Rapscallion (9 page)

The human sounds
began to fade as the hulk's inhabitants fell under the spell of night. In the
darkness, however, the ship continued to express her own displeasure. A
continuous cacophony of groans and creaks from the vessel's ancient timbers
filled the inside of the hull. It was as if
Rapacious
was
venting her irritation at the presence of those trapped aboard her. The pull of
the tide and the sound of the wash against her sides seemed magnified a
thousand-fold, as did the hypnotic slap of rope and line against her cut-down
masts and yards.

Mercifully, her
gun ports remained propped open, for these were the only means of ventilation.
Even so, it was unbearably warm. The squeak of hammock ring against hook and
cleat was a grating accompaniment to the noisy tossing and turning of the gun
deck's restless residents as they sought relief from their sweltering
discomfort.

Even if there
had been silence within the hull, the rhythmic step of the sentries along the
metal gantry outside and their monotonous half-hourly announcements that all
was well was a salutary reminder that the will of every man on board, be he
prisoner or guard, was no longer his own to command.

A sniffle
sounded close by. It was the boy. He was lying on his back, blanket pushed down
over his lower legs. His right arm rested across his face as if to ward off a
blow. As Hawkwood watched, the boy turned his head, the movement revealing his
right eye and lower jaw.

At that moment,
a scream rose out of the darkness. It seemed to hang in the air for two or
three seconds before ceasing abruptly. Hawkwood knew it had originated not on
the gun deck but somewhere below, deep within the bowels of the ship. There was
little or no reaction from either the sentries outside or the occupants of the
surrounding
hammocks,
save for one: the boy. Moonlight
from the open gun port highlighted a pale segment of cheek, skin tight over the
bone. The boy's eye was a white orb in the darkness. He stared wildly at
Hawkwood for several seconds, terror written on his face, then his throat
convulsed and he turned away, pulled the blanket over himself, and the contact
was lost.

The scream was
not repeated. A small, rounded shadow appeared at the grille. A rat was
squatting on the sill, preening. As if suddenly aware that it was being
observed, it paused in its ablutions and lifted its head. Then, with a flash of
pelt and a flick of tail, it was gone.

Hawkwood closed
his eyes. It was interesting, he thought, that the rat, when startled, had chosen
to exit the hull rather than seek sanctuary within it.

Perhaps it was
another omen.

Hawkwood stood
at the rail of the forecastle and gazed down at his new world. The view was
less than impressive.

Aside from the
two accommodation decks, the only other areas on the ship where prisoners were
permitted to gather were the forecastle and the well deck, the space referred
to euphemistically by the interpreter Murat as "the Park". Lasseur
had taken it upon himself to pace out the Park's circumference. The survey did
not take long. It was a little over fifty feet long by forty feet in width. It
didn't need many prisoners to be taking the air to make the deck seem
overcrowded. It explained why so many men chose to remain below decks. With
space at a premium, they didn't have much choice.

Bulkheads at the
forward and aft ends of the ship separated the prisoners' quarters from those
of the ship's personnel. The militia guards occupied the bow. The hulk's
commander and the rest of the crew were accommodated in the stern. At first
sight, the bulkheads appeared to be made of solid iron. On closer inspection,
Hawkwood discovered they were constructed from thick planking studded with
thousands of large-headed nails. Loopholes had been cut into the metal-shod
walls at regular intervals to allow the guards on the other side of the
partition to fire into the enclosed deck in the event of misbehaviour or riot.
They resembled the arrow-slitted walls of a medieval keep. With the gun deck
reminiscent of a long dungeon, it wasn't hard to imagine the hulk as some kind
of bleak, impregnable fortress.

At six o'clock
the guards had removed the hatch covers, allowing the prisoners to carry their
bedding topside to be aired. Hawkwood had welcomed the first light of dawn,
still conscious of the collective reek coming off his fellow inmates.
Lieutenant Murat had given his assurance that it would take only a few days to
become acclimatized. As far as Hawkwood was concerned, the moment couldn't come
soon enough. The gun- port location may have provided access to the elements
and a sea view, but it didn't mean the smell was in any way reduced. The foul
odours within the hulk had built up over so many years that they'd become
engrained in the ship's structure, like a host of maggots in a rotting corpse.

Breakfast had
been a mug of water and a hunk of dry bread left over from the previous
evening's supper. The fist-sized block of stale dough had been made marginally
more digestible when dunked into the water. It remained small consolation for
what had been, despite Hawkwood's ability to negotiate the hammock, a fitful
night's sleep. Though it was a soldier's lot to bed down when and wherever he
could, it did not always follow that slumber came easily. The night had seemed endless.
Lasseur looked equally unrested as he peered out across the choppy brown water.

Perched at the
extreme north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey, Sheerness dockyard lay across
the starboard quarter; an uneven line of warehouses, barracks and workshops.
Rising above these was the fortress; its squat, square outline surmounted by a
grey-roofed tower. Guarding the entrance to the Medway River, the fort
dominated its surroundings, a stone defender awaiting an unwise invader.

To the south, at
the edge of the yard, lay Blue Town. The settlement provided accommodation for
the local workforce and owed its name to the colour of the buildings, all of
which had been daubed in the same shade of naval paint. Made almost entirely
from wood chips left over from the dockyard work, the small houses weren't much
more than crude shacks, clumped together in an untidy rat-run of narrow lanes.
Even so, they were several steps up from the previous riverside accommodation.
Originally, dock workers had been housed in hulks, not dissimilar to
Rapacious
,
moored to break the flow of the river and reduce the loss of shingle from the
foreshore. A couple of them still remained, stranded on the mud like beached
whales after a storm.

