Authors: David Donachie
Catgut waved his skinny arms in feeble protest as he looked into rows of accusing eyes. Lower than the others, Horatio Nelson could see tears appear in the fiddler’s eyes. His jaw was set in denial, but his rapidly dampening cheeks told the truth.
‘Holy Mary Mother of God,’ cried McGrath, moving forward. Horatio Nelson closed his eyes, not wishing to witness what was about to happen, but relieved that the thief had been exposed.
‘Stand!’ snapped John Judd, and such was the authority he had acquired that even the ship’s hard man obeyed him. ‘The thief must confess to stave off damnation.’
Nelson, eyes wide open now, watched as Catgut’s shoulders slumped, and he loosed the first of several sobs. The words followed slowly, in spurts. ‘In the manger … by the straw where the hens alay.’
‘You mean, paltry swab.’ Judd whispered. ‘Go down on your knees this second, and beg for the forgiveness of Neptune, as well as the man from who you stole.’
The fiddler’s bony knees thudded onto the planking. He was babbling away, to God, Neptune and Eamon McGrath, pleading for absolution, promising every drop of his grog for the whole voyage if he could be spared the drubbing he was owed.
‘I’ll not forgo it,’ said McGrath, emphatically, his fists clenched.
Judd put his hand on McGrath’s arm and spoke softly. ‘Take it easy on the sod, shipmate. He’s a miserable wretch, and what’s more the only fiddler we have aboard. Wound him too deep and you’ll find yourself dancing the capstan in his place.’
It was a bruised and bloodied specimen that crawled from his hammock the following day, but McGrath had heeded Judd’s wishes. The fiddler could still play, if only a scratch and a scrape, but enough to pace all hands as they swung round the capstan, pushing to get a new topsail yardarm aloft. The boys went up the shrouds after John Judd, and followed him out on the footropes, nagging him to answer their most pressing question. Finally, acting like a man driven to distraction, he obliged. ‘Why shipmates, it was all stuff and nonsense. But there is nowt as daft as a superstitious tar. You’ll never go astray preyin’ on that particular habit. Take that blood now, which got everyone so. They thought it was from that chicken, but I tipped the whole of that o’er the side in plain view.’
‘So where did it come from?’ asked Amos eagerly.
‘No more’n a lucky mishap.’ Hooking his arm around a sling, he showed them his thumb, the thin gash where the knife had caught him now no more than a thin white line in the callused flesh. ‘Bled like a stuck pig I did. But seeing as I had it to hand, and was set to prey on the fancies of my messmates, I thought it added a touch of the devil to the business.’
‘Land ho!’ came the cry from above their heads. ‘Fine on the larboard bow.’
Every eye on the ship strained for their first sight of solid earth for two months. Captain Rathbone’s voice boomed out, cursing the crew and telling them to get on with their tasks. They obliged, but as they worked their eyes strayed, until all had seen the white clouds that hovered over what must be land.
‘Now my boys,’ said John Judd, ‘you think you’s seen excitement since we weighed from the Downs. But just you wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ as yet. Over yonder there’s rum, women and make merry, and old Rathbone has coin in his sailing chest that makes sure we’ll get the chance to partake of it.’
The brilliance of St John’s was astounding, everything Nelson had been told to expect and more, a combination of bright sunlight, deep blue skies and sea set against the green and brown of the island of Antigua, which was dotted with buildings of startling whiteness. Beyond lay the land of fabled fortunes made from sugar cane, of great sea battles, sieges, of islands changing hands in bewildering rotation between the warring French, Spanish and British.
In the seas between here and the Spanish Main the pirates and buccaneers had plied their bloody trade, creating legends that he and his friends had re-enacted on the beaches and chill waters of the north Norfolk shore – Drake, Henry Morgan, Blackbeard. This was the arena in which his uncle had risen to martial fame. And here he was about to land on one of the islands.
What would they be doing at the Parsonage now, his brothers and sisters?
