Caribbean (55 page)

In this manner, Port Royal, capital of the buccaneers and the wildest haven in the Seven Seas, vanished from the earth in less than twenty-five minutes.

Will received small thanks for translating the tragic news about Port Royal, for next day he was back laboring on the roads, but on the day after, he received an unexpected reward, for Fray Baltazar reappeared on his little mule: “Tatum, the
conde
appreciated your help the other day. He tells me you’ve been an upstanding prisoner, obedient and good at your job. He gave permission to grant you a
boon. Lay down your shovel and share with me a stew and a bottle of red wine … at my sister’s.”

Every Spanish man, whether priest or scoundrel, trusted old adviser or conniving clerk in a government office, was subservient to the ironclad rule that had always dictated behavior in Cartagena: “Look after your family,” and not even Baltazar was exempt from that stern edict. His sister was a presentable widow with forty-four acres of productive land who had for a dozen years been trying to find a new husband. On this day when her brother brought yet another unmarried man for one of her fine stews, she served such a splendid meal that Will was encouraged to return frequently, without Fray Baltazar’s urging. Then one day the priest rode his mule to Will’s workplace, bringing an unexpected proposition for this Englishman he had grown to trust: “Will, you must have observed that my sister needs someone to help work her land. I will explain to the
conde
. I know he will release you … and you could live there …”

“Oh, you want me to marry your sister? But I’m not Catholic and …”

“Who said marry?” the priest shouted. “For me to marry a Protestant like you to a good Catholic like her would be a mortal sin. I’d roast in hell. But I’ve had a small hut built … on a corner of her land … I’m not talking about marriage!”

Before Will could respond to this amazing suggestion, the priest said almost in a whisper: “She’s a good woman, Will, a dear woman whom I love. I’m past sixty and I must see to it that she has help on her little farm.”

In this manner, Will Tatum, mortal enemy of things Spanish, became caretaker for a Spanish widow with forty-four acres and marvelous skill in the kitchen, and as the years passed, and he took his meals increasingly at her table, he discovered that “When a man understands the Spanish, they aren’t all that bad.”

^*1
In 1697, because the French pirates had taken effective control of this western portion of Hispaniola, the Treaty of Ryswick, which ended a European war, awarded it to France, who held it until 1804, when rebellious blacks expelled Napoleon’s armies and established the republic of Haiti. Tortuga, too, is now a part of Haiti.

^*2
In 1678 one of Morgan’s buccaneers, a Dutchman of questionable background known as Exquemelin or Esquemeling, published in Amsterdam the sensationally popular
De Americaensche Zee-Rovers
. When it appeared in London in 1684 in English, Morgan started legal action, claiming that this story, among others, was libelous. Two different publishers recanted and settled for £200 each, but other buccaneers who had participated in the attack averred that the accounts of Morgan’s brutality were true.

^*3
The Miskito Indian known as David was rescued years later by the legendary pirate-naturalist-writer William Dampier and carried to freedom. Curiously, in 1704 the famous Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk marooned himself on this same island, where he lived in total solitude for four and a half years before being found by this same Dampier on a return visit to Juan Fernández. Daniel Defoe, who knew Dampier, later borrowed the story, unacknowledged, as the basis for his novel
Robinson Crusoe
.

^*4
The Falklands in English. In Spanish, Las Islas Malvinas.

E
NGLISH SETTLERS IN
J
AMAICA KNEW THEM AS
M
AROONS
, black slaves of fierce character whose ancestors had escaped when their Spanish owners were driven from the island by the British in the 1650s. These slaves had fled to remote mountain glens in the center of the island, and there they had survived and prospered for more than eighty years, repelling all English efforts to dislodge them. Year by year their numbers had grown as new slaves, imported into Jamaica at great expense, worked a few years on the sugar plantations, then disappeared into the mountains to form the new stock of Maroons.

In 1731 the situation grew so grave, with daring Maroons actually mounting formal assaults on sugar plantations, that the white planters decided on a drastic counterattack, and launched a major campaign against the mountain robbers. Each plantation was required to contribute arms, money and especially white men or trusted blacks to a militia formed to chastise the renegades. As expected, the distinguished Trevelyan Plantation north of the capital, Spanish Town, contributed many arms, much ammunition and a captain for the force, Sir Hugh Pembroke. He was forty-six that year, military in bearing, his slim form showing to good advantage in the uniform of an English regiment. A descendant of that bold young Officer Pembroke
who had suggested to Admiral Penn in 1655 “Since the Spanish have thrown us out of Hispaniola, why don’t we throw them out of Jamaica?”—thus adding this fine island to the empire—Sir Hugh loved politics and was an important member of Parliament in London.

The large contingent of more than a hundred from Spanish Town and its attendant plantations marched north to Trevelyan, where the troop was joined by an extraordinary planter, Pentheny Croome, two hundred and forty pounds, a shape like a newly patted butterball, and a flaming red face. Like Sir Hugh, he was a member of the British Parliament, famed in that body as “the only man in either House who has never read a book.” Indeed, some members said behind his back: “We doubt he even knows his alphabet, but for sure he knows how to calculate fifteen percent per annum on his investments.” Pentheny’s investments, like those of all the senior leaders of this improvised expeditionary force, were in sugar, for he had, through natural cunning, avarice and theft, acquired not only a huge working plantation, twice as large as Sir Hugh’s, but also several thousand acres which he was about to bring into cultivation. He was a giant man with giant appetites, and when the troops were ready to start their chase through the hills, he told them: “We’re goin’ to rout out them Maroons and kill the lot! No quarter!”

