Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments

by Francis Selwyn

  Joseph Morant-Barham was alone in his cabin with Lieutenant John Ransome after the other three subalterns had left. The two men sat either side of the green baize table, lolling in their chairs. Between them was a litter of empty glasses and piled cigar bowls, scraps of paper on which the reckonings had been made, and several scrawled IOUs with Charley Keston's signature.

  'Two hundred and eighty,' said Ransome, taking the cheroot from his mouth. 'Two hundred and eighty your departed guests left us, not counting the damned paper you let young Keston issue for the last half hour. Paper's a blue look-out, Joey. You and I shan't be rich while you let fellows pay you with that gash.'

  Ransome fanned out Charley Keston's promissory notes, as though they were a hand of cards, and shook his head ruefully.

  'Dammit, Jack!' said Morant-Barham pettishly, 'we mayn't be anything, the way you call it, if you pull that dodge with your tunic-sleeve too often. They must be blind not to see!

  Ransome's sun-reddened face broadened in a tolerant smile for the boy who was hardly more than half his age. He spoke softly.

  'You'd be blind not to see, Joey, sitting where you are, but then we're two of the closest pals a man ever saw, ain't we?'

  The young man slapped his hand down like an angry child.

  'They could have seen, Jack! It don't excuse the risk!' Ransome grinned and slowly shook his head again. 'Joey, Joey! The art of it is that even when a fellow sees, he looks away rather than have a beastly row. A gentleman don't care to quarrel over cards, not even when he knows there's huggery-muggery. And the beauty of it is, they each lost a piece to you, and then you were so obliging as to lose it all to me. It takes suspicion off you, and if you don't complain over losing it to me, then why should they?'

  'Fairground faking ain't worth the risk,' said the boy sullenly.

  Ransome's face coloured up, as if at some implied insult.

  'Risk?' he said sardonically. 'With Chamberlain blind drunk? With Keston's breeches busting each time your Janet showed her fat backside? When three gentlemen in turn have ploughed another gentleman's doxy, they don't generally start a rumpus over what may have happened at his card table!'

  Morant-Barham's face dimpled in derision and he tossed his black curls contemptuously.

  'Ploughed her! They took her in the other room for the look of it, to boast what whoremasters they were tonight!'

  Joey,' said Ransome, grinning gently, 'I wasn't so green as to miss having from her own mouth every word of what went on in there. Two of them rode her so hard she couldn't lie still after it. Keston was the rummy cove, Put her on her back and held her legs like a wheelbarrow. Then has your Miss Janet over a bolster with her bum in the air. Last of all, has her kneeling at his chair, her face going down on him and her parts displayed in a mirror behind her. I don't risk Keston busting up and not paying his ticks.’

  Ransome tossed the IOUs on the table, and Morant-Barham brightened,

  'Take his paper in your share, Jack, if you can squeeze him.'

  'No, Joey. Share and share, gold and paper.'

  'I told you I must have gold,' said the boy, almost whining. 'Dammit, Jack, you know there's a broker to be paid.’

  'You all the halfpence and me all the kicks, eh?' said Ransome. 'A broker won't brave the Kaffirs to follow you. There's a hundred and forty each in gold, and half Keston's paper.’

  'Jack,' said Morant-Barham coaxingly, 'I signed a bill for £200 two months ago, from a damned little moneychanger in Fetter Lane. I never had £200 nor anything like, but the bill was at three months and the cash must be sent.’

  'You'll be on the other side of the world, Joey. Sleep easy.' Morant-Barham clasped his hands and closed his eyes. 'It must be paid, Jack. Really it must. . . .' 'Because?'

  'Because, dammit, it ain't my name on the bill’ Ransome sighed with undisguised satisfaction and the boy looked up sharply, tasting for the first time the sick fear of having begged a respite from the hands of a professional blackguard.

  'Jack, it must be bought back. I only did it for a safe spec. If that bill goes to the fellow whose name's on it, there's all hell to answer! God, Jack, you can see that, can't you? You can see how a fellow might be so driven that he'd do it for a sure spec?'

