Then, the smell. It was compounded of many things, but it made up a whole that was new to him, but which he would never forget. After the fresh cold breeze of the Channel it was like being stifled, strangled, having his nose plugged. Broad involuntarily gagged. Oddest of all was that he had not noticed it before, while he had been in irons.
One advantage of a blow with an oar-loom then; it dulled more senses than one. The smell was rich and complex. The usual ship things were there, like tar, cordage, thick paint, wood. Then there was the rank odour of bodies, many bodies, far too many for such a confined space. Soot, presumably from the galley forward, and the strong stench of the farmyard. A jumbled animal noise ahead of him let him at least guess where the beasts were penned.
Below everything, faint yet insidious, was a rotten smell, almost masked by all the stronger ones. It was the smell of the sewers, a smell which was common in Portsmouth’s streets but which Broad, who lived in a hamlet to the east, did not relish. The bilges. Ye Gods; this was before the cruise started, in home waters, where every cleanliness would be observed.
His eyes more accustomed to the gloom, he walked to his left, to the ship’s larboard side, to seek a mess. Each one, he knew, was formed by the space between two of the great guns – eighteen-pounders in the Welfare’s case. The men ate between each pair, on a table slung from the deck beams overhead, and lived there during their waking hours below. He guessed that in this ship, because of her size, all but the most privileged slung their hammocks on the lower deck, one beneath. That would be the main source of the smell of dirty bodies.
Broad was in no hurry, nor did he intend to make a mistake. He walked aft a short way, to the no-man’s-land abaft which the marines lived, a buffer between the messes of the men and the quarters of the officers, which were partitioned off by light, collapsible screens. It did not occur to Broad as strange that he should know these things. Everybody did, every seaman anyway. He wanted to spit again at the thought of the marines, billeted between the sailors and their lords. Scum, who would turn their muskets on men of their own condition to protect officers. He almost risked a spit, but smiled instead. Why court punishment for the mere thought of such vermin?
Turning his back on the area, he walked slowly forwards, scrutinising and being scrutinised by the gaggle in each mess. They were an assorted lot, with a high proportion of aged and semi-crippled among them. Some of the messes abounded in bandannas, and flashes of gold in mouth and earlobe. Pirates, in appearance; and knowing Swift’s evil name, pirates in fact probably. Very few smiled as he walked past, but several scowled; bared blackened teeth, made warning noises. Welcome aboard, he thought sardonically. Ah Christ, if only Mary could see me now. A stab of pain and anger caught his chest. The choice of mess mattered nothing. He would not be here long enough.
At the very next space he stopped. A red-haired boy grinned.
Two or three older seamen nodded, one removing his empty pipe from between his gums as a mark of courtesy. Broad spread his hands to show he had no dunnage.
‘Mind if I join here, kind friends?’ he said. ‘I have no gear, no bad habits save wine, women, tobacco and music, sleep like a babe and do not snore. Jesse Broad, from Langstone way, in a line of business that – But now an able seaman. For His Gracious Majesty.’
The red-haired boy laughed.
‘Business, he do say!’ he crowed. ‘A real live gentleman down on his luck. And look at his fancy suit and wellshaved crown!’
From the position nearest the port a man in his mid-thirties half-lifted himself from the gun carriage. He was dressed in dark blue trousers, a blue woollen, and a neckcloth. He looked like a seaman, with a hard, closed face and big square hands. His eyes were grey, and cool, and bright. He could not stand upright, so tall was he. A great disadvantage for the naval man, as Jesse had noted even in the cabin. One of the boatswain’s mates had stood almost doubled, and the first lieutenant would have been hard pressed to have stood upright.
‘Your business, they say, was smuggling fine brandy from our enemies the French,’ the dark-faced man said quietly. ‘Do you consider that proper for an Englishman?’
One of the older hands tutted in a faintly disapproving way. Not at him, Broad thought, but as much as to warn the brooding man off from making statements that could be quarrelsome.
‘My business I consider to be private,’ he replied levelly.
‘Suffice it to say I never harmed another Englishman, nor my country, by it. Brought great comfort to some I’ll wager – while not for a moment telling one word of what my business is.’
‘Was though, don’t you mean?’ said the red-haired boy almost anxiously, as though he half-expected to see Broad produce a bottle of brandy from behind his back.
Broad laughed, and two or three of the others joined in.
‘Was indeed. Now I am a pressed man.’
‘As so all here,’ a greybeard said. He glanced at the others.
‘Well, messmates, what does you say? I say – it’s all right by me if this young fellow joins along.’
There was a ready chorus of assent. Only the dark-faced man said nothing.
The greybeard looked at him.
‘And you, Mr Matthews? What say you?’
‘Oh aye, Thomas Fulman, what’s the difference? Let him come in and welcome.’
Thomas Fulman smiled, shaking Broad’s hand.
‘Mr Matthews is a pressed man too,’ he said. ‘And a—’ A harsh growl from Matthews. Fulman stopped, shrugged, and offered Broad a place to sit.
It was not long before his new messmates had given him a lot of background. Much of it was wild talk, Dame Rumour in her truthless mantle, but much was interesting. His feeling that the crew were unusually old and villainous had been a correct one, apparently.
‘They’m gutter rats, a lot of ’em,’ said the red-haired boy, wonderingly. ‘I’m surprised they have the likes of ’em in the Navy.’
This caused a general laugh. Broad soon realised that the boy, Peter, was famous for his simpleness of statement.
He was as near to being a volunteer as anyone on board, having been the victim of a trick so obvious that to have fallen for it was rated as being completely his own fault. What’s more, he was genuinely happy. He had swopped the drab life of a farrier’s overworked apprentice in a rat-infested and noisome stables in the stinking heart of Southampton for the life of an overworked ship’s boy in a rat-infested and noisome frigate. But as he pointed out, the food was more regular and not much worse, the liquor allowance knocked what he’d scrounged on shore into a cocked hat, he was beaten no more often – and he preferred the company of men to that of horses.
Thomas Fulman confirmed his view on the men, though. ‘They are a bad lot, friend Jesse,’ he said seriously. ‘The scum of every prison hereabouts, winkled out by magistrates and put to sea. There’s murderers on this deck, and vagabonds and thieves. But seamen? Oh dear, they’re hard to find.’
‘Where may we be bound do you think, grandfather?’ Broad asked the old man. Peter was ready with a reply, but Fulman raised his hand.
‘There’s been many a week of westerlies ablowing, many a week. And we’ve swung to this hook until a move in any direction would raise a cheer. But now the wind’s making from the east, I reckon, or soon will be. We’ll be under way before much longer.’
‘Heading westward, then?’ said Jesse. ‘Any suggestion as to where?’
‘It’ll be far!’ squeaked Peter. ‘We’ve a whole dungyard of farm animals. You should smell ’em when we’m battened down!’