Corsair

by Dudley Pope

  In a way it was unfair, Ned mused: Santa Lucia was an innocent town, chosen by chance. But then the five villages set ablaze by the Spaniards on Jamaica had been innocent, too; their inhabitants had been fisherfolk and people farming the land nearby, people caught up in a Spanish decision to attack the island. They were innocent people in the Jamaica villages; they were innocent people in Santa Lucia. It was always the innocent who suffered – but then who was not innocent? In Cuba, perhaps everyone except the Viceroy…

  There was a grating noise under the keel and the Griffin came to a stop. Even before Ned had time to register that they had gone aground the Peleus was passing on one side and the Phoenix on the other, showing that the ship was hung up on an isolated rock, not a reef, so that the rest of the ships could pass her on either side. But how many more isolated rocks were there, waiting hidden below the water ready to strand or hole an unsuspecting ship?

  “I think we ran on it to starboard,” Ned told Lobb. “We’ll heel her to larboard and see if she comes off. Hoist up one of the boats by the yardarm, and run the guns over to the other side.”

  But it all takes time, he cursed: time in which the rest of the buccaneer fleet will have anchored and sent their men ashore. Hurriedly men cast off the breechings and train tackles of the guns on the starboard side and began to haul them over to larboard, the trucks rumbling on the deck. More men pulled one of the boats round while others scrambled up the rigging and out along the yard, reeving a tackle to hoist the boat.

  “Will that be enough weight?” Lobb asked anxiously. “This wind isn’t strong enough to help heel us much.”

  “As soon as we get the boat hoisted up we’ll set the mainsail and brace the yard sharp up,” Ned said. “If that doesn’t heel us enough, then we’ll have to start the water and pump it over the side to lighten the ship.”

  But who was going to lead the raid on the port? Ned thought whether or not to take the remaining boat and hurry for the shore, but he realized that with the distance involved and the delay he would arrive after most of the boats had landed and that it would then be hopeless trying to take command of more than a thousand excited men. But for running up on this damnable rock the Griffin would now be at anchor and her boats would be the first to land on the beach, leaving him properly placed to lead.

  So now it was up to Thomas, who was more than capable of taking charge. The Peleus had passed close enough for Thomas to see what had happened and he would have wasted no time in deciding what to do.

  By now all the starboard side guns had been pushed and hauled over to larboard and the men who had rove the tackle were dangling the rope down to those in the boat, which was now directly under the end of the yard.

  Ned went to the bulwark and watched the men feed the rope through the lifting eyebolts and, as soon as they stood back with the task completed, Ned called to the men at the tackle. “Hoist away…”

  Should he have filled the boat with water? It was only a question of pulling the bung out and letting the boat flood, but a flooded boat might be too heavy, springing the yard or parting the tackle.

  Slowly the boat jerked into the air, and once it was clear of the bulwarks Ned gave the order to set the mainsail and sheet it home.

  With the guns on the larboard side, the boat added its weight at the end of the yard, levering the mast over to larboard. Now the mainsail caught the wind and, as the men hauled on the sheet and braces, helped heel the ship further to larboard.

  What did you do during the attack on Santa Lucia? Well, actually I watched from the middle of the harbour because we ran aground… The last of the buccaneer ships had passed the stranded Griffin, heading for the beach, and not one of them had stranded.

  Aurelia had noticed and she commented: “I think we hit the only rock in the whole harbour.”

  “At least it didn’t hole us. Remind me to talk to the carpenter – he was quick to get below and sound the well. We’re not taking a drop of water so we’ve that much to be thankful for.”

  As Ned and Lobb stood silent for a moment, watching the big mainsail belly in the wind, ghostly in the darkness, they felt the ship grunt, then grunt again as the keel slid across the rock. And then suddenly the Griffin was under way once more, sailing unrestrained.

