by Dudley Pope
“What about the crew of your boat?”
“They’ll be in some tavern and drunk by now. They won’t start worrying until they wake up in the morning, when the mosquitoes and sandflies start to eat them.”
Thomas was quick to realize what Ned was trying to do. “By the time we’re missed it’ll be noon tomorrow. The buccaneers will question the boat’s crew, who’ll know nothing, and then they’ll come here, looking for us in this office. By then, I suppose, Slinger will have taken us away somewhere…”
One of the officers laughed, delighted at the idea that such a famous Royalist could be so miserable. “Yes, you’ll be a long way away by then, “he said. “Up in the mountains among the clouds. Cold and wet.” He gave a brutal laugh. “Yellow fever up there; you’ll see the graves. Spanish, some of them; they soon learned that this is an island for dying.”
Within half an hour it was almost dark, and one of the officers went to fetch candles. It took him ten minutes with his tinder box, cursing and gently blowing the tinder, to produce enough flame to light the crude rush candles, and then he set them down on the table, jamming them into three empty bottles he had found outside.
The dim light did not encourage talking, and Ned tried to remember which six men had rowed the Griffin’s boat. Yes, they were sensible men. What would they do when their captain and Sir Thomas did not arrive back at the jetty?
Probably one of them would walk over to this house, quietly, and ask the sentry, what was delaying his master. Either there would be no sentry, or he would get an unsatisfactory answer. Or he would be made a prisoner. Certainly within fifteen minutes the rest of the boat’s crew would be suspicious: they would come over to the house – and one glance through the window would be enough to warn them.
Ned suddenly felt a twinge of doubt. Supposing the boat’s crew had already been made prisoner? He then decided it was unlikely that Slinger would think of it: he was in a whirling fury of rage, excitement and righteousness when he left the house and, being a soldier, he would not associate buccaneers on land with boats – any more, Ned admitted, than buccaneers would necessarily associate a band of soldiers with horses.
Well, without risking a pistol ball in the gizzard or a slash from one of the heavy swords, there was nothing to do but wait for an opportunity. These two officers were conscientious: there was no chance of them dozing off or getting drunk…though a chance remark told him that they were getting hungry.
One of them had a watch which he opened and held the face towards the nearest candle. “Nearly nine o’clock. If the colonel remembered, they should be along with some supper in a few minutes.”
Ned caught Thomas’ eye and casually looked round the room. Heffer had the table in the centre so that the door was on his right, and thus on the left of Ned and Thomas sitting opposite him. The guards were behind, between the table and the window, the two of them making do with one chair and taking it in turns to sit down. The only light came from the three candles stuck in bottles on the table. He had been listening ever since Slinger and Rowlands left, and there was no hint of anyone in the ante-room, which opened on to a large hall and led to the front door.
He attracted Thomas’ attention again and with his eyes tried to indicate his plan. Finally Thomas rubbed his nose and gave an uncharacteristic belch.
When it happened it took Ned unawares: he had not realized how thick was the door and what a good fit the Spanish carpenters had made so many years ago. The key grated in the lock and first Rowlands, carrying a lantern, and then Slinger came into the room. Rowlands, obviously put out that both Ned and Thomas completely ignored him, almost flounced, making the heels of his boots thud on the stone floor and, Ned noted, passing right across the room. Slinger stopped a couple of paces inside the door and looked questioningly at one of the guards.
“Everything in order, sir; the prisoners have been quiet.”
“Very well. A couple of men are coming with your supper. Nothing elaborate.” Ned saw a faint glow of light through the door. He could picture a soldier carrying a saucepan or bucket in one hand and a lantern in the other. The second man – bearing in mind that only two soldiers were carrying food for six people – must be laden with pots and pans.
Slinger said to Ned: “I hope you have been having second thoughts. You must have realized you are a long way from London. By now the Commonwealth will be re-established and the King either executed or forced to flee back to France.”
“The Netherlands, I believe.”
“The Netherlands?”
“Yes, General Monck brought him back from the Netherlands, I’m told.”
“Oh, the Netherlands, eh?” Slinger muttered, completely confused by Ned’s remark. “Well, I expect they’ll have him back.”
Ned then heard footsteps which were slowing up as they neared the door, then he saw the glow of a lantern, and pictured a nervous soldier slowing down, perhaps intending to poke his head round the door jamb and ask where to place the food.
He leapt up and flung over the table in the same moment, sending the candles flying, and ran the few steps to the door. In the same motion he thrust Slinger in front of him so that the little colonel bounced off the startled soldier, who dropped the lantern and saucepan with a loud clatter.
With only Rowlands’ lantern left alight, the ante-room was in almost total darkness, and Ned tried to guess where the front door was, somewhere on the far side of the hall. He heard an oath, a crash and a whimper of pain and the single lantern went out: Thomas had obviously flung Rowlands to one side and with a triumphant bellow of “Make way for Whetstone, you mumbling yokels!” crashed through the ante-room and hall after Ned, hurling aside furniture and somehow staying on his feet.
“Gallows Point! Make for Gallows Point,” Ned hissed as they flung open the front door and plunged down the three wide steps.
