Wide is the Water (7 page)

‘Oh, we'll sort them out all right.' The Englishman turned back to Bill. ‘Don't look so troubled, man. I'm not going to ask you which are which. I don't need to. They'll be taught soon enough what life is like on a king's ship. The question is, what are we going to do about you?'

‘Let me serve Captain Purchis, sir. I'd like to do that. He's – family to me.'

‘An excellent idea.' He shouted an order, and a little, wizened, grey-haired sailor came bounding into the cabin as if he owned it.

‘You wanted me, Capting?'

‘Yes, Smithers. This young man will be looking after Captain Purchis. Meet my man Smithers, Mr.—' He turned questioningly to Bill.

‘Just Bill,' he said. ‘We don't have no other names.'

‘You do on my ship.' He looked at Hart. ‘We can't have another Purchis, however you spell it.'

‘No.' Hart recognised the reference to slaves who were named after the ship's captain who had brought them from Africa. ‘But how about Winchelsea? That's the name of our plantation,' he explained to his cousin. ‘Would you mind being Bill Winchelsea?' he asked.

‘I'd be right down proud, sir.' Bill saw that Smithers was holding out a brown, clean hand, looked surprised, but took and shook it warmly. ‘How do you do, Mr. Smithers.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr. Winchelsea,' said Smithers. ‘Now come along of me, and I'll show you where we doss down.'

‘And let him help you look out some of my clothes for Captain Purchis,' said the Englishman. ‘And for himself. We've enough sick already without a couple of deaths of cold on our hands.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.' Turning suddenly nautical, Smithers sketched a crisp salute and departed, taking Bill with him.

‘Well?' said the Englishman.

‘I'm ashamed,' said Hart. ‘As you say, we talk of equality, and look at us! And calling my wife a Jonah, too!' This had hit him hard. ‘A heroine like her.' But he must not go into that. ‘Thank God there's no chance that wicked slander got to shore with her. I'd not have liked her to start life in New England with a nickname like that tied to her. As for my crew, Captain Purchas, they're all yours, and welcome to them. Just don't trust them, the way I did.'

‘Oh, we'll teach them new ways of thinking on the
Sparrow
,' said Purchas cheerfully. ‘Tell me, Cousin, what's your first name? We can't go on Purchas-Purchising each other all the way to England. I'm Richard, mainly known as Dick. And you?'

‘Hart.'

‘Unusual. Just with an
a
, I take it?'

‘Yes.'

‘That certainly settles the question of our relationship. That and the name of your plantation. The member of our family who misspelled his name and moved to the other end of Sussex took a friend from Harting with him. A George Hart and his family. I suppose an intermarriage was bound to happen.' He held out his hand. ‘Welcome again to the
Sparrow,
cousin.'

‘You're from Sussex too?' Hart returned the firm pressure.

‘Yes. My home's in West Sussex. Denton Hall, not far from Petworth. You shall make us a long visit there when we reach England; meet my father, who sits for the Whigs – the opposition interest in Parliament – my older brother George, and my tearaway of a sister Julia. And remember, if you can, that you're a married man.'

‘I shall remember.' But was he? ‘I look forward to meeting your family, Cousin Richard. It was a lucky day for me when I fell into your hands.'

‘Maybe luckier than you know,' said Purchas. ‘I wonder
what your life would have been worth if you had sailed much longer with that disaffected crew of yours and no prizes.'

‘So do I,' said Hart.

If writing to his mother had been difficult, writing to Mercy was almost impossible. It would have been hard enough anyway, after the fiasco of their marriage, but to have to do so with the knowledge that his newfound cousin must read every word he said … He was still struggling with the stilted phrases when they sighted a British sloop, inward bound to New York, and he was forced to a hurried, loving, almost incoherent conclusion. And then, while Smithers, who had come for the letters, concealed his impatience, he added a postscript:

God knows who will read this besides you and me, my dearest Mercy. And God keep you. Your loving husband.

‘Thank you sir.' Smithers took the open letters. ‘The captain said to tell you he'll see they're sealed all right and tight and safe away.'

‘Thank you, Smithers. And please give Captain Purchas my best thanks.'

