Pirate Latitudes

Hunter looked toward the next island to the south. The smoke fires, previously visible, had now disappeared. It was then that they heard the faint thumping of drums.

“We had best return to the boat,” Hunter said, and, in the afternoon light, his men moved quickly. It took the better part of an hour to return to their longboat, beached on the eastern shore. When they arrived, they found another one of the mysterious canoe-trenches in the sand.

And something else.

Near their boat, an area of sand had been patted smooth and ringed with small stones. In the center, five fingers of a hand protruded into the air.

“It’s a buried hand,” one of the seamen said. He reached forward and pulled it up by one finger.

The finger came away clean. The man was so startled he dropped it and stepped back. “God’s wounds!”

Hunter felt his heart pound. He looked at the seamen, who were cowering.

“Come now,” he said, and reached forward, to pluck up all the fingers, one after another. Each came away clean. He held them in his palm. The crew stared with horror.

“What’s it mean, Captain?”

He had no idea. He put them into his pocket. “Back to the galleon, and we’ll see,” he said.

…

IN THE EVENING firelight, he sat staring at the fingers. It was Lazue who had provided the answer they all sought.

“See the ends,” she said, pointing to the rough way the fingers had been cut from the palm. “That’s Caribee work, and no mistake.”

“Caribee,” Hunter repeated, astonished. The Carib Indians, once so warlike on many Caribbean islands, were now a kind of myth, a people lost in the past. All the Indians of the Caribbean had been exterminated by the Spanish in the first hundred years of their domination. A few peaceful Arawaks, living in poverty and filth, could be found in the interior regions of some remote islands. But the bloodthirsty Caribs had long since vanished.

Or so it was said.

“How do you know?” Hunter said.

“It is the ends,” Lazue repeated. “No metal made those cuts. They were made by stone blades.”

Hunter’s brain struggled to accept this new information.

“This must be a Donnish trick, to frighten us off,” he said. But even as he said it, he was unconvinced. Everything fit together - the tracks of the canoes, the crocodile skin with pierced rawhide thongs.

“The Caribee are cannibals,” Lazue said tonelessly. “But they leave the fingers, as a warning. It is their way.”

Enders came up. “Beg pardon, sir, but Miss Almont has not returned.”

“What?”

“She’s not returned, sir.”

“From where?”

“I let her go inland,” Enders said miserably, pointing toward the dark cactus, away from the glow of the fires around the ship. “She wanted to gather fruits and berries, seems she’s a vegetarian-”

“When did you let her go inland?”

“This afternoon, Captain.”

“And she’s not back yet?”

“I sent her with two seamen,” Enders said. “I never thought-”

He broke off.

In the darkness came the distant pounding of Indian drums.

Chapter 33

IN THE FIRST of the three longboats, Hunter listened to the gentle lapping of the water on the sides of the boats, and peered through the night at the approaching island. The drumbeats were louder, and they could see the faint flicker of fire, inland.

Seated alongside him, Lazue said, “They do not eat women.”

“Fortunate for you,” Hunter said.

“And for Lady Sarah.”

“It is said,” Lazue said, chuckling in the darkness, “that the Caribee do not eat Spaniards, either. They are too tough. The Dutch are plump but tasteless, the English indifferent, but the French delectable. It is true, do you not think?”

“I want her back,” Hunter said grimly. “We need her. How can we tell the governor that we rescued his niece only to lose her to savages for their boucan-barbecue?”

“You have no sense of humor,” Lazue said.

“Not tonight.”

He looked back at the other boats, following in the darkness. All together, he had taken twenty-seven men, leaving Enders back on the El Trinidad, trying hastily to refit her by the light of fires. Enders was a wizard with ships, but this was asking too much of him. Even if they escaped with Lady Sarah, they could not leave No Name for a day, perhaps more. And in that time the Indians would attack.

He felt his longboat crunch up against the sandy shore. The men jumped out into knee-deep water. Hunter whispered, “Everybody out but the Jew. Careful with the Jew.”

Indeed, a moment later, the Jew stepped gingerly onto dry land, his arms cradling a precious cargo.

“Was it dampened?” Hunter whispered.

“I do not think so,” Don Diego said. “I was careful.” He blinked his weak eyes. “I cannot see well.”

“Follow me,” Hunter said. He led his group into the interior of the island. Behind him, on the beach, the other two longboats were discharging their armed crews. The men moved stealthily into the cactus ashore. The night was moonless and very dark. Soon they were all deep in the island, moving toward the fires and the pounding drums.