now could only ever leer.

  ‘He might at that,’ Coxon acknowledged. ‘I’m sure he’s missed such pleasures.’

  ‘Perhaps he can wash all our breeches, lads.’ Rogers dabbed at the drool on his chin with a shirt cuff. ‘Now. Back to the fox at hand. We have a door to knock on this day. And no doubt we shall not be welcome.’

  Chapter Seven

  The post-noon watch saw the sloop Shark and the fifth-rate frigate Rose approach the bay of Providence. Cawford raised his linen to his nose at the milky spume of bubbling effluence that floated out on the tide to pollute once sparkling waters.

  His First Lieutenant’s voice issued profanities as he looked along the beach to see the tents of whores, carcasses of hogs and discarded horseflesh strewn along the white sands, a putrefying red and yellow morgue piling upon the beach already decorated with bottles and human waste.

  The waves made an effort to drag away the junk of the hell the pirates had created, and the flotsam bumped against the Shark’s hull, as if begging for a new home.

  Smoke drifted from beyond the beach. Pillars of grey, dozens of them, signalling the presence of camps and shanties littering the woods. Cawford had seen engravings of Nassau, a pretty English town set amongst palms and springs with smiling farmers and milk maids. He wondered what it looked like now.

  The commotion of brigs and sloops that bobbed in the bay showed no colours. Amongst them were the hulks of stolen ships, now dark and lifeless. Nearly all these were mastless and devoid of sail. Others seemed to have chunks of their bulwarks bitten out of them by some mythical nightmare colossus that fed on decks and cannon, prowling the shores and discarding the hulks like chicken bones to rot upon the shoreline.

  ‘Good God!’ Cawford exclaimed. ‘What manner of life is this?’

  His lieutenant stood closer to him and raised his hand toward a sail slipping free from the general litter.

  Cawford drew up a little at the sight of the French flag of the sloop that had broken away from the other ships.

  ‘An ally, boys!’ he cried. ‘Some souls come to join us!’ He raised his scope for a fairer look.

  ‘And a brigantine too, sir,’ his lieutenant pointed to a white ship also casting loose of the line of cruisers under a British pennant.

  ‘Good men. Always good men,’ Cawford stated and studied the French ship. ‘All will be well, lads.’

  Through the silence of his glass he watched the bowsprit of the brigantine streak ahead of the French sloop. Her shrouds were hung with armed men. Her deck alive with bodies.

  The brigantine veered away, leaning to larboard. Cawford swallowed at the shouting mouths too far to hear and the fists full of weapons pumping the air in derision directed at him.

  Standing on the gunwale was a man in a white frock coat and black hat with white trim. He fired two pistols into the air and a hundred men did the same. Captain Charles Vane, one of Providence’s former pirate lords, was welcoming his new masters.

  ‘What the devil?’ Cawford lowered his scope. He glanced back to the frigate on his starboard quarter. The Rose had pulled in all sail and sat high and patient. He could see the scopes along the fo’c’sle observing the display calmly.

  If the Rose was not bothered, Whitney keeping his ports closed, then Cawford would stay also. After all, the brigantine was sailing away, its stern already turning to escape the bay. Only the French sloop at full sail and hard to starboard, yards braced to a hard angle, flew to join the Shark’s quarter. She was bearing on them fast.

  ‘Odd,’ spoke Stanford, his First Lieutenant, squinting through his spyglass. ‘The deck is empty, sir.’ He swept left to right across the whole ship. ‘Not a man. Not a man at all. Yet she is hard to braces.’

  Cawford raised his scope again. The shrouds, ratlines and yards were indeed free of hands. The bowsprit crossed his scope’s narrow eye and powered straight for him, her jibs suddenly obscuring his view of her deck.

  ‘Aye, Lieutenant. Not a man on deck. Perhaps hiding from the pirates? We’ll wait and see.’

  John Coxon almost broke his spyglass on the quarterdeck rail as he slammed it down. His officers jumped at the sound and lowered their scopes.

