The Convicts (15 page)

Midgely came out from the old woman's coat like a turtle. His head and hands appeared. “Where are we?” he asked.

I couldn't bring myself to tell him. We were back at the hulk, at the
Lachesis.
The boat plunged at the foot of the steps, on waves that rolled over the landing, over the boots of soldiers and guards. It surged up the steps to the feet of the Overseer.

“Haul them out,” he said. “Put them in the black hole.”

We were shifted like baggage, out of the boat and up to the deck. The fisherman's woman was shrieking at the Overseer. At the top of her voice she demanded a reward for delivering us home.

The guards locked us into the black hole, each into our own narrow space. It was hard enough for
me
to be put in there, but for Midge it was almost torture. He cried out, “I can't see!” And then, “Are you there,
Tom?”
And I answered him, “Yes. Oh, Midge, I'm so sorry”

For days and dayswe-were kept in theblack hole. I could neither stretch out on the floor nor stand beneath the ceiling. I had to curl like a bug, or crook myself against the curve of the wall. There was no day and no night, nothing but a never-ending darkness. Even the quaver of the ship's bell didn't reach medown there. Time meant nothing.

If it weren't for Midgely, the black hole might have made me a drooling, mumbling lunatic. It was my worry
for him,
at first, that set me talking nonstop. But soon I needed the sound of his voice, and thought I might go moony without it. “Tell me about your islands,” I said. “Tell me about the one with the village.” Tell me of this one, I would say; tell me of that one. And Midge went on and on, sometimes quoting whole paragraphs straight from the book. I learned the names of the islands, their harbors and tillages.

I began to see them and smell them, and when I wasn't tramping across those islands with Midge, I was dreaming myself upon them. Deep in dark jungles I would come across my father, and we would wander down winding trails to beaches of sand so bright in the sun that my eyes ached froni the gleam.

To wake from that to utter blackness was almost too much Sometimes. As often as not, I would hear Midgely weeping, calling for me. “I'm here,” I'd say, and off we'd go again:

When at last we were let out, I couldn't stand up. It was as though my legs had forgotten how to hold me. My brain, so used to seeing lush islands, couldn't make sense of the wooden walls and wooden decks.

Two guards dragged me along, and another dragged Midgely. The workday had just ended, and the convicts were gathering for their meal. They watched us come in, our chains rumbling, and watched us being slumped in our places. Midgely had to grope for the edge of the table, though his eyes were open. They looked gray and cheesy now, like old half-rotted hardboiled eggs.

He whispered at me. “Are they here, Tom? Oten and that horrible boy, are they back?”

“No,” I said. I had almost forgotten that Oten Acres wouldn't be there—
couldn't
be there ever again. I remembered his drowned body in the river, but it seemed so very long ago. And Benjamin Penny? What had happened to him?

Weedle was in his place at the head of the table. The bruises I had given him were still not completely healed. His eyes were as dark as ever, his twisted scar as evil-looking, yet there was something different in his manner.

“Eleven days,” he said.

I didn't understand. Beside me, Midgely squirmed. “Eleven days,” he echoed, then looked at me and grinned. He was already his old self. “Holy jumping mother of Moses, Tom. That's more than anyone ever.”

“Was it that long?” I asked. I could hardly believe it. Christmas had passed. The whole year had ended and a new one begun.

Weedle touched his tongue to his lips. He was collecting his shares from the boys, and it was nearly my turn. Perhaps he saw in my eyes that I wouldn't give up so much as a spoonful. Perhaps he never meant to ask. But he passed over Midge and me, and told the redheaded Carrots, “Give a share to
him.
To Smasher there.” He even tried to smile at me. “Bygones, eh, Smashy? Forgive and forget?”

He was scared of me now; it was fear in his eyes. Like any bully, Weedle was afraid of being beaten twice.

“Don't call me that,” I said. “Don't call me Smashy.”

“Sure, Tom.” He nodded and twitched, then snapped at the boy “Hurry up, Carrots, Give him your share.”

“No,” I said. “Eat your own. Everyone; eat your own.”

That was the end of sharing. In our little kingdom in a filthy ship, a little king had toppled. I saw such a wretched look on Weedle's face that I nearly pitied him; He had lost his treasured throne, and most of his faithful army. Inside, he must have boiled with rage at what I had done to him. But outwardly, he was now—in llidgely's words—-a meek. He was the meekest of the meek, bobbing up when I came near, as though ready to scurry away.

