by Hunt N. Peck
Chapter the Seventh, or A Barrel Of Fun.
"He is suffering from commotio cerebri, I should think," said Mr Frank Benjamin, a tall portly man with a gloomy face, made more gloomy by a black eye, and pince-nez spectacles upon the end of his large nose.
"That would be the Latin," said Bulbous Bill Bucephalus.
"Yes, it is Latin for 'he has been hit on the head', you see."
"Stop talkin' like I'm not here, ye scurvy hounds!" whispered Israel Feet, his head swathed in a bandage.
"That be the way doctors talk, Izzie," said Bill.
"You bain't be a doctor."
"Yes, but me an' Mr Benjamin are trying to be doctors, so it follers that we must act like doctors, if we are to make you well."
"Iffen yez wishes to help me give me some rum, you lubbers," the First Mate pleaded.
"I'm afraid, Mr Feet, that alcohol is presently forbidden to you," said Frank Benjamin solemnly, "as it is stimulating to the brain, and yours is concussed, or bruised. It would ease the pain for a little, but then a hangover would set in and you would be in agony. Drink plenty of warm tea and try and sleep."
"He should 'ave a draught, perhaps?" pondered Bill.
"It can do no harm to exhibit a little bark and steel," said Frank Benjamin, "but no purgatives of any sort. No rhubarb powder."
Bulbous Bill departed to the galley. Frank Benjamin squatted down next to the bunk.
"Your friend has treated you with skill," he said quietly. "He has cleaned your wound with a cotton swab soaked in clean brine, then he has stitched up your skull as neat as a Jermyn Street bootmaker. The king's own surgeon could not have done better, but he has an enthusiasm for draughts and potions. In your case these will do little good, but no harm either, so I ask you to accept them as tokens of his regard for you, as his wishes for your speedy recovery. I will restrain him if he wishes to dose you too liberally. The pain in your head will lessen in a day or two, and we have no opium, so I must ask you to be patient and endure it. After that your recovery should be progressive, but you will be prone to occasional headaches for a time."
"Arr! How long be a time?" moaned the First Mate.
"Weeks, maybe months, but they will stop eventually."
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges paced his quarterdeck, dressed in the fine powder-blue uniform of a kapitein van schip of the Dutch East India Company, his beard a rich boot-polish brown. The wind was steady and fresh and the pirate frigate Ark de Triomphe, disguised as the armed merchantman Groot Ombeschaamheid, was making seven knots, spray occasionally flying over the leeward taffrail. The day was fine, the sky blue with a few small puffy clouds, the noonday sun warm rather than hot, now that the ship was sailing northerly, away from Gibraltar and the Pillars of Hercules.
Bulbous Bill and Mr Benjamin joined him on the quarterdeck, discussing the velocity of sound.
"It was indeed astute of you to calculate it so, Mr Bucephalus," said Mr Benjamin, "but I am afraid that you are not the first. That estimable Frenchie Mersenne – la pére Mersenne, as I should say – has it in his book Traité de l'harmonie universelle, and applies it to a theory of music, the wily old cove."
The Captain had been listening.
"Newton mentions the velocity of sound in his Principia Mathematica, but as an ideal to be calculated from the elasticity of the air, not as a quantity to be measured. Yet you are in good company, Bill. The ancient Greek fellows had no cannons, or games of cricket even, did not perceive the tardiness of the report after the flash, and so expressed no opinion on the matter."
"The Greeks, wonderful fellows though they were, are not to be entirely trusted on many subjects," said Mr Benjamin. "There is a fine examination of this in the Pseudodoxia Epidemica of Thomas Browne. Are you familiar with the work?"
"Indeed! The Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or 'enquiries into very many received tenets and commonly presumed truths'. I am a great admirer of Browne," said the Captain. "The Pseudodoxia brushes away old wives' tales as though it were a besom sweeping dry leaves. Some wags call it the Vulgar Errors, mistranslating the Latin. I have it in my cabin. A sixth-printing, bound in varnished canvas against the sea airs."
