The Coves

by Whish-Wilson, David;

  There was no moon, and when Dempsey appeared in the firelight the men flinched. The giant Irishman made of noise and bluster gone eerily silent, a pious cast on his face. Eyes pecked clean by the fierceness of his observing. In his hand a rope leash, and out of the darkness behind him, a crawling thing, hessian sack over his head, the second mate, shirtless and mute.

  The men shifted on their haunches to give Dempsey access to the circle, but he ignored them, led the American with a tight rein to the mainmast, where yesterday he’d gutted the Captain. It was here they observed that Dempsey’s leash ended in a noose-knot, resting behind the sailor’s ear. The man was groaning in pain, although there were no visible wounds. Two days with his head down in a wooden hole, his knees trussed to his chest, had crippled him of easy movement.

  There was pity in the eyes of the men. No reason for the second mate to suffer like this. An American whaler, not a hated redcoat, or a peeler. Gone to savage, perhaps, judging by his tattoos and earrings, clothes fashioned from the cured pelts of seal, possum, kangaroo. Leather moccasins rubbed with animal fat. But no different to any of the men. And they understood, with a wrench, that this was no punishment, but a sacrifice, and the uneasiness became open fear. The Irishman taking them back beyond the pale, behind the centuries. Darky Malone so struck that he crossed himself, an involuntary action that wasn’t lost on Dempsey. He kicked out, took Malone by his orange beard, dragged him up. Looked into his eyes, and finding what he was looking for, passed the leash, indicated that Malone should cast it over the aft boom, which he did, nobody watching lest they catch Dempsey’s eye.

  Malone stood aft of the boom and reined in the leash while Dempsey stalked the edge of the circle, gesturing to Malone that he should hoist the American onto his feet. The sailor groaned as his back straightened. The noose came tight and Malone reached for a higher grip and was lifted on his toes, the heavier American not rising but choking.

  ‘Wait!’

  Dempsey emptied his tankard of rum. Kicked a hand-tied wooden stool toward the sailor. Signalled to the two nearest, a pale longhair the name of Starr and a stout old lag the name of Sweeney, to hoist the American onto the stool. When the two men took the American’s legs and hefted him, faces averted to hide their revulsion, Malone took the slack and wound the rope around the horned cleat on the mainmast. Stepped away and scampered back to the anonymity of the circle.

  Each of them had been through a court. They could hear the prosecutor’s voice. ‘And who lashed the rope that hung the man? And who lifted the man from the deck? And who turned the man off when the order was given?’

  Dempsey just laughed, but you could hear it—the worry that he’d lost them. Would he next howl at the moon? Get down on all fours and rip at the legs of the condemned man? He began to mutter, an incantation of some sort, punctuated by hard laughter. He’d told them the story of his grandfather, fighting under Wellington for the British at Waterloo. How before the battle Wellington selected five squaddies at random from the front line of his own troops; had them tied to a frame and flogged—‘to get the scent of blood in the air, to rouse the bloodlust of his men’, a strategy he’d learnt in India. So it was no surprise when Dempsey took from his belt the flensing knife and tossed it to Starr, the longhair northerner. With his other hand drew out the deringer pistol and pointed it at Starr.

  ‘On yer feet, allerya. We’re in this together, and spilt blood is our bond. You will recite, as I recite, and you will draw blood when I mark the signal, or I’ll blow out your belly with this primed shot. Mark my words, for this bloodletting marks the conception of the Dempsey Gang, united by common purpose and the bloodseal of our order, sanctified and watched over by our Lord the Tawny Prince.’

  The men and Sarah Proctor rose from the firelight shadows into the hard light cast by Dempsey’s stare. You could see in the shoulders of some men that their minds were on charging Dempsey, bringing him down, now that he’d forsaken his cruel-hooked knife. One went, the others would follow, but Dempsey was watching too and waving the deringer across the herd. Sam Bellamy, carrying the dog, whose ears were flattened, worked his way to the back of the rows, for there wasn’t space to form a line. His hands shaking. Knees too. Felt the strength leaving his body, or was it the goodness of his soul?

  ‘You boy, no. You be our Jack Ketch. Take your place behind the dangler, for it’s you who’ll turn him off, on my order.’

  Sam had expected some kind of cruelty, but not to be made a murderer. He glanced into the darkness, as though it might reveal a saviour, but nobody was coming to help him. Sam skirted the rows with his eyes on the hanging man, whose toes gripped the edge of the stool, dirty feet straining white, not a sound from his sacked head.

