The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  “Ah well,” he said. “I suppose they’ll never know for sure, is one good thing. It was not a major shipment, as I guess; the flotas are not timely any more. She was a solo vessel so I doubt her treasure load was great. A solo vessel, with a little escort out into the open ocean, but she never made it there. I take it you took nothing off before she sank? You saw the cutter go, I guess? With the survivors?”

  A longer pause.

  “She did not sink,” said Kaye. And added quickly: “Then.” He cleared his throat. “I put a prize crew on, but another squall blew up that turned into an all-out blaster, and we never saw a sight of her again. Perhaps she sank in that one; to tell truth we do not know. It was very violent, and before they left her, the cutter men had planted bombs to blow her bottom out, although the fires all burned out without explosion, it would seem. She was a plate ship, Captain Shearing. I am certain of it. She was a prize it was worth dying for, if need be. We searched for her for three clear days.”

  Shearing half rose, as if he would have liked to pace about. Then dropped back, frustration on his face, his chopped-off leg thrust out. But his gaze was level, still; he had impressive self-control.

  “So she’s out there floating is she, for all we know? With your prize English crew on board and a hold that may be worth ten fortunes? Alternative: they are all dead. Well, tell me one thing, sir. You were not flying British colours, were you, when you did this job? Please God.”

  Kaye’s throat was troublesome once more. “In heat of moment, sir, I own that colours may have been overlooked,” he said, as if regretfully. “The whole thing was very sudden, and the squall came on so quick. Remember, the shots they threw were offered without warning.”

  Shearing, although satisfied with that, was absorbed in thought.

  “So,” he said, “that’s one thing, then. I thought that Pedro’s pirate must be you, and you admit it. But Pedro only thinks he knows, so far, and could hardly dare to say so here in Kingston Harbour, eh? You’ve broken every law and protocol between the nations ever written, Captain, all to steal some plate that probably ain’t even there. And if the Dons can pin it on us, we’ll be at war with them, as well as Johnnie Frog. What is your state of readiness for sea? Don’t goggle, man — how quickly can you get your killick up and go? And I will not hear your horseshit, man. The truth!”

  For a cripple,. Shearing had extraordinary authority. Kaye goggled further, but not for very long. There was scurvy, he admitted (Hah! thought Sam Holt, hah!) but already bumboats full of fruit had flocked around the Biter, and the very sick could go on shore if need be; they were not many. There was bread and salted beef in plenty, he imagined, and the water should hold out a day or several. But why, he queried, oddly. Why should they put to sea, for what?

  Will knew, and his heart was growing colder by the second. They would go, and Deb was lost on land.

  “To find the Santa, Captain,” Shearing said, “before she’s lit on by the Dons. If she is still afloat, and she has Englishmen on board, we are undone. The Spanish presence in the Carib is enormous. They have ships in droves, and ports unlimited. To stop them joining with the French is our constant juggle in these parts, and you have risked it. Well; capital.”

  Dick Kaye was unabashed. It occurred to Sam he did not believe the ship could be afloat. His precious Scotchmen would have saved it, otherwise. He had given up the treasure, and his crewmen, for a total loss. But also avoided any danger to his reputation.

  “Well, sir,” said Kaye complacently, “if I find the Santa — ”

  “When,” said Shearing. “It was an act of war, man, so it is when. And if she has got trove on board…”

  “So when, then, sir,” riposted Dickie, lightly. “And if she is a plate ship, sir, what do you propose I do? Sink her?”

  He said it with a laugh, but Shearing was not laughing.

  “Yes, sink her,” he replied. “Get her underneath the waves as soon as ever possible, without too much smoke to signal any Pedros who might see it. Axe her bottom out, pour shot below the waterline, do anything you may, but get her scuttled and then go. If you are spotted in the act, God help us all. How many of your men speak Spanish? Aye, as I thought. If the Spanish find her first, and take your prize crew off, we will deny it all, whatever they might say to us, however strong their certitude. We’ll say they are deserters, pirates, any bloody thing, but naught to do with George’s Navy, understood? George’s men are Pedro’s friends, and if they hand them back, you must hang them from the yardarm there and then, no trial or any other fiddle-faddle, to show them we speak true. Or I will hang them here if the Dons should drop ’em back, whatever they might have babbled under the thumbscrews. Woodes Rogers cleared these seas of pirates, so it’s said, and we uphold that blessed state. Now Captain — go.”

