“Yes. I got some nice ones of these here islands. Every anchorage and spring marked. Basil done them. You remember Basil, Pete. He was a very good drawer.”
“Doctor Basil? Yes. He drawed a tooth of mine once.”
“Ah? Now as for Tolu, Captain Margaret. It’s a walled town. But the only guns are in the sea-wall. And the wall ain’t much more than gabions. Not much stone about it. If it comes to fighting, we’ll land on the beach away south here, and creep up, wading, along the beach, so as to arrive about dawn.”
“Well, Captain Pain,” said Margaret. “We’ll sail to-morrow. We’ll see which of us is right.”
He smiled pleasantly, but his thoughts were bitter. He saw that to succeed on the Main one needed to be one of the crowd. Pain there, the inscrutable, pale man, had long ago decided how to use him. He, a cultured gentleman, with a King’s commission, was in Pain’s hands. He must either go with Pain, or lose his crew. His crew would follow Pain at a nod. If he tried to coerce either Pain or his crew, he saw that there would be trouble. The Broken Heart would be taken from him. He had not thought of this chance; but he remembered a word of Cammock’s: “Give them some little success, and they’ll do anything.” If this trading venture prospered, he could proceed to Jamaica, he could come to some treaty with the Spaniards, pledging himself to put down privateering. If the trading venture failed, then it would rest with him to make a conquest of the Indies, to gather all these thieves into a company, and strike at Spain till she tottered. After Tolu, and Tolu would have to be a success, he would lead them against Cartagena. Then he might be able to make a head. At present he was a “new standard.” He understood Pain’s point of view. He knew that he must appear to Pain as an uppish youth who thought that he knew more than old hands. He would show them that he did know more.
“By the way, Pete,” Cammock said, “what come of George Bond?”
Pete laughed. “Oh, him,” he said. “He went to Portobel, and joined the Spaniards.”
“How did the Spaniards treat him?” Perrin asked. He had heard of that wild spirit from Cammock.
“Dunno,” said Pain carelessly. “Give him a position in the Government, I heard.” He turned to Cammock. “One of Bill Knight’s lot was in Panama a year ago,” he continued. “He said he was got to be a big one there.”
“Ah?” said Cammock. “Well. It’s right, too. There’s very good openings for a man in a Spanish town here.”