Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [206]
‘Aye, that is what it looks like. And they succeeded in it – she would not have been found now, but for the accident of the men getting drunk. A hundred ships could water there without knowing anything of her. Men go to shoot pig in the scrub or fowl at the edges of the lagoons, but no one goes into the swamps behind. Why should they?’
‘And the captain?’ Erasmus spoke with a strange constraint. It was as if he wanted the other to supply him with judgement. ‘Surely he could not …’
‘Thurso was not a man to abandon his own ship, not willingly. But this is speculation – I was concerned only to tell you what I could vouch for.’ He set down his glass and rose to his feet. ‘I saw the vessel with my own eyes,’ he said. He moved towards the door, then stopped and looked back at Erasmus, who had also risen now. ‘It is all I know for definite,’ he said. ‘But I sail in those waters regular, now that Florida has been given to us by the Spaniards, and I have heard stories. I did not pay much heed to them before …’
‘What stories?’
‘The Indians who trade with Cuba from the Florida Keys tell of a kind of settlement somewhere back behind the coast, where white and black live together and no one is chief.’
‘But twelve years,’ Erasmus said. ‘How could men remain hidden there?’
‘It is feasible,’ Philips said after a moment of reflection. ‘The southern part of Florida is a wilderness. It is trackless and empty of human kind, save for some scattered Indians. The Spanish never went down so far, not that I know of. There was no reason why they should. For seven of these last twelve years they have been fighting a war to keep the colonies that really matter to them. A remote part of the Florida peninsula was of interest to no one. Yes, it is feasible.’
Erasmus was silent and the captain, perhaps taking the silence for disbelief – he was a prideful man and sensitive in his own way – held out his hand rather abruptly. ‘I did not say I believed the stories,’ he said. ‘With Indians you do not know if they are speaking of today or yesterday or a hundred years ago. Well, I have done what I came to do. Now I must take my leave of you.’
‘One moment.’ Erasmus appeared to rouse himself from some private musing. ‘I am extremely obliged to you for this intelligence you have brought me. Be good enough to let me know where you are lodging, so I may send you a mark of my gratitude.’
‘So much is not necessary.’
‘I do not imply that it is necessary.’ Erasmus practised his smile again. He had formed no conscious intention other than to send a sum of money. It was right that a man should be rewarded for his trouble, and there was not a sufficient sum in the house. But he knew even now that the money was merely a pretext: he had to know where Philips could be found. ‘I would esteem it a favour,’ he said.
Pressed thus, the captain complied. He was staying at the Bull in Southwark. He took his leave and Erasmus found himself alone again with the tattered black book on the desk before him. The interview had made him late: there was no time now for more than a cursory look. Philips had been right, the log was largely indecipherable. Mould had attacked the covers and outer pages, obliterating the names of captain and ship. Everywhere damp had spread the ink, running the lines together into blurred webs. The quality of the hand did not help: it was crabbed and uneven, the writing of a man not at ease with a pen. But occasionally, and particularly in the latter part, there were entries that could still be made out, dates, details of weather and navigation. His eye caught a name: Haines, set in irons for some offence not named …
He had no time now for more. When he left the house the log went with him, but it was not until late in the afternoon that he was able to look at it again. All through the day’s business he had found himself recalling, half incredulously, fragments of his interview with the captain, dwelling on details of his visitor’s words and manner as if to detect some falsity in them that would discredit his story,