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Three bells of the first dog watch

20th July 1735 (Old Style)

Aboard Isabelle Bligh

The Atlantic

The six-pound shot came aboard with a scream and a hiss, smashing one of the mainmast deadeyes, punching holes through the longboat secured over the waist, taking off the arm and shoulder of a seaman, as neat as a surgeon’s knife…and throwing the limb shivering at his feet, as if still alive. The man screamed, and sat down flat with his back to the windward bulwark.

In the horror of the moment, Olivia Rose, sixteen years old and at sea for the first time in her life, turned from her father and clung to the heavy bulk of the lad who’d been doing his best to stand between her and the flying shot.

“Get below!” cried Josiah Burstein, her father. “And get away from him!” He snatched her away, blinking nervously at the boy, for Burstein was a small man while the boy, also only sixteen, was broad and heavy with thick limbs, big fists and a dark, ugly face. But the boy stood back, nodding.

“Get below, Livvy,” he said. “Your pa’s right.”

Seizing the moment, Burstein hustled his daughter down a hatchway, out of the way of shot. He cursed the day he’d set out from Philadelphia to make his fortune in London with his skills as a mathematical instrument maker, for nothing good had come thus far: only Livvy Rose keeping company with that lumpish oaf of a ship’s boy.

Boom! A distant gun fired, and on deck, the crew ducked as another shot came howling down and smashed into the hull. The boy looked astern as his captain yelled from the quarterdeck.

“There, sir!” cried Captain Nehemia Higgs, seizing hold of the man beside him, the ship’s owner Mr Samuel Banbury, and shaking him angrily. “Now where’s your peaceful way?”

Banbury said nothing, but pulled free and, wrenching off his coat and shirt, ran forward to jam the crumpled linen deep into the fallen seaman’s hideous injury in an effort to stem the flow of blood.

“Aaaaaaaah!” screeched the wounded man.

“And may I now – in God’s name – turn to my guns?” yelled Captain Higgs.

“Aye!” roared the crew, nearly two dozen of them, angrily waiting for the order. Their captain might be a Quaker, but at least he was one of the right sort – unlike Mr Banbury, who was clearly one of the wrong sort. The crew, on the other hand, weren’t no sort of Quakers at all – not them, by God and the Devil! And they weren’t about to give up their wages at the mere sight of a black flag!

Ignoring them, Banbury tugged off his belt and managed to strap it round the wounded seaman’s chest to hold the dripping red bundle in place. Looking around him for help, he spotted the boy.

“You!” cried Banbury. “Give me your shirt!”

So two shirts were clapped on the wound, with the boy close enough to be sprayed by the victim’s spittle and drenched in his blood. But he could see it weren’t no use. Soon the screaming stopped and the man’s eyes closed. Tommy Trimstone was his name; from Ilfracombe in Devon, and now dead.

The boy stood up from the corpse, wiping his hands on his breeches. He’d never seen death and didn’t know what to make of it. He looked to his captain again, cussing and blinding as no Quaker should, and then finally raising a telescope to check on their pursuers, before calling to the boy.

“Come here, you young sod!” he cried. “Take this bastard glass and get into the bastard top, and keep watch on that bugger –” he pointed to the oncoming ship – “and be quick about it, or I’ll skin the bleeding arse off you!” With all hands on deck, standing by to man his guns, Higgs needed a lookout.

The boy went up the shrouds at the run, and got himself nice and tight into the maintop. He levelled the glass…

“What d’you see?” yelled Captain Higgs.

The boy saw a sharp-keeled, rake-masted brig of some two hundred tons: deeply sparred, and with ports for twenty guns. The wind was weak so she was under all sail, and coming on only slowly, but her decks were black with armed men, which was not surprising for a vessel that flew the skull and bones.

Boom! Up went another cloud of white from the enemy’s bow, followed swiftly by the deadly howl of shot heading their way. It shrieked high over the masts as the boy called down to the quarterdeck, telling what he’d seen.

“You heard that,” said Higgs to Banbury. “We must defend ourselves!”

“Can we not outrun them?” said Banbury. “You have three masts to their two!”

Higgs sneered from the depth of his seaman’s soul at this ludicrous dollop of landlubber’s shite. Isabelle Bligh was a Bristol-built West Indiaman: well found, and fit in all respects for sea. But she was designed for cargo, not swiftness. In her favour, however, was the fact that she bore sixteen guns and was heavily timbered, so if it came to cannonading, she might well drive off a lighter vessel that was built purely for speed. Higgs yelled this thought at Banbury, but dared not act without his word.

Up in the top, the boy looked down, puzzled. Banbury and Higgs were Quakers that weren’t supposed to fight. But the ship had guns, like other Quaker ships, so why not use them? The boy shook his head. He didn’t know. He only knew that Banbury was a very special Quaker, come out from England to staunch the slave trade among the Pennsylvania Quakers, and now going home. Clearly Cap’n Higgs was afraid of Banbury. Perhaps it was like the Catholics with their pope?

