The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  “I was not told,” said Will.

  “Indeed. Holt’s word-of-mouth was that I should, if possible, get the message out that he was safe to Dr Marigold’s establishment for you. One Annette, who could be trusted. I could not make shift. Or, let’s say, shall we, I did not. In excuse, I was told it was not essential, at a pinch you would know, or guess. In truth, I had become afraid of Kaye, for which I stand ashamed. I could say I did not know by then that he’d decided to avoid the Sussex venture, but that would be another lie. My message should have been, for you to run to Sussex on the instant and save Holt’s life, get him away. However stiff and bloody it will be down there, he is now abandoned. He has been left to face it quite alone.”

  “They have to know he’s there first,” said Will, robustly. “We planned to spy the leaders out if we could not get up a force to take them. He’s pretty good at secrecy, he knows the area like his hand. When we do not turn up in Biter — ”

  Some look in Kershaw’s face caused him to stop.

  “What?” he asked. “Surely they could not guess him out? The only way they’d know is if — What, Slack Dickie would betray him? But how? But why?”

  “I do not know,” Kershaw replied. “Leastways, I don’t know if he’d sink that low, or if he thinks it that important. The how would not be that difficult, would it? If you know certain people.”

  “What, the smugglers? Mr Kershaw, what is it you mean? Are you suggesting Kaye is linked up with them somehow? He is a Navy officer! And he agreed! He would have… he was taking the Biter round to apprehend them, save that this Frenchman thing came up. I do believe he thinks that is a more important venture, to move against the enemies of the Crown.”

  Indeed, he thought, he has told me to my face. He has called me unpatriotic over this very thing. Kershaw, three feet from him, remained unmoving, face unreadable. If Kaye is tied to them, Will thought, and my uncle is tied to Kaye, then what means that? Impossible! Whatever else Swift is, he’s honest. And he’d ignore a hundred smugglers, if he could kill one Frenchman. They are the enemy.

  Kershaw watched his face as if he read it. He said quietly: “The French ship we’re seeking is very fast, I’ve heard of her. Two dipping lugs, damn near as long as we are, she moves like shit from out a goose and goes to windward like a knife. Kaye gathered information from the time you saw him at the Lamb. I heard him speaking with one man that I knew of old. The Biter may come up with her somehow, if she be taken by surprise, but if she runs… She was built of fir, in Kent, by Englishmen. She was built for speed, you know, not honesty. The man who skippers her knows these coastal waters as well as I do; better. Mr Bentley, I make one prediction only, for I cannot answer any more. Whatever reason Kaye has given you for attempting it, we will not get near to her, or catch her under sail, we cannot. And Mr Holt is on a Sussex beach alone. I have said too much.”

  He walked away towards Mr Gunning at the con, who was conversing quietly with the helmsman. Will ached with tiredness, soon to go off watch, but he tried to struggle with what Kershaw had implied but would not say. Kaye’s move against the French lugger was a blind, a cover, because he did not want to land at the Adur, and he had made it impossible for Will or Sam to seek out any other aid in time. The move against the French would do no harm in any case; the lugger was a match for them, would show them heels. But even less than half successful as a venture, it occurred to Will, it would do Slack Dickie good in their lordships’ eyes: to spy out, find, attack a vessel full of men who should be chained in jails and prison hulks. The irony, that Sam should have put him up to it, by telling of Céline. And now might be a sacrifice.

  The last part, in his cot a half an hour later, kept Will awake, but not for very long, because he felt he could have died for lack of sleep. The part about why Kaye should want to protect the villains on the beach — if he did — why he might let Sam be killed — if true — he could not hold to with his mind at all. He saw Deborah in her torn shift, face racked with fear, surrounded by a baying horde. Deb could be dead already, dead many hours, dead to him for ever.

  Like all the other things he faced, there was nothing he could do, at all, about it.

  *

  From the very first part of the action against the Frenchman, it looked to Will as if Kershaw had got it wrong. The engagement was undertaken fast and brilliantly, a combination of fine seamanship, and bravery, and luck, with Kaye elated to the point of bloodlust. His tactics were excellent, although they did cost several men. The French lost more, however, including their pilot-captain. It would be an extremely close run thing.

