by Tim Severin
'Here, give me a hand,' he called out. A second crew man, obviously one of Duill's cronies, ran forward. He stumbled momentarily, and gave a whooping laugh. The two drunks took the priest by the shoulders and feet and began to swing him back and forth between them like a heavy sack. 'One, two and away,' they chanted, and with a drunken cheer heaved the body over the rail and into the sea. Then they toppled against one another and broke into boozy laughter.
'Savages!' murmured Ringrose. He had risen to his feet and had gone pale.
'The priest was still alive,' groaned Hector. He felt that he was going to vomit.
Ringrose gripped his arm. 'Steady, Lynch. Remember where we are. Look at the men.'
The crew of the Trinity were staring at the patch of blood on the deck. Many of them were silent and thoughtful. But at least a score of them were grinning broadly. Suddenly Hector remembered Peralta's warning. They were like a wolf pack gloating over a kill. They had enjoyed the spectacle.
* * *
'Of course he knew his pistol was loaded,' said Jacques. It was just after sunset on the evening of the murder, and the four friends were gathered by the lee rail to discuss the atrocity. 'In the toughest Paris gangs the leader would select one of his men at random and order him to slit a throat or break an innocent head. If the man refused or delayed, then he was likely to suffer that same fate himself. That was the gang leader's way to gain respect and impose his authority.' 'But I was tricked,' said Jezreel.
'Sharpe's more cunning. He has shown the crew that he's ruthless, and at the same time made sure that he does not have blood on his own hands.'
'So why did he pick on me?' added Jezreel. His face set hard. 'Why was I the one selected to do the job?'
'Because he wants to bind us to him,' said Dan quietly. The others looked at the Miskito in surprise. It was rare for him to make any comment. Immediately, he had their complete attention. 'Remember when Coxon refused to include Hector in his group returning to Golden Island? We stuck together, Coxon was made to look a fool, and several of the other men came over to our side. Sharpe doesn't want that happening to him when he is in charge.'
Hector was beginning to understand the point that Dan was making. 'So you think Sharpe was making sure we stay on Trinity?
Dan nodded. 'Several men have already approached me to ask if I was satisfied with Sharpe as general. They are plotting to depose him by vote. If that fails, they are planning to leave the expedition.'
'You mean that if we went with them back to the Caribbean, word of the priest's death is sure to get out and Jezreel could finish up on the gallows in Port Royal.'
'Sharpe knows that we stay together as a group, and he needs us,' Dan said, and his unhurried manner of speaking gave his words all the more weight. 'Consider who we are. When it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, no one aboard this vessel is more skilled than Jezreel. The men look up to him. They like him to be on their side when we send out a boarding party. Hector is the best interpreter. Plenty of others can speak some Spanish, but Hector has a knack of getting along well with the Spaniards, men like Peralta. They confide in him.'
'What about Jacques, surely there's nothing special about him?' said Jezreel showing a glimmer of his usual banter.
Dan gave a faint smile. 'Surely you know that on a ship a good cook is more valuable than a good captain.' The smile vanished, to be replaced by a solemn expression. 'As for myself, there are only two Miskito strikers left with the expedition. Without us the company would be even hungrier than they are now. And starving men are discontents.'
That was true enough, thought Hector. Finding enough food to satisfy Trinity's large crew was a constant problem.
'Capitan Peralta said to me as far back as Panama that the expedition would disintegrate,' he said.
'This is worse than when I killed a man in a prize fight,' said Jezreel glumly, looking down at his hands. 'At least that was in a fit of rage. This time I have been made a dupe.'
'The situation is not hopeless,' Hector comforted him. 'Given enough time, the death of the priest will be forgotten or
perhaps Sharpe's double-dealing will be exposed. But for the moment our general holds the advantage. However unwilling we may be, he has bound us to him, just as Dan says, and we must wait until matters right themselves.'
TWELVE
Hector watched Bartholomew Sharpe throw himself a double four. Passage was a brutally simple game of dice but well suited to the gamblers aboard Trinity. They wanted to wager their loot with the least effort and the quickest results. The rules were straightforward: three dice and two players. The first player to get a double using only two of the dice, then threw the third. If the total on all three dice was more than ten, that man won. Ten or under and he lost.
