A Spider In The Eye

by Mark Hayes

  The forecastle had twin link 3/8th’s in good repair. The two pintle mounts on either side had Vickers guns similarly well maintained. The howitzer on the other hand, as I said, I wouldn’t order fired for love nor money. Mercifully it only had five rounds in the locker. It would have been more merciful to have none though just to be safe.

  I submitted a report to the Captain about the gun’s condition and got told to ‘Lanata hei…’ for my trouble, before he somewhat begrudgingly explained that if the ship did come across something it needed to use the howitzer on, then it would be high-tailing back to Delhi as fast as it was able. A sentiment I could only agree with. The gun, therefore, was there for show, nothing more. So unless I ‘wanted to fix the damn mounting myself’, it would stay that way.

  Which was why I was up in the aft deck looking at it when the Captain shouted me. As I said old habits. I really hated having an unusable main gun on my berth. Pride more than anything. Not that I had that much of a sense of pride in the rusting hulk I was billeted on. But, you can pull the gunnery officer off the burlesque dancer, but you can’t stop him playing with his weapon. Besides which, if I could get it in workable order than I would at least prove to the Captain I had some worth if only a little.

  Small victories and all that.

  Of course, it also gave me an excuse to keep out of the way for a while every couple of days, while I tried to figure out how to fix it, which given the crew’s general attitude towards me was a reward in and of itself.

  “Mr Smyth, you have the ship. We are going to ground for the evening,” the Captain shouted up to me, without bothering to turn, salute or extend any of the other niceties that I would’ve expected on a RAN gunship. Having proclaimed his intent, he just turned and walked towards the winch, where more than two-thirds of the crew seemed to be gathered.

  “Aye, sir,” I shouted back as he departed. I even saluted, god only knows why as he had no doubt forgotten me already as he went to ground.

  It was going to be another one of his little jaunts. I was getting used to them. They seemed to happen about once a week when the ship was anchored somewhere safe, normally above a hill fort he knew the commander of or a small village in friendly territory like this place. He, Singh and a goodly portion of the crew would go on ground leave, while muggings here would be left to mind the ship with a couple or more unlucky sods who had drawn the short straw. That or men who had earned themselves a black mark from the second officer that day I didn’t doubt. So they left the dregs and me while they went to enjoy whatever hospitality could be found below.

  Regulations in Old Iron Knickers’s Air Navy state that one senior officer and a third of the crew must remain aboard ship at all times, even when in its home port. In theory, they are there to see to the basic maintenance and upkeep of the craft. As well as to set a watch over it, and if needs must to get ready to be underway should trouble of some kind break out.

  I suspected the regs were much the same in the Company fleet. Captain Jackson played loose with them regardless and only left two or three ‘trusted’ men aboard on a night in a safe anchorage. Well, four if you included the officer left in charge. But as I was far from trusted, I don’t think that I counted.

  If this was a RAN ship and I had drawn ghost watch, I’d have had two men posted sentry, making a circuit patrol of the outer walkways, in opposite directions. Another man in the flight cabin and one watching the boiler house. The remainder doing whatever little jobs needed doing or taking shifts for the patrols. Having sorted out the rota, I’d probably have sloped off for a kip myself of course, or joined the spare men in a game of cards in the mess. I was a layabout and a laggard after all. I was, however, a good enough officer to make sure I kept the ship secure all the same.

  As it was, however, there were four men on board including me. No one was expecting trouble. This was a safe port, and the Captain had business ties with the village. Judging by the crops being grown in the fields we had passed over, that business was by way of bribes and illicit goods. So it was unlikely we would come under attack by bandits, in a village of drug smugglers who were also trading partners of the crew. So the Captain wasn’t worried. If he had been, I doubt he would have left me in perfunctory charge.

  It came as a surprise to find growers this close to New Delhi, but I suppose we were in the last of the foothill valleys. The only access to the place was by air as far as I could see. I suspected there was an arrangement. One that involved most of the crew getting blind drunk and partying with the locals, so the best men were all below.

