PIRATE: Privateer Read Free Page A

galleon’s crew survived the wreck?’ Hector asked Roparzh Kergonan. He was on the pinnace’s deck, trying to divide the spoil into two equal piles,
one for the Bretons, and one for himself and his friends. Roparzh was hovering over him, making sure that Hector was not cheating. Hector could smell the rum on the man’s breath.
    ‘Someone usually lives,’ grunted Roparzh. ‘Clings to flotsam and is washed ashore or gets clear in a ship’s boat.’
    Hector turned his attention to a large silver dish. Dan had found it wedged in a crevice in the coral. The dish was engraved with an ornate coat of arms, and Hector guessed that it had been the
property of an officer on the galleon, someone from a noble family.
    ‘How do we divide this item fairly?’ he asked the Breton.
    ‘Hack it up with an axe and weigh out the scraps,’ came the blunt reply.
    Hector winced inwardly at the thought. ‘It is a match with the other pieces. They’ll be worth more as a set.’
    ‘And the first person we try to fence it to will recognize the mark and guess how we got our hands on it. Might even know the family.’
    ‘Only if that person is familiar with the crests and emblems of Spanish families.’
    Roparzh was looking at him as if he was simple-minded.
    ‘You mean the Spaniards buy goods stolen out of their own wrecks?’ Hector said.
    ‘There’s more goes on than either Madrid or London knows about.’
    The Breton decided that he had said enough. He shovelled up his share of the coins and put them in a pouch. Without asking, he took the silver dish out of Hector’s hand and slouched away
with it. Hector decided that it was not worth making an issue of the matter and went to help Dan as he climbed out of the water.
    The Miskito was exhausted. He flopped down on the deck and leaned back against the bulwarks to rest. His eyes were closed, and the water ran off his body, making dark patterns across the deck.
He looked utterly spent. After a minute or two, he opened his eyes. They were red-rimmed from the time spent underwater.
    ‘We have to watch our backs now,’ he said.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Hector asked.
    Dan’s eyes flicked to the stern where the Kergonan brothers were huddled together. They were double-checking their haul of coins and silverware. ‘One dark night when we are asleep,
they may take the chance to be rid of us.’
    He lifted one hand and made a cutting motion across his throat.

TWO

    T HE DISCOVERY OF THE candelabrum was the start of their reward. In the next five days of diving on the wreck Dan brought up nearly two hundred more
coins. They were mostly cobs, misshaped slugs of metal that scarcely looked like money. Yet each one bore an assayer’s monogram that proved it was genuine silver. He also retrieved
twenty-three gold doubloons and an assortment of tableware and jewellery – pendants, bracelets and necklaces. Under the mistrustful gaze of the Kergonans everything was sorted and divided. As
the value of the haul increased, so too did the tension on board. It boiled over on the afternoon Dan brought up a leather purse from the sea floor. Jacques slit open the soggy purse and tipped a
dozen emeralds out on to the deck. A drunken Roparzh Kergonan gave a great whoop of triumph and reached forward to grab the spoil. But Jacques beat him to it. The Frenchman quietly picked up one of
the jewels and held it up to the sunlight. He had worked with a Paris fence and knew how to spot a fake. Without hesitation he declared that the ‘emeralds’ were nothing more than chunks
of coloured glass. It was as if he had blatantly swindled the Breton. Roparzh leaped on him and seized him by the throat and would have strangled him if Jezreel had not intervened.
    That night was Hector’s turn to be on anchor watch. Seated on the foredeck in the pre-dawn darkness, he knew that the salvage operation had to end very soon. Even if the Kergonans could be
kept under control, less than half a barrel of drinking