TimeStorm Read online

  Driscoll held no fear for Redmond. “Damn it! The men in ’ere are hurt, ’an...”

  “Men!” scoffed Driscoll. “Men! I was unawares of any men bein’ down here. Filthy, louse-ridden convicts I knows about, but men...”

  “Damn yer eyes!” cursed Redmond.

  The smile was instantly wiped from Driscoll’s face. “You must have enjoyed your last taste of the cat, ’cause you obviously want a repeat dose.” He walked closer to the door, but was careful not to come too close. “Well, I’m goin’ to see you get it!”

  Redmond held his tongue, aware of the futility of his cause. Driscoll mounted the stairs, but stopped halfway up. “As for the good doctor,” he said, recovering some humour, “he’ll be here after he’s treated the crew. But don’t hold your breath, he’ll be hours yet.”

  Driscoll’s boots thudded up the stairs to the deck. Redmond spat into the guard area. “Bastard!”

  The Sergeant was a brave man when there was no danger, but the convict knew it would be a different story when all that lay between them was a cold blade.

  CROSS

  William Cross shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his eyes resting on the blank page of his log book. For two hours he had sat, unable to put into words the event he had witnessed. The storm provided him with a sense of calm he had not imagined possible.

  As the Marlin sank deeper into the whirlpool he had made his peace with God and given himself up to His mercy, quite prepared to die for his sins. Now he was forgiven and could begin anew. The guilt he felt over Redmond remained, but now he had the opportunity to make amends. It was far too late to change what had happened, yet he would do his best to persuade the authorities in New South Wales to make life a little easier for the convict.

  Pleased with himself, Cross turned his attention back to the damage report. The Marlin returned to somewhere close to normal in a remarkably short space of time, the main mast being the only serious damage. A jury-rigged spar would suffice until Sydney, where the mast would be replaced. For the second time on this voyage, he realised.

  Injuries were also minimal. No crewmen had died and there were only three broken arms and a broken leg among them. Four more were unconscious, but Watkins’ note indicated they would recover before long.

  Cross was treated by Watkins before the doctor went off to see the crew, and he was pleasantly surprised. Though the insufferable surgeon was a miserable, resentful man, he was thorough and professional about his duties. He manipulated, then bound the Captain’s leg in a most comfortable way. It still hurt when Cross put weight on the limb, but at least he did not feel in danger of it giving way.

  Watkins was now in the convict hold, God bless him. That ought to stifle his arrogance for a while, thought Cross uncharitably. The surgeon had sent an initial report of the situation below, and it indicated the terrible ordeal the convicts had suffered. Three dead, a dozen broken limbs and countless minor injuries.

  Two of the men were crushed to death, the other stabbed. The murderer was unlikely to be found after such confusion, though Cross wondered if the poor devil was better off in view of a convict’s lot in the colony.

  Enough dithering! decided Cross. He could feel the beginnings of another headache, so he dipped his quill in the ink pot and began to write.

  Fourteenth day of January, Seventeen hundred and Ninety-six. Position –

  Cross left a space to be filled when Kite informed him of the calculation.

  Encountered a savage storm which, but for the grace of God, would surely have destroyed the ship and all aboard.

  It was tempting to relate the truth of the whirlpool, yet Cross was convinced no one would believe such a story. If he had not been there, he would have thought the author of such a report to be mad. Better to be matter-of-fact and leave it to the crew to spread the legend of the Marlin’s survival.

  Completing the report with damage details and the names of the dead convicts, Cross slammed the logbook shut. He reflected on one of the dead prisoners, a boy of sixteen, the age of his youngest daughter. How different their lives had been...

  A knock on the door halted his thoughts. “Enter.”

  Lieutenant Blaney entered, grinning from ear to ear, the image of his father. Cross and Luke Blaney were great friends for many years, until Luke was blown apart by a French broadside at Ushant in 1778. Standing shoulder to shoulder with him at the time, Cross did not receive so much as a scratch. Luke would have been an Admiral had he lived, while Cross, as he must admit to himself, was fortunate to have made Captain. Such was fate.

  The Captain saw Blaney was looking at him, eager yet curious. It was no wonder. Cross felt spiritually better, but his reflection revealed a seriously ill man. His face held no colour and each trial of the voyage had left its own set of lines and furrows like entries in the log book.

  “Sit down, Kit.”

  “Has Doctor Watkins been to see you, sir,” asked Blaney as he squeezed into the chair.

  “Yes. He did a fine job, too.”

  Blaney looked sceptical.

  “Truly,” said Cross, smiling. “The man is extremely unpleasant and a bore, but as a surgeon he is worth ten Garretts. Now, what was so amusing when you came in?”

  The excitement returned to Blaney’s face. “You won’t believe it, sir!”

  “Perhaps if you told me, I could test your conviction.” Cross hid the growing excitement from his own voice.

  According to Kite’s reading,” began Blaney, “we are within hours of New South Wales! We may well be in port before dawn!”

  Cross was stunned by the words. He replayed them in his mind to ensure he had heard them correctly. It took a full minute before he could answer his grinning Lieutenant. “That’s preposterous! Has Kite been drinking?”

  “No, sir,” laughed Blaney. “I checked the reading myself. It is correct. We’ve been blown close to a thousand miles!”

  Good God, the man’s serious, Cross realised. Perhaps both Lieutenants had gone mad during the storm. Heaven knew it was possible, and Blaney was beaming like an idiot.

  Cross shook his head. There must be a mistake. “Did you use your own sextant?”

