Morgan’s Run (47 page)

On the morrow it was still there, just farther away, and on the third day out, with the wind freshening and the sea getting up, it looked as if the straight and steady hand which had drawn the horizon had been suddenly jarred to produce a tiny fang. Teneriffe was 100 miles away when the horizon became perfect again.

On the
15th of June they crossed the Tropic of Cancer, an event marked by much ceremony. Every soul on board who had not been south of this imaginary line was obliged to stand trial before none other than Father Neptune himself. The scene on deck was set with shells, nets, seaweed and a huge copper tub filled with sea-water. Two sailors blew on conches while a fearsome individual was carried from the forecastle on a throne made from a barrel; it took a hard look to recognize Stephen Donovan. His head was crowned with seaweed and a jagged brass ring, his beard was seaweed, his face, bare chest and arms were blue, and from the waist down he was clad in the tail of a swordfish caught the previous day, flesh and guts scooped out to accommodate his legs. In one hand he bore his trident, which was actually Alexander’s grains—a three-pronged, barbed instrument the sailors successfully used to spear big fish. Each man was brought forward by two blue-painted, seaweed-draped sailors, asked if he had crossed the line, and if he said no, was thrust into the copper of sea-water. After which Father Neptune slapped a bit of blue paint on him and let him go. The best fun for the audience was watching Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp get dunked, though both knew enough about the ceremony to wear slops.

Rum was issued—and continued to be issued—to all hands, including the convicts; someone produced a penny whistle and the sailors fell to dancing in their strange way, bobbing up and down with arms folded, jigging in circles, teetering from one foot to the other. From that they passed to chanties, after which the convicts—the crew heard them singing often—were begged for a song or two. Richard and Taffy sang a lay by Thomas Tallis, passed into “Greensleeves,” and brought the rest into it to sing tavern ballads and popular ditties. Everybody was served a brimming bowl of Mr. Kelly’s swordfish chowder, which soaked up the hard bread and actually made it seem tasty. On nightfall lamps were lit and the singing continued until after ten o’clock, when Captain Sinclair sent a message through Trimmings, his steward, that all hands except the Watch were to go to fucken bed.

They picked
up the northeast trades, which carried them on south and west at a goodly rate. No square-rigged ship could sit with the wind directly behind her sails; it had to blow on the leading edge of the sail, which meant more to the side or beam. An ideal wind blew from abaft the beam, somewhere between the stern and the midships. As the natural tendency of winds and currents pushed ships toward Brazil and away from Africa as they went down the Atlantic, everyone was aware that sooner or later the fleet must arrive at Rio de Janeiro. The vexed question was,
when?
Though every water tun was full when they left Teneriffe, Governor Phillip thought it prudent to top up the casks again in the Cape Verde Islands, owned by Portugal and positioned almost directly west of Dakar.

On the 18th of June in blowy, hazy weather, the Cape Verde Islands began to pass—Sal, Bonavista, Mayo. Alexander was scudding along at the rate of 165 nautical miles a day, which were 190 land miles. Though mileage was not counted as the actual miles sailed; only those miles which proceeded in the right direction were. On some days a ship might achieve a minus mileage, having spent her time going backward when latitude and longitude were determined at noon. Sea days were noon to noon, when the sun could possibly be shot with a sextant for latitude; accurate longitude was calculated from the chronometers, of which the fleet possessed only one set aboard Sirius, the flagship. As soon as longitude was known on Sirius it was signaled to the other ten ships by flying the appropriate flags.

Big and mountainous St. Jago loomed on the morning of the 19th of June. All went well until the fleet, close together, rounded the southeastern cape to make harbor in Praya. Suddenly they were becalmed, stripped of all wind save what seamen called “catspaws”—little puffs from all points of the compass. To make matters worse, a strong swell was running inshore and breaking upon the reefs; after a few tentative essays the Governor, seeing Scarborough and Alexander within half a mile of the surf, ordered the fleet back to sea. There would be no additional water.

