The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  This time, Slack Dickie got things right in spades. Bentley and Holt had assumed he would force Gunning to con them down the Thames, and Gunning would put them on a bank from fury, spite, or even craftiness. If they grounded hard enough the voyage might be over before beginning, and he could go back on shore and try to have Kaye arrested for attempted kidnap. Or if still too drunk to work this out, he might hit another ship and kill them all, himself included.

  In fact, Kaye had engaged a pilot priorly, straightway to the Nore, and Gunning’s fate was a washing-down with buckets, and being shackled in the hold with men he had betrayed. At first they raged at him, but he raged back, in fury and an agony of deprivation, desperate as he was to have a drink. Then, when they had been released but he was not, Kaye pulled an even smarter stroke by giving him bottles ad libitum until the thirst was gone, and he was prepared to lie unconscious for a day or so, and then forswear hard liquor for evermore (again.) When Gunning next appeared on the quarterdeck, he was pale, and clean, and workmanlike, and they were half way to the ocean, two days without a sight of land.

  The strangest thing of all was that, having been kidnapped and cheated, robbed of his family, friends, and home, he did not find it terrible. With the weather staying clear and good, and getting warmer as they ran down their southing before the long push west, he became expansive, happy, and abstemious. On that front, he was not so big a risk as the so-called surgeon, Grundy, whose inability to hold a knife and fork at dinnertime gave little confidence should he ever need to come at one with a scalpel in his shaking hand. Grundy still swore black was white he did not drink, and indeed no one had ever caught him at it. His chest was always locked, and he was never seen around the spirit-store replenishing his “medicines,” so bribery and buying silence was the only answer feasible. There were always men on any ship who could get liquor as by magic, and mostly they were not the ones who drank. Not many sailors went ashore with money in their purses at the end of any voyage. Some did. Some were very rich. And all thanks to their lordships at the Admiralty.

  Holt and William, contemplating Taylor dousing three drunken men with water-buckets one afternoon, three drunken men dragged from below almost unconscious, wondered why the Navy did it; although, of course, they knew.

  “Eight pints a day,” said Sam, disgustedly. “A bloody gallon down each neck, while still we’ve water in the tanks, sweet, fresh, and clean. Then a nip of brandy as would kill an ass or my old Auntie Mabel, even. Christ, when we reach Jamaica and the rum, they’ll all be dead or pickled in advance. How do we ever fight the French?”

  “Maybe they’re worse,” said Will. “They grow the grapes and make the wine and brandy. Strange if their sailors don’t get as much of it as ours. Though, come to think of it, our smuggler friends were sober to a man, almost. Small-boat hands, however: if half your crew’s unconscious, who’s to save your life?”

  Gunning, big and bland in shirtsleeves and bare feet, had come up with them upon the quarterdeck to watch the boatswain’s operation. He was relaxed and comfortable, no concession made at all to the fact that he was the Biter’s sailing master, as everyone supposed. He shook his head and sighed.

  “The devil drink,” he said, lugubriously. “I’ll tell you why the Navy do it, sirs; to keep men who can’t run from jumping overboard. Christ, what a life for those boys there. See Willie Morgan — the curly one, built like an ape? He’s just got wed, and his doxy’s fair enough to tear your heart out wishing for a grip of her. And Charlie, next beside him: his old lady just had twins, two month ago. Any wonder they hits the bottle? Life saver.”

  Sam, who had quite taken to the Londoner in the past few days, eyed him with amusement.

  “Two things to say there, Jack, if I can be so bold? Firstly, did you not love the bottle before you were pressed into the Navy, so what’s your excuse? And second, weren’t it you that pressed those men, who thought they were immune?”

  Bentley was amazed by Sam’s outrageous gambit, and more so by the response of Gunning. He gave a whoop, and then a chuckle, then said merrily, “Aye, fuck ’em, so it was! To keep ’em on their toes! They’ll be back upriver someday, and if Willie’s missus hasn’t any childer, or only the one he’s put into her already, then it’s proved she’s worth the marrying, ain’t it? And likewise, if she’s gallus, he’ll have living witnesses, sucking at their mother’s milk, and save the time of hearing lies and stories. He should thank me for my benefaction.”

