The East Indiaman Read online

  ‘Whatever you are, Captain Grindley,’ Kite riposted smoothly.

  Even more confused, Grindley blurted out, ‘when are you sailing, Kite?’

  ‘When I am ready.’

  ‘Ah!’ Grindley exclaimed triumphantly, ‘you mean when your topass has stolen you some charts!’

  ‘I think I shall be buying them, Captain Grindley, which is rather different, don’t you think.’

  ‘Your boy will be stealing them just the same,’ Grindley protested with pejorative emphasis on the juvenile noun, but no-one seemed inclined to come to his aid before Cranbrooke caught Cavanagh’s eye.

  ‘Cavanagh has a fine voice. You’ll oblige us Cavanagh? Good. Shall we join the ladies and listen to him?’

  As they walked out onto the verandah where the ladies lounged on chaises longue, Harling caught Kite’s arm. ‘I apologise on behalf of Grindley, Captain.’

  ‘That is kind of you, but there is no need. He is offensive and, should he wish to pick a quarrel I shall counter any challenge by claiming the primary insult. I am certain he has insulted my wife and I am extremely adept with a hanger.’

  ‘I am sure it will not come to that.’

  ‘But you will tell him, none-the-less.’

  ‘If it becomes necessary, yes.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Kite knew that Sarah would affirm the East India Company officer had been less than gallant. It was a condition common to men who claimed gentility, Kite had observed, but he doubted Grindley would press the point to a challenge. Anyway, Kite mused as he settled himself against the verandah rail and listened to Cavanagh’s fine baritone dissipate into the velvet darkness, Grindley would not find him available to fight a duel in the dawn’s mist. If Rahman had filched, stolen, borrowed or simply bought the folio of charts, Kite and Spitfire would be away.

  After Cavanagh, one of the English wives with a mellow contralto rose and sang some pleasing airs with which Kite was not familiar, and she was followed by a declamation by one of the writers, who recited a tedious ode by a poet unknown to Kite. the chief virtue of the performance seemed to be to demonstrate the mental retention of the young man, but he redeemed himself with his encore, Oliver Goldsmith’s Woman, which he addressed to the ladies present with generous gestures encompassing them all.

  ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly,’ he declaimed tragically, ‘And finds too late that men betray,’ the last word uttered with an insinuating sneer as he leaned forward. ‘What charm can soothe her melancholy?’ he asked, straightening up, pressing clasped hands to his bosom. ‘What art can wash her tears away?’

  The men were all grinning and the women wore amused, quizzical smiles, waiting for the poet’s revelation.

  ‘The only art her guilt to cover,’ the writer went on, provoking moués of protest that no guilt attached to any of them or their sex in general; ‘To hide her shame from ev’ry eye,’ and now the mock indignation was almost voiced as the ladies looked from one to another and the men grinned ever more widely. ‘To give repentance to her lover, and wring his bosom…’ there was heavy emphasis on the personal pronoun which claimed the attention of them all as they awaited the bon mot: ‘is – to die.’ The last word was breathed with its single, awesome syllable attenuated in a note that was almost melodramatic. It faded into loud cheers and applause from the men and a little simpering approval and laughter from the ladies.

  ‘Bravo, Douglas, such force of rhetoric would have done Cicero proud,’ Cranbrooke said and for a while the conversation became general until the senior writer, acting upon some previous instruction, rose and made his excuses.

  The company took the hint and Kite rose, handing up Sarah who smiled graciously at her admirers.

  ‘We shall see you again before you leave us, I hope,’ someone said.

  ‘I am a mere passenger, I fear, you must ask my husband; he commands the ship.’

  ‘You are not leaving immediately, are you Captain Kite?’

  Aware that several of the men, and especially Grindley, who stood swaying alongside Harling, Kite affected indifference. ‘Oh, when we are ready,’ he repeated before turning to thank their host. A moment later they had escaped into the soft, dark night.

  ‘Well, than Heavens that’s over,’ Kite said as they walked swiftly down to the landing place. ‘Where you much troubled by that old goat Grindley?’

