The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  With a sudden, swift movement, the captain pitched the belaying pin over the side and drew his sword.

  ‘Craig!’ he yelled. ‘Do your duty!’

  The captain of marines jumped. He looked at the swaying body of men. He turned abruptly to his soldiers.

  ‘Cover them, cover them!’

  The marines moved their muskets to their shoulders quickly and efficiently. Broad saw a line of muzzles, behind the glittering steel of the bayonets. But his mouth was still open, sound was still pouring from it. With the other bodies all round him, the swaying got greater and greater.

  Captain Swift had perched himself on a rail at the bulwarks so that he looked down at the men. He screeched to Craig: ‘Fire, damn you! Fire! They have gone mad!’

  Craig looked bemused. He stared down at the moving, ululating body of seamen. His sword wavered. Gradually, the men started to move forward.

  ‘Fire, damn you! Fire!’ screamed Daniel Swift. His face was black with rage, his sword trembled violently in his fist.

  The marine officer raised his sword in a decisive sweep. ‘At the front rank!’ he cried. ‘Prepare to fire!’

  With an amazing suddenness, the noise ceased. The ship’s people, as if at a signal, became deathly quiet. The swaying continued, but only from momentum. It slowly got less, until they were still. A bitter curtain of spray drenched men and soldiers as they silently faced each other.

  Swift turned from the people to the officer of marines.

  His voice was thick.

  ‘Fire, damn you Craig. Fire, I tell you.’

  Broad saw the marine officer swallow. He looked at the captain, then at his red-coated men. The sword wavered.

  Slowly his mouth opened.

  But Swift spoke before him, choking this time on the word.

  ‘Fire!’

  There was a single bang, and a gasp from the ship’s company. Broad and many around him uttered small cries of shock. Everyone looked about to see who had been hit, who had fired. A small cloud of blue smoke was torn away aft. It had come from one musket, from one soldier. Broad stared at the man, a tall, ordinary-looking fellow. The other marines were staring too, and exchanging frightened glances. The man looked sick, panicky; but defiant.

  And who was shot? Broad tore his eyes off the man who had fired, as a ragged shout went up.

  Captain Craig’s sword dropped with a clang, bounced once, and landed at the feet of Henry Joyce, who was in the front row. The captain of marines, without uttering any sound, crumpled at the knees and fell to the deck. He did not move again.

  Jesse Broad’s voice joined in the howl that burst from the people.

  His body joined in the mad lunge towards the quarterdeck. Like those all him round, he became blind to reason or thought in the great surge aft. He did not find a weapon, like many of the others; he did not tear at flesh with his bare hands, for which he later thanked God. But he did become a wild man, a screaming, vengeful thing. He was part of the explosion of hate, revenge, and energy that tore through the Welfare.

  After the first madness, though, he became lost in the confusion. The marines on the quarterdeck had opened fire, that much he could tell. There was a volley of shots, and the acrid smell of burnt powder. But whether they were firing at the people, or at each other, or both, he did not know. Balls whistled about the crowded decks, and he saw two men fall. Peter fell too, not from a wound but from his great weakness after the flogging. Broad tried hard to reach him, but the lad disappeared under dozens of trampling feet. It was impossible to break through the struggling hordes.

  A great roaring, of many seamen, was split by screams. At one moment, pushed out of the mass as it staggered drunkenly on the rolling deck, Broad saw a dreadful sight: Higgins, the third lieutenant, was caught by a mob at the mizzen shrouds. He was trying to beat them off with an iron belaying pin, yelling the while. As Jesse watched, the pin was jerked from his hand and five or six seamen grabbed him. Within a split second he was upended, taken by feet and hands, and sent spinning over the side into the grey rollers.

  A frantic cannonade went up from the canvas shortly after this. Broad saw that the wheel had finally been abandoned. He wondered dully if the man had been killed, or had at last been jerked out of the reverie of concentration that had held him for so long. There was another thunderous clapping, and the decks shook ominously, stirring his seaman’s instincts. Even under short sail, in this wind the Welfare was in deadly danger. Caught by a gust, blown across sea and wind, she might roll her masts out, or even roll over. He thought of Matthews, wondered where he was. Christ, he had wanted this mutiny, had wanted the decks thick with blood, had he not? Well, thick they were, and slimy, and where was Matthews now?

