His sombre thoughts were not helped when he saw Thomas Fox being brought on deck by Jefferies. Grandfather Fulman, sucking salt-water through his cold and empty clay, told him ‘the poor boy’s appointment as a liar’ would last a week, or maybe much more. Of filth and unremitting work.
‘But in weather like this?’ said Broad, watching the isolated trio at the bow. ‘Hell’s teeth, no man on board could use the heads, let alone clean them. Are they mad?’
Grandfather Fulman looked around him carefully under his dripping, shaggy eyebrows.
‘Mad?’ he muttered. ‘Ah, friend Jesse. There’s many on board of this vessel—’
A shout went up from ahead of them, and the Welfare began the fast, deep plunge into the monster sea that had arisen to weather of her. Broad watched its rise out of the corner of his eye as he reached for a secure handhold.
‘Grip hard, lad,’ said Fulman.
There was a strange momentary lull before the sea hit them, as the height of it deflected the savage wind above her sails. Then the wall rose in a great black surge over the bow and the weather rail.
In the confusion that followed, with loose timbers careering about the waist and men coughing water from their lungs and stomachs, Broad noticed that the midshipman had gone from the foredeck.
‘Grandfather!’ he said urgently. ‘We’ve lost that mid!’
The old fellow was a sorry sight himself. He was red with fury and wetter than a drowned cat. He had bitten hard at his pipe to save it, but the weight of water had carried away the bowl. He turned his face to the foredeck in a flash.
‘Damn me, I think you’re right!’ he said excitedly. ‘Now there’s cause to rejoice!’
Jesse Broad was shocked.
‘Hold hard, Fulman,’ he said. ‘It is only a boy!’ Grandfather Fulman spat.
‘See that, Broad,’ he said viciously. ‘I have spat on the deck. My mouth is full of salt and dottle from me pipe. And anyway, I’m an old man, entitled to spitting. Six months ago I spat like that, on a night as black as hell, and over the side, not on the deck, and young master Bentley caught me at it. I wore the spitkid for a week. And was lucky, quoth he, not to be flogged. I shall not mourn the nephew of the uncle.’
The ship was wallowing in the aftermath of the sea.
There were loose spars to be seized, secured, restowed. The boatswain’s mates, as wet as anyone, were venting their fury on any back within reach. Before he jumped to stop a partly-adzed yard from rolling overside, Broad saw that Bentley had rejoined Thomas Fox and Allgood. He was relieved, despite what Fulman had said.
After an hour of heavy, wet work, the pair were sheltering once more. The old man was panting painfully, the darkened pipe-stem still gripped in the side of his toothless mouth. Broad said nothing to him, so as not to increase his distress by having to reply. He looked into the eye of the wind, then up at the masts, then at the quarterdeck, where the slight form of Mr Robinson was huddled in a cloak.
‘You’ll be needing that breath soon, old fellow,’ he told Fulman with a smile. ‘We’ll be setting more sail before much longer, unless I’m not the seaman I used to be. It’s falling lighter all the time; aye, and fairer too. I’ll wager we’ll have back that easterly we lost yesterday. And we’ll get it before we get a hot meal!’
After a bit he added: ‘What is this of a spitkid, that you were telling me? It cannot be enough to wish the child drowned, whatever.’
Fulman panted for a few minutes longer before answering.
‘You have a lot to learn about the Navy,’ he said. ‘For instance, you probably do not know that on this ship we could incur the wrath of any officer, or snotty little boy even, by merely talking like this. When on deck, on watch, we should be silent. Your eyes are too still, Jesse. You should keep them moving more.’
It was true that Fulman’s own hooded eyes never stopped roaming. Even here on the bleak, roaring deck he spoke in whispers, and watched like a hawk everyone who moved.
‘The spitkid now,’ he went on. ‘It weighed a great deal for a man of my years, and was full of tobacco juice and spittle and other vilenesses. That young fellow, whose miserable hide you value so much, had one of Allgood’s mates lash it round my neck like the feedbag of a beast. I wore it for six days.’
Broad shook his head. The punishments on board these ships seemed hardly to be borne.
‘And young master Bentley made damned sure that it was kept in use,’ said Fulman bitterly. He noted Broad’s look. ‘Aye, that shakes you, eh? He made sure that any man who wished to spit did it in “Grandfather’s spitkid”. Now are you so keen on the boy?
‘And for another thing,’ he added, curiously. ‘Did he not aid your own taking? Did he not kill your friend? And why do you think young Thomas Fox is suffering under Allgood’s lash, the poor simple boy?’
Broad’s eyes flinched at the mention of Hardman.
The hours of work and hardship had cleared his mind of thoughts of friends, home, wife and family. A vivid picture leapt into his mind. The wherry racing through the waves to the christening; Hardman talking of the French girl, Louise. The sudden shock, the sight of sword and pistol, the flash of powder and the blow on his head. But he remembered one thing. It was the oafish third lieutenant, Higgins, who had killed Hardman, not William Bentley.
In many ways it helped, the way each and every conversation, each and every activity, was interrupted on the ship. He hoped he would never have the time to brood, to grow a seed of hatred inside him, if the weather should turn good. He dreaded what might happen if the sea and the wind became kindly, and there was too much time to think.
Now the call was to go about, which would be followed, for a guinea, by the setting of more sail. The wind was backing south and east so fast, that on their present tack they would soon be going in the wrong direction. It was still blowing very fresh, but it was easing. He made for his assigned position at the main brace with a sense of relief. He would have to hear more of the old man’s tales, he would have to think about the sort of society fate had landed him in; but not now, thank the Lord. Now there was the simple necessity of forcing his weary arms and legs to handle the damp and slippery ropes, to force his aching brain to sort out and interpret the orders which he still found complicated. He was learning to be a deep-sea man. It was enough…
In the red-painted fug of the midshipmen’s berth, the nephew of the uncle, William Bentley, was stretched across two sea chests, his face twisted, while the surgeon tried to put back his dislocated shoulder. The other midshipmen, both young gentlemen and the older hands whose title and berth they shared, were ranged about the makeshift table trying to give Mr Adamson some assistance, physical and moral.
‘Trouble is you see, young Bentley,’ the tiny surgeon chirped, ‘is that I’m so blessed puny. It is said that a rearing horse frightened me into the world before my time, and I never made up for the lost growth!’
William bared his teeth in his sweat-glistening white face, in what he hoped was a smile. Dolby, the senior midshipman in terms of years if nothing else, tutted as if disapprovingly. Jack Evans laughed obligingly, while the two other young mids, Simon Allen and James Finch, said nothing. Finch, indeed, was prostrate on a large chest. He was only just twelve and had been terribly ill.
‘Come on now,’ continued the surgeon. ‘You, Mr Dolby, sit on his legs, that’s the ticket. Now, you, what’s your name, Evans. You and him grab that arm you see sticking out to the side.’
William was in agony. He lay on his back, staring at the deckhead. He was stripped to the waist, with sweat pouring in runnels down his chest and sides. Evans and Simon latched hold of the arm as the surgeon indicated, while he himself moved to the other side of the table. On his way round he bobbed his head close to peer into William’s eyes.