‘Perhaps I mentioned to some of the other Africans on board that Onyema bit you. Perhaps they surmised, as I did, that she must have been a leopard woman. What does it matter? Whether or not you believe in the leopard people, you cannot deny she was evil. She tried to kill you, tried to kill us all…’ She smiled, and pushed her breasts out towards him. ‘But that is not the real reason you brought me here alone, is it?’ she asked, licking her lips.
He turned away quickly. ‘You’re no better than she was. You do realise that six others were killed as a result of that fire?’
‘God decides who lives and who dies. If Onyema died it was because God wanted to punish her for being a leopard woman. Perhaps God also wanted to punish the six who died for crimes of which we know nothing. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’
Killigrew stared at her. ‘You’re a Christian?’
She nodded. ‘A Catholic.’
‘Of course. That’s where you learned Portuguese, isn’t it? Jesuit missionaries.’ He ran his fingers wearily through his hair. ‘Get out. Go on. Get out of my sight. And there’ll be no more burnings of witches or leopard people or any other superstitious nonsense like that, d’you hear?’
Her head held high, she crossed to the door. On the threshold she paused and turned back to stare at him gravely. ‘The leopard people are real, Senhor Killigrew. You will believe.’
Killigrew felt a shudder run down his spine, then shook his head dismissively. ‘Superstitious nonsense,’ he muttered to himself.
* * *
The sea was glassy. The sails hung limply from the yards, without a breath of wind to stir them. The heat of the sun was oppressive. The recaptives lay listlessly on the deck; the sailors were not much better off. Killigrew had gambled on rationing the food and water for five days, knowing that they could not stay afloat much longer than that anyway, but even so they were weakened by thirst and hunger.
The only sounds were the creak of the timbers and the squeaking of the pump which two Africans continued to work, knowing that their lives depended upon it now. Killigrew stood at the taffrail where he had rigged up a fishing line. Their only hope now lay in putting the long boat into the water and towing the Maria Magdalena to the shore; but he was not convinced his men had the strength for the feat. Still, short of a miracle – the freshening of the wind – it was their only chance. He took out his fob watch and glanced at it. Five minutes to noon. If the wind doesn’t pick up by noon, he told himself, we ’ll have to try it.
Strachan climbed on to the poop deck, dabbing sweat from the underside of his jaw with a wadded handkerchief. He joined Killigrew at the taffrail. ‘We’re going to die here, aren’t we?’
‘Never say die, Mr Strachan,’ Killigrew told him with a breeziness he did not feel. ‘We’re not dead yet.’
‘We might as well be, if the wind doesn’t pick up soon.’ He took Killigrew’s telescope and turned it to the east. ‘Wait a minute! I can see land!’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘Smokes.’
‘What?’
‘Those are smokes. Low-lying fog banks, Mr Strachan. They’re quite common in these waters at this time of year. They can look like land, from a distance.’
‘To a landlubber, you mean.’
‘I didn’t say that. Mind you, if the smokes weren’t there – and if my calculations are correct – you would be able to see the coast of Africa.’
‘Jings! Are we that close?’
‘It’s still about seven miles. It might as well be seven hundred miles without any wind.’
Strachan had been keeping his voice low, but now he lowered it even more and moved closer to Killigrew. ‘But if we’re that close, couldn’t we get in the long boat and row?’
‘All three hundred and fifty-seven of us, Mr Strachan?’ Sickness had continued to take its toll of the Africans despite Strachan’s best efforts; Killigrew had to be content with the small consolation that an average of three deaths a day was not bad for a slaver, even one which a Royal Navy prize crew was trying to get back to a harbour.
‘It’s pointless us all dying,’ murmured Strachan. ‘There must be room for twenty in that boat…’
‘Twenty-four, actually. Probably more, if you took some of the children instead of the adults. But how do you choose which ones?’
‘Well, we Britons should go, naturally…’
‘Why “naturally”?’
Strachan thought about it. ‘Well, because we’ve got the guns and I’m a selfish swine.’
‘Your honesty does you more credit than your generosity of spirit, Mr Strachan.’
