Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley

by Kenneth Roberts

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  spoiled by the women and the men, too, and wind up in rags or drudging for some rat like Langman."

  Captain Dean leaned forward. "What's that? What about Langman."

  "Oh," Swede said, "he's a mate on one of these merchant vessels. She's laid up for repairs. He weaves nets for boys to catch whitebait with: then he collects 'em and sells 'em and makes a good thing out of it."

  "Why, that's my mate," Captain Dean said. "That's Christopher Langman!" To my father he explained, "He beats anything I ever saw! Every minute of the day he's figuring how to make money, and he doesn't care how he does it."

  "Sounds caddish to me," my father said carelessly. "Why don't you get rid of him?"

  "The truth is," Captain Dean said hesitantly, "I can't."

  "Since when," my father asked, "has a captain been unable to get rid of a mate when his vessel's in port? I can see how it might be a little difficult if you're halfway across the Atlantic, but you aren't. You're seizing spars, or fishing ropes or sheetswhatever it is you nautical people fish and seizeand you'll be lucky to get to sea inside of another two months."

  "I know," Captain Dean said, "but it's a long story."

  "Well, give me a hint," my father said. "I'm interested in this Langman and his whitebait ventures. First thing we know, he'll be making it into one of these stock companiesselling shares on 'Change Alley and ruining thousands just like the stock jobbers. How does it happen you can't get rid of Langman, John?"

  "Well," Dean said, "he sailed on one of Woodes Rogers' ships two years ago."

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  "Woodes Rogers! Why, he's a buccaneer," my father said quickly.

  "No, no," Dean said. "Not a buccaneer, Charles! He's a privateer. Privateers carry government commissions, and a tenth of their takings go to the state."

  "Oh, don't try to tell me the law," my father said. "I know what the law is, and most of these privateers are nothing but buccaneers, no matter what the law says."

  "Well, I don't know about that," Captain Dean said, "but I do know that Langman says he sailed with Woodes Rogers; and around the Gulf of Guayaquil, when Rogers was busy capturing some footling town or other, Langman went off in a small boat with a few of his seamen, came across a smart-looking galley and captured her. Then somehow he was separated from Rogers, couldn't find him again, and decided the safest thing he could do was sail home. He had no money, and his men hadn't been paid, so he hunted up my brother Jasper and offered to sell him the galley at a bargain, provided he was retained as first mate."

  He stirred uneasily beneath my father's scrutiny.

  "Sounds fishy to me," my father said. "What happened to the crew that was in the galley when she was taken?"

  Captain Dean looked more uncomfortable. "I asked him that, and he said they just went ashore, all but two men that he persuaded Jasper to hire."

  Neal Butler came back from the kitchen to stand beside his father.

  My father snorted, raised incredulous eyes to the sky; then spoke to Neal. "What did Mrs. Buddage say, young man?"

  "She said Captain Dean came here just in the nick of time," Neal said. "She said she'd just been thinking of

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  making some cheese out of her sour cream." He sounded exactly like Mrs. Buddage.

  "Good," my father said, "good. Now, Neal, this Langman you're working for: did you undertake to work for him for a certain length of time?"

  "Yes, sir," Neal said, "I promised, when he gave me the trap, to fish for him every day when I had nothing else to do. He pays me threepence a quart."

  "You know that's not a fair price?" my father asked.

  "Yes, sir," Neal said. "If I had time to peddle 'em around, I could get more; but if I took out time to peddle them, I wouldn't be able to catch enough."

  "Yes," my father said, "there's something in what you say, but I'm a magistrate and I herewith declare your contract with Mr. Langman to be null and void. I have friends who'll be glad to pay a shilling a quart for them, and that's what I'll pay youa shilling a quart and guarantee to dispose of all you catch. Understand? As for Langman, I'll give him a talking-to. He sounds to me like a slippery customer."

  My father turned to Swede. "Now, Swede," he said, "does it make you easier in your mind to know your boy's having no further dealings with Langman?"

  "Yes, sir," Swede said, "that'll help, but I'd like to get him out of the theatre. When Penkethman finishes with Greenwich, he'll take his players back to London; and if Neal goes with themwell, Mr. Whitworth, he's too young to be around a theatre. I know what it means. He'll buy a periwig and become a foplearn to drawl and take snuff: strut and cock his cravat strings. Ten to one he'll go to the Groom Porter's and run into debt over the turn of a dirty deuce."

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  "How do you feel about it, Neal?" my father asked. "Don't ask him," Swede said hastily. "He thinks these actors are angels right out of heaven. He can already walk like 'em and talk like 'em, and the only thing he doesn't yet do, thank God, is think like 'em. He thinks like a human being, and I don't want him spoiled."

  "It's understandable," I told my father. "There's something about the theatre that's mighty exciting."

