The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  They were well-near through one of Thomas’s favourites, a song about a maid who set out to sea in a tiny boat to find her pressed lover, when he saw the purser walking along the deck. He stiffened, although there was nothing to indicate that the man was seeking him, and the words died on his lips.

  She wrung her hands and she tore her hair Much like a maiden in deep despair.

  Her little boat, ’gainst a rock did run, How can I live now my William is gone?

  The sonorous voices of the seamen, blending with the rich keening of the elbow-pipe, rolled away in the warm wind. The purser, reminiscent of a suet pudding, his blue coat sticking out over his stern in the way that had helped earn him his nickname, picked his way among them delicately. When the song had ended, the conversational murmur from the non-singers had died too. Butterbum was a much-hated man. But one that nobody dared to cross.

  The glistening, sweat-streaked face lit up when the purser spotted Thomas. The boy’s blood ran cold. Jesse Broad, who had been lounging nearby, got up casually and walked towards his friend. He stopped three feet from Thomas, looking coolly at Butterbum, who stopped at about the same distance.

  ‘Play on, play on!’ said the purser, in a transparent attempt at comradeliness. ‘It is a fine piper you are, Irishman. Do not let me interrupt!’

  Doyle did not move, the pipes lying flaccid in his lap. The washing of the seas and the mild thrumming of the cordage were the only sounds.

  ‘Well then,’ said the purser, in a changed tone. ‘You boy, there is a matter of some hens. Come with me.’

  Thomas half-stood, glancing helplessly at Jesse once, then at the deck again. Broad said mildly: ‘It is the dogwatch, sir.’ His tone was neutral; he took care that he could not be accused of insolence or insubordination.

  Butterbum looked at him bleakly, his face furtive and mean. At first it looked as if he would turn nasty at Broad’s intervention, but a sort of growl arose from the resting men.

  They were off-duty. They did not like this man upon their deck.

  Suddenly the fat purser capitulated.

  ‘See me in half an hour,’ he told Thomas. ‘The captain wishes to entertain his officers to some fowl. According to my reckoning we have seventeen left. I will inspect them later. Make all ready and perhaps you would do me the great favour of selecting the plumpest. Hm?’

  No one responded to the joke. The purser smiled about him nervously. He shrugged and waddled aft again. As he got out of earshot an obscene muttering followed him.

  Shortly afterwards the men were singing a jolly love song, but Thomas was in despair. Doyle clearly sensed it, for when the song finished he would play no more. Thomas took his hand, leading the blind musician below. Jesse Broad did not interfere. He merely hoped that Butterbum’s count of chickens tallied with the number that were there.

  It did not. When they were below, in the stifling heat between decks, Thomas flung his arms round Doyle’s neck and wept. For he had never told about the three fowl that had died in the storm, nor of another one that had keeled over since from an obscure sickness. He had not had the courage. All four of them had been put through a port in the dark of night, but that was not likely to be believed. The purser stood to make commission on the fowl, as on all the livestock and foodstuffs on board, and kept an exact tally of anything that was killed and eaten. If he said there were seventeen hens left, it was certain that there would be only thirteen.

  When the fat man came below after the end of the first dog-watch, he did not make a song and dance at his discovery. He presented Thomas with the figures, and pointed out calmly that the fowl were four short. Thomas could not plead. He stood staring at the deck, the blind man behind him holding his shoulder, and he emitted a low, barely audible moan.

  After asking three times for an explanation, the purser smacked his lips with an air of ending the matter.

  ‘Well then, sir,’ he said. ‘I can only conclude, the conclusion is inescapable, that these hens have been stolen. By you, or by person or persons unknown. Well?’

  No reply.

  ‘You are not prepared to claim that they were stolen from your care?’

  No reply.

  After a pause the purser sighed. In the sound was deep satisfaction, a kind of quiet triumph that sank into Thomas Fox’s soul.

  ‘Good,’ said Butterbum. ‘Then I think I know what I must report to the captain.’

