Spanish Galleon

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Action & Adventure; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

An old story from the loose lips of a whiskey-sodden seaman sets Glaswegian giant Roddy Roy MacGregor off in search of wealth beyond his wildest dreams. On the tiny Hebridean Isle of Inishewen, he soon finds himself embroiled in a devious and highly illegal plot to raise the sunken treasure of a legendary Spanish galleon before the authorities, or the locals, can lay claim to it. Aided by members of the Clan MacAimish - the lovely daughter of the chief among them - Roddy seeks to scupper the efforts of the English salvage expedition and take the treasure for himself, and for the good of Scotland. 'One of Scotland's most prolific and respected writers' The Times

Release date: February 14, 2013

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 230

Sample

THE big man and the little man looked at one another, and their expressions were as different as was their general appearance. The one, in dungarees and shirt-sleeves, was a bull-like giant of a man, in his early thirties, with a shock of curling red hair and strangely hot blue eyes. Eyes that glared. The other was older, a spare weedy-looking individual, dressed in the relics of a cheap blue suit and a broken-peaked seaman’s cap, unshaven and unkempt. His eyes were watery and none too steady. They blinked. But it was this latter nevertheless who was being courageous, standing his ground. And it was very much the big man’s ground, too.

“Sure I’m Roddie Roy MacGregor. Sae what?” the red-head roared—and some sort of shouting was necessary in order to be heard above the ceaseless staccato clamour of the electric riveters that hammered on the towering ships’ hulls that hemmed in the tiny boatyard in a muddy corner of the Clyde. “But I’m sump’n else, tae. I’m busy, see. I’ve nae time to chew the bluidy rag. I’ve nae jobs, neither. An’ I’ve nae patience wi’ guys that’s three pairts drunk at ten in the morn! Sae, scram—see! If you ken what’s guid for you!”

“Och, my goodness—I am not drunk, at all!” the other protested, with a strange mixture of defiance and pleading. “No, no—nothing of the sort. And it is just two-three minutes of your time, Mr. MacGregor, that I’ll be taking . . .”

“Speak up, man—if you must! I canna hear a word.”

The small man looked up and around him distastefully at the forest of gantries and scaffolding and the great cliffs of echoing rusty iron that seemed almost as though they would topple in on them, and with a gesture of surprising dignity indicated where the responsibility lay, wavering a little on wide-planted feet in the process. “Och, an office, maybe? I am saying—a sort of an office you will be having, likely, about, hic, the place, Mr. MacGregor?”

“Jings!” the giant said simply.

“I could be away the quicker, see you.” The man had a soft lilting West Highland voice, singularly unsuited to compete with the clangor of the Clyde. “Och, I’ll be keeping you no time at all.”

“You’ll dae that, right enough! You’re fu’, I tell you. Will you get oot o’ this—or hae I to pit you oot?” There was nothing soft nor lilting about the MacGregor’s richest Glasgow. Nor did the noise incommode him, for he was born to it—indeed he was an ex-riveter himself. “Noo—see here, my mannie . . .” The big man stopped. Two of his three boatyard hands had drifted near, to stare with undisguised interest at the encounter, hope of dramatic entertainment in every line of them. “Yous!” he bellowed, and a great hand thrust out at them menacingly. “Scram!”

They melted away promptly, urgently obedient if regretful. Most people did behave thus discreetly, around that part of Glasgow, when Roddie Roy MacGregor spoke his mind.

But not so the seedy-looking and part-inebriated intruder. He was still standing his ground, if with a certain rhythmic oscillation. “Mr. MacGregor,” he said carefully, earnestly. “I have a pro-proposition to be making to you. As one patriot to another, just.”

“Patriot? Bluidy wars! You nuts, or sump’n? What the hell d’you mean—patriot?”

“Just what I am saying, whatever. Och—but I could be saying it a whole lot easier out of this noise, Mr. MacGregor!” And the speaker looked about him a trifle wistfully, amongst the litter of boats, planking, oil and paint drums, donkey engines, ropes and miscellaneous nautical gear, for cover from the storm of sound. But receiving the reverse of encouragement, he sighed. “I was after listening to you last night, see you. In the Dock Tavern. Man, Mr. MacGregor—you were magnificent! Just magnificent. A real patriot, my God!”

“Aw—shurrup!” The big man actually looked embarrassed. “Enough o’ that crap. An’ for Pete’s sake, dinna ca’ me Mister, like I was some wee toffee-nosed stinker!”

