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“Richly though ye ha’ merited death a thousand times over, yet for that ye are a woman – as indeed is plain for all to see, heh-heh! (laughter and whistles) – and for that his majesty’s plantations are in need of labour, it is the merciful sentence of this court that ye be transported to the East Indies, and there sold in bondage for the rest of your natural life …” (sensation in court, cries of “Fix!” “Boo!” “It’s a cut-up!” “We want to see her swing!” and “Good old Jeff!”.)
It was rumoured that the King himself had intervened, having seen her in Newgate and done a quick double-take before observing that they couldn’t hang a female who looked like that, it would be criminal, etc., etc. But as she heard the sentence Black Sheba screamed with rage, and clashed her fetters at the bar.
“Damn your mercy!” she snarled. “I’ve been a slave! I’d rather die, you foul shrivelled bastard, you!”
At which Jeffreys, with commendable restraint, had hurled himself frothing about the bench, bawling at her:
“Why, so ye shall, ye vile black bitch – so ye shall, in God’s good time! And I trust they’ll have lashed every inch of hide off your foul carcase first, thou wanton, smelly, perverse slut, thou! Take her down, take her out, take her anywheres so she be away!” And he had thrown his wig at her in his passion, calling her beldame, whore, slattern, harlot and jigaboo, but since Sheba had given him back cuckold, honky, pimp, snake, and faggot, the spectators decided it was a draw, and ought to be replayed. Sheba was dragged back to her cell, and there she was, pacing and snarling, waiting to be haled off to East Indian bondage, while …
Colonel Blood reluctantly tore his eyes away from the cleavage of the buxom serving-wench who was hanging admiringly over the back of his chair, considered his cards, and glanced, sighing, at the fat, ugly, gloating, richly-dressed gull who sat across the table in the taproom of The Prospect of Whitby. Blood was looking slightly better than when we last saw him, having shaved, found a clean shirt, and apparently spent his last five pence on a shampoo and set. He had also acquired a lace jabot, an embroidered red coat with a sword worn modishly through the pocket, and a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. (Spectacles? What have we here?)
“Come on, come on, sir!” cried the fat man. “Ya’ play, damme!”
Blood sighed again and played the king of spades; the fat man played the queen and gleefully nudged his crony, another podgy vulgarian. They eyed the pile of guineas on the table; money for jam, they were thinking.
“Ya’ last card, sir! Hey?” cried Fatso. “What, sir? Come, sir! Eh, sir?”
“Just the seven o’ clubs,” said Blood innocently, and faced what is usually the duddest card you can hold at picquet. The fat man and his friend gaped, and swore, and the fat man dashed down his useless king of diamonds. Blood raked in the cash almost apologetically, removed his spectacles and tucked them in his sleeve, rose, kissing the serving-wench lightly on the cheek, and flipped a guinea down her ample frontage.
“Blast me vitals!” cried the fat chap. “How – how, sir, did ye guess I’d sloughed the ace o’ clubs? What? Hey?”
“Irish instinct, me old joy,” said Blood, winking at the wench. “My mother was frightened by a knave of hearts.”
“The fiend’s own luck!” groaned the fat man.
“Devil a bit,” said Blood. “All my luck’s reserved for love, eh, sweetheart?” And he squeezed the wench again, bade his opponents an affable good day, and sauntered upstairs whistling “Come lasses and lads”, jingling his winnings. There he turned into a bedroom, where a dark and languid lady, slightly past her prime, extended a plump hand to him from the froth of lace which surrounded her as she reclined among the pillows, purring amorously.
“Dah-ling!” she breathed, and Blood gallantly slipped on to the bed, kissing ardently up her arm to her buxom shoulders and bosom, at which she reproved him coyly, and then began to eat his ear, murmuring hungrily: “I vow ye’ve been away from me so long, I thought ye had forgot your dear little pigeon,” and she tried to drag him under the sheets.
“A mere half-hour, ye fascinating houri,” said Blood, and poured his winnings into a purse before her eyes. “A trifle of pin money I’ve been earning, me heart’s darling – forty guineas against our travelling expenses to Gretna.”
At this the lady cried out fondly: “Why, thou foolish dear fellow, where was the need? Have I not ample funds … and there is all my jewellery.” And she fingered her necklace and stroked his cheek, all of which the Colonel bore with equanimity.
“Only a vandal,” he murmured, nuzzling the necklace and the soft skin beneath it, “could bear to see it removed from its rightful place – tho’ faith, it’s dim by comparison with such a lovely setting.”
