Kage Baker - Dark Mondays

“Two shares each, if you’re able marksmen,” said Felham.

Jago’s lip curled in disdain. He loaded his musket, with his pipe drooping over his powder horn—John and Felham drew back involuntarily—and then turned and took aim at the shattered palm tree.

“See the centipede on the trunk?”

“No,” chorused John and Felham.

“I take off his head,” said Jago, and fired. A spurt of sand was kicked up a little way beyond the palm trunk. John got up and went to the trunk, crouching over, squinting to see. There was a centipede there, or most of one anyway, writhing and scrabbling. John squashed it and turned to shout:

“He done it, by God.”

“ Three shares,” cried Felham, and grinning broadly he reached out and shook Jago by the shoulder. “Well done, mate!”

Jacques scowled—at least it looked as though he was scowling, under all that beard—and seized Felham’s wrist so hard John heard the bones crack. He began to bellow abuse, in French so far as John could tell, shaking his fist under Felham’s nose. Jago turned round and shrieked more French at Jacques; Jacques let go of Felham but rounded on Jago, thundering away death and destruction. Jago rolled his eyes, threw his hands in the air and screamed something impatient. Jacques wept, tears starting from his little, red furious eyes, and he began to slap Jago. Jago got a double handful of Jacques’ hair and pulled on it. Jacques caught Jago by the wrist and bit him.

John pulled out his pistol and fired it in the air. They stopped quarreling at once and stood apart.

“He very jealous,” said Jago.

“You ain’t going to do that on board ship, I hope,” muttered Felham, rubbing at his wrist. He read them in and they went splashing out to the boat, holding hands once more.

“Next,” John called. The next man stepped up to the table, and John blinked at him suspiciously. He seemed familiar, and not just in that he looked like any one of the down-at-heel cavaliers who’d come out to Jamaica one step ahead of their creditors. No; John had seen him here on Tortuga, three or four times in the past few days. He’d stuck in John’s mind because, each time he’d passed by, he’d looked into John’s eyes . He gave John a smile now, in which there seemed something a little sinister.

John, mindful of the two boucaniers just read in, felt a blush burning up from his collar and glared at the table. “Name?” said Felham.

“Tom Blackstone,” said the cavalier.

“Indeed, my lord?” said Felham. “Age and place of birth?”

“Thirty-one. Waddon Hill, Dorset.”

“Of course,” said Felham, in the politest possible tones of disbelief. John wrote it down, refusing to look up.

“I suppose you ain’t an able-bodied seaman, my lord?”

Clear across the water came the sound of violent quarreling from the longboat, where Jago seemed to have affronted Bob Plum in some way. Felham sighed, drew his pistol and fired a shot in their direction.

“Stand to!” he bawled. Lowering his voice he went on: “Sorry, my lord. You was saying—”

“I was upon point of saying that I am an indifferent sailor, but a damned good fighting man,” said Blackstone. “And well armed, I might add.” He waved a lace handkerchief, and from behind him two shaky old drunks stepped to the fore, each one setting down the chests they’d been bearing for him. They opened the chests to reveal kegs of powder, bars of lead for casting, and what looked to be the ready stock of an armorer’s shop.

“Oh, yes,” said Felham, and read him in. Tom Blackstone stepped up and signed to the register in a bold scrawl. The drunks were paid off with gold and backed out of Blackstone’s presence, knuckling their forelocks.

“If you’ll just walk out to the boat, my lord?” said Felham. “Haul them boxes, John, and see them stowed directly.”

“Aye aye,” said John, feeling surly. He hoisted the chests to either shoulder—for John was strong as a bull in those days—and waded out to the boat, with Blackstone prowling along beside him.

“Shame to get those fine boots wet,” said Blackstone.

“They’re sea-boots. They’ll do,” said John.

“Ah, but I think they’re a little more than sea-boots, aren’t they? All that fine cutwork,” said Blackstone. And then he stopped right there, with the sea foaming around their ankles, and looking straight at John said: “Cumberland.”

“Beg pardon?” John replied.

“Cumberland,” Blackstone repeated. When John just stared at him by way of answer, he narrowed his eyes. “Pray tell me, sir: Where might I buy such boots, if I were so minded? In whose shop?”

“Don’t know, mate,” said John. “I had them off a dead man, didn’t I?” As who should say, I’m a killer, friend, and you don’t want to cross me!

“Did you indeed,” said Blackstone thoughtfully, and said nothing more.

They got to the boat, where the boucaniers and the Reverend and his mates were now chattering away and laughing like old friends. John stowed the chests, scrambled in after Blackstone, and watched him sidelong as they rowed out to the Mayflower .

Well, so the captains decided to take Panama. Morgan argued for it, shrewdly, in that way he had of making it seem as though it was somebody else’s idea. Wasn’t Panama the great clearing-house of the world, the place where all the silver and gold of Peru was brought down to be shipped away to Spain? She was open and undefended, she had never been sacked at all!

And no wonder, argued some of the captains: for she lay clear on the other side of the Main, facing into the South Sea, with sixty miles of jungle at her back, steep mountains and a winding river. Morgan pointed out that the perfumed grandees of Panama couldn’t imagine anyone attacking them from the west; they themselves would never risk mud on their fancy shoes, or work up a sweat slashing through the jungle.

Then Morgan mentioned, in an offhand kind of way, those great cities he’d taken on his first ventures: Villahermosa and the rest. He’d led his men hundreds of miles through that stinking, mosquito-haunted wilderness, and out again. Child’s play, he said.

But he didn’t press the point. Morgan was too clever for that. He let the images work for him: the bar silver from the mines of Potosi, the long emeralds and beaten gold, the silks and porcelains and pearls. When the captains had all agreed on taking Panama, he got them to sign a paper to that effect, the wily devil, giving sane and serious reasons relating to the safety of the realm. It stood him in good stead later too.

There was one other suggestion Morgan made, one to which all the captains agreed readily enough. Why not take themselves a base on the Main first, a place near to the business at hand, some island where they could refit and revictual at need? Old Providence ought to do nicely, he said. Recapture it, and get a little revenge into the bargain.

The fleet raised anchor and sailed, with a fair wind behind them all the way. Six days it took. On Christmas Eve—as the Papists amongst them reckoned it by the new calendar, which was ten days out from the right one—there were the three mountain peaks of Old Providence, red in the sunrise. By midmorning the Brethren sailed up to the anchorage and saw the battery guarding the harbor, and the black mouths of four silent guns. Morgan had a good look at the place with his glass.

No little figures moved along the parapets; no Spanish banners waved. Nobody moving inland, either; no sight of a living soul.

Morgan closed his glass and, cool as ice, bid his captains enter the anchorage. The Satisfaction first; he stood tall on her quarterdeck as they slipped in, right in range of the guns, but never a shot was fired. Had the Spanish deserted the place, after breaking so many hearts to take it? Morgan landed a thousand armed men, and went ashore to find out.