It was just after dawn. I was shaking Adam into wakefulness after running pell mell from the rocky cove where I had gone early to catch a reef fish.
‘We’re no longer alone,’ I panted. ‘There’s a vessel riding at anchor.’
Open-mouthed, he sat up, still half asleep. ‘A bark? Where?’
‘In the hidden cove facing Isla Pequena — the one we call Idle Bay. She’s a little schooner, a trader of sorts. And only three fellows aboard, as far as I can tell.’
He struggled visibly to comprehend.
Then I said, ‘Get up, Adam. We must take her, or die trying.’
At once we made ready for an assault, all or nothing. We cleaned and charged the two precious pistols Youssef had secreted in the boxes, uncountably glad to find the horns had kept the powder good. The weapons were of finest manufacture, the kind that would fire when asked. Together with the pieces, we took up two short knives and an axe each. These were all the weapons we had.
‘Ready?’ I asked.
With a pistol a-piece and spare horns and balls, we set off into the low scrub. Two advantages presented themselves: our knowledge of the lie of the land, and surprise. Yet as we loped through the undergrowth, it was a puzzle why such a schooner might fetch in here. The Witness Isles could hardly be reckoned as worthwhile stopping points between trading posts, where a ship might wood and water. Mariners would be sorely disappointed to find the hillsides all but bare of trees save for the few coco palms. As for water, we had only what we caught from rainstorms, for there was no spring or pool. Thus there would likely be no such visitors again until after we were long dead. This must be our one and only chance.
Reaching Idle Bay, we topped the rise above the cove, keeping well hidden. The schooner was moored with an anchor out from her bows and a stern line to a rock. Her launch was still stowed on deck, so the interlopers must have chosen to swim the short distance ashore. The three of them were on the narrow strand, occupied in tending a fire, with their backs to a straight rock wall behind. Reckoning themselves safe, showing no sign that they had an inkling of our presence, they were off their guard.
‘They’re devoted to that fire,’ I whispered.
Two were youngish fellows, dark, with bushy beards sprouting from their chins and their loose clothes colourful but filthy.
‘Spaniards?’ breathed Adam.
They were Dagoes for sure, and carried a pair of pistols each. From the bloodied remains on a nearby rock, it was clear they had used knives for cutting up the large fish now roasting on their fire. The third man was an altogether contrasting figure, not bearded but grey-haired, lighter-skinned and a deal older in years, sitting detached from the others as if uninterested in their doings, staring moodily at the fire.
I rested a hand on Adam’s arm. ‘They’re better armed than us, and stronger.’
‘I’m as ready as you are, sir,’ he said without hesitation.
‘Good man. Go off to the south and get down from the high ground into cover. When I show myself from this side, you present from yours and we’ll have them by surprise. I’ll next see you when we are victors, and owners of that schooner.’
He took up his charged pistol and, with hardly a rustle of the dry bushes, was gone. I moved down the slope to a position not twenty yards from the party, above them where they could not spy me behind the rock face, but with a good sight of the schooner and clear across the bowl of the bay to the rising ground opposite. The interlopers had paid no attention to their surroundings as we approached in stealth, confident they were alone, intent on cooking their fish. After a few minutes, Adam’s raised arm appeared low in the scrub across the far side, not more than fifty paces off our targets. I lifted my own arm in acknowledgement. Our moment was now.
With my pistol raised and cocked, I was on the point of breaking cover when one of the darker fellows began kicking the older man. Cursing in his own tongue, the Dago made him get up on his knees and bend forward. The man moved with difficulty — not through age, I saw at once, but because his hands and feet were bound. His captors fell to beating him and he kept his head bent low, for he could not resist their blows or defend himself.
Then this grey-haired fellow suddenly said in clear tones, ‘Now’s the time then, boys?’
To my astonishment, he had spoken in English. The Dagoes each drew out a heavy pistol. One of them deliberately cocked back the lever and levelled his barrel at the back of the prisoner’s head. Plain to see, there was about to be an execution of the most unjust and barbarous nature.
I stood up at the lip of the rock wall and took a two-handed aim at the chest of the would-be executioner.
‘Throw off your weapons!’ I shouted.
Two faces swivelled upwards and the Spaniard’s pistol swung my way. I tripped the flintlock and the pan flashed, sending sparks all around. The charge fired and the pistol bucked. The fellow did not go down with the shot but seemed to fling himself against the rock wall. The ball thudded into the beach where it kicked up a shower of sand. Dammit, missed altogether — and at fifteen paces range. But at least he had let drop his pistol.
