Chapter 7
Roanoke and the lost colony
“We won’t be followed,”
said Timor. “As I said, the harbourmaster
is a good friend. Now if you want to put me off
, we could pull into the next quiet cove we come
to.”
Dad said: “I’ve been
talking to Prospero this afternoon. He says Nassau
is not a good place. He recommends we head for
Grand Cayman; says it’s a relatively sheltered
island and rarely has the worst of the hurricanes.
I’ve been talking it over with Bob. We’d
be glad to have you with us but we can’t
pay you. We said the same to Prospero. You can
cabin up with Bob if you like.”
“Money, gold, treasure.
None of that is important to me. So Prospero suggested
Cayman? In that case I’d like to come along.
But we shouldn’t go too far south too soon
before the hurricane season ends. We could put
in by the Carolinas. Do you know Roanoke Island?
I’d like to take you there.”
So it was we set a southerly
course down the US eastern seaboard for Roanoke.
We had been in Nantucket less than a day but it
was still good to get back to our shipboard routines.
Timor was as good a sailor as Prospero and could
hoist the mainsail in seconds, single-handed.
Without his shirt I could see he had strong, bronzed,
muscular arms. He also had some curiously patterned
tattoos on each arm. Suddenly my stomach churned.
The marks were faded, but there was no mistaking
what looked like a much older tattoo on his shoulder:
the skeleton with the spear and the heart.
As the orange sun slid gently
over the horizon I walked into Badger’s
cabin. Pat was there too. First I told them about
the strange tattoo shared by Prospero and Timor.
Neither Badger nor Pat had noticed it. Then I
fetched the old book from my cabin. “I bought
this today. There was no chance to show you in
the shop but look at this page here.” I
opened the book at a page of diagrams.
“These are pirate symbols
like the skull and crossbones here. But not all
pirates flew the same Jolly Roger. Some sailed
under different flags. This one here is the Old
Roger.” The white on black image was exactly
that traced on the arms of our crewmates - a horn-headed
skeleton holding an hour glass in one hand and
a spear in the other, standing beside a heart
above three droplets of blood.
“Whose flag is that then?”
asked Pat.
Badger was already reading the
answer. In a loud, shocked whisper he read out
the name: “Edward Teach.”
Before Pat could ask again, he
had his answer. “Blackbeard.”
“Blackbeard?”
Badger was ahead of him, reading the text. “
Teach was his real name. It says here he was the
most fearsome pirate that ever lived. Whenever
he went into battle he had three pairs of pistols
strapped across his chest. He used to tuck canon
fuses under his hat and light them so that his
head was shrouded in smoke just for effect. He
would kill people as soon as look at them and
when he died it took twenty cutlass blows and
five pistol shots to bring him to his knees. The
man who killed him cut off his head and hung it
from the bowsprit of his ship.”
“Some pirate,” said
Pat. “Hang about, didn’t you say Mo
that the museum map was Blackbeard’s.”
“That’s what it said
on the card but I don’t see how anybody
could know, unless….”
“Well what?”
“Well there were some markings
on the underside that could have been this figure
here. I don’t know. It says in this book
that pirate treasure maps are a load of fiction,
Long John Silver and all that. I don’t know.
But what I do know is that two people on this
yacht have this exact same image tattooed on their
arms and one of them has been talking about pirate
treasure and taking more than just a passing interest
in my map. If he hasn’t seen it he certainly
knows it exists. I guess he must have seen it.
He couldn’t know about it any other way.”
As I spoke the most absurd idea flashed into my
mind; too absurd to mention.
“I say we sleep on it,”
said Pat.
“We could be murdered in
our bunks,” said Badger. I looked at him
afresh. Is this the same guy I’d been feeling
so gooey about? Mind you, I found myself nodding
at his suggestion. “Mo, you and Vince, make
sure you lock your cabin door,” said Pat
“We’ll do the same. Here take this.”
He passed me an emergency flair. “If anyone
comes for you aim it at their face and pull the
cord.”
I didn’t sleep too much
that night and when I did my dreams were full
of cutlass-wielding pirates, severed heads and
screaming US cavalrymen. I tried to think of palm-fronded
islands and coconuts but every time the coconuts
turned into human heads, rolling down the beach,
bobbing in the surf.
There was just the first delicate
suggestion of dawn in the night sky when I rolled
out of my sleeping bag and went up on deck. Timor
was at the helm, alone. His top knot was streaming
from his scalp in the cool morning breeze. He
used his hair and the feel of the breeze on his
cheeks as a way of reading the wind when at the
wheel. Faustus was perched beside him on the rail.
“Where’s Prospero?”
I asked.
“Where Prospero likes to
be most of the time Miss Mo - wrapped up in his
bunk.”
