Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1955

by Flag on the Levee (v1. 1)

  “It is the lazaretto beneath the cabin,” Casimir informed him. “A special small hold, to keep the provisions of the ship’s officers.”

  “Here’s a way out of the cabin,” said Ben. “That door’s locked, and they’re outside the port.”

  “But the lazaretto is separate from the main hold.”

  “We might work our way through to the main hold without attracting attention,” said Ben. “If we can do that, there would be some way to the open deck.”

  “Que diable, what then?”

  “We could overpower the man at the wheel and run this ship into the bank,” pointed out Ben. “Then we could escape, and they’d never be able to work free and blow up our warships at Mobile.”

  “True, Ben. Up with the hatch, then.”

  Ben hoisted the section of flooring. Beneath was darkness, like a pool of ink. Ben held the candle down, and saw that the lazaretto was a cell-like chamber some six feet square and about the height of a man. A ladder descended into it, and its shelves were empty.

  “I’ll go down first,” he said, and suited the action to the word. Below there was a smoky gloom, that fled when Casimir handed the candle to him and followed.

  Ben tapped the bulkheads with his knuckles. “Strongly made,” he reported, “but here’s a plank that shakes when I press it. Take the candle, Casimir, and pass me back the knife.” .

  It was a strong blade for all its shortness, and he used the point to pry away a loose nail, then another. When the nails came out they gave play to the plank, and he was able to drag one end of it several inches away from the others. He pried strongly but with caution, to avoid making a noise. Then he let go and worked at the other nails he had thus loosened. “It’s coming away,” he told Casimir. “Stick the candle to the shelf, and take hold of this end. I think I can get purchase on the other. Now, are you ready? Pull hard.” They exerted their strength together. The plank came free slowly, and they lowered it to rest at their feet. There was an open space some four feet long and ten inches high. Ben put his arm through into black emptiness.

  “You’re the leanest, Casimir,” he said. “Can you crawl through?”

  “Easily.” Casimir slid a shoulder and leg into the slit they had made. He drew the rest of himself through and landed beyond with a slight thud.

  “What’s there?” called Ben softly.

  “I feel kegs,” was Casimir’s reply. “They are small, but there are many of them. They are set close together, and one upon the other, lashed in place with cord.”

  “Take the candle,” offered Ben, reaching to the shelf for it.

  “No, no!” Casimir protested, his hand coming through to gesture frantically. “Keep the candle there, for your life!” “Why, what’s the matter?”

  Casimir’s face thrust back into view.

  “I can smell it in the air. And Banton told us what the errand of this ship would be. This hold is full of gunpowder.”

  XV. In the Hold

  At once ben left the candle, hurried to the opening, and inserted his head. Casimir was right. The air of the dark hold was full of the sweet-pungent smell of gunpowder.

  “If it’s as strong as that, it isn’t shut up,” Ben decided aloud. “Feel around, Casimir. See if you can find out just what the arrangement is.”

  Casimir vanished into the gloom. Ben heard him scraping and scrambling around, as though on hands and knees. Then he returned to the slotlike opening.

  “You are right. The heads are beaten from some of the kegs, and powder is spilled among them. I make no doubt but that a train has been laid to some point where Banton can set it off at will.”

  Ben wriggled nervously. He had a sense of danger all around him, and he glanced to see that the candle was well away from where he and Casimir talked. Then he looked upward, at the open hatchway and to the cabin above. Finally he beckoned Casimir.

  “Come on back into the lazaretto.”

  Casimir did so, watching Ben expectantly.

  “Now, hold the candle in the middle of the space, right under the hatchway. Kneel so that you can hold it on a level with the place where we gouged out the plank. Pm going in there and make my own explorations.”

  Casimir took the candle. Ben squeezed through the opening and dropped his hands and knees in the main hold. The light inside the lazaretto filtered through.

  Ben rose. He saw that he stood among shadowy piles and ramparts of kegs, fastened with ropes as Casimir had described. Moving cautiously away from the light, he found himself forced to scramble over a heap, then another. His exploring hands supplemented the little he could make out by vision.