  So there I was, the Captain gone for the night and the barrel-scraping crewmen who were left, without a word of English between them, were playing cards in the boiler house. Which at least meant they would be keeping an eye on the steam pressure and such.

  That was one job that definitely had to be done. Lax Mahatma Jackson might be, but he wasn’t so lax as to let his boilers go untended. So the given order of the night was that’s where the card game would be. One of the crew would walk the perimeter every hour or so, for the show of it. But as long as the boiler was tended, the Captain would be happy, and the crew knew it. So damn all need for me to issue any orders myself, not that they would be listened to or understood if I did.

  Set, as I was, for a night of relatively safe boredom, in contrast to weary terror and looking over my shoulder every five minutes as was my usual evening, I took it upon myself to liberate one of the Captain’s contraband scotch bottles from the forward compartment and retired myself to the aft deck again for the evening.

  The Indian night was hot but dry and a cooling breeze was starting to blow down from the mountains. It was a damn sight more comfortable up there than down in my cabin. Probably safer as well as I half expected a scorpion in my bed one of these nights.

  Oh but the SO does like his little jokes…

  There was a chance the bottle would be missed, but like as not the crew would get the blame. It was the cheap Indian stuff anyway rather than the good single malt. Sure, I would have preferred the single malt, but chances were Captain Jackson would know exactly how much of that was down there, and the crew would know better than to get caught with a liberated bottle of the good stuff. So rhaki it was.

  I whiled away an hour drinking the clear Indian fake scotch. It’s the kind of stuff to send you blind in excess, but sometimes needs must and I needed a stiff drink for my nerves, don’t you know.

  I just propped myself up against the howitzer and drank, while wondering how the hell my being on this rust bucket of a ship was supposed to get me into H.G. Wells’s good graces. As plans went, this seemed a remarkably haphazard one to me. I’d gotten past the point where I thought The Ministry knew what it was doing. I’d tried to piece it together of course. One does not like to be heading towards danger, blind and ill-informed. Mainly because if the one in question is me, I don’t particularly like to be heading into danger.

  Let me dissuade any false impression I may have accidentally given you. I’m not merely self-effacing. I really am not the dashing hero I might otherwise pretend to be. I am merely dashing, and it takes all my energy to be so.

  An hour or two must have passed this way. With me slowly getting drunk and starting to feel the chill in the air as the day’s heat evaporated, when I saw an unexpected glow in my peripheral vision. Like the red glow of sunset to the east. An hour after dusk.

  It took me a moment or two to spot the problems with that proposition, for which I blame the rhaki.

  East, sunset, after dusk.

  I jumped up and almost banged my head on a beam, and found myself a little unsteady on my feet. Looking at the bottle in my hand, barely half drunk. I was surprised and figured drunkenly that the local Indian scotch might taste like rubbing alcohol, but it was damn strong stuff.

  Stumbling slightly as I moved closer to the rail, I peered into the darkness and discovered the source of the glow and smirked. One of those suspicious-looking fields was ablaze. The smoke billowing
up into the night sky might be all but invisible but the fire itself was glowing bright and angry. It was pretty too, after a fashion. So I smirked some more, thinking of my Captain and his profitable sideline burning down there.

  Again I would blame the rhaki, but in truth, it was just a little bit of vindictive humour on my part. I’m not proud of it. But on the other hand, I wasn’t going to lose any of the sleep I wasn’t getting over it either.

  Soon enough I wasn’t the only one to notice the fire, the village below was suddenly like an overturned anthill, the locals and my wonderful crewmates running around like headless chickens. In minutes they were streaming out towards the fields with buckets, shovels and anything else they could use to put out the fire. More than one of them was stumbling drunkenly as they did so.

