The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  The first indication was when the corporal was carried screaming into the sick-bay, followed almost immediately by the smell of brandy and the tiny surgeon. The crazy motion of the deck, that had the soldiers reeling as they tried to lay their comrade down gently, bothered Mr Adamson not at all. He rode on his skinny legs like a gull, the fat black bottle swinging from his fingers. He raised his eyes to heaven as much as to say ‘what a waste’ to Broad, as he sent two or three huge gulps shooting down the open throat of the screaming man. As the corporal coughed and jerked, Mr Adamson spoke.

  ‘Blowing great guns out there, my friend,’ he said. ‘And about enough seamen on deck to man one of your damned piratical luggers. God help this poor fellow when I try to tie his arm up. She’s rolling like a mare in season!’

  Seconds later a boatswain’s mate fell into the tiny sick-bay. He was streaming water and red in the face with exertion. ‘You!’ he said to Broad tersely. ‘Up. On deck. Aloft, damn you, and make it snappy.’

  At that moment the Welfare made a plunge and roll combined that seemed to go on for ever. Broad felt his body turning over, while the corporal, who had been propped on his side, rolled down the deck like a piece of carpeting. The surgeon grabbed for him, staggered, and repeated a short, sharp oath over and over again. Broad could feel the timbers vibrating. He put up a hand, the boatswain’s mate seized it and jerked him upright. He hardly noticed the pain as they scuttled crabwise along the deck.

  It was chaos. The frigate was lying over on her ear, and a huge jumble of spewing, cursing people had slipped from their places on the high side into a struggling pile on the low. There was shouting, screaming, and the frantic bellowing of animals in pain. Out of the murk boatswain’s mates appeared momentarily, thrashing with cane and rope, kicking and swearing. Broad ignored this rabble and crabbed along to a ladder. The Welfare was in trouble, and if this chaos was the response to a call for all hands, then God have mercy on her.

  On deck, he was appalled by the tiny number of people visible. More than the crew of a ‘damned piratical lugger’ by a long way, but not enough, not enough. The short, high, grey seas were sweeping across the waist almost without pause. At the hatch he had to wait for nearly a minute before he could claw his way to the windward side in a frantic dash. The boatswain seized his arm at the last and hauled him to shelter.

  ‘Good man!’ he shouted.

  The noise was dominated by a clapping like a succession of cannons. The fore topsail had blown out, and the remaining strips were cracking and creating like wild things. One of the headsails had gone too, which was perhaps a good thing, thought Jesse. The ship was struggling for her life, pressed down by a gust that was doing its immortal best to keep her under while the seas cleared her decks of every object, up to and including the masts. Even the life-lines which the boatswain had rigged so that men could hang above the seas as they moved along the decks were going under from time to time. Aft, the four men now at the wheel were in a bad dream, waist deep in water, white-faced, fighting.

  ‘Aloft, aloft!’ roared the master. ‘Hand main topsail!

  Get him in, boys, get him in!’

  It was all a whirl. Broad aloft, flattened against the yard by the enormous pressure of the wind, men on deck in a maelstrom of foam. A scream as a fellow he knew by sight flew over his head, smashed to the deck where he lay like a rag doll for a second, to disappear in a grey welter as the next sea smashed on board and creamed over the lee rail. A weird howling as the fore topgallant mast carried away. Well, that was no loss. The ship would be easier without it. But by God, he thought, this is a blow and a half ! Not that he thought coherently. He was weak, and the work was hard, and the old rule of one hand for the ship and one for himself went, as it always did, by the board. He fought hard wet canvas with his hands, his arms, his stomach and legs, his knees and elbows, even his teeth.

  They saved her. Gradually the Welfare, canvas stripped, yards braced round to offer least resistance, rose sluggishly from her crippled-shoulder position, put her teeth to the wind, and began to ride them again. The men who had done the work stood in the lee of a shattered cutter and drank wine at the captain’s order. One boy stood and cried; his father was one of the lost three. One of the men too old, or too sick, to hang on.

