Fletcher's Glorious 1st of June

by John Drake

  Fletcher

  Mr Forster the magistrate

  Mr Pendennis the Polmouth merchant

  Mr Richard Lucey the solicitor

  Mr Taylor the bookseller (& wife)

  Mr Forster’s Constable

  The Constable’s two brothers.

  “Now,” she said, “this is what I propose. I shall go to Polmouth to deal with Pendennis and Lucey, you shall go north to Lonborough for Forster and the Taylors, and Slym shall deal with Fletcher.” Victor shuddered at the thought of what he must do, and even more at the very rare expression of grim ugliness that crossed his mother’s face. “We might contest your father’s Will in the courts and so refute Fletcher’s claim to our inheritance, but I want Fletcher dead.”

  “But how shall you control Slym?” said Victor, frightened again. “The man is a thief-taker. Why should he not ‘peach on us? And how will you make him kill Fletcher? He is an honest rogue who never even took a bribe to let a felon escape.”

  “I shall manage Slym,” she said and sank back into the cushions, stretching her limbs like a magnificent luscious cat.

  “Oh,” said Victor, “that way …”

  “Not entirely,” she said. “I shall need to hold this man for many months. I do not think that this can be a speedy business.” She considered the matter and made her calculations. “I think I could hold him for a month or two with the constantly promised but constantly denied glutting of his lust. Naturally, I should delay the consummation for as long as possible …”

  “I see,” said Victor.

  “For in that phase a man is most utterly under control.”

  “Quite so!” said Victor.

  “But eventually I must let him have his way, and then the grip progressively weakens. Even I can hold a man no more than a few weeks after that. They come back for more, of course, but think it their right not their privilege. It is the way of all men.” She smiled sadly, imparting a mother’s wisdom as if to a daughter.

  “I know!” said Victor, shaking his head in sorrow.

  “But with Slym, there is something more. The creature is obsessed with pathetic ideas of self-improvement. He thinks he can be a gentleman and dreams of finding some patron who will introduce him into society. I can promise him this and so secure a more lasting power over him, though regrettably I doubt I can avoid the former method. The fellow is drooling at the mouth already!” She shrugged her shoulders philosophically, “Ah well, at least he is clean in his person.”

  Victor smiled at her cleverness, and it was typical of both mother and son that neither even considered that there might be anything other than lust or self-interest to bind one human being to another.

  Having faced her peril and declared her strategic objectives, Lady Sarah went on to give Victor the practical details of her plans. Victor smiled at this, and chuckled with enthusiasm, though in giving her son this insight, Lady Sarah told him fully as much as he needed to know, and no more.

  4

  I went down the shrouds like a midshipman at play and shoved Horace’s glass into his hands.

  “Permission to unlock the magazine, Cap’n?” says I, and his knees began to knock like a marine drummer beating to quarters.

  “Ah! Ah!” says he, “is it then an enemy?” and he stammered awkwardly over the two “n” sounds.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” says I. “And if we don’t do something about it, we’ll lose the ship and everything in her.” That made him twitch, for he had far more to lose than I.

  “Ah!” says he, looking up at me with watery eyes. “Then what would you suggest, Mr Fletcher?” That’s what the African fever had done to him. Five weeks in his hammock, knocking at death’s door with his skin bright yellow, his bowels in cramps and his mind gone away with the pixies. He’d never fully recovered and he wasn’t the man who’d set out from London.

  “The keys to the magazine, please, sir,” says I. “We must bring up powder for the guns.”

  “Ah!” says he, and bit a fair chunk out of his hat.

  “The keys are in your desk, Cap’n,” says I, “in your cabin. I’d better fetch them, hadn’t I, sir?”

  He looked at me in an agony of worry. There were actually tears in his eyes, and he mumbled as he chewed his lump of felt. In practice, I took command from that moment and didn’t refer to him again for any orders.

  “Aye-aye, sir!” says I, loudly, and touched my hat to him for the benefit of the crew. Then I darted below and into his cabin. The desk was locked. I hadn’t thought of that and I couldn’t bear the prospect of going back to get another key off him, but there were cutlasses in a rack on the stern bulkhead so I seized one and levered at the lid of the desk. The polished mahogany splintered easily and I was rummaging in his papers in a second. I remember a half-finished letter in which he addressed his wife as “Little Pigsnee”.

