SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. Page 10

  Best of all, Joe thought, those who came for him would be only too glad to get the job over. Not one of them would risk opening the bladder of infection and disease which the shroud represented. If all was not as it should be, Surgeon Doyle would take the blame, not they.

  The stitching took him a little while, not least because the light was so faint. At length he finished the work, squirmed himself over on his back, and lay still with the pearl-handled razor closed in his fist. If they should discover the trick now, he thought, he would try to cut his way through them with the blade rather than surrender. Better to die than to endure what was in store for him on the Indomitable.

  He knew that a corpse would not be left overnight and that the burial party would do its work before sunset. With no means of calculating time, he guessed that it was about twenty minutes later when he heard voices beyond the Surgeon-Major's office and the door opened. Several men came into the narrow space of the bows. One of them made a sound of nausea and disgust in his throat at the faint sweet smell which had begun to seep from the corpse on the bunk. None of them doubted that its source was within the shroud.

  There was a sudden movement as two of the men lifted the plank which formed the top of the trestle-table. As a further precaution against contamination, they were not even to touch the shroud. The dead man would lie upon this wooden bier in the cutter until the time came when he was tipped from it into the sea. Joe listened for the voices of Surgeon Doyle or Claire. He heard neither and he guessed that Doyle had taken her elsewhere for his enjoyment. Then he felt his heart beat in his throat with apprehension as one of the officers looked at the figure on the bunk and spoke.

  'No use flaying his back, Master-at-Arms! The scum's dead!'

  But there was only a grunt in reply and Joe felt the procession moving onward through the ward with its invalids in their two rows of beds. He was in a creamy twilight which filtered through the threads of the canvas, listening to the rattle of keys, the opening of the iron-barred gate at the far end of the deck. Then he heard the call of gulls and the whisper of the calm evening tide.

  They kept him level as the funeral party descended the gangway steps. He had once seen it done, the bearers at the lower end of the board holding it high above their heads. Then he felt the movement of the cutter, the rocking of the trim little boat as the men of the party stepped into it and settled themselves. His mind was possessed by two conflicting thoughts. The first was that he would be dead in a few moments more, trapped fifty feet below the rippling waters of The Race or drowning on its surface beyond reach of land. The other was that he would be free, walking the Haymarket with its doxies in their merino gowns and the waving feathers in their pork-pie hats. He thought of the rustling silks, the soft voices, and then he prayed.

  'Give way! Together!'

  As the officer commanding the detail gave his order, the oars of the first-class convicts cut the waves with a rhythmic wash of spray. Joe felt the cutter emerge from the lee of the Iphigenia into the bucking swell of open water. There was not another word spoken for several minutes while he lay and breathed as shallowly as he could manage. Sea wind whipped and snapped at a loose corner of the canvas. Someone touched it and he heard the solid impact of iron shot being set down as one of the men roped it to the shroud. 'Oars up!'

  .They had evidently reached the spot, and for an instant there was a great stillness. But as he listened Joe heard a sound, the purling of water close by and further off a long continuous roar. He thought of The Race, the great tidal swirl, and for the first time his fear was greater than his hope.

  'Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.' The officer in command was yapping out the burial service, the speed and the shudder of his voice testifying to a chill in the evening wind. 'He cometh up and is cut down like a flower. . .' The words were new to Stunning Joe, who had never heard anything like them in his life. But even to his uninformed mind there was no mistaking what came presently.

  'We therefore commit his body to the waves, in sure hope. . .'

  What it was that the officer hoped, Joe never discovered. The plank was upended and he felt himself going backward, head first. The shroud hit the water, with the force of an explosion in his ears. Desperately, he drew a deep last breath, filling his lungs until they ached. Then the creamy twilight was gone. There was darkness, sudden and bitter cold, the roaring and booming of unfathomable depths.

