‘Bosun Stevenson, if you please,’ calls the Captain, pushing himself to his feet.
He is still on one knee when a figure bursts from the open hatchway on deck. His eyes wild with fury, the man races across the deck and launches himself from the boat’s rail. We barely have a second to react before the man is across the gap between the vessel and the path, a long sugar cane-cutting knife in his hand. The blade comes down straight at the Captain.
The Captain falls back away from the sharpened steel, and the tip of the knife misses him by inches. It hits the path with a nasty clang and a spray of sparks.
The Captain is quick to recover. He rolls over and jumps up, drawing out a stiletto from his boot.
The sailor slashes, but the Captain blocks with his thin blade. The man slashes again, a long swift cut from up high, but the Captain steps to one side and the blade whisks harmlessly through the air. The Captain takes up a traditional fencing position, with his left hand high in the air to balance himself. He skips forward two paces and thrusts his blade straight at the sailor’s chest. The sailor sees it coming and steps back. The Captain repeats the move before the man can even lift his blade in the air again. This time, the Captain slashes his knife straight down, and the sailor steps backwards again, but the tip of the Captain’s knife slits open the man’s shirt right across his chest.
‘Step aside, Captain!’ shouts Mr Smith from the base of the cliff. ‘I’ve reloaded. Let me finish the swine.’
The Captain does not seem to hear. He makes a full, forceful cut that would have split the sailor in half if it had connected. The sailor skips nimbly back, but this time, he has miscalculated. With a cry of shock, the man steps back into thin air, straight off the dock’s edge, and into the river with a loud splash.
We all race to the Captain.
‘Captain?’ asks Bosun Stevenson, concerned.
‘Thank you, Bosun Stevenson, I am fine, in spite of the efforts of our wet friend down there.’
In the water, the sailor struggles desperately to stay afloat, flapping the surface with his arms. He does not cry out for help even though he knows he has only a minute or so to live. He is not far from the steps, but we all know he will never reach them.
‘Look, Captain, he’s one of us,’ announces Bosun Stevenson, peering down into the water at the stricken sailor. The man’s shredded shirt has come off and across his back a dreadful mess of vivid red and older white stripes and raised welts is clearly visible. ‘Looks like he’s tasted the cat more than once, if I’m any judge. And I am.’
Several men chuckle.
‘A not so Jolly Jack Tar,’ says the Captain. ‘Perhaps we had better see what he has to say for himself.’ He looks about and sees me. ‘You, boy.’ The Captain nods towards the stern of the Loggerhead where a length of rope lies coiled on the deck.
I run and jump across the gap, only just making the distance. I reach for the rope and quickly tie a bowline loop in the end, the way Mr Smith showed me, and fling it overboard towards the drowning sailor. Still panicking, he thrashes about, but eventually manages to get his left arm into the loop.
‘Keep still! I have you!’ I yell, pulling on the rope. He is heavy and he slips back under so his mouth fills and he chokes.
‘Stop strugglin’, youse blessed fool!’ yells down Mr Smith. ‘Or I’ll put a bullet in ya skull, so help me I will!’
To my surprise, the threat works, and the man relaxes and manages to grip the rope and haul his head above water. Bosun Stevenson and Mr Cord leap across the gap onto the boat and together we haul him up and onto the deck.
The Loggerhead has started to drift slowly away from the path. The Bosun steps around the gruesome mess of Sims’ blood on the deck, grabs the mooring rope and throws it ashore. Teuku grabs the rope and loops it over the old cannon bollard.
I look across at the Captain and am surprised to see he seems a little shaken, but he immediately grips his hands behind his back, the way officers often do. No one else sees the slight shaking of his hands, or the major shaking of mine. I’ve never seen someone get their head blown off at close range. It is not a pretty sight.
‘A beautiful shot, Mr Smith,’ the Captain calls ‘Saved my bacon, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘Pleasure, Cap’n,’ replies Mr Smith.
‘Now my good fellow,’ says the Captain, turning to the half-naked sailor shivering at his feet. It must have been fright as the water really isn’t that cold. ‘If you would inform me, firstly, of your name, and secondly, of your business, I would be grateful.’
The man stays silent, his face sullen and defiant.