I don’t know why. But I didn’t feel
afraid. I decided it was time to get things out
in the open. I wanted to know whether any of my
suspicions were true. “I saw the tattoo
on your arm. It’s a pirate symbol. Blackbeard’s
Old Roger. Prospero has the same one.”
“You’re a very observant
young lady,” said Timor. He didn’t
seem at all fazed by my remarks. I didn’t
know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.
I couldn’t help noticing that we were alone
together. What if I was to “accidentally”
fall over board? No-one would know. This fearful
thought dissolved as quickly as it had formed.
Timor wouldn’t do that.
“Quite right, I would never
do such a thing.”
“How…how did you
know what I was thinking?
“I’d think the same
thing if I was in your place. You have just as
good as accused me of piracy after all. Blackbeard
was the worst kind of pirate. He got what he deserved.
As for this,” he raised his right arm from
the shoulder. “I didn’t deserve this.
I must blame my vagabond father for that.”
“Your father did that?”
The first rays of the sun were just peeping over
the horizon, throwing a warm glow on Timor’s
face. The boat was surfing along on a broad reach.
A herring gull hung in the air just to our stern.
Faustus squawked and performed a complicated gyration
using beak and feet on the makeshift perch.
Timor stared straight ahead.
“He didn’t create the tattoo. He couldn’t
even sign his name. But he had it put there by
a tattoo artist, just as he had one drawn on Prospero
when he was born, just as my grandfather had it
done to his son and how his father had passed
it on to him. Apparently they were part of some
society dedicated to preserving the pirate fellowship.
My father wore a doubloon ring on the middle finger
of his left hand. The tattoo meant he was in the
club, so to speak. That mark there came down a
long line of no-good men.”
“Including you?”
“I hope not. But who knows?
I do my best but I’m not perfect, far from
it.”
“Does it go back as far
as Blackbeard himself?”
“So they say.”
“Are you saying that both
you and Prospero are descended from Blackbeard?”
“I don’t know about
that. I hate to think so. The story passed down
through the generations is that the male line
in my father’s family was descended from
one of the crew that served, as you said, under
the Old Roger. It’s not something I’m
proud about.”
“So does that mean….are
you and Prospero related?”
“We’re brothers. Our mother is mostly
native American, descended from the Powhatan tribe
of the Algonquin indians, she says. I have her
blond hair and many of her ways, I hope. I never
knew my father. He understood indian ways, and,
with slave blood in his veins, he knew what it
was to be persecuted. Mother says he had some
good features, but giving me this tattoo was not
one of them.
“I stayed with mother as
a child but father took Prospero with him on his
travels. Prospero is a few years older than me.
He was always getting into trouble. Father would
call in now and again and sometimes bring money.
Some of it came from Prospero’s thieving.
My brother was wanted by the police in four states.
Dad couldn’t control him so took him to
Bermuda where he had friends.
He came for me too but my mother
hid me in the woods. Then she moved to be with
me with me so he couldn’t find her. We survived
in the wilds and lived off the land. That’s
how I learned how to hunt. Mother taught me how
to skin a deer and snare a rabbit, how to creep
up so quietly to a fox that I could grab its tail.
“But she also taught me
how to read and how to write with some old books,
called McGuffey readers with pictures of boys
in straw hats and girls in bonnets. But in these
books the rabbits were pets and lived in cages.
They could not run free in the woods.
“One day when I was no
longer a child I was returning from a hunting
trip and saw smoke rising from the trees. Our
cabin had been burnt to the ground. There was
no sign of mother. I went down to the valley where
the people lived with their cars and houses and
shops, schools and hospitals. The local paper
had a story: “Woman living wild in hills,”
said the headline. “Police find signs of
illegal hunting by hobos in unauthorised cabin
- no fridge, no running water no TV,” said
the story. A sub-heading said: “care order
issued.” I found the name of the care home,
walked straight in, broke down the door to her
room and carried her out.
We hid away in the hills and
there my mother lives now where no one will find
her. She has everything she needs. A short time
after we arrived we built a new home she told
me to go and make my own life. That seems like
another time, before I saw so many things in far
off lands; before people called me Timor the Hunter.”
His voice boomed as he spoke
his name, as if he was speaking from another age.
What about your father?”
I asked.
“I don’t know about
my father. He hasn’t been seen for years.
I expect he’s dead.”
“So Prospero is your big
brother?
“You could say that, although
it’s not your normal big brother relationship.
I’m the one who has to keep an eye on him.
He’s never been very responsible and he’s
always been a schemer. Prospero and I are like
two sides of a coin. Trouble seems to follow him
around. I wasn’t surprised to hear about
the storm and the water-spout. That kind of thing
happens to Prospero all the time. He seems to
have some charm-like power. It’s as if he
can influence things from afar, drawing people
to him like the Cornish wreckers who used to entice
ships on to the rocks. It’s why he’s
safer on Bermuda. He should stay there.”
