Morgan's Run

Alexander’s two longboats and her jollyboat had been taken off the deck and put in the water, so there was room for Richard to move his three West Country groups out of the way. Confusion was his initial impression; knots of scarlet-coated marines stood about looking like thunder, two sashed marine officers and two corporals ma

What happens now? As there was no one to ask, he watched the confusion grow ever worse. Long before all eleven lots of convicts were on the deck the place resembled a menagerie—an impression added to by dozens of goats, sheep, pigs, geese and ducks ru

“Soldiers,” whispered Billy Earl from rural Wiltshire.

“Marines,” corrected Neddy Perrott. “White facings on their coats. Soldiers have colored facings.”

Finally a first lieutenant of marines descended in a snappy fashion from the quarterdeck and surveyed the scene with a nasty look in his pale blue eyes. “My name,” he bellowed with a burr in his voice, “is First Lieutenant James Shairp of the 55th Company, Portsmouth! Ye convicts are under my command and will answer to no one except His Majesty’s Marines. It is our duty to feed ye and keep ye from a

Though Scotch convicts were nonexistent, Richard recognized the speech pattern by now, particularly Shairp’s constant use of “ye.” The old form of “you” was slowly disappearing; he used it himself, but not when “you” needed special emphasis. So this marine officer was a Scotchman; he had heard that most marine officers were.

Sergeant Knight and Corporal Fla

“Get over!” barked the sergeant.

They got over and stood in an aisle of deck less than six feet wide. Looking forward into the darkness, they were on the left, or larboard, side. Fixed to the larboard hull were two tiers of platforms very similar to those on Ceres, save that these were double. Each was firmly braced by stanchions and had a curved outer edge which followed the line of the hull, and they were actually quite beautifully made. No one would be able to dismember them in a fit of lunacy. At ten-foot intervals the platforms were partitioned off; the top tier was a little over two feet below the upper deck, the bottom tier was a little over two feet above the lower deck, and the distance between the two tiers was a little over two feet. As even Ike Rogers could comfortably stand upright in the aisle between the beams, Richard calculated that the ’tween decks height was close to seven feet; his head cleared the beams themselves with half an inch to spare.

“These are yer cots,” said the sergeant, a villainous individual who gri

“Richard Morgan, number two hundred and three,” said Richard, put a foot on the lower platform and hauled himself and his goods onto the top platform, the other five following; they were still chained together. Ike’s six were directed into the adjoining top “cot,” partitioned off from theirs by thin boards down the middle of a beam that ran from larboard to starboard hull. Stanley, Mikey De

“Cozy,” said Bill Whiting with a rather hollow chuckle. “I always wanted to sleep with you, Richard my love.”

“Shut up, Bill! There are plenty of sheep on deck.”

Six of them were crammed into a space ten feet long, six feet wide and twenty-seven inches high. All they could do unless they lay down was to sit hunched over like gnomes, and, sitting like gnomes, each of them tried to cope with leaden despair. Their boxes and sacks occupied room too—room they did not have. Jimmy Price began to weep, Joey Long and Willy Wilton in the next cot were howling—oh, dear God, what to do?

Across the three tables and six benches in the middle was another double tier of platforms on the starboard side; even craning into the darkness did not reveal how far the chamber extended or what it really looked like. A steady trickle of chained men were dropping onto the middle table, then were herded into the aisle and inserted into a cot. When six of their eleven groups had been put on the larboard side, Sergeant Knight started directing men to starboard and again filled up the cots from the stern bulkhead forward—up, up, down, down.

Over the worst of his shock, Richard summoned the will to act. Did he not, all of them would be in tears, and that he could not have. “All right, first we deal with our boxes,” he said crisply. “For the moment we stack them upright against the hull—there will be just enough room between them to put our feet. ’Tis lucky we put the solids in the boxes and filled at least one sack with clothes and rags, because a soft sack will be a pillow.” He felt the coarse matting under him and shuddered. “No blankets as yet, but we can bundle for warmth. Jimmy, stop crying, please. Tears do nothing to help.” He eyed the beam where the partition was between them and Ike’s cot. “That beam will take extra things once I manage to get out a screwdriver and hooks—cheer up, we will manage.”

“I want my head against the wall,” said Jimmy, snuffling.

“Definitely not,” said Will Co