  Sarah chuckled. ‘Not much, but he is an obnoxious fellow for all his airs. He offered me a passage to China aboard the Carnatic. Said if my husband could not come he would give me a better ride in his Indiaman than ever I’d have at the hands of a schooner skipper. There was no mistaking his meanings, either.’

  ‘I suspected as much, well, we have done with him now, just so long as Rahman has obtained the requisite charts.’

  They were pulled out to the schooner by oarsmen that had clearly enjoyed the evening in their own way and Kite affected not to notice the stink of arrack about them. Sarah was swung up and over the side of the Spitfire by a chair Harper had rigged earlier and Kite soon followed her up the tumblehome.

  ‘Is Rahman back, Zachariah?’ he asked.

  ‘I am here, Kite Sahib, and I have obtained a first class folio of the charts you are wanting.’

  ‘Very well done. Then we shall weigh anchor in an hour.’

  Part Three

  The Reaping

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Long Chase

  ‘Well, what d’you make of her?’ Kite asked, his voice terse.

  There was a pause as Harper, undeterred by his commander’s impatience, took his time in studying the strange sail. Kite had held off asking the mate his opinion until called for the change of watch and was almost fuming with anxiety as the distant ship crowded on sail in obvious pursuit of the schooner.

  ‘Damn it, Zachariah…’ Kite began but then Harper closed the glass with a decisive snap and handed it back to Kite with his assessment.

  ‘French frigate.’

  Kite nodded. ‘Aye, that’s what I think.’ The two men stood side by side, staring astern and effortlessly bracing themselves against both the heel of the deck and the movement of the Spitfire’s racing hull. Yet their bodies were tensed with expectation, as if waiting for their brains to galvanise them into action and all along the deck, the men changing watches also looked astern, where the chasing ship was now hull up, her canvas taut with the strength of the monsoon, and the bone in her teeth just breaking the sharp line of the horizon.

  It was a beautiful morning, the Indian Ocean sparkled a deep, sapphire blue beneath a sky of a lighter hue, dappled with small fluffy, fair-weather clouds. From the surface of the sea rose the curious shapes of a myriad flying fish which, with outstretched wings, somehow dodged the tumbling wave-crests as they escaped the pursuing barracuda. From time to time dolphins flashed through the sea, leaping in the schooner’s wake oblivious to the situation of the vessel whose hull sent manifold complex patterns of varying pressure out into the surrounding water. The wind was fresh, but not so strong as to prevent either vessel carrying full sail and both had the wind on their starboard quarters, broad-reaching so that every stitch of canvas drew.

  Even the routine ringing of the bell, the four double-strikes that marked the end of the morning watch, failed to break the spell on the schooner’s deck, for no-one watching the approaching frigate could be in any doubt of the outcome of the long hours of daylight that lay ahead of them. The prospect of capture acted on each man in singularity, breaking up that synthesis of purpose that distinguished the men who manned the Spitfire as a crew, to turn them each into apprehensive individuals. This sense of forlorn and solitary exposure acted more powerfully upon Kite and now Harper, for both had women to think of, and this fuelled their private fears. It was a consequence of defying the ancient prejudice of allowing women aboard ship and for those seamen who nursed such thoughts, the apparent paralysis of their officers was a direct consequence of their foolish conduct. For in addition to the likely prospect of captu
re by an enemy frigate and subsequent incarceration on Île de France, several of the schooner’s company were irrationally hostile to the handful of women who inhabited the Spitfire. Were they not sisters to the polluted nautch-girls of Bombay whose promiscuity, eagerly embraced a week or so earlier, was now producing dire and painful consequences? And as if to emphasise that perverse perception, one of these lousy creatures now rose up from the after companionway her dark hair blowing provocatively in the wind, provoking nudges and nods from those watching seamen infected by disease and a lack of charity.

  ‘How do you know she is French?’ Just as her appearance broke the hiatus among the watching hands forward, Sarah’s voice ended the apparent paralysis of Kite and Harper. Sarah had heard the news from Jack Bow who had come aft to attend the cabin as was his daily round after breakfast, and had heard the dreadful word uttered by Harper.

  ‘What?’ Kite turned, his face irritable.

