Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Five





‘View halloo!’ came the cry from St Augustine’s quayside. It was the largest bay on Madagascar, and the safest, for the pirates favoured the northern jungles and hills. A sixteenth-century Spanish castle loomed over the bay, its guns still watching all those arriving from Africa’s cape. Enough iron showed to keep the pirates shy.

The watchman of the Talefan, his storm cape wound tightly around his face, turned to the hunting yell. Instinctively he raised his lamp to the sound.

Thomas Adams, bosun’s mate, stood by the foremast, reasonably well sheltered under the storm sheets and the furled sails, and was reluctant to move away.

Another call came, the more familiar ‘Ahoy there!’, still undoubtedly from a lubber, judging from its high effeminate pitch. He cursed and slopped his way across the deck to the fo’c’sle to improve his view of the quay.

It was still the noon watch. Another bell and Thomas would be relieved. The squall was spitting hard, the blue sky of an hour ago now an eerie purple and gold. Had Thomas been more poetic – and warm – he would have appreciated it. Instead it had been dark enough to light the mast lamps and he had shared emanations of woe with the French watch on the smart hoy beside the Talefan as the skies opened.

He slammed his lamp on the bowsprit and looked below to see who summoned him. He was sorry to have bothered.

Standing on the quayside, sheltered by a white ombrelia, stood a dandy of a gentleman in yellow silks, which would have been bad enough had he not also brought with him the unconscious forms of the two English gentlemen passengers that had disembarked that very morning.

They were clearly drunk and probably newly poxed as well. So drunk in fact that they had to be carried by three men apiece – no doubt rumpots that had taken a ducat or two to hoist the pair down to the quay.

Thomas Adams’ face could only be seen above the nose for his eyes were hooded by the brim of his hat, his mouth by his cloak’s collar. Even so his enthusiasm for the scene before him could be read from what sliver of his features remained visible.

On seeing Thomas, the yellow-coated fool waved a glove and raised his umbrella.

‘Hoy hoy, there, man!’ Dandon cried. ‘I believe these two belong to this vessel? Are you the Talefan?’

‘Aye,’ Thomas replied stoutly. ‘Who goes there?’

‘I bring you Albany Holmes and George Lee. Two fellows with whom I have had the pleasure of taking an early lunch. I fear they may not be used to some of the flavours we enjoy amongst the islands of the East!’

Thomas pulled himself up by a sheet to see the better and set his foot on the gunwale. ‘Drunk are they? They usually are. Let them sleep it off ashore. I’ve no time to watch over them.’

Dandon lowered his shade to appeal with both hands. ‘In truth, as well you know my good man, St Augustine is not a place for those who cannot hold their drink. I have sworn on my honour to take them to the safety of their quarters.’

Thomas gave the matter brief contemplation. He looked back at the belfry, to the glass of sand and the man standing beside it. Another turn of the glass and the drunks would be some other soul’s problem. His watch done, he could take a meal and put his head down for a few hours. It really made no odds to him to take them aboard. He looked back down to the quay.

‘Aye. Bring them on.’ He swung down and moved to the larboard gangway. The rain was easing and its sluicing through the cocks of his hat and down the back of his cloak had stopped, which brightened his mood almost as much as watching the party struggle awkwardly across the gangplank.

He cast a cautious eye to the bedraggled brace of men that carried George and Albany aboard. They met his eye with a jolly wink.

They were, however, armed with cutlasses and pistols. He thought of asking them to remove this surplus weight and swept aside his cloak to display his own steel. Then George began to spew like a hose through his tiny mouth, dashing the woodwork around the deck. With that, Thomas ushered them to carry the pair down the companion, out of his watch.

The men chuckled and shook their heads at the foolishness of gentlemen as they lowered the drunkards down the steep ladder like a pair of rolled-up rugs.

Dandon stepped from the gangplank to stand beside the shorter Thomas, who was looking at the trail of vomit now smearing his deck. Dandon tipped his wide hat.

‘Much gratitude, my good man. Tell me, is Captain Moss aboard?’

Now Thomas showed a marked interest in the man whose eyes were nearly as yellow as his coat when seen at closer quarters. This one at least was not armed.

