‘Captain Quested!’ snapped Cusack. ‘I demand an explanation!’
At first the captain ignored him, turning to his crew. ‘Bring the ship to the wind, there! Brace up the fore and mizzen tops’ls and haul aback the main yard!’
‘Cheerly does it, bullies!’ said Macy. ‘Let’s get underway, before those kanakas rally and start chasing us in their canoes!’
Quested slapped his second mate on the back. ‘Good work, Mr Forgan.’
Forgan grinned. ‘My pleasure, Cap’n.’
‘Captain Quested!’ insisted Cusack.
The master finally turned to meet the Irishman’s glare. ‘What seems to be the trouble, Mr Cusack?’
‘Captain Quested, I demand to know what’s going on!’
Quested gestured dismissively. ‘Just a little diversion, that’s all.’
‘A diversion! Diverting whom from what, may I ask?’
‘My agreement with you is that I’ll deliver you in one piece to your friends in ’Frisco,’ Quested said coolly. ‘How I conduct my voyage on the way is no concern of yours.’
‘It’s my charter!’
‘Correction, Mr Cusack. It’s the Irish Directory’s charter. If you have any complaints about the way I do business, I suggest you discuss it with them when you get to New York.’ The captain seemed to soften. ‘Look, calm yourself, Mr Cusack. We were just making a lot of fire and noise, that’s all. Those bombs are deadly when they penetrate a whale’s blubber, but otherwise they’re no more dangerous than firecrackers.’
‘Then account for all that screaming, damn your eyes!’
‘Kanakas have a low pain threshold, Mr Cusack. That’s a well-known fact. You’ve only got to slap them about a bit, and they blubber like weenies. Isn’t that right, Mr Macy?’
The chief mate nodded.
‘I told Mr Forgan to try to avoid hitting anyone; if any of them got hurt, it was an accident.’
‘One of them ran in front of my bomb-gun,’ explained Forgan, grinning. Macy cuffed Forgan around the back of the head, but Cusack did not see: he was too busy glaring at Quested.
‘There’s no real harm done, Mr Cusack,’ insisted the captain. ‘You have my word on it.’
‘No harm done,’ Cusack said dully. ‘You set their entire village alight, and you tell me there’s no harm done?’
‘You think the kanakas build their huts out of palm-thatch and pandanus leaves because they don’t know any better? These island are often ravaged by cyclones, Mr Cusack. The kanakas build their homes out of such materials because they’re easy to replace.’
‘But… why?’
‘I can’t explain now; but rest assured, it had to be done. In a few days I’ll be able to explain it all to you; and I hope then you’ll see I had no choice. What do you take me for? The kind of man who takes pleasure in the suffering of others?’ Butter would not have melted in his mouth. ‘Trust me, Mr Cusack. That’s all I ask.’
‘I’d sooner trust an Englishman, Captain Quested.’ Cusack turned on his heel and stalked back down the after hatch.
‘He’s going to be trouble, Cap’n,’ opined Macy.
‘Aye,’ agreed Quested, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Who’d’ve thought a Paddy revolutionary would get so sentimental over a bunch of goddamned kanakas?’
‘That’s the least of it,’ said Macy. ‘What’s he going to say when the trade goods are brought on board?’
‘You’re right,’ said Quested. Then he shrugged. ‘Ah, what does it matter? If he tries to make trouble, we can just hand him over to Kowiowi with the trade goods. It’ll mean kissing goodbye to the balance of that ten thousand dollars; but Thorpe’s offered me twice that. Besides, if I have to choose between collecting that five thousand dollars and avenging my nephew’s death, it’s no choice at all. There are some things you can’t put a price on. Killigrew’s head is one of them.’
‘Now just hold on a minute!’ protested Gardner. ‘Don’t we get a say in this? We’ve all got lays in the profits of the voyage, too…’
‘Stow it, Mr Gardner. I’m captain of the Lucy Ann; you knew that when you shipped with me; and you agreed to abide by my orders. Well, those are my orders.’
‘I shipped with you because I was told that no voyage with Captain Quested at the helm failed to turn a good profit; but I never shipped to take part in some quest for personal vengeance.’
