Pirate Latitudes

Chapter 23

ENDERS, THE BARBER-SURGEON and sea artist, stood at the helm of the Cassandra and watched the gentle breakers turn silver as they smashed over the reef of Barton’s Cay, a hundred yards to port. Up ahead, he could see the black hulk of Mt. Leres looming larger on the horizon.

A man slipped aft to him. “The glass is turned,” he said.

Enders nodded. Fifteen glasses had passed since nightfall, which meant it was nearing two in the morning. The wind was from the east and fresh at ten knots; his ship was on a strong tack, and he would reach the island in an hour.

He squinted at the profile of Mt. Leres. Enders could not discern the harbor of Matanceros. He would have to round the southerly point of the island before he came into view of the fortress and the galleon he hoped was still anchored in the harbor.

By then, he would also be within range of the Matanceros guns, unless Hunter and his party had silenced them.

Enders glanced at his crew, standing on the open deck of the Cassandra. No man spoke. Everyone watched silently as the island grew larger before them. They all knew the stakes, and they all knew the risks: within hours, each man would either be unimaginably rich or almost certainly dead.

For the hundredth time that night, Enders wondered what had happened to Hunter and his party, and where they were.

. . .

IN THE SHADOW of the stone walls of Matanceros, Sanson bit the gold doubloon, and passed it to Lazue. Lazue bit it, then passed it to the Moor. Hunter watched the silent ritual, which all privateers believed brought them luck before a raid. Finally, the doubloon reached him; he bit it, feeling the softness of the metal. Then, while they watched, he tossed the coin over his right shoulder.

Without a word, the five of them set out in different directions.

Hunter and Don Diego, with ropes and grappling hooks slung over their shoulders, crept northward around the fortress perimeter, pausing frequently to allow patrols to pass. Hunter glanced up at the high stone walls of Matanceros. The upper walls had been constructed smoothly, with a rounded lip to make grappling difficult. But the masonry skills of the Spanish were not sufficient to the conception; Hunter was certain his hooks would find purchase.

When they reached the north wall of the fort, farthest from the sea, they paused. After ten minutes, a patrol passed, armor and weapons clanging in the still night air. They waited until the soldiers disappeared from sight.

Then Hunter ran forward and flung the grappling iron up over the wall. He heard a faint metallic clink as it landed on the inside. He tugged on the rope, and the iron came back, crashing to the ground beside him. He cursed and waited, listening.

There was no sound, no indication that anyone had heard him. He threw the grappling iron again, watching it sail high over the walls. Again he tugged. And he had to dodge as the iron came back.

He threw a third time, and this time the hook held — but almost immediately, he heard the noise of another patrol. Quickly, Hunter scrambled up the wall, panting and gasping, urged onward by the approaching sounds of armored soldiers. He reached the parapet, dropped down, and hauled up the rope. Don Diego had retreated back into the underbrush.

The patrol passed by beneath him.

Hunter dropped the rope, and Don Diego scrambled up, muttering and swearing in Spanish. Don Diego was not strong, and his progress seemed interminable. Yet finally he came over the side, and Hunter pulled him to safety. He hauled in the rope. The two men, crouched down against the cold stone, looked around them.

Matanceros was silent in the darkness, the lines of tents filled with hundreds of sleeping men. There was an odd thrill to be so close to so many of the enemy.

“Guards?” the Jew whispered.

“I see none,” Hunter said, “except there.” On the opposite side of the fortress, two figures stood by the guns. But they were sea watches, posted to scan the horizon for approaching ships.

Don Diego nodded. “There will be a guard at the magazine.”

“Probably.”

The two men were almost directly above the wooden building Lazue had thought might be the magazine. From where they crouched, they could not see the door to the structure.

“We must go there first,” the Jew said.

They had brought no explosives with them, only fuses. They intended to take their explosives from the fortress’s own magazine.

