Morgan’s Run

PART THREE

From

January of 1786

until

January of 1787

The wagon to London and Woolwich arrived at dawn the next day, the 6th of January; exactly a year since his last wagon trip had commenced, Richard realized. But this was a gaol parting of higher magnitude and much sorrow, the women weeping desolately.

“What will I do without you?” Lizzie Lock asked Richard as she followed him to Old Mother Hubbard’s house.

“Find someone else,” said Richard, but sympathetically. “In your circumstances, a protector is essential. Though ’twill be hard to find another like me, willing to forgo sex.”

“I know, I know! Oh, Richard, I shall miss you!”

“And I you, skinny Lizzie. Who will mend my stockings?”

She grinned through her tears, gave him a shove. “Get away with you! I have shown you how to use a needle and ye sew well.”

Then two gaolers came and took the women back to the prison, waving, howling, protesting.

And back to the iron belt around the waist, the four sets of chains joined together at its front.

In appearance this wagon looked the same as the one from Bristol to Gloucester-rawn by eight big horses, covered with a canvas semicircle. Inside it was quite different, having a bench down either side long enough for six men to sit with plenty of space between each. Their belongings had to be piled on the floor between their legs and would pitch and slide every time the vehicle jarred, thought the experienced Richard. What road was smooth, especially at this time of year? Dead of winter, and a rainy one.

Two gaolers traveled with them, but not inside with them; they sat with the driver up front, which had a fine shelter built over it. No one in the back was going to slip out and escape; once seated, a length of chain was run through an additional loop on each man’s left fetter and bolted to the floor at either end. If one man moved, his five companions had to move.

The pecking order was now established. Muffled in his warmly lined greatcoat, Richard sat at the open end of the wagon on one side, with Ike Rogers, leader of the youngsters, facing him.

“How long will it take?” asked Ike Rogers.

“If we cover six miles in a day we will be lucky,” answered Richard, grinning. “Ye’ve not been on the road before-in a wagon, I mean, Ike. I do not know how long. It depends which way.”

“Through Cheltenham and Oxford,” said the highwayman, taking the joke in good part. “Whereabouts Woolwich is, however, I do not know. I have been to Oxford, but never to London.”

Richard had conned his first geography book, a text on London. “It is well east of London but on the south bank of the Thames. I do not know if they mean to make us cross over-we are going to hulks moored in the river, after all. If we go through Cheltenham and Oxford, then we have about a hundred and twenty miles to travel to Woolwich.” He did some calculations in his head. “At six miles a day, it will take almost three weeks to get there.”

“We sit here for three weeks?” asked Bill Whiting, dismayed.

Those who had already been on the road in a wagon laughed.

“No need to worry about sitting idle, Bill,” said Taffy. “We will be out and digging half a dozen times in a day.”

As indeed proved to be the case. Wayside hospitality, however, fell far short of that extended to Richard and Willy by John the wagoneer. No barns, no warm horse blankets, nothing to eat save bread, nothing to drink save small beer. Each night saw them bed down in the wagon by transferring their belongings to the seats and occupying the floor to stretch out, greatcoats for covers, hats for pillows. The canvas roof leaked in the perpetual rain, though the temperature stayed well above freezing, a small mercy for damp and shivering prisoners. Only Ike had boots; the rest wore shoes and were soon caked to above their fettered ankles in mud.

They did not see Cheltenham or Oxford, the driver preferring to skirt both towns with this cargo of felons, and High Wycombe was no more than a short row of houses down a hill so slippery that the team of horses became entangled in the traces and nearly turned the wagon over. Bruised by flying wooden boxes, the prisoners were set to work righting the perilously leaning vehicle; Ike Rogers, who had a great affinity with horses, engaged himself in calming the animals down and sorting out their harness.

Of London they saw absolutely nothing, for one of the gaolers fixed a shield over the open back and blinded them to what was going on outside. Soon came a trundling motion rather than a lurching one; they had reached some paved main road, which meant that their services would not be needed to dig the wagon out. Noises percolated inside: cries, whinnies, brays, snatches of song, sudden babbles which perhaps meant they passed by an open tavern door, the thump of machinery, an occasional crash.

When night fell the gaolers pushed bread and small beer in through the shielding flap and left them to their own devices; he who needed to urinate or defecate was now provided with a bucket. More bread and small beer in the morning, then onward through that confusing racket, joined now by the cries of vendors and some very interesting stenches-rotten fish, rotten meat, rotten vegetables. The Bristolians stared at each other and smirked, while the rest looked a little sick.

For two nights they lay somewhere within the reaches of the great city, and on the afternoon of the third day-their twentieth since leaving Gloucester-someone yanked the shield away and let in the London daylight. In front of them lay a mighty river, grey and slick and bobbing with refuse; judging from the position of the sun, a pale and watery brilliance in the midst of a whitish sky, they had crossed the stream somewhere, and were now on its south bank. Woolwich, Richard decided. The wagon stood alongside a dock, to which was moored a dilapidated semblance of a ship which bore a barely discernible name on a bronze plate: Reception. Most appropriate.

The gaolers removed the chain which had linked them together and told Richard and Ike to get out. Legs a little shaky, they jumped down, their companions following.

“Remember, in two groups of six,” said Richard to Ike softly.

They were marched up a wooden gangplank and onto the vessel before anyone had a good opportunity to take in much of the river or what lay upon it. Once inside a room they were divested of their chains, manacles, belts and fetters, which were handed back to the Gloucester gaolers.

Boxes, sacks and bundles around them, they stood for some time aware of the guards at the door of this ruined wardroom or whatever it might have been; escape was impossible unless all twelve of them made a combined rush-but after that, what?

A man walked in. “Dowse yer nabs n toges!” he shouted.

They looked at him blankly.

“Nabs n toges orf!”

When nobody moved he cast his eyes at the ceiling, stormed up to Richard, who was closest, knocked his hat off and yanked at his greatcoat and the suit coat he wore beneath it.

“I think he wants us to take off our hats and coats.”

Everybody obeyed.

“Nah kicks araon stampers n keep yer mishes orn!”

They looked at him blankly.

He ground his teeth, shut his eyes and said, with a very odd accent, “Britches round your feet but keep your shirts on.”

Everybody obeyed.

“Ready, sir!” he called.

Another man strolled in. “Where are you lot from?” he asked.

“Gloucester Gaol,” said Ike.

“Oh, West Country. Ye’ll have to speak something akin to the King’s English, Matty,” he said to the first man, and then to the prisoners, “I am the doctor. Is anybody sick?”

Apparently assuming that the general murmur was a negative, he nodded and sighed. “Lift your shirts, let us see if there are any blue boars.” He inspected their penises for syphilitic ulcers, and having found none, sighed again. “Bene,” he said to Matty, and to them, “Ye’re a healthy lot, but all things change.” About to leave the room, he said, “Put your clothes on, wait here, and keep quiet.”

They put their clothes on and waited.

It was a full five minutes before Bill Whiting, the chirpiest of the twelve, recovered enough of his cheek to find speech. “Did anybody understand anything yon Matty said?” he asked.

“Not a word,” said young Job Hollister.

“Perhaps he was from Scotland,” said Connelly, remembering that no one in Bristol had understood Jack the Painter.

“Perhaps he was from Woolwich,” said Neddy Perrott.

Which silenced all of them.

An hour went by. They had subsided to the floor and leaned their backs against the walls, feeling the slight shifting under their legs as the ship moved sluggishly against its moorings. Rudderless, thought Richard. We are as rudderless as this thing that was once a ship, farther away from home than any of us has ever been, and with no idea of what awaits. The youngsters are dumbstruck, even Ike Rogers is unsure. And I am filled with dread.

Came the sound of several pairs of feet thumping on wooden planking, the familiar dull clinking of chains; the twelve men stirred, looked at each other uneasily, got up wearily.

“Darbies f y dimber coves!” said the first man through the door. “Fetters, ye pretty hicks! Sit down and nobody move.”

Six inches longer than the Bristol or Gloucester versions, the chains were already welded to the cuffs, which were much lighter, flexible enough for the heavily muscled smith to bend apart around a man’s ankle, then close until the holes in either end overlapped. Then he pushed a flat-headed bolt through the holes from the ankle side, grabbed the prisoner’s leg and slipped the long tongue of an anvil between it and the fetter. Two heavy blows with his hammer and the rivet ends were smashed flat against the iron band forever.

I will wear these for the next six and more years, thought Richard, easing his aching bones by rubbing them. They do not do that for a mere six and more months. Which means that even after I reach Botany Bay, I will wear these until I finish my sentence.

Another smith had fettered the second six from Gloucester, and just as competently. Within half an hour the two of them had the job done, prodded their assistants into gathering the tools up, and left. Two guards remained; Matty must have belonged to the doctor. However, Matty had passed the message on, for when one of the guards spoke, it was in that peculiarly accented English, not in what time would inform the prisoners was “flash lingo”-the speech of the London Newgate and all those who had dealings with that place.

“Ye’ll mess and sleep here tonight,” he said curtly, tapping the knobbed end of his short bludgeon against the palm of his other hand. “Ye can talk and move about. Here, have a bucket.” Then he and his companion moved out, locking the door.

The two Wiltshire lads were wiping away tears; everyone else was dryeyed. Not in a mood for talking until Will Connelly got up and prowled about.

“These feel better on the legs,” he said, lifting one foot. “Chain must be thirty inches long too. Easier to walk.”

Richard ran his fingers over the cuffs and found that they had rounded edges. “Aye, and they will not rub so much. We will go through fewer rags.”

“Proper working irons,” said Bill Whiting. “I wonder what sort of work it will be?”

Just before nightfall they were given small beer, stale and very dark brown bread, and a mess of boiled cabbage with leeks.

“Not for me,” said Ike, pushing the pot of cabbage away.

