The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  It was in a minor way, however, for they still appeared to find the sailors’ greed amusing. They laughed about it when their minds were made up, and rolled down to the stockade beach as if off on a holiday. Bob had been dispatched back to the caves and there were ten of them all told, plus the whites. Thompson and Pond had searched out useful baulks of wood to start to make a raft for diving from, and Ward had stumbled on a broken-handled adze. But here again the blacks were more amused than anything, spoke to each other incomprehensibly in Kreyole, and split into two apparent searching parties. One lot returned in short order with some gourds of fresh water from a spring they knew, and half an hour after that there was a loud hallooing from offshore, and a light canoe, of reeds or bark or some such material, was seen heading round the point. It was for fishing, in the normal way, Chattel told them, and was hidden down along the coast. So why not fish from it to catch the white men’s dreams…?

  The canoe itself was too flimsy for a diving platform, but between the crowd of them there were skills aplenty to make better things. The blacks had blades and axes, and great knowledge of the sort of woods there were available, and construction started soon on a substantial raft. By the time it was launched the canoe men had confirmed the diving site, aided by the fact that Kaye had not bothered to have the floating masthead stump removed before he sailed away, which gave them not just an easy sea mark, but a makeshift mooring buoy to boot. Before much time had passed, the black men were clamouring to dive.

  It was a certain satisfaction to the Biter men that Chattel and his stalwarts found the game much harder than expected. They made their first dives more as jumps, with very little preparation, and although they swam down strongly they did not get really very far; maybe three fathoms was the best. They learned fast however, and before very long one two-man team could be seen through the clear water sinking at terrific speed, then stopping almost simultaneously six feet apart on a tilted lower yard close to the deck. As the jubilation grew Chris Thompson, self-appointed as an overseer, persuaded Chattel that all divers had to go ashore from time to time, and drink fresh water, and eat fruit. “More haste, less speed,” he said portentously, and they appeared to think that made him a philosopher. Chris Thompson, possibly for the first time in his life, began to be a happy man.

  The first day was long, the next longer. One of the best divers seemed to burst an ear and could not go far below the surface after that, while another swallowed a mass of water and had to be dragged up by the line he had, by luck, been taking down with him. For they had reached the deck, at last, and were seeking things to draw up to the top. First came a fourfold block – no use to anyone but the thought was there – and then a sodden coat that had a doubloon in its pocket… a treasure trove indeed. The next part of the diver’s trade was then revealed. They could get down to the roof of the treasure chest, so to speak, but then had to enter what was virtually a water-tomb. Seven attempts, and seven failures. At which Seth Pond began to laugh, and Ledermann furiously beat him from the beach into the water, then had the canoe sent ashore to take him to the raft. Pond, who could not swim, was forced to hug a rock and close his eyes and jump, and when the rock was lost and he was saved, was forced to jump again, this time to get it back. Thompson clashed with Ledermann, Chattel backed the white man up, and the evening was passed in bitterness.

  Next morning there was peace and harmony, and the diving was set fair to carry on. Three of the divers were gaining confidence and skill, while Ledermann had dredged out from his memory the names of former friends from Gulf days, and some idea of where he might track them down in the west part of the island.

  In meantime, though, and on the first plunge of the day, a skinny boy called Timba not only reached the deck but went in through the hatch and stayed out of sight until Chris Thompson was almost choking with vicarious fear of drowning. Then there was a double-jerk on one of the lines that were stretched from wreck to raft in permanency, and a sudden burst of air blew sideways from the hatch, followed by the jet-black sphere of the diver’s head. Timba burst from the water like a breaching dolphin, and slowly a small chest was jerked and juggled into sight. It was a two-man haul, and they had to take it to the shore to break it open. Chattel and his crew were excited by its very weight, but the Englishmen, for the same reason, were dubious. It was pigs of lead, and some small ones of iron, that Mr Gunner – Henderson – had collected up.

