No Defense Part 14

Ferens replied in a low voice:

"Our men are goin' to send out pet.i.tions--to the Admiralty and to the House of Commons."

"Why don't you try Lord Howe?"

"He's not in command of a fleet now. Besides, pet.i.tions have been sent him, and he's taken no notice."

"Howe? No notice--the best admiral we ever had! I don't believe it,"

declared Dyck savagely. "Why, the whole navy believes in Howe. They haven't forgotten what he did in '94. He's as near to the seaman as the seaman is to his mother. Who sent the pet.i.tions to him?"

"They weren't signed by names--they were anonymous."

Dyck laughed.

"Yes, and all written by the same hand, I suppose." Ferens nodded.

"I think that's so."

"Can you wonder, then, that Lord Howe didn't acknowledge them? But I'm still sure he acted promptly. He's a big enough friend of the sailor to waste no time before doing his turn."

Ferens shook his head morosely.

"That may be," he said; "but the pet.i.tions were sent weeks ago, and there's no sign from Lord Howe. He was at Bath for gout. My idea is he referred them to the admiral commanding at Portsmouth, and was told that behind the whole thing is conspiracy--French socialism and English politics. I give you my word there's no French agent in the fleet, and if there were, it wouldn't have any effect. Our men's grievances are not new. They're as old as Cromwell."

Suddenly a light of suspicion flashed into Ferens's face.

"You're with us, aren't you? You see the wrongs we've suffered, and how bad it all is! Yet you haven't been on a voyage with us. You've only tasted the life in harbour. Good G.o.d, this life is heaven to what we have at sea! We don't mind the fightin'. We'd rather fight than eat."

An evil grin covered his face for a minute. "Yes, we'd rather fight than eat, for the stuff we get to eat is h.e.l.l's broil, G.o.d knows! Did you ever think what the life of the sailor is, that swings at the top of a mast with the frost freezin' his very soul, and because he's slow, owin'

to the cold, gets twenty lashes for not bein' quicker? Well, I've seen that, and a bad sight it is. Did you ever see a man flogged? It ain't a pretty sight. First the back takes the click of the whip like a d.a.m.ned washboard, and you see the ridges rise and go purple and red, and the man has his breath knocked clean out of him with every blow. Nearly every stroke takes off the skin and draws the blood, and a dozen will make the back a ditch of murder. Then the whipper stops, looks at the lashes, feels them tender like, and out and down it comes again. When all the back is ridged and scarred, the flesh, that looked clean and beautiful, becomes a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.s. Some men get a hundred lashes, and that's torture and death.

"A man I knew was flogged told me once that the first blow made his flesh quiver in every nerve from his toe-nails to his finger-nails, and stung his heart as if a knife had gone through his body. There was agony in his lungs, and the time between each stroke was terrible, and yet the next came too soon. He choked with the blood from his tongue, lacerated with his teeth, and from his lungs, and went black in the face. I saw his back. It looked like roasted meat; yet he had only had eighty strokes.

"The punishments are bad. Runnin' the gauntlet is one of them. Each member of the crew is armed with three tarry rope-yarns, knotted at the ends. Then between the master-at-arms with a drawn sword and two corporals with drawn swords behind, the thief, stripped to the waist, is placed. The thing is started by a boatswain's mate givin' him a dozen lashes. Then he's slowly marched down the double line of men, who flog him as he pa.s.ses, and at the end of the line he receives another dose of the cat from the boatswain's mate. The poor devil's body and head are flayed, and he's sent to hospital and rubbed with brine till he's healed.

"But the most horrible of all is flogging through the fleet. That's given for strikin' an officer, or tryin' to escape. It's a sickenin'

thing. The victim is lashed by his wrists to a capstan-bar in the s.h.i.+p's long-boat, and all the s.h.i.+p's boats are lowered also, and each s.h.i.+p in harbour sends a boat manned by marines to attend. Then, with the master-at-arms and the s.h.i.+p's surgeon, the boat is cast off. The boatswain's mate begins the floggin', and the boat rows away to the half-minute bell, the drummer beatin' the rogue's march. From s.h.i.+p to s.h.i.+p the long-boat goes, and the punishment of floggin' is repeated. If he faints, he gets wine or rum, or is taken back to his s.h.i.+p to recover.

When his back is healed he goes out to get the rest of his sentence.

Very few ever live through it, or if they do it's only for a short time.

They'd better have taken the hangin' that was the alternative. Even a corpse with its back bare of flesh to the bone has received the last lashes of a sentence, and was then buried in the mud of the sh.o.r.e with no religious ceremony.

"Mind you, there's many a man gets fifty lashes that don't deserve them.

There's many men in the fleet that's stirred to anger at ill-treatment, until now, in these days, the whole lot is ready to see the thing through--to see the thing through--by heaven and by h.e.l.l!"

The pockmarked face had taken on an almost ghastly fervour, until it looked like a distorted cartoon-vindictive, fanatical; but Dyck, on the edge of the river of tragedy, was not ready to lose himself in the stream of it.

As he looked round the s.h.i.+p he felt a stir of excitement like nothing he had ever known, though he had been brought up in a country where men were by nature revolutionists, and where the sword was as often outside as inside the scabbard. There was something terrible in a s.h.i.+pboard agitation not to be found in a land-rising. On land there were a thousand miles of open country, with woods and houses, caves and cliffs, to which men could flee for hiding; and the danger of rebellion was less dominant. At sea, a rebellion was like some beastly struggle in one room, beyond the walls of which was everlasting nothingness. The thing had to be fought out, as it were, man to man within four walls, and G.o.d help the weaker!

