Girl on the Orlop Deck (4 page)

When she got home, the house was full of noise and laughter for her parents were in the kitchen and obviously had company. It took no time at all to sneak into the back bedroom and find her brother’s breeches which still lay across the end of his truckle bed where he’d thrown them when he changed clothes for the wedding. His shirt was ready to hand too. That was in a crumpled heap on the floor. She changed quickly, plaited her hair and tied it with a length of string he’d been using for fishing. Then she crept past the kitchen door, as quietly as she could so as not to alert her parents, and strode out of the house, newly masculine and full of determination. How easy it was to walk in breeches. She hadn’t realized how much skirts got in her way until that moment. It was a pleasure to stride along the road.  

The Dolphin was as crowded as it had been in the afternoon, but this time Tom Kettle was there. He was easy to find because he was making so much noise and, besides, he was sitting next to another seaman who had a wooden leg propped up on the chair in front of him.  

‘Tom Kettle?’ she said. There was no need for politeness or
preliminary
. She was a boy now.  

‘Who wants ter know?’ Tom Kettle boomed.  

What was she to call herself? She could hardly say Marianne. ‘I do,’ she said.  

‘An’ do you have a name, my lubber?’

She had a name in that instant. ‘Matt,’ she said. ‘Matt Morris.’  

‘Well now, Matt Morris, what can I do for ’ee? Since you’re so almighty keen to see me.’  

‘I wants for to join the navy,’ Matt Morris said.  

‘A bold lad, bigod!’ Tom Kettle said. ‘Well now, Matt Morris, you come to the right shop. D’you have a trade by any chance?’

‘No, sir.’

‘What is your father?’

‘He’s a wheelwright, sir, but I don’t intend for to follow him. I wants a life a’ my own. I’m willin’ to learn.’

Tom Kettle was satisfied that he’d seen the reason for this enlistment. Many’s the boy had joined the fleet to escape an unwelcome trade. ‘Than so you shall, bigod!’ he said.

Two minutes later Marianne was a member of His Majesty’s Navy, the recruitment papers signed with her new name, and countersigned by her new friend Tom Kettle, all, as the gentlemen himself declared,
shipshape
and Bristol fashion. It was the easiest sovereign he’d ever earned.

A tot of rum was ordered and she drank it with outward bravado and inward misgiving, surprised to find how quickly it made her head spin. She was patted on the back by Tom Kettle and thumped between the shoulders by his friend Peggy and told she would steer to glory and return in a month or two with her pockets full of silver. Then since they were being so friendly she asked them whether they remembered enlisting a man called Jem Templeman.

‘Fine feller,’ Tom Kettle said. ‘Joined this afternoon, didn’t he, Peg? You took him to the quay, didn’tcher?’

‘Then you know what ship he’s on.’

‘Well, as to that,’ Tom Kettle said cautiously, ‘I couldn’t say.’ It was bad policy to tell anyone where his enlisted men had gone. Some of ’em had left debts behind and some had all manner of troubles. This one was being chased by a harpy of a wife if he remembered correct. ‘We just delivers ’em to the captains, like we’ll do for you. ’Tis the captains what sends ’em on to the ships.’

Marianne tried not to look disappointed. But it didn’t matter really, for she’d find him soon enough once she was afloat. Now it was just a matter of saying goodbye to her mother and father and then she could be aboard and off on her search. ‘Could I just cut off home for a while?’ she asked. ‘To say goodbye like?’

In the normal run of events Tom Kettle would have sent his new recruit to the press room and kept tight hold of him until he could get him aboard, but this lad was so eager and earnest he let him go, advising him to be on the quay by nine o’clock sharp ‘or we shall cast off without ’ee.’

So Marianne went back to her parents’ house to break the news to them. Her appearance in the kitchen caused quite a stir.

‘My dear heart alive!’ her mother said. ‘What do you look like, gel? What have you got on?’

‘She’s got my breeches,’ Johnny said. ‘That’s what she’s got on. What you playin’ at, Marianne? I thought you was a married woman, not one a’ them actor fellers.’

‘I’m an actor feller from this day on, Johnny,’ she told him and explained. ‘Jem’s joined the navy an’ I don’t know where he is, except he’s at sea.’

Her mother was so astonished her jaw fell. ‘Joined the navy,’ she said in disbelief. ‘He can’t have. Not on his weddin’ day. I never heard the like. What’s got into him? ’Ten’t natural.’

