The north wind, or as he would prefer, the Breath of Boreas, gusted into his face, tossing the locks of his wig beneath the rim of his hat. Brackish water sprayed up over the low gunwales of the jollyboat as he and Hempstead stood in the bow and the brawny men rowed behind them, the unlettered Dutch boy who had fallen under his tutelage, manning the rudder. As the junior officer aboard the Dutch Frigate come to accept the goodwill of the Spanish Mission station ahead, he was not only the junior officer of the entire fleet, at age 14, but was the sole representative of England from among the class that mattered. Fourteen-year-old boys of later times could have scarcely believed that one their age might have once commanded men of the sea and even men of war, but Lord Pendelton Shaw was an ensign of the Dutch Navy, his commission purchased for him, a newly minted, even dainty, man, not yet possessed of the physicality and renown to command the respect of the world-weary men that transported one of his class to the very ends of the savage earth, but with the ambition to carve a name for himself in the history books—the Iliad and the Odyssey of his age, his time.

The jollyboat rocked in the river mouth. Spray rose from the collision of the plank boat with the brackish water of this sleeping winter bay where the remorseless river pushed into it. Two musket shots off, on the northern shore, sat the Spanish mission, a tiny wooden affair, a crude coniferous cross before it, and a fallow garden to the east along the bank, where not even a pier had been sunk to improve communications with the distant maters of this papist place. Behind him was the eighteen-ship strong might of the Dutch West Indies Fleet.

Before him though, to the west, played out a grim drama. The sinking of the half-scuttled Spanish fleet in the harbor of Porto Soto had been no more difficult—but a good deal more exciting—than shooting ducks with Uncle’s blunderbuss in Auntie’s fishpond. However, his English thirst for battle—the veritable religion of his pugnacious nation—the need to come to grips with the swarthy, idolatrous enemy, coursed through his veins and sought expression to no avail. For the Spanish possessed land superiority and the Dutch admiral would not send his sailors against the soldiers of the stubborn Don Enrique. So they had sailed north to establish an outpost here, with respect to the priests of the mission, giving them leave to go, before the fleet’s reverend and more fanatical congregationists converted this half-pagan temple into a proper house of Christian worship.

Hempstead’s voice then aroused him from his dreams of Achilles—being somewhat short of stature, young, and wearing a powdered wig and ruffled jacket, but Achilles nevertheless—chasing a very Spanish Hector before the walls of a wooden-stockade Troy as he clutched his leather bound Iliad under his canvas coat against the spray. This improbable fantasy was inspired by what met his eyes. On the south bank of this icy river, flecked with snow rafts of ice here and there, a Spanish pikeman lay maimed, where he had fallen defending his lord, as his Lord, the very same Don Enrique who possessed such a formidable ground force, a goodly regiment of musketeers, pikemen and horsemen, and had apparently blown the powder magazine at Porto Soto to keep it from falling under the Dutch flag, made an icy ride to freedom on the back of a magnificent stallion that swam the surging river.

“Look at that bugger swim, Lord Shaw—a stinking Scotsman right out of the stocks I’d say! A strong, stoked bugger he is, Lord.”

It appeared that Don Enrique was the lone survivor of some terrible battle among the savages in the hinterland, a mob of savages that seemed to contain one of white appearance, a tireless killer chopping the icy river swells with hands that chopped quicker than the hands of a swimmer should. Pendelton became animate, “Row the harder, men. We want to see this thing at a near measure.”

Looking over their shoulders and pulling, the men needed no encouragement to see some heathen Scot cross swords with his swarthy, papist brethren. Hempstead then snarled at the men as they looked over their shoulders for the view, “Eyes ahead, backs into it, mates.”

Simpleton—his very own unfortunate name—complied, as did the rest, fairly lifting the boat from the water, but mumbling, “But, Hempstead, Sir I was wantin’ to lay two-to-one on the heathen runnin’ down that fat snot and a cleavin’ ‘is arse—”

“Of course I’ll take it, Simpleton, but you don’t trust me to call odds adjustments without your craning neck able to see, dog!”

“Why should I, Sir? I’m Welsh, after all.”

Griegs then added, “I’d like a lay at those odds too, Sir, providing His Grace reigns as guarantee-arer…”

Pendelton had been drawn in, “Guarantor—blast your lowly habit of adding letters to that which is already mispronounced, Griegs—and so it goes, men. The mighty stallion heaves past mid-river as the savage knifes the water with his hands, kicking like a mermaid’s ravisher with his unseen feet, closing the distance on the overburdened horse—odds adjusted upward to three-to-one in favor of the heathen!”

More of the hard-rowing men began throwing their lot in with Simpleton and Griegs as Hempstead, groaned, ever weary when it came to dipping out coin to cover a mob bet.

The jollyboat was nearing land and so was the waning stallion, dragging itself out of the icy muck with its broad, over-dressed charge upon its back. “The hero horse staggers forth under the weight of the coward Don, buckles, falls, pins the honorless wretch by a leg, the heathen swimming—now running, rumbling like a lion—five to one odds.”

“We will cover it, Lord, with our backs if need be!” and they pulled harder at the oars, as Hempstead snarled—ten-to-one on the heathen committing a dastard doing—any takers?”

The men were all shouting their individual responses, which Hempstead would somehow be able to retrieve and sort from the muddle between his ears when this vicious drama came to a close.

Pendelton pursed his lips to begin narrating the odds shift again, but was then left dazed as the heathen unhinged a great highland claymore from his back and had cross words with the Don over the horse, which the Don swore was a better man that the heathen was, even as he extricated himself from the flank of his dying horse and backed up toward those who seemed to await them all, three priests—or were they monks of some kind, for he could scarcely keep these idolatrous types focused in his mind—and a nun of savage type. The jollyboat now scraped ground and he found himself riding unceremoniously on the broad back of Griegs as the Spaniard drew his elegant rapier and retained his scabbard as a beater, and the heathen contemptuously cast his heavier scabbard aside and charged with a roar, a roar that must once have issued from the throat of some beast that was far less than human, and sent a shudder through them all.