Caribbee Part 83

"Just tie him." The woman's voice came again. "He is only a boy."

The man's voice responded, in the strange language, and Hipolito thought he could feel the sword against his neck. He had always imagined he would someday die proudly, would honor Elvita by his courage, and now here he was, cringing on his belly. They would find him like this. The men in the vineyards would joke he had groveled before the Protestant _ladrones_ like a dog.

"I will stay and watch him, and this place. Leave me two muskets." The woman spoke once more, then called out in Ingles. There were more footsteps on the stairs as the other men clambered up.

"Why d.a.m.n me, 'tis naught but a lad," a voice said in Ingles, "sent to do a man's work."

"He's all they'd need to spy us, have no fear. I'll wager 'twould be no great matter to warn the fort. Which is what he'll be doin' if we . . .

"Senor, how do you signal the fort?" The woman was speaking now, in Spanish, as she seized Hipolito's face and pulled him up. "Speak quickly, or I will let them kill you."

Hipolito gestured vaguely toward the two bells hanging in the tower behind.

"Take out the clappers, then tie him." The woman's voice came again, now in Ingles. "The rest of you ready the lanterns."

The dugout canoes had already been launched, bobbing alongside the two frigates anch.o.r.ed on the sea side of the Cayo de Carena. Directly ahead of them lay the Point, overlooking the entry to Jamaica Bay.

Katherine felt the gold inlay of the musket's barrel, cold and hard against her fingertips, and tried to still her pulse as she peered through the dim moonlight. Up the companionway, on the quarterdeck, Winston was deep in a final parlay with Guy Bartholomew of the _Swiftsure_. Like all the seamen, they kept casting anxious glances toward a spot on the sh.o.r.e across the bay, just below the _vigia_, where the advance party would signal the all-clear with lanterns.

The last month had not been an easy time. After the death of Jacques le Basque, Tortuga was plunged into turmoil for a fortnight, with the English and French _boucaniers_ at Ba.s.se Terre quarreling violently over the island's future. There had nearly been war. Finally Bartholomew and almost a hundred and fifty seamen had elected to join Winston in his attempt to seize a new English privateering base at Jamaica. But they also demanded the right to hold Villa de la Vega for ransom, as Jackson had done so many years before. It was the dream of riches that appealed to them most, every man suddenly fancying himself a second Croesus. Finally Winston and Bartholomew had drawn up Articles specifying the division of spoils, in the tradition of the _boucaniers_.

After that, two more weeks had pa.s.sed in final preparations, as muskets and kegs of powder were stockpiled. To have sufficient landing craft they had bartered b.u.t.ts of kill-devil with the Cow-Killers on Hispaniola for ten wide dugout canoes--all over six feet across and able to transport fifteen to twenty men. With the dugouts aboard and lashed securely along the main deck of the two ships, the a.s.sault was ready.

They set sail as a flurry of rumors from other islands began reaching the buccaneer stronghold. The most disquieting was that a French fleet of armed warships had already been dispatched south by the Chevalier de Poncy of St. Christopher, who intended to restore his dominion over Tortuga and appoint a new French _commandant de place_.

Yet another story, spreading among the Spanish planters on Hispaniola, was that an English armada had tried to invade the city of Santo Domingo on the southern coast, but was repulsed ingloriously, with hundreds lost.

The story of the French fleet further alarmed the English buccaneers, and almost two dozen more offered to join the Jamaica expedition. The Spanish tale of a failed a.s.sault on Santo Domingo was quickly dismissed. It was merely another in a long history of excuses put forward by the _audiencia_ of that city to explain its failure to attack Tortuga. There would never have been a better time to storm the island, but once again the cowardly Spaniards had managed to find a reason for allowing the boucaniers to go unmolested, claiming all their forces were needed to defend the capital.

The morning of their departure arrived brisk and clear, and by mid- afternoon they had already made Cape Nicholao, at the northwest tip of Hispaniola. Since the Windward Pa.s.sage lay just ahead, they shortened sail, holding their course west by southwest till dark, when they elected to heave-to and wait for morning, lest they overshoot. At dawn they were back underway, and just before nightfall, as planned, they had sighted Point Morant on the eastern tip of Jamaica. Winston ordered the first stage of the a.s.sault to commence.

The frigates made way along the southern coast till they neared the Point of the Cayo de Carena, the wide cay at the entry to Jamaica Bay.

Then, while the _Swiftsure_ kept station to watch for any turtling craft that might sound the alarm, Winston hoisted the _Defiance's_ new sails and headed on past the Point, directly along the coast. The attack plan called for an advance party to proceed overland from the rear and surprise the _vigia_ on the hill overlooking the bay, using a map prepared by their Spanish pilot, Armando Vargas. Winston appointed Atiba to lead the men; Serina went with them as translator.

