There was little air, and no light at all, in the Adams's hold. Tier after tier of barrels had been stowed in even rows fore and aft, and when the hatches had at last been battened down, it was presumed that they would remain there, undisturbed, until the ship was alongside in Jamaica. Biddlecomb and Rumstick moved cautiously, their arms flung out before them, running their hands over any solid objects with which they came in contact, in an attempt to get their bearing.
"I'll hide on the larboard side, here. You take the starboard. It's better if we don't hide together," said Rumstick in a low voice.
"Aye," agreed Biddlecomb in a whisper.
"I don't mind telling you, Isaac," Rumstick began in a halting voice. "I'm damn scared. I don't know when I've been this scared. I don't think I could take being a slave aboard a British man-of-war."
Biddlecomb could not see his friend's face, but he could hear the fear in his voice. It was something he had never heard before. "I'm scared as well," he said, and he was.
The two men moved to opposite sides of the hold. Biddlecomb reached out and felt the rough wood and the rounded top of a hogshead. Keeping his hands on the tier of casks, he made his way forward down the narrow opening between the stacks. His foot came down on a rat, which screeched and darted away, the noise like a lion's roar in the silent hold. From somewhere behind him Biddlecomb heard Rumstick curse.
Biddlecomb continued forward, stepping carefully, until he guessed that he was at the spot near the bows where the curve of the vessel's side required that the casks be stacked three deep rather than four, and a small gap was left between the outboard barrel and the side of the ship. He reached over the top of a barrel and gripped the barrel's hoops as best he could, at the same time finding a foothold among the casks. Then with a lunge he leapt for the top of the tier, pulling himself up and crashing his head with all his force into the deck beam above. He rolled onto the upper tier, clutching his head and groaning and cursing.
"Are you all right, Isaac?" whispered Rumstick.
"Yes," said Biddlecomb through clenched teeth.
When the pain had subsided, Biddlecomb rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled over the casks toward the ship's side. One, two, three, four, he counted the barrels beneath his hands. He was still too far aft. He turned forward and crawled along low to avoid the deck beams, his shoulder rubbing on the ceiling planking.
When his left hand came down not on a hogshead but in thin air, he knew that he was at the curve of the bow. He swung around, sitting on the casks, his feet dangling in the void, and kicked the shoring away, giving himself room in which to hide.
"How are you, Isaac?" Rumstick's voice was loud in the silent hold though he was still speaking softly.
"I'm fine, Ezra. Have you found the opening?"
"Aye, and it's damn tight. I can just fit."
Biddlecomb tried to imagine his large friend squeezing into a space that he himself found confining. He was about to comment on that fact when the hold was shaken with a dull thud and the strange reverberating sound of something striking the ship below the waterline.
"Brig's boat is alongside," said Rumstick, and the two men fell silent.
Biddlecomb was certain that twenty minutes had passed since they had heard the boat come alongside, but on reflection he decided that they had been there only ten minutes. Actually, he admitted to himself, he had no idea of how long they had been hiding.
It was the complete absence of everything, light, sound, save for the gurgle and thump of the water hitting the ship, that was so maddening. Their lives were threatened, they were being hunted, and all they could do was sit in complete silence. And wait.
At last the light and the voices came. They were foreshadowed by footsteps, at first so faint that Biddlecomb could not be certain that they were footsteps at all, and then growing louder, and with them a yellow light, cut here and there by shadows, that illuminated the overhead so that Biddlecomb could see each beam. The steps moved down the hold, booted feet that moved with determination. The shadows on the overhead swam and shifted as the light moved down the row of casks, then stopped when the footsteps stopped. There was silence again, and Biddlecomb was suddenly aware that he was holding his breath.
"Right, come on out, you two. No sence in hiding." The voice was clipped, aristocratic, and British. Biddlecomb almost leapt with surprise. He had to force himself to remain silent, to not move.
"Come now, I shan't warn you again."
Silence. Biddlecomb felt a thousand needles pricking the bottom of his feet. He thought he might be sick.
"Harland, start with the pike. Start there," said the voice. Biddlecomb could hear the sound of metal on wood from somewhere in the row of casks. He turned his head slowly and sighted down the side of the ship. Square patches of light danced on the side of the ship where the lantern shone between the barrels. From one of those squares of light the iron point of a pike emerged and pricked the hull planking.
"Move it forward, here, and try again," commanded the voice. "And use a bit of muscle this go-round."
The pike clattered on the hogshead again, thrusting between them and embedding itself deeper into the wood, closer now to Biddlecomb. They were working their way closer, probing with a pike. Biddlecomb squeezed against the hull, drawing himself away from the patch of light that shone on his sleeve, the patch, where the pike would enter. He shrunk away as if the light were red-hot metal.
The pike thrust in again, and the man who wielded it had to rwist the pole to extract it from the wood in which it was embedded.
How the hell did they know? How did they find us here? Biddlecomb thought through his fear.
The next thrust would enter his hiding place. Biddlecomb withdrew farther, keeping his arm clear of the patch of light.
He heard the rasp of the steel on wood and the pike shot in, the stiletto point catching Biddlecomb's left arm and opening the flesh half half an inch deep.
Biddlecomb gasped with pain and surprise, then bit down hard on his lip and was silent.
The steps did not come. The press gang did not move on. They had heard him.
"Right, then. Come on out, you," said the voice.
Biddlecomb remained silent, drawn up in himself. He clutched his wounded arm and felt the blood squeezing between his fingers. He imagined the blood dripping from the point of the pike.
"Mebbe Harland killed him," ventured another voice with the accent of the lower deck.
"I didn't kill him, Wilson, you whoremonger—"
"Silence! Remove those hogsheads! Roll them out of the way!" said the first voice. This was absurd and unnecessary. Capture was now inevitable.
"All right, God damn you to hell!" shouted Biddlecomb. "I'll come!"
He reached up and grabbed hold of the uppermost barrel, noticing, as his arm came into the light, that the blood had completely soaked his sleeve. He pulled himself onto the top of the tiers, gasping from the pain in his arm, and crawled inboard, swinging himself off and dropping to the deck with the help of the British seamen. He straightened and looked at his captors.
There was an officer, wearing a blue coat with white facing, white waistcoat and breeches. The buckles on his shoes glinted in the lantern light, as did the gold trim on his cocked hat, and from under the hat blond hair was tied back in a queue. A midshipman. Or a lieutenant. Or some damn thing. Biddlecomb neither knew nor cared.
Behind the officer stood the press gang with cutlasses and pistols and Harland with his boarding pike. Biddlecomb could see his own blood, wet on the point.
And behind the well-armed men, half-lost in the shadows, stood Fry. He stared impassively at Biddlecomb, and if he was delighted or revolted by his treachery, Biddlecomb could not tell.