Hunt for White Gold

by Mark Keating

  Watson was ready but now the prize’s stern spun away from him, and his guns had yet to bear. ‘She’s coming back in!’ He checked his hawser coils. There were rounds enough. ‘Warm her bow, lads if we can’t have her stern!’

  ‘Aim them high!’ Devlin yelled at Watson. ‘Her bow’s no use to me. Take her wind.’

  Watson and his gunners tugged out the quoins and the muzzles rose. Eight hundred yards between the wooden worlds. The Mumvil wheeled around; the sea boiled white and angry beneath her as she struggled against the waves, her bowsprit pointing towards them now, her powder-scorched sails facing and full. Whoever the captain was he was racing his ship to face a broadside that would surely take at least his jibs and forecourse and with luck the mast as well. It was foolish, desperate even, and Devlin stood back to let Watson to his work and wondered what he would have planned if he were standing on the sloop flying towards him.

  Five hundred yards and Toombs’s bowsprit began to cross the path of Devlin’s starboard guns. The Mumvil turned fully. Surely not to ram? Coming like a bull, but towards loaded guns? Pride perhaps? A final glory of a dead ship?

  The bosun yelled to his mate and they heaved the fore-course up to slow the Talefan just enough to let Watson’s guns have a measured passage across the Mumvil’s draft and eat her bow like chopping wood.

  Hugh Harris stopped his tune and the tiny sound of Watson dribbling his powder trail across the touch-holes of his guns and the hiss of the slow-match drew every man’s eye.

  Dandon sidled up to Devlin again, his own confidence wavering amid the sight of the ship ploughing towards their guns. ‘Surely this is suicide for them, Patrick? Does he intend to ram us?’

  Devlin did not turn from watching the bowsprit ducking and stabbing ever forward. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad angle to board anyways.’

  Watson danced across all four of the guns with his linstock and the powder flared into life.

  Dandon weaved away from Devlin’s imminent fury as he spoke. ‘Surely he knows we’re about to empty our guns at him?’

  And that was it. To empty the guns. Surely he knows we’re about to empty our guns at him?

  ‘He’s going to club-haul at us!’ he hollared to all as it came to him. ‘He’s to drop anchor at us! He’ll swing round to bear!’ Devlin sprang forward to a swab bucket on the deck plucking the rope handle as he yelled.

  ‘Dowse them, John! He wants us to fire!’ He tossed the water at the breech of number one just as she roared and hurtled back, shattering the bucket in Devlin’s hands.

  Watson and the rest covered their ears as the guns rolled one by one in four drumbeats that tore through the Mumvil’s forecourse and the whole ship vanished in the white smoke, the sound of whipping cleatlines and stays whistling through the air.

  ‘Cap’n?’ Watson shouted back as his senses returned.

  Devlin bellowed for all hands to reload. The cloud began to drift fore just as they heard the unmistakable splash of an anchor from the Mumvil.

  The veil of the cannon’s breath lifted away to reveal Toombs’s broadside swinging towards them. The reloading froze on the Talefan as they stared over at all ten of Toombs’s minion guns aiming above the gunwale only a pistol shot away. The hiss of their touch-holes wafted like mocking laughter.

  ‘Down!’ Devlin bellowed and threw himself to the deck.

  With two men lighting the touch-holes it took ten seconds to fire ten guns and Seth Toombs was the only man not clamping his hands to his ears but idly checking again the lock and leather-clasped flint of his pistol. He stood and watched the eighty pounds of double-shotted iron and chain explode away from his deck.

  He winked at Howell, cowering behind the foremast, as the last gun echoed in the sails. If Devlin had been a better captain, thought Toombs, he would have noticed the fast heeling of the Mumvil as a sign of all the guns being shifted over to larboard, weighing her over. He would have noticed her leaning to her lee as she went at the Talefan under full forecourse.

  His gunners had removed the quoins and the trucks of the five guns at the ports and dragged them back to angle over the gunwale. The starboard guns had been freed from their tackles and wheeled round to stand between and behind their brothers. Jury-rigged tackles reeved through the deck’s fairleads amidships. It was risky, a gamble. A pirate’s chance. All ten guns peered over the gunwale. One round – an avalanche of iron that would turn a weak sloop into a man-of-war for one murderous broadside.

