“Now, Señor Delamere, being, although still very young, a naval officer of considerable experience and undoubted courage, will be an acquisition of the utmost value to us if we can but succeed in inducing him to join us—and I have hopes, very great hopes of doing so. I, therefore, want you to take him in charge for the present, showing him the utmost consideration, and allowing him free range of the settlement,—since it will be impossible for him to escape,—because I desire him to become thoroughly acquainted with all our resources, and to see for himself the perfection of all our arrangements for securing the success of our great enterprise.”
I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard Fernandez give this extraordinary and, as I deemed it, most imprudent order. It seemed too good to be true! Why, if the foolish man had but known it, there was nothing I could possibly have more ardently wished for than liberty to range freely the settlement and become fully acquainted with all its resources! If I had ever dreamed of such a possibility as this it would not have needed that I should be brought a prisoner to the place; I should have been but too eager to make my way to it voluntarily. But, of course, it was much better as it was, for now all that I had to do was to keep my eyes and ears wide-open, learn everything I possibly could, and, generally, make the very best use of my time before the return of Garcia, while humouring Fernandez to the top of his bent in his delusion that he would ultimately convince me of the advantage of joining the band. Moreover, I believed I should not have much difficulty in accomplishing this last; for, although I was at first somewhat at a loss to understand his great eagerness to secure me as a recruit, it became perfectly intelligible when I learned a little later on that the only weak point in the entire scheme consisted in the extreme scarcity of trained sailors capable of undertaking the more important executive duties. Seamen, of the kind to be found in a ship’s forecastle, they possessed, not exactly in abundance, but sufficient for their ordinary necessities; but it appeared that, apart from Garcia, his first lieutenant, and one other, they had not a single navigator among them; and it was easy to understand that, if anything untoward should happen to either of these men, the activities of the brotherhood would be seriously crippled, while a fatality that swept the whole of them away might well mean the utter ruin of all their hopes. I did not learn this quite at once, for it seemed to be the one item of information upon which Fernandez desired me to remain ignorant; but, mingling freely with everybody, as I was permitted to do, it was impossible for them to prevent the secret from ultimately leaking out, and I had not been in the settlement more than three days before I became acquainted with it, and with a good many other things as well.
For instance, I learned that of the three navigators which the community boasted, two—namely, Garcia and another—were on board the Tiburon, while the third was in command of a most respectable-looking brig, which, provided with a complete set of false papers, was engaged in conveying to various ports such portions of the cargoes of plundered ships as were not needed by the pirates themselves, disposing of the same for cash, and procuring with that cash such commodities as were required from time to time. The felucca that lay at anchor in the bay had also been similarly employed; but she was now idle, the man who had commanded her being with Garcia in the Tiburon, in place of an officer who had been killed in the action with the Wasp.
At the time of my arrival this extraordinary pirate settlement, or community, consisted of some forty seamen of various nationalities—except Englishmen—who had thrown in their lot with Garcia, Fernandez, and the rest; and about a hundred others who, although not seamen, were most useful for the performance of such strictly shore duty as the erection of houses, the loading and discharging of the trading brig, the storage of the various commodities needed by the community, the working up of rough spars into spare masts, yards, booms, etcetera, for the brig and schooner, the making of spare sails for the same, and, in short, the execution of all those multitudinous kinds of work that are essential to the comfort of man in his civilised condition. And exceedingly comfortable the rascals made themselves, for the houses were well-built, and in many cases beautifully furnished; also they enjoyed many luxuries, procured either from the cargoes of plundered ships, or purchased out of the proceeds of the sale of such plunder as they did not require for their own use.
