The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  ‘Well, well,’ said Butterbum, in a voice of deep satisfaction,

  ‘Captain Swift will be delighted at this state of affairs, I am sure. How many have died?’

  He consulted his ledger. Thomas spoke in a whisper. ‘None, sir. All are present.’

  ‘Hah. Is that so? Well, indeed you surprise me. Let me count ’em.’ As he moved into the pen to count, Thomas drew to one side. He kept his arm tightly around the dying ewe. Under his hand her heart shook and rattled. His mind was filled with one prayer. That she should live. Please God, let her but live until Butterbum went away.

  For the moment that would be enough.

  The purser swiftly checked the sheep. He was disappointed. All were there, no doubt of it.

  ‘They look sick,’ he said, abruptly. ‘I think they are dying. Definitely on their last legs. What do you say?’

  Thomas closed his eyes to get the words out. ‘No, sir. Cold, sir. But very hardy.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Butterbum sighed.

  ‘Ah well, the captain wants one killed. See to it boy, see to it. Though God knows, he’ll not be pleased with you when I tell him how desperate thin they’ve grown.’

  He gave a short laugh. ‘Not been eating their rations, have you? You and your purblind friend there!’

  Under Thomas Fox’s hand the rattling heart slowly ran down. It twitched once or twice, then caught a beat, steady, but fainter still. As the purser waddled away, he shuddered with released tension.

  ‘Butcher,’ he mumbled. ‘Padraig, I have to get to the butcher, before this poor ewe dies. I cannot take you. Wait, friend, and tend the others. Warm them Padraig, warm them!’

  The dying sheep was not heavy, but the motion of the ship made it difficult to move fast. He cradled it as best he could as he headed to the galley, where he hoped to find the pressed man, rated able, who kept his hand in at his real trade, of a butcher. He was not there. The old crippled cook was not inclined to say where he might be, despite Thomas’s obvious desperation, so at last, following directions from half a dozen hands, he climbed onto the foredeck. The butcher had been seen wandering about with two cleavers in his hand, himself seeking the carpenter’s mate to sharpen them.

  On deck, the half-naked sheep began to shiver violently in the wind. Thomas felt the chill too, but it was the least of his worries. He scanned the damp, pitching deck anxiously. There! He could see the butcher with the carpenter’s mate, walking forward from the mainmast. As Thomas hurried towards them, the great bulk of the boatswain came from behind one of the ship’s boats. He was muffled in an all-enveloping surcoat, his beard flying wildly out from above the collar. He gave a booming laugh.

  ‘Haha, my bucko!’ he roared. ‘Caught you at the game, have I? Sheep-stealing’s your lay!’

  Thomas tried not to stop, but the boatswain planted himself in front of him. The sheep hung down from his arms, shaking convulsively.

  ‘Hello, what’s this then?’ cried Mr Allgood. He was in high good humour, enjoying the joke and the bracing weather. A few hands watched incuriously from nearby. ‘The butcher, sir,’ Thomas muttered. ‘I must see the butcher this instant. The captain requires—’

  ‘This instant!’ echoed the boatswain. He laughed again. ‘By hell, Thomas, we are the bold one now indeed, since we beat the shrimpish boy! To tell the boatswain your business is urgent! Do you not consider that a shade forward? Has it not occurred to you I might trice you to a grating and strip your back to the bone? “This instant”!’

  The butcher and the carpenter’s mate had approached.

  Thomas turned his stricken face to them, and saw, over the butcher’s shoulders, that Butterbum was also in the offing. The fat purser, an interrogative sneer on his face, was waddling from the quarterdeck. Beside him was the midshipman of the watch. William Bentley.

  ‘Oh please,’ whispered Thomas, in desperation. ‘Oh please, Mr Allgood, sir!’

  Under his hand the sheep’s heart raced anew. Its whole body shook for a few seconds. The heart slowed down.

  Slower and slower, slower and slower. It faltered, picked up, faltered again. Then stopped. He squeezed the emaciated rib-cage. Nothing. The heart had stopped.

