The Dark Secret of Josephine rb-5

by Dennis Wheatley

  His uneasiness was increased by the fact that on the Sunday follow­ing Bloggs's flogging, five more of the crew failed to attend the Church of England service but joined the Dissenters; and after prayers were over the dozen-odd men continued their meeting squatting on the deck, smoking their clay pipes and talking in low voices.

  He had no grounds for supposing that Bloggs was preaching mutiny but he could make a very good guess at the kind of talk that went on at these discussions, and he had practical experience of the sort of horrors which might result from a general acceptance of Bloggs's doctrines. Only too often he had seen well-intentioned men undermine authority among the illiterate masses, then be swept aside by unscrupulous ruffians who led frenzied mobs to commit the most brutal excesses; so he decided to take an early opportunity of having a talk with Bloggs.

  It came that afternoon when the burly quartermaster did his next trick at the wheel. Sauntering up, Roger dropped into conversation with him and, after a few casual remarks, began to ask about the conditions of the crew.

  The subject was one on which Bloggs had plenty to say. He described the year-old salt pork, bullet-hard peas, grey-coloured duff and weevily biscuits that they had to live on as 'enough to turn a man's stomach', and their quarters as 'scarce fit for animals'. Roger had already noticed that as soon as the ship reached a warmer latitude nearly all the men spent the nights on deck, and now Bloggs told him that they did so only to escape the bugs, fleas and rats that infested their airless foul-smelling den which had neither light nor warmth, or even space enough for all the off-duty watch to stretch out in comfort at one time. In the tropics it was customary for them to sleep near naked, but from the start of the voyage to its finish they never took off all their clothes, and their only faculties for washing were in a bucket of sea water that had been hauled up from over the side.

  In Circe and many ships like her, Bloggs said, the crew's lot was made still harder by unnecessarily harsh treatment, as some Captains allowed, and even encouraged, the mates and bos'n to belabour the men with ropes' ends when hauling on tackle, although in the long run it did not make them work any better. They were expected to take blows and abuse without protest, and the least sign of resent­ment was sufficient to get them clapped into irons. At times a man was picked on for some very minor slackness and given twenty-four hours in the hole just to ginger up his mates; and during the present voyage the only days on which there had not been one or more men in irons, for slight offences, were those of the tempest.

  The wages of an ordinary seaman were three pounds a month, and with the object of preventing them from deserting they were not paid until their ship returned to her home port. Despite that, many of them preferred to forgo their earnings on the outward voyage rather than remain in a bad ship or under a tyrannous captain; and there were so many of both that nearly a third of all the seamen who went out to the West Indies deserted ship when they got there. Some of them took a chance on signing on for a return passage in another vessel, but the great majority elected to join the lawless thousands already there, as beach-combers, smugglers of contraband to the Spanish mainland, or in privateers which were often little better than pirates.

  Obviously matters were even worse than Roger had supposed and he made no attempt to defend the shipowners, who through meanness or neglect were fundamentally responsible; but he did put it to Bloggs, as tactfully as he was able that, however strong the men's grounds for complaint might be, no good could come of encouraging them to hold meetings, at which their natural tendency would be to exaggerate their grievances and in time become obsessed with them.

  At this Bloggs, who had previously been most communicative, suddenly became abrupt and surly in his manner. Evidently he now suspected that Roger was acting as a stool-pigeon for the Captain, and endeavouring to trap him into an admission that he was fomenting unrest among his shipmates. He muttered with a touch of truculence that the only meetings he knew of were those held on Sundays, that every man had a right to worship God in his own way, and that if a few poor mariners chose to join together in prayer that was no concern of their betters.

  Hoping to restore the conversation to a friendly footing, Roger talked for a while about religion and his own tolerant attitude towards it, but either Bloggs was no theologian or thoroughly alarmed, as he refrained from comment, and replied to questions only by mono­syllables; so Roger had to abandon the attempt to wean him from his potentially-dangerous activities.