‘Well he has,’ Marianne said. ‘The barman at The Dolphin seen it. Only he don’t know what ship he’s on. Nobody does. I been lookin’ for him ever since I left you, Ma, an’ I’ve tried an’ tried, an’ I can’t find no one what knows where he is or where he’s gone or anything. Except he’s in the navy. So I’ve joined the navy too an’ I’m goin’ after him to find him.’

The announcement caused absolute consternation. ‘You’ve took leave of your senses,’ her father said. ‘Gels don’t join the navy. That’s for the likes a’ young Johnny here. ’Tis only boys they wants, not gels, so let’s have done with it an’ no more silly talk.’

‘’Ten’t silly talk, Pa,’ Marianne tried to explain. ‘He’s my husband. Where he goes I got to go.’

‘But not to sea, gel,’ her father said. ‘You can’t go to sea. ’Tis out the question. I forbid it. Gels don’t go to sea.’

His heaviness made her stubborn, as it always had done. ‘There’s no point goin’ on about it,’ she said, ‘an’ you can’t forbid it, for the deed’s done. I’ve signed the paper an’ I’m going to sea. I just came back to say goodbye.’ And she put her arms around her mother’s neck and kissed her. ‘I’ll be back as soon as you know it,’ she promised. ‘With Jem
alongside
a’ me. You’ll see. Wish me well.’

‘Don’t you do nothin’ of the sort, Ma,’ her father said. ‘She’s making’ a terrible mistake. You just tell her so.’

‘What would be the good a’ that?’ Mary said, sadly. ‘Would it stop her goin’?’

‘No, Ma,’ Marianne said. ‘It wouldn’t. Nothing’s going to stop me now. I’ve made my mind up. I can’t stay here an’ be laughed at. I got to go.’

‘I shall go straight down to that quay an’ tell ’em you’re a woman,’ her father said. ‘That’ll stop you.’

Marianne was beginning to feel horribly irritated. Couldn’t he see she’d made up her mind? ‘No it won’t,’ she said, speaking directly to her father. ‘An’ I’ll tell you for why. It won’t on account of I’ll just go straight back first chance I get and sign up again with a different name. Won’t make no difference at all except I won’t come back to say goodbye, I’ll just go. I don’t belong to you no more, Pa. I belongs to Jem.’

He threw his hands in the air with exasperation. ‘We’ve just give you the best weddin’ a gel ever had,’ he said, ‘all that food an’ all, an’ the piper an everything. Don’t that count?’

‘It’s got nothin’ to do with the weddin’, Pa,’ Marianne said. ‘I’m goin’ on account of it’s the only way to find him. Can’t you see that?’

‘You’re an ungrateful, wicked gel,’ her father said. ‘That’s what you are. An’ I allus thought you was such a good little thing. Well, how wrong I was! This is downright rank disobedience an’ you’ll be punished for it. You mark my words.’

Marianne decided to ignore him. ‘You wish me well, Ma, don’t you?’ she said, turning to her mother. It meant a lot to her to have her mother’s blessing.

‘I do, child,’ her mother said, putting her arms round her. ‘I think you’re making a terrible mistake, mind, but I wish you well with all my heart. I truly do.’

‘Then I’ll be off,’ Marianne said, being brisk about it because she was suddenly too close to tears for comfort. ‘There’s my weddin’ ring. Look after it for me. I’ll send ’ee letters when I can get hold of pen and paper. I can’t promise many of ’em, sea travel bein’ what it is, but I will write. You can depend on it.’

Then she left them, striding quickly away from the house and along the dark alley towards the quay, her chest aching with tears. Wherever you are, Jem Templeman, she thought, you’re causing me a deal of grief.

Jack Morris was still fuming. ‘And what are we going to tell Lizzie Templeman?’ he said to Mary. ‘We shall look a fine pair of fools.’

‘We’ll tell her the truth,’ Mary said. ‘That’s what we’ll do. That her blamed fool son’s run off to sea, what’s the most foolish thing I ever heard of, and our Marianne’s gone to sea after him to find him.’

‘An’ I allus thought she was such a quiet little thing,’ Jack said. ‘I can’t think what’s got into her.’

‘An’ I can’t think what’s got into him neither,’ Mary said trenchantly. ‘An’ if he was here I should tell him so. He needs a piece of my mind, wherever he is. Blamed fool.’

