The Smuggler's Curse Read online

  ‘Whenever youse is ready, Cap’n,’ he says.

  When the double charge from Long Tom fires, it fairly rips the air apart, and the shock wave of the massive charge goes straight through me, shaking me from my ears right down to my toes. A ten-foot column of flame bursts from the cannon’s mouth. Moments later, part of the distant cliff, above and behind the fishing junk, explodes in a puff of red dust as the cannonball strikes. I stand there with my mouth open in shock as the acrid stink of the gunpowder fills the air for a brief second, then immediately blows away in the wind.

  ‘Holy Moses!’ exclaims someone close by.

  The Bosun lifts his telescope to his eye. ‘It worked. They’re going about. Changing tack to seaward.’

  ‘Bosun, do you think you can get us in close to that point?’ says the Captain, pointing to where the green jungle meets the sea.

  ‘Not too close, Captain. Submerged rocks. I’ve been here before. But I’ll do my best, sir.’

  Bosun Stevenson looks towards the helmsman and nods. The helmsman immediately spins the wheel to the right, and the motion of the boat changes a shade.

  ‘’scuse me, Cap’n!’

  ‘What is it, Mr Smith?’ replies the Captain, turning slightly to face him.

  Mr Smith’s face has turned pale. He seems suddenly very alarmed, as he points to starboard, amidships. He does not need to say anything.

  Clearing the headland and bearing down on us rapidly thunders an enormous frigate. The canvas on all three masts full, with the decks cleared for action and her gun ports open. Moreover, flying from her backstay, three flags whip colourfully in the wind; the white and blue flag of the Netherlands, the pennant of a Captain, and the Dutch battle ensign.

  THE FRIGATE

  ‘Where did that come from?’ exclaims the Bosun, genuinely surprised. ‘God preserve us.’

  The massive old frigate, its timbers painted blue and bright yellow, is racing straight at us.

  ‘The Willem that’ll be, Captain,’ says Bosun Stevenson recovering his composure. ‘Thirty-six guns, if I remember correctly. Always on patrol in these parts, looking for smugglers and pirates. She is old and slow but mighty powerful. Nothing can stand up to those guns. Nothing. Last of the line she is.’ In spite of the certain danger, he sounds almost proud to be seeing such a magnificent old ship.

  ‘Still think the East Indies is theirs, them Dutch do,’ adds Mr Smith.

  ‘They are still mostly theirs,’ replies the Captain.

  The deadly cliffs and hidden rocks of the point lie directly ahead, while, to the left, the coast and the shallows of a wide sandy bay block our way. To the right, directly into the wind, looms a warship armed with three dozen thirty-two pounder guns that can turn a whole town into rubble in an hour. They can also turn the bravest man’s bowels to liquid in an instant, or a boy’s even quicker. I look about the deck. The men are silent, some visibly frightened, and most wait for the Captain’s reaction.

  You do not need to be an experienced sailor to know this is not good.

  ‘Bosun Stevenson,’ the Captain calls calmly, loud enough for us all to hear. ‘Remember our scrap with that scurvy pirate south of Hong Kong a couple of years ago? How we got out of it?’ Several men smile. ‘It worked then, God rot him. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work now.’

  ‘Except that pirate wasn’t a thirty-six-gun frigate bearing down on our heads,’ says Bosun Stevenson.

  ‘The principle’s the same. We’ll just have to be quicker by half,’ he replies.

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘Bosun Stevenson, take us about and set a course for that beach yonder, if you’d be so kind. And Mr Smith, I suggest you load and prime the three port guns. Load them with grapeshot, the biggest you have. Double charge, I suggest. We want to do some grievous damage here today.’

  Even before Mr Smith relays the order, the gun crew has started work, using block and tackle to pull the wooden gun carriages to the rail. Both the carriage wheels and pulley wheels squeal in protest as the men grunt with the effort.

  I know my job. I scamper off down the ladder into the gun locker below the waterline, to bring up more sacks of gunpowder. In spite of the darkness, I am not allowed to use a lantern because of the explosive black powder. I feel about in the blackness, find the powder sacks stacked up and run back in minutes, breathing heavily from the weight of the measured sacks in which the gunpowder charges are packed.

