The Convicts Read online

  “Smash? What are they doing?” asked Penny.

  “Who knows?” I said.

  Midgely sighed. “They're setting topsails, you stupids. The helmsman got her hard over, and she's falling off on the current; it ain't no quiz. They're fitting the capstan bars and—there!—you see? They're weighing anchor.”

  I heard the sailors singing, and the anchor winding in. I felt the ship slide forward. From the front came a thud.

  “Anchor's up,” said Midge. “They're hoisting the foresails now. They're setting the main course, see.”

  Through the grating in the hatch I saw a white sail billow open. It flapped and curled around the edge, then tightened in a swooping curve. Water gurgled against the wood behind me. In a rattle of canvas the huge square sail swung across the grate.

  “They've come about,” said Midge. “Wind's behind them now. They're running for the river.”

  He said all this with his dead eyes open, seeing nothing. But through his blindness I could look beyond the shadows where we lay. Not everything I understood, yet everything I saw. Our ship added sail upon sail. It quickened on its way, flying down the river, a brown hull under towers of canvas. It flitted past shouting bargemen, heeling to the left as the river burbled down the planks. My heart beat faster; my breaths came deeply. Through the squares of the metal grate I watched shreds of clouds and a silvery bird go streaming by.

  The ship hurtled out of the Medway and into the wider Thames. The sails cracked and tightened; the wind made a whistle through the ropes. Then the ship rocked forward, and in a moment rocked back, and it lazily rolled to each side. And that was it for me. Old Neptune had me in his arms already, and he squeezed them round my guts. He rattled me and throttled me, and not an hour into our voyage he had me pinned against the deck.

  I wasn't the only one with the seasickness, but none suffered so greatly, and none shared the fear that was building inside me.

  As the wretched ship galloped out to sea, Midgely soothM me, but Penny only laughed at my slithering, boneless body. “You're turning green,” he said.

  “Go away,” I told him.

  “Green as sewer slime.”

  “Ohh,” I groaned. “Leave me alone.”

  He did, finally, as soon as old Neptune squeezed my breakfast right out of me. Midgely, by then, had gathered a bucket, and he held it for me as he cradled my head in his lap. “It ain't nothing, Tom,” he said. “Think of Nelson. Think of trees, Tom, and beaches. Tom, think of our islands.”

  I did that—both of us did—as our ship battered its way to the Foreland. We sat on our favorite sunny beaches, with coconut trees above usu We heard the parrots chatter, and the natives drumming at their village. Then came a clamor of canvas and wood, of voices shouting and feet at a run.

  “We're coming about,” said Midge. “We're heading for the Channel, Tom.”

  The ship settled onto a new course. It leaned harder to the side, and hurled itself from wave to wave. Creaking like a bag of cats, the hull trembled from end to end. “That's the masts working,” said Midge. “They shake the whole ship.”

  Waves bashed against the bow, each boom of the sea sending a shudder through the timbers. Gallons of water came thundering onto the deck, splattering against the iron grate in bursts of greenish white, raining coldly on our bodies. Soon a sailor appeared there, and another, and they tore the grating open.

  I thought we were about to sink. I tried to get up, but the deck was too slippery, my legs too weak. “Save yourself, Midgely!” I shouted.

  He only smiled. “Ain't nothing, Tom,” he said. “Why, this aiir't nothing at all.”

  As always, he was right. The sailors had only opened the hatch to give us food and water. Down came bloated skins and sacks, falling as though at a slant to land at the side of the ship. Then came the blankets, some thudding down in tight rolls, some fluttering like wounded birds. Midgely collected his share and more, but I wanted neither food nor drink.

  The grating was closed again. Over the top, sailors stretched tarpaulins that the sunlight turned to sheets of gold. In a moment they were soaked with spray, and their glistening wetness gave our space a pleasant, shadowed glow. I was glad that the sails and the rushing clouds were hidden at last.

  “That's better,” I said. “I like the darkness, Midge.”

  “Oh,” he said. “It ain't night already, is it? What a ripping day we've had.”

