by Dudley Pope
“Anguilla is as flat as St Martin is mountainous. Flat as the pot lid I was talking about. Still, St Martin has some decent anchorages – off the village of Marigot on the north side; then on the south side there’s Simson Bay (got its name from an Englishman who owned a plantation there, I shouldn’t wonder) and a larger anchorage on the south-east corner with a reef protecting it. Very dangerous, both of ’em, when the wind goes south or west. Get embayed in a blow and you drag up on to the beach.”
“All this is very interesting,” Ned said, “but I’m baking standing here in this sun, and you two must be thirsty.”
“Aye, we are that,” said Hoskins, who seemed to accept that his mate did not speak.
Ned led the way to the tent where Mrs Judd presided over what was somewhat grandiosely called the kitchen.
“‘Ello,” she said to Ned, eyeing the two strangers suspiciously, “what have you brought in? Not two rough sailors, I ’ope. I’ve got my reputation to think of.”
“If we’d thought of that we’d have brought two dozen,” Thomas said. “Ask our worthy friends what they want to drink, and offer them something to eat. Larks’ tongue, nightingales’ liver, unicorns’ kidneys – whatever you happen to have at hand: they’re not fussy.”
“Boucanned beef or salt snapper, that’s all we’ve got. Hot waters, o’ course. Bread won’t be ready for half an hour; that’s a right fussy oven Saxby’s built me – won’t draw in this wind. Must ’ave found a load of special cold bricks. And,” she added crossly, “the dogs piddled on the charcoal, so it’s ’ard to get it started. What I’d give for an ’undredweight of proper sea coal.”
Hoskins looked nervously at Ned. “I’m sure we don’t want to be any trouble to the lady,” he said.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mrs Judd’s just serving you the first course. Once she’s had her grumble, you’ll get a good meal.”
“Dunno why I let Saxby talk me into coming up ’ere,” Mrs Judd growled. “Reckon it’s because ’e ’ates sleeping alone.”
Hoskins eyed her more carefully as she turned away to the table which half filled the tent. “Who is Saxby?” he asked Ned.
“A jealous man. Handy with a knife, though… Now,” Ned said firmly, leading the men to the second tent which served as a canteen, “what have you been kind enough to ride all the way from Port Royal to tell us?”
“Oh, yes, well, this channel ’twixt Anguilla and St Martin, it’s only seven miles wide, you understand?”
“Yes, so you told us. Coast flat on the Anguilla side to the north, mountainous on the French side to the south.”
“S’right,” Hoskins said. “Shallow, too. Four an’ five fathoms in the middle, but a lot less at the sides.”
“Indeed?” Ned said, wondering how long his patience would last. “Shallow, eh? Ships could accidentally run aground.” He thought of the low ground on Anguilla, and the fact that it was the last of the chain, except for Sombrero, which was a barren rock. “Sandy bottom, I suppose. Once you’re aground, you’re stuck, if you happen to be running before a brisk Trade wind.”
“Ah, you’ve guessed!” Hoskins exclaimed happily and, turning to his mate, said: “See, Mr Yorke’s guessed! You don’t get made the Admiral of the Brethren for nothing, just like I told you.” He turned to Ned, grinning broadly. “Well, then, that’s worth something, isn’t it?”
Ned frowned, puzzled by the man’s eagerness. “So far, you’ve described two islands and the channel between, and I’ve guessed that the channel is shallow. But neither I nor the Brethren give a damn; as far as we’re concerned–”
“But the treasure!” the mate said suddenly.
Hoskins looked crestfallen. “Sorry, Mr Yorke, I’ve forgotten the important part. One of they Spanish plate galleons is stuck hard aground just off Marigot. They – that’s the French – think she’s laden, but she’s got more than enough guns to drive off anything the French can bring up – trading sloops, fishing boats, canoes they use for conch diving… I don’t reckon the French have a dozen muskets, let alone cannon. But that Don’s there until his mates find him – or he breaks up in a gale o’ wind. He’s beginning to pound already. Leastways, he was when we left.”
