The Pelicans arrived to find most of the crew assembled round its bars, ready to bring the ship’s boats on board. A rope ran forward along the deck, through a series of heavy blocks up to the deck above. At the command, the newcomers copied the action of the experienced seamen and took hold of the bars. On another command they began to heave, some fifty souls digging their feet into the planking and pushing with all their might to get the boats out of the water. Lanterns were lit as the boats were placed over booms that ran across the waist, for they blocked nearly all of the available light, dripping water on to the deck from bottoms that were green from time spent in the river.
Next the order came to ‘Hove short,’ followed by, ‘Rig the messenger cable.’
That command saw the rope on the capstan cast off, to be replaced by one that was a huge continuous ring. Looped over and set in the capstan groove, the free end was taken forward to where a party of men and the ship’s boys gathered by the thick cable that disappeared out of a hole in the side. One sailor started singing, which was taken up by the others, a rhythmic chant designed to maximise the effort they were making.
‘Who would be a sailor, I would me, go, go, go-Jack-Go.’
The last go had everyone applying pressure at once, and Pearce felt the first easy movement as the capstan responded, only to realise that all they had done was take up the slack on what the sailors called the messenger. The chant was repeated over and over again, but there was no quick speed gained, just tiny increments accompanied by the creaking of the rope that made it sound as if it were going to part. Ahead men were attaching cords both to the thick cable and the messenger that ran round the capstan.
‘Why is not the damn thing moving?’ said Michael, red-faced with pushing.
‘The cable weight, pudding head,’ gasped a sailor, ‘without we raise it from the water and get it taut we’ll be here all day.’
‘Sure that would suit me fine, friend,’ Michael replied. ‘God alone knows why I am pushing this pole, since I have no desire to go anywhere, at all.’
‘You’ll push it,’ called Kemp, moving towards him with his rattan raised, ‘or you’ll feel this.’
‘I am thinking,’ the Irishman said with a huge grin designed to infuriate Kemp, ‘that such a thing as that would fit very neatly in your arse.’
‘Well said, Paddy,’ cried a voice, ‘though I’ll tell you he has the tightest arse on the ship.’
‘Short arms and deep pockets, that’s Kemp,’ hailed another.
‘God in heaven, these craturs are human,’ Michael scoffed, looking at Pearce with raised eyes. ‘They speak, and here was me thinking they was dumb beasts of burden, not much above being donkeys.’
‘Stow it, you cheeky sod.’
‘Now who was that a’braying?’
‘Happen you’ll find out when we’ve won our anchor.’
Kemp jabbed at Michael’s back with his cane. ‘Meet Samuel Devenow, Paddy, who loves to bruise, and I wish you joy of the acquaintance.’
Pearce looked to where Kemp was pointing, into a scarred face going red with the effort of pushing, and a look in the eye, aimed at Michael O’Hagan, that was enough to kill on its own. He recognised it as the face he had observed haranguing a silent mess table as they had had their dinner, and decided it was even less prepossessing closer to than it had been before.
‘What’re you grinning at Paddy?’ Devenow snarled.
‘Sure, I have not had the honour to see such ugly features since last I looked to that grand and ancient church at Canterbury town.’
‘Never met a Paddy yet that talked sense,’ Devenow replied, a remark which was greeted by a degree of gasping assent.
Pearce, beside Michael on the capstan bar, could see the look in Michael’s eye too, and for all the cast of amusement on his face, and the jocular tone of the voice, there was none in the gaze. For the first time since the Irishman had tried to clout him in the Pelican he saw something of the man that Charlie Taverner had identified as a bruiser.
‘I suppose,’ Michael continued, ‘you’re too much the heathen to go near a place of worship, even a blaspheme Protestant one. But I think the masons who built Canterbury were good Papists, and had the likes of you in mind when they fashioned their gargoyles. The ugliest one I reckon, demon-like and nasty, was an outlet for the privy, which suits, since what comes out of the hole of its mouth is not so very different to what issues from yours.’
That made a few of the men laugh, but a sharp bark from Devenow killed that, which underlined for Pearce what he had suspected before; they were in the presence of someone the crew treated with caution. As he pushed he was full of thoughts as to what that would mean – every shade of humanity would be on board the ship, and there would likely be a tyranny below decks to match or even surpass the one that existed abaft the mast. There was little doubt that Michael O’Hagan knew that too, and was prepared to challenge it.
They were moving now, not fast but at a very slow walk, and as they came round Pearce could see the thick cable coming in, covered in slime, dripping gallons of water on to the deck as it was fed through a hatch to be stored on the deck below. The boys detached the lengths of cord before the hawser disappeared, then ran back to the seaman who lashed them speedily onto the moving hawser. He could not help but examine the method, which was clever – the messenger was only that, a continuous rope that acted as means to get the much thicker hawser inboard. That itself was too thick to wrap round any kind of device, and clearly too heavy to be hauled aboard by humans.
