Caribbean: a novel Part 15

'Smell this,' Will cried bitterly to an imprisoned Spanish captain. 'What is it?'

'Gunpowder.'

'Run for your lives,' Will shouted to Ned and the other sailors, and when they were gone, he ignited the powder trail in the room, watched it start down the stairs, and dashed to safety. Before the prisoners could break free, a tremendous explosion destroyed their corner of the castle and all were blown to bits.

Morgan had eliminated one of the castles, but another of significant strength remained, and it was commanded by a most valiant man, the governor himself, supported by soldiers of merit who repulsed one English attack after another, until even Morgan had to admit: 'If we don't do something powerful, they'll prevail.'

What he did was teach even the Spaniards a lesson in the brutalities of pirating, for he halted his attack on the castle, turning instead to raid a monastery, from which he collected a group of monks, and a convent, from which he took many nuns. While this was being done, his carpenters were a.s.sembling extremely wide ladders, 'so broad that four men could climb side by side to scale a wall.'

When all was ready he gave simple orders to the monks and nuns: 'You and you, lift those ladders and carry them to the wall of that castle.' And behind the religious he marched the mayor of the city, the businessmen and the elders to help bear the weight of the ladders: 'If anyone falters, man or woman, you'll be shot in the back.' To ensure that the ladders went forward, he intermixed sailors with the group, and Ned was a.s.signed the job of goading forward the nuns.

As this tragic procession started toward the walls, the men around Morgan said: 'But the Spaniards will never dare fire at their own people, and religious ones at that,' and he said: 'You don't know Spaniards.'

Slowly the heavy ladders inched toward the walls. Nervously Ned bent double to hide behind the nuns. Urgently Morgan drove the column forward. And on the parapets the governor waited, deliberating. He saw that the ladders were of such dimension that once planted, scaling his walls would be possible, and if that happened, all was lost. But he also realized that he could halt the progress of the deadly ladders only by firing directly at the best citizens of his city.

Now from the ladder-bearers rose pitiful cries directed at the governor: 'Do not fire on us! Save us, we are your people!' Some called him by name. Others reminded him of past relationships, and all looked upward into the barrels of his guns.

'Fire!' he shouted, and the guns blazed into the ma.s.s of his friends. After the dead nuns and the shattered monks had fallen aside, Ned and the others goaded the survivors to keep plodding ahead with their ladders.

'Fire!' Others fell, but then the ladders were tilted against the walls and a hundred sailors led by remorseless Will Tatum were up and over.

The fighting was wild and close in, and marked by great heroism on both sides. This was no easy victory like that at the first fort, no Spanish officer asking the English to shoot him. The Spanish governor in particular conducted himself with such outstanding bravery that even Tatum had to admire him: 'Sir, yield with honor! Your life will be spared!'

Thinking that the governor did not hear him, for he fought on incredibly, Will called for Ned to interpret for him, and his nephew shouted: 'Honorable Gobernador, rindase con honor.' This time the n.o.ble fighting machine heard the words, saluted, and half lunged at three a.s.sailants, who had no course but to cut him down.

To Ned, the next two days would always remain a blur, days that happened but which he preferred to erase from memory. The privateers, having won an incredible victory against one of Spain's main cities, a key link in the Peru-Sevilla chain, felt themselves ent.i.tled to a victory debauch, and they launched one with no regard to the rights of the defeated or the rules of decency. Rape and pillage, maiming and burning, turned proud Porto Bello into a charnel house, and many a Spanish man seeking to protect his woman ended with a saber through his chest. Ned, watching the saturnalia, thought: When I left Barbados, I wasn't seeking this.

It was not a Spanish survivor who reported the b.e.s.t.i.a.lity of these two days, but a Dutchman who had served as one of Morgan's captains. Many years after, when an old man in retirement at The Hague, he wrote: What the English did at Porto Bello leaves a scar on my soul, for I did not believe that men who were such decent companions afloat could be such fiends ash.o.r.e. After we captured the two castles we gathered all the citizens into the public square and told them: 'Show us where you hid the money, or we will make you tell.'

This brought forth some money from people who knew what to expect from English pirates, because that's what they were despite calling themselves privateers. Having gained the easy money, they now set about searching for the hard, and they did this by applying to men and women alike the most h.e.l.lish tortures that man has devised. Racks were set up in various spots to tear limbs apart. Fire was applied to all parts of the body. They used a most terrible torture they called woolding, whereby a broad cord was placed around the head at the middle forehead. Then, with sticks knotted into the cord at the back, they drew the cord ever tighter, causing the worst pain a man could know, for even his brains were addled, his eyes began popping out of his head, until at last he fainted and often died from a crushed brain.

I saw them cut people apart, slowly and with repeated shouts 'Where's it hidden?' until body and soul fragmented at the same instant. I saw them do things to women that are best forgotten, but what haunts me to this day are the indecencies visited upon Catholic nuns who could not have had even one peso.

In this Dutchman's horrified recollection of the sack of Porto Bello appeared a pa.s.sage which threw oblique light on how these extravagances affected young Pennyfeather on his first serious privateering adventure: Each morning Captain Morgan sent scouting parties to search the woods for men and women who had fled at first gunfire: 'If they were clever enough to flee, they were also smart enough to have gathered riches in years past. We must find where the jewels and silver are hidden.' These people, when caught, were subjected to the worst tortures, and on the fourth morning, when I was sent out at the head of a detachment to capture the last groups that had remained in hiding, I had in my command a fine English lad called Ned, and together we found three families of refugees, but as we were bringing them in, roped together, I saw Ned watch carefully the other pirates, and when they were not looking he untied the women and set them free. He caught me looking at him, but, not wishing to see acts I would have to report, I turned away.

