‘My duty.’
‘Your duty. And what was that? To drag me back to Norfolk Island in chains? Or just shoot me in the back and say I died resisting arrest? Save the British taxpayer the expense of a trial. Don’t worry, I won’t hold that against you. Death from a bullet would have been more merciful than going back to Norfolk Island.’
‘You broke the law. You have to be punished. It’s as simple as that.’
‘The law!’ spat Wyatt. ‘Oh, you bastards in authority are always quick to hide behind that particular petticoat when it suits you. Do you mean to tell me you never cut any legal corners in your pursuit of slavers and pirates? You never need to worry about the law, do you? That uniform you wear makes it all nice and legal, and if you say you kill the men you murder in self-defence, who’s going to question the word of an officer and a gentleman? And that gives bastards like you the right to judge me. A great man once said: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”.’
‘Since we seem to be quoting the Bible, isn’t there also one about not trying to remove a mote from your brother’s eye when you’ve got a beam in your own?’
‘Think you’re precious clever, don’t you? With your fine clothes and your school education…’
‘Actually, I had a private tutor.’
Wyatt smiled. ‘Ah. Now you’re deliberately being provocative, aren’t you? Make the other cove angry in the hope he’ll make a mistake.’ He straightened. ‘You want to know something? You’ve succeeded.’ He kicked Killigrew in the head, and stalked back to the quarterdeck.
Devin Cusack emerged from the after hatch. Gone was the deathly sick man of the previous night. Now his cheeks were ruddy, and he looked to be in the prime of health.
‘Hullo,’ Molineaux murmured under his breath. ‘It’s Young Ireland!’
Quested and Forgan exchanged glances, and the second mate hurried to intercept the Irishman. ‘You oh-kay this morning, amigo? You sure you shouldn’t still be lying down? You might have a relapse if you push yourself too hard so soon after being taken poorly…’
‘Never felt better, Mr Forgan,’ Cusack replied, gazing about the deck. ‘I don’t know what—’ Then his eyes fell on Killigrew and Molineaux. ‘When did they come on board?’
‘Last night,’ explained Forgan. ‘They were on Tanna; tried to stop us from sailing; but fortunately we were able to overpower them.’
‘Then why bring them? Why not leave them on Tanna?’
Forgan glanced helplessly towards Quested.
‘Thought we could do with a couple of hostages, now that Mrs Cafferty’s gone,’ the captain explained. ‘The Tisiphone’s tracked us this far – there’s a danger she may catch up with us yet. If we’ve got her first lieutenant and one of their seamen on board, that might make them think twice about blowing us out of the water.’
Cusack seemed to accept that, and started across the deck to where Killigrew and Molineaux were chained. Forgan caught him by the arm. ‘You don’t want to speak to them, amigo. They’ll only rile you up.’
Cusack looked at Forgan, then at the two captives, then at Forgan again. He shrugged off Forgan’s arm with deliberation, and moved off. The second mate looked as though he might make another attempt to stop Cusack from talking to the prisoners, but Quested laid his hand on his shoulder and held him back. When Forgan glanced quizzically at the captain, Quested just shook his head and raised his hook to his lips.
Cusack stood over Killigrew and Molineaux. ‘So tell me, Admiral. How do you like being a prisoner?’
Killigrew shrugged. ‘After being in a Turkish prison and a Chinese gaol, this is the lap of luxury.’
‘Too soft for you, is it now?’ remarked Cusack. ‘Perhaps I should have Quested cut your rations for a few days, let you find out what it’s like to go hungry. Maybe then you’ll understand why I had to take up arms in the first place.’
‘I’m sure you’re the expert. I don’t suppose there was much food in your family’s big town house in Dublin during the famine, not after you’d finished feeding all your servants.’
Cusack bent down, seized him by the jacket and hoisted him to his feet, before slamming him against the bulwark, half-teetering over the sea.
‘You filthy English bastard! Don’t you dare try to lecture me about Ireland! You weren’t there. You didn’t see what I saw. You didn’t see the heaps of corpses lying in every village, where the dogs and rats gnawed at their bones, because the dead outnumbered the living. You didn’t see men like walking skeletons, their skin black with scurvy. You didn’t see women going out of their heads with the hunger. You didn’t see the children so starved they had not the strength to speak, with the hair falling from their scalps in clumps. You weren’t there, you didn’t see the dysentery, the typhus fever, the people living like animals: reduced to eating roots, grass, seaweed, twigs. And all the while your bloody British government exported food to England and passed laws to evict the poorest from their land!’
