“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.
The Caribee village was much larger than he expected: a dozen mud huts with grass roofs, ranged in a semicircle around several blazing fires. Here the warriors, painted a fierce red, danced and howled, their bodies casting long, shifting shadows. Several wore crocodile skins over their heads; others raised human skulls into the air. All were naked. They sang an eerie, monotone chant.
The object of their dance could be observed above the fire. There, resting on a lattice of green wood strips, was the armless, legless, gutted torso of a seaman. To one side, a group of women were cleaning the intestines of the man.
Hunter did not see Lady Sarah. Then the Moor pointed. He saw her, lying on the ground to one side. Her hair was matted with blood. She did not move. She was probably dead.
Hunter looked at his men. Their expressions registered shock and rage. He whispered a few words to Lazue, then set out with Bassa and Don Diego, crawling around the periphery of the camp.
The three men entered one hut, knives ready. The hut was deserted. Skulls hung from the ceiling, clinking together in the wind that blew through the encampment. There was a basket of bones in a corner.
“Quickly,” Hunter said, ignoring this.
Don Diego set his grenadoe in the center of the room, and lit the fuse. The three men slipped back outside, to a far corner of the encampment. Don Diego lit the fuse on a second grenadoe, and waited.
The first grenadoe exploded with stunning effect. The hut blew apart in a thousand fragments; the stunned lobster-colored warriors howled in frightened surprise. Don Diego lobbed the second grenadoe into the fire. It exploded moments later. Warriors screamed as they were riddled with fragments of flying metal and glass.
Simultaneously, Hunter’s men opened fire from the underbrush.
Hunter and the Moor crept forward, retrieved the body of Lady Sarah Almont, and moved back into the bushes again. All around them, the Caribee warriors screamed, howled, and died. The grass roofs of the huts caught fire. Hunter’s last glimpse of the camp was that of a blazing inferno.
Their retreat was hasty and unplanned. Bassa, with his enormous strength, carried the Englishwoman easily. She moaned.
“She’s alive,” Hunter said.
She moaned again.
At a brisk trot, the men hurried back to the beach, and their boats. They escaped the island without further incident.
. . .
BY DAWN, THEY were all safely back to the ship. Enders, the sea artist, had given over work on the galleon to Hunter, while he attended the woman’s injuries. By mid-morning, he was able to report.
“She’ll survive,” he said. “Nasty blow on the head, but nothing serious.” He looked at the ship. “Wish we were as well off here.”
Hunter had been trying to get the careened ship ready to sail. But there was still much to do: the mainmast was still weak, and the maintop missing; the foremast was entirely gone, and there was still a large hole below the waterline. They had torn out much of the deck to obtain lumber for the repairs, and soon they would have to tear up part of the lower gun deck. But progress was slow.
“We can’t be off before tomorrow morning,” Hunter said.
“I don’t fancy the night,” Enders said, looking around the island. “Quiet enough now. But I don’t fancy staying the night.”
“Nor I,” Hunter said.