  Ned snapped at the helmsman and the Griffin turned towards the town. “We’re finished with the mainsail,” he told Lobb. “Back the headsails while we get the boat back in the water.”

  He turned to the larboard side. “You men with the guns – get them back to starboard and secure the breechings and train trackles; if we roll they’ll go clean through the ship’s side.”

  Once again the heavy wooden wheels on the gun carriages rumbled as the grunting men pulled and heaved them back into position, and then they crouched as they knotted the heavy rope through the eyebolts fitted to the ship’s side.

  The boat was lowered back into the water, the tackle was cast off and men with the painter began to haul it aft. Ned called them to leave it alongside: the moment the Griffin was properly anchored, he intended to get ashore.

  The headsails were sheeted home and the Griffin once again stretched towards the town. It was hard to see the beach for anchored ships, and Ned cursed: he would not be able to anchor close in, and that meant he would be even later in landing. The devil take that rock!

  Lobb gave the order to ease the helm as the Griffin slipped past one of the buccaneer ships, and quickly followed that with instructions to luff up to avoid another anchored just beyond.

  “Don’t go in any closer,” Ned said. “We’ll anchor here.”

  With most of the buccaneers now ashore, judging from the boats Ned could see on the beach, there was no need to avoid shouting orders, and after a bellow from Lobb the headsails slid down the stays and the Griffin slowly turned head to wind.

  Lobb ran to the ship’s side to see when the way had come off her and gave another bellow, which was followed by the splash of the anchor and the sound of the cable coursing through the hawsehole.

  Ned hitched at his cutlass and pushed at the two pistols stuck in his belt. He jumped up on to the bulwark above the boat and shouted to the nearest men to join him.

  A couple of minutes later he was seated on a thwart while the men fitted the oars into the rowlocks. He heard Aurelia call something and answered with a reassuring hail. Now the men began rowing briskly, and at that moment Ned heard the tolling of a church bell: the Spaniards were raising the alarm. How far had the buccaneers got?

  The boat’s keel grated on the sand and Ned leapt out. There were many boats on the beach, like great fish tossed up by the sea. The sand was hard and Ned held up his cutlass as he ran towards the tolling bell and the yelling of the buccaneers who had already landed. The men who had been rowing followed him, by now shouting with excitement.

  That damned bell! It would get everyone excited and he could just see the church tower above the roof tops. He ran along one street and then turned into another, seeing the white-painted church on the far side of a small plaza, which was already teeming with men.

  Drawing his cutlass he flung open the church door and ran in. A few moments later he found the bellringer: a man in his nightshirt ringing with something approaching a frenzy. “Stop!” Ned ordered in Spanish but the man was oblivious, apparently hauling in panic. Ned slashed at the bellrope above the man’s head and the bell rang once more as the man tugged and collapsed. The bellrope flicked back and forth for a few moments and Ned decided to leave the man – priest or sexton? – slumped where he was, still holding on to a few feet of bellrope.

  By now he had been joined by several of the buccaneers, who ran to the altar looking for gold ornaments and candlesticks. Ned left the church and walked over to the nearest house, banging on the door with the hilt of his cutlass.

  A woman asked what he wanted in a voice trembling with fear. “Where does
the mayor live?” he demanded.

  “On the other side of the plaza – a double gate beside the big tree!”

  Ned turned and ran across the plaza, calling to the buccaneers.

  The mayor refused to come to the door of his house and the buccaneers soon smashed it in. Ned led them into the house and eventually found their quarry hiding under a big table in what seemed to be the dining room.

  He was a plump little man also dressed only in his nightshirt, although Ned could not distinguish his features in the darkness. “Take him down to the boat and hold him there,” Ned told three of the buccaneers.

  Back out in the plaza he saw the flicker of flames coming from buildings at the seaward end of the town. A few burning houses, he thought grimly, will help us see what we are doing.

  As he made his way towards the flames he heard Thomas’ booming voice.