“Eat it, Ike,” Richard ordered. “My cousin James says we must eat every vegetable we can get, otherwise we will get scurvy.”

Ike was unimpressed. “That muck could not cure a runny nose.”

“I agree,” said Richard, having tasted it. “However, it is a change from bread, so I will eat it.”

After which, windowless, womanless and cheerless, they lay down on the floor, wrapped their greatcoats about them, used their hats as pillows, and let the gently moving river rock them to sleep.

The next morning, amid a drizzling grey rain, they were taken off Reception and loaded into an open lighter. So far nothing hideously cruel had happened to them; the guards were surly brutes, but as long as the prisoners did as they were told at the pace demanded, they kept their bludgeons to themselves. The wooden boxes were a source of curiosity, obviously, yet why had no one inspected them? On the dock they learned why. A short, rotund gentleman in an old-fashioned wig and a fusty suit came hurrying down from the ship’s remnant of a poop, hands outstretched, beaming.

“Ah, the dozen from Gloucester!” he said brightly, with an accent they would discover later was Scotch. “Doctor Meadows said ye were fine specimens, and I see he was right. My name is Mr. Campbell, and this is my idea.” His hand swept the soft rain aside in a grand gesture. “Floating prisons! So much healthier than the Newgate-than any gaol, for that matter. Ye’ve your property, yes? Good, good. ’Tis a black mark for anybody does not respect a convict’s right to his property. Neil! Neil, where are ye?”

A person who appeared enough like him to be his twin rushed from the bows of Reception down onto the dock and came to a halt with a puff. “Here, Duncan.”

“Oh good! I did not want ye to miss setting eyes on these splendid fellows. My brother is my assistant,” he explained, just as if the prisoners were real people. “However, he is responsible for Justitia and Censor at the moment-I am too busy with my dear Ceres-she is superb! Brand new! Of course ye’re going to dear Ceres-so convenient that ye’re the round dozen and in such good condition. Two teams for the two new dredges.” He actually began to prance. “Splendid, splendid!” And off he galloped, his brother bleating in his wake like a lost lamb.

“Christ! What a quiz!” said Bill Whiting.

“Tace!” barked the overseeing guard, and brought his bludgeon down with a sickening thump on Whiting’s arm. “Nah hike!”

That they understood; with Ike Rogers unobtrusively supporting the half-conscious Whiting, the twelve men edged, hanging on to their goods, down a flight of slimy steps to the waiting lighter.

Stretches of a low, swampy shore and misty profiles of a few ships came and went through the ghostly grey rain; collars turned up, hats oriented to cascade water onto their shoulders rather than down their necks, they sat amid their boxes, sacks and bundles. A silent crew of twelve oarsmen, six to a side, pushed the lighter off, turned it, and stroked toward the middle of the great wide river with a long, easy motion that hardly disturbed the sliding water.

There were four ships sitting one behind the other like a line of cows about three hundred yards off this south or Kentish shore. Each was moored more thoroughly than Richard had ever seen a vessel moored, even in the Kingroad of the Severn Estuary. To fix them, he thought, too firmly to allow them to swing at anchor, of which each had many on chains rather than the normal rope cables. The smallest ship was farthest upriver in London’s direction and the largest brought up the rear, with perhaps a hundred yards separating each from its neighbors in the line.

“Hospital ship Guardian-then Censor, Justitia and Ceres,” said a guard, pointing.

The lighter struck for Censor, opposite the dock, then turned to run downriver with an ebbing tide to make life easier for the oarsmen. Thus they had the chance to look at each of the three prison hulks. Travesties of ships only, mizzens long gone, mainmasts broken off forty feet aloft in cracks and splinters, foremasts more or less intact but stripped of shrouds, clothing hanging limp and wet from lines strung between each fore and main, as well as on the stays connecting the fore with a stub of bowsprit. The decks sported a shambles of wooden huts and jutting penthouses with a forest of iron chimneys kinked at all angles; more of these stood atop quarterdecks, forecastles and roundhouses. Censor and Justitia looked old enough to have gone to sea with Good Queen Bess’s fleet against the Spanish Armada-no scrap of paint left, no copper nail ungreened, no strake unchipped.

By comparison Ceres looked a mere century old; its naval black-and-yellow paint still showed in places and it had the remnant of a figurehead beneath its bowsprit, some sort of wheaty bare-breasted female a wag had finished off with bright red nipples. The gun ports of Censor and Justitia were closed fast, but those of Ceres had been removed entirely and replaced by grilles of thick iron bars which led the Bristolians, experienced in such matters, to conclude that it had two decks below the upper or surface deck-a lower deck and an orlop deck. Once a second-rate ship of the line with 90 guns, then. No cargo vessel or slaver ever owned so many ports along her sides.

How, Richard wondered, are we going to manage to get ourselves and our belongings up a rope ladder? Our chains will be our undoing. However, the ebullient Mr. Duncan Campbell had fitted his pride and joy with a flight of wooden steps attached to a bobbing landing. Box in his arms, two sacks of additionals slung over his shoulders, Richard found himself first over the side of the lighter behind a bludgeon-bearing guard, and mounted the steps to an opening in the rail sixteen feet above. Ceres had been a big second-rater.

“Gigger dubber!” roared the overseeing guard.

An important-looking but slovenly fellow emerged from between two wooden shacks picking his teeth; in the background Richard saw an occasional flick of a skirt, heard women’s voices, and realized that most of the guards must live in these ramshackle quarters.

“Ah?” asked the important-looking individual.

“Twelve convicts from Gloucester Gaol, Mr. ’Anks. Ain’t flash so don’t know the lingo. Mr. Campbell says they are the two new teams for the new dredges. No hum durdgeons among ’em, Doc says.”

“More ’icks!” said Mr. Hanks in disgust. “Nigh ’alf aboard are ’icks now, Mr. Sykes.” He turned to the prisoners. “Me name is ’Erbert ’Anks an I am the gigger dubber-gaol keeper to youse. Into the orlop wiv ’em, Mr. Sykes. An ’ere ye ain’t prisoners, ye’re convicts. Got it?”

They nodded wordlessly, trying to sort out an English wherein the th’s were pronounced as v’s and the f’s as th’s. Sort of.

“Prisoners,” Mr. Hanks went on conversationally, “ ’ave a chance to get theirselves unsnabbled. Convicts is convicts, in for the ’ole duration. ’Ere are the rules, so put yer lugs to listening ’cos they will not be said again. Visitors allowed on Sundees after the autem bawler’s service-autem is compulsory-that’s church to youse-an ain’t no autem quavers nor dippers nor cacklers of any Dissenting sort allowed. Just the King’s autem ’ere. All visitors will be searched, ’ave to lodge their blunt wiv me, an any grub they got will be confiscated. Why? ’Cos flash coves smuggle files aboard in their cakes an puddens.”

He paused to eye his auditors with a curious mixture of glee and severity; he was enjoying this. “When ye’re aboard, the orlop is ’ome. I am the only one can dub the gigger-open the door-an that don’t ’appen hoften. Up to work, down to sleep, Mondees to Sattidees. Weather permitting, youse work, an I mean youse work. Today, frinstance, is not a day for work ’cos the rain is too fucken ’ard. Youse eat what ye’re fed an drink what I decide. Blue tape-gin-comes very dear, an I am the only purveyor of such delights. ’Alf a borde-sixpence-a ’alf-pint.”

Another pause ensued, this time to allow Mr. Hanks to hawk and spit at their feet. “Youse mess in sixes an get yer grub from the purser. Sundees, Mondees, Wensdees, Thursdees an Sattidees the following rations are issued to each six men-one ox cheek or ox shin, three pints of pease, three pounds of vegubbles, six pounds of bread an six quarts of small beer. On Tuesdees an Fridees it is burgoo-as much aqua Thames as ye want, three pints of oatmeal wiv simples, three pounds of cheese an six pounds of bread. That is all ye get. If ye eat it all up at supper, ye go ’ungry an thirsty of a morning, got it? Mr. Campbell says youse ’ave to wash every day an shave every Sundee before the autem bawler comes aboard. When youse come up for work or autem, ye’ll bring yer night buckets wiv youse an empty ’em over the side. One bucket each mess. Ye are locked in, me dimber cullies, so what youse do inside I do not care hany more than Mr. Campbell do.”

His pleasure increased. “But first,” he said, squatting down while Mr. Sykes and his minions remained standing behind him, “I ’ave to cast me ogles over them boxes an bags, so dub ’em-now!”

This lecture having informed them that to dub was to open, the convicts unlocked their boxes, spread open their additionals.

Mr. Herbert Hanks was very thorough. By chance he commenced with the belongings of Ike Rogers and his team, whose boxes were smaller, not uniform, and in the case of the two Wiltshire lads, nonexistent. Rags he discarded, clothing he discarded, but each and every rag and item of clothing was nonetheless passed up to Mr. Sykes, who ran them between his hands and squeezed at every tiny swelling. This yielded nothing. Nor did any of the other articles appeal, evidently.

“Where’s yer money?” he demanded.

Ike looked respectfully surprised. “Sir, we have none. We have been in Gloucester Gaol for a year. The blunt got spent.”

“Huh.” Mr. Hanks turned to Richard’s team, eyes glistening. “Rum coves, eh? A lot of loot.” Out of Richard’s box and sacks came the clothing, the bottles and jars, the framed dripstone and several spares, the rags used as packing, the books, the ream of paper, the pens-very curious objects!-and two spare pairs of shoes. He held the shoes up and studied them in disappointment, shrugged at the equally disappointed Mr. Sykes. “Ain’t for nothing ye’re called clodhoppers. No one here got feet that size, cully, even Long Joyce. What is this, then?” he asked, displaying a bottle.

“Oil of tar, Mr. Hanks.”

“An what is this contraption?”

“A dripstone, sir. I use it to filter my drinking water.”

“Water is already filtered in ’ere. Got a big strainer under every pump. What’s yer name, big feet?”