When the tortures were concluded, emissaries were sent across the isthmus to the capital city of Panama to demand a ransom of 350,000 pesos in silver, failing which, the entire city of Porto Bello would be burned to the ground. Officials in Panama replied that they could not raise such a sum, but they did offer to give Morgan a promissory note on a bank in Genoa; he replied, sensibly: 'Privateers feel safer with hard bullion.' In the end, 100,000 pesos were paid, and twenty-four days after the initial a.s.sault the privateering fleet weighed anchor and started the swift run back to Port Royal, where Will Tatum, Ned Pennyfeather and each of the other partic.i.p.ants received at least a hundred and fifty English pounds, in those days a tremendous sum. Ned sent his share back to his mother.

If Ned Pennyfeather at the sack of Porto Bello in 1668 saw Henry Morgan at his brutal worst, in 1669 at the attack on Maracaibo he saw him at his strategic best. The story of how Morgan came to attack the nearly impregnable site is one of the dramatic tales of the Caribbean.

After his reverberating victory at Porto Bello the British government gave him, as their soi-disant Admiral of the Spanish Main, a powerful new ship, the Oxford, a 34-gun frigate with a crew of a hundred and sixty. Naval warfare in the Caribbean was about to be drastically modified.

To a convocation held aboard his new ship anch.o.r.ed at Isla Vaca, a small Jamaican island halfway between the pirate strongholds of Tortuga and Port Royal, Morgan invited any captains who might be interested in a major privateering foray, and a cutthroat gang of desperadoes met to decide what rich city along the Main to attack next. As always, they would be guided by the rule: 'If we capture a ship, the king gets his share, but if we sack a city, we get it all.' Before the discussion began, Morgan, in a show of schoolboy pride, wanted to display his new ship: 'Look at the stoutness of this cabin, the heaviness of the holds. This is a fighting ship.' And then he added: 'Gentlemen, in a few minutes we shall select our next target, and remember that for the first time we will have at the core of our fleet this powerful ship, stronger than anything the Spanish can muster against us.' And then, in his enchanting Welsh way, he could not refrain from adding a comic touch: 'The Oxford was sent out here for one purpose only, to suppress piracy. So if you sight any pirates, let me be the first to know.'

Because of the Oxford, discussion of possible targets was animated, and lesser towns like those serving the logwood trade were not even considered. 'Any profit in heading back to Porto Bello?'

'None,' Morgan said. 'We picked that chicken clean.'

'What chances at Vera Cruz?'

'If Drake and Hawkins failed, how could we succeed? We've proved we're good, and with this new one, we'll be very good. But not invincible.'

'Campeche?'

'Not rich enough.'

'Havana?'

'Those new forts? No!'

And then Captain McFee named the target that all had been thinking of but none had been brave enough to mention: 'Cartagena?'

This magical name evoked a flood of memories. Drake had gained much booty there. Dutch pirates had attacked it. The fierce French pirate, L'Ollonais, cruelest man ever to sail the Caribbean, had tried Cartagena, and many others had attempted investing it for its almost limitless wealth, only to be thrown back by its formidable defenses. One who had been defeated there described it as 'a bay within a bay whose forts protect a smaller, tighter bay rimmed with guns. It can be taken, but not by mortals.'

'Drake took it,' someone said, and another captain replied: 'A century ago, before the new forts were built.' Before anyone could comment, he reminded them: 'Spanish engineers can build a lot of forts in a hundred years.'

Then Morgan spoke: 'The thirty-four big guns of our Oxford can silence whatever guns the Spanish have. It's Cartagena!'

The more timorous captains would surely have advised against such boldness had not, at this precise moment, a careless spark from some source never identified fallen into the powder magazines, igniting an explosion of such enormous magnitude that it blew the Oxford completely apart, causing it to founder immediately and sink with more than two hundred men. Miraculously, Morgan and his senior captains were saved by the stout construction of the room in which they met, and as he said nonchalantly when fished from the water: 'The Morgan luck held again.'

When the sea-drenched survivors huddled ash.o.r.e, Morgan did not allow them even a minute to lament their great loss, for while the few members of the crew who had escaped built fires to dry off, he told the captains: 'As we were saying a few minutes ago, we're not strong enough to attack Vera Cruz, and now without the Oxford we can't a.s.sault Cartagena. Well, men, what city is available?'

A French captain who had probed all corners of the Caribbean, and fiercely, said: 'Admiral Morgan, there's one no man has mentioned. Maracaibo,' and the English captains looked hesitantly, one at the other, and for good reason.

On the northern coast of Venezuela, nearly five hundred miles west of the great salt flats at c.u.mana but only four hundred miles east of Cartagena, lay the huge gulf of Venezuela, at whose southern end a very narrow channel led to an inland fresh-water lake nearly as big as the gulf itself. It was called La Laguna de Maracaibo, to be famous in later centuries for its large deposits of oil, and it measured eighty-six miles north to south, sixty east to west, more than five thousand square miles. It was a world to itself, practically cut off from the sea and rimmed by fruitful fields, prosperous villages and, at the end of the channel, by the substantial town bearing the same name as the laguna.

Maracaibo was thus both a tempting target because of its wealth and a very dangerous one because of the risk of getting one's ships trapped inside the lake if a squadron of Spanish warships could be summoned while a raid was under way. Even well-armed privateers with ample gunfire thought twice about trying to sack the Maracaibo area: 'The spoils would be vast, but there's always that terrible risk of getting trapped in the channel. What happens then?'

