By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  The silence lasted for another second; then the air was full of the cries of men trying to effect a rescue. The sling was there quick, a rope attached to it and flung under the end of the cask. Pearce was on his knees beside Michael, both cursing as they tried, in the gap created by Scrivens’ crushed body, to get enough purchase to ease the weight.

  ‘Bring more light, for Christ’s sake,’ one sailor called, while two more cursed endlessly as they tried to get a line under the cask. ‘And the surgeon.’

  A quick knot was tied to the sling and the order given to haul away easy. Slowly the cask began to lift, and there was enough light to see how badly hurt the poor sod was. The light picked up the blood streaming out from about three different parts of his body, his eyes were closed and he was beyond the point of feeling any pain.

  ‘Hang on, Abel,’ Pearce said uselessly, while Michael, who had crossed himself, was praying in a whisper. ‘For Christ’s sake hang on.’ Looking up, as if to the heavens and a God in which he did not believe, Pearce looked into the faces of Abel Scrivens’ friends. Charlie Taverner had his head in his hands, Rufus had tears in his eyes; Ben Walker was on his knees, face anxious, bird-like eyes fixed on the old man, calling down words of encouragement.

  ‘Stand aside.’

  Lutyens pushed Pearce and Michael out of the way and knelt down to touch Scrivens’ neck, then lower to search for breath. ‘There is life still. We need a sling to lift him out, for I cannot attend to him here.’

  More shouts brought a hammock, and Pearce was vaguely aware of the men on the main hoist adding ropes to make a different kind of sling and the voice of Lieutenant Digby enquiring what had happened. Lifting Scrivens’ body was not easy – for all that he was a featherweight, the position in which he lay was awkward, and all who had hands on him knew that they could damage him more than help him. Scrivens’ body twitched several times as they moved him, evidence of the deep pain that was penetrating his unconscious state. Slowly, having been placed in the hammock, he was eased out and upwards, to the sound of raised voices.

  ‘Get that party out of there,’ said Digby.

  ‘The cook needs those casks out for the men’s dinner,’ protested the purser.

  ‘The men have been down there long enough, sir,’ Digby insisted. ‘Apply to Mr Roscoe for another party to complete the task.’

  It was easy for Pearce to imagine the fat little purser puffing out his toad chest then. ‘I think you exceed your authority, sir.’

  Digby’s response was icy. ‘Since I have some, sir, and you have none, I think my opinion is the one that will count.’

  ‘The captain will hear of this.’

  Digby shouted then, his voice every bit as unforgiving as Barclay’s. ‘The captain might be too busy overseeing a burial to listen.’

  Pearce and Michael climbed out to find the two faces close to each other, Digby, red faced and angry, towering over the purser, who was relenting. ‘I am merely trying to do my duty, Lieutenant Digby. There is no need to adopt so high a tone.’

  They were by the steps leading up to the orlop deck when Pearce looked back to the officer and the purser, who were now engaged in mutual apologies. He saw Martin Dent slip out through the hatchway, throwing an alarmed look at him, before scurrying away, leaving Pearce with the certain knowledge of where the extra weight on that cask had come from.

  ‘I suggest,’ said Michael O’Hagan, when Pearce told him, ‘that you kill that boy before he kills you.’

  Lutyens knew that he was going to lose his patient as soon as he got him on to the table in the sick bay. Probing fingers felt ribs so crushed that internal damage was inevitable, likewise the hips, while the heavy bleeding implied damage to the spleen. It was the loss of blood that took him, for Lutyens, try as he might could not stem it in time, because there was no obvious place to put either a ligature or a tourniquet. He was aware of the men behind him, the big Irishman and the one entered as Truculence, and he saw the flash of hate in those eyes when he indicated, by a shake of the head and a request for one of them to fetch Lieutenant Digby, that his patient was slipping away.

  Scrivens died before Digby made his appearance, the life going from his inert body without even a last gasp of air. Barclay was informed, and ordered that the body be prepared for burial. Then he consulted his Bible for an appropriate lesson to read out at what would be the first, but certainly not the last burial service of this commission.

  ‘I think it would reassure the men to see me attend, Captain Barclay,’ Emily said, firmly. ‘I would not want them to think me heartless.’

