PIRATE: Privateer (7 page)

Hector’s attention had been focused on the petty officer and his three men. If they awakened now, the plan was to overpower them. But none of them moved.

Already Jezreel was filling a sack with some hard tack, a piece of dried fish, the remainder of the peas. Jacques and Hector tiptoed across and joined him. Each of them lifted a jar of water.
Silently they edged their way along the deck with their loads, cautiously skirting past the sleeping men. Once on the poop deck, Hector laid down his burden and took over the helm from Dan. He kept
the boat on course so the Miskito could stuff a dirty rag into the mouth of the unconscious helmsman and tie the gag in place. Jacques and Jezreel were at the stern and hauling in the tender by its
painter.

Not a word had been spoken since Hector had given his first order. Everything had gone exactly as the four friends had discussed that afternoon.

Jacques lowered himself into the tender, and Jezreel began handing down the food and water. Hector looked anxiously towards the
Sainte Rose
. As far as he could tell, the frigate was
continuing on her way as before. She was too far away for a lookout to have seen the scuffle, but he feared that someone might notice that the pinnace’s tender, normally towed on a long
painter, was now fastened close under her stern.

In another couple of minutes they were ready to leave. Jezreel had joined Jacques in the tender, and Dan had passed down the oars and a roll of tarpaulin.

All that remained to do was to lash the tiller so that the pinnace stayed on course for as long as possible and allow them to get clear. Dan found a length of line and took a loop around the
windward rail and then two turns around the tiller. Carefully he adjusted the tension to his satisfaction and tightened the knots. A moment later he was gone, climbing lightly over the taffrail and
dropping into the waiting boat.

Hector turned to follow him, and had not taken two paces when he heard a muffled grunt. It came from the helmsman lying where he had fallen. The moon appeared from behind the clouds, and the
sudden flood of moonlight showed the man was about to spit out his gag. Hector could see his jaws working. Another moment and he would raise the alarm.

Hector spun round, knelt, and brutally crammed the wad of cloth deeper into the man’s mouth. Then he tightened the gag fiercely. He was about to rise to his feet when a shadow fell across
him.

He froze.

Someone was standing on the deck above him. It took a moment for him to realize that it was Anne-Marie. Her cabin was directly below the poop deck, and the commotion overhead must have disturbed
her. He wondered how long she had been standing there, and why she had not cried out.

He got slowly to his feet and faced her.

The shadow stepped closer. ‘Here take this,’ Anne-Marie whispered. She was holding out something in her hand. Hector reached out and felt the butt of a pistol. ‘Like I said, it
might come in useful.’

‘But why . . . ?’ Hector began. He was too stunned to say more.

‘Go!’ she hissed. ‘There’s someone waiting for you on Tortuga. I’ll make sure that the
Morvaut
stays on course.’

Hector’s legs were shaking as he stumbled to the taffrail and lowered himself into the tender. Dan had found a knife and was in the bow waiting to cut the rope. He was reaching forward,
blade in hand, when a bundle – a roll of tarpaulin – dropped from above and into the boat with a soft thud.

He jerked back in surprise. The towrope then went slack and the free end, unfastened from the
Morvaut
’s stern, dropped into the water.

Outlined against the sky was the figure of Anne-Marie standing at the taffrail, a hand silently raised in farewell.

Released from her tether, the tender fell away rapidly as the pinnace sailed on. Hector waited for a shout of alarm, but none came. He looked away to his left. The
Sainte Rose
was
maintaining her course.

Jezreel had seated himself on the central thwart and set the oars in place and was ready to begin rowing. ‘Which way?’ he enquired in a whisper though already the pinnace was far out
of earshot.

Hector looked up at the sky. He stood up in the little boat, extended his arm to full stretch and turned to face the Pole Star. He clenched his fingers and placed the lower edge of his fist on
the horizon beneath the star. His hand spanned the gap between star and sea almost exactly. It was a trick he had learned from an Arab merchant captain who showed him how to measure the height of a
star by the width of his hand or fingers. They were in 16 degrees north or thereabouts. After weeks exploring the Vipers he carried a chart of the area in his memory. Jamaica must be north-west,
some hundred and fifty miles away. Saint-Domingue and the French colonies would be twice that distance in the direction that the
Morvaut
and the
Sainte Rose
were now disappearing in
the darkness.

If he had judged de Graff correctly, losing his captives would hurt the man’s pride. Driven by an angry captain, the frigate would turn around and hunt down the fugitives. Logic would
dictate that they had fled north-west towards Jamaica, and that was the direction where de Graff would search.

Hector swivelled round and faced the opposite horizon. Sirius was clear and bright, low in the sky. ‘Towards the Dog Star,’ he said to his companions. Jezreel dipped the oar blades
in the water and began to row south-east.

T
HE
G
OVERNOR OF
S
AINT
-D
OMINGUE
, Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, stood loitering in
the shade of a palm tree on the beach of the French settlement at Petit Goâve. A frail-looking man with a head that seemed too large for his body, he was dressed as usual in a light coat and
loose breeches of white cotton, and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat. As a tobacco planter on the island for twenty years, he was accustomed to the climate, but today was exceptionally hot and it
would be at least another hour before Major de Graff came ashore. Besides, the Governor enjoyed watching the
Sainte Rose
work her way into the anchorage. De Cussy was not a sailor himself,
but he could appreciate competent ship handling when he saw it, and he was relieved that the frigate was back in port. He worried every time
Sainte Rose
set sail, fearing that de
Graff’s opportunism would get the better of him and the filibustier would end up losing the ship in a rash battle with the English or Spaniards. An even worse nightmare for the Governor,
though he never breathed a word of it to anyone else, was that de Graff would steal the ship and go off on his own account with his crew, half of whom had earlier served with him as sea robbers. As
far as de Cussy was concerned, de Graff was still a pirate at heart.

