I popped a “tabnab” into my mouth and went to reassure Blanche.
Chapter Seventeen
An evening or two later I was leaning on the rail at the waist of the ship, on the windward side, greedily snuffing what slight air wafted to me. There was the least shuffle of bare feet on the deck. I did not move except to put my hand upon the butt of the revolving pistol in my waistband. A shadowy form materialised beside me. It was on my left side, which gave me some reassurance, for I am right-handed. I drew back the hammer of the pistol, soundlessly, as I thought.
“Put it back to ’arf-cock, Sir,” whispered the shadowy form, “for I means you no ’arm.”
I lowered the hammer completely, then pulled it back to full-cock: I could afford to trust no one. The clicking seemed to satisfy the shadow.
“It’s only old Tom Transom,” it said. I almost put the hammer to half-cock, but at that time I would not have trusted my mother. My father, perhaps, yes.
“Mr Van Cleef, Sir,” whispered Transom, “meaning no disrespect, but are you out of your sodding mind?” There were only two answers to this; “yes” or “no”, and I could not find it in my heart to give either.
“Hrrumph,” I said Britishly.
“Shh!” he whispered.
“Sorry!” I squeaked.
“Ssshhh!” he shushed, anguishedly. I shushed. He fell silent, peering and listening until he was sure that no one was a party to our conversation. It struck me that he was almost as afraid as I was.
“Listen, Mr Van Cleef, Sir,” he whispered at last, “’aven’t you wondered why you ain’t in that boat with the other ossifers?”
To tell the truth I had not wondered much: perhaps in my vanity I had supposed that I was popular, perhaps I had thought, in a modesty more natural to me, that I was too insignificant to be awarded the dramatic casting-away. I did not answer, for I had no answer ready.
“Well, I’ll tell you. First, they needs someone to take sights of the sun with that quadrant; them Yankees can ’andle the ship everywise but that. Second, they reckon that if we’re cotched, you’ll speak up for them at the trial. Third, you was the only one stupid enough, beggin’ yer pardon, Sir, not to know that jest by staying aboard, let alone doing the navigationing, you was aiding and comforting mutiny on the high seas and you’ll be ’ung ’igher than any on us if we’re taken.”
This sank in, painfully, terrifyingly.
“I see,” I said. “What, then, can be done?”
“Dunno, Sir. ’Opes you’ll come up with an idea. Smartly, Sir.” Frantically, I clutched my wits together, tried to think as a Nelson.
“I do not see how we can attempt to re-take the ship,” I said, “for they have every arm in the ship except my revolver.”
“True enough, Sir, true.”
“How many of the crew are of your turn of mind, Transom?”
“Well, Sir, there’s a clear twenty on us served under Lord Stevenage’s pa; I reckon I could trust a dozen of them, true as steel, the others is old or daft or plain frittened.”
“Hm,” I said. A plan commenced to glimmer in my frightened brain. “Meet me here at this time tomorrow night, Transom,” I murmured. “I think something can be done but I must have a look at the charts.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” he said. This made me feel wise and responsible; no one had ever said “Aye aye Sir” to me before. It also reminded me, uncomfortably, that I was indeed an officer, however supernumerary, and an officer condoning mutiny. I had never witnessed a hanging and felt strongly that, if I should ever do so, it would be more interesting to be a spectator than the principal.
I spent a miserable night, slept a little in the morning and at noon, when it was my task to shoot the sun, my mind was a mere riot of half-digested plans. Alone in the chart-room, plotting our position and laying out a course, I took the opportunity of stuffing the chart for the coast between Knysna and Cape Town under my shirt and down my trousers. This chart I pored over agonisedly all afternoon, to some avail.
Transome and I met again in the dark.
“The day after tomorrow,” I said, “at just about this time, we should be at Longitude 20° East.”
“Arrh,” he said, “Cape Agulhas. Nasty bank there and a famous place for dirty winds.”
“Suppose I made a false reckoning at noon and laid a bad course and one of our party was quartermaster: we could run her aground, don’t you think?”
“Yerss,” he said bitterly, “that’d solve our little troubles for good, that would. Might as well jest jump over the side now an’ be done with it.”
