Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

Hung Pao—the most feared, dangerous, and powerful man in Hong Kong—trusted him, and I doubt Hung Pao trusted anyone.

  Capitán Zapata—for reasons I could not fathom—trusted him, and El Capitán seemed to trust no one.

  Even my resistance was breaking down.

  I was starting to understand that being a thief, a killer, and a seducer of wealthy women did not make a man all bad.

  When the bets were down, Luis was the man I wanted on my side, covering my back.

  Like the dhow purchase, the opium transaction proceeded with no problem. Hung Pao turned over the three chests of opium on our galleon’s deck, and Luis paid him a chest full of silver seconds later.

  Hung handed Luis a red flag with a gold dragon emblem.

  “For your safe voyage out of Chinese waters,” old Hung then said, suddenly spouting a bit of Spanish. That was not surprising—the Spanish Philippines was a significant trading party for the Chinese.

  Luis gave him a terse head nod.

  On departing, he and Hung Pao bowed curtly to each other, and the Harbor Lord departed with his silver.

  FIFTY-NINE

  A DHOW TYPICALLY required more than a dozen sailors to crew it, but despite its size and mass the boat was remarkably simple and easy to handle. Towed behind the galleon with its sails down, Luis believed we could man it with five sailors.

  He chose Arturo as the third man aboard. Arturo chose the other two crewmen from men he said we could trust.

  In the event we got separated from the galleon, Luis had purchased a “kamal” from Hung Pao. A celestial navigation device used by Arab and Chinese navigators, it was used to determine latitude by finding Polaris’s angle above the horizon.

  I found the kamal to be a curious-looking device—a small, thin piece of wood about two inches long and one wide, it had a string attached through a hole in the middle. The cord had a series of knots corresponding to different latitudes.

  When we were out to sea and would soon have to pack the dhow with explosives and kindling to make it into a floating bomb, we told Arturo the true nature of our mission.

  Ayyo … our friend was not pleased. Nor were the two sailors he had recruited, though Luis’s assurances that he had survived twenty fireboat attacks and was made wealthy by the experiences—as they would be, if they survived this one—helped. That, plus the truth about how unarmed the galleon was, brought them around.

  “It’s a death run for us,” Arturo said. “I’m sorry I ever laid eyes on either of you.”

  “We will be right beside you, amigo,” Luis said.

  “Wonderful. We can hold hands as we are blown into hell.”

  SIXTY

  FOR MY PART I set about turning the dhow into a fireboat.

  I started out at first light by laying out five crisscrossed rows of good sail-hauling line, three sets each. On top of those lines I laid out five layers of strong thick canvas sail cloth, ten feet across, on each of the three sets of crisscrossed lines. I had drenched each sail with whale oil the day before, then given it twenty-four hours to thoroughly sink in.

  I told the crew of the galleon to pull the dhow alongside in calm waters and lower kegs of what I had referred to as “stump-blasting powder.” In addition, I had kegs of metal scrap used to load cannons for short range shots that cleared the decks of opposing warships when they came alongside.

  Using a dinghy extended on a painter between the two vessels, I kept a steady stream of supplies coming as I thought of more items I needed.

  I asked the captain to round up every bar of strong lye laundry soap in the ship.

  When Luis saw my preparations, he thundered at me that I was smoking the opium and that I’d become “muy loco.”

  We argued when he wanted a “suicide” cannon lowered down to the dhow from the galleon.

  “We’ll place the cannon below the deck,” he said, “right above the waterline. We want it to detonate through the bulkhead so that it strikes the enemy at point-blank range right at his waterline.”

  He was not pleased when I told him that I didn’t want the cannon aboard the dhow.

  “A ship-killing Chimneys of Hell made of canvas and stump-blasting powder?” he shouted derisively. “I told you what a real Chimneys of Hell was like. We need something like that. Build me something like that.”