  Bentley approached the group on the foredeck with distaste and a certain nervousness. The purser nauseated him, but he had made a specific complaint, and as if by magic the person involved, along with one of the sheep mentioned, had appeared before him. It was obvious that something peculiar was going on; he had a duty to investigate. There was another reason, which he did not put into words. He had not approached or spoken to the shepherd boy since the fight. With both of them on the deck, it was essential that he should speak to the scum. Otherwise the people, in their oafish ignorance, would take it for a sign that he was uncomfortable, even afraid.

  At that moment, the boatswain’s booming laugh rolled to him on the wind, followed by a jumble of words. William did not catch them all, but he picked out ‘Butcher it’, and ‘Dead as mutton’, and ‘Killed again’. Butterbum almost grabbed his sleeve in his excitement.

  ‘Did you hear, sir?’ he said. ‘Did you hear! The sheep is dead! I told you so!’

  Then the great, hairy face of the boatswain turned itself on to William’s. They looked at each other across the cold, sloping deck. For several seconds Allgood stared at him.

  Then he turned back to the small group.

  William quickened his pace, and the purser positively skipped.

  The knot of men in front of them had closed up tightly, and moved to the lee rail. There was a sudden scream, half human, half animal.

  And then, as William broke into a run, the water in the scuppers suddenly turned bright red. A split second, and a gush of sea burst over the rail as the lee bow plunged. The stain spread, pinkened, then ran out through the drain ports.

  ‘Ahoy!’ he shouted. ‘Mr Allgood! What are you about, man!’

  Once more the boatswain turned to face William. There was a wide, insolent smile on his full red lips. He held the carcass of the sheep easily in his huge hand, half-naked and sodden, like a drowned child. Its head was hanging by a fold of skin and gristle.

  ‘Teaching the butcher his business, Mr Bentley,’ he said mildly.

  ‘And testing the edge that has been put upon his cleavers.’

  William stared around the faces. The butcher and the carpenter’s mate looked high into the rigging, their expressions blank. The boy was up to his old trick of studying the deck, his shoulders shaking slightly. A black wave of anger swept through the midshipman.

  ‘You,’ he snarled. ‘You, boy. Look at me, damn you, or I’ll have you flogged. That sheep was dead already, was it not? Dead!’

  Thomas did not move. The boatswain made a gesture of surprise.

  ‘Dead when we cut its throat, Mr Bentley?’ he said, milder still.

  ‘Do you think I would give such trash-meat to the owner? And did you not hear it scream, sir?’

  William opened his mouth and gripped his fists together. He drew a shuddering breath. The boatswain smiled a small smile, an encouraging, wickedly insolent smile.

  ‘Bless your heart, sir, of course it wasn’t dead. I cut its little throat myself, sir, sweet as you like.’

  ‘Check the other sheep, sir, check the others,’ hissed Butterbum. ‘They are all in the same state, sir, on death’s door. Trust me, sir, they…’

  He trailed off. William Bentley looked into the boatswain’s eyes, spoke as coolly and as calmly as he knew how.

  ‘Mr Allgood,’ he said, ‘I am seriously displeased at your conduct in this affair. God only knows what is in your mind to do it. At the very least, to slaughter animals upon the upper deck. I shall express my feelings to the captain instantly. I am most displeased.’

  The boatswain had cleared his face of all expression. ‘Aye aye sir,’ he said. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  *

  The news of this latest clash between Thomas and the midshipman went round the ship like wildfire. It was exhilarating news, t
hat set the messes buzzing with amazement and delight. Fox himself, released by the boatswain when the butcher carried the carcass off forward to dress it, went below filled with nothing but horrified anticipation. He found the blind man draping the sheep that were left in any rags he had managed to gather. They checked each animal in turn, the boy’s despair mounting at the state of them. They were a half-starved, half-frozen bunch.

  Although the men were excited by the incident, no one sought out Fox. A strange circumspection had become apparent over the past days. There was an air of expectation, a thrilling, heady sense of danger. Once more the shepherd lad had been at its centre, besting the dreadful boy; but only his messmates spoke to him.

  Broad was the first. Little Peter would have been, but he had not recovered from the flogging which had racked his skinny form, and was more or less immovable, although not in the sickbay. Broad leaned over the side of the pens, and called softly into the gloom. After a few seconds Fox appeared, his face pale and worried.