  9

  Like a madman in a strait-jacket, Stunning Joe fought against the heavy swathes of wet canvas. The thick cloth plastered itself over his face and round his arms as he sank deeper and more slowly into the dark tide. A noise of thunder filled his ears as the blood gathered in his head and he pressed the air frantically back into his lungs. In the moment of hitting the water he had somehow lost his grip on the smooth pearl handle of the razor. Now, in a convulsive frenzy, he scrabbled against the wet canvas to find it again.

  His fingers touched the hard smoothness. To ease the pain in his lungs he released the first precious bubbles of air as he jacked the blade open. He stabbed at the canvas and found to his horror that the thin steel made no impact. The folds of sailcloth were so wet and slack that they presented no resistance to the edge of the razor. Vomiting air again, he clawed at the canvas stitching, found it, and then began to cut desperately at the waxed thread.

  At length he managed to thrust his head clear of the open shroud, kicking and wriggling to free himself from it completely. The struggle had seemed to last for several minutes but it was a far shorter time. He was nowhere near the sea bed. Below him, the weighted cloth peeled away, sinking to its last resting place. Stunning Joe had always imagined the depths of the sea to be a wonderland of green and blue, like the water-show at the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. Instead he found himself in the darkest night, choking as the first taste of brine entered his mouth and scorched his lungs. He struck upward to the surface.

  Abruptly, he broke the waves and drew in the cold air, retching to clear the salt water from his windpipe. He had feared that the men in the cutter would be close enough to see him. But they had buried him almost in the last of the twilight, and in any case the drift of the sea had carried him from them as he sank. Joe could make out the shape of the cutter across the darkening water. It was fifty yards or more away, pulling for the gloomy sides of the hulks which rode against the dusk sky. The officers, sitting in the stern, had their backs to him. At their oars, the first-class convicts were too preoccupied by their labour to scan the surface of the flood tide. Had they done so, they would have seen nothing but a small dark shape bobbing among the waves as Joe's head appeared above the surface. In any case, the thought of a corpse released by the shroud and floating on the tide would have been enough to keep them rowing all the harder.

  At the age of eight, Joe O'Meara had been a 'mud lark', scavenging the muddy shores of the Thames at low tide. His first companions were watermen and sailors. Before he was full grown, he had learnt to swim with the best of them. That alone might prove his salvation now.

  For several minutes he trod water, taking care not to splash the surface until the cutter was well clear of him. At the same time, he tried to get his bearings.

  At his back he could still hear the distant roaring of The Race. Yet with the shadows gathering and the wind growing chill, the burial party had dropped him short of it. Even in a cutter with a full crew they had no wish to be caught in the cross-tides after dark. Instead of taking him out beyond Portland Bill, they had gone to one side. He was just as far from the convict hulks but in the calmer water which was enclosed by the right angle of Portland with its isthmus and the main sweep of Weymouth eastward to Melcombe Regis.

  Stunning Joe located the red lights of Portland quay and the new breakwater, measuring them against another blob of red which he judged to be the pier at Weymouth itself. Between them and beyond, the gaslights of the esplanade made golden paths over the crumpled water. He began to calculate his chances.

  The
Weymouth shore was further off, perhaps two miles away, but it was a secure landfall. By dawn he would have entered a house, helping himself to clothes and money as easily as if they had been laid out for his choice. The dark rock of Portland, which rose closer at hand, promised recapture and vengeance. Even if he could get safely ashore and find clothes or money, the guards across Chesil Bank stood between him and the mainland. The body in the bunk of the Iphigenia might be buried next day as his own. Or it might not. If Surgeon Doyle was sober enough to notice the deception, there would be no road out of Portland for Joe O'Meara.

  Slowly, conserving his energy for a long ordeal, he struck out towards the further blob of red light, where the mainland esplanade of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis began. The distance was far beyond any which he had swum before. Paddling like a dog, he had learnt to stay afloat for half an hour at a time in the waters of the Thames. To cover so great a distance in a specific direction was another thing altogether.