  Dempsey nodded to Starr, who approached the sailor. Reached up with the flensing knife, made a clean cut across his breast, drawing a red ribbon, then a prickling of red teardrops, as Dempsey began to intone, quietly at first but building in volume. ‘I am the roguish strowler. The principal Maunder. I mourn not my mother who died a rope-dancing for your honour. My brother morts, repeat after me. I do swear to be a True Brother…’

  Waving the deringer, eyes afire with righteous possession, smiling to hear the men and Sarah Proctor recite his proclamation.

  ‘…and in all Things, obey the commands of the great Tawny Prince, and keep his counsel, and not divulge the secrets of my brethren.’

  As a second, then a third man drew a stripe of blood across the condemned man’s torso. ‘…I will not forsake this company, but obey the instruction of Anderson Dempsey, who is the roguish Strowler, the Principal Maunder, whose mother died a-dancin on the rope in your honour. I will not teach anyone to Cant, nor betray my fellow morts to the Peeler or Outlyer, although they flog me to death. To die on the rope is to die in your name, and I swear to take your bloody part against all who oppose you, or any of us. We are bonded forth as only brothers-in-arms may be bonded, against every Ruffler, Peeler, Abram, Hooker, Swaddler, Irish-toyl, Swig-man, Whip-Jack, Kark-man, Bawdy-basket, Clapperdogeons or Curtals…’

  Some enthusiasm now, as the line diminished, and those who’d drawn blood took their places in the shadows, a lilt in the voices. ‘…I will share my every winning with my fellow Ruffman, and for the company of us. I will cleave to my Brethren stiffly, and will bring them peckables and spirits, goblets and Praters, or anything else I can come at. In your name, Tawny Prince, we give you this our Jack Ketch and this dangling man. Reward us in this new country, and abide with our depradations, us fellows of the Dempsey Gang.’

  The American had long ceased his moaning. Sam Bellamy had not seen, but one among the men had showed the kindness of severing the artery inside the thigh of the sailor, whose leg now pulsed blood over his feet and toes, down the verticals of the stool, to sluice across the boards.

  The moaning was now from the lashed steersman, thrashing at his bonds in the darkness.

  Dempsey inspected the flayed body of the sailor, peered at the death-wound administered to the inner thigh, and nodded to Sam. ‘Boy, we shall dispense with the floggin. Turn him off. Out of this world and into the next, where he will join the Tawny Prince, and look down approvingly upon the exploits of the Dempsey Gang. Turn him off!’

  But Sam couldn’t move. He had only to kick the blood-slippery stool. It would slide as soon as topple. Sam’s eyes were on the stool, paralysed as the rest of him. He felt it draining: the soul that animated him, replaced by a terrible weight; the fear that was too familiar. Dempsey took his fear for bloody-minded sabotage and roared. ‘The ritual. The dangling man. Turn him off!’ But saw, and hissed, ‘You focken coward! I honoured you thus!’

  With a stride he was at the mast and booted the stool, smashing it with the blow. The rope groaned on the cleat and over the boom; Sam felt every inch of the straining hemp as the man began to dangle and twitch, silent but for the trickle of blood from his toes, painting the bare patch of board beneath the stool.

  The deringer was at Sam’s ear and
Dempsey had his hair in a rough grip but Sam couldn’t move. It was ever thus. He was there but not there. In a way, he was free, had slipped behind the curtain of hateful air like a conjuror’s apparition; couldn’t feel Dempsey’s fingers gouging his scalp or the cold eye of the pistol now pressing his throat. He was free, in his cowardice, absent of human feeling, and of consequence. Could float away or sink through the boards. Walk through walls, or gallop across the waves. A living ghost, which is what Dempsey saw now and laughed, and cast him aside. The dog growled, and Dempsey aimed the deringer but the dog scuttled into the darkness, a ratter who knew when to be a rat.

  Not a word from the others, who’d turned their backs on the dangling man, rejoined the firelight and their mugs of rum. Dempsey kicked at Sam and returned to them, the Principal Maunder. He began to sing as the lashed steersman groaned and the dew-wet sails riffled and the dog whimpered and gathered Sam’s sleeve in its mouth to tug him.

  4

  Sam lay paralysed on the creaking deck until the cold formed a blue shellac on his skin. The only warmth the dog’s nose thrust into his armpit, its tremors against his ribs. He wished the cold to take him, could feel the weight of air pressing down from the frozen stars in the black sky. Rising too from the great black depths, a force that would grind him in its icy teeth and turn his bones to dust.