Morgan, reflecting on the dangers involved in attempting this ticklish target, said: 'Let's get some sleep, if we can,' and in the morning he gathered his captains: 'It's got to be Maracaibo.' And that was how, on the morning of 9 March 1669, Ned Pennyfeather stood in the prow of the Glen Affric with a sounding line checking the depths of the tortuous entrance into the laguna. At times the pa.s.sageway was so narrow, he felt he could reach out and touch the sh.o.r.e, but he was so busy attending to his job that he almost failed to see looming ahead on a prominent point a Spanish fort whose guns might destroy the ship. It was prodigious, a huge ma.s.s of stone wall and iron battlement with heavy guns pointed directly at the ten approaching ships.

'Guns!' he shouted belatedly, just as a shot, poorly aimed and elevated, screamed overhead, far wide of the invading ships. It was the Spanish tragedy repeated: a fine castle-fortress, perfectly placed and properly armed, but undermanned by troops lacking in either determination or skill. Ned was almost ashamed at how easily Morgan's men took this excellent fort without the loss of a single sailor.

But his uncle Will voiced the apprehension of all old-timers: 'It was easy getting in, but will we get out?' and in subsequent days, while the fleet stormed through the great lagoon, achieving victory after victory, the older sailors kept wondering: 'How do we get our booty out of this trap?'

The booty was enormous, for the smaller towns perched on the banks of the lagoon were rich indeed, but the citizens had cleverly hidden their gold and jewels, so that Ned was confronted with a grave moral crisis, realizing that if the buccaneers hoped to collect the great wealth, someone must capture rich citizens who had fled into the hills, bring them back in shackles, and somehow force them into revealing their secret hiding places. Doing the latter was horrible, involving as it did the rack, the fire and the terrible woolding. But he never partic.i.p.ated in the tortures. He did track down and deliver the people to the quarters in which the questioning took place, and when the hiding places were revealed, he did hurry there and dig up the jewels.

During a drinking celebration when the buccaneers were celebrating the success of their raid, a lookout who had been stationed at the entrance to the lagoon arrived with the news all had feared: 'Spanish warships have moved in to block the escape route.' Instantly men hovering on the edge of drunkenness sobered and all faces turned to watch Morgan, who showed that he was not surprised by this unlucky turn. He asked the messenger to sit down, take a drink of ale, and answer questions.

'How many ships?' One big and six or seven smaller, about the size of Captain McFee's.

'Any attempt to reactivate the fort we partially destroyed?' Oh yes! Heavy rebuilding, new cannons, first-cla.s.s troops moving in.

'Any attempt to move the Spanish ships into the laguna?' None. They're bunched in the channel, waiting for you to try to break through.

At this point Morgan took an apparently unrelated tack: 'The big ship? Has it high sides?' ... 'Is there an area near the fort where a canoa could land and discharge men?' ... 'Any forest in the vicinity?' When he had heard enough, he calmly told his captains: 'Problem is simple, gentlemen. We break through their blockade, sail back to Port Royal, and distribute our prize money,' and none of the captains dared ask him 'How?'

He had only one option: to run the gauntlet even though the forces arrayed against him seemed overpowering, and on 27 April 1669 he prepared to do just this. Ned, who now served aboard the flagship, had an opportunity to observe at close hand the brilliant manner in which Morgan prepared to make his dash for freedom. Moving his ten-ship flotilla toward the contested exit, he addressed his sailors: 'We don't have to do it the way they expect. We'll do it our way.' And he a.s.signed the men diverse tasks. Some cut lengths of wood from which to make a host of imaginary men, others dressed them in improvised hats, while still others armed them with sticks. Having learned that Will Tatum was a man to trust with important tasks, Morgan summoned him from another ship: 'Will, I want you to bury this deck with everything you can find that burns. Especially tar, pitch and loose gunpowder. Then cover the mess with dry leaves and sticks.' Will asked quietly: 'You're not going to sacrifice your own flagship?' and Morgan replied: 'No Spanish admiral would do it, but I shall.' And while Will and Ned prepared the ship for the flames, Morgan directed his blacksmiths: 'Forge me six huge grappling hooks, twice as big as any you've made before,' and when they were done, great clawing monsters, Morgan himself helped reeve heavy ropes to them.

When all was ready, with three smaller ships pared to the gunwales so they could fly over the water, Morgan gave the signal, and his fearfully overmatched fleet set sail as if trying to break through the cordon, but when the fire ship, controlled only by Tatum, Pennyfeather and eight daring men, plus the wooden sailors who stood ferocious along the deck, drew abreast of the big Spanish ship that formed the heart of their defense, the pirate craft did not try to steal past, but turned suddenly to head straight for the midquarter of the enemy ship, while two of the smaller English vessels attacked fore and aft. The three English ships smashed simultaneously the great Spanish warship, grappled themselves to her, and caused the Spanish defenders to break into three groups. They would have done better by opposing only the big ship in the middle, for once the hooks were set and separating made impossible, Tatum and Pennyfeather shouted to the other Englishmen: 'Flee! We fire the powder!' and the men leaped overboard to be rescued by a trailing ship while Will did what gave him pleasure: setting fire to the chain of powder which, even before he and Ned leaped into the sea, exploded in a vast fireball that ignited all the inflammables on deck, leaving the huge Spanish warship prey to the roaring flames.

In one gigantic blaze the two ships intermingled their fates, iron grapples binding them together as they burned to the water line and sank as one. The major Spanish plug in the escape route had been removed.

Meanwhile, the second largest Spanish ship had fled toward the fort in an attempt to beach itself so that its crew could get ash.o.r.e and help man the fort, but one of the swift English vessels trailed it and with fireb.a.l.l.s set it ablaze, leaving it a smoking hulk. The third big Spanish ship was chased right out of the laguna and into the narrows, where it was captured and where Morgan adopted it as his flagship to replace the one he had sacrificed to the burning. The lagoon was cleared of Spanish ships and the first of the impediments to freedom had been removed.

In the morning Captain Morgan addressed himself to the problem of how to get past that menacing fort whose restored guns could destroy any enemy trying to sneak by. The task looked impossible.

