By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  Hale pulled the now-empty mess kid towards him, directed a stream of dark brown spittle into it, then replied calmly, clearly unfazed. ‘Happen I’ll tell them you’re windy as well, given to speechifying.’

  ‘You can tell them,’ Michael added, raising a clenched fist, ‘whoever them may be, that I dislike being practised upon, and that I am inclined to act upon such with this.’

  Hale’s sparse-toothed smile was slow and infuriating, though as he spoke he took a care to lean back slightly, which would take him out of the range of that ham fist. ‘There’s one or two aboard who will not shy away from that, Paddy.’

  ‘You do.’

  ‘Now, mate, on an open deck for all to see, and a bosun’s cat and a disrating just waiting for the miscreants. Fighting begets punishment when it can be seen, but happen in a quiet corner you would find I would not shy off, for I am not one to measure a man by the size of himself or his fist.’

  ‘O’Hagan has nothing to lose,’ said Cornelius Gherson, with a snide air.

  Hale grinned slowly. ‘He has, and I reckon before this commission is out he will find out what that is.’

  ‘What is it you want, Hale?’ asked Pearce, throwing a sharp look at Gherson to shut him up. He had a fair idea what Michael would lose: the skin off his back.

  Hale executed a slow chew before replying. ‘Why would I want something from the likes of you?’

  ‘Mr Hale.’ The compliment earned Pearce a nod. ‘You were one of those who pressed us, were you not?’ Another nod, slower to come this time, to confirm what had been a guess, because though Pearce thought he had heard Barclay shout the name, and allude to a scratching female, who could well be responsible for the very obvious marks on the man’s face, he could not be sure.

  One cheek appeared to swell as the tobacco was pushed sideways. ‘It would be of interest to hear what you think of the likes of me.’

  ‘It would not be pleasant to the ear,’ said Charlie Taverner, ‘but I am happy to try if you so wish it.’

  ‘Like as not,’ Hale replied, ‘but what we was doing comes under the heading of necessity.’ He could see half the table about to protest and held up a hand to stop them. ‘I came here to do you a favour.’

  ‘Like last night?’ demanded O’Hagan.

  ‘And to stop you from doing something daft, like trying to jump off the ship into a boat, or swim to Sheerness or the Isle of Grain. Thoughts like that be natural, but you has been told already under what laws you serve, and don’t have a doubt they would be applied. You won’t get clear of this ship so you’d best accept it. You’ll be hauled in with a quick round turn and had up at the grating without doubt. It would do no good to claim you were pressed ’cause you are on the ship’s muster as volunteers. Now I will grant that being had up like that is not agreeable, and I know ’cause it was my way into the Navy just like you.’

  ‘You were pressed?’ asked Rufus, with his habitual innocent air.

  Pearce was not surprised at Rufus’s trusting response but he himself did not believe a word the man was saying. If sailors had a reputation for anything – apart from over enthusiastic carousing and whoring – it was for tale-telling that extended to downright falsehood. Hale had an air about him of that sort; the slight cock of the head, a lop-sided smirk, the earnest look in the eyes to imply sincerity that achieved the exact opposite.

  ‘I was, lad, and younger than you, it being during the American War.’

  ‘The American Revolution,’ said Pearce, in a dogged tone of which his father would have approved.

  ‘Call it what you will, mate, it was war and the fleet was short, and bein’ a striplin’ under the legal age of seventeen made no odds. I was taken just like you and I can recall to this day what I felt on my first night aboard ship. Lost, sitting in a huddle like you was, plotting an’ a’plannin’, cursing those who did the deed.’ Hale’s voice changed then, becoming eager and intense. ‘But in time I came to see that I had fallen lucky. The work was hard, no error, but what toil ashore is any better? Life before the mast weren’t half bad. I had food, clothes and money being paid that I could scarce spend.’

  The black eyes, heavy browed, ranged round the table. ‘Honest in your heart now, how many here have had more in their hand than would keep them sound for a week at most, eh?’

  ‘I have,’ insisted Gherson, looking to the others as if determined to make a point, underlining once more that he was not like them. The rest of his mess did not know him enough to concur, or esteem him enough to care, so that the added words, ‘many times’, sounded weak and unconvincing.