  The first part of Jesse’s prayer ended with the end of the storm’s climax. For an hour the frigate lay-to under bare poles with the rain and wind a moving shroud. Then the sky lightened, the wind .eased, the rain ceased. Still the seas broke over the battered ship, still the gale tore ceaselessly at her top-hamper. But the worst was over.

  With merely a gale blowing, the hands were sent aloft to set canvas. More men were beaten up from below to handle headsail halyards and outhauls. A reef was shaken out of the main topsail. Half an hour later she lay bravely to the seas, belting up great gouts from bow and side as she clawed towards the Atlantic.

  During the course of the afternoon the weather moderated, which made the hell below decks worse in some ways for those of the people who had collapsed earlier. The boatswain’s mates, freed from their duties on deck, lashed by the tongue of the boatswain who had in turn been lashed by Swift, lashed the moaning bodies below with everything at their disposal. Some discarded rope’s ends and cane for solider battens. Heads were broken and blood flowed. Swift would have had some of them shot, he averred to William, except that not a man-jack of the marines was capable of standing, let alone firing a musket.

  William felt superb now that they had lived through the worst.

  He had worked on the deck almost like one of the people, although he had not, of course, gone so far as to handle a rope. But he – and Jack too, to be fair – had been in the thick of it right the way through. He had been as sick as a dog, had been cut across the face by a wildly lashing sheet when it carried away, but he had kept his end up. He and Jack had even managed to kick a seaman as he stumbled past, for the act of stumbling. He was beginning to be able to tell the lubbers from the seamen, he thought. He was beside his uncle, who had crossed to the lee side of the quarterdeck to observe some wreckage floating by, when the master approached Swift and coughed deferentially.

  ‘Yes, Mr Robinson? What is in your mind?’ said Swift. ‘It is in my mind, sir, that she would stand a little more canvas. That it is time, also, to bend a new fore topsail. It is in my mind, sir, that this wind is a thought less powerful. I beg your pardon, sir.’

  William looked at the master. He was not an inspiring man to see. Thin, and very ugly, with an attitude to his superiors that bordered on the indifferent. He had helped William, it was true.

  But he had had to be asked, and passed on his knowledge in ways that were not easy to follow. He talked of ships as though they were thinking, feeling things. But he was a good master, nobody could gainsay it. William looked at the rigid, bellied sails, close-reefed and tiny against the towering, straining masts. He tried to detect a change. Why did Robinson think she could now stand more? But the mystery remained.

  Captain Swift hardly glanced upwards.

  ‘As you say, Mr Robinson,’ he said. ‘As you say. Shake ’em out and welcome.’

  He turned to William, very unexpectedly.

  ‘Like to go aloft, my boy?’ he said in a jovial voice. ‘Keep an eye on the scum, eh? Weather’s moderating, and it’s about time too.’

  He turned to Jack Evans, who was lurking a few feet downwind.

  ‘You too, Evans. Aloft the pair of you. See what a breath of wind feels like aloft!’

  There was no argument, naturally. The two boys climbed the ratlines with the men, who kept silence, kept their faces clear of expression, slowed down their easy, barefoot pace so as not to show up the clumsy overfed boys in their heavy tarpaulins and leather shoes. They stopped at the top, so as not to get in the way as the men swarmed out along the yards. William was almost overawed at their agility. At the way they swung like monkeys, their feet gripping foot-ropes, their clenched stomachs holding them to the big, swaying yard as th
eir free hands flew at the reef-points and earrings. His sickness, and the sickness of fear, were still with him, but he felt proud also, proud and brave.

  Then he saw Jesse Broad. He saw the man he knew as a captured smuggler, the man who had tried to run, the man who had saved the life of that dreadful boy, the man he had seen flogged at the gangway and who had smiled at the last stroke. Through the torn shirt he saw the seaman’s back. It was black and blue, swollen like a bolster. The man was doubled across the yard, his face clenched in pain or concentration, his fingers hidden by the sail’s belly he was working at.

  William Bentley saw blood well through the torn and soaking shirt. The nausea flooded through him anew. His stomach dropped. He raised his eyes past the handsome head, away from the awful, savaged back. He stared out across the wild grey waters.