Across the river,
a mile away to port, the Isle of Grain was a dark green smudge in the
early-morning light, while beyond the stern rail, less than two miles to the
south, lay the western mouth of the Swale Channel, separating Sheppey from the
mainland.

The weather had
improved considerably. Despite the sunshine, however, there was a stiff breeze
and it brought with it the smell of the sea and the cloying, foetid odour of
the surrounding marshes, which stretched away on both sides of the water.

A cry of warning
sounded from the quarterdeck where Lieutenant Thynne was supervising the
delivery of provisions from a small flotilla of bumboats drawn up alongside the
hulk. Fresh water casks were being hoisted on board to replace the empty ones
lifted from the hold, and one of the casks had come adrift from its sling. It
was the second delivery of the day. The bread ration had arrived less than an
hour before and had already been delivered to the galley.

Lasseur eyed the
activity with interest. "What do you think?" he said.

Hawkwood
followed his gaze to where the wayward cask was being secured. "It'd be a
tight fit."

Lasseur grinned.

Hawkwood looked
sceptical. "How do you know they don't check inside as soon as they get
them ashore?"

"How do you
know they do?"

"I
would," Hawkwood said. "It'd be the first place I'd look."

"You're
probably right," Lasseur murmured.
"Worth considering,
though."
He reached into his coat, drew out a cheroot, and gazed at
it wistfully.

"I'd make
that last," Hawkwood said. "They tell me tobacco's hard to come by.
Expensive, too."

Lasseur stuck
the unlit cheroot between his lips and closed his eyes. He remained that way
for several seconds, after which he placed the cheroot back in his coat and
sighed. "The sooner I get off this damned ship, the better."

Latching on to
Lasseur appeared to have been a sound investment. From the moment they'd been
thrust into the Maidstone cell together, the privateer captain had made it
clear he was looking to make his escape. Gaining the man's confidence had been
the first step. James Read had been correct in his surmise that Hawkwood's
background story and the scars on his face would stand him in good stead.
Lasseur and the others had accepted him as one of their own. Hawkwood's task
now was to find some way of exploiting that acceptance. Where Lasseur went,
Hawkwood intended to follow.

Hawkwood allowed
himself a smile. It was strange, he thought, given the short time he'd known
him, how much he'd come to like Lasseur. It had been an unexpected turn of
events, for the privateer was, after all, the enemy. But wasn't that what
happened when men, irrespective of their backgrounds, were thrown together in
unfamiliar surroundings? It reminded him of his early days in the Rifle Corps.

When Colonels Coote
Manningham and Stewart had put forward their plan for a different type of unit,
one which would fight fire with fire and carry the war to the French, the men
who were to form the new corps had been drafted in from other regiments.
Suddenly the past didn't matter; whether they were draftees or
volunteers,
was irrelevant. The men's loyalty was to the new
regiment, and the glue that bound them together was their willingness to fight
for their country and against the French.

On
Rapacious,
it was a similar situation. It didn't matter whether
you had been a sailor or a soldier, privateer, teacher or tradesman. The
important thing was that you shared a common enemy. And in the case of the men
confined aboard the hulk - Hawkwood included - it was the officers and men of
His Britannic Majesty's prison ship
Rapacious
who were
the foe.

According to
Ludd,
Rapacious
hadn't been her only name. During her years as a
man-of-war, as a mark of affection her crew had bestowed a nickname upon her:
Rapscallion,
a tribute to her role in causing mischief to the
French.

It was doubtful,
Hawkwood reflected, looking around him, if any of the seamen who'd raised her
sails, scaled her rigging and run out her guns would have recognized her now.
Any beauty or sense of pride she might have possessed as a mighty ship of war
was long gone. Even with the morning sun slanting across her quarterdeck, with
her once graceful profile buried beneath a ramshackle collection of
weather-beaten clapboard sheds, she was as ugly as a London slum.

Another cry
sounded from the work party. The full water casks had all been taken aboard and
the last bumboat was pulling away with its cargo of empty barrels. Several of
the full casks remained on deck. The contents were needed for the day's midday
soup and to replenish the drinking water tanks. The hoist was repositioned in
preparation for the next round of deliveries.

Lasseur turned
from the rail. "Walk with me, my friend. I'm in need of some
exercise."

The number of
prisoners strewn around the deck made it more of an obstacle course than a
walk.

"How many
soldiers are there on board, do you think?" Lasseur asked. He kept his
voice low as they picked their way through the press of bodies.

"Hard to
tell," Hawkwood said. "Not less than forty would be my guess." He
looked aft, where two members of the militia were patrolling back and forth
across the width of the raised quarterdeck, muskets slung over their shoulders.
Other militia were spread evenly around the hulk, including one on the forecastle
from where they had just descended. Hawkwood had counted three on the gantry
and one on the boarding raft, and there was one at each companionway. He
suspected several others were standing by, poised to deploy at the first sign
of trouble.

The two men left
the forecastle and made their way below.

"I did a
count last night," Lasseur said as they descended the stairs. "Six on
the grating, one manning the raft, and I could hear others on the
companionways."

"You didn't
waste any time," Hawkwood said.

Lasseur
shrugged. "It was hot, I couldn't sleep. What else
was I going to do? Besides, I've
seen the way you've been looking around."

"There's
the crew as well," Hawkwood said.

"I'd
not forgotten. How many, would you say?"

Hawkwood
shook his head.
"On a ship this size?
You'd know
better than me. Thirty?"

Lasseur
thought about it, pursed his lips. "Not so many.
Twenty,
maybe."