‘Messmates!’ he cried. ‘The man is a coward, not a doubt in the world of it. A coward!’
He roared the word till it reverberated through the deck, although it did not silence the row from the other messes. His comrades cheered.
‘A coward!’ he roared again. ‘And a craven! And a poltroon! And the son of a dirty whore!’
Each epithet was cheered to the echo. William could hardly believe his ears. Where was the master-at-arms to quell this din? And did these men not realise they could be hanged! He did not move, however. The man had, after all, still not named a name.
‘“My brave boys”, he says, the poltroon, “My brave boys, soon we’ll be at sea. And God help the enemy then!” he says.’ Joyce laughed until he choked, his messmates banging away with their pots. ‘“My brave boys”, he says, “when we get to sea there’ll be prizes galore. Prize-money enough to rot you! Prize-money to have you rolling in gold. Or my name’s not Daniel Swift!” he says. Well lads! What the hell is it, eh?’
And as his messmates roared, he answered his own question: ‘Captain Lily-liver! That’s his name! Captain fucking Coward!’
In a blind fury William took a step towards the mess. That these scum could sink so low! That such talk could be heard on a ship of His Majesty. In his rage, he almost walked up to the gang of drunken seamen. But in the last instant, some sense deep within him told him to move no further. Breathing rapidly through his nose he blundered back to the ladder, then worked his way aft to find the master-at-arms.
When Joyce was safe below in irons, after a struggle that had cost dear in corporals’ teeth, William went to report to his captain. Who expelled air through his lips in mighty satisfaction.
‘Well done, my boy,’ he said. ‘Well done and quickly done. That is the way of it, you see. We must strike hard and we must strike quickly. That way we shall keep the dogs under.’
Thirteen
Next morning Thomas Fox was hauled out of the sick-bay and set to work.
He was lying on his side when the order came. He was very weak, and when he retched nothing came up except a thin dribble of brown, bitter fluid. From time to time in the long hours, surgeon’s mates and Peter had tried to ‘tempt’ him with food – dry biscuit, cheese and beer – which he had refused even to look at. He had drunk some water, but it had made him sicker, having turned brown and muddy because of the violent motion of the water casks.
Not long before, Mr Adamson had come to check his charges. There were four others in the sick-bay besides Thomas now – the corporal with the broken arm, a seaman who had broken his leg when a sea threw him into the scuppers, another seaman with a knife wound under his arm from a drunken fight the night before, and a marine who seemed to have a disease of the stomach. The fracture cases had given over screaming long before, but uttered sharp, squeaking noises when the ship lurched more violently than usual. The cut sailor lay on his back snoring like a pig, while the marine let out long hollow groans of agony every ten minutes or so. He was doubled up so completely that his chin was below his knees. He still had his scarlet coat on, sadly stained with all manner of stains; he was too contorted for it to be removed.
Mr Adamson had recovered his good humour during the long night, although he can have had very little sleep. He hopped around the sick-bay with a bag in one hand and the inevitable brandy bottle in the other, whistling to himself and tutting occasionally as he looked at his patients. The drunk sailor he did not even waken – merely looked at the knife-wound, dabbed at it with a cloth, and retied the bandage. He caught the sick, bright eyes of Thomas as he pulled the man’s shirt back across his chest.
‘He’ll damn my eyes when he wakes, eh boy?’ he chirruped.
‘Done up his wound and never offered him a drop!’ he winked.
‘Only the roughest though,’ he confided. ‘Not the sort of brandy I’d give to granny!’
Thomas would have smiled had he been able to. The surgeon was so kind. He had treated him like a friend, trying everything he knew to make him comfortable. A long swell of nausea racked him and he puked feebly. Not that the treatment had brought comfort, but how Mr Adamson had tried.
‘Still as bad is it, young fellow? Never mind, it’s only the seasickness. You’ll be over it soon, then we’ll have you skipping about like a lamb.’ He knelt before Thomas and wiped the vomit from his face. ‘It’ll moderate soon, the weather, you see if it don’t. Then we’ll have you skipping.’
The surgeon passed on, to ease bandages, check splints, administer brandy. He obviously used it as a cure-all, thought Thomas, and indeed he looked forward to the moment when he could hold some down. His mother placed her reliance on herb teas and other country infusions. He suspected that brandy would do as much good as such medicine, while its other properties were far preferable to some of the things that had been forced down his throat.
When the boatswain’s mate swam into his view and told him to get up and follow him, Thomas could make no sense of it. Mr Adamson had said nothing of his being better, or fit to leave the sick-bay, or anything. He tried to focus on the face, which was pressed strangely against the deckhead way above him. His eyes ached and he did not take much in. A shambly sort of fellow, with his yellow teeth sticking out of his lips. Thomas closed his eyes again, hoping the vision would go away.
Instead a searing pain dragged deep into his stomach.
The boatswain’s mate had kicked him. Thomas retched, but nothing came. He opened panic-stricken eyes to see the big bony foot drawn back once more. He struggled to get to his knees, but fell forward into the kick. He started to cry.
Then another pain and he started to rise. It was a magical pain, excruciating, and his body had to follow it, to rise under it. The man was pulling him upright by a thin tuft of his remaining hair.
Through his tears Thomas Fox looked at the slacklipped, toothy face. It grinned.
‘Charlie Jefferies at your service,’ said the boatswain’s mate. ‘Beg to present the compliments of Captain Swift and Mr Allgood. A small matter of punishment, I believe. On account of you a-trying to do for yourself.’
Again Thomas was too ill to really understand. He was half-pushed, half-carried out of the sick-bay and along the main deck. The stench was alarming, even after the dirty straw he had lain on. Everywhere he sensed guns, vague shapes, and men in the gloom. He stumbled over the main cable once, falling to his hands and knees. The deck was wet and slimy.
Climbing the steep ladder into the open air would have been beyond him if it had not been for Jefferies. He was carrying a stiff cane with which he jabbed the boy frequently and hard. It was like a goad such as Thomas might have used himself on a set of stubborn animals. He was whimpering with pain, and a growing fear of the punishment or torture he was to face.
They emerged from a hatchway in the forward part of the ship and to Thomas Fox it meant a renewal of terror and misery. He could see nothing, for a long while, but greyness; greyness and cold. All around the labouring vessel the sea was like slate. All the greenness and warmth he knew had gone. The sea was a cold, intensely threatening colour, overlaid by a grey-whiteness as the tops of the waves were blown out and forward in front of them. And the waves!
In his eyes they were enormous. They rose steeply to the weather of the ship and tore down upon her. Each one must crash straight on board and break away everything in its path, he thought. Enough of them actually did break over the bulwarks and roll fast and solid across the waist to make his fears seem perfectly justified. Sometimes the mainmast grew out of a wilderness of living sea that tried to climb higher and higher up its weather side.