The Bombay Marines (8 page)

In the three days since dropping anchor off Bull Island, Adam Home had organized four work groups from the eighty-nine men of the
Eclipse
’s crew, the seventeen Marines of the frigate’s fighting unit and the remaining fourteen prisoners recruited from Bombay Castle.

He split the four groups into four shifts of duty: one watch stood guard at all times aboard the
Eclipse
; three sentry posts were stationed around the island; a labour detail repaired buildings and dug latrines; and a drill squad trained from dawn to dusk, breaking only for meals and lessons ranging from tapping cannon with ball and grapeshot to smearing bayonets with goose fat. The four work groups rotated daily in the four divisions of duty.

Lieutenant Pilkington alternated with Midshipman Bruce and Midshipman Mercer in command of ship and shore shifts. Sergeant Rajit headed the drill squads. Tim Flannery was assigned to a hut on the edge of the island’s main cluster of stone buildings and converted it into his infirmary. Home had also ordered Flannery to shave off the men’s hair, beards, and moustaches as a precaution against lice. He offered his own headful of curly chestnut hair as Flannery’s first job.

By the fourth morning it was time for the men of Group One to train again with Sergeant Rajit in the drill squad. The men who had not hacked off the legs of their
dungri
trousers wore Indian
dhotis
twisted around their loins. Many men also tied rags around their heads, knotted at four corners, to
protect their newly shaven heads from the sun.

Rajit wore no shirt, his pot-belly hanging over the waistband of the trousers he had rolled to his knees. Looking short and roly-poly, he set the pace for the single-file line of men, surprising them with his energy, moving at a constant, staccato pace.

Leading the day’s thirty-one-man squad down the rocky spine towards the cove, Rajit slowed as they reached Midshipman Bruce’s carpenters working on the gallows. Rajit did not need to turn his head to know that the men behind him were gawking at the work being done.

‘Eyes straight. You’ll be up the gibbet soon enough.’

‘If I last out the day,’ called a voice.

Another man gulped, ‘I’ll die before I get to the gibbet.’

Rajit maintained a dog trot. ‘A man who’s got wind enough to talk has wind enough to …
run
!’ Quickening the pace, he bellowed, ‘Left! Left! Left! Left!’

Thirty-five minutes brought the men back around the rocky perimeter of Bull Island. They panted for air. Sweat covered their half-naked bodies. But Rajit still appeared fresh, his round, shaven head free from perspiration, looking as if he were starting the day’s exercise.

At the crest of the hill, Rajit slowed the column as they approached Adam Home standing by the sentry watch – Post One – commanding a view over the Arabian Sea to the east.

Home fell into step with the squad to review Rajit’s progress with the men, looking for stamina, comparing the performance of the prisoners to that of the ship’s crew and the Marines, judging today’s squad against the progress of the other three drill groups.

Running alongside George Tandimmer, he shouted, ‘Back straight, Tandimmer.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Don’t swing those arms, Tandimmer.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Pull in that stomach, man.’

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Tandimmer, you’re a good sailor but you make a hell of a Marine.’

The freckle-faced Sailing Master agreed loud and clear,
‘Aye,
aye,
sir
!’

Home left the column at the foot of the western slope as they began running towards the tumbledown buildings which had been the French prisons.

Rajit ordered, ‘Drop!’

The men fell to their stomachs on the ground.

‘I didn’t say lie down and go to sleep! I want you to crawl! Crawl like the worms you are!’

Rajit moved along the string of gasping men, kicking them into a straight line, stepping on the buttocks of the men who arched too high off the ground.

‘I said …
crawl
!’

The men bellied over the ground, approaching the area where small prisons had been chipped into the hard, yellow stone.

Rajit thundered, ‘Eyes right!’

The men looked to the right, seeing small, rectangular stone boxes topped with iron doors, one-man prisons in which a man lay on his back with the iron doors locked a few inches above his face, baking in the sun. The French had called the small prisons
‘les
fours’
– the ovens.

Rajit ordered, ‘Take a good look at those hot boxes. See what’s waiting for you.’

He walked alongside Mustafa the Turk.

‘Do you see those rock beds, man?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Mustafa kept his hips to the ground, face sideways, grimacing as he moved through the weeds.

Rajit passed down the line to the Japanese prisoner, Kiro, who was propelling himself with quick, strong movements of the elbows.

