It was the purser, Butterbum, who had discovered Fox’s crime.
The afternoon before, during the first dog-watch, Thomas had led Padraig Doyle to the foredeck with his pipes. The wind was blowing less steadily than of late, and the sun was beginning to turn some men’s faces almost black. Some of them had taken off their shirts and were lying about the deck talking, playing at cards, or snoozing. Thomas enjoyed the dog-watches, when there were no duties to speak of, and music could be played. It was good to be the friend of Doyle, because the piper was in great demand. Some of the friendliness for him rubbed off onto his companion. As he played, his back against the fore-bitts, Thomas sat close and sang. But all the while he was carving away at the pipe he was making. It had taken him a long time to find a suitable piece of wood, but he thought the whistle would be a good one.
Most of the sailors liked singing, and one or two of them made their own songs. They liked songs best that told a sad or heart-rending story, but the tunes had to have a bounce. That bounce, Doyle excelled at giving. The normally mournful note of his pipes could turn wonderfully light. It set the feet a-jigging.
They were well-near through one of Thomas’s favourites, a song about a maid who set out to sea in a tiny boat to find her pressed lover, when he saw the purser walking along the deck. He stiffened, although there was nothing to indicate that the man was seeking him, and the words died on his lips.
She wrung her hands and she tore her hair Much like a maiden in deep despair.
Her little boat, ’gainst a rock did run, How can I live now my William is gone?
The sonorous voices of the seamen, blending with the rich keening of the elbow-pipe, rolled away in the warm wind. The purser, reminiscent of a suet pudding, his blue coat sticking out over his stern in the way that had helped earn him his nickname, picked his way among them delicately. When the song had ended, the conversational murmur from the non-singers had died too. Butterbum was a much-hated man. But one that nobody dared to cross.
The glistening, sweat-streaked face lit up when the purser spotted Thomas. The boy’s blood ran cold. Jesse Broad, who had been lounging nearby, got up casually and walked towards his friend. He stopped three feet from Thomas, looking coolly at Butterbum, who stopped at about the same distance.
‘Play on, play on!’ said the purser, in a transparent attempt at comradeliness. ‘It is a fine piper you are, Irishman. Do not let me interrupt!’
Doyle did not move, the pipes lying flaccid in his lap. The washing of the seas and the mild thrumming of the cordage were the only sounds.
‘Well then,’ said the purser, in a changed tone. ‘You boy, there is a matter of some hens. Come with me.’
Thomas half-stood, glancing helplessly at Jesse once, then at the deck again. Broad said mildly: ‘It is the dogwatch, sir.’ His tone was neutral; he took care that he could not be accused of insolence or insubordination.
Butterbum looked at him bleakly, his face furtive and mean. At first it looked as if he would turn nasty at Broad’s intervention, but a sort of growl arose from the resting men.
They were off-duty. They did not like this man upon their deck.
Suddenly the fat purser capitulated.
‘See me in half an hour,’ he told Thomas. ‘The captain wishes to entertain his officers to some fowl. According to my reckoning we have seventeen left. I will inspect them later. Make all ready and perhaps you would do me the great favour of selecting the plumpest. Hm?’
No one responded to the joke. The purser smiled about him nervously. He shrugged and waddled aft again. As he got out of earshot an obscene muttering followed him.
Shortly afterwards the men were singing a jolly love song, but Thomas was in despair. Doyle clearly sensed it, for when the song finished he would play no more. Thomas took his hand, leading the blind musician below. Jesse Broad did not interfere. He merely hoped that Butterbum’s count of chickens tallied with the number that were there.
It did not. When they were below, in the stifling heat between decks, Thomas flung his arms round Doyle’s neck and wept. For he had never told about the three fowl that had died in the storm, nor of another one that had keeled over since from an obscure sickness. He had not had the courage. All four of them had been put through a port in the dark of night, but that was not likely to be believed. The purser stood to make commission on the fowl, as on all the livestock and foodstuffs on board, and kept an exact tally of anything that was killed and eaten. If he said there were seventeen hens left, it was certain that there would be only thirteen.
When the fat man came below after the end of the first dog-watch, he did not make a song and dance at his discovery. He presented Thomas with the figures, and pointed out calmly that the fowl were four short. Thomas could not plead. He stood staring at the deck, the blind man behind him holding his shoulder, and he emitted a low, barely audible moan.
After asking three times for an explanation, the purser smacked his lips with an air of ending the matter.
‘Well then, sir,’ he said. ‘I can only conclude, the conclusion is inescapable, that these hens have been stolen. By you, or by person or persons unknown. Well?’
No reply.
‘You are not prepared to claim that they were stolen from your care?’
No reply.
After a pause the purser sighed. In the sound was deep satisfaction, a kind of quiet triumph that sank into Thomas Fox’s soul.
‘Good,’ said Butterbum. ‘Then I think I know what I must report to the captain.’
Padraig Doyle made a sound; a horrible, groaning, inarticulate cry. The purser looked at him with deep distaste, turned on his heel and strode towards the ladder.
When Joyce was brought on deck to be punished, he was a bad sight. During the many days of his confinement he had never been released from his iron fetters, for any reason whatever. He was a wild man, huge and violent, of the sort that was common on the sea. On land, Broad thought, he would not have lasted long. He would have been a thief, or a highway robber, or a hired killer. But whatever he did, he would have been marked for death, for the land could not contain such a wild, fierce animal. In the merchant marine, too, he would have been a mad dog, uncontrollable by the officers, a terror to the men. Only in the Navy did he have a chance of life, and that a paradoxical one. A chance that hung always in the balance of his usefulness as a seaman and fighter, and his disruptiveness as a drunken beast.
When Joyce was brought on deck, the beast looked as though it may have been tamed. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing warm. It was still steady in the north east, but it was losing power daily as they approached the area of the doldrums.
Every stitch of light-weather canvas had been bent, all was drawing, but still she threw no great bow-wave. Much of the time, an increasing amount, the water bubbled only gently along her weed-festooned sides. Henry Joyce stood in the sunshine blinking, blinded.
He looked like an animal, but an animal tamed. Still wearing only the canvas drawers he was arrested in, his filthy torso was washed by runnels of sweat. His face was pale, untouched by sun or wind, and it had a sickly, deadly look to it. He had fed on nothing but ship’s biscuit and tank water. A weaker man might well have died. Around wrist and ankle Joyce had red, running bands of ulcerated flesh. His drawers were soiled and stinking, his legs beneath them quite black. His hair and beard, wild and long, were matted, stiff with filth.
Only his eyes gave the game away. As Broad stood silent on the deck, along with the whole ship’s company, he looked into Joyce’s eyes. The beast was not tamed. Perhaps it was untameable.