Pirate Latitudes

All this thinking mattered not at all. He was traveling in circles with no sense, no purpose, no destination, only the persistent itch of a frustrated man who was trapped and sought an exit in vain.

And then, he heard the cry that seamen fear more than any other: “Fire!”

Chapter 29

HE RUSHED TOPSIDE, in time to see six fireboats bearing down on the galleon. They were the warship’s longboats thickly coated with pitch, and now blazing brightly, illuminating the still waters of the bay as they floated forward.

He cursed himself for not anticipating this maneuver; the smoke on the warship’s decks had been a clear clue, which Hunter had failed to understand. But he wasted no time in recrimination. Already the seamen of El Trinidad were pouring over the side, into the galleon’s longboats, tied alongside the ship; the first of the longboats cast off, the men stroking furiously toward the fire ships.

Hunter spun on his heel. “Where are our lookouts?” he demanded of Enders. “How did this happen?”

Enders shook his head. “I don’t know, the watch was posted on the sandy point and the shore beyond.”

“Damn!”

The men had either fallen asleep at their posts, or else Spaniards had swum ashore in the darkness, surprised the men, and killed them. He watched the first of his longboats with its complement of seamen battle the flames of one burning ship. They were trying to fend it off with their oars, and to overturn it. One seaman caught fire and jumped screaming into the water.

Then Hunter himself went over the side, dropping into a boat. As the crew rowed, they drenched themselves with seawater, as they approached the burning boats. He looked off and saw that Sanson was leading a longboat from Cassandra to join the fight.

“Bend your backs, lads!” Hunter shouted, as he moved into the inferno. Even at a distance of fifty yards, the heat from the fire ships was fierce; the flames streaked and jumped high into the night; burning gobs of pitch crackled and spit in all directions, sizzling in the water.

The next hour was a living nightmare. One by one, the burning ships were beached, or held away in the water until their hulls burned out and they sank.

When Hunter finally returned to his ship, covered in soot, his clothes ragged, he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

…

ENDERS WOKE HIM the next morning with the news that Sanson was down in the hold of El Trinidad. “He says he has found something,” Enders said doubtfully.

Hunter pulled on his clothes and climbed down the four decks of El Trinidad to the hold. On the lowest deck, redolent of dung from the cattle above, he found Sanson, grinning broadly.

“It was an accident,” Sanson said. “I cannot take credit. Come and see.”

Sanson led the way below to the ballast compartment. This narrow, low passage stank of hot air and bilge water, which sloshed back and forth with the gentle motion of the boat. Hunter saw rocks placed there for ballast. And then he frowned - they were not rocks, they were too regular in shape. They were shot.

He picked one up in his hand, hefting it, feeling the weight. It was iron, slippery with slime and bilge water.

“Five pounds or so,” Sanson said. “We have nothing on board to fire a five-pound shot.”

Still grinning, he led Hunter aft. By the light of a flickering lantern, Hunter saw another shape in the hold, half-submerged by water. He recognized it immediately - it was a saker, a small cannon no longer much used on ships. Sakers had fallen out of popularity thirty years earlier, replaced either by small swivel guns or by very large cannon.

He bent over the gun, running his hands along it, underwater. “Will she fire?”

“She’s bronze,” Sanson said. “The Jew says she will be serviceable.”

Hunter felt the metal. Because it was bronze, it had not corroded much. He looked back at Sanson. “Then we will give the Don a taste of his own delights,” he said.

The saker, small though it was, still comprised seven feet of solid bronze weighing sixteen hundred pounds. It took the better part of the morning to wrestle the gun onto El Trinidad ’s deck. Then the gun had to be lowered over the side, to a waiting longboat.

In the hot sun, the work was excruciating and had to be done with consummate delicacy. Enders shrieked orders and curses until he was hoarse, but finally the saker settled into the longboat as gently as if it were a feather. The longboat sank alarmingly under the weight. Her gunnels clearing the water by no more than inches. Yet she was stable, as she was towed to the far shore.

Hunter intended to set the saker on top of the hill that curved out from Monkey Bay. That would place it within range of the Spanish warship, and allow it to fire on the offshore vessel. The gun emplacement would be safe; the Spaniards could not get enough elevation from their own cannon to make any reply, and Hunter’s men could shell them until they ran out of balls.