Flash For Freedom!

'Please sir, it's gruel. The doctor sez for you to eat it, please, sir,' and he lumbered forward and spilled half of it over my cot.

'D—n you!' cries I, and weak and all as I was I caught him a back-handed swipe on the face that sent him half across the cabin. 'Take your filth and get out!'

He mowed at me, and tried to scrape some of the stuff off the floor back into the bowl. 'Doctor'll thump me if you don't take it, please, sir,' says he, pushing it at me again. 'Please, sir, it's nice tack, an' all — please, sir,' and then he squealed as I lunged out at him, dropped the bowl, and fairly ran for it. I was too weak to do more than curse after him, but I promised myself that when I was better I would put myself in a better frame of mind by giving the blundering half-wit a thumping on my own account, to keep the doctor's company.

Next man in was no half-wit, but a nimble little ferret of a ship's boy with a loose lip and a cast in one eye. He gave me a shifty grin and sniffed at the spilled gruel.

'Looney didn't 'ave no luck, did 'e?' says he. 'I told 'im gruel wouldn't go down, no'ow.'

I told him to go to blazes and leave me alone.

'Feelin' groggy, eh?' says he, moving towards the bunk. 'Grub's no good ter you, mate. Tell yer wot; I'll get in bed wiv yer for a shillin'.'

'Get out, you dirty little b d,' says I, for I knew his kind; Rugby had been crawling with 'em. 'I'd sooner have your great-grandmother.'

'Snooks!' says he, putting out his tongue. 'You'll sing a different tune after three months at sea an' not a wench in sight. It'll be two bob then!'

I flung a pot at him, but missed, and he let fly a stream of the richest filth I've ever listened to. 'I'll get Mister Comber ter you, yer big black swine!' he finished up. 'E'll give you what for! Ta-ta!' And with that he slipped out, thumbing his nose.

Mr Comber was the fourth of my new acquaintances. He was third mate, and shared the cabin with me, and I couldn't make him out. He was civil, although he said little enough, but the odd thing was, he was a gentleman, and had obviously been to a good school. What a playing-field beauty like this was doing on a merchantman I couldn't see, but I held my tongue and watched him. He was about my age, tall and fair haired, and too sure of himself for me to get on the wrong side of. I guessed he was as puzzled about me as I was about him, but I was feeling too poorly at first to give much heed to him. He didn't champion the cabin boy, by the way, so that worthy's threat had obviously been bluff.

It was four or five days before I got my sea legs, and by then I was heartily sick of the Balliol College. Nowadays you have no notion of what a sailing-ship was like in the forties; people who travel P.O.S.H. in a steam packet can't imagine, for one thing, the h—-ish continual din of a wooden vessel — the incessant creaking and groaning of timber and cordage, like a fiend's orchestra playing the same discordant notes, regular as clockwork, each time she rolled. And, by G-d, they rolled, far worse than iron boats, bucketing up and down, and stinking, too, with the musty stale smell of a floating cathedral, and the bilges plashing like a giant's innards. Oh, it was the life for a roaring boy, all rights and that was only the start of it. I didn't know it, but I was seeing the Balliol College at her best.

One morning, when I was sufficiently recovered to hold down the gruel that Looney brought me, and strong enough to kick his backside into the bargain, comes Captain Spring to tell me I'd lain long enough, and it was time for me to learn my duties.

'You'll stand your watch like everyone else,' says he, 'and in the meantime you can start on the work you're paid for — which is to go through every scrap of that cargo, privatim et seriatim, and see that those long-shore thieves haven't bilked me. So get up, and come along with me.'

I followed him out on deck; we were scudding along like a flying duck with great billows of canvas spread, and a wind on the quarter deck fit to lift your hair off. There was plenty of shipping in sight, but no land, and I knew we must be well out of the Channel by now. Looking forward from the poop rail along the narrow flush deck, it seemed to me the Balliol College didn't carry much of a crew, for all her size, but I didn't have time to stop and stare, with Spring barking at me. He led me down the poop ladder, and then dropped through a scuttle by the mizzen mast.

