The Convicts Read online

  Up the stairs I went, in a rumble of scraping irons. Even at the top I couldn't reach the bearded man, and had to climb higher, on spindles and knobs of wood, nearly right to the hatch, where the stars shone pale and yellow.

  “Tom?” said Midge. “Have you gone off your nut?”

  I balanced on a narrow ledge and, reaching up, grasped the feet of the crucified Jesus. With my face pressed against the wall, I couldn't look up. My knees trembled at the effort of standing there, stretching full length as I was, to touch the wooden toes and then the wooden ankles. The spike that went through them was metal.

  Midgely drew a breath when he realized what I was doing. I heard it clearly, his gasp from far beldw. “Oh, Tom,” he said. “No. You can't do that.”

  The spike was fitted snugly in a hole. I thought for a moment that it wouldn't come loose, but it did. I drew it out inch by inch, then nearly dropped it when it came suddenly free. Heavy and thick, it was fully eight inches long.

  It was harder to go down than up. With the spike tucked into my belt, I had to feel for every handhold, every place to set my feet. I was nearly out of breath when I reached the floor, but still, went straight to work. Where before I had taken out only slivers and flakes of wood, I now tore away finger-sized chunks. Still, I could see that the job would take many more nights than I'd hoped.

  But as the days went by, and Weedle grew stronger, I became more desperate. Midgely was loathe to use the spike, or even to touch it at first. I pleaded and bargained, yet it did no good.

  “Why should I help you, Tom?” he asked one night, looking pathetically sad. “I don't want you to go. Why should I help you get away?”

  “Because I'll take you,” I said.

  “Honest?”

  “Of course. I always meant to take you with me.” It was a lie, but he believed it. He asked where we would go and what we would do. “Well, what would you like?” I said.

  He thought for a moment, biting his lip. “To go to Ireland,” he told me. “It would be dead easy, Tom. We could walk to Bristol, then steal a boat and cross the sea to Ireland. We'd be safe there forever.”

  “Then that's what we'll do,” I said. Another lie. Crossing the sea in a stolen boat was the last thing I would do. In truth, I would leave Midge on the marshes as soon as we escaped. I would leave him sleeping in the rushes like the baby Moses in his Bible book. But of course I didn't tell him that, and he didn't suspect it.

  Our work went on with a pleasing speed. There were times when I saw Midge chipping away in the darkness and thought of my sister, Kitty, who had been about the same size when she died. In those moments I imagined I might take him along. But I soon thought better of it. He was too young and too small; he would only slow me down. Yet I imagined the disappointment he would feel when I left him. I nearly felt it myself. I pitied him then, ind that annoyed me greatly.

  I made it up to him as best as I could. Hours and hours we spent studying his book of the South Seas. I felt as though I'd joined a ship that went sailing through the pages, from island to island. Groups of black natives came paddling out in great canoes to welcome us with baskets full of fruit. Like Midge, I found myself slipping into the pictures, into the story. I saw that he had found his own way of escaping from the wretched Lachesis. He had no need to tunnel from the hulk; he was already outside it, more free—in a fashion—than I could ever hope to be. The idea made me envious at first, and then frightened. Could a person lose his mind in imaginary islands.

  The feeling came so strongly one night that I suddenly closed the book. It was like closing a window on a different world, and all there was to see again was the ship and the pitiful boys. Midgely tried to pry it open again. “Don't stop,” he said.

  “I don't want to read anymore,” I told him.

  “Then we can look at the pictures,” he said.

  “NOi” I kept it shut. “When you go outside, up on deck, what cfe you see, Midge?”

  He frowned. “What do you think I see?”

  “Palm trees,” I said. “I think you see jungles and sandy beaches”

  “Not likely!” He laughed. “I see a ship, Tom. But not an old hulk. I see a ship of the line like She used to be. Them shacks is gone, and all her sails is set, and I'm a sailor working the ship.” He gazed up at me, and in the depth of his feelings his words became more slurred. “Oh, Tom, I don't care if we ever get out. I want to be transhported. I want it sho badly. Every day, more than anything, that'sh what I want.”

