by Tim Severin
As they retreated to the second abandoned barricade, Hector noticed a corpse with an orange handkerchief clenched in its fist. John Watling had been hit in the throat by a Spanish bullet and his shirt front was drenched with his blood. Duill, his second in command, was nowhere to be seen, and Hector presumed that the quartermaster had either also been killed or had fallen into the hands of the Spanish. Sharpe, who seemed to relish his renewed command, set the men to searching the corpses for spare cartridge pouches and bullet bags.
There was no respite from the Spanish counter-attack. As the buccaneers fell back street by street, their opponents kept pressing on, shooting down from the roof tops or suddenly appearing from lanes and passageways to fire and then slip away. The citizens of Arica knew the layout of their town and used that knowledge to their advantage. They paid no heed to their countrymen being used as human shields, and kept up their fire, killing or injuring several of their own people. If Sharpe had not been on hand to steady the buccaneers, their retreat could have become a panic-stricken flight.
Eventually the raiders were at the place where they had started – the barricade where they had first attacked the town in the light of dawn. Here Sharpe took a brief head count. Nearly one-third of the raiding force, some twenty-eight men, were missing. They were either dead or had been captured. Among those who now crouched exhausted in the shelter of the earthwork, eighteen had serious wounds. Everyone was dispirited, drooping with thirst and hunger.
‘We’ll be shot down like rabbits as we ascend the slope,’ said Jacques despondently. ‘The moment the Spaniards reoccupy this earthwork, it’ll be like target practice for them.’
‘Has anyone still got any grenades left?’ Jezreel asked. Hector shook his head. He had left his satchel behind after his run to the church.
‘I’m afraid I got rid of mine when we began the retreat,’ said Jacques.
‘What about Dan’s grenades? They should be here somewhere,’ suggested Hector. He remembered that the Miskito had left his satchel by the breastwork when he went up the hill to act as lookout. After a few moments of searching Hector spotted the bag tucked away in a corner.
He handed the satchel to Jezreel who brought out three grenades, then called out to Sharpe, ‘Captain! Get going with the others. My friends and I will cover your retreat.’
Sharpe looked at the grenades and frowned. ‘They’re unreliable.’
‘No matter. They will do the job.’
Sharpe did not need to be asked a second time. ‘Come on!’ he shouted to his men. ‘Turn loose any prisoners. Back up the hill!’ He turned to Jezreel. ‘Is there nothing we can do?’
‘Half a dozen men. Good shots. Place them half way up the slope where they have the range of the Spaniards. That might help.’
The buccaneers began their flight, stumbling wearily up the hill, some using their muskets as crutches, others helped along by comrades.
Jezreel started work on the grenades. He adjusted their fuses until he was satisfied, then buried them in the barricade a few paces apart. Looking over his shoulder to check that Sharpe and the main body of buccaneers were well on their way up the hill, he lit the three fuses and then shouted at his friends to turn and run.
The three friends scrambled back across the rough ground. Behind them came a flurry of shots, and Jacques stumbled and fell. Hector ran across to him while Jacques was struggling to stand up. He seemed dazed and blood was gushing from his head. He clapped a hand to his ear and brought it away. ‘The bullet clipped my ear!’ he exclaimed with a relieved grin. ‘It’s nothing.’ There was an explosion from the barricade. The first of the grenades had detonated, throwing up a spurt of smoke and dirt. Several Spanish militiamen who had ventured into the gateway, dived back into shelter.
‘Two more to go,’ said Jezreel with a satisfied grunt. Holding out a hand, he helped Jacques to stand upright, then put an arm around him and began to assist him up the hill. ‘When I was in the fight game, there was a troupe of actors who used our ring as a stage between-times. When they needed to bring on or take off an actor, they had a hidden assistant who set off an explosion with lots of smoke and noise. It worked every time.’
FIFTEEN
‘IT WAS A SHAMBLES!’ Basil Ringrose was still fuming, his anger fuelled by the fact that he and his comrades had also very nearly fallen victim to the Spaniards. ‘Two white smokes! I nearly took the boats right into Arica harbour. We would have been blown out of the water.’
He glared angrily at Sharpe who was standing by the lee rail.
