There was a sudden crash of glass, and a great, unearthly yell which broke instantly into a torrent of wild and uncontrollable laughter.
Keen exclaimed, ‘They’ve broached the rum!’
A door flung open and they heard Bezant’s powerful voice raised in a furious bellow, so loud he could have been here in the cabin.
‘You bloody scum! What in hell’s name are you doing?’
Somebody else laughed, high-pitched, the cry of one who had already gone beyond reason.
Something heavy, a belaying pin perhaps, clattered across the deck, and Bezant roared, ‘Get back, you whore’s bastard!’ He must have fired a pistol, and as the echo of the shot rebounded from the bulkhead Bolitho heard the laughter change to a terrible scream.
Bezant again, as if with relief. ‘Ah, here you are, Jeff!’ Then in astonishment, ‘In God’s name, think what you’re doing!’ There was another shot, seemingly from high up, and a body crashed across the deck above like a heavy log.
‘Ready?’ Bolitho took her wrist. ‘Don’t provoke anyone.’ His eyes flashed in the dimness. ‘One wrong move …’ He did not finish it. Someone drove a musket-butt through the skylight and yelled down, ‘Come on deck! No trouble, y’hear, or we’ll cut you down!’
Bolitho saw Jenour slithering into the unused cabin where Ozzard was already waiting to cover the gunport with some of the stored cabin goods and chests.
Wild thoughts ran through his mind. Suppose Jenour could not get through it? And even if he did, what were his chances?
He saw Allday and Tojohns at the foot of the ladder, the shadows of other figures who were waiting on deck to confront them.
He took Catherine’s arm and turned her towards him. ‘Remember, Kate, I love thee.’
Keen passed them. ‘I shall go first, sir.’ He sounded completely calm. Like a man facing a firing squad when all hope is gone, and even fear can find no cause to gloat. ‘Then we shall know. If I fall, I pray to God that He will protect you both.’
Then he walked to the foot of the ladder and took the handrails without hesitation. He paused just once by the small polished coaming, which was folded back when not in use, but which, in rough weather, was supposed to prevent incoming seas from cascading down the ladder to the deck below. Not even Bolitho saw the deft movement as he touched the butt of the pistol he had lodged there during the night.
On deck, even though it was only dawn, the sight that awaited Keen was as sickening as it was predictable. Bezant the master lying on his side gripping his thigh as blood poured on to the pale planking around him. A corpse sprawled wide-eyed in the starboard scuppers, with a gaping hole in his throat where Bezant’s pistol had found its mark. Small groups of men, some armed and threatening the others, the rest staring around as if still expecting to be rudely awakened from a nightmare.
Up in the weather shrouds a man was casually reloading his musket. He must have marked Bezant down the moment he had burst on deck. The mate, Jeff Lincoln, faced Keen, his beefy hands on his hips; there was blood on one sleeve but it was not his own.
‘Well, Captain?’ He watched him for any hint of danger. ‘Are you alone?’
Keen saw the wavering muskets, and more professional handling by men who were obviously the released soldiers. All except one. He sat against the mainmast trunk, crooning to himself and taking long swallows of rum from a stone jug.
Keen said, ‘My companions are coming up, Mister Lincoln. If you lay a finger …’
Lincoln shook his head. ‘You give no orders here, sir. I understand you have lately taken a young wife?’ He saw Keen flinch. ‘So let us not make her a widow so soon, eh?’
There was a lot of laughter, a wild sound: men committed without realising yet what they had done.
Keen regarded them. ‘You could still relent. Any court would show mercy under the circumstances.’ He did not look at the big, beetle-browed mate. He wanted to strike out at him. Kill him before he himself was hacked down. He continued, ‘You know the navy’s ways, Mr Lincoln.’ He saw the new mate Tasker staring at him, his eyes shifting quickly between them, and continued relentlessly, ‘Mutiny is a bad thing, but to seize people as important as my vice-admiral and his lady …’
Tasker said hoarsely, ‘We didn’t know they were going to be aboard!’