  “To be transported}”

  “Yes. To get beyond the sheash.” He nuzzled even closer. “I can't hardly wait for that.”

  “But the ship's half rotten,” I said. “And the masts are cut off.”

  He frowned, then laughed again. “Oh, we won't go in this” he said. “They'll put us on a proper ship. And now's the time, when it's summer in the south. We have to round the Cape of Good Hope in the summer.”

  The Cape of Good Hope! It was the one place my father had been allowed to talk about. The weather was so wretched, the place so terrible, that my mother had delighted in its horrors. “Tell the boy about the Cape,” she'd say. “Tell him about the storms. Tell him about the ghost ship.” My father had seen it there, the Flying Dutchman, tearing along with its sails in rags, its crew all skeletons and corpses.

  “The Cape of Storms, they call it,” said Midgely. “Look here; I'll show you.”

  He pulled at the book, and I gave it up. He opened it almost at the very page he wanted, a picture of monstrous waves, with the only land a mere scratch in the distance. Across the picture ran a ship, a great ship with sails as small as handkerchiefs. Nearly all the deck was underwater, and the sailor who was steering was lashed to the wooden wheel. The ship lay nearly on its side, and the next wave rolling toward it—breaking at the top into foam and spray—was taller than the masts. Below the picture, the writing said “Summer off the Cape.”

  I was doomed. If Regent's Pond on a sunny day could set my knees shaking, what would the ocean do? I had to get off the ship. I had to go soon.

  Oteii Acres was dying. He wasn't the only one; all around that miserable ship the weaker boys were fading away. Two mornings in a row, there was another who never got out of his hammock. The guards came and bundled them in the canvas, then carried daem up to the sunshine.

  But Otetf didnt have the fever like them. He didn't have scurvy or wasting disease, yet he was surely dying. I knew it at breakfast oat day, when I saw how he stared at the grating. My mother had worn just die same look when she'd sat for endless hours gating at the little altar she'd made for Kitty. It was as though, inside, he was already dead.

  It was several days after his beating. The bruises on his face were still bright and lurid. Blood had dried round his mouth in brown cakes, in his hair like rusted cables, but he hadn't bothered to wash it away. He sat absolutely still, huge and hunched, gazing toward that grid of bars.

  He didn't eat his food anymore. Every boy at every meal eyed it with lip-licking greed, and even I fancied a share. I, who owned riches beyond belief, wanted nothing more than a bite of Oten's moldy bread. As soon as we rose from the benches, it seemed a flock of seagulls descended on the table. The farm boy's food disappeared in a tangle of reaching hands, and was torn apart in the struggle.

  We put away the tables and benches. I started toward the chapel, but stopped when I saw Oten rubbing his scrubbing brush in circles, still staring at the window.

  “Ain't nothing you can do for him,” said Midgely, coming to my side. “Those boys from the country never last long. They die like the grass.” He nodded. “Like grass without sun.”

  It didn't sound like Midgely to phrase it that way. I imagined he was parroting what someone else had told him—maybe the kindly old chaplain. But he was certainly brokenhearted. “They do, Tom,” he said. “They don't even try to hang on. And it don't help to worry about them.”

  I wasn ‘t worried, though it shamed me to admit it. My only worry was Weedle, who was getti
ng strong very quickly now. He knew that every night I left my hammock, so how long could it be before he learned where I went?

  It nearly happened that very night, as Midge and I were digging. We were halfway through the frames by then, and Midge was picking at the wood in his fussy way when he suddenly turned toward me. “Tom?” he said. “When we get out, what will we do?”

  “I've been thinking of that,” I told him. “They'll bring soldiers, I think.”

  He nodded. “And dogs. We'll have to look sharp to keep ahead of them.”

  “Well, that's where you're wrong,” I said. “We'll keep behind them, Midge.” I pried at a sliver he'd loosened. “We'll bury ourselves in the mud, so close to the ship that they won't even look where we are. Theft, when they're searching for us miles away, we'll slip off toward London.”

  Milgely whistled. “That's a wicked plan, Tom.”

  But you won't be going, I thought Poor Midge.

