Galleon (24 page)

“I wonder, Ned, if she really deserves to
have
any colonies: it’s people like you that win them for her, and it is people like you that get cheated by the men in London who are not even faces, let alone names.”

“Oh, we have names,” Ned said, watching the
Phoenix
and the
Peleus
luff until they were in the
Griffin
’s wake. “The Duke of Albemarle, for one, and despite what you say, I think that as soon as he finds out exactly what’s happening out here, he’ll prove a good friend.”

“Mark my words,” Aurelia said gloomily, “watch the men who came back from Spain with the King. Oh yes, I know they showed their loyalty by going into exile with him (and I know your father and brother were among them); but some were Catholics, and I think everyone knows that the new King is, to say the least of it, sympathetic to Catholics. Very well, Ned, watch out. The minute the,
comment dit-on?
, the Secretary for Trade and Foreign Plantations is a Catholic, Spain’s interests will come first. What the Pope wants is what matters. The Pope wants Jamaica returned to Spain, and a Pope drew the Line giving Spain most of the New World.”

“If the Jesuits could hear you…” Ned said.

“If the Jesuits could hear me, they’d make sure I never spoke another word. And remember what I’ve said. This man Bennet, Sir Henry Bennet – watch him. He’s a strong Catholic; he went into exile with the King and he has the King’s ear. Watch him, Ned. If ever he becomes the Secretary of State then Jamaica is certainly lost and we must think of settling somewhere else. The Bay Islands? Perhaps we should sail up there and inspect them.”

“Cheer up,” Ned said, “let’s get to St Martin and see if we can help the Spanish with this stranded galleon. If we lighten her of a few tons of gold perhaps she’ll float off the sandbank…”

He pulled open the binnacle drawer and took out the perspective glass. He studied the coast carefully, commenting: “Low cays, reefs and mangroves. This is no coast on which to make a landfall at night…” He thought for a minute or two. “Perhaps we ought to short tack along here. None of us know this south coast of Porto Rico and having once had a sight of it the knowledge might come in useful.”

“Just as long as the sea is no rougher,” Aurelia murmured.

“No, and now the light is going the offshore breeze may set in for the night, so we can stretch along here comfortably without beating.”

“You aren’t going to see much of the coast once it’s dark,” Aurelia pointed out.

“There’s a hundred miles of it, and the night breeze will be so weak I doubt if we’ll make much progress over the current. The scene won’t have changed much by the time dawn comes round.”

In fact dawn next day found them approaching Guayanilla, the second port along the coast, and as they tacked again they could just see the port of Ponce, the island’s second largest city. When Lobb commented that the name, which he pronounced in the English way, was a strange one, Ned explained it was named after Juan Ponce de León, who visited Porto Rico while still searching for the Fountain of Youth. Ponce, Ned added, was pronounced “Ponthay” in Spanish, and “Juan” was “Hwan”.

Ned found himself explaining more Spanish a few hours later as the three ships tacked seaward again after passing a small island some five miles offshore. Called Isla Muertos, it meant “Island of the Dead”. Why? Lobb wanted to know. Ned shrugged his shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps they hanged pirates on it – though why they’d row out this far I can’t think. Maybe people living on it all died of the plague. Or ships run on it at night and the bodies are washed up on the shore.”

Aurelia said: “Cities named after dead explorers – even if they were looking for the Fountain of Youth – and islands of the dead: don’t let’s become like the Spanish, obsessed with death.”

Finally, as the
Griffin
tacked south-east again at the south-eastern tip of Porto Rico and was followed round by the
Phoenix
and the
Peleus
, the eastern end of the island began to fade to the northwards and they could see another island ten miles further eastwards.

“Crab Island,” Ned explained. “The Spanish call it Vieques, and I’ve no idea what
that
means. Beyond Crab Island, much too far away for us to see now, are a line of low cays running eastwards from the end of Porto Rico to meet another island, which in English is called Snake Island and the Dons call it Culebra, which means the same thing, snake or serpent.”

“Porto Rico means ‘rich port’ in Spanish,” Aurelia said suddenly. “That’s an odd name to give a whole island.”

“Well, go on,” Ned said encouragingly.