  ‘How do you know she is French?’ Sarah repeated her question, adding, ‘may I take a look?’ She extended her hand for Kite’s glass.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sarah..’ Kite expostulated, but handed over the telescope. Taking it Sarah climbed over the sea-step and crossed the deck, to level the instrument and brace it against the thick rope tackle of the main topmast backstay. As she focused the lenses every man on the schooner’s deck watched the slim figure in her breeches and shirt, her unruly hair only half tamed by the black ribbon, her hip jutting, her shirt pressed against her back and her long legs terminating in short, hessian boots. Even the clapped seamen felt the twitches of lust momentarily overcome their indisposition.

  ‘Could she not be British?’ Sarah asked without lowering the telescope and seeking to moderate their collective fear by readjusting her query.

  ‘No,’ snapped Kite, ‘not with those topsails…’

  ‘What about those topsails?’ Sarah persisted.

  ‘The cut and colour of them, Mrs Kite,’ Harper explained as Kite remained mute. ‘Most of the British men-o’-war in these waters have worn sails…’

  ‘That is one of the French ships which we last saw in the Cape Verdes,’ Kite broke in.

  ‘You think so?’ Harper said surprised at this assertion.

  ‘I’m as sure of it as you are that she’s French, and it makes sense if you think about it,’ Kite reasoned. ‘They were reinforcements and, after taking wood and water at the Cape, have come on into the Indian Ocean.’

  ‘That would set the cat among the pigeons in these seas,’ Harper added reflectively.

  ‘She is over-hauling us, is she not?’ Sarah asked, lowering the glass and turning to face them, one hand gripping the backstay.

  Kite sighed and nodded.

  Sarah looked aloft at the drawing sails. ‘Can we do nothing about it?’

  ‘What does the tension in that backstay tell you?’ Kite asked.

  ‘She’s straining?’ Sarah asked, taking her hand from the backstay and looking at her husband under her brow.

  ‘She’s straining all right,’ Kite confirmed. ‘We could jettison the guns on deck, we could start the water casks and pump their contents over the side out of the bilge, we could chop up the boats on the chocks and throw the debris overboard and ditch every piece of loose gear. We could even break open the opium bales and hurl our cargo into the wake but, even if we succeed in escaping, on what do we live and with what do we trade if we succeed in escaping?’

  ‘But if capture is inevitable, is it not better to have tried to get away and then to leave so little a prize that the enemy profits little by it?’ Sarah responded, ‘moreover he will weaken his own strength by having to secure the Spitfire with a prize crew and has us to feed.’

  Kite shook his head. ‘A ruthless and competent naval commander, and I have little doubt but that we are being pursued by a man of such mettle, would burn an unwanted and useless prize. As for feeding us, you might be well provided for, Sarah,’ Kite said with a meaningful look, ‘but apart from Nisha and Maggie, the rest of us could be conveniently neglected.’

  Kite derived a cold satisfaction from the pallor that stole over Sarah’s beautiful face. ‘I see you understand me,’ he added harshly.

  ‘Then we must fight,’ she said sharply.

  Kite turned and looked at Harper, raising one eyebrow. ‘Well, Zachariah?’

  Harper nodded. ‘We may sail under the British flag, Cap’n, and have Liverpool as our port of registry, but Mrs Kite and me are native-born Americans. We’ll fight.’

  Kite looked sharply at Harper, and then laughed. ‘Damn me, Zachariah, I believe you’re admonishing me.’

  ‘Not before time,’ Sarah added, ‘you’re confounded churlish this morning.’

  ‘I’m confounded concerned about that devil!’ Kite admitted, aware that he had been over-short with his wife and that Harper disapproved. ‘Very well. It’s your watch, Zachariah, and this could be a long job. We’ll clear away the guns, shot and charge them behind closed ports. I don’t want to reveal our weak state. Then do you prepare the small arms, load every musket and pistol. I’ll stand my watch down to break their fast and urge them to try and rest but don’t you or your men take your eyes off the wind and the sails. We must try and extend the chase as long as humanly possible. It is the only chance we have.’

