by Dudley Pope
There was a scattering of guns firing, but Ned realized they were probably set off by gunners careless with their linstocks as they tried to avoid being flung down by the impact. Then he heard a curious crackling, like a tree collapsing under a woodman’s axe, and he turned right aft to see the guarda costa’s bowsprint sliding off the Griffin as her mast slowly toppled over: falling sideways as though it had all the time in the world, with shrouds parting under the strain and sounding like horse whips and the great sail splitting diagonally and then flapping like a big tent collapsing.
Saxby’s roar of triumph overriding the cheers of the two helmsmen brought Yorke back to the present: the guarda costa was lying dead in the water, her sails now fallen over her like a shroud, her mast in two pieces like a broken twig of greenwood, the stump still sticking up vertically from the deck but the rest in the water, an end held to the stump by rigging, halyards and sail.
More important she was being left astern while the Griffin slowly turned westward to run before the wind, her mainsail beginning to slam as Yorke ran to ease the sheet.
Saxby shouted: “On deck everyone! Come on, Mrs Judd, get back to your wounded!” Just as Burton led a rush up the companionway, he paused to look round for the guarda costa and was nearly knocked down in the crush of men and women doing the same thing.
Because of the height of the taffrail and the fact that the companionway they were using was so far forward, the guarda costa was out of sight for them. Burton ran to the larboard side and peered out of a port – and let out a cheer. Within a few moments the whole crew were surging aft, cheering Yorke, who promptly pointed to Saxby. “He did it; I had my eyes shut!”
Saxby was unimpressed by the cheering. “Get the wounded below and sew those dead men up in hammacos with a shot at their feet. All of you ought to be weeping, not cheering. Not a bloody gun fired by you – and the Dons hit us with two broadsides. Tinkers and tailors, that’s what you are! Canecutters and sons of whores! I’d put you all back in the Bridewell if I had my way!”
As soon as he paused for breath Mrs Judd’s penetrating voice came across the deck. “Any more of that Saxby, an’ you sleep on your own!”
The threat was more than enough to silence the master, who bustled forward, calling for his assistant Simpson to come with him to inspect the damage.
Suddenly he was shouting again. “Carpenters, where are those bloody carpenters? Quick, get below and sound the well, we might have taken a shot ’twixt wind and water and be sinking!”
“I’ve sounded,” one of the carpenters said in an offended voice. “Just like you said after we’ve been shot at. Straightaway I sounded the well. You said –”
“What did you find, you whoreson?” screamed Saxby, thoroughly exasperated.
“None,” the man said crossly, and Mrs Judd, bending over one of the wounded, lifted her head to deliver an ultimatum.
“One more paddywhack like that Saxby and your hammaco’ll be as busy as a monk’s cell for the rest of this voyage.”
Grumbling to himself Saxby began to walk round the Griffin’s decks, noting shot-torn bulwarks, a dismounted gun, a deck scored deep by a roundshot that by chance came through the bulwark one side, gouged its way across the deck planks without hitting guns or fittings, and smashed its way out through the bulwark the other side.
Ned looked round for Aurelia, realizing guiltily that he had given her no thought from the moment Saxby had ordered everyone below. Now he saw her with Mrs Judd and the other women, bandaging the wounded while seamen waited to carry them below.
The only man on board with nothing to do, it seemed, was the Griffin’s owner. He walked aft and leaned against the taffrail, looking astern at the dismasted guarda costa, whose hull was now almost out of sight behind the swell waves pushed up by the Trade winds. Then he looked at the distant pearl-grey rippling mountains of the Spanish Main. He thought of Saxby’s first angry words when the men began cheering them. The man was right: every one of them, Ned himself included but leaving aside Saxby and Burton, were a sorry crowd of canecutters who had no business at sea until they had learned a great deal more.
