Caribbean: a novel Part 14

'What do you do?'

'What can we do? As free men, we go back to work for your brother or men like him for whatever wages they choose to pay.' He leaned against a fence post, and said bitterly: 'Any chance I had of bringing my la.s.sie out from Inverness to build a plantation and a family is lost.'

'Haven't you protested?' Will asked, and McFee spat: 'I did. Appealed to the courts, but who are the justices? Oldmixon and your brother, and they invariably side with the other plantation owners. An ordinary overseer has almost no rights, a laborer none whatsoever.'

When Will heard these details of life on the new Barbados he told McFee: 'I'd like to learn more,' and as he moved about the island he saw many things that perplexed him. The next time he saw McFee, he said: 'Far more than half the faces I meet are black. Didn't used to be that way,' and McFee explained: 'When one white man like Oldmixon owns land that sixteen white men used to work, he has to have slaves ... always more slaves-"Get me slaves at the auction when the Dutch ships bring them in"-so now the island has many blacks. In another ten years, fifty rich white men will own all the land and operate it with fifty young Scotsmen like me, one to each plantation supervising forty thousand slaves.'

'The slaves I've known,' Will said, 'aren't stupid. Get enough of them in one place, they'll begin to fight for their rights.' Antic.i.p.ating what that would mean, he told McFee one afternoon: 'I'd not want to live on a Barbados like that,' and McFee, looking about before he spoke, said: 'I'm not so happy living on this one.'

That exchange of two short sentences set in motion a chain of events which would carry the two conspirators far beyond what they contemplated when the more-or-less careless words were spoken, for McFee began to study carefully the operation of the Tatum estates and Will began hanging around the Bridgetown waterfront, noticing with a practiced mariner's eye all sorts of developments and particularly which ships were coming from where, and it was as a result of this process that he renewed his knowledge of the Tortuga that Captain Brongersma had spoken about with such enthusiasm. It was a unique island, sailors said, lying close to the northwest sh.o.r.e of the great Spanish island Hispaniola, which Columbus had settled and ruled.

'It's practically French,' said one grizzled veteran who knew it well. 'Not half as large as Barbados. Supposed to belong to Spain, which tried to recapture it from time to time. But the French, they're pirates, really ... call themselves buccaneers. Buccaneer is how we English p.r.o.nounce it. The French word is boucanier. Four years I served with them in Tortuga. Very excitin' I can tell you. But as I was sayin', these wild men, and they're wilder than anything you see on Barbados ... believe me, they live on two things. Huntin' down small Spanish ships, killin' the crew and stealin' the vessel and whatever's inside. And goin' over to the forests on Hispaniola and killin' wild hogs. They bring the meat back, cut it in strips, rub in salt and spices and roast it very slowly over a low fire ... maybe four days. Boucan they call it, so that makes 'em boucaniers. They sell the meat for a tidy profit to Dutch and English privateers workin' those waters against the Spaniards.'

'Do they really capture Spanish ships?' Tatum asked, and his ears p.r.i.c.ked up when the old man said: 'Many. You see, the hatred the buccaneers have for Spain and anything Spanish goes back to 1638 when there was a big boucanier settlement on Tortuga.' (He used the two versions of the word interchangeably, but he obviously preferred the latter.) 'Spanish officials in Cartagena sent a big force up to Tortuga, and their savage soldiers killed every boucanier on the little island-men, women, children, even the dogs. And as I may have told you, the one thing in this world a boucanier loves is his huntin' dogs. They can smell a wild boar at two miles. But hundreds of us were absent, huntin' on Hispaniola, and when we sailed back the few miles to Tortuga and saw our friends' bodies still unburied, we swore that before we died ...'

'How do you join the buccaneers?' Will asked, and the old fellow said: 'You just go there. Steal yourself a ship of some kind, sail to Hispaniola, avoid the Spanish on the south side of the island, and coast around to the northwest. You don't need no papers to join. Frenchmen come, Indians from Honduras, Dutchmen who've fought with their captains and maybe murdered them and taken their ships, Englishmen, half a dozen from the American colonies ...' The man would have said a great deal more, but Will had heard enough, and that night he began talking seriously with Angus McFee.

In daytime he did his best to look after the interests of his sister, noting with anxiety that her health was failing rapidly, and he discussed the matter with Ned, who said: 'Mum knows. Told me she wasn't long for this world.'

'Why didn't you tell me?' and the boy said: 'She swore me to secrecy. Said you had your own problems.'

'We must do something for her,' and in a series of swift, loving moves he sold the store to a young couple just out from England, placed the money in the care of a trustworthy local businessman, added to it all his own savings, moved Nell into the home of a neighbor who could care for her, and even went to see Isaac to beg him to contribute to his sister's upkeep. But with Lady Clarissa sitting primly beside him, Sir Isaac said: 'She went her way, I went mine,' implying by his smug look that Will, too, seemed to have gone his own way, a dreadfully wrong way.

