Читать книгу The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh - James Tucker - Страница 9

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WASHED, shaved, close-cropped, supplied with two new suits each, and newly double-ironed, the convicts selected for the draft were paraded aboard the Leviathan for examination by the surgeon-superintendent of the Magnet. The few sickly men were rejected and their places filled by robuster transportees, and the approved men were marched aboard a large lighter and transferred to that vessel, swinging at anchor in Spithead. Despite the harshness of the conditions to which he knew that he was going, Rashleigh carried his heavy irons with a light heart, and watched the distance between the hulk and the lighter increase with a feeling of vast relief.

The prisoners were immediately taken between-decks to their sleeping-quarters, where each was given a numbered bed and a blanket, and left for the night.

The good ship Magnet was of about five hundred tons burthen. The greater part of the main deck was relegated to the use of the convicts, who numbered one hundred and fifty; and the deck was divided into two sections by a strong bulkhead, the smaller section being for the confinement of the thirty boy convicts who were aboard. The hatchways were secured with elm stanchions, in a stout framing of which all the exposed woodwork was covered closely with broad-headed nails, so that the structure was practically proof against being cut. In one of these hatchways, between the men’s and the boys’ prisons, were communicating doors, so small that only one man at a time could pass through them. A military sentry was posted, day and night, in the hatchway, to deal with any attempt at mutiny or other dangerous conduct.

The military guard consisted of two commissioned officers, six N.C.O.’s, and forty private soldiers, some of whom were accompanied by their wives and families. The routine of the ship was arranged so that, during the voyage, the convicts were allowed the liberty of the deck from sunrise until sunset, under an armed guard of three soldiers posted at points of vantage which gave them full surveillance of the tough bunch of derelicts in their charge. A boatswain and six mates were selected by the surgeon-superintendent from among the convicts, and they were made responsible for the cleanliness and orderliness of their fellows. The convicts’ food-ration was what was known in the transport service as ‘Six upon Four,’ six convicts sharing between them the rations normally allowed for four Royal Navy sailors. The food was mainly salt tack, and on alternate days a small portion of wine or lime-juice was issued. Water was the only item of diet which had to be carefully apportioned: the food, such as it was, was plentiful.

In addition to the surgeon’s sanitary party selected from the prisoners, there were also chosen another boatswain, two cooks, and other servants, who formed monitors or leaders of the squads of eight into which for purposes of food supplies the convicts were divided.

During the few days when the ship lay to in Spithead before sailing, Rashleigh was tempted, by the sense of irrevocableness of his departure from England, to do as his comrades were mostly doing, and write to let his connexions know of his fate. His better instincts overcame this sentimental urging, and he determined to fade out of their knowledge, lost to them for ever in his degradation, under his assumed name. Bumboats, carrying all manner of supplies, hovered daily round the Magnet, and Rashleigh’s slender store of money was soon expended on modest supplies of tea, sugar, and other trifling comforts for the long voyage. Although he was, in a sense, glad to be leaving England, he was affected strongly by the good fortune of some of the men whose mothers, wives, sweethearts and children came on board to take farewell of their men folk. His own friendlessness, contrasted with this affection, sorrow-ridden as it was, made him feel more than ever a pariah, one who had been driven out of the herd, absolutely, for ever. He was glad when the period of waiting was over, to see the anchor weighed, the sails unfurled and bellying to the breeze, and to feel the slight motion of the ship as she slipped jauntily between the mainland and the Isle of Wight.

As night fell on the English Channel, the convicts were ordered below to the sleeping-berths, between decks. These were framed of deal boards, supported by stanchions and quarterings, and subdivided in compartments, each sleeping six men in very close proximity. These sleeping-berths were framed in rows along each side of the ship, with a double row between them separated by narrow passages.

Rashleigh, being a good sailor, enjoyed what amusement could be got from the conduct of those who were unused to the motion of the ship. Many of them had never been to sea, and the vertiginous motion of the vessel caused by the broken sea of the Channel, filled them not only with nausea but with terror. Soon after being shut below, the sea freshened, and at first there was much confusion among the closely-packed prisoners. Those who were not too terrified to do other than lie in the immobility of fear, filled the night with a contrasting chorus of oaths and prayers. Gradually, however, a semblance of quietude came, and Rashleigh went to sleep, but as he was lying athwart the ship and she started rolling, his rest was continually broken by the violent motion. The increasing seas at last made sleep impossible, and he sat up for greater comfort, listening with awe to the crash of the waves against the bows, and feeling the shiver that ran through the ship at each thudding impact.

