Passage to Mutiny

by Alexander Kent

  “Deep eight!”

  Lakey said sharply, “More like it.”

  Bolitho walked to the quarterdeck rail and looked down at the guns. Here and there a man moved nervously or took another pull on a gun tackle. Bare feet scraped on the sanded decks, and high in the maintop some marines were swinging a swivel gun back and forth in a silent bombardment. He saw Lieutenant Keen standing between the lines of twelve-pounders, bending at the waist to peer through one of the open ports, but keeping his arms folded as if to show how calm he was.

  Two midshipmen were assisting him at the divisions of guns, the pug-faced Fitzmaurice and the slight figure of young Romney. Swift stood with his signal party on the quarterdeck, while Borlase, puffing and emptying his cheeks like a fretful baby, moved restlessly by the starboard gangway.

  All there. Ready and waiting for something to happen.

  Bolitho glanced at the half-hour glass beside the compass. He wanted to take out his watch to be sure, but knew it would be seen as agitation, uncertainty. He had been aware of the men nearby, watching him. Looking away quickly as his gaze had passed over them.

  But it was taking far too long. If they had to change tack now it would be an age before they could work back towards the inlet. He studied the out-thrust wedge of land, the only thing recognizable from the bald description on his chart. It was pale, probably some sort of rock, and strangely at odds with the lush green background. Beyond it, glittering now above the starboard carronade, was the first hint of an opening. He bit his lip. If Herrick stayed silent he would have to drive past the inlet, and lose precious time in so doing. If there were ships still there, they might even slip past before he could come about and spread more canvas. He looked up, slitting his eyes against the glare. The sunlight angled down between the shrouds as if through windows in a cathedral, he thought vaguely.

  Topsails and jib, with the forecourse so tightly reefed it was barely filling. But it was dangerous to make more speed.

  He saw Allday watching him from the companionway, his heavy cutlass across one shoulder. Allday was waiting his moment. He knew his captain’s moods so well that to speak now would only bring a swift rebuke.

  The realization, even amidst all his uncertainty, moved Bolitho. He said quietly, “I can almost feel the island.”

  Allday walked to his side. “The smoke is thinning a bit, Captain.”

  “No. I think it’s being fanned further inland.”

  “Mebbee. It’s my thought that the first lieutenant has found nothing. The pirates have gone, and knowing Mr Herrick, I’ll wager he’s looking after the dead an’ wounded left behind.”

  “Deck there!” The urgency of the cry made everyone look up. “Ships at anchor around the point! Two of ’em!” A pause. “Tops’l schooners!”

  Bolitho turned to Allday, his eyes gleaming. “Well?”

  Allday seemed troubled. “I was wrong then.”

  “Yes.” Bolitho strode to the rail. “Shake out the fores’l, Mr Borlase! There’s no sense in losing that pair.” He smiled at the lieutenant’s anxious expression. “We might even catch them as prizes if they’ve the wit to strike to us!”

  He turned away, trying to contain his anxiety for Herrick and his men. They must have lost their way, or perhaps the schooner had grounded?

  The big forecourse boomed and filled importantly from the foreyard. In response, the land seemed to move abeam more quickly, while spray spattered over the bow and across the crouching seamen there.

  Keen was shouting, “Starboard battery will fire by division! On the order, gun captains, and not before, d’you hear?”

  Bolitho looked at him at the opposite end of the ship, or almost. How far he had come to gain such confidence and authority. Without becoming a tyrant on the journey, which was even more important.

  It did not occur to Bolitho that Keen’s captain might have had something to do with it.

  He said, “Stand by to alter course, Mr Borlase. Pipe the hands to the braces. We will steer nor’-east.”

  How many times had they altered tack and course during the long night? But it had been usual enough for these men. This was different. They had made their landfall. They would do what they were ordered.

  He listened to the bark of commands, the clatter of halliards and blocks as belaying pins were removed and the hands prepared to trim the yards.

  The pale wedge of land was almost past now, and he could see fires burning, and hissing clouds of steam from the opposite side of the inlet.

