by Killigrew of the Royal Navy (Killigrew RN) (retail) (epub)
Crouched in front of the safe, Molineaux was inserting a couple of picklocks into the keyhole when Killigrew entered. The seaman glanced up in alarm, but then recognised him and relaxed. ‘Get it open?’ Killigrew asked him.
‘Not yet. These things take time.’
‘Time is the one thing we don’t have. There’s enough powder in the hold to blow up this ship and ten more like her.’ Killigrew crossed to the window and opened it, before tying one end of the rope to an overhead beam.
‘If we don’t find something in here to tell us who’s behind this Bay Cay Trading Company, you can kiss goodbye to your commission.’
‘And if we don’t get out of here now you can kiss goodbye to that part of your anatomy on which you sit. And every other part of your anatomy, for that matter.’
‘Got it!’ The tumblers of the lock clicked, and Molineaux swung open the door.
The safe was empty.
* * *
Salazar reined in his horse on the beach to the south of the barracoon, where Madison and Coffin headed southwards with a band of Salazar’s men, holding burning torches aloft. ‘Any sign of them?’ asked Salazar.
‘No,’ snapped Coffin. ‘We’re wasting our time here. Killigrew won’t come this way, because he knows it’s the first place we’ll look.’
‘It is the only sensible way for him to come,’ Salazar pointed out reasonably. ‘The nearest settlement is Monrovia, fifty miles to the south. Either he comes this way or he makes for Freetown, which is nearer a hundred miles to the north.’
Coffin hawked and spat upon the sand. ‘You seem pretty sure he’ll stick to the coast.’
‘Of course he will. What chance do a young European and an American lady have of getting anywhere in the interior? They would not last five minutes. It would be complete madness to try that way.’
‘It was complete madness for him to try to pass himself off as a slaver,’ said Coffin. ‘But he tried it – and almost pulled it off.’
‘Prince Khari will take his leopard warriors into the interior to search for him,’ said Salazar. ‘If Killigrew has headed inland, he will not get far.’
‘I wouldn’t trust that uppity nigger and his goddamned leopard warriors to catch a dose of the clap,’ snorted Coffin. ‘Face it, Salazar. You let the Limey bastard get away.’
Salazar shrugged. ‘Perhaps. It does not matter.’
‘Doesn’t matter!’ exclaimed Madison. ‘And just how do you figure that, Mr Salazar, bearing in mind that once he gets back to civilisation he’ll tell the authorities everything: about you and me, about my ship and your barracoon…’
‘If he gets back, which I very much doubt. And if anyone will believe him, which I also very much doubt. You forget: in England he is disgraced as a drunk and a child-killer.’
‘He won’t be when Rear-Admiral Napier speaks up for him.’
‘Which is why I suggest someone goes to England and makes sure that an accident befalls the rear-admiral. Something fatal. Who will pay any attention to Killigrew if he does not have Napier to back him up?’
A smile spread slowly across Coffin’s face. ‘Maybe you ain’t such a dumb sonuvabitch after all, Salazar.’
‘I hope not. It would be a poor world indeed where a “dumb sonuvabitch” could amass as vast a fortune as my own. Are you volunteering to go to England to arrange the admiral’s tragic and premature demise?’
Coffin grinned. ‘It’ll be my pleasure.’
Salazar turned to Madison. ‘You see, captain? Even if Killigrew does make it back to civilisation – which is extremely unlikely – his story will not be believed. So I think that I shall be able to continue my trade uninterrupted for a few years yet, and nothing will stop you from using the profits of this voyage to fund your retirement. I don’t think Mr Killigrew will give us any more trouble…’
They heard a thump from out to sea, and turned their eyes in that direction in time to see the Leopardo disintegrate in a huge, blossoming ball of orange flame accompanied by a tremendous roar. A thousand planks of wood were hurled in all directions, most of them high into the sky, and as the ball of fire faded into a black cloud the planks rained down on the surface of the sea, some of them landing on the beach a short distance away. Of the Leopardo they could see nothing, just the expanding concentric circles in the water to show where she had recently floated.