Adam broke cover, running on to the beach and kneeling to take aim at the second fellow. The ball struck the Dago’s legs, throwing him to his knees. He dropped his piece and writhed on the ground.
Now they still had a pistol each left to fire against nothing more than our short knives and axes. The fellow I had missed leapt up and grasped the Englishman, manhandling him to his feet and holding him as a shield. As he fumbled for his second pistol, I saw his hand was a mess of blood. My ball had caught him after all. Nevertheless, he brought the muzzle of his piece up and pointed it at me.
I launched myself from the rock two fathoms above. The pistol barked, spitting sparks, and the ball snatched at my briches. Passing through the rising smoke of the discharge, I landed on the two, catching the bearded one full on the neck. With a snort, he crumpled, breaking my fall, and we rolled on top of his prisoner. I was quickly on the Dago’s back but he managed to whip out a knife from his belt before I could pin his hands. I bore down on his wrists, the flashing point inches from my face.
The Spaniard Adam had wounded went for his fallen weapon, but Pyne reached him first and struck a blow with his axe. The man staggered and they fell upon each other, fighting.
Tussling with my own opponent, sensing his much greater bodily strength, a sheer will possessed me, the urgent craving to get charge of that vessel, the stark knowledge that if we failed now death would be mighty quick. As if in a formal dance, though with grunted oaths rather than politenesses, we each worked towards getting an arm free enough to strike.
‘Fuego de Diablo!’ cursed the dark-bearded interloper.
My face was buried in the back of the Dago’s head, my mouth full of lank hair. The fellow was well-muscled and I could not raise my pistol butt to administer a felling blow. Without warning, he jerked back his head, clacking shut my jaw so that I nipped my own tongue.
‘Hell burn you,’ I spat.
Something caught under my feet, almost overbalancing me. It was the Englishman, struggling under both our weight. His hands were groping between the Dago’s legs. The Spaniard yelled in pain and let go his grip on the knife.
‘Cojones de Dias,’ he groaned.
My pistol butt came down from high and cracked across the back of his skull. He collapsed like a sack on top of his former prisoner. Neither fellow moved as I grabbed up the loose pistol.
Adam too stood victorious, legs planted astride the crumpled figure of his opponent, and breathing in snorts of triumph.
‘Bind your man up, quickly now,’ I said, tearing off a cloth band from the Dago’s waist. I tied his wrists and ankles, then dragged him aside. Relieved of this weight, the Englishman sat up and ejected a mouthful of sandy spittle.
‘Teeth and armpits, it’s a wonder what a man’ll do when you cradle his plums,’ he said, flexing and unflexing his grip with some difficulty due to the wrist bonds. ‘But the Saints thank you, my good fellow.’
‘I thank you in return. But are there any more?’ I said, panting. ‘Aboard the schooner?’
‘The three you see is all,’ said the Englishman. He was perhaps fifty and spoke in the tones of an educated man, if not a gentleman. ‘Two done in and one whole, though it was intended to be the other way about.’
He wore sailcloth briches with ropes for shoulder straps, no shirt against the sun, and his horny, calloused feet were those of a common sailor. I bent over and touched his belt and pockets for a knife, but there was none.
‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
Beside where he sat, upright but at a tilt, its base dug into the sand, stood a black bottle. ‘Pass me that,’ he said, ‘and I shall tell you my story.’
I shook my head. ‘That can wait. How do you come to be their prisoner?’
‘That’s a tale worthy of the printer’s attentions.’
‘Then it’ll have to stew a while yet,’ I told him, ‘and you stay tied.’
Adam came over, pointing at my thigh. There was a burn hole clean through the loose folds of my briches where the Spaniard’s ball had passed without touching flesh.
The Englishman let out a whistle. ‘I see I am. not alone this morning,’ he said, ‘in coming close to getting a ball in a bad place.’
We dragged and carried our prisoners to the base of the rock, where we sat them down, backs against the wall. One remained as still as if dead, though I saw that he breathed. When I splashed seawater on his face, he revived, though his hand displayed a ragged gash to the thumb. Adam’s victim was muttering and rolling his eyes, holding his right leg, blood spotting the sand where a ball had gone clean through the calf. When these wounds were bound the bleeding stopped.
Both Spaniards had fairly bristled with arms. Not only did they carry two pistols and two knives a-piece, but they had cutlasses, hand-axes and a pair of long-muskets propped against the rock wall. I gathered up the spare pistols and offered one to Adam.