“Richard Morgan.”

He snatched a list from one of Mr. Sykes’s offsiders and cast his ogles over it; read he could, but painfully. “Not any more it ain’t. From now on, Morgan, ye’re convict number two ’unnerd an three.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A booky cove, I note.” Mr. Hanks riffled through the pages of a few in search of salacious etchings or erotic prose, then laid each one down with a frustrated slap. “An what’s this?”

“A tonic, sir, to cure boils.”

“An this?”

“A salve, sir, for cuts and ulcers.”

“Shite, ye’re an apothecary’s shop! Why’d ye bring all this clutter?” He removed the cork from the bottle of tonic and sniffed suspiciously. “Aaaaaagh!” He slammed it down on the deck and let its cork roll away. “Smells bad enough to come from the river.”

Expression unconcerned, Richard stood while the head gaoler picked up the empty box, shook it to hear if it rattled, rapped all four sides, top and bottom. After which he felt every seam of the sacks. Nothing. He appropriated Richard’s better razor, the strop and whetstone, and Richard’s best pair of stockings. Then he moved on to Will Connelly’s box and bag. Very quietly and unobtrusively Richard knelt to retrieve his tonic, cork it and put it to one side. A glance at Mr. Sykes told him that he was probably expected to repack his things at this juncture, so he nodded to the immobile Rogers and began his task. Rogers and the youngsters followed suit.

Finished with the twelve of them, Mr. Hanks exuded pleasure. “Right, now where’s yer coach wheels? Where’s yer blunt, cullies?”

“Sir, we have none,” said Neddy Perrott. “We have been in gaol for a year and there were women…” He trailed off apologetically.

“Pockets inside out!”

Every coat pocket was empty save Richard’s, Bill’s, Neddy’s and Will’s, stuffed full of books.

“Dowse yer toges-take ’em off!” snapped Mr. Hanks.

Off came greatcoats and suit coats; Mr. Sykes felt over every inch of every one. “Nowt,” he said, grinning.

“Frisk ’em, Mr. Sykes.”

This they interpreted as an order to search their persons; Mr. Sykes proceeded to feel their bodies, with obvious enjoyment when he groped around genitals and buttocks. “Nowt,” he said, exchanging a look of keen anticipation with Mr. Hanks.

“Dowse yer kicks an bend over,” said Mr. Hanks in a resigned but quivering voice. “Though I am warning youse! If Mr. Sykes ’ere finds any coach wheels up yer arses, ye’ll wash ’em in yer blood.”

Mr. Sykes was brutally, lingeringly efficient. The four young men and Joey Long wept in pain and humiliation, the others endured it without exclamation or evident discomfort. “Nowt,” said Mr. Sykes. “Fucken nowt-not nuffink, Mr. ’Anks.”

“We are from Gloucestershire,” said Richard as he pulled up his underdrawers and breeches. “It is a poor part of England.”

And I have got your measure. Shame and money. God rot you.

“Take ’em below, Mr. Sykes,” said the gigger dubber, and went off into the warren of shacks a disappointed man.

As of this January 28, 1786, Ceres held 213 convicts; the twelve from Gloucester were admitted as numbers 201 to 213, Richard at 203. The only gaoler, however, who used their numbers was Mr. Herbert Hanks of Plumstead Road, near the Warren, Woolwich.

Someone in his wisdom-probably to placate the felons of the London Newgate, who loathed associating with hicks-had separated the London Newgaters from the hicks by putting them on different decks. The London Newgaters occupied the lower deck and the hicks occupied the orlop deck. Or perhaps this wisdom stemmed from the perpetual war which went on between the London felons and all the non-Londoners on Censor and Justitia, wherein everybody was so hopelessly intermingled that not even Mr. Duncan Campbell could unravel the tangle. With Dunkirk in Plymouth he was to go further than with Ceres, segmenting the ship to create seven convict compartments according to a system of classification he had concocted himself.

The divisions between Englishmen were very deep. Those who used the London Newgate flash lingo spoke what sounded like an alien tongue, though many could-if pushed to it, and in a bizarre accent-speak a more general kind of English. The problem was that by far the greater number of them refused to as a matter of principle, preferring their flash exclusivity. Those from the lands of the north as far south as Yorkshire and Lancashire could more or less comprehend each other’s speech, but, no matter how literate, could not make head or tail of anyone who hailed from farther south. Complicated by the fact that Liverpudlians spoke something known as Scouse, another foreign language. The Midlanders could communicate fairly well with those from the West Country and both these groups could understand convicts from Sussex, the Channel parts of Kent, Surrey and Hampshire. But those from the Thames part of Kent spoke something akin to flash lingo, and the same had to be said of those from the parts of Essex closest to London. As for those from north Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincoln-quite different again. So polyglot was this assemblage of Englishmen, indeed, that Censor owned two convicts from Birmingham who could not understand each other; one had lived in the village of Smethwick, the other in the village of Four Oaks, and neither had been a mile from home until caught in the judicial net.

The result was that people clumped. If one group of six could understand another group of six, they mingled to some degree. When dialects or accents became insuperable, the twain never met. The Gloucester men therefore entered a divided camp, united only in a universal hatred of the London Newgaters one deck up, who were said to get the lion’s share of everything from grub to cheaper gin because they and the gaolers could understand each other and were allied in depriving the non-Londoners of their rightful share.

This last assumption might well have been true of the gin, as the London Newgaters were in their own bailiwick and likely to have more sources of money, but it certainly was not true of the grub.

That jolly little prancing person Mr. Duncan Campbell became exceedingly thrifty about things he had to pay for out of the £26 per convict per year he obtained from His Majesty’s Government, and grub was an item he had to pay for. Ten shillings per week per man: on the Thames hulks that January his gross income was £360 per week, and there were things a canny contractor could do to keep the gross and the net figures closer together. Such as growing his own vegetables and brewing his own small beer. The more obvious ploys of falsifying his convict numbers or letting scurvy run riot were, alas, out of the question. Too many nosy officials. He bought his bread and his beef from the garrison at the Tower of London-ox heads and shins only, hard bread only-and at first he had not been fussy about their condition. Then along came Mr. John Howard; bread and beef had to improve somewhat. Notwithstanding these irksome constrictions and a staff of 100 assorted persons, Mr. Campbell managed to make a profit of £150 a week from his Thames hulks. He also had a hulk in Plymouth-Dunkirk-and two in Portsmouth-Fortunee and The Firm. His total profit from all his enterprises was around £300 a week; he was also engaged in some delicate dickering for the tender to supply the bruited expedition to Botany Bay.

The ’tween decks on the Ceres orlop were six feet, which meant that Richard cleared the ceiling of moldering planks by half an inch and Ike Rogers could not fully straighten. The beams which ran from side to side were a foot lower than this, however, and were spaced six feet apart. Thus turning the act of walking into a parody of a monkish parade, heads bent in a reverence every double pace.

For a Bristol man the smell was bearable, as the wind moaned around the iron grilles and swept through the chilly, red-painted chamber extending from a bulkhead athwart the foremast to the entrance bulkhead in the stern. All told, it was about 40 feet wide and 100 feet in length. Along either outer wall-the hull-were wooden platforms at about the height of a table, and such they seemed to be, for men were sitting at them on benches. The conundrum was that they also seemed to function as beds, for in some places men were lying on them, apparently resting or else gripped by fever. The platform width of six feet also suggested that they were beds. Another table-like platform six feet wide ran down the middle. Perhaps 80 men inhabited this garish crimson chamber, and upon the entry of twelve new inmates all conversation stilled and most heads turned to look.

“Where from?” asked a man sitting at the middle table near the entrance.

“Gloucester Gaol, all twelve of us,” said Will Connelly.

The man rose to his feet, revealing himself as short enough to pass beneath the beams, though he had more the physique of a jockey than a midget, and had the face of a man who had spent most of his life around horses-creased, leathery, faintly equine. He might have been any age between forty and sixty.

“How de do,” he said more than asked, advancing to meet them and holding out a diminutive paw. “William Stanley from Seend. That is near Devizes in Somerset, but I was convicted in Wiltshire.”

“We most of us know of Seend,” said Connelly with a grin, then performed introductions. He put his box down with a sigh. “And what happens now, William Stanley from Seend?”

“Ye move in. That would be Sykes did the bum fuck. A real Miss Molly. ’Tis his way of getting to know the convicts from the inside, ye might say. No money, eh? Or did he find it?”

“We have no money,” said Connelly, sitting on the bench. He winced. “After Mr. Sykes, this is hard. What does happen now?”

“This end is Midlands, West Country, Channel, Wolds and Wealds,” said Stanley, producing an unlit pipe and sucking on it when he was not using it to point in some direction. “Center is the boys from Derby, Cheshire, Stafford, Lincoln and Salop. Far end-bows-is Durham, Yorkshire, Northumbria and Lancashire. Liverpudlians have that end of this middle table. They have a few Irish, all but one Liverpudlian. Got four blackamoors, but they are upstairs with the Londoners. Sorry, Taffy, no Welsh.” He eyed their boxes and bags. “If ye’ve valuables, ye’ll lose ’em. Unless,” he added, tone loaded with meaning, “we can plain deal.”

“Oh, I think that will be possible,” said Connelly affably. “I take it we eat off what we sleep on?”

“Aye. Put your tackle right here at this middle table, it has plenty of room for twelve this end. Mats ye sleep on are rolled up under it, and that is where ye’ll stow your tackle too. One mangy blanket each two men.” He giggled. “We are in the Yankey business of bundling here, not too private if ye’re of a mind to toss off. But we all got to toss off-bum fucking ain’t popular with the troops after a taste of Mr. Sykes. Upstairs they get women in on Sundays-call ’em their aunties, sisters or cousins. Don’t happen here because we are all too far from home and them as has got money prefer to spend it on Hanks’s sixpenny gins. Robber!”

