Killigrew and the Incorrigibles

by Jonathan Lunn

  ‘Then start counting, damn you! Maybe the lieutenant here could put in a good word for me. Maybe it might get me transferred. But it’s going to take time for the paperwork to go through. And all that time I’ll be back on the Isle of Mis’ry. You think that bastard John Price is going to let me live long enough to get transferred? So you pull that trigger, damn you! Better a quick death from a bullet than a slow, painful one on Norfolk Island.’

  Molineaux’s face glistened with tears in the firelight. ‘Please, Foxy! Don’t make me do it.’

  ‘Yes, Wes. You. I can take it from you, but not from that bastard Price! If I’m to die, let me die here and now: a free man.’

  ‘Please, Foxy! I’m begging you! Anything but this!’

  ‘Yes, Wes! Do it! Pull the trigger, damn you!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Or I’ll blow this bastard’s brains right out, I swear!’

  ‘Don’t do it, Foxy! Didn’t you teach me that cramping coves was a lay for flats?’

  Lissak sighed. ‘If that’s the way you want it…’

  Killigrew flinched at the sound of the shot, sure his hour had come. Then the gun was gone from his temple, and Lissak’s body crashed to the planks of the jetty. Killigrew glanced down at him. Molineaux had drilled the old lag right through the centre of the forehead.

  The seaman turned away and threw the musket into the lagoon with a gesture of disgust. Killigrew took a step towards him, to thank him, but Mrs Cafferty stopped him. ‘Leave him.’

  He saw the sense of that, and nodded.

  Everyone else breathed again. Cavan started rounding up the prisoners on the deck of the Lucy Ann. ‘Wait a minute, where’s Thorpe?’ demanded the midshipman.

  ‘Ran off while you lot were watching what was going on on the jetty,’ said Paddon. ‘Don’t worry, Moltata’s gone after him.’ He pointed to where Thorpe’s rotund figure was climbing the steps to the blazing house. Moltata ran across the plaza after him, carrying a harpoon.

  Thorpe had reached the top of the steps and was about to run into the jungles behind the house when Moltata threw the harpoon. The barbed iron flew true, and Thorpe’s figure jerked as it was skewered. He stood motionless at the top of the steps, and then pitched over. The wooden shaft snapped off the iron at once, and Thorpe rolled over and over, tumbling down the steps until he bounced past where Moltata stood and pitched up at the foot of the plinth on which his own statue stood. The yeremanu crossed to where he lay, checked the trader was dead, and straightened and began walking back to the jetty, seemingly satisfied.

  ‘What about the rest of the incorrigibles, sir?’ asked Cavan.

  ‘Wyatt did our job for us as far as Blake was concerned,’ said Killigrew. ‘I got Jarrett and Wyatt. That’s three.’

  ‘I got Griddha and… Lissak…’ said Molineaux, in control of himself once more. ‘What about Vickers?’

  ‘I got him,’ said Mrs Cafferty, without looking up from where she sat on a barrel, staring down at the planks of the jetty.

  ‘You killed him?’ asked Cavan. ‘Good God!’

  ‘I shot him,’ she said wearily. ‘I don’t know if he’s dead. You’ll find him in the alley beside the sawmill… what’s left of it.’

  ‘Better go check,’ Cavan told Ågård.

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The petty officer hurried off to investigate.

  ‘That’s still only six,’ said Molineaux. ‘Who’ve we forgotten?’

  ‘Cusack,’ said Killigrew.

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Cavan. ‘The most important of them all! Endicott, check below decks. See if you can find him in any of the cabins.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ The Liverpudlian descended the after hatch.

  Strachan climbed down to the jetty from the Vanguard. ‘Everything under control?’ he asked. ‘Good. Anything I can do? Anyone hurt?’ He looked at Killigrew’s face, one half of it covered in blood from the cut behind his eyebrow. ‘You’re bleeding,’ he observed, taking out a handkerchief and wadding it.

  ‘I’ll live.’ Killigrew took the handkerchief from him and pressed it to his brow. ‘But you might look to some of Moltata’s people.’ He nodded to where Moltata’s son Guevu stood, clutching a wounded shoulder.

  ‘Of course, of course!’

  Ågård returned from the sawmill. ‘I found him,’ he assured them. ‘Vickers, I mean. He’s dead. Poor bastard bled to death.’ He gave Mrs Cafferty a wary look.

