Greenbeard (9781935259220)

by Bentley, Richard James

  “Why did you not give me the order to fire? He had come for us – for you, who once sailed with him! – with malice in his heart, and greedy for more honours from the King, even though he is as rich as several Pharoahs already.”

  “Well, Peter, that might perhaps have made him a martyr; ‘Brave, loyal, honest Captain Morgan murdered by the vile treacherous pirate Captain Greenbeard!’ the broadsheets would have thundered! ‘We must scour the oceans and destroy this wicked highwayman of the high seas! England can ask for no less!’ but now it will be rather ‘That wily rogue Greenbeard outsails and out-manoeuvres wooden-headed Captain Tom Fool Morgan, even showing mercy and allowing him to keep his miserable life, and then diddles him into running his own ship up onto the beach, the clumsy idiot!’ Which is much better in the long run of things, you must confess. And I did not wish to cause great slaughter to his crew, who are not really to blame for Morgan’s ambitions, after all, even though they sail under his command.”

  “Um. Even so…” said Blue Peter, looking doubtful.

  “Oh, Lord! You gunners are a bloodthirsty lot, aren’t you? I know that a raking is the supreme challenge for a master gunner, but have you ever raked a ship yourself?”

  “Well, no…”

  “I haven’t, either, and I would if I had to, but only if there was no possible alternative, for it is not something that should be done lightly. I conversed once with an old Navy captain who had managed that feat. He had taken his ship across his enemy’s stern, each one of his guns firing as it bore, each one of those thirty-two-pound cannon-balls smashing through the stern windows and ripping through the whole length of the ship – boom! boom! boom! boom! – and he said that as they drew away from the enemy ship she lay stricken in the water like dead animal, with blood pouring in great gouts from all her gun-ports, alike to water gushing from broken guttering in a rain-squall. He said that all his crew started muttering prayers for their poor enemies when they saw that, some of them crying, and they were men hardened by many a sea-battle. He said he had never forgotten the sight and never would, and that he prayed every night for forgiveness, and lit candles for the souls of the dead every Sunday without fail, and still sometimes he would dream evil dreams and awake weeping for what he had done. Don’t wish that upon yourself, Peter! Especially for such a dunce as Morgan! Even though he was ready to fire upon us, for I saw the red glow of his gunners’ linstocks through his gun-ports as we crossed his wake. That is so typical of Morgan! He is such a skinflint that he has not got flint-locks for his cannon, rich though he is.”

  “I was not eavesdropping,” said Mr Benjamin, standing up suddenly from behind the binnacle, holding a spanner, grease smudges on his face and hands, “but I agree with the Captain … Cap’n … sorry, I still struggle with naval nomenclature.”

  “Oh, you gave me a start!” said Captain Greybagges. “I hadn’t seen you lurking there!”

  “I was checking the orientation of the shafts and greasing the elbows of the rods. Everything is as it should be.”

  “You have examined the main shunt, I presume? No sign of sparking? No excessive heating? No charring of the wooden parts?”

  “We looked at it first, Cap’n. It was just as it was when we covered it.”

  “I am relieved at that, Frank. Please tell me there was something wrong somewhere, otherwise I might feel that the fates are mocking us.”

  “The port-side connexion to the gun-deck had loosened – probably by the flexing of the hull – but it is duplicated on the starboard side, with a cross-over, so no harm could have come from it. We have tightened it, and put in an s-bend to allow it more freedom, so the natural working of the ship’s timbers puts no further strain upon it.”

  “Aah! You ease my mind, Frank! There was something amiss! The Muslims regard perfection as unlucky, and always put a small error in even their most flawless silk carpets and alabaster arabesques. I understand their caution!”