But on that morning more than a month ago when he had sailed his ships past the fort, he had seen a way to get them back out, and now he put it into effect. Gathering about him all the big canoas his men had captured within the laguna, he placed in each twenty well-armed men, clearly visible, and directed the steersman to head for sh.o.r.e near the approaches to the castle but to land in the midst of tangled trees. There the canoas ostensibly unloaded what would become an a.s.sault force on the fort, but when they returned to the pirate ships, with only two rowers visible, the other eighteen were stretched flat in the bottom with leaves covering their bare arms, lest they glisten and betray the trick.

In this clever manner, Morgan appeared to have landed at the foot of the fort an immense a.s.sault party, whereas in reality all his men were back aboard their ships, but hidden belowdecks. The occupants of the fort, determined not to be taken by surprise, switched their heavy guns away from the seafront and pointed them directly at the spot where the sailors had landed and from where they could be expected to launch their attack.

It never came. Instead, a lone lookout attending the sea pa.s.sage shouted: 'They're escaping!' And when the defenders rushed to that side of their fort, armed only with pistols and swords, their guns having been pointed the wrong way, they saw Henry Morgan and his fleet of ten heading serenely into the narrow channel that would lead them to freedom. One Spanish officer who had a navigator's gla.s.s studied the lead ship, and cried to his fellows: 'That swine! He's using our Soledad as his flagship and he's sitting there drinking what has to be rum.' Morgan was free and on his way back to Port Royal.

The deadly trio, Captain McFee with his Glen Affric, Will Tatum as his first mate and Ned Pennyfeather as a hanger-on, wasted the year 1670 in diverse and unproductive ways: loafing around the inns of Port Royal, drinking and carousing. A Quaker missionary, come down from Philadelphia to serve on Barbados, was laid over in Port Royal when his ship lost a spar, but after one horrendous day ash.o.r.e he retreated to his cabin, from which he would not budge so long as his ship remained in that h.e.l.lhole: I often read about Sodom and Gomorrah, and I thought: They could not have been real, just symbols of evil. But Port Royal is very real, and if this were the old days, G.o.d would sweep this place off the face of the earth.

Grown irritable in their idleness, the Glen Affric men set out to sea with no sensible plan in mind. 'The logwood jungles we don't want,' the sailors insisted, and they kept hoping to intercept a Spanish treasure ship, but none appeared. So they wandered first toward Porto Bello, but the unexpected arrival of an entire Spanish convoy from Cartagena scared them away from certain disaster.

In their random wandering, they never called the sea upon which they were traveling the Caribbean. That word had in those years not yet come into common usage. Because of the curious way in which the Isthmus of Panama ran-west to east and not, as one might have expected, north to south-the Caribbean was always referred to as the North Sea, which it was, and the Pacific as the South. So Drake fought the Spanish in the North Sea, then crept through the Strait of Magellan to come home by way of the South Sea, not the Pacific. And Sir Harry Morgan ravaged the North Sea, not the Caribbean.

One sailor kept telling McFee: 'Mexico is where the silver is,' so for want of anything better, the Affric sailed northwest to the first Mexican land they could find. It turned out to be the historic island of Cozumel, but when they stormed ash.o.r.e, guns ready, they found nothing but a collection of decaying temple ruins from some ancient period. Will, studying the fallen rocks, announced them to be Egyptian and the others accepted his opinion, but there was much discussion as to how the Egyptians had reached this forlorn spot.

At Cozumel they found not one peso, but Ned did come across a small carved head which must have been broken from a larger statue, and this he carried back to the ship with him, but when his uncle saw it on the boy's hammock he threw it overboard: 'We don't want no heathen idols on this Christian ship. Bad luck.'

In the last days of 1670, Captain Morgan himself let it be known that he had in mind 'to try one of the vastest enterprises ever attempted in these seas,' and as the rumor spread, captains like Angus McFee with his small tough Glen Affric swarmed back into Port Royal, to hear the official confirmation: 'Captain Henry Morgan, with official papers from the king and from the governor of Jamaica, has been appointed admiral and commander in chief of all forces arranged against the Spanish, and he invites any ships and crews interested to meet with him at Isla Vaca off the southwest corner of Hispaniola to lay plans.' Within a few days the roadstead at Port Royal was deserted as a small armada converged upon the little island off whose sh.o.r.e the great warship Oxford had exploded two years before, and Morgan was delighted to see that nearly a dozen battle-scarred French ships were among them, for he had high regard for the fighting ability of the French buccaneers. 'Best in the Caribbean,' he frequently said, adding: 'If properly led,' and he intended leading them to gold and glory. When Morgan as admiral addressed his a.s.sembled captains, he stunned them with the boldness of his vision: 'Gentlemen, we have a.s.sembled here thirty-eight ships and nigh three thousand fighting men.' Morgan halted the cheers which greeted this with a warning finger: 'But we have just learned that England is now formally at peace with Spain.' Loud groans. 'All is not lost, for we have further instructions that if we uncover any Spanish plot to invade Jamaica or any other English possession, we are commanded to attack Spain wherever vulnerable in order to render said attack impossible.' More cheers. Then the sober news: 'Gentlemen, we have no proof of any such Spanish plan, and I would be most grateful if you could find me some.'

What happened next is best described in a memorial which Ned Pennyfeather composed to Admiral Morgan when the latter was long since dead: To capture proof of Spanish duplicity, several small ships ranged far and wide to take prisoners who would testify that Spanish forces in Cartagena were planning to mount a major effort to retake Jamaica. I judge there was no such plan, for we captured two Spanish ships, one after the other, and despite the most prolonged interrogations at which I served as translator, we learned nothing, whereupon the obstinate Spaniards were loaded with weights and thrown into the sea.

