The Bombay Marines (9 page)

The sixth day was over. Adam Horne sat contentedly on the bench outside Headquarters, boots crossed in front of him, facing the
Eclipse
riding high beyond the pier, a single lantern shining on the starboard gangway, a beacon for the next watch.

The challenge of settling Bull Island and establishing a training schedule had invigorated Horne. He felt alive, confident, enthusiastic about moulding a squadron of fit men to follow him into whatever waited at Fort St George for the Bombay Marine. With the first week of physical training nearly complete, he knew that the rigid programme puzzled the men but, thankfully, no one had openly questioned their orders since arrival. He was pleased not to have had to make another ugly example of discipline as he had done aboard the
Eclipse.

Living with day-to-day developments of accommodation and training. Horne was beginning to feel more satisfied that he could meet Commodore Watson's deadline. But the future – like the past – had little meaning to him these days. He was living and breathing the demands of Bull Island, and enjoying it.

As he thought about his own schedule, he felt hunger pangs and remembered that no food tray had appeared tonight on his desk in Headquarters. Either Jingee had forgotten to prepare his supper or the day's work had finally sapped the dubash's store of energy. Horne suspected that Jingee was asleep like the other one-hundred-and-eleven
men not on duty tonight.

Rising from the bench, he decided to make the rounds of the sentry posts before looking for something to sate his hunger, a handful of dates, a few oranges, anything left over from the men's evening meal.

Stepping inside Headquarters, he struck a flint light and studied the guard list posted on the wall. He saw the names of the men standing watch at the three sentry posts and grabbed two clay pipes and a pouch of tobacco from the shelf. He tucked them into his shirt pocket and locked the door behind him.

The surf boomed beyond the rocks edging the island's eastern shore, the rollers crashing like cannon fire on the jagged shoreline, erupting into tiny pinpoints of spray and creaming into foamy tide.

Horne climbed the hill above the thundering surf, both hands tucked into his waistband, deciding that the time had come to alter the training schedule. Tomorrow morning he would tell Sergeant Rajit to slacken pace on the majority of men, to concentrate on the fit and able. That would leave three weeks to develop a small, tight squadron for the mission.

Three of the ship's seventeen Marines – Tyson Lovett, Randy Sweetwater, and Jim Davis – were proving to be in better condition than Horne had expected. He was also now able to count seven men from the ship's crew who had become hearty enough to be considered for a special Marine squadron. If Tom Gibbons gave him some sign that he was dependable, Horne could raise the number to eight.

Reaching the top of the hill, Horne counted over to himself the prisoners who might possibly be of use to him.

Mustafa the Turk was strong, well-disciplined, as skilful at firing muskets and fighting with knives as he was at swinging his garrotte. But Mustafa was a quiet man, always behaving so secretively. Did he have something to hide? If so, what was it? Was he a potential mutineer?

Kiro also puzzled Horne. The Japanese gunner backed
away from all physical confrontation. Why? Was Kiro the kind of man who tightened in action? Or was he simply cowardly?

The Glaswegian prisoner, Brian Scott, was well-built, nimble, and not frightened to take chances. But Scott was always creating a disturbance. He accidentally knocked over poles, dropped a knife or flintlock with a loud clatter, coughed or sneezed at the wrong moment. Soldiers often had to be quiet but Scott could not stand still without making a noise.

The two prisoners who worried Horne the most were Babcock and McFiddich. Neither man had shown any signs of disobedience since arriving on Bull Island. Although Babcock never remembered to address an officer with respect and McFiddich's burning eyes always seemed to be hiding a secret, so far both men had obeyed Rajit's orders. They learned quickly. They were proving to be strong and brave. Nevertheless, something about them troubled Horne.

At the summit of the hill, he called out in the night to identify himself to Tyson Lovett and the prisoner whom Lovett had chosen for sentry partner, Martin Allen. Horne produced the pipes and tobacco for the men as they set down the butts of their muskets on the stony ground.

Tyson Lovett, a forty-two year-old Marine, broad-chested, with straw-coloured hair and large glassy blue eyes, helped himself to the tobacco as he reported, ‘All's clear again tonight, sir.'

Horne looked towards the southern horizon.

