The Dark Secret of Josephine

by Dennis Wheatley

  This was particularly infuriating for Roger, because had the wind continued fair for a further two days they should have sighted Martinique. On his appointment as Governor of the island, their original plan had been modified to the extent that his party was to be dropped off there while Charles’s went on to Jamaica; and, if it proved practical, they would exchange visits after Christmas. This would have made no difference to Circe’s schedule, as the normal course for ships sailing to Jamaica was to pass between Martinique and St. Lucia. It was this which had caused the islands to the south and north of that Channel to be named the Windwards and the Leewards respectively; and after leaving them to left and right Jamaica-bound ships completed their voyages by a five-day cruise inside the semicircle that they formed.

  But now Circe had been carried up to a point some distance north of the Virgin Islands; and Captain Cummins said that, since any attempt to thread a way between the innumerable rocky islets dotted about them would be fraught with grave danger, he must pass outside Porto Rico, then tack down the channel between that island and Santo Domingo. Roger therefore had no option now but to go on to Jamaica and take a ship back to Martinique from there, which would mean a delay of at least a fortnight before he could hope to assume his Governorship.

  On the second day after the storm abated they made a landfall on Porto Rico, and all that afternoon ran along within sight of the big island’s north coast. As its dense forests ran right up to the tops of its mountains it appeared to be uninhabited, but they were near enough to make out groups of tall palms dotted along its shores and the line of white surf creaming on its golden beaches. At this first glimpse of the green and azure playground they had come so far to enjoy the passengers were thrilled, but they were given something much less pleasant to think about early next morning.

  As dawn broke Porto Rico was still in sight and Circe was about to round the western end of the island. The channel between it and the eastern end of Santo Domingo was some eighty miles in width but another ship lay almost directly in her path. The other was a three-masted barque painted from bulwarks to waterline a greenish-yellow colour that would have made her almost unnoticeable had she been lying up in a cover with her sails furled against one of the islands for background. It was this unusual colour which immediately aroused the suspicions of Circe’s First Mate. Having bawled an order to ‘about ship’, he ran down to fetch the Captain.

  By the time Captain Cummins, bleary-eyed and clutching about him a revoltingly soiled chamber-robe, reached the poop, the barque was already crowding on more sail and standing out towards them. Within a matter of minutes all hands were on deck, anxiously staring astern, though the early morning haze prevented them from getting a very clear view of the craft which looked as though she was bent on pursuit.

  Roused by the shouting, the passengers soon learned the disquieting news, and hurriedly pulling on their clothes came out to join the Captain on the poop. By then there could be no mistaking the strangely-coloured barque’s intent to come up with them; but she was still some two miles distant and the Circe, now heading north-west to clear the invisible point of Santo Domingo, was scudding along on a good brisk breeze.

  That morning, November the 24th, no breakfast was cooked or eaten, for everyone in the Circe too much depended on whether she could outdistance her pursuer for any other matter to be given a thought. Both ships set staysails, stunsails and flying jibs, and heeled far over in the water under every inch of canvas they could carry. As the morning advanced the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky, and with visibility now perfect it became evident that the gap between the two ships was slowly closing. For sailing powers they were fairly evenly matched but the Circe was heavy laden and the barque in ballast, which made all the difference.

  At eleven o’clock the barque called on her quarry to halt by firing her forward gun. The shot fell a hundred yards short, but at intervals of ten minutes others followed, and the fourth crashed into the Circe’s stern.

  Amanda was standing beside Roger. Her grip on his arm tightened a little as she asked anxiously: ‘What is likely to happen if they capture us?’

  ‘Nothing very terrible,’ he replied; and while he wished to reassure her he believed that he was giving her a reasonable forecast, as he went on: ‘It will be deucedly inconvenient and damnably expensive, but it is unlikely they will do us any injury. Should we have to surrender they will put a prize crew on board and sail Circe to their home port If she’s French that will almost certainly be in Guadeloupe, as the recapture of that island last; spring again gave France a base in the West Indies. But she may be American, and if so we would be carried much further from our destination. In either case I fear it would be months before we reached Martinique, as privateers sell the ships they capture and demand ransoms for passengers and crew. But they operate on licence from their governments, so are under an obligation to treat their captives honourably as prisoners-of-war.’

