Battle Fleet (2007) (3 page)

To match his cheery greeting, he was a miserable bird and his beak seemed to be causing him distress – it
looked like the top and bottom were growing into each other. Sydney often tried to bite his perch, but it was difficult for him to do. I went to see Garrick, the carpenter, and he gave me a few strips of rotting wood. He was nicer to me this time.

‘I can see you’re both good lads and good sailors too,’ he said as he rooted round his little workshop. ‘This crew, they’re not the finest bunch, but they’re shapin’ up. Best not to look down on ’em too much. It’s a long voyage to spend with men you don’t rub along with.’ I wasn’t going to defend myself. I knew he was right.

‘That bird’s not makin’ you very popular neither,’ he said. ‘But you stick it out. They’ll get to like him. There’s months of this ahead and every one needs some-thin’ to entertain ’em.’

Sydney grabbed a sliver of wood at once in one claw and, balancing on the other foot, immediately began to gnaw away. From then on, Garrick made a point of giving him a bit of wood to chew whenever he could spare one. I supposed that Sydney’s beak grew like our fingernails do. If he’d nothing to gnaw on, it would curve inward and kill him.

He could be an affectionate bird when you got to know him. He especially liked me to stroke his neck and his back, and would even lower his head when I came near him if he wanted me to pet him. He was quite open in his feelings though. For those who teased him he had
a peck and a squawk, although this seemed to encourage them.

I thought he would enjoy being out in the open so I persuaded Evison to let me take him on deck for a few hours a day. ‘He’ll like being with the other birds,’ I said.

But out in the fresh air, Sydney took no interest in the caged birds. Instead he would stare longingly at the seabirds that circled our ship and try to fly away from his perch. I did feel sorry for him. I knew what it was like to be held captive.

Looking after Sydney might make me more unpopular with the crew but it had one great perk. It gave me and Richard an excuse to talk to Lizzie and Bel. Like the other passengers, who often took to wandering the weather deck in a sullen daze, they were finding the voyage very tedious. Sydney was the perfect distraction. When I took him out on deck, they often came over to see him.

‘Lucky you,’ Lizzie said to me, ‘having this lovely creature to look after. I’m sure it passes the time most pleasurably.’ She sounded rather wistful and turned to Bel. ‘Think of all the things we could teach him to say! I wonder what other tricks he could do?’ Then she turned back to me. ‘Don’t you find it a trial though, having to take care of Sydney as well as perform all your
other duties on the ship?’

I could see where she was going here, and I wanted to keep Sydney for myself. Bel caught my eye and said, ‘They make a terrible mess, Miss Lizzie. Might be too much trouble. Besides, Sam here is doing such a good job. You can tell Sydney likes him.’

Lizzie and Bel were a pair of opposites. Lizzie was tall and buxom, with blonde curly hair and peachy skin. Bel was much smaller and had big grey eyes in a face pale against a thick black mane of hair. Although they were mistress and servant, they seemed more like close friends, but while Lizzie spoke with the measured tone and poise of the wealthy heiress she was, Bel was a cockney girl.

Richard came over to join us. Lizzie gave him a dazzling smile. ‘It’s our American friend. Are you a bird lover too?’

‘Never had one of these myself, Miss Lizzie,’ he said, ‘but he’s a handsome creature.’

‘I prefer to be addressed as Miss Borrow,’ said Lizzie rather frostily. I wasn’t sure whether she was teasing or being serious.

Richard sailed blithely on. ‘So, how are you finding the voyage?’

‘Very dull,’ she said. ‘And so much more tedious on a merchant ship than one of the transports.’

‘Really!’ said Richard in genuine surprise. We had
sailed over with Lizzie the previous year, when we had been transported. ‘Oh yes,’ she said archly. ‘With a ship full of you rough convict types there was always the chance there’d be a mutiny and we’d have our throats slit. That was far more exciting. The only thing we’ll die of here is boredom.’

Then they sauntered off to the fo’c’sle. Bel looked around to catch my eye. I wasn’t sure whether she was saying ‘Well that told you!’ or ‘Don’t mind her.’

