Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Three





Dandon’s eyes blinked open painfully. He closed them again as sunlight stabbed into his skull then resigned himself to his awakened state and rolled himself upwards, his boots ringing against empty bottles as they gingerly settled to the floor.

His hands cradled his head. He rubbed his temples and raised his eyes to the shafts of dusty light fingering their way through the slatted walls of the den.

He breathed deeply, feeling a rustling in his lungs from poor tobacco, a wretchedness about him that had been well paid for.

How many days did he have left now? How many more times would his withering body drag him awake to regret the sinking of another tavern? He looked absently at the back of his hand. Barely thirty and counting brown spots like domino pips.

Sure enough he had been a drunk of some measure upon Providence Island, vaguely performing medical favours to the whores and pirates in exchange for a straw bed and his own leather mug rarely empty, but now? With these men? Another class of drinking ensued.

This past year with the pirate Devlin, a man he considered his friend, had been dangerous and rewarding. Dandon now had golden coin where before only bits of silver occasionally dusted his pockets. They had stolen a gold treasure, although from their own viewpoint they had certainly earned it, and the apothecary’s assistant from colonial Bath Town had never looked back.

At times, after a couple of bottles and in the glow of a guttering early morning candle, he would spout that he would return to his original schemes now that he had coin aplenty. He would set up a saltern in the Bahama islands, a string of them, and manufacture his own salt pills and healing potions and join the multitude of quacks growing fat on the desperate gout-laden rich who refused to believe it was their own greed that perpetuated their ill-health.

He would slap the table and bid them all farewell on the morrow. And then he would awake, as now, and not remember a word he had said.

Now he hazily recalled joining the Shadow’s giant quartermaster Peter Sam and Hugh Harris, another pirate rogue who had become a friend, in a tour last night of some of the more rancorous and mysterious holes of the town. The windowless pits where the opiates wisped and where the women – and the men that looked like women – snaked and writhed and ran your coin through their fingers like water.

Peter Sam had disappeared off to the darkest alleys leaving Hugh and Dandon to avail themselves of the long pipes and clay-like powders that made you feel born anew, light of conscience, beloved and eternally free. Until the next day.

Dandon looked up and saw that part of the wall of the den was Hugh himself, sitting angled against it and staring straight at him, an evil grin spread across his jowls.

Last night, or the night before, or the week before, Dandon’s cot had been a duck down delight of comfort. He looked at the straw and burlap mattress with a terrible disdain and brushed his shirt free of invisible vermin. He coughed, swallowed something foul.

Hugh responded to the cough with a crack of his throat. ‘How’s the morning to you, Dandon there?’ He raised a brandy bottle to pass along but Dandon waved back a sorrowful hand.

‘Nay, old boy,’ he heaved. ‘I need an egg and some bread if I can find some.’ He looked about the smoky room. ‘Where are we, Hugh? Apart from hell.’

Hugh laughed coldly. ‘No matter, Dandon. We be safe as long as we have tin. What a day or two, eh mate?’ He stretched himself and clasped the bottle to his lips.

‘To my own mind, Mister Harris, I recall very little. I will take your familiarity with the events for truth therefore.’

He rubbed the mess of his narrow beard and reeled at the smell of his own hand. ‘Where is Peter Sam? What became of him? I seem to recall his back drifting away to some other abode a time ago.’

‘Aye,’ Hugh hacked. ‘He be wandering back along his own path soon enough. We’d best make our way back to the Cap’n.’ He slapped his head to waken his senses. ‘This time be done.’

Dandon stood and straightened his clothes, his eyes wandering to his yellow silk coat, golden waistcoat, weary plumed yellow hat and white necktie all slung down in a dank corner. He had, however, chosen to sleep in his buckled shoes, much to his regret.

‘We best find him though, Hugh. The big man’s weaknesses can be his undoing I have noticed.’

‘That be true.’ Hugh struggled up and lifted a note from the broken table that stood in the centre of the room. ‘He left us a scribbling I reckon. I sees it last night but paid it no mind. Your eyes be better for reading, Dandon, mate.’ He gave the paper across to Dandon and picked up his cross-belt and sword.

Dandon stretched the paper in his hands, sniffed and pulled his head back to focus on the rather official-looking handwriting before his aching eyes.