It would have pleased her to know that he was lying in a miserable heap on the quarter-deck of the frigate
Sirius
feeling extremely sick and extremely sorry for himself. He was soaking wet, his head was pounding, someone was making the devil of a racket grinding and thumping, it was dark and the ship was rolling from side to side, sloshing his innards about like water in a pail. Why was he on a ship? Hadn’t he just got wed? He had a faint recollection of a marriage service and walking away from a church with Marianne hanging onto his arm, and there’d been a wedding breakfast with plenty of ale. He remembered that. But as to what had happened next, it was as if the events had been punched out of his head.

‘So you’re back in the land a’ the livin’, are you, my sonny?’ a voice said. ‘An’ not afore time. Look lively.’

Jem opened his eyes and squinted up at the speaker, a thickset man with a formidable beard and massive shoulders, holding a lantern so that they could see one another. ‘Where am I?’ he said.

‘Where are yer?’ the man mocked. ‘Why, where should you be, you dunderhead? You’re on the
Sirius
, that’s where you are, which is the best frigate afloat, so think yourself lucky. The eyes an’ ears of Admiral Cornwallis’s navy we are an’ don’t you forget it. Now you got work to do. Look lively.’

Jem did his best to stand up. ‘Had a skinful,’ he explained.

‘Sick as a dog you was,’ the man said, grinning at him and showing a mouthful of very white teeth. ‘We had to throw you in the scuppers, my sonny, and wash you down or you’d ha’ stunk the place out. My name’s Mr Turner and I’m the master carpenter on this ship, which means to say you’re my mate so you do as I say. At all times. Understood? Right then, my sonny, pick up your gear an’ follow me. We’re wanted in the galley.’

There was a carpenter’s bag standing on the deck by Mr Turner’s feet, so Jem picked it up as he was told and did his best to follow the man which he did very unsteadily, for the motion of the ship was throwing him about so much that he could barely keep on his feet. But at least he knew the galley was the ship’s kitchen and at least he had some tools, so he wasn’t surprised when they arrived on a lower deck in a low-ceilinged
room full of sailors, and he found himself standing beside the biggest cooking stove he’d ever seen, with a table lying upside down beside it.

‘First job, fix the table,’ Mr Turner said, and turned to the cook, who was another stolid looking man, with a wooden leg. ‘This here’s Jem, Charlie,’ he said. ‘I hope you got some good grub fer us tomorrow. I didn’t think much a’ tonight’s. Load of ol’ cagmag that was.’

‘Onny the best for you, Mr Turner,’ the cook said, lifting the lid on a huge cooking pot and inspecting the inside. ‘You know that. So what about this ’ere table then?’

‘Jem’ll do it,’ Mr Turner told him. ‘Give him enough light. I’m off to inspect the hull. I shall be in the walk if you want me.’ And he marched away, his lantern bobbing before him.

‘Needs a carpenter does that,’ the cook complained, but he was talking to the air.

‘I
am
a carpenter,’ Jem said. It was making him cross to be talked about as if he wasn’t there. ‘A master carpenter.’

The cook was lighting more lamps. ‘Well, we shall see, shan’t we?’ he said.

Yes, Jem thought crossly, you will. I’ll make sure of it. And, as soon as the lights were ready, he set about his task. At first glance the table looked as though someone had hit it with a hammer. One leg was so badly split it would have to be replaced. Where did they store the wood?

‘Got a job on, aintcher?’ the cook said with obvious satisfaction. ‘Wasn’t stowed proper, that’s the trouble. Took a bashing in that last storm.’

‘If you can tell me where they keep the wood, I’ll make it up as good as new,’ Jem promised. And although he had to suffer the ignominy of being led to the store by one of the ship’s boys as though he was an
imbecile
, he made an excellent job of the repair. The cook said it was ship-shape, damn his eyes if it wasn’t, which was obviously high praise. But then the bell struck four times and the sailors who’d been cleaning and stowing pots while he’d been turning the new leg, gave their
utensils
a last rub and their cook a farewell nod and were gone.

‘Time fer shut-eye,’ the cook explained. ‘They got to be up after the middle watch to get the fires going or you won’t get no grub come eight bells.’

‘I could do with some grub now,’ Jem said. ‘I’m starvin’.’

‘I daresay you could, my lubber, but supper’s all over an’ done with long since, so you’ll just have to do without.

‘En’t you got no bread?’ Jem asked hopefully. ‘Chunk ’a bread ’ud do me fine. Stave off the pangs like.’ And he looked for a bread bin.

