Under the Jolly Roger: Being an Account of the Further Nautical Adventures of Jacky Faber (8 page)

I balance myself against the roll of the ship and stick my foot in the right leg of the drawers, and then the left, and yank them up to my waist, right over my money belt. I sit on the edge of the bunk and pull on the stockings and then I pick up the shirt and give the armpits a bit of a sniff—pretty clean, I reflect, but then just how stinky can little boys make things? I pull it over my head and down to my waist. It fits fairly well and has ruffles at the cuffs and neck and lacings that go halfway down the front. I lace it up and pull on the britches. Tight, but serviceable.

The last thing I do is put on the black jacket with its two up-and-down rows of gold buttons. Nice and trim and tight it feels. Hat on, with hair tucked up under, and wishing for a mirror, I'm strapped back in harness again, ready for whatever else happens.

I step back into the midshipmen's berth and almost trip over two of the boys, as Ned and Tom had pulled their mattresses to the floor and are sound asleep outside my door, one to each side—I imagine they are there as protection for my own frail self.
My two Knights Errant.
Three, actually, as Georgie is curled up over there at the foot of the ladder.
Did you all swear mighty oaths on your knightly armor and intend to keep a watchful vigil over yon fair maiden? I am touched. How sweet.

Robin Raeburne is asleep at the table, his head on his arms. There is a cup in front of him and I pick it up and sniff it and it smells strongly of rum.
Does it help you sleep, young Robin? Does it help make you forget where you are? If it does, then I shan't blame you for it.

I quietly put the cup back down next to his hand and tiptoe past the sleeping boys and go out of the room, up the hatchway, and into the light.

All on board expect me to hide. Therefore, I shall
not
hide.

It looks to be a bright clear day with the sun coming up over France out there to port. I grab a ratline off the foremast and climb up into the rigging. I go up past the foretop and gain the fore royal yard and straddle it, looking out toward France.

France seems to be a pleasant place, in spite of all the awful tales I have heard of it ever since I got old enough to listen. I had half-expected there to be ogres and trolls and other of Napoleon's minions hanging about, but instead there are gently rolling hills going off into the distance, marked with neat pastures and farmsteads. There are some inlets set into the coast with a few fishing boats coming out of them to set their nets. But they do not come out too far, I notice, as they know we are lurking out here. Back there, behind us and out of sight below the horizon, is England ... England and Ja—Judy. Back there is Judy, and I hope she managed to make do on the money I left her.
Hang on, Judy, till I get out of this mess and can get back to you.

I look down at the
Wolverine
lying down there below. It is, as I suspected when first I caught a glimpse of it, a Brig-of-War, about a hundred feet long and twenty-five feet wide at the beam—which is half the size of the dear old
Dolphin.
Two masts instead of three. It probably carries about a hundred men and officers—one-quarter the number on the
Dolphin.
Looks to be eighteen cannon and they seem to be eighteen-pounders, and they are all right there on the top deck itself, not down on the second deck like on a frigate. I'll bet there's a Long Tom nine-pounder up front as a chaser and another in the stern.

It's plain that the
Wolverine
is on blockade duty—helping to keep the French warship fleet bottled up in their harbors and disrupting the enemy's seagoing commerce by stopping smugglers. All for the good and glory of Britannia, she who rules the waves, at least for now. And forever, it is hoped.

I look up at the sails and see that she is trim and the decks down below are scrubbed clean, so it is not a sloppy ship. My fear is that she is all spit and polish and not in fighting trim because that's a dangerous situation. I already feel, deep in my bones, that there are some things very,
very
wrong on this unhappy ship.

Today is Sunday, so I expect there will be a muster of the crew and church, but I don't know. I will wait and see. I know from the smoke curling up from the cooking fires that the next watch is getting their breakfast, and so I slip back down to the deck to get me some. I duck down into the fore hatch and stride into the teeming mess deck. All heads lift up upon my entry and the hum of conversation stops dead. There is a low whistle from some cheeky cove, but that's it. I get a cup of tea and some johnnycake and I sit down across from a seaman seated at the long table. I am used to being the center of attention. Most times I like it. Sometimes I do not.