Mr Benjamin expressed a desire to consult the book; his own copy was in his house in Virginia, a treasured volume. Captain Greybagges and Mr Benjamin explored their mutual regard for Sir Thomas Browne. His wit! His elegant language! His extensive learning; did he not have the best library in England? Not the largest, maybe, but surely the most well-chosen!
Bulbous Bill Bucephalus ceased to listen. The ship took his attention for a while, and then they were talking of things of which he knew nothing. What do I know of latitudinarianism or urn-burials? thought Bill, I am pleased I was right about the velocity of sound, even though that Froggie priest thought of it first. He shouted to a foremast jack to tighten that sheet, you lubber! and thought of the First Mate; he sleeps now, and that is good. There is a small chop, but the barky rides it well, so he will not be unduly disturbed even though we are making a good rate. John Spratt is doing well as his stand-in, but he lacks authority over his mess-mates and does not wish to acquire it, for Izzie will recover and then they will be his mess-mates again.
When Bulbous Bill turned around again Captain Greybagges and Frank Benjamin had gone below.
"I remembered the inspiring words of Sir Thomas Browne when I was a prisoner in Barbary," said Mr Benjamin. "He wrote, 'rest not in an ovation, but a triumph over thy passions; chain up the unruly legion of thy breast; behold thy trophies within thee, not without thee: lead thine own captivity captive, and be Cæsar unto thy self', which was good advice at the time."
"I am sorry that Suleyman Reis had you questioned, Mr Benjamin," said Captain Greybagges. "I offered too much for your freedom, in order to save haggling, and that must have stimulated his curiosity. Will you have more wine?"
"Indeed I will, and thank you. The bearded fellow in the big turban was quite insistent, but I had no notion of who you were, let alone why you should wish to purchase my release. I am deeply grateful that I am freed, however, and drinking a glass of this excellent Madeira with you. May I have another of these little pastries? They are very good."
Captain Greybagges passed the plate with a smile.
"You seem lacking in curiosity yourself, Mr Benjamin. Do you not wish to know why I paid that rogue eight hundred guineas in gold for your liberty?"
Frank Benjamin brushed crumbs from his waistcoat, and sipped the sweet wine.
"I feel sure that you will tell me in due course," he said, "but if I were to hazard a guess I would say it was my compressed-air cannon."
Captain Greybagges looked startled.
"A gun worked by mere air? Is such a thing possible?"
"Indeed. Air is reduced in volume by means of a pump, then allowed to expand again in the barrel of a gun, thus discharging a ball in the same fashion as the expanding fire of gunpowder."
"You have constructed such a weapon?"
"Yes, a small model, firing balls the size of peas, but I confess there were problems. The flasks into which the air was compressed exhibited a sad propensity for bursting explosively."
"What advantages does such an engine have?"
"No smoke, and a smaller noise. I am not sure about the noise, though. If an air-cannon could be made with the same power as gunpowder I suspect it would sound just as loud. Such a cannon might be made to repeat-fire reliably and quickly – Pom! Pom! Pom! – but that is only a notion, and not yet tested."
Captain Greybagges got up and walked to the stern-windows of the Great Cabin, the slight roll and pitch of the ship unnoticed.
"Why do you think that I would require a compressed-air cannon?"
"Because all men are fascinated by engines of destruction, of course! I said nothing to the corsairs, not even when they beat me, because otherwise I would be there still. I gambled that they would know nothing of it, being in Barbary. However, you, Captain, speak English well and have lately been in the waters of the Americas, so you may have heard a rumour, if some of my friends or workmen in Virginia have been indiscreet. Also, you are no Hollander, yet you masquerade as one, so I might rationally suspect you of representing some foreign power who wishes to acquire my knowledge for the purposes of aggressive war."
"Be at ease, I do not wish to build a compressed-air cannon," said Captain Greybagges, "or to encourage warfare between nations in any way, and I do not act as agent for any potentate or cabal. I find the notion of confining air in flasks very interesting, though. It may solve a problem for me. If you would tell me more of this I should be in your debt, but it is not the reason that I ransomed you. I wish you to tell me your knowledge of lightning-rods."