Killigrew’s fishing line twitched in the water. ‘You’ve got a bite,’ Strachan told him.
Killigrew glanced down. ‘It’s just a sprat. Not even worth the effort of reeling it in.’
Strachan shrugged. ‘I’m not saying we should leave all the negroes,’ he continued. ‘There’s seven of us, that leaves room in the boat for seventeen of them. More if we took the children: they’ve got longer lives ahead of them anyway.’
‘Is it your medical training which allows you to think such things through so coldly and calculatingly?’
‘Just common sense, I’d have thought. Listen Killigrew, if you want to be a hero and go down with your ship that’s fine by me. I just don’t see why you should want to take the rest of us down with you.’
‘I don’t intend that anyone should go down with this ship, Mr Strachan,’ Killigrew said coldly. ‘I’ve already lost thirty-five people since I took command of this vessel. I’ve no wish to make it three hundred and fifty-two—’
Killigrew’s fishing reel span with a screech. Something big had taken the hook and was moving away fast. ‘That’s a sprat?’ Strachan asked incredulously as everyone gathered around the two of them.
‘Something that ate the sprat, Mr Strachan.’ Killigrew took the fishing rod from its line and braced himself to fight the fish.
Everyone else was suddenly an expert on deep-water fishing. ‘Let it run, sir! Let it run!’ urged O’Connor.
‘No, fight him!’ said Boulton. ‘Wear him down.’
‘It’s a marlin! It’s got to be a marlin.’
‘No, it’s a shark!’ Strachan pointed to where a fin cleaved through the water about a hundred yards or so off the stern.
‘Good,’ said Killigrew. ‘Have you ever eaten shark steak, Mr Strachan? It can be surprisingly tasty. In China, the fin is considered a delicacy.’
‘Hit him, sir! Hit him now!’
The line went slack and Killigrew at once began to reel it in.
‘All right, now reel it in,’ Boulton said unhelpfully.
‘Why don’t you tie the line to the bows, maybe we can persuade it to tow us ashore,’ sneered Strachan.
‘You’ve lost him, sir,’ said Boulton. ‘The line’s snapped.’
‘No, he’s hooked,’ said O’Connor. ‘He’s hooked good and proper.’
‘He’s gone, I tell you,’ insisted Boulton.
The reel screeched as the shark ran again.
‘He’s running, sir!’ said Boulton.
‘Let him go… that’s it… Right, now hit him! Hard!’
‘Sail ho!’ cried one of the recaptives Sails had trained to be a lookout.
Killigrew twisted and glanced up to where the African sat on the foretop. ‘Where away?’
The African just pointed off the port side of the Maria Magdalena. ‘Sail ho!’ were probably the only two words of English he knew, Killigrew reflected.
He handed the fishing rod to Strachan. ‘Here, take this.’
‘Wha—? No! No, I don’t know anything about this…’
‘Boulton and O’Connor will teach you soon enough,’ said Killigrew, picking up his telescope. ‘They both seem to be experts.’
As the two seamen at once began to bombard Strachan with contradictory advice, Killigrew moved to the bulwark and pointed his telescope to the north, in the direction which the lookout had indicated. He couldn’t see any… no, w
ait, there it was: the upper sails of a ship, the hull down below the horizon. Killigrew descended to the quarter-deck and jumped lightly on to the gunwale before ascending the ratlines to the mainmast top. He paused on the platform about a third of the way up the mast and raised the telescope to his eye once more.
Yes, he could see her all right. A clipper, her sails hanging just as limply as the Maria Magdalena’s. Killigrew could just make out three boats in the water before the clipper’s prow. They had to be towing the ship.
And she was headed towards the Maria Magdalena.
Killigrew slammed the telescope shut and shinned nimbly down the ropes to the deck. ‘’Vast angling, there!’ he roared as he ascended to the poop deck.
Boulton was helping Strachan to reel in the shark while O’Connor readied a boat hook as a makeshift gaff. ‘Hold on,
‘Killigrew!’ called Strachan. ‘We’ve almost got the blighter! By jings, he’s a leviathan!’
