Pistoleer: Pirates Read online

  The dark man was again yelling at the fishermen. "Now, throw your nets." As the shore party watched, the men in the skiffs flung out net after net overtop of the hoard of swimming rats. The nets must have been heavily weighted, for they quickly dragged the rats down under the water. Net after net was thrown until there were no longer any groups of rats, but there were still individual rats swimming towards the skiffs to climb out of the water.

  The fishermen now took up clubs and began smashing at the rats that had survived the nets. Because the rats all wanted to crawl out of the water onto the skiffs, it became a desperate battle of flailing clubs over numbers, but the fishermen won the battle, and the sound of the clubbing slowed and then stopped.

  Meanwhile another party had arrived on the beach carrying blunderbusses. These were likely the men expected by the dark man.. They set to work blasting anything that was still squirming on the beach. "Don't touch them, they are diseased,” the dark man called out. "Use these spades,” he pointed to stands of tools close to him, "to hurl them into the sea so the ebb tide can take them away. And for gods sake, pull your kerchiefs up over your noses. They carry a plague and they can infect you with it, somehow."

  A group of men came down the beach from the other side of the fires. Their leader called out, "Jacob, did it work?"

  "Yes, John. Very few rats escaped. Hopefully only the healthy ones."

  The leader, John, stopped in front of the dark man Jacob and stared at the dangerous looking men standing around him who were all busy reloading their pistols, "Who are you?"

  "We are from the ship in the harbour, the Swift Daniel out of Bridgwater,” Robert replied. He then introduced Edward, and finished by saying, "We brought Edward's Pilgrims to join the settlement at Plymouth."

  "Then I bid you welcome to the new settlement of Newport. I am Pastor John Clarke, the mayor and physician, and this is Jacob Lopes, ugh, a visitor from New Amsterdam, who is also a physician."

  "Well met. It is Doctor Lopes we have come to find,” Robert replied. "We carry a letter for him from his nephew in Saint Kitts." He turned to Jacob and told him, "I am most happy you are still here sir, for it would have been a difficult decision for us to turn about and search for you in New Amsterdam. I shall send a man to fetch your letter from my ship." One of his men had already finished reloading, and at these words he ran to fetch Daniel and the letter.

  "Umm, thank you, but first please help us hunt down the rest of these rats. The more we kill now, the more successful will be the settlement of Newport."

  The shore party covered their mouths and noses with their kerchiefs and spread out to search for any movement. The task went quicker once Daniel and another half dozen of the crew arrived from the Swift, all of them armed to the teeth.

  "We were most lucky to have Doctor Lopes visiting with us,” Clarke told them once the grisly task was finished. "It was he who explained to us how deadly these blasted black rats are, or rather, the sickness they carry. We expect many Massachusetts pilgrims to join us here, and until his dire warning, we had planned on using the old village as their temporary quarters."

  Another man with Clarke, a man called Coddington, interrupted. "Using the abandoned native villages for temporary shelter has been usual for our settlements. Perhaps these rats are why the earliest of our settlements lost so many men in the first winter."

  "Aye,” Clarke added, "the rats may also explain why so many natives have died since this coast was first settled. There are abandoned villages and abandoned fields in all the best locations. At one time there must have been tens of thousands of Wampanoag living along the Massachusetts coast. The rats, or rather, the plague they carry, could explain their sudden disappearance. Just think of all those deaths, and all due to rats? Disgusting."

  "There was a silver lining, John. All those cleared fields ready for planting."

  "Does this plague have a name?" Daniel asked.

  "Doctor Lopes calls it by its medical name, Black Jaundice, but in England it is called Rat Catcher's fever. The good doctor says that it is spread by the filthy toilet habits of the rats. They shit and piss where they sleep and eat, which means their nests are dangerous to people, as is anything they have gnawed."