However, one of our sister scouting ships did capture two prisoners who were willing to betray Spanish secrets, and I was moved to that ship to ensure the accuracy of their reports. The two were not Spaniards, really, but Canary Islanders of a base sort and I was never convinced that they told the truth or that, indeed, they knew anything at all about which they testified, but after they saw three of their companions, who had refused to talk, well weighted and tossed overboard, they were willing to swear on the Bible I provided that in Cartagena a ma.s.sive fleet of many vessels and untold soldiers was preparing for an a.s.sault on Jamaica. And when I handed my copy of their statements to Admiral Morgan, he crunched them in his right hand, raised them high in the air, and shouted: 'This is all we need!' and that very afternoon he informed the a.s.sembled captains: 'We sail for the isthmus, march across it, and sack the great and rich city of Panama.' When I heard these words I trembled, and so did many of the captains.

There were two routes across the isthmus, leading from the Caribbean on the east to the Pacific on the west. The first was by land, the infamous one traversed by Drake and the mule trains from Peru. The second, a route utilizing the Chagres River some miles to the north and fearsomely protected by a stupendous fort at its mouth, so ingeniously located and fortified that one of Morgan's men would later require two closely packed pages to describe its frightening armaments: 'Built upon a high mountain ... surrounding ditch thirty feet deep ... supported by a smaller fort with eight great guns commanding the river.' And finally: 'Besides all this, there lies in the entrance to the river a great rock, scarce to be perceived unless at low tide.'

The attack on the fort by four hundred of Morgan's men against the same number of resolute Spanish defenders was long and terrible. Dusk fell with no resolution, and it looked to Ned, fighting with the grenadiers whose perilous job it was to run close to the walls and throw in grenades and lighted brands, as if the defenders might repulse the raiders and throw them back to their waiting ships. But, as light faded, one of those unforeseen events occurred which determine the outcome of battles: a skilled Indian marksman fighting with the Spaniards sent an arrow that pa.s.sed completely through the shoulder of a grenadier standing beside Ned. Cursing, the Englishman ripped it out of the wound, tipped it with a mixture of cotton and powder, set it ablaze, and shot it back into the fort, where it landed on a dry roof. Within minutes that portion of the fort was aflame, and through the long night daring forays of other grenadiers including Ned lobbed additional fireb.a.l.l.s into the fort, so that by morning most of the wooden portions blazed.

Then followed a day of horror. More than a hundred privateers, a number never matched before, died in their attempt to subdue this stubborn fort, whose Spanish defenders lost all but a few of their force. And never in Ned's prior experience had so many Spanish soldiers fought with such valor, especially the castellan, who was driven back by concentrated fire first to a corner of his fort, then from room to room, fighting with cutla.s.s all the way, until he was at last forced into a corner, where he held off three buccaneers until a fourth rushed in to administer the coup de grce. Ned, who had been one of the three and nearly slain by this heroic man, knelt over the corpse, retrieved the Spaniard's sword, and placed it over his fallen body with the handle serving as a cross. There the castellan lay as flames embraced him and his fort.

On 19 January 1671, when Admiral Morgan and his near two thousand men started their trip up the Chagres River in their fleet of canoas, none were aware, Admiral Morgan least of all, that they were engaged in what would turn out to be one of the most ill-prepared expeditions in military history. For when one of his sailors, seeing that he had left behind all their food supplies in order to carry weapons needed for the a.s.sault on Panama, asked: 'What are we going to eat on our march?' he said lightly, as had many other generals in history: 'We'll live off the land.'

Unfortunately, there was no land. The Chagres River did not drain into fine farmlands populated by Indians in little gra.s.s huts tending cattle, harvesting fruit trees, and growing vegetables. It drained only into swamps that contained no huts, no cattle, and to the amazement of the sailors, not even any fruit trees. So this huge army of men went three days without one bite to eat. On the fourth day there was a perverse kind of joy among the troops, for scouts cried: 'Ambush ahead!' To the starving marchers it did not mean danger, but a chance to fight a devil-may-care battle and capture some food. However, when they reached the site of the supposed ambush, they found to their horror that the Spaniards had fled, leaving behind not a morsel of food. All they left was a half-score of leather field bags such as soldiers in all countries prefer for the safekeeping of their valuables, and these the famished sailors ate. One of them wrote later: You ask how men can eat leather? Simple. Sc.r.a.pe off the hair, cut it into strips, beat it between two rocks as you soak it in river water, then boil it to make it tender and roast it to make it tasty. You still can't bite it, but you can cut it in very small bits and roll them around in your mouth for the delicious taste, and finally swallow them. They carry no nourishment to your belly, but they do give it something to work on, and this ends for a while the terrible gripe when a belly works but finds nothing.

Ned almost missed this feast, such as it was, because he was scouting up the river when the leather was distributed, but when he returned and saw the men chewing on what he a.s.sumed was food, he cried in panic: 'Where's mine?' and Mompox took him by the arm, sat him down, hushed the protest, and explained what the sailors were trying to eat. Then he separated his apportionment of roasted leather and gave his friend half. Ned later told Will Tatum: 'It saved my life. I couldn't have gone another day.'

The ninth day was one never to be forgotten, for after an excruciating climb to the top of a sizable hill, the starving men looked south and saw a sight which stunned them with its beauty and significance, as Ned Pennyfeather wrote when he recalled it: Mompox and I rose early, sought the Lord's blessing on what we feared might be our last day on this earth, and started up a steep hill while we still had remnants of energy. As I struggled with my head bent forward to keep my empty belly snug in its growling pain, Mompox cried: 'Ned! Oh, Ned!' And when I looked up I saw the immense expanse of the South Sea stretching infinitely out to where the sky became almost black. Gentle waves no higher, it seemed, than a few inches broke onto the beach in endless dimension and glory. There was no sign of the Panama that Morgan had described to us, only this vast ocean stretching onward beyond the imagination.

