is not something he chooses to remember. Though at the time we thought we could depend on him. I have explained to you that no man among us could shoot as well as he. We wanted him to fire the first shot, as he did when we were hunting. Truly we had high hopes for him." Jacques drank again, a broad silhouette against the panorama of the sunset.
"He told me how you got together to fight the Spaniards, but ..."
"Did he? Bon. " He paused to check the boucan below them, then the men. Finally he shrugged and turned back. "It was the start of the legend of the boucaniers, Mademoiselle. And you can take pride that the Anglais was part of it. Few men are still alive now to tell that tale."
"What happened to the others, Jacques?" Winston's voice hardened as he moved next to one of the nine-pound cannon. "I seem to remember there were almost thirty of us. Guy Bartholomew was on that raid, for one. I saw him down below last night. I knew a lot of those men well."
"Oui, you had many friends. But after you . . . left us, a few unfortunate incidents transpired."
Winston tensed. "Did the ship . . . ?"
"I discovered what can occur when there is not proper organization, Anglais. But now I am getting ahead of our story. Surely you remember the island we had encamped on. Well, we waited on that cursed sand spit several weeks more, hoping there would be another prize. But alas, we saw nothing, rien. Then finally one day around noon, when it was so hot you could scarcely breathe, we spied a Spanish sail—far at sea. By then all our supplies were down. We were desperate. So we launched our canoes and put to sea, with a vow we would seize the ship or perish trying."
"And you took it?" Winston had set down his tankard on the railing and was listening intently.
"Mais oui. But of course. Desperate men rarely fail. Later we learned that when the captain saw our canoes approaching he scoffed, saying what could a few dugouts do against his
guns. He paid for that misjudgment with his life. We waited till dark, then stormed her. The ship was ours in minutes."