The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  ‘Go below to your berth and get your whistle-pipe. I require you to play it.’

  The tension was becoming greater. William willed the shepherd boy to look at him. Nothing happened.

  Suddenly Peter produced the whistle from inside his shirt. He blushed crimson.

  ‘Please your honour,’ he mumbled, ‘Tommy give him to me. I think as he don’t want him no more.’

  ‘Do you play, boy?’

  ‘No sir, your honour. But he don’t want it, so I took him.’

  ‘Then give him back,’ said William coldly. ‘Take up your whistle-pipe, Fox, and play. I command you.’

  For a long moment, Thomas did not move. Peter held out the pipe, William felt sweat trickle down his neck into his shirt, the surrounding seamen watched. Then Thomas reached out a hand, took the pipe, and began to raise his head. He raised it until his eyes were level with Bentley’s chin. His face was white and tense, the muscles in his neck and cheeks fluttering. He made a great effort to raise his eyes to the midshipman’s, but they stuck at his chin. William’s own mouth was dry.

  Slowly Thomas raised the pipe in front of him. He brought his left hand up to meet his right. He tried once more to raise his eyes to Bentley’s. Failed. Then snapped the whistle in two and dropped the pieces on the deck.

  There was a noise like a sigh all round William Bentley.

  He looked aft at the quarterdeck. His uncle was gazing at the scene, had watched it all. He returned his eyes to Fox, who was staring full at the deck again, his arms limply at his sides.

  William felt a peculiar mixture of things. Cold rage, cold but blazing, and hot humiliation. He knew his face was red, knew what an incredible fool he must look. He felt awful hatred for Thomas Fox, mixed with a weird elation. An elation at the opportunity he had been given to get his own back. The punishment came to him in an instant, and he enunciated it clearly, although he could not hide a tremor in his voice.

  ‘I will beat you for that,’ he said. ‘I will beat you till you scream.’

  There was another odd sigh from the men on the foredeck.

  ‘But it will be all fair and above board,’ he added. ‘It will be at the sea chest. Ours will be the first milling, Fox, and I will beat you till you scream. I will beat you for an insolent animal, sir. And I will beat you till you scream.’

  He was white now, and trembling violently. There was dead silence as he left the foredeck to the seamen.

  Twenty-One

  Not even the bubbling Peter spoke until Bentley had disappeared. At first it looked as though he would return to the quarterdeck, perhaps even talk to the captain. But at the after hatchway he swung to his left, and clattered below.

  There was an abrupt babble among the seamen, loud and incoherent. They clustered about Thomas offering congratulations and encouragement. Thomas did not respond in any way, but Peter swelled with pride and strutted like a cockerel.

  ‘Good man, Thomas!’ was the general cry. ‘Good man to face that snotty boy; you made him such a fool he’ll never hold up his head again.’

  Peter piped shrilly: ‘He is a miserable cur, but we have brought him down. My brave messmate! Did you see how he broke the whistle-pipe? I had him in my shirt and would have learned to play him soon enough!’

  The other members of the mess were silent. Doyle’s arm was round Fox’s shoulders, while Grandfather Fulman had a look of bitter gloom. The mood of the gathered seamen changed rapidly from exhilaration to commiseration. The shepherd boy’s gesture had been a bold one, but where would it lead? To a savage beating, legal and above board. Many allowed that it was mightily unfair. Some grudgingly admitted that the midshipman was sharp. But no one doubted that the affair would end disastrously.

  Although it was the men’s spare time, the boatswain’s mates moved in quickly to break up this unseemly meeting, held solely to discuss the demerits of a young gentleman.

  Broad saw them coming and warned the others, who melted away to the wider open spaces of the deck. They sat in silence for a while as the mates lounged self-consciously about, their rope’s ends swinging lazily.

  Jesse Broad did not like to think how the silent, hopeless figure of his messmate would fare against the confident, energetic young mid. True, Thomas was older, probably a year or two, and true he was bigger, quite a bit bigger. But these advantages were nothing. He was beaten before he began, physically and in his heart. He would lie down and take anything that was dealt out. The fearful thing was, to Jesse’s mind, that the boy Bentley would have no mercy.