  “And the bottle?” Sam pressed.

  “And anyway,” continued Gunning blithely, “I ain’t joined the Navy, who told you that? Have I signed articles, or took a bounty, or dressed up in shitty cast-offs from out of Pusser’s chest, like stink I have! What’s been done to me was done against the law, and Mr Kaye will pay for it one day. He thinks that he can be my friend, he thinks I’ll keep him company, poor lonely captain bastard, and he can kiss my sweaty bollocks. I can navigate and run this ship, but I’m a passenger. It’s going to cost him dear.”

  The breeze was blowing gently from a clear and lovely sky, and the Biter, hardly heeling, was running at a cracking speed, with stun-sails drawing. Around them men worked quietly, and Kaye was nowhere to be seen. Will, despite the conversation, could feel his heart expand. All problems, at the moment, were well below the threatening.

  “Not for an argument, Mr Gunning,” he said, “but me and Mr Holt here can do those things now, I would venture. You yourself have checked my sights and seen my reckonings, and I get better every day. Sam can do positioning as well as any man, and between us and Taylor and his mates, the vessel runs on grease. We’ve got your hands ditto, Morgan and Charlie Bond and what’s the tall one called, Mike Symonds, is it? They may be drunkards, but then what matters that, in our King’s Navy? They can hand and reef and steer, as so can many of our people, and your men know the Biter like their mothers’ faces. Not say you’re not needed, but might say we’d get by.”

  Gunning spread his hands in apparent agreement, nodding.

  “Oh surely, Mr Bentley, surely. And you know the Carib, do you? You’ve sailed in hurricanes? You know when the season starts and when it ends? You know when the reefs in clear blue sea below you are at safe depth, although a hundred fathoms shows no less sharper than two meagre feet? Do you know how well your anchor holds on volcano ash? What time of night the wind blows onshore like clockwork, and on which island? Of course you do, sir! You’re an officer!”

  “We’re very young, Jack,” Sam put in, as if he meant it, gravely. “Try to make allowances, won’t you?” He twinkled. “But you have sailed the Caribbean, have you? Does the owner know? Whoops! You were the owner, weren’t you? Will be again by sound of it! Or want to be!”

  Gunning laughed. “Not I. I dropped out of Biter before her bottom could; she’s served her turn for me. But in the Carib there’s more to learn than what you glean by years of merchanting, believe me. There’s Monsieur le Toadfrog with his long lean guns to fight, there’s Senor Spanish with his garlic and his thumbscrews, there’s savages who eat folk up for breakfast, and for all I know there’s pirates, still. Thank God for men of such experience as you, Lieutenant Bentley, I should say. Without you I’d be shaking in my shoes.”

  Will was not inclined to take umbrage at the tease, for Gunning had a point at end of all. In any way the man was interesting, as Sam had told him several times. He was starting to discern his friend as right.

  “Well, we have guns an’ all,” he mildly said. “And the Dons are on our side, unless there’s been another treaty I’ve not heard about. We’ve fought before, we’ll fight again, I guess.”

  The big man curled his lip so obvious that both Will and Sam turned inquiry on his face, and waited. Gunning, as if he’d been caught out as schoolmaster, sighed. He leaned across the rail, and hawked, and spat. No Navy man indeed; no officer would do that, and no seaman dare on pain of lash. He cleared his throat.

  “If we meet a canny Frenchman, I’ll take my chances overside, among the
sharks,” he said. “How long we been at sea? Ten days, twelve or more? When did you last hear a carriage gun? Where’s your gunner, armourer? On deck, examining his pieces? Down below filling cartridges? The shit he is! How long to run a big one out, do you reckon? Clear it, charge it, load it, haul it out, and set the bastard off? If Dickie is the owner now, he don’t take care of his possession, does he? Even the Spaniards, half drunk, could outgun us for speed — and probably for straightness, also. These things don’t aim themselves.”

  “But you have sailed with him — ” Will began.

