1636: Seas of Fortune (15 page)

Once the Dutchmen recovered enough to speak, they told a grim tale. Not only had the Spanish not made any effort to rescue the sailors thrown into the sea, they had taken potshots at them, for sport. The two Dutchmen had survived by swimming under an upturned chest; it trapped air and hid them from sight.

David knew that if he had reached the area a few days earlier, his three ships, together with the three already there, might well have staved off the Spanish assault. He also knew that it was foolish to blame himself, because there was no way he could have predicted the tragedy.

That didn’t stop him from fretting about it, anyway.

The crew likewise became agitated. There was talk of sacking Maracaibo or Coro on the Venezuelan coast, but the more experienced men pointed out the dangers of being trapped against the Spanish coast if the squadron returned.

* * *

Philip was uneasy, and it wasn’t only because of the Spanish galleons said to be on the prowl. David’s temper had changed for the worse. Clearly, his ire had been raised by the report from the survivors of the Bonaire incident.

Not that David was that fond of the Spanish at the best of times. But Philip had always been impressed by David’s coolheadedness. Now he was afraid that David might set aside the long-term company goals, in order to take revenge.

His musings were interrupted by Cornelis, the second mate of the
Walvis
. “Captain wants you.”

Philip found David on the quarterdeck. “Sir?”

“What do you know about Nicaragua?”

“Just what Maria collected. About the San Juan river being a good place to look for rubber. She gave me a copy of the 1911 encyclopedia article.”

“Please leave the copy in my cabin.”

Providence Island, off coast of Nicaragua, May 1634

The three peaks of Providence Island slowly rose out of the haze. David’s ships picked their way cautiously through the reefs and shoals that surrounded the island, with the shallow draft
Hoop
as their advance guard. The leadsman of the
Walvis
was hoarse by the time they entered the harbor.

The English gave them a guarded welcome. They were Puritans, suspicious of royal intentions, and hostile to the Catholic powers, Spain in particular. The news of the Battle of Dunkirk, and the Treaty of Ostend, had not been well received. Still, Charles had not yet made any announcement of an intent to hand Providence Island over to the Spanish, and the islanders were determined to keep their heads down and hope the king would recognize the dangers of a Spanish alliance.

That said, they felt no need to engage in outright hostilities with the Dutch, let alone a Dutch-crewed ship flying the Swedish flag. At least until a specific royal command forced them into war.

Several Dutchmen, Abraham and William Blauveldt in particular, had been intimately involved in the founding and maintenance of the colony, and Abraham was on hand to greet David.

David mentioned the roving Spanish squadron to Abraham Blauveldt, and he and David agreed that they should sail out together for mutual protection. “You collect your rubber,” said Abraham, “and I will pick up some tortoiseshell from the Miskitos. It sells pretty well.”

The coast of Nicaragua was 150 miles west of Providence Island, and the coastal region was dominated by the Miskito Indians. The Blauveldts, and the English of Providence Island, had quickly made friends with them.

“By the way, Abraham, I almost forgot to show you. Look here.” David pointed at Bluefields, perhaps eighty miles north of the mouth of the San Juan River. “This town was named after you. Or would have been in our old future, I should say. Really.”

Abraham Blauveldt smiled. “That’s worth celebrating. Where’s the schnapps?”

* * *

The English ship’s carpenter decided to stay with the
Walvis
. “I’d like to see those rubber trees of yours. And I would even more like to have a chance to pay back the Spanish for what they did to the
White Swan
. You’re gunning for the Dagoes, aren’t ye?”

“Yes, indeed. And of course, they’re gunning for us.”

* * *

The final addition to their crew was the least likely: a preacher, Samuel Rishworth. He had approached Philip to find out the up-timers’ views on the issue of slavery. What he heard pleased him, and he explained why.

Providence Island had started importing slaves the year before. Rishworth’s views on the matter had gotten him in trouble with the local authorities. At first, he merely preached against slave-owning. But the company insisted that slavery was lawful for those who were “strangers to Christianity.”