Blue Peter Ceteshwayoo and Torvald Coalbiter were in the sick-bay, sitting with Israel Feet, to give him tea and biscuits and to distract him from the pain of his head-wound.
"That be a prodigious great razor, an' you may drown me else, wi' a curse," whispered the First Mate.
Blue Peter replaced the enormous razor in its velvet-lined box. He had been recounting the tale of how the Captain had out-thought Ali the Barber, as the First Mate had been below at the time, waiting for the order to lead the armed pirates on deck.
"He be a sharp one, the Cap'n, and you may lay to that, wi' a curse," whispered Israel Feet.
"The beard did not like the razor, I expect," said Torvald Coalbiter, "and it is a lucky beard, a beard with a witch-charm upon it."
"Why do you say that?" said Blue Peter.
"Back in Norðragøta my father's mother is a witch. She talks to whales and she can call the fishes with an iron fry-pan and a piece of coal."
"How the bugger does she do that?" said Israel Feet.
"She bangs the coal on the fry-pan and shouts 'fish! fish! come here you bloody fish!' and the fish usually come. She says it is because they are curious."
"Does she put charms on beards, then?" said Blue Peter.
"No, not that I remember, but she will put charms on most things, if you ask her nicely and give her money. She charmed my boots so they would take me home again, and charmed my knife so that I would not drop it. See? It has the lucky knotted string on its hilt. I tie the lucky string to my wrist when I use the knife. So long as the lucky string is tied to my wrist I will never drop the knife."
Blue Peter and Israel Feet considered this in silence for a while.
"How did you come by your name, Coalbiter?" asked Blue Peter eventually.
"It is from a forebear, a long time ago. My father's father's father, maybe even longer. He had a cousin, a birsarka, who was called 'the Foebiter' because he was so mad in battle that he would bite and kick at his enemies even after they were dead. My ancestor preferred to stay by his own hearth, so his cousin mocked him and called him 'the Coalbiter'. He had the last laugh, though, as the Foebiter and all of his men went away a-viking and were lost at sea, and then my ancestor became the jarl and had sons with all their wives."
"And yet you went to sea despite your ancestor's tale?" said Blue Peter.
"The Coalbiter was a great sailor, it is told, and no coward. He was warming himself by his fire when when the weather was too bad to venture to sea, and by his fire when battles were lost, not when they were won. His great power was to know when to sail or to fight and when to sit quietly by his own hearth with his dogs at his feet. Anyway, those birsarkas were foolish men. They would eat the fly-mushroom and drink mead before battle until they were in a blind fury, then howl like wolves and tear their shirts off and gash their chests. Very frightening to farm-boys, but not so frightening to seasoned warriors, I think, which is why there are no birsarkas left now. The sea is not frightened by howling and chest-beating either, but it respects cunning and a knowledge of its ways. So I am glad to be at sea with the Captain. I think I would be less happy to be at sea with Blackbeard Teach, for he is alike to the Foebiter and mistakes recklessness for fearlessness and madness for cunning."
"Har! You be in the right there, shipmate, wi' a wannion!" said Israel Feet, forgetting to whisper piteously, "but don't be telling Captain Teach that to his face, har-har!"
"Tell me, Torvald," said Blue Peter, "what did the whales say to your grandmother, when she spoke with them?"
"Well, she used to talk to the whales right enough, in the late summer when they would come and sport off the north headland, but I am not sure if they ever said anything to her in reply."
"We must let Izzie sleep some more," said Blue Peter. "Tomorrow, Izzie, you can go on deck and get some fresh air, then you will soon be right as ninepence."
In the Great Cabin Mr Benjamin and Captain Greybagges had discussed lightning-rods and their peculiarities – and was it not true that the excellent Sir Thomas Browne had coined the word electrick to describe the mysterious fluid? Was there nothing that his mighty intellect had not mused upon? – and they had drunk most of the bottle of Madeira and eaten all of the pastries. The evening twilight blue'd the tall windows of the stateroom, earlier now as the ship's latitude grew ever more northerly, and Captain Greybagges lit the oil-lamps with a spill from the candle-stub they had been using to light their pipes.
