The covenant - James A. Michener [255]
'Not I, not yet,' the captain said gallantly.
'But she's right,' Richard said. 'Saffron is yelloworange, reallyand they do use it a great deal in India. You'll grow to like it.'
'While you're here,' Vera said to the wagon builder, 'could you fix the lock on my box? The workmen threw it aboard, I'm afraid.'
Thomas Carleton left the men's cabin and moved a few paces to Vera's, where, after one quick glance at the portmanteau in which she kept her dresses, he told her that a small piece of wood must be replaced so that the screws holding the hasp could catch. 'It's no problem,' he assured her, 'always providing we can find the wood.' Together they made a quick tour of the deck, finding nothing, but when they went to the 'tween deck, where the ship's carpenter kept his cupboard, they found the piece they needed, and it was so small that the carpenter refused any payment from Vera: 'Take it and be blessed.' He was giving it not to this amiable girl but to the wagon builder, whose good work among the passengers he had noted.
When the box was fixed, Vera thanked the young man, four years her junior, and then talked with him about conditions belowdecks. She was by no means a philanthropist, as those seeking always to do good for others were called in Englandthose busybodies who were agitating against slavery in Jamaica and child labor in Birminghambecause families like hers in Salisbury were too sensible for that. But she was interested in whatever was occurring on this tedious voyage, and on subsequent days she visited various parts of the ship with Carleton, and one night about half after ten the captain who occupied the bunk closest to the dividing wall in Richard's cabin whispered, 'I say, Saltwood! I think something interesting's going on next door.'
'Mind your business,' Richard said, but any chance of sleep was destroyed, so toward three in the morning, after assuring himself that the captain was asleep, he peered into the night and saw young Thomas Carleton, he of the glib tongue, slipping out of the next-door cabin and down the ladder to his proper place below.
The next weeks, half of March and half of April, were a dismal time for Richard Saltwood; it was apparent that Vera Lambton was entertaining the young man from belowdecks three and four times a week. During the day their behavior was circumspect. They spoke casually if they chanced to meet each other as he pursued his duties, but they betrayed no sign of intimacy. On one very hot day after the Cape Verdes had been passed and the ship was heading sharply southeastward, the ship's captain summoned both Saltwood and the young officer to assist him in a court-martial; the accusing official was young Carleton, who, as an officer in charge of maintaining discipline belowdecks, had brought charges against a pitiful specimen who on four different occasions had been caught stealing.
When the court learned that he had been shipped aboard after a chain of similar offenses in London, there could be only one logical verdict: 'Twelve lashes.' And Thomas Carleton was charged with bringing on deck all the passengers so that they could see for themselves how crime was punished. When all were in place, ship's officers led the convicted on deck, where he was stripped to the waist, tied with his arms about the mast, and lashed with a club from whose end dangled nine cattails of knotted leather. He made no sound till the fifth stroke, then cried pitifully and fainted. The last seven lashes were delivered to an inert body, after which he was sloshed with salt water. There was no more stealing.
The flogging had a sobering effect upon theft belowdecks; some of the passengers were a sorry lot, but most were from the sturdy and moral lower classes, women and men who would engage in no misconduct, and they rebuked those who did. One man, nearing fifty and with two sons, grabbed Carleton's arm as the young man hurried past one afternoon and pulled him into a corner.
'Laddie,' he said bluntly, 'you're treadin' on very dangerous ground.' 'What