Morgan’s Run (50 page)

“The end of the road for this highwayman,” he said. “Oh, I am so glad, Richard! Be glad for me too. Try to look after Joey. He will feel it.”

“Rest easy, Ike, we will all look after Joey.”

Ike lifted one skeletal arm to indicate the shelf along the beam. “My boots, Richard. Ye’re the only one big enough to wear them and I want ye to have them.
As they are, whole and complete.
Ye know?”

“I know. They will be used wisely.”

“Good,” he said, and closed his eyes.

About an hour later he died, not having opened them.

So many men had died aboard Alexander that her sailmakers had had to beg old canvas from other ships; clad in clean clothes, Isaac Rogers was sewn into his envelope and carried on deck. As he owned a Book of Common Prayer, Richard read the service, committing Ike’s soul to God and his body to the deep. It slid off the board and sank immediately, weighted down with basalt stones collected off the same beach in Teneriffe where John Power had slept. The Death Ship had run out of metal scraps.

Surgeon Balmain ordered another fumigation, a scrub with oil of tar, a new coat of whitewash. His was rather a lonely life, stuck on the quarterdeck with only two marine lieutenants for company. They messed separately from him and shared absolutely nothing with him. Like Arthur Bowes Smyth, the surgeon on Lady Penrhyn, Balmain sustained himself with an interest in the many sea creatures they chanced upon, and if they were small enough, preserved them in spirits. Admittedly it was a great deal easier to descend into the prison these days of chain pumps, but he was still smarting from Surgeon White’s jawing and determined that it would not be
his
fault if the wretched convicts kept dying.

When a
convict using the crew’s holes in the bow was washed overboard by a freak wave, the complement went down to 183.

At the beginning of August the fleet made landfall at Cape Frio, a day’s sail to the north of Brazil’s chief city. But the high, jagged mountains of that coast behaved as had St. Jago’s peaks; once around the cape the wind failed into catspaws and calms. They groped down to Rio de Janeiro, not reaching it until the night between the 4th and 5th. The season was winter now: Rio de Janeiro was so far south of the Equator that it lay just to the north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Out of the realms of both crab and sea goat. The passage from Teneriffe had taken 56 days and they were 84 days out of Portsmouth, figures which rounded neatly into 8 weeks and 12 weeks. And 6,600 land miles.

Permission to enter the colonial domains of Portugal had to be secured, a time-consuming business. At three in the afternoon the fleet crossed the mile-wide bar between the Sugarloafs to the thunder of a thirteen-gun salute from Sirius answered by the guns of Fort Santa Cruz.

From dawn on, everyone on Alexander had crowded to the rails, fascinated by this alien, fabulously beautiful place. The south Sugarloaf was a thousand-foot-tall egg of pinkish-grey rock crowned with a wig of trees, the north Sugarloaf less spectacularly bare. Other crags reared, their tops sheared and jarred, flanks thick with lushly green forests, flashes of brilliant grassland, jutting grey, cream, pink faces of rock. The beaches were long, curved and yellow-sanded, creamy with surf where the ocean beat in, still and placid once across the bar. They dropped anchor not far inside, opposite one of the many fortresses erected to guard Rio de Janeiro from maritime predators. It was not until the next day that the eleven ships were towed to their permanent moorings off the city of São Sebastião, which was the proper name for urban Rio. It occupied a squarish peninsula on the western shore and sent tentacles of itself into the valleys between the peaks all around.

The harbor was alive with bum boats, most of them paddled by near-naked negroes, each craft sporting an awning painted in bright colors. Richard could see the spires of churches crowned with golden crosses, but of other tall buildings Rio had few. No one had forbidden the convicts access to the deck, nor had they been ironed, even John Power. A patrol of longboats rowed constantly around the six transports, however, and turned the bum boats away.

