I held on to something—a backstay, the rail, I do not remember—and watched with sick fascination. As we rushed downward, the waves cut off the wind, and suddenly the howling in the rigging ceased, leaving only the dismal universal roar of the storm. To my horror, the bow of the Aurora stabbed into the sea, as if we were heading down to the bottom, and for a moment I was sure we would never rise. One of the men at the whipstaff cried out, “God save us!”
And then with a terrible, creaking groan, the good ship raised her bow again, and a green wall of water came washing straight back along the deck. It smacked into me chest-high, and I felt my feet sweep from under me. For a moment only my death grip on the backstay and the rail held me aboard, and then the water poured from the scuppers as if we had taken a waterfall aboard us. And then we were climbing one of those monstrous waves again.
By the time the storm had passed, we had much mending to do, but nothing had carried away or broken. With a fresher wind, we found our two consorts. Neither of them was badly damaged, and together the three of us fairly flew to the south.
That was just the beginning of dreary weeks spent coasting along. We met precious few vessels, and none of them had any news to share. Sometimes we threaded our way through a maze of low islands or ghosted along northward within sight of the coast of Central America, praying that no strong wind would spring up to wreck us, for the chief of a sailor’s fears is to be caught on a lee shore, a shore toward which a strong wind is blowing. In such cases, a ship has small hope of surviving, and so does her crew.
We were nearing the territory of Yucatan by the first of September. That afternoon Mr. Adams and I slaved away at our mathematical studies on deck, for the heat below was stifling. Mr. Adams’s mathematical studies had fairly blossomed. Somehow understanding had taken root within him, and he was now showing me how to work hard problems in trigonometry. Lord knows, it could not have been my uncle’s teaching that made the difference, for he knew as much of the higher mathematics as a flounder does of the Alps. Perhaps it was simply that Mr. Adams had grown desperate, and desperation drove him to great effort.
At any rate, late that night I lay in my hammock, dripping with sweat and vainly trying to sleep. At last I gave up and swung down to the deck. My uncle, in his cot, was snoring away, for he could drop off at any time and in any place. I took a pillow and went up on deck to find a coil of rope where I might curl up in the relative coolness.
It must have been well past midnight when a hurried exchange of voices woke me up. “To the north, see?” someone said. “Better tell the cap’n.”
I sprang up. “What is it?”
One of the new men jumped a foot, swore, and then said, “The loblolly boy? What’re you doin’ above boards?”
“Hush up, Sweeney,” said the other, a man I knew to be Obedience Jackson. “He’s our mascot, like. He brings us good luck.”
By then I had heard what had drawn their attention. It was a low, distant rumble, something like thunder. But it was not thunder, for I had heard the sound often before. Somewhere to the north, a ship was firing its guns.
I sprang to the rigging and clambered up to the maintop, where Olaf Petersen gave me a grunting welcome. “Ye can see there, about three points to larboard. Watch steady.”
Presently I did see flashes—or rather the red reflection of flashes—far in the distance. Long seconds later the thundery sound rolled in again. “Shall I tell Captain Hunter?” I asked, knowing that the two sailors below were still uncertain.
“As ye see fit,” Mr. Petersen told me. I slid down a backstay, hardly thinking twice about it, and landed softly on my bare feet. I hurried aft and tapped on the captain’s door.
Captain Hunter opened it, holding aloft a lantern. “Davy! What the devil?”
“Gunfire, sir, to the north. Perhaps seven leagues or more away, three points off the windward bow.”
Captain Hunter was in his breeches and shirt. He paused only to pull on a pair of slippers and then hurried onto the deck. “Masthead, there!” he bawled, with his hand cupped beside his mouth. “What do you see?”
“Flashes o’ fire,” Mr. Petersen responded. “I make it to be two vessels.”
The captain checked our speed, a bare two knots. At that rate, it might take us eight or ten hours to get to the scene of the fight. He called the watch aloft and spread more canvas, and our speed increased to a trifle over four knots, but with the wind we had, that was the best we could do. The Fury and the Concepcíon were nowhere near, though we had an appointment to rendezvous with them a few days later. Whatever we found to the north, we would have to deal with it alone.