  At the same time Hale’s voice, and the look in his eager face, took on a fervent cast. ‘And that be before we has a chance to take a prize. Why, I could tell you tales of fortunes made at sea, Spanish treasure ships so laden with gold they can barely float have been taken by the King’s Navy, with money by the sack load for every man in the crew. Think of that! Look around this deck. Do you see heartbreak? Look at me. I ain’t nobody now. I put myself to it, and I have an honourable station in this here Navy.’

  ‘Mr Hale,’ said Pearce, electing to speak for them all, including Cornelius Gherson, whose eye had lit up at the talk of gold. ‘I thank you, even if your tales of prize money are romance.’

  ‘Ain’t romance, mate, it be the right sound truth.’

  ‘So true,’ Pearce replied, with cold precision, ‘that you are still in your honourable station.’

  The pair locked eyes, as if Hale thought that by doing so he could make Pearce back down. His adversary was tempted to let him know just how wise he was to such deceit. There was hardly a tavern in the land that did not have its ex-tar trying to keep his throat lubricated by exaggeration; sea monsters, deadly storms, compliant women, some of them two-headed, and most of all wealth, gold and sparkling jewels which by the most devilish ill-fortune had slipped through their fingers. Pearce had met them, listened to them and long ago learnt to see such storytelling for what it was; just that.

  Hale broke the stare first, nodded, stood and said, ‘Hark at what I said.’

  ‘Which part, the truth or the fiction?’

  That was received with a grunt, and the man turned. All eyes watched as Hale made his way to another mess table, to another huddle of pressed men from the Pelican. They would be talking the same talk, and Hale would no doubt deliver the same lecture, and hold out the same prospect. Who knows, thought Pearce, he may well find willing ears, for, as well as hearing the tall-tales, he had observed many a gawping soul who plainly believed every word.

  ‘So, John boy, I ask again, what’s the plan?’ said Michael.

  Faced with more looks of hope, and not wishing to say nothing, Pearce replied, ‘Pen and paper, Michael.’

  ‘Handy instruments if you can employ them,’ the Irishman replied, holding up his hand again, this time with thick fingers spread. ‘Jesus they’re not much use to me.’

  ‘And who would you be writing to?’ asked Charlie Taverner.

  ‘Anyone in authority that can get me off this ship.’

  ‘Just you?’

  Pearce locked eyes with Charlie then, but said nothing.

  ‘I can write,’ Gherson said, with a surprised look.

  The notion seemed to trigger something in his mind, for he rose quickly from the table and walked away, to pass slowly each of the other mess tables set out at intervals along the deck. Even though Pearce could only observe his back, he guessed Gherson was employing that infuriating smile, ingratiatingly aimed at every member of the crew, some of whom were responding. At one table it was enough to allow Gherson to sit down.

  ‘You must be able to write, Abel,’ said Pearce.

  ‘Happen I can,’ the old man replied, his face and voice full of melancholy. The others, who knew him well, just looked away. ‘But then what’s the point when you ain’t got no one to pen a letter to, ’cepting some sod that wants to chuck you in gaol.’

  ‘Another visitor,’ hissed Charlie Taverner, which forced Pe
arce to forget Gherson, and look instead at Kemp, who was heading for their table.

  ‘They say,’ Michael expounded, ‘that the smell of corruption comes from what they term the bilges.’ Kemp got a direct look then. ‘But I take leave to doubt that’s the true cause.’

  ‘Your nose might be too close to your arse,’ Kemp replied.

  ‘While yours I would liken to a diseased prick, with the discharge you have hanging from its end.’

  Kemp had been insulted too many times in his life to be fazed, but he did use his sleeve before he spoke again. ‘Clear up around you, and the mess table, lest you want to be mother to your own tribe of rats.’

  ‘We were promised clothes in which to work,’ said Rufus Dommet, very obviously thrilled at the idea of being given anything.

  ‘We have to weigh first,’ Kemp replied.

  ‘Would I be right to say that the purser advances goods against wages to come?’ asked Pearce, too busy with his own thoughts to register what Kemp was saying.

