Admiral Page 16

  “The bishop’s lady was rather cross. She had decided to make use of the bishop’s absence by trimming her hair and washing it, we having plenty of water after that bad weather. So with wet hair wrapped up in a towel I came up on deck after the first bang, watched the fall of shot, used the perspective glass to see exactly where the gun was, reached the same decision as Aurelia, and went below to finish my hair.”

  “And very nice it looks.” Ned said.

  “Have the men finished looting Puerto Catalina yet?” Aurelia asked.

  “No, they won’t be done until nightfall. Don’t sound so disapproving – this is their pay!” Ned said.

  “I’m not disapproving,” Aurelia said. “It’s just that they’re going into people’s homes…”

  “I agree,” Diana said. “Rob the treasury, the governor’s residence, the bishop’s house, the arsenal, warehouses and shops – but I have the same feeling about homes.”

  “Ned’s as soft as you are, “ Thomas growled. “The Spanish landing in Jamaica would burn the homes after looting them…”

  Ned put tankards on the table and reached for a bottle. “Thomas, would you open the door and pass the word for Lobb?”

  The Griffin’s mate came down to the cabin.

  Ned said: “I want you to pick a couple of men – ask for volunteers – to take a perspective glass and go over to Providence. They must climb up to the top of the easiest of these two closest peaks and watch for sail on the horizon. They should get back to the beach again an hour before sunset, and report to me.”

  Lobb grinned as he said: “I’ve just the right men, sir: a couple of Highlanders who’ve been telling me how these peaks and valleys remind them of home. Can they take muskets in case they see something worth shooting for fresh meat?”

  “As long as they get to the top of a peak and then report to me an hour before sunset. They must be on board here by that time, or earlier if they sight more than four ships.”

  Lobb left the cabin and Thomas pointed to the glasses. “You’re getting absent-minded: they’re still empty.” As soon as he had taken a sip or two of rum, he said: “The captains are due on board an hour before sunset, too.”

  “Yes,” said Ned casually, “it’s beginning to get cool by then.”

  “What are you hatching?”

  Ned gave a mock frown. “The admiral of the Brethren doesn’t ‘hatch’ anything. He makes well considered plans – like diving into a ditch – and gives well considered orders – like ‘Get your knee out of my stomach!’”

  The two women looked puzzled, and Thomas described the gun firing at them as they walked up the hill, and their leap into the ditch. He then looked at Ned. “You’re not talking about the captains’ meeting then?” Ned shook his head. “I’m not being mysterious, but it all depends on those Highlanders.”

  Chapter Nine

  The captains arrived punctually in one boat, the rest of the craft still drawn up on the beach and being loaded with their purchase from the port, and Ned had just finished greeting them when Lobb reported that the two Highlanders were returning in a canoe.

  Ned hurriedly handed the captains over to Thomas and took the Highlanders down to the cabin to hear their report in private. He had first to listen to one of them grumble bitterly at the amount of game to shoot, and after the second man had carefully returned the perspective glass, he heard what they had seen.

  Then, after being assured in a dialect so broad he could barely understand it that Providence and Jamaica, with their mountains and valleys, crags and rocky spines, had so much more to offer than an island as flat as Barbados or as parched as Antigua, Ned thanked the men and went on deck to join the captains. They were gathered round Aurelia and Diana, both of whom were now wearing dresses with normal skirts and, Ned saw with pleasure, looked as though they were standing on their own lawns being agreeable at some function involving the estate’s male employees.

  There was not much time to waste: the sun seemed to drop faster and faster in its plunge to the western horizon, and Ned quickly told the captains what he intended to do. They listened and then grinned as they agreed to it. The only disagreement came from Nicolo Secco, the Spanish captain.

  “They will trick you,” he said flatly. “I know my countrymen. I must come as well. Do not introduce me – I will pretend to be your coxswain and bodyguard – I shall be able to hear any whispering and warn you in English without them realizing I speak Spanish.”