‘Aye, sir. Cap’n Moss be in his cabin aft. Why?’

Dandon looked with curiosity at the young watchman. ‘Are you normally of a manner to ask a gentleman his attitudes, sailor?’

Thomas could have said a dozen things to counter such an affront. He was bosun’s mate and master of the watch, after all. Yet none came to mind and he merely felt his ears redden beneath his wet hair.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, the phrase that issued forth whenever a gentleman’s horse trod on his foot, or a silk coat barged past him in a town square.

Dandon asked the young man his name, seemed to record it mentally, then continued.

‘Now, Thomas, I have George’s winnings from our gaming this morning. I need to assure myself that they will make their way to George when he wakes.’

He pulled from his coat a silk bag that chinked heavily as only coin can do. Dandon weighted it in his hand twice then dropped it into Thomas’s alertly-open palm.

‘Would you deposit this sum with Captain Moss for me, Thomas, for safekeeping?’

Thomas held the bag as if a star had grown out of his palm. The coin within tumbled satisfyingly as he hefted it in his hand.

He mouthed something then began to tread slowly along the gangway to the low-roofed cabin aft of the mizzen. He had forgotten about Dandon. He had forgotten the six roughs that seemed to be employed a long time below. He thought only of the heaviness of the bag that rolled in his hand.

He rapped twice on the single arched door, then pushed it open at the sound of Moss’s voice. Thomas briefly glanced back to Dandon still standing by the entry port then stepped inside.

Before the door had clicked shut Dandon was three steps down the companion ladder. He ducked beneath the deck and swept his eyes down the dark interior of the ship.

There he saw his six pirates with two pistols apiece at different quarters covering the fifteen men who had been eating below. George and Albany lay sprawled on a table, the tender expression of sleeping children shining from their faces.

Sam Fletcher saluted to Dandon with a pistol, which Dandon returned with a gloved hand, then vanished back above where he met the other sailor, the sentry at the sand glass by the belfry. He had been watching Dandon jump below just as ten more pirates came bouncing across the gangplank with pistols drawn and aimed at him.

His hand had begun to crawl to the bell but then drew back wisely if not bravely. Dandon greeted him, gratefully, for not forcing his men to kill him.

The next minute was frantic. In the cabin, Captain Moss and Thomas were seated at table, entranced by the silk bag of gold coin, which signified more than three years’ wages to them both. It would be worth silencing – doing in – the two gentlemen for such a purse and dispatching that pompous yellow fool outside would be a bonus.

At that very moment the yellow fool outside was sending men down the Talefan’s starboard side with a line to one of her boats to warp her out of the harbour. He passed an axe to another to cut her cable and loose them from the quay.

Meanwhile some Frenchmen from the hoy alongside began to notice the activity aboard the Talefan. Like good Frenchmen they minded their own work and shrugged their shoulders. All Englishmen were forban anyway: pirates born.

One minute: the tiniest trickle of sand in an hourglass, less time than it takes to count a bag of gold coin. Dandon smoothed himself down outside the cabin door and swallowed a breath at about the same time Captain Moss became horrified at Thomas’s admission that he had let six men vanish below. He had begun to rise, looking round for his pistols and cursing the bosun’s mate for a fool, when the narrow door flew aside and James Moss froze.

The captain had always dreaded this moment. He was sure it would happen one day and had resigned himself to it, playing the scene over and over in his head, and was in a small manner ashamed of the relief he felt now the nightmare had finally become reality.

Dandon stepped into the room, followed by a murder of crows with black pistols and wide grins, whose ragged clothes steamed from the rain as if they had just climbed out of hell.

‘I see you have accepted my offer, Captain Moss,’ Dandon trilled as he swept off his hat.

Moss was still rising from his chair, his right hand resting on the edge of the table. His voice quavered. ‘Who are you? Get out of my cabin! Get out!’

Dandon took a further step into the room so that he stood a mere hand-swipe’s distance from Thomas. ‘Come now, that is surely my purse you have there before you? A fair price would you not say for such an aged brig?’

Moss took in the pistol mouths staring at him and his words tumbled as if he were dreaming. ‘What do you want of me, pirate? Who are you?’

