by Tim Severin
Watling's rabble slowly advanced. Occasionally a man would halt and double over, vomiting in the road. Others stumbled and tripped. One fell flat on his face in the dust before he was pulled back to his feet by a comrade. Soon the gaggle of drunken looters were level with the gully where the Spaniards waited in ambush, and for one alarming moment Hector saw a buccaneer break away from the group and run to the side of the road. If he stumbled into the ambush, a massacre would follow. The man was clawing at his breeches as he ran, and he must have been caught short, for before he reached the roadside, he suddenly squatted and defecated in the dust. Gorged on too much fresh fruit from the gardens of La Serena, Hector thought grimly, as the man pulled up his breeches and broke into a weaving run to rejoin the column.
'Canoes ready on the beach,' Jacques called up from the foot of the tower. At last some of Watling's men had noticed the row of figures standing on the parapet. Faces turned up as the returning buccaneers began to wonder what was happening. Others were pointing, and Jezreel and the rearguard could be seen bringing their muskets to the ready. Hector stepped forward, hoping that he would be recognised, and waved at them, urging them to hurry down the final slope to the waiting canoes.
'Don't move!' Hector snapped at his hostages. 'We stay here until everyone is safe back to the ship.'
One of the Spaniards shifted on his feet and asked mockingly, 'And what about you, how will you leave?'
Hector did not answer. Watling's party were sliding and stumbling down the slope towards the beach. He could hear the crunch and clatter of the shingle beneath their feet and, amazingly, a snatch of drunken song. Some of the buccaneers still did not understand the danger they were in. From his vantage point Hector saw Jacques emerge from the base of the tower below him and run forward and speak urgently to Jezreel. Watling was beside him. A sense of urgency finally spread through the entire group. Some of them turned to face inland, reaching for their muskets.
Hector looked towards the ridge at the top of the beach. Now it was lined with dozens of Spanish soldiers. More and more armed men were appearing out of ravines and dips in the ground, or pushing out from the bushes. There must have been at least four companies of soldiers, and they were well disciplined and trained for they took up their positions in orderly formation, looking down on the buccaneers as they splashed out into the shallows and began loading their booty into the canoes. If anything went wrong now, the beach would become a killing ground.
A sudden flurry of movement, and Hector saw Jezreel reach out and wrest a gun away from a drunken buccaneer. He must have been preparing to fire a shot in bravado.
The loaded canoes began leaving the beach, heading towards Trinity. Only the smallest one was left, and Jezreel was standing up to his knees in the water holding the bow steady, waiting for him.
From below, a group of men came into view. They were the Spaniards whom Jacques had been holding captive. They were running towards the militiamen at the top of the slope. As they ran they were gesticulating and shouting out that they were Spanish, calling on the soldiers not to shoot. Now the only remaining prisoners were the half dozen men with Hector on the roof of the tower.
He went over the row of hostages, and raised the nooses from their necks. He crossed to the ladder which led down from the roof and began to climb down the rungs. As his head came level with the flat roof, he took out his knife and cut the cords which bound the ladder in place. Reaching the foot of the ladder, he pulled it clear. It would take several minutes for the prisoners to free themselves and still they would be trapped in the tower.
Continuing down the ladders, Hector removed each one as he descended. Reaching the ground, he walked out of the door and onto the beach. He was alone. To his right Jezreel waited with the canoe. To his left, no more than fifty paces away, stood the line of Spanish soldiers. They had advanced down the slope in open formation, muskets ready. Hector remembered how he had gone forward under the white flag of truce to the palisade of Santa Maria. But this time he had no white flag, only his faith in Peralta.
Someone stepped out from the Spanish line. It was Peralta himself. He came down the slope of beach, unarmed, his face sad.
'Your people have gutted La Serena,' he said. 'But I am grateful to you for making sure that my colleagues and I were released unharmed.' Behind him, Hector heard Jacques shouting that Trinity was weighing anchor and they must leave now if they were to reach the ship in time. Peralta stared into his eyes and his gaze was Unflinching.
'You may tell your captain that the next time he tries to raid us, he and his men will not be so lucky. Now go.'
Hector did not know how to answer. For a moment he stood where he was, conscious of the hostility of the Spanish soldiers fingering their guns and Peralta's flinty tone. Then he turned, walked down the beach and climbed into the waiting canoe.
THIRTEEN
Hector had grown accustomed to the constant moaning and braying, barking and hissing, bubbling and trumpeting. The clamour had been in the background from the day Trinity arrived at the island exactly two weeks after the withdrawal from La Serena. The hubbub came from hundreds upon hundreds of large furry seals which lounged and fought and squabbled on the rocks. There were so many of the creatures and they were so sure of their possession that when the sailors first landed, the men had to force their way through the ranks of fishy-smelling beasts, clubbing them aside. The largest of the bull seals, gross lords and terrors of their harems, had resented the intrusion. They rushed furiously at the strangers, silver manes swollen, long yellow fangs bared, grunting and roaring hoarsely until the seamen fired pistols down their angry pink throats. The dark, almost black seal meat had been welcome at first, but the men soon tired of the taste. Now, if a seal was killed, the carcass was left to rot.
