Klaus Oversteegen frowned. “Did you visit Curaçao yourself, then?”
Houtebeen Jol shook his round head. “No. Too close to the Spanish. But my sailing partner, Moses Cohen Henriques, roves nearer to their ports, since—having no Dutchmen aboard—even if they were captured, it wouldn’t point the Spanish in our direction. He went as far as New Providence, where he made contact with Abraham Blauvelt, the famous ‘explorer.’” Jol smiled. Blauvelt was not much less of a pirate that Houtebeen, truth be told. “So we got news from him, as well. All the attention of the Spanish Main, and even Havana, seems to be focused on Curaçao.”
“That’s good for us,” observed Gerritsz soberly.
“Yes, but maybe not so good for Marten Thijssen,” mused Jan van Walbeeck.
Tromp nodded. “True enough, but right now, we cannot help him—cannot even send word—without tipping our hand and calling attention to ourselves here.” Although we may be doing so soon enough, anyway.
Simonszoon shifted from a mostly supine to mostly upright position. “Maarten, this is all very interesting, but you didn’t bring us here to listen to Houtebeen tell us what he’s already jabbered about in my great cabin when he’s in his cups.”
Jol smiled at Dirck even as he frowned. Simonszoon smiled back.
In that brief moment of silence created by their gruff camaraderie, Tromp discovered, and not for the first time, how grateful he was to have these two snarling sea dogs in his command. Both privateers with more a decade of experience, they had been the ones least panicked by the fleet’s relocation from Recife to its tenuous safe haven on St. Eustatia. They had long experience with the vicissitudes of fate that shaped the lives of seamen, and the changing menu of perils it offered as its daily fare. Where Tromp’s other captains had wrung their hands anxiously, these two had reached out their hands for another cup of rum and exchanged tales of the earliest days of Dutch colonization (the Spanish rightly called it “invasion”) when danger and uncertainty had been truly high. These days, they opined with slow, sage sips at their fermented cane juice, were just a bit unpredictable. Nothing to lose sleep over.
“Dirck’s right,” agreed van Galen. “We all know your purser has been in town from first light this morning, buying provisions for the fleet. And we’ve all seen a disproportionate amount of those supplies coming to the ships captained by the men in this room. So where do we sail, Admiral? North again? To take back St. Maarten?”
Tromp shook his head. “No. That would be the last place I would sail, right now.”
“Why? When the puny Armada de Barlovento came nosing south from there last year, we boxed them in and sank all four ships.”
“Yes, thanks to the watch post the admiral set on the high ground of Saba Island,” Simonszoon pointed out with a slow drawl that signified that van Galen’s simplistic view of that engagement was beginning to annoy him.
Tromp waved away Dirck’s compliment. “Simple prudence. Any capable commander would have taken that precaution. But Captain van Galen, have you considered how very lucky we were that day?”
“Lucky? Admiral, it was your skill and our naval superiority that won the day. We started with eight ships to their four and, thanks to the advance warning, had the wind gauge on them before they knew we were sailing the same ocean. And by the time they realized their predicament, the other three of our ships appeared on the leeward horizon, closing the trap. Those square-rigged Spanish apple-barges never had a chance.”
Tromp had to glance at Simonszoon to keep him from commencing a low-voiced, laconical evisceration of yet one more nautical fool he was not willing to suffer gladly. “Mr. van Galen,” Tromp said patiently, “I mean, have you ever thought how lucky we were after the battle?”
Van Galen blinked. “After the battle? How were we lucky after the battle? We won a clear victory and even—”
“You half-blind pup,” whispered Simonszoon. “Have you never considered what must have happened on St. Maarten after those four ships failed to return?”
Van Galen’s stunned silence—an expression of insult giving way to worried suspicion that he had missed a key piece of some naval puzzle—confirmed that he indeed had never considered such a thing.
Simonszoon acquainted him with the immensity of that oversight. “Then let me reprise the events on St. Maarten almost three or four weeks later, when, by any reasonable estimate, the Spanish on the island had to consider the under-equipped Armada de Barlovento to be missing. The commander there—Captain Cibrian de Lizarazu, if last word is accurate—no doubt picked up his goose quill pen and started a letter to his superior, one Captain-General Bitrian de Viamonte in Santo Domingo. In this letter, Lizarazu certainly reported the disappearance of the entirety of that puny Armada, and promised his continued vigilance for any sign of its return.