  Ned did not have to think twice: Secco was a shrewd man and according to Leclerc a good seaman and completely trustworthy.

  “Come on then, Thomas, it’s time we left.” Ned looked round and saw Lobb standing beside the entry-port holding a boarding pike. He waved when he saw Ned glance towards him, indicating that the canoe was alongside.

  Ned kissed Aurelia and whispered a promise for the night; Thomas gave Diana a bear-like hug. Secco gave the women a courtly bow and followed the two men.

  Five minutes later, squatting in the canoe being paddled round the southern end of Santa Catalina and into the channel separating it from the main island, the three men discussed the plan as Thomas took the boarding pike and twirled it to unwind the large white flag which had been secured to the upper half.

  “Paddle faster,” he growled at the six seamen, “this cloth isn’t streaming out enough!”

  Would the Spaniards honour a flag of truce? Ned thought they had nothing to lose and perhaps much to gain. If they had any sense they would meet the boat on the narrow beach just below where the bridge had been pulled back on to Santa Catalina.

  There were no signals from the stark cliffs on their left; no sign from this angle that a human being had ever set foot on the hills behind. Puerto Catalina on the big island, now well over on their right, looked completely deserted at this distance, apart from the buccaneer boats on the beach.

  He called to the men at the paddles and pointed to the small beach now coming into view on Santa Catalina. Thomas jerked a thumb upwards towards the top of the cliffs. “That dam’ fortress will be in sight in a moment – it’s just round this square-topped cliff.”

  “We’ll rename it Fort Whetstone!”

  “You’ll do no such thing! Leave it with its sainted name!”

  The canoe had gone another three hundred yards, nearing the beach which was scooped out of the cliffs, when Ned noticed that steps had been carved out of the rock from the top of the cliffs down to sea level, and that five men were now standing on the sand. A movement at the top of the cliff soon turned into four more men coming down the steps, one of them carrying a white flag.

  “The reception committee is arriving,” he commented to Thomas and Secco.

  “Thank goodness,” Thomas muttered. “I was waiting for the fort to start target practice again.”

  Secco said: “Don’t forget that my name is ‘Brown’. If they suspected I was Spanish they might demand that I’m handed over as part of some agreement.”

  Thomas laughed and slapped Secco on the back. “Don’t worry, we don’t sell our friends and no one would take you for a Spaniard, my dear Brown. You might almost pass for an Englishman. A Welshman, anyway.”

  Two of the men paddling laughed delightedly, and Thomas added: “Sounds as though you have two countrymen there.”

  “Come round a little to larboard,” Ned ordered. “We’ll run the boat’s stem up on the sand, but gently. A couple of you can stand in the water and hold her in case we have to leave in a hurry.”

  They were now a hundred yards from the sand and could see wavelets lapping on it. Twenty yards back (“Careful not to get their feet wet!” Thomas observed) stood two Spanish officers with three soldiers who were holding swords.

  “They should be unarmed,” Thomas grumbled, standing up with his white flag.

  “Stop paddling,” Ned ordered, and murmured
to Thomas: “We’ll wait until the Spaniard with their white flag has joined these chaps, just in case…”

  As the boat drifted thirty yards from the water’s edge, one of the Spanish officers made an impatient gesture, waving it in to the beach. Ned called in the careful Spanish which Aurelia had been teaching him: “We wait until your flag of truce has arrived and your men have removed their swords.”

  “You could be armed,” came the uncompromising answer.

  “We are not, but one man standing up in a canoe is enough; more might capsize it. Only three of us will land.”

  The officer turned to the soldiers, who thrust their swords into scabbards and walked over to the cliff, ostentatiously unbuckling their belts and leaving the swords and then returning.

  By now the four men with the flag of truce had arrived at the far end of the beach. Ned saw that only the man carrying the flag and one other wore uniform; the other two were in ordinary clothes.

  “Beach the boat,” Ned said to the men with the paddles, and warned Thomas to sit down, in case the impact unbalanced him.