  “That's a plan and a half,” he said. “But, Tom? What will we do when we get out of the ship and fall in the water?”

  I stopped working. I hadn't even thought of the river beyond the planks. In all my imaginings I had gone straight from the ship to the marsh, never thinking of water between them.

  “Is the river deep?” I asked.

  “Hookey Walker! The ship's floating, ain't she?”

  It would be fathoms deep. I would drop like an anchor through the cold water, past the weeds and the fishes. My irons would raise puffs of mud as they were buried in the bottom, and there I would stay forever.

  “I was thinking,” said Midge. “We'll have to go on the springs, Tom. She'll set her garboards down then,”

  I hated sailor talk “Say what you mean,” I snapped. “What are garboards? What are springs?”

  “The garboards are the bottom planks,” he said patiently. “Springs are the big tides that come after the foil moon, and in December they're biggest of all. She'll settle right into the mud then. Why, we could nearly walk to shore.”

  “Underwater?”

  “I can hold my breath forever. Look, Tom.” He suddenly filled his lungs in one gasp, then sat there with his eyes closed, his cheeks puffed out.

  I ignored him. All my life I had had nightmares of falling in water. Countless times I had woken kicking from those dreams, breathless and choked, so drenched in sweat that I might indeed have been underwater. I couldn't even imagine dropping into the dark river, or crawling across its bottom, through the mud and weeds, past the crabs and the worms and whatever else there might be. The moment the water closed over my head, my mind would unhinge like my mother's. But I had to try; I had to get off the ship. If I wasn't killed by Weedle I would wither away like Oten Acres, and either way I would be carried from the ship in a brown bundle.

  I looked up at the hatch. The moon was a white sickle, half hidden by clouds. I didn't know if it was waxing or waning, or how many nights would pass before it came full, but the springs were surely coming.

  “Midge, I have to get my irons taken off,” I said.

  He let out his breath with a startling puff! His face was red. “See that, Tom?” he said proudly.

  I didn't care how long he could hold his breath. “Tell me how to get my irons off,” I said.

  “You can't,” said he.

  “But the Overseer told me …”

  Midge laughed. “He told me that, too. He tells everyone that. He only wants you to be a meek, is all.”

  “What about the list?” I said. “The liberty list.”

  “It might be true,” said Midge with a shrug. “But I never seen it happen. When the ship gets crowded they pack boys off, that's all I know. I seen whole bunches go, but not me. If you ain't thirteen, or wicked as the devil, they don't care how long you stay.”

  “I'm older than that,” I said.

  “Lucky you.” He sounded jealous. “They might transport you any day.”

  I didn't want that, With nearly four hundred boys on the ship, how much more crowded could it be?

  The moon went gliding by and the clouds filled in, and the chapel grew blacker than ever. We worked by feel alone, chipping away at the massive frames, For another hour we labored together; then I slept while Midge carried on. “We've no time to waste. You'll have to keep at it,” I told him. But when I woke hours later, he had taken out no more wood than could fill a thimble.

  “It was the nobs,” he said. “Them and Weedle they came looking for us.”

  “I don't believe you,” I said. “Weedle isn't strong enough yet”

  “Might have fooled me,” said Midge. “I know what you think, Tom. That I'm a lazy twiddlepoop, but I'm not.”

  “Well, you're not any ‘help,”1 told him. “I'd do better by myself.”

  “You think so, Tom?”

  “Yes,”Isaid.

  Without another word he picked up his irons and shuffled away, around the benches and out the door. I thought he would be back in a moment, shamed into working harder than ever. I took up the spike, drove it at the frames, and with a crack and a groan, a splinter came out. It was smaller than my thumb, but more than Midge had managed in all the time I'd slept. I pushed and pried with the spike, hammered and pulled, until! had to stop from sheer exhaustion Then, panting heavily, I felt a deep despair. The hulk had already token its toll on my strength.

  I looked up, trying to pick out the shape of the wooden Jesus, to find again the hope he'd given me. But he was so hidden by darkness -thai he might not have been there at all. “Oh, please,” I whispered. “Please help me.” I cried out to that wooden figure, begging for another chance to see my father, to hold my mother, to claim my lost riches.

