Galleon (29 page)

“Ah, who doesn’t,” Ned agreed, “but we live in a wicked world and often don’t have the choice. And make no mistake,” he said quietly, “although we may say something lightly, usually a good deal of thought has gone into the idea.”

“We realize that,” Couperin said. “In fact that’s why we took so long to make up our minds,” he admitted frankly.

Ned, suddenly irritated, said: “I make it a rule never to trust a man who doesn’t trust me.” He intended the remark to be a warning to Couperin and added: “There are more than thirty buccaneer captains. Any one of them could betray the others, but we don’t fear betrayal because we know we all have the same object…”

“Yes, I understand that now,” Couperin said soberly.

Thomas left a pile of coconuts on the sand and walked up to Ned. “The wind’s damned light – we’re right in the lee of the hill – it’s making the wind go over our heads.”

“I know, but it’s the current that’s going to do all the work. The current is quite strong off the end of the headland – and it curves into the bay, right on to the galleon.”

“How the Devil d’you know that?”

“While you were unloading the coconuts from the donkeys’ panniers, I walked to the end of the point, threw sticks into the water and watched them drift.”

“Hmmm, so now we have to shift all those blasted coconuts out to the end of the headland?”

“Yes, you’d unloaded them before I found out. Anyway, let’s take three or four each and try ’em. They might drift differently from sticks.”

“I think not,” the Frenchman offered.

“Neither do I,” Ned said, “but it all helps keep Sir Thomas in a good humour.”

There was a brief pause while Couperin digested Ned’s words and realized there had been no protest from Sir Thomas. “Ah yes, that is most important.”

He walked with the two men and picked up an armful of coconuts. Land crabs scurried out of the way, disappearing down their holes, for which the men kept a wary eye: although many were large enough for coneys, the holes usually went down vertically so that instead of tripping a walking man they were more likely to break his ankle.

As they trudged towards the headland, Anguilla was sitting in the darkness out of sight ahead of them, Gallows Bay on their left with the galleon in the middle, and Marigot town was beyond over their left shoulder.

“Coconuts,” Thomas muttered to himself, “we bombard ’em with coconuts. If the King of Spain ever hears about this, he’ll surrender, or die laughing.”

“If it works,” Ned said softly, “a lot of the King’s officials will be punished with a garotte round their neck. I’m sure the King gets very haughty when he hears that buccaneers are spending his money!”

Couperin laughed. Yes, he was beginning to understand these Englishmen. Joking passed the time; they were nearly at the end of the headland and, listening to them, he had not felt nervous. He had not thought once about the prospect of being recalled to Paris. Not until this moment, anyway, and it seemed a good deal less likely. Perhaps there was something in this light-hearted approach after all. Certainly he felt all the better for having made his deputy stay behind in the town. That gloomy face always seemed full of reproach. Was he (Couperin was startled that he had never thought of it before) an informer? Did he report secretly to Paris on the Governor General’s activities? As he stumbled along in the darkness Couperin remembered reproofs from Paris, and often he had been puzzled how they could have known. Yes, it was that damned deputy! He recalled half a dozen episodes where only he and the deputy had known of them, yet the reprimands had arrived.

Now,
parbleu
, the damnable deputy knew all about the galleon, and although he didn’t know about the buccaneers’ precise plans, he knew what it was intended to do with the bullion if they succeeded in getting it. If Paris ever received even a hint…well, Charles Couperin would never see his vineyards again. The deputy, Couperin thought (with a light-heartedness previously alien to his nature), will have to meet with an accident… A bar of gold might fall on his head! Couperin giggled to himself. Killed by his own greed! What a good epitaph. It was surprising how quickly the cemetery up the hill was filling. Fevers, too much drink, drunken quarrels…it was extraordinary how everything was finally resolved in the churchyard up the hill, just below the battery.

By now they had reached the headland and Ned led the way out to the furthest rock, first placing his coconuts on top before scrambling up.

He picked up a coconut, looked round carefully to see how much room he had, and hurled the nut seaward as far as he could. He stood still, watching it. Then he threw two more in quick succession, and Thomas said: “Quite amazing how they show up, Ned. From down here they look just like men swimming. The waves are just high enough to give them the right amount of movement. We should have painted faces on them!”

“If the Spaniards suddenly spotted a dozen men swimming towards them facing the wrong way, they might be puzzled.”

