William Price and the Thetis 12

 

Chapter 12

 

“One light; slaves confirmed,” said William. “Shorten sail, if you please, Mr. Gubbins, and signal to Mr. Percival to move into position to engage the enemy. Pass the word, Mr. Lord, to be ready with grapeshot, and boarding parties standing by. Mr. Prescott, you may shed your shoes and stockings, and stand by with Wick to go aboard first. We should not need the grape shot; though they carry large numbers to subdue the slaves, they are not such large numbers as pirates. A matter of the profit margin,” he added, dryly.

“Permission to go aboard with Mr. Prescott and Wick to aid with unlocking slaves?” said Walden.

“Permission granted,” said William. “You have your own bessy now, Mr. Prescott?”

Colin patted his pocket; the ship’s blacksmith had copied Taffy’s lockpick for the midshipman, to be ‘employed as the service requires;’ and William had written permissions for his larcenous but loyal poachers, who had picked up house breaking at some point,  and Colin to carry such implements as necessary equipment to be used in the rescue of slaves. They could no longer be gaoled as a matter of course just for owning them.

“Diw! I could unlock slaves even with one wing,” said Taffy.

“Very well, Taff,” said William. It was hard to deny the one-armed man anything, since he felt guilty that Taff had lost an arm.  More so than the other man who had lost his arm, who had asked to be invalided out at Gibraltar. Nothing would stop Taffy, who was directing a number of attachments to the stump of left arm, to enable him to climb and grasp again.

The Pinnace was now level and could be hoisted inboard, men and all, in a hurry, as the dark mass of the slaver schooner seemed to rush up to them. Scully and Adou took their places with the boarding party, waiting for Colin and his party to neutralise a deck watch. Wick was in the ratlines with his favourite weapon, and shortly there was a muffled thump and a rattle.

The belaying pin had flown straight and true and the watchman, who was looking out behind with his telescope, had fallen.

Hardly had he gone down than Wick had thrown his second, at the man on the wheel.

Light came from below, where the slavers seemed to be at their meal. Colin grinned. He leaped aboard with a couple of firkins of gunpowder. Colin eyed the skylight to the captain’s cabin dubiously. Raucous laughter arose, but Colin was uncertain if he could open it easily.

“Wick, Jeb, do the hands, but wait for my, er, signal,” he said. “Taff, come with me, I need you to open and shut a door.”

“I can manage that, look you,” said Taff.

Colin took off his coat, and might, with bare feet, pass for any sailor anywhere. He lit a length of slow match and held it in one hand, cradling his cask in the other. He walked boldly into the captain’s cabin, where the captain and his officers were fondling two of the female slaves, and a male slave served them wine.

“Bonne nuit,” said Colin, having had Scully mutter to him that they were French. “Sors,” he added, to the male slave. “Vous femmes, sors!” he indicated with his thumb. They stared, rolling their eyes, but got up obediently and fled.

“Mais qu’est ce c’est? Qui êtes vous?” The captain was taken by surprise and not fully sober.

“Eh bien, mon chou, tout se révélera en bon temps,” said Colin, setting down his small firkin, touching the slow match in his hand to the end of the fuse of the firkin. He picked up a glass and a bottle of wine, and strolled out, this piece of audacity so taking the attention of the officers that they failed to look at the small barrel this intruder had put down.  Colin nodded to Taffy to slam the door, and turned the key in the lock, and took it out.

“It’d likely fire out like a cannon ball,” he said. “And if they check my barrel, they’re still prisoners, and if not…”

There was a shuddering detonation.

A few seconds later there was another.

Colin poured himself a glass of wine and sipped, appreciatively.

“Not bad,” he said, and handed it to Taffy.

“Not my tipple, thanks all the same, look you, sir, bach,” said Taffy.

“Well, let us go and start rescuing people,” said Colin. “Any survivors of the slavers will come on deck, and Mr. Price said signal him when I was ready for boarding parties, and I reckon that makes a good signal. You three had better come with me.” He beckoned the three terrified blacks.

 

The two explosions in short order had William turn to Scully.

“Since, no doubt, that constitutes a signal on the part of Mr. Prescott, pray oblige me, Mr. Scully, by taking command of the slaver ship and subduing any such crew as remain, er, unexploded.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Scully. “Such a very untidy young officer is Mr. Prescott.”

