The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

“Well, sir, if I might make so bold? I think it… I think it dangerous,” he said. “It is not to me, sir, do not think that. But… but other men… the brothers are… they anger people, sir. I fear if they gave orders, there would be…”

  He tailed off. He was blushing worse than Savary, whose face burned in sympathy. A most odd army man, Bentley thought.

  “Well?” Kaye enquired silkily, after a pause. “There would be what? Speak out, Rex. We’re all friends here, y’know.”

  “There would be bloody mutiny,” said Sam. He laughed. “Mr Shilling is right,” he added. “Apart from any other thing, Jem and his lads would fight it tooth and claw. They — ”

  “In any way, it’s wrong,” cried Shilling, interrupting. “They don’t deserve it, sir, they’re disobedient. I mean; no, that is wrong, they disregard… there is insolence in them.”

  Kaye’s amusement was clear to see.

  “Disobedient,” he said. “Well well.”

  His humour was still high, so Holt traded on it.

  “I tell you, Captain, a damn good plan might be to have a milling for the prize,” he said. “Jem and Hugg and Tilley facing the Lamonts across a chalk-line on the deck. They could slug it out to kingdom come, and the best men win it all. It would come to that, in any way, Mr Shilling is right on that score. If you make the Scotchmen up to boatswain and mates, the boatswain and his mates will make a war of it. To death, I should not wonder.”

  “A milling match,” said Kaye. “Hmmm, interesting. It would be a bloody afternoon.”

  Will said, “And Taylor and his boys would win it, sir. Jem’s small but hard as adamant; Toms Hugg and Tilley are just veritable bears. If you wish to give the brothers fair reward, this would be one way of doing it!”

  “Fair reward!” said Shilling, sounding furious. Then bit it off, although he damn near choked himself to do it. Ah, Will noted gloomily, he learns at last. But Kaye was musing.

  “They would win, would they?” he muttered, almost to himself. “Aye, a bloody afternoon, indeed. Well, I will think of all this, gentlemen,” he continued more publicly, “and thank you for your views and information. Thank you, Mr Groat. Illuminating.”

  In the days that followed this, Rex Shilling convinced himself, apparently, that his ideas had put the captain right about the brothers. Somehow, it appeared to give him confidence, particularly face to face with them, who bristled enmity when he approached still, and failed to give voice of any kind to anything he might demand of them or say, although they did his orders, with bad grace. Below decks, Will heard it rumoured, the mid took care to keep well clear of them, singly or in group, in case they cared for confrontation, and he should lose. But in company he would boast, even to the Scotchmen’s faces, that he had kept them down, and put the captain straight on their deficiencies. Their eyes now filled with hatred for him just at sight.

  He tried to have them flogged, when Dickie decided flogging might be the way to smarten ship, but luckily for him, perhaps, the captain seemed to think that he was jesting. What had they done that was so wrong? he asked, and something in his eye quelled Shilling’s answer. Both Holt and Bentley mildly averred that there was no one of the people whose transgressions needed whipping out of them, because they largely thought it true. Apart from a little drunkenness, a little swearing, a little incautious sodomy, the people had been very well behaved; their only fault was sloppiness and slack, which Sam and Will had hoped to school them off with working up the guns.

  However, once he’d had the good idea, the captain went whole hog with it. His first candidates were the deserter he had brought on board the night before they’d sailed from London (on the grounds he’d cost good money, but turned out too unstable to replace the soldier stabbed in Deptford, who had later died), the three ex-Gunning crewmen whose drunkenness had set the whole thing off, and Josh Baines. Poor Baines, the ginger rat, had done nothing worse than usual (which was very little), but Kaye did not like him, as nor did anyone, which made him very popular as a choice. Bentley pointed out stiffly to his captain that one man was merely half-demented, one was guilty of not even that, and the other three could not receive three dozen lashes as proposed because that was illegal by the articles. Kaye curled his lip, contemptuous, but avoided argument with this young, but stubborn, officer. All five, he said, would get a dozen straight. Clear decks and set them on, and call all hands.

