Pirate Latitudes

Chapter 22

HUNTER AWOKE WITH the instant conviction that something was wrong. He heard Spanish voices, but this time they were close — much too close. And he could hear footsteps, and the rustle of foliage. He sat up, wincing as the pains shot through him; if anything, his body ached more fiercely than it had the day before.

He glanced around at his little group. Sanson was already on his feet, peering through palm fronds in the direction of the Spanish voices. The Moor was quietly rising, his body tense, his movements finely controlled. Don Diego was sitting up on one elbow, eyes wide.

Only Lazue still lay on her back. And she was lying absolutely motionless. Hunter jerked his thumb at her to get up. She shook her head slightly, and mouthed “No.” She was not moving at all. Her face was covered with a fine sheen of perspiration. He started to move toward her.

“Careful!” she whispered, her voice tense. He stopped, and looked at her. Lazue was lying on her back, with her legs slightly apart. Her limbs were oddly rigid. He then saw the red, black, and yellow–striped tail disappear up the leg of her trousers.

It was a coral snake, attracted by the warmth of her body. He looked back at her face. It was taut, as if she were withstanding some extraordinary pain.

Behind him, Hunter heard the Spanish voices growing still louder. He could hear several men clumping and thrashing through the underbrush. He gestured to Lazue to wait, and went over to Sanson.

“Six of them,” Sanson whispered.

Hunter saw a party of six Spanish soldiers, carrying bedding and food, armed with muskets, moving up the hillside toward them. The soldiers were all young, and apparently regarded this excursion as a lark; they laughed and joked with each other.

“It’s not a patrol,” Sanson whispered.

“Let them go,” Hunter said.

Sanson looked at him sharply. Hunter pointed back to Lazue, still lying rigidly on the ground. Sanson immediately understood. They waited as the Spanish soldiers passed by, and moved on up the hillside. Then they returned to Lazue.

“Where is it now?” Hunter said.

“Knee,” she said softly.

“Moving up?”

“Yes.”

Don Diego spoke next. “Tall trees,” he said, looking around. “We must find tall trees. There!” He tapped the Moor. “Come with me.”

The two men set off into the brush, in the direction of a clump of Mayaguana trees some yards away. Hunter looked at Lazue, and then up at the Spanish soldiers. The soldiers were clearly visible, a hundred yards farther up the hillside. If any of the soldiers chose to look back, they would see the group immediately.

“It is too late in the season for mating,” Sanson said. He frowned at Lazue. “But we may be lucky and find a chick.” He turned to look at the Moor, who was scrambling up one of the trees, while Diego remained on the ground below.

“Where is it now?” Hunter said.

“Past the knee.”

“Try to relax.”

She rolled her eyes. “Damn you and your expedition,” she said. “Damn all of you.”

Hunter looked at the trouser leg. He could just see the slight movement in the fabric the snake made as it crawled upward.

“Mother of God,” Lazue said. She closed her eyes.

Sanson whispered to Hunter, “If they find no chick, we may have to stand her and shake her.”

“The snake will bite.”

They both knew the consequences of that.

The privateers were hard and tough; they regarded the poisonous bite of a scorpion, a black widow, or a water moccasin as no more than an inconvenience. Indeed, it was high good fun for a man to drop a scorpion into a comrade’s boot. But two venomous creatures commanded the respect and dread of everyone. The fer-de-lance was no laughing matter — and the little coral snake was the worst of all. No one ever survived its timid bite. Hunter could imagine Lazue’s terror as she waited for the tiny pinch on her leg that would signal the fatal bite. They all knew what would inevitably occur: first sweating, then shaking, then a creeping numbness that would spread all over the body. Death would follow before sunset.

“Where now?”

“High, very high.” Her voice was so soft he could hardly catch her words.

He looked at her pants and saw a slight ripple of the fabric at the crotch.

“Oh God,” Lazue moaned.

And then he heard a low squeak, almost a chirp. He turned and saw Diego and the Moor returning. Both smiled broadly. The Moor held something cupped in his hands. Hunter saw it was a tiny bandybird chick. It squeaked and fluttered its feathery, soft body.

“Quick, some cord,” the Jew said. Hunter produced a length of twine, and it was fastened around the chick’s legs. The chick was placed by the mouth of Lazue’s trouser cuff and tied to the ground, where it remained squeaking and twisting around its bonds.

They waited.

“Do you feel anything?” Hunter said.

“No.”

They looked back at the bandybird chick. The little creature struggled piteously, exhausting itself.

Hunter turned to Lazue.

“Nothing,” she said. And then her eyes abruptly widened.

“Coiling . . .”

They looked at her trousers. There was movement. A slowly forming curve in the cloth, which then dissolved.

“Going down,” Lazue said.

They waited. Suddenly, the chick became very agitated, squeaking more loudly than ever before. It had smelled the coral snake.

The Jew produced his pistol, shook out the shot and prime, and gripped the barrel in his fist, holding the butt like a club.

They waited. They could see the progress of the snake now passing the knee, going along the calf, moving by slow inches. It seemed to take forever.

And then suddenly, abruptly, the head appeared in the light, and the tongue flicked out. The chick squealed in a paroxysm of terror. The coral snake advanced, and then Don Diego leapt on it, pounding the head into the ground with the pistol butt, and simultaneously Lazue was on her feet, jumping back with a scream.

Don Diego pounded the snake with repeated blows, crushing its body into the soft earth. Lazue turned and was violently sick. But Hunter paid no attention to that — at her scream, he had immediately turned and looked up the hillside, toward the Spanish soldiers.

Sanson and the Moor had done the same.

“Did they hear?” Hunter said.

“We cannot risk it,” Sanson said. There was a long silence, interrupted only by Lazue’s retching. “You noticed they carried supplies and bedding.”

Hunter nodded. The meaning was clear enough. They had been sent up the slope by Cazalla as a warning party, to watch for pirates on the land — and also to scan the horizon for the approach of the Cassandra. A single musket-shot from that group would alert the fort below. From their vantage point, they would see the Cassandra many miles away.

“I will do this,” Sanson said, smiling slightly.

“Take the Moor,” Hunter said.

The two men slipped away, moving up the hillside after the Spanish troops. Hunter turned back to Lazue, who was pale, wiping her mouth.

“I am ready to leave,” she said.

Hunter, Don Diego, and Lazue shouldered the equipment, and moved on down the hillside.

. . .

NOW THEY FOLLOWED the river that opened into the harbor. When they first met it, the river was only a narrow trickle, and a man could step across it easily. But it quickly broadened, and the jungle growth along its banks became thick and deep.

They encountered the first of the organized patrols in late afternoon — eight Spaniards, all armed, moving silently up the river in a longboat. These men were serious and grim, fighting men prepared for battle. As night fell, the high trees along the river turned blue-green, and the river surface black, unmarred except for an occasional ripple of a crocodile. But the patrols were now everywhere, moving in steady cadences, by torchlight. Three other longboats ferried soldiers up the river, their torches casting long, shimmering points of light.

“Cazalla is not a fool,” Sanson said. “We are expected.”

They were now just a few hundred yards from the fortress of Matanceros. The stone walls loomed high above them. There was a lot of activity, inside and outside the fort. Armed bands of twenty soldiers paced the perimeter.

“Expected or not,” Hunter said, “we must keep to our plan. We attack tonight.”