by Gene Wolfe
I felt sure that Capt. Burt would search the island for me, but I had seen enough of the high jungle by then to know that I could evade any number of searchers there. Soon the flotilla would set sail, and I would be alone. Alone in a climate that was too hot only at midday, and never too cold. Alone on an island that would have provided meat, fruits, and greens enough for a hundred men indefinitely. No more fighting and no more storms. No ship and crew to worry about. No more fear of hidden rocks, hanging, and mutiny.
Later Novia told me she had felt the same way the whole time we had been there. If I had ever proposed that we leave the ship and hide, she would have agreed at once. Now I wonder whether Hoodahs's shipwrecked Master ever regretted boarding the vessel that had returned him to England. It seems to me that he must have, and often. Did he ever try to get back, I wonder?
And did he succeed? In the end, we remained among the Saddle Islands for a little over two weeks. Before we left we caught hundreds of turtles of manageable size to take with us. Laid on their back they must stay where they are put, and they can live for weeks (for months, some sailors say) without food and water. They provided us with fresh meat that lasted until-but I must not jump ahead.
We lay ten days off Callao. Princess stayed near enough to shore that no ship could put out from the port without being seen. The rest of our ships were scattered to the north, none so far from the rest that she could not read the signals of some other. When the treasure ships put out-several large ships, strongly armed-Princess would make signal. As they sailed north, they would encounter us one by one, and by the time there were enough of us to alarm them, the passage back would be a long one. That was Capt. Burt's plan, and I still think it was a good one.
32
The Sea Fight
Most of the numbers in this account have been guessed at. They are good guesses for the most part-when I said that there were four unmarried men on the Santa Charita, for example. There could have been only three, or there might have been five. But I am fairly sure it was four. These are exact numbers: we had waited ten days off Callao when the treasure ships put out, and there were three of them.
The ten days have stuck in my mind because of the awful suspense of the wait. You cannot stay in one place in a ship unless you are tied to a wharf. If there were no currents and no wind, you might try. But even a toy boat set in the middle of a tub of water will drift to one side of the tub or the other, given time. A ship at anchor is held by its cable, but moves even so, now here, now there. We made a sea anchor, drifted downwind for three or four hours dragging the sea anchor, then took in the sea anchor and tacked slowly back to our original position. We did that so often that all of us, I think, began to hope for a storm. None blew.
At night, and sometimes by day, Novia and I talked about what we would do with our share of the gold. We would buy a hacienda in New Spain. Or a big farm in the New Jersey colony Capt. Burt had told me about once. Or a fine house in Madrid. Or Havana. A sugar plantation on Jamaica.
We would have the yard that had built the Castillo Blanco build a ship like that for us, hire a crew, and sail it around the world.
As time wore on we talked about what Novia might do if I were killed, and what I might do if she were. I am not going to go into that here. Some things are too personal, and that is one of them.
The tenth day was clear and warm, just like the first nine. It was about halfway through the forenoon watch when the Weald signaled ENEMY IN VIEW. After that, we followed Weald, in accordance with orders.
I did not get a good look at the three treasure ships until the day was more than half gone. There was a big galleon (later I learned she was the San Felipo), and two other ships that were only a little smaller (the Socorro and the Zumaya). So far, we had not worried them enough to make them turn back, which was what we wanted.
What we did not want was for them to keep going after sundown. Most Spanish ships hove to after sundown, and that was what we were expecting and hoping for. These kept going. That may have been SOP for the treasure ships, or it may just have meant that the captain of the San Felipo was getting a little concerned.
If it had been up to me, I would have gone for them that night. Capt. Burt decided to wait until morning. Having said that, I should also say that he had good reasons for it. First, we might wear down the Spanish crews a little if they were made to stand to their guns as long as we were in sight. Second, and more important, they could have put out their lights and scatted. If they had done that, we would have had a good chance of getting one, but not much chance of getting all three.