  The powder kegs were of various sizes. He judged that these had been gathered from a number of sources, probably over a considerable period of time. The plot to start war, then, was no overnight inspiration. As Ben touched the kegs, he found that less than half of them were securely closed. The heads of some had been split apparently with blows of an ax, and in some cases the heads had been removed entirely. Here and there his slippered feet slid and faltered as if there were spilled dust on the floor. He stooped and felt around him. Gunpowder lay there in heaps, like spilled flour on the floor of a mill.

  The arrangement and exposure of the whole freight of explosives bore out Casimir’s theory j the application of a single spark at some point known to Banton would set it off. Ben paused.

  Further groping exploration here and there would be useless, as well as dangerous. He would certainly need light to find the hatchways among the clutter. And a light would be the death of him, he knew. Any chance of a surprise sortie to the open was slim. He and Casimir must think of something else.

  He pondered, alone in the dark. Then he moved back to where light filtered to him, guiding him toward the opening in the bulkhead of the lazaretto. He set to work at a stack of kegs.

  From the tightly netted lashings he managed to pry one keg with a breached head. He hoisted it and poured out its contents at the base of the pile. Then he felt among the others, took a small open keg, lifted it and tilted it slightly. He moved slowly in the direction of the light, pouring out powder as he went.

  As he crossed the intervening stacks, he carefully left an unbroken trail of grainy powder across and among them. Finally he reached the gap, stood still, and lowered the halfempty keg to the bottom of the hold. Then he peered into the lazaretto.

  “Go back up the ladder, Casimir,” he said, “and take the candle with you.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll explain in a moment. Go on up.”

  Casimir mounted the ladder, and Ben, once more squeezing through, followed him up to the cabin.

  “I think that Banton’s so arranged this ship that he can set it off like a cracker at Christmas,” he said. “Well, I propose that we rig our own way of setting it off—in our own time, not his.”

  “I take you, Ben,” nodded Casimir at once. “You mean, to explode her before she can damage Commodore Shaw’s ships.”

  “And before Banton can damage us. We’ll light her up as we get away.”

  “But how?” demanded Casimir.

  “We need a fuse. I brought plenty of powder to the edge of that hole into the lazaretto. What can we use for fabric?”

  “Perhaps your pirate sash.”

  “Of course! ” said Ben, unwisely loud in his approval. “It’ll make a capital slow match.”

  He unwound the sash. It was more than six feet long, and fully twenty inches wide. With his knife he slit it into five four- inch strips. Gathering these in his hand, he gave the knife back to Casimir.

  “Set the candle on the table’s edge, so that it shines into the lazaretto,” he said, “but take care it doesn’t drop down on me there, or we’ll go up in an instant. Guard the candle and the door. If anyone comes in, have that knife ready.”

  “He’ll never live to cry a warning,” promised Casimir. “And you, my Ben?”

  “I’ll be down below, making fuses out of the powder and this silk.”<
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  He swung down the ladder, spread his strips of the sash on a shelf, and went to the opening into the hold. Putting his arm through, he fumbled in the keg he had left just beyond and brought back a big handful of powder. Then, returning to the shelf, he spread out one of the strips and began his work of making a fuse.

  After several experimentations, he hit upon the device of spreading the silk smooth and flat and dribbling a generous streak of powder lengthwise along one edge, then rolling this in and over and over. He wound up with a tube of silk centered with powder. He tied its ends with rags twisted thin, then began to roll another.

  “Ben,” came Casimir’s cautious hail from above.

  “What is it?” asked Ben, looking up from his labors.

  “I can hear them by putting my ear to the port. The lookout says we are leaving the channel, coming into wide-open water.”

  Ben took two steps up the ladder, his chin rising above the level of the cabin floor.

  “We’re not out at sea yet, surely. It can’t be midnight, or anywhere near.”

  “But they speak of open water.”

  Ben scrambled into the cabin and went to the curtained port. “We mustn’t show light,” he told Casimir.

