"Why do you say that?"
"'Tis home and hearth of the finest assembly of thieves as you're e’er like to cross this side of Newgate prison. An' that's the fact of the matter."
"Are you trying to make me believe you've actually been there, John?" She regarded him carefully. John Mewes, she had come to realize, was never at a loss for a story to share—though his distinction between truth and fancy was often imprecise.
"Aye,'twas some years past, as the sayin' goes. When the merchantman I was quartermaster on put in for a week to careen." He spat into the sea and hitched up the belt on his breeches.
"What exactly was it like?"
"A brig out of Portsmouth. A beamy two master, with damn’d seams that’d opened on us wide as a Dutch whore's cunny— beggin' Yor Ladyship's pardon—which is why we had to put in to caulk her . . ."
"Tortuga, John."
"Aye, the Turtle. Like I was sayin', she's the Sodom of the Indies, make no mistake. Fair enough from afar, I grant you, but try and put in, an' you'll find out soon enough she's natural home for the rogue who'd as soon do without uninvited company. That's why that nest of pirates has been there so long right under the very nose of the pox-rotted Spaniards. Mind you, she's scarcely more than twenty or thirty miles tip to tip, but the north side's a solid cliff, lookin' down on the breakers, whilst the other's just about nothing save shallow flats an' mangrove thickets. There's only one bay where you can put in with a frigate, a spot called Basse Terre, there on the south—that is, if you can steer through the reefs that line both sides of the channel goin' into it. But once you're anchored,'tis a passing good harbor, for it all. Fine sandy bottom, with draft that'll take a seventy-gun brig."
"So that's how the Cow-Killers . . . the buccaneers have managed to keep the island? There's only one spot the Spaniards could try and land infantry, and to get there you've got to go through a narrow passage in the reefs, easy to cover with cannon?"
"I'd say that's about the size of it. No bottom drops anchor at Tortuga unless those rogues say you aye." He turned and began to secure a loose piece of line dangling from the shroud supporting the mizzenmast. "Then too there's your matter of location. You see, m'lady, the island lays right athwart the Windward Passage, betwixt Hispaniola and Cuba, which is one of the Spaniards' main shippin' lanes. Couldn't be handier if you're thinkin' to lighten a Papist merchantman now and again. . . ."