  ‘Bosun, ease off the mainsail, let the Dutch think they can catch us. Not too much, though. We want to keep out of range of those damn thirty-two pounders,’ orders the Captain, quietly. ‘We have a few minutes now. Everyone take a deep breath and be calm.’

  Be calm? How? I look back at the massive ship and wonder if this is to be my last day on Earth. It certainly seems likely. My heart starts pounding so loudly I think everyone will be able to hear it.

  BATTLE

  ‘Boy?’ calls the Captain, snapping me out of my daze.

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it. And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son,’ he continues.

  ‘Captain?’

  ‘Not Mr Shakespeare this one time, boy, but a brand new poem by Mr Rudyard Kipling. Quite apt for this situation, don’t you think?’

  Quoting poetry as if he is in an English drawing room full of genteel ladies when we are facing certain death? Sometimes, I think the Captain is completely crazy.

  ‘Boy, stick close by me now,’ he adds, breaking the calm. ‘I might need you when things start to get hot.’ The Captain stands to the left of Bosun Stevenson at the helm, where he can keep an eye on the binnacle, a small cabinet where the ship’s compass is mounted.

  ‘First off you can get rid of this.’ He takes off his black peaked cap and hands it to me. ‘No need to make myself a target for all those Dutch sharpshooters they are sending aloft.’

  Without his cap, the Captain looks more like one of us and less like an officer, but not quite.

  ‘Watch this next manoeuvre carefully, boy,’ he commands. ‘We can outrun them easily, but we can’t outrun a broadside of cannon balls. So we have to box clever. This next little trick has saved our lives before, and it may do the same for you one day. Pay close attention, and watch your head. When the boom whips across, this time, it will be vicious. Could take your head clean off at the shoulders.’

  In spite of the increasing wind, we keep hearing snatches of kettledrums in the distance, beating the Dutch to their stations on the frigate.

  Over the next half-hour, the frigate grows slowly but steadily closer to our stern until we can just hear the Dutch shouting at us. I cannot understand their words, but it is easy to get their meaning, and they sound confident. They have two hundred or more men to our twelve, and we only have a handful of small guns, whereas their ship bristles with thirty-two-pound monsters that fire cannonballs as big as a man’s head.

  ‘Listen to them. Pride comes before a fall, eh, Bosun?’ laughs the Captain, quietly. I cannot understand how he can remain so calm.

  Moments later, from behind me, I hear Bosun Stevenson begin humming the hymn, Abide With Me.

  The Captain begins softly singing the words, almost to himself. ‘The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.’

  One by one, the rest of the crew join in, even Rowdy, who hardly ever says a word.

  Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

  The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.

  When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

  Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

  Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

  Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;

  Change and decay in all around I see;

  O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

  I am surprised an
d moved by the melancholic harmony all around me. I have no idea how we can possibly survive this. None at all. Even if we surrender, the Dutch will probably hang us as pirates, or worse, as spies. Either way, we’ll be dancing the hempen jig from a yardarm before this day is out. I look about. The men know they are facing almost certain death, but none seems frightened anymore, just rather resigned to their fate. Other than the Bosun, the crew are not generally religious, but the gentle tune appears to comfort them.

  ‘Ready men,’ Captain Bowen shouts suddenly. ‘You know how it goes. In five.’ He nods his head five times, counting the seconds. ‘Now!’

  The Bosun immediately spins the wheel to port. The crew let go the jib sheets, and the jibs fill with wind, then collapse, then fill again as they are pulled over to the other side, dragging the bow of our boat smoothly around, spilling the wind in the mainsail. The boom swings across the entire stern faster than an arrow and crashes into place with a mighty whack. The mainsail immediately fills with the rising breeze again. The Captain has jibed across the wind. Now the Black Dragon beats back out to sea, in almost the opposite direction, while the Willem billows its way relentlessly towards the beach, far too quickly it seems to me. The sand is now only a few hundred yards ahead.

