Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob.

by Francis Selwyn

  The men worked in groups of six to a dozen, standing in a ring about the pile of chalky boulders, swinging the heavy stone hammers and smashing them down on the cracking masonry. In an outer ring, their carbines at the ready, three warders faced inward, watching the men at their labour. Each officer had a notebook, in which from time to time he made a note on a man's enthusiasm for work, or his lack of it. On Joe's arrival, the senior officer in charge of the detail, MacBride, had explained with relish the penalties of sloth. A warder who 'took a shine' to a prisoner could reduce his life to a living hell. MacBride had only to make an unfavourable page of notes for Joe O'Meara to find himself on bread and water, in solitary confinement in the suffocating little cell which stank of the ship's bilges, even tied to the gratings for the cat o' nine tails. Had circumstances permitted, Stunning Joe would have gone to the gallows with a song on his lips for the murder of Officer MacBride.

  By the end of the morning the smooth wooden handle of the hammer was slipping in Joe O'Meara's hands. He was still a novice, only six weeks in the yard, and his palms were not yet calloused. After several hours of labour the blisters burst and his hands bled. It happened at the end of every morning and every afternoon, often before the end. Mac-Bride's voice was at his ear as he paused.

  'To your work, O'Meara! To your work, sir!'

  The cold blue eyes under the polished peak of the warder's cap glinted with rage, as though the felon had offered Mac-Bride some personal insult by his idleness. Perhaps he had. It was a rule of any warder's employment that he should be fined a shilling of his pay every time that one of his convict detail was caught malingering.

  A noon gun from Portland Castle was the signal for work to end. The trim cutters took the convicts back to the Indomitable. In the cages below deck there was another muster roll before the men sat down to their silent dinner. Stunning Joe's meal consisted of a potato and a ladleful from the tub of meat. Like all the provisions for the hulks the meat was supplied by private contract. Rotten before it reached the vessels, it had been boiled to a thin stew. On three days of the week, as a measure of economy, it was replaced by gruel, consisting of barley boiled in water without the addition of salt or any flavouring. Salt and pepper were included in the supplies, but were used exclusively on daily dressings applied to the backs of men who had been flogged. It was held by the prison medical authorities that this prevented putrefaction of the culprit's wounds.

  After fifteen minutes, the warders in the corridors between the cages began to jangle their keys along the bars.

  'All up! All up! Stone-yard details to your places! Move! Stir yourselves, you damned scoundrels!'

  Joe O'Meara joined the file of men. They shambled without fear or resentment. It was MacBride's boast to new arrivals that a month of prison diet and discipline would leave them as quiet as gelded stallions. In this, at least, MacBride had always been proved right.

  The summer heat of the afternoon seemed to strike back at the men of the labour details from the white surfaces of new stone. Some of the parties were permitted to strip to their blue shirtsleeves, but not MacBride's. The sweat ran into Stunning Joe's eyes and he felt as though his strength was draining from him with the moisture. He knew, beyond doubt, that they were going to kill him. Unless he fell suddenly, from a seizure in the glare of the stone yard, he would not die at Portland. But only a fool would believe that he could survive fourteen more years of this in Parramatta where the heat would be twice as fierce as England in July.

  Somewhen, about the middle of the afternoon, he knew that the chief officer was making his rounds of the details. As the senior warder approached each detail it was the duty of the guard to shout the official strength of the party followed by the number of men who were actually present. Sickness and the departure of transports generally caused some discrepancy. Joe O'Meara heard the voices getting closer.

  'Ten-eight, sir! . . . Six-five, Mr Patterson! . . . Seven-seven, sir! . . . Six-three!'

  The dust in the lower part of the stone-yard seemed thick as smoke, rising from the fractured rock at the hammer blows of the men. Joe O'Meara choked suddenly as he drew a lungful of it. Dust was the only cover he would ever have, enough to make it worth the chance. He would run and run. Of course they would fire at him but they might miss. If not, he would as soon die here and now as suffer what lay ahead of him.

  He had nerved himself for the dash across the quarry, up the rock-face and over the turf beyond. Then he heard MacBride's 'Seven-six, sir!' not two yards behind him. And even in his desperation, Joe held himself in check.

