White had wandered away to discover how the crew could load cargo through an intervening prison; a look below showed him that the tables and benches in the prison had been removed to reveal six-foot-square hatches beneath them exactly in line with those on the upper deck. Winched inboard on davits, even the gigantic water tuns were dropped straight into the orlop hold. He came back with his air of brisk superiority very much to the fore, brushed Balmain and Donovan aside, and issued orders.
The 36 starboard prisoners were despatched into the prison to mop, scrub and sponge the place with vinegar before fumigation with gunpowder; the 36 larboard convicts were sent down into the marines’ quarters below steerage, there to do the same.
“Christ!” squeaked Taffy Edmunds. “Poor little Davy Evans was right—we convicts are in heaven compared to this, though ’twould be nice to sleep in hammocks.”
The hold floor was awash in bilge overflow which stank worse than the prison compartment and released gases which had turned the pewter buttons on those brave scarlet coats as black as coal. The ’tween decks was scarcely six feet, which meant bending to pass under the beams, as on Ceres.
Thus it was that Richard and the larboard convicts were made privy to what took place between the irresistible force and the immovable object; Major Ross and Captain Sinclair came to grips in the marines’ hold under the fascinated eyes of 36 men. This stupendous battle was heralded by the arrival of the Major at the bottom of the wooden ladder from the crew’s quarters above.
“Get your bloated blubber down here, ye torpid bag of shit!” Ross bellowed. “Come and look, damn ye!”
And down the ladder on dainty booted feet came Captain Duncan Sinclair, for all the world like a glob of syrup trickling down one side of a smooth string. “No one,” he puffed, reaching the deck below, “speaks to me like that, Major! I am not only captain of this ship, but also one of her owners.”
“Which only makes ye all the more guilty, balloon-arse! Go on, look around ye! Look at where ye expect His Majesty’s Marines to live for God knows how many months! Almost three months already! They are sick and very afraid, for which I do not blame them one wee bit! Their dogs are better off—so are the sheep and pigs ye have aboard to pile on your own overloaded table! Sitting up there like King Muck of Dunghill Palace with a night cabin, a day cabin and the great cabin all to yourself, and my two officers in an airless cupboard! Eating with the privates! It will change, Sinclair, or I will personally spill your swollen guts into this liquid shit!” He put his hand on his sword hilt and looked perfectly capable of following the threat with the deed.
“Your men stay here because I have no other place to stow them,” said Sinclair. “As a matter of fact, they are occupying valuable space my firm contracted to fill up with more useful cargo than a lot of thieving, rum-swilling twiddle-poops not clever enough to get into the Navy nor rich enough to get into the Army! Ye’re the entire world’s leavings, Ross, you and your marines! ’Tain’t for nothing they call an empty bottle a marine! Cluttering up my crew’s galley, letting two dozen dogs shit from bowsprit to taffrail—look at my boot! Dog turd, Ross, fucken dog turd! Two of my hens dead, four of my ducks, and one goose! Not to mention the ewe I had to shoot because one of the fucken bulldogs got its teeth in and would not let go! Well, I shot the fucken dog first, ye Lowlands bastard without a mother!”
“Who’s the Lowlands bastard, ye Glasgow bitch’s by-blow?”
A pause ensued as both the combatants searched wildly for a new and mortally wounding thing to say and the convicts stood as still as statues for fear they might be noticed and sent on deck.
“The Lords of the Admiralty accepted Walton’s tender, which was specific about Alexander’s appointments,” said Sinclair, eyes two blazing slits. “Blame your superiors, Ross, do not blame me! When I heard I was to have forty marines as well as two hundred and ten convicts, I was not a happy man! The marines stay right here, and ye can like or ye can lump it.”
“I do not like it and I will not lump it, ye elephant’s arse! Ye will shift my lads up into steerage and accommodate my officers properly or I will have words to say from Governor Phillip all the way to Admiral Lord Howe and Sir John Middleton—not to mention Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt! Ye have two choices, Sinclair. Either put your crew down here and my marines where they are, or move the stern bulkhead of the prison twenty-five feet forward. Now that the fleet has Prince of Wales, the displaced convicts can go to her. And that,” said Ross, brushing his white-gloved hands together, “is that, suet-face!”
“It is not!” Sinclair snapped through his teeth; the sight of so much adiposity in such a ferment was Homeric. “Alexander was contracted to transport two hundred and ten convicts, not one hundred and forty convicts and forty marines in a space belonging to seventy more convicts! The purpose of this expedition is not to cosset a parcel of scabby marines, but to get as many of England’s felons to the far end of the earth as possible. I will keep my entire contracted complement of convicts and—if ye like—I will take full responsibility for their confinement through the agency of my crew. It is very clear and simple, Major Ross. Move your precious marines off Alexander. I will lock the convicts in the prison permanently and feed them through the hatch bars for the duration, which does away with the need for marine guards.”
“Lord Sydney and Mr. Pitt would not approve,” said Ross, on safe and sure ground. “They are both modern men who insist that the convicts be delivered at Botany Bay in better condition than ye used to deliver your slaves to Barbados! If ye lock these men in for as much as a year, they will half of them be dead on arrival and the other half fit only for a Bedlam. Therefore,” he continued, looking as malleable as a cast-iron thirty-two-pounder, “it might behove ye to build yourself a poop roundhouse and a forecastle within the next month. Ye may then move yourself one deck up to live in solitary splendor and turn your quarterdeck over to my officers. Do not forget, Sinclair, that ye have also to accommodate the ship’s surgeon, the naval agent and the contractor’s agent, all of whom have quarterdeck rank. They will fill it without your presence, ye cheeseparing bile bag! As for your crew—put them where a crew belongs, in a forecastle. My enlisted men can then move up into steerage and I will undertake to provide them with a galley stove on which they can cook for themselves and the convicts. Thus your crew can keep their galley, you can build yourself a new one in your roundhouse, the officers can use the quarterdeck one, and Alexander will turn into something like a ship rather than a slaver, ye fat flawn!”
The grey slits of eyes had changed during this masterly speech, from furious rage to a more natural cunning. “That,” Sinclair said, “would cost Walton’s at least a thousand pounds.”
Major Ross turned on his heel and mounted the ladder. “Send the bill to the Admiralty,” he said, and disappeared.
Captain Duncan Sinclair looked at the ladder, then suddenly seemed to see the silent ring of men around him for the first time. “Ye need a bucket chain to get rid of this overflow,” he said to Ike Rogers curtly, “and while ye’re about it, lift that hatch over there and start baling out the starboard bilge. Some more of ye can bale out larboard. Tip fresh sea-water in and bale until the bilge water is clear. I can smell it on the quarterdeck.” He stared at the ladder again. “You, you and you,” he said to Taffy, Will and Neddy, all much of a height, “get your shoulders under my arse and push me up this fucken ladder.”
Once the sound of his progress upward had faded, the convicts collapsed into shrieks of laughter.
