‘Seamen say, ship on run, captain wanted. So why not go for prizes?’
We lay in Flawless Cove, anchored under the hot sun, and as Youssef spoke I shot a glance at my Navigator. Young Pyne was still shaken from his accident in the launch, but that was the slightest of his troubles. With the Cornelius declared a renegade — liable to reported on sight by any bark, private or Navy, if not attacked outright — my concern was for all the ship’s complement, from Abigail to the lowest sea-boy. Yet of all of them, it was only Adam and myself who were wanted alive or dead.
We could have sailed no further without repairs, so I had brought us to this hidey-hole thirty leagues along the Jamaickan shore. We were skulking in a lagoon that was as much a trap as a haven, and my most urgent desire was to get away again in the shortest time. In the meantime, I trusted the Navy would have little cause to visit Flawless Cove.
As we sat on the blistering quarter-deck sheltering under the awning, the officers’ disconsolate faces were ranged before me — Youssef the Barbar, the second mates Eli Savary and Jakob Tosher, and Navigator Adam Pyne. A little apart stood Abigail, concerned, listening closely. No one spoke for a full half minute while we watched the carpenter’s crew busy at work with their mallets and adzes. Overhead, blocks creaked as a party took a line from the mizen truck to the chainplate and hauled the mast straight while a fellow aloft with a plumbline called instructions to his mates below. From deep within the hull resonated the rhythmic thuds of hammer blows as the step was laboriously worked tight and true.
‘The Cornelius may be accused, sailing-master,’ growled old Eli, chewing determinedly on a baccy plug, ‘but Captain Matthew wants to keep her in honest trade and prove we never stole her. And by Saint Mary’s blood, that’s what we’ll do.’
In truth, rather than being a ship-stealer, I had led the fight to prevent the Cornelius falling into the hands of mutineers, and it was they who had killed the English officer. Adam, a midshipman loyal then to the Navy, had risked his life to save the Success when it too was taken in mutiny. Far from deserting, he had been blown clean off her decks in the battle, and only come aboard our privateer to save his life. Yet the poster branded us murderers. Was there a way to prove our innocence? For sure, not in the Admiralty Courts of Jamaicka or the Bahama Isles, even if we were fortunate enough to appear there alive. These were no true seats of English justice but rather a source of fear that spread throughout the Antilles. The Naval judges, it was said amongst sailors, would as lightly flog a man to death as eat a breakfast.
Jakob Tosher puffed at a delicately curved clay pipe, sending contemplative clouds into the air.
‘Ya, the captain’s right,’ he said in a melancholy tone. ‘Either we bring her back to Amsterdam with a profit for the owners or every man jack of us is a ship-stealer.’ He pointed at Youssef with his stem. ‘So we must remain legal, and free.’
‘Free but poor,’ said the sailing-master, fixing me with his Barbary look, gaunt-featured and hook-nosed. ‘Men say, dollar a week not enough. As well go aboard slaver, or into King’s Navy.’
Every captain knows his sailing-master’s word is law below decks. For the jack-tars who spend their lives running aloft at a moment’s notice, slopping out the bilges or emptying the pissdales, caulking seams and bloodying their knuckles scraping barnacles off the bottom — for these hardy fellows who eat and sleep in the foc’sle far from the grace and comfort of the Great Cabin, the sailing-master’s word counts above the captain’s.
‘They’ll get their chance to vote,’ I said levelly, ‘as soon as the repairs are done and we’re safely at sea. I’m depending on you officers to put the choices to them fair and square.’
I cast around the company, wondering if anyone might rather offer up their wanted master and his pilot in hopes of keeping the ship for themselves. My eye fell once more on the Barbar, who gazed out across the lagoon where the waters ruffled in the tradewind breeze. At twenty three he had only a year the better of me, but his service aboard the Cornelius stretched back far longer than mine. His resentment at my rise to the captaincy was plain.
The brooding silence was prolonged, so I changed tack.
‘Now fellows, the stripe of white paint along her gunports makes a good enough disguise,’ I told them, ‘but I want a new name too.’
Everyone breathed more easily, shifting and stretching their tensed limbs. Adam was first to speak.
‘Second mate Tosher’s come up with an idea, sir,’ he said brightly.
Jakob withdrew the clay from his lips and sent aromatic clouds wafting upwards to the awning.
‘The Saskia, captain,’ he offered with a doleful grin. ‘The girl I left behind in Harlingen.’