There was no chapel that evening; the kindly old chaplain was gone. Carrots said he'd been taken away to be shot, but I didn't really believe it. Carrots seemed to know everything and nothing all at once. So instead of chapel, I spent my time with Midgely's book. We sat in our same old place, but everything else was different. No longer could Midgely see the pictures He touched Iris finders to the pages, as though to feel the image in the ink. “Oh, Tom,” he said. “I wish I had one more day to look at them.”

I didnt read a single word. All Midgely wanted was for me to describe the pictures—every detail, every line. But I couldn't see in the smudges what he wanted me to see, and it was a sad hour for the both of us. I was glad when the time ended, and the ship began to loek down for the night. In my doubled irons, I felt too weak to walk on deck. I looked at Weedle, told him, “Fetch my hammock,” and saw hinj nod.

“Sure, Tom,” he cried.

“Midgely's too,” I said.

Up he went and down he came, then held out the bundles toward me. I had only to look toward the grated window to set him nodding again. “Sure, Tom,” said he. “I'll hang them there. No fear.”

I spent the night as Oten had spent his—gazing out at black water, at things I couldn't see. I dreaded the additional punishment that would surely come in the morning. I feared the cat-o’ -nine-tails.

It was still dark when Weedle carried my hammock away. Weedle fetched my breakfast, and even washed my bowl. At ten o'clock he looked at me in worry, as though I meant to send him in my place to see the Overseer.

I went up with Midgely. We crossed the deck below a gray sky of torn clouds, with the sun behind them like a smear of mustard, and were left to wait at the Overseer's door. On the far side of the river, a boat was drawn up on the beach, its rowers sitting like men at a picnic. In the marsh above them, a boy was being buried. By the size of the bundle that was all he'd become, it must have been Oten Acres. Wrapped in brown cloth, he was heaved into the ground with only a guard and a gravedigger for mourners.

I wondered if Worms would get him, if old Worms would come riding out with his three-legged horse and bear Oten away, at last, to the city he had hoped to see.
“I been out to
Woolwich and the Medway now and then to fetch the ones
from the ships,”
Worms had told me.

I looked away, down the river toward the distant trees. A ship was working around the bend, its white sails fluttering. As much as I hated the sea, and anything that moved upon it, the sight of that ship gliding over the water was a picture of freedom itself. Three masts soared up front the marsh, dazzling sails moving along above the grass like the banners of a marching army. Then the dark hull emerged, growing long and graceful, bearing the towers of white canvas.

To my surprise, Midgely turned toward it. “Is there a ship coming, Tom?” he asked.

“Can you see it?” I said.

“I can
hear
it,” he said. “I can hear the wind in the sails.” He tugged my arm. “How many masts has she got? Topgallants, Tom? Royals? Has she got skysails, Tom? Can you count the yards?”

“Count the
what?”
I said. He had taught me a bit about ships, but nothing like that. I asked hiiri, “What are yards?”

“Spars, Tom.” Then he sighed and said, “Them sideways sticks what holds the sails.”

It pained him, I saw, to put it like that. But I counted them off, six on each mast, and he whistled. “Holy jumping mother of Moses. She's a ship, Tom. A real ship.”

I didn't know then that not every ship was a ship. But as Midgely rubbed his eyes and stared toward it, I wished he could see more clearly. There was beauty and grace in that thing.

“You know why she's here?” said Midge. “She's come to take us to Australia. Sure as eggs, we'll be transported.”

His words robbed the ship of its beauty. They turned it to a lurking horror, a black beast creeping up the river.

“All's Bob now,” said Midge. “No more hulk. No more guards and nobs and Weedles. Yes, all's Bob now.”

“It will be just the same somewhere else,” I said.

“Oh, no,” said he. “It will have to be a better place where we're going.”

The Overseer called us in. He sat in his wooden armchair, dressed in white. His shirt was fine and ruffled, his breeches and stockings tight as skin. He looked like a fat poodle close-cut round the legs and wooly at the head. He frowned at Midgely. “What's wrong with your eyes?” he said.

“It was an accident, sir,” said Midge. “I fell on a needle.”

“Twice on the same needle?”