  ‘Don’t waste your time praying for his soul,’ said Killigrew, putting a comforting arm around Mrs Cafferty’s shoulder. ‘He was a rapist. He got what he deserved, and he’s burning in hell for it now.’

  ‘If you believe in that heaven and hell nonsense,’ snorted Strachan, binding Guevu’s wound.

  A thud ran the length of the jetty as someone leaped from the forecastle of the Acushnet on to the planks. Without pausing, the figure turned and sprinted across the wharf.

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Cavan. ‘Hi! You! Come back here!’

  Endicott appeared at the rail above them, a massive bruise swelling around his left eye. ‘Sir! Sir! That’s was him!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Paddy, sir! Cusack! I found him tied up in one of the cabins. I started untying him, and he planted one on me!’

  ‘He won’t get far,’ snorted Cavan. ‘Mr Cusack seems to have forgotten we’re on an island!’

  ‘What about the trading station at Havannah Harbour?’ asked Mrs Cafferty. ‘What if there’s a ship there?’

  ‘Want me to go after him, sir?’ asked Ågård.

  ‘No!’ Killigrew stood up, and then stooped to take the revolver from Lissak’s dead hand. ‘Cusack’s mine!’

  ‘Leave him, sir,’ said Endicott. ‘He ain’t worth it.’

  But Killigrew was already running down the jetty after Cusack.

  * * *

  The Young Irelander ran through the back streets of Thorpetown and plunged into the jungles beyond. He knew about the trading station at Havannah Harbour, but first he had to shake off his pursuer. It was not long before the fires that raged in Thorpetown were far behind him, and he had only the light of the waning crescent moon and the stars to guide his way. He stumbled blindly through the foliage, following the slope upwards. The further inland he went, the further he was from Thorpetown; and he hoped that the steeper path would discourage Killigrew, who must have been exhausted as it was.

  But nothing would shake off the lieutenant. Just as he had chased the carriage across Norfolk Island, just as he had chased the Lucy Ann across the Pacific Ocean, now he pursued Cusack on foot every bit as relentlessly. In that moment, Cusack understood what made Killigrew the man he was. He might not be the most intelligent officer in the Royal Navy; he might not be the strongest, or the toughest, or the most skilled with pistol or cutlass. But he was a man who would never, ever give up; not until his final, dying breath rattled in his throat. That single fact alone made him more frightening than the hate-filled Wyatt or the deranged Captain Quested.

  Cusack ran on and on as the darkness faded, giving way to dawn. He was tiring now, but still fresher than Killigrew. Nevertheless, the lieutenant stayed close behind him, neither gaining nor falling behind. Cusack crested a rise and stumbled down a slope until his feet splashed into a stream. He followed the stream, wading ankle-deep, the absence of foliage in mid-stream giving him a clear path. The walls of the gully suddenly grew steep on either side, until suddenly Cusack found himself standing on a precipice. The water cascaded out over the rocks to plunge into a pool nearly sixty feet below, gleaming like spun silver in the early morning light.

  A dead end.

  He turned back, and saw Killigrew standing ten yards behind him, levelling a revolver at his head. ‘Halt! Halt, or I’ll fire!’ Cusack felt utterly defeated. ‘I had a feeling you’d come after me, Admiral,’ he sighed. ‘I’d hoped you wouldn’t, but I knew you would. I think even when I first met you that night on Norfolk Island, when I realised Fallon had come to rescue me, I knew you to be the
kind of man who’d chase me to the ends of the earth.’

  ‘Sorry, Cusack. It’s nothing personal. I’m just doing my duty.’

  The Irishman nodded. ‘Well, I’m not going back to Norfolk Island alive, so I guess you’ll just have to shoot.’

  ‘One last chance, Cusack! What’s it to be?’

  ‘You can give me a hundred chances if you like. This is the way it has to be. I’ve made my choice: now you make yours.’

  ‘So be it.’ Killigrew took careful aim, and fired.

  * * *

  There were twenty-eight prisoners in all by the time the Tisiphone steamed into the lagoon at first light: two men from the Lucy Ann, including the cook; Captain Pease and fifteen of his men from the Acushnet; and nine from the Wanderer. They would all be taken back to Hobart Town to stand trial for their part in the whole business. It would take months to unravel the mess, and the lawyers would get fat, so at least someone would benefit.

