Tim Severin - Buccaneer

'What else did your people expect? Did they know nothing of our equatorial weather?' commented Capitan Peralta to Hector. The Spaniard was one of the growing number of prisoners, and the two of them were in the habit of meeting in the bows of the ship where they could not be overheard.

'Are the rains finally over?' Hector asked.

Peralta shrugged. 'There can be heavy downpours at this time of year, even into August. I wonder if your comrades will still want to follow their captain by then?'

Peralta gave Hector a sideways look. The buccaneer council had elected Bartholomew Sharpe as their new general, the grand title they now gave to their overall commander.

Hector hesitated before replying, and Peralta was quick to pick up on the delay. 'There's something a little devious about him, isn't there? Something not quite right.'

Hector felt it would be disloyal to agree, so said nothing. But Peralta had a point. There was an unsettling quality about

Sharpe. It was something that Hector had noted at Golden Island. Even then he had thought that Sharpe was a natural mischief maker. Behind the amiable smile on the fleshy, pouting lips was an evasiveness which made one reluctant to trust him entirely. Now that Sharpe had been made general, Hector was even more apprehensive. He sensed the man was self-serving and devious.

'Don't be surprised if some of your colleagues decide to break away on their own when conditions get more difficult,' Peralta continued. 'Your shipmates are easily swayed and can be pitiless.'

To change the subject Hector showed the Spaniard a new backstaff that Ringrose had fashioned.

Peralta watched him slide the vanes of the backstaff along its wooden shaft.

'It seems a more complicated instrument than usual, more movable parts,' observed the Spaniard.

'Ringrose assures me that it will allow us to calculate our latitude position even where the sun is so high in the sky at noon that a normal backstaff is inaccurate. See here . . .' Hector handed Peralta the instrument so he could inspect the extra vanes. 'They allow readings even when the sun is at ninety degrees overhead.'

'Fortunately I don't depend on such a device for finding my position. I know the coast from here to Lima and beyond,' the Spaniard answered dryly. 'And if I am in doubt I turn to the pages in my derotero, my pilot book, and then I know where I am.' He allowed himself a sardonic smile. 'That's your new commander's real dilemma. He doesn't know where he is or what he's up against, and sooner or later his men will realise it too. They are a wolf pack, ready to show their fangs, and their leader may turn out to be equally ruthless.'

Hector recalled Peralta's warning in the third week of August when Trinity overhauled another small coaster. Unusually, her crew put up a fight. They draped waistcloths along the bulwarks in order to conceal their numbers, and men fired old-fashioned arquebuses at the approaching galleon. The battle lasted only half an hour and the outcome was never in doubt. Trinity was by far the larger vessel and mustered three or four times as many marksmen. Yet two buccaneers were badly wounded by enemy bullets before the bark dropped her topsail in a sign of surrender and her survivors cried for quarter.

'Search and sink her, and be quick about it!' Sharpe shouted angrily as he watched the canoe which served as Trinity's cockboat being lowered into the water. He was in an evil humour. The enemy's fire had cut up Trinity 's newly overhauled rigging which would have to be spliced and mended, resulting in further delay, and it was three weeks since they had last taken any plunder.

The canoe made a dozen trips between the two vessels to ferry back the captive crew, who would now be held for ransom or obliged to work as forced labour aboard the galleon. On the final trip the buccaneers were crowing with delight and holding up leather bags and glass bottles. The bark was carrying five thousand pieces of eight as well as a generous stock of wine and spirits. Trinity's quartermaster, Samuel Gifford, lost no time in distributing the loot at the foot of the mainmast, and each man came away carrying his share of the coins in his hat. Every fourth man, drawn by lot, also received a bottle.

'Here you!' said Sharpe beckoning to Hector. 'Find out from the prisoners why they resisted when they had no chance against us.

"Who is your captain?' Hector asked. Only a handful of the captives wore the clothes of working sailors. He guessed they were the bark's sailing crew. The majority — some thirty men — were too well dressed to be mariners and looked more like minor gentry. There was a priest among them, an elderly red-faced friar who was clutching his gown close around him as though he feared some sort of profane contagion.

A small man in a brown doublet and a stained but costly shirt stepped out of the group.

'My name is Tomas de Argandona. I am the mestre de campo from the town of Guayagil over there.' He gestured vaguely towards the horizon.

'I need a list of everyone's names and where they come from,' explained Hector.

'I assure you that will not be necessary,' said the little man, a touch pompously. 'We are aware that you pirates are accustomed to asking ransom for your prisoners, and we have agreed among ourselves not to participate in that sordid practice.'

'What's he talking about?' demanded Sharpe. There was a nasty edge to his voice.

Argandona was speaking again. 'We were looking for you.'

'Looking for us . . . ?' said Hector, startled.

'The entire coast is aware that you are sailing in these waters aboard the Santissima Trinidad which you have stolen. My colleagues and I offered our services to His Excellency the Viceroy of Peru. We intended to seek you out, and then inform his Excellency exactly where you might be found so that he could direct the armadilla to seek and destroy you.'

'But surely you must have known that your vessel was no match for us.'

'We never expected to confront you,' answered Argandona condescendingly. 'Only to observe and report. But once we were challenged, we as gentlemen, ' - and he emphasised the word gentlemen - 'could not decline the battle. Our honour was involved.'

Hector translated this defiant reply to Captain Sharpe who gave a dangerously mirthless laugh. 'Ask the coxcomb if his honour will allow him to tell us exactly what the Viceroy and his armadilla are proposing.'

To Hector's increasing amazement, the mestre de campo's response was utterly frank. 'His Excellency the Viceroy disposes three great warships in the Armada del Sur but, sadly, all of them are unfit for sea at this time. So he has ordered an equal number of merchant ships to be armed with their brass cannon and placed seven hundred and fifty soldiers aboard them. He has also sent extra guns to defend the ports. In our town of Guayagil we have mustered more than eight hundred soldiers to defend our property and constructed two new forts to guard the harbour.'

'He's trying to scare us off,' grated Sharpe when Hector relayed the information to him. 'I don't think so,' said Hector quietly. 'I think he is being truthful. It's a matter of his honour.'

'We'll see about that,' said Sharpe. Looking round, he saw Jezreel standing nearby. Taking a pistol from his sash, Sharpe handed it to the giant. 'Point this at the belly of that sneering priest over there, and make it look threatening,' he ordered. In a lower voice he added, 'It's charged with powder but not ball. I want to scare the pompous little shit.'

Turning back to Hector the buccaneer captain said, 'Now inform the puffed-up runt that I don't believe him, and I'm calling his bluff. If he doesn't change his story I'll send his priest to the hell he deserves.'

The Spaniard was quivering with a combination of fright and indignation. 'Your captain is a savage. I have already told him the truth.'