‘You stinking little toe rag,’ the Irishman yelled, leaping to his feet, one huge hand hauling up his trousers while the other shot out to catch the boy by his collar. The garment was worn loose to ward off the sun and it seemed as if the youngster was going to slip bodily out of it as McGrath lifted his arm. But Amos, squealing with terror, stayed inside, the white linen stretched above his head.
‘I’ve a good mind to wipe my arse with you. Then we’ll see how much you want to stay dogging my every step.’
‘Please, McGrath,’ Amos screamed, as he was swung out over the bows, well clear of the nettings.
As they were right at the peak of the prow, few people could see what McGrath was doing. And if they could hear the squealing, they could also hear the Irishman’s angry voice, and were not about to come forward to investigate. Let down as far as possible Amos’s calves were soaked by the forward motion of the ship. As soon as the sea dropped back he was hauled in again, close to the angry sailor’s face.
‘You’ll be after telling me what you’ve done wi’ my Pigtail or, Jesus bear witness, next time I duck you I’ll leave go.’
‘What Pigtail?’ Amos shouted, turning his head away from McGrath’s eyes. Nelson was shouting too as his bantam-sized fists pummelled the Irishman to little effect.
‘My fuckin’ baccy. A whole wad of prime Pigtail. I want to know who you sold it to.’
Amos tried to say he knew nothing about McGrath’s tobacco, but the man’s grip had tightened and the shirt was now knotted over his throat. Then one of Nelson’s punches swung wide, taking the huge man in the groin just below the hand that was still holding his trousers. McGrath roared in pain, and swung a fist at his assailant’s head. Not only did he miss the nimble lad, but the ducks ended up round his ankles, and tripped him up.
This was mostly bad news for Amos who, if he was saved from drowning was nevertheless roughly hauled over the bowrail. McGrath let him go and he crumpled on to the wet planking, still unsure as to which way was up by the time the Irishman got his ducks up round his waist. Nelson was standing just out of reach trying to tempt McGrath to follow him by cursing him roundly as ‘a no good swab, a grass-combing bugger not fit to be boiled for tallow’.
John Judd arrived just as the huge sailor, roaring like a bull, was about to launch himself on the boy. Judd pushed Nelson behind him, his hands held up to his friend in fearful supplication. ‘Now, stow it, McGrath.’
It was only in that place of relative safety that Nelson realised what had just happened. Without thinking he had landed several blows on the hardest man in the ship. The burst of fear was mingled with pride at his own audacity.
‘Step aside, Judd.’
‘What?’ Judd replied with disbelief. ‘So you can beat up a nipper?’
‘Did you cock an’ ear to what he said?’
‘I did, and it was cheek for certain. But I reckon he’s just spoke to save young Amos.’
Clearly McGrath had forgotten about Amos, who was now crouched on his hands and knees watching the Irishman’s back. As the sailor turned, he shot for the bowsprit.
‘Where’s my damned baccy you little sods?’ he growled, his head jerking back and forth. ‘’Twas in my chest and some skulkin’ low life bastard has gone an’ lifted it.’
‘Weren’t locked,’ said Judd, almost to himself, since a man like McGrath felt, quite rightly, that he had little need to protect his possessions. While both men were pondering this, and at a cocked thumb from Amos, Nelson took the opportunity to slip away.
‘Thanks mate,’ gasped Amos, and Nelson’s chest swelled with pride.
‘You’ll be after tellin’ me I’m to blame,’ growled McGrath.
‘I can see how such as that would work on you,’ said Judd, moving forward, his finger tapping his head, well within the range of those bunched fists. ‘That’s why you’ve been a-brooding.’
‘There’s not a man on this barky would cross me, mate, an’ well you know it.’ The use of the word ‘mate’ was reassuring, hinting that some of McGrath anger had dissipated. But he could still be heard on the forecastle as he continued, ‘But them tykes might pinch my Pigtail to sell on.’
‘Never in life,’ said Judd. ‘They might be imps, but they ain’t light-fingered.’
McGrath looked unconvinced, but Judd pressed home his advantage being the hard man’s friend. ‘What if I was to say to you, McGrath, that John Judd could find out for certain who snaffled your Pigtail?’