“It’s like that, is it?”
“Exackerly like that. An’ if one or two on us got ashore alive, we’d still be mutineers, wouldn’t we?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Well, I ’ad,” he said, caressing his leathery neck affectionately, as though he liked it as it was. I was chagrined that he no longer called me “Sir”; clearly, I was no Nelson in his eyes.
“Never mind,” I said briskly, “I am just testing my thoughts, you understand.”
“Yerss. There’s summink in it though. Make a wrong course so’s we pass close to land on a rising tide in the dark and we could swim ashore.”
“Mrs Knatchbull cannot swim,” I said. I did not know this, but what I did know was that I could not.
“Oh,” he said in a disinterested voice.
“Now then,” I said, still briskly, “how long would it take to lower a boat, quietly, in the dark; one large enough to take us all?”
“Quarter-boat too small,” he mused. “Lower the launch – fifteen minutes. In the dark – twenty. If we got everything cleared away, falls loosened and such, all before’and like, p’raps ten minutes in a flat calm.”
“Excellent!”
“But quietly,” he went on, remorselessly, “carn’t be done. Arsk me to slaughter a pig quiet and I’d give it a try, but lower a long boat …” I think he would have laughed if the need for silence had not been so imperative.
“Don’t jump to conclusions!” I rapped – but as quietly as it is possible to rap. “I am examining the possibilities; your part is to make seaman-like comments. When asked.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” he replied, gratifyingly. There was no trace of surliness in his voice: I might not know wood from canvas but I was a gentleman and therefore capable of thought. All he had was knowledge. He could probably have made an ass of me at draughts but he would not have attempted to learn chess, for he knew his station in life. (This is the art of dealing with the lower orders: praise their mastery of the craft to which they are born but keep the chess-board locked up as you would your wine-cellar.)
“Now,” I said, “suppose that the mutinous, self-appointed officers were locked in the cabin when they have dined and supped and one of our hearts of oak knocked the quartermaster’s brains out quietly; would that give us time to lower the boat?”
He breathed deeply; one would have thought that he was thinking.
“No, Sir,” he said. “You couldn’t reckon they’d all be drunk enough; I’ve seen that crazy Boothcastle wide awake after a quart of rum. They got all the firearms in there, they could blow the lock off before you could say ’ow’s yer farver.”
“My pistol?”
“Might ’old ’em back, might not. Then, when we’re in the boat?”
“Hm,” I said, striving for a tone of “hm” which would convince him that this was what I had expected him to say.
“Anyways,” he went on, “there’s a fair lot in the fo’c’sle what would come raging out at us; they got their hearts set on South Americky and freedom. They’d reckon that if we got ashore a King’s ship would be arter them in jig-time – and we knows their names and their destination. Which ain’t ’Eaven,” he added, obscurely. “You couldn’t ’old off the cabin and the fo’c’sle both, not with that pistol – the men forrard still ’ave their case-knives, let alone the firearms aft. See?”
I saw, but preserved my feigned
nonchalance.
“Quite right,” I said. “Now, this gun,” nudging the pivot-piece beside me, “I fancy this could be brought to bear on the fo’c’sle? There is a garland of shot beside it, a flexible rammer and sponge racked against the bulwarks, a flint in the lock and the expense-chest of powder cartridges under my very foot as I speak. What do you say to that, eh?”
“Wot I says, Sir, is: tap the expense-chest with your boot.”
I tapped. It rang hollow. It seemed to me that just such a tap at my head would have produced a similar sound, for that had been the last of my ideas, my trump card. Never again would Transom call me “Sir”. My hand stole to my collar and fingered the soft skin at my throat. Transome maintained a respectful silence, no doubt sure that I was elaborating some further part of a plan, but I was considering the technicalities of hanging. In the hands of a skilled craftsman, a well-calculated drop brings kindly oblivion in a twinkling of an eye, I am told, but to be hoisted aloft in a noose is a quite different matter: more prolonged, tediously uncomfortable and calculated to make the subject behave in various shameful and disgusting ways which I shall not trouble you with describing.