  “As to what you were saying to Peter, Cap’n,” continued Mr Benjamin, “it seems to me that by not blowing Morgan to kingdom come you have also not drawn attention to yourself, and that you may not do that because you have now a ship that moves in complete disregard of the wind and tide. I think I mentioned to you before that my idea for an air-powered cannon drew all kinds of unwelcome attention to me. Men are fascinated by engines of death, after all. I confess that I do understand Peter’s enthusiasm. Indeed, the temptation to develop the air-weapon was not inspired by the fame, the friendship of the powerful or the wealth that it may have brought to me, but rather by the sheer fascination of building an engine of such power and then using it. We are creatures full of curiosity, and nothing tempts us so much as a cannon primed and ready to fire! The possibilities intrigue us! “As swift as a pellet out of a gunne When fyre is in the powder runne,” said the sage Chaucer. Things other than guns can fire the imagination by their possibilities. I am amazed still by what you have done – a ship that moves in defiance of the winds! – and I see that such a wonder would be regarded with acquisitive eyes by many, because of the possibilities. A nation possessing such power would dominate the globe! To advertise the existence of a self-propelled ship would have been foolish. As things are, Morgan’s account, if he is so indiscreet as to give one, will arouse howls of mocking laughter, the attempt of a beaten man to explain his dismal failure by an improbable tale. Yet I still sympathize with Peter’s disappointment! How fine it must be to fire a perfect broadside, and bring a loathed foe – callous and overbearing in his pride and arrogance! - to well-deserved ruin in an instant!”

  “Well, Frank, Peter may well have his chance to perform a perfect broadside before too long, and you will be there to witness it, I promise you. A self-propelled ship is indeed a wonder, yet now I will show you another wonder! Night approaches, and we are alone in an empty ocean. Even the sea-gulls have abandoned us. There are no curious eyes to witness us, and no wagging tongues to spread rumours. Where are Bill and Izzy?”

  Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges paced the quarterdeck while the two were called.

  “I am as nervous as a cat!” said the Captain to Blue Peter. The ship’s cat chose that moment to swagger across the quarterdeck and curl up next to the rail, exhibiting no nervousness at all.

  “Ah, Izzy! Please get the jacks to furl all sails, and then bring all of them, even the look-outs, down on deck.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n!” said the First Mate.

  “Bill, please engage X-FORCE and take it slowly to two.”

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n!”

  “Bill, you have an understanding of the other levers now?”

  “I does, Cap’n. The force levers be the directions, and the little levers below them on the board are the rotations about them directions. The one below X being roll, the one below Y being pitch and the one below Z being yaw. I has that firmly in mind, Cap’n.”

  The sails were now furled on the yards and the crew were all on deck, looking expectant but puzzled. The Ark de Triomphe still cut through the sea, driven now by the mysterious X-FORCE alone.

  “Well, no point in delaying!” said Captain Greybagges. “Bill, engage the Z-FORCE and then, on my word, take it slowly up to five ... UP SHIP!”

  Bulbous Bill Bucephalus moved the Z-FORCE lever carefully and precisely, and the pirate frigate Ark de Triomphe, her hull creaking just a little, lifted slowly out of the sea and rose majestically up towards the clouds.

  Captain William Schovelle sat in his cabin, humming a tune. His account-books and bills of lading lay before him on his desk, in the light from a lantern. A good cargo: Dutch crockery (very nice blue-and-white glazed earthenware; he would keep a service for his wife, and maybe one for her dim-witted brother, too, if he felt generous); French wine (although one of the damn’ barrels had sprung, wine lost and some of the crew now had secret caches of claret, caught in hats and pannikins as the leaking barrel was brought on deck for repair); English cotton cloth in bright patterns and woollen cloth in plain dark sober shade
s: some pewter; some brassware; Sheffield-made steel blades for sickles and scythes, and a ballast of pig-iron. A good cargo to land in the American colonies, and his strategy of going further to the south in the crossing had proved itself. A less-experienced master would not sail at the lower latitudes of the trade winds and risk becoming becalmed, but Captain Schovelle would run that risk for the reduced risk of piracy. The winds had been light and had veered and backed quite remarkably at times, but his ship had not once lain hove-to in a dead calm, her sails flapping. And the ocean had been empty, nobody this far south. He was feeling, truth be told, a little smug.

  Captain Schovelle poured himself a glass of rum, and he was just in the process of lighting a clay pipe with a taper lit from the lantern when there was a discreet knocking at the door of his cabin.