Martin Allen took the tobacco pouch from Lovett, scooping a bowlful of rough brown shreds as he asked, ‘You say, sir, that the French sail these waters?'

Horne detected a slight hesitation in the young bare-knuckle fighter's voice. ‘The French have their southern base in Mauritius.'

Allen puffed on the pipe's long stem, making the bowl glow in the darkness. ‘What about the other islands out
there, Captain? They have people living on them?'

Allen's question might be innocent but Horne worried about the prisoners becoming too interested in the surrounding islands. The Laccadives could be used as an escape route to the mainland.

‘Allen, your guess is as good as mine about what's out there.'

The young bare-knuckle fighter took another quick draw on the pipe.

Horne added, ‘Just follow orders, Allen, and you might get back to Stepney sooner than you think.'

Allen's head jerked. ‘Stepney?'

‘Isn't that home for you?'

‘How do you know?'

The question had unnerved Allen. Why?

‘I read your record at the Castle, Allen. I saw you have a wife at home.' Horne did not divulge, however, that he had also read that Allen was illiterate, or that the Company Service officer had put down his suspicions that Allen applied himself so feverishly to exhibition fighting to compensate for the fact that he could not read or write.

Allen had tightened into a shell, his eyes lowered, his voice thinning as he admitted, ‘Yes, I have a missus. Her name's Ellen. We have a little one. He'll be four come April. I've never seen him.'

Horne tried to be light-hearted. ‘I think I can safely say you won't be home for your son's next birthday. But you might well make it back next year.'

Allen's eyes widened. ‘Sir, you think so?'

‘I'm not making any promises. But I can do this much. Come and see me in Headquarters in the next couple of days. We'll see about sending a letter home to your wife.'

‘Sir, would you help me write it?'

Horne had learnt that seamen who openly admitted their illiteracy were more trustworthy than men who were ashamed of the fact.

‘Come and see me, Allen, and I'll see your wife gets a letter from you.'

Lingering a few more minutes with the two men before bidding them goodnight, Horne took the pipes and tobacco pouch for the guards on Post Two.

Hands gripped behind his back, head bent forward, he ambled down the western side of the plateau, wondering as he walked what it would be like to have a family waiting for you to come home. A son you've never seen. A wife.

The thought of being married, of having a family, reminded him of Isabel and his week-long contentment cracked with the image of her oval face, soft chestnut hair, eyes the colour of aquamarines. Would she have borne him children had she lived? A son? Daughters? Where would they have made their home? London? Or would she have taken the children to live with her father in Essex? Or would Horne's own father have given them the house in Mount Street in London?

Remembering how anxious Isabel had been to taste everything in life, Horne thought she would probably have wanted to come with him to India, to live in Bombay, build a little garden house with a view of Elephant Rock.

Slowing his pace with the bittersweet memory of Isabel, he realised that if she had lived, he would most likely not have come to India. His life would have been completely different. But having lost Isabel, he had replaced her with a continent. A strange country. A new life. Was it a fair substitute or was he hiding here from reality?

Unable now to stop his rush of memories and reflections, he wondered if a man who truly cared about a foreign country should not be learning more about it? Acquainting himself with the people and their ways? Eating more of their food? Learning at least a few words of their language and history?

Horne disapproved of colonial families who brought English lives with them to India, lock, stock, and barrel. But had he not done worse? Was he not living in a movable shell
he had locked himself into years ago? Wallowing in melancholy and self-pity?

Perhaps he was making himself a hermit as well. Keeping himself too guarded from society when he was ashore. Should he look for someone – something – to replace Isabel? To be the new centre of his life apart from work? But what about the idea he had entertained, of never becoming attached to anybody, of protecting himself from more disappointment? Was that cowardly? Unadventurous? Even puerile?

A sound disturbed him at the foot of the hill.

Horne stopped at the sound of the noise, studying two roofless buildings in the moonlight, the tumbledown stone structures which had once been the French prisons but now looked like jagged boulders in the darkness.

Again he heard the noise, a grunt like an animal.

Moving towards the larger of the two ruins, Horne realised the sound had come from one of the shallow prisons chipped into the ground, the stone prison dug only a few yards away from him.

