Flashman and the Emperor

by Robert Brightwell

  “I can navigate and I can save you if you let me,” I told him. “Do you want to stand on that deck watching the rest of those bastards sail away, leaving you to feed the sharks?” I may be a base coward, but I have always had the talent of appealing to the more primitive instincts in my fellow man and there is none stronger than survival. I could see the glow of interest in João’s eyes as he considered just how random a lottery might be against the certainty of a seat in a boat.

  “What do we do?” he asked at last.

  “First, we examine the outside of the hull,” I told him. “It might not be as bad as we think. If we can fother a patch over a hole, it will still give us a better chance than a small, open boat.” He nodded at the sense of that. Fothering involved moving a pocket of sailcloth over a leak. The pocket would be filled with oakum to wedge in the hole which would reduce the inflow to something that could be managed with the pumps. “If we dump most of the cargo we may move some of the holes above the waterline,” I continued.

  “But if the leak is too bad?” he prompted.

  I took a deep breath: this was the moment when we discovered just how willing João was to do the dirty on his fellow man. “Then,” I said quietly, “we tell the captain that it can be fixed and we leave in the boat tonight.”

  “Leave the rest to drown,” he whispered. I was not sure if he was considering the idea or was appalled, but it was too late to go back now.

  “We can only have men we trust in the boat when we examine the hull in case they see how bad the damage is. If word gets out, there will be panic and a stampede to the boats.” I still could not tell if he was repelled by the whole plan and about to run squealing to the captain. God save me from a virtuous conscience, as I would be literally sunk if he did. To try to provide him some comfort I added, “We will take the longboat and leave them the cutter, so some will still have a chance.”

  João nodded and slowly a smile spread across his features. I breathed a sigh of relief as I recognised that I had judged my man right after all. “We can trust the carpenter,” he stated quietly, “and the captain would want him in the boat to assess the damage.”

  A short while later I was climbing down into the longboat to join João, the carpenter and six oarsmen as we rowed around the ship to inspect the hull. The captain was a stupid, lazy bastard, I had concluded, for even though his command was now down by at least a foot in the bow, he still showed no great concern. All he kept doing was checking for water in the well.

  “We must have taken water in the hold, but the cargo is stopping it reaching the pumps,” he told me. In truth, he was not wrong and had he a manifest showing precisely what was in the hold he might have been more interested. But then again, any competent commander would have been down there to examine things for himself. When I asked if he minded if I joined his carpenter on the inspection around the hull, he just scratched his belly, belched and said, “The carpenter knows what he is doing.” I stood my ground and he gave me another glance, taking in the Brazilian navy captain’s uniform I still wore, then he shrugged. “You can go if you want,” he conceded. As I walked away I heard him mutter that, “The navy always thinks they know best.”

  In the longboat, barely a word was spoken. I guessed that João had told the men what we had found in the hold. We were all conscious of other passengers and crew watching us with curiosity over the rail of the ship. We soon spotted several split planks in the side of the ship that were revealed by the rolling Atlantic swell. João guided the boat alongside the hold and then the carpenter stripped off his shirt and took several deep breaths. He dived in and I watched the soles of his feet kick under the waves as he went down to explore the timbers of the hold under the waterline. It would be no easy task as the hull was covered in weed, barnacles and other burrowing worms that were rife in tropical waters.

  We watched the water expectantly, an unspoken tension shared by all of us. I did not glance at my watch, but it seemed that almost a minute had passed before there was a flurry of movement under the waves again. The carpenter surfaced right next to the hull and glanced up. The curve of the ship shielded him from the view of those watching from the deck. He looked across at us and silently shook his head.

  Then as he swam towards the boat he called out, “There is a hole, Captain, but it can be repaired.”

  We pulled him into the boat. The vessel’s commander was staring down at us, making a rare excursion from the quarterdeck to the front of the ship. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and was brushing at a collection of crumbs on his shirt front with the other. “Is it big?” he demanded.

  “No,” replied the carpenter with a convincingly sincere face. “Just a few sprung planks. We can fother them easily and then move the cargo so the pumps can do their work.” The captain nodded and was turning away as the carpenter added, “We are just going ahead to view the list of the ship. We may need to shift some ballast to balance it out.” The captain did not even bother to reply, instead waving an acknowledgement and strolling back to his quarterdeck.

  We were a hundred yards ahead of the ship before the carpenter spoke again, this time in hushed tones. “She’s fucked,” he announced in colourful Portuguese. “Dozens of planks have sprung across the bottom of the ship and down both sides. When I put my hand in some I could feel the sacks in the hold. The wedged sacks are the only things keeping her afloat now, but they will keep expanding until she breaks apart.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked one of the oarsmen.

  “We will fother a patch like we told the captain,” the carpenter said. “Then we will move some of the sacks to make a channel for water to reach the pump well. Once he starts to see water going over the side, the captain will be satisfied.”

  “Should we throw some of the rice overboard to lighten the ship?” suggested another man.

  “Christ no,” retorted the carpenter. “Even someone as dim as Hector,” he warned, referring to the captain, “will start to worry if he knows rice is at the bottom of his hold.”