  “Enter!” he commanded, in a voice made deep by years of bellowing orders into the teeth of gales full of rain, sleet, snow, hailstones and the occasional cannon-ball.

  “Why, Tack! Come in my lad!”

  He was fond of his nephew, Caractacus Todd, who, despite being the son of his wife’s wooden-headed brother Theobald, was indeed as sharp as a tack. The young man seemed distressed.

  “You seem distressed, young man. What ails thee?”

  Tack’s mouth opened and closed several times, then:

  “Uncle Bill, I saw something strange,” he whispered. “Just now. Nobody else saw it”

  “What did you see, then?”

  “I find it difficult to speak of it. I fear you will laugh at me, or think that I have lost my reason.”

  “Tack, you are fourteen years old, but you are a sailor, and so you will have to take a scare once in a while. Here, take this rum, sip it and sit for a moment to collect your wits before you tell me.”

  The young man sat and sipped the rum.

  “When I was your age, or not much older,” said Captain Schovelle, “I was on an old leaky barque, sailing off the coast of Newfoundland. In the dog-watches I used to trail a fishing-line from the taffrail, for I am as fond of cod and taters as the next man. One night I was pulling in a fish when something snatched it off the line, I felt the line go taut and snap. Looking down, by the light of a gibbous moon, I saw a monster that had come up from the deep. It had the tentacles of an octopus, a beak - alike to a parrot’s but much larger - and round eyes the size of dinner-plates. I saw it quite clearly, and it was very ugly and very real and its tentacles waved at me until I jumped backwards half across the deck. I went and looked over the taffrail again and it had gone. I told the ship’s master, and he called me a liar and a rogue. He was not a bad man, either. I have never met anyone else who has seen such a creature, but I have heard old tales and legends that speak of monsters like that. I saw it, you see, and I know what I saw. Sometimes we sailors see things that are best not spoken of by land. Sometimes we see things that even other sailors will not believe. Now tell me what you saw. I will not mock you, I swear.”

  “I saw a ship, Uncle Bill, and she was flying in the sky. At first, by the light of the moon, I only saw something flitting through the clouds, and I thought it strange, and then it passed almost overhead.”

  “Um, was this ship the right way up? I have heard of mirages such as are said to occur in the deserts - fata morgana some calls ‘em - but they are oft-times upside down, as they are but a mere reflection, an image made of light.”

  “No, Uncle, it was no image. She seemed to be pushing through the clouds, and they swirling around her as water does. She was three-masted. A frigate, I think. Black with a yellowish band along her side. She moved in complete silence, except for a faint sighing noise, honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze, honk-wheeze. I looked with the spy-glass, and she had all her sails furled. I could see men on the deck, all clad in red and grey slops as are worn by the crews of the Dutch company. As she passed I could even see her name writ large in gilded script upon her stern. It said ‘De Fliegende Hollander’. I can spell the letters for you, if you wish, for I am no great hand at the speech of foreigners.”

  “’The Flying Dutchman’ … that is … um … best not to speak of this to another soul, my boy, for this is a very strange thing, a very strange thing indeed. Have another glass of rum.”

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH,

  or The Voyage to Baart’tzuum.

  There could be no doubt about it; Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges was facing a mutiny.

  “We will not go ashore! You shall not turn us ashore!” said Mrs Miriam Ceshwayoo, neé Chumbley, small but nevertheless daunting, in a low but very determined voice. “You show us your wonderful flying ship, talk of the fabulous kingdoms far away that you shall visit, the great treasure that you will win there, and then you want to dump us all in bloody Porte de Recailles for the mere fact that we are women? I shall not accept that, and neither will these ladies!”

  The island women nodded in agreement, looking as grim as their inscrutable faces would allow.

  “I am surprised that you did not barricade yourselves in your cabin,” said Captain Greybagges, trying to gain time to think.

  “Do you think we are stupid, because we are women? The walls … sorry, the bulkheads … are held in place by wooden dowels and wedges! All the cabins are! Even your own cabin is the same, so it may be knocked-down at need and used as a gun-deck for stern-chasers. Mr Chippendale would have removed the bulkheads in a trice, leaving us holding just the door. Then we would have looked so pathetic that all you men would have laughed at us and put us on the beach feeling oh-so-smug that you were doing the right thing, you pigs! If you are going to throw us off your boat then you must do it so that all the crew may see, and see what an ass you are! … Captain.”

