By the Mast Divided (23 page)

Kemp had the cane raised ready to strike at Scrivens’ back, but even though he opined that Captain Barclay wouldn’t object, he declined to use it in the face of such strictures from a man who was his immediate superior. Scrivens was lifted between Ridley and Costello and they tried and failed to drag him to the side. Where the scrawny creature found the strength to dig in his heels surprised them, for he didn’t budge.

‘We’ll chuck you in the bloody drink so help me, you skinny toad, if you don’t get up them shrouds,’ snarled Costello, no longer the grinning and jocular fellow he had been earlier. 

What emerged was very close to a cat’s meow. ‘I can’t.’

‘You got to,’ Ridley added, jumping up on to the bulwark and holding out a hand, ‘for we ain’t taking no grief for you being shy.’

Scrivens kept his hands firmly by his side, and Kemp stepped forward, this time without interference, and swiped him hard. Costello ignored the screaming response and grabbed Scrivens’ hand and lifted it to where Ridley could grab it, and with a heave Scrivens was pulled upwards, Costello pushing at his feet to get them on to something solid.

‘Don’t look down,’ Ridley grunted, as Costello joined them on the bulwark and together they dragged the unwilling Scrivens to a point where they could place his hands on the ropes.

What followed was slow, painfully so, each hand and foot movement forced on Scrivens. Getting him through the lubber’s hole looked to be impossible until first Pearce, and then O’Hagan took a wrist to haul him on to the platform, where his mates were quick to congratulate him and tell him there was nowt to fear. Standing there, forty feet in the air and as white as a sheet, free to look about him and down, swaying on a mast that was moving slowly back and forth through an arc of some ten feet, Scrivens was promptly sick.

‘Enough of this farrago,’ said Ralph Barclay. ‘Get those damnable fellows down.’

It needed a competent pilot to get HMS
Brilliant
to a secure berth in the Downs but it was Barclay’s misfortune to be saddled with an idiot who, it later transpired, had got his situation through his connections not his ability. He very nearly ran them aground before they went half a league and only a leadsman in the chains, alerting the quarterdeck to the rapidly shoaling water, allowed Ralph Barclay to haul off, obliging him to take charge himself.

An anchorage that stretched five miles from the bottom of Pegwell Bay to Walmer Castle, with a width of three between the treacherous Goodwin Sands and the shingle of the Kent shore, should have had ample room to accommodate a frigate and Davidge Gould’s sloop, which was following in his wake. But with hundreds of merchant ships, the components of several convoys crowded in to that space, none of them showing any inclination towards regimentation in the way they anchored, it needed a strong nerve and a skilful crew to get a man-o’-war safely to the part of the waterfront reserved for the Royal Navy.

Barclay certainly displayed a strong nerve, even though inside he was terrified of public disgrace. His ship, however, did not have the skilful 
crew it needed, so progress was not only slow, but hazardous, with the frigate forced to back topsails half a dozen times to avoid a collision with either a vessel or the taut anchor cable that kept it secure. And all the time his consort,
Firefly
, looked set to run him aboard across his stern. Several times Davidge Gould’s bowsprit came over
Brilliant
’s taffrail. Only exemplary seamanship from Gould in backing and filling, and good fortune for Barclay, saved both vessels from calamity.

It was a blessing that the wind stayed light, for in any sort of blow, Barclay would have been forced to luff up and drop his best bower wherever he could. As it was, after a scary two hours of manoeuvring, in which he and his officers became hoarse with shouting, and his crew disgruntled once more at the delay to their dinner,
Brilliant
, with HMS
Firefly
in attendance, dropped anchor opposite Deal Castle, just south of the Navy Yard, in that part of the anchorage reserved for King’s ships, several of which, on the seaward side, rode at anchor nearby. No sooner had the metal fluke hit the water than the admiral commanding at the Downs sent up from his official residence an order for both captains to repair ashore immediately.

Pearce, hauling on ropes, running here, there and everywhere on the frigate’s deck, had been praying for a collision as the sails were backed and reset, only to be backed again two minutes later. He saw all about him a chance to escape, for sometimes the frigate was a mere twenty feet from the side of another ship, and a hollering, angry and blasphemous voice telling them to sheer off. He was flabbergasted by the number of craft within view, from enormous vessels flying the flag of the Honourable East India Company that dwarfed the frigate, to craft that looked too small to brave the open sea.