  Ransome sat very quietly, as though hardly able to credit his good fortune in having stumbled on the young man's criminal foolishness.

  'Borrowed £200 and put another man's name to the debt?'

  Morant-Barham nodded.

  'Take the paper,' he urged. 'Squeeze Keston for it. Take the £80 gilt, and whatever else you please.'

  Ransome sucked his teeth and whistled softly. The possibilities for plucking the imprudent young heir to the Barham estates were so enormous, given this piece of information, that he needed time to assess the opportunity more fully.

  'Jack,' said the young man suddenly, 'take the £80 and the paper. There's £200. And take my bill at three months for £120 morel'

  Ransome laughed softly and shook his head.

  'And when the bill ain't met, Joey? What then?'

  There was a pause, Ransome continuing to whistle softly.

  'Jack,' said the boy again, 'take the girl! She's worth more than all the rest. You can't ask for one better broken to the saddle! Dammit, didn't you see her work for me? She's taught to do the same for any man that runs her and, between whiles, keep him at a stand a hundred ways. Only think, what you might do in India with her!'

  Ransome got up and opened the door leading to the sleeping quarters. By the dim illumination of a single lamp he could see Janet lying on the bed. She was still naked but for her stockings, perhaps expecting further demands upon her soft pale body. Ransome approached, calling her to him, telling her to turn, stretch, or bend herself in the most convenient manner for his examination. With unconcealed amusement he questioned her gently, compiling an inventory of the acts practised on her. The girl replied in timid murmurs as Ransome's hands ran like a whisper over the smooth, milky contours of breasts, hips and bottom. Then, with the patting and probing done, he left the girl and returned to his host, standing before Morant-Barham, leaning with one hand on the gaming table, his smile betraying nothing of his decision.

  'Well?' asked the boy impatiently.

  Ransome steadied himself on the table as the hull of the ship vibrated uncomfortably, the helmsman turning hard to starboard and causing one of the paddle-wheels to spin clear of the water with the incline of the ship. The Birkenhead righted herself and then seemed to rise on a sudden and unexpected swell. Ransome braced his feet apart and clutched the table with both hands, his dark eyes narrowing as though with suspicion. The ship swung violently, there was a distant clatter of china and one of the glass shades in Morant-Barham's cabin toppled and smashed to tiny sparkling slivers on the carpet.

  'The deuce of it!' said Ransome, relaxing his grip a little.

  But the long rising swell came again, stronger and steeper, the Birkenhead heeling as though in the trough of a great storm. Just as it seemed that the worst might be over, the hull rolled precipitously, the rattle of falling furniture smothered by a great crash which echoed through the ship as though every gun-port had been stove in simultaneously by a heavy sea. Morant-Barham was thrown from his chair by the impact, while Ransome lost his footing and fell backwards among the scattered furniture. Two of the oil-lamps had smashed, leaving only one whose guttering flame cast a fitful shadow-play over the wreckage and confusion.

  Morant-Barham, conscious of a swelling bruise above his left eye, struggled to his feet and found that the floor of the cabin sloped upward a little towards the stern. Yet when he began to walk it seemed as if the angled deck was shifting under his feet with the weight of every step. And then the schoolboy subaltern lost his fear of Ransome in a still greater apprehension. The mighty engines of the Birkenhead were ominously still and somewhere inside the hull there was an echoing inrush of water.

  'What in God's name was that?' he asked, shivering.

  Ransome picked hi
mself up from the littered fragments of glass and the overturned furniture.

  'Get your bitch dressed!' he said, brushing down his tunic vigorously. 'Get on deck!'

  But Morant-Barham was peering into the wrecked cabin, kneeling and fumbling in the gloom.

  'The sovs, Jack, the sovs! All on the floor somewhere!'

  'Damn the money! Get up, unless you want this brig for a coffin!'

  The hull of the ship was coming alive again with voices and footsteps in the passageway. Ransome pushed Morant-Barham through the shuffling files of men, along narrow passages and up iron ladders in the warren of the Birkenhead. They moved almost in silence, the majority of them having been shaken from their deepest sleep by the blow. A party of foot soldiers, moving at the double, crossed the path of the escapers. Steam hissed from the safety-valves as the hull moved again under their feet, wallowing in the ocean surges like a dead whale. Deep in the ship's entrails they heard the funereal clang! clang! Clang! of the first iron hand-pump which the soldiers had manned.