‘Don’t youse be rude to our Cap’n, ya scurvy sea dog,’ warns Mr Smith, prodding the sailor with the end of his rifle. ‘He’s a gentleman, he is, and shouldn’t ’ave to be dealin’ with the likes of youse. One more dose of disrespect and it’ll be back into the drink with ya.’
‘Briggs, I am, Captain, sir,’ says the sailor, obviously believing him. ‘I mean no disrespect, sir. Adam Briggs.’
‘He’s served on the Lady Nelson, down Tasmania way, if I’s not mistook, Cap’n,’ says Mr Smith. ‘Keen on the lash, their bosun were, back on that ol’ tub. I recognise ’is ’andiwork. Sweeny. Swiney, we all used to call the butcher. Always used the same pattern ’e did when ’e was whippin’, and ’e signed off with a Union Jack on the right shoulder with his last four lashes.’
Sure enough, the sailor’s right shoulder has a raised crisscross mess of healed welts inflicted by a lead-tipped cat o’ nine tails whip.
‘Answer the Captain truthfully,’ orders Bosun Stevenson. ‘And perhaps we’ll get you dried and fed as well. What are you carrying in that tub?’
‘Guns, sir. Rifles. Like you got there.’ He nodded at the one inches from his face.
‘Government guns?’
‘Yes, sir. Enfields. That’s what’s writ on the boxes. From England, they come originally, but Captain Sims, he got them in Singapore.’ Briggs’s voice is shaky with fear.
‘Well, that would be treason to my way of thinking,’ says the Captain. ‘Trading in stolen guns from the Queens’s own armoury. High treason. Shameful dealings. Most shameful indeed. Just as well the British Navy didn’t catch you. They wouldn’t be able to find a yard-arm high enough to hang you all.’ The Captain lets the thought sink in. ‘So who was Sims’s customer? Were they to be used against good colonial soldiers perhaps?’
Briggs glances up, still expecting to die. Attacking a Captain as he has just done would have been almost instant death in the Royal Navy, as soon as the paperwork was completed, of course.
‘No, Captain, sir, they are for the rebels fighting the Dutch here on Aceh.’
‘Well, that is slightly better. At least, someone won’t be shooting at Englishmen with them. The Sumatrans need some assistance. All the help they can get. Whereabouts was the delivery to be made?’ asks the Captain.
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. West of here, we were headed, sir, but the storm …’ Briggs trails off, uncertainly.
‘Mr Cord, check their hold if you would be so good,’ says the Captain. ‘And while we wait, Briggs, you can tell me how is it a Navy man ended up with a murderous old villain like Sims. God rot his wretched, pox-ridden soul.’
‘My ship, the Agamemnon, had called in at Georgetown in Penang, and I hadn’t returned in time when she sailed,’ says Briggs. ‘I didn’t mean to. I fell asleep. But the Navy’ll be wanting me for a deserter now. They might hang me. I don’t want that, Captain, so I joined Sims when he called in port a week later. I had no real choice. Anything’s better than hanging.’
‘I dunno about that,’ interrupts Bosun Stevenson. ‘Keelhauling would be worse.’
‘What’s keelhauling?’ I whisper to Mr Smith.
‘It’s when youse gets a rope tied to you, and youse is throwed overboard, then youse get ’auled right under the ship from one side and up the other. The barnacles on the bottom cuts youse to ribbons, if youse don’t drown first, or the shar
ks eat you.’
‘Oh,’ I say, slightly shocked. ‘The Bosun is going to do that to him?’
‘Maybe. Flogging Round the Fleet was a pretty bad way to go too, back in the old days,’ Mr Smith continues. ‘Youse got fifty lashes on every ship in the Admiral’s fleet. A important Admiral with lots of ships and youse was done for. Mincemeat youse’d be before youse was ’alf-way though, and deader than maggot-infested mutton by the finish. And they didn’t let up. Kept on floggin’ even though youse were gone.’
BACK IN BUSINESS
‘Captain, sir!’ calls Mr Cord from Sims’ deck. ‘Pardon, sir, I think you’d better come and have look over here, sir.’ Mr Cord looks down at the mess of blood he stands in. ‘No, sorry, sir, stay there, sir. I beg your pardon.’
On to the increasingly blood-stained deck of the Loggerhead, Mr Cord hauls up a long, narrow wooden crate about six feet long from the open grate. He manhandles it ashore and sets it down on the rough pathway. The light coloured wood is branded Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield Lock, London, along with the mark of the Queen’s crown.