The mornings, hot here, would perhaps be frosty in Norfolk. If Father were at home the strict regime he insisted on would be in place: proper dress, cleanliness, prayers three times a day and not enough food to go round. Nelson had been homesick on this voyage from time to time, either in his daily prayers or lying in his hammock longing for the familiarity and security of Burnham Thorpe. He wasn’t now, though, and he knew that every one of his siblings, perhaps even his pessimistic father, would envy him what he was about to experience.
To land and see the very ordinary faces of those who occupied the place was a great disappointment. There were no scarred scallywags and villains, flagon of rum in hand, or black-browed rogues thirsting to fight over a wayward look. There were only tradesfolk of the most mundane hue. The wharves that followed the horseshoe shaped bay were crammed with warehouses, full to the brim with everything from ambergris to wine. The place reeked of prosperity, not danger.
‘Now, I have knowledge of this port of St John’s,’ said McGrath, pointing to an area where narrow lanes led off the quay, ‘and it is not, thank the Lord, a place where a Christian would wish to spend too much time. So we leave Jesus and St Patrick in the boat, John Judd, and get our feet under a tavern table.’
The two boys followed in their footsteps, curious onlookers to the sights sounds and smells of the place. His first sight of so many black faces had had no effect on Nelson, but outside a drawing smuggled into his schoolboy dormitory, he had never before seen bare-breasted females, who were seemingly unashamed by the exposure. Though it was warm, the air was clear and dry, and the women, as they passed close to them, gave off a musky smell that tantalised the boys as much as it did McGrath and Judd.
The tavern the Irishman chose was so dark and full of smoke that, at first, they could hardly see. But with elbows put to good service McGrath found them a place to sit. Then slapping some silver coins on the bare wood of the table, he loudly demanded attention. Looking around Nelson could see girls in bright patterned shawls, who sat at the tables and encouraged the customers to divest themselves of their money.
Within seconds rum had arrived, strong, undiluted liquor that nearly made him choke until it was cut with water and lime juice. He felt the warmth of the drink spread through his limbs. Pipes arrived too, and soon Judd, McGrath and Amos were puffing away, adding to the dense clouds that hung thick under the low rafters. McGrath had downed his first rum in one, then called for and consumed another before he rose to his feet and grinned at Judd. ‘That’s set me up fine and dandy, John boy, but you know, as I do, that too much of one good thing does no favour to another. You just keep an eye on these nippers while I test the mettle of what lays at the top of them stairs.’
Six eyes followed him. They had adjusted now to the gloom and they could see the open wooden staircase that ran up to a landing that lined the
whole of one wall. Most of the doors were closed, but the two that remained open had handsome young negresses standing in them, demure in their looks despite the flesh they showed. McGrath had stopped at the base of the staircase and was haggling with the man who sat at the table. Finally a bargain was struck, money changed hands, and the Irishman had his foot on the first step.
Distracted by the arrival of more rum, when they looked back he’d disappeared. Amos Cavell grinned and nudged Nelson, indicating that one of the open doors was now closed. Suddenly John Judd was fidgeting like an infant, swaying back and forth as though trying to find the seat of a particularly galling itch. Setting down his tankard, he pronounced himself unwilling ‘to hold such for an instant longer’, and was at the foot of the stairs in an instant. His business at the table was as quickly concluded and the boys saw him run up, slap something into the last girl’s hand, before both disappeared behind the closed door.
‘Give me rum any day, mate,’ said Amos to Nelson, leaning back in a superior way. ‘There’s more pleasure in a good jug of rum than in any
black-skinned
trollop.’
‘You’re right at that,’ was the reply, though doubt was evident in Nelson’s voice. The pair sat there as Judd and McGrath satisfied their corporeal needs, trying hard to look like men rather than boys. This took the form of an exaggerated loucheness, which with more rum soon turned raucous. Pufffing on his pipe, Amos was showing away, as if a tavern was his natural habitat, shouting lewd comments that earned him many a baleful look. It also attracted to the table two of the whores working the room.