Quested put his hand on the revolver holstered at his hip. ‘Are you saying you want to break your contract with me, Mr Gardner? Is that it?’
The third mate blanched. ‘No, sir! That ain’t what I meant at all…’
‘Easy, amigos!’ said Forgan. ‘No need to part brass rags. The way I figure it, there’s a way Thorpe can have his sandalwood, the cap’n can have his vengeance and we can all share in the profits of this voyage.’
‘Go on, Mr Forgan.’
The second mate lowered his voice. ‘We’ll get the doc to put pipe ash in Cusack’s vittles.’
‘Pipe ash?’
‘It’s an old trick for swinging the lead when there’s dirty work to be done; I used to know a sailor who’d put ash in his own coffee rather than pick the stink out of the casks, until the old man got wise to his tricks. It made him sick as a dog for a few hours, and after that he was right as a trivet. If the doc puts pipe ash in Cusack’s dinner tomorrow, he’ll be so sick by the time the cap’n gets back from Port Resolution, he won’t know what’s going on. By the time he’s recovered, Erromanga will be behind us, and he’ll be none the wiser to anything that happened.’
Macy and Gardner exchanged hopeful glances. Quested was silent, and then a smile spread across his face. ‘I’m obliged to you, Mr Forgan. That’s as neat and tidy a solution as any. Cigar ash seasoning with dinner it is. We’d better get smoking, gentlemen.’
‘What about them?’ Macy jerked his head to where Lissak stood with the other convicts.
‘I’m sure we don’t need to worry about them.’ Quested turned to Wyatt. ‘What do you say? You and your friends aren’t squeamish about what happens to a few kanakas, are you, Mr Wyatt?’
‘You can sell a thousand of the heathen bastards into slavery for all we care, Captain Quested.’ As usual, Wyatt took it upon himself to speak for all the convicts. ‘As long as you deliver us safely to California, you’ll have our thanks.’
‘Now that’s what I like to hear, Mr Wyatt – a little appreciation when one man does a favour for another. As it happens, I’m glad you feel that way: I’ll be in need of a man of your talents and disposition tomorrow. Help me out, and I might just cut you and your friends in for a share of the profits.’
‘What do you want us to do?’
* * *
‘Whatever it was, it’s stopped now.’ Molineaux picked his way over the bodies of the men who lay cramped on the deck of the Vanguard to where Killigrew stood at the helm. With Ågård acting as boatswain, Endicott and three other seamen worked the sails, while the remaining sixteen bluejackets sat on the deck with Summerbee and his three marines; those seamen who had muskets checked and rechecked them; while the rest clutched cutlasses, tomahawks and boarding pikes.
The schooner was a small vessel, barely thirty-five feet from stem to stern; small enough for Richards to make short voyages between the islands of the New Hebrides solo, if the need arose, although he usually employed the services of Sharky and a couple of other friendly natives to help him.
It was not often that the lieutenant had the chance to get his hands on the tiller of a ship. On board the Tisiphone, that task was usually given to one of the hands, rotated amongst the crew so that sooner or later every seaman got a chance to learn how to steer, under the close supervision of an experienced quartermaster. But as much as he enjoyed being at the helm, he was in no mood to appreciate it now.
‘What was it?’ he asked Molineaux. ‘Musket fire?’
‘I don’t think so, sir.’
The Vanguard was still off the south-east coast of Tanna. The shore party had responde
d with impressive efficiency to Killigrew’s order to board the schooner, but it had taken more than three hours to get the Vanguard out of Port Resolution in the dark, tack around Yewao Point against the south-easterly winds and sail with the wind two points before the port beam to a position four miles from where the mysterious ship had last been seen. Killigrew had been hoping they would encounter the ship sailing in the opposite direction, but so far they had seen no sign of her; if she had changed course and was sailing clockwise round the island, she had had enough time to get more than a dozen miles away by now.
The sound of distant bangs had come from somewhere off to landward, but it had echoed off the sides of the two mountains ashore, making it impossible to pinpoint precisely. To leeward, all Killigrew could make out was the faint white gleam of the surf crashing against the shore in the weak moonlight, but he was aware that Mount Melen towered above them in the blackness somewhere off the starboard bow.