  On Circe’s being hit, Captain Cummins had ordered her ensign to be run up and the women to go below; then he had a round fired from her stern-chaser in reply. It failed to reach its mark, but now she had shown her intention to resist her attacker also showed her colours. To the astonishment of the little group on the Circe’s poop they proved to be a white flag embroidered with the golden Fleur-de-lys of Royalist France.

  Charles lowered the spy-glass through which he had been looking, and remarked: ‘How very strange. The French Monarchy has been dead these two years past. Should she catch us there is no port to which she could take us without being caught herself, and by her bitterest enemies, the Republicans.’

  Roger’s face had suddenly taken on a strained look, as he replied: ‘Then she cannot be a privateer. Her Captain must be a free-lance—some Frenchman ruined by the revolution who has become a lawless rover, and is out to plunder, sink and kill. God help us if we fall into his hands. This means we have no option but to fight him to the last.’

  5

  ‘For Those in Peril on the Sea’

  Very anxiously now Roger and Charles discussed the evil fate which, in the shape of a graceful white-winged ship, had come out of the morning to menace them.

  As the barque tacked in pursuit it could be seen that she had eight guns on either side, in addition to the long-gun in her bow and two carronades mounted on her poop. She was still at extreme range, so could not yet use her main armament; but should she succeed in closing sufficiently to do so it was clear that the Circe would be hopelessly outgunned. Even if they fought on, the enemy’s cannon would cause such havoc among their masts and sailing gear that they would be hove-to and become vulnerable to boarding. So unless some unexpected turn of events occurred, their chance of escaping seemed slender; and to be captured by a pirate was a terrifying thing to contemplate.

  Half a century earlier buccaneers had still sailed the waters of the Spanish Main with comparative immunity, but the navies of England, France, Holland and Spain had since combined to put them down, or regularise their depredations by converting them into licensed privateers; so their numbers had greatly decreased and to have fallen in with one was a piece of exceptional ill-fortune.

  To be taken by a privateer would have been bad enough, as that would have meant being robbed of all but the clothes they stood up in, then having to kick their heels, perhaps for months, in far from comfortable quarters while they arranged to buy their feedom with heavy drafts on London. But to fall into the hands of a sea-rover who owed allegiance to no government might prove infinitely worse.

  Such pirate captains were, almost without exception, debased and illiterate men who treated their captives with ruthless savagery. The fact that they were outlaws debarred them from all communication with the civilised world; so they had no means of securing ransoms for their prisoners. Instead they either killed the men or marooned them on some desolate islet, and having raped their choice among the women gave them over to become the common property of the crew until death during some drunken scrimmage, or from
disease, released them from their hideous bondage.

  It was the thought of their wives, young Clarissa, and Jenny and Nell being handed on from one filthy ruffian to another which made the palms of Charles’s hands go damp and Roger conscious of a horrid empty feeling in the pit of his stomach; although each endeavoured to reassure the other.

  They argued that as the barque carried the flag of Royalist France the odds were all on her Captain being a man of gentle birth. If so, however criminal the life to which he had taken, his natural instinct would be to treat the women chivalrously; and, as one who had been brought up to put faith in the word of one gentleman given to another, he might be persuaded to put them all ashore on their promise to arrange for a large sum to be made available at some port where he could collect it without danger.

  Yet these optimistic speculations were offset by grave misgivings, as they were aware that there were definite limits to the authority wielded by pirate captains. Their crews were the scum of the seven seas, desperate and vicious men, banded together in free association, and willing to obey their leaders only so long as doing so seemed likely to serve their own ends. Discipline could be maintained aboard such ships only by a captain shooting out of hand any man who challenged his authority, and provided the bulk of the crew thought the action for the common good that was the end of the matter; but if a majority got the idea that their captain was either falling off as a leader, or cheating them out of their full share of plunder, it was they who murdered him.