I gave Abigail a smile. ‘The woman’s name suits our graceful bark, so the Saskia it shall be.’ I stood up. ‘As agreed, then, soon as we’re fit we set course for the Colomby coast and Cartagena, to seek a peaceful trade there. Once the cargo’s sold, we shall clear the holds and start afresh.’ As if it hardly mattered a jot, I added lightly, ‘Unless the vote changes everything.’
Eli looked sad. ‘In the squall, we split a keg or two of that savages’ medicine. It’s set up a vile nose in the pump-well, quite enough to make me a queasy sailor.’
‘Horns and furskins make big stinks,’ grimaced Youssef. ‘We trade quick, by Allah, or get rid.’
‘Miss Abigail is seeing to all cargo matters,’ I said firmly. ‘Sailing-master, see that all the men not engaged in repair work are kept busy. Set up a gunnery drill after eight bells of the noontime watch. Dismissed.’
Moments later, Abigail and I dropped down the companionway and entered the Great Cabin. Her father, the merchant Seth Jeffreys, rose with a false smile that utterly failed to disguise his habitually shifty demeanour. To my eye he cut a ridiculous figure when he wore, as now, his tricorn atop a short wig, with a weskit over his shirt and a long-coat on too. He must be off his head to be garbed infull rig in such heat. Then I realised the landlubber merchant, taking no account of our shipboard troubles, had readied himself to go ashore, scenting the prospect of profitable merchanting.
‘Matthew — Captain Loftus — are we to go to the next trading port at once?’ he said, taking a little mincing step forward, his small eyes alight with fervour. ‘As soon as these mast mounts or whatever they are have been fixed. Is that the idea? With the ship disguised, can the trading at Port Royal not be resurrected?’
‘We’re certainly not going back to any Jamaickan port, sir,’ I said testily. ‘Have you forgotten we are wanted?’
‘Well, I insist upon going ashore in future. As I told you, it is necessary to speak the proper language of commerce in order to make the best of such poor trade as we have aboard.’
‘Not poor, but honest trade,’ I corrected, glaring.
‘Ah, so like your misguided father and his nonsense against the Africkan commerce.’ Now the merchant wore a small regretful smile, as if someone had tipped his arm and spilled small beer on a clean shirt. ‘You are forever clinging to unattainable dreams. Why, back in Whitby you progressed around the town with your head in the air and your book under your arm, quite as if you were no more in life than a little apprenticed cole-boy.’
‘And you,’ I said, jabbing a finger at his narrow bird-like chest, ‘cheated and beggared good men with your !endings at ten and twelve per cent. We’re not going to an English port and I’m certainly not taking any advice from you. I’ve decided we shall put to sea for Cartagena, and the officers agree.’
Open-mouthed, he spun towards his daughter. ‘Abigail, I thought you said —’
‘That’s enough, sir,’ I snapped, and bade him exit from the Great Cabin.
When he had sidled out, not without protestations, Abigail and I sat alone together at last. The sun streamed in through the mullioned sternlights, throwing her sweet face now into illumination, now into shadow as the Cornelius swung gently at anchor. It must be so hard for her, I thought, to resist her father’s incessant carping.
‘Matthew, I have been thinking,’ she began, ‘if you and Adam are accused, we must have money and gold to put up for your defence.’
‘There’s no defence in the colonial courts, my dearest,’ I told her.
‘Well, a pardon may be bought, so father says. I worry that we shall not get enough for the wares in Cartagena.’
I squeezed her hand. ‘The medicines are prized by apotheckaries of the Spanish Navy and the timbers are greatly needed by the shipyard there. I understand the port bulges with vessels bound back for Europe, where skins and horns command fine prices. We shall make a good trade. It’s the only way to return the ship to Amsterdam and clear ourselves of all the charges. And pay the seamen.’
‘Can we truly make enough by commerce? They came aboard for prizes and gold, did they not?’
‘Aye, but since then they voted for trading fair and square. All agreed, trade’s better than plunder — it keeps a man whole, with this limbs intact. Our cargo’s worth between two and three thousand dollars, yet it cost less than a hundred. Surely that’s profit enough.’
Abigail looked thoughtful. ‘It’s worth nothing if no one will buy it.’ She brightened. ‘Why could we not sell the ship? She’s more valuable than the cargo. She’d fetch two thousand pounds, father estimates. Enough to pay off the men and buy land with a house, for growing tobacco or cane.’