“When was that?”
“Just eight days ago. As soon as we heard what had happened we sailed for here.”
“Hmm, you were sailing for Jamaica anyway,” Thomas said. “Did you hear about it at St Martin?”
“Well, no,” Hoskins admitted. “We were at St Kitts. That was our last place: we weren’t carrying nothing to St Martin this time.”
“Oh, so you haven’t actually seen this galleon?” Ned asked.
“Not actually seen her, Mr Yorke, but we know the channel well enough. Look, I can draw you a chart, with soundings.”
“Very well, I’ll get you some writing materials. But eat first – sit down in here and Mrs Judd will feed you. I want to talk with Sir Thomas, then we’ll come back for the chart.”
As soon as they left the tent and walked over to shelter from the sun under the shade of a tamarind tree, Ned said: “A plate ship? What on earth would she be doing in that channel? If she’s laden for Spain, she’s hundreds of miles too far south…”
“And if she isn’t laden with plate she’s bound from Spain to the Main laden with needles and cotton, pots and pans for the worthy Spanish citizens waiting along the Main,” Thomas said. “In which case she was probably chancing her arm, and taking a short cut to Cartagena through the Anegada Passage. She’d only have to be twenty miles too far south – likely enough after three and a half thousand miles across the Atlantic – and she’d land up just where she is.”
“The Spanish pilot could hardly make a mistake like that,” Ned pointed out. “That’s the only place with such a narrow channel with high land to larboard and low to starboard. The Anegada’s further north and seventy miles wide!”
“Think of that dam’ haze,” Thomas reminded him. “Sometimes you can see only a couple of miles. Or at night. They don’t realize how far ahead of their reckoning they are. Scared maybe of getting too far north because of the Horseshoe Reef at the end of Anegada. Then – no breakers, no warning: the ship just slows up and stops. The leadline tells you you’re hard aground on sand – and a brisk following wind telling you there isn’t much chance of getting off.”
“Very well, if she’s come from Spain laden with ‘needles and cotton, pots and pans’, as you suggested and she’s nine hundred miles to windward of us, then I for one am not interested!”
“Ah yes, Ned, but supposing she was making a bolt for it the other way, from Cartagena to Spain; just think, instead of risking the weather by rounding Cuba and calling at Havana before beating out through the Bahamas, and then up past Somers Island and over to the Azores…”
“You mean she’d break out into the Atlantic at Anguilla to face a couple of thousand miles of brisk head winds! No fear, they’re not that mad!”
“I didn’t mean that. Just that she’d risk getting out into the Atlantic through the Anegada and then turn north until she’s level with Somers Island. Then she’d be on the normal track of the homeward-bound galleons but she’d have avoided all the risks sailing past here and then round Cuba and the Bahamas.”
Ned turned and faced Thomas, nodding his head slowly. “My lord bishop, imagine yourself the captain of this wretched galleon laden with silver ingots, gold cobs and gems by the sackful. Are you dodging the enemy or the difficult navigation?”
“Well, mainly the enemy, of course, but–”
“But there’s no enemy now! Remember Spain has just signed a treaty of peace with our newly restored King, so the Dons have ensured the English heretics won’t attack their plate fleets any more.”
“But the heretics don’t have ships of war out here anyway!”
“Indeed they don’t, so the Dons are probably sure they have nothing to fear. Their ambassador to the Court of St James will have reported to Madrid already that the new Governor of Jamaica was sent out with orders to cancel all the privateers’ commissions and start a trade with the Main–”
“Which the Dons know they won’t allow!”
“Which the Dons won’t allow, yes, but they haven’t yet told the English King they won’t allow it! So, my lord bishop, from the Spanish point of view now is a very good time to send off a galleon laden with plate! And to send it by the shortest route because the English Court has already agreed to stop privateering. If you were the King of Spain – or, since he is a busy fellow, his Minister of Finance, desperate to pay off those importunate Italian and Austrian bankers – wouldn’t you send out a frigate or something to Cartagena, telling them to hurry over a galleon with as much plate as she can carry?”
