by J. D. Davies
I was still not thinking clearly, and I could see no objection to what the renegade was proposing. There had been not a few grumbles when O'Dwyer's disappearance put paid to any prospect of extended leave among the manifold attractions of Kasang, especially the more nubile ones, and the Irishman was undoubtedly correct in his assessment of what lay both behind and ahead of my crew. Moreover, there were still tensions aplenty between mariners and redcoats, Bristolians and Cornishmen, so an evening of holiday aboard the Seraph seemed amply justified. As O'Dwyer departed to his own half of the cabin, I sent for Lanherne and gave the necessary orders. A little later, I heard cheering all along the main deck as the news was relayed to the messes. It's said that a captain should not seek too much popularity; but I thought of those who had already died upon this voyage, and of the unknown number who would certainly die of fevers, ravenous beasts or God alone knew what else in the weeks and months to come, and judged that this was one night when a little popularity for Matthew Quinton—and even, God help us, for Brian Doyle O'Dwyer—could not go amiss. I sent for Martin Lanherne to give the necessary orders.
But something troubled me: something I could not quite name or measure. Half an hour later I stood upon the forecastle, almost in the very beakhead itself, and shared my thoughts with Francis Gale, Valentine Negus and Kit Farrell.
I was in a deep sleep, the deepest I had known in our whole time upon the River of Gambia. Not even the carousing from the messes, continuing long after the night watch would have been set at sea, served to disturb me. It must have been the very middle of the night, when all should have been quiet upon the ship—yet there seemed to be a voice...
'Alarm, boy!'
The door of my cabin was open. Beyond it, I could hear the ship's bell begin to ring out from its belfry on the forecastle. There was no light, but I was aware of a presence standing above me. A blade glinted in the moonlight that glimmered through the stern window. In that instant, I knew the man about to kill me was Brian Doyle O'Dwyer.
The blade came down, straight for my eyes, but I just had time to throw my head to the right. I felt something nick my ear, and knew it was the traitor's knife.
'Not so fast, fuckhead!' cried a familiar voice behind the Irishman. Phineas Musk leaped across the cabin with unexpected agility, thrusting his own short-bladed knife at the traitor.
O'Dwyer turned. Still barely awake, I kicked out and caught him on the thigh. He lunged at me again with his blade, embedding it in my mattress. As I reached for my sword, O'Dwyer ran the few strides to the stern window and flung it open. I saw him, framed for an instant against the moonlight, before he flung himself into the abyss beyond. As I reached the open window, I heard a loud splash as he entered the water.
I stared into the blackness, my eyes adjusting slowly to the night. As Musk came up beside me, I saw O'Dwyer pull himself out of the water into a low, silent shape that could only be a native canoe. He turned, looked at me, and seemed to shrug. Then he touched his forelock before making a Moorish hand-salute.
As his canoe pulled away, I became aware of others. Many others, surrounding the Seraph. I heard the first clashes of metal against metal on the deck above, the first shrieks of death-agony.
'Ship's under attack,' said Musk unnecessarily.
'To the quarterdeck, then, Musk!' I cried, reaching for my pistol and tucking it into my belt. My ear stung, and I was aware of a warm trickle oozing down my neck. 'And Musk,' I said, 'thank you.'
'Bloody drunken sailors, keeping me awake,' he said, as we began to run forward. 'Lucky for you I wasn't dead to the world.'
The upper deck of the Seraph was a battlefield. A small band of my men held the quarterdeck and the forecastle, but the waist was filled with shrieking natives armed with the short spears, knives and decorated shields that we had seen on sale in the streets of Kasang that same morning. More and more of them streamed over the ship's rails on both sides.
I fought my way to the quarterdeck rail, where Kit Farrell was wielding two cutlasses to deadly effect. As he swung with the right, cleaving a native at the shoulder, he lunged with his left, impaling another on the blade.
'Mister Farrell!' I cried. 'How stands the fight?'
'Nearly took us by surprise, sir,' he said, gasping for breath. 'Thankfully we had keen-eyed, sober men on lookout. As you ordered.'
