The Privateer

by Josephine Tey

  When the time came that the Fortune and the Dolphin rode ready and waiting in harbour for their voyage to Isle of Pines, Jack took Elizabeth out to show her over his ship, that being the kind of courtesy that he would have offered a fellow-captain whom he respected and admired. And Elizabeth, visiting her husband’s ship later to say good-bye, did not fail to point out that on board the Fortune she was merely a poor female creature on sufferance saying farewell to her lord, while on the Dolphin she had been an honoured guest.

  Her farewell to Henry was to say: ‘I wish that I was coming with you, Harry!’

  Don’t forget me, come back to me, come back safe, come back soon, women were saying all over the town. But Elizabeth’s only spoken wish was that she might go with him. And watching the small, upright figure being borne away across the water in the stem of the boat, Henry found himself wishing that it might indeed have been possible to take her. She had mettle enough for two men. Even with the pressure of her arms still alive on the back of his neck, he had a suspicion that her wish was at least as much for the adventure as for his companionship. She would make a wonderful lieutenant in a ploy.

  ‘At least I shall not have to worry about the state of your clothes while you are away,’ she had said when she was packing his sea-chest for him. ‘Romulus will see to that.’

  For the Indian boy, who took no interest at all in sea matters, was enchanted by clothes and all that pertained to them. Romulus patted a piece of cloth with exactly the same gesture that Mansfield used when he patted a map. And this minor passion of his, allied to his major passion for Henry, was like to make Henry the best-groomed Captain in the Caribbean. A rent, a spot, a frayed lace, and Romulus was there with needle or sponge to make all perfect immediately. If there were no repairs to be done, Romulus was still there, of course; sitting in Henry’s shadow, silent and still. Henry was the reason for his existence. He had submitted without a quiver to being branded at Henry’s hands, at the same time as the new slaves for Morgan’s Valley, and had won Morgan’s heart by taking the terrifying moment with his eyes wide open and fixed in fathomless trust on his master’s face.

  It was the New Year before the Fortune was ready to sail, and by that time almost two-thirds of her old crew had rejoined. The remaining third was made up not of seamen but of old-soldiers, Royalist and Commonwealth, who found planting life too hard or too dull, and were glad to give their services in return for adventure and their victuals. Bernard Speirdyck, seaman to his marrow, looked askance at these, but Henry had plans for them. Bernard was, of course, sailing as mate; and Cornelius, very sedate, as befitted a Benedict, as second. And Jack Morris had not this time to put up with any disgruntled master as mate, for Charles Hadsell had fallen heir to a prize by way of temporary compensation for his own lost ship, and was now master of the frigate Maria. The Maria followed the Fortune and the Dolphin out past Fort Charles in the cool grey of a Spring dawn, bound for the South Cays, and early as it was the Point was gay with women’s dresses and vivid with kerchiefs waving them a farewell.

  ‘I had no idea we were so popular,’ said Henry, much gratified.

  ‘That is not for us,’ said Cornelius, who had spent the night ashore and had left his bride in bed.

  ‘No? For whom, then?’

  ‘For Manuel, I suspect.’

  ‘Manuel!’ Henry took a longer look at the gay fluttering on the point and realised that the colours were a little too bright to be altogether respectable. Cornelius seemed to be right. Every trollop in the port had come out to wave good-bye to Manuel.

  9

  For a fortnight the three ships clawed their way up-wind, glad if they gained a mile in the hour; and the crews had time to settle down with each other, and Henry had time to wonder how he was going to deal with any Frenchmen who might be waiting for him at Isle of Pines. At home, so it was understood, the French had come to the assistance of the Dutch, and were actively fighting England. How much would this weigh with the French in the Caribbean, the French who had been so long an ally against the pretensions of Spain?

  When he expressed his doubts to Bernard, the Hollander’s normally wooden face melted into curves. ‘Yoost look at me. Captain, yoost look at me! At home your people sink my people like it was the best fun in the world. All over the North Sea they sink them. But does it make any difference to my appetite for salt pork and yams? Does it make any difference to the fact that we like each other, you and I, Captain, and we do not like the Spaniard? No! And the French they do not like the Spaniard either. It will not matter one little piece to the French what anyone does at home. You will see.’