The first pass made little sense, so Dandon read it again more slowly. He found himself sitting again on the fragile cot. By the third reading his heart had begun to race, and his head was clearer.

He stood up, folded the paper with care and reached for his coat. ‘We must grab ourselves coffee and get to Devlin with great haste and flight, friend Hugh. Some strange act is afoot.’

‘What says it? Is it not from Peter?’ Hugh’s voice leapt like a boy’s.

‘It is about Peter, at least,’ Dandon flapped his silk justacorps about his scrawny body. ‘But it is not from our quartermaster.’

Feeling Dandon’s anxiety fill the room, Hugh checked his pistols.

‘Rather it is from some deluded soul who has taken it upon himself to free us from his company under pain of good Peter’s death.’

‘Eh?’ Dandon’s utterances were puzzling to Hugh at the best of times.

Dandon yanked the door and let in the dazzling late morning sunshine and crash of the sea.

‘He has been “kidnapped” from us Hugh, a terrible term from my less eloquent cousins in the colonies. I may have a better phrase for it after a dose of hot brown when my head is better. Make haste man! I hunger but may not eat until this note be in our captain’s hand!’

Hugh missed the last several words as Dandon was already striding ahead through the crowds that hung around the port. He observed Dandon’s wake, calling for the yellow back to slow down, while he ducked back into the hut for his bottle.

Dandon had spied one of the Chinese shanties selling hot brews and bowls of rice along the winding paths. He veered away to stand before the bent old man in the red skullcap who bowed and cracked his face at the emergence of Dandon’s purse. Although he was obviously busy, he took the time to ladle steaming black coffee into a small porcelain bowl for which Dandon passed a broken quarter of a reale into the soft small hand.

Dandon sidestepped to let another customer take his place and inhaled deeply the powerful vapours which cleared his passages almost instantly. He sipped carefully at the scalding liquid and suddenly craved his tobacco pouch.

Hugh stumbled up to his side, every corner of him bristling with weaponry, the brandy bottle peeping out of his coat like another gun. He waited while Dandon drank his coffee, his eyes darting back and forth, reading every passing face for conspiracy.

Dandon passed back the cup with a bow. The stick-like hand took it with a swipe and laid it next to a fresh pile rattling beside other towers of bowls, cups and ladles. The old man gave the bowls no thought. He had known them all his life, as his father had known them. Cold to the touch, translucent in the sun. They never chipped or ran with cracks even after a thousand uses. A portion of them had faint green paintwork that told their own stories, but most were plain, bone white.

The Chinaman grabbed another bowl and poured boiling green tea for a Dutch whaler who had lost his way. The whaler gave no thought to the cold cup in his shovel-like fist either, and Dandon and Hugh moved on.

They made their haphazard way up to the top of the town and to the inn on the hill, pausing for a breath to look back and down over the smoking wood-fires billowing from the ragged chimney pots like an avenue of tornadoes curling to the sea; then to the cobweb riggings of the ships huddling in the harbour, seemingly stringed together as one mass of rope and masts.

Beyond this in the sky above, a dark smudge was growing and swelling, whilst on the horizon a foreboding curtain of grey swept ever closer.

‘Dandon!’ A cry from the tavern steps swung them around. It was Sam Fletcher, the wretch from London, a gallows dancer of a deserter and Shadow pirate. ‘Where have you been, mate? Come see the sport Devlin has a-going!’

Dandon pulled at Hugh, the note tight in his hands.


George and Albany’s eyes lit up at the apparent sight of a fine fellow crossing the threshold, then dropped again at the tripping of the scarecrow that followed him.

Dandon cultivated the illusion of being a gentleman, but his once fine golden justacorps was now damp and worn, his yellow silk waistcoat frayed at the shoulders, its buttons loose and dangling. He had found himself of late new shoes, stockings and breeches, but had not found any store equal to replacing his favoured coat or limp, dandelion-hued, broad-brimmed hat.

Dandon only differed from his brethren in that he carried no weapon, unless absolutely necessary. Otherwise he joined them in every curse and vice of their clandestine existence. Besides, he had often found that going unarmed could open doors that would otherwise remained locked and barred.

Dandon took in the party seated at the long table dragged to the centre of the tavern. George and Albany faced him, their coats removed to the backs of their chairs, a line of cups in the centre of the table, six in all.