Midgely nodded. “It was an accident, sir.”

The Overseer leaned toward him, then away in disgust. “This accident, boy. Tell me his name.”

“Please, sir, it was just an accident.” Midgely bit his lip. “And Tom here, sir, he don't know his name neither.”

“I see. You boys can pick a pocket and cut a throat, but never tell a tale. Is that it?” The Overseer's hands came together on the bulge of his belly. “You caused me a great deal of trouble. I shall have to enter all this in the Occurrence Book. One boy dead and another missing, and a ruddy big hole in my ship. What have you to say for yourselves?”

Midge looked down at the deck, a study in remorse. It was surely what the Overseer wanted. He would be pleased by that, delighted if we begged for mercy. But I found myself annoyed by his foppish clothes, incensed by the finery of a cabin so near to our misery. Not minding what punishment he gave me, I squared my shoulders and said, “I'm sorry Oten died. He was a friend of mine, and I liked him. But he was dying already, because your ship was killing him, and I gave him a bit of hope, and I'm proud of that.”

Midgely trembled, and the Overseer looked astonished. His fingers ran up through the ruffles on his shirt, up to his chin. “Why, you're fiill of guts, aren't you, boy? A frumper, you are,” he said. “I could give you a flogging for an outburst like that. But there's worse in store for you, my boy.”

The Overseer wetted his lips. He stretched his fat legs, and the chair creaked below him like the timbers of the ship. He touched the papers on his table. “I've made my lists,” he said. “You were recommended for liberty, Tom. Do you know that? The chaplain suggested I set you free?’

He looked straight into my eyes. “Well, you're being transported now. The pair of you are. We'll see what a spell in Australia does to that spirit of yours.”

I managed to swallow the fear that was choking my throat. The Overseer stared at me, and I stared right back. Then he turned away to his papers, his fat lips set in a pout. “That is all,” he said.

The distant ship had anchored when we came out. It sat right in the bend of the river, with men working way up on Midgely's blessed sticks. If I had to go to Australia, at least I was glad it was to be in something as large as that, as solid as an island. Then I remembered the picture in Midgely's book,
Summer off the Cape,
where the water had looked like a range of snowy mountains. I tried to put that ship into the drawing, and frightened myself half to death.

Midgely sang. Barely above his breath, he launched into a sea song, a ditty of sailors and hauling on ropes. I imagined he had sung it in his home, in his dingy parlor, or had had it sung
to
him by the sailors who had called on his mother. In his creaky child's voice, hardly more than a whisper, he warbled away. “We're bound for the Rio,” he sang. “And away, Rio! Aye, Rio!”

I gave him a shove and told him to stop. “You don't know where the Rio is,” I said.

“I do,” said he. “It's in the Americas, Tom.”

“And we're going the other way,” I told him.

“No, we ain't!” he cried. “We go all the way across the ocean, and all the way back. That'sh how it worksh, Tom. That'sh the windsh for you.”

He sang again. He sang that song as we worked, sang it as we ate, as we tramped around the deck. He was still singing when we settled down in the evening, below the grating where Weedle had sat before. The cold night's air blew across us, plucking at the lamp flames, and in flickering shadows the boys played at their pitch-button game.

“How long will it take to get to Australia?” I asked.

“Oh, a hundred days,” said Midge, as though it were nothing. “Maybe a hundred and fifty.”

“Five months?” I groaned. It didn't seem possible. How could a ship set out from land and not touch it again for nearly
half a year?

“Sometimes it's longer,” said Midge quite cheerfully. “In the First Fleet, the
Sinus
took two hundred and sixty days to get to Australia, Think of it, Tom.” His voice squeaked. “Two hundred and shixshty days!”

“Shut up!” I told him.

He drew away with a little gasp. I saw the hurt look on his face, and was instantly sorry. When I reached toward him he cringed at what must have seemed like a blurred fist coming at him.

“Midge” I said. “The truth is …” It was hard to admit. The boys were arguing at their button game, all standing now, suddenly close to blows. I leaned toward Midgely and said in a whisper, “I'm a little afraid of the sea.”

“Afraid of the sea?” he echoed too loudly. “The son of Redman Tin? Your blood's salt water, Tom.”

“Well, it feels like ice,” I said.

