Secrets of the Fearless

by Elizabeth Laird

  ‘I hid it,’ said Kit, looking anxiously at Mr Tawse. ‘I reckoned there was some trouble in store for John. We heard Nat and Mr Higgins talking in secret when we went down to the purser’s for John’s hammock. Something to do with John’s gear being stowed, and something that was supposed to be in it. I saw how surprised John was when he saw the satchel. I suppose I just guessed, I don’t know why, I . . . well . . . I thought it was best to hide it.’

  He faltered to a stop.

  Mr Tawse held out his hand for the satchel, undid the clasp, pulled out the contents and laid them on the table.

  ‘Now then. What do we have here?’

  Everyone bent curiously to look. John picked up the dogeared papers and leafed through them.

  ‘This is . . . I don’t know . . . oh yes, it says Bill of Sale. It’s for our cows at Luckstone. And this is . . .’

  ‘A lease on a field.’ Mr Tawse took it from him and laid it aside.

  ‘Here’s a letter,’ said Tom, who had been trying to spell out the first line.

  ‘Put that down, Tom Todd,’ barked Mr Tawse.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ mumbled Tom, blushing.

  ‘It’s from my mother, the last one before she died,’ said John, hastily taking it and folding it up.

  ‘Nothing. There’s nothing here of note.’ Mr Tawse was placing the papers in a pile as he scrutinized each in turn. ‘A contract for a bushel of wheat. A deed of covenant, but out of date. The last will and testament of one Joseph Barr. A marriage settlement. A warrant – Hello! What’s this?’

  He held up to the lantern a little booklet and riffled through the pages. It was made up of a few thin pages of India paper, on which were written, in a tiny, spidery hand, small columns of numbers facing corresponding columns of words.

  ‘I . . . I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before,’ John said, wrinkling his brow as a memory knocked faintly in the back of his mind. ‘I don’t know what that could be. Some kind of accounts, perhaps? It’s not my father’s hand.’

  Mr Tawse held the paper up to the lantern and peered at it closely.

  ‘Could be accounts, I suppose,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Plenty of numbers, anyway. I can’t make head nor tail of it at all.’

  He put the paper down on the table. Jabez picked it up and squinted at it. Horace ducked his head down and tried to take a peck at it. Jabez jerked it out of the parrot’s way, accidentally hitting the lantern, which began to swing wildly. Jabez put the paper down, steadied the lantern and tapped Horace smartly on the beak.

  ‘You mind your manners, ’Orace. Don’t you go nibbling at what don’t belong to you.’

  ‘Put them papers away, lad,’ Mr Tawse said to John. ‘There’s a bit of a mystery here. It’s my belief that this Mr Creech of yours . . .’

  ‘Please, sir, he’s not mine,’ objected John, revolted.

  ‘You know what I mean. It’s my belief he’s taken hold of a mistaken idea about the contents of this satchel. There’s nothing there of value that I can see. It’s what young Nat Claypole was doing that I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mr Higgins knows Mr Creech,’ said John. ‘I saw them talking together on the receiving ship. And Mr Higgins and Nat were talking secrets together down below.’

  ‘Accusations against an officer on board this ship is what I won’t tolerate. Not for any reason.’ Mr Tawse fixed John with an awful frown. ‘The ways of bosun’s mates is wondrous strange and passing all knowledge, and it’s not for jumped-up boys to question them. Keep this satchel tucked away and out of sight, that’s my advice. We don’t want no more poking and prying and mysteries here. And now we’ll close this whole sorry business. I hereby state, young John, that you are free of all suspicion. I believe you have told us the whole truth. No one could make such a story up, anyways. I ain’t never heard a thing to match it, though most men in the navy have a tale to tell that would curl the hair of a mermaid.’

  ‘Nothing exciting ever happened to me,’ Tom said regretfully. ‘My father sent me to sea. I’m to work for him on his brig trading out of Ayr when I’ve learned to be a seaman. He says the training’s finer in the navy.’

  ‘I ran away from my master,’ said Davey with simple pride. ‘Laid him out with a good blow to the jaw first, flat as a flounder, even though he was the biggest blacksmith in Rye. Couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been drunk. He won’t bully me ever again, will he, Mr Barton?’