‘You’re a noisy one,’ said the older of the pair, as she sat on the bench beside Amos.
The younger girl perched next to Nelson. He squirmed along his bench to avoid her. Close to, her skin didn’t look quite so smooth, and her shawl was garish rather than colourful. ‘This one is quiet and deep, I can tell.’ Her voice was low and rasping, her face round and pockmarked, but her touch was light as she laid a warm hand on his.
‘The question is,’ said the other, ‘what are they doing here? This be a place for men, not boys.’
‘I ain’t no mere boy,’ said Amos, loudly, reaching under the table to his own crotch. ‘There be the making of a smile down here.’
‘Thin and fleeting, I’ll wager.’ The older woman laughed, showing a couple of broken teeth, then patted his waistcoat pocket. ‘Never mind what’s in that pouch below the board. Is there the wherewithal in here?’
‘Depends,’ Amos replied, sucking hard at his pipe and trying to look manly. ‘I ain’t no Simple Simon waitin’ to be dunned.’
The older woman’s eyes had narrowed just a fraction, while the one close to Nelson had put her hand in his lap. As he watched Amos lean close to negotiate, he wanted to run, but that would make Amos sneer.
‘What have you got hidden away in your breeches?’ asked the girl next to
him. Her voice was husky and insincere. ‘I promise that whatever trade they agree will do for me.’
He couldn’t speak, much as he wanted to, and neither could he move when, on hearing Amos agree a fee of two shillings, the girl’s hand moved from his lap to his arm, and with a hearty tug she hauled him to his feet. Amos was already at the foot of the stairs, and the whole place seemed to have sunk away from him, the babble of the tavern somehow distant. And all the time, the smiling negress propelled him forward, with whispered promises of the delights to come. When it came to payment he felt as though he was outside his own body and the sweating face of the man who took his coins was too ill-defined to register.
Then they were on the stairs. At one point he managed to stop and look into her grinning face, which earned him an admonition not to be afraid, that every boy had to come to manhood one day. It was that, allied to the feeling that every eye in the smoke-filled room was on him, that turned him back up the stairs. If this whore knew he lacked experience then so did everyone else. To balk would be to invite ridicule from the entire assembly, so he allowed himself to be pushed along the landing, then through a door.
The hands that spun him round as soon as the door shut were not gentle, neither was there a smile on the girl’s face. The fingers that scrabbled at his breeches buttons were eager enough, but the words she breathed now betokened impatience rather than lust. His erection sprang out into her avid, jerking hand, and the ache he had felt in his groin at the table concentrated so much that he had to close his eyes. When he opened them a second later he saw that he had shot semen all over the hem of her brightly patterned shawl.
‘My, you’re a quick one,’ she said, in a voice that had no hint of the earlier sensuality. Her hand was in the folds of the shawl, to be wiped clean. But she was looking at his breeches. ‘Best do likewise, young sir. Half the contents of your sack are running down your ducks.’
As they worked to reload
Swanborough
with the cargo of molasses, Nelson wanted to kill Amos Cavell. It wasn’t the notion of what he had got him into that chafed, or what had happened in that upstairs room. That, as he knew from mess table conversation, was an old bawd’s trick, which earned them their money without any effort. Besides he had kept it secret. What annoyed him was the way the other boy reprised every second of his own experience. Since he had been gone a lot longer than Nelson, there was little doubt that he had been successful. In his boasting, Amos sounded like the older hands, and his tale always ended with the words, ‘Best two shillings’ worth she’s ever had, I’ll wager. Wasn’t fit for the knacker’s yard after a bout with Amos Cavell.’
