Chapter 268: The Grandmother of Buccaneers

By the forenoon watch of the fifth day, the Black Fortune speed turned into habit.

While nothing larger than a gull appeared over the horizon, the trade wind came from the east, forward of the beam, which was about the one quarter of the compass guaranteed to make a reasonable ship miserable.

An ordinary merchantman beating down through the banks and anchoring at dusk among the cays would have wanted nine or ten days for the voyage. The Fortune had done it in five.

The island ought to rise over the prow at any moment, and James’s mind had been thinking over its name all morning.

A chart lay pinned beneath the binnacle lamp, with a small humped island inked upon it no bigger than a flea. Whitlock sat beside it on a cask, slate balanced on his knee, and James bent over the ink.

He knew Tortuga in two ways. One belonged to the old life, where it sat on the first page of every pirate story ever told, while the other belonged to the memories he had inherited, where Calloway had taken the Rose herself off Hispaniola.

Both let him on the broad strokes and not much in the way of fine lines.

Columbus had named the island for its back, which looked like a turtle that had sat down to think. Spain, tired of colonists trading with Dutchmen, emptied the north side of Hispaniola and left the cattle and hogs to run wild.

Hunters from three nations, hungry bastards with muskets, moved in on all that loose meat and cured their kills on wooden smoking frames. The French called the frame a boucan and the men who tended it boucaniers while the English, who have always had a talent for ruining words, made it buccaneers.

The Spanish preyed the hunters and the survivors fell back on the island across the channel, where a Huguenot engineer built a fort on the Rock in 1640. The Brethren of the Coast roosted behind it with their rules of share alike, grandfathers to every set of Articles ever signed.

Later, a French governor who wanted the rabble resolved shipped women out from the poorhouses and gutters of France and handed them to hunters who had spent twenty years talking to pigs.

James’s thumb traveled across the chart from that humped speck to the dot of Jamaica, then up to the scatter of the Bahamas, then it stopped at a blank patch of sea where no one had thought to ink Concordia yet.

Tortuga’s grandchildren had all outdone the old girl, one after another.

French privateers with commissions in their pockets, calling themselves flibustiers, raided Spanish America from that rock for a generation. One of them, L’Olonnais, was feared for his cruelty even by sailors who made a living at the same business.

Port Royal was the first to outshine her.

The English took Jamaica, and the trade spread south to the new bank and brothel of the Caribbean. When the sea swallowed that waterfront, London turned on its old privateers, and no one went home to Tortuga.

In 1697 Spain handed the western third of Hispaniola to France at Ryswick. The flibustiers sacked Cartagena that same year, their last great revel, and after that came sugar, followed by enslaved labor to grow it, and the hides were forgotten.

Tortuga became a small French dependency with a parish church, which was a considerable fall from its former profession.

Nassau took in the sailors released by the peace of 1713, and every rogue in the Caribbean moved house. Concordia was the newest grandchild of the lot, sitting behind its reef with its Code and its stone, while now its founder was sailing to call upon the oldest, in a ship that had once flown French colors.

The old rock had put on a French bonnet, but she still kept a roof for those who needed to resupply and do business away from curious officers.

Whitlock ruled a fresh column on the slate, headed it harbor dues, and underlined it twice.

The island lay long and humped, with one real harbor on the southern shore below the Rock. That was Basse-Terre, an open roadstead with no proper docks, across a narrow channel from the mainland town of Port-de-Paix where a commandant ruled it for France, a King’s lieutenant answering to the governor of Saint-Domingue on the far side of the mountains.

The King himself was a boy and the Regent was a world away.

A thin garrison most likely occupied the old fort on the Rock, while French ships patrolled the northern waters from the mainland ports, ready to hang any pirate who made himself a nuisance.

French law hanged pirates in principle. In practice, Tortuga ran on dues, a gift for the commandant, and silver for the chandlers, who would sell a man any goods that floated, burned, or went bang. Its few remaining brothels still kept their lamps lit.

Early that year, the Regent had signed an alliance with King George, which James remembered from the other life since the news hadn’t yet crawled across the sea. When it did, every officer on that shore would remember his gallows, but until then, the place dozed, and a corvette could hardly ask for better hospitality.

At the wheel, Bonnet straightened the coat he had pressed that dawn for the occasion. Below, Mary walked the row of the guns with her hands behind her back.

James had a notion, and those never needed more than a grin to keep it standing. The old hands were the ones to ask, be them sailors, buccaneers’ grandsons, chandlers, and the parish priest if it came to that.

A sailor and a chart for those waters could be bought. Along that shore lay a harbor curved like a fishhook, a fort shaped like a star, and cane smoke behind them.

Bonnet would be the gentleman trader, which required no acting at all, and Whitlock would be the purser, which required even less. Mary’s guns would pass for ballast, and James would be introduced as whatever struck him interesting.

What he had come for lay inland in a fold of the hills, a warm pulse in the green.

Then the foremast lookout bellowed. "Land ho! Land on the prow, blue hills a long way back and a low humped island lyin’ across ’em like a sow in a doorway!"

Every hand off watch hit the rail, and Whitlock’s quill dragged a black scar across the slate.

James went forward and set a boot on the prow, spyglass at his eye. The blue wall came first, mountains standing up out of the haze, the same blue as the picture behind his eyes. Every coast in that sea had a blue wall, though, and he knew better than to swear to one.

Then the island rose out of the glare, long and humped, lying across their heading like a great turtle sitting in the sea and daring them to move it. Its north shore was steep and dark.

Bonnet put the helm over to haul down that shore toward the western end, and by dusk the Fortune would round to the south side.

🏴 [BLACK FORTUNE — STATUS]

Hull Condition : Excellent

Armament : 30 Broadside Cannons, 2 Swivel Guns

Gunpowder Supply : 26 Casks

Provisions : 21 Days

Crew : 91 / 90

Morale : Unbreakable

Loyalty : Unwavering

Perks : [Wind Dancer], [Calloway’s Armada]

⚓ [FRENCH TERRITORY — TORTUGA]

Faction : Kingdom of France

Status : Colonial Dependency (Retired Pirate Haven)

Population : Approximately 900 (Planters, Hunters, Enslaved, Transients)

Stability : Drowsy

Harbor : Open Roadstead, Bastion & Fortifications, No Proper Docks

Major Facilities : Taverns, Brothels, Chandlers, Warehouses, Small Garrison, Parish Church, Careening Strand

Faction Status : Uninvited Guest (Reputation Preceding)