The Privateer Page 8

  But to the delectable islands they came in the end, considerably battered and much poorer in canvas, and in that gossip-shop of the Caribbean met their kind and exchanged news. Charles was indeed king, it seemed; and it was very pleasant, as one privateer’s captain told Henry, to be able to drink that toast again. No man could be expected to drink with any emotion to something called a Protector, could they? he said. What grown man wanted a Protector! But there was also much talk of how soon they might be out of work. Would Charles be all for peace with Spain? And would he understand that, whatever they arranged in Europe, there was ‘no peace beyond the Line’?

  ‘I put my faith in the City of London,’ laughed an old captain they met at Isle of Pines. ‘The new king—God bless him—may want this or that, but in the end he depends on the City of London. And the City of London is devoted to the English cause in the West Indies. The City of London—God save it—will not desert us.’

  It was now, viewing for the first time at close quarters his brethren in ‘the sweet trade of privateering’, that Henry realised how lucky he had been in falling heir to a crew like Jack Morris’s. Morris, being a seaman bred and the son of his father, had his pick of the seafaring fraternity. He had no need for pressed men or jailbirds to get his ship to sea; indeed, seamen had been known to offer bribes to men sailing on a Morris ship in an endeavour to take their place and be sure of a well-found ship and a good master.

  Very few masters of ships in the Caribbean were so fortunate. Even Joe Bradley, who brought his ship into Isle of Pines a few days after the Fortune had reached shelter, reported that a man had been blown from the topsail-yard, and added: ‘A runaway plantation hand. No manner of use at sea. A deported London pickpocket.’

  Morris recruited a second crew to sail the Seville, and the original crew stayed with Morgan. And during those months in the South Cays while they patched and hammered, and provisioned themselves from the ample game ashore, Henry came to know his crew very well, and they in their turn became proprietary about Henry Morgan. The tale of the Gloria and her sea-change into the Fortune had gone round the privateers’ rendezvous at Pine Island, and men made excuses to call on the Fortune so as to meet this brilliant recruit to the trade. They were a mixed lot, sheltering there till it was sailing weather again: French, Dutch, English and Portuguese. At any moment a war at home might make it possible for them to take out letters-of-marque against each other, and if that happened they would sink each other conscientiously but without rancour. The only rancour they had was for Spain: elegant, civilised, eternally barbaric Spain.

  Here and there among the ships there was one that was looked on askance; whose crew was coldly received ashore. These were the cannibals: the men who ate their own kind: the men who had stepped over the borders between privateering and piracy. As a rule they were shabby in appearance and bearing, for piracy was a hand-to-mouth affair, dependent on an uncertain market. A successful privateer brought his prize proudly into port, had the ship condemned and its cargo valued, and having paid his dues, pocketed the proceeds. But the pirate was in the position of the thief who must depend on the generosity of a fence. His ill-gotten riches had to be turned into a suit of sails or tubs of salt beef in some disreputable backwater, and the ship-chandler with whom he dealt had all a fence’s power.

  So the privateers drew the ample skirts of their coats away from those sad and seamy brethren of theirs, and made good company with their own kind. When there was no ship to visit, the crew busied themselves each according to his kind. Bart spent his days among his cloths, so that the Fortune should be both beautiful and strong when she went to sea again. The mulatto went on shore and came back with a dog; an odd-looking hound which he called Goodbye; no one knew why. Manuel went hunting, and continually brought trophies of the chase to lay metaphorically at Henry’s feet, so that the little after-cabin where he lived became horrible with horns, tail-feathers, teeth, wings, tusks, and tails, which the soft-hearted Henry was too long-suffering to throw overboard. Bernard Speirdyck went native and had the Fortune scrubbed with sand and soda from end to end (‘You damned housewife, it smells like a laundry!’ said Morgan) and in his off-time went prospecting on other ships to see if he might like to buy them. Bernard was a merchant at heart, and war with him was only a means to an end. Someday, when he had had his share of a big prize, he was going to buy a ship, settle down in Jamaica (which according to Bernard was the coming metropolis of the New World), and run cargoes between that and the other British possessions in the Indies.

