Pirate Latitudes: A Novel (22 page)

Part V

The Mouth of
the Dragon

Chapter 32

H
UNTER AWOKE FROM a restless sleep with an odd sense that something was wrong. He sat up in bed, and realized that everything was quieter: the motion of the ship was less frantic, and the wind had died to a whisper.

He hurried onto the deck, where a light rain was falling. He saw that the seas were calmer, and visibility had increased. Enders, still at the tiller, looked half-dead but he was grinning.

“We weathered her, Captain,” he said. “Not much left to her, but we’ve come through.”

Enders pointed to starboard. There was land — the low, gray profile of an island.

“What is it?” Hunter said.

“Dunno,” Enders said. “But we’ll just make it.”

Their ship had been blown for two days and nights, and they had no idea of their position. They approached the little island, which was low, and scrubby, and uninviting. Even from a distance they could see the cactus plants thick along the shore.

“I reckon we’re down the Windward Chain,” Enders said, squinting judiciously. “Probably near the Boca del Dragon, and there’s no respite in those waters.” He sighed. “Wish we could see the sun, for a sighting.”

The Boca del Dragon — the Dragon’s Mouth — was the stretch of water between the Windward Caribbean islands and the coast of South America. It was a famous and feared stretch of water, though at the moment it seemed placid enough.

Despite calm seas,
El Trinidad
rolled and wallowed like a drunkard. Yet they managed with shredded canvas to round the southern tip of the island, and find a fair cove on the western shore. It was protected, and had a sandy bottom suitable for careening. Hunter secured the ship, and his exhausted crew went ashore to rest.

There was no sign of Sanson or the
Cassandra
; whether they had survived the storm was a matter of indifference to Hunter’s men, exhausted beyond the point of reasonable fatigue. The men lay sprawled in their wet clothes on the beach and slept with their faces in the sand, their bodies prostrate like corpses. The sun emerged, briefly, from behind thinning clouds. Hunter felt weariness overtake him, and slept as well.

The next three days were fair. The crew worked hard careening the ship, repairing the damage below the waterline, and the spars of the ragged superstructure. A search of the ship disclosed no wood aboard. Normally, a galleon the size of
El Trinidad
carried extra spars and masts in the hold, but these had been removed by the Spanish to allow more cargo. Hunter’s men had to make do as best they could.

Enders sighted the sun with his astrolabe and fixed their latitude. They were not far from the Spanish strongholds of Cartagena and Maricaibo, on the South American coast. But aside from this, they had no knowledge of their island, which they called No Name Cay.

Hunter felt a captain’s vulnerability with
El Trinidad
hauled over on her side, unseaworthy. Should they be attacked now, they would have a difficult time of it. Still he had no reason to fear anything; the island was obviously uninhabited, as were the two nearest little islands to the south.

But there was something hostile and uninviting about No Name. The land was arid, and thickly overgrown with cactus, in places as dense as any forest. Brightly colored birds chattered high up in the overgrowth, their cries carried by the wind. The wind never stopped; it was a hot, maddening wind that blew at almost ten knots, throughout the day and night, with only a brief respite at dawn. The men grew accustomed to working and sleeping with the whine of the wind in their ears.

Something about this place made Hunter post guards around the ship and the scattered campfires of the crew. He told himself it was the need to reestablish discipline among the men, but in truth it was some other foreboding. On the fourth evening, at dinner, he gave the night’s watches. Enders would take the first; he himself would take the midnight watch, and he would be relieved by Bellows. He sent a man off to notify Enders and Bellows. The man returned an hour later.

“Sorry, Captain,” he said. “I can’t find Bellows.”

“What do you mean, can’t find him?”

“He’s not to be found, Captain.”

Hunter scanned the undergrowth around the shore. “He’s off sleeping somewhere,” he said. “Find him and bring him to me. It will be the worse for him.”

“Aye, Captain,” the man said.

But a search of the cove did not yield any trace of Bellows. In the growing darkness, Hunter called off the search and collected his men around the fires. He counted thirty-four, including the Spanish prisoners and Lady Sarah. He ordered them to stay close to the fires, and assigned another man to take Bellows’s watch.

The night passed uneventfully.

.   .   .