“Have you ever been to
Cornwall?”
“Of course.”
“You seem to have some
strange power too, some sort of sixth sense,”
I said.
“I do seem to know what
other people are thinking. Maybe it’s just
intuition, something I was born with. Among the
Algonquins it’s not so unusual. Sometimes
I could speak with my mother without saying a
word. I can certainly sense when things aren’t
right. But I don’t have any charms. I’m
no wizard and neither is Prospero. More of an
imp if you ask me. Everything he meddles with
means trouble.”
Timor handed me the helm and
went below to fix a hot drink. The early sun was
a giant blood red orb rising above the horizon.
Over to the west where the sky was a dark purple
I could just make out the faint outline of New
York on the eastern seaboard. Another two or three
days of sailing would bring us to Roanoke.
There were other matters I needed
to raise with Timor but they would have to wait.
Uncle Bob’s head appeared in the hatchway.
“Morning Mo. Couldn’t
you sleep? I’m not surprised.” He
stretched out his arms and yawned. “What
a beautiful day.”
He paused as if he was groping
for something to say. “I think I owe you,
and everyone else for that matter, an apology,”
he said. “It was me who let Caliban out.
I didn’t think it was right to keep him
in a cage. I was trying to tie a leash on him
when he slipped out of my grasp.”
“Never mind. You should
have seen him with that ice cream.”
Bob had taken a shine to Caliban.
He fed him fruit and knew how to keep him calm
by grooming his coat. Caliban was a Vervet monkey.
The expression on his shiny black face suggested
he had been bred for mischief. Like almost everything
that came Prospero’s way, the monkey had
arrived on a passing ship. Its previous owner
had lost him in a card game.
Faustus, on the other hand, said
Prospero, was one of the few exceptions. The bird
had simply turned up. “I woke up to a squawking
sound one morning and saw this beautiful Macaw
in the tree outside my window,” he told
me. “Sometimes he disappears for weeks.
I never know where he goes. But he always comes
back. I give him all the nuts and grapes he needs.
That’s why I call him Dr Faustus. He sold
his soul for a packet of seed.”
Daybreak at sea on a perfect
morning with a steady wind in the sails, hands
on the helm feeling the rudder ploughing its solitary
ocean furrow. Could there be anything better than
this?
With Timor at the helm the on-board
atmosphere relaxed again. We hardly knew him yet
there was something reassuring about his presence.
Prospero was keeping out of sight in his bunk,
Caliban was high in the rigging sitting on the
shroud stays. When Pat took over the helm Faustus
hopped on to his shoulder. Timor was standing
on the prow keeping his own company and mum, dad,
Uncle Bob, Vince, Badger and myself were taking
our breakfasts in the cockpit. Bob looked across
at us all and smiled.
“I hope, like me, you’re
glad now that you came,” he said. “This
is a fine ship with a fine crew and I think me
and the boys are lucky to have our friends on
board.”
He was just about to speak again
when Timor shouted from the prow: “Whales!
Humpbacks, three of them, over to port.”
A great grey black head broke the surface not
ten feet away from the side of the boat, then
another and another. It looked like two adults
with one of their young. They swam alongside us
and crossed our bow for a full hour before tiring
of the game and falling away to our stern.
The wind rose enough so that
we took down the Genoa and exchanged it for the
number two yankee – a smaller foresail.
The boat had begun to heal over and Pat had been
struggling to hold course, so Timor reefed the
mainsail. Caliban scampered down from his vantage
point and scuttled through the hatch while Bob
carried Faustus to his galley perch. Clouds were
gathering and for the first time in days I could
feel my stomach beginning to heave. The breeze
maintained its strength in a lumpy sea but never
broke into a full-blown gale. Prospero popped
his head through the hatch.
“Good day Mr Grant,”
he said to Bob who had taken over the helm. “Any
work for old Prospero?”
“You missed the rush,”
said Bob. “But thanks for the offer. You
could bag up the Genoa if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all, sir, Mr Grant,
sir.” Watching Timor and Prospero working
together on the foredeck you could see some likeness
between them. It was as though they had a quiet
understanding, exchanging few words.
The wind whipped up that night
and both men stayed on deck with Bob while the
rest of us hunkered down below. Vince, mum and
Badger had all been sick again. I wondered about
taking a drink to Badger but decided to leave
him. We didn’t seem able to recapture the
moments we shared on that long transatlantic voyage.
With mum in her bunk we were without our best
navigator but Timor seemed to know this coastline
like the back of his hand issuing a series of
course changes to avoid the treacherous shallows
and shifting sand banks.
