English passengers (63 page)

Slowly slowly land got flatter till one day I went over some low hill and there was sea, northern sea. I followed shore east until, one good good weather morning, I saw, far away behind the waves, that so familiar mountain, thin and pointed like some spear. Robson’s island, where he brought us and watched us die. That was strange to behold like seeing some saddest ghost. Nearer in the sea was a hill, round and low, and I surmised this must be Father’s island, as when Mother tried to kill him with her waddy stick that time I could recall he sailed that way. I quickened my walk, islands got nearer, and by and by I came to some num place. This was small, with just few houses by a river and few white men near, making sheep run hither and thither like always. River by the sea was muddy and on its mud were two boats, one of them just correct, with two oars and small mast for sail. So I went away to nearby forest,
where I made spears, plenty of them, and then I waited. When evening came and white scuts were all gone inside their houses I went to that boat, going carefully, then pushed it into the water, though it was too heavy, and climbed inside and went away.

Night was light enough with half a moon and I put up the sail and I rowed sometimes besides. When morning came hill island was near and world behind was gone in cloud. First I could see nothing, but when I went round all of a sudden I could see houses, six of them, long and low. These were enough for plenty of white men I did surmise, too many for me to fight, which was worrisome, as I supposed they would kill me before I ever could spear Father. Then I observed a puzzle to confound. I could see nobody there, you see, while chimneys had no smoke. Were they all hiding, waiting with their killing surprise? I pulled sail smaller, going slowly, but still no one came to look or shoot his gun, so I went to the shore and pulled boat from the sea. Going to nearest house, spears ready, I pushed door open. Inside were no people but there was TABLE and CHAIRS and smell of mutton bird, while when I went to fire and touched it with my fingers, ashes were still warm. Other houses were just the same, which was interesting. So I decided to observe. I took my boat, very heavy, and hid it in bushes. After that I sat behind, watchful, with all my spears ready in a line.

It was nearly dark and I was sleeping when I got woken by faraway voices murmuring over the water. Lights were shining on the sea, four of them, with little splashes as oars dipped. From lights’ movings I knew this was four boats, and though I couldn’t see rowers I knew from their voices they were many, which was bad. Still there was nothing to do now and so I remained thus, watching as boats came near, touching spears once and again, to be ready, and wondering if Father had some whole heinous tribe these days.

E
VERY DAY DUSK
came just a scran later and the night felt a touch colder. Well, there was no mistaking the story of that. We were getting
into northern seas. It couldn’t be long now before we’d reach Potter’s England. There was a poor sort of prospect to look forward to.

My marks on the wall counted nine weeks since we’d rounded Cape Horn, which was two full months, and I couldn’t think of a poorer, more starved pair of months than these. I don’t know if it was the scare they’d got, or the cleverness they felt at winning I couldn’t say, but ever since our little battle by Cape Horn it was as if frost had got into those ship stealers’ veins. Dr. Potter had the sweet notion of chaining Brew, the Reverend and me to the floor timbers, while he even came down himself to make sure it was done to his liking, which meant too tight, so it was hard as could be to catch a proper dose of sleep at night. From then our visits to the heads were traded for buckets, which seemed a vengeful, shaming sort of thing. Even Hodges, who was the softest of the four, started handing out jabs with his gun keen as mustard, almost as if this was a new game that he’d never dared play till now. Hooper was the worst, though. He was the one who gave poor Brew and Kinvig their lashing—which we all had to watch—while he looked like he was enjoying his work, grinning and smirking and taking little runs so he could make more of a mess of their backs. Giving that scelping seemed to give him an appetite for more, and several times I heard him padding down the stairs, quiet as ghosts, hoping to catch Brew and me chattering in Manx, as this was now forbidden under Potter’s new laws. Your Manxman may have his faults, I dare say, but he’s never sneaking and brutal like that. This was finding a kind of joy in handing out pain.

