Morgan's Run

“I do not believe the butter,” said Jimmy Price, chin shining.

“Nor did we,” said Donovan dryly. “It seems the butter loaded for the officers was put in the wrong sort of firkins—perishables are supposed to go into double-lined containers, but the contractors cut corners as usual and used ordinary ones. So the butter is on the turn and the whole fleet has been issued with it to get rid of it before it spoils. Then the coopers will get to work to make proper butter firkins—which ca

Bellies full, they stumbled back to their cots and slept until the church bells woke them at midday Angelus. Shortly after that they ate again, goat’s meat, fresh corn bread and raw onions.

Richard gave Ike the fresh, buttered bread roll he had purloined the evening before and hidden in his shirt. “Do try to eat it, Ike. The butter on it will help ye.”

And Ike did eat it; after three days and four nights at anchor he was begi

“Come look!” cried Job Hollister, excited, sticking his head inside the hatch.

“Ain’t she grand?” he asked when Richard appeared on deck. “I never saw a ship half her size in Bristol, even at Kingsroad.”

She was a Dutch East Indiaman of 800 tons and dwarfed Sirius, though she sat a little lower in the water—on her way home, Richard decided, laden with the spices, peppercorns and teak the Dutch East Indies produced in such abundance—and probably with a chest of sapphires, rubies and pearls in her captain’s strong-box.

“Going home to Holland,” said John Power, pausing. “I would bet she’s lost a fair number of her crew. Our East Indiamen do, at any rate.” Mr. Bones beckoned, Power scampered off.

Secure in the knowledge that the official inspection was not going to be repeated, the marines had settled down to drinking now that Sergeant Knight’s rather impromptu court martial had concluded with no more than a disciplinary rap over the knuckles; privates like Elias Bishop and Joseph McCaldren had had a hand in Alexander’s “grog rebellion” as well, had expected 100 licks of the cat, and were profoundly glad that marine officer sympathy was more with them than with Captain Duncan Sinclair. The two lieutenants had hardly been aboard, busy dining with their fellows on better ships or dickering for goats and chickens in the Santa Cruz marketplace, not to mention journeying inland to see the beauties of a fertile tableland on the mountain’s flank.

Some of the convicts had managed to obtain rum as well, and Scarborough was selling Dutch gin she had picked up floating at sea off the Scilly Isles. To English palates, very harsh and bitter; English gin was as sweet as rum, the main reason why so many men (and women) had rotten teeth. Tommy Crowder, Aaron Davis and the rest in the cot below were snoring on rum they had bought from Sergeant Knight; in fact, the snores which emanated from the Alexander prison were louder than they had been since embarkation. On Friday only those like Richard who preferred to keep their money for more important things were on deck at all, and on Friday night the ship’s timbers reverberated.

They were five hours into Saturday morning’s daylight when the very haughty and superior first mate, William Aston Long, came looking for John Power.

The faces turned to him blankly were patently i

Several marine privates, stupid from drink, began yelling that they had better get their fucken arses on deck, and look lively! Startled, the convicts tumbled out of their cots or from around the tables; they were expecting to be fed at any moment.

Captain Duncan Sinclair emerged from his roundhouse, his face pouting in extreme displeasure.

“My dad had a sow looked just like Captain Sinclair,” said Bill Whiting audibly enough for the thirty-odd men around him to hear. “Don’t know why all the huntsmen talk about wild boars—I never knew a wild boar or a bull could hold a candle to that awful old bitch. She ruled the yard, the barn, the coops, the pond, the animals and us. Evil! Satan would have given her a wide berth and God did not want her either. She would charge at the drop of a hat and she ate her piglets just to spite us. The boar near died of fright when he had to service her. Name was Esmeralda.”

From that day on Captain Duncan Sinclair was known to the entire complement of Alexander as “Esmeralda.”

Heads aching, tempers ruined, those marines not ashore were put to turning the prison inside out, and when it yielded nothing, to turning every other place inside out. Even rolled sails on spars were searched for John Power, who had disappeared. So, when someone thought to look, had Alexander’s jollyboat.

Major Ross came aboard during the afternoon, by which time the hapless marines had managed to look as if they were halfway sober. Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp had been summarily ordered back from Lady Penrhyn, where they were in the habit of dining with marine captain James Campbell and his two lieutenants. Because of the “grog rebellion” Ross was in no mood to suffer more trouble from this most troublesome of the fleet’s eleven ships. The convicts kept dying, the marines were the worst assortment of malcontents the Major had ever encountered, and Duncan Sinclair was the bastard son of a Glasgow bitch.

“Find the man, Sinclair,” he said to that worthy, “else your purse will be the lighter of forty pounds. I have reported this matter to the Governor, who is not pleased. Find him!”

They did, but not until after dawn on Sunday morning, with the fleet ready to sail. Enquiries aboard the Dutch East Indiaman had revealed that Power had arrived alone in the Alexander jollyboat and begged for work as a seaman on the voyage to Holland. As he was wearing the same kind of clothes as the many English convicts the Dutch captain had seen on the English ships, he was courteously refused and told to be on his way. Not before someone, moved at the sight of his terrible grief, had given him a mug of gin.

It was the jollyboat the search parties from Alexander and Supply found first, tied by its painter to a rock in a deserted cove; Power, sound asleep thanks to sorrow and Dutch gin, was curled up behind a pile of stones, and came quietly. Sinclair and Long wanted him given 200 lashes, but the Governor sent word that he was to be put into double irons and stapled to the deck. The stapling was to last for twenty-four hours, the irons were to remain on at the Governor’s pleasure.

Alexander put out to sea. Chips, the ship’s carpenter, stapled John Power to the deck by screwing down his manacles and fetters, thus pi

The weather was fine, su

On the morrow it was still there, just farther away, and on the third day out, with the wind freshening and the sea getting up, it looked as if the straight and steady hand which had drawn the horizon had been suddenly jarred to produce a tiny fang. Teneriffe was 100 miles away when the horizon became perfect again.