Silently, in the darkness, Hunter slipped to the ground, and Don Diego followed, blinking his eyes in the faint light. They moved around to the magazine entrance.

They saw no guard.

“Inside?” the Jew whispered.

Hunter shrugged, went to the door, listened a moment, slipped off his boots, and gently pushed the door open. Looking back, he saw Don Diego also removing his boots. Then Hunter went inside.

The interior of the magazine was lined in copper sheeting on all sides, and the few carefully protected candles gave the room a warm, reddish glow. It was oddly inviting, despite the rows of gunpowder casks and the stacked bags of cannon charge, all suitably labeled in red. Hunter moved soundlessly across the copper floor. He saw no one, but heard a man snoring from somewhere in the magazine.

Slipping among the casks, he looked for this man, and eventually found a soldier asleep, propped up against a barrel of powder. Hunter struck the man hard on the head; the soldier snorted and lay still.

The Jew padded in, surveyed the room, and whispered, “Excellent.” They immediately set to work.

. . .

IF THE FORTRESS was silent and sleeping, the rough shanty town that housed the galleon’s crew was boisterous. Sanson, the Moor, and Lazue slipped through the town, passing windows through which they could see soldiers drinking and gaming in yellow lantern-light. One drunken soldier stumbled out, bumped into Sanson, apologized, and was sick against a wooden wall. The three moved on, toward the longboat landing at the riverside.

Although the landing had not been guarded during the day, a group of three soldiers were there now, talking quietly and drinking in the darkness. They sat at the end of the landing, hanging their feet over the side into the water, the low sound of their voices blending with the slap of water against the pilings. Their backs were to the privateers, but the wooden slats of the landing made a silent approach impossible.

“I will do this,” Lazue said, removing her blouse. Naked to the waist, her dagger held behind her back, she whistled a light tune and walked out onto the dock.

One of the soldiers turned. “Que pasa ca?” he demanded, and held up a lantern. His eyes widened in astonishment as he saw what must have seemed to him an apparition — a bare-breasted woman nonchalantly walking toward him. “Madre de Dios,” he said, and the woman smiled at him. He answered the smile in the instant before the dagger passed through his ribs into his heart.

The other soldiers looked at the woman with the bloody dagger. They were so astonished they hardly resisted as she killed them, their blood spurting over her bare chest.

Sanson and the Moor ran up, stepping over the bodies of the three men. Lazue pulled her tunic back on. Sanson climbed into one boat and immediately set out toward the stern of the galleon. The Moor cut free the other boats, and pushed them out into the harbor, where they drifted free. Then the Moor got into a boat with Lazue, and made for the bow of the galleon. Nobody spoke at all.

Lazue pulled her tunic tighter around her. The blood of the soldiers soaked through the fabric; she felt a chill. She stood in the longboat and looked at the approaching galleon while the Moor rowed in swift, powerful strokes.

The galleon was large, about one hundred and forty feet, but mostly she was dark, only a few torches demarcating her profile. Lazue looked to the right, where she saw Sanson rowing away from them, toward the galleon’s stern. Sanson was silhouetted against the lights of the raucous shanty town on shore. She turned and looked left, at the gray line of the fortress walls. She wondered if Hunter and the Jew were inside yet.

. . .

HUNTER WATCHED AS the Jew delicately filled the possum entrails with gunpowder. It seemed an interminable process, but the Jew refused to be hurried. He squatted in the center of the magazine, with an opened bag of powder at his side, and hummed a little as he worked.

“How much longer?” Hunter said.

“Not long, not long,” the Jew said. He seemed completely nonchalant. “It will be so pretty,” he said. “You wait. It will be very beautiful.”

When he had the entrails filled, he cut them into various lengths, and slipped them into his pocket.

“All right,” he said. “Now we can begin.”

A moment later, the two men emerged from the magazine, bent over with the weight of the powder charges they carried. They crossed the main yard of the fortress stealthily, and paused beneath the heavy stone parapet on which the guns rested. The two lookouts were still there.