My craven musings were blown to pieces by a deep, sotto voce cough, six inches behind me, I did not quite jump over the side, nor did my heart altogether stop, but I must confess that I shuddered violently and, indeed, may have moistened myself a little.
In an instant I collected myself, realising that it was only the Doctor: a man to be trusted regardless of his creed or colour.
“Ah was wokened up by yo’ thinkin’, Mistuh Cleef,” he rumbled softly in my ear, “so ah jes’ naturally come out heah to heah what you was saying. ’T’warn’t at all the same as what I heard you a-thinkin’.” I looked over my shoulder at him: his grin was like the keyboard of a small piano-forte.
“Speak, thou apparition,” I said.
“Cain’t hex me, Mistuh Cleef; I hear’t longer words nor that. Jes’ wanted to tell you about my medicine chest.”
“Yes, well, I did see it before,” I mumbled, swallowing the blood from my bitten tongue. (It was, indeed, a beautiful chest, with double doors and sliding sides and back, all filled with little bottles of Gregory’s powder, snake-oil and other useful jollops.)
“Didn’t see the secret drawer in the bottom, Mistuh Cleef. Didn’t see the big flat bottle of micky-o-flynn.”
Transom, beside me, stiffened into attention; clearly this meant something. I raised an interested eyebrow: the doctor could see it in the dark, I was sure.
“Cheloral hyderate,” he explained, “ ’nuff to send a school o’ whales to sleep.”
My mind raced.
“Only trouble,” went on the cook, “it don’t keep too long. Bo’t it two year ago. Still send ev’one to sleep but anyone ain’t fit, well they jes’ might not wake up agin.”
“Tsk tsk,” I said. “That is a risk we must take, is it not?”
Our plans were soon laid.
On the night, all went wonderfully well. Only the watch on deck had not drunk of the micky-o-flynn in their fish-chowder; only six of these were not of our persuasion and they were tapped upon the head and battened below hatches. I made a dutiful visit to see that all was well in the specie-room and took a little gold to cover travelling-expenses. Then I went onto the quarter-deck and showed the steersman my pistol. Without hesitation he agreed that it was better to be tied up than shot. I delivered him to Transom, set a course to take us as near to the mouth of False Bay as possible, slipped the becket over the spoke of the wheel and went to supervise the loading of my chests of porcelain. A whip had been rove to the main-mast yard-arm for this and all went as smoothly as a rabbi’s wedding. Nothing was heard but the creaking of the tackle and the hoggish snores of those who had eaten of the fish-chowder. Yes, well, also the muffled sobs of Blanche, who had been obliged to abandon half her wardrobe. I had not troubled to explain to her the benefits of our action, for women, as you will learn when you are older, think only with that charming organ which is their third eye, second heart and only brain. For my part, being compassionate by nature, I was concerned for the crew we had left behind, mutinous dogs though they were, but a glance over my shoulder as I sat in the stern-sheets shewed me the ship pursuing an excellent course. If even half of them awoke by morning they should be able to round the Cape; after that they needed no navigator, any course west of north would pitch them up somewhere in South America where life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness awaited them.
At dawn we beached the boat somewhere south of Simonstown, emptied it, stove it in and shoved it back into the sea to sink. I gave each man a guinea to see him safe home to England and we dispersed, only Blanche, the doctor and Orace staying with me and the chests. We slept until noon, when the doctor, who had rambled off, arrived with a yellow-faced man, two thin, strong negroes and a spring-cart.
Arrived at the village of Simonstown, our bottoms blackened and blued with the jolting of the cart’s hard seat, we were taken to a house where a fat woman gave us something nameless to eat and put us into a monstrous feather-bed. I do not know how long we slept. When I awoke I saw from the window some ships which clearly belonged to Her Majesty and I lost no time in hiring another cart to take us to the town of Cape Town, where we mingled with the motley crowd. We ate better there and slept as softly. After a day the doctor came to find us and announced that he was going off to seek his fortune at the digging of gold and diamonds, poor benighted heathen. I assured him that he would be safer working in one of the vineyards, such as the great Constantia, but he had been convinced by some plausible fellow that there was gold to be had for the digging and diamonds to boot. Sadly, I offered him a piece or two of gold but he refused these, explaining that, when I was about to leave the John Coram, I had carelessly left the key in the door of the specie-room. I bade him farewell with much feeling.