The prison's iron doors were closed. Horne moved closer, seeing an iron pin holding them shut.

He heard the noise again. This time it sounded like a muffled call.

Bending over the rusty doors, he removed the pin and raised one door with a screech of metal. He saw the wrist of a man's bare arm chained to a metal ring. Hurriedly he opened the second door and recognized the man. Dropping to his knees, he pulled the rag from Jingee's mouth and began freeing his arms from the iron rings.

Jingee remained silent as Horne released him, scrambling from the prison as Home stood up.

‘Jingee, who did this to you?'

Jingee did not answer. He stood with his eyes to the ground.

‘Jingee, why aren't you talking?'

Jingee shook his head.

‘Are you refusing to tell me who locked you in there?'

Jingee began to speak but stopped.

‘Jingee, I can't make you talk. But I know you're an intelligent man so I can ask you to
think
about what happened to you. I want you to think how this could affect the other men and I want you to come and see me tomorrow morning.'

Horne escorted Jingee to his barracks in silence. He waved him past the guard and turned to the cove.

Forgetting about hunger, he felt a foul mood overtaking him, discontentment with Jingee and agitation with all the crew.

Horne had to be so many things to his men. Teacher. Warden. Sleuth. Disciplinarian. The responsibility could sometimes feel unbearable, especially at these times when he wanted nothing more than to have a simple existence, to be a husband and father, to have a chance of that life which had been destroyed on the night when Isabel had been shot.

Unbuckling his belt and pulling off his shirt, Horne began dropping his clothes as he moved towards the end of the pier. The only panacea for despair was to keep in motion, to exhaust the body until the mind was dull.

His naked body sliced the ruffled water in a neat, silent dive.

Jingee lay awake in his hammock in the darkness of the barracks. He held both hands clasped behind his neck, thinking about the three men who had locked him in the shallow stone prison earlier tonight when he had been on his way to Headquarters with Horne's supper. The men were English and had called Jingee the ‘Captain's pet'. It was not the first time that Jingee had been called such a name.

From childhood, Jingee had been smaller than other boys. His parents had taught him that he must acquire abilities which taller, stronger boys did not possess. They had tutored him to read, to write, to cook and sew, to do menial tasks which men – even women – considered unworthy for people in their high station of society, the
Vaisya
caste.

Unlike many Tamils, Jingee's parents had interpreted the coming of the
feringhi
– foreigners – to India as the end of life as their ancestors had known it. The Muslim Mughul had begun changing India three hundred years ago. Dutch and Portuguese traders had come next, bringing their ships and strange plants – potatoes and corn. Now it was the English.

Apart from learning how to make himself indispensible to powerful conquerors with his talents and skills, Jingee had also learnt how to protect himself.

His father had taught him to fight, beginning by giving the basic advice that if you are too small to strike your adversary, then kick him, and if you can't kick, then bite him – to do anything to protect yourself and your honour.

Thinking about the men who had locked him in the shallow prison tonight, Jingee lay in the hammock and began plotting his revenge against their leader and instigator, Kevin McFiddich. He was sorry that his revenge would anger Horne. Home was a good man, a rare
feringhi
who, despite his strength, was a feeling, sensitive man. Jingee greatly respected him. But Jingee also respected himself, and he decided to fight McFiddich with the same weapon which he had used to kill the English factor in Hyderabad. Jingee knew, too, where he would get the knives.

Adam Horne did not know how long he had been swimming when he pulled himself onto the pier, but his muscles ached and his brain was numb from the physical exertion. Grabbing his clothes from the wharf, he dried himself with his shirt as he padded in darkness towards Headquarters.

He collapsed onto the cot and the next thing he knew somebody was pounding on the door, shouting, ‘Captain Horne! Wake up, Captain Horne! There’s trouble!’

Horne leaped out of the cot. He looked through the small window above the cot and saw dawn bleaching the sky.

Pulling on his breeches as he moved towards the door, he lifted the latch and found Midshipman Bruce standing outside on the doorstep.

The round-cheeked Midshipman snapped a salute, blurting, ‘Sir, there’s a fight by the Barracks!’

