Elizabeth Mansfield (31 page)

The stocky sailor lowered his seabag to the deck and shrugged. “Tho’t I’d give it one last try.” He grinned at Tom with unabashed admiration. “I guess no press-man’ll take
you
unawares.”

Tom’s answering grin soon died as the two men stared at each other in silent realization that it might be for the last time. “So you’ve packed, eh, Daniel? Ready at last?” He forced a smile. “It’s goodbye, then.”

Daniel pulled off his cap and ran his fingers through his shock of curly red hair. “It’s the only thing I regret about leavin’, y’ know … sayin’ goodbye to ye, Tommy lad.” His soft brown eyes, usually gleaming with good cheer, now looked watery, as if the fellow was holding back tears. He thrust out his hand for a last farewell.

Tom ignored the hand and threw his arms about his friend in a warm embrace. “No need for the dismals, Daniel,” he said softly, patting his friend’s back with affection. “Where did you say Betsy is? Twyford, isn’t it? That’s less than a dozen miles north of here. We’ll see each other from time to time.”

“No, we won’t,” Daniel muttered, breaking out of the embrace and turning away his face. “Betsy an’ me’ll be movin’ to God-knows-where, an’ ye’ll get yerself a berth with the John Company, an’ we’ll lose track—”

“Stow the gab,” Tom ordered with an attempt at a laugh. “We can keep in touch if we try. There are letters …”

“I ain’t much good at writin’.”

“Then Betsy can do it for you. I’ve seen her letters … your wife writes a fine hand.”

Daniel sighed and put on his cap. “Aye, I suppose so.” He lifted his seabag to his shoulder and gave his friend a pathetic mockery of a grin. “Be seein’ ye, then, eh? We’ll let ye know where we’ll be settlin’.”

Tom nodded, finding himself suddenly too choked to speak. They walked together slowly toward the gangplank. “Are you sure you won’t sign on again? Just one more voyage?” he asked at last.

“What’s the use of it? Betsy’s heart’d break fer sure. It’s different fer you, Tommy. You haven’t a wife t’ cling to yer knees, sobbin’ her eyes out every time ye make fer the door. Besides, one more voyage an’ ye’ll have yer master’s papers. Why, next time I hear of ye, ye’ll be mate on a John Company ship.”

“Not very likely. East India Company berths are saved for rich men’s sons, not for the vicar’s daughter’s bastard.”

“You can try, can’t ye? Ol’ Aaron swears he heared that a mate on a company ship can pile up a couple o’ thousand quid on a single voyage!”

Tom shook his head dubiously. “Two
thousand
? What gammon! Don’t put your trust in those dreamers’ yarns. Besides, if I get to captain a ship like this tub we’re on, it’ll be good enough for me.”

“Aye, if that’s the sort of life ye want.”

“It is.” Tom threw his friend a worried look. “But what about you? What will you do now, do you think?”

“I dunno. I’ll find somethin’. I’ll
have
to, y’ know—what with Betsy makin’ me a father by spring.”

“Aye, you lucky bag-pudding,” Tom chuckled. “A
father
! Before you know it, there’ll be a strapping, red-headed whelp sitting astride your shoulder instead of that seabag. It’s a sight I’d give a yellow-boy to see.”

Daniel’s face clouded over. “Per’aps ye will,” he muttered without much conviction. “Per’aps you will.”

Tom felt a wave of depression spread over him. Daniel was probably right. They were about to set off on widely diverging paths, and the likelihood of ever meeting again was slim. And even if they did, the close camaraderie of the past months would have long since evaporated into the unreality of nostalgic memory.

Daniel stuck out his hand again, and Tom gripped it tightly. They held on for a long while, and then, by some manner of wordless communication, let go at the same moment. The redheaded man turned abruptly away and marched purposefully down the gangplank. Tom watched him from his place on the railing, feeling bereft.
A sailor’s life is always leavetaking
, he told himself glumly as he watched his friend trudge stolidly across the wharf. Just before Daniel was completely swallowed up by the shadows, Tom saw him pause, turn and give one last wave of farewell.

