The Distant Ocean

by Philip K Allan

  ‘Very well then, let the canoe go there, men,’ ordered the teenager. ‘We must go and explore this next creek.’

  As the launch entered the river estuary the world began to close in around them. The fresh wind of the open ocean was cut off, and the temperature and humidity soared. Now the air was tainted with an earthier smell of decay from the line of dense forest that seemed to push in on them from either side. The blue rolling sea had turned to flat brown water and the sound of waves faded behind them to be replaced by the cries of strange birds and the constant drone of insects. As the estuary narrowed, long shiny mud banks rose from beneath the surface on either side, their tops dotted with pieces of drift wood left high and dry.

  ‘It seems plain to me that there can be no ship-rigged privateer here,’ said Butler. He ran a finger around his collar, trying to cool himself. ‘God, it’s damn hot.’

  ‘We should press on a little farther inland, sir,’ said Sedgwick. ‘The channel is deep enough for a ship for some distance yet, and there’s this proper long bend in the river ahead what you can’t see around from here.’ Butler looked at him in surprise.

  ‘How the deuce do you knows that?’ he asked. ‘Did the fisherman tell you?’

  ‘I need no advice from them, sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘I grew up on the banks of this river and fished it with my uncle. We are very close to where I came from.’

  Butler swatted at a biting insect and then sat back in the stern sheets, fanning himself with his hat. The boat sailed on up the brown river, and the banks came still closer, before opening up to one side as the flow swept around a broad bend. Sedgwick sat forward with one hand on the tiller and scanned the nearest side. The midshipman followed his gaze to a big area of much lighter undergrowth and no large trees that stretched along the river bank. The shore seemed lower there. Sedgwick looked at it for a moment, then leant back in the boat.

  ‘Is that clearing where your village once was?’ asked the midshipman.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sedgwick. ‘But no one lives there now. Soon it will be forest again.’

  Butler looked a little longer at where the coxswain’s home had been, and then turned his attention to the opposite bank of the river. His eyes wandered over the forest, but his mind was still thinking about the man sitting next to him. He chanced to look at a line of particularly tall trees that grew right down on the river bank. Most were straight, but some were angled over. The water flow must have undercut their roots, he thought, although a long bank of mud obscured his view of their bases. His eye drifted over one fallen giant that rested against its neighbour at much the same angle as the forestay of a ship was to the foremast. He had started to glance away when something flashed in the sun. That’s odd, he thought, shading his eyes. Whatever it was had been too bright to be the light reflecting off the water. He reached for his spy glass and focused on the shore. After a moment he pushed himself upright and looked away. He closed the telescope with a snap and sat in the boat, looking straight forward.

  ‘Put her on the other tack,’ he ordered. Sedgwick glanced around in surprise and noticed the fixed look in the teenager’s face.

  ‘Hands to the sheets, there,’ he called. ‘Ready to go about!’ The launch spun around and headed towards the sea once more.

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’ asked the coxswain.

  ‘Men, keep your eyes in the boat,’ Butler said, then he muttered out the side of his mouth. ‘Direct your gaze over my right shoulder, where those tall trees are. What can you see?’

  The coxswain looked at the patch of jungle where Butler had indicated. He scanned the forest, his eyes moving backwards and forwards, without success. And then he saw a shape emerge from out of the background of lush green.

  ‘It’s a bloody ship!’ he gasped. ‘With loads of creepers and branches tied aloft in the rigging. The hull must be tucked behind that big mud bank.’

  ‘Nice and calm does it, Sedgwick,’ urged the youngster. ‘Let us return to the Titan, but keep it nice and calm.’

  Chapter 4 Passe Partout

  The first mate of the Passe Partout was a bear of a man. He had shoulder-length black hair and a pockmarked face dominated by a bristling moustache. He stood towards the stern of the privateer and peered up into masses of greenery over his head.

  ‘Have they gone, mon capitaine?’ he asked. The man he addressed had climbed part way up the mizzen shrouds and was only visible as a pair of polished Hessian boots that protruded from the abundant foliage draped over the ship’s rigging. He heard his captain close his telescope, and a moment later he jumped back down onto the deck amid a small shower of leaves.

