what would inevitably occur: first sweating, then shaking, then a creeping numbness that would spread all over the body. Death would follow before sunset.
“Where now?”
“High, very high.” Her voice was so soft he could hardly catch her words.
He looked at her pants and saw a slight ripple of the fabric at the crotch.
“Oh God,” Lazue moaned.
And then he heard a low squeak, almost a chirp. He turned and saw Diego and the Moor returning. Both smiled broadly. The Moor held something cupped in his hands. Hunter saw it was a tiny bandybird chick. It squeaked and fluttered its feathery, soft body.
“Quick, some cord,” the Jew said. Hunter produced a length of twine, and it was fastened around the chick’s legs. The chick was placed by the mouth of Lazue’s trouser cuff and tied to the ground, where it remained squeaking and twisting around its bonds.
They waited.
“Do you feel anything?” Hunter said.
“No.”
They looked back at the bandybird chick. The little creature struggled piteously, exhausting itself.
Hunter turned to Lazue.
“Nothing,” she said. And then her eyes abruptly widened.
“Coiling…”
They looked at her trousers. There was movement. A slowly forming curve in the cloth, which then dissolved.
“Going down,” Lazue said.
They waited. Suddenly, the chick became very agitated, squeaking more loudly than ever before. It had smelled the coral snake.
The Jew produced his pistol, shook out the shot and prime, and gripped the barrel in his fist, holding the butt like a club.
They waited. They could see the progress of the snake now passing the knee, going along the calf, moving by slow inches. It seemed to take forever.
And then suddenly, abruptly, the head appeared in the light, and the tongue flicked out. The chick squealed in a paroxysm of terror. The coral snake advanced, and then Don Diego leapt on it, pounding the head into the ground with the pistol butt, and simultaneously Lazue was on her feet, jumping back with a scream.
Don Diego pounded the snake with repeated blows, crushing its body into the soft earth. Lazue turned and was violently sick. But Hunter paid no attention to that - at her scream, he had immediately turned and looked up the hillside, toward the Spanish soldiers.
Sanson and the Moor had done the same.
“Did they hear?” Hunter said.
“We cannot risk it,” Sanson said. There was a long silence, interrupted only by Lazue’s retching. “You noticed they carried supplies and bedding.”
Hunter nodded. The meaning was clear enough. They had been sent up the slope by Cazalla as a warning party, to watch for pirates on the land - and also to scan the horizon for the approach of the Cassandra. A single musket-shot from that group would alert the fort below. From their vantage point, they would see the Cassandra many miles away.
“I will do this,” Sanson said, smiling slightly.
“Take the Moor,” Hunter said.
The two men slipped away, moving up the hillside after the Spanish troops. Hunter turned back to Lazue, who was pale, wiping her mouth.
“I am ready to leave,” she said.
Hunter, Don Diego, and Lazue shouldered the equipment, and moved on down the hillside.
…
NOW THEY FOLLOWED the river that opened into the harbor. When they first met it, the river was only a narrow trickle, and a man could step across it easily. But it quickly broadened, and the jungle growth along its banks became thick and deep.
They encountered the first of the organized patrols in late afternoon - eight Spaniards, all armed, moving silently up the river in a longboat. These men were serious and grim, fighting men prepared for battle. As night fell, the high trees along the river turned blue-green, and the river surface black, unmarred except for an occasional ripple of a crocodile. But the patrols were now everywhere, moving in steady cadences, by torchlight. Three other longboats ferried soldiers up the river, their torches casting long, shimmering points of light.
“Cazalla is not a fool,” Sanson said. “We are expected.”
They were now just a few hundred yards from the fortress of Matanceros. The stone walls loomed high above them. There was a lot of activity, inside and outside the fort. Armed bands of twenty soldiers paced the perimeter.
“Expected or not,” Hunter said, “we must keep to our plan. We attack tonight.”
Chapter 23
ENDERS, THE BARBER-SURGEON and sea artist, stood at the helm of the Cassandra and watched the gentle breakers turn silver as they smashed over the reef of Barton’s Cay, a hundred yards to port. Up ahead, he could see the black hulk of Mt. Leres looming larger on the horizon.
A man slipped aft to him. “The glass is turned,” he said.
Enders nodded. Fifteen glasses had passed since nightfall, which meant it was nearing two in the morning. The wind was from the east and fresh at ten knots; his ship was on a strong tack, and he would reach the island in an hour.
He squinted at the profile of Mt. Leres. Enders could not discern the harbor of Matanceros. He would have to round the southerly point of the island before he came into view of the fortress and the galleon he hoped was still anchored in the harbor.
By then, he would also be within range of the Matanceros guns, unless Hunter and his party had silenced them.
Enders glanced at his crew, standing on the open deck of the Cassandra. No man spoke. Everyone watched silently as the island grew larger before them. They all knew the stakes, and they all knew the risks: within hours, each man would either be unimaginably rich or almost certainly dead.
For the hundredth time that night, Enders wondered what had happened to Hunter and his party, and where they were.
…
IN THE SHADOW of the stone walls of Matanceros, Sanson bit the gold doubloon, and passed it to Lazue. Lazue bit it, then passed it to the Moor. Hunter watched the silent ritual, which all privateers believed brought them luck before a raid. Finally, the doubloon reached him; he bit it, feeling the softness of the metal. Then, while they watched, he tossed the coin over his right shoulder.
Without a word, the five of them set out in different directions.
Hunter and Don Diego, with ropes and grappling hooks slung over their shoulders, crept northward around the fortress perimeter, pausing frequently to allow patrols to pass. Hunter glanced up at the high stone walls of Matanceros. The upper walls had been constructed smoothly, with a rounded lip to make grappling difficult. But the masonry skills of the Spanish were not sufficient to the conception; Hunter was certain his hooks would find purchase.
When they reached the north wall of the fort, farthest from the sea, they paused. After ten minutes, a patrol passed, armor and weapons clanging in the still night air. They waited until the soldiers disappeared from sight.
Then Hunter ran forward and flung the grappling iron up over the wall. He heard a faint metallic clink as it
