The Log of a Privateersman

by Harry Collingwood

At daybreak we roused up, and, making our way to a clear space on the very summit of the hill, looked abroad at the scene. Seaward, the ocean stretched away, a vast plain of delicate blue, to the horizon, and some twenty miles in the offing we made out a speck of white, gleaming in the brilliant morning sun, which we decided must be the schooner. Then, turning our backs upon the sea, we had the hilly foreground of the island before us, sloping away to right and left and in front of us down to the smooth, placid waters of the spacious harbour. On our right was the Boca Chica, the only entrance to the harbour, a narrow, winding channel with a sort of bar at its inner extremity, whereon, Hoard informed me, there is scarcely four fathoms of water. Nevertheless, viewed from the elevation which I occupied, the navigation of the channel appeared simple enough, the submerged sand-banks on each side of it showing up quite clearly through the blue water. At the inner extremity of the channel lies the outer harbour, a sheet of water roughly circular in shape, and measuring some four miles across in either direction. I noticed a few small shoals dotted about here and there in this outer harbour, but there was only one that appeared to be at all dangerous, and that one was to be easily avoided. The northern boundary of the outer harbour seemed to be pretty well defined by a cluster of decidedly dangerous shoals stretching right across from the island of Tierra Bomba to the mainland, but with fairly wide channels of deep water between, and north of this lay what might be termed the intermediate harbour. This is a sheet of water of about half the area of the outer harbour, with a good clean bottom and plenty of water. It is formed by a shoal uniting the island of Tierra Bomba with the mainland, a reef of rocks projecting above the sand and rendering the Boca Grande—once the main entrance to the harbour—quite impassable by anything larger than a boat. Then, inside this again, and rendered especially safe and snug by being inclosed by two long, low, projecting spits with a narrow channel between them, is the inner harbour, having an area of about three-quarters of a square mile, with plenty of water for the largest ships. The head of this harbour washes the walls and wharves of the town of Cartagena; indeed it does more, for, as Hoard informed me, it divides the town into two nearly equal parts, the tide flowing right through it and for some distance beyond. In this inner harbour lay quite a fleet of small coasting-craft, and towering high among them all could be made out the tall spars of the galleon. Immediately in front of us, and on the opposite side of the harbour, the country was low, swampy, and thickly covered with scrub and bush, among which could be made out the whitewashed mud walls of the villages of Buenavista, Gospique, and Albornos, in the latter of which Hoard’s friend Panza had his habitation. The fishing-boats from these villages were dotted all over the bay—they had probably been out all night,—and having pointed out to me the several objects of interest in the noble scene that stretched around us, my companion intimated that the time had arrived for him to leave me, as he intended to get a passage across to the mainland forthwith, and then make his way to the town for the purpose of acquiring information. He cautioned me to keep a bright look-out for chance stragglers, and to carefully avoid them, for he assured me that, if discovered, I should certainly be dragged off to the town, and probably meet with the same fate that he had suffered. And finally, he undertook to return, if possible, the next night to the spot whereon we then stood, adding that, should he fail to appear, I was not to be alarmed. I watched him make his way down the hillside, lost sight of him among the bush, and finally made him out again, with the aid of my glass, just as he was entering a little hamlet on the harbour shore of the island. I watched him sauntering hither and thither among the dozen or so of huts that composed the hamlet, saw him engage in conversation with several people, and at length observed him making his way down to the beach, accompanied by a couple of men. The trio entered a boat and pushed off, and I watched the crazy craft heading straight across the harbour to the village of Gospique, from whence I concluded he would make the best of his way to Albornos.