  "Aye, I well know the black jaundice,” Daniel replied. "My folk fish in the Fens, and every few years one of us is stricken with it. We call it Swamp Fever. Nasty. So it is spread by rats, eh? That figures. There's always an abundance of the filthy creatures where ever there's a fishery."

  "You were lucky to only have lost one man every few years,” Clarke replied. "Over the last twenty years, we have lost over half of the pilgrims that stepped ashore in Massachusetts. With the Wamphanoag the death rate was even worse."

  Jacob jumped at the bang of one of the dragons as it turned yet another squirming mass on the beach into a bloody mess. He yelled another warning to the men spading the bodies into the water, "Make sure you wash yourselves well afterwards, and don't spare the lye soap. Keep in mind that we are dealing with Rat Catcher's fever, and on this day you are all rat catchers."

  * * * * *

  So far there had been only two houses built in Newport, and both were longhouses which would sleep many, but offered no private rooms, or privacy in any form. For this reason Jacob took Daniel for a walk along waterfront while he read his letter and asked about his nephew.

  "I am going to recommend that my nephew move here instead of to New Amsterdam,” Jacob told him. "Pastor Clark has promised me that we Jews will be welcomed here in Newport. He says that his Baptists will do so to prove to other Puritan sects that religion is a matter of conscience not politics. This is good news for my family for New Amsterdam has been slow in offering us the rights we have both in Holland and in New Holland, and I doubt that the Puritans of Massachusetts will ever allow us to practice our faith."

  "Ahh, but will these Baptists allow you to build a temple?" Daniel asked. He had been told by this man's nephew that in Portugal and Spain the Jews survived by pretending to be Catholics, but that the Spanish had converted all of the temples and mosques into Catholic churches.

  "The temples will come, but later,” Jacob assured him. "The main issue is that we are welcome in Rhode Island and in the Providence Plantations. The Dutch in New Amsterdam and the English in Massachusetts are against slavery, and so they do not approve of plantations. The Dutch of the Brazils and the English of Virginia are dependant on plantations so slavery is a given. My family is in the business of sugar. Our business depends on plantations and therefore on slavery."

  "Ugh, is English your second tongue?"

  "My fifth,” Jacob replied proudly, "for my mother tongue is Portuguese, which begets Spanish. I learned Hebrew in secret lessons. I have spoken Dutch for many years, and now English."

  "Then I fear that your knowledge of English is misguiding you about the words 'Providence Plantations'. In English the word 'plantation' can be used to mean a great estate with forced labour, or it can mean simply a settlement or a colony. I doubt that these Baptists approve of slavery any more than the Anabaptists or Mennonites, or even most Puritans."

  Jacob pointed across the straight to the other islands and the mainland to the south of them. "But that land is perfect for plantations. I assumed that these Baptists fled here from Massachusetts to escape the Puritan morality. They did not want religion to hinder their business profits. In this New World, profit means plantations. The Baptists of Providence and Rhode Island would be fools to forbid the profits made from slaves."

  Daniel certainly hoped the opposite for this colony, but he did not say so. Instead he changed the subject slightly. "Your family runs sugar plantations in the Caribbean and in the Brazils. What in New England interests you enough to settle here?" Daniel was eager to find out more, for the answers may change his mind about where his clan may settle. "Why not just live in the warmth of a Caribbean island?"

  "The wood,” Jacob replied. "There is so much forest and wood here, and that means planks to make barrel
s and ships, and waste wood to burn to make rum. Here the wood is so plentiful that it is wasted. On cold days, they burn the wood for warmth all day and all night. They clear land by burning the trees out of the way. Over in Portugal and Spain, wood large enough for planking is precious, for they have already used up their forests, and the trees are not growing back because they graze sheep and goats on the cleared land. Here there are forests without end."

  After a bit of thought Daniel said, "If it is just planks you want, then you could trade for them anywhere along this coast. Please tell me the compelling reason that attracts you to Rhode Island."

