The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Gunning was getting restless, though, fearing the light westerly might die before the jollyboat was under way, so he, Bentley and Jack Ashdown stuffed down their vittles hurriedly and prepared to leave for Port Royal. They took meat and biscuit in generous amounts, but water remained a problem. The scouting parties had found nothing close to camp, and had been forbidden to wander far until they were armed and organised, so they took two bottles only from the number Taylor had had filled up from the scuttlebutt before the Biter had gone down. All three guessed that they would find water along the coast, and in any way, if the wind and conditions answered to their hopes, they would be in port before things were desperate. The jollyboat was pushed off stern-first and the sail was hoisted smartly, and they were under way. Will felt foreboding as the people stood and watched them, because a silence fell which was somehow ghostly. But when the sail had filled and the sprightly little vessel heeled and creamed along, he had a sensation of well-being, as a sailor will at sea.

  As the sun began to lose its heat, the prospect was in ways a joy to contemplate. The island was extraordinarily beautiful, white strands, grey cliffs, and a background of verdant green. From out of that, steep mountains rose, purple and misted, with a crown of clouds on some of them. Bentley let out a chuckle, which made Gunning raise his eyebrows.

  “Well, you’re an easy one to please,” he said. “Tell me what’s so wonderful and I might raise a smile myself.”

  “Pardon,” said Bentley. “Just a private thought. Megson had it right, perhaps. It is a sort of Eden. Maybe reminded him of home, I guess, as he’s a Corkhead.”

  “Corkhead?” said London Jack. “And what the hell is that?”

  Bentley laughed.

  “From the Isle of Wight,” he said. “Do not ask me why they call ’em that though, no one knows. But it is lovely, and very green, and Saint Catherine’s Down is like a mountain, I suppose. To a Corkhead!”

  “Mr Ashdown,” said Gunning, satirically. “We are commanded by a king of lunacy, so jump and swim ashore now, if you can. Sadly, I cannot…”

  *

  On the beach, as night came down, the well-being and good humour hung together passing well, and far longer than Sam Holt and Taylor, who were naturally allied by sense and circumstance, had expected. Geoff Raper’s food was consummate, Captain Kaye allowed a brandy ration from the one small breaker they had brought ashore, the mild weather reconciled the people to the idea of sleeping on the ground, and Sweetface Savary’s marine soldiers took up guard duty on the outskirts without demur. Savary himself, though womanly in looks and the object of much rough desire from the seamen most desperate in their longings, had proved himself as manly, and no soft touch. He gave his orders firmly, and generally was obeyed. He also, as of habit, took his place at his soldiers’ head, as it were, and encouraged them in their duty.

  The night, by English standards, was a noisy one. As black as pitch except when the moon showed through the high and milky cloud, it was full of cries and shriekings that sometimes struck as almost human. When the cooking fire had died down and the brandy-glow worn off, some of the sailors began complaining that they had the horrors, as Rat Baines spread tales of ghosts and goblins, backed up by the carpenter. Surgeon Grundy, meant to be the Biter’s man of God as well as medicine, had his own demons to contend with, so gave no help at all. What was wanted, Jem Taylor said, was a fire, big and noble, to drive off the terrors crowding in.

  Kaye said no, on the grounds it might draw unwanted attentions on them, then thought again and said, why not? If they had not been seen or heard by now they would never be, and it they had to fight, well let it happen soon. The men were well, and fit, and fed, and it would be a bloody rout. In truth, his thoughts were otherwhere: he wanted to do a sortie soon, he was certain they would find an easy road to Spanish Town or Kingston, and Ashdown’s tales of savages were all my-eye.

  “God’s sake,” he said to Holt and Taylor, “the man is Irish, ain’t he? And a papist rogue to boot…”

  While he was expounding this, the embers of the cooking fire began to flare up high and mighty. Sam turned to go and bawl them out, but Kaye, as slack as ever, waved him to forget it.

  “What matter, when all’s said and done?” he said. “Keep them happy, keep them warm. They’ll follow better in the morning when we strike inland.”

