Fletcher's Fortune

by John Drake

  “I was hungry,” says she, stone-faced. “Give me that.” She pointed at the bottle of grog. I passed it over and she pulled the cork and poured some into a little cup. I watched her white throat pulse as she drank. “Ah!” says she. She wiped her mouth, folded her scrap of linen, and looked me over like a master taking on a new hand. The coldness of it irritated me. This wasn’t what I’d come for at all.

  “Well?” says I. “What do you want from me?”

  “Listen, Jacob Fletcher,” says she, “I did not choose this life, but I stayed with Matthew O’Flaherty because I liked him. And now he’s gone. But I am not to be had by every drunken beast who takes the fancy.”

  Her hand darted down and came up with something that gleamed iron and brass in the lantern light. It was a pocket pistol, short and heavy in the barrel. She aimed it squarely at my head. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” says I. I took the point. She looked perfectly capable of pulling the trigger.

  “Now,” says she, “you’re young but you look like a man. Can you be my man?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how shall you do it?”

  “I’ll wring the neck of any other man who comes near you. I can do that.”

  “I know,” says she, “that’s why I chose you. And now here’s my hand on it.” She put down the pistol and offered me her hand. I was none too pleased with this. Polly Grimshaw had gone at it whole hearted. She giggled and sighed and made you feel ninety feet tall.

  So what was this solemn little elf doing, with her long looks and handshakes like a Lancashire merchant closing a deal on wool? I was half decided to leave her to her misery and go back to my mates where at least I was among smiling faces.

  And then I changed my mind. With the pistol gone she looked so tiny and forlorn and I thought of her dead lover, mashed before her eyes, and I thought of being one lonely woman among hundreds of men. A mixture of pity and tenderness welled up from inside me and instead of clasping her hand, I took it gently in both of mine and bent my head to kiss it. She hadn’t expected that, and as I looked up I saw her face soften for the first time. She looked sad and happy at the same time.

  “And now I must be your woman,” says she, and my bowsprit stood like a marine on parade as she pulled her shirt out of her trousers and wriggled it over her head. Then she stood up, unbuckled her belt and threw off the trousers as well. She was slender and muscled like an athlete, and her white skin shone in the light, with small breasts that stood out like figureheads.

  I sighed and reached out for her.

  “No,” says she, “you’re too big. You must do as I say.” And damn me if she didn’t insist! Her style wasn’t the mad frolics I’d enjoyed with Polly Grimshaw but a sort of slow, oriental progression that nearly murdered me with impatience. For one thing she had me strip off and lay back so she could climb aboard in her own time. (That’s what you get for weighing sixteen stones, women have made me do that all my life.) But, by George, once she was in the saddle and had clapped on her hold she had tricks to play with her inside muscles that made me burst like a mortar-shell! After that, we talked a bit, drank some more grog and went back for another round.

  Later, when we were lying quietly together, a thought came to me.

  “If you hadn’t chosen me,” says I, “who would it have been ... Billy Mason?” She sneered.

  “That ugly pug? Never! Not with a King’s Officer waiting his chance.”

  “What?” says I. “I didn’t think officers ... that is I didn’t think ... ” She finished it for me.

  “You didn’t think officers went with common doxies?” She laughed a laugh that wasn’t funny. “Well, this one would have — if I’d let him! He was creeping round me before Matthew was cold!” I was puzzled.

  “Then why didn’t you go to him?” says I. “Who is he?”

  “He’s the one half the girls in Portsmouth won’t go near, not at any price. He cut up one of my friends with a horsewhip. And he’s supposed to have actually killed a girl once, and it was all hushed up with money. He’s dangerous, though you’d never know it to look at him.”

  “Who is he?” said I. “Tell me!”

  “Your First Lieutenant, Mr Williams.”

  “What?” says I. “Mr Williams?”

  “Yes, the pretty one.”

  “No! He’s the finest man in the ship.”

  “Is he now?” she said, cynically. “Then would you like to know what your ‘finest man’ does with girls? He likes to ... ” But she looked at me for a moment and changed her mind. “No,” says she, “you’re a kind man. You don’t want to hear that.” And she fell silent.