  “Tight bastard,” Carver hissed. “Who did he think would want to run away with that?”

  The divers were still pleased, however, and paddled out for another try. Within an hour two men were inside the hull, and a fair few knick-knacks – almost valueless – had been drawn up. The pattern went on all that day, with diving more successful, and spoils hardly worth the puff. The white men grew disheartened, but the blacks did not. Apparently, they really did not care about the “value” of the treasure.

  And then, towards the dusk, a diver shot from deck to surface without a pull on the lifting line. His arm came over the raft-side before the rest of him, and he dropped a leather bag that made a metal clinking sound. It was a bag of doubloons, glittering and shining as if they had never been immersed.

  And a shout was heard, from off the nearest headland. It was Black Bob, who amused himself these days by keeping lookout.

  “A sail!” he shrilled. “Sail ho! A sail!”

  The Jacqueline, refitted and full-manned for treasure seeking, was heaving round the point.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The second wave of depredations by the Siddlehams and Suttons was swift and violent, and was bruited far abroad. The raids were done for justice they insisted naturally, and justice, naturally, was buried deeper and more quickly than the corpses of the people that they overran. They fell upon Deb’s old camp and maimed and killed with wild brutality. Mrs M was the oldest woman left alive, and they put her to the sword. The greybeard Dhanglli did not try to hide or run, and was struck down by a boy of seventeen. Then they spread out into the woods all round.

  Deborah, who had not been there for many days, still heard of all the carnage as she and Mildred continued moving west. The bloodhounds had intelligence that she had gone and they struck out after her, but Mildred had better intelligence by far and they were always several jumps ahead. Alf Sutton on his infamous black mule was the leader of the most pugnacious thrust, because he had a personal desire to get at Miss Tomelty. Apart from anything else, he thought that having paid for her body not so long before, he deserved to get a go at it. After that his son, most likely, then the Siddlehams, then sell her to the bloodhounds and the slaves. He had quite a detailed picture in his mind.

  For white men, sadly, the climate and terrain made such well-laid plans more nearly fantasies. In getting on for a hundred years, they had only really conquered the areas that were flat enough and mild enough to take proper roads. However boldly Sutton pushed into the hinterland, he always ended up in bush and wilderness whose boundaries were undefined, but which boasted English parish names as if to make them real. They struck out from St Catherine, climbed over into St Dorothy, floundered in the badlands of southern Clarendon, then ran into the mountains of Elizabeth. There were tantalising hints that they were getting nearer to their prey, but Alf knew the “natives” well enough to know he could not trust them, and was hard-headed enough to know they were not to blame. Had it been his job to sell such “information,” he well knew, it would have been even more expensive, and even less reliable. But determination blind and stubborn drove him on. He was still a Yorkshireman.

  For Deb and Mildred, the journey was not easy. They knew where they were going – to find the man called Marlowe – and Mildred said that when they were far west enough he would in fact find them, because he knew of everyone who infiltrated his territory and would want to know their business. She said he was invincible, had not sold out to the white men like most Maroons with their treaties (a word Mildred spat out with contempt), and had no interest in casual butchery
so would not just kill them out of hand. Deborah, whose view of men both black and white was more realistic, she felt, thought this Marlowe sounded too good to be true, but she had no alternative to believing, on the surface, what Mildred told her. Back eastward she was a criminal and a runaway, and her white pursuers did like butchery, or at least employed it as a weapon of control and vengeance. If this Marlowe were to chop her up, she told herself, at least she’d have had a country walk. Philosophy Will Bentley would have called that, she figured.

  Deb thought a lot about Will as she and Mildred trudged and lurked across the centre of the island. Now she knew that he was here, she knew also and beyond all doubt that she was tied to him, and had to fight to gain her destiny. She had received word from Bridie that, however garbled by word-of-mouth transmission, convinced her that he felt the same, and she found herself from time to time just looking back towards the east and murmuring she loved him.