‘Is there anything like these hot boxes where you come from?’

Kiro gritted his teeth as the hot sun beat down on his back. ‘No … sir.’

‘You’re lucky. You’d still be inside one. Look at those shoulders –’ Raj it lowered Kiro’s neck with a stomp of the foot.

‘And look at that butt!’ Rajit’s foot pressed Kiro’s groin to the ground. ‘I didn’t tell you to kneel, damn it. I said “crawl”!’

Home had ordered the training to be concentrated on the fourteen prisoners from Bombay Castle. The men who proved to be the strongest were to bear the brunt of Rajit’s discipline.

The next morning, work was completed on the gallows. Boards had been ripped from the steps and re-nailed across its legs and crossbeam, creating a wall atop the platform, a curtain of boards with a rope dangling from top to base.

Rajit led the day’s new squad of twenty-nine men – Group Two – twice round the island, slowing them as they approached the gallows.

He turned and ran backwards, shouting to the men behind him, ‘Watch me close because I’m only going to show you bastards once.’

Turning round again, he gathered speed and approached the gallows at a run, balancing his way up a protecting timber remaining from the dismantled steps. He leaped onto the platform, grabbed for the rope and began a hand-over-hand climb up the wall, knees straight, feet climbing the boards.

Reaching the top, he grasped the wall with one arm, dropped the rope and jumped for the mud pit which had been dug at the back of the gallows to break a man’s fall. Loud hoots greeted him as he emerged from the base of the gallows, wiping mud from his face.

Good humouredly accepting the laughter, Rajit began barking the first man up the front of the gallows.

‘Walk the wall, McFiddich. Hold onto the rope and walk that castle wall.’

Kevin McFiddich grabbed the rope, moving his bare feet up the splintery boards.

‘Drop the rope, McFiddich, and grab for the top.’

McFiddish balanced himself at the top of the wall, tossed back the rope and held onto the wall.

‘Bend your knees before you jump, McFiddich, or you’re going to break your bloody legs.’

McFiddich, knees bent, jumped for the mud pit.

Rajit hurried the next prisoner, Fred Babcock, up the gallows, yelling for him to walk the castle wall, toss back the rope, bend his knees before he jumped.

Rajit shouted the twenty-nine men through the gallows climb. He repeated the drill three times before running the men down to the cove, ordering them to dive into the clear blue water and wash their mud-covered bodies before jogging back to the settlement for their midday meal.

Fresh fish. Rice. Dates. Oranges. Tankards of cool beer drawn from kegs brought ashore and stored in the island’s deep cellar. Simple but healthy, the fare was more appetizing than the usual midday meal of salt fish and dried biscuits aboard the
Eclipse.

The men lined in front of a makeshift table set up beyond the barracks. After heaping their tin plates with food, they divided into small groups under rattan shelters dotting the hill which rose from the harbour.

Kevin McFiddich and Tom Gibbons sat side-by-side in a group of seven men under a sun shelter on the slope’s western edge. McFiddich and Gibbons had become friends since Home had locked them in bilboes.

Both men had finished their plates of food and listened quietly to the other five complaining about morning drill.

Ned Wren, a young yardsman with red hair and a blue
rag tied like a cape over the sun blisters rising on his shoulders, cradled his right foot on his left thigh, picking splinters from his horny skin. ‘Why do sailors have to climb gallows and hurdle stone walls? It makes no damn sense to me.’

Fernando Vega lay at the edge of the group, thinking about his wife, wondering if she had seen other men since he had been sent away to prison for murdering one of her admirers. Feeling cheated by life, his voice was thin with bitterness as he said, ‘Captain Horne wants to make Marines out of us.’

Ned Wren kept digging at the sole of his foot. ‘Not me, jack. I sail for John Company but that don’t make me no bloody Marine.’

Martin Allen peeled an orange as he asked Wren, ‘What’s Horne like? You sailed with him before.’

‘Ask Gibbons. He’s been with Horne longer than me.’

Gibbons sat feeling the smooth spots on both cheeks where his bushy muttonchop whiskers had grown until four days ago. ‘Don’t ask me about Horne,’ he said glumly. ‘I don’t know him. Not no more. He was always poker-faced but a man who watched out for his crew. All that’s changed now. You saw how he hit me. You saw how he beat me in the ribs. Humiliating me in front of my mates.’

