Pieces of Eight

Afternoon, 3rd October 1752 Fort Ferdinand Isabel Island, Niña de Cuba

Capitan Zorita looked at the two tenientes and five young guardia marinas who were under his command in the task of stiffening the defences of Niña de Cuba against the coming world war. Zorita pointed at the longboats and their bustling crews, and he shook his head at the puzzled faces of his subordinates.

“Do you not see through it?” he said. “It’s an old trick of the English pirates–Morgan and England used it on many occasions.” There was a silence and all present tried to avoid his eye.

“So!” said Zorita, and shrugged. “Well, gentlemen, you must listen carefully, for the object of these…activities,” he looked at the boats, “is to make us think that a major force has been landed for an assault upon the northern walls of the fort, compelling us to move our guns up here, leaving the other walls undefended.”

“Oh?” they said, for they’d been duly deceived and would have done as he said.

“But,” said Zorita, “they’ve overdone it. Let’s say each of those boats holds thirty men, besides the crews. That’s ninety per trip, yes?”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“And this is their fourth trip, making three hundred and sixty men landed.”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“Which is a great number of men to land from ships of their modest size.”

“Yes, Capitan!”

“But what they’re actually doing is rowing ashore with the men sitting upright, and rowing back with them hidden in the bottom of the boats.”

“Ahhhhhh!”

“And if they keep on doing it, then I’ll be certain it’s a ruse, for they’ll be pretending to land more men than they could possibly have on board.”

That night there was a great lighting of campfires and making of noise at the north end of the island, where those ashore–under Cap’n Bentham’s orders–gave the fort to believe that a large storming party was bedding down for the night, ready for an assault next day. Meanwhile the same boats that had been busy all day crept quietly down the eastern side of Isabel island with muffled oars, making their way slowly across the shoals and sandbanks to land a large force of men on the beach facing the fort across a few hundred yards of still water.

Neither was it a quiet night in the fort, where Capitan Zorita ensured that guns were indeed moved and prepared, and the ready-use lockers filled with cartridges and shot, and the crews made sure of their duties.

At dawn, Bentham’s northern shore party opened fire on the fort with a six-pound gun, brought ashore for the purpose and emplaced on planking so the trucks of its sea-carriage shouldn’t bog down in the soft ground.

Bang! went the gun, and its cannonball screamed through the air and…crunch! It buried itself harmlessly in the twenty-foot thickness of brick-faced earth ramparts that formed the outer defence of the fort’s inner stone walls. It did no harm, and wasn’t meant to. The gun was burning powder only to keep the fort’s garrison focused on the northern wall. In that case, the six-pounder crew might have taken early warning from the fact that the fort didn’t bother to reply to the insult…

Down at the southern tip of the island, Danny Bentham–followed as ever by Mr O’Byrne–waved a cutlass over his head, called for three cheers, and led the rush to the boats, which were swiftly launched and oars manned, and filled in deadly earnest with armed men–over two hundred of them–equipped with scaling ladders, ropes and grappling hooks.

“Now, my boys,” cried Bentham, “pull your hearts out! Break your backs! It’s Spanish dollars for all hands, and whores aplenty!”

Clank! Clank! Clank! The boats drove forward, crammed with yelling, cheering men, aiming for the south-east walls of the fort, which by Cap’n Bentham’s matchless cunning would have empty emplacements, blind of guns.

Unfortunately they weren’t the only boats setting forth with deadly intent, and four gunboats pulled clear of the small jetty that Bentham should have noticed as he came up Ferdinand channel. Each was nearly twice the length of a longboat, driven by fifteen pairs of oars and commanded by a guardia marina–a midshipman. And each mounted a twenty-four-pounder in the bow: a tremendous armament for so small a craft, and one that was capable of swift movement, to fire from any quarter, irrespective of wind and weather.