It wasn’t long before he lost his chance to play that particular game. After just a couple of days Potter noticed he didn’t have enough Manxmen to sail his vessel, and off came Brew’s shackles. That was a shame, too, as I’d enjoyed having some company other than that droning crab of a parson. As it turned out, though, Brew’s stay had usefulness even afterwards, as it had showed him where I was chained. That same night after he went I heard a scratching from the wall behind me, faint, like some mouse having adventures, and it kept up all through the night. That caught my interest, not least because I knew that behind the wall was the fo’c’sle. Sure enough, early the next morning a shine of metal broke its way through one of the timbers by my elbow, then vanished away, leaving a little hole, and when I leaned down to listen I heard the
sweet sound of Manx. The metal, Brew explained in a whisper, was a teaspoon, this being all that Potter would allow them to eat their dinners with, as it seemed he was afeared that forks and such would make these men of Peel a proper peril against his poor babes that were armed just with rifles.

There was a fine change. All of a sudden I could hear all the talk, and know how things were up on deck. Not that everyone was pleased. Whenever one of the boys whispered hello I could see Wilson turning tetchy, and his eyes would look round corners as if he was trying to hear what they were saying, though it could do him little good, seeing as every word was pure Manx. The man was jealous, though he had not a scran of right to be. It wasn’t even as if he was losing my own sweet company as it was days since he’d thrown me so much as a word, preferring to keep all his chatter for heaven. Sometimes when Brew mumbled hello Wilson would start praying extra loud, just to stop me hearing, and I quite feared he’d find some way of blurting about it to Skeggs and Hodges, or making them see the hole in the wall with his staring (I hid it as best I could with my arm). Truly, that vicar was a handsome bit of meanness. We were only equal now, were we not, after all. He had someone to chatter to, in his good friend the Almighty, and now so did I, though, judging by his curiosity, mine was better for telling the latest news.

Not that there was any I was pleased to hear, as it was all bad. Brew said the fo’c’sle was nothing more than the crew’s own private gaol, being so fixed up with bolts that there was not a chance of breaking out even with the mighty help of teaspoons, and the boys were kept there except when there was some need for them to man the pumps or work the sails. Worse, by the sound of it they were beginning to lose heart. I tried to urge them on to venture some more havoc—perhaps at night when the Englishmen were tired—but they wouldn’t be coaxed. Then again the true fact of Manxmen is that deep down they’re purest mood, being the kind that’ll fill out and fall slack like sails in the wind. When all’s going well and their hopes are high there’s no stopping them, but if things once turn sour then the soo will spill clean away, till they’ve lost all believing in themselves. Getting beat by the Englishmen had knocked the boys badly, while having to watch Brew and Kinvig get lashed, with-out
being able to do a thing to help, was worse again. Nor was this the end of our troubles. Your Manxman is as sensible as cold water most of the time, but certain things will creep under his skin and plague him, and Potter’s mystery of skulls and bones was just one. Not that I’m one to pay any heed to such things myself, but I’ll own it had got some of the others a touch nervous, and there was talk that Potter had
certain ones
on his side, so he’d never be caught out, however clever we were. That sort of notion did bring a body low.

The ship was getting into a poor way, too. Potter’s new madness of forbidding all repairs soon started to take its toll, especially when we reached those doldrums, where we were caught for two weeks and more. That was all hot sun and sudden windless squalls, just the sort of thing to spoil a sailing vessel, and by the time a breeze took us away I could hear the sound of the
Sincerity
’s aching spilling down through the deck timbers. It was there in the screeching of the metal blocks, too shrill and scanky to be right, and in the thuds of the boys’ boots on the deck planks, which should’ve rung out dull and solid, but instead were getting a touch hollow, as if they were dancing on some cheap fellow’s coffin. Most of all it was in the slushing sound of water down below, which was getting gently slower and deeper—like a tin bath that’s beginning to fill— and it was in the squealing of the pumps as they were worked, trying to keep the ship’s belly dry. Any ship that’s been a year or two afloat will need pumping now and then, but this was different. There seemed hardly an hour, day and night, when they weren’t going.

