‘Only brandy? How much?’ One of the Americans stood up and walked across to Palmer.
Palmer pulled the cases out. ‘There’s four-and-twenty bottles, at least,’ he said.
‘And two of them is broken, ain’t that so?’ Palmer checked again. ‘No, there in’t one broken …’
‘And I say two of them has broken in the storm. Now that’s a shame! What a bugger storm that was. Brought our rigging down and smashed the captain’s brandy. Don’t tell me life ain’t cruel.’ The sailor winked, took two bottles from the case and rejoined the other Americans on their canvas mat. He shook the bottles, pulled the corks. ‘Gentlemen, the captain sends his compliments.’ They mixed the captain’s brandy with the treacle rum already in their stomachs. They were revived and warm and dangerous.
‘ANOTHER bottle, then?’
‘And how!’
‘The captain’ll be hogged.’
‘He’s always hogged.’
‘What’ll the captain know? If two’s got broken, why not three?’
‘Or four?’
‘We’ll drink the bloody lot of it, for all he knows.’
‘I couldn’t drink another drop, unless you offered it.’ This man had got an empty bottle balanced on his chest.
‘Don’t drink it, then. Just rub it in.’
‘No, throw it over me. I’ll smell it when I wakes.’
‘If you wakes.’
‘How many, then?’
‘Just one more for the journey back?’
‘And another for the voyage home.’
‘And a couple for the horses.’
‘Don’t bloody count. Just drink.’
‘We’re dead men if the captain knows. He’ll put the whip on us.’
‘Don’t breathe on him, he’ll never know.’
‘Don’t waste a fart on him.’
‘Another bottle or not?’
‘For God’s sake, pull the cork. I’m dying here!’
‘Spin a coin. Take a risk. Heads we drink. Tails we spin again.’
‘No, I’ll throw my hat. If it lands we’ll wet it home with two more bottles. If it don’t come down again, then what to do but go back sober?’
‘Now that’s the sort of risk I like.’
The hat came down two yards away. To cheers.
‘Go get ’em, boy! Two bottles of the best.’
‘Bring six, or I’ll crack your head!’
Palmer did as he was asked. He pulled the corks out with his teeth. ‘I’ll never breathe a word of this,’ he said. ‘Not to the captain.’ They looked at him with narrowed eyes.
‘You do, and we’ll throw you off that cliff.’
‘Let’s throw him anyway.’
‘No, what I mean is … I’ll stay quiet … I’m … hoping you’ll stay quiet for me, an’ all. I mean to ask you, if someone in’t a proper passenger and tried to hide away on the Belle, then would you breathe a word of it, if, say, you found him hiding?’
They laughed at this. ‘Now, that depends on who it is.’
‘If it was that Mrs Yapp … Well, she’d be welcome on my yardarm anytime.’
‘I’d come abeam for her, that I would.’
‘No, say it might be me aboard, suppose …’ said Palmer.
‘What, you the stowaway?’
‘I never said.’
‘Well, is it you, boy, or not?’
‘I want to leave this place, that’s all. I want to go to America. I’ve got a dollar, see.’ He held his dollar up.
‘Toss it over, then.’
‘It’s mine.’
‘You toss it over, Palmer boy.’
‘It’s mine to keep.’
‘It ain’t. Not unless you want to starve. A dollar pays for board and lodging on the Belle. It’s a fair shake. Ain’t that the case?’ The sailor’s comrades nodded their agreement. ‘We’ll give you meat and drink all right.’
‘Raw rats, Adam’s ale …’
‘Except you’ll have to catch the rats yourself.’
They suggested twenty places he could hide: in the bilges (‘Plenty to drink down there’), on the anchor deck, between companion plankings, in the canvas store, in the jib-boom housing, in the pilchard kegs, ‘up the mate’s backside’. It would be fun to have a stowaway, they decided. They were too full of brandy to be rational.
‘You’re in good hands,’ they said, when Palmer parted with the flowing hair of Liberty and threw Nat Rankin’s dollar to them.
‘I’ll drink to that!’
‘Let’s break another bottle for the stowaway!’
‘Let’s break it on his head!’
WHEN Ralph Parkiss reached his shipmates on the headland, there was not a cow in sight, except the bow-roped one. The sailors looked as if the plague had come. Their faces were both red and pale. Their eyes were wild and dead. Their greetings didn’t make sense. Their gestures were obscene.
‘Hoy, Ralph. Have you come back without your stick?’
‘Any more mare bites to show us, sailor?’
‘Meet the stowaway.’
Ralph saw the empty bottles on the grass. So what? He was drunk himself. A heart was scratched around him. Miggy had been in the cottage with her mother when he arrived. He’d had to play the model son-in-law and talk about his family and his prospects in America. But then they’d walked behind, into the fields, while Rosie baked the bread. And there he’d kissed his Miggy on the mouth.
‘I saw your bit of carving on the bench,’ he said. She didn’t understand. She blushed, and shook her head. But Ralph adored her shyness. He kissed her mouth again. He kissed her tunic, over her breast.
‘Tell me how it’ll be when we get to America. Tell me, Ralph.’ She let him guide her hand onto his trousers. She frowned, more baffled than afraid. She knew it wasn’t right. They held their breath. She rubbed. Was this lovemaking, then? Was this as soft as thistledown?
‘America …’ he said. ‘It’s hard to think of anything to say …’
He didn’t tell the sailors what she’d done. He didn’t need to. They could tell. He was in a restless mood. ‘Come on. Who’ll help me swing the Cradle Rock?’
He got four volunteers. But when the others saw the massive rock in motion, they all got up and ran, as best they could, along the grassy path up to the hollow bowl below the tonsured granite of the Rock. They climbed between the arrowed slabs onto the platform where their comrades stood, watching the Cradle Rock dipping on its pivot stone. They whooped like Indians. It was a giddy sight; the drink, the rapid clouds, the undulating rock. They couldn’t tell what moved and what was still. One sailor wedged an empty brandy bottle underneath. The Rock descended on the glass, and powdered it.
Palmer Dolly hadn’t run along the path to help them with the Rock. He stayed with the wagons, and he watched. He was superstitious. Cradle Rock could bring good luck, and bad. He wouldn’t risk the bad.
All ten Americans put their backs against the Rock. They’d see how far and quickly they could move it. ‘And push! Let-her-go. And push! Let-her-go.’ The eighty granite tons were rocking at their own pace. But the sailors didn’t step away to watch. As each decline reversed into ascent they put their hands and shoulders underneath the rock and hastened it. Each time the Rock lifted on its pivot, they looked into the damp and darkness underneath. No one said anything. But they felt stronger than the rock. They could bring it down.
Four men went back to the wagons and returned with iron bars, and lengths of hardwood. They knocked away the loose stones underneath the Rock on the seaward side. They undermined the earth, so that the Rock could fall and rise a few more inches at its outer edge. They tested it again. It made more noise. Its rise and fall expanded on each push. Again they knocked away more stones and earth. They levered with the iron bars.