‘Anchor cable hove short, sir.’ A voice called from above.
Roscoe’s voice gave the response. ‘Stand down half the men on the capstan.’
Another voice called then, ‘All hands to make sail,’ a cry that was repeated throughout the ship. Everyone bar the marines and the hawser party ran up to the deck, Kemp driving his charges before him to the quarterdeck, where they were ordered to ‘clap on that there fall, and stand by to heave on command’.
Topmen were speeding aloft, spreading out along the yards and as soon as they were in position the order came to let fall the topsails. The pale brown canvas dropped, snapping like a wild animal, filling the air with noise as it rattled in the wind. As soon as the ropes attached to the lower ends were tied off, with much shouting as to how they should be eased or tightened, the sails boomed out with a life of their own, stretching taut, the frigate creaking as the pressure began to move the hull forward.
The whole exercise was accompanied by a huge amount of shouting, some to the men and boys aloft, more to those manning ropes, even more to a party they could see atop the buoy to which the frigate had been moored, men struggling with crowbars to free the other end of the hawser where it was looped around the great ring on the crown. As it came free it splashed into the water and disappeared – then the frigate took on a life independent of the shore. Barclay stood by the wheel alongside a fellow dressed in black, who looked to be hanging on to a spoke rather than applying pressure to it. All were looking aloft to see the billowing canvas against the now grey sky.
Pearce was impressed despite himself, aware that no one, least of all he, could watch such a majestic sight, the three great sails high on the masts, taut now, and not be moved by it. But more moving still was a sight of the shore, the increasing distance between it and the ship; for him the certain knowledge, and a sinking feeling to go with it, that getting free had just got more difficult.
HMS Brilliant won her anchor with ease, if not with elegance, thrilling the captain’s wife, who had been allowed to take up a central position on the poop. From there she could look at the groups of sailors hauling on ropes, from the waist to the very deck on which she stood. The ultimate snap as the wind took the mainmast sail, it being so loud, made her laugh and cover her ears. Ralph Barclay knew that what appeared impressive to her would be seen as less so by those of his professional peers watching the frigate depart, for it had been a laboured performance. Like his fellow captains he had seen true crack ships weigh, seen the topmen aloft in seconds and the whole manoeuvre fulfilled in two minutes, a good twelve minutes less than his crew had managed. Once more he swore to himself that he would make this a ship to be proud of, and in his mind’s eye he could see and feel the admiration that would come his way when it was.
Bleary eyed, looking left and right, the black-clad fellow muttered instructions to the two men on the wheel, watched by a very anxious master and an equally troubled ship’s captain. Ralph Barclay had been in and out of the Little Nore anchorage dozens of times, and reckoned he knew it as well as this drunken buffoon who was hanging on to his wheel. There was plenty of water around them, but Barclay knew how narrow was the gap between the twin banks of the Sheerness Middle Sand and the Cheyney Spit, both now hidden by the height of the tide, but with not much more than a fathom of water to cover their mud. The deep-water channel was even narrower. Ships had gone aground here before, to be left high, dry and a laughing stock as the tide receded.
‘Would you care for a leadsman in the chains?’ he asked.
The pilot turned dark purple in the face, which was already heavily cratered with the after effects of smallpox, and snorted. ‘I daresay you knows your job, sir. Allow that I know mine.’
‘Mr Roscoe,’ said Collins, the master, ‘I think a reef in the main and fore topsails would be prudent.’
‘Sound, Mr Collins,’ said the pilot, ‘the wind demands it. I feel an increase.’
If the wind had strengthened, Ralph Barclay failed to notice it, and judging by the look on Roscoe’s face neither had he. Looking more closely at Collins it was possible to see his glassy eyes, which meant that he too had been at the bottle, no doubt in the company of this rascal of a pilot. The comment about sails and wind was nothing but professional complicity, an attempt to tell the commissioned fellows on the deck that their blue coats and braid counted for nothing; that when it came to sailing a ship it would be best to leave it to those who thoroughly knew their business.
Convinced or not, Roscoe called out the orders. Aloft, the men bent over the yards and began to gather in the sail, hand over fist, reducing the overall area drawing on the wind, using long lines of ties stitched into the canvas to lash off what they had drawn up. Ralph Barclay hated this, the one time when he was not in command of his own vessel, and to stop himself from showing his frustration he went to join his wife on the poop. His master would set what sail was necessary – the pilot would con the ship – and Roscoe would convey his orders. He was not required.
‘I have seen a ship at sea, Captain Barclay,’ Emily cried, ‘from a distance and looking enchanting, but nothing can compare with this.’
‘You will observe better, my dear, when we get aloft a full suit of sails in anything of a blow.’
‘Look husband, there is an officer there raising his hat to us.’