Profoundly aware that Cusack had only to loosen his grip and he would drop into the sea, weighted down with his irons, Killigrew refused to be cowed. ‘What happened in Ireland was terrible, Cusack; no one would disagree with that. But it didn’t give you the right to take up arms against your sovereign.’
‘I didn’t take up arms against my sovereign!’ snarled Cusack. ‘I took up arms against your bloody government; the government that stood by and allowed my people to starve, saying it was an act of God and ’twasn’t their duty to interfere with God’s will! If that doesn’t give me the right to take up arms in rebellion, then what does? If the British government had sent its army into Ireland in force with orders to shoot the peasants at random, would that have given me the right? For that’s what they might as well have done; except that a bullet would have given many of them a cleaner death than the famine allowed. How far must a people be pushed before rebellion is justified, Admiral? I looked into the lifeless eyes of dying children in Limerick and Tipperary and saw all the justification I would ever need for a thousand rebellions!’
‘Rebellion against tyranny is one thing, Cusack. But trying to coerce a democratically elected government by force of arms is another. That doesn’t cure tyranny, Cusack: it creates it.’
The Irishman laughed bitterly. ‘Democratically elected, he says! Did I vote for your government? Did you, for that matter? More to the point, did the thousands who died in Ireland?’ He hauled Killigrew off the bulwark and threw him roughly back to the deck, before kicking him viciously in the side.
‘You can’t win, Cusack,’ Killigrew hissed through the pain. ‘In Ireland, I mean. The British government will never bow to force of arms.’
‘Sometimes it’s the fights we cannot win that are most in need of fighting—’
‘Land ho!’ roared Vickers, taking his turn as lookout at the maintop.
‘Where away?’ demanded Quested.
Vickers pointed, almost dead ahead.
Quested nodded. ‘Erromanga.’
‘The Martyrs’ Island,’ said Forgan.
And suddenly Killigrew understood. Part of him cursed himself for not having realised what Quested was up to earlier; and yet at the same time part of him was horrified even to consider that mankind could be capable of conceiving such inhumanity. For a savage to feast on the flesh of his enemies… well, that was a crime born of ignorance of the laws of God, and one that the natives of this island might, in time, be cured. But for a white man to exploit that hideous craving for flesh by turning it to his profit… for that there could be no forgiveness.
He realised he had one last trump card to play before it was too late. ‘For a man who talks about freedom, you keep some damned rum company, Cusack.’
The Irishman had been turning away, but at Killigrew’s words he turned back. ‘And what’s that supposed to mean, pray tell?’
‘Blackbirders,’ said Killigrew. ‘Slavers.’
Cusack laughed. ‘Nice try, Admiral. You expect me to believe that? Y
ou’d say anything to save your own hide.’
‘If you don’t believe me, go down to the hold and see for yourself. You’ll find a dozen natives from Tanna chained up down there.’
‘Shut your mouth!’ Forgan strode across the deck and kicked Killigrew in the side of the face.
‘Better go below, Mr Cusack,’ said Quested.
The Irishman stared at him. ‘Is this true, Captain?’
‘I’m not a slaver, Mr Cusack. You have my word of honour on it.’ Forgan’s foot had only caught Killigrew a glancing blow on the jaw, but that had been painful enough; it felt as though it had been dislocated, but when he tried to talk he found he still could, so it probably felt worse than it was. ‘He’s right there,’ he said thickly, licking blood from his lips. ‘I’m doing the captain a gross injustice when I accuse him of slavery. He intends to sell those natives to the Erromangoans, but not as slaves.’
‘I said shut up.’ Forgan was about to kick Killigrew again, but Cusack pushed him away.
‘Go on, Admiral.’
‘The natives of Tanna and Erromanga have been at war for generations, Cusack. What do you think the Erromangoans intend to do with the Tannese when Quested sells them to them in exchange for sandalwood? The same thing the Erromangoans always do to their enemies when they kill them or capture them. They’re cannibals, Cusack.’
The colour drained from Cusack’s face. ‘Is this true?’
Quested shrugged. ‘This is the South Seas, Mr Cusack. It’s a different world. You can’t apply the same rules of morality here that you do in Europe.’
