Mr Corbett's Ghost (13 page)

For a while he attempted to sing in time to the regular uproar of the lashed irons. But such songs as he knew were all ballads of forsaken love, neglected love, despised love, graveyard love, fruitless love, betrayed love, impossible love, love at death's door—in short, his songs were all of a love that was scarce more prosperous than his own. Did he but know it he was passed beyond the third stage of first-sight love. He was now in its fourth stage, from which there is no turning back and for which not even death is a sure cure; it lingers on in the air . . .

He paused in his singing and listened once more to the solemn grinding of the invisible irons. Between their clankings, he could hear the industrious rats. They seemed to be at dinner. He shuddered to imagine the course. He sat down and attempted to compose himself for sleep. Then considered he had no cause to wish the morning nearer. Yet waking held no profit, either.

His thoughts kept turning back with dismal anger to the three kind friends who'd seen him off at Deal. Seen him off indeed! He saw them now, as he'd seen them so often before—those three well-born young gentlemen—sitting easy in some coffee house, jingling the guineas he'd prigged for them and waiting for more.

‘Well done, Nick, old dear!'

‘Lord! You're a marvel, Nick!'

‘Don't know what we'd do without you, Nick!'

Desolately, he stared into the darkness and wondered who had made the world and why. Where was his mysterious springtime gone? Where were the hopes with
which he'd been born? Where was his birthright of innocence now? He'd not spent it—and that was for sure. Yet here he was, Nicholas Kemp, scarce two and twenty, an outcast and a scapegoat, damned if ever a man was—even waiting to be hanged. He'd a glum notion that, though many a naked beggar got into heaven, gentlemen who wore cravats of rope were most likely directed elsewhere.

Suddenly, the rhythm of the chains was disturbed. The regular tolling was changed into a rapid clatter. Likewise, the heaving motion of the ship (which, in the extreme darkness Nicholas was profoundly sensitive to) altered to a curious shuddering.

On deck the helmsman struggled with the wheel, for the
Phoenix
was come upon one of the strong submarine currents whose presence, in sunlight, proclaims itself in long, glass-smooth fingers stretched across the rippled sea. The effect was as if some profound monster was wrenching at the ship's keel.

The entire passage across this current lasted maybe no more than seven or eight minutes, but such was the loudness and violence of the shaking irons that Nicholas was all but deafened. When it stopped, and the old beating was resumed, he could hear nothing external for several minutes, and mistook an urgent knocking for his own blood banging in his head.

‘Sonny! Sonny—are you there? Answer me, boy! It's Bartleman here! Speak up if you're still alive!'

Amazed out of his misery, Nicholas cried out: ‘Is it you? Is it really you?'

Bartleman laughed, and there was no mistaking the sound of it.

‘It's really me, sonny. Ain't that a fine thing to hear in the dark?'

‘You've no idea, Mr Bartleman! No idea at all how fine it is! Where are you?'

‘Behind the bulkhead, sonny. Had you forgot? We're
all here. Tell this poor, unhappy lad you're all here! Let him hear your voices!'

Directly came a score of voices, low but thick with affection, wishing him well and urging him keep in good heart.

‘That's enough!' ordered Bartleman. ‘Quiet, now. Time enough for roaring later. Eh? Eh?'

Nicholas's spirits began to flicker and to rise. If ever he'd suspected the embezzler's kindness, such suspicions would now have been truly laid. Fierce and thieving as was that man, there was a heart in him such as few possessed. There was some good in the world after all—be it never so oddly lodged.

‘They'll not hang you, sonny.'

‘Much thanks for your comfort, Mr Bartleman, but I think they will.'

‘No contradictions, sonny. When Bartleman says they won't, they won't. For it's not Bartleman alone. There's eighty downtrodden gentlemen here who say the same. Ain't that so, gentlemen?'

Came a chorus of agreement—most determined: most formidable.

‘Did you hear that powerful eighty, sonny? Each and every one of 'em feels it would be right villainous to hang a gentle, simple soul like you. And will put his feelings into action—without which, feelings is so much trash!' (Here, the embezzlers voice took on a cutting edge.) ‘D'you take my meaning, sonny?'

‘The ship? You'll take over the ship, Mr Bartleman? D'you mean mutiny, sir?'

Nicholas's spirits began to dive and twist and whirl, as might a leaf or a fledgling caught in a sudden crosswind. The sensible part of his mind assured him that Mr Bartleman was but trying to comfort him in his last hours by filling them with hope; but another part of his mind provoked an unnatural excitement.

‘Call it what you like, sonny. For my part, I'll call it the terrible meek in'eriting a little bit of the earth. Or a rising up, sonny, on be'alf of you. Or, if you like, a rightchus anger for the poor little bleeding oppressed. Take your pick, son—it's six of one and 'alf a dozen of the other. All that matters is, that you can sleep easy, sonny. Bartleman's a-watching over you.'

Nicholas did sleep—but not easily. His soul was much torn with excitement and uneasiness and a gloomy conviction he'd have no more luck in escaping the hangman's rope than he'd had in what was gruesomely known as love.

‘Love!' murmured Nicholas, dreamily. ‘You've broke my heart, and now you'll break my neck.'

Then, little by little, his old nature asserted itself and hope came creeping back. Bartleman, the embezzler—whose voice he could hear murmuring from time to time on the other side of the bulkhead—would not let poor Nick Kemp die. He had promised. Bartleman would—

‘Thank you, Mr Bartleman,' he murmured before he dozed off. ‘You are indeed my good angel . . .'

And when he awoke, his eyes were wet with tears.

HAVING NOTHING OF
black in her luggage but half a yard of lace of her mother's, Miss Warboys slept badly and woke early, still wondering whether to wear it at her throat or on her hair. But her reddened eyes and stained cheeks—though she would never have declared it—had a deeper cause than vanity over a touch of mourning. Her heart ached: gentle Mr Kemp had stolen more than a brooch . . .

