Scarborough Fair - Chris Scott Wilson [92]
“Can you pull an oar?” Mayrant demanded.
The prisoner merely glowered. Beside him, Tom Berry prized open his eyelids. When the officer’s gaze turned to him, he nodded, not trusting his voice. When the midshipman looked away, Berry took the opportunity to nudge Jackie Rudd awake. As he came up onto his elbows, Mayrant’s eyes fell on him.
“You too. You look a likely lad.” He passed on, searching sleeping faces.
“What’s going on?” Jackie asked, rubbing his eyes.
Tom Berry’s voice was a harsh whisper. “He wants men to crew a small boat. Wake Billy. This could be the chance we need.” He looked at the sun sloping toward the horizon. “Be night before long. Darkness could be our friend.”
Jackie’s eyes came into focus at last. Berry was right. A small boat and the cover of night could mean everything or nothing. He shook Billy.
“What? Let me sleep.”
Berry leaned over to poke a stiff finger in the Whitby man’s ribs. “Time enough to sleep when you’re dead, lad. Get your wits about you. Open your eyes and ears and shut up.”
CHAPTER 8
“It’ll be daylight soon,” Jackie said to nobody. Seated on the starboard side of the ship’s boat as it nudged HMS Serapis’s hull, he did not have to port his oar. He could let it trail in the water, resting his arms across the handle. Slowly his head sank onto his wrists. The agonies his body had suffered through the long hours at the pumps had been reawakened. Every muscle and tendon screamed. Rowing! And it had all been Tom Berry’s idea. So much for that. At least manning the pumps there had been rest periods. No so rowing. The only break was when the wounded were being loaded or unloaded. They had labored from twilight into the night and now it was almost dawn.
Back and forward. And with each journey from Bonhomme Richard to the captured Serapis, the boat was filled with groaning men. The stench of festering wounds invaded even the bluntest sense of smell, hard to endure on a stomach that had seen only meager rations and sips of water.
Now he rested as best he could, drawing the cold salt breeze deep into his lungs. What he would have given for a quiet corner to sleep, and he would have sold his soul for a straw pallet and the luxury of a blanket. Fighting away sleep’s beckoning arms, he glanced up at Billy who was doing his best to lean on his upright oar, eyes closed. Across the boat Tom Berry was watching everyone, cat eyes restless. He saw Jackie turn so he made a face, one eye threatening a sly wink. One of the wounded passed between them, being helped to the specially rigged accommodation ladder. His head was swathed in bandages that bore a spreading crimson stain. It seemed half his head had been shot away. Jackie had seen so many of them by then, he felt nothing, not even pity. He turned away. Off the starboard quarter a small flotilla of ships’ boats were pulling steadily toward him, each crammed with wounded.
In the stern sheets, one of the two armed American sailors muttered. “I’m going to be sick if we do this much longer. Never did like small boats. I don’t mind when we’re making way, but when we’re not I’m queasy.”
His partner looked away. “It’s just the swell.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t care. I just feel bad.”
Jackie moved his head slightly so he could see the complaining sailor. He made a mental note then heard a scuffle of oars as the boat in front pushed off to return to Bonhomme Richard for its next fragile cargo. From their position the American flagship was only a cluster of riding lights. A thin veil of mist lay on the sea, showing signs of thickening.
When the last of the wounded had been half hauled, half carried up on deck, the midshipman clambered down the ladder and came between the oarsmen to take his seat by the tiller. As he settled, the sick sailor turned a jaundiced eye on him.
“What now, sir?”
Mayrant nursed his sling-bound arm. “The