Then Alexander got into trouble again. Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp had a good thing going with Lady Penrhyn, always one of the two laggards. Both groups of marine officers owned sheep, pigs, chickens and ducks; they not only cooked for themselves, they killed for themselves. Captain, mates and crew had their own stock on board, and so jealously was fresh food regarded that fish caught by the crew were not shared with the marines, and vice versa. There were always several expert fishermen among the crew, but the marines had come equipped with hand-lines, hooks, floats and sinkers for fishing as well. If a convict was discovered to be a handy fisherman, he too would be pressed into service in return for fish-chowder on the convict menu that day or the following one.

The fowls were comfortably consumed by the marine officers of one ship, but in these tropical latitudes a whole carcass of mutton or pork would spoil before it could be eaten. It might have seemed the sensible thing to a hungry convict like Richard Morgan that the marine officers should negotiate with the captain and crew of their vessel to share meat. But no. What belonged to the marine officers would be eaten by none except marine officers. So when Johnstone and Shairp killed a pig or sheep (the goats were kept for milk), they hung a tablecloth over the stern of Alexander; on seeing it, Captain Campbell and his two lieutenants would send a boat to pick up their half of the kill. Similarly, whenever Lady Penrhyn hung a tablecloth over her bows, Alexander’s lieutenants took a boat to Lady Penrhyn to pick up half the kill.

To the great joy of Johnstone and Shairp, on the 21st of June Lady Penrhyn hung out a tablecloth. The two marines promptly commandeered a longboat and went to collect their share of the feast. Governor Phillip, Captain Hunter, Major Ross, Judge Advocate David Collins and various other senior persons aboard Sirius watched with amazement as Alexander’s marine officers set off gaily into the teeth of a huge swell running from the northwest. Skillfully rowed by twelve marine privates, the longboat made the round trip and arrived safely back to Alexander. While it was being stowed in its usual resting place on deck, Johnstone and Shairp drooled at the prospect of succulent pork loins and Teneriffe onions braised in goat’s milk.

Captain Sinclair sent for them.

“Sirius,” he said in a monotone, “is awash in flags. I suggest ye go up to the poop and read what they are saying.”

The two first lieutenants mounted the steps to the poop, where Sinclair kept his chicken coop, a pen of sheep and goats, and six plump porkers in a mudless sty well shielded from the sun and having a salt water pool so that the pigs could submerge their knees and keep their body temperature down.

“No boat is to leave Alexander without specific permission from the Governor,” said the flags.

Such brevity could not convey any emotion whatsoever, but Major Ross rectified this omission a little later in the day when he and a Sirius longboat visited Alexander.

“Ye pair of fucken cretins, I’ll flay ye until your ribs show!” he roared, as usual in front of anybody who cared to listen; his conveyance was heaving up and down larboard and he was not about to waste his valuable time by hauling the miscreants into the privacy of the quarterdeck to tell them what he thought of them. “I do not give a fucken shit what Campbell and his ninnies on Lady Penrhyn have to do with ye, or ye with them—this fucken traffic will cease forthwith!”

Back he marched to the rope ladder, down it and into the Sirius longboat without picking up so much as a single drop of sea foam; then it was off to Lady Penrhyn to repeat his sentiments.

Since the marine underlings were laughing quite as hard as the crew and convicts, Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp shut themselves into the quarterdeck and contemplated suicide.

While the
northeast trades held the fleet made good time, but toward the end of June the steady wind failed and progress depended upon whatever breeze could be found. This involved a great deal of tacking and standing; the helmsman would bring the ship onto a different tack and then everybody would wait to see if it brought a wind with it which would send the ship in the right direction. If no such wind appeared, the ship was again turned a little, and the waiting began once more. Tack, stand, tack, stand. . . .