Horne’s mind cleared. ‘Where’s Sergeant Rajit?’

‘Aboard the
Eclipse,
sir. I sent the Dutchman, Groot, to fetch him, sir.’

Horne grabbed for his boots. ‘Who’s fighting?’

‘McFiddich and your man, sir.’

Horne stood like a stork in the middle of the room, one boot in mid-air. ‘
My
man?’

‘The prisoner called Jingee, sir. The man who cooks and washes for you.’

Horne drove his foot into the boot with a slam.

Bruce held both arms stiff at his side. ‘It appears, sir, that your man started the fight.’

Horne buckled his belt, thinking that if Jingee had instigated a fight with McFiddich it meant that it was McFiddich who had locked him in the prison last night. Jingee was seeking revenge. Horne cursed himself for not suspecting what Jingee would do. It was the natural action for a man who put so much store in honour and self-respect, for someone who had been imprisoned for murdering a foreigner who had violated Hindu caste laws.

‘Are you armed, Bruce?’

‘Yes, sir. A brace of pistols.’

‘Good. What barracks is it?’

‘Barracks One, sir.’

‘Who’s on guard there this morning?’

‘Wheeler, sir. He has that big African as his partner. Both men are armed with muskets, sir, but they’re waiting for your orders to fire.’

‘Let’s go.’

Horne led Bruce out of the door.

The two men crossed the harbour yard at a quick pace, approaching a crowd encircling the front of the stone-and-mortar shed known as Barracks One.

The men parted for Horne to pass through the circle, all except for Tom Gibbons who stood in Horne’s path. ‘Your man started it, Captain Horne.’

Horne pushed Gibbons aside and continued through the crowd, halting when he saw McFiddich and Jingee, both crouching forward and armed with knives.

The circle closed round Horne as he faced the fighters and shouts rose for the favourite.

‘Watch out for him, Kev.’

‘Take him slow, McFiddich.’

‘Clip his other wing, McFiddich. Go for him. Go for him.’

McFiddich played his knife with back flips of the wrist,
stepping on one foot, then the other, revolving clockwise around Jingee.

Jingee wore his usual white turban and
dhoti
. His bare feet danced in a constant movement as he stabbed his blade at McFiddich, poking the knife back and forth in the air until – in a flash – he lunged for his opponent.

McFiddich dodged. But Jingee’s knife nicked his shoulder cap and a line of scarlet trickled down McFiddich’s bicep.

Horne reached back so that Midshipman Bruce could hand him the pistols. Taking the primed flintlocks, he stepped forward and shouted, ‘Enough!’

Jingee faltered.

McFiddich seized his opportunity and stabbed for Jingee.

Jingee smiled. He had anticipated McFiddich’s movement. He stepped to his left and McFiddich fell face down on the ground.

Pouncing onto McFiddich’s back like a cheetah, Jingee locked both legs around the other man’s shoulders and clenched a forearm around his neck, positioning the knife to his throat.

Horne kicked the knife from Jingee’s hand and, raising both pistols, pointed a barrel at each man. ‘Move and I’ll blow your brains out.’

McFiddich lay gasping on his stomach, loosening the hold on his knife. But Jingee remained where he was, both legs locked over McFiddich’s shoulders.

Horne pressed the barrel against Jingee’s temple. ‘I said stop.’

Jingee remained firmly on McFiddich’s back.

Horne clicked the pistol’s hammer.

Dropping his arm, Jingee slumped to the ground.

Horne beckoned to one of the Marines, Wheeler. ‘Seize the weapons.’

Stepping back while the Marine retrieved the two knives, he looked from Jingee to McFiddich. ‘Who got the knives?’

Jingee’s voice was quiet, respectful. ‘Me, Captain sahib. From the kitchen.’

‘Did McFiddich lock you in the prison last night, Jingee?’

McFiddich raised from the ground. ‘Yes. But so what? That’s where pets belong, isn’t it? Locked in cages?’

Horne swung the flintlock against the side of McFiddich’s head.

McFiddich’s body slumped to the ground and, standing over it, Horne ordered, ‘Wheeler, escort this man to the old prison grounds. Lock him in one of the small prisons. Midshipman Bruce will accompany you with padlock and chains.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Horne raised his voice. ‘Has Sergeant Rajit returned to shore yet?’