  They’d gone right round the foreland before they picked up signs of their quarry, and Kaye himself, after poring over Gunnings chart, had climbed up to the maintop to look forward through a glass. This had caused some cynical amusement in Will’s breast, for he had decided Kershaw’s version would be right in outline, if not in detail. Slack Dickie with a spyglass, keen, did not ring true. Indeed, he’d climbed down again disconsolate, with nothing seen. It was a half an hour later, with the daylight almost gone, before a cry went up.

  It was the absence of good light that let them bring it off. Lieutenant Kaye, instead of piling on, ordered Gunning quietly to shorten sail, and made as if to bring Biter to and snug her for the night. From a distance she looked like a merchantman, a tubby, snubby collier from the north. The lugger, lying offshore a half a mile, must have studied them, but decided there was no danger there. She had two boats alongside, disgorging men it seemed, and an empty one, a yawl, was heading for the shore. Impossible to tell if they were starting the loading job or finishing, but Kaye was in the mood to wait and see. Within five minutes, his brig was almost drifting, under rags. The wind was freshening with the dark, and to the north-west black, rolling clouds were piled. It might be a very dirty night.

  Astern of the Biter as was her way, she towed the cutter and two yawls, along with the captain’s skiff, and he told Will off to see two of them hauled up close for manning. Will, with a strange sensation, ordered both John Behar and Tilley to head his crew, while Silas Ayling, who had been made up to boatswain’s mate after Shockhead Eaton’s death, took Jem Taylor’s as his own. Naturally, with an action close to hand. Lieutenant Kaye stayed in command of Biter, with hands enough to man the guns and the boatswain to control them. Then Kershaw, who was standing awkwardly near Gunning at the binnacle, asked Bentley if he would take him with him, in his boat.

  This struck Will odd, but Kaye, who’d heard it, waved an airy hand.

  “No use to me, sir!” he told the midshipman. “Take him and welcome! Drop him overboard!”

  “Thank you. sir,” said Kershaw formally. Jesu, thought Will, Mr Kershaw, you were wrong. Kaye relishes this action, he is positively transformed.

  “Mr Bentley,” said Kaye, “the plan is this. When I send you and, Whatsisname, the boatswains mate, you are not to board, d’you hear? You’re to cut the chickens from off the mother hen, which, by loss of paying customers, will give them pause for thought. They’ll have small arms, no doubt, but their boats will be jam-packed and yours will not. Run rings round them, pick them off like birds I do not care, they’re only bloody Frogs. Meantime, I’ll put some shots in the mother and try to slam her down. Then, if I lay alongside of her, you board too. Do you understand that?”

  Slack Dickie insults a man without awareness that he’s doing it, thought Will. God save me from the very rich and stupid. He nodded rather curtly, and acknowledged with a crisp “Aye aye, sir!” It was by no means a bad plan, when all was said and done.

  By the time they’d drifted close enough, they could see their timing was exactly right. Two boats were pulling from the shore into the wind which, fluking near the foreland, was dead ahead and gusting stronger, but the last boat to have unloaded was being hauled on board. On the luggers foredeck men were gathered at the anchor windlass, and the fore was being cleared for hoisting. Had the wind been lighter both sails would probably have been left up and brailed, but ev
en with her muffled main still up the mast, the smuggler was starting to sheer quite wildly in the swell. It was almost time to go.

  Lieutenant Kaye concurred. He gave the order and the men, with whoops, piled across the bulwarks and down into the boats, still shielded from the vision of the enemy. They were bristling with arms and could not be quiet for the life of them, which hardly mattered any more. As Bentley, then Ayling, gave their orders to let go and stand by to hoist, Gunning, at a word from Kaye, roused his men to clew-garnets, braces, tacks and sheets, and to break out canvas with the utmost speed. Will’s cutter dropped astern, the main went up, she blew off in a gust around the Biter; up helm and sail her off. In half a minute more they had the mizzen set, sheets trimmed, and were surfing across the waves towards their quarry. Ayling’s crew were only slightly slower.

