Hunter.
“There he is!” Lazue shouted.
And indeed, there he was, standing at the shore with some woman.
“Can you stop?” Lazue demanded.
Enders shook his head. “We’ll go into irons,” he said. “Throw a line.”
The Moor had already thrown a line. It hit the shore. Hunter grabbed it with the girl, and they were immediately yanked off their feet and dragged into the water.
“Better get them up smartly, before they drown,” Enders said, but he was grinning.
The girl nearly drowned, she was coughing for hours afterward. But Hunter was in fine spirits as he took command of the treasure nao and sailed, in tandem with the Cassandra, out into the open seas.
By eight in the morning, the smoking ruins of Matanceros lay far astern. Hunter, drinking heavily, reflected that he now had the distinction of successfully leading the most extraordinary privateering expedition in the century since Drake attacked Panama.
Chapter 24
THEY WERE STILL in Spanish waters, and they moved southward quickly, under every inch of canvas they could muster. The galleon normally carried as many as a thousand people, and crews of two hundred seamen or more.
Hunter had seventy men, including prisoners. But most of the Spanish prisoners were garrison soldiers, not sailors. Not only were they untrustworthy, they were also unskilled. Hunter’s crews had their hands full managing the sails and rigging.
Hunter had interrogated the prisoners in his halting Spanish. By midday, he knew a good deal about the ship he now commanded. She was the nao Nuestra Señora de los Reves, San Fernando y San Francisco de Paula, Captain José del Villar de Andrade, owner the Marques de Canada, a vessel of nine hundred tons, built in Genoa. Like all Spanish galleons - which were invariably cumbersomely christened - this ship had a nickname, El Trinidad. The origin of the name was obscure.
El Trinidad had been built to carry fifty cannon, but after formal departure from Havana the previous August, the ship had stopped along the Cuban coast, and most of the cannon offloaded to permit the ship to carry more cargo. She was presently fitted with only thirty-two twelve-pounders. Enders had gone over the ship thoroughly and pronounced her seaworthy but filthy. A party of prisoners were now clearing some of the refuse from the holds.
“She’s taking on water, too,” Enders said.
“Badly?”
“No, but she’s an old ship, and bears watching. Not kept in good repair.” Enders’s frown seemed to encompass the long tradition of shoddy Spanish seamanship.
“How does she sail?”
“Like a pregnant sow, but we’ll make do, with fair weather and no trouble. We’re short, is the truth.”
Hunter nodded. He paced the deck of the ship and looked at the canvas. Fully rigged, El Trinidad carried fourteen separate sails. Even the simplest task - such as letting out a reefed topsail - required almost a dozen strong backs.
“If there’s heavy seas, we’ll have to ride it out with bare poles,” Enders said, shaking his head.
Hunter knew this was true. In a storm, he would have no choice but to reef all his canvas, and ride out the foul weather, but that was a dangerous thing to do on a ship so large.
But even more worrisome was the prospect of an attack. A ship under attack needed maneuverability, and Hunter lacked the crew to handle El Trinidad smartly.
And then there was the problem of the guns.
His thirty-two twelve-pounders were Danish cannon, of recent vintage, and all in good repair. Together they represented a reasonable - if not formidable - measure of defense. Thirty-two cannon made El Trinidad the equivalent of a third-rate ship of the line, and she could be expected to hold her own against all but the largest enemy warships. At least she could if Hunter had the men to work the guns, and he did not.
An efficient gun crew, a crew capable of loading, running out, aiming, and firing a cannon once a minute during battle consisted of fifteen men, not including the gun captain. To allow for injury, and simple fatigue during battle - the men grew tired pushing around two and a half tons of hot bronze - the crews were usually seventeen to twenty men. Assuming only half the cannon were fired at one time, Hunter really needed more than two hundred and seventy men just to work his guns. Yet he had none to spare. He was already shorthanded topside with his canvas.
The hard facts Hunter faced were these: he commanded a crew one-tenth the size he would need to fight well in a sea engagement, and one-third the size he would need to survive a heavy storm. The implication was clear enough - run from a fight, and find shelter before a storm.
It was Enders who voiced the concern. “I wish we could run out full canvas,” he said. He looked aloft. Right now, El Trinidad sailed without mizzens, spritsails, or topgallants.
“What’re we making?” Hunter asked.
“No better than eight knots. We should be doing double that.”
“Not easy to outrun a ship,” Hunter said.
“Or a storm,” Enders said. “You thinking of scuttling the sloop?”
Hunter had considered it already. The ten men aboard the Cassandra would help on the larger ship, but not much; El Trinidad would still be sorely undermanned. Furthermore, the sloop was valuable in itself. If he kept his own boat, he could auction the Spanish galleon to the merchants and captains of Port Royal, where it would fetch a considerable sum. Or else it would be included in the king’s tenth, and greatly reduce the amount of bullion or other treasure that King Charles would take.
“No,” he said finally. “I want to keep my ship.”
“Well, we could lighten the sow,” Enders said. “There’s plenty of deadweight aboard. You’ve no use for the bronze, or the longboats.”
“I know,” Hunter said. “But I hate to see us defenseless.”
“But we are defenseless,” Enders said.
“I know it,” Hunter said. “But for the moment we will take our risks, and trust to Providence that we will have a safe return. Chance is on our side, especially once we are in the southern seas.” It was Hunter’s plan to sail down the Lesser Antilles, and then west, into the vastness of the Caribbean between Venezuela and Santo Domingo. He would be unlikely to meet Spanish warships in so much open water.
“I’m not one for trusting to Providence,” Enders said gloomily. “But so be it.”
…
LADY SARAH ALMONT was in an aft cabin. Hunter found her in the company of Lazue, who, with an air of elaborate innocence, was helping the girl comb her hair.
Hunter asked Lazue to leave, and she did.
“But we were having such a pleasant time!” Lady Sarah protested, as the door closed.
“Madam, I fear that Lazue has designs upon you.”
“He seemed such a gentle man,” she said. “He had a most delicate touch.”
“Well,” Hunter said, taking a seat in the cabin, “things are not always as they seem.”
“Indeed, I have long since discovered that,” she replied. “I was on board the merchantman Entrepid, commanded by Captain Timothy Warner, of whom His Majesty King Charles has a most high opinion, as a fighting man. Imagine my surprise to discover that Captain Warner’s knees shook more vigorously than my own, when confronted by the Spanish warship. He was, in brief, a coward.”
“What happened to the ship?”
“It was destroyed.”
“Cazalla?”
“Yes, the same. I was taken as prize. The crew and the ship were fired upon and sunk by Cazalla.”
