Читать книгу They Seek a Country - Francis Brett Young - Страница 20

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The convict-ship Minerva, a barque of four hundred and fifty tons burden, ran south-west on the Finisterre course at ten knots, with studding sails low and aloft. This was the first fair day she had struck since the ninth of December, when, weighing anchor off Deptford, she had dropped down on the tide amid flurries of snow that froze and congealed on her masts and rigging, and so whitened the desolate saltings on either shore with their ghostly mantle that it was hard to distinguish where water ended and land began.

The Minerva had spent the last twenty years of her ageing life on the Van Diemen’s Land passage. She was a ship with an ill name for luck, and this, her eighth voyage in that grim trade, had begun in keeping with her bad reputation. From the moment when the last sombre boatload of shivering shackled convicts had been hurried aboard her from the hulks lying in the Thames where they had been held in readiness for sailing, the devil’s luck had dogged her. First, swinging in the fairway, she had run foul of a hoy and stove her in and sunk her. Next, rounding the Foreland and seeking shelter from the gale that still drove the snow before it, she had blown on the Goodwins and, shuddering, grounded in the night. Guns booming heavily and masthead lights had summoned the Ramsgate lifeboat, which stood by till dawn, when a great sea lifted the Minerva and refloated her. For another week she had lain and strained at a dragging anchor in the teeth of a second sudden fury that swept the West Bay from Portland to Start and caught her taking in water and ballast on the lee shore of Torbay. For two more with naked topmasts and reefed mainsail she rode out an even fiercer gale from the West that hurled the full Atlantic on ironbound Ushant. Now, at last, though the huge afterswell of that tempest still ran abeam, alternately balancing her on its dizzy crests and letting her slide down the face of the wave into sickening troughs, the warm wind that barely filled her sails was a very zephyr.

John Oakley, battened down in the ’tween-decks, knew nothing of the perils and hairbreadth escapes through which he had passed. From the moment when, shivering in his shoddy convict’s uniform, he had been taken by road from Worcester jail to the hulk off Deptford and then driven aboard the Minerva, his fate had passed out of his own hands so completely that there was nothing more to be gained by speculation; no manner in which he could modify it or change it by the exercise of his own will. The machine into whose cogs he had stumbled had gripped his body. By luck rather than by deliberate intent it had failed to crush his life out of him as it had crushed Aaron Sheldon’s; but the moving mechanism still held him helpless and would continue to hold him until the end of his seven years’ sentence, unless he died first.

It was now a full month since he had seen the light of day, if that last cheerless glimpse of the frozen Kentish marshes and the low sky solid with snow deserved that name. In the ’tween-decks of the Minerva no light glimmered save the lanterns preceding and following the orderly officer who, escorted by soldiers of the guard, twice daily braved the stench of the convicts’ barracoon on his hurried tours of inspection, and the tallow-dips that were lit when tubs and cauldrons of food were brought in from the galley; for the scuttles, which must have been closed in any case to keep out the sea, were obscured by the double tiers of bunks or shelves, divided by stanchioned partitions like stalls in a cowshed, that were nailed to the ribs of the ship on either side, and, since the Minerva left the Thames, the main-hatch which led to the prison had not been opened.

It was so dark, indeed, in this low-ceilinged noisome cellar, that for some days Oakley found it impossible to comprehend its shape or extent, being conscious of nothing more than the foul suffocation of air breathed and rebreathed to exhaustion by the hundred and forty-four degraded bodies with which it was stuffed. It was only after a week of this pitchy confinement that his eyes, adjusting themselves to perpetual gloom, acquired a new cat-like sense of discrimination in which inanimate forms that had previously been dim and meaningless defined themselves, and even human features (if such features were human) became distinct.

He was lodged, it appeared, in a wooden box or compartment, less than five feet square, in which he and five other convicts, packed close as pilchards in a barrel, were expected to sleep. When the ship pitched or lifted to a head or a following sea, this arrangement had its advantages: the stowage was so snug that their bodies were wedged together; it also afforded heat which, until the animal warmth of a hundred and forty-four human radiators made the air of the prison-deck tepid, had not been supplied by their single threadbare blankets. Yet, in spite of these questionable benefits, the width of the communal bunk was so meagre, that not more than one of its occupants at a time could lie on his back, while the shackled ankles and feet of such of them as were taller than pygmies were perpetually thrust or dangled beyond the edge of their shelf: a convenience to nobody except to the sergeant hurriedly checking the numbers of his charges by pairs of feet when the guard was relieved at the end of each second hour, or to the surgeon making his rounds.