The mass of smaller boats bobbing around, transporting supplies or people from ship to shore was just as staggering, and it was not Pearce alone who looked hungrily at those returning from some errand without goods or passengers. And there, no more than a hundred yards distant, and plain to the naked eye was the Deal seafront, rows of tall,
salt-streaked
houses perched on the edge of the steep shingle beach, split by a series of enticing narrow alleyways that promised to take a running man out of sight. What lay beyond that he did not know – more obstacles no doubt – but since there was no way of foreseeing those he tried to put it out of his mind. More important was the way the waves hit the beach, leaving a thin strip of darker pebbles; the tide was making and would help carry a swimming man inshore.

‘Mr Roscoe,’ called Barclay, ‘muster book if you please, and my barge. 
Mr Sykes you will oblige me by getting the jolly boat in the water and squaring our yards. Also ensure that no other boat gets anywhere near my ship in the time I am ashore.’

‘Which is where we all want to be,’ hissed Charlie, ‘you black-hearted bastard.’

He looked at Pearce then, a sort of hunger in his eyes that made the recipient uncomfortable. ‘This looks more promising than Sheerness, Charlie.’

‘For you, maybe,’ Taverner responded, with a look and an air that spoke volumes. For a man who could not swim the small boats slipping by, seemingly so close you could reach out and touch them, and that shingle beach, might as well have been a mile away.

‘If Corny has the right of it there will be boats right alongside before long.’

Gherson glared at Pearce then, for the use of that nickname or for making public what he had only vouchsafed to him, Pearce couldn’t say. But those words made him respond to the enquiring looks from the others. ‘I have it on good authority.’

‘I wonder how you paid for that?’ said Charlie, smirking.

Stung by that, Gherson replied sharply. ‘If I have the sense to seek help, and you do not, then that is your affair.’

‘Tell them what you learnt,’ said Pearce. Seeing the hesitation, he added, ‘Or would you rather I did?’

Gherson obliged after the merest pause, becoming quite showy in the way he explained. ‘The crew will be given what wages are owing to them before we sail, it is the custom. After that, Barclay must allow the men some liberty to spend what they have been paid, and every trader and procurer in Deal will come alongside to secure their share. I have been told not to credit this notion of a swift departure, that he has been in the Navy too long to place much store by such orders.’

Orders came to get on the capstan bars. Sidling closer to Pearce as they made their way down the companionway, he whispered, ‘Why did you speak so?’

‘It’s only fair that we all have a chance,’ Pearce lied. He wanted them looking at boats, not at him.

‘We must not jeopardise the possibility our letters will present, which will most certainly happen if any of those fools try to get aboard a boat.’

As he pushed to lift the captain’s barge, then the jolly boat for the bosun, Pearce reprised in his mind, now that they were off Deal, the inherent flaws in placing any hope in a letter. Gherson’s, in plain English, 
could go straight to a local Justice who might choose to act with alacrity, but his could not. It was addressed to John Wilkes in London and would have to go by post with the man he hoped to help him having to pay for the delivery. Gherson might be right about the ship being delayed here, but surely not for the days it would need for his plea to arrive and be acted upon. The only thing it might achieve was to blacken Barclay’s name, which would be some comfort.

‘You’re right, of course,’ he said to Gherson, who was moaning on about what Pearce had done. ‘Stupid of me. If any of them show an inclination to try, I must stop them. Best you keep an eye on them as well.’

‘Right, boats in the water,’ called a voice, as the rope leading from the capstan went slack. ‘Strike the bars.’

As soon as the capstan bars were removed to their racks a bosun’s mate piped ‘up spirits’. Pearce watched as some of his mess, Gherson included, rushed off enthusiastically to get their ration of diluted rum. Pearce hung back, half torn for a second between the notion of trying to get off the ship now, or getting back to that store with something to break open the padlock.

‘You don’t seem in much of a rush, mate?’

Pearce turned towards the voice, and found himself looking up into a scarred and unpleasant face with a well-thumped nose. Close to the prominent bumpy forehead were small dark brown eyes, the whole not made any more becoming by the man’s attempt at a smile.

