Martha could not tell from Mr. Clark’s expression whether the ship had received any help wandering into the rocks that surrounded that part of the island. Although her father said nothing, she knew the question would be weighing heavily on his mind, as well.
The only area of dissention between the islanders and their vicar—an outsider to Stroma for all that he’d served the small community for two decades—was their wrecking activities.
To a man—or woman—they would have denied it, but the people of Stroma were known up and down the coast as wreckers: men and women who lured ships to their ruin and stripped them of their cargos.
Clark cleared his throat. “The ship looks like a transport, which makes me think her destination was New South Wales.”
“You mean a ship for prisoners?” her father asked, his eyes widening in disbelief.
“Aye.”
“And yet she is up here?” Martha asked.
“It is unusual, there is no denying that,” Clark admitted. “My guess is the convicts were locked in the hold—maybe even chained. I think many won’t make it out alive.”
“Jesus wept,” her father said, swaying like a reed in the wind.
Martha put her arm around him and sucked in a breath when she realized how fragile his shoulders felt beneath her hand. Jonathan Pringle had never been a big man, but he’d always been healthy. Now he felt as insubstantial as a bird.
“Martha brought our medical bag,” her father told Mr. Clark. “Where would you like us to set up?”
“Actually, I think you should open up the meeting hall to treat survivors.”
“That’s quite a walk. You wouldn’t rather use the church?” Mr. Pringle asked.
The church was the largest building on Stroma and also close to the beach.
When Mr. Clark hesitated, the vicar smiled. “I know tomorrow is Sunday, but the Lord will understand why we can’t have our usual service.”
Clark looked uncomfortable. “We’ll need the church for other purposes, sir. I’m afraid the dead will outnumber the living this night.”
◆◆◆
It was ironic that Hugo probably owed his life to being a piss-poor sailor.
From the moment he’d woken up half naked aboard the ship, he’d begun puking.
Shackled and chained to men on both sides of him and crammed in with convicts all around him, he’d quickly become the most unpopular man onboard: nobody wanted to get near him.
Sometime in the middle of the third or fourth night—he’d lost track—the prisoners around him had finally had enough of the inhumane conditions and began to riot. Hugo could have told them that his stomach was, by then, as empty as a killer’s conscience and that if they’d but waited another few hours he would have coughed up his innards and that would have been the end of it.
But his fellow convicts had long since lost any interest in being reasonable. A riot with men chained to one another could only lead to one thing: some men living, some men dying.
Once the violence broke out, those in charge of the prisoners simply shut the two huge hatches to the ship’s hold, periodically opening them just enough to toss down food and lower the occasional bucket of water.
Hugo discovered that the best way to avoid becoming a dead convict was to be so covered in puke that nobody wanted to touch you. So, he crammed his back up against the splintery hull and watched the fighting. Puking weakly from time to time.
It was soon evident which of the convicts had been arrested for crimes against property and which for crimes against their fellow man. The compulsion to steal a loaf of bread—usually driven by hunger—could not compete with the compulsion to kill or rape—two actions Hugo had witnessed more than once growing up in the rookeries.
Luckily for him, the two men chained closest to him were of the former variety. When the killing began, they both squashed themselves against Hugo like hens huddling for warmth, no longer put off by a little puke.
The three of them watched the horrifyingly lethal proceedings with growing terror as the days passed, their curiosity leavened with a healthy dose of self-interest.
It took no time for one prisoner to reach the top of the pile. The man was a mountain of a brute whose small, piggy eyes were those of a person who enjoyed exercising dominion over others. Once he’d made it clear that he was in charge, the situation in the hold settled into an uneasy peace.
But then no food or water came down the following day, and none the day after.
The big man—Graybow was the name tattooed in uneven blue letters across his massive chest—seemed to go mad on the third day, sawing off the foot of the man attached to him with a wicked, rusty blade he appeared to have snatched from thin air.
The prisoner on Hugo’s right prayed loudly while the one on his left had taken up where Hugo left off and was puking—or at least heaving, since there was nothing left to bring up.
Graybow then sawed off the foot of the man on his left. When he’d finished, he forced the terrified prisoners nearest to him to form a human platform, which he climbed to reach the hatch doors, and began beating on them.
This went on for hours.
As the daylight that bled through the planks overhead faded, Hugo looked from the maniac’s broad back to the rest of the convicts. Other than a few who were actively supporting Graybow—or themselves sawing off body parts of the men chained to them—most of the prisoners were as terrified as Hugo’s two neighbors.
Hugo no longer had the energy to be afraid; he would rather die then and there—at least he’d escape the vile smell in the hold—than suffer through another day in Hell.
“Do you want to live?” The words came out of his mouth without direction from his brain.
His two companions’ heads swiveled in his direction.
“You heard me,” he