  “By th’ mark five!”

  Lakey said, “Ready, sir.”

  Bolitho looked at him gravely. It was all on the sailing master’s lean face. Responsibility. Anxiety. Determination. The ship, and it was always his ship to a master, had to have room to come about should the water become too shallow or the wind die. At worse they must anchor, but still hope they could fight clear of the shoals and the angry-looking spray below the foreshore.

  “Very well.” As the seamen hauled at the braces, and the big double wheel was put steadily over by Lakey’s best helmsmen, Bolitho cupped his hands and yelled, “Masthead! What of the ships?” The seaman must have been so enthralled by his place as spectator that he had not added to his first report.

  “Still at anchor, sir!” The man was probably peering down at the deck, but the blinding sunlight hid him.

  Bolitho consulted the compass and then the set of the sails, feeling the ship leaning less steeply as she came into the land’s shelter.

  Borlase was yelling, “Belay there! Take that man’s name, Mr Jury!”

  Bolitho had no idea who that man was, nor did he care. He was staring at the reflected fires on the water, leaping and glowing dull red despite the sun’s power, making the inlet ahead of the bowsprit glitter like one great flaming arrowhead.

  “Take in the forecourse, Mr Borlase!”

  As the sail was brailed up to its yard again, Bolitho studied the blazing village and charred boats with mounting anger. Where was the point of it? What prestige could a pirate like Tuke hope to gain by destroying and murdering these simple people?

  “Deep six!” The leadsman sounded completely absorbed.

  Ninety feet above the deck Marine Blissett, ex-gamekeeper and now one of Tempest’s best musket shots, stood with his companions beside the little swivel gun and watched the stick-like masts above the barrier of land.

  Once round it and the starboard battery would begin to fire. Slow and deadly. The first shots were always under control. He peered over the barricade at the intent figures between the black guns, the lieutenants and warrant officers pacing and worrying, or snatching a look aft at the captain.

  He saw Bolitho almost below him. He was carrying his hat, and his black hair was moving in the hot breeze.

  Blissett remembered the other island. The girl he had found stripped and murdered.

  Blissett was always amazed at his fellow men. They were often forced to live and work in unbearable hardship, and no matter how the captain kept an eye on such matters, there was always some bully ready to make things worse when he got the chance.

  Yet these same men who could face a broadside with outward calm, or watch one of their mates flogged with barely any emotion, could rise to madness if an outsider kicked a dog, or as in that case, killed an unknown girl who was probably a slut anyway.

  Blissett was not like that. He thought things out. What you needed to stay out of trouble. But also what you had to do to get noticed. He wanted to be a sergeant like Quare. He might as well, now that he was one of them.

  He wondered why he had not been one of the party sent ashore with that pig Prideaux.

  The captain of the maintop, legs braced, his back against the massive blocks of the topmast shrouds, asked, “Wot you dreamin’ about, Blissett?”

  The captain of the top, a giant petty officer called Wayth, was very aware of his responsibility, the maze of cordage and spars, the great areas of canvas which he might be ordered to repair or reset at any moment of
the day. And he disliked marines intensely without knowing why.

  Blissett shrugged. “We’ll have no chance of taking these buggers. They’ll fight to the finish and take their bloody ships to the bottom with ’em. No prize money. No nothin’!”

  The mast trembled, and Wayth forgot the marines as he peered up at his topmen.

  Blissett said to his friend, “We’ll be up to ’em. shortly, Dick.”

  “Aye.” The marine at the swivel swung it towards the land. “We’d never even reach the ships with this poor cow!” He grinned. “Now, if we was shootin’ on the larboard beam we might ’it a couple of fat ’ogs for our supper, eh?”

  Rising to his friend’s joke, Blissett turned away from the rocky shoreline and the two sets of masts and playfully pointed his musket towards the opposite side.

  “One for the pot, Dick!” He froze. “Jesus! There’s a bloody cannon over there!”

  Wayth snarled, “I’ve ’ad about all . . .”