  ‘You would,’ Kemp replied, ignoring a curse from Abel Scrivens; he added, ‘an’ he’ll put it against your bounty if’n you ask him. So what is it you’re after?’

  Kemp’s face showed a deep curiosity, an eagerness to know what this John whatever-his-real-name-is wanted to buy. Pearce had no intention of obliging him.

  A whistle blew several notes, followed by a shouted command. ‘All hands, stand by to weigh anchor.’

  Kemp’s rattan twitched. ‘Time to shift.’

  Pearce, holding the man’s gaze, had felt his heart jump at the command to weigh, and cursed himself for missing what Kemp had said earlier. The frigate was about to depart the Nore anchorage; if he was going to go it had to be now, but standing, he found himself swept along with his own messmates as well as others, all heading for the capstan.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Pelicans arrived to find most of the crew assembled round its bars, ready to bring the ship’s boats on board. A rope ran forward along the deck, through a series of heavy blocks up to the deck above. At the command, the newcomers copied the action of the experienced seamen and took hold of the bars. On another command they began to heave, some fifty souls digging their feet into the planking and pushing with all their might to get the boats out of the water. Lanterns were lit as the boats were placed over booms that ran across the waist, for they blocked nearly all of the available light, dripping water on to the deck from bottoms that were green from time spent in the river.

  Next the order came to ‘Hove short,’ followed by, ‘Rig the messenger cable.’

  That command saw the rope on the capstan cast off, to be replaced by one that was a huge continuous ring. Looped over and set in the capstan groove, the free end was taken forward to where a party of men and the ship’s boys gathered by the thick cable that disappeared out of a hole in the side. One sailor started singing, which was taken up by the others, a rhythmic chant designed to maximise the effort they were making.

  ‘Who would be a sailor, I would me, go, go, go-Jack-Go.’

  The last go had everyone applying pressure at once, and Pearce felt the first easy movement as the capstan responded, only to realise that all they had done was take up the slack on what the sailors called the messenger. The chant was repeated over and over again, but there was no quick speed gained, just tiny increments accompanied by the creaking of the rope that made it sound as if it were going to part. Ahead men were attaching cords both to the thick cable and the messenger that ran round the capstan.

  ‘Why is not the damn thing moving?’ said Michael, red-faced with pushing.

  ‘The cable weight, pudding head,’ gasped a sailor, ‘without we raise it from the water and get it taut we’ll be here all day.’

  ‘Sure that would suit me fine, friend,’ Michael replied. ‘God alone knows why I am pushing this pole, since I have no desire to go anywhere, at all.’

  ‘You’ll push it,’ called Kemp, moving towards him with his rattan raised, ‘or you’ll feel this.’

  ‘I am thinking,’ the Irishman said with a huge grin designed to infuriate Kemp, ‘that such a thing as that would fit very neatly in your arse.’

  ‘Well said, Paddy,’ cried a voice, ‘though I’ll tell you he has the tightest arse on the ship.’

  ‘Short arms and deep pockets, that’s Kemp,’ hailed another.

  ‘God in heaven, these craturs are human,’ Michael scoffed, looking at Pearce with raised eyes. ‘They speak, and here was me thinking they was dumb beasts of burden, not much above being donkeys.’

  ‘Stow it, you cheeky sod.’

  ‘Now who was that a’braying?’

  ‘Happen you’ll find out when we’ve won our anchor.’

  Kemp jabbed at Michael’s back with his cane. ‘Meet Samuel Devenow, Paddy, who loves to bruise, and I wish you joy of the acquaintance.’

  Pearce looked to where Kemp was pointing, into a scarred face going red with the effort of pushing, and a look in the eye, aimed at Michael O’Hagan, that was enough to kill on its own. He recognised it as the face he had observed haranguing a silent mess table as they had had their dinner, and decided it was even less prepossessing closer to than it had been before.

  ‘What’re you grinning at Paddy?’ Devenow snarled.

  ‘Sure, I have not had the honour to see such ugly features since last I looked to that grand and ancient church at Canterbury town.’

  ‘Never met a Paddy yet that talked sense,’ Devenow replied, a remark which was greeted by a degree of gasping assent.