Their heads swayed with drunken concentration, the pirates crowded round them, crowing and jeering at each success and failure.

The game was simple: two teams, and each player had his own coin, as close to equal value in weight as could be estimated from the myriad of currencies that jangled through Madagascar. With dexterity and skill the players would bounce a coin upon the table to ring into a cup. On the cheer following a successful attempt they would drink from the cup, to the very dregs, and keep their coin to play again.

If the coin landed elsewhere or glanced off the cup, it was forfeit to the opposing side who added it to their account to play again. Devlin and Sam Morwell were unlucky this day to play against against the skilled eyes and better blood of the two gentlemen, who were winning hard-earned gold and silver from the two ruffians, and steadily adding to their pile.

With each victory the gentlemen proved their better birth and with every gulp and slap of their backs their confidence grew. They were beating this vile group at their own game, showing their worth and even drawing respectful cheers from the dark hearts that surrounded them.

Perhaps they would deign to toss a coin or two to some of the more pitiful eyes that stared at them, red-rimmed and deferential to their betters. Poor misguided wretches. Perhaps, for one of the more sorrowful ones, Albany could find a role aboard their ship. He himself might have need of a valet if a good clean man could be found.

The pirate Devlin was particularly bad at the game, he slapped the table with a curse as he gave up another reale to Albany, then excused himself and even tipped his hat when the man in the yellow coat bent to whisper in his ear.

George won again, amid a song to his luck, and he let the rum trickle over his face and down his neck and called with a bang of his empty cup for more and for the pirate opposite him to try again, damn him, for George would not be beaten, despite the swaying of the room.

Dandon spoke low, lest others cocked an ear to his message, ‘I have been gone, Patrick, but now am found again. Yet I bring strange, possibly grave news that I do not understand but am sorry to impart, I fear.’

Devlin, too, sometimes grew impatient with Dandon’s flowery phrases. ‘Speak Dandon,’ he snapped. ‘You’re pale with Turkish pipe no doubt.’

‘I am a capricious capote, Captain, true,’ he ushered Devlin to the door. ‘But I know not who lies within this tavern that can be trusted.’

‘Speak, I said. I’m working on these silks here and it’s costing me a sum to get them under. I intend to add their ship to ours. Peacefully if possible.’

‘Peter is gone. I have this paper here for you,’ he said, and passed the vellum to Devlin. ’Tis not my fault, Captain. You know full well Peter’s want to travel dark.’

Devlin pulled the paper taut. He read swiftly, growing paler with each word. The print was gracious, clearly dry by weeks for it had become a paler blue.

The paper was unsigned. Just a name, printed proud and tall, was embossed at the foot of the page.

‘Ignatius.’

Then the address: Charles Town. South of the Carolinas. A trade colony of great fortune and civility, the fifth largest in America. A harbour town often plagued by pirates. Devlin’s eyes fixed on the final portion of script:

‘I will know the hour this letter reaches your hand. Attend alone and without force. Announce at the House. There will be no harm brought if no member of your crew enters the streets of the town.’

‘When did you last see Peter Sam?’

‘A day ago, Captain. Maybe two. You understand I was not counting his absence for fear of such a happening. Who after all could hope to drag away such a fellow as Peter?’

This was true, perhaps the most disturbing aspect. Peter Sam was a brute of a man. He laughed off bullets, broke cutlasses for toothpicks and took gunpowder with his eggs.

Devlin himself had seen him sling two men over the gunwale, like bags of straw, one in each hand. That had been aboard the Noble, Devlin’s old frigate where he had lived as servant to Captain John Coxon. Over a year ago now and a world away. A lifetime away.

What manner of man or men could spirit away the mammoth in brown leather who had become Devlin’s mainstay amongst the crew? The quartermaster that the men held their breath by and lowered their eyes at his passing. The old stander that had sailed with Seth Toombs, Black Bill and Will Magnes. The man who had sailed to The Island, the French island of the gold, and rescued them all. Came back for them all. Came back for his captain and defeated Coxon’s frigate.

‘It would take a fair plan, to be sure, to bring him down. A trap, I’ll lay to that.’ Devlin read through the epistle again. ‘And this script is not fresh.’ He folded the paper with care, placed it inside his shirt. He swore a silent promise, to give it back to the man who wrote it.