  Down below, a separate rampage took place. William Bentley, hidden in the alcove in his uncle’s cabin, heard and vaguely saw awful things. He heard the smashing of wood and the breaking of glass as men sought the first liquor they could lay their hands on. He heard the laughter and the screams as the second lieutenant was woken from his drugged sleep and stabbed and beaten to death. He heard the awful pulsing roars from the deck above, and the gunfire.

  Bentley did not blame himself for cowardice. He had heard the beginning of the affair, and he had gone to his uncle’s cabin in mental agony, to seek the pistols. But he had not known on whom they should be turned. What had happened up there? What had brought about that terrifying noise? Had Thomas Fox been shot? Or his uncle? He had stared long at the big horse-pistols, strange and out of place in the hands of a boy at sea. He felt a boy; a lost boy, dreadfully alone. As the mutiny got under way, as the ragged shooting, and the roaring of so many men rolled in waves down the hatchways, as dozens of armed seamen burst about the officers’ accommodation, he knew that he could do nothing at first but hide. If he could help to fight the mutiny it must be later. To show himself now would just mean instant death.

  It was the loss of the helmsman that indirectly brought the fighting to an end. Jesse Broad had made contact with Matthews at last, and the two of them had got behind one of the boats to talk. The struggle was still raging aft, with the opposing sides more clearly defined. A knot of men, with Mr Robinson and Daniel Swift certainly among them, were holding out fiercely around the mizzen mast. They were under heavy attack from a far greater number of seamen and marines, led by Henry Joyce and his cronies. Cutlasses had been broken out, and the musketry was far more sporadic. The marines who had stayed on the side of authority were using bayonets.

  ‘We must try to stop it somehow,’ said Jesse Broad. ‘It is horrible. It is unbearable.’

  ‘Aye,’ Matthews replied, shaking his long, sombre head. ‘It is a bloodbath. Believe me, I had not this sort of villainy in mind.’

  ‘Ah, but the villain himself, the villain himself,’ said Broad. ‘My poor Thomas, that luckless boy.’

  There was, between them and the quarterdeck, a group of men who had left the fighting. They were standing about as if in a daze, gazing about at the littered corpses and wounded. Some held bloody cutlasses drooping in their hands. One or two were weeping. As the Welfare lurched, and another thunderous beating of canvas came from aloft, Mr Allgood emerged from the group. His face was covered in blood, and one arm hung limp beside him. He stared aloft, then shook his head. Matthews hailed him.

  ‘Ahoy! Mr Allgood! Here by the cutter! Quick man!’

  The boatswain shook his bull head again, and began to walk towards them. He seemed drawn by the note of authority in Matthews’ voice. Broad himself was startled by it.

  ‘Here, man,’ said Matthews, when Allgood arrived. ‘We have got to get this ship under control. She will beat herself to pieces else.’

  The huge warrant officer stared unseeingly. He blinked red-rimmed eyes. His face was livid and bloody. He looked beaten, hurt.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said at last. ‘Oh God, what have I done? Oh God, the shame of it.’

  There was a rending explosion from aloft as a topsail split.

  ‘For God
’s sake, man!’ snapped Matthews. ‘Pull yourself together!’

  But Allgood mumbled on.

  ‘I started it,’ he said. ‘The boatswain, me, Jack Allgood. To raise a hand against an officer. To start a mutiny in His Majesty’s Navy. Oh God.’

  Broad felt a flash of anger.

  ‘You started nothing, Mister,’ he said. ‘Have you forgot the boy so quick? Have you forgot what Swift did to that boy? You are dazed, you have been hit. Remember Thomas, that is all!’

  The eyes cleared a little.

  ‘Ah, true,’ he said. ‘Most true. The man is a villain, double-dyed. But to mutiny, Jesse Broad, to raise a hand against an officer of the King…’

  Matthews spoke now much like an officer. His lean face had hardened. His great jaw jutted with determination.

  ‘Your feelings do you credit, Allgood. But consider this: although the deed is done now, we can yet save something from it. We can save the Welfare for a start. And next we can stop the bloodbath. But Christ, we must be quick!’