‘An’ how, in the name of Brian Boru, are you going to do that?’
‘You wait and see.’
‘I’ve been mullin’ on it since well before he blew,’ said Judd, clearly pleased at the looks of certainty on the two boys’ faces. At least they didn’t doubt him. The rest of the crew did, and were placing bets that it would be Judd himself who would feel the weight of McGrath’s displeasure, which was to be welcomed since it was like to save them. ‘Now, you just run along and attend to your duties while I get my little surprise ready.’
Amos, Nelson and the rest of the crew watched Judd like hawks. As Rathbone made his noon observation, he was spotted standing by the lee rail, muttering incantations and throwing various objects into the sea. This included the innards of a chicken, whose neck had been wrung to provide the cabin dinner. Some of the bird’s blood followed, which, added to the dirge-like tones of Judd’s prayers, caused much unease among a deeply superstitious crew.
Dinner was eaten in silence, with the Irishman’s eyes never still as he sought guilt in every move or gesture. Only Judd was relaxed. Taking advantage of the tension, he helped himself to twice the normal allowance of food. Being Saturday, there was grog to consume, but no one really seemed to want it until they were sure what was afoot.
Observing this, Judd reached behind him, and pulled from a ditty bag a set of thin sticks. In the lantern-light, every eye was drawn to the dark blood that tipped the end of each one. ‘Do all concur that there be such a thing as sea justice?’ he asked, to nodding heads and grunts of assent. ‘An’ that McGrath here has been cruelly robbed of his rightful chattels?’ His eyes ranged round the table. ‘We’re all tars at this mess table, an’ we know that there are laws and retributions that have nowt to do with judges and courts. Have we not all seen the won’t-take-no-for-an-answer sodomite fall from the yards, his vile blood to stain the deck, the slack-arsed swine who crows on his mate lost o’erboard on a dark and windy night, with no man’s hand anywhere near him?’
Judd’s voice had dropped low, seeming to draw in the deck beams above their heads. ‘Now, there are those that cry mishap an’ refuse to see the power of old Neptune at work. But there are others, men like us, who knows that venerable laws govern the lives of sailors, doctrines that go back to a time hidden by the mist.’
Horatio Nelson felt his skin crawl, such was the effect of John Judd’s litany. All his father’s admonishments regarding sorcery and devilry, which tried to well up and force him to leave, could not stand against the power of a present speaker. Judd’s eyes seemed to have grown larger, as if he was no longer the same gentle fellow who took such care of his boys. He looked at Amos, seeing that he, too, was deeply affected. They both started, as Judd’s words cracked like a whip.
‘There be a thief among us,’ Judd cried, ‘an’ that, as you know, is enough to summon the old spirits. I have said words to the waves, summoned Neptune’s aid in cantos that are death to the hound that lies. I have spoken with the spirits, as a few of us can, and they say that McGrath shall have his Pigtail returned, and his vengeance on the villain who lifted it.’
The bundle of thin sticks was shoved into the middle of the table, the base in his fist, the bloody tips held upright. ‘In here there is one piece for each man. They must be returned to my hand by suppertime, and he that stole McGrath’s Pigtail baccy will have the longest one of us all, for with his guilt and my spells, the wood will grow in his possession and nail him as sure as my name is John Judd. Let no man see it as you choose, for t
he evil eye rests in the miscreant, and he may do to yours, with no more’n a look, what should be done to his own.’
Tentatively, each man took his choice, some quickly, others hovering over the tips. The last two were offered to the ship’s boys for, as Judd observed, the spirits required them all to hold a piece of the true wood. Slowly the sailors moved away, to carry out the duties that had been assigned to them for the late afternoon. As the work progressed they would stop suddenly, pull their sticks from their pockets and turn to examine them. No genius was required to see the relief on the faces when they observed that theirs was the same length as when they had drawn it.
Time dragged until supper, began to seem near standstill as the men ate, so by the time Judd called for the sticks to be returned, the atmosphere was as taut as a bow string. One by one they laid them, even in length, on the table. As the line increased, so did the fear, for the number of potential culprits diminished. Catgut the fiddler was near the last to oblige. Heads turned in wonder when they saw that his stick was a good inch shorter than the rest.
