Elizabeth Mansfield (32 page)

“But ye see, sir, there
will
be someone—”

“What?” the lieutenant asked, writing.

“Someone lookin’ fer me. I have a wife, y’ see, an’ she—”

“Forget your wife, fellow. Can’t worry about wives. Haven’t you heard that the Prime Minister, Mr. Addington, declared war on Napoleon this past May? This is wartime,” Mr. Benson said pompously, adding Daniel’s name to the roster. “Cut his bonds,” he ordered the guards.

“Y’ don’t understand, sir,” Daniel pleaded as a sailor stepped behind him and sliced the cords at his wrists with a small, curved-bladed knife. “I—”

The lieutenant paid no attention but merely held out the pen. “Here. Put your X right here.”

Daniels’s hands were trembling. “But… y’ see… I
can’t
sign on. My wife’s in the family way, if y’ know what I mean. She’ll starve t’ death if I—”

Mr. Benson’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Are you daring to contradict me, Hicks? If I don’t have your X on this sheet at once, it’ll be ten stripes for you!”

“Twenty,” came the captain’s voice ominously out of the shadows.

“Twenty!” Mr. Benson echoed.

Daniel cast Tom a look of stricken anguish. Tom, his mind racing about to think of a way out of this rat-trap, could do nothing at the moment but signal with a blink of the eyes that Daniel should acquiesce. Poor Daniel groaned despairingly, stepped forward and took the pen from the lieutenant’s hand. He knew well enough how to sign his name, but he wrote an X as a gesture to himself that he still had a spark of rebellious spirit within him.

Mr. Benson threw a look of satisfaction over his shoulder at the captain and turned to Tom. “Now
you
, murderer,” he said with a kind of malicious enjoyment, “what’s
your
name?”

“Collinson, sir. Thomas Collinson.” Tom used the opportunity to move closer to the desk and
Daniel’s side.

“You don’t appear to be overly disturbed about having killed a man,” the lieutenant remarked, looking him over interestedly.

“If you’re speaking of the press-man I laid low, he damn well deserved it.”

Mr. Benson’s self-satisfied expression changed to one of discomfort. He was not accustomed to back-talk. This fellow was a cool one, and that type could make him look foolish before the captain. “Watch your tongue, fellow,” he growled threateningly, “if you know what’s good for you.”

Tom shrugged. “May as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb” he said, brazenly directing his words to the captain.

Captain Brock said nothing, but he moved in closer to the light and peered at Tom intently. The lieutenant, meanwhile, jumped angrily to his feet. “Oh, you won’t hang, fellow,” he sneered, “but you’ll wish by tomorrow that you had. Hanging’s too good for the likes of you.”

“Don’t think to frighten me with this fustian,” Tom retorted. “A civil trial might be more damaging to the Navy than to me, and
that’s
why I won’t hang.”

The lieutenant, red-faced with fury, reached out and grasped Tom by the collar of his coat, but before he was able to do anything further, the captain’s voice stopped him. “Hold on there, Mr. Benson. Let the fellow be for a moment.” He walked into the circle of light and studied Tom’s face before turning to the King’s officer. “Speaks the King’s English, Moresby, did you notice? You haven’t made a mistake again, have you?”

The officer stepped forward, his brow wrinkled with sudden alarm. If a member of the nobility had been mistakenly caught in his net, he could find himself in a great deal of difficulty. He circled Tom slowly, looking carefully at his clothing, his hands and the careless way his hair had been cut. “I don’t think so, Captain Brock,” he said thoughtfully. “Looks all right to me. He came off the
Triton
, after all, and that’s not the sort of berth a gentleman would seek.”

“Where did you learn a gentleman’s English, fellow?” the captain asked Tom.

“At Cambridge. Where else?” Tom responded flippantly.

The captain drew in his breath and nodded at the lieutenant.

Mr. Benson, who still clutched Tom’s collar with one hand, smashed him in the mouth with the other. “The captain asked you a question, sailor. Answer him properly, or you’ll feel the taste of wet leather!”

Tom pulled himself free of the lieutenant’s grasp and licked the blood from his split lip before he answered. “I read a bit, that’s all,” he muttered.

“That’s
not
all,” the captain said in a voice so icy that Tom understood how he could command this ship with its crew of hundreds. “One doesn’t learn to speak well only by reading. Well?”

Tom gave the captain a sardonic shrug. “I had a mother who set great store by appearances. She trained me. She thought that if her boy
appeared
to be a gentleman, he might be taken for one.”

“How very interesting,” the captain murmured, his voice, even while tinged with amusement, still chillingly cold. “And
were
you taken for one?”

Tom smiled wryly. “Not until now.”

The captain let out a grudging laugh. “You’ve a sharp wit, Collinson, but you’ll find that wit is no advantage here. Carry on, Mr. Benson.” And he walked back out of the light.

The lieutenant sat down and leered up at Tom with satisfaction. “As I was saying, sailor, you’re not going to hang. That would be too easy a punishment for you. You’re going to serve on this ship. You’re going to labor through two watches every day.
Two
! And once a week, the bo’sun will deliver upon your back at least… er …”

“Thirty-five,” came the voice from the shadows.

“Thirty-five stripes. Do you understand, Collinson?
Thirty-five
. Every week. Why, when we put into port, you’ll be so bone-weary and sore you’ll be glad that you have to stay behind in the brig instead of going ashore with the rest of the scum you’ll be calling your shipmates. What have you to say to
that
with your clever tongue, eh, Collinson?”

