Authors: William Dietrich
“Agreed. I trust you. But you shouldn’t trust Martel.”
“Ethan, I was a slave. I don’t trust nobody.”
So we set to work, and work it was. I strapped myself back into the barrel and drifted into the cavern to inform Martel of our plan. I was amazed at how much shorter the distance seemed now that I had traversed it before.
Martel was at first as skeptical at leaving me alone with the treasure as I was of leaving him with Jubal. I explained that, first, I had nowhere to go without his help, and second, as we transferred I would be leaving
him
with the growing heap of gold. “But not the toy birds, or whatever you want to call them.”
“Flying machines.”
“Those stay until I come. And if you try to betray me or kill Jubal, you lose them. And remember, my blacks are aboard your ketch.”
“As is your wife and child. And my inspectors and sailors.”
“The only way this will succeed is if we all work together.”
“I’ve tried to explain that to you from the beginning, Monsieur Gage. It’s good to have partners, no?” And with a Gallic snort he plunged into the diving bell and jerked on the line to be pulled out, the water helping neutralize the golden alligator that weighed at least a hundred pounds and that he cradled in his arms.
I set to work before my candle burned down completely.
We set up an efficient system. Jubal and Martel traded tasks, one swimming gunnysacks of gold and precious stones out to our anchor depository, the other tugging on lines to haul out the treasure or to signal me to pull the empty bell back. With each relay I loaded a gunnysack with loot, hung it on the floating barrel, and watched it jerk away before returning empty ten minutes later. Slowly the Aztec hoard diminished, my labor as mechanical as if I were shifting coal. The hoard was only half depleted when I swam down to attach a sack and found a crude note that Jubal or Martel had tacked inside the air chamber before I pulled it back.
“Storm coming. Finish now.”
I didn’t argue. Yes, I left a dragon’s nest of gold behind, but we had enough treasure to buy Napoleon’s palace at Saint-Cloud three times over. The candle was guttering. So I took the flying models, tucked them in my shirt, filled the gunnysack with some last precious idols, strapped myself into the leaded rum barrel, and gave a tug.
I still braced for betrayal. If the line went slack from being cut, I was determined to grab the rough sides of the tunnel and try to kick my own way up and out.
But no, my journey went smoothly. Hands grabbed. I came to the surface with the last of the treasure, blinking away water. Light was rapidly failing. I heard no more gunfire.
“Did the British hit our vessel?”
“No, we would have heard cheers.”
The twilight was an odd, ominous green, and the swells were growing higher. It was so hazy I couldn’t see the top of the rock. I bobbed uneasily up and down in the waves, and I could hear our longboat scraping where it was hidden in the cleft. The air felt very heavy.
“Yes, no time for more gold,” I said. “When will the ship come back?”
“Midnight,” Martel said. “You brought the flying machines?”
“If that’s what they really are, yes. You’ll win my consternation if you make them into something that actually flies.”
“Your challenge is accepted, monsieur. French science leads the world.”
“You have the lunacy of a true savant, Martel.”
“And you the nerve of a good grave robber.”
Compliments exchanged, we swam to the tiny cove where the longboat was moored, hauled ourselves aboard, donned more clothes—I had a vest—and gobbled cheese and wine. Our bread, alas, had gone soggy, and I missed a spoon of sugar, too. Jubal eyed the storm while Martel tried to puzzle out the triangular objects, and I watched Martel. The first priority was to safeguard Astiza and Harry, waiting on the ketch. And then?
If all else failed, I still had the emerald.
I’ve learned to be cautious around my enemies so I’d swallowed it, in case Martel tried to take it back from me. To time its emergence correctly, I shouldn’t eat much anyway. So I dropped my share of the spoiled bread overboard and watched fish come to gobble.
“So can you fly to London?” I idly asked Martel.
“Look, here are the wings. And here a man sitting between to steer. This is sculpted from something the Aztecs had seen, I’m certain of it. But did the wings flap? This will require much study.”
“I’ve been on a glider that crashed. It would be a brave man who first mounts a contraption based on a toy.”
“I will be that man.”
Night came, and we lost all sight of Martinique. It was as if we were marooned, no stars overhead, the wind continuing its alarming rise. Surf was beginning to boom against stone. The longboat bucked uneasily up and down. Anchoring the ketch to scoop up the treasure wouldn’t be easy.