‘Grab that bull’s-eye and see if you can signal the lookouts, Molineaux,’ ordered Killigrew. ‘Send that this is Killigrew on board the Vanguard, and ask them to acknowledge. Cavan, you take the telescope from the binnacle and look for a response.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Molineaux sent the signal, passing his sennit hat before the beam to break it up, while Cavan levelled the telescope in the direction Killigrew indicated.
‘No reply, sir,’ said the midshipman, when Molineaux had finished signalling.
‘Send again, Molineaux…’
‘Wait a minute, sir!’ said Cavan ‘I’m getting a response.’
‘Good. Molineaux, send this: “What?”’ The signals he had worked out did not include the word ‘bangs’, but the lookouts must have heard the reports too. Killigrew hoped they would understand his own bewilderment, and find some way of signalling an answer, if they had one.
The seaman sent the signal, and before long the reply came back. ‘“Lights, west by north-west, twelve miles.”’
‘Take the tiller, Ågård.’ Killigrew descended to the Vanguard’s cramped cabin, where Strachan was stretched out on the window seat, sleeping off the whisky. If the ship did turn out to be slavers and there was a fight, then Killigrew knew that if anyone was badly wounded then Strachan’s best chance of saving them lay in getting to them as quickly as possible. But first they would have to catch the slavers, and if this hunt turned into a stern chase, that could take hours: there was plenty of time for Strachan to sleep.
Killigrew lit an oil-lamp and searched through the drawers in the cabin until he found a rough chart of Tanna that, from the look of it, had probably been drawn by Richards himself. Spreading it on the table, Killigrew took a ruler and pencil and drew a line running west by north-west from the lookouts’ position; then he took a compass and measured off twelve miles. The location this pinpointed was approximately halfway up the west coast: whatever the bangs had signified, it was almost certainly the handiwork of the ship that had vanished. But it would take the Vanguard the best part of six hours to get there.
Strachan stirred and blinked at Killigrew, without trying to get up. ‘What’s going on?’ he murmured sleepily.
‘I wish I knew,’ Killigrew replied grimly.
* * *
‘Stand clear of the chain!’ ordered Quested. ‘All hands bring ship to anchor!’
One of the bower anchors was dropped from the cathead and the chain rattled noisily through the hawsehole as the anchor splashed into the waters a hundred yards out from the north coast of Tanna. The northern end of the island was relatively flat, a broad expanse of scrub and grassland, and in the early morning light the mountains which dominated the southern end of the island were visible about fifteen miles off.
One thing was obvious to Lissak as he stood on deck and watched the captain and his shore party get ready to leave the ship: Captain Quested was insane. If he wanted to kidnap natives from that island, that was no skin off the old lag’s nose; but he could easily have taken them from the village they had attacked last night. Yet clearly that was not enough for Quested. He wanted to take them from Port Resolution, right from under Killigrew’s nose, just as he had taken Cusack from Norfolk Island right under the nose of the Tisiphone.
And he wanted Killigrew. Lissak had heard from some of the hands on board the Lucy Ann about how the lieutenant had killed Quested’s nephew in Hobart Town. Whatever it cost Quested, no matter how long it took, he hungered for Killigrew’s death with an intensity that glittered feverishly in his eyes. Lissak shuddered: he was glad he was not the lieutenant.
Forgan came up on deck. ‘Cusack?’ Quested asked him.
The second mate grinned. ‘Fast asleep in his cabin, Cap’n.’
‘Good! Let’s leave it that way for now.’ Quested turned to Macy. ‘Make sure doc puts the ashes in his dinner. I want him in his bunk when I come back aboard this evening. You’ll have the larboard side to shoreward when you get to Judgement Point; make sure you keep it that way when you anchor. I don’t want Cusack glancing out of his cabin porthole and seeing me bringing the trade goods on board.’
‘And what if we run into Killigrew sailing in the opposite direction on our way to Judgement Point?’ demanded Macy.
‘You won’t. By now Killigrew will have heard there was an attack on that village last night. Word travels fast on an island like Tanna: if there’s an attack on one village, word goes out to warn the others by the bush telegraph. Richards understands the jungle drums; he’ll have told Killigrew, and Killigrew will have commandeered the Vanguard to investigate. If he left Port Resolution within an hour of our attack on the village, he’ll reach it some time later this morning; when he gets there, it won’t take him long to realise it was a diversion. He’ll ask himself what he was being diverted from; he may not guess what, but as to where, there’s only one possible answer.’
