Hunt for White Gold

Chapter Forty





END GAME



Log entry of Captain John Coxon:



His Majesty’s ship Milford under order of His Governor of New Providence, Eleuthera, Harbour Island and Abaco August 1718



Hauling round Goulding Cay in the morning. Light airs. Land trend away NWBW. Some places around the ship 3 or 4 fathom of water. In some places not quite so many feet. Got up main topmast and main yard. Got the sail ready for fothering the ship. Put it over under the starboard.



4 am. Following coast ascertaining threat to islands of possible pyrate landings. The known pyrate Devlin apprehended on Providence. Assume pyrates may attempt rescue. Full traverse of island by 10 am expected.



Sail sighted 1 league out of Simm’s Point. Head NEBN to intercept.




Coxon handed the glass to his First, his head weary and eyesight blurred. ‘What make you, Rosher? Sail there.’

Rosher put the telescope to his eye and saw the ethereal light of the hour before dawn grow slowly in his view. They stood at the raised fo’c’sle of the Milford beneath the stays and rippling jibs, elbows and backs jostling around them, oblivious to their presence but still making sure not to brush the officers on the crowded deck.

Rosher swayed with the tide and waited for the murky image miles distant to steady itself. ‘A sloop,’ he said at last, confident in the sight of the lateen sails between the two masts and the flush deck beneath. ‘She’s hauling fast,’ Rosher lowered the glass and looked at Coxon, then up to their fore- and mainsails at forty-five degrees, the deck lee-lurching to larboard beneath his feet as they tacked painfully north-east. ‘Fast before the wind. Faster than us at any rate.’

Coxon looked down at his watch, waiting for more Rosher felt, or perhaps gauging the other ship’s speed by invisible points along the gunwale.

‘What else make you?’ Coxon asked without looking up and Rosher breathed in and raised the glass again, taking the moment of re-sighting to consider what his captain might be looking for. The little sloop soon obliged as Rosher caught the forestay in his eyepiece and saw the black pennant playing on the wind.

Rosher’s back snapped up straight and he stretched out to the sea.

‘A pirate! A black flag from her forestay, Captain. A pattern upon it.’

Coxon clicked his watch shut. The speed made. He had been measuring the sloop against his Milford. Too fast. Too far. The Milford like a whale to a seal. ‘What pattern do you see, Rosher?’ he asked idly, already resigned to the chase, but never the capture. Maybe he could stab at her with the chasers to keep her from the shore.

‘A red heart,’ Rosher said beneath the scope. ‘A tall skeleton pulling at it … no … I see blood dripping from the heart … he’s piercing it … piercing it with some sort of spear I believe, Captain. Something in the skeleton’s hand … Can’t make it.’

Coxon shook his head. ‘It’s an hour-glass. It means our time is running out. Such vanity from such filthy coats.’

Rosher brought down the telescope and was back to the world of men in slops who rushed by, always busy, always dipping their heads at him. ‘Should we not record the flag, Captain?’ Rosher sounded rather too excited for Coxon’s liking. ‘’Tis my first pirate sighting to be sure!’

A King’s Letter boy, thought Coxon, the promising younger sons thrown aboard as minors. Six years at sea to be made lieutenant at no younger than twenty. He might just have seen the last edge of the war.

Coxon swung away from the young man and took two steps to the rail above the deck.

‘Listen up, lads!’ his hands gripped the rail as if trying to pull up the ship, and he raised his voice, commanding all to abide his words. ‘Who amongst the pirates shows a skeleton stabbing a bleeding heart for his putrid black flag of colour? What say you now?’

The crew looked at each other, unsure what their answers might betray to their captain and also unsure what the lack of an answer might summon otherwise. A mop handle rested for a moment on a chest and an arm was raised gingerly.

Coxon’s finger shot out towards the sailor, pointing like a priest’s at a blasphemer. ‘You, sailor! Tell us all and young Rosher here. Who sails under such a flag?’

The man looked about his mates, who ducked away from his silent pleas as if he were standing knee-deep in his grave. He looked back to Coxon high above him and spoke louder than he thought he ever could. ‘That be Blackbeard’s colours, Cap’n. Blackbeard I believe, Cap’n.’

Coxon whisked his hand back. ‘Bosun! Pint of rum to that man whenever he chooses to take it. Blackbeard it is.’ He wheeled back to Rosher. ‘No need to mark it, Rosher. That’s a bold sod to wave his presence without a challenge. You have the watch. All sail to make him if you can.’