  As if to prove him right, the ship staggered to a big grey sea. She was falling off fast, lying almost in the troughs, and the wave broke right over her side and rushed across the waist. The broken bodies of men and boys were lifted and moved along like sodden logs. At the same time, there was a splintering crash from aloft as a spar carried away.

  Allgood stared at Matthews.

  ‘We will be hanged,’ he said. ‘It is too late to change sides now, my friend. We will be hanged.’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ shouted Matthews. ‘Just get to work, damn you, get to work. You will not be hanged, depend on me. Nor will you change sides. But get to work, before you drown yourself and all the lot of us.’

  The boatswain made his decision. He turned about, strode to the men in the waist, and began yelling orders at them. At first they seemed disinclined to move, but he laid about him with the flat of a cutlass, and they began to jump. Matthews looked at Broad with half a smile.

  ‘He’ll save the ship, all right,’ he said. ‘Now let us go and save the owner.’ He paused, and the smile deepened. ‘The ex-owner,’ he added, simply.

  On their way aft they found muskets that had not been fired in the chaos. Broad went up the lee shrouds of the mizzen a few yards, and Matthews up the weather. They positioned themselves firmly in the rigging, and trained their weapons on the struggling men below.

  Jesse was sickened by the carnage he saw. The captain, startlingly visible in his fine and gaudy clothes, was fighting like a demon, the centre of energy of a fair-sized group of men. All around the edges of this group there was a low wall of dead and wounded. Around that wall again, on the outside, was a ring of mutineers. The centre of their energy was the monstrous figure of Henry Joyce. He still held the marine officer’s light sword in his left hand, broken off six inches from the point. But in his right was the weapon most suited to him; a great curved cutlass that he wielded like a toy.

  They were not making much noise any more; the fight had been a long, exhausting one. Matthews’ voice, a voice of brass, caused a dozen heads to lift.

  ‘Ahoy!’ he roared. ‘Ahoy below! You will put up your weapons this instant. The mutiny is over. We have won!’

  The fighting faltered. But Captain Swift was not impressed, nor was Henry Joyce.

  The captain shouted: ‘To hell with you! Come, my brave lads, fight on!’

  And Joyce, like a refrain, roared: ‘Kill the bastards, kill the bastards, kill!’

  Some of the impetus was gone, however. Men on the fringes backed off. Matthews shouted, ‘We have a musket trained upon you, Captain Swift. Surrender with your men or you must surely die. Surrender.’

  More and more men drew back. The clash of blades grew less.

  ‘And you, Henry Joyce!’ said Matthews. ‘We have you covered. Call off your party or we will shoot.’

  Joyce turned up his weird bald head in fury.

  ‘Are you traitors, you bastards? For I’ll die fighting till I’ve spilled his murderous blood!’

  The sounds of steel had almost died. The panting circles looked at each other, and the men aloft.

  ‘Not traitors, Henry, but not butchers neither. And are you? And are all your men? We have won, we have brought the villain low. Shall we now behave like him? Shall we now be as black as that black devil?’

  The argument won through to many of the men. Joyce’s heavy-bearded face looked aloft, then round the outer ring of tired mutineers. Blood from his upraised cutlass coursed backwards, dripping from the guard. He grunted.

  Captain Swift, his pale eyes gleaming, seized the chance.

  ‘Good man!’ he cried. ‘Good man! By God, whatever your name is, and you too, Broad, you’ll not regret this work! I’ll shower guineas on you till your pockets groan. When these scum swing, you’ll stand beside me in full honour. Your fortunes are made, lads, depend on it. I will see you rich as Croesus!’

  Broad’s eyes, sighting down the barrel of his musket at the captain’s handsome head, raised themselves in horror to the figure of his companion in the weather shrouds. He was deeply disturbed by the captain’s words. Henry Joyce gave an animal roar of anger. Spittle sprayed from his lips as he barked his hatred.

  ‘So, you filthy bastard, Matthews! You’d be bribed, would you? You’d sell your shipmates to this demon, would you? Well damn you then, but I’ll die fighting, anyway!’

  ‘Do not heed him, Matthews!’ cried Swift. ‘He is a mutineer and murderer. All will swing, all! But you will be a rich man, that I promise you!’