I saw Francis Gale drive his blade straight through the ribs of a man who was attempting to clamber onto the poop rail. The bloodied iron protruded like a skewer from the dying man's back before Francis pulled his sword free and turned in search of his next opponent.
I looked about me and saw my lieutenant. The sight was very brief: he levelled two pistols at tribesmen clambering over the starboard rail and fired, clouding both of us momentarily in smoke. When it cleared, the men on the rail were gone and Negus was already reloading. 'Any of our men in the waist, Mister Negus?' I cried.
'I think not, sir! We fell back on both ends of the ship. Captain Facey's men are holding the forecastle, but with so many of the enemy in the waist, we can't get the rest of our men up quickly enough from the main deck.'
'Time to make some space, then!'
One of the quartergunners had already brought one of the swivel guns across from the larboard rail and fixed it to the quarterdeck rail instead. Following his lead, other of our men brought up another two. I took the nearest myself and found myself standing next to Lindman, who manned the next gun. A man whose face I could not make out thrust a lighted match into my hand.
'Loaded and primed, Master Gunner?'
'Of course, Captain,' the Swede replied grimly. 'Canister shot.'
'Very well, then. Give fire!'
I put the match to the linstock. The gun went off with a tremendous recoil and a great cloud of acrid smoke. I heard a strange whistling sound, then the dull noise of bodies and body parts falling upon the deck. A wailing went up.
'Seraphim, with me!' I cried.
I ignored the quarterdeck ladder, jumping directly onto the upper deck. In another time and place, I might have felt sympathy for those before me: at such close quarters, the effects of canister shot are a sight drawn straight from the picture gallery of Hell. Round balls take men apart or tear off limbs, often killing swiftly, but canister spreads a deadly cloud of small iron balls. The bodies closest to the quarterdeck swivel-guns lay upon the deck, peppered like so many bleeding sieves. Some of those further away lived, but had lost eyes, noses or mouths. Blood oozed upon the deck.
Yet the natives seemed undaunted. More of them poured over the rails, so that even as my party advanced from the stern and Facey's from the bow, joined now by more of our men coming up from the deck beneath, we were pressed ever more tightly inboard. I struck out with my sword, deflecting spear thrusts and stabbing into naked flesh. At my side, Musk and Francis Gale fought like the veterans they were. This was not the fighting found in genteel fencing manuals; this was evil, kill-or-be-killed viciousness, and we had our casualties too. I saw Russell, the Bristolian who had quarrelled with Macferran early in our voyage, take a dagger thrust into his neck. His blood spurted like a fountain over those nearest to him.
Other men were coming into the fray from below. I caught a glimpse of Tom Shish, fighting with the fury that only the redeemed can find, wielding a half-pike as though he was born to it. Harrington, the purser, waved a cutlass above his head, roaring defiance as he brought it down to cleave the skull of a naked savage. Even Bradbury, the maimed cook, had a blade in his one good hand, sticking men as though he was making the juices run free from a roasting ox.
The moonlight glinted on a spear-point, coming at me from the right—I swung my sword up, deflected the thrust and at once swept my blade into the side of my assailant's head, opening his skull and spilling his brains. We were almost meeting Facey's men now, the soldiers advancing grimly in two ranks as though they were upon the practice ground. As I watched, one of the redcoats reacted too slowly to a spear thrust which struck hard into his groin. The s
oldier fell to his knees, cupping his manhood in his hands so it would not spill onto the deck, before falling forward and going to his God.
It was discipline and modern weapons against sheer weight of numbers now, and the issue was still in the balance. Then I saw that one of the natives was dressed differently to the others. His arms were decorated in the gris-gris that had adorned the King of Kombo, and he wore a similar mitre-like headpiece. He was a tall, striking figure, whose skin seemed lighter than that of the warriors alongside him. As he fought, he uttered a word that I recognised all too well: 'Stront!'. It frequently escaped the lips of my wife, the Dutch being more delicate in my mother's hearing than the English equivalent or even its French alternative, merde. I gestured to Musk and Gale, and we began to cut our way towards the richly clad man. The natives around him fought even more ferociously than those we had battled through already, but at last I had what I sought—a space, a few precious feet of open space—I reached to my belt with my free hand and lifted the flintlock pistol.
