The War Chest

by Porter Hill

  ‘Yes, Captain sahib. And Groot’s sailing master at the wheel.’ Jingee turned to a locker, took out a freshly laundered shirt and passed it to Horne, holding out his hand for the wrinkled garment that Horne had picked up from the arm of the chair.

  Surrendering the soiled shirt, Horne asked, ‘What about the new men?’

  Jingee tossed the shirt towards the door where he would not miss it on the way out of the cabin. Crossing to the berth to straighten Horne’s bed linen, he answered, ‘The new men ask questions all the time about Marines, Captain sahib. They don’t understand the ways of Bombay Marines.’

  Who did understand the Bombay Marines? Particularly those in Horne’s squadron? Manning a pirate frigate and searching for a French treasure ship—Horne’s Bombay Marines must seem normal to very few outsiders.

  ‘The new hands‚’ continued Jingee, ‘think that a Marine should be—’ he nodded at the door, ‘—a guard. A sentinel. A man who stands in the companionway with a musket on his shoulder.’ Jingee stood rigidly, chest thrown out, both arms at his sides to illustrate his point.

  ‘That’s how a Marine should be, Jingee. Aboard other ships. Navy ships.’

  Jingee bent over the wrinkled bed linen. ‘But not the Huma.’

  ‘Nor the Eclipse. Nor any ship over which I have had command, and probably will ever have command.’

  Horne preferred a crew to be versatile, capable of as many feats as possible; he also believed that the men themselves preferred their duty to be that way.

  ‘Do you know what the name means, Captain sahib?’

  ‘What name, Jingee?’

  ‘The Huma?’

  Horne had never thought about it. ‘No. What?’

  ‘It’s a mythical bird. A bird in Indian folklore which never stops flying.’

  ‘A bird that’s always in flight?’ Horne thought of the noisy seagulls which had thankfully disappeared from the stern windows.

  ‘The Huma flies day and night, Captain sahib. Never alights on a tree or a rock or a fence. Always staying in air.’

  Horne was intrigued. He remembered how he had first visualised the frigate when he had seen it from the Indiaman, seeing it as a large, magnificent eagle, travelling with a smaller predator, a kingfisher.

  Bending over the berth, Jingee smoothed the sheet, saying, ‘That’s a sad story, don’t you think, Captain sahib? A bird that can never stop flying?’

  ‘Perhaps for a nesting bird, yes. But not for a predator, a hunter, or for a messenger. The gift of staying in motion could be a great attribute, Jingee. A wonderful gift. A fine feat.’

  Jingee stood upright, surprised by Horne’s opinion.

  ‘Imagine it,’ Horne went on. ‘Such a bird would not have to waste time resting, taking food, sleeping. It would always have the strength to keep on flying, discovering new things, travelling to new places, encountering new things.’

  Jingee bent back over the berth, shaking his head; he decided that Horne, the Captain sahib, would probably be such a bird rather than a nice, cosy nesting bird, a partridge, or a dove.

  Horne picked some raisins from the porridge, eating them like sweets. ‘Do you think the name’s an omen, Jingee?’ he asked.

  ‘Omen, Captain sahib?’

  ‘For us? That we’ll always be on the wing? Never remaining in one place?’

  ‘I shall ask the astrologer, Captain sahib, when we return to Bombay.’

  ‘And if we don’t drop anchor, you’ll have your answer.’

  Jingee laughed at Horne’s flippant remark. Moving towards the door, he glanced at him with admiration, knowing why he respected him. A stern, dedicated man, Horne also had a whimsical side to him, an appreciation of the mysterious, the unknown, the sacred. Jingee truly believed that Horne possessed great karma, that intangible, indefinable essence of a man’s soul.

  Seated behind his desk, Horne spooned his porridge as he studied a chart for Cape Agulhas. ‘Jingee,’ he asked, ‘have there been complaints from the crew about their food?’

  Jingee cooked for Horne and, occasionally, for the other Marines, but never for the crew. The ship’s galley had a Malagasy cook. But Jingee had seen their provisions and answered, ‘The food is bad, Captain sahib. There are weevils in the biscuits. The dried fish is too salty. The barrel meat is tough as leather.’

