The Mountain of Gold

by J. D. Davies

  'Besides,' said Carvell, 'Ali here spoke with some of the men of the town, after you'd left. He's picked up enough of their tongues in our time upon this river. They pointed him to an old man who had supplied the renegade with Arab garb, and had seen him going off across the river to the southward.'

  'So I studied the pilot's charts, Captain,' said Ali Reis, 'and concluded that our friend here would make his way south and east, then work back up the river to the vicinity of Barraconda, where he was like to meet with a caravan bound for Timbuctoo. He was unlikely to go far from the river, not knowing the land. But the Coxswain, here, perfected the trap.'

  Carvell was uncharacteristically bashful. 'Well, Captain, all I reckoned was that this far upstream, an Arab factor and his slave would be less conspicuous than a couple of seamen in old English slop clothes. But it worked better than ever I imagined. He didn't recognise us, y'see, sir. We'd got ahead of him—'

  And he approached us,' said Ali Reis triumphantly, 'crying As-Salamu Alaykam!'

  'That he did,' Carvell laughed, 'until he saw a naked Mandingo level a matchlock pistol at his brow.'

  'Well, gentlemen!' I cried. 'I commend you both for your initiative, by God! The king shall hear of this, have no fear.' I shook the hands of both Carvell and Ali Reis. Then I stepped in front of O'Dwyer, and at last, the renegade raised his eyes to meet mine. 'So, Colonel O'Dwyer,' I said, 'or I think Omar Ibrahim is more appropriate again, perhaps? Fleeing back to the corsairs, I see, as I always knew you would—as you would have done when the Rovers came upon us at sea, or else at Tenerife, but for my men—'

  Even now, the bravado of the foul rogue was breathtaking. 'Not at all, Captain—I was merely seeking guides to take us to the mountain more directly, and the factors who could provide an advance upon its profits, as you and I discussed—'

  I raised my hand. 'No, Irishman. Enough. Your silken words won't save you from the noose this time—not with the blood of eleven Englishmen added to all the lies you've told.' The renegade shrugged; eleven deaths were evidently only a little matter in the weighing of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer's conscience. But I had the measure of him now. 'Captain Matthew Quinton will finally execute upon you the justice you should have receive the moment you set foot on the deck of the Wessex, I said. And if you think you'll get a chance to mislead my king once again, O'Dwyer, then you're more mistaken than you can possibly conceive.'

  I was almost twenty-four years old at that time, and had left childhood behind me long before; civil war and exile are powerful enough aids to maturity, but following the deaths of my father and grandfather, and in the absence of my brother and Uncle Tris, I had effectively become the senior male in the household of Ravensden at the age of five. Even so, I could not restrain a childish glee as I gave two orders in quick succession: one, to chain the traitor O'Dwyer in the hold; two, for the carpenter's crew to demolish the partition in my cabin and return the whole to me.

  Twenty-Five

  When I addressed a council of the officers of the Seraph later the next morning (after a particularly blissful sleep in my sea-bed, whose comforts I had never appreciated so much), I looked out upon the faces of changed men. It was not only the welcome fact that my cabin now reached the entire breadth of the ship, giving all of us ample room to stretch ourselves. It was as though a mighty chain had been cut from all our ankles; even Tom Shish was smiling, for the first time since the discovery of his intended sabotage. It was also one of the briefest and most unanimous councils of that sort I ever experienced. When I put forward the proposition that O'Dwyer's mountain of gold had been exposed as a monstrous fraud, and that I saw our duty as being to return downstream as fast as we could to pursue the other part of our orders, the harrying of the Dutch, every man smiled, cried 'aye!' and pounded his hands upon the table.

  Thus it was that four nights after the arrest of O'Dwyer, the Seraph dropped anchor once more off Taukorovalle, close to the Courlander Krokodil. She was now more nearly shipshape, but God alone knew how good a fist her tiny crew would make of it on the river, let alone out in an Atlantic gale. I proposed to hold another council shortly, for we faced a pressing dilemma under the terms of our orders. There was now nothing to stop us attacking Jakob's Fort on San Andreas in the name of King Charles and old England, but I was reluctant to shed the blood of that good fellow Captain Stiel and his garrison; moreover, Captain Facey and I had seen for ourselves the formidable battery of the fort, and there was no guarantee that we could capture—or even sail past—such an arsenal. Thus I needed to know Stiel's temper and intentions, and crucially, I also needed intelligence of Holmes' actions, for we had received no word of his war-making mission since proceeding upstream.

