Under the Jolly Roger

by L. A. Meyer

  Mr. Pelham looks at his watch. "Twelve o'clock, two minutes, thirty-five seconds. Get out your slates and figure it out, lads!"

  The boys whip out their chalks and cipher away. To make up for my mistake on the horizon, I disdain the slate and do the figuring in my head and I do it fast.

  "Three hundred and forty-nine degrees, twelve minutes, thirty-five seconds, Sir!" I bark out.

  A smirk crawls across Mr. Pelham's face. He spreads out the chart on a table that is there for just that purpose. "Let's see here. Hmmm. What have you got, Mr. Raeburne?"

  "Three hundred and fifty-nine degrees, twelve minutes, thirty-five seconds, Sir." Robin looks at me sheepishly, like he knows something.

  Fifty-nine degrees? Oh, Lord, another mistake! I forgot to carry the nine!

  "Wait, Sir...," I stammer, but I am not to get out of it.

  "Now, now, Miss Faber. Let's just see where you have us now." He affects a look of amazement. "Why, my word! You have placed us right here in the very middle of Paris, itself!"

  There is laughter, not only from the deck, but also from the rigging.

  I bow my head and get ready for more abuse. Mr. Pelham strides over to the rail and looks down. "Why, our bow is cleaving the very cobblestones of le Boulevard de la Madeleine right now! See how they part and fall to the side."

  There is more laughter ... and then there is not.

  There is a dead silence and a chill. I turn around. The Captain has come on deck. He looks around at us and says to Mr. Pelham, "Playing with the brats, are you, Pelham?"

  I quietly say, "Attention on deck," and get my boys in a line.

  "No, Sir, begging your pardon, I was merely instructing the midshipmen in taking a sun line," says Mr. Pelham. The Second Mate keeps his head up, showing some spine, it seems to me.

  The Captain looks down the line of my midshipmen. "Why are they here?"

  I save Mr. Pelham from more woe by stepping out and saying, "As Senior Midshipman, I have instituted an education program for the middies, as well as adding them to the Watch, Quarter, and Station Bill." I pause. "If it please you, Sir."

  Well, it doesn't please him. He turns on me and says, "You are a cheeky one, ain't you?" he says, looking around my back all plain at my bottom. "In any number of ways."

  Maybe it would be well if these britches weren't quite so tight.

  "Well. We shall see about your cheekiness soon, shan't we?" says the Captain.

  Mr. Pinkham is by his side and the Captain turns to him and says, "The same sailing orders as yesterday. Do not diverge from them in the slightest degree. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Sir," says Mr. Pinkham.

  "Good, now, now call ..." and a spasm of pain crosses the Captain's face and he doubles over and almost falls to his knees.

  "Sir!" says Mr. Pinkham, putting his arm under his Captain's and trying to hold him up.

  "Damn!" says the Captain, sinking to his knees.

  It is plain that he is very sick. Mr. Pelham goes over to him and takes his other arm and helps him to his feet.

  "My cabin! Get Earweg! Tell him medicine ... and I need to be bled!" gasps the Captain, and the two officers take him down. Before Mr. Pelham leaves the quarterdeck, he says, "Mr. Wheeler has the con. I will be right back."

  Tom looks up at the sails, astounded. Well, after all, he was the Junior Officer of the Deck at the time and it is his right. I am jealous, of course, as I feel that I should have been the first middie to have the con, but so be it.

  ***

  At the noon meal, served by the still sullen Weisling, whom I have nicknamed the Weasel, to the delight of the lads, the dinner really is meal with some bits of meat in it. I tuck it in and head back out to see about things.

  My division is securing from drill. I shall drill with them each day, but I feel that they have come as far as they can without live fire. We shall have to live with it.

  Leaving Harkness to dismiss them and put them to useful labor, I cross the deck, heading for the other rail to have a look about and I pass through a group of Waisters pretending to work on some chafing gear. Muck is among them, smirking away as I pass, then I hear low mumbles and then low and insinuating laughter. I have been trying to avoid him as much as possible, but I know I can't let this go, so I turn around with my haughty Look and say to Muck, "Is there something you wish to say to me, man?"