  “Captain,” Holt started, but gave up. How tell this man it was not the way to keep them disciplined? Jem Taylor shrugged a shoulder, unseen by Kaye, and Holt sent him to keep an eye on things. He and the captain sat with Purser Black (invited to the circle out of courtesy), but the surgeon had merged into the darkness with his bag. Even when the flames were bursting up into the sky, throwing white flames and red all round the encampment and the nearest trees, he was not seen.

  As the fire grew, so did the men’s exuberance. Their noise turned into singing, there were impromptu dances, and the shoutings grew obscene. It was drink, Sam Holt was certain of it, and after some while this was confirmed by the boatswain. But Kaye was unconvinced.

  “Drink? How mean you drink, Taylor? We brought one small keg ashore and I have doled this night’s share out. Do you think those people are magicians?”

  Where liquor was concerned this was quite probable, in Sam’s experience, but Kaye had hardly risen up the Navy in the normal way. Sam and Jem knew drink could appear from anywhere – or apparently from nowhere – and in a shipwreck would be the only true necessity in seamen’s eyes to guarantee continued life.

  “What is the state of them?” Holt asked the boatswain. “Are they ugly in it? Do we have control?”

  “We have sneaked all blades well out of sight,” said Taylor. “Blades and firearms, except their working knives, I guess. But there’s a faction growing that I do not like. Ayling and Thompson may be at the heart of it, and that loudmouth one, Pat Strafford. They’ve been scuffling with silly Sam Megson, who stood up for Ratty Baines when he snitched some brandy.”

  “Stood up for the Rat? By God he really is an idiot,” said Sam. “Maybe that’s why they call them Corkheads, nothing more!”

  “But there’s others joining up,” said Taylor. “Carver, Sweeney, McGuigan and that lot. Tom Hugg’s watching them, and Tilley’s gone to fetch a podger from the yawl. There’s shouting that they’re going to run for it.”

  “Bah!” said Kaye. “Run where? At least if they get butchered we’ll know there’s niggers out there, won’t we?”

  Holt pulled a pistol from inside his coat and checked the pan.

  “There’s only powder and a wad in this one,” he said, cheerfully. “I thought this might happen and I didn’t feel the need to waste a ball, or life. Come on, Jem. Leave it to me, sir,” he added to his captain. “It won’t be anything.”

  When he reached the fire, though, things were nearly on the cusp. Within the crowd of men, mostly unmoving, was a smaller band of troublemakers, and all too clearly drunk as monkeys. Si Ayling, a good man in the general way, was bare to the waist and sweating, and in a fighting stance. He was yelling blood and thunder at a man called Jennings, who was standing over the prostrate form of Megson, who had a bloody face.

  As Holt arrived it took a turn for worse. Jennings reached behind him and produced his sailor’s knife, short and dangerous, from his belt and showed it to Si Ayling’s face. Who leapt at him, not an instant’s hesitation, and tried to club him down with his fist. More sudden blood, and a cry of rage from Ayling, who clutched onto his opponent, and the pair of them went down. This raised another squawk from Megson, and a further rush of men into the middle. More than a dozen fighting, and a riot on the break.

  Sam, who could think as fast as any man, whipped out his pistol and discharged. The effect was instantaneous, but sadly not sufficient. The bang and powder-flash cooled down half the brawlers, but only half. In fact Sweeney and Carver, not noted for their brainpower, began a charge on Holt himself that could only end in death by hanging it they landed blows.

  They did not,
though, for Tom Tilley flashed into the firelight at the same instant, running from the water’s edge. He had an ash stave with a metal end in one enormous hand, and his first swing tore open Markie Sweeney’s upper lip and scattered broken teeth. Tommy Hugg jumped in from the rear, with only two enormous fists for weapons, and bore McGuigan to the ground. The excitement of a roughhouse spread, and exhilaration began to take control. Some twenty men were fighting, more knives were coming out. Toms Hugg and Tilley stayed within the thick of it, but Lieutenant Holt, joined by the boatswain, stood on the fringe and watched. The vast majority shuffled in unease, fighting the urge to join the fun.

  “What best to do?” asked Sam, of Taylor. “We can’t bring it down by force of arms. I have another pistol loaded, but it’s got shot in it. No point in killing for the sake of it. In any way, it might incense the rest.”