“Och, well—as you wish.” The other produced something between a bow and a shrug. Sensing a chink in the giant’s armour, he pursued his possible advantage, unfortunately but necessarily at the pitch of his lungs. “Never have I been hearing Scotland’s wrongs so right movingly put. Hic, never! An education it was, just. I was saying to myself—Callum Mackay, I was saying—that gentleman is a patriot. And more than that, I was after saying . . .”

“Aw—pit a sock in it!” The MacGregor glanced almost apprehensively left and right, in case any of his men could have worked back near enough to hear any of this shameful nonsense. “You’re fu’, man—drunk as a bluidy coot! Awa’ hame an’ sleep it off. An’ if you still got sump’n on your mind, you can come back the morn’s morn, when you’re sober, maybe . . .”

“I am sober now, my goodness!” The visitor thrust out his unimpressive chest, and rose to wavering tip-toes to prove his point. “I am not drunk, my Chove. It is a damned lie to be saying that I am drunk! And I am as good a p–patriot as you are, Roderick Ruadh MacGregor—you that was saying that Scotland was lost for want of independent men, whatever! That was saying that it was the big political parties that were the, hic, ruin of the country. That it would be taking two thousand pounds apiece to be putting an honest man into Parliament—and another thousand to be keeping him there. You that said that if you were in Parliament, just, you’d . . .”

“Crickety-jings! Will you hud your tongue, man!” Last night had been a big night in the Dock Tavern, something of an occasion, and a man could not be expected to remember everything that had been said. Especially with politics to the fore. But this crazy coot was practically shouting his folly now, and unfortunately MacGregor’s yard was not big enough for shouted embarrassments to be missed by attentive ears acclimatised to the surrounding din. He grabbed the other man’s arm in a fierce grip, and propelled him along almost at a run. But it was inwards that he ran, not out towards the entrance gates but over to a tiny box-like structure that obviously once had been the deck-house of some diminutive coasting steamer or trawler, with the legend OFFICE painted in erratic characters in red lead on the door. Into this kennel the visitor was thrust—and when Roderick MacGregor followed in after, stooping and almost sidling to get the door shut, the box was filled to capacity and the newcomer pinned against a bulkhead. But at least there was a sort of privacy—and less noise.

“Noo,” the MacGregor said, breathing heavily, “—if you got sump’n on your chest, git it off, see. An’ look smert aboot it. I got work to dae. An’ nae mair o’ yon patriot–stuff, see. I dinna like bein’ ca’d names.”

“Never a name would I call you, Mister . . . och, er, Roderick Ruadh,” the other assured, eagerly now. “No, no. But only a real patriot could have spoken as you, hic, spoke last night, about Scotland’s sorrows and the blackguardly English Parliament at London . . .”

“The hell wi’ the bluidy English Parliament! An’ the hell wi’ Scotlan’, tae! Scotlan’s done, see. Jist done. Yellow. Sae yellow we’ll no’ knock a herrin’ off a plate for oorsel’s. We havena a chance—we’re aye ootvoted an’ sold doon the bluidy river! But what’s that to dae wi’ you, eh? You didna come here to jaw aboot Scotlan’ this time o’ the morn, my Goad? For if you did, you wee runt, you can bluidy-weel scram oot again . . .!”

“I came here to talk about Scotland, yes—in a sort of a way. But mainly about money, see you—och, lots of money.”

“Eh . . .? Money, d’you say? Hell—you crackers, as weel’s fu’?”

“I am not, no. And that is no way for a gentleman to be speaking to another gentleman, at all. Here is myself bringing you word of all the money that you could ever be needing, thousands and thousands of pounds just, to be putting your fine honest men into the Parliament, like you said . . .”

“My Sufferin’ Sam! See—anither time, my mannie. When I’m no’ sae busy, see. No’ the day . . .”

“Another time and it will be too late, MacGregor!” The other drew himself up impressively. “It is now, or never, just. You want the money?”

“Aw, gee—skip it, Mister. I dinna want ony money, no. No’ the day. No’ a bean . . .”

“Can you deny, man, that you said that you were wanting thousands of pounds of money? To be saving Scotland? Last night. That if you had—how much was it now—thirty thousand pounds, thirty thousand pounds, just, could be saving Scotland.”