‘Belay that! All hands to quarters!’
Boulton and O’Connor at once left Strachan to it, leaving him with a forlorn expression on his face. A moment later the rod was torn from his grip, leaving him with the skin flayed from his palms.
‘O’Connor, I’ll wager there’s a Brazilian ensign in the flag locker,’ said Killigrew. ‘Fly her upside down from the mainmast. Mr Ågård, see if you can get this pivot gun ready for action. Round shot, if you please. I noticed some in the shot locker the other day.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
As O’Connor and Ågård hurried off to do Killigrew’s bidding, Strachan came across wiping his bloody palms on his handkerchief. ‘We almost had him there,’ he said petulantly.
‘Sorry to spoil your sport, Mr Strachan, but this is more important.’
‘What’s going on? You look as if you’re preparing for a fight.’
‘That I am. The ship has the look of a slaver to me.’
‘She’s not a steamer, is she? I don’t see any steam. How is it they’re moving while we’re becalmed?’
‘They’re using their boats to tow her.’
‘You can do that? Why didn’t we think of that?’
‘I did. But it’s seven miles to the shore and our men are weak with hunger and exhaustion. Pulling a ship of three hundred and fifty tons burthen seven miles to shore is no laughing matter, especially when she’s low in the water. That’s what they call a counsel of desperation.’
‘I’d say we were in pretty desperate straits.’
‘I was hoping something would turn up. And it has.’ He gestured off the port beam. ‘She’s headed south along the coast. If she’s a slaver that means her slave deck’s empty; otherwise she’d be sailing out to sea.’
‘And you think they’ll give us passage to Freetown?’
‘It may take a little persuasion.’ Killigrew patted the muzzle of the thirty-two-pound pivot gun on the poop deck.
‘Do you think we can beat them in a fair fight?’
‘Good God, no. That’s why we’re using guile.’ Killigrew nodded to where O’Connor was hoisting a Brazilian ensign to the top of the mainmast.
‘That’s not a British flag.’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t it upside down?’
‘Unofficial sign of distress. With any luck the slaver should come to investigate, which I very much doubt she’d trouble to do if we flew the Union Jack. Take your coat off. You look too much like a naval officer.’
‘I’ll tell Commander Standish you said that. He’s usually weighing off at me for not looking enough like a naval officer.’
Killigrew made his way to where Koumba stood in the waist. She had avoided the poop deck ever since Killigrew had confronted her about Onyema’s death. ‘There’s a ship coming,’ he told her curtly. ‘It’s our only chance to get everyone off this floating coffin alive, but if we’re going to take her we need her to get close. The only way we can do that is if they think we’re just another slaver. That means that all these people have to get out of sight.’ He gestured at the recaptives on deck.
‘Go back down on the slave deck, you mean.’
‘I’m afraid so. We’ll put the irons on them but not lock them. Can you explain to them? Make them understand it’s for their own protection?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll try.’
‘The slaving fraternity is a close-knit one, sir,’ Ågård warned Killigrew. ‘If you’re going to try to pretend to be the master of this vessel there’s a good chance the captain of that clipper will know you’re not who you claim to be. He probably knows the real master of the Maria Magdalena.’
‘I know, but that’s a chance we’ve got to take. Anyway, I’m not going to pretend to be the master of this vessel; you are.’
‘Hunh?’
‘I’m the only white man on board who speaks more than a few words of Portuguese. If only one of us does any talking it’s going to look damned suspicious. So you’re going to pretend to be American. You’ll never pass for Brazilian anyway, with that blond hair and those blue eyes. Think you can manage a Yankee accent?’
Ågård grinned. ‘Waal, Ah guess Ah sure kin try.’
‘That’s good, but don’t overdo it.’
‘An American master of a Brazilian vessel?’ said Strachan. ‘Isn’t that going to seem even more suspicious?’
‘Brazilian slavers often carry American captains, Mr Strachan,’ said Killigrew. ‘To go with their false American colours and forged papers.’