  ‘Vuur de kanonnen, wanneer het schip binnen bereik!’ yells an officer on the frigate.

  The Captain laughs. ‘They’ll be fortunate if they can swing that. They can fire all they like, but we won’t be in range. Look at the angle the deck is on. It’ll take them ages to re-sight. It looks like we might’ve caught the Dutch with their pantaloons down.’

  The first frigate gun roars out, then the second, third and fourth, but their shots land short, way off our port side and behind us, sending up harmless sprays in our growing wake as we slice back towards the open sea.

  The massive ship is only shouting distance away, so we can hear the officers yell frantically. Sailors scurry up the ratlines and out onto the yardarms in a desperate effort to reef in the square sails and cut the ship’s speed. The momentum still surges the massive ship forward, and the deck still leans at an angle, so the guns point uselessly down into the water.

  ‘Hold her steady, Bosun Stevenson,’ warns the Captain, quietly. ‘Ready men, ready to go about,’ he calls. ‘On my mark. About!’

  Again, the Bosun quickly swings the helm to port, and this time, the boom swings slowly across, but only to the other windward tack. Almost immediately, and to my surprise, we are directly behind the warship. The great cabin’s wall of glass shines and glistens in the light and looms high above us.

  ‘One, two and three, youse know where!’ yells Mr Smith, standing at the first gun. ‘Let ’em ’ave it! Fire!’

  The three guns on our port side roar together. Three elongated columns of yellow flame explode from the muzzles and the ear-shattering cracks reverberate in my head and through my whole body. I blink several times and peer through the acrid smoke. At first, it looks like our gunners have missed. There does not seem to be much damage to the frigate at all, only a few broken windows. Up in the Willem’s rigging, I can also see the sporadic flashes from rifles firing at us, but we must be out of range as no shots hit.

  The Captain sees the look of disbelief on my face. ‘Look at the water line there, boy,’ he says, pointing towards the ship. ‘With a little luck, our grapeshot has splintered their rudder and shattered their steering mechanisms. The frigate should be out of control with no way to turn in time and avoid the shallows now.’

  The crew has fallen silent, as if mesmerised, watching the frigate plough on slowly, but relentlessly towards the shore.

  A whizzing noise rips the air directly above our heads. I look up in surprise. A jagged hole the size of a fist has ripped through in the mainsail. The crash of a small cannon immediately follows loud and clear.

  ‘Damn, they’ve got a stern-chaser. Get your heads d—’

  Before the Captain can finish, a deep rumble like the crash of lightning and the distant rolling thunder of a summer storm rises from the very depths of the ocean.

  ‘The frigate’s done hit the shallows. Damn me, she’s run aground!’ calls someone on the foredeck. ‘There goes the main mast.’

  Slowly at first, then more quickly as her stays and shrouds stretch and snap, the mainmast tilts forward, the wind hard against her canvas still trying to drive the big ship forward into the sand. Sailors up in the rigging drop from the ropes high among the canvas, along with rifles and hats and equipment. Some lucky fellows fall into the sea with a cry and survive, but others plummet to the deck below, their screams loud and carried on the wind, then suddenly cut short. Several men hang in the air, caught in the mess of rigging ropes like tragic spiders in their webs.

  The Captain nods to the Bosun. ‘Well done, men. I do believe you may have saved our bacon, so to speak.’

  ‘It’s a pity, to be sure, for she is a proud looking vessel,’ says Bosun Stevenson, quietly. ‘Magnificent. The last of her kind.’

  ‘Now, time for us to depart,’ says the Captain. ‘We have a living to earn, as much as it pains a gentleman to have to admit such a terrible thing. The shame of being in trade.’

  There are several small chuckles.

  Me, I sigh deeply and grip my hands together to stop them shaking.

  ‘Slim pickings so far this voyage,’ he continues. ‘But better luck than a certain captain not far from here. It’s one thing to run into submerged rocks on a fog-bound evening on some foreign coast, but quite another to run a fully-armed warship aground on a sandy beach in broad daylight on your own damn shore. That will certainly take some explaining.’

