Pirate Latitudes

Chapter 37

ON OCTOBER 23, 1665, the conviction of Charles Hunter and his crew on a charge of piracy and robbery was summarily overturned by Lewisham, Judge of the Admiralty, meeting in closed session with Sir James Almont, newly restored Governor of the Jamaica Colony.

In the same session, Commander Edwin Scott, Chief Officer of the Garrison of Fort Charles, was convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hanged the following day. A confession in his own handwriting was obtained on the promise of commutation of sentence. Once the letter was written, an unknown officer shot Scott to death in his cell in Fort Charles. The officer was never apprehended.

For Captain Hunter, now the toast of the town, one final problem remained: Andre Sanson. The Frenchman was nowhere to be found, and it was reported that he had fled into the inland hills. Hunter put out the word that he would pay well for any news of Sanson, and by mid-afternoon he had a surprising report.

Hunter had stationed himself publicly in the Black Boar, and soon enough an old bawdy woman came to see him. Hunter knew her; she ran a whoring house, her name was Simmons. She approached him nervously.

“Speak up, woman,” he said, and he called for a glass of kill-devil to ease her fears.

“Well, sir,” she said, drinking the liquor, “a week past, a man of the name of Carter comes to Port Royal, desperate ill.”

“Is this John Carter, a seaman?”

“The same.”

“Speak on,” Hunter said.

“He says he has been picked up by an English packet boat from St. Kitts. They had spotted a fire on a small uninhabited cay, and, pausing to investigate, had found this Carter marooned, and brought him thence.”

“Where is he now?”

“Oh, he has fled, he has. He’s terrified of meeting with Sanson, the Frenchy villain. He’s in the hills now, but he told me his story, right enough.”

Hunter said, “And that is?”

The bawdy woman told the story quickly. Carter was aboard the sloop Cassandra, carrying part of the galleon treasure, under Sanson’s command. There had been a fierce hurricane, in which the ship was wrecked on the inner reef of an island, and most of the crew killed. Sanson had gathered the others together, and had salvaged the treasure, which he directed them to bury on the island. Then they had all built a longboat with the flotsam of the wrecked sloop.

And then, Carter had reported, Sanson had killed them all — twelve men — and set sail alone. Carter had been badly wounded, but somehow survived and lived to return home and tell his story. And he said further that he did not know the name of the island, nor the exact location of the treasure, but that Sanson had scratched a map on a coin, which he then hung around his neck.

Hunter listened to the story in silence, thanked the woman, and gave her a coin for her trouble. More than ever, now, he wanted to find Sanson. He sat in the Black Boar and patiently listened to every person with a rumor of the Frenchman’s whereabouts. There were at least a dozen stories. Sanson had gone to Port Morant. Sanson had fled to Inagua. Sanson had gone into hiding in the hills.

When finally the truth came, it was stunning. Enders burst into the tavern:

“Captain, he’s on board the galleon!”

“What?”

“Aye, sir. There were six of us set as guard; he killed two, and sent the rest in the boat to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Either you arrange his pardon, and discard openly your feud with him, or he’ll sink the ship, Captain. Sink her at anchor. He must have your word by nightfall, Captain.”

Hunter swore. He went to the window of the tavern and looked out at the harbor. El Trinidad rode lightly at anchor, but she was moored well offshore, in deep water — too deep to salvage any treasure if she were sunk.

“He’s damnably clever,” Enders said.

“Indeed,” Hunter said.

“Will you make your reply?”

“Not now,” Hunter said. He turned away from the window. “Is he alone on the ship?”

“Aye, if that matters.”

Sanson alone was worth a dozen men or more in an open battle.

The treasure galleon was not moored close to any other ships in the harbor; nearly a quarter mile of open water surrounded it on all sides. It stood in splendid, impregnable isolation.

“I must think,” Hunter said, and went to sit again.

. . .

A SHIP MOORED in open, placid water was as safe as a fortress surrounded by a moat. And what Sanson did next made him even safer: he dumped slops and garbage all around the vessel to attract sharks. There were plenty of sharks in the harbor anyway, so that swimming to El Trinidad was a form of suicide.

Nor could any boat approach the ship without being easily spotted.

Therefore, the approach must be open and apparently harmless. But an open longboat gave no opportunity for hiding. Hunter scratched his head. He paced the floor of the Black Boar and then, still restless, he went out into the street.

There he saw a water-spouter, a common conjurer of the day, spouting streams of multicolored water from his lips. Conjuring was forbidden in the Massachusetts Colony as tending to promote the work of the devil; for Hunter, it had an odd fascination.

He watched the water-spouter for several moments, as he drank and spewed different kinds of water one after another. Finally, he went up to the man.

“I want to know your secrets.”

“Many a fine woman in the Court of King Charles has said as much, and offered more than you have offered.”

“I offer you,” Hunter said, “your life.” And he pressed a loaded pistol in his face.

“You’ll not bully me,” the conjurer said.

“I fancy, I will.”

And a few moments later, he was back in the conjurer’s tent, hearing the details of his exploits.

“Things are not as they seem,” said the conjurer.

“Show me,” Hunter said.

The conjurer explained that before a performance, he swallowed a pill confected of the gall of a heifer and baked wheat flour. “This cleanses my stomach, you see.”

“I do. Go on.”

“Next, I take a mixture of brazil nuts and water, boiled until it is dark red in color. I swallow this before I work.”

“Go on.”

“Then I wash the glasses with white vinegar.”

“Go on.”

“And some glasses not so washed.”

“Go on.”

Then, the water-spouter explained, he drank water from clean glasses, and regurgitated the contents of his stomach, producing glasses of bright red “claret.” In other glasses, which had a coating of vinegar, the same liquid became “beer,” of a dark brown color.

Drinking and regurgitating more water produced a lighter red color, which was called “sherry.”

“There’s no more trick to it than that,” said the conjurer. “Things are not as they seem, and that’s an end to it.” He sighed. “It’s all in directing attention to the wrong place.”

Hunter thanked the man, and went off to search for Enders.

. . .

“DO YOU KNOW the woman who enabled our release from Marshallsea?”

“Anne Sharpe is her name.”

“Find her,” Hunter said. “And get for the longboat crew six of the best men you can muster.”

“Why, Captain?”

“We are going to pay a visit to Sanson.”