“All right,” Thomas said, “no faces. Here are some more nuts.”

Ned threw them in and, a couple of minutes later, added Couperin’s armful to the flotilla which current and wind carried across the bay in a gentle curve towards the black hulk of the galleon.

“Have the men bring up the rest of those coconuts, and pick someone with a strong arm to take my place up here.” Before jumping down on to the sand, Ned stared into the darkness. Yes, it was easy enough to see the coconuts and yes, they did look like human heads. Would they fool a Spanish sentry on board the galleon? Would the sentry be awake? Would there even
be
a sentry?

“If those sentries don’t sight the coconuts,” he commented to Couperin, “then it’ll be our enemy’s incompetence that wrecks our plan…!”

“You are likely to be disappointed.” Couperin said. “No respectable Latin would anticipate an attack at night. Only you English (and perhaps the Dutch) could be so–” he groped for the word, “–so ungentlemanly.”

All the coconuts had been launched from the rock and the long curve of black balls stretched down towards the galleon, watched by Ned, Thomas and Couperin and the half dozen seamen from the
Griffin
who had volunteered to help handle the donkeys.

Couperin paused in his pacing up and down the beach and said, almost accusingly: “It didn’t work. All that trouble finding donkeys and collecting coconuts, and losing a night’s sleep–” he scratched himself vigorously, “–and getting eaten by the mosquitoes – to what purpose, I ask you: what good has it done?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Thomas drawled. “Let’s see. We now know the set of the current into Gallows Bay, which even the Governor General didn’t know before. We have discovered that thousands of land crabs live along this beach. We–”

“What the devil does all that matter?” Couperin asked angrily.

“Did you know whether or not the Spaniards kept sentries on duty at night?” Ned asked mildly.

“Well, no, not for certain.”

“Don’t you regard that as useful and important information?”

“Well, only if you are making a night attack,” Couperin said doubtfully.

“You’d attack in daylight?” Ned inquired innocently and incredulously.

“As I have neither ships nor trained men, I can’t attack at all; you know that!”

Ned paused for a moment. “I was wrong: they do have sentries!”

Across the bay they could now just hear voices shouting and then, making them all jump because they had been talking with lowered voices, a single shot rang out, the noise echoing round the bay, followed by a dozen more. Tiny winking red eyes along the galleon’s upperdeck showed more men firing with muskets and pistols.

“Sentries – and at least a couple of dozen men either on watch or sleeping near their guns.”

“Well,” Couperin asked, and Ned thought the man was chastened, “what have we achieved
now
?”

“That I forecast the result of the race too soon,” Ned said cheerfully. “They do have sentries, and men are on duty near their muskets. That means that they fear some sort of attack – and thought a couple o’ hundred swimmers were about to swarm on board…which in turn indicates they don’t know what the Devil is going to happen.”

“And what is going to happen?” Couperin asked.

“Nothing much, until you’ve got rid of your deputy,” Ned said evenly. “None of us like him very much. Don’t forget you are the extra captain we’ve accepted into the Brethren for this job, and you can guess what happens to anyone we trust who then betrays us…”

“What will you do if Couperin doesn’t sack that fellow?” Thomas asked as he and Ned paced the
Griffin
’s quarterdeck. “After all, the man may have been appointed by the authorities in Paris. Perhaps Couperin can’t sack him.”

“Well, we’ll keep an eye on him. If necessary, he’ll meet with an accident. It needn’t be fatal…”

Diana came up with Aurelia. Both the women had been delighted with the story of the Spaniards fighting off the coconut attack: both were enchanted with the anchorage in Marigot. St Martin was different from the other islands. Diana said, “because the hills are softer and warmer. More curved. You don’t get the feeling of jagged rock lying just underneath everything.”

Aurelia agreed. “Think of Antigua – there the hills are lower anyway, but they’re nearly always parched brown. Somehow – well, Antigua always seems to be a cringing beggar with his hands outstretched. And so many mosquitoes and sandflies; more than anywhere else.”

