Morgan’s Run (42 page)

Johnstone and Shairp had a difference of opinion as to whether the convicts left on board should be manacled; Johnstone prevailed and hands stayed free. Having lost the argument, Shairp took the jollyboat and went to visit a congenial colleague aboard another vessel bound for Botany Bay. There were several such now, one of them almost as large as Alexander.

“Scarborough,” said fourth mate Stephen Donovan, cradling the big marmalade cat in his arms. “Yonder is Lady Penrhyn—ye know her—and the addition, Prince of Wales. They could not manage to get all aboard five transports, so she is the sixth. Charlotte and Friendship have sailed to Plymouth to pick up those on Dunkirk.”

“And the three loading from lighters closer in shore?” Richard asked, turning his head to glare a fierce warning at Bill Whiting, who looked as if relative liberation might loosen his tongue in a Miss Molly jest Miss Molly Donovan might not appreciate.

“The storeships—Borrowdale, Fishburn and Golden Grove. We are to carry sufficient supplies to last for three years from the time we reach Botany Bay,” said Mr. Donovan, eyes caressing.

“And how long does the Admiralty think it will take to get to Botany Bay?” asked Thomas Crowder, smarming sweetly.

As Crowder was not to Mr. Donovan’s taste—too simian—the fourth mate chose to direct his answer to Richard Morgan, whom he found very fascinating. Not so much because of his looks, though they were wonderful—more because of his aloofness, his air of keeping most of what he thought to himself. A head man, but of far different kind from Johnny Power, whom all the crew knew well. A Thames seaman with the sense not to talk flash, Power and sailors had a natural affinity.

“The Admiralty estimates that the voyage will take between four and six months,” Mr. Donovan said, pointedly ignoring Crowder.

“It will take longer than that,” said Richard.

“I agree. When the Admiralty does its calculations it always thinks that winds blow forever in the right quarter—that masts never snap—that spars never come adrift—and that sails never split, fall in the slings or work loose from the reefing pendants.” He tickled the loudly purring cat beneath its chin.

“No dog?” asked Richard.

“Bastards of things! Rodney here is Alexander’s cat and the equal of any dog aboard, which is why they don’t mess with him. He is named after Admiral Rodney, with whom I served in the West Indies when we thrashed the Frogs off Jamaica.” He lifted his lip at a hovering bulldog; so did Rodney, whereupon the bulldog decided it had urgent business elsewhere. “There are twenty-seven dogs aboard, all of them belonging to the marines. They will soon diminish. The spaniels and terriers ain’t too bad, they rat, but a hound is simply shark bait. Dogs fall overboard. Cats never do.” He kissed Rodney on top of his head and put him on the rail to illustrate his contention. Indifferent to the lapping water below, the cat settled with paws tucked under and continued to purr.

“Where have they sent the rest of the convicts?” asked Will Connelly, rescuing Richard, who moved unobtrusively away.

“Some to The Firm, some to Fortunee, the sick to a hospital ship and the rest to that lighter there.” Mr. Donovan pointed.

“For how long?”

“I suspect for one or two weeks at least.”

“But the men in the lighter will freeze to death!”

“Nay. They put them ashore each night in a camp, manacled and chained together. Better to be on a lighter than on a hulk.”

The following
day Alexander’s surgeon, Mr. William Balmain, brought two other doctors aboard, apparently to look at the ship, since the sick convicts were gone. One, whispered Stephen Donovan, was John White, chief surgeon to the expedition. The other, they could see for themselves, was the Portsmouth medical man Lieutenant Shairp had called in when Alexander first arrived.

Having received no work orders yet, the convicts stood about in close proximity to the doctors and listened to what was said; the equally curious crew were genuinely too busy to eavesdrop—cargo was arriving in lighters.

The Portsmouth doctor was convinced the illness was a rare form of bubonic plague; surgeons White and Balmain disagreed.

“Malignant!” cried the doctor. “It is bubonic!”

“Benign,” said the surgeons. “It is not bubonic.”

