A few minutes later, the Captain calls, ‘Over the rail with the both of you. We don’t have much time.’
It slowly dawns on me that the Captain actually means Mr Smith and me are the sacrificial goats. I can feel my heart thumping. I do not like that word ‘sacrificial’ one little bit. But is it fear or excitement that increases my heartbeat? As I climb down the ladder and hang there waiting for the dinghy to pull close enough for me to jump in, I feel strangely calm. I remember the Captain telling me that only fools are not frightened, but it is the brave who overcome their fear and fight on regardless. What am I, brave or just plain foolish? Everything around me seems crystal clear and more pronounced. The colours are brighter, the sea wider and the wind keener on my face. It is as if all my senses have burst into life at the same time.
‘Keep your ’ead down, Red,’ commands Mr Smith. We lie on the floor of the dinghy, him nearer the bow, our heads below the gunwale and half-covered with a canvas sail. The Captain does not want us seen until it is too late for the helmsman. The rope holding the dinghy’s bow plays out and jerks to a stop, leaving us bobbing about violently in the Dragon’s wake. I have to hang on tight to stop from being flung overboard.
Soon, the pirate ship and the Captain’s port tack are once more heading to cross. Mr Smith lifts his head slightly, slides the barrel of his rifle up and rests it on the gunwale. He slips a cartridge into the chamber on top of the gun and works the lever, cocking the mechanism.
On board the Dragon, I can see the Captain spinning the ship’s wheel. The pirate Genghis begins shifting tack as well, but then the Captain stops and lets the breeze carry the Dragon back to its original tack, leaving the pirate heading the wrong way for a full-on broadside. It has been a worthy trick.
Fooled, Genghis shouts out in rage, bellowing an order through his speaking trumpet. His forward gun, the only one in range, fires. Instantly, the stern of our ship explodes. A large corner of the Captain’s cabin is blown away. A shower of splintered timber and flying glass rockets towards our dinghy. Somehow, I duck my head quickly enough, but Mr Smith falls backwards, clutching his face with both hands, his head a mass of blood.
‘Mr Smith!’ I cry, scrambling to reach for him. A large gash on his forehead bleeds into his eyes and his right ear has been almost torn completely off. It hangs by a few shreds of skin and blood runs from the gaping wound down his neck and onto his shirt.
I look about desperately for some cloth to staunch the blood flow, then I pull my shirt off, bunch it up and push it against Mr Smith’s mangled ear. He pulls away in pain.
‘Red? Where are youse, boy?’ yells Mr Smith. He seems to recover his wits quicker that I can imagine. Quicker than I could have. If my ear had been hanging off as his is, I would be squealing like a stuck pig, or worse, crying like a wet baby.
‘I can’t see, boy. I can’t see nothin’. Youse’ll have to shoot for me!’ he yells. ‘We don’t have too long. In a few minutes, the pirate’ll change tack again. To the port. When ’e does, in the luff when the boom swings across, ya shoot the helmsman. Not too soon and before the ship swings. Not too late when the sails refill. Got it? Miss and we’ll all be done for. Hit ’im and their boat stalls dead.’
I nod and crawl back towards the bow of the dinghy, but it is difficult. With the waves throwing the dinghy about like a cork, it takes longer than I want as I have to hang on with one hand. Water sloshes at my knees and I have to hold the gun clear with my other hand to keep the rifle dry.
‘Remember Red, as she stalls ’eadin’ about. You got only a few seconds. Aim only at the ’elmsman, the one with the white ’eadband. If youse misses the first shot, then goes for a second and third, but youse ’as to ’it ’im. They won’t even ’ear the noise over the wind. Just remember what I taught ya.’
I am surprised Mr Smith can even think straight.
With a slap of the mainsail and banging of the rigging, the pirate ship begins swinging to starboard, away from us. The stern looms large and as the vessel starts to swing smoothly across, the helmsman’s back comes squarely on to me. He spins the ship’s wheel quickly. I sight down the barrel of the rifle trying to keep it level, but every time I get close, the dinghy lurches.
‘Now boy, now,’ says Mr Smith, quietly. ‘Breathe in, then out, then in and then ’olds ya breath, and squeeze. Don’t jerk the trigger, like I learnt you. Remember.’