‘You are undone, Catgut,’ said Judd softly. The scrawny fiddler tried to laugh, but one look into John Judd’s eyes killed the sound in his throat. ‘All the sticks were the same, each and every one. To be shorter, a man would have to break a bit off. Why would he trouble to do that, lest he thought himself guilty and wanted to be sure his stick hadn’t grown? Now, delay no more an’ tell me where you’ve hidden McGrath’s Pigtail.’
Catgut waved his skinny arms in feeble protest as he looked into rows of accusing eyes. Lower than the others, Horatio Nelson could see tears appear in the fiddler’s eyes. His jaw was set in denial, but his rapidly dampening cheeks told the truth.
‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ cried McGrath, moving forward. Horatio Nelson closed his eyes, not wishing to witness what was about to happen, but relieved that the thief had been exposed.
‘Stand!’ snapped John Judd, and such was the authority he had acquired that even the ship’s hard man obeyed him. ‘The thief must confess to stave off damnation.’
Nelson, eyes wide open now, watched as Catgut’s shoulders slumped, and he loosed the first of several sobs. The words followed slowly, in spurts. ‘In the manger … by the straw where the hens alay.’
‘You mean, paltry swab.’ Judd whispered. ‘Go down on your knees this second, and beg for the forgiveness of Neptune, as well as the man from who you stole.’
The fiddler’s bony knees thudded onto the planking. He was babbling away, to God, Neptune and Eamon McGrath, pleading for absolution, promising every drop of his grog for the whole voyage if he could be spared the drubbing he was owed.
‘I’ll not forgo it,’ said McGrath, emphatically, his fists clenched.
Judd put his hand on McGrath’s arm and spoke softly. ‘Take it easy on the sod, shipmate. He’s a miserable wretch, and what’s more the only fiddler we have aboard. Wound him too deep and you’ll find yourself dancing the capstan in his place.’
It was a bruised and bloodied specimen that crawled from his hammock the following day, but McGrath had heeded Judd’s wishes. The fiddler could still play, if only a scratch and a scrape, but enough to pace all hands as they swung round the capstan, pushing to get a new topsail yardarm aloft. The boys went up the shrouds after John Judd, and followed him out on the footropes, nagging him to answer their most pressing question. Finally, acting like a man driven to distraction, he obliged. ‘Why shipmates, it was all stuff and nonsense. But there is nowt as daft as a superstitious tar. You’ll never go astray preyin’ on that particular habit. Take that blood now, which got everyone so. They thought it was from that chicken, but I tipped the whole of that o’er the side in plain view.’
‘So where did it come from?’ asked Amos eagerly.
‘No more’n a lucky mishap.’ Hooking his arm around a sling, he showed them his thumb, the thin gash where the knife had caught him now no more than a thin white line in the callused flesh. ‘Bled like a stuck pig I did. But seeing as I had it to hand, and was set to prey on the fancies of my messmates, I thought it added a touch of the devil to the business.’
‘Land ho!’ came the cry from above their heads. ‘Fine on the larboard bow.’
Every eye on the ship strained for their first sight of solid earth for two months. Captain Rathbone’s voice boomed out, cursing the crew and telling them to get on with their tasks. They obliged, but as they worked their eyes strayed, until all had seen the white clouds that hovered over what must be land.
‘Now my boys,’ said John Judd, ‘you think you’s seen excitement since we weighed from the Downs. But just you wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ as yet. Over yonder there’s rum, women and make merry, and old Rathbone has coin in his sailing chest that makes sure we’ll get the chance to partake of it.’
The brilliance of St John’s was astounding, everything Nelson had been told to expect and more, a combination of bright sunlight, deep blue skies and sea set against the green and brown of the island of Antigua, which was dotted with buildings of startling whiteness. Beyond lay the land of fabled fortunes made from sugar cane, of great sea battles, sieges, of islands changing hands in bewildering rotation between the warring French, Spanish and British.
In the seas between here and the Spanish Main the pirates and buccaneers had plied their bloody trade, creating legends that he and his friends had re-enacted on the beaches and chill waters of the north Norfolk shore – Drake, Henry Morgan, Blackbeard. This was the arena in which his uncle had risen to martial fame. And here he was about to land on one of the islands.