  With increasing regularity, they heard tales of murder and depredation by the Siddleham and Sutton crews. It must have been obvious to them that the people they accused of hiding Deb were innocent, but it seemed a campaign of revenge had been decided on, to teach some sort of lesson; most of the victims were small bands like Deb’s had been, incapable of organised resistance or fatal ambushes. What the women also heard was that the Maroons who had lost Captain Jacob had become infected with the general rage, and there were rumours of an “expedition of revenge” against the white plantations. With the masters and their bloodhounds gone, the knives and axes would fall upon the heads of the weakest slaves, and the women and their children. They would fall on Bridie also; Bridie who had risked everything for Deb.

  “What can we do?” she asked. “Bridie is there, and I cannot have her hurt. Can we get warning to her, Mildred, do you think?”

  Mildred laughed, her cold eyes glittering.

  “You do forget you man,” she said. “He the Navy in the town. He the protector. Never mind that Bridie, girl. They going for chop up you Mister Bill!”

  “But he –”

  Deb stopped. Mildred was right. Will might not be at the Sutton or the Siddleham plantation if there was a raid, but he would be there the minute the alarm was raised, it would be his duty. But his ship had gone, his men had gone.

  “I don’t forget him,” she replied forlornly. “Mildred, can we warn him? Can we get a message back to Kingston? Or to Bridie’s? Please. Is it possible?”

  Mildred could not answer. But she pointed out again that both the Sutton and the grander place were defenceless, and that both of them, to the Windward Maroons, had Maroon blood on their hands.

  “Oh God,” said Deb. “Oh Mildred. How long have we got?”

  Mildred sucked her teeth.

  “I get a message through,” she said. “I go tell Bridie woman through the Sutton housegals. I tell them hurry.”

  “But when? How quickly can the message go?”

  “Him gone already,” Mildred said. “Them words they moving now”

  *

  Chattel and his band did not waste much time in spying on the Jacqueline when she had settled down to a routine. Chris Thompson, once the ship was spotted in the offing, had got all divers up and heading for the shore like lightning, all rocks tipped off the raft to lighten her, the strongest men put on to paddling. Some of the black men swam, and the canoe lifted across the water like a wherry in a race.

  On the beach there was a conference, with whites and blacks agreed the raft should be destroyed or hidden, to keep their operations dark. Again Chattel proved his worth as leader. He pointed out that they must have been seen by the lookouts on the ship, and even if they smashed their platform into pieces its existence could never be denied. Better remove and hide all the long lines they had used (evidence of diving operations), scatter some fishing gear they had onshore across the grounded raft as if they had abandoned it, and lift the canoe up the beach to hide it or destroy it. The conference was ended by a flash of light, a rush of smoke, and a boom from the bow-chaser. They did not see the shot splash down, but it galvanised them. Within five minutes there was nothing on the beach but the abandoned raft.

  They had ample time to take the cockleshell higher into the hinterland and hide it well beyond a white man’s capability, before returning to watch the little brig drop hook. Before she did so, she fired a half a dozen shots into the stockade, presumably to see if any cannon fired back. Fat Mick Carver made a play of despair at this – despair at the folly of the British Navy – which drew appreciation from Chattel and some others of the escapers. Each time another chunk of hard-won fortification sang off into the firmament there was a small ironic cheer.

  When the ship’s boats came ashore stuffed with armed men, the band retreated to a higher and more sheltered point. It was entrancing to watch the sailors crawling on their bellies, dragging cutlasses and muskets through the sand and hoping for invisibility behind each miserable little tuft of greenery. The poor marine contingent – two men, no officer, no Rob Simms, but still unmissable in garish red – were almost objects of pity and concern to the English fugitives.