"Well met, John Harper," I say, sitting myself down next to a man I now recognize. The johnnycake is good and the tea is hot, at least.

"Well met, Jacky," says Harper, smiling slightly. "Or I should say,
Miss
Faber." He is the man who fingered me as the one and only Jacky Faber the day before. The last I saw of him, he and I were both lookouts on the
Dolphin
on the day the ship was blasted and sinking and without hope. He is young but balding cleanly back from the forehead, and he affects a goatee, which makes him look like a devilish Spanish pirate, but I know him for a good man.

"So, Johnny, what kind of berth have we found here? Are there any more Dolphins aboard?" I ask. I finish off the cake and sip at the tea.

"As for Dolphins, alas, nay. As for the other question, I go on watch as lookout on the mainmast when the watch changes." He looks around at his fellow crew members and casts me a significant look.

I understand. We swap harmless tales of former shipmates and then I knock off the rest of my tea and stand. "Till later then, John Harper."

I know every eye in the place is on me, so I lift my chin and loudly say, "Good morning, mates. Thank you for sharing your breakfast with me. Is it not a glorious thing to be serving His Majesty the King on this fine day!"

With that, I turn and stride out of there, bootheels rapping on the deck, leaving a roomful of gaping mouths behind me.

I go back up the foremast and get to the topgallant brace and wait till I see Harper take over from the lookout, and then I take the foregallant brace, a line that goes between the two masts for support of both and is under such tension that it's like the wire a circus performer would walk, and I go over, hand over hand, till I reach the mainmast and the grinning Harper.

"Still at home in the riggin', eh, Jacky?"

We are on a very small platform, high, high on the mainmast. Back on the whaler this would be called the "crow's nest." It is where sharp-eyed men looked out constantly across the waves for the spume of a blowing whale.

"May it ever be so, John, as I am never happier than when I am up here," I say and settle myself against a brace. "So what's the story on this bark?"

His face darkens. "'Tis a Hell Ship, for sure, and I've never been on a worse one and it's all on the Captain's head."

"Careful, John," I say, looking about to make sure we are not heard, "you're getting close to mutiny."

"Mutiny!" he snorts. "The crew has been at the edge of mutiny for months. The officers should have done it long ago, but they are frozen in fear of him, just like anyone on board. He has flogged men half to death for sport and he keelhauled a man last month for merely lifting his hand in protection from a beatin' by the Bo'sun. Poor Spooner was alive after he was hauled back aboard, but he was cut up so bad by bein' scraped against the barnacles on the bottom that he died soon after from the infection."

That sends a shiver up my spine. Keelhauling is a cruel punishment wherein a poor seaman is taken up to the bow and a long rope is tied to each of his legs and he's thrown overboard and the ropes are walked back, one on the port side and one on the starboard side, drawing the man underwater all along the encrusted keel and back to the stern of the ship, where he's hauled back up, half drowned and bloody. I have never seen it done, Captain Locke of the
Dolphin
being a good and fair man, but I have heard accounts of it.

Harper's normally cheerful face is full of anger as he continues. "... And he gave Teddy Smallwood a hundred lashes, a
hundred
!—just for havin' a bad shave, for Christ's sake, and Teddy still can't stand up straight or put on his shirt in any comfort. I tell you, Jacky, the only times when this ship breathes easy is those times when the Captain is sick and stays in his cabin." Harper pauses and calms himself and sighs, "But he is sick a lot, and we thank God for it."

"Can nothing be done?" I ask.

"No. It would be up to the officers and they ain't done nothin'."

"And the crew?"

He thinks for a moment, then says, "The crew is split up in different gangs with different loyalties, which ain't surprisin' on a ship like this. A man's gotta know who his friends are."

"Who can be trusted?"

"Drake, the Master-at-Arms. Harkness, a gunner, and Jared, the Captain of the Top, are all good men. They command the loyalty of most of the crew."

"Most?" I ask.

"Aye. That gang of lubbers brought on with you looks to be a real bad lot. They've been put with the Waisters, which wasn't a good bunch to begin with."

Ah, Muck is at it again, sowing suspicion and hatred and discord even in the short time he has been aboard. It ain't surprising that he would end up with the Waisters, them being the worst sailors on board any ship, good only for the most simple and brutish of tasks.