It was not long before I discovered that there was a mystery of some sort attaching to the felucca that lay at anchor in the bay. I had made more than one attempt to go on board her, with the object of giving her an overhaul, but each attempt had been quietly met and frustrated in such a way that I soon grew to understand I could not persist further without exciting grave suspicion, which was the one thing of all others that I most desired to avoid. For it was this felucca that I regarded as my only possible means of escape from the pirates, and, that being the case, it was of the utmost importance that I should do nothing to betray the thought that lurked at the back of my mind. She was a fine, sturdy-looking little craft, measuring somewhere about sixty tons; and I felt that if I could but once get aboard her, and get enough sail hoisted to take me out to sea, the most difficult part of my adventure would be over; for Jamaica lay to leeward, and I could not very well lose my way, even if I were compelled to go to sea without a chart. It is true that the rig of a felucca—namely, a single latteen-sail, its head stretched along an enormously long, tapering yard, hoisted to the top of a stout, stumpy mast raking well forward—is not precisely the rig that I would willingly choose to go to sea alone with; but beggars must not be choosers, and it seemed to me to be Hobson’s choice—that or nothing. I must therefore make up my mind to face the difficulties of the rig and do the best I could with it, or remain until Garcia’s return, and so miss my only chance. Of course, there was just the bare possibility that I might find a man, or even two or three, willing to share the adventure with me—for I could scarcely believe that every member of the community had quite willingly joined it without compulsion of any kind—but I had no intention of jeopardising my chances of success by making inquiries, of however cautious a character. If such men were to be found it would have to be almost by pure accident; meanwhile it was for me to make my plans in such a manner that, if necessary, they could be carried out single-handed.
But it was imperative that I should visit the felucca, by hook or by crook; and since I had already discovered that it could not be managed during the day, there was nothing for it but to make the attempt at night. Now, I was in Pacheco’s charge, he was responsible for me, and although I was nominally free to come and go as I would, it was not long before I discovered that it was practically impossible for me to get out of his sight for more than five or ten minutes at a time, except at night time, when I was granted the privilege of a small room to myself in his house. Even then, for the first week of my sojourn, I could scarcely stir in my bed but at the creaking of it he would be at my door, inquiring why I was moving, and whether I required anything, the questioning being, I fancied, simply for the purpose of assuring himself that I was still in the room. But as the days—or rather the nights—went on his vigilance gradually relaxed, for I so shaped my speech as to convey the impression that, at least in my own mind, I had practically decided to join the band. It was this, perhaps, that so far threw him off his guard as to betray him, on a certain night, into the indulgence of his favourite vice, which was a too-marked devotion to the rum bottle. For several nights in succession—ever since I had been placed in his charge, in fact—he had been perforce compelled to remain perfectly sober in order that he might keep a strict watch upon me, but at length when, while we were sitting at table together, taking supper, I allowed him to believe that I had finally decided to go to Fernandez the next morning and take the oath, he ventured to celebrate my conversion by drinking my health in a stiff nor’wester of rum and water—rather more rum than water. That act of weakness was his undoing, for at the first taste of the spirit after his forced abstention he completely lost all control of himself, and could no more refrain from taking a second tumbler than he could have flown. The second naturally led to a third, and the third to a fourth; whereupon, recognising that my chance was at hand, I yawned twice or thrice most portentously, complained of fatigue, and retired to my room, he following as far as the door and locking me in, as was his custom before going to his own room. But that troubled me not a whit, for the house was of one story only, and to slip out of it by way of the open window was almost as easy as walking out through the door, once my gaoler became so deeply wrapped in sleep that my stealthy movements would not awake him.
I moved quite carelessly about the room for a minute or two, and then flung myself heavily upon the bed, fully dressed; and as I did so I heard Pacheco go tiptoeing clumsily back to the table, stumbling against a chair on the way, and muttering imprecations at his own clumsiness as he went. A further gurgling of liquor being poured into a glass followed, then a deep sigh of satisfaction as the glass was emptied, the bang of it as it was noisily replaced on the table, and finally the man’s staggering footsteps along the floor as he made his way to his own room. Then came the kicking off of his shoes, followed by other sounds indicative of the fact that he was undressing, a heavy creaking of the bedstead as he flung himself upon it, and, a minute or two later, deep snoring.
But it was still much too early for me to think of making a move, for sounds reached me from the outside which told me that quite a number of people were still up and about; I therefore waited, with such
patience as I could muster, until these had all ceased, and then allowed something like another half-hour to elapse, in order to make all sure—for this was a case where it were better to be half-an-hour late than half-a-minute too early, and by undue haste spoil everything.