Buccaneer

Gutteridge gave him a penetrating look. 'Mr Snead ... or Mr Snead's friends?' he said grimly. 'The word's out that there's an assembly off Negril. Several hard cases are recruiting for some sort of mischief. One of my own men ran off yesterday to volunteer.'

'So you'll be needing a replacement,' said Hector.

'Yes, but I wouldn't want to make enemies of that lot.'

'No one need know. You could conceal me aboard until your ship sails. Then I can make myself useful until we reach Petit Guave. That would be a fair price for the map.'

Gutteridge nodded. 'All right. We have a bargain.' He reached down and pulled at a trap door in the cabin floor. 'This leads down to the aft hold. You can stay down there.' He reached for an earthenware jug standing on the floor beside his bunk. 'Take this water with you. It'll be enough until I can get you some food later in the day.'

Hector sat down on the edge of the open hatch, his legs dangling into the dark space below. He looked up at Gutteridge. 'And when do you expect to reach Petit Guave?' he asked.

Gutteridge avoided his eyes and did not answer.

'You said you were stopping there, to take on brandy,' Hector reminded him.

Gutteridge was shamefaced. 'No, I did not say that. I said only that I was thinking of stopping there on the way to Campeachy.'

'But I have friends in Petit Guave ... a Miskito and a Frenchman. This is why I want to join you.'

Gutteridge continued to look evasive. 'Maybe on the return trip .. .' he said lamely. 'And if we bring back a good load of logwood, I'll cut you in for five per cent of the profit.'

He gave Hector a gentle push with his foot, and the young man dropped down into the darkness, suddenly aware that he was unlikely to see either Susanna or Dan and his friends until his voyage to Campeachy was over.

_FIVE

'Christmas,' said Captain Gutteridge cheerfully, 'is the best season to take up logwood.' He was leaning over the rail as his vessel edged slowly along a low swampy coast. Beyond the swamp a cloudless sky came down to the horizon in a pale harshness that made Hector's eyes ache. The land was so flat that all he could see was the endless dark green barrier of mangroves on their tangled mud-coloured roots and the feathery top of an occasional palm tree. It had taken less than ten days to sail from Port Royal to the Campeachey coast, and Gutteridge was in good humour. 'You'll be back in Jamaica before you know it,' he was saying. With Hector's stolen chart in hand, he was carefully tracking their progress. 'Logwood fetches a hundred pounds a ton on the London market, and with your share of the profit you can begin to make your fortune.'

Everyone in the Caribees, Hector thought to himself, was ready with advice on how to make vast great riches. Earlier it had been Robert Lynch, now it was the threadbare captain of a worn-out trading sloop. He no longer resented Gutteridge for his dishonesty over the mythical trip to Petit Guave. It was three weeks since Hector had last seen Dan, Jacques and the two Laptots, and he had accepted that whatever had happened to them in the French colony it was too late for him to make a difference. As for his yearning to see Susanna again, perhaps the captain was right. The niece of Sir Thomas Lynch would be more impressed with a rich suitor than a penniless admirer. Maybe a lucrative trip to the Campeachy coast would be his first step on the road to making a fortune.

He turned his attention back to the shoreline. 'The logwood cutters call themselves Bay Men and they live scattered all along the coast,' Gutteridge told him. 'Maybe five or six of them live together in a shared camp. They could be anywhere, so we cruise quietly along the shore until they spot us and make a signal. Then we drop anchor and they'll come out to trade. They'll exchange their stock of logwood for the goods we bring. Our profit is rarely less than five hundred per cent.'

'How do we know what they want?'

The captain smiled. 'They always want the same thing.'

'But wouldn't they get a better price if they brought their logwood to Jamaica themselves?'

'They can't. Too many of them are wanted by the authorities. They'd be arrested the moment they set foot ashore. Many of them are ex-buccaneers who failed to come in and surrender when there was an amnesty. The rest are knaves and ruffians. They like the independent life, though I can't say I envy them.'

Now Gutteridge was staring fixedly at a stretch of mangrove. 'Is that smoke?' he asked. 'Or are my eyes playing tricks?'

Hector looked carefully. A light grey haze was rising from the greenery. It might be smoke or a patch of late-morning mist that had not yet cleared. 'They hide themselves like fugitives. Surely the authorities would not send ships here to arrest them,' he said.

'It's the Spanish they are afraid of,' Gutteridge explained. 'The Spaniards claim all of Campeachy as their territory and regard the Bay Men as trespassers who steal the timber. If the

Spanish patrols catch the loggers, they are carried off to the cities where they are thrown into prison or auctioned off as slaves.'

He was shading his eyes with his hands and staring long and hard. He gave a grunt of satisfaction. 'Yes, that's smoke all right. We stop here.'

He despatched Hector with a sailor into the ship's hold with orders to bring up a barrel of rum. Stooping under the deck beams, Hector noted that the cargo space was three-quarters empty. In one corner were stacked a few rolls of cloth. Elsewhere were several cases of hammers, axes, cutlasses, wedges, crowbars. Against a bulkhead several more chests contained blocks of refined sugar. But the bulk of the sloop's cargo was three dozen barrels and casks of varying sizes, ranging from a little eighteen-gallon rundlet to a massive puncheon. He checked their contents. Perhaps a quarter of them were kegs of gunpowder, the rest held rum, great quantities of it. With the help of his companion, Hector rolled a rum barrel to the companion-way, and rigged a block and tackle to raise the cask on deck. There a rough table had already been made by laying planks across yet more barrels, and was set with loaves of ship's bread, ham and salted beef.

'Here they come now in that pirogue,' said Gutteridge, looking towards the shore. A large dugout canoe was already halfway out to the ship, paddled by three men. It was difficult to see much of the men because all were wearing hats with extravagantly broad, drooping brims which completely shaded their faces.

The captain himself went to the ship's rail, ready to hand his visitors up on deck. 'Greetings, my friends, greetings! Welcome to my ship!' he called out jovially. Hector could see that the newcomers were heavily armed. Each man had his musket, and there were pistols tucked in their belts. One of them paused his stroke for a moment, waved his paddle in the air, and let out a great whoop of elation.

Moments later their canoe was alongside, and the three logwood cutters were climbing over the rail. Gutteridge was slapping them on the back and gesturing towards the table of food and the keg of rum. Hector had never seen such uncouth characters. Their tangled hair hung down to their shoulders, and their beards were matted and unwashed. Every garment was filthy and reeking of sweat. Two of them had facial wounds - one had a scar that ran from his ear down the side of his neck, and another was lacking an eye. The third man in the group seemed to be their leader and was a colossus. He stood nearly six and a half feet, with heavily muscled shoulders and arms, and the knuckles on his enormous hands were callused. His face looked as if it had been struck a dozen times for there was a tracery of fine scars across his forehead and cheeks, and his nose had been flattened by a cruel blow. All three men carried themselves with a swaggering menace as they set foot on deck and looked around. Most striking of all was the colour of their skin. Their hands and faces were a strange dark red as though they had been roasted on a spit or were suffering from some strange disfiguring disease.