by Dudley Pope
Ramage glanced at Colon and saw his dejected, hunchbacked walk, the reluctant, foot-dragging steps.
“What did you do to him?”
“Well, sir …” Jackson began sheepishly, “we didn’t lay a finger on him …”
Ramage eyed the seaman, and then laughed. “Lieutenant Colon will tell me all about it.”
Jackson’s face fell. “Honestly, sir, we didn’t touch him. Just a bit o’ play-acting by Staff and Rosey.”
A few moments later Colon was led up by a gleeful Stafford, Rossi and Maxton.
Southwick looked curiously at Colon. He had shown little interest in Ramage’s description of the morning’s ambush, but that was his way of showing disapproval at not being put in command.
Colon had eyes only for Ramage and began speaking as soon as Stafford signalled him to stop walking.
“I wish to tell you,” he said, words tumbling out as if he was trying to make an urgent plea as the guillotine blade fell. “I will tell you everything. But I want a guarantee. Your word of honour—”
“A guarantee about what?”
“That they won’t garrotte me!” he said, pointing to the seamen. “Slowly,” he added with a shudder. Stafford’s pantomime seemed to have been extremely effective. But again Ramage thought of this man sending for a slave to be whipped for his pleasure.
“You aren’t in a position to demand guarantees. Tell me about the graves.”
“Not graves!” Colon exclaimed almost tearfully, as though using the word to describe the trenches would eventually change their purpose. “Trenches.”
“Holes,” Ramage said, suddenly exasperated. “You shouldn’t waste time fussing about the precise choice of words. Tell me about the holes.”
“I want a guarantee.”
Not at all sure he could muster a bloodcurdling laugh without breaking into a giggle, Ramage merely said contemptuously, “A beggar doesn’t make demands.”
Colon stared at the ground. Ramage looked directly at Stafford, let his eyes drop to the cord the Cockney was still holding and then looked back and forth along the ground in front of Colon.
Stafford understood the signal immediately and began to walk around, slapping the cord impatiently against his leg and whistling cheerfully through his teeth. He looked the picture of an impatient killer, as though, as he might phrase it, in a hurry to use the “carrot.”
Colon glanced up nervously, looking first at Stafford and then at Ramage, who said nothing. Apart from the sharp slapping of the cord against Stafford’s leg, his whistling, and the distant boom of waves hitting the outer reefs, there was silence.
To Colon, though, it seemed to be a silence filled with terrifying fantasies; he was perspiring and pale, clasping and unclasping his hands.
“The orders you received,” Ramage prompted.
Colon looked up and Ramage was reminded of an animal trapped in a snare.
“You can guess,” Colon said.
Ramage was puzzled for a moment and then wondered if there was more to Colon than he thought. Was the man hoping Ramage would guess, so that he would not actually have to use words to reveal his orders? A legalistic interpretation of “reveal?” Ramage decided that as long as he found out what the holes were for, he didn’t give a damn, so he gave Colon a little help.
“I presume you were looking for something.”
“Of course.”
“The only things of value likely to be on this island are water and pirate’s treasure.”
Suddenly Colon became animated: his head came up, his shoulders straightened, both arms came up as though he was greeting a long-lost friend.
“Precisely! And there is plenty of water in the village …”
“So you are looking for treasure.”
Colon did not answer; instead he grinned happily. Ramage was too excited now for the long-winded method he’d been manoeuvred into. Treasure! Presumably treasure looted from the Spanish Main, so who would be in a better position to know about it than the Spanish!
“You have a map?”
Colon shook his head.
“You’re not just digging at random?”
Colon nodded.
Is this clown being legalistic again? Ramage wondered.
“You are digging at random?” Ramage asked.
Colon nodded vigorously.
“Anywhere on the island?”
Again Colon nodded.
“You’d better find your tongue,” Ramage said. “Don’t forget that now I have guessed about the treasure, you aren’t revealing that!”
This seemed to reassure Colon.
“Anywhere,” he said. “Just selecting likely places and digging.”
“Are the holes all the same depth?”
“Oh yes, no more than the height of a small man.”
“Why that limit?”
Colon shrugged his shoulders. “Orders. The Colonel said it wouldn’t be deeper than that.”
“How did he know?”
Ramage had the impression that Colon was slowly becoming conspiratorial in his manner; as though he had secretly abandoned the Colonel and the service of Spain, and was giving clandestine help to the British.
“There was a report.”
“What report?” Ramage said angrily, getting impatient as he levered the facts out of Colon a few words at a time. “Come now, tell me all you know, otherwise you’ll be pegged out to dry like boucan.”
His exasperation gave his words just the right ring; Colon went white again and Ramage expected him to faint. Pirates and privateersmen haunting the Caribbean islands pegged out raw meat to dry in the sun to preserve it, calling it “boucan,” and became known as boucaniers, or buccaneers.
Ramage turned to Jackson and said in English: “Use your cutlass to clear some of this—” he pointed to the low shrubs. “Level a space about seven feet long and five feet wide. In front of this chap.”