Suddenly, the grubby white shirt fills my eye. It is all I can see down the end of the barrel. I squeeze the trigger back just as Mr Smith commanded. The hammer slams home, the gun roars and instantly fires, the black smoke immediately whipped away in the wind. I wipe the salt spray from my eyes and peer back to the stern.
The helmsman jerks and falls forward, letting go of the helm, just as the Captain wanted. He staggers backwards and, clutching vainly at the rail, topples overboard.
THE PIRATES
The pirate ship, now facing directly into the wind, its sails flapping uselessly, sits stalled, its stern and aft quarter facing the Dragon’s lined up guns. Over the roar of the wind and flapping of the sails, no one has heard the shot or looked back to see the helmsman missing.
From across the gap between us, I hear the Captain yell, ‘Gun crew, now! If you please.’
The Captain has the pirate ship right where he wants it, dead in the water and at such an angle its guns point away from the Dragon, useless. Ours are pointed at the stern of the vessel ready to blow the piratical scum all the way to kingdom come.
The gunners fire in a relay from Long Tom to the small swivelling stern-chasers mounted on the stern rail then back to number one again. Cannonballs, chain-shot and canister-shot thunder across the deck much like the sweep of a gigantic, white-hot scythe, only a thousand times louder and more deadly, chopping the crew down like bloodied wheat stalks. The noise and total devastation are unlike anything I have ever experienced.
Then, suddenly, silence falls. Even from down at sea level I can make out the gruesome scene up on the pirate deck. It reminds me of the slaughter yard at the back of Mr Tosser’s butcher shop in Broome on market day.
Not a single pirate is left. The pirate ship wallows, the shredded sails no longer any use, the masts leaning precariously. A minute or so later a wave washes over the deck, but the spray that runs down the sides looks pink, not white.
‘M-M-Mr Smith,’ I stammer, helplessly.
He has wiped the blood from his eyes and holds my bunched shirt against his head. He too stares towards the carnage, squinting through the dribbles of blood on his face and wincing in pain. ‘Sweet Jesus! It’s no wonder ’e’s called Black Bowen, but I’m a-thinkin’ Bloody Bowen might be more fittin’.’
‘I dunno, Mr Smith, looking at you.’ His shirt is splattered scarlet. ‘Bloody Smith more like at the moment.’
‘Aye, right enough.’
A few minutes later, the crew haul the dinghy back in alongside the Dragon. Rowdy climbs half down the ladder to help Mr Smith up and on board. ‘Good shot, Mr Smith,’ he says as they reach the deck.
‘’fraid not. T’is young Red ’ere what saved the day this time. ’e took the shot. I couldn’t see me ’ands in front of me.’ Even with all the spray and water in the dinghy, his face and clothes are still scarlet and splattered and he looks like one of Jack the Ripper’s particularly gruesome murder victims.
‘Well, Red, you surprise me, yet again,’ declares the Captain. He reaches down to help me with the last step on the ladder, almost pulling me up and onto the deck.
‘Captain,’ interrupts Sam Chi. ‘You’d better look there. She’s on fire, I’m thinking.’ A thin cloud of black smoke rises steadily from a hatchway in the centre of the pirate ship.
‘Damn,’ exclaims the Captain. ‘I’d love to see what’s in her strong box. Still, fire’s not a sailor’s friend.’ He shrugs as we all turned to look.
‘Let’s get us away from that damn scow. She’ll have a magazine jam-packed with gunpowder. Make all haste now.’
The Captain nods towards Briggs, who begins spinning the ship’s wheel as the men rush to adjust the sails.
The pirate ship explodes not ten minutes later, with the boom of a thunder clap that astounds me. She blows completely apart, shattering from end to end, sending debris hurtling through the air. The shock on the wind reaches us a brief second later, like a sudden kick to the chest.
‘Well, I’ll be stonkered! Look at that!’ yells Teuku standing up on the rail holding a shroud. He nearly topples overboard.
We all stand at the side rail watching as timber and a whole shipload of wreckage cascades back to the surface and scatters over a vast area, sending up white splashes like an enormous school of flying fish.
‘Double, double toil and trouble,’ says the Captain, staring at the flaming hull. ‘Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf.’ He smiles slowly, a quiet look of satisfaction in his eyes.
‘The Navy as like would be paying a goodly reward for the head of that Genghis brigand,’ says Rowdy, breaking the silence.