Hector watched the two men bicker. It was two months since the defeat at Arica, yet the panicked desperation of the withdrawal still provoked recriminations. He, Jacques and Jezreel had reached the ridge behind the town to find Sharpe and the others uprooting dry weeds and brushwood to make a signal fire. ‘One white smoke,’ someone was saying. ‘Let’s hope that the boat crews are quick about it. We have to get out of here before the Spaniards catch up with us.’ The words were scarcely spoken when Dan, who had rejoined them, had said quietly, ‘That’s not our worry now.’ He was looking back towards Arica. From the town were rising two thick columns of white smoke, reaching into the sky on that windless, scorching day and hanging there in false welcome. Dan had gone running to the shore to intercept Ringrose and the small boats before they were lured into the Spanish trap. Sharpe and the rest of the survivors had hobbled and limped behind him, half-dead of thirst and utterly spent. Troops of Spanish horsemen had harassed them all the way, then rolled rocks down the cliffs at them as they scrambled into the boats.
Back aboard Trinity, the men had divided into two camps, bitterly opposed: those who blamed Watling for the debacle and those who still detested Sharpe enough to resent serving under him again. After weeks of squabbling, a council had been held to decide the expedition’s future. There was to be a simple vote: the majority would get to keep Trinity while the minority would receive the ship’s launch and the canoes to do with them what they wanted. At the show of hands, seventy had chosen to keep on Sharpe as leader and forty-eight had been against. The losers had taken their share of the accumulated plunder and set out on the hazardous return voyage to Golden Island, intending to make the final leg of their journey back over the isthmus of Panama. Hector was sorry that William Dampier had gone with them, though he himself was in no hurry to return to the Caribbean now that he had given up his hopes of finding Susanna again. The longer he stayed away, the less likely he was to run across Captain Coxon. Hector had no doubt that Coxon remained a dangerous foe and would have his revenge if he ever had the chance.
Ringrose was speaking once more, a frown replacing his normally cheerful expression. ‘I say that it was Duill who betrayed our signals to the Spanish. They must have taken him prisoner and tortured him.’
Sharpe shrugged. ‘There’s no way of knowing. What happened at Arica is in the past. Under my command we’ll make no more shore landings against well-defended targets. We stick to what we do best – taking prizes at sea, and we cruise wherever there’s the best chance to do so.’
Hector found himself wondering if he and his three friends had been wise to vote for Sharpe. Life aboard Trinity had quickly reverted to its former easy-going ways. Dice and cards had reappeared, shipboard discipline had grown slack, the men were irritable and slovenly. Only their care for their ship and their weapons was irreproachable. The men’s clothing was falling into rags and they were often short of food, but they kept the tools of their trade – their muskets and blunderbusses – clean and smeared with seal fat against the salt air. Their cutlasses, swords and daggers were regularly sharpened and oiled. Their diligence for the ship was no less impressive. They experimented endlessly with improvements to their galleon’s performance by adjusting the rake of the masts or the angle of the spars, and crewmen spent hour after hour seated on deck with needles and thread, working to shape new sails under the direction of the ship’s sailmaker, or using marlin spikes and fids to mend and splice and tune the rig
ging.
Hector felt the deck tilt slightly beneath his bare feet. The warm breeze was strengthening. Beneath an overcast sky Trinity was running on a course parallel to the Peruvian coast, which was no more than a faint line on the horizon. As her captain had implied, her hunting ground was the broad strip of sea along which the coasting vessels travelled back and forth between the Peruvian ports. Here, only a week ago, the buccaneers had already taken one ship with 37,000 pieces of eight in chests and bags. Equally encouraging they had captured a government advice boat on its way to Panama with despatches. Hector had translated the official letters and it appeared that the Spanish authorities believed that all the buccaneers had left the South Sea. It meant that the coastal shipping might again be venturing out from their well-defended ports.
He sauntered forward to the bows where Jacques was taking his turn as lookout.
‘Has the chase made any move to get away from us?’ he asked. Since first light Trinity had been tracking a distant sail, and the gap between the two vessels had narrowed to less than a mile. The Spaniard had proved to be a merchant vessel of medium size and, judging from her smart paintwork, a ship that was making money for her owners.