‘You bastard!’ hissed Cusack. ‘You inhuman, murdering bastard!’ He strode across to where Quested stood with murder in his eyes, but Magog caught him before he got there, holding him fast. A big man, Cusack struggled furiously, but Magog did not even break into a sweat. Gog looked at Quested, who nodded once. Gog crossed to where his brother held Cusack, and drove a massive fist into the Irishman’s stomach. Magog released Cusack, and he crumpled to the deck, retching.
Quested hunkered down beside the writhing Irishman. ‘The only reason I’m not going to have you killed is that you’re worth too much money to me, Paddy. I’ll fulfil my side of the bargain and take you to California. I still intend to collect on that five thousand dollars when we get to ’Frisco.’
‘You twisted fiend!’ gasped Cusack. ‘I’ll see to it you never collect one red cent of that money!’
‘Oh, I’ll collect, right enough.’ Quested straightened, and kicked Cusack savagely in the stomach. ‘They’ll pay me, because if they don’t no one will ever see Devin Cusack again.’
‘You’re making an enemy of the wrong people, Quested. The Irish Directory has friends all over the world. When this is over, I’ll be coming after you. No matter where you go, I’ll find you. I’ll hunt you down and when I catch you—’
‘Good point,’ said Quested. ‘Maybe it would be safer for me to kill you now, and have done with it. On the other hand, five thousand dollars is a lot of money. And should I really be scared of a bunch of overfed Paddies who couldn’t organise an orgy in a brothel, never mind a revolution to kick the British out of Ireland? Put him in the lazaretto,’ he told Gog and Magog. ‘I’ll decide what’s to be done with him later. First we’ve got business to attend to. Once Mr Cusack here is safely locked away, start bringing the kanakas up from the hold.’
Moltata and the other natives kidnapped on Tanna were being paraded on deck by the time the Lucy Ann anchored in Dillon’s Bay on the west side of Erromanga. The island was much like Aneiteium and Tanna in appearance: palm-fringed beaches, rocky headlands and jungle-covered mountains. Killigrew could see a native village ashore, and a host of outrigger canoes was paddled out to crowd around the Lucy Ann. The natives were much the same as Moltata’s people, naked but for penis-wrappers and crude ornaments, all of them armed to the teeth with war clubs and spears.
Forgan stood at the entry-port to greet their visitors, holding a blunderbuss. ‘Just you, Kowiowi!’ he called down, and lifted an index finger for emphasis. ‘One! One only, amigo!’
Quested and Forgan clearly did not trust the Erromangoans. Killigrew could not blame them; when Kowiowi climbed up the side ladder on to the deck, the lieutenant did not care much for the cut of his jib: a fat, stocky man whose big belly almost concealed the penis-wrapper beneath, and whose flabby breasts would have been the envy of the most buxom Haymarket whore.
Kowiowi embraced the captain warmly. ‘Hullo old feller Quested! All same with you today here?’
‘I all right,’ replied Quested. ‘All same with you?’
‘Me good,’ replied Kowiowi. Then he saw Molineaux in irons in the lee waist next to Killigrew. Judging from his reaction, it was the first time he had ever seen a black man in white man’s clothes. ‘Why him there? Him is dressim long fashion b’long white man!’
‘Him is black man b’long England. Him is warrior, too much brave. Too much mana.’
Kowiowi glanced at Quested with one eyebrow arched sceptically. ‘Him is warrior?’ he asked, and then roared with laughter. ‘My pikanini too much small savvy stikim him!’
‘Let Quested take these clinkers off me, and I’ll show you who’s a warrior, you greasy tub of lard!’ snarled Molineaux.
‘Quiet!’ snarled Utumate, smashing the handle of a gaff-hook across the backs of Molineaux’s knees. The seaman sank to the deck with a sob of pain, and Kowiowi laughed. He indicated Killigrew and Molineaux with a hopeful expression.
Quested shook his head. ‘Sorry, Kowiowi. No savvy. They’re mine. Two feller there is b’long me.’ He led the bigman across to where the Tannese were paraded under guard. ‘Here you go, Kowiowi, you heathen black bastard. A dozen number-one Tanna warriors. Too much strong, too much brave.’
When Kowiowi saw the Tannese chief, his eyes widened with delight. ‘Moltata!’
Moltata replied in his own language. Killigrew did not understand a word of it, but the tone did not sound complimentary.