  But Henry still thought that it might be much less easy to handle the French than it had been up to the present.

  They picked up Isle of Pines on a morning of tumbled seas and glancing light, but it was late afternoon before they came on their last tack into the quiet water in the lee of the island, and saw the ships sheltering in the wide lagoon.

  ‘Yoost look at them,’ said Bernard. ‘A navy, by Gar! That is John Ansell there, with the broken figurehead. And that over there with the long sprit is Tom Clarke. And that tub with the foremast stepped too far for’ard is Tom Roger’s Gift. She is a cow to sail, the Gift. And there—’

  But Morgan was looking for the stubby masts that would tell him that the Endeavour was there. All the way north he had looked forward to seeing Mansfield; to putting his plan in the old man’s lap and seeing him laugh with pleasure at its impudence and its reasonableness. Looked forward to hearing him say: ‘Ah, my little taker of prizes, you have come of age, it seems. You plan like a veteran. Like Mansfield himself.’

  But there was no sign of the Endeavour.

  The only familiar sight was the May Flower, lying well under the lee of the land as if she had been there for some time.

  Well, at least Bradley was here. Bradley might have news of Mansfield.

  He found his old colleague of the Santa Catalina expedition in the ramshackle village ashore. He was sitting on the veranda of Charley’s as if he had been sitting there for months and had got embedded.

  ‘You’ve been a damned long time, Harry Morgan,’ he said. ‘I’d nearly given you up,’ he said. But he said it without feeling, and he looked pleased to see Morgan. ‘Has Jack Morris still got the Dolphin?’

  ‘Yes. That’s him coming ashore in the boat now.’

  ‘And who’s your frigate friend?’

  ‘Charlie Hadsell.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joe, without enthusiasm.

  ‘She’s the Maria. A prize. Where is Mansfield?’

  ‘Not here. And that’s all I know. I thought you would give me news of him.’

  ‘Has no one news of him, then?’

  ‘Not a soul, as far as I know.’

  ‘That’s odd,’ Morgan said, troubled.

  ‘There’s nothing odd about it. Mansfield always plays a lone hand. He’s probably nosing round the coast of the mainland making charts for his future purposes. He has a passion for coasting.’

  Neither of them mentioned Santa Catalina. The loss of the place had been the chief talking topic of the Islands for the last six months, and there was nothing to say about it. They watched Jack’s boat come to shore and his neat, spare figure come up the beach to them, and Bradley gave a running commentary on the ships in the bay for Henry’s benefit. Several were ‘untouchables’, pirates on their own secret and unlovely business; here to refit or careen. One or two were legitimate prizes on their way to surrender to a reputable authority. A few more were birds of passage, bound out after they had obtained fresh food, wood and water. But a considerable number were privateers, or ex-privateers, looking for business.

  ‘I see Tom Rogers is here,’ Jack said, coming up and greeting Joe Bradley with pleasure. ‘I never know how he manages to make that thing sail at all, but sail her he does. He can make her go two forward and one back like a lady dancing at a party. He’d be a good man to have with us.’

  ‘What are your plans?’ Bradley a
sked.

  ‘I’ll tell you after supper,’ Henry said.

  ‘Oh, God! do I have to stay sober?’ said Joe.

  The sky flared suddenly into sunset, and Charley, looking at the crowded condition of his crazy veranda, built a fire of driftwood on the beach below and carried his huge cauldron of peppery fish stew out from his kitchen to keep hot on it. His customers followed the appetising reek and were served while they sat about the blaze. As each newcomer arrived he was introduced to Morgan by either Bradley or Jack Morris, and as the swift twilight fell and the shifting light of the fire grew brighter, Morgan considered the faces of these strangers, speculating and comparing. Was this one too vain to accept orders, was that one too reckless to be trusted to carry them out, was the next one too cautious to take a legitimate risk?