  For a moment, Bentley used the thought of hanging Scotchmen from the yardarm to tear his mind from Deb, but he could see the fatal flaw in all this jolly talk too clearly. On board the Santa were not just the Lamonts and their fellow desperadoes Morgan and Miller, but an unknown number of Spaniard survivors. They could speak Spanish, doubtless — but were not likely to tell Shearing’s version, were they? They had been captured by the English Navy, and that was that. And if Biter got them first, then what? They could not be clapped in a Jamaica jail, surely? They could not be prisoners of war when Spain and England were at peace. Yet still Slack Dickie Kaye was smiling.

  “And the silver, sir?” he said, silkily. “The treasure trove, the bullion, the jewels? As I will have took the ship illegally, I confide you wish me to sink all that as well? A pity, though, that I’ve achieved so little good. And all with best intentions, I do swear.”

  Sam, who’d held his peace with fortitude for very many minutes, stifled a laugh so badly that it went off like a giant’s fart. Shearing, to give him credit, joined in the ensuing fun.

  “You are incorrigible, Captain Kaye, and so are your officers,” he said. “Of course the silver must be lost — in a pig’s back fundament! But when you’re shifting it from ship to ship, for God’s sake keep a weather eye open for the Dons. To lose the lot would be far better than be caught with it, and I mean that absolutely. If you have to you must sink it, let it drown, for if you don’t, you will sink us, the whole damn boiling. The French fleet could be in the offing any day. We can’t afford to meet him with one hand tied up behind Don Pedro’s back.”

  In two hours’ time, after a fury of activity that was a sort of miracle, the Biter was towed out beyond the Twelve Apostles, all canvas set and hanging, until she picked up the beginnings of the Undertaker’s Breeze to blow offshore with. Twelve men had been sent on land to rid them of the scurvy, and the decks were stacked in any way with fruit, and water casks, and puncheons of good fresh local rum. No men had run, Lieutenant Sweetface Savary reported with a quiet pride, although Black Bob had tried to jump off of the captain’s quarter gallery to swim ashore or drown himself, no one knew which. Kaye, who had lost his store of riches, his chance of getting out of debt, and now was on a wild goose chase, gave the boy a damned good kicking. By late afternoon, in a steady Carib wind, they watched the island disappearing in a grey-blue haze of heat. John Gunning, stone cold sober, stood beside the helmsman at the con. Will Bentley stood beside him, and his heart was cold as stone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Deborah, after the starfishing of Bonzo and his five companions, was thrown out of Alf Sutton’s house, and given to the blacks. She was, indeed, of them already, for they had saved her life while the white men had stood by and watched her burn. The slaves she had been thrown among by the oldest Siddleham began to beat the flames out instantly, although the smell of burning hair filled Deb’s nostrils as her heart was filled with terror. The pain was general and excruciating, from legs and arms and body and her face, but her eyes were open and she saw Moira throw herself on top of Bonzo. The black woman was dragged off, as Deb had been, but given far more blows and cut across the face by Fido and his men. Her body crashed
into Deborah’s, and the two of them lay screaming in the crowd.

  The starring went on for some more hours, but after this Deb was not part of it. She lay with Moira in a smoking heap, fading in and out of consciousness, it seemed. The blacks all round her, men and women, continued with their ululating chants, and every now and then, apparently, others of them would rush on to the square to scream and shout, and be thrashed down like animals. The smoke, of wood and flesh, stayed low onto the earth in the throbbing air, and the screaming of dying people rose and fell. At last the darkness came, and the slaves were told to go away, then whipped and cajoled when they failed to move. Deb’s pain was dull, unless she made a sudden movement, and she and Moira, somehow, soothed each other, cheek-to-cheek. Towards the end, the Siddleham boys came to look at her, but she was too damaged to be used for sex, and they went off. Later, Deb saw Bridie, and called out to her, but Bridie walked on by.