  Consequently, Belem went ashore to glean what he could from the Portugee and half-breed factors of the town. When he returned aboard and presented himself in my cabin, where I was discussing the almost forgotten matter of the Countess Louise with Francis Gale and Phineas Musk, he had a bleak expression upon his ancient face. 'It is as you feared,' he said. 'Word has come of Holmes' capture of Gorée. The garrison on San Andreas has been sent orders to fight you if you attempt to come down river. I am told that your friend Stiel was unwilling to do so—vowed to surrender to you as soon as you came into sight.' The old man frowned. 'But he has been persuaded otherwise, it seems. Persuaded, along with all the rest of his garrison, by a large bribe in gold, provided by—'

  'Montnoir,' I said. Belem nodded. 'The gold that the King of Kombo refused has found a home after all, then. So Montnoir now commands the fort, and will turn its guns against us if we attempt to force a passage.'

  'A Frenchman commanding Dutch?' cried Musk. 'Well, not Dutch. Those Russians.'

  'Courlanders, Musk,' I said. 'Courlanders, not Russians.'

  'Same thing. But how's that happen? I mean, since when are the Dutch, or the Russians—Cour—them, friends of the French?'

  Francis Gale smiled. 'Since the treaty of mutual defence and alliance between King Louis and their High Mightinesses of the States General was concluded a year or two back, Musk. Now, you and I might fairly say that an alliance between the Most Christian King and a heretical republic is hardly a marriage made in Heaven, and is certain to end in blood one day. But that, Musk my friend, is what the great men of every nation call "diplomacy"'.

  'And as he took such delight in telling us,' I said, 'My Lord Montnoir is, after all, an accredited ambassador of King Louis. So put yourself in Captain Stiel's position, Musk. I think that if such a mighty personage, with such impeccable credentials, offered you a very large purse of gold, then even you would fight against your own mother, would you not?'

  'Did that gratis enough times,' said Musk, 'but I see the justice of the case.'

  I summoned the council of my officers in the great cabin of Seraph. The assessments of the senior men present, Negus and Facey, were equally bleak. Yes, we could attempt to force a passage past the fort, but its battery was stronger than our own—much stronger, if the garrison moved guns across from the north rampart to the south or vice-versa, depending on whether we chose the south or north channel. They would have ample time to do so, given the uninterrupted view up river that Stiel and his new commanding officer possessed. We could attempt to slip past by night, but the moon was bright, we would of necessity be moving slowly and carefully, with less sail aloft than by day, and there was thus a danger that we would make an even easier target for the fort's gunners. Of course, we could try to take the fort; both Facey and I were confident that it could be captured easily enough, if only we could get close enough to make a breach in its ramparts and get enough men ashore. But that was an almighty if only, given the power of the battery ranged against us. We discussed the possibility of getting word to our men aboard Prospect of Blakeney and at Charles Island. If they could come upstream to reinforce us, and we could mount an attack on the fort from both sides—This was an attractive proposition, but it was Belem, of all people, who demolished it. It would probably take at least two days t
o get a message to the mouth of the river, rather longer for the other force to make its way upstream. The pilot's intelligence established that Montnoir already had a score or more of his own Frenchmen in the fort, others were downstream toward the mouth of the river, and could we be certain that the Knight of Malta did not have other reinforcements on their way to him, perhaps overland from Fort Saint Louis in the Senegal? Moreover, by ordering our entire force upstream we would be effectively abandoning the mouth of the river, and nothing was more certain than that Dutch ships would appear at some point to avenge Holmes' depredations. Could we really risk a two-pronged assault on Jakob's Island, only to find the mouth of the Gambia sealed against us by overwhelming force thereafter?