“Make him scrub the bulkheads,” said William.

“Sir!  Right, lads, up and at ʼem… any young Mr. Prescott has left us.”

“He was jealous of missing out last time when Neptune nicked his britches,” quipped someone.

They followed Scully aboard, and found a sufficiency of men to oppose them to feel satisfaction, as Wick started leading frightened slaves onto deck while Taffy, Walden, and Colin unlocked their fetters.

“Of course, you might have got the key from the captain,” said Taffy.

“Doubt it’d be any faster,” said Colin.  “I doubt the key or shackles are well-made, so the fit is not perfect; whereas a bessy fits anything.”

“Diw! It iss a good philosophy, look you,” said Taffy. “I learned to use a bessy when I was a boy, when I was in prison. I managed to get out on a technicality, look you, that the bailiff could not swear it wass me who wass poaching, see, and whateffer it gave me a real education. It learned me that I do not like any ach-i-fy gaol. So, next time the bailiff locked me up in his cramp-irons, I waited while he was gone after others, look you, and then I slipped out, and me old mam ready to swear I’d been in bed all night. So, when I met Jeb, Adam, and Pete on shipboard, didn’t I teach them how to use a bessy, and how it can come in.”

“And it has come in very useful here,” said Colin. “Taff, Jeb, I get that a lot of slaves are taken in war, but how can any man justify enslaving children?”

“Because then the children will not grow up to fight them,” said Jeb. “Naow, I do not believe for a moment that it necessarily follows, but that’s the reasoning.”

“And you can train children up to a job faster, too,” said Taffy. “And if the poor little sods are children when they are first slaves, why, look you, they are less likely to think of escape, being accustomed to it.”

“It’s horrible,” said Colin.

“Yes, Mr. Prescott. Vat’s why the Royal Navy’s doin’ somefing abaht it,” said Walden. “Up you go, missy,” he added to the young woman he was unlocking. She burst into tears, and ran deeper into the hold. “Where’s she orf arter?”

“Looking for family, I expect,” Colin said.

“Right,” said Walden. “I better go with her.”

Shortly after, the young woman, two children, and a man went happily on deck together.

The first job was in bedding down the slaves with something more than a small amount of rank hay, and with a meal of porridge, rich with milk, to help to build them up.

“It’s as well we provisioned well in anticipation of this; and thank you for paying for it,” said William to Amelia.

“I feel I sort of owe it to these distant cousins of mine, for I have been lucky, and so was my mother,” said Amelia. “Tomorrow, I will, of course, give them all a medical exam, as I have for the few we had from the last group. Perhaps Adou can ask if any have any problems, then I will see the children, with their mothers if present. It’s worth taking them on to Freetown. There must be three or four hundred.”

“Yes, though I won’t turn down any who want to enlist,” said Will. “Did any of the slavers survive?”

“I don’t think so,” said Amelia. “The crew are still angry after the callousness of the last lot. And Colin’s incendiaries were… enthusiastic.”

“I must check the damage to the after cabin. I’ve been trying to come up with some construct with canvas, held between two boats, to catch any thrown over when we reveal our colours, as we must do sometimes in broad daylight,” said William. “In order to catch them, as those few were caught on the wreckage.”

“Most will be put overboard on the far side of the ship, which will be no good.”

“If we put out boats on our far side to encircle them… with boarding nets; we won’t catch all, but we may save some,” said William, pleadlingly, as if asking for her to make it true.

“If you can get there covertly… and fasten the nets to their ship somehow,” said Amelia. “But I fear the weight would take the small boats down.”

“You are right,” sighed William. “If we only had cork, we might make floats for the poor souls to grab onto, in nets to hold them long enough to grab on.”

“Perhaps we can purchase cork,” said Amelia. “Empty casks?

“With rope around to grab on… attached to a net to halt their downward progress long enough to do so… essentially a boarding net with casks tied to it every few feet, to have its own buoyancy, andʼ the small boats to haul them inboard as fast as possible to reduce the weight on the net,” said William.

Amelia smiled.

It wouldn’t save them all, the heavy shackles of many men would overcome the buoyancy of the floating net eventually, but it might save some. And some were better than none.