“How can ye help us hang on to our things, William?” asked Bill Whiting, suffering two kinds of pain: one from the escort’s bludgeon, the other from Mr. Sykes’s hand and fingers.

“I do not work, ye see. They tried me in the vegetable patch, but I got eight brown fingers and two brown thumbs-even the turnips curled up their toes. So they gave me up as too old, too stunted and too hard to keep the darbies on.” He lifted one tiny foot and surreptitiously wriggled it in his fetter until the iron band sat across his instep. “Ye might say I am the caretaker of this establishment. I run a mop around it, swill out the night buckets, roll up the mats, fold up the blankets and keep the mad Irish at bay. Though our Irish, being Liverpudlians, are not too bad. But there are two on Justitia can only speak Erse-got snabbled the day they hopped off the boat from Dublin. No wonder they run mad. ’Tis hard this side of the Irish sea, and they are soft folk. Gulled in a twinkle, drunk on a dram.” He chuckled, sighed. “Ah, ’tis good to see some new West Country blood! Mikey! Here, Mikey!”

A young man slouched up, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with the faintly furtive air West Country men recognized as belonging to a Cornish smuggler. “Nay, not Cornwall,” he said, reading their minds. “Dorset. Poole. Seaman in the customs division. Name, Dennison.”

“Mikey helps me look after the place-cannot do it on my own. He-me are surplus, never manage to hook up in a six. Mikey has fits-real corkers! Goes black in the face, bites his tongue. Frightens the shit out of Miss Molly Sykes.” Stanley eyed the newcomers shrewdly. “Ye’re already two lots of six, ain’t ye?”

“Aye, and that fellow who says not a word is our leader,” said Connelly, pointing to Richard. “Just will not own up to it. Bill Whiting and I have to do all the talking while he sits back, listens, and then makes the decisions. Very peaceful, very clever. I ain’t known him all that long, but if Sykes had done that before I met Richard, I would have gone at him-and for what? A sore head as well as a sore arse. And a flogging, eh?”

“A bludgeoning, Will. Mr. Campbell do not hold with the cat, says it keeps too many men off work.” William Stanley from Seend half-shut his eyes. “ ’Tis you I come to terms with, Richard-what was the surname?”

“Morgan.”

“Welsh.”

“Bristol born and bred for generations. Connelly has an Irish name, but he is a Bristolian too. Surnames do not mean much.”

“Why,” asked Ike Rogers suddenly, having spent most of this exchange gazing about, “is this place painted red?”

“ ’Twas the orlop on a second-rater,” said Mikey Dennison, the smuggler from Poole. “The thirty-two pounders lived in here and so did the surgeon’s hospital. Paint the place red and the blood ain’t visible. Sight of blood puts the gunners off terrible.”

William Stanley from Seend pulled a huge turnip watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. “Grub up in an hour,” he said. “Harry the fucken purser will dole out your trenchers and mugs. Today being Friday, ’tis burgoo. No meat, apart from what’s in the bread and cheese. Hear the racket overhead?” He poked his pipe at the ceiling. “They are grubbing in London now. We get whatever is left. There be more of them than us.”

“What would happen if Mr. Hanks decided to put some Londoners in here?” asked Richard, curiosity stirred.

Little William Stanley chuckled. “He’d not dare do that! If the Irish did not cut their throats in the darkmans-that is their flash lingo for night-the North Country would. Who loves London and Londoners? Tax the whole of England drier than a bog trotter at a Methodist meeting, then spend all of it in London and Portsmouth, London being where the Parliament, the Army and the East India Company are, and Portsmouth where the Navy is.”

“Burgoo. If I remember my Mr. Sykes correctly, that means we drink aqua Thames,” said Richard, getting up with a dazzling smile. “My friends with dripstones, I think we should conduct a little ceremony. Since ye accused me of being the leader, Will, follow my lead.” He put his box on the table, unlocked it with the key he kept around his neck, and pulled a large rag out of it. Once it was draped across his cropped head he began to hum musically; Mr. Handel would have recognized the tune, but nobody on the Ceres orlop did. Bill Whiting forgot his injuries to don a rag, then Will, Neddy, Taffy, and Jimmy followed suit, though they left the music to Richard. Out came Richard’s dripstone; the hum became a long, rising and falling aaaah. He passed his hands across it, bent to touch his brow to it, then scooped it up and stalked to the pump, his five acolytes behind him in emulation. Taffy had picked up the melody and sang a high counter to Richard’s baritone, notes rather than words. By now only those in the throes of fever were not watching, transfixed; William Stanley’s eyes goggled.

Luckily the pump produced a series of trickles rather than gushes; they fell into a copper kettle somone had punched a few holes in. Mr. Campbell’s filtration system did serve to confine an occasional horrible lump or tiddler fish, but was incapable of anything else. From there the water dribbled into the scuttles, and so escaped bilgeward.

With a grand gesture Richard indicated to Jimmy Price that he was to work the pump handle, and held his dripstone to catch his three pints. The others followed, Bill Whiting bowing lavishly to Jimmy before filling his dripstone as well, while Richard’s fine voice swelled into a loud string of hallelujahs. Then off back to the table, where the six objects were set in its exact center amid many gesticulations. Richard banished his acolytes to two paces behind and spread his hands, wiggling his fingers.

“King of Kings! Lord of Lords! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” he sang. “Hosannah! O Hippocrates, receive our supplications!” After a final reverential bow, he doffed his rag, folded it with a kiss and sat down. “Hippocrates!” he yelled, so suddenly that everyone jumped.

“Christ! What was that all about?” asked Stanley.

“The rites of purification,” said Richard solemnly.

The horsey little man looked suddenly wary. “Is it a joke? Are ye gammoning me?”

“Believe me, William Stanley from Seend, what all six of us are doing is no joke. We are placating Father Thames by invoking the great god Hippocrates.”

“Is this going to happen every time ye drink water?”

“Oh, no!” cried Bill Whiting, perfectly understanding the method in Richard’s madness. He was setting them apart, endowing them with special qualities, helping to preserve them and their property. How quick he was! All this out of Jimmy’s and Lizzie’s remarks about his turning filtration into a religion. Miss Molly Sykes would get to hear of it-William Stanley from Seend was a gossip, and had all day inside Ceres. “No,” he went on earnestly, “we conduct the rites of purification only on special occasions, like entering a new place of abode. It-it alerts Hippocrates.”

“Mind you,” said Will Connelly, contributing his mite, “we use the stones every time we drink water, just not with the whole ceremony. That is for the first day of each month-and when we enter a new place of abode, of course.”

“Is it witchcraft?” asked Mikey Dennison suspiciously.

“Did ye smell brimstone and sulphur? Did the water turn to blood or soot?” Richard demanded aggressively. “Witchcraft is nonsense. We are serious.”

“Oh, oh!” Stanley exclaimed, brow clearing. “I forgot! Ye are mostly from Bristol, home to every Dissenter there is.”

“Ike,” said Richard, getting up, “a word in your ear.” They moved a few paces away, every eye still on them. “Confirm our story, and next time we perform join in the chorus. If ye back us we will all keep our things-and our money. Where d’ye hide yours?”

Rogers grinned. “In the heels of my riding boots. They look low on the outside, but inside-I am up on stilts. And yours?”

“One side of every box has a thin inside lining. Those of us with coins can keep them there. They cannot rattle because of lint wadding. Will, Neddy and Bill have a few, I have more than a few, but the other boxes are empty, so if any of us acquire more money there is space for it. Yon William Stanley from Seend can be bought, but the question is, will he tell Sykes?”

The highwayman considered this carefully, then shook his head. “I doubt it, Richard. If he sings, Miss Molly will get the lot. What we have to do is convince the jockey that we only have so much-Christ, I wish we had a regular visitor from London! If we did, we could explain our wealth that way. Ye’re right about the water-it is foul. My lads and I will have to drink small beer on burgoo days and I warrant yon William Stanley from Seend can get it for us.”

Richard clapped his hand to his head. “Jem Thistlethwaite!” he exclaimed. “I think I can arrange for that visitor, Ike. Are ye of the opinion that Stanley runs an efficient postal service?”

“I am of the opinion that he runs most things efficiently.”

When Richard and his team were led on deck the next morning they understood why evacuation from the orlop had been a gradual business; Ceres had the use of a certain number of lighters, but not nearly enough, even with men jammed in, to ferry the convicts en masse to their places of work. Luckily no place of work was farther from Ceres than 500 yards, but they were water yards. The oarsmen plied their open boats with a will simply because this was better work by far than other kinds. Convicts from Censor, they were chained to the under side of the gunwales. Why do they not simply make a run for the shore and escape? Richard wondered, learning later that in days gone by they had escaped, only to be recaptured and sometimes hung.

The chief advantage of “Campbell’s academies” (as the hulks were known to their inmates) lay in the fact that they floated; very few Englishmen could swim. That fact also kept a pressed crew on board a vessel once it sailed. Richard could not swim, nor could any of his eleven friends. Which endowed them with a horror of deep water.

His belly was empty, though he had saved half his bread and cheese to eat when dawn came; the half-pint of oatmeal gruel flavored with the bitter herbs called simples he drank as soon as it had been issued to him, gone cold by then, but surely worse twelve hours later. At least Old Mother Hubbard had realized that men performing hard labor had to be fed sufficient to keep their strength up, but less than a day on Ceres had shown him that Mr. Duncan Campbell, more isolated from his superiors than Old Mother Hubbard was, cared not a rush about quality work.

The convicts destined for shore duty had already gone when Richard’s lighter ferried its complement of four dredging teams slightly downriver of the ship and somewhat closer to the shore. His dredge was the first of the four, moored by chains on both sides of both ends. It was a true barge, absolutely flat-bottomed and rectangular in shape, its hull (it had neither bow nor stern) curving out of the water at each end to make it easy to run aground and climb on and off when unloading. Being new, its interior was empty, its paintwork unsullied.

