The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  The captain’s quandary was tearing him, it was written on his face. But he struggled with his own desires.

  “We will not fight them, Mr Gunning, and there’s an end,” he said. “We are here to aid Jamaica against the French marauders, not take on three armed Spaniards.”

  A knot of seamen grouped around the con made a sudden noise. An unknown voice (certainly it had no Scottish accent) uttered words that sounded like “They shot at us! They shot!” Big Angus Lamont stared at the captain, and his eyes spoke volumes; they glittered with contempt. Another sailor’s voice said plaintively, from out the ruck, “It’s fucking treasure, mates! It’s fucking gold!”

  But it was Gunning, half-drunk but crammed with subtlety and guile, who played the clinching card.

  “God bless your soul, sir,” he said silkily. “I don’t mean fight all of them. You say three, sir, but I see only one. It blew like seven bells, sir, and it will again, I promise you; we’re in the tropics and I know. They’re scattered, and the cripple’s left behind. They went downwind, and we went athwart it. They’ll have to claw up to it, and up to us, if they can do it and if they dare to. In the meantime, Mr Kaye, sir, we’ve got a sitting duck.”

  There was a cheer, started by the Scotsmen, and taken up by many throats, and as if to settle it, Silas Ayling roared down from the eagle’s nest that the “big ’un” was the only ship in sight.

  “She’s lumbering!” he shouted. “She’s like a bleeding sow! Not one full sail upon her left untorn! We can run her down in half an instant, sir!”

  “Less!” roared Ed Higgins, upping the bet from his slightly lower perch below the fore-truck. “Let me take her, Jack Gunning, and you can trim the sails! We’ll show these Navy lily-boys how it’s done!”

  Jack’s former crew roared their backing for this idea, and Kaye’s originals, whose loyalty to Slack Dickie was suddenly beyond question under this absurd attack, whooped their own defiance. Men came streaming off the yards and took up stations to handle tacks, sheets, and braces. Ed Higgins slid down a hundred feet like lightning and then dashed aft to take the wheel (which Angus made clear he’d have to fight him for), while the gunner, Henderson, called his mates and favoured crews to open ports, clear decks, and get the powder up, instanter. All this without an order or a word from Kaye or any officer. Bentley, indeed, was struck with amazement and amusement the way the ship was galvanised. She and her people had a mind and spirit all their own to fight and take the treasure ship, and her lord and captain was simply a part of it, not the brain. Will was fascinated to see what Kaye would do. Spain, for God’s sake, was not a bona fide enemy.

  Slack Dickie — on whim or goldlust, who would ever know? — threw in his lot with the rolling tide. Remarkably, he played his game with shrewdness and élan.

  “A sitting duck!” he roared. “Aye, a fat duck for the taking, too! They fired on us, on a warship of His Majesty. Our duty is to teach the Dons their folly! Mr Gunning, give chase with all dispatch, I beg of you.”

  They cheered him to the echo this time, both factions giving voice as one, and Lieutenants Holt and Bentley went to work to weld them as a single team. Taylor and his mates were called and given their instructions, Sweetface Savary spoke earnestly with Kaye upon the quarterdeck, and Mr Henderson spoke to his keenest crews as man-to-man, while cajoling the rest. In a half an hour, Biter was scurrying down the breeze under everything she had to spread, with all guns charged and ready to run out, her upper ports already open. The sky was largely blue by now, enormous, with only high white clouds racing overhead. Captain Kaye, indeed, thought to open up the lower ports, to bring the guns to bear the instant they were layable, but Gunning shook his head, and took a long pull at his bottle.

  “You look to sink her, do you, sir?” he said. “Ah well, she’s yours to play with, when all’s said.” He jerked his head towards the sky to windward. “D’you not see that? Another squall is coming, by and by. Perhaps the whole damn storm is blowing up again. So open them and bravo, that’s the style. And hope.”

  Gunning, to those who knew him, was clearly drunk. His face was rosy, his lips were curving wetly in a dangerous smile. His curly hair was somehow wilder than the normal run, his bright eyes brighter, his good humour tinged with sharp aggression. He held a bottle by its neck, open and defiantly, and swigged at ever shorter intervals. His whole attitude was scornful; each time he lit upon a face of Navy officer, his eyes gleamed certain insolence. How long, Will wondered, before he was incapable? It was dependent on the time he started; the process was inexorable. If this was day one, great trouble seemed to lie ahead.