'But, Isaac, she's dying. I can see it in her eyes. She's worked herself to death,' and Isaac said: 'That rambunctious boy of hers should get a job and not fool around that silly store.'

'The store's been sold,' and Clarissa said: 'Well, then she does have some money,' and Will simply looked at the two misers, the skin around his scar flushing with the hatred he felt for them, and there was nothing more he cared to say. Stopping by McFee's hut as he started back to town, he said with unhesitating resolve: 'The plan we talked about the other night is right. We go.'

Sir Isaac, like many of the wealthier plantation owners, had a ship called Loyal Forever, in boastful memory of the defense of King Charles during the Barbadian troubles of 16491652. It was not large, for it was intended merely for the interisland trade with places like Antigua and for Carib hunting on All Saints, but it was st.u.r.dy, having been built by the best shipwrights in Amsterdam and brought by Dutch sailors to Barbados with a hold full of slaves. Sir Isaac had bought the ship, its charts and slaves in one big deal on which he had already made a huge profit, and this would double when he sold the Loyal Forever to some other planter about to enlarge his plantation.

In a series of secret meetings, McFee, Tatum, two other abused indentured servants, three trusted slaves of great ability and the boy Ned discussed plans for capturing the Loyal Forever, persuading as many of the crew as possible to remain on the ship, and sailing it to Tortuga to join the buccaneers. With a sharp needle Will punctured the left forefingers of his seven co-conspirators and made them dab a sheet of paper on which nothing had been written: 'Your oath. If you betray us with even one word ...' and he drew his own b.l.o.o.d.y forefinger across his throat.

When Will and Ned saw from their room ash.o.r.e a signal that the ship had been taken with no gunfire, they walked down to the wharf to board her, moving slowly lest they attract attention. But at the last moment Ned broke away and ran back to the neighbor's house in which Nell was staying. Rushing into the small room, he embraced his rapidly failing mother and whispered: 'Mum, I'm off for a buccaneer! Me and Uncle Will.' Looking up at her son, so bright and promising, she said softly: 'Maybe it's better. Not much here for you two.' And she kissed him for the last time. 'Be careful.' Leaving the house with never a backward glance, the young fellow strolled nonchalantly down to the stolen ship, trying to look like an indifferent old seaman.

It was more than a thousand miles from Barbados to Tortuga, and the would-be buccaneers chose what they judged to be the route least likely to throw them into contact with other ships: through the St. Vincent pa.s.sage and into the Caribbean proper, then northwest to Mona Pa.s.sage between the Spanish islands of Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, then along the north coast of the latter island, and into the channel that separated it from Tortuga.

During the first days of the trip, which took about three weeks, it was obvious that whereas McFee was a brave man and intelligent, he was no sea captain, but no one else wanted the job. Fortunately, Tatum and others aboard were seasoned sailors, and in Ned Pennyfeather, Will had an aide who had learned from a Dutchman how to use a remarkable but still primitive instrument, the astrolabe, for checking lat.i.tude whenever the sun was visible at noon or the North Star at night. They had left Barbados at near thirteen degrees and climbed the ladder of the lat.i.tudes to past twenty, and Ned delighted in telling Captain McFee the ship's position twice each day: 'Sixteen degrees lat.i.tude North and on course,' and so on. But since no ship at that time had a reliable way of determining longitude, he never really knew exactly where the Loyal Forever was. When they had made their way far enough north to be reasonably sure they had pa.s.sed Hispaniola, they headed due west toward Tortuga.

As they entered the channel and Will saw how small Tortuga was, how low and unimpressive its hills, he had a moment of disbelief: How could this place be the wonderful center Brongersma told me about? And as McFee brought the Loyal Forever to its anchorage among nine or ten other ships, Ned said: 'None of these ships are as big as even the small Dutch traders that sneak into Barbados.'

But when they went ash.o.r.e, they saw a strange sight. This vital center of the Caribbean was not a town but a haphazard collection of houses, each duplicating the owner's memories of his homeland: a famous Dutch pirate had used his enormous wealth to create a replica of his childhood home in Holland, complete with dormer windows and a windmill; an Englishman who would later hang at Tyburn had built himself a Devon cottage with a fenced-in garden and a flower bed; a Spaniard had a house of tile; but it was the French, who predominated, who contributed the wildest a.s.sortment of miniature chalets and country cottages.

But most of the living places were shacks of the meanest sort, with many tents and canvas lean-tos propped against trees, and there were trading spots but no real stores. Wherever one looked, there was an easy juxtaposition of considerable wealth and abject poverty. Since a pirate's standing depended upon his most recent capture at sea, and since most had gone months or even years without having taken a prize, Tortuga was not a handsome place.

But every dwelling did have two features: an open hearth topped by an iron spit for the slow smoking of boucan, and at least one dog, more often two or three. Those were the hallmarks of Tortuga.