Rajit’s voice boomed behind him. ‘Here, suh!’

Horne kept his eyes on Jingee as he ordered, ‘Sergeant, I want you to take this other man aboard the
Eclipse.
I want him locked in bilboes. If he gives you any trouble, tie his hands behind his back, shoot him in both legs, and throw him overboard.’

‘Yes, suh!’

In the circle of men behind Horne, Fred Babcock looked from Tom Gibbons to Martin Allen to Fernando Vega, at all eleven men so far recruited for the escape plot. How did McFiddich’s imprisonment affect the mutiny? Babcock suspected that the time had come for him to start making his own plans.

Kevin McFiddich’s wrists and ankles were bound tightly to the iron rings embedded into the floor of the stone prison. He lay spreadeagled on his back under the rusty iron doors and, as the late morning sun fired the metal above his face, he kept turning his head from left to right, trying to avoid the blistering heat.

Salty rivulets of sweat flooded his eyes. The heat dried his lips. Thickened his tongue. Parched his throat. He called for the guards to give him water but nobody replied.

He kept turning his head from side to side. He wiggled his fingers in the chains. He took deep gulps of air. He did everything he could to quiet his heartbeat, hoping to calm the panic caused by the iron doors locked shut a few inches above his eyes.

Periodically, he heard the sound of the drill squad as they rounded the island. When they stopped passing his prison, McFiddich guessed that it must be midday, and that the men had gone to eat under the sun shelters on the hillside.

To keep his mind off hunger and thirst, he studied a small shaft of light piercing the stonework to the right of his head. He saw an ant crawling along the stones and moving towards the iron doors above him.

The ant was joined by a second ant, larger and red and crawling faster than the first ant.

A third ant joined them, and another, and another …

McFiddich’s body was covered with ants. There were ants on his arms, ants crawling across his neck, between his shoulder blades, through his crotch, into his ears, up his nostrils …

Telling himself he was only imagining that he was lying on an anthill, he tried to forget about the present and to concentrate on the past, to remember life as it had been before he had been imprisoned in Bombay Castle.

A woman’s voice hissed in his ear.

May
you
burn
forever
in
hell!

Kevin McFiddich had been imprisoned for rape. He had accosted a scrivener’s wife in a back alley of Bombay. Her name was Jane Morgan and McFiddich had made the mistake of going into the bazaar, so giving Jane Morgan the opportunity to identify him to patrol guards.

Flaxen-haired and fair-skinned, Jane Morgan had attended McFiddich’s hearing in Bombay Castle. She had sat
silently in her chair throughout the trial. But when the time came for the sentence to be read, she sprang from the chair, pointing her finger at McFiddich and cursing, ‘May you and every man like you burn forever in hell!’

Burn
in
hell.

Had Jane Morgan put a curse on him? Was it coming to pass? Had she willed him into this prison?

But why had he not suffered from other curses in the past? What about the women he had taken in England? The cobbler’s daughter? The tiny-boned dressmaker? The housemaid with raven locks who had bitten him so hard when he had held his hand over her mouth? Why had none of his other victims cursed him like Jane Morgan?

A sudden tap, tap, tap on the iron doors brought McFiddich’s thoughts back to the present and he thought that someone had finally come to free him.

The tapping sound continued. McFiddich’s heart sank as he realised that the noise was not someone tapping a signal to him: it was the pounding of heavy raindrops on the iron doors.

The sound of rain grew louder, falling faster on the doors, the shower quickly becoming a deluge, and the vent which had admitted light to McFiddich’s shallow prison now channelled torrents of water into the rock box.

As the rain fell harder, water began to rise around McFiddich’s body, flooding him with dirt and floating insects and more water. McFiddich began to dig with his fingernails, to claw at the rocks in his shackles. The manacles burned the skin on his wrists. The irons rubbed against his ankles. But he tried to claw, to kick, to gouge some kind of niche or hole for the water to escape from this quickly-filling reservoir.

A voice outside the prison stopped him. Who was it? He listened.

The voice called, ‘Kev?’

‘Who is it?’