Richard was not discouraged by Lizzie’s haughtiness. ‘Plenty of time to get to know the girls,’ he said after they’d gone. ‘Only so much you can do on a ship – they’ll be eager for the company of a couple of handsome lads like us!’ I envied his confidence, and wondered where he’d got it. As far as I knew, Richard had never kissed a girl in his life.

Unsurprisingly, Richard wasn’t the only young man on the
Orion
who fancied his chances with Lizzie Borrow. When he and I were both high in the rigging shortening one of the mizzen topsails, the sound of Lizzie’s laughter floated up to us. Hossack had invited her to join him on the quarterdeck during his watch. ‘Don’t fall for him,’ said Richard between gritted teeth. ‘He’s pompous. He walks around like he’s got a poker stuck up his backside and I’ll bet he sips his tea with his little finger cocked up in the air.’ The two of them were deep in conversation. ‘Walk away,’ said Richard. ‘Come
and talk to me instead when I get down from this mast. I’m more interesting. And I’m not a bully! And I’m much better looking!’

Richard was at a disadvantage when it came to wooing a wealthy girl like Lizzie Borrow. Not least because Hossack could invite Lizzie to the officer’s cabin, where they could dine on fine food and wine from a lace tablecloth. Bel would accompany her, of course, as a chaperone. I wondered if Hossack had asked them yet. I felt a twinge of jealousy. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘We’ll be officers one day. Then we’ll be irresistible!’

‘Witchall and Buckley,’ Hossack’s voice called up from below. ‘Attend to your duties, and stop gossiping like a couple of giddy lassies.’

‘Now he’s just showing off,’ I said, but Richard flushed angrily.

The crew continued to give me a hard time about my cockatoo. William Bedlington picked me up by my shirt one morning and lifted me so close to his face I could smell his stinking breath and see the crumbs of food in his beard. ‘Have that thing fed some rat poison, something to kill it without Evison suspecting. I’ve had enough of it, and so has every other damn man in this cabin.’

They had good cause to complain – when you had only four hours to sleep you did not want to be disturbed
by a flapping, squawking bird. Fortunately the crew’s complaints reached Evison’s ears too, and he acted swiftly. ‘Witchall,’ he told me, ‘you are going to have your own cabin – a small one, by the other passengers. You’ll have to share it with Sydney. But well done, lad, the bird’s starting to look a lot better these days.’

‘Won’t the passengers mind, sir? He can be very noisy!’

‘Damn the passengers. If they mutiny, they’ll be easily dealt with. Can’t say that for the crew.’

I couldn’t believe my luck. A cabin of my own. Richard was green with envy.

The cabin was small, with a tiny porthole of dingy green glass to let in a little light. There was no room for a bunk and barely enough room to swing the hammock I was given. But I still felt very privileged. I placed Sydney’s perch by the door, facing the porthole so he could see something of the outside world. It was the first time I had had a room of my own since I left home. It was a curious sensation being alone on a ship. On drowsy afternoons between watches I would lie there on my own, daydreaming about Bel.

Being out on deck suited Sydney, and he soon picked up a fine collection of nautical sayings, like ‘Hoist the mizzen royal’, ‘Tighten the shrouds’ and ‘Look lively, yer lubberly bastards’. He was a clever bird. He rarely said ‘Show us yer arse’ any more, except to Mrs Evison.

* * *

Two weeks after we left the northern coast Richard came screaming down below deck with distressing news. ‘Sydney’s slipped his mooring.’

I ran up to the perch where I’d left him on deck. His tether dangled down, severed close to the knot.

Mrs Evison walked past as we stood there inspecting the scene of the crime. ‘Pecked his way to freedom has he?’ she smirked. ‘Can’t say I’ll miss him much.’

‘I’ll bet it was you,’ I thought.

I did feel miserable. Poor old Sydney lost at sea. What a fate. But then I stopped feeling sorry for the bird and started to worry about losing my cabin. Evison wouldn’t let me keep it if I didn’t have a cockatoo to look after. I would be back in the fo’c’sle with the rest of the crew. And we’d have less of an excuse to talk to the girls. Maybe it wasn’t Mrs Evison who’d cut the tether after all. Maybe one of the crew had done it out of spite.