“What about the boat?”
“If they haven’t seized it yet, it’ll be the first thing they’ll make for now!”
As the two men ran along the track over the dunes towards the battery which Heffer had shown them only a few days earlier, Thomas said: “What’s the attraction of Gallows Point?”
“Last place they’ll look for us!”
“They’ll find us – blast, nearly broke my ankle in a land crab hole – at daylight!”
“We’ll see,” Ned said. “Save your breath for running.”
Behind them they heard the crack of a pistol, followed by a second shot.
“Aimed away from us,” Thomas said. “Firing towards the jetty. You were right, they think we’re making for the boat.”
The sea on their left reflected the stars, but the moon, in its last quarter, would not rise for several hours. They reached the battery, and once past it the track narrowed down to an almost indistinguishable path as it went on towards the end of the sand-spit.
“We can walk now,” Ned said, slowing down. “Less risk of twisting an ankle.”
“We’re just about abreast the Griffin and Peleus. Want to risk swimming out to them?”
“No,” said Ned firmly. “I doubt if you’re good for half a mile. I know I’m not.”
“Sheer bravado,” Thomas admitted cheerfully. “With this paunch twenty yards would scuttle me.”
Now they were standing among knee-high shrubs, and Ned said: “I’m hoping we’ll find a fisherman’s canoe on the beach up here.”
Thomas held his arm so that the two men stopped.
“We’re safe enough now, Ned. Let’s sit here and think for a while. What about Teffler? Do you think this fellow Slinger will hold on as governor?”
“Heffer has three thousand men. Your guess is as good as mine about who picks Slinger and who picks Heffer. It boils down to a handful of colonels and two handsful of majors: the subalterns and the rest follow their commanding officers.”
Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Slinger is clearly mad, and can’t accept that the King is restored permanently –”
“We don’t know that for sure, Ned!”
“We can make a good guess, though. Because General Monck and the army decided to bring the King back, and the navy sent a ship to fetch him, then the army and the navy are so involved that the Restoration must be a success. It has to work. The old monarchy was overthrown but the Commonwealth replacing it was obviously failing even before its leader, your benighted uncle, had died.”
“And the first real news the King will get from Jamaica is that a group of fanatical Roundheads have turned the island into a republic.”
“Exactly, and I suspect that Heffer has only just worked that out!”
“So what can we do?”
“Do with 1,250 buccaneers against perhaps three thousand soldiers? I don’t know. I can’t see the Brethren wanting to do anything: after all, the Restoration in England is no concern of theirs. They’re interested in Port Royal only as a base. I’m sure most of the French, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish Brethren barely know the name of their own king!”
“Let’s be selfish, Ned. The Brethren have no brains and precious little organization. The Portobelo business will be a farce, unless we organize it for them and you lead. If we’re going to put purchase in their pockets, then in return they can give us a hand when need be.”
Ned was silent for a minute or two. “Better if they gave us a hand without realizing it.”
“How so, Ned?”
“Well, they’d cut throats by the dozen to rescue you and me – they’ll start as soon as they discover we are missing. But if we warned Slinger that we’d turn the Brethren loose on him…he doesn’t know how many men we have, and it looks an impressive fleet at anchor…and…” His voice tailed off and Thomas left him with his thoughts for three or four minutes.
“And…” Thomas prompted.
“I was thinking; Heffer warned Slinger that the Spaniards were coming, and Slinger brushed it aside. I suspect that by now Slinger has had second thoughts. I believe Slinger was one of the first to run away in that farcical attack on Santo Domingo, so he has a healthy respect for the Spanish soldiery!”
“How does all that help us ? If the buccaneers won’t budge to support us Royalists, and Slinger controls Jamaica for the Commonwealth – which no longer exists, except here in the person of Slinger – and Slinger chooses to ignore the Spanish threat, then I’m going to suggest the Brethren return to Tortuga.”
“Keep talking in this tone of voice. Thomas, I don’t know what’s going on but we are surrounded by men crawling through the bushes. That damned man –”
A bush rose and struck him across the head and the whine of mosquitoes and rattling of tree frogs suddenly stopped.
Chapter Seven
Above the throbbing which threatened to burst his skull he heard Leclerc giving instructions in an agitated voice. “Break off more branches and build up that bonfire – we must have light!”
“Supposing the soldiers see it?” another voice protested.
“They’ll think it is fishermen boiling conch. Look, Sir Thomas is moving – and there, M. Yorke opens his eyes: M’sieur, how are you? Mon Dieu, what a mistake!”
The little bonfire spurted more flame as branches caught fire; Ned felt he was inside a black tent. Then he remembered the bush that moved, and tried to sit up.
A man crouching beside him – was it the Englishman Coles? – said gently: “No rush, Mr Yorke, wait until you feel steady again.”
“What the devil happened?”
Leclerc heard the mumbled question and said to Coles: “You tell him!”
“Well, Mr Yorke, your boatmen came back and reported what they’d seen through the window of the general’s house; all three o’ you held prisoner by soldiers. So Leclerc landed at the point with a hundred men while Rideau collected the rest of them and landed at the jetty. We reckoned that’d be enough to get you all out – and occupy the Palisades, if need be.”
