SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (13 page)

As
at Wannock Hundred, Joe O'Meara had been trapped in the net of other men's
schemes without knowing why. It puzzled him that he, the shrewdest and most
agile spider-man in London, should so easily become the prey of their
malevolence. The enigma ran through and through his mind as the uniformed
warders half pushed and half dragged him across the rough turf, driving him
onwards with blows of their boots. At last a kick behind his knee disabled him
momentarily and they towed him by his manacled wrists, his heels bumping over
the tufts of grass, the sun in its decline dazzling him with white fire.

He
was vaguely aware of MacBride walking at the end of the line, and of the
smocked figure who almost ran to keep up with the senior officer. The coarse
mouth was open again, but it was a grimace of genuine anxiety rather than a
grin. And in Stunning Joe's mind the question echoed long after the peasant
voice had ceased to ask it of MacBride. 'Wha's the bounty, mister? Wha's the
bounty?'

They
brought him on board the
Indomitable
in the centre of a phalanx of
black-uniformed warders. As he was pushed towards the open hatchway the light
glittered on the bayonets of the officers who lined the way. Since the moment
of his capture neither MacBride nor any of the other officers had spoken a word
to him, as though silence would multiply vengeance. On the lower deck the
prison-cages were empty, still awaiting the return of the convicts from the
quarries. At the head of the deck, in the very bows of the ship, was the tiny
'refractory cell', formed by the damp timbers of the ship itself and the iron
door which closed the prisoner in darkness and stench. Immediately above the
cell, the ‘heads' of the ship formed an open sewer which ran down the outer
surface of the cell timbers, the foul odour seeping through every gap.

The
leg irons were unlocked and Stunning Joe was left alone and handcuffed in the
darkness. Even for a man of his slight build the bare space of the cell was too
small to allow him to lie down at full length. At night he would be given a
single blanket, and in this he would huddle on the damp timber as best he
could until the cramp and confinement woke him again. Men did not sleep much in
the refractory cells but then it was part of their punishment that they should
be put to discomfort in this manner.

Joe
had no idea how long they left him like this. He judged that it was no more
than half an hour before the iron grille in the door slid back and a bull's-eye
lantern shone in upon him. Joe, blinking in the sudden glare, heard the voice
of MacBride.

'Ten dozen with
the governor's compliments, O'Meara!

And see if they don't cut yor
focking backbon' through!'

The
iron slat crashed shut again before Stunning Joe had time to say a word. He
looked about him, blinking in the darkness. A man who was recaptured after an
escape was invariably flogged just before sunset on the following day. The
interval was allowed for the governor to judge sentence and for the medical
officer to certify the man fit. Surgeon Doyle, even when sober, had never been
known to spare a man the ordeal of the gratings. Several of those who underwent
the punishment died afterwards, but it was never attributed to the effects of
the flogging. 'General infirmity' and 'chronic venereal infection' were the
official causes of death.

Joe
O'Meara had known, without considering the matter specifically, that they would
tie him to the gratings and take the skin from his back. To that extent he had
been well prepared for MacBride's news. In the darkness he pondered MacBride's
tone of voice. To judge by that, they were going to try and finish him. If he
had known the choice, it would have been better to kill MacBride in the quarry.
Then, at least, they would have had to try him for murder and he would have
died like a man before the Newgate crowds.

Presently
he was aware of the tramping of men returning to the prison-cages from their
afternoon labour. They would not remain in their quarters longer than was
necessary for diem to wash in the buckets of water provided. After that they
were marched to the chapel, a space formed on the two lower decks of the
Indomitable’s
stern, for an hour's religious
instruction. When they had gone, MacBride and four armed officers came for
Stunning Joe.

'Prisoner O'Meara to see the medical officer!'

The
iron slat was opened first and then the main lock of the cell door. They no
longer bothered to replace the leg-irons, judging the handcuffs alone to be
sufficient for the short crossing to the hospital ship
Iphigenia
.
Joe walked between them, past
the barred corridor with its empty cages on either side and up the steps of the
companionway at the far end. Through the wooden partition he could hear the low
rumbling responses of the prisoners in the chapel to the prayers read by the
chaplain. Then he stepped out into the redder glare of the summer evening.

Across
the water, the hospital cutter was being rowed towards the
Indomitable
's gangway. The warders held
Joe where he could watch the rituals of justice being carried out amidships. A
convict who was a stranger to Joe had been tied spreadeagled to the wide
lattice-work of the gratings against the side of a hammock-house. Two senior
warders stood to one side, where there was a bench with several pails of water
upon it. Both the prisoner who was roped to the gratings and the officer who
held the cat o' nine tails were stripped to the waist. From the distance of the
gangway, however, the entire back of the victim seemed to be coated with an
orange wash, where the water from the pails had just sluiced down his wounds.
His head, which had been lolling forward as if he might have fainted, rose and
then flopped forward again. The officer who held the cat held it high above him
and then brought it down with all his strength. It made a sound like a
butcher's cleaver going through soft flesh to the bone of a carcass. A cold
sickness began to swell in Joe O'Meara's stomach.

The
victim of the torment had not moved or responded. According to prison rules,
the punishment would cease when he lost consciousness. But the cold shock of
sea-water thrown over his back had caused a convulsive movement of the head. In
the eyes of the warders he was therefore able to endure what remained. Among
the lacerated flesh, Joe glimpsed a speck of white and knew instinctively that
it was uncovered bone. As the cat was raised again, he averted his eyes. The
savage vengeance of the underworld and the swell mob, he thought, was nothing compared
with the justice of the hulks.