  Then I had his keys and was opening the arms locker by the cutlass rack. There were a dozen each of pistols and muskets with flints in the hammers and cartridges ready in boxes. They were battered old stock that Horace had bought cheap off an East India captain. Swiftly, I loaded a pair of pistols and stuck them in my belt with the cutlass. Then I took a pocketful of cartridges and ran to the magazine.

  This was a proper man-o’-war style magazine, down below the waterline and lit through a little double-glazed casement window jutting in from the lamp room adjoining. It was honeycombed with shelves for the ship’s powder: kegs at deck level, filled flannel cartridges for the guns, above. The only way in was down a short, narrow passageway, with doors at each end. In a mad haste, I charged in and found myself in pitch dark. Damnation! There was no light burning in the lamp room. Urgently, I felt for the nearest shelf and groped about. As my hands ran across a row of fat flannel cylinders, I felt a touch of grit beneath my fingers.

  “What’s that?” I thought, and snatched my hand away as I realised it was loose powder.

  Fear shot up my legs and across my belly like cold water. Christ, what a bloody fool I was! This was the most dangerous part of the entire ship. One spark in here would blow her to driftwood and there were strict rules to be obeyed. No naked lights, obviously, but more than that, nothing that could possibly strike fire, hence no tools or implements of iron. In King’s ships, the gunner and his mates even wore felt slippers in the magazine in case the nails in their shoes might work mischief. Aboard Bednal Green we made do with bare feet — or were supposed to. And here was me blundering in with shoes, cutlass and a pair of loaded pistols! What if one of those pistols slipped out of my belt and went off as it hit the deck? That was perfectly possible as the half-cocks on these old barkers were worn, and they were none too safe.

  I made myself stand still, and grabbed a shelf to steady myself against the motion of the ship. I spent a few minutes getting a hold on myself, since I realised that this sort of behaviour wouldn’t do. If I’d acted like this in sight of the men, then they’d panic and we’d do more harm to ourselves than the Yankees could.

  Now I’d seen the right way to behave, as practised by Royal Navy officers. I’d seen them parading about in action, with their hands clasped behind them and that peculiar affectation of indifference to danger. I knew that I should have to copy them. Christ! Could I do it? I was in a sweat of nerves and my heart thundering merrily. I was a seasoned seafarer by now, and that helped. I’d seen rock and tempest and fire afloat, but leading a ship’s crew into action against a powerful enemy is something else.

  The trouble was, it all hinged on me. The only times I’d gone into action was aboard H.M. Frigate Phiandra, under a set of elite officers and with a crew trained to perfection. All I had to do was follow the orders that these experts gave me. Now, by comparison, I had a Captain who was eating his hat and a crew too small to man the guns properly and, worst of all — would they fight?

  They were hard men but it wasn’t as if it were the Frogs or the dagoes that were after us, the which were their natural enemies. Nor was it African savages who they had to fight b
ecause of the ghastly tales of what the darkies would do should they get hold of you. By contrast, most of Bednal Green’s crew would as soon serve aboard a Yankee as a British ship, if it came to that. So I would be asking them to face death or mutilation for their pay and such small shares in the cargo as some of them had.

  On the other hand, I knew them and they knew me after the months we’d sailed together. Even if Horace hadn’t let me train them quite as I’d liked they knew not to disobey any order of mine, as long as I was standing over them. And as I stood in the dark of the magazine the germ of a plan of battle formed in my mind. There was just the possibility that if I were very lucky, I might do better than simply make the Yankees pay: I might save my money.

  So I took myself a deep breath, and went carefully out of the magazine, shutting both doors behind me. Then I went up on deck and looked about me. I was looking for Jonas Spry, our gunner (he was also cooper and tailor, but that’s what you get in a small crew). There he was, with his messmates, sheltering from the wind in the lee of the longboat, where it was secured amidships. Typical English seamen, you could read their very souls in their faces.

