The Screaming Skull - Chapter One

The Screaming Skull

 Chapter 1

 by Adam Manning,  24th October 2014

Josiah Turnbull, Captain of the Screaming Skull, stumbled against the ship’s wheel, his blood-smeared cutlass clashing against the French officer’s rapier. He pressed back, throwing himself bodily once more into the melee and raised his blade to slash down. The deck heaved with the swell of the ocean, the air thick with cannon smoke and the hollers of men fighting and dying.  The lieutenant, a younger man, thrust to impale Josiah with his blade’s point but the pirate’s sword beat the rapier down and then cut back up in a long arc.  His prey fell, his knees buckling. Josiah leaned forward, grabbed his victim’s leather cap and with a short horizontal cut, severed the Frenchman’s artery and crimson liquid poured onto the deck.  As the sailor collapsed screaming, Josiah let go and whirled round to drink in the clamorous battle.

Sailors from the French corvette were still yet scrambling aboard the Screaming Skull but the fighting was at the turn.  Some of his buccaneers crouched, firing muskets at the boarders whilst others brandished their long knives at those already on board.  He respectfully stepped over a fallen comrade lying with his face ruined by musket shot and with that was in the midst of the conflagration. All around him, the men under his charge sought to repel the warship’s crew. In front, Edward Cutter, Master at Arms of the Screaming Skull lead three ship mates in a desperate struggle next to the ship’s port hull against five of the Frenchmen.  Blood pooled on the planking and the Skull’s crewmen struck again. Cursing and then killing like murderous tigers, their steel bit deep into the flesh of the cowering ratings.

The Skull’s Captain tore through the jostling, mounted the gunwale and looked back, holding onto the rigging.

‘To me lads’, he yelled above the fight’s thunder and then turned once more to face their enemy’s vessel.  The corvette was somewhat bigger than the Screaming Skull with a higher side and he had to jump up, first onto the base of the huge grappling hook they had used to trap his ship then deftly on top of the ship’s gunwale before jumping down onto the enemy deck.  Two seamen rushed him almost before his feet were on the floor.  He parried the one to the left with the back of his blade, turned to the right and then hacked back. His blade drew a line of red after it as it tore through the sailor’s loose shirt.  As that one fell back, holding his stomach, Josiah jumped at the second and with a loud crack kicked the others face and broke his nose.

His men followed his lead and in the space of a minute they had taken the fight onto the deck of the corvette.  Musketeers still aboard the Screaming Skull took shots at the French officers.  The battle was joined on both ships and Josiah pushed into the mid-ship of the corvette. To his right was his corpulent First Mate by the name of Malcolm Davies, a Welshman.  The First Mate hacked maniacally with his boarding axe at a sailor who had already fallen before him, the bloodied dagger held in his other hand glinting redly in the tropical sun. 

A French officer, buttons bright against his long jacket, charged at Josiah wielding a rapier in one hand and hatchet in the other. Hopping to his left, Josiah crouched, bracing for an attack.  The office swung the hatchet wildly at the pirate’s neck. Josiah flicked his blade up and to the right to block and seeing the opening, the officer lunged with the rapier.  Its stinging end tore through the pirate’s thick jacket and scratched against the thin leather waistcoat he wore underneath.  It penetrated, a gouge etching onto the left side of his chest. He cried out his pain and swung to the left, pulling his cutlass with him.  His blade cut at the left side of the officer’s head, tearing the top of his ear off and then slicing deeper into his face.  The cutlass then sheared up and off its target and with a grunt Josiah carved down onto the officer’s right shoulder just past his jacket’s lapel.  The sharpness of the blade cut deeply into the collar bone, protected only by the sailor’s shirt where it hit.

Josiah roared exultantly, spittle on his beard.  His men were panthers, hissing and snarling with the savagery they dealt out.  He licked his mouth, tasting blood and with a snort smelled the tang of burnt gunpowder.  Dimly through the confusion of bodies he made out the thick figure of a higher officer on deck, beyond the mast and guarded by mariners. It was the French Captain, ordering his men and pointing angrily at the throng. A frenzy surged through the pirate’s leader and his legs ached from his labours and the tremulous hunger for victory.

The pirates swarmed onboard the corvette and though the poor ratings were an ill match for them per man, their numbers were greater. Josiah saw some of his men cut down, some who had sailed with him ever since they had captured their ship shortly after the English captured Jamaica from the Spanish.  With fury, he realized his crew would not survive this encounter without the loss of some of his scallywags.  He gazed up at the fat bottomed trading galleon that had been their intended prize before they had suddenly been sprung on by the Marine Royale Francaise.