  That was the first I knew that his eyes were getting worse. He hadn't seen the tarpaulins, nor even sensed the difference in the light. I looked into his eyes and saw them grayer than before. He yawned, then stretched out at my side, nearly covered in blankets.

  “Tom?” he asked. “Where's that horrible boy? He ain't near, is he?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You'll keep him away, won't you? If he comes back, you'll chase him off?”

  “Oh, Midge,” I said. “Does it really matter?”

  “Yes,” he said, whispering now. “It does.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn't even tell you, Tom,” he said. “I should turn the other cheek.” He sighed. “But he's the one, Tom. That Benjamin Penny, he's the one that blinded me.”

  I wanted to get up right then and give Penny the thrashing I'd given to Weedle. But I wanted as well to lie right where I was and never move again. I managed only to lift my head and stare across the ship. Weedle had his face in a bucket, and Boggis was rocking and moaning. Between them, Benjamin Penny sat laughifrg.

  “Please don't smash him, Tom,” said Midgely. “Promise you won't.”

  “But, Midge,” I said.

  “No!” He pinched my sleeve in his fingers. “Say you won't do nothing. Promish you'll be a meek.”

  I gave him my word. Then Midgely eased me down again, and I fell at last into a woozy sleep.

  Because of Midgely, the struggles and battles had ended. It was an uneasy peace belowdecks as We sailed to the south, but a peace nonetheless. Weedle and his lot kept to one side of the ship, Midgely and I to die other. Benjamin Penny seemed caught in the middle, until my coldness finally drove him off. Then he made a place at the giant's side, and his horrid laughter often rang through the ship. But from the glances he gave me, and the dark looks he fixed on Midge, I knew he housed a bitterness and jealousy. He could never forgive nor forget.

  Six weeks into our journey, I still hadn't seen our mad captain. Carrots said he left his cabin only at night, to pace the deck from dark to dawn and mutter at the moon.

  But the ship I knew well. I had applied myself to it as I had once sweated over Greek and arithmetic, and through Midgely's teachings I'd learned why the sails were trimmed to be flat one hour and full the next. I'd learned their names, and the names of the ropes that worked them—the sheets and braces and whatnot—and saw the sense in all the many tangles. I'd even begun to see why my father loved his world of oceans.

  I looked forward how to my turns on deck. I dared to look beyond the rail at the patterns of the waves and the puffy clouds always in the distance. I sat high on the stack of lumber below the foremast, a place where the sailors liked to lounge in the sun on the old tarpaulin covers, where the fiddler sometimes played. On our forty-second day I crept to the front of the ship. I clung to the rigging that braced the bowsprit and stared straight down at the ship's very bow slicing through the water, shredding it open in glistening curls.

  “She's making miles,” I said to Midge, and felt very much the sailor.

  He and I were never apart. We spent as much time as ever in his world of islands, but began to explore anew one as well. Convinced that I was the Smasher, he begged to hear stories about my gang of urchins, and I amused myself by spinning the wildest tales I could imagine. I told of dark deeds iri dark alleys, casting myself as a Robin Hood who helped the lame and the blind, preying only on Mr. Good fellow who appeared in every tale—under a different name—and suffered more agonies than all the poor old Greeks rolled together.

  Midge didn't really
believe the stories, but pretended he did. And over time I told him all, even of my diamond. The old blind mud lark became a rich tnan with a fancy walking stick, but that was the only thing I changed. Midgely listened, then followed my tale with another, about an old king and a pirate named Captain Jolly.

  It was a story more strange than any of mine, more tangled than a mystery. It was about a jewel called the Jolly Stone, a fabulous diamond that brought ruin to all. It started on a ship, with a battle in the moonlight, and moved a hundred places through a hundred years. And it ended below the Tower of London, with a woman on a white horse galloping to her death. “In her hand was the cursed stone,” said Midge. His voice slurred. “No one sheen it ever shinsh.”

  The story gave me chills. If there was any truth in it at all, if my diamond was really the Jolly Stone, I had found the biggest one in all creation. And with it, a plague of misery and pain.

  “Didn't it make anyone happy?” I asked.