“Och, maybe. I said that Scotlan’s done if we couldna elect decent honest independent guys to the blasted London Parliament instead o’ thae party yes-men. Aye, I said that. An’ I said I ken’t guys that would dae it—right guys that would pit Scotlan’ first an’ a’ the time, an’ no’ give a damn for the bluidy parties. Aye, that would go doon to yon London an’ chivvy the daylights oot o’ thae party bosses, baith the toffee-nebbed Tories an’ the wee snivellin’ Socialists. Aye, I ken them, a’right. Good guys. But they havena the money. Naebody that’s got that sorta money cares a red cent for auld Scotlan’. That’s what I said. An’ what o’ it? It’s true, is it no’?”

“Surely, surely. I’m never doubting it. Myself, hic, I am no politician, at all. But for two thousand pounds, you were saying, you could put a man into the Parliament, with another one thousand, was it, to keep him there? Half a dozen it was, you said, you would need, to be waking up that London? And you not getting elected every gentleman that stands, at all. Thirty thousand pounds, it was, you said you needed . . .”

MacGregor groaned. “What o’ it?” he said wearily—and it was not often that that man allowed himself to be reduced to weariness by another’s eloquence. “What if I said it, then?”

“I can put you on to thirty thousand pounds. Och, more—lots more. Hundreds of thousands of pounds, likely,” the other said, simply.

The big man’s sigh was like a gale in that confined space. It came out wordlessly.

“True, it is,” his visitor insisted. “I was trying to be telling you last night. In the public house. But, och, you pushed me away. I fell. Rude, you were. I do not mind a glass myself, now and again, but och, hic, a gentleman should not be rude with it!”

The great hamlike fists so close to the little man clenched. “Look, you wee Hielant baistard . . .!”

“But, och, I’m not holding it against you, Roderick Ruadh. No, no—not me. For you are just the man for me, see you. The very man. For a gentleman the likes of yourself—and a boat-hirer, too—it couldn’t be nicer, at all. A gift, as you might say.”

“Eh? What’s sae bluidy nice, noo? What’s a gift?”

“Och, yourself. And the boats. And these people, after the treasure, see you. In this galleon. Easy it would be . . .”

“What in the name o’ Pete are you bletherin’ aboot, Jings? Treasure, d’you say? Galleons? What’s easy?”

“Just what I’m after telling you. The money. Treasure it is, in a Spanish galleon. Easy it would be, for the like of yourself—a fine big man, and not afraid for anybody. Not caring that much about the law, either, so they tell me. Taking a chance, just, and no questions asked. And thousands and thousands of pounds in it. Not for youself, of course—no, no! For Scotland. To pay for your elections. Maybe you would be standing for Parliament your own self? Och, a fine upstanding M.P. you’d make, too . . .”

“Shurrup!” the other told him. “You’re the damnedest haverin’ wee runt I ever fell foul o’. Stick to yin bit o’ bluidy nonsense at a time, will you? What’s this aboot treasure?”

“I told you. It’s in a Spanish galleon. Sunk in the sea. They’re after it, these ones. Seaweed research, they call it—but och, they could not fool Callum Mackay. I saw, hic, through them, right enough . . .”

“Save us a’—Spanish galleons! The auld Tobermory tale again! Man, what d’you tak me for? That yin’s as auld as the hills. It stinks, see . . .”

“It’s not Tobermory, at all. It’s an island called Eilean Roay. Off Innishewan. In the Inner Isles, just. Another galleon, altogether. And they’re down here now. In Glasgow. Looking for more boats. For the seaweed, they say, see you. But . . .”

“Seaweed, noo! What the hell . . .?”

“Seaweed surveying, yes. Mapping it, just.”

“My Goad! Enough o’ this!” Roddie Roy roared. “I’ve had plenty! Jings, aye! Seaweed! Galleons! Treasure! Bluidy patriots! You’re jist plain skitterin’ daft, man. You should be lockit up! But no’ wi’ me—hell, no’ wi’ me! I’ve had enough . . .”

“Och, you are not the first to be thinking that I am a man of no intelligence!” Mr. Mackay declared, sadly. “These others thought the same. They thought that I did not tumble to their game. But I knew that it was not the seaweed. Och, no—I was not born yesterday. I told them that, at Drummond’s Yard—but, och, they were not believing me. Sacked me, they did, on account of the lies of these seaweed surveyors.”

The mention of Drummond’s Yard had its effect on MacGregor. Drummond’s was a rival firm of boat builders and hirers, in a much bigger way of business. “You mean bluidy Drummond’s, doon at Bowling? Them yins? You were wi’ them?” Almost a faint degree of sympathy crept into the younger man’s voice. “Baistards!”