While the Jew waited with the gunpowder, Hunter climbed onto the parapet and killed the lookouts. One died in complete silence and the other gave only a quiet groan as he slipped to the ground.

“Diego!” Hunter hissed.

The Jew appeared on the parapet and looked at the guns. He poked down a barrel with a rammer.

“How delightful,” he whispered. “They are already powdered and primed. We will make a special treat. Here, help me.”

The Jew pushed a second bag of powder down the mouth of one cannon. “Now the shot,” he said.

Hunter frowned. “But they will add another ball before they fire.”

“Of course. Two charges, and two balls — these guns will breech before their eyes.”

Quickly, they moved from one culverin to the next. The Jew added a second charge of powder, and Hunter dropped in a ball. Each ball made a low rumbling sound as it moved down the cannon mouth, but there was nobody to hear it.

When they had finished, the Jew said, “Now I have things to do. You must put sand in each barrel.”

Hunter slipped down the parapet to the ground. He took the loose sandy surface of the fortress in his fingers and dropped a handful down each cannon mouth. The Jew was clever: even if, by chance, the guns fired, the sand in the barrels would destroy the aim — and ream the inside so badly that they would never be accurate again.

When he was finished, he saw the Jew bent over one gun carriage, working beneath the barrel. He got to his feet. “That’s the last,” he said.

“What have you done?”

“Touched the fuses to the barrels. The heat of firing the barrel will ignite the fuses on the undercarriage charge.” He smiled in the darkness. “It will be wonderful.”

. . .

THE WIND CHANGED, and the stern of the galleon swung around toward Sanson. He tied up beneath the gilded transom and began to scale the rear bulkhead toward the captain’s cabin. He heard the soft sound of a song in Spanish. He listened to the obscene lyrics but could not locate the source of the song; it seemed to drift in the air, elusive and faint.

He stepped through a cannon porthole into the captain’s cabin. It was empty. He moved outside, on the gun deck, and down the companionway to the berth deck. He saw no one. He looked at the empty hammocks, all swinging gently in the motion of the ship. Dozens of hammocks, and no sign of a crew.

Sanson did not like this — an unguarded ship implied a ship without treasure. He now feared what they had all feared but never voiced: that the treasure might have been taken off the ship and stored elsewhere, perhaps in the fortress. If that were true, their plans were all in vain.

Therefore, Sanson found himself hoping for a good-sized skeleton crew and guard. He moved to the aft galley, and here he was encouraged. The galley was deserted, but there was evidence of recent cooking — a bullock stew in a large cauldron, some vegetables, a cut lemon rocking back and forth on the wooden counter.

He left the galley, and moved forward again. In the distance, he heard shouts from the sentry on deck, greeting Lazue and the Moor as they approached.

Lazue and the Moor tied up alongside the midships ladder of the galleon. The sentry on deck leaned down and waved. “Questa faire?” he called.

“We bring rum,” Lazue answered in a low voice. “Compliments of the captain.”

“The captain?”

“It is his day of birth.”

“Bravo, bravo.” Smiling, the sentry stepped back as Lazue came aboard. He looked, and had a moment of horror as he saw the blood on her tunic and in her hair. Then the knife flashed through the air and buried itself in his chest. The sentry clutched the handle in surprise. He seemed about to speak. Then he pitched forward onto the deck.

The Moor came aboard, and crept forward, toward a group of four soldiers who sat playing cards. Lazue did not watch what he did; she went below. She found ten soldiers sleeping in a forward compartment; silently, she shut the door and barred it.

Five more soldiers were singing and drinking in an adjacent cabin. She peered in and saw that they had guns. Her own pistols were jammed in her belt; she would not fire a shot unless she had to. She waited outside the room.

After a moment, the Moor crept alongside her.

She pointed into the room. He shook his head. They remained by the door.