Mr Smith uses the butt of his rifle to crack the box open. Padded out with wood shavings, the pine box contains six brand new rifles, just as Briggs stated, their walnut stocks polished, and their oiled steel fittings gleaming.
‘Martini-Henrys. Nice. There’ll be a few rebels fighting near here who could put these beauties to good use, I’d wager,’ exclaims Bosun Stevenson. ‘Fine pieces.’
‘There are hundreds of these, sir,’ says Mr Cord. ‘Hundreds of boxes. The hold is jam-packed full of them. There’s not even room for a bilge rat down there.’
The Captain walks away a few paces, his hands still behind him, deep in thought, and then returns to the same spot. ‘Well, Mr Adam Briggs, formerly of her sometimes gracious Majesty’s Navy, and recent gun-runner and worthless traitor, no better than a common pirate,’ he begins. ‘We have three choices.’ He holds up his hand and turns down his fingers one at a time as he counts. ‘One, we hang you here and now as a traitor and you can, indeed, go dancing with Jack Ketch, as you so reasonably fear, but, more importantly, deserve. We have a gaff high enough to swing you from.’ He nods towards the mast of the Dragon. ‘Two, we throw you back in the sea. Or three,’ the Captain pauses for a long time before continuing. ‘You can pledge your loyalty to me and join us. As I’ve just experienced, you can handle a blade. With more enthusiasm than skill, but that works. You should be useful in a fight, and you obviously know the sea. Ten years before the mast, has it been?’
The sailor looks up in surprise, the Captain’s reprieve being the last thing he expects. ‘More like thirty or more, sir,’ he says. ‘Since I was a lad.’
‘So what it’s to be, Briggs?’ The Captain pauses to let Briggs decide though there are no real options that I can see. It is either join us or die. ‘On the Black Dragon, the Captain, who as you would have gathered by now, is my good self, takes fifty percent of everything we make, in accordance with it being my vessel. The officers, two shares of the rest, and the men, one share. What’s your word, sir?’
Briggs stands straight and looks the Captain in the eye, ‘I’ll be pleased to join you, Captain Bowen.’ He raises his right hand to his forehead in a salute.
‘Now, we’ll have none of that on the Dragon. We all had enough of that sort of nonsense years ago.’
‘Yes, Captain. Sorry, sir. Old habits die hard …’ His voice trails away.
‘Boy, if you could be so kind, take Briggs here to the hut,’ instructs the Captain. ‘Sam Chi might find him some victuals. Oh, and Briggs? You will need this I’m sure in the coming days.’
Surprisingly, the Captain picks up the cane-cutting knife and gently throws it to him. Briggs twists his wrist to catch it by the handle, thankful, no doubt, to be carrying the blade and not have it stuck in the middle of his guts.
In the hut, Briggs stands with his back to the fire, a smile on his face as if he can hardly believe his luck. But then, I don’t suppose he can believe it.
‘Your Captain,’ he asks. ‘He’s alright then?’
‘Mostly,’ I say. ‘Unless you cross him, then he’ll rip your guts out I’ve been told, with no more thought than if you are pearl meat in a shell.’
‘It was you who threw me the rope,’ he continues. ‘Just as well for me, eh?’ Judging by how sentimental sailors are, I guess this is as close as I am going to get to a word of thanks for saving his hide from drowning.
While Briggs tucks into a tankard of hot tea and several of Sam Chi’s fruit dumplings, I sit and stare at the fire wondering about the coming days. We are safe from the weather, but we are smugglers in a foreign country, and if any soldiers appeared on the cliffs surrounding the inlet, we would be trapped like rats in a barrel. They could rain fire down on us day and night with no way of us escaping.
Outside, I hear the sea crashing against rocks all along the coast, and it sounds so much like distant gunfire. With the way my luck has been running recently, I would not be in the least bit surprised if it actually was.
FORAGING
Although the storm has cleared, the wind continues blowing relentlessly from the nor’-east, leaving Bosun Stevenson unable to guide the Dragon out of the inlet. So we wait, feeling increasingly vulnerable.
After transferring the cargo of rifles to the hold of the Dragon, a job that takes hours, the men have little to do. Some gamble and play cards, or work on carving their model ships and other toys, but mostly they smoke and stare at the water, much as they do at sea. I sit leaning against the wall of the house and begin to reread The Adventures of Tom Sawyer for the third time. Tom reminds me of myself a bit, but with more luck than I possess at present. I seem to have about as much luck as the poor orphan Huckleberry Finn — little to none.