  Seth had bellowed for the starboard quarter anchor to be dropped just as the shot from the Talefan hazed his bow, jibs and forestays. As the anchor bit it would club-haul the ship round to bear.

  The fluke had dug into the coral, the sudden reining of the hawser bucking the ship and heaving her round, just as the timoneer did the same. The effect was like braking a carriage at full pelt in a harness race, to make the corner or kill the driver, except that ships did not risk toppling over. Instead they turn, and turn fast. The scream of the ship as her seams resist is the only similarity.

  When the smoke cleared from the Talefan’s broadside they were beam to beam, the caps of their spars fencing playfully. Seth’s guns stared ready at the powerless Talefan, an axe about to fall.

  ‘Fire!’ cried Seth, and snapped his own pistol at one of the grey shapes moving through the fog at the same instant his ten guns detonated at Devlin’s masts.

  The Mumvil writhed with the recoil, the deck quaking in her seams. It was ten seconds of nothing but pounding guns and smoking wood. Had they been anything larger than four-pounders they may have snapped away, killing or maiming as they flew from their breeches. As it happened, each man eagerly picked up a loaded musket with a cheer, for not even an eyebrow was singed.

  Seth climbed up the larboard shrouds to fire down onto Devlin’s deck, his smoke-filled eyes searching through the haze for the head of the Irish traitor. The ship opposite rolled in pain at each fresh fiery stab into her side.

  It had been ten murderous seconds for Devlin and his men. After each new pounding from the guns beyond, Devlin had inched along the scuppers towards the cabin, aiming himself away from the splinters flying at his eyes and limbs.

  A ton of yards and sail crashed to the deck all about. By the fourth shattering of wood his path was blocked by a cobweb of sheets and ratlines taller than a man and he looked over to the mainyards and maincourse shrouding the bodies of his men amidships.

  The seconds dragged on and the rage continued. Three more and the topmasts came down like stone columns to the deck, crushing legs and skulls. Cries were cut short as men who had worked with wood and rope all their lives were suddenly spliced and hammered themselves.

  The canvas and cordage had been a living thing only an hour before, its duty a world of tension and stays; now the iron had cleaved it free and four miles of rope and wood plummeted howling to the backs of the tiny men below.

  Three more seconds passed and a storm of sawdust and choking smoke that tasted of paint and tar swirled around the deck. Devlin crawled away from the sight of bare bloody feet poking out of fallen sails and his hand lighted on a broken fiddle, its neck snapped, its strings splayed out like whiskers. He shoved it away for fear of what it might represent, then dived beneath the larboard bulwark to protect himself from the final storm of topsails and stays falling in defeat.

  Slowly silence began to ripple through the air and the whisper of the sea and the creaking of the deck resumed as the world rolled on. Devlin’s ears then began to absorb the other sounds: the roars from the other ship and the coughing and groans of the dying.

  Devlin knew what would come well enough and he crept from his cover of the cannons and the bulwark and pulled his pistol, shouting for hands, as bold as if an army were waiting below for his call.

  He stood and looked about for those who could still stand. A face riven with gore stepped to his side, the stark whites of its eyes gleaming from the mask of blood running from the black wound across his scalp.

  Devlin
did not recognise the ghoul until the matched pair of duelling pistols clicked into life with a snap of his wrists. Then he warmed to the power of Hugh Harris by his shoulder.

  ‘I thought you lost, Hugh. I saw your fiddle broke.’

  The red face spat a mouthful of blood. ‘They broke my fiddle?’ He kissed his pistols in turn. ‘I’ll eat the bastards when I’m done!’

  More heads struggled from their stupor, blowing dust from the locks of their musketoons and pistols, before ducking from a volley of whistling musket balls splintering the deck. Then the risen men found the nerve to mock their opponents’ lamentable aim, vowing as one to show them how it should be done, before joining their captain’s side.

  Only stumps of mast remained so there would be no climbing to the tops to hurl grenadoes or crow’s feet caltrops. It would be a fire-fight now, cutlass and shot. Lead and steel, and blood.

  Devlin saw Watson, linstock still in hand, lying dead by his guns as he counted the men still with him. Lawson, the bosun, locked his musketoon and crouched ready. Others checked their pistols and wound lighted fuses around their wrists for the grenadoes stuffed within their shirts.