  "It can be mighty destructive, too," my father said. "What are the plays all about? Whoring, drinking, gaming! What are the manners of the fine ladies you see represented? Those of the tavern and the brothel, without relation to life or art!"

  He turned to Neal. "See here, my boy: Miles tells me you recited one of Mr. Cibber's epilogues. Will you do it for us now?"

  Neal said quickly that he would, but that he'd like a costume. My father went into the house and I heard him calling to Mrs. Buddage to bring him a shawl and a soiled tablecloth. How Neal wrapped those two pieces of cloth so deftly about him, I couldn't see, but he turned in a moment from a young boy to a girl, wide-eyed, pleading, provocative, looking at us over his shoulder as he spoke, and smoothing the tablecloth over his narrow hips.

  I can't remember Cibber's lines; but the verses told how, eventually, English actors would be forced to imitate Italians, and it's impossible to reproduce the strange quarter English, quarter Latin and half imitation Italian that followed the line, "I give you raptures while I squall despair." There was something overwhelmingly ludicrous about this meaningless twaddle, so earnestly delivered, and

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  with such coy and fetching gestures. My father snorted and Captain Dean said, "Haw!" but Neal seemed not to hear them.

  " 'If this won't do,' " he quoted, coquettishly touching his finger tips to his lips, " 'I'll try another touchhalf French, some English, and a spice of Dutch' " ... and immediately he broke into another utterly meaningless song that made no sense although it seemed constantly on the verge of doing so.

  When it came to an end, all too soon, my father slapped his leg delightedly, Captain Dean's face was red from repressed laughter. Swede was the only one who didn't laugh.

  "I think I see what you mean," my father said to Swede, as I helped Neal fold the shawl and the tablecloth. "I see what you mean. It isn't easy to divert a talent like that. It isn't even safe. If I were youif Neal were a few years olderI'd advise you not to try to do it, but as I say, I think I know exactly how you feel."

  He seemed to think aloud. "It's London you're afraid of. Now suppose Neal had a profession to support him. We've had some good professional men in the theatre and they've done well. Take Sir John Vanbrugh. He was an architect. When Miles goes up to Oxford, I might be able to use Neal. He'd be a help to me writing briefswriting insurance. What would you say to that, Swede?"

  "I'd be forever in your debt, Mr. Whitworth," Swede said.

  "Yes," my father said. "Well, that's one way of looking at it, so if you've been uneasy in your mind, you'll probably feel better. All of us can keep an eye on Neal till

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  it's time for him to go to work for me in the autumnand the work he's doing now is training of a sort: teaches him how to hold a t
ea-cuphow to seem to be at ease when he isn't."

  When Swede looked dubious, my father seized his hand and shook it, tapped Neal lightly on the shoulder, and said, "See them to the door, Miles."

  To Neal he added, "I'll remember to speak to Langman, so don't forget to bring us whitebait whenever you can."

  Captain Dean got to his feet. "Just a moment," he said. "I've been thinking about that mate of mine, and about Swede's experience on the Minerva. How do you spend your days in the Naval Hospital, Swede?"

  Swede laughed. "I spend 'em in the hardest kind of work, Captain. Doing nothing. Describing my aches and pains to others who have worse aches and pains."

  "Do you have aches and pains?" Captain Dean asked.

  "Everybody who does nothing has aches and pains."

  "You don't look to me as if you had as many aches and pains as any one of my crew has. How'd you like to ship with me on the Nottingham Galley? I'd be glad to have you along, just to have the benefit of your advice. I'd sign you on as first lieutenant. We've got ten guns and a gunner who contrived to blow his eyes full of powder."

  Swede looked from Captain Dean to Neal and back again. "Why," he said slowly, "I think that might be a good thing if my boy's going to help Mr. Whitworth. I felt like being a pensioner before my shoulder healed, but I don't feel like it any more. I think it would be a good thing all around if Neal had a first lieutenant as a father instead of a pensioner."

  I thought, as I led Neal and his father to the street, how

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  odd it was that, because the tide had thrust my dinghy against Deptford Steps, the lives of two people had been alteredand greatly for the better, I earnestly hoped. How many people's lives that tide had altered, I couldn't dream. We never know: we never know!

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  Chapter 4

  That was the beginning for my father, as well as for Captain Dean and me, of a course in the most popular of London's plays. Penkethman's playhouse was next door to the Hospital Tavern, and I'm bound to say Penkethman did well as a manager, for he went out of his way to add to his Drury Lane and Haymarket regulars, bringing in promising drifters from strolling companies like those in Dublin, Bath and Bristol. The plays he presented were held to be the best, and certainly Penkethman knew how to read his lines in such a way as to make words of no consequence seem irresistibly droll.

