by M. C. Muir
Pacing up and down, he glanced over them. They were an untidy lot, not unlike the sweepings from the Portsmouth taverns gathered up by a persuasive press gang. A woven scarf, a knitted beret and a felted waistcoat were enough to convince the visitor they were farmers. Stopping in front of the broad-chested Negro, who stood several inches taller, he spoke in Spanish and waved the plaited handle of his coiled whip in front of Eku’s face.
‘You know the sound this lash makes?’
Eku nodded.
‘Turn around,’ he ordered.
When Eku obeyed, the shirt was tugged from his belt and lifted. The raised scars criss-crossing his black skin satisfied the pirate. He was not to know that they were not from his days on the plantation, but from his time in the Royal Navy. Mr Tully also carried the scars of service on his back, and though he was not asked to reveal them, the pained expression on his face did not escape unnoticed.
‘You with the beady eyes, are you listening to what I am saying?’
Not understanding what van Zetten was saying, Ben Tully did not reply.
‘It seems I have your eyes but do I have your ears?’
Standing beside the lieutenant, Eku was nodding his head slightly in an attempt to convey the message to Mr Tully to do likewise. Fortunately van Zetten did not notice. But neither did Ben Tully.
After handing the whip to one of his men, the swish of steel being drawn from his scabbard brought an audible intake of breath from the women. Holding their hands to their mouths, some closed their eyes. They had already witnessed the atrocities this man was capable of.
Van Zetten’s voice rose as he repeated his demands. ‘You will listen and do as you are bid. You will obey or die.’
Lifting the curved blade, he levelled the tip to within a few inches of the lieutenant’s left eye.
‘You still do not answer,’ he taunted.
Mr Tully shook his head. He didn’t understand what was being said, but his lack of response was taken as a sign of insolence.
With a flick of his wrist, van Zetten slid the cold metal down the side of Mr Tully’s skull and deliberately sliced through the cartilage of his ear, amputating most of it and leaving only the fleshy earlobe dangling. As it fell onto the paving, Mr Tully groaned and gritted his teeth. He thrust the flat of his palm against the wound, but it did not stop the blood running between his fingers and streaming down his neck.
Screwing the amputated ear onto the tip of his blade, he held it in front of the lieutenant’s face. ‘Now,’ van Zetten yelled in Spanish, ‘I have your ear. Perhaps you will give me your attention.’
The pain creased Ben Tully’s brow, but he did not cry out.
Showing little fear, one of the younger women ran from her house, stripped off her apron, rolled it into a bundle and thrust it into the hand of the wounded officer. Though his knees quivered and a wave of fear almost toppled him, he stood firm, lifted his bloodied hand from the mutilated wound, smiled weakly at the villager and pressed the coarse cloth to the side of his head.
Van Zetten was amused. Holding the blooded piece of flesh aloft, he flicked it across the square where a flock of gulls immediately dived on it arguing over the tasty morsel. With wings beating furiously, the screaming birds fought over the tough flesh and ripped it to pieces.
The pirate laughed. ‘Now you will all lend me your ears. Allez! All of you.’ Pointing his sword in the direction of the beach he waited for the group to move off. The Negro led the way.
Oliver Quintrell remained silent. He dare not allow his gaze to meet that of his lieutenant or the frightened faces of his men. Remaining where he was in the middle of the pack, he followed Ekundayo from the village, leaving the women clinging to each other for support.
Yet, despite the malicious injury inflicted on Mr Tully, the captain’s plan was working. When they reached the beach, he expected to be loaded into boats and rowed out to the San Nicola. The next move would depend on the Perpetuals who had been taken prisoner earlier. Their help would be needed, if he was to take van Zetten’s ship.