Suddenly the Magnet hit a really big sea with a crash that made Rashleigh instinctively shrink back. There was a scattered noise of timbers falling overhead, as a great wave broke over the ship and poured a volume of water down the main hatchway, carrying the sentry violently against the bulkhead, and filling the prisoners’ berths feet deep. Over a hundred sleepers awakened in the unfamiliar surroundings, to find their beds awash with sea water, let loose a pandemonium of terrified cries. The water, as the ship rolled, half drowned first one row of men and then the other. The cry went up that the ship was sinking, and panic took possession of the convicts. Rashleigh looked on in a state of terror, knowing there was nothing to be done; even when a few of the bolder spirits rushed at the small doorway in the hope of breaking through and gaining the deck, he made no move to join them. Their efforts to break through the wicket were in any case unavailing. An officer came with the assurance that there was no danger, leaving the prisoners to pass the remainder of the night comforted by the news that the big crash had been caused by one of the yards giving way. As most of the convicts knew of no yard except a measure, they were none the wiser for this explanation. Next morning the pumps were got to work and everything made ship-shape.

Fair weather favoured the Magnet thereafter, and the Equator was reached without any incident occurring to interrupt the strict routine on shipboard. There was a good deal of fun in the ceremony of ‘Crossing the Line,’ about fifty of the prisoners being ducked and shaved in tribute to Father Neptune. Rashleigh, because of his clerkly education and capacity, had been selected by the surgeon-superintendent to act as his clerk, a position which provided him with many comforts, and happened also to prevent him being implicated in a daring scheme which was set afoot for the seizing of the vessel.

The boys’ prison was separated from the sleeping-quarters of the military only by a bulkhead, as it was from the senior convicts’ quarters on the opposite side. Some of the irrepressible young thieves had succeeded in loosening a board in the bulkhead, giving them access to the soldiers’ quarters. It became known to the men that one of the smallest-built lads made a practice of slipping through the narrow space and stealing tea, sugar, tobacco, biscuits, and anything else he could lay hands on; and some of the wilder spirits saw in this a chance to carry out a plot for successful mutiny. They persuaded the boy that he should, on a chosen night, steal three muskets which, he said, stood in a rack in the soldiers’ berth, and which were supposed to be kept continually loaded. The plot was that, the muskets thus secured, they should be passed through into the men’s prison, and in the morning when the convicts were let up to wash the deck, some of those who were up first should go to the forehatch and receive the stolen muskets from those in the prison below. During the proceeding the other men on deck were to be very active in throwing water and generally bustling to and fro to attract the attention of the three sentries — one at the forecastle, one at the waist, and the third on the poop — of whom only the last would be armed. The two sentries forward were to be surprised, seized and thrown overboard, while at the same signal, the one on the poop was to be shot dead. A party would then cut loose the breeching of a loaded cannon on the deck, and run it to the companion ladder leading to the soldiers’ quarters. Simultaneously another party was to rush aft and secure the officers.

The day came, and to the point of seizing the forward sentries and the covering of the sentry on the poop, everything went according to plan, after which everything went to pieces. The stolen muskets proved to be unprimed; the sentry on the poop gave the call to arms, fired his piece at random, and was immediately thrown overboard. The fastenings of the cannon were too tough for the crude implements which the convicts possessed, and they were unable to cut it loose, no one having a knife.

By this time the soldiers were pouring up the companion ladder, only to be knocked backwards by the clubbed muskets in the hands of the now desperate prisoners. Two commissioned officers clambered through the cabin skylight, gained the poop, and shot out-of-hand two of the boldest among the convicts. This sudden turn in affairs cowed the others, who fell back, giving the soldiers the opportunity to gain the deck. Instantly a volley of musketry poured into the ranks of the prisoners, of whom five fell dead, three jumped overboard, and the rest were driven below by the pricking bayonets of the infuriated guard. The whole of that day they spent without food below, and on the following morning they were mustered early on deck.

All ranks of the military were under arms, one line being formed across the poop and another across the forecastle, while a gun had been lashed in front of each, beside which stood a seaman with lighted match. Both muzzles were trained upon the main hatchway where the convicts huddled in a cowering group, thoroughly abashed by the formidable precautions against any renewed attempt at mutiny. The ship’s boatswain called each convict by name, and as each answered, he was ordered up to the quarterdeck on which the ship’s and military officers were assembled in all the impressiveness of full uniform. The only one of the three sentries who had escaped death on the previous day, was called upon to scrutinize each man as he came forward, with a view to identifying those who had been on deck during the attempted seizure; and each prisoner was stripped. If no wound showed, and the sentry failed to identify the man as a participant in the mutiny, he was interrogated as to his knowledge of the details of the plot and to the identity of the ringleaders responsible for the outbreak, the promised reward for accurate information being immediate benefits for the rest of the voyage, and a strong recommendation from the senior officer and the ship’s master for his liberty on landing at Port Jackson.