  Slack Dickie Kaye was infamous among the officers of the Navy that knew his name, and famous, possibly, among the other, lesser, ranks. By reputation he had never flogged a man, and it was widely held to be through idleness, or lack of understanding of the art. Discipline on the Biter, when a small-manned tender of the pressing service, had been bought with sheer indulgence, and the presence of Jack Gunning and his paid crew to do the seaman-work. Her Navy men, almost alone in the service in a war, had been given leave on shore, and what’s more had chosen to return each time because their life was such a fizz. In and out of London River, good food from one-leg Raper, tarts and taverns always close to hand except when in the Downs or the approaches (sometimes as much as five whole days at sea — disgusting!), and so much space below, they could forget their hammocks and sleep on the decking if they so desired, to share their beds with rats and cockroaches, and sometimes lovely ladies from the docks. Now she was crowded, like other ships of war, and Geoff Raper’s good fresh food was giving way to shit, provided not by the local Thames-side markets but from out of Purser Black’s dank barrels, purchased God knows where and God knew when. And Dickie’s first reaction to increasing disaffection — was the cat.

  In an odd way, that first time, it was almost festive. Savary’s soldiers mustered in their finery, looking fitter than soldiers did normally. Sunshine, food, and lack of marching had been a rest-cure for them, and their officer was startling in his cleanliness and healthy glow. He looked so much like a pretty maiden that Will idly wondered if some of the sailors’ songs he’d heard had come to pass, and Arthur Savary was indeed a lovelorn maid who’d come following her poor pressed man to sea. Somehow he doubted it, for Savary showed little interest in any man on board, and in fact used to shave, in the sunshine, in the waist, with a big cut-throat razor that made the sailors who lusted for his slender tail go weak in case he nicked his peachy skin. Any case, when Will had gone to the quarter gallery one time to defecate, he’d been at squat already, and Will had glimpsed his yard.

  Tom Hugg had seen the gratings lashed in place — two side by side, for Kaye had decided on a show — and the company had mustered for the spectacle with good grace enough. They were well out by now, not far from the Azores, where they might stop with luck to pick provisions up, and the weather was killingly hot. Pitch was bubbling on the decks, and the smell of sweat from many bodies could catch the throat when wafted on a zephyr. The wind had dropped to nothing, and the Biter was racketting and crashing idly in a leaden, lumpy swell, rolling like a bitch. It was most uncomfortable, and Midshipman Shilling, first time in a proper sea in all his landlocked life, was showing it.

  The five transgressors, hands tied in front of them, were brought up together and positioned by the rail. Kaye stood at the poop-break in his smart dark coat and wig, with Sam and Bentley flanking him, and Shilling a short way off. Savary stood down below them, next his three gallant soldiers, whose muskets-butts were glazed with sweat. If one slipped out of hand and hit the deck and fired… Will Bentley bit his lip, remembering another time and place, an unexpected pain. He looked at Taylor, and recalled the giant boatswain Allgood, and his vicious mates.

  Taylor was not vicious, though, and nor, despite their size and rough demeanour, were Tilley and Hugg. Their faces were blank as they listened to the captain’s litany of the sailors’ dreadful crimes, which at times was shouted above the crashing of the gear above. Taylor was glancing constantly aloft, fearing that the hamper might break free and come raining down, smashing heads. Jack Gunning ditto. Though he had scorned to come and see his former shipmates whipped, in the e
vent he could not stay below. The torture of the sails and yards and rigging was a torture to him also; he could not hide it from his face.

  Kaye’s hoped-for soldier was the first triced up, alongside him Edward Higgins, pressed from Biter’s early crew. Higgins, stripped to the waist, stood stoical, not bothered by a punishment considered well-earned by such a drinking session, considered almost a nothing to a man as hard as he. He laid his cheek against the grating, closing his eyes as if drifting off to sleep. His back, broad and hairy, was criss-crossed with old scars. So he had been a Navy man before his river days — or in some common jail.

  His peroration finished, Kaye gave the nod to Taylor, who passed the order on to his two mates. They stood like bulls, cats hanging from their hands, knees bending as they rode the dreadful roll. Bentley, on the poop, could see the faces of the people, and not a few of them showed some distress. Not at the brutish punishment they had to watch, but at the motion of the sea. Of the newly pressed, there would be several who had been dragged from dry land life, however hard they’d screamed about it, and some of them would be throwing vomit before long. Will would have liked to shut his eyes on the whole distasteful thing, but he knew men better than his captain did. He had to forge a fighting, sailing crew from this gang of motley. Showing them weakness was not the way.

