Galleon (16 page)

“What’s the name of the port? What bay?” When the man did not reply he tried Martha Judd’s trick, and said loudly: “Where were you watering?”

“Bokker somewhere,” the man mumbled.

“Boquerón?”

“S’right, sir.” Then he murmured, “Sorry…gotta…sleep…”

“Oh, you’re a cruel man!” Aurelia accused Ned. “This poor
matelot
– you bully him with questions even though he’s probably dying!”

The skin of Ned’s face tightened. “If necessary, I’d have killed all three of them for the information I’ve just got,” he said harshly. “Their lives against eighty or more in the
Peleus
? But it wasn’t necessary, anyway.”

“But the Spanish must have killed Thomas and Diana and all the rest of the
Peleus’
crew,” Aurelia said, beginning to weep as the full significance of what she had just said sank in. “Oh Ned, no plate galleon,
nothing
, was worth that.”

“The Spanish won’t have killed them yet. A cat likes to play with a mouse. Saxby, go across to Lobb and the rest of our men. Gather them round and tell ’em what we’ve just heard. Then ask them to work night and day until we get the mast stepped and can sway up the yard and bend on the sails.”

“Aye, that’s the way to do it,” Saxby said. “What was that place in Porto Rico?”

“Boquerón. It’s the long bay on the western coast at the southern entrance of the Mona Passage.”

“Reckon there’s much we can do, sir?”

Ned shrugged his shoulders, avoiding looking at Aurelia. “I hope so. You know what a garotte looks like.”

Next day, as the men of the
Griffin
and
Phoenix
hurried to get the mast ready to be towed out and stepped in place using sheer legs rigged on the ship, a canoe brought Sir Harold Luce’s secretary Hamilton with a message for Ned.

Hot and tired from helping to rig the sheer legs – two roughly trimmed tree trunks lashed together at the top so that when raised they would form a large upside-down letter V – Ned did not know the young man had arrived on board until Aurelia came up to tell him: “There’s a message from the Governor.”

“Take it – I’ll read it later.”

Aurelia, dressed in seamen’s clothes because she too was helping, said: “No, it’s a young man with a message.”

“If the Governor has any message for me, let him put it in writing,” Ned said crossly, shouting an order to seamen standing ready aft to haul on a rope.

“Oh Ned, this poor young man has come all the way out in a fisherman’s canoe with the message,” Aurelia said. “Give him a minute!”

“Pretty young fellow with a silly blond beard, dressed like a haberdasher?”

“Well, he’s–”

“That’s ‘Shifty Hamilton’! Send him off in his canoe!”

“Ah, Mr Yorke,” the young man said, having followed Aurelia across the deck, “this sailor told me you were busy, but…”

Ned stared at Aurelia. Yes, she wore seamen’s clothes; yes, her ash-blonde hair was piled on her head and covered with a scarf. But the face, even though sun-tanned…

“Don’t listen to these rough sailors,” Ned said, “they’ll tell you anything. I’ve been waiting here for days for you to bring me a message from the Governor. What does Sir Harold say – that couldn’t have been written in a letter and delivered next week?”

Hamilton, oblivious to Aurelia (whose face was flushed with embarrassment and anger as she realized that the young man was either unaware or uninterested in the fact she was a woman), said: “Sir Harold asked me to find out about the boat that came into the harbour yesterday.”

“Did he?” Ned said politely.

“Er, yes, he did. There were men in it.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, three men.”

“Well, now you can go back and tell Sir Harold all
about it.”

“But…well, that’s
all
I know.”

“What else do you want? The names of all their wives? How many children they have?”

“I’m sure Sir Harold will want to know where they came from, and why they came here, and what they want.”

“I’m sure he will,” Ned said, signalling to the seamen at the rope to start heaving. “Excuse me, I’ve work to do,” he told Hamilton.

“But Mr Yorke, what shall I tell Sir Harold?” Hamilton asked plaintively.

“Tell him what you’ve just told me.”

“But he’ll want to know more. They tell me at the jetty you are hurrying to get that mast on board so you can sail. Is that because of the men?”

“How many men are rowing the canoe that brought you out?”

“Two. I was–”

“Tell them to row you back, now.”

“But I must–”

“Unless you want to swim. Can you swim?”

