Reversing the movement, Bowyer dropped to the deck. “Now you, mate.”

CHAPTER 3

In the light night winds, sailing easily full and bye on the starboard tack, there was little for the watch on deck to do. Keyed up to expect hours of toil, Kydd was surprised to find how relaxed the watch before midnight could be. After an initial fuss at the braces, tacks and sheets, the sails were finally trimmed to the satisfaction of Warren, the officer of the watch, who then reluctantly stood the men down, save those about the binnacle.

One thing, however, Kydd found disconcerting. Where the mess decks were gloomy, lanthorn-lit caverns, on deck it was positively tomb-like. A low overcast obscured the night sky and his eyes strained in the winter night to distinguish main features, let alone the dozens of ropes, ringbolts and sharp edges that lay invisibly in wait. It was quite impossible to make out the faces of the others. They were phantoms in the darkness: their voices had the curious quality of being overloud when close, and too distant when farther away. Only moving shadows against the dim whiteness of the deck disclosed their presence.

Kydd stayed close to Bowyer as they went down the ladder to the main deck. There, in the waist of the ship, they would be on instant call, but could shelter from the spray and keen wind. It didn’t escape Kydd that they would also be out of sight of Warren and the others on the quarterdeck. They hunkered down, backs to the bulwark, the old hands among them coming together in companionable groups to converse in low tones and while away the watch. Kydd sat on the periphery of Bowyer’s group, content to listen.

The hiss of the ship’s wash out in the darkness was hypnotic. Sitting on the deck, leaning against a gun carriage in the anonymity of the night, Kydd felt a creeping unreality, that stage of tiredness when a floating light-headedness bears the spirit on in a timeless, wondering void.

Disembodied voices rose and fell. His mind drifted, but returned to hear what they were saying.

“No, mate – I saw ’im! Didn’t do a bloody thing, just watched while Ollie went over the side. Did nothing ’cept stare, the useless ninny.”

“Yeah, you saw him, but he was givin’ a chance fer Lockwood to do somethin’ for himself. He had the deck, didn’t he?” Kydd recognized Bowyer’s troubled tones.

“It won’t fadge, Joe,” someone replied. “The Captain ’as the ship. There’s no buts in it. It’s his dooty to look after the people, same’s it’s our dooty to look after the ship.”

“Now, what I don’t like is this. When it comes to a situation, it’s ‘sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion’ but he just stood there! Yes, sir, just froze right up!”

“So we gets a dirty great Frenchie, yardarm to yardarm, offerin’ to ventilate our sides – ain’t no time to be stoppin’ and starin’.”

“I seen a scrovy like that!” a voice chirruped from out of the dark.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Did so too. He was touched, that’s what he was, used t’ stare like that – into his vittles, out the window, nobody could speak to him. Right scareful, it was.”

“What happened to him, then?”

“Well, one evenin’ he fell down in the pothouse, kickin’ ’n’ twisting ’n’ scarin’ the daylights out of us all until they took him off ter the bed-lam.”

Kydd snorted into the gloom. “Bloody rot! You’re talkin’ of the falling sickness. Poor juggins to have you as his friend. It’s a kind of fit. An’ what I saw this afternoon wasn’t the fallin’ sickness.”

Another voice challenged, nearer. “So what was it, Mr. Sawbones?”

Conscious that he had attracted attention to himself, Kydd could only answer lamely, “Well, it wasn’t, that’s all.”

The exchange drifted into an inconclusive silence.

The edge of an unseen sail fluttered sharply and quietened, and an occasional muffled crunch of waves came from forward, in time with a slight pitch of the bows. Kydd shifted his position. He heard Bowyer from farther away: “Can’t blame the skipper, Lofty. He’s new, ’n’ he’s had to take over the barky from Halifax without the smell of a dockin’, poor lady.”

“That’s all gammon, ’n’ you know it, Joe.”

“No – what I’m a-saying is that, as bloody usual, in this war we’ve been caught all aback ’n’ all in a pelt – skipper’s got to get the ship out to meet the Frogs ’n’ ’e’s cuttin’ corners.”

The man grunted loudly. “Pig-shite! You always were simple, Joe. What we ’ave is a Jonah! Seen ’ em before. They doesn’t know it even but they ’as the mark! An’ it’s evil luck that comes aboard any hooker what ships a Jonah, as well you know, mate.”

The murmurs died away, and Kydd shivered at the turn in the conversation. He took refuge in the continual run of shipboard noises – the ceaseless background of anonymous sounds that assured him his new world was continuing as usual.

There were a few coughs before a deep voice announced, “When we makes Spithead tomorrer, I’m goin’ no farther than yon Keppel’s Head – get me a good sea coal fire ahead, a muzzler of stingo under m’ lee and I’ll not see daylight until we fronts back aboard.”

“Stow that!” someone whooped. “I’ve got a year’s pay says there’s no fubsy wench in Portsmouth Point’s goin’ unsatisfied while I’ve got the legs to get me ashore.”

The babble of voices was broken by one of the older men. “Presumin’ we get to step off.”

“Course we will! On the North Ameriky station for near two years – stands to reason we dock first to set the old girl to rights afore we join the Fleet. Gonna take at least half a year – we’re forty years old, mate, and you know she spits oakum in any sort of sea!”

“Yeah, that’s right! We had thirteen months ashore off of Billy Ruffian in ’eighty-eight, an’ she was in better shape than we by a long haul.”

“Jus’ let me get alongside my Polly – she’s been a-waitin’ for me ’n’ my tackle since St. Geoffrey’s Day.”

The excited chatter ebbed and flowed around Kydd, until it crossed his mind that if the others went ashore, then there might be a chance for him to slip away. A few days’ tramp along the London Road and he’d be back, God be praised, in the rural tranquillity of Guildford. Distant bells sounded from forward. A hand on his arm broke into these happy thoughts. “Stir yerself, Tom. Now we can get our heads down until mornin’,” said Bowyer.

Their way lit by a lanthorn carried by a ship’s corporal, they passed down to the lower deck. Shadowy figures, the last of the larbowlines, hurried past.

After the cold dankness of the open air, the heat and fug of the broad space, full of slowly swaying hammocks, was prodigious. The air was thick with the musty odor of many men in a confined space and the creeping fetor of bilge smells. With fatigue closing in on him in waves, Kydd stumbled over to his hammock. Stripping off his outer clothes, he followed the example of the others and rolled them into a pillow. He then addressed himself to the task of getting in. It took only two tries before he was aboard, agreeably enfolded by the canvas sides. Some cautious wriggles and he found that the hammock was remarkably stable and, in fact, astonishingly comfortable. The meager “mattress” conformed to his shape and the single coarse blanket was hardly needed, with the heat of so much humanity.

Lying there, too exhausted to sleep, he let his eyes wander restlessly over the scene – the loom of hammocks all around, the dark closeness of the deckhead above and the last few moving figures. Then the lanthorns were removed, and he was left alone with his thoughts in utter blackness.

There was an air of excitement and anticipation as the far-off soft green and gray-black of the land resolved into the Isle of Wight, and Portsmouth, with its sheltered naval anchorage of Spithead. The weather had held, and there was nothing to disturb the winter-bright pearlescence in sea and sky. Duke William glided in under all plain sail toward the long dark smudge ahead that was the Fleet at anchor.