  Once the chief officer had made his rounds, MacBride and his two subordinates relaxed. There would not be another check upon them before five o'clock. One of the warders went off behind a corner of the quarry to relieve himself. The other subordinate was far away, not looking in Joe's direction. But MacBride was at his back. Then, to Joe's astonishment, MacBride spoke to him, very gently.

  'You, O'Meara! Lay your hammer down and step to me!'

  Joe propped the long-handled hammer against the rock and turned about. MacBride stood over him, dark whiskers clipped short, the pale blue eyes watching keenly under the polished cap-peak.

  'Obedience!' said MacBride softly. 'Obedience to those put in authority over you. Y’ have have that lesson by heart, have you!'

  The voice was that of the Celt, overlaid by the intonation of an industrial slum. MacBride laid down his carbine, as if to tighten the belt of his tunic. Joe stared back at him, not daring to believe that the most savage of all his guards could be Sealskin Kite's man.

  'Don't mess me about y' focker!' A bitter resentment of O'Meara and his own complicity sharpened the tone of the words.

  'No, sir!' Joe's heart beat faster, his eyes measuring the distance to the rock-face. He knew that he could climb fifty feet of it in less time than it would take some men to go up a flight of stairs. MacBride's voice grew softer.

  'Hit me, Stunning Joe!' he said. 'Hit me, and run!'

  In a few seconds more the warder who was relieving himself behind the rock would reappear. MacBride's other subordinate might turn round at any moment. With his hands hanging beside him, MacBride faced the little spider-man impassively. Joe locked his hands together, as if in a gesture of indecision. Hardly raising his head, he brought his double grip up, like a rock from a catapult, to connect with the angle of MacBride's throat and jaw. It was not at all what the warder had expected. With a long choking sound he stumbled forward, going down on hands and knees. Joe's locked fists smashed downward on the exposed nape and MacBride lay still.

  For a split second, Stunning Joe thought of the carbine, but he knew it would impede him. If they got close enough for him to use it, he would be taken anyway. Already he was racing across the quarry, through the clouds of hot dust and the glare of the white Portland stone. The wind roared at his ears and the scarred face of the quarry was twenty yards ahead of him, rising to the open turf above. He glanced back once, long enough to see MacBride still lying motionless and the other warder unslinging his carbine. Joe ducked his head and began weaving across the remainder of the quarry. A single twing-g-g-g, sang past him like an insect and he saw the bullet smack into the rock-face ahead of him with a spurt of pale dust. It was no easy matter to hit a man at this range, a target moving as quickly and erratically as he had done. On the rock-face itself it would be a different matter.

  The broken wall of limestone came under his fingers, and he began to pull himself up, the deft little hands and feet finding their crevices as easily as a monkey. Behind and below him the shouting had begun, the warders holding their carbines over their heads with both hands, which was the signal of an escape. MacBride had risen to his knees but only the officer who had fired the first shot was still taking aim at the fugitive. The carbine cracked like a whip as Joe seized a sharp ledge of rock above and his feet trod the crumbling limestone into a shower of fragments. A bullet chipped the white surface a dozen feet to one side. At first he thought the officer wi
th the carbine must be Mr Kite's man too, firing deliberately wide of the mark. But as Joe pulled himself to the rim of the quarry, where the turf began, he saw that his escape had been well timed. In mid-afternoon, the July sun was directly over the quarry face, shining into the eyes of those below. Shooting into the colourless glare, the marksman would be lucky to get a bullet anywhere near his target.

  In any case, Stunning Joe now had the turf under his hands, as he wriggled upward over the final ledge and lay for a few seconds on the high downland to fill his aching lungs. The softness of the turf was like a carpet under his feet after months of stone floors and the decking of the hulk. As he ran onward the sounds of voices and pursuit died away. It would take them a good while to follow him by the quarry path.

