Heart of Steele (6 page)

He glared at me again. “You! You wouldn’t last a day on Steele’s ship. Show me your hands, boy!”

I held out my hands, which were callused from my climbing the rigging on the
Aurora.
He grunted. “Well, well, so ye can do a day’s work, at that. But ain’t no odds, boy. Join up with Steele, says ye? No chance, says I. And for why? Ye can’t
find old Steele, that’s why! Nobody can, as he don’t want anyone to find ’im.”

“But you’ve sailed with him. Do you sail with him still?”

“Not I, laddie buck,” the old fellow told me. “Nah, ol’ Gaff is too broke of arm an’ wind to climb the riggin’ or point a cannon. Dismissed me, did Jack, with a bag o’ gold an’ not so much as a thank ye. But that’s better nor what most o’ my shipmates got, a knife in the back an’ a berth in the ocean!”

He maundered on, going back to his youth in the north of England, where he was a minister’s son, or so he claimed. Then he talked of taking prisoners at Barbados when Steele raided that island in 1682. Then he was off on some other thread of memory. I saw that he was going to pass out soon, so at half past nine I asked again where Jack Steele might be found.

“Anywhere,” was his slurred response. “’E might be makin’ the Pirates’ Round and be off to Madagascar for the India trade. Or ’e might have sailed round the Horn an’ be makin’ ’is way to Panama.” He hiccupped. “If ’e’s off the Spanish Main, ’e’s got a snug harbor at Bloodhaven. In
these waters, maybe San …” His head reeled loosely on his neck.

“Santiago?” I asked, naming the principal port on the southeastern coast of Cuba.

“Nah, nah, San Angel. Tight little town, easy t’ keep the Spaniards quiet, quiet, qui—” He pitched forward all of a sudden, his old head crashing onto the splintered table. In a flash, I was back in the kitchen, tugging at my apron.

Jessie, who stood at a tub full of soapy water and pewter dishes, scowled at me. “What are you about?”

“I’ve got to get to sea,” I said, and in a few words I told her of what I had heard.

“San Angel?” asked Jessie, with a frown on her freckled face. “I’ve never heard of such a place, and I’ve lived here as long as I can remember. The man was drunk!”

“Drunk or sober, he’s given me the first clue I’ve struck,” I told her, and a moment later I was away.

A full moon was rising toward zenith, and in its light a good many small craft were gliding in the harbor. I got to my skiff, loosed the lines, and climbed in. A sentry on a wharf asked my business. “Fishing,” I called back.

He was silent, and I rowed on until I fetched the harbor channel and ran up my single triangular sail. Again, I was not alone, for a good many of the working people of Port Royal went late-night fishing on nights with a good moon, and as one of a dozen or more small craft, my skiff was not easy to notice.

It was uncomfortable to sail, for even with the fair sky there was a storm stalking out on the sea somewhere, and it sent a choppy swell rolling through the darkness. I shipped some water and had to bail for a good while before getting the hang of it.

My navigation was nothing more than simple dead reckoning, but the wind favored me. I sailed out onto the dark ocean until Port Royal was only a smear of yellow light low on the horizon, and there I struck my sail and dropped my small anchor.

I lit my lantern and looked at my uncle’s treasured silver pocketwatch. It was but ten minutes to eleven, and the
Aurora
would surely not show up before the set time. I had more than an hour to wait out on the open sea.

It was miserable, with the swell bobbing me up
and down like a cork in a millrace, and waves breaking over the bows at times, so that I had to bail again and again. Once two other fishing craft came toward me from the darkness, and I doused the lantern. They passed me by without even noticing me, calling to each other as they made wagers on how many fish they were going to take. Before long they were out of sight and out of earshot.

Then the devil’s own time did I have striking another light, for my tinder was damp, but at long, long last I had the lantern alight again. By then it was nearly midnight, so I ran the lantern up the mast, where it hung pitching and bobbing. Looking at it made me feel seasick. I seem never to be bothered with that illness except when aboard a small craft.