  ‘As I say, my dear, the choice is yours. No funeral is pleasant, even that of some low creature without much hope of salvation in his life.’

  That angered Emily, for whoever this Scrivens was he was the possessor of a soul. ‘Did you not say, husband, we are all God’s creatures, when you advised me that some of your volunteers may succumb.’ The emphasis on the word volunteers was unmistakable.

  ‘I did, my dear,’ Barclay replied, guardedly.

  ‘Then I think that makes us all equal in his eyes, does it not? The poor man is as welcome in heaven as the prince.’

  Ralph Barclay responded in a hurt tone, well aware that if anyone else had chosen to speak to him in such a manner he would have bitten their head off. ‘I cannot help but feel Mrs Barclay that there is a tone of chastisement in your voice.’

  ‘Not chastisement, husband, but pity that you seem to see the man just deceased as somehow unworthy. However,’ she added quickly, to the shocked look on his face, ‘I am sure I have misunderstood you, and that it is only the experience of so much death in your profession that makes you sound callous.’

  ‘Callous?’

  ‘Perhaps inured is a better word.’

  The men gathered in their divisions, officers in dress uniform, under a grey sky, to bury a man few of them knew, and less than half a dozen had cared about when he was alive. But they were solemn, all of them, for in a profession where the risk of death was a commonplace, it was tempting providence to show anything other than respect. Sown in canvas, lying on a hatch cover, with a piece of roundshot to weight down his shroud, Scrivens was not visible to the burial party, so all could imagine him as somehow a better specimen, a bigger and fitter man, perhaps even a younger one, than he had in fact been.

  ‘He was good,’ sniffled Rufus, ‘even if he did get on at me, it was well meant.’

  ‘Never would have survived on the Thames bank without him,’ added Charlie Taverner.

  ‘Amen to that,’ added Ben.

  ‘Silence there,’ said Lieutenant Digby, a command that was soft enough to respect their grief.

  Barclay read the burial service, watched by his wife, in a sonorous voice, and Emily was pleased at the mood he struck, mournful but also hopeful, the certainty that the man being buried was going to a better place. She searched the faces of the crew, pleased to see that in the main, by the expressions of piety they wore, they seemed to agree with their captain; that man was born into nothing and left this earth with nothing, that an all-seeing God would be there to greet him at the gates of eternity to count his virtues and his failings. This poor creature, obviously unsuited to a life at sea judging by his behaviour in climbing the shrouds, would go to a better place.

  She could not help but look for John Pearce, for he was an educated man in the midst of a high degree of ignorance, stood between the big curly haired fellow, who had his head bowed in prayer, a man who crossed himself frequently in the Papist manner, and a handsome youth who looked to be crying from the way he dabbed at his eyes. Pearce was doing neither – he was staring straight ahead at her husband and the bible in his hand, with a look that could only be described as malevolent. There was no piety in that countenance and the thought that surfaced then was unwelcome.

  Her husband had pressed these men – his so-called volunteers – they were here against their will. Was there a woman somewhere, a mother, sister or sweetheart who would mourn t
he man’s passing? Would they ever know how he died, or where he died? Abel Scrivens should not have been aboard this ship, and if he had not been he would still be alive. Instinctively, Emily Barclay knew what Pearce was thinking – that Captain Ralph Barclay had as good as murdered Scrivens, and the real problem she had was that she could not disagree with such a thought.

  ‘And so, we commit the body of…’ There was a pause then, as Ralph Barclay had to look at the flyleaf of his Bible, where he had noted in pencil the name of the deceased ‘…Abel Scrivens to the deep.’ The hatch cover had been picked up, taken to the side, and one end laid on the bulwark. As Ralph Barclay intoned the final words of the burial service, the cover was lifted and with a hiss followed by a splash, the shroud slid into the sea.

  ‘And may God have mercy on his soul.’

  Emily Barclay had her eyes tight shut, as she sought to submerge the words that filled her brain. ‘And yours, husband, and yours.’