  From my lofty position, I could already see it was going to be a fool’s errand. The fire had caught hard and was blazing down both sides of the main field, as well as in a couple of the smaller ones. I found the whole thing hilarious, truth be told, for which I also blame the rhaki. I started shouting encouragement to the firefighters and felt like I was cheering on a rugger match. All the while I was swigging away at the rhaki between hollering advice. It may have been just due to how highly strung I was at the time, but the evening was turning out to be the most fun I’d had in an age. I probably made quite a sight when one of the crew came up to see what all the turmoil was. I remember shouting after him as he turned and bolted down the gantry.

  Something witty no doubt, to me at any rate. So I burst out laughing once more.

  The crewman didn’t care what the mad English officer was doing by the main gun anyway. He was too busy shouting in Hindi down to his crewmates in the engine room. Doubtless, he was trying to organise them to go help fight the fire. Later when I was in a better state of mind to think about such things, I realised that the Captain probably cut his crew in on the profits of his illicit trade. The best way to buy a man’s silence is with a few rupees, after all, so the way the remaining crew rushed to the winch room to go down and help fight the fire that was eating up their slice of the profits made perfect sense. Only two types of men run towards a fire. Professional firemen and those who are seeing their money go up in flames.

  I was still laughing hard after them as I heard the winch descending, I didn’t care a boiled fig for my Captain’s sideline, so their panicked looks just added to my entertainment. After all, he had not offered to bring me in on it, and as he was running a sideline, it made ditching the inconvenient white officer over the side only the more likely. The last thing they’d want is someone like me spoiling the pot.

  Hell, in their position I would be thinking much the same. Though I would have tried bribery before murder myself. No matter what had got me into this mess in the first place.

  So laugh and drink a little more I did.

  My laughter stopped about the same time the winch hit the ground, and a volley of shots rang out. Even drunk as I was, the fire suddenly made an unnerving amount of sense, if that was, it was a diversion and someone was making a play for the ship. Someone who knew the patrol route well enough to stage the whole thing.

  Another round or two of weapons fire cut through the general hullabaloo of the fire. And I heard the gate of the winch platform crash open and shut. Boots on the metal platform, and more shouts that had nothing to do with the fields burning on the hillside.

  Rhaki or not, I realised quickly the Jonah’s Lament was being hijacked. And there was I, drunk on knocked-off scotch, the last officer on board.

  Hell, I was the last man on board come to that. As such all my RAN training told me I was behoved to defend my ship with my life and do all I could to see the dastardly hijackers off.

  I was the last line of defence.

  I was the thin end of the wedge.

  This then was an opportunity to prove my worth to Captain Jackson. To be the man to save his ship from would-be hijackers. After this, I would no longer be that bastard British officer foisted upon the ship’s captain by the Company, but the brave, stout fellow who saved his ship. The man he doubtless would recommend for his own command. The one he would be sure to mention in dispatches. The fine, upright fellow, the captain, and God damn it, his crew would both admire and trust.

  No more phegm in my food for me, ‘oh no, sir, only the best for you, sir…’

  The last officer, holding the line. A dashing blade in one hand, a stiff wrist holding his pistol firmly in the other, defending his command with his life’s blood. Denying the laggards their prize and standing front and centre to greet them with defiance, saying, “No, sir, not on my watch, you don’t. Have at you, sir, have at you and be damned.”

  So, with all this in mind, I did exactly what you would expect from a man in my position.

  I ran for the forward cargo bay and hid myself in the stash.

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH

  Captured by Jove…

  Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that as plans go, it had its faults.

  So yes, I was stuck in a cargo compartment hidey-hole. With no idea who’d taken over the ship. I was alone, only lightly armed, and had no access to food or water, so hiding out for any length of time was a non-starter. I’d no idea how many of them they were, or what their intentions were. We were somewhere over northern India, heading gods only know where. To top it all off, I knew, in all likelihood, I was going to be found the moment they started to take an inventory of their ill-gotten gains, because depressingly I also knew exactly how long it had taken me to stumble across Captain Jackson’s ‘secret’ compartment in the hold.

