Captain Craig, the commanding officer of the marines, had been called in for a conference with Swift, and the guard on all means of escape was redoubled for the last night. Red-coated men shivered watchfully at every point, and the bulwarks were constantly patrolled. Even the heads – the lavatories right in the eyes of the ship – had their guard. Swift knew his men; he was determined that none should run.
In the mess shared by Jesse Broad and Thomas Fox, a mood of intense brooding prevailed. The gunports were battened down, and a lantern cast a flickering, stinking light. Peter, the boy, tried to strike up a conversation with Fox, but the wide, swimming eyes were sightless.
‘I do believe he be drunk!’ exclaimed Peter, after a while. ‘Why Thomas Fox, you be drunk!’ Grandfather Fulman tutted gently.
‘Leave him be, Peter lad. If he do be drunk it is surely better for him, but just try to mind the situation he finds himself in.’
Thomas did not know if he were drunk or sober. Truly the amount of beer he had consumed during the afternoon was amazing, much more than he ever drank on shore. But his mind was racing so fast, his thoughts were so like a rat in a trap, circling, circling, searching hopelessly for a way out, that he had noticed no effect from the liquor. The biscuit he had eaten for supper, with an end of rindy cheese, had likewise gone down his throat unnoticed, despite Peter’s attempts to amuse him with the small animals that could be made to ‘come out and beg’.
He knew the ship was to sail tomorrow, and his world had grown inwards into his head, smaller and smaller. It was one day only since he had been pressed, but he could not grasp that. The whole of his life was crushed into the tiny, reeking space that he filled on earth. He had been born into the Welfare, born into this misery. Every time his mind stumbled accidentally onto the cottage where he lived, it gave him a sharp physical pain. Occasionally a gasp or a small shriek would escape from his lips when this happened. Father, Mother, Maggie and Sue. He could not think about them. He sat beside the wheel of a gun, his shoulders hunched so far forward that he found it hard to breathe, staring at the deck in front of him without seeing it. It was an agony of missing that he could not explain, could hardly endure.
The others in the mess must have recognised the signs, for apart from Peter no one tried to offer comfort or give advice. Very few words were spoken, in fact. Grandfather Fulman sucked at his empty pipe, another old shellback called Samuel whittled away at the deformed skin on the end of his thumb with a knife. Matthews, the lantern-jawed merchant sailorman, kept his usual place nearest the port. His eyes were closed, his lips were sealed, his thoughts were secret.
Jesse Broad looked at Thomas Fox a lot. He felt desperately sorry for the shepherd boy, and toyed with the idea of taking him with him. But he knew it was crazy. The boy could not swim, for a certainty, despite having been born and raised on the coast. In fact, Broad knew, it was unlikely that half a dozen of the whole ship’s company could stay afloat unaided for more than five seconds. Strange fellows, seamen. Maybe they thought it better to drown quickly if they had to, than kick about in hope and anguish for hours before sinking just the same.
But Jesse Broad could swim. Ever since a lad he had treated the green waters as his second home. Even Mary could swim, rare indeed for a woman. In years gone by they had swum together, secretly, in the wooded creeks round Langstone. The pleasure of the sport made a thousandfold better by the fear of being caught.
He had a grinding pain of loss run through his belly then. He thought of the christening day. Today, only today! To Broad, too, it was as though he had been years in the Navy. He shook the pain away with a grunt. Why the feeling of loss, when tonight Mary would be in his arms again? And Jem, his tiny boy.
Well, not tonight, but soon. Tonight, with the easterly driving the waves straight onto the Isle of Wight, he would make Priory Bay. An hour or less to walk round the coast to Bembridge, and James Sweet would hide him readily enough. The Welfare would make sail tomorrow – no single deserter would hold her up – he would lie low for a day or two in case Swift got word ashore to the preventive men or the Navy to try and flush him out – then heigh ho back to Portsmouth.
He thought about Swift for a while. What had he said about desertions? Two men had tried and two men had died. That was clearly why he had anchored at St Helen’s. There were many ships much farther in towards Portsmouth, in Spithead, but out here the chances of getting ashore were far remoter. The rocks off St Helen’s were very dangerous and the tidal currents powerful and treacherous. Broad, thanks to the contraband trade, knew those currents and tidal movements like the back of his hand. With the breeze to help and the set of the waves, he was pretty sure he could make it.
There was a muffled sob and a grey movement as Thomas Fox stood up. He stumbled away from his messmates towards the pens where the beasts were kept. Broad shook his head. The desperate thin boy; he had never seen so much misery in a human being. And only a child.
What if he found a spar? A barrel, or a plank, to hold them both afloat? Madness. Out of the question. If he was to see Mary again, and his child, he must think of no one but himself. In any case… He remembered Hardman, his dear friend Hardman. He would have liked to have revenged him, for the sake of old times and dear times. Dull anger stirred. Where was his body? Where was the wherry? Oh God, he must get to Portsmouth and home before the wherry was found to terrify Mary.
Jesse Broad stood slowly until his head pressed against the rough underside of a deck beam. The pale round of a face followed him. It was Grandfather Fulman.
‘Where are you going to, friend Jesse?’
Broad stared at the old man. The face was open, and kind, and strangely sad. It occurred to the younger man that this old salt probably had had a Mary once. A wife, sons, daughters. Was probably wrenched away, to never see them again. He almost spoke his mind. But stopped.
‘Heads,’ he muttered.
Grandfather Fulman gazed for a long time.
‘If you are seen you’ll be shot, or flogged, or put in irons,’ he said softly.
‘For going to the heads?’ Broad whispered stubbornly.
‘You are an animal now, friend Jesse,’ answered Fulman. ‘You have no right to even breathe, if someone decides you should not.’
There was a pause. The others in the mess seemed to be unaware of the conversation.
The old man went on: ‘Go very gentle, friend. There’s marines on this ship would kill for sport. The boatswain’s mates are murderers to a man, and Captain Swift, they say, is first cousin to the devil. Avoid all lighted parts, remember that there’s darkness round the main chains, and if you gets in the water, think on this…’
Broad listened, tense, unsmiling.
‘Keep your feet, what’s white, under the waves, and keep your face, what shines, covered in your jacket, what’s dark. That is, don’t leave your jacket, although heavy, on account it’ll keep you secret. Drop him when you’re clear. If they puts a boat out for you, swim across wind and waves for a while. You’ll be safe.’
Broad said nothing still.
‘By the by, friend Jesse,’ said old Fulman. ‘Can you swim?’
‘Don’t need to swim, grandfather. For I am only going to the heads. Amn’t I?’
The whispering was over. Broad set off across the dark and silent deck like a cat, straining every nerve and muscle to see and hear. It was a strange world, of curved hammocks, snores, odd points of flickering light and crouched men. There was a ghostly silence over all, which was in fact no silence at all, more a threatening calm. There was a constant low groaning from the ship, a desolate sighing of wind, a mournful grinding of the main cable. Every so often there was a splashing slap as a sea broke against the side and rose up for a moment before subsiding. Then the shuffling of beasts from the pen, and from among them a thin piping wail, mysterious and horrible, which he knew to be the suffering boy.