  He dragged himself into the webbing cast over the plundered stores. His length gave him away, but the cold at least abated as his shivering diminished to a tremble. The stars above him burned cold and the hissing of waves on the ship-flanks sounded like flames on wet wood. The smell of smoke on the wind was gone as the whaler sailed north into the icy climes. A hoarse whispering came to him on the wind, and he thought it the spirits of drowned sailors, until the whisper was punctuated by coughing, and he remembered the steersman. Sam had taken the American some water as the only consolation left to give, but the sailor had slept on the wooden wheel pinioned like a staked hide. Now the steersman was calling him. Boy. Boy.

  Sam left the sleeping dog and went to the man. ‘Curse you, boy. Were it not for you, I’d have turned us onto rocks. We are there. We are arrived in San Francisco.’

  To the starboard side of the foredeck Sam made out sulphur-coloured lights in the distance. ‘Set the lamp aglow, boy. Load the brazier with coke. And loosen my bonds. I will speak well of you, should I survive.’

  The sailor cracked his ankles, warming his legs with movement, rolling his neck.

  Sam did as he was told. He lit the wick of the whale-oil lantern that hung on the boom of the foremast. Quietly placed chunks of coke in the coals of the fire. Blew on them. Returned to the sailor, who was shifting his weight from one hip to the next.

  ‘Do not cut the rope, for they’ll know you a traitor. Unhitch that shank from the spoke-handle.’

  Sam unhitched the rope, and the American worked his hands loose, but didn’t remove them. ‘Can you swim, boy?’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘The water will shock your heart to stillness, but I plan to run us into the shallow muds before Sydney-cove. You can swim or wade to your countrymen. I will not speak against you to my chums, or to Tom Miller, the owner of this venture, and his men. They will break the bones of the pirates. They will have their vengeance. They are a fierce company.’

  Below deck, the sound of chain on boards. Links clashing.

  The sailor pulled free his hands. ‘Boy, give me a minute to swim free of musket range. Then sound the alarm. Keep the course and it will take you to mud, rather than rock, or the great timber jetty.

  Sam felt a pang of fear. ‘Take the longboat. Take me with you.’

  The American shook his head. ‘The longboat was ruined in New Zealand, chasing the whale. We lacked the pitch to fix it. It will surely sink.’

  With that, the American padded to the edge of darkness, placed a bare foot on the timber rail and dived into the night. No sound of a splash. No more sounds from below deck. Only the lights ashore and the smell of wood smoke; the tinkling of a piano across the water, like the speech of metal birds. A fiddle note curling around itself. The wheeze of an accordion.

  Sam did not do as instructed. He would no sooner rouse Dempsey from his slumbers than enter a bearpit. The numbing fear came upon him again, his feet rooted to the cold boards. The wind had dropped in the lee of the hills whose grey sides he observed curving around a broad bay. The moon heading to the western horizon, not far to dawn. Ropes creaking as the sails emptied of wind.

  The sound of oars in the crisp dark. Now Sam left his station by the wheel. Peered across the black waters and watched a longboat materialise out of the blackness. No distinction between water and air but for the silver flecks of moonlight on the ribbed flanks of the boat. A musket raised and aimed at Sam, who ducked into the webbing by the mainmast, drew the dog into his arms.

  The American had dived toward land. The longboat appeared out of the sky, floating in the gloom like a ghost-ship. No chance the sailor had raised an alarm. Sam thought to join the sailor in the waters but his heart was beating weakly. He instead burrowed into the hemp webbing, listening to the clambering of soft boots onto the rear deck, the splash of rope, the drawing of a cutlass from a scabbard. More boot-steps, more scraping steel. From his position he watched the raiders pass. One man took the steering, began to shank the wheel to port, toward the great wooden jetty the American had warned about. Three men with muskets knelt around the opening on the waist deck that led to the bunkroom. The men were dressed in blue trousers and calfskin boots. Wore pelts across their shoulders. The woollen skullcap of sailors.

  A tall man appeared with a dragoon pistol, the beast cradled across his forearm. He wore a suit of dark wool, a waistcoat and top hat, his face in shadow. At his signal, another began to ring the brass bell that hung from the foremast. Rang it loud and clear and didn’t stop. Shouts from below. Dempsey’s rough cursing clear through the pealing. Sound of boots on boards and the dropping of dull and heavy things. The raiders tensed as the Dempsey gang rose to the deck, the Irishman foremost. The look of violence on his face at the sight of the sailors crouched with muskets and cutlasses in the shadows.