  The curtain rose at five or six o'clock three times a week, and for a guinea apiece, the three of us had tickets that entitled us to see twenty-one plays. We by no means saw twenty-one, for our playgoing came to a sudden and unexpected end with the production of The Walking Statue on the last Saturday in July, the twenty-ninth; but until that day we talked theatre as though we ourselves were actors: of Penkethman as Daniel in Oroonoko, of Penkethman as Calico in Sir Courtly Nice, with Powell

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  playing Sir Courtly: of Penkethman as Squib in Tunbridge Walks, of Penkethman as the painfully comical shepherd in The Libertine Destroyed: of Mrs. Kent's artistry as Caliban in The Tempest and of Mrs. Baker's beauty as Miranda: of the vast promise of Lacy Ryan in The Fair Quaker of Deal: of Penkethman as Fribble in Epsom Wells, and Spiller in The Emperor of the Moon and The Recruiting Officer.

  If I were an artist, I could have drawn pictures by the score of those play nights in Greenwich: of wherries, barges and galleys unloading their tumultuous, half-drunken pleasure-seekers at King's Head Stairs while the hot July sun was still high enough to make the massed vessels in the river stand out sharply in black and white, and while the fishermen along the quays were still turbulent and noisy: of Londoners, both men and women, outside the doors of the innumerable Greenwich taverns, some standing, some sitting at little tables because the taverns were so crowded, each with a dish of whitebait and a tankard of ale before him, and each one tossing crisp morsels into himself with a great show of daintiness and refinement.

  Even the sounds and odors of Greenwich on those play nights were fascinatingover everything the savory fragrance of the whitebait: and in the foreground the peculiar mangled gabbling of Londoners, who think of everyone beyond the sound of Bow Bells as being half witless and speaking a language incomprehensible to gentlefolk: the penetrating perfumes of the silk-clad playgoers: the squealing of orange and apple women who pushed through the crowds, crying their wares and reminding all hearers that there was nothing like an orange for throwing at actors:

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  the common sailors in blue and white striped trousers and coats always too big or too small, and caps made from pieces of stocking: the naval officers with tangled golden swabs on their shoulders, and half-moon hats the size and shape of the shallops that are forever running errands between barges and docks.

  To me the most memorable of play-night pictures were those of the playhouse itselfthe shouting, catcalling, orange-throwing roisterers in the gallery, the subdued and honorable citizens of Greenwich in the pit, the affected ladies in the boxes above the stage, and the incredible fops grouped on either side of the stage itself, and frequently all across the front of the stage, so that occupants of the pit had difficulty in seeing the movements of the actors. Some nights those wretched fops formed a background entirely around the rear of the stage, if the play was one that had made a reputation for itself at Drury Lane.

  Some of these fops became as well known to us, by sight, as Penkethman, Powell, Spiller or Neal. All of them affected little mannerisms and great ones, too, for that matter. Their wigs without exception were enormous, sometimes tinted in strange blues and reds. Their speech seemed to be marked with peculiar sibilances and lisps; their gestures, as when they tossed back the lace from their wrists, or took snuff with a flourish such as a dancer makes when she poises herself for a pirouette, were airy and womanly. They were forever making play with perfumed handkerchiefs, touching them to their lips, or whisking imaginary nothings from their sleeves or weskits.

  Sometimes they traveled in pairs, and sometimes singly, but even in the latter case they made a pretense of being

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  disdainfully amused by those about them, bowing here: bowing there: staring out at those of us in the pit through quizzing glasses, as at animals in cages.

  We had names for themSugar-leg for one who was constantly admiring his not too slender ankle: Jackdaw for one who was constantly bursting into cackles of laughter: Tintoretto for a little man with painted cheeks and lips who stood motionless for long periods of time, staring, so far as we could see, at nothing, his face a mask that never moved.

  Only twice in all the nights we watched Mr. Penkethman's players at their antics did we see Neal on the stage, and on both occasions he recited that epilogue of Cibber's about the Italian opera singers, reading his lines in a way that brought smiles to the faces of those who listened, and downright guffaws when he lapsed from his lines into that queer running outburst of imitation Italian. On each occasion he was got up in the same costume: a blue gown, voluminous around the hips, with a pointed stomacher, a high collar that rose almost to the top of his head in back, and on his wig of auburn curls a little cap that looked as though made of pearls.

  Mr. Penkethman, he told us, had begged the cap from some lady of title, for the especial purpose of being worn by the person who recited this epilogue. His youth and the soft brown of his face gave him the look of an Italian beauty; and when, at the close of the epilogue, he gathered up those full skirts and curtsied deep to the audience, he was as pretty a picture as a Rembrandt portrait of a young girl, glowing with reflected lightas pretty, surely, as Anne Bracegirdle was supposed to be. I found it difficult to believe that he was the same boy who had pulled white-

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  bait from the Thames with his little four-cornered trap and had shied away from my outstretched hand on the afternoon when I had first seen him.