By the Knife Read online

  Carter was turning back to the young officer when a great shout went up: another set of boarders was climbing over the rail.

  ‘To the boats,’ he shouted, and dropped down the hidden side of the ship to the waiting longboats closely followed by his crew. As they worked clear the Englishmen swarmed back to their boat to pursue.

  The pirates pulled hard for the reef and the waiting brig with the English longboat some distance behind. As they arrived at the ship, she fired her cannon at the navy boat, turning them back.

  As soon as the ship was underway John went to his cabin and spread the chart. As he sought a new hiding place, the golden-haired boy’s face kept coming into his mind. He wondered if he would die. I could have kept him alive for hours, he thought, cutting him into little pieces. If he lives perhaps we will meet again then I’ll cut him properly.

  The decision to hide on a Spanish island was a difficult one made more out of respect for the English navy than any other consideration. The island was sparsely populated and the bay at the southern end uninhabited. There was a large mangrove swamp into which they could pull the brig until she grounded in the mud. Her spars were sent down and her masts camouflaged once again.

  John intended to leave the brig hidden for as long as possible in the hope that the war would take the English navy off to fight Spain and leave him alone.

  What he wanted now was a small local ship that would attract no attention. With this in mind he took five of his dark-skinned crew and set off in a longboat for the next island.

  After his time in the islands John’s skin was almost as dark as that of his crew; to help further he darkened his face with wood black and wore loose native clothes. Until they could lose the longboat, however, the disguise was useless.

  They landed late at night and walked from the windward side of the island until they could see into the village they sought. There was a short wooden jetty but no ship in sight.

  John settled down to wait.

  Two days passed and John was beginning to think that this was a waste of time, when a single-masted boat sailed into the bay. The little craft was dirty and her sail a rag; just what John was looking for. Her two-man crew carried some bales up into the village and then settled down on the beach with some of the locals; a flagon was passed round and all seemed set to pass some time together.

  That night John and his men swam round the dock and climbed silently up the little boat’s topsides. Her crew slept on the floorboards and died without waking.

  Two men set the mainsail and cast off from the jetty whilst John and the rest of the crew hid in the bottom of the boat. They hoped anybody watching from the shore would think all was normal.

  John Carter intended to sail the little boat up island to a community where he could live for a while without attracting any attention. The problem he had was that the whole crew wanted to go with him. Nobody was interested in living in a mangrove swamp.

  In the end a deal was made. John would take fifteen men with him and then after one month they would return and the other half of the crew would leave.

  Like this there would be enough men to defend the brig should she be discovered.

  The men cast lots to see who stayed and who went.

  The lucky ones gathered up their kit and crowded into the boat.

  They moved slowly north, spending each night on a different island.

  The men looked at John in disbelief when he told them he would stay in Antigua.

  ‘That’s an English naval base,’ one of them said.

  ‘That’s true,’ John replied. ‘Who would look for me there? You men go where you will. I land in Antigua.’

  ‘When will we meet again?’ the same man asked.

  ‘On the way back the boat can pick me up.’

  ‘Where and when?’ the pirate demanded.

  ‘The same place you put me ashore in one month.’ John could see the man was thinking of the hidden gold. ‘You men have the ship and you know where the gold is. It’s me trusting you, is it not?’ John smiled as he watched the boat sail away; only he knew where the gold was.

  The town of St. John’s was as far from the naval dockyard as could be whilst still being on the island of Antigua. In John’s canvas sack were four bags of gold and a pair of britches, plus a shirt.

  The first thing he did was to walk into the woods, change his clothes and bury his money, keeping only enough gold to be going on with.

  The town, when he arrived, was a few streets lined with small wooden houses. A stone church was half built on a rise overlooking the town and natural harbour. A stranger would stand out here.

  John hid himself back in the woods to think on the problem. Once again fortune seemed to be smiling on him when he saw a ship working her way towards the harbour. Strangers came on ships. Quickly filling his bag with grass and leaves to make it look full, John circled round the town keeping to the woods until he arrived at the wooden dock where the ship would berth. He then settled down to wait.

  It was the following morning when the ship finally came alongside. Once all her people had come ashore John put his bag on his shoulder and walked into town. Standing in what looked like the main street he asked directions to a tavern and was pointed towards a ramshackle building on the water’s edge.

  A young lad was pouring ale from a barrel behind the bar for the six or seven customers who sat at wooden benches scattered around what was quite a large room.

  John ordered the same and asked if they had a room to rent.

  ‘You must ask Dad,’ the boy said and went about his business.

  Dad turned out to be a scrawny-looking man with a mean mouth.

  ‘Can you pay?’ he asked.

  John threw a gold piece on the bar. ‘I can pay,’ he said.

  For the next couple of days John Carter settled in. He bought new clothes and spent time walking around the town and harbour. Talking to the local fishermen he posed as an English farmer come to look for land for a plantation. Having seen his money, the landlord became quite friendly. John expanded on his story, telling of falling out with his father and setting out to find a new life in the islands.

