It was not long afterwards that Mr Robinson decided to get the topgallants off her. He spent some little time explaining why he was going to make the move to William Bentley, who remained interested although he was very cold despite a waterproof. Mr Robinson talked of the way the ship was rolling, the difficulty she was beginning to experience in lifting her bows from steep troughs, the feeling that she was unhappy. None of the explanations was in any way specific, which annoyed William vaguely. He knew that things had changed, that the note from the rigging was deeper, that the gouts of spray that flew across the quarterdeck in cold and drenching sheets had become more frequent; but as for ‘feeling’, as for ‘experiencing’ – how could he tell what the ship knew?
More interesting was the deep sensation of nausea that was growing in his belly. For more than two hours men had been being ill, and at first he had enjoyed the spectacle. He had been out in the Channel before, of course. That great grown sailormen should be stricken like boobies had amused him. Now he was not so sure. In fact, by the time hands were piped aloft to reef the upper sails, William watched them with an expression of pained fascination on his face. What was more, he could not really see them. His eyes were filled with a greenish mist, criss-crossed with cordage and wildly swaying masts, that etched awful patterns against the white and grey clouds racing across the lowering sky.
When his uncle came on deck to speak to the master, William was like an iron man, a dummy, rooted to the spot. Their conversation came into his ears in a drone, as if from a great distance.
‘What goes on, Mr Robinson?’
‘We are in for a blow, sir, unless I am greatly mistaken,’ the master replied. ‘And the wind is veering again. We may end up with a westerly yet.’
The first part of Jesse Broad’s prayer was apparently being answered.
Eleven
By the middle of the next day the Welfare was making heavy weather of it, and the quality of the people had become a problem that threatened her with danger. Not all the beating in the world, not all the starting by the boatswain and his men, could turn the scrapings of many a gutter, the scourings of many a jail, into seamen. Already they had lost one man over the side. He had dropped with a long scream from the fore topsail yard as the labouring ship had staggered drunkenly between two big seas. He had bobbed off almost slowly, his face clearly visible between the creaming grey crests, looking imploringly a t the struggling frigate.
One of the helmsmen had allowed his eyes to stray for a moment to his lost shipmate, and a sail had almost been caught aback. Captain Swift, who had been hovering near the wheel, gave a snarl and punched the seaman full in the face, while the master and the other helmsman clawed the spokes up to get her off the wind once more.
William Bentley, as befitted a young gentleman, was now on the quarterdeck and fighting his sickness manfully. He was not alone. Jack Evans was a vile green colour and Simon Allen, another mid, was as sick as a donkey. The youngest of the young gentlemen, James Finch, had gone below to the berth, which was a very bad move. Bentley was not officially on duty, but to skulk below in a storm, when the crew of scum had to be bullied, cajoled, and given example to, might damn him in Swift’s eyes forever.
So William stood on the quarterdeck, muffled in his tarpaulin coat, soaked under it to the very skin in freezing water, and suffered in silence. His sickness was awful. He would have welcomed any way out of it. Every now and then, like the others, he vomited, violently, painfully. Then turned his eyes to sails and cordage, wind and sea, once more.
The wind had hauled farther and farther round in the night, as it gained in power. The Welfare was now closehauled, under double-reefed topsails. Her lee rail was low, and green seas swept the deck every two or three minutes. The process of the gear stretching and working-in that Mr Robinson had explained to him the day before was unfortunately still going on. It was their main problem.
William watched the boatswain with something approaching admiration. For a common man he showed an uncommon determination and endurance. The few really good seamen under his control worked like a team of fine animals, and even the gutter-rats could be made to pull, usually at the correct moment – the gutter-rats that were capable of moving, that is. The boatswain’s great strength had stood him in good stead. For he had been on deck for nearly twenty hours, fighting canvas and men. As he sheltered under the weather bulwarks for a moment the midshipman stared at him. His black beard was streaming, his body was like a great sponge – and he was laughing into the teeth of the gale. He did not even wear a tarpaulin jacket, merely a thick flannel shirt that had split almost to his belt. He was a giant.
To windward, the prospect was bleak. The cloud was so low it almost skimmed the wave-tops. These were high, and creaming, and marched in never-ending succession that he found oddly frightening. There was no reason William could see why they should ever stop. Great, grey, cold mountains, that could bear down on the Welfare until she gave up the uneven struggle. He gritted his teeth. It was the sickness merely. That would go; that he would defeat. And his uncle, and Mr Robinson, and that mad boatswain – were they worried? Not a bit of it. Allgood was laughing.
The sickness on deck was confined to the officers, because any man who succumbed in the waist or on the foredeck would have been washed overboard immediately. So the sick among the people were all below, all confined to their living quarters. The gunports were tightly battened down, as were the hatches; under them, in the reeking darkness, conditions were appalling. There was a dim, flickering light at intervals from swaying lanterns, but mostly the men suffered in near-total blindness. The master-at-arms and his corporals patrolled from time to time, but with little purpose, and in fact on his third round one corporal was caught off balance, thrown against a gun-truck, and broke his arm in two places. His screams of agony added a more ghoulish note to the groans of ship and men. The all-pervading smell of sewage that rose from the bilge water being thrown around and stirred up deep below fought a constant and evil battle with the reek of vomit, fresh and stale. Even the livestock was vomiting.
Jesse Broad was not sick, but the battering his body received from the deck he lay on hurt him badly. The sick-bay was up in the eyes of the Welfare, and the cool breeze that had come through the hawse holes the day before was now a dank, chilling blast. Water burst through the holes despite their plugging, and roared back along the deck, bubbling under the light partitions that formed the bay. Broad’s palliasse was a sink of dripping straw. Worst was the forward motion. As Welfare’s bow lifted over each sea and the wind drove her into the next, she would gather speed until her great flat bow buried itself, and Broad would be inched along, flat on his face, on his straw sledge.
His prayer had been answered, half of it, and that with a vengeance. But so far it had meant only discomfort. There was no sign that the frigate was being much delayed yet, or might run for shelter. With each shock, with each fresh stagger, with each howl of wind through the hawse, he smiled grimly. Blow wind blow, he thought; blow like a bitch. Blow us back to England and to hell with it!
He spent several hours trying to comfort Thomas Fox, whose terror, like his elation the day before, Broad found amazing. The shepherd boy was convinced that the ship was sinking, and he was equally convinced that Broad was lying when he said there was nothing to fear. It had been confirmed for him when the water started coming under the partition and sluicing across the deck. It had been a relief for Broad, although a nuisance because of the mess and stench, when the boy had become too ill to talk. Luckily Fox was still weak; he spent more time unconscious than most of the sick men on board.