  And he saw the ship. She was close, not above a couple of miles, to his unpractised eye. So close he could not understand why the cry had not gone up. She was close, and she was a ship of war. She was to windward, towards the coast of France. And for a sovereign, for a King’s ransom, she was French!

  He filled his lungs and roared, his head swimming with excitement.

  ‘Sail ho! On deck there! A sail, a sail!’

  The cry rose thinly from the captain’s speaking trumpet: ‘Where away? Aloft there! Where away?’

  ‘Broad on the larboard bow! Broad on the larboard bow! A ship of war! A ship of war!’

  The Welfare took a mighty plunge then, and shook the sea from her foredeck like a dog. The second part of Jesse’s prayer had been answered.

  Twelve

  If the new ship was a Frenchman, there could be only one, inevitable, consequence. Even if the Welfare had been an unarmed merchantman, desperate not to fight, she would have been hard put to escape; the distant ship was well before the frigate’s beam, and she was running free. But Welfare was a ship of war, and British, and to every person on board who was not too sick to think, the situation was clear. A ragged cheer went up from the men on the yard, exhausted as they were, and William Bentley found himself cheering with the rest of them. From the deck, a faint hullabaloo arose.

  William, who had a good theoretical knowledge of single-ship actions, and who spent many hours working out moves and tactics in the midshipmen’s berth, alone and with the others, weighed up the situation. His sickness was waning fast, being replaced by an almost unbearable excitement. He turned his face to Evans, who was clinging to the mast beside him.

  ‘By God, Jack!’ he said. ‘Now we’ll see something!’ Jack’s face was flushed where before it had been sallow, almost green.

  ‘Do you not think we ought to get on deck, Will? We must stand to our positions!’

  ‘Orders, Jack, orders.’

  ‘Perhaps your Uncle Daniel has forgot us!’

  William turned his eyes to the men on the yards and screamed at them impatiently: ‘Move, you lubbers, move! Cannot you see there is action to be had!’

  ‘How will we engage do you think?’ Evans asked. His high voice carried well in the howling noise of the rigging, and Bentley had to strain hard to match him.

  ‘Difficult, difficult. She is to windward of us, has the wind abaft the beam, and can lay down the terms. But in this tempest she will be hard put not to merely fly past us. Can you see what she is carrying?’

  The two boys stared across the heaving waters. The ‘enemy’ dipped and plunged in the distance, sometimes almost disappearing into the troughs.

  ‘Close-reefed topsails I think,’ said Evans doubtfully.

  William watched as their own sails grew larger. It seemed an odd tactic, now, to increase the area. In weather like this Welfare would need to be as handy as possible, especially to meet a vessel coming down the wind. Even more so if the fellow didn’t want an encounter and had to be chased; and that was always possible with the French, according to everything he had ever heard. The men on the yard were hesitating too, as if expecting the order to take in the reefs once more, or even add to them. It occurred to him that the view from the deck must be considerably less than theirs up here, and on an impulse he cupped his hand to yell at the quarterdeck.

  ‘On deck there! On deck there! She’s under close-reefed topsails only, and closing fast.’

  There was a short pause, filled by the roaring wind and clapping of canvas. Then the voice of his uncle, distorted by his speaking trumpet. It rose to the heights of the mast as if slowly; an eerie effect.

  ‘Has he made any sign yet? Has he seen us?’ A pause. ‘Any colours? Any change of course?’

  William and Jack Evans strained their eyes. The distance was definitely closing. Had the windward vessel changed course?

  ‘She’s coming round, Will, she’s coming round! Oh my God, there’s going to be a fight!’

  William wasn’t so sure. The ship looked just the same to him.

  But he knew Jack’s eyes were keener. ‘Are you sure? Has he altered?’

  ‘Aye, aye!’ squeaked Evans. ‘Oh, he’s changing all right!’

  William roared down to the deck as hard as he could, and another cheer rose slowly upwards seconds after his words.

  ‘On deck there! On deck there! He’s making for us! He’s seen us! He’s bearing down for us! The devil’s on for a tussle!’

