English passengers by Matthew Kneale Read Free Book Online Page B

and pay me what you owe.
    That was no reply. That was just a low rottenness flung over oceans. As if I’d sell the
Sincerity.
As if I even could, considering what her new owners would find inside her. We called Gawne some names that morning, I can tell you. Scrissag. Scrawl. Sleetchy old scraper. Hibernator.
    Castletown snot. Fat muck of a fritlag. Big slug, all sitting on his shillings with his little crab of a wife, snurly and high as if they thought they were somebody.
    Not that it made any difference. Within the hour we were in worse trouble than ever, when two of the starboard watch, Tom Hudson and Rob Kneale, jumped ship, doing so clean in front of the whole crew, springing over the side with their sea chests as if they never cared. ‘‘No, thanks,’’ they jeered, when I ordered them back. ‘‘We’d rather find a boat that can pay.’’ With other vessels this wouldn’t have mattered, and would even have had its uses as their wages could be kept, but the
Sincerity
wasn’t other vessels and all her crew had to be Manxmen from Peel City. All of a sudden I knew it was time to be taking a chance, and a big one too. As the wise man says,
it’s no good betting pennies when the dice have snatched your horse and your house.
    Now if a body goes knocking around ships he will hear things, including chatter about places he’s never seen and never expects to, and I’d heard talk about London, including the name of a particular inn that was near the docks, where certain people might be found and certain arrangements made, as it was said. Perhaps, I reasoned, I could get us a loan out of someone as part of an arrangement. It would be a good enough deal after all. Once we were free, those certain somebodies could have our cargo at a most reasonable price. There were dangers in such a venture of course. Most of all we didn’t know who to trust among all these Englishmen foreigners, and there was the fear we’d been getting help from a gang of customs officers in disguise, as they were known to play such tricks. For all this, it had to be tried.
    First I needed to get some samples. I sent Kinvig up to distract the spy Parish with a bit of talk, just as a precaution, and had Brew set the boys working at something noisy too, while I made my way down to those certain secret places that the
Sincerity
had kept so pure from customs’ eyes. First I went to her pantry and reached above the rim of the doorframe, to that certain piece of cord that Captain Clarke had so narrowly missed, which I gave a gentle tug. The answering click didn’t come from nearby but from the storeroom next door. Not that you’d have known what it was that had clicked there unless you happened to go looking behind a particular coil of rope at the panel just behind,which was suddenly a touch loose. Which I did. And d’you know, out it swung, to reveal a couple of pieces of cable just asking to be pulled. Which I did too. Now what did we have now but two more clicks, from the dining cabin. Sure enough, the two busts, of Albert and Victoria, seemed somehow a touch less anchored. Have a close look and you’d notice the hollow blocks they were fastened onto were a little loose, and give one a push and you’d get a smartest surprise, as the hinged trap door in the floorboards swung open so tidy and smooth.
    Now I’ll tell you why all those serious-faced customs men never found a thing. It was because the
Sincerity
wasn’t just some piece of cheap faked-up carpentry, no. From the dining-cabin floor down, the
Sincerity
was two entire vessels, one inside the other. The inner hull was those timbers I’d bought from the boat that was being broken up, and though I’d had it thinned out little, still it didn’t sound hollow if you gave it a thump. It even looked weathered and damp, just like it should. As for the gap between these two hulls, this was no more than eighteen inches— more and the hold would have looked too curious—but eighteen inches right