Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Thirty-Three





Eleven of the Clock




Israel Hands helmed the skiff. The small single-masted boat towed behind Blackbeard’s Adventure was now free. She was fast and nimble enough to carry him and Palgrave Williams around the north shore of Providence and into Nassau harbour. The Adventure with Blackbeard still aboard lay anchored at Goulding Cay at the island’s most western point, and would wait the night out until the skiff returned, with or without Palgrave, depending on how well he had played his part, or how much Israel believed he had.

Palgrave studied the young man with the handlebar moustache and bare chest. Israel lounged against the tiller, his eyes fixed on the horizon and looking straight through Palgrave, occasionally checking the sail as she luffed under the slight wind but leaning back lazily for the most part, his left hand tapping out a rhythm against his belt, never far from the pull of his pistol or his knife should Palgrave have a mind to dance.

Palgrave settled back and watched the black coastline crawling by, belying the swift weaving of the boat. Dark now, past eleven at least, the sky a blue-black under a quartermoon, the island darker still, her palm trees towering over the beaches silhouetted against the night.

Palgrave had no weapons and carried only the leather satchel he had first set out with three years ago with Sam Bellamy and their dreams of treasure hunting amongst the sunken wrecks of the Spanish Main. That seemed a time ago now. He wondered if his wife had remarried and if he might ever return to the Rhode Island colony – if he might ever return alive anywhere – as he took in the dark man at the stern of the boat.

There are those who might also wonder why a forty-year-old man, a respectable goldsmith with a dutiful wife and two young children, would suddenly throw in all he had and follow the life of a pirate and rover, having never before trod upon the ocean.

To Palgrave and thousands more it had always been simple: I might be a millionaire today or dead tomorrow. Hoy por mi, mañana por ti. Today me, tomorrow thee. The beating of his heart beneath his chest was enough, even with the fear that charged the air around him this night.

An hour later and Israel had brought the skiff around Long and Silver Cays and through the sleeve between the harbour and Hog Island, the four-mile stretch of land that kept the warships out. The courting cries of the cochons-marron howled out over the bay from the forested island, breaking the cold silence between the two men, and the soft pulse and bounce of the thimble jellyfish eerily lighted their way into shore.

Palgrave was encouraged by their degree of cooperation in mooring the boat to the jetty; Israel had even put out a friendly hand to assist Palgrave as he disembarked.

I am not old, he thought. I am not dead. I was a pirate with Black Sam Bellamy. I am the most wanted man in America. Who will remember the name Israel Hands when he is dead?

His confidence shrivelled as Hands pricked Palgrave’s pot-belly with his dagger’s tip. ‘Remember I’m here, Palgrave, waiting for you.’ He nodded down the wooden jetty to the beach and the burning brazier with two soldiers shuffling around it. ‘You mind that.’

Palgrave tipped his hat and clopped off across the planks, leaving the smell of the pirate behind with the skiff.

The brazier’s glare destroyed what little night vision the soldiers guarding the beach might have enjoyed. A whale could have beached and they would not have seen it; thus they jumped as Palgrave stepped out from behind a curtain of black and swept off his hat.

‘Whence came you?’ one of them squeaked, his musket rattling.

Suddenly breathless, Palgrave gave his speech to the private.

‘My name is Palgrave Williams. I am late of Black Sam Bellamy’s crew. One of his commanders. I come to give myself up to Governor Rogers. I come to take the pardon of my King.’