The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Then another pain and he started to rise. It was a magical pain, excruciating, and his body had to follow it, to rise under it. The man was pulling him upright by a thin tuft of his remaining hair.

  Through his tears Thomas Fox looked at the slacklipped, toothy face. It grinned.

  ‘Charlie Jefferies at your service,’ said the boatswain’s mate. ‘Beg to present the compliments of Captain Swift and Mr Allgood. A small matter of punishment, I believe. On account of you a-trying to do for yourself.’

  Again Thomas was too ill to really understand. He was half-pushed, half-carried out of the sick-bay and along the main deck. The stench was alarming, even after the dirty straw he had lain on. Everywhere he sensed guns, vague shapes, and men in the gloom. He stumbled over the main cable once, falling to his hands and knees. The deck was wet and slimy.

  Climbing the steep ladder into the open air would have been beyond him if it had not been for Jefferies. He was carrying a stiff cane with which he jabbed the boy frequently and hard. It was like a goad such as Thomas might have used himself on a set of stubborn animals. He was whimpering with pain, and a growing fear of the punishment or torture he was to face.

  They emerged from a hatchway in the forward part of the ship and to Thomas Fox it meant a renewal of terror and misery. He could see nothing, for a long while, but greyness; greyness and cold. All around the labouring vessel the sea was like slate. All the greenness and warmth he knew had gone. The sea was a cold, intensely threatening colour, overlaid by a grey-whiteness as the tops of the waves were blown out and forward in front of them. And the waves!

  In his eyes they were enormous. They rose steeply to the weather of the ship and tore down upon her. Each one must crash straight on board and break away everything in its path, he thought. Enough of them actually did break over the bulwarks and roll fast and solid across the waist to make his fears seem perfectly justified. Sometimes the mainmast grew out of a wilderness of living sea that tried to climb higher and higher up its weather side.

  He stood quivering in the strong, icy blast of wind that tore at him, until a stroke from Jefferies’ rattan slashed across his back. He scrambled onto the deck, with the boatswain’s mate immediately behind him.

  ‘Forrard,’ said Jefferies tersely. ‘Mr Allgood wishes to see you right in the bows.’

  The deck was sloping, and there were many men on it. They were sheltering, for the main part, on the high side. Most of them wore tarpaulin coats or long frocks of canvas. Their faces were muffled deep into their necks, and nearly everyone wore a hat of some sort. Thomas, who no longer even had a jacket, tried to keep his teeth from rattling as he moved slowly from one handhold to the next. Right behind him, all the time, was Jefferies, hurrying him, pushing him, starting him with the stinging cane. It struck Thomas as impossible, this movement from one part of the ship to another; but other men left their sheltered points and scurried about like goats at shouted orders. He was still filled with nausea, but his head was clearer. He managed to duck to avoid the larger lumps of solid water that broke over the bow. But by the time they were clear of the foremast he was wet through.

  The chill in his stomach got much worse when he recognised one of the two figures who came towards them. It was small, a lot smaller than himself, wearing a long tarpaulin and a shiny tarpaulin hat. From under it the small clear face looked out, eyes bright. A few strands of blond hair were plastered across the bottom of the hat and the forehead. It was the midshipman who had kidnapped him.

  Thomas staggered and might have fallen, but Allgood, who was beside William Bentley, put out a hand like a dinnerplate and took him by the shoulder.

  ‘Where are your clothes, my scrawny boy?’ he said. ‘What sort of gear do you think that is to start your life as a sailor, now?’

  ‘I think the big shirt suits him very well,’ said the small midshipman. ‘It leaves him plenty of room to manoeuvre.’ The boatswain glanced at him.

  ‘As you say, Mr Bentley, sir,’ he replied. ‘Plenty of room to move. I was just thinking though – perhaps he’ll be too cold to move a muscle soon.’

  He still had hold of Thomas. Despite the weather, his enormous hand was warm. It almost struck him as being somehow friendly.

  ‘Then perhaps you had better see to it that he works sufficiently to keep warm, Mr Allgood,’ the midshipman said. ‘I do not have to remind you that this is intended as a punishment.’