  “Aye, and found him slack. What care to me, Slack Dickie’s slackness? I ran a tub for him, for profit, on the Press. What chance of battles with the French in them times? If we saw one we could run, and I could sail her, no fear on that score, eh? That Navy clerk I know, remember? Ed Campbell, you met him with his doxy on Biter once, Sal Marlor’s friend. He said the Navy’s hot on gunnery; they see it as the coming thing. Some captains — and Dick would not believe this — can loose off shots as regular as tides, once in five minutes, less; I can’t remember. How long on Biter, do you reckon? Five hours? Days?”

  Will cast his mind back to his other life, his other ship, the Welfare, his Uncle Daniel, martinet. Good God, this man was right: they’d passed the days with gun drill, cutlass drill, fist fighting, single-sticks. The big guns had been in and out a dozen times a day, loaded, set, unloaded, cleaned, run out again, sometimes fired if the captain cared to use some powder for the sake of keeping men on their toes. If the people were not up and down the masts in setting, furling, bracing, sheeting, slushing, they were up and down from magazine to gun-deck, arsehole to breakfast time, sweating till they dropped. And when the wind was calm, they got the boats out and towed until their muscles screamed for mercy and backs cracked.

  Holt’s experience was not so wide by far, but he could clearly picture it. He had spoken to other men, and been mocked because he sailed on a Press tender and thus fought English tars, not with the enemy. He knew the Biter’s Navy hands were lazy, overfed, and soft — too lazy, overfed, and soft even to run, which other shipboard slaves did as a duty, or a tradition of the service. He had known of something wrong, but had not realised before that they might have had the remedy to hand.

  “By God, Jack,” he announced, “I think you have the right of it! By God, Will, this could help to pass the time! Let’s call upon the man instanter; let’s get some action going!”

  “Instanter?” responded Gunning, with a smile. “If you mean the captain, you mean tomorrow, don’t you, Mister? Urgent means tomorrow on this ship, tomorrow or the next day. And tomorrow never comes, they say.”

  Good jest, and one Sam Holt appreciated, but Sam Holt meant today. There was another matter he was determined would not get away from him, however; he wanted one thing more.

  “Jack,” he said. “Oh, not ‘Mister,’ by the way, call me ‘Lieutenant,’ for sake of Navy form, and ‘Sam’ in private, if you wish — but Jack, you slid away from my important question: what of the bottle? You came on board unconscious, you drank in irons like a fish for two days, you call the liquor ‘devil,’ or ‘the demon,’ and — ”

  “And then I swore,” said Jack. “All that’s behind me, that I can promise you. I had been took, remember? Kidnapped, forced, plucked from my hearth and home — well, from an ale-house, anyway. It was a little need I had, for comfort and replenishment, and me and drinking now are sundered, that partnership is dead. See that cloud there, Mister Lieutenant?” He pointed, to the far horizon. “I could be misreading but I’d say that is bringing dirty weather. Strong winds, big seas. I welcome it. ’Twill wash the stink of piss away.”

  “You change the subject.”

  “No, I don’t. I have naught to hide from you, I promise you. I’m teaching you, is all. This calm blue sea, this vault of tender firmament — it’s going to blow like buggery. If not today, tomorrow. I’ll put money on it. I’ll bet a quart of brandy.”

  He’s incorrigible, thought Will, with keen amusement. He drinks himself insensible, and pretends that he don’t like the stuff, then makes a wager and a joke of it. Holt was in tucks.

  Gunning said, “Why should I lie though, gentlemen? I drink the way I whore; sometimes it’s necessary. You know that, Mr Holt, don’t you? They say that you’re in love with one. That’s the hardest, is it not? The tearing off, the ripping out of some maid’s bed and heart. Do not you sometimes feel the pull of drunkenness?”

  Sam smiled, easily. “But men don’t miss whores, surely, if it’s true that mine’s a whore. You’ve been pulled off from a lawful wife and home. Children too, for aught I know.”

  Will watched, fascinated, and held his peace. This sort of talk was out of his experience. These two men sparring made him think of wary dogs, stalking round each other, shaping up to see which was the stronger or more dangerous. Not for the first time, he realised his early life was of a different class from that of many men he knew and worked with.