"Of course, Captain," continued Mr Benjamin, "I had the advantage of a mechanical education. My father was a blacksmith and farrier, my uncles on either side a clockmaker and a gunsmith, so I was apprenticed to all three, one could say. Even so, I might still have followed in my father's footsteps and worked a forge if my mother's cousin Nathaniel had not been a printer. He was a fine typesetter, but all thumbs when it came to a mechanism, so as a boy I was often sent to help him work his press. At times he would give me proof-reading to do, and so I learned not only good English but also the rudiments, at least, of Latin and Greek, and German, too, there being a number of Hanoverians in Virginia at that time. The combination of manual skills and book-learning made a productive ground in which new ideas might grow and bloom. I have been lucky in that, and may stake no claim to genius, although I enjoy your generous compliments, Captain!" He raised his glass and sipped a little Madeira.
"You are right about the skills of the hand and eye being as illuminating as any text," said Captain Greybagges. "As captain of a ship I am made aware of this every day. The ship would founder without continual repair, and no book can give the smith or the carpenter his art. When I was a boy I made a little boat to sail on the lake on my father's estate, and there is a great pleasure in taking wood and shaping it, making it into a vessel that draws the wind and cuts the water, a great pleasure indeed. Perhaps one day I shall have the leisure to build another."
"The art of the boatwright is indeed profound. A cabinet-maker feels he is a fine fellow for making an inlaid vargueño with a secret drawer, but the boatbuilder's work must survive the battering of the seas, and has not a single straight line anywhere to put a try-square to."
"That is the truth. If you ask a cabinet-maker to make you a more expensive box he will make it of precious woods, inlay it with ivory and put gold handles on it. Ask a boatwright to do the same and he will make it more watertight, giving it a barrel-top and curved sides so the planks strain against each other and stay close-fitting as in a carvel-built whaler, thus expending the extra value in its construction and not on mere ornamentation. Mr Chippendale, the ship's carpenter, has such a sailor's chest. I shall show it to you betimes. It is surprisingly light in weight."
"I have seen such a chest. The light weight comes from it resembling more an egg than a box. An egg-shell is made of thin friable stuff, yet when it is complete and whole it will withstand much rough treatment. A cubical egg would be a sadly weak thing."
"And quite painful for the chicken, too!" said the Captain, and they roared with laughter.
"The last of the Madeira, Mr Benjamin?" Captain Greybagges emptied the bottle into their glasses. "The skills of the hands! I suppose that is why I respect our King Charles. I met a Guernsey man once who told me that when the King was exiled to the Channel Islands during Noll Cromwell's time he would sail a cutter from dawn to dusk, just for the joy of it, and that he could easily be master of a ship if he wasn't the king. I admired that, and I also learned that as a young prince he had insisted on being taught smithing and carpentry despite the dogged opposition of the dukes and earls who had been appointed to be his tutors, who thought such things beneath his royal dignity. They say that he is a man who enjoys his pleasures too much to be a good ruler, but I think a king who has willingly worked a forge and a bench, and who loves to sail a jolly-boat, cannot be bad. Many pirates make a pretence of being Jacobites, and toasting the king across the water like a parcel of drunken Scotsmen, but I do not. King Charles would maybe hang me if he should catch me, but that does not make him a bad king, merely a monarch whose wily diplomacy would sacrifice a few freebooters if that will give him peace with Spain. If there is war with Spain, then I will miraculously become a buccaneer once more, loyal and true, and not – heaven forfend! – a wicked pirate, and the King would then surely smile upon my depredations, as he has done already with Captain Morgan."
"You freely confess to being a pirate, Captain Greybagges, and yet all my instincts are to trust you," said Mr Benjamin. "Kings, popes and potentates are often constrained by circumstances to act in ways that are morally dubious, as you imply, and yet they are held to be the fount of order and law in this turbulent world. A pirate may be as much a creature of virtue as a king, I find. That man with the beard and turban in Barbary caused me to confront my mortality, to brace myself to face death, imprisonment or slavery with as much courage and dignity as I could muster. A barbarian, indeed, without honour or pity. You are not such a man. You buy my freedom at much risk to yourself, and yet you say that should only earn my goodwill, and that you will pay me for my labours and deliver me safe home to Virginia in the spring. I am honoured by your courtesy and your straightforwardness, and I will gladly accept your offer."