He would have been less poetically carefree if he could have seen the serving-wench at that moment, discovering the spectacles which had slipped from his sleeve during his last departing fondle, to hook themselves in her apron-string. She squeaked with surprise, exclaimed: “Ow, look, the gennelman’s left ’is glasses!”, giggled, and clapped them on her pert nose for the entertainment of the customers. “Caw, look at me!” she exclaimed, peering affectedly, and then her eyes fell on the cards scattered on the table, and she gasped in genuine dismay.
“Ow!” she cried. “Caw, bleedin’ ’ell! Ow, me! Lookathat! Ow, the rotten cheat!”
For through the spectacles she could see that on the backs of the cards their identities were clearly marked, and even she, dumb trull that she was, knew that this was irregular. The defeated gamesters gaped, and seized the glasses from her, and peered through them, and observed their cunningly-tinted glass, and with one accord cried: “Burn my bowels! Bubbled, by God! Where is the knave, the sharp, the cut-purse!” and were on the point of making for the stairs, to wreak vengeance, when a stentorian voice thundered at the tap-room door:
“Landlord! Hither to me! Have you a rakehell black Irishman in your house, hey? A rascal that calls himself Colonel Blood?”
“Colonel Blood, sir?” spluttered the fat man. “My word, sir, the villain has just made off with my forty guineas!”
“Damn your guineas, sir!” roared the newcomer, who was huge and masterful and magnificently dressed. “The villain has just made off with my wife!”
Since no one kept their voices down in Restoration England, it followed that every word of this exchange was audible upstairs. The languid lady, suddenly distraught, shot bolt upright with a violence which pitched Blood on to the floor, clutched her bosom, and cried “My husband!”, followed by a shriek of dismay as she realised that her erstwhile lover, hoisting his breeches with one hand and grabbing his purse with the other, already had one leg over the sill. She stretched out an arm in dramatic entreaty and shrilled: “False heart, will you desert me now? Oh, stay!”
“Just slipping out for a breath of air, my sweet,” said Blood reassuringly, and vanished, blowing a kiss, for he liked to observe the polite niceties.
“What shall I do?” cried the lady, wringing her hands like anything, and Blood, who would deny no one advice if it might be helpful, poked his head back in to suggest: “Tell him ye walked in your sleep,” before dropping to the street.
Now, in any romance of fiction, he would have slipped nimbly up a side-street and hid, grinning rakishly, in a doorway, while the pursuit rushed futilely by. But since this is a highly realistic, moral tale, it has to be recorded that he fell slap on to a pile of empty beer-crates, and was thrashing about cursing when the outraged husband and his burly minions (all outraged husbands in those days engaged burly minions, from some Restoration equivalent of Central Casting) emerged to seize him wrist and ankle. And they tore off his fine coat (which was the husband’s anyway, having been provided for Blood by his doting leman) and beat the living daylights out of him with stout canes, to the great satisfaction of the cheated gamesters, and the vicarious excitement of the deserted lady, who watched, biting her lips, from her bedroom window. Indeed, she became so emotional that when her lord, after a final cut at the hapless Colonel, strode into the inn, up the stairs, and confronted her with a lowering scowl and a “So-ho, madam!” she flung herself sobbing at his feet, begging forgiveness and pleading, in piteous tones, her youthful folly – she was forty-seven, to be exact, but her contrition was such a change from her customary wilfulness, and she looked so fetching in her dishevelled negligee, that he forgave her on the spot, and taking a leaf out of Marlborough’s book, pleasured her (once) in his boots, and they lived happy ever after, or so we may assume.
A comfortable and loving note on which to end our second chapter. But sterner matters await us. Avery, his hair brushed and his heart pure, is about to set off on his perilous mission to Madagascar – will his path cross that of Black Sheba when they ship her to the Indies? And what o’ Blood, caught in the acts of abduction, seduction, marking his cards, and causing malicious damage to beer crates? He is right in it …
CHAPTER (#ulink_a7cc1f27-9b6f-53be-830a-8f3cf16b6c1c)
THE THIRD (#ulink_a7cc1f27-9b6f-53be-830a-8f3cf16b6c1c)
In the taproom, whither they had dragged him battered and bruised as he was, Colonel Blood fetched his breath while the gamesters reviled him, the wench giggled, one burly minion brushed the stolen coat, and another snarled: “Bide you there, ye muckrake, whiles Oi fetch a constable. ’Tis the Roundhouse for ’ee, aye, an’ the gallows therearter, damn ’ee!”