They had gone ash.o.r.e two hours before midnight, giving them four hours to secure the _vigia_ before the attack was launched. A signal of three lanterns on the sh.o.r.e below the _vigia_ would signify all-clear. After they had disappeared up the trail and into the salt savannah, the _Defiance_ rejoined the _Swiftsure_, at which time Winston ordered the fo'c'sle unlocked and flintlocks distributed, together with bandoliers of powder and shot. While the men checked and primed their muskets, Winston ordered extra barrels of powder and shot loaded into the dugouts, along with pikes and half-pikes.

Now the men stirred impatiently on the decks, new flintlocks glistening in the moonlight, anxious for their first feel of Spanish gold. . . .

Katherine pushed through the crowd and headed up the companionway toward the quarterdeck. Winston had just dismissed Bartholomew, sending him back to the _Swiftsure_ to oversee final a.s.signments of his own men and arms. The old boucanier was still chuckling over something Winston had said as she met him on the companionway.

"See you take care with that musket now, m'lady." He doffed his dark hat with a wink as he stepped past. "She's apt to go off when you'd least expect."

She smiled and nodded, then smoothly drew back the hammer on the breech with an ominous click as she looked up.

"Then tell me, Guy, is this what makes it fire?"

"G.o.d's blood, m'lady." Bartholomew scurried quickly past, then glanced uncertainly over his shoulder as he slid across the bannister and started down the swaying rope ladder, headed for the shallop moored below.

"Hugh, how long do you expect before the signal?"

"It'd best be soon. If not, we won't have time to cross the bay before daylight." He peered through the dark, toward the hill. "We've got to clear the harbor and reach the mouth of the Rio Cobre while it's still dark, or they'll see us from the Pa.s.sage Fort."

"How far up the river is the fort?"

"Vargas claims it's only about a quarter mile." He glanced back toward the hill. "But once we make the river, their cannon won't be able to touch us. It's only when we're exposed crossing the bay that we need worry."

"What about the militia there when we try to storm it?"

"_Vargas_ claims that if they're not expecting trouble, it'll

be lightly manned. After we take it, we'll have their cannon, together with the ordnance we've already got. There's nothing else on the island save a few matchlock muskets."

"And their cavalry."

"All they'll have is lances, or pikes." He slipped his arm around her waist. "No, Katy, after we seize Pa.s.sage Fort, the Spaniards can never get us out of here, from land or sea. Jamaica will be ours, because this harbor will belong to us."

"You make it sound too easy by half." She leaned against him, wishing she could fully share his confidence. "But if we do manage to take the fort, what about Villa de la Vega?"

"The town'll have to surrender, sooner or later. They'll have no harbor. And this island can't survive without one."

She sighed and glanced back toward the sh.o.r.e. In the moonlight the blue mountains of Jamaica towered silently above the bay. Would those mountains some day stand for freedom in the Caribbean, the way Tortuga once did . . .?

She sensed Winston's body tense and glanced up. He was gazing across the bay toward the sh.o.r.e, where a dim light had suddenly appeared. Then another, and another.

"Katy, I've waited a long, long time for this. Thinking about it, planning it. All along I always figured I'd be doing it alone. But your being here . . ." He seemed to lose the words as he held her against him. "Tonight we're about to do something, together, that'll change the Americas forever."

The oars bit into the swell and the dark waters of the bay slapped against the bark-covered prow, an ancient cadence he remembered from that long voyage north, ten years past. Where had all the years gone?

Behind him was a line of dugouts, a deadly procession of armed, grim- faced seamen. All men of Tortuga, not one among them still welcome in any English, French, or Dutch settlement.

Was it possible to start over with men like these? A new nation?

"_Mira_," Vargas whispered over the rhythm of the oars. His dark eyes were glistening as he pointed toward the entry to the harbor, a wide strait that lay between the Point of the Cayo de Carena and the mainland. Around them the light surf sparkled in the moonlight. "Is not this _puerto_ the finest in all the Caribbean?" He smiled back at Winston, showing a row of tobacco-stained teeth. "No storm reaches here. The smallest craft can anchor safely, even in a _huracan_. "

"It's just like I figured. So the spot to situate our cannon really is right there on the Point. Do that and n.o.body could ever get into the bay."

Vargas laughed. "Si, that is true. If they had guns here, we could never get past. But Jamaica is a poor island. The Pa.s.sage Fort over on the river has always been able to slow an a.s.sault long enough for them to empty the town. Then their women and children are safe. What else do they have worth stealing?"

"Hugh, is this the location you were talking to John about?" Katherine was studying the wide and sandy Point.

"The very place. That's why I had him stay with the _Defiance_ and keep some of the lads."

"I hope he can do it."

"He'll wait till sun-up, till after we take the fort. But this cay is the place to be, mark it."