by Porter Hill
‘Let go anchor.’
As the cable coursed through the hawsehole, the watch scrambled to furl the topsails and the Eclipse began to swing in her course. The wind played with the ship like a cat toying with a leaf, gently batting the frigate on the flowing tide as the anchor dragged weight.
As the Eclipse continued to swing in the wind, an inlet came into sight, the view of a few roofless stone buildings and a rocky shore pocked with salt pans. The men lining the railings stared silently at the stony shoreline, at an island barren except for a few coconut palms and patches of brown grass.
The most prominent structure was a tall gallows jabbing up into the sky, the shred of a hangman’s rope tossing in the breeze from the wooden crossbeam.
Chapter Nine
THE THREE GOVERNORS
North-east of the Laccadive Islands, the sun ripened dead fish and rotting fruit in Bombay’s noisy harbour. A swarm of dongis skimmed across the murky water towards the wharf, the oarsmen playfully shouting ‘Ram! Ram! Ram!’ as they passed a lumbering ulark loaded with dung cakes. The din of pedlars and fishermen in the waterfront bazaar was cut by the bellow of an elephant, the silver howdah on the animal’s back decorated with yak tails brightly plaited with ribbons and a myraid of tiny jangling bells. The cacophony and sweetly-spiced stench of the harbour carried up the yellow bastions of Bombay Castle and through the closed shutters of a chamber where Commodore Watson sat in a meeting with the three Governors of the Honourable East India Company.
Commodore Watson’s superior, Governor Spencer of Bombay, tall and slim with a neatly trimmed moustache and sharply pointed goatee, sat at the opposite end of a long mahogany table from Governor Vansittart of Bengal who had crossed the subcontinent of India with Governor Pigot of Madras for the meeting at Bombay Castle.
Governor Vansittart was explaining to Commodore Watson the reason why the three Governors had decided to remove the imprisoned French Commander-in-Chief, Thomas Lally, from Fort St George earlier than scheduled. Slim, elegant, speaking in a mellow voice, he summarized Lally’s last year in India.
‘Wandewash was the beginning of the end of General Lally. He retreated back to Pondicherry with the British Army at his heels. The Navy joined the Army’s siege of Pondicherry in June and, by the end of the year, they had brought Lally to his knees.’
Today was the first time Commodore Watson had heard in full why the British Commanders-in-Chief were squabbling amongst themselves over Lally as a prisoner, and why the East India Company planned to interfere – secretly – in the heated dispute.
Vansittart clasped his thin hands on the table as he spoke. ‘In January, General Lally saw that the French cause was hopeless. He sent an envoy to Colonel Coote, inviting him into the fortress to discuss terms for a formal surrender. Coote accepted the invitation and, whilst he studied the terms of Lally’s capitulation, Lally left the fortress and boarded Admiral Pocock’s flagship in the harbour. Surrendering a second time to the Navy, Lally submitted documents to Pocock, claiming Pocock – and disclaiming Coote – as the one true victor of Pondicherry.’
Confused, Watson asked, ‘Lally double-crossed Coote? He sneaked out of Pondicherry to Pocock’s flagship with a different set of documents?’
Vansittart nodded. ‘Lally surrendered twice. Once to the Army. A second time to the Navy. Both times excluding the other from the Terms of Capitulation.’
Watson was astonished. He looked at Governor Spencer at the head of the table. He glanced across the table at podgy Governor Pigot. ‘And both officers – distinguished British officers – signed documents excluding the other from a victory?’
Vansittart’s slim hands remained folded on the table. ‘I’m afraid so, Commodore, and the storm which claimed your Marine ships that day proved to be a blessing for Lally’s scheme.’
‘The winds began scattering the British fleet,’ he went on, ‘and Admiral Pocock ordered Lally off his flagship. As Pocock hurried to the rescue of the distressed ships, Coote was informed of Lally’s disappearance from the fortress. He emerged to find him aboard the Army troop ship. Pleased with his own good luck, Coote struck out through the gale, sailing for Madras where he locked Lally in the Army Guardhouse at Fort St George and continued north to Calcutta.’
