did as ordered, though I offered our assistance first. He thanked me for that, but said it was not needed. So off I went.'
Novia turned to me. 'We were many days in the forest, Crisoforo.'
'We were.' I tried to recall the entries I had made in the log, and the ones Bouton and Boucher had made as well. 'From the time we went ashore to take Portobello to the time we sailed away from it comes to thirty-three days, I would say. I don't believe that can be off by much.'
'So I think, Capitan Harker. A month, I say. We women are given a reason to take note of the moon. You waited long when we had gone?'
Harker nodded. 'Those were my orders, madam. I was to wait until your good captain came and Captain Lesage. Not one, but both. Wait I did.'
'So may God wait my soul. Long and long, I hope. Capitan Burt, you are our man of wisdom. Where is this Lesage, who was Chris's lieutenant once?'
Capt. Burt spread his hands. 'I have no more notion than you, Senora. A thousand things may chance at sea.'
I said, 'He may be hanging from a Spanish rope right now.' The thought cheered me, I admit.
'Aye,' Harker put in. 'Or his crew may have voted him out and gone elsewhere-he's a hard man, by repute.'
'He may be nosin' around Portobello lookin' for us, Chris.'
I felt Novia's small, hard hand slip into mine as she said, 'You will send this man back to see, Capitan Burt?'
With a slight frown, he shook his head.
'When we come, Chris wish to know. Now I, too, wish to know this. I do not like them, this capitan and his ship which disappear.'
'You fear some treachery, Senora. What is it?'
Her hand tightened on mine. 'I do not know.'
'No more do I, Senora. What could he do? Tell the Spanish we intended Portobello? By the time he learned of that, Portobello had fallen to us. Tell the Spanish we intended Maracaibo? Yes, certainly, and it seems someone did. You'll remember Goslin's letters, eh? So that may have been Lesage. But it may have been any of two dozen others as well.'
Novia did not speak.
'We held a meetin', Senora. A council of war. You weren't there, and neither was Chris, nor Lesage for that matter. The rest were. Hal and I were for Maracaibo. Only us. Not Goslin', not Cox, not Dobkin, not Ogg, though I'd counted on Ogg. Not another soul. What does that tell you?'
I said, 'I don't know, Captain, and I don't think Novia does either.'
Capt. Burt leaned back in his chair, making a steeple of his fingers. For about half a minute, nobody spoke. Then Novia burst out, 'We wish to know what it tell you, Capitan.'
'Suppose that you'd known I meant to raid Maracaibo, Senora. Suppose further that you, famished for gold, had sold your knowledge to the Spanish. Would you want to send Chris here off to help me raid the place?'
She shook her head violently. 'Not I!'
Capt. Burt nodded. 'What about you, yourself, Senora? You marched with us from Portobello to Santa Maria.'
'Back also, Capitan. Who is carry me?'
'Would you want to march on Maracaibo?'
'No! They are warn. I have say this.'
'So you have, though I intend Maracaibo even so. If you had been a captain in that council of war to which I referred, wouldn't you say the same? Maracaibo's fly? Let's go somewhere else?'
Capt. Burt looked at each of us in turn. 'Recollect now that every captain there, save for Hal and me, said just that.'
Harker said, 'They won't all have spilled the works, Captain.'
'Naturally not, Hal. I'm saying only that if our Judas was there, he'd have spoken as the rest did-and might, perhaps, have suggested Portobello. The ideal result of our meetin'-from his perspective, mind-would be for me and some others to go off after Maracaibo, while he and the rest went elsewhere. He might've asked himself where Bram Burt wouldn't care to go, d'ye see? And been answered Portobello, for saucy Bram knows Portobello to be a hellhole.
'Of them that was at the meetin', who could Bram trust then, shipmates?'
I said, 'Only Captain Harker here, I would think.'
'Well said, Chris, but there's one other. Besides myself.'
I probably looked as blank as my mind was at that moment.
'Hal? Care to have a go?'
He shook his head.
'Senora? You've a long head.'
'Capitan Isham, I think. Because you have say nothing of him here.'
'Clever.' Capt. Burt smiled and leaned toward us, his elbows on the table. 'Clever, but not right. No, I ask you, shipmates, if you had played Judas with Spain, and had afterward found letters saying the Spanish had been warned, would you tell Bram Burt?'
Novia shook her head.
I said, 'I see.'
'So you should, Chris. There's a good reason to trust Goslin', and here's another. When the rest went off to Panama and left me, who stayed by me? Why, it was Goslin' again. You with him, to be sure, and your man Rombeau. So there's four captains I can trust. I suppose everybody'd like a spot more wine?'
When it had been poured, Novia said, 'Four to trust, but I do not count four here.'
'Correct, Senora. Goslin' spoke against Maracaibo at the meetin'. If I was to say to him what I've said to you today, he'd always think he was not trusted. He is, but he'd think the contrary, d'ye see? I wouldn't want that. You can't trust a man who thinks he ain't trusted, Senora, and you can make book on that. As for Rombeau, I called him Chris's man, which he is. It's my wish he should make fast there, for the time bein'. If he were drinkin' with us now, he'd begin to think himself Chris's equal, and I don't want it. Do you, Senora?'
28
Maracaibo
Captain Burt had told us we would be going to the Bay of Campeche. We did, but first we took a sort of working vacation in the Saint Blaise Islands. They are small and very lush-sort of jungle light-and there must be hundreds of them. Because the sea breezes tend to blow away flying bugs, they are nowhere near as bug-ridden as the lowlands of Darien or Hispaniola. You get beautiful beaches, big trees (mostly cedars), and parrots everywhere. Altogether, it is about as nice a place as I have ever seen.
The people are Kunas, like those we knew in Darien. Our Kunas there had been small, smaller than we were and smaller than the Moskitos. These Island Kunas were smaller yet, but they spoke the same language and seemed to have about the same customs. That was when I really wished Novia had let me bring Pinkie back with us when we left Santa Maria. I do not believe there would have been any trouble about getting her on board, and when we reached the islands she could have interpreted for us and I would have known a lot more Kuna than I did.
As it was, all of us did our best to make friends. The Kuna did not have anything we wanted, and it was pretty obvious that they would be good people to have on our side. We explained as well as we could that we were not Spanish and would not raid them for slaves the way the Spanish did. We were the enemies of the Spanish, who were their enemies, too. We proved it by giving them hatchets, axes, knives, and needles, the same kinds of gifts we had given the other Kuna. The Island Kuna liked them as much as the others had, and repaid us with meat,