With that there was a high retort of gun fire from overhead, swiftly followed by the scream of a man in the direction he faced. Shortly the force they fought seemed to ebb until, almost before he realized what was happening, a junior officer pulled back the two ratings he fought.  The officer, an Aspirant or midshipman, waved a large white handkerchief before him whilst looking anxiously at Josiah to see if his message was clear. His meaning was made explicit when he lowered his sabre to the floor in front of the pirate captain.  The rest of the navy men stood down and the pirates, with a cheer, knew they had won although only a few knew how and why.

Josiah commanded very little of the French tongue but the crew of the Screaming Skull were of a varied origin.  He beckoned his men to cease their onslaught.

‘Mister Cutter, be so kind as to call for our wise doctor if you please’, and with a nod his Master at Arms motioned for two of their able seaman to bring forth their rather mature surgeon, who soon transferred to the captured ship.

          ‘Ah, Monsieur Christophe, be so good as to interpret for me with the brave crew of the Sun King’s fine ship’, Captain Turnbull intoned with only a certain ingredient of sarcasm.

          ‘Oui, Capitaine’, his bald, rotund doctor answered, his vest smeared with blood from treating the Skull’s crew members, two flasks of rum at his side.   ‘There is no need’, the French officer started with a French nobleman’s accent. ‘My English should be quite adequate.  As our Capitaine Leveque was killed by a bullet to the right eye, I, Midshipman Anton Garnier, am now the highest ranking officer aboard this vessel, Le Redoutable.  As such, it is my duty to offer you the full surrender of the crew on the condition that we are allowed to go aboard the galleon and return unmolested to Petit-Goave from which we set sail some two days ago.  You may take this vessel and all that you find on her.’

          ‘Why that is a pretty bit of speech’, Josiah rasped after a pause, sizing up the midshipman. ‘And what is that makes you think I won’t just take your merchantman, your navy’s fine barque and throw you all in with the sharks?’ Some of his men guffawed croakily, merry frogs gazing with languid hunger at the flies nervously buzzing about them.

          ‘Honoured Capitaine, you could not do this. We are honest sailors in the employ of his Majesty Louis XIV and these waters are claimed by him as part of his domain. His Majesty’s other vessels scour this sea and no doubt would present a force far more formidable than even your ship with all its brave and illustrious crew.  If you treat us well we will try to prevent any, shall we say, repercussions of this present action.’  The French Captain spoke with a slightly condescending intonation, his erudition escalating with every syllable.

          ‘Aye, would that be right? You think the consequences of our actions weighs heavily on our thoughts and our hearts Monsieur Petit-Goat?’ With that, Josiah patted the midshipman playfully on his rear end with the flat of his cutlass to the officer’s obvious discomfort. ‘We’ve lived by our wits for these past years, sir, and plan on doing so for a while yet.  You can send your frigates or your battle ships, sir, if you wish but before then we’ll gut your redoubtable turnabout of a boat and its rich mother too and if you’re lucky we’ll send you and your men to the briny bottom with only a scratch or two each.’  Garnier lowered his eyes with dread.

          ‘I serve my country well Officer Garnier and in that office I’ve a wish to put the enemies of my land to suffering and show them the superior nature of the Englishman.’ He pulled at his long brown beard as he spoke, his mouth twitching and his irregular, broken teeth grinding.

          As the men watched him, a thin arm reached out to tug the thick sleeve of his overcoat.  It was their cabin boy, Patrick Fitzwilliam, who had jumped over to Le Redoutable unnoticed.  ‘What boy?’, Josiah spat.

          Young Fitzwilliam, only twelve or thereabouts, leered smugly and held up a scuffed pistola.  ‘It was me’, he mewled.

          ‘What boy?’, his Captain repeated, anger flaming his voice.

          ‘I shot the Frenchy Captain sir’, the boy answered. ‘And killed him.’

          ‘Neptune’s gizzard boy! What!’ the Captain roared, rocking back on his boot’s heels and grasping the thick belt round his waist. The boy cringed and cowered lowly, base nature foretelling his doom at his leader’s dread and raving temper. Turnbull spat liquidly on the deck and then roared a cackle of laughter off like the retort of a musket. ‘To think boy I hadn’t killed my first man till I was fifteen and then there’s you, barely parted from your mother’s breast and you’ve already laid waste to your first enemy.’

          Turnbull grabbed the slip of the lad and pulled his nose, much to his discomfort, before shoving him slipping on the bloodied planking away. The pirate turned back to the midshipman who had taken to smiling nervously whilst observing this explanation of his captain’s demise.