‘Probably Rowdy, but finding his head may be a tad difficult now,’ replies the Captain. ‘Still, men,’ he says, grabbing me by the shoulder. ‘We live to fight another day. No small thanks to our Red here.’ He smiles widely and slaps me on the back. ‘Now clean yourself up.’
I smile and turn to go below and clean myself up. Mr Smith’s blood is all over me.
‘I think I might have been perfectly wrong about that little milksop,’ I hear him murmur to Mr Smith a few minutes later when he thinks I am out of earshot.
I feel a surge of pride at the Captain’s compliments, but the thought that I have actually shot someone, even if he was a murderous pirate, unsettles me. I know perfectly well that had I not done so, they would have murdered all of us, probably horribly and painfully, but it still doesn’t sit comfortably in my stomach. Most of the crew do not seem to care less that they have just wiped out twenty men in a hail of iron and blood and guts.
Back on deck, I go over to the hatch cover where Mr Smith sits on an upturned firkin as Sam Chi treats his wounds. I grimace nearly as much as Mr Smith does as the cook pulls out a kitchen knife from his belt and casually slices off the flap of skin holding Mr Smith’s ear to the side of his head. Without a word, Sam Chi flings the ear overboard and sets to stitching up the gash with a needle and tarred cotton.
Mr Smith’s face screws up in agony for a few moments as the broad sail needle pierces his skin and then again as the cook pulls each knot tight, closing the deep red gash on his head. He sways slightly like a drunkard. ‘A pox on them bandits, but this ’urts like the blazes,’ he exclaims, screwing his face up. ‘This’ll learn me to keep me ’ead down, eh boy? Still, the women goes for a man with scars. Ain’t that so Sam Chi? Youse knows all about women.’
‘In my experience it’s the women what give you the most scars,’ laughs Sam Chi. ‘I’ve stitched you up with good thread in fresh blood, so the chances of putrification are slight. You’ll live. At least, until the missus sees you again. Then I don’t like your chances.’
Mr Smith nods, then he reaches out and grabs my forearms. ‘Don’t youse worry, boy. It’ll pass soon enough,’ he says. ‘The sickness. Don’t worry overmuch about it. Them bandits wouldn’t have worried about sticking youse full of steel or roasting youse alive, just for the pure fun of it.’ He smiles sympathetically and then lets out a sharp, painful cry as the cook pulls the final stitch tight. ‘They got what they deserved. Ain’t that so Sam Chi?’
‘Too right, murderous swine.’
‘That’s enough entertainment for one day,’ calls the Captain, looking at the sky and feeling the wind on his face. ‘We have work to do. Nor’-west to Aceh we head again. And I want those men not on watch to go below and start patching up our poor sorry vessel. I hate to think of the state of my cabin, damn their eyes. And if they smashed any of my best claret I’ll …’ The Captain then smiles, remembering there is nothing more he can do now to the pirate crew.
Years ago, when I was young and the Captain first started visiting the Smuggler’s Curse, I thought all the men called him Black Bowen because of the clothes he wore. I realise now I could not have been more wrong. He dispatched the pirates to Hell with no more thought than if he was just swatting an annoying blowfly. Behind the generous nature and the warm smile he sometimes displays, there must be a heart as cold and as black as the deepest coal mine. I feel I still have a lot to learn about the ways of adults.
SUMATRA
The sweet smell of sunshine and over-ripe fruit wafts out from the land that we can just see in a heat haze on the horizon. After days of nothing but sea, salt and blazing sun, it seems almost unbelievable. I can feel the mood on board improve with each league that passes.
‘Fresh food by the time this day is out,’ declares Sam Chi, picking up the smell. ‘They have fruit by the cartload out here. The ground is thick with it.’
‘Pineapples would be good,’ says Bosun Stevenson, with enthusiasm. He is pale compared to the rest of us, who are now dark brown with the constant sunshine, but he seems a lot better. He is spending more and more time up on deck sitting in a chair borrowed from the Captain’s cabin, with his feet well padded and raised on a cushion.
‘Red, aloft with you, if you please,’ says the Captain. ‘And relieve Teuku on watch. Here, take my glass. I want to know when you spy a church tower. It should have a cross or a bell. It’ll probably be white-washed as well. The missionaries seem to like that style.’
