Nobody’s Child

by Andrew Wareham

  We came rapidly to first-name terms; it was Bob and Giles within the day.

  Not so sure that was a good thing, thinking back on it. He was still the captain on his ship, not that a single-masted eighty tonner was so much of a leviathan of the ocean. The principle of the thing is what matters, to my mind. I suspect the navy might have it right in this case.

  We sailed some five days due west, or perhaps a bit to the north of that line, reaching the coast over an empty sea. The land takes a generally north-easterly trend thereabouts and the wind was within reason steady from the south-west, so it was a leeward shore, but not too much so – it required little effort to tack along the shoreline.

  We passed two harbours in the first day, smallish bays sheltered under low cliffs and big enough to moor half a dozen large dhows. We might have tacked into those places, but we would have been hard pressed ever to get out again. The big dhows could easily carry a crew of fifty fighting men; six of them were far too many for us to essay.

  “Lucky they do not come out to pursue us, Giles. Probably making up their cargoes of slaves and unwilling to risk losing them to cannon fire.”

  Two days further north and we came to the sort of target we fancied. A river mouth coming down to the sea through a swamp of some sort – mangrove we would call it now – and a small village and single barracoon with a pair of lateen-rigged Arab ships tied up. Neither dhow was as big as the sloop and they probably had tiny crews.

  “Based on the village and sending men out to sweep up the countryside, I expect, Giles. The Arabs take their slaves at gunpoint, killing as many as they capture. Not like the West of Africa where the local kingdoms sell their slaves to our ships.”

  I knew nothing of the slave trade; listening, I gained the impression that Bob knew too much.

  “Sailed out of Liverpool when I was a boy, Giles.”

  I doubted he was five years my elder now, barely twenty.

  “No choice in my ship. Foundling and signed on as apprentice, willy-nilly, by the parish. The ship was on the African run, carrying powder and muskets and gin down to the Coast, selling to the traders at the Castle and then bringing back a cargo of elephant’s teeth and palm oil and Grains of Paradise and fine timbers. Bit of gold dust on occasion, but that not every trip. The traders sold the cargoes on to the native kingdoms and picked up the goods we carried back to Liverpool and slaves as well, mostly prisoners taken in their wars. I never crewed on a slaver, as such, but was close to the trade and saw how it worked. Time I put a few quid together, I got out and came down to Poole, running a distance for breaking my indentures in Liverpool. Dirty bloody business. Worse the way the Arabs do it.”

  That sounded fair to me, then. It still does. An apprentice indentured by the parish did as he was told, by law, and could be given fifty lashes the first time he tried to run away. If he was not successful the second time, the punishment could be far worse. The death penalty was never enforced on runaway ‘prentices, but, in the worst case, a boy could be given fifty with the cat every third day for a fortnight. It was a rare man who stood upright ever again after surviving that.

  Bob had had no choice but stick out aboard his ship until he had made a few pounds, and a boy was paid pennies only.

  “Been with Captain Marker for two years now, Giles. Good man!”

  “So he seems to me, Bob. They’re shouting us to come close by the looks of things, Bob.”

  We were sailing in company with Jenny Dawes, not too close, for the sake of the watchkeepers in the night who might not fancy colliding with her. Bob ordered the helm down and made a workmanlike job of taking the sloop down the wind to pistol shot of Jenny Dawes’ stern.

  Captain Marker hung over the rail and yelled.

  “You’re rat-catcher, Mr Westfield. Come the dawn, I want ye a mile or so downwind of that little harbour. Should the dhows, or any other boat, cast off, you are to pick them up. As soon as you have tidied up, make your way inshore – shouldn’t take more than a couple of tacks. Bring the captures in with you. Don’t burn ‘em. They might come in handy.”

  Bob shouted his acknowledgement and dropped away to take up the correct position before nightfall. He told me that there was always a chance that the wind might change. It wasn’t likely, but he preferred not to take the slight risk.