Somehow I slept some that night. The wind picked up a bit, and by dawn we had made about eighteen good sea miles of progress. The firing had long since fallen silent, though Mr. Petersen had reported that he saw a red glare for a long time, as if a ship had been set afire.
In the first gray light of day someone spied a body. It was a sailor, and he had been dead for at least a few hours. His injuries looked as though cannon fire had inflicted them. We passed him by, abandoning him to a school of small sharks. Before long we saw more debris: a floating cask, a splintered yardarm. The Aurora traced a zigzag path across the seas until finally the lookout, no longer Mr. Petersen but another man, shouted down that he saw a boat.
We closed on it. It proved to be no boat at all, but rather a kind of raft of casks, a chicken coop, and some planks, all tangled together with ropes. And on it lay a body that stirred feebly. Six of us went into one of the gigs and rowed over to him. He was a youngish man, perhaps twenty, with grievous wounds in his abdomen. He was scarcely conscious as we hauled him aboard and carried him to the sick berth.
Uncle Patch shook his head the moment he had examined the man, but he set to work stitching and bandaging. The sailor began to groan as we worked on him, and at length he rasped, “I thought I was dead for sure. What ship is this, mate?”
“’Tis the ship that fished you out of the ocean, and that’s all ye need know right now,” answered my uncle. “Who might you be?”
“Name is Samuel Walters,” he said. “I can’t feel my legs at all.”
“You have some bad wounds.”
Walters licked his lips and lay still as my uncle tied off the last of the bandages. “Be I goin’ to make it?” he asked.
For a long moment Uncle Patch looked into his face. Then in a soft voice he said, “If I were you, Samuel Walters, I would prepare to meet my Maker.”
Walters winced. Then he growled, “So that’s the way of it, is it? Curse Jack Steele!”
I cried out in surprise, but Uncle Patch shushed me. “What of Jack Steele?” he asked. “What have you to do with him?”
In a fading voice Walters said, “I were third mate in the Janus. Oh, she were a sweet-sailing French-built frigate, but Steele sunk her from under us.” He trailed off.
My uncle gently shook his shoulder. “Tell me now, is that the ship that masqueraded as the Aurora?”
“Aye,” said Walters. “Shark was our cap’n. But he died, so we heard tell from some o’ his crew that come back from th’ Fury. That were a sloop—”
“Yes we know about her,” my uncle said urgently.
Walters frowned. “It’s main dark in here.”
“It will be lighter by and by,” Uncle Patch said. “What happened aboard the Janus?”
“Why, we elected a new cap’n, Ben Rogers, an’ we come to rendezvous with the Red Queen. Rogers, he went over to report, an’ next thing we on the Janus sees is Steele a-throwin’ Ben’s body overboard. Then he give the order to open up on us. We ran, and he chased all night. But he sank us at last.”
Walters was drawing breath very hard. My uncle leaned close and said, “You’re going out, Walters. But you can still do some good here. Where is Bloodhaven?”
“Daren’t tell,” Walters groaned. “It’s so dark in here.”
We had four lanterns burning, and the wind port let daylight in.
&n
bsp; “Hang it, man,” Uncle Patch said intensely, “this is the Aurora. Do you understand that? We’re looking for Steele, and we mean to send him to the bottom. You’ll be beyond Steele’s reach in a few minutes. Where is Bloodhaven?”
“Be I goin’?” asked Walters in a whisper. He took a deep breath and held it so terribly long I thought he had died. But then he exhaled. “Nineteen eighteen,” he said so quietly I could hardly hear him.
Uncle Patch seized a scalpel and carved the numbers into a beam. Walters whispered more, numbers in the eighties. Then he said, “Longitude and latitude. Bloodhaven.” And with that his throat rattled, and he died.