‘She’s still plodding along. I doubt she suspects anything yet,’ replied the Frenchman. He gave one of his sardonic grins. ‘Bartholomew Sharpe is a past master in fakery. If we set too much canvas, they would be suspicious.’
Hector glanced up at the spars. Trinity was proceeding under plain sail as if she was an ordinary merchant ship going about her business, not a predator closing in on her victim.
‘How long before they realise their mistake?’
‘Perhaps another hour. Trinity has the lines of a locally built ship. That must reassure them more than our Spanish colours.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like a right sailor.’
‘I’ve grown to appreciate this roving life,’ Jacques answered, rubbing his cheek where his ex-galerien brand was now barely visible beneath his deep tan. ‘It’s better than scrabbling for an existence in the Paris stews.’
‘Then it’s lucky that our dice fell that way.’
Before the vote in the general council, the four friends had been undecided whether or not to support Bartholomew Sharpe. Jacques had suggested that they leave it to chance by throwing dice. If the number was high, they would vote in Sharpe’s favour, a low number and they would side with Dampier and the other malcontents. The dice had shown a six and a four.
‘That wasn’t luck, as Jezreel and Dan already know,’ Jacques confessed.
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I didn’t waste my time when I was nearly left behind on shore on Juan Fernandez. Do you remember those two dice that Watling flung into the bushes, the ones he took from Sharpe?’
‘Were they the dice you used?’
‘Yes, I searched for them because I thought they might come in handy one day. I knew they were loaded.’
‘I don’t remember you gambling against Sharpe.’
Jacques treated Hector to a look which told him that in many ways he was still very naive. ‘I didn’t. But I watched the pattern of his play. Did you ever wonder why the game the crew is so fond of is called Passage?’
‘I think you’re going to tell me.’
Jacques allowed himself a crafty smile. ‘That’s how the English pronounce passe dix – “more than ten”, its French name. The game was invented in France and there’s little that I don’t know about how to cheat at it.’
‘So our captain is not the only one who knows all about fakery and deception,’ Hector rejoined.
A movement aboard the Spanish vessel caught his eye. The crew were reducing sail in response to the strengthening of the wind. From the quarterdeck behind him came a low command. Sharpe was issuing orders.
‘Do as they do, but take your time about it! The slower you are, the more ground we will gain,’ he called.
No more than a dozen of Trinity’s crew went to obey him. The rest of the buccaneers were hidden, either crouching behind the bulwarks or waiting below deck. A glimpse of so many men would instantly warn their prey that Trinity was not an innocent merchant vessel.
‘Lynch! Come back here to the quarterdeck,’ called Sharpe. ‘I’ll want you to address the Spaniards when we are within speaking distance. ’
Hector made his way back to the helm but his assistance was not needed. Half an hour later when the gap between the two ships was less than three hundred paces, the Spanish ship suddenly veered aside, there was the sound of a cannon shot, and a neat round hole was punched in Trinity’s forecourse.
‘All hands now!’ shouted Sharpe. There was a surge of activity as the full complement of sail handlers sprang into action. Extra sails blossomed along the yards and Trinity accelerated forward, showing her true pace. Within moments she was ranging up to windward, rapidly overhauling her prey. Her best marksmen took their positions, some in the rigging, the others along the rail, and they moved unhurriedly, confident in their skill. By contrast there was a panicked flurry of action on the deck of the Spanish vessel. Men were hastily clearing away loose deck clutter and erecting makeshift firing positions. It was evident that Trinity’s victim was utterly unused to violent confrontation.
Another bang from the chase’s cannon, and again the shot was wasted. It threw up a spout of water as it plunged into the sea well short of its mark. The wind had raised a short rolling sea, making it difficult for the Spanish gun crew to aim their weapon accurately.
‘Seems they have only a single cannon aboard,’ commented Sharpe calmly, ‘and their gunners need some practice.’
Trinity’s musketeers had not yet fired a single shot, but were waiting patiently for their target to come within easy range. Samuel Gifford, the quartermaster, had warned them that they were not to waste ammunition. The ship’s supply of lead for making bullets had been badly depleted by the raid on Arica.