  Mr Allgood thrust his great whiskery face into Thomas’s.

  ‘And as such,’ he boomed, ‘shall be hot work, my fine young lamb. Right, sir,’ he said to Bentley. ‘You can leave ’un to me and get back to shelter.’

  ‘Thank you, boatswain,’ the boy replied icily. ‘I shall decide for myself when to return to my duties aft.’

  The boatswain moved his shoulders under his coat. It could have been a shrug, or perhaps he was just keeping his balance. But he turned his back on Bentley.

  ‘Listen, my bright spark,’ he told Thomas. ‘We have a task for you that Captain Swift do think will fit your abilities. On board this vessel, the illustrious Welfare, it is known as being the liar. And if you recall, you did lie when you come on board of her.’

  ‘Please sir, I—’

  ‘Silence!’

  Thomas looked from the bland hairy face of the dripping boatswain to the contorted face of the midshipman who had shouted. If only he knew what to make of it all. Surely this boy, this child, was not in control of the mountain of flesh and muscle who was now smiling faintly? But who had himself, in any case, been roaring only seconds before. He wanted to cry out, to tell them that he did not understand, to ask them how he was meant to respond. He kept silent. If nothing else, he had learned that much. He said not a word.

  Bentley spoke. His voice was thin, irascible.

  ‘Captain Swift has been more than generous with you, Fox. He has decided to neither flog you, nor lock you in irons, nor try you by court martial for your attempted suicide. But for now, starting from the moment Mr Allgood thinks fit to put you to it at last, you are to be the Welfare’s liar. That is, you are to clean the heads. And I want them clean. They shall be inspected. If you fail in this duty a real punishment will quickly follow.

  ‘It has not gone unnoticed, youth, that you have a tendency to slackness, to malingering. If you ever have occasion to return to the sick-bay, it will be because you have been given a more proper reason. Do you understand?’

  Thomas goggled. The boatswain shook him.

  ‘Say “Aye aye sir” to the young gentleman,’ he said.

  ‘Aye aye sir,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Good,’ said Allgood. ‘Jefferies, get about your business. And now, my lambkin liar. Let’s get to the heads.’

  Because of his condition, and the condition of the weather, Thomas Fox had forgotten, if he ever knew, what the heads were. No one had used them since the Welfare hit the dirty weather, more especially since it had come round to meet her from the south and west. The bluff bows were constantly burying themselves deep into the short, steep seas, which every so often broke right over the foredeck.

  Standing right in the eyes of the ship a few moments later, after he had clawed his way along with the boatswain and the midshipman, Thomas looked down beside the bowsprit completely puzzled. Below him, if he ignored the yellow cliff of the bow itself, was nothing but the rigging and gammoning of the huge, groaning spar. And a sort of small gallery. He stared.

  ‘Good God!’ shouted the midshipman, after a short pause. ‘Do you know what I think, Mr Allgood? I think the scoundrel does not recognise ’em at all. He does not know the heads when he sees ’em!’ It was true. All Thomas could see was a gallery, with seats. In the seats, about eighteen inches apart, were cut round holes. Through the holes the boiling sea was visible. On the side of the bow nearest him and below, cut in the bulkhead, was a stout door or hatchway. It was closed and battened.

  The boatswain gave his deep, loud laugh. It was whipped away by the wind.

  ‘The
m there,’ he said, ‘is the heads. The jakes. The privies.’ Another laugh. ‘Although there ain’t too much privy about them when all’s said, eh?’

  ‘And they are to be cleaned,’ said Bentley. ‘It is Captain Swift’s orders that men who defile the air with lies must clean the shit away. You, Fox, will clean the shit.’

  At that moment, Allgood, whose eyes had never stopped flicking at the marching grey seas the ship was punching into, gave a grunt of warning. His ham-hand gripped Thomas suddenly and he tightened his hold on the bulwarks. The Welfare’s nose began to dive with alarming speed. Down and down she went into a trough, as if she were falling. It seemed to Thomas that she could never stop. The midshipman had lost his balance and was scrabbling for a handhold. When the ship hit the bottom, as it were, Bentley fell to his knees at the shock. Thomas looked, fascinated, as the sea, deep green when seen so close, rose in front of them like a wall. The surface of it rushed upwards, up the bow, up the stem, bursting round the gallery. For a split second, weird great gushes of water spouted through the privy holes. Then the gallery was gone and the sea rose higher.

