PIRATE: Privateer (10 page)

Hector looked at the others, seeking their opinion. Dan and Jacques both nodded their agreement, and Jezreel promptly began to dismantle their jury rig. Within minutes he was seated on the
central thwart and rowing powerfully towards the distant land.

Slowly, very slowly, the island began to take shape. It was desolate-looking, low and nearly flat. The interior rose only a few feet above the level of the sea. Towards the eastern end a couple
of white sand beaches were backed by dunes. But otherwise the place was featureless. There were no hills or trees, and from a distance no hint of human occupation.

It was a desert island.

As the sun rose higher, the glare from the sea made it more and more difficult to pick out even those few details. Then a thick heat haze arose, and as the skiff crept nearer, the shoreline
distorted into an indistinct shimmering blur.

‘We’ll be lucky to find fresh water in a place like that,’ said Jacques. The outline of the island was dancing and wavering in the hot air. Hector joined Dan on the oar bench
so that they could take over from Jezreel and row the final mile.

All of a sudden Jacques called out in surprise.

Hector turned in his seat and looked forward.

Emerging from the haze a boat was coming straight towards them. It was a piragua, a large canoe of local design. The long, narrow hull was carved from a single huge tree, and the sides were
built up with planks to make it fit for coastal passages. For a brief moment Hector thought they had blundered on a native tribe. But then he saw that one or two of the men rowing the piragua were
wearing large hats to shade them from the sun. He had never seen Indians who wore such hats, and they rarely rowed. They preferred to use paddles.

‘Who in God’s name are they?’ breathed Jacques.

‘Whoever they are, there’s no escaping them,’ said Jezreel.

The piragua was coming on apace, rapidly closing the gap. Some instinct made Hector reach for the pistol that Anne-Marie had handed him. He hid it inside his shirt.

‘
Saludos!
’ shouted the leading man in the piragua.

The canoe was thirty yards away, and Hector could get a good look at its crew. There were a dozen of them, and all were so heavily bearded and unkempt that it was difficult to tell whether they
were white men or native. Two wore greasy leather caps with long visors to shade their eyes. The rest favoured either broad-brimmed hats or coloured headcloths.

The piragua was turned and slowed so the oarsmen could inspect the skiff, and a shiver of apprehension ran up Hector’s spine. Never in his life had he seen such a gang of cut-throats. They
were like a pack of starving wolves sizing up their prey.

‘
Saludos!
’ called their leader again, and then he switched to English. ‘What happened to you?’

Hector thought quickly for a plausible answer. ‘Castaway!’ he shouted back.

‘Then welcome to our camp!’ came the reply, and the captain of the piragua waved them towards the shore. It was not an invitation, but a command.

As they were escorted towards the beach, Hector caught a glimpse of a musket barrel protruding over the gunwale of the piragua. Judging by its length the gun was one of the old-fashioned but
deadly muskets favoured by sharp shooters who hunted wild cattle on remote islands. Such men were reputed to be as untamed and dangerous as their prey.

‘Brigands,’ muttered Jezreel under his breath.

‘Let me do the talking,’ Hector said, just loud enough for his companions to hear him.

The piragua beached alongside them as he and Dan ran the little skiff on to the sand. Several of the brigands hurried across to lay hands on the little boat and drag it up above high water mark.
It gave them the chance to look inside and check its contents. ‘
Nada
. No weapons, Lucas,’ one of them shouted to their leader.

The man they called Lucas walked over to interview the new arrivals. He had hard, cunning eyes whose calculating look failed to match the smile on his face.

‘So what brings you here?’ he asked with false geniality.

Hector tried to place the man’s accent. His voice had a slight burr. He could originally have been from Scotland.

‘Bastard of a captain set us adrift,’ Hector lied. The beach seemed to sway beneath him. He had yet to regain his land legs and was feeling unsteady on his feet.

‘Why?’

