The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  ‘You will not run, able seaman, you will not run,’ said Swift. ‘For as a smuggler you would hang, and as a deserter you would hang. But as an able seaman, you will be of use. You will not run, able seaman, because you will be watched. Well?’

  ‘Aye aye sir.’

  ‘And, able seaman, bear this in mind. No man has run from this ship in some little sojourn in St Helen’s Roads. Two have tried and two have died. Mr Scrivenor, sign him on board.’

  The bewigged clerk scratched in the ledger. Jesse Broad was pushed forward to sign. He held the quill clumsily and made his mark. At least no one need know he could read and write.

  When he had been led out, Thomas Fox was prodded forward. He had listened in awe to the weird conversation. His admiration for the silent, powerful smuggler had kept his tears at bay. Now, alone in the lion’s den, his teeth chattered audibly.

  ‘Your name?’ said Captain Swift.

  ‘T-T-T-Thomas F-F-Fox, your honour,’ he whispered.

  Captain Swift curled his lips back over prominent teeth in a smile.

  ‘Welcome aboard His Majesty’s frigate Welfare,’ he said. ‘I am sure you will be happy to serve your King here.’

  Thomas fell to his knees and began to cry. Keep your counsel, the smuggler had said. But he could not.

  He babbled and wept incoherently about the injustice that had been done. He cried for his family and pleaded to be sent home. No one stopped him, but the silence was profound. After a short time he stopped trying to speak. He stared through his tears over the polished edge of the table. He sniffed and staunched his eyes and nose with his sleeve. Captain Swift was smiling at him.

  ‘Boy,’ he said at last. ‘Are you telling me you were tricked on board this vessel?’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘That you accepted thirty shillings not as the King’s bounty but in payment for your flock?’

  ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘That you have a mother and father, ailing no doubt, a farm that needs you, two little sisters to cry themselves to sleep?’

  Thomas almost felt better. The captain understood! He breathed deeply, the sobs gone, his mouth hanging open. The captain understood!

  ‘Yes, your honour,’ he breathed.

  The captain smiled. Everyone smiled. The officer on his right licked his red lips with a thick tongue, the rotund officer’s little eyes disappeared into rolls of fat. Only the marine did not smile; his eyes were blank.

  ‘Well well,’ said the captain. ‘Something must be done about this state of affairs. Do you agree?’

  ‘Yes, your honour,’ said Thomas.

  This time they laughed. Even the clerk, a thin, dry man in a dusty coat and lawyer’s wig, uttered a noise like a small croak.

  ‘How about thirty shillings? Thirty shillings more? Thirty shillings on top of the thirty shillings bounty you accepted? Thirty shillings for your fine sheep? Eh?’

  ‘But, your honour. Begging your pardon. Not the bounty, your honour.’

  ‘Do you contradict me, boy? Do you dare kneel there and contradict an officer of the King! Good God boy, are you calling me a liar!’

  Captain Swift’s voice, his face, his manner, all had changed. The deep red colour mounted in his face till it was dark and furious. His flanking officers sat more upright in their chairs. Fox raised his hands to his mouth, his eyes wide.

  ‘It is you, boy! You are the liar!’ shouted Swift. ‘You freely accepted the King’s bounty in front of witnesses and now you would be forsworn. Hell, boy! You will burn in hell! Do you understand!’

  Thomas Fox was lost. He felt himself already in hell, burning in agony. He bit his lips, his gums. He wrung his hands and rolled his eyes as if already mad.

  ‘No, your honour,’ he moaned. ‘Yes, your honour! Oh please, your honour.’

  Before his eyes, behind the table, the captain rose like a vengeful being. He reached his full height, a barrel-chested fury.

  ‘In future, boy, when you are addressed by an officer, you will say “aye aye sir”. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes your hon—’

  A rattan slash bit into his back. Thomas Fox sprawled forward and was pulled upright to his knees once more.

  ‘Aye aye sir,’ he mumbled.

  Captain Swift sat down. His face was back to normal.

  As if nothing had happened.

  ‘Good boy,’ he said, almost kindly. ‘You are prepared to learn, I see. Good boy. Well, Thomas, that is my proposal. I will offer you another thirty shillings, which is alarmingly generous of me. Will you accept?’