  “From what I heard, sir, some of them want to run,” Taylor responded. “Grass being always greener on the other side. Mebbe when they’ve traded blows enough they’ll bugger off. Is that too bad an outcome, do you reckon?”

  “As long as they don’t damage Hugg or Tilley,” Sam Holt said. And they shared a laugh.

  It might look more serious than it was, but it did indeed look serious. Sam wondered idly where they’d got the spirits from, then suggested to the boatswain they might be best occupied in hunting out the barricoes and staving them. That way, at least, this could be the last drunken night. Before they could start, however, Slack Dickie played his hand. He emerged into the jumping firelight with a horse-pistol in his hand. He was not a bad shot, Dickie, and he favoured the hand-held cannon. If only, thought Sam, with contempt, for the satisfying bang it made.

  He did let out a creditable roar, though, which cut the row down briefly, and for a few seconds there was a pause, which struck Sam as rather wonderful in the firelight, like the representation of a holy revelation in a painting of the classic mode. Bloody, sweaty, panting men stared ruggedly out of their little circle for an aching moment at this visitor from an unknown world. Big, and clad in blue, with head held high and a bloody great firearm pointing straight into the heart of them. Pointing at Patrick Strafford, in fact – a smallish man, but very virulent – and pointing to the purpose.

  “Stop this drunken lunacy, you stinking bastards,” Slack Dickie yelled. “Or I’ll kill the lot of you!”

  It broke the spell, and Pat Strafford stumbled forward, apparently enraged.

  Kaye pulled the trigger without a second thought, but without a satisfactory bang. More a snap, and then a fizz, and a discharge from the barrel-end of a great gout of dirty, whitish smoke, veined with bright red flame. When Strafford fell to the ground – not poleaxed backwards but with a slack-kneed forward slump – even he looked surprised at being hit. There was another moment, this time of pure silence, then the noise burst forth once more. Sam Holt, with a sinking heart, pulled out his second pistol. Bloody Kaye, he thought. He’ll be the death of all of us some day. And it could be now, quite possibly.

  But Strafford’s henchmen, assuming he was dead, had other things in mind. They saw Holt’s gun, they guessed the captain could produce another, and in any case they had their reason now, clear-cut and golden. They turned as a body, pushing through the shipmates bunched all round them, and ran out of the firelight, away from the sea, towards the trees and rising ground.

  “Stop! Stop!” roared Kaye. “I’ll see you hanged, you villains! Stop them, you bastards!”

  None of the bastards tried that lark, none of the bastards lifted a finger. Even Hugg and Tilley were happy to let them go, although they did not care to make it obvious. The other men stopped shouting, and many of them assumed a sober look, respectable as aldermen. Within seconds the crashing sounds of undergrowth died away. A shout of “Who goes?” from an outlying marine guard, a filthy imprecation in response, then nothing else.

  “Stand down, you lubbers!” shouted Taylor. “Tommy! Tom! If anyone else is inclined to run, you will break their legs, please. Captain’s kind permission. The rest of you get sobered up and get turned in, before we come amongst you with a whip.”

  He turned to his captain, mildly.

  “There, sir,” he said. “Riot’s over. Do you want that we should tie them up? Any of ’em?”

  But Kaye, job done, was looking for a drink himself, and a well-earned rest.

  “Damn them,” he said. “Just bed them down and keep an eye till daylight. And get a couple of them to dig a hole for that man there. What’s his name again?”

  Taylor grinned from ear to ear at thought of burial, for the corpse was showing signs of life already. He answered “Strafford, sir” however, and tried to keep his face straight until the captain turned away. Holt went along with this arrangement.

  “That was impressive, sir,” he said, as they walked back to their positions. He saw Lieutenant Savary moving in to join them.

  “Aye,” said Kaye. “That nipped it in the bud, and properly. Ah, Mr Savary. We’ve had some runners. Did you not see them? You should have shot them, man.”

  There was concern on the sweet face, but minor only.

  “We had heard the shouting and the guns, sir. We thought they might be in pursuit of islanders. And they were unarmed. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Ah well, no matter,” Slack Dickie said. “Sankey; get me a drink, man. And Mr Holt here, and Lieutenant Savary. Hot work, but satisfying.”

