By the Mast Divided (18 page)

‘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.