  Thomas nodded.

  ‘Aye aye sir,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Stoutly done,’ said Swift. ‘Now, make your mark with Mr Scrivenor there. He will rate you as a landman and put thirty shillings down beside your name. And in addition, two months’ pay are due, two months’ payment in advance, you will be a prince among the people, a very prince! For all of which largesse, Thomas, I beg you will be so good as to consider your duties from this moment forward as tender of the ship’s beasts. We have two cows, some few pigs, a couple of dozen fowls, and some sheep. About twenty in all, I think, counting the flock you so kindly sold us. Too many for the manger in any case, so we have pens as well.’

  Thomas was pulled upright and stood facing the captain.

  He was bewildered by this quick-tempered, hot-cold man. He was dug in the ribs.

  ‘Aye aye sir,’ he said.

  The captain gave him an almost dazzling smile. ‘Good,’ he said again. ‘But Fox, you must not lie on board one of His Majesty’s ships. It is a serious crime.’ He looked past Thomas.

  ‘Mr Allgood, as Fox has proved himself a liar, a liar let him be. And now dismiss.’

  With this cryptic farewell puzzling him more than ever, Thomas was wheeled by the shoulder and prodded outside.

  He had proved himself a liar, so a liar let him be. He shook his aching head, but the mists did not clear. All he knew for sure was that he had made his mark. He was a landman in the British Navy.

  Five

  When Jesse Broad was led out from the cabin, he took one last look around him before he went below to find himself a mess. The breeze was still backing easterly, blowing fresher and yet fresher. The deep green of the Hampshire coast, the dry brown of Portsdown, were sparkling and pristine, the softer green of the Solent and Spithead flecked with big white horses. There were many ships of war anchored in Spithead, many merchant vessels threading among them.

  A bluff-bowed collier, close-hauled on a course that would bring her past the Welfare, was carrying reefed topsails and sending gouts of spray out from under, making heavy weather of it. He breathed the clean air deeply, speculating.

  If their mission was to the westward, they would soon be off. The frigate had an unmistakeable air of readiness. As he watched, a large naval launch, cutter rigged, cleared a gaggle of men-of-war in Spithead and smashed into the rolling seas towards them. He guessed, for no real reason, that she was bringing their sailing orders.

  He turned to the boatswain’s mate who had brought him out.

  ‘I don’t know these vessels, if you please. How do I find a berth?’ The boatswain’s mate, a friendly enough fellow when he was allowed to be, pointed to a hatchway.

  ‘Below there and follow your nose. The first lieutenant has you marked for a topman in the larboard watch. They are below now. Find a mess that wants you.’

  Broad walked to the hatchway. All around him tars were working, at scrubbing, overhauling gear, a thousand other tasks. There may have been eighty men visible had he looked about, but there was no sound of voices. They worked in silence, under many watchful eyes. At the foremast, like sore thumbs in their scarlet and pipeclay, stood a detachment of marines, long muskets in hand. Further aft another small band stood. Broad felt like spitting, but stopped himself. He knew no naval laws as yet; but that was bound to be among them.

  He let himself down the hatchway onto the gun deck. Once there he stood still, to grow a
ccustomed to the differences above and below.

  First, the darkness. Although the gunports were all lashed open, the deckspace was very dark. Ahead there was an area of light spilling through the boat-skids that slatted the main hatchway, but it spread only a few feet to either side. The rest was lost in gloom. It was an area of dim square shapes, low-beamed and hollow-sounding. There was the murmur of voices, and from farther forward a steady grinding, which he took to be the main cable as it led out through the hawse into the waters of St Helen’s Roads.

  Then, the smell. It was compounded of many things, but it made up a whole that was new to him, but which he would never forget. After the fresh cold breeze of the Channel it was like being stifled, strangled, having his nose plugged. Broad involuntarily gagged. Oddest of all was that he had not noticed it before, while he had been in irons.

  One advantage of a blow with an oar-loom then; it dulled more senses than one. The smell was rich and complex. The usual ship things were there, like tar, cordage, thick paint, wood. Then there was the rank odour of bodies, many bodies, far too many for such a confined space. Soot, presumably from the galley forward, and the strong stench of the farmyard. A jumbled animal noise ahead of him let him at least guess where the beasts were penned.