After a time, one of the soldiers announced his bladder was bursting, and left the room. As he came out, the Moor crashed a belaying pin down on his skull; the man hit the deck with a thud, just a few steps from the room.

The others inside looked toward the sound. They could see the man’s feet in the light from the room.

“Juan?”

The fallen man did not move.

“Too much to drink,” somebody said, and they resumed their cards. But soon enough one of the men began to worry about Juan, and came out to investigate. Lazue cut his throat and the Moor leapt into the room, swinging the pin in wide arcs. The men dropped soundlessly.

In the aft quarter of the ship, Sanson left the galley and moved forward, running right into a Spanish soldier. The man was drunk, a crock of rum dangling loosely from one hand, and he laughed at Sanson in the darkness.

“You gave me a fright,” the soldier said in Spanish. “I did not expect to see anyone.”

Then, up close, he saw Sanson’s grim face, and did not recognize it. He had a brief moment of astonishment before Sanson’s fingers closed around his throat.

Sanson went down another companionway, below the berth deck. He came to the aft storerooms, and found them all hard-locked and bolted. There were seals on all the locks; in the darkness, he bent to examine them. Unmistakably, in the yellow wax, he saw the crown-and-anchor seal of the Lima mint. So there was New Spain silver here; his heart jumped.

He returned to the deck, coming up on the aft castle, near the tiller. He again heard the faint sounds of singing. It was still no more possible to locate the sound than before. He paused and listened, and then the singing stopped, and a concerned voice said, “Que pasa? Que esta vous?”

Sanson looked up. Of course! There, in the perch above the mainmast spars, a man stood looking down at him.

“Que esta vous?” he demanded.

Sanson knew the man could not see him well. He stepped back into shadows.

“Que?” the man said, confused.

In the darkness, Sanson unsheathed his crossbow, bent the steel spring, fitted the arrow, and raised it to his eye. He looked at the Spaniard coming down the rigging, swearing irritably.

Sanson shot him.

The impact of the arrow knocked him free of the rigging; his body flew a dozen yards out into dark space, and he hit the water with a soft splash. There was no other sound.

Sanson prowled the empty aft deck, and finally, satisfied that he was alone, he gripped the tiller in his hands. A moment later, he saw Lazue and the Moor come abovedecks near the bow. They looked back and waved to him; they were grinning.

The ship was theirs.

. . .

HUNTER AND DON DIEGO had returned to the magazine, and were setting a long fuse to the powder kegs. They worked swiftly now, for when they had left the cannon, the sky above them was already beginning to lighten to a paler blue.

Don Diego stacked the kegs in small clusters around the room. “It must be this way,” he whispered. “Otherwise there will be one explosion, which we do not desire.”

He broke two kegs and sprinkled the black grain over the floor. Finally, satisfied, he lit the fuse.

At that moment, there was a shout from outside in the fortress yard, and then another.

“What is that?” Diego said.

Hunter frowned. “Perhaps they have found the dead watch,” he said.

A moment later, there was more shouting in the yard, and the sound of running feet. Now they heard one word repeated over and over: “Pirata! Pirata!”

“The ship must be in the channel,” Hunter said. He glanced over at the fuse, which sputtered and sizzled in the corner of the room.

“Shall I put it out?” Diego said.

“No. Leave it.”

“We cannot stay here.”

“In a few minutes, there will be panic in the yard. Then we will escape.”

“It had better be a very few minutes,” Diego said.

The shouting in the courtyard was louder. They heard literally hundreds of running feet, as the garrison was mobilized.

“They will check the magazine,” Diego said nervously.

“Eventually,” Hunter agreed.

And at that moment, the door was flung open, and Cazalla came into the room, with a sword in his hand. He saw them.

Hunter plucked a sword from the dozens that hung in racks along the wall. “Go, Diego,” he whispered. Diego dashed out the door as Cazalla’s blade struck Hunter’s own. Hunter and Cazalla circled the room.

