The Isle of Devils (7 page)

I frowned. “But what were they, Henry?”

My brother laughed. “Birds, Ham, birds. There is a local bird, called the Cahow, which makes an unearthly nighttime screech. On a return trip, Bermudez landed only long enough to sow the island with a dozen hogs in order to provide food for any mariners who unluckily found themselves shipwrecked upon the isles.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Boars?” I inquired.

“Now, now, brother. I know from your letters that you have coursed many creatures in many countries, but you are here to rest and recuperate from your wounds and illness. There will be no drawing the cover for you here!”

I nodded deflatedly. “You are right, of course.”

“Of course, we are fortunate that the Spanish have always been such cowards, for their loss is the Crown’s gain. It’s a fine land.”

“And what of you, brother?” I enquired. “I have not, of recent, been in a place to receive your letters.”

“I have been given command of the stout Fort St. Catherine, on the far opposite end of the island,” he replied with a tone of modesty, though I could tell that he was secretly proud of such a responsibility.

“My congratulations,” I said warmly.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “It is nothing. But the Fort is as far from Dockyard as Lands’ End to John o’
Groats
, and if I am to see any of you during your sojourn, I determined that you could not spend your time here. Nor is Fort St. Catherine a good place to recuperate, of course, but close by is the town of St. George’s.”

“I am certain that I would be fine bunking either here, or at the Fort.”

“Nonsense, Ham. It’s all been arranged. I think you will like St. George’s. Now that the capital has been moved to Hamilton and the war in America is over, it is a quiet place.”

“That does sound good,” I admitted reluctantly. “My nerves are still rather shaken, and I do not think that my constitution is strong enough yet to stand much noise or excitement.”

“Then let us go. Is that all you have, brother?” he queried, motioning to my valise, still in the hands of the helpful Midshipman Brewis.

I nodded. “My experience in camp life has at least had the effect of making me a prompt and ready traveler. My wants are few and simple.”

Henry took the valise from Brewis, whose hand I shook before the kind and knowledgeable marine departed. Henry then motioned me to the waiting boat.

For a moment, I balked. “Another boat? I have just gotten off one and you want me to climb aboard another?” I said with wonderment and a hint of dismay.

Henry smiled. “Although Bermuda is only twenty-two miles long, and the charms of the isles are many, the fastest way from here to where you will be staying in St. George’s is to take a sloop.”

“Not a train?” I queried, hopefully.

“A train? In Bermuda? You must be mad, brother! Wait until you see this island. It is no place for a train.” Henry said with finality.

“Ah, perhaps it is for the better,” I said. “It is a dangerous occupation, that of a
railwayman
.”

Henry placed my valise into the small boat and then lent me an arm so that I could make my way onboard. Many years ago I may have resented the thought that I needed assistance, but now, older, wiser, and two wounds later, I did not begrudge him that gesture. 

Once aboard, Henry introduced me to the captain of the sloop, which was a private vessel called the
Caliber
. He went by the name of Nathaniel Smith. He was a small compact man, but with broad shoulders and a deep chest. He had a round face that was seared with a thousand wrinkles and burned yellow with the sun. His grey eyes were deep set in hollows beneath overhung brows, and were perpetually set in a squint. His shock of hair, beard, and moustache were all white, save that the area around his mouth where they were stained yellow with tobacco smoke from the brier-root pipe that was clenched fast between his lips. He was a taciturn fellow, who had a fair trick of managing to rumble out a few words from between teeth that still clenched the pipe. Only for longer sentences did he deign to remove the pipe, thereby exposing a line of yellow and irregular teeth. His age was nearly impossible to determine; he could easily have been an aged man of forty, or a vigorous man of sixty years.

As Mr. Smith unfurled the sails and the sloop began to back away from the pier, my brother began to describe the island to me. “Bermuda is shaped much like a fishhook. We are currently on the point here at Dockyard. The eye is way over by St. George’s, the bend is an area known as Southampton, and the shank runs through several parishes, known as Warwick, Paget, and Smith’s. The latter is no relation to our skipper… at least, so he claims. Of course, many a man is related here, since the descendants of those first colonists control much of the land.”

Henry pointed to an area of land directly across from our position that appeared to reach out into the water. “That there is Spanish Point, a reminder of the original discoverers of these isles. The legend is that in 1603, six years before Admiral Somers claimed Bermuda for the Crown, a great Spanish treasure fleet was scattered in a storm. One galleon, commanded by a Captain Diego Ramirez, was driven upon the coast of Bermuda. Unlike innumerable other seamen who have met their end in this old death-trap of sailing vessels, and whose ships litter the bottom of the sea, Ramirez managed to avoid the worst of Bermuda’s treacherous surge-swept reefs. After three weeks, his men had managed to repair the ship and they sailed away. Before he left, however, he erected a large cross, made from the wonderfully resistant local cedar wood. Supposedly, on it was carved directions for locating drinking water, and the cross lasted so long that this area is still remembered as Spanish Point.” 

The reticent skipper suddenly intervened. “Wasn’t water,” he said enigmatically.

