‘In’t there no horses in America?’ Palmer Dolly wanted to know. And, ‘What will a dollar buy?’ And, ‘Has Captain Comstock got a man to take Nathaniel Rankin’s place?’ The sailors amused themselves with lies. No, they hadn’t any horses in America, not yet. The farmers there rode goats. One dollar bought one dozen goats, and there was money left for saddles. No one with any sense would want Nathaniel Rankin’s place. His place was up the topmast with a stick, night and day, knocking seagulls off the rigging, ‘for no one travels free on board the Belle, not even birds’. Palmer knew they were teasing him. He didn’t care. He was happy to belong, and to prove how useful he could be, even if there weren’t any horses in America, even if the captain had already said he couldn’t crew with them. He had a better plan. He’d stow away. He’d take his dollar on the Belle.
The riders were numb to the bone with cold when they arrived on the bluffs above Dry Manston, late in the morning. The walkers were as warm as toast, except their faces and their hands. Ralph Parkiss went across to the bench where he’d carved his initials, nine days before. Had they survived the snow? Someone had ringed his carving with a heart and inexpertly added more initials: M.B. Miggy Bowe! Ralph blushed with pleasure. She must have come and seen his name carved in the wood. She’d found a stone and scratched her love for him. A heart, containing both of them. He ran his fingers around the heart. He kissed his fingers and he pressed them to the wood. He would have put his lips on to the wood if he had been alone, and tongued the letters of her name. If only he could slip away, and hold his Miggy in his arms.
He rejoined the wagons and the sailors as they began their descent to the beach. The tide was high up on the shore. The strongest waves fell just short of the dunes. The horses were not happy going down. The rocks were steep and slippery, and all the sailors had to hold the wagons from behind or let them tumble with the horses onto the beach. It took them more than an hour to negotiate the rocks and reach a wider and less steep path. First came grassy heathland, then salty flats littered with the flotsam of the winter tides, and then the shifting dunes, so flimsy at the edges of the sea that even the roar of breakers, eighty yards away, and the rattle of the tide throwing pebble dice, were all it took to make the dune sand blink, and separate, and slip.
The wagons sank into the sand. They’d have to leave them at the edges of the dunes and lug the ship’s stores over by hand. Unless the horses could be forced, of course. Palmer shook his head. ‘They in’t gonna shift,’ he said. ‘They’ve had enough for now. Leave ’em to their bit o’ grass.’ Ralph Parkiss thought he knew better. He tried to pull one of the nags by its head. He held it by the headstall. And tugged. Perhaps there really weren’t any horses in America, thought Palmer. Ralph didn’t seem to know that horses could nip. And hard. He watched the old horse nuzzle Ralph’s shirt. He saw it bite. Ralph could hardly breathe for pain. When he opened up his shirt, there was a bleeding four-inch bruise in the soft flesh of his stomach.
His shipmates made the most of it. ‘Don’t let your Miggy see that, Ralph, not on your wedding night.’
‘A horse had its mouth inside your shirt? Oh, yes! She’ll think you’ve found another girl.’
‘She’ll think the mare was Mrs Yapp. She’s got the teeth!’
They poured a drop of spirit from one of Walter How-ells’s black bottles onto the wound. Ralph could hardly breathe again. The pain came back. ‘That’s firing stuff,’ he said.
‘Let’s taste it, then!’ They passed both bottles round.
‘It’s bottled tar,’ one man suggested.
‘It’s pilchard gin!’
‘It’s Devil’s piss and vinegar.’
Palmer Dolly told them it was treacle rum. He’d never liked the taste of it, but still he drank and passed the bottle on.
‘Dear Lord, it’s firing stuff,’ Ralph said again. ‘I need a bit of air.’
‘There’s air enough out here to last a lifetime.’
‘It’s not this air I want,’ Ralph said. ‘I want some air down there.’ He pointed along the coast towards the cottages at Dry Manston. It was half a mile to Miggy’s home. He could run along the beach and be with her, and then be back within the hour. ‘I’ll not be missed, I hope.’ His shipmates jeered when he walked off — ‘Go on then, boy. Don’t let her get inside your shirt’ — but it was only jealousy. If each of them were young and had a girl a half a mile away, they wouldn’t feel so wild and mischievous. Perhaps if Ralph hadn’t been the greenhorn of the crew they would have mocked him more cruelly. Seasoned sailors didn’t lose their hearts to girls like Miggy. They couldn’t marry every girl they kissed. But Ralph was still a novice. That was his charm. He gave his heart quite readily.
The sailors didn’t wait for Ralph. Their muscles itched. With treacle rum inside of them, the job of loading the wagons with the loose gear from the Belle seemed almost enjoyable. They packed the gear as tightly as they could, but there was hardly space for all of it. The wagon wheels sank into the ground a further inch or two. Water puddled at their rims. They should have brought three wagons and six horses. They’d never get this load up onto the headland without an act of God. They had to half unload again and waste the best part of an hour carrying the smaller and the lighter stores up to the headland by hand. They let Palmer take charge of the cattle. He was less nervous of cows than the sailors were. He went into their makeshift pen and roped the biggest with a length of bowline. He tempted it with grass. And when it came, the others followed, single file, as orderly as ants. They had eaten all the hay that Howells had left and then had cropped their pen back to the sand. They’d put up with anything so long as they could reach the untouched grass. When they had grazed for a while, Palmer held the lead cow by the bowline and led it up the path to the headland by the Cradle Rock and tied it to a boulder. The others followed, encouraged at first by Palmer’s sticks. Then the hullabaloo of the Americans behind them was so alarming that they clambered up between the rocks like goats.
The sailors had to make a noise. They put their shoulders to the half-loaded wagons and pushed, and when they pushed they had to shout the effort out. Even then they only managed to move the wagons one yard at a time. It had been easier to shift the Belle. They missed their capstans and their windlasses. They couldn’t rest between each push. The wagons and the horses would roll back, down hill, to join the debris in the dunes. They wedged large rocks behind the wheels of the second wagon, and concentrated on the first. They anchored it with ropes to boulders at the top of the path. Two men stayed with the ropes and took up the slack; the other eight stayed with the horses and forced the wagon forward. The earth was loose. Cascades of rocks dislodged and bounced downhill. The Americans muttered every foul word that they knew. They put their shoulders to the wagon back and screamed it to the top. Then they cursed and screamed the second wagon too. Palmer Dolly made the loudest noises of all. ‘Tuck ’em in!’ he shouted, every time the wheels began to move. ‘And tuck ’em in!’
The sailors spread a canvas on the grass and lay down on the headland. Their backs and shoulders ached. Their hands were trembling. They shared tobacco and what pipes there were, while Palmer Dolly pointed out the Dolly home, the cottage where the Bowes lived, the Cradle Rock, the moors and, finally, a tiny figure on the beach — Ralph Parkiss — running along the water’s edge, to catch them up. The cattle spread out along the path. The two horses steamed. Palmer Dolly searched the wagons for food. Perhaps there’d be a side of bacon or some sacks of ship’s biscuit amongst the gear. ‘I can’t find anything,’ he said. ‘There’s only brandy.’