McDuff stepped up to the quarterdeck with his odd gait, much like a barrel rocking from side to side.
"Mr McDuff, I wish to speak to you about your practice of starting the men."
"Aye, sir. And what of it?"
"Well, I notice that you are in the habit of striking the last man down from aloft following a sail change."
"Aye, that I do. And it keeps the bastards hopping, don't it?" said McDuff with a grin.
"Yes, I suppose it does. But it seems to me that the last man down must have necessarily been the first man up, don't you see? I do not want the men to hang back for fear of being beaten."
McDuff cocked his head and looked at Pendexter with an expression of growing suspicion. "Don't you believe it, sir. Them buggers — beg pardon, sir — they knows how to be last up and last down, the lazy sods, and I knows it and they know I knows it."
"And when we pipe all hands," continued Pendexter, giving voice at last to concerns that had been growing for several days, "I notice that you and Longbottom start the last man on deck."
McDuff did not seem to understand the line of questioning. "Aye, sir. Of course we does, sir."
"Well, it seems to me that someone has to be last, what? I mean, does being the last man on deck necessarily mean that a man is being lazy?"
McDuff's expression was now one of full-blown suspicion. "I've been in the navy twenty years now, sir, and I knows every one of their tricks, the lazy bastards, begging your pardon, sir. If a man is the last on deck, he's been up to something, count on it, and he needs a starting."
Pendexter looked at his feet and considered these words. McDuff had entered the navy when he himself had been just one year old. And he could not say that McDuff's methods did not produce results.
"Well, Mr McDuff, I suppose that if you, in your professional opinion, feel that this starting is necessary..."
"Believe me, sir, we wouldn't have no discipline without I start the men. Like animals they is, sir."
"Well, now, I'm not so certain..."
"And, sir? I wanted to ask you, regarding the new arrangements of the course lifts..." and with great relief Pendexter abandoned the subject of discipline for the subject of rigging.
Now Pendexter recalled that conversation for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time he felt uneasy about it. But how better to maintain discipline? Would greater kindness endanger greater loyalty, or would it be taken advantage of?"
He watched the boarding party on the merchantman lead the pressed Americans down into the boat, and his thoughts went back to the total, unquestionable authority that he held over every man aboard. He could order any man on the Icarus flogged, at any time. Just say the word and they would be bound up and flogged, right there, no trial, no asking a superior officer, he could just order it and it would be done. He was taken by a feeling of excitement and wicked delight. He had the power to do it. They had better figure out, he thought, that I'm a man who's not afraid to run a taut ship. Pendexter stood and collected up his coat and cocked hat and made his way to the quarterdeck. It was time to welcome the new hands.
He stepped up to the quarterdeck, cast an eye over the sails and down in the waist, acknowledged the master's greeting, then turned to leeward where the American lay. The merchantman filled away already. Indeed, she was cracking on more sail as she fled to the south.
The longboat had covered half of the distance back to the Icarus, and even without a glass Pendexter could make out the individual occupants. Three men were sitting amidships between the men at the oars, and Pendexter assumed these to be the men that Smeaton had pressed. If they were prime seamen, then they would go far toward filling the holes in the quarter bill.
The longboat swooped alongside and Bloody Wilson in the bow hooked on to the mainchains. Smeaton stood up in the stern sheets and made his way to the boarding steps, pushing his way past the Americans and clambering aboard. He stepped up to the quarterdeck.
"Any problem, John" Pendexter asked. One of the pressed men had a bloody bandage on his arm, he noticed, and another looked as if he had been beaten. What;s more, a number of the boarding party were bleeding as well.
"Nothing to speak of." Smeaton continued quietly. James, have you ever heard of a 'Royal Decree'?"
"No. No, I have not. What is it?"
"It's nothing. Never mind."
Biddlecomb's arm hurt much worse now, and his mind seemed unable to focus, as overwhelmed as it was with the pain and the new circumstances and what he feared was loss of blood. He looked up at the brig; it seemed enormous, as all vessels do when viewed from a boat alongside. No one had said a word on the way across. He wondered what kind of a greeting awaited them.
A man appeared at the gangway, an ugly face on a squat body. Around the man's neck was a silver bosun's call, and in his right hand was a long rattan cane. "Right, you Yankee whores' sons, up and out. Get up here on deck, you sorry bastards!" he shouted, answering, to Biddlecomb satisfaction, the question of their greeting.
Biddlecomb made his way awkwardly up the boarding steps, followed by Rumstick and Haliburton. The brig seemed extraordinarily crowded; Biddlecomb imagined sixty men at least were on deck or aloft. The Adams, half as big again as this vessel, had an entire complement of twenty men.
The officer who had led the boarding party was standing at the break of the quarterdeck. Beside him stood another man in an identical uniform, whom Biddlecomb guessed to be the captain. Their eyes met, just for a second, and then the captain looked away, running his eyes over the others. Biddlecomb assumed his neutral quarterdeck expression. He would say nothing; it was always best to say nothing. He hoped the other two would follow suit.
The captain at last stepped up to the rail at the forward edge of the quarterdeck. "My name is Captain Pendexter, of His Majesty's brig Icarus, and I—"
"Well, lookee here, Captain Pendexter," Haliburton shouted.
Biddlecomb flinched. Please, Haliburton, shut your stupid mouth, he thought, but he knew that Haliburton would not.
"If you're the captain of this here brig," Haliburton continued, "then you best know it ain't legal to press Americans."
Pendexter's mouth fell open, but before he could speak, he was cut off by the squeal of the boat tackles as the longboat lifted from the water.
Haliburton turned to the men on the tackles. "Belay thay!" he shouted, and the surprised men obeyed him and ceased hauling.
Biddlecomb turned his head toward the carpinter. "John," he said in a low voice, but Haliburton was not one to listen to reason or anything else.
"Shut up, Isaac," he said, then turning back to Pendexter continued, "It ain't legal, I says, and you can be sure that Mr Brown, out of whose ship you pressed us, Mr Brown won't stand for it. So you best return us to the Adams and be right quick about it, mate!"
Pendexter recovered from the shock and found his voice again. "You do not give orders aboard my ship, and you do not refer to me as 'mate'! You address me as 'captain' or 'sir' when you are aboard my ship, and that will be for a great long time. You will—"
"We'll nothing, mate. You set us back on the Adams now, you bastard, or I'll have the law on you. You can't press Americans!"
The crew of the Icarus had abandoned even a semblance of work and they were all staring at the altercation aft.
"How dare you?" Pendexter spluttered. "No Jonathan will come aboard my ship and—"
"Come aboard, hell! We was dragged aboard, you bloody son of a whore, and you ain't got the right!"