  He would look a complete fool if he found himself unable to carry out his simple orders for being stuck in the wrong place, I realised. It was a lesson for me, as well. Don’t dally when there’s action in the wind. Holiday time is for leisure.

  We came to an anchor in the shallows just outside the reefs. Apparently, the shore sloped gently away here, unlike parts of the Pacific where I later discovered there might be one fathom of water inside the reef and a hundred and more just a few yards out to sea.

  “Why might little old dhows come in handy to us, Bob?”

  “Say the Arabs have got a little fort with a couple of guns. They hole up in it and it’s a nuisance winkling them out. But they won’t want to stay there, with the slaves they took waiting for them outside the walls and only so much of food and water inside. If we offer them their boats back in return for surrender of themselves and all they possess, well, it ain’t the best of bargains, but it’s a bloody sight better than what will happen when the slaves lay their hands on them.”

  Highly practical, I realised.

  “How do we talk to ‘em, Bob?”

  “Captain’s got a few words of Arabic. Enough for that. He likes learning languages. Gives him something to do in his cabin, when he’s on his own, what a captain must be some of the time.”

  My respect for the gentleman increased, but not sufficiently for me to borrow a dictionary and set about learning myself.

  “Mount full lookouts tonight, Giles. They ain’t likely to risk sailing in the dark, but they might, even so. Too risky in the ordinary way of things – they don’t know that we’re going to attack them, might be safe if they stay in port. So I expect them not to sail, but that don’t mean they won’t.”

  I set the boarders to two-hour watches in pairs, to be useful, and to make sure they were awake to what we were doing in the morning.

  “Sleep with long-arms loaded, and pistols for those who’ve got them.”

  The four men with the musketoons had been told to fire and then reload. The musketeers would drop their weapons and rely on pistol and blade. Bob’s seamen would man the swivels and I would use my sword and the two dragons that Fred had cleaned up. The six crewmen would stay aboard the sloop when we went against the dhow.

  The men had brought bottles of schnapps from Cape Town, inevitably. It was, they told me, much like gin, but being foreign wasn’t as good. I laid down the law on drinking, knowing they would disobey me but hoping they would not drink too much to be able to fight in the morning.

  “No more than a bottle between four tonight, lads. Got to be sober for the morning.”

  They all knuckled their foreheads and swore they would be good.

  “Bloody liars, Bob!”

  “So they are, Giles. Have a nip of brandy, lad.”

  The cook produced a hot drink in the morning, saying it was chocolate from the Sugar Islands, though he called it cocoa. He had sugar as well and had stirred it in. Hot and sweet and damned near thick enough to chew. Best breakfast ever. I still take a mug of that most mornings.

  We were in sight of the little harbour and watched Jenny Dawes harden her sails and make her way at four or five knots through a gap in the reef. One of the dhows slipped along the shoreline, probably not twenty yards off the white coral beach, and came out through a second far narrower passage, coral heads within a yard of her hull on both sides.

  “Bloody good seamanship, Giles! Must be making eight knots and sailing to the inch!”

  We waited, weapons loaded and anchor up and laying-to, our sails flatted in to hold against the wind.

  We heard a broadside as Jenny Dawes turned parallel with the shoreline. That had not been part of the origin
al plan.

  “Can you see what she’s shooting at, Giles?”

  We had no glass and could not pick out details at a mile distant.

  “Masthead?”

  “Might be a breastwork, sir. Something made of timber, I reckon. Can’t see no cannon, sir.”

  The dhow was making more sail, heaving her boom higher to increase the area of canvas catching the wind. She was making straight for us.

  “Risking anything we can throw at her as she crosses us, Giles, rather than tacking offshore more slowly. She’s fast!”

  Bob called for the topsail of the sloop to be loosed, giving us no more than three knots.

