English passengers (14 page)

As the wise man says, though,
for every summer Sunday there’s a winter wind to pay
, and in this case the cost of our freedom was plain for all to see, strutting about the ship as if they owned it. Total charge: three passengers. Worse, Englishmen all of them. I can’t say I was happy about the arrangement. I dare say I’d expected the
Sincerity
to see a few humiliations in her time—to be nibbled by barnacles, shat on by gulls and poked and prodded by customs men—but never, not once, did I think she’d be reduced to the shame of passengers.

Strange articles of passengers they were, too. Truly, you never did see such a clever and pestful trio as these, all disagreeing with themselves and taking their great clever brains for a little stroll about the deck. I dare say it was hardly a surprise they were odds, mind, seeing as their quest was to discover themselves the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden! As if it couldn’t just be left in the Bible where it belonged. They weren’t even looking to find it in any sensible spot, but on some rotten island at the very ends of the earth, called Van Diemen’s Land, or Tasmania, as it couldn’t make up its mind. This was a mad fool of a place, by the sounds of it, all gaols and bluemen and worse, being nowhere any sensible fellow
would venture near. It was there, and all the way back, too, that we were supposed to carrying the three snots. A whole year of Englishmen. What a thought that was. It was bad enough just taking them along the coast to Maldon.

Worst was mealtimes, when I had to suffer them in the dining cabin, with all their genteel little smirks and thank-yous and
I wonder if you could pass the salt, Captain?
The hardest to take was that vicar, Reverend Wilson, who was a thin, twittering sort of body, with a toothy smile that sat on his face all the time, like he never tired of himself. Truly, you never met a body so rich in his own importance, and watching him smirk and chew at his dinner it was hard not to think what a surprise he’d give to the fishes if he accidentally got dropped over the side. He was mean as could be, too. Truly, I don’t think we could’ve found a more suspecting and penny-counting scrape if we’d trawled all London especially. It was all I could manage to coax enough charter money out of him to pay the customs fine, and even then he insisted on following me round the provision shops and such, peering over my shoulders as if I couldn’t be trusted. Was that really enough casks of water for a journey to Australia? Enough biscuit? Enough chickens and sheep? In the end I had no choice but to stock up with half a shipload of food and water and creatures that we didn’t want, quite as if we really did intend to take them to the ends of the earth. All the while we were loading up their own stores which were fancy as could be—champagne and best French brandy, choice meats and even silver cutlery to eat it all with—so we knew that, for all his moaning, this vicar was rich as the man that turned the rabbits all to gold.

Hardly a day seemed to go by without him calling at the sealed dock with some new fussing. He squawked so loud about sleeping quarters that I was sure he was after my own cabin. I was tempted to clear out Chalse Christian’s carpentry workshop and fling them in there, but I supposed we’d never catch a penny out of them with that, so in the end it was the mates’ cabins they had. I had Chalse Christian the carpenter rig up a top bunk in Brew’s haunt, which would now be graced by Reverend Wilson and Dr. Potter. Second mate Kinvig’s cabin, being nothing more than a cupboard with a porthole, I gave to the plants boy, Renshaw. Even then they were all three of them moaning and complaining,
saying they wanted something more genteel, as if this was some passenger steamer. Nor were they the only ones playing huffy, as Brew and Kinvig were in a proper scowl at being slung into the fo’c’sle with the boys. Never you mind, I told them in Manx, it’s only till we get to Maldon.

Finally there came that welcome morning when we were to be gone from the London dock. I’d have been happy slipping away nice and quiet, for sure, as in my book it’s never clever to go catching the world’s stares, but sadly that wasn’t our Englishmen’s way, and quite a crowd turned up to wave them good riddance. There were parsons, and newspapermen looking sharp. There was Jonah Childs, the moneybags, who had signed the charter agreement and given us our jink. A funny-looking body he was, tall as trees with a little tiny head so he looked like a bottle stuck on a pole, as he went round playing the big man, letting everyone have a little shake of his hand. Then there were the Reverend’s children— a great stringy pack of them—and his wife and her sister too, who were a proper pair of wallopers, smiling away as if they couldn’t wait for the old sleetch to be gone. Not that I blamed them any for that. Renshaw, the little plants boy, did hardly better, as his brother and father looked cheery as tombstones, while his mother was too far the other way, sobbing and fussing and pulling out a little present that she pretended she’d forgot, ‘‘for those cold nights in the mountains,’’ though this turned out to be a dainty pair of gloves just right for supping tea with the Queen. It was the surgeon of the three, Potter, who did best with his goodbyes, catching himself half a hospital’s worth of doctors, all making little speeches to one another at how grand it was he was going. They’d have a surprise when he came back inside a week.

