He glanced inside the stateroom, pulled one of the sheets off the bunk and cut it into strips with which he tied up and gagged the two unconscious convicts. Then he slotted his cutlass back into its scabbard, picked up Jarrett’s pistol and crossed to the door. He listened and, hearing nothing, eased it open a crack to peer out. The corridor beyond, illuminated by an oil-lamp, was deserted. He slipped through the door and closed it softly behind him.
Listening at the first door he came to, he heard a man groaning. Not quite sure what to expect, he opened the door and let the pistol in his hand precede him through. Cusack lay on the bunk, tossing and turning, his face deathly pale. He was neither asleep nor awake, but trapped in a fevered limbo between the two. In any event, he was quite oblivious of Killigrew, and in no condition to present a threat to anyone. Killigrew left him where he was and slipped back out into the corridor; Cusack could wait.
He was about to try the door to the next cabin when he heard ponderous footsteps descending the companion ladder up ahead. He turned, levelling the pistol, and saw the biggest, ugliest man he had ever had the misfortune to clap eyes on The behemoth was followed by its mirror image. They both stopped when they saw him.
‘You two must be Gog and Magog,’ Killigrew said wryly.
The two giants exchanged glances, and then one of them reached into his trouser pocket.
‘Hey! Belay that. Whatever you’ve got in there, bring it out handsomely.’
The twin drew his hand from his pocket and held up a coin for Killigrew to see. Then he flipped it, caught it out of the air and slapped it against the back of one of his massive, hairy paws.
‘Heads,’ said the other.
They both consulted the coin. The one who had spoken looked delighted. ‘I win, Magog,’ he told his brother.
‘Excuse me?’ said Killigrew. ‘Do you mind not ignoring me when I’m holding you both at gunpoint—’
Gog advanced on Killigrew. The lieutenant menaced him with the pistol. ‘One more step, my bucko…’
Gog clapped a massive hand over Killigrew’s wrist and forced the pistol aside. Then, with his other hand on the back of Killigrew’s neck, he slammed the lieutenant against the bulkhead to his left and twisted his arm up into the small of his back. Even if Killigrew had not had that shoulder dislocated eleven months earlier, it would still have been agonising. He cried out and dropped the pistol. Gog kicked the gun with his heel so that it slithered across the deck and came to rest by his brother’s feet. He released the lieutenant, allowing Killigrew to see Magog stoop and pick up the pistol. He tucked it in his belt, and stood with his arms folded.
‘Now it’s a fair fight,’ said Gog.
Squared up to Gog, Killigrew looked him up and down. Even with their knees bent, like a couple of overgrown orang-utans, both twins had to hold their heads at an angle to avoid banging them against the beams on the low deck head. ‘You against me?’ Killigrew spluttered incredulously. ‘That’s not my idea of… fair!’ On the last word, he threw his fist at Gog’s jaw in a powerhouse right cross. It looked pretty hopeless, but it was worth a try: sometimes the bigger they were, the harder they fell.
Gog’s head was snapped round by the blow. He turned his face back to Killigrew with a contemptuous snort.
Killigrew wasted no time in self-recrimination, but at once launched into an all-out attack, the pugilistic set piece he thought of as the Killigrew special: right jab, right jab, left uppercut, right cross and then the coup de grâce – that old left hook that came out of nowhere when they were too dazed to see it coming. It almost never failed to floor an opponent.
Almost never.
‘Finished?’ asked Gog.
‘I think so,’ Killigrew said with a sinking feeling.
‘Good.’ Gog reached forward and seized a fistful of Killigrew’s shirt in his massive paw. Then, with one arm only, he lifted the lieutenant bodily off his feet and smashed his skull against the deck head above. When he released him, Killigrew staggered on watery legs and had to grab hold of one of the handrails to stop himself from crumpling.
Gog punched him. Before Killigrew lost consciousness, the last thing he was aware of was the door at the far end of the corridor splintering under his weight.
* * *
Molineaux guessed there were still thirty minutes until midnight when he saw a lantern being raised to the masthead of the Lucy Ann. He was still trying to work out what it could signify when one of the men with Quested saw it too, and pointed it out to the captain. Quested said something which made his companions laugh, and then stuck two fingers in his mouth, blowing a piercing whistle and motioning for someone unseen to join him from out of the dunes.
