“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.”