  For the first time in his life John grew a beard. He hated it, but one of his reasons for being in Antigua was to find out how much was known about him and for that he needed to talk to someone in the dockyard. He cut his hair and wore a large straw hat.

  Once his beard was long enough to hide his features he bought a mule and started wandering around the island.

  The journey across the island to the dockyard was too long to do in one day, but John was in no hurry. He camped by the side of the road at night.

  At last as he rode down a hill, with the sea on his right-hand side. He saw a warship anchored in a large bay. He was relieved to see she was a third rate, not a sloop.

  The road followed round the bay until it crossed a neck of land and ended at the dockyard gate; two marines stood guard. John turned back to the bay and tying his mule to a bush walked over to where four seamen sat on a small wooden dock guarding a longboat.

  ‘Well met,’ he began. ‘Could you tell me if there is a tavern in this part of the island?’

  ‘If there was,’ one man replied, ‘we would not be sitting on this dock.’

  ‘Then join me in a wet,’ said John, producing a flagon he had brought with him. The men brightened and were soon talking freely. ‘Will you be fighting the Spanish?’ John asked.

  ‘The bloody French as well by all accounts,’ said one.

  ‘What’s this I hear about pirates?’ John asked. ‘I thought you men had wiped them all out.’

  ‘A pirate,’ a man corrected him, ‘and a bastard at that. He gave one of our sloops a run not long back. Name’s Carter out of England; he’s got a brig full of gold, or so they say, but our boys will have him, you see. There’s a young lad in the dockyard near dying of his wounds, nine of his shipmates dead. This Carter will hang, you see.’

  John made his exit. Giving th
e men the flagon, he returned to his mule. Hearing his name had been a shock.

  The information must have come from the crew of the ketch; he should have sunk them himself. What to do now, that was the question. The brig would have been seen by the sloop’s crew, so he should leave it where it was, but what of his remaining crew? They would give up all if captured. Thank the gods he had moved the gold.

  A thought came to him: a young lad near dying of his wounds. Could it be his golden-haired lieutenant? The idea was exciting.

  Back in St. John’s, Carter began to plan. If he did not meet the men at the appointed time what would they do, come ashore looking for him? If they did it would soon come to the notice of the soldiers he had seen drilling behind the town. So he would meet them but make some excuse not to go with them. He would say he would wait for the next batch and go north with them.

  Then he could tell the new crew to go on without him; that should gain him another month.

  John Carter sat in the tavern, watching the landlord as he worked behind the bar. The man was weak and probably dishonest, but how dishonest? The money John had been using, he had collected over the years. The gold was in small bars with a Spanish stamp. John needed somebody to convert the gold into money.

  John went camping again. After first visiting his gold he moved some distance down the coast to where there was a large deserted bay with a small island in the middle. On the southern shore John set up camp on the beach. Lighting a fire he built it up with charcoal. Once it became white hot he set an iron cooking pot to heat and dropped in three gold bars. Whilst waiting for the gold to melt he cooked a chicken he had bought in the town.

  In his room at the inn he had carved a mould for a cross, digging the shape out of a piece of oak with his knife. After spending many hours cleaning and polishing he was quite pleased with the result. This mould he now soaked in the sea. Once the gold was ready he cast his first cross; by midnight he had nine small crosses.

  The next day he journeyed back to town. In his room once more he polished and cleaned his crosses and then hid all but one.

  Sitting once more in the bar John called the landlord over. ‘When I travelled here,’ he began, ‘I came first to Virginia and there I met an Indian who traded me this cross.’ He placed the cross on the table. ‘Would you be the man to sell it for me?’

  The man’s eyes lit up and with a look of great cunning he said, ‘What would you be thinking it’s worth?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ John replied. ‘I know you to be a man of honour.’

  The landlord weighed the cross in his hand. ‘By the weight,’ he said, ‘I can tell it’s not solid gold.’

  John pulled out his knife. ‘Let us cut it,’ he said, ‘and then we will know.’

  The man’s eyes locked on the knife. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Pity to spoil it. Let me talk to a man I know.’

  ‘Good,’ said John, picking up the cross. ‘Bring him here.’

  The man in question was not of Antigua but traded amongst the islands in a schooner.

  The landlord assured John that he would be in town within the week.

  True to his word a few days later he introduced a large, slightly fat man to John as Ben Harris.

  ‘My friend Bill here,’ Ben said, pointing at the landlord, ‘tells me you have an interesting cross to sell, Mr…?’

  ‘Owen,’ the landlord said, giving the name John was going by.

  John placed the cross on the table. Harris picked it up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Interesting, you traded it from an Indian, I’m told.’ When John said nothing he said, ‘I’d like to meet that Indian. Now, Bill, why don’t you bring us all a drink?’ Once the landlord had left Ben leaned in close. ‘I’m told you have a fine knife, Mr. Owen, and you’ve the blackest hair I’ve ever seen. Did you sometimes wear it long? This cross could well be Spanish gold.’