  “Will she stay afloat until tonight?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, I reckon she has at least another day before things get really bad.” He paused and gazed around at us all. “So we are agreed, then: we take the boat?” There was a harsh, ruthless tone to his voice. He did not display an ounce of compassion to those he was leaving to die, some of whom he must have sailed with for some time. In normal circumstances, I would have viewed such commitment to self-preservation as admirable – after all I have run out on a few other desperate situations in my time. But in this case, I suspected that he would also abandon me without a second thought. I decided it was timely to remind them of my apparent value to our merry band of murdering deserters.

  “I will take the captain’s charts and sextant,” I told them. “Is there a compass we can put in the boat?”

  “We will put the ship’s compass in,” confirmed the carpenter. He fixed me with a piercing glare. “Are you sure you know how to navigate?”

  I managed to laugh and gesture at the markings of rank on my uniform. “I am a captain in the Brazilian navy, and served in the British navy before that. Of course I know how to bloody navigate.” In fact, I did not really have the first idea about navigation, but I knew enough that to admit such would mean my death sentence. Equally, I would die if we stayed on the ship. Cochrane had shown me how to use a sextant once; it had seemed a damned complicated business with all sorts of calculations I did not understand. But, I reasoned, how hard could it be? We were much closer to Europe and Africa than we were to South America. I just had to point the boat east and keep going until we hit land. Even I knew that the sun rose in the east and if we had a compass, so much the better.

  We agreed that we would leave that night as soon as it was dark, while dinner was being served to the passengers. There would be few people on deck then and as the captain ate with his guests on board, he would be out of the way too. I would just have to make an excuse to leave the table and join t
he boat party, who would arrange to be on night-watch duty so that they could slip away without anyone noticing. At least that was the theory.

  We spent the rest of that day manoeuvring a great fothering patch over some of the holes on the port side of the hull. It was tough, dirty work and to win favour with my new friends, I joined in. Well, it was not just goodwill on my part; I was already starting to worry that the ungrateful wretches might decide to leave me behind. Ironically, we had to move some of the sacks away from one of the holes on the waterline to allow a small flood of seawater in. We made a channel through the rest of the cargo so that this flow could reach the pump well. Soon the water we were deliberately letting in was gushing back out over the side through the pump. The captain gave a nod of satisfaction when he saw the torrent leaving his ship. He thought it was a clear sign that we were making progress, little realising that an even bigger tide was still entering his vessel.

  I carefully made my own preparations for our departure, tucking my loaded Collier pistol into one coat pocket and a bottle of brandy into the other. I gathered a small bundle of possessions in a sack including spare pistol balls, a powder flask, a pile of ship’s biscuit I had stolen from the galley and a bottle of black tea, which tasted better than water from the cask. Food and water were bound to be rationed and I wanted my own supply. Then, when I knew the captain was on deck, I stole into his cabin. There on his desk, under a couple of dirty plates, was his chart. As I moved the crockery aside, I felt a chill run down my spine, for suddenly the enormity of what we were about to do hit me.

  Until then I had thought of the longboat as my one chance of life, which it was, but how big a chance? We had been struggling against the prevailing winds and tides that would have taken us in the opposite direction, to the United States. The captain’s notes on his map showed that we had travelled some two thousand miles, but we were still not close to the shores of Europe. Instead a pencil line on the chart showed that we were heading to the Portuguese possession of the Cape Verde islands, off the coast of Africa. The captain evidently planned to take on supplies there before heading north, perhaps via the Canary Islands and on to Lisbon.

  I sat down in the captain’s chair and stared at the inked lines and pencil marks in trepidation. My initial thought that we would just head east until we struck land was ridiculous now. Only a skilled navigator could find a small cluster of islands in an ocean, and if we missed them there was a chance we would find ourselves on the shore of the great dark continent itself. Even the coast was not marked as a continuous line on the map. Only two ports were shown along what must be a thousand miles of coastline. Of the interior, there was no detail at all. Just an expanse of blank parchment to mark the unknown. I had already learned from my earlier adventures the fate of Europeans who had had the misfortune to end up in the hands of the Barbary pirates on the North African coast. What horrors, I wondered, might await on the western coast of the continent.

  At first I thought we would have to kidnap the captain and bring him with us to navigate. But to do that would mean admitting to the men that I had lied to them about my own navigation skills. That carpenter did not seem the forgiving sort and I was bound to lose my place in the boat. Worse, word would then get out to the passengers and there would be panic. Any boats that left at all were bound to be dangerously overloaded, with little chance for anyone to survive. I studied the chart again. If the captain’s calculations were right, we were exactly due south-west from the Cape Verde islands. The wind was pushing us west and so I deduced that if we sailed east-north-east, we stood a reasonable chance of finding a friendly shore. There were only some two hundred miles to go to reach the islands. What was that? Just two to three days’ sailing with a good wind. I tried to convince myself that even I could manage that. I would not need the bloody sextant, although I noted where the captain had put it, in its wooden box. I knew that I would at least have to go through the motions of using the thing if I was to convince the others that I knew what I was doing.