  He ducks his head and puts his knuckle to his brow. "No, Miss," he says, "it warn't me what spoke." I have noticed that Muck has grown in confidence as he has found no one on board who recognizes him as a corpse seller. No one but me, that is, and I shall keep my own counsel on that, at least for the time being.

  Muck seems to have become the leader of this surly bunch, and I know how he did it, too. He did it by stirring up and feeding their discontent with his lies and whispered insinuations. I look around at the other Waisters, and a worthless bunch they are, sitting there smirking and fiddling with pieces of line and canvas.

  "If there is any among you who would doubt for one moment that I would not have you lashed to that grating and given a dozen for insubordination and lack of respect, let him stand up now," I say.

  The grins disappear. I notice Harkness has come up next to me, with a belaying pin in his hand. I have the feeling he has as much use for this bunch as I have.

  "Very well," I say. "This deck is in need of cleaning. Holystone and sand. Now! I will inspect in two hours and this deck had better be gleaming whiter than snow, or, by God, your backs will pay!"

  I've got the First Dog Watch and I'm looking out toward the land. We are at the southernmost point in our patrol and there, there, way to the north is a ship heading out from the coast.

  I leap into the rigging and gain the foretop. Shielding my eyes, I see that it is a two-masted schooner, probably 120 feet long, and very probably laden with rich contraband.

  I feel my larcenous Cheapside self rising to the surface, elbowin' my fine upright Lawson Peabody lady self rudely to the side, and I realize I ain't come so far from Little Mary, that small thief who ran the streets of London not so long ago. It is she who now shouts in my ear, Prize Money! Prize Money!

  Every Man Jack—and one Jill—on this ship knows these would be lawful prizes. Why ain't we takin' 'em?

  I notice a movement at my side and I see that Jared, the Captain of the Top, has joined me.

  "That is a legal prize, Seaman Jared," I hiss and grab his forearm. I can feel the corded muscles tighten under my grip.

  He looks down at my hand and then in my eye. "Aye" is all he says, but he gives me a significant look.

  I watch the smuggler heave out of reach. She seems to show us her tail with impudence. Damn! Something is going on here that ain't right. We ain't doin' our job!

  "All hands aloft to make sail!" comes the cry from below. The ship is going to turn to the northern leg of her patrol. A little late now, I think.

  I can see, far off to the south, another ship making a turn. That would be the British patrol just below us, linking the northern limit of his patrol with our southern one.

  I climb on down to the deck.

  And so the day is done. For me there were setbacks, humiliations, and such. But then, every man on board now knows my name and who I am, for better or for worse. I think I have done what I can, for now. The rest is up to Providence, or to luck. And so to sleep. I've got the Four-to-Eight.

  Chapter 10

  The Captain is sick. He's bad sick. We can hear him thrashing about in his cabin, groaning and cursing everything about him. Every soul on this ship hopes with all his heart that he dies of this affliction, and soon.

  The ship hums right along in the Captain's absence. It's been a good two weeks now and we all rejoice in it. We generally rejoice, for he did appear once—about a week into the Captain's illness, he staggered out onto the open deck, cursing and clutching his belly, when he tripped over a sailor named Micah James who was bent over scrubbing the deck where some tar had spilled. When the officers
had pulled the furious Captain back to his feet, he ordered the man bound up, hands and feet, and set upon a barrel. A noose was knotted and put around his neck and drawn up tight to the main yardarm. We all had to watch in horror and pity as young Micah messed his trousers as he stood there crying and shaking on his tiptoes, sure in the knowledge that he was going to die.

  The Captain then crept back down to his cabin, ordering that Micah be kept teetering there till the ringing of the noon bell and then taken down and given twelve. That is, if he had not fallen off the barrel and choked to death before then.

  Mr. Pinkham, upon seeing that the Captain was in his cabin and not likely to come out, allowed several of Micah's mates to stand about him to catch him should he fall. He was, however, given the twelve lashes when he was taken down. Though he was not in my division, I went down to the orlop, where he was taken afterwards, to put on the salve myself and to say soothing words.