  In the roaring before it broke over the foredeck, he heard Allgood yell at him to hang on. He did, with every ounce of his strength. He was saved though, as he well knew, by the fact that the boatswain had spared a hand for him as well as holding the bulwarks.

  The sea broke right over them. He thought he would drown before it cleared. He thought his arms would break as the solid water tore at his body. He would have cried out in terror, but his lungs were too busy fighting the cold salt invader that tried to fill them. Time stopped. The fingers of the boatswain bit into his shoulder and back. There was nothing except freezing water, pain, a roaring in his ears.

  The deck beneath him began to vibrate. It pushed upwards urgently. The Welfare began to rise, to fight back. Before he fully knew it, the water around his head had become less solid. His lungs sucked in a vast gout of air and spray combined. He coughed and spluttered. Then his shoulders were clear, and rapidly the water rushed past him, across the planking and over the sides. The weed-draped forefoot appeared, as the Welfare lifted herself high before beginning the next plunge.

  Mr Allgood, streaming like a fountain, smiled at him. ‘That was a bitch of a sea, eh my buck!’ he said gaily.

  ‘The seventh son of the seventh son!’ He laughed at Thomas’s blank look, then said to himself, in a lower tone: ‘And where’s our fine young gent, I wonder?’

  William Bentley emerged just then from the lee scuppers. He was white about the face, except for his mouth, where bright blood streamed from a torn lip.

  ‘Ah,’ breathed Allgood. There was a strange note in his voice. But the hairy face was as bland as ever.

  As Bentley limped up to them, the boatswain said stiffly: ‘Sorry about your accident, Mr Bentley, sir. I should have sung out earlier.’

  The midshipman was shaking; not much, but visibly. ‘You are wasting time, boatswain,’ he said. Despite himself his voice was gaspy. Thomas looked at the deck, at the storm headsails, anywhere except at his face. He was beginning to work things out.

  ‘Get that dog to his task immediately. I shall have an eye upon you.’

  He turned on his heel and walked to the weather rail.

  Then he began to work his way aft.

  It did not occur to Thomas immediately, exactly what Bentley’s last remark had meant. He took in the scene on the deck, where several knots of men were trying to secure everything that had broken free before another big sea swept her. On the quarterdeck stood a few officers, in streaming tarpaulin. Behind them, the wastes of the Channel, bleak and lonely.

  He was shivering with cold. He could not be wetter.

  He had been covered way over his head in water. The keen wind pressed the wet cloth to his thin body. His teeth began to chatter. He turned his eyes to Mr Allgood, fear growing in his stomach. The midshipman had spoken of his task. There was a cold light in Allgood’s eyes.

  ‘No,’ muttered Thomas. ‘Oh no. Sir, I could not.’ Allgood let go of his shoulder.

  ‘You heard the young gentleman,’ he said. ‘Get about your business before you regret it sorely.’

  The heads could not need cleaning in this weather, he thought. They were being constantly washed by these waves. And no one could use them.

  ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘Please sir. I cannot.’

  A new, hard note came into the boatswain’s voice. ‘Get down there, boy, before I take a cane to you. God damn it, do you dare to defy orders!’

  Thomas Fox could not raise his eyes from the deck, although he saw nothing.

  ‘Oh please sir,’ he said.

  At last, with lifeline and a stiff broom, he found himself in the beakhead gallery. He was not sure how he came to be there. He knew the boatswain had lifted him, had knotted a rope about his waist. His fingers were almost too nerveless to hold the rail, let alone the broom. His head swam. Each time the gallery dipped and the sea rushed up towards him he went rigid with shock. The memory of that monstrous wave that had engulfed him was unbearable.

  His bewilderment over Mr Allgood was complete. He was a mighty man, in physique and in power on the ship. He had saved Thomas, and yet he put him to this agony. Even now he stood above him, roaring occasionally when Thomas went numb, and striking out with the free end of the lifeline which he held. Thomas felt nothing except the crashing rise and fall of the bow, saw nothing except the green seas that turned to raging foam as the ship ploughed into them. He moved the broom this way and that as if he was in a dream. The agony was never-ending.