Lincoln swung on him and snarled, ‘Shut your face, man! Can’t you see what this bloody aristocrat is trying to do?’ To Keen he said, ‘I command here.’ He glared at the wounded master. ‘If you want to save him, and yourself, lend that old bull a hand!’
Keen knelt down beside the groaning master and tied his neckcloth tightly above the wound. The ball was lodged there, small and deep, and from a musket, so that it had probably deflected against bone.
All these things passed through his mind, but his eyes were on the hatch measuring the distance, one last strike at the enemy if all else failed.
He saw the boatswain, Luke Britton, being supported by two of his men, blood running from his forehead where he had been savagely attacked. At least he had stayed loyal, as were the men around him. Frightened maybe, because mutiny was as much feared as yellow jack. But more so, perhaps, of what would happen to them when they were caught.
The released prisoners were the most dangerous. Men who knew harsh discipline were usually the first to run wild if that same control was broken. They had nothing to lose but their lives. They had all known that when they enlisted, or had been coaxed into taking the King’s shilling in exchange for a brief, drunken taste of freedom.
Lincoln’s shadow passed over them. ‘’Ere, fetch a cask!’ To Keen he added, ‘Get this bugger to sit up beside the wheel. I can keep an eye on him there.’
An unknown seaman shambled aft and shouted, ‘He gave me the cat, the bastard! Give him to me, I’ll lay his back in ribbons!’
Lincoln faced him with cold contempt. ‘Can you navigate these waters, you oaf? You asked for that punishment – if the master hadn’t ordered it, damn your eyes, I’d have laid into you meself!’ The sailor staggered back as if he had been punched.
Everyone fell silent as Catherine and Bolitho came on deck, the maid clutching her mistress’s hand while she stared fixedly at the deck. Catherine turned slowly and looked at the watching figures. ‘Rabble.’
Lincoln glared. ‘Enough o’ that!’ He saw Bolitho’s old sword at his hip and said, ‘I’ll have that, if you please.’ Something in Bolitho’s grey stare must have warned him that his plan might go astray before it had really begun, and he relented. Instead his fist shot out and he seized Sophie’s wrist and dragged her to his side where she began to shake like a puppet.
Catherine said, ‘Are you so brave?’ She gently released herself from Bolitho’s restraining grip and stepped towards him. ‘If you need a surety, then take a lady, not a child.’
Several of the onlookers laughed, and a soldier yelled, ‘An’ I’m the next after you, matey!’
Catherine forced herself to show no emotion; nor did she look at Bolitho. The least sign, the smallest action and he would lose his self-control. She said, ‘Go to Mr Yovell and the others, Sophie. I will remain with this gentleman.’
Bolitho stood beside Keen, his mind held in a vice. He said to the groaning Bezant, ‘They will kill us – you know that, don’t you?’
‘I – I don’t understand.’ He seemed more shocked than angry now that it had happened. ‘I’ve always been a fair man.’
‘It’s over.’ He tightened his hold around Bezant’s bulky shoulders and stared hard through the spokes of the wheel. ‘You are the only one who can prevent it.’ He felt Keen tense suddenly as Lincoln touched one of Catherine’s earrings, his thick fingers playing on the edge of her gown and against her skin. Any second now and all reason would go. Not even a mutiny, but brutality and murder at its worst.
He heard her say in reply to something Lincoln had asked or implied, ‘I value my life more than precious things.’
The man called Tasker said urgently, ‘Tell ’em wha
t to do! They’re ’alf-stupid with drink already, God damn them!’ He turned on Catherine and said quietly, ‘I shall give you a time to remember, my bloody ladyship! I was in a slaver afore this, an’ I’ve learned a trick or two on them long passages with our black ivory!’
Lincoln pushed him aside, angry or jealous at his intrusion, it was hard to tell. All Bolitho could think of was her lovely body in their hands, her despair and agony acting only as encouragement to men such as these.
Bezant took a grip on himself. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking of me. You of all men should know!’
Bolitho stepped away from him and murmured, ‘Remember what I said.’