For a few moments the men on the beach stared in stunned silence. It was Madison who spoke first. ‘And just in case that Limey bastard does get back to England,’ he told Coffin with a calmness surprising for one who had just had his livelihood blown out of the water, ‘make sure he suffers an accident, too. A very painful one.’
* * *
Both Killigrew and Molineaux duck-tailed under the water as the ship exploded less than two hundred yards behind them. The surface of the water above them burned as bright as sunrise with orange flame, and a moment later the shock wave hit them, knocking the breath from their bodies. They surfaced, gasping, just as the debris rained down about them.
‘Bang go your chances of finding out who was behind the Bay Cay Trading Company,’ gasped Molineaux as they trod water beside one another.
‘I’ll just have to hope that being able to reveal the location of Salazar’s barracoon is enough to redeem myself and win back my commission,’ said Killigrew.
‘And we’ll just have to hope that we can live that long.’ Molineaux nodded to the beach perhaps seven hundred yards away where they could see torches. ‘Looks like we’ve got a reception committee waiting for us on shore.’
‘They won’t be able to see us out here. Those torches will ruin their night-vision. We’ll be all right so long as we steer clear of the circle of light.’
They swam across the bar, the current carrying them away from where the men on the beach spread out to meet any survivors swimming from the Leopardo. At last they reached the shallows and crouched low in the surf, gasping for breath. They were perhaps two hundred yards away from the nearest man, with fifty yards of open beach between them and the cover of the trees. ‘Together, or one at a time?’ asked Molineaux.
Killigrew shook his head. ‘One at a time. Crawling. Less chance of being seen that way. You go first.’
Molineaux nodded and slithered up through the surf and out of the water, gliding with cat-like stealth over the sand while Killigrew watched the men with the torches, waiting for one of them to cry out at any moment. But they moved further away now, heading back towards the barracoon, as if they had given up any hope of catching Killigrew returning ashore; perhaps they thought he had been blown up with the Leopardo.
When he glanced back at Molineaux he saw the seaman was already near the trees, and a few moments later the black was swallowed up by the darkness beneath the trees. Killigrew did not hesitate before following him. As he crawled along in Molineaux’s tracks, he realised there was another advantage to crawling over running. Salazar’s men were bound to find their tracks with the coming of sunrise and if they had found two sets of footsteps they would have realised that Killigrew had an ally now, for there would have been no chance of mistaking Molineaux’s prints for Miss Chance’s. But crawling just left one confused track which could as easily have been the work of one man as of two.
He reached the trees and stood up beneath their boughs, dusting off the worst of the sand which clung to his sodden clothes. ‘Molineaux? You there?’
‘Yeah, I’m here,’ Molineaux’s voice came back. Killigrew found the seaman’s presence strangely reassuring. ‘I mean, it’s not as if there’s anywhere else I could go, is there? What do we do now, head down the coast towards Monrovia?’
Killigrew shook his head. ‘No. First we have to fetch Miss Chance.’
‘You managed to keep her alive, then? That’s good.’ Molineaux grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness. ‘I was beginning to think we’d run out of Chances.’
‘Very droll.’ Killigrew led the way through the belt of trees which lay between the beach a
nd the barracoon, heading parallel to the shore.
‘Are you going to tell me what went wrong, then?’
‘Salazar knew all about me. Someone in England talked to the wrong person.’
‘Impossible. The only people who knew what you were doing were you, me, and the rear-admiral himself. And you’re not suggesting he peached, are you?’
‘No. But I’m still not sure about you.’
‘Well, thank you very much! I saved your life back there, you know.’
‘Anyway, several people knew about my mission,’ said Killigrew. ‘Corporal Summerbee and Private Whitehead, to name but two.’ And Eulalia Fairbody to name a third, Killigrew could not help thinking as he found his half-boots and sat down to pull them on. It was inconceivable to think that she might have betrayed him, and yet…
‘Who are Corporal Summerbee and Private Whitehead when they’re at home?’