Ralph Barclay followed his wife’s finger, towards the Great Nore anchorage, dotted with line-of-battle ships. The raised hat came from one of the smaller vessels of a mere sixty-four guns.
‘That, my dear, is HMS Agamemnon, Agymoaner to the common seamen, and the fellow giving us the salute is Captain Horatio Nelson.’
Emily picked up the tone in her husband’s voice – not dislike so much as disinclination – and looked at him with some curiosity. Then she saw him smile as he recalled that Nelson had once been grounded here in HMS Boreas, set on the sand so high and dry that crowds had come from all round the Medway to parade round the ship and jeer. The thought cheered Ralph Barclay immensely, a touch of comeuppance for a fellow over-full of himself.
‘Did you not meet him last night at the Assembly Room dance? It was he who mentioned to me how much you enjoyed yourself. You may well come across him in the Mediterranean, my dear, for he has orders too for that station. Should you do so, beware, for I have sailed in his company before, and he is a terrible bore.’
And a proper tittle-tattle, thought Emily.
If the men looked for respite as they sailed down the north shore of the Isle of Sheppey, past all those settled and silent ships of the line, they were disappointed. Roscoe had laid out a list of tasks to be carried out and training to be undertaken, and that applied to the seamen as much as the landsmen and ‘volunteers’. As soon as the pilot had set his course in the deep-water channel he set his plans in motion. Mess number twelve, being mere lubbers fit only to haul on lines, were being shown the use of a belying pin as a cleat. A line of pins sat in drilled holes, pushed down for a tight fit. If a rope was lashed to it with a double round turn it became a quick and secure knot, but by merely removing the pin the knot was released and with it the sail to which it was attached.
‘Take the rope,’ said Dysart, holding a spare line dropped for the purpose, ‘fetch it under the pin, like so.’ He then made a loop with the free end under the fixed end and lashed it to the pin, saying, ‘Take a roond turn once, and loop that o’er the top, wi’ another wan the same an’ pull tight. It’s a secure horse or a clove hitch. When ye’ve done that, always mak sure ye tidy what’s left of the fall intae a neat coil, or the Premier will have yer guts.’
Dysart looked at faces of the party of which he had been given charge, seeing comprehension in the eyes of those who had understood, and mystification in that of the others. He had them try, noting that O’Hagan knew the knot and that the man who wanted to be called Truculence, along with Taverner, learnt it quick. Not the ginger bairn, though, and the other, much older one, Scrivens, looked as though he would never manage it.
‘Right, and here’s the beauty,’ Dysart added eventually. ‘The order comes tae let fly the sheets, which tae you would mean them sails we have set aloft. Nae time for untying knots, so ye just haul oot the pin and, there ye are, nae knot.’
There were parties all over the deck and aloft engaged in various tasks, mostly of an undemanding nature. But Ralph Barclay was not content to let matters rest at that – he had to get his crew to a sharp pitch of efficiency and he had no time spare for indulgence. He sent his wife back to their cabin, before calling in a loud voice, ‘Mr Roscoe, there is a fire in the manger.’
‘Watch on deck, fire engine forrard,’ Roscoe roared, even though he knew the alarm to be false.
The cry taken up by the petty officers, which saw a group of sailors driven to the small engine that dealt with such an emergency, a wheeled pump with a hose attached to drop over the side into the river. No sooner had water begun to flow from the men’s efforts, drenching the animals, which bleated and lowed in distress, than Barclay presented another task.
‘There is a ship in the offing, Mr Roscoe,’ he said, pointing to a merchantman on the same course as they, though in another channel. ‘There, off our larboard quarter, which may be an enemy or a neutral. Pray launch a boat to investigate.’
‘Permission to heave to, sir?’
Barclay allowed himself a smile then, for he was, while the pilot was aboard, only partly in charge of his ship. ‘Denied.’
‘Mr Burns, take charge of stowing the fire engine. Man the capstan. Mr Sykes, derricks over the side, and lash on the cutter. Mr Digby a party to man her.’
‘Mr Farmiloe, gather a boarding party from the foc’sle,’ yelled Digby. He added a call for the Master at Arms to issue weapons. ‘A message to Mr Holbrook, and we require a file of marines.’
Mess number twelve, on deck to haul ropes when required, showed just how useless they were by the way they bumped into men who had what they did not, some idea of where they were going. Pearce, with Michael O’Hagan taking a lead from him, avoided the worse collisions by employing the same patient tactics he had used in the Pelican, letting matters clarify themselves before moving, which earned them both a stinging swipe from a rattan, a blow which landed simultaneously to the command to, ‘Get a bloody move on’.
Pearce swung round, fists balled to retaliate. Dysart grabbed his shirt collar and hauled him backwards, then swore at an alarmed Kemp, which, as soon as the man saw he was safe, earned the Scotsman a rudely raised finger.