‘We don’t keep nothin’ lying’ around,’ the cook said, interpreting the look. ‘Not in a galley. You ought ter know that. Or aintcher never been ter sea afore?’

Jem packed his tools and admitted his ignorance.

‘You got a lot to learn then,’ the cook said.

I
T DIDN’T TAKE
Marianne more than five minutes to discover that life at sea was going to be extremely difficult. When she’d rushed off to enlist, she hadn’t thought any further than her anger had taken her. It had all seemed very simple then. She wasn’t going to stay in Portsmouth and be mocked by her neighbours, so she would have to find Jem and make him come home. That was all there was to it. Now, and a bit late, she realized that there was a going to be a very great deal more to it. For a start, she was going to have to learn to live a completely new kind of life, as a man among men, and according to their rules and regulations, what’s more, for everything on board was regulated. And it was all as far removed from her life at home as it could possibly be.

There were so many people aboard, hundreds and hundreds of them, seamen and marines and ship’s boys and officers in a variety of uniforms, and all of them telling her to look lively and jump to it. And as if that wasn’t enough, they kept ringing bells, incessantly, day and night, and everybody seemed to know what they meant, except her. Not that she had time to ask because she was rushed from one thing to the next. For the first few hours she lived in a state of obedient bewilderment. She was shown where to buy her sailor’s slops, which, according to the purser, was ‘on tick, bein’ as you ain’t earned nothing yet’ and bought a canvas ‘ditty bag’ as well to store her things in; she was given a place at the mess table on the gun deck and told never to sit ‘nowhere else’; she was shown where the heads were and told to piss over the side ‘when you’m a need of it’ – as if I could! – and when her first shift was finally over, she was told to sling her hammock between the guns like the rest of her watch was doing and was mocked when she tried to climb into it, which was a great deal more difficult than it looked.

It was a miserable, worrying night. She wanted to pee but there was
no sign of a chamber pot, not that she could have used it if there had been, and she wasn’t at all sure she could find the heads in the middle of the night. The bells rang, her companions snored and farted and ground their teeth, and at daybreak, when she’d finally fallen into an uneasy sleep, she was shouted at and told to show a leg and wake up and look lively. And then, when she opened her eyes, a new problem pushed into her head to worry her. How on earth was she going to change into her sailor’s clothes without being seen? There were half-naked men stepping into breeches and pulling on shirts and waistcoats and jackets
everywhere
she looked and no possibility of any privacy. In the end she changed her breeches while she was still in the hammock and contrived to sit with her back to her messmates when she put on her shirt and jacket. By the time she was dressed, she was out of breath and her heart was beating most uncomfortably but the change had been made and she was wearing the same sort of clothes as all the other seamen, the same striped breeches and the same duck cotton jacket, with a black straw hat on her head and good stout shoes on her feet, looking the part even if she didn’t feel it.

The day progressed in a series of embarrassments. She felt as if she was in a foreign country surrounded by men speaking a completely foreign language, she understood so little of what they were saying. And it annoyed her that she had to be taught the simplest things – how to stow her hammock ‘roll um up tight like that see’, one of her messmates told her, ‘now pass um through the hoop, now give um seven turns, six en’t a bit a’ good, ’tis seven or nothin’, and then you can stow um in the netting’; how to scrub the deck with a holystone and flog it dry with a length of rope – this by a saucy boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve and made a point of mocking her whatever she did. You wants your ears boxed, my lad, she thought, as she worked. I been a-scrubbin’ floors all my grown life. I don’t need no whippersnapper a-tellin’ me what to do. She had no idea what the time was, nor how long she’d have to work before she had something to eat, but she daren’t ask because that would reveal her
ignorance
of those interminable bells. By the time the decks were scrubbed white and the brass fittings had been polished and the rails wiped clean, she was so hungry her stomach was rumbling and aching.

But eventually the bell sounded eight times and work seemed to be over for a while and everyone headed back to the gun deck. Now she had to be shown how to lower the table and benches from the beams and set
them ready for breakfast and then she was told to retrieve her spoon from her ditty bag. ‘An’ look sharp about it or ’ee won’t get nothin’ to eat’. After that they all waited while the mess cook, who was a tall man with an imposing black beard, ambled down to what he called the galley but was actually a huge stove at the far end of the deck and returned with a steaming dish of porridge which he called skillygalee. Why do they have to have different names for everything? Marianne thought, watching his hands as he served them their portions, dollop by dollop. It was a bit lumpy, whatever it was called, but it was hot and filling and she was glad of it and ate it greedily.

