Morgan’s Run (51 page)

“Another favor?” he asked, looking eager to do it.

“No, this I must pay for.” Richard pointed to the deck and bent down as if something of interest lay there. Donovan hunkered down too; nobody saw the seven gold coins change hands.

“What is it ye want? Ye could buy a topaz the size of a lime for this, or an amethyst not much smaller.”

“I need as much emery powder and very strong fish-glue as it will buy,” said Richard.

Mouth slightly open, Donovan looked at him. “Emery powder? Fish-glue? What on earth for?”

“It would probably be possible to buy them at the Cape of Good Hope, but I believe the prices there are shocking. Rio de Janeiro seems a much less expensive place,” Richard hedged.

“That does not answer my question. Ye’re a man of mystery, my friend. Tell me, else I’ll not buy for ye.”

“You will, you know,” said Richard with a broad smile, “but I do not mind telling you.” He looked out across the bay toward the northern hills, smothered in jungle. “I have spent a great deal of time during this interminable voyage wondering what I should do when finally we reach Botany Bay. There are hardly any skilled men among the convicts—we all hear the marine officers talking, especially since arriving in Rio, what with all the visiting goes on. Little Lieutenant Ralph Clark never shuts up. But sometimes our ears glean a useful item between his whines about the drunken antics on Friendship’s quarterdeck and his fond moans about his wife and son.” Richard drew a breath. “But do not let me start on marine second lieutenants! Back to what I began to say, that there are hardly any skilled men among us convicts. I do have some skills, one of which I will certainly be able to use, as I imagine there will be much tree felling and sawing of timber. I can sharpen saws. More importantly, I can set the teeth on saws, a rarer art by far. It may be that my cousin James managed to get my box of tools somewhere aboard these ships, but he may not have. In which case, I cannot do without emery powder and glue. Files I imagine the fleet must have, but if it has been as sketchily provided with tools as it has been poorly victualled, no one will have thought of emery powder or fish-glue. Hearing the news about musket cartridges has not exactly cheered me either. What did they expect us to do if the Indians of New South Wales are as fierce as Mohawks and besiege us?”

“A good question,” said Stephen Donovan solemnly. “What d’ye do with emery powder and fish-glue, Richard?”

“I make my own emery paper and emery files.”

“Will ye need ordinary files if the fleet has none?”

“Yes, but that is all the money I can spare, and I will not encroach further on your generosity. I am hoping for my tools.”

“Getting information out of you is like squeezing blood out of a stone,” said Mr. Donovan, smiling, “but I am a little ahead. One day I will know all.”

“It is not worth hearing. But thank you.”

“Oh, I am your servant, Richard! Were it not for having to search high and low for your medicaments, I would never have found half the fascinating sights I have seen in Rio. Like Johnstone and Shairp, it would have been coffee houses, sticky buns, rum, port and smarming up to Portuguese officials in the hope of being dowered with precious little keepsakes.” And off he went down the ladder with the careless ease of someone who has done something ten thousand times, whistling merrily.

On the last Sunday in Rio the Reverend Mr. Richard Johnson, chaplain to the expedition and noted for his mildly Methodical view of the Church of England (
very
Low!), preached and gave service aboard Alexander to the accompaniment of blatantly Catholic church bells clanging and cascading all over town. The decks were being cleared, a sure sign that sailing time was imminent.

They began
the business of getting eleven ships out of Rio de Janeiro’s island-littered harbor on the 4th of September and completed it on the 5th, having remained at anchor for a month of oranges and fireworks. Fort Santa Cruz and Sirius outdid themselves with a twenty-one-gun salute. Water rationing to three pints a day had already been instituted, perhaps an indication that the Governor concurred with the surgeons about the quality of Rio’s water.

By nightfall land was out of sight; the fleet headed out to find its eastings in the hope that the 3,300 land miles to the Cape of Good Hope would be a swift passage. From now on it would be eastward and southward into seas charted as far as the Cape, but not populous. Thus far they had encountered a Portuguese merchantman occasionally, but from now on they would see no ships until they neared the Cape and the route of the big East Indiamen.

Richard had his replenished stocks plus emery powder, glue and several good files; his chief worry was the dripstones, of which he still had two spares but his five friends had none. If Cousin James-the-druggist was right, they had to be nearing the end of their usefulness. So with Mr. Donovan’s help he rigged up a rope cradle and trailed one dripstone in the sea, praying that a shark did not fancy it. One shark had fancied a pair of marine officer’s trowsers being towed behind for a good bleaching, snapped the line in half, swallowed the trowsers and spat them out in disgust. As it would a dripstone. But once the line was gone, so was the item attached to it. After one week he pulled it out and screwed it to the deck to get plenty of sun and rain. A second one went in for a long bath. He hoped to get through all of them before any started showing signs of deterioration.

As they drew farther south, still waiting on the great current which would assist them to cross from Brazil to Africa, they began to see groups of spermaceti whales, also heading south. Massive creatures, they had snouts which in profile looked like small cliffs, beneath which sat ludicrously slender lower jaws armed with fearsome teeth. Their tails were blunter, their flukes smaller, and they were less acrobatic than other whales they had seen. The usual marine life of porpoises, dolphins and sharks were there aplenty, but edible fish were harder to catch because they were sailing faster and into heavy swells. Sometimes a school came along to provide fish-chowder, but the fare was mostly salt meat and hard bread seething with weevils and worms. No one had much of an appetite. The convicts did have a large sack of dried citrus peelings, however, and shared it out to chew on, a small piece every day.

Gigantic sea birds called albatrosses grew more and more numerous as they inched southward, but when an ambitious marine got out his musket because he fancied roast albatross for dinner, the crew restrained him in horror; it was bad luck to the ship to kill one of these kings of the air.

