“That will be a matter for us to address when the time comes. And if it arises while we are still gone, then mijn heeren van Walbeeck and Jol will be available to make a suitable response.”
Houtebeen Jol started. “You’re leaving me behind? With the rest of the fleet? Maarten, surely you must—”
“Captain Jol. I am leaving you behind. But not with the fleet. That’s not the place for you.”
Jol’s injured expression began to shift into a blend of shock and rage. “Why, I’m twice the captain of any—”
“Jol,” Tromp said calmly, “I can’t afford to tie you down to any fleet. Not the one I’m sailing with, and not the one I’m leaving here under the command of Joost Banckert. I need you to keep doing exactly what you’re doing: being our ears and eyes in the wider Caribbean. Because, if any Spanish should happen to decide to venture in this general direction while we are gone—”
At which words, Peg Leg Jol held up a hand and nodded. “Yes, Maarten. I understand. I don’t like it—but I understand.”
Tromp hoped that Jol did understand the full import of his responsibility to St. Eustatia now. Yes, he had to keep Jol at his specialty—a rover—and had increased need of his ability to gather intelligence along the Spanish Main. But if Tromp failed, or worse yet, did not return, then the thin but crucial trickle of supplies that Jol’s raiding provided would need to be expanded, and quickly. If the Dutch lost the ten fighting hulls that Tromp was taking south, the Dutch would, in the same act, have come to the attention of one or more foes. And sooner or later, that meant that the Spanish would seek the source of the destroyed ships, and attempt to reduce it by bombardment and blockade.
When it came to building up a reserve of munitions and supplies to endure such an eventuality, and yet to acquire them surreptitiously, Jol had no peer. He was a master at finding single ships before they detected him, shadowing them, closing during the night (no mean feat, and he was its master) and then attacking them early and swiftly so that, by midday, he had the prize in hand. If the ship was in good enough shape and a good sailer, he brought her back with a prize crew if he had the men to spare and the distance was not too great. Otherwise, he took what he could, spars included, and scuttled her. No fires: that could draw attention.
Which was always, of course, his most important objective: to leave the Spanish unaware of his depredations. As far as the viceroy of New Spain and the governors of his various audiencias were concerned, these were ships that simply disappeared, as did so many others that sailed alone in the treacherous waters of the Caribbean.
The one difficulty with his operations had been prisoners. Not the presence of them—the Dutch only had three dozen under guard at Fort Oranjestad—but their paucity. Jol had taken eight large ships, so far. Almost all had crews that had been greater than twenty, some considerably more. And yet, only thirty-six prisoners. The Spaniards—indeed, everyone but the Dutch—had long considered Houtebeen Jol more of a pirate than a privateer, but even those detractors who labeled him El Pirata nonetheless grudgingly conceded that when it came to enemies and prisoners, Jol was a singularly humane and considerate fellow. And yet, only thirty-six prisoners.
In the past year, Houtebeen Jol’s missions had not been for commercial gain; they had been for the survival of St. Eustatia. More than once, in the early days, widespread starvation had been narrowly averted by the timely return of Jol’s twenty-two-gun Otter, loaded with Spanish foodstuffs but without a single Spanish prisoner aboard. What could explain such ominously suspicious circumstances? Jol, who had always been an almost insufferably merry fellow, had grown quieter over that year, and did not volunteer an explanation.
To his shame, Tromp had not asked for one. Because, after all, what was the point of doing so? Jol had known well enough that the thousands of newly arrived refugees on St. Eustatia could not feed themselves, let alone prisoners. Furthermore, each Spaniard taken prisoner was one more escape risk, one more chance that someone would alert the viceroys that there was a credible challenge to their power in the New World, but that it was fragile and vulnerable and could be eliminated by a single decisive blow.
Simonszoon had risen. “So, no pirates in our fleet,” He poked his friend Peg Leg in the ribs to lighten the mood. “And the rest of us? We’re the fleet?”
“You and a few other ships.”
Van Holst crossed his arms. “Which others?”
“The Neptunus, the Achilles, and the Kater.”
Pieter Floriszoon, who commanded the most heavily gunned of all the Dutch jachts, the Eendracht, nodded. “So I’m to be helping Captain Gijszoon of the Kater, then.”