All three were what we wanted.
I slept on deck that night, which was no great hardship. About the time I was yawning and stretching, the Weald made signal: CROSS BOW OF LEAD SHIP GOOD LUCK CHRIS.
We crammed on as much sail as Sabina would carry in that wind, which was pretty much everything. The Spanish ships were strung out, as I saw when we got closer. The big galleon was in back to protect the smaller ships. One of those was about a quarter mile in front of her, and the other out in front of that one by about half as much.
I stayed west out of range of the galleon's guns. She fired anyway, throwing up fountains a hundred yards to starboard. It is a trip to be shot at and missed. It gets the old heart pumping and brightens up the eyes something wonderful.
When we got out front and put the wheel over, all that torment we had gone through in the Strait of Magellan paid off. This was fair weather, just a good stiff following wind. We put the helm over, brought the yards around, and had everything drawing again faster than any diesel-engine sailor would have thought possible.
The Spanish captain was ready for us and began his turn the moment he saw us go about. We fired as soon as our guns bore and got off the first broadside. Zumaya answered before the echoes had died away. Counting her guns was easy-she carried eight per side, five in the main battery and three on the weather deck. I guessed them twelve-pounders. If I was right, we were throwing a little more metal.
What really counts, though, is how much metal hits. The general rule with guns like we had is to aim at the base of the mainmast and pray to hit something. We were aiming a little higher and firing chain shot, because the last thing we wanted to do was to sink her. Novia was running up and down our weather deck checking aim, and Boucher was doing the same thing down below. But chain shot is slower to load and less accurate than round shot, and we were taking some punishment.
It looked bad until the Spanish captain tried to get fancy. His idea was to lag a little, then turn north again and rake us. It was the kind of thing I have seen a lot of guys do in fights-a good idea for somebody faster. We swung Sabina north again, it was our broadside to his bow, the same thing Capt. Burt had wanted originally.
I do not know how much damage altogether it did to Zumaya's rigging, but her formast went down and there seemed to be a good deal more.
"Shall we lay alongside, Captain?"
That was Bouton, and I told him I was not ready to die quite yet.
"But, Captain-"
"How long for the rest of them to catch up?"
He had not thought of that. I could see it in his face.
There was more fencing. One of our ships-usually the Weald-would engage the big galleon broadside-to-broadside. While the galleon was busy with whoever it was, somebody else-Snow Lady, Rescue, Fancy, or us- would cross her stern.
Or try to.
A minute can be forever when there is that kind of fighting. All afternoon (and we did it all afternoon) takes a year. There would be an hour or more of jockeying for position. Then hard shooting for five minutes or so, and then another hour or two of tacking, turning and edging around. I had musket men in the rigging, and Nazaire swore he hit the captain. If he did, I did not see any sign of it.
We did our best to keep track of them during the night and lost them anyway. Capt. Burt thought they had gone back to Callao. I did not get to speak to him, but I know he did from the orders he gave. Sabin
a was to look north, with Magdelena and Princess. I was in command. If we found them, Rombeau and I were to engage, and send Harker south. Weald, Snow Lady, Rescue, and Fancy would look south and send to us if they found the chase.
So what he thought was pretty plain. Sabina and Weald had taken more punishment than the others-Weald most of all, I would say, but it was the biggest we had and so was more able to take it.
The other thing was that I had the three fastest ships. The prevailing winds are north along that part of the coast, and he must have figured that if the Spanish had taken off north, they would make good time. It would be no use to send any ships but the fastest we had after them. On the other hand, running home to Mama would mean a lot of tacking. Our ships could probably out-tack the Spanish even if they were in good shape, and Zumaya had no foremast and would have trouble tacking even with a good captain and a handy crew.
Anyway, off we went with six men at the pumps and a dozen more trying to plug shot holes. That sounds like we were limping along, but actually we were not. I had the log cast three times, and one of those readings was sixteen knots. That was flying for a ship like Sabina, and I knew darned well that the Spanish were not going to make that kind of speed.
