“Why do they call them Portuguese men o’ war?” asked Joey Long, yielding his place to Richard, whose turn it was to nurse Ike.

“Because Portuguese ships of the line are painted that same shade of blue,” said Richard.

“Not black with yellow trim like ours?”

“If they were painted the same as ours, Joey, how would anybody tell friend from foe? The moment there is powder smoke all about, ’tis very hard to distinguish flags and badges. Now take a turn on deck, there’s a good fellow. Ye spend too much time below.” Richard sat beside Ike, stripped off the shirt and trowsers and began to sponge him down.

“Balmain is an idiot,” Ike croaked.

“Nay, he is simply at his wits’ end. He don’t know what to do for the best.”

“Does anybody? I mean anybody at all, anywhere at all?” Ike had leached away to skin stretched over bones, a collection of sticks wrapped in parchment; his hair had fallen out, his nails had turned white, his tongue was furred, his lips cracked and swollen. Though Richard found the most horrifying talismans of his illness in his nude, shrunken genitals; they looked as if they had been tacked on like an afterthought. Oh, Ike!

“Here, open your mouth. I have to clean your teeth and tongue.” Touch gentle, Richard used a screwed-up corner of rag moistened in filtered water to do what he could to make the highwayman’s day more bearable. Sometimes, he thought as he worked, it is worse to be a big man. If Ike were the size of Jimmy Price, it would all have been over long since. But there was a sizable mountain of flesh there once, and life is tenacious. A very few give up without a protest, but most cling to whatever is left like limpets to a rock.

The smell was worsening and its source was the bilge water. Though he had been a naval surgeon for seven years and had staffed a surveying expedition to the west African coast at the time when the Parliament had still thought of using Africa as a convict dumping ground, Balmain found Alexander a task beyond his abilities. At his insistence wind sails had been installed in the suffocating corners of the prison—useless canvas funnels supposed to deliver a good draft of air through a hole bored in the deck. Captain Sinclair had protested vigorously for such a torpid man, but the surgeon would not back down. Perturbed because Alexander was now nicknamed the Death Ship, Sinclair gave way and ordered Chips to deface his deck. But very little if any fresh air came prisonward, and men continued to come down with fever.

Thin though he was, Richard was well. So too were his cot mates and the four others in Ike’s cot. Willy Dring and Joe Robinson had abandoned below deck entirely, which left three others (they had lost a man outside Portsmouth) to spread out in a space designed for six at twenty inches apiece. The cot belonging to Tommy Crowder and Aaron Davis had such a good thing going with Sergeant Knight that they lived very comfortably. Despite these good indications, Richard’s instincts told him that the new outbreak of disease was going to be a bad one.

“Save for whoever is nursing Ike, we move onto the deck and we catch as much rain-water for ourselves as we can,” he ordered.

Jimmy Price and Job Hollister began to whimper, Joey Long to howl; the rest looked mutinous.

“We would rather stay below,” said Bill Whiting.

“If ye do, ye’ll catch the fever.”

“You said it yourself, Richard,” Neddy Perrott snapped. “As long as we filter our water and keep everything clean, we will live. So no deck. ’Tis fine for you with your skin, but I burn.”

“I will come up,” said Taffy Edmunds, gathering a few things. “You and I have to practice for the concert. We cannot let our ship be the only one unable to get a concert together. Look at Scarborough. She has a concert every week. Corporal Flannery says that some of the acts are so polished they have to be seen to be believed.”

“Scarborough,” said Will Connelly, “might have more convicts than we do these days, but the reason they are well is because they are spread between the lower deck and the orlop. We’re jammed in half the space Scarborough has because we’re carrying cargo too.”

“Well, I for one am very glad that Alexander has cargo in her orlop,” said Richard, giving up the fight, which he could see was pointless. “Look what happened to the marines when they were one deck farther down. Scarborough’s bilge pumps work. It all goes back to the master. They have Captain Marshall, we have Esmeralda, who don’t care if his bilge pumps work as long as his table groans. Alexander’s bilges are absolutely fouled.”

By the 4th of July another man had died and there were thirty men on the hospital platforms. It was, thought Surgeon Balmain, as if the whole of Alexander’s hull was packed solid with corpses in the worst stage of decomposition. How could these unfortunate wretches live amid the putrescence?

The next day two orders came from Sirius. The first said that John Power was to come out of his irons; the moment he was unlocked he was back to report to Mr. Bones, nothing having been said to forbid his working. The second order displeased Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp hugely. The water ration for every man in the fleet (women and children got less) was to go from four pints to three pints, be he sailor, marine or convict. One pint was to be issued at dawn to all convicts, two pints in mid afternoon. A detail to be under the supervision of a marine officer, with two marine subordinates and two convicts as witnesses; the marines and convicts were to be changed each and every time to prevent cheating or collusion. The holds were to be locked, the water tun in use locked and kept under strict guard. Custody of the keys went to the officers. Additional water for the coppers and kettles was to be issued in the morning, together with water for the animals. Animals drank copiously; cattle and horses got through ten gallons per day per head.

Three days later the calms and storms vanished and the southeast trades began to blow. This despite the fact that the ships had not yet crossed the Equator. Spirits picked up immediately, though the fleet was hard-pressed to maintain its course in terms of real miles, which were less than 100 a day. Alexander ploughed into a huge head swell, her rigging creaking, parallel as usual with Scarborough the concert ship, Sirius and Supply not far behind, Friendship out in front, the swell over her bows in masses of spray she shook off as a dog does water.

When the silver buttons on Johnstone’s and Shairp’s scarlet coats began to blacken and the smell was pervading the quarterdeck almost as badly as below deck, the two lieutenants and Surgeon Balmain went as a deputation to see the captain, who received them and dismissed their complaints as nonsense. What concerned him was that the convicts were stealing his bread and ought to be flogged within an inch of their lives.

“You ought,” said Johnstone tartly, “to thank your stars that they are not stealing your rum!”

The dirty teeth showed in a smile of pure pleasure. “Other ships may have trouble with their rum, sirs, but my ship does not. Now go away and leave me alone. I have given the starboard bilge pump to Chips to fix, it is not working properly. That, no doubt, accounts for the state of the bilges.”

“How,” said Balmain through his teeth, “can a carpenter fix an object whose capacity to work depends upon metal and leather?”

“Ye had better pray he can. Now go away.”

Balmain had had enough. He flagged Sirius and received permission to take a boat to Charlotte and the Surgeon-General, John White. With Lieutenant Shairp in command, the longboat headed away into the swell; Charlotte, a heavy sailer, was lagging far behind. The trip back to Alexander was frightful, even for Shairp, who never turned a hair in the worst seas. So when Surgeon White clambered up Alexander’s ladder he was not in a good mood.