' Overgave, uwe majesteit!' I cried in Dutch—surrender, your majesty.
The man looked me up and down, took in my bloodied sword and my pistol, and nodded. His knife and spear fell to the deck.
I sat the King of Kasang down in my half-cabin and offered him some wine, which he drank lustily. He did not seem bitter and vengeful at the deaths of so many of his men; evidently his culture valued the warrior, and respected a victorious enemy. His surviving tribesmen had retired to their canoes, but we could hear the swish of paddles as these circled the ship, waiting for some sign as to the fate of their chief. I had no doubt that this was no victory, but a mere truce, and all depended on the discourse between the King and I in the next few minutes. I sent for Belem to translate, but it was swiftly clear that he was not needed; the King spoke almost flawless Dutch.
'My mother was a Dutchwoman,' he said, 'wife to a factor who resided at Kasang. When he died, my father took a fancy to the notion of a white wife.'
'Then tell me, Majesty,' I said, paying this potentate all due respect, 'how did you come to fight for our traitor, the man called O'Dwyer or Omar Ibrahim?'
'The latter, in his dealings with me,' said the King. 'He came to my court this afternoon, dressed in the Arab fashion.' I nodded; so that was why O'Dwyer had disappeared for some hours. 'He knew of my war with the King of Niani, beyond the ridge, and swore that he could provide me with the weapons to win that war. The weapons aboard this ship, which serves the enemy of my mother's country.'
Belem was rueful. 'I told O'Dwyer of it,' he said. 'During my description of these parts, I mentioned that the King, here, was half-Dutch and much inclined to their cause. And I told him of his war with Niani.'
It was not difficult to see how O'Dwyer's fertile mind had worked. Belem had inadvertently told him of a ruler who favoured the Dutch, and who wanted something that the renegade offered to provide. All O'Dwyer had to do was escape the attention of my men for a few hours in order to make his suit directly to the King. At first, I had been mystified by O'Dwyer's return to the Seraph, and almost convinced myself that I had misjudged the man. But during my conversation upon the forecastle with Valentine Negus, Kit Farrell and Francis Gale, the four of us pieced together a far more sinister explanation for the Irishman's actions. True, he could have escaped during the afternoon, but then we would have been in close pursuit, with a fair chance of running him down. Far better for his cause if no-one at all from the Seraph was left alive to pursue him; an end to be achieved by lulling the captain and crew with his unexpected reappearance, then ensuring their guard was lowered even further by proposing a night of abandon and debauch, making them incapable of resisting the attack by his new ally, the King of Kasang. And if, at some time in the future, it became convenient for Omar Ibrahim to don the guise of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer once more: well, who would be able to dispute the word of the sole survivor of the tragic expedition to locate the mountain of gold?
I almost felt a new respect for the enigmatic O'Dwyer. Yet there were more immediate matters to be settled, and they hinged upon the disposition of the man sitting before me, the King of Kasang.
'Now, Your Majesty,' I said, 'it seems that we have much in common, you and I. You have a Dutch mother, I have a Dutch wife. So let us talk truthfully of the present state of the world beyond this river, and of the ways in which I might be able to assist you in your dealings with the King of Niani.'
Twenty-Four
Most of the officers of the Seraph were gathered in its steerage, looking down upon the chart that Belem had placed upon the table. It was just after dawn, barely a few hours after the attack by the Kasang tribesmen, and we were all mightily tired, stinking of sweat and gunsmoke, yet grimly determined about our business.
'If he's making directly for Algier, he'll go due north,' said Facey in the gruff way of the old soldier. His arm, pierced by a tribesman's spear, was bandaged and held in a sling.
The ancient pilot shook his head. 'A difficult route—just one man, crossing all of that great desert—unless he has the good fortune to fall in with a caravan of Arab traders travelling back from these parts toward Timbuctoo or the like. In which case, he's more likely to go north-east, as most of the traders will be coming to and from Barraconda and the lands above there. We can discount south, I think—away from his destination, and he will find no friends among the peoples to the south of the river.'