  “Search these big houses,” he was shouting. “They don’t eat their meals off pottery!”

  He found Thomas in the next street, cutlass in one hand and pistol in the other.

  “Ned! You got off that rock then! Must be the only one in the bay. Gave me quite a turn when I saw the Griffin stop: thought it might be a wide reef. Not much purchase in this place!”

  “I found the mayor,” Ned said. “He’ll be worth a bit of ransom.”

  Thomas waved towards the burning buildings. “Do we burn the whole town?”

  “No, but a few of these big houses should go: the owners are the influential people in this town.”

  “What about stoving in some of the fishing boats on the beach? I saw a dozen or more drawn up when I landed.”

  Ned thought a moment then shook his head. “No, leave them: the fishermen are poor folk and have no influence.”

  “We were lucky there weren’t any out in the bay to raise the alarm,” Thomas said, pausing to shout orders to a group of buccaneers.

  Ned watched as buccaneers smashed down another door and ran into the house, shouting threats. By now several of them had lanterns and burning torches, and he could see the glow at many other windows as the men searched for valuables.

  But Santa Lucia’s streets stayed empty except for the roaming bands of buccaneers and if there had been a watch in Santa Lucia its members stayed behind closed doors. He heard a triumphant shout as one buccaneer found something valuable, and suddenly he realized that his heart was not really in the raid. Yes, the raid was necessary to teach the Dons a lesson and warn them off Jamaica, but terrorizing people like this, robbing them and setting their homes ablaze round their ears…?

  Yet it was a weird contradiction: if the Spanish raided a town in Jamaica they would have no hesitation in putting houses to the torch; nor, more important, would they hesitate to murder the occupants. From what Sir Harold had said, eight people had been killed in the five villages. Ned felt a chill; this was no time to be faint-hearted, he told himself. To the Spaniards – to any Spaniards, be they young soldiers or old women – the people of Jamaica were heretics, doomed to the rack, hellfire, brimstone and eternal damnation.

  By now Thomas’ buccaneers had searched the houses and were busy setting fire to two of them. The fires started as little more than bonfires in the rooms, but the wood was bone dry and in moments flames were leaping up, crackling like splintering wood and roaring as random puffs of wind fanned them. Walls collapsed with a crash; roofs caved in, hurling more wood into the fires.

  Was it worth looking for the town treasurer, and finding out who were the two or three most prosperous merchants? Ned decided not: they would demand a high ransom for the mayor to make up for it.

  Ned called to his buccaneers and made for the other side of the plaza. There were several big houses there that needed searching. Already he could see some of Thomas’ men staggering down to the boats, carrying and dragging items they had found.

  His own men were soon battering down doors, shouting at the terrified occupants and disappearing into the houses, their lanterns lighting up the windows as they flung open the shutters. Ned suddenly realized that apart from the crackling of flames, the loudest noise was the hysterical barking of dogs, which were obviously racing through the town in excited packs. There was the yapping of small dogs mixed with the deep baying of hounds, and all clearly frightened by the flames.

  By now it was clear that many of the buccaneers had found wine and spirits in the houses and were getting drunk, but Ned knew it was hopeless to try and keep the men sober. If there was drink, the men would find it, and anyone trying to stop them risked his life. Ned knew that it would be stupid to risk his authority by getting into drunken arguments with a group of besotted men. Do as much as possible while the men were sober, and then get them back to the boats when they were too drunk to carry on. Buccaneer raids had their own pattern.

  By the time dawn started picking out the shape of the houses, the buccaneers had searched through the last of the big houses and staggered down to the boats with their loot. Ned checked that the mayor had been taken out to the Griffin and handed over to guards. They did not speak a word of Spanish, but Aurelia would have acted as interpreter should any explanations be necessary.

  The next time Ned found Thomas – still in control of several hundred drunk and half-drunk buccaneers – he raised the question of the mayor.

  “Shall we ransom him here or take him back to Jamaica?”

