Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley

by Kenneth Roberts

  Sometimes, after the play, we waited for Neal and he walked home with us to tell us some of the many things concerning which my father, both as a magistrate and as an interested human being, was profoundly curious. He probed into Neal's mind to discover how some of the plays we had seen had impressed him, and we soon learned that allusions which seemed offensive to my father had appeared to Neal to be simply amusing, or just so many words written by an author and recited by an actor in order to further the action of the play.

  ''I suppose it's amusing in Venice Preserv'd," my father asked politely, "when an actor says, 'In what whore's lap have you been lolling? Give but an Englishman his whore and ease, beef and a sea coal fire, he's yours for ever.' "

  "Sir," Neal said, "that was a Frenchman said that. The answer was 'Frenchman, you are saucy!' " He seemed puzzled that my father should have questioned the speech.

  We discovered how Penkethman's players had built up their wardrobes by begging discarded gowns and gentlemen's silks from such people of high station as were fascinated by theatrical mattersas so many of them were.

  We learned how benefits were arranged to increase the pay of various actorsbenefits to which the actors themselves sold tickets, running after the carriages of rich folk, begging them to subscribe, or calling at houses to sell tickets as a fishmonger might solicit patronage.

  Such a benefit, Neal said, might bring as much as one hundred guineas to an actor, and make all the difference between a season without profit, or one that would let

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  him live in comfort for two months or more if he were so unfortunate as to be unable to obtain work.

  On one subject he was silent. He recognized, from our descriptions, the fops who had caught our attention by their posturings and grimacings as they stood in the stage entrances. He nodded understandingly at our imitations of Sugar-leg and Jackdaw; but when my father described the mask-like face of the little man we called Tintoretto, Neal's face and eyes were expressionless. He seemed almost to have stopped breathing.

  We found out nothing at all from Neal when we first mentioned Tintoretto to him; but we learned a little morenot much, but more than enoughabout him on the twenty-ninth of July, when Penkethman's company performed The Gamester and, as "a cup of tea," threw in a second play, The Walking Statue, with the gibberish-interlarded epilogue which Neal recited to appreciative laughter. The Walking Statue had been a great favorite at Drury Lane and was equally so in Greenwich. The words "a cup of tea," we knew from Neal, had come to be actors' slang for anything likable. Tintoretto, obviously, was not Neal's "cup of tea."

  Probably my father and Captain Dean and I would have waited for Neal, the night of July 29th, and walked him home with us if it hadn't been for that epilogue, which made it necessary for Neal to get out of his costume and makeup. Unfortunately the night was warm and all three of us were eager for a bottle of chilled claret; so home we went.

  When we got there, we did something we seldom didopened our downstairs windows. This was a dangerous

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  practice in Greenwich, as it was in any naval town, because of the almost unbelievable number of thieves, streetwalkers, wandering Jews, irresponsible sailors and light-fingered dockyard workers who roamed the streets at all hours of the night, alert to snatch anything from an unguarded room, provided only that the anything was small enough to be lifted through an open window.

  We sat there in the semidark, listening to Captain Dean's comments on his Nottingham and his forthcoming voyage to America. Every sea captain considers his own vessel somehow superior to every other vessel, no matter how much larger; and I could sense how Captain Dean felt because of knowing how much finer my own dinghy was, in sailing qualities and clean lines, than larger shallops and even some yachts.

  Since the Nottingham was a galley, Captain Dean explained, she was fitted with oars for rowing when necessary, and with guns so that she could fight if forced to do so, and she was faster than a running vessel, which is fast enough to sail without convoy. That meant she was designed to make quick voyages with small cargoes.

  Behind Captain Dean's talk I was conscious of all the night-sounds of Greenwichthe bells from the vessels in the river; the distant shouting from taverns; the clatter of hoofs: the rattling of wheels of after-theatre carriages on the cobbles of the river frontwhen suddenly I heard something I didn't like at all. Captain Dean and my father heard it too, and liked it as little as I; for their heads turned slowly and questioningly toward each other.

  What we heard was halfway between a gasp and a gurgle, as though someone had started to shout, and had been prevented by a gush of liquid in his throat.

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  But if that sound was repeated, it was lost in all the other noises that made Greenwich, in summer, so difficult a place in which to sleep.

  I pulled the curtain to one side, leaning from the window to listen. I thought I saw a blob of darkness on our front steps. When I stared at it half sideways, to see it more clearly, I decided it was nothingthere was no movement from itand then, suddenly, I heard a long-drawn, quivering inhalation, such as one might make after holding his breath until his lungs are on the verge of bursting.

  I ran to the front door and drew it open.