  Below everything, faint yet insidious, was a rotten smell, almost masked by all the stronger ones. It was the smell of the sewers, a smell which was common in Portsmouth’s streets but which Broad, who lived in a hamlet to the east, did not relish. The bilges. Ye Gods; this was before the cruise started, in home waters, where every cleanliness would be observed.

  His eyes more accustomed to the gloom, he walked to his left, to the ship’s larboard side, to seek a mess. Each one, he knew, was formed by the space between two of the great guns – eighteen-pounders in the Welfare’s case. The men ate between each pair, on a table slung from the deck beams overhead, and lived there during their waking hours below. He guessed that in this ship, because of her size, all but the most privileged slung their hammocks on the lower deck, one beneath. That would be the main source of the smell of dirty bodies.

  Broad was in no hurry, nor did he intend to make a mistake. He walked aft a short way, to the no-man’s-land abaft which the marines lived, a buffer between the messes of the men and the quarters of the officers, which were partitioned off by light, collapsible screens. It did not occur to Broad as strange that he should know these things. Everybody did, every seaman anyway. He wanted to spit again at the thought of the marines, billeted between the sailors and their lords. Scum, who would turn their muskets on men of their own condition to protect officers. He almost risked a spit, but smiled instead. Why court punishment for the mere thought of such vermin?

  Turning his back on the area, he walked slowly forwards, scrutinising and being scrutinised by the gaggle in each mess. They were an assorted lot, with a high proportion of aged and semi-crippled among them. Some of the messes abounded in bandannas, and flashes of gold in mouth and earlobe. Pirates, in appearance; and knowing Swift’s evil name, pirates in fact probably. Very few smiled as he walked past, but several scowled; bared blackened teeth, made warning noises. Welcome aboard, he thought sardonically. Ah Christ, if only Mary could see me now. A stab of pain and anger caught his chest. The choice of mess mattered nothing. He would not be here long enough.

  At the very next space he stopped. A red-haired boy grinned.

  Two or three older seamen nodded, one removing his empty pipe from between his gums as a mark of courtesy. Broad spread his hands to show he had no dunnage.

  ‘Mind if I join here, kind friends?’ he said. ‘I have no gear, no bad habits save wine, women, tobacco and music, sleep like a babe and do not snore. Jesse Broad, from Langstone way, in a line of business that – But now an able seaman. For His Gracious Majesty.’

  The red-haired boy laughed.

  ‘Business, he do say!’ he crowed. ‘A real live gentleman down on his luck. And look at his fancy suit and wellshaved crown!’

  From the position nearest the port a man in his mid-thirties half-lifted himself from the gun carriage. He was dressed in dark blue trousers, a blue woollen, and a neckcloth. He looked like a seaman, with a hard, closed face and big square hands. His eyes were grey, and cool, and bright. He could not stand upright, so tall was he. A great disadvantage for the naval man, as Jesse had noted even in the cabin. One of the boatswain’s mates had stood almost doubled, and the first lieutenant would have been hard pressed to have stood upright.

  ‘Your business, they say, was smuggling fine brandy from our enemies the French,’ the dark-faced man said quietly. ‘Do you consider that proper for an Englishman?’

  One of the older hands tutted in a faintly disapproving way. Not at him, Broad thought, but as much as to warn the brooding man off from making statements that could be quarrelsome.

  ‘My business I consider to be private,’ he replied levelly.

  ‘Suffice it to say I never harmed another Englishman, nor my country, by it. Brought great comfort to some I’ll wager – while not for a moment telling one word of what my business is.’

  ‘Was though, don’t you mean?’ said the red-haired boy almost anxiously, as though he half-expected to see Broad produce a bottle of brandy from behind his back.

  Broad laughed, and two or three of the others joined in.

  ‘Was indeed. Now I am a pressed man.’

  ‘As so all here,’ a greybeard said. He glanced at the others.

  ‘Well, messmates, what does you say? I say – it’s all right by me if this young fellow joins along.’

  There was a ready chorus of assent. Only the dark-faced man said nothing.

  The greybeard looked at him.