  ‘He will not, Davey, zo long as you behaves yourself, and becomes a good seaman, and looks after them animals, zame as you’re told,’ said Jabez comfortably.

  John turned expectantly towards Kit, hoping to hear his story, but Kit was inspecting the sole of his foot, trying to pull out a splinter with his fingernails.

  ‘Don’t think too hard of Nat, boys,’ Mr Tawse said into the silence. ‘Beaten and starved he was, all his life, like a puppy no one wanted. It’s no surprise his character turned as sour as milk that’s left to curdle. I was sorry for the lad. But there was no making a gunner of him. What’s the first rule of gunnery, Tom?’

  ‘To maintain the discipline of the gun crew and obey the gun captain at all times,’ rapped out Tom.

  ‘And the second, Kit?’

  ‘To remain steady under fire,’ said Kit, without lifting his eyes from his foot. ‘Even if the head’s shot away from your shoulders.’

  ‘That’s enough of your sauce. What’s the third, Davey?’

  ‘To . . . to be . . . um . . . speed. Quick,’ Davey brought out triumphantly.

  ‘Good lad. Now then, boys, keep yourselves quiet and out of mischief till it’s time to pipe down the hammocks. I have business with Mr Erskine.’

  By the time the short supper of ship’s biscuit, cheese and cocoa had been taken, and the hammocks had been fetched down from the decks above, John was so tired that he would have fallen asleep anywhere, standing, sitting or lying down, if he’d been left alone for a moment. He was still just awake when Tom showed him how to untie his hammock, hook it between two beams and shake out the pillow and blanket it contained. He was yawning so hard his jaw felt it would crack right open as he bent to take off his shoes, barely noticing that he was the only one to do so as the others were all barefooted.

  It was harder than he’d expected, climbing into his hammock. It rolled away from under him, tipping him out. He summoned up a sleepy smile at the others who were laughing at his clumsy efforts, and at last, with a desperate thrust of his feet, he managed to get in and stay in. He had barely pulled the blanket over himself before he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  The pipe of a bosun’s whistle, shouts of ‘Larboard watch ahoy!’, curses, groans and the scuffle of men’s feet coming from the far side of the canvas jerked him awake. He lay with his eyes wide open in the dark, wondering for a long moment what kind of dream he’d fallen into. The events of yesterday churned through his mind. He turned over and cried out with fright as he nearly tipped himself out of his hammock.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ came Tom’s sleepy voice from the hammock only a hand’s breath away to his left. ‘It’s only the watches changing. We don’t have to go. It’s still just the wee small hours.’

  John grunted in reply. Although it was cold, the air, heavy with the smells of tarry ropes, stale breath and unwashed men, was almost too close to breathe. There were strange sounds all around – Jabez Barton’s deep growling snores; lighter ones, ending in a whistle, from behind the partition marking off Mr Tawse’s tiny cabin; a kind of whimpering from where Davey slept; bumps and cries; the clang of a bell, and the endless straining creak of the ship’s wooden beams.

  Where are you, Father? he thought. Are you awake? Are you thinking of me?

  A feeling of dreadful sadness swept across him. He sniffed, rubbing the end of the blanket savagely across his nose. Then he felt a hand from the right, coming from where Kit slept. It took hold of the edge of his hammock and gave it a shove, so that it swung gently a little from side to side. The sensation was wonderfully comforti
ng, as if he was a baby being rocked in his cradle.

  Quite suddenly, he was asleep again.

  Chapter Twelve

  The ship’s bell ringing at half past six brought the crew springing to life, but John was so dead asleep that he heard nothing. Shouted commands of ‘All hands ahoy! Up hammocks ahoy!’ and the shrill blasts of the bosun’s whistle barely penetrated his dreams.

  He came to with a start as a painful tap from someone’s rattan cane landed with a thwack on his back.

  ‘Show a leg! Out or down! Jump to it!’

  He rolled over, trying to sit up at the same time. The hammock twisted out from under him and he landed painfully on the hard wooden floor of the deck. Kit, Tom and Davey were already fully dressed. Their blankets were stowed neatly in their hammocks, which had been unhooked from the beams, and they were folding them up, lacing them into tight neat rolls.

  John hastily tried to copy them, made a mess of it, and started again.