'There you are,' says he. 'Take a good look.'

Although I've done a deal more sailing than I care to remember, I'm no canvas-back, and while I know enough not to call the deck the floor, I'm no hand at nautical terms. We were in what seemed to be an enormous room stretching away forward to the foremast, where there was a bullthead; this room ran obviously the full breadth of the ship, and was well lighted by gratings in the deck about fifteen feet above our heads. But it was unlike the interior of any ship I'd ever seen, it was so big and roomy; on either side, about four feet above the deck on which we stood, there was a kind of half-deck, perhaps seven feet deep, like a gigantic shelf, and above that yet another shelf of the same size. The space down the centre of the deck, between the shelves, was piled high with cargo in a great mound — it must have been a good seventy feet long by twelve high.

'I'll send my clerk to you with the manifest,' says Spring, 'and a couple of hands to help shift and stow.' I became aware that the pale eyes were watching me closely. 'Well?'

'Is this the hold?' says I. 'It's an odd-looking place for cargo.'

'Aye,' says he. 'Ain't it, though?'

Something in his voice, and in the dank feel of that great, half empty deck, set the worms stirring inside me. I moved forward with the great heap of cargo, bales and boxes, on one side of me, and the starboard shelves on the other. It was all clean and holystoned, but there was a strange, heavy smell about it that I couldn't place. Looking about, I noticed something in the shadows at the back of the lower shelf — I reached in, and drew out a long length of light chain, garnished here and there with large bracelets. I stood staring at them, and then dropped them with a clatter as the truth rushed in on me. Now I saw why the Balliol College had sailed from France, why her deck was this strange shape, why she was only half-full of cargo.

'My G-d!' cries I. 'You're a slaver!'

'Good for you, Mr Flashman!' says Spring. 'And what then?'

'What then?' says I. 'Well, you can turn your b d boat about, this minute, and let me ashore from her! By G- d, if I'd guessed what you were, I'd have seen you d––d, and old Morrison with you, before I set foot on your lousy packet!'

'Dear me,' says he softly. 'You're not an abolitionist, surely?'

'D—n abolition, and you too!' cries I. 'I know that slaving's piracy, and for that they stretch your neck below high-water mark! You — you tricked me into this — you and that old swine! But I won't have it, d'ye hear? You'll set me ashore, and —'

I was striding past him towards the ladder, as he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, eyeing me under the brim of his hat. Suddenly he shot out a hand, and with surprising strength swung me round in front of him. The pale eyes gazed into mine, and then his fist drove into my belly, doubling me up with pain; I reeled back, and he came after me, smashing me left and right to the head and sending me sprawling against the cargo.

'D—n you!' I shouted, and tried to crawl away, but he pinned me with his foot, glaring down at me.

'Now, see here, Mister Flashman,' says he. 'I didn't want you, but I've got you, and you'll understand, here and now, that while you're on this ship, you're mine, d'ye see? You're not going ashore until this voyage is finished — Middle Passage, Indies, homeward run and all. If you don't like slaving — well, that's too bad, isn't it? You shouldn't have signed aboard, should you?'

'I didn't sign! I never —'

'Your signature will be on the articles that are in my cabin this minute,' says he. 'Oh, it'll be there, sure enough — you'll put it there.'

'You're kidnapping me!' I yelled. 'My G-d, you can't do it! Captain Spring, I beg you — set me ashore, let me get off — I'll pay you — I'll —'

'What, and lose my new supercargo?' says this devil, grinning at me. 'No, no. John Charity Spring obeys his owner's orders — and mine are crystal clear, Mister Flashman. And he sees to it that those aboard his ship obey his orders, too, ye hear me?' He stirred me with his foot. 'Now, get up. You're wasting my time again. You're here; you'll do your duty. I won't tell you twice.' And those terrible pale eyes looked into mine again. 'D'ye understand me?'

'I understand you,' I muttered.

'Sir,' says he.