  ‘And you, Mr Matthews? What say you?’

  ‘Oh aye, Thomas Fulman, what’s the difference? Let him come in and welcome.’

  Thomas Fulman smiled, shaking Broad’s hand.

  ‘Mr Matthews is a pressed man too,’ he said. ‘And a—’ A harsh growl from Matthews. Fulman stopped, shrugged, and offered Broad a place to sit.

  It was not long before his new messmates had given him a lot of background. Much of it was wild talk, Dame Rumour in her truthless mantle, but much was interesting. His feeling that the crew were unusually old and villainous had been a correct one, apparently.

  ‘They’m gutter rats, a lot of ’em,’ said the red-haired boy, wonderingly. ‘I’m surprised they have the likes of ’em in the Navy.’

  This caused a general laugh. Broad soon realised that the boy, Peter, was famous for his simpleness of statement.

  He was as near to being a volunteer as anyone on board, having been the victim of a trick so obvious that to have fallen for it was rated as being completely his own fault. What’s more, he was genuinely happy. He had swopped the drab life of a farrier’s overworked apprentice in a rat-infested and noisome stables in the stinking heart of Southampton for the life of an overworked ship’s boy in a rat-infested and noisome frigate. But as he pointed out, the food was more regular and not much worse, the liquor allowance knocked what he’d scrounged on shore into a cocked hat, he was beaten no more often – and he preferred the company of men to that of horses.

  Thomas Fulman confirmed his view on the men, though. ‘They are a bad lot, friend Jesse,’ he said seriously. ‘The scum of every prison hereabouts, winkled out by magistrates and put to sea. There’s murderers on this deck, and vagabonds and thieves. But seamen? Oh dear, they’re hard to find.’

  ‘Where may we be bound do you think, grandfather?’ Broad asked the old man. Peter was ready with a reply, but Fulman raised his hand.

  ‘There’s been many a week of westerlies ablowing, many a week. And we’ve swung to this hook until a move in any direction would raise a cheer. But now the wind’s making from the east, I reckon, or soon will be. We’ll be under way before much longer.’

  ‘Heading westward, then?’ said Jesse. ‘Any suggestion as to where?’

  ‘It’ll be far!’ squeaked Peter. �
�We’ve a whole dungyard of farm animals. You should smell ’em when we’m battened down!’

  ‘Well,’ said Grandfather Fulman slowly, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know as how any man can tell, being as how most of the rest of the world lies out that way. But Mr Matthews do reckon as how we’re going south. West and south.’

  Broad looked along the length of the black gun-barrel to where the dark man sat slumped on the deck, his chin on his chest. He glanced inquiringly at Fulman, as if to say ‘How would he know?’

  The old man cleared his throat.

  ‘Mr Matthews,’ he began; and stopped.

  ‘Is a sea captain!’ piped up Peter. ‘He was took off of a homeward-bound ship as he was mate of her, and he was on passage to England to take up as a captain! There!’

  Jesse Broad stared at the dark man, who had not moved or sought to stop the boy. Pity stirred in his breast. Small wonder Matthews was so bitter-seeming. Another piece of fine illegality by good Captain Swift. To be impressed as a merchant mate!

  ‘Only three days off of port he was,’ said Peter. ‘Almost there. And he’s rated—’

  ‘Hush boy!’ Fulman clapped an old and horned hand on Peter’s knee and pressed. Matthews stirred his great lantern head. He looked full into Jesse’s face.

  ‘The boy tells part of it, at least,’ he said. ‘And I am rated ordinary, for making too much of the misfortune that...befell me. Let you be warned.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Broad replied. ‘And where do you think this ship is heading, if I might ask?’

  ‘You might,’ said Matthews. ‘This ship and all that’s in her is heading west, and south, far south. If I have it right, we are out to double Good Hope or the Horn. My guess is the Horn.’

  Broad did not know why, but he felt afraid. It was not merely the distance. The Horn had a cold ring of mystery to its name.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Fulman philosophically. ‘Mr Matthews may be right, but I reckon it’s the West Indies after all. Why, what is there to take us round the Horn? Eh? Nothing as I knows. And the West Indies is always short of men and ships. Mark well what I say.’