  Yet as he moved, Joe felt the tide bearing him on its flood into the great bay of Portland harbour and the Weymouth shore. For the time being it was running in his favour. He had no idea when it might turn, carrying him further out to his death in the churning currents of The Race. Even at the flood, it was not taking him in the precise direction he had chosen. The long channel swell broke across Portland Bill, its waves swept eastward, so that Stunning Joe found himself carried along the shoreline rather then towards it.

  From time to time he stopped, easing his tired arms by treading water and letting the sea bear him unresistingly. At first it seemed that he was no closer to land than when he had begun, and then he saw that he was moving in, under the lee of Portland. The line of golden light along the esplanades had now fragmented into separate points of brilliance, like an embroidered pattern. Still it was too far, a distance beyond anything he could cover before the first menacing pull of the receding tide.

  Earlier he had thought the summer sea was warmer than the evening air above it. Now, as he struck out wearily again, his arms were chilled and growing numb from cold and fatigue. He stopped to rest them, treading water again, much sooner than he had intended. But this would never get him safe on land. Grinding his teeth, prepared to weep with the frustration of it all, he thrashed forward with his arms again, thrusting their slow and aching discomfort from his thoughts.

  It was no use. A few minutes later he had stopped again, his limbs in a shimmering dance just keeping him afloat. For all Stunning Joe's agility, his small wiry body was ill-suited to the long endurance of the sea. He was nearer, much nearer to land, than when he had begun. But there was a mile of dark and restless water between him and the pinpricks of golden light, where men and women dined or took their ease. The reflections danced on the sleek shifting surfaces of the waves, as though mocking his fatigue and terror.

  With a roar that carried anger as well as desperation, Joe struck out again, clawing away the water in a last fury of physical effort. It .carried him a hundred yards, perhaps more, before he could go no further. Then he knew he was done for. He had heard that the gentle slope of the Dorset sands enabled a man to get his footing quarter of a mile out to sea, and stand with the water no higher than his chin. However that might be, there was no ground under him now and none that he could ever reach. His head lay back on the water as his arms and legs paddled feebly.

  'Help me!' he shrieked. 'Help me!'

  But his voice sounded tiny, even to him, in the great vast-ness of the sea. He turned on his belly, clawing again but making no progress. And then a wave slapped against his face with enough force to drive the water into his mouth. He choked and spat, still snatching at the flood as though it would offer him support. Another wave broke over his head, and then another with greater force. He knew suddenly that the tide had changed and that, for all his struggling, it was carrying him further and further out to sea. If he could stay afloat long enough, he would hear presently the roaring cross-tides of The Race growing ever louder at his back. But he could hear nothing for the moment above his own screams which were draining him of strength and breath simultaneously.

  'Help me! For the love of God! Help me-e-e!'

  But the waves slapped harder across his face and he felt the first pull of the tide that would draw him backward and downward. He cried out again and listened for the roar of the currents crossing.

  ‘I’ll help you, Stunning Joe,' said a quiet voice. 'That's what I'm here for.'

  10

  He was dead then, he thought, hearing either the voices of heaven or the last flickering madness in his own brain. In a vision, it seemed that the arms of mercy were lifting him from the cold sea and laying him at last on something firm. And then the vision faded as he began to retch again, spewing out water where he lay. No one spoke again. There was a steady creaking, like a tavern sign being swung in the wind. The sea had gone and there was darkness everywhere. Stunning Joe felt himself sliding into unconsciousness and made no attempt to resist it.

  When he opened his eyes, two men were lifting him by his arms and legs, carrying him across shingle which crunched under their boots. He could not see clearly enough to make out who they were or where they were taking him in the darkness. Indeed, it was only piece by piece that he recalled what had just happened to him — the shroud, the burial and the long ordeal of the tides. A gate opened, he smelt hollyhocks and wallflowers in the warmth of an enclosed garden.

  Dazzled by lights, he felt himself carried upstairs and laid on warm linen. There was a scent of lavender and a girl's voice among the others. Soon it was dark again and he was alone. The warmth overcame him with the ease of chloroform. He could not have stirred a limb to save himself from being returned to the Indomitable. The weight of his eyelids seemed greater than all the power of the sea. He heard a tiny sound, the turning of a key in a lock, and then he slept deeply.