“Just that. Och, you have the rights of it, right enough. They would not listen to me. But they listened to these seaweed men, and they had me sacked.”

“Hell—what’s a’ this seaweed to dae wi’ it?”

“They are pretending to be surveying the seaweed, see you. The tangle. The tangle of the Isles, just. Mapping the deposits of it, they are supposed to be—round the coasts.”

“But, for why? What’s the guid o’ that?”

“Och, valuable stuff the seaweed is, these days, it seems. They can be making right comical things out of it, they say, plastics and pills and the like. But that is no matter—for the seaweed is a blind, just. It is the galleon that they are after. I’m not so daft-like as they think, goodness me. That aeroplane—for the seaweed! They’ll not treat Callum Mackay the way they did—and all for the sake of a sip or two of the whisky! I’m telling you . . .”

“Aw, Jings!” The big man ran a hand through his mop of rufus curls—something of a helpless gesture for that dominating and forthright character. “Whisky, noo! I can believe that! But aeroplanes, tae! Goad—what next?” He took a deep breath, and a decision with it. “Look, Mackay or whatever you ca’ yoursel’,—gie’s this thing straight, see. I’ll gie you five meenits. But for Pete’s sake stop dottin’ aboot like a hen on a hot griddle! Tell me so’s a guy can git the hang o’ it—or dinna tell it at a’. I dinna ken where you’re at. Begin at the beginning, will you? But dinna tak ower long aboot it. Five meenits, jist. Okay—shoot!”

The man Mackay did not obey these reasonable injunctions to the letter, of course, but he did manage to convey a more coherent story. It seemed that, about one month previously, two men calling themselves Doctors Lloyd and Thomson had hired a sea-going launch from Drummond’s Yard at Bowling, a little further down the Clyde, for the purpose of some scientific seaweed survey of the West Highland coast, ostensibly for some big chemical combine, and Callum Mackay had been sent along as boatman, by the Yard. He had sailed them up to the island of Innishewan in the Inner Hebrides, between Mull and Eigg, and there they had certainly surveyed the west coast of the island with the utmost care. Gradually, however, Mackay had begun to doubt whether all this was being done for the sake of science or seaweed, however useful a commodity the stuff had become in these days, especially when, after a little, they were joined in their search by a light aeroplane, which day after day skimmed, hovered and soared around them, over the coastline, now high, now low, and constantly in communication with the scientists by short-wave radio. Much of the time Mackay had not been with the two doctors at all, for they used for inshore work a small dinghy with an outboard motor, which they managed for themselves, leaving him on the launch. But it seemed clear to him that this was no general survey of weed deposits, and that they were particularly interested in certain quite limited areas of the coast, particularly around the north-west tip of the island. Moreover, they were notably secretive with him; and not only with him—for though there were days when the weather prevented them from operating, and they had to remain ashore, they tried to avoid all contact with the islanders and charged their boatman to do likewise. And he heard snatches of talk, on more than one occasion, that had set him thinking; also a chart that he had glimpsed, marked with red crosses at two or three points.

However, Mackay had been hired to sail the launch, not to ask awkward questions—and apparently his temporary employers were not of the sort to be questioned with impunity. They were pretty tough individuals, he indicated despite their academic background. And they clearly had not hit it off too well with their boatman anyway, being less than friendly—especially in the matter of liquid refreshment, it seemed. There had been words passed, on occasion.

Then, about a week ago, things had come to a sudden head. One forenoon, just after the launch had taken them out to a bay in the small isle of Roay, and the doctors had gone inshore in the dinghy as usual, the attendant plane had suddenly started swooping and dipping down and turning in tight circles at a certain point beside a thrusting reef. Mackay had watched through binoculars and seen the scientists sail over to the spot and start peering down with the underwater glass tube affairs that they used, and then go in for much waving and gesticulating to the circling plane above. They had come back to the launch for a marker-buoy and anchor, obviously in a mood of excitement, and returned to mark the spot. Thereafter they had promptly packed up for the day, the aircraft flying off to wherever it came from. They had muttered something pretty feeble to Mackay about having come across an extra large deposit of a rare weed—but he had not the slightest doubt that they had found the galleon that they sought. The very same day they had gone off to the mainland at Mallaig and done a great deal of telephoning. Then they had travelled south by train, telling Mackay to sail the launch back to the Clyde meantime, and there to await further orders.