We made our rendezvous with the Fury and the Concepcíon the day after we buried Samuel Walters. And then we made our way toward the spot he had named, all sailing within sight of one another. We coasted northward along a shore rich with poisonous green vegetation. For the first time I began to be aware of how vast were the Spanish holdings in the New World, so huge that whole great sections of it still were hardly explored and could easily be all but invisible to those who governed it from far-off Spain.
Leaning on the rail and staring at the shore, Uncle Patch observed sourly, “I don’t know what else we may find there, but I’ll bet my teeth we shall find fever. I don’t like the looks of this place, Davy, that I don’t.”
And day by day he grew grimmer as the ships glided ever closer to the location of Bloodhaven.
The Secret Base
IT WAS THE FIFTEENTH of September when we finally arrived at the coordinates poor Samuel Walters had given us. There we discovered that what he had sworn to was true. Like ancient Celtic warriors from one of Uncle Patch’s stories we had come to the end of our quest.
We lay anchored off the fairway that led into Bloodhaven.
“Anchor us firm and fair, Mr. Adams,” Captain Hunter called out. “We’re in tricky shoal water. Rocks down there’d rip the bottom out of the Fury, let alone the Concepcíon.”
“How does something as big as the Red Queen is supposed to be get in and out of here?” I asked my uncle as we stared over the Aurora’s side at the dark green shoreline.
“Sure, and he probably has it all mapped to a fare-thee-well, lad,” he grumbled back. “Probably as clear as Bristol Walk if you know the way. He does, we don’t, so we wait here.”
And so we did in the sweltering heat, the nimble little Fury to our starboard, the great towering Concepcíon to our port. The captains of our strange little armada had made plans for this. In the steaming night, four small boats slipped away from our ships and disappeared into the darkness. They were equally filled with former buccaneers and grim Spanish Marines. I would not have wanted to cross the wake of either of them, come dark or daylight.
We waited, and the heat came and went in waves, the night cool only in comparison to the day. The air was thick with the stench of dead fish and rotting vegetation. Even the water seemed to be dyed green, as if the sun had melted the thick growths along the shore and poured their slick hues into the sea. I had never realized what an ugly color green could be. Finally when it seemed as though we would soon all drown in our own sweat, a small triangular sail appeared, beating its way back to us. A crimson-and-gold banner fluttered from its single mast. Some of Don Esteban’s marines had at last come back to report.
Soon I found myself standing beside Uncle Patch in the amazingly expansive captain’s cabin on board the Concepcíon. I remembered how poor John Barrel had complained about how William Hunter “had done himself well” with the Auroras cabin and furnishings. He stood next to Captain Hunter now, his mouth gaping open in frank covetousness. The cabin was huge, all dark wood and somber gilt. A tapestry covered one wall and depicted a towering galleon blowing some other vessel to pieces. I tried not to look too closely at the flag of the defeated ship. Don Esteban stood on the other side of a great round table, dressed as ever in his grim black uniform. Captain Hunter, in a quest for contrast, I suppose, was resplendent in his green coat and yellow sash. This time he had brought his ostrich plume hat but kept it discreetly under his arm.
Next to Don Esteban stood a powerfully built man with the blackest mustache I had ever seen. He stood at attention and glared at us. Don Esteban, on the other hand, actually smiled. “Welcome, gentlemen, to my humble quarters.”
“Humble quarters,” rumbled John Barrel. “I robbed from churches ain’t half this grand.” Don Esteban acted as though he hadn’t heard anything, but I believe his smile grew slightly wider.
“This stalwart gentleman to my left is Sergeant Gonzalez, who was in command of the marines we sent ashore. He has returned to make his report.” He glanced at the grim marine. “Sergeant?”
Stiff as a stringed puppet, the sergeant removed a roll of canvas from under his arm and spread it out on the table. We all crowded around it. It was a surprisingly detailed map of a harbor and a town. He said something in Spanish.
With a nod, Don Esteban said, “Sergeant Gonzalez is a man of many talents, not the least of which is a gift for the drawing of maps. Unfortunately his talents do not include a knowledge of any language but his own. With your kind permission, I shall translate.” Don Esteban spoke in Spanish to the sergeant, who nodded.