Then from behind me came a cry: 'Look! Panama!' and I turned toward a direction I had not attended, where I saw the gleaming city that was going to make us rich. I could detect many churches and the stately tower of a cathedral, and houses innumerable crammed with the things we sought. And in the bay before the city, more than a dozen ships, some of them galleons of enormous size bringing north the silvery riches of Peru. Mompox and I knelt to give thanks, for in that city there would have to be food.

As they descended they came upon a valley containing a quant.i.ty of cows, bulls, horses, goats and a.s.ses. Butchering the animals hastily, they started great fires for barbecuing, but many, including Mompox and Ned, could not wait for the meat to cook. As soon as it began to smoke they grabbed it from the brands and began eating, the blood spilling down their fronts as they gorged themselves.

On the tenth day since their capture of the fort at the Chagres, Admiral Morgan and his replenished men were ready to launch their attack on Panama, whose numerous defenders awaited them in battle order on a flat plain before their city. In addition to trained troops, able cavalry and strong leadership, the Spaniards had a secret weapon in which they placed much reliance: two immense herds of wild bulls to be released simultaneously against the pirates at a propitious moment. With a cry of 'Viva el Rey!' the cavalry started the charge, reinforced by valiant foot soldiers, and for two hours the battle raged, with the Spaniards unable to break the dogged ranks of the invaders, who knew that if they lost this fight, their days in Spanish prisons would be h.e.l.lish and short.

At the start of the third hour the Spaniards released their wild bulls, twelve hundred in each herd, left flank and right. They rushed straight at the pirates, heard the noise of battle, stampeded, and doubled back right into the Spaniards, who, in total confusion, retreated pell-mell toward the city, with Morgan's men roaring after them.

Morgan's entry into Panama was bitterly contested, and so many of his men lost their lives that a rage began to consume him. When he found that fleeing soldiers and civilians had taken refuge in ditches, hoping to surrender after the fury had pa.s.sed, he ordered his men to shoot them all, men and women alike, and not a prisoner was taken. Inside the gates he came upon a large group of nuns and monks, and in his blind fury, he shouted: 'They're about to attack!' and he led his men in a charge which slaughtered them indiscriminately.

His rage intensified even more when he gained the city and found that from the huge warehouses along the seafront all silver had been evacuated, and from the fabulously rich monasteries and churches all embellishments had vanished. Morgan had won a tremendous victory against huge odds, but he gained only the sh.e.l.l of a city. Its treasures had escaped him.

In a fury that now knew no bounds and recognized none of the limits of decency, he turned Panama over to the pillage of his sailors, and after they had rampaged for several days he ordered his men to set the city afire. During the four weeks he and his men remained there the endless flames raged, until everything was consumed. Churches, monasteries, homes, warehouses-all were destroyed in one consuming blaze. Only the rock-built tower of the cathedral remained to mark where this splendid crossroads city had been.

In the meantime, Morgan's men, enraged by the absence of the wealth they had suffered so much to get, went about capturing as many citizens as they could find and putting them to the torture to make them reveal their hiding places. Both Will Tatum and Mompox partic.i.p.ated in seeking out the fugitives and then subjecting them to the refined tortures the pirates had perfected in earlier raids. They used the rack, fire, the horrible woolding, dismemberment, rape, and when their patience ran out, murder. The sack of Panama accounted for some four hundred soldiers dead on the battlefields, many times that number of civilians slain in the interrogations.

This time Ned did not partic.i.p.ate in chasing down those in hiding; instead, he was given charge of the interrogations. It became his duty to attempt to ferret out where the riches of Panama were hidden, and because he shared in the disappointment of his mates, and knowing that if they did not uncover the hidden treasures they would return to Port Royal with little reward for their days of battle and starvation, he became a ruthless interrogator. When women refused to reveal family secrets, he had no compunction in shouting to his a.s.sistants: 'Ask her again,' and the torture would be escalated until the prisoner sometimes died there in the improvised room in which Ned worked.

Among those captured was a man of obvious importance and considerable wealth, found by Tatum and Mompox during a raid far from the city. When he delivered him for questioning, Will said: 'He had three menservants who gave their lives protecting him. Mompox and me, we had to kill them. This one knows something.'

No one ever learned who he was, and Ned began to think that he might be a member of some religious order. Finally, after torments that few could have withstood, the man broke into demonic laughter: 'You d.a.m.ned fools! You idiots! Bring Morgan here and I'll reveal everything,' and when Morgan hurried to the questioning room, the prisoner, lashed to the rack, looked at him with the infinite contempt of a dying man: 'You great a.s.s! You posturing general without a grain of sense!'

'Ask him where it's hidden!' Morgan shrieked, and when Ned repeated the question, the Spaniard said: 'You had it in your grasp, Morgan. It was all there, two boat lengths from sh.o.r.e when you roared into our city ... our beautiful city.' For a moment it seemed that the man was going to weep, not from pain but from sorrow over the burning of his city, so Morgan told the men working the rack: 'Tighten it,' and after the man screamed involuntarily, he said with infuriating calm: 'Before you came I ordered all the treasures in Panama-plate from the churches, bullion from the warehouses, great treasures from the monasteries and official buildings, everything, a pirate's dream of wealth ... I placed it in that little galleon you saw when you stormed our city.' He gasped, for speaking was a painful effort with death so near. 'But you, Morgan, you utter fool, you jacka.s.s. When you came in you allowed your men to revel and get drunk and rape and burn churches. What a pitiful general. And all the while the tremendous treasure you sought was within your reach ...' Taut ropes prevented him from raising his head, so he dropped his voice to a whisper, causing Morgan to bend forward to hear where the treasure had fled, whereupon the dying man spat full in his face.