  'Now,' said Ransome, pushing forward, 'sharp's the word and quick's the motion!'

  As the ominous tolling of the pumps echoed through the emptying hull, Captain Salmond, commander of the Birkenhead, and Colonel Seton, as senior military officer on board, reached the quarter-deck. On the main deck, below them, where the tall thin funnel breathed its smoke and sparks into the night air, the depot companies were pushing and mingling as they strove to assemble by regiments. The officer of the watch presented the charts to Salmond.

  'Point Danger five miles to port, sir,' he said, gesturing through the darkness towards the African coast. Salmond looked at the chart briefly and then waved it away. There was nothing marked in the ship's path but any East India captain knew that a hundred reefs off the coast of Cape Colony had never been charted. Danger Rock, several miles off the Point, was the unmarked grave of a dozen vessels but thousands had passed it in safety. It was a remote chance, not even a chance in a thousand, but HMS Birkenhead had hit the saw-toothed ridge of the reef at 2 am, bows-on, and full speed ahead.

  On the main deck, below Salmond and his officers, the troops swarmed like bees from an overturned hive, surging from the hatches and companionways. The junior officers, the first on the scene, endeavoured to restore order,

  'Depot Company, 73rd Foot, fall in! ... 12th Lancers! Fall in, lads! Fall in!'

  'She'll tear herself open on the rock if she stays fast in this tide,' said the officer of the watch, not quite out of Salmond's hearing. The men on the quarter-deck could feel the ocean swell and the strong night-wind pulling the stern of the ship round and then swinging it back again. At each movement there was the shrill bird-shriek of metal twisting against rock.

  Salmond called sharply,

  'Mr Hetherington! Two turns slow astern, if you please!'

  'Two turns slow astern, sir!' Hetherington's voice echoed down the speaking-tube. The engine-room telegraph rang its familiar and reassuring code. Among the steam released by the safety mechanism during the ship's immobility, the engineer officer wiped his forehead with his sleeve and closed the valve. The mighty pistons of the paddle-axle recoiled once and then twice. The finned wheels threshed the water in two precise strokes.

  The Birkenhead seemed to glide clear of the obstruction and there was a subdued cheer from some of the troops on the deck. But no sooner had the paddles stopped than the sea carried the hull forward again. The grinding of metal on rock and the rending of timbers rang hideously loud in the stillness of the night air. In the forward troop-deck, the last of the riflemen to push their way towards the companion-ladders heard the sound at their backs and turned to see with horror the entire bulkhead buckle and burst under the thundering weight of sea. Far below the ship's waterline, there was no escape for them. Men and their equipment were caught in the swirl of dark water, clutching at chairs or tables as the foul bilge water reached them first. It was no sudden death. Ten or fifteen minutes might pass before the last obstinate pocket of air was driven out and the few survivors were forced against the upper deck-beams, holding their breath against the cold flood overwhelming them until their lungs burst.

  On the main deck, Colonel Seton had established order among the survivors of the depot companies, his company commanders taking up the cry, 'Fall in, in drill stations!' Seton himself was with his 74th Highlanders when Frank Chamberlain slipped across to take his farewell of young Joey Morant-Barham.

  'Well, old fellow, I don't suppose we shall all of us come out of this with our feet dry. But if you do, and I don't, and if there should be a court of inquiry, do tell them that the drivelling old idiot commanding the ship sank us by going astern off a rock, when the only thing that might save us was slow ahead. I ain't a wet-bob but I know that much!’

  They shook hands Firmly, and Chamberlain marched away to his regiment.

  On the bridge, Captain Salmond heard the inrush of water at the bows swelling to a mighty flood. Belatedly, he came to the same conclusion as Frank Chamberlain.

  'Let go the bower cable, Mr Hetherington! Keep her on the rock, if you can. Once she slips off now, there's no holding her."