“Well, calling the capital San Juan, St John, seems strange too.”

“I’ll let you into a Spanish secret,” Ned said. “When Columbus first sighted the island, he called it San Juan, after St John the Baptist, and when he discovered that fine port on the north side of the island, he called it Porto Rico because he was sure he would find plenty of gold to send to Spain. But somehow, when the news of his discoveries reached Spain, there was a muddle, so that the island was called Porto Rico and the port San Juan.”

“Doesn’t seem worth beating up to Vieques to look for crabs,” Lobb said lugubriously. “They probably muddled that with the Island of the Dead…”

“Anyway,” Aurelia said, “the next island we sight is Dominica or Guadeloupe – is that right, Ned?”

“We might sight Santa Cruz, which is about fifty miles away, but it’ll be on the northern horizon.”

“Santa Cruz? Another Spanish Island?”

“Yes, but call it St Croix if it makes you feel more comfortable,” Ned said, “even though it’s not French.”

“Why don’t we capture it so you can rename it and give it to me as a present?”

“Of course, darling. It must be as big as St Martin and Anguilla put together, so we’ll collect it on the way back – unless your arms are too full of bullion.”

From the moment they tacked away from Porto Rico the wind backed to the north-east, giving the three ships an easy reach towards the chain of islands running almost north and south, like a row of sentry boxes separating the Caribbee from the Atlantic. A shifty-looking little Welshman named Williams was the first to sight land late one afternoon, and Lobb was the first on board the
Griffin
to identify it.

“South end of Guadeloupe,” he said confidently. “I recognize those three peaks – that’s the volcano, La Soufrière, but we are too far off to see if it’s smoking.” He looked at Ned. “That’s just what you said, sir: just about midway between Dominica and Guadeloupe!”

Ned unrolled the chart he had just fetched from his cabin. “So St Martin lies up there, to the north of us, and the wind looks as if it’s going to veer, which will be most obliging of it. Anyway, we don’t want to get too near Guadeloupe – those mountains cut off the wind for miles to leeward.”

He gave Lobb a new course, to the northwards. “It’s like a road, this last stretch up to St Martin. We’ll find Montserrat to larboard and Antigua to starboard. We gallop up the middle, leaving Barbuda and St Barthélemy on our right, and Nevis, St Christopher, St Eustatius (usually known as St Kitts and Statia) and Saba on our left.”

“And then what?” Aurelia asked.

“And then we come to St Martin on our right, with Anguilla just beyond. Then we stop the carriages, water the horses, and pay a visit to the French on the north side of the island.”

“Why not call on the Dutch on the south side?”

“The galleon is supposed to be aground on the north side, so it’s nothing to do with the Dutch. Anyway, I’m hoping that neither the French nor the Dutch have managed to do anything about her. Our arrival will certainly keep the French interested, but let’s hope they don’t have suitable ships in Marigot.”

“Ned,” Aurelia said, “I haven’t said anything before because I was afraid you’d think it was because I’m French, but aren’t we going to risk upsetting the French if we just arrive and attack the galleon, which is so near to the St Martin coast?”

Ned grinned ruefully. “If the French have captured the galleon already, we’ll be too late; but if the galleon is still there aground, they’ll be like a toothless fox starving outside a rabbit hole. If we come along with the right ships and a good plan, perhaps we can strike a bargain with the French: give them a share of the purchase and they’ll look the other way.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything about a good plan before, Ned. What are you planning?”

“I wish I knew,” he admitted. “Until we see if the galleon is still there, and how she is lying, it’s useless even to think about it.”

“I suppose you’ll want me to act as the translator when we call on the mayor of Marigot,” she said. She thought a moment and then added: “I haven’t any suitable clothes, you realize that, don’t you?”

The sail northwards between the islands was something that Diana would always remember even though, as she commented to Thomas, she had sailed thousands of miles through the Caribbean.

By now she and Thomas had recovered from the torturing although Thomas, looking at some of the black-painted metal bands round the oiled wood of the mast, had immediately protested that they reminded him of the garottes waiting on the ground beside their chairs in San Germán, and later that same day Mitchell had, without comment, sent a man aloft to paint them white.

