Free Admiral by Dudley Pope Page B

mean?”
    “‘Registered’ is the amount shipped by private individuals – don’t forget the king does not own the mines; he simply levies a royalty, ‘the royal fifth’. That year there was a total of 256,114,000 pesos registered – which, with a peso valued at five shillings, comes to about sixty-four million pounds…”
    Ned nodded as the Frenchman worked out the figures. “I can hardly visualise even a sum like the royalties. The registered amount is quite beyond me – sixty-four million pounds… Are there that many people in the world?”
    “Aye,” Coles said slowly, “now you see why we wanted to choose an admiral with a brain in ’is ’ead.”
    “Is there any indication that last year’s consignment is anywhere as large as 1640’s? That’s a quarter of a century ago.”
    “It’s less,” Leclerc said. “We hear the consignment gets less each year. Apart from anything else, the mines need quicksilver to extract the silver from the ore – don’t ask me why, or how it is used, but they do. The quicksilver comes from Spain in jars. Or it should do.”
    Ned sighed so deeply that everyone looked at him and Aurelia said questioningly: “ Chéri ?”
    “I was thinking that His Most Catholic Majesty really is in a mess. Unless he can find the money to fit out a fleet, he can’t send the galleons to Portobelo and the flota to Vera Cruz to collect the bullion to pay his debts. But soon unless he can send out quicksilver there will be no silver mined for him to collect when he gets enough money to fit out a fleet…and so on!”
    “Thomas knows the feeling,” Diana said.
    “Ah, my creditors were muttering harsh words like ‘Marshalsea’ – the debtor’s prison,” he explained to Leclerc and Gottlieb, “when her ladyship sailed to my rescue.”
    “His Most Catholic Majesty must be praying for a Lady Diana.” Leclerc said, adding with a bow: “I’m thankful we have her!”
    “Potosi… Potosi…” Thomas said the name, rolling the word on his tongue. “Two thousand miles from Panama, you say. Pity we can’t get at the silver before it arrives at Panama. Two thousand miles, and with no enemy ships in the South Sea I doubt if the Dons bother to escort it.”
    “Not since Sir Francis Drake,” Ned said.
    “About one hundred and fifty years ago! Yet even here in the North Sea they still talk of El Draco .”
    Leclerc gave a mirthless laugh. “ El Draco ’sghost is a good friend of the buccaneers: he has conjured the Spanish into believing that they can never win at sea and rarely on land.”
    “They shouldn’t have needed much persuasion,” Thomas said.
    “Well,” Leclerc said, “let us continue to follow the voyage of the bullion. Panama is a poor port, very shallow, but a large and wealthy city. The Viceroy and all the rich merchants live there. The silver is landed and put in the treasury to await the most difficult part of the journey, and I’ll leave it there for a moment to outline the story from this side, from the North Sea.
    “Those two names tell the story: on our side, our sea is called the North Sea because it is on the north side of the Isthmus; the South Sea is so called because it is on the south side of it. And the Isthmus is one hundred miles wide, and where there aren’t swamps and dozens of rivers, like the veins on the back of an old man’s hand, there are mountains. Their galleons from Spain arrive in the North Sea, and – as I’m sure you know M. Yorke – they go to Cartagena.”
    “Why not Portobelo?”
    “Ah, because Portobelo suffers from the same problem as Panama: it is very shallow. The galleons draw too much water, and Portobelo has been silting up for years. Now the problem for the Spanish is that they have the bullion in Panama and the ships in Cartagena, but the journey from Panama by land to Cartagena is, as far as bullion is concerned, impossible.”
    Leclerc finished on a note of triumph, as though he personally had made it impossible, but