Chapter 9
San Nicola
Climbing aboard the San Nicola, Oliver Quintrell was struck by the obnoxious smell. It was not a familiar ship’s aroma of Stockholm tar, vinegar, brimstone and bilge water, but the sickening, unhealthy smell of a ship too long at sea―of rotting timbers and rotting men. Apart from the odour, the ship was unkempt and spoke of lax discipline and lack of pride on the part of its captain and his officers. Various objects waiting to be tripped over littered the deck, while loosely lashed barrels rocked to the movement of the waves. Lines, hanging down like lianas from aloft waited to be taken up, while those that had been coiled had been thrust onto the belaying pins in a lubberly fashion. To the observant eye, some ropes, high in the rigging, showed signs of fraying due to constant rubbing against a spar or sail. For the captain, this lack of attendance to basic ship-keeping would eventually result in time-costly accidents and likely loss of life. The final insult was the sight of a meat bone from a previous meal thrown into the scuppers waiting for the next big sea to wash it overboard.
As he and his men appeared slovenly and bedraggled, the captain considered they were in keeping with the tone of the vessel. Scanning the deck tentatively from under his straw hat, he had hoped to see a few familiar faces, but at first saw none. Then he spied a pair of seamen dressed in blue jackets and white duck trousers―regular naval slops’ issue, and another three standing beside the windlass. They were under the close gaze of a sailor with a stout rope’s end swinging from his wrist. Then he spotted another two, similarly dressed, in the fo’c’sle. They, too, were being guarded, though not closely. Van Zetten’s men showed no interest in the new arrivals, which was a relief to Captain Quintrell, but his major concern was that there were very few sailors from the frigate about. His only hope was that when it was time to prepare the ship for sea, the frigate’s sailors, who were probably held below, would be summonsed on deck.
The thought had hardly left him when, without drum-beat, pipes or whistles, a raucous voice bellowed a command in Spanish. The foreign words were gobbledegook to most of the newcomers apart from Eku and another sailor who had once served on a Spanish ship in the West Indies. Without understanding the order, the new men were poked, pushed or beaten over the head with a knotted rope to the stations where they were required.
After being shepherded to the capstan, Captain Quintrell and half a dozen of his own men picked up the heavy wooden bars and slotted them into the capstan’s head. When the call went out to weigh anchor, they leaned their full weight against them and began walking circles around the drum to raise the anchor from the sea bed.
‘Where are the men?’ Mr Tully whispered to the captain.
‘Hush,’ Oliver replied. ‘Be patient.’
With the wet cable returned to the tiers and the anchor catted, a stream of commands from van Zetten’s first mate was relayed along the deck. This time, sailors spilled up from below where they had been confined. Keeping his face hidden beneath the brim of his hat, the captain recognized the faces of his crew, however, there was no sign of Mr Parry or the two midshipmen.
Like Oliver’s group from the village, these seamen were unfamiliar with foreign words, so they too were pushed and prodded to the stations where they were needed. Most were stationed around the fife rails beneath the three masts, or at the pin rails along the sides of the ship. It was here the braces were belayed.
With the work on the capstan finished, the men removed the long levers and placed them neatly on the deck next to the skylight. The hands were then sent elsewhere. There was no time to lose in relaying the captain’s plan to the others, but extreme caution had to be taken. If a voice was overheard speaking English, the plan would be foiled.
‘Watch yourselves and keep your voices low,’ Oliver whispered, as he moved to the starboard rail.
Though the orders screamed at them in Spanish were incomprehensible, for seasoned sailors the sequence required to put
a ship to sea mattered little on the vessel’s size or nationality. The location of the lines on both larboard and starboard sides followed a logical pattern and was almost identical on every square-rigged sailing ship.
Standing by the mainbrace on the windward side, Oliver was joined by three more members of his crew. On seeing the captain, one of the hands exploded in surprised delight. It took a quick thump in the ribs from behind to quieten him and explain what was about to happen. There were more unwanted shrieks and outbursts as word travelled along the deck, but van Zetten’s men, who were overseeing them, took their sounds to be no more than complaints or curses.
If his plan was going to work, Oliver knew it had to be enacted quickly. If his identity became known, all would be lost. Waiting for the ideal moment, he watched the wave of whispering as it spread both forward and aft, whilst on the quarterdeck, Captain van Zetten swayed side-to-side, oblivious to the reason for the undercurrent of murmurings.