The frigate was now almost on top of her mooring in a sheltered cove at the western side of the bay. De Cussy saw the splash as her main anchor went down. Squinting against the glitter of the
sun on the water, he tried to identify the small pinnace that accompanied the frigate. Something about the boat was familiar. Then he recognized it as the
Morvaut
, owned by the Kergonan
family on Tortuga. The Governor knew the Kergonans by reputation. It was common knowledge that they ran illegal cargoes to the Spaniards and perhaps traded with the English in Jamaica as well. But
he had yet to catch them red-handed. For a moment he wondered if de Graff had intercepted just such a smuggling run and arrested them. The thought gave de Cussy a brief glow of hope. But on
reflection he decided it was unlikely. The captain of the
Sainte Rose
would actively encourage smuggling, not prevent it, if there were a profit to be had.

An eight-oar launch pushed away from the
Sainte Rose
and set off across the bay towards the landing stage on the near side. The Governor left the shelter of the palm tree and began to
stroll along the beach towards the wooden jetty to greet his frigate captain.

Anne-Marie, seated beside de Graff in the launch, recognized the figure of the Governor moving along the shoreline. Occasionally he had come on an official visit to Tortuga, which was nominally
a French possession, but he never stayed on the island for long. She had met him once, and very briefly, because her brothers tended to make themselves scarce whenever the Governor was around.

The hard shape of the small pistol hidden in her sash brought her thoughts back yet again to Hector. The weapon was the pair of the one she had given him, and she had been regretting for the
past four days that she had allowed Hector to slip through her fingers. He was a most unusual young man. There was a quality about him that she had rarely encountered – a sense of honour. She
smiled to herself as she recalled the shocked look on his face when she had put a pistol to the head of that young Spaniard on the urca. He had genuinely believed that it was an underhand way of
getting the food and water they needed. Yet, according to his friends, Hector was no faint-heart when it came to a crisis. Jacques had told her something of their adventures in the Pacific and how
they had survived as prisoners among the Moors. The loyalty of his three friends had impressed her greatly. They were a remarkably assorted bunch – prize-fighter, galérien and Miskito.
Yet they accepted Hector as their leader and looked to him as a man they trusted to lead them in difficult times. Anne-Marie had seen for herself that he was level-headed and clever. And, besides,
he was rather good-looking in a finely drawn sort of way, though he did not know it.

She stole a sideways glance at de Graff on the thwart beside her. He too was handsome, though in a very different manner. The filibustier had a strong beak of a nose above the luxuriant
moustache, and he carried himself with a swagger that had a definite appeal. Also he could turn on the charm at will. In some ways he reminded Anne-Marie of her former husband. She had been married
for less than a year to an engagé, an indentured man who had come out to Tortuga from France hoping to make a new life hunting wild cattle and selling their hides. At first he had seemed
affable and charming, but had quickly turned into a drunk and an idler, given to outbursts of violence. That was when she had learned to keep a pistol in her sash. She had not been sorry on the day
he had died of the black flux.

She wondered how Captain de Graff treated his wife. He also had a violent temper. She had seen it on the day Hector and his companions had escaped. The petty officer in charge of the prize crew
on
Morvaut
had woken to find the pinnace sailing along by herself, the tiller lashed, the helmsman and lookout tied up and gagged, the prisoners and the skiff gone. There had been shouts and
yells, the petty officer kicking his men awake, a great deal of running to and fro, a musket fired to attract the
Sainte Rose
’s attention. She had emerged from her cabin at the sound
of the musket, pretending not to know anything, and asked what was going on. She was fairly sure that she had fooled the petty officer, but when she was brought across to the frigate and questioned
by de Graff, she looked into his grey eyes and saw mistrust and suspicion.

She had noticed spots of blood on the frigate’s deck as she left that interview. Later Yannick told her that de Graff had already interrogated the petty officer. The filibustier captain
had repeatedly slashed the unfortunate man about the face with a cane as he screamed his questions. Then he had ordered a flogging for every man on the prize crew.

She could still sense de Graff’s anger at the prisoners’ escape now. He was staring straight ahead, his back rigid and jaw set, his face shaded by the wide brim of his hat with its
flamboyant white ostrich plume. He was dressed in the full uniform of a frigate captain and she wondered if perhaps he had chosen this dashingly impressive wardrobe for her benefit.

‘The
Sainte Rose
makes a splendid sight, captain,’ the Governor called down from the wooden jetty as the crew of the launch caught hold of the pilings and steadied the craft.
He watched Anne-Marie appreciatively as she came up the wooden steps. She had put on a simple working dress and a pinafore which accentuated her generous bosom.

‘Allow me to introduce Anne-Marie Kergonan of Tortille,’ said de Graff.

‘Perhaps we have already met briefly,’ replied de Cussy. It would have been difficult to forget such a shapely figure, he thought. ‘How are your brothers? Yannick and, er . . .
?’

‘Roparzh and Yacut,’ she said. ‘They are well, thank you.’

‘I’ve added them to my crew,’ interrupted de Graff.

De Cussy raised an eyebrow. He had noted that Anne-Marie looked less than pleased. ‘I’m sure you had good reason,’ he said.

‘A waste of prime seamen otherwise. I intercepted their boat,
Morvaut
, in questionable circumstances,’ de Graff continued. ‘They had four suspicious strangers aboard
– a big Englishman, and a Miskito Indian, as well as a Frenchman renegade. Their leader was a young man. Calls himself Hector Lynch.’

‘The name means nothing to me.’