New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [163]
The next day was hot and sultry, so Master was quite glad to escape the unpleasantness of the city streets and take the ferry across the water to Brooklyn. The ferry dock lay across the water from the northern part of the town. From this point, the river made a turn eastward. On the Manhattan side, the buildings along the waterfront petered out. On the Brooklyn side, one came around the river’s corner to a great sweep of salt meadows, cordgrass, open water and mudflats whose Dutch name had long ago been transmogrified to Wallabout Bay. And there in Wallabout Bay lay the prisons Master was looking for.
The hulks. Disused ships. Animal transports mostly. Huge, blackened, decrepit, dismasted, anchored with great chain cables in the muddy shallows, the hulks lay not a mile and a half from the city yet, thanks to the river bend, out of sight. There was the Jersey, a hospital ship, so-called. And the Whitby, an empty carcass since it had burned last year, its charred and broken ribs pointing sadly to the sky. But there were several others, and they were all crammed with prisoners.
It was easy enough to hire a waterman to take him out to the ships. At the first vessel the fellow in charge, a burly, heavy-jowled man, was reluctant to allow him on board, but a gold coin changed his mind, and soon Master was standing with him on the deck.
With the bright morning sun, and the line of Manhattan Island less than a mile away across the water, the outlook from the deck might have been pleasant. But despite the gold coin, the attitude of the custodian was so suspicious and surly that, as soon as he set foot on deck, Master felt as if a grim cloud had suddenly settled over the day. When Master asked for Sam Flower by name, the fellow shrugged contemptuously.
“I’ve two hundred rebel dogs below,” he answered. “That’s all I know.” When Master asked if he might go below to make inquiries, the fellow looked at him as if he were insane. He took him to a hatch, though, and opened it. “You want to go down there?” he said. “Go.” But as Master moved forward he was assailed by such a stench of urine, filth and rottenness that he staggered back.
At this moment, from another hatch, an ill-kempt soldier with a musket appeared, followed by two figures. As soon as these two were on deck, the soldier banged the hatch closed behind them.
“We let ’em up two at a time,” their custodian remarked. “Never more than two.”
But Master hardly heard. He was staring at the men. They were not just thin, they were walking skeletons. Both were deathly pale; but one of them, with sunken eyes, looked feverish and seemed about to fall at any moment.
“These men are starving,” said Master.
“Course they’re starving,” said the custodian. And with the first trace of a change of expression since their conversation began, he actually smiled. “That’s because I don’t feed ’em.”
“I think that man is sick,” Master said.
“Sick? I hope he’s dying.”
“You wish this man to die?”
“Makes room for the next one.”
“But are you not given money to feed these men?” Master demanded.
“I am given money. They live or die as they please. Mostly die.”
“How can you deal in such a manner, sir, with prisoners under your charge?”
“These?” A look of disgust formed on the man’s face. “Vermin, I call them. Traitors that should’ve been hung.” The fellow nodded toward the city. “You think it’s any better over there?”
“I wonder, sir, what your superiors would say about this,” Master said threateningly.
“My superiors?” The man put his face very close to Master’s, so that the merchant could smell his stinking breath. “My superiors, sir, would say: ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ Why don’t you go and ask them, sir, if you really want to know?” And with that he told Master to get off his ship.
At the next hulk, a young officer poked his head over the side and informed Master, politely enough, that he could not come aboard because half the prisoners had yellow fever.
At the third, however, he had more luck. The hulk itself appeared to be rotting away, but the tall, thin, hard-faced