  Six, Devlin counted. Six, and him, still fighting, and he called all their names as he strode to the starboard gunwale to await the grappling hooks, plucking a boarding axe from the remains of the mainmast and passing it to one of his brethren to hack at the ropes as they landed.

  He stepped into something wet amongst a mess of cloth and rope and looked down to his boot in the writhing guts of Sam Fletcher. Fletcher belched a torrent of watery blood and looked up at Devlin with a gasp.

  Devlin lifted his foot, foolishly apologising, and lowered his pistol to Fletcher’s head.

  Fletcher whispered to his captain, his hands trying to tuck his insides back into place, his voice too rasping to hear.

  Devlin clicked his lock. ‘What you say, Sam?’

  ‘My mother, Pat. Don’t tell me mother about me.’

  ‘You didn’t hang, Sam,’ and he winked at the boy for the last time.

  ‘Nor you, mate,’ Fletcher coughed a hot dribble of blood. His eyes closed to the sight of Devlin emptying his pistol into his forehead.

  Devlin moved on, reloading as he went, using the clicks and snaps of his weapon to shake the memory before it formed. Then he heard his name, like a curse, bellowed in a Bristol accent from the ship opposite and he raised his pistol to the man astride the gunwale, hanging off the shrouds, aiming at him with a snarling grin.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Woodes Rogers paused, holding the bottle of Red Sack Madeira over the two tall-stemmed glasses and looking up in surprise at Coxon’s explanation for missing their luncheon appointment.

  ‘You had a funeral? A funeral for a diseased whore?’ He resumed pouring, his shock dissipating with the gentle trickle of the limed wine that kept so well in the smothering heat of the Bahama Islands.

  ‘I knew her.’ Coxon took the glass held out by Rogers under raised eyebrows and offered his explanation. ‘She was one of the women with Devlin on the island, Governor.’

  Rogers purred his understanding, ‘Ah, you had a connection with the strumpet. You thought you might give her a noble burial. For old times, eh?’ Rogers winked.

  ‘She recalled more of me than I did of her, Governor.’ Coxon sipped his warm Madeira. ‘I remembered only that she had hair a colour off of red.’

  ‘You favour the auburn then, John?’

  Coxon disliked the turn of the conversation. ‘I only know of it from the church windows and paintings of my youth: when Eve is shown before the apple she is golden-haired. After the fall, she is always painted red.’

  ‘I have never noticed, John. That is most interesting. Come, take a sit with me, I have a matter to discuss but first tell me how the fever goes.’ Rogers retired to his desk, peeling off his waistcoat to relax in linen and cuffs against the warmth of the afternoon, the sounds of hammering and squeaking pulleys beyond through the broken-paned windows, as the fortifications and repairs dragged on.

  Coxon scraped a chair across the room as he spoke. ‘The death of the girl is an unpleasant fact. Very few of the old residents are ill, no more than one might expect in these climes. I had her room smoked and all her effects burned and I suggest that should be common practice.’

  Rogers put a pen to his log and studied Coxon carefully. ‘All her effects? I had heard that you buried some with her? You had eight of your men attend to the hole with a carriage of goods, did you not?’

  Coxon never hesitated. ‘Some of her larger furniture I had buried rather. There are some of medicine that suggest that fevers may carry in fumes. I would also suggest that large funeral pyres are to be avoided, Governor, in what is mostly a wooden town unless it is to be upon the beach. I burnt her clothes and bed linen in a brazier, broke up her bed and closet and buried it with her in the hills.’ Coxon sniffed as if the memory disgusted him. He placed down his empty glass on the desk and wiped one hand with the other.

  Rogers made a note, scratching rapidly, then leant back and toyed with the fletch as he resumed his habit of continuing a conversation he had already started in another room.

  ‘The two captains have returned from our trading mission. Finch and Arnot.’

  ‘So soon?’ Coxon counted the days in his head.

  ‘So soon that they managed to lose one of the ships in their haste.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Governor?’

  ‘Pirates, John. They turned pirate. Thirty-two of them took the Mumvil Trader. The Buck returned this morning whilst you were in the hills with your whore. The news is probably the talk of the taverns, and my head the target for their jibes.’ He tossed down his quill in dudgeon.