  Horne had feared this. He had seen one cask of salt fish after weighing anchor and had turned up his nose at the stench. At Port Diego-Suarez, he had been too busy supervising the ship’s refitting to attend to its provisioning. His first instincts on discovering the inferior condition of the supplies at sea had been to share his own food with the crew, but Jingee had pointed out that there would not even be enough staples from Horne’s provisions for one complete galley meal.

  Why had Governor Spencer done such a thing? Horne wondered. Or had some local merchant taken advantage of the Company’s situation and produced old rations, a sad but familiar trick?

  Jingee frowned. ‘If anybody gets hungry, I know where they can get a fat monkey to cook.’

  Horne raised his eyes. He knew what monkey Jingee meant.

  Jingee gripped an imaginary knife, threatening, ‘I’m going to kill that monkey myself, Captain sahib.’

  Fred Babcock had kept the nut-brown monkey from Madagascar and brought it aboard the Huma, arguing that Navy ships had dogs and cats, so why could not the Bombay Marine have a monkey?

  Jingee shook his head, saying, ‘You’ll see, Captain sahib. You’ll see. Babcock will bring that monkey to this morning’s meeting. You’ll see how loudly it chatters and screams.’

  A meeting had been slotted between the morning and the late morning watch. Horne hoped no altercation would develop between his men because of a monkey; he had too many important details to discuss.

  * * *

  Babcock’s pet monkey added to Jingee’s disapproval of the towering American Marine. A man who did not properly address his superiors was not a man to be admired. Jingee had always secretly disapproved of Babcock’s disrespectful ways but, of course, had tried hard not to betray any of his feelings. He had noticed, however, that Babcock seldom saluted Horne, that he seldom addressed him as ‘sir’ or ‘sahib’ or ‘schipper’, or however people addressed officers in that far-off land across the Pacific Ocean called the Americas.

  Jingee thought about Fred Babcock—and his annoying little brown pet monkey—as he washed Horne’s laundry. Using ash soap that he carried tied around his waist in a leather pouch, he crouched in the space which seamen used for their latrine, the enclosure at the fore part of the ship and named for its location—the ‘heads’.

  Rubbing a shirt’s collar, his thoughts moved to another Marine, Bapu. What was happening to Bapu? How would he come back to earth in the divine cycle of existence? Would he return to relive his role as a warrior? Or would Bapu’s forebears consider that he had forsaken the Kshatriya caste? Being disowned, Bapu would be reborn outside the system of the four castes, coming back a Panchama—somebody so deplorable that people would not touch him. Perhaps he would even be reincarnated as someone who had to ring a bell to warn unsuspecting strangers that his polluting presence was approaching them.

  Not wanting to wash Horne’s clothing in harsh, salty sea water, Jingee rinsed the shirt in a bucket of drinking water he had taken unnoticed from the casks. As he worked, he thought about the rest of the Marines. He had definite opinions about each and every one of them.

  Mustafa and Groot had been good friends of Babcock in Bombay; the three of them had lived together. But, then, they were topiwallahs—foreigners who wore hats, not turbans. In fact, Groot never took off that blue cap. Did he wear it for some religious reason? Was he some kind of northern Sikh?

  Thinking of religion, Jingee reflected that Mustafa was a Muslim. Muslim invaders had come to India more than three hundred years ago and put their Grand Moghul on the throne. The Hindu Tamils in the south had never accepted the Moghul’s religion, but many northern Indians not only bowed to the
mighty court of wealth and power but accepted the word of Allah.

  Jud—also a Muslim—mystified Jingee more than Mustafa. To Jingee, Mustafa was little better than a thug. A tough. But, Jud, ah, he was different. He was special.

  Jingee considered that Jud must be an exceptional man for the priests of the Red Temple to allow him to guard their fabulous treasures. Hindu priests were Brahmins, the highest caste in all creation, and if Brahmins recognised something unique in Jud, then he must be no common thief. He must have great Karma. Jingee often heard Jud singing to the wind and suspected it was some kind of religious chant, some conversation with spirits.