There was a ragged scatter of firing from the Spanish ship, and a spent musket ball struck Trinity’s mainsail, dropped onto the deck, and rolled towards the scuppers. Jezreel reached down and picked it up. The bullet was still warm. ‘Here, Jacques, you might return the compliment,’ he said, tossing the bullet to his friend.
Bartholomew Sharpe was watching the gap between the two ships carefully, gauging the distance and the speed of the two vessels. ‘Hold her just there,’ he told the helmsman when Trinity was level with the Spanish ship, a hundred yards away and upwind, close enough for the buccaneers to pick their individual targets. The figure of the Spanish captain was clearly visible. He was darting back and forth among his men, obviously encouraging them to stand firm. ‘You would have thought they would see sense and surrender,’ Sharpe muttered to himself. Hector remembered how Sharpe had tricked Jezreel into shooting an innocent priest, and was surprised by the captain’s reluctance to press home the attack. The captain, it seemed, was capable of compassion as well as savagery.
The Spanish had once again reloaded their single cannon and this time the shot struck Trinity amidships. Hector felt the hull quiver, but a moment later the carpenter came up on deck to report that no damage had been done. The cannonball had been too light to penetrate the heavy planking.
‘Open fire! Clear their decks!’ ordered Sharpe after a pause, and the musketry began. Almost immediately the figures on the deck of the Spanish ship began to fall. Their captain was among the first to be hit. He was making his way towards the entrance to his cabin at the break of the poop deck when a musket ball struck him for he suddenly pitched sideways and lay still. Seeing their commander go down, the two steersmen abandoned the helm and ducked into cover. The Spanish vessel, no longer under control, slowly began to turn up into the wind and lose speed.
‘Close to fifty paces,’ Sharpe told his steersman, and Trinity moved into even easier range for her musketeers. Trinity possessed the advantage in height, and her marksmen were shooting downwards on their targets now. In a short time not a single Spanish seaman
was visible. They had all fled below hatches, leaving only their dead and badly wounded on the deck. Their vessel slowed to a halt, the wind spilling from her sails, the canvas flapping uselessly.
‘Call on them to surrender,’ Sharpe ordered Hector, handing him a speaking trumpet. ‘Say we will do them no harm.’
Hector took the speaking trumpet and had to repeat his shouted instructions three or four times before a small group of sailors emerged warily from the hatches and made their way to the sheets and halyards. Minutes later they had brailed up the sails and the Spanish ship lay rolling on the swell, waiting submissively for her captors to take possession.
‘The sea’s too rough for us to go alongside. We risk damaging our ship,’ observed Ringrose.
‘Then lower the pinnace,’ Sharpe told him, ‘and go across with half a dozen men and see what we’ve caught. Take Lynch with you as interpreter.’ Sharpe was looking satisfied with himself for he had not had a single one of his own men killed or injured, and the Spanish ship appeared to be a juicy prize.
As Hector helped ease the pinnace into the water, Jezreel appeared beside him, carrying his smallsword. ‘I think I’ll go with you in case it is a trick. The Spaniards gave up all too easily. I’m suspicious that they’ve merely retreated below deck and are waiting to ambush us.’
Hector murmured his thanks, and the two friends helped to row the boat across to the waiting prize. As he approached the Spanish ship, Hector looked up at its wooden side and, as always, was struck by the fact that the vessel which had seemed so low in the water from a distance, was much higher and more awkward to board when seen from close at hand. Timing his leap, Hector jumped for the rail of the ship, caught hold and swung himself aboard. Jezreel, Ringrose and three of Trinity’s men armed with muskets and cutlasses followed him.
The body of the dead Spanish captain was the first sight that met Hector’s eyes. It lay where it had fallen, close to the break of the poop deck. The captain had dressed in a faded blue uniform jacket which was now soaked with blood. His hat had rolled off, revealing wisps of grey hair surrounding a bald patch of scalp. One hand was flung out as if still reaching out to open the door to his cabin. Standing beside the corpse was a thin-faced young man, no more than Hector’s own age, and he was pale with shock. Hovering in the background half a dozen sailors were casting nervous glances at the boarding party.