He held out his hand and Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges shook it solemnly.
"I am pleased to have you aboard, Mr Benjamin, as one of my pirate crew. Do please call me Sylvestre, but not on the quarterdeck, as that would breach naval ettiquette."
"Call me Frank. I drink a glass with you!"
They touched glasses and downed the last sips of the sweet Madeira wine.
"Frank, I must take a turn around the deck, as it grows dark. Please do accompany me, for the appetite is stimulated by the fresh salt air, and then please do join my officers and myself for a little supper."
The pirate frigate Ark de Triomphe, disguised still as the Dutch merchantman Groot Ombeschaamheid, cleaved a white wake thought the darkening sea into the gathering dusk. She had been heading northwest into the Atlantic to avoid lee shores and inquisitive Spaniards, but the wake was heading now northeast towards the Channel, with the prevailing southwesterly winds at her stern. The sailors hauling on the ropes were dressed in the red-and-grey matrozenpak slops of the Dutch East India Company, but they were singing in English – many of them in various accents, perhaps – as they hauled:
"Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
For we've received orders for to sail for old England,
But we hope in a short time to see you again,
We will rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,
We'll rant and we'll roar all on the salt sea.
Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England;
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues."
Captain Greybagges awoke at dawn as the tall windows of the Great Cabin let in a cold grey light. The ship was pitching more – a rougher sea – and rolling more – a gusting wind. A splatter of rain rattled against the stern windows. He yawned and swung his legs out of the hanging bunk, slowing its swinging with his feet on the canvas deck-cloth. He put a black coat of thick Duffel cloth on over his nightshirt, fastened its wooden toggles and went up to the quarterdeck. The ship was thumping through a moderate chop, the deck was wet and cold under his bare feet from the spray blown over the leeside taffrail. Two steersmen were at the wheel, under the watchful eye of Bulbous Bill Bucephalus, who wished the Captain a good morning and then indicated upwards with his eyes. The Captain looked up; Mr Benjamin was standing on the lower crossyard of the mizzen mast, facing sternwards into the wind, wearing only his wig, his spectacles and a pair of cotton drawers. He had tied a length of rope around his waist and the mast so that he could spread his arms wide and not fall.
"A very good morning to you, Captain!" he called down, just audible against the buffeting of the rain-filled wind.
"How long has he been up there?" asked the Captain.
"Oh, about half an hour," said Bill.
Captain Greybagges nodded and sighed, and went below. After his head had been shaved by Mumblin' Jake, and he had washed and dressed in his piratical black clothes, he returned to the deck. Mr Benjamin was standing by the pump, waiting for two foremast jacks to rig the handles.
"Taking a seawater bath, Mr Benjamin? It sets a man up for the day! Though I must confess that I prefer to do it in warmer climes."
"I feel it would be a grand thing to do after an air-bath, Captain, if I am not inconveniencing anybody."
"They will tell you quick enough if you are. But what is an 'air-bath', pray?"
"Why, a bath in the air! I have a theory that certain vapourous humours are drawn from the corpus by exposure to a brisk breeze, and that clothes tend to insulate one from the roborative effects of fresh air, much as they are necessary for warmth."
"I notice that you have tied your wig and spectacles to your head with cod-line. Surely it would be easier to leave them off?"
"I need my eye-glasses to see, Captain, and keep my wig on that I might retain my dignity. If I may presume to ask you a question in return, why is your beard green?"
"Because I am Greenbeard the pirate, Mr Benjamin. I am not in disguise as Myneer Oplichtenaar, kapitein van schip. This is how I normally attire myself."
"Ah! You are indeed a notable buccaneer, Captain Greybagges! Even a landlubber like myself has had report of you."
"The price of such fame is that I must colour my beard with brown boot-polish and, sadly, restrain myself from writing for the broadsheets as I used to do. After your seawater bath there is breakfast in the wardroom, Mr Benjamin. I must attend to some paperwork."
