The Bombay Marines Read Free Page B

Company’s prestigious Maritime Fleet? Why choose the rough-and-tumble, shabby Bombay Marine?
    Watson knew little about Horne’s private life. Company records supplied the facts that he had joined the Marine seven years ago, had risen from the rank of Midshipman to First Lieutenant aboard the Protector, forty-four guns, the flagship of Watson’s predecessor, Commodore James, and that James had promoted Horne to Captain on his retirement.
    Watson had heard gossip that Adam Horne had been involved in the murder of a young woman in a London bordello. There were stories, too, that Horne had studied as a young man with Elihu Cornhill, the eccentric old soldier who taught boys controversial ideas about survival in the wilderness.
    Watson had a rule whereby he did not believe rumours about his officers. He tried to judge a man by his actions, and Adam Horne’s report about the Maratha pirates fortified his opinion that Horne was a versatile leader, both on land and sea, a commander who acted responsibly for other men’s lives yet was unafraid of death himself.
    Over his past forty-two years of Naval service, Watson had known no more than a handful of men who were undaunted by the prospect of being killed in battle. Each and every one of those men had had a close encounter with death. The experience had left them with an advantage over fear. He suspected Adam Horne was such a man.

Chapter Two
A QUICK MIND AND STRONG BODY
    Accompanied by Lieutenant Todwell and a party of eight armed guards, Adam Horne descended deep into the maze of dark passageways channelled into the bedrock beneath Bombay Castle. The clank of cutlasses and muskets echoed with the thud of footfalls; the moving torches sputtered in cross-currents of air, the light illuminating bats hanging upside down from mouldy corners, singeing spiders’ webs festooned across the low, seeping ceilings.
    Lieutenant Todwell held a parchment high in front of his eyes, catching the glow of the torch behind him as he read, ‘William Bradford, Calumet. Judged guilty of murdering an officer. Death by hanging … Henry Denning, City of Manchester. Judged guilty of murdering a fellow servant. Death by hanging … Brian McGregory, Fifth Regiment of the Foot. Judged guilty of mutiny and pilfering medical supplies. Thirty-five years imprisonment …’
    Moving down a chilly incline, Adam Horne stopped listening to Todwell reading the prison list and began reappraising the scant information Commodore Watson had given him about the mission to Fort St George.
    Had the East India Company’s Governors of India’s three Presidencies – Bengal, Bombay, and Madras – ordered the mission for the reason Horne suspected? To abduct an important prisoner-of-war from the Army or Navy? If so, what was their motive? To claim valuable war prizes for the Company?
    The East India Company was rich, vastly rich. Theirmerchant ships profited well over three hundred per cent from voyages to the Orient, bringing home silks, spices, teas; indigo for dyes, saltpetre for gunpowder, baubles for the British housewives.
    Chartered by Queen Elizabeth more than a hundred-and-seventy years ago, in 1600, the East India Company had surpassed the Dutch and Portuguese traders in world markets. Investors streamed to the Company’s headquarters on Leadenhall Street in London to buy shares in every new voyage.
    No, Horne decided, the East India Company would not be abducting France’s Commander-in-Chief to claim war prizes. The Company had more wealth – and power – than most nations. And France’s own East India Company – the Compagnie des Indes Orientales – had declined in the last few years, changing the war between England and France from a struggle for trade monopoly to a battle for territory.
    So, if the Governors’ reason for sending a squadron of Marines to kidnap Lally was not financial, why would they be ordering a secret mission? For military reasons?
    Military strength was becoming an increasing