  “Yes, you told me what the classic fireboat is like—a ship refitted belowdecks with troughs which lead to portholes projecting ‘fire chimneys.’ The shafts protrude out from the upper deck. The hole is filled with highly inflammable materials so that when the troughs are lit, the fires set off charges that cause flames to burst out the portholes and up the chimneys.

  “Unfortunately, the timing for setting the fires has to be perfect. The ship has to hook on to the enemy’s ship exactly on cue—otherwise the ship just bursts into flame. Also the enemy ship will burn from the bottom up—the exact opposite of what we need. We have to torch the masts and rigging first, not last—if we want to disable the enemy immediately.

  “The fireboats are manned by the best sailors and explosive experts in the fleet because timing and ignition have to be perfect. You have some experience, but Arturo and I are both reluctant fireboat crewmen. You admit that depending on the weather, you may have to add to the crew to sail the dhow to the boat where the pirate leader is aboard. They will not be experienced fireboat sailors, either.”

  “Amigo, we’ll be lucky if others don’t jump ship halfway to the enemy dhows,” Luis said. “Just fill cannons from the galleon full of blasting powder, cap off the end, and let her blow. All that compression will give you the most powerful bomb in the world. That’s all we need.”

  “Except it will never work. The cannons are cracked, but they’re case-hardened, heavy-duty, hand-casted iron,” I said wearily. “All you will get is a ruptured cannon, more likely to blow us out of the water rather than the pirate’s vessel. We need a material that will blow and spread fire instantly.”

  I handed him a bar of soap.

  “Now if you’re going to do something, start shaving parchment-thin slices of soap onto this piece of canvas. We have a lot of soap to shave up. We’ll have to mix the shaved soap and the shrapnel in with what I keep calling stump-blasting powder.”

  Luis’s face was a pained mask of skepticism. “Why the soap? Are you going to wash the pirates’ mouths out with it?”

  “No, those razor-thin soap slices will melt into sticky fiery glue when the powder heats up and blows. Then we’re going to stick fire to their ships.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I once saw a black-powder grenade blow a bar of soap all over soldiers during the revolt of Hidalgo. They couldn’t get the fire off their bodies. Water and dirt wouldn’t put it out. I tell you it’s fire glue.”

  Luis stared at me, still dubious.

  “Okay, how do you get the compression we need?”

  I pointed to a barrel full of seawater—also filled with three pieces of canvas sail cloth.

  “We wrap the whole package in saltwater-soaked canvas, rope it off tight, then have the ship’s sailmaker sew it up even tighter. We set it out on deck for the rest of the day, letting the sun shrink the saltwater-soaked canvas. I assure you, our compression will be tighter than tight.”

  “If your design fails—”

  “We’ll meet in hell, amigo.”

  PART XIV

  PIRATE ALLEY

  SIXTY-ONE

  ON THE VOYAGE from Hong Kong to Manila, Luis took time out to give me a detailed lesson on ships, cannonry, and the galleon’s disgraceful lack of preparedness.

  Luis knew everything about cannons, naval and warfare, and fortifications. Moreover, he knew everything about what a well-armed well-appointed vessel should have, which meant he knew what we did not have.

  “It’s not a proper galleon,” he explained to me. “The ship is smaller than the galleons that usually make the Acapulco-Manila run. It only has three masts when four would be better, eight sails when ten are
best, and worst of all, it’s undergunned—twenty-two cannons, twelve of which are twelve-pounders, ten of which are twenty-pounders—about half the firepower the ship should have had.

  “It’s a mongrel,” Luis said, “a leaky old ship that’s a constant struggle to keep afloat with tar-and-horsehair caulking as the planks spread wider—and of course endless bilge-bucket brigades.

  “The worthless tub had usually been running supplies between New Spain and Peru and was rushed into the Manila run after another ship was sunk by pirates.”

  He threw his hands up in exasperation. “The ills of the ship illustrate why Spain is no longer the most powerful empire on earth. Our best leaders died in the war against the French and we are ruled by a king and court fools who are not capable of cleaning stables much less the ills of an empire.”

