"Why damn me, 'tis naught but a lad," a voice said in Ingles, "sent to do a man's work."
"He's all they'd need to spy us, have no fear. I'll wager 'twould be no great matter to warn the fort. Which is what he'll be doin' if we . . .
"Senor, how do you signal the fort?" The woman was speaking now, in Spanish, as she seized Hipolito's face and pulled him up. "Speak quickly, or I will let them kill you."
Hipolito gestured vaguely toward the two bells hanging in the tower behind.
"Take out the clappers, then tie him." The woman's voice came again, now in Ingles. "The rest of you ready the lanterns."
The dugout canoes had already been launched, bobbing alongside the two frigates anchored on the sea side of the Cayo de Carena. Directly ahead of them lay the Point, overlooking the entry to Jamaica Bay.
Katherine felt the gold inlay of the musket's barrel, cold and hard against her fingertips, and tried to still her pulse as she peered through the dim moonlight. Up the companionway, on the quarterdeck, Winston was deep in a final parlay with Guy Bartholomew of the Swiftsure. Like all the seamen, they kept casting anxious glances toward a spot on the shore across the bay, just below the vigia, where the advance party would signal the all-clear with lanterns.
The last month had not been an easy time. After the death of Jacques le Basque, Tortuga was plunged into turmoil for a fortnight, with the English and French boucaniers at Basse Terre quarreling violently over the island's future. There had nearly been war. Finally Bartholomew and almost a hundred and fifty seamen had elected to join Winston in his attempt to seize a new English privateering base at Jamaica. But they also demanded the right to hold Villa de la Vega for ransom, as Jackson had done so many years before. It was the dream of riches that appealed to them most, every man suddenly fancying himself a second Croesus. Finally Winston and Bartholomew had drawn up Articles specifying the division of spoils, in the tradition of the boucaniers.
After that, two more weeks had passed in final preparations, as muskets and kegs of powder were stockpiled. To have sufficient landing craft they had bartered butts of kill-devil with the Cow-Killers on Hispaniola for ten wide dugout canoes—all over six feet across and able to transport fifteen to twenty men. With the dugouts aboard and lashed securely along the main deck of the two ships, the assault was ready.
They set sail as a flurry of rumors from other islands began reaching the buccaneer stronghold. The most disquieting was that a French fleet of armed warships had already been dispatched south by the Chevalier de Poncy of St. Christopher, who intended to restore his dominion over Tortuga and appoint a new French commandant de place.