The weather had calmed again
by the afternoon of our third full day out of
Nantucket when Timor said we were close to North
Carolina’s outer banks - long sandy islands
protecting stretches of muddy shallows between
the banks and the mainland. We passed KittyHawk,
the long stretch of sand where Orville and Wilbur
Wright had achieved the first powered flight in
1903.
Motoring steadily, Timor guided
us through a tight inlet and coaxed our boat with
Bob at the helm slowly through narrow channels
until he said: “Roanoke, dead ahead.”
The land was so low lying you could hardly make
out the island except for a few buildings close
to the shoreline. We weighed anchor in about ten
feet of water and lowered Timor’s open canoe.
It took three trips to paddle everyone ashore.
Prospero said he would stay with the boat and
paddled back alone.
We booked some rooms at the Roanoke
Island Inn that had been extended so much you
couldn’t tell what was original and what
was just “olde worlde”. There was
the usual smattering of shops, suffocating in
their tweeness. The island was joined by a road-bridge
to the mainland.
“It’s changed since
I was last here,” said Timor. “I don’t
remember this place well. My childhood was in
the mountains where my mother lives. Her tribal
roots have faded but she retains the stories passed
down through her family. One of these stories
recalls the lost colony of Roanoke.”
Timor walked with us down to
the waterfront. “I wanted you to come to
this place because here are my roots. My roots
and your roots are inter-linked. I am a man of
the world, old and new. There is a part of me,
my soul perhaps, in Africa, but you might also
say I have one foot in your European homeland
and one foot among the natives of this land. My
mother used to tell me about the lost colony.”
“What’s a colony?”
said Vince. “And how did it get lost?”
Timor swept his arm across the
breadth of the island. “Look around you.
It was here in 1587, that John White established
a colony of English settlers. His daughter Elenora
Dare gave birth soon after to a baby daughter,
Virginia. They were among the 117 colonists left
here when White sailed back to England for more
supplies and people. But England was at war with
Spain by the time he had returned home and ships
were forbidden to leave port.
“It was August 17, 1590
before White could get back. The island was deserted.
His daughter, her family and the rest of the colonists
had gone. The only sign of disruption were some
ransacked chests and the only clue to the settlers
whereabouts was the word “Croatoan”
carved on a post and three letters, “CRO”
marked on a tree. This referred to an island just
south of here, now called Hatteras. But no-one
ventured that far for another 20 years. The settlers
were never found.
“What do you think happened to them?”
I asked.
“I know what happened.
My mother told me. Their food had run out so Ananias
Dare, White’s assistant and Elenora’s
husband, rafted the whole group across to the
mainland and struck out for the interior with
Croatoan guides.
“The Croatoans were friendly
tribespeople. But the group was attacked by a
hostile war party from the Powhatan tribe. The
men were slaughtered and the women and children
taken into the tribe. Among these were Elenora
and Virginia Dare. Do you remember I told you
my mother had blond hair. That’s almost
unknown among the American tribes. It’s
extraordinary but she still retains some old English
words in her speech. She used to refer to Prospero
and I as bantlings, meaning infants. When we spilled
our food as children she would call us slobberchops.”
“Hey I know that word,”
said Vince. “My gran used to call me slobberchops.”
“I wonder why,” said
Pat.
“Well there you have it
- the missing link,” said Badger in a sceptical
tone.
Timor seemed offended. “Timor
does not lie,” he said. “What I tell
you is the truth. If you choose to believe otherwise
you are entitled to do so.”
“I believe you Timor,”
said Vince. “So do I,” I said.
That night Timor did not stay
in the hotel. He was gone the whole of the next
day and most of the day after that, returning
in the evening. There was blood on his hands.
“A deer,” he said, in answer to our
gaze. He looked slightly embarrassed. “It
was for my mother. She sends you her greetings.
She says you are good people.”
“How does she know? She’s
never met us,” said Badger.
“She knows. Algonquin people
know many things. She worries about Prospero.
Watch him, she said, he will lead you into trouble.
She is right. I have been to your boat and Prospero
has gone.”
Mum, dad and Bob who had been
silent up to that point looked at each other.
Bob said: “Timor, Prospero is free to go
at any time. We cannot control his life. He owes
us nothing.”
We returned to the Endeavour
the next day. “He’ll be back,”
said Pat. “He wouldn’t leave Caliban
and Faustus and they’re still here.”
“We should not have come
here,” said Timor. “These are sorrowful
waters for many reasons.”
What did he mean? I pushed my
hand into my pocket to check on my map. It had
gone. My face must have registered my shock. “What’s
up Mo?” asked Pat. “Seen a ghost?”
I had taken off my shorts the previous night,
getting ready for bed. The paper was there then.
Could someone have been in my room during the
night?
“We’ll stay here
one more night then up anchor after breakfast
tomorrow,” said Uncle Bob, “whether
Prospero is here or not.”
|