Jackson gave an impressive salute and began a series of low, sweeping strokes with the cutlass blade.
Colon watched, as if hypnotized, and when Jackson had finished and kicked the branches clear, Ramage turned to the Spaniard and said abruptly: “Pegged out there. You were saying?”
“The report,” Colon said hurriedly. “A family here, on this island. No taxes—they had not paid taxes. It was a long fraud on the government. The Intendente was going to put father and son in prison and confiscate their land. To save themselves the father offered to tell the Intendente about the treasure if the tax was forgotten.”
“How did he know about treasure?”
“He is a descendant of a pirate. There are many such families.”
“But treasure? Not every pirate family—”
“This one knew,” Colon said contemptuously.
“How could the Intendente be sure?”
“A week in the dungeon at El Morro and everyone tells everything,” Colon said. “That much I can assure you.”
“We can do quite well here, and in less time,” Ramage said dryly. “Now, tell me all you know about it.”
“Well,” Colon said nervously, “treasure is buried here somewhere. They’ve known that in San Juan for scores of years. They’ve looked for a map and they’ve watched the people, hoping that the family that knew would one day start to dig.”
“Did they?”
“No. In fact they didn’t know the details. Only the depth.”
“And what is the important clue?”
“I was going to tell you about that,” Colon said quickly. “Everyone says it’s important, but no one understands it.”
“Say it!”
Colon recited:
By the sound of the sea
and my memory,
Three times three
A tree above.
“And no one knows what it means?” Ramage asked.
“No one!”
“What else should you tell me?”
“That’s all,” Colon said, and Ramage felt he was telling the truth. “That’s a
ll, and now you can kill me.”
The voice was so lugubrious that Ramage laughed, and then realized Colon interpreted the laugh as agreement.
“I’ll wait a while,” Ramage said. “I may think of some more questions. By the way, the family that knew the poem?”
“They are still in jail at El Morro.”
“And the other islanders?”
“They know nothing.”
He gave Jackson instructions for guarding Colon and he and Southwick went back to the beach. There they found Yorke, St Brieuc and St Cast and walked along the beach with them. After describing the so-called clue he said, “You can all exercise your brains on that. As soon as one of you tells me what it means, we can start digging for the treasure.”
“If it really is a clue,” Yorke said doubtfully.
“I’m inclined to think it is,” St Brieuc said. “The Spanish are not stupid. They’re close to the treasure. If they believe it, then I think we should.”
“They were digging on level patches,” Yorke said. “That’s something we can do anyway. There can’t be so many in a hilly place like this. Plenty of flat fields, of course, but I think the Dons know it’s a small flat area up in the hills. If we try those we don’t waste time while we work on the clue. We want to get to windward of the treasure before the provision ship arrives.”
Ramage had quite forgotten to find out when the ship was due. He excused himself and went off to question the teniente again. He found him much more cheerful, and quite prepared to talk. The next ship was due on the first day of the month. That was the regular date, though it was sometimes a day or two late.
While considering the problem of keeping Colon a prisoner without a building to lock him in, Ramage remembered that there were houses in the village … Houses and a well.
The Marines and a handful of seamen could stay here in the camp to guard the provisions and magazine and the rest of them could move to San Ildefonso. The slaves seemed quite cheerful with their new status, which could be best described as freedom with limited liberty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
BY NIGHTFALL most of the survivors of the two ships were in occupation of the village. The powder and muskets had been moved and the St Brieucs and St Cast were given the best house while Ramage, Yorke, Southwick and Bowen shared another. The senior petty officers shared two more which left four unoccupied and in various stages of disrepair for the seamen. Ramage was surprised at the lack of enthusiasm for them.
“Those houses,” he asked Jackson. “What’s wrong with them? Why don’t the men use them?”
Jackson looked blank and Ramage said irritably, “I’ve given them four houses and told ‘em to decide among themselves, you know all that!”
The American said apologetically, “Sorry, sir, I didn’t quite follow what you meant. The men are grateful, sir, but they’d sooner sleep out in the open.”
“You mean that what is good enough for the officers isn’t good enough for them,” Ramage said acidly.
“Oh no, sir!” Jackson exclaimed in alarm, “it’s not that at all. Sleeping in hammocks slung from trees in the Tropics with all the birds singing and the strange flowers and all that—why, sir, they’re like kids at Michaelmas Fair. They’re loving it. They’ve been betting on humming birds, putting their money on which particular blossoms on a tree get visited in a set time.”
“Oh,” Ramage said lamely. “I’m glad. I hope they won’t forget how to sling a hammock afloat.”
“They’ll be ready to go to sea when the time comes, sir. It’s just something completely new. Even the men from country places are finding it so different, sir.”
Supper was served in the largest room in the house taken over by Ramage, and he decided that he would eat his meals with the others simply because the alternative was too complicated.
They were halfway through the meal when Ramage said: “Has anyone thought of an explanation of the mysterious clue?”
No one had.
“What do you propose to do?” Yorke asked.
“Well, the provisions ship isn’t due from San Juan for another three weeks. I might as well keep the men busy digging holes as doing anything else.”