Rashleigh, being an inveterate and well-known lie-abed who was never on deck in the morning until driven there by compulsion, combined with the fact that his position of clerk to the surgeon made it unlikely that the leaders of the mutiny would have confided their plans to him, was dismissed as innocent of complicity. In the end about twenty prisoners were specifically identified and, after a severe public flogging, were heavily ironed and confined in a den under the forecastle for the remainder of the voyage. No amount of questioning produced any reliable information as to who the leaders had been, and the inquiry closed on the assumption that they were the men who had been shot dead, and those who had jumped overboard at the failure of the attempted seizure.

The normal routine, varied only by the posting of five sentries on deck instead of three, was resumed, and no untoward incident occurred until a few days after the Magnet had passed the island of St. Peter and St. Paul. One day a sail was reported standing on a course which would bring her close across the Magnet’s course. She was a long, low schooner with raking masts, and in the captain’s phrase, ‘she loomed very suspicious altogether’; but as she veered on to another course when almost within hail and made away, no further interest was taken in her that day. In the dense haze of the following morning, however, she suddenly appeared close to the Magnet, and almost at the moment she was seen by the lookout-man, the sullen roar of a heavy gun boomed across the morning quiet. Before the reverberations of the report had ceased, someone hailed the convict ship in a foreign tongue. Captain Boltrope replied at once:

‘An English convict ship bound from Portsmouth to New South Wales.’ The excitement promised by the gun’s fire had roused even Rashleigh from his bed, and he came up on deck at a run. There he saw the schooner lying with flapping sails, head to wind, and the officers of the Magnet, including the military, gathered on the poop. From the answering hail from the schooner, it was patent that she was a foreigner whose officers knew no English, and immediate confirmation of the conjecture came with the running up of the gaudy flag of Portugal on the stranger’s gaff, simultaneously with the firing of another gun.

‘By hell, that gun was shotted!’ roared the mate, looking aloft as if following the flight of the ball.

‘Then, Captain,’ said the senior Army officer, ‘it’s about time we got busy.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ answered Boltrope eagerly; ‘we’ll soon test the stuff she’s made of. Hoist away the Union Jack, there! Mr. Trairs, jump below and hand up cartridges and wads. Surgeon, will you turn out all your men from below to help load, and run the guns in and out. You at the helm, there,’ he roared, ‘bring the starboard side to bear. By the Lord, you can have all the fighting you want, my pup of a Portugee!’

Amid the excited bustle which ensued, Dr. Dullmure, a Scottish Presbyterian chaplain who was on board, approached Captain Boltrope.

‘Do you mean to fight, then, Captain?’ he asked in a terrified voice.

‘Do I mean to fight?’ cried the seasoned sea-dog. ‘Do I mean . . . ? Well, that’s a good ’un. Aye, and fight like hell. Do you suppose I’m going to stand by and see my ship plundered, and that glorious bit of bunting overhead insulted by a damned Portugee? No, no; Jimmy Boltrope, with forty soldiers and that mob of tough ‘uns — English, and fighters, every one of them — to back him, is ready to fight your devil himself, though he rise from the ocean with seven heads and seventy horns, like your beast in the Revelations. Now, stand back out of the way.’

The parson retreated below before this torrent of bellicose oratory, and the poop was cleared for action. The captain was in great glee and roared with laughter at the spectacle of the clumsy soldiers struggling up to the fighting tops to which they had been detailed. Meanwhile a boat had been lowered from the schooner, apparently full of armed men, and made towards the Magnet. As it approached, however, the sight of the military guard at their various posts put consternation into the voice of the boat’s commander.

‘Prisonniers! prisonniers!’ he shouted back to his ship, and immediately ordered the boat to be put about.

He and his crew clambered quickly aboard, the boat was raised, and the schooner stood away without any further warlike action, and made its escape, much to the secret disappointment of every one, except the chaplain, on board the convict ship.

After the excitement of the mutiny and the encounter with the Portuguese, the eventlessness of the remainder of the voyage gave a new dreariness to life aboard, and there was not a man who did not thrill with anticipation, when one evening the hail of ‘Land ho!’ from the masthead heralded the end of the sea journey.