‘Make your choice, Captain Moss,’ Dandon’s eyes were cold. ‘Take your coin. Say to no man that you came to harm. Captain Patrick Devlin would hold no quarter if you did.’

Thomas looked between Moss and Dandon as the name Devlin danced merrily across the face of one and fell like a hanged man down the face of the other. The corners of Dandon’s moustache pointed jauntily upwards as he bowed his head while Moss’s mouth turned dry and his eyes widened. The table trembled beneath his right hand.

‘We have an accord?’ Dandon asked, politely enough. ‘Find the rest of your crew ashore. Take what you want of your own,’ he tossed his hat onto the small cot between the bulkheads. ‘Then get off my ship, sir.’ He bowed again, slowly, his eyes more deadly than the pistols’ promise.


At five o’clock Dog-Leg woke Devlin with coffee. He had napped in his cabin for a few hours, peaceful in the tight comfort of his cot. He spent the next hour lying on his side leafing through a book. Outside the squall rumbled on its path northwards and the stamp of feet above his head signalled the readying of the ship, its pace becoming more urgent with the improving weather.

As the hour drew near to six he heard his coach door open. For a moment he forgot the business of the morning and looked to the door expecting the red-bearded face of Peter Sam to be there. Instead it was Hugh Harris’s dirty grin.

‘Ship’s all ready for you, Cap’n,’ he said, entering the room. Harris had rowed over from the Talefan to bring Devlin back with him. There were no congratulations or even thanks from his captain for capturing the ship or braving the dying squall to fetch him.

Devlin went back to his book to ingest a few more colourful words that he did not fully understand.

‘Grab my bag for me, Hugh,’ he asked. ‘The storm’s gone I take it?’

‘Aye,’ Hugh looked around for the bag, seeing it at once beside the table. ‘Lucky too. She’d have held us up for a few days otherwise.’ He picked up the sack of clothes and books. ‘But now we can get after the bastards that have it with Peter. She’s a fair ship. Fast I reckon. Faster than this old girl.’

‘How many guns?’ Devlin closed his book and rolled out of the bed.

‘Eight. Six-pounders. I’ll be glad Shadow be behind us should any wood start flying about.’ He indicated the closed book in Devlin’s hand, ‘What you reading there, Cap’n. Instruction is it?’

Devlin stood, then crossed the cabin to pick up his weapons and coat. He placed the small book softly upon the table.

‘No. Something by a fellow named Cervantes. Spanish. Poems. Songs.’ He dragged on his coat, holding the cuffs of his shirt not to have them carried up by the sleeves.

Hugh gave an admiring and thoughtful hum.

‘Oh, I don’t understand it, mate.’ Devlin checked his belt and silver capped powder flask. ‘But it’s pretty to read it. And I can gather some of the words from our own. Don’t know which was first, mind, ours or theirs. What say you, Hugh Harris?’

Hugh opened his mouth but was pushed through the door by Devlin before he could offer his opinion.

‘Never mind, Hugh. Takes me to me new ship. If Will Magnes and the boys can’t find Peter ashore we’ll find him at sea. Chase those bastards down then on to Charles Town and kill the bastard that summons me.’

They moved out onto the main deck and into a rushing world of calls and ropes. The air from the storm seemed to sharpen the edges of every corner of wood. The crew’s eyes glistened with every lowering of sail and crank of the capstan.

A fiddle broke out in a wail and a Welsh voice began to sing. It was a song of cuttlefish combs and Cape Cod girls of questionable virtue that pulled the Shadow to life. The flukes dragged free from the seabed, stirring a cloud of sand that spread through the waters. Shadow began to breathe awake and she shrugged the storm from her yards like a dog shaking itself dry.

Devlin looked about him to the men and the ship he had known for a year now. Her wounds from the battle at the island, now scars, gave him pause. To step aboard another – to captain the Talefan, to cheat on Shadow – brought the guilt of betrayal to a part of him. He was thankful to see the welcome bulk of Black Bill lumbering towards him, to pull him from his brief melancholy.

‘Bill!’ Devlin’s voice sang. ‘What goes on?’

The mariner’s boots clumped to his captain’s side. ‘All’s well, Cap’n.’ He looked down to his empty pipe and began to fumble through his outer pocket. ‘We have food enough for six weeks. With good eating.’