MacBride's voice spoke quietly beside him.

'There's places on a man's back, O'Meara, places where
a good aim shall see he never climbs nor walks again. See if you don't find it
so!'

But
Stunning Joe felt terror no longer, only his numb disbelief at the horror
which was about to envelop him. They bundled him down the gangway steps to the
cutter below, placing him at its centre so that he was surrounded by the
bayonets of the warders on every side. He knew that the rational course was to
destroy himself now, quickly, before the threatened horror became a reality.
The sharp little eyes darted from side to side, vainly seeking an opportunity.
MacBride read his thoughts easily.

'Have
no fear, Stunning Joe,' he said sofdy, 'you shall be fed and watched like a
baby, until your turn comes at the gratings!'

The
cutter bumped alongside the encrusted hull of the
Iphigenia
.
At a glance, the hospital ship
hardly differed from the other hulks of the prison fleet. The portholes, though
somewhat larger, were as securely barred over. Two small boats rowed round and
round the moored vessel, each containing its complement of red-coated
riflemen, their carbines and fixed bayonets stacked in a grove of blades at
the centre of the launches. Day and night, this military picket was provided by
the regiment on guard-duty at Portland.

MacBride
and the escort took Joe aboard and delivered him to two duty warders on the top
deck. He was signed for and marched into the upper ward where the most gravely
ill of the prisoners were kept. The ward was lined with beds, rather than
hammocks, each occupied by a figure in a blue-grey nightshirt and a cap with
the word 'Hospital' embroidered upon it. The
Iphigenia
had once been a 36-gun frigate
and the barred gun-ports allowed more light and air into the ward than was
permitted on the main hulks.

Joe
looked furtively about him as he was marched down the length of the deck
towards the surgeon's office and the surgery itself at the far end. Few of the
patients here would recover from their sickness. Many were asleep, a few lay
awake staring vacantly at the bulkheads or the decking above them. From the
grey pallor of their skin, one or two might have been dead already.

If
anything, he thought, escape from the
Iphigenia
was more difficult than from
the main hulks. At the entrance to the ward the entire deck was railed off from
the outside world by the familiar bars of a convict-cage. Two warders stood
guard, one outside and one inside the locked gate. Because of the size of the
gun-ports, they had been double-barred so that a man would have to cut through
several thicknesses of steel before he could make a large enough gap to crawl
through. Even then, he would have to work under the eyes of the warder.

But
the arrangement of the far end of the deck made Stunning Joe's hope grow
dimmer still. Beyond a further iron-barred grille was Surgeon-Major Doyle's own
office, through which the prisoner and escorting warders passed to reach the
surgery and examination room in the bows of the vessel. Here the portholes were
smaller, too narrow for Stunning Joe to get through, even had he found the
means of filing the bars. Coldly he counted up the barriers between himself and
freedom. First he would have to pass back through the office, overpowering
Doyle and anyone else in there. He must find Doyle's own key to unlock the
grille beyond, which closed the way to the ward. Then he must either account
for the two guards at the main gate to the ward, or else file through the steel
bars of the gun-ports in full view of them. After that he had only to swim for
freedom through a rain of bullets from the marksmen in the guard-boats. And all
this was to be accomplished without a file or a weapon, and while wearing
handcuffs. It hardly seemed a likely spec.

Doyle,
a hulking brute of thirty or so, watched the new arrival sullenly as Joe
O'Meara was led through the office to the surgery beyond. The Surgeon-Major's
dark clothes were crumpled, his Finger-nails showed half-moons of grime, and
his breath carried an acid stench of brandy. Whatever decorum he had once
possessed as he walked the wards as a student was now lost in the dull brown
eyes and slack wet mouth.

'Take
the brute through,' he said sluggishly. 'And leave his cuffs on, damn you!'

They
bundled Joe O'Meara into the space beyond and slammed the door upon him. A
plain wooden bunk had been fixed on either side of the surgery against the
lime-washed timbers. At the far end of the room the area had been curtained
off. Joe sat down on one of the bunks, looked about him, and detected a movement
behind the long black curtain. He was about to get up and investigate when the
door opened and Doyle came in. The Surgeon-Major ignored Stunning Joe. Instead
he went to the curtain, lifted it at one side and dragged out the girl who had
been concealed behind it. The reason for his ill-temper was now evident.
Stunning Joe and his escort had arrived just as Doyle was about to enjoy a
doxy, one of those brought aboard under the pretext of a compassionate visit to
a dying felon.

The
girl was eighteen or nineteen years old. She was tall and thin, her red hair
cropped short as a boy's, suggesting that she might herself have undergone a
recent sentence in a reformatory. The green eyes had a vicious slant and her high
cheek-bones were carefully rouged. Stunning Joe had not so much as seen a girl
for months but the excitement in his heart was one of recognition. The tall
pale redhead was known in the Haymarket night-houses as French Claire. And
Claire was one of a dozen girls run by Old Mole with the aid of his bully, Jack
Strap.

The
girl was stripped to her petticoats, giving a glimpse of the shape of her
narrow hips and long white legs. Though she glanced at Stunning Joe, any hint
of recognition in her green eyes was quenched at once. She followed Doyle into
his room, the door closed, and Joe heard the key turned in its lock.

Having seen Claire, he knew that some plan still
existed for his freedom. But unless he worked out its details for himself, it
was unlikely that the girl would have any chance of telling him. A young whore
like Claire would be skilful enough to keep the Surgeon-Major occupied for an
hour or two, and he must make the best of his time.