‘You are a fine example, friend Thomas, of a very vicious breed,’ Daniel Swift was saying. It was clear to Broad that he was hardly talking to the boy, but was talking to himself, and them all. His voice was gentle, contemplative. ‘You are a fine example of the breed that returns love with hatred and trust with treachery. You are a snake in the grass.’
There was still no response from the shepherd boy. But the people were listening intently, almost rapt. Good God, thought Broad, Swift believes it all. He thinks he’s been betrayed!
As if he had plucked the thought from his brain, the captain said:
‘You have betrayed me, Thomas, after the kindness I have shown you. And you are a picture of the blackness in the hearts of your fellows. All, all, would betray me, who has only done his best by them. Oh, it is vile.’
To Broad’s astonished eyes, Swift looked actually miserable. The fine arrogance of his hawkish profile was blurred somehow. He looked at the boy before him, then at all his men, with an air of sadness. He believes it, thought Jesse. Now God help us all, he believes he has done his best, and we have turned against him!
Suddenly, Swift’s face changed. It darkened. The muscles in his cheeks bunched. His pale eyes bulged. His breath hissed in his nostrils.
‘You there!’ he screeched, at the startled mates. ‘Let him go! He will stand alone, or before God, I will strike him dead!’
The mates let go immediately. Thomas, without a sigh, crumpled in a heap between them.
Swift looked as if he must explode. His face became almost black.
He rose up onto the points of his toes and remained there, fists clenched, breath grinding in his throat.
‘Pick him up.’ He was choked, could hardly speak. The mates picked the boy up, his head hanging limply. His face was blotched, with dead white patches where the ice had bitten deep. His eyes were closed.
Captain Swift took two quick paces forward, and slapped each side of his face.
‘Fox! Fox! Listen to me. Stand, boy! Stand! Or it will be the worse for you! Do you hear! Do you hear!’
Deep inside, Thomas heard. He put all the life inside him into the effort. He pressed upwards with his legs. The pain was dull but violent. He gasped.
Swift let out a shriek.
‘Haha! He understands! Now, let him go!’
This time the mates eased their grip less swiftly. For perhaps two seconds, the boy supported himself between them. As he crumpled they made to grab him, but the captain flew at them, screaming with rage.
At the bottom of the ladder, William Bentley heard the noise and his blood ran cold. He had been listening, his horror ever deepening. Now he rested his forehead against the rough wood, closing his eyes. He remembered the pistols in the alcove in his uncle’s cabin. He began to pray.
Captain Swift retired to a distance of several feet from Thomas while he was hauled to his feet again. This time, after some seconds, the boy opened his eyes. It was a great effort, and he geared himself to it with all the determination left in his :soul. He tried to focus, but there was nothing. A few hazy shapes, a vague roaring noise. That, and the captain’s voice; it was all he could make out.
‘Fox,’ came the voice, and this time, for the first time, he truly heard. ‘Fox, I want their names. Fox, look at me. I want their bastard names.’
He felt one of the boatswain’s mates let go of his arm, and braced himself to try and stand alone. A rattling came from his throat as his breathing quickened with the effort.
It was an all-consuming effort, and he could not understand the question, even when it was repeated.
‘Their names. What are their names?’
The words throbbed in his head. Names? Names? What names? The other boatswain’s mate slowly released his fingers, and Thomas took the strain. He swayed, was pushed upright again, swayed the other way. The breath groaned in his throat.
Broad watched the struggle like the other men. They were fascinated. By the display of willpower by the youth, of fanatical single-mindedness by the man. The two were six feet apart, Fox swaying like a drunk, his eyes swimming in his blotched and horrible face, the captain crouched like a fighter waiting to spring, with tongue protruding slightly from his lips. When he spoke his voice was high and piercing.
‘Thomas Fox, I want their names. All their names. I will have your fellow mutineers from you, my boy, if it is the last thing I ever do. Their names, scum! Their names!’
Fox heard all this. It went into his head and lodged there. But it was incomprehensible. It was meaningless. He took a step forward, and he tried to speak. He tried to say something quite simple, to form a simple question, to convey his lack of understanding. But only a strange and ugly sound came out; a liquid, growling, sob-like noise. It was loud, quite loud. And very horrible.
As Thomas took his stumbling step, the Welfare lifted to a big sea which threw her weather-side high. The step became a stumble, the stumble a shambling run. Fox put out his hands, and skittered down the sloping deck. His mouth was wide, the sobbing groan an inarticulate roar. His eyes were open, white and rolling, as he bore down on Captain Swift.
The whole ship’s company swayed in unison as the big sea rolled under her. Caught on the point of balance, Thomas swayed once more, and would have run backwards as the deck sloped the other way. He was a foot from Captain Swift now, his eyes open, his stare wild.
But Swift’s face was wilder. As the boy had run towards him, he had retreated down the deck as if in terror. His face was riveted on Fox’s, as though he were looking at something frightful, something black and unknown. The slobbering boy stood before him, the gurgle rattling in his throat. Swift’s mouth was open, his eyes were wild; his face was terribly pale.
She rolled heavily. The clutching hands of the boy reached for the throat, the coat, the shoulders of the man. Swift gave his own cry now, loud and strange. He jumped backwards to the bulwarks. He seized an iron belaying pin from the rail. As the boy staggered open-armed towards him he swung the pin from behind his back with all the strength in his body.
He held the belaying pin by its lighter end, and the swing was enormous. The shaped metal of the heavy end landed square across Thomas Fox’s face, on the bridge of his nose. The crunching of bone as his forehead and eye-sockets caved in was clearly audible. It was his only sound. He folded to the deck instantly, a vivid gush of blood rising into the air then splashing onto the planks.
Swift stood without sound or movement, his face drained, staring downwards. All the men were silent, as bright blood pulsed across the deck. The wind moaned in the rigging, the steep seas slapped and gurgled along the Welfare’s sides.
At the helm, nothing had changed. Hand a few spokes, down helm to meet it, up helm to sail her. Close-hauled, and watch the luff. Luff, water, binnacle; binnacle, water, luff.
The Welfare sighed as a stronger gust took her. The helmsman eased a spoke or two through his hands as she tried to head it. She dipped her bow and battered onwards.
Twenty-Seven
The silence went on and on. To Broad, it seemed endless. His eyes were stretched and his mouth was open. He was gripped by a sense of total strangeness, incapable of movement. The spray-washed deck, the red-coated marines in line before him, the cold wind moaning in the sails and cordage. And there by the lee rail, the white-faced captain, still holding the bloody pin. Broad could not see Thomas through the press of men in front of him, but he could see Swift, and he could see the marines, and he could see the marine officer, whose face was tense and horrified.