  ‘Supper, Thomas,’ Broad said gently. ‘Did you not hear the call?’

  ‘Oh Jesse Broad,’ Fox whispered. ‘The beasts are dying. It is too cold. We cannot come.’

  ‘Nay, nay,’ said Broad. ‘Come you to supper, Thomas, you and Padraig. There is hot Scotch coffee, and we have rum still to lace it with. You need the warmth in this weather.’

  ‘How long will it last, friend Jesse? It is too cold, the beasts are in a frightful way. We can do nothing to help them. They have our blankets already. Oh Jesse, friend Jesse, this ship is hell!’

  ‘But Thomas, no,’ said Broad, urgently. ‘No no, ’tis fine now. Hold yourself together, man, do not despair. You are a hero, the people love you, come and eat. Then we will see to the animals, myself and all. They shall have my blankets, all our blankets if need be.’

  Thomas laid his head on the pen railing, the wood distorting his thin cheeks.

  ‘My cousin Silas,’ he gasped. ‘Silas, Jesse, my cousin. He is a marine on board here, and God help me, soon he will be told to blow my brains out. Oh Jesse, this ship is hell.’

  Broad watched the shuddering face in pity, although he did not fully understand the shepherd’s drift.

  ‘Your cousin? A marine?’

  ‘Aye Jesse; or maybe, no. It does not matter if he is or not. I can speak to no man, no man can speak to me. The beasts are sick and freezing, and I have cruelly hurt the boy once more. Everything is at an end, and soon the end will come. Oh Jesse, Jesse, the beasts are cold, so cold.’

  The seaman spoke low, his voice urgent.

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘No, no, no, Thomas. Believe me, I am your friend. This weather is wrong, a freak. We should still be in the warmth and sun. It will return, it will. And as to the rest, you have done nothing, I swear it. Nobody hates you, you will come to no harm. You have never hurt that boy, neither; it is not your fault.’ He told him more. Of how Grandfather Fulman and other older hands were complaining about the ‘cold snap’. That it was an aberration. That soon, tomorrow even, they would be in the sun again. He further said that all in the mess would turn-to that night to keep the animals warm, with blankets and spare clothes if need be. At last the boy was comforted, and allowed himself to be led to supper, leading in turn his friend the blind man by the hand. True to the word, that night the messmates shivered under rags while the sheep rolled sickly in their blankets.

  But the weather prophets were sadly out. Between seven o’clock the next morning and three in the afternoon, during which time the temperature was scarcely over freezing, four of the seven sheep died.

  Twenty-Five

  William Bentley, for all his threat to the boatswain, did not in fact tell Captain Swift about the incident on the foredeck for a long time, and there was no one else to speak to that august personage of such matters. Rumour ran a speedy course around the ship, but there were some ears too grand to be touched, and William himself simply did not know how to present it. He had been slighted yet again, the boatswain had been party to it, but his uncle had certain views that he knew were rigid and sacrosanct. There was no doubt in his own mind that the boatswain was an insolent dog, but he dreaded to imagine what would happen if he said so. So it was, that in the whole ship’s company, only Swift did not know immediately about the ‘sheep that died twice,’ as it was called.

  When he did hear, it was, almost incredibly, through the purser; and it led William into a nightmare.

  All that day, as the Welfare ploughed south under shortened canvas, Jesse Broad worked hard to keep the terrible secret that the other sheep had died. It was a hopeless, pointless exercise, but it was pursued with fanatical care.

  Broad had seen a collapse in the shepherd boy that horrified him, and his fear as to what would happen when the deaths were discovered spurred him on. He had a vague, wild hope that if the weather worsened, if night fell, they could somehow manufacture a stampede, an accident. Perhaps the damned beasts could be washed overboard; anything. Once it was dark, in a storm, he was prepared to go to almost any lengths to get the dead sheep over the side, if it meant being flogged insensible.

  He also had a half-formed plan to see Matthews and try to start a riot. To bribe some of the wilder element with rum, however dearly bought, and have them attack the pens and ‘slaughter’ the miserable corpses. His brain seethed.