Finally the ropes were let go, the boats hauled us out of the sealed port and a tug towed us down the river and away to the estuary. Grand as it felt to have the
Sincerity
back to a bit of ocean, it was rotten hard having those Englishmen aboard, all snooping and curious and noticing things. My fright was they might notice too much. The other little bother I had—and which I’d hardly troubled myself with till then, as there’d always been something worse to worry me—was how on earth we were going to unload that certain special cargo without catching their notice. Shifting casks of brandy by the dozen, along with sheaves of
tobacco and some interesting pieces of French glass, will tend to cause a bit of fuss and noise, after all. It would have to be done somehow, though, as we couldn’t give them back their charter money till we’d sold up.

‘‘Perhaps we should just drop all three of them over the side,’’ suggested Brew, smooth as milk. Sometimes I hardly knew if that one was joking. We didn’t have to make up our minds, neither, as it turned out. The breeze was a southerly, which did with tacking, while Maldon wasn’t far, and just that next afternoon we put a sight on the Blackwater. I had the boys drop anchor at the river mouth, thinking it just near enough to the town for us to look into our certain arrangements, while still handily out of view. Our passengers never liked this little surprise at all, of course, and the moment the Reverend heard the roar of the anchor chain go he was moaning and complaining.

‘‘Maldon? But what on earth for? I’ve told you we can’t afford any further delay.’’

‘‘It’s the ship’s clock,’’ I told him, as this seemed as good a reason as any. ‘‘We can’t go sailing around the world with a broken clock, as we’d never know where we were. Why, there’d be nothing to stop us sailing clean into some part of Africa or Australia on a dark night that we’d never so much as guessed was there.’’

That quietened him. If there’s one thing to settle passengers I dare say it’s a bit of shipwreck talk. Besides, it was true enough, apart from a couple of little tiddling particulars that I’d forgot, such as that we had no intention of sailing anywhere further than Peel City, and the ship’s clock worked nice as nip.

Next Potter, the surgeon, started up. ‘‘If it’s so very important, then shouldn’t we return to London and find a clockmaker of quality? We’re still near, after all.’’

For just one moment I almost wondered if he was suspecting us. It hardly seemed likely, for sure, but you never did know, while exactly the very last place I wanted to put a sight on now was that London. I hardly could fathom that surgeon. He was a different pair of oars entirely from our friend the vicar, that was certain. If Reverend Wilson was skin and bones, Potter was purest meat, and likewise if Wilson was all talk and
fuss and getting in everyone’s way, then Potter was quietness, like a big badger you wouldn’t quite trust.

‘‘Maldon’s a tidy little port,’’ I told Potter. ‘‘Don’t you worry, we’ll have no trouble finding a good clock man there.’’

There was little enough they could do in any case, as it was my vessel. I had the boat lowered into that Blackwater, to go and find cousin Rob. Not that that turned out easy. I knew he lived near Maldon, but, as any fool will tell you, there’s near and there’s near, and the two are different as pigs and parakeets. ‘‘You can’t miss it,’’ he’d told me when he last visited Peel City. ‘‘It stands all alone by the shore, straight over from Northey Island.’’ That had seemed clear enough at the time, but then directions usually do when you’re still months and miles off from needing them. We’d written to each other once or twice since, making our certain arrangements, but I never thought to have him send us a map. Now that we were perched on the Blackwater, and Northey Island was dead ahead—looking like nothing but so much more mud—I wished I had.

‘‘What about that over there to larboard?’’ called out Parrick Kinvig, the second mate. ‘‘That looks like a house.’’

It did too, fairly much. The weather was a touch misty and it was a good way off so it was hardly more than a tiny speck of white above the mud. ‘‘I suppose it could be,’’ I answered him.