  Pearce, beside Michael on the capstan bar, could see the look in Michael’s eye too, and for all the cast of amusement on his face, and the jocular tone of the voice, there was none in the gaze. For the first time since the Irishman had tried to clout him in the Pelican he saw something of the man that Charlie Taverner had identified as a bruiser.

  ‘I suppose,’ Michael continued, ‘you’re too much the heathen to go near a place of worship, even a blaspheme Protestant one. But I think the masons who built Canterbury were good Papists, and had the likes of you in mind when they fashioned their gargoyles. The ugliest one I reckon, demon-like and nasty, was an outlet for the privy, which suits, since what comes out of the hole of its mouth is not so very different to what issues from yours.’

  That made a few of the men laugh, but a sharp bark from Devenow killed that, which underlined for Pearce what he had suspected before; they were in the presence of someone the crew treated with caution. As he pushed he was full of thoughts as to what that would mean – every shade of humanity would be on board the ship, and there would likely be a tyranny below decks to match or even surpass the one that existed abaft the mast. There was little doubt that Michael O’Hagan knew that too, and was prepared to challenge it.

  They were moving now, not fast but at a very slow walk, and as they came round Pearce could see the thick cable coming in, covered in slime, dripping gallons of water on to the deck as it was fed through a hatch to be stored on the deck below. The boys detached the lengths of cord before the hawser disappeared, then ran back to the seaman who lashed them speedily onto the moving hawser. He could not help but examine the method, which was clever – the messenger was only that, a continuous rope that acted as means to get the much thicker hawser inboard. That itself was too thick to wrap round any kind of device, and clearly too heavy to be hauled aboard by humans.

  ‘Anchor cable hove short, sir.’ A voice called from above.

  Roscoe’s voice gave the response. ‘Stand down half the men on the capstan.’

  Another voice called then, ‘All hands to make sail,’ a cry that was repeated throughout the ship. Everyone bar the marines and the hawser party ran up to the deck, Kemp driving his charges before him to the quarterdeck, where they were ordered to ‘clap on that there fall, and stand by to heave on command’.

  Topmen were speeding aloft, spreading out along the yards and as soon as they were in position the order came to let fall the topsails. The pale brown can
vas dropped, snapping like a wild animal, filling the air with noise as it rattled in the wind. As soon as the ropes attached to the lower ends were tied off, with much shouting as to how they should be eased or tightened, the sails boomed out with a life of their own, stretching taut, the frigate creaking as the pressure began to move the hull forward.

  The whole exercise was accompanied by a huge amount of shouting, some to the men and boys aloft, more to those manning ropes, even more to a party they could see atop the buoy to which the frigate had been moored, men struggling with crowbars to free the other end of the hawser where it was looped around the great ring on the crown. As it came free it splashed into the water and disappeared – then the frigate took on a life independent of the shore. Barclay stood by the wheel alongside a fellow dressed in black, who looked to be hanging on to a spoke rather than applying pressure to it. All were looking aloft to see the billowing canvas against the now grey sky.

  Pearce was impressed despite himself, aware that no one, least of all he, could watch such a majestic sight, the three great sails high on the masts, taut now, and not be moved by it. But more moving still was a sight of the shore, the increasing distance between it and the ship; for him the certain knowledge, and a sinking feeling to go with it, that getting free had just got more difficult.

  HMS Brilliant won her anchor with ease, if not with elegance, thrilling the captain’s wife, who had been allowed to take up a central position on the poop. From there she could look at the groups of sailors hauling on ropes, from the waist to the very deck on which she stood. The ultimate snap as the wind took the mainmast sail, it being so loud, made her laugh and cover her ears. Ralph Barclay knew that what appeared impressive to her would be seen as less so by those of his professional peers watching the frigate depart, for it had been a laboured performance. Like his fellow captains he had seen true crack ships weigh, seen the topmen aloft in seconds and the whole manoeuvre fulfilled in two minutes, a good twelve minutes less than his crew had managed. Once more he swore to himself that he would make this a ship to be proud of, and in his mind’s eye he could see and feel the admiration that would come his way when it was.