The thing was that I had thought about the same things Capt. Burt had, and had come up on the other end. There were three things they could do: go back to Callao, go west into the Pacific, and go north to Panama.
I tried to put myself into the head of the galleon captain: "Callao is close," I said to myself, "but it's upwind. It might take us every bit as long to get there as it would for us to get to Panama. So that's strike one. My orders don't say a thing about going back there, and everybody in town will say I'm a quitter. Strike two. Worst of all, it's what they'll expect. So strike three and out.
"Heading off into the Pacific is something they'll never expect, so that's a point in its favor. Ball one. But just look at all the problems. The farther we go, the longer it will take to get back. Strike one. We're not carrying enough food and water-water especially-to sail west for a week or so and then come back, angling north for Panama. Strike two. When we get back, we'll likely find the pirates hanging around near Panama waiting for us, and have to fight them anyway. Strike three. But none of that is the worst. It's against orders. If I do it, people may think I'm running off with the gold myself. Those people could include the captains under me and even my own crew. So that's absolutely out. No way!
"That leaves Panama. Sure, it's farther-strike one-but look at all the good stuff. It's what my orders call for-one base. Nobody's goin' to talk about cowardice or stealing-two bases. They won't expect it-I'm rounding third. It's downwind- home run! 'Well, Admiral Valdes, sir, God and all His saints were with me, and Captain Burt hung his curve.' "
I told everybody to get ready. We had drawn the long straw, and they were ours.
Which they almost were. We caught up with them about noon, Princess scooted off to tell Capt. Burt as ordered, and Rombeau and I got out in front and turned broadside-on. The idea was to keep them dodging and tacking until Weald and our other ships showed up. It worked twice, and then they caught on.
I had expected them to scatter, but they came at us in a line ahead, the San Felipo in the lead. It meant she was heading into our broadsides, and as long as she was bow-on we really pounded her.
She pounded us a little bit, too. She had six bow chasers, and they looked like four twelve-pounders and two twenties to me. We had the upper hand and did some real damage, but it was no picnic.
We wore ship as she came on, turning so as to keep our broadsides toward her. I kept hoping she would veer off. But hit or missed, or maybe replaced, her skipper had guts.
And big guns on the lower deck, probably thirty-two-pounders. She got it from both sides as she passed between us, but she gave as good as she got, and better. Socorro and Zumaya followed her. All I can say about them was that they pounded us some more. Maybe we pounded them a little, too. I know we tried, and tried hard.
This gets painful. Fr. Wahl keeps a bottle of Scotch in his bedroom, or so he says, and has invited me to join him whenever. Tonight I am going to knock on his door and take him up on it. If things go as I hope, I will get a drink or two-no more than two-and an hour's good talk.
Then go to bed. More tomorrow.
33
Gold!
A lot of men were dead, and a lot more were hurt so badly that they died in the next couple of hours. When a wooden ship is hit by a cast-iron cannonball, it throws splinters every which way. It throws them hard, and some are big. We did the best we could for our wounded, but our best was not much.
I am not going to list all the men who died here. I will list the one woman-otherwise you will feel sure it was Novia. It was Azuka. As for the rest… Well, a lot of the names I have mentioned over and over in telling my story will not be mentioned anymore.
Novia and I were not hurt, or at least not badly. I would say that there were about thirty of us who were not. Why God ruled that we were to be spared, I cannot say.
His mysteries lie beyond our comprehension.
The Spanish might have turned around and sunk both our ships. Or maybe Magdelena could have gotten away. What I know for sure is that we could not have. Anyone's guess is as good as mine as to why they did not. Mine is that their assignment was to carry the gold to Panama, not to fight pirates. They may also have seen Princess run off to fetch Weald and the rest of our ships.