'Tighten the ropes!' Morgan shouted, and slowly the man was torn apart.

The rape and burning of Panama occupied Morgan from 28 January to 24 February, exactly four weeks, and when he and his men were satiated with the desolation they had caused, they marched almost empty-handed back to the headwaters of the Chagres River, down which they sped in the canoas they had left behind a month earlier. During the trip Ned had ample opportunity to study his commander, for Morgan rode in his canoa and Ned had several occasions to talk with him. Morgan never deviated from the conclusion he had reached when first alerted to the fact that somehow the riches of Panama had eluded him: 'It was a n.o.ble effort. If we'd done nothing but reduce that fearful fort, it would have been a triumph. English vessels can use this river in the campaigns ahead. And the sacking of their great silver port! When the King of Spain hears what we did these weeks he'll tremble in his bed.' Actually, the new king was a ten-year-old near-idiot whose inadequacy marked the end of Hapsburg rule in Spain, the subst.i.tution of the French Bourbons, and the decline of Spanish power throughout the world and especially in the Caribbean.

Morgan, of course, knew nothing of these European matters: 'A man does what he can, Ned, and there'll be spoils enough. Not lavish, but enough.' As to his carelessness in allowing the treasure ship to escape when he had it almost within his fingers: 'At Porto Bello and Maracaibo, we had good luck we didn't deserve; at Panama, bad luck we did deserve. Did you say you took part in all three raids? If you saved your shares, the average won't be trivial.'

As their boat pa.s.sed the place where they had found the leather bags which they ate, Morgan laughed: 'A couple of days without meat never hurt any man. Tightens up his belly.' But Ned had to speak: 'It was ten days, sir,' and the famous admiral grew sober: 'Yes, and at seven or eight I wondered if I could go on, but at nine and ten when I began to smell the sea ...' He stared at the banks of the river that had been so inhospitable: 'I'd not like to make that trip again ... well, not that way. But you and I'll be making other good trips in our day, that we will.'

Ned treasured these conversations with Morgan, for in them the great admiral displayed a warmth and understanding of his people that was otherwise not visible. In action he seemed a remorseless man willing to sacrifice anything, any human life, to achieve his brutal aims, and the Spaniards he had caused to die on his three culminating trips were uncountable, many as a result of fair and open military action, about the same number during interrogations regarding their hidden wealth, real or supposed. But in the closing days of this extraordinary expedition he proved himself to be a most extraordinary man whose fame, Ned thought, would reverberate throughout the Caribbean as long as men loved the sea and the heroic actions possible thereon.

As San Lorenzo became visible, that remnant whose reduction had cost so many lives, Ned felt driven to let Morgan know how much he admired him: 'Admiral, my father died when I was too young to know him. After these adventures with you, I'll always think of you as the kind of father I wish I'd known,' and Morgan, only thirty-six years old at the time, said gruffly: 'I've watched you, Ned. You're a real man. I'd be proud to have a son like you.'

But Ned was to change his opinion of Admiral Morgan; his a.s.sessment came in the opening pages of an extensive log he kept of events which transpired after the expedition returned to the fort at San Lorenzo and the sailors prepared to reboard their ships for the return to Port Royal. Rendered into acceptable English, with its arbitrary spellings clarified, it reads: LOG OF A BUCCANEER.

TUE 14 MARCH 1671: One of the darkest days of my life. For all these months my uncle Will Tatum and I have been following Captain Morgan like puppy dogs, listening to him boast how he would bring us home 'not hundreds but thousands.' Well, this morning he gathered his crew under three big trees and cried: 'Search all!' and we stripped to nothing, and each man searched the clothing of someone else, every pocket and seam, so that coins and jewels, even the tiniest pieces of value were thrown into the common pot. The trunks of what little treasure we had carried from Panama were unloaded so that all could see, and when every item stood before us, Captain Morgan started the division: 'This to you and you, and two shares to the ship captains and four shares to me.' On he went till the last Spanish peso had been distributed, and then he did a bold thing. Throwing off all his garments but his small clothes, he cried: 'Search me too!' and nothing was found secreted. 'Is this all we get?' Will cried, and the disappointment in his voice encouraged Mompox and the others to cry: 'Where is the wealth you promised?' until there was a general commotion which might have turned into a riot, except that Captain Morgan bellowed: 'Be quiet, you sheep! We missed the big treasure at Panama but each of you has his fair share of what we did get.' It was a pitiful eleven pounds, seven shillings each. 'You've robbed us!' men began to shout, and if Captain Morgan had not signaled the captains to gather about him, he might have been injured.

WED 15 MARCH: All last night Captain Morgan slept in his tent with men guarding him, and he was wise to do so, because I for one wanted to kill him. Sailors who had sailed and fought with him for more than three years had little for their pains, and in their bitterness started rumors that he had stolen much gold and great boxes of coins, but where he had hidden them no man could say. As for me, I think he smuggled them aboard his ship that stands offsh.o.r.e. I told Will about this, and he said: 'Let's search it now,' but Captain Morgan's men, well armed, kept us away from the small boats we would need to sail out to the ship.

THU 16 MARCH: d.a.m.n his dirty eyes, d.a.m.n his fat mustaches, d.a.m.n his goatee, and d.a.m.n his flowered jacket. Today, before most of us on sh.o.r.e were awake, Captain Henry Morgan rowed secretly to his ship, upped anchor, and slipped away from us before we could prevent him. He sneaked out with thousands or even millions of our pesos and untold quant.i.ties of gold bars which he had withheld from an honest sharing. When I shouted to Will: 'There he goes!' Will ran down to the sh.o.r.e and screamed: 'I hope your magazine explodes! I hope a great whale overturns you!' Mompox and some sailors jumped into their boats and tried to overtake him, but Captain Morgan, knowing chase was futile, stood on the stern of the vessel, laughed at them, and ordered his gunner to fire two parting salutes, which rattled the branches over our heads. In this infuriating way I finished my buccaneering duty with Captain Henry Morgan and his Letters of Marque and Reprisal.