Watson expostulated. ‘How can two British officers allow Lally to … manipulate them like this?’
Vansittart reached for a decanter in front of him on the table. Splashing port into a goblet, he replied, ‘The rightful victor of Pondicherry will not only enjoy a distinguished place in history, Commodore, he will also receive more than sixty thousand pounds in prize money.’
The sum of money was a fortune. But Watson was still confused. He looked back at Governor Spencer at the head of the table. ‘How can this dispute possibly benefit Laily? What’s the cad up to?’
Setting down his goblet on the table, Vansittart replied as spokesman for the three Governors. ‘Lally is most likely trying to buy time to be rescued. We’ve had reports that d’Ache is gathering the French fleet off Madras.’
‘Where’s Admiral Pocock now?’
‘Nearby off the Coromandel Coast. Guarding Madras. Waiting to claim Lally as his prize. Making certain that Coote doesn’t spirit him off to England.’
Watson’s head was full of questions. ‘Why did Coote leave Lally in Madras in the first place?’
Vansittart fingered the goblet’s thick stem. ‘Coote’s knee was injured at Wandewash. Originally he was not due to sail back to England until March, so he had time to visit his surgeon in Calcutta. But since then, he’s decided to depart at an earlier date. We must act more quickly.’
Watson ran a stubby forefinger around the inside of his high-standing collar, hesitating before asking the most difficult of his questions.
‘Your Excellency, what does the Company hope to achieve by … removing Lally from the Army’s Guardhouse and sending him to England? To steal him out from under their noses?’
The answer seemed obvious to Vansittart. ‘Why, to settle the problem of whose prisoner Lally is. The Army’s or the Navy’s. We’ll deliver Lally to the War Office in London and settle the dispute once and for all between them.’
Watson mopped his bald pate. ‘But what does the Company hope to achieve for itself? Certainly not prize money?’
Vansittart and Spencer exchanged glances down the length of the mahogany table; they both looked at Governor Pigot sitting between them.
Pigot nodded as his small red hand reached for the decanter in front of him.
Vansittart remained the spokesman. ‘Commodore Watson, when we deliver Thomas Lally to the War Office in London, we shall submit demands to Sir William Pitt for military control over all regions and territories in which the Company has powers of trade.’
It was the honesty that Watson had wanted. But the answer stunned him: the Governors were forming a coalition. Vansittart, Pigot and Spencer were laying the groundwork for an autonomy of Colonial power throughout the Orient!
Looking at Governor Spencer, he rasped, ‘But what if the mission fails, Your Excellency? What if Captain Horne’s squadron doesn’t succeed in kidnapping Lally?’
The mellowness disappeared from Vansittart’s voice as he answered. ‘If Captain Horne fails in this mission, Commodore Watson, we shall have no choice but to review the Company’s need for maintaining the existence of the Bombay Marine.’
Watson dropped both hands to his lap. He did not want the three Governors to see him trembling.
Vansittart added, ‘Commodore, we suggest you inform Captain Horne immediately of the change in plans.’
Part Two
THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF
Chapter Ten
THE HARD WAY
In the three days since dropping anchor off Bull Island, Adam Home had organized four work groups from the eighty-nine men of the Eclipse’s crew, the seventeen Marines of the frigate’s fighting unit and the remaining fourteen prisoners recruited from Bombay Castle.
He s
plit the four groups into four shifts of duty: one watch stood guard at all times aboard the Eclipse; three sentry posts were stationed around the island; a labour detail repaired buildings and dug latrines; and a drill squad trained from dawn to dusk, breaking only for meals and lessons ranging from tapping cannon with ball and grapeshot to smearing bayonets with goose fat. The four work groups rotated daily in the four divisions of duty.
Lieutenant Pilkington alternated with Midshipman Bruce and Midshipman Mercer in command of ship and shore shifts. Sergeant Rajit headed the drill squads. Tim Flannery was assigned to a hut on the edge of the island’s main cluster of stone buildings and converted it into his infirmary. Home had also ordered Flannery to shave off the men’s hair, beards, and moustaches as a precaution against lice. He offered his own headful of curly chestnut hair as Flannery’s first job.