This went on until well after they had weighed, which made Nelson grateful that a shortage of coin and the work of disgorging the cargo and reloading had confined his friend to that one carnal outing. Then, one morning, after Amos had made several trips to the heads, the boasting stopped. No explanation was given, but Amos took to watching Nelson closely. They were basically inseparable anyway, because of their duties and the other boy’s curiosity deepened. His constant allusions to Nelson’s health made no sense until the day when Amos had to admit that, like McGrath and Judd, he had been forced to consult the cook.
‘How come?’ he moaned, stroking his groin, ‘that out of a pair I get the one that’s poxed, an’ you get away scot-free? McGrath and Judd are in the same state. You must have had the only clean whore in the whole fuckin’ place.’
‘Pot luck, I reckon.’
The dark eyes narrowed and Amos looked hard at his blond friend. ‘You did do the service, didn’t you, Nellie?’
‘By the pint, Amos,’ Nelson responded gaily. ‘By the pint. The prize bull himself couldn’t have done better.’
The way to England was the third arm of the triangular passage, north from the sugar islands, the coast of the American colonies to leeward, searching for the trade winds that would take them east and home. So far it had been
a good voyage, with few accidents and no deaths. But the risk of that was a constant, and never more so than once the ship had touched land and the crew had been exposed to ailments alien to the sea.
They lost one man to a fever of unknown origin that had them sousing the whole ship with vinegar; that was followed by a week when everyone watched everyone else carefully for any sign of a malaise that might threaten them all. Tales of a whole ship’s crew perishing, leaving the vessel to drift, were the stuff of nightmares. Amos stopped boasting and took to regaling them with tales of his fortitude when faced with the cook’s mercury-tipped metal implements.
John Judd kept silent about what he had endured in the same line, but he still watched over them, ensuring that they did what they had been taught. He told Nelson that now he was a full member of the crew, like to be trusted, being seen in close conversation with the captain would not be taken amiss. As soon as the boy showed interest in the more difficult nautical skills, Rathbone practically fawned on him. Learning the rudiments of spherical trigonometry was harder than tying knots, but Nelson fetched his seamanship books from the chest in which they had lain undisturbed, and set himself to learn as much as he could.
Yet he still messed forward, with the same men, who now hankered after home instead of foreign adventure. It took him time to realise what it was that made him feel so at ease. It gradually dawned on him that the men shared a sense of tolerance he had experienced nowhere else. They were at ease with their differences and forgiving of transgressions, once a point had been made or a score settled. No one shunned Catgut, or hid their possessions from him. He was now, almost with affection, named a fiddler on two counts. He had suffered McGrath’s retribution and that was enough.
At home, at school, even in his limited time in a midshipman’s berth, Nelson had seen how every mark counted against a person’s character: it was knowledge to be husbanded for future use. No sin was forgotten, no misdemeanour forgiven in a world where people jockeyed for advantage, in which standards must be maintained, where change was treated with suspicion. Here, ’tween decks, a man’s ability was what marked him out; and live and let live was the order of every work-filled day. That, and a keen anticipation of whatever it was that lay over the horizon.
‘You’ll never satisfy a blue water sailor, young Nellie,’ said John Judd, as they worked on some old ropes, picking out the shakings so that they could be reused. ‘They ain’t like fisher folk and men who work the coast. For those that go deep grass is always greener, don’t matter where they are.’
The youngster wanted to disagree, since he was himself a blue water sailor now, and he was as happy as he had ever been in his life, unsure that the future could hold better than the world he now inhabited. But he needed to keep that to himself. Better a joke than maudlin emotion. ‘Excepting Fiddler’s Green,’ he replied, grinning.
‘The land of milk and honey,’ Judd intoned, ‘where the money never runs
out, and the women are as obligin’ as the rum is pure. God grant you get there one day, Mr Nelson, cause it’s as sure as hell is hot that I never will.’
‘Fiddler’s Green don’t exist, John Judd, and you know it.’
‘It’s there for some, lad, though I daresay your pa the parson would term it heaven.’
‘Not with obliging women he wouldn’t.’