  Grandfather Fulman and his messmates knew that something had happened, but only that. Peter’s inability to move or poke his nose about was a true blessing at last, despite the poor lad’s own agony. They got their blankets back, and they kept their mouths shut. Fox and Doyle, as ever, kept to their darkened pen, with Broad watching from a short distance, casually keeping away men who would pass too close. Towards the end of the dog-watches, the cloud-filled sky was growing rapidly gloomy. Broad, seeing the light that filtered below decks dwindling, had a rush of hope. He went to the pen and spoke to Thomas.

  ‘Take heart, boy,’ he whispered to the huddled form. ‘It will soon be night. We will save the situation, do not doubt it. Only wait a little longer.’

  *

  At about the same moment, the word was passed to Bentley, who was lying musing unhappily in the berth, that the captain wanted to see him. The other young gentlemen looked at him with smiles he saw as sneers. William disliked them badly at the moment, waiting as they were, he guessed, for the latest step in his downfall. He smiled back awkwardly.

  ‘Oh damn,’ he said, in a voice he hoped was languid, ‘if I drink much more green tea with Uncle Daniel I will surely burst.’

  As he approached the marine sentry outside the cabin, the door clicked open and Butterbum shuffled out backwards. He closed the door, turned, and flushed when he saw William. He gave him a queer, half-smirking look, put on his hat, and bustled off forward. William’s stomach dropped away from him as he knocked.

  Captain Swift, sitting behind his mahogany table, did not move as his nephew slowly approached. He was still, quite still, apart from the fingers of his right hand. They drummed a soft tattoo on the polished surface. His eyes were steadily on his nephew’s face. They looked deadly. William stopped, waited, said nothing. But he was afraid.

  ‘You saw the purser, of course,’ said Swift, flatly. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He told me a peculiar tale, Mr Bentley. A most peculiar tale. Is it true?’

  William swallowed, but decided not to throw himself to the lions before he saw the actual shape of their fangs.

  ‘What tale, sir? The purser is…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The purser is a man I have not found to be entirely trust… Entirely without faults of his own, sir.’

  Swift smiled. It was a broad smile, disconcerting in its friendliness.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mr Butterbum is a vile, fawning rogue.’ The smile disappeared. ‘The last sort of scum, William, that I expect to learn things from.’

  The boy gave in to the inevitable. He swallowed once more, then spoke out.

  ‘Sir, I promise you I was try
ing to keep nothing hidden. The incident was so uncertain. I do not know to this moment if I was being made a dupe or no. Mr Allgood assured me the beast was killed by him.’

  ‘Allgood? You believe my boatswain would butcher a sheep? It is impossible!’

  ‘Must I then believe he lied, sir? For he told me so· himself. He told me so.’

  The man and the boy stared at each other in the swaying lamplight. Outside, the cold wind moaned. Swift’s fingers resumed their drumming.

  ‘The shepherd boy again. He was there.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘And the purser says he had a dead or dying sheep. That he gave me – me! – the flesh to eat of a sheep already dead.’

  ‘Yes sir. As I understand it, sir. Although…although Mr Allgood says the beast was not yet dead.’

  There was another long silence. William wanted to burst out; wanted to convey his fears. Not only Fox, he wished to say, but Mr Allgood. They were in it together. He sensed danger, deadly danger. Again he was filled with hatred for the lanky boy. But he said nothing.

  ‘Between you and me, my boy,’ Swift said, ‘this damned shepherd lad has got the better of you. You seem to have made a great muff of things. Eh? As a plotter, he has left you standing. In stays, sir! Eh?’

  It was not fair, and it was awful. He closed his eyes momentarily, made a movement with his hands. It was unfair, it was dreadful, and… was it true? Inwardly, he groaned.

  Captain Swift went on, thoughtfully: ‘I’ll tell you what though, he is a damned lot of trouble for a boy, that much is all too certain. And whatever the ins and outs of the matter, he is making me mad. Bentley, you have let me down, sir. But as for that accursed boy…’

  It was then that the knock came. The captain gave the command to enter – and there was Butterbum once more, his eyes alight with triumph. He stood in front of Swift, his hat in his hand, trembling.

  ‘Well,’ said the captain. ‘A quick return, Mr Purser. Your findings?’