  Dempsey threw back an arm and held the others behind. A smirk broke the rictus of his war-face. ‘Our saviours!’ he proclaimed into the silence that rang with the absence of bell-pealing. The tall man cradled the dragoon and indicated for Dempsey to lay down the deringer, which he did like a man accustomed to surrender.

  The tall man nodded. ‘Lay them down, and come into the lamplight. Let us see what manner of vermin the tides have brought us.’

  Dempsey’s surprise. The tall man’s Australian voice.

  ‘Sit in three lines. Expose your heads.’

  The sailors armed with cutlasses formed around the seated men and Sarah Proctor, keeping her head low. She caught Sam’s eye, and nodded.

  ‘Where is the crew? The Captain and mates? The harpooners and cook?’

  ‘Our saviours.’

  Dempsey had continued his intoning, ever weaker. The tall man took the oil lamp off its hook and held it to the Irishman’s face. ‘Speak.’

  Dempsey swallowed the harsh light with mournful eyes. ‘We hit a storm a few days back. I heard the Captain cry, “All is lost”, before they took to a longboat, left us, and now you have saved us.’

  The tall man grunted. ‘The longboat is cradled still. You lying scum. And what of this blood?’

  Dempsey looked at the crust of blood at the base of the mast, ruby-red in the dawn. ‘A curiosity captured by the Captain in Van Diemen’s Land, for what purpose I cannot say. A boomer. A great grey kangaroo. We butchered it, and it sustained us. As for the longboat, that is needing of repair. The other was taken, as I have truthfully related, by those who left us to our pitiful fate. We are not sailors. Where are we? Which coast have we reached? Are we back in our beloved homeland?’

  The tall man turned the lamplight onto the others, spoke to his men. ‘As you can see, most of these men are the convict wr
etches of my native land. Their heads are shorn but weeks ago. The Irishman and a few longhairs aside—’

  ‘I was a police constable in New South Wales, a servant of Her Majesty—’

  The butt of the dragoon crunched the back of Dempsey’s head, knocking him out for a moment. He awoke like a drowning man and clutched the shoulders of those around.

  The first rays of sunlight broke upon the rim of hills to the west. Denuded slopes and green gullies running down through sandhills to a large town of wood and white stone, wattled huts and canvas shacks, wraithed in smoke. And from the shabby streets nearest the foreshore, a sound that made those aboard cock their heads.

  ‘Coooooiiiieeee!’

  A lone voice, and then another. Another. And then a chorus, in joyful unison, the call of their native land. Darky Malone broke his smile to put his hands to his mouth. Returned the call until the flat blade of a cutlass caught his skull. The Dempsey men arose as one mass of flailing arms and hard-charging heads into the bellies of the sailors who fired and slashed at the wall of men exploding outwards. So far from home and so near their destination. The calls from shore sailing over their heads. Dempsey and the tall man wrestling by the mast, the dragoon braced crossways at Dempsey’s throat and the Irishman’s flensing knife slicing at the Australian’s face. The brazier had tipped and thrown coals across the webbing and hessian that concealed Sam. He scrambled ahead of the flames to the deck’s edge and cradled the dog, made ready to jump. On the muddy flats by the shoreline a line of men were waving hats and pistols and raucous-calling. The Dempsey men that survived the cutlass and ball emptied into the black waters, Darky Malone among them, splashing at the water like he was trying to climb. Sam turned and saw a musket aimed at his head and he jumped and sank and hit the muddy bottom, feet driving him up toward the light. He surfaced with the dog under one arm biting him and ducked as a musket was fired, before surfacing closer to shore. The water was colder even than the icy waters of Van Diemen’s Land, knocking the breath out of him, and he gasped too soon, sucking in water, his lungs burning as he touched ground and bobbed his head, coughing and spitting, the dog biting his bicep until he held it aloft. The sight of the sodden dog brought a great cheer from the drunks at the shore, waving him ever closer. Sam leaned into the water and fell and floated toward land, emerging on his knees. Rough hands grasped him and drew him upright, cheering and clapping his head and back. He turned to the waters and saw the others wading fearfully from the musket-fire that rang out from the bows of the grounded whaler. Some men beside Sam began returning fire, but the gesture was mocking, accompanied by full-throated imprecations punctuated by laughter. Three eager men waded to their chests to drag Sarah Proctor, floating on her circle of skirts, into the mud, where she retched to their lewd cheers.