The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  They sailed throughout the night, and as they sailed they piled on every stitch of canvas they had on board. Gunning and Bentley conferred contentedly, as though it was a race on peacetime terms at home. They spread studding sails on every yard, low and aloft, rigged bonnets on the courses, and a spritsail underneath the sprit, then studding sails on that. The Biter; full of stolen silver, weed-infested from her cross-Atlantic plug, rolling in the lumpish, nasty sea, was hardly flying, but then, she hardly ever had in all her long and varied life. Worse, she was making water fairly quickly, which the unhappy seaway did not help. The firing of the guns, Gunning assessed, was what had done most damage, as it had the last time they had fought. Will wondered if he should have asked how Big Jack squared the price he got for Biter from the Admiralty with her condition, but dismissed it as a waste of breath. Jack Gunning saw Kaye’s behaviour in pressing him as perfidy. It would never be forgot, and it answered everything.

  The blazing mark that was the Santa flared strongly for a fine long time, then faded, then snuffed out suddenly. There had been no flash or gout of flame, so they guessed she had gone under before the powder magazines were touched by fire, and Kaye fretted to the gunner that the Dons had been able to get on board and damp the powder down and carry off the remaining riches. Henderson dared to doubt this, and indeed the flare had been so great for such a time that even the Spaniards were not deemed mad enough to have tried. Unless they’d slaves on board, said Sam, to do the work for them. To which Slack Dickie responded with such seriousness, that Sam despaired of his sardonic wit.

  All on board had thought and hoped, though, that the blazing treasure ship ploy to keep the Spanish occupied would have worked completely. As the night had worn on the lookouts had sensed several times that there might still be pursuit, but the weather, the hot beacon, and the failing moon had made proper sight impossible, and eye-tricks epidemic. But as the sky lightened in the east, then raced to daylight in the tropic way, the spectral visions jumped rudely into life. One of the Guarda-Costa ships, taller and more graceful than the Spanish norm, was not so many miles behind them, and she was sailing like a beauty. Kaye, Gunning, and the two lieutenants stood to watch her from the poop, almost aghast.

  “She’s not got half the canvas up we have,” said Will. “She’s going through it like a knife through butter.”

  “Like shit out of a goose,” said Gunning, bitterly. “Them Deptford men that re-rigged us have done a proper bollocks.”

  “We’ll have to fight,” said Kaye. “Shit, Gunning, do you think he’ll catch us? Is there nothing you can do to make this tub go faster, man?”

  “I could throw some bodies overboard,” retorted Gunning. “There’s a couple of men or so I’ve got my eye on. The one who lit the sea up with a beacon for a start, mebbe.”

  Will, studying the movement of the Spaniard, and the water in between, was not so sure that they would ever close. He felt the wind was getting fresher as the sun climbed up, and he thought that if it came to blow much harder their pursuer would lose his advantage. Biter was canvassed like a pyramid but not labouring, and could even have carried more. Tub maybe, but a good old Newcastle coal tub, built like a parish church.

  “We could whistle for a gale,” he said. “That would show Don Pedro who can gallop.”

  “Or with the solid way we sit,” said Sam, “and Gunner Henderson to lay’em on so sweet, we could pick her sails and masts off, nice as nice. That other one won’t catch us, any case. I’ll take any wager on that score.”

  As the long day dragged on, hotter by the minute, the wind did pick up appreciably, and the rate they were run down diminished. But they were still run down, inexorably, and a confrontation, unless the nightfall saved them, was inevitable. They were not flying colours, and they had tried to hide her English cut of rig, but Kaye had it on his mind, and mentioned it too frequently.

  “If it comes to fighting,” Bentley said to Holt at one point, “I think he’ll do it to the death, the very bitter end. He’ll want to sink her and leave without a witness, swimming or picked up, who might report on us. Jesu, how far will ruthlessness take him, dost think? Or is it fear, not ruthlessness?”

  “Not neither,” laughed Sam, “surely? He’s won a fortune, Will, ain’t you worked that out yet? He’s stolen treasure from the Spanish, and he’s had the blessing from on high — the Admiralty. He’ll get a good proportion of it by the rules, and maybe even extra, as reward. And don’t you think some of it won’t walk, in any way, into his capacious pockets? When we get back on shore with this, my friend, Slack Dickie’s rich. Not to tear the arse out, this may have saved his life.”