What would they be doing at the Parsonage now, his brothers and sisters? The mornings, hot here, would perhaps be frosty in Norfolk. If Father were at home the strict regime he insisted on would be in place: proper dress, cleanliness, prayers three times a day and not enough food to go round. Nelson had been homesick on this voyage from time to time, either in his daily prayers or lying in his hammock longing for the familiarity and security of Burnham Thorpe. He wasn’t now, though, and he knew that every one of his siblings, perhaps even his pessimistic father, would envy him what he was about to experience.
To land and see the very ordinary faces of those who occupied the place was a great disappointment. There were no scarred scallywags and villains, flagon of rum in hand, or black-browed rogues thirsting to fight over a wayward look. There were only tradesfolk of the most mundane hue. The wharves that followed the horseshoe shaped bay were crammed with warehouses, full to the brim with everything from ambergris to wine. The place reeked of prosperity, not danger.
‘Now, I have knowledge of this port of St John’s,’ said McGrath, pointing to an area where narrow lanes led off the quay, ‘and it is not, thank the Lord, a place where a Christian would wish to spend too much time. So we leave Jesus and St Patrick in the boat, John Judd, and get our feet under a tavern table.’
The two boys followed in their footsteps, curious onlookers to the sights sounds and smells of the place. His first sight of so many black faces had had no effect on Nelson, but outside a drawing smuggled into his schoolboy dormitory, he had never before seen bare-breasted females, who were seemingly unashamed by the exposure. Though it was warm, the air was clear and dry, and the women, as they passed close to them, gave off a musky smell that tantalised the boys as much as it did McGrath and Judd.
The tavern the Irishman chose was so dark and full of smoke that, at first, they could hardly see. But with elbows put to good service McGrath found them a place to sit. Then slapping some silver coins on the bare wood of the table, he loudly demanded attention. Looking around Nelson could see girls in bright patterned shawls, who sat at the tables and encouraged the customers to divest themselves of their money.
Within seconds rum had arrived, strong, undiluted liquor that nearly made him choke until it was cut with water and lime juice. He felt the warmth of the drink spread through his limbs. Pipes arrived too, and soon Judd, McGrath and Amos were puffing away, adding to the dense
clouds that hung thick under the low rafters. McGrath had downed his first rum in one, then called for and consumed another before he rose to his feet and grinned at Judd. ‘That’s set me up fine and dandy, John boy, but you know, as I do, that too much of one good thing does no favour to another. You just keep an eye on these nippers while I test the mettle of what lays at the top of them stairs.’
Six eyes followed him. They had adjusted now to the gloom and they could see the open wooden staircase that ran up to a landing that lined the whole of one wall. Most of the doors were closed, but the two that remained open had handsome young negresses standing in them, demure in their looks despite the flesh they showed. McGrath had stopped at the base of the staircase and was haggling with the man who sat at the table. Finally a bargain was struck, money changed hands, and the Irishman had his foot on the first step.
Distracted by the arrival of more rum, when they looked back he’d disappeared. Amos Cavell grinned and nudged Nelson, indicating that one of the open doors was now closed. Suddenly John Judd was fidgeting like an infant, swaying back and forth as though trying to find the seat of a particularly galling itch. Setting down his tankard, he pronounced himself unwilling ‘to hold such for an instant longer’, and was at the foot of the stairs in an instant. His business at the table was as quickly concluded and the boys saw him run up, slap something into the last girl’s hand, before both disappeared behind the closed door.
‘Give me rum any day, mate,’ said Amos to Nelson, leaning back in a superior way. ‘There’s more pleasure in a good jug of rum than in any black-skinned trollop.’
‘You’re right at that,’ was the reply, though doubt was evident in Nelson’s voice. The pair sat there as Judd and McGrath satisfied their corporeal needs, trying hard to look like men rather than boys. This took the form of an exaggerated loucheness, which with more rum soon turned raucous. Pufffing on his pipe, Amos was showing away, as if a tavern was his natural habitat, shouting lewd comments that earned him many a baleful look. It also attracted to the table two of the whores working the room.
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