Hunter was backing away.

“Englishman,” Cazalla said, laughing. “I will feed the pieces of your body to my dogs.”

Hunter did not reply. He balanced the sword in his hand, feeling the unfamiliar weight, testing the whip of the blade.

“And my mistress,” Cazalla said, “shall dine on your testicles.”

They circled the room warily. Hunter was leading Cazalla out of the magazine, away from the sputtering fuse, which the Spaniard had not noticed.

“Are you afraid, Englishman?”

Hunter backed away, almost to the door. Cazalla lunged. Hunter parried, still backing. Cazalla lunged again. The movement took him into the yard.

“You are a stinking coward, Englishman.”

Now they were both in the yard. Hunter engaged Cazalla fully, and Cazalla laughed with pleasure. For some moments they fought in silence, Hunter always moving farther from the magazine.

All around them, the garrison troops ran and shouted. Any of them could kill Hunter from behind in an instant. His danger was extreme, and Cazalla suddenly realized the reason. He broke, stepped back, and looked at the magazine.

“You son of an English buggered swine . . .”

Cazalla ran toward the magazine, just as the first of the explosions engulfed it in rolling white flame and blasting heat.

The crew aboard the Cassandra, now moving up the narrow channel, saw the magazine explode and cheered. But Enders, at the helm, was frowning. The guns of Matanceros were still there; he could see the long barrels protruding through the notchings in the stone wall. In the red light of the magazine fires, the gun crews preparing to fire the cannon were clearly visible.

“God help us,” Enders said. The Cassandra was now directly off the shore batteries. “Stand by, mates,” he shouted. “We’re going to eat Donnish shot today.”

Lazue and the Moor, on the foredeck of the galleon, also saw the explosion. They saw the Cassandra beating up the channel past the fortress.

“Mother of God,” Lazue said. “They didn’t get the guns. They didn’t get the guns.”

. . .

DIEGO WAS OUTSIDE the fortress, running for the water. He did not stop when the magazine exploded with a frightful roar; he did not wonder if Hunter was still inside; he did not think anything. He ran with screaming, painful lungs for the water.

Hunter was trapped in the fortress. The Spanish patrols from outside were pouring in through the west gate; he could not escape that way. He did not see Cazalla anywhere, but he ran east from the magazine toward a low stone building, intending to climb onto the roof, and from there, jump over the wall.

When he got to the building, four soldiers engaged him; they backed him with swords to the door of the building and he locked himself in. The door was heavy timber; they pounded on it to no avail.

He turned to look around the room. This was Cazalla’s quarters, richly furnished. A dark-haired girl was in the bed. She looked at him in terror, holding the sheets to her chin, as Hunter dashed through the room to the rear windows. He was halfway out the window when he heard her say, in English, “Who are you?”

Hunter paused, astonished. Her accent was crisp and aristocratic. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am Lady Sarah Almont, late of London,” she said. “I am being held prisoner here.”

Hunter’s mouth fell open.

“Well, get on your clothing, madam,” he said.

At that moment, another glass window shattered, and Cazalla landed on the floor of the room, his sword in his hand. He was gray and blackened from the powder explosion. The girl screamed.

“Dress, madam,” Hunter said, as his blade engaged Cazalla’s. He saw her hastily pulling on an elaborate white dress.

Cazalla panted as he fought. He had the desperation of fury and something else, perhaps fear.

“Englishman,” he said, starting another taunt. Then Hunter flung his sword across the room. The blade pierced Cazalla in the throat. He coughed and sat backward, into the chair by his heavy ornate desk. He leaned forward, pulling at the blade, and in his posture, he seemed to be examining charts on the desk. Blood dripped onto the charts. Cazalla made a gurgling sound. Then he collapsed.

“Come on,” the woman said.

Hunter led her through the window, out of the room. He did not look back at Cazalla’s body.

