“Mr. Brout, you are to be given the first helping of breakfast.”
“Why—yes, Admiral. Thank you.”
“Do not thank me. It is so you may go ashore as soon as possible. You are to requisition as much salt fish, smoked goat, dried fruit, and hard-baked cassava loaves as you can find. Tapioca for porridge, and beans, too.”
“I am to ‘requisition’ it, sir?”
“Yes. We will settle accounts later.” If we’re alive to do it. “You are to return by noon. The supplies are to be loaded by nightfall.”
“Admiral, that leaves me little time to negotiate for a fair—”
“Mr. Brout, you do not have time to negotiate. You will see that the holds of our ships are provided with three months’ rations, at a minimum. You are to begin by calling upon Governor Corselles. He will have my message by now, and will accompany you to ensure the compliance of your suppliers.” And to watch out for your own profiteering proclivities, Brout.
Whose eyes were wide. “Yes, Admiral. If I may ask, are we soon to weigh anchor—?”
But Tromp was already out the door and into the narrow passageway. He was halfway up the ladder to the gun deck before the raucous buzz of hushed gossip surged out of the galley below him.
Willi, at Tromp’s heels, laughed softly.
“Something amusing, Mr. van der Zaan?”
“Yes, sir. Very much, sir.”
“And what is it?”
“How an admiral of so few and such quiet words can work up so many men so very quickly.”
Tromp shrugged and turned that motion into an arm-boost that propelled him up onto the gun deck with satisfying suddenness. Men who were hunched in whispering clusters came to their feet quickly. Over his shoulder, he muttered, “A man who yells does so because he is unsure that he is in command. Remember that, Willi.”
“I will, sir.”
Tromp, walking with his hands behind his back, nodded acknowledgments to the respectful greetings he received from each knot of befuddled seamen. However, his primary attention was on the guns. The last of the culverins were gone, as he had ordered. In their place were cannon, although one of those was only a twenty-two-pounder, or “demi-cannon.” But each deck’s broadsides would be a great deal more uniform now: another up-timer optimization that tarrying at their Oranjestad anchorage had enabled. Gone was the mix of culverin and cannon of various throw-weights and the occasional saker, and with them, the variances of range and effectiveness that made naval gunnery even more of a gamble than it already was.
He popped a tompion out of a cannon’s muzzle and felt around within the mouth of the barrel. He found it sufficiently dry, and with a paucity of pitting that testified to the routine nature of its care. Salt water was a hard and corrosive taskmaster.
Admirably anticipating his next point of inspection, a gunner came forward at a nod from his battery chief and made to open a ready powder bag. Tromp nodded approval and turned to young van der Zaan. “Fetch Lieutenant Evertsen to find me here. He’ll need to complete the inspection. Then make for the accommodation ladder.”
“Why, sir? Are you expecting—?”
A single coronet announced a noteworthy arrival on the weather deck.
“Yes,” Tromp answered, “I am expecting visitors. Now go.”
Tromp looked up when, without warning, the door to his great cabin opened and Jan van Walbeeck entered. “You’re late,” the admiral muttered.
“I am more informed than I would have been had I hurried to be on time,” retorted van Walbeeck with his trademark impish grin. He pulled up a chair and sat, heavy hands folded and cherubic smile sending creases across his expansive cheeks. Full-faced for a man of thirty-five, his jowls were apparently not subject to privations in the same way the rest of his now-lean body was. He, along with the other three thousand refugees from Recife, had narrowly avoided the specter of starvation over the past year. But somehow, van Walbeeck still had his large, florid jowls.
Tromp waited and then sighed. “Very well, I will ask: and what additional information did your tardiness vouchsafe?”
“I tarried on deck to exchange a few pleasantries with your first mate, Kees Evertsen. While there, a Bermuda sloop made port. Down from Bahamas, freighting our neighbors’ sugar for relay to Bermuda. And as chance would have it, one of our most notable neighbors was on board.”
Tromp frowned. By “neighbors,” van Walbeeck meant the English on St. Christopher’s island, which was already visible as a dawn-lit land mass out the admiral’s south-facing stern windows. A “notable visitor,” meant the person was not of the very first order of importance, so it was not the governor, Sir Thomas Warner himself. Indeed, the “Sir” part of Warner’s title was somewhat in doubt. Technically, shortly before the League of Ostend arose, Charles Stuart of England had ceded all his New World possessions to Richelieu. Or so the French maintained. And it was probably close to, or the very, fact. The English crown’s protest over that interpretation was, to put it lightly, muted. However, the popular English outcry over losing its New World possessions had grown intense enough to propel the already paranoid Charles into a dubious course of instituting loyalty oaths and a standing, special court for the investigation and hearing of purported cases of sedition.