I forced myself to look away and scan the dark horizon. Nothing. Time crept by like an aged beetle, and every minute seemed an hour.

If the watch had not told me that only twenty minutes had passed, I would have sworn that it was near dawn when I sighted the twin lights that had to be the
Aurora.
To make sure, I loosed the line that held my own lantern and lowered it and raised it again.

Sure enough, the top lanterns of the approaching vessel rose and then moved from side to side. Men at the masthead had seen my signal and were giving me the agreed answer. Now all I had to do was stay put until they got to me, but that was a wearisome business, for the wind that was fair to me was foul to them.

At long last, though, she hove to, and I rowed to her side and tied my skiff fast before climbing aboard. My uncle met me with, “What news?”

“Let me tell it all at once,” I begged. “For I am weary, and I don’t want to repeat it.”

He and I joined Captain Hunter in the stern cabin, and there I poured out my story. “’Tis little enough, I know,” I said as I finished the tale.

“It may be enough,” said my uncle. “Bloodhaven, is it? And San Angel? William?”

In the light of the hanging cabin lantern, Captain Hunter went to the map chest and rummaged through its contents. He produced a chart and unrolled it atop his table. All three of us bent over it. “There is a San Angel in Mexico, I think, but that one’s landlocked. Hardly the spot for a sea dog like Steele. But if I am not mistaken …”

His finger traced the southeastern tip of Cuba, drawn on the chart in a large scale. “I see it,” said my uncle, stabbing his forefinger down at a spot well to the west of Santiago.

“Aye, just a fishing village of a few dozen souls,” said Captain Hunter with a nod. “A narrow inlet, but uncommonly deep for these waters, and a rocky island just off the coast big enough to hide even a large vessel.”

“Steele’s hideout, then?” asked Uncle Patch.

“A rare place for smugglers, at any rate,” returned Captain Hunter. “The Spaniards are forbidden by law to deal with any but their own ships. But the Spanish king charges such high prices for his goods that there’s a brisk trade in stolen booty. San Angel is one of those quiet little corners that calls no attention to itself, but it’s just the spot where, on a dark night, a British or French captain might quietly transfer a hold full of goods to an honest Spaniard’s merchant ship—or the ship of a Spaniard who passes for honest, at any rate.”

I was not to go back to the King’s Mercy, it seemed. For that I was grateful, being worn out from my week of hard work and my night of rowing and
sailing a cross-grained little skiff on that rolling sea. Straightaway I went belowdecks to my hammock, climbed in, and dropped into as deep a sleep as I have ever known.

The next morning we had cleared the eastern tip of Jamaica and were making our way north and west, toward San Angel. The wind almost failed us, and with the topsails set, we glided along at less than two knots. “It’s just as well,” said Captain Hunter, “for we must change our disguise.”

He called for Mr. Grice, the sailmaker, and told him to make up all the flags appropriate to a Spanish trader. Then he had some men paint out the false name,
Fairweather,
that ran along the ship’s transom. He walked the decks for more than an hour before exclaiming, “I have it!” He went to his cabin for a short space of time and came back with a sheet of paper on which he had hand-lettered
Cielo Claro.
He handed that to Mr. Tate, who was in charge of the painting crew. “This is to be our new name, Mr. Tate. Paint it on as fancy as you please.”

“Dark blue and gilt?” asked Mr. Tate with a
gleam in his eye. He loved gold, even if it were only paint.

“Gilt, dark blue, whatever you wish,” said Captain Hunter with a grin.

Uncle Patch peered over Mr. Tate’s shoulder.
“Cielo Claw?”

“We shall be the
Clear Sky,”
answered the captain. “It’s very close to
Fairweather.
Just the sort of unremarkable name that will draw no undue attention from the dons.” He looked around. “Alonzo!”

A sailor in the mizzen top leaped from his perch as though he had lost his mind and was bent on dashing out his brains on the deck. He caught a stay, though, and slid down it, dropping off lightly and landing just before the captain. “Yes, sir?”