  As John’s hand moved towards the hidden knife the man touched his arm. ‘Stay a while,’ he said. ‘I’m just saying that if you have more crosses I would be very interested in buying them.’

  Ben Harris and John walked down to where Ben’s schooner lay. She was some sixty feet long with a raised cabin aft. Two dark-skinned crew men lounged on the deck.

  As they entered the cabin Ben said, ‘I came out from Bristol fifteen years ago, been working up and down the islands ever since.’

  ‘Where did you find the schooner?’ John asked.

  ‘Virginia,’ Ben replied. ‘They build them up there. I never saw anybody selling crosses though.’

  John ignored the comment. Sitting down he threw a small gold bar onto the table. Ben’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ he said. ‘So it’s true.’ He picked up the gold bar and studied the stamp. With a grin he said, ‘Two of the most powerful navies in the world are looking for this.’

  John looked him in the eye. ‘Understand that you hold your life in your hand,’ he said.

  Ben’s smile vanished. ‘I know that,’ he answered.

  The deal was struck. Ben would take John to Virginia and buy him a schooner. He would dispose of the gold little by little and take twenty parts in the hundred as his share.

  John Carter returned to the schooner the next night with three and a half bags of gold.

  ‘By god, man, you have the price of three schooners right here,’ Ben exclaimed.

  ‘I had another partner called Ben,’ John said. ‘He died.’

  They understood each other. Next morning they sailed north.

  The waters around the coast of Virginia were shallow, the community very English, honest and hard working. They worshipped their god and were pious by habit. The place made John’s skin itch.

  They walked the small shipyards that lined the foreshore, but John was in no mood to wait six months for his schooner. Ben put out the word that he was in the market for a ship and two weeks later a Frenchman tracked them down to an inn outside of town.

  John watched as the dapper little man approached their table. His interest peaked. He remembered Du Bois and had never cut a Frenchman.

  ‘I am told you would buy a ship,’ the man began. ‘I have two ships in trade but with the war I would return to France.’ All had heard the news that in Europe the French army was involving itself in the war with Spain, on the side of the Spanish.

  ‘Where are your ships?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Not far, we can go there if you wish.’ They wished.

  Outside a carriage waited to take them round the headland to a small bay in which two ships lay each side of a wooden jetty. The larger was a ketch, the smaller a schooner not unlike Ben’s.

  As they walked up the jetty, Ben asked, ‘Are you selling them both?’

  ‘No,’ the Frenchman answered. ‘One I will sell, the other will take me back to France; I care not which.’

  Both ships were in good order; they looked well used but well kept. Neither had any armament.

  ‘You do not fear pirates?’ John asked.

  The man turned to him. ‘Your navy has rid us of that scum, no?’

  They crawled through both ships and climbed both rigs. John preferred the ketch. He left the bargaining to Ben. By the time night fell John was the legal owner of a ketch in the name of Michael Owen. Her name was the Belle Fortuna; they changed it to the English Good Fortune.

  At first, crew was a problem; John needed just enough men to work the ship.

  Three or four would be good, but nobody wanted to leave home and as John was not prepared to say when or if he would return, the locals showed no interest. Ben came up with three black men who had worked on a plantation. More runaway slaves, John thought. He also wondered how far he could trust Ben; perhaps these were his men.

  He bought stores and provisions to sell in the islands, not really caring what it cost as long as it gave him a reason to sail down island so he could lift the gold.

  At last when all was ready he sailed to the south, leaving Ben to go about his business.

  CHAPTER 8
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  David’s return to the Trojan’s wardroom was a happy moment. All the officers shook his hand and he had to take off his shirt and show his scars. As he had crossed the deck, crew men had waved to him with big grins on their faces.

  ‘You are quite famous, Mr. Fletcher,’ Lieutenant Charles told him. ‘The man with the scars.’

  A midshipman, who David did not recognize, gave David his sword to the handle of which a lanyard had been rove.

  ‘That will stop you losing it again, Mr. Fletcher,’ someone called.

  That night David slept in his hammock, back amongst friends. His body kept him awake long into the night, however, longing for Elle’s touch; he wondered if he would see her again.

  The Trojan did not sleep long. Before first light the crew were called and with the very lightest of breezes, she slid out of the anchorage bound to St. John’s on the west side of the island. An army messenger had brought news of a pirate landing below the town; the army claimed to have captured John Carter.

  The early morning breeze took them round the south and west coasts of the island. The sloop anchored off the town quay at St. John’s.

  Captain Peterson, accompanied by David and a midshipman, was rowed ashore. David came along to see if he recognized any of the pirates.

  The men were held in the army barracks behind the town. When the naval party entered, they were introduced to a major of the 43rd Foot who stood and walked round his desk.

  ‘Good day, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘You made good time. Come, let me show you what we have.’

  He led them down a hallway and unlocked a door at the end. The room was about twenty feet square with a table to one side, at which sat two soldiers. Down each side of the room sat seven seamen with their hands tied behind their backs. Some had open wounds, one looked dead and on the floor in front of the table sat a man nursing a burnt, blackened hand.