McFiddich listened to Gibbons complaining and, hoping to encourage the big boatswain’s ill-feelings, he patted him on his broad shoulder. ‘Look at it this way, Gibbons,’ he said consolingly. ‘It’s good you found out what Horne’s really like. Now we know what to watch out for.’

Kevin McFiddich’s body was lean and sinewy. His closely cut hair gave his face a skeletal look, making his eyes appear to be deeply set in their sockets. He had been press-ganged from the Lincolnshire Prison into His Britannic Majesty’s Navy and had been gaoled three years later in Bombay Castle. He never talked about his crimes.

‘I sailed three years aboard the
Land
of
Hope
so I know what I’m talking about.’ McFiddich’s piercing dark eyes
studied the six other men in the group. ‘Horne’s ignoring all the rules. Doing what he damn well pleases.’

Ned Wren straightened his right leg from his thigh. ‘I was seven years aboard the
Treaty.
I know other Marine captains don’t run their ships like Horne. No officer makes his crew crawl through no bloody weeds. Look here at my belly. Look at these scratches …’

McFiddich raised his hand. ‘Why does Horne want to make Marines out of you? Like he says he’s going to do with us new men? That’s what’s not clear to me.’

He looked at the sunburnt faces around him. ‘I don’t know about the rest of you but I don’t want to be no Bombay Marine.’

Wren glanced over his shoulder, confiding in a lower voice, ‘I don’t even know if I want to be crew for Horne no more. That’s how I’m thinking.’

McFiddich’s dark eyes glowed like two shining chunks of coal in their sockets. ‘So let’s get a plan.’

He looked at Fred Babcock. ‘How about you, Babcock? Are you going to let Horne make you keep scrubbing deck whenever he wants to humiliate
you
?’

Babcock shrugged, pulling on one ear.

McFiddich glanced at the bare-knuckle fighter. ‘And what about you, Allen? You got family at home. Don’t you want to go back to them?’

Martin Allen nodded slowly. ‘More than anything in the world.’

McFiddich nodded at the small building which stood at the end of the wharf and served as Horne’s Headquarters. ‘That’s where our plan starts. Right down there.’

The other six men looked at Headquarters. They saw Jingee approaching the front door with a covered tray in his hands.

McFiddich curled his upper lip with disgust. ‘Look at that poor bastard. See what Horne has him doing. Does Horne want to make Marines out of us like he says? Or is he going to train us to wait on him hand and foot?’

Martin Allen watched Jingee enter Headquarters. ‘I talked to that little Indian guy. His name’s Jingee. He’s not bad. He likes cooking and working for Horne.’

McFiddich scoffed, ‘Then maybe this … Jingee’s trying to be Horne’s pet.’

Vega interrupted. ‘Forget about the Indian, McFiddich. Tell us your plan.’

McFiddich studied Vega’s face, strong Latin features drawn tight with hatred and jealousy. ‘How do I know you’re not going to run and tell Horne our plan? Try to be one of his pets yourself?’

Vega’s chest swelled. ‘You insult me, McFiddich.’

McFiddich smirked. ‘So what if I do, Spanish?’

‘My name is not “Spanish”.’

‘To me it is.’

‘And to me you are …
caja
… shit!’

McFiddich rose to his knees.

Grabbing McFiddich by the elbow, Tom Gibbons whispered, ‘Kev, hold it. Fighting’s not going to do nobody no good. We learned that.’

McFiddich’s deeply set eyes glared at Vega. ‘This greaser better watch it.’

Vega’s fists were clenched. ‘You’ve got to prove yourself worthy before we listen, McFiddich.’

‘I don’t have to prove nothing to you, Spanish.’

Babcock broke the tension with a laugh. ‘What about me? You said yourself, McFiddich, I’m not Horne’s pet. Maybe you’ll tell me your plan.’

Wren chorused, ‘I want to hear too.’

Martin Allen joined in. ‘You said something about me going home, McFiddich. I want to hear what you got to say.’

McFiddich sank back onto the ground. He looked from Allen to Wren to Babcock. Glancing around the hillside for eavesdroppers, he turned to Vega and threatened, ‘If one word of what I’m going to say gets out, Spanish, I know exactly where to look for the rat.’

He proceeded to explain his plan for escape, keeping his voice low as he told the six men what he wanted them to do.