  But in all the months they were in the South Cays no word came to them as to the future of privateering. It was the Navy who told them that all privateers had been recalled; six months later, down off the Mexican coast again, when they ran into some of Admiral Mings’ squadron.

  ‘This will not be of any interest to you, of course,’ said the Navy, ‘since you are without doubt a scientific expedition studying the incidence, habitat, and breeding habits of mermaids.’

  ‘How did you know?’ they said.

  ‘We meet so many of you,’ said the Navy.

  Incidentally, they said, they had heard that Jamaica was a good place to take prizes to for condemning. They had a new Governor and the place was booming. The Governor was fresh out from home. A man called Morgan. Colonel Morgan, as far as they remembered.

  ‘Colonel what Morgan?’ asked Henry.

  Edward, they thought. Yes, almost certainly Edward.

  And they sailed away about their lawful occasions leaving Henry dazed by his luck.

  ‘My uncle!’ he said to Morris. ‘Just consider what it means, Jack! We don’t have to sit in a hot little waiting-room with our hat in our hands any more. We walk straight in. I’m the Governor’s nephew. Good old Uncle Edward! I’ve never liked him so well!’

  ‘Did you like him, then?’ Jack asked, taking this piece of luck as equably as he took most turns of the wheel.

  ‘He was the one I did like: the Royalist one. The other was one of Cromwell’s best generals, God rot him; with a face like a fiddle and a voice like a corncrake. Uncle Edward was quite different; a kind little man, always amused. He fought for the King, and when it was all over he went back to the Continent. He had soldiered for years on the Continent and married a German woman. And now, I suppose, he has come back with the new King, and been rewarded with Jamaica. Dear, good, kind, laughing, little Uncle Edward. How good it will be to see him again!’

  ‘Do we go now?’

  ‘Oh, not yet, not yet. We are not going to hear the news about the privateers’ recall for some months yet. We’ll take home a Spaniard for Uncle Edward.’

  5

  The harbour at Port Royal lay like a great round mirror under the benevolent sky, and on its surface a score of ships turned with a lazy acquiescence to greet the incoming tide. The town on its spit of land was repeated in the still water, candy-pink and mint-green, like a sweetmeat. Port Royal in Jamaica had the reputation of being the most riotous town in the islands, with a drinking-den for every five of its inhabitants, but in the limpid light it looked fresh and innocent and pretty. The inhabitants, in any case, did not largely frequent the much-quoted drinking-dens; the inhabitants were enlisted merely for statistics’ sake. The pleasures of the town were for sailors ashore, and when no ships lay in the wide lagoon between the town and the mainland, Port Royal lay quiet and parochial under the sun, almost as innocent as it looked.

  In the comparative coolness of the cabin in his ship Endeavour Captain Mansfield sat drinking madeira and being gloomy about his prospects.

  ‘I am getting old, Exmeling, that’s what it is,’ he said, slumping his square body farther down in his chair. He cocked an eye at the younger man and waited for the expected denial.

  ‘You are as young as ever you were. Captain,’ Exmeling said. ‘The times are inauspicious, that is all. One cannot control the conjunction of the planets.’ He had a voice like honey running from a jar, and a curious trick of lingering on his consonants so th
at the drawl irritated like a bone stuck in one’s throat.

  ‘The planets don’t alter my powers of persuasion, do they? No, either I’m getting old, Exmeling, or the English are losing their grip. Five separate times I have talked to that donkey of a Governor. “Look,” I said, “it is a gift for England. Two or three ships, a handful of men, and the place is yours.” But he is nothing but a lace cravat and a piece of ribbon, that Governor. “It is not a constitutional proceeding,” says he. What is a colonial Governor for if not to shut his weather eye to the constitution! As beautiful a plan as anyone had since Noah made the Ark, and no one with the guts to help me to carry it out.’