When Captain McFee's mutineers from Barbados anch.o.r.ed their Loyal Forever close to the sh.o.r.e of this small, wild island, none realized that this had once been part of the area governed by Christopher Columbus, for Tortuga had always been an appendage to Hispaniola and still was. Santo Domingo, the ancient capital and still a major city, lay far away, two hundred and thirty miles, but it faced the Caribbean while Tortuga had to battle Atlantic storms. That was fitting, for it was a tempestuous, unruly place, its chaotic appearance explained by the fact that at irregular intervals some Spanish governor in Cartagena would bellow: 'Enough of those d.a.m.ned pirates in Tortuga preying on our ships. Destroy the place.' Then Spanish soldiers in helmets, brought north by a small fleet, would storm ash.o.r.e, burn all the houses to the ground, kill everyone including the children and dogs, and leave only ashes. Tortuga would then lie desolated for a while, but soon a new gang of pirates would come ash.o.r.e, sort through the still-warm ashes, and start to build their own preposterous dwellings.

When the Barbados men got there they found the island jammed with outlaws who had grudgingly conceded that they lived most easily if they submitted themselves to a rough form of government. They had even agreed upon a governor, of sorts, a Frenchman elected by his fellow buccaneers.

Tortuga, the island shaped like a turtle, hence its name, was a place of excitement and promise, and Ned was proud to be one of the youngest buccaneers. And because his uncle Will had insisted that Ned learn French and Spanish, he was enlisted in important negotiations regarding the Loyal Forever.

Two big and terrifying French pirates had services to offer which McFee and his Englishmen could not ignore, for as the two Frenchmen explained: 'If you stole your ship standing out there, English patrols will be looking for you. If they catch you, the noose. Because you are now technically pirates.'

As McFee and Tatum listened to this blunt statement, Ned saw them wince, but then the Frenchmen made their offer: 'We'll take your ship and have our carpenters ...'

McFee broke in: 'Don't you do the work?' and the Frenchmen laughed: 'We arrange. Last Spanish ship we captured, we got ourselves eight experienced carpenters. We keep them as our slaves, you might say, but we do feed them well.' He summoned the carpenters, who exploded in a flurry of Spanish as they described how they would tear the Loyal Forever apart and rebuild it so it could never be identified.

'And,' said the Frenchmen, like thoughtful bankers concluding a loan, 'we take your boat and give you ours, the one you see anch.o.r.ed over there. Not quite as big as yours, but not so vulnerable, either.'

The deal was arranged, and by midafternoon the Spanish carpenters were destroying practically everything on the Loyal Forever that might betray its origin, and building in its place a superstructure which created a new silhouette. After a week of intense labor the new ship looked longer, narrower, and had two masts instead of one. The ship they were receiving in exchange had also been sharply modified, and Ned wondered who had owned it before. As to its name, McFee asked the Spanish workmen to carve him a board to attach to the stern, and when it was in place, Ned asked: 'What's Glen Affric?' McFee told him: 'A glen in Scotland where the angels sing.' Ned noted with satisfaction that their new ship had portholes for eight small cannon. 'This Glen Affric will do some singing, too,' he predicted.

But the dream of a quick dash north to intercept a lone Spanish bullion ship on its way to Sevilla was rudely ended when McFee brought disappointing news: 'No action till the Spanish ships go past in May. They want us to go ash.o.r.e on Hispaniola to hunt wild boar,' and Ned was given a very long gun with a spadelike b.u.t.t to jam against his shoulder, a high pointed cap to protect him from the blazing sun, a ration of tobacco and a big, rangy black female hunting dog that had belonged to a French buccaneer killed during a boarding fight. With this gear, plus a bowl made from half a coconut and a blanket rolled into a tube whose ends he tied about his waist, he was ready for the forests of Hispaniola, and when a small boat placed him and ten others on the sh.o.r.e opposite Tortuga, he was prepared for his initiation into the arcane rites of the buccaneer.

Although they were now on the historic island of Hispaniola, the one from which the entire Caribbean had been settled by the probing Spanish, the part they were in was untamed wilderness of low trees, savannah, wild hogs and no settlers at all. But it remained a part of the Spanish empire, even though few in command remembered that it existed.*

In this strange but captivating mixture of wilderness and prairie, Ned was taken from his uncle's group and thrown in with a group of six, headed by a bright young fellow of twenty-seven or so who had been hunting in Hispaniola for some years during those spells when seaborne filibustering was not under way. 'My name Mompox,' he said, just that, nothing more, and in the days that followed, Ned learned that he was half-Spanish, quarter-Meskito Indian from Honduras and quarter-Negro from the Isthmus of Panama. 'Because my color, Spaniards make me slave, work in building fort at Cartagena.'

'How did you break free?' Ned asked, and the big man with roguish eyes replied: 'Like him, like that one, like you maybe,' and he let it go at that. However, from things he said hunting on Hispaniola, Ned deduced that he had been a Tortuga buccaneer for some years.