He’s wasting his time, Molineaux thought to himself with a grim smile.
Five men stood up from various positions where they had been concealed amongst the dunes; but if Molineaux had failed to spot them, then at least they too had failed to spot him.
Six men waiting in ambush: Quested had certainly intended to make sure of Killigrew when he arrived. But in that case, why was he leaving now?
Molineaux’s heart sank when he realised what the lantern at the Lucy Ann’s masthead signalled. And now the Lucy Ann was leaving, and the Vanguard was not due for another two and a half hours.
Wondering what the hell he should do next, Molineaux remembered Killigrew’s orders: if you get the chance to kill any of those bastards… don’t waste it. That was one order the seaman had every intention of obeying.
One of the men converging on the dune where Quested stood was walking straight for the clump of reeds where Molineaux was concealed, oblivious of the seaman’s presence. Molineaux waited until the man had almost stepped on him, and then slashed him across the knees with the rifle. The man went down, and Molineaux pushed himself to his feet and smashed the man in the face with the musket.
The other four men heading back to the beach had no idea that their numbers had been reduced by a third. One of the men with Quested pulled the harpoon out of the sand and took down the lantern. Quested had already set out down the far side of the dune and would be hidden from view in a few more seconds.
Molineaux raised the stock of the rifle to his shoulder, took aim, and fired.
It was impossible to say if the other man stepped in the way of the shot before or after Molineaux pulled the trigger; but the effect was the same. The man went down; Quested and his other companion stared at his body for a split second. Molineaux threw aside the rifle and unslung the musket, but by the time he had levelled it Quested had ducked back out of sight.
But the other four men were now staring at him. One of them unslung his own musket. Molineaux swung the barrel of his weapon round and fired, then jumped down behind the dune as the other three sent bullets winging his way. He rolled over on the black sand at the bottom, then picked himself up. He started running, knowing that the three men would come looking for him where they had last seen him. He weaved his way through the dunes, trying to outflank them.
As he rounded one dune, he came face to face with another man less than thirty feet away. The man was in the process of reloading his musket. Molineaux knew this was no time for being chivalrous: the man’s two friends were probably not far off. He dropped the empty rifle, and pulled one of Killigrew’s pepperboxes from his belt. The handgun had no sights, so all Molineaux could do was point it in his general direction and squeeze off six shots – the double-action was a bugger; Killigrew must have had fingers like bananas to be able to pull the heavy trigger – in the hope that at least one would find its mark. The theory proved sound: the man was thrown on his back and lay still.
‘Capital shooting, Summerbee!’ he called, in a fair imitation of Lord Hartcliffe’s clipped tones, an impersonation that never failed to amuse his shipmates on the lower deck. ‘You take your men around to their left, I’ll take the rest to their right, and we’ll round up the rest of these swine.’
‘Very good, sah!’ – this in mimicry of the corporal’s voic
e.
‘Come on, men!’ Hartcliffe again. ‘This way!’ Molineaux ran around the next dune and collided with another man running in the opposite direction. Both fell back to the sand, but Molineaux recovered first, pulling Killigrew’s other pepperbox from his belt and shooting the man twice in the chest.
Quite aside from the benefit of reducing his enemies’ ranks by one, this had all the effect Molineaux could possibly have desired. To Quested and the remaining five men on the beach and amongst the dunes, it must have sounded as if there was gunfire all around them.
‘Let’s vamoose, amigos, pronto!’ a panicky voice with a Carolina accent yelled off to Molineaux’s right. ‘The whole goddamned Royal Navy’s here!’
‘Don’t be a half-wit, Forgan,’ Quested snapped back from another direction. ‘There’s one man out there!’
‘Oh? Well, your one man’s killed Andy and Obed, and I can’t find Ike or Eber anywhere! Where’s that consarned Utumate gotten himself to?’
‘Never mind Utumate!’ snapped Quested. ‘Find whoever it is that’s taking pot shots at us, and kill him!’
Molineaux decided that Quested was getting just a little bit too clever for his own good. There were four shots left in the pepperbox in the seaman’s hand; the next one was for the whaling captain.