  Down there in the orlop, Earweg, the loblolly boy, said it was the Captain's recurring ill humors and bad phlegm, picked up when he was on a slaver on the west coast of Africa, that's causin' all this. Serves him right then, I thought, as I put the greasy balm on the welts of the crying boy's bloody back, tears comin' to my own eyes, for him bein a slaver and all.

  I reflected that, once again, Captain Scroggs had managed to strike fear and terror into his crew, while staying just this side of a chargeable offense under Naval Regulations.

  Oh, may you truly rot in Hell forever, Captain, for the things you have done!

  Several days later, as Robin was relieving me of the watch, I saw Earweg go down into the cabin with a scalpel and a bowl still crusty with dried blood to bleed the Captain again. I clutched Robin's arm and made him promise me that if ever I am sick or wounded, that man is not to be let anywhere near me. Not even for amputations, which are what the surgeons and loblolly boys are mainly here for. I'll take my chances without them ... and without their so-called medicines.

  ***

  I had the Midwatch last night and it is now morning and I'm at the table with Ned and Tom and Georgie going over some geography. I've found some books lying about and gotten others from the officers, and I'm pointing out places on the charts that are in the books and telling them that they may very well visit those places of wonder. Their eyes grow big as their fingers trace over the lines of latitude and longitude and the trade winds and the trade routes and names like Singapore and Madagascar and Cancún, names of places that do not sit easy on their British tongues but do excite their young minds.

  There are pieces of rope and metal strewn about the berth, evidence of the boys studying their marlinspike seamanship with their sea dads.

  "All right, lads, that's enough for today. Do your penmanship exercises later and put them ... Oh, never mind," I say as Tom and Ned skip out with their whipcords in their hands. I know they're heading for the rigging to sit at the feet of Morrison and Brady, their sea dads, and learn their knots and splices and such, but really, mostly to sit there and listen to their sea stories ... "And then, lad, we doubled the Cape with half the men dead and the other half drunk and we come upon the Dutchman himself, glimmerin' all ghostly and white out there on the horizon, the moans of the damned souls within comin' at us from across the water, their dead and rotting arms reaching out of the gun ports, the putrid flesh hangin like rags off 'em, and I swear on me sainted mother's grave that it's true and..."

  Georgie, though, doesn't run out with the others, even though I know he's been getting along famously with Amos Gooch, a disreputable and bewhiskered old reprobate who is, of course, a perfect sea dad for young George.

  "What's the matter, Georgie?" I ask, when I see him hanging his head and running his finger aimlessly through some spilled tea on the tabletop.

  He doesn't say anything. "Come, Mr. Piggott," I say. "Let's have it out."

  He reddens and stammers, "I ... I don't think I'll be able to stand up ... in battle, like ... when it comes time for me to do that, I don't, Jacky, I don't think I'll be brave enough to do it. Not like you were."

  "Like I was what?" I ask.

  "Brave. In the book. You were brave. You stood up."

  Oh.

  "Has everybody read that damned book?"

  "Everyone who can read, I guess. There's two copies on board. There are some who can read who've read it to those who can't. I've read it twice."

  Sweet Jesus, what next?

  "Hmmm." I think it over. "Well, for one thing, I wasn't brave at all. I was terrified, and anyone who isn't terrified at a time like that is a fool. You just concentrate on doing your job and try not to think about it. Think about your duties, not the fight. Pretend it's an exercise. Anything to get through it. Like they say about the life aboard a Man-o'-War—a year of sheer boredom and five minutes of sheer terror."

  I pat his hand. "Put it out of your mind, Georgie, we might be here on this patrol forever, growing old together."

  He nods, but I don't think I made him feel any better about it.

  I reach out and put my arm around his waist and pull him to me and say, "Georgie, I don't know why the world is the way it is. I don't know why we can't all, French and English alike, throw the cannons over the side and sail off as merchant ships, or ships of discovery, and see the wondrous world in all its splendor—see the Bombay Rat and the Cathay Cat and see the kangaroos and wombats and Hottentots and all of it. I've met some French people and they ain't all that bad. Some are downright good, even."

