The Continental Risque (26 page)

Tottenhill felt his irritation mount with every word Woodberry said. ‘You presume to tell me how to run my vessel? Who do you think you are? I shall do what I think right, and if I want your counsel I'll ask for it, and I don't imagine that will happen anytime before the conversion of the Jews.'

‘Sir, I just meant—'

‘Oh, I know what you meant, never doubt it. If you do not want a tot, then you need not have one. In which case I'll thank you to get a broom and see to sweeping out the cable tier.'

‘But, sir, the buntline—'

‘Damn the buntline, get a broom and get below before I stop your tot for good!'

Woodberry took a long second to glare at Hackett, and then at Tottenhill, before mumbling, ‘Aye. Sir,' and shuffling forward.

‘Very well, Hackett,' Tottenhill said with finality. He knew that after his display with Woodberry he could no longer deny Hackett his request. ‘The men have earned as much. Fetch the purser and tell him I have decided to issue an extra tot today.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Hackett said, saluting crisply. ‘The men will be wonderfully grateful.' And saying that he hurried off forward.

The distribution of the rum, like anything done by a well-trained and properly motivated crew, was carried out with amazing speed and efficiency. Not above four minutes later, Hackett settled on the heel of the bowsprit, displacing two of his messmates, and took a long pull from his tin cup.

‘There. And didn't I tell you I could get that stupid bastard to issue us a tot? That's a shilling apiece, you gentlemen owes me, by my reckoning,' Hackett said, barely containing his triumph.

‘And we'll pay you once we gets it, mate, and you'll just have to wait till then,' said Michael Jenkins, a fellow North Carolinian. ‘I'd like to see you get away with this with bloody Biddlecomb or Rumstick aboard.'

‘Sod Biddlecomb and sod Rumstick, them Yankee sons of bitches,' Hackett said. ‘They don't run things here, any more than that dumb arse Tottenhill.'

‘You're getting a bit full of yourself, ain't you, Captain Hackett?'

‘“Captain Hackett”? I like that, I like that full well. Sets good on me, don't it?' Hackett took another pull of his rum and stared out at the flagship, with all the fleet's boats clustered around it.

It had been a productive twenty-four hours. Sneaking down into the cable tier to steal a nap, he had come across Weatherspoon doing the same thing. He raised a great ruckus, pretending to believe the sleeping midshipman injured or dead. Now Weatherspoon was relegated to the masthead as punishment for taking a caulk. With the other Yankees off the ship Hackett had made great advances in Tottenhill's confidence, and with Tottenhill in command it gave him great freedom to work his will.

He smiled as he thought of how suspicious he had been when first recruited. He had been afraid that the navy would be a floating hell, but in fact it was turning out to be the highlight of his career at sea.

And now was the time to prove once and for all who ruled on the lower deck.

‘Look here, you bastards, you owe me a shilling each,' he said.

‘We ain't got a shilling, dumb arse, like I said,' said Jenkins.

‘Okay, then. What say you gentlemen help me in a little job and we'll forget all about the shilling.'

Hackett looked at the five men sitting around him. His courtiers. His court jesters. They looked suspicious, as well they might.

‘What job?'

‘It's just a little thing. Got to do it right now, so drink up, boys. But don't you worry, you'll like it as much as I will.'

The five tilted the last of their rum into their mouths, then sat silent, waiting for further instructions from Hackett. And Hackett, like a chess master, ran over in his mind his next move, and his move after that and his move after that. There was so much more to do. Oh, my, yes, there was so very much more yet to do.

The light of the single lantern allowed Woodberry only the dimmest view of the cable tier, even after his eyes had adjusted to the dark. The cables themselves, great heaps of cordage like monstrous coiled snakes, occupied the majority of the space.

The tier itself was none too big, and moving around in that confined place was awkward. That, coupled with the low overhead, made Woodberry uneasy; he was used to the vast spaces on deck or aloft. Being thus confined induced a slightly panicked feeling.

On the deck under his feet he could feel the dried filth that had been carried aboard with the cables, the muck from the bottoms of rivers and harbors where the
Charlemagne
had anchored. He slashed at it with his broom, feeling the pain from his partially healed hand shooting up through his arm. It felt good, a perfect complement to his mood.