Lincoln stood on a hatch cover, his legs braced against the deck’s uneven roll. To one of the soldiers he said, ‘Watch our master at the wheel. If I order you to shoot him, then do it. I’ll not risk an ounce of gold for a few moments of drunken lechery.’ His eyes moved quickly to the woman who stood just below him. He would tame her. She might fight all she could, but he would do it. A creature like her, the kind of woman he had never seen or known in his whole life.
He took a grip on himself. ‘Begin hoisting the boxes from the hold.’ He pointed at the boatswain with the bleeding wound on his head. ‘Take charge of rigging tackles and see to it that each box is secured and guarded.’ Again the casual signal to the soldier. ‘If he disobeys, kill him!’
Bolitho looked at Allday. ‘Bear a hand with the tackles, John.’ He spoke easily, seeing the instant anxiety in his eyes. ‘It will give you something to do.’
John. He had called him by name. Allday felt it touch him like a cold hand. In minutes, they could be dead. Or perhaps nothing would happen until rum and the thought of two women in their midst finally broke down the last barricade of Lincoln’s control.
Tasker walked to the scuppers and bent over the corpse. After removing a money-pouch from the dead man’s belt he gestured with his thumb. ‘Over with him!’ He did not even turn as the corpse hit the water alongside and drifted rapidly towards the stern. He was still imagining that proud, arrogant woman, just as he had seen the screaming black slave girls when he had turned his men on to them.
Below his feet, Jenour put his weapons on to the deck and peered out through the open gunport. It was all moving too fast; the sea so bright, and so early.
He gave Ozzard a quick nod. The little man was obviously terrified. It seemed suddenly important that he should not leave him without a word, some crumb of support.
‘I’ll do a sketch of you when this is over, eh?’ He touched his shoulder as he had seen Bolitho do so often; the contact he always seemed to need, when people who did not know or understand him thought he wanted for nothing.
Ozzard did not seem to hear. ‘Take care, Mr Jenour, sir. We’re all very fond of you.’
Jenour stared at him and then began to worm his shoulders through the port. It was not going to be easy. He had never imagined it would be. He looked down and saw the hull’s copper sheathing gleam in the frothing water below him, then up to the mizzen chains, and a glimpse of the blocks and tarred cordage beneath the quivering ratlines. The gun was very near there, but as yet out of sight.
He cringed against the warm timbers as a corpse heaved over the bulwark just by the shrouds struck the water beneath him. One flapping hand casually brushed his arm as it dropped past him, and he waited with sick horror for the sound of a shot, or the agonising thrust from one of the boarding pikes he had seen stacked around the mizzen trunk.
He stared down as something glided into the cresting water cut back by the barquentine’s raked stem. For only a few seconds he saw the black, empty eyes watching him before the shark turned deftly and plunged after the drifting corpse.
Jenour gritted his teeth and pulled himself to the chains and then swung himself round and up on to the mizzen channel. He waited for an eternity before he dared to raise his head. The bulwark was only feet away – at any moment a curious face might look down and see him. Perhaps, although he had heard no sound, all of his companions had been butchered. He thought of the letter which was still unfinished, the sketches his family in Southampton would never see. He felt his eyes smarting; his body was shaking, so that he had to force himself to look directly down again into clear water. There were two sharks now. He gave a quick sob. They would not have long to wait. He whispered, ‘God bless you!’ He did not know to whom.
On deck, the first of the heavily-barred boxes was swayed up into the full view of the expectant mutineers. They gave a wild cheer, and more rum was already being broached from the other hold.
Catherine saw some of the men watching her and looked away, her eyes meeting with Bolitho’s as if to some unspoken word.
His eyes moved, just once, and she turned her head very slightly. She felt her heart pounding, and put her hand to her breast. She had seen what Bolitho had intended: Jenour’s grimy, bloodied fingers feeling up for the lower ratlines, while directly beneath the mounted swivelgun two of the armed seamen were resting in the shade. At any second Jenour might make some sound and bring them down on him.
Lincoln swallowed a mug of rum and gasped noisily, his reddened eyes on the hand against her breast.