“We was born for the sea. Captains’ boys and all.” There was a smile on his lips, and it made his dead eyes especially , strange. “It's like no matter what we did, we would someday go to sea.”

Perhaps he was right. My mother had done all she could to shield me from the sea. She'd hidden me from it, as though she'd feared that Neptune himself might have stolen me away like a Gypsy or a chimney sweep. She had raised me to love the city and hate the sea, and she'd taught me so well that I'd screamed and kicked on a summer day when my father tried to put me into a paddling boat on Regent's Pond. But one turn of fate after another had seen to it that I would follow my father in his watery ways.

“It's queer, though, ain't it?” said Midge. “You'll look straight in the face at what fears you. I'll get what I want, but I won't see a thing.” He turned his shoulders and tipped up his head. “Promise you'll be my eyes? You can tell me what it's like, the waves and the albatrosses and all. I wanted so much to see an albatross. Promise me that?”

“I will.” I patted his hand, feeling ashamed. If a frail blind boy wasn't frightened, then why was I?

On the Sabbath that week I didn't pray for my deliverance. I knelt in my chains and asked only for courage.

The next morning we were off on our way. Sixteen boys were sorted out for transportation, Weedle and Carrots among them. Four boats came to fetch us, nuzzling up to the side of the ship like piglets to a filthy sow. Then the dawn broke in glorious colors, and the Overseer came to stand on his high deck. Above us, against the crimson and the yellow, he might have been the figure in a stained-glass window high in a great cathedral.

“Lest any of you think that Fate is cruel, remember this,” said he. “You had a fair start.”

He looked at us for so long that I thought it was all he had to say. Then the wind lifted his hair like a puff of smoke, and plucked at the ruffles of his shirt. His voice boomed out. , “Don't think that England has turned her back on you, boys. She expects you to return as men one day. Remember always that you are British. God save the King!”

He got no answering shout, no huzza from us. We closed tightly together as the guards came to move us off. They marched us to the landing and into the boats, and I sat with Midgely in the stern of one, with a pair of men to row us. Down the river we went, the wind behind us, past the marshes and the castle. I glanced back at the hulk and saw it sitting steady in the water, the British flag streaming. Nothing in the world could have looked more awful and evil. With a shudder I turned to face the front, looking past the rowers to the Beacon Hill rising to its flat top. The dark ship was below it, and in the river's bend grew a floating forest of masts and sideways sticks.

The waves tipped us up, tipped us down, and we sped toward the ship. The rowers chewed big quids of tobacco that bubbled yellow from their lips. Their backs bent, their amis pulled, and to my surprise we flew right past the ship. A lone sailor on the deck pulled off his cap and cheered us on.

Midgely had his eyes closed, his hand spread atop them to shield the sunlight. I didn't tell him that we passed the ship, for I saw where we were going instead, to another just beyond it.

If ships were people, then the first would have been a dark and beautiful daughter, and this her ugly stepmother. Older and smaller, battered and bruised, it lay by itself as though out of shame. It had two masts instead of three, and not nearly as many sticky. I looked up along the rigging, past sails like wadded bedclothes, to a familiar and wretched sight.

At the top of the mast, curled by the wind, flew the Goodfellow flag. Its purples and greens, its gold crest in the middle, waggled against the sky as though Fate was thumbing her nose at me.

The ship was exactly as my father had described those of the Goodfellow fleet.
“Beggars of the sea,” heh&d said. “Not fit for rotten-row. A drowning man would sooner swim than climb aboard one.”

There was a steady thumping and a run of water, a gushing like a city fountain. I'd learned its meaning well on the
Lachesis—-md
Midgely knew it too. “Why are they pumping?” he said.

He started to take his hand away, but I clapped it back in place. “Don't look,” I said. “Wait till we're aboard.”

“She ain't old and leaky, is she, Tom?”

“No, no. She's beautiful.” I hoped to save him from his disappointment. One ship was so much like another, and his eyes so bad, that I thought he might
never
discover the truth. “Keep your eyes shut tight till I tell you,” I said,

Our boat bumped against the hull, and a sailor reached down with a hooked stick to catch it. Even in our irons there wasn't much climbing to do; the deck was barely above the water.

“My, she's sleek,” said Midge. “She must look like a greyhound, Tom.”

“Like some sort of dog,” said I.