This seemed a reasonable forecast to Blood, who promptly swooned lower on his bench, gasping “Water! Water!”, at which they reviled him harder than ever, but relaxed their guard, with the result that one minion was suddenly rolling on the floor, clutching his groin and making statements, the other had the fine coat wrenched from his grasp (the Colonel, a realist, knew that you can’t get far in your shirt-sleeves) and an iron fist smashed against his jaw, and before the wench could even squeal or the gamesters swear, foxy Tom was off and running.
Naturally, they pursued, minions, gamesters, landlord, bystanders, and other interested parties – including, eventually, the outraged husband, once he had recovered from his unexpectedly joyous reunion and hurried downstairs. And nip and double as Blood might, his beaten limbs (not improved, of course, by late nights, booze, women, and too much smoking the day before the match) would inevitably have let him down had his headlong flight not carried him suddenly out on to a long cobbled wharf thronged with porters, hawkers, fishwives, seamen, loiterers, and all the motley of the waterfront. In an instant the Colonel was lost in the shifting human tide, which bore him along while he got his breath back, straightened his coat, and regretted that he had no hat to complete the appearance of a genteel saunterer slumming.
A great ship was making ready for sea, and Blood paused by her gangplank to look round for signs of pursuit. All clear behind, and he was about to stroll on when he saw, dead ahead, the breathless figures of the fat gamester and one of the burly minions moving questingly through the crowds in his general direction. The Colonel wheeled smartly about – only to see emerging, from the alley down which he had run, a constable, the other minion, and in the rear the cuckolded husband, buttoning his weskit askew and inquiring thunderously about a black-avised rascal in a red coat. As heads turned and the two sets of pursuers continued to converge at random, Colonel Blood looked desperately for a bolt-hole. The gangway was before him, and as two seamen staggered on to it under the weight of a furled tarpaulin, he hesitated no longer, but used them as a shield to slip swiftly on to the ship’s crowded deck. One quick look back showed him the outraged husband and the fat gamester hailing each other over the heads of the mob; Blood pushed hurriedly past a couple of bare-footed seamen, rounded a pile of casks, and came face to face with a bawling red face in a brass-buttoned coat and cocked hat.
“Sink an’ be damned!” it roared. “An’ how in thunder do I know where the swab o’ a surgeon should sling his hammock? ’A can sleep i’ the scuppers; ’a’ll be drunk enough not to notice! How now, sir?” it demanded of Blood. “What make ye here? We’re putting to sea, or damme! No, we’re not – not while them tarts an’ trollops are fouling my ship!” And he rolled furiously past Blood, a bosun at his heels, bawling the odds at the waterfront slatterns who were keeping his men from their work forward; at his instructions the bosun passed among them with a rope’s end, belabouring them towards the gangplank, while all around the seamen hurriedly pulled ropes and battened hatches and shouted through cupped hands and spat resoundingly – doing all those things needful, d’ye see, to get a ship under weigh.
“Avast there! Get in the forrard plank!” yelled the red-faced man. “Yarely, an’ be damned, wi’ a pox on’t!” Plainly he was another Farnol graduate, one of that barnacle-crusted band whose natural ancestor is the bosun in “The Tempest” – the one who is responsible for the greatest stage-direction Shakespeare ever wrote: “Enter mariners, wet.” He rolled about the place, roaring and belaying, and then his eye fell on Blood again, and he bellowed – but with a certain respect for one well-dressed: “Now then, you, sir, blast me bollocks an’ by y’r leave! What, sir? What make ye, master? It’s go ashore or go to Calicut, or hoist me for a lubber, what?” And his gesture invited the Colonel to the gangplank – at the foot of which the fat gamester was plainly visible, craning his neck as he surveyed the crowded wharf. Colonel Blood had his choice, and took it.
“But, captain,” said he, with desperate nonchalance, keeping under cover of the casks, “Calicut is where I wish to go. News came this morning … my rich uncle’s dead o’ the flux or the gout or the fever or somewhat. Shocking sudden, and the plantation going to the devil. I had your direction … and where the devil my man Jenkin is with the dunnage, God knows. Ye can give me passage, I dare swear?”
“What, sir? Carry ye to Calicut, rot me? Why, sir, now, sir!” The captain rubbed grizzled chin wi’ horny paw and considered the appellant – rich lace, good coat, rakehelly genteel, dressed in a hurry … but then, he’d admitted as much. “Why, y’r worship, it might be,” he conceded. “A four-month passage, let’s see – I could make room at a pinch, for … forty guineas, now?”
