Thomas Hoover: Caribbee

“!Ingles Demonio!'' One of them suddenly found his voice and yelled out, then threw himself face down on the paving stones. One after another, all the others followed. In moments only one man remained standing, a tall officer in a silver helmet. Winston realized he must be the gunnery commander.

He drew his sword, a long Toledo-steel blade, and stood defiantly facing Winston and the line of musketmen.

"No." Winston waved his pistol. "It's no use."

The commander paused, then stepped back and cursed his prostrate militiamen. Finally, with a look of infinite humiliation, he slowly slipped the sword back into its scabbard.

A cheer went up from the seamen, and several turned to head for the inner chambers of the fortress, to start the search for booty. Now the second wave of the attack force was pouring through the corridor.

"Katy, it's over." Winston beckoned her to him and and boxed ceremoniously. "Jamaica is…"

The yard erupted as the copestone of the turret at the corner exploded, raining chips of hard limestone around them.

"Great God, we're taking fire from down below." He stood a moment in disbelief. Around him startled seamen began to scurry for cover.

Even as he spoke, another round of cannon shot slammed into the front of the breastwork, shaking the flagstone under their feet.

"Who the hell's in charge down there? There were no orders to fire on the fort…"

Another round of cannon shot crashed into the stone facing above them.

"Masters, take cover. There'll be hell to pay for this, I promise you." He suddenly recalled that Mewes had been left in command down below. "If John's ordered the ships into the bay and opened fire, I'll skin him alive."

"Aye, and with this commotion, I'll wager their damned cavalry lancers will be on their way soon enough to give us a welcome." Bartholomew was standing alongside him. "I'd say we'd best secure that door back there and make ready to stand them off."

"Order it done." Winston moved past the gunners and headed toward the front of the breastwork, Katherine at his side. As they approached the Spanish commander, he backed away, then bowed nervously and addressed them in broken English.

"You may receive my sword, senor, in return for the lives of my men. I am Capitan Juan Vicente de Padilla, and I offer you unconditional surrender. Please run up your flag and signal your gunships."

"We've got no flag." Winston stared at him. "Yet. But we will soon enough."

"What do you mean, mi capitan? You are Ingles." His dark eyes acquired a puzzled expression. "Of course you have a flag. It is the one on your ships, down in the bay."

"Hugh, what's he talking about? Has John run up English colors?" Katherine strode quickly past the smoking cannon to the edge of the breastwork and leaned over the side.

Below, the bay was lightening in the early dawn. She stood a moment, then turned back and motioned Winston to join her. Her face was in shock. He shoved his pistol into his belt and walked to her side.

Headed across the bay, guns run out, was a long line of warships. Nearest the shore, and already launching longboats of Roundhead infantry, were the Rainbowe and the Marsten Moor- the red and white Cross of St. George fluttering from their mizzenmasts.

"Heaven help us. To think the Lord Protector's proud Western Design has been reduced to assaulting this worthless backwater." Edmond Calvert's voice trailed off gloomily as he examined the blue-green mountains of Jamaica. Then he turned to face Colonel Richard Morris, standing beside him on the quarterdeck. "No silver mines, no plantations, doubtless nothing save wild hogs and crocodiles."

"Well, sir, at least this time the navy has landed my men where we'd planned." Morris was studying the Passage Fort that loomed above them. Amidships, moored longboats were being loaded with helmeted infantry, muskets at the ready. "Their culverin seem to have quieted. If the town's no better defended, there should be scant difficulty making this place ours."

"That, sir, was precisely what you were saying when we first sighted Santo Domingo, scarcely more than a fortnight past-before those craven stalwarts you'd call an army were chased back into the sea."

Morris' eyes narrowed. "When the accounting for Hispaniola is finish'd, sir, that debacle will be credited to the incompetence of the English navy."

"All the same, you'd best take your stouthearted band of cowards and see what you can manage here." Calvert dismissed the commander with a perfunctory salute. Rancor no longer served any end; what was lost was lost.

What had been forfeited, he knew, was England's best chance ever to seize a portion of Spain's vast New World wealth. Oliver Cromwell's ambitious Western Design had foundered hopelessly on the sun-scorched shores of Hispaniola.

He reflected again on the confident instructions in his secret commission, authorized by the Lord Protector himself and approved by his new Council of State only four months earlier. “The Western Design of His Highness is intended to gain for England that part of the West Indies now in the possession of the Spaniard, for the effecting thereof we shall communicate to you what hath been under our Consideration. Your first objective is to seize certain of the Spaniards' Islands, and particularly Hispaniola. Said Island hath no considerable place in the South part thereof but the City of Santo Domingo, and that not being heavily fortified may doubtless be possest without much difficulty, which being done, that whole Island will be brought under Obedience. From thence, after your Landing there, send force for the taking of Havana, which lies in the Island of Cuba, which is the back door of the West Indies, and will obstruct the passing of the Spaniards' Plate Fleet into Europe. Having secured these Islands, proceed immediately to Cartegena, which we would make the Seat of the intended Design, and from which England will be Master of the Spaniards' Treasure which comes from Peru by the way of Panama in the South Seas to Porto Bello or Nombre de Dios in the North Sea…”

How presumptuous it all seemed from this vantage. Worse still, the Council of State had not even bothered taking notice of Jamaica, an under-defended wilderness now their only chance to seize anything held by the Spaniards.

Most depressing of all, Cromwell would surely be loath to spend a shilling on the men and arms needed to hold such a dubious prize. Meaning the Spaniards would simply come and reclaim it the minute the fleet set sail.

Surely, he told himself, Cromwell was aware they had shipped out without nearly enough trained men to attack Spanish holdings. Even his Council of State realized as much. But they had nourished the delusion that, once Barbados was bludgeoned back into the Commonwealth, its planters would dutifully offer up whatever first-rate men, arms, and cavalry were needed for the campaign.

What the Council of State had not conceived was how indifferent those islanders would be to the territorial ambitions of Oliver Cromwell. Barbados' planters, it turned out, wanted nothing to do with a conquest of the Spanish Americas; to them, more English-held lands in the New World only meant the likelihood of more acres planted in sugar one day, to compete with the trade they hoped to monopolize. Consequently, Morris' Barbados recruits consisted almost wholly of runaway indentures eluding their owners and their creditors, a collection of profane, debauched rogues whose only boldness lay in doing mischief.

Sugar and slaves. They might well have undermined Barbados' brief try for independence; but they also meant there would be no more English lands in the Americas.

Calvert's heart grew heavy as he remembered how their careful strategy for taking Hispaniola had been wrecked. They had decided to avoid the uncharted harbor of Santo Domingo and land five miles down the coast. But by a mischance of wind on their stern, it was thirty. Then Morris had disembarked his troops with scarcely any water or victuals. All the first day, however, he had marched unopposed, his Puritan infantrymen even pausing to vandalize Papist churches along the way, using idols of the Virgin for musket practice.