SV - 05 - Sergeant Verity and the Swell Mob. (14 page)

Joe
examined his temporary prison. There was no, way out, except through Doyle's
own room. But even if he had been able to get to the ward itself, he would have
been seized at once by the guards. The timbers on all sides of him were stout
and unyielding, broken only by two portholes, high up and heavily barred.
Drawing a deep breath, he walked over to the curtain behind which Claire had
been hidden, and pulled it back. A sudden exultation overcame his fright at the
object which lay behind the black drape.

On a
trestle-table a human shape lay stitched into an envelope of sail canvas. That
space behind the curtain was all that served as a mortuary for the convict
hulks. Rarely a day passed without one or two deaths among the felons. Their
bodies were brought here for Doyle's cursory examination and a few hours of lying
in state while the details of their deaths were entered in the record for the
prison commissioners. Hardly was a corpse allowed to grow cold before the
shrouded form was taken on board the burial cutter. No time was allowed for the
contagion of the dead to contaminate the living in the confined space of the
decks. A man who woke in the morning might be fifty feet deep by the evening,
his weighted shroud carried clear of the convict fleet by the fierce currents
of The Race, where two tides met beyond the tip of Portland Bill.

Still
fearful of the sight, Joe stretched out his hands towards the shape within the
tightly-sewn canvas, broad at the shoulders and narrower at the feet, like any
coffin. At first he thought it was a dummy, but that would hardly do for the
plan he was trying to envisage. His brow furrowed as he tried to read the
thoughts of Mr Kite and Old Mole. He touched the canvas and his Fingers read
the shape of an arm and hand folded across the breast. The chest seemed
absurdly thrust out, as if the dying man had drawn a great breath to hold for
all eternity. And then Joe felt the faintest warmth, seeping through the canvas
as though to answer his touch. Hope and horror mingled in his heart. As he
stood there, still uncertain, the shape within the shroud gave a soft groan and
the inflated chest seemed to fall a little.

Stunning
Joe sprang back and let the curtain fall. He had heard of dead men's groans as
the air left their bodies but the effect of it was no less appalling for that.
He had no idea who the man was or why he had died. Something had been said
about a convict dying in one of the quarries that morning, either by an
accident or from a seizure. Composing himself, Joe lifted the curtain again.

He
thought that Claire could occupy Surgeon Doyle's attention but there was no
means by which she could smuggle a prisoner to freedom from the
Iphigenia.
That he must do for himself,
using the only means that would be likely to occur. First he tried to lift the
canvas shape and found it heavier than he had dared to imagine. Abandoning the
task for a moment, he ran his Fingers round it and with a sudden excitement
touched something small and hard. While Doyle had hidden the half-dressed girl
from the warders she had made use of the curtained space as her own place of
concealment.

It was
a tiny key, exactly of the pattern carried by every policeman and prison
officer in the kingdom. To the uninitiated, handcuffs were a formidable means
of restraint. But a villain who knew his trade also knew that the same key
would open any handcuffs in police office or prison lodge. They were made in
such quantities that it was out of the question to cut different keys or make
variable locks. Moreover, the routines of the police and the prison service
would have been hopelessly complicated if there was an infinite variety of
keys and cuffs. Most magsmen and bullies professed a contempt for handcuffs,
swearing that they would generally spring them open with a good hammer-blow.
That was a trick Stunning Joe had never accomplished, but with a twist of one
hand he had the little key in its lock. The cuffs opened at its first turn and
he laid them on the floor, rubbing the red impress which they had left on his
wrists.

As he
turned to his task again, Joe's heart was beating high and fast with a new hope
tempered by the knowledge that such means of escape from the hulks was very
likely to be the means of his death as well. Yet his spirits rose for the first
time since he had been brought to Portland. Had not Soapy Samuel promised him
that he must die to live again?

Running
his fingers under the edge of the canvas shroud again he searched out whatever
objects Claire had left there. One was a small pearl-handled razor. The second,
which he failed to find for a moment, was a stout needle with a length of wax
thread passed through its eye.

Now he
knew beyond question what it was that Mr Kite required of him. The escape at
the quarry, with MacBride's apparent assistance, was still a mystery. Had they
meant him to get clear? Or was it a mere device for bringing him to the
Iphigenia
and ensuring that he would
never be sought again by the law? Perhaps Claire was present only to provide a
second chance for him in case the escape at the quarry failed. If that were so,
then Mr Kite and Old Mole must want him very badly indeed. He chuckled to
himself with the elation of the idea.

The
shroud had been stitched by one of the other prisoners, effectively but not
with great neatness. Stunning Joe opened the little pearl-handled razor and cut
the canvas thread where it secured the shroud above the corpse's head. Inch by
inch he wrestled the canvas down, stripping it from the stiffening form.

The
dead man's face was anonymous like all those of the Portland prisoners. Cropped
hair and sallow features were almost universal among the convicts, making it
harder to distinguish one man from another. In this, at least, the authorities
had unwittingly aided Sealskin Kite's plan. For the first time, as he struggled
with the weight of the corpse, it occurred to Joe that the man's death was no
accident. Mr Kite had needed a body, and Mr Kite's power extended even into the
brutal kingdom of the hulks and the labour gangs.

He
drew the rough canvas shroud clear and dropped it on the floor. Then came the
struggle to move the corpse from its trestle-table to one of the bunks by the
green-washed timbers. Stunning Joe paused and listened. Through the closed
door he heard the harsh drunken laugh of Surgeon Doyle and the exclamation of
amused vindictiveness.