Even on smooth seas, when the main-hatch was open and a wind-sail carried draught downward into the close ’tween-decks, this forced stuffing of six competitive human bodies into a space barely sufficient for the comfort of three was a torture to any creature in whose hardened stomach the normal discomforts of prison life had left the least shred of sensibility or decency; but in stormy weather, when the main-hatch was battened down, enclosing the exhalations of seven score men: when the ship, riding light on huge seas, rose and fell precipitously and staggered and shook and shuddered with groaning timbers under buffets whose monstrous impacts could be felt like the stunning blows of a sandbag; when, to the factor of suffocation and the furious noise of the storm there were added the stink of vomit and sounds of retching and cries of fear—then each of those twenty-four crowded berths with its stifled and suffering human content was as near an approach to hell as man’s devilry could devise.

There were few of John Oakley’s companions in the Minerva’s ’tween-decks who, by the time Finisterre was sighted, had not often wished themselves dead. He himself, when he felt that he could bear the torment no longer, had extricated himself from the compact mass in which his body was wedged and lowered himself as well as the leg-irons would let him to the deck in the hope of finding more air and space for the stretching of cramped limbs; but the surface his dangling feet touched at last was awash with seawater that had penetrated the hatch and swirled to and fro ankle-deep with the drunken ship’s plungings and rollings, and slippery with invisible foulness and strewn with the prostrate forms of others who, like himself, had escaped and lay there as if dead, having neither the strength nor the will to haul themselves up again.

In the earlier days of the voyage, when the darkness was still impenetrable to eyes accustomed to light, he had heard plenty of talk and rough joking and snatches of sentimental or bawdy songs; men complained or whined or boldly boasted of their crimes in the cant of the prison-yard, which John could not understand, and in a dozen other dialects from Cockney to Northumbrian; but the sea, that bitter leveller, had soon silenced braggarts and whiners alike. For the next fortnight no voice had been raised save in pain or distress. In the community of suffering all the prisoners fell dumb as a parcel of hard-driven bullocks penned at the gate of a slaughter-house. Even when the sea moderated a little and hunger returned, and the blessing of dazed sleep, rudely broken every two hours by the crash of the opening gate in the loopholed barricade that divided the prison space from the rest of the ’tween-decks, by the rattle of grounded muskets and the barking words of command—even then the sad herd remained crushed and dumb and spiritless. They sat up in their bunks and grabbed at their food and munched it in silence, or stared out with incurious eyes at their mute companions over the bilge-lapped expanse of deck that separated them.

A more various collection of flotsam than these it would have been hard to imagine. Beneath the grey uniforms there were hidden men of all kinds and conditions and ages: from grizzled veterans of a score of crimes to whom the habit of a convict’s life was second nature, to a pair of undersized brats from the slums, peaked and pallid as cellar potatoes, whom offended justice had sentenced to transportation for the crime of filching a loaf of bread; from flashy townsmen who had thriven, for a time, on their wits, and still kept their swagger, to mean sneak-thieves and pickpockets bred in the subterranean warrens of Seven Dials; from hulking ruffians, whose only weapon was brute violence, to effeminate panders and delicate-fingered gentry convicted of coining or forgery, and shady professional men, well-mannered and modest, who had come to grief through being a thought too clever. Yet the bulk of this luckless company was composed not of criminals but of simple and even decent countrymen, like John Oakley himself, who, hard-driven by sheer want or angered by petty tyrannies, had slipped into the net of the Game Laws or were paying the penalty of an unwelcome freedom of speech or action in defence of their vanishing rights. On these—far more than on those others who had consciously flirted with the perils of lawlessness and taken their chances and lost—the misery of transportation lay with a crushing weight. They were men who had been used to living in the open air, to labouring until their thews ached with fatigue and returning to the simplicities of their cottage homes and the company of their wives and families. Here they lay, their legs fettered in irons, in airless darkness, alone, yet cheek by jowl with the meanest scourings of city sewers: men whose quality of mind no less than their unintelligible speech branded them as denizens of another world—almost monsters of a different species: men who were used to living in crowds and to using their wits, not their muscles; quick of speech, ingenious, crafty, and enviably adaptable. When John Oakley saw, through the gloom, the solemn bewildered faces of these pitiful mortals, villagers, like himself, oppressed by their own lonely muteness yet not daring to speak, his heart ached for them.