  I knew, of course, how the Spanish had conquered the One World, but was curious about how they had won the Philippines, a big foothold in the Pacific. He told me about brave men who set out on an endless ocean to gain not just treasure and empire, but knowledge.

  “The Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan—representing both Portugal and Spain—led the first Spanish expedition there, landing at Cebu in the Philippines early in the sixteenth century. The islands were inhospitable even then. The natives murdered Magellan a short time later in a fight on the nearby island of Mactan.

  “Thirty years later our king, Philip II, asked Andrés de Urdaneta, a navigator, to lead an expedition from Mexico to the Philippines and to chart an advantageous return route. Five earlier attempts had ended in disaster. In 1565 Urdaneta reached and established a mission—again on the Philippine island of Cebu—then commenced his return to New Spain.

  “Sailing in the high latitudes, around 36 degrees north, he exploited their auspicious winds, eluded the southerly typhoons, and reached Panama in 123 days. This became the route of the Manila galleon run and enabled us to colonize the Philippines. Having a foothold there created Eastern markets for the goods of Mexico and Peru and the supply of silk and other goods from the Orient.

  “Three further expeditions ended in disaster, but Philip II, who we call the most Catholic of kings, and for whom the islands are named, was undeterred. Dispatching Miguel López de Legazpi to the Philippines, he established the first permanent settlement in Cebu in 1565. The Spanish city of Manila was founded in 1571, and Spain controlled most of the coastal and lowland regions from northern Mindanao to Luzon by the late sixteenth century.

  “Inquisitors, friars, and soldiers converted the natives to Catholicism in their usual short order—often using the sword when the Bible didn’t convince the natives.

  “Legazpi fought off Portuguese ships and Chinese pirates, but he could never subdue the Philippine Muslims of Mindanao and Sulu, whom we call Moros.”

  Luis shook his head. “We pretty near ruined the Philippines, amigo, just as we did New Spain. We brought in New Spain’s encomienda system so that the natives were conscripted into backbreaking labor on Spanish-owned farms to the financial advantage of the plantation owners.

  “Manila quickly became one of the Crown’s most lucrative colonies. The galleon trade with Acapulco assured Manila of commercial dominance. Exchange of Chinese silks for Mexican silver attracted a large Chinese population.

  “The heirs of pre-Spanish nobility were known as the principalia and played an important role in the friar-dominated local government—the same as in New Spain.”

  “Something tells me I will hate Manila,” I told Luis.

  “Yes, if we reach Manila in one piece, you will positively loathe it.”

  “We don’t have to reach it. I loathe it already. It sounds too much like New Spain, too many of the same injustices.”

  “Never fear, young gun-maker. We will probably not live long enough to suffer its cruelty.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  THE SHIP SAILED on, pulling us behind it as we transformed the dhow into a fireboat and my education about ships and the sea increased.

  “Galleons were originally caravels, young friend, a vessel dating back three hundred years,” Luis explained one day as we worked combustibles on the deck. “Their design has changed over the years. I’ve heard that the caravel was originally broad-beamed, a vessel of 50 or 60 tons burden, with some as large as 160 tons. About seventy-five feet long, those caravels were smaller and lighter than the galleons of a century later.

  “The early caravels had forecastles and aftercastles that tended to catch the wind and make the ship unmaneuverable, so we left them off our galleons, making galleons longer, leaner vessels. We also increased the number of heavy guns until they ran the full length of the ship’s broadside in one, two, and finally three tiers. The big galleons we called ships of the line because they could serve as powerful warships in a line of battle.”

  Now that I was a sailor, these ships fascinated me.

  “How big were these ‘ships of the line’?” I asked.

  “A sample ship of the line through the seventeenth century could run two hundred feet in length and displace twelve hundred to two thousand tons with a crew of six to eight hundred men. Their armament was arranged along three decks: the bottom-deck battery consisting perhaps of thirty cannons firing balls of thirty-two to forty-eight pounds. The middle deck would have as many guns firing twenty-four pounds. The upper battery would carry thirty or more twelve-pounders.