'Why, you young
bitch! So you would, would you?'

There
came sounds of an amorous tussle, enough in Joe's opinion to cover the noise of
his own movements. He lugged the shoulders of the corpse from the table and
dragged the body to the floor. Its limbs had not yet stiffened completely in
death. As he towed it by the feet, slithering across the planking of the deck,
the arms fell to either side. The dead man was still dressed in his prison
garb, his number stitched to the brown jacket.

Before
lifting the body on to the bunk, Joe took the pearl-handled razor and slit the
brown jacket so that it came easily away. Then he peeled off his own jacket
with his number upon it. For ten minutes he struggled to thrust the hardening
arms through it, and at last pulled it down untidily over the man's torso. With
a final effort, he dragged the body on to the bunk and turned it on one side,
facing the timbers of the ship's side.

With
any luck, he thought, Doyle would have been too dazed by drink to recognise him
when he came in. And after Claire's attentions it might be next morning before
the Surgeon-Major came in and found that the man brought from the
Indomitable
had died of 'general
infirmity'. The trick was not foolproof but it was the only hope left. Stripped
to the waist, he took the fragments of the dead man's jacket and went back
behind the curtain.

It was easy enough to arrange the tapering shroud upon
its trestle-table and to slide himself into its open end. While he was moving
the corpse to the bunk, Joe had considered what must be done. He stuffed the
mutilated jacket into the far end of the shroud, took the closed razor in one
hand and the needle with its wax thread in the other. Then he slid face
downwards into the faint creamy light of the sailcloth. He would have to stitch
the two flaps of canvas together from the inside, a labour which he guessed
would be easier if he could work with the material below him rather than
reaching overhead to do the job. Of course, close examination would show that
the stitching had been done from inside, but burial parties were not likely to
make close inspections of a shroud. Even if they did, it would be assumed that
the prisoner who stitched the shroud had begun, clumsily, with that end of it.

Best
of all, Joe thought, those who came for him would be only too glad to get the
job over. Not one of them would risk opening the bladder of infection and
disease which the shroud represented. If all was not as it should be, Surgeon
Doyle would take the blame, not they.

The
stitching took him a little while, not least because the light was so faint. At
length he finished the work, squirmed himself over on his back, and lay still
with the pearl-handled razor closed in his fist. If they should discover the
trick now, he thought, he would try to cut his way through them with the blade
rather than surrender. Better to die than to endure what was in store for him
on the
Indomitable.

He
knew that a corpse would not be left overnight and that the burial party would
do its work before sunset. With no means of calculating time, he guessed that
it was about twenty minutes later when he heard voices beyond the
Surgeon-Major's office and the door opened. Several men came into the narrow
space of the bows. One of them made a sound of nausea and disgust in his throat
at the faint sweet smell which had begun to seep from the corpse on the bunk.
None of them doubted that its source was within the shroud.

There was a sudden movement as two of the men lifted
the plank which formed the top of the trestle-table. As a further precaution
against contamination, they were not even to touch the shroud. The dead man
would lie upon this wooden bier in the cutter until the time came when he was
tipped from it into the sea. Joe listened for the voices of Surgeon Doyle or
Claire. He heard neither and he guessed that Doyle had taken her elsewhere for
his enjoyment. Then he felt his heart beat in his throat with apprehension as
one of the officers looked at the figure on the bunk and spoke.

'No
use flaying his back, Master-at-Arms! The scum's dead!'

But
there was only a grunt in reply and Joe felt the procession moving onward
through the ward with its invalids in their two rows of beds. He was in a
creamy twilight which filtered through the threads of the canvas, listening to
the rattle of keys, the opening of the iron-barred gate at the far end of the
deck. Then he heard the call of gulls and the whisper of the calm evening
tide.

They
kept him level as the funeral party descended the gangway steps. He had once
seen it done, the bearers at the lower end of the board holding it high above
their heads. Then he felt the movement of the cutter, the rocking of the trim
little boat as the men of the party stepped into it and settled themselves. His
mind was possessed by two conflicting thoughts. The first was that he would be
dead in a few moments more, trapped fifty feet below the rippling waters of The
Race or drowning on its surface beyond reach of land. The other was that he
would be free, walking the Haymarket with its doxies in their merino gowns and
the waving feathers in their pork-pie hats. He thought of the rustling silks,
the soft voices, and then he prayed.

'Give way! Together!'

As the
officer commanding the detail gave his order, the oars of the first-class
convicts cut the waves with a rhythmic wash of spray. Joe felt the cutter
emerge from the lee of the
Iphigenia
into the bucking swell of open
water. There was not another word spoken for several minutes while he lay and
breathed as shallowly as he could manage. Sea wind whipped and snapped at a
loose corner of the canvas. Someone touched it and he heard the solid impact
of iron shot being set down as one of the men roped it to the shroud. 'Oars
up!'

.They
had evidently reached the spot, and for an instant there was a great stillness.
But as he listened Joe heard a sound, the purling of water close by and further
off a long continuous roar. He thought of The Race, the great tidal swirl, and
for the first time his fear was greater than his hope.

'Man
that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live.' The officer in command
was yapping out the burial service, the speed and the shudder of his voice
testifying to a chill in the evening wind. 'He cometh up and is cut down like a
flower. . .' The words were new to Stunning Joe, who had never heard anything
like them in his life. But even to his uninformed mind there was no mistaking
what came presently.

'We
therefore commit his body to the waves, in sure hope. . .'