They stepped over the gunwale of the lighter onto a five-foot-wide plank platform which ran down one side of the barge only; no sooner was Jimmy Price, the last man, out of it than the lighter shoved off and headed for the next dredge some 50 yards away. After a wave for Ike and his youngsters, they turned to inspect the premises. One end of the barge was a simple shell, whereas the other had a broad deck on which stood a small wooden shack complete with iron chimney stack. Feeling the impact of men coming aboard, their keeper strolled out of his domain puffing away at a pipe of tobacco, a bludgeon in his other hand.

“We do not,” said Richard instantly and courteously, “speak the flash lingo, sir. We are from the West Country.”

“S’all right, cullies, that don’t worry me.” He inspected them. “Ye’re new to Ceres.” As no one volunteered to comment on this observation, he continued to converse with himself. “Ye’re not that young, but ye’re real strong-looking. Might get a few tons of ballast out o’ ye before ye weaken. Any of ye dredgemen?”

“No, sir,” said Richard.

“Thought not. Any of ye swim?”

“No, sir.”

“Best not lie to me, cullies.”

“No lies, sir. We do not come from swimming parts.”

“What about I throw one of ye in to find out, eh?” He made a sudden move at Jimmy, who squealed in terror, then on each of the others in the row, watching their eyes. “I believe ye,” he said then, returned to his shack, disappeared inside and emerged with a chair, upon which he sat himself, one shin resting on the other leg’s knee, pipe blowing a delectable cloud their way. “Me name is Zachariah Partridge and ye call me Mister Partridge. I am a Methodist, hence the name, and I have been a dredger since me youth in Skegness on the Wash, which is why I do not care for flash lingo. In fact, I asked Mr. Campbell to make sure I did not get no Londoners. Wanted some Lincoln men, but West Country ain’t bad. Any of ye from Bristol or Plymouth?”

“Three from Bristol, Mr. Partridge. I am Richard Morgan, the other two Bristolians are Will Connelly and Neddy Perrott.” He pointed each man out. “Taffy Edmunds is from coastal Wales, Bill Whiting and Jimmy Price are from Gloucester.”

“Then ye know a bit about the sea.” He leaned back in his chair. “This here establishment aims at deepening the channel by dredging out the mud on the bottom with that”-he waved his hand at what looked like a giant, gape-mouthed purse-“bucket. It runs around a chain-there at your feet now, but waist level when bucket is in-which can be shortened or lengthened according to the depth of the water. Adjusted just right for this here spot, did it meself.”

Clearly enjoying giving this oration (though there seemed to be no malice in him), Mr. Zachariah Partridge spoke on. “Ye might well wonder why this spot? Because, cullies-that be a word I have picked up local-like-the Royal Arsenal over there supplies the entire army with ordnance, yet there ain’t a tenth enough wharfage for the ordnance tenders. Your colleagues in crime on shore are building the new wharves by filling in the marshes around the Warren. And we dredgemen give them their ballast, which of course they have to mix with rock, gravel and lime, else it would all wind up back in river.”

“Thank you, Mr. Partridge, for explaining,” said Richard.

“Most folk never do, do they?” He waved at the huge purse again. “That there bucket goes in water at my end and comes up where the davit is down far end. If ye do the job right, it will hold fifty pounds of mud and muck-terrible, some of the things what come up! This here barge holds twenty-seven tons of ballast, as we dredgemen refer to it. That means ye will have to dredge up one thousand, one hundred buckets of ballast to fill it. This being winter, ye’ll work six hours-they waste two hours getting ye here and back again. A good day’s work will give me twenty buckets, which is half a ton. Subtracting”he is literate and numerate, thought Richard“Sundays and allowing for another day a week for foul weather, especially this time of year, ye should fill this here establishment with ballast in about ten weeks. When it is full it is towed to the Warren, where ye’ll shovel it out before it is towed to a new spot and ye start again.”

He loves facts and figures; he is a disciple of John Wesley; he is not from London; and he enjoys what he does-particularly because he does not have to lift a finger. How then do we burrow our way into his affections, or, failing that, gain his approval? Is the degree of labor he expects from us feasible? If it is not, then we will suffer in some subtle Wesleyan way. No brute, he.

“Are we allowed to speak to you, Mr. Partridge? For instance, may we ask questions?”

“Give me what I want, Morgan, and ye’ll have no trouble from me. By that I do not mean that I will pamper ye, and if I want, I can break your arm with this here club. But I do not want to, for one good reason. I aim to stand real high in Mr. Campbell’s estimation, and to do that I need to produce ballast. I have been put in charge of this here brand-new establishment because my dredge has always produced the most ballast. You help me, and I might be willing to help you,” said Mr. Partridge, getting up. “I will now proceed, cullies, to tell ye what to do and how to do it.”

The bucket was a thick leather bag about three feet long, with a round maw of iron a little over two feet in diameter. Fused to the iron on its underside was a steel extension shaped like an oval spoon, shallow and sharp-edged. A chain was attached to either side of the iron ring and joined in a Y to the single chain which ran, uninterrupted, in a circuit from one end of the barge to the other with sufficient slack to put the bucket on the river bottom. The chain went around a winch which dropped the bag into the water at Mr. Partridge’s end; it sank under its own weight, its leather butt tethered to a rope manipulated from the barge. A geared and pulleyed davit at the other end dragged the iron maw and its steel spoon along the bottom gathering in mud. When the bucket reached the end of the run the davit exerted a vertical pull; up it came, dripping, was swung inboard by turning the davit and hung over the ballast compartment. Then, working the rope on its butt, the bag was upended and vomited its contents. It came down, empty, ran along its chain to the winch, and went over the side again for its next meal of Thames mud.

Getting used to the job took a full week, during which Mr. Partridge did not see anything like his expected half-ton a day. He was calculating upon one bucket every twenty minutes, whereas the new team took an hour. But Mr. Partridge said and did nothing, simply sat on his chair and sucked at his pipe, a mug of rum at his feet and all the activity of the great river to occupy his attention when he was not staring contemplatively at his toiling team. A dinghy was attached to the barge by a painter, which may have meant that he rowed himself ashore at the end of the day, though he seemed to spend at least some nights on board, for he bought wood for his stove and food for his larder from two of the hordes of bum boats which plied their wares around the river; his rum and his ale came from a third.

There were knacks and tricks, his team discovered from sheer experience. The bucket was prone to lift off the bottom and had to be kept down with a pole put in exactly the right place, which was the top of the iron ring, only three inches wide. A matter of sense and feel in water owning no visibility thanks to churning mud. Four men worked the davit and rope, one man the winch, and one man the pole keeping the bucket down. The brute force was almost all on the davit, though the pole man had to be as strong as he was skillful. Mr. Partridge having done and said nothing, Richard was left to sort out the team. Jimmy Price on the winch, which required the least brawn. Bill, Will and Neddy on the davit, Taffy on the rope, and himself on the pole.

Slowly, slowly, slowly their speed increased, as did the amount of ballast in the bucket. When they achieved their twenty buckets in a six-hour day a week after they had started, a genial Mr. Partridge broke out six big tankards of small beer, a pat of butter and six one-pound loaves of fresh, yeasty bread.

“I knew ye were good when I set eyes on ye. Leave men to find their own way, I always says. I get a bonus of five pounds for every load of ballast I deliver to the Warren-ye rub my back and I will rub yours. Give me more than twenty buckets a day and I will give ye lunch-a quart of small beer and a pound of good bread each. Ye’re all thinner than ye were a week ago, cannot have that. I have a reputation to look after.” He stroked the side of his nose reflectively. “Mind, could not buy ye lunch every day.”

“We might be able to contribute funds,” said Richard. “As a Bristol man, I know the smell of that tobacco-Ricketts. Must be very expensive in Woolwich-even in London, I daresay. It may be possible for me to have some of Ricketts’s best sent to you, Mr. Partridge, if ye can give me an address. I fear that were it to go to Ceres, Mr. Sykes would have it.”

“Well, well!” Mr. Partridge looked tickled. “Find me just one shilling every day, and I will provide lunch. And send the tobacco to me at the Ducks and Drakes tavern in Plumstead.”

At first Ike Rogers and his team did not fare happily, but after a few conferences with Richard and his men they quickened their dredging and came to the same kind of arrangement with their dredgeman, a Kentishman from Gravesend.

The worst feature of the work was its filthiness. From hair of head to soles of feet, they were plastered in blackish, stinking mud; it coated the chain as it ran waist-high along the platform, it dripped from the bucket, it splashed everywhere as the bucket was emptied. By the end of that first week the brand-new barge looked the twin of any of the older rigs.

When Richard realized that once a day two of them would have to descend into the ballast compartment to shovel the gluey mud and its grisly inclusions away from the mound under the bucket, he made a decision.

“Has anybody a sore foot? A cut, a scratch, a blister?”

“Aye, me,” said Taffy. “Corn looking nasty, Da.”

“Then tonight after we wash I will give ye some of my salve, but it means that ye cannot dig until the foot is better. I am not going into that slime in my shoes. In fact, as soon as it gets a little warmer, I will ask Mr. Partridge”-avidly listening-“if we may put our shoes on his deck and work in bare feet. In the meantime, we do our turns on the shovels in bare feet.”

At least they could wash, and did so every evening the moment they were let into the Ceres orlop; for the non-Bristolians the sight of what the Thames dredge brought up was horrifying enough for them to be eager to emulate Richard-strip off, soap and wash at the pump, muddy chains, fetters and all. And they had a nice arrangement with William Stanley from Seend, who had Mikey wash their clothes during the day. Wash them all, thanks to Mr. Duncan Campbell the canny Scotch contractor.