  As often happens in such cases, we were soon going in circles, revisiting schemes we had rejected but half a glass earlier. Negus and Facey began to argue, albeit politely, if on no better grounds than that a sailor and a soldier must argue sooner or later. My mind began to wander. I looked out of the stern windows. Beyond the Krokodil, a lone elephant cooled itself at the river's edge. I thought of Hannibal taking an army of those beasts over the Alps; I needed such ingenuity now, by God! I searched my memories for stories that I might have read, or heard. As so often, such thoughts resolved themselves into one question: what might my grandfather have done in such a case? After all, his legend had been sufficient to get us clear of Tenerife...

  I was a child of ten or eleven again, listening to Tris tell the tale of what Earl Matthew had done in command of the Ark Ravensden off the Azores in the year ninety-two.

  'My father detested Francis Drake, young Matt, as I often told you before. The world was too small for both of them. But he acknowledged Drake as a mightily skilled seaman. So, when faced with that great Spanish galleon off the isle of Graciosa, he recalled how Drake had captured the Concepcion on his voyage round the globe...'

  I leaned over to Kit Farrell and whispered to him, for I recalled something that he, too, had once said to me, during this very voyage. Kit, whose good humour toward me had seemingly been restored by our recent land-voyage, seemed puzzled at first, then smiled broadly and nodded vigorously in approbation.

  I looked up. I raised my hand, and Negus and Facey fell silent. 'Gentlemen,' I said, 'I have a proposition to put to you. Musk—please ask Mister Shish to join this council.'

  Those in the fort—Montnoir, Stiel, all of them—would have seen the two ships coming down to them on the strong south-easterly breeze off the land, avoiding the native canoes that thronged the river, out of the very first glimmers of the dawn. There was Seraph in the main channel to the south of the island, trying to force that passage: the wider channel and so the obvious one for her to take, as it afforded the greater sea-room for manoeuvring. Every inch a royal warship of England, her sails were sheeted home with precision, the lion figurehead cut through the waves at her bow, and the great red-and-white ensign spilled from the staff at her stern. In the north channel, and some way astern, was the ungainly Krokodil under her Courland colours, finally making her way back to the open sea after so many months stranded in the upper reaches of the Gambia. Her much-decimated crew struggled to control her as she slewed to and fro across the channel under loose, slovenly sails.

  As they aimed their guns at the magnificent sight of the oncoming Seraph, Montnoir's men must have been filled with grim anticipation; for they knew full well that their weight of shot would tear apart the beautiful, fragile frigate.

  I stood with my officers on the quarterdeck of my Seraph. Nerves, fear and determination struggled to gain the upper hand in my emotions.

  The fort opened fire. For the hundredth time, I wondered if I had chosen the correct strategy. About that many men had died aboard my ill-fated first command, the Happy Restoration. Would history repeat itself here? Would Matthew Quinton's inglorious naval career end with him being cut in two by a Courlander cannonball?

  Montnoir's gunners did not yet have their aim. Shot was falling just short of the Seraph in the south channel, but it would be only a matter of time before the Dutch, French and Courlander men on the ramparts found their range and bearing. Naturally they had massed most of their battery on the south rampart, seeing Seraph heading on that course. My crew were nervous and whispering among themselves, for they all knew the monstrous risk their raw young captain was taking with their lives. Still the Seraph bore down the south channel, straight into the withering fire that would fall upon her at any moment. I held my breath. The first shot struck just behind the head. A second went through the foresail. The enemy were gaining confidence now, truly getting their bearings, and still Seraph did not return fire. The fort's south rampart battery opened up with ever more vigour. As it did so, its own gunsmoke drifted back over it. The wind was ideal for Montnoir's gunners, whose view of the ship in the south channel would not be obscured.

  But their view of the Krokodil, slewing drunkenly all over the north channel—a view already made dim enough by the darkness of the dawn—ah, now that view was obscured even more by the smoke that drifted back over the lightly armed north rampart, whose defenders were in any case looking south, to see how their more favoured brethren did. And after all, most of the men in the fort were Courlanders themselves. They had seen the Krokodil go up river. They knew that ship, and they knew her crew. She was one of their own, and nothing to concern them on a morning where they had hotter business to transact.

  A succession of shots slammed into the Seraph's hull. Soon the beautiful frigate, still pressing on under full sail, would be smashed to pieces .