  Jacob really didn't want to say, but this man had brought him letters, so he owed him something. "The location. This is a defendable island large enough to feed itself. Behind it is a huge bay surrounded by forests but with many abandoned planting fields. Off the coast are rich fishing and whaling grounds. Location is everything. With warehouses here, we can store our cargos bound for New England and New Amsterdam, or for England and Holland."

  This answer was no surprise to Daniel for he had studied the charts and had already figured out the importance of Rhode Island's location for himself. If his interests were in starting a trading company, then this would be where he would settle. The promise of such profits tempted him, but not enough. There were decades of cold winters coming, and Rhode Island would suffer from those winters just as much as England.

  "Too cold,” was all he said to Jacob. "If I am going to move my village all the way across an ocean it will not be to a place that has snow in the winter. Besides, I don't think Rhode Island will survive all of this religious turmoil. The Puritans are not known for their tolerance to other faiths so they are more likely to burn these Baptist rebels as witches, than allow them to prosper. My folk are not Puritans nor Baptists, so they would be caught in the middle."

  "I thank you for your warning,” Jacob replied. "However, I do not plan on bringing an entire village here, just one man's family. Just one voice in the local politics to represent our sugar business and our trading. It would be nothing more than a toehold, just in case things go badly for the Dutch in the Brazils."

  "So finally we come to the real reason. You worry that the Portuguese may take back Northern Brazil from the Dutch. That is most unlikely now that the Dutch fleet controls the seas, and now that their companies control the trade routes."

  "For now, yes, but what of the future. The Dutch are not conquistadors like the Spanish and the Portuguese. Yes they are arrogant enough and yes their companies are greedy for profits and yes they have fine weapons, but they do not rule with an iron fist. They rule through barter and agreement rather than by whip and punishment. The Dutch are too trusting, and that will be their undoing."

  Hearing the Dutch called trusting made Daniel laugh, but Jacob shushed him. "Don't laugh until I tell you what I know of Dutch companies. In Amsterdam, the shareholders of the Dutch trading companies are too trusting of the directors of those companies. Those directors are too trusting the managers they have sent across the seas to run the plantations. On the plantations the Dutch managers are too trusting of their local overseers.

  I have lived in Brazil and I know that these overseers are corrupt and greedy men who live in places where corruption is a way of life. Back in Holland, the shareholders and the directors cannot imagine the level of corruption on their plantations. They are all too trusting. Brazil will end badly for the Dutch because they ignore the corruption and take the profits, rather than admit to the corruption and deal with it severely. Eventually the Portuguese will once again rule all of Brazil, because they understand how to rule the corruption."

  "At least the Dutch have a republic,” Daniel moaned. "In England the corruption comes top down from our useless aristocracy. Those who speak out against the corruption are seen as criticizing the King, so they are quickly silenced. Corruption is all upside down in England because the poor are beaten for their tiny cheats, while the richest cheaters are glorified for their business cunning."

  "Interesting," Jacob said thoughtfully, "that explains much about the English Puritans and how they push their morality upon all those around them. So why don't the English folk seek help from the Dutch and get rid of these royal corruptors? With protestant republics in Holland and in England, the Hapsburg armies would have no choice but to retreat from Flanders."

  "That has been a dream of mine ever since I joined the Rotterdam militia and was trained as a pistoleer,” Daniel sighed. "The short answer is, I don't know why it hasn't happened before now. The merchants of London would surely support a Dutch style republic as a replacement for our ridiculous aristocracy. Ah well, who knows? I have been at sea for months, so for all I know, Scotland may already be a republic. I certainly hope so."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 8 - Cape Cod in July 1641

  There was no inland waterway that connected Rhode Island to Plymouth. On the contrary, the route the Swift must sail took them far to the east and around Cape Cod. Along the way they stopped at two interesting looking islands to the south of the cape's hooked point, but each was heavily peopled with Wampanoag natives.

