Corsair (51 page)

Hector wiped the telescope’s lens with a strip of clean cotton rag torn from his shirt, and was about to take another look at the stranger’s flag when there was the sound of a cannon shot. The noise carried clearly downwind, and he saw a black puff of gun smoke from the sloop’s deck.

‘That’s to attract our attention. They want to talk with us,’ said Benjamin.

Hector stared again at the sloop. It was obvious that she was closing rapidly, and he could see some sort of activity on her stern deck. A small group of men had clustered there.

‘We should show them a flag,’ Benjamin suggested.

Hector hurried down to the dead captain’s cabin. He knew there was a canvas bag tucked away discreetly in a locker behind the bunk. Hector pulled open the bag and tipped out its contents on the cabin floor. There were some items of dirty linen and, beneath them, several large rectangles of coloured cloth. One had a red cross stitched on a white ground which he recognised as the flag flown by the English ships that had occasionally visited the little Irish fishing port where he had spent his summers as a child. Another was a blue flag with a white cross. In the centre of the cross was a shield bearing three golden fleur-de-lys. That flag too he recognised. It had flown on the merchant ships of France when he and Dan had been prisoner-oarsmen at the royal galley base in Marseilles. The third flag he did not know. It also displayed a red cross on a white background, but this time the arms of the cross ran diagonally to each corner of the flag, and the edges of the arms of the cross were deliberately ragged. They looked like branches cut from a shrub after the shoots had been trimmed away. It seemed that the deceased captain of
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had been prepared to fly whichever nation’s flag suited the occasion.

Hector returned on deck, all three flags under his arm in an untidy bundle. ‘Well, which one is it to be?’ he asked. Again he glanced across at the unknown vessel. In the short interval he had been below decks it had come much closer. Well within cannon shot.

‘Why not try King Louis’s rag?’ proposed Jacques Bourdon. In his mid-thirties Jacques was an ex-galerien, a thief condemned to the oar for life by a French court and he had GAL branded on his cheek to prove it. He, together with the second Laptot, completed their five-man crew. ‘That way our colours will agree with our ship’s papers,’ he added, shading his eyes to scrutinise the approaching sloop. ‘Besides . . . if you look there, she’s flying the French flag as well.’

Hector and his companions waited for the stranger to come closer. They could see someone at her rail waving his arms. He was pointing at their sails and gesturing that they should be lowered. Too late, Hector felt a prickle of suspicion.

‘Dan,’ he asked quietly, ‘any chance that we can get away from her?’

‘No chance at all,’ Dan answered without hesitation. ‘She’s a ketch and carries more sail than us. Best heave to and see what they want.’

A moment later Bourdon was helping the two Laptots loose the sheets and lower the sails so that
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gradually slowed to a halt, and lay gently rocking on the sea.

The approaching ketch altered course to come alongside. There were eight cannon on her single deck. Then, without warning, the little group on her stern deck parted to reveal someone hauling briskly on a halyard. A ball of cloth was being pulled aloft. A puff of wind caught it and the folds of cloth shook out, revealing a new flag. It carried no marks, but was a plain red sheet.

Jacques Bourdon swore. ‘Shit! The
jolie rouge
. We should have guessed.’

Startled, Hector looked at him. ‘The
jolie rouge
,’ Bourdon grunted. ‘The flag of the
flibustiers
, how do you call them – privateers? It’s their mark. I shared a Paris prison cell with one of them, and a right stinking bastard he was. Smelled worse than the rest of us gaolbirds put together. When I complained, he told me that in the Caribbees he had once gone two years without a proper wash. Claimed to have dressed in a suit of untreated cattle skins.’

‘You mean he was a buccaneer,’ Dan corrected him. The Miskito seemed unworried by the sight of the red flag.

‘Are they dangerous?’ Hector wanted to know.

‘Depends what sort of mood they’re in,’ replied Dan quietly. ‘They’ll be interested in our cargo, if there’s anything they can steal and sell. They’ll not harm us if we cooperate.’