Boom! Another shot from the pirate’s bow-chaser. They were close enough now that the boy could see the men working the gun. Again the shot went wide, and he watched them haul in, sponge out and re-load. And then he had a nasty thought. For the first time it occurred to him – in his youth and innocence – that the pirates…might actually capture the ship! He groaned in fear of what they would do to Olivia Rose.

Plump and luscious with shining skin and titian hair, Livvy was the only female aboard. He blushed for the things the hands said about her, behind her back. What chance would she stand if such men as them – but worse – got hold of her?

Then another flag went up on the pirate brig: a plain, red flag. The boy didn’t know what it meant, but his mates did, down below.

“Bugger me,” said one, “it’s the Jolly Roger!”

“Gawd ’elp us,” said another.

“Higgs,” demanded Banbury, “what’s that red flag?”

“The Jolie Rouge,” said Higgs. “The ‘Pretty Red One’ of the French Buccaneers.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means no quarter to those that fight,” he said. “It’s death to all aboard.”

“But only if we fight?”

“Aye.” Higgs scowled, for he knew this gave the game to Banbury.

Banbury heaved a sigh of relief as if a tremendous burden had just fallen away, relieving him of the agonising balancing act between principle and expediency. For he was a merchant as well as a Quaker, and wasn’t quite so firm against fighting as he’d said. The truth was that he had his reputation to consider, having risen high within the Society of Friends, for he was clerk to The Meeting for Sufferings of the London Quakers, which was as near to a governing body as their prayerful egalitarianism permitted, and thus his actions would be closely examined upon his return by rivals ever-eager to take his place.

“Strike your colours, Captain,” he said, “and pray for deliverance!”

The boy saw everything. Isabelle Bligh lowered her ensign and backed her topsail in surrender. The pirates cheered and came alongside in a squealing of blocks and a rumble of canvas, taking in sail and heaving grapnels over the side to bind the ships together. Then they were swarming aboard, fifty strong and heavily armed, as the two vessels rolled under the rumble of boots on timber.

The boy didn’t understand their speech, which seemed to be French. But they yelled merrily and a man with a feathered hat and a bandolier of many pistols embraced Captain Higgs and kissed him on both cheeks for a good fellow, while his men herded the crew for’ard. Then the boy gulped as Sam Collis, biggest man aboard, took exception and started shouting…and they shot him dead! It was ruthless, merciless and hideous. Bang! Bang! Two puffs of smoke, and a decent seaman went down and was kicked aside like a piece of rubbish.

Isabelle Bligh’s people groaned in horror, but they were pushed to the fo’c’sle with the pirate captain – he of the feathered hat – yelling at them in English: “Your lives are yours, messieurs! Be good and make no fight, and you shall have your ship when we are done with her!”

“Aye!” cried Mr ‘Meeting for Sufferings’ Banbury. “It is loot they seek, not blood!” And he joined in, shoving Captain Higgs and the rest for’ard as if he were one of the pirate’s own band, and agreeing with every word the villain spoke. The boy frowned heavily.

“Bleedin’ traitor!” he muttered.

And then the pirates got down to the serious business of smashing open everything that was locked, and breaking into the cargo, and up-ending every bottle in the ship with the most tremendous noise, but all in good temper. Most of them vanished below for this vital work, leaving a dozen men, well armed with firelocks, to guard the crew.

And none of them took the trouble to look up into the maintop where the boy was hiding. And since nobody saw him, he watched as the smashing and cheering went on and on, and men staggered about the decks in the captain’s best clothes and Mr Banbury’s hat, gorging on pork and pickles and wine and brandy.

Later still, the boy shuddered in horror as a girl’s shriek came from below, and men emerged through the quarterdeck hatchway, grinning and leering, with Olivia Rose and her father dragged behind them. The father was bloodied and staggering, and was kicked into a semi-conscious heap by the mizzenmast. But there was a roar from the pirates on sight of the girl, and greedy hands reached out to paw and grab and grope. Her long hair was loose, her gown was ripped, pale flesh gleamed and she screamed and screamed.

But the pirate leader – he of the feathered hat – kicked his way through the press, seized Olivia Rose by the arm, and merrily fired a pistol in the air for attention.

“Après moi, mes enfants!” he cried, grinning at his men. “Je serai le premier!” And they cheered and laughed, and fired off a thundering fusillade in salute.

Up in the maintop the boy shook with rage.