  Within two minutes Ned, Thomas and “Brown” were standing on the beach, three seamen were holding the canoe so that it would not drift broadside-on, and the remaining three seamen stayed on board, paddling to help keep it in position.

  Ned walked up to the two officers. “You see we are not armed,” Ned said, “and we land under the flag of truce. My name is Yorke.”

  “Hernández,” the older of the two officers said, bowing stiffly. “Commander of the garrison. And you are…?”

  “An admiral. You see some of my ships.” Ned gestured seaward.

  “Pah, they are pirates. You are a pirate leader!”

  Ned shrugged his shoulders and smiled pleasantly. He continued in slow, careful Spanish: “Do not let us quarrel over words. Pirates, privateers, buccaneers – you can see only a few of my ships. Their men are pleased to call me their admiral. You,” and Ned’s smile became even friendlier, “are less fortunate: you call yourself the garrison commander, but you have no garrison!”

  The man went white. He had been lulled by Ned’s quiet voice and smiling manner, little realizing that he was being led into a trap by a Ned who still was not sure that the garrison had been taken off and shipped to Jamaica.

  “What’s wrong with the fellow?” Thomas asked anxiously. “Looks as though he’s going to faint.”

  “He said he was the garrison commander, but now he’s just accidentally told me, without using words, that he has no garrison!”

  At that moment the Spanish flag of truce and the two civilians arrived. One was obviously in command; he brusquely inquired of Hernández what was happening and was told, in fast nervous Spanish, that the pirates knew the garrison was gone.

  The civilian swore at Hernández for saying it, since obviously one of the English spoke Spanish, but the soldier said angrily: “He speaks it very slowly, that was why I spoke quickly!”

  Ned said to Hernández, deliberately thickening his accent and using wrong tenses: “You should introduce us.”

  Hernández asked the other man’s permission, but before Hernández could speak the man snapped: “Vásquez, the Governor of Providencia. Why have you come here under a flag of truce? You raided our port first, now you want a truce!”

  Ned shook his head politely and still spoke softly in bad Spanish. “No, you must give me an opportunity to explain. Your Excellency, you want the truce.”

  The governor, a portly, sallow-faced man in a large plumed hat and with drooping moustaches and clearly very short-sighted, obviously could hardly believe his ears. “I want a truce? Why, that is absurd! We sighted your ships – your seven ships,” he said with sarcastic emphasis, “last night. We evacuated Providencia, manned our nine castles, fortresses, and batteries, and removed the bridge. So tell me please, why should I want a truce?” Hernández and the other officers and the civilian laughed dutifully.

  “You had good look-outs on duty yesterday evening,” Ned said, “and this morning at first light you saw the seven ships come in and anchor. Yes?”

  “Yes,” Vásquez said, his voice patronizing. “Seven ships. Seven small ships. And their boats took less than 400 men on shore, leaving four or five on board each ship.”

  “Your men have sharp eyes,” Ned said admiringly, and both Vásquez and Hernández nodded their heads, as if accepting the praise. “But the look-outs on duty yesterday evening – what happened to them?”

  Vásquez turned to Hernández. “Tell him. No, tell me first.”

  “They were sent to the guns. They fired at the ships this morning,” he said very quickly.

  “Did you understand that?” Vásquez asked, and when Ned shook his head, repeated it slowly.

  Ned managed to look both sad and disappointed. “Oh,” he said, like a man who had just found the answer to a puzzle. “So that is why you do not realize that you need the truce –”

  “Explain yourself!” Vásquez interrupted angrily. “I did not ask for a truce, I do not want a truce, and I’ve granted you one against my better judgement.”

  Again Ned shook his head, hard put to avoid bursting out laughing as he adopted the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger role, and thankful Thomas could not understand.

  “I suggest, Your Excellency,” he said politely, “that you send those look-outs up the hill again with a good –” he broke off, using his hands to imitate a perspective glass. “I do not know the word in Spanish.”