  As I talked he appeared. It may have been the light from the stars, in a sudden parting of the clouds. But he seemed to step out from the darkness. Bearded and sad, he emerged from the shadows, and perhaps for a minute he stood there still and quiet before he slipped away again.

  I went back to my work. I pulled away chunks of wood, and suddenly that wonderful smell came wafting from the hole. Just beyond where I'd stopped, the frames were mushy and rotten. With my hands I tore them apart.

  Then I heard the footsteps. They came steadily along the deck, heavy steps that marched with a rhythm. It wasn't Midgely, and it couldn't be Weedle. It was someone with boots, coming with a purpose, as though sent to help. I left the panel open, my poor tools strewn around, and moved out through the chapel door. The long deck looked empty, but I heard the footsteps marching, and then the warble of a whistled tune—”Adeste Fideles,” that lovely hymn.

  There was a flare of light, a swoop of shadows. Thirty paces away, the ladder that led up to the workrooms glowed in a yellow fire. I might not have been surprised to see the spirit of my father come down in that light. But it was only a guard who appeared, a lantern in one hand, a sturdy cane in the other.

  The light seemed to spread up the deck. It flashed into hidden spaces, onto the shapes of boys crouched by the timbers.

  “Who's there?” cried the guard. He raised his lantern.

  The boys leapt up. They rushed the guard from either side. His whistling stopped, and the lantern shattered on the deck, its light instantly extinguished to all but a smoldering wick, Then locks rattled, and deep voices called down from the decks above. I heard Weedle shout, “Clear off I” The boys scattered, and the guard went running.

  I watched them go, then hiirried to the place where the guard had fallen. I gathered bits of the broken glass, then found his cane—or half of it—lying at the foot of the ladder.

  Hatches had opened, and cold air swirled through the ship. With pounding steps and booming voices, other guards were coming. But the first to reach me was Midge, hobbling from the darkness with his chains in his hands. “Tom!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

  “Look for the cane,” I said. I had a plan, but no time to tell him what it was.

  We found the rest of the cane against the wall. We threw the two halves and some pieces of glass into t
he hole and replaced the panel. As the guards came pounding down the ladders, we put the framing in place. The lights from their lanterns were flashing through the ship when we fled from the chapel.

  Midgely was faster than I. His irons rattling, he ran ahead while I struggled with mine. I tripped and rose again, then tumbled down a ladder. A guard came right behind, and I reached my hammock only just in time. I settled into it as the space filled with light and guards.

  I turned toward Midge, eager to see if he was safely there. I reached across and shook the ropes that held his hammock. “Midge?” I whispered.

  A face rose from the canvas. But it wasn't Midgely's. I looked straight into Weedle's dark eyes.

  “I know where you go,” he said. “Don't think you're safe hiding in a chapel. I got a score to settle, I do. And it don't bother me where it's done.”

  With that he turned away. His irons clinked as he rolled over in the hammock. I lay still, staring at the ceiling, thankful for the guards. They stayed with us till daylight, tramping up and down as a storm began to rise. It came in a whistle of wind, a shiver in the hull. The hammocks swayed in that long sort of ripple that had sickened me before. And hour by hour the storm grew worse.

  I didn't see Midge until morning chapel. He slipped into the bench at my side, looking worried and worn. In a whisper, as the benches filled, he said that Weedle had taken his hammock before he could get there, “fle knows everything, Tom,” he said. “But, Tom, I didn't tell him.”

  “I know that,” I said. “He's going to come after me, Midge.”

  In the roof of the chapel, above the crucified figure, the rain tapped on the hatch like hundreds of tiny hammers. The chaplain had to raise his voice above the sound of the wind in the rigging. I could hear waves drumming on the hull.

  By the hour it worsened. The ship groaned; it creaked. The rain fell so heavily that there might have been herds of hoofed animals trampling the deck above the workroom. Our reels of thread rolled back and forth, the lamps swung wildly, and I felt even sicker than I had on my first day. As we marched to our noontime meal I staggered like a drunken sot. And in my weakness, Weedle must have seen his chance.