  “Puts us across her bows, Giles. The initiative is hers in this wind, and she has the choice of cutting inshore of us at speed or taking a tack to pass to seaward of us. If she tacks and slows, we have the chance to get aboard her.”

  “And if she goes inshore?”

  “We get a single volley at about fifty yards distant. Clear the stern, if we do it right. Steersman at the tiller and the captain stood next to him both to die. Get it wrong and she’ll be gone, probably with their cashbox and any elephant’s teeth they picked up. They’ll have loaded her overnight with everything valuable they possess.”

  A few minutes and the dhow was within a cable of us, a white bone in her teeth and still increasing her speed. Four shots rang out from her, individually aimed fire, and one of the seamen dropped.

  “Long rifles, the bastards!”

  Bob sounded indignant; they had no business being accurate at over the hundred yards.

  “Take your aim!”

  We leaned on the rail, cuddling the flintlocks and trying to allow for the shallow lop on the sea. The dhow came within forty yards, closer than we had hoped for.

  “Cock your locks! Shoot!”

  There was a surprisingly loud volley as fifteen firearms sounded off as one. I had the pair of dragons and dropped the first and levelled the second, gave one final loud shot, probably pointless at the range. We watched silent as the dhow came up into the wind and then fell off, out of control, bows towards the shore. She struck within the minute, driving high up onto the reef.

  “Reload all,” I shouted.

  Bob took the sloop slowly towards the stern of the dhow, one of his seamen sitting in our bows and shouting to steer left or right as he watched the depth of water. The little sloop drew no more than six feet and he was able to bring us so close to the dhow that our jibboom – or so I believe it to be called – actually touched her stern.

  “Boarders!”

  I ran forward, first up and onto the dhow. That was the rule. Had to be done that way, officer taking the lead. I had my new sword in my right hand and a heavy pistol in the left. The dragons I had on makeshift rope slings across my back. I suspect I looked the very model of a brigand or pirate chief.

  There were no more than seven men aboard the dhow, and three of them had been in the stern around the tiller and had taken the brunt of our fire. The three were very dead, sprawled in pools of blood. Two others were nursing buckshot wounds to chest and belly, down on the deck and with little chance of ever standing again. A wound that penetrated the abdomen was almost inevitably fatal, particularly in the tropics. Two stood their ground, one carrying a long straight sword, the other a pair of daggers.

  I yelled and pointed down, hoping they would surrender and drop their weapons. They shouted their war cry back and jumped forward, evidently intending to die fighting. Four of the boarders had their musketoons and had managed to reload. At ten feet distance, the big blunderbusses made mincemeat of the pair. Elegant, it was not.

  I could see a coral head sticking through the planking of the dhow’s side. She would never swim again.

  “Quickly! Below decks and seek out anything of value!”

  I set the example by diving into the little stern cabin.

  Chapter Five

  Nobody’s Child Series

  Nobody’s Child

  We emptied the little dhow at full pelt – I doubt I have moved so fast in all my life, apart from the time I was almost caught in the women’s quarters of a mandarin’s house in Canton, but I had a real incentive to run hard there… you might say I had a lot to lose. That’s another tale, of course. If I live long enough, I shall write down what happened on that occasion in Canton. Young Fred won’t like it. Bugger him!

  We were right in the surmise that the Arabs would have loaded the dhow with all of their wealth, not that it was a hell of a lot, but better than nothing. Quite a lot better, actually.

  I found a small chest in the cabin, as long as my forearm – the classical cubit, I suspect – and much the same width and depth. Damned near ruptured meself trying to pick it up. Took four of us to work it out of the cabin and then to the stern rails. Got a line from the sloop and rove it through a block from the boom to hoist it inboard, very carefully. It had a chain round it with a damned great padlock on top. We found no key and left it until we got it to Jenny Dawes, expecting Master Gunner to deal with it in minutes.

  Besides the treasure chest we picked up three pairs of elephant’s teeth and a dozen of rhino horns, the latter much in demand in Eastern medicine, we were told. Apparently, it could restore virility in the elderly. Some hope!