Three hours later, Garrick spotted Sydney circling the ship from a distance. Had he escaped while the coast was still in sight I’m sure he would have been gone for good. Perhaps he realised he was lost and we were his only source of food and company. Dragging his tether behind him must have tired him out.

We shouted ourselves hoarse. ‘Sydney! Come back!’ Lizzie and Bel came out to wave their hats.

He landed on the main topsail and there he stayed,
right at the end of the yardarm.

Everyone seemed pleased to see him, except Mrs Evison. ‘Clear off y’bloody bird,’ she shouted.

The following morning he was still up there. We held up berries and nuts, but nothing could shift him from his perch. ‘Perhaps he thinks you’re angry with him, Sam,’ said Bel. ‘D’you think you ought to go and get him?’

Armed with a slice of apple I shinned up the shrouds and tried to coax him down. I expected him to be pleased to see me, but he wasn’t. As I balanced on the rope beneath the yard, the wretched bird flew right at my face. My feet slipped and I dropped the apple. I clung on for dear life to the top of the yard with my feet scrabbling for the rope, and then Sydney started to peck at my hand.

‘The bird’s gone mad. Get a musket and shoot it,’ squawked Mrs Evison.

‘Sydney, stop it!’ I yelled, and he backed off. I found my footing and came down again to the deck. I was trembling now and could see the girls had both gone white with anxiety.

Bel ran up to me. ‘Sam, we thought you were goin’ to fall.’

Perhaps it was foolish of me to risk my life to help that bird. Maybe it was to impress the girls, or keep the cabin, even to spite Mrs Evison. Maybe it was because I
had grown fond of him too. I found that slice of apple on the deck and went straight back up the rigging. This time Sydney came quietly. First he bowed his head to let me stroke him. Then he picked up the apple, carefully nibbling away the flesh from the skin with his beak. Then he hopped on my shoulder and I skimmed down the ratlines to the deck.

The girls came to make a fuss of him. I was the hero of the hour. Bel was convinced Sydney was a girl. ‘Maybe she’s gone all broody,’ she cooed in a way that made me lose sleep for a week. ‘She’s probably missing her mate.’

By now the crew had noticed how well we got on with the girls, and it became something else for them to taunt us with. ‘It’s the budding Casanovas,’ said William Bedlington whenever he saw us on the fo’c’sle. ‘Give the girls a kiss from me,’ he’d leer. It wasn’t outright bullying, but like the little digs when we were holystoning the deck, or the shoves on the companionways, it was their way of telling us they didn’t like us.

First we saw thin columns of smoke reaching up to the distant horizon, then mountain peaks, fuzzy through the heat haze, clearer as we grew nearer. Despite the danger we’d been told about, catching sight of the islands of the East Indies after the monotony of several weeks away from land was still exciting. We were making progress. ‘I don’t care how perilous they are, I’m volunteering for the first trip ashore,’ I said to Richard. ‘It’ll be good to get away from this scurvy lot.’

The closer we got to land, the more it rained. We were
arriving in the middle of the wet season, where a sudden downpour would soak the dry timbers of the ship and bring a welcome cool to the heat of the day. But some days, as we sailed along that island chain, it would rain incessantly, and then everything and everyone would become drenched and soggy. Feeling cold was a novelty. After my time on the
Elephant
sailing through the North Sea at the tail end of winter, I never wanted to be that cold again.

Sighting land also meant we were another stage nearer to Coupang and the moment Richard would leave the ship was closer to hand. It wasn’t just the fact that I’d miss him that troubled me. Maybe the crew would be nastier to me when he was no longer around. Maybe I’d see less of Bel too, as Lizzie would no longer be drawn over to talk to Richard.

We had shared a lot of our free time talking with the girls recently. Lizzie Borrow would never mingle with our kind in her normal life, but she was intrigued by Richard. She often asked him about life in the New World. He was not remotely bashful about her station in life compared to his. Although he was an ordinary seaman on this ship, I suppose his family had money, like hers, and he had prospects.

I sometimes wondered if this friendship would make Lieutenant Hossack jealous and he would take it out on Richard. But he was so sure of his own social superiority
it didn’t even occur to him that he might have a rival for Lizzie’s affections.