  Kite lingered on deck as Harper busied himself and his men who, once the orders were given, were forced by habit to act again in concert. If the Old Man thought there was a chance of escape, then they would all do their best and he was at least not going to submit. Only a few Jeremiahs grumbled that Kite’s action could only postpone the inevitable; the majority hoped something would turn up.

  The forenoon drew on and the chasing frigate grew larger with an inexorable progress that appeared to the labouring watch to occur in fits and starts. Like a clock, the hands seemed immobile when being watched but, take your eyes off the thing for an instant and attend some other matter, and when you looked again the change was startling.

  About twenty minutes before noon a tall column of white water suddenly rose in their wake, followed by the dull boom of the gun’s report as it caught up with them. A small cloud blew ahead of the frigate, dissipating as it went.

  No-one on deck said a word. There was nothing to say. Turned heads stared forward again, searching the Spitfire’s sails and rigging for any adjustable advantage that would gain them even a fraction of a knot. The noise of the frigate’s bow-chaser brought Kite on deck. He was followed by Sarah and, in a flutter of scarlet silk, Nisha.

  Standing by the stern, Kite did not need a glass to take in the details of the enemy ship. She was a fine French firgate and the dark cluster of men about her knightheads told of the care with which her bow chase guns were being pointed. They would fire bar shot, he guessed, hoping to cripple the schooner by reducing her rig and, sooner rather than later, they would find the range. The strong wind gave the heavier ship the advantage of speed and he had not another shred of canvas to set. Kite ruminated unhappily upon his fate. He seemed doomed to be frustrated at every endeavour, yet there was one trick he could try. He had done it before and, by God, he could do it again! It required split-second timing and it ran a tremendous risk, but it was the only chance he had.

  ‘Zacharaiah!’

  Harper was beside him in an instant. ‘Sir?’

  Get Jack to pass word to the watch below that they are to muster at the botom of the ladders but not to come on deck until summoned. Get your watch to stand by the halliards and flake them. Every halliard, d’you understand? When I give the word I want them all cast off their pins and let to run. I want every sail down, including all the square-sails. Get extra men out of my watch, but let me know when you’ve a man at each station.’

  ‘You don’t want a commotion with all hands on deck, I guess?’ Harper queried, divining Kite’s intention by adding, ‘you’re going to dodge round into her wake and make off to windward?’

  ‘It’s all we can do!’ hissed Kite.

 
‘Yessir!

  Harper went forward and Kite envied him the catharsis of movement then, recollecting that he could do nothing by staring at the frigate, he too turned forward, just as another column of water rose in the wake, twenty yards astern of them.

  ‘Don’t look aft!’ he snapped at the apprehensive helmsman. Kite took station beside the man and called Sarah’s name. ‘Go quietly forward and report to Mr Haper, he said, relieving the seaman and than to his wife, ‘give me a hand on the tiller here. Nisha, do you go below, if you please. I would not have you exposed to any shot. The next quarter of an hour will decide our fate so perhaps you can invoke one of your gods. He smiled as kindly as he could.

  ‘That is the first time you have been sociable this morning,’ admonished Sarah beside him.

  ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t much care for sociability at the moment…’ he looked forward, seeing Harper moving round the deck. The men were lifting the heavy coils of rope off the belaying pins and flaking them out on the deck so that they would run free when the turns were thrown off the pins.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Sarah asked, leaning against the tiller beside him.

  ‘Attempt, Sarah, it’s providence that will decide whether I achieve it…’ and Kite explained.

  ‘He could wreck us in passing,’ Sarah observed with a toss of her head at the looming presence that seemed almost palpable behind them.

  ‘I’m hoping that we have convinced him by now that we are simply going to run. I am fairly certain that, though he has his guns run out, he is concentrating all his efforts in shooting at our rigging.’

  But he got no further as with a deep noise, a shot plunged into the sea alongside them. ‘He’s got our range!’ Kite breathed, giving himself a quick look astern. ‘And by God he’ll have our wind in a few more moments!’

  The French commander knew his business, or had a sailing master, an officier bleu, who did. Using the advantage of superior speed the frigate had edged up to windward and the Spitfire would soon fall in the wind shadow of the French vessel. When that happened her speed would fall off and all would be over.