“Pull!” cried the guardia marinas, leaping with boys’ excitement as the graceful oars beat and swayed, sending the gunboats forward like the triremes of Athens. Capitan Zorita watched from the walls of the fort. He nodded. He knew now that he’d guessed correctly, for his lookouts had heard the boats in the night, even with muffled oars. The pirates were making their real attack on the south-east. The demonstration before the northern walls was a sham…one which served Zorita well, since by placing so many men ashore the pirates would have left their ships half-manned, firmly anchored, and utterly vulnerable to what was bearing down upon them as fast as Zorita’s oarsmen could pull.

“With me! With me!” cried Bentham as he leapt over the bow of his boat, splashing knee deep into tepid, flat water and charging up the beach towards the walls of the fort and the V-bottomed dry-ditch that encircled it. There came a huge cheer and a roar from those behind him, and Bentham’s heart soared in delight at his own cleverness, for not a gun was in action in the walls ahead, and not a single snout of a firing piece was visible in the embrasures that faced him.

A rumble and battering of shoe leather, and screeches and cries from all hands brought the pirates to the brink of the ditch, and still no gunfire. Bentham was yelling at the men, shoving half a dozen of them into the ditch to form a human bridge, and leading the way over, boot heels grinding into arms and shoulders, standing on the narrow walkway under the wall, and unwinding the line and grapnel from his waist, and beginning to swing it, O’Byrne beside him, ugly face yelling in delight, and more and more men and ladders raising and figures scrambling up and over the wall…

And then the wrath of God beat down upon Bentham’s men. The sound alone was enough to strike men bleeding and broken. The orange flame seared and sizzled. It scorched and burned and turned living bodies into blackened, red-glowing rags of meat.

An unseen heavy gun had fired from the inner angle of one of the fort’s bastions, from an emplacement designed for just such a moment, and which enabled the gun to fire horizontally across the face of the wall. Capitan Zorita had prepared most carefully and made best use of the guns that he had. Thus the load was double canister: forty-eight pounds of musket balls, sewn up in canvas bags: some eight hundred projectiles blasted forth in a hideous cloud by gunners who instantly served their smoking gun, ramming home a second charge, and running out and firing again.

“Fire!” cried the senior guardia marina, and four heavy guns thundered and slid back up the ingenious slides designed to absorb their recoil. Even so the gunboats heaved backwards, but the oarsmen took the way off them and lined up the boats again, so their guns bore directly into the stern windows of the chosen ship: Favourite was its name, picked out in yellow paint just over the rudder.

The range was too close for a miss and the gunboats were placed so that they could fire into Favourite from a position where none of her guns, nor those of her consorts, could retaliate. That was why Favourite had been chosen. Like everything else in the Spanish attack, it was logical, skilful and effective.

“In your own time, now…fire at will!” cried the senior guardia marina, but he needn’t have bothered. The gunners were fighting mad, delighted to punish a despicable enemy, and cheering at every ball they sent tearing from end to end of the damned-to-hell pirate ship with its black flag and its crew of heathen savages come to burn churches, rape maidens and to piss upon the holy banner of Spain.

Bentham was lucky. So was O’Byrne. So was Parry. By the caprice of war, they were untouched. Captain Nichols was not lucky. He was among the one hundred and sixty-three left dead or wounded. Or perhaps he was lucky, since he was killed outright, unlike the man next to him: still alive and sat stupefied with the side of his skull blown away and mashed brains running down his neck.

Captain Danny led the rout. He ran. All those who could came after him, to the total of twenty-eight fit men. They managed to launch a boat, and pulled away, closing their hearts to their shipmates that slithered after them on shattered limbs, begging not to be left behind. They didn’t need to close their ears, for they were all deaf for days afterwards, thanks to the concussion of the single gun that had ruined their attack with just a few rounds fired at point-blank range into a packed and helpless target.

Hercules and Sweet Anne likewise cut their cables, abandoning Favourite to the enemy. And they too were lucky, for there was just enough wind in the anchorage for steerage way, and just enough hands aboard to man the guns. But even so they were comprehensively shamed, for once the gunboats had smashed Favourite into a wreck, and seen her heel over till her yards touched bottom in the shallow bay, they went after the pirates like hungry sharks, seeking to get under their sterns where no enemy gun could return fire, and the pirates all the while manoeuvring crabwise, constantly attempting and failing to deliver a broadside of grape into their agile enemies.