Sharpe had brought Trinity to Juan Fernandez at the crew's angry insistence. After the disappointment of La Serena the men had voted to spend Christmas there, far from the constant threat of vengeful Spanish cruisers. Hector wondered how sailors had known about the remote, mountainous island. Juan Fernandez lay 400 miles from the South American coast, and the South Sea was an uncharted mystery to all but the Spaniards. Yet there were men aboard Trinity who were aware that this bleak, unfrequented place offered a refuge. He supposed that somehow in the taverns of European ports and Caribbean harbours where sailors gathered, men talked of the island and how they had been able to recruit their strength there, repair their vessels, and relax.
When Trinity arrived on a grey, windswept day in early December the island was uninhabited. But it was obvious that people had visited Juan Fernandez because someone had stocked the place with goats. The animals had thrived and wild herds of them roamed the broken scrub-covered uplands. Their flesh was much to be preferred to seal meat, so Dan and the other remaining striker, another Miskito named Will, went off daily with their muskets and came back with goat carcasses draped over their shoulders. However, it was Jacques who had provided the most certain proof that other sailors had used the island as a resting place. Shortly after landing, he had come hurrying back, beaming with pleasure and brandishing a handful of various leaves and plants. 'Herbs and vegetables!' he crowed. 'Someone planted a garden here and left it behind to grow! Look! Turnips, salads, green stuff!'
The crew of Trinity had quickly made themselves comfortable. They draped spare sails over the branches of trees to make tents, set up frames on which they barbecued goat meat and fish, filled their water jars at the stream which emptied across a beach of small boulders and into the bay. On Christmas Day itself Jacques had cooked the entire company a great dish of lobsters, broiling them over the fire. He insisted on calling them langoustes, and they crawled in the shallows of the bay in such numbers that one had only to wade out into the chilly water and gather them by hand, dozens at a time. For their vegetable the company had eaten finely sliced strips of tree cabbage cut from the tender head of sprouting palms.
Yet the atmosphere continued to be very sour and unhappy. The crew g
rumbled about the lack of plunder. The sack of La Serena had yielded barely 500 pounds' weight of silver to be divided between nearly 140 men. They felt this was a paltry sum for all the risks they had taken, and it made matters worse that many of the malcontents had gambled away their booty in the long, dull sea days that followed. By the time they reached Juan Fernandez, a majority of the dice and card players were virtually penniless, and they muttered darkly that they had been swindled. When they did so, they looked towards Captain Sharpe. Unable to prove it, they were sure that he had somehow gulled them.
To leave behind the bickering and the acrimony of the camp, Hector had got into the habit of going for a long walk each day. From the pleasant glen where the sailors had set up their shelters, a narrow goat track climbed steeply inland, leaving behind the groves of sandalwood and stands of pimento trees and passing up through dense thickets of brush. The path doubled back and forth, and after the long weeks spent on board ship he found that his legs were quickly tired by the demands of the steep ascent. Now his leg muscles were aching, and it would take him another hour of hard climbing to reach the crest of the narrow ridge where he liked to spend a few moments looking out over the ocean, quietly contemplating. This morning he needed to hurry because there was to be a general council of the expedition at noon, and he wanted to be back in time to attend. The men were to vote whether Bartholomew Sharpe was to continue as their general and — equally important — what was to happen when Trinity left the island.
Hector took deep breaths as he scrambled upward. In places the bushes grew so close together that he had to force his way through, the branches snagging at his clothes. Occasionally he caught the distinctive acrid smell of goat hanging in the air, and once he startled a small herd, three billies and as many she-goats, which ran up the path ahead of him with their odd mincing stride, before plunging aside into the thickets and disappearing. As he ascended, the sounds of the seal colonies grew fainter and fainter from below, and whenever he stopped to turn and look down into the bay, Trinity looked increasingly small and insignificant until finally a turn in the path meant that he could no longer see the ship at all. From now on he might as well have been alone in the entire world. To his left rose a mist-shrouded mountain, a gloomy square mass with the shape of a gigantic anvil. On his right the island was a densely forested jumble of ravines and cliffs and spurs and ridges which were impenetrable to anyone except an expert hunter.
Eventually he reached his destination, the narrow saddle of the ridge joining the anvil mountain to the wilderness, and sat down to rest. The crest of the ridge was no more than a yard or two in breadth and the view to either side was magnificent. Ahead of him the ground dropped away in sheer scree and he was looking out over a wave-flecked ocean which spread out to a horizon of cobalt blue. When he turned in the opposite direction, he was facing into the sun and the surface of the sea became an enormous glittering silver sheet across which drifted dark shadows cast by the clouds. Everything seemed far, far away, and the high ridge was exposed to a wind which rushed past, swirling over the crest of land.
He sat in the lee of a great flat rock, clasped his arms around his knees, and gazed out to sea, trying to think of nothing, losing himself in the vastness of the great panorama before him.