  Casimir cupped his hand around the flame and pursed his lips to blow.

  “No!” warned Ben, just in time. “Don’t put it out. We’ll need that flame later on. Here.” He pulled open the wall cabinet where Banton had stowed his wine bottle and glass. “Set it in here.”

  Casimir did so.

  “But don’t close that door,” said Ben. “I tell you, that candle mustn’t go out. Here, we’ll hang this in front to hide it.”

  Quickly he stripped off his Barbary tunic and draped it across the front of the open cabinet. Darkness at once possessed them, and Ben put his hands to the curtain. It slid easily on a rod, and he pulled it clear and looked out into half moonlight.

  Turning the screw bolt, he swung the glass frame inward, pushed it against the wall, and thrust his head through the square opening.

  At once he felt a pang of disappointment. The port was not large enough for his broad shoulders to pass through. He could see the starboard rail of the ketch, but nobody was in sight. Past the rail flowed water, a considerable expanse of it that shone darkly and seemed fairly quiet. In the distance the clotted shadows of trees showed against the sky.

  Then Banton’s voice spoke from forward.

  “We can see from side to side here, but not where the channel opens ahead. Better bring her along shore, and so around.”

  “Better nothin’ of the sort,” came Seiber’s reply from aft of the cabin. “Let someone take the wheel here, and I’ll act lookout. We’d best stay well away from shore as we cross this open stretch. A tree or snag under water could rip the bottom out of us.”

  “And that mustn’t happen,” called Banton again. “Here, I’ll take the wheel myself, and you come up to the bow. Wicks, Packard, do you hear me? Stand by the sails, take orders from Seiber. Sing out, Seiber, which way you want me to steer.”

  Ben closed the port again, made it fast, and pulled the curtain across. He waited motionlessly. A moment later he heard Banton walking past, just outside. Then came Seiber’s lighter steps, moving forward. Ben gave himself a count of twenty to make sure that all was clear, then put his hand beneath the curtain and opened the port a couple of inches.

  “We can hear everything now,” he told Casimir under his breath. “Put the light back on the table. They’re all busy out there, and we have plenty of time for what we’re doing here.”

  “Then they have not reached open water?”

  “It seems to be just a wide place in the bayou, a sort of lake. Since they don’t see the way across, they’re moving very carefully. All four of them are giving their attention to that. We won’t be bothered here.”

  “What shall I do?” asked Casimir, quite readily looking to Ben for orders.

  “Stay here. Watch the door and the candle, and keep your ear close to the port—I’ve left it open a trifle. Pm going below again.”

  The work steadied his nerves, as though it meant some sort of triumph already assured. His hands and wrists were black with gunpowder when he completed a total of five fuses, each six feet long and as thick as his finger. He then addressed himself to the problem of joining them into a single unbroken line. After several trials and errors, he succeeded by shoving the end of one fuse deep into the end of the next, binding them securely with a strip of silk that he had previously filled with powder. Next he added the other fuse lengths, and at last he had a single ropelike line of cloth and powder, fully thirty feet long.

  He thought for a moment. The port was too narrow for him to crawl through, but Casimir would manage. If he,, Ben, could not escape the cabin . . . His lips tightened in the dimness. No point in thinking about that. His duty was plain, and if he shirked it he would die anyway, and many others as well.

  One end of the fuse line he carried to the place where the board had been detached and thrust it through. Then he buried it well in the powder remaining in the keg he had left there. He took the other end in his teeth and mounted the ladder, making sure that the fastenings between the lengths did not come loose. Casimir stared at him as he came into view in the cabin.

  “Your face is smudged as black as a sweep’s,” Casimir told him.

  “I can imagine,” mumbled Ben around the fuse. “Pull that candle to the far edge of the table. I don’t want to be blown back into the lazaretto.”

  Mounting into the cabin, he brought several feet of fuse with him. He pulled the chair to the side of the hatch and fastened the end of his line to its back with a final scrap left from his sash. Then he lowered the hatch of the lazaretto carefully, so it would rest lightly on the fuse and hold it in place at floor level.