‘A couple of jollies who helped me inveigle myself on board the Madge Howlett; or the Leopardo, whichever you prefer. You still haven’t told me how you got on board her, by the way.’
‘I joined her in Havana,’ explained Molineaux. ‘Madison went to a slave market looking for a good seaman who could cook. He chose me. At least, that’s what he thinks. Actually he chose one of the other slaves and I was substituted later with the British consul’s help.’
‘And you mean to tell me Madison never noticed the switch?’
‘Of course not. Us darkies all look the same to you people.’
‘I’ll thank you not to put me in the same category as Madison, Coffin and Salazar,’ said Killigrew. ‘So the British consul in Havana knew about our plan as well?’
Molineaux shook his head. ‘He knew Napier wanted me aboard a certain slave vessel, but he didn’t know why. And I didn’t tell him.’
‘It couldn’t have been him anyway,’ mused Killigrew. ‘Salazar said his informant was in England… Wait a minute: if Napier had you join the crew of the Leopardo in Havana, he must’ve been setting this thing up for months. But he only told me about it two months ago.’ Two months! It seemed more like two years since he had played billiards in the United Service Club in London.
‘Months!’ said Molineaux. ‘Man, I’ve been on that ship for two years. Something went wrong, badly wrong. The cove I was supposed to protect was someone called Comber, but he never even turned up. I managed to get in touch with Napier the next time we landed at Liverpool and he told me to sit tight until he could get someone else. When you turned up I knew you were one of his men straight away.’
‘You’ve been living a lie for two years on that hell ship? I take my hat off to you. Or at least, I would if I were wearing one.’
‘Yes, and it hasn’t been fun either, I can tell you. You saw for yourself how Madison used to treat me.’
‘You must be dedicated to the cause of anti-slavery.’
‘To tell the truth I didn’t have much choice. But don’t believe any of that gammon I told you about not caring about the Africans. They’re human beings, at least, which is more than you can say for bastards like Madison and Coffin. I don’t know what made you so down on slavery, sir, but while Madison never had me flogged – as long as I toadied to him and grovelled and bowed and scraped like a bug-eyed watermelon-guzzling sonuvabitch – he weren’t kind to every slave that came his way, I can tell you. Some of the things I’ve seen…’
‘I’ve seen similar,’ Killigrew assured him.
‘So are we going to get those bastards and put them out of business for ever?’
‘Damned right we are.’ The two of them shook on it. ‘But first we have to get to safety. Now, where did I leave Miss Chance?’
Killigrew paused to look around. He could tell from where he stood in relation to the watchtowers that he was not far from where he had left her, but in the darkness all the trees looked the same. They were too close to the barracoon for him to want to risk calling out to her.
‘You mean you don’t know where you left her?’ Molineaux hissed incredulously.
‘She’s around here somewhere…’
A woman’s scream, loud and shrill in the darkness, sounded somewhere off to their right.
‘This way,’ said Killigrew, heading off in the direction of the scream.
Chapter 16
The Law of the Jungle
Well, Suzannah, you wanted adventure, Miss Chance told herself ruefully as she made herself as comfortable as possible in the tree’s lower boughs. You can’t say that isn’t what you’ve got. Shipwrecked, picked up by murderous cut-throats, chased by the US Navy, threatened with being consigned to a megalomaniac’s harem and rescued by a dashing young British naval officer; if she ever got a chance to write back to her family in Poughkeepsie they were not going to believe a word of it. She was not sure that she believed it herself.