But all three concurred about preventative measures: the ’tween decks would have to be fumigated again, scrubbed thoroughly with oil of tar, then thickly coated with whitewash—a solution of quicklime, powdered chalk, size and water.

Left on board to supervise the loading of cargo, Stephen Donovan was not amused; the decks were piling up with casks, kegs, sacks, crates, barrels and parcels.

“I have to get them below!” he snapped to White and Balmain. “How can I do that when ye’ve got them hatches battened all day for your wretched fumigations? There is only one thing will rid Alexander of what ails her, and that is better bilge pumps!”

“The smell,” said Balmain loftily, “is due to dead bodies. A week or two at sea after extensive fumigation will remove it.”

White had wandered away to discover how the crew could load cargo through an intervening prison; a look below showed him that the tables and benches in the prison had been removed to reveal six-foot-square hatches beneath them exactly in line with those on the upper deck. Winched inboard on davits, even the gigantic water tuns were dropped straight into the orlop hold. He came back with his air of brisk superiority very much to the fore, brushed Balmain and Donovan aside, and issued orders.

The 36 starboard prisoners were despatched into the prison to mop, scrub and sponge the place with vinegar before fumigation with gunpowder; the 36 larboard convicts were sent down into the marines’ quarters below steerage, there to do the same.

“Christ!” squeaked Taffy Edmunds. “Poor little Davy Evans was right—we convicts are in heaven compared to this, though ’twould be nice to sleep in hammocks.”

The hold floor was awash in bilge overflow which stank worse than the prison compartment and released gases which had turned the pewter buttons on those brave scarlet coats as black as coal. The ’tween decks was scarcely six feet, which meant bending to pass under the beams, as on Ceres.

Thus it was that Richard and the larboard convicts were made privy to what took place between the irresistible force and the immovable object; Major Ross and Captain Sinclair came to grips in the marines’ hold under the fascinated eyes of 36 men. This stupendous battle was heralded by the arrival of the Major at the bottom of the wooden ladder from the crew’s quarters above.

“Get your bloated blubber down here, ye torpid bag of shit!” Ross bellowed. “Come and look, damn ye!”

And down the ladder on dainty booted feet came Captain Duncan Sinclair, for all the world like a glob of syrup trickling down one side of a smooth string. “No one,” he puffed, reaching the deck below, “speaks to
me
like that, Major! I am not only captain of this ship, but also one of her owners.”

“Which only makes ye all the more guilty, balloon-arse! Go on, look around ye! Look at where ye expect His Majesty’s Marines to live for God knows how many months! Almost three months already! They are sick and very afraid, for which I do not blame them one wee bit! Their dogs are better off—so are the sheep and pigs ye have aboard to pile on your own overloaded table! Sitting up there like King Muck of Dunghill Palace with a night cabin, a day cabin and the great cabin all to yourself, and my two officers in an airless cupboard! Eating with the privates! It will change, Sinclair, or I will personally spill your swollen guts into this liquid
shit!
” He put his hand on his sword hilt and looked perfectly capable of following the threat with the deed.

“Your men stay here because I have no other place to stow them,” said Sinclair. “As a matter of fact, they are occupying valuable space my firm contracted to fill up with more useful cargo than a lot of thieving, rum-swilling twiddle-poops not clever enough to get into the Navy nor rich enough to get into the Army! Ye’re the entire world’s leavings, Ross, you and your marines! ’Tain’t for nothing they call an empty bottle a marine! Cluttering up my crew’s galley, letting two dozen dogs shit from bowsprit to taffrail—look at my boot! Dog turd, Ross, fucken dog turd! Two of my hens dead, four of my ducks, and one goose! Not to mention the ewe I had to shoot because one of the fucken bulldogs got its teeth in and would not let go! Well, I shot the fucken dog first, ye Lowlands bastard without a mother!”

“Who’s the Lowlands bastard, ye Glasgow bitch’s by-blow?”

A pause ensued as both the combatants searched wildly for a new and mortally wounding thing to say and the convicts stood as still as statues for fear they might be noticed and sent on deck.