  No one came to wake him. He opened his eyes the next morning in a sunlit room, still alone. There was little enough furniture. A china basin and pitcher stood on a plain table, and there was a small wooden chair beside the bed. It was a servant's attic, he guessed, the boards uncarpeted and the window small. He got to his feet and walked unsteadily across the floor. There were bars on the little window, quite as formidable as those on the portholes of the hulks. Not that Joe could have made his escape even if the window had opened. Either the trousers of his prison clothes had been lost in the sea, or else they had been taken from him by his rescuers. At all events, he was now completely naked.

  He looked down at the scene below. The house was one of the Georgian villas which lined the shore beyond the regimented grandeur of the esplanade. There was the little garden, as he had remembered it, with a high wall and a wooden door leading to the pebble beach. At intervals, on either side, were similar detached houses, imitated from Regency designs with pilasters and wrought-iron balconies. To the west lay the grand front of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, the bathing-machines drawn up by the water's edge and several striped tents along the top of the beach. The stone paving which edged the shore was now shimmering in the summer heat and the sea sparkled like tinsel.

  Further out rose the great rock of Portland with the dark prison hulks moored in its shelter. Joe turned away from the sight and went back to the bed. He sat down and thought that whatever lay in store for him here, it could hardly be worse than the obscenity of the convict transports.

  His movements had evidently been heard. A key scraped in the lock of the door and the handle turned. The forehead of the man who entered the room was creased in a frown of bewilderment, though the yellowed mouth hung open in what might have been a smile of welcome. He scratched the close, dark crop of his head and grinned at the man who had been saved from the sea.

  'Well now, Stunning Joe!' said Old Mole thoughtfully. 'What trouble you have caused your friends!'

  He walked slowly towards the bed, tapping the back of one hand into the palm of the other. Stunning Joe stood up, his hands folded over his loins in an instinctive
gesture of decency.

  'I never peached, Mr Mole! They never had a word from me! And if they had stripped the skin from me, I'd a-bit off my tongue before I'd peach to bastards like them!'

  Old Mole drew a deep breath into his burly lungs. He walked up to Joe and clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder.

  'You're all right, Stunning Joseph. You're a safe cove. Ain't in your nature to peach on old pals, is it?'

  Joe snatched a blanket as a girl with a deformed idiot face appeared in the doorway carrying a tray. She set it down and went meekly away again. Without waiting for an invitation, Stunning Joe took the tray on his knees and cut hungrily at the mutton chops in their dish.

  'I know what was done for me,' he said through a mouthful of meat. 'You and Mr Kite himself. I mean to show myself grateful.'

  Old Mole watched the knife cut vigorously across the dish.

  'Oh yes,' he said gently. 'You'll show yourself grateful all right. That's what I'm here for.'

  The last words woke a sudden memory in Joe's mind, the voice which had spoken when all hope was lost. He put down the knife and fork.

  'It was you, Mr Mole! In the boat last night!'

  Old Mole inclined his head, modestly.

  'Me and Jack Strap. Mr Strap ain't even a swimmer. He can't abide the water. Even when he's had to send an awkward cove to his last long home, he won't do it by water. Turns him quite rummy. Even Strap got a bit of sensitive nature, ain't he?'

  Old Mole's mouth extended in huge and silent appreciation of his own wit.

  'I was let go by Mr MacBride,' said Joe insistently. ‘I was saved by Miss Claire. And I was took from the water by you.'

  Old Mole shrugged and watched Joe start his second chop.

  'When Mr Kite wants a thing, he generally gets it. You was watched over like a child in its cradle, Stunning Joe. It was never sure you could get clean away from the quarries, what with bounty-hunters as well. But then there was the hospital to see you safe out again, if caught. When they came to bury you, it was me and Jack Strap had you safe in sight. Mind you, Joseph, I don't say we should have found you easy again without you calling for us. The tide that carried you was driving us back.'