The captain threw again, a five, and reached out to sweep up the coins wagered by his opponent. As he transferred his winnings into a purse, he became aware of Hector standing behind him. 'What do you want?' Sharpe asked brusquely, turning to glare at the young man. Hector detected a moment of unease in his captain's eyes and the briefest flicker of dislike. It was enough to make him wonder if his new captain might become just as much a threat as Captain Coxon, as dangerous but more subtle.
'A word in private, please.'
Sharpe treated his gambling victim to a shrug of false sympathy. 'That's enough for today. I've won back all the money I lent you, and you'll need more plunder before we play again.'
He deliberately left his dice on the capstan head. It was not something he would have risked with more sophisticated gamblers in London or professional players though the three dice were masterpieces of the counterfeiter's art. Two were paired delicately so they tended to come up with doubles. The other, of course, was adjusted so it gave a high number. It was that last dice which had a very slight discolouration of one of the pips, just enough for Captain Sharpe to recognise. Naturally he always took care that he lost several throws before he began to use the three dice in the correct sequence, and now after two months of gambling he judged that he personally held fully ten per cent of all the plunder taken on the cruise.
'Well, what is it?' he asked gruffly as he and Hector moved out of earshot of the gamblers.
'There's a risk of a prisoner uprising,' Hector told him.
'Why so?'
'Because we don't have enough men to supervise the prisoners properly.'
The captain looked hard at Hector. 'Anything else?'
'Yes. It's not just the numbers of prisoners. We've been keeping back those who are wealthy or were officers on the ships we captured.'
'Of course. They were the only ones worth holding.'
'They are the ones most likely to organise an uprising.'
Sharpe made no reply, but looked out across the sea. The sinking sun had coloured the underbellies of the clouds a deep and angry red. It was as though a great fire had been lit beyond the horizon. It reminded Bartholomew Sharpe of the unsatisfactory outcome to the raid on the mainland a fortnight earlier. The Spaniards had already retreated into the hills, taking their valuables with them. He had threatened to burn down their houses and farms unless protection money was paid, but the Spaniards were astute. They dragged out the negotiations until they had gathered enough soldiers to chase the buccaneers back to the beach. In their frustration the raiders torched the farms anyhow.
A few days later forty members of his crew, dissatisfied with the poor progress of the venture, had left Trinity. They had sailed away on a captured bark, heading north on the return journey to the Caribbean. Barely a hundred members of the original expedition remained, and that was not enough to deter a revolt among the prisoners.
'What do you propose we do?' he asked Hector.
'Set the prisoners free.'
Sharpe gave Hector a calculating glance. Here was an opportunity to gain the young man's trust. The captain was aware that he and his friends were suspicious and resentful of him. But the trick with the loaded pistol had been a necessity. It had impressed the crew and
cowed the Spaniards.
'Are you suggesting this because you are friendly with Captain Peralta?'
'No. I think it would be a prudent action.'
Sharpe thought for a moment. 'Very well. Next time we come to land, you will see that I can be generous, even with my enemies.' In fact he had already decided several days earlier to rid himself of the captives. No one seemed willing to pay a ransom for them, and they had become so many useless mouths to feed.
'Rocks! Rocks! Dead Ahead!' the lookout suddenly bellowed. Sharpe looked up in surprise. The note of alarm in the man's voice indicated that he had been dozing at his post and suddenly seen the danger. 'Reefs! Breaking water! No more than a quarter mile away.'
'Ringrose!' Sharpe shouted. 'What do you make of it?'
'Impossible! We're thirty miles off the coast,' exclaimed Ringrose who had taken a sun sight earlier in the day. He jumped up on the rail and shaded his eyes as he peered forward. 'I wish to God we had a decent chart. This groping about in the unknown is madness. One night we'll run ourselves full tilt onto a reef in the dark and never know what happened.'
'Rocks to starboard as well!' The lookout's voice was shrill with panic. This time his shout caused a surge of activity aboard Trinity. There was the noise of running feet as men appeared on the deck and rushed into the bows and gazed forward trying to identify the danger. 'Bear away to port,' Sharpe called out to the helmsman, 'and reduce sail.' The order was unnecessary. Men were already easing out the main sheets and bracing round the yards. Others were standing by the reefing tackles.
