"A dozen twenty-four-pounders?" said Nichols. "That's still enough to sink the three of us, even with the sun in their eyes."
"Not if they're spread round the fort, so as to cover an attack from any side," said Bentham. "There's only five guns facing the channel, and the guns aren't exercised more than once in three months!"
"How d'you know that?" said Nichols.
"Same way as I know that an' more," said Bentham. "The fort's a slaving station — blacks is offloaded there from the middle passage, and paid for from a chest of dollars in the fort's strong room — an' there's never less than twenty thousand dollars in the chest!"
"Ahhh!" they said.
"But how'd you know?" said Nichols.
"Ask him — " Bentham winked confidentially at O'Byrne "- he's the boy for secrets!"
O'Byrne stepped forward, cheered by the merry recollection he was about to share.
"We know," he said, "'cos we took a Dago slaver in June. And when we'd done pluckin' 'em, we hung the crew by the ankles and I beat their bollocks with a belaying pin until they told us all they knew."
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" cried Danny Bentham, holding his crotch with both hands and staggering bandy-legged as if in agony. That drew a great laugh, for men followed where Bentham led. He had that gift. He cut a fine figure — and was respected for being big and dangerous; especially dangerous, for Bentham could turn nasty over a wrong word or a sour look, and then God help any man within reach of his long arm and his Spanish sword.
So they laughed, Nichols, Parry and the rest, and they nudged one another and were impressed. And when Danny Bentham explained his plan for taking the fort, they cheered from the bottom of their hearts. Across the water, Sweet Anne's, and Favourite's people cheered along with them, for they caught the merry mood even if they didn't know what was afoot.
As the sun set, Sweet Anne and Favourite formed line astern on Hercules, and the three came up the Ferdinand River with the flaming sun to larboard and the guns of the fort booming and thudding ineffectually on their starboard beams. Just as Bentham had predicted, they came through unscathed, and in the great anchorage to the north of Isabel Island they found five slavers that duly lowered their colours, and cringed in fright, and begged only to be left alone.
At dawn the three ships, now double-anchored, hoisted out their longboats. Loaded with armed men, they pulled for the northern end of Isabel Island, each with a ship's captain at the helm: Bentham leading, followed by Parry, followed by Nichols.
"Give a song, you men!" cried Bentham, leading off with the first line:
"Farewell an' adieu to you fair Spanish ladies…"
"Farewell an' adieu for 'tis parted we'll be!" they sang.
"For we have our orders to sail home to Eng-er-land…"
"And t'will be a sad time till we shall see thee!"
And thus, with a great deal of noise, and much waving of blades and firing off of pistols, the three boats crossed the anchorage to their chosen destination, which was thickly wooded and the only part of their journey that was not under plain sight from the fort at the other end of the island.
In due course, the three longboats emerged from the cover of the trees, and only the oarsmen and helmsmen could be seen as the boats returned to their squadron, passing out of view behind the flagship. Then came more roaring and carousing and the boats emerged, dense-packed again, pulling strongly for the shore. As before, they returned with just oarsmen and helmsmen to take on yet another load of armed men. And so it continued, to and fro.
These activities were studied with interest by a group of gentlemen peering through telescopes on the northern ramparts of the fort. They wore the cocked hats of sea-service officers, and their blue coats and red vests marked them out as men of the Real Armada Española: the Spanish Royal Navy.
Their commander, Capitan de Navio Frederico Alberto Zorita, turned from his telescope to smile at his subordinates.
"And so they spoil a good plan!" he said.
Chapter 10
"All hands mustered and ready for to march, Mr Gunner!" "Very good, Mr Joe," said Israel Hands, and did his best to look over the men as Long John would have done.
There were a dozen of them, paraded on the beach, with muskets, water canteens, and big hats constructed of sliced and plaited palm-leaves for protection against the sun. They stood grinning and yarning, some of them chewing tobacco, but they were cheerful and ready, and Israel walked up and down the line, making sure that each one had a good pair of shoes, and water in his canteen rather than rum, and that no lubber had primed his firelock without orders.
"You! And you!" cried Israel Hands, picking two of the nimblest. "You're the advance guard, which shall march ahead as lookouts." Then he picked the two biggest: "You two shall follow on behind, a-walloping and a-belting of them as won't keep up!" The men laughed.
"And the rest shall proceed in line astern of myself and Mr Joe, and shall attend to my signals — " He put a bosun's call to his lips and blew a single sharp note. "Well?" he said.
"Forward!" they cried.
"And this?" he said, blowing a sharp double-note.
"'Vast heaving!" cried some.
"Belay!" cried others.
"Stop!" said Israel Hands. "That'n means stop!"
"Stop!" they said, nodding.
"And this?" A long trembling call.
"Enemy in sight!" they roared.
There were a few more simple signals: easily understood, and a credit to Israel Hands's capacity to innovate, since never before had he led men through a forest.
"Stand by!" cried Israel Hands.
"Huzzah!" cried the men.
"Forward!" cried Israel Hands.
In single file, they set off up the beach towards the palms, leaving the tented encampment almost empty. "Camp Silver" they were calling it now. A few men were still working on the wreck of Lion, while most of the others had already left — on Long John's orders — on expeditions led by Black Dog and Sarney Sawyer.
There was also a small guard of ten men left to defend the camp with a quartet of four-pounders charged with canister and mounted in their carriages on firing platforms of ships timbers, the better to load and train in case of attack. These men were also responsible for Long John's parrot, who'd never go willingly into a boat — even with him — and awaited its master's return here, with its own perch and a supply of food and drink, and a bit of shade rigged over it.
The bird squawked at Israel Hands as he scrunched past, ankle deep in sand, bobbing its head in greeting.
"Ahoy there!" it cried, and Israel Hands grinned, knowing himself favoured, and he plodded on.
He smiled again as he looked at Mr Joe marching ahead, a heavy Jamaican cane-cutlass in his belt, ready to clear a path if need be. The lad was a slim, wiry black who'd grown up with such a quick temper that he failed to see the joke when an overseer, finding Joe bent over to cut cane, had merrily cracked his arse with a whip. Thus Joe replied with a cutlass slash that removed a diagonal quarter of the overseer's head, plus all hope of promotion for Joe in his career as a plantation slave, obliging him to seek advancement elsewhere.
Israel Hands grinned at the thought. Joe was quick and intelligent, and under Hands's instruction he was speedily learning his letters and his numbers, to the point that he was now rated gunner's mate, and addressed as Mr Joe by all hands, even Long John himself.
Joe had his little faults, of course. He could not stand to be teased, and he was dreadfully afraid of the dark, since as a child he'd been told by his mother that, if he didn't behave, at midnight the Jumba-Jumba man would come in his big black hat and fetch Joe away in a sack. Even at nineteen years of age, Joe was still looking out for him, but Israel Hands thought no worse of the lad for that, since all sailormen believed such things: Mr Hands himself — when alone — would never look over the side at night for fear of seeing Davy Jones, the hideous fiend that lay in wait for the souls of drowned men.