          ‘Now then monsieur, since we’ve established that the most negligible personage of my crew has bested your own noble lord, I think we’ll be hearing less of your advice and you’ll be taking note of your orders from me.  We’ll have you and your crew tied up and bestowed down below so that you’ll give us no more of your fancy French fighting.’  So saying, he beckoned his crewmen to take the officers and men of La Redoutable into their power, tying them up with what rope was to hand on deck and then opening the hatch to the deck below. 

          The French crew men’s resistance was limited to a few unhappy groans but they despondently acquiesced.   One of the greyer veterans dropped to his knees, sobbing and calling for his mother and had to be booted downstairs.  Finally all were placed in the hold and the hatch was secured over.

          ‘Back to the Screaming Skull you jackals.  We’ll make way for that fat galleon and set afire this enemy of good mother England.’

          ‘With the crew aboard?’, Cutter asked.

          ‘Aye them as well. No one can say we are not patriots’, the Captain answered, a grim crack of a smile shaping his dry lips.

          The men set to their work and shortly La Redoutable was crackling with flames, slowly spitting their way along the gunwale and higher levels of the deck. As the last crewmen of the Screaming Skull clambered back aboard their own vessel, the inferno took greater hold of its victim. They pushed off, the screams from the French crew mingling with the hacking stench of the searing Hades La Redoutable had become.  Its hold was a holocaust as skin and muscle popped, spat and cooked in the conflagration.

          The blue Caribbean sky saw all but made no judgement as the Screaming Skull cut across the swell to the galleon. Unlike La Redoubtable, its crew had no gall and gave no bombast as its naval escort had done.  At the approach of the pirates, she lowered what sails were still flying and its sailors stood sullenly on deck.  Captain Turnbull’s vessel came about and then sailed alongside the larger vessel. Grappling hooks secured the two vessels together and the Captain, followed by his Master at Arms and other officers climbed up the rope ladders strewn down over the ship’s hull.

          Captain Turnbull greeted the Captain of the galleon, a squat and oily Gallic sailor. ‘You see what we’re about now sir.  We are but honest thieves and intend only to be taking what lies in your hold by way of rightfully claimed booty.’ Downcast, the French captain, bowed deeply, unable to look Turnbull in the eye.

“Monsieur!” a shrill voice ringing out from the top of a stair well and a corpulent, overly refined aristocrat made his way up and out onto the deck of the galleon.  He wiped some, possibly imagined, morsel from a corner of his mouth with a lace handkerchief. Bowing exquisitely, he addressed the pirate captain as if he were a fellow dignitary or at least a well to do banker or honoured citizen of some Gallic town.  His nervousness seeped out though whenever he dared to cast a wary eye over the other privateers. “Welcome aboard my captain and a very good day to you. I would like to say how honoured we are to have such fine men of the sea aboard our humble vessel.”

          “Hold that fine talk Sir Silvertongue”, Josiah countered, “you know what we are about. And we will take it as we please.”

          “That maybe my lord, but surely if we can give you some ample reward for your trouble and then we can all make sail again, happy and content as friends”, he simpered, eyes twitching from face to face amongst the crew of the Screaming Skull. As he spoke the other members of the galleon’s crew backed away from him, leaving him isolated in his idiocy.

          “Ah, no Monsieur”, Josiah pronounced the French word barbarously, “we shan’t be doing that, no matter how pleasant a prospect that may seem.  Tie him up so his back’s to the muzzle face of one of our thirty pounder guns Mr Cutter if you will sir.”

          “Aye”, the slender gunner grinned. He and two other of the Skull’s rogues grabbed the oily, Gallic gentleman by the oversized cuffs of his long jacket.  Their captive resisted and they pulled him bodily too the deck, the side of his face clattering painfully against the unyielding surface. He wept openly and without shame.

          As Josiah stopped down to belittle him further, two young, scrappily dressed Frenchmen approached, a large trunk held between them.  The Skull’s crewmen beside them turned, blades drawn.  One of them, Jerzy Bainowski, the ship’s chief Gunner, kicked the nearest Frenchman’s hands so that he dropped his end of the trunk. It fell to the floor with the distinct crash of a thousand doubloons cascading downwards and Bainwoski kicked the lid open. He gasped and fell to the floor.

          “Mój Bóg!” he cried, gazing inside with reverence.  He pushed aside the mass of Spanish gold coins, clearly freshly stamped, and clutched a jewel encrusted cross to his breast before kissing it delicately.  As he sat back, lost in some private reverie, his Captain took his place by the trunk and continued to fish underneath the layer of doubloons with his bloodied claws. His tongue stuck grotesquely out like some lecherous lizard, he fished lower and found a false bottom to the chest.  