“How’s your Spanish, Pedro Alonzo?” asked Captain Hunter.

Mr. Alonzo scratched his head. “Well, sir, I might be that bit rusty. I was brought up a-speakin’ of it, but I’ve had small occasion to talk it since I was twelve or thereabout.” I thought that Mr. Alonzo might now be three times that age. “What does your honor need?”

The captain grinned. “A ship’s master, if a Spanish vessel hails us. Think you could tell ’em all that we’re the
Cielo Claro,
fresh from Seville, if they ask?”

A relieved grin split Mr. Alonzo’s dark, craggy face. “Oh, aye, that I can do with no trouble at all. I thought you wanted something more in the—the—litterarywary line.”

“Just the talk of an honest Spanish merchant seaman, that’s all,” the captain assured him.

When Mr. Alonzo had left us to climb back to his post, Uncle Patch shook his head dolefully.
“Cielo Claro,
in faith! This will never answer, William. Any sailor with half an eye can see that the
Aurora
is French-built.”

“Aye, but what of that?” Captain Hunter said carelessly. “I hope an honest Spanish merchant may buy his ship at any port he chooses. We’ll get close enough to see whether the
Red Queen
is riding at anchor in the fairway to San Angel, you may rest assured of that.”

“And then?” asked my uncle.

Captain Hunter shrugged. “One thing at a time, Doctor. First let us see whether this drunkard’s tale
of Jack Steele is just vaporings, or whether it has any sober truth at its bottom.”

And not another word on the subject would he speak.

Death and Desolation

IN THE DAYS
that followed, we sailed along the southern coast of the great Spanish island possession of Cuba. Sparkling white beaches and mangrove swamps, lush forests and the distant mountains that formed the spine of the island slid past, broken only by small white villages and the occasional flocks of fishing boats. We sailed fast and silent, ignoring all hails. Captain William Hunter had one goal and one goal only.

San Angel.

Finally we were there. The passage was a bit tricky. A long, low island thick with trees protected the indifferent harbor from the sea.

“Doesn’t look like much for all this fuss, does it, Uncle?” I asked as the two of us stood by the rail. Uncle Patch grunted in reply, but he, too, was scanning the little town before us.

San Angel was a small cluster of white buildings huddled around a tiny ivory-colored Catholic church. Behind it towered a tangled wall of dark green trees. The water in front was a deep blue. And not a sound or movement came from white or green or blue.

“I have no liking for this stillness,” Uncle Patch muttered. “I have no liking for it at all.”

Then the birds began swarming up in thousands, for an instant blotting out the little town in a fluttering wall of screaming white. Gulls, so many gulls, and my mind immediately cast back to the last time I had seen so many.

That was when they had risen like an evil white cloud over the horror that had been the derelict bark
Elizabeth Bingham.

Their screaming cast a spell of silence over the decks of the
Aurora.
The closer we glided, the more apparent the destruction that was San Angel became. The harbor was empty and there was no
giant bloodred pirate ship waiting for us with open gunports. In truth, there were no ships waiting at all. It was deserted, save for us. The little dock was cluttered with broken barrels and cases, fishing nets festooning the piers like seaweed. And the neat little houses gaped roofless at the cloudless sky.

And still the gulls rose.

“It’s a fishing village,” whispered Mr. Adams, coming up behind us. “Where are all the fishing boats?”

At that moment there was a sharp scraping sound from underneath us. Something was dragging against the
Aurora
’s cooper-sheathed bottom. Uncle Patch looked over the side and all the color drained from his ruddy face.

“Faith, Mr. Adams, they’re all right here,” he breathed in a dead voice. “You just have to know where to look.”

I joined him at the railing and stared down into the azure water. I could just barely make it out, but I could see the faint outline of a fishing boat resting on the bottom of the harbor. It was the very tip of her single mast that was scraping against our hull. Other shadows loomed up out of the deeps.

“Sharks!” Mr. Alonzo cried from where he stood
clinging to the shrouds. “There’s another! And another! Blessed Mary, the bay’s alive with ’em!”