‘May one ask, sir,’ said Craig levelly, ‘what are your intentions?’
Swift blew air noisily through his nostrils.
‘You may, sir. I cannot, of course, forbid a funeral. Even scum like that cannot be hurled overboard like carrion. But it will be plain and simple. The plainest and the simplest. He will be slipped over the side with a prayer and a promise. I will make the promise: that every damned malingering dog I catch in future will not even get so Christian a burial.’
Every man and boy at the table was looking downwards. They raised their eyes, reluctantly, when Swift gave a short laugh. On his face was one of his strange, dazzling, smiles. It seemed to William most inappropriate.
‘Well,’ said Swift. ‘Have you anything to say, Captain? You may be frank with me.’
‘Well sir,’ Craig replied. ‘Then I will be frank. I do not like it. I do not like it at all.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Hmm… Because, I think, because—’
‘Because your men will not like it,’ Swift interrupted icily. ‘That is why. Because you fear you may have trouble with your men.’
Craig bowed his head as if in deference to the captain’s opinion.
‘Well, sir,’ continued Swift. ‘I say this. Damn your men’s opinions, and damn their feelings.’ His voice rose.
‘This, gentlemen, is what is wrong on board my ship, and this is what I shall stamp out. There is a laxity; there is a softness. These people are scum, and they are getting away with what they will. All of you, all you officers, all you silly drunken boys, are playing their game. And you will cease! I want this damned ship tightened up, do you hear? And I want to see you do it. Now.’
There was a long silence, broken only by the whistle of air in Swift’s thin nose. He had ended his speech loud, very loud. But when he spoke again, his voice was quiet.
‘Now gentlemen, will you be so good as to take a little port with me? And let us converse of happier matters.’
They did, and soon he had them all laughing, at stories of his boyhood in a ship of the line commanded by a real old character. William’s confusion gradually faded away as the port mellowed him, and smoothed the rough edges of his drunkenness. Of course Uncle Daniel was right. There was only one way to deal with scum, and they had been lax.
The fine weather, perhaps, lulling them into a false sense of comfort. He determined, fuzzily, that he would mend his ways. And the people’s.
In the part of the Welfare where Fulman’s mess were taking their dinner, wine was also being drunk. By now the small quantity of beer remaining in the casks had been declared unfit even for seamen to drink. This unprecedented decision had been forced on the reluctant Butterbum by Mr Allgood; probably, it was generally felt, more out of a desire to thwart that character than for the benefit of Jolly Jack. The wine was a thin and highly acid white, but to the people it was paradisial after the vile dregs of ale, which by this time were graced with tiny wiggling creatures that made one cough.
The men’s food was also beginning to show signs of life, which most of them bore in good part. But to some, who were laughed at as being too lordly for their own good, eating was becoming a trial. Thomas Fox was one of them. The ‘bread’, which was as hard as rock and crawling with weevils and maggots, he found particularly repulsive. Peter watched him banging it and picking at it in a vain attempt to separate the livestock from the substance.
‘You’m a funny one, Tommy Fox,’ he· said. ‘Why you trying to get rid of them harmless creatures? They gives that bread its taste.’ Thomas did not reply. At home, in those far-off days that were like a dream, bread had been a joy to him.
‘Anyone’d think as how you was a proper gent,’ continued Peter. ‘Them fat white maggots is good to the tongue. They cools you down on days like this.’
Old Fulman butted in.
‘Give it a little rest, eh Peter boy? I expect young Tommy do recall a little better grub than you do.’
Peter smiled, chewing heartily at a mouthful of rancid beef, bone-hard biscuit, bitter weevils and slimy, cooling maggots. He swallowed, washing down the rough bits with a long draught of wine.
‘Oh aye, very likely, very likely,’ he conceded. ‘Why, my master gave me nothing at all most days. Well, Tommy, I wager you never did have to feed after the house’s dogs, did you?’
Thomas, toying with the vile food, flicked his eyes up at the bright, jolly face. It was true, he had not. Oh God, mother, mother! Fresh bread and eggs and cheese and all. Oh God, oh God!
‘No, I’ll wager. Why some days, Tommy, I fought the very dogs in the street for bones that fell from the slaughterer’s cart!’ He looked round, as if expecting to be contradicted. ‘It is true,’ he said.
No one contradicted him. Most were too busy eating.
Jesse Broad, who like Thomas found the food almost unbearable, did not bother to say so. He ate doggedly, rather than starve. We all get there in the final reckoning, he thought. Poor little Peter started life eating such filth, I come to it now and must school myself until I stomach it. The maggots did cool the mouth and throat in fact, and the weevils did impart a certain bitterness to the hard, tasteless biscuit. He almost gagged at the thought. The fatness of those maggots!
‘I saw yon poor marine sewn in for burial not two hours since,’ Peter said brightly, after a pause.
‘Hold thy tongue awhile, Peter,’ repeated Grandfather Fulman irritably. ‘We are at supper. We do not want to hear of dead men.’
‘Aye,’ said Peter, ‘but it was wonderful interesting when all’s said. Did you know he did stitch his nose in with him? The sailmaker? He run that great curved needle straight through the poor dead fellow’s beak.’
Broad looked at Fulman enquiringly. He could half believe any barbarity on board a Navy ship. Fulman tutted gently.
‘My, Peter, how you do chatter on,’ he said comfortably.
He belched.
‘Is it true?’ asked Broad. ‘About the fellow’s nose? I’ll skin you, Peter,’ he added, mock threateningly.
Grandfather Fulman belched again.
‘Oh aye, true enough, friend Jesse.’ He indicated a mess of gristly beef on Broad’s platter that looked abandoned. ‘Ah, by the way…if I ain’t being forward…’
Broad pushed it across with a faint shiver. The old man filled his mouth and chewed solidly. When he had swallowed, he went on.
‘Ah, well they say it is this way. When a fellow dies on board of a ship and the sailmaker sews him into his last overcoat, as it were, there’s always one more chance. Which is, of course, that he’s not so much dead as dead drunk.’
Peter squeaked with laughter.
‘Nay Peter, you may laugh, but I have seen it more than once. A fellow can go that rigid in rum you’d not credit there could be breath left in him. Gospel. Any road, friend Jesse, that’s the tale. With the last stitch, the sailmaker drives that great needle through the corpse’s – right through the horny part, there, where it do hurt the worst. And many’s the corpse, I suppose, that must have sat right up at that, a-howling blue bloody murder and calling for another dram!’
Peter nodded vigorously.
‘I seen it, Jesse,’ he said earnestly. Then added with a giggle: ‘Tell you what, though! That bugger didn’t jump! Him’s as dead as this beef!’
‘Aye,’ put in the taciturn Samuel. ‘And a lot deader than the biscuit.’
There was another silence, a shipboard silence. The noise of the sea, the noise of the rigging, slatting from time to time as the wind fluked. And the louder noise, the strange noise, of Padraig Doyle eating. Broad watched the blind man’s mouth as he tried to masticate like other men, wondering dully whatever could have happened to have brought him to such a state. Without a tongue he could hardly eat the hard, stringy naval fare. Awful, dreadful things had happened and were happening in rebel Ireland, Jesse knew. What tales of torture would poor Doyle tell if someone had not ripped his tongue out? Or had he lost it, and his eyes, in an accident? It was not likely, he decided. And decided, also, that his own sufferings since the night of his capture were a minor thing compared with the worlds of misery that were a commonplace on this awful ship.