Kowiowi scowled, and then grinned when he realised he had nothing further to fear from his enemy. ‘How much?’ he asked Quested.
‘Five wood per head.’ The captain held up a hand with all five fingers splayed. ‘One hundred more twenty wood.’
‘Is too much.’
‘Is no too much. Straight price. One hundred more twenty wood, or I’ll take ’em back to Tanna and you can sing for your supper.’
‘One hundred. No more.’
‘One hundred more fifteen.’
‘One hundred more five.’
‘One hundred more ten.’
‘Ale! Is good. One hundred more ten. M’be you feller is tekkim all long sand beach, more m’be me-feller is leggo wood long beach.’
Quested was sweating as he returned Kowiowi’s grin. ‘So you can try to overturn my longboat as we row ashore like you did last time, you treacherous sonuvabitch? No savvy. M’be you-feller tekkim wood long ship here, m’be me-feller is givim kaekae-man place here.’
‘Ale, ale! You no makas, old feller Quested! M’be me-feller is fetchim wood long ship.’ He crossed back to the entry port and called out to his men waiting in their canoes, shouting out to them in his own language. A great cheer went up from them, and several of the canoes were rowed back to the beach, where a great pile of sandalwood logs had already been stacked in readiness.
The Erromangoans carried the bundles of slender sandalwood logs into the sea and floated them out to where the Lucy Ann was anchored. As soon as the spouters had finished bringing the logs on board and Quested had checked the quality of the heartwood, they let half a dozen more Erromangoans on deck – Forgan and Gardner keeping a watchful eye on them and one hand on their guns – to herd the Tannese warriors towards the entry port. Moltata went with quiet dignity, but as they were pushed down the side ladder to a waiting canoe, one of the Tannese tried to put up a fight. It was useless without weapons and with his legs hobbled and his hands manacled, however. One of the Erromangoans clubbed him
down, and the Tannese fell into the bottom of the canoe and lay motionless. Chanting the New Hebridean equivalent of a shanty, the Erromangoans started to paddle the canoes back towards the beach.
‘Get this lumber stacked up in the hold, Utumate,’ ordered Quested. ‘Loose all sails. Sheet home and hoist tops’ls, t’gallants’ls and royals. Heave up the anchor.’
‘Anchor’s aweigh, sir,’ Gardner reported from the forecastle.
‘Hoist the jib and cat the anchor.’ Quested watched to see that all canvas was drawing, and once the Lucy Ann was under way again he turned to Forgan. ‘Set course for Traitors’ Head.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Quested crossed the deck to where Killigrew and Molineaux were chained. ‘I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t sell you to Kowiowi along with those captives,’ he said. ‘That was my original plan. But as Mr Wyatt here was good enough to point out to me, that would be much too easy. He’s come up with a peach of a notion.’
‘We’re going to give you two a chance,’ explained Wyatt, grinning. ‘The same chance you would have given us, if you’d taken us back to Norfolk Island.’
‘The same chance you gave my nephew,’ put in Quested.
‘By which I suppose you mean no chance at all?’ asked Killigrew.
‘That’s about the long and the short of it. You see, the kanakas on the west side of the island, well… they’re pretty civilised, compared to the bastards on the east side of the island. The kanakas around Traitors’ Head: now they’re just plumb mean. So that’s where we’re going to put you ashore.’
‘I want you to know what it’s like,’ explained Wyatt, ‘to be hunted like an animal, the way you’ve hunted us these past nine days. Who knows? You may yet live to a ripe old age. Shall I tell you how to avoid ending up as the course of honour at a cannibal feast? You’ve just got to keep running.’ He chuckled. ‘For the rest of your life.’
‘Don’t worry,’ added Quested. ‘That won’t be for too long.’
* * *
‘Sail ho!’
For Robertson, the cry from the masthead was a welcome relief. He was in his cabin with his clerk, keeping the ship’s paperwork up to date. One of the luxuries of being the captain of a ship, be it a first-rate ship of the line or a paddle-sloop (third class), was that one usually had lieutenants to take care of the huge amount of paperwork that the navy insisted upon. In the absence of Hartcliffe and Killigrew, the wearisome job fell to Robertson. Not that there was much else to do, while the Tisiphone waited at Thorpetown in the increasingly vain hope that the Lucy Ann might show up there.
Killigrew and the Incorrigibles Page 36