  “Aye, childer too,” said Gunning, “but that’s just complications. I’ll tell you frank, Lieutenant, I’m glad to be away from land at last. No word to Kaye now, I depend on you for that, but what drove me to drink was not the loss of one, but the grabbing claws of many. Wives ain’t the worst of it, at least they only want to gossip or to moan. But you’ve seen Sal. Christ, she was locked on like a bulldog-bitch, all talk of love, and little houses in a leafy spot, and children of her own — our own!”

  Sam gave a hoot of genuine amusement.

  “But don’t she know you have a wife? Now that is foolish in you, John!”

  “Damn me to hell she knows! She sees no right in it, is all! As if there was some way I could get out of it! As if I wanted to! Then there’s the others, too: Becky and Flit and Jane and Janet and the rest of them she do not know, I hope, but she’ll find out. Just ’tween the three of us, it is a favour Dickie’s done me, although I’ll make the bastard pay for it! And in the islands, I believe, the maids are black, and don’t speak English, and so don’t answer back. My friends, that sounds like paradise to me.”

  “So it’s not the lack that drives you to the bottle, then, but superfluity! By George, you’ll not go thirsty, whichever way! And your pledge to drink no more is straight a lie, I guess?”

  The big man spat across the rail once more, with levity.

  “God’s truth,” he said. “I swear to you Lieutenant, I will never touch another drop.”

  *

  Whatever the lieutenants thought of Gunning’s good intentions, Sam in particular was fired by his plan to smarten up the people, and sought the captain’s ear on it in good short order. Kaye, languid at first, soon changed as it sank in. The trouble was, as Holt told Bentley later, he seemed to get the process arse about. Within a half a day, before he would allow a gun drill, he ordered floggings. He had, he claimed, been well aware the people were all idling, and had decided that a bomb be put amongst them. All Holt could offer, he averred, was advice as to which of all the scum most needed the whip. Groat, he added with amusement, had made it clear he thought the Lamonts were prime candidates, which only showed that Groat was mad. Who were Holt’s nominations?

  Holt, as he told William, was in a quandary. Scarce one on board did not agree with Shilling, however much or little they cared about the boy himself. The Scotsmen, almost blatantly, made mock and thwarted him, while if confronted with the captain near, they were as meek and mild as muted sheep. Muteness, indeed, was their most telling tool against the midshipman. When he ordered them to any task, they would not respond, and the more his passion rose, the tighter went their lips. He stopped short of striking them, which he would have done, and did, the bulk of men, because there was something in their silence so deeply menacing.

  Groat’s only triumph, and only he alone thought of it as such, was in the matter of their being warranted as boatswain’s mates. He had boldly brought the matter up at the captain’s table one early night when Kaye, relaxed and softened by the weat
her and their easy progress south towards their goal, had hosted a minor feast for all his gentleman save Grundy, who was lying down below dead drunk and claiming a recurrence of the ague. It had been at first a sticky do, with the tragic, clumsy form of Black Bob — since the river incident a kind of listless ghost — casting a long shadow on easy conversation. But as the wine flowed, then the brandy, the talk got easier, with opinions passed about many of the men and circumstances on board the ship. Kaye raised the brothers first for devilment, it would appear, for he held mention till a point where Bob was standing at his side with a large hot bowl in hand. The boy jumped visibly at the name Lamont, and slopped some juice, and the captain laughed at him, and winked at Arthur Savary, who blushed.

  “They are galvanic, see?” said Captain Kaye. “Their very name makes even monkeys jump. Beg pardon, boys, to all you three, but I wish they could be officers indeed! Except that they agree they cannot navigate!”

  Bentley and Holt let it ride, for they thought Dickie said this for mere effect. But Rex Shilling, quite drunk and slightly flushed, began to sputter quietly. He did not dare to speak it out, but his views were plain, and Kaye found it amusing in extreme.

  “I’m going to build them up,” he said. “Jem Taylor is a useless article, and his mates are worse. I see the Lamonts taking over from all three, Angus as boatswain, the younger ones as mates. What say you, Rex?”

  Groat swallowed.