  The Japanese Marine, Kiro, frightened more than baffled Jingee. Japanese Orientals and Asian Orientals were similar, yet so different. All Bombay Marines were supposed to be accomplished assassins. Jingee had killed his previous employer—an English district officer—who had defied Hindu law by yoking a Brahmin to an Untouchable to till his kitchen garden. Jingee had warned the foreigner that he was violating sacred laws. But the foreigner had continued to ignore Jingee’s warning and Jingee had driven a dagger through the man’s sacrilegious heart. For that crime Jingee had been condemned to Bombay Castle.

  Kiro, however, was a different kind of murderer. He was stealthy, quiet, his eyes like water at night. Seldom talking, never divulging secrets. Yes, Jingee had to admit to himself that if he were to fear any of the Bombay Marines, it would be Kiro.

  He stood wringing water from Horne’s laundry over the blue-grey waves lapping below, thinking of the way the Captain sahib held together this unusual assortment of men. Without Horne, the Marines would not talk to each other, not see each other, not even know each other. They were united by Horne and, of course, by their criminal backgrounds. But the important link was the Captain sahib.

  Pulling out a length of string from the side of his dhoti, Jingee knotted it across the heads, letting the wind off the sea begin drying the wet laundry. The morning was hot. The clothes would dry quickly. Jingee was not on watch duty, so he could stand here waiting until it was time for the morning meeting. If somebody wanted to use the heads, Jingee did not care. They could go somewhere else. His work came first. The Captain sahib reigned supreme.

  * * *

  The six Marines came to Horne’s cabin for the meeting. Seeing them gathered so casually inside the small space reminded Horne of the old days aboard the Eclipse.

  Pressing on with business at hand, he addressed them standing at his desk. ‘I haven’t informed you about the purpose of our new assignment for the simple reason that we’ve had more important things to occupy our minds. But now that the Huma’s at sea, I can tell you the bad news—we’ve been deputed to find a needle in a haystack.’

  Glancing from Babcock with his monkey by the door, to Mustafa cross-legged on the deck, to the other four men lounging or squatting around the cabin, he continued, ‘We’re here to find a French ship, the Royaume. She sailed from Le Havre six months ago carrying a shipment of gold. She’s bound for Mauritius. Our orders are to commandeer her.’

  Babcock whistled.

  ‘Apart from the gold‚’ elaborated Horne, ‘the Royaume is supposedly carrying heavy cargo. Disguising her true mission, I suppose. Whatever the reason, the cargo’s in our favour as it slows down her progress.’

  Groot, sitting cross-legged to Horne’s right, raised his hand.

  Horne nodded permission to speak.

  ‘Schipper‚’ he began, using the Dutch word for captain. ‘How is the French ship armed?’

  ‘We don’t know, Groot. Incidentally, how do our guns stand?’ He looked at Kiro.

  Kiro had been a gunner aboard a Japanese pirate boat out of Nagasaki, learning English from a Lascar sailor before being captured in an attack on an East India Company merchantman and jailed in Bombay Castle. Because of his experience Horne had appointed him gunner aboard the Huma.

  Sitting on deck in front of Horne’s berth, Kiro answered, ‘Larboard guns are stronger than starboard, sir.’

  Horne said, ‘We must try for perfect balance, Kiro. Also, I want swivel guns ready on the forecastle.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Horne’s hazel eyes moved from Kiro to Jud squatting next to him, and then to Jingee, the only Marine able to stand up straight without brushing his head on the cabin’s low beams.

  ‘If any of you men have questions, ask them. We can always work out some kind of plan. The orders are difficult but not impossible. We’ve had a tougher command.’

  Babcock laughed. ‘That’s the trouble. We shouldn’t have done so well.’

  ‘Are you afraid, Babcock?’

  Babcock answered honestly, one hand stroking the monkey cradled on his arm. ‘Not of having to find a needle in a haystack. But set against a treasure ship better armed than us, hell, yes, I’m … afraid!’

  ‘We know nothing of its munitions,’ Horne reminded Babcock.

  Jud asked, ‘What about her escort, sir?’

  ‘My information, Jud, is that the Royaume left Le Havre unescorted.’

  Horne resettled himself on the edge of the desk. ‘But I’ll say this. If there is an escort, if the Royaume is sailing in convoy, we shall abandon the mission. Immediately. No permission asked.’

  Jud smiled. ‘Sir, you of all men would find a way to sneak us into a convoy and make away with a gold chest.’

  Horne glowed, not above enjoying idle flattery.

