James McGee - Rapscallion

It wasn't the first time Hawkwood had experienced the restraints of a hammock. There was a definite art to clambering into the sling, but it was a case of once mastered, never forgotten. As a soldier, he'd grown used to bivouacking in uncomfortable surroundings, be it barn, bush or battlefield. On the march, you took advantage of sleep and sustenance when and where you could, because you never knew when the opportunity would arise again. A hammock was the epitome of comfort compared to some of the places he'd had to rest his weary head.

He lay back and listened to the emanations of the four hundred souls hemmed in around him. The sounds varied widely in content and tone, from the drawn-out cries of the distressed and the wheezing of the consumptives to the groans of the dysentery sufferers and the weeping of the lonely and dispossessed. When added to the chorus of swearing, hawking, spitting, farting, coughing and general expectorations common to the male species, they formed a discordant backdrop to the physical deprivations endured by men held in mass confinement and against their will.

The human sounds began to fade as the hulk's inhabitants fell under the spell of night. In the darkness, however, the ship continued to express her own displeasure. A continuous cacophony of groans and creaks from the vessel's ancient timbers filled the inside of the hull. It was as if Rapacious was venting her irritation at the presence of those trapped aboard her. The pull of the tide and the sound of the wash against her sides seemed magnified a thousand-fold, as did the hypnotic slap of rope and line against her cut-down masts and yards.

Mercifully, her gun ports remained propped open, for these were the only means of ventilation. Even so, it was unbearably warm. The squeak of hammock ring against hook and cleat was a grating accompaniment to the noisy tossing and turning of the gun deck's restless residents as they sought relief from their sweltering discomfort.

Even if there had been silence within the hull, the rhythmic step of the sentries along the metal gantry outside and their monotonous half-hourly announcements that all was well was a salutary reminder that the will of every man on board, be he prisoner or guard, was no longer his own to command.

A sniffle sounded close by. It was the boy. He was lying on his back, blanket pushed down over his lower legs. His right arm rested across his face as if to ward off a blow. As Hawkwood watched, the boy turned his head, the movement revealing his right eye and lower jaw.

At that moment, a scream rose out of the darkness. It seemed to hang in the air for two or three seconds before ceasing abruptly. Hawkwood knew it had originated not on the gun deck but somewhere below, deep within the bowels of the ship. There was little or no reaction from either the sentries outside or the occupants of the surrounding hammocks, save for one: the boy. Moonlight from the open gun port highlighted a pale segment of cheek, skin tight over the bone. The boy's eye was a white orb in the darkness. He stared wildly at Hawkwood for several seconds, terror written on his face, then his throat convulsed and he turned away, pulled the blanket over himself, and the contact was lost.

The scream was not repeated. A small, rounded shadow appeared at the grille. A rat was squatting on the sill, preening. As if suddenly aware that it was being observed, it paused in its ablutions and lifted its head. Then, with a flash of pelt and a flick of tail, it was gone.

Hawkwood closed his eyes. It was interesting, he thought, that the rat, when startled, had chosen to exit the hull rather than seek sanctuary within it.

Perhaps it was another omen.

Hawkwood stood at the rail of the forecastle and gazed down at his new world. The view was less than impressive.

Aside from the two accommodation decks, the only other areas on the ship where prisoners were permitted to gather were the forecastle and the well deck, the space referred to euphemistically by the interpreter Murat as "the Park". Lasseur had taken it upon himself to pace out the Park's circumference. The survey did not take long. It was a little over fifty feet long by forty feet in width. It didn't need many prisoners to be taking the air to make the deck seem overcrowded. It explained why so many men chose to remain below decks. With space at a premium, they didn't have much choice.

Bulkheads at the forward and aft ends of the ship separated the prisoners' quarters from those of the ship's personnel. The militia guards occupied the bow. The hulk's commander and the rest of the crew were accommodated in the stern. At first sight, the bulkheads appeared to be made of solid iron. On closer inspection, Hawkwood discovered they were constructed from thick planking studded with thousands of large-headed nails. Loopholes had been cut into the metal-shod walls at regular intervals to allow the guards on the other side of the partition to fire into the enclosed deck in the event of misbehaviour or riot. They resembled the arrow-slitted walls of a medieval keep. With the gun deck reminiscent of a long dungeon, it wasn't hard to imagine the hulk as some kind of bleak, impregnable fortress.

At six o'clock the guards had removed the hatch covers, allowing the prisoners to carry their bedding topside to be aired. Hawkwood had welcomed the first light of dawn, still conscious of the collective reek coming off his fellow inmates. Lieutenant Murat had given his assurance that it would take only a few days to become acclimatized. As far as Hawkwood was concerned, the moment couldn't come soon enough. The gun- port location may have provided access to the elements and a sea view, but it didn't mean the smell was in any way reduced. The foul odours within the hulk had built up over so many years that they'd become engrained in the ship's structure, like a host of maggots in a rotting corpse.

Breakfast had been a mug of water and a hunk of dry bread left over from the previous evening's supper. The fist-sized block of stale dough had been made marginally more digestible when dunked into the water. It remained small consolation for what had been, despite Hawkwood's ability to negotiate the hammock, a fitful night's sleep. Though it was a soldier's lot to bed down when and wherever he could, it did not always follow that slumber came easily. The night had seemed endless. Lasseur looked equally unrested as he peered out across the choppy brown water.

Perched at the extreme north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey, Sheerness dockyard lay across the starboard quarter; an uneven line of warehouses, barracks and workshops. Rising above these was the fortress; its squat, square outline surmounted by a grey-roofed tower. Guarding the entrance to the Medway River, the fort dominated its surroundings, a stone defender awaiting an unwise invader.

To the south, at the edge of the yard, lay Blue Town. The settlement provided accommodation for the local workforce and owed its name to the colour of the buildings, all of which had been daubed in the same shade of naval paint. Made almost entirely from wood chips left over from the dockyard work, the small houses weren't much more than crude shacks, clumped together in an untidy rat-run of narrow lanes. Even so, they were several steps up from the previous riverside accommodation. Originally, dock workers had been housed in hulks, not dissimilar to Rapacious, moored to break the flow of the river and reduce the loss of shingle from the foreshore. A couple of them still remained, stranded on the mud like beached whales after a storm.

Across the river, a mile away to port, the Isle of Grain was a dark green smudge in the early-morning light, while beyond the stern rail, less than two miles to the south, lay the western mouth of the Swale Channel, separating Sheppey from the mainland.