“The Lords of the Admiralty accepted Walton’s tender, which was specific about Alexander’s appointments,” said Sinclair, eyes two blazing slits. “Blame your superiors, Ross, do not blame me! When I heard I was to have forty marines as well as two hundred and ten convicts, I was not a happy man! The marines stay right here, and ye can like or ye can lump it.”

“I do not like it and I will not lump it, ye elephant’s arse! Ye will shift my lads up into steerage and accommodate my officers properly or I will have words to say from Governor Phillip all the way to Admiral Lord Howe and Sir John Middleton—not to mention Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt! Ye have two choices, Sinclair. Either put your crew down here and my marines where they are, or move the stern bulkhead of the prison twenty-five feet forward. Now that the fleet has Prince of Wales, the displaced convicts can go to her. And that,” said Ross, brushing his white-gloved hands together, “is that, suet-face!”

“It is not!” Sinclair snapped through his teeth; the sight of so much adiposity in such a ferment was Homeric. “Alexander was contracted to transport two hundred and ten convicts, not one hundred and forty convicts and forty marines in a space belonging to seventy more convicts! The purpose of this expedition is not to cosset a parcel of scabby marines, but to get as many of England’s felons to the far end of the earth as possible. I will keep my entire contracted complement of convicts and—if ye like—I will take full responsibility for their confinement through the agency of my crew. It is very clear and simple, Major Ross. Move your precious marines off Alexander. I will lock the convicts in the prison permanently and feed them through the hatch bars for the duration, which does away with the need for marine guards.”

“Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt would not approve,” said Ross, on safe and sure ground. “They are both modern men who insist that the convicts be delivered at Botany Bay in better condition than ye used to deliver your slaves to Barbados! If ye lock these men in for as much as a year, they will half of them be dead on arrival and the other half fit only for a Bedlam. Therefore,” he continued, looking as malleable as a cast-iron thirty-two-pounder, “it might behove ye to build yourself a poop roundhouse and a forecastle within the next month. Ye may then move yourself one deck up to live in solitary splendor and turn your quarterdeck over to my officers. Do not forget, Sinclair, that ye have also to accommodate the ship’s surgeon, the naval agent and the contractor’s agent, all of whom have quarterdeck rank. They will fill it without your presence, ye cheeseparing bile bag! As for your crew—put them where a crew belongs, in a forecastle. My enlisted men can then move up into steerage and I will undertake to provide them with a galley stove on which they can cook for themselves and the convicts. Thus your crew can keep their galley, you can build yourself a new one in your roundhouse, the officers can use the quarterdeck one, and Alexander will turn into something like a ship rather than a slaver, ye fat flawn!”

The grey slits of eyes had changed during this masterly speech, from furious rage to a more natural cunning. “That,” Sinclair said, “would cost Walton’s at least a thousand pounds.”

Major Ross turned on his heel and mounted the ladder. “Send the bill to the Admiralty,” he said, and disappeared.

Captain Duncan Sinclair looked at the ladder, then suddenly seemed to see the silent ring of men around him for the first time. “Ye need a bucket chain to get rid of this overflow,” he said to Ike Rogers curtly, “and while ye’re about it, lift that hatch over there and start baling out the starboard bilge. Some more of ye can bale out larboard. Tip fresh sea-water in and bale until the bilge water is clear. I can smell it on the quarterdeck.” He stared at the ladder again. “You, you and you,” he said to Taffy, Will and Neddy, all much of a height, “get your shoulders under my arse and push me up this fucken ladder.”

Once the sound of his progress upward had faded, the convicts collapsed into shrieks of laughter.

“I thought,” gasped Ike, “that for a moment there, Neddy, ye were going to tip him flat on his puss in the bilge water.”

“I was tempted,” said Neddy, wiping his eyes, “but he is the captain, and ’tis best not to offend the captain. Major Ross don’t care who he offends, so much is sure.” He giggled. “An elephant’s arse! Oh, it fits! Getting him up that ladder near killed us.”