‘Christ, laddie, you’re well christened. Truculence by name an’ truculence by nature.’
‘If he swings that damn thing once more.’
Dysart just pushed him to where he was required. ‘You’ll gie him what he wants, if ye clout him, laddie. I’ve heard him boast what he’s got in store for you, ’cause he kens yer temper. You at the grating and him wi’ a cat in his hand. Now use yer heid and get toiling.’
On deck, the bosun was personally overseeing the clearing of the boats stacked above the waist of the ship, and men were rigging the sling that would be used to get the cutter over the side. Below, more than half the crew were being driven back to the capstan bars, which they grabbed from their racks around the base of the mainmast, for the cutter was heavy, and needed a lot of manpower. Above their heads, as the boat was raised from its booms, other men hauled on the rigged derrick that swung it over the ship’s side. When they got level with the deck, the party that Farmiloe had gathered from the forecastlemen, the older and most experienced men on the ship, armed with cutlasses and axes distributed to them by the Master at Arms, leapt aboard, followed by four marines bearing muskets. As soon as the boat hit the water, the men fended off with their oars, and as those same oars dipped into the water to carry them to the imaginary ship, Barclay shouted.
‘She’s a neutral, Mr Roscoe, and has shown her colours. Pray get our boat in.’
The whole operation was put into reverse, but Barclay was not satisfied, for as soon as the cutter was inboard, dripping water once more onto the maindeck, he issued another set of orders. ‘We will need topgallants in this light breeze, Mr Collins.’
The master jerked as his captain spoke – clearly he had been in some kind of reverie, or was still stupefied by drink. ‘I had intended to set them when we came abreast of the Reculver Tower, sir.’
‘I think now would be better,’ Barclay insisted.
‘Mr Sykes,’ called Roscoe, ‘topmen aloft and a party to fetch up the topgallants.’
‘Now what in the name of Jaysus are they?’ asked Michael O’Hagan, of a blue coat nearby. ‘The best looking boyos on the ship, maybe?’
Whistles blew a different set of notes that sent the slim and agile topmen aloft once more. A set of ropes began to appear from the masthead, one end dropped down to the maindeck where these objects were apparently stored, another to the deck for the donkeys known as landsmen to haul on. They rose on the falls, long tubes of shaped timber with ends tapered to a point. Aloft, nimble topmen rigged them across the mast, seemingly suspended in thin air.
‘Right, you lot below, to the sail locker,’ called some strange fellow, and so inured were the volunteers now to taking orders that they followed without demur. As soon as they got to the orlop deck, Pearce, aware that the storeroom containing his possessions was on this deck made a crouching effort to try and slip away, only to be thwarted by Abel Scrivens and Rufus who tried to follow him.
‘You three! Where in the name of Christ are you goin’?’
Glaring at the pair, Pearce knew in his heart that they had dogged his heels through ignorance, nothing else, but that did nothing to cheer him. Another sailor, bringing up the rear, prodded them to rejoin the rest at the barred door to the sail locker.
From inside that room they dragged heavy folded canvas, which had to be opened out, rolled and tied in a way that aided the topmen for lifting it aloft, where it was lashed through the deadeyes to the yard they had already put in place. Ralph Barclay had his watch out, determined to let no one doubt that the whole operation was taking too long. But when the sails were rigged, though not set, he said nothing in complaint, merely informing Lieutenant Roscoe that it was time to coil up ropes and sweep decks, called early because of the fading light.
Supper was a repeat of dinner in the quality of the food, as Mess Number Twelve contemplated a meal that varied very little from what they had had already, pork instead of beef. But if experience had made some of them fussy, toil had made them too hungry to care, and since the bread and cheese were still fresh it was not a wholly unpalatable meal, made more so by a tot of rum which, on an empty stomach, went straight to Rufus Dommet’s young and tender head. As soon as they had finished they were ordered to call on the purser to collect their hammocks.
‘You are entitled to what you have in your hands.’ The fat little purser said, adding, with a cock of the head, an insincere smile, and a roll and a rub of his smooth pink hands. ‘But I daresay you would aspire to a bit of decoration, like these bandanas I have.’
He pointed to a chest that lay near to the front of his deep storeroom, with bits of black silk inside. ‘I am also prepared to advance you jackets and caps upon your mark, and of course, tobacco can be purchased against your bounty and your pay.’
In the dim lantern-light of the orlop deck, Pearce and his fellow ‘volunteers’, stood in a snaking line. He had been given and changed into duck trousers of the type he had seen the rest of the crew wear, wide at the bottom with ties to hold them at the waist, a checked shirt, a thick rough blanket that smelt slightly of mould and a rolled hammock in a small numbered sack that, he was told, would double as his night-time ditty bag.
