Battle Fleet (2007) by Paul Dowswell Read Free Book Online Page A

whether he was dead or alive.
    ‘Don’t go trying it, Sam, I beg you,’ said the Captain. ‘They say it’s like the most wonderful dream you ever had, then you want to do it again and again and it enslaves you. The rich ones here, they’re slaves as much as the poor. But they have money to pay for it and servants to run their homes and businesses. The poor, they live like starving beggars just to scrape together the money to buy some.’
    Our visit did pass without incident, though I was glad to be back on the ship. It seemed strange to be among somany people with glazed, faraway eyes. Our trade completed and our hold full of goods, we sailed on along the island chain, heading for the Indian Ocean. So far, luck had been with us.



CHAPTER 6
Ten Little Daggers
    There was an unnatural stillness in the sky – no seabirds circled our ship. They knew something bad was coming our way. The animals in our manger sensed it. The sheep and goats lay down in the straw, tense and wary. The hens on deck stopped clucking. Even Sydney stopped chattering. He kept flapping his wings trying to get away. I took him and his perch down below to my cabin and that calmed him.
    Thunderstorms had come and gone all the time we sailed through the East Indies – they were just part of the climate here, along with the clammy heat and theoccasional whiff of volcanic sulphur. The rain would come down in sheets, the sky would rumble and flash. Then, an hour later, it would be a breezy bright day again. But this one, coming over the horizon on our larboard side, seemed particularly ominous. The sky had the strange inky purple glow which seemed to be a feature of storms in these parts, and the moisture in the air was so dense you could taste it on your tongue.
    Evison had us spend the day preparing for the storm. We brought down the canvas from the lower sails, then the lower yards too, leaving only the topsail yards and canvas to provide some control of the ship if we should drift dangerously close to the shore. It was a difficult job with this crew, lowering the heavy canvas and wood to the deck, and I was relieved when we had accomplished it without injury. The deck was cleared of all the birds and plants. Anything there that wasn’t tied down was going to be swept away.
    Night fell with such all-enveloping blackness I could have believed we had been cast into some purgatorial void. Then the ship was lit by a majestic flash of lightning, which spread across the sky like an upturned, bare, satanic tree. This was lightning I had never seen before – not white but blue.
    That first bolt was our sign to go below – with only a handful of men on the weather deck left to stand watch. The hatches were battened down and all lightsextinguished. Bel and Lizzie sought me out and we sat together in the dark. ‘I’ve been in much worse storms than this,’ I said, trying to reassure them. ‘We’ll be fine.’
    Still, I muttered a thankful prayer that we were a good distance from land and only if the storm lasted several days were we likely to be driven ashore. I muttered another one too, beseeching the Lord to safeguard our wormy hull. If the timbers cracked open as we lurched between the waves, the ship would be lost with all hands.
    Rain lashed the ship until the timbers were sodden, seeping down to the stinking hold, drenching every living thing, from bilge rat to Captain. We worked the pumps until our hands were bleeding and blistered, trying to keep down the rising water in the hold. Evison even enlisted the help of the passengers to take their turn. Some complained haughtily that they had paid for their passage and were not going to do the work of common sailors. But when Bel and Lizzie offered to do their share on the pump handles it shamed them into helping out. ‘Come on, Mr Ellis,’ I heard Lizzie say to one of the passengers, ‘it will take your mind off the seasickness.’ There was plenty of that too – making the dark, airless deck an