‘Kev, it’s Tom here. Tom Gibbons. Don’t talk, Kev. Just listen …’

‘Gibbons, get me out of here! Damn it to hell, Gibbons, I’m drowning in here!’

‘The rain’s stopped, Kev. You’ll be okay. There’s a change of guard coming on duty. Just try to hold on till tonight.’

‘You going to help me, Gibbons?’

‘We’re going to help you. We got more men. One’s the guard coming on duty with Vega.’

‘Promise me! Promise me you’re going to help me!’

‘I promise you, McFiddich. I promise.’

McFiddich heard the sound of footsteps crunching away from him and he relaxed, smiling at the thought that he would soon be free to sail for Oman.

Tom Gibbons walked slowly away from McFiddich’s prison, filled with sudden doubts about the man who had become his new friend.

Gibbons tried to imagine how Adam Horne would act if he were locked in a prison like McFiddich. Would Horne beg to be let out? Would Horne panic? Call to be rescued?

Gibbons suspected that if Horne suffered it would be in silence.

Only a few weeks ago it had been an honour for Gibbons to serve under Horne. The mission to the North Arabian Sea had been a high point of his life. He had gone with Horne into the Maratha camp in the hills above the Gulf of Maniy. He had fought with a dirk and a branch from a tree. Horne had praised him for his courage and Gibbons had never felt prouder.

But ten days ago Gibbons’s world had collapsed. He had fought with Kevin McFiddich aboard the
Eclipse
and Horne had humiliated him in front of the crew. Gibbons could not forgive the Captain for doing such a thing to him. Nevertheless, he was still secretly ashamed that he had to throw in his lot with a man as gutless as McFiddich.

Sergeant Rajit saw that the day was progressing from bad to worse.

Two men collapsed from heat stroke during morning drill. Before midday, Tyson Lovett spotted the sails of an unidentifiable brig against the southern horizon as Rajit passed the Sentry Post with the drill squad. By the time that Horne had rushed from Headquarters with his spyglass, the mysterious ship had disappeared. Later, the deluge had collapsed the roof on Barracks Two and, after the midday meal, Raj it sprained his ankle in the gallows jump.

Frustrated, he sat on the edge of a cot in Flannery’s makeshift infirmary and insisted that he could walk, that the injury was not serious.

Flannery knelt in front of him on the dirt floor, examining the ankle. ‘Just take a swig of that bottle I gave you, bucko, and let me do the deciding about what’s serious or not.’

The pain throbbed up Rajit’s leg but he was determined not to complain. Being a teetotaller, and knowing that Flannery was a tippler, he was also determined not to drink from the small brown bottle which Flannery had given him.

‘Take a drink of that medicine,’ the Irishman urged, ‘or you’ll never get out of here.’

Rajit bit back a scream as the pain shot through his leg, and, recognizing the Sergeant’s stubbornness, Flannery twisted the ankle more ruthlessly.

Rajit’s scream filled the room.

‘Are you ready to listen to me, bucko?’

Raj it gulped at the bottle.

‘Aye, that’s a good lad.’

Rajit’s mouth felt sticky, coated with a sweet-tasting film. Looking at the bottle he had half-emptied, he asked, ‘What is this?’

Flannery ignored the question. ‘You’ve got to stay off your feet for two, maybe three weeks. Read some of those fine books of yours.’

‘I can’t stay off my feet for two weeks. Horne can’t drill those men without …’

Rajit stopped. He felt dizzy. His head was spinning. ‘What kind of medicine was that you … gave me?’

Flannery moved across the room to make a salt bath. ‘Laudanum.’

‘Laudan …’ Again, Rajit faltered, shaking his head. He felt drowsy.

Returning to the bed with a basin, Flannery found his patient slumped across the mattress. He smiled at the pot-bellied Asian. There was a way to handle men who wouldn’t listen to him.

Setting down the salt bath on the floor, he pulled his brandy flask from his pocket. Feeling the liquor burn his throat, he thought how much closer he was to subduing – once and for all – the man who had killed his dearly beloved brother thirty-one years ago. Laudanum would be child’s play compared to the weapon he would use in his vendetta. Flannery’s lips lifted in a thin smile.