Magdelena chased them, and we did our best to keep up. After six hours or more of that, Novia came up from the hold and said, "She sinks tonight, Crisoforo. It is best, perhaps, if we go before the sun. No?"
It was, and we did. I signaled Rombeau, and he hauled wind. Our longboat was stove, but we got a few men into the jolly and the piragua. Magdelena's longboat took the rest, the sound and the wounded.
The dead we left on board.
No. I did not go down with my ship, but I was the last to leave. That night, when we were alone in the cabin Rombeau gave up for us, Novia and I held each other and she cried. I did not, but I wanted to. I would have felt better, I know, if I had. I could not. I WOULD NOT want to go back to the three or four days that followed, but I must write about them here for the record to be complete.
For you to understand, and for me to understand, too.
The Spanish ships reached Panama. We thought of raiding the harbor, but by the time Weald, Snow Lady, Rescue, Fancy, and Princess joined us, a lot of the gold had been unloaded. Capt. Burt knew the route the mule train would follow if it headed north to Mexico or Veracruz and we decided to cut them off. I say we. Even though I did not get to vote, Capt. Burt let me sit in on the captains' meeting. Having no ship, I did not count.
How would I have voted if I could? To tell the truth, I am not sure. But probably as they did.
We sailed west along the coast to a village of eight or ten houses called Rio Hato, where the road turns inland. Half of each crew was to stay on each ship, as before. I got Novia alone and said, "Now listen to me. I'm not going to lose you. I've already lost a lot of people I liked, and I'm not about to lose the one person I love. I want you to swear to God Almighty, right here and right now, that you'll stay on this ship."
She raised her hand and said, "I, Sabina Maria de Vega Aranda Guzman, do swear as I live that I will remain behind until this good man who is my husband before you, O Lord, returns for me. I shall not follow him, save he permits me."
I knew she meant it. I could hear that in her voice and see it in her face. I did not ask her any questions, but she knew me better than anyone else ever has, and she knew. Almost whispering she said, "I have in me a child, Crisoforo."
Half the crews were supposed to stay behind. That was not how it was, although I did not realize it until that evening, when we had laid out our ambush and camped. Novia had not followed, but a lot of men who were supposed to stay with the ships had. Some of them were probably afraid that we would never come back to the ships. (Most of
us never did.) Some just felt that this was going to be the biggest thing in their lives and wanted to be in on it, saying, "I was with Burt at Rio Hato," the way people said, "I was with Morgan when he burned Panama." Later I found out that there had been only five men with Novia on the Magdelena.
For most of the morning we tramped up the road until we found a good place, with some big trees back from the road and a lot of brush alongside it. We set up our ambush a hundred paces or so after that. Men were stationed every yard or so on both sides, with twenty good musket men to block the end once the soldiers and mules had gotten between the rest. I was in charge of that group; and Mahu came with me, although he did not have a musket. Nobody was to fire until we did.
It seemed like a good plan and would probably have worked. The trouble was that when the mule train ambled into it late that afternoon, somebody got spotted. A soldier shot at him, his friends shot back, and in less than a minute every barrel was hot. We moved out into the road and started shooting the way we were supposed to, but the nearest soldiers were still forty or fifty paces away.
They were shot to rags just the same, but half the mules and mule drivers ran hell-for-leather back toward Panama. We were running after them, yelling for all we were worth, when something happened that just then seemed like a miracle. There was more shooting off to the east, and a terrible pileup when the men and mules who had been at the back of the column turned around and tried to bug out toward us. We shot, and the guys who had been east of us shot, and the soldiers who were left did not stand a chance.
The new pirates-the ones who had been east of us blocking the way back to the coast-turned out to be Lesage and the crew of the Bretagne. We were happy to see them, and they pretended to be happy to see us. I hugged Lesage and got to talk to him a little bit. He said he had missed us at Portobello, but he had known what Capt. Burt planned to do so he had gone after us as fast as he could, and had finally found our ships at Rio Hato.