‘That should be my place, my lady!’
She turned aside and reached up to adjust her piled hair.
She felt his breath, stinking of rum, smelt the dirt and sweat of his body as he gripped her waist and stared wildly at the shadow between her breasts.
It was all she could do to look at him as she felt his hands moving on her body.
Then she said, ‘I must loosen my hair!’
If she thought of Bolitho now, all would be lost.
Deftly she pulled the long comb from her hair and even as it tumbled over her shoulders, she raised the comb and drove it into Lincoln’s eye.
He fell backwards, screaming, the decorated comb protruding from his eye like an obscene growth.
Someone dropped a musket and it exploded, so that men who had been yelling and running for weapons froze in their tracks and watched with sick disbelief while Lincoln rolled on his back, his heavy seaboots drumming on the deck while his blood encircled his agony.
Tasker, the new mate who had once been a slaver, dragged out his pistol and shouted, ‘Leave him! Take the others below and shackle them, ’til we can deal with ’em properly!’
He looked at the tall, dark-haired woman who, despite the levelled weapons, had walked to Bolitho’s side.
Tasker laughed. ‘That pig-sticker of a sword won’t help you now, Admiral!’
Bolitho gripped his sword, but felt only her arm against his side. He was even surprised at the unemotional tone of his voice, when just an instant ago he had been about to throw himself to her defence.
He said, ‘Help is here now.’ He saw Tasker’s astonishment as he slipped the old sword back into its scabbard, then watched it change to stunned understanding as the swivel-gun swung inboard and was depressed on to the bulk of the mutineers.
Allday had torn a cutlass from one of the sailors guarding the loyal hands and now ran aft, bending almost double in case Jenour should jerk the lanyard and rake the deck into a bloody shambles with a full charge of canister.
Bolitho shouted, ‘Throw down your arms! In the King’s name – or I swear to God I will order my lieutenant to fire!’
Keen stood up from the companionway and cocked his hidden pistol. Tojohns had also produced a pair from another hiding place.
Keen found time to notice Bolitho’s voice, the intensity of his stare, recalling the moment when he had ordered them to continue pouring broadsides into the enemy that had destroyed Hyperion in another sea.
If they do not strike they will die! He was still not sure whether Bolitho would have continued to fire if the French flags had not come down.
He had that same expression now.
The men on deck stared at one another, some probably already planning how they would defend their actions by pleading that they had intended to o
verthrow the mutineers. A few of the loyal men wondering, perhaps, how their circumstances might have indeed changed had they thrown in their lot with the others. Gold to keep them free of danger and want, the rigours of the common seaman.
There was one man in the ship who had not been consulted or threatened either way, nor even considered when the others had been fanned into an uprising.
He was a seaman from Bristol by the name of William Owen, who had been aloft in the crosstrees, the first masthead lookout at the start of this new and terrible day.
Throughout the fighting on deck, he had witnessed the astounding sight of his messmates turning upon one another after the master had been shot down and the military prisoners released; then, it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye, the roles had been reversed. He had seen the admiral’s lady, her bearing defiant even from this high perch, and had sensed the seething cauldron of mutiny as more and more rum had flung reason to one side. Now, his hands shaking badly, he twisted round and peered across the quarter for the other ship’s topsails. He rubbed his eyes as relief flooded through him. He was safe, and the other vessel was stern-on as she went about on an opposite tack.
Safe. He had taken part in nothing. He had been doing the job he knew best, for Owen was the most experienced lookout in the Golden Plover’s company.
He shaded his eyes again and stared until they watered. He knew all the signs but had never before witnessed it, and he had been at sea for fifteen years.
Stretching away beyond the bows, it made the sea change colour without breaking the surface. Like fast-moving smoke, or steam from a kettle, as if the sea were boiling in its depths …
He leaned over and peered down at the deck, his voice carrying above all else. The cruelty and the greed were forgotten.
‘Deck there! Breakers ahead!’
* * *
9
Abandon
* * *
Beyond the Reef Page 14