‘We’d better recharge these,’ I said, ‘and be sure the powder and spark are good.’
The Englishman looked alarmed. ‘If you’re going to finish us all off, lads, will you hear my confession first?’
‘We’re not bent on killing anyone,’ I said. ‘All we want is the boat.’
‘Everyone wants my Diamond,’ he said. A smile broke over his features, but his eyes were sad. He was half-drunk. ‘Let me have a free hand to grasp that dam’ bottle, there’s a good fellow.’
‘No rum till we haul away off these blasted isles,’ I told him, going over and checking his bindings as well as the Dagoes’. Then I straightened and cast an eye across the waters of Idle Bay. ‘Adam, it’s time to go and survey our prize.’
As if by signal, we turned to each other, smiling, and danced the steps of a jig around the beach, so pleased were we with the prospect of our release from the Witness Isles. With whoops of triumph, we ran to the water’s edge and, a pistol each held dry above our heads, swam out to the Diamond.
The schooner’s topsides were painted black at the gunnels and varnished brown to the waterline. The full hull rode easily on the water and her black-pitched bottom showed every time she rolled on the slight swell. At her waist were a couple of boarding steps, by which we clambered to the rail together and peered over, wary of attack. Nothing moved, so we scrambled quickly up and stood on her decks for the first time.
She was about forty five or fifty feet in length — not including the sprit — with a flat run from right aft to right forward, and must have been fifteen foot broad with plenty of beam carried towards the bow. As a schooner, she boasted a foremast and a mainmast, with a long boom extending aft to right above the taff-rail. To my eye, she had a fast rig and a hull for speed as much as carrying. There were two light guns bowsed down either side, two-pounders I reckoned, with a half-pound swivel at the bow and one aft for the stern chase, so she was well enough armed to defend herself.
At the quarters was the long tiller-bar, with a compass binnacle by a hatchway which led below. We ducked into its low entry and dropped down to find a captain’s sleeping cabin, a day room and a bread store. The below decks space ran forward under the waist to a small galley-furnace just aft of the foremast. She was well-used but cared for, and smelt of new wood and pitch from recent harbour work. There was a carpenter’s table right forward where the anchor cables dropped into a chain locker from the windlass, a sail-room midships, and hammocks slung along either side. All these quarters were quite empty of people or animals. Under the sole boards, we discovered stores of supplies in kegs, barrels and sacks stowed in every cranny and running the length of her keel between the ship’s frames — dry stores enough for months at sea. The hold beneath the captain’s quarters was locked, but finding a key we opened the lid to reveal an armoury and powder store, jammed with muskets, shot and sacks of powder.
Back on deck, we reckoned her to be in fine trim, as if just fresh from a refit. Her standing rig was all of a piece, well tarred and tight, the running rig neatly coiled and the sails — as far as we saw at a glance — patched but in good order. The mainsail was roughly folded on the long boom, the staysail crudely brailed up to the foremast, and the jibsails loosely lashed on the sprit.
‘If those Dagoes only knew how to stow a sail.’ I shook my head. ‘But this is a bark any sea-captain would be proud to take into harbour.’
When we swam ashore, the two black-beards were awake and scowling, mouthing in their Spanish tongue, blasphemies, like as not. The Englishman directed his mournful gaze at the fire.
‘That kingfish is well past roasted,’ he said.
Adam and I were giddy with our sudden deliverance from the solitude of marooning. The aroma of the fish’s scorched, thick body charring on the flames was seducing. It was a beauty of two feet at least, more than a double handspan around and surely caught offshore, being of a size and variety our island prison had never offered. The fire was near its last and the skin was crisped brown and the flesh steamed white inside. With my knife, I speared the prize and cut it into pieces, whereupon Adam and I fell on the steaks, desperate to satisfy our ravening appetites. It might have seemed an uncommon scene, two fellows by a fire greedily eating and scorching their tongues while three others, all of them bound up and one half drunk on rum, sat quiet, stewing in the Tropick furnace. We cared nothing for that, for the fish filled up our bellies and gave us strength and refreshed our spirits. When we were done, Adam and I each took a long pull on the rum bottle.
‘Is it resistance to talk?’ said our English prisoner, his sad eyes on the bottle.
‘No, speak up, man,’ I encouraged. ‘Tell us your story, if you like.’