Rage doesn’t just conquer fear. Rage annihilates it. Rage brings boiling fury such that no grain of self-preservation remains, nor any consideration of danger, nor threat of weapons. Hence the Viking berserker transported into blood-spattering frenzy…and the ship’s boy that leapt bare-chested into open air from the maintop to slide down one of the backstays and launch himself – twenty feet from the deck – as a human projectile, landing feet first on the feathered head of the pirate captain – who went down with his neck snapped on a jutting boot, and his face burst open like rotten fruit as the impetus of the boy’s fall drove him smashing into the pine of the quarterdeck planking.

Then…uproar and confusion. The pirates bellowed and roared, surprised for an instant, shocked and disbelieving, then snapping pistols at the boy, forgetting they were empty. Taking their example, he snatched the pistols from the dead pirate’s bandolier – there were seven of them, ready loaded – and let fly, left and right. Men shrieked and fell as the bullets struck, and the rest hung back while the pistols lasted, then charged, and the boy was blocking slashing blades with the heavy barrel of a hot, smoking pistol, which soon got lost. Bodies heaved and bundled and swayed, and more men piled in, and the fight rolled and staggered, with the boy in the middle, armed only with his own two fists and his unhinged, manic fury. And then he got hold of a cutlass, which he couldn’t swing in the dense press, so he used it two-handed as a spear, shoving it into an open mouth and out the back of a head, then wrenching it free and punching out another man’s teeth with the iron hand-guard, and on and on…

But with nearly twenty pirates on the quarterdeck and more coming up from below, there could be only one end to the fight…except that the pirates were remarkably clumsy and got in each other’s way, and they’d fired off their pistols and muskets…and on the fo’c’sle, seeing their guards with backs turned, gaping at the fight on the quarterdeck, Captain Higgs had his own moment of rage.

“Sod you, you bugger!” he said to the hand-wringing Banbury. “Come on, lads!” he cried, pulling a belaying pin from the pinrail, swinging it down with a crunch on to the blue-kerchiefed head of a mulatto pirate and snatching up the carbine that he dropped. The guards hadn’t fired off their arms, so Higgs blasted lead and flame at three-feet range into the chest of another pirate even as he turned back to face the sudden danger.

After that, it was hellfire and damnation aboard the good ship Isabelle Bligh and Quakerism went over the side with the dead. For Isabelle Bligh’s crew were seething that they’d not manned their guns in the first place, and were out for vengeance for their murdered shipmate. So even though they were outnumbered more than two-to-one, they recaptured their ship, fighting at first with belaying pins and sailor’s knives, and then taking up the weapons of their foes…and with the considerable advantage that many of the pirates were blind staggering drunk.

When Captain Higgs finally called an end to the slaughter, less than a quarter of those who’d come aboard as bold dogs and roaring boys were left alive to be clapped like slaves under hatches, and the pirate ship was sailing under a prize crew, behind the triumphant Isabelle Bligh, such that even Samuel Banbury’s conscience was eased by the money he’d make in selling her.

As for the boy who’d saved the day: he was ship’s hero! Without his plunge from the maintop there would have been no fight, and no triumph. So there were glorious weeks of a merry voyage when even Olivia Rose’s father did not try to keep her and the boy apart, and the two fell as deeply in love as ever it is possible for a pair of sixteen-year-olds to do: he loving her for her beauty and sweet kindness, and she loving him for those things that she saw that others did not, especially his limitless capacity to love. She saw that he would never be happy without a cause to follow and a loved one to serve. In her eyes this transformed Caliban the ugly into Ariel the shining one.

It was a wonderful, golden, glorious romance that approached…reached…and transcended Heaven on Earth, for the two young lovers.

“You are my beau chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,” she said to him once.

“What’s that?” he said.

“It means…my fair knight, fearless and pure.”

He blushed.

And so they sat together, and talked together, she telling him stories and playing that ancient game with seashells – at which she was adept – whereby swift movement of the shells deceives the onlooker who cannot tell which hides the pea. He loved the game, and the curious West Indian shells she played it with, and of which she had a collection. And he loved the country love songs that she sang to him of an evening, with the crew sitting quietly and joining in the chorus.

But voyages end. This one ended in London, and there the two were parted by duty: hers to her father, and his to his trade. There were bitter tears and mighty promises of faithfulness when finally, in the Thames below London Bridge, she was about to go into the boat that would take her and her father ashore to their new life. In that tragic moment, he gave her the traditional seaman’s love-token of a staybusk that he’d carved from whalebone with his own hand. In return, she gave him a lock of her hair, and half a dozen of the West Indian shells that he loved.

“I’ll be back for you, Livvy Rose,” he said, “when I’ve made me pile!”

“Be a good boy,” she said. “And remember me.”

And indeed he did. He remembered her to the dying second of his dying day, and he really did try to come back to claim her. But he never quite made his pile, and day by day other duties intervened, until finally it was too late, because – in the meanwhile – he had become something very other than a good boy.

For he was led astray. He was led bad astray was Billy Bones.