“I’d better go and see how much of a mess Colin made,” said William. “I don’t suppose there will be anything written that will be any use, especially after Colin’s incendiary urges.”

“Speaking of words being of use, did you hear what young Lord did?”

“No,  but you’d better tell me.”

Amelia sniggered.

“He was fighting some French sailor, who was pouring forth a fluent stream of obscenity, and Lord asks, ‘Excusez-moi, quesqu-ce sais les mots obscene?’ and the sailor is staring at him as if he has two heads. And then Peacock finishes the sailor off, and says, ‘’E don’t know no words wot ain’t obscene, Mr. Lord, sir,’ and Lord says, ‘Oh, Peacock, what were the words and what do they mean?’ and Peacock, between a rock and a hard place, says, ‘ʼAve an ʼeart, Mr. Lord, I’m ‘ard pressed ter spell in English, never mind in foring.’”

William laughed. Lord loved collecting what he called ‘smutty’ words.

“He could do worse than ask Colin, who, when involved in fighting was quite fluent in the habits, cleanliness, antecedents and religious observances towards the devil of his opponent.”

“He didn’t learn that from Stackfield,” said Amelia.

“No, and I don’t want to know where he learned such linguistic accomplishments,” said William.

 

 

The after-cabin was unburned, largely because the concussive force of the blast in a small space had blown anything flammable near it clear out of the sternlights. There was not a scrap of glass left. The décor was somewhat ominous, and sorting out the previous three occupants individually would puzzle an anatomist. And yet a beautiful silver coffee pot had survived untouched. Explosions did that at times.

It would do for the gun-room; they were not supposed to take loot, but something like that could not very well be divided up. And the men would not see it as unfair.

William went to find Colin.

“Mr. Prescott!” he said. “To you is the honour of cleaning the after-cabin and that part of the lower deck formerly occupied by the sailors at their meal. You may only use volunteers to help you. However, anything you can salvage may belong to the gunroom; there’s a fine coffee pot, but I suspect most other things are currently well disguised with body parts even if unmangled.”

“Aye, sir,” said Colin, chastened.

“Don’ worry, sir, we’ll make sure you gets plenty o’ ʼands,” said Walden, softly. “We all knows that your infernal devices meant that saved a mort o’ our lives.”

“Reducing the odds against us,” said Colin.

“Which is why you’ll be a great orficer one day,” said Walden. “Let’s go see ʼow much of a mess we made, an’ ven we’ll soon ʼave it shipshape.”

“Jeb, how many sailors does it take to light a candelabrum?” asked Colin.

“I don’t know, Mr. Prescott, but I wager I’ll groan when you ʼave that tone of look on your face,” said Walden.

Colin beamed.

“A whole ship’s crew; many hands make light work,” he said.

“You are a caution, sir,” said Walden.

“I need to be in a good mood, because cleaning up things that used to be people is not going to be very pleasant,” said Colin. “And that’s why Mr. Price ordered me to do it, to remind me that they were once men, and I snuffed them out with my orders and actions without thinking twice.”

“An’ in the accountin’ of the Good Lord, it’s set agin ʼow many pore bloody darkies the filthy bastards ʼave murdered, jes’ because vey ain’t white,” said Walden. He gave a wheezing laugh. “Reckon if Gideon ʼad ʼad gunpahder, not jes’ swords, ʼe’d of blown up vem vere Midianites in a brace o’ shakes.”

“Oh, now, remember, Jeb, he divided the company to be an elite, by taking the patient, careful ones, by seeing if they drank like animals from a stream, or remained alert, taking handsful of water.”

“Aye, an’ a careful commander wot picks the best would spare ʼis men, if ʼe could pulverulise the enemy first-like,” said Walden. “Mind, it don’t sound as good ‘Ve barrel of gunpowder  of ve Lord and of Gideon, do it?”

“It lacks the brevity and ring of the word, ‘sword,’” said Colin, who mightily enjoyed Jeb Walden’s interpretation of the scriptures, though Thomas Stackfield’s sermons, breaking down the tales of the Bible in a way that young boys could understand and learn from them, occasioned less need for Walden to translate to the other hands in the way he had done for other chaplains, or plain texts read out by busy captains with more on their mind than spiritual renewal of their men, but required to produce something besides the reading of the thirty-six articles of war once a month.