  He would deal it out until Fox could take no more, until his humiliation was assuaged. His humiliation was as big as his pride and spirit: enormous.

  When the mates were out of earshot, Peter hissed excitedly: ‘My, Tommy, this is a fine thing. We will make mincemeat of him. How I wish that I—’

  Grandfather Fulman growled ‘Hold your tongue, Peter!’ with such venom that Peter was crushed.

  *

  Before the milling could take place, however, the unpredictable weather of the equatorial zones stepped in with a vengeance. Throughout the late morning and early afternoon the sky had been changing almost imperceptibly. But when the squall arrived it took everyone by surprise.

  Bentley, below in the midshipmen’s berth, was still shaking with a mixture of anger and excitement when the call for all hands came. He had refused to be drawn on the subject by Simon Allen, who had been writing in his personal log and missed the whole affair, but in his head he was already planning just how and what he would do to the insolent shepherd boy. He seethed with resentment, not least at what the captain might say about his handling of the matter. Uncle Daniel had, after all, been pretty set on his little dancing band.

  Almost as soon as ‘All hands’ was piped and called, he felt the Welfare give a strange shiver. Every timber began to tremble. The quiet creaking that never ceased, even when she was in a flat calm, turned immediately into a loud grumble. The two boys, halfway to the after hatchway, looked at each other in surprise. Then, stranger still, the light pouring in from above dimmed as rapidly as if someone had turned a lamp down. There was a roar, a very violent shaking, then the ship heeled suddenly over, farther and farther. Bentley and Allen both lost their footing. They went skeetering across the deck, from high to low. Stools, partitions, food pannikins and men went with them. William thought for one amazed moment that he would be thrown headlong through an open port, but at the last moment he seized a gun tackle. There was a great shouting and roaring from the men who had tumbled down with them.

  As he clawed his way up the canted deck towards the hatch, the noise from above became enormous. The air was filled with darkness, shouts, the rushing of wind. Amid it all he could hear noises like gunfire, which he guessed must be sails carrying away.

  On deck the chaos was complete. Broad and all the topmen had been sent aloft at the first sign. The wind rushing towards them had at first only darkened the glassy surface of the sea, pushing a small steep ledge of white water before it. Iron-red cloud had appeared out of the dull glaring sky, a hard edge of spite. The cloud had climbed with amazing speed, bringing darkness and violence.

  Mr Robinson had appeared by the wheel as if by magic, sensing from within his cabin and his afternoon nap that something dire was about to happen. The helm was put hard down, hands were sent scurrying for brails, clew garnets, tacks and sheets in an instant. But the Welfare, a hive of activity, her rigging suddenly filled with panting men, sat sedate and unmoving in a stillness as yet untouched by the wall of howling air that was bearing down on her.

  When the squall had reached her, Broad was on the main topgallant yard, moving out along the footropes to the yardarm. The sail beneath him was already partly clewed up, but when the wind caught its sagging belly it carried away almost instantaneously. The greyish canvas flattened itself out in front of the yard like a rigid table, there was a thunderous series of reports as it whipped in its agony, then it blew clean out of its boltropes. Broad, pressed against
the yard as if by a great thrusting hand, glimpsed the tattered remains of it whip away forward.

  Around and below him other men fought their own desperate battles. But the Welfare had been taken all-standing, and many of her people were half drunk. She lay farther and farther over under the press of wind. Some sails were saved but more blew out to leeward. When she slowly righted herself and began to answer her helm, lightened by the canvas brailed or torn to pieces, she had lost many of the trappings of the hot still weather she had suffered under. The captain’s awning that shaded part of the quarterdeck was gone, the lines of washing rigged by the foremast had flown merrily off, flapping their arms and legs, and even the galley chimney had come adrift and taken the plunge overside. Two men, too, one from the mizzenmast and one from the main. Jesse had watched one of them hurled from a bucking yard. His mouth had been open, but no cry could be heard. He had not known him by name.