  The rest of his anger was blasted away by the crash of a heavy gun and the immediate shriek of iron as it smashed between Tempest’s masts.

  Blissett fell to his knees, ears ringing, the breath pounded from his lungs by the closeness of a massive ball. Dazedly he stared at the length of severed rigging, and then, as he retched helplessly over the barricade, at the pulped remains of the main-top’s captain. The ball had cut him completely in half, leaving his stomach against the mast like a pancake.

  Somehow Blissett managed to shout, “Deck! Battery on th’ larboard bow!”

  It was then he realized that apart from the corpse he was alone. His friend and the other marine must have been hurled bodily to the deck below.

  Blissett leaned his musket against the barricade and trained the swivel towards the shore.

  The first shot from the shore was followed instantly by another, bringing cries of alarm from the Tempest’s gundeck as it passed between the masts and ploughed into the beach on the opposite beam.

  Bolitho yelled, “Engage with both batteries, Mr Keen!”

  He turned away as blood and flesh fell across the nets which had been spread above the guns. Someone had been killed on the maintop, and two marines had gone over the side after hitting the same nets then bouncing into the water, dead or alive, he did not know.

  Some of the men at the starboard battery were shouting and cheering, the sound strangely wild. They were probably trying to drown their sudden surprise at the bombardment, the unexpected deaths right amongst them. But soon they would hit back themselves. Even the score.

  The shouting faltered and broke up into more confusion as the hidden guns fired again, putting down a heavy ball almost alongside.

  Bolitho watched the spray falling across the hammock nettings, a seaman peering up at it as if expecting to see a boarder. He felt chilled, unable to move his thoughts in time with the swift change of events.

  Bang! That was surely a third gun, perhaps halfway up a slope and above the blazing huts. The ball went wide, and he turned to see it raise a tall waterspout near the rocks.

  Keen had his sword above his head. “Ready, lads! Ready!”

  Bolitho saw the sword drop to Keen’s side and for an instant feared he had been hit by some hidden marksman.

  Then Keen came running aft, heads turning from each gun to watch his passing.

  “What the hell, Mr Keen?” Borlase’s voice was shriller than ever.

  But Keen ran halfway up the larboard ladder and shouted to Bolitho, “Sir! The masts are false! There are no ships!”

  To add menace to his words a shot crashed through a gun-port and upended a twelve-pounder over two of its crew; the air rent with screams and sobs as the ball shattered in fragments on a gun across the deck. Men fell kicking and plucking at their bodies with hands like claws, their dying progress across the planking marked by trails of dark blood.

  “Engage to larboard!” Bolitho walked quickly to the compass. “Broadside, and then reload with grape!”

  Through his reeling thoughts came a spark of hope. That they might hit some of the carefully sited guns and give themselves time to beat clear of the inlet.

  “Fire!”

  The ship bucked and vibrated as if she had struck a sandbar, the smoke rolling away downwind in a dense pall from the uneven broadside. Shouting like madmen the gun captains urged their men to reload with heavy grape, while around them the ship’s boys darted with more powder, dodging the gaping corpses and crawling wounded, their faces like tight masks.

  “Ready!”

  Hand by hand each gun captain looked at Keen, his trigger line pulled almost taut.

  “On the uproll! Fire!”

  This time it was better timed, and Bolitho thought he saw the trees and burning huts shiver as the packed grape sliced through them.

  But the reply came just as swiftly, almost two together. One hit the forecastle, and Bolitho heard the crash and whine of splinters, saw men flung down as if by a terrible wind. He felt the air throb over his head, and winced as a ball cut through rigging and clawed down another seaman who was pulling himself aloft to repair some of the damage.

  The man fell with a sickening thud across one of the quarterdeck guns, and for a few moments he moved like some obscene, bloody creature before he died and was hauled away by the stone-faced crew.

  “We will come about, Mr Lakey!”

  Bolitho staggered as the deck jumped to another long-drawn-out broadside. Thank God the smoke was going towards the hidden guns. It was their only protection.

  Lakey nodded, his head jerky. “At once, sir.” He cupped his hands. “Man the braces if you please, Mr Borlase!”