‘If we sold her, then we would truly be ship stealers,’ I sighed.
She took up both my hands in hers. ‘Would it not be safer ashore somewhere, my love? If we had a plantation, the Navy would never find you.’
‘I’m not going to hide, I’m going to fight to prove my innocence.’
She was downcast. ‘Perhaps I shall never again have a proper house. With well-made furnishings, and a maid too. And look at my hands — rough from handling flax and canvas, tugging at bales of furs. I haven’t even a silken dress left.’
I squeezed her waist and planted a consoling kiss on her lips. She wriggled her body snugly against mine. Of course it was tempting to think of taking some easy prize, turning the Cornelius into a plundering privateer and paying the jack-tars handsomely in gold coin. In the lawless Caribbee Sea, we would likely get away with such crimes. Yet a single act of piracy would leave me without defence, living forever as a wanted man, each minute of every day fearing denunciation, followed by condemnation and the rope around my neck. I could not live — would never live — like a cur.
‘We could seek a French galleon or Spanish treasure ship, you know,’ Abigail was saying. ‘Surely that would not be wrong, for they are the enemies of the King. And father says, if we catch a fish, it might as well be the biggest we can find.’
I stopped kissing her. Her head was full of Mister Jeffreys’ notions about prizes and profits. All at once it seemed a long time since she had been the demure girl of our Whitby days, tripping up and down the steep streets in her leather-heeled shoes and best Sabbath Day bonnet.
‘Abigail,’ I said, ‘seizing ships when there’s no war is outright piracy, no matter whether a Catholick country is sworn against a Protestant King. It would make the charges against us undefendable. And I’m sure a woman ought not to be thinking of such a thing.’
‘I’ve heard of women pirates,’ she challenged me, ‘with diamonds in their ears.’
‘Aye,’ I said, kissing her again, ‘and hanged on the gibbet by the Admiralty Courts at the Bahama Isles or in Port Royal.’
‘You always see the black side,’ she murmured. ‘Father says we might come upon a plunder-ship working off the Colomby coast to join her convoy, and if we took her —’
’“Father this and Father that”! I’ve heard enough from him!’ I pushed her away, the heat of my passion turned in a flash to anger. ‘The Cornelius — dammit, the Saskia — is going to make her peaceful trade or she can go on without me.’ My temper was rising and I banged a fist hard down on the table ‘As long I am commander I shall fight to be free with our heads held high. And to keep all aboard safe and whole against attack from prize seekers.’
She sat back, shocked at my vehemence. Of a sudden, she rose and went to sit on the window-seat, arms folded.
‘I’m half minded,’ I continued intemperately, ‘to lock you in the sleeping cabin along with your father, to plot your fortunes together.’
‘Why must you be so stubborn!’ she said. Slowly, tears welled up and trickled down her cheeks, turning her face blotchy and red. Still annoyed, I fell to wondering why a woman takes on such a look when she grows distressed.
‘I wanted your trading to succeed,’ she sniffled, ‘but you won’t admit it’s failed.’
‘We’ve hardly allowed it a chance,’ I protested.
She sat up, wiping away the tears and recomposing herself. Some locks of her thick hair had come loose under the linen bonnet, and her eyes were large with sadness. Her forlorn look, the hurt on her face, and the way she sadly smoothed down the faded dress all combined to take me quite aback. I wanted to go to her, cover her with kisses, beg forgiveness, prostrate myself and ask what she would have me do to make amends.
Just as I thought to embark on this, to kiss and comfort my girl, put my arms around her waist and draw her body to mine, speaking words of contrition and love and tenderness, the little world we had created was split asunder.
‘Sail ahoy!’ cried the lookouts from far aloft. ‘A sail entering the cove!’
I ran from the Great Cabin and bounded up the steps, fearing the worst. The entire ship’s company was likewise assembling on deck, men bursting from the foc’sle, some already craning over the rail, others scrambling into the ratlines.
‘English ensign, captain,’ said Youssef grimly, handing me the tube.
Though the vessel’s hull was hidden by high ground around the entrance, we saw her three topgallant masts plain enough as she glided in towards the anchorage.
‘Drill as we have practised,’ I ordered, my heart thudding. ‘Kedge and tow her round.’
I hoped we were ready enough to defend ourselves. Youssef shouted commands and twelve men scrambled into the Great Launch, pulling away at the sweeps. Eight more ran up on the quarter and hauled at the kedge anchor’s cable, bringing aboard the dripping rope and taking it to the deck capstan. As the coils wound on, the stern began its slow swing to bring us broadside on to meet the newcomer.