  Both she and Moira had had places in the house, but neither of them was allowed inside again. Deb could walk, and Moira could be carried, so they went to the settlement of huts not far from the boiling factory where Bonzo had used to work most of the time. About twenty shared the hut they used, men and women, and two little children who had somehow survived beyond their births. Both were fully black, and both had mothers who were very young and hopeful, or so Mabel tried to explain to Deb as the days went by. But they were weak and sickly because they got no sufficient nourishment, so were surely bound to die in shortish time. Mabel’s own son — Alf Sutton’s son, who had no expectations — lived near the house and got good scraps to live on, so might grow. Deb found she wished to know what Mabel thought of this, but had neither heart nor Kreyole words to ask.

  From the moment they got her to the hut, it was clear the slaves would treat her as their own. Both she and Moira were stripped of every stitch and gently laid down on beds of fresh-plucked leaves, and Deb, in her pain and misery, did not give a hoot for that. But later, when Fido came a visiting, she risked mortal agony to roll onto her side and curl up like a baby. She knew why he was there, and his attitude made it even clearer, and he spoke words that she could tell the meaning of despite that she knew none of them. He brought some others of his men as well, and there was general nudging. Crumbs off the rich man’s table, Deb thought bitterly. Not good enough for white men now, was she — but still a very juicy dish.

  The herbs and potions, salves and unguents, eased her body, and strangely, eased her mind. Some of the things they bade her swallow induced sensations as of swirling and euphoria, and — had her face permitted it — she might, at times, have smiled. When Bridie came, in deadly secrecy, at night and wrapped up like a corpse, the housekeeper was glad, but not surprised. She hinted darkly at other soothing things than rum and brandy in the world of man, and told the maiden she would heal, what’s more. Deb did, with great rapidity, although much of her lustrous hair was gone, and she had scabs and blisters on her face, her neck, her arms. She asked Bridie if this was why she had been banished from the house, but Bridie guessed it different.

  “They see you as a slaveman’s whore,” she told Deb simply. “The Suttons will not play seconds to a black in first instance, and nextly, if you got with child, they would not know till birth if it was white or mixaroon. Why waste their time, when there are other wenches to be swived? Had you left Bonzo alone they might have married you, or had you as a whore of privilege, but you’ve made your bed, insulted them, and so are damned. When you are better though, cailín deas, you’ll become a toy for Fido and his men. I have heard the Suttons talk of it. Seth in particular thinks it a gallant jest. I come to give you warning, Deb. I would caution you to cut your throat. Or run.”

  Deb lay there, wrapped in the rich and aromatic darkness of the hut, and contemplated. Become a toy for Fido and his men, or throw herself alone into the wilderness. No money, no real clothes, no knowledge of the land and how to live on it, no language except the language of the masters. She was learning Kreyole fast, but it would serve her ill in any crisis. It was a tool without a proper edge so far.

  “I was no friend of Bonzo, no special friend,” she said. “I ran out then because I could not bear it any more, to see him and his fellows suffering so cruel. I do not know what I hoped to do, just end something, anything, perhaps my life. Bridie, believe me, I lost my sanity. He was the nearest one, that’s all, and I knew Moira. She had lost his child that day, aborted it. I think the Suttons are the devil, Bridie. How can I run away?”

  “Slaves do all the time, or leastways not infrequent,” Bridie said. “Then they are hunted down by bloodhounds and brought back. As you can guess it, most of them are killed for giving masters trouble, or crippled sometimes, feet cropped with axes, fingers torn off, ears removed, eyelids slit, that sort of thing. Then others, that are very useful, young strong men and some strong women, are spared and put to work again, usually spavined in some way to stop another flight. It is a constant worry for the planters to know what to do for best. To lose slaves costs great money, for they have to be replaced, but to catch them and forgive them is not possible, and to catch them and to kill them costs even more. Sometimes, around the dinner table, my heart bleeds for them at what I hear.”

  Said with great solemnity, but Deb took it for a bitter jest. Bridie, she knew, was as much a slave as if she had been bought, as much as Deb had been before she’d joined hearts with the negers. Deb also knew the bloodhounds were not dogs but men, that slaves would hunt down slaves and kill them or return them to their masters. She lay there in the darkness, and she wondered how she could stand it for another seven years. Three months ago, she thought, I had a house to call my own, and a poor, fat, naked man to care for me. Could one miss that sort of thing? Absurd, absurd, absurd.