FRI 17 MARCH: When our furies cooled, Uncle Will collected some forty men he trusted, and reasoned: 'Let's forget this morning. We've been tricked by a master. I say let's be real buccaneers. Let's march back across the isthmus, capture a treasure ship, sack what's left of Panama, and return home as G.o.d allows.' Every man he approached was in a mood to try this venture, for we all knew that we had the force and courage to do as Will proposed: 'Buccaneers like to have a captain they can trust, and I think we should all vote for McFee.' When we cheered the suggestion, Will and Mompox fired a salute and announced 'election unanimous,' and forty-six fighting men shouted 'Halloo.' Fifteen Indians, including a Meskito named David who had proved his skill at both fishing and carpentering, begged us to let them come along, as did nineteen black slaves who did not want to sail back to harsh masters in the sugar fields of Jamaica. And of course I insisted that Mompox join us. So we have a party of eighty-one, every man a killer if required.

SAT 18 MARCH: I am writing this on the trail back to the South Sea. Never have I witnessed as much effort as I did yesterday. Some of our men collected a group of Indian canoas, long and s.p.a.cious, into which we piled all the guns, pikes and powder we could gather from the ships that had chosen to return to Jamaica. And since we remembered how we had starved on the first trip, we wanted to take all the food we could, but some of the sailors who were afraid to join us tried to keep food from us, so Will shot one of them and we had no more trouble. I took from one of our ships two lengths of hollowed bamboo, sealed at the ends, in which I would keep my pens and papers, for I wanted to keep an honest account of how we performed without Captain Morgan. On this first day we did well, coming at least fifteen English miles up the river.

TUE 28 MARCH: We rose early, sought the Lord's blessing on His day, and marched only a few miles, with me and Mompox in the lead, when I saw once more the immense expanse of the South Sea. How different it looked this time! When I saw it last from this hilltop we were going to sack Panama, turn around, and go home rich men. This time we intend capturing us a ship and setting forth upon that vast ocean to seek the opposite sh.o.r.e, if there is one. And when I turned to look at the ruins of where Panama City used to be, I saw two things, one promising, the other not. The Spaniards had recl.u.s.tered about their cathedral, so they were conveniently gathered for plucking, and this time we plan to catch their wealth before they hide it. But anch.o.r.ed in the bay were some of the biggest warships I had ever seen. I began to tremble.

WED 5 APRIL: One of the most exciting days of my life, because I proved that I am a true buccaneer. We rose early and set forth in our eight strongest canoas to do or die in our attempt to break through the cordon of Spanish ships and capture one of the big galleons riding in the harbor. As we approached the fleet, the Spaniards thought to oppose us by throwing many of their sailors and fighting men into three small, fast vessels they call barcas, and these made for us as if they would devour us, which I thought they might. But as they bore down on us, Captain McFee, a true fighting man, shouted: 'Let them draw nigh!' and for what I considered a most dangerous waiting period, we withheld our fire. Then, when we could see their faces plainly, we let loose a fusillade of such magnitude and careful aim that we stunned them. They did try to fire back but by now we were upon them, and with great dexterity we leaped from our canoas, boarded their barcas, and began fighting hand-to-hand. In the excitement of battle I forgot my fears and gave a rather good account of myself, but when only two of us tried to force five of them backward into the stern of their barca, they proved too much, and they might have slain me with their brutal pikes had not Mompox leaped to my defense with sword and dagger, killing one of the Spaniards and badly wounding his partner. Before the sun reached the meridian we had become masters of two of the barcas and had sent the third scudding back to safety in the harbor.

Our victory left us with some eighty Spanish prisoners, almost two for every Englishman, far more than we knew what to do with. My uncle, who had conducted himself with a special bravery which gave him the right to speak, wanted to kill them all, and when Captain McFee asked why, he growled: 'They're Spaniards, aren't they?' McFee would have none of this, so three canoas were brought alongside the barcas which were now ours, and into them the Spaniards were loaded. But as this was being done, my uncle and Mompox went among them, shot those that were badly wounded and tossed their bodies into the sea. The rest could row their way home.

By capturing the two barcas we gained an immense replenishment of cutla.s.ses, guns, powder and b.a.l.l.s, so that we had suddenly become not a group of Indian canoas but two small, swift men-of-war, capable, because of our superior English fighting ability, of menacing even the biggest galleons could we get close to them. And I too was changed, because I now knew that I was capable of leaping out of my boat onto the deck of a larger ship and sweeping the deck of Spaniards. I think my companions gained the same a.s.surance, for in this battle we forty-six defeated four times that number, with only two killed and three seriously wounded. Our dead Indians and blacks who had helped us we did not count.

Captain McFee replenished our losses in a curious manner, for as we were preparing to send our prisoners ash.o.r.e, he stood by the railing of the barca into which I had leaped for the battle and there he peered into the faces of all the Spaniards, and by this device alone, selected five that seemed most intelligent and strong and held them back. Since he does not speak Spanish, it fell to me to serve as translator, and I learned several valuable facts. The richly laden galleon which comes across the Pacific from Manila never puts in to Panama. It goes only to Acapulco. The galleon that fled Panama during Morgan's raid on the city stayed at sea until we were gone and then came back, so that a huge treasure is now ash.o.r.e, awaiting us if we can get there. And the galleon that brings the silver from Peru has not yet arrived, but when it does, it will be attended by numerous fighting ships. With that intelligence I go to sleep tonight in a new ship, a new hammock, and inspired by new dreams.