Command

You are responsible for landing the prisoners in a good state of health—in accordance with your government contract, I hasten to add. Shall we inspect their quarters?'

Kydd had quickly made his acquaintance with Totnes Castle before. Her capacious hold was still being readied; the carpenter had done the job before and seemed to know what was needed. Kydd had simply let him get on with it.

He and Mowlett stepped gingerly through the half-constructed bulkhead, studded with heavy nails and with loopholes. Their entry was a small door, but it was more like a slit, requiring them to squeeze through sideways. At sea if the ship was holed this would be a hopeless death-trap.

With hatches off, the entire drab length of the space was illuminated pitilessly, a reeking grey-timbered cavity with iron bars fitted as a barrier at midships, another further forward. As soon as the convicts were aboard, the hatches would be battened down securely with gratings and this would change to a dank hole. The carpenter straightened and offered, 'Men 'ere, females the next, an' the nippers right forrard.'

Kydd had forgotten that he was to carry women and children as well; with a lurch of unreality he realised that nothing in his previous sea experience had prepared him for it. Mowlett moved over to the side of the ship where most of the work was going on. Two levels of berths were being fitted along the sides with a narrow central walkway. They were like shelves: four or more would be expected to sleep together. It was all a hideous travesty of sea-going and Kydd's gorge rose.

He glanced at Mowlett and saw his lips moving as he counted. The surgeon swivelled round to count on the other side, then turned to Kydd and drawled, 'Upwards of two hundred human beings confined in here, for four, five months. All weathers, half the world over and in chains.'

What was he expected to do? Kydd wanted to retort. The contract was for 214 convicts and the ship was being stored and victualled accordingly. Kydd stepped forward doggedly and checked the fore hatchway; the compartment led up the ladder to the foredeck, where pens for cattle and poultry were ready. Barricades had been erected at each end of the open deck with firing slits facing inwards, and everywhere bore evidence of the real purpose of the ship.

Four or five months at sea in this! It was inconceivable, and with not a soul aboard who could in any sense be called a friend to share with him the grievous assaults on his soul. He turned and tramped back to his cabin.

Glowering out through the salt-misted stern windows at the busy Thames, Kydd was startled by a light laugh behind him. It was Mowlett, who must have followed him in, now sitting at his ease in the armchair. 'So you're Kydd, a victor of the Nile and now prison-ship master! What possessed you to take the post I can't possibly conceive.'

Something in Kydd's look made him add, 'Easy enough. An unusual name and I do read the Gazette sometimes.' He went on offhandedly, 'So we can take it that it's in your interest to land the convicts in Port Jackson fit and healthy at more than seventeen pounds a head, then.'

'Aye,' said Kydd, cautiously.

'No, it's not,' retorted Mowlett, half smiling, 'It's much more in your interest to have a sickly voyage with half the convicts shaking hands with Davy Jones. Claim their rations and sell it on in New South Wales—on that alone you'll make twice your figure for landing 'em healthy.'

Kydd was speechless.

'But, then, of course you'll be venturing privately? A decent freight of baubles and trinkets will have all Sydney a-twittering. It's expected, you know, and if you come all that way without you have something, well, consider the disappointment.' As captain, Kydd was free to arrange cargo stowage for any such speculation and it did not take much imagination to conjure the effect in the desperately isolated colony of the arrival of the latest London items of fashion. It would be a captive market.

'You are a man of the world, Mr Kydd, and you will know that this is not where the greatest profit lies—oh, no . . .'

'So then, what is—'

'Why, I'm astonished you confess ignorance! All the world knows the one cargo perfectly sure of a welcome, that will be snatched from your hands by free and bound alike, and that is— rum! Rivers of the stuff are thrown down throats daily to dull the pains of exile, to make brave the weak, to blind the eyes to squalor. I should think the whole colony will be safely comatose in a sodden, drunken stupor for at least three weeks after our arrival . . .'

The bitterness he could detect under the banter eased Kydd's misgivings and he replied gravely, 'Then they'll be disappointed, Mr Mowlett, for there'll be no rum cargo f'r Totnes Castle.'

Mowlett seemed taken aback, then added, in a milder tone, 'We shall hope that our squalid cargo of humanity does not bring the usual gaol-fever or worse—you have the easier task. I ask you to conceive of my dilemma in the selecting of physic to meet all and any scourges of the flesh brought aboard by the poor wretches and which invariably will become apparent only in the midst of the ocean.'

He got to his feet. 'Good luck, Doctor,' Kydd said quietly.

'It's you who will need the luck, Captain.'

Kydd watched the lighters approach with bleak resignation. The vessel was as prepared for the convicts as it was ever likely to be: the 'tween decks were now one long prison-cell. He and the officers would inhabit the raised after cabins, what the Navy would call a poop, while the seamen had a corresponding raised fo'c'sle forward. Apart from store-rooms and hideaways for the boatswain and carpenter, the rest was so much prison lumber. There was, however, a state-room on either forward wing of the officers' cabins. These were prepared for two free settler families apparently booked for the passage; they would board at the last possible moment before they sailed to minimise any distasteful exposure to the prisoners.

The lighters had put off from the dark hulks moored further along; foetid, rotten and stinking, they were worse even than the disease-ridden bridewells ashore. Later there would be carts with unfortunates from Newgate and other London gaols to crowd aboard.

In his pocket was a letter just received from Cecilia. She had understood Kydd's need to be away to sea again and had avoided reference to his ship, only stating a forlorn request for a souvenir of the far land they would reach after so much voyaging. Renzi was still missing but Cecilia stoutly believed they would find him soon. Kydd felt there was little hope if he had not been found by now, and he could not shake off an image of his friend lying dead in a ditch somewhere like any common pauper.

Totnes Castle had been warped alongside the wharf. A scruffy troop of redcoats