The new sickness broke out among the marines first, but soon spread into the prison. So it was back to fumigating, scrubbing and whitewashing. The central isolation platforms were full once more and one convict died in the midst of a roaring gale. Surgeon Balmain—happier to visit in these days of sweeter smells—spent a lot of time between the prison and steerage. Whenever the weather permitted it he ordered yet another fumigation, scrub, and whitewash, though clearly the ritual did nothing save steal a little more light for Richard, Bill, Will, Neddy and others to read by if the deck was a shambles of sail and sailors. It turned out during this series of blows that Captain Sinclair was no mean sailor himself; he would make sail the moment the wind was right, then shorten sail not many minutes later if the wind went sour. Make, shorten, make, shorten, make. . . . Little wonder that John Power, Willy Dring and Joe Robinson never made an appearance in the prison. The mates could use all the hands they could get. Nothing was worse than having too few hands to get a decent rest between watches.

By the end of September the equinoctial gales died a little, the seas became easier, deck accessible. In fair weather or foul she sailed well, did Alexander, so at no time did the seas break over her hard enough to batten the hatches. That fate had happened only the once since leaving Portsmouth.

Looking as exalted as he did exhausted, John Power returned to the prison from time to time once his services were not so much in demand, as did Willy Dring and Joe Robinson, who seemed edgy and restless; they made no attempt to go forward and join Power’s clique around the bow bulkhead, which puzzled Richard, who had expected that shared work would see them grow increasingly friendly with their fellow sailor. Instead, they looked uneasy whenever they saw him.

Things went along much as they had for weeks on end—an excursion on deck to fish or pat animals, a read, a singsong, talk between groups, games of dice or cards, some sort of struggle to eat; they were all growing thin again, the little bit of padding acquired in Rio dwindling on that terrible diet. No one near the stern bulkhead on the larboard side noticed anything different—no change in the atmosphere, no furtive whispering, no descending into the hold to steal bread—well, who would want to? Willy Dring and Joe Robinson had gone to earth in their cot and seemed to sleep or doze constantly; that last was the only symptom Richard noticed, and he dismissed it as odd but not really remarkable. They had worked hard for two solid weeks.

Then on the 6th of October and not very far from the African continent, a party of ten marines descended into the prison and took John Power away. He went fighting, was knocked senseless and lifted out through the after hatch while the convicts stared in amazement. A few minutes later the marines were back to remove two men from Nottingham, William Pane and John Meynell, whose cot was next to Power’s. Then—nothing. Except that Power, Pane and Meynell never came back.

Richard got most of the story from Stephen Donovan and a little from Willy Dring and Joe Robinson.

Power and some of the crew had planned a mutiny which hinged on the fact that two-thirds of the marines were not fit for duty.

“A wilder, more harebrained scheme I have never heard of,” said Donovan, confounded. “They simply intended to take over the ship! Without any method to their madness at all, at all. I was not in on it, I would stake my life young Shortland was not, and his eminence William Aston Long would not so demean himself—he is up for a master’s ticket when he gets home, besides. Old Bones? He says not, though I do not believe him and nor does Esmeralda. Once the quarterdeck and the scatter cannon were secured, the idea was to batten the marines and the convicts in below deck, take the helm and steer for Africa. Presumably Esmeralda, Long, Shortland, self and the dissenting crew were to be locked up with you lot in the prison. I doubt any murder was planned.”

“Do not go away,” said Richard, and went back to the prison to beard Willy Dring and Joe Robinson.

“What did you know about it?” he demanded.

They looked as if an enormous weight had been lifted from them.

“We heard about it from Power, who asked us to be in on it,” said Dring. “I told him he was mad, and to give it up. After that he made sure he spoke to no one while we were about, though he knew we’d not do the whiddle on him. Then Mr. Bones dismissed us.”

Richard returned to the deck. “Dring and Robinson knew, but would not be in on it. Bones I think was. What
happened?
”

“Two convicts informed on him to Esmeralda.”

“There are always snitches,” said Richard, half to himself. “Meynell and Pane from Nottingham. Bad bastards.”

“Well, Dring and Robinson adhered to the code of honor among thieves, whereas this other couple are in the business of earning official commendations and better food. Ye called them bad. Why?”

“Because there have been other snitchings. I have had my suspicions about them for some time. Once the names are known, it all falls into place. Where are they now?”

“Aboard Scarborough, to the best of my knowledge. Esmeralda took a longboat to see His Excellency the moment the pair informed. I went along to heave him up ladders. Sirius sent two dozen marines and the sailors whom the snitches named were arrested. About Mr. Bones and some others—we have no proof. But they will not try it again, no matter how much they hate Esmeralda for watering the rum and then selling it to them.”

“What of Power?” Richard asked, throat tight.

“Gone to Sirius, there to stay stapled to the deck. He will not come back to Alexander, that is certain.” Donovan stared at Richard curiously. “Ye truly do like the lad, don’t ye?”

“Aye, very much, though I could see he’d end in trouble. Some men attract trouble the way a magnet does iron nails. He is one. But I do not believe that he was guilty of the crime he was convicted for.” Richard brushed his eyes, shook his head angrily. “He was desperate to get home to his sick dad.”

“I know. But if it is any consolation, Richard, I think that once we get beyond Cape Town and there is no chance for Johnny to return home, he will settle to being a model convict.”

It was not much consolation, perhaps because Richard felt that he himself had not fulfilled his filial obligations; most of his thoughts lay with Cousin James-the-druggist, not with his father.

There was one thing he could do to help John Power, and he did it without a qualm: he let the names of the snitches be known from one bulkhead to the other. Snitches were snitches, they would snitch again. When Scarborough came into Cape Town the word would travel to her. Pane and Meynell would be known for what they were to every convict at Botany Bay. Life for them would not be easy.