The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  “Sir,” he said. “I beg your pardon, sir, but had we better not form up defences? In case these…”

  Kaye switched his fury on to him.

  “You mean you have abandoned watch!? You mean your men have left their posts!? By God, Savary, I’ll have your hide! By God, sir, this is dereliction!”

  Savary was not short of backbone. He looked calmly at his captain’s congested face.

  “My men have abandoned nothing, sir. There are three of them on constant watch, as ordered. Is three sufficient for your purposes? The stockade is hardly ready yet, is it?”

  This bordered on insolence, but Slack Dickie Kaye for once made the right choice of action. He stopped shouting, stepped back from Bob and Tilley, and took a breath both deep and shuddering.

  “You correct me, Mr Savary,” he said. “And I swear that I am in the wrong. For sure your men are up on guard, and they shall have mine with them presently. Mr Holt, sir, find out the gunner and the sawdust man and get the stockade work back under way. Far as I can see we’re open to attack.”

  As if to make the point, a large wave broke on the shoreline, rolling McGuigan’s head a foot or two. Jem Taylor picked it up gingerly by its tarry pigtail and rewrapped it in the bloody shirt, then gave it to Hinxman with a dirty look.

  “Hugg, where are you, man?” he said. “Quit skulking and get these bastards on the move. Tilley – oh…” Tilley still had Black Bob in arms. Taylor looked to Holt for guidance and Holt, convulsively, plucked Bob from Tilley, despite the black boy struggled for a moment.

  “There there,” he said, awkwardly. “You’ll be all right with me, my boy. There there.”

  Kaye led the petty officers back up the beach, where the sailors were spreading back towards their undone tasks with urgency renewed. Rob Simms was detailed with his musket back up the beach to join the guards, two more reliable men called Bamford and Nuttall were armed with horse pistols and cutlasses to aid them, while Savary took a roving brief, carrying a spyglass as well as armaments. Mr Grundy, bereft once more of any company, mooched up to hover near the sweating purser, who was trying to impose his will on Raper. Who ignored the pair of them with a humorous contempt.

  The work, though, romped along. It was a case of digging holes and trenches to receive cut sapling-boles, using the metal tools that had been brought ashore, and hard wooden spades that the gloomy carpenter had fashioned with his adze. By nightfall there was a ring of stakes, driven deep enough to withstand all but the greatest shock, with the tips pointed so sharp that even the doubting Thomases were satisfied. There were gaps still – the final form of ingress and leaving points had to be decided – and a second row of stakes, and earthworks, were also planned. But a celebration fire was lit, and while they were outside enjoying it, no sly Maroons crept in to lie in wait inside to cut their throats when they returned.

  There was still drunkenness, however, which infuriated Kaye and puzzled even the less-naive warrant men. In the morning came sore heads and ill tempers, but the work began again before the sun was very hot, and the men were sweating soon enough to leach out the poison through their pores. Raper, as ever, served a hearty breakfast, with meat today, snared by half a dozen of the men who had fed themselves and families all their lives outside the towns and cities of the homeland, until, indeed, they had been snared themselves to serve their lord the King. There was water too, sweet and plentiful. Not all the Biter men had wasted the day before.

  Kaye, if he felt shame about Black Bob, did not give a hint of it, although Sam discovered early that they had not spent the night together. The captain had told off the boatswain to “look out for” the little boy, as one of the few men Bob did not hold in mortal fear, and the boatswain had tucked him up beside him in his own place behind the stockade walls. After breakfast, when the captain told Holt and the boatswain to join him on an expedition with Tilley and Lieutenant Savary, Bob was left to help Geoff Raper, with Purser Black in nominal command, and Surgeon Grundy, presumably, to oversee his spiritual welfare. This was a standing jest: the dreadful Grundy as shepherd to the Biter’s flock of lambs.

  Kaye’s expedition was a reconnaissance. He wished to see the area Holt had surveyed with his own eyes, to form his proper judgements for himself. Tilley and Taylor were his muscle, the marine lieutenant was his firepower, while Holt already knew the land. The treasure not forgotten, Kaye had ordered the best of his six divers – Jones and Macintosh, aided by John Manton – to take the yawl out to the wreck with Hinxman to keep them in control. On land, the ordering of the marine guard and Bamford and John Nuttall was in the hands of Simms, at Savary’s suggestion. There seemed no harm in this.