While the Griffin steered westward towards Curaçao she skirted a chain of islands which, lying more than a hundred miles off the Main and parallel with the shore, stretched for five hundred miles. Saxby was careful to note down the names as they came in sight. Most of them were uninhabited cays, some great rocks and others patches of coral and sand. His slate already recorded Isla la Orchila, Cayo Grande, Cayo Sale and Islas de Aves when he warned the lookout to watch for Bonaire. This, the first of the three islands used by the Dutch, was the one they would see before Curaçao, and by the time Bonaire was in sight decisions had to taken.
The cabin appeared even smaller than usual. Aurelia swung in her hammaco, Ned sat crossways in the bunk, while Saxby and Burton sat on the cabin sole, their backs resting against the bulkhead.
None was cheerful; an hour earlier they and everyone on board the Griffin had attended the funerals of the four men killed by the guarda costa’s broadsides. Finding that in the rush to leave Barbados no one had remembered a prayerbook, Saxby had spoken as much of the funeral service as he could remember, and the hammacos with their now rigid contents had been slid over the side by tilting a plank.
Mrs Judd’s report on the fourteen wounded had been more hopeful: only one was in any danger; the other thirteen had been cut by flying splinters and five of them would be able to work next day with bandages protecting the wounds.
Yorke had earlier visited the men in their hammacos and at first found them shamefaced at having been wounded while the Griffin had not fired a shot in reply. They explained that by the time they had lifted out the half-portlids, primed the guns (they had been left loaded) and run them out, the guarda costa was alongside and firing. It would not happen again, they assured him; once their cuts were healed they were going to practise and practise so that even a seagull would not pass unscathed. Burton, as armourer and gunner, and the man responsible for the training so far, was equally shamefaced and obviously, it seemed to Yorke, took the entire blame for the fact that they had been caught unawares.
“It’s happened and we’ve learned our lesson,” Yorke said, but Burton was not to be consoled.
“I should have advised you and Mr Saxby that the ship’s company must be at general quarters when we’re sailing past a headland like that. It’s an obvious place for a trap. The fact is,” he admitted like a small boy owning up to scrumping a neighbour’s apples (Yorke was amused to find how easily the old Kentish word came to mind), “everything went so easily at Carúpano that I thought the Dons were glad to see us… They bought all they wanted and didn’t haggle too much.”
“It was that mayor, I’ll be bound,” Saxby growled. “Always beware of greedy people who smile: they’re really only showing their teeth. He sent a warning to them at Cumaná.”
Aurelia coughed delicately – far too delicately for Ned not to look up inquiringly. “I was thinking,” she said gently, “that we know what happened and why, and we sold about a tenth of our goods at Carúpano for a good price. We are sailing westward, I know, but where are we really going? What are we going to do until we learn a great deal more about smuggling or buccaneering, or piracy – the name hardly matters? We cannot sail on and on… We lose the, comment dit-on, the weather page.”
“Gage. Yes, you are quite right and you’ve put it fairly,” Ned said. “It was no one’s fault – certainly not yours, Burton, and but for you, Saxby, that damned guarda costa would have kept on circling us like a dog worrying a sheep until she’d sunk us. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me – I own the ship and I started off something about which I knew nothing…”
“I suggested smuggling,” Aurelia said.
“And I proposed piracy,” Saxby added.
“And I agreed to both,” Ned said, “and no doubt if s
omeone else had suggested barratry I’d have agreed to that too, though I’m not quite sure what it means.”
“The master or crew stealing from the cargo,” Saxby said.
“Hmm, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Anyway,” Ned said firmly, “from this moment any blame rests on me and no one else.”
“No one answered my question,” Aurelia observed.
Ned looked at Saxby. “Do you have any ideas?”
“None, sir. We could call at Curaçao and see if the Dutch will buy any of our goods.”
“True, but once we have sold our goods we are back with Mrs Wilson’s question of two days ago: then what do we do? Although we didn’t answer the question then, we seem to have had it answered for us now.”
Saxby looked puzzled. “I suppose so, sir, but…well, what was the answer?” He shook his head like a bull confused by a small barking dog which would not be still for long enough to provide a target.