  “Listen, Casimir,” he said earnestly. “I think we’re ready now.”

  “To get away.”

  “Yes, we’ll slip out by the port and dive overside.” Ben strove to sound casual and confident. “I’ll be the last one out; I’ll touch the candle to this fuse. It’ll carry the fire down to that big floating magazine Banton has stowed in the hold.”

  “How long before we have this explosion?”

  “I don’t know that,” replied Ben. “It may be a full minute, it may be more, it may be less. I don’t reckon we’ll have any more time than we can spare.”

  “Then I remain to set the fuse going,” announced Casimir.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” snapped Ben. “I’ll—”

  He broke off. For a loud yell had resounded in the outer night, from a distance but long and wailing, and distinct enough to carry to the captives in the cabin:

  “Ahoy, you there in the ketch! ”

  A moment of silence. Then once again the long-drawn yell, sounding as if it came through a speaking trumpet:

  “Ahoy! We follow you! Heave to, or we open fire!”

  XVI. The Lighting of the Fuse

  The thundering voice of banton rang out from where he held the wheel behind the cabin, and he sounded furious and not at all afraid:

  “Who’s that threatening us?”

  “No matter for that,” rejoined the speaking-trumpet voice. “We know this water, you do not! We have muskets aboard—”

  “Have you so?” roared Banton. “We have a cannon. Shoot if you dare, and see who gets hurt most! ”

  “Stand by to bring her about,” called Seiber from forward. “Wicks, out with the mainsail. Packard, come up here and get the jacket off our gun!”

  Ben and Casimir swayed on their feet as the craft reeled heavily on its change of direction. Recovering, they heard the sound of muskets firing. Something struck the outside of the cabin as though an ax had been driven into its stout planking.

  “That was within a finger’s width of me,” they heard Ban- ton snarl.

  “Ram home the charge,” Seiber was ordering crisply. “Packard, you were a soldier. Prime her and see if you can
lay her to sink that devil back yonder.”

  “All ready,” rejoined the hurried voice of Packard.

  “Then blow your match,” was Seiber’s next command. “Stand by, we’re coming ’round to bear upon her!”

  Hearing this, Ben gripped the table edge with one hand, and with the other snatched the candle sconce just in time to keep it from flying through the air. The ketch lay hard over as she completed her swift, sharp turn. Then:

  “Fire!” bawled Seiber.

  The cabin shook with the roar of a cannon. Plainly Banton had not been bluffing about the armament he carried.

  “Missed!” groaned the voice of Wicks from somewhere.

  “Sponge and load again, Packard,” Seiber was saying. “Mr. Banton! Better lash that wheel and come to lend a hand with our muskets. We’ll pepper them while we get ready for another go at them with the gun.”

  Banton raced past outside. Reports rang out in the night, like a succession of sharp slaps.

  Ben knelt suddenly and thrust sconce and candle under the chair. Over the seat he quickly draped his tunic. Its folds fell and hid the light.

  “Out with you, Casimir,” he said in the dark.

  He felt his way quickly to the port, stripped away the curtain, and pulled the glass all the way back. Casimir came up beside him, and Ben gripped his shoulder. “Out with you,” he said again.

  “I won’t go,” Casimir told him, and another rattle of shots sounded outside.

  “By heaven, you will,” said Ben, and seized Casimir’s other shoulder. “What makes you talk like that?”

  “You mean to stay and die here. There’s not room enough for you to get out; the port is barely wide enough for me. I won’t go and leave you.”

  “I said you’re going,” repeated Ben, and flung his strong arms around Casimir.

  Casimir struggled and struck, but Ben ducked his head to avoid the blow and administered a powerful, strangling hug. As Casimir wheezed and half-collapsed, Ben hoisted him bodily from the floor, shoved his thrashing head and shoulders out through the port and, with a final surging effort, thrust him into the open, like a log through the door of a furnace. He heard Casimir fall full length on the deck outside.