“But Sir Harold will–”

“Good day,” Ned said, turning his back on Hamilton and watching as the inverted V of the sheer legs rose up in the air, forming an arch which could be used to raise the mast.

Hamilton turned to Aurelia, hands held out pleading.

“I should go,” Aurelia said crossly, “or he’ll order
me
to throw you over the side.”

The next caller was Saxby, who had just come over from the
Phoenix
.

“Had a bit o’ luck sir. Both those Spanish seamen I signed on when we took the
Phoenix
as a prize know Boquerón, and guess what? The
Phoenix
, when she was Spanish before we captured her, was anchored in Boquerón for eight weeks while they used their boats to load sugar and cotton and hides from the shore. They both know it well – both the bay and the village, and even some of the towns and villages nearby. They used to go to Mass at various places because the priest of Boquerón was defrocked while they were there. Some trouble with his two servants.
Two
,” Saxby said contemptuously, “and he got caught.”

“One can’t resist the hot-blooded
señoritas
, Saxby,” Ned said.

“Indeed you can’t,” Saxby agreed, “but these were young men. Anyway,” he produced a folded paper from his pocket, “my men have drawn a rough chart, complete with soundings. They’re sure of the soundings and bearings because they used to put down fish traps every night and they didn’t buoy them, else the local fishermen’d steal ’em, so they relied on bearings to find the traps again.”

Ned unfolded the chart which Saxby had redrawn in ink and saw it had plenty of detail. “Hmm, a convenient little coral island with palms in the middle to mark that outer reef. And mangroves growing on coral to mark the entrance of the reef protecting the bay. A lake and marshes just inland near Boquerón. Ah, there’s San Germán, about nine miles inland. Isn’t that where the old church is? Mayagüez is further along the coast – probably the most important port around there. Look at that town called Cabo Rojo a good three miles inland. I thought ‘
Cabo
’ meant ‘cape’. Oh, that’s the town up there: the cape itself is right down here, miles away to the south, ten miles at least, the real south-western tip of Porto Rico. Well done; tell the men I appreciate their care. I’ll have a talk with them later – they’ve probably some ideas where we might find our friends.”

Saxby shook his head, looking sombre. “Reckon all we’ll find is graves, unless they throw the bodies on the town midden.”

“We’ll see,” Ned said, “but in the meantime keep those sort of thoughts to yourself: the men must think we can rescue them. Men’ll take chances when there’s a hope.”

“True, sir, I haven’t mentioned my doubts to anyone else.”

“Is this my copy of the chart?” Ned held up the paper, folding it and tucking it in his pocket when Saxby nodded. “By the way, we’ll need a couple of your boats to help tow the mast out this evening, when the wind has dropped, and every man you can spare to help parbuckle it on board. And you, of course. Lobb took the mast out with the sheer legs, but he’s never put one back. I think he’d like to have you standing beside him.”

“He learns fast,” Saxby commented. “If you ever find someone to replace him, I’d be glad to have him.”

“I’ve no doubt you would,” Ned said. “Let’s get on shore and see how Lobb’s getting on. I’d like to get that yard on board this evening, too. By the way, the Governor has been inquiring about the boat with the three men from the
Peleus
.”

“I guessed as much: I saw a canoe bringing out that fop of a secretary. What did you tell him, sir?”

“Nothing. He’d heard from somewhere – the secretary, I mean – that we were going to sail as soon as we get this damned mast stepped, but has no idea where – or why.”

“That’s right, let’s keep Sir Harold guessing. Probably thinks we’re going off to meet the rest of our ships and seize Cartagena!”

“If he’s scared about what we might do, think of the Spanish Governor! In fact, when the Dons find out they’re losing ships, they’ll blame me. Still, if they complain to Madrid, giving dates, we can probably prove to Sir Harold that we were still in Jamaica sawing planks and digging trenches…”

“He’ll probably confiscate your land,” Saxby said, “just out of spite.”

“I’ve thought of that, and Sir Thomas’ too, especially if he’s been killed by the Dons. Still, we can play the game of ‘if’ all night,” Ned said, walking towards the entryport, where a boat waited.