Sir Hugh, with superior military experience, corrected him: “No, Pentheny, my good friend, the governor’s orders are quite different. We’ve tried to shoot the Maroons for the past three decades. One excursion after another. The tally? Six of us dead, for sure. Four of them dead, maybe.”

“Then why’re we goin’?”

“A truce. Men, we’re not going to fire at a single Maroon. We’re going to offer them a truce. No more war … ever … if they’ll pledge to bring back our slaves who try to run away.”

“Can we trust them?” Croome asked, and Sir Hugh retorted: “What other choice do we have?”

Pentheny Croome muscled his way to the front, thrust his face close to Sir Hugh’s, and asked: “Was that your recommendation, Pembroke?” And Sir Hugh said loud enough for all the troops to hear: “Back in 1717 when they passed that law, difficult slaves could be mutilated at your and my decision. Even dismembered and burned if the offense was grave enough. I warned you then it wouldn’t work. And it hasn’t.” He stared at each of the other plantation owners:
“Well, now we’re going to try something better, at least in our part of Jamaica.” And he led his troops into the hills.

After four days of climbing up and down the backbreaking cockpit country, they had seen no sign of the Maroons they knew to be in the area, despite the fact that they had sent scouts ahead to call out the name of the Maroon leader: “Cuffee! Cuffee! Come out! We want to talk.” There was no response, but toward sunset on the fifth day, Maroon fire came from a tangle of banyan roots, and Croome shouted: “Over here!” and into the matted jungle he crashed, firing his gun and killing one of the Maroons.

“That’s how we’ll handle this,” he said as he sat on a log cleaning his gun, the dead black at his feet. But Sir Hugh would have none of it. Tying a big white kerchief to the tip of his rifle, he called to his son Roger to do the same, and together they walked toward the banyan thicket, crying: “Cuffee! Cuffee! It’s Sir Hugh here. Come talk with me.” And as darkness fell the famous leader of the Maroons, a man of forty whose forefathers had been hauled from the Gulf of Guinea in 1529, came cautiously out to parley with the enemy, as if he were a head of state.

When the expeditionary force returned to civilization, Sir Hugh did not stop off at Trevelyan, but accompanied by Pentheny Croome, rode on to Spanish Town, where he reported to the governor, General Hunter: “Brief skirmish. Croome here reacted with extreme bravery in one tight squeeze. Had to kill a Maroon.”

“Excellent man, Croome. And what did you accomplish?”

“Met with Cuffee. Saw his men. Saw their huge cache of stolen guns, bullets. Concluded the agreement you and I spoke of. No more killing on his part. No more fires in the night. On our part, we’ll give him additional ammunition against the chance of a Spanish invasion.”

The governor exploded: “Good God, man! You mean you shied away from the real topic?”

“I did not, with all respect, sir. Cuffee and his lieutenants, all of them, agreed to harbor no more runaway slaves. He’ll bring them back. Ten pounds alive, five dead.”

“Good work, Pembroke.” He saluted, left, then returned with good news for Croome: “That cleared land? Papers have been certified, just as you said they would be. It’s yours.” With a gesture of real
affection, for Pentheny Croome was the kind of man he understood, he gripped the huge fellow by the shoulder and ushered him out.

Next morning Sir Hugh was up well before dawn and rode off with Roger without even saying farewell to Pentheny, for he was homesick for the one secure refuge he knew in this world, superior even to his safe seat in Parliament, the glorious green fields of Trevelyan Plantation. When he saw the outer boundaries enclosing land that was neat and clean, he cried to his son: “Maintain it this way, Roger! A place like this is something to gladden a man’s heart.”

Since the sun was well up, he was not surprised to see his slaves marching to the slightly rolling fields where the myriad little rectangles had been lined out with severe exactitude, their four sides carefully delineated by hoeing up loose earth, inside which the ratoons of sugarcane would be planted, each with its own irrigation system ensured by the low earthen walls.

He did not expect the slaves to show any pleasure from the fact that he was once more among them, but had he inspected closely, he would have detected signs that they would rather have him here in Jamaica than in London: “When de boss foot touch de soil, things grow.”

Then Hugh’s heart beat faster, for he was approaching the slight rise at which he always stopped when returning home after any prolonged absence from his plantation, and when he reached the top he reined in his horse, leaned back in the saddle, and gazed once more upon one of the finest sights in Jamaica and perhaps the entire Caribbean.

Atop a hill in the distance rose a handsomely constructed stone cylindrical building, shining in the morning sunlight and displaying as its crown the four big canvas sails which proclaimed it to be a working windmill. Near its foot on a large flat area stood a somewhat similar stone building that boasted no windmill, but it resembled the first in that the interior of each contained a vertical crushing mechanism into which raw sugarcane was fed so that the rich juice could be extracted.

These two handsome buildings, each as well built as a cathedral, were the laboring heart of the plantation, for when the wind blew, as it did at least half the days during the harvesting season, the tall building did the work, obtaining power from its windmill. But when the winds ceased, as they sometimes did at inopportune moments, shouting black boys in the smaller building drove pairs of heavy oxen
endlessly around a tight circular path to activate the heavy rollers. As long as either of the two buildings was prepared to operate, the plantation was ready for work.