  Rogers he was sure of at once. Rogers was a little dark man with eyebrows so thick and so black that they looked like smudges. He was talkative and quick-tempered and volatile, but there was nothing pinchbeck about him. Rogers was the genuine article: courageous, imaginative, and dependable. Another dependable-appearing creature was the big fair man on the other side of the fire; a man with a rough-hewn square face that was ruddier than ever in the light. ‘The cherry trees will be white soon, in Kent,’ he was saying. ‘I’m going to give up the sea, so help me I am, now that England’s a country fit for gentlemen to live in again. I’m going to get me a bit of land and an orchard and I’ll never eat another fish stew as long as I live.’ The Celt in Henry recognised the Saxon salt-of-the-earth and paid tribute to it. He wanted to have the Kent man with him.

  When they were gorged on turtle and shell-fish they lay around drinking and swapping stories while the moon climbed into a bland sky and stared at them. Morgan was well aware that a great interest and curiosity settled on him, but that their innate good manners prevented them from open question. They knew that if he wanted to tell them of his plans he would, and that if he wanted to keep those plans to himself, question was both unmannerly and useless. He watched the weaker brethren grow a little drunk, and removed them from his consideration: not because they were drunk, but because if they had allowed themselves to become drunk, then they were not vitally interested in any plan that he might have in mind. For the same reason he dismissed those who eventually left the fire to gamble in the back room of the little eating-house. The drunken ones went back to the house when the rum gave out, to replenish the jugs, and stayed there, so that presently those round the fire were the survivors of a natural process of selection of which they were unaware. But they were aware of a mental unbuttoning, a lessened need for discretion, now that the company was less general.

  It was Tom Rogers, just a little flown, who gave expression to this growing relaxation.

  ‘You don’t by any chance happen to have a use for the Gift, do you, Captain Morgan? I know she’s the joke of the Caribbean, but I can lay her alongside as neat as a dove’s tail in the time you’d take to make up juice for a second spit.’

  Morgan savoured the quickened attention of the sprawled figures round the fire, and lengthened the moment for his own enjoyment.

  ‘I don’t need ships at the moment,’ he said. ‘I am going into the cattle business.’

  ‘Cattle!’ they said, shocked. ‘Where?’

  ‘Cuba,’ said Henry, demure; and nearly laughed aloud as the lounging figures sat up as one man.

  ‘Cuba!’

  ‘Yes. It’s a very fine cattle-country, I understand.’

  Oh,’ they said, relaxing. ‘You are going to land a poaching party to victual the Fortune.’

  ‘Oh, no. It is all quite open and above-board. I am taking a thousand head of beef out of Cuba in the next few weeks.’

  They sat up once more and considered this unlikely statement.

  ‘And how will you manage to run off a thousand head under the Spaniards’ noses?’

  ‘Oh, I shall have permission, of course.’

  ‘Permission? Whose permission!’

  ‘The Spaniards, naturally.’

  ‘The Spaniards! You think they will give you permission?’

  ‘For a consideration, they will.’

  ‘You’re mad, Henry Morgan,’ they said. ‘Not for any money will the Spaniards oblige an Englishman to the extent of a thousand head of cattle. You can save your breath and your money.’

  ‘I had not thought of money.’

  ‘No? Then what was your “consideration”?’

  ‘I think the Spaniards will give me the beef as the price of not sacking Puerto Principe.’

  There was complete silence at that. A staggered silence.

  ‘But Puerto Principe is in the very heart of Cuba,’ they said. ‘Thirty miles at least from the coast.’

  ‘That is why I think it would be a good bargaining counter.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It has no defences worth mentioning.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ they said. ‘But the rest of Cuba has plenty. The place bristles with fortifications.’

  ‘Only at the Havana end. They take it for granted that Puerto Principe doesn’t need any. No one, they think, would come into the heart of the country to attack it.’

  ‘And I don’t blame them,’ said little Rogers in a burst. ‘By God, it is so daft that it is very nearly sensible.’

  ‘There is a further reason that makes Puerto Principe a handy thing to dicker with. The plains round the town are black with cattle. The best beef in Cuba.’