  While Robertson was interviewing Cavan in his day room until Killigrew came back, Molineaux stood on the upper deck and cast a glance at the smoking ruins of Thorpetown. If anyone had told him when he had first met Solomon Lissak twenty-two years ago that their relationship would come to an end on an island in the South Seas, he would have laughed at them; he did not feel like laughing now.

  Had Foxy deserved to die? Plenty would have said ‘yes’ to that, but perhaps no one who had known him. Some said you shouldn’t judge a man, that was up to God and Saint Peter. But Molineaux was not a religious man, and if he did not believe in God, then who was left to sit in judgement on men? Senile old fogies in ridiculous wigs? Twelve good men and true? Whatever people said about the rights and wrongs of sitting in judgement, the fact was that people judged each other’s actions every day of the week, no matter how much they denied it; that was human nature; and only a fool failed to act on his own judgement.

  He wondered briefly how someone might have judged himself: then he realised that he did not much care, one way or another. He was Wes Molineaux, able seaman, and that was good enough for him.

  He caught sight of something in the water out of the corner of his eye and saw a figure swimming for the side ladder below the entry port. The man swam awkwardly, as if he had injured his left hand and was unable to use it.

  ‘Foxy?’ Molineaux muttered it to himself, hardly daring to hope. Even though he knew he had killed Lissak, part of him still could not believe the old lag was dead: he had escaped from so many tight spots in the course of his life, it was impossible to believe that he could not somehow escape death; even if he were in Hell, he was probably digging a tunnel to Heaven.

  Then Molineaux saw the shark’s fin cleaving through the water behind the swimmer at an almost leisurely pace. ‘Shark!’ he yelled. ‘It’s a shark! Swim for your life!’

  Strachan joined him at the entry port. ‘Jings! It’s a Carcharodon carcharias!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Molineaux. ‘It’s definitely a shark.’

  The swimmer reached the side ladder and got his right hand on the lowest rung. Molineaux hung down from the entry port to take his left, but when the man took it from the water he saw it was a hook. Grinning savagely, Captain Barzillai Quested caught it over the next rung, and used his right hand to take the pistol from his mouth. He levelled it at the seaman. Molineaux gasped and made to reach for his Bowie knife, but Quested had him cold.

  Then something slammed the captain violently against the side of the hull. He gasped and dropped the pistol, grabbing for one of the rungs, but he was pulled down until he was chest-deep in the waves. Only his hook, implacably caught on the rung of the side ladder, held him above water. He screamed in agony as he was swirled about, now being pulled away from the side of the ship, now being smashed against its side.

  Robertson, Strachan and Mrs Cafferty emerged from the after hatch and joined the crowd at the bulwark. ‘Dear Lord!’ gasped Mrs Cafferty. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Quested,’ said Molineaux.

  ‘Isn’t anyone going to help him?’ asked Strachan.

  ‘I’ll kill the first man who tries!’ snarled Paddon.

  Then Quested was gone, pulled under the water, leaving only a trail of bubbles and a cloud of vermilion in the water beneath the side ladder.

  Molineaux dashed across the deck and peered over the far bulwark into the water between the hull and the jetty. ‘Watch both sides!’ he yelled. ‘He might have swum under the keel!’

  ‘Molineaux!’ snapped Strachan. ‘The poor devil’s just been attacked by a great white!’

  ‘If he has, then that shark’s going to get a nasty case of indigestion,’ said Molineaux. ‘On the other hand, maybe that’s just what he wants us to think.’

  ‘Well, I can’t see him,’ said Robertson.

  ‘Wait!’ said Mrs Cafferty. ‘There’s something caught on the side ladder.’

  ‘Can you see what it is, ma’am?’ asked Robertson.

  ‘No, it’s too far down.’

  ‘Molineaux!’

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Climb down there and see what that is.’

  ‘Down there, sir? You must be joking! Begging your pardon, sir, but I ain’t climbing down a ladder hanging over water where I’ve just seen a man eaten by a bloody great shark!’

  Strachan sighed. ‘I’ll get it,’ he said, easing himself backwards through the entry port.

  ‘Be careful, sir,’ said Molineaux. ‘That was a man-eater.’