The weather was fine and very hot, the air still. Oh, to be allowed ashore! Not possible, all the convicts understood that. When midday came they were served with huge pieces of fresh beef, pots of yams and beans, messes of rice and loaves of strange-tasting bread made, Richard was told later, from a root called “cassada.” But all that was as nothing when the boats arrived and laughing negroes threw hundreds upon hundreds of oranges up onto the deck, making a game of catchings out of it, white teeth flashing in ebony faces. Richard knew of oranges, as did a few others; he had read that some great houses contained “orangeries” and had once seen an orange displayed by Cousin James-the-druggist, who imported lemons to obtain their oil. Lemons were less perishable.

Some of these oranges were six and seven inches in diameter, deep and rich in color; others were almost blood-red and had blood-red flesh inside. Having discovered that the unpalatable skin peeled off easily, the convicts and marines gorged on oranges, ravished by their sweetness and juiciness. Sometimes they ate fat, bright yellow lemons to cut the saccharine taste of so many oranges or sucked at less juicy limes, which lay somewhere between the astringency of a lemon and the syrup of an orange. They never got tired of the citrus, could not get enough. Finding that the palest fruit had been picked before it was fully ripe, Neddy Perrott began at the end of their third week in Rio to stockpile any succulent globes he thought might last a few days; once made aware of it, more convicts followed suit. And a number of men, including Richard, saved orange and lemon seeds.

Every single day they got fresh beef, fresh vegetables of some kind, and fresh cassada bread. Once the marines found out that Rio rum might be poor in quality but was almost as cheap as water, discipline and supervision of the convicts was close to nonexistent. The two lieutenants were hardly ever on board, nor was Surgeon Balmain, who took himself off on country expeditions to look at enormous, brilliant butterflies and flowers of waxen glory called orchids. Hungry for pets, the crew and marines often came back bearing quite tame parrots of gorgeous colors; only two of the dogs were left, the rest, as Donovan had predicted, bait for sharks. Rodney the cat, his wife and rapidly growing family were thriving. Alexander might be more sanitary now, but she was full of rats and mice.

There was a less attractive side to Rio; it was a cockroach paradise. England did own a very small and meek creature in the roach, but these things were giants that flew, clattered, and oozed the same kind of evil intent that sharks did. Aggressive and clever, they would charge a man rather than run away. From Sirius’s top echelons all the way down to Alexander’s most picked-on convict, men were driven to the verge of dementia by cockroaches.

Most shipbound people slept almost nude on deck, though not as peacefully as at sea. Rio never went to bed. Nor did it ever grow dark; the churches and other buildings were illuminated all night. As if the few Portuguese and their innumerable black slaves feared what lurked amid the nocturnal shadows. After hearing some creature emit a bloodcurdling sound halfway between a shriek and a roar in the small hours of one night, Richard began to understand why they kept darkness at bay.

At least two or three times a week there were fireworks, always in honor of some saint, or the Virgin, or an event in the life of Jesus Christ—there was nothing sober or toned down about Rio’s religious life. This offended Knoxian individuals like Balmain and Shairp, who regarded Catholicism as immoral, degenerate and satanic.

“I am surprised,” said Richard to John Power as they watched colored sparks and tendrils float down from a skyrocket, “that ye’ve not tried to escape, Johnny.”

Power looked wry. “Here? Not speaking Portuguese? I would be snabbled in a day. Apart from Portuguese slavers and cargo snows, the only ship in port is an English whaler having her bottom scraped. And she is to take a party of naval invalids from Sirius and Supply home with her.” He changed the subject, obviously too painful. “I see that Esmeralda is neglecting his ship as usual. He never makes any attempt to scrape her.”

“Didn’t Mr. Bones tell ye? Alexander is copper sheathed.” Richard flicked his chest, sticky with orange juice. “I am going over the side to wash.”

“I did not know ye could swim.”

“I cannot. But I dunk myself in the water and hang on to the ladder. In the hope that sooner or later I will be able to do without the ladder. Yesterday I let go and actually kept afloat for two seconds. Then I panicked. Today I might not panic.”