  On the evening of her tenth day out from Lisbon, the Circe reached Madeira. Captain Cummins had hoped to find there the bulk of the convoy with which they had left Cork, but in that he was disappointed. Between the 19th and the 27th both escorts and nearly sixty merchant vessels had come straggling in, but no more having arrived during the past two days the senior naval officer had assumed the remainder to be either lost or refitting in other ports; so, only that morning, he had given the order for the voyage to be resumed.

  For any but fast ships to cross the Atlantic without escort was to run a grave risk of capture by a privateer on nearing the other side, but both Circe and the British schooner that had accompanied her from Lisbon had a fair turn of speed; so after consultation their Captains decided that as the convoy was only a day's sail ahead of them, rather than delay for a month awaiting the coming of the next, they would take a chance on being able to catch their own up. In consequence, the passengers had only a few hours ashore in the little port of Funchal on the morning of the 30th, while fresh water, vege­tables, fruit and two pipes of Madeira wine were taken aboard; then anchor was weighed again and sail set for the long run to the Indies.

  Now that they were down in the lower thirties conditions were very different. The weather was clement, the air balmy, and instead of progressing laboriously by cross-winds they bowled merrily along under full sail propelled by the North-East Trades. The Iiot weather caused the girls to take to their muslins, and canvas awnings had to be rigged to shade the decks from the blazing sun. Any regrets the passengers had had earlier about making the voyage were now forgotten in the pleasure of long days spent in idle chatter, playing games, reading, and watching schools of porpoises and flying-fish or an occasional whale.

  Captain Cummins now emerged from his cabin only at infrequent intervals. When he did he was always morose and often the worse for liquor; but that may to some degree have been excused by the fact that he had become a prey to considerable anxiety. Circe and the schooner should have overhauled the slow-moving convoy within three days of leaving Madeira, but they had failed to sight it. This meant that they and it were sailing on slightly divergent courses; so by the fourth, or fifth day at the latest, must have passed it, and now had very little chance at all of picking it up. In consequence the Circe would have to run the gauntlet through privateer-infested seas when she entered the Caribbean. As her armament consisted only of a nine pounder in the bow and a long eighteen-pounder stern-chaser these would prove quite inadequate protection against a well-armed rover; so should she fall in with one she would not have much hope of escaping capture unless she could show a clean pair of heels.

  In spite of the brutish Captain's rare appearances on deck the men were kept hard' at it, the majority of the duty watch being slung over the ship s sides in cradles to give her fresh coats of black and yellow paint as she ran smoothly down the trades. There was no let-up in punishments either—as unless there was always a man or two in irons the Captain cursed the mates, accusing them of failing to maintain a sufficiently rigorous discipline—and there were two more floggings.

  Another member of the company who was far from happy was Monsieur Pirouet. As he cooked for the passengers in his stifling little galley he thought longingly of the spacious kitchens at Whiteknights Park, St. Ennins's noble seat in Northamptonshire, and at Stillwaters, Georgina's own great private mansion near Ripley, and even of his domain in Berkeley Square, where he had ruled over a pastry-cook, a vegetable chef and six kitchen-maids. But what troubled this culinary artist ev
en more was the greatly curtailed menus he was compelled to submit to his mistress. Before leaving London he had despatched two wagons in advance loaded with meat, fish, game, poultry and many other things, all packed in crushed ice liberally sprinkled with freezing salt; and on arriving at Bristol he had seen to it that all these were stowed well away from the decks where they would not be affected by the heat. Yet, despite all his precautions, now that nearly two months had elapsed since they had left London, many of the items that remained started to go bad almost as soon as they were unpacked and exposed to the torrid heat. He still produced miracles of omelettes and souffles from his crates of eggs and could always fall back on his hams and smoked salmon, but was nearly reduced to tears by the lack of variety in the dishes he could send to table, and Georgina had her work cut out to console him.

  November the 13th was declared a gala, as on that day they crossed the Tropic of Cancer. West Indiamen did not go as far south as the Equator, where Neptune and his consort would have come on board; so instead it was customary for the traditional ceremonies of crossing the line to be carried out during a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Cancer.