Only at the mouth of Isabel Bay, where the fresh wind gave advantage to the ships, did the gunboats back oars, but they had the satisfaction of one enemy sunk, dozens of prisoners taken for the hangman, and a goodly tonnage of shot sent thumping into the two ships that they’d driven off for the honour of His Catholic Majesty King Ferdinand VI.

Then, as the oarsmen headed for home with the guardia marinas standing at their tillers, heads held high, perhaps they were careless, perhaps they dwelt too much on the hero’s welcome awaiting them ashore, else they should have seen the longboat creeping out from behind Isabel Island, and pulling desperately after the pirate ships. As soon as they were sure the gunboats weren’t coming after them, this bedraggled crew raised a shirt on an oar and waved it to attract the attention of uncaring shipmates who were forging out to sea under all plain sail.

“Bastards!” said Bentham. “Can’t they see us?”

“Swabs!” said O’Byrne. “Wouldn’t trust a mother’s son of ’em!”

“The sods are going to leave us!”

But they didn’t, and Bentham and the rest were saved. They were saved by that last, pitiful companion of the desperate, the sentiment that remained in Pandora’s box when all the world’s evils escaped. For when those aboard Hercules saw the longboat, they found that they still cherished hope: the beloved hope that the storming party might have come away from the fort laden with Spanish dollars.

So Hercules backed her topsail, hove to, and took the longboat aboard. Then all hands peered mightily into the bottom of her for any sign of treasure chests.

They found no treasure, only their captain and twenty-eight desperately shaken men, most of whom hadn’t even the strength to go down to the spirit room to get drunk. They just called for rum and sat about looking dismal, some sobbing with self-pity, when their mates asked what had happened.

Only O’Byrne was anything like himself. He went round cussing and blinding, and punching the heads of all those he considered to have been safe aboard while better men died. But even that was only for show. They could tell. So it was a dangerous time for Danny Bentham and there was much muttering in corners as Hercules rolled onwards and left Niña de Cuba behind.

Facing mutiny, a more honest captain than Bentham would have told the truth and trusted his men, while a more sinister captain would have terrified them. But Bentham was only his modest self, and aside from a talent for skewering men with a rapier, his only real gift was to cut a dash. So he put on some good clothes, and told all hands what he was going to do next, by heaven, and he uttered great lies and swore fat promises. And what with O’Byrne and Parry and the other survivors wanting never to hear of Isabel Island again…he got away with it.

So, no black spots were made nor passed into Cap’n Danny’s hands. But he knew that he was humiliated, and that one more failure would see him rising to the yardarm, his hands tied behind him.

Danny Bentham needed a success. He needed one badly.

Chapter 12 (#ulink_15db6400-7116-50c8-8f3a-9bdb5b60dcb6)

10 a.m., 12th November 1752 Half Moon Bastion, Bay Street Charlestown, South Carolina

Captain Flint was surprised. He was surprised because Mr Meshod Pimenta had finally said something surprising.

So far this morning, Joe Flint, Charley Neal and Selena had toured–in succession–the Ashley Bastion, The Pallisades, Granville’s Bastion, a bastion whose name Flint had forgotten, and had gazed upon a twelve-foot moat. All the while, Pimenta had refused to discuss business, lecturing instead on the enormous, concrete-faced earthworks and the great numbers of guns that made the walled city of Charlestown one of the most powerful fortifications in the entire British colonies. When he was not doing that, he was praising the city for its energy and resourcefulness in recovering from the hurricane, which–he said–had thrown it flat on its back in September.

Charley Neal had arranged the meeting and Flint was in his shore-going rig: plain hat and coat and no weapons–at least none visible. He’d insisted on having Selena in tow, dressed in some plain but respectable women’s clothes he’d found for her, because he was jealous of Van Oosterhout and Cowdray and wouldn’t leave her on the ship with them. He’d even acquired a nice respectable name for the occasion; in Charlestown he was Captain Garland, that being Uncle Peter’s name, who’d first taken him to sea, and his mother’s maiden name besides. Pimenta, though, knew exactly who he was.