Free Admiral by Dudley Pope

then?”
    “We all decided we could not start it without a proper leader. As Coles says, a thinking man. This great expedition needs much thought.”
    “When do I hear about it?”
    “You are our leader, and Sir Thomas is joining us?”
    “I’ve already joined,” Thomas growled. “As from yesterday, so I have twenty-four hours’ seniority over Ned.”
    “And the ladies…”
    Ned eyed Leclerc. “It is a question of the ladies trusting the buccaneers, not the other way around. Don’t forget, you came with us to Santiago; we didn’t go with you!”
    Coles gave a great bellow of laughter, in which Gottlieb and Brace joined. “Tell ’im about it, Jean-Pierre, because ’e’s right, yer naw,” Coles said, “they took us on trust, and look what a purchase we got – and not a buccaneer’s life lost nor a ship damaged.”
    Leclerc looked at the other buccaneers, who nodded in agreement. “ Alors ,” Leclerc said, “for you, M. Yorke, I hope this is the beginning of a long voyage.”
     

Chapter Four
    Ned was surprised to hear how many buccaneers, taken prisoner by the Spaniards along the Main, managed over the years to escape and eventually get back to Tortuga. It seemed that once the priests had finished with the heretics among them, the prisoners were handed over to the army to work at quarrying stone for repairing or building fortifications. If the particular fortifications were finally completed or brought into good condition, the army simply locked the prisoners in cells. However, the army was not as zealous as the Inquisition, and unless the prisoners were chained to the walls (as was often the case), many managed to escape.
    The main problem in escaping from an inland prison, Thomas said, speaking from experience, was getting to the sea through tangled jungle or waterless desert: thirst or sickness frequently struck down a man before he reached the coast. The more fortunate found a fisherman’s dugout canoe in some creek well inland, and simply paddled to freedom, staying hidden on the coast until he saw a smuggling ship hovering, waiting for darkness to fall.
    Several buccaneers had escaped in the past three months from places as widely spaced as Riohacha and Chagres, and reported two things. The first was that the government in Spain – the king, in other words – was in such financial straits that there was no money to fit out in Spain the annual two plate fleets (already much reduced in size in the last decade). For the second year running there would be no galleons arriving at Cartagena or Portobelo, and no flota visiting Vera Cruz in Mexico. This in turn meant that once again the Spanish merchants along the Main would not receive goods from Spain (their main complaint was the shortage of wine and olive oil, cloth and mundane things like cooking pots, needles and thread) and could not ship out goods for sale in Spain, mainly leather and dyewoods.
    The second report by the escaped buccaneers, obvious when you thought about it but hard to confirm, was that the bullion and gems were piling up, waiting for shipment to Spain – ingots of silver, ingots of gold, all stamped with the royal arms of Spain and numbered, all recorded in the great assay registers, all desperately needed by the Spanish king, who was being pressed by the bankers of Italy, Austria and France, who wanted either the interest due on their loans, or the capital repaid… And the Spanish king was going bankrupt in Spain because he could not afford to equip a fleet to sail across the Atlantic to collect his bullion…
    Thomas chortled as Leclerc outlined the story. “It’s like a rich man starving because he’s lost the key to his treasure chest!” he exclaimed.
    Diana and Aurelia had both watched Ned as the Frenchman gave the facts he knew. Ned’s expression did not change, but both women sensed that he was no longer in the cabin: he was darting along the coast, looking into Riohacha, spotting an escaping buccaneer paddling his