Galleon (33 page)

“Come round two points to larboard!” he shouted at the men at the tiller and hurried to the coaming. “Right ho, Thomas, start it up!”

“Saxby seems to have timed that right!” Thomas shouted. “Sounded as though we’d get our sides stove in. Ah!” He bellowed as the third explosion echoed across the bay and Ned saw red pinpoints along the galleon’s side: startled Spaniards were now firing muskets in the direction of the explosions as though expecting an attack from seaward.

Now the galleon was dead ahead. The
Didon
was slowing as the short peninsula ending in Coconut Point cut off some of the wind, but Ned was thankful: it gave him extra seconds to pull himself together and more time for Thomas to make sure everything was going well in the hold.

A sudden thought struck him and he hurried aft, past the startled helmsmen, and stared over the taffrail into the
Didon
’s wake. Yes, her boat was still towing there safely, like a puppy on a leash.

Suddenly Thomas was standing beside him and men were tumbling out of the cargo hatch. “A minute to go,” Thomas gasped, looking over the bow, “and we’ve timed it beautifully, by God!”

A fourth explosion boomed to seaward and the rattle of the Spanish muskets, firing at they knew not what, now sounded so loud that Ned’s ears rather than his eyes warned him. Then he realized that, able to see only her transom, he had misjudged the distance: the
Didon
was a great deal closer than he had estimated, and Thomas had just made the same mistake.

“Into the boat, all of you!” Ned shouted, and as arranged Thomas moved to the tiller. “Come on, lads, haul in the painter and down into the boat and don’t forget to keep an eye open for us!”

Dragging off his boots in case he had to swim, he watched the galleon’s great black shape, stark now against the glowing red of the hill. “Come round to starboard, Thomas…that’s enough…hold there… Hurry, you men – you too, Mitchell, there’s nothing more for you to do… Fine, Thomas, now larboard a point…”

And now there was smoke and flame roaring up from the
Didon
’s tiny cargo hatch and Ned was puzzled for a moment by the small red squares glowing at various places along the deck: then he remembered the men chopping with axes and Thomas’ assurance that there was enough draught…

“The pitch and those bits of tarpaulin have caught all right!” Thomas shouted. “If we take much longer – that’s the first of it,” he exclaimed as a sudden flash of blazing rumbullion lit the
Didon
, “–if we don’t get there dam’ quickly it’ll reach the powder which’ll hoist us both into those hills!”

The
Didon
was rapidly turning into a floating torch and Ned cursed monotonously as the flames leaping up from the hatch almost blinded him. But there she was! “Helm hard over!” he shouted at Thomas and ran to help him at the tiller to swing the ship to larboard. Slowly – agonizingly slowly it seemed – the bow began to turn, and Ned was relieved that bowsprit and jibboom just cleared the galleon’s quarter galleries. Then slowly, but inexorably, the sloop seemed to slide sideways to crash into the galleon’s transom and stop, held there by the wind pressing on her sails.

Ned paused for a moment to make sure the
Didon
was definitely pinned, held by wind and current under the immense outward curve of the galleon’s transom, and then he felt someone tugging his arm violently. “Come
on
, Ned!” Thomas yelled. “All that powder’ll go up any second. Quick, over the side and–” he paused as the crackle of pistol shots overhead warned that the Spanish were firing down at them, still not understanding what was happening, or forgetting what El Draco had done to them half a century earlier off Calais.

“–over the side and swim for your life!” Thomas shouted again and, glancing back to make sure Ned was following, leapt on to the bulwark and jumped feet first into the sea.

Ned followed him. The water was warm! It was only in the few moments it took to drop into the sea that he had switched his mind from handling a fireship into swimming, and as he surfaced he saw, only a few feet away, the enormous bulk of the galleon with the
Didon
jammed across the transom like the fiery tail of a rocket.

Men were shouting in English and splashing showed that Thomas was still swimming towards the noise. The world looked huge but absurdly distorted from sea level: there was the burning hill – glowing now, rather than flaming – and there was the galleon. And there was the
Didon
. He swam a few strokes and then stopped to watch the burning sloop. Acrid smoke from the pitch seemed to scorch the back of his throat – salt water and burning pitch smoke, a harsh combination. And still those stupid Spaniards were lining the galleon’s taffrail, firing muskets and pistols down into the
Didon
as if expecting to be boarded by a hundred howling and heavily armed men scrambling up out of the smoke and flames – Satan’s cohorts.

