Pieces of Eight

“Farewell an’ adieu for ’Tis parted we’ll be!” they sang.

“For we have our orders to sail home to Eng-er-land…”

“And t’will be a sad time till we shall see thee!”

And thus, with a great deal of noise, and much waving of blades and firing off of pistols, the three boats crossed the anchorage to their chosen destination, which was thickly wooded and the only part of their journey that was not under plain sight from the fort at the other end of the island.

In due course, the three longboats emerged from the cover of the trees, and only the oarsmen and helmsmen could be seen as the boats returned to their squadron, passing out of view behind the flagship. Then came more roaring and carousing and the boats emerged, dense-packed again, pulling strongly for the shore. As before, they returned with just oarsmen and helmsmen to take on yet another load of armed men. And so it continued, to and fro.

These activities were studied with interest by a group of gentlemen peering through telescopes on the northern ramparts of the fort. They wore the cocked hats of sea-service officers, and their blue coats and red vests marked them out as men of the Real Armada Española: the Spanish Royal Navy.

Their commander, Capitan de Navio Frederico Alberto Zorita, turned from his telescope to smile at his subordinates.

“And so they spoil a good plan!” he said.

Chapter 10 (#u290d5c57-2e90-510e-9dca-388a83445eee)

Dawn, 2nd October 1752 The southern anchorage The island

“All hands mustered and ready for to march, Mr Gunner!”

“Very good, Mr Joe,” said Israel Hands, and did his best to look over the men as Long John would have done.

There were a dozen of them, paraded on the beach, with muskets, water canteens, and big hats constructed of sliced and plaited palm-leaves for protection against the sun. They stood grinning and yarning, some of them chewing tobacco, but they were cheerful and ready, and Israel walked up and down the line, making sure that each one had a good pair of shoes, and water in his canteen rather than rum, and that no lubber had primed his firelock without orders.

“You! And you!” cried Israel Hands, picking two of the nimblest. “You’re the advance guard, which shall march ahead as lookouts.” Then he picked the two biggest: “You two shall follow on behind, a-walloping and a-belting of them as won’t keep up!” The men laughed.

“And the rest shall proceed in line astern of myself and Mr Joe, and shall attend to my signals–” He put a bosun’s call to his lips and blew a single sharp note. “Well?” he said.

“Forward!” they cried.

“And this?” he said, blowing a sharp double-note.

“’Vast heaving!” cried some.

“Belay!” cried others.

“Stop!” said Israel Hands. “That’n means stop!”

“Stop!” they said, nodding.

“And this?” A long trembling call.

“Enemy in sight!” they roared.

There were a few more simple signals: easily understood, and a credit to Israel Hands’s capacity to innovate, since never before had he led men through a forest.

“Stand by!” cried Israel Hands.

“Huzzah!” cried the men.

“Forward!” cried Israel Hands.

In single file, they set off up the beach towards the palms, leaving the tented encampment almost empty. “Camp Silver” they were calling it now. A few men were still working on the wreck of Lion, while most of the others had already left–on Long John’s orders–on expeditions led by Black Dog and Sarney Sawyer.

There was also a small guard of ten men left to defend the camp with a quartet of four-pounders charged with canister and mounted in their carriages on firing platforms of ships timbers, the better to load and train in case of attack. These men were also responsible for Long John’s parrot, who’d never go willingly into a boat–even with him–and awaited its master’s return here, with its own perch and a supply of food and drink, and a bit of shade rigged over it.

The bird squawked at Israel Hands as he scrunched past, ankle deep in sand, bobbing its head in greeting.

“Ahoy there!” it cried, and Israel Hands grinned, knowing himself favoured, and he plodded on.

He smiled again as he looked at Mr Joe marching ahead, a heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass in his belt, ready to clear a path if need be. The lad was a slim, wiry black who’d grown up with such a quick temper that he failed to see the joke when an overseer, finding Joe bent over to cut cane, had merrily cracked his arse with a whip. Thus Joe replied with a cutlass slash that removed a diagonal quarter of the overseer’s head, plus all hope of promotion for Joe in his career as a plantation slave, obliging him to seek advancement elsewhere.