Rishworth shrugged. “So God’s will was clear to me; I needed to preach the Gospel to the slaves. And tell them that if they became Christian, they could insist on their freedom.”

“I bet that went over well.”

“I was warned that I was ‘indiscreet,’ that I should not have made ‘any overture touching their liberty’ to the slaves, without the permission of their masters.”

“Right,” said Philip. “So what happened next?”

“Oh, the number of slaves who escaped into the woods increased. Not that I had any idea of how they managed it. No idea at all.”

“No idea at all,” Philip echoed.

“Of course, getting them off the island is a more difficult matter.”

“Can they swim?”

Rio San Juan, and the Miskito Coast, Nicaragua

“Rubber collecting going well, Philip?”

“Well enough.” The fugitive slaves from Old Providence Island were willing to work, at least after Rishworth had a word with them, but they were few in number. While the Miskito were willing to cut trees—the fact that it involved using an axe made it a warrior activity—that was only if there wasn’t something more interesting to do. If they got bored, they would go hunting or fishing, or just doze off in hammocks, and there was nothing Philip could do about it. And that wasn’t the only problem.

“I am worried about the waste,” Philip admitted. “Cutting down these
Castilla
trees, I mean. Yes, we get a lot of latex out of them all at once, but if we could just tap them, we could keep coming back each year for more.”

“It’s not practical, Philip. This is too close to Spanish-controlled territory. All they need to do is put a real fort at the mouth of the Rio San Juan, and give it adequate artillery and troops, and the rubber trees would be as inaccessible to us as if they were on the Moon. And I really can’t shed a tear over depriving the Spanish of their
Castilla
trees.”

“Well, if they don’t build that fort, it means that next time we visit, we’re going to have to go deeper into the rainforest to find more trees.”

“We’ll deal with that if we must.”

* * *

Philip brooded about the problem. He wasn’t worried about the yet-to-be-built fort—he figured that in a few years, the USE would have battleships in the Caribbean, and that would solve
that
problem. But battleships couldn’t grow back trees that had already been cut down.

He decided to experiment. He had one of the Miskitos cut V’s into the bark, not just near the ground, but all the way up the trunk. The “milk,” as the Miskitos dubbed the latex, came running out. A tree with a five-foot diameter might yield twenty gallons of milk. Which was about as much latex as they collected the original way. Whether the tree would in fact survive the heavy cutting, he couldn’t be sure. What he was sure was that it wouldn’t survive being felled. So this had to be an improvement.

It had the unexpected effect of increasing his labor force. His original guinea pig was one of the topmen from the
Walvis
. Accustomed to climbing a seventy-five-foot mast, he wasn’t exactly afraid of heights. The novelty of Philip’s experiment attracted observers, both Dutch and Miskito, and Philip overheard what they were saying. And decided to stage a race. The
Walvis
beat the
Koninck David
.

Then the Miskitos wanted in. They had their own climbing tricks. There was a risk of falling, of course. A mature
Castilla
was many feet high. But so far as the Miskito were concerned, the risk was what made the new rubber tapping a
desirable
activity for a warrior.

* * *

Rather than draw on the ships’ provisions, David preferred to pay the Miskitos to hunt for them. The Indians ranged along the coast, and up the river, bringing back turtle meat, fish, fowl and other dainties. Blauveldt had told David that in their home territory, two Miskitos could feed a hundred Europeans. It wasn’t much of an exaggeration.

* * *

“One of the hunters is back; seems anxious to speak to you, Captain,” Cornelis reported.

“Bring him by. Let’s find out what he has to say.” David was sitting on the stump of a rubber tree, munching on some fruit.

The report brought him to his feet. “Cornelis, pick the steadiest men. Have them go around, tell the other captains to have their men to quiet down, collect weapons, and assemble by the canoes. There’re Spanish upriver.”

David pulled a ring off his finger, and handed it to the hunter. “For you, good work!”

He then turned to Philip. “Go with him, get the Miskito chiefs together.”