Of all the group that had been a.s.signed to hunt under him, Mompox seemed to like Ned the best, for he took special pains to instruct him in how to handle his big gun and utilize his trained dog in tracking down wild boar. And when Ned finally shot two in succession, after having missed two, Mompox showed him how to gut the animals, skin them, and cut their rich meat into strips.

When enough hogs had been slain to justify building a big fire, Mompox instructed Ned in the art of barbecuing, and for several days the boy had the job of tending the fire and watching to see that the pork strips did not burn; he also applied salt to the meat and rubbed it with a handful of aromatic leaves that Mompox provided. 'This meat,' Mompox a.s.sured him in a wild mix of many languages, 'will keep for months. Many ships stop by to buy it from us. It fights scurvy.'

When the older man felt that Ned now knew the basic principles of boucan, he led him on a long foray into the interior, and they penetrated to a point so far from sh.o.r.e that along with three others, they reached a spot often visited by patrols from the Spanish part of the big island. On this day they had the bad luck to encounter one, and Ned might have been killed by a sharpshooter had not Mompox seen the Spaniard and shot him. At the end of the tangled fight which ensued, the buccaneers took the man prisoner, but Mompox cut his throat, leaving his corpse propped against a tree.

When the various hunting parties were ready to return to Tortuga, they gathered on the sh.o.r.e and waited two days with their huge bundles of dried meat for ships to come for them, and in that time Will observed with some apprehension the interest Mompox was taking in Ned. When they ate, Mompox slipped the boy better pieces of meat, and when they camped beside the channel, Mompox gathered twigs for Ned's sleeping place. Tatum also noticed that even when the two were separated, Mompox's sharp eyes frequently came to rest on Ned, regardless of where the boy was sitting.

During the waiting time Will said nothing to his nephew, but when the ships came to collect the cured meat and the hunting teams, Will interposed himself onto a bench so that Mompox could not sit beside Ned, but the big chief hunter forestalled him by saying boldly: 'Sit over here, Ned.' Will ignored the move as if it were of no concern; however, when they returned to Tortuga and were off by themselves, he took his nephew aside for some fatherly talk.

'Have you noticed, Ned, how each buccaneer seems to pick out some one person to work with? Sort of look out for each other?'

'Yes. If Mompox hadn't come back for me that time, I'd be dead.'

'You didn't tell me. What happened?' and when Ned explained the incident with the Spanish sharpshooter, Will said approvingly: 'You were lucky Mompox was there,' but then he changed his approach: 'Were you there the night before we went to Hispaniola? The night one of the men suddenly leaped up and stabbed that other fellow?'

'Yes.'

'Why do you suppose he did that?'

'Maybe money?' Ned really did not know and had not the experience to make a sensible guess, so very quietly Will said: 'I doubt it was money. When a lot of men gather together, with no women around ... haven't seen one for months and even years ... Well, men behave in strange ways ... fight each other for strange reasons.'

He stopped there, but Ned was quick-witted enough to know that this conversation had not ended: 'What are you trying to tell me?' And Will said simply: 'Don't get too close to Mompox. No, I don't mean that. Don't let him get too close to you.'

'But he saved my life.'

'That he did, and you owe him a great deal. But not too much.'

Both Will and Ned, and Mompox too, were disappointed when, on their return to Tortuga, they found no plans under way for either an attack on a Spanish treasure galleon or a land a.s.sault on a city in Cuba or Campeachy, and they were appalled at what was proposed. McFee explained as best he could: 'We've sold all the barbacoa we can, and there's no money coming in from any raids. But those two big ships out there, one English, one Dutch, have promised they'll buy all the logwood we can cut ...'

At even the mention of logwood the older buccaneers groaned, for there was no job in the Seven Seas worse than cutting logwood. As one old sailor who had once been forced to work the salt pans at c.u.mana said: 'Logwood is worse. At c.u.mana you at least worked on land. Logwood? Up to your b.u.m in water eighteen hours a day.'

But with Spanish treasure nonexistent, McFee's men had no choice but to sail due westward to the distant sh.o.r.es of Honduras, with the two big ships trailing behind to purchase such logwood as the buccaneers felled. When Ned saw the forlorn tangle of sea and swamp in which the many-branched trees grew, and imagined the insects and snakes and panthers infesting that jungle, he lost heart, but his uncle, who had been two days from death in that Cadiz cell, encouraged him: 'Six months of h.e.l.l, Ned, but they do pa.s.s. And for years after, we'll tell others how bad it was.'

It was exactly what Will had predicted, six months of the most torturous work men could do, up to their thighs in slimy water, beset by cruel insects, attacked now and then by deadly watersnakes, and arms tense from chopping at the tangled logwood trees. It was difficult to believe that these ugly trees were valuable, but one old fellow told Ned: 'Pound for pound, about as valuable as silver,' and a fight broke out when someone else shouted: 'Horse manure!'