“Why only one, Ned? The Dons aren’t short of silver on the Main!”
“No, but they’re short of ships. Supposing this was the only galleon in Cartagena that was seaworthy?” A sudden thought struck him. “Supposing, my lord bishop, that’s why the Viceroy has called in all the large trading vessels around his coast? Supposing he is going to use them to carry more plate to Spain because the Dons in Spain can’t afford to fit out the galleons and the flota because the money to repair ships and buy sails and cordage is still on the Main, still in ingots of gold and silver, useless until it arrives in Spain?”
Thomas suddenly grabbed Ned by his coat. “And think, Ned, these are the very ships the Brethren have gone off to capture – before they get to Cartagena!”
“Yes,” Ned said calmly, “it’s called ‘Cutting your nose off to spite your face’.”
“It’s too late to stop them, I suppose, but they’ll go mad when they realize the ships would have been loaded with plate if only they’d waited…”
“Well, we can’t do anything about it, so let’s find out whether we’re talking sense or just daydreaming.”
Thomas looked puzzled. “How do we do that?”
“By asking a question we should have asked at the beginning.”
Thomas took off his hat and scratched his head. “What’s the question and who should we ask?”
“We ask Hoskins which way the galleon was going when she ran aground. Was she coming westward into the Caribbean from Spain – or was she beating her way out eastwards into the Atlantic heading for Spain?”
The galleon had been going eastward, towards Spain. She had gone aground in Potence Bay, just east of the village of Marigot, because she stood on too far (Hoskins had heard that just a ship’s length would have made all the difference) before tacking towards Anguilla. Seamen watching from the village reckoned she was making all of eight knots at the time, running up on hard sand and then slewing round to head west as they tried to tack, so that her stern dragged over a small shoal of rocks, damaging the rudder.
“You didn’t mention the rudder before,” Ned commented crossly.
“What difference does it make?” Hoskins asked, aggrieved. “I told you she was hard aground and there was no chance of getting her off. I can’t tell you all the damage. There may not be any more; still, having a broken rudder – and probably unable to rig a jury one – is bad enough. But did those rocks stove in some planks as well? For all I know she might be resting on the bottom, her holds full of water. Usually hard to tell from a distance whether a ship aground will float off or she’s holed. Only a few inches rise of tide, you realize.”
“We know all that,” Thomas growled, “but be sure there’s nothing else of importance you’ve forgotten. Is she in range of French batteries?”
“There’s only a small fort on the top of a hill at the seaward side of the village of Marigot. Not even a fort, really; just a built-up battery. Perhaps a couple of guns. Never heard tell of them being fired, and I first saw the battery at least twenty-five years ago, when I were a boy, so I reckon the termites have weakened the platform so much by now no one’d dare walk on it, let alone put match to a gun.”
Ned nodded, and waved a piece of paper. “You’re sure of the soundings you’ve put on this chart?”
“Yes – that’s the channel I always follow when I anchor off Marigot. We come in from the west and go out by the west, that’s why there aren’t soundings beyond into Potence Bay, where the galleon’s stranded.”
“I noticed that,” Ned said. “By the way, you know what Potence Bay means in English?”
Hoskins shook his head. “Haven’t concerned myself with it.”
“Don’t,” Ned said drily, “it means ‘Gallows Bay’.”
“Well, sir, you going after him?”
It’s curious, Ned noted, how the English always referred to their own ships as “her”, while enemy vessels became “him”. Certainly Latins usually referred to their own ships as male, so was there any significance in the fact that the English considered their own female? Did Englishmen not wage war on females, even in the guise of ships of war?
“Most of the Brethren have sailed,” Ned said.
“I saw three at anchor off Port Royal,” Hoskins said.