  When the boatswain at last told him to come back inboard, Thomas was not able to. His legs were too weak for climbing, and his fingers could not grip. He looked at the grating beneath his feet, watched the foaming stempost, his head hanging.

  ‘Look at me, boy!’ roared Allgood. But he could not raise his head. In the end the boatswain hauled him onto the foredeck as if he had been a parcel. Thomas half walked, half crawled to a hatchway, blindly. If another big sea had raked the deck he would surely have been washed away.

  He fell through the hatch and lay on the deck below. Peter found him, and got him to their mess.

  Fourteen

  The reason no more big seas came a board, although Thomas did not know it, was because the weather was moderating. It was also hauling back to the east. When dawn had broken, Broad was way aloft, sent there with other keen-eyed men to search for the Frenchman. The seas were empty. In every direction there was nothing but rolling water, white-capped and angry, and torn, lowering cloud. They had given her the slip.

  Jesse Broad did not have long enough to decide if he regretted it or not. For by the time of full daylight, another hazard was seen by the highest man on the mainmast. After he had sung out, the other men in the rigging strained their eyes for signs of land. A few minutes later Jesse could see the faint line of breakers.

  A great pain seized him. All chances of being weather-bound had gone. The French frigate that he had hoped might force them to make port for repairs had vanished in the night. He stared until his eyes ached. The coastline of England. And now the Welfare would claw off of it. He wondered if he would ever see that shore again.

  Shortly after the sighting, all the lookouts were called down to normal duties, save the highest. Given the small number of skilful men he had, Swift’s way was to make them work on sundry tasks, not necessarily in their normal parts of ship. So Broad, nominally a mainmast topman, was not spared other work as well, even on other masts. It was a killing system. The duty now was to put the ship about, to turn her away from those hungry breakers and steer her out into the Channel. Jesse and the other men raced each other to the deck, where the boatswain’s mates waited with their rope’s ends and rattans, the officers hunched like vultures on the quarterdeck, and the midshipmen strutted like vicious guinea-fowl, ready to pounce and tyrannise for any reason or none.

  The Welfare was still carrying the close-reefed topsails and storm heads
ails she had worn throughout the night. But handling them was even harder if anything, now that another day had broken. More men were down sick, no one had eaten a hot meal since God knew when, and very few had slept. The exhausted sailors stumbled to sheets and braces like donkeys; hands were clumsy, and easily torn through long immersion in sea-water. Broad’s head was splitting as he did his share of the work. His brain was numb and his limbs seemed all to hurt.

  As he crossed from one set of running rigging to another, he staggered against Matthews, head bent into his weather-proofed coat, his face almost hidden in an oiled hat. Matthews gave him a sort of smile.

  ‘Glad you signed to serve the King, Mr Smuggler?’ he said sardonically.

  Broad smiled back.

  ‘As glad as I guess you are to be handling hemp instead of giving orders,’ he replied. They passed on to their respective positions.

  Huddled under the shelter of the weather bulwarks later, Broad remembered storms at sea when he’d been running cargoes with Joel Gauthier of the Beauregard, a great man for dirty weather. But this was different. He could not remember ever being so weary, so hungry, so cold. As for the end of it – well, in his old trade, the end was always just over the horizon. As an able seaman in His Majesty’s Navy, what end could he ever hope for?

  His sombre thoughts were not helped when he saw Thomas Fox being brought on deck by Jefferies. Grandfather Fulman, sucking salt-water through his cold and empty clay, told him ‘the poor boy’s appointment as a liar’ would last a week, or maybe much more. Of filth and unremitting work.

  ‘But in weather like this?’ said Broad, watching the isolated trio at the bow. ‘Hell’s teeth, no man on board could use the heads, let alone clean them. Are they mad?’

  Grandfather Fulman looked around him carefully under his dripping, shaggy eyebrows.

  ‘Mad?’ he muttered. ‘Ah, friend Jesse. There’s many on board of this vessel—’