Ned would have had a difficult time in the logwood forest had not Mompox been at hand to look after him, tend the horrendous insect bites when they festered, and see that he received adequate food. Once when Ned nearly fainted from a fever caused by bites and constant immersion, Mompox persuaded the Dutch ship to take Ned aboard so that he could at least catch some uninterrupted sleep, and while there the weakened lad asked the captain: 'What do people do with this d.a.m.ned logwood?' and the Dutchman explained: 'Look at the core of that exposed piece. Have you ever seen such a beautiful deep, dark purple-brown ... maybe even a touch of gold?' And when Ned looked, he saw how magnificent the corewood was that he had been harvesting.

'I still don't see what you do with it.'

'A dye, son. One of the strongest and most beautiful in the world.'

'I thought dyes were yellow and blue and red. Bright handsome colors that women like.'

'Those are showy, yes, but this ... this is imperial.'

When Ned was able to go back to work he chopped at his trees with more respect, but as for the occupation of logwood cutter, he had to agree with the men who had described it before he came to Honduras: 'It's h.e.l.lish.'

On the voyage back to Tortuga he asked in some irritation: 'When do we strike the Spanish?' and a longtime member of the force on the island reminded him: 'We wait for the right year with the right wind and the right advantages for our side. Remember that in 1628, Piet Heyn, the great Dutch pirate, waited two years for the moment-but he caught the whole silver armada on its way home to Sevilla. In a daring move never to be repeated, he captured not three treasure galleons, not four, but the whole fleet. Yes, fifteen million guilders in one shot, and a guilder was worth more than a pound. That year his company paid a fifty-percent dividend. I sailed with Heyn, and we got so much prize money I could have bought a farm. But I didn't.'

In the tedious months of 1667 and early 1668, Captain McFee's buccaneers in their perky little Glen Affric partic.i.p.ated in no such lucky a.s.saults, but they did manage to engage in two rather sharp fights in which, in tandem with three other small ships, they attacked two isolated Spanish galleons, losing one and taking the other after a difficult boarding fight. The galleon yielded gratifying prize money for the four crews, and Ned had a chance to watch how his uncle and Mompox treated Spanish prisoners-they shot all of them and pitched their bodies overboard.

That January, when McFee told his crew that during the forthcoming quiet season, when no Spanish ships could be expected, they had two choices: 'Hunt wild boar on Hispaniola or go back to Honduras for more logwood,' they rebelled: 'No. We took great risks to come here to fight Spanish ships, and that we shall do.'

'Brave speech!' McFee said as if applauding their courage, but then he became scornful: 'And what will you eat for the next ten months? Choose. Hunting or chopping.'

It was Mompox who solved the dilemma, for he was an adroit man who listened to whatever rumors circulated: 'They say there's a captain who's very lucky over in Jamaica. And I like to sail with lucky captains, because we share in whatever he captures.'

And for the first time Will Tatum and his nephew heard more than the general rumors that had been filtering through the Caribbean. The captain was Henry Morgan, a thirty-three-year-old Welshman who had come out to Barbados some years before as an indentured servant and who had graduated, like McFee, to a life of buccaneering, a trade in which he had known spectacular successes. He was widely regarded as a lucky captain, one to whom rich target ships were drawn as if by magnets. He had not yet enjoyed feats like the great Piet Heyn, or sacked Spanish cities the way the cruel Frenchman L'Ollonais did so effectively, but he had proved his mettle by driving his little ships against huge adversaries and coming away victorious. As Mompox told the men on the Glen Affric: 'They say: "When you sail with Morgan, you come home with money." ' And off they sailed to Port Royal.

Ned would never forget the day of their arrival. Standing in the prow of the Glen Affric, he watched as they approached from the south the big island of Jamaica, and as if he might have to bring his own ship into port at some future time, he excitedly rattled on, though Will was barely paying attention to him: 'From this distance it's impossible to see there's a port anywhere on that coast. Just Jamaica, big and looming. But look! There seems to be a chain of pinpoint islets sweeping westward, parallel to the land. They can't be far offsh.o.r.e, but I can see they must shelter a bay behind them. But to enter it, I'd have to sail far to the west, turn, and then sail back east. That's just what we're doing.'

He had no sooner made this deduction than he gasped, for the bay subtended by his arc of little islands was enormous: 'All the warships of England could find safe harboring in here. Uncle Will! This is stupendous!' But Will was looking at the real miracle of this anchorage. What young Ned had a.s.sumed was a chain of islets was in reality a long, low sandspit curving from the mainland, and at its end stood a town.

'That must be Port Royal!' Will whispered, and the sense of awe with which he clothed the words forced Ned to study more closely the famous buccaneers' capital: 'It has a fort, so they mean to protect it. Hundreds of houses, so people live here. That's a church. A place for hauling out ships to sc.r.a.pe the bottoms. And those must be shops. But look at that sign! It's a wine shop ... and that one ... and that.'