  Padraig Doyle made a sound; a horrible, groaning, inarticulate cry. The purser looked at him with deep distaste, turned on his heel and strode towards the ladder.

  *

  When Joyce was brought on deck to be punished, he was a bad sight. During the many days of his confinement he had never been released from his iron fetters, for any reason whatever. He was a wild man, huge and violent, of the sort that was common on the sea. On land, Broad thought, he would not have lasted long. He would have been a thief, or a highway robber, or a hired killer. But whatever he did, he would have been marked for death, for the land could not contain such a wild, fierce animal. In the merchant marine, too, he would have been a mad dog, uncontrollable by the officers, a terror to the men. Only in the Navy did he have a chance of life, and that a paradoxical one. A chance that hung always in the balance of his usefulness as a seaman and fighter, and his disruptiveness as a drunken beast.

  When Joyce was brought on deck, the beast looked as though it may have been tamed. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing warm. It was still steady in the north east, but it was losing power daily as they approached the area of the doldrums.

  Every stitch of light-weather canvas had been bent, all was drawing, but still she threw no great bow-wave. Much of the time, an increasing amount, the water bubbled only gently along her weed-festooned sides. Henry Joyce stood in the sunshine blinking, blinded.

  He looked like an animal, but an animal tamed. Still wearing only the canvas drawers he was arrested in, his filthy torso was washed by runnels of sweat. His face was pale, untouched by sun or wind, and it had a sickly, deadly look to it. He had fed on nothing but ship’s biscuit and tank water. A weaker man might well have died. Around wrist and ankle Joyce had red, running bands of ulcerated flesh. His drawers were soiled and stinking, his legs beneath them quite black. His hair and beard, wild and long, were matted, stiff with filth.

  Only his eyes gave the game away. As Broad stood silent on the deck, along with the whole ship’s company, he looked into Joyce’s eyes. The beast was not tamed. Perhaps it was untameable.

  The scene was a formal one, that everyone knew and everyone hated. There was an air of brooding violence over all, accentuated by the heat of the day and the feeling that they were witnessing a commonplace, an oft-repeated bloody ritual. Accentuated too, by the smells; the new smell from Joyce, of shit and dirt and squalor, and the smells of unwashed bodies as the naked sun beat harshly on the mass of gathered men. The officers, lined across the quarterdeck, were almost clean. But they stank too, in their tight blue coats and high collars, they stank of sweat and armpits.

  Hottest and most uncomfortable of all, on the deck abaft the officers, were the marines, in red coats, gaiters, cockaded hats. Unshaded in the violent, violent sun. A glare came off their scarlet coats and shining accoutrements.

  Their faces were shining also, fixed and shining, covered in veils of sweat that flowed ceaselessly from hat to collar. Broad could almost pity them as they stood like that, in silent, unmoving agony. But each marine had a musket, each marine would shoot a sailor down. Better to save one’s pity for a beast like Henry Joyce than a marine.

  As he studied the bald-fronted, pig-tailed head of the man to be flogged, there was a flash of movement among the ranks of soldiers. The movement was brief, but he could tell which one had staggered. There was a white face, a chalk-white face, among them. It was thin with agony.

  At a brief sentence of command, Joyce was spun round and triced up to the grating by knees and wrists. He made no attempt to struggle. His back, like his chest, was di
rty with slime, blackish with whitish runnels. Captain Swift began to speak.

  ‘My brave boys,’ he said, in his quiet, penetrating voice, ‘you are to witness today the punishment of the vilest rogue unhung in His Britannic Majesty’s Navy. His name is Henry Joyce and the charge against him, which myself and my officers have found proven, is a multiple one. To put it in the language of the people, for I wish to blind no man with fine-sounding words, this rogue is guilty of all that is intolerable in a British tar. He is a liar, a cheat, a coward and a bully. He has spoken mutinous filth, incited his good-hearted messmates to sedition and calumny, and resisted arrest so violently as to cause injury to the ship’s corporals in the exercise of their duty.’

