Seas of Fortune(46)
Philip had been staring at his wristwatch. He announced the time—his watch was set to Grantville Standard Time, which took into account the relocation of the town by the Ring of Fire—to the nearest minute. Comparing the local time to the time at a place of known longitude was critical to the most accurate method of determining a ship’s longitude.
“Write it in the logbook. Solar altitude is—” David squinted at the vernier, and read off the altitude. “Record that, too. Take that and the star shot we did half an hour ago, and calculate our position.”
Philip stifled a groan. He had made the mistake of admitting that he had taken half a year of trigonometry before embarking on his present escapade. The captain had happily decided that Philip could help with the navigational mathematics. That meant many hours studying Bowditch. The Company’s Bowditch was based on a couple of “attic and basement” editions of Nathaniel Bowditch’s famous American Practical Navigator, and they included calculation of longitude both with a chronometer and by the method of lunars.
“Boat, ho!” cried the lookout.
David grabbed his spyglass and took a look. Sure enough, a longboat with a makeshift sail bobbed in the waves, several miles ahead of them. Philip eagerly dropped the Bowditch and joined.
“That’s odd,” he muttered.
“What’s odd?” asked Philip. Since David’s cousin, Heyndrick, had been left behind at the new colony in Suriname, Philip had gradually become David’s confidante on the ship. In retrospect, it wasn’t surprising; since Philip wasn’t a sailor, talking to him didn’t create discipline problems. The fact that Philip was one of the mysterious up-timers also gave him a cachet.
“No one would willingly cross the open sea in a longboat. They are used for in-shore work by ship’s crews.
“Still . . . we mustn’t get careless. Many a pirate has gotten his first ship by stealing a fishing boat and then coming alongside an imprudent merchant vessel.” David gave orders; the crew prepared to repel boarders. The flotilla altered course to bring itself closer to the mysterious small craft.
David hailed them. In English, since it wasn’t prudent to do so in Dutch.
They responded in kind. “Help us, please, we’re the last of the White Swan.” David sent his own longboat over to inspect, and his crew reported back that they did indeed seem to be mariners in distress. Not just English, but Dutch as well. David allowed most of his crew to stand down, and the strangers were taken aboard. If David had a few men still armed and ready, well, that was only prudent in Caribbean waters.
The longboat’s crew were brought some food and liquor, and encouraged to tell their tale. Not that they needed much encouragement.
“I am—was, I should say—the carpenter of the White Swan, out of Plymouth. There were two Dutch fluyts with us, all peacefully gathering salt from the pans of Bonaire.” That was one of three islands off the coast of Venezuela. “We were sent in the longboat to Goto Meer, a lake in the northern part of the island, to fetch fresh water. We were making our way back when we saw the attack. A squadron of six Spanish warships came through, and immediately attacked the two Hollanders.
“The White Swan kept its distance. I suppose the captain, God rest his soul, must have figured the Spanish were just after the Dutch. We should’ve known better. Once both Dutch ships were safely in Duppy Jonah’s Locker, the Spaniards came after the White Swan. And sent her down as well.”
“So much for peace,” said another English sailor.
“‘No peace beyond the line,’” David quoted. “And the Spanish think they and the Portuguese own all of the New World.”
The carpenter nodded. “We stayed hidden among the mangroves—what else could we do?—until the Spanish moved west, and the sun went down. There was a moon, so we went looking for survivors, and hauled in these Dutchmen, poor wretches. They had found something to cling to, but they were still pretty waterlogged when we took them on.” The Dutch survivors were still too weak to make conversation, but they nodded feebly.
“And a good thing for you that you did,” David said. “Since I am Dutch, and we are under Swedish colors. Otherwise, we might be less charitable, considering how the English treated the Dutch at the Battle of Dunkirk.”
* * *
The English wanted to be taken to Saint Kitts, but that was well off David’s course, and thus out of the question even if David were sure of a friendly reception. And the American colonies were English no longer. David told his unexpected guests that he could drop them off on Providence Island, off the coast of Nicaragua. There was a Puritan colony there. They would work as crew, in the meantime, of course.