  In the hour or two before dinner was served, there was a growing tension aboard the ship. The passengers may not have noticed it, but I did. There were furtive conversations going on between several groups of the crew. Once, I walked past the carpenter and the purser talking in a passage. The purser jumped back as though I had caught him with my wife. The carpenter just gave me a malevolent glare, which only served to increase my sense of agitation. I guessed that the crew who were coming were involving their friends, who would join us, while those that were left out were trying to work out what was going on. I met up with João and confirmed that as dinner would be served at eight, we would leave the ship at nine. It would not be a moment too soon, for while we were making our plans, there was a deep groan from the timbers beneath us as the pressure built against them. We both sighed with relief when the Dona Estela rose sluggishly to meet the next wave.

  That final meal aboard the ship was one of the most nerve-wracking of my life. The captain sat in his usual spot at the head of a u-shaped trestle table in the saloon. The passengers gathered around, chatting gaily, oblivious to any imminent danger. It was a jolly scene for most, but not for me. I was still being shunned and made to feel as welcome as a pig in a synagogue. But tonight that was fortunate, as it eased any feelings of guilt for what was about to happen. I found a seat on the outside of the table, was ignored by my immediate neighbours, and stared around at the group. Apart from the middle-aged women, there were men of all ages. From the old grandee who had allowed me aboard, to a lad of just eighteen, travelling with his father. I would have felt sorry for him but for the fact that the little swine deliberately knocked me with his shoulder every time we passed in the passage. The plantation owner’s wife was busy ingratiating herself with the captain, as she had been told that it was her cargo that had damaged the ship.

  “I am so sorry for the trouble I have caused, Hector,” she apologised, squeezing the captain’s arm. Then she looked down the table pointedly at me and added, “I know some of the stores will be ruined by the seawater, but at least they are not going to that Brazilian scum.”

  “Here, here,” called a few voices around the table to show their agreement with that sentiment, which gives you a good idea of what a friendly gathering we were. No, my worries were not about the passengers, but about the crew.

  The trouble with joining a bunch of treacherous rats who would run out on their friends and enemies alike, is that there is always the chance that they will run out on you too. Perhaps the carpenter thought that he could manage without a navigator. Several times I heard the thud of things being moved around on the deck above. I had a sick fear that as I sat there spooning soup, the rest of my merry band were pouring down into the longboat and abandoning me to my fate. It was a relief to see the stewards come in to take away the dishes and bring in the next course. At least that showed that some of the crew were still there. I forced the food down, even though I was not feeling hungry. Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was a quarter to nine; it would soon be time to leave. I was just putting the instrument back in my pocket when there was a loud crash of something heavy hitting the deck above. Several of us started in our seats and one of the ladies gave a little scream. The captain leapt to his feet.

  “What in Christ’s name was that?” he roared, starting to the cabin door.

  I stood up too, unsure what to do. If he got up on deck then all would be lost. Unconsciously, my hand slipped inside my coat pocket and my fingers closed around the butt of the Collier. I would have to kill him before he could leave the cabin. “Captain,” I called, finding my voice. “The carpenter had talked about moving some of the water barrels to rebalance the ship. They have probably dropped one, I could go and see.”

  Conscious of the other passengers watching him, the commander drew himself up. “You may count as an officer in your navy, sir, but I am in charge of this vessel.” He turned back towards the door. I was just about to pull the gun from my pocket, when a new voice called out
.

  “Hector, please let him go. I have some preserved peaches to share as my apology for the trouble I have put you to.” I turned around to see the plantation owner’s wife holding up a large glass jar of orange-coloured fruit. Doubtless she wanted me out of the way so that she could share them with her fellow passengers and make sure that I did not get any. The captain stared at the jar, then at me and finally back at the jar. Greed and duty battled themselves for just a moment, before greed finally won.

  “All right,” muttered the captain as he returned to his seat. “Just make sure that they do not drop anything else.”

  I was out of the saloon in a moment and as he sank his teeth into his first peach, I was in his cabin, helping myself to his belongings. I took the chart from his desk and the wooden box that contained his sextant and a large telescope. Then, grabbing the sack of my own possessions, I hurried up on deck.

  I expected, nay, ‘hoped’ would be a better word, to find my small group of conspirators waiting by the rail and the longboat ready to go. Instead I was met with a moonlit scene of pandemonium. Virtually every member of the crew was on deck, carrying things to and from the side of the ship. I had barely taken a step when one whirled round, drawing a knife from his belt.

  “Passenger on deck,” he hissed over his shoulder while keeping a wary eye on me.

  “I am one of you,” I whispered back. “I am navigating,” I added, holding up the chart in evidence. The man still seemed unsure, but I heard the carpenter’s voice telling him to let me pass. I ran to the side of the ship and peered down. The longboat and the cutter were in the water and both were already half full of men. I whirled round to face the carpenter, “What on earth is going on?” I demanded.

  “The crew aren’t stupid,” he said. “They can look in the hold like the rest of us when they sense something is going on. We are all leaving together in the two boats.”

  “But there won’t be room,” I protested.