I had now the rest of the day before me in which to look round and make my observations, and I determined to do so to the utmost extent of my ability. But I was by this time hungry and thirsty, so before doing anything else I sought out a comfortable spot in the shadow of a clump of bush, and sat down to discuss a portion of the viands that I had been careful to bring with me. Then, my meal finished, I produced pencil and paper, and proceeded to very carefully draw a map of the harbour, preserving as accurately as I could the just proportions of every feature, and marking the shoals in their proper places, as also the battery guarding the entrance channel, and the position of the villages dotted here and there along the shore. I had taken the precaution to bring a small pocket-compass with me, and this I found most useful as a means of laying down the bearings of the various features from my point of observation. By drawing the whole roughly to scale, judging my distances as accurately as possible, and freely using my pocket-compass, I found that by the end of the day I had secured a sketch map that had the appearance of being fairly accurate. Not a soul came near me throughout the day, but several small craft passed out of or into the harbour, and these afforded verification of Hoard’s statement as to the extraordinary precautions observed by the authorities, every one of them being obliged to heave-to until a boat from the battery had boarded them. A large ship, apparently a Spanish Indiaman, also arrived pretty late in the afternoon, so that I had an opportunity of witnessing for myself the manner in which such craft made their way through the channel to the inner anchorage.

At length, when the sun was within an hour of setting, I observed a fishing-boat under sail emerge from among the group of islets that block the approach to the village of Albornos, and it presently became evident that she was making for the island, on the highest point of which I was perched. I brought my telescope to bear upon her, but for some time was unable to distinguish her occupants, the sail being in my way. At length, however, one of them moved forward and stood for a few minutes under the lee of the sail, and the boat being by this time more than half-way across, I was able to recognise the ragged habiliments worn by Hoard when we took him off the wreck of the Magdalena, and which he had resumed for the occasion. The sun was just dipping beneath the western horizon, and the shadow of the island of Tierra Bomba had enshrouded the waters of the harbour in a soft dusk, when the boat entered a shallow lagoon at the north-eastern extremity of the island, and grounded on the low, swampy shore. I saw Hoard disembark and stand talking with his companions for a few minutes, and then the boat shoved off again and made her way to about mid-channel, when her crew doused her sail and proceeded to shoot their nets. Meanwhile I had lost sight of Hoard behind a hill that lay between me and the lagoon where he had landed, and I saw no more of him until he suddenly appeared against the star-lit sky only a few paces from me.

“Well, sir,” said he, as he ranged up alongside, “I’ve got some news for you, and no mistake; but I greatly doubt whether it’ll be very acceptable.”

“How so?” I exclaimed; “has anything gone wrong?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know about ‘gone wrong’,” was his reply; “but the way of it is this: The galleon is finished loadin’, and her hatches is on. The gold is expected to arrive in the town to-morrow evening, and if it does, it’ll be got aboard the day after to-morrow; and next day three hundred sojers is to be marched aboard of her, and she’ll then sail for Europe!”

“Three hundred soldiers!” exclaimed I incredulously. “No wonder that they consider the vessel capable of making her way home without a convoy!”

“Ay, you may well say so, sir,” was the reply. “It seems that the whole thing have been planned out for a long time. These three hundred sojers is to go home as invalids, so I hear; and the relief has arrived to-day in the Injieman that, mayhap, you saw come into the harbour this a’ternoon. She’s been expected this three weeks, so my friend Panza tells me.”

“Well,” said I, “that is, as you say, news indeed; and it was a most fortunate thing that we came ashore, as we did. Had we simply dodged off and on, waiting for the galleon to come out, those three hundred soldiers would have done for us. You say that the gold train is expected to arrive to-morrow. Is this expectation pure conjecture, or have they reason for it?”

“Oh, they’ve reason enough for it, sir; so I understand,” answered Hoard. “You see, the shippin’ off of this here gold is the talk of the town; nobody’s thinkin’ of anything else; and everything that happens concernin’ it is knowed at once all over the place. That’s how I got my news. Panza had heard all about it, and as soon as he sees me he starts talkin’ about it, not knowin’ that I’d been shipped off in the Magdalena; and I just let him talk, puttin’ in a question here and there until I’d found out all about it. As to the gold train, I don’t think there’s much doubt about it, because the news in the town is that a runner came in from Barranca this morning with a message from the commandant that the train had arrived there last night, and might be expected at Cartagena some time to-morrow, most likely pretty late in the evening. I was wondering whether it ’ud be possible for us to lay in wait for the train somewhere on the road, and get hold of the gold that way; but that plan ain’t any good, because the three hundred sojers that’s to go home in the ship are comin’ down with it; and sixty men again’ three hundred is rather long odds.”