  Sam did not say it further, but his smile led Bentley on. Not just Dickie rich, but in the nature of it, his company as well, and most of all his officers. If Dick was saved, then so was Sam, too. Will began to see the reasons for the captain’s growing agitation, and, quite suddenly, to wonder if he himself might benefit, and by how much. His debts were not enormous like his friend’s, but to ease himself of them would ease his family ten times more. In many ways, the debacle of his last few months had cost his father dear, his mother, and his sisters ditto. Then there was Deborah, in servitude to God knows who in this awful, violent colony, a servitude that he could buy her out of, should he win such cash. He forced his mind away from that dream, and lighted on his Uncle Daniel. With money of his own, he could be forever free of that succubus.

  How many of the people had made the same connection he could not guess, but Gunning, whose position in regard to prizes was ambiguous indeed, had clearly worked some implications of advantage out unless his motive, as so oft before, was pure devilment. A half an hour after this, in fact, he went below in secret, to emerge again all sunny smiles. Glancing at the captain, he marched to the signal hoist belayed at the rail, fiddled with his hands in front of his large body, then hoisted bunting, still in ties, and jerked it out into a flag when the bundle reached the lateen-end of the driving sail; a flag that made men goggle, slap their sides, then yell with laughter. Crude and quickly made, but definitely a skull and crossbones. The Biter, of King George’s Navy, was flying the black flag.

  It may have been the weather, though, that saved them in the end, for as the sea got lumpier, the Spaniard made by far the worst of it, although she closed up on them still. When she was close enough Dick Kaye, in consultation with Gunning, decided on a stroke. Henderson was called into the huddle, Bentley and Holt were told what the captain and the master wanted, and a number of gun crews were mustered to be ready. By now it was too late to open lower ports, for fear what they might ship on board to add to what was coming through the seams already, and long, lightish guns were chosen to be charged and laid. Henderson selected chain shot, and some in canisters, and some grape. He did not want to kill or sink this time, because the officers said crippling was needed, quick and from a distance, so they could get away intact. The shots would all go high, intended for the masts, and sails, and rigging, and they were going to round up and rake her by surprise, up helm again and scoot. The people, when they got the picture, became excited. Their dreams of money loomed anew. Money, and lots of celebration rum.

  Gunning, as ever, was a poet of the ship manoeuvre. On a signal, the Biter was brought round sharply hard upon the wind, yards braced, tacks, sheets, and bowlines snapped in like bowstrings in a miracle of energy and speed. Presented with her broadside, the Spaniard could either keep her course and hope her narrow target caused a miss, or swing one way or the other to get some guns to bear. It was even hoped, on Biter, they were not close enough as yet to have readied up their pieces. The Spaniards, after faltering one way and then the other till the captain made up his mind for good, came straight on at them — a disconcerting move, as she was going like a wagon down a hill, a juggernaut. Mr Henderson, in sole command of this part of the strategy, made some adjustments, went from gun to gun, then fired two together on one upward roll, and three more in quick succession as that side rose again. Mr Hender
son, let none dispute it, was a master gunner.

  The destruction was extraordinary. At first, as the rolls of smoke blew clear, the Spaniard showed no sign of major hurt, although the keener eyes could see her sails were shredded. Then her fore topgallant mast went sideways overside, like some tall pine tree falling in a forest. Then her topsail dropped horizontally, a great white rush of canvas, which landed on the foreyard, hovered, then broke that from its chains to crash onto the forward deck, while behind the foremast the main topsail yard fractured at the truss and flopped downward like a seagull’s broken wings. Then, as she dropped broadside on, the Spaniards, good men, fired three or four of their upper guns, and one ball was heard to buzz and roar across the poop deck, hitting nobody and nothing. The Biter’s cheering was interspersed with sail orders, as Gunning upped his helm, braced yards round handsomely, and tended tacks and sheets.