  Holt said mildly: “Is that a jest, Mr Gunning? The sky is like a sunny day at Beachy Head. Do you really mean the dirty weather is still stalking us?”

  Before Gunning could make up his mind to give a friendly answer or spit blood, a man dropped from the lower ratlines of the weather main shrouds and lay crumpled on the deck. All three Navy officers, plus Gunning, were on the quarterdeck, all four of them were astonished. Then Tilley, standing nearby to the man, moved up to him and pushed him with his foot.

  “Tilley!” snapped Bentley. “What do you there? Is that man drunk, or ill?”

  Grundy, strangely, who had been in the mainmast shade, moved to the seaman, unsteady but determined. He crouched over him and pulled his face up to the light. Bentley noticed blood around the nose. “What ails him?” he called, approaching.

  “He is shirking, sir,” said Grundy. “Shirking for a guinea.”

  Tilley made an expression at the surgeon’s head. He said to Will, “It’s Abel Phillips, sir. He has the scurvy.”

  “Shit on scurvy!” cried the surgeon. “He is lying down!”

  “He dropped off the ratlines,” Tilley told Bentley. “He can hardly stand. He does naught but drink. Won’t eat.”

  “Is he hurt? Did he fall far?”

  Grundy shouted: “I can smell the brandy!”

  This begged an answer, for so could Will and Tilley — off of him. Then Gunning took a hand, then Kaye.

  “Of course he is not drunk,” sneered Gunning. “He’s not a King’s man, is he? He is one of my boys, and they can hold their liquor. He has been ruined by the food on here, I would not feed a pig on it. He’s dying, Capting, and it’s you and Pusser Black have done for him.”

  Kaye, prodded beyond endurance, bellowed: “He is drunk, indeed! The man’s an arrant idler! Send him to the royal yard immediately! He is our lookout for three watches straight!”

  Gunning said cheerfully: “How will he get there, Capting, if he cannot climb?”

  “And you are impudent!” cried Captain Kaye. He moved across the deck, as if to strike or kick the fallen man, then thought better of it. “Tilley! Start him, man! Get him on his feet! Whip him up the rigging, instantly!”

  “And when he falls out, bury him,” said Gunning. “Christ help us, I need another drink. Black! You pasty bastard! Black, where are you, fat-arse thief?”

  Grundy was pulling ineffectually at Phillips, and Tilley, with a shrug, put in a kick or two, without much heart in it. The man, blood trickling from his nose to lips, pale and blotchy, with a fat tongue in his mouth, was hauled and helped till he was upright, when Tilley called a man across with water, and gave him to drink, and poured the residue, quite gently, over his face. When Kaye had wandered, falsely casual, off the deck and Grundy had been wooed and shooed away by Bentley, Phillips was guided down into the ’tween decks, where his friends might aid him if they could. He would have to go aloft, though. Will and Sam, for all their disapproval, could see there was no way out of that.

  The time it took to run down on their prey was short, but even in that interval they could tell Gunning’s prediction on the weather would be right. Out of the blue sky astern of them, high white fronds of clouds came speeding overhead, thickening and twisting like a villain’s fingers reaching for their neck. Below the fingers was a bar of iron-black, its top hard and definite as a ruler made of ebony. As the first
movements on the surface caught up and overtook them, the easy rolling swell got shorter and more lumpish. The Biter, stretched to capacity by her canvas, began to plunge and labour. Overall began a hum of vibrating cordage, which rose rapidly in pitch.

  “When Gunning’s drunk he’ll overstrain her,” Sam said, laconically. “What do we do? Give orders to reduce, or call the captain, or keep mum until the sticks go overside?”

  It was tempting to watch stubborn men go pig-headed to disaster, but not an option when the cards were down. Bentley shouted: “Mr Taylor, boatswain’s mates! Why do you wait to get it off of her? Baines there! Call up the captain, lively now! Jump!”

  Gunning’s big face took on a twist, but he was not a fool, for all his wildness when in liquor.