‘But it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a little fresh timber on the way.’ Devlin elbowed his sailing master’s side as they walked to the entry port. Hugh Harris was already clambering down to the boat.

‘We’ll keep behind. Eyes to your masts,’ Bill affirmed. ‘They’ll be looking for Shadow not a wee brig.’

Devlin rested on the gunwale, looked out to the Talefan laying to the North. ‘That’s the game of it. If eyes are upon us at Charles Town they’ll look for our black and red girl. She’ll be fast, Bill. We’ll make a half-sail. Give you a chance to keep up until we reach Ascension.’

‘Aye.’ Bill lit his pipe slowly, ignoring the world as he drew the bowl into glowing life. ‘Patrick,’ he said at last. ‘There be something you should know. I been of a mind to bring it up for a time now.’ He looked hard to his captain. ‘About Peter.’

Devlin had grown to know Bill well over the past year. A serious man. Drank less than most. Walked the decks at night alone, smoking his pipe over the taffrail watching Shadow’s wake crawl behind them. His confidence was rarely bestowed.

‘What about Peter?’

Bill stared out to the mountains of Madagascar as he spoke.

‘That time. At The Island. With the land in sight. Peter Sam … and I to confess true,’ he lowered his head, drawing deeply on his pipe. ‘We changed sail, Cap’n. Headed South. Leaving you to yourself.’ He sighed out a cloud of blue smoke.

‘I believe you may have known that, Cap’n,’ his usually growling voice was smooth and tinged with shame. ‘But I wanted to be sure you knew. Before you went after Peter and all. Before you gave me the Shadow to command.’

Devlin took Bill’s left forearm in both his hands. He shook it once then backed himself through the port, his feet already upon the ladder. The hours on The Island flashed through his mind. He looked up into Bill’s round face.

‘But you came back, Bill.’ He minded his footing as he descended, looking up once more before the final drop to the jolly boat. ‘You came back, and you would again.’

Devlin sat down with Hugh at the sheets. Slipping off his coat and hat he welcomed the two crewmen at the oars, men he had never seen before and who eyed him warily.

‘Take me to America, boys!’ he cried. ‘There be a man waiting for me to end his days!’

Bill watched the boat fight through the waves until he could no longer hear the slap of the oars. Since the month they had been shored in the east he had not seen Devlin so charged. Idleness did not suit him. Horses have need to run.

He came away from the gunwale and made his way up to the helm, barged through the men too slow to jump out of his path.

‘Make sail!’ he bellowed. ‘Move your arses! Your cap’n is waiting! We’re going to the Caribbee! Put your hearts away you sons of bitches! We’re back to the Indies!’


On the cliffs above the town of St Augustine, to the north of the bay, a man with a telescope watched the Shadow begin to turn south-west, her grey sails full.

The man lowered the brass tube. He had sat with the scope resting on his knees, watching the ship for the past hour. Occasionally he stretched his back and dipped into his canvas satchel for some goat’s cheese and the flat salty bread that he had endured at first and then grown ravenously fond of.

He pulled the cork from his leather flask of Arrack, making a note to refill it at one of the taverns on the way back to the guardhouse.

He drank some of the spicy sweet wine, rewarding himself for his vigilance. He replaced the flask and the scope in the satchel then heaved himself up, flashing the departing ship a final horrible grin before turning to see two boys with butcher’s knives who stood blocking his path.

They were natives. Wiry black fellows with bare bony chests. Young men. Too young to be anything else but hungry. Too young to know how to kill properly.

The watcher rose to his full towering height, seven foot in his buskins, his breeches tucked in the knee–length boots.

The two youths quaked somewhat at the sight of his frame, as broad as them both together. A glance passed between them and then they began their chatter.

The watcher did not understand the words but he knew the sentiment. The boys laughed between themselves, their white teeth glowing behind their wide brown mouths. The watcher had known the laugh all his life.

He kept his eyes on the rusty blades wrapped in twine and balanced in the boys’ hands as they finished their chortling and their deadly look returned.