Above the ship’s noise a distant voice could be heard complaining: “… and the dam’ gallows-bait had my guineas, too!” Colonel Blood did not hesitate, but pulled the purse from his pocket and tossed it over negligently to the captain. “A bagatelle,” said he, and the roaring skipper promptly knuckled his hat, and beamed, crying “Thank’ee, y’r honour, I’ll see ye have a comf’table berth, y’r honour, crisp me liver if I don’t! Yardley’s the name, sir; Cap’n Yardley. Steward! Hell’s bells an’ hailstones, will ye lay aft, steward, damn ’ee?”
The Colonel was too old a hand to regret his lost cash; it had been necessary. The question now was whether to kiss it good-bye and steal ashore later, or to avail himself of this unexpected magic carpet away from London – a place which might be uncomfortably hot for him. India? He had never been there, and had no great desire to go … on the other hand, he was one who had always lived where he’d hung his castor – why not? He’d have four months’ board and lodging in the meantime. As he considered, he lurked, and presently saw his baffled pursuers take themselves off; the resolve was forming in his mind … he’d quite enjoy a sea-trip, and the Indies, by all accounts, offered a fruitful field to men of his talents. He allowed himself to be shown his berth, shed his too-conspicuous coat, and sallied forth on deck again to view the orderly bustle of the ship as the final preliminaries to sailing went ahead right handily, with cheery yo-ho and bronzed backs bending to haul, pipes twittering, captain bawling, men hasting aloft, capstan turning, and that sort of thing, with salty baritones roaring:
Where is the trader o’ Stepney Town? Clap it on, slap it on, How the hell should I know?
And up the gangplank, striding tall, came a superbly handsome young man in a naval coat and hat, his buttons glinting keenly at his surroundings; he bore a polished oak box under one arm, and his sea-chest was wheeled behind by an awestruck urchin whom he rewarded with a groat, a kindly word, and a pat on the head. The urchin went off swearing foully at the size of his tip, but the skipper was all over the newcomer, crying welcome aboard, Cap’n Avery, look’ee, here’s j’y, or rattle me else! The young man nodded amiably, but looked down his classic nose when the beaming skipper presented him to his fellow-passenger.
“Blood?” he said, bowing perfunctorily. “I seem to have heard the name,” and his tone didn’t imply that it had been in connection with the last Honours List; plainly he was not enchanted with the Colonel (trust Avery to spot a wrong ’un every time). “You are a soldier, sir?”
“Oh, here and there,” said Blood easily. “You’re a sailor?”
“I am a naval officer,” said Avery coldly.
“Ah,” said Blood wisely, and wondered: “Don’t they sail?”, at which Avery’s cuffs stiffened sharply as he favoured the Colonel with that steely glance employed by Heroes on mutinous troops, rioting peasants, and impudent rakehelly villains, who respectively quail, cower, or gnash their teeth when exposed to it. Colonel Blood met it with an amiable smile, and the two of them detested each other from that instant.
A coach came rumbling along the cobbles, and Captain Yardley swore picturesquely, excused himself to Avery, and stumped off bawling: “Admiral’s a-comin’, damme! Ho, bosun, blister me bum, lay up here, d’ye see? Hands on deck!” And as the coach stopped by the gangplank, a massive-limbed figure with an order on his silk coat and a ruffled castor on his head, stepped ponderously down from it – Admiral Lord Rooke, with a face like a ham, brilliant grey eyes, grizzled head, weatherbeaten feet, tarred elbows, and all that befits a sea-dog of seniority and sound bottom. He was just what an admiral ought to be: tough, kindly, experienced, and worshipped by the salts of the Navy, who referred to him endearingly as Old Pissquick, in memory of the time he extinguished a lighted fuse accidentally at the intaking of Portobello, or the outflanking of Mariegalante, no matter which. He bellowed a command in a voice which had blown look-outs from their crows’-nests e’er now, and a lackey leaped from the box and quivered in his livery.
“You’re not English, are ye, fellow?” growled the Admiral.
“No, sair, pliz, je suis un Frog,” smarmed the lackey.
“Just the thing!” cried the Admiral. “On thy knees, rat!” And as the lackey knelt on all fours in the mud, providing a step, a dainty foot emerged from the coach, shod with a trim spiked heel, and cased in white silk, and planted itself in the small of his back. A second dainty foot followed it, with a flurry of lace petticoat which revealed a modish velvet garter buckled with brilliants below a shapely knee, and there stood the Admiral’s daughter, Lady Vanity, her tiny gloved hand holding a parasol, waiting to be helped down.