There was a clatter and slap of canvas as the strangers’ vessel came up into the wind. Her helmsman must have carried out the manoeuvre many times and was obviously an expert, for he deftly laid the ketch alongside the smaller
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Hector counted at least forty men aboard, a uncouth assembly of all ages and shapes, most of them heavily bearded and deeply tanned. Many were bare chested and wore only loose cotton drawers. But others had chosen a ragbag of clothes ranging from soiled lawn shirts and canvas breeches to seamen’s smocks and broadcloth coats with wide skirts and braided cuffs. A few, like Jacques’s former cellmate, were dressed in jerkins and leggings of untanned cattle skin. Those who were not bareheaded displayed an equally wide range of hats. There were brightly coloured head cloths, sailors’ bonnets, tricornes, leather skull caps, and broad-brimmed hats of a vaguely military style. One man was even sporting a fur hat, despite the blazing heat. A few hefted long muskets which, Hector was relieved to observe, were not being pointed at
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, nor were the deck guns manned. Dan had been right: the buccaneers were not unduly aggressive towards a ship’s crew that obeyed their instructions. For the present the mob of ill-assorted strangers were doing no more than lining the rail of their vessel and appraising
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The slightest thump as the hulls of the two vessels touched, and a moment later half a dozen of the buccaneers dropped down on
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’s deck. Two of them carried wide-mouthed blunderbusses. The last man to come aboard seemed to be their leader. Of middle age, he was short and plump, his close-cropped reddish hair turning grey, and he was dressed more formally than the others in buff-coloured breeches and stockings, with a purple waistcoat worn over a grubby white shirt. Unlike his fellows, who preferred knives and cutlasses, he had a rapier hanging from a shabby baldrick. He was also the only boarder wearing shoes. The heels clumped on the wooden deck as he strode purposefully to where Dan and Hector were standing. ‘Summon your captain,’ he announced. ‘Tell him that Captain John Coxon wishes to speak with him.’

Closer up, Captain Coxon’s face, which at first sight had seemed chubby and genial, had a hard set to it. He bit off his words when he spoke and the corners of his mouth turned down, producing a slight sneer. Hector judged that Captain Coxon was not a man to be trifled with.

‘I am acting as the captain,’ he replied.

Coxon glanced at the young man in surprise. ‘What happened to your predecessor?’ he demanded bluntly.

‘I believe he died of fever.’

‘When and where was that?’

‘About three months ago, maybe more. On the River Wadnil, in West Africa.’

‘I know where the Wadnil is,’ Coxon snapped irritably. ‘Have you any proof, and who brought this ship across? Who’s your navigator?’

‘I did the navigating,’ Hector answered quietly.

Again the look of surprise, followed by a disbelieving twist of the mouth.

‘I need to see your ship’s papers.’

‘They’re in the captain’s cabin.’

Coxon nodded to one of his men, who promptly disappeared below deck. As he waited, the captain slipped his hand inside his shirt front and scratched at his chest. He seemed to be suffering from some sort of skin irritation. Hector noticed several angry red blotches on the buccanneer captain’s neck, just above the shirt collar. Coxon gazed around at
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and her depleted crew. ‘Is this all your men?’ he demanded. ‘What happened to the others?’

‘There are no others,’ Hector replied. ‘We had to sail shorthanded, just the five of us. It was enough. The weather was kind.’

Coxon’s man came out from the cabin door. He has holding a sheaf of documents and the roll of charts that Hector had found aboard when he, Dan and Bourdon had first set foot on
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. Coxon took the papers and stood silently for a few moments as he read through them while absent-mindedly he scratched the back of his neck. Abruptly he looked up at Hector, then thrust one of the charts towards him. ‘If you’re a navigator, then tell me where we are.’