  “Oh, all of them,” said Midge. “But not for long. If I was you, I'd leave it where it is. Even if it ain't that Jolly Shtone.”

  “But think of the riches,” I said. “I could have my own carriage, and so could you. We could both be gentlemen, Midge.”

  “Me?” He laughed. “Me, a gentleman? Holy jumping mother of Moses, Tom, I ain't no gent. I don't want no part of that.”

  He never asked where my diamond was. He never spoke of it again. For Midge, the only thing that mattered was the ship. It carried us along in gales and calms, in cold and searing heat. The Goodfellow flag flew always above us, and the farther south we went, the hotter the days became, and the more fitful was the wind. For hour upon hour—sometimes for a full day or more—the ship didn't move forward at all. But it rocked to and fro in an agonizing fashion. Far to the right, then far to the left, the masts swung like pendulums. The sails flapped, the yards creaked, the blocks and slack lines slammed on the canvas. And my sickness returned.

  Midge said we were in the doldrums. It was the perfect name for a place with no wind and no shelter from the sun. It was so hot that the pitch melted on the deck, and globs of black—hot as coals—fell upon us like a hellish rain. The scorching sun seemed to climb through the rigging, up the shrouds as noon approached, every day a little higher. From the angles and the heights, I calculated that the sun would balance on the topgallant yard one day. And when it did, we would cross the equator.

  “Oooh, we'll see Neptune then,” said Midgely.

  “Go on,” I said. I thought he was pulling my leg.

  “It's true. King Neptune and his court, they board every ship when it crosses the line.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” said Midge. “It's his sea, ain't it? The whole ship turns otit to meet him, Tom.”

  It took a week to prove him right. Then the sun mounted the topgallant yard, and not an hour later we were taken up on deck. The sails were set at odd angles, the ship turned into the wind, skidding sideways up big, rounded waves. “She's hove to,” said Midgely. “We must be waiting for Neptune.”

  There were three tubs of water set against the rise to the afterdeck. Blanks and barrel hoops lay beside them, and all the sailors had gathered. Sunburned and laughing, they sprawled on the stack of lumber and perched along the rail. Suddenly they cheered, and up from the sea came Neptune with his trident in his hand. His hair was green, his face a terrible red, and he rose from the ocean in a water tub.

  It took me only a moment to see that Neptune was really the old blacksmith, wrapped in a strange cloak. His hair and beard were seaweed, clotted by oatmeal and tar, and his face was painted with ochre. Three of his Tritons were jammed with him in the tub, all bellowing as the sailors brought it inboard and tipped out the king of the sea.

  He tumbled onto the deck in a most unkingly way. Then up he leapt and roared, “Who goes here? Bring me the captain, I say.”

  His Tritons went running, leaping to the barrels, up to the afterdeck. The sailors parted, and a man appeared.

  It wasn't the madman Carrots had spokeft of. He had no bloodstained lash, no evil in his eyes. I looked at him and gasped, for I knew him very well.

  Our captain was my father.

  He came with his familiar smile, in his familiar walk, and my heart glowed to see him. He looked younger than I remembered, his face burned by the sun, his eyes shining. He looked down at King Neptune. “We're bound for New South Wales,” he said.

  Neptune stroked his beard. “Have any among you never crossed the line?”

  What followed was an hour of utter delight. The planks were set atop the barrels, and three by three the boys went forward to meet the court of Neptune. They paid tribute to him with little songs and silly dances, and Neptune granted freedom to some, but not very many. The rest were sat up on the planks, and the royal barbers came forward to shave them. With enormous scrubbing brushes, the barbers applied a foul lather of grease and tar, then took up the iron hoops for razors. At the last touph of the blade the planks were pulled away, and down went the boys into the barrels. Some squawked and shoutedrbut others laughed, and none more than Benjamin Penny. His webbed hands splashing, he frolicked in the water like one of the dolphins that often played round the ship.

  It was hard to wait for my turn, as I longed to cry out to my father, to run and put my arms around him. I imagined the look of surprise and delight that would come to his face when he saw me. But when I stepped forward he turned to a sailor's chore and didn't see me dance my little jig, nor sit atop the plank. When he looked again, my face and head were coated with lather.