Macy smiled. ‘Port Resolution.’
‘And the quickest way from that village to Port Resolution by sea is around the south coast,’ concluded Quested. ‘He’ll know we’ve got several hours’ head start on him; but he’ll also know that if we’re sailing around the north side of the island, we’ll have to tack down the east coast; so he’ll think he’s got a chance of getting there before us.’
‘And supposing he guesses that we’re going overland?’ demanded Wyatt. ‘Supposing he heads overland himself? He could be back at Port Resolution before we get there.’
‘He could,’ allowed Quested. ‘We’ll find out soon enough. We’ll approach the village carefully, find out who’s there before we attack. If Killigrew gets back before us, or if he never left, we’ll just have to improvise, that’s all.’
‘I don’t like it,’ grumbled Wyatt. ‘Going overland. It’s got to be about twenty miles – some of that through thick bush and rough country. What if we run into any natives?’
‘That’s why we’re taking precautions,’ said Quested. ‘Mr Forgan? Pass out the precautions.’
The ‘precautions’ were a veritable arsenal of firearms: a musket and two revolvers for each of the eleven men who would go ashore with Quested: Forgan, Wyatt, Mangal, Vickers, and seven of the spouters from the Lucy Ann, including the massive Lawless Twins.
Wyatt checked his revolvers. ‘They’re primed and loaded, Mr Wyatt,’ Quested assured him. ‘I’m trusting you and your two friends. I’d advise you not to disappoint me.’
‘Do all whalers carry this many guns on board, Captain Quested?’
‘Most carry a few. But I learned the advantage of being well armed when I was a sandalwood trader; I thought this little lot might come in handy when Mr Fallon asked me to rescue Cusack from Norfolk Island. If we do run into any kanakas, they’ll outnumber us ten to one; the only thing that will save us will be firepower. And we’ll need it when we get to Port Resolution. Don’t underestimate the kanakas, Mr Wyatt. They use their bows for hunting, not for war; but I’ve seen one of them throw a spear clean through six inches of solid wood from a distance of fifty yards. Firearms won
’t save us if they attack us in the bush: they’ll appear out of the trees with their clubs and tomahawks, and strike before any of us gets a chance to shoot, so keep your eyes and ears open as soon as we get in the trees. Oh, and another thing: some of them will have muskets. They may even know how to use them.’
‘This just gets better and better,’ Wyatt said sourly.
‘Scared, Mr Wyatt? I can leave you behind on the Lucy Ann, if you prefer. Someone else can go in your place.’
Wyatt shouldered his musket. ‘I fear no man.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Quested picked up a brown-paper package, looping his hook under the string which held it together, and handed it to Mangal. ‘You take this.’
‘What is it?’ asked Mangal. Stuffing his face as usual – he had a hunk of stale bread in one hand – he spoke with his mouth full and had no qualms about letting everyone see the half-masticated food on his tongue.
Quested grinned. ‘A little present for Killigrew. Something to make sure he comes dashing to Mrs Cafferty’s rescue after he gets back to Port Resolution.’
‘But we do not have Mrs Cafferty on board!’
‘He doesn’t know that; and what’s in that package will convince him we do. Gog? Magog? You two take a couple of coils of rope each. We’ll need them when we get to Port Resolution. All right, let’s go.’
* * *
‘This must be the place.’ From the deck of the Vanguard, Killigrew studied the village ashore through the telescope. Many of the native huts had been burned to cinders, and there were several bodies sprawled on the sand, including one or two small children. Killigrew was close enough to make out the silvery tracks of tears on the cheeks of the brown-skinned women in grass skirts.
It was ten past seven in the morning, and already the sun was high in the sky. As soon as the Vanguard hove into sight, there was much activity ashore as the men of the village ran to and fro amongst the huts which still stood.
‘Butchery,’ snorted Strachan. He looked pale and ashen from the previous night’s excesses. ‘But why?’
Killigrew and the Incorrigibles Page 29