Richard had been put on fishing detail, not so much because he demonstrated any degree of luck as because he was so patient; when people like Bill Whiting decided to fish, they expected a bite within a minute of sending the line down, and refused simply to stand, leaning on the rail with line in the water, for hours if necessary. With the sun directly overhead, deck was not such a comfortable place anymore, particularly for fine white English skins. In that respect Richard’s luck held; he had pinkened on the voyage to Teneriffe but then darkened slowly to a good brown, as did Taffy the dark Welshman and others who tended to dark hair. For the fair and freckled Bill Whiting and Jimmy Price came a long period during which they had to retire below, there to nurse pain and blisters, suffering sparing applications of Richard’s salve and the calamine lotion Surgeon Balmain slapped on heartlessly.

So when Richard saw the sailors rigging canvas awnings from the stays to the shrouds or any handy projection which would not inconvenience men climbing aloft, he was very pleased.

“I did not know Esmeralda was so considerate of sunburn,” he said to Stephen Donovan.

Donovan hooted with laughter. “Richard! Esmeralda don’t give a fuck about shelter! No, we are getting close to the line Line—the Equator—which is why we spend so much of our lives becalmed. Esmeralda knows the storms are about to start, is all. The awnings are to catch rain-water—see? They put a tun at the lowest corner to take the runoff. ’Tis an art to string the canvas—old pieces of sail—so that it forms a saucer with just one edge sagging to form a funnel. We have lost the trade, I think, and so does dear Esmeralda.”

“Why are ye fourth mate, Mr. Donovan? It seems to me as I go about the deck that ye carry almost as much weight as Mr. Long, and certainly more than Mr. Shortland or Mr. Bones.”

The blue eyes crinkled up at their corners and the mouth wore a smile, but to Richard it looked a little bitter.

“Well, Richard, I am an Irishman of sorts, and despite time with Admiral Rodney in the West Indies, I belong to the merchant sail. Esmeralda put me on as second mate, but the naval agent wanted a berth for his son. Esmeralda got very piggy when he was informed that Mr. Shortland would be coming aboard as second mate—he and the father, Lieutenant Shortland, had a rare old barney. The result was that Lieutenant Shortland thought it better to shift himself to Fishburn. But the son stayed. Mr. Bones was not about to give up his third mate’s ticket, so I became fourth mate. There is one of us for each Watch, ye might say.”

Richard frowned. “I thought the captain was master of his own ship and had the final say.”

“Not when ye’re in partnership with the Royal Navy. Walton’s want to do more of this transportation work—that is why Captain Francis Walton, one of the family, is master of Friendship. Esmeralda Sinclair is a partner in Walton & Company. Ye’d find, if ye looked hard enough, that almost all the masters of the transports and storeships are shareholders in their companies.” Donovan gave a shrug. “If the Botany Bay experiment is a success, there will be a brisk trade in shipping convicts.”

“It is nice to know,” Richard grinned, “that we miserable wretches bring prosperity to some people.”

“Especially to people named William Richards Junior. He is the contractor—and the one ye have to thank for the food ye get, God rot the bastard to Hell forever. And, God, send us a fish or two!”

The line in Richard’s hand jerked. So did the one Donovan was holding. A whoop went up from a sailor farther astern; they had come into a huge school of albacore, and hauled the big fish in at such a rate that those standing watching were put to baiting hooks so the lines could go down again before the fish were gone. By the end of this exhilarating spurt of activity there were over fifty large albacore flipping and flapping around the deck, and sailors and marines were sharpening their knives to clean and scale and fillet. A task not allowed to convicts, devoid of knives.

“Chowder aplenty tonight,” said Richard with satisfaction. “I am glad too that we do not eat at midday anymore. A man sleeps better on a full belly. I know our lieutenants complain that these beautiful creatures are dry eating, but the meat is
fresh.
”

The sea was great company; something was always happening in it. Richard had grown used to the sight of huge porpoises and somewhat smaller dolphins chasing, playing and leaping far out of the water, though they never ceased to fascinate. Life for sea dwellers, he fancied, could not simply be a matter of survival. These creatures
enjoyed
themselves. Nothing as carefree as a leaping porpoise could possibly not know pleasure in the act, no matter what dour men like Mr. Long said about the leap being a device to frighten predators away, coming down with such a splash and rumpus.