Something approximately like this Roddie Roy MacGregor gathered. It might be that he took up some of the details wrongly, and certainly he sensed gaps in the account. And considerable allowance had to be made for the effect of malt liquor. But so much registered.

“But, say—what’s a’ this to dae wi’ me, man?” he demanded. “What am I s’posed to dae aboot it—s’posin’ it’s a’ true?”

“God’s truth it is. You should move in, just,” the other explained patiently, as though to a child. “Get into the racket, see you. Wide open they are for someone the likes of yourself to work in. Och, muscle-in I’m told the word is for it. Muscle-in!”

“Jings—d’you tak me for a bluidy crook?”

“No, no—not at all, Roderick Ruadh. Nothing like that. Just a man who knows his own mind, if you see what I mean. And with . . . och, with a sort of a way with him! And not that frightened of the law, maybe. I’m told . . .”

“Aye—wha’s been tellin’ you things, eh? Wha’s been openin’ his bluidy trap ower wide?”

“Och, nobody at all, just. I was hearing that you had been sort of mixed up in the Stone of Destiny business. And some other things like that. Och, fine things. A real partiot, like I said. And you could be using a lot of money for a good cause, see you. And a boatman your own self . . .”

“Look, if there’s a’ this dough in it, how come you’re no’ musclin’ in your ain sel’? Why come to me, eh?”

“Because . . . och, because I’m sacked—that is why. The first thing they were doing, these ones, when they came to Glasgow again two days ago, was to be getting me sacked. From Drummond’s. They were wanting rid of me, I’m thinking. My Chove, the dirty low thieving English that they are!”

“Eh? Thievin’? These scientist guys? Hoo d’you mak that oot?”

“Of course it’s thieves they are! Do you not see it, man? They are after doing all this, hic, secretly. The islanders are not to know. Nobody is to know. So that the Government does not be getting to know, see you! For any treasure in that galleon will be belonging by law to the Government in London. Treasure trove or some such name, they call it. These ones will want it all for themselves, just.”

“Hell, an’ I dinna blame them!” the big man cried. “The Government! What right’s the bluidy Government to it—if there’s any treasure in it, at a’?”

“Och, yes, but it’s the law, whatever. Something to do with wreck. That’s the way of it. My goodness—you’d not be wanting the like of these mannerless English to be coming up and stealing our Scots treasure, would you now? Not if you could be getting . . . getting maybe half of it? For Scotland, see you. Och, not for your own self, mind. For your elections. And you’d not so much mind taking it from the Government in London either, would you? To be getting the gentlemen you were talking about into their Parliament! You see what I’m meaning, do you?”

“My . . . Goad!” That came out on a gusty sigh. Roddie Roy’s hot eyes had lit up, now. “I see, a’ right. Aye, fine I see. But, look—why you doin’ this, my mannie?”

“Because I do not like these Englishmen, at all, that is why. They were right rude to me, many a time. They have no manners to them—like dirt they were treating me. And they got me the sack from Drummond’s Yard . . .”

“Aye, so you said. But what for, eh? What d’you dae to them?”

“Och, it was nothing—nothing at all. Just a few bottles of whisky. Half a case, no more. Man, I could have explained it all, perfectly. Just perfectly, hic. But not a chance did they give me. They talked about the police, my goodness—them! They would not have dared to go to the police, their own selves! I could have told too much . . .”

“You could go to the polis noo, if you wanted?”

“Och, mercy on us—why would I do that? What good would that be?”

“Aye. I reckon you’ve done time before, eh?” MacGregor suggested shrewdly. “In the jyle?”

“Och, well—not what you’d call time, just. A wee whilie, now and again . . .”

“Sure. I get you. So you’re tellin’ me a’ this to get your ain back on these guys? You want to dae them dirt—that’s a’?”

“That is so—in a kind of a way. Though, mind you, I’d be glad of just a little small bit of the treasure, too . . . if you could be sparing it, Roderick Ruadh. Och, not a great lot, you know—I wouldn’t be taking it from Scotland’s cause, see you. No, no. Just maybe a gold dish or two . . .?”

“Aye. I see, a’right!” the other said grimly. “I’ve to dae the dirty work, an’ you want your whack! We’ll see aboot that, my wee mannie! But, hoo d’you ken there’s any bluidy treasure in it? Hoo d’you ken it’s no’ a’ jist fairy-tales?”

“My Chove—do you . . .