  Blue Peter stood behind the women, looking guilty.

  “Please, Miriam, my dear!” he said.

  “I hope this … um … contretemps was not your idea, Peter,” said the Captain.

  “I only told her that I was pleased she would be safe in my … in our … cottage, away from any battles or hardships, and what a wonderful time we would have when I returned.”

  Most of the crew had now stopped what they were doing, and were watching with alert and amused interest. Captain Greybagges thought quickly.

  “Dear ladies …”

  “Don’t you dear ladies us, you old tyrant!”

  “A tyrant I am not. A captain of buccaneers can only command with the full consent of his crew, and there are no floggings or keel-haulings aboard my ship. I shall put the matter to a vote at once.”

  Captain Greybagges called out to the crew working on deck:

  “Shipmates! I calls yuz to an informal vote under the rules of the Free Brotherhood o’ the Coasts! Shall these female members of the crew be left behind in Porte de Recailles, so that they shall not be harmed, whatever may befall us? If yuz thinks they should then ye shouts ‘aye’! If yuz thinks they should not, as they are pirates of our company, despite they being of the fair and female gender, then ye shouts ‘nay’! How votes yuz all?”

  There was a loud confused roar of shouts of ‘aye’ and ‘nay’, mixed with catcalls and oaths.

  “As yer Cap’n, I does then declare that the nays has it! The dear ladies shall stay on board an’ share our hardships and tribulations, share our plunder and treasure and share our exploits and adventures, too! Are yuz satisfied that the vote be lawful under the rules?”

  There was another confused roar, this time mostly of ‘aye-aye, Cap’n’.

  “Well then, dear ladies, you shall stay, and Porte de Recailles will be duller for your absence. Are you now satisfied that your rights have been upheld, as is fair and just?”

  “You are undoubtedly planning to trick us! This is just to keep us quiet until we get into port, then you’ll put us ashore, you lawyer!”

  “What? Shall we not go into Porte de Recailles? Shall we not have a last carouse in Ye Halfe Cannonballe? Shall we not let the old pirates see their girlfriends and wives and children?”

  There was a roar, not confused
at all, of ‘nays’, and shouts of “Come on! Let’s get on with it!” and “Anchors aweigh, me hearties!” and similar sentiments.

  “Oh, sod!” muttered Captain Greybagges. “I forgot that they were all still listening. I shouldn’t have mentioned the wives and girlfriends, either.” He raised his hands, then addressed the crew again; “Alright! Alright! Then we shall go now, upon this very instant. But only if there are sufficient stores, and if the air-bottles are all filled, for then I have no objections.”

  There was a prolonged burst of applause and cheering. Mr Benjamin whispered that the air-bottles were charged to maximum pressure, Cap’n, all of them, even the two which had leaky taps, which we have ground-in with jeweller’s rouge and re-packed the stoppers with fine cotton and grease, d’you see? Then Jake Thackeray was pushed up to the quarterdeck steps to swear that there was plenty of food and water stowed, enough for three months, at least, Cap’n. The crew’s enthusiasm for an instant departure was palpable. Again Captain Greybagges raised his hands for silence:

  “It is agreed, then, shipmates!” he spoke in a commanding tone, “we shall start our cruise upon this very moment. First we must make ready! Belay the course for Porte de Recailles, steersmen, and take her away from the wind! … First mate, all the sails furled, if you please, and all the jacks down on deck! … Bill, engage the forward force as the sails are furled, one or two on the dial, just to keep some sea-way upon her … Mr Benjamin, please bring the telescope up from the hold, and the alidade and the transit circle, too, … Peter, are the guns unloaded, plugged and lashed? The powder-magazine swept, locked and secured? Excellent! … Everybody else, have you no work to do? There be things to be done still! Look there on the foredeck, the bottles are all filled now, so the air-pumps can be dismantled and stowed …”