All conversation on the foredeck stopped. The men gathered round and studied this new phenomenon. Thomas kept his eyes on Doyle’s fingers but he knew he was surrounded, knew he was being watched. He felt relaxed, confident. The pipe and the bagpipe merged, the air swelled with their pure music.
William Bentley noticed the cluster of men from his position on the quarterdeck. He moved curiously forward until he was on the edge of them. When they became aware of his presence the seamen moved apart, touching their foreheads and mumbling. William looked down, at the man and the boy. A smile played about his lips. By the time the tune came to an end, most of the men had melted away to watch from a safe distance.
The whistle ended on a high trill, the bagpipe on a low contrasting chord. As the notes died away, Bentley spoke. ‘By whose permission, Thomas Fox,’ he said. ‘Do you play that instrument?’
Thomas looked up in shock, then down again. Dread swooped in his stomach, a great gush. The whistle slipped from his fingers and rolled across the deck towards Bentley’s feet.
‘By whose permission?’ repeated Bentley. ‘The blindman is musician here, and as such is on the books. Who said you might play?’
Not a word came. Thomas stared at the deck with unseeing eyes.
‘One time more,’ said Bentley. ‘By whose permission do you play that pipe?’
After a short pause, he lifted his foot as if he would crush the whistle that lay before him. There was a sudden movement, and Broad broke from a knot of seamen. He knelt quickly in front of the midshipman and picked up the whistle. He remained on one knee, gazing into the face of the boy. His lips were parted; he was panting slightly.
Bentley held out his hand for the whistle, but Broad did not move. They stared at each other for a long time, deep into each other’s eyes.
Then, quite suddenly, Bentley filled his mouth with spittle and jetted it into the seaman’s face. As it ran down beside his nose and dribbled over his lips, Broad’s face darkened. A muscle worked in his cheek and his face grew darker. It grew darker and darker until he was almost black. Nobody moved.
Then Bentley spun round on his heel, and walked steadily back towards the quarterdeck.
Twenty
The breeze that had lifted the Welfare from her sluggish misery, blew gentle and steady for long enough to take her across the Line. The boats and the interminable pulling were forgotten, the insanely pointless sail-trimming was replaced by genuine work, which nobody objected to. The ship did not sail fast, particularly, but she was sailing. And even if the heat and mildew below decks were still almost unbearable, even if the bugs and cockroaches continued to drive men almost mad, at least on deck there was a cooling wind to dry the sweat and ease the sores and boils that nearly everyone had round mouth and eyes.
The preparations for the ceremony of crossing the Line caused great excitement on board, not least because Henry Joyce was to be Neptune. When he had finally emerged from the sick-bay, he had been a fascinating sight to all hands. He had lost a great amount of bulk, lying near death as he had for days on end. He had practically lived on the surgeon’s brandy for one whole week, and for most of the rest of his time below he had been unable to hold down anything other than pease pudding. But emaciated and pale, Joyce retained some awful signs of power. His great shoulders were unbowed, despite the piled scars that swelled onto his neck under his pigtail, and his shambling walk, though less steady, still had an indefinable air of the beast in it. The eyes were usually cast down. But Bentley, stalking in the waist on the morning he reappeared, had caught Joyce looking at him, and it caused him a shock of something he did not care to contemplate.
It amused the: men that Joyce was to play Neptune, the cruel lord, but it gave no pleasure to the young gentlemen.
In this one ceremony they were very much at the mercy of tradition. Tradition had it that they must pay tribute to Neptune, after being prepared for the honour by his barbers. And Neptune could do with them what he would. The other boys on board faced the perils too, as did every ‘pollywog’ who had never crossed the Line, but the mids guessed that they would receive the roughest treatment of all.
They did. After being stripped, half shaved and thoroughly beaten and ducked, all four young gentlemen were a sorry sight. Finch, to his shame, was weeping, but he managed to do it quietly at least. William would have liked to have cried, he ached desperately and great patches of his skin were roughened and sore, but it was something that had to be borne. It was a golden opportunity for the men to try to break the boys. He scorned their clumsy physical attempts; he would have laughed aloud at them had not any opening of the mouth been an invitation for Neptune or one of his roughs to fill it with a stinking mess of pig’s lard and tar. They were pathetic in their desire to hurt and he despised them.
Jesse Broad despised them too, as he awaited his turn to face the half-drunk ‘barbers’. He watched the men drooling with pleasure as they beat and pinched the boys. It was a chance, admittedly, their only chance. Had he retaliated when Bentley had spat at him, he could have hanged for it. He watched the small naked figure of Finch being hoisted high over the deck by his ankle and felt sorry for the child. This was not the way.
One thing surprised him, though. Thomas Fox had got off almost scot free.
Broad had been fearful of the ceremony on the shepherd boy’s account. After the incident over the whistle, Fox had collapsed in on himself like a pricked bladder. Broad, almost blinded with anger, had yet been aware that the real victim of the midshipman was the boy. The vile excuse that there was only one musician on the ship’s books was nonsense; any man could play, if he wanted, during the dog-watches; Thomas was transgressing no laws. But after the incident the life that had come back into his pale, dead face had gone. Broad could not see his eyes, no one could any more. Fox kept them turned always to the deck. But that brief spark that had been in him as he had walked to the piper with his whistle had gone again. Worse, he appeared to have given up all hope; his shoulders had stooped, his arms and hands were always limp. Broad had tried to tell him that he could play; that Bentley had been merely goading him. But Fox did not even seem to hear.
To many of the men, not just officers and warrants, Fox had been a target. He was considered simple, a fool, and fair game for any treatment, however atrocious. Broad had warned off some, as he knew Matthews had too, and the boatswain’s strange ambiguity kept Fox safe from many vile excesses. But among the lower of the people – and God knew, thought Broad, most of them were the scrapings of the sewer – he was an object of hatred and contempt.
Red-headed Peter, who had crossed the Line before, had been gleefully ghoulish, in his childish unthinking way, about what the men would do to Thomas. Thomas had not listened, apparently; but Broad had felt deep pity for the boy.
But it had not happened that way. Fox had awaited his turn, docile as a broken lamb, and almost as a lamb he had been treated. At first Broad thought it must be a deep and subtle plan by the men to show to Bentley what they felt of his behaviour; but that was surely quite beyond them.
It slowly dawned on him that the pity he felt for Fox had somehow become general; the incident at the fore-bitts had brought about a change in the men, even the most beastly. It must be true, for Neptune and his assistants were certainly among the most beastly dregs of humanity on board. And they treated Thomas with an eerie gentleness. He was pushed around, of course, and one or two sly digs went in. But compared with the treatment everyone else received, he got off light indeed.