  ‘You’ll do it yet, Captain,’ Exmeling comforted, and raised his glass. ‘Your good fortune, Captain!’

  ‘Always drink to your host with your glass two-thirds empty,’ the old man said.

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘He notices how low it is.’ He shot a glance at Exmeling to observe how discomfited he might be, and said: ‘Well, well, I have no doubt it will be wasted on you, but if you give me that bottle that’s standing on the board below the port there, I’ll give you something that tastes like sunshine in your throat.’ He watched the square of sunlight steal from the floor to the table as the ship swung. ‘Mansfield may be getting stiff in the joints, but he has never spoilt his palate with the luck of the barrel. Always I knew what I was drinking—even when I was drunk.’

  The silence arrested him, and he lifted his head to look across at Exmeling, who was standing by the board with the bottle in his hand.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  Exmeling did not stir or answer. He was standing looking out on the harbour, staring.

  ‘Exmeling!’

  ‘I know I’m not drunk,’ Exmeling said, to himself rather than to Mansfield. ‘Two glasses. That is all I had.’

  Between exasperation and curiosity, Mansfield got up to see what was holding Exmeling’s interest.

  ‘Holy Saint Michael!’ he said, after a moment.

  ‘Do you see it too?’

  ‘Three prizes! Three of them.’

  He turned and with marvellous agility ran up the ladder to the deck. Clustered at the side and in the ratlines were some of his crew, chattering like monkeys as they watched the ships come in.

  ‘Who is that?’ demanded Mansfield. ‘Who is that with three prizes?’

  ‘I saw that low-pooped ketch when I was in the South Cay with Bradley. It’s Captain Morgan’s ship.’

  ‘Captain Morgan?’ said Mansfield. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘New to the business, they say.’

  ‘New! With three Spaniards in tow?’

  ‘They say he catches them with a fishing-rod,’ someone said.

  ‘No, he whistles and they come,’ said another.

  ‘He whistled a bit too lively for Number Three,’ someone pointed out. Number Three had her fore-topmast shot away.

  ‘I don’t think Two liked the tune much either,’ the first man said.

  Mansfield precipitated himself down the ladder to the cabin again, calling for his servant. ‘Jacob! Jacob! Jacob, I say; where are you! Blast your black hide, can’t you hear me!’ and seeing that Jacob was there: ‘My best coat, Jacob. And a clean shirt. And the red silk sash. Exmeling! Order a boat alongside in half an hour. I am going calling on Captain Morgan.’

  The Fortune was not prepared for visitors so early, and Morgan himself was busy with the choosing of an anchorage for his little fleet, so scant notice was taken of the boats that came out from the shore to satisfy their curiosity. Mansfield’s boat was at the bottom of the ladder before any notice was taken of it. The man at the top, impressed by the visitor’s clothes, made no attempt to dissuade him, and Mansfield scrambled up the ship’s side like a ten-year-old and arrived, a little breathless, but able to say: ‘Captain Mansfield to see Captain Morgan.’

  ‘He’s there. Captain,’ said the impressed Fortune man: Mansfield was a name to be reverenced from the Bahamas to the American mainland; and he tilted his head to the group on the main deck, aft. The group was a scattered one, still in their working clothes and not prepared for social demands; and Morgan was standing behind the nearer men, still in his old Spanish coat, faded now to a mud colour and not over clean.

  Mansfield walked towards the group, who had turned to watch him come; looking at them in turn and then looking on to the next. He walked straight past the nearer men and went on to Morgan.

  ‘Captain Morgan,’ he said, and bowed.

  ‘How did you know that I was Morgan?’

  ‘But of course you are he. It needs only to look. Have I not commanded men all my days? My name is Mansfield.’

  ‘The Mansfield who went to Campeche?’ exclaimed Henry, wishing immediately that he had on his new coat.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mansfield, laughing a little. ‘And I tell you this for your good, young man. Keep away from Campeche. I came home without a real. But who am I,’ he added with a wave of his hand at the prizes dropping anchor beyond, ‘to advise such as you?’