  I do know why, of course—it's 'cause if Bonaparte destroys the British fleet, then all he will have to do is put a line of frigates at the top of the Channel and a line at the bottom and then he could ferry his army across in barges and England would lie there helpless to stop him.

  "I know it's all stupid, Georgie, but it comes down to this: If Boney kills us all and sinks our ships, then he'd be in the homeland, Georgie, he would. And I've read what he said he'd do—conquer and pillage and I don't know what all. He ain't gonna be nice if he wins, Georgie, no, he ain't, and so it comes down to that. And all I can say is keep your head down, your backside covered, and hope you don't disgrace yourself when the time comes. That's all I ever did."

  I think back to my days up on Hugh the Grand's shoulders, reading the newspapers pinned outside the printer's shops and seeing cartoons of Boney getting his troops over the Channel by balloon, by kite, by barge, any way he can. In a land war we would probably prevail, eventually, but it would be bloody. Blood would run in the gutters of the streets of our cities, as it now runs from the scuppers of our ships during battles.

  I know the why of it, but I don't have to like it.

  "So, Georgie," I say, running my hand over his curly head, "put it all out of your mind and go see Amos Gooch and listen to some more of his lies. Learn how to put an eye splice on a line. All right? Good." I give him an affectionate pat on his tail as he goes out.

  I get up and stretch and head out. I cross the deck, checking the rigging and gear and find nothing out of order. I do notice, however, some thick clouds building up on the western horizon. We'll have to keep an eye on that.

  I ain't got a sea dad, none assigned, anyway, but Joseph Jared always seems to be around when I might be needing some instruction in seamanship. Like now, when I sit down on the capstan, with my own bit of line, he sits down beside me.

  "The Turk's head knot, Jared, I swear I'll never get it," I say, helplessly.

  He chuckles and takes the line from my hand and says, "Here now, Miss Faber, you just take the bitter end and put it over the lay of the line and bring it around here..."

  There are days when the ocean is a serene wonder, delighting the heart and mind of all who observe her with its infinite variety—beautiful greens and blues, mirroring the soaring sky and puffy white clouds above. Seabirds play above the swells and gentle waves, and God lays His hand upon the waters and all is calm.

  This ain't one of those days.

  The sea has been working up all this day—first
the freshening breeze that had a sense of foreboding in it, then the quickening whitecaps whose tops were quickly sheared off by the wind and sent scudding over the darkening seas, then the skies turned to dark gray. There is a deepening of the wave troughs and then a howling gale comes right down upon us. It is a dangerous storm for it comes at us from the sea and not the land, which means if anything goes wrong, and things go wrong at sea all the time, then we will be driven ashore, wrecked, and if any of us live, we shall be captured and stuffed down in some French prison.

  It is what the sailors call a living gale, a storm so powerful and treacherous that it seems to be actually alive, driven by some evil force that has it in for you, personal-like. I have the Evening Watch and throughout the watch we have trimmed back sail to almost nothing—there is only the forestaysail up to keep us pointed right, so we can take the heavy seas on our bow. Mr. Pinkham has the watch.

  Three hours into the watch and I'm wet and bone tired and looking up at that lonely sail quivering up there, stiff and taut under the tremendous pressure of the wind, the only thing keeping us from disaster. I don't know if it looks quite right, I'm thinking, but maybe it's just my nervous imagination. I wipe the rain out of my eyes and peer more closely at each part of the sail and the lines that hold it. What's that flutterin' there at the foot of the sail? Is it ... Yes, it is! The chafing gear has torn away!

  "Mr. Pinkham!" I shout over the wind. "The forestaysail! It's chafing at the clew! Look! The line might part!"

  He looks up through the rain and says, "Damn! You are right. Messenger, call for Seaman Jared and—"

  But I'm already gone. I jump off the quarterdeck and go hand over hand along the rail against the wind and spray, already drenched and wishing for my old oilskins from the Pequod. There are coils of rope every few yards along the side, and I take one and throw it over my shoulder. I find Jared and his topmen together in the fo'c'sle, looking worried.