  “The ships could follow each other’s wake into battle. By maintaining the line throughout the battle, the fleet, despite obscuring clouds of smoke, could function as a unit under control of the admiral. The formation maximized the fighting power of the broadside and marked a final break with the tactics of galley warfare in which individual ships sought each other to engage in single combat by means of ramming, boarding, and so on.

  “The provisions were little better than the bilge slaves’ rations and the daily routine was the same as ours: washing down the decks, caulking, repairing rigging.”

  “In short, the job was backbreaking even then.”

  “Young powder-maker,” Luis said, “it was ever thus.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  WE’D SAILED UP the Manila coast without mishap, and for a while I thought we might make it without doing battle with pirates. In fact, we were less than a hundred miles from the Manila Straits when we encountered them—three enormous gangha dhows, each one almost two of our baggala dhow.

  Each dhow featured two small twelve-pounder cannons, which gave them six more working guns than we had. Moreover, their rails and decks teemed with flamboyantly clad brigands sporting black head scarves, billowing shirts, and loose-fitting trousers of crimson and black. They brandished pistolas and knives, axes and cutlasses, bows and arrows.

  These were professional killers, not the gallows-bait and prison-fodder manning our vessel. The only weakness I saw were the pistolas. There was no way, in this damp climate, the pistolas would be capable of repeated firing. They were for show, but the rest of the weapons were deadly.

  Midday, the wind was calm, the waters almost flat. We couldn’t have outrun them even if we wanted.

  We brought the dhow alongside the galleon so we could confer with the captain as to the demands—and battle—we expected.

  Bribing them with silver was not an option. They would only take it as a sign of weakness.

  The brigands dispatched a dinghy to within shouting distance of the galleon. A Spanish-speaking pirate—a rough-looking, one-eyed, bald-pate rogue in a crimson shirt and black trousers—stood in the bow, and shouted: “You cannot cross our waters without paying our tax levies. One chest of gold—or two chests of silver—and we’ll be on our way … pay or die!”

  “In a pig’s ass they’ll be on their way,” Luis said. “The captain knows that they’re testing us—to see how effective our cannonry is.”

  “Tell them we’ll bring them a quantity of silver and a gift of jade from New Spain for their leader,” the captain told Luis. “Tell them we’ll give them some opium so th
ey can have pleasant dreams. They’ll correctly interpret our concessions as a sign of weakness but won’t attack until they have that much in their hands.”

  “They’ll be slavering for everything else we must have on board,” First Mate Gasset said.

  “Just tell them,” Capitán Zapata said.

  Luis shouted: “We are giving you a dhow loaded with silver and gold and jade. Opium! We have opium for you! Three chests each packed with riches and opium—one for each ship.”

  Luis then whispered to me: “If we give them three chests, all three pirate vessels will converge on the dhow. They will not entrust their share to the other ships.”

  The bald bandido was as surprised as our own crew members who had been kept in ignorance but now heard the proclamation.

  “Get out the polished brass coins—that glitter will look like gold at a distance,” the captain said. “Also the flour, which from a distance should counterfeit opium.”

  While the pirate went back to the mother ship, a large dhow much more ornate than the other two, sailors on the galleon lowered chests of “booty” down to us with ropes and nets.

  Every so often, Luis smiled and waved at the pirates, then pointed eagerly at their tribute.

  Ayyo … the pirates must have thought they had died and gone to the Garden of Allah or whatever paradise full of celestial virgins they subscribed to.

  Once loaded, we looked at each other. Five of us, on a suicide mission none of us wanted to be a part of.

  We pushed off for the pirate leader’s dhow, raising a single small sail. The enemy wasn’t far and we were not in a great hurry.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  LUIS POSTED TWO men with muskets, one on the bow, the other on the stern, to discourage any pirates who might try to board us before we reached the flagship.

  The pirate captain, easily the most gaudily dressed of the bunch of cutthroats, stood at the railing and stared at us. I knew what was going on in his mind—he couldn’t believe his good fortune, which made him wonder whether it was a trick.