‘Should any of you wish to sell your shore clothes,’ the purser continued, ‘I will, provided they have a value, put a sum against your name for the purchase.’
‘Not hard money?’ asked Gherson, whose breeches and shirt, even after a dunk in the Thames and a day’s work on deck, looked to be of good quality.
‘Coin?’ replied a startled purser, as though such a notion was outrageous. ‘I fear you do not understand life in the Navy, man.’
‘Then thank Christ for that,’ snapped Charlie Taverner.
‘We should have sold our teeth,’ said Scrivens. ‘Like Rufus said. The boy had the right of it for once.’
‘I wouldn’t be after selling my teeth to this spalpeen bastard,’ said Michael O’Hagan, glaring at the purser, a remark that had no effect at all on a man so accustomed to verbal abuse, including that in the Irish vernacular.
‘What will you give for these leather breeches?’ asked Rufus.
Arched back to look at them, like a man being shown the contents of a particularly rank night-soil pot, the purser replied, ‘I doubt they would trouble my credit for more than a shilling.’
‘This is prime leather, well tanned, that I made into breeks myself.’
The fat little fellow bent forward and made a good pretence of having a closer look. ‘I fear you have been guyed by the man who supplied you with the material, for it looks to me as if the cow from which it was skinned was diseased. As for your skill with the needle I doubt the sail maker will be seeking you out. One shilling and three pence.’
Pearce spoke then, cutting across Rufus’s response to robbery. ‘I require a pen, ink, paper and wax.’
‘I too,’ said Gherson, racking his brain to think to whom he could write who would not have a connection to the man who had tried to kill him. Could he pen a plea to Carruthers’ wife, Catherine?
‘Certainly, and if you require the services of a scribe, I can supply that too.’
Pearce just glared at him, which had no effect on the fat, pompous little purser, who retired into the gloom to fetch what had been requested. Pearce then had to endorse each item in a ledger. Having just declined the services of a person to write for him, he could hardly make just a mark, so he took the proffered quill and signed John Truculence. The purser turned the book to look at it, and grinned.
‘I am happy that you have chosen to record it thus, for that is, after all, the name under which you are entered.’
Gherson scribbled his name likewise, and the purser blew on the ink to dry it. They moved on to allow him to make the same distribution and pitch to those behind. Pearce realised immediately that they were unsupervised, but the same problem faced him as had done already – how to get away from his messmates. He had no choice but to speak, which he did quietly, and only to Michael O’Hagan, dropping his new hammock as he did so.
‘Step in front of me Michael, you are broad enough to hide me.’
The Irishman went up hugely in Pearce’s estimation then – he did not ask why, nor did he look at him – he merely squared his shoulders and half turned to cover Pearce, allowing him to slip away to the edge of the available light, then to the other side of the deck. He had to stop, for he had no idea where the bread room lay, or for that matter the storeroom containing his possessions. At his back he could hear the murmur of voices – ahead of him as he moved gingerly over the planking lay small pools of light and several screened-off cabins.
This deck, he had already learnt, was home to some of the lesser officers, as well as the surgeon if Charlie Taverner had the right of it. Dysart had said the gunroom, which was where the real officers lived. That had to be at the back of the ship, under the quarterdeck – behind him, so he had been moving in the wrong direction. Cursing, for he had little time, he retraced his steps. Adopting a normal gait, as though he had every right to be where he was, Pearce walked back the way he had come until he knew he was beyond the purser’s store and the knot of pressed men outside.
The two storerooms were marked by their difference to all the others – not barred off spaces full of solid objects or screened off cells, but proper doors in a narrow alleyway with very obvious, and very sturdy locks. There was enough light to see the traces of flour on the deck, and enough of a smell to tell him which was the bread room. Pearce turned, bending down to examine, with a sinking feeling, the big padlock on a solid looking hasp that stood between him and his possessions – one that would take a blast of gunpowder to remove.
As he ran his fingers round the door edge, looking in vain for a point of leverage, he had no idea where it came from, the notion that he was being watched, just that it was present and it was powerful. He looked hard at the door to the rear of the after companionway, that must lead to the officer’s quarters, but that was firmly shut. He also knew that even if it was merely in his imagination there was nothing he could do faced with such an obstacle as this padlock. He recalled Dysart’s words about the tin lining designed to keep out the rats, creatures better equipped to gain entry than he; they could gnaw, he could not. With the fanciful notion that it was a clan of those watching him and hoping to gain entry, Pearce stood up and made his way back to join his fellows, just as Dysart returned to take them back to the maindeck so they could sling their hammocks, trying to recall, in all the things he had seen that day, if there had been some kind of lever, of metal rather than wood, strong enough to prise off that lock.
He got a questioning look from Michael O’Hagan, no doubt eager to know what he had been about, one that he could only respond to with a shake of the head.