Thomas must be in the boat now, and he could hear him and Mitchell shouting. They sounded alarmed, as though they feared something had happened to him. And now the creak of rowlocks: damnation, they would get dangerously near the
Didon
. Ned shouted several times, heard an answering hail, and then began swimming towards the boat. The flames were taking a long time to reach the kegs of powder, he thought. Then, only seconds later it seemed, he was being hoisted and then parbuckled into the boat, coughing up salt water.

“Take a look, Ned!” Thomas shouted in his ear, hauling him upright on a thwart.

It did not matter that the powder took a little longer: the
Didon
’s mast and blazing sails had just tumbled down on to the galleon, stoving in part of the taffrail and holding the sloop against the galleon like a foal nuzzling its mother. Flames spitting up blazing pitch from the
Didon
’s cargo hold had started a fire on board the galleon and, as they watched, the galleon’s great curving transom began to burn, driving back the men with pistols and muskets. The flames lit up the gilding on the quarter galleries: in the excitement Ned had not noticed it before, but the galleon’s transom was beautifully decorated, carved wood carefully painted in gay colours. And there was the name, carved and gilded,
La Nuestra Señora de la Piedad
.

“Come on, Ned, we’ll have a better view from farther away!” Thomas urged. “Which way do you want to go?”

“Round the stern and out to where Saxby should be watching.” The seamen started pulling enthusiastically at the oars without waiting for Mitchell’s order: they had first lit canvas strips round the barrels of pitch and then the thin, cord-like trails of slowmatch which led into the kegs of gunpowder. They had placed the casks of rumbullion so that as the pitch heated up it would burst the casks, spraying the hold with the spirit – hot waters indeed, Ned thought inconsequentially. They had left the hold at the last moment, they had climbed into the boat at the last moment, they had seen their Admiral and his second-in-command jump over the side several seconds
after
the last moment, and now all they wanted to do was to get as far away as possible before the first slowmatch burned its way into the powder, like a tiny red caterpillar crawling along a string.

Mitchell steered the boat towards Coconut Point until they were three or four hundred yards from the two ships locked in a fiery and fatal embrace and then gradually turned seaward.

“What the Devil’s happened to that powder?” Thomas suddenly exclaimed.

“Looks as though the slowmatches have gone out.”

“Six of them? Don’t forget there are six kegs.”

“Don’t worry,” Ned said, “the flames will be almost through the staves of those kegs. But why the heat hasn’t done the job already…”

“Wasn’t French powder, was it? That’d be so damp you could wring water from it.”

“No, it was ours. Stop rowing for a minute or so,” Ned told Mitchell, “we’re far enough away now and it isn’t often we can see such a sight.”

The wind was driving the flames upwards at the galleon’s transom so that sails and rigging were starting to blaze, and also forward to piles of rope, the rigging on the yards which had been lowered to the bulwarks, and the rolls of sails piled against the bulwarks.

“Look, sir!” Mitchell exclaimed, pointing towards the galleon’s bow, and Ned saw what seemed like dozens of ants swarming out along the galleon’s bowsprit and then scrambling down rope ladders into the boats which had been left there, wind-rode and clear of the hull.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Thomas said, giving an appropriately blood-chilling laugh. “A couple of hundred men in four boats? Half of them are going to have to swim for it when they capsize… Ho, ho, ho – I doubt if a quarter of ’em can swim.”

At that instant the
Didon
exploded: in the blinding flash Ned thought for a moment he saw the trees of the Pic du Paradis green among the clouds – and then, as the sloop vanished, so the galleon began blazing more fiercely but now clouds of steam swirled up to mix in the coils of smoke, and chunks of blazing pitch scattered across her decks were fanned by the wind into bonfires as though a bivouacked army was cooking meals. Ned watched speechless as thin lines of fire raced up diagonally from the deck towards the masts and a moment later he realized that the tarred rope of the galleon’s rigging, dried by days of scorching sun, was catching fire.

