“Which of these two keys do you recommend?”
“La Sound’s Key is the most frequented,” answered Cammock. “You often have a dozen sloops in at La Sound’s. They careen there a lot. You see there’s mud to lay your ship ashore on. And very good brushwood if you wish to give her a breaming.”
“I see. And the Indians come there, you say?”
“Oh yes, sir. There’s an Indian village on the Main just opposite. Full of Indians always. La Sound’s is an exchange, as you might say.”
“If I went there, in this big ship, should I be likely to get into touch with the privateer captains? I mean, to make friends with them.”
“You’d meet them all there, from time to time, sir—Coxon, Tristian, Yanky Dutch, Mackett; oh, all of them.”
“All friends of yours?”
“No, sir. Some of them is French and Dutch. They come from Tortuga and away east by Curaçoa. That’s a point I can tell you about. Don’t you make too free with the French and Dutch, sir. You stick by your own countrymen. I’ll tell you why, sir. If you let them ducks in to share, the first you’ll know is they’ve put in a claim for their own country. They’ll say that the settlement is theirs; that we’re intruding on them. Oh, they will. I know ’em. And they’ll trick you, too. They’ll get their own men-of-war to come and kick you out, like they done at St. Kitts, and at Tortuga.”
“That would hardly suit. But is La Sound’s more of a French and Dutch resort than Springer’s?”
“Yes, sir. Since Captain Sharp’s raid. Ever since that, we’ve been as it were more separated. And then there was trouble at the isle of Ash; they done us out of a sloop; so we done them in return. Springer’s is the place the Englishmen goes to, now. Oh, and Golden Island, this easterly island here. But Springer’s Key is the best of them. Though we goes to La Sound’s Key, mind you, whenever we’re planning a raid.”