‘Not looking too good, young chappie,’ he said brightly. ‘Mouth all cut up, too. Drop more brandy, eh?’
William smiled again, but shook his head. The trouble with Mr Adamson was that his surgery sometimes left men dead drunk, if not dead.
‘It’s a bad sight right enough,’ said Adamson. ‘Arm stuck out like a semaphore. How did you manage it?’
William wished he would stop talking and get on with it, but he tried to answer to take his mind off the pain.
‘A big sea,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you felt it.’ The surgeon screeched with laughter.
‘Oh aye, I felt it, Mr Bentley, I felt it. It kept me very busy for a while in the sick-bay did that.’ He paused. ‘Else I would have been here sooner.’
‘No matter for that, sir,’ said William. ‘It almost did for me, that sea. I was knocked clear across the foredeck, and fetched up in the chains.’
Jack Evans’s high-pitched voice made him turn his head.
‘And very lucky you were too, Will. I was aft and saw you go. I squeaked so loud I got sent below for my pains.’
William felt a burst of irritation as the colour rose in his friend’s cheeks. That was much as one would expect from Jack. It was not the place of a young gentleman to behave in that manner. There was an example to be upheld, always an example.
Evans went on: ‘You took it very well too, all upon the quarterdeck could note that. You walked back aft calm as you please, although how you managed it with your arm like that I cannot imagine. Why Will, it sticks out two points to starboard now, but then it was quite flat at your side.’
Well that, thought William, was something. It had cost him a great deal not to let the boatswain know he had been hurt. It was pain enough to have been caught unawares by the sea. One hand for yourself, one hand for the ship was one golden rule, and always to keep a weather eye out was another. He had done neither, which was gross stupidity on the foredeck in a gale. Allgood knew it, and William hated the blandness of his face, his remarks that reeked of hidden insolence. His apology for not singing out earlier was a case in point; how could one define the subtlety of the insult?
‘I suppose it was the seventh wave,’ said old Dolby quietly, from his seat on William’s legs. ‘They say every seventh wave is a big ’un, right enough.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Dolby,’ he snarled. ‘Did we ship every seventh sea like that? In the whole time did we meet a sea like that?’ Dolby’s colour deepened.
‘That may be, sir,’ he said. ‘But when you’ve been at sea as long—’
‘Shut up!’ snapped Bentley.
And: ‘Hey-up!’ chirruped the surgeon, throwing his weight across the table.
The suddenness of it forced a cry from William’s lips. A sharp pain across the chest, a definite meaty click, and his shoulder was back. Relief and irritation mingled within him.
‘Punishment taken like a man,’ sang out Mr Adamson. ‘Or a young gentleman, to be sure!’
The boy closed his eyes and muttered his ungracious thanks. Oh hell, he thought, the people on this ship are so low, so near to cowards all. It was vile, always to have to be an example for their better behaviour.
Fifteen
When the larboard watch was piped on deck next morning, Broad knew at once that all the slim chances he had been praying for had passed. The sky was high and blue, with a few streaks of white wind-cloud. The sea was deep green, with occasional whitecaps, and much longer and easier than it had been. During the four hours he had been asleep below, Welfare had spread her wings. All plain sail was set and drawing on the main and mizzen masts, and during his watch the task of setting up a new fore topgallant mast, to replace the one that had carried away, was completed.
Stunsails were rigged on the lower yards to drive her along at her very best speed. High up in the rigging, he stared over the stem towards England. But there was nothing to be seen.
All spare hands were set to clean ship. The hatches were unbattened and a vile reek rose from them, to be blown briskly away over the bow. Thomas Fox was put to tending his beasts, which had suffered miserably during the bad weather. He was glad of the task, for the others had the far worse one of clearing the filth off the decks. Pumps were rigged and manned, buckets ran in chains, water splashed and gurgled everywhere. The portlids were lashed open, making the deck light once more. For an hour Thomas kept his head buried in the smell of the animals, as being sweeter than that from the gun-deck. But gradually the vomit and excrement was sluiced away – much of it into the bilges, true, and the ship became a cleaner, more bearable thing.
After the sluicing came the scrubbing. Thomas had finished mucking out the beasts, so had to join the others with holystone and prayer book. He needed to give the animals more attention; three hens had already died and others were weak, a pig was looking sick indeed, two poor sheep had injured legs; but he could not bear to say so. The sight of a boatswain’s mate, after his ordeal, made his eyes seek the deck. When Jefferies walked by six feet away he began to tremble.
So he knelt with the rest, the heavy sandstone block in front of him, his trousers rolled high, scrubbing for his life.
The work, like all work on the frigate, was meant to be done in silence. But Thomas was beside Peter. Peter talked.
‘Every day we do this, young Tommy,’ he said. ‘Every morning, some afternoons, and not a few night-times.’
Thomas said nothing. The deck beneath him was dark, stained. The boatswain’s mates kept yelling ‘White – white and glaring till it blinds the eyes out of you!’ He had no reason to suppose they did not mean it. He scrubbed harder.
‘It is the worst part of all, I suppose,’ Peter went on. ‘What I hates about it is, on an empty stomach it hurts worse than it need. If they would only wait until after breakfast!’
Grandfather Fulman and the other greybeard in the mess sloshed more water from a bucket, followed by two handfuls of sand.
‘Then again,’ said Peter, ‘it do hurt the knees so. But if you keeps your breeches rolled down – why then, soon you has no breeches worth speaking of!’
On they scrubbed. The pain in his arms and knees was getting worse. But the planking was coming up whiter, in one place at least.
A boatswain’s mate roared: ‘Harder, you lousy scum! Harder! If I can’t blind my bleeding eyes on that deck there, I’ll see you flayed alive!’
The deck was a mass of men, on their knees, moving rhythmically up and down as if praying to some Eastern god. In front of each knot others walked backwards with buckets. Decrepit old fellows as a rule, or sick men, or cripples.
‘Damn his own eyes,’ hissed Peter. ‘Oh, this be a terrible service to be in Tommy, terrible.
‘Why,’ he went on, not pausing for a second in his scrubbing, although his voice had become quite dreamy, ‘why, if I was still on shore now, I’d have had me breakfast inside me, piping hot, and would be sitting like a lord on a bolt of hay, smoking a pipe and supping a can of ale.’
Slosh, went Fulman’s bucket, followed by a patter of sand. Peter shook his red hair from his eyes, laughing.
‘What a fool I am though!’ he said. ‘’Tis all lies, Thomas, all lies. I never came by so much kindness on shore as I do now, and as for hot breakfasts! Well, not long now, my dear messmate, and breakfast will be piped – and piping hot too! Did you ever come by a hot breakfast on shore, Thomas? I’ll wager you did not!’
Thomas said nothing. He scrubbed and scrubbed, and thanked God for his strong arms. At least he could make his patch of deck as white as the next boy’s, although he doubted he’d ever have a sailor’s power; fine muscular men some of them were. He did not answer Peter’s question, not even in his own mind. He could not think of breakfast at home, nor yet dinner nor supper. Home was a bright red spot deep in his head, not to be touched on.