“Yes, but who hit me and Sir Thomas?”
“Well, we’re sorry about that Mr Yorke, but we saw two men just sitting and we reckoned they were soldiers acting as sentries, guarding the house against anyone coming from the point. It was too dark to recognize you, sir – anyway, we thought you was still prisoners in the house. So…”
“Leclerc,” Ned said, reassured to hear Thomas beginning to curse and sit up, “now we are here, we’ll go down to the house and free the general. He’s an old fool but Sir Thomas and I were just making arrangements with him for our base here when those traitors arrived.”
“Yes – but what is going on?”
“It’s an army quarrel: a few colonels want to take over. A simple mutiny. They haven’t enough to occupy their time so they plot.”
“Let me help you,” Leclerc said, “I understand perfectly. We can free the general, hang a few colonels and be back on board in time for breakfast. Ah, Sir Thomas, my apologies!”
“Our fault for not spotting you crawling through the bush. Trouble was we were busy talking.”
“Yes, we thought you were gossiping sentries.”
Thomas lurched over to Ned. “You are all right? Good, shall we go back and rescue old Teffler? I feel sorry for him. And I want to get my hands round young Rowlands’ throat!”
Within three minutes the bonfire had been put out and the glowing embers stamped into the sand, and Ned and Thomas were leading the buccaneers back along the path to the battery, and then along the wide track to the house.
“Do you want swords and pistols?” Leclerc asked. “Most of us have two of each.”
“Not for me,” Ned said. “My head throbs so much I couldn’t aim a pistol!”
They were well past the battery when Leclerc stopped them. “There’s a light ahead. A window?”
“The general’s office faces this way. They’ve still got him there.”
Thomas said: “I wonder if they’ve given up looking for us?”
“I should think so. We’re of no importance to Slinger. He thinks only of the army – quite rightly. He’s worried about the other colonels, not us.”
Ned told Leclerc: “There’s a back door on the north side and the front door is on the east. The window we see is on the west. The road leads up to the front door but goes on round to the back. Now, listen carefully. We want to rescue General Heffer alive. He is a tall man with white hair and a long face like a sheep and protruding teeth. The traitor, Slinger, is small with a face like a fox. Black hair, cut short, Roundhead style. He moves quickly like a fox or a burglar.”
“We want him alive?”
“Don’t kill him unnecessarily. There’ll be other officers with him but I doubt if any private soldiers. So – I shall go through the front door and into the office with Sir Thomas. You and Coles and Brace will follow but at first stay outside the office. You’ll see when you need to come in.”
“At the same time I want five men crouching below that window with pistols ready to cover us – or shoot any of these soldiers if they don’t behave. Another five men to guard the back door and stop anyone entering or leaving the building. The rest stay a few yards from the front door: our corps de réserve.”
Leclerc walked back, picked his men and then returned.
“We are ready,” he said. “Here are Coles and Brace and Rideau.”
Ned quickly described the route to the office through the front door and across the hall and ante-room. “We’ll go barefoot,” he added. “Don’t let the rude soldiery stamp on your toes, Thomas!”
A few yards from the house they stopped and removed their shoes and boots, putting them in a pile beside a small bush. Coles crept up to the door from one side to make a
bsolutely sure there was no sentry, and then Ned led the way through the entrance.
Suddenly they could hear voices from inside the office: Ned could distinguish the querulous tone of Slinger and the deeper reply of Heffer. Slinger was angry and excited – it seemed a permanent state for him – but Heffer was frightened.
There was a third voice and it spoke with some authority. Another mutinous colonel, Ned thought. And a fourth. Now a fifth interrupted, and was in turn interrupted by Slinger.
He moved across the hall to the ante-room door. Here he could distinguish words, not just voices and it took him three or four incredulous minutes to be certain what was going on. He pictured the buccaneers getting into position, especially the five crouching below the sill of the window.
The office was well lit now, and the candles and lanterns threw dancing shadows on the whitewashed walls of the ante-room. There was no doubt about it: Slinger had set up a court in the office: Heffer was being tried by court-martial. He was protesting that he was not being allowed to call witnesses.
One of the other colonels was jeering at him, saying that his only witnesses, the two Royalists, had run away to rejoin the buccaneers. Then Slinger declared that the evidence against him spoke for itself: Heffer had accepted the orders sent out from London in the name of the King.
“And General Monck: he signed them!” Heffer exclaimed angrily.
“It is obvious that Monck has turned traitor to the Commonwealth,” Slinger said contemptuously.
“How can you be sure? The Lord Protector is dead; we all know that Richard Cromwell has no taste for succeeding him. The army in England may –”
“So now you slander the whole army,” Slinger almost screamed. “Your own words, and the written orders bearing his signature that you have put in as evidence, prove both you and Monck are traitors. He gives you orders and you obey them. That alone makes you a traitor. A traitor!” Slinger spat out the word. “Worse, far worse, than those libertine Royalists. They live sinful lives in their ships, all drunkenness and lechery, but at least they are true to the man they call their king. We’ll hang them for it, of course, but at least they betrayed no one!”