  Both Vásquez and Hernández stared at him. “What would they see?” the governor asked suspiciously.

  “At this moment they would see in the last of the sunlight twenty-one ships – the rest of my fleet – on the horizon, approaching Santa Catalina. They will come in and anchor at daylight, so you see, I have twenty-eight ships, not seven.”

  Vásquez and Hernández began a violent argument with each other. The governor wanted to know why the look-outs had been sent to the guns instead of keeping a watch, and the garrison commander, forgetting Ned in his anger, said they were two of only eleven men who knew how to aim and fire a gun.

  Secco’s eyes caught Ned’s for a moment, and Ned was thankful he had not misheard the commander. Nine forts, castles and batteries, with an estimated fifty guns, and only eleven men on Santa Catalina who could aim and fire them. The Spaniards had vastly underestimated the English: obviously when taking the garrisons of Portobelo and Providence they knew there were no English ships of war at Jamaica, simply the garrison of three thousand men to defend the island. Equally obviously, the Spanish authorities on the Main (the Viceroy of Panama? Ned was not sure) thought there was no danger in taking Providence’s garrison – the island had never been attacked since the English were driven out seventeen years ago, and the English had run away after attempting Santo Domingo, losing thousands…

  After telling Hernández to hold his tongue – using a vulgar phrase which he obviously assumed Ned would not know – Vásquez stood stiffly, pushing out his chest and bracing up his stomach, and told Ned: “The truce is over. You cannot possibly capture Santa Catalina, there is nothing to discuss.”

  Ned decided to play all his aces. This was a game that could be won in the next five minutes or otherwise last a couple of months – and certainly no buccaneer would wait that long.

  “Nothing to discuss,” he said agreeably. “However, you should listen to my terms. They are generous – very generous.”

  “A pirate’s terms generous?” Vásquez sneered.

  “Yes. You see, I know that you have nine forts and half a hundred guns, and probably about three hundred quintals of powder in your magazines – enough to defend Santa Catalina for months, because of course you have a well of sweet water and no doubt plenty of grain. But, Your Excellency, who will aim and fire all those guns?

  “You have only eleven trained men…
And yes, you have drawn back the bridge, but I have three thousand men, agile as mountain goats – more so, because climbing rigging in a storm is much more difficult than scrambling up rocks… And of course, we would put the port to the torch before doing anything else. That would mean none of the refugees in your little fortress island will have a house when it is all over. Not a house, not a shop, not a tavern; just charred wood and blackened stone.”

  “You mentioned ‘generous’…” Vásquez said, his voice strangled, his hands now shaking as he loosened the collar of his jerkin and took off his hat with its large white plume, “‘generous terms’?”

  “Yes. We take or destroy all your cannon, shot, musket, pistols, and powder, pikes and swords and armour. We destroy any of the forts on Santa Catalina that I choose. That is all.”

  “All? What about the women and children?” Vásquez asked, unaware that he was revealing that he would accept the terms. “You promise to send all the prisoners to Portobelo or Cartagena? You give me a safe-conduct? No hostages – you must guarantee that –”

  “You have heard my terms,” Ned said, deliberately speaking in a harsh tone. “I want all your weapons. No prisoners, no hostages, no ransoms and no safe-conducts.”

  Vásquez slid down on to the sand in a faint, and Thomas said triumphantly: “I knew he would, he was swaying like a drunken curate. Dead faint. What on earth did you say?”

  As Hernández and the other Spaniards knelt down round the governor, Secco muttered in English: “He misunderstood you – your grammar was bad. He thought you meant you were taking no prisoners or hostages, that you were going to kill everyone.”

  Thomas roared with laughter. “No wonder he fainted. Still, just shows you, Ned, he reckons you can do it. He can’t have any defences up there!”

  “They haven’t,” Ned said quickly. “Or at least, they have plenty of guns but no men to fire them.”