“Lower away!” bawled the Admiral, kicking the lackey’s behind, and the lackey subsided obsequiously into the mud, allowing Lady Vanity to step down to the cobbles, over which forehead-knuckling salts had laid a red carpet. Examine Lady Vanity for a moment.
She was, of course, a blonde whose hair shone in sunkissed golden ringlets on either side of a roses-and-cream complexion which she knew to be dazzling. Her eyes were sparkling blue, her nose haughtily tip-tilted, her little chin imperious, her lips a cupid’s bow whose perfection was no way impaired by its provoking pout; practically everything about Lady Vanity pouted, including her shapely figure, which would have done credit to the Queen of the Runway. She was not tall, but her carriage was that of a fashion model who has been to a Swiss finishing school and knows she has the equipment to stop a battalion of Rugby League players in their tracks with the flick of a false eyelash. She was dressed by Yves St Laurent, in pleated white silk, and her jewellery alone had cost her doting father all his last cruise’s prize money. Lady Vanity was a living doll; even the plump little negress who was her maid was pretty enough to be Miss Leeward Islands.
Captain Avery and Colonel Blood stood together by the rail, drinking her in – one in respectful worship, the other with thoughts of black silk bedclothes and overhead mirrors.
“Will ye look at that, now?” invited the Colonel in an enchanted whisper. “Maybe there’s compensations to a life at sea, after all. I hope to God the old feller isn’t her husband … not that it matters.”
Avery’s eyes blazed frostily at this lewd effrontery. This fellow’s foul tongue, he decided, must be curbed, and speedily.
Lady Vanity was surveying the ship. “Are we expected to sail to India in that?” she cried petulantly.
“Seen worse,” growled the Admiral, and kicked the lackey again for luck.
“No doubt you have, father,” said Lady Vanity chillingly. “But I did not run away to sea as a cabin-boy at the age of twelve.”
“Ye’re still that cabin-boy’s daughter, m’dear,” chuckled the Admiral, bluff as anything, “even if they call me ‘me lord’ nowadays.”
He handed her aboard, and there were big introductions at the gangway, with Captain Yardley blistering and damning and apologising with great geniality, milording and miladying and bowing as far as his guts would let him as he indicated Avery, whom the Admiral hailed with delight.
“Why, young Ben! Good to see ye, lad!” He waved a great paw. “M’dear, this is Captain Avery, that fought wi’ me against the dam’ Dutchmen – m’daughter, Lady Vanity …”
Their eyes met, the brilliant maidenly blue and the clear heroic grey, and although the lady’s glance remained serene, and the young captain’s steady, atomic explosions took place in the interior of each. Captain Avery felt a qualm for the first time in his life; his knees may not have trembled, but they thought about it, and a great gust of holy passion surged up from his pelvis and thundered against his clavicle. Lady Vanity, normally careless of masculine adoration which she took for granted, suddenly felt as though her silken stays were contracting and forcing a flight of doves up through her breast to her perfect throat, where they elbowed each other in fluttering confusion. As he took her hand and bent over it, murmuring “Servant, ma’am,” his mind was saying, “Nay, not servant, worshipping slave – and master and protector, all these and more!’ And Vanity, whispering “Sir,” was thinking “Oh, dreamboat!” and feeling thoroughly ashamed of all the fan letters she had written in the fifth form to Prince Rupert (who had just sent a cyclostyled autographed picture, anyway). So they met, and as he raised his eyes to hers, and she for once shielded those haughty orbs ’neath fluttering lashes, their unspoken love was sealed like Bostik; beside them, Dante and Beatrice were nothing but a ted and a scrubber at a palais hop.
She never even noticed Blood, who was giving her his pursed, wistful leer. Her attention was all for Avery as she murmured softly: “We shall be companions on the voyage, sir. You shall tell me all about the ropes and anchors and keel-haulings and things,” and he replied “I shall be even more enchanted than I am now,” with such a look of fervent adoration that she dropped her reticule. Blood picked it up, and she never even looked at him as she said, “Thank you my man,” and passed on while Rooke drew Avery aside.
“Ye have it safe?” he asked, rolling an eye at the box containing the Madagascar crown, and Avery assured him that he had, and would bestow it secretly in his cabin. “Aye!” rasped the Admiral, in what he imagined was a conspiratorial whisper. “In y’r cabin! Secretly, that’s the word! But mum!” Possibly they heard him as far away as Chelsea, for he had a carrying voice; at any rate, Blood did, and made a note that the box which Captain Avery carried so carefully might be fraught with interest.