  The stern they showed so clearly to the Spaniard still flew the skull and crossbones, with humour and defiance. It had gone two hours later, to be replaced by Dickie’s favoured ensign — a bare pole — when Taylor knocked, then burst into the cabin where the upper echelon sat and listened as the captain, in a mood of wild exuberance, regaled them with fine promises. Of rum unlimited, of furlough, women, and of money, money, money! One look at Taylor’s face sobered all of them. It was immediate.

  “Sir,” he said. His voice was almost hoarse. “Sir, we are sinking. The bottom’s dropping out.”

  Christ, thought William Bentley. Gunning’s revenge…

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sir Nathaniel Siddleham’s back was broken, but the tenacity with which he held on to life, and Deborah, was extraordinary. His eyes, now dull, now bright, kept up a constant communication, they flashed and signalled at her, imploring for her help. There were other men around her for a while, exhorting her to come, in Kreyole or their native tongues, and there were women, pleading with increasing desperate pathos. Mavis tried to drag her, tried to break her from the old man’s vision, tried with cry and gesture to make her realise. But Sir Nathaniel — without a touch — held on. Needing her for help, offering solace for her body and her soul.

  Deborah, finally alone with him in the river gully, knew that there were other men not far behind them, white men and black, Christians and their willing slaves. She knew that if they caught her, if she remained here till the followers came up, it would be the end, even if they did not kill her out of hand. She might, indeed, be lauded as a heroine; she might be hailed a saviour, or end up as a member of the white community, respected in the way that Bridie was, safe, with authority and some influence and position. But — she would not end up free.

  She did not mean from slavery, she did not even mean from retribution for her running in the first place. She would not be free, if they caught up with her, to be herself, do as herself, a simple human being. All her life she had been forced. She saw it now with clarity, as she stood panting in the gully with this poor, broken old man. Forced to be a daughter, to be a hatter-girl, to be a liar, thief, a whore, a runaway. She had been a sideshow, a kept female by a rapist, a rich man’s comforter and toy and — close as a toucher — a Spithead Nymph. The only time she had not been forced, since childhood, was when she’d known Will Bentley.

  And then she almost spat. She laughed, and almost snarled. Oh bollocks, she had been forced, been forced by love, as well! To follow, to seek, to pine, to hope. She could not blame him for that love. It had hit her. She had not looked for it, as nor had he, for certain. But it had made her weak once more, a thing of someone else’s whim and want, a shadow and a follower, without her own clean will.

  Deb looked at this broken lordship laid in front of her, and she thought: No more! She would turn away and leave him to his destiny. She would be hard on him and easy on herself. Her self. She would run into the mountains with Mavis and the men and other desperate slaves, and she would make a life with them. She would make a life, and try to live, and if she failed, she’d die. She would die unbidden, unadmonished, unadvised. She would die a mistress, not a maid. The mistress of her fate.

  Sir Nathaniel was staring up at her, his eyes melting in the growing light. He was imploring her. His eyes were screaming to be helped, one human being crying for humanity. Suddenly, as if pulled by a wire, Deb bent over him and kissed him gently on the lips. She tasted blood and tears.

  Goodbye Lord, she breathed (but did not voice the words aloud), goodbye. I hope someone will help you — but not I. Poor Lord, it can’t be I.

  She heard the hunters crashing through the undergrowth. She heard black women call, beseeching her to come.

  She went.

  *

  They had whistled for a wind when they’d been fleeing, but as the day wore on and night came down, men on Biter began to pray that it would ease. With the Guarda-Costa vessel wrecked and her fellow not yet even up to her, they had no more to fear from Spanish action (nor recognition or suspicion of identity), but the piping gale grew ever stronger and the seas grew worse. After Taylor’s news, the pumps were manned in earnest, and a bucket chain was organised. The captain and his officers had all run down below to see the damage, but Gunning, signally, had declined to budge. He was not drinking, despite the fact that they all were, but he had a long clay in his mouth and was smiling round it when the news was brought. At which he bit the stem off.

  The situation on the orlop had been terrifying. Hugg and Tilley had got men with lanterns and were clearing lumber to locate a source, but the deck was running water like a river underground. The ship was rolling violently, with great walls of water slopping from one side to the other, meeting amidships, throwing up great gouts. In the light of smoking lamps, Will could see white gushes driving through the seams, growing and contracting as the timbers worked. Round their feet and knees it foamed and bubbled, some fresh from outside, some mixed with thrown-up bilge filth, rank and vile.