  Swift’s peculiar eyes ranged over the assembled men. His skin was dry, his breathing even. He did not appear to feel the heat, dressed though he was in linen and heavy-duty cloth. He started to speak again, and his words were bitter. He held Joyce up as an example of creeping evil that every man should feel with shame and fear as a silent force that could bring them all to ruin.

  Thomas Fox had seen the marine stagger, too. Unlike Broad, he recognised him, although it took some little time. It was, he was sure, the ill man, the man who had been doubled up in the sick-bay when he had been confined there also. But how could it be? For many nights, since his own ‘release’, as he had lain among the mass of hammocks, he had heard the muted screams of the soldier, and had had no doubt that he was dying. Now the man was on the quarterdeck, his face a portrait of agony, a thin line of spittle oozing between his lips. Thomas was fascinated.

  There was another man in the marine contingent he thought he knew, although his certainty had diminished as time had gone by. This was the one he had taken for his cousin Silas, despite the cold lack of recognition in his eyes. Although their paths had not crossed for many years, he would probably have dared to test him in the street, though on board the Welfare, he hardly dared greet his own shadow. In any case, the marines were hated by the sailors, he had learned that. In some odd way, although they ate the same food and drank the same drink, they were the enemy, as much as the warrant officers and the gentlemen aft. Indeed, they lived between the two factions, and one of their duties was to protect the high from the lowly. Their only duty, some said, for it was a hard thing to have them idling by, when seafaring men were hard-pressed at working the ship.

  The nondescript, sweating face before him remained a puzzle. He turned his attention to the captain’s words.

  ‘Had I not been a merciful man,’ Swift was saying, ‘I could have – nay would have – had this scum kept in irons and finally court-martialled. As you know, each and everyone of you, the result could only have been his inevitable death. Believe me, I would see the life choked out of him at the yardarm with not inconsiderable pleasure. But I am, for my sins, a merciful man.’

  He turned to face the boatswain.

  ‘Mr Allgood, please. Have your mates do their duty. I need not repeat the usual warning as to the fate of any I consider is not applying himself to the task with all his might.’

  ‘Aye aye sir. May I be permitted to enquire the number of strokes you require, sir?’

  There was a long pause. The men were deadly silent. ‘That, Mr Allgood, depends largely upon the will of your inferiors. I require…we require,’ he amended, waving his hand to indicate the officers, ‘that this dog be rendered insensible. At least one hundred, however. At least one hundred.’

  A low groan went up. The captain smiled his bitter smile.

  ‘Unusual crimes require unusual remedies,’ he said.

  Even the lowest seaman, however, knew that such a number was quite illegal unless under due sentence of court-martial.

  It was not long before the brutal rhythm became almost soporific. The whistle of the cat, the thud and cut as it hit into the broad, immensely muscular back, the grunt of effort as the mate in question jerked the thongs back, ran them through his fingers to clear the blood, then swung once more with every sinew cracking. At the end of each dozen, Mr Allgood pointed to a fresh mate with his rattan. Brows were wiped, palms rinsed in a bucket of sea water, the rhythm taken up by the new man.

  William Bentley, standing not far from his uncle, found the whole affair difficult to keep in his attention. It was distasteful – although he was used to it now – the way his face and uniform kept getting flecked with particles of blood and skin. But he was hot, as hot as Hades, and he feared it would be a long operation. He also had seen the red glare of beastly hatred in Joyce’s eyes. The red glare of rum as well. It was apparent that the dogs had fed their friend until he almost overflowed. Please God he would soon pass out, from the alcohol if not the whipping.

  The noise behind him, a clattering accompanied by a soft thud, came as a relief. After nearly an hour, Joyce had not yet uttered a cry, nor even closed his tiny, savage eyes in their rings of dirt. He was built like an ox, and was as stubborn. The boatswain’s mate paused in his stroke, his eyes flickering past the officers.

  Captain Swift gave a cry of rage.

  ‘Lay it on! Lay it on there, God damn you! Keep your eyes on the task, you scum!’

  The surgeon slipped away and into the marine contingent like a sparrow. William heard feet behind him. There was a quiet commotion.