“My Griffin, Sir Thomas’ Peleus and Saxby’s Phoenix. Hardly a match for a galleon, even if it is aground. And the French in Marigot might feel they have a claim on her.”
“They can claim all they like,” Hoskins said contemptuously, “but the only way they’d ever capture her is to starve out the Dons, and that’d take months because she’s provisioned for Spain.”
“You think we should anchor round her, just out of gunshot, and start a siege?” Thomas asked sarcastically.
Hoskins flushed and said: “There must be a way, Sir Thomas. I have only thirty men, otherwise I’d try myself.”
“Look,” Ned said, “you’d better start off back to Port Royal, otherwise you’ll get benighted. Thank you for the information. If we go after her and get her treasure, I promise you’ll get a look in.”
“How much?”
Thomas growled: “How do we know, until we capture her? Anyway, it’ll be more than you deserve! Mr Yorke is very generous. If we take our three ships, that’s three captains. You won’t even smell powder or take any risks!”
“Supposing the rest of the buccaneers come back in time to go with you, what then?”
“Then you still get a reward. You’d still be a rich man, judging from our last purchases, but don’t worry,” Thomas said, “they won’t be back in time.”
Sitting at the table in the tent which served as a canteen, listening to the saw (which sounded like a bull spasmodically gasping for breath) and the chinking of maul and chisel against stone as the masons faced up the rock, Ned smoothed out the chart drawn by Hoskins.
With a finger Thomas traced round the edge of a soup stain on the bare wood of the table. “It’s a temptation, Ned.”
“We need a pair of scales. Put the chances of treasure in one pan, and the consequences on the other.”
“Never been much of a person for worrying about consequences, Ned; nor have you.”
“Not until now. This time the consequences could be much more serious. Officially we’re at peace with Spain, so if you and I and Saxby go off and deliberately attack a Spanish plate ship, we’re probably guilty of treason because we’re waging war on a friendly nation. Certainly we’d never be able to return to Jamaica.”
“I see what you mean,” Thomas said. “The women would lose their houses.”
“That, and the fact we’ve a monarchy again. I always thought of Cromwell and his Roundheads as a passing phase: the English would eventually get over him, like recovering from a nasty disease you caught from a passing beggar. It all took a dozen years, but now the King is back; England’s a monarchy once again. But if we’re forbidden to enter eve
ry acre the King rules because we’re accused of treason, it won’t change in our lifetime. Exiles for the rest of our lives. Where shall we spend our old age, Thomas?”
Thomas grimaced but said: “You’re quite right, Ned, but don’t forget what’s in the other pan of the scales. How much plate do we need for a lifetime? How much plate does a galleon carry?”
“A lot more that we can stow in our three ships, but where could we sell it? We’d end up like the Dons, tons of silver but we can’t use a penny of it.”
“Well, Ned, although I can’t speak for Aurelia I’m damned sure Diana will agree with me: let’s first try to get our hands on the plate. We can start worrying about the consequences if we have some silver and gold stowed in the holds! After all, here we’re only leaving–” he gestured towards the site of Ned’s house, “–the trenches we’ve dug for the foundations and a few sawn planks and faced stones. If I can exchange them for my share of a Spanish galleon, old Loosely’s welcome to mine. Don’t forget Loosely’s only the first of a string of fools to be Governor here – even if the King isn’t giving the island back to Spain.”
“I’ve just realized that your share might be the whole lot,” Ned said ruefully. “The Griffin can’t sail at the moment: you remember there was that soft patch in the mast? Just before we left Port Royal I told Lobb to make a new mast and step it…”
“So first he’s got to find the tree, fell it, lop it, get it carried down to Port Royal for the men to shape it up with adzes, fit the ironwork for the topmast… Three weeks?”
“At least,” Ned said lamely. “I’m sorry, Thomas, but with all the rest of the ships sailing for Tortuga, I thought we’d have at least a couple of months to get the houses built, and it seemed a good time for Lobb to do the mast work. He’s a good man,” Ned added, “he won’t waste time once he’s started.”