Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

On the20th of May, while Alexander frisked into a strong swell and driving rain, the convicts were brought up on deck a few at a time to have their leg irons removed. The sick went up first, even including Ike Rogers, so bad that Surgeon Balmain had put him on a glass of potent Madeira wine twice a day.

When Richard’s turn came he emerged into a minor gale; it was impossible to see anything beyond the ship and a few yards of white-capped ocean, but the skies wept fresh, wholesome, genuine, honest-to-goodness water. Someone thrust him down onto the deck with his legs extended in front of him. Two marines sat on stools side by side; one slid a broad smith’s chisel under the fetter to pin the cuff to a sheet of iron and the other smashed his hammer down on its butt. The pain was excruciating because the force of the blow was transmitted to his leg, but Richard didn’t care. He lifted his face to the rain and let it cascade over his skin, his liberated spirit soaring into the grey tatters of cloud. One more excruciating pain as his other leg came free and there he was light-footed, light-headed, soaking wet, and utterly, blissfully, perfectly happy.

Someone, he had no idea who, gave him a hand to help him up. Dizzily he wavered on feathers to get himself out of the way and come to terms with the fact that he, who had been ironed for thirty-three months, was suddenly stripped of them.

Once back in the prison he began to shiver, took his clothes off, wrung the sweet clean water out of them into his dripstone, draped them across a line between the sea-water barrel and a beam, dried his body with a rag and donned a brand-new outfit. It was that kind of day, a milestone.

In themorning he looked at his friends and tried to see each of them as he saw himself. How did they feel? What did they think about the enormity of this great experiment in human lives? Had any of them realized that home was probably gone forever? Did they dream? Did they hope? And if they did, what did they dream about, hope for? But he couldn’t know because none of them knew. If he had voiced those questions, asked them outright, they would have answered in the way men always did: money, property, comfort, sex, a wife and family, a long life, no more troubles. Well, he hoped and dreamed of all those things himself, yet they were not what he yearned to know.

All of them looked at him with trust and affection, and that was somewhere to start, though nowhere to finish. Somehow each of them had to be made to see that his own fate was in his own hand, not in Richard Morgan’s. The head man on the larboard side was perhaps a father, but he could not be a mother.

They were now allowed on deck provided that the whole prison did not appear there at one time, and provided that they kept out of the crew’s way. Though John Power, fizzing with joy, was let work as a seaman, as were Willy Dring and Joe Robinson. However peculiar Richard found it, by no means every convict wanted to go above. Those still seasick he could understand-the Bay of Biscay had felled some unaffected until then-but now that they were free of their irons others were content to lie about in their cots or congregate in groups around a table to play cards. Of course it was still squalling and blustering, but Alexander was not a hefty slaver for nothing. It would take bigger seas than she was ploughing through at the moment to swamp her decks and elicit the order to batten down the hatches.

By the time that the command came from Lieutenant Johnstone that men might proceed on deck, the weather was clearing rapidly; they had been fed and watered with the inevitable hard bread, salt beef and horrible Portsmouth water. Six marine privates were delegated to tip buckets of salt water into the prison barrels, and stiff, proper Lieutenant Shairp stalked up and down the aisles commanding slack cots to clean their decks and platforms. Secure in the knowledge that Shairp would have no complaints about their area, nine of Richard’s eleven hauled themselves through the hatch with a wave for Ike and Joey Long.

A rush to the rail, there to look at the ocean for the first time. Its grey was suffusing with a steely blue and still bore many white-caps, but the horizon was visible and so were other ships, some to larboard, some to starboard, and two so far astern that they were hull down, only their masts showing. Close by was the other big slaver, Scarborough, a magical sight with her sails filled, pennants flying in some unknown sea code, her blunt bows biting at the swell, which ran on her starboard stern beam in communion with the wind. She had a larger superstructure than Alexander, which perhaps was why Zachariah Clark, the contractor’s agent, had elected to sail in her instead. The naval agent, Lieutenant John Shortland, was another had defected; he was in Fishburn the storeship, though one of his two sons was second mate in Alexander. The other was aboard Sirius. Nepotism reigned.

As at Tilbury, Richard’s six parted company the moment they smelled fresh air and a chance to be relatively alone. Richard hauled himself atop one of the two longboats tied upside down athwart the spare masts and counted ships. A brig about half the size of Alexander was at the head of the field, then came Scarborough and Alexander, after them the two-masted sloop Supply clinging to Sirius like a cub to its mother. Behind them was a ship he thought Lady Penrhyn, then the three storeships, and those two sets of masts on the horizon. Eleven vessels if none were out of sight.

“Good day to you, Richard Morgan from Bristol,” said Stephen Donovan. “How do your legs feel?”

Half of Richard wanted to be alone, but the other half was very glad to see Miss Molly Donovan, whom he read correctly enough to think was too intelligent not to know that his sexual inclinations were not shared. So he smiled and nodded with the correct degree of courtesy. “In regard to the sea or the irons?” he asked, liking the sensation of lifting and dropping.

“The sea is no grief, that is evident. Irons.”

“Ye would have to have worn them for three-and-thirty months to understand how I feel without them, Mr. Donovan.”

“Three-and-thirty months! What did you do, Richard?”

“I was found guilty of extorting five hundred pounds.”

“How long did ye get?”

“Seven years.”

Donovan frowned. “That makes little sense to me. By rights ye should have hanged. Were you reprieved?”

“No. My original sentence was seven years’ transportation.”

“It sounds as if the jury was not very sure.”

“The judge was. He refused to recommend mercy.”

“Ye do not look resentful.”

Richard shrugged. “Why should I be resentful? The fault was my own, nobody else’s.”

“How did ye spend the five hundred pounds?”

“I did not try to cash the note of hand, so I spent naught.”

“I knew ye were an interesting man!”

Disliking the memories this conversation provoked, Richard changed the subject. “Tell me which ship is which, Mr. Donovan.”

“Scarborough keeping pace with us, Friendship in the lead-a snappy little sailer, that one! She will show the rest a clean pair of heels all the way.”

“Why exactly? I am not a seafaring Bristolian.”

“Because she is-shipshape. Her steering sails provide just the right proportionate area for holding in a zephyr or a gale.” He stretched out a long arm to point at Supply. “Yon sloop is rigged brig-fashion, which don’t suit her one wee bit. Since she has a second mast, Harry Ball would have done better to rig her as a snow. She’s a slug as soon as the seas turn heavy because she’s so low in the water and she cannot crowd on enough sail. Supply is a light-wind sailer, at home in the Channel, where she has had her career. Harry Ball must be praying for good weather.”