  Pearce had no intention of killing Martin Dent, yet he knew the boy had to be stopped. But how? An appeal to bury the hatchet would be more likely to be taken as an invitation to stick an axe in his head. Would a word to Lieutenant Digby work, or even, God forbid, Barclay? He didn’t know, and he sought out the only person he thought he could ask.

  ‘We aw’ know wee Martin,’ said Dysart, grinning. ‘A right tyke he is, though liked by the crew, for he will as like as no, provide a laugh as much as mischief.’

  ‘He’s trying to kill me.’

  ‘Och! Away man,’ Dysart cried. ‘Has yer imagination got the better of ye?’

  Pearce decided an appeal to a national commonality was necessary, even if he risked imparting information in the process. ‘You doubt the word of a fellow Scot?’

  ‘You, a Scot?’ Dysart said dismissively. ‘Ye dinna sound like wan tae me.’

  ‘I spent most of my formative years south of the border in England.’

  ‘Well, it’s no done much for yer wits.’

  Martin Dent was intent on avoiding Pearce and Charlie Taverner, staying out of their way until he had another chance to impose trouble. He knew the ship better than his adversaries, the places to hide, and those where to accost him would be public. Every mention of the name underlined what Dysart had said – he was popular, more so than the other ship’s boys. It was pointless for Pearce to speculate on the nature of this popularity, though difficult to avoid doing so. He had to stand outside himself and examine the problem objectively, something the Abbé Morlant, his French tutor, had taught him always to do.

  How distant Morlant seemed now, and those comfortable days in Paris – the calm of proper study with his soft voiced Abbé mingled with the excitement of an upheaval that truly seemed to make people free. He remembered citizens smiling at each other in the streets, or engaging in fearless and open debate; the common bonds of humanity that culminated in the great Festival of the Revolution, when it seemed that everyone in the city had come to the same place with the same purpose – to express their happiness at the present state of their country and their lives. In that great expanse of the Champs de Mars – a huge open field where once soldiers drilled and cannon fired salutes to Kings, now filled with flowers, food, flaring torches, dancing, laughing, kissing and embracing commoners – it had been truly possible to believe that the world had changed.

  ‘That sounds like shite to me,’ said Michael, when Pearce advanced the proposition that there was good in everyone and that the boy would have been chastened by the death of Scrivens, that he would give up his grudge from mortification at the result of his actions. Michael took a mouthful of grog before adding, ‘The little sod will not stop till he has killed you and you cannot, for your own sake, think he will.’

  ‘Well, Michael,’ Pearce replied, with just a trace of exasperation, ‘if you have any ideas on what to do, I would be grateful.’

  ‘Simple,’ said Charlie Taverner, who felt equally under threat. ‘Collar him, gag him, and drop him overboard on a dark and windy night.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ added Ben Walker, with a gleam in his eyes and a tone in his voice that made Pearce reckon him easily capable of killing a fellow human being.

  ‘Murder?’ said a shocked Rufus Dommet.

  ‘Preservation,’ Michael insisted. ‘Charlie and Ben are right, for if I have learnt one thing in my life, it is best to collapse a ditch on a man who is your enemy before he collapses one on you.’

  ‘And you believe in God?’ said Pearce.

  ‘I do,’ O’Hagan insisted, ‘but I have no yearning to meet him before my given time.’

  ‘We’re all at risk,’ said Ben, slapping the table with a flat hand. ‘You do know that Pearce?’ The silence that followed allowed Ben to look at each of them in turn, and for the first time Pearce saw, in that serious troubled face, a degree of determination that underlined how much he was his own man. ‘Abel did the boy no harm, yet he died as a plain result of his actions. If any of us come between Pearce and Dent…’

  ‘And me,’ Charlie interrupted, ‘don’t forget me.’

  ‘…we will suffer the same fate as Abel.’

  Silence greeted that sobering thought, as Ben again looked from one to the other, until all four had nodded to acknowledge the truth of what he was saying. ‘Then it stands to reason that we all have to have eyes for each other’s back. We goes no place alone, an’ we stay close to each other at all times.’

  Rufus shuddered. ‘Christ, Ben, that be scary.’

  ‘Not scary, Rufus, deadly more like if’n you don’t harken.’

  ‘I think I will try talking to him,’ said Pearce.