  The two camps squared up once more, and Broad still stared at Matthews. Before the factions could come to blows, however, the brazen voice of his companion stilled their arms.

  ‘I do not want your riches, Captain Swift, nor yet your filthy blood. You may offer me all the world, but I will see you in hell before I take it. Likewise you, Joyce. You will die by my hand, I promise you, if you scratch but one more fellow’s skin. This filthy bloodshed’s over. It is over! Now put up, put up! Another word, Swift, and you die!’

  For some minutes, below decks in his alcove, William Bentley had known that it was time to move. The uncontrolled, dangerous motion of the Welfare had been arrested. She had fought and lunged and shivered for a great age, her timbers shrieking with the unaccustomed strains. Now she had settled down. She rolled and swooped, but in a normal, patterned way, under command and sailing. The noises, too, had died. No more men had plundered and shouted in the captain’s cabin or the officers’. Below decks she was bereft of voices, strangely empty of her teeming men.

  He did not know what to do, but he knew he must do something. It appeared to him most unlikely that the mutineers had failed, most unlikely that he would find his uncle living, or indeed any of the officers. He had a damned fair idea of Plumduff’s fate, and of his own if he appeared among the glorying crew and was taken. But he knew he had to act.

  In the long time of silence behind the heavy curtain, in the long minutes after all frantic noise had ceased, he had tried hard to make a decision about right and wrong. He had a vision of monstrosity concerning Thomas Fox that almost choked him; he had a distaste for his uncle’s excesses of conduct that amounted to physical horror, that made his muscles crack with tension and his flesh crawl. And yet – and yet… Mutiny. Ah Christ, no, it was impossible. And gunfire, and Plumduff, and such filthy mindless beasts as Henry Joyce.

  He made the climax of revulsion and confusion project him from the alcove. The pistols were ready, heavy and reassuring in his hands. He moved swiftly and quietly to the door of the cabin, which was swinging open, and looked forward along the dark and silent deck. He took a step, then stopped. If he went forward, if he reached the upper deck from that direction, he could only be taken, it was inevitable. He must try for surprise.

  As William turned to go back into the captain’s cabin, there was a movement in the dimness before him. He froze, his eyes glaring at the dark shadows around the hatchway to the deck below. He pressed himself be
hind the door, one long pistol hanging ready by his side to be jerked up and fired. He waited.

  There was an odd sighing noise as the shadow moved again. A sighing and a shuffling. It was a man, climbing from the lower deck. He was breathing noisily, almost panting, with the queer sighs intermixed. If no one challenges this noisy item, thought William, at least it will prove the place is empty. He waited, impatient and afraid.

  As the figure crawled into a lighter patch, he came near to gasping. The object had on a wig, and a pair of bent-wire spectacles, and was drunk, dead drunk. On an impulse, he went up to the crouching figure and spoke; it was worth a try.

  ‘Mr Marner,’ he hissed. ‘Mr Marner it is I, Will Bentley. Pull yourself together man, and quickly. I need your help.’

  He supposed that Marner had been skulking below all the time, had missed it all, rolled in his blankets, and had been missed in his turn by the wandering mutineers. He jerked at the old schoolmaster’s shoulder none too gently.

  ‘Get up, damn you, and listen. We will find you an arm. This ship has fallen to a mutiny, Mr Marner, and we are the only men left free. Do you hear me, sir, do you hear me? You are a gentleman, God help us, and you will aid me in this. Do you understand?’

  The filthy, drunk old man was on his hands and knees.

  Very slowly, he pushed his trunk upwards until only his knuckles were on the deck. His face was pale beneath its sheen of dirt. He was dribbling a little, trying to form a smile.

  ‘Mr Bentley,’ he mumbled, and his voice was slurred. ‘If you care to go below, sir, to our quarters, you will find your little friend. Little Jimmy Finch, sir, little Jimmy Finch, God rest his soul. They stuck him, sir, like a little squealing pig, from the arsehole to the crown. He is dead. Oh very, very dead.’

  Mr Marner dropped forward on his hands again, and let out a drunken cackle.

  ‘And I hope,’ he said, when he had got his breath, ‘I hope, oh how I hope, that when they catch you, sir, they’ll do the same to you.’