He stood with the woman on the north face of the parapet. The ground was thirty feet below, hard earth with a few scrubby plants. Lady Sarah clutched him.

“It’s too far,” she said.

“There’s no choice,” he said, and pushed her. With a shriek, she fell. He looked back, and saw the Cassandra pull into the channel, under the main battery of the fortress. The gun crews were ready to fire. Hunter jumped to the ground. The girl was still lying there, holding her ankle.

“Are you hurt?”

“Not badly, I think.”

He got her to her feet, and drew her arm over his shoulder. Supporting her, they ran toward the water. They heard the first guns open fire on the Cassandra.

The guns of Matanceros were fired serially, one second apart. Each one breeched one second apart, spitting hot powder and fragments of bronze into the air, sending the crews diving for cover. One by one, the big guns rocked back to their recoil position, and were still.

The crews slowly got to their feet, and approached the guns in astonishment. They examined the blown touch-holes and chattered excitedly among themselves.

And then, one by one, the charges under the carriages blew, sending splinters of wood flying, dropping the guns to the ground. The last of the cannon went rolling along the parapet, with terrified soldiers racing out of its path.

Less than five hundred yards offshore, the Cassandra sailed untouched into the harbor.

Don Diego was treading water, shouting at the top of his lungs as the Cassandra bore down on him. For a horrified moment he thought no one would see or hear him, and then the bow of the sloop veered to port, and strong hands reached over the side and hauled him, dripping, onto the deck. A flask of kill-devil was thrust into his hands; his back was pounded and there was laughter.

Diego looked around the boat. “Where is Hunter?” he said.

In the early-dawn light, Hunter was running with the girl to the shore at the eastern point of Matanceros. He was now just beneath the fort’s walls; directly above him were the barrels of some of the guns, now lying at odd and irregular angles.

They paused by the water to catch their breath.

“Can you swim?” Hunter asked.

The girl shook her head.

“Not at all?”

“No, I swear.”

He looked at the Cassandra’s stern, as she moved up the channel to the galleon.

“Come on,” he said. They ran toward the harbor.

Enders, the sea artist, delicately maneuvered the Cassandra alongside the galleon. Immediately, most of the crew jumped to the larger boat. Enders himself went aboard the galleon, where he saw Lazue and the Moor at the railing. Sanson was at the tiller.

“My pleasure, sir,” Sanson said with a bow, handing the helm to Enders.

“Don’t mind if I do, mate,” Enders said. Immediately, he looked aloft, where seamen were scrambling up the rigging. “Hoist the foretop. Smart there with the jib!” The sails were let out. The big ship began to move.

Alongside them, the small crew remaining with the Cassandra tied the bow to the stern of the galleon and swung around, sails luffing.

Enders paid no attention to the little ship.

His attention was fixed on the galleon. As she began to move, and the crews worked the capstan to bring up the anchor, he shook his head. “Soggy old bitch,” he said. “Moves like a cow.”

“But she’ll sail,” Sanson said.

“Oh, she’ll sail, in a manner of speaking.”

The galleon was moving east, toward the harbor mouth. Enders now looked toward the shore, for Hunter.

“There he is!” Lazue shouted.

And indeed, there he was, standing at the shore with some woman.

“Can you stop?” Lazue demanded.

Enders shook his head. “We’ll go into irons,” he said. “Throw a line.”

The Moor had already thrown a line. It hit the shore. Hunter grabbed it with the girl, and they were immediately yanked off their feet and dragged into the water.

“Better get them up smartly, before they drown,” Enders said, but he was grinning.

The girl nearly drowned, she was coughing for hours afterward. But Hunter was in fine spirits as he took command of the treasure nao and sailed, in tandem with the Cassandra, out into the open seas.

By eight in the morning, the smoking ruins of Matanceros lay far astern. Hunter, drinking heavily, reflected that he now had the distinction of successfully leading the most extraordinary privateering expedition in the century since Drake attacked Panama.