Captain Greybagges turned and addressed the crew in the rigging in a loud carrying voice.
"Listen, you swabs! There looks to be a great storm a-blowing up from aft, damn me iffen there ain't! It will be upon us before dark, so's you keeps the sails in good order betimes, keep a weather eye open and attend to Mr Bucephalus, for iffen yez don't and the storm don't tear out yez guts I surely will, and yez may lay to that, wi' a wannion! The Bay of Biscay is a graveyard for damned lubbers, but not for canny sailormen, so sets yez the sails handsomely, shipmates!"
The pirates had rigged the pump and fitted a stand-pipe. The Captain noted that Mr Benjamin removed his wig and spectacles before standing under the gushing gouts of cold seawater.
There was a knock at the door of the Great Cabin. "Enter, wi' a curse!" shouted Captain Greybagges, lifting his quill from the paper. Mr Benjamin looked around the door, his wig still looking slightly damp.
"Ah, Frank. Come in."
"Captain, Sylvestre, I have a notion to demonstrate to you something of the electric fluid, if there is to be a storm with lightning, but I need the assistance of a carpenter. Is he busy?"
"I do not think so. Tell him I said to do your bidding, unless there is some pressing task which must have his immediate attention."
"Thank you, Sylvestre. I am sorry to have disturbed you."
Captain Greybagges returned to his correspondence and the comforting scritch-scratch of the goose-quill on foolscap. I wonder what Mr Benjamin is intending to do, he mused, as he penned a letter of instructions to be sent to a clockmaker in Dublin.
As the Captain wrote letters and dealt with the mundane paperwork of the frigate he was aware that the weather was slowly worsening. The pitch and roll of the ship increased and became more random. He had to keep things stowed in drawers rather than have them slide around the top of his desk, and he spread his feet wider to steady his seat in the chair, in case there should be a sudden lurch. This did not bother him unduly, but he wondered how Mr Benjamin was taking it. If he was working with the ship's carpenter the activity would perhaps keep his mind off any queasiness.
Mumblin' Jake came with the Captain's lunch; a doorstep-thick sandwich of bread, cheese and sliced onion, two boiled eggs, a thick wedge of pork pie with mustard, an apple and a tankard of ale. The Captain kept the tankard in his left hand on the desk's leather top and the basket of food in his lap, and was able to enjoy his repast and continue writing in between mouthfuls despite the movement of the ship. The ship was by no means troubled by the wind and waves, and made agreeable creaking noises as though it were a live creature grunting with the effort of shouldering its way through the green seas. I hope Mr Chippendale has checked the bilges, he thought, and not been distracted by whatever it is Mr Benjamin wants of him.
The storm following the Ark de Triomphe worsened as it drew closer. As twilight fell the waves rolled past it one after another, lifting the stern with a lurch, and the wind howled. The foremast-jacks swarmed in the rigging, trimming the canvas to catch the blow yet not burst the gasket-ropes. Some of the pirate crew donned oilskins and boots, but the more-active men on the yards could only wear shirts and pants as heavy-weather gear would hamper their freedom of movement, and freezing cold and wet are better than a fall into the churning sea. They were relieved on a rolling-shift system so they got hot drinks and burgoo below before they became stupid from the cold, and fresher men took their place.
Jemmy Ducks was still in disgrace and was not relieved from his watch at the main foretop crosstrees, although he was well bundled up in several woollen jumpers, an oversize griego and a tarred sou’wester. Jack Nastyface had joined him in his lonely vigil out of friendship, a meaningful gesture when young Jack could have been lollygagging by the warmth of the galley stove with a mug of sweet coffee in his hand. Jemmy Ducks was resentful of his friend’s sacrifice at first, it seemed to diminish his punishment, and he was aggrieved at himself for his near-calamitous dereliction of duty, but Jack Nastyface was such a well-meaning fool that soon they were arguing as of old.
“You must have heard him wrong them, you ass!” said Jemmy Ducks. “He probably wanted a barrel of beer, the mad old bugger.”