Tom waved back, his throat tingling with unexpected emotion. He grunted in self-disgust, annoyed at this indulgence in sentiment. If there was one requirement for a ship’s master, it was hardness—hardness of body and of feeling. If he was ever to become a master, he’d better learn to behave like one. He’d be—

“Tom!
Tom! Press-gang
!” came a shout from the shadows. Tom felt the blood drain from his face. “Good God!
Daniel!
”

He could hear, above the noisy slap of the water against the side of the ship, the sounds of a violent
scuffle in the dark of the dock. His heart began to hammer in his chest, for he knew that the worst had happened. An attack by a press-gang was a merchant seaman’s direst fear. He glanced about him desperately for some sort of weapon. Snatching up a belaying pin, he vaulted over the railing onto the gangplank and dashed down.

The sounds from the shadows became louder and more alarming as he tore across the wharf and neared the shadowy part of the dock beyond. “No, no, don’t use the cutlass,” he heard a voice bark. “He’s a good, stalwart specimen. I don’t want him spoiled.”

Tom raced round a mound of crates and gasped at the sight that met his eyes. Daniel was struggling like a wild stallion against the tugs and blows of half-a-dozen ruffians armed with cutlasses and cudgels. Standing apart, his arms folded over his chest, was a King’s officer watching the proceedings with dispassionate interest. Tom would have liked to land him a proper facer, but the six bruisers had to be tackled first. He threw himself headlong into the melee. “All right, Daniel,” he shouted, “let’s give it to ’em!”

There was no answer from the beleaguered Daniel, but he struggled against his attackers with renewed energy. Tom swung the belaying pin about in violent desperation, striking one press-man on the shoulder hard enough to make him squeal and drop his hold on Daniel’s arm. Turning quickly about, he swung the pin at the head of another attacker and heard a very satisfactory crack of the skull as the fellow slumped to the ground.

The shouting was deafening as shadowy figures swirled about him. He swung his makeshift weapon wildly, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t accidentally strike his friend. “Daniel, are you … there?”

“Aye, lad,” came a breathless, discouraged answer from somewhere behind him.

“Don’t despair,” Tom urged, swinging the belaying pin vigorously about him, keeping two of the ruffians at bay. Just then, from behind, came a sharp blow. The flat side of a cutlass had struck powerfully and painfully against his ear. He swayed dizzily. The pin was wrenched from his weakened grasp, and three men jumped on him at once. He felt himself toppling over backwards, but he kept swinging his fists as he fell. With a string of curses, his assailants slammed his head down upon the cobbles. It struck with an agonizing thud. Streaks of red and yellow lightning seemed to obscure his vision and sear his brain with pain.

By the time he could see again, the fight was over. He lifted his head and looked about him. Two of the press-men were leading Daniel off, his shoulders pathetically stooped and his hands bound behind his back. Three others of the gang, looking very much the worse for wear, were trussing up his own wrists with leather straps. And the sixth lay stretched out on the cobbles, blood trickling from his nose. Above it all, the King’s officer stood apart, his hands unsullied by the struggle he’d just witnessed. Catching Tom’s eye, the officer smiled in grim satisfaction. Tom well understood the expression. The man on the ground might be dead, and another of his gang might not have the use of his right arm for a long spell, but the two men the officer had caught were trained seamen. He and Daniel were the sort of catch the press-gangs most desired. This had been, for the officer, a very good night’s work.

After having been alternately shoved and dragged along the waterfront for what seemed like miles, his head aching painfully and his spirits in despair, Tom was pushed into a longboat manned by eight uniformed sailors. Daniel was nowhere in sight. The King’s officer dismissed the ruffians of the press-gang and climbed into the boat, giving Tom a smug smile as he seated himself on a thwart facing his prisoner. Tom’s fingers ached to choke that smile from his face.

The sailors began to row toward an imposing frigate (painted with the yellow and black stripes that Admiral Nelson required of naval vessels) which rode at anchor some distance from the dock. It was His
Majesty’s Ship
Undaunted
, and despite the darkness Tom could see that it carried at least fifty guns and floated in the water at over six hundred tons. As the longboat drew up alongside the vessel, a sailor prodded Tom with an oar, urging him to climb up the ladder to the upper deck.

Despite the desperation of his condition, Tom couldn’t refrain from peering with considerable interest through the darkness at the activity on deck. While the King’s officer, who had followed him up the ladder, held a whispered colloquy with the vessel’s first lieutenant, Tom looked around, marvelling at the pristine neatness of the ship. But before he had an opportunity to scrutinize what was a vastly different vessel from the one he’d just abandoned, the lieutenant, a stocky, balding man in his mid-twenties, with a florid complexion that bespoke a hot temper, gave an order to the two sailors who were guarding him, and he was roughly dragged across the deck to the companionway.