  All work was called off, a large spare sail was rigged to form a bath amidships and filled with water, then two of the crew were lowered over the side to reappear on deck in fancy dress representing the powers of the deep. Everyone aboard who had not previously crossed the tropic was mustered to be initiated into this seafarers' mystery, and a far from happy little crowd they looked, as they had good reason to expect rough handling. But the women were naturally exempted, as also were Roger and Charles, for in those days it was considered almost a crime to treat a person of quality with lack of respect, and to duck a noble Earl was quite unthinkable. Instead, they and their ladies were invited by the ship's cook, who was acting as Master of Ceremonies, to take seats on the dais erected to overlook the bath, at either side of the thrones which had been set up there for Mr. and Mrs. Cancer.

  It was then they realized that none of them had seen Clarissa since breakfast, and Charles suggested that perhaps she had shut herself in her cabin rather than witness the rough horse-play that was expected. But that proved far from the case, as a moment later she emerged from beneath the poop, and at the sight of her they all gasped with astonishment.

  As the coining gala had been a topic of conversation for some days past, young Clarissa had decided to enter into the spirit of the thing and give them a surprise. Swearing Nell and Jenny to secrecy, she had got the two maids to make for her a large fish's tail out of an old dress that was spangled with sequins. Her legs were now encased in it, and her bare shoulders cloaked only with her lovely fair-gold hair which had been brushed out to its fullest extent. To carry her two poles had been lashed to a chair so that it formed a sedan, and in this Tom and Dan bore her triumphantly up to the dais.

  Amanda was extremely angry at this prank as, although there was nothing actually indecent about Clarissa's get-up, she thought it most unseemly that her young cousin should invite ribald comments from the seamen by appearing in such a garb. But to send her back to her cabin was clearly out of the question, for at the first sight of the lovely mermaid the whole ship rang with lusty cheers of appreciation from the crew, and she was at once invited to take the part of Mrs. Cancer, as far surpassing the sailor who had been selected for that role.

  While the ship's fiddler scraped away vigorously, and the men roared out the chorus of "What shall we do with a drunken sailor?" the neophytes were 'baptized' by having a cross marked in ink* on their foreheads, had their faces lathered with a huge brush, were shaved with a wooden razor two feet long, given a beating with ropes' ends and finally thrown into the canvas pool. The poor little Supercargo was given a terrible time and only rescued at the plea of the Mermaid Queen, but the initiation of Monsieur Pirouet proved the high-spot of the day. He showed such intense resentment at having to submit to the ceremony that he received a worse baiting than any of the others and his furious struggles to escape only provoked general mirth. At length Clarissa managed to beg him off further indignities, but not before his beautifully waxed moustache had been ruined; and for several days afterwards even Georgina could not induce him to utter a word.

  It was on November the 19th that another storm blew up and, by ill-luck, one the severity of which was quite exceptional in those latitudes for that time of year, as the hurricane season was in the summer. Again the Circe's masts were stripped of canvas and her hatches battened down, while the wind tore at die rigging and heavy seas thudded on her decks. However, the ship's situation was at no time as critical as it had been during the two worst days of the tempest she had met with off the northern tip of Spain, and her passengers now having been for seven weeks at sea were far better conditioned to stand up to the violent motion. Georgina, Nell and Roger went down with short bouts of sickness, but the others suffered only dis­comfort, and Clarissa once more thoroughly enjoyed herself. The storm parted them from the schooner which had been their companion all the way from Madeira, and they now missed her familiar presence; but the most annoying thing about it was that for the best part of three days the Circe had to run before the storm, which drove her to the north-westward and over five hundred miles out of her course.