  Within an hour, the sky was black as pitch, relieved only by flickering jags of lightning. The violent wind drove torrents of rain before it, the strange motion of the ship – she was roaring through a practically flat sea at a great rate under bare poles – becoming less strange as the squall made waves, then combers, and finally a high, pounding sea. Broad and the other seamen, driven by a ferocious boatswain and his mates, got up heavy weather gear, bent new canvas ready to set, overhauled and renewed damaged running rigging, set up the stretched and sagging stays.

  In the early evening, the squall left them. William Bentley, muffled in a cloak and sick as a dog once more, surveyed the chaos from the quarterdeck, which was pitching on the short, jumbled sea. But his uncle put all the midshipmen under the charge of the master then, and for hours they worked away with teams of seamen clearing, running up new gear, organising the chain and hand pumps to clear the water taken through ports, hatchways and strained seams.

  By midnight they were in a great and steady wind, roaring them southwestward at a rate of knots under topsails and forecourse. Deck sports and milling were forgotten.

  The change in the weather brought relief to the bored, sickened crew. The change from stifling heat below decks to bracing draughts, the change from dry, cracking skin to damp freshness, was more than welcome. The bugs, as if by a miracle, lost their taste for human flesh. The cockroaches, while vile as ever in themselves, were less in evidence, presumably preferring dark and warmth in nooks and crannies to the open decks. There was sickness, but on nothing like the earlier scale; most men could handle anything now.

  And there was work. Good, hard, regular work which the seamen knew and responded to. The loss of gear may have been an unlooked-for disaster to Mr Robinson, but the men did not mind a jot. Every day they had little to think about but preparing and repairing. New sails were made, ropes were spliced, wormed and parcelled, sprung spars were fished or replaced. It was a hard, satisfying time that made the food taste bearable, and the grog like absolute heaven.

  Strange then, Jesse Broad considered, that it was at this time that the breath of mutiny that stalked the Welfare like a spectre, should have found a voice.

  Even odder, and it shook him to the core, was mutiny’s mouthpiece. It was not Henry Joyce or any of his tearaway companions, although they remained a brooding presence in the ship, a mute threat. It was not any of the more reasonable men who had been brutally flogged and humiliated in the punishments that had gone monotonously on, week after week. It was not any of the hysterical, almost insane element, of which the ship had not a few. It was his former messmate, Matthews.

  He had buttonholed Broad on the lower deck and asked if they might speak in private. This in itself was odd, especially in the cramped and noisy accommodation area. There was some privacy in a crowd, certainly; at least one could be seen talking without it arousing suspicion. But Matthews wanted a different sort of privacy. Broad hesitated. He was on watch and had been sent below to re-stow some cordage. But the chances of his being missed for a while were not high, he decided. In any case, Matthews had an air of urgency, of tension, which was most unlooked for in the man. Broad nodded. Matthews gave a tight, strained smile and led him forward. They went down a ladder into a pitch-black place that had obviously been noted beforehand. It stank vilely, the bilge water slopping audibly beneath them.

  For a few moments, Broad listened to the groaning timbers and the mysterious gurglings. He tried to accustom himself to the darkness, but the darkness was impenetrable. A dim light filtered down through the hatch opening some yards away, but where they sat he could not even see Matthews’ outline. When he spoke it was in a whisper. The note of strain was definite. The words came as a violent shock.

  ‘I can trust you, Jesse. We are ready to bring down the captain.’

  Broad heard his own breath quicken. In the stinking blackness the two men sat and panted. He was filled with excitement and terror. Also surprise. Was this Matthews talking? Matthews?

  ‘You are mad, Mr Matthews. This is most unlooked for. You are surely mad.’

  A pause. Two panting men.

  ‘Not mad, Jesse, but merely sickened. The captain is inhuman. A tyrant. A villain. If any man is mad on board this ship it is Daniel Swift, not I. It is Daniel Swift.’

  Each time one or the other of them stopped speaking there was a long pause. The whispered words faded away into the darkness, as if slowly sinking into the bilge. Broad was getting his breathing back to normal. He agreed with his friend, totally. But even alone as they were, he dared not voice it.