  Now or never, boy, cried a familiar voice in my head.

  'Mister Negus! Mister Shish!' I shouted. 'Time to end the charade!'

  'Aye aye, sir!'

  With that, an unexpectedly large crew raced up the shrouds of the Krokodil, sheeted home her courses and let fall a profusion of topsails. The tipsy Courlander suddenly assumed an immaculate appearance, running in directly for the north shore and rampart of San Andreas. Axes in hand, the carpenter's crew ran to cut away some of the false bulwarks that had been erected around the rail and head. As the deals fell away, the lion figurehead of a king's warship emerged, roaring in proud defiance. The painted canvas hiding the quarter-galleries was torn off. Gunports, painted over to conceal them, opened to reveal a formidable battery of demi-culverins and sakers, their barrels now hauled through the hull by a crew ten times the size of that left to the Krokodil. Finally, the Courland flag came down, and the red-and-white of old England went aloft in her place.

  The Seraph—the true Seraph—was ready for battle.

  'Mister Lindman!' I cried.

  'Sir!' replied the bluff Swede.

  'Command the guns, sir, if you please—as we discussed!'

  'Aye, aye, Captain!'

  The hoisting of our true colours had also been the signal for two dozen or so of the native canoes to change course abruptly and make for the island. The near-naked 'natives' aboard them drew up muskets and swords from the depths of their craft. Captain Facey waved from the leading canoe. The remainder of his men were already making their way up to the main deck of the Seraph to form the landing party with my starboard watch.

  I turned to Francis Gale. 'Let us pray, Francis, that Kit and his crew on Krokodil do not suffer too terribly in our stead.'

  The chaplain nodded, and extemporised a prayer for our friends.

  The sun was rising now, and before we ran in directly under the shore of the island it was just possible to see the false Seraph, taking the punishment designed for us. Daylight made it easier to see the limitations of the two disguises conjured out of nothing, and in so few hours, by Shish and his men; Krokodil had been cut down at the stern to masquerade as Seraph, and no amount of painted gunports, false gun barrels, and wood-and-canvas quarter galleries and stern windows, rounded off by an especially impressive false figurehead, could turn her into a plausible man-of-war for very long.

  But it had not needed to be for very long.

  'Give fi
re!' roared Lindman, and as one, the larboard battery of the Seraph bombarded the north rampart of the fort.

  Montnoir and his men must have looked behind them at that moment, for at once there was movement on the south rampart. Guns were being pulled back and swivelled round, either to be moved to the north side or—because any man would realise there was no time to take enough of the guns across—being elevated so that they could fire over the north rampart from where they were, albeit at the cost of accuracy.

  Seraph fired again. Negus judged that we were now in our best position without over-running the island, and I gave the order to drop anchor. On our starboard side, Facey's canoes were coming alongside to take on the rest of the landing party. A third broadside. As the smoke cleared, I saw three breaches, if not four, in the north rampart. With that, I left the quarterdeck and made my way down into a canoe that also contained Francis Gale, Musk, Lanherne, Macferran, Ali Reis, Treninnick and Carvell, along with three or four of the Bristol men and a half-dozen soldiers. We paddled out under the bow of the Seraph and made directly for the narrow beach beneath the north rampart. The defenders now had a few more men on the north rampart, trying vainly to lower the elevation of the guns to fire grapeshot upon the invaders or else firing sporadically with muskets. But Seraph, too, was firing grape now, and the effect of our broadside on that rampart was truly dreadful.

  My canoe struck the sand of the island and I leapt out into the shallow water, raising my sword to beckon the men forward. But men need no commands at such times. What needed to be done was obvious: reach the rampart, get over or through it, kill whoever stood in the way. For my part, I ran up the beach with Francis Gale at my side, a man who had experienced enough sieges to know the truth of that dictum better than most. We reached one of the breaches to find it clear. Some of the enemy's soldiers were standing in the middle of the parade ground, pointing muskets or pikes vaguely in our direction, but they were but a disordered rabble. As Facey's red-coats and my seamen charged them, they turned and fled to the south rampart. Good, I thought—I had a mind to avoid shedding the blood of Stiel's Courlanders if I could avoid it...