On the third day, Sam Chi, Teuku and two other men return from searching the jungle for food.
‘Ahoy!’ Teuku calls as they grow closer. He carries a dead monkey over his shoulder. It looks good and plump, but it is the only one, and nowhere near enough to feed us all. One of the other men has a bag of fruit, and Sam Chi has a length of python over his shoulder. I know the Aborigines back home in Broome eat snake by the ton, but I think I’d have to be starving to death before I’d try it. Snake? Can you imagine a hunk of boa constrictor between two slices of bread? No, thank you.
‘Sorry, Captain,’ says Sam Chi. ‘But there isn’t anything any which way we walked. Not a living soul. No houses, no rice paddies, nothing growing. Just jungle and grassland. And more jungle.’ He sits down with a long sigh, clearly worn out. ‘There aren’t even any decent edible weeds.’
‘I hope it won’t come to us eating weeds,’ says the Captain, sounding more hopeful than most of us feel. ‘No matter. Tomorrow we’ll try up the coast. We’ll take the dinghy. On the chart, there’s a village about half a day away. We’ll chance our luck there.’
‘Will the people sell us food? Us being foreign?’ I ask Mr Smith.
‘There’ll not be a problem, just as long as they don’t think we’s Dutch. Besides, there’s nothin’ foreign about gold coin. And if the gold fails — and it never do — there’s always them new rifles. Good persuaders they’ll be, I wager.’
At dawn the next morning, after a breakfast of monkey stew, the most disgusting meal I think I have ever eaten, we set out. Bosun Stevenson has the helm, and the Captain sits forward on the front thwart while six of us row. We have stowed a box of the new rifles, all loaded and ready to fire.
With the wind blowing us along the coast, the rowing is much less strenuous than the day we hauled the Dragon into the inlet, but even so I soon have a sweat up.
‘Take a break, men,’ orders Bosun Stevenson.
I lean forward on my oar, raising it up to stop it dragging in the water and perhaps tangling with the oar of Rowdy, the man in front of me. I can just imagine his reaction if I did that.
To port, right at the base of a small cliff, are the remains of what may have been a mi
ssion settlement. Much of the cliff has eroded so that parts of the white weatherboard church have crumbled and fallen into the sea. A small jetty has collapsed as well with just a few black barnacleencrusted pylons showing above the water. The belltower still stands, with huge dark holes, like the eyes of a blind beggar. I don’t know why the missionaries bother trying to convert the people in these parts. They seem perfectly happy with their own religion.
An hour later, we come to a spit of land that protrudes out into the sea. It is mostly pale, orange coloured rock washed smooth by the waves, with a few small palm trees growing further back beyond the high water line. Rings of darker tidemarks colour the stones closest to the water and small crabs scurry across the surface.
Ahead is a cove lined with woven coconut-fibre huts and bamboo houses on rickety stilts over the water. Waves wash up under them. Washing hangs from bamboo poles and flutters wildly in the warm wind. Beyond the houses, a small town square faces onto the waterfront, and on the other three sides, large corrugated iron warehouses fill the space. On the far side of the bay, I can see a decent sized jetty still under construction. A steam pile driver sits inactive and no ships are tied to the pylons.
Inland, the pyramidal roof of a mosque surrounded by an extensive walled courtyard stands out. Next to that, another substantial building has a sign on its roof reading Mariner Tabac Export. The aromatic smell of harvested tobacco leaf pervades the town.
Beyond the new buildings yet another long building, this one with many windows, stands apart from the others. It has a military feel to it, all neat and clean and with a space big enough for a parade ground. Whitewashed rocks mark out pathways and the Dutch flag flies aloft from a flagpole at the far end.
‘Where did all this building work come from?’ says the Captain surprised. ‘Last time we sailed this coast this was just a tiny fishing village off in the distance. Now it looks like a Dutch garrison and port.’
As we draw closer the usual poo-stink of civilisation reaches us. The hot afternoon has emptied the streets of people. The smoke from cooking fires spirals upwards into the sky from the houses and is quickly blown away. Some scrawny long-legged chooks peck the ground and squabble with each other, but everything else is silent.
The Smuggler's Curse Page 7