An Eye of the Fleet by Richard Woodman

required for duty.’
    The girl knew instinctively the identity of the intruder and struggled to her knees. ‘No! No!’ she protested.
    Morris grinned. ‘Are you questioning my orders?’
    The girl faced Morris, biting her lip.
    ‘I can report you for obstructing an officer in the execution of his duty. The punishment is a floggingЕ your husband is already guilty of disobeying orders in having a hammock out of the nettingsЕ’ He spat the words in her face. This threat to his wife revived Sharples who pulled his wife gently aside.
    ‘W-what orders, Mr Morris?’
    ‘Man the launch.’
    The topman hesitated. He was not in the boat’s crew. ‘Aye, aye;’ then turning to his wife he whispered ‘I’ll be back.’
    The girl collapsed sobbing on the deck and one of the older women, to whom midshipmen were small fry, put an arm around her. A stream of filth followed Morris down the deck.
    The launch was absent three hours. After a while the girl, disgusted with the scenes on the gun-deck, sought fresh air and light on deck. Finding her way to the forward companionway she groped her way to the starboard side where she made a little bright patch against the coils of black hemp belayed and hung upon the pinrail.
    Staring out over the bright waters of Spithead she touched the life quickening within her. Her heart was full to bursting with her misery. The horrors of her week-long journey rose again before her at a time when she had thought to be burying them in happiness. Shame for her man and for herself, shame for the unborn child and for the depths of degradation to which one human could subject another welled up within her. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
    Her eyes stared out unseeing at the ships lying to the tide. She was a small, broken piece of the price Britain paid for its naval puissance.
    It was some time before old Blackmore noticed the lonely figure forward. He had relieved Keene of the deck and soon sent Drinkwater to turn the woman below again. Blackmore, trained in the merchant service, retained his civilian prejudice for refusing women leave to come on board. He sighed. In the merchant service a master gave his crew shore leave. If they wished to visit a brothel that was their affair, but they could be relied upon to return to their ship. The navy’s fear of desertion prevented any liberty and resulted in the drunken orgy at present in progress between decks. If the old sailing master could do nothing to alter the crazy logic of Admiralty he was damned if he would have the upper deck marred by the presence of a whore.
    Drinkwater approached the girl. In her preoccupation she did not hear him. He coughed and she turned, only to blench at his uniform. She drew back against the coils of hemp imagining Morris’s threat of a flogging about to be carried out.
    ‘Excuse me ma’am,’ began Drinkwater, unsure of himself. The woman was obviously distressed. ‘The Master’s compliments and would you please to go belowЕ’
    She looked at him uncomprehending.
    ‘Please ma’am,’ the midshipman pleaded, ‘None of you, er, ladies are permitted above decks.’ She began to perceive his meaning and his embarrassment. Her courage rallied. Here was one she could answer back.
    ‘D’you think I’m one of them ‘arlots?’ she asked indignantly. Drinkwater stepped back and the girl gained more spirit from his discomfiture.
    ‘I’m a proper wife, Mrs Sharples to the likes o’you, and I journeyed a week to see my ‘usband TomЕ’ she hesitated and Drinkwater tried to placate her.
    ‘Then, please ma’am, will ye go to Sharples and bide with him.’
    She rose in scorn. ‘Aye willingly, Mister Officer, if ye’d return him to me but he’s out thereЕ’ she waved over the side, ‘off in a boat, an’ me with child and a week on the road only to find ‘im beat and, andЕ’ here she could not bring herself to say more and her courage failed her. She stepped forward and fainted into the arms of a confused