Pieces of Eight. John Drake

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      One bell of the afternoon watch 2nd October 1752 Aboard Hercules off Cape Castillo, Niña de Cuba

      Since Captain Bentham liked music, the ship’s band of musicians was scraping and blowing fiercely even as the bosun’s pipes saluted the coming-aboard of Captain Parry of Sweet Anne, and Captain Nichols of Favourite: these gentlemen, and their first mates, being summoned aboard the flagship for a council of war. The noise was terrific, and powder smoke swirled as the guns of the three ships added their voices to the din.

      All was good fellowship and satisfaction, what with Captain Bentham having led his squadron safe and sound from Upper Barbados, making landfall exactly as he’d boasted and with fair winds and a swift passage besides.

      Of the greasy mob that filled Hercules’s maindeck, only Brendan O’Byrne was frowning. He frowned because he hadn’t the guile to hide his feelings, and he was scrutinising the new arrivals as they clambered over the rail, in their best clothes and their best hats, and into the arms of Cap’n Bentham and his crew, to be welcomed as jolly companions.

      Ugh! thought O’Byrne There it was: the look. He’d seen it on three faces. Not Cap’n Parry’s, God bless him! Not him, for he knew Danny Bentham of old. But his first mate didn’t, and Cap’n Nichols didn’t, and nor his first mate neither. So they were staring at Cap’n Bentham in the way men did who met him for the first time.

      So it was a puzzled, questioning look and one that tormented O’Byrne. Worse still, it filleted the backbone out of him, so instead of being fired with manly anger he was cast down and enfeebled.

      The fact was that O’Byrne couldn’t bear any insult to Cap’n Danny. Not when his feelings for the captain were so intense, and their precise nature–stemming as they did from his own nature–were a mystery even to himself. For while O’Byrne didn’t normally care for women, any feelings towards men were ruthlessly denied…such that Cap’n Danny was a unique door through which desires might emerge that otherwise must be contained.

      With a heavy sigh and a shrug, O’Byrne told himself that it was all part of the privilege of sailing under Cap’n Danny–like never mentioning the captain’s latest wife once Williamstown was under the horizon.

      Fortunately, Cap’n Danny himself was immune to such concerns. He was what he was, and he was used to it, though he swaggered a bit at first meetings, and took care to deepen his voice.

      “Rum!” cried Bentham now. “And lay out the chart!” The crew cheered, and with much good humour kegs of spirits were brought up from below decks. A big empty cask was then up-ended by the landward quarterdeck rail to serve as a table, and as the shipmasters and their leading men gathered around it, all hands pressed forward, as befitted their status as equals under the articles they’d signed.

      “So,” said Bentham, one finger on the chart and one pointing towards land, three miles to the north. “That there’s Isabel Bay, into which the River Ferdinand runs. The bay’s a thousand yards wide at the mouth, between Cape Castille and Cape Aragon, with a great anchorage within, and Isabel Island sits between the two capes, like a sausage in a dog’s jaws.”

      “So where’s the fort?” said Captain Parry.

      “And the dollars!” said Captain Nichols.

      “See here–” said Bentham, studying the chart “–to the east of Isabel Island is sandbanks and shoals. The safe channel lies to the west, between the island and Cape Aragon, past the fort, which is down here at the southernmost tip of the island.”

      Nichols took off his hat and fanned himself against the heat.

      “If we take the channel,” he said, “we’ll be under fire from the fort all the way in. An’ it’ll be eighteen-pounders at least, and maybe twenty-fours.”

      “It’s twenty-four-pounders,” said Bentham, “but we’ll go in at sunset with the light in the gunners’ eyes, and them having to split their fire between three ships, and ourselves firing back to hide us with smoke.”

      “Hmm…” they said.

      “And,” said Bentham, “the fort’s got emplacements for thirty guns, but there’s only a dozen pieces within the walls.”

      “Aye,” said Parry, nodding, “that’s often the way of it. No bugger’ll pay for the full set! Not King George, King Louis, nor the King o’ the Dagoes.”

      “A dozen twenty-four-pounders?” said Nichols. “That’s still enough to sink the three of us, even with the sun in their eyes.”

      “Not if they’re spread round the fort, so as to cover an attack from any side,” said Bentham. “There’s only five guns facing the channel, and the guns aren’t exercised more than once in three months!”

      “How d’you know that?” said Nichols.

      “Same way as I know that an’ more,” said Bentham. “The fort’s a slaving station–blacks is offloaded there from the middle passage, and paid for from a chest of dollars in the fort’s strong room–an’ there’s never less than twenty thousand dollars in the chest!”

      “Ahhh!” they said.

      “But how’d you know?” said Nichols.

      “Ask him–” Bentham winked confidentially at O’Byrne “–he’s the boy for secrets!”

      O’Byrne stepped forward, cheered by the merry recollection he was about to share.

      “We know,” he said, “’cos we took a Dago slaver in June. And when we’d done pluckin’ ’em, we hung the crew by the ankles and I beat their bollocks with a belaying pin until they told us all they knew.”

      “Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Danny Bentham, holding his crotch with both hands and staggering bandy-legged as if in agony. That drew a great laugh, for men followed where Bentham led. He had that gift. He cut a fine figure–and was respected for being big and dangerous; especially dangerous, for Bentham could turn nasty over a wrong word or a sour look, and then God help any man within reach of his long arm and his Spanish sword.

      So they laughed, Nichols, Parry and the rest, and they nudged one another and were impressed. And when Danny Bentham explained his plan for taking the fort, they cheered from the bottom of their hearts. Across the water, Sweet Anne’s, and Favourite’s people cheered along with them, for they caught the merry mood even if they didn’t know what was afoot.

      As the sun set, Sweet Anne and Favourite formed line astern on Hercules, and the three came up the Ferdinand River with the flaming sun to larboard and the guns of the fort booming and thudding ineffectually on their starboard beams. Just as Bentham had predicted, they came through unscathed, and in the great anchorage to the north of Isabel Island they found five slavers that duly lowered their colours, and cringed in fright, and begged only to be left alone.

      At dawn the three ships, now double-anchored, hoisted out their longboats. Loaded with armed men, they pulled for the northern end of Isabel Island, each with a ship’s captain at the helm: Bentham leading, followed by Parry, followed by Nichols.

      “Give a song, you men!” cried Bentham, leading off with the first line:

      “Farewell СКАЧАТЬ