‘He's a right one,' said Smithers. ‘For a man out of luck, sir, I reckon you coulda done a whole lot worse.'

‘I know it.' His view was confirmed when Dick Purchas took him on a tour of the
Sparrow
next day and he recognised it at once for a happy ship, in painful contrast with his own
Georgia.
Where had he gone wrong? How had he lost the confidence of the crew who had once been devoted to him? It has to be something to do with Mercy and their unlucky marriage. A Jonah, they had called her. Well, no use trying to pretend that she had been lucky for him.

It was disconcerting, too, to see Georgians who had already turned their coats very neat and smart in the blue cloth trousers and flannel frocks that had been issued to them from the
Sparrow's
slop chest, learning their
duties as members of the enemy's crew. Some of them saluted him, awkwardly, unhappily; others looked away, pretending not to see him. ‘They're settling down well enough,' Captain Purchas told him, later, over a glass of wine. ‘But bless me, Cousin, what kind of discipline do you keep in your navy? They seem to think they have a right to discuss every order. I'm afraid, much though I dislike it, we'll have to take the cat to one or two of them pretty soon, as an example to the rest. I can't have the infection of their free-and-easy ways spreading to my crew. I'd heard about your militia going home from the scene of battle when their time was up, but I had no idea such independent habits spread to your ships too. You'll never beat us without some discipline, Cousin Hart.'

Impossible not to be grateful for the impartial tone in which this was said, but difficult also to answer. ‘When it works,' said Hart. ‘It works to a marvel. You must have heard of the exploits of our John Paul Jones.'

‘An amazing man,' agreed Dick Purchas. ‘But a wild one, Cousin. More a pirate than a privateer, if you ask me. His kind may win laurels, but they don't win wars. It's the day-to-day grind of duty done and orders obeyed that does that.'

‘You may be right,' said Hart thoughtfully. ‘You may well be right, Cousin. And if so, God help my countrymen.'

‘Oh, well.' Dick Purchas laughed and poured more wine to break the sudden tension. ‘God may or may not help you Americans, but your allies the French and the Spanish most certainly are. I have every hope, entirely between ourselves, that we shall get to England to find Parliament talking seriously of peace. The last letters I had spoke of a possible intervention by the Empress of Russia. And my father was in high hopes that Lord North's government would fall at last and be replaced by Fox and the friends of peace. Who knows? Maybe you will be the lucky man who takes the good news back to your country.'

‘A privateer captain, and an unlucky one at that? I'm grateful for your comfort, Cousin, but I'm not quite a
fool yet. If you can really contrive to keep me out of prison, I'll be most grateful, but that's the height of my hopes.'

‘Then let us hope you will be pleasantly surprised.'

Six members of the
Georgia's
crew died of their wounds, and three were flogged for disobedience, but otherwise the voyage to England was swift and uneventful, with friendly westerlies behind the
Sparrow
most of the way. Twice a week Hart and his newfound cousin visited the members of the
Georgia's
crew who had refused to serve the British in their dark confinement on the orlop deck. And every time they did so, Hart would find one or two more missing and know that they had joined their friends in freedom abovedecks. And more and more he was aware of the ugly looks of the men who still held out and who must have felt, with justice, that his lot was shamefully light compared with theirs.

He always returned from these visits in a black mood, which Dick Purchas learned to respect. Shut in his tiny cabin, he would go over and over the whole disaster of the last winter, trying to decide whose fault it all was. His own? Mercy's? The men's? After all, if they had only told him about the
Sparrow
sooner, he would have been able to show her a clean pair of heels, without dishonour and without pursuit, as his cousin Dick had told him.

All past, all over with, all irretrievably done. Blame was for the past. He must think of the future, his own and that of the few of his men who still remained immured belowdecks. He had never seriously hoped for rescue, and as day followed uneventful day, he was glad of it. Better not to hope than to hope and court disappointment. And besides, as he got to know the officers of the
Sparrow,
he found it increasingly difficult to think of them as the
‘enemy.' Most of them were Whigs like their captain and would clearly much rather fight Frenchmen or Spaniards than Americans. They spoke with comforting respect of the rebels' successes in the five years of war and then apologised for calling them rebels.

