Chapter Six #6
Sailing peacefully up to that busy port as Magpie slipped out of the range of a lone, energetic and massive coastal gun, at least a ninety-pounder, water splashes bigger than any they had ever seen before, came a large four-masted barquentine, her promiscuous mixture of square and fore-and-aft sail exciting much comment.
“An entry for your journals, young gentlemen,” Munson suggested to the midshipmen. “Elegantly drawn, perhaps coloured, her name noted with date and time. A written description of her rig.”
“The Virgin of Maracaibo, sir.”
“She’ll not be sailing in company then, Mr Gleeson – you will never find two virgins in any seaport.”
Frederick recognised the forced laughter – God had made a joke...
“Close her. Chaser, Mr Jackman, wait my order.”
Fraser put down his telescope, endeavoured to look calm like his young mentor. “Six hundred tons, sir? Three times our size, at a guess, and will have the legs of us, I suspect. Can’t count her gun ports on this tack.”
“Let us hope she is no privateer, Mr Fraser.”
“Still less a local bottom built for the Spanish navy, sir.”
They considered this possibility, together clasped their hands casually behind their backs, put on a show of insouciance, spoiled by their anxious glances at the masthead as he hailed.
“On deck! Hands to braces, furling square sails, sir.”
“Preparing to tack, Mr Fraser?”
“Fighting sail, or ... No, I have it, sir! A light crew, merchantman, tack or wear under fore-and-aft sail only, use the square sails on a wind when making their speed.”
“That is typical of a merchant hull, I agree, Mr Fraser. Mr Jackman! Open fire!”
The first round, intentionally high and wide, sounding very close to the Spanish sailors, peaceful men with no experience of war, knowing only small pirates who could be outpaced and avoided.
The Spanish master began to order his hands to wear ship, realised this would open his ship to a full broadside from the nasty-minded descendant of Drake just two cables off.
Brief consideration of tacking suggested this would merely offer his other side, if not for so long.
If he held his course, then the heretic would simply range onto his quarter and place his broadside there.
He glanced at his men, none of whom chose to catch his eye.
“Bring her up to the wind! Strike our colours!”
“We are flying none, sir.”
“Line the rail and raise your hands, then! They will not fire unless we try to attack or run.”
The boats took possession very quietly, apologetically almost – the Spanish were different, somehow, there was a feeling of unfair game in taking a Spanish vessel – it was not really their war, but prize money, the Magpie’s first of this commission, spoke louder than qualms of conscience.
Fraser reported back very quickly, quite delighted. Like any lieutenant living on his pay he had minor debts waiting in England, small but irritating and now easily cleared. Life was suddenly much more attractive.
“Full holds, sir. Mainly hides, well cured. Some logwood; cocoa and coffee beans in sacks. A few tons of mahogany, seasoned in baulks and boards. Some of that balsa wood. Tons of sweet potato and Irish potato, sir – slave food. A crew of eighteen, sir, who will work the ship in exchange for our promise of a return to a Spanish port, sir. Apparently, they believe that the English habitually enslave captured ships’ crews, sir. ”
“Dear me! The falsehoods people – unnamed – do not scruple to tell to innocent, na?ve sailormen! Assure them that they will be returned unharmed, with their personal possessions, although it may take a month or two to find a cartel.”
Frederick was quite impressed with Fraser’s initiative – it enabled him to cut the prize crew to a very bare minimum. Rogers left the ship with six men and a wealth of advice from the master and with every intention of enjoying himself – wouldn’t his old dad stare if he could see him now!
In the nature of things Rogers dispossessed the master of his cabin and, two days later, idly poking around off watch, he made to open a locker, found it to be a false front for an iron safe.
The Spanish captain said he had no key for it – the safe was opened and loaded by the owners in Maracaibo and cleared by the agent in Trinidad, its contents small and, he imagined, precious.
The door was hung on pintles, three heavy hinges capped over and probably proof against a crowbar, but not against naval greed.
Three bandannas knotted and packed with gunpowder and worked in behind the hinge bars, a few inches of match, Rogers and the prize crew at a distance from the cabin door, gleefully waiting.
Three coughing explosions followed by a rattle and a thump as of a sheet of iron hitting the deck.
“Three counted?” Rogers formally enquired, had his hearing confirmed – pedantic, perhaps, but so much safer – the beach at Pompey always had one or two armless beggars who had been sure they had all blown.
They crowded into the cabin, now regrettably glassless in the light in the deckhead.
“Rig a sail on battens across that, if you please, no sense in getting rained upon.”
The safe was gaping open, smoke rapidly dissipating in the through draught, displayed four shelves, three empty, the last carrying a small wooden box and a wash leather bag.
The box was no bigger than Rogers’ hand, two fingers thick, contained a thick black velvet bed on which rested six uncut greenish stones, each the size of a thumbnail, quite rough and dull.
“They mine emeralds up in the mountains, sir, green stones.”
“And these must be valuable – they don’t look like much until they’re cut and polished, do they?”
They shook their heads, waited for him to open the bag, breathed a great sigh of wonderment.
“Pearls, they look better, don’t they!”
Twenty-two bright, shining, pea-sized globules, pink or blue in tint, the pick of months of harvesting the beds.
“Comes from the Great South Sea, sir. Brought overland as being quicker and safer than a passage of the Horn.”
“You’ve sailed these waters before, Carter?”
“No, sir – but I have read my books, sir – I was apprentice to a bookseller in Devizes, sir, and he had daughters, sir, and one thing led to another and I left for Portsmouth and the sailor’s life.”
“You might have been better off to have married her, Carter!”
“Beg pardon, sir, but the vicar would not have let me wed all three.”
“My word, Carter, I see you are a man of parts – most of them private!”
They turned back to the spoils of the safe, wondering what was best to do with them.
“Six and twenty-two, we agree the count?” Rogers asked.
The six, all able, had been picked for their reliability, agreed the figure, each a surety for the other.
“Back in the box and bag and tie them up, I suppose. Nothing else we can do.”
“Beg pardon, sir, but I could run up a ditty bag out of canvas, two thicknesses and double seams, and we could sew them inside.”
“I did not know you was a hand with a needle, John Totton.”