For that worthy had issued new clothing-he did this about once a year-to the denizens of his academies four days after the men from Gloucester had arrived: two pairs of coarse, heavy linen trowsers, two checkered linen shirts of the same weight, and one unlined linen jacket. The trowsers, the Gloucester men discovered to their delight, might feel like hacksaws along their seams, but they came down past their ankles, though on Richard and Ike they were shorter. Ike’s height had shrunk several inches, but due to their newness in Ceres, no one save his Gloucester companions had noticed, and mum was the word when he switched to shoes.

Wearing trowsers, the men of ordinary height did not have to pad their fetter cuffs, and did not need to wear stockings to keep out the cold Thames winds. Richard, a dab hand with a sewing needle thanks to Lizzie Lock, obtained enough cloth off the ends of Jimmy’s trowsers to add to his own, while Ike paid Stanley a mug of gin for his offcuts and had Richard sew them on. What a wonderful invention trowsers were! Theirs were rust-colored, hard-wearing, eminently washable and differently constructed from breeches, which came only to the knees. Whereas breeches opened at the waist on a broad flap held by buttons along the waistband, trowsers opened up the front seam with buttons in a vertical row from a man’s genitals to his waist. A great deal easier to take a piss in too.

Mr. James Thistlethwaite arrived on the second Sunday after they were admitted to Ceres. He appeared in the doorway warmly shaking Mr. Sykes’s hand, stepped across the threshold and stared at the crimson prison in disbelief.

“Jem! Jem!”

They embraced unashamedly, then held each other off to look. Close enough to ten years had gone by since last they met, and those ten years had wrought many changes in both men.

To Richard, Mr. Thistlethwaite looked mighty prosperous. His wine red suit was of the finest cloth, his buttons mohair, his head bewigged, his hat trimmed with gold braid, his fob gold, his watch gold, his black top boots absolutely gleaming. The paunch was noble, the face fuller and therefore less lined than it used to be, though the grog blossoms on his bulbous nose had flowered to an empurpled perfection. Beneath the shock, the look in his watery, bloodshot blue eyes was full of love.

To Mr. Thistlethwaite, Richard was like two men moving within each other, one surfacing briefly, the other taking his place for an equally short span of moments. The old Richard and the new, inextricably intertwined. Christ, he was handsome! How had he managed that? The stubble of hair seemed actually to have turned blacker than its old very dark brown, and his skin, weathered though it was, had the same flawless look ivory did. He was shaven and very clean, and the Sunday shirt open on his chest showed the ridges and columns of fatless muscle. Did he not feel the cold? This blood-red chamber was freezing, yet he wore no coat and seemed comfortable. His shoes and stockings were clean-oh, the fetters! Chains on patient, peaceful Richard Morgan. That did not bear thinking of. In his grey-blue Morgan eyes lay most of the change; they had used to be a little dreamy, a little smiling in a serious way, and always very gentle of expression. Now they were more directly focused on whatever he looked at, did not dream, did not smile, and were definitely not gentle of expression.

“Richard, how much you have grown! I had expected all kinds of changes, but not that.” Mr. Thistlethwaite pinched the bridge of his nose and blinked.

“William Stanley from Seend, this is Mr. James Thistlethwaite,” Richard said to a wizened, tiny little man who hovered. “Now give us some elbow room. Everybody leave us in peace, hear? I will do the introductions later. Privacy,” he said to Jem, “is the scarcest commodity aboard Ceres, but it can be obtained. Sit down, do!”

“Ye’re the head man!” Jem said in wonder.

“No, I am not. I refuse to be. It is just that occasionally I have to be a trifle forceful-but we all do that when provoked. The head man is a notion full of sound and fury, and I am no more a talker now than I was in Bristol. Nor do I want to lead any man other than myself. Needs must, Jem, is all. They are sometimes like sheep, and I would not have them go to the slaughter. Save for Will Connelly, another Bristolian from Colston’s under a good Head, they have little skill in using their wits. And the true difference between Will Connelly and me can best be summed up as Cousin James-the-druggist. Had I not known him and had he not been so good to me, the Richard Morgan ye see now would not exist. I would be like those poor Liverpudlian Irish down there, a fish out of water.” He smiled brilliantly, leaned forward to take Mr. Thistlethwaite’s hand. “Now tell me all about yourself. Ye look exceeding grand.”

“I can afford to look exceeding grand, Richard.”

“Did ye marry money like any true Bristolian?”

“Nay. Though I do make my money from women. Ye’re looking at a man who-under a nom de plume, naturally-writes novels for the delectation of ladies. To read novels is the latest female passion-comes of all this teaching them to read but not letting them do anything, y’see. Between bookshops, episodes published serially in magazines and the lending libraries, I do amazing better than ever I did out of lampooning. The counties are stuffed with genteel reading females in every vicarage, parsonage, manor and hotel, so my audience is as big as Britain, for ladies in Scotland and Ireland read also. Not only that, but I am read in America too.” He grimaced. “I do not, however, drink Cave’s rum anymore. In fact, I have eschewed rum entirely. I now drink only the best French brandy.”

“And are ye married these days?”

“Nay again. I have two mistresses, both of whom are married to other, lesser men. And that is enough about me. I want to hear about you, Richard.”

Richard shrugged. “There is little to tell, Jem. I spent three months in the Bristol Newgate, exactly a year in Gloucester Gaol, and am now two weeks into however long I shall be aboard Ceres. In Bristol I sat and read books. In Gloucester I lumped stones. On Ceres I dredge the Thames bottom, which is a nothing to one weaned on Bristol mud at low tide. Though all of us find it hard when we bring up the corpse of a baby.”

They passed then to the important consideration of money and how to safeguard hoards of gold coins.

“Sykes will be no trouble,” said Jem. “I slipped him a guinea and he rolled over to present me with his belly like any other cur. Be of good cheer. I will come to an arrangement with Mr. Sykes to buy ye whatever ye need by way of food or drink. That goes for your friends too. Ye look as trim as a sloop, but ye’re thin.”

Richard shook his head. “No to the food, Jem, and small beer only. There are almost a hundred men in here, give or take the few who die regularly. Each man watches hawkish to see how much the pursers dish out to every other man. All we need to do is preserve our existing money and perhaps beg more from you if it becomes necessary. We have been lucky enough to encounter an ambitious dredgeman and the Thames is full of bum boats. So we eat well at midday on our dredge for tuppence a man, everything from salt fish to fresh vegetables and fruit. Ike Rogers and his youngsters are succeeding in taming their dredgeman too.”

“It is hard to credit,” said Jem slowly, “but ye’re full of purpose and almost enjoying this. ’Tis the responsibility.”

“ ’Tis belief in God sustains me. I still have faith, Jem. For a convict, I have had remarkable good luck. A woman called Lizzie Lock in Gloucester, who kept my belongings safe and taught me how to ply a needle. She turned cartwheels over the hat, by the way, and I cannot thank ye enough. We miss the women, for reasons I explained to ye in one of my letters, as I remember. I have kept my health and sharpened my wits. And here in this assemblage of womanless brutes, we have managed to carve a niche for ourselves, thanks to an avaricious jockey and an ambitious dredgeman who combines Methodism with rum, tobacco and laziness. Queer bedfellows, but I have known queerer.”

His dripstone was standing on the table near him, and, it seemed absently, he put his hand out to stroke it. A curious hush and murmur arose among those in the crimson chamber, intrigued enough at the advent of a visitor to watch in hang-dog envy. But the reaction of all those men to Richard’s idle gesture was a mystery Mr. Thistlethwaite’s sensitive nose itched to explore.

“Provided he has a little money, avarice is a convict’s best friend,” Richard went on, putting his hand back on top of its fellow. “Here, men come far cheaper than thirty pieces of silver. ’Tis folk like the Northumbrians and Liverpudlians I feel sorriest for. They have not a penny between them. So they mostly die of disease or pure hopelessness. Some of them it seems God has a purpose for-they survive. And the Londoners upstairs are astonishing hardy, with all the cunning of starving rats. They live by different rules, I think-perhaps gigantic cities are entire countries in themselves, with their own way of looking at life. Not our way, but I discount a lot of what I hear on the Ceres orlop about the Londoners. The Ceres orlop contains the rest of England. Our gaolers are venal and deviant into the bargain. And then ye must stir the likes of William Stanley from Seend into the mixing bowl. He milks the way this place functions better than a dairymaid her pet cow. And we all of us from Hanks and Sykes through the rum coves, snitches, hicks, cullies and boozers to the dying wretches on that platform over there walk a rope across a pit of fire. One inch too far either way, and we fall.” He drew a breath, surprised at his own eloquence. “Though no one in his right mind could call what we play a game, it does share some things in common with a game. There is plenty of wit involved, but also some luck, and it seems God has given me luck.”

It was during this speech that Mr. Thistlethwaite suddenly understood much about Richard Morgan that had always teased and tormented him. Richard had spent his life in Bristol as a raft, pushed and pulled at the direction, sometimes the whim, of others. Despite his griefs and disasters, he had remained that passive raft. Even William Henry’s disappearance had not provided him with a rudder. What Ceely Trevillian had done for him was to pitch him into an ocean wherein a raft would founder. An ocean wherein Richard perceived his brethren as incapable of floating, and therefore took them upon his own shoulders. Prison had given him a star to steer by, and his own will had swelled sails he did not even know he possessed. Because he was a man who had to have someone to love more than he loved himself, he had undertaken the task of saving his own people, those he had brought with him from Gloucester Gaol into alien and storm-tossed seas.

After the introductions had been performed, the fourteen convicts (William Stanley from Seend and Mikey Dennison had to be included) settled to hear what Mr. James Thistlethwaite could tell them about what might happen to them.

“Originally,” said the purveyor of reading delights for most of Britain’s literate women, “those on board Ceres were destined for a place called Lemaine, which, as I understand, is an island in the midst of a great African river about the size of the island of Manhattan in New York. Where undoubtedly all of ye would have died of some pestilence within a year. ’Tis Edmund Burke ye have to thank for striking Lemaine and all Africa from the list of places thought possible transportation destinations.