It was only when the Minerva changed her course off Finisterre, the remnants of the Biscayan surges running on her starboard quarter, that the master gave orders for the main-hatch covers to be lifted and, after much hammering of battens, a flood of incredibly white light poured down into the ’tween-decks, illumining their recesses, and what until then had seemed no more than a cavern of vague extent, revealed itself as a quadrangular chamber, roughly forty feet square and less than six feet in height, bounded on either side by the double range of berths and closed at both ends by the loopholed barricades which divided it, for’ard, from a narrower sick-bay, and aft from the more spacious quarters occupied by the guard. The middle of the after barricade was pierced, at the height of a standing man’s chest, by a trap-door admitting the muzzle of a small howitzer loaded with grape-shot which, moving on swivels, could rake the whole length of the prisoners’ compartment in case of mutiny.

The sight of this ominous weapon’s black throat, hitherto invisible, was enough of itself to discount the sense of relief and unreasoning hope that permeated the ’tween-decks along with the unexpected irruption of air and light; yet no sooner were the hatch-covers lifted, than the crushed spirits of the prisoners were obstinately revived. Something had happened at last to break the deadly monotony. The barracoon woke, like a bird-haunted thicket at dawn. Men whose tongues had been suddenly tied for three weeks found speech and addressed their neighbours. They blinked at the light and scratched themselves and stamped and stretched their cramped legs. A babel of confused speech and oaths and even of laughter arose as men recognized the faces of others whom they had known or curiously examined their unknown bed-fellows. In the midst of this turmoil the gate in the after barricade was thrown open with a crash. The sergeant of the guard, a plump man with a fiery whiskered face, and the corporal appeared in the gateway. The sergeant wrinkled his nose and puckered his lips with distaste. “Phew ... my God,” he exclaimed, “if this isn’t a stinking shambles! I’ve seen pigsties in Limerick that looked like a palace compared with this. And the stench of the beggars! No better than animals or niggers, they aren’t, not raising as much as a finger to clear the mullock, but set there chattering away like a lot of bloody monkeys ...” He raised his voice and bellowed: “Stow that blasted noise and keep quiet when the guard comes in and stand to your bunks at attention until you’re told not to! Now come on!”

The men shuffled into their places sheepishly. In the opposite rank John became aware of his friend George Dicketts, from whom he had been separated since they reached the hulks at Deptford. The old soldier seemed less the worse for the voyage than most of them. He brought down his peg with a thwack on the deck, cocked his head like a robin and smartly saluted. There was a ripple of uneasy laughter. The sergeant’s red face went redder.

“Pretty bobbish customer, eh? Who d’you think you are then?”

“Trooper Dicketts, sergeant. Fifteenth Hussars. Lord Uxbridge’s Brigade.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Old soldier and all. Well, you’d better forget it quick. I know your sort, and what’s more I’ll keep my eye on you. And not so much of your ‘sergeant’ either: I’m ‘Sir’ to convicts, and mind you don’t forget it!” He turned to the corporal. “Fall in a dozen of these jail-birds with swabs and buckets, the first six on either side’ll do, and swill out this deck and scrub it. Keep the dogs to it, mind. Rub their noses in it and see they step lively, and if you catch any one of the bastards shirking, you send up his number and I’ll see as he don’t shirk twice. I shall look round again in half an hour’s time, and if, when I come, this here deck isn’t fit for me or the Lord Mayor of Dublin to eat his dinner off, there’s going to be trouble for somebody. Go on then, get to it, the first dozen.” He spat and retired.