At the end of the passage, he was unceremoniously ushered into what he instantly recognized was the captain’s cabin. It was a low-ceilinged, unpretentious compartment with panelled walls and a row of wide windows (which usually graced the stern of a sailing ship) covering the far wall. The captain himself was nowhere in evidence, for the chair behind the huge desk (a piece of furniture which gleamed with polish and importance in its impressive position at the dead center of the room) was empty. The only sign of the cabin’s inhabitant was a coat trimmed with gold braid which had been thrown over a cabinet in the corner.

After his eyes became accustomed to the light—provided by a lamp swinging at eye level from the rafters on a long, brass chain—he could see that the desk was covered with navigational charts and a heavily-bound ship’s log. But his eyes were immediately drawn to the group of men who had been standing at the desk when he’d entered. Two of them were uniformed sailors, set to guard the prisoner standing between them. It was Daniel, his face chalky-white in the lamplight, his hands still secured behind him and blood dripping from a cut on his upper lip. Tom felt his stomach lurch with nausea as their eyes met. Daniel’s face was rigid with terror.
And no wonder
, Tom thought miserably. Daniel’s life was no longer worth a brass farthing.

The worst circumstance that life could impose on Daniel had occurred: impressment. All through their sailing days, merchant seamen were edified with blood-chilling tales of the sort of life they could expect if they were so unfortunate as to be impressed into naval service. Service in His Majesty’s Navy was hell for impressed seamen. They were forced to fill the most unwanted posts, to work at the dirtiest jobs and made to expose themselves to the greatest dangers. The food the King allotted for ordinary seamen was rotten beyond belief, and the pay a pittance. And the chance of coming out of the experience alive—after who-knew-how-many forced voyages—was slim indeed. The Navy, unable to recruit enough seamen to staff its ships because of this notorious mistreatment, had for centuries used the nightmarish device of impressment to fill its berths. And this time, Tom and his best friend had been caught in the net. For
him
there was a ray of hope—the ship-master’s apprentice papers in the pocket of his coat; but for Daniel there was no hope at all.

He started across the cabin to stand beside his friend, but he was jerked back to his place by the sailors who were guarding him. The lieutenant and the King’s officer conferred again briefly, and then the lieutenant went to a door near the far corner of the wall at Tom’s right and tapped gently. At the sound of a voice from within, the lieutenant opened the door and disappeared inside. He emerged a few moments later, followed by a tall, lean man of late middle age with a head of iron-grey hair, a short beard and a pair of narrow, glinting eyes. The man was in his shirt-sleeves, but Tom knew it was the captain even before he reached for the gold-trimmed coat and shrugged himself into it.

The lieutenant, meanwhile, came into the circle of light which surrounded the desk and, bending over, began to shuffle the papers about until he found what appeared to Tom to be a ship’s roster.

“Sit down, Mr. Benson, sit down,” the captain muttered from the shadows where he stood leaning his elbow on the cabinet and looking from Tom to Daniel and back again.

“Aye, aye, Captain.” Mr. Benson, the lieutenant, took the chair behind the desk, picked up a pen from the inkstand and wrote something on the paper. Then he looked up at the two prisoners coldly. “Which one of you is the murderer?” he asked.

“It’s the taller one, of course,” came the captain’s voice from the shadows. “Isn’t that so, Moresby?”

The King’s officer chuckled. “You’re right again, Captain Brock.”

At the sound of the captain’s name, Daniel’s eyes flew to Tom’s with a look of desperation. Sir Everard Brock was notorious. His reputation for cruelty was legendary among seamen.

“Start with the other one,” the captain ordered.

Mr. Benson nodded. “What’s your name, fellow?” he demanded of Daniel.

“Dan’l Hicks, sir.”

“You were an ordinary seaman on the
Triton
?”

“Aye, sir, but… I …”

“Yes?”

“I’ve finished my time.”

“Finished? Didn’t sign up again, eh? Had enough of the old scow?” Mr. Benson asked with a sardonic grimace.

“Well, I … I suppose ye could say that.”

“Good. If they’re not expecting you back on board the
Triton
, no one will be looking for you.” He dipped the pen carefully in the inkwell.