A sudden puff of flame which burgeoned out into a small explosion showed that gunpowder left on the galleon’s deck for the guns threatening Marigot was now exploding. And the flames, like a dreadful cancer, must be creeping below decks towards the galleon’s magazine…

“Very well, Mitchell,” Ned said, “let’s go off and find Saxby.”

His calm voice fooled no one. “When her magazine goes up,” Thomas said, “our ears will ring for a week.”

“Just so long as the gold and silver sinks right there in shallow water,” Ned said, “with all the emeralds and pearls beside them. Just a big enough bang to get the Dons off the ship, but not enough to split open those wooden crates and crack the royal seals on them.”

As the men rowed, the oars creaking against the thole pins, each man fell silent with his thoughts, and for the first time each heard clearly the noise accompanying the destruction he had wrought. The flames attacking the wood of the galleon’s timbers were crackling as though a giant was snapping tree trunks like twigs. A distant hissing puzzled Ned for a moment until he realized it must be the hot hull of the
Didon
still being quenched by the sea. And the birds and dogs – every laughing gull, tern, heron, king bird and pelican had been roused out and was flying in circles or fleeing amid squawks of alarm: every dog in Marigot – and Ned had seen large packs of them – was yapping, yelping or barking, according to its size, and working itself into a frenzy. And, like a querulous bishop trying to make himself heard in a crowded brothel, at least one donkey was braying frantically, its hee-haws like a saw blade binding in green wood.

The shouting from ahead proved to be Saxby challenging and Thomas bellowed the reply. Two minutes later both boats were being held alongside each other and as Ned leant over the bulwark to talk to Saxby he felt himself being seized in the darkness.

A moment later, after a smacking kiss, he heard Martha Judd telling him: “That’s to be going on with, until you get back to Mrs Wilson! Those bangs! What a blaze! What a night – better than my first honeymoon!”

“You must tell us about the second,” Ned said, provoking chuckles, and then asked Saxby: “Did everything go all right?”

“Perfect here, sir. Just like you told us, we uncovered the kegs in the first fishing boat, laid the slowmatch, lit it and pushed it off to leeward. Then we rowed to windward like madmen, towing the other three boats, and then we were just preparing the second when the first went off! What a bang! Oh,” he exclaimed anxiously, “I hope you saw the flash and heard the bang, sir.”

“Must have been heard over the whole island and in Anguilla, too,” Ned assured him. “All four of them were perfectly timed.”

“Yes, well, first we saw your two lanterns. Then we saw you lower them. Then Lobb started setting fire to the hill. Made a proper job o’ that, didn’t he!” Saxby said, admiring the other man’s work. Martha said: “And then we saw the
Didon
round Coconut Point and start her fireworks. I wish Mrs Wilson could have seen you tuck her under that Spaniard’s tail! But the Dons never did seem to realize what was happening to them!”

“No, that’s right,” Saxby exclaimed. “Why, they started shooting in our direction with muskets!”

“That’s nothing!” Thomas growled. “They shot down at us with pistols – just as we were jumping over the side!”

“Sir,” said Mitchell, “there’s something going on over there, along the beach.”

They all turned to see the flickering red spots of musketry fire.

“Couperin,” Ned said. “He and his men are driving off the Spaniards as they try to land from the boats on to his beach.”

“What a choice,” Thomas said. “Those that couldn’t swim had to roast or drown. Those in the boats have the choice of being shot or skewered by Couperin’s men. Well, any escaping to hide in the hills will have a tale to tell their grandchildren.”

“Time we went home,” Martha said. “Poor Mrs Wilson and Lady Diana, their hair must be turning grey with worry.”

Mitchell waited until Ned said: “Does anyone want to wait for the galleon to blow up? No? Well, let’s get back to our ships.”

The galleon did not blow up. Ned, Aurelia, Thomas and Diana were rowed round to Gallows Bay to wait for first light and see what had happened, and Thomas was the first to guess why they had neither heard the rumble of the galleon’s magazine exploding nor found the bay littered with pieces of floating wreckage.

“Her magazine must have been flooded when she first went aground weeks ago. What’ll you bet me, Ned, that we find she was holed by rocks and when she heeled a bit the magazine flooded?”

“What about her captain’s threat to bombard Marigot?”