  Groot called, ‘What we are doing now, schipper, is patrolling all southern waters for a French ship.’

  ‘Yes, Groot. In effect. The winds fortunately narrow down the work for us. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Agulhas, the Roaring Forties should bring the Royaume directly into our path.’

  Jingee asked, ‘Is it possible, Captain sahib, that the French ship has already passed?’

  ‘Or pirates got to the gold before us?’ put in Jud.

  ‘Those are both possibilities,’ said Horne. ‘We merely have to continue our search, looking, waiting, hoping.’

  He glanced around the cabin. ‘Any more questions?’

  There was a silence broken only by the sound of the Huma sailing under full canvas, the creak of timbers, the prow cutting through lapping waves.

  Horne looked at Mustafa, realising that the Turk had been silent throughout the entire morning’s meeting.

  ‘Mustafa, do you have any questions?’

  The beefy Turk began to speak but stopped, shaking his head, his thick black moustache turning down at both bushy ends.

  ‘What is it, Mustafa? Something’s troubling you?’

  Glancing around the cabin with quick, darting eyes, Mustafa looked back at Horne and asked, ‘What do we do with the gold, sir, when we get it?’

  Laughter filled the cabin.

  Horne raised both hands for silence. ‘Return it to Bombay—’

  Mustafa’s face fell.

  Horne’s answer had only been a quick response, and he added, ‘You didn’t think we were going to be able to keep it, did you, Mustafa?’

  ‘Sir, if there’s a lot of it and we’re the only ones who know where it is—’

  The men laughed louder.

  Horne smiled, realising, however, that Mustafa had raised a legitimate point. Governor Spencer had not told Horne what to do with the valuable cargo if and when the Marines did seize it. Was that not strange?

  * * *

  Jud left the meeting early to return to the forenoon watch. Horne had divided duty into six watches, joining the first and second dog watches into one stand.

  Long hours of raw, fresh sea air invigorated Jud. He was pleased to be free again of land. Shipboard life was the only true happiness he knew—at least, these days.

  Life had changed after Jud’s wife, Maringa, had died. Tall, sweet-faced, with eyes like a doe, Maringa had been a house slave in the castle of the Omani Sheik All Hadd. Jud had been saving to buy her freedom for the time when she gave birth to their child.

  Maringa had brought a son
in the world. A Nubian midwife had given Jud an exact description of the child she had delivered, stillborn—Maringa had also died the same night.

  In despair, Jud had refused to eat for a week, wanting to die himself, to join his wife and son in a faraway world. But the gods would not have Jud. So he had turned to crime, becoming reckless as he burgled the homes of rich merchants, shops and warehouses, behaving as if he was determined to be caught. He was caught, stealing from a warehouse of the Honourable East India Company, and was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment in Bombay Castle. He would not have cared if it had been a hundred, or a thousand years.

  The Huma—like the cells honeycombed beneath Bombay Castle—was a world without women. Jud was happy in such a world, at least for the present. At sea, alone on the quarterdeck, or high on the yardarm where he liked to crawl and sit by himself, he talked to his son, speaking to his dead child in the ancient African practice of ancestor worship. But instead of talking to ancestors, Jud talked to his progeny.

  ‘How are you, boy?’ he called to the wind.

  ‘Boy, you have a bigger eye than me. Show us how to find that French ship, boy. Help your old man.’

  Standing on the quarterdeck on the forenoon watch, Jud looked at the southern sky as he talked to his son and, spotting a trace of a storm cloud, he asked, ‘Boy, what you blowing my way? Is your Ma angry today, boy? Is that your Ma’s temper I see rising like brimstone and smoke?’

  Chapter Ten

  RENDEZVOUS

  The Huma grew restless as morning passed, rising, dipping, lifting on swells, crashing down into the troughs. Overhead, the sky remained cloudless, the sun a yellow blot high on a blue bowl, but all around the frigate the sea churned and thrashed, becoming a greenish-grey murk.

  Looking southeast across the bows from the quarterdeck, Horne watched a bank of dark clouds rising on the horizon, forming like a dust storm on a plain. Looking towards the wheel, he saw Groot—a blue peaked cap set back on his tow-blond hair—keeping a wary eye on the clouds.