Only then did he look eastward to inspect the great bay itself: 'More than two dozen huge ships! They can't all belong to buccaneers! There wouldn't be enough Spanish ships for that many to attack.'

As Captain McFee edged the Glen Affric toward its anchorage, his crew caught the full impact of this fabled seaport, the most savage and uncontrolled anywhere in the western world that ships dropped anchor. From where the Glen Affric came to rest, its sailors were close to a most inviting town, with white houses in a row, big sh.o.r.e establishments for the holding of goods, four or five churches and a small cathedral of sorts. What they could not see, but which they took for granted from the stories Mompox had told, were the forty taverns and fifty entertainment houses that accounted for the town's evil reputation.

It was not exaggerated, for when they went ash.o.r.e they quickly saw that Port Royal was special. It had no police, no restraints of any kind, and the soldiers stationed in the fort seemed as undisciplined as the pirates who roared ash.o.r.e to take over the place, night after night. They were of all breeds and certainly all colors, and all with nefarious occupations. In some hectic months Port Royal averaged a dozen killings a night, and prominent on the waterfront was a rude gallows from whose yardarm, 'dancing in Port Royal sunshine,' was the corpse of some pirate who had attacked the wrong ship at the wrong time.

How different it was, Ned thought during his first few days, from Tortuga. The latter had been dour and barren, the food monotonous and the beer rotten. Port Royal, on the other hand, was a rollicking place. The food was excellent, with fresh fruits from inland Jamaica, beef from the plantations and fish from the sea. Whole casks of wine arrived from Europe and a rough beer from local brewers. But better than those amenities, most pirates thought, were the women of all colors who streamed in from lands in or touching upon the Caribbean. They were wild and wonderful, addicted like the men to strong drink and riotous living, and men who came down from the womanless world of Tortuga eagerly sought the diversion these lively women could provide.

Curiously, on Sundays the churches on the spit were just as crowded as the taverns had been during the week, and clergymen did not hesitate to remind their bleary-eyed congregations that if they continued piracy and debauchery as their way of life, retribution was sure to follow. Church of England rectors, who appreciated a nip now and then, did not inveigh against drinking, but ministers from the more rigorous sects did, and there was usually some traveling missionary from either England or the American colonies who preached fire and brimstone as the likely termination of Port Royal's dissolute ways.

Ned, who had promised his mother that he would attend church, was faithful to his vow, and it was after a particularly thunderous sermon, which he had listened to with Mompox at his side, that the minister, seeing him among the known buccaneers and marking his youth, stopped him as he was leaving the church and invited him to the rectory for Sunday dinner. Ned said that Mompox would have to come too, and the minister laughed: 'Enough for three, it'll stretch to four.'

The dinner combined tasty food, a fine wine and a fascinating history of Jamaica by a man who had partic.i.p.ated in it: 'In 1655, Oliver Cromwell sent into the Caribbean two gloriously incompetent men, buffoons, really, Admiral Penn in charge of only G.o.d knows how many ships, and General Venables leading an army of men. Their chaplain? Me. We had simple orders: "Capture Hispaniola from the Spaniards." But when we tried, Penn landed thirty miles from our target and Venables forgot to take along food or water. When we finally reached the walls of Santo Domingo, we were so exhausted that three hundred Spanish soldiers defeated three thousand of ours, and we ran like the devil back to our ships, dropping our arms as we ran.'

Ned, aghast at this tale of incompetence, said: 'A terrible defeat,' but with a wide smile the clergyman corrected: 'Not at all! A glorious victory!'

'How could that be?' Ned asked. 'Did you go back and take the city?'

'Not at all!' the ruddy-faced minister repeated in the same exultant accents. 'A crisis meeting was held aboard ship, and Penn said: "If we sail home now, Cromwell will chop off our heads," and Venables asked: "What shall we do?" Neither could think of an escape, but a very young lieutenant named Pembroke, hardly more than a boy, asked brightly: "Since we're already in these waters, why don't we capture Jamaica?" When Penn studied his chart he saw that it was only four hundred and sixty miles to the west, and cried out: "On to Jamaica!"

'Well, I expected another disaster, because I could see that Penn knew nothing about ships and Venables less about armies, but Pembroke guided our fleet into this harbor, and this time our thousands of soldiers went ash.o.r.e within walking distance of the Spanish, who had only a handful of men to oppose us. We won, and took possession of this magnificent island. When Penn and Venables returned to England, they said little to the newspapers or Parliament about their defeat at Hispaniola but a good deal about their capture of Jamaica. They talked themselves into heroes.

'Both Penn and Venables wanted me to return to England with them. Promised me a good church in Cromwell's new religion. But having seen Jamaica, I didn't want to leave.' He smiled at his guests, and added: 'So you see, young men, you can sometimes lose a big battle but go on to win a bigger one. Jamaica is the jewel of the Caribbean.'