Hector looked down at the chart. It was poorly drawn, and its scale was inadequate. The entire Caribbean was shown on a single sheet and there were several gaps or smudges on the surrounding coastline. He placed his finger about two-thirds across the parchment, and said, ‘About here. At noon yesterday I calculated our latitude by backstaff, but I am unsure of our westing. Twelve days ago we saw a high island to the north of us, which I took to be one of the windward Caribbees. Since then we could have run perhaps a thousand miles.’

Coxon stared at him bleakly. ‘And why would you want to go due west?’

‘To try to reach the Miskito coast. That is where we are headed. Dan here is from that country, and wishes to get home.’

The buccaneer captain, after a brief glance towards Dan, looked thoughtful. ‘What about your cargo?’

‘There is no cargo. We came aboard the ship before she had loaded.’

Coxon gave another jerk of his head, and two of his crew opened up a hatch and clambered down into the hold. Moments later they reappeared and one of them said, ‘Nothing. She’s empty.’

Hector sensed the captain’s disappointment. Coxon’s mood was changing. He was becoming annoyed. Abruptly he took a step towards Jacques Bourdon, who was loitering near the mast. ‘You there with the brand on your cheek!’ Coxon snapped. ‘You’ve been in the king’s galleys, haven’t you? What was your crime?’

‘Being caught,’ Jacques replied sourly.

‘You’re French, aren’t you?’ A ghost of a smile passed across Coxon’s face.

‘From Paris.’

Coxon turned back towards Hector and Dan. He still had the sheaf of papers in his hand.

‘I’m seizing this ship,’ he announced. ‘On suspicion that the vessel has been stolen from her rightful owners, and that the crew has murdered her captain and officers.’

‘That’s absurd,’ Hector burst out. ‘The captain and his officers were all dead by the time we came aboard.’

‘You have nothing to prove it. No certificate of death, no documents for transfer of ownership.’ It was evident that Coxon was grimly satisfied with himself.

‘How could we have obtained such papers?’ Hector was getting more angry by the minute. ‘The bodies would have been put overboard to try to stop the contagion, and there were no authorities to go to. As I said, the vessel was half way up an African river, and there were only native chiefs in the region.’

‘Then you should have stopped at the first trading post on the coast, sought out the authorities and registered the events,’ countered Coxon. ‘Instead you set sail directly across to the Caribbees. It is my duty to regularise the matter.’

‘You have no authority to take this ship,’ Hector insisted.

Coxon treated him to a thin smile. ‘Yes, I do. I have the authority of the Governor of Petit Guave, whose commission I carry on behalf of the kingdom of France. This vessel is French. There is a branded convict aboard, a subject of the French king. The ship’s papers are not in order, and there is no proof of how the captain died. He could have been killed and the cargo sold off.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’ Hector asked, choking down his anger. He should have realised from the start that Coxon had been trying to find an excuse to seize the vessel. Coxon and his men were nothing more than licensed sea brigands.

‘This vessel and those found on her will be taken to Petit Guave by a prize crew. There the vessel will be sold and you and your crew will be tried for murder and piracy. If found guilty the court will decide your punishment.’

Unexpectedly, Dan spoke up, his voice grave. ‘If you or your court mistreat us, you will have to answer to my people. My father is one of the old men’s council of the Miskito.’

Dan’s words seemed to have carried some weight because Coxon paused for a moment before replying. ‘If it is true that your father is of the Miskito council then the court will take that into account. The authorities in Petit Guave would not wish to anger the Miskito. As for the rest of you, you will stand trial.’

Coxon again slipped his hand inside his shirt front and scratched at his chest. Hector wondered if the itching was what made the man so irritable. ‘I need to know your name,’ the buccaneer said to Hector.

‘My name is Hector Lynch.’ The hand stopped scratching. Then Coxon said slowly, ‘Any relation to Sir Thomas Lynch?’

There was a wariness in the man’s tone. His question hung in the air. Hector had no idea who Sir Thomas Lynch was, but clearly he was someone well known to Coxon. Hector also had the distinct impression that Sir Thomas Lynch was a person whom the captain respected, perhaps even feared. Alert to the subtle change in the buccaneer’s manner, Hector seized the opportunity.