  ‘Try that, Pearce,’ growled Charlie, emptying his jug, ‘but I reckon Ben has the right of it. And when you have failed, then help me to chuck him overboard, for that is what I will do if I get the chance.’

  Silence fell as Gherson approached. It was understood between them – without anything ever being said – that they should not trust him.

  Martin got Charlie Taverner with the boiling water at an unguarded moment, just as he and Rufus were collecting from the cook their chosen piece of meat, as well as their rations to make a pudding called duff. Aiming for Charlie’s head, his lack of height allied to haste meant he got him on the legs, and although it hurt like the devil when the water penetrated Taverner’s ducks, it did not scald him as it was supposed to. Martin was gone before Charlie got out his first cursing screech, the mess kid with the dinner inside dropped to roll on the deck, the boy emerging from behind the cook’s coppers grinning like a monkey. That grin faded as Martin saw Pearce and O’Hagan standing in front of him, Ben Walker just behind them.

  He dodged well left, to get outside Pearce, who had to dive across the planking to grab his ankle. Once he got a grip on that he hauled the boy in, fending off the scrabbling, scratching hands that Martin used in an attempt to get free. Holding him close, he just avoided a bite that would have removed his nose, and with his free hand he began to slap the boy on the face, side to side, not too hard, but enough to stop him struggling.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ Pearce said.

  ‘Fuck off,’ Martin spat.

  ‘Belay that.’

  The bark was from Sam Devenow; Pearce knew that before he looked. ‘Take your hands off young Martin, you green-livered swab.’

  ‘Young Dent tried to kill me, Devenow,’ said Pearce, wondering how something so true could sound so feeble.

  Devenow snorted, then started to move towards Pearce. ‘Then the pity is he ain’t succeeded!’

  From the look in his eye Pearce knew that he was going to have to fight. Was it about grog or was it about Martin Dent? It didn’t matter now – all he could be sure of was that slight tremble shaking his body that always came when danger threatened.

  ‘It was him that caused that burial this morning,’ called Charlie Taverner, emerging from the galley, to stand close to Pearce, with Rufus, looking very fearful, just behind him. ‘And he has just this second tried to maim m
e.’

  Devenow stopped and glared at Charlie. ‘Who asked you to butt your nose in?’

  ‘It’s my business, too,’ called Ben.

  ‘Then I’ll deal with you,’ Devenow growled, looking past Pearce, ‘once I have dealt with this bugger here.’

  Pearce knew that to wait would be fatal – he reckoned he had no chance anyway, but that would be ten times worse if he did not get in the first blow. He threw Martin Dent at Devenow’s feet, which took the sailor’s eye off him for a second, grabbed the second mess kid out of Rufus’s hand and slung it at Devenow’s head. The man was too quick or too wise, he ducked under and it flew past, the contents, flour, suet and raisins, going everywhere.

  ‘You just shot your bolt, mate,’ he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves to expose thick matted forearms.

  ‘Kill him, Sam,’ said Martin Dent, with a look of hate quite startling in its intensity.

  Devenow grinned. ‘I might just do that, young Martin. Happen there’ll be another bit of canvas dropped overboard on the morrow, and a lesson learnt by all and sundry of these pressed bastards. That it don’t do to be flighty with Samuel Devenow.’

  ‘Back away, Pearce,’ said Charlie, who then looked confused at once more letting slip the name.

  ‘I can’t, Charlie.’

  He was aware of the gathering crowd, and of men who had made their way to the companionways without bidding, their task to keep a lookout for anyone in authority. Gherson had come from the table, but sensing what was happening he stood well to the rear of Ben Walker, who had his fists bunched, and a dogged expression on his face, one that said he was willing to take on all comers and had moved to the edge of the throng. The cook had emerged from behind his galley stove, and his bulk cut off the view from aft. Pearce felt the knot in his stomach, fear mixed with the notion that there was not a soul on this ship who would intervene, and that Devenow might be right. With a sword he could take him, for all his lessons in Paris had not been on logic and philosophy, but he might as well whistle for a seizure as that. Any weapons were locked and chained in racks that could only be undone by the Master at Arms.