          With a shake of his head, he beckoned the two Frenchmen to upturn the chest onto the deck and then glanced over at the merchant, who could not help but be dismayed at the loss of his loot.  He whimpered as the coinage flooded onto the wooden decking. Quickly, Bainwoski and Cutter scooped up the doubloons in sacks whilst Turnbull took his knife from his belt and cut out the false bottom of the chest.

          With a rip he tore it out, looked and then, snarling, heaved the chest up into the air and threw it down onto the merchant across his back.  As the Frenchman grimaced against the pain, a plain, black leather bound volume slipped out from the chest.  Bainwoski clutched it and, turning it over, recognized it as a silver-inlaid Bible.  

          “Ahoy Captain”, a cry rang out from The Screaming Skull.  “Half a dozen more Frenchie ships to stern.”

          “Aye, well it seems we best be tidying ourselves away after all”, Turnbull ordered.  “Make haste now lads, to arms. We’ve won our day.” He strode off without a backward glance and like a swarm of rodents the rest followed him.

As he strode away, two of the thickly bodied seaman from The Screaming Skull, the Frenchman Du Solenne and the drunken sot of an Irish man Kelly Mawby, sullenly grabbed up at the trunk and hauled it with them back to the other ship.  

          “The Sun King’s navy is more than a match for your scattering of English vessels on the Main”, the merchant man gasped as he rose on his haunches.  “Only the Viceroyalty has more tonnage and if Phillip IV wants a war we shall give it to him.” His lips, smeared with blood, dropped red stained saliva onto the deck which pooled in crimson spots. “You heard me, you English are nothing. Philip wants to drive you from the Caribbean. He knows you are weak. Spain and France have been at war for years and now you shall be too. England shall be no more!”, he thumped the deck with the palm of his right hand.

          Turnbull stepped up to him as he spoke, reached to his belt for one of his two six inch spikes he habitually carried with him and hammered it straight through the merchant’s hand, impaling it into the plank below. As the merchant screamed obscenities in his mother tongue, the pirate gestured Du Solenne to pass him one of his loaded pistols. One of the Screaming Skull’s few French rogues, Du Solenne passed it to his captain with an approving nod.  

          Without stopping, Captain Josiah took the gun, aimed it at the merchantman’s face and fired from close quarters. The front of the head exploded before him and the Frenchman’s body slumped down dead.

          Turning away, the tattered tails of his long jacket whirling, the pirate Captain muttered, “that’ll be quite enough of that think you. We are good English patriots to a man. Even the foreign curs in the crew.” Du Solenne and Mawby gave a cackle of laughter and followed onward.  The Screaming Skull’s crew clambered on board once more and disentangled themselves from the French galleon, cutting it lose as the warships bore down on them, sails full with the wind.

          “Far frenchies are make good timing Captain”, the Master at Arms Edward Cutter pointed out as they took to their stations onboard The Screaming Skull once more. Taking up his brass telescope after wiping the eyepiece with his greasy finger, Turnbull peered at the oncoming warships, grunting and grinding his broken teeth all the while.

          “Mr Davies, full sails if you please and kindly ask our heathen sot of a navigator to land us back at Port Royal as fast as the wind’ll bear us.”  

          The young cabin boy had monkeyed his way up to the crow’s nest and hollered, “the lead Frenchie ship is closing on us Captain. They’ll only have to come about soon and we’ll be in reach of their guns as sure as scotch eggs.”

          “Alright boy, we know what we’re about thanking you”, growled Turnbull, slamming his left palm down on the ship’s wheel. He kicked the stout post it was attached too and marched to the gunwhale to look defiantly at the approaching ships.  

          “They are not coming for us”, he shouted back up the mast to Paddy, “they’ve gone and got their own problems.” Indeed as he spoke the ships broke into two groups, one huddling the galleon they had just stepped off and the other circling the Skull’s original victim, now a blackened cadaver of a sea vessel roasting and smoking in the tropical heat.

          “Good fortune Captain”, Durrow the shipwright guffawed, a happy skip in his step. 

          “Aye, they’ll get theirs in time. Now to Port Royal, as long as our navigator’s prayers have been said often enough.” He walked back across the deck to his first mate, the Welshman Malcolm Davies and the ship’s pilot, a foreigner from eastern lands. All three took to scrutinizing the Skull’s principal map of the Spanish Main, dappled as it was with spots of old grease, phlegm and blood.  The pilot, his filthy turban bobbing up and down as he nodded thoughtfully at the others comments measured their route out with his dividers across the chart.

          “Co piekło!” screamed out a voice from the gun deck. Looking up, their gunner, Bainwoski, was clutching to his chest the large black book, presumably a Bible, he had taken from the French galleon, anxiety creasing his eyes. “The sweet Virgin has been defiled”, he whispered, thrusting the book to the First Mate.