‘We didn’t like the way he treated us, the stupid sod,’ said Hector.

‘So you mutinied.’

‘We had no choice. If he had kept doing things his way, we’d have gone to the bottom.’

Hector hoped that the sour tone he had adopted would be convincing. The brigand’s false smile puckered the scar which ran up from the corner of his mouth and vanished into the tangle of
filthy black curls which emerged from under his hat.

‘Where did it happen?’

Hector waved vaguely out to sea. ‘Four days back. He gave us some water and a little food and sent us off.’

Lucas was looking at him calculatingly. ‘You were lucky to arrive here when you did. We were just heading off.’ He paused, his eyes shrewdly assessing the four men. ‘Maybe you
would like to join us.’

Hector was at a loss as to how to reply. He had worked out exactly who the piragua men were. They were sea bandits, butchers who preyed off local villages and passing ships. They obeyed no laws
and had no scruples. Runaway indentured men, escaped felons, murderers and thieves, they came together in small bands and roamed the coast. They descended on small undefended villages to rape and
loot. If they came across a small ship at anchor they went aboard and slaughtered the crew, then stole the cargo. They were enemies of all nations and were hunted down like vermin. Beside such
villains, men like Major de Graff were saintly.

‘We’re exhausted,’ Hector temporized. ‘We need to rest and gain our strength.’

The brigand’s expression did not change but he stiffened slightly, as if insulted by Hector’s lack of enthusiasm to join his band. ‘You mean you would prefer to remain on this
godforsaken lump of rock and sand?’ he asked.

Hector did not reply, and Lucas turned towards Hector’s companions. ‘What about you,’ the brigand asked. ‘Any of you want to join us?’

Jezreel shook his head, and Jacques looked away. Dan stared back silently.

‘So be it,’ rasped Lucas. His hand dropped to the butt of the pistol in his sash. For a moment Hector thought he was about to be shot. But the brigand turned to shout at his men.
‘Take anything useful. Then smash up their boat.’

While Hector and his friends looked on helplessly, the brigands removed the rope, oars and tarpaulin from the skiff and put them aboard their piragua. They also stole the two water jars and all
the remaining food. Then they rolled the skiff upside down on the sand. Two of the ruffians fetched hatchets from the piragua and splinters flew as they hacked a great hole in the bottom of the
upturned boat.

Once the skiff was ruined, Lucas waved to his crew to go back aboard the piragua and announced waspishly, ‘This place has no people, and few ships pass by. You’ll wish that
you’d stayed out at sea in that cockleshell.’

With one last look at the splintered wreckage, he strode off down the beach and waded out to where the piragua was waiting. He climbed aboard and his crew began to row.

‘God help any village they come across,’ said Jezreel grimly as he watched them leave.

‘Why would they want to strand us here?’ Jacques demanded.

‘So we cannot warn others of their presence. We should be thankful that they did not murder us out of hand,’ Hector answered.

*

T
HE BRIGANDS
’ abandoned camp was a scene of squalor. A blackened pit and scorch marks showed where they had lit their cooking fire. Nearby were the
shells of dozens of turtles that had provided their main diet. Broken bottles and filthy rags lay scattered about. Judging by the smell, they had not troubled themselves to go very far for their
latrine.

‘Ugh, they lived like animals,’ mumbled Jacques, trying to avoid breathing through his nose.

Dan sifted through the rubbish and came across the remains of a broken musket. Its firing lock was damaged beyond repair.

‘This will come in useful,’ he said, rubbing away the rust with his thumb.

‘To beat someone to death?’ commented Jacques.

‘With the flint we can start a cooking fire,’ explained the Miskito patiently.

‘If the bastards had left us anything to cook,’ objected Jacques. ‘I don’t fancy living off blue-footed maniacs from now on, if that’s what you are about to
suggest.’

‘I have something else in mind. Just stop complaining and get that cooking fire started, I’ll be back with some food soon enough,’ Dan told him.