Time dragged. Were the French not coming? I’d row to shore before dawn rather than risk another day here.
Then there was a scrape above and bits of grit and pebbles rained. A hundred feet above a horn lantern swayed in the wind. “Look, a glim,” I whispered to the others, pointing to the light.
Men were working down the cliff. Had they seen us?
One if by land, two if by sea, the British were coming.
L
ife is never simple. My captured family and I were now within imminent gunshot range of English, French, and Haitian rivals; the weather was deteriorating toward a real storm; and fish had gotten all our rolls. I was sticky with salt, windburned, thirsty, and weary. Any man who tells you adventuring is a lark is a liar.
“Maybe the English won’t see us if we row out to the buoy,” Jubal whispered back.
“In these seas? We’ll splash like a duck,” I said.
“They’ll see no more if we meet them with steel,” Martel suggested. He drew a stiletto as wicked as a warlock’s wand, and it gleamed in the night like a shard of ice. The bastard looked as anticipatory about sliding it between a man’s ribs as I do about stroking a woman. Our renegade policeman was a dog needing to be put down, but we could use his bite now.
“You’ve certainly more pluck than I can muster,” I said to encourage him. “Could you show us how to stalk, please? Jubal and I will guard the rear until
Pelee
heaves to. We’ll keep your flying machines safe as well.”
He looked at the lantern bobbing above. “I prefer that we cut English throats together, Gage. Just to continue our partnership.”
“I rather like the Albions, despite our differences at Lexington and Concord. They’re terribly earnest but have a dry sense of humor. Slitting English throats seems more of a French than an American task, don’t you think? Not that my hopes and prayers don’t go with you.”
“You’ll strand me on the rock.”
Excellent idea. “Not if you’re quick,” I lied.
But before Martel could demonstrate his assassination skills or, even more conveniently, be killed, more pebbles rained down and a shout came from above. “There’s a boat down here!”
“Too late,” the Frenchman muttered. He tucked his stiletto away, unwrapped an oilcloth, uncovered a brace of pistols, and tossed one each to Jubal and me. He took up a third, stood in our bouncing craft, aimed, and fired. There was a cry and the lantern tumbled, bouncing into the air like a meteor and then plunging in the sea, leaving us in darkness again.
“Vive Napoleon!”
“Frogs!” the British sailors exclaimed. Muskets flashed above, and balls pinged and whined about our heads.
“Couldn’t we have discussed our strategy before you cried out like a charging regiment?” I grumbled.
“French élan, and a commendable shot in these conditions,” Martel replied. “
Pelee
will be here soon. Make them hesitate, Gage.”
So Jubal and I fired, too. British pistols banged back, I heard the richest variety of curses this side of a Portsmouth alehouse, and then we were all busy reloading. More lights appeared at the top of the rock, and a general alarm was raised. A trumpet sounded, and drums rattled. We’d spent the entire day slipping out treasure from under the British noses, and now, in the dead of night, we’d raised the entire garrison. Was Martel trying to get us killed?
“We can’t fight the whole bloody fort,” I said. “Let’s row for Martinique and you lads can come back for the treasure later. I’ll take Astiza and Harry and be on my way.” Leaving an emperor’s ransom hurt, of course, but I had my emerald on deposit.
“They’ll wonder what we were here for, dive, and find it,” Martel replied. “We need that treasure, Gage. No man should understand the importance of money better than a drifting pauper like yourself.”
Alas, he had a point. We work all our lives for filthy lucre in hopes of not working at all. It makes no sense, but then neither does love, fashion, or the American Congress.
A cannon boomed from atop Diamond Rock. They couldn’t depress the barrel enough to hit us, the shot flying overhead. But the spout of water it raised out to sea reminded us that retreat had its own perils. Then more musket shots rose from above, one ricocheting off rock and thunking into the wood of our longboat. Too close! While the overhang gave us protection, we ultimately were fish in a barrel in our little cleft of a cove.
I looked up. More lanterns, ropes slithering in descent as they uncoiled. I’d no doubt sailors and marines would soon be swinging down them like angry apes. I could see musket muzzles poking out from crevices above, pivoting to look for us like the antenna of insects. I envied Jubal his dark skin, figuring it made him more invisible.