  But things got worse as she got better, for Fido and his boys were anxious for their just deserts. Moira — whose name was really Kaia, it turned out — was to be the pudding at the feast, and the young men decided on some jollity to work up their appetites. Her brother in the hut (and Deb could not fully understand if he were her brother in the English sense or not) protested at the violence that was planned on her, and some other of the young men stood up on Deb’s behalf, as well. An argument outside turned to violence as the women listened, and quickly there were blows and screams and lashing of hide whips. One of Fido’s dogs shed blood, and Kaia’s brother’s face was smashed in with a stone. That night, outside the huts and then around the whole plantation, there was the sound of drumming.

  *

  In the brief hours before the Biter passed the Twelve Apostles and picked up a useful wind, Will Bentley tore out his heart for Deborah, which was the grand total of everything that he could do on her behalf. The pain of sitting in the sternsheets while jolly oarsmen rowed him from the shore was worst because she was within three miles or so, she might be dead or dying, and he could not even turn around and gaze, however pointlessly, behind. He had contained the ache of fear and longing in the Navy offices, knowing in himself that he would go and find her soon, then Captain Shearing had sent them on their way instead. On board the Biter the situation had been lax but jovial, with the people waiting almost calmly for some liberty ashore. It turned ugly in a way that he could fully understand when the news sank in that they were putting back to sea.

  John Gunning was the key in saving it, because although sober himself he persuaded Captain Kaye to break out rum puncheons from the new supplies and pass the spirit round the people willy-nilly. So long as the men were capable of pulling rope and hanging on a yard, he said, the ship at this stage had no other use for them; but if they started to revolt she’d never get to sea. Savary’s marines were stood down instantly from their guarding duties, and made to flank a table in the waist that Purser Black set up. This fat man, a smile of calculation on his face, tallied out the small puncheons as they emptied, and counted profits in his head. The lines of sailors, surly to begin with, drank raw spirit till they coughed, then smiled, then laughed, then pranced
off to their working stations. Jack Gunning, Will was told by Sam, would be an admiral in weeks if he should ever join the Navy.

  Even when the brig had towed out and was in a useful breeze, however, and half the men were half drunk and the others worse, it was still felt that the reason for their sailing was a nonsense and a crying shame. They had scoured the seas for three days when they’d lost the Spaniard, so what chance of finding her should they have now? It was generally determined, given her condition when last viewed in daylight, that she’d have done the long dive, with the silver, Scots, and onion-eaters all on board. The silver was regretted, but the other losses could be viewed with equanimity, and even pleasure in some hearts.

  Gunning, though, with his knowledge of these seas, put it round that wind and currents would have moved her to a certain place, in probability, and he knew where it was. All moonshine, doubtless, but worth the gamble to give the men incentive. In fact, with tall masts, good lookouts, and the excellent clarity of the weather after the recent storms, he told the two lieutenants, there was a more than even chance that she was findable, if still afloat. With almost no hands and her extensive damage, the galleon could not have moved far, and the Scots, if they had navigating skills, would be heading for the south coast of the island, to get her beached on some friendly strand for looting.

  “Tell Dickie Kaye to find out his best-sighted men, and bribe them with rum unlimited if they raise the ship,” he said. “A ticket to a whorehouse would go down well, as extra. And remind him Don Spaniardo will be hunting ditto, so have a word with Gunner Henderson. Let’s see if these bastards can still shift them cannons while their brains are all muzzed out. The demon drink, eh? It should not be allowed on ships, is my opinion.”

  As well as doubting that the ship still swam, Slack Dickie Kaye had other problems on his mind than gunnery, although he agreed the men should practise hard as soon as they were sober. The problem of the Spaniards on board the Santa gave him most pause, as he explained to Bentley and Holt around the dinner table. If they had helped the Scots, for having saved their lives, they might be almost friends and allies by this process, and bribable to keep their mouths shut or to join the English Navy. Or maybe they had revolted against the Lamonts and taken back their ship, which would be even better, for then the Biter could wage war on them, which they would not survive. Both lieutenants looked politely dubious at this, which Kaye accepted ruefully. There was no evidence that Spaniards were completely mad by nature, so the Scotchmen would be safe. He sighed.