  "These islands stick out into the warm sea currents from the south. The cape turns that current out to sea,” Weston told them. "That warm current is why these islands can support so many people. It not only gives them a much warmer climate than the mainland, but it also leaves the bounty of the sea on their southern beaches." He said this as they stood off from one of the southern beaches and watched while Wampanoag clansmen stripped the flesh and blubber from some beached whales. "It is too bad that there are so many natives, because either of these islands would make for a wealthy settlement."

  Daniel sniffed at the man's words in disbelief as he looked down at the chart. The chart showed a cold current that came down the coast from Newfoundland. "If Cape Cod is where the cold current meats this warm one, then these islands will be lost in fog for most of the year."

  "It is because the currents meet here that is called Cape Cod,” Weston replied defensively. "Where two sea currents meet there is always an abundance of fish. Ask the Wampanoag if you don't believe me."

  And so they did. That afternoon they anchored in the small bay of the largest village on the island of Nantucket which was furthest island out to sea from Cape Cod. As soon as they were given permission to land by the village sachem ... the headman, half of the crew rowed to shore and hiked across to the southern beach to watch the butchering of the whales. The village children, each chewing on a choice piece of whale meat, were delighted to lead them across the island. .

  It was a very friendly village, and why not since their bellies were full. The sachem's wife bid everyone on the ship to come ashore and join that night's whale feast, assuring them that those that did not like whale meat could eat fresh codfish. The wife was also the sachem's translator, and had the look of having been sired by a white man.

  It was the wife who led the pilgrims and the rest of the crew across the island, for the feast was to be held on the southern beach where the whales had been beached. Along the way she spoke at length about her island, and how it had been spared the plagues that had killed so many Wampanoag on the mainland.

  Like the other clans along this coast, this clan was also a matriarchy. All wealth and buildings and rights to common fields were inherited through the blood line of the women, passing from eldest daughter to eldest daughter. Daniel spoke with her about this, because his Fen-Frisian village had the same tradition. It was a tradition that worked well in both places for the benefit of the women and children, for it meant that they were not devastated by the early deaths of their men.

  As Daniel expected, Edward and the other Pilgrims thought the tradition unnatural and against God's wishes, such fools were the Pilgrim men. Even Weston, who had once lived with native clans, thought that inheritance passed through the women was an abominat
ion. He and Daniel agreed to disagree, for Daniel well knew that the main reason his village had prospered through the centuries was because the women controlled the households and the food crops. This enabled the men to travel and make trade, or to fish, or to hunt, or to fight.

  What truly horrified the Pilgrim men was learning that since a clanswomen controlled the household, she also controlled the marriage contract. She chose her husband, whether for the season, for the year, or forever. When she cancelled a marriage contract, the clan demanded that the man leave her house quickly and peaceably.

  No matter how well or how long Daniel explained that in the long run, the entire clan benefited from these natural rules, the Pilgrims remained unconvinced. Their 'natural rules' were not based on what was evident in nature, but on what was evident from an interpretation of their bible. Luckily the trail to the southern beach was short, else tempers would have flared.

  The folk of Nantucket were all gathering on the beach, and were building cooking fires. There were two types, the flaming fires where they first seared the outside flesh of codfish or whale, and the smoking fires where they finished the cooking. By the time the crew had eaten their fill, there must have been a thousand folk on the beach.

  It seemed unbelievable that so many could eat their fill from just a few small whales, but such was the richness of the meat. A few small pieces would quench a normal appetite. There was no risk of running out of codfish, for as darkness fell, the light of the fires on the beach attracted schools of cod in close to shore. When more fish were needed, some of the men would wade into the schools with woven baskets and pluck more cod from the schools.

  Needless to say, as the feast progressed, it became quite immoral from a Pilgrim point of view. Fearful for the chastity of the pilgrim women when they were this close to their future home, Edward ordered all of the pilgrims back to the safety of the ship. The crew, on the other hand, celebrated long and hard, for it was obvious to them that there would be no such ribald feast held to welcome them to Plymouth.