But nothing was ever decided by sighing. The lace became her reddish hair distractingly well—and three pins would hold it if the air proved kind. It all depended on the weather. Anxiously, she rouged the tear stains out of her cheeks and stumbled forth to see how strong the wind blew.

The morning was palely brilliant. The eastern sea seemed to have washed all the blood out of the sun so that it hung over the poop like a glaring ghost.

The air was cold but had little motion. Most likely this was on account of all sails being furled—which gave the ship an open aspect, as of a house suddenly unroofed.

There was no doubt that three pins would secure the black lace quite confidently.

‘I must look well for him,' she murmured, clinging to her pertness though her passions were in disarray. ‘I must look my—Oh God—God! How horrible!'

From the larboard arm of the mainyard hung a rope that was no part of the rigging.

‘Hemp for Kemp, miss,' said the boatswain harshly, then laid his hands behind his back and stared down at the hatch that covered the thief to die.

Though the rope appalled her, she could not forbear from looking at it again and again before she returned to her quarters.

Nor was she alone in this. The merciful captain had seen it with displeasure and even with pain. For he
was
a merciful man—though cursed with a quick temper and a loose tongue. It was certain he regretted the sudden sentence he'd passed in the night. But his word was law to the boatswain; and laws must be kept else they fall into disrepute and are booted aside.

If I weaken now, he thought fiercely, them thieving felons will have the gold out of me passengers' teeth! No! Examples must be made—then we can all rest easy.

‘Boatswain!' he shouted from the quarter-deck—and in the general stillness, his voice ranged high and wide. ‘I want everything done shipshape! Crew on the forecastle head. Convicts in their enclosures. No passengers near 'em. I'll have no more thievery! They can
keep to their cabins or come out with me. Shipshape. D'you understand?'

‘Aye, Captain. Shall I read the Service?'

‘That's my office, mister. You can dispatch him, but I'll address him. Get moving, mister. And do it neat and decent. Remember—there'll be ladies present.'

The boatswain moved. Put into motion the captain's orders. Eased out the crew from every dozy cranny and dicing hole. Crossed and recrossed the staring deck. A hard and vigilant man.

Sourly the captain watched, then returned to his cabin to ferret out his Bible. On his way, he remembered the paying passengers. He frowned. Had brief hopes of their keeping to the Great Cabin till the . . . unpleasantness was done with.

His hopes were dashed when he saw them, warmly dressed and full of expectation.

‘Gentlemen and ladies,' he said irritably. ‘I must ask you to keep well aft, poopward, I mean, of the mainmast this morning. An . . . an example is being made. For the convicts. It . . . it really ain't your business. Begging your pardon! It ain't interesting. But, of course, if you insists . . . Gentlemen—I'll trouble you to look to the ladies. Some turns queasy. I recommend aromatic vinegar . . . Miss Warboys! It won't do no good, y'know—not to him nor to you, miss. It wasn't your fault . . . and you won't make it any easier on him. Better for him to think on spiritual matters when . . . Miss Warboys! Bear up, my girl!'

This last, as Miss Warboys tottered and clutched at the table for support. She recovered herself, attempted one of her smiles (which seemed to pluck at her lips like a child begging), then felt for the piece of black lace that lay atop her head.

‘Saucy slut!' remarked a female passenger, and Miss Warboys' eyes glittered with a touch of anger.

‘Did you see? Did you mark?
That
went home!'

The sun was halfway up the mizzen—a blinding eye to stare the world out of countenance. There was no looking backward towards it.

The masts flung great shadows the length of the deck. These shadows were wide and thick like velvet, and lay most ominously across the hatch that covered up Nicholas Kemp.

‘Boatswain!' shouted the captain.

‘Sir?'

‘All assembled?'

‘Aye, sir.'

‘Then let up the convicts first. Open up their hatch. Move, man!'

Came a curious effect. The mainmast's shadow lay three-quarters across this hatch, so that the captain shouted a second time before he saw the shabby felons spilling over the edge of the blackness and understood the shadow to be hiding them as they emerged.

Now a slight wind sprang up, coming from the north-west. The flat sea prickled and the
Phoenix
began, very gently, to dance.

‘Get 'em moving, mister! Quicker there!'

The captain most likely feared the wind would increase and blow his sermon too early to heaven.

‘Move, you stinking felons!' roared the boatswain. ‘Else you'll all end up with Kemp!'

But the convicts did not seem to hurry themselves. And, rather than from the angry boatswain, they seemed to take direction from a squat convict who shifted deftly in and out of the mainmast's shadow so that, one moment he was plainly seen, and the next there was nothing but an invisible presence, somewhere in the dark.

‘Are they all come up yet?'

‘I'll go see, sir. I think—ah!'

The boatswain had gone into the dark, towards the invisible presence.

‘What's amiss, there? What are they doing? Boatswain! Damn you, mister! Answer me or—'

But if that vigilant man had been damned, it was now by a more powerful Judge than the
Phoenix
's captain. He lay in the black shadow, dead of Bartleman's knife.

There followed movement and purpose of uncanny speed and skill—which the very brilliance of the day obscured.

Even as a shoal of black perch in a summer's stream may twist and dart and vanish utterly in the shadows of overhanging leaves and branches, so the rapid dark figures of the running convicts vanished in the deep, wide shadow of the mainmast. Nothing was seen—but there was heard the terrible sound of their tread, under which the deck trembled.

Wild confusion had broken out on the forecastle head!' But the man who might have quelled and commanded it was dead. Muskets were swung and desperately levelled . . . But against what? Valuable moments lost: moments that were now beyond price.