‘To the guns,’ I called. ‘Charge up with doubled roundshot.’
In an anchorage, and at such close quarters, chainshotting the rigging to disable the newcomer from sailing was pointless. If we hit her at all, we had to hit hard — and hit first.
As Tosher and Eli sprang away, what any landsman might think a scene of chaos ensued as men ran hither and thither, dropping their mallets and brushes, making off the tackles at the mizen, shouting and gesticulating. Yet in a flash, shot-garlands were racked out behind the pieces, and ramrods, sponges, wads and horns placed by each one. The decks rumbled as each crew heaved on the tackles and ran their heavy gun out through the open ports. In under three minutes, we transformed ourselves from a scene resembling a shipyard works into a fully-armed vessel of war, with our larboard broadside charged with two round balls each and double primed. Peaceful repairs had been abandoned and gunnery begun.
The newcomer passed swiftly through the narrow entrance passage. Thank the angels, she was no Navy bark. Instead, she revealed herself to be a two-decker of twelve guns, an armed merchantman capable of putting up a fight but no outright man o’war. Her ports were open and the guns run out, but until she was brought round they could not range either side’s six guns our way. The Cornelius, on the other hand, had all but kedged herself beam on and in another half minute would be able to loose off an eight-gun broadside.
I called the signalsman over. ‘Hoist an English ensign and make the signal of friendship.’
As she nosed into the lagoon, my spy-glass showed her watches busy aloft with the canvas and at the catheads unstowing the bower for letting go. A launch was in the water with a tow off her beak and a smaller cutter stroked out ahead sounding the depths. Yet though the guns were run out, few men stood behind them and I could make out no immediate preparedness to fire. Far from bracing herself for a frenzy of gunnery she appeared quite unready, yet they must have seen our masts from outside the entrance. My hopes rose that her intentions were peaceful and this would not end in battle. If she did not know us and was not a prize seeker, there was no need for a fight.
With a roar at my shoulder and a blast of white smoke, the signal piece discharged. I scanned the merchantman for a reply, or any clue to her provenance. The Cornelius — the Saskia now — shifted uneasily in her chains, held beam on against the tradewind. I went to the break and put my hands on the rail. Again all the seamen’s faces were fixed on me, from the galehardened salty dogs to the youngest sea-boy. This time they waited for their captain to put it to them in a show of hands, the long-time privateers’ way, whether we should give fight or make flight. This was not the open sea, so flight was out of the question. And everyone could see we had the better of the twelve gunner in a straight fight.
A voice hissed insistently into my ear. It was the Barbar. ‘They smell a prize, Captain Mattoo. Say we fight. They vote for you.’
A pool of expectancy enveloped the whole ship. Every last jack-tar, gunner and powder-boy was gathered on the weather-deck and crowded by the guns. They stared up, ready for their captain to propose the action that would bring them the coins of gold and silver they craved. Poised by the foc’sle were the ship’s surgeon and old Carpenter Sedgewick, doubtless already reckoning up their idlers’ share. Even the lookouts gazed intently down from their perches in the tops.
There was no doubt the stranger was off her guard. If our aim was good first time, she had no defence against a sudden broadside. With luck, she might strike her colours without reply. What a fine prize she would make! There would be a handsome distribution to settle the men’s grievances, and gold to buy more arms and powder. Far from the Cornelius being caught in the trap of Flawless Cove, this plump fruit had fallen into our lap. With one word of command, I could transform my captaincy from one of failed trading into a gilt-edged triumph of prizetaking. At a stroke, I could alter our fate forever and set us on a course of plunder and mayhem, gorging on spoils, enriching ourselves at the expense of those weaker or more unready to fight. Yet with that single order to fire the guns, I would throw away forever any chance of acquittal or pardon or reprieve.
As the silence extended and my palms grew damp on the smooth wood, I was full of uneasy misgivings, not so much for the future but this very minute. There was a look about this newcomer that was not as it should be. Something was badly amiss.
At the sound of a step behind, I half turned to catch sight of the Merchant Jeffreys emerging from the companionway, the tricorn in place, his nose twitching at the whiff of a plunder. But my gaze carried beyond this absurd figure, past the taff-rail and across the lagoon. Behind the spit near the entrance, there was a movement.