  The speed and skill of Gunning’s men was also most commendable, and must have shocked the lugger’s people horribly. Kaye had the wind-gage, and was close enough to run down and ram if that had been his intention. Gunning spread everything, and the bulky brig, from slopping like a wicker basket full of fish, dug in her nose, and then her arse, and surged. Jem Taylor and the gunner cleared ports and ran out guns, with excitement sweeping the deck like wildfire. As he raced away, Will saw a small black figure approach Kaye on the quarterdeck, with a glass and bottle, and foreboding swept him. Do not celebrate too early, Dick, no, don’t do that, he thought. Then he braced himself against the tiller and told Behar to ease the mizzen sheet.

  Kershaw was beside him in the cutter’s well, gazing intently at the scene ahead, his one eye shielded from the spray, and he first saw the flaw in Kaye’s plan. He said something to Will, was not heard above the wind, then shouted it.

  “They’re not his boats! He will abandon them! Look, he’s going to cut her free!”

  Will glanced, and saw a seaman on the lugger’s foredeck raise an axe above his head. At the same time the main began to shake and thunder with the brails let fly. The foreyard was already rising up the mast.

  “Blood!” he shouted. “They’re shore boats! You have it right, sir! Tilley! Hugg! Get your muskets up! Get me a helmsman for a guinea!”

  He had not thought of it, he did not know why, but nor had Kaye. The heavy boats to bring out the French escapers were not going back to France, but were merely ferries. Clearly the most important people were on board already — and the bulk of others — and the rest were seen as extra cash, expendable if need be. Both boats were wheeling for the shore, with their sailors pushing and shoving at the landsmen to get them clear from off the sails for hoisting. On the instant Hugg’s musket cracked, to no effect apparently, then Tom Tilley’s, and shortly afterwards three more from Ayling’s boat. Like firing from careering horses at a leaping hare, not any chance at all, except by simple luck.

  From windward came the crash of heavy guns, as Biter hauled her wind to bring her starboard side to bear. Will saw shots pluming in the rolling sea, but the lugger was not hit. Her fore was almost up, her anchor warp was cut, her main hard in, and already she was forging ahead with extraordinary speed. “Hah,” said Kershaw beside him, and Will knew exactly what he meant. The lugger was brilliantly handy, given men who knew her, and the Frenchmen clearly did. Once she had speed up, and with a bit of fortune, she might get clear of Gunning’s rolling tub completely.

  “He’s wearing round!” said Kershaw, in astonishment. “I wonder what his game is now!”

  Will could not afford to look. He chose a target from the two ahead, then bellowed and gesticulated until Ayling understood and shaped up for the other one.

  “Hold fire, men!” yelled Bentley to his crew. “We’ll go in close to get a good one, then I’m heading up.” To Kershaw he added, but maybe not loud enough to hear, “If Kaye can wing her, we’re near enough to go on board perhaps.”

  “She’s falling off,” said Kershaw, who had heard. “He’s coming round to pick them up after all, is he? ’Fore God, I don’t know!”

  As the lugger turned upon her heel, she fired off two guns at Biter, and one shot tore a perfect circle in her forecourse. The Frenchman, on a dead run, screamed down towards her ferries and the Biter’s boats, careless of her chance to claw off and outmanoeuvre her attacker.

  “He draws eight feet or less,” said Kershaw, laconically. “He’s luring Kaye on to the ground, the stoat. How much does Biter draw?”

  Will did not know, but there was no doubt she was deeper, perhaps two feet or more. She’d squared up, and was plunging in a line straight after her prey, as if water depth was no consideration. Will felt sweat break out beneath his arms.

  “Gunning knows,” he said. “He knows these waters and he’s very good, when sober.”

  Tom Tilley grinned at him, having overheard. “He’s sober, sir,” he said. “He hasn’t touched a drop for days. Look, shall we fire? You can see the buggers’ teeth.”

  Shots cracked out from Ayling’s boat, and a man in the nearest ferry slumped. There was a flash from near him, a ragged stream of smoke, and then a pistol-snap, barely audible.

  “No,” said Will. “We’ll save it for the mother hen. She’s coming round.”