By the fourth morning it was time for the men of Group One to train again with Sergeant Rajit in the drill squad. The men who had not hacked off the legs of their dungri trousers wore Indian dhotis twisted around their loins. Many men also tied rags around their heads, knotted at four corners, to protect their newly shaven heads from the sun.
Rajit wore no shirt, his pot-belly hanging over the waistband of the trousers he had rolled to his knees. Looking short and roly-poly, he set the pace for the single-file line of men, surprising them with his energy, moving at a constant, staccato pace.
Leading the day’s thirty-one-man squad down the rocky spine towards the cove, Rajit slowed as they reached Midshipman Bruce’s carpenters working on the gallows. Rajit did not need to turn his head to know that the men behind him were gawking at the work being done.
‘Eyes straight. You’ll be up the gibbet soon enough.’
‘If I last out the day,’ called a voice.
Another man gulped, ‘I’ll die before I get to the gibbet.’
Rajit maintained a dog trot. ‘A man who’s got wind enough to talk has wind enough to … run!’ Quickening the pace, he bellowed, ‘Left! Left! Left! Left!’
Thirty-five minutes brought the men back around the rocky perimeter of Bull Island. They panted for air. Sweat covered their half-naked bodies. But Rajit still appeared fresh, his round, shaven head free from perspiration, looking as if he were starting the day’s exercise.
At the crest of the hill, Rajit slowed the column as they approached Adam Home standing by the sentry watch – Post One – commanding a view over the Arabian Sea to the east.
Home fell into step with the squad to review Rajit’s progress with the men, looking for stamina, comparing the performance of the prisoners to that of the ship’s crew and the Marines, judging today’s squad against the progress of the other three drill groups.
Running alongside George Tandimmer, he shouted, ‘Back straight, Tandimmer.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Don’t swing those arms, Tandimmer.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Pull in that stomach, man.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
‘Tandimmer, you’re a good sailor but you make a hell of a Marine.’
The freckle-faced Sailing Master agreed loud and clear, ‘Aye, aye, sir!’
Home left the column at the foot of the western slope as they began running towards the tumbledown buildings which had been the French prisons.
Rajit ordered, ‘Drop!’
The men fell to their stomachs on the ground.
‘I didn’t say lie down and go to sleep! I want you to crawl! Crawl like the worms you are!’
Rajit moved along the string of gasping men, kicking them into a straight line, stepping on the buttocks of the men who arched too high off the ground.
‘I said … crawl!’
The men bellied over the ground, approaching the area where small prisons had been chipped into the hard, yellow stone.
Rajit thundered, ‘Eyes right!’
The men looked to the right, seeing small, rectangular stone boxes topped with iron doors, one-man prisons in which a man lay on his back with the iron doors locked a few inches above his face, baking in the sun. The French had called the small prisons ‘les fours’ – the ovens.
Rajit ordered, ‘Take a good look at those hot boxes. See what’s waiting for you.’
He walked alongside Mustafa the Turk.
‘Do you see those rock beds, man?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Mustafa kept his hips to the ground, face sideways, grimacing as he moved through the weeds.
Rajit passed down the line to the Japanese prisoner, Kiro, who was propelling himself with quick, strong movements of the elbows.
‘Is there anything like these hot boxes where you come from?’
Kiro gritted his teeth as the hot sun beat down on his back. ‘No … sir.’
‘You’re lucky. You’d still be inside one. Look at those shoulders –’ Raj it lowered Kiro’s neck with a stomp of the foot.
‘And look at that butt!’ Rajit’s foot pressed Kiro’s groin to the ground. ‘I didn’t tell you to kneel, damn it. I said “crawl”!’
Home had ordered the training to be concentrated on the fourteen prisoners from Bombay Castle. The men who proved to be the strongest were to bear the brunt of Rajit’s discipline.
* * *
The next morning, work was completed on the gallows. Boards had been ripped from the steps and re-nailed across its legs and crossbeam, creating a wall atop the platform, a curtain of boards with a rope dangling from top to base.