  Governing the sharing out of plunder, and the enjoyment of captured women, they had rules well established by tradition, and the disturbing thought was the unlikelihood that they would be willing to forgo them. From that, it followed that even if this French Royalist sea-rover’s instinct was to protect his prisoners, there seemed little chance that he would give his men just grounds for combining against him by doing so, if that entailed the risk of stirring up a mutiny which might prove beyond his powers to suppress.

  Grimly, although they did not say so to one another, the two friends faced the fact that unless Circe could hold her lead until nightfall, then throw off her pursuer during the hours of darkness, both her passengers and crew would all be wishing that they had been quietly drowned some weeks back off the coast of Portugal.

  Meanwhile both ships had exchanged another shot, neither of which scored a hit; but now the Frenchman fired a sixth. It landed plumb on the poop not a yard from the mizenmast before bouncing overboard, and was a clear enough indication that she was gradually creeping up on them.

  Its arrival coincided with the striking of eight-bells; so although the whole crew was standing by, the watch was automatically changed. The Dutch First Mate took over from the Second, who had been on duty for the past four hours, and Ephraim Bloggs relieved the man at the wheel.

  The north-east corner of Santo Domingo could now be made out distinctly as a dark irregular patch on the horizon, some twenty-five miles away. At the speed they were making Captain Cummins estimated that they should round it about three o’clock, and he said that when they did the wind, for a time at least, would be more favourable to him; but Roger now doubted if they could get that far before the Frenchman had come up close enough to fire a broadside and disable them.

  Frantically he cast about in his mind for a means of saving the women. He was willing enough to play his part in fighting the ship, but no uncertainties troubled his well-balanced mind about where his first loyalty lay. As a passenger he was under no obligation to stand by Captain Curpmins to the end, and he decided that he must abandon him if that would give a better chance to get his own party away. Taking Charles aside, he said to him in a low voice:

  ‘Unless the Frenchman has the luck to shoot away one of our masts, we still have an hour or two in which to make preparations against the worst.’

  Charles gave him a desperately worried look. ‘I take it you have in mind the provisioning of some hiding place for our ladies and their maids. I greatly doubt though if they could remain undiscovered till a chance arises for them to get ashore. Any prize crew that is put aboard will ransack the ship from stem to stern in search of valuables.’

  That apart;’ Roger replied, ‘I fear that a number of our own crew are untrustworthy and may go over to the pirates. In any case some of them will give it away that there are women aboard, and under threats betray their hiding place. No; unless you have a better plan, mine is that we should remain aboard as long as there seems a chance that Circe’s resistance may prove successful; but should capture seem inevitable we will get the women into one of the boats and make off in it.’

  ‘Anything would be better than surrender; but I doubt your idea being practical. To lower a boat full of people while the ship is still under weigh sounds a damnably difficult proceeding.’

  ‘She won’t be. Gunfire will have reduced her speed, and Cummins be on the point of surrender, or if he decides to fight it out they’ll be about to board us. In either case we’ll be as good as hove-to. The Frenchman may send off a boat to chase us, but there’s a fair chance that he’ll be too fully occupied. Anyway we should be able to secure a good lead. The sea is calm and in an hour’s time we’ll be within fifteen miles of the coast. It will be a stiff pull but with you and I, Dan, Tom, and Pirouet, we should be able to reach it.

  Charles’s brown face brightened. ‘I believe you’re right. What do you wish me to do?’

  ‘Go down and warn the girls. Tell them to pack small cases. Nothing heavy. No more than each of them can carry—just their valuables and greatest necessities. I’ll inform the men of our intentions. The gig is the lightest boat, so we’ll take that. While everyone has their eyes fixed on the pirate, Dan will have no difficulty in giving her a quick look over without attracting attention. He’ll see to it that there’s water in her, and make sure that her gear is in running order so that we’ll be able to get her out speedily.’