  The royal barber scraped at me. Too soon the plank was pulled away. I tumbled breathless into the water.

  It was not as deep as I was tall, but the wooden barrel was slick with lather. I struggled and gasped, but the ship roared with laughter. King Neptune, thinking my struggles a game, thrust his trident into the tub, and whenever I rose to the surface he pushed me down again.

  In desperation I grabbed the trident and gave it a mighty pull. To my great surprise, Ihaule4 the king of the ocean head over heels into the barrel. His beard floated off; his wig tangled in my arms. I breathed water into my lungs and couldn't cough it out. Down I sank m the warmth and the darkness, until my face touched the bottom of the barrel.

  Hands hauled me out. They were my father's hands; I knew them right away. They plucked me from the water and held me above it. There was his fece, peering into mine. It was such a shock he got that he dropped me again, and old Neptune himself had to fish me out in a dead faint.

  When I woke, the game was over. I was sitting on the deck, my back against the barrel, dribbling rivers of water on the wood. The boys were gone, the gratings replaced. Nep-time and his Tritons and barbers had shed their green wigs, and now stood looking foolish in their robes and red-painted faces.

  My father was kneeling beside me, patting my hand. “Tom?” he said, when he saw me awake. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, Father,” I said.

  Tears bubbled from his eyes, shining in the sun. Then his arms wrapped around me, and all of him trembled. “Oh, if I'd only known you were here,” he said. “All these weeks you've been so close. But it wasn't in my heart to come on deck when it was full of hungry, wretched lads. I couldn't bear to look at them.” He touched my arms, my hair, as though he wasn't sure that I was real. “But here you are.”

  His dark hair, windblown into tangles, ruffled in front of my eyes. He looked at gawking Neptune, at all the gawking sailors, and he grinned. “Set the topsails, set the jibs,” he told them. “Set the staysails, if you please, and steer for Table Bay.” Then he helped me to my feet and took me to his cabin.

  There, in the stern of the ship, I stretched out flat on his bunk. He gave me raisins and cheese and a glass of small beer. He sent for oranges. For oranges!—even the word was delicious. Then we asked each other, with the same wonder, “How did you end up here?”

  I went first. I told him how I'd gone into the fog and found a diamond. �
�Father, it's the most fabulous diamond,” I said. “It might be the Jolly Stone and—”

  “I don't give a hang about that,” he said. “I want to know about you”

  So I told him about the blind man and old Worms, about the boy in the grave, my dead twin. “He was exactly like me,” I said. “But you know that; you saw him. Mr. Goodfellow took you there.”

  “He made me bargain first.” My father walked to the windows at the stern, opened one, and let in the sound of water and waves. “He wouldn't take me until I agreed to his terms.”

  “You promised to sail his ships,” I said.

  My father nodded as he stood staring out the window.

  “Will you carry slaves for him?”

  “Slaves?” cried my father, turning to face me. “Good God, no, my boy.”

  “The ship's a slaver,” I said.

  “Was” said he. “Seized and sold; a bargain for Mr. Goodfellow. Lord knows what he's up to now. He has sent along every chart of the Java Sea, so I'm bound to be sailing home by way of Borneo. I'm to meet his agent in New South Wales, and then I'll see the cut of his jib. I suspect there will be some odd sort of cargo. But slaves?” Father shook his head. “He knows it's forbidden.”

  “He's not above it,” I said. “He's done worse.”

  My father nodded. “Well, Mr. Goodfellow shall get his comeuppance,” he said. “That's one cockroach I want to see crushed We'll land at Table Bay and I'll quit the ship. We'll go home together and—”

  “No,” I said. “They'll only put you back in prison, and mein irons.”

  “Then I'll sign you aboard as crew”

  “As crew?” I said. “Dad, I'm afraid of the sea.”

  “No wonder why,” he told me, still gazing through the window. I couldn't look at his back without seeing all the water beyond him, the trail of the ship laid in white streaks across the waves. “There are things I never told you, Tom. About the night you were born.”

  I pressed my hand against my awn, feeling the hardness of my scar. I thought I knew what he was about to say.