“Why?” Hunter said.
“Because I have hidden half the treasure. Look here,” Sanson said, fingering a gold coin about his neck. “Here I have marked where the treasure is located. The treasure from the Cassandra. Does that not interest you?”
“It does.”
“Well then. We have reason to negotiate.”
“You tried to kill me,” Hunter said, holding the crossbow steady.
“Would you not try the same, in my place?”
“No.”
“Of course you would,” Sanson said. “It is sheer impudence to deny it.”
“Perhaps I would,” Hunter said.
“There is no love lost between us.”
“I would not have crossed you.”
“You would, if you could.”
“No,” Hunter said, “I have something like honor-”
At that moment, from behind him, a female voice squealed, “Oh, Charles, you got him-”
Hunter turned fractionally, to look at Anne Sharpe, and in that moment, Sanson lunged.
Hunter fired automatically. With a whish! the crossbow arrow was released. It shot across the deck, catching Sanson in the chest, lifting him off his feet and pinning him to the mainmast, where he swung his arms and twitched.
“You have done me wrong,” Sanson said, with blood dripping from his lips.
Hunter said, “I was fair.”
Then Sanson died, his head slumping on his chest. Hunter plucked out the crossbow arrow, and the body fell to the ground. Then he pulled the gold coin with the treasure map etched in its surface from around Sanson’s neck. While Anne Sharpe watched, with her hand covering her mouth, Hunter dragged the body to the side of the ship, and pushed it overboard.
It floated on the water.
The sharks circled it warily. Then one came forward, tugged at the flesh, tore away a piece. Then another, and another; the water churned and foamed blood. It lasted only a few minutes, and then the color dissipated, and the surface was still, and Hunter looked away.
Epilogue
A CCORDING TO HIS own memoirs, Life Among the Privateers of the Caribbean Sea, Charles Hunter searched for Sanson’s treasure during all of the year 1666, but never found it. The gold coin did not have a map scratched on its surface; instead, there was a funny series of triangles and numbers, which Hunter was never able to decipher.
Sir James Almont returned to England with his niece, Lady Sarah Almont. Both perished in London ’s Great Fire of 1666.
Mrs. Robert Hacklett remained in Port Royal until 1686, when she died of syphilis. Her son, Edgar, became a merchant of substance in the Carolina Colony. In turn, his son, James Charles Hacklett Hunter, was governor of the Carolina Colony in 1777, when he urged that the colony side with the northern insurgents against the English army under the command of General Howe in Boston.
Mistress Anne Sharpe returned to England in 1671 as an actress; by that time, women’s parts were no longer played by boys, as they had been earlier in the century. Mistress Sharpe became the second most famous woman from the Indies in all Europe (the most famous, of course, being Madame de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV, who had been born on Guadeloupe). Anne Sharpe died in 1704, after a life of what she herself described as “delicious notoriety.”
Enders, the sea artist and barber-surgeon, joined Mandeville’s expedition on Campeche in 1668 and perished in a storm.
The Moor, Bassa, died in 1669 in Henry Morgan’s attack on Panama. He was run down by a bull, one of the many animals Spaniards released in an attempt to protect the city.
Don Diego, the Jew, lived on in Port Royal until 1692, when, at an advanced age, he died in the earthquake that destroyed the “wicked city” forever.
Lazue was captured and hanged as a pirate in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1704. She was said to have been a lover of Blackbeard’s.
Charles Hunter, weakened by malaria during his searches for Sanson’s treasure, returned to England in 1669. By that time, the raid on Matanceros had become a political embarrassment, and he was never received by Charles II, nor accorded any honor. He died of pneumonia in 1670 in a cottage in Tunbridge Wells, leaving a modest estate and a notebook, which was stored at Trinity College, Cambridge. His notebook still exists, as does his grave, in the cemetery of the Church of St. Anthony in Tunbridge Wells. The stone is nearly worn smooth, yet it can still be read:
Honest Adventurer and Seaman
Beloved of His Countrymen
In the New World