  Borlase peered aft, his eyes bulging from his head. Another shot whined low over the nettings, and it seemed to bring the lieutenant’s limbs back into motion.

  “Man the braces! Clear the starboard battery if you must but lively there!”

  Bolitho watched coldly. No room to wear and take full advantage of the wind. They would have to pass right through its eye, pivoting round with those four mocking masts their only adversary. He could feel the anguish blinding and choking him.

  It was his fault. He should have seen the flaw, felt his enemy’s cunning. No, skill.

  “Ready ho!”

  Several men let go a brace as a ball splintered through a portion of the gangway and ground three men into a writhing shambles.

  Bolitho saw it all. Felt it. One second a scene of pain and survival as two men dragged a wounded companion towards a hatchway and safety. Now they kicked and screamed in one hideous gruel.

  “Put the helm down!”

  Bolitho ran to the lee side to try and see any sign of the enemy. But apart from several scattered fires on a hillside, caused no doubt by Keen’s grapeshot, it was as before.

  He watched the men hauling at the braces, their features grim and shining with sweat. Here and there a warrant officer, even some of the wounded, added their weight to drag the great yards round, while above the proud figurehead the jib, with broken rigging drifting amongst it like weed, flapped in abandoned confusion.

  “Helm a’lee!”

  The quartermaster had to repeat it as the guns hurled themselves inboard on their tackles, one of them making red tracks through the remains of a fallen seaman.

  “Off tacks and sheets!” Borlase’s voice was like a scream through the speaking trumpet.

  “Let go and haul!”

  Bolitho watched, hardly daring to breathe, as the land began to move very slowly to larboard as his ship responded to rudder and canvas.

  A grating crash brought more startled shouts, and he saw a ball upend another gun, slewing it right round amidst its severed tackles and gasping men as if to turn upon its own ship in revenge.

  Rigging fell from the maintopmast in black, glittering coils, and heavy blocks bounced and trailed over the nets like live things.

  Through it all, urging and threatening, sliding in blood or colliding with men employed at trimming the yards, Keen and his subor
dinates sent more hands across to the still unfired starboard battery.

  All these things were recorded in Bolitho’s brain like writing on parchment. Keen was keeping his head, knew that once around they might have a faint chance of finding and hitting their attackers before they reached open water again.

  Crash! Lakey yelled, “Main t’gallant, sir! Watch out on deck!”

  Like a giant, murderous tree, the whole topgallant mast and yard, all its canvas, blocks and shrouds swept down and through the flimsy protection with the sound of an avalanche. It fell across the larboard side, breaking down nettings, whipping men from their feet and flinging them aside like dolls.

  Bolitho felt the ship stagger under the onslaught, sensed the change in motion as the tangle dragged at the hull like a great sea-anchor.

  Jury was booming, “Axes there! Clear it away! Get those wounded below!”

  His great voice seemed to rally the dazed gun crews along the side where the topgallant mast had fallen. More trailing halliards and ratlines, followed by the masthead pendant, splashed over the side, surging around some corpses and a few frantic swimmers as if to suck them under.

  Somewhere through the din and smoke Bolitho heard the fore-topsail filling to the change of tack, and saw the land loom dangerously close while Tempest continued to turn.

  The planks bucked beneath him, throwing up splinters like jagged darts as a ball smashed through the poop and explored the semi-darkness between decks in a trail of destruction and terror.

  In disbelief Bolitho saw the sun glinting on clear water, a distant island very green in the untroubled light. In the opposite direction the trailing smoke from his ship mingled with that of the inlet and glowed above the burning village.

  One more ball struck the hull right aft, a great hammer-blow, as if to mark the final seal of defeat.

  Bolitho listened to voices resuming command and order, the cries of the wounded becoming fainter as men died or were carried below to the orlop for Gwyther and his mates to tend as best they could.

  The broken mast and spars were drifting clear of the stern, and he saw one man sitting astride the crosstrees, staring after his ship, too stunned to know what was happening.