  The lugger was close in now, downwind of them and — just — the shorebound boats. She was going like a running bull, but as she reached the ferry the helmsman gybed, then luffed her sharply to kill her way. Men were jumping up like spiders on a web, with hands on board dragging them by clothes and limbs and hair. Sails flapping, head to wind, she forereached to the second boat, which smacked into her, its mainsail dropped, a huge confusion of men jumping to get out. Ayling’s gunners let out a ragged fire at quite close range, and two or three men fell but were picked up again. The lugger began to drop astern with helm reversed, and as she paid off both yards were dipped most prettily, when she began to gather forward way with entrancing ease. Biter was bow on to her, with few guns to bear, but the Frenchman’s all were clear to fire.

  “She has to turn,” said Kershaw. “She’ll hit the bottom else. Ah — there she goes.”

  As Biter swung hard round on to the wind, Will heard a ragged fusillade. The instant it was over, and before he heard the one that did the damage, the cutter received the most amazing blow, he felt her lift and smash beneath him. He was sprayed with something wet. not sea but something warm and heavy, and in front of him Behar’s trunk sat at the mizzen sheet, blood weeping from his headless neck. Ahead of that, a swathe of crimson stretched out to the bow, with mangled men adorning it. This was all in silence, he was not aware of any sound at all. The bow, in fact, was open to the sea, its whole starboard side removed from just behind the stem. Before time was properly renewed, he watched the sea roll in and swamp the boat, but very slowly. Then he heard the screams.

  The lugger, having done for her, damn nearly ran across the wreckage then. There were many men on deck, seamen and pick-ups from the shore, and some were openly aghast at the carnage they were bearing down on, and had caused. At the very latest moment the helm went down, she sliced up towards them, sails let fly and all a-shake. If she was life-saving, it was each man for himself, and some on board the cutter were past help anyway. Tom Tilley jumped, and Tennison and Wilmott, then Will, after pushing the crippled Kershaw into the reach of willing hands. The cutter crunched along the lugger’s side; two screaming men rolled off and under, the water staining red. By the time he was on board, his soaked pistol held foolishly in hand, her sails were filled and sheeted and she was ploughing on.

  The fusillade that had sunk the cutter had hit Biter; it appeared. Her forecourse was down, the yard cocked across the deck, the canvas covering and impeding men. She was athwart the seas and rolling heavily, as other men strove to clear the decks for gunnery and sailing. In common with all hands, William watched from the lugger’s deck as she forged under Biter’s lee at about a half a cable’s distance. The action seemed all over, and although the French skipper could have put in another volley, he did not do so. But as the Biter rolled away from them, expo
sing her weedy larboard side, four of her guns were fired almost simultaneously, and by luck or judgement they caught the roll just right. First the flashes, then the strikes, then the reports. Will looked aloft and saw the top part of the foremast sag then break, the sail dropping like an enormous bat. From aft, though, came a burst of screaming. A ball had smashed the rail, missed the mainmast by inches, and killed and crippled, mainly from splinters. One of its victims was the pilot-captain, whose leg was severed at the groin. He bled to death in half a minute, without a word or cry.

  There was cheering on the Biter and another, single cannon-shot, that went wide. But the lugger, with only her mainsail set, still forged through the water fast, and stayed close-winded. None of her fore hamper had gone overside to drag her back, and the helmsman, small, dark and saturnine, handed the spokes as if on a summer outing. Within a minute they were clear ahead of the Impress brig, and in five they went about on to the larboard tack to sail round her on the windward side to clear into deeper water before standing south.

  Before that, though, the Biter men were rounded up as prisoners. There were only five of them, and it was not roughly done, perhaps as only Will had brought a firearm on board, and that quite drowned for all to see. The common men were separated off by common Frenchmen and had their sea knives taken off them, then they were herded forward as if to share a can — which, for all Will knew, they might. He gave his pistol up, politely and butt-first, and Kershaw indicated with his hand to show that he had nothing. As they went aft men were washing blood away, but the looks they got were curious, not informed by rage or hate. In the cabin, seated at the table with four men, was Céline.

  “Mr Bentley,” she said. “In less tragic circumstances, I would say well met. I do not understand how this came about, this sad contretemps, but now, it seems, you are our prisoner. I am sorry for that.” She was vaguely as Will remembered her to look at, but of a different manner entirely. Small, dark, but with a heavy seriousness, as if she were in command. Indeed, the men who flanked her said nothing, although they followed the conversation as if they understood. He found her manner rather chilling; and her assumptions.