"... and watch out for Bo'sun Morgan—he's the Captain's man, all the way. He's a cruel bastard who enjoys carrying out the Captain's punishments."

"I will, John," I say, glad of the information.

"I'm sorry, Jacky, that you ended up here on this Hell Ship. I knew you for a good kid back on the
Dolphin,
and as I see it, you're more in danger than anyone else here."

I put my hand on his arm. "Don't worry about me, John. I'll be all right."

He nods and shakes his head like he doesn't believe it. Like he doesn't believe
anybody
on this ship's gonna be all right. "You do have friends here, though. The men that saw you save Billy Barnes at the expense of your own freedom, well, they ain't forgot, and they have spread the story throughout the ship."

I think on this. "Thanks, John. That is good to know," I say, and swing out to go back down. "Oh, and one other thing. I need a shiv. Can you get me one?"

I start back down toward the deck, but I cock my head as I hear voices raised down on the quarterdeck below me. It is the Captain and the First Mate, Mr. Pinkham. I quietly drop down to the maintop and sit down to listen.

"Complications? What complications? A girl shows up on my ship and I bed her. What's complicated about that? I'm the Captain of this bloody ship, and I do what I bloody well want. And I remind you, Pinkham, this is a warship, with rough men on it, not some bloody Asylum for the Protection of Some Poor Bloody Orphans."

"Well, Sir, if you will pardon me, there are several complications here. First, there is that
book:
Because of it this girl is well known throughout the fleet, throughout all of London, for that matter—and who knows what foolish wife of a commodore or sister of an admiral or even First Lord has read this book and sees this foolish girl as a heroine or at least a poor victim? And for you to be the one that takes this girl under these circumstances, it would not be seemly, Sir. Your reputation, your career, your future promotions..."

"To hell with all of that and all of them, too." I sense, though I can't see it, that the Captain's tic is pulling his face into another grimace and his eye has gone a-wandering again.

"Secondly, Sir, there is the question of fraternization."

"What? What do you mean?" demands the Captain, his irritation plain.

"If I may be blunt, Sir, a Captain cannot mount a Midshipman. Captain Douglas, you may recall, was executed by firing squad on his own quarterdeck for just that indiscretion."

"Yes, but that Midshipman was a boy."

"I don't think the Court-Martial would make that distinction, Sir. You have entered her on the books as a Midshipman."

"Hmmm. So if she was a Lieutenant..."

"But that's impossible, Sir!"

"Oh, bugger all that! I don't give a good goddamn for any of it! If I didn't have an attack of that cursed gout last night, I'd have strapped her on right then, by God, and to Hell with all of them! And to Hell with you, too! Damn! Accursed gout! Why does God hate me so? Delivers a toothsome wench into my very grasp and then unmans me.
Pah!
"

"The very fact that she's on board, Sir, is—"

"There's nothing in Regulations about it, Pinkham. A good many of the Captains on this godforsaken blockade have got their wives put up in their cabins and the whole fleet knows it. There's thirty women on the
Orion
at last report and everyone knows there were three hundred women that had to be taken off the
Royal George
when she sank in Portsmouth Harbor back in eighty-two! Admiral Durrette's got his goddamn mistress down in his bed right now, for Chris'sakes!"

"The Admiral's mistress is a grown woman, Sir. This girl is scarce fifteen," says the good Mr. Pinkham. "Perhaps..."

"Perhaps, Mr. Pinkham, if you would go to Hell," says the Captain, and I hear his unsteady tread as he takes himself off the quarterdeck. "Send the loblolly boy to my cabin with my medicine and then muster the bloody crew for my inspection!"

The Bo'sun's pipe shrills out and the men are called. I slide down the shroud after the Captain has left the quarterdeck and gone down to his cabin to get his medicine and tend his misery. May he well enjoy his pain.

It seems the Captain never misses an opportunity to shame his men ... or his officers—half the ship must have heard him dress down poor Mr. Pinkham like he was a common seaman. I can imagine what this inspection is gonna be like.

As the men assemble in their divisions, all cleaned up and in their best uniforms, I seek out and find Mr. Pelham, the Second Mate, and present myself in front of him.