It was no mystery what the trouble was. We were falling apart. Very slowly, as it happened, but falling apart still. Starve a sailing ship of mending and she’ll soon set about turning herself into so much rotten wood, torn ropes, rusted metal and rising seawater. Without their daily dousing and caulking the deck planks will shrink and let in rainwater to slosh about the bilges, and start a little rot besides, and sure enough I began to notice wet seeping down from the deck during squalls, till spots of damp were springing up along the walls. Brew said the ropes were fraying and going slack, as Potter was too suspecting to let them be tightened regularly. If he wasn’t careful the masts themselves would go, as without fresh tarring there’d be nothing to stop them turning rotten
and brittle. Little by little the
Sincerity
was trying to reach that fine state that every wooden vessel is always hankering to become: a wide spread of driftwood and canvas decorating some empty stretch of ocean.

There was a low, dirty piece of vandalism. My own
Sincerity
, that I’d had built from wrecks, almost with my own hands, and kept trim as could be, brought to ruin by ignorant mutineering dirts. Why, it was like having someone go pissing on your favourite child. I’d have almost been pleased if she’d just gone completely and sunk, but we didn’t even luck enough for that. Brew said that, for all her leaks, she was still high in the water. For a time that had me puzzled but then I guessed the why. It was the contraband holds. They must be acting like two great floats, holding us on top of the ocean. I suppose it’s no easy thing to send a vessel to the bottom when she has two hulls to preserve her.

The shame was that us poor Manxmen didn’t have a second hull to save us. Ever since our Cape Horn battle Potter had cut our rations right down, till we weren’t getting enough hardly to famish a mouse. Soon all I could think of was eating, and that ache that gnawed at my gut and wouldn’t stop. It soon showed. The Reverend had been thin enough to start with, and by the time we left the doldrums he was a proper skeleton, while I could see my own arms and legs getting bonier by the day. Brew said the boys were getting so light and fleshless that their faces were looking like so many dead men. All the while I was pleased to see the Englishmen were keeping themselves nicely fed, and I could have sworn Skeggs put on a new inch or two on his fat belly.

He wasn’t so lucky with the scurvy, sad to say. I knew this must come, as I’d not seen a lime since before the doldrums, and I was already getting a mad hunger for vegetables. Skeggs was the first it caught, for all his meat, turning pale and weary—which I thought a fine improvement on the man—till his mouth began to swell so there was no question left. After that Brew’s news was scurvy and more scurvy, who’d got it, and who thought they might next. I caught it like the rest, and I can’t say it was a pleasure, neither. First it took me with a tiredness strong as death, so it was hard to imagine doing so much as a thing, and then my gums and mouth became raw, making it rotten painful to eat. I knew where it went from there. Next a fellow would go blotchy like he had seven
plagues, then his teeth would start working loose, till finally he’d find himself wrapped in a slip of spare sailcloth and dropped quietly over the side to puzzle the fishes.

Wouldn’t you know who was the very last one aboard to get struck? The Reverend. How he managed it I just couldn’t say. Perhaps he’d found a way of stealing limes. He loved that, of course, and hardly an hour went by without him praying more thanks to the Lord God his Father for making sure he, the Reverend Geoffrey Wilson, was still fine as fiddles, when all us other poor dirts were bloating up like corpses and feeling our teeth go slack. The relief I felt when he finally fell sick too. Not that it made much difference. Why, I do believe he got worse. He wouldn’t rest quiet even for an instant, and if he couldn’t think of anything to say to his friend the Almighty, then he’d just start humming, or making strange little put-put-put noises with his lips, or drumming on the floor timbers with his knuckles, just to play pest. The jink I’d have given to be loosed from my shackles, so I could coax him into quiet with a good honest pelting.

All the while the evenings grew longer and the air cooler. A day came when Skeggs stopped coming on his errands, and Hooper came to give us our scraps of food instead. Brew said two of the boys were so hobbled they could hardly stagger aloft to work the sails. Still we sailed gently on. Storms? Why, I hardly knew what this ocean was playing at. Since our wetting by Cape Horn the Atlantic had been shaming itself, giving us hardly anything worse than pretty boating weather. Cape Finis-terre, Bay of Biscay, with all their bragging of ships smashed and sent to the bottom. Why, they should’ve been ashamed of themselves.