As if on cue Amos Cavell came back from his latest visit to the cook, his face as grey as the sea under the keel. ‘How many more times has he got to stick that probe down my prick? The pleasure the man gets ain’t natural.’
‘Just be thankful you’re alive, Amos,’ said Judd. ‘’Cause that is what matters most.’
Once they had found the prevailing westerlies, well north on latitude 40 degrees north, the sun was rarely out. Behind them, in the Caribbean, the hurricane season was in full swing, and the tail of that weather pursued them across the grey Atlantic, sending black clouds scurrying eastward and whipping up storms that, even when they abated, left them in the midst of a heaving, troubled sea. Going aloft in sheeting, wind driven rain was misery. And, as John Judd never tired of reminding them, it was dangerous. He was at his charges constantly to keep both arms over the yard, both feet well spread on the foot ropes slung below, religiously supervising their work even as he carried out his own.
‘Hands aloft!’ yelled Verner, head down the hatchway for the tenth time since dawn.
Groaning and moaning Nelson, exhausted from little sleep and too much toil, dragged himself on to the deck, as the mate ordered another reef in the topsail to take account of an increase in the wind. He was still wet from his last outing, when a black squall had swept across the ship, rain so heavy that he could barely breath, so he felt he must be drowning. The ship was rolling and pitching on a heaving grey sea, under glowering, cloud-filled skies that, even in the gathering twilight, promised a deluge in the near future. He was cold already but the wind chilled him even more as it took what little heat his body had generated. Rathbone was by the wheel, where he had been since the day before, red eyes caked with salt, water cascading off his oilskins. Verner was beside him now, speaking trumpet in hand.
‘Clap on there, Nellie,’ Judd barked, pushing him slightly as the ship pitched into a deep, broken trough. Nelson had forgotten to lash himself on, but there was no time to reach for the line he wore round his waist for the purpose. He grabbed at the man-rope that stretched from the top of the companionway to the bulwarks, his feet slipping on the wet deck as it canted, leaving him stretched out practically face down. Above his head he heard the cry, and Amos Cavell screaming. John Judd slipped past him, hands scrabbling for a hold that didn’t exist, on a deck that the running sea had swept clear.
Judd made his feet just before his body hit the bulwark, with the ship
rising on a wave to help him upright. He stood like a man on a tightrope, grasping at the air for balance, his eyes on the lifeline that was just beyond his reach. Nelson was on his feet too, lashing himself to the man-rope while the deck was horizontal. The ship should have continued to lift,
threatening
to throw Judd all the way across the deck as it canted to larboard. Instead she pitched again as a sudden gust of wind, allied to a freak in the run of the sea, threw her over until she was nearly on her beam-ends. John Judd, wide-eyed and with nothing to hold on to, was lifted bodily and, as his back hit the bulwark, he tumbled over the side.
‘Man overboard,’ yelled Nelson, a cry that was taken up all around him as he battled his way along the man-rope to the side of the ship. Using the shrouds to secure himself he leapt on to the rail and arched his body out over the hull. John Judd was in the water, arms waving, bobbing away towards the stern, the opening gap testimony to the speed
Swanborough
was making. Someone astern threw a rope, but it missed him by several feet, which in this sea was as good as a mile.
‘Get aloft, Nelson,’ screamed Verner, his mouth close to the youngster’s ear. Words wouldn’t come as Nelson pointed at Judd’s fast disappearing form. The mate’s salt streaked face held little sympathy for his distress, and the voice was a harsh growl. ‘How in Christ’s name are we to come about and save the poor sod without we have men to work the fuckin’ sails?’
Nelson was already climbing when he heard Rathbone give the orders for a figure of eight. He wondered as he ascended what that meant then put it to the back of his mind as he made his way out on to the topsail yard – the need to survive the journey out to the end of the narrowing pole had to take precedence over everything. The ropes beneath his bare feet were soaked, but rough enough to give grip and, true to Judd’s teaching, he had half his body across the yard, a hand holding anything that would aid his purchase.