  But the tone of the messages brought by runners from the lower decks was hardly encouraging. The forward holds were under water and there was nothing for it but to draw the soldiers and their hand-pumps back, abandoning part of the ship to the sea. It was ten minutes since the Birkenhead had struck the reef and already the stern was beginning to lift clear of the water as the bows settled. The paddle-wheels hung idle and the trail of smoke from the thin black funnel was replaced by the whistle of escaping steam.

  'Mr Archibald,' said Salmond softly to his gunner, 'fire the pivot-guns. They may be seen by some of the settlements or by another ship.'

  As the gunner doubled away, Salmond's officers looked down and saw the troopers of the 12th Lancers herding their chargers from the horse-boxes on the main deck, driving them towards the port gangway-opening. One after another the terrified animals were half-pushed and half-thrown by the men over the side of the ship and into the dark surges.

  'Poor brutes!' said Hetherington.

  'Those poor brutes can swim, Mr Hetherington,' said Salmond tersely. 'They don't like it, but they may reach land long before you or I.’

  The gunner reappeared, breathless.

  "The entire foredeck is awash, sir! No way through to the magazine and in any case the shells for the pivot guns must be under water already.'

  A great weariness appeared to settle on Captain Salmond.

  'Very well,' he said. 'Mr Hetherington, order the firing of the distress rockets.'

  The officers on the quarter-deck busied themselves in letting off the flares. The dark blue flash of the rockets lit the surrounding water in a garish pyrotechnic display.

  A score of the sputtering missiles rose in their long arc and then glided down, settling on the sea like so many malevolent birds, continuing to burn with a slow blue fire which cast its sickly light over the wreck of the Birkenhead.

  The last of the horses, hysterical with fear, had been pushed into the purplish gloom with a floundering splash. Regimental companies waited in drill order, their commanders before them and a group of women and children huddled close to each formation.

  'Mr Hetherington!' called Salmond, "an account of the ship's boats, if you please.'

  Hetherington consulted the list which had been brought him.

  'Both main pinnaces wrecked by falling spars, sir, at the moment of striking the rock. Port and starboard paddle-box boats ready for lowering, Ship's cutter prepared, and two small gigs, sir.’

  'And the complement now?'

  'Four hundred men mustered, sir, all others lost below decks. Fifty crew, including Royal Marines on guard. All women and children safe, sir, one hundred and thirty of them all told.'

  Salmond straightened up from the rail on which he had been leaning.

  'My compliments to Colonel Seton. The boats must be lowered at once. Will he have the goodn
ess to see the women and children safely into them? The men must stand fast or their numbers will swamp the boats.'

  As he spoke, the hull shifted again under their feet and there was a distant sound of crumbling wood and metal. Steam from the boilers was now escaping in a deafening hiss but Salmond was so absorbed in his task that he hardly seemed to notice such distractions. His officers looked down on the scene below where their men scurried to lower the two boats carried on the paddle-boxes. Ropes had been hoisted over one of the yard-arms to form makeshift davits for the port boat. Teams of pig-tailed sailors hauled on the lines until the boat swung up and over the ship's rail, suspended with the swell of the sea below it. As the little craft hung just under the level of the yard-arm there was an abrupt crack and the makeshift tackle snapped. The stem of the boat fell with a splintering of board on to the rail of the Birkenhead. Like actors in a grim farce, the sailors left the wrecked lifeboat and raced across to the starboard paddle-box to assist in lowering the other boat. The soldiers of the depot companies stood impassively at attention, their faces lit by the faint blue light of the rocket-floats.

  Salmond watched them swing the starboard boat up from its paddle-box and clear of the ship's rail. But he could see that the ropes were too thick and the blocks too small. This might not have mattered so much if the crane-pins and sheave-pins of the lowering gear had been scraped free of rust regularly and coated with tallow and black lead to preserve and lubricate the mechanism. But there was no time for such luxuries in the routine of a ship like the Birkenhead. The starboard lowering-gear creaked and then jammed hopelessly, leaving the lifeboat suspended at a steep angle half-way down the ship's side. There seemed no question of being able to free it in the time that was left.