‘Now then, young feller-me-lad,’ the mess cook said, ‘when you can stop filling your face for a second, you en’t told us your name yet, what you should ha’ done long since.’

She stopped eating, aware that they were all grinning at her, and told him her new name. ‘Matt Morris.’

‘Well now, Matt Morris,’ the mess cook said, ‘I’m Johnny Galley, which was Johnny Galloway afore I come aboard but is Galley now on account of I serves the grub, which don’t ’ee forget or ’ee’ll starve to death, and this here is Abram, and that there is Henry and that there is.…’

She nodded at them in turn, her head spinning at being told so many names all at once. But they seemed friendly and the man called Henry leant across the table to talk to her. ‘You’m new aintcher?’ he said. ‘Teks a bit a’ getting used to, does the sea.’

‘Aye, it does,’ she agreed. ‘Specially them bells. I can’t get the hang a’ them at all.’

‘Three watches,’ Henry explained. ‘Eight hours each, from noon to noon, one watch on, one watch off. Bells every half-hour, reg’lar. Two lots of eight bells in each watch, one rung after the first half-hour’s gone by, two on the hour, three on the next half-hour and so on. ’Tis all eights aboard ship, d’you see, being there’s twenty-four hours in a day.’

It seemed simple put like that.

‘Next time you hears eight bells,’ Henry said, ‘’twill be the end of the morning watch. An’ when ’tis the end of the forenoon watch, ’twill be one bell an’ the bosun’s mate’ll play
Nancy Dawson
an’ then you’ll know ’tis dinner time.’

The bells were ringing again. No time to ask any more questions for that was obviously the signal for the mess to be cleared, dishes wiped
clean with a rag and stored in racks against the ship’s side, spoons packed away in ditty bags, the table and benches raised and hung in the beams out of the way, while Johnny Galley carried the serving dish back to the stove.

Now what have I got to do? Scrub the lower decks apparently. They likes things clean, she thought, as she scoured with her holystone along with all the other boys, and it occurred to her that the ship was still at anchor and wondered why they weren’t moving. If I’m to find my Jem, she thought, t’will have to be when we’m all in port on account of I can hardly swim out to all the ships in the fleet, even I could swim, what I can’t. I’ll go ashore first chance I gets an’ ask all the sailors I meet till I find him. Sweat and determination flowed together. Oh I shall find him, no matter where he is. I’ve made my mind up to it. I shall find him an’ we’ll go home together and everything will be all right again. He’s got to be in one or the other of our ships and from what I seen this morning, there can’t be more than a dozen of ’em. I wonder what work they’ve set him to do.

It would have surprised her to know that her husband wasn’t in her own part of the fleet at all but several leagues away leaning over the rail on the quarter-deck of the
Sirius
, which was making speed towards Brest. A few minutes before he’d been hauling on a rope to lift the sails as the ship changed tack, now he was talking to his new shipmates and doing absolutely nothing at all.

‘I thought I was a carpenter,’ he complained, rubbing his new blisters. ‘Never thought I’d end up manning a rope an’ that’s the truth of it.’

‘Step aboard a frigate, my ol’ lubber,’ the nearest man said, ‘an’ you’re a jack of all trades. I’m a gunner by trade, but we does what needs to be done aboard a frigate accordin’ to the watch we’re on, an’ that’s all there is to it. Fighting ship is this. You’ll get to ply your trade presently, bein’ t’is the forenoon watch.’

Jem thought of the great guns, resting heavily against their blocks and wondered what it would be like when they were fired. ‘D’you ply your trade in the forenoon too?’ he asked.

‘No, my lubber,’ the gunner told him. ‘Guns is fired off after supper. As you’d ha’ heard last night if you hadn’t ha’ been tiddly. We seen you in the scuppers, didden we, boys? You’d had a fair ol’ skinful hadn’tcher.’

‘Yes,’ Jem admitted and suddenly remembered everything about it in
painfully vivid detail, Tom Kettle plying him with rum and roaring with laughter, pies and pressed meats covering the table at the wedding feast, all those pretty little jellies and custards.

‘What brought you to sea, then?’ the gunner said. ‘You aint a reg’lar. That I
do
know. Not by no account. Name a’ Tom, by the way.’