I looked at the men around the table. We, the officers of the Seraph, almost certainly all had the same thought: we would never catch the renegade now. In one sense, his stratagem had worked perfectly. Fleeing during the night rather than the day, and using his allies' onslaught to delay us, gave him a greater head start on us. As he would have known, too, we were also inevitably exhausted from the fight. O'Dwyer seemed to have stacked the cards overwhelmingly in his favour.
But the attempt had to be made. The honour of the King of England and, more importantly, of Captain Matthew Quinton, demanded it; but so, too, did something much more tangible, a cause more personal and palpable. Eleven of our men had died in the night attack, seven Seraphim and four of Facey's soldiers. Most of these had been good men. I thought most of poor Summercourt, a stout man, and the eleven children now fatherless in their cottage upon Bodmin Moor; and Trevanion, the friend of my loyal followers Polzeath and Tremar, strong men who had lifted his body delicately from the deck with tears streaming down their faces. Morgan Facey seemed particularly affected by the death of one Tysoe, who had fought for the king all the way from Powick Bridge to Worcester fight, the first and last battles of England's civil war, three miles and nine years apart, only to perish in this miserable place in an obscure fight that would soon be lost to history. From beyond the bulkhead came the unmistakeable sound of sailors scrubbing their blood, and that of the natives, from the deck. Ergo, Brian Doyle O'Dwyer had caused the deaths of eleven good and true Englishmen, bringing misery to eleven families who would not learn of their loss for many months to come, and of scores of loyal subjects of the misled King of Kasang. Dead men, their widows and their orphans screamed out to us for revenge.
Thus I studied the chart with almost ferocious concentration. I thought hard upon what I knew of Brian Doyle O'Dwyer, and of all my dealings with him. No, I thought, I will not make a fool of myself in front of these veterans—it is an insane proposition...
And yet somehow I blurted it out. 'Is it not possible, gentlemen, that O'Dwyer will attempt to go north-west? Toward Cape Verde? The shortest route to the sea, after all.'
Negus seemed on the point of laughing at his captain's youthful folly. 'Aye, Captain, and toward Montnoir as well, and the rest of the French at Fort Saint Louis. He will hardly escape from the lion's mouth to put himself into that of the tiger.'
I persisted; somehow I sensed Cornelia's invisible presence, and she would have persisted until doomsday. 'Quite so,' I said, 'but remember, he sailed with the Sallee Rovers—the very gentlemen who essayed to attack us, no doubt in hopes of lib
erating their friend. Sallee is not too far north, gentlemen. And I think the Rovers often come down to Cape Verde or beyond—do they not, Belem?' The old pilot nodded. 'Well, then. What if O'Dwyer aims to rendezvous with some of his old shipmates on the Senegal shore?'
None of them could fault the logic of this. Thus we resolved upon three search parties. The smallest, under Negus, would set out along the least likely route, that due north toward the desert. Facey would take half of his redcoats to the north-east, leaving the remainder as a guard for Seraph. Not that we feared another attack from the King of Kasang; he had been assuaged by his conversation with me, and even more so by our generous provision of swords and muskets for his war against Niani, and wine with which to celebrate his inevitable victory. Thus Kit Farrell and I could set off confidently for the north-west with a party of seamen, leaving Gunner Lindman in command of the ship—for in truth, his skills were unlikely to be required during a manhunt, whereas Kit's ability to navigate by sun and stars would be invaluable. Boatswain Lanherne and Coxswain Carvell were devastated that they would not be required—the latter had a mighty urge to see a lion or two—but I had a dark, unspoken thought at the back of my mind. If Negus, Castle, Kit and I were all devoured by wild beasts, or slaughtered by a cannibal tribe, or simply died of heatstroke and thirst, like poor Castle, then the Seraph would require a sufficient body of sea-officers capable of taking her back to England. Otherwise, we were unanimous that two days would be sufficient for the pursuit. Our desire to avenge our fallen shipmates, and to uphold the honour of our country, had to be tempered by two rather more pressing considerations. The first was the need to get back down river before the wet season and its deadly fevers struck the Gambia. The second was the ever-present thought that somewhere downstream waited the Seigneur de Montnoir, for I was certain that the Knight of Malta was not done with us yet.