I tuck the telescope in my belt and set off up the ratlines, hand-over-hand, towards the crow’s nest. As I climb, I realise how much easier it is now. I guess I must be getting stronger.
I spend just over an hour sitting on the crow’s nest platform, peering through the Captain’s telescope. It isn’t a church I first notice, but a dozen squat masts against a wooden jetty, and the low, coconut fibre houses of a fishing village on the water’s edge. Behind them, a hill rises steeply away from the coast. I adjust the telescope and can see a track that winds up from the houses to a church.
‘Captain!’ I cry. ‘Port, east-by-south-east. A village and a church.’
‘Well done, lad. An extra ship’s biscuit for you then,’ he yells back, laughing.
‘Do I really have to, Captain?’ I reply.
‘Get down from there, you cheeky blighter, before I tell Sam Chi you hate his cooking. Then you’ll know about it.’
‘Captain,’ asks Bosun Stevenson, a little later that morning. ‘I was thinkin’ earlier. I hope you don’t mind me asking, sir, but what do you want with a church? I’ve never known you to be a God-fearing man. I was under the impression that was my job on the Dragon.’
‘Oh, I fear him well enough, Bosun. Indeed, I fear him as much as any man. I’ve just no desire to meet with him face to face yet, and I’ve avoided that pleasure so far, no thanks to our Dutch friends or even our own Queen’s men,’ he laughs. ‘And a few jealous husbands. It’s not a church I need, more like the missionary inside it. The islands hereabouts are covered in damn missionaries. They have a massive spider’s web of connections all across the Straits. They mostly speak the lingo so they are the ones who know what is going on. Find me the local missionary and I’ll find out where the Dutch Army are, and most importantly of all, where the guerrillas are hiding out, so we can trade our hold full of guns for gold. Though, looking about at this miserable village, I suspect gold may be a little on the scarce side.’
‘And I thought for a minute there you were going all holy on us,’ laughs Bosun Stevenson.
‘Gorillas, Captain?’ I ask. ‘Like the big monkeys from Africa?’
The Captain chuckles. ‘Guerrillas, Red. Locals fighting the Dutch colonial government. Anyone who wants to try to poke those greedy crooks in the eye is a friend of mine. From what I’ve heard, the locals have bloodied Dutch forces good and proper just lately. Now let’s go and see what this village is really like. Mr Smith, prime the guns.
Just in case. Bosun, at your call.’
‘Aye, Captain. Ready about!’ yells the Bosun. He looks up from his chair near the binnacle.
As they have done hundreds of times before, the men sprint to their positions. ‘About!’ Rowdy lets out the boom and Briggs spins the helm. The bow begins swinging to port, the sails flutter and collapse, the boom swings across as the jibs are hauled over, and the sails fill and billow again. It takes seconds. A wave carries the ship down into a small trough, as we ride it towards the shore.
‘Bosun,’ asks the Captain. ‘Would you have a Union flag in your locker? We don’t want these poor villagers thinking we are a warlord or a Dutch ship coming to do unspeakable things to them.’
‘No, we’ll do speakable things to them instead,’ laughs Bosun Stevenson.
‘Red, out on the bowsprit with you. Keep an eye out for reefs and rocks. This close in we can’t be too careful.’
I make my way to the bow of the Dragon and clamber out in the net that hangs below the long bowsprit that juts forward, just like a crane’s beak, and climb up on it. I wriggle my way out to the very end of the pole where the base of the jib is secured, climb up and stand, holding the forestay and settle in to watch out for underwater threats. I have to yell loudly and raise my arm if anything suspicious comes close. Luckily, the sea remains clear and the bottom sandy all the way to the shore and a semi-derelict jetty. A small shark swims by and I see the shadow of a much bigger one, but nothing else.
Briggs guides the ship slowly up to the end of the jetty and has the sails lowered from the mast top. Several crewmembers leap from the vessel, haul on the mooring lines and tie us on just as the ship stops drifting.
‘Well done, Briggs,’ says the Captain. ‘Very smooth, Rowdy.’
Rowdy smiles, sort of, but does not say anything.
About a dozen small fishing junks, moored to rusted rings on the faded grey timber jetty closer into the shore, jerk sluggishly as small waves wash against their hulls.
The Smuggler's Curse Page 11
