He stood up abruptly, as Marner tried valiantly to struggle through some simple explanation. The old man reeled backwards as Allen let out a loud, strangled gurgle. Then the boy staggered forward clutching his throat, dropped first to his knees then onto his face, twitched violently and lay still.
The other young gentlemen sat rigid, stifling their laughter at this perfect piece of pantomime. But Mr Marner was horrified. His mouth dropped open. He went white. His hands shook.
‘My God,’ he said. ‘Allen!’ He turned blindly to the class.
‘Bentley,’ he croaked. ‘Fetch the surgeon. I think…’
William leapt to his feet, took three paces towards the schoolmaster, let out a shriek, and dropped like a stone. Little James Finch ran after him, whooping and twitching, sticking his tongue out the while. Then Jack, not to be outdone, whirled like a top until he was dizzy, staggered about a bit, clutched at the old man’s jacket, and collapsed at his feet. As he stared upwards, he croaked: ‘Poison. Oh Mr Marner! We’re all poisoned by that bottle!’
As the drunk old man stumbled towards the deck, clutching at his own throat and pale with shock, the boys clambered up and followed him. They were almost bursting with joy, and kept hugging themselves and each other. The prank was superb!
Marner burst onto the upper deck like a thunderbolt.
Blinded by the sun and the mixture in the bottle, he barged into startled sailors and ran heavily up against the ship’s gear. He was uttering a sort of squawking moan as he reached the quarterdeck. Higgins, the third lieutenant, stood blinking at the apparition. Captain Swift, William noted with satisfaction, was not in evidence.
‘Poisoned!’ croaked Marner. ‘Poisoned. All the young gentlemen, sir, all four of ’em! Poisoned! Stark dead!’
Everyone on deck was watching him. Every activity alow and aloft had ceased. The old man fell to his knees.
‘I’ve drunk it too,’ he groaned. ‘Oh sir, call the surgeon to save the poor young gentlemen!’
Higgins, round-faced and slow-witted, stared from the school-master to the hatchway forward, where the four young gentlemen stood, as clear as daylight, as large as life. They were rolling in silent mirth, holding their bellies and shaking with glee. Everyone was transfixed. Only the helmsman, silent and impassive, watched nothing but the sails and compass as he handed the spokes.
‘Are you mad, sir!’ suddenly roared Higgins. His face blackened.
‘Dead, sir,’ said Marner pathetically. ‘Oh, call the surgeon.’
‘Dead drunk! That is it!’ shouted the third lieutenant. His eye licked round the deck, spotted a seaman holding a bucket, a nearby boatswain’s mate.
‘You there!’ he cried. ‘Boatswain’s mate. Fetch that bucket over here. Smartly, man, smartly there!’
The mate seized the bucket, which was full of sea water.
He loped across the deck with a smile. The boys were laughing aloud, there was nothing else for it. All around, men paused in their work, pleased at the diversion, amused if mystified by what was going on.
The boatswain’s mate stood four-square in front of the kneeling schoolmaster, who was crying now, and had luckily removed his spectacles. The stream of water knocked him bodily over backwards and he let out a shriek. Laughter rose from the deck in a gale. Even Mr Higgins permitted himself a perfunctory smile before marching off aft. William and his friends were breathless with triumph. What a stunt that had been! That would perhaps teach old Marner in the future, the drunken sot.
Later, William faced his uncle over the incident, and promised that no such thing would happen again. The captain was not much amused by it, nor even interested, but he made it clear to William that their schooling should not be interrupted. William listened politely, keeping his opinions to himself. He agreed, however, although he made no comment, when Captain Swift suggested they might expend their zeal to better purpose on more recalcitrant cases. A man as old as Marner was, if nothing else, easy meat.
Finally he relented a shade, admitting that it had been something of a wheeze. Young gentlemen had to work, true, but all work makes Jack a dull boy.
‘There is a place, my lad, for high spirits in a youth,’ he said. ‘But remember our harsher purpose, William. Do not relax too much.’
Seventeen
The Welfare was in the tail end of the trade winds before Captain Swift decided it was time to punish Henry Joyce. And although the timing of the event was meant to be a deadly secret, somehow or other the ship’s company knew. Which meant that Joyce was so full of rum that had been saved and smuggled to him, that it was hoped the ordeal might be bearable.
For Thomas Fox, the anticipation of the event, which would generally have filled him with dread, was overshadowed by a far more terrible possibility – that he himself was shortly to be punished. Whether by accident or the deep design of Swift, there had been a punishment every day since the weather had turned fine. Every forenoon the calls had shrilled, the mates had shouted, and all hands had assembled aft to witness a flogging. Every day the event had been preceded by a speech from the captain, after he had read out the details of the offence and punishment, reviling the lowness of the ship’s people and promising that he would flog some common human decency into them.
Now Thomas had transgressed.
Usually the cause of punishment was drunkenness, or arose from drunkenness. This upset Thomas terribly, for the men were flogged for an offence it was almost impossible not to commit. Every sailor was given eight pints of beer a day, as well as his rum ration. Although by now the beer was worse than vinegar it was still beer, still capable of making you drunk. Even he, who treated it with care and often poured away his rum ration – a fact known only to Doyle, who did the same – often felt muzzy and unsteady.
Most of the sailors, if for some reason they did not want all their portion, used it as currency. So it was always possible to get not just drunk, but blind, roaring, fighting drunk. Any man on board who could not live without liquor could always buy it, whether with money, services – sometimes of the vilest and most secret sort – and even notes of credit. There was one fellow in a nearby mess, a shaking, greyfaced man who looked as if he had not long to live, who had no clothes left other than a long wool shirt. He needed up to four pints of grog in a day to make him insensible, and he would go to any lengths, however degrading, to get it. He was regularly beaten up by seamen who gave him drink for services he could not render (as they well knew) and who obtained their satisfaction from the thrashing that followed.
So every day the master-at-arms and his corporals had no difficulty in finding tomorrow’s victim. Sometimes a man was arrested for being merely drunk, which was a grave enough offence under the Articles of War, but more usually they waited until a fight broke out, when they could take two, or even more, at one swoop. And every day the captain would venomously harangue the people on the evils of drunkenness, and every day the pannikins of fiery spirit and the jugs of sour beer would circulate in a way that many a land-bound drunkard would have found next thing to Paradise itself.
The sin that Thomas had committed, and the way retribution had leapt upon him, had nothing to do with drink. It had nothing to do with sinfulness either, but he was well aware that in terms of shipboard life he had committed a crime, and that punishment was inevitable. He had once seen a peddler hanged on land, pack and all, for allegedly taking a coney, so he did not rail at the injustice of the retribution that would come; that was the way of the world. But it was the form. It could not be flogging though; no, it could not he flogging. Thomas found the spectacle of a man being whipped appalling; the thought that those cruel thongs could tear into his own naked back was unbearable. When his mind touched on it, unbidden, he whimpered; but did not believe.