He was following the sound of Quested’s voice when he heard a sound above him and looked up in time to see a muscular figure leap at him from the dune above. Molineaux managed to squeeze off a wild shot, and then the man had crashed into his shoulder and the two of them went down. The gun flew from Molineaux’s hand. Before he could even think about retrieving it, the man – a Polynesian, naked but for a pandanus kilt – came at him with a dagger every bit as large and wicked-looking as the Bowie knife in the small of Molineaux’s back.
The seaman managed to grab the Polynesian’s knife-wrist in one hand and caught his stomach against the soles of his feet. Rolling on his back, he flipped the Polynesian over his head. The Polynesian landed heavily on his back, and Molineaux was astride his chest in an instant, trying to wrest the dagger from his hand.
‘You kill Andy,' hissed the Polynesian. ‘Him friend of Utumate. Utumate sing out for help, can. But Utumate no sing out for help. You know why?’
‘I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me anyway,’ grunted Molineaux, who preferred his brawls without banter.
Utumate threw him off and rolled on top, pushing the point of his dagger down towards Molineaux’s chest. ‘Utumate want pleasure in kill you for self.’
The seaman managed to push the dagger aside, and butted Utumate on the bridge of the nose. Blood gushed from Utumate’s nostrils, and his eyes rolled up in his head. Molineaux pushed him off. ‘The pleasure was all mine, covey.’
Almost as dazed by the head-butt as the Polynesian, Molineaux shook his head muzzily to clear it, and then retrieved the pepperbox. He crawled over the next dune and glanced across the beach to where the Lucy Ann’s boat was still drawn up beyond the reach of the surf. There was no sign of Quested, or of either of the two men who had been guarding the boat earlier. He cast a glance back over the dunes behind him, but Quested and his men were keeping their heads down now. Only the occasional cry carried back to where Molineaux was, as Quested and Forgan tried to co-ordinate their search for the seaman. Smiling to himself, Molineaux slithered back down the dune on his hands and knees.
Behind him, the hammer of a musket clicked as someone cocked it. ‘Don’t move a muscle, shipmate. Drop the barker, put your fams above your noggin, and turn around slowly.’
Molineaux complied. ‘Hullo, Foxy.’
* * *
Solomon Lissak narrowed his eyes. ‘I ain’t been called Foxy in years… Do I know you?’
‘You used to. Back in the days when they called me Cowcumber Henson.’
‘Cowcu—’ Lissak stared. ‘Wes? Wes Henson? Is it you?’
Molineaux grinned. ‘It was the last time I looked in a mirror.’
‘…and you been fighting against seven years’ bad luck ever since,’ Lissak concluded the old, private joke for him. Then he threw aside his musket and seized Molineaux in an embrace. ‘Wes, my boy! I can’t believe it. Let me look at you!’ He held the seaman at arm’s length. ‘My, but you’ve grown. Filled out a bit in the chest and shoulders, I should say. Not much good for climbing through skylights and down chimbleys, though.’
‘I don’t do that kind of thing any more.’
‘What are you doing here?’ He took in the pusser’s slops Molineaux wore. ‘A lagger now, is it?’ Then realisation struck him. ‘You’re one of the seamen from that navy sloop that’s been chasing us!’ He lunged for the musket he had thrown aside, but Molineaux was younger and faster. Even as Lissak grabbed the musket, the seaman put his foot on the barrel and pinned it to the sand.
Lissak looked up at him pleadingly. ‘You wouldn’t…?’ Molineaux picked up the musket and levelled it at him.
‘Wes! You was living in the gutter when I found you! You wouldn’t send me back, would you? After all I done for you?’ Molineaux sighed. ‘Aw, hellfire! Course not. Go on, you old rascal. Nommus, before my shipmates get here. Whatever happens here tonight, the others won’t be staying long. Stay in lavender for a couple of days, then pad the hoof to Port Resolution. A ship’s bound to call in there sooner or later. Maybe we’ll meet again. In the next life.’
‘God bless you, Wes! You’re a fine boy!’ Lissak took a couple of halting steps away from the beach, and then stopped and turned back. ‘It’s brown shirt, Wes. I can’t!’