“Shall I look now, Tom?”

“No! Not yet,” I cried.

The ship was a ruin. Littered with boxes and barrels and tangles of rope, with a huge stack of wood for a cargo, it looked like a tumbled old warehouse. Paint was peeling; globs of tar lay everywhere. Midgely held on to me with one hand, his other touching the railing and the ropes. Bits of paint flurried away from the wood, and tiny strands of rope went floating off in the sun. The entire ship, I thought, would fall apart like that, shedding its little pieces all across the ocean.

Weedle clambered up from the next boat, and Carrots from the third. Dampened from spray, chilled by the winter air, we stood with our heads drawn into our collars, our breath making white mist.

Way off at the front of the ship, an old man came backward from a door. He smoked a clay pipe that puffed gray clouds, and he dragged a wicker basket on the end of a rope. He paused to hoist it over the sill, gouting smoke like a steam engine. By the clanking sounds that came from his kypsey I guessed he was the blacksmith. Too frail to carry his tools, he dragged them instead, tipping forward and back as the kypsey rocked on its rounded bottom.

Midge kept touching the ropes, up and down from one to the next. “Tom?” he said. “This ain't the right ship.”

Before I could speak, he opened his eyes. I didn't know what he could see exactly, but he glanced back and forth, up and down, and his face crumpled. “A brig,” he said. “Just a little brig:”

His disappointment turned to anger. His face was suddenly redr “A rotten trick, Tom. Thai Wash a rotten, rotten trick.” He let go of my arm. “Why didn't you shay it wash a brig?”

“How could I?” I had only meant well, so I got angry too. “I don't even know what the devil that means. I could touch the ropes till doomsday, or walk right from the front to the back and—”

“They ain't
ropes,
Tom,” said Midgely. “They're
lines.
And it ain't the front and back, it's the
bow,
Tom. The bow and the stern.” He sighed through his nose. “You ain't the son of Redman Tin. That was another lie.”

“Midge, no,” I said. But he snatched up the slack in his chains and went hobbling to the end of the line.

The old smithy huffed his way right up to us. With watery eyes he looked into our faces, then shook his head with a deep sadness and blew half a dozen quick little puffs through his pipe.

“It's summer down under, lads,” he said. “You'll be warm as toast in Van Bremen's Land.”

Another puff from his pipe, a sniff from his nose, and the old man eased himself to the deck. He went to work on Midgely's irons, and a moment later—with a clang and a rattle—they fell away in a heap. “How old are you, son?” he asked. Midge said, “I'm ten,” and the smithy grunted. “You're not.”

“Near as spit,” said Midgely. “I'll be ten in a month.”

“Good Christmas!”

When four boys were free of their irons, guards led them away. I watched with a pang as Midge went off with them, over a hatch and down. I felt as though we liad parted forever, and could never be friends again. When the old smithy knelt before me, he tried to jolly me out of my sadness. In a whisper he told me: “Don't fear, lad, you'll soon be at sea. Haifa gale in the Channel tonight, and we'll be clear of the land by dawn. It will lift your spirits, lad, when old Neptune rocks you in his arms.”

He meant well, the old fool. But a gale in the Channel, no land within sight—that wasn't a thought that cheered me. When old Neptune started rocking, it wasn't my spirits he'd lift.

My irons came away. The great weight of them—more than a third of my own—tumbled to the deck. But I felt no lighter as I trudged away in my turn, over the hatch and into a ship that made the
Lachesis seem
cheerful.

The place had been washed and scrubbed. From the open hatches came light and fresh air. But nothing could cleanse the ship of a lurking sense of misery. The very wood had soaked it up, and the ship was haunted by it. It
smelled
of misery, of sickness and suffering.

“Tom?” cried Midgely. I saw him kneeling by the wall, reaching out in his blindness like the Bartimeus in his Bible book. “Tom!” he called again. “I need ytai.”

Weedle was cowered in a corner. “I never touched him!” he cried.

I went to Midgely; I
ran
to him. The deck down there was studded with ringbolts, some with shackles attached, some with rusted bits of chain. There were bolts in the ceiling and bolts in the walls, and where Midgely knelt there was a long snake of a chain—fully the length of the ship—lying in curls and bends.

Midgely held me, his anger gone. “Oh, Tom,” he said. “She's a slaver.”