  ‘I am greatly honoured and touched by your visit, Captain Mansfield. Will you come below and have a drink with me? Speirdyck here, my mate, can take over on deck.’

  ‘Speirdyck?’ said Mansfield, looking at the mate. ‘A Hollander? Good-day to you, Mr Speirdyck. My wife was a Hollander, and they tell me that I still speak better Dutch than English. Which reminds me that my wife’s cousin, Exmeling, is sitting in the boat at the bottom of your ladder and he will assuredly die of curiosity before we have finished all we have to say to each other unless he is rescued. You have a little drink to spare for him too?’

  ‘He has one of those long, thin noses, Exmeling,’ Mansfield went on, as Speirdyck went to summon Exmeling and Morgan led him below. ‘The kind of nose that is always poking into others’ affairs and—and—’

  ‘And not liking what it sees there,’ finished Morgan, and Mansfield laughed.

  ‘And not, as you put it, liking what it sees there. But he is a very good surgeon, Henrik. His real name is Smeeks, by the way. He enjoys surgery.’

  He saw Henry shudder, and laughed again.

  ‘Why Exmeling, then?’ asked Morgan.

  ‘He aspires to be an author, if you can believe it. Yes. He is for ever busy with pen and ink writing down imaginary horrors of the sea. It would seem that the horrors under his knife are not sufficient for him. And Smeeks, it appears, is not a very good name to be famous with. He is not altogether bad, little Henrik. He was for a time with the Dutch East India Company and has been to Batavia. I do not believe one little tenth of all he says happened to him there in gales and open boats—he is not very good in a boat—but he is not without experience. He came out to Tortuga with the “French West India”, but they went ffft! and so he had to be bondsman to a physician.’

  ‘A great many good men have been bondsmen,’ Morgan said.

  The old man’s quick ears heard the undertone, and without looking at Morgan he said easily: ‘Yes, oh, yes. It is not to little Henrik’s discredit that he has had to serve his time. Any apprentice does as much.’

  And he presented ‘little Henrik’, when he arrived, with due courtesy. Henrik was dark for a Hollander, black-haired and red-cheeked, with shiny eyes and—as his cousin by marriage had pointed out—a very sharp nose. The soft, drawling voice was oddly inappropriate. It had a ventriloquial quality; as if one were watching a wooden image going through the motions of speech while the voice was supplied from some other and greatly different source.

  When wine was set before them, Mansfield said: ‘I have come to see you, Captain Morgan, for my soul’s good.’

  ‘I am no shriver, sir.’

  ‘I have come to be comforted, not shriven. It does my soul good to meet someone young and English—’

  ‘Welsh, Captain.’

  ‘So! Young and Welsh, who has the root of the matter in him. Tell me, my young Captain, how did you attach those three prizes to your not very war-like ship?’

&nb
sp; ‘The bleating of the kid excites the tiger, sir.’

  ‘Hah! Tempted to their undoing, hah?’

  ‘Manoeuvred into an unhappy position, let us say.’

  ‘Ah, my dear young Captain, how I wish that I was young again. What you and I could have done together. We could have taken the whole of America for England. And now what is there to do? Nothing! Nothing but be good boys and sit on the beach making collections of sea-shells for real sailormen to take home to their women. They suggest that I lead an expedition against Curacao, but—’

  ‘Curacao!’ said Morgan, astounded.

  ‘Oh, yes. They have gone to war with Holland at home. Had you not heard? They are all bubbling over with fury at each other, it seems. But what has that to do with us out here? Out here the Hollanders are our friends. We fight Spain together. We speak alike. We think alike. We feel alike about ships. We do not torture prisoners when we take them; no, we give them something hot from the galley, God help us. We are almost one people, the Dutch and the English (and may I speak for the Welsh too, perhaps?), and it is manifestly absurd to expect us to care about their little war at home. And supremely absurd for the Governor, who ought to know better, to ask me to attack Curacao.’