Trooping back on to the maindeck, they saw that some hammocks were already rigged far forward, close to the manger where the smell of animals obviously did not bother the occupants. Mostly though the crew was still at their mess tables, waiting to be entertained by what was about to happen. Naturally, the place allotted to the newcomers was closest to the open waist, and thus the cold air.
‘See here on the deck beams is a number, and that is on your hammock an’ aw’. Now I will show you how to lash it up, and give you some advice of how you can get yersels into it, but if you don’t get it quick, I will not spend the night in useless instruction, and you can sleep on the deck planking to be nibbled by the rats.’
Dysart slipped Pearce’s hammock out of its bag and it lay there like a long white sausage with a coil of rope around it.
‘Look you at that and recall it,’ said Dysart, ‘for that is the bound article and when it has to be stowed it must be lashed just so.’
Dysart dropped one end and shook it out as they all gathered round. He took the end rope and reached up to a ringbolt attached to the beams above. ‘Take the rope and pass it through once, fetch it doon to near the strands, cross it o’er and hold with thumb and finger, like that, before crossing it again. Bring the end through the V you have made and pull, then lash it off with a knot. Do the same wi’ the other end and you will sleep sound and safe.’
‘Could you do that again?’ asked Ben Walker. ‘But slow like.’
‘I could’na go much slower, laddie, I was hardly moving.’ To prove the point Dysart, his fingerings a blur, retied the knot at his own pace. Then he grinned and proceeded to repeat the manoeuvre at half speed. ‘Now you lot have a try.’
Many a seaman had moved to watch and be amused, the first to oblige being those who thought their knots secure, who, leaning on their tied hammock fell flat as their attempt unravelled. Even the men who succeeded in executing the required hitch then had to get in. Dysart showed them one method, which required a swift roll that got the body weight central and stable. Naturally not one of the pressed men could execute this and, to sound of much hilarity, they thudded into the deck.
Pearce might not be a sailor, but he had crossed the English Channel twice, and since that was a passage that could take one day or ten, depending on wind and weather, he had been shown how to sling a hammock, as well as the best way to get into an arc of canvas that would never stay still. The knot suffered only from lack of practice and he had it after a couple of attempts. Then he reached up to the rough-hewn wood of the deck beam above, placing one hand either side and feeling for the indentation he guessed to be there between support beam and planking. Having found it, he took his weight and heaved himself in, if not with ease, then at least without taking a tumble.
‘Now where, laddie,’ said Dysart, who had stood back to watch the fun, ‘did ye learn to dae that?’
Pearce ignored him, but he rolled out of the hammock quickly because Michael, who had the next space to his, was struggling. He had managed knots of a sort, though they were not the proper article, but his attempts to get in were farcical, and being as big as he was, and thus very obvious in his ineptitude, the Irishman, though not alone in his difficulties, was attracting much of the taunting, for being an ignorant bog-trotting turnip-eating bugger. With his height he assumed that the task would be easy, only to find that height did not favour him at all – he could not find the centre of the thing, and fell out continually. His anger only made his situation worse, fuelling the catcalls and jokes, which could only result in Michael stepping away from his tangled hammock and belting one of his tormentors.
‘Here, Michael, let me help you?’
‘This thing was not made for man,’ the Irishman gasped, when he finally got in and lay backwards, stiff, a suspicious look on his face as though the hammock had a life of its own, and would toss him out if he relaxed. ‘Lest to make them look fools.’
Pearce saw Scrivens standing several yards away, the drooped hammock in his hands, looking at it with utter incomprehension. Weariness was as much to blame as confusion, and since his friends were too pre-occupied with disentangling their own efforts, there was no one to aid him. If anything damned the press-gangs, and they were damned anyway, this was it – the taking up of souls totally unsuited to the life into which they were entered. Yet there was humanity on board as well as cruelty and ribaldry, for as Pearce moved to help he was beaten to it: one of the young sailors come to laugh at their efforts, seeing Scrivens, thin, weary and unmoving, came to his aid, and with quiet gentility, showed him how to rig his bed.
‘Now I should have a go at taking them down for stowing,’ said Dysart, when they had all got them rigged, ‘then putting the buggers up again.’
It was freezing outside and the heads, on a winter night with a wind blowing over the gently pitching bows, was no place to linger with your brand new ducks around your ankles. So Charlie Taverner’s desire to engage Pearce in quiet conversation, while he went about his occasions, was not entirely welcome.
‘Can we get off the ship, that’s what I want to know?’
Pearce stared out at the inky black of the night, listening to the sound of the water as it slid by the prow. He was sure he could smell the tang of the sea, but that was all he knew about where they were. The odd winking light from the shore gave no idea of distance – it could be a candle in a lantern no more than a hundred yards away or a substantial oil-lamp several miles distant.
‘I have no more idea than you, Charlie, of how that is to be achieved.’