  Neal Butler fell into the hallway as if he had been leaning against the door.

  I pulled him to his feet. His appearance horrified me.

  "What's the matter with you? You look sick!"

  I took him by the arm and turned him toward the front room. My father and Captain Dean were on their feet, staring at us, and Neal's appearance led my father to hurry to the windows, draw them down and close the shutters.

  He struck a light, and helped me put Neal in a chair.

  We saw it was no ordinary sickness that troubled Neal, but some sort of mental disturbance that had left him half conscious. He seemed unwilling to look at either of us. His breathing was quick and shallow, with a deep shuddering breath at unexpected intervals.

  "What happened to you, Neal?" my father asked. "Speak up! We're your friends."

  When Neal didn't answer, my father reached for a claret bottle and filled a glass. "Here," he said, "drink this and tell us what happened to you."

  When Neal continued to stare into space, my father

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  grasped his chin, and put the glass to his lips. Neal choked; then drew two of those long, shuddering sighs.

  "He was waiting for me after the play," he said flatly.

  "Who was?" my father asked.

  "The one with the white face," Neal said. "The painted one."

  "You mean the one we call Tintoretto?" my father asked.

  Neal nodded. "He pulled at mepulled at my clothes. I tried to walk around him so to get to you and Miles."

  "This manthis Tintoretto. He'd pulled at you before?" my father asked.

  "I had that knife," Neal said. "That one I'd sharpened. When we were almost at your house, I ran. He ran after me. When he caught up with me, I showed him the knife. He pushed it away. Hehe laughed! That white face! That painted fish mouth! I never thought the knife would go into him so quickso smooth!"

  For the first time he looked directly at me and at my father. "When he fell over against me, I was glad I did it. I had to do it. You'd have done it if you'd been me! Then I was afraid."

  My father put his hand on Neal's shoulder. "Had Tintoretto ever done this before?" Neal seemed to have run out of words. My father shook him. "I asked you whether he'd ever done this to you before tonight."

  Neal gulped. "No, sir. The first time I recited Mr. Cibber's epilogue I could hardly get past him in the wings. He squeezed me, and my hand smelled of perfume. I couldn't get around him."

  "Listen carefully," my father said. "Do you think others saw him squeeze you, as you put it?"

  Neal nodded and swallowed hard.

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  Captain Dean got to his feet. "Let's see about this," he said. "Charles, you sit here with Neal while
Miles and I go out on the street for a few minutes. Neal, you're not to move! Understand?"

  Neal nodded.

  Captain Dean and I went out onto the street and turned toward the river. We found Tintoretto near London Street, between our house and the park. He was huddled against a hedge, a crumpled shadow of a man.

  "The man's drunk," Captain Dean said loudly. "This is no place for him! We'll put him where he can sleep it off. You take him under one arm, Miles, and I'll take him by the other. We'll walk him toward the park."

  When we pulled him to his feet, his head hung slack on his shoulders, and even in the dim light his painted face had the blank look of a clown's. The handle of Neal's knife still protruded from the black silk front of his coat. His garments had an abominably musky odor.

  "Take out that knife, Miles," Captain Dean whispered. "We can't leave that in him. Toss it into your yard. We'll pick it up in the morningif we can't find it tonight."

  We supported Tintoretto draggingly toward the park, and it seemed to me that we did it so successfully that anyone who saw us would think we were merely doing a Christian act for a gentleman who had been oversedulous with the port.

  At least, that's what I thought until two men came toward us from the direction of the park. Then I knew that Tintoretto's body was limper than any mere drunken man could be or could look.

  As they drew nearer to us, Captain Dean muttered, "Better do some acting!"

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  He took Tintoretto around the waist and hung him, doubled up, over his arm; then bent over him solicitously. I bent over too and made retching sounds.

  The two men halted beside us. One said, "Want any help?" I thought I recognized the voice of Lacy Ryan, one of Penkethman's young players.

  "No, indeed," Captain Dean said heartily. To Tintoretto's body he said cheerfully, "Try hard! Better out than in." Again I uttered retching sounds and made play with my handkerchief.

  The two men went slowly on, laughing; and when they were dim in the darkness, we carried Tintoretto to a wooded spot and left him there.

  I was sweating, and with good reason, because I had no way of knowing how much the eyes of a keen young man like Lacy Ryan might have seen.

  "Well," my father said, when we told him that Tintoretto was dead with a knife wound under his ribs, and that Lacy Ryan and another man had spoken to us when we were getting rid of the body, "there's nothing like an occurrence of this nature to help a man make up his mind. And there's one sure thing about it: we've got to get Miles and Neal Butler out of here before somebody starts asking too many questions."

