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 lookouts 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, grinni
ng 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 re-focusing 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 …”