Rajit led the day’s new squad of twenty-nine men – Group Two – twice round the island, slowing them as they approached the gallows.
He turned and ran backwards, shouting to the men behind him, ‘Watch me close because I’m only going to show you bastards once.’
Turning round again, he gathered speed and approached the gallows at a run, balancing his way up a protecting timber remaining from the dismantled steps. He leaped onto the platform, grabbed for the rope and began a hand-over-hand climb up the wall, knees straight, feet climbing the boards.
Reaching the top, he grasped the wall with one arm, dropped the rope and jumped for the mud pit which had been dug at the back of the gallows to break a man’s fall. Loud hoots greeted him as he emerged from the base of the gallows, wiping mud from his face.
Good humouredly accepting the laughter, Rajit began barking the first man up the front of the gallows.
‘Walk the wall, McFiddich. Hold onto the rope and walk that castle wall.’
Kevin McFiddich grabbed the rope, moving his bare feet up the splintery boards.
‘Drop the rope, McFiddich, and grab for the top.’
McFiddish balanced himself at the top of the wall, tossed back the rope and held onto the wall.
‘Bend your knees before you jump, McFiddich, or you’re going to break your bloody legs.’
McFiddich, knees bent, jumped for the mud pit.
Rajit hurried the next prisoner, Fred Babcock, up the gallows, yelling for him to walk the castle wall, toss back the rope, bend his knees before he jumped.
Rajit shouted the twenty-nine men through the gallows climb. He repeated the drill three times before running the men down to the cove, ordering them to dive into the clear blue water and wash their mud-covered bodies before jogging back to the settlement for their midday meal.
* * *
Fresh fish. Rice. Dates. Oranges. Tankards of cool beer drawn from kegs brought ashore and stored in the island’s deep cellar. Simple but healthy, the fare was more appetizing than the usual midday meal of salt fish and dried biscuits aboard the Eclipse.
The men lined in front of a makeshift table set up beyond the barracks. After heaping their tin plates with food, they divided into small groups under rattan shelters dotting the hill which rose from the harbour.
Kevin McFiddich and Tom Gibbons sat side-by-side in a group of seven men under a sun shelter on the slope’s western edge. McFiddich and Gibbons had become friends since Home had locked them in bilboes.
Both men ha
d finished their plates of food and listened quietly to the other five complaining about morning drill.
Ned Wren, a young yardsman with red hair and a blue rag tied like a cape over the sun blisters rising on his shoulders, cradled his right foot on his left thigh, picking splinters from his horny skin. ‘Why do sailors have to climb gallows and hurdle stone walls? It makes no damn sense to me.’
Fernando Vega lay at the edge of the group, thinking about his wife, wondering if she had seen other men since he had been sent away to prison for murdering one of her admirers. Feeling cheated by life, his voice was thin with bitterness as he said, ‘Captain Horne wants to make Marines out of us.’
Ned Wren kept digging at the sole of his foot. ‘Not me, jack. I sail for John Company but that don’t make me no bloody Marine.’
Martin Allen peeled an orange as he asked Wren, ‘What’s Horne like? You sailed with him before.’
‘Ask Gibbons. He’s been with Horne longer than me.’
Gibbons sat feeling the smooth spots on both cheeks where his bushy muttonchop whiskers had grown until four days ago. ‘Don’t ask me about Horne,’ he said glumly. ‘I don’t know him. Not no more. He was always poker-faced but a man who watched out for his crew. All that’s changed now. You saw how he hit me. You saw how he beat me in the ribs. Humiliating me in front of my mates.’
McFiddich listened to Gibbons complaining and, hoping to encourage the big boatswain’s ill-feelings, he patted him on his broad shoulder. ‘Look at it this way, Gibbons,’ he said consolingly. ‘It’s good you found out what Horne’s really like. Now we know what to watch out for.’
Kevin McFiddich’s body was lean and sinewy. His closely cut hair gave his face a skeletal look, making his eyes appear to be deeply set in their sockets. He had been press-ganged from the Lincolnshire Prison into His Britannic Majesty’s Navy and had been gaoled three years later in Bombay Castle. He never talked about his crimes.