“Aided and abetted by Lord Beauchamp, last March and April Burke launched an attack on Mr. Pitt’s schemes to rid England of its felons. Better, cried Burke, to hang the lot of ye than ship ye off to some place where death would be a great deal slower and a sight more painful. After the inevitable parliamentary committee of enquiry, Mr. Pitt was forced to abandon Africa, probably forever. Hence attention turned to the suggestion of Mr. James Matra-that Botany Bay in New South Wales might be a good place. Lord Beauchamp had made a huge fuss over the fact that Lemaine Island was outside the limits of English territory in an area the French, the Spanish and the Portuguese all frequent for slaving. This Botany Bay, on the other hand, though it certainly lies outside the limits of English territory, is also not anybody else’s territory. So why not kill two birds with the same stone? The raven-a far bigger, nastier feathered specimen-is the likes of you, costing England vast sums with little or no return. The quail-a demure and most toothsome little sweeting-is the possibility that, after a few years of outlay, Botany Bay will turn a fat profit for England.”

Richard got out a book and tried to show the group whereabouts Botany Bay was on one of Captain Cook’s maps, but the only faces to display any kind of comprehension belonged to the literate men.

Mr. Thistlethwaite tried. “How far is it from London to, say, Oxford?” he asked.

“A long way,” offered Willy Wilton.

“Fifty miles or thereabouts,” said Ike Rogers.

“Then Botany Bay is two hundred times farther from London than Oxford is. If it takes a week for a wagon to journey from London to Oxford, then it would take two hundred weeks for the same wagon to make the journey from Oxford to Botany Bay.”

“But wagons cannot travel on water,” Billy Earl objected.

“No,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite patiently, “but ships can, and much faster than wagons. Four times as fast at least. That means a ship will take a year to go from London to Botany Bay.”

“That is excessive,” said Richard, frowning. “Ye should know that from Bristol days, Jem. In a good wind a ship can sail near two hundred miles in a single day. Allowing for time spent in ports of call as well as periods of standing and tacking, the time might be as few as six months.”

“Ye’re splitting hairs, Richard. Be it a mere sixmonth or a whole twelve-month, Botany Bay is not only on the far side of the globe, but on its underside as well. And I have had enough. I am off.” Suddenly sapped, Mr. Thistlethwaite rose to his feet.

As well that they are the infinitely patient Richard’s burden! Were they mine, he thought, banging loudly on the door to be let out, I would side with Edmund Burke and hang the lot of them. I can see neither rhyme nor reason in this Botany Bay experiment. It smacks of utter desperation.

“Adieu, adieu!” he cried as the gigger dubber on duty dubbed the gigger for his benefit. “We shall meet anon!”

“Mr. Thistlethwaite is a great swell,” said Bill Whiting as he usurped the departed visitor’s place alongside Richard. “Is he your London informant, Richard my love?”

The old nickname jarred. “Do not call me that, Bill,” he said a little sadly. “It reminds me of Gloucester Gaol’s women.”

“Aye, it does. I am sorry.” He was not the old, cheeky Bill these days; Ceres tended to reject jokers. He thought of something else. “At first I thought that Stanley from Seend would become one of us, but he is only with us for what he can get.”

“What could ye expect, Bill? You and Taffy made off with live animals. Stanley from Seend was caught skinning a dead one. He will always fleece what cannot fight back.”

“Oh, I do not know,” said Bill with a dreamy look at variance with his perky round countenance. “If you and Mr. Thistlethwaite are only half right, ’tis a long sail from here to Botany Bay. A spar might fall on Stanley’s pate. And would it not be a sight for sore eyes if Mr. Sykes met with an accident before we go?”

Richard took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Do not even think such things, Bill, let alone say them! There is only one way any of us can ever hope to see an end to misery, and that is to endure it without ever attracting attention to ourselves from those who have the power to increase our misery. Hate them, but bear them. All things end. Ceres will. And so, sooner or later, will Botany Bay. We are not young, but we are not old either. Do ye not understand? In surviving, we win! That alone must concern us.”

And so time wore on, marked by the little circuits of the dredge bucket’s chain-in, out, around. Piles of stinking mud. The stinking orlop of Ceres. The stinking bodies hustled out once a week for burial in a piece of waste ground near Woolwich that Mr. Duncan Campbell had acquired for the purpose. New faces kept arriving; some of them went to the waste ground. Old faces went to it too, but none belonging to Richard or to Ike Rogers.

A certain camaraderie existed between everyone on the orlop, born out of tribulations in common, remotest between groups who could hardly communicate. By the end of the first seven months every face which lasted was known, nodded to, gossip and news exchanged, sometimes simple pleasantries. There were fights, some very serious; there were feuds, some very bitter; there were a certain number of snitches and toadies like William Stanley from Seend; and, rarely, someone died violently.

As in any other enforced congress of very different kinds of men, the grains of single individuals and the various layers of similar weight shook until they settled into stability. Though a monthly repetition of Handelian and Hippocratic invocations served to keep other groups too wary to encroach on their domain, both Richard’s and Ike’s groups achieved confraternity as well as an exclusivity. They were not bully boys or pranksters or predators, but nor were they the prey of those who were. Live and let live: it was a good rule to go by.

Mr. Zachariah Partridge found no reason to alter his opinion of his dredging crew; as the days lengthened and the hours of labor increased, he was paid his £5 bonus for a full load more frequently than he had dreamed possible. These fellows made a ritual out of keeping fit by working and eating well.

Like everybody else on that populous river from the bum boat denizens to the hulk gaolers, he was well aware that Botany Bay loomed. This disposed him to be generous with his crew because he knew that were they chosen to sail, his chances of getting another crew half as good were slender. The Ricketts tobacco had arrived, together with a small keg of wonderful rum. So when Richard and his men wanted the services of a bum boat vending sometimes peculiar wares, he indulged them provided that the dredge scooped in its stipulated amount of ballast. Fascinated, he watched them accumulate duck clothing, sea soap, shoes, scissors, good razors, strops, whetstones, fine-toothed combs, oil of tar, extract of malt, underdrawers, thick stockings, liniment, string, stout sacks, screws, tools.

“Ye’re touched in the noddle,” he observed. “D’ye expect to be Noahses?”

“Aye,” said Richard solemnly. “That is a fitting comparison. I doubt there are any bum boats at Botany Bay.”

News came from Jem Thistlethwaite whenever he had more of it. In late August he was able to tell them that Lord Sydney had written formally to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury and notified them that 750 convicts were to be ferried to a new colony in New South Wales likely to be situated at Botany Bay. They would be in the custody of His Majesty’s Royal Navy and under the direct control of three companies of marines, who were to sign on for three years’ duty dating from arrival in New South Wales.

“They will not simply throw ye ashore,” he said, “so much seems certain. The Home Office is awash in lists, from convicts to rum, and tenders for the contracts. Though,” he grinned, “it is to be an expedition of male convicts only. They plan to provide women from islands in the vicinity, no doubt in the same manner as Rome obtained women from the Sabines on the Quirinal. Which reminds me that I must give ye the existing volumes of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.”

“Christ!” Bill Whiting exclaimed. “Indian wives! But what sort of Indians? They come in all varieties from black through red to yellow, and fair as Venus or ugly as Medusa.”

But in October Mr. Thistlethwaite informed them that there were to be no Indian wives. “The Parliament was not amused at a reference to the rape of the Sabine women, for all could see that the Indian men would not offer their women as a gift, or maybe even sell them. The Do Gooders shrieked a treat. So women convicts will sail too-how many, I do not know. As forty of the marines are taking their wives and families, it has been agreed that husbands and wives in prison together will both go. There are some such, apparently.”

“We knew a pair in Gloucester,” said Richard. “Bess Parker and Ned Pugh. I have no idea what has become of them, but who can tell? Perhaps they have been chosen if both live… Yet what a shame to send men like Ned Pugh and women like Lizzie Lock when by next year they will have served five of their seven years.”

“Do not hope for Lizzie Lock, Richard. I hear that the women to go will be drawn from the London Newgate.”

“Ugh!” was the general reaction to that.

A week later their fount of knowledge was back.

“A governor and a lieutenant-governor have been appointed for New South Wales. A Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy is to be the governor, and a Major Robert Ross of the Marine Corps is his lieutenant-governor. Ye’ll be in the hands of the Royal Navy, and that means ye’ll be introduced to the cat. No naval man, even a marine sort, can live with out the cat, and I do not mean a four-legged creature which says meow.” He shuddered, decided to change the awful subject. “Other appointments have been made. The colony is to exist under naval law-no elected government whatsoever. The judge-advocate is a marine, I believe. There will be a chief surgeon and several assistant surgeons, and of course-how could ye live without a good, stoutly English God-a chaplain. For the moment, however, it is all hush-hush. No public announcement has been made.”

“What is this Governor Phillip like?” asked Richard.

Mr. Thistlethwaite guffawed. “He is a nobody, Richard! A true naval nobody. Admiral Lord Howe was very disparaging when he heard, but I imagine he had some young nephew in mind for a thousand-pound-a-year commission. My source is a very old friend-Sir George Rose, Treasurer of the Royal Navy. He informs me that Lord Sydney chose this Phillip personally after a long conversation with Mr. Pitt, who is determined this experiment will work. An it don’t, his government will face defeat on something as piddling as the prison issue. All those felons with nowhere to go, and ever more of them into the bargain. The problem is that transportation is linked to slavery in zealous, reforming Do Gooder minds. So when a Do Gooder espouses the one, all too often he espouses the other.”

“There are similarities,” said Richard dryly. “Tell me more about this Governor Phillip, who will be the arbiter of our fates.”