IN THE MORNING
, Hunter led a party in search of wood. There was none to be found on No Name, so he set off with ten armed men toward the island nearest to the south. This island was, at least from a distance, similar to their own, and Hunter had no real expectation of finding wood.

But he felt obliged to search.

He beached his boat on the eastern shore, and set off with his party into the interior, moving through dense clumps of cactus that plucked and tore at his clothes. They reached high ground at mid-morning, and from there, made two discoveries.

First, they could clearly see the next island in the chain to the south. Thin gray trickles of smoke from a half-dozen fires drifted into the air; the island was obviously inhabited.

Of more immediate interest, they saw the roofs of a village, along the water on the western coast of the island. From where they stood, the buildings had the crude appearance of a Spanish outpost settlement.

Hunter led his men cautiously forward to the village. With muskets at the ready, they slipped from one clump of cactus to another. When they were very close, one of Hunter’s men discharged his musket prematurely; the sound of the report echoed, and was carried by the wind. Hunter swore, and watched for the village to panic.

But there was no activity, no sign of life.

After a short pause, he led his men down into the village. Almost immediately, he could tell the settlement was deserted. The houses were empty; Hunter entered the first but he found nothing save a Bible, printed in Spanish, and a couple of moth-eaten blankets thrown across rude, broken beds. Tarantulas scampered for cover in the darkness.

He went back into the street. His men moved stealthily into one house after another, only to emerge empty-handed, shaking their heads.

“Perhaps they were warned of our coming,” a seaman suggested.

Hunter shook his head. “Look at the bay.”

In the bay were four small dinghies, all moored in shoal water, rocking gently with the lapping waves. Fleeing villagers would certainly have escaped by water.

It made no sense to leave any boats behind.

“Look here,” said a crewman, standing on the beach. Hunter went over. He saw five long deep trenches in the sand, the marks of narrow boats, or perhaps canoes of some sort, pulled up from the beach. There were many footprints of naked feet. And some reddish stains.

“Is it blood?”

“I don’t know.”

There was a church, as rudely constructed as the other dwellings, at the north end of the town. Hunter and his men entered it. The interior was demolished, and all the walls were covered in blood. Some sort of slaughter had occurred here, but not recently. At least several days past. The stench of dried blood was sickening.

“What’s this?”

Hunter went over to a seaman, who was staring at a skin on the ground. It was leathery and scaly. “Looks like a crocodile.”

“Aye, but from where?”

“Not here,” Hunter said. “There are no crocs here.”

He picked it up. The animal had once been large, at least five feet. Few Caribbean crocs grew so large; those in the inland swamps of Jamaica were only three or four feet.

“Skinned some time past,” Hunter said. He examined it carefully. There were holes cut around the head, and a string of rawhide passed through, as if it were to be worn on a man’s shoulders.

“Damn me, look there, Captain.”

Hunter looked toward the next island to the south. The smoke fires, previously visible, had now disappeared. It was then that they heard the faint thumping of drums.

“We had best return to the boat,” Hunter said, and, in the afternoon light, his men moved quickly. It took the better part of an hour to return to their longboat, beached on the eastern shore. When they arrived, they found another one of the mysterious canoe-trenches in the sand.

And something else.

Near their boat, an area of sand had been patted smooth and ringed with small stones. In the center, five fingers of a hand protruded into the air.

“It’s a buried hand,” one of the seamen said. He reached forward and pulled it up by one finger.

The finger came away clean. The man was so startled he dropped it and stepped back. “God’s wounds!”

Hunter felt his heart pound. He looked at the seamen, who were cowering.

“Come now,” he said, and reached forward, to pluck up all the fingers, one after another. Each came away clean. He held them in his palm. The crew stared with horror.

“What’s it mean, Captain?”

He had no idea. He put them into his pocket. “Back to the galleon, and we’ll see,” he said.

.   .   .

IN THE EVENING
firelight, he sat staring at the fingers. It was Lazue who had provided the answer they all sought.

“See the ends,” she said, pointing to the rough way the fingers had been cut from the palm. “That’s Caribee work, and no mistake.”

“Caribee,” Hunter repeated, astonished. The Carib Indians, once so warlike on many Caribbean islands, were now a kind of myth, a people lost in the past. All the Indians of the Caribbean had been exterminated by the Spanish in the first hundred years of their domination. A few peaceful Arawaks, living in poverty and filth, could be found in the interior regions of some remote islands. But the bloodthirsty Caribs had long since vanished.