  Although he hated this game he knew it, and from the first blow of the pair of cats, he knew that Taylor and his men were pulling back. He saw the bare backs jerk, and he saw the dull red streaks on the white skin. Not yet broken, though, nor even like to be at this rate. The half-wit face of the non-soldier broke into a slack-lipped grimace, denoting pain and anguish, true. But Higgins, whatever his intention to dissemble, revealed a half a smile before he turned his head to cover it.

  “Good,” said Captain Kaye, and “good God” thought Bentley and half the Biter’s crew.

  “Not hard enough,” said Bentley. Not loud, but loud enough for Taylor to hear, as well as Richard Kaye. The captain looked at him, his hazel eyes half angry, but seeking knowledge, too.

  “I beg your pardon, sir? Did you have commentary to bestow?”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” his junior replied. “I merely thought the rolling spoiled the warrants’ strokes. Those cuts would not have lifted a milk pudding skin. They were not serious, Mr Taylor? Surely?”

  Dick Kaye regarded him with different eyes, too stupid to understand his full intent. Taylor knew, though, as did Tilley and Tom Hugg. He acknowledged with an apologetic nod, and gritted to his mates to lay it on, or else they’d feel the lash themselves. The next stroke made the captain jump, the half-wit scream and howl, and Edward Higgins smile a shade more bitterly. Still no skin broke, though, and Taylor’s inquiry to Will, their talking glance, had them in full agreement: it was convincing, but way this side of beastish-ness. Most importantly, Kaye remained in ignorance of their collusion: he and the people knew this flogging, however undeserved, was earnest. Transgressors would be hurt, and go hang guilt or innocence.

  The pain felt by the idiot was fearful, though, heartrending, and quite clearly affected Kaye. After seven strokes the blubbering was constant, an embarrassment, a shame, when luckily he passed out of consciousness, collapsed. He had shit himself, what’s more, a liquid horror running from his trousers to the deck, and Kaye, pretending fury, ordered him cut down and given to the surgeon, who stood swaying by the port-side shrouds. Grundy was staggering, two sailors told off to drag the soldier slipped in the shit and fell, and several of the greenhorn seamen threw up their beef and biscuit. Sam and Bentley, cold-eyed, efficient, brought order back in half a minute, and the last three men were flogged, Ed Higgins having been released like his companion after only seven strokes, for which luck he showed no gratitude at all. This time the whippings were perfunctory, with no one much interested anymore, so the infliction of great pain a pointless exercise. Josh Baines was therefore fortunate; although later in the ’tween decks he received a black eye somehow. He must have fallen badly, it was said…

  The main reason for the quick end to flogging was the weather, however, which went rapidly from bad calm to ten times worse, with wind. Gunning’s prediction, which had been discounted in Will’s mind, was merely some hours late, but the wind and seas that shot the men into the rigging and washed the filth and vomit from the decks was on them before the gratings could be unlashed and stowed. Of a sudden, the sickness that had already started flashed through the ship like wildfire, with thirty men or more retching and heaving up. One of them, who fought till after dark to save his self-respect, was Shilling. Sent below to make sure ports and hawses, and any other leaky points, were firmly lashed and bunged, he ran a gauntlet of cruelty in the heaving dimness. Out of sight of his fellow officers in the roaring squall, he was also out of mind.

  Full dark came early with the lowered cloud and heavy, rain-filled wind, and the general lack of vim and keenness of the people made the work very hard and dangerous, both below decks and aloft. It was not till after midnight that the officers foregathered in Kaye’s cabin, with Gunning himself, and two of his better, stronger men at helm. The Biter was snugged down to reefed foretopsail and latino mizzen, with a rag or two at head. She was on the wind and punching, with the scuppers running constantly with breaking sea.

  “Where’s Groat?” said Captain Kaye, who had been sick himself, sick as a dog, and now was settling digestion with half pints of brandy swallowed neat. “Has no one called him? Bob! Bugger-boy! Go out and call the midshipman! Go fetch him, bugger-boy!”