My brother frowned. “What’s that, my good man?”

Captain Smith shook his head. “Those directions. They weren’t to water. They were to the gold that they had to leave behind.”

My brother tried to hide his grin. “If the Spanish had to leave treasure behind, why did they never return to claim it?”

“Mayhaps they did. Mayhaps
Guv’nor
Moore drove them away,” the man replied peevishly. 

My brother looked as if he were about to challenge the point, when his attention was distracted by another matter. He stopped for a moment and gazed out at our track upon the sea. He leaned back and called up to Mr. Smith. “Where to, skipper?”

“Ah, I’m sorry Captain Henry. I forgot to tell ye. We’ve got to make a Two Rock Passage. I previously made an arrangement to pick up a gentleman at the Hamilton docks who wishes to go to St. George’s.”

My brother frowned at this piece of information. “Need I remind you, Mr. Smith, that we are not going to St. George’s? We’re headed to the Fort.”

“Aye, Captain. But to get to St. George’s from the Fort, all a man needs do is nip around the end of the isle. And Bob’s your uncle.”

“And what of the time that this side-trip will cost us? I don’t suppose that you were planning to give us a partial refund on our fare.”

The man did not appear enthused by this suggestion. “What did you have in mind, Captain?”

“Perhaps your passenger and I should split the fare?”

Smith made a long face. “If that, I would have only taken you.”

“My point exactly, Mr. Smith, my point exactly,” Henry replied.

The skipper shook his head grudgingly. “I’ll tell you what, Captain. We’ll take a third from the fare for each of you.”

My brother stared at him for a moment, before finally signaling his agreement. Henry then turned his attention back to me. “If you sail between Ireland Island and Spanish Point, as we are doing, you will enter the gap of the fishhook, or what is known as the Great Sound. And tucked into a little corner of the Sound is the harbor belonging to the new capital town of Hamilton. Before we reach there, however, if you turn your gaze over those small islands dotting the Sound, you can see, high on that hill, a white conical structure known as Gibbs Hill Lighthouse. It stands on one of the tallest points of the island, and it is the world’s first cast iron lighthouse, built back in 1846.”

My brother’s narration trailed off as we sailed into Hamilton Harbor proper. Like the area surrounding Dockyard, the waters were thick with ships. However, rather than the Royal Navy vessels that I had witnessed there, we were now surrounded by a plethora of civilian ships of all shapes and sizes. A full-sailed merchant-man was being guided by a tiny pilot boat, presumably to
avoid Bermuda’s hazardous reefs. Of the ships at anchor, many of the appellations were impossible to make out, but I clearly counted the brig
Hotspur
, its home port listed as Sydney, Australia. There was one old-fashioned, heavy-bowed broad-beamed craft that I judged to be about five hundred tons, and I suspected that she had once been employed in the Chinese tea-trade, but she was turned so that I could not spot her name. There were at least two barques, the
Sophy Anderson
, registered as hailing from Dover, England, and the
Lone Star
, Savannah, Georgia. There were many steamers, including the
Esmeralda
, home port Vitoria, Brazil, and the
Mathida
Briggs
, registered to Banda Aceh, Sumatra. A great clipper, the SS
Palmyra
, Cape Town, South Africa, was also resting at anchor, her masts overrun with lascars evidently working upon repairs.

Smith tied up the
Caliber
along a busy quay directly across from a row of brightly-painted two-story commercial establishments which appeared to be an admixture of shops and restaurants. A broad street fronted the buildings, and from it a faint odor of horse dung wafted towards us, a sudden clash from the fresh salt air to which I had become accustomed. A small army of wharf-fingers loaded barrels and crates to and from trading ships also tied up at the waterfront. Up the hill, directly behind the buildings in front of us, I could make out the grey stone single spire of a cathedral. My brother also motioned to the left, where another large white structure stood apparently along the same back street as the cathedral. “That’s the Hamilton Hotel. I had thought to have you stay there, since it is by far the finest hotel upon the island. It has twenty-six rooms appointed with every modern luxury. However, it is still far from here to the Fort, so I opted instead to engage a room for you at the smaller and more bucolic Globe Hotel in St. George’s.”

I nodded my approval at his choice. “That is perfectly all right with me, Henry. A private bed in a room that does not sway back and forth will seem like luxury enough when compared to my poor quarters over the last year. And I am not certain that my pocketbook could withstand the assault of a fine hotel.”

At that moment, a man hurried up to the ship, waving his right arm. “Is this the
Caliber
?” he inquired, a trace of an accent apparent upon his lips. He was a tall, handsome man, with keen dark brown eyes. I thought I detected a hint of a former military man in his erect posture. His dark brown hair was slicked back and his moustache suavely waxed. He was exquisitely dressed
in a black-frock coat faced with
green
silk, a black waistcoat, and well-cut pearl-gray trousers. Neat black gaiters protected his leather shoes.
Based on his accent, he seemed to me a
quick-witted Latin.

He hopped aboard the boat, and after a quick word with Mr. Smith, he turned to us. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Antonio Jose da Paiva Cordeiro. How do you do?”