The dim light prevented him from really seeing what he was doing, but he did not care. It was sweltering in that lowest part of the ship. He felt the sweat drip from his face. His hands were slick on the handle of the broom.

His anger, already great and still building, was not at his being given this miserable job, nor was it at his being denied an extra tot.

He was not even angry at Hackett for playing his little games.

Woodberry had been in enough ships to see Hackett's kind rise and fall. And he knew that generally, eventually, they fell, and when they did, they fell hard, with a healthy push from their shipmates. He was angry because Hackett seemed to be winning his game, tearing the crew apart along sectional lines, North and South. And Tottenhill, his infernal tool, too thick to see it, was helping him along.

He kicked at a rat that he could barely see and swept the dried dirt into a pile. He heard footsteps, bare feet, on the berthing deck overhead. He paused in midsweep and listened. The steps were coming down the ladder, aft.

He stepped out of the circle of light and peered in that direction. Whoever was coming, he doubted that they were his friends. Most of his friends were off with Biddlecomb on the sloop, as he would have been, had it not been for his broken hand.

‘Woodberry, how are you doing? Careful you don't miss any dirt, now.' Hackett stood in front of two other men, just beyond the edge of the light from the lantern. The two men behind him carried belaying pins, which they were making a halfhearted effort to hide.

‘Come to bear a hand, Hackett? Be the first work you've done since you come aboard.'

‘Aren't you a funny one. No, I come to have a talk with you.'

Woodberry remained silent. One of the men at Hackett's back was Gray. The other, deeper in the shadows, appeared to be Allen, but he was not certain. If they wanted to mix it up, he could take the two of them down, belaying pins or not. He did not think Hackett would participate in anything that could get him hurt.

At least he could take them down on deck. The thought of fighting in that narrow space, with the serpentine cables at his back, made the panic rise up again. He could taste it in his throat. He pressed his lips together. He remembered that his hand was broken as well. If they made him do this, he would make them pay.

‘You think you're cock of the tween decks, don't you, Woodberry? Well, I just want you to understand who runs things now.'

Woodberry's hand moved automatically for the handle of his sheath knife and rested there. ‘Captain Biddlecomb runs things on this ship. Not you and not me.'

‘Ain't that nice, you and your little Biddlecomb.'

Woodberry heard more steps behind him, coming from the forward ladder, the soft, barely audible sound of hard, bare feet on planking. He took a step back and looked in the direction of the sound. Jenkins and another man. Four against one on the cable tier was pushing the odds. If he could get up on deck, even the berthing deck, he would be all right. If he could get Ferguson down here, they could do for these sons of whores. But Ferguson was off on the sloop.

‘I brought some witness with me, Woodberry, you bastard, so they can hear you say all proper that I'm first man on the tween decks,' Hackett said.

‘Sod off.'

‘Sod off, is it?' Hackett took a step closer, as did the other four, moving in on Woodberry, further confining him. The sweat on his forehead felt cold.

‘Sod off, is it?' Hackett asked again. ‘You better say it, if you know what's good for you.'

‘Even if I said it, it don't make it true,' Woodberry said, though he knew that he was wrong about that. If he was forced to admit in front of others, even Hackett's men, that Hackett was first man on the tween decks, then that would virtually guarantee that he was. It was like a gun crew, he thought. If the gun captain gets knocked down, the next man steps in. And on the lower deck he was captain and Hackett was the next man.

‘You got something to say, Woodberry, you buggering coward?'

Coward. Woodberry was consumed with fear, a sensation that he was not accustomed to, because of the damned confines of the cable tier. His eyes darted around; he felt his palm slick on the handle of his knife. The fear, the thought of being afraid, made him sick.

‘Come on then. Coward,' Hackett said. He took another step. He was smiling and Woodberry knew that he could see the fear, and he knew that Hackett would think he was afraid of the threats, not the space, and he could not stand that.

‘Son of a whore!' Woodberry roared, and lunged at Hackett, grabbing handfuls of his shirt and jerking him closer and bringing his knee up into Hackett's groin as he did. He could see the pain and fear in Hackett's eyes, smell the panic on his breath in that instant before Gray brought the belaying pin down on the knuckles of his broken hand.