  “I’ve got you up to spitting range of her,” he muttered, as he stumped towards the hatch. “If it’s gunnery and stuff like that, I’m going to take my drink below and let you get along with it. I cannot bear to watch Slack Dickie’s seamanship.”

  They were indeed quite close, and the speed was almost critical. As Kaye came onto deck, Tilley led Abel Phillips out from down below and took him to the main shrouds, to weather. Other men were gathering, waiting the order to reduce the canvas, and which specific sails. Phillips could have an easy climb if he went now, with mates to help him on the way.

  Sam, on a nod from Kaye, was passing orders to the boatswain, calls were shrilling, and soon the yards and rigging swarmed with men. Will, at a sign, joined his captain at the weather, and they studied the great Spaniard. She was lumbering and her decks were chaos. There were soldiers, but not a lot of them, and sailors, cows and sheep and pigs. Up aloft, on unsecured yards, were rags and fronds of canvas, swinging blocks, and five sails, baggy at the leeches, not bowsed up block-to-block. Even Kaye was unimpressed.

  Bentley said: “Where are her people, sir? Good heavens, there are more porkers than masthead hands. There should be hundreds. What is going on?”

  “They’ll be skulking,” said Kaye, crisply. “You know the Spanish cowards. They’ll be hiding down below.”

  As if in answer, there came a flash beneath the Spanish taffrail, then a dull bang as smoke went pouring off to leeward. A lucky shot or natural brilliance, but the heavy ball passed close indeed, growling and droning as it tore a passage through the air.

  “Aye, sir,” said Will, dryly. “Cowards indeed. Shall we return it? We’re close enough. Perhaps he wanted to vouchsafe us with a ranging shot?”

  Kaye had good grace enough to grin and raised his hand to the gunner, who was waiting eager as a dog.

  “When you’re ready,” said the captain. “Stop her, dismast her, anything you like. But if you sink her, Mr Henderson, I will murder you!”

  Gunning, too drunk to miss the fun, burst onto deck at this point and went to give instruction at the wheel. He gazed aloft, assessing the sails Sam had chosen to bring down or douse or furl, and found no problem worthy of the comment. The wind was freshening by the second, but Biter was snug enough. Her decks, though, were still dancing and heaving in the rising sea, and gunnery would be a lottery. Compared with her, the galleon was like a stone-built fortress on dry land. At a cable’s length, or a little more, she took advantage of it. Along her starboard side there was a clutch of flashes, blown smoke, flat bangs, and on Biter’s larboard, tense men clenched their teeth involuntarily. This time the gunnery was not so lucky, though. Will heard no screeching buzz, noted nil damage to men or fabric of the ship, and saw but one single plume of water, that might have been a ball hitting a wave or merely a breaking crest. On the Biter’s deck a cheer went up.

  “Come on!” Kaye shouted to the gunner. “He’ll think we have no heart for it! Fire, God damn you!”

  Some of the gunners took Kaye’s spleen as an order, overriding Henderson’s lack of one, so seven guns fired in a quick succession, and seven balls sank without trace about a hundred feet off Biter’s side. As she rolled to starboard and the deck rose level, the remaining cannon fired to better effect with at least three balls striking home. One struck a gun; they saw a barrel pitch into the air and then crash down, and after that the Spanish ship loosed off a half a dozen more, which missed, and then there was silence. Gunning, off his own bat, shouted he was taking her about, which made good sense in view they were still making too much way, and would shoot past in half a minute. Also, they would be bow-on when the Dons let fly again and would be hard to hit.

  The manoeuvre went like clockwork in every department. Tacks and sheets were raised, braces stamped out at terrific speed, and her head went through almost without hiatus. At the same time, Henderson and his gunners prepared the guns for a second broadside, then reloaded the larboard pieces as the ship plunged round. Henderson had pulled men off the main gun deck because the sea was gone atrocious by this time, and the lower ports would probably stay closed unless they had a lull. The Caribbean might be warm, but on present form it could kill as easy as the Western Ocean. In any way, the Spanish ship seemed disinclined to fight.

  As Biter filled upon the other tack, her starboard guns came round to bear in smart succession, and as they ranged they spoke. There were four strikes this time, and a ten-foot stretch of bulwark was beat down. Through it, most bizarrely, a line of screaming hogs came running, to plunge and thrash and disappear beneath the driven foam. Madly, a soldier with a long musket stood in the gap and aimed and fired, then threw his musket to the deck in anger.