‘Pleased ter meetcher,’ Jem said. ‘Name a’ Jem.’ Then he paused. He could hardly tell them the real reason, although he remembered it well enough this morning. It shamed him even to think of it. He could feel her pushing him away, telling him to stop, could see her standing in the middle of the room with a trickle of blood running down her leg, saying he’d hurt her. What a thing to do to him! He could feel his anger rising at the memory of it. Was it any wonder he’d run away to sea? ‘Nagging wife,’ he said, eventually. ‘Couldn’t stand her no more, so I upped and went.’

‘My stars!’ Tom said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be you when her family catch up with you. We had a marine aboard once, done the self-same thing an’ when he got back home again her brothers up an’ took a horse whip to him. Nearly had his eye out.’

‘They’ll have forgot all about me by now,’ Jem said, assuming a bravado he didn’t feel because the story had made him wince. ‘Bad penny, they’ll say. Good riddance to him.’ He could almost persuade himself he could hear their voices. ‘Sides, I shall come back with a
pocketful
of silver. En’t that the size of it?’

‘So they says,’ Tom grinned. ‘That or a peg-leg. There’s no tellin’ if we fights the Frenchies.’

‘Are we going to fight the Frenchies?’

‘If Admiral Lord Nelson had his way, we’d be fightin’ ’em tomorrow,’ Tom said. ‘Trouble is we can’t find the beggars. They give us the slip every time.’

‘Run away, d’you mean?’

‘Every time. No sooner they sees his flag a-flyin’ than they’re off.’

‘That’s why we’m off to Brest,’ another man said. ‘To see if we can find the beggar. That’s our orders. d’you see. To find the beggar.’

‘Right then, my sonny,’ Mr Turner said from behind him. ‘We got work to do. Follow me.’

Jem was beginning to get the hang of keeping his balance as the ship rolled beneath him, and knew he had to bend his knees to accommodate the movement. He followed his new master in his new lurching way,
across the gun deck, down the gangway and into a narrow space between the hull and the bulkheads. It was dark and cramped but it seemed to be where he was going to work.

‘Bungs,’ Mr Turner said.

Jem had no idea what he was talking about, so he waited.

‘We could be in the thick of it when we reach Brest,’ Mr Turner said. ‘There’s no knowing. They could skulk away an’ hide, which they been doing long enough in all conscience, or they could come out an’ face us. Any which ways I likes to be prepared. So good stout bungs is what we need. Like this one here.’ And he traced the outline of a large round plug of oak that was firmly embedded in the hull. ‘If we’re in heavy seas an’ we gets holed below the waterline, d’you see, we needs to plug like
lightning
. I likes to have a good stock ready an’ waiting.’

They lurched to the storeroom down in the hold and made bungs for the rest of the afternoon, large ones for cannon balls from 32 and 24 pounders, ‘in case we meets a man a’ war’, smaller ones for 18 and 12 pounders, ‘in case ’tis a frigate’. Jem worked doggedly and quietly, as he usually did, but as the minutes passed he became aware that his master was watching him with approval and, after a while, they began to talk in the desultory way of men engrossed in their work.

‘This’ll be your first trip I’m thinking,’ Mr Turner ventured.

After nearly a day aboard, Jem knew the correct way to answer. ‘Aye, sir.’

‘A lot to learn, I don’t doubt.’

‘Aye, sir. But I’m a quick learner.’

‘You’re a good worker, certainly,’ Mr Turner said. ‘I’ll give you that.’

They worked companionably until eight bells were rung and not long after that a single bell sounded and he could hear a piper up on deck, playing a familiar tune. Mr Turner put his tools away and headed back to the gun deck. ‘Grub an’ grog, my sonny,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Pint a’ rum and water does wonders for the spirits.’

And so it seemed to do, for after the meal, which was ship’s biscuits and a generous helping of salt beef boiled to a stew, they were all in splendid humour. None of them was on watch so they had the afternoon to themselves and could do as they pleased. Some took a needle and thread from their ditty bags and sewed ribbons into the seams of their shirts and trousers, some used the time to smoke a pipe or chew a wad of tobacco, and a group from Jem’s mess gathered round the ship’s
story-teller 
for a yarn and were soon chuckling and laughing. But Jem sat apart and watched. He needed to get his thoughts into some sort of order and it was the first time since he’d come aboard that he’d had the leisure to do it.