‘And what do we do, dear Captain?’

‘They have two days you reckon at most? Two days ahead of us?’

‘Aye. Maybe only one, but that’s two hundred miles with a good wind and a fast ship. And Shadow ain’t so fast.’

Devlin turned to the game at the table where the two gentlemen now sat drunk and laughing like lords. ‘Do you have some laudanum about you, Dandon?’

‘I could not sleep otherwise, Patrick.’

‘Then I will have a fast ship,’ Devlin turned back and winked at the grinning Hugh Harris.

‘There is one more thing, Captain,’ Dandon leant on the threshold and beckoned Devlin to follow him outside.

They stepped out into the bright noon where Devlin could see in the offing the black clouds forming and sky meeting horizon in an endless blanket of grey.

‘We could not make it past the Cape of Africa amid that, Captain,’ Dandon sighed. ‘Even I know that much.’

Devlin looked to the whitecaps swelling on the sea, the bucking of the ships in the harbour far below, their masts swaying like reeds. He placed a foot upon the low wall that skirted the hostelry’s vegetable garden and thought on.

Luck was obviously with the fellow in Charles Town who commanded Devlin from afar. A gentleman’s luck. The luck that comes from having a large enough purse to tip the world to your bidding. Devlin had known no good gentleman, and the irony of that form of address was not lost on him.

The first he had encountered had been back home in Kilkenny, a fuming English magistrate sentencing him to death for poaching. The gentleman had not objected to buying the poached bird, only to the damage some embedded shot had wrought upon the teeth in his wife’s rotting jaw.

Like the child that is bitten by a dog and is wary of even the smallest yap for the rest of his life, Devlin would keep the ruling class a long berth away from him. Now was different of course. Now his class was measured with steel and lead. The white faces of the two young coxcombs inside the tavern reminded him that he had jumped from his allotted peg-hole. Jumped ship, as it were, from the constraints of his former master, Captain John Coxon, and every other sniffing ponce that had handed him their shoes to clean or empty cup to fill.

He wore their clothes, though sullied and old, drank their wine, though stolen and without salute to their king, and spent their coin that they had stolen themselves from the backs of others.

Aye, like a child bitten by a dog and then wary of even the smallest yap all his life. The only resolution for the child in a world of such dogs: resolve to become a wolf.

‘I’m back to the ship. I need Bill’s conference.’

Black Bill Vernon, the old Scot, sailing master from the Lucy, Seth Toombs’s old ship that had started Devlin’s path. The only man they had who could plot and divine the latitudes as well as Devlin, more from experience than learning.

‘I want you to sort for those men. It’s been a while since we had a consort and we could do with the hands.’

Dandon looked back to the open door. ‘A consort yes, another ship to be sure, but you want those fops for hands?’

‘I want the men they rode in with.’ Devlin stood, his face in shade from the brim of his hat. ‘The ship is a brig called Talefan. Thirty hands. Captain Moss commands. Bristol man.’ He came to stand at Dandon’s shoulder. ‘I’ve got those fools drunk for a reason. Use your talents to ensure they do not wake. If we give chase it’ll be best in a ship that none will know. Get the ship without blood.’

‘And how am I supposed to achieve such peaceful reversal of ownership?’

Devlin walked back inside to grab his coat and weapons before winding his way back to the harbour and the Shadow. He turned. His expression appeared almost insulted.

‘If I have to tell you, Dandon, I have sorely overestimated our acquaintance.’ He took one more glance over Dandon’s shoulder to the blackening sky. ‘Send someone to me by six to tell me it’s done.’

Devlin emerged a moment later, shrugging on his black, calf-length double-twill coat. His favoured left-locked pistol with its eleven-inch barrel was shoved into his belt and his sword pushed up the tail of his coat as he swept past Dandon with a tip of his hat.

Dandon watched him meander away. He stroked his narrow beard and tapped his thumbnail against his gold front teeth.

The sounds of another triumphant play by George and Albany drew him back to the comfort of the tavern. His hand darted from his chin to feel in his outer pocket where his fingers fell upon the cold vial of laudanum. He smiled softly and walked slowly back into the dim hole.