  ‘Like this,’ Tom said, pushing him out of the way and rolling John’s hammock himself.

  Kit and Davey had already disappeared, their rolled hammocks under their arms.

  ‘Come on, quick!’ Tom said. ‘We’ve to put them away before Mr Tawse inspects us. You’ll not want to be there when he finds it’s not all to his satisfaction.’

  The last wisps of sleepiness cleared from John’s head as he dashed away in Tom’s wake. A moment later he was on deck. The shock of cold fresh air was like a douche of water. He gasped as it hit him and drew deep sweet breaths into his lungs.

  The deck was crowded with barefooted men, bleary eyed, red nosed, many barely recovered from the drunkenness of yesterday. They were yawning and scratching, bad tempered and mostly silent. Between them stalked the officers, blue coated, gold braided and commanding, rope ends in their hands.

  Another whistle howled through the morning air.

  ‘All hands make sail! Man the rigging!’

  A shudder seemed to run through the ship from bows to stern as hundreds of men swarmed up the rigging to unloose the sails from the great yards from which they were suspended. It was clear that the women and traders, the visitors and hangers-on had left the Fearless during the night, shaken out of her like fleas from a blanket. One last small boat-load of women was being rowed hastily ashore. They were waving with cheerful desperation to the ship, but the men on board, transforming themselves rapidly from a drunken rabble to a disciplined, efficient force, seemed to have forgotten them already.

  All around John, men were hauling on ropes or letting them out, covers were being lashed down, tackle and gear were being lifted and moved. From below came the sound of fifty men’s voices singing as they laboured to turn the vast spokes of the great winch that pulled up the anchor.

  ‘Bosun! Start that man!’ came a booming cry from above. Looking up, John saw Captain Bannerman standing, legs apart, arms crossed, behind the rail of the quarterdeck. He shrank against the netted hammocks as the bosun, a terrifying figure in a black-brimmed leather hat, bore down on him with his cane raised. He put up his arm to fend off the expected blow, but the bosun surged past him and brought his cane down with a crack on the back of the man who had been leaning woozily against the mainmast.

  John looked round for Tom, but he had disappeared. A shout from above of ‘Away aloft!’ made him glance up, and his heart lurched with fright as he saw Tom far, far above his head, climbing like a monkey up the ladder-like rungs of the rigging.

  ‘Here, boy, get up there and pass the brace through the bullseye,’ said a gruff voice behind him.

  John spun round. The instruction had come from a heavyset sailor, whose sleeves were rolled up to reveal a mermaid tattooed on each massive forearm, and who was hauling on a rope nearby.

  ‘A . . . a brace?’ stammered John. ‘I don’t know – I’m new.

  ‘Damn your eyes! Get below, and stay out of the way!’ the man said with a scowl.

  Hastily, John obeyed.

  On the covered gun deck below, the wild scenes of yesterday were impossible to imagine now. Men were on their hands and knees, scrubbing the boards with big flat stones. Others were washing the tables and stowing away chests.

  Mr Tawse, looking taller somehow, stern, almost alarming, in his cocked hat and full gold braid, was inspecting the guns down the length of the ship, Jabez Barton following gravely in his wake, his head permanently bowed beneath the low ceiling.

  John hovered uncertainly, not knowing how to employ himself. He didn’t wish to seem idle, but he didn’t know where to go or what to do. Fortunately, Mr Tawse, who was now far down the gun deck, looked round and saw him. He beckoned and John ran up to him.

  ‘You’ll start your new duties with me this afternoon.’ Mr Tawse was brisk and impatient this morning. ‘In the meantime, you must begin to acquaint yourself with the workings of the ship.’ He pointed to the nearest companionway. ‘Get yourself up there. Now. Mr Higgins is ready to show you the ropes.’

  ‘Mr Higgins, sir?’ John’s heart had skipped a beat, but Mr Tawse was staring at him, his brows raised, as he waited disapprovingly for John’s obedient response.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ John said, taking a deep breath. Mr Tawse had already turned back to the gun he was inspecting, pointing out a fault to its crew, who were listening and nodding respectfully.

  John was now used to the ladder-like companionways that connected the decks, and he was already learning to run up and down them with ease, but his palms were clammy with dread and his feet nearly slipped on the rungs as he emerged on to the deck of the fo’c’sle above.