At noon next day, with the mast stepped and men grunting with the effort of swaying up the yard and reeving the running rigging, Martha Judd reported to Ned: “Two of those men can answer questions now. The third’s got a fever and is delirious. I’ve had his hammock slung up forward so he doesn’t disturb the others.”

Ned nodded and waved to Saxby, who followed him down the ladder. Going from the harsh brightness of the sun into the half darkness below, Ned paused for a minute to let his eyes make the change.

“Martha says one of them is delirious,” he told Saxby.

“Not surprised. They looked like boucan when I first saw them. By rights they ought to be dead. Remember those notches? I wonder exactly how long they took to get here?”

“It’s about six hundred miles from Boquerón, but I doubt they know the date they left. I still can’t get over that boat sailing itself into here.”

Saxby said: “It’s not surprising really, if the boat sailed along the coast with a following wind. The wind then funnels in through the entrance, and the tide was making, so the current’d help carry them in. Might have been a different story with an ebb tide.”

“That was one of the first lessons you ever taught me about seamanship, Saxby: always make a landfall on a flood tide, so that if you accidentally go aground, the tide’s still making and will probably float you off. Even if the rise and fall is a matter of inches!”

Saxby laughed cheerfully as he led the way to the two men in the hammocks. “I must admit you seem to have remembered everything, sir, but at the time I didn’t think you were paying much attention.”

“That was before I ever thought we might have to use the
Griffin
to escape from Barbados,” Ned said. “It took Cromwell to show me my own neighbours could be my worst enemies.”

He reached the first hammock. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better, thanks Mr Yorke,” the man said. “Mighty sore from the sunburn but not so weak. That Mrs Judd is feeding us up as if she’s going to cook us for Christmas.”

“She may well be planning to do that. Now, tell me what happened – first, why did Sir Thomas go into a Spanish port?”

“Water,” the man said simply. “Y’see sir, most of the casks had been left empty while Sir Thomas was up in the mountains starting to build his house. When he came back and said we was sailing, well, the mate sent the casks on shore to fill ’em, but Sir Thomas thought he was just having the water changed so we had it fresh: he didn’t know most of ’em had been empty for weeks.”

“What’s that got to do with going into Boquerón?”

“Leaving the casks empty all that time, sir, the staves dried out. We didn’t pay much attention when we filled ’em – just reckoned they was weeping a few drops of water and it’d stop once the wood took up, that’s what we thought, and o’ course we stowed ’em below out of sight and sailed that same evening, an’ you watched us go from the
Phoenix
.”

“And the casks were still weeping?”

“Yes, sir, though we didn’t know. We were abeam of Cow Island, this end of Hispaniola, when the carpenter came up and reported a lot of water in the bilges, and when Sir Thomas went below to see what was happening he tasted it, and it was fresh, not salty.

“Well, we checked the casks – at least, we thought we did. We didn’t move them all and reckoned about half had been weeping. We guessed the casks that weren’t weeping weren’t leaking, and that was our mistake.”

“In what way?” Ned asked.

“Well, sir,” the seaman said shamefacedly, “they weren’t weeping because they were
already
empty: they’d lost all their water and the outsides had dried. We found that out much later when we was hoisting up a cask just as we got to the eastern end of Hispaniola, just starting to cross the Mona Passage. The cask came up light. We rigged up the tackle on the next one, and that came up empty too. Then we got down in the hold and started shifting the casks a bit sharpish. No water. Well, maybe we had fifty gallons all told.”

“What did Sir Thomas decide to do then?”

“Well, sir, I only heard the gossip, but it all put him in a mortal rage because he was in such a hurry to get to St Martin, and after all the beating we’d done to get where we was, he weren’t keen on running six hundred miles back here to get more water. He reckoned the casks were wet enough inside so the wood would be swelling gradually so they’d take up.

“Now this is just wot I ’eard, sir. Sir Thomas reckoned that because of the new peace treaty wot’s been signed with Spain, that the governors – viceroys, that’s what they’re called, leastways I think so – would have had orders from Spain, or at least news of the treaty.

“So ’e reckoned ’e’d chance ’is arm and anchor off a Spanish port and send a boat in to ask for a safe conduct to send in the rest of the boats to fill the casks. Offered hostages, too, ’e did.”

Ned saw the man was perspiring with the excitement of telling his story. “Did the Spanish take him up on the hostages?”