“He did not,” insisted Jack. “He pacifically asked for an empty barrel. I heard him clear as I hear you now.”
This was no guarantee of clarity, as the wind howled around them in their lofty perch, but Jemmy Ducks was partially convinced.
“And three fathoms of cotton cloth, the sort that is dyed for flags,” continued Jack Nastyface, “and forty fathoms of codline, and a bar-shot, and some oilcloth, and four pounds of gunpowder, and …”
“And here he comes now!” shouted Jemmy Ducks above the wind’s noise, pointing down to the deck. He then felt a twinge of guilt. “I cannot look. I must keep watch on the horizon. Tell me what they are doing.” There was not much horizon to watch, as the squall-line crept closer, a mass of angry clouds, dark in the twilight and stitched with flashes of lightning. Jack Nastyface hung over the yard, to better observe the deck.
“Yes, it is Mr Benjamin. He has tied his wig on with string, and it is flapping, hee-hee! The Captain, too, and Mr Chippendale, and the barrel, and a bundle of sticks, or something. They are going forward … onto the forepeak. Mr Benjamin is buggering about with the sticks … aah! It is a kite! A big kite! I used to have a kite when I was a boy ashore, but it is much bigger than that. He has launched the kite into the wind! … It soars! The carpenter is paying out the line, and the kite soars ahead of the barky … the Captain and Mr Benjamin have put the barrel on the rail. Aha! The bar-shot is rigged alike to a keel on the barrel, and something sticks out of the top, alike to a little mast. They are tying the line off to the little spike-mast. The kite flys high now, and almost all the string is paid out.”
Jemmy Ducks, in his scan of the obscured horizon, could see the kite as it lofted high towards the cloud, but he tore his eyes from it to continue his watch; if he missed something again the Captain would surely have him flogged, or else the crew would kill him. Jack Nastyface continued, shouting about the keening of the wind.
“The line is all paid out … they have pushed the barrel over the side! The Captain waves to Mr Bucephalus by the wheel.”
The Ark de Triomphe turned away from the floating barrel. Jack Nastyface hauled himself upright to let a party of foremast-jacks clamber out on the yard. He could see the barrel bobbing amongst the white wave-tops. The kite was towing it perceptibly, such was the strength of the wind.
“By the Saints! The kite pulls the barrel! Take care, Jemmy, the squall is almost upon us!”
“I can see that, you dullard! Look to your own handholds. Watch the barrel! What the devil are they doing? Why throw a barrel into the oggin to get pulled by a kite? It makes little sense.”
“The kite is soaring into the cloud-bottoms! I never got my kite to fly so high! Here comes the squall! … Oh!”
From the corner of his eye Jemmy Ducks saw first a white flash, then a red light, and a fraction of a second later heard a ‘boom’.
“Oh, crikey!” yelled Jack. “There is a strange thing! I have never seen the like of that! I trow I have not!”
“Seen the like of what, you fathead?”
“Well, that is a wonder! A wonder indeed!”
“What is a wonder, you donkey?”
The squall howled around their ears, and a lightning flash lit the bottoms of the clouds an eerie blue. Jack Nastyface waited to speak until the thunder and the squall had abated.
“A great wonder, indeed! I have never seen the like of that!”
“Of WHAT!” pleaded Jemmy, still keeping his watch as though his life depended on it.
“Har! When the kite went into the bottom of the clouds lightning ran down the string, like a line of white fire, then the barrel blew up, ‘boom!’ The fire of the levin-bolt must have lit the gunpowder in the barrel! How very extraordinary!” He peered down at the deck. “The Captain congratulates Mr Benjamin, and claps him on the back! He must be a wise old cove to know the nature of lightning, and to guide it into a barrel of powder! I take my hat off to him!”
Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges and his officers were still chuckling from the surprise of the explosion, shaking their heads and going, in their different ways ‘zzzzt! BOOM!’, to demonstrate how the barrel had detonated. The Captain sloshed dark rum into Bulbous Bill’s lignum-vitae beaker, then Israel Feet’s tarred leather drinking-jack, then Blue Peter’s tumbler of precious diamond-cut Bohemian crystal, then his own chased-silver goblet and finally Frank Benjamin’s pewter tankard. He raised his goblet:
“A toast, me hearties! A fulsome toast to Mister Frank Benjamin, the man who has mastered the fire of the lightning-bolt, leading it where he wills, alike to the good farmer who directs water to the parched field through leats and ditches with a turn of his spade! A toast!”
They downed their rum and banged their various drinking-vessels back onto the Captain’s desk. The ship rolled with the seas, and rain rattled on the tall transom windows from the following wind, but the Great Cabin of the Ark de Triomphe seemed cosy with light from the oil-lamps and the warm fellowship of the pirates. Mr Benjamin grinned modestly and raised his tankard:
“My thanks, friends and shipmates! Captain Greybagges has done me great honour by inviting me to join your illustrious company, and I am glad to have given such pleasure by a modest demonstration of the power of natural philosophy. I return your toast in full measure! To the lusty buccaneers of the good ship Ark de Triomphe and to their captain, the illustrious Sylvestre de Greybagges!”
They drank again. Mr Benjamin seated himself, staggering a little from a lurch of the ship. He filled his pipe.
“I must say, though, Captain,” he said, “that you may have to repay your excellent carpenter for the reel of fine copper wire which I used to direct the flow of electrick fluid down the kite-string. He was loath to part with it, and I had to invoke your name to ensure his compliance. It is a pricey commodity, that cuprous filament, not valuable for its metal, but for the rare skill required to draw it so hair-like thin, and now most of it is turned to vapour.”
“Surely I shall reimburse Mr Chippendale his reel of wire, and another reel of wire of pure gold if I can find such a thing, for his metal thread has shown to me that certain things, certain plans of mine, lie within the bounds of the possible, and are not mere pipe-dreams. I am grateful for that, and relieved, and grateful to you, too, Frank.”
The Captain refilled their cups once again. Mr Benjamin leaned forward to nod and acknowledge the Captain’s compliment, the flickering light of the oil-lamp reflecting on his pince-nez spectacles as ovals of yellow.
“This is also an opportune moment for me to add that Mr Benjamin is now a full member of the crew, with all the rights, responsibilities, emoluments and perquisites appertaining to that position, as laid out in the Free Brotherhood o’ the Coast’s rule-book. Somebody give Mr Benjamin a copy to study at his leisure. Be assured, though, Frank, that I shall not command you to stand a dog-watch as masthead lookout dressed only in your wig and your drawers, har-har!”
There was mirth at this sally, but Mr Benjamin did not seem unduly put out, smilingly slyly and sipping his rum.
“You said as how you might have plans, Cap’n?” said Bulbous Bill Bucephalus carefully.
“Indeed I do, Bill. Indeed I have plans. They are still in a state of vagueness because of their dependence on certain things happening, mind you, so I am unwillin’ to discuss them much. Things will be clearer to me after I have settled some business in London.”
Up in the mainmast cross-trees Jemmy Ducks and Jack Nastyface wrangled idly about this and that, Jemmy all the time keeping a regular circle-scan of the horizon, or what could be seen of it through the darkness and rain. Occasional flashes of lighting lit the clouds from within and without.
“… yes, I am envious of you, Jack. The crew do not have a down on you. I don’t blame them, but it’s mortal hard on a fellow to get all these black looks, I can tell you.”
“Har! ‘Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks!’ The Captain said that earlier to the sailing-master,” said Jack, “but I think he was just quoting and didn’t mean that Bill had been being envious at all. He said it were by a famous fellow name of Sir Thomas Browne, he …”
Jack would have said more, but a face appeared over the mast, dimly pale in the cloud-dimmed moonlight.
“Cap’n says you two nippers, you two young gentlemen, are to go the galley, get something hot inside yuz,” said the foremast-jack, “and I to take yer place, for my sins.”
“Not just yet!” shouted Jemmy Ducks. “Call you down to the steersman! There are white breakers to port side! White breakers less’n two miles to port!”
The foremast-jack turned and hailed the steersman at the wheel in a deep and powerful voice.