  He looked to right and left. On the one hand was the glimmering sweep of Chesil Bank. When darkness came he would follow its shore, wading waist-deep, his movements concealed by the roar of the tide. The other way led along the cliffs, towards Portland Bill and the end of the peninsula. A man who was running for freedom would hardly be expected to choose that direction. With the glittering channel stretching away into the horizon glare, Joe followed a path which skirted the cliff edge. His pursuers would search the more likely escape routes first. It would be dusk by the time that the armed warders and the dogs began to drag the cliffs on this side.

  Stunning Joe knew that there were two lighthouses at the tip of Portland Bill, constructed on the high ground. They were known as the Upper Light and the Lower Light from the difference in their locations. From conversations among other prisoners, Joe understood that they were not manned, merely visited by a Trinity House engineer once a week. The Lower Light was on sloping ground, where the land dipped towards the sea. It was almost the last place that the hunters would reach. By then it would be dark. Stunning Joe would have slipped out, retraced his route to the start of Chesil Bank and begun his eight-mile walk to the mainland at Abbotsbury. By the next day he would have stolen clothes and money, reaching the safety of Dorchester or one of the market towns. On the following night he would be back with Mr Kite and Old Mole.

  He devised the plan as he ran, with the quicksilver of the afternoon tide below him. Not more than ten minutes later he saw the two lighthouses before him. At the end of the peninsula the expanse of turf sloped gently towards the last cliff, and the tall finger of the lighthouse tower was clearly visible. The Lower Light was sixty or seventy feet high, the glass lantern rising above deserted fields and distant whitewashed farms. Stunning Joe was alone under the summer sky, knowing that he was free at last. The lock of the lighthouse door was so simple that he could have picked it with his finger-nail. He was studying it, thinking that he would lock himself in and make them believe he had never been there, when he heard a movement behind him.

  Joe turned slowly, dreading to see a dark uniform with crowns on the lapels. But it was an unshaven man in an oatmeal-coloured smock and leggings, his grey hair dishevelled. There was a shotgun in his hands as he bared his gums and grinned at the fugitive.

  'You'm a runner!' he said humorously.

  Stunning Joe looked blankly at the ragged man in the smock. There was no hint of intention behind the yellowed teeth in their shrewd smile. Joe, bracing his narrow back against the lighthouse door, met the eyes of his adversary and found them expressionless.

  The man passed his tongue slowly across his lips, as though he found this an aid to thought.

  'You'm a runner,' he repeated quietly, 'from the hulks! You'm took your ticket o' leave!'

  'Stop a bit,' said Joe reasonably. 'You've no cause to take a part. Act sensible and you shan't suffer by it. A week or two shall see you richer than you are now. It ain't your quarrel.'

  The ragged man's mouth widened in amusement.

  'See me rich?' he sniggered. 'You don't look to me like a man of substance, my friend. Where's the proof?'

  Joe measured the distance between himself and the barrels of the shotgun. He slid his right foot forward and the man drew back at once, keeping the aim of the gun steady.

  'You stop that nonsense soon as you like, young shaver,' he said quietly. 'Right then, Mr Will and Master Harry! If you please.'

  Two more figures stepped round from the far side of the lighthouse, where they had been concealed during the brief conversation. One was a fair-haired man in a smock similar to the first. The other was a boy of seventeen or eighteen with weak limbs and blotched complexion. They both carried guns, blunderbuss muzzle-loaders. Stunning Joe knew all too well that they fired a hail of metal fragments at each shot, enough to drive a dozen iron fragments into his body at this range. The ragged man turned to Will, speaking as though Joe O'Meara could not hear them.

  'Ten sovereigns was give for the last,' he said thoughtfully, 'but then that was two year or more since. ‘Twould be fifteen or twenty now, p'raps, having a new governor that don't want to dirty his snotter!'

  He turned again to Joe with the same humorous grin. Beyond the ridge above them there was a long hollow booming sound.

  'Warning gun,' said the fair-haired man philosophically. 'They knew 'e gone, then. They'd give twenty to 'ave 'e back. Least that.'

  Joe stood with his back still pressed to the wooden planking of the door, the three guns held in a semi-circle before him.

  'Twenty!' he said incredulously. 'You could have two hundred in a week more!' His eyes were anxiously upon the crest above them, fearing the first appearance of dark uniformed figures.