“There they are!” the cry echoed down. “In that tight cove! Ready . . .”
Muskets swung to aim at us. I winced, wondering if I was about to expel my emerald long before I’d planned to.
And then a boom of a different cannon, this time from the other direction, and with a crash a cannon ball hit the cliff above and rock splinters flew in all directions. Men howled.
It was
Pelee
, leaning hard in the wind as she scudded out of the night, smoke drifting off the muzzle of a deck gun. Then another of her cannon fired, the flash like lightning. Martel whooped at the arrival of our allies and lit our own lantern in the longboat, uncovering the side that faced the water to signal where we were.
The ketch banged again and again, shot bouncing off the flank of Diamond Rock like a castle wall. The British sailors were in full retreat, scrambling upward even faster than they’d swung down. Their own artillery crashed in reply, water geysers shooting up. The French mortar on the ketch barked, and a shell screamed up toward the clouds to burst. In the flashes of illumination, we joined the tumult by shooting our pistols again.
Martel untied the longboat. “We salvage under their gun muzzles,” he said. “Prepare to dive where bullets can’t reach us.”
I didn’t have a better plan. Jubal and I pushed off toward
Pelee
and the buoy we’d set. Musket fire peppered the water, cannons crashed, but the French ketch had turned into the wind so close to Diamond Rock that the British couldn’t help but overshoot her. She dropped her mizzen and anchored, continuing to lob with her mortar while spraying the side of the rock with swivel guns. Her captain, a man named Augustus Brienne, was showing élan of his own.
“Come on, comrades!” I heard Antoine call.
I studied the crowd on board. Yes, there was Astiza, waving to me over the gunwale.
Stay down, darling.
Harry must be somewhere below. I also saw other Negro heads besides Antoine, assuring me that the French hadn’t betrayed Jubal’s men yet. There was still a chance.
Once we got to our submerged buoy we dove over the side of our longboat, eager to evacuate before British fire found it. The sea was inky below, its heave pulling and pushing below the surface. At night I could imagine a thousand hideous things coming at me from deep. But the surest way to get out of this mess was to retrieve what we’d come for, so I followed the buoy line to the bottom, groped by the longboat anchor, and seized slick metal.
Aztec gold!
I swam up, narrowly missing knocking my own head on the tethered launch. Then I kicked over to the ketch and hollered for a ladder. A rope-and-peg one uncurled down the side. The little ship was bouncing up and down in the seas like a coach on a potholed American road, the weather both screening us and making salvage difficult. I had to time my grab to avoid the scrape of barnacles that girded the vessel’s waterline. At last I climbed partway up and slapped what I’d grabbed—it was one of the gold necklaces, I saw—on deck. The French gaped.
“Get it in a strongbox,” I ordered. “There’s
much
more to come.”
Martel squeezed up beside me, crying for help to lift the golden alligator. “Yes, and don’t cut anchor until we’re all aboard,” he added. “Send the blacks to help.”
We dropped back into the sea, bullets whapping into the ketch’s hull and plunking into the water. Jubal swam by, hoisted his own piece of the hoard on deck, and shouted to his comrades. “Dive, freemen! The faster we fetch, the faster we leave!”
Men leaped from the ship and swam with us back to the buoy. Even Crow and Buzzard jumped in to help. Down we ducked like otters, groping for gold, and then swam gasping to
Pelee
’s far side. The ship’s coughing mortar gave fits of illumination. British cannonballs kept arcing over us to fall harmlessly into the sea beyond, and their gunners swore like the sailors they were, frustrated they couldn’t depress their cannon barrels far enough and no doubt wondering what the devil we were doing down there.
Finally they tried just pitching a cannonball by hand. This, to a certain extent, worked: the sphere fell three hundred feet, hit an outcrop, and bounced outward toward our salvage operation. There was no good aim, but the ball made a disturbing impact when it splashed into the sea a few yards from where we swam.
Madness! But gold, too. I dove again.
With our team of bandits, the treasure was transferred quickly. We thrashed blindly—one poor lad got a handful of urchin spines—and it gradually became harder to find whatever was left. I could hear the plonk of ricocheting cannonballs as they struck the water, and finally thought we’d done a good night’s work. I’d decided to suggest this to Martel when there was another splash, different this time, and something bobbed on the dim surface. I dove and felt a last time for treasure.