Pirate Latitudes. Michael Crichton

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       CHAPTER 8

      IT WAS, OF COURSE, impossible to keep the expedition secret. Too many seamen were eager for a berth on any privateering expedition, and too many merchants and farmers were needed to fit out Hunter’s sloop Cassandra. By early morning, all of Port Royal was talking of Hunter’s coming foray.

      It was said that Hunter was attacking Campeche. It was said that he would sack Maricaibo. It was even said that he dared to attack Panama, as Drake had done some seventy years before. But such a long sea voyage implied heavy provisioning, and Hunter was laying in so few supplies that most gossips believed the target of the raid was Havana itself. Havana had never been attacked by privateers; the very idea struck most people as mad.

      Other puzzling information came to light. Black Eye, the Jew, was buying rats from children and scamps around the docks. Why the Jew should want rats was a question beyond the imagining of any seaman. It was also known that Black Eye had purchased the entrails of a pig—which might be used for divination, but surely not by a Jew.

      Meanwhile, the Jew’s gold shop was locked and boarded.

      The Jew was off somewhere in the hills of the mainland. He had gone off before dawn, with a quantity of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal.

      The provisioning of the Cassandra was equally strange. Only a limited supply of salt pork was ordered, but a large quantity of water was required—including several small casks, which the barrel-maker, Mr. Longley, had been asked to fabricate specially. The hemp shop of Mr. Whitstall had received an order for more than a thousand feet of stout rope—rope too stout for use in a sloop’s rigging. The sailmaker, Mr. Nedley, had been told to sew several large canvas bags with grommet fasteners at the top. And Carver, the blacksmith, was forging grappling hooks of peculiar design—the prongs were hinged, so the hooks could be folded small and flat.

      There was also an omen: during the morning, fishermen caught a giant hammerhead shark, and hauled it onto the docks near Chocolata Hole, where the turtle crawls were located. The shark was more than twelve feet long, and with its broad snout, with eyes placed at each flattened protuberance, it was remarkably ugly. Fishermen and passersby discharged their pistols into the animal, with no discernible effect. The shark flopped and writhed on the dockside planking until well into midday.

      Then the shark was slit open at the underbelly, and the slimy coils of intestine spilled forth. A glint of metal was perceived and when the innards were cut open, the metal was seen to be the full suit of armor of a Spanish soldier—breastplate, ridged helmet, knee guards. From this it was deduced that the flathead shark had consumed the unfortunate soldier whole, digesting the flesh but retaining the armor, which the shark was unable to pass. This was variously taken as an omen of an impending Spanish attack on Port Royal, or as proof that Hunter was himself going to attack the Spanish.

      SIR JAMES ALMONT had no time for omens. That morning, he was engaged in questioning a French rascal named L’Olonnais, who had arrived in port that morning with a Spanish brig as his prize. L’Olonnais had no letters of marque, and in any case, England and Spain were nominally at peace. Worse than that was the fact that the brig contained, at the time it arrived in port, nothing of particular value. Some hides and tobacco were all that were to be found in its hold.

      Although renowned as a corsair, L’Olonnais was a stupid, brutal man. It did not take much intelligence, of course, to be a privateer. One had only to wait in the proper latitudes until a likely vessel happened along, and then attack it. Standing with his hat in his hands in the governor’s office, L’Olonnais now recited his unlikely tale with childish innocence. He had happened upon the prize vessel, he said, and found it deserted. There were no passengers aboard, and the ship was drifting aimlessly.

      “Faith, some plague or calamity must have fallen it,” L’Olonnais said. “But ’twas a goodly ship, sire, and I felt a service to the Crown to bring it back to port, sire.”

      “You found no passengers at all?”

      “Not a living thing.”

      “No dead aboard the ship?”

      “Nay, sire.”

      “And no clue as to its misfortune?”

      “Nary a one, sire.”

      “And the cargo—”

      “As your own inspectors found it, sire. We’d not touch it, sire. You know that.”

      Sir James wondered how many innocent people L’Olonnais had murdered to clear the decks of that merchantman. And he wondered where the pirate had landed to hide the valuables of the cargo. There were a thousand islands and small brackish cays throughout the Carib sea could serve his purposes.

      Sir James rapped his fingers on his desk. The man was obviously lying but he needed proof. Even in the rough environment of Port Royal, English law prevailed.

      “Very well,” he said at last. “I shall formally state to you that the Crown is much displeased with this capture. The king therefore shall take a fifth—”

      “A fifth!” Normally the king took a tenth, or even a fifteenth.

      “Indeed,” Sir James said evenly. “His Majesty shall have a fifth, and I shall formally state to you further that if any evidence reaches my ears of dastardly conduct on your part, you shall be brought to trial and hanged as a pirate and murderer.”

      “Sire, I swear to you that—”

      “Enough,” СКАЧАТЬ