  In case you’re wondering it had taken me about five minutes from the first time I entered the hold. That was on my first day on board, well the first night, when I went looking around on the dog’s watch I’d endured.

  True, I had been looking for some kind of stash at the time, because I am a suspicious sod who knew the captain of every airship has a stash hole somewhere in his hold. But that was scant consolation because I worried, nay suspected, that people who went around hijacking gunships were suspicious types themselves. Exactly the types to go looking for hidden compartments and checking that none of the crew were still aboard. So I doubted it would take them much longer than it had taken me to find my sodding hidey-hole.

  This didn’t please me, as thoughts go.

  After I’d heard the hissing that could only be the ballast air being blasted out, followed by the rumble of the main engine firing up, and felt the tugging at the belly that only a sudden uplift can cause, I’d known we were underway. That had taken all of five minutes from the moment I got myself securely hidden in the cargo locker. So I knew whoever these pirates were, they knew their airships. Which also didn’t bode well for my chances of staying hidden in the hold very long.

  As such, I found myself taking stock of my situation, and it seemed grim.

  However, one of the things they teach you in officer school is evasion and escape. It’s your allotted task, indeed your duty, should you get downed in enemy territory, to make it home in one piece. That and a general understanding that you should try to cause as much disruption to the enemy as you could in the process. They ship us up to Bodmin Moor, and all the cadets have to go through the training exercises. It’s something akin to cross-country running from my school days. Well, cross country running with a pack of dogs on your tail and men with ballast guns ordered to shoot any cadet they set eyes on.

  In theory, a ballast gun will only knock you on your arse with a splitting headache. Airmen of the ranks often volunteer for ‘shoot the cadet’ duty. Presumably on the grounds that if they are going to have to take orders from the cadets once they pass out, they might as well get revenge in first while they have the chance. So for the hunters, it’s a bit like a pheasant shoot if the pheasants are snot nosed bastards you will have to obey in a couple of months’ time no matter how stupid the orders they give you are. They ‘the rank airmen’ look forward to it, so I am told.

/>   For a cadet, however, being chased by men with ballast guns, dogs, random patrols of ‘enemy troops’, across miles of boggy moorland, in thin fatigues that do sod all to protect them from the weather for three days is utterly terrifying. So, as I said, very much like cross-country running at Rudgley School.

  The first lesson of the evasion and escape course is ‘take stock of your inventory’. What do you have to help you evade the enemy, and if at all possible make his life difficult in the process? So let’s do that then shall we…

  I had one pistol, my standard service revolver, five chambers loaded with rounds and one empty, because only an idiot keeps the trigger barrel loaded when he is walking around on an airship. I also had a couple of spare cylinders on my belt. So seventeen rounds in total.

  My sabre was in my cabin. Leaving it there is technically against regulations as the officer of the watch, but only an idiot walks around with a sword hanging by their legs when they’re drinking rhaki on an open decked airship.

  On the plus side, my cutthroat was in my boot, because only an idiot doesn’t carry something sharp and dangerous with them when they’re on an airship at night full of unfriendly crew.

  So when I did this little exercise, all I managed to establish with my inventory was that I’m not an idiot.

  Not completely at any rate. But given that the man saying this is hiding in a small, not very well concealed compartment… In the cargo hold of an airship in the process of being stolen… With no food, no water, but enough rhaki to knock out half the population of Madras…

  Well…

  Anyway, added to this I was also facing unknown opponents. In a country whose language of choice, I didn’t speak. Oh, and I was very obviously an English officer. It was a reasonable bet therefore that for all my own crew didn’t like me very much, that would be peanuts compared to how much the hijackers were likely to despise me.

  If I’d had any sense, I’d have slipped down a mooring line before the ship had lifted. True, with my luck I would probably have hung myself by mistake, but that could well be merciful compared to anything my soon to be captors were likely to do to me.