  Coxon could not help raising a corner of his mouth in mirth and scorn. Although Finch and Arnot were Bahama traders the scheme of crewing the ships with former sea-dogs was clearly sailing towards disaster.

  Rogers spied the edge of the smile. ‘Seems the leader of them was one of your men, John, as were the ones that followed. A man named Toombs. Did you know of him?’

  Coxon shifted and scratched his forehead irritably. ‘He came on in Bristol before we met the fleet. Rum sort indeed, look of the lash about him. At least we have not lost both ships.’

  Rogers’ throat rumbled in disagreement. ‘It’d have been better by far if we had. I know these fellows from back in Madagascar. Part of their power is to let men go, allowing talk of the horror over a noggin and how fortunate they were to have escaped with their lives. The most successful pirates spread more legends than sailcloth.’

  Coxon heard German shouts from the scaffolding outside. An abundance of foreign capital had been invested in manual work since the pirates had refused to take up the hammer to rebuild the fort. One Teuton was abusing the other for his ineptitude. Coxon listened in amusement at the German curses volleying back and forth.

  ‘What do you suggest we do, Governor?’ He smoothed his short hair forward nervously.

  Rogers sat up. ‘We can fight! I have sworn to rid these islands of pirates and that is exactly what I intend to do. This is my last chance, John,’ he looked morosely into his wine. ‘Not even forty and this my last chance to make something of my life.’

  Coxon leant forward. ‘You have done more than most men, Captain Rogers, and now you’re governor of all the Bahamas.’

  Rogers dropped his head. ‘Aye. Ten years I’ve been at sea. At the cost of my family. My wife. My brother. Not a bean to show for it whilst those who have yet to leave the teat of England grow fat on what we bring them back.’

  ‘Nobody ever got rich from adventure, Governor. It is the ones that follow that reap the rewards.’

  Rogers nodded into his glass as he drained it then wiped his lips as his eyes bored into the future.

  ‘Hornigold is out a-hunting south of here. He may find these bastards who have taken the Mumvil and bring them back. All I have is this place, John. My mark on it will be the eradication of pira
tes from her waters. I have a fort, a hundred men, and warships to defend her.’ He stood up and crossed to the window to look down over Nassau. ‘It can be done. This disease will clear if we can survive the summer.’ He turned to Coxon’s back. ‘And I’ll not allow these pirates the chance to encourage others with their success. No-one will enjoy the tale, I’ll make sure of that.’

  Coxon twisted round in his seat, ‘Governor?’ he queried, already fearing the response.

  ‘We have a proper gallows in the square. Before these scum take measure of my failure I want you to hang nine more of the pirates. And reward the loyal men of the Buck with an extra acre of land as an example of the rewards for loyalty to the King.’

  Coxon shot up. ‘To the King or to Woodes Rogers, Governor? I have not come here to hang men.’ He kept his voice peaceful as if to a friend making a terrible mistake.

  Rogers’ eyes stopped dreaming of the future and he stepped closer. ‘Men? My soldiers are men. We are men. These are pirates, John. You should know them by now.’

  ‘These are pirates who have taken the King’s proclamation. They are colonists now. Your colonists. They need food not fewer mouths to feed, Governor, and I will not hang subjects just to prevent a few tall tales slurring around a tavern.’

  ‘Those tall tales, as you put them, could amount to insurrection if left to fester, Captain, and I will not have it! Not on my island!’ He brushed past Coxon to grab for the Madeira again. ‘No! I will not have it, sir! Men will hang before I have it!’

  Coxon ignored the brimming glass held out to him. ‘I’ll not hang them, Governor,’ he flapped his hat, shaking off the dust of the morning funeral. ‘I’ll hang the ones Hornigold brings back, if any, and I’ll hang any pirate past September who hasn’t taken the proclamation.’ He squared his hat and touched it in salute. ‘And that is all I’ll do. Find another captain for your meat hooks. Good day, sir.’ He dipped his head and made for the door.

  ‘And your pirate Devlin, John?’ Rogers sang out as he put the glass to his lips. ‘Would you not hang him even if he turned up and took the proclamation? Or do you judge every pirate as entitled to a peaceful life?’