I occupied a few days thus: I discarded my surname of Van Cleef and retained my middle name of Mortdecai; I found a synagogue, stricken with poverty, which was prepared to marry me to Blanche without enquiring too strenuously into our antecedents. I found a similarly stricken Scotch church whose minister did more or less the same thing: this satisfied Blanche, who happily sewed both sets of marriage lines into her stays. Normal matrimony suited her: it was only rarely that she hinted at a nostalgic desire for the whip. I helped her through those times.
More important for our future was the necessity to get back to England, the home of the free and the brave. My first attempts to buy a map were baffling: the Dutch settlers (they liked to be called Afrikaaners – the word “Boer” in those days meant a rustic clown, perhaps rightly) had no faith in cartography, for they knew that the earth was flat. London was a few weeks’ marches North; Holland a little further. One could not disagree with such men for each one carried a firearm and was fierce in his faith, fierce. Anything not explicitly spoken of in the Bible could not exist: it was so simple. I envied them their certainty. One Predikant or preacher harangued me for quite half an hour, his food-encrusted beard cracking like a whip as he spoke. Armageddon, he assured me, along with the end of the world, was positively to begin in the year 1914. I have every intention of seeing that year (for I am careful about choosing those who prepare my food) but I shall be surprised if anything Armageddon-like occurs.
No map was to be had, I learned, except by favour of the Clerk to the British Admiralty at the Royal Dockyard. This meant, for me, in my peculiar circumstances, that no map was to be had. While Blanche occupied herself with replenishing her wardrobe, I roved the town, making friends both here and there. The Afrikaaners were difficult to befriend: my clean Gelderland Dutch seemed affected to them and their yokel-patter grated upon my delicate ear. Many a time, when I had plucked up the appetite to attack a bowl of beef stewed with ginger and dried apricots, a monstrous she-Boer with breasts like pillows and moustaches which seemed to have strayed from her private parts would clap me heartily upon the shoulder and cry “Smaaklike ete!” into
my ear. This never failed to destroy my appetite.
On one such night, famished and forlorn, I fell in with a rich young smouse, or Jewish pedlar, in a drinking-shop. He had been up-country many times, he said, and was indeed about to set forth again. I expressed interest. He studied my clothes, which were of good quality but not showy and decided that I was a man of some small substance. We began the elaborate, ritual dance of conversation which takes place when Greek meets Greek. He was, it appeared, tailing on to a caravan of farming settlers who were “trekking” north-westwards instead of taking the more usual route to the Orange River and the Vaal. This trek was to march parallel to the coast, through the Little Bushman Country, skirting the great Kalahari Desert and, it was hoped, joining a party of kinsmen who had gone that way a couple of years before.
“And how are these kinsmen faring?” I asked.
“Who knows?” he shrugged. “What is news? Who is going to ride through dangers for a month on a valuable horse just to tell that Oom Paul has the gout and the cow has calved? Maybe they are all dead, God forbid; more likely, they are wallowing in milk and honey in some new Canaan.”
The smouse clearly believed, from his experience, that the gamble of taking his wares so far was a better-than-even chance: he was not a man to take odds worse than seven to three. If the trek found the community settled and prosperous, the contents of his pedlar-packs would be almost beyond price. Such a community, you see, might well be self-sufficient in the matter of meat and butter, corn and leather, even milk and honey – but no such community could make fine steel needles, gun-flints and powder, silk shawls, lead bars for the casting of bullets, ribbons, petticoats and delicate under-drawers for brides. (A Predikant would be in our trek and would have a busy time if we found the settlement: there would be a great naagtmaal with much hell-fire preaching and drunkenness, many informal marriages to be regularised, adulterers to be chastised and babies to be baptised.)
Yes, the smouse agreed, there was much room to spare in his wagon. The charges, of course, would be heavy, for this space could otherwise be used for valuable freight. Surely I could see that? I pressed many a glass of the excellent Van Der Hum drink upon him but the heaviness of the charges dwindled only a little. At last we struck hands on the bargain.
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