  I was still wrestling with disbelief when the second wave of amazement hit me, as I realised what this meant. I knew my enemy at last, and I wanted badly to tell Sammy. So first I told Kate she’d mess with me and my mates from now on — and God have mercy on any man who offered her the slightest insult! Then I left her for the moment in her little tent and went back to the lower deck.

  But Sammy refused to be woken and I had to wait until morning when I went up and down the deck with the Bosun and his other mates, bawling and yelling and helping lazy sailors out of their hammocks to meet the new day.

  And a grand game for a lad that is too! The trick of it is to catch them before they know it. A quick upward heave of the shoulder, and you can have them turned out of their hammocks and on their way to the deck five feet below before they’re even awake. So in all the busy routine of the early morning, stowing away hammocks in the bulwark rails and swabbing the decks, I never spoke to Sammy, but in the event I didn’t need to for I soon came face to face with Lieutenant Williams.

  At first, I still couldn’t believe what was in my mind. The mere look of him banished all thoughts that anything bad could exist in such a body. A born leader with the devil’s own charm. It’s hard to believe ill of a handsome face. He greeted me as always, friendly yet permitting of no familiarity, easily keeping the distance between officer and seaman. Or at least he tried to, but something was changed.

  I saw it as he looked at me: a downward flick of the eyes and a second’s faltering of the smile. Such a thing had never happened before, and it was there and gone in an instant. But I saw it all right, a spark of fear struck from him by the shock of the moment, for I’d changed as well. I was glaring steadily back and thinking, “Right, you swine, let’s see what you can do now I’m ready!”

  So it really was Lieutenant Williams. I knew from that moment. Yet it was the most staggering thing. He was a black-hearted, murdering swine, and by all accounts a perverted creature. But he was also the best officer in the ship, admired by everyone and loved by the lower deck: hadn’t Norris given up the chance of home and family so as not to disappoint him? But if it was him, then why was it him?

  When I did talk it over with Sammy, he shook his head.

  “Don’t ask me,” says he. “What worries me, lad, is that if you saw it in his face, then he’ll have seen it in yours. He’s warned, and God knows what he’ll do now!”

  24

  What Lieutenant Williams did do came as a surprise. It was underhand and clever and I suppose it was typical of him to identify my weakest point so precisely and to know exactly how to exploit it. It was also fast. He made his move that very night, after I’d first looked him in the eye and seen what he was.

  I was busy below decks with the Bosun’s records. My pretence of selling off a cable had returned to haunt me. I’d only mentioned it as part of my plan to get off the ship, but now the idea was tormenting me. Never mind all this seafaring nonsense. That unsold cable was a matter of business. It was a challenge to the part of me that I took a pride in. I’d just managed to square everything nicely when Sammy appeared. He was obviously worried but wouldn’t say what was wrong and led me off to a quiet corner of the lower deck, where Johnny Basford was crouched against the hull, hugging his knees, with the big tears rolling down his cheeks. As we knelt beside him, he recognised me an
d turned his face away.

  “None o’ that!” says Sammy sharply, and pulled him round to face me. Dimly visible in the great space all around, the off-duty watch were swaying in their hammocks as the ship rolled, and we spoke in whispers. “Now then,” says Sammy, “you just say you’re sorry to Jacob like I told you, and he won’t mind a bit.” Sammy turned to me, “Your friend’s been at him. He told Johnny he’d ... ”

  “He said he’d flog I, he did, and I never done nuffin!” says Johnny miserably. “He made I tell him ... ”

  “’Tain’t Johnny’s fault,” says Sammy, “he can’t bear a flogging, everyone knows that. That bugger cornered him and got it all out of him.”

  Sammy sighed and looked at me. “Jacob, I’m sorry, mate, but Johnny was listening when we was ashore. I should’ve been more careful. He heard everything and now he’s told Williams. He’s told him all about you doing away with that Bosun on the Bullfrog.”

  “An’ he said ... he said ... ” Johnny sputtered and mumbled, searching his store of words, “he said he gonna send a writing ashore. He gonna put it in his sea-chest, so whatever happens it’ll go to them ashore ... to his brother and his ma. So’s they’ll know what you done ... And he laughed at I, he did ... I’m sorry, Jacob.”