  ‘And what will the Spaniards be doing while we are coming openly across the plain?’ asked the Kent man.

  ‘We, Captain Ansell?’ said Morgan, and his heart lifted.

  ‘If you’re going to hold up a town in the centre of Cuba, you’re not going to do it with a ship’s crew. Captain Morgan. And if you’re planning to take over a thousand head of cattle, then you’re planning to victual more ships than the Fortune. I want to be part of whatever is forward.’

  ‘I shall be very pleased to have your help, Captain Ansell. And as to your question, we shall do the thirty miles over the hills between a dawn and a dawn, so that we come down into the plain while the world is still asleep. We shall be in the town before they are aware of us.’

  ‘Have you anyone who knows the interior of Cuba?’ Rogers asked.

  ‘Yes. Captain Hadsell here escaped from Havana across country, and lay in hiding on that coast for some time.’

  ‘And how many men do you plan to use?’ Ansell said.

  ‘About four hundred if I can get them. But it can be done with less.’

  The blazing logs slipped one by one, in sudden cascades of sparks, to scattered embers while they discussed the affair; and when at last, in the bright calm of midnight, they got stiffly to their feet and went their several ways to the boats, the verdict was the one that Tom Rogers had so impulsively given at first hearing: It was so daft that it was very nearly sensible.

  ‘What about the French?’ Morgan asked Rogers and Ansell as they walked down the beach together. ‘There are three of them in the lagoon. Are they to be trusted these days?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Ansell. ‘My family have been marrying back and forth across the Channel for hundreds of years, and I never found a war with France make any difference to our mutual plans.’

  ‘Let them make the offer—don’t you go courting them. Captain—and then they’ll stay by you,’ said Rogers, who was a Celt like Morgan, and therefore more devious-minded than the Kent man.

  And Morgan took this to be good advice.

  He held it to be even better advice next morning, when he saw a boat from the Galliardena being rowed across to the Fortune, and a tall, thin, chestnut-coloured man—chestnut hair, chestnut eyes, and chestnut skin—came on board and introduced himself as Captain Pierre Gascoone. Henry made him welcome, and as soon as sea etiquette was satisfied—that is, as soon as he had accepted a second drink and thereby paid tribute to the quality of the first—he broached the business he had come on. He and his two fellow-captains had he
ard much of Captain Morgan’s prowess against Spain, and it was freely rumoured in the Islands that Captain Morgan was planning a new adventure in that direction. He had no wish to force any confidence, but he would like Captain Morgan to know that if he was looking for assistance, he, Pierre Gascoone, and his two colleagues, Captain Tribetor and Captain Linaux, would be glad to join any expedition that Captain Morgan might have in mind. All three of them had suffered at Spain’s hands; and all three crews were very short of back-pay. Two cogent reasons for an early foray among the shipping of Spain.

  ‘Or into Spanish territory?’ Morgan said.

  ‘Or into Spanish territory,’ agreed Captain Gascoone, not batting an eyelid. ‘The mainland, perhaps?’

  ‘Presently. But the ships will have to be victualled first. And that can be done successfully only by disciplined crews. Crews that can be held in when excited.’ How much, he wanted to know, could the Frenchmen depend on their crew’s coming to heel when wanted?

  ‘Like little dogs, they are,’ said the Frenchman. ‘I whistle, they come. I put up my hand, they lie down.’

  So Morgan told him of their plan for victualling. And the chestnut-coloured eyes in the brown face danced and laughed.

  ‘Captain Morgan,’ said the Frenchman, standing by the ladder as he was taking his leave, ‘always I have liked the English, but never do I like them as well as today. They have a panache that makes even my countrymen seem as flat as a yesterday’s lettuce. I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, Captain Morgan, and will be delighted to be a partner in your impudences.’

  So the plan was accepted, and preparations went forward. And every morning when he went on deck Henry looked round the bay to see if Mansfield had come in during the night; and every evening as the light failed his last glance was to the horizon in the hope of seeing the Endeavour coming up. It was unthinkable that this first step towards the avenging of Santa Catalina should be taken without the old man’s presence and blessing.