'White water to port!' roared a sailor. He was pointing, open-mouthed with alarm. There was a foaming patch on the surface of the sea no more than a hundred paces beside Trinity. The galleon had sailed herself into a trap. There were reefs on each side and ahead, and little room to manoeuvre. 'Bring her head to wind!' snapped Sharpe to the steersman.
'Lucky she's so nimble,' said Ringrose beside Hector as Trinity s bow turned into the wind, the sails came aback against the mast in an untidy tangle of ropes and sails, and the galleon came to a halt, gathered sternway and began to fall off on the opposite tack.
'Merde! Look there behind us! We sailed right over those rocks and never saw them.' Jacques had arrived on the quarterdeck and was gazing back towards the expanse of sea which the galleon had just negotiated. That too was boiling up in a white froth.
Beside him, Dan began to chuckle. Jacques looked at him in astonishment. 'What's so funny? We're boxed in by rocks!'
Dan shook his head. He was smiling. 'Not rocks . . . fish!'
Jacques scowled at him and then turned back to stare again at the sea. One of the foaming reefs had disappeared, abruptly sunk beneath the waves. But another had taken its place, fifty paces from the spot. There too the water was boiling upward.
'What do you mean . . . fish?'
Dan held up his hand, finger and thumb no more than three inches apart. 'Fish, small fish. More than you can count.'
Hector was concentrating on a nearby white patch. It was definitely on the move and coming closer to the ship. A moment later he saw that it was formed of myriads of tiny fish, millions upon millions of them, weaving and flashing and churning in a dense mass which occasionally broke the surface of the sea in a white spuming flurry. 'Anchovies!' cried Jacques.
There was relieved laughter from all around Trinity as the crew realised their error. 'Resume course!' ordered Sharpe. He, as much as anyone else, had been misled, but he had noted how the crew had taken matters into their hands in the imagined crisis. They had not consulted him, nor waited for orders. It was time that he found something to distract them.
He sent for the gentleman prisoner, Tomas de Argandona. The Spaniard was much less self-assured now that he had witnessed the shooting of the priest, and Sharpe was waiting in his cabin with a pistol lying on his desk. One glance and Argandona told Sharpe what he wanted to know: the nearest town on the mainland was La Serena and wealthy enough to have five churches and two convents. It lay two miles inland and had neither a garrison nor a defensive wall. A watchtower overlooked the closest anchorage but there was an unguarded landing beach some distance away. Small boats could put men ashore there and it was no more than a three-hour march to reach the town.
The general council held on the open deck the following morning went just as smoothly. The men voted overwhelmingly in favour of a raid.
'I propose John Watling to lead the attack,' Sharpe announced after Gifford, the quartermaster, had counted the show of hands. 'He lands with fifty men and takes the town by surprise. I then bring Trinity into the main anchorage and we ferry the plunder aboard.'
Looking on, Hector knew that Sharpe was being as wily as ever. Hector had seen little of Watling since the day they had been in the same canoe during the attack on Panama, but he knew Watling was popular with the men. He had sailed with
Morgan and they would follow him without question. He was one of those rigid, grim, old-fashioned Puritans who detested Catholics and observed the Sabbath scrupulously. Also, as Hector had noted, Sharpe had never been able to cheat Watling at dice, because he never gambled.
'Looks as though we were expected,' Dan said under his breath. He, Jezreel and Hector had come ashore with Watling's raiders as soon as there was enough daylight to approach the landing beach safely. Now they were trudging along the dusty coastal track that would lead them to La Serena. Jacques had been left behind with a dozen men to guard the boats.
Hector followed the Miskito's glance. From a spur of high ground overlooking the track a horseman was watching them. He made no attempt to conceal himself.
'There goes our chance of surprise,' Jezreel commented.
Hector scanned the countryside. The day was promising to be overcast and very humid, and the raiders were advancing across rolling scrubland. Occasionally the path dipped into small gullies washed out by rainstorms. It was ideal terrain for an ambush, and there was a faint whiff of smoke in the air. He wondered if the Spaniards who farmed the area were burning their crops to prevent them falling into the hands of the raiders.