Or so it was said.

“How do you know?” Hunter said.

“It is the ends,” Lazue repeated. “No metal made those cuts. They were made by stone blades.”

Hunter’s brain struggled to accept this new information.

“This must be a Donnish trick, to frighten us off,” he said. But even as he said it, he was unconvinced. Everything fit together — the tracks of the canoes, the crocodile skin with pierced rawhide thongs.

“The Caribee are cannibals,” Lazue said tonelessly. “But they leave the fingers, as a warning. It is their way.”

Enders came up. “Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Almont has not returned.”

“What?”

“She’s not returned, sir.”

“From where?”

“I let her go inland,” Enders said miserably, pointing toward the dark cactus, away from the glow of the fires around the ship. “She wanted to gather fruits and berries, seems she’s a vegetarian—”

“When did you let her go inland?”

“This afternoon, Captain.”

“And she’s not back yet?”

“I sent her with two seamen,” Enders said. “I never thought—”

He broke off.

In the darkness came the distant pounding of Indian drums.

Chapter 33

I
N THE FIRST of the three longboats, Hunter listened to the gentle lapping of the water on the sides of the boats, and peered through the night at the approaching island. The drumbeats were louder, and they could see the faint flicker of fire, inland.

Seated alongside him, Lazue said, “They do not eat women.”

“Fortunate for you,” Hunter said.

“And for Lady Sarah.”

“It is said,” Lazue said, chuckling in the darkness, “that the Caribee do not eat Spaniards, either. They are too tough. The Dutch are plump but tasteless, the English indifferent, but the French delectable. It is true, do you not think?”

“I want her back,” Hunter said grimly. “We need her. How can we tell the governor that we rescued his niece only to lose her to savages for their boucan-barbecue?”

“You have no sense of humor,” Lazue said.

“Not tonight.”

He looked back at the other boats, following in the darkness. All together, he had taken twenty-seven men, leaving Enders back on the
El Trinidad
, trying hastily to refit her by the light of fires. Enders was a wizard with ships, but this was asking too much of him. Even if they escaped with Lady Sarah, they could not leave No Name for a day, perhaps more. And in that time the Indians would attack.

He felt his longboat crunch up against the sandy shore. The men jumped out into knee-deep water. Hunter whispered, “Everybody out but the Jew. Careful with the Jew.”

Indeed, a moment later, the Jew stepped gingerly onto dry land, his arms cradling a precious cargo.

“Was it dampened?” Hunter whispered.

“I do not think so,” Don Diego said. “I was careful.” He blinked his weak eyes. “I cannot see well.”

“Follow me,” Hunter said. He led his group into the interior of the island. Behind him, on the beach, the other two longboats were discharging their armed crews. The men moved stealthily into the cactus ashore. The night was moonless and very dark. Soon they were all deep in the island, moving toward the fires and the pounding drums.

The Caribee village was much larger than he expected: a dozen mud huts with grass roofs, ranged in a semicircle around several blazing fires. Here the warriors, painted a fierce red, danced and howled, their bodies casting long, shifting shadows. Several wore crocodile skins over their heads; others raised human skulls into the air. All were naked. They sang an eerie, monotone chant.

The object of their dance could be observed above the fire. There, resting on a lattice of green wood strips, was the armless, legless, gutted torso of a seaman. To one side, a group of women were cleaning the intestines of the man.

Hunter did not see Lady Sarah. Then the Moor pointed. He saw her, lying on the ground to one side. Her hair was matted with blood. She did not move. She was probably dead.

Hunter looked at his men. Their expressions registered shock and rage. He whispered a few words to Lazue, then set out with Bassa and Don Diego, crawling around the periphery of the camp.

The three men entered one hut, knives ready. The hut was deserted. Skulls hung from the ceiling, clinking together in the wind that blew through the encampment. There was a basket of bones in a corner.

“Quickly,” Hunter said, ignoring this.

Don Diego set his
grenadoe
in the center of the room, and lit the fuse. The three men slipped back outside, to a far corner of the encampment. Don Diego lit the fuse on a second
grenadoe
, and waited.