Impossible not to like them, and equally difficult not to enjoy this enforced idleness. There had been no time like this since that day almost five years ago, at Lexington, when Mark Paston had died in his arms. His only other spell of inactivity had been after he was taken prisoner at Monmouth Courthouse, when he nearly died on a prisoner of war hulk in New York Harbour. Mercy had arranged his rescue from there. Mercy had nursed him back to health and had saved him once again when Savannah was taken by the British. He owed her his life. Horrible to feel that in some curious way this seemed an obstacle between them. That and the sea, the ever-widening cold grey waste of sea that lay between them now.

Oh, wide is the water, I cannot get o'er,
The water lies wide twixt my true love and me …

His mother had sung him the ballad when he was young. How did it go on? He could not remember.

‘Sir?' Bill had brought his shaving water and was laying out a clean shirt, part of the wardrobe to which all of the
Sparrow
's officers had contributed.

‘Yes?' Hart watched with surprise as Bill opened the cabin door, looked cautiously to right and left, then shut it again.

‘I've a message for you. From the men.'

‘The men?'

‘Some of them. Grant that was mate on the
Georgia
and his friends. Grant was flogged the other day, as you know.'

‘He was lucky to get off so lightly.' It was true, but just the same it had been horrible to have to watch the
blood-drenched back writhe under the lash. And, he remembered now, he had felt something sinister in Grant's clenched silence and that of the other Americans.

‘He don't see it that way,' said Bill. ‘He's had his bellyful of British discipline, he says. Told me to tell you' – he lowered his voice – ‘that he and his friends are ready to rise and take over the ship if you'll just lend them a hand. They've found friends in the British crew who say they're sick, too, of low pay and the lash. One of them's assistant to Doc. Burnard. He prigged this the other day.' He handed Hart a small bottle. ‘Laudanum. Your part's to put it into the officers' wine the first chance you get. We'll have to think of some way you can let me know you've done it.' He looked round the cabin. ‘Your Bible. Leave it open on the desk. I always come in after dinner to see all's right here. I'll pass the word to the others. And we'll be sailing home in no time. What is it, sir?' He felt Hart's lack of response.

‘Bill, I can't. I gave my word. So did the others. Swore allegiance to King George.'

‘This is war,' said Bill. ‘Sir, think! Think of the Georgians who are still prisoners belowdecks. What's going to happen to them when we get to England?
If
we get to England. Mill Prison, sir. We all know that. You better than most after that time you spent on the prison hulks at New York. A living death. What's a man's word compared to that? And just think of the other side of it. Sailing the
Sparrow
into Charleston Harbour! The welcome we'd get. And the difference it would make. A spanking frigate like her. We'd be heroes.'

‘We'd be villains. Bill, I'm sorry. I can't do it.' And yet how appallingly tempting it was. ‘What would happen to the officers?' He realised as he asked it that it betrayed him as wavering.

‘Oh, they'd be right enough. Held for ransom, most like, or' – he corrected himself, seeing Hart's expression – ‘exchange, rather.'

‘I wonder.' Hart was remembering that writhing, bloody
back under the lash. If Grant got the chance, he would never stop short of the fullest possible revenge. ‘No,' he said, ‘I'm sure you believe Grant, but I don't. He'd kill them all. Captain Purchas is my cousin. He's been – they've all been good to me. To us all,' he added with less conviction. ‘Think how Dr. Burnard cared for your wounds. All your wounds.'

‘So we could help sail their ship,' said Bill. ‘Sir, it's such a chance.' He was pleading now. ‘For me, most of all. They need me, see; they're treating me like one of them again.' He looked suddenly grey. ‘If you don't agree, sir, and I have to tell them so, my life's not worth a straw. And there's something else. Something Grant told me to tell you if you should be uncertain like.' He paused for another quick, cautious look outside the cabin door. ‘It's about Miss Mercy, sir. Mrs. Purchis, I should say. Grant said to tell you that when you and she were ashore that day at Cohuit, some men came out to the
Georgia
across the ice from Boston Harbour. You never knew that, did you?'