He let go of Hackett's shirt, gasped in pain, and reached with his other hand for his knife. He felt Jenkins's hand on his arm, felt the sheath knife jerked from the sheath the instant before his hand reached it. He heard the sound of the knife hitting the ceiling as Jenkins flung it away.

He wheeled around and with his good hand hit Jenkins full in the face. The pain of the blow seemed to explode in his hand and shot up his arm. He knew he had broken at least one finger. But the effect on Jenkins was much worse than that. He flew back as if struck by round shot, and he and the man behind him, unable to step aside in the narrow space between cables and ceiling, fell into the darkness beyond the lantern's reach.

There was an ache in Woodberry's head and in his shoulders and he realized, dumbly, that he was being struck from behind, oddly ineffectual blows. He turned back and caught Gray's belaying pin in mid-swing and wrenched it from his hand. Hackett had stumbled away, doubled over against the cables.

Woodberry's terror of the confinement was gone, swept away by his rage. The tight space was his ally now, preventing his attackers from massing on him. He punched Gray, remembering in the last instant his shattered hand and holding back as his fist made contact. The blow was weak, and it hurt Woodberry much more than it hurt Gray.

‘Ahhh, son of a bitch!' Woodberry roared, grabbing his left hand loosely with his right. He felt a blow to his kidneys; Jenkins was up and hitting him from behind. He had half-turned when the man behind Gray, having clambered up on the narrow space on top of the cables, struck him on the side of the head with his belaying pin.

The blow swung him around, facing Jenkins. He had just the briefest glimpse of Jenkins's bloody face before he was struck again. He felt himself going down, and he grabbed ahold of Jenkins with both hands, determined to take the man down with him.

He felt Jenkins's arm around his neck as he pounded the man's stomach with both fists, screaming in pain each time he drove his shattered hands into the man's ribs. He felt Jenkins's grip loosen, felt repeated blows on his head and back.

‘Bosun! Bosun's coming!' Woodberry heard someone – it might have been Hackett – whisper. Jenkins released his grip and Woodberry half fell to the deck. He felt feet stepping over him as his assailants fled forward.

‘You son of a bitch!' Woodberry grabbed at Gray as he rushed past, but Gray squirmed out of his grip and was gone.

‘What in the hell is acting here?' He heard Sprout's voice on the deck above. ‘Hey, there! What …'

Sprout's feet stepped onto the ladder. He was coming down to the cable tier. Sprout knew what was going on, and he would certainly have recognized the sounds of a fight. You didn't spend a lifetime at sea without recognizing those sounds. He would demand an explanation, and Woodberry would have to refuse or make up some obvious lie. The problems of the lower deck stayed on the lower deck. Bringing a problem like this aft would do more damage even than admitting that Hackett was first man of the tween decks.

Woodberry pulled himself to his feet and hurried forward. He made his way awkwardly up the ladder, unable even to touch the rungs with his battered hands, just as Sprout descended into the cable tier.

‘Son of a bitch,' Biddlecomb muttered to himself as he stared at the
Charlemagne
from the stern sheets of the boat as Ferguson steered for the Bahamian sloop. He did not have time to worry about what was going on there, he had an invasion to lead. He would send Rumstick over, let him worry about it, though that was just as likely to make things worse as better.

The boat pulled up alongside the sloop, and Biddlecomb stepped quickly up the two steps of the pilot ladder hung over the side. ‘Mr Rumstick,' he called, and the second officer stepped over and saluted.

‘Look here, Ezra,' he said in a low voice, ‘I've just been aboard
Charlemagne
and things aren't looking too good there. I don't know what's acting, but the mood is … brittle. You know what I mean? Like things are ready to break. Like they were on the
Icarus
, just before …'

‘The mutiny?'

‘Just so.' Biddlecomb sighed, steeling himself to say what he had to say. ‘Ezra, I need you to go back aboard
Charlemagne
. Tell Tottenhill it's my orders. I'd make you acting first officer if I could, but I can't. Still, it'll do the man good just having you there.'