The first
grenadoe
exploded with stunning effect. The hut blew apart in a thousand fragments; the stunned lobster-colored warriors howled in frightened surprise. Don Diego lobbed the second
grenadoe
into the fire. It exploded moments later. Warriors screamed as they were riddled with fragments of flying metal and glass.

Simultaneously, Hunter’s men opened fire from the underbrush.

Hunter and the Moor crept forward, retrieved the body of Lady Sarah Almont, and moved back into the bushes again. All around them, the Caribee warriors screamed, howled, and died. The grass roofs of the huts caught fire. Hunter’s last glimpse of the camp was that of a blazing inferno.

Their retreat was hasty and unplanned. Bassa, with his enormous strength, carried the Englishwoman easily. She moaned.

“She’s alive,” Hunter said.

She moaned again.

At a brisk trot, the men hurried back to the beach, and their boats. They escaped the island without further incident.

.   .   .

BY DAWN, THEY
were all safely back to the ship. Enders, the sea artist, had given over work on the galleon to Hunter, while he attended the woman’s injuries. By mid-morning, he was able to report.

“She’ll survive,” he said. “Nasty blow on the head, but nothing serious.” He looked at the ship. “Wish we were as well off here.”

Hunter had been trying to get the careened ship ready to sail. But there was still much to do: the mainmast was still weak, and the maintop missing; the foremast was entirely gone, and there was still a large hole below the waterline. They had torn out much of the deck to obtain lumber for the repairs, and soon they would have to tear up part of the lower gun deck. But progress was slow.

“We can’t be off before tomorrow morning,” Hunter said.

“I don’t fancy the night,” Enders said, looking around the island. “Quiet enough now. But I don’t fancy staying the night.”

“Nor I,” Hunter said.

They worked straight through the night, the exhausted men going without sleep in their frantic haste to finish work on the ship. A heavy guard was posted, making the work slower, but Hunter felt it was necessary.

At midnight, the drums began to pound once more and they continued for the better part of an hour. Then there was an ominous silence.

The men were unnerved; they did not want to work, and Hunter had to urge them onward. Toward dawn, he was standing alongside a seaman on the beach, helping him to hold down a plank of lumber, when the man slapped his neck.

“Damn mosquitoes,” he said.

And then, with an odd look on his face, he collapsed, coughed, and died.

Hunter bent over him. He looked at the neck, and saw only a pinprick, with a single red drop of blood. Yet the man was dead.

From somewhere near the bow, he heard a scream, and another man tumbled to the sand, dead. His crew was in confusion; the posted guards came running back toward the ship; the men working huddled under the hull.

Hunter looked again at the dead man at his feet. Then he saw something in the man’s hand. It was a tiny, feathered dart with a needle point.

Poison darts.

“They’re coming,” shouted the lookouts. The men scrambled behind bits of wood and debris, anything that would afford protection. They waited tensely. Yet no one came; the bushes and cactus clumps along the shore were silent.

Enders crept over to Hunter. “Shall we resume work?”

“How many have I lost?”

“Peters, sir.” Enders looked down. “And Maxwell here.”

Hunter shook his head. “I can’t lose more.” His crew was cut to thirty, now. “Wait for the dawn.”

“I’ll pass the word,” Enders said, and crawled away. As he did, there was a whine and a
thwack!
And a small feathered dart buried itself in the wood near Hunter’s ear. He ducked down again, and waited.

Nothing further happened until dawn, when, with an unearthly wail, the red-painted men came out from the brush and descended on the beach. Hunter’s men answered with a round of musket-fire. A dozen of the savages dropped on the sand, and the others fell back into hiding.

Hunter and his men waited, crouched and uncomfortable, until midday. When nothing occurred, Hunter cautiously gave word to resume work. He led a party of men inland. The savages were gone without a trace.

He returned to the ship. His men were haggard, weary, moving slowly. But Enders was cheerful. “Cross your fingers and praise Providence,” he said, “and we’ll be off soon.”

As the sound of hammering and construction began afresh, he went to see Lady Sarah.

She lay on the sand and stared as Hunter approached.

“Madam,” he said, “how do you fare?”

She stared at him, not answering. Her eyes were open, but she did not see him.