‘My name is Will Wrack, skipper of the Diamond, that lovely moored behind us here. Everyone in the island chain knows me and my ship, yet just a little time ago I thought that none should ever see us again. For these two Spanish here, having taken my vessel and slaughtered one of my poor and innocent crew and put the rest off, had granted me a death by shooting. It was to be followed by their feasting on this roasted fish. They allowed me that bottle of sugar-rum to ease my passage out. A ball through the back of the head was their preferred way.’
‘Aye, Mister Wrack, we saw it,’ I said, putting a juicy portion of the intended execution meal into his outstretched hands. Pulling on the bonds, he lifted the food to his mouth and champed open-jawed, like a dog.
‘Where did they seize your boat?’ I said. ‘And how?’
‘In Grenady, just off the Grande Anse,’ he mumbled, spitting shreds of flaked flesh. ‘Surprised us, coming up in the dark in their rowing boat. Wanted my schooner to go fishing, they said, but fishers need good hands aboard and they landed off all my fellows at Prickle Point. They had no call to slit the throat of my most companionable friend — Pauley, my blackamoor mate and a freeman. These Dagoes are piratickal of nature, no doubt of it. They took me along to steer them safe to the Spanish Main, yet when we passed the isles here, they had me haul in, saying they’d seen enough of how to sail her and could do without me.’
‘Your schooner’s too well-armed for a fishing boat,’ I remarked.
‘Armed for her own defence,’ he said. ‘And right enough in these waters.’ He sighed. ‘I take you for lawless men, do I? Pirates? What’s your cause to be on the Witness Isles?’
I shook my head. ‘Private men, marooned here. Starved of good meat for too long. But first things first.’ I got up. ‘What do you say, Adam, that we take Mister Will Wrack with us to help sail the bark, and leave the Dagoes here to live or starve as we have done?’
‘Aye, it’s fair,’ he said, then with a shrug and a smile added, ‘there are crabs and fish, and rainwater to collect.’
I shaded my eyes to squint at the schooner. ‘She’s a fine little bark, and well stored up. She’ll take us where we want to go.’ I turned to the bearded Spaniards. ‘Right, señores — up with you.’
We escorted them back aboard their one-time prize, lashed them at the rail and swam ashore to loose the stern line off its rock. Taking Will Wrack between us this time, we stroked the distance, climbed aboard and set him down in the waist, tied to the rail opposite his tormentors.
‘Don’t leave me like this, boys,’ he said. ‘Bring up my tobacco pouch and clay, there’s good fellows.’
‘You’ll have to wait,’ I said, though not unkindly, for he had a likeable way about him.
‘Let me help sail her,’ he insisted. ‘She’s my bark — I know her best.’
‘You may sing out, Mister Wrack,’ I grinned, ‘if we work her poorly.’
But we did not. We raised up the big jibsail, leaving it unsheeted while we went about the business of getting her anchor. It was hard labour, the two of us working at the windlass, for the bower had gone down into near ten fathom and we were hardly the fittest of men, but up it came at last. Adam sheeted home while I ran back to the quarter and grasped the long tiller-bar. We let her drift clear of Idle Bay until we caught the breeze, then steered round towards our encampment, the jibsail alone carrying us along at four knots or so. She seemed a lively bird on the water, and my heart sang. We had fallen upon luck the Devil himself might envy.
Hauling round the headland, we approached the strand of our marooning with some confidence, knowing the waters well and the depths too, with our weeks of swimming here in search of morsels of fish and shell. After splitting out a small portion of the boat’s stores, we left the Dagoes, that cursing pair of brigands who deserved nothing, with rice and beans enough to last a week, as well as the necessary vitals of survival that Filligrew had granted us, such as hooks and lines and small knives. They were fortunate enough, I reckoned, to benefit from that code of honour between privateers, when they had been about to execute a man.
Soon, the breeze swung our bows towards the strait and Adam sweated in the sheets for the short reach through Crab Strait towards open water. Beneath my feet the Diamond’s deck-boards trembled as she heaved to the swells and I breathed deeply, savouring the tang of salt sea air which I loved almost beyond anything. For the first time in god knows how long, the fresh ocean breeze brushed my face. Bracing against the thrumming tiller-bar, sensing the rush of water over the rudder blade as the schooner gathered speed, I thrilled unashamedly at the prospect of steering this little bark free across the seas.
Secure below in a secret locker of the captain’s cabinet was the apotheckary’s Physick box with that most precious, irreplaceable volume inside, left for me by Observator Spatchears in hopes of my delivering it into safe hands. It was our chance of freedom, and a pardon. Now the fates had given me the means to win that prize.
They had sent me the little Diamond.