  Instead he said: ‘We? You say “we”. Who is this “we”? And who is sickened? It would appear to me, in fact, that since we got this wind the people are more content than for many weeks. Now that the dreadful sun and the fluky calms have been blown away.’

  Matthews blew through his nose, a whispered laugh. ‘That is true in part. But only in part. Are you fooled, Broad? Did your heart leap in gratitude when the villain offered us sports and dancing? Did you not take it as a mere ploy, another way of keeping us too busy to be hatching trouble?’

  ‘I did. Of course. And no, I was not fooled. But good God, man, most men were, and you cannot deny it! They fell into his hand like rotting medlars. And then the weather. A clincher, a clincher!’

  In the silence that followed, he detected a change in Matthews’ breathing. It was faster, harder, forced through tense nostrils, brokenly. There was a sound that could only be grinding teeth. Suddenly Matthews spoke. His voice came loud, harsh and strangled.

  ‘Like rotting medlars! Aye! They fell!’ Jesse felt panic rising.

  ‘Hush man! Hush for Christ’s sake! You’ll have us hanged!’

  Matthews did hush. Something like a sob came from his throat.

  Then he hushed. Jesse had a vision, a flash of insight. He saw the shape of a seaman, in neckerchief and slops, flying through the air, screaming mutely.

  He said gently: ‘You lost a messmate.’ Matthews gave a long, shuddering sigh.

  ‘It is no matter,’ he said. ‘It is not the reason.’ He repeated the whispered laugh. ‘But it is true; you are astute. My friend was lost.’

  Broad sat silent, considering. Good God, one could not blame the squall on Captain Swift. To lose a friend was hard, but then…

  He thought briefly of Hardman, his dear friend Hardman. Then of Mary and his home. A deep sadness sank slowly into him. He shuddered.

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Matthews replied.

  ‘But no matter,’ he went on. ‘Listen, Jesse Broad, you are astute. I was smashed by that loss, I will own it. But it was not the only reason. And you are not entirely right about the rest of the people, neither. There are many more than you ever dream who will rise up at the word. I promise you.’

  ‘The scum?’ asked Broad, brutally. ‘Henry bloody Joyce and his henchmen? I would rather stay penned by a beast like Daniel Swift than a beast like Henry Joyce. At least his tyranny is certain, not an untouched powder keg.’

  Another sigh.

  ‘You a
re too astute. Yes, many of this crew are scum. To rise up would perhaps be to unleash a monster. But believe me, there are others. Good men, true men. Men who have been whipped, men who have been scorned. Good God alive, what of yourself? That scummy boy who spat in your face! Other men will not stand such humiliation with equal fortitude. Did you not want to rise and smite him? Did you not want to break his back across your knee?’

  ‘All right. So if I did,’ Jesse replied. ‘But Matthews, what are you saying? That boy Bentley has a right, if he so desires, to play the beast. There is no one to stop him, no law to touch him. But if we rise up, we die. If we overcome the captain, if we overcome the officers, if we overcome the hell-rotten marines who would shoot us like dogs, still we die. The Navy does not forget. The Navy does not forgive. They would track us down across the oceans. They would follow us to hell. Or heaven.’

  Somehow the tension had eased between them. They breathed gently. The silence was long and thoughtful.

  Matthews’ answer, when it came, was a roundabout one. ‘Jesse,’ he said. ‘I am a navigator. I was an officer, as you know, and I have much experience. We are heading for Cape Horn, there is no doubt of that. And by the time we reach it, the season will be far, far advanced. It is, indeed, much later than wisdom dictates to attempt to double the Cape. Swift was presumably held up, whether by lack of crew or lack of Admiralty orders, God only knows. And then the doldrums. We flogged about the Line for longer than has ever been my experience. It will be very late when we reach Cape Horn.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, friend Jesse? And this. When we double the Horn – if we double the Horn – no one will be able to follow. For months. In the winter season there, the wind blows westerly and it blows like the cannons of hell. Once we are round the Horn no ship will be able to follow. For months. Months.’