Once in place he managed a look over the stern. Judd was clear in the wake, bobbing in the troughs and rising on the tops, going under occasionally but resurfacing, his arm raised in supplication. Then the orders came, sails loosed as Rathbone bore up into the wind in a long arc. The yards, worked by those still on deck, spun until they were nearly fore and aft, with the wind pushing the ship to leeward at an increasing rate. Rathbone called for them to be sheeted home then let the bows fall off across another heavy gust. Nelson felt himself pulled through the air as, with the wind now pushing on the starboard bow, the trim of the yards was reversed. Rathbone had his speaking trumpet raised to call out the orders to take the ship back across its own course.
‘Sheet home, lively,’ Verner screamed. ‘Aloft there, let fall the topsail.’
Already reefed, Nelson scrabbled at the ties that had halved the area of available sail, the men inboard of him doing likewise. Habit overbore anxiety, and the task was carried out as if the sea were calm, and the toiling topmen were not rising, falling, pitching and rolling through an arc of fifty feet. Nelson knew that the Captain was taking a risk, showing so much
canvas to a gusting wind. He would be safe if he could come up into it again and make some headway before another gust hit the ship. That would take him beyond John Judd in the water; he could then come round to complete the figure of eight with the gale on his quarter, shortening sail to shield Judd. Then they could try to get a line on him to haul him inboard, a manoeuvre that would have to be performed with way on the ship. Any attempt to heave to in this swell would see them founder.
With a darkening sky, time was short, but a glance told him Judd was still alive. He knew Rathbone was trying to rescue him, so he had stopped waving and put all his effort into staying afloat. The Captain made his figure of eight, and brought
Swanborough
to a point to leeward of Judd before he wore to come back on to his original course. Now the swell was the problem. That and the fear that by getting too close to Judd, a sudden gust would ship them sideways and drive him under.
The task aloft was finished, and Nelson chivvied those ahead to clamber down the shrouds. Sensibly they wouldn’t be hurried, insisting that they lash themselves off to avoid sharing Judd’s fate. Descending at a pace set by others, Nelson saw the lines fly out again and again, as the best men on the ship tried to cast a rope close enough for Judd to reach. He was calling encouragement to them now, his voice carrying over the wind. Before Nelson touched the deck, he knew the gap was too great. The tide was carrying Judd at a rate close to that of the ship so the gap never closed. To put her before the wind and narrow it meant setting a course across the swell, bringing the risk that she might roll out her masts.
‘Let me try and swim to him,’ he said, tugging at Rathbone’s sleeve with one hand while the other was occupied releasing his safety line.
The captain turned to look at him, clapped a hand over the still tied knot and shook his head. ‘I’ll not risk losing two, Mr Nelson.’
There was a look in the red-rimmed eyes that seemed to hint that if another had asked he might have said yes. The notion that he was being favoured made Nelson both angry and intemperate. ‘I’ll go without permission,’ he shouted, trying to prise off Rathbone’s hand.
‘You will not, Mr Nelson. But if you can find a grown man to accept the task I will sanction an attempt.’
McGrath was beside them, and heard Rathbone’s words. He tugged at Nelson’s sleeve so hard that the boy slipped on the wet deck. When he spoke, his voice was an angry growl. ‘Get up, you grass combing bugger and lash me up.’
‘Can you swim?’
The beetle-browed hard man swung round and shouted to Amos Cavell. ‘Fetch me a cask from below. If it ain’t empty make it so.’
Judd’s voice came again, asking why they’d given up casting a line to him.
‘How long till full night, Captain?’
Rathbone looked up at the scudding black clouds, full of rain and the
indistinct lightness to the west. ‘Half an hour, no more. Get a line ready for McGrath, and one to put round the barrel in case the bugger lets go. Mr Verner, when our man is ready, I want to put the ship before the wind for no more than a minute.’