  ‘Yes, they have gone for now, Bruno,’ said Captain Andre D’Arbigny, as he brushed pieces of creeper from off his plum-coloured coat. ‘But the question is why.’

  ‘Capitaine?’ queried the mate.

  ‘Did they go because they saw nothing to interest them, or do they hurry back to their frigate with news of us?’

  ‘They did not come across to this side of the river,’ said Bruno. ‘Surely if they were suspicious they would have come to our side of the mud bank, mon capitaine? I took the cutter out into the river this morning to check our cover. I swear that a hawk would have missed the ship.’

  ‘Even so, there is something that troubles me,’ said D’Arbigny. ‘It all felt very strange. I do not like the way that they suddenly turned their boat around. Having come so far, why did they not search past the bend in the river? They took a glance at the abandoned village and off they went again. And I do not trust the look of the officer who sat in the stern sheets. One moment he was searching everywhere, and then he sat staring only ahead. No, I do not like it at all.’

  D’Arbigny set off to pace along the deck of his ship, his hands clasped behind his back and his polished boots making a slight squeak on the planking as he went. The sloop was too small to have a quarterdeck or forecastle, which meant he could stride all the way along her uninterrupted length. He paused for a moment at the first of her little six-pounder guns and frowned. The tiny cannon balls they fired were fine to intimidate other slave ships, he mused, but would bounce of the thick sides of the heavy frigate he had seen from the masthead. He had counted her many gun ports, each one sure to conceal a huge eighteen-pounder. He could picture the hurricane of shot they would fire and how it might smash his little ship to splinters. No, it would be suicide to enter a fight with the likes of her.

  An awning had been suspended from the rigging, and under its shade the anchor watch sat at their ease. Several of the men were grouped around an upturned tub where a lively game of cards was in progress, while others sat around and talked quietly. He watched them out of the corner of his eye as he strode past. Here too, all was not as he would have liked. On the surface, they were a fearsome looking crew. Most were old Africa hands; former slavers from the Vendee and Brittany, well used to intimidating large bodies of men, and capable of considerable violence. But it was one thing to dominate a group of unarmed and bewildered slaves in shackles. How well would they fight against trained sailors and marines, armed with cutlasses and muskets as they poured over the ship’s sides? They might resist for a while, but once things turned nasty, he doubted if one man in three would die for him. So, I cannot win with my cannon, nor with the crew either, he muttered to himself as he reached the bow of his little ship.

  ‘Masthead!’ he bellowed, up into the masses of greenery. The roar of his voice briefly silenced the sounds of the forest. ‘What do you see of that ship’s boat?’

  ‘She is out at sea now, mon capitaine,’ came the reply. ‘The English are just about to reach their frigate.’

  ‘Watch them carefully. Let me know what they do next.’

  ‘Oui, mon capitaine!’ came the reply.

  Captain D’Arbigny leant on the bow rail and stared over the side into the oily brown water of the river. A piece of wood drifted towards him, bumped off the steeply raked hull of his ship, and carried on towards the sea, turnin
g with the stream as it went. Now that was something he did have in his favour, he decided, as he admired the sharp lines of the sloop. No one could touch his Passe Partout for speed. If ever he could once put some blue water between himself and the English ship, he would be free. He leant over the rail and patted the oak side with affection, as if he wanted to calm a nervous thoroughbred.

  ‘We have crossed the ocean together many times, old girl,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Capitaine?’ queried Bruno, who had followed him up the deck.

  ‘I was just remembering all the voyages I and the Passe have made,’ he said. ‘Back in the year ninety we set a new record from this coast to Martinique, you know. But now the market for my slaves has vanished. The Roast Beefs captured our sugar islands and the Negros are in revolt in Saint Dominique.’

  ‘So now we make it our business to prey on their slavers,’ said Bruno. ‘Your idea was brilliant! The only thing swift enough to catch a slave ship is another slave ship, and the very fastest of them all was rotting at her moorings in Nantes.’

  ‘It was a good idea,’ agreed D’Arbigny. ‘But has it now run its course, mon ami? Does it all end here in the godforsaken swamp?’