‘Silencio!’ he shouted. At the same time, the slap of the bosun’s plaited starter on a man’s back brought the whispering to a halt. Then a barrage of commands followed. The masts groaned as the yards were braced around them. Crumpled canvas clattered down. Lines were hauled and sails sheeted home, and when the belly of the sail filled, the clew-garnets and bunt-lines were adjusted and made fast. With the helm hard over, the wind caught the jibs turning van Zetten’s ship from the coast.
While only a light breeze had ruffled the translucent waters of the cove creating little more than a ripple washing onto the sand, on the open sea outside the shelter of the headlands, San Nicola met with a fresh nor’wester on her larboard bow. With the sails taken aback, the jibs luffed, canvas crackled and blocks rattled over the deck as the ship heeled over. For a while it was in danger of being blown onto the lee shore, where the rugged rocks would have ripped open the rotting hull in minutes.
Then another order was given. The helm was put over and the braces hauled, swinging the yards on the fore, main and mizzen masts around in unison. With the rudder adjusted, San Nicola’s bowsprit pointed north towards the main island of the Azores.
It was time.
Oliver leaned towards the man alongside him. ‘Pass word to be ready for the call.’
Sailing close to the wind, the ship’s bow sliced the oncoming waves like a hot knife through butter and, while the eyes of van Zetten’s crew were fixed on the top hamper, no one payed heed to the messages being passed between the newly recruited lubbers stationed around the deck.
With their eyes focused on Captain Quintrell, the seasoned sailors worked slowly and carefully taking the lines on the belaying pins down to a single turn and placing their hands firmly over them, so they would not slip. The strain on the weather braces was extraordinary.
As the ship pounded through the oncoming swell, the doleful moan of the wind in the rigging was suddenly interrupted. Throwing his straw hat aside, Captain Quintrell leapt into an open space amidships and bellowed so loudly his voice could be heard from bowsprit to mizzen top: ‘Let fly all lines! Let the braces run! Hold firm, men and then reach for your weapons!’
Within seconds, the lines sizzled and smoked as they hissed through the sheaves at lightning fast speed. Huge pulley blocks on the stays’l and jib sheets hammered the deck and swung over it like giant pendulums slaying anything in their path. The block on the main topsail halyard swung down wildly knocking one sailor from his feet and slamming him face-first onto the deck. Blood seeped from his skull. On the mainmast, the royal yard dropped onto the topmast cap crushing a sailor’s head and sending another cannoning into the sea. The deck heeled violently to starboard, then to port, throwing the officers on the poop deck off their balance and barrelling them into the gunwales.
When the wheel spun free, a spoke caught in the helmsman’s jacket and tossed him over the rail like a wad of tobacco spat from a sailor’s mouth. Another man grabbed the helm and almost lost his hand as the bow swung around and the rudder took on a will of its own. The spinning wheel pounded his hand ripping his little finger until it was lying flat across the back of his hand.
With the sheets cast free, the great squares of canvas surrendered to the wind, flying out horizontally like giant pennants flapping in a gale. With no one controlling its course, San Nicola pitched its bowsprit into the sea, then rose like Neptune’s trident pointing skywards. Heeling violently, water rushed in through the scuppers and washed back and forth across the deck, carrying men like pieces of flotsam caught in a maelstrom, dashing them against the bulwarks. For a while, van Zetten’s men had lost control of San Nicola. The wind and waves had taken command and were pushing the ship towards the deadly coast. As Oliver Quintrell had planned, the ship was their main ally.
Before the renegade crew had gained their feet, the frigate’s sailors reached for their weapons―seven-foot long capstan bars and shorter, but equally hefty, wooden handspikes from the windlass, boat-hooks, plus dozens of belaying pins turned from blocks of dense vitae lignum that were now sitting empty on the pin rails. Wielding one in each hand, like cudgels, the Perpetuals descended on the surprised sailors bludgeoning them like wild men.
Van Zetten’s officers on the poop deck, struggling to regain their feet, had no time to draw their swords before they were attacked by the prisoners stationed around the mizzen mast.