Mr. Thistlethwaite licked his lips, wishing he had a glass of brandy. “A nobody, as I have already said. His father was a German and taught languages in London. His mother had been the widow of a naval captain, and was a remote connection of Lord Pembroke’s. The boy went to a naval version of Colston’s, so they were poor. After the Seven Years’ War he was put on half-pay and chose to serve in the Portuguese navy, which he did with distinction for several years. His biggest Royal Navy command was a fourth-rater, in which he saw no action. He has come out of a second retirement to take this present commission. Not a young man, nor yet a very old one.”

Will Connelly frowned. “It sounds distinctly odd to me, Jem.” He sighed. “In fact, it sounds very much as if we are to be dumped at Botany Bay. Otherwise the governor would be-oh, I do not know, a lord or an admiral at the very least.”

“Give me the name of one lord or admiral who would consent to go to the far ends of the earth for a mere thousand pounds a year, Will, and I shall offer ye England’s Crown and Scepter.” Mr. James Thistlethwaite grinned evilly, the lampoonist in him stirred. “A refreshing trip to the West Indies, perhaps. But this? It is very likely a death trap. No one really knows what lies at Botany Bay, though all are assuming it is milk and honey for no better reason than that to think thus is convenient. To be its governor is the sort of job only a nobody would accept.”

“You still have not told us why this nobody,” said Ike.

“Sir George Rose suggested him originally because he is both efficient and compassionate. His words. However, Phillip is also a rarity in the Royal Navy-speaks a number of foreign tongues very fluently. As his German father was a language teacher, he probably absorbed foreign tongues together with his mother’s milk. He speaks French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian.”

“Of what use will they be at Botany Bay, where the Indians will speak none of them?” asked Neddy Perrott.

“Of no use at all, but of great use in getting there,” said Mr. Thistlethwaite, striving manfully to be patient-how did Richard put up with them? “There are to be several ports of call, and none of them are English. Teneriffe-Spanish. Cape Verde-Portuguese. Rio de Janeiro-Portuguese. The Cape of Good Hope-Dutch. It is a very delicate business, Neddy. Imagine it! In sails a fleet of ten armed English ships, unannounced, to anchor in a harbor owned by a country we have warred against, or gone a-poaching in its slaving grounds. Mr. Pitt regards it as imperative that the fleet be able to establish excellent relations with the various governors of these ports of call. English? No one will understand a word of it, not a word.”

“Why not use interpreters?” asked Richard.

“And have the dealings go on through an intermediary of low rank? With the Portuguese and the Spanish? The most punctilious, protocolic people in existence? And with the Dutch, who would do Satan down if they thought there was a chance to make a profit? No, Mr. Pitt insists that the governor himself be able to communicate directly with every touchy provincial governor between England and Botany Bay. Captain Arthur Phillip’s was the only name came up.” He rumbled a wicked laugh. “Hurhur-hur! It is upon such trivialities, Richard, that events turn. For they are not trivialities. Yet who thinks of them when the reckoning is totted up? We envision the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh-ruffler, freebooter, intimate of Good Queen Bess. A flourish of lace handkerchief, a sniff at his pomander, and all fall at his feet, overcome. But quite honestly we do not live in those times. Our modern world is very different, and who knows? Perhaps this nobody, Captain Arthur Phillip, has exactly the qualities this particular task demands. Sir George Rose seems to believe so. And Mr. Pitt and Lord Sydney agree with him. That Admiral Lord Howe does not is immaterial. He may be First Lord of the Admiralty, but the Royal Navy does not rule England yet.”

The rumors flew as the days drew in again and the intervals between Mr. Zachariah Partridge’s £5 bonuses stretched out, not helped by two weeks of solid rain at the end of November which saw the convicts completely confined to the orlop. Tempers shortened, and those who had come to some sort of arrangement with their shore supervisors or dredgemen whereby they ate extra food on the job found it very hard to go back to Ceres rations, which had not improved in quality or quantity. Mr. Sykes trebled his escort when obliged to be in the same area as a large group of convicts, and the racket upstairs on the Londoners’ deck was audible on the orlop.

They had ways of passing the time; in the absence of gin and rum, chiefly by gambling. Each group owned at least one deck of playing cards and a pair of dice, but not everyone who lost (the stakes varied from food to chores) was gallant about it. Those who could read formed a substratum; perhaps ten per cent of the total number of men exchanged books if they had them or begged books if they did not, though ownership was jealously guarded. And perhaps twenty per cent washed their linen handouts from Mr. Duncan Campbell, stringing them on lines which crisscrossed the beams and made walking for exercise even harder. Though the orlop was not overcrowded, the available space for walking limited the shuffling, head-bowing parade to about fifty men at any one time. The rest had either to sit on the benches or lie on the platforms. In the six months between July and the end of December, Ceres lost 80 men of disease-over a quarter of the entire convict complement, and evenly distributed between the two decks.

Late in December Mr. Thistlethwaite was able to tell them more. By now his audience had greatly enlarged and consisted of all who could understand him-and that number had grown too, thanks to propinquity. Only the slowest rustics among the orlop inmates by now could not follow the speech of those who spoke an English somewhat akin to that written in books, as well as grasp a great deal of flash lingo provided the users of it spoke slowly enough.

“The tenders have been let,” he announced to his listeners, “and some tears have been shed. Mr. Duncan Campbell decided that he had sufficient on his plate with his academies, so ended in not tendering at all. The cheapest tender, from Messrs. Turnbull Macaulay and T. Gregory-seven-and-a-third pence per day per man or woman-did not succeed. Nor did that of the slavers, Messrs. Camden, Calvert & King-Lord Sydney did not think it wise to use a slaving firm for this first expedition, though again the price was cheap. The successful tender is a friend of Campbell’s named William Richards Junior. He describes himself as a ship’s broker, but his interests go well beyond that. He has partners, naturally. And I take it that he is cooperating closely with Campbell. I should tell ye that the lot of the marines to go with ye is not enviable, for they are included in the tender price on much the same rations save that they get rum and flour daily.”

“How many of us are to go?” asked a Lancastrian.

“There are to be five transports to carry about five hundred and eighty male convicts and almost two hundred female, as well as about two hundred marines plus forty wives and assorted children. Three storeships have been commissioned, and the Royal Navy is represented by a tender and an armed vessel which will function as the fleet’s flagship.”

“What are they calling ‘transports’?” asked a Yorkshireman named William Dring. “I am a seaman from Hull, yet it is a sort of ship I do not know.”

“Transports convey men,” said Richard levelly, meeting Dring’s eyes. “In the main, troops to an overseas destination. I believe there are some such, though they would be old by now-the ones used to send troops to the American War had already been used during the Seven Years’ War. And there are coastal transports for ferrying marines and soldiers around England, Scotland and Ireland. They would be far too small. Jem, were there any specifications in the tender for transports?”

“Only that they be shipshape and capable of a long voyage through uncharted seas. They have, I understand, been inspected by the Navy, but how thoroughly I could not say.” Mr. Thistlethwaite drew a breath and decided to be honest. What was the point in giving these poor wretches false hopes? “The truth, of course, is that there was not a rush to offer vessels. What Lord Sydney had counted on, it seems, was an offer from the East India Company, whose ships are the best. He even dangled the bait of the ships’ proceeding directly from Botany Bay to Wampoa in Cathay to pick up cargoes of tea, but the East India Company was not interested. It prefers that its ships call in to Bengal before proceeding to Wampoa, why I do not know. Therefore no source of vessels proven sound for long voyages was at Lord Sydney’s disposal. It may well be that naval inspection consisted in culling the best out of a poor lot.” He looked around at the dismayed faces and regretted his candor. “Do not think, my friends, that ye’ll be embarked upon tubs likely to sink. No ship’s owner can afford to risk his property unduly, even if his underwriters allowed him the opportunity. No, that is not what I am trying to tell ye.”

Richard spoke. “I know what ye’re trying to say, Jem. That our transports are slavers. Why should they not be? Slaving has fallen off since we have been denied access to Georgia and Carolina, not to mention Virginia. There must be any amount of slavers looking for work. And they are already constructed to carry men. Bristol and Liverpool have them tied up along their docks by the score, and some of them are big enough to hold several hundred slaves.”

“Aye, that is it,” sighed Mr. Thistlethwaite. “You are to go in slavers, those of you who will be picked to go.”

“Is there any word of when?” asked Joe Robinson from Hull.

“None.” Mr. Thistlethwaite looked around the circle of faces and grinned. “Still, ’tis Christmastide, and I have arranged for the Ceres orlop to be issued with a half-pint of rum for all hands. Ye will not have the chance for any on the voyage, so do not guzzle it, let it sit a while on your tongues.”

He drew Richard to one side. “I have brought ye another lot of dripstones from Cousin James-the-druggist-Sykes will hand them over, have no fear.” He threw his arms about Richard and hugged him so tightly that none saw the bag of guineas slip from his coat pocket into Richard’s jacket pocket. “ ’Tis all I can do for ye, friend of my heart. Write, I beg, whenever that may be.”

“My thumbs are pricking,” said Joey Long over supper on the 5th of January, 1787, and shivered.

The others turned to look at him seriously; this simple soul sometimes had premonitions, and they were never wrong.

“Any idea why, Joey?” asked Ike Rogers.

Joey shook his head. “No. They are just pricking.”

But Richard knew. Tomorrow was the 6th, and on each 6th of January for the past two years he had begun the move to a new place of pain. “Joey feels a change coming,” he said. “Tonight we get our things together. We wash, we cut our hair back to the scalp, we comb each other for lice, we make sure no item of clothing or sack or bag or box is unmarked. In the morning they will move us.”

Job Hollister’s lip quivered. “We might not be chosen.”

“We might not. But I think Joey’s thumbs say we will.”

And thank you, Jem Thistlethwaite, for that half-pint of rum. While the Ceres orlop snored, I was able to secret your guineas in our boxes, though no one knows save me.