"How many s.h.i.+ps in the fleet are sworn to this agitation?" Dyck asked presently.

"Every one. It's been like a spread of infection; it's entered at every door, looked out of every window. All the s.h.i.+ps are in it, from the twenty-six-hundred-tonners to the little five-hundred-and-fifty-tonners.

Besides, there are the Delegates."

He lowered his voice as he used these last words. "Yes, I know," Dyck answered, though he did not really know. "But who is at the head?"

"Why, as bold a man as can be--Richard Parker, an Irishman. He was once a junior naval officer, and left the navy and went into business; now he is a quotaman, and leads the mutiny. Let me tell you that unless there's a good round answer to what we demand, the Nore fleet'll have it out with the government. He's a man of character, is Richard Parker, and the fleet'll stand by him."

"How long has he been at it?" asked Dyck.

"Oh, weeks and weeks! It doesn't all come at once, the grip of the thing. It began at Spithead, and it worked right there; and now it's workin' at the Nore, and it'll work and work until there isn't a s.h.i.+p and there isn't a man that won't be behind the Delegates. Look. Half the seamen on this s.h.i.+p have tasted the inside of a jail; and the rest come from the press-gang, and what's left are just the ragged ends of street corners. But"--and here the man drew himself up with a flush--"but there's none of us that wouldn't fight to the last gasp of breath for the navy that since the days of Elizabeth has sailed at the head of all the world. Don't think we mean harm to the fleet. We mean to do it good.

All we want is that its masters shall remember we're human flesh and blood; that we're as much ent.i.tled to good food and drink on sea as on land; and that, if we risk our lives and shed our blood, we ought to have some share in the spoils. We're a great country and we're a great people, but, by G.o.d, we're not good to our own! Look at them there."

He turned and waved a hand to the bowels of the s.h.i.+p where sailors traded with the slop-sellers, or chaffered with women, or sat in groups and sang, or played rough games which had no vital meaning; while here and there in groups, with hands gesticulating, some fanatics declared their principles. And the principles of every man in the Nore fleet so far were embraced in the four words--wages, food, drink, prize-money.

Presently Ferens stopped short. "Listen!" he said.

There was a cry from the s.h.i.+p's side not far away, and then came little bursts of cheering.

"By Heaven, it's the Delegates comin' here!" he said. He held up a warning palm, as though commanding silence, while he listened intently.

"Yes, it's the Delegates. Now look at that crowd of seamen!" He swung his hand towards the bowels of the s.h.i.+p. Scores of men were springing to their feet. Presently there came a great shouting and cheers, and then four new faces appeared on deck. They were faces of intelligence, but one of them had the enlightened look of leaders.h.i.+p.

"By Judas, it's our leader, Richard Parker!" declared Ferens.

What Dyck now saw was good evidence of the progress of the agitation.

There were officers of the Ariadne to be seen, but they wisely took no notice of the breaches of regulation which followed the arrival of the Delegates. Dyck saw Ferens speak to Richard Parker after the men had been in conference with Parker and the Delegates, and then turn towards himself. Richard Parker came to him.

"We are fellow countrymen," he said genially. "I know your history.

We are out to make the navy better--to get the men their rights. I understand you are with us?"

Dyck bowed. "I will do all possible to get reforms in wages and food put through, sir."

"That's good," said Parker. "There are some pet.i.tions you can draft, and some letters also to the Admiralty and to the Houses of Lords and Commons."

"I am at your service," said Dyck.

He saw his chance to secure influence on the Ariadne, and also to do good to the service. Besides, he felt he might be able to check the worst excesses of the agitation, if he got power under Parker. He was free from any wish for mutiny, but he was the friend of an agitation which might end as successfully as the trouble at Spithead.

CHAPTER XIII. TO THE WEST INDIES

A fortnight later the mutiny at the Nore shook and bewildered the British Isles. In the public journals and in Parliament it was declared that this outbreak, like that at Spithead, was due partly to political strife, but more extensively to agents of revolution from France and Ireland.

The day after Richard Parker visited the Ariadne the fleet had been put under the control of the seamen's Delegates, who were men of standing in the s.h.i.+ps, and of personal popularity. Their first act was to declare that the fleet should not leave port until the men's demands were satisfied.

The King, Prime Minister, and government had received a shock greater than that which had come with the announcement of American independence.

The government had armed the forts at Sheerness, had sent troops and guns to Gravesend and Tilbury, and had declared war upon the rebellious fleet.

At the head of the Delegates, Richard Parker, with an officer's knowledge, became a kind of bogus admiral, who, in interview with the real admirals and the representatives of the Admiralty Board, talked like one who, having power, meant to use it ruthlessly. The government had yielded to the Spithead mutineers, giving pardon to all except the ringleaders, and granting demands for increased wages and better food, with a promise to consider the question of prize-money; but the Nore mutineers refused to accept that agreement, and enlarged the Spithead demands. Admiral Buckner arrived on board his flag-s.h.i.+p, the Sandwich, without the deference due to an admiral, and then had to wait three hours for Parker and the Delegates on the quarter-deck. At the interview that followed, while apologizing to the admiral for his discourtesy, Parker wore his hat as quasi-admiral of the fleet. The demands of the Delegates were met by reasoning on the part of Buckner, but without effect: for the seamen of the Nore believed that what Spithead could get by obstinacy the Nore could increase by contumacy; and it was their firm will to bring the Lords of the Admiralty to their knees.