  He looked at Captain Dean. "How long before you'll be ready to sail, John?"

  "Two weeks, maybe," Captain Dean said. "Our cordage is at Gravesend, ready to go aboard, but I've done nothing about the butter and cheese. I'm only taking on a little: just enough for a quick turnover in Portsmouth or BostonPortsmouth probably."

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  "Get 'em in Donegal," my father said promptly. "Go north-about around Scotland and Ireland: come down to the island of Aran, and just beyond it you'll see the red cliffs of Donegal. The best butter and cheese in the world come from those fields around Donegal Bay. They're the greenest fields you'll ever find. I'll tell you what to do, John: drop down to Gravesend on the early tide tomorrow morning, and pick up your butter and cheese when you get to Ireland."

  When Captain Dean started to protest, my father jumped up to wag a magisterial finger before his nose. "Now listen, John! I can't have Miles mixed up in anything like this, and if Lacy Ryan recognized him, he certainly will be mixed up in it. So now I've told you what to do, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll provide enough money to double your purchases, the profit from my part to be divided between us.

  "I make this stipulation, though: Miles must go along as supercargo, and you'll make Neal your apprentice. He's a good boy, John. We can't let him start off in life with a murder charge against him-and that's what it'll look like to most London magistrates, no matter how it looks to us."

  "It seems to me," Captain Dean said, "that this killing was justifiable."

  "Bah!" my father cried. "Justifiable homicide: most dangerous thing in the world! What is justifiable homicide of a private nature? It's the defense against force of a man's person, house or goods. Ah! But how do you interpret the word 'justifiable'? Put all the judges in Britain in one room, and ask 'em to interpret a homicide you consider justifiable, and they'd argue for years! Take it to court, and

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  Lord Itchpate, C.J., would press a bunch of flowers to his nose and mumble that we are certainly not prepared to suggest that necessity should in every case be a justification. And what, to the mind of a learned judge with his nose in a bouquet, is necessity, for God's sake? Not the same thing that it would be to Neal Butler, harried, horrified and frightened half out of his wits by the insane maulings of aa creature so frenzied that he impales himself upon a knife. No, no! I can hear Itchpate now!

  " 'It is therefore our duty to declare that the prisoner's act in this case was willful murder, that the facts as stated are no legal justification of the homicide'and the honorable Court, in a hurry to down two dozen oysters and a bottle of port, would briskly proceed to pass sentence of death upon the prisoner! No, John: you do as I tell you! Get the Nottingham to sea with Swede and Neal and Miles aboard, and with no loss of time!"

  Captain Dean nodded thoughtfully. "Why not? With Neal aboard, Swede will work twice as hard. It'll let me have decent company aft, in place of Langman. It gives me an excuse to send Langman forward with the men. Your idea's a good one, Charles. You won't make a fortune on the venture, but we ought to clear enough to take on a good load of salt codfish in America. It smells, but it's a sure seller in England or France."

  "Well, now, look," my father said. "There's a lot to be done tonight." He laughed ruefully. "Doesn't it beat hell how much inconvenience and downright misery just one misguided bruteone betwattled male doxywho deserves nothing but to be officially and legally removed from this world, can cause by getting himself unofficially killed!

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  "Anyway, go on back to the Nottingham, John. Go tonightnow! Take Neal with you. Stow him away in your own quarters where nobody'll see him. Keep him out of Langman's way until you're clear of the land. I hunted out Langman, hard at work at his fishmongering, and gave him a talking-to he'll never forget. I doubt that he knows which way is up, as the saying goes, but we can't take chances. He's Malice personified."

  He put his hand on Neal's shoulder. "Are you hearing all this, Neal? We're doing this for your own good. Your father will agree."

  Neal just stared at him.

  "You go along with Captain Dean," my father said, "and try to forget everything that happened to you tonight, as well as everything we've said. Under Captain Dean you'll learn to be a marinera credit to your father and to all of us."

  Captain Dean emptied his glass of claret and got to his feet.

  "There's one more thing," my father said. "Swede hasn't boarded the Nottingham yet."

  "He's signed on," Captain Dean said.

  "I know," my father said, "but the hospital authorities don't know about it. I can notify 'em and make everything all legal sometime tomorrow afternoon; but we'll avoid any chance of delay by having Miles go to the hospital first thing in the morning."

  To me he said, "The doors open at five o'clock. Find Swede and bring him to me. Tell him I'll arrange things with the hospital authorities after the ship has sailed. There'll be clothes for him here, and we should have him aboard the Nottingham by six o'clock."