On the following Monday, Ned was lounging in a tavern when several old-timers gathered round in hopes that he was buying, and after he treated, they instructed him in the niceties of maritime warfare as conducted by Englishmen: 'You mustn't never call us pirates. A pirate is a sailor who storms about the seas, obeyin' no laws, no rules of decency. He'll attack anything that floats, even a sea gull if he can't spy no Spanish galleon. Frenchmen can be pirates, and Dutchmen too, but never a proper Englishman.' They warned Ned that if he wished to get his skull cracked, all he had to do was call a Port Royal man a pirate.

'You can't use corsair, neither. Just a fancy name for pirate. Freebooter, neither. Nor even buccaneer, which is only a shade better. Unruly, stuck away on Tortuga with his long gun and dog. Never washes. Lashes out now and then, captures a little ship with little cargo, then scuttles back to Tortuga to celebrate with his filthy cronies.' The man speaking spat in a corner: 'And what do you think this here buccaneer does when he can't catch a Spaniard? Cuts logwood in Honduras.'

The mere mention of such labor sickened Ned. 'What do you want to be called?' he asked.

'What are we? We're privateers. We sail under Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by the king and we act obedient to his law. You might say we're part of his navy, informal like.'

At this point the gathering was electrified by a shout from Mompox, who appeared in the doorway: 'Henry Morgan's sailing for the Main!' and he had hardly begun to explain that this meant the mainland of South America when others ran in, crying out and adding to the general confusion: 'Henry Morgan for Cartagena!' and 'Captain Morgan for Havana!'

In seconds the tavern was emptied as men of all character rushed to a small government building in whose main room the great privateer waited to instruct the captains whose ships would comprise his fleet, and both Ned and his uncle were delighted when one of Morgan's aides announced that among those chosen to partic.i.p.ate was Angus McFee and his Glen Affric. Then Morgan rose, a husky man of medium height with strange mustaches that started thin under his nose and bloomed into little round bulbs on his sun-darkened cheeks. Beneath his lower lip sprouted a small goatee, and about his shoulders hung a heavy brocaded coat. His most impressive feature was the sternness of his eyes, for when he glared at a man and issued an order, it was clear that it would be impossible to disobey.

Asking the eleven captains who would join him to step forward, he told them in a low voice: 'It's to be Porto Bello,' and before they could respond to the striking news, for that well-fortified harbor was supposed to be impregnable, he spoke as if its capture would be nothing more than an ordinary land operation. But later, when Captain McFee a.s.sembled his crew aboard the Glen Affric, Ned heard with surprise how strict the rules would be: 'Upon pain of instant death, never attack an English ship. Nor any ships of a nation enjoying a treaty of peace with us, and for the time being that includes the Dutch.'

Concerning injuries, the usual rules would apply: 'Lose a right arm, you get six hundred pieces of eight, or six slaves; loss of a left, five hundred, or five slaves. Same if you lose a right leg or a left. If you lose an eye, one hundred pieces, or one slave; and for the loss of a finger, the same.'

A captain was allowed to include in his crew men of any nationality, and McFee's would ultimately have Englishmen, Portuguese, Dutch, Indians from the Meskito coast, many Frenchmen and even a few disgruntled Spaniards who had been ill treated in Cartagena or Panama. The rule governing slaves was complicated: 'We can take slaves aboard to do heavy work, but only such as we find on the vessels we capture. Severe penalties if we accept any slaves who have run away from Jamaica plantations. Owners there need them for the sugar crop.'

And then came two curious rules which determined certain odd behaviors of the privateers: 'If we capture a foreign ship at sea, we must sail it back to Port Royal so the crown can catalogue its contents and skim off its share of our prize. But if we sack a Spanish town on land, the entire spoil belongs to us. That's why Captain Morgan is going to ignore the big Spanish ships and head right for Porto Bello, where the land treasure is.'

Morgan himself came before the captains to recite ominously the final rule, handed down by the king, which governed English pirates, corsairs, buccaneers and privateers alike; its harsh terms would explain much of the barbaric behavior Ned would engage in during the years ahead: 'If you capture Spanish prisoners, treat them exactly as our subjects are treated when the Spaniards capture them.'

Then the twelve captains signed receipts indicating that they had received from the Jamaican government Letters of Marque which bestowed legality on their enterprise, but such niceties did not influence Tatum or his nephew. 'We're not privateers,' Will said. 'We're plain buccaneers, and that's what I want to be called.' Ned agreed; he had not run away from home, experienced the wild life on Tortuga and the slavery of the logwood jungles to find refuge in the legal refinements of privateering. He would sail with Morgan and proudly obey his orders, but at heart he would still be a buccaneer.