Diana, inspecting her body in their cabin using the tiny mirror, said: “At last the bruises have almost faded. The advantage of being suntanned is that you don’t notice so much the horrible stage when they turn yellow.”

Thomas watched her as she turned slowly. “You don’t look any taller, so the rack didn’t stretch you permanently!”

Diana shuddered at the memory. “It surprises me that it didn’t hurt so much when they were winding it up to stretch me, even though I thought my arms and legs would pull out of their sockets. What hurt was when they let go: that was when I fainted. It was like being kicked in the back by a mule.”

“I was the same,” Thomas said, reaching for his breeches. “I say, that’s some bruise you have on your left breast.”

“That’s where they pinched me with those tongs. They are swines, you know, stripping off all my clothes like that.”

Thomas grunted. “Well, I didn’t mind that so much; I took against them when they started winding you up on that damned machine. I kept remembering all the stories I’d heard of men having their arms and legs torn out.”

“Yes, but they weren’t scourged at the same time. It’s very painful having a wild-eyed priest whacking your belly and breasts with twigs. The look in his eyes!”

“What was he looking at?”

“Not my fair face, I assure you! I thought his eyes would pop out!”

“Can’t fault his taste,” Thomas commented. “I’ll scourge you myself if you go on twisting and turning like that!”

“But not with twigs,” Diana said, walking towards him.

Later, when they were both standing on the foredeck of the
Peleus
as she drove north before a brisk south-easterly wind, Diana said: “This is the kind of navigation I enjoy. One just has to count. We’ve passed one big island to starboard–”

“That was Antigua,” Thomas said.

“–then a smaller one we could just see–”

“Barbuda.”

“–and the mountainous one to larboard and the little one sticking up like a tooth…”

“Montserrat and Redonda.”

“Now there’s this big one to larboard. Just look how it starts low down, then rises to that peak, and then goes down again.”

“Like a young woman’s breast. Like your breast before you grew into a proper woman. Used to be a volcano.”

“Did I?” Diana inquired innocently. “Don’t you think hot fires still rage inside me?”

“Oh yes, they just need me to stoke them now and again,” Thomas said, “but if you’re keeping a count, that island’s Nevis. The light must have been bad when he first saw it, because Columbus thought it had snow on it, hence the name.”

“Just look how the cloud forms right up at the peak,” Diana said. “As though an artist is painting it in.”

“Both St Kitts and St Eustatius have peaks like that. In fact you can see cloud forming above St Kitts. There, just north of Nevis.”

Diana looked with the perspective glass. “Not just cloud but a great black thunderstorm! It’s just starting to bubble up now! Oh, it’s rising so fast!”

“They’ll be glad of the rain. Antigua and Monterrat looked parched and there’s much more brown than green on the slopes of Nevis.”

Diana suddenly pointed ahead and up in the air. “Look – a huge white swallow!”

“Ha! That’s a tropic bird. Don’t you recognize it? Look at its tail when it passes overhead.”

Diana shaded her eyes and watched. The bird flew with strong but unhurried strokes of its wings, looking at first like a great tern, and in a direct line, as though having sighted the ship from a long way off it was investigating. “Oh! I see what you mean about the tail – it’s so long – and why, it’s only two feathers! As long as the bird itself – longer, in fact. But they do split just like a swallow’s tail.”

“You don’t remember the first one you ever saw?”

Diana looked puzzled. “No, In a way they’re just the opposite of frigate birds, white instead of black. I hate frigate birds – they seem so evil, but the tropic bird – look, he seems so independent!”

“The first one you ever saw,” Thomas reminded her, “was in the middle of the Atlantic. You were quite upset because you thought it was lost, with the nearest land fifteen hundred miles away!”

“Yes, I remember now. It was flying as though so determined; as though it knew where it wanted to go but had taken the wrong turning. And look, there’s another!”

“They live in colonies near high cliffs, so there are probably a number round Nevis and St Kitts.”

“This sea,” Diana said, “what a wonderful deep purple. And with the glass I can see how it turns green, and then a very light green as it reaches Nevis. Outlying reefs, I suppose.”

Thomas suddenly took the glass, searched a section of the horizon just south of Nevis, and said: “You’re not much of a lookout!”