  Bob, eyes cast down, slunk out for fifteen minutes, returning wetter than a half-drowned pup. But he could not find Midshipman Groat, he muttered, and stuck to it however hard Kaye struck his face. Later Sam went out with a lanthorn, then Will joined him with Savary and the two of his soldiers not too sick to hold a musket. They searched the fetid ’tween decks, poking and pushing everywhere, amid the groaning timbers and the groaning men. Taylor and his two mates then joined, and others of the seamen they could trust. In two hours the ship was quartered, and they had drawn a blank. Rex Shilling had gone overside, and he was never seen again.

  NINETEEN

  Next morning, when the news was general, it had a strange effect upon the ship. No one had liked Shilling, but there was an all-pervading sense of shame at his demise. No announcement was made, naturally, but everybody knew, and everybody thought they knew the culprits. Many men went overside in storms, including officers, but this was different. Rex Shilling was disliked, Rex Shilling had insulted and antagonised damn nearly all the people. Rex Shilling was at daggers drawn with the three Scotchmen, and they had murdered him.

  Slack Dickie Kaye, alone, did not believe this. It was brought up first at breakfast time by Sam, at his most cutting, and Kaye jumped on it. At first he was lyrical, talking of injustice, proof, and high-flown concepts then — when Sam responded with a shocked obscenity — notched up to violent anger. His florid face grew flushed, his eyes protruded, and he shouted Lieutenant Holt down as a calumniator of the innocent.

  “How dare you, sir?” he roared. “How know you that? Good God, sir, in a court of law you would not dare!”

  This was so extraordinary that Holt would have laughed, except his mouth was gaping.

  “In court of law?” he sputtered. “But… but…”

  “It is defamation!” the captain said. “Last night there was a gale, the night was filthy! Shilling was sick, and puking, and he’s never been to sea! You have the knife in for those brothers, Mr Holt, and I will not allow it! What makes you say such things? He lost his feet. He slipped. He lost his footing.”

  “Pray God he did not lose his cherry,” Sam said, deliberately. “Please God he was not fucked before he fell. Sir, those men are animals.”

  “Where is your proof? What is your proof of that? God, Mr Holt, if I should tell them what you say!”

  This caused silence in the cabin. Bentley and Savary both kept eyes downcast. Gunning, who had been awake all night, gave a sudden and
gigantic yawn. Then Holt attacked, though quietly.

  “You will not tell,” he said. “As we will not tell your cousin how your nephew died. Some things must be unsaid.” He stood, and wiped his mouth. “And now I leave, with your permission, sir, before this nonsense gets out of hand.”

  Kaye looked set for renewed fury, but Gunning also stood, large and exhausted, head bent under the deckhead.

  “I’m for my cot,” he said. “I don’t care how the mealmouth died, he’s dead that’s all. The way your people acted, the wonder is we’re any of us living. When we make it to Azores, I’m minded to walk off of here. You’ll need the Scotchmen then; they’re seamen. Mayhap the only ones.”

  Not asking for the captain’s by-your-leave, he shouldered out and Holt went after him. Will and Savary stayed for a while, while Slack Dickie chuntered at them. As they left, he clouted Black Bob in a fit of pique as he cleared the table.

  Outside, the day was fine and mild and beautiful, the sea calm and friendly, swept by a splendid breeze. The line of bronze that had marked the far horizon before the storm was gone, the few clouds left were high and tiny. Hard to believe that such a short time before they had been under press. Hard to believe that somewhere beneath these waves lay poor Rex Shilling. Will wondered about the vile things Holt had said. Poor Rex.

  Sam, not content to merely wonder, had gone angrily about the task of finding out. He could move about the ship, above, below, even in the heads if he so desired, where most officers would neither care, nor dare, to venture normally. But although he clearly read a mood of muted regretfulness, or guilt at least, he could not crack the wall of silence. The only man he found prepared to open his mouth was the impressed soldier-boy who had been flogged, and he was almost lunatic by now. He gibbered at the officer, and clutched at him from off his pallet in the sick berth. Sam suggested to Mr Grundy that he should be tied, if only for his own safety, but Grundy, reeking of old brandy and despair, ignored the point. In fact, some days later the man went overside, like Shilling, but in full view of all hands, and screaming as he ran. He was as little missed; or less.