No Defense Part 13

Once more good-bye, my dear friend, and G.o.d be with you.

SHEILA LLYN.

P. S.--I wonder where you will read this letter. I hope it will find you before your release. Please remember that she who wrote it summons you from the darkness where you are to light and freedom here.

Slowly Dyck folded up the letter, when he had read it, and put it in his pocket. Then he turned with pale face and gaunt look to Michael Clones.

"Michael," said he, "that letter is from a lady. It comes from her new home in Virginia."

Michael nodded.

"Aye, aye, sir, I understand you," he said. "Then she doesn't know the truth about her father?" Dyck sighed heavily. "No, Michael, she doesn't know the truth."

"I don't believe it would make any difference to her if she did know."

"It would make all the difference to me, Michael. She says she wishes to help me. She tells me that money's been sent to the big firm in Dublin-money to take me across the sea to Virginia."

Michael's face clouded.

"Yes, sir. To Virginia--and what then?"

"Michael, we haven't a penny in the world, you and I, but if I took one farthing of that money I should hope you would kill me. I'm hungry; we've had nothing to eat since yesterday; but if I could put my hands upon that money here and now I wouldn't touch it. Michael, it looks as if we shall have to take to the trade of the footpad."

CHAPTER XII. THE HOUR BEFORE THE MUTINY

In the days when Dyck Calhoun was on the verge of starvation in London, evil naval rumours were abroad. Newspapers reported, one with apprehension, another with tyrannous comment, mutinous troubles in the fleet.

At first the only demand at Spithead and the Nore had been for an increase of pay, which had not been made since the days of Charles II.

Then the sailors' wages were enough for comfortable support; but in 1797 through the rise in the cost of living, and with an advance of thirty per cent. on slops, their families could barely maintain themselves. It was said in the streets, and with truth, that seamen who had fought with unconquerable gallantry under Howe, Collingwood, Nelson, and the other big sea-captains, who had borne suffering and wounds, and had been in the shadow of death--that even these men d.a.m.ned a system which, in its stern withdrawal of their cla.s.s for long s.p.a.ces of time from their own womenfolk, brought evil results to the forecastle.

The soldier was always in touch with his own social world, and he had leave sufficient to enable him to break the back of monotony. He drank, gambled, and orated; but his indulgences were little compared with the debauches of able-bodied seamen when, after months of sea-life, they reached port again. A s.h.i.+p in port at such a time was not a scene of evangelical habits. Women of loose cla.s.s, flower-girls, fruit-sellers, and costermongers turned the forecastle into a pleasure-house where the pleasures were not always secret; where native modesty suffered no affright, and physical good cheer, with ribald paraphrase, was notable everywhere.

"How did it happen, Michael?"

As he spoke, Dyck looked round the forecastle of the Ariadne with a restless and inquisitive expression. Michael was seated a few feet away, his head bent forward, his hands clasped around his knees.

"Well, it don't matter one way or 'nother," he replied; "but it was like this. The night you got a letter from Virginia we was penniless; so at last I went with my watch to the p.a.w.nbroker's. You said you'd wait till I got back, though you knew not where I was goin'. When I got back, you were still broodin'. You were seated on a horse-block by the chemist's lamp where you had read the letter. It's not for me to say of what you were thinkin'; but I could guess. You'd been struck hard, and there had come to you a letter from one who meant more to you than all the rest of the world; and you couldn't answer it because things weren't right. As I stood lookin' at you, wonderin' what to do, though, I had twelve s.h.i.+llin's in my pocket from the watch I'd p.a.w.ned, there came four men, and I knew from their looks they were recruitin' officers of the navy. I saw what was in their eyes. They knew--as why shouldn't they, when they saw a gentleman like you in peasant clothes?--that luck had been agin'

us.

"What the end would have been I don't know. It was you that solved the problem, not them. You looked at the first man of them hard. Then you got to your feet.

"'Michael,' says you quietly, 'I'm goin' to sea. England's at war, and there's work to do. So let's make for a king's s.h.i.+p, and have done with misery and poverty.'

"Then you waved a hand to the man in command of the recruitin' gang, and presently stepped up to him and his friends.

"'Sir,' I said to you, 'I'm not going to be pressed into the navy.'

"'There's no pressin', Michael,' you answered. 'We'll be quota men.

We'll do it for cash--for forty pounds each, and no other. You let them have you as you are. But if you don't want to come,' you added, 'it's all the same to me.'

"Faith, I knew that was only talk. I knew you wanted me. Also I knew the king's navy needed me, for men are hard to get. So, when they'd paid us the cash--forty pounds apiece--I stepped in behind you, and here we are--here we are! Forty pounds apiece--equal to three years' wages of an ordinary recruit of the army. It ain't bad, but we're here for three years, and no escape from it. Yes, here we are!"

Dyck laughed.

"Aye, here we're likely to remain, Michael. There's only this to be said--we'll be fighting the French soon, and it's easy to die in the midst of a great fight. If we don't die, Michael, something else will turn up, maybe."

"That's true, sir! They'll make an officer of you, once they see you fight. This is no place for you, among the common herd. It's the dregs o' the world that comes to the s.h.i.+p's bottom in time of peace or war."

"Well, I'm the dregs of the world, Michael. I'm the supreme dregs."