  Then, with his tale complete, he blew his nose into his fingers and wiped them on his breeches, greatly encouraged by his confession. He grinned happily.

  Sammy put an arm round his shoulders and looked to me for agreement.

  “Johnny can’t help it,” says he. “’Tain’t his fault.” At that moment, I could cheerfully have hanged Johnny from the main-yard and watched him choke. But it wouldn’t have helped. So I made the best of it and forced a smile.

  “All right Johnny,” says I. “You couldn’t help it.” After all, we were only a few days from the certainty of action against the French. However brilliantly Captain Bollington planned the affair, and however lucky we proved to be, some of us were sure to be killed. Williams might be dead before Phiandra returned to Portsmouth. So might I, and the ship might be wrecked or burned or captured. I was coming to share some of the fatalistic attitudes of my mates. One day at a time would do.

  Then, on the evening of 11th July, the look-outs sighted the French coast and a stream of orders from our noble First Lieutenant sent the hands rushing across the decks and swarming up the shrouds to shorten sail. I joined the Bosun and the other mates in repeating orders on my silver whistle, a trick I was still working hard to perfect. The trouble was, it felt such a straw in my hand, too small by half. But I stumped along beside Mr Shaw and cursed like King Neptune himself.

  “Haul away there, you idle sods! Get up them shrouds you slovenly buggers! Damn your eyes for a set of bloody farmers! ... etc, etc, etc.” Oh yes. That’s what the King’s Service had done for Jacob Fletcher of Pendennis’s Counting House, and destined for respectable trade. If only Dr Woods could have seen me at that moment, me and the Bosun, in our glazed round hats, with our tarred pigtails and silver whistles. Him lashing out with his cane and me roaring like a bull. I never used a cane though; nor a starter. Not then or ever, for the memory of what Dixon did to me. Mind you, if I’ve kicked one backside then I’ve kicked a thousand in the encouragement of sailors to their duty. I doubt they’d have been happy without it.

  As dusk fell that night, we crept up to the particular part of the French coast that Captain Bollington had chosen. His plan was to take out a prize from under the noses of the French in one of their safest anchorages: the Passage D’Aron. He knew the area intimately since his father had been British Charjay Daffaires (and if that ain’t how the Frogs spell it, I don’t give a damn) at the nearby town of Beauchart during the years between the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 and the resumption of our natural state of war with France in 1756. So the young Harry Bollington had spent long hours in small boats in and around the estuary of the river Aron and the Lance archipelago at its mouth.

  I have made a map to show how things lay, and you will see that the Passage D’Aron is a triangular area of coastal water bounded on the west by the islands of the Lance and on the east by tall cliffs. The Lance, with its rocks and sand-banks is impassable to all but small boats. It sticks out about ten miles, north-west into the sea from Cape St Denis on the south bank of the river Aron. Two miles upriver is the important market town and seaport of Beauchart.

  In peacetime there was a busy coastal trade between Beauchart and the Gironde estuary, and Bordeaux which was less than thirty miles north, up the coast. The mouth of the Aron and the narrow seaway southwards, the Beauchart Straits, were protected by no less than five forts with over a hundred heavy guns between them. In wartime, the southern end of the Passage D’Aron was a death trap to the enemies of France.

  Consequently, any French Merchant Master who got his ship inside the welcoming mouth of the Passage D’Aron thought himself entirely safe from the interests of those English and their damned Navy. And it was precisely to destroy this happy belief that Captain Bollington brought Phiandra and Ladybird slowly up towards the westerly, seaward side of Les Aiguilles to lay to for the night. He chose an anchorage just off one of the islands from where, come the morning, we should be hidden from sight to those inside the Passage and from look-outs on the French forts less than eight miles away.

  What we were about to attempt was extremely dangerous. It would be like a French cruiser trying to take a prize out from Chatham or Portsmouth and I suspect the sheer devilment of it appealed to Captain Bollington as much as the profit. Not only was there every chance of our being pulverised by the massed guns of the forts, but at that time, so early in the war, there was still a steady flow of French warships in and out of their major ports. So we might run into a powerful enemy squadron. All in all, most British Captains would have left Passage D’Aron alone.