  They were sulky. They knew I wanted to fight and they knew we were outclassed. If I didn’t put some heart into ‘em, I might as well haul down our colours and bid farewell to my money right now, and I was damned if I was going to do that. Clearly the moment had come for me to act out my role. I knew what was wanted, ‘cos I’d seen it done dozens of times. All I had to do (God help me) was copy it, and then if I looked confident the men would follow my lead. That’s how it was with seamen. So I took a deep breath, and gave the assembled company my representation of one of His Majesty’s Royal Navy officers, in command of a 100-gun ship, about to do battle with a cockle-boat manned with Quaker pacifists.

  “Mr Spry,” says I in a bold voice, “have the goodness to unlock the magazine and send up powder for a full broadside. And you may also send up firelock triggers for the guns, out of your stores. I intend to give the enemy a bloody nose and bring our ship safe home to England!”

  By George, you should have seen the change come over them. It worked! They grinned and nudged one another and, as for Spry, he damn near split the planks of the deck as he saluted me, seaman-style, stamping down with his foot.

  “Aye-aye, Mr Fletcher, sir!” says he. Greatly encouraged, I gave them some more, putting in a little joke as a good leader should.

  “And Mr Spry,” says I, “take the boys to run cartridges to the guns, but mind you keep an eye on ‘em. I know I can rely on you, but we don’t want to lose the ship through the nippers skylarking in the magazine among the powder!” They all laughed and I handed Spry the keys, as if it had never crossed my mind to enter the magazine myself, let alone do so with an ironmonger’s shop clashing at my belt.

  Spry ran off like a good ‘un and I turned to one of his mates. “Hayworth,” says I, “down to the Cap’n’s cabin at the double and bring up the small-arms. Issue a cutlass to all hands and load all the firearms. But stack those under the Cap’n’s eye by the wheel. No man’s to touch ‘em without my word.” I looked around for the rest of them. “And you others … All hands!” I roared. “Rig boarding nets!”

  That got ‘em moving. Nearest thing to man-o’-war fashion I ever saw on that vessel. I looked at the Captain, standing by the wheel, and raised my hat to him with a flourish. I was swept away by the thrill of the moment. He nodded back, happy to let me get on with things while he concentrated on his hat. It looked as if he’d finished the brim and was about to start on the crown. I wondered how he’d manage the silver buckle on the hatband.

  So I swaggered about, roaring at the men and lending a hand to raise the nets, which had to be hoist by lines secured to the tops above and secured below to the bulwarks. That way they covered our decks in a great, sagging tent of heavy netting, to keep out enemy boarders. The men worked well and my spirits rose. I was just congratulating myself on what a man of action I’d turned out to be, and how much better at it than poor old Horace, when I noticed the red-brown face and lank, soot-black hair of Matti the Braziliano, bobbing up and down at my elbow as he chattered at me, bent double with respect and furiously knuckling his brow.

  The rogue hadn’t a word of English but he understood orders well enough, and he was a hard worker. So why wasn’t he rigging the nets with his mates? And then I saw the boys gaping at me, one with a pair of cartridge-cases and the other with a handful of cannon-locks. The mists cleared. Matti was reminding me that it was time to cast off the sea-lashings from the guns and make ready to load.

  The gall of it! This from a jungle savage who’d swung through the trees with the monkeys till the Jesuits caught him and put breeches on him! The thing was, he was fascinated by the guns. On the beastly hot nights by the African shore, when only Matti felt comfortable, and those that could sleep tried to do it on deck, I’d seen Matti curl up beside a gun for company, muttering to the bloody thing and clapping an ear to it, for its reply. And on the rare occasions when we’d fired them, he’d leapt and gambolled with joy, snapping his fingers and laughing.

  “Yes, of course, you heathen Hottentot!” says I. “Just as soon as the nets are secured. First things first!” Christ! It’d slipped my mind. But nobody noticed and the instant the nets were rigged I gave the word to load and run out. I saw Matti dash to the nearest gun in delight. He bent over it busily casting off the lashings and I gave him a good kick up the arse for being too damn clever. I clipped the boys’ ears too, for good measure. Best thing for ‘em.