  ‘It is going to take a goodly effort to get her off too, I’d say,’ adds the Bosun. ‘It seems God was on our side today, not theirs.’

  We head nor’ by nor’-west at a more than steady pace, ploughing into the increasingly large waves that flick spray back across the deck, soaking us all. Bosun Stevenson wants our mainsail repaired and keeps grumbling it will tear all the way to the boom, but the Captain is not going to stop until we are well away from the coast, and he feels safe to heave-to for the repair. A frigate beached like a whale will soon attract all sorts of unwelcome attention to the area, and we need to be well away. After such a close shave, none of us cares. We are just glad to be alive.

  TROPICAL TEMPEST

  The smell of stew being boiled up by Sam Chi wafts up from the galley for several hours before we are called below for an early dinner. The Dragon sails in open water, running on her foresail, so only the helmsman, a lookout and a jib man to trim the sheet are needed on deck to keep the boat steady. I am glad it isn’t me on duty as I am starving, and it has been torture smelling the stew cooking.

  Teuku has just handed out the plates, and Sam Chi is still ladling out the steaming stew when the Captain appears. ‘Do you mind if I join you, men?’ The chatter and noise immediately stop.

  Unlike the Navy, with its strict class division between the officers and crew, our Captain mixes with the crew all the time. He is not like any of the naval officers I have ever met at the Curse. Most of them are self-important stuck-up prigs if you ask me. And they are stingy with their money, even worse than a church minister, and that is as mean as you can possibly get.

  The Captain sits on a stool at the head of the long bench and pulls a lantern closer so we can all see him. Everyone waits for him to speak, but Sam Chi yells instead, ‘Teuku, another plate. At the double, you useless excuse.’

  ‘An eventful day, and I’m proud of you all,’ says the Captain. ‘But nothing to show for it, I’m afraid. Nothing. Those Malay pirates have stolen our stake and are no doubt hiding away somewhere deep and dark. They’ll be shivering in their boots at the thought of what we’ll do to them when we catch them.’ The Captain suddenly jams his eating knife into the bench. He pauses to let the men imagine the worst. ‘Now, here we are out in the open sea again, and there looks to be a mighty storm blowing up. Bosun Stevenson?’

  ‘Aye, Capt
ain. There is a fair nip in the wind, and it’s shifted to a nor’-easterly. And no sunset from the look of it tonight. I can feel it in my bones. A right biblical tempest is brewing, if I’m any judge,’ replies the Bosun.

  ‘Teuku, you know the coast here about. We need to put into shelter until she blows over. How say you?’

  The crew has experienced enough tropical storms to be wary of them. Several nod enthusiastically.

  Bosun Stevenson speaks first. ‘I’d say we’ve time to make a run back to the coast before the worst of it, Captain. With the nor-easterly the old girl will be on a broad reach. We’ll fair know we’re sailing then. God’s own speed.’

  The men stay silent, all listening to the Bosun.

  ‘I know a place,’ says Teuku. ‘It’s a river mouth with good-sized hills either side, nor’-east lee of the land. The countryside about there is thick with jungle, so we shouldn’t bump into any of our European friends, with a little good luck.’ He looks at the men’s faces for their reactions.

  ‘And here’s hoping the good Lord will help protect you lot of Godless heathens from the wrath of His weather,’ says the Bosun.

  ‘Splendid Bosun Stevenson, we’ll all be grateful to you, I’m sure,’ replies Captain Bowen. ‘Just time enough for us to finish our stew, I trust? It smells delicious, Sam Chi, well done.’

  When we go back up on deck, the weather has indeed turned. I cannot believe it has changed so much and so violently in the short time we have been below.

  The Dragon races out to sea and away from land. We clear the far headland, and the bow begins plunging deeper into the swell in a rhythmic gallop. I’ve seen plenty of storms in Broome, but this sky is darker than I’ve ever seen before and the air is thick with the threat of it. Facing a frigate is nothing compared to what is forming on the horizon behind us. Storms have no pity and can kill with just one rogue wave, and we now face an endless ocean of rogue waves.