The Miskito walked off along the beach to where a ledge of rock projected into the sea. There he waded out until knee deep in the water. He could be seen stooped over, searching the loose rocks
beneath his feet.

Meanwhile Hector had located the well that the brigands had dug. It was a shallow drift excavated into the hard-packed sand at the back of the beach. Water was oozing into the shallow basin. He
scooped up the contents in the palm of his hand and tasted. The water was brackish but drinkable. There was more than enough to satisfy their needs.

Jezreel took on the chore of sweeping up and burying the worst of the filth of the brigand camp. Then he used timber salvaged from the skiff to build a frame which he covered with some abandoned
flour sacks. ‘It’s nowhere near watertight but at least it will keep off the sun,’ he said, as he completed the humble shelter.

Within half an hour Dan returned with an ample haul of limpets and other shellfish that he had gathered among the rocks. Jacques roasted the catch in the ashes of the fire, and after they had
eaten the meal, which Jacques had to admit was very tasty, the four of them sat on the sand and gazed out on the sea. It was a balmy evening and there was a perfect calm. A flock of pelicans flew
laboriously past, not more than six feet above the water, their wings beating in solemn unison.

‘Tomorrow we explore the island,’ said Hector.

Jacques had cheered up considerably now that he had a full stomach. ‘We could be worse off. A few days’ rest will be time enough for our sores to heal.’

‘Have you been able to work out exactly where we are?’ Jezreel asked Hector.

He shook his head. ‘Somewhere quite close to the mainland. That piragua was not designed to go very far out to sea.’

But he knew that they could no longer plan on going to Curaçao. The loss of the skiff had changed everything. He doubted they would find materials on such a barren island to build a
replacement boat. They would have to survive until a passing vessel rescued them, and there was no way of knowing when that might happen, or where the vessel might take them. In the meantime Maria
would be wondering why he had not returned. Yet he did not regret refusing Lucas’ invitation to join his murderous band. He had kept his promise to Maria that he would do everything to avoid
returning to a life of piracy.

N
EXT MORNING THEY SET OUT
inland to investigate their new home. The day was scorchingly hot under the bowl of a cloudless pale blue sky, and there was
no breeze. The still air carried the chirping and clicking and buzzing of a myriad of unseen insects as well as the distant sound of the sea receding behind them as they walked. Everything that met
the eye was bleached pale yellow or tawny brown. They picked their way across a barren landscape where thin plates of loose rock clattered and shifted awkwardly beneath their feet. Twice they
disturbed flocks of small dun-coloured birds that looked like sparrows. Otherwise the place was a wilderness. Low thorny bushes tore at their clothes and strange bulbous plants sprouted from the
stony soil. Each was the size of a man’s head and armed with fearsome arrays of three-inch-long spikes. The plant had a fluffy topknot and inside was a small pink fruit which tasted and
smelled like wild strawberry. But collecting the fruit was hazardous. The ground was littered with the fallen spikes, sharper than any needle. Soon both Jacques and Hector were limping from
puncture wounds in their feet.

The island sloped very gently upwards until after a couple of hours they crested a low ridge and found themselves looking once again at the sea. They had arrived at the centre and found
nothing.

‘Might as well go the whole way across now we are here,’ said Hector. They went on towards the farther shore. As they approached, the ground turned soft and boggy and they came to an
area of reeds. Beyond it, the hot air shimmered over a dreary expanse of saltwater marsh. It was here that they found the only evidence of human activity. Four artificial conical mounds stood on a
dike. About four feet high, they were a dirty brown.

‘Salt piles,’ said Jezreel. ‘I came across them on the Mexican coast. The salt rakers scrape up the salt in heaps which they cover in dry grass and then set alight. It makes a
hard shell to protect the salt against the rain.’

He picked up a stone and walked over to one of the mounds and struck it hard. The outer shell of the mound cracked and he peered inside.