But his speculations were now rudely interrupted, by Captain Yardley thundering: “Make haste, then, bring her aboard, d’ye see, wi’ a curse!” and the passengers of the Twelve Apostles turned to see who this might be. A barred cart had drawn up on the quay, and from it two sentries with muskets were manhandling Black Sheba, her wrists and ankles loosely secured by lengths of chain. Blood stared with interest, for the fetters made up most of her attire, her fine red breeches surviving only as a pair of frayed shorts, and her shirt little better than a rag. Her silver earring had gone into the pocket of her first jailer, and her hair was bound tightly behind her head, giving her face the appearance of a polished ebony mask from some Egyptian tomb. That, and her height, and the fact that she was struggling like fury with the sentries, made her a sufficiently striking spectacle to turn every head on quay and ship.
The officer in charge grabbed her wrist-chain and hauled her forward so violently that she stumbled and fell, whereon he shouted “Get up, you slut!” and kicked her brutally, in approved romantic redcoat style. Which was a mistake, for she got up faster than he bargained for, blazing with rage and fetters whirling; the chain caught the officer across the face before the sentries hauled her back, writhing, and the officer dabbed blood from his cheek and swore most foully.
“Thou black vermin!” he shouted. “Ha! Wouldst thou, eh? Shalt learn the price of raising hand to thy betters, thou snarling slattern, thou! Sergeant, hoist me her up and we’ll ha’ the cat to her!”
The redcoats having come provided for such contingencies, as they always did in those days, in a trice Sheba was spreadeagled against the cart, her wrists lashed to it with cords, and the sergeant, a burly, grinning brute with bad teeth who hadn’t shaved (or washed either, probably), strode forward and tore away her shirt before flourishing the long cat-o’-nine-tails in a hand whose finger-nails would not have borne inspection. The spectators stared, and dainty Lady Vanity clutched at the Admiral’s arm in maidenly distress.
“Nay, father – stop them! They mustn’t!” Her sweet soprano was tremulous wi’ entreaty. “Not in public! Can’t they lambast her behind a building or somewhere?”
The sergeant spat a brutal stream of tobacco juice on Sheba’s bare back, saw her flinch, roared wi’ sadistic glee, and struck with all his might. Sheba choked a scream into a gasp as the tails tore at her skin, the officer gloated “Nice one, fellow!”, and the sergeant was winding up for another stroke – when the cat was plucked from his grasp and he spun round to face a reproachful Colonel Blood, who had vaulted nimbly from rail to wharf, and was shaking his head as he tossed the cat into the dock.
“Wait till ye’re married afore ye do that sort o’ thing, son,” he reproved the sergeant. “Ye’re too young altogether.”
The officer surged forward, raging. “Who the devil art thou to mar our discipline and condign punishment?”
“Me?” said the Colonel innocently. “I’m a Tyburn hooligan, the kind that breaks up executions and gets spectator sports a bad name.” He beamed on the officer. “But I can see you’re a man of taste, and ye wouldn’t want to spoil anything as pretty as this, now, would ye?” And he ran an appreciative hand over Sheba’s shuddering bare shoulder.
“Avoid, upstart!” hooted the officer, and Blood frowned.
“Och, don’t be so hasty – sure it’s a teeny scrape she gave ye, an’ her just a slip of a girl! Use a little Christian charity,” coaxed the Colonel, “ye bloodthirsty bastard. Abate thy spite, an’ think on gentle things – apple pie, an’ Christmas, an’ little lambs a-gambol, an your own dear old hag of a mother –”
“Damn thee, thou damned thing, thou!” shrieked the officer, fairly demented. “You’ll answer for this –”
“Then so shall I!” rang out a crisp, clear, well-modulated, upper-class, R.A.D.A.-trained baritone, and down the gangplank strode Avery, all clean-limbed virtue. Sheba twisted her head to look, and forgot the smart of her back in a surge of relief (if ever you’re tied to a cart and they’re going to give you the business, an approaching Avery is just what you need).
“You’re a disgrace to your commission,” he chilled the officer, “creating a scene like this with ladies present. Stand aside, sir!” And the officer stood. Avery strode to the cart, and where you or I would have stopped foolishly, wishing we’d brought a knife, he simply reached up and snapped Sheba’s bonds with two quick twists of his powerful fingers. Sheba regarded him with wonder, and as she turned from the cart he gulped and blushed, hastily averted his eyes, whipped a convenient cloak from the cart, and dropped it over her shoulders.
“Off you go now!” he told her sharply. “Mustn’t catch cold. Aboard with you, and slip into something comfortable.”