‘Aye, Captain,’ Rosher pulled the front cock of his hat, but paused before descending. ‘But what of Devlin, Captain? Was it not his frigate we were expecting?’

Coxon leant on the gunwale and stared at the stern of the pirate turning her heels to him. ‘Birds of a feather, Rosher. You can watch the tree and wait for the fruit to fall soon enough. Or you can take a bloody great stick and knock the shite out of it.’ He heaved himself away from the spray as the ship turned and straightened his coat. ‘We will set sail to chase. Send a boat back with my regards to Governor Rogers that I intend to do so. Send the Master to me, Mister Rosher.’

The young man tipped his hat again, his turn of shoulder stopped by Coxon. ‘And Mister Rosher?’

‘Aye, Captain?’

‘Hoist the colours. Rabbits run from hounds’ teeth.’ He winked and turned to follow the horizon from westward over his shoulder to Blackbeard’s sloop bobbing against the cap of the sun in the east. Unashamedly, to Coxon’s senses, the sloop appeared quite beautiful under the faint amethyst sky of the dawn. Fine artists had painted less.

Devlin had not been seen. His Shadow remained elusive. Perhaps he had joined with Teach, with Blackbeard, for there was Blackbeard and Devlin had been taken on Providence only hours before. Coxon felt sure that the Delicia would keep Devlin’s men from coming in south. If the Shadow were here, or were on her way, north would be her waters.

A glint flashed in the dawn before him and his imaginings were suddenly wiped away by the gleam of a gold band blinking at him across the leagues – the reflection of a telescope’s brass ring off the morning light. He moved to the stair and left the watcher to his study of the Delicia’s coming on.


Hog Island was a swampy, boggy stretch of almost-land barely four miles long and not even half a mile wide, so that you could nearly see to its other shore through the palms and fronds upon it. A hundred years before, some Spanish or Porto traveller had marooned several sanglier, some wild chestnut pigs, letting them run free and breed, to rule the island alone, the only price of their freedom to submit to being hunted on occasion by the residents of Providence. Travellers well knew the spot and its mouth-watering indigenes. Now the lords of the island grunted and squealed away from the crash of the pirates passing through their home.

A panting mass of men was charging to the opposite shore, hacking at the gnarled branches that blocked them and cursing at the sucking ground at their feet.

Hog Island gave Providence its narrow harbour, the channel that stopped the men-of-war from coming close in. The channel had saved the pirates from many attempts to oust them and had allowed Charles Vane his avenue for escape a month before. Now it gave Devlin his as the day suddenly broke through the trees and he almost fell to his knees on the beach at the sight of the Shadow waiting in the cove.

Anchored fore and aft, restless at her cables and bucking like a foal desperate for the field, she tugged at her lines as if chomping at the bit and pleased to see her master. Bill had plotted the hands to sail from the Delicia’s starbolin watch through the dark while it still covered them. She had sailed north-east, keeping three miles at least from the East Indiaman’s forty guns then turned and headed for Hog Island and the dawn. The Delicia was waking now, unaware that the pirate ship had crept past her in the night. Captain Gale was sitting in his nightshirt at his table sipping his first coffee of the morning.

Dandon stumbled to Devlin’s side breathless from the run. Resting on his knees he gulped at the air and looked thankfully up at the black and red freeboard and the security of the three masts that promised strength and speed against anything that sailed to oppose them.

He looked to his captain grinning at the sight of his frigate, high in the water, blistered by barnacles on her pale lower strakes. The smell of Dog Leg Harry’s peaberry coffee and egg-rice breakfast was already drawing them in: two boats lay on the shore waiting for them and cheers came from the deck as their brothers waved them on, hats tumbling and pistols firing into the sky.

Bill brushed past Devlin and Devlin grabbed the Scotsman’s blue sleeve, turning to him.

‘Thanks, Bill,’ he said, acknowledging the slight blush above the beard and following the big man to the shore with Dandon, carrying the bamboo ransom, trailing behind.

‘Can we abandon this place, Patrick?’ Dandon panted, collapsing into the boat. ‘I have grown tired of the world of ordinary men.’

‘Aye. North to the lanes then to Peter Sam.’ Then he darkened at the remembrance of Ignatius and the promise of Valentim Mendes’s vengeance. At least the passage should be plain and smooth enough, if not the outcome. ‘At least we have beaten Teach to be sure. His face will be a picture when he finds it is us who has the letters.’

Devlin permitted himself a smile.