  This was particularly infuriating. for Roger, because had the wind continued fair for a further two days they should have sighted Martinique. On his appointment as Governor of the island, their - original plan had been modified to the extent that his party was to be dropped off there while Charles's went on to Jamaica; and, if it proved practical, they would exchange visits after Christmas. This would have made no difference to Circe's schedule, as the normal course for ships sailing to Jamaica was to pass between Martinique and St. Lucia. It was this which had caused the islands to the south and north of that Channel to be named the Windwards and the Leewards respectively; and after leaving them to left and right Jamaica-bound ships completed their voyages by a five-day cruise inside the semi-circle that they formed.

  But now Circe had been carried up to a point some distance north of the Virgin Islands; and Captain Cummins said that, since any attempt to thread a way between the innumerable rocky islets dotted about them would be fraught with grave danger, he must pass outside Porto Rico, then tack down the channel between that island and Santo Domingo. Roger therefore had no option now but to go on to Jamaica and take a ship back to Martinique from there, which would mean a delay of at least a fortnight before he could nope to assume his Governorship.

  On the second day after the storm abated they made a landfall on Porto Rico, and all that afternoon ran along within sight of the big island's north coast. As its dense forests ran right up to the tops of its mountains it appeared to be uninhabited, but they were near enough to make out groups of tall palms dotted along its shores and the line of white surf creaming on its golden beaches. At this first glimpse of the green and azure playground they had come so far to enjoy the passengers were thrilled, but they were given something much less pleasant to think about early next morning.

  As dawn broke Porto Rico was still in sight and Circe was about to round the western end of the island. The channel between it and the eastern end of Santo Domingo was some eighty miles in width, but another ship lay almost directly in her path. The other was a three-masted barque painted from bulwarks to waterline a greenish-yellow colour and would have made her almost unnoticeable had she been lying up in a cove with her sails furled against one of the islands for background. It was this unusual colour which immediately aroused the suspicions of Circe's First Mate. Having bawled an order to "about ship", he ran down to fetch the Captain.

  By the time Captain Cummins, bleary-eyed and clutching about him a revoltingly soiled chamber-robe, reached the poop, the barque was already crowding on more sail and standing out towards them. Within a matter of minutes all hands were on deck, anxiously staring astern, though the early morning haze prevented them from getting a very clear view of the craft which looked as though she was bent on pu
rsuit

  Roused by the shouting, the passengers soon learned the disquieting news, and hurriedly pulling on their clothes came out to join the

  Captain on the poop. By then there could be no mistaking the strangely coloured barque's intent to come up with them; but she was still some two miles distant and the Circe, now heading north-west to clear the invisible point of Santo Domingo, was scudding along on a good brisk breeze.

  That morning, November the 24th, no breakfast was cooked or eaten; for everyone in the Circe too much depended on whether she could outdistance her pursuer for any other matter to be given a thought. Both ships set staysails, stunsails and flying jibs, and heeled far over in the water under every inch of canvas they could carry. As the morning advanced the sun blazed down from a cloudless sky, and with visibility now perfect it became evident that the gap between the two ships was slowly closing. For sailing powers they were fairly evenly matched, but the Circe was heavy laden and the barque in ballast, which made all the difference.

  At eleven o'clock the barque called on her quarry to halt by firing her forward gun. The shot fell a hundred yards short, but at intervals of ten minutes others followed, and the fourth crashed into the Circe's stern.

  Amanda was standing beside Roger. Her grip on his arm tightened a little as she asked anxiously: "What is likely to happen if they capture us?"

  "Nothing very terrible," he replied: and while he wished to reassure her he believed that he was giving her a reasonable forecast, as he went on: "It will be deucedly inconvenient and damnably expensive, but it is unlikely they will do us any injury. Should we have to surrender they will put a prize crew on board and sail Circe to their home port. If she's French that will almost certainly be in Guadeloupe, as the recapture of that island last spring again gave France a base in the West Indies. But she may be American, and if so we would be carried much farther from our destination. In either case I fear it would be months before we reached Martinique, as privateers sell the ships they capture and demand ransoms for passengers and crew. But they operate on licence from their governments, so are under an obligation to treat their captives honourably as prisoners-of-war."