“Madam?”

There was no reply.

“Madam?”

He passed a hand in front of her face. She did not blink. She gave no sign of recognition.

He left her, shaking his head.

They floated
El Trinidad
on the evening tide but they could not depart from the cove until dawn. Hunter paced the deck of his ship, keeping an eye toward the shore. The drums had started again. He was very tired, but he did not sleep. At intervals through the night, the air whined with the deadly darts. No man was struck, and Enders, crawling over the ship like a sharp-eyed monkey, pronounced himself satisfied, if not pleased, with the repairs.

At first light, they hauled the stern anchor and backed and filled, making for open water. Hunter watched, expecting to see a fleet of canoes with red warriors attacking. He was able, now, to give them a taste of cannon shot, and he was looking forward to the opportunity.

But the Indians did not attack, and as the sails were raised to catch the wind, and No Name Cay disappeared behind them, the entire episode began to seem like a bad dream. He was very tired. He ordered most of his crew to sleep, leaving Enders at the tiller with a skeleton crew.

Enders was worried.

“By God,” Hunter said, “you’re eternally worried. We’ve just made off from the savages, we have our ship beneath our feet and clear water before us. When will you find it suffices?”

“Aye, the water’s clear,” Enders said, “but now we are in the Boca del Dragon, and no mistake. And this is no place for a skeleton crew.”

“The men must sleep,” Hunter said, and he went below. He immediately fell into a tormented, restless sleep in his heated, airless cabin. He dreamt his ship was capsized in the Boca del Dragon, where the waters were deeper than anywhere else in the Western Sea. He was sinking into blue water, then black . . .

He awoke with a start, to the shout of a woman. He ran on deck. It was twilight, and the breeze was very light; the sails of
El Trinidad
billowed and caught the reddish glow of sunset. Lazue was at the helm, having relieved Enders. She pointed out to sea: “Look there.”

Hunter looked. To port, there was a churning beneath the surface and a phosphorescent object, blue-green and glowing, came streaking toward them.

“The Dragon,” Lazue said. “The Dragon has been following us for an hour.”

Hunter watched. The glowing creature came closer, and moved alongside the ship, slowing in speed to match
El Trinidad
. It was enormous, a great bag of glowing flesh with long tentacles stretched out behind.

“No!” shouted Lazue, as the rudder was twisted from her hands. The ship rocked crazily. “It’s attacking!”

Hunter grabbed at the rudder, took it in his hands. But some powerful force had taken hold of it and seized control. He was knocked back against the gunwale; the breath went out of him, and he gasped. Seamen ran on deck, drawn by Lazue’s shouts. There were terrified cries of “Kraken! Kraken!”

Hunter got to his feet just as a slimy tentacle-arm snaked over the railing and twisted around his waist. Sharp, horny suckers tore at his clothing and dragged him toward the rail. He felt the coldness of the creature’s flesh. He overcame his revulsion, and hacked with his dagger at the tentacle that encircled him. It had superhuman strength, lifting him high into the air. He plunged his dagger again and again into its flesh. Greenish blood flowed down his legs.

And then, abruptly, the tentacle released its grip, and he fell to the deck. Getting to his feet, he saw tentacles everywhere, snaking over the stern of the ship, coming up high over the aft deck. A seaman was caught and raised, writhing, into the air. The creature flung him, almost disdainfully, into the water.

Enders shouted: “Get belowdecks! Belowdecks!” Hunter heard musket volleys from somewhere amidships. Men leaned over the side, firing at the thing.

Hunter went to the stern and looked down at the dreadful sight. The bulbous body of the creature was directly astern, and its many tentacles gripped the ship in a dozen places, whipping and snaking this way and that. The entire body of the animal was phosphorescent green in the growing darkness. The creature’s green tentacles were snaking into the windows of the aft cabins.

He suddenly remembered Lady Sarah, and rushed below. He found her in her cabin, still stone-faced.

“Come, Madam—”

At that moment, the lead-paned windows shattered, and an enormous tentacle, as thick as a tree trunk, snaked into the cabin. It wrapped itself around a cannon, and hauled at it; the cannon came free of its chock blocks, and rolled across the room. Where the creature’s horned suckers had touched it, the gleaming yellow metal was deeply scratched.