Sheba, stricken into an awe quite foreign to her, was suffering precisely the shock which Lady Vanity had sustained a few moments earlier – it was the sort of thing impressionable teen-agers used to feel when they saw Valentino or Paul Newman for the first time: that brave new world reaction of Miranda’s. She fumbled the cloak round her like one in a dream, and moved unsteadily towards the plank, staring back at the Apollo-like figure of her rescuer, who was withering the sullen officer with a final glance. As Sheba reached the plank, there was Blood, all casual charm, waiting to pat her wrist.
“Don’t thank me, darlin’ – it was nothin’.” He smiled beguilingly at her, and she came out of her Avery-induced trance just long enough to spit in his eye, before refocusing on the splendid captain as he followed her aboard. So intent was she that she tripped on her ankle-chain and hit the deck with a blistering oath which caused the nearest seamen to press their knuckles to their teeth and stop their ears.
Lady Vanity, looking down in disdain from the poopladder, was heard to remark: “Fie! what a disgusting creature!” and Sheba, sprawled on the deck like Cat Woman, glared up at her with diabolic venom.
“You should pray, my lady,” said she in a sand-papered hiss, “that you never find out how disgusting I can be!”
“How now, baggage o’ midnight – wilt bandy, ha?” Captain Yardley dragged her to her feet. “An’ wi’ lady o’ rank, look’ee, aye, an’ prime quality, as far above ’ee as truck be above keelson!” He frowned, considering – yes, the truck was above the keelson, he was pretty sure. He thrust her roughly towards the hatchway. “Stint thy hoydenish clack or we’ll ha’ thee in the branks – you there, down wi’ her an’ clap her in bilboes, wi’ a wannion!”
He turned apologetically to usher his quality passengers to the poop, where they thrilled to the spectacle of the Twelve Apostles being warped from her moorings. Men threw ropes about, and dropped tardy wenches over the side, sails were unfurled and bumboatmen fell in the water, articles of all descriptions were clewed up, the crowd on the dock sang the seventeenth-century version of “Auld Lang Syne”, the stench of bilge mingled evocatively with the rotting refuse of the river, the jolly sailormen swung their pigtails and strained at the capstan bars wi’ heave and ho, Captain Yardley was quietly seasick in a corner, and only Blood spared a last glance (a leer, actually) for Black Sheba as she was hustled below. But even he missed her sudden start as a huge brute of a seaman yanked cruelly at her fetters with a coarse guffaw of: “Har-har, me fine lady – allow me to show ye yer quarters – a right dainty chamber, sink me!” He was a great bearded ruffian, all shaggy with red hair from crown to breast, and he quickly bundled Sheba out of sight. Blood sighed, and wondered where they would put her; maybe in some quiet corner where she’d be glad of a little company … provided she wasn’t guarded by daunting thugs like that red-haired gorilla. Big, tough rascal he looked. Come to that, these sailors were a pretty muscular lot; Blood’s eye dwelt for a moment on another seaman lingering by the hatchway, a clean-shaven heavyweight in spotless white calico who looked as though he could comfortably have taken three straight falls from Oddjob. Of course, the Colonel mused, sailors probably had to be large and fit in order to cope with squalls and doldrums and other nautical hazards; it stood to reason.
He dismissed them from his mind, and set to studying how to cut in on Avery, who was explaining to a fascinated Vanity that the sharp end of the ship was at the front, and if you consulted the compass you could point the vessel the way you wanted to go; she was astonished at his expertise. Admiral Rooke observed them fondly, and Captain Yardley, having dosed himself liberally with Kwells and Alka-seltzer, stumped his deck and berated the topmen who were clinging to the futtock-shrouds in lubberly fashion.
Thus, wi’ her strange human cargo, did the stout ship Twelve Apostles set out on her fateful journey to the far-off Indies, gliding down the Thames through a forest of lesser shipping which gave way, d’ye see, before her stately passage. Tall and proud she stood down for the open sea, dipping her peak to their Lordships’ flag at Greenwich, dropping the pilot off the Medway, bumping into the pier at Southend, and running down a shrimp-boat off Clacton. Old salts viewed her admiringly as she passed, and wished her a prosperous voyage with ale-mugs raised in half-stoned salutation, none guessing what strange destiny awaited her ’neath tropic stars beyond the ocean rim …
Night found her in the Downs, pursuing her steady course beneath all plain (and decorated) sail, her crew and passengers a-slumber as she bore southwards. Did I say all? Nay, there were those that waked – the man at the wheel, more or less, and the look-out aloft, although he was surreptitiously reading a dirty book, possibly Moll Flanders, by shielded candle-light in the crow’s-nest. And others there were who as yet were sleepless – what thoughts, think you, reader, crowded their minds as they pondered the unknown future? How the hell should we know, says you. Then I’ll tell ’ee, says I, and ye may lay to that.