‘Lookouts, dam’ you!’ I cried, pointing. ‘Sails ahoy!’
All eyes followed my extended arm. At the heads of the only passage into the cove there had appeared two more sets of masts, their soaring height signifying ships of great size. A brace of vessels was following the twelve gunner into Flawless Cove, one of them clearly a far mightier bark than ours. Though as yet we could not see their hulls, the leader’s trucks stood even higher than either of its companions’, and it was plain the three barks represented a force that outweighed our firepower by a multiple. Belatedly, the errant lookouts began shouting, calling out the number of masts they spied, the spread of canvas on display, the state of the sails. They were behind events by a long shot.
‘Stand at your positions,’ I commanded, and amidst the nervous shuffling as everyone rearranged themselves before the guns, some taking up linstocks, others fingering their muskets, I snatched a look at our flagstaff. The friendly signal still fluttered there boldly, thank the Lord.
The massive three-master barged into the cove under tow, crowding the little sanctuary. She was a heavyweight two-decked vessel of thirty guns, a full-rigged fighting ship with a broadside capable of smashing clean through our four-inch timbers. Even the most shortsighted of sail-stitchers could see her guns were all run out, the rails busy with men, the whole ship astir in the expectation of a fight. No wonder the first bark had shown such msouc1ance.
Astern of this fearsome warship, following like a tame gundog, came a third vessel, smaller but nevertheless of about twenty guns, enough on her own to outmatch the Saskia. Her foreparts looked oddly arranged, with the bowsprit askew and drooping, the forestays hanging slackly. My heart missed a beat. By the Lord’s own blood, she was the Willingminde.
Not more than two cables distant, the water rustled at the thirty gunner’s great stem as she fetched grandly across the bay with sails bunted up and towing launches on station. She let go her bower with a mighty splash, lay back to set the flukes, then ran out more cable. Far from letting her tail into the tradewind, the launches swung her stern round and ranged the broadside directly upon us, fifteen menacing black mouths gaping our way.
There settled on her a stillness of the same intensity as on our own bark. Dozens of pairs of eyes must have been trained on us, but the only sounds in the lagoon were the swish of the Tropick breeze stirring the coco palm fronds and the sighing surf on the encircling shore.
Then her signal gun fired once, shattering the fragile calm. It was a command, not a request, for us to show that we would give no fight. I looked at my officers. Adam’s face was pale. The Barbar turned his mouth down at the corners and shrugged. Eli gobbed a cheekful of brown liquid on the boards.
‘It’s as well for us, captain,’ said the old salt, ‘that you had eyes for what was coming.’
The lugubrious Jakob, glum as ever, said, ‘If we avoid being blown to pieces, that would be, I think, a cause for celebration.’
Mister Jeffreys’ tricorn bobbed back down into the hatchway. Did he know that a well-ranged six-pound shot could penetrate even the stoutest timbers of the stern quarters as if they were mere falls of sacking cloth?
‘Haul up the flag of truce,’ I said quietly.
Now the thirty gunner’s red and white English standard was downhauled and replaced by the strangest four-yard colour. On a brilliant red ground, picked out in gold and white, was a terrifying defacement, a death’s head bold against the field, supported by crossed cutlasses under. It signalled no quarter. But above the skull’s forbidding motif was another emblem, a pair of hands clasped in friendship. This was no common pirate’s flag, but a contradiction. It professed force and fear and death, yet equally it declared an offer of alliance. What the Devil was she about?
In the Saskia’s waist, forty figures stood immobile, some hunched by the guns, others standing tall with rammers in their hands, each man staring fixedly at the great flagship, puzzling out her meaning.
Fervently hoping our flag of friendship, hauled to the cross-trees and now fluttering and snapping in the hot Caribbee trade-wind, had been seen and noted, I brought up the spy-glass. On the big ship’s quarter-deck, her officers were gathered together, consulting. One figure stood out taller than the rest, magnificently attired in white hose, golden briches, silken shirt and feather-trimmed hat — the master or captain, or even a gentleman-landsman by the look of it. A launch went briefly alongside, hoisted a blue trucial flag and pushed off. As the boat closed, her bows displayed the name of the mother ship. Picked out in fancy gold lettering, it declared her to be the Prometheus.
‘She’s offering to meet halfway for a parley,’ I said, lowering the tube.
I scanned the faces of my officers one by one. Every man of us knew that — parley or no parley — the moment these fearsome ships had entered the lagoon, the Saskia’s fate was settled.