  ‘No such thing,’ snorted Strachan. ‘Human beings aren’t sharks’ natural food; if we were, they’d’ve died out long ago. A shark might bite a man to see what it tastes like, but they rarely come back for a second helping.’ His feet on the bottom rung of the side ladder, he squatted down to reach for the strange object that hung there. ‘Jings!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Quested’s hook.’ Strachan held it up for them to see.

  ‘Eurgh!’ said Mrs Cafferty. ‘Throw it away!’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone want it as a keepsake?’

  ‘Spare us your anatomy-school humour, Strachan,’ growled Robertson. ‘And get back up here, before—’

  A great white shape surfaced with a spray of water immediately beneath the assistant surgeon. He lost his grip on the side ladder and fell into the water with a cry.

  It was Sharky. The nakaimo climbed up the side ladder and strolled casually across the deck. Strachan swam back to the side and followed him up.

  Molineaux exchanged glances with Strachan. ‘Sir, you don’t suppose that shark—’

  ‘No,’ Strachan said firmly. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘But you have to admit, it looked rum…’

  ‘Mere coincidence,’ sniffed Strachan. ‘There’s a perfectly rational explanation for everything. Quested swam out to the ship; the shark attacked him; the shark swam away; Sharky climbed on board. That’s all we saw, because that’s all that happened. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’m going down to the gunroom to change into some dry clothes.’

  ‘He’s right, of course,’ said Robertson. ‘Our imagination’s running wild, that’s all. We’re all overwrought and overtired; it’s a miracle we’re not seeing pink spiders.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Mrs Cafferty agreed dubiously. Molineaux glanced up to where Sharky sat in the rigging. The nakaimo took his jew’s-harp from his mouth to grin at the seaman. It was probably just a trick of the light, but Molineaux could have sworn there was blood on Sharky’s teeth.

  A few minutes later, they heard the sound of a distant shot from somewhere inland.

  ‘Killigrew,’ said Molineaux.

  ‘Or Cusack,’ Mrs Cafferty replied, pale-faced.

  * * *

  Cusack flinched, and stared down at his body in the half-light as if searching for a bullet wound. When he did not find one, he raised his eyes to meet Killigrew’s with an expression of bewilderment.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Killigrew told him. ‘Do you understand me? I’m going back to
Thorpetown now; I’ll be telling Commander Robertson I killed you. So if Devin Cusack turns up in the United States a few months from now on a lecture tour, inciting rebellion in Ireland against the Crown, my career will be over. That means I’ll have a lot of time on my hands, and believe me I’ll use every last minute of it to hunt you to the ends of the earth and finish what we started back on Norfolk Island.’

  Cusack had only one question: ‘Why?’

  ‘Why?’ echoed Killigrew. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps some of the things you said to me on board the Lucy Ann the day before yesterday made a lot of sense. Or perhaps I just think there’s been enough slaughter and bloodshed for one day.’

  Cusack grinned with relief. ‘God bless you, Admiral. You’re a darlin’ feller!’ He started to turn away, but Killigrew called after him again.

  ‘Cusack! I’m giving you a second chance. Not many of us are lucky enough to get one, so use it well if not wisely.’

  ‘And you do the same, Admiral!’ Cusack turned back to the precipice, and before Killigrew could stop him or even say another word, the Irishman had stepped out into space and dropped out of sight.

  Killigrew ran to the precipice, and then took a step back instinctively from the dizzying drop. The stream gushed over the edge and fell in a long, silvery cataract that plunged down into the pool far below, and even as Killigrew peered cautiously over he saw a white splash blossom outwards where Cusack had hit the water close to the foot of the waterfall. He did not expect to see the Irishman surface, but he did, swimming back to the shore and pulling himself out on to the rocks.

  Killigrew found himself smiling. ‘And it’s “lieutenant”, you sonuvagun!’

  He walked back to Thorpetown, heading for the pall of smoke that hung over the south side of the island. He started whistling ‘Oh, Susannah’ to himself.

  * * *

  ‘Please, do take a seat, Commander Robertson.’ In the superintendent’s office on Norfolk Island, John Price pulled a chair out for the commander.

  ‘It’s all right; I don’t intend to stay any longer than necessary. I have to get back to Hobart Town to make my report to Sir William Denison and Captain Erskine.’