  Swift’s face contorted with fury. He took a step forward and turned to look aft. At a sign from Allgood, the mate continued laying it on, impassive, sweating.

  ‘God hang you, Mr Adamson,’ said the captain. ‘What do you think you are doing? Leave that damned malingerer alone and get back here this instant!’

  William dared not look round. The sea of faces in front of him were staring at the quarterdeck. He could guess what had happened, though. The marine who had collapsed was on duty at the captain’s insistence. He had told Adamson that morning he would tolerate no more shirkers, and to William’s amazement the little man had argued back. His action had bordered on the insolent, not to say the insane, given his uncle’s low opinion of him, but he had said quite firmly that the marine was ill, not shirking, and that to send him to his post would be an act of folly. At this word Bentley had actually blushed; he expected some terrible and sudden explosion of retribution. There had been none. But in silence his uncle had glared at the surgeon, and in silence the surgeon had left. The marine was now on duty.

  Mr Adamson spoke drily to the captain.

  ‘I beg permission to inform you, sir, that this soldier is desperate ill. I think he is dying.’

  There was a ripple of excitement from the ship’s company. Bentley jumped as his uncle rushed past him, screaming in rage.

  ‘Silence! Silence! Silence!’ he shouted. Then he seized the upraised arm of the boatswain’s mate, and stopped his backward swing. A gout of thick blood ran off the man’s hand onto the captain’s face and silken collar.

  ‘Cease this punishment!’ he shrieked. ‘Cease this instant, I say! This man is drunk, drunk as a lord, drunk as a buggering bitch! Allgood, dismiss these scoundrels and rig the pumps. I want this bastard soused until he’s stone sober, do you hear! Then we’ll start again! And this time your men will do the job properly! And there will be no dinner and no grog for anyone on board until this swine is flogged insensible.’

  Watching the closed, angry, faces of the people as they obeyed their new orders with a sullenness bordering on insubordination, Bentley had an uncomfortable feeling arise within him. He could not quite pin it down, but it was unfamiliar and exceedingly disturbing. It was the first vague stirrings of fear.

  Two and a half hours later Henry Joyce passed out, although with the awful possibility that he was merely shamming, even after the appalling punishment he had received. Forty minutes after that, the marine, who had resumed his monotonous high screaming, vomited blood and expired.

  Eighteen

  At dinner that evening, Captain Swift was the very picture of gentlemanly urbanity. He had invited all his lieutenants, and the four young gentlemen. The captain of marines, bril
liant in wig and dress coat, graced the opulent cabin, and behind Swift’s chair there stood his servants, domestics from his home estate, stiff, silent, and unseeing, except when passing a decanter or serving from the covered silver bowls. The stern windows were open wide, allowing the musical bubbling of the wake to be heard. It was quiet and soothing, becoming occasionally louder as the rudder was turned to a sharper angle to keep the Welfare on her course. Above their heads the tread of Mr Robinson could sometimes be heard, the ever-watchful master.

  The food was excellent, although by now the only fresh vegetables left on board were turnips. But there was no shortage of these for captain and officers, and they were cooked in butter. The first course had been fish, caught half an hour before it went in the pan, and accompanied by a good white wine. Captain Swift sailed always with his own cook, who had both his legs and both his arms, unlike the pensioners who usually served that office in His Majesty’s ships. This man had been with Swift’s father on his lands ashore, and did office as cellarer also. He had nothing to do with the people’s cook, a consumptive old man with a crippled back.

  As the red wine went round before the second course was served, Swift turned the conversation from the pointless politenesses they had been mouthing to the matter that was in all their minds.

  ‘I should have hanged that fellow Joyce after all, I think. If he recovers he might still be a fine enough seaman, but I smell trouble. What say you, gentlemen?’

  William glanced about. It was not his place to speak, nor the other boys’. By custom, Mr Hagan should have first say. Custom prevailed. ‘A stubborn dog for a certainty,’ said the tall, red-haired man. He paused, twiddling the stem of his glass. ‘But after all, Captain Swift, if he proves troublesome, we can surely hang him next time!’