Ned looked at Aurelia. He found that more frequently he was turning to her not so much for advice as for comments and criticisms that showed a different point of view. Her womanliness and her Frenchness seemed to provide a calm logic that the rest of them lacked. Perhaps it was simply that she was a woman; the French logic was, in his experience, a cloak Frenchmen draped over themselves when they indulged in what anyone else would call sneering.
“We are not at war with the Dutch,” she said. “Why should we not call at Curaçao and see what we can learn from them?”
“The mynheers don’t give away owt for nowt!”
Aurelia’s eyebrows raised at Saxby’s comment and he gave a rumbling laugh.
“Owt for nowt?” she repeated.
Ned said, “Comes from ‘aught for naught’, but they pronounce it differently in the north of England. What he’s really saying is they do not give away anything for nothing; they need something in return.”
“They are good tradesmen!”
Burton said diffidently: “Perhaps it would help if we went in to buy something. We have spare money now!”
“Water is what we want,” Saxby said. “Water and salt meat.”
“The Dutch will be selling salt fish,” Ned said. “They buy salt from the Spaniards, take it back to Holland, salt down the herrings they catch in the North Sea, and bring them back and sell it to the Dons.”
“Fresh herrings,” Saxby said wistfully. “Fried in a nice batter. This fish out here – no guts to it!”
“That is true, Edouard,” Aurelia said, as though Ned was disputing it.
“Yes. The reason is simple. The colder the water the tastier the fish. All the fish you French catch in the Mediterranean is so tasteless you have to hide it in a strong sauce. Out here in the tropics it is much worse – most of the fish are utterly tasteless, and no one bothers with a sauce.”
“There is much about food that is beyond my understanding,” Aurelia said. “White meat and red meat, for instance. In England and out here, white meat is considered fit only for the servants, and red meat is for their masters. Why? I like poultry. A slice of turkey or a slice of beef – pour moi the white meat!”
“Me, too,” said Saxby. “That’s one of the reasons I prefer to eat with the servants.”
“Ha – tongue seasoned with herbs, a kid ‘with a pudden in its belly’, a fricassee of pork, sucking pig, a loin of veal stuffed with limes, oranges and lemons,” Ned said. “You’d exchange all that for a scrawny fowl?”
“Curaçao,” Aurelia said. “Will we be able to buy water there?”
Saxby shook his head doubtfully. “From what I’ve heard, it’s all flat and sandy, covered with divi-divi trees and goats, and it rarely rains.”
“That’s why the Spaniards don’t bother with it, I suppose,” Burton commented. “But there’s no need for us to know they’re short of water until after we’ve arrived. We can have a good look…”
Yorke nodded. “Very well, we’ll go to Curaçao, but I don’t expect the Dutch to reveal any of their secrets to us.” He thought for a few moments, and then added: “I’m not sure there are any secrets. I think we went into Carúpano in the normal way. The Spaniards seemed to know what to do, especially the mayor. Had we been Dutch I don’t think he would have betrayed us. Somehow he guessed we were English.”
“Or French – from my accent,” Aurelia said.
“Possibly, but it does not matter. The Dutch probably have the smuggling monopoly – or perhaps they will take goods in exchange, instead of insisting on money, as we did. The traders in Carúpano might have had warehouses full of hides.”
Ned tapped the bunkboard with his fingers. “Yes, that’s what we have to learn about smuggling: when to take cash and when to take goods in exchange.”
Aurelia gave her hammaco a violent push. “You men!” she exclaimed crossly. “You should leave all this to Mrs Judd, Mrs Bullock and myself. You keep on talking about learning about smuggling, but you forget that even if you were the most skilful smugglers on the Main, you have only one cargo to smuggle and nowhere else to buy more goods. Let me put it into simple language that a man can understand. You have an anker of brandy and you own a tavern, as I’ve told you before. You sell the brandy mug by mug, and put the money in your pocket. Soon the anker is empty of brandy but your pocket is full of money. What do you do then?”