  As they forced their way through the undergrowth Kaye, sweating like a pig already, explained his salvage thinking thus to Holt:

  “They will not reach the wreck but they will not malinger and will train themselves to get a better depth each time. Hinxman is not an officer or a warrant, so he will let them take their ease so long as he knows there’s no one there to overlook him, which should encourage them. We are not so desperate for time now as we know we cannot just strike out for Kingston willy-nilly, and the fort is coming on apace and will be invulnerable. Even if Bentley don’t come back at all we can be self-sufficient, and when we return I’ll see what has been achieved at the wreck, and maybe send some fresh men down. It is like gunnery, dear chap – practice makes perfect. We do our reconnoitre to make our lives secure, while the men keep hunting gold. What think you? Good?”

  This is a marvel, thought Samuel, almost tiredly. He is concerned, merely, with the safety of his lust for wealth. If we do not return, and if the Maroons out there should be in numbers, we are dead men whatever, and however long it takes. Dead men, but rich, if Kaye should have his way! He said bitterly, “I do not think men can go down that far, sir, however great the intention and temptation. And already the savages have cut off three men’s heads.”

  “Three? Oh yes, Si Ayling, I had forgot. Pity that, he was a good man, wasn’t he, if I have got the right one in my memory. Still; only three. There can’t have been so many of the negers, can there?”

  Savary, with curtained perspiration running from beneath his wig, gasped: “But more disappeared than just the three, sir. There was that fat man with the limp, and at least five more, if I recall it.”

  “You do,” said Holt. “I think eleven ran, all told. The fat man is Mick Carver – is, or was – and there was Chris Thompson, Seth Pond, Joe –”

  Kaye cut him off.

  “Enough! Enough! You are such detractors, you love the black side every time! If they were massed out there you would have seen them, they would have took you too! Those other men have run, that’s all, they are deserters, not breakfast for the niggermen! And they’ll come crawling back, I’ll wager you. As soon as they grow hungry and they see a savage with a knife. Well, what say you? Do you have proof of any kind? Or merely sour minds and mealy mouths?”

  Sam had seen black shadows in the undergrowth the day before, but he was quite unsure how many, or what they signified. No point in arguing with this stubborn man; and he was not prepared to make things up. Indeed, he hoped like hope that Kaye was right, that the runaways were still alive and should stay so.

  “No, sir, no proof,” he said, and Dickie preened. “No proof at all.”

  “And you are wrong about the diving, too,” said Kaye. “Ain’t that so, Tilley? They’ll get down to her before we return, would you say? Or very shortly afterwards?”

  Tilley was not dim, so told his captain what was desired.

  “Ho yus, sir, yus indeed. We damn near done it yesterday, and they is fresh today, as fresh as daisies. If anyone can do it Sam Hinxman can, he is an evil bastard, Sammy. Oh, he’ll get something done.”

  Five hours afterwards, as the shoreside party emerged out of the underbrush and back on to the beach, they learned just what that something was. Kaye had his glass in hand, they heard shouts and screaming from across the water, and at a fe
w hundred yards they saw with naked eye a shape burst from the water and then flop back again, with a renewed caterwauling so high-pitched it had to be Black Bob. Kaye, beside himself, bellowed so loudly that when the yawl’s bow grounded on the sand some minutes later, Hinxman cowered in the sternsheets.

  Black Bob was lying on the bottomboards, smeared with blood and vomit. Naked once more, he looked half dead, but he was sobbing as if his heart were broken. Manton, Jones and Macintosh were shamefaced, as were Bell and Collins, who had rejoined the diving crew. Sam Megson was on there too, shifty and repentant. Jesus Christ, thought Sam Holt wearily, all the dummies on a jolly-out.

