Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian Page B

arise. A numerous world, however, for although it had at first been considered that half a dozen convicts would serve as a sufficient blind to cover Mrs Wogan's transportation - to make it seem something other than the most exceptional measure that in fact it was - some of the other bodies or departments concerned had been unable to resist adding to the number, so that it had grown to well above a score, with a superintendent, a surgeon, and a chaplain, besides the usual guards or turnkeys, to look after them. And all these people, the convicted and the unconvicted, inhabited the forward part of the orlop and the forepeak, under the waterline, where they could not get in the way of the working or the fighting of the ship, and where, he had hoped, they could be forgotten. The chaplain and the surgeon were allowed to walk the quarterdeck, but the remaining free men, including the furiously indignant superintendent, were obliged to take the air on the forecastle; while they also messed together in what had been the bosun's cabin.
    'That is where the women are stowed,' he observed, nodding towards the carpenter's store.
    'Are there many?' asked Stephen.
    'Three,' said Jack, 'and another farther aft. Mrs Wogan is her name.' He collected himself, cried, 'Below there! Show a glim,' set his foot on the ladder and ran down. Forward of the bitt-pins stretched a curving, triangular space, whitened, barred with iron across its after end, and lit with three dim lanterns. Underfoot lay a mass of straw, floating a foot deep in bilge and liquid filth that heaved with the heaving of the ship, and all about it lay men in the various attitudes of extreme prostration; some few squatted against the step of the foremast; many were still uttering the hoarse sounds of sea-sickness; all were beyond caring where they lay or crouched; and all were wearing irons. The stench was appalling, and the air so foul that when Jack lowered his lantern the flame guttered, burning faint and blue. The Marines were lined up outside the cage: inside, near the door, stood their sergeant and a couple of guards, standing over the body of the superintendent. The man's head had been battered to a pulp and it was clear to Stephen that he had been dead some time, probably since the beginning of the storm.
    'Sergeant,' said Jack, 'jump aft - Mr Larkin and the mate of the hold. Mr Pullings, twenty swabbers immediately. The channels and pump-dales are choked with all this straw: they must be cleared. Sailcloth and the sailmaker for the body. Do you wish to examine it, Doctor?'
    'No further, sir,' said Stephen, bending low and rolling back an eyelid. 'I know all I need to know. But may I suggest that these men should be carried up at once, and that a wind-sail should be installed? This air is mortal.'
    'Make it so, Mr Pullings,' said Jack. 'And let a hose be shipped in the head, to lead down through the manger-scuttle: that will give us a clear run to the forward well. Tell the carpenter to leave everything and repair the forward chain-pump.' Turning to the civilians, he said, Do you know who did this?'
    No, they said, they did not: they had looked at all the irons, as far as they could, what with being hardly able to move themselves and having no orders, like, but in all this wet and filth, why, one pair of irons was much the same as another. In a low voice, jerking his head towards a huge raw boned man who lay almost naked, utterly indifferent as the lapping surge turned his body from side to side, one of them said, 'I think it was him, sir. The big 'un. And his mates.'
    Mr Larkin, the master of the Leopard, came running down the ladder, followed by the mate. Jack cut their exclamations very short, gave a number of sharp, clear orders, and turning to the hatchway roared,
    'Swabbers, bear a hand there, swabbers. Bear a hand, God damn you all,' in a voice that could be heard on the poop.
    As soon as the sickening work was well in hand, he told the senior turnkey to follow him,