Buccaneer by Tim Severin

his spectacles, and carefully turning the second sheet face down.
    Hector glanced down at the map. It was a navigation chart. It showed a length of coastline, various off-shore islands and a number of landmarks which would be useful to anyone navigating along the coast. He had no idea what coast it displayed.
    ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘That should not be difficult.’
    ‘How long would it take you?’
    ‘Two days, perhaps less.’
    ‘Then you’ve got yourself ten days’ work if the first copy is to my satisfaction. I’ll want five copies made and I’ll pay two pounds for each, plus a bonus if they are ready by next Wednesday.’ He paused, and gave Hector a sly look. ‘But you don’t leave this house, and you don’t speak to anyone about the work. I’ll arrange for my housekeeper to prepare your meals, and you can sleep in a spare room in the garret. Do you understand?’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Hector. He was scarcely able to believe his good fortune. On his first morning in Port Royal he had found both employment and accommodation. With the pay he could resume his search for a ship that would take him to Petit Guave.
    ‘Good,’ said Snead, ‘then you can begin work as soon as you have gone to collect your things.’
    ‘I have nothing to collect,’ Hector admitted.
    Snead looked him up and down, a gleam of understanding in his eyes.
    ‘Runaway, are you? Well, that’s no concern of mine,’ he said with obvious satisfaction, ‘but if you breathe a word to anyone about your work, I’ll see to it that your master learns exactly where you are to be found.’ He nodded towards the pile of surveys. ‘Most of the big landowners and the wealthy merchants come to seek my services, and I can soon find out who is missing an indentured man.’

    B EFORE THE DAY was out, Hector had discovered that Snead was not as fierce as he at first made out. The architect had scarcely left the young man to his work in the upper room when he came back up the stairs and announced that he was closing his shop and would be back in half an hour. If Hector needed additional supplies of paper, pens and ink, he would find them in the downstairs office. A moment later the young man heard the front door close, and glancing out of the window he saw Snead walking off down the street, then turn into a nearby alehouse. When Snead came back rather more than an hour later, Hector concluded that his employer was drunk. He heard him knock over a chair as he fumbled his way back to his desk. By then Hector had identified the region shown by the chart he was copying.
    It was a map of the Caribbean shores of Central America. He remembered the general outline of the coast from the smaller scale chart that he had used aboard L’Arc-de-Ciel. Now he was being asked to copy out a larger and much more accurate version which covered the northern half of that coast. He guessed that the second sheet, the one that Snead had hidden from him, showed the southern portion. Clearly someone had recently sailed along the coast and made numerous observations. The sheet in front of him was covered with handwritten notes to help a navigator recognise his landfall, then track his progress, avoiding reefs and other outlying dangers, select from a number of different harbours and anchorages, and find watering places. Whoever had written these notes had not ventured more than a few miles inland because the interior of the countryside was left blank.
    The map seemed harmless and it was puzzling that Snead was being so secretive about it. Hector supposed that even if the architect was caught dealing in maps without a licence, he would receive only a minor penalty. Yet more mysterious was the fact that he needed five copies.
    As Hector began work, Susanna’s image kept appearing in his thoughts. He saw her walking in the garden of her father’s plantation house, or as he had last seen her, seated in a carriage and smiling at him gravely. From time to time he put aside