  Dick Kaye restrained himself from shooting them, but when the bow had been pulled up on the shore he laid into Hinxman first with words and then with fists. That Hinxman had started it was not in doubt, although Kaye did not bother to enquire, and if Hinxman had cared to make a fight of it, he would have killed or crippled his captain with two blows. His every part was muscle, and his eyes were hot and small, a bull terrier’s. That there were limits to his stupidity was proved, however, by his reaction to the beating. He stood face up to the captain, and his arms hung by his sides. He never closed his eyes, even as each blow landed, and even when his nose was split almost into two he did not raise a hand to touch it or wipe the blood away. As on the day before, a crowd of quiet men had formed to watch this punishment, a semicircle whose ends were in the waves. The others of the boat’s crew stood in the water, facing across the yawl from either side, hands resting on the gunwale, silent, hopeful. For all they knew they would be next. Thank God Slack Dickie was so fat and weak, they no doubt thought. By the time he’d knocked down Hinxman, he’d not have strength left to disturb a pudding skin.

  When Hinxman decided the time was ripe, he collapsed onto the strand as if unconscious, and lay still for a few kicks to the face. Bosun Taylor, meanwhile, had gathered Black Bob up and waded to the beach. Holt joined him, and the two of them walked through the avid crowd back to the fire area. Grundy and Purser Black approached them cautiously, each movement of their bodies studiedly obsequious, to gabble out the expected tale: it had been Hinxman’s doing, they had been powerless to prevent it, they had no authority to order him to cease. All true maybe, but what the hell, thought Sam; poor Bob, in this ship’s company, was doomed. As the surgeon tended to the boy’s external wounds, he made his mind up. He talked to Taylor privately, and the boatswain agreed, with a sort of quiet joy. He went and made some preparations.

  They carried Bob out from the camp when Grundy had done with him, and in a quiet clearing a half a mile back from the beach, they sat him down and Taylor talked to him. The little boy trusted Taylor, as no other man he knew, and as he listened some life came back into his eyes, some sparks of animation. They had seen some men, explained the boatswain, some Africans, lurking in the forest. Yesterday for the first time, and then again today. They had not spoken – they were the white man’s enemy – but it was certain they were there, and waiting.

  “Black Bob,” he said. “Black Bob, boy – would you like to go?”

  Perhaps he did not understand, perhaps he could not believe them, but Black Bob seemed confused. His eyes showed hope, then fear, then disbelief. Taylor, touched almost to tears, took him in his arms and whispered comfort in his ear. Sam, also deeply moved, watched from a little distance, and held his breath. He willed the little boy to understand their good intent, their urge to help, to save him.

  And he did. He cried, he clung onto Bosun Taylor, he laughed, he babbled, then he cried some more. They showed him the bundle they had made up, the food, the water, a square of blanket, clothes, and they led him deeper into the brush, towards the area where the Maroons would be. Bob, recovered, found the rising ground no problem now, in fact he outpaced the men with ease, despite his feet were bare and theirs were shod. On the edge of the thickest scrub and woodland, they stopped and stood. It occurred to Holt for the first time that they were in truly mortal danger. He had a sabre with him, and one pistol, while Taylor had a thick black stick. This morning, in this very spot, they had seen men moving in the undergrowth – but there had been more than the two of them then, and they had carried guns with ostentation.

  “Christ, Jem,” he said. “Soon as we spot them, we’d better cut and run!”

  The boatswain smiled tightly.

  “Get ready then,” he said. “For I can see one now”

  Sam’s mouth went dry as he saw what Taylor saw. Not fifty yards away there was a black face peering through the bushes. Another then appeared, six feet away from it. And then a third. The boatswain put a hand into the small boy’s back, propelling him.

  “Now, Bob,” he said. “Look you, there are your friends. Now then, Bob, you go to them, before they eat us up!”

  The boy hung back. He looked over his shoulder at Sam, then at Bosun Taylor for further reassurance. Taylor, with an effort, wiped the fear from off his face. The need to run was urgent.

  “Go on, Bob,” he said. “Don’t hang about, lad. You don’t want to get me killed, do you? They’re your men, boy. Your friends. Your people. Go!”

  Four men were visible. They had stepped out of the bushes. They were dressed almost like whites, except more ragged, torn shirts and scraggy britches. One had a gun, one had a cutlass, the other two had clubs. They were silent, threatening.

  Holt stepped forward.

  “We are here in peace!” he shouted. “We are not your enemies! We have a friend for you! A little African that you must help! Look after him!”