Koumba persuaded the recaptives to descend below decks, leaving only two of them on duty at the bilge pump. Dando went below with Koumba to make sure the recaptives put the irons on their ankles so that it would seem to the casual observer that they were secure. They took the slavers, gagged them, and escorted them to one of the store rooms where they shackled them and locked them in.
Killigrew made his way to the cabin to fetch his pepperbox. He passed the sailmaker on the way. ‘Sails, can you check the level of water in the well for me?’
The sailmaker nodded and made his way to the well. Killigrew entered the cabin and made sure all the barrels of his pepperbox were primed and loaded. He thrust it into his holster and then took the single-shot flintlock, loading and priming that as well. He unfastened his sword belt, loath to part with his cutlass but aware that as navy-issue equipment it would give the whole game away. On his way out he took the keys from the nail on the bulkhead and slipped them into his pocket.
On deck, he met the sailmaker returning from the well. ‘How much longer do you think?’ Killigrew asked him.
‘Half an hour, an hour maybe? Then the water reaches the lower ports. I’ve battened the ports down, of course, but that’ll only buy us a few minutes.’
‘How long until the other ship reaches us?’ asked Strachan.
Killigrew took another look through his telescope. ‘No more than half an hour.’
‘That’s cutting it damned fine.’
‘Assuming, of course, that they trouble to come and investigate.’
‘What if they don’t?’
‘Then I hope we can all swim.’
* * *
The clipper troubled to come and investigate.
The men in the small boats towed the clipper to within a cable’s length of the Maria Magdalena and the master of the clipper – the name painted on the stern was the São João – hailed them in Portuguese with his speaking trumpet.
‘You are in need of assistance? You seem very low in the water.’
‘I’d better pretend to be the ship’s interpreter,’ Killigrew said to Strachan, and raised his own speaking trumpet to reply. ‘We’re sinking. We were chased for over a hundred miles by a damned British steamer. We managed to give her the slip in the end, but not before she damaged us below the waterline.’
‘You have slaves on board?’
Killigrew was about to reply when Ågård laid a hand on his arm. ‘If this turns out to be a US Navy ship posing as a slaver…’
‘Don’t even think such t
houghts,’ said Killigrew. ‘Don’t worry, the Yankees don’t have that much imagination.’ He raised the speaking trumpet to his mouth. ‘Yes. Three hundred and forty-one of them. You can have fifty per cent commission on them, if you’ll just get us out of this mess.’
‘Seventy per cent!’
‘Nothing doing!’
‘Killigrew!’ hissed Strachan. ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘I’ve got to haggle, or they’ll know there’s something rum going on.’
‘Seventy, or we leave you all to drown!’ called the master of the clipper.
‘Fifty-five. My owner will kill me anyway when he hears about this.’
The master of the São João laughed. ‘Sixty-five.’
‘Sixty. Any more than that and I’m bankrupted.’
‘Sixty-five. That’s our last offer, take it or leave it.’
‘You drive a hard bargain, my friend.’ Killigrew hesitated, as if indecisive. ‘Very well, sixty-five it is.’
‘Come on over. We’ll talk.’
‘All right, but don’t let’s talk too long. This ship is going down fast, and if we don’t get the slaves on board your ship your commission will be sixty-five per cent of nothing.’
Boulton, Dando, Sails and O’Connor swung the Maria Magdalena’s jolly boat out on its davits and lowered it into the water. Killigrew produced the flintlock and thrust it into Strachan’s hand. ‘Here. Stick this in your belt.’
Strachan accepted the weapon dubiously. ‘Won’t they see it?’
‘That’s the general idea. They’ll think it odd to see a slaver who isn’t armed.’
‘Will I have to use it?’
‘When the time comes you may have to wave it around threateningly. If we can do this without unnecessary bloodshed I’ll feel much happier. If you must shoot it, here’s how you aim it.’ Killigrew clamped his hand over Strachan’s and held the muzzle close against his own side. ‘Like that. That’s the only sure way of hitting your target with one of those things. And remember it’s a single-shot weapon, so once you’ve pulled the trigger you’re defenceless. Unless you want to use it as a club, of course.’
Killigrew of the Royal Navy Page 6