  ‘Sir?’ Rosher, his First, started.

  ‘It’s a fire-ship! Heading straight at them!’ He jumped to the stair then swayed powerless, holding on to the rails. He was too distant to be of any help and could only holler to his own officers.

  ‘That’s Charles Vane on that brigantine! That’s a fire-ship he’s set against them!’ He shouted in vain to the ship, ‘Hard to, you fools!’

  The young gentlemen on Coxon’s quarterdeck looked between each other, then raised their spyglasses again to watch the drama unfolding a mile ahead of them.

  A fire-ship, a ‘smoker’, that old pirate standby. Drake and Raleigh had used it against the overpowering wood of the Armada generations before. The lower decks would be loaded with powder kegs and ball, then a fire set and the tiller lashed. Put on as much sail as she can muster and set her running.

  Captain Charles Vane was indeed warmly welcoming his new masters.

  Woodes Rogers stood on the Delicia’s fo’c’sle, his fingers whitened along the gunwale then braced against it as he watched the French sloop explode in a ball of fire and cataclysm of splinters spearing across the water and making every man aboard the Shark and the Rose duck for cover. The roar quaked the waters of the bay and jostled the warships that had dared upon her.

  The sloop had in fact gone up too soon, but the smoke and the fire on the water had served Charles Vane’s purpose. He could sail out of the other end of the harbour unhindered, sail north and out to the Carolinas with his Ranger intact. To the men of the Shark and the Rose it did not bear to consider the consequences if Vane’s timing had been five more minutes in his favour.

  Teach had sailed the day before, broken free from Hornigold and the coming justice that the others were willing to bow to.

  Those others, the lords, had held a court and eagerly rubbed their hands together at the thought of a King’s pardon to avoid a choking whilst still retaining their coin.

  Vane and Teach would not pick up a hoe f
or the Hanoverian King’s sanctimony. They would never take an acre of land and the freedom to pay taxes for the peace of going with the grain; to their minds a pardon was merely the first chain-link of slavery. As privateers, abandoned when peace descended, they remembered how weak paper could be and how shallow ink ran.

  Woodes Rogers paced his quarterdeck, looking up to the rising black smoke, the small fires carried on the tide. ‘Damn his eyes!’ he spat at his officers. ‘That man has cost me a day!’

  ‘We could still row you ashore, Captain?’ his First offered. ‘When the smoke clears.’

  Rogers ignored him. ‘Get my gig round. Take me to the Milford. I will confer with Coxon.’ He ceased his pacing and looked to the shrinking stern of the Ranger already clearing the bay. ‘Cost me a day! Cost me my sleep. On the morrow then. So be it! Damn his eyes! Damn him!’ He slammed the rail and wiped his mouth. ‘Damn him!’

  The burning French ship crackled on through the afternoon and early evening as Venus and then Mars winked into life. The slumber of the darkening sky was disturbed only by the blackened mainmast eventually yawing over into the sea with a drawn-out death throe.

  The man by the belfry on the Milford watched the end solemnly. He tapped the last grains free from the sandglass and tugged on his bell-rope four times.

  The four other ships echoed the same song across a mile of sea. One by one the side-lights and lamps were lit until the line from the Buck to the Delicia resembled a small village settling down for the night.

  ‘One could get used to this almost perpetual twilight don’t you think, John?’ Rogers drew on his ivory pipe of Virginian tobacco, growing light-headed as the blue smoke twisted through his shoulder-length wig. ‘Here it is. Ten of the clock and I could still fish in this light.’

  ‘It does get darker, sir. I’m sure I do not need to tell you that,’ Coxon stated flatly, pulling a silver fork though his rice seeking more titbits of chicken.

  Rogers had joined him for dinner and to empty a few bottles of Coxon’s wine. They sat in Coxon’s Great Cabin, alone. Rogers’ furious humour abated after the first carafe and both men had burnt Vane’s ears in condemnation then appeased their anger with another bottle. At length, they had even laughed at the boldness of the stratagem.