  “Lot easier if we do it here,” Thomas said. “Once it’s daylight, we’ll gather up some of the townsmen and tell them what we want for their mayor.”

  “We might have taken all their money,” Ned said.

  “Then we’ll take him away while they look for more!”

  By nine o’clock, a dozen of the most important of Santa Lucia’s inhabitants were lined up in the plaza, with the burned-out row of houses over on the left. The whole plaza reeked of the burned buildings, and the twelve men stood in a group.

  When Ned walked up to speak to them, he realized that all twelve thought they had been selected for execution. Certainly the plaza looked a grim enough place for a file of musketeers to line up to form a firing squad, he thought to himself.

  He stood in front of the twelve men. “A few days ago,” he said in Spanish, “a number of your ships appeared off the north coast of Jamaica and set fire to five villages. Five up to the time we left; there may have been many more since then. And they killed eight people.

  “So now you know why we are here: we could have burned down the whole of Santa Lucia, but as you see we have burned only a score of houses. We could have taken all of you as hostages, but in fact we’ve only taken the mayor.

  “We hope you will complain to the authorities in Havana, and explain to them that this raid is a reprisal for the raids on Jamaica. Now, we have to talk about the mayor. Obviously you respect him, or else he would not be your mayor. To get him back, you are going to have to pay a ransom.

  “Don’t,” he said sternly, holding up his hand to silence some of the men who were beginning to protest, “argue that you have no money. You have plenty, and it is still where you hid it. I shall return here at noon, and you will all be here, and you will have with you enough gold and coins to ransom your mayor.

  “How much? Well, we will be generous. This is a small town and your mayor is a small man. So we will fix the price at forty thousand pieces of eight, or its equivalent in gold objects. If you do not pay, then your mayor will be hanged–” Ned gestured across the plaza, “–hanged from the cotton tree over there…”

  With that Ned gave what he hoped was a bloodcurdling laugh and stalked out of the plaza, followed by Thomas. As they reached the boats Thomas said: “My Spanish wasn’t good enough to follow everything you said, but that was a diabolical laugh; it even made my blood run cold!”

  “Well, I don’t want to have to hang the mayor from that tree, so let’s hope those worthies produce t
he ransom. Our men will also see what they missed!”

  “Yes, I guessed you have given them time and let them go so that they can get their valuables out of their hiding places.”

  “Yes – robbing houses is a waste if the people have time to hide things. That’s why it’s better to attack a big town where there’s a treasury. Still, I told them why they’ve been raided, so Havana will hear all about it.”

  By the time that Ned was rowed out to the Griffin he was beginning to feel the effects of a night’s lost sleep. Aurelia reported that the mayor had been put below in leg irons, with a couple of seamen guarding him.

  “He was terrified when he was brought on board,” she said. “He was trembling so much I had a hard time making him understand what was going on. He’s convinced he’s going to be killed. He has a wife, seven children, his mother and four aunts depending on him; that he told me when he had calmed down a bit. Every one of them will mourn him, he says, and every one of them will starve if he doesn’t provide for them.”

  “Did you reassure him that he wasn’t going to die?”

  Aurelia shook her head. “No: I found I had nothing but contempt for him. Once he found out that a woman appeared to be in command of the ship, he began weeping, trying to get sympathy – for himself and all his family.”

  Ned described the raid on Santa Lucia, and how a dozen of the town’s leading citizens had until noon to collect the mayor’s ransom.

  “I saw many houses burning,” Aurelia said.

  “It probably looked worse than it was: a score at the most. Just enough to teach them a lesson.” He took out his watch and looked at it. “The dozen worthy burghers have to be in the plaza at noon to pay the ransom. Wringing their hands and saying they have no money…”

  “So what do you do then?”

  “Frighten them. Daylight might have given some of them a little more courage.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I’ll take the mayor with me – is he still in his nightshirt?”