  His mind was racing, back to tactics once more. With this sea running the gun action would be difficult indeed. The lee ports could certainly not be opened; they were under water half the time. And then the weather ones – well, they were pointing to the sky by the same token. They would either have to go head to wind to get her on an even keel for a minute or two, or be stern to wind at just the moment the Frenchman ranged alongside. But then they’d be completely exposed as they wore, and he had the wind gage in any case. Obviously paper tactics and his sketchy knowledge of seamanship would not suit here; if he was controlling this action, he realised with a thump, he would not know how to begin.

  Evans was having the same trouble.

  ‘How will he lay her, Billy?’ he asked. ‘We cannot rake the dog like this, our shot would be over his trucks. We’d pepper the clouds!’

  ‘Whatever else, Jack,’ Bentley shouted, ‘we’ve got to get some canvas off her. He’ll run rings round us else.

  The press is too great.’ The gap was narrowing. Still the seamen on the yards were at sixes and sevens. They must be wondering what to do; when the order would come to closereef. Maybe Uncle Daniel was planning to clew them up of a sudden when Johnny Crapaud was in range, then shake out and sail her. William could see the master and the captain at the weather rail, heads together. Mr Robinson, that indifferent man, was waving an arm about in animation.

  ‘’Tis damn near time to beat to quarters,’ Jack said in his ear. His voice was doubtful. William did not reply. With the sea-sickness on board, with the general lubberliness of the people, with the badness of the weather and the closeness of the enemy, he secretly thought it was time and a lot more.

  The guns were shotted already, but all ports were closed and caulked, all tampions were in, every mess between every pair was full of groaning, useless men. Partitions were up, mess tables were in position. He looked into the wind. Although a very short time had passed since the first sighting, the weather frigate was noticeably closer. He could see what Jack had seen. She was making to intercept them.

  ‘Is she carrying colours yet?’ Evans replied after a long moment.

  ‘Not yet. But hell’s teeth, Will, when do you think your unc—’ He broke off. William flushed.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ he said viciously. But he said it to himself. Then the penetratingly thin voice warbled up from below. A sudden stronger gust carried the first part of it away.

  ‘…or I’ll flog every last son of a whore of you!’

  Aha! The word to close-reef. William watched the men.

  They did nothing. They must not have heard either. He was about to repeat what he guessed was the order, when Captain Swift’s voice rose once more, full of ven
om even at that distance.

  ‘Get that canvas set, God damn you! Shake out those reefs I say!’ It was unbelievable. Bentley and Evans exchanged glances. Shake them out? Another order rose from the deck, not directed upwards this time, but still audible.

  ‘Tacks and braces! Tacks and braces there, you buggers! Man the sheets!’

  The master had gone to the helm. The men laid to the spokes with a will. All over the decks others scrambled, to man the topsail halyards, to brace the yards as the frigate altered course. There was a thunderous clapping as the canvas bellied and flapped during a series of sail and helm manoeuvres done at double-quick time. The men on the yard clung on for dear life as they were flung about, then they were all round the two boys, then at other parts of the rigging, then away like lightning towards the deck. Jack Evans was pink around the gills. They felt like a couple of hopeless lubbers. Collapse of the young gentlemen.

  ‘I say,’ he shouted miserably. ‘Had we better get down off here?’

  It was no moment to wait for orders. Captain Swift would have forgotten all about them, anyway. William went down the ratlines lost and unhappy. He glanced to windward, which was now over the larboard quarter. The French ship had not altered, as far as he could see. Doubtless her commander was as surprised by the frigate’s latest move as were all on board her.

  He picked his moment carefully, to avoid the seas that still combed the deck. The knots of seamen standing about had on sullen, closed expressions, and an air of depression had replaced the cheeriness. Disbelief, too. Not one of them apparently who could believe they were really attempting to run. It must be some ploy on the owner’s part. Swift might be a hard man, even a tyrant. But no one had ever caught him playing the coward.

  As was his duty, William reached the quarterdeck.

  The first and second lieutenants were there, studiedly looking away to starboard at nothing in particular. Captain Swift was alone, high on the weather side, his lips grim. Mr Robinson looked incuriously at the two midshipmen, then returned his gaze to the masts. At a signal, William approached his uncle.