  The reconnaissance took the best part of an hour, including the final rush on the stockade amid a storm of whoops and shouts and roars. Then the armed sailors spread out along the beach and began to push into the woods and foothills. The lurkers moved back and back, their sense of pleasure not diminished. Fat Mick and Thompson agreed that the life of an old-time buccaneer might be attractive as a half-plan for the future; to have a ship, a base on land, and to pick off easy targets as the mood and opportunity presented…could that be improved on? At dusk the Navy men went back, worried at how suddenly their world would turn to black, and the Chattel crew trailed them to the beach again, and watched them row out to the ship while a defence contingent went into the “fortress” and blocked and barred the entrance and the newly damaged walls. Possibly for the first time, none of the deserters wished that they could rejoin their former mates, but saw them as potential targets. The Jacquelines would strain their guts to get the treasure up. Then would be sitting ducks.

  “They lifts it, we takes it off of ’em,” Chris Thompson said. “We goes and robs Slack Dickie of his prize. We’ll enjoy that, won’t we lads? We will!”

  The process of persuasion that the treasure should not merely be abandoned was accepted by the Chattel band with surprising lack of argument, and the ineptitude of the Navy divers when they watched them the next day seemed a major part of that response. Timba in particular was filled with scorn at the shortness of the time they could stay under, and the elaborate paraphernalia of lines and sinkers that they needed to get down at all. Ledermann and Chattel listened as they watched, and were sanguine at the idea that they might take control again.

  “You would be chief man, yes?” asked Chattel, with transparent disingenuity. And Thompson, who was sharp as knives, responded instantly: “Nay, not at all. We need a leader, and we need a black man, and black men to do the diving, for we can’t. You will be chief, and we can be your helpmeets.”

  “Black men do the fighting, too,” said Chattel, patting the woodwork of his long pistol. “Black men get more black men, and white man’s muskets. Black men can creep in wooden fortress, too. Black men can kill all white man.”

  They stayed one more night, and in the morning Timba was prevented from taking up position where he liked to watch, and the band of them moved out. There were fifteen or so all told, with the white men careful to behave as less than equals, and Black Bob happy as chief scout, or spy. As they moved quickly through the hilly, thick terrain, the small boy sped and ranged before, behind and round them, returning to report to Chattel and to Ledermann at intervals. He was with friends at last, not enemies, and he ranged with confident delight.

  Then, as he rounded a bluff onto a small and sheltered plateau facing out to sea, he came across a band of men, six black, five white. Bob stopped, and gave a high-pitched scream, and tried to run. One of them – tall, emaciated, with pal
e and curly beard and hair – jumped faster than a spider and gripped him cruelly by the wrist. Black Bob’s howl was cut off abruptly as another hand went to his neck. He had found the Lamont brothers. He had come across the Scots.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Black Bob’s scream, although choked off, was enough to save his life this time. As he dangled from Wee Doddie’s hand, his gurgling screech cut through the Caribbean air like a knife on glass and struck the ears of Chattel and his men. Before it ended, Seth Pond had let out his own involuntary cry, which carried back to the Lamonts and their cohorts in the sudden silence.

  “Shut up!” hissed Fat Mick Carver, angrily. “Shut mouth, you fool!”

  “Tssss!” went Chattel, sharply. His men, without an order, spread out into a hunting phalanx, and began moving forward, fast and silently, engorged with memories of their lost home, perhaps. Josh Ward and Carver, followed at a pace or two by Pond, went after them, made suddenly aware that they were at a natural disadvantage. The Africans had changed their attitude, were in control. Chattel had cocked his pistol, and his fellows’ long blades had appeared from their concealments – while the whites had only the short working knives they had been allowed when trust had been established. The speed at which they covered ground was, to the Navy men, astonishing.

  Around the bluff the Scotsmen’s band, although forewarned, had had no time to prepare or disappear. Chattel and Ledermann appeared from out of nowhere, at either end of a solid line of warriors, while Wee Dod and his group could only stand at bay. Dod had two other white men, short and powerful, armed with cutlasses, and some blacks with hacking knives. The Biter men, clear of the undergrowth, recognised their foe and were amazed.