‘I didn’t think you had, unlike our friend O’Hagan.’
‘Hardly your friend, given that I recall what you said about him.’
‘I curse him less now than I did in the Pelican, for I have seen how he has come to the aid of others, especially old Abel.’ Taverner followed that with a deep intake of breath, then added, ‘I’m sorry for letting slip your name.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ Pearce replied, with something less than complete candour, for what Taverner had done had annoyed him intensely. But even on such a short acquaintance Pearce knew this fellow was prone to talk more than was strictly necessary, and Taverner had no idea how much his gabbing endangered him.
‘Why can you not call down the law on Barclay’s head?’
The invitation to confide was obvious. Pearce was tempted to respond that if he couldn’t trust Taverner with his name, he was damned if he was going to confide in him any details of his predicament. Instead, having seen to his needs, he stood, pulled his ducks back on, and said, ‘How would you get back to the Liberties, even if you could get onto dry land?’
‘I doubt I’d have much of a problem in the country. I’m not some famous felon. The Liberties would have to wait for a Sunday, when the writs cannot be served and the tipstaffs take a day off.’
‘What would you face apprehended?’
Taverner sighed, stood himself and hauled up his new ducks. ‘Six inches square of a debtor’s gaol, John, in a cell with a hundred others and all the diseases they carry. No means to pay for food or decent bedding, dependent on charity, with little hope of ever clearing the burden that got me had up in the first place.’
That was something with which Pearce could wholeheartedly sympathise. ‘Abel the same?’
‘Aye, only the debt he carries is huge, so huge he would die in there if malice did not see him strung up or transported for that which he stood as dupe. God knows it makes little difference, for life at sea may do for him anyway.’
‘Not if we help him.’
‘We will all try to do that, for God knows he has helped us often enough.’
‘The others?’ Pearce asked.
‘Rufus would suffer nothing more than a return to his family, for I think if they had the means to buy him an apprentice bond in the first place, they could very likely raise what is necessary to buy him out of it.’
‘No point in asking about Ben is there?’
‘None,’ Taverner replied, as they made their way back to the foredeck. ‘I suppose what I was asking, John, is this. If you find a way to get off this ship and clear of pursuit, we would be obliged to be included.’
‘All of you?’
Pearce had said that because of his surprise. Charlie misunderstood. ‘I think maybe just Abel and me. But there again, perhaps not. Ben is his own man, and would need to be coaxed, but Rufus will follow where I go.’
Pearce was tempted to point out how difficult a mass escape would be. But just damning such a proposition was unwise; he might as well say he would make any attempt on his own and that could only increase the amount of scrutiny he was under from Charlie, the most watchful of the four.
‘Should I sound them out?’ Charlie asked.
‘It can do no harm,’ Pearce replied, not sure if that was a truth or a falsehood.
Sat once more at the mess table, Pearce pulled out his paper, pen, ink and the stub of sealing wax, thinking that, in terms of getting him quickly off the ship, letter-writing was tenuous in the extreme; no more than a pious hope. But it would serve, he hoped, to allay the suspicions of anyone watching him, which included his own messmates.
The paper had absorbed and been stained by some of the sweat from his body, and it was a thought that amused him – to reflect that the man to whom he was writing, the elderly Radical politician John Wilkes, would see those stains as proof of a deep distress. He took much care in his composition, as he had deciding on the recipient – the requirement for circumspection limited the choice. The message had to be brief, concise and coded in a way that was not obscure.
‘That podreen-faced sod with the tarred hat who calls himself Hale has his eye upon you,’ whispered Michael, ‘and that little surgeon fellow, who thinks no man can see him lurking.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ Pearce replied, pretending to sign with a flourish. He could not say to Michael that his being so public was deliberate, so he said, ‘If I don’t do this now, there might not be another chance.’
Pearce folded the letter quickly, wrote the address, then opening the lantern above his head, stuck the sealing wax into the stuttering flame. Once it started to drip he applied it to the join, watching as it solidified, wishing that he had about him a proper seal that would indent the wax with a design to prevent tampering. That done he slipped it back into his shirt, feeling the last of the warmth from the wax as it touched his bare skin.
He was now faced with the task of getting the letter into the hands of someone who could deliver it. If mail was to be taken off the ship, could it go in that? He doubted it. There must be some form of examination and a letter without the name of the sender appended would arouse suspicion. It occurred to him that his indifference to the crew of the Brilliant, his cold stares and unfriendly attitude, would work against him in this. The only person with whom he had shared an even half decent exchange was Dysart. He looked across the maindeck to where the Scotsman sat, easy to spot with that bandage, the sight of which militated against reposing such a crucial trust in that quarter. A man having suffered so much to take him up was not likely to have much heart for letting him go. But his train of thought did remind him that there was one of their mess who had made a point of sucking-up to the crew, the only other one who had asked the purser for pen and paper.