She gave the hammaco another angry push. “You cannot buy more brandy because there is none to buy. You can use the money in your pocket to buy so much food, but after a month you have eaten it and you have no more money.
“Now, mes gars, what do you do? If you were in England you would end up in the debtors’ prison. The Marshalsea, non? Well, you are in the Caribbee Sea, not the Marshalsea, but the problem is the same.
Saxby chuckled and said: “That was an old joke – a man pretending he was a seaman was said to have cruised the Marshalsea.”
“Mr Saxby,” Aurelia said sternly, “Mrs Judd, Mrs Bullock, myself and the other three women are determined to stay out of the Marshalsea or any Spanish, Dutch or French equivalent, so will you apply yourself to the problem.”
“My apologies, ma’am, I ramble on, and certainly we do –”
“Mr Saxby!”
“Curaçao, ma’am!” the master said harshly. “To see what we can find out.”
“I agree,” Burton said hurriedly, alarmed at his first sight of Mrs Wilson being both French and determined.
“Me, too,” said Ned. “So we are all agreed.”
“Oh no!” Aurelia said. “You are thinking of Curaçao as a confessional! You go in, explain your problem, the Dutch priest tells you to say six prayers and pay a fine, and off you go. But where do you go? To the Marshalsea! There is nothing, nothing, nothing that the Dutch can tell you that will avoid that.”
She sat up in the hammaco her legs out over the side and glared at Ned. She pointed a finger at him as though it was a pistol, her aim, Ned noticed, constant despite the rolling of the ship making the hammaco swing.
“You have the ecstasy of the bankrupt or the repentant sinner!”
“The what?” asked a startled Ned.
“Oh, I have seen it so often. The sinner goes to confession, gets forgiven, and walks down the road with a smile on his face and his heart full of fine intentions. The bankrupt is freed by a friend’s charity, walks away from the debtors’ jail with a smile on his face, the slam of the door music in his heart, which is equally full of fine intentions. The fine intentions disappear with the setting sun…”
Ned wondered how often she had forgiven Wilson for some vileness, heard him express “fine intentions” and seen them vanish at sunset. “Which are we, sinners or bankrupts?” he asked ironically.
“You have the sheepish look of both,” she said, relenting slightly, “but you are bankrupts. You are bankrupt of ideas. If you had any ideas, you would be
sinners – and that is something we would welcome!”
Ned looked at the other two men and shrugged his shoulders. “Apart from piracy, when we have improved our gunnery and shiphandling, I have no ideas.”
“Nor me,” said Saxby. “We need to drink some ale with these Dutchmen and see what we can learn.”
Burton nodded, obviously relieved that Mrs Wilson was raising no objection.
Saxby and Burton were just leaving the cabin when an excited yell of “Sail ho!” came from aloft and the master pushed Burton aside as he pounded up the companionway, bellowing up at the masthead lookout: “Where away?”
Yorke arrived on deck to find Saxby staring over the larboard bow and then telling the lookout to shout down a description because the ship was not in sight yet from the deck.
Fifteen minutes later, most of which Burton had spent up the mast, it was established that the ship now coming into sight was a sloop perhaps half the size of the Griffin and probably making for Curaçao from the Main.
Saxby was taking no risks this time: the guns were loaded, the arms chests containing the muskets and pistols brought up from below, and Burton watched carefully as they were loaded and made sure each man had a spanning key to wind up the mainspring.
The strange sail was obviously behaving warily, careful to get across the Griffin’s bow so that she could not be cut off from Curaçao. Then she dropped her jib and partly brailed her mainsail, obviously waiting for the Griffin to come up to her, but ready in an instant to hoist her jib and let fall the mainsail and escape should the Griffin prove to be an enemy.
“We’ll stay on this course,” Saxby announced. “She’s scared of us but curious. There’s something about the shape of the hull that makes me think she was built in England. And that being so, I reckon she’ll be thinking the same about us.”
“Or could have been captured by the Spanish,” Yorke said.