John Oakley was one of them and so was George Dicketts. The work was sufficiently revolting, yet somehow a relief after the days and nights of bored and bitter idleness. They swilled the deck with buckets of seawater and swabbed the noisome scuppers with clouts of sailcloth. At one moment John found himself scrubbing at Dickett’s side. The little man winked cheerily: “Well, John, how goes it? I missed you. I never even knowed you was here. Well, that’s company anyway.”

The corporal, who stood idly sucking his teeth at the barricade, looked up to see who was talking. “Ho, you again is it?” he said, and sent Dicketts sprawling over the slippery deck with a flying kick. John jumped up and turned round on him with clenched fists and dropped them too late. “What! Another of you? Would you then?” He raised his fixed bayonet threateningly; but John had already thought better of it and was down on his knees, and the corporal turned back muttering to his post. George Dicketts sidled up and spoke in a reproving whisper:

“You didn’t ought to have flared up like that, lad,” he said. “This here job, it be just like soldiering: the less you say and the less you do, the better. If you acts too willing, the other chaps soon notices it and thinks you be trying to get an advantage over them. And if you acts too bobbish and gets across of the corporal ... well, then God help your poor soul—for life on this earth won’t be worth living. You may be a damned fool like me, and you may be as clever as paint: but the way to get on in the army or prison, I reckon, is to make out you be neither one nor t’other and keep your mouth shut.”

In half an hour’s time, when the Irish sergeant returned to sniff at it, the prison deck, though still wet, was comparatively sweet and clean, and his humour less violent.

“Now fall in these blackguards,” he said, “and let’s have a look at them.”

The two files of prisoners stood up in front of their berths. It was only when he saw them thus in the mass that John Oakley realized what a ruffianly company they were and how sorely that hellish passage had tried them. Some had suffered so much and were so weak with starvation that their legs could not counter the rolling of the ship; they swayed and clutched at the wooden bunks to sustain themselves. All their features were drawn and scrubby with a three weeks’ growth of beard which picked out their teeth and the whites of their eyes and gave them an aspect of hungry ferocity. Their faces, too, had a greyish, light-starved pallor that contrasted with the soldiers’ well-fed ruddy complexions. The sergeant walked down the deck between the files, examining each man as he passed with the contemptuous eyes of a farmer considering an ill-fed parcel of cattle. Opposite one, a man with a sparse white stubble of beard, a thin, shaggy chest and hot, black beady eyes, he stopped.

“Hello ... I’ve seen this ugly mug before now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This isn’t the first time you’ve been through the passage?”

“No, sir. Transported last time in the Minerva. I done seven years at Macquarie.”

“And turned up again, like a bad penny! Well, mind you behave yourself. I want none of your old hands’ tricks. What’s your name?”

“Tim Kelly, sir. Born and dragged up in the parish of Tipperary.”

“Tipperary, is it?” The sergeant laughed. “Well, don’t forget there’s another Irishman got his eye on you!” He turned to the corporal. “All correct. Where’s that farrier got to, damn him?”

“Where’s the farrier?” the corporal shouted. A hatchet-faced, shambling figure of a soldier appeared with a blacksmith’s leathern apron over his singlet. He carried a bag full of what might have been implements of torture which he let fall on the deck with a metallic crash.

“Now get on with it, Jones. I don’t want to stay breathing this stench all day,” the sergeant blustered.

The farrier produced a steel gad and a three-pound hammer with which he methodically proceeded to drive out the rivets that closed the loops of the convicts’ leg irons. His hands were brutal and clumsy. Sometimes the gad, which a second soldier held, slipped from the head of the rivet and ripped the skin of a bony ankle. Once the hammer slipped too and struck the soldier’s forearm a numbing blow. The man rubbed it and glared at his comrade. The hatchet-faced farrier grinned; the sergeant laughed and swore at the victim: “Call yourself a soldier? Get on with it, you white-livered son of a bitch!”

John Oakley stood sixth in the row. This time the aim was better: the farrier was getting his eye in. The rivet shot out with a single blow; but the hammer’s dull impact shook the bone and bruised it. John clenched his teeth and his fists, awaiting the next; and once more, with a sickening thud, the rivet shot out, and the two men passed on.