  In the early morning of the 12th July, which was a Friday, Ladybird was ordered to hoist French colours and sail up and around the long sand-bank at the end of Les Aiguilles to take a look into the Passage D’Aron to see what shipping might be present. We shouldn’t want to go charging in on the morrow like Rollocking Bill the Pirate, only to find the Passage full of Line-o’-battle ships.

  Ladybird was gone all day and aboard Phiandra we were occupied with preparations for our expedition. It was to be a regular cutting-out raid led by the Captain himself and including over ninety men. Two boats would take part: the launch and the barge, and the hands couldn’t have been happier if they’d been about to go ashore on holiday. Nobody thought of any other subject than prize money.

  By four bells in the first watch, as darkness was falling, Ladybird was sighted coming round Les Aiguilles under easy sail. In half an hour she was close alongside. We were under orders that there should be no hailing or loud noise to alert the enemy, so Bollington was rowed across the short distance between the two ships, to report.

  He was a nice lad, not much older than me, and he was grinning all over his face as he came over the rail. The word ran round the ship like lightning that the game was afoot. We didn’t have long to wait for the full details, for the Captain mustered the officers in Phiandra’s great cabin for a conference and after that the individual groups of marines and seamen got their orders from their own officers. In my case, as I was to go in the launch, I stood with the rest before the Captain who was to command it. There were about sixty of us, so it was a large enough audience.

  “Now lads,” says the Captain, “Lieutenant Bollington tells me that the Passage is full of merchantmen but there’s no warships. It’s dark now and they will have anchored for the night rather than run the risk of rocks and shoals on the way up to Beauchart. There’s powerful tides in the Passage, so unless there’s a strong wind blowing straight out to sea, any of them who are outward bound will stay anchored until the tide runs out at half past six tomorrow. Now ... I intend that well before then, we shall be alongside our prizes ... ” A delighted murmur ran through the men at this wonderful word and the Captain sm
iled.

  “Yes, my boys,” says he, “prizes! I shall command the launch with Lieutenant Clark and Mr Percival-Clive, and Lieutenant Seymour shall take the barge with Mr Wilkins. We must be alongside the French at dawn, so it’s up-hammocks, breakfast done, and boats manned an hour before first light. I want to be pulling through the Lance islands and well into the Passage as the sun rises. Then we shall lay on our oars and pick our prizes as the light comes. And while we attend to the French, Mr Williams shall bring Phiandra and Ladybird round to the mouth of the Passage, to meet us as we come out on the tide. If there’s a fair wind, then well and good, but we’ll have the tide come what may and if the worst comes to the worst, we shall tow our prizes out with the boats. Every seaman shall have a pistol and five rounds beside his cutlass, and the marines shall bear muskets as usual. But mark me well ... there must be no use of firearms except in the utmost peril. We shall operate beneath powerful shore batteries and the longer they remain ignorant of us, the better. As a further precaution, the marines shall wear seamen’s jackets and hats. We may as well run in under the Union Jack as show those lobster-coats!”

  And after that, Captain Bollington carefully allotted groups of us to individual tasks about the French ships we were to take: some to cut the cable, some to shake out the foresail, the marines to secure prisoners, and so on. It was as thoroughly well planned as ever such a thing could be and I was most impressed with Harry Bollington’s grasp of detail. I thought that should ever I establish a substantial business, then there would be a place in it for such a man. For his part he had noticed my own talents, though not those I set much store by. To my surprise, he sought me out personally.

  “Fletcher!” says he. “In case I may be occupied with other matters, you shall stay by me and note the actions of the enemy immediately to my front.” In short I was appointed his personal bodyguard.

  For some reason, this irritated me. I felt like a servant and said so later to Sammy Bone. What Sammy said about this I shall not bother to record, for it would burn the printed page to ashes. But his drift was that if there wasn’t a promotion in this for me somewhere, then I was more stupid even than I looked, if that were possible.