‘You’ve been having words with some of the crew, Gherson,’ Pearce said, sliding along the bench seat to whisper to him. ‘What is about to happen?’
That earned Pearce a quizzical look. Once Charlie had found out his full moniker, he had taken to calling Gherson ‘Corny’, a tag adopted by everyone for the very simple reason that he obviously hated it, and he was such an annoying bastard that any chance to upset him was welcome. That Pearce had not done so was significant.
‘Do I perceive that you are about to ask me for something?’
Pearce knew he couldn’t trust him, but he also knew that Gherson had asked for the means to write, which could mean that he had also pondered a way to get a letter off the ship.
‘I think in writing letters we share a purpose, and I was wondering if you have the means to fulfil yours?’
He might be irritating, but Gherson was no fool – Pearce had spotted that quicker than the others. There was a sharp if selfish intelligence at work behind that handsome, sensual countenance. No evil looks from Gherson greeted any member of the crew who was passing – instead they were gifted with a smile designed to win them to him, and Pearce had observed that in one or two cases he had succeeded, just as he had succeeded in getting a seat at other mess tables. He was not about to tell Gherson that he might have cause to regret his behaviour, for in his innocence he seemed blissfully unaware that he got his benevolent responses from sailors who had motives that transcended mere kindness.
Gherson was wondering if Pearce could be an asset or a threat. He had persuaded one of the forecastlemen, the one they called Molly, to take a letter from him – if he could get it written – and pass it over the side to one of the panders who would, he was informed, bring out the whores to any departing warship.
‘Perhaps if you were to confide in me, who it is you are writing to and what the connection is, I might be able to help.’
‘I would be prepared to say that he has a voice loud enough to start a hue and cry that might get us out of this.’
That was not an expression that was welcome to Cornelius Gherson. A hue and cry was an uncontrollable beast. ‘Us?’
‘Every man who came aboard yesterday,’ Pearce insisted.
Gherson was truly surprised. ‘Why worry about them?’
Pearce was about to suggest common humanity, but it was obviously a concept alien to the other man. ‘Revenge,’ Pearce hissed, forced to add in the face of clear disbelief, ‘I want to see that sod Barclay up before a beak. Taking us up was illegal. It would be nice to see him pay the price for what is a crime.’
‘We are bound for Deal on the East Kent shore,’ Gherson whispered, ‘the anchorage called the Downs where there is a convoy waiting. I have been told the crew will be paid there, and a number of boats will come out to trade with them. I have engaged one fellow, who says that no letter of a newly pressed man would be allowed ashore through the normal method, to pass mine to one of those traders.’
‘He could pass two.’
Having overheard Pearce tell the purser he had money, Gherson’s response was as quick as a flash. ‘I have promised my fellow payment.’
‘I will meet what is necessary,’ Pearce said, observing Gherson’s eyes flicker at the words. It was almost naked greed he saw there.
‘You have deep pockets then?’
‘Not bottomless.’
Gherson had no money at all, that had gone along with his coat, and since the service he was being offered was coming to him free, this was a chance to get some for when he got himself on shore. ‘Still, a sum in guineas?’
Pearce had no intention of answering that. ‘Name a price.’
‘Five guineas?’ said Gherson, who feared to pitch it too high, because that would mean he would get nothing.
‘I can run to three,’ Pearce replied.
‘I cannot guarantee what you ask for less than four, and I ask you to recall I will be requesting a favour for future, not present payment.’
‘Done. Payment as our feet touch terra firma.’
Gherson nodded, but he was thinking that Pearce was at risk of giving himself away by showing off, using Latin where plain English would do.
‘Give me your letter,’ Gherson insisted. Pearce took it out of his shirt and handed it over and Gherson darted quickly to the table where Molly sat. The sailor moved to let him sit down, and, watching, Pearce wondered how it was that Gherson alone could not see the nudges such an association produced. Then he had to consider that Gherson could see as well as the next man and, as he put his head within an inch of Molly’s, that he didn’t care.
‘Another letter?’ Molly asked, with a worried look.
‘Does that make any difference?’ Gherson said, slipping Pearce’s missive into an unwilling hand. ‘I would have thought the risk was the same.’
‘Two letters,’ said Molly, thinking quickly, ‘be best to look for two different carriers, rather than the one.’
‘You are so clever,’ cooed Gherson. ‘Why did I not think of that?’
Molly tapped his head. ‘You need a tar’s head for such matters, and one a mite older than that you bear on your shoulders, boy. You leave it with me, and let’s hope by the time we’s due to weigh that there’s a writ to be served that will get you back on shore.’
‘I will always be grateful, I hope you know that.’
Molly put a hand on Gherson’s knee and squeezed. ‘Why lad, what decent soul would not aid a brother?’