  In spite of his fear, he couldn’t help giving a gasp of surprise. During the few minutes that he’d been below, the vast white sails of the Fearless had all been set and the ship was fully underway, the wind catching at the canvas, thrusting the bows forwards through the cold green water. He looked up. Men were still up there, working above the sails along the yards, right to the very tips. They stood on nothing more solid than ropes, and seemed to be dancing on the wind, creatures of air, miraculously keeping their balance as the ship rose and fell beneath them. The sight of them made John dizzy.

  I couldn’t. Never. I couldn’t ever go up there, John thought with a shiver of dread.

  ‘You. John Barr.’

  He spun round. Mr Higgins was standing behind him, holding his rattan in one hand and bringing it down with smart, threatening taps into the palm of the other.

  ‘You’re going to learn the ropes from me, boy.’ He spoke with malicious satisfaction. ‘And once I’ve finished with you, you ain’t never going to forget them again.’

  John swallowed hard.

  ‘No, sir. I mean, yes, sir.’

  Mr Higgins’s hand shot out and he took hold of John’s ear in a painful grip.

  ‘There is nothing, nothing you can hide from me,’ he hissed. ‘I’ll discover all your secrets. In the end you’ll be glad to give me what you know is not yours.’

  Mr Erskine appeared on the quarterdeck at the far end of the ship and seemed about to approach the fo’c’sle along the linking gangway. Mr Higgins released John’s ear and stepped back.

  ‘The forestaysail halyard,’ he barked, tapping his finger against a rope. ‘Say it.’

  ‘The fore . . . forestay . . .’ stammered John.

  ‘Forestaysail halyard.’ The prompt came with a vicious cut from the rattan.

  ‘F-forestaysail halyard,’ John managed to say.

  The next hour was the most painful that John had ever spent in his life. He danced at the end of Mr Higgins’s cane while the names of the ropes – strange words he had never heard before – were barked in his ear. With each hesitation came a painful swipe of the rattan. The sailors working at different tasks on the deck nearby smiled as he passed, remembering their own first lessons in seamanship. While one of them was watching, the flicks from the rattan were bearable. But as soon as the sailors’ attention was elsewhere, Mr Higgins sent the cuts raining down hard on John’s head, across
his back and arms, wherever they would inflict the most pain.

  ‘You will report to me here tomorrow at the same time,’ he said at last, releasing John with a final crack across the shoulders, ‘and if so be as you can’t tell me the names of every rope, faultless, as I points to it . . .’

  He left the threat unfinished, to let John’s imagination do its worst.

  As John stumbled down towards his berth again, he caught sight of Nat Claypole. A smirk of triumph lifted Nat’s mouth at the sight of John’s face. John turned away, biting his lip till it almost bled.

  The long morning had ended at last, and whistles blew as the men were piped to dinner. From one end of the gun decks to the other, legless tables, which had been pegged to the beams, came rattling down between the guns, and a few minutes later almost the entire ship’s crew was sitting down around them, waiting while one man from each table went to the galley to fetch the food.

  A sigh of relaxation seemed to run along the length of the ship. The boys felt it too. The dinner of oatmeal porridge, bread, cheese and ale was not very inviting, but they fell upon it with sharp appetites.

  ‘Learning the ropes, was you, John?’ said Davey, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I seen Mr Higgins after you with his cane.’

  ‘I have to recite all of them to him tomorrow, and I can’t remember one of them.’ John put down his spoon. He had eaten enough of the mess on his plate to stop his hunger, but he couldn’t force down any more. ‘Halyards, sheets, braces, stays – they’re all in a muddle in my head.’

  ‘It’s not so hard,’ Kit said quietly in his ear. ‘There’s some on this ship with wooden pegs for heads. If they can learn them, you can. I’ll show you later if you like.’

  ‘Did Mr Higgins send you up aloft, John?’ Tom called down the table.

  John shook his head.

  ‘That’s a shame. It’s good and calm here in the Forth. Tomorrow we’ll be out in the open sea and there’ll be a fine old swell on her with this wind that’s blowing. I wouldn’t like to go up my first time when she’s bucking about like a—’