Tom moved close to the desk, carefully stepping on Daniel’s foot and pressing down on it with just enough weight to indicate that the pressure was not accidental. He hoped Daniel would recognize it as a signal to stay alert. Meanwhile, he faced Mr. Benson with a leer of his own. “What I have to say, sir, is that you can’t do it. I’m sorry to disappoint you … and you too, Captain Brock. You may be able to bring me to the magistrates on the charge of murder, but you can’t make me sign on. I have papers.”

“Papers?” The lieutenant looked nonplussed. “What papers?”

“If you’ll permit your men to untie my hands, I’ll show you.”

Mr. Benson looked over his shoulder for guidance. The captain nodded, and the lieutenant motioned to the guard with the knife to slice the straps. Then Tom reached into his coat and pulled out an oilskin packet. He was about to untie the strings when the lieutenant reached out his hand. “Here, give it to me.”

Mr. Benson nervously undid the strings as if he feared a snake might emerge and sting his finger. He pulled out the contract which Tom had signed with the captain of the
Triton
, and his eyes slid over the closely-written words. Then, biting his lip, he looked hesitantly over his shoulder. With a sigh of annoyance, the captain came up behind him and picked up the document.

After a quick scan of the papers, the captain looked up at Tom, his lips twisted in a small smile. “So,” he said with quiet menace, “you’re a mate, are you? Well, well! You
have
brought me a good haul this time, Moresby. It’s not often we get recruits who know the difference between main and mizzen.”

“But you can’t recruit me,” Tom argued. “Those papers prove I’m exempted by law—”

“Papers?” the captain asked. “What papers?” He ripped the document in half and then in half again. “Did you see any papers, Mr. Benson?”

The lieutenant smirked. “No, Captain.”

“Did anyone here see any papers?” Captain Brock asked, looking around at all the faces pleasantly, all the while tearing the precious sheets into shreds.

“No, Captain,” the sailor-guards said in unison.

Captain Brock turned and walked back into the shadows, reappearing again with a washbowl in his hand. He placed the bowl on the deck before Mr. Benson and threw the shreds of paper into it. “Burn it,” he said curtly, turned on his heel and strode off to his inner cabin, slamming the wooden door behind him.

Every man around the desk watched soundlessly as Tom’s papers burned. They all knew that a man’s future was going up in smoke. But Tom felt no emotion but a sharp, alert tension.
There’ll never be a better time
, he thought, and he pressed down hard on Daniel’s foot while, at the same moment, he snatched up the flaming washbowl and smashed it down on the lieutenant’s head. “Use the log book!” he shouted to Daniel, and he ducked down and lunged at the legs of the guard closest to him.

Daniel, with a cry of elation, snatched up the heavy volume and swung it at the head of the guard at his right, while the other one was busily occupied putting out the fire on the desk. Tom, meanwhile, from his place at the top of his first guard, grabbed the legs of the second and pulled him down. Before they’d recovered from their surprise, he scrambled to his feet in time to see the King’s officer advancing on him with a drawn cutlass. Again he ducked and dived for the fellow’s midsection. They toppled over in a heap, the officer waving his deadly implement wildly in the air. Tom grabbed at his wrist, for the
officer was trying urgently to hack him to pieces. Suddenly Daniel loomed above them and, using the log book as a broadsword, knocked the cutlass out of the officer’s hand and sent it spinning across the floor. The fellow cried out in pain. Tom seized the moment and administered a smashing right to his jaw, while Daniel used the log book to good effect on the heads of the two tackled sailors who were just getting to their feet again.

Tom leaped up, fists ready, but only Daniel was still erect, his breast heaving and his eyes shining with the glow of victory. Tom chortled in delighted surprise at the sight of six men sprawled about in various degrees of semi-consciousness. “We
did
it!” Daniel crowed, hugging Tom and slapping him on the back.

“Don’t congratulate yourselves too soon,” came the captain’s icy voice from the shadows, and they wheeled about to see him step into the light, pointing at them with the black, ugly barrel of a very long pistol.

“Go ahead and shoot, Captain Brock,” Tom said, moving in front of Daniel and motioning behind his back for Daniel to edge toward the cabin’s outer door. “I’d rather be dead than serve under you.”

“But you’ll live,” the captain muttered with chilling calm. “You’ll live … and you’ll serve!”

Tom wished he could look up at the lantern to gauge its distance accurately, but he knew that if he moved his eyes from the captain’s face he’d give his scheme away. “
Duck
, Daniel!” he shouted and swung his arm at the lantern.

A shot rang out, and he felt the ball whiz by the side of his face as the lantern swung across the desk, a glowing missile aimed right for the captain’s head.

They didn’t stay to watch it reach its mark but bolted for the door. The companionway was already filling with sailors who’d heard the noises, but they were either too startled by the sudden appearance of the fleeing men or too sympathetic to their plight to grab hold of them. “Head starboard,” Tom gasped as they broke onto the deck. They ran across the deck, meeting with no obstruction in the darkness, and came to the railing near the stern. With the sounds of shouts and running footsteps hot behind them, they climbed up on the railing and, with one quick look at one another, leaped overboard into the black water.

Elizabeth Mansfield (a pseudonym) published more than two dozen Regency romances. Before beginning a career as a full-time writer, she was a teacher of Drama and English in junior high school, high school and college. She died in 2003. More information can be found on
www.elizabethmansfield.com

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