  All the same, I threw off my coat and hauled with the men. Bednal Green’s larboard battery was five 6-pounders and five 4-pounders with the same again to starboard. To serve this artillery properly was the work of forty men, so you can see how stretched we were with only twelve men in total.

  If Horace hadn’t been so obstinate, I’d have had the guns loaded and run out as soon as we left Charleston, and kept ‘em that way, against eventualities. But he wouldn’t have it. He claimed the spray would damp the powder and rust the firelocks. My answer to that was daily gun-drill with live firing. But he wouldn’t have that either for the expense of the powder and shot. Or so he said. But I think he was so terrified of being caught by a privateer that he couldn’t bring himself to face the fact that it might happen.

  So we had to go through the whole process of unlashing the muzzles, where they were secured to the ship’s side, and then haul them in to give room to ply the rammers, and then set to with firelocks and charges from below, and shot, wads, powder-horns, priming quills and all the rest, from the lockers beside each gun. There was no question of all guns being loaded and run out together, so I split the hands into three gun-crews and we did the thing in dribs and drabs, till both broadsides were ready for action.

  At that stage, with all prepared as best as could be, and the ship thrashing along merrily, and nobody actually firing into us just yet, I suffered a rush of enthusiasm to the head. I went round slapping the men on their backs, calling them jolly tars and British lions (even Matti) and telling them what a drubbing we were going to give those Yankees, damn-their-eyes-and-split-their-bones.

  But then the sight of old Horace with his soggy hat in his hands brought me to my senses. By George but he looked dismal. He saw my face fall, and it must have stirred something within him, he’d been a master mariner over twenty years, after all. He made a pathetic attempt to straighten his back and he stuck his hat on his head, which made him look all the worse considering the state of it.

  But it was time to look at the Yankee again. So I borrowed Horace’s glass and got up into the shrouds. The privateer’s t’gallants, tops’ls and courses were all clearly visible from deck level with the black smudge of his hull heaving in and out of sight between the waves. He was overhauling us without a doubt, though not quite so fast as I’d feared. I estimated he’d be alongside of us in a couple of hours. The idea that had occurred to me in the magazine, leapt out again. The thing looked like be
ing a stern chase, in which case we must make use of our 9-pounder to put the Yankee under fire as she came up astern. It was the best gun in the ship and, with luck, we might knock enough holes in Mr Yankee to slow him down and let us escape. Provided of course that he didn’t do the same to us.

  First, however, we would have to move our long nine from its station in the bow, and remount it to fire through the solid oak of the taffrail, astern, which was not pierced for gunfire. But this was a simple matter and I did no more than give the orders and stand back while the crew organised themselves to the work. Seamen are most amazingly ingenious at things of that kind, especially when they go at it with a will. And they did too, because it was obvious that remounting that gun astern offered us the chance of shaking off our pursuer without a fight — the best of all possible outcomes.

  The gun was seven-and-a-half feet in the barrel and weighed twenty-one hundredweights. But ten men levered it out of its carriage and, taking the load with a rope cradle lashed beneath it, they walked the gun astern. The companionway ladders (down from fo’c’sle to waist, and up from waist to quarterdeck) gave them some trouble but all hands pitched in and they completed in ten minutes a job that landsmen would have spent a week over.

  Then, for relaxation, they fetched the gun-carriage and mounted the gun, ready for use with its wheels chocked to keep it still, and all its tackles laid alongside. All that was done well before the carpenter and his mate had finished hacking a hole through the taffrail, and had screwed a big ringbolt into either side of it to take the breeching tackles that would control the gun’s recoil.

  Then it was up to me. I was in command, and thanks to my time aboard Phiandra there was no better-trained gunner in the ship. So I chose a full gun-crew, loaded and ran out, and waited for Yankee Doodle to put himself in range. In fact it was about an hour before I could open fire, and during the wait, I had some food served out for the men, and I trimmed the sails constantly to try to get another knot out of the ship. Our course was E S E and the Yankee was closing from the north-west. The combination resulted in his bearing down from our larboard quarter, giving the nine-pounder a good view of him through the new port.