The problem was, she had had more adventures in one week than she had planned to have in the five years she intended to spend working at the Sherbro Island mission. Serves you right. Missionary work is supposed to be a way of serving God, not of looking for adventure…
The night sky was lit up by an explosion which hammered her ears with its roar. Mr Killigrew had said something about making sure the slavers did not use the Leopardo to ship out the slaves in the barracoon, but had he intended to blow the ship out of the water? It was quite likely, but until he returned she had no way of knowing whether or not he had managed to get off the ship with her brother before the explosion. She hoped so. For one thing, she had little confidence in her ability to get back to safety without his help; she had studied maps of the Guinea Coast, of course, and guessed the barracoon lay somewhere between Sierra Leone and Monrovia, but which was nearest she had no idea. And for another, she found Killigrew so infuriating she was starting to wonder if she had fallen in love with him. First of all he had charmed her, then he had let her think he was a drunkard and a child-killer, then he had let her think he was a slaver, and now he had been revealed as a brave man prepared to risk everything in the noble cause of the fight against the slave trade.
‘Psssssssst!’
The sound snapped her out of her reverie. ‘Mr Killigrew?’ she called softly. ‘Is that you?’
‘Psssssst!’
The noise was close. Too close. As if it were in the tree with her…
She twisted on the bough she lay on and came face to face with a snake. She froze instantly, but her movement had already startled it and its head reared back, inches from her own, so close she could clearly see its black eyes glittering in the light and its forked tongue flickering out at her.
She caught her breath. She could feel her heart pounding. The snake only wanted to get out of the tree, she knew, but she was in its way. Why did it not have the sense to turn around and go back the way it had come?
She tried to edge back down the bough towards the trunk, but even that movement seemed to anger the snake and it reared back again. It might not be deadly poisonous, she realised, but she had no wish to find out the hard way.
She was aware of someone moving about on the ground below her, silently and stealthily. She could not look down to see who it was without taking her eyes off the snake, and that she could not bring herself to do. Its gaze was hypnotic and forced her to focus all her attention on it.
She heard a snap from below. At first she thought it was a twig breaking underfoot, but a second, identical snap followed hard on the heels of the first. It was no natural sound, but the noise of a brace of pistols being cocked. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see Assata below her, aiming her pistols up at her. The amazon gestured for her to climb down out of the tree.
‘I can’t move!’ she hissed. ‘There’s a snake!’
Assata gestured with the pistols again, impatiently now. Miss Chance tried to ease her way back down the bough, but again the snake reared threateningly. Get shot or get bitten by a poisonous snake; what kind of a choice was that?
Then the snake struck.
Young ladies
of genteel upbringing rarely have the opportunity to test their reflexes, so it was not until that moment that Miss Chance had any idea how good her own were. The palm of her hand hit the side of the snake, just behind its head, and without thinking about it she closed her fingers around it. It opened its jaws wide, baring vicious fangs at her, but she gripped it tightly, knowing that to let it go would be one of the last things she ever did if its bite were deadly poisonous. It hissed at her, and she hoped it was not the kind of snake which could spit venom into its victim’s eyes.
Then she realised she had lost her balance on the bough and was slipping over sideways. She could not use her right hand and flailed about wildly with her left, but it met only thin air. She reached the point of no return, teetered for a moment, and then fell.
The fall seemed to last for ever, and yet at the same time it was over before she knew it. What little of the world she could see in the darkness tumbled around her, and then she hit the ground below, using her left arm to break the fall and taking care to hold the snake well away from her body with her right.
Assata said nothing – she never did – but she snorted what might have been a contemptuous laugh, and gestured for Miss Chance to get up. Miss Chance tried to comply, but she could not use her right arm and she sprawled awkwardly on her left side. Assata moved in close, apparently oblivious to the particular impediment under which Miss Chance laboured, and kicked her in the side. The amazon was only wearing sandals, but she did not hold back and the blow was both painful and humiliating.
‘All right, all right, I’m trying!’ Miss Chance snapped irritably. ‘Stop kicking me! Can’t you see I’ve got this—’
She broke off, and looked from the snake to the amazon. Then she pressed the snake’s mouth to Assata’s ankle.
Assata screamed and dropped the pistols as the snake’s fangs went home. Then she turned and ran off through the trees, shrieking, doubtless hoping to find someone who would suck out the venom before it was too late.