There is Captain Avery, strong chin in firm hand, his keen grey eyes veiled for once in thought as he dreams of … flag rank? Naval glory? The Madagascar crown and his perilous mission? Or is he envisioning a perfect roses-and-cream complexion framed by gold ringlets, dreamy blue eyes, a small soft hand brushing against his own, a sweet musical voice inquiring: “What are scuppers?” Of course he is, the susceptible big jerk. Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity, as far as he’s concerned.
And Vanity, her petal-like cheek resting on her lace pillow, is drowsing fondly over the memory of that marvellous profile, that vibrant baritone, that strong arm that supported her up the poop ladder. Mm-mm, if only he has ten thousand a year …
Blood, too, has his thoughts as he lies in his berth. That big spade bint is a bit of all right, he reflects; of course, so is Blondie, if a little upstage. Still, four months is a long time … suppose he was shipwrecked with both of them? A happy dilemma, and the cad falls asleep with a blissful smile on his raffish countenance.
And they weren’t the only ones astir on the Twelve Apostles as she cruised gently south in the velvet night.
Far below the waterline, in the nethermost bowels of the ship, in the foul reeking orlop where rats scurried beady-eyed in the dark, and the bilges slopped around wi’ foetid plash – there, in a far corner, a light guttered palely, casting the shadows of three figures. Black Sheba, fettered by slim ankles to a bulkhead, reclined her shapeliness on matted straw, eyes agleam like eager anthracite, and with her the red-bearded gorilla and the tall fellow in white – you know who they are, but how did they get here? Listen …
“… all the way to England, camarado, dogging the King’s ship that brought you, till we sighted Portland, when we dropped ashore, while Bilbo lay off, d’ye see? When we had word o’ where ye was bound, we shipped aboard as focsle-jacks, and –” here he winked a shrewd Calico Jack wink “– with a score or so stout lads as we can count on, look’ee. Bilbo’s been tipped the word, and lays course south for a rendezvous agreed wi’ Akbar the Damned an’ Happy Dan Pew …”
“– an’ when the time comes, a right merry meeting we’ll ha’ on’t, rack, rat, an’ rend me for a sea-slug else!” chortled Firebeard. “Har-har! These misbegotten King’s pimps don’t dream what a flock o’ lovin’ lambs they’s got aboard – an’ when Bilbo and the lads lays alongside – why, good day an’ good-bye to ’em, honest men! Then, little Sheba darlin’,” gibbered the hairy scoundrel, “ye can pay ’em for this sal-oobrious accommodation, an’ this jewellery they’ve give ye!” And he jingled her fetters gleefully.
“Oh, friends!” Sheba, the proud, fearless sea-queen who gutted Spaniards before breakfast, and had been known to roast cathedralfuls of nuns just for laughs, choked back a sob of pure feminine emotion. A tear welled on her dusky cheek, and Firebeard wiped it tenderly away with the tail of his shirt, blushing coyly to the eyelids, the only part of him visible through his tangle of hair. “Dear comrades,” continued Sheba, “I know not what to say … shall we barbecue ’em first and keelhaul them after? Or flog and carbonado them, and then disembowel and flay them by inches? Could we, perchance, do all six, and woold and dismember them later on? Oh, I know these are mere womanly fancies,” she went on, with a catch in her voice, “but it’s been so long! And if it’s the last thing I do –” she clenched her fists till her chains rattled, and ground her pearly teeth “– I’m going to fix that stuck-up little blonde bitch in the St Laurent outfit with the puffed sleeves and those pleated seams going round above the hips and gathered in under the little bows along the back so that it fits snug at the waist and looks as though it’s creaseless material and probably costs a bloody fortune to have altered supposing you can get a woman to do it. She won’t,” Sheba added venomously, “have much use for it by the time I’m through with her –”
“There, there,” said Firebeard soothingly, patting her manacled ankle with his great paw, “she han’t got near such nice legs as you, I’ll lay, an’ I bet she sunburns somethin’ rotten – ha, Calico?”
“Patience, camarado,” said Rackham. “There’s long sea-miles to go afore we call our reckonin’ – so mum, an’ leave all to us.”
As they were going, Sheba suddenly checked them. “Calico, wait. When they were going to flog me today …” she looked askance, and her voice was over-casual “… who was yon that loosed me?”