  “No. Kite’s.”

  “Ah,” said Cross. “Did you check to see if it was damaged in the storm.”

  “No, sir.” Blaney was no longer smiling.

  “I have to say, Kit, that I believe you and Kite have made an error, probably because of a faulty instrument.”

  Blaney was clearly disappointed. He began to protest, but Cross headed him off. “I shall take a reading with my own equipment and I suggest you do the same with yours. I will see you on deck in five minutes.”

  Blaney departed quickly and Cross stood up. He opened the chest beneath the porthole and removed his sextant from its sealskin cover. The instrument was a magnificent prize liberated from a French ship fifteen years earlier. “What will you tell me, my friend?”

  KITE

  Watching his two senior officers filled Lieutenant Henry Kite with trepidation. Cross and Blaney lined up their instruments to the night sky, carefully noting the readings in their small pocket books.

  At first Kite felt outraged that his figures had been called into question. Blaney trusted him, why couldn’t the Captain? He’d successfully navigated the Indian Ocean without a mistake, after all. But now, during their painstaking deliberations, he had convinced himself he had made a serious error. How else could they be so far off course. His enthusiasm was about to backfire and he would be made to look a complete fool before the entire ship.

  Finishing first, Blaney scribbled his final figures with flourish and allowed the Captain to continue in silence. He winked at Kite, however, and the young Lieutenant had to stifle a sigh of relief.

  Cross straightened up. “Tell me, Mr Kite, have you noticed anything out of the ordinary about the sky?”

  Kite looked anxiously to Blaney, but the First Lieutenant offered no assistance. The answer then came to him and his confidence returned
. “Yes, sir. I believe there are not as many stars visible as there should be.”

  “And what do you make of that?”

  Kite had absolutely no idea of what to make of it. “I’m afraid I don’t know, sir”

  “Mr Blaney?” asked Cross. Kite was reassured that the Captain did not know either.

  Looking up to the sky, Blaney sniffed loudly. “I think, perhaps, it is connected with the smell. It may be a fine mist, not visible at sea level, yet much more dense at a higher altitude, thus hiding the dimmer stars from our view.”

  Good God! marvelled Kite, I would never have thought of that in a thousand years.

  “Very good,” said Cross, in equal admiration. “Did you take this into account when you made your reading, Mr Kite?”

  Kite was prepared. “No, sir. The necessary stars are all plainly visible and Mr Blaney reviewed all of my calculations.”

  Cross nodded and bent to his sextant once again. The sky was a curious sight to Kite, like a huge unfinished canvas waiting for the artist to fill in the missing stars. A movement suddenly caught his eye to the north. “Look!”

  Blaney and Cross turned to witness the strange phenomenon. In the distance a red, blinking light rose upward from east to west, then veered north and faded from view. The three officers looked at each other, baffled by the sight. Something was very wrong, Kite thought. The whirlpool, certainly out of the ordinary, was at least a known quantity. The flying light defied logic.

  Crewmen had also witnessed the scene and they milled closer together, sensing their officers knew as little as they did. Cross was not about to reassure them. He shook his head, apparently deciding to ignore the vision, and returned to his sextant.

  There was more to this than a smell in the air, reasoned Kite. Although he was on a familiar ship, surrounded by people he knew well, he felt as though he was in the wrong place. Perhaps it was because of the distance they had been blown, yet it felt more like a million miles than a thousand. He saw Blaney wore an expression that summed up his own bewilderment.

  Cross cleared his throat. “Well, Mr Kite, you will be pleased to know I confirm your reading.”

  Kite forced a smile, though he wished with all his heart he had been wrong.

  A shout from the fore mast attracted their attention. “Land to the port bow!” Uriah Perkins was perched on the temporary cross beam of the main mast, the crows nest having been lost when the mast was shattered. With a sense of foreboding, Kite remembered it was Perkins who first saw the whirlpool.

  Blaney hurried to port and extended his telescope.

  “How can he see the coastline in the dark?” asked Kite.

  “Because of the lights.” Blaney passed his glass to the Captain.

  Kite’s eyes adjusted to the distance and now he could them, dancing on the horizon like hundreds of fireflies, twinkling as the Marlin rode the light swell.

  “Lights!” exclaimed Cross. “But we’re miles from Port Jackson. This coast seems awfully well lit for a new colony.”

  Neither Kite nor Blaney chose to respond, both men preoccupied with their own thoughts. Kite could not put his feelings into words, but something inside made him dread their arrival in New South Wales.

  WATKINS

  After an uncomfortable hour in the convict hold, Dr Watkins’ fears began to ease. His bullying, bombastic approach had most of the convicts jumping to accommodate him and he could feel his heartbeat slow. He was also relieved to have been removed from the Fortune, which could not possibly have survived. The injured crew members had described the storm and whirlpool and Watkins had no doubt only one of the two ships could perform such a miraculous escape.

  Watkins had lingered with the crew for as long as he could, but eventually the blasted Briggs forcibly took him below on the orders of Blaney, damn his eyes! The scene greeting his arrival was beyond belief. Covering his mouth and nose with a handkerchief did nothing to prevent the stench. Had he eaten, the odour would have reached into his stomach and brought the food up.

  His ears were filled with the moaning of prisoners, who huddled pathetically among the debris and filth covered floor. Watkins became a surgeon in order to get rich treating wealthy patients with gout, not to risk his life in an uncivilised sewer such as this. Refusing to go further into the hold until it