Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(222)
“Caribs, or as they style themselves, the Kalinago, will be good in battle. But their real value to you will be as scouts. Give them time to thoroughly assess The Quill and all that is going on upon it. The wait shall be worth your while, I am sure, and you should easily be in your positions by dawn.
“Once the attack begins, you know what to urge, even if du Plessis forgets or believes he has devised—God help us!—a superior plan. The Kalinagos are to skirmish and their bowmen are to work from forest ambush wherever possible. That said, do not depend over-much upon the musketeers, either ours or theirs. Bring them up like artillery when you run into concentrated defense, then let the Kalinago lead the attack once again. And once you reach Oranjestad, you need only get far enough into it to allow the torch to be your final weapon.”
As his uncle squeezed his shoulder affectionately and rose to leave, Jacques realized that there was one topic that had never come up in all the discussion of the attack and its details. “What of prisoners, Uncle Pierre? What should we do with them?”
In the growing darkness, d’Esnambuc’s face was a black outline. “They would be a great inconvenience,” he said slowly. “I recommend you defer to Touman and the Kalinago regarding the disposition of any persons who surrender.”
“But Uncle—”
“Defer to the Kalinago. And do not stay to watch.”
Off Bloody Point, St. Christopher’s
The late autumn sun was now southerly enough that, at dawn, it did not rise over the high, green spine of St. Christopher’s mountains, but over the flat uplands just north of the French town of Basseterre. Pieter Floriszoon screened his eyes with his hands and looked back at Hugh Albert O’Donnell. “Seems rather quiet, don’t you think?”
Hugh shrugged, smiled. “Having never been here, I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, in my time, I’ve rarely seen so few boats out fishing. Is it some holiday?”
“None that I’m aware of.” Hugh felt the strong tugging pressure fade out of the patache’s whipstaff and heard and saw the mainsail begin to luff slightly. “Wind is shifting,” he commented.
“So it is,” grinned Pieter, who folded his arms and smiled.
Hugh rolled his eyes. This was not a tricky wind, but Floriszoon was probably trying to see if navigating so close to land spooked the Irishman. But as the wind from the northeast shifted to north by northeast, and he went from close reaching to close hauled, it was a simple matter of turning one point to port to bring the wind back into the mainsail and return to close reaching.
The flutter of the mainsail’s luffing subsided and the patache resumed a brisk northwesterly pace, aimed directly at the headland known as Bloody Point.
Malachi O’Mara approached from where his Dutch tutor in sail-handling had just relieved him. “My lord, you look a bit of a pirate this morning, you do.”
“Mind your tongue, O’Mara, or you’ll find out what it’s really like to be keelhauled.”
“Yes sir!” He approached and watched Hugh’s work with the whipstaff meditatively, clearly paying not a jot of real attention to it.
O’Donnell knew a purposeful loiter when he saw one. “Out with it then, O’Mara. For whom are you playing the part of an emissary, this morning?”
“Why, my lord, I wouldn’t dream of—”
“We never dream of things we do routinely. So out with it, I say.”
“As you say, m’lord. There’s some concern among the new lads from Montserrat that maybe we should have gone to Nevis first, after all. Showing up on Governor Warner’s doorstep might be seen as being a bit bold.”
“They feel that, do they?”
“Well, yes, sir. Respectfully, sir.”
“I appreciate their respectful concerns. You may convey to them my resolve to proceed as planned. Governor Warner is not so grand and well-established a lord as he once was. He’s been cut loose by his king. So I suppose you might say, having both lost our titles, mine was greater and older than his and I’ve no reason not to pay him a visit and my compliments directly. Besides, it was he who accepted their deportation to the Irish colony on Montserrat. It is he who would have to repeal it, at least enough so that they might trade freely here once again without any prejudice or suspicion of being agents for the French.”
“Or for them to recruit for you among the relatives and friends they left behind?” Floriszoon all but winked at Hugh.
“Just so,” the attainted earl replied. “You say his plantation is beyond that headland?”
Floriszoon nodded. “Yes, a mile or so north of Bloody Point. And what town he has is there, as well. The English are far more populous, but also more spread out. They have no single settlements as large as Dieppe Bay or Basseterre. Although now that we Dutch have sent over so many soldiers, I wonder if—”