Somehow the letter from Virginia had decided Dyck Calhoun's fate for him. Here he was--at sea, a common sailor in the navy. He and Michael Clones had eaten and drunk as sailors do, and they had realized that, as they ate and drank on the River Thames, they would not eat and drink on the watery fairway. They had seen the tank foul with age, from which water was drawn for men who could not live without it, and the smell of it had revolted Dyck's senses. They had seen the kegs of pickled meat, and they had been told of the evil rations given to the sailors at sea.

The Ariadne had been a flag-s.h.i.+p in her day, the home of an admiral and his staff. She carried seventy-four guns, was easily obedient to her swift sail, and had a reputation for gallantry. From the first hour on board, Dyck Calhoun had fitted in; with a discerning eye he had understood the seamen's needs and the weaknesses of the system.

The months he had spent between his exit from prison and his entrance into the Ariadne had roughened, though not coa.r.s.ened, his outward appearance. From his first appearance among the seamen he had set himself to become their leader. His enlistment was for three years, and he meant that these three should prove the final success of this naval enterprise, or the stark period in a calendar of tragedy.

The life of the sailor, with its coa.r.s.eness and drudgery, its inadequate pay, its evil-smelling food, its maggoty bread, its beer drawn from casks that once had held oil or fish, its stinking salt-meat barrels, the hideous stench of the bilge-water--all this could in one sense be no worse than his sufferings in jail. In spite of self-control, jail had been to him the degradation of his hopes, the humiliation of his manhood.

He had suffered cold, dampness, fever, and indigestion there, and it had sapped the fresh fibre of life in him. His days in London had been cruel. He had sought work in great commercial concerns, and had almost been grateful when rejected. When his money was stolen, there seemed nothing to do, as he said to Michael Clones, but to become a footpad or a pirate. Then the stormy doors of the navy had opened wide to him; and as many a man is tempted into folly or crime by tempestuous nature, so he, forlorn, spiritually unkempt, but physically and mentally well-composed, in a spirit of bravado, flung himself into the bowels of the fleet.

From the moment Dyck arrived on board the Ariadne he was a marked man. Ferens, a disfranchised solicitor, who knew his story, spread the unwholesome truth about him among the s.h.i.+p's people, and he received attentions at once offensive and flattering. The best-educated of the s.h.i.+p's hands approached him on the grievances with which the whole navy was stirring.

Something had put a new spirit into the life of his majesty's s.h.i.+ps; it was, in a sense, the reflection of the French Revolution and Tom Paine's Age of Reason. What the Americans had done in establis.h.i.+ng a republic, what France was doing by her revolution, got into the veins and minds of some men in England, but it got into the veins and minds of the sailor first; for, however low his origin, he had intercourse not given to the average landsman. He visited foreign ports, he came in touch with other elements than those of British life and character.

Of all the s.h.i.+ps in the navy the Ariadne was the best that Dyck Calhoun could have entered. Her officers were humane and friendly, yet firm; and it was quite certain that if mutiny came they would be treated well. The agitation on the Ariadne in support of the grievances of the sailors was so moderate that, from the first, Dyck threw in his lot with it. Ferens, the former solicitor, first came to him with a list of proposals, which only repeated the demands made by the agitators at Spithead.

"You're new among us," said Ferens to Dyck. "You don't quite know what we've been doing, I suppose. Some of us have been in the navy for two years, and some for ten. There are men on this s.h.i.+p who could tell you stories that would make your blood run cold--take my word for it.

There's a lot of things goin' on that oughtn't to be goin' on. The time has come for reform. Have a look at this paper, and tell me what you think."

Dyck looked at the pockmarked face of Ferens, whose record in the courts was a bad one, and what he saw did not disgust him. It was as though Ferens had stumbled and been badly hit in his fall, but there were no signs of permanent evil in his countenance. He was square-headed, close-cropped, clear-eyed, though his face was yellow where it was not red, and his tongue was soft in his head.

Dyck read the paper slowly and carefully. Then he handed it back without a word.

"Well, what have you got to say?" asked Ferens. "Nothing? Don't you think that's a strong list of grievances and wrongs?"

Dyck nodded. "Yes, it's pretty strong," he said, and he held up his hand. "Number One, wages and cost of living. I'm sure we're right there.

Cost of living was down in King Charles's time, and wages were down accordingly. Everything's gone up, and wages should go up. Number Two, the prize-money scandal. I'm with you there. I don't see why an officer should get two thousand five hundred times as much as a seaman. There ought to be a difference, but not so much. Number Three, the food ought to be better; the water ought to be better. We can't live on rum, maggoty bread, and foul water--that's sure. The rum's all right; it's powerful natural stuff, but we ought to have meat that doesn't stink, and bread that isn't alive. What's more, we ought to have lots of lime-juice, or there's no protection for us when we're out at sea with the best meat taken by the officers and the worst left to us; and with foul water and rotten food, there's no hope or help. But, if we're going in for this sort of thing, we ought to do it decently. We can't slap a government in the mouth, and we can't kick an admiral without paying heavy for it in the end. If it's wholesome pet.i.tioning you're up to, I'm with you; but I'm not if there's to be knuckle-dusting."

Ferens shrugged a shoulder.

"Things are movin', and we've got to take our stand now when the time is ripe for it, or else lose it for ever. Over at Spithead they're gettin'

their own way. The government are goin' to send the Admiralty Board down here, because our admiral say to them that it won't be safe goin' unless they do."

"And what are we going to do here?" asked Dyck. "What's the game of the fleet at the Nore?"