  ‘Deck ho!’ called the lookout at the masthead.

  ‘Oui, Pierre!’ called D’Arbigny. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘The boat has been swayed up into the frigate, and the English are making sail.’

  ‘See, mon capitaine!’ exclaimed Bruno. ‘They can have seen nothing. Let us lay low for a little longer, and slip back out to sea with the tide tomorrow.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said D’Arbigny. ‘Or maybe that is what they want us to think. It will be night in a few hours and there will be little moon. These Royal Navy captains can be as cunning as the devil. What if they shape to go, but in reality they plan to return as soon as it is dark? No, I do not trust them. Call the men together. I have an idea.’

  *****

  It was black night off the coast of Africa, with only the glimmer of an occasional star peeping through the broken cloud. On the dark sea nothing seemed to be moving amongst the rolling waves of pitch. And then a line of phosphorescence was drawn across the surface, to glimmer briefly and then vanish as the hull of a large ship ghosted through the water.

  ‘The ship is in position to cover the mouth of the river now, sir,’ reported the sailing master, his usually cheerful face rendered to a gargoyle by being under-lit with the light of the binnacle.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Armstrong,’ replied Clay. ‘Let us get the sails off her, if you please.’

  ‘All hands! All hands to take in sail!’ called the boatswain’s mates, for once banned from using their piercing calls for fear of alerting the enemy. Clay sensed more than saw the dark mass of men as they flowed towards the ships sides, and moments later he heard the sound of their race aloft as a thrumming in the shrouds. The way came off the frigate and she began to drift into the wind.

  ‘Pass the word to let slip the anchor,’ he ordered.

  ‘Let go there forward!’ called Lieutenant Taylor towards the invisible forecastle. The two tons of the Titan’s best bower hit the water with an explosion of phosphorescence that followed it like the tail of a comet as it plunged down into the depths.

  ‘Anchor’s holding,’ called Hutchinson, the Titan’s boatswain, from out of the night.

  ‘The ship is at anchor, sir,’ said Taylor. ‘The boatswain will bend a spring on the cable. Soon we will be in a position to blast those Frogs if they should be fool enough to try and slip away.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Clay. ‘Gentlemen, the hole to the den is stopped. Let us now send in the terriers.’

  On the main deck the battle lanterns had been lit to provide a faint glow for the boat crews to assemble in. Clay looked down onto a mass of men drawn up beneath him. He could feel their boiling excitement at the prospect of action.

  ‘Marines over here!’ called Lieutenant Macpherson. Booted feet crunched and stamped across the deck in unison, followed by the scrape of leather soles on oak as their sergeant made them shuffle into a properly dressed line. Then the Scot walked slowly down the row to check that every man had his correct allocation of equipment.

  At the open arms chests the seamen were collecting either a cutlass or a boarding axe each. One man stood blocking the way, while he angled the blade edge in the dim light like a connoisseur considering a purchase.

  ‘Move your arse there, Bill,’ urged O’Malley, ‘or the peace will be declared long before we get ourselves a cutlass. What are you after doing with that, anyways? Having yourself a fecking shave?’

  ‘I wants a proper blade, like. Last one I had bleeding snapped off at the hilt, first Frog I stuck it into,’ grumbled the sailor, but he moved aside so O’Malley and the others could grab a weapon. Then they moved on to where the armourer and his mate were handing out pistols.

  ‘One each,’ he intoned, as he passed each weapon over. ‘Take one and shift along there, lads.’

  ‘Can I have a musket, please, Mr Arkwright?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘Pistols only, Hobbs,’ he growled. ‘If it were a musket you were after, you should have joined the bleeding army.’

  ‘I’ll be fine with a pistol, Mr Arkwright,’ said the Irishman, holding out his hand. The armourer handed over a loaded pistol, but failed to release his end.

  ‘Now O’Malley, this time don’t you go cocking your piece till you’re on board the enemy,’ he urged. ‘Unless you plan to blow your fundament off while you’re rowing, that is.’ He then released the pistol.