‘You daft old flat! I’m giving you the cokum to make leg bail, damn it!’
‘I can’t leave ’em, Wes. Don’t you see? If it wasn’t for them, I’d still be rotting on the Isle of Mis’ry!’
‘What? That bludger Wyatt and his pals? What do you care about them? They’re just the kind of coves you always taught me to steer clear of back in the Big Huey.’
‘Since when did you start listening to my advice?’
‘Just about my whole life.’
Then you’ll remember another piece of wisdom I taught you. You never play booty on your pals. Not ever.’
‘I’m not asking you to peach on them, Foxy!’ Molineaux protested in exasperation. ‘Just get away from here, while you still can.’
‘I never played booty on you, Wes. After I got nabbed for the Haymarket job, they kept asking me who my accomplice was. Said they’d give me a reduced sentence too. But I never told.’
‘You might as well’ve done. After I mizzled from that prad-ken where they caught us, the traps were waiting for me at the Rat’s Castle, my mum’s drum, the gathering where Luther works… Someone gave ’em my tally, Foxy.’
‘It weren’t me, Wes! I swear it!’
‘I know it weren’t, Foxy. You think we’d be standing here talking if I thought it was you that peached? My money’s on Sammy the Swell. Who else d’you think planted that monogrammed sneeze-box in my gropus so the peelers would have something to connect us with the Haymarket job?’
Lissak nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sammy the Swell. He was planning to play booty on us from the beginning, weren’t he?’ He gave a high-pitched, hooting chuckle. ‘I had the last laugh on him, though.’ Lissak raised a finger to his lips enjoining secrecy, looked about surreptitiously, and winked at Molineaux. ‘That bosh I passed to Deadly Nightshade through the window of that cross rattler? It weren’t the one we’d prigged.’
Molineaux stared at him in amazement. ‘You switched the boshes? You foxy old rascal! Sammy the Swell must’ve been in a right wax when he realised we’d skinned him.’
‘You know what the funny thing is? I never meant to diddle him. I only did it to be on the safe side, just in case he tried to play booty on us.’
‘Can’t think what made you reckon he might try something like that,’ Molineaux said drily.
‘You know me, Wes. Fair’s fair. Even though he gammoned us about how much that bosh was worth, I’d agreed a price for us to
prig it; I was ready to stand by my side of the agreement. He’d’ve had his tol if he hadn’t got greedy and decided not to pay us our fair share…’
‘Fair share of what?’ a voice demanded behind him.
Molineaux whirled in time to see Quested descend the dune behind him with Wyatt, Utumate, and a spouter and an officer – Forgan, Molineaux supposed – from the Lucy Ann. Quested had a revolver in his hand, levelled at Molineaux. ‘Nice work, Solly,’ said Wyatt. ‘Keep him talking while the rest of us creep up on him from behind.’
His jaw hanging, Lissak shook his head helplessly. ‘You don’t understand, Ned. He’s an old pal of mine. Used to be my partner.’
‘Aye?’ snorted Quested. ‘Well, Mr Lissak, your old partner just killed five of my best men.’
‘Put the musket down, boy,’ ordered Forgan.
‘I’m twenty-eight,’ said the seaman.
Forgan was thrown off guard by the response. ‘What?’
‘I ain’t no boy, mister.’
Forgan looked amused. ‘Well, I’ll be doggone! A nigger with a bad attitude. You got a lot of sass for a nigger with a gun at his head, boy.’
‘The name’s Molineaux. Able Seaman Wes Molineaux.’ He raised the musket to his shoulder, keeping the muzzle in the captain’s face. ‘And I ain’t the only one with a gun at his head, Quested.’
‘What are you talking about, Wes?’ asked Lissak, confused. ‘Don’t pay no attention to him, Cap’n. His name’s Henson, not Molineaux.’
‘I reckon I’ve got time for one shot before you coves croak me,’ Molineaux told Forgan. ‘I’ve been trying to make my mind up who gets it: you, Quested or Wyatt. You just made my mind up for me, mister.’ He levelled the muzzle at the third mate’s forehead.
Killigrew and the Incorrigibles Page 33