“The wrecks, sir,” Southwick reminded him.
“Of course. The most important jobs are protecting ourselves here, guarding the provisions, bringing over the rest of the powder, and getting more supplies from the wrecks before they break up, just in case we don’t get off the island for a while. That means I can use the slaves and some seamen just to dig. The dons dug only one hole at a time.”
“I am not surprised,” Bowen said. “If that Spanish officer was not there, the moment the treasure was found, it would vanish into thin air!”
“Exactly,” Ramage said. “And because we have more reliable people to take charge, we can cover more ground.”
“Count me in,” Yorke said.
“I hope you will not forget me, sir,” Bowen said. “I should regard the discovery of pirate treasure as the climax of my medical career.”
“Medicine and piracy go hand in hand,” Southwick teased.
“Exactly,” Bowen said. “Didn’t you notice the alacrity with which I volunteered?”
“I wonder what language the clue was composed in,” Yorke said.
“Why not Spanish?” Ramage asked.
“I just can’t see a pirate not making it rhyme. I was wondering if it was originally in English, poorly translated, and now translated back, slightly differently from the original.”
“I should have thought of that before,” Ramage said, feeling his face redden. “The Spanish weren’t the pirates; they were the victims. The clue certainly wouldn’t have been in Spanish.”
“Let’s translate it again,” Yorke said cheerfully.
Ramage sent his steward for pen, ink and paper, and when he had written a translation of the Spanish phrases, he read them out aloud:
By the sound of the sea
and my memory,
Three times three
A tree above.
“Let’s take the first line,” he said. “I want ideas reflecting treasure and poetry!”
Yorke said, “It’s wrong, I’m sure. It’s isolated from the next line, whereas it probably ran on originally.”
“What was the man trying to describe?” Bowen asked.
“It’s a distance,” Southwick said. “Buried within sound of the sea.”
“You’re right,” Ramage exclaimed. “Let’s look at the second line for a moment. It’s ambiguous. It could be ‘my memory’ or ‘remember.’”
“‘Remember me?’” asked Yorke.
Ramage nodded, wrote it down and then said tentatively, “It could begin, ‘Hear the sea and remember me …’”
“That’s more like it,” Bowen said. “Now, how did the third line go?”
Ramage read it again, and the Surgeon said: “Three times three, eh. Nine paces, or perhaps three pieces of something in three places?”
“Three pieces … I’d have expected it to be ‘Three by three’ in that case,” Yorke said.
Ramage scribbled it down, and read the fourth line, adding, “‘A tree above’ could also mean ‘underneath a tree,’ or in the shade of it.”
“What have we got now, sir?” Southwick said, running his hands through his white hair. “My memory isn’t very good for poetry.”
Ramage continued changing a word here and there for a moment, then said: “How does this sound?
Hear the sea
and remember me;
Three by three,
Beneath the tree.
“Well, we can hear the sea,” he continued. “Then we have to remember this chap—presumably remember his treasure. Then ‘three by three’ or ‘three times three.’ Trees in three groups of three … A hill with three groups of three big rocks on its slope—plenty around here, I’ve noticed … Three groups of three peaks among the hills?”
“Not trees, surely,” Southwick said. “They grow quic
kly or get blown away in a hurricane. Or burned down—I’ve seen traces of big fires here, probably started by lightning. And hills—they’re not precise enough.”
“Not trees,” Yorke echoed. “Too obvious. The family here who knew the rhyme would have spotted anything like that. They’ve probably been looking for a trio of anything for a century or more.”
“Can you hear the sea from where the Spanish party was digging when Jackson found them?” Bowen asked.
“Barely,” Ramage said. “On a still night with a heavy swell on the reefs …”
“So either the Spanish don’t realize the significance of ‘The sound of the sea,’ sir, or they discount it,” Bowen said.
“Yes, but obviously they have plenty of time. I didn’t ask this fellow Colon how long he expected to be here, but the provisions ship is due monthly. Now, we have enough slaves to make up five parties of four. Plus four seamen to each party. And one officer.”
By the time they went to bed the leadership of each party had been decided. At dawn next day they marched out along the track towards the camp. Ramage had decided to continue in that direction because Colon had covered all the flat areas flanking the track from San Ildefonso to the point where he was captured.
By nightfall the parties had returned to report that they had dug an average of twelve trenches each and found no sign of anything.
“Sixty damned trenches,” Ramage said crossly to Southwick, “and not a trace …”
“Don’t think of it like that,” the Master said soothingly. “It means three hundred and sixty a week which is about a year’s effort for that Spanish Lieutenant.”
Southwick’s mathematics were comforting, but whoever buried the treasure did not envisage scores of men digging for weeks: he meant someone who learnt the poem and solved its riddle to be able to go straight to the treasure.
At supper that evening he discussed the day’s digging with the other men. He felt they did not share his sense of urgency; to them three weeks seemed time enough. It probably was but, as he pointed out to Yorke, “We can’t be sure a ship won’t arrive unexpectedly. If it does we have to capture it, and if it’s suitable, sail away in it, treasure or no treasure.”