Every sailor aboard Alexander was eager to tell anybody prepared to listen that the blow had been the worst he had ever, ever encountered, chiefly due to those awful seas coming from all points of the compass at once-ominous, very ominous. Word was flagged from Scarborough that all was well; poor Friendship was in worse case, having been pooped as well as right over on her beam-nothing on board her was dry from animals to clothing to bedding.
But the eastings had been found and the three ships, keeping abreast of each other with a cable’s length in between, ploughed forward to log up a minimum of 184 land miles a day. They were now down at 40° south latitude and inching steadily farther south than that. Early in December came an even worse gale than the famous one, but at least it blew itself out faster. The weather was freezing cold, despite the summer season; the truly impoverished and less farsighted convicts huddled together for warmth in their thin contractor-issue linen slops, though thanks to the number of deaths there were spare blankets. The hay came in handy.
Dysentery broke out among convicts and marines; men started to die again. Then came news from Scarborough and Friendship that they had dysentery too. Richard insisted that every drop of water his men drank be filtered through the cleaned dripstones. In these tossing seas that meant a few spoonfuls at a time. If all the ships were suffering, whatever water they were on was contaminated. Surgeon Balmain did not order fumigation, scrubbing and a new coat of whitewash, probably because he realized that did he, mutiny would break out.
Though Friendship had set more sail than at any time during the voyage so far, she could not keep up with Alexander and Scarborough, flying along at 207 and more land miles a day. Almost a week into December and the weather warmed a little; Shortland ordered the two big slavers to slow down and let Friendship catch up. Then came a morning of dense, pure white fog that glowed from within like a gigantic pearl, eerie, beautiful, dangerous. The three ships loaded their guns with powder only and fired regularly while a sailor rang Alexander’s bell in its belfry on the starboard rail, clang-clang-long pause-clang-clang. Muffled booms and faint clang-clangs drifted back from Scarborough and Friendship, which kept as true to course as Alexander, a cable’s length apart. Then at ten o’clock the fog lifted in a twinkle to reveal a fine, fair day and a fine, fair breeze.
Great drifts of seaweed appeared-a sign of land, said the sailors, though no land was sighted, just large numbers of grampuses having terrific fun streaking around, under and between the three ships forging along together. The seaweed became mixed with broad trails of fish sperm in meandering ribbons, of what kind no one knew. Somewhere to the south was the Isle of Desolation [3] where Captain Cook had once spent a very strange Christmas Day.
Two days later the entire sea turned to blood. At first the awed and fascinated occupants of Alexander thought it must be blood from a slain whale, then realized that no leviathan could exsanguinate enough to dye the water scarlet as far as the eye could see. Yet another mystery of the deep they would never solve.
“I understand at last,” Richard said to Donovan, “why ye itch to see foreign places. I was never visited by a wish to go any farther from Bristol than Bath because that was my narrow, familiar world. A man cannot help but grow when he is plucked out of his narrow, familiar world. Either that, or like some in the prison below, he will die of the uncertainty. Place is very strong in people. It was in me, perhaps still is.”
“To have a sense of place is common, Richard. That I have none may be thanks to poverty and a burning desire to be free of it, get out of Belfast, out of anywhere tied me down.”
“Did ye go to a charity school, then?”
“No. A kind gentleman took me under his wing and taught me to read and write. He said-and rightly so-that literacy would be my ticket to better things, whereas booze is a ticket to nowhere.”
Donovan was smiling as at a fond memory; reluctant to probe, Richard changed the subject.
“Why is the sea turned to blood? Have ye seen it before?”
“Nay, but I have heard of it. Sailors are a superstitious lot, so ye’ll find most of them describe it as a sign of doom, or the wrath of God, or a portent of evil. For myself-I do not know, except that I believe it is as natural as wanting sex.” Donovan wriggled his brows expressively and grinned at Richard’s discomfort, knowing full well that Richard hated being called a prude chiefly because he knew that at heart he was a prude. “Perhaps some huge convulsion on the sea floor has thrown up a mass of red earth, or perhaps the blood is composed of tiny red sea creatures.”
They ran into more gales, always terrible. In the midst of one memorable squall Alexander sustained her only accident of the voyage by carrying away her fore topsail yard in the slings, which meant that the short chains tethering the wooden yard to the mast snapped and the sail, still attached to its yard, flew free. Scarborough and Friendship backed their main and fore topsails to halt onward progress and waited until the sail was caught-a risky business-and the slings were reconnected.
Then right on the summer solstice it rained-after which it snowed heavily-and followed this up with a bombardment of hailstones the size of hen’s eggs. Nothing the sheep felt, but for pigs and men, a bruising nuisance. The joys of summer at 41° south! 41° north was the latitude of American New York and Spanish Salamanca, where it did
By Christmas Day the three ships were at 42° south and maintaining their 184-land-mile- a-day average through dirty weather. The most enormous whale of the entire voyage followed the trio while the light lasted; he was a bluish-grey in color and well over 100 feet long. As well then that apparently he was just wishing them a merry Christmas, for he would have made shivered timbers out of little Friendship.
Christmas well-being reigned in the prison. Served in the mid afternoon, dinner consisted of pease soup flavored with salt pork, the usual chunk of salt beef and the usual small loaf of hard bread. The treat was in receiving a full half-pint of neat Rio rum each. They also got a chance to win one of Sophia’s pups. She had produced five healthy offspring in Zachariah Clark’s cot, Surgeon Balmain acting as midwife. They were extraordinary. Two looked like pug dogs, two rather like stiff-haired terriers with overslung lower jaws, and one was the image of Wallace. Lieutenant Shairp, the proud surrogate father, gave Balmain the pick of the litter; he chose a puggy one. So did Lieutenant Johnstone, the proud surrogate mother. That left Lieutenant John Shortland and first mate Long to take the salmon-jawed pair.
Things became complicated when Lieutenant Furzer refused to accept the Wallace look-alike because he looked so Scotch (though he did not say that-it was Christmas, after all).
“What shall we do with him?” asked Shairp.
“Esmeralda and his bum boy Clark?” asked Johnstone.
The entire quarterdeck sneered.
“Then I have a mind to give young MacGregor to the prison for Christmas. No convict has a dog,” said Shairp.
The entire quarterdeck thought this an excellent idea, worth toasting in a postprandial amalgam of port and rum.
On Christmas Day the two marine parents appeared in the prison as soon as dinner was finished, Shairp carrying little MacGregor. Both officers were falling-down drunk, though that was not an occurrence peculiar to the festive season. No one ever got any sense out of a marine officer after dinner time on any ship save Friendship, where the lemonade-sipping Ralph Clark used his rum ration to trade to carpenters for writing cases and bureaus, and convicts for tailoring everything from shirts to gloves.
The lots for MacGregor were cast using four decks of cards: those who drew an Ace of Diamonds were in the running. To whoops and cheers, three men showed an Ace of Diamonds. Shairp, sitting on the table, then asked for three straws, though he was so drunk that Johnstone had to wrap his hand around them snugly.
“Long straw wins!” cried Shairp.
Joey Long drew it, weeping in delight.
“The long straw to Long!” Shairp was so amused that he fell off the table and had to be helped tenderly to his feet by Richard and Will, while Joey took the wriggling scrap and covered it in kisses.
“We will keep him with his mama until we get to Botany Bay,” caroled Johnstone. “Once ashore, MacGregor is yours.”
God could not have been kinder, thought Richard as he drifted into a rummy sleep, for once not consumed with