“I can swim, but dare not,” said Power ruefully. Slack discipline or no, Power had his own guard.

Richard was
in the water one day when Stephen Donovan returned in a hired boat. He had not succeeded in swimming; as soon as he let go of the ladder he began to sink. With a boat coming in he had to get out, and was ready to when he saw who stood in its bow.

“Richard, ye idiot, there are sharks in this harbor!” said Donovan, gaining the deck. “I would not continue were I you.”

“I very much doubt that any shark would fancy my stringy frame in the midst of the bounty Rio harbor offers,” grinned Richard. “I am trying to learn to swim, but so far I am a dismal failure.”

Donovan’s eyes twinkled. “So that if Alexander goes down in an ocean gale ye can swim for Africa? Fear not, Alexander has a good tumblehome hull and she’s shipshape in spite of her age. Ye could lay her right over on her beam until her spars went under or poop her in a following sea, and she’d not sink.”

“No, so that when we get to Botany Bay and perhaps buckets are in short supply, I can at least bathe in sea-water without needing to worry about being over my head in a hole. There may be lakes and rivers there, but Sir Joseph Banks does not mention them. In fact, he indicates that fresh water is exceeding scant—just a very few small brooks.”

“I understand. Look at yon dog Wallace.” He pointed to where Lieutenant Shairp’s Scotch terrier was striking out for the ship alongside a hired boat, encouraged by a laughing Shairp.

“What about Wallace?”

“Watch him swim. Next time ye go down the ladder to brave the sharks, pretend that ye’ve got four legs, not two. Tip yourself onto your belly, stick your head up out of the water and move all four of your limbs like a duck’s paddles. Then,” said Donovan, bestowing a silver sixpence upon a beaming black man after he put a heap of parcels on the deck, “ye’ll swim, Richard. From Wallace and four legs ye’ll go easily to treading water, floating, all the tricks and treats of swimming.”

“Johnny Power swims, yet he is still with us.”

“I wonder would he have come so tamely in Teneriffe if he had known what I found out today?”

Alerted, Richard put his head to one side. “Tell me.”

“This fleet sailed from Portsmouth with what cartridges the marines had in their pouches and not a grain of powder or a single shot more.”

“Ye’re joking!”

“Nay, I am not.” Donovan began to chuckle, shaking his head. “That is how well organized this expedition is! They forgot to supply any ammunition.”

“Christ!”

“I only found out because His Excellency Governor Phillip has managed to purchase ten thousand cartridges here in Rio.”

“So they could not have contained a serious mutiny on any one of these ships—I have seen how our Alexander marines care for their pieces and ammunition—there would not be one cartridge worth a man’s spit.”

Mr. Donovan glanced at Richard sharply, opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and squatted down near the parcels. “Here are some of your things. I will pick up more tomorrow. I also heard talk of sailing.” He piled the bundles into Richard’s arms. “Oil of tar, some ointment from a crone so hagged and ugly that she cannot help but know her craft, plus some powdered bark she swears cures fevers. And a bottle of laudanum in case aqua Rio spreads the dysentery—the surgeons are suspicious of it, Lieutenant King sanguine. Lots of good rags and a couple of fine cotton shirts I could not resist—got a few for myself and thought of you. For coolness and comfort in hot weather, cotton has no equal. Malt is proving elusive—the surgeons got to the warehouses first, damn their eyes and cods. But dry some of your orange and lemon peels in the sun and chew them. ’Tis common sailor talk that citrus prevents the scurvy.”

Richard’s eyes dwelled upon Donovan’s face with affection and gratitude, but Donovan was too wise to interpret what they held as more than it actually was. Friendship. Which was to die for with this man, who must surely have loved, but was not willing to do so again. Whom had he lost? How had he lost? Not the woman who had opened the gates of sexual heaven. That, from the expression on his face, had revolted him. Not any woman. Nor yet any man. One day, Richard Morgan, he vowed, I will hear all of your story.

As he went to leave the ship the next morning, he found Richard waiting for him by the ladder.