‘‘But I’m sure it is, Captain,’’ insisted Kinvig, all huffy that I’d only said
could be.
Kinvig always was a scrowly one, being the kind that could stir trouble from angels themselves. There were persons said this crabbi-ness was on account of his father, who was a useless old body, and famous for drinking his horse and his cart in one summer at the inn, this being one of those things that nobody ever forgot. Other persons disagreed, saying Kinvig’s rage came from his own tallness—which was no tallness at all, as he was a tiny mhinyag of a body, hardly higher off the ground than a child—there often being trouble in midgets, as was shown clear as glass by Emperor Bonaparte himself I hardly cared, if truth be told, as it’s the proper job of a second mate to be always in a rage, yelling and scelping at the boys to keep them from slacking. Why, the sign that a second mate knows his work is that he’s hated worse than the devil himself and here Parrick Kinvig was beauty as could be.

But I’m getting away from where I was, which was this house or such that he’d seen. Up to now I’d planned going to the right of Northey Island, as that looked the wider stream, but a building is a building and this was the only one that showed. ‘‘Very well, larboard it is,’’ I said, adding, just to stop him getting too high, ‘‘and if it’s no good then we’ll know who to blame.’’

There’s faster ways to travel than rowboats, I dare say, and even with China Clucas the ship’s giant at the oars, still we were slow as snails. Little by little, as the afternoon snuffled off towards dusk, the building grew, from just a speck to a speck with edges, then to something like a matchbox with a roof, till finally there it was ahead of us with its sign swinging in the wind, a full-grown inn. That wasn’t the best news, for sure, but it could have been worse, as if there’s one place that’s good for finding where somebody lives then it’s an inn. We beached the boat, Kinvig went off to ask and a moment or two later he was squelching his way back. I guessed from his look that it was nothing good.

‘‘They know him, right enough, and his house is just further along. But we’ll not find him. He took himself off to Colchester, so they said, just a few days ago, and got himself murdered half to death in some knife fight. He’s still there.’’

It was as if bad luck was following us about, like an old dog that won’t be chased off. All at once I had no buyer, nor any way of finding one. I was low on jink and had three passengers expecting to be taken to the ends of the earth. The fact was if there was one thing I’d relied upon in this whole adventure it was cousin Rob. Not that I’m one to go hurling blame, but he was hardly making things easy for us. He’d known well enough that we were on our way, after all, and if we were a little late that was hardly our fault. All he’d had to do was sit quiet and wait like any sensible body, but no, he’d had to go dallying off to Colchester and tempt some passing knifeman to stick a blade into him.

‘‘Perhaps we should go up to this Colchester and have a quest for him,’’ said Kinvig.

I was in no mood to start chasing about, making ourselves noticed. ‘‘Even if we found him he’d probably only go and die on us.’’ We could go straight on to Maldon and try our luck asking questions, in the hope that I’d find those certain bodies Rob had said were interested, but I
could see trouble there. We didn’t have a single name—Rob had been too canny to tell, I suppose for fear I might make a deal without him—while the customs knew we’d been going to Maldon, and might well be keeping watch. But there was something we could do. ‘‘Where did they say Rob’s house was?’’

Kinvig looked puzzled. ‘Just further round the island.’’

‘‘Then let’s be on our way.’’

Now, cousin Rob was hardly the kind to go collecting servants, while his Englishwoman wife would be away in Colchester at his bedside, so, as I saw it, his house was sure to be empty. Not that I want to seem unkindly, but we’d had an agreement, and he’d been the one to break it and drop us into blackest trouble. Why, we’d have been right as rain if the silly slug hadn’t chosen to get himself stabbed. No, this was simple compensation. Why, if he made up his mind not to die after all, we might even think about giving him a few pennies back, if we felt kindly.

China and the rest put themselves to the oars and round Northey Island we went. It was a relief to have made up my mind and even the land seemed to give us the nod, growing cheerier as we went along, a distant Maldon spire or two peering out over the mud. After a time the shore became lined with a fine bank of trees, and just after there was a house, sitting all alone just like it should. It wasn’t a bad size, neither.

‘‘Where’s his boat?’’ wondered Kinvig.

I guessed that quick enough. ‘‘He must’ve taken it to Colchester.’’