Hib Gow, for that was the watcher’s Scottish name, had fought all his days over that laugh, was used to it very well. His great slab of a head was uncommonly blessed with a proboscis – more monstrous horn than nose – that grew aquiline out of his huge square face. Hib was ugly, to be sure, but that had not mattered in his previous life, when his days had been spent with his head covered by a black hood.

The cruelty his large nose provoked had led to a more scarred and mis-shapen visage than he might have grown up with, but the streets of Greenock had not allowed him to pass by without some punishment for being blessed with such a beak. A lifetime of beatings had not served to improve his looks. Broken face. Sunken eyes. A never-ending fury scarred across his face.

He watched the two boys as they mouthed their strange language and rubbed their fingers together gesturing for coin.

Hib would gladly have given them his flat bread and cheese if empty bellies were their only problem. He reckoned they had loftier plans for themselves that only his coin could realise for them.

He pitied them for their greed and grasping hands. Their laughter had brought him back to Wapping and Tyburn, back to before the Hanoverian had wedged himself into the throne. All the way back to when Hib in his black hood was the crowd’s favourite.

The hood was a pointless subterfuge, for his nose lifted the black cloth out of shape and the scaffold of his frame announced him more grandly than fife and drum ever could.

‘It’s Hib!’ the crones would cackle. ‘Hib’s doing it!’ the crowds would hum, knowing that he would give them a show, with a rope too short that would make the villain dance for twenty minutes rather than ten. And he would thrust aside any misguided tear-eyed fool who tried to pull the man’s legs to snap his neck.

Hib gave them a choking, a hempen jig, a proper hanging. But then there had been the Jacobite rebellions. Damned politics had ruined the chances of a Scotsman to be good at an English job. They had taken away the killing, then blamed him, imprisoned him in the same cells he used to march past when he had needed to bleed his moods.

It was neither his fault nor his doing. The man Ignatius had rescued him from his own noose when other bodies led to Hib’s doorstep. He had new life now, a foreign life. And a worthy letting of blood.

His hand moved slowly to his belt and eased free the Estilete dagger. The two youths chattered even more at the sight of it. They rocked on their heels and began to wave their wretched blades at him, beckoning again for his coin.

His dagger was worth more than the small purse he carried. They should appreciate that fact and sample it for themselves. Its Spanish blade was older than all of them, dark and tapered to infinity. How proud they should be to taste it.

He checked them both, playing the blade in his palm. One boy had sharp, panicked eyes. He talked the fastest. He would not move first. The other had the wide eyes of the damned, the brilliant whites making of his pupils just black spots in a desperate face.


Hib’s next thought was how to clean his shirt in such a parched land. The mad stare had ended with the popping of a windpipe. A rush of air like a bellows flew out of the boy as he tumbled backwards. He would die slowly now.

The second was already dead when Hib cursed the blood that gushed over his clothes. In a single twist he had pulled his dagger from the throat of the first and whipped it straight through the silk wrap of the second boy. A hard punch of steel to the gut. The boy had gripped Hib’s arm, imploring, begging as Hib damned him for the arterial spurt that soaked his waistcoat right through to his shirt.

He let the body drop then wiped his Spanish dagger on the skirt. A noise made him look up at the rustling branches of a bush. There had been another, perhaps a girl who had urged them to it, now running home to her brothers. There was always a girl involved in such a waste of life. London had been the same. It had been easy to please himself at night in London’s inns when women were around. Always someone who asked for the blade if you looked too long at his girl. It was so easy to bleed his mood back then.

It had been a while since Hib Gow had felt the pain in the base of his skull. The old pressure back as blood pumped at the sight of death. He twisted his broad thigh of a neck, trying to stretch the pain away, and rubbed a bloody palm to the throb. No good. The blood still slammed hard at the very bone of his head like a hammer blow.

Get back to the guardhouse. Kick that pirate scum some more. That would calm the blood. That would scarify his mood.

‘It’s Hib!’ they used to scream. Those old toothless hags. ‘Hib’s to do it! It’s Hib I tells you! Look at his beak for God’s sakes!’

He loped away, snapping some more of the flat bread with a powerful bite, forgetting about his bloodied clothes already drying.

Aye, scarify his mood with another’s pain. That always helped. For a time.