  “You bastard,” Bentley heard the captain saying to himself, of John Gunning, there was not a doubt. “You filthy, lousy, lying bastard!”

  Hugg and Tilley, then Bosun Jem, all pointed out danger points, all shook their heads in blank dismay at any way of stopping it. Holt said to Will, digging with a fid he’d taken from a rack, “She’s rotten, Will. She’s fucking rotten. She’s a sieve.”

  The ship had one main chain pump, which hoisted buckets in continuity from deep down in the bilge up to the deck. It was run by manhandles, each long enough to take three sailors side by side. Working at top effort, it would wear a man down in fifteen minutes or so, when other men would leap on to keep momentum up. With this pump manned, the water coming in was beating them with ease, so after consultations, pails, scoops, bailers, and buckets were all broken out from stores, and teams of men put on to using them. At con John Gunning, still maintaining a stiffish smile, issued commands to ease and trim the sail-plan to avoid the worst of the battering the tired hull was getting from the sea. And in the cabin, Slack Dickie, like a man condemned to hell, sat poring over charts of the Jamaica coast and wondering where the hell his ship might be exactly, and where was best to hit.

  By morning, it was clear that all was lost for Biter, if not yet for the hope of saving treasure. No need for constant sounding of the hold: the water could be seen down the companionways. It was slopping to an awful rhythm, as she rolled more sluggishly with her increased weight and depth. Each time she rolled, it slopped and ran, and rushed down to the low side, and with each roll she went further and took more time for the reverse. Then the water had to climb, hold her leaden on the balance point, then begin the awful rush to the new low. The feeling that she would not stop, but just continue till she rolled right over, became an enormous strain, almost unbearable.

  By morning also, something else was clear. Jamaica was quite visible, white strands, green undergrowth and jungle, purple, brooding hills. Kaye, who could hardly bear to talk to Gunning, had nonetheless to huddle on the poop with him, lend him the spyglass, listen to him smugly make prognosticatio
ns. Gunning, a man become quite happy with himself again, allowed, with apparent pleasure, that he was not certain where they would hit, but thought he knew within a mile or five. With luck, he said, they would rest the ship on sand, not far off a beach where they could make shelter in some safety, and sail round to Port Royal in the boats and bring back hulls and men to lift and carry off the booty. When Kaye objected, acidly, to that pirate term, Big Jack laughed delightedly. With luck, he also said, there were no Maroon bands living in the area. Otherwise — more loud laughter — they would all be dead.

  Insist he did, however, that they would make the beach before the Biter’s rotten bottom planking kissed goodbye to her sides. The beach would be long and shelving, he further promised, as it mostly was along this part of coast, and they would beach inside the strongest of the surf. She would be swept, quite possibly, by long rolling Carib seas, but she would be high enough to take no mortal damage, and the lifting of her precious cargo would be like eating cake. Kaye, because he had to, because the desire to was almost as concrete as his very bones, believed him. As they came closer, Will and Sam could smell the need and lust off him, the sheer, crushing desire to get his treasure on the beach and safe. When they had reached a mile off-shore, when it looked as though Jack Gunning had been completely right, Kaye fell from time to time to whimpering, letting out small sounds of anxiety and delight, which he was unaware of. And all the time Jack Gunning smiled his sober, drunken smile.

  Their luck ran out a quarter mile from land. The sea had eased, the wind had eased, and anxious scanning of the shoreline revealed no black runaways preparing fiendish death for them. Despite Gunning’s promises and contempt, attempts had been made to bring some of the “booty” up from the hold, to make it easier to recover if Biter went underwater rather than resting on the beach, but the holds themselves were under many, many feet, and raising heavy weights brought added instability. For the last long time their progress had got slower, and it had been mooted that they must fill the boats with silver to ferry it to shore in case the brig just did not make it in that far. But there was another problem, on top of inundation of the hold, and instability, and Gunning’s acid mockery. Few of the men could swim, and there would be no spare room for anything at all. Even Slack Dickie, it was thought, would not have brass neck enough to save the treasure but not men. Even at best, some would have to hold on ropes or drown.