Preparations began as soon as they waded ashore. First they beached the dugouts and camouflaged them with leafy brush. Next they axed down several trees in a grove back away from the water, chopped them into short green logs, and dragged these down to the shore to assemble a pyre. Finally, they patched together banana leaf ajoupa huts in the cleared area. Experienced woodsmen, they knew well how to live off the land while waiting.
The first day passed with nothing. Through a cloudless sky the sun scorched the empty sand for long hours, then dropped into the vacant sea. That night lightning played across
thunderheads towering above the main island, and around midnight their ajoupas were soaked by rain. Then, in the first light of the morning, while dense fog still mantled the shallow banks to the west, they spotted a ship. It was a single frigate, small enough that there would be only a handful of cannon on the upper deck.
Jacques le Basque, the dense-bearded bear of a man who was their leader, declared in his guttural French that this was a historic moment, one to be savored, and passed a dark onion-flask of brandy among the men. Now would begin their long-planned campaign of revenge against the Spaniards, whose infantry from Santo Domingo had once burned out their settlement, murdered innocents. It was, he said, the start of a new life for them all.
All that remained was to bait the trap. Two of the hunters retrieved a bucket of fat from the ajoupas and ladled it onto the green firewood. Another scattered the flask's remaining liquor over the top of the wood, then dashed it against a heavy log for luck. Finally, while the men carefully checked the prime on their broad-gauge hunting muskets, le Basque struck a flint to the pyre.
The green wood sputtered indecisively, then crackled alive, sending a gray plume skyward through the damp morning air. Jacques circled the fire triumphantly, his dark eyes reflecting back the blaze, before ordering the men to ready their dugouts in the brushy camouflage along the shore. As they moved to comply, he caught the sleeve of a young Englishman who was with them and beckoned him back.
"Anglais, attendez ici. I want you here beside me. The first shot must count."
The young man had been part of their band for almost five years and was agreed to be their best marksman, no slight honor among men who lived by stalking wild cattle in the forest. Unlike the others he carried no musket this morning, only a long flintlock pistol wedged into his belt. In the flickering light, he looked scarcely more than twenty, his face not yet showing the hard desperation of the others. His hair was sandy rust and neatly trimmed; and he alone among them wore no animal hides—his doublet was clearly an English cut, though some years out of fashion, and his sweat-soiled breeches had once been fine canvas. Even his boots, now weathered and cracked from salt, might years before have belonged to a young cavalier in Covent Garden.
He moved to help Jacques stoke the fire and pile on more green limbs. Though the blaze and its plume should have been easily visible to the passing frigate by now, the sleepy lookout seemed almost to fail to notice. The ship had all but passed them by before garbled shouts from its maintop finally sounded over the foggy waters. Next came a jumble of orders from the quarterdeck, and moments later the vessel veered, its bow turning into the wind, the mainsail quickly being trimmed.
As it steered into the bay, Jacques slapped at the buzzing gnats around them and yelled out a Spanish plea that they were marooned seamen, near death. As he examined the frigate through the morning fog, he grunted to himself that she was small, barely a hundred tons, scarcely the rich prize they’d braved the wide Caribbean in dugouts for.