‘Devenow’s the name, Sam to those I call friend.’ Pearce just nodded. ‘Best friends I have, and many. None be too partial to grog, so for a consideration they allows me to have what they don’t require.’

With his mind so fixed on escape, the question to ask was obvious. ‘What kind of consideration?’

‘Different from one to another, mate,’ Devenow replied, putting a large hand round Pearce’s shoulder. The way he exerted pressure made it obvious this was no gesture of friendliness. ‘Some gift it out of kindness, some for a favour, like sorting some grass combing bugger aboard who is giving them grief. They know they can rely on Sam Devenow to put matters straight.’ The voice changed, becoming gruff, as the pressure on Pearce’s shoulder increased, bringing Devenow’s head closer, so close that Pearce caught a whiff of tobacco on his breath. ‘Then there are those who would wish to avoid upsetting me, ’cause I have it in me to be a bad bastard at times.’

Pearce was aware that he was trembling slightly – his fists had
clenched, and his shoulders had stiffened – for he had been threatened with physical violence many times in his life and he could smell it a mile off. Devenow was telling him that to surrender his rum ration would save him from a beating. Maybe it was those squaring shoulders, or the way that Pearce moved a foot to enhance his balance and give himself room to swing, that alerted Devenow to the fact that this newcomer was not about to be browbeaten – that he would fight if he had to. The thought produced a smile in Devenow, but it was not a humorous one.

‘Happen you will have to wait, seeing as you’re a gamecock. If I don’t shift I won’t get my own grog, let alone yours. But we shall talk again, and that might just include a bit of a lesson.’

Watching Devenow’s crouched back, looking at the huge shoulders and the height that prevented him from walking upright under the deck beams, Pearce was looking at a man who had an inch or two on Michael O’Hagan. The feeling he had in his gut, as he contemplated having to fight that giant was not one to reassure him. Fight he assuredly would if he could not get off this ship, because it was not in his nature to back down, but just as assuredly he knew that with nothing but his fists he would lose to a bruiser who had the advantage in height, weight and experience.

Kemp’s voice, coming from the companionway he had been about to climb, broke that depressing train of thought, and the smirk on his face was evidence that he had a good notion of what had just taken place. With that sod watching him, he had no choice but to trail in Devenow’s wake.

The queue had formed before the purser, the Master at Arms and the small keg from which the rum was being dispensed. Pearce recalled the exchange the Irishman had had the day before when on the capstan, of the look on both their faces, thinking that it was only a matter of time before that pair squared up to each other.

Last in the queue, he saw that Devenow had got himself in behind Rufus Dommet, and was whispering in his ear, with not one of the sailors he had walked in front of protesting. He observed Rufus’s ginger head half turn, and fancied he saw fear in the profile. Clearly the man who had tried to bully him was working on the youngest of the Pelicans. Abel Scrivens was behind Rufus, and he would no doubt be next to be told ‘If you don’t want a beating, give me your grog ration.’

‘Rufus,’ he called, ‘come and join me. You too, Abel.’

Rufus Dommet positively shot back at Pearce’s request. Scrivens was slower to react, but looking at Pearce, then following the direction of his 
gaze, which had him craning to look into the scarred face of Devenow, he soon did likewise.

‘Happen you and I will have to have words soon, mate,’ Devenow said, glaring at Pearce. ‘Very soon.’

Every head between Devenow and the trio of Pelicans had turned to stare, with varying degrees of reaction – pity, a recognition of stupidity, the odd shake of the head, but more worrying the fact that by his action Devenow had made him an object of scrutiny just when he wished to be invisible. Last to be served with his grog, Pearce had little choice but to make his way towards his mess table, when an over his shoulder look from Charlie Taverner alerted him. Turning, expecting danger from Devenow, he was unprepared for Martin Dent skipping by, and a hand jammed under his jug that sent the contents flying all over the deck. His free hand just failed to catch the pest by the shirt as he doubled back towards the companionway and shot up to the upper deck.

‘You should have broken his damned neck, Pearce,’ said Charlie, who had left his seat too late to intervene, ‘not his nose.’