Gonzalez pointed at the map, took a deep breath, and began to speak in a sharp, no-nonsense flow of Spanish. True to his word as ever, his captain spoke almost at the same time.
“Bloodhaven is here. A narrow harbor at the mouth of a small river. It is probably the only anchorage for ships of any real size for one hundred miles in any direction. It is because of this isolation that it has not been discovered by any of the legitimate authorities.” A stiff finger stabbed down at the map. “The actual settlement is small but tight. The wharves are well constructed and extensive. The only stone buildings in the settlement proper are these four long structures here behind the piers. They are warehouses, except for the largest one, which has thicker walls and serves as an arsenal and powder magazine. The living quarters are situated behind the warehouses and for the most part are open-walled sleeping platforms with thatched roofs to keep off the sun and rain.” The stocky marine rumbled to a stop, eyes staring straight ahead.
“The ships, Sergeant?” Don Esteban prodded softly.
The sergeant took another deep breath, and again as he spoke Don Esteban translated: “There are at this time twelve ships within the harbor. Their last locations are indicated on the chart. There are seven brigs, three sloops, and two pinnaces. All are armed and fully fitted to sail. Alas, there is no sign of the Red Queen or her evil captain.”
I doubted that Sergeant Gonzalez had actually said the word “alas,” but the effect of his translated words on Captain Hunter was alarming.
“Not here!” he snarled. “Steele not here! Will there never be an end to him?”
“Ease yourself, my friend,” purred Don Esteban. “The rest of the good sergeant’s tale will, if I am not mistaken, put Steele’s absence more to our liking.”
Sweat was beginning to break out on the sergeant’s brow. I do not think he was used to public speaking. Once again the translation began. “There are two rocky islands, only a few acres in size, that lie just off the coast. One is two hundred yards south of the harbor entrance, the other a little farther north of it. Although they cannot be seen from the ocean, both islands contain fortifications cleverly constructed from native stone and planted with vines to obscure their lines.” The sergeant’s finger stabbed out again, quickly indicating positions on the map. “However, each one is armed with six forty-two-pound cannons, as well as smaller weapons. They are arranged so as to command a total crossfire of the only approach to the inner harbor.”
“Forty-two pounders!” my uncle burst out. “Even the Royal Navy can’t get forty-two pounders! Where does he steal this stuff from?”
“I doubt he steals it at all, Patch,” said Captain Hunter, shaking his head. “He probably buys it from good English businessmen or some of the navy’s more enterprising quartermasters.
Lord only knows, after ten years of piracy he should have enough gold for it.”
“Gracias, Sergeant,” said Don Esteban, drawing us all back to the matter at hand. Sergeant Gonzalez actually sagged before settling into a position of rigid attention. His captain turned and smiled his blunt predator’s smile.
“I would like to propose the following plan, gentlemen. My marines will land on the islands under the cover of darkness and take the forts. I suggest that a second party, composed of members of your inestimable crews, infiltrate Bloodhaven and set fires. As soon as the marines possess the forts, they will open fire on the ships at anchor in the harbor. The Concepcíon, the Aurora, and the redoubtable Fury will stand off the approaches. When the ships that the forts do not sink try to break for the sea, we shall cut them down. All will be done before the Red Queen returns to discover her spawn dead and drowned.”
Captain Hunter nodded solemnly as he contemplated Don Esteban’s plan. John Barrel looked likely to burst with pride over the Spanish captain’s description of his little craft as redoubtable. When first we met him, the Fury was trying to hold the Concepcíon off while two other pirate ships burned around her. John Barrel and his crew were nothing if not brave. Captain Hunter nodded one more time and also pointed at the map.
“A solid plan, Your Excellency, most well thought out. However, I have a refinement that might serve us well. Let my men make the first move, let them take and set fire to the powder magazine your sergeant has pinpointed for us. When it goes up, it not only will take half of Bloodhaven with it, but also is sure to distract the garrisons at the forts. That will serve as your marines’ signal to attack, for the men within are going to be gaping at the destruction ashore.”
Heart of Steele Page 10