Suddenly there were shouts from the head of the column, and someone came running back, urging everyone to close up and look to their weapons. Hector brought his musket off his shoulder, checked that it was loaded and primed and that the ball had not been dislodged from the barrel, then placed the hammer at half-cock. Holding the gun in both hands he walked cautiously forward, Hector and Dan at his side.
The track had been no more than the width of a cart but now it broadened out as it entered a clearing in the scrub. The bushes had been cut back for a distance of some fifty paces, and at the edge of the clearing were several clumps of low trees.
'Lancers over there, hiding in the woods!' warned someone. 'How many?' called a buccaneer.
'Don't know. At least a couple of dozen. Form up in a square and look lively.'
At that moment came the sound of muskets, no more than a dozen shots. There were puffs of smoke from the bushes farthest from the column and Hector heard bullets flying overhead. But the shots went wide and no one was hurt. He dropped on one knee and aimed his gun towards a bush where he could see the haze of musket smoke still hanging above the leaves. He could not make out the man who had fired, and waited for him to show himself. Away to his right he heard several shots as the buccaneers saw their targets.
Hector's arm was beginning to ache as he tried to keep his gun trained on the suspect bush. The muzzle was wavering, but he was reluctant to waste a shot. It would take a long time to reload, and in that interval the cavalry might show themselves.
Seconds later, the Spanish cavalry burst from the thickets. They crashed out in a wild charge and rode straight for the formation of buccaneers. There must have been about sixty or seventy of the riders mounted on small, light-boned horses. A few riders held pistols which they discharged as they came careering forward, and Hector glimpsed one man brandishing a blunderbuss. But the majority were armed only with twelve-foot lances.
Whooping and cheering they galloped forward in a confused mass, hoping to skewer their enemy. Hector swung the muzzle of his gun to aim into the charging body of riders. None of the Spaniards wore uniform or armour. These were not professional troopers, but farmers and cattlemen seeking to protect their property.
He selected his target — a stout, red-faced cavalier astride a dun horse with a white blaze — and pulled the trigger. In the confusion and through the gun smoke he could not see whether his shot went home.
He rose to his feet, placed the butt of his musket on the ground, and plucked a new powder charge from the cartouche box on his belt. Beside him Jezreel was doing the same. Vaguely Hector sensed that the Spaniards' attack had come to nothing. A scatter of horsemen was galloping back towards the shelter of the woods. One or two bodies had been left lying on the ground, and a riderless horse came tearing past, reins hanging loose, the bucket-shaped saddle empty. Hector charged and primed his gun, selected a musket ball from the bag hanging from his waist and dropped it down the barrel. He was about to tamp the bullet home with his ramrod when, beside him, Jezreel said, 'No time for that!' Hector watched his companion lift his musket a few inches off the ground and slam the butt down sharply so the bullet came up hard against the wadding. 'Saves a few seconds,' grinned Jezreel, as he dropped back on one knee and brought the weapon to his shoulder. 'Now let them come at us again.'
But the skirmish was over. The Spaniards had withdrawn. They had lost four men, while not one of Watling's group had been wounded. 'Honour satisfied, I think,' said Jezreel. 'I feel sorry for them. One of their lancers was carrying nothing more than a sharpened cattle prod.'
The column moved forward, more cautiously now, and two miles farther on arrived at the outskirts of La Serena. It was the first Spanish colonial town that Hector had ever entered, and he was struck by the mathematical precision of the place. Compared to the haphazard jumble of Port Royal with its narrow lanes and dogleg streets, La Serena was a model of careful planning. Broad straight avenues were laid out in an exact grid, every intersection was a precise right angle, each house stood at the same distance from its neighbour, and their frontages matched as if in mirrors. Even the town fountain was located at the geometrical centre of the market square. The two-storey houses were of pale yellow sandstone and most of them had carved wooden balconies, studded double doors and heavy shutters. Occasionally there was a glimpse of a garden or small orchard behind a boundary wall, or the ornate bell tower of a church rising above the red-tiled roofs. Everything was solid, neat and substantial. But what made La Serena seem to be an architect's concept rather than a living township was that the town was empty. There was not a single living creature in its streets.