  ‘Right you are, Mr Arkwright,’ said O’Malley, stuffing the pistol into his waist band without checking it. ‘Like I’ve not fecking done this above a score of times before,’ he muttered to his friends.

  ‘Besides, Sean, your tackle’s that riddled with pox, losing it will come as a blessed relief, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Evans, to general laughter as they returned to their places in their division.

  ‘It seems to be a proper load of us going,’ remarked Trevan as he looked about him. ‘All the Lobsters, an’ a good hundred of us Jacks.’

  ‘Aye, it do seem a deal of bother for one little sloop,’ said Evans. ‘Why ain’t we just sailing in and blasting the bleeders to the far side of hell with our great guns?’

  ‘Because they have gone an’ moored themselves behind this big mud bank where the barky can’t come at them,’ said Sedgwick. ‘If young Butler didn’t have good eyes, we would have missed them all together.’

  ‘That be fair enough,’ said Trevan. ‘Cold steel shall sort it, if we can find them buggers in this dark, mind.’

  ‘Don’t you go and worry about that, Adam,’ said the coxswain. ‘I have the helm of the lead boat, and I could find my way up this river blindfolded.’

  ‘Launch crew, come here!’ ordered Lieutenant Preston. There was a surge of movement towards the sound of his voice.

  ‘Cutter crew over by the forecastle!’ directed Lieutenant Blake. More men broke away to form a fresh group.

  ‘Longboat crew to me!’ called Midshipman Butler.

  ‘Right, that’s us,’ said O’Malley. ‘Best of luck, lads. An’ the last one onto the enemy’s deck buys the fecking grog in Cape Town.’ The sailors bumped fists as they headed across the deck to join the group gathered around the midshipman.

  ‘Good luck, Mr Taylor,’ said Clay. He reached for the older man’s hand. ‘And remember, show three lights at the foretop yard when you bring her out, so I shall know not to open fire. If I see no signal, I will assume the Passe Partout is trying to cut and run, and act accordingly.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I shall not forget. We have no great distance to cover. I expect to return in a matter of hours.’

  *****

  All the ship’s boats were crammed with men, none more so than her longboat. Each of its ten benches bore at least three marines and two sailors, one of whom was trying to row. In the stern sheets there was a little more room, but Sedgwick was still squeezed in
next to Lieutenant Taylor, with Lieutenant Macpherson on one side and the gangly Midshipman Butler on the other. He tried to ignore the hilt of Taylor’s sword as it dug into his thigh and concentrated instead on navigating the boat. In his head he kept a running count of the oar strokes, using this to help him feel his way into the night.

  They were deep into the estuary now, and with the last of the sea breeze cut off it was almost as hot as it had been during the day. The reek of decaying plant matter seemed to flow out of the black trees that hedged them in. The air all around throbbed with the drone of an infinite numbers of insects, while larger creatures stirred in the dark. From the forest off to one side the distant roar of a big cat set off howls of derision from a troop of monkeys, while on the other side something very big shifted amongst the trees. There was a sudden swirl in the water just beside the boat, accompanied by a heavy jolt against the side. A circle of ripples twinkled in the starlight.

  ‘Was that some manner of large fish, Sedgwick?’ asked Taylor as he watched the ring of disturbed water disappear behind them.

  ‘No sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘A hundred and twenty. It was a crocodile. A hundred and twenty-one.’

  ‘Truly?’ said the lieutenant. ‘Well I never did. Remind me to make sure of my footing when we clamber aboard the enemy.’

  ‘Damnation,’ muttered Macpherson as he slapped at his neck. ‘It is not your crocodile I fear but these damned mosquitoes. The wee beasties are worse than Highland midges.’

  ‘The mud bank that conceals the enemy is coming up on the port side, sir,’ said Sedgwick. ‘Shall I let the others close up?’

  ‘If you please,’ murmured Taylor, twisting in his seat to look behind him.

  ‘Easy oars,’ ordered Sedgwick and the boat slowed to a halt. ‘Bow pair keep sculling. Hold us in this here current.’ Off to one side the long dome of mud glistened in the faint light. Beyond it the Passe Partout was invisible against the black forest.