He must have been sitting silently for five or ten minutes when he became aware of an occasional small black speck which sped past him, flitting through the air. To begin with, he thought the specks were a trick of his vision, and he blinked, then rubbed his eyes. But the phenomenon continued, momentary glimpses of some tiny flying object which came up from the scree slope behind him, moving so fast that it was impossible to identify, then vanished ahead, dipping down the slope in front of him. He concentrated his gaze on a clump of bushes a few paces below where he sat. That's where the flying specks seemed to disappear. Cautiously he eased himself off the ridge and, still seated, slid down towards the bush. There was a slight brushing sensation on his cheek as another of the little specks flew past, so close that he distinctly felt the wind of its passage. It vanished so quickly that he still could not identify what it was. He suspected it was some sort of flying insect, perhaps a grasshopper or a locust. He came to within an arm's length of the bush, and waited motionless. Sure enough, there was a quick darting movement as another of the flying specks came up from behind him, slowed in mid-air for an instant, then plunged in among the branches. Now he knew what it was: a tiny bird, no bigger than his thumb.
Another few moments passed, and then one of the diminutive creatures rose from within the bush. It ascended vertically and began to hover in the air, its wings moving in a blur. The bird was no more substantial than a large bumblebee and astonishingly beautiful. The feathers were green, white and brilliant blue. A moment later it was joined by a companion rising from the foliage. This time the plumage was a glossy dark maroon, the colour of drying blood, which glowed in the sunshine. A few heartbeats later and the two tiny creatures began to dance together in the air, circling and dipping, hovering to face one another for a few moments, then suddenly diving and turning and making short arcs and loops until they came together again and stayed hovering. Spellbound, Hector watched. He was sure that the two birds were male and female and they were performing a mating dance.
With a sudden pang of memory he recalled the last time he had seen a hummingbird. It had been just over a year ago with Susanna when they were travelling towards Port Royal and she had said he possessed the soul of an artist because he had compared the whirring sound made by the wings to the noise of a miniature spinning wheel. Now he listened carefully to the two birds dancing in the air before him. But he could hear nothing above the sound of the wind sighing over the ridge. An image of Susanna came to mind with painful clarity. He saw her dressed in a long, resplendent gown and attending a grand occasion in London where she had been taken by her father. She was dancing with her partner before a crowd of onlookers, all of them wealthy and sophisticated and of her own social standing. With an effort Hector tried to push the apparition out of his mind. He told himself that he was seated on a mountainside on the far side of the world, and this image of Susanna was entirely make-believe. He scarcely knew her. It did not matter what happened in the next months or years, whether he stayed with Trinity and her crew, whether he returned with riches or in poverty. Susanna was always going to be unattainable. His encounter with her would never be more than a chance meeting, however much it had affected him. He should learn from his moment of confusion when he had stood before the portrait of a young lady in La Serena and found himself uncertain of what exactly reminded him of Susanna. As more time passed, he would remember less and less of the true Susanna and what had happened during those few hours he had spent in her company. Instead he would substitute fantasy until everything about Susanna was make-believe. It was an irreversible process and his best course was to free himself of false hope. It was time he acknowledged that he was keeping alive an illusion that had no place in the true circumstances of his own life.
He shivered. A cloud had passed across the sun and the wind brought a momentary chill in the shadow. Robbed of sunlight, the plumage of the two dancing hummingbirds abruptly lost its irridescence and, as if sensing the change in his mood, they darted back into the foliage. Hector got to his feet and began to descend the path back to camp.
* * *
He arrived to find the general council already in session. The entire crew of Trinity was gathered in the glade where they had set up their tents. Watling was standing on a makeshift platform of water barrels and planks and haranguing them in his gruff soldierly voice.
'What's going on?' Hector asked quietly as he joined Jezreel and Jacques at the back of the crowd.
'Watling has just been elected our new general by a majority of twenty votes. They've turned Sharpe out and chosen Watling to replace him,' answered the big man. Hector peered over the shoulders of the men. Bartholomew Sharpe was in the front rank of the assembly, over to one side. He appeared rel
axed and unconcerned, his head tilted back as he listened to Watling's announcements, his soft round face inscrutable. Hector remembered how he had thought when he had first laid eyes on Sharpe that his fleshy lips reminded him of a fish, a carp, and there was still that same faint air of guile. Seemingly, Sharpe was unaffected by his abrupt dismissal from overall command but Hector wondered what was going on behind that bland exterior.
'We return to the ways of our gallant Captain Sawkins before his death,' Watling was saying loudly. 'Courage and comradeship will be our watchwords!'
There was a murmur of approval from one section of his audience. Among them Hector recognised several of the more brutish members of the crew.
'There will be no more blasphemy!' grated Watling. 'From now on we observe the Sabbath, and unnatural vice will be punished!' His tone had turned harsh and he was staring directly at someone in the crowd. Hector craned his neck to see who it was. Watling had singled out Edmund Cook, the fastidiously dressed leader of one of the companies that set out from Golden Island. Hector had heard a rumour that Cook had been found in bed one day with another man, but had dismissed the tale as mere gossip.
Watling was speaking again, barking out his words.
'Gambling is forbidden. Anyone who plays at cards or dice will have his share of plunder reduced . . .' Watling stopped abruptly, and suddenly his arm shot out as he pointed at Sharpe. 'Hand your dice to the quartermaster,' he ordered.