  As they were about to turn towards the poop ladder they saw again the bright flash of the Frenchmen’s bow gun. It was followed by a puff of white smoke and, a moment later, the dull boom of the charge. The report was still echoing across the water when the shot crashed into one of the Circe’s after cabins. A piercing scream came from below.

  Scrambling down the ladder Roger and Charles ran aft along the passage under the poop fearful of what they would find. To their relief their wives were safe, but they were greatly distressed at the scene they came upon in the big after cabin. Poor little Nell lay with her head in Amanda’s lap. The round shot had come through one of the cabin windows and had taken her arm off near the shoulder. For a yard around the place was spattered with her blood, and it was impossible to staunch the bleeding from so great a wound. Within five minutes she was dead.

  Roger had already told them all that they must not use the big cabin because it would be dangerous; but it emerged that she had gone in there to fetch something and, by ill chance, the shot had crashed through the window just at that moment. Now, having covered her up, he hurried the others into the store-room amidships, where they would be protected on all sides by bulkheads. Leaving Charles to tell them of his plan, he went to his own cabin, hastily stuffed a few things into his pockets, collected his sword and pistols, and went in search of Dan.

  When he came out on deck again the Frenchman was perceptibly nearer, and had landed another round, shattering one of the starboard mizen chains. Each time Circe came into the wind to alter tack she fired back, and now she scored her first hit. A cheer went up from the men who were manning the gun, and striding over to the bos’n who was acting as layer, Roger cried:

  ‘Well done! If you can hit her often enough she may abandon the chase. I’ll give five pounds for every shot that finds a mark, and a hundred if you can bring down one of her masts.’

  With another cheer the gun crew set about reloading, and hurrying across to Cummins, Roger asked:

  ‘What do you think of our prospects, Captain?’

  The Captain glumly shook his head.
‘They’re none too good, Sir. Unless we can dismast her she’ll come up with us before we make the point. Then a couple of broadsides will likely carry away enough of our gear to bring us to; so she’ll be able to board us.’

  ‘You mean to fight though?‘

  ‘There’s naught else for it. Were she a privateer I’d surrender; but pirates are very different cattle. They’ll not risk letting us go, so as we could later get a ship o’ war sent from Jamaica to hunt them out. If we’re taken, they’ll hang you gentlemen an’ me and my officers from the yard arm, or worse. Better by half to do our damnedest to drive them off, or die fighting if need be.’

  Roger nodded agreement, and having satisfied himself that there would be no premature surrender, went in search of Dan. On finding his faithful henchman, he quickly outlined his idea for getting the women away in the gig during the height of the fight if the Circe’s crew looked like being worsted. The ex-smuggler agreed that it could be done and they settled the details. He was to look over the gig, then keep Tom and Pirouet near him, and once the Circe was boarded keep an eye on Roger. If Roger took out his handkerchief and waved it, they were all to run to the gig and set about lowering her while St. Ermins fetched up the women.

  Another round shot coming over caused them to duck their heads, then jump for cover from the splinters as it smashed through a hatchway further forward. Exchanging a sheepish grin, they resumed their conversation and Roger gave Dan further instructions that he wished carried out should he be killed during the action, or if it proved impossible to get the gig away. Dan did not relish at all these but he had been in too many tight corners with Roger to question his judgment, so he reluctantly agreed to obey them.

  It was now getting on for half-past-one. At every change of tack shots were being exchanged and both ships had scored further hits. The Circe’s after cabin had had four balls through it and part of her poop deck-house smashed in, but she had landed two rounds in the Frenchman’s fo’c’s’le and shot away the tip of her jib-boom, forcing her to haul in her flying jib. Yet, this loss of sailing power was so comparatively slight that she was still gaining upon them. Three bells had just struck when she suddenly turned into the wind and fired her first broadside.