  “I’ll wear her, sir,” roared Gunning, in a delirium of excitement. He swung his bottle in an arc while shouting at the helmsman, “Up, up, up, damn you! We’ll get the other broadside in!”

  The wind was rising like a thing gone mad, but as the brig spun off it, Taylor and his new-trained seamen played her and her complex of thrashing sails and cordage as a master plays an orchestra. She turned in a pirouette, yards were swung and braced, tacks, sheets, and bowlines hardened home, and more sails doused and quieted. Henderson was ready as his new side came to bear, and five more balls slammed home into the Spaniard, from closer this time, in through gun-ports, across decks, spreading blood and consternation. But none below the waterline, thought Will. Good man, Mr H, good man. She will live to yield her treasure up.

  Their fire-rate, compared with what the bigger ship could do, was clearly devastating. They could see men sweating at the Spanish pieces, and they could almost feel their shock at the weight of iron this lightweight Britisher could hurl at them. Men were seen abandoning the guns and running to the larboard, out of sight, although the soldiers kept up a ragged fire, way out of range. Then, as Biter loosed off yet another cannonade, two big guns, low down near the waterline, belched smoke and iron from the foreigner, and both balls struck giant hammer-blows, causing the Biter to stumble like a racing bull struck down. Sam Holt and Bentley, side by side at that instant, almost lost their footing, and took each other’s arms.

  “Christ,” said Sam. “No more of those please, Pedro. You’re meant to run away!”

  But the Spaniards, for whatever reason, had shot their last of heavy metal. There was a general scattering on the decks, and suddenly a cry came down from Biter’s watch position on the main topmast cap. It was Phillips, whose voice, though thin and shaky, could still convey excitement.

  “They’re running, sir!” he yelped. “They’re going in a cutter, overside! They’re abandoning the ship!”

  This caused new chaos on the deck, with seamen scurrying and whooping randomly. Hugg and Tilley laid about them with a purpose, while Taylor despatched some “better men” to be the Biter’s eyes. The captain, desperate to see, jumped on the rail once more, clutching at a hammock net to stop him going overboard, and attracted an instant hail of Spanish musketry.

  “They still need working on, our lads,” Holt said dryly to Will Bentley. “Not one of them can keep at post, and the captain leads the silliness, as usual. Look, they’re cocking up their main yard for a crane. For want of better, I suppose. Faute de mieux.”

  “
Lay off!” yelled Gunning to the seamen at the wheel. “We’ll be in stays, you bastards! We want to reach her, not go arsewards all to hell!”

  “Mr Henderson!” roared Captain Kaye. “The bow chasers! Lay into her with those, man! I want the bastards stopped!”

  On board their target, work was going on apace. The main yard cocked, the main course clewed and thundering, they saw the bulwarks of the cutter rise into view. They had a heavy tackle on it, which argued lack of manpower, and as yet no one had boarded, but were guiding it overside with ropes and podgers. Then the big ship rolled, and they lost their view of her deck. They heard halloos, though, and guessed their meaning, quickly confirmed when she rolled back the other way. The cutter had been launched from off the bulwarks, and men had swarmed on board of her. Short stubby mainmast was going up already, and grew a big tan sail in moments. Then a little mizzen, this sail white. They were full and pulling, sheeted home.

  “Hah!” yelled Kaye. “The bastards! They’ve took the treasure for a guinea! Mr Holt! Mr Bentley! Mr Gunning! We must after them! We must launch boats!”

  “Dickie’s gone bedlam,” Sam said quietly. “How much treasure have they got in that? Has he seen the weather yet? Has he even looked at the horizon?”

  On the Spaniard, something else was happening. Men were running at the bulwarks, climbing up, waving their arms and shouting. Some were trying to attract their own cutter, others were screaming at the English ship. Yet more were at the smaller boats on deck, apparently to ready them to launch. As Will puzzled, a half a dozen of the men dived overboard on the far side. Then the big ship rolled and men jumped off towards the Biter from this side. The seas by now were boiling. He saw arms and heads for moments, then most went from view. From afar he thought that he heard screaming.