  'Never mind a week more,' said the man with the shotgun. 'What's in 'ee pockets now?' Joe shook his head.

  ' 'at's the problem, 'at is,' said the man thoughtfully. 'Two hundred what might come next week or never. And a good chance of being had for aiding an' abetting.'

  'Twenty's safer,' said Will. 'Twenty's sure, an' no questions to answer either. If he could toss two hundred around as easy as tha', wha's he doin' on the hulks?'

  'Wait!' said Joe urgently. 'Take me where it's safe, and let me send a message for the money. Keep me till it comes. If it don't, then ask your twenty guineas of the law.'

  He watched them, looking for the glint of greed in their eyes. But they grinned back at him, unbelieving.

  'You'm shy of the cat, my friend,' said the man with the shotgun jovially. 'They d' all get their backs skinned when they'm fetched back. You'm shy o' that!'

  'If I'm took back, my son,' said Joe bitterly, 'them that's got the two hundred sovs and more shall know why. And you shall hear from them in good time!'

  The threat was lost upon them.

  'Oh-ah?' said the man with the shotgun, as though the matter hardly concerned him, 'S'posing they can find us, and s'posing they don't hear from us first.' He stepped back, while the two blunderbusses were trained on Stunning Joe, and pointed the shotgun at the blue summer sky. The blast of the first barrel rocked and reverberated from the cliffs, its echoes hardly dying before the explosion of the second barrel woke them again. From beyond the rising ground there was an answering howl of dogs and presently the black figures appeared in silhouette against the hot blue of the afternoon sky. In a long moment of stillness before they came to the little group at the Lower Light, Joe listened to the full swell of sea breaking on the rocks below. Now, surely, it was all over.

  MacBride himself was with the men. Perhaps he had deliberately exaggerated the effect of Stunning Joe's attack upon him at the time. But why? Joe looked stupidly at the officer as the cuffs were locked upon his wrists and his legs were ironed. Why had MacBride been bought for an escape attempt which was doomed to fail? Then, for the first time, Joe O'Meara saw the matter in a new light. MacBride had not been bought. He had allowed the escape for his own cruel sport, the hunting down of the felon and the terrible vengeance which the rules of the hulks would exact from him once he was caught.

  As at Wannock Hundred, Joe O'Meara had been trapped in the net of other men's schemes without knowing why. It puzzled him that he, the shrewdest and most agile spider-man in London, should so ea
sily become the prey of their malevolence. The enigma ran through and through his mind as the uniformed warders half pushed and half dragged him across the rough turf, driving him onwards with blows of their boots. At last a kick behind his knee disabled him momentarily and they towed him by his manacled wrists, his heels bumping over the tufts of grass, the sun in its decline dazzling him with white fire.

  He was vaguely aware of MacBride walking at the end of the line, and of the smocked figure who almost ran to keep up with the senior officer. The coarse mouth was open again, but it was a grimace of genuine anxiety rather than a grin. And in Stunning Joe's mind the question echoed long after the peasant voice had ceased to ask it of MacBride. 'Wha's the bounty, mister? Wha's the bounty?'

  They brought him on board the Indomitable in the centre of a phalanx of black-uniformed warders. As he was pushed towards the open hatchway the light glittered on the bayonets of the officers who lined the way. Since the moment of his capture neither MacBride nor any of the other officers had spoken a word to him, as though silence would multiply vengeance. On the lower deck the prison-cages were empty, still awaiting the return of the convicts from the quarries. At the head of the deck, in the very bows of the ship, was the tiny 'refractory cell', formed by the damp timbers of the ship itself and the iron door which closed the prisoner in darkness and stench. Immediately above the cell, the ‘heads' of the ship formed an open sewer which ran down the outer surface of the cell timbers, the foul odour seeping through every gap.

  The leg irons were unlocked and Stunning Joe was left alone and handcuffed in the darkness. Even for a man of his slight build the bare space of the cell was too small to allow him to lie down at full length. At night he would be given a single blanket, and in this he would huddle on the damp timber as best he could until the cramp and confinement woke him again. Men did not sleep much in the refractory cells but then it was part of their punishment that they should be put to discomfort in this manner.