  “Do you not wish I should pursue them, Captain?” asked Savary. “Although I guess they’d only disappear into the woodland further.”

  “The hell with it,” said Kaye. “They’ll come crawling back if they get hungry, and I’ll maybe string one up to teach the rest their manners. We’ll hunt them in the morning while we’re out looking for that road. But I doubt we’ll see a hide or hair of them again. They’ll be gone and soon forgotten. Good bloody riddance to them, too.”

  They did see some of them again, however, the next afternoon. Markie Sweeney was found first. His severed testicles were stuffed into his torn and gaping mouth.

  Chapter Five

  Deb Tomelty, Will Bentley’s lost love, found her new life among the people of the central hillsides a great confusion. She’d escaped from the Sutton spread the night the slaves had risen up and killed a planter, but the people who had saved her were not warriors or Maroons, and for the most part they were women. Alone among the escapees she was white, a household servant due to get her freedom in some years, while they were slaves forever until death. In their eyes, Deb had golden opportunities – to become a planter’s dame, or failing that his whore. Injuries notwithstanding, she was exceeding beautiful.

  Worst, in her anticipation of the way they’d treat her, was the fact she could not speak their language, although her grasp of Kreyole was coming on apace. In fact, in the days since she’d been burnt and injured aiding black men tortured by the Suttons, she had been numbered as a slave herself, in hatred by the white men and in honour by the black. When the Suttons had mounted their last reprisal she had run with the rebels, and when their lordly neighbour Siddleham had smashed down off his horse she’d abandoned him to die. In the slaves’ eyes it was the saving of her; in the planters’ a warrant for extermination.

  The community she stayed with in the foothills, she quickly learned, were no longer slaves but runaways. They numbered thirty or so, and they lived by selling food, not thievery or predation. Even on the plantations, some planters gave slaves a small amount of land, and a day a week to cultivate it. And if they ran – and lived – they could carry on their skills and sell the surplus they could hawk around.

  Her new-found friends – Mrs M, Rebekah and Kinji – did not laugh at her, as they eased her from her ignorance. The four of them, joined now and then by Mabel, who had a little son, were bathed in dappled sunlight as the breeze moved the palm fronds up above them, and were sucking small fruit contentedly. She found it hard to envisage the actualities of escaping from their own plantations, but believed them when they d
escribed the threats and blows and rapings that had made it time to try.

  “It saying nay that mainly done the damage,” said Mrs M, “That why Rebekah got no teeth. Show, gal!”

  Rebekah was a lovely woman, Deb considered, but she had wondered why she never spoke. Now she drew her lips back to reveal empty gums, and an ugly hiatus in the structure of her upper mouth. She stuck her tongue out just a little way, and it was red and scarred. She closed her lips and smiled.

  “Rebekah,” said Deb. Because she could not think of another thing to say. “Is that her real name?”

  “Can speak meself.”

  Deb blushed scarlet, and Rebekah smiled forgivingly.

  “They call me that when I get here,” she said. “My mammy call me ’nother name I not remember. They sell my mammy day we come from Congo-land, and my sisters and my brothers. My father die on ship, so I got no family anymore. ’Cep Mrs M now; and Kinji and so on. They best people. No trouble now we livin’ here. No man, no trouble. Ain’t that so!?”

  The women laughed and Deb joined in. She had left one man dying – Sir Nat Siddleham, if she understood his name exactly – and she regretted that, but he would have killed her if he’d not fallen off his horse. And his sons were vile, although meant to be gentlemen, and her master Alf Sutton was even worse, as was his one surviving son who had sworn – as all the others, come to that – that he would fuck her when he had the chance, and she’d be grateful.

  There were men in the hillside camp, but it was the women’s world, which kept it safer from attack. There were two old men, called Alfred and, strangely, Toad, whose role appeared to be to keep the fire burning, and there were young male visitors. All were runaways of some sort, like the ten who’d quit Alf Sutton’s the night of the attack, but two of them (with the slave names Flight and True) had melted into the darkness. Goanitta and Mildred had continued on their flight, as had Mabel and her little boy, fathered on her by old Alf himself. Marge and Missy were the other two, and a lugubrious old greybeard man called Dhanglli, known even to his fellow Africans as Dangle.