“Marigot,” Diana said dreamily. “I’ll always remember it along with a couple of bays in Grenada.” She let her memories move northwards, up the island chain. “St Vincent – nowhere there; Cumberland Bay always frightens me; I imagine voodoo and disease and death. St Lucia – beauty and corruption, like a lovely whore with a vile disease. Martinique – yes, a few bays. Dominica – those glorious rain forests but all the
rain
– no wonder the Spanish plate fleet coming from Spain often used to water there. Guadeloupe – no, nor Antigua. Montserrat – all rocks and cliffs, and always the ship rolls. Nevis – yes,
that’s
a beautiful island – the slope up to the top of the old volcano. That glorious sweep down from the top and then northwards to the beaches, as though an artist did it with a brush. We once sailed right round the island and you could see all the plantations spread out on the slopes, like patterns on a quilt.”

Aurelia nodded in agreement. “We were sailing up the west coast of St Christophe one morning just before dawn. Gradually the island took on a lovely pink glow as the sun came up behind the island. The pink glow gave way to all the greens and browns but there were still shadows giving shape to the valleys. And the little wisps of smoke showing where the villages and plantation houses were just waking up to begin the day. So beautiful…it makes me want to cry just to think of it. Why does one want to cry when remembering happy days?”

“Afraid they won’t ever come back, probably,” Ned said gruffly. “Now change the subject or you’ll have
me
in tears: I remember that morning. Not a breath of wind; just the north-going current carrying us along.”

Thomas sighed and looked at Diana. “Remember those mornings in Cuba? Among the cays in the Queen’s Gardens?” He explained to Ned and Aurelia: “Not a breath of wind, the fish jumping, the pelicans flying past and diving and seeming to wink, as though we were all in a big conspiracy to steal fish from the Spanish. You could see the sandy bottom clearly at fifty feet: conches crawling along down there, leaving trails; barracudas keeping still in the water, hovering until they saw a target – then they’d be off like silver arrows. And dozens of other fish, some only the size of a piece of eight. And such colours you’d hardly believe. There was a little one of such a blue that if you gave a king a cloak of that colour he would make you a duke on the spot (and the queen would probably poison your wine out of jealousy). The coral – all shapes and sizes, and it grows like great hedges under the sea. Oh well,” he said, embarrassed by his enthusiasm, “you two have seen it all as well.”

“A sensitive little heart beats strongly under that tattered jerkin,” Diana said wryly. “Thomas likes to beat his chest from time to time, but it’s like a cockerel strutting.”

“If you go on like that,” Thomas warned, “I’ll talk about an old hen losing her feathers!”

“The galleon,” Aurelia said. “Now we’ve alarmed the Dons with coconuts have you decided what to do about transferring the bullion?”

“Well, I know you think the coconuts were a great joke, but you may find they were worth ten thousand times their weight in gold.”

A startled Thomas turned and stared at Ned. “You mean you really
do
have a plan?”

“If we find it works, then we’ll say I had a plan. If it doesn’t work, it was only an idea.”

“Ned, my dear,” Diana said sternly, “we don’t care whether it’s a dream or a nightmare, just tell us about it. Aurelia and I can’t wait to look at all those emeralds they’ll have from the province of Columbia, and the pearls from the island of Margarita. ‘Margarita’ is Spanish for pearl, by the way. We don’t really love you, you know; we just collect jewellery – and gold, of course. We are not very keen on silver – too much polishing. But gems, big and bright, and well mounted in gold. Yes, necklaces and bracelets and rings…”

“It seems that if we dig deep enough we’ll find your hearts under a pile of bullion and emeralds,” Thomas growled. “An upsetting thought for someone with as sensitive a little heart as me, throbbing away under this jerkin.”

“That idea,” Aurelia reminded Ned. “Let’s sit down under the awning and hear about it. Is it funny like the coconuts or serious, like rescuing Diana and Thomas at San Germán?”

That afternoon, after picking up Saxby on the way, Ned and Thomas were rowed in to the small jetty at Marigot. The little town was hot: the few houses seemed to act as ovens, while the big hill with the gun battery perched on top cut off the easterly breeze which had cooled them on board the ships anchored further out.

There was just enough wind several feet above the ground to rustle the tops of the palms, but the dogs and the pigs dozed contentedly wherever they could find shade. A pile of empty conch shells, a dapple of vivid pinks and yellows edging into browns, was a buzzing mass of flies. The fisherman who dived them up had not cut the muscle holding in the animal at the right spot, so that as each conch was wrenched from its shell a small amount of the meat stayed in the pointed spire of the shell, where the sun’s heat soon rotted it and the stench, as Saxby commented sourly, brought over all the flies which had been on duty on the other side of the village.