Israel Hands grinned at the thought. Joe was quick and intelligent, and under Hands’s instruction he was speedily learning his letters and his numbers, to the point that he was now rated gunner’s mate, and addressed as Mr Joe by all hands, even Long John himself.

Joe had his little faults, of course. He could not stand to be teased, and he was dreadfully afraid of the dark, since as a child he’d been told by his mother that, if he didn’t behave, at midnight the Jumba-Jumba man would come in his big black hat and fetch Joe away in a sack. Even at nineteen years of age, Joe was still looking out for him, but Israel Hands thought no worse of the lad for that, since all sailormen believed such things: Mr Hands himself–when alone–would never look over the side at night for fear of seeing Davy Jones, the hideous fiend that lay in wait for the souls of drowned men.

A day’s marching, with stops for meals and the heat of noon, had taken Israel Hands’s team clear of the palms and sweltering jungle that lined the island’s southern shores. Steering by a small brass compass, they had moved steadily north into a terrain of sandy hills interspersed with small, open clearings surrounded by broadleaf trees: mainly live-oaks, but with an increasing number of pines, and all with dense foliage at their bases. With night falling, they set about making camp–and made their first discovery.

“Look, Mr Hands,” said Joe. “You see them stumps there?”

“Aye, lad,” said Israel Hands. The spot they’d chosen was a clearing that the forest was slowly reclaiming. About a dozen big trees, all pines, had been felled many years ago, leaving stumps which were now so heavily overgrown with moss and fungus, and so surrounded by undergrowth and young trees, that it was hard to spot them. But they were there if you looked; proof that men had been this way before.

“Looks like this island ain’t so secret as some would believe!” said Israel Hands.

“Aye, Mr Hands,” said Joe, peering into the darkness between the standing trees. “Now we get back with the others, eh? And we make the fire?”

“Aye,” said Israel Hands, smiling, for the others were only a few steps away.

That night Joe had the horrors and no mistake. He woke constantly. He heard noises in the night. He got up and paced about, and repeatedly told the sentries to keep a sharp lookout.

“Yes, Mr Joe! No, Mr Joe!” they said, levelling their muskets at nothing, just to keep him quiet.

They all thought him a bloody fool, until early next morning when the expedition made its second discovery. As the sun came up, those on guard duty saw a figure peering at them from behind a tree: looking, but afraid to come forward.

“There he is, Mr Hands!” said one of the sentries. “It’s a white man, not a savage. Miserable-looking sod, though.” He cocked his musket. “Shall I take a pop?”

“No!” said Israel Hands, as the camp stirred and men gathered around him. “I think I know who that is!” He stepped forward and called out:

“Ahoy there! Come alongside! We’re all friends here. Friends and jolly companions.”

There was a stir of surprise as the bedraggled figure left the cover of his tree, and–with utmost nervousness–crept forward, hunched over in humble supplication, with fearful eyes staring out of a simple, pleasant face. He was bareheaded, bare-chested and barefoot, deeply sunburnt with a sprouting beard and hair like broken straw. All that he had in the world was a pair of breeches, an old belt, and a sailor’s knife in a sheath. But the thing that drew gasps of surprise was the creature holding his hand like a child and scampering along beside him: a large and most beautiful monkey.

The ape was handsomely marked, with thick fur–mostly dark brown, apart from its creamy breast, arms and face–and a shock of black, upstanding hair on top of its head. It had the most appealing and intelligent face and came forward entirely without fear.

When the man thought he was close enough, he stopped, and began to speak in a self-pitying whine.

“I’m Benn Gunn, I am,” he said, shaking off the monkey and clapping his hands together as if in prayer. “Poor Benn Gunn, what’s lived alone for weeks with not a bite of Christian food, nor what’s not spoke to a Christian soul.”