Enraged, the foreign sailors fought back, throwing punches and kicks and reaching for their pistols, but most were too slow for the newcomers. Quintrell’s men lashed out relentlessly cracking skulls, ribs and arms, leaving the deck littered with fallen bodies cradling bleeding heads and broken collar bones,
But the cries of victory were premature as not all van Zetten’s men were on deck. On hearing the commotion, those who had remained below rushed up the companionways. They were greeted with a barrage of blows before they could step out on deck and when they fell back from the ladders, their weapons were quickly taken from them.
Van Zetten seethed with rage. His eyes flashed wildly as he screamed orders at his men. Surrounded by a group of his trusted lieutenants, he fired his two pistols indiscriminately blowing the face from one of his own men before throwing the firearms aside and drawing his sword. Lashing out, he showed no regard as to whom he struck. He had no intention of surrendering his ship and fought furiously to keep his command.
Descending the forward hatch, a group of Oliver’s men easily overcame the single guard outside the cabin in which Mr Parry and the two midshipmen were confined. Until the door was smashed open, the three prisoners were unaware of what was happening on deck. They had been alarmed by the thuds, the sound of running feet, timbers creaking, pistol shots and screams. They had felt the violent motion as the ship had pitched and rolled, and heard distant calls. But they were unaware Captain Quintrell was aboard and were both amazed and thrilled to hear that he was taking the ship.
‘The weapons store,’ Mr Parry cried, hurrying forward to locate it, but it was already being rifled. Without the attention of an armourer, many of the blades were blunt and stained with old blood, but they were still lethal if wielded correctly.
While wooden pins whizzed across the ship at head height, some hitting their targets, others ricocheting off spars and spinning along the deck like runaway wheels, blocks continued to strike lethal blows at anyone foolish enough to venture across the bow. The noise was deafening. With the thunderous luff of the sails, the crack of loose lines whipping the air, and the banging of the blocks that bounced off the deck, it was impossible to hear if any shots were fired.
The Perpetuals’ were frenzied. Without blades, they vented their anger wildly, gouging eyes, biting noses and head-butting their opponents, but when the cutlasses and dirks were handed up from below, the clang of steel on steel rang out. Men screamed and bodies fell. Initially, Quintrell’s men had been in the minority but, with the enemy suffering badly from the surprise attack, the numbers were soon relatively even.
With the sun glinting between the swaying sails, Tommy Wain
wright kept low and dived for the feet of a man levelling a musket at his mess-mate. Having knocked the renegade to the ground, Bungs was quick to drive the tapered stem of a belaying pin into the man’s bare belly. Tommy cried out as the skin parted and a gush of foul fluid spurted in his face.
‘Are you all right?’ the cooper called.
‘Fine,’ Tommy yelled, wrenching the pin from the victim and hammering it into the back of another man’s knees.
‘Well done,’ shouted Bungs, as he stormed aft.
Making his way through the mêlée toward the poop deck Oliver Quintrell’s sights were set on van Zetten. But when he was almost within arm’s length, the giant African, who had carried his master ashore on the beach, sprang in front of him.
Creating a mirror image, Ekundayo did the same for Captain Quintrell, leaping to his captain’s defence. With the power of a man who could turn a millwheel single-handed, Eku wielded a capstan bar above his head. Swinging it around in a full circle of three hundred and sixty degrees, he struck the African beneath the jaw. The power of the blow severed the man’s head and sent it flying over the hammock netting like a ball from a bat. Blood, dripping from the tentacles of veins, splattered the deck with red spots. The standing carcass crumpled in a heap, while the pool of blood spilling from the neck was quickly sucked up by the thirsty oakum from the dry seams where the pitch had sweated away.
A cutlass from the store was thrust into Captain Quintrell’s hand. Though unwhetted and rusty, the weapon with a plain iron hilt was quite capable of killing a man. ‘Out of my way,’ he called to the men nearby, side-stepping the headless corpse and heading towards his opponent.
Although the foreigner was older than Quintrell and could boast far more practice with a sword, Perpetual’s captain was no less capable as a fighter. The gleaming blade van Zetten wielded was slightly curved and razor sharp. It was far more ornate than the old cutlass Oliver presented. But the amount of gold filigree on the hilt provided no advantage.