  We picked up the four long rifles and half a dozen of brass handled pistols, for their curio value, as well as some good quality blades, very old by their looks, steel that had been cherished through the ages in a family. ‘Sky steel’, they call the metal from Damascus, for what it’s worth. There was a small sack of worked coral beads, red and pink mostly – thousands of hours of patient labour by poor fisherfolk stolen away from them by the thieving slavers.

  That apart, we collected together the oddments that were of some little value to us – brass drinking cups as an example.

  Then we looked into the hold space, still dry, fortunately, and became busy again. I had expected nothing more than slave food and water barrels, bearing in mind their trade, but they had evidently intended to set up a small fort at the village and use it as a base for raiding the hinterland. There were fifty of Tower muskets, all in good condition, and barrels of powder and ball and flints. Besides that they had put together two score of breastplates and steel caps, old-fashioned but handy against an enemy without firearms. We kept the block and tackle busy for two hours, twitching as the tide made and the broken hull bounced against the reef.

  We emptied her and then looked at the wounded men, debating what best to do with them. Both were unconscious and looked to be dying. There was no gain to moving them and we left them where they lay and poled the sloop away into deeper water. It seemed that the only thing keeping the dhow above water had been the hull of the sloop pushing against her. The little vessel slipped off the reef and sank quickly, her end marked by a single shark’s fin investigating the disturbance.

  “Meat supper for him tonight, Bob,” I remarked casually.

  “There’ll be a dozen more in a few minutes, Giles. The moment he takes a mouthful and releases blood into the water the rest will cluster in.”

  We did not stay around to find out, making our tacks to join Jenny Dawes at the little harbour.

  I reported aboard, found that Captain Marker was ashore and used the sloop’s boat to join him.

  “I see you caught the dhow, Giles.”

  “Got her, sir. Worth a thousand or two, I suspect, as well.”

  “Good. We’ve found very little. Muskets and pistols and not much else. Some sacks of rice is about all. They don’t seem to have been here long, still setting themselves up. Barely a dozen of adult slaves and I have released them and their children, those that remain – we ain’t in the business of running black ivory. Be different if we took a cargo at sea, but I ain’t loading these poor fellows aboard. They killed all of the old folk here, and the youngest children – not worth anything as slaves and they just bashed their heads in. The few men and women remaining are young and strong – they should survive.”


  I had not heard of the habits of the Arab slavers before, was inclined to be angry.

  “Did you take any prisoners, sir?”

  “Eight, all of them more or less wounded. I gave them to the slaves.”

  “Good!”

  “It seemed fair to me, Giles. They burned them alive, I believe. A foretaste of the fires of Hell, which are certain to be their fate.”

  I was none too convinced of the afterlife; I was simply glad they suffered before departing this. I’ve heard of forgiveness, and that sort of nonsense, turning the other cheek and suchlike. Not for me. I’m all for grabbing evil-doers and kicking them in the nuts, driving my disapproval home, you might say.

  “Have the fisherfolk any food, sir?”

  “A storehouse with some rice and local flour which I am leaving here. Besides that, they have their fishing canoes. They will survive. I shall leave the dhow here as well. They may be able to use her. We can take the pair of three pound cannon she has aboard. Brass guns and long in the barrel. Should be very accurate. Could put them to the stern ports, perhaps. See what Master Gunner has to say. Sell them in Bombay if he don’t want them. What’s your butcher’s bill, Giles?”

  I told him of the one man who had gone down to the long rifles.

  “High in the left arm, sir. The bone is damaged but not smashed.”

  We had no surgeon and could only heal by guess.

  “Should we take it off, Giles?”

  I could not tell and was unwilling to take the responsibility for such a mutilation.

  “Nor me, lad! What does he say? Who is it?”

  “Maneater again, sir. He seems unlucky, attracts any fire that is in the area.”