As Henry Morgan's armada of twelve nondescript vessels crept secretly along the coast of Nicaragua on their approach to the rich target of Porto Bello, they were blessed with two strokes of good luck: they captured the Spanish lookout vessel which was supposed to speed back to Porto Bello with news of any approaching pirates; and spotted in dark waters a small boat being paddled by six Indians who signaled to the big ships as if calling for help. When brought aboard, the Indians turned out to be Englishmen, with a gruesome story: 'We're ordinary prisoners taken from English ships by Spaniards. How were we treated? Chained hand and foot to the ground of a prison cell that contained thirty-three of us, so close that each unwashed man offended the nose of the man chained next to him. At dawn we were unchained and taken into salt water up to our bellies, where we worked all day in the blazing sun. Look at our bodies. Leather. Some days no food at all. Others meat with worms. Legs torn, feet bleeding, and at night, the same chains on the same cold ground in the same crowded cell.'

Captain Morgan asked: 'How did you escape?' and they said: 'We killed two guards, so if they ever catch us, it's torture and death.' Then Morgan asked: 'Will you guide us in our attack on Porto Bello?' and the chief spokesman said: 'If necessary, on our hands and knees,' and when Morgan promised: 'You will have your revenge,' the man revealed news which caused gasps: 'Remember when Prince Rupert, the glorious cavalryman, lost one of his ships in that hurricane off Martinique? And everyone believed that his brother, Prince Maurice, drowned? Not at all! In a small boat he and others reached the coast of Puerto Rico, where the Dons arrested him. And he's one of those languishing in the bowels of that castle.'

Morgan, realizing that if his buccaneers could rescue the prince and restore him to the royal family in England, great honor would come to him and his men, saw to it that the sun-blackened Englishmen were pa.s.sed from ship to ship so that all could hear their report of what was sure to happen if they were captured during the attack. When the men reached McFee's Glen Affric, Will Tatum asked to serve as their custodian, and at the conclusion of their report, he asked for a few minutes to relate his experiences in the jail at Cadiz where English sailors were burned alive, and the crowded quarters in which he spoke became silent as the sailors grimly listened.

When the big ships had sneaked as far down the coast as they dared without being prematurely detected, twenty-three large canoas were dropped into the water, each capable of carrying a score of fighting men. For three days and nights oarsmen rowed and paddled eastward, until, on the dark night of 10 July 1668, Will Tatum, steering in the lead canoa, pa.s.sed the word to those following: 'The guides say this is the last safe place.' Silently, the sailors dragged their canoas ash.o.r.e, and every man checked his three weapons: gun, sword, dagger. Only then did Morgan give the order: 'We take the town first and then the big fort.'

Since Porto Bello contained three powerful forts-two at strategic points along the bay, one commanding the city-the Spaniards were sure that no seaborne force could successfully attack their fortress city, but they had never been a.s.saulted on land by men like Morgan's privateers. Stealth and the accurate spy work by the leather-skinned former prisoners enabled the attackers to reach the western outskirts of the city undetected. There in the hours before dawn they a.s.sembled, and suddenly, with wild yells and the firing of guns at anything that moved, they created havoc, in the midst of which they were able to capture the heart of the city without the loss of a single man. But Morgan knew that this was a hollow victory so long as the Spaniards held the three forts, so without stopping for meaningless celebration, he cried: 'To the big castle!' and he personally led the attack.

This fortress-castle had been so strategically placed and solidly constructed, its ma.s.sive guns commanding both the streets of the city and the anchorages in the harbor, that it looked impregnable, but it was afflicted with that indolent rot which doomed so many Spanish ventures in the steamy climates of the New World. The officer in charge, the castellan, was a man of such flawed character that his ineptness was comical. For example, his constable of artillery, who should have been able to man his considerable cannons with lethal effect against a storming party, did not even have his cannon loaded, so with almost shameful haste the great fortress was surrendered. In the final a.s.sault the castellan was mercifully slain, releasing him from the painful obligation of explaining his deficiencies to the king.

The ineffective constable suffered a more bizarre fate. Surrounded by Englishmen to whom he wanted to surrender his guns, his fort and his honor, he looked about for some officer among the invaders and saw Captain McFee. Falling before him on one knee, he threw his arms wide, exposed his chest, and cried in broken English: 'Dishonored ... failure to my king ... no life ahead ... shoot me!' McFee was staggered by such a plea, but not Tatum, who stood beside him. With a sudden grab for his pistol, Will thrust it against the man's chest and pressed the trigger.

Now came Ned Pennyfeather's harsh introduction to the life and morals of buccaneering, for the victorious Englishmen herded all the castle's Spanish officers and men into a room as small as the cell in which the English prisoners said they had once been kept. When they were in place, Ned was sent down into the cellar to haul barrels of gunpowder into position under the room, and when he returned to where Will was guarding the prisoners, he saw to his horror that his uncle had laid a trail of heavy black powder from that room and down the stairs to the barrels.