Some minutes later, there was a quick Dutch-Miskito council of war on the bank of the Rio San Juan. The Dutch, with swivel guns brought over from the ships, blocked the path downriver. The Miskitos fanned out in small groups, heading into the rainforest. They would cut off the Spanish escape route.

The ambush was completely successful. It was also completely anticlimactic. The two mestizos the Indians had spotted weren’t scouts for a Spanish expedition. They
were
the expedition. In a manner of speaking.

More precisely, they were stragglers from a canoe convoy that had come down the river some months earlier, at the end of the last rainy season. The two had gone hunting one day, gotten lost, and discovered, when they made it back to the river, that they had been left behind. They had built a raft and tried paddling upriver, but decided eventually that it was too difficult and headed back downstream.

The mestizos were from the town of Granada in the interior of Nicaragua. Their convoy’s cargo was their region’s annual export of cochineal, sugar, indigo, hides and silver; it had been headed for Portobello, three hundred miles to southeast. There, it would have been transferred to the great
flota
, which sailed in January or February to Cartagena, Havana, and finally home.

There was much moaning and wailing among the Dutch when they realized that they had missed an easily captured treasure by just a few months.

The Miskitos were disappointed, too. While the Miskitos did cultivate crops, their general attitude was that it is easier to let someone else do the farming and then rob them. In this regard, they were not very different from their English and Dutch allies.

* * *

David thought about the treasures of Granada, and its sister city, Leon. He couldn’t afford to hang around the mouth of the San Juan until next December or January, waiting for the 1635 convoy. His investors would be unhappy about the delay in the delivery of the oil, rubber and bauxite, and a wait would increase the danger that a roving Spanish squadron would spot his ships.

But . . . If the convoy left the town half a year ago, that meant that the town’s warehouses were half-full again. Right?

Could he ascend the San Juan and assault the two cities? He had started the voyage with perhaps one hundred sixty men. Some of those had been left behind in Suriname, to help the colonists; others had died, through accident or disease. If he were to be away from the ships for a month or more, he would have to leave a strong guard behind, or he could return with much loot, only to find that he had no ships to sail home in. So that meant oh, perhaps, a hundred effectives. That was the bare minimum.

But if Blauveldt joined in . . . and the Miskitos . . . he might reasonably lead two hundred men into action. That made the idea . . . quite practical.

* * *

“Captain?” Philip was anxious to report on his successes.

The captain stared into the forest, without a word.

“Captain?”

David grimaced. “I have rethought the situation. We have done enough rubber collecting. It is time to take more direct action against the Spanish.”

“The USE military uses rubber—”

“Yes, yes, it will be used by your APCs. But we Dutch need to damage the Spanish more . . . directly. The Spanish are confident they can do anything they please with our ships and colonies, because they are winning the war in Europe. We need to remind them that the Dutch are not impotent.”

“This expedition is funded by USE investors, and flies the USE and Swedish flags.”

“And carries Dutch captains and crews. Who want to see the Spanish taken down a peg. Which will make both the Swedes and the Americans happy enough.

“So this is what we will be doing. We will take canoes up the Rio San Juan, to the Lago de Nicaragua. And across it . . . to Granada and Leon.

“They are towns rich in silver and other treasures. They have never been attacked, and hence are unwalled and poorly garrisoned. I feel confident that they will pay a heavy ransom to be spared the torch.”

It was Philip’s turn to stare silently at the wilderness.

David put his hand on Philip’s shoulder. “You Americans don’t seem to have much taste for plunder, I know. When I formed the Company, I was shocked by the up-time lack of enthusiasm for privateering.” He stifled a chuckle. “Of course, the down-time investors made up for it.

“So don’t worry. I don’t need to take you with me. I have to leave a guard for the ships, and I will give you a few additional men to help you continue your rubber harvesting. The ones too old or too sick to be fit for my little excursion to Granada, of course. And you will have some of the Miskitos.”

“How long will this take? I am no expert on the Caribbean, but I do know that the hurricanes come in August and September.”

“Oh, we’ll have you back in the Thuringen Gardens, with your friends buying you drinks, and an admiring young fraulein on your lap, well before then.”