  The ragged men stepped forward, and Holt and Taylor back. Bob remained unmoving, but a cautious smile was on his face.

  “Go on,” said Taylor. “Go on, Bob. Your own kind. They are your people! Go!”

  Suddenly, Bob made his mind up. With another backward glance, he ran forward, his bundle in both hands. As he ran he shouted something, which the white men could not understand. But it was filled with wild elation, and the blacks moved to meet him, and it was time to go. Holt and the boatswain turned and plunged into the undergrowth, down the hill. Behind they heard voices, but not shouts. For a moment, in a hundred yards or so, they stopped to listen. There was no pursuit.

  “Christ, Jem,” said Holt, “we’ve done it! We’ve saved the poor child’s life! Jesus! Can you guess what Slack Dick will say! Jesus!”

  “Sir,” said Taylor. “Sir, I do not give a cockerel’s bollocks! It’s done, sir, and no one can gainsay it! We have done right by Black Bob! At last!”

  “Amen,” said Sam. “Amen to that. And no one more deserved it… He has gone back to his own.”

  Chapter Ten

  Honourable men or not, the French sailors on the Jacqueline threw in their lot with Bentley and his people with a will. They were called Chrétien Perrin and François Imbert and they both hailed from Saint Malo, in a place they called Bretagne. “Petit Bretagne,” Perrin said to Bentley one morning, “and you are from the big Bretagne. We also ’ate ze French.”

  They had spent a bitter night together in the crippled ship, and the brotherhood of seamen was urging very strong. Bentley was not too naive, however, and Gunning, who was at the tiller, kept giving him the warning gaze. They were French, they were the enemy, they could not be trusted, even for a moment. This thin-faced man, though, in desperate need of shaving and with a glittering eye, had an easy charm it was hard to not respond to.

  “Je ne comprends pas,” said William. “Vous dites que vous hassez les Français? But vous êtes Français tous les deux. N’est-ce pas?”

  Perrin stubbornly stuck to English, as stubbornly as William practised his French.

  “No, no, not at all,” he said. “I tell you, Petit Bretagne. We even ’ave a lingwidge of our own, like yours from the Pays de Galles – you call that what? From Wells?”

  Bentley laughed.

  “Wells is in Somerset,” he said. “J’ai un oncle près de cela. Non, vous voulez dire Wales.” He wished to spell it, but that was beyond his knowledge.
He laughed again. “Un pays ou les hommes baisent les montons, on m’a dit.”

  Both Frenchmen’s eyes popped in amazement.

  “What?” said Perrin. “You say – baisent les moutons? You mean — ferk ze sheeps?”

  “Alleluiah!” said the other. “C’est déguelasse!”

  “What are you saying, skipper?” Gunning demanded. “My old lady’s Welsh!”

  “It’s dirty minds,” said Will, all disingenuous. “Not mine, theirs. Baiser means to kiss, far as I know!”

  “You know nuzzing zen,” laughed Perrin. “But I think zat is not true, hein?”

  “Me neither,” said Gunning, quite won over. “My old lady ain’t Welsh, neither, for that matter, sir. Just thought you ought to know that for a fact. Now, Frenchmen or Bretons – get up that blistering mast and help out Mr Ashdown and the Worm. I want to set more sail, and I want it drawing, comprenny vous?”

  With the deck deserted, Gunning and Will fell to serious discussion. The bad weather had left them in the early morning light, and the wind had gone round fair at last. William had managed several star sights, and both of them were expert at dead reckoning – Gunning, ever modest, to the level of a genius, he said. They were heading nearly north at present, and hopeful of a landfall before night, or very early in the morning. In the last days they had moved little, except dead to the lee, more or less due south, using the diminished rig to jog along as near hove-to as possible. Hard work and tiring, but it was over now, and they were cruising more like the old King’s yacht than a cripple, or an armed foreigner, or anything at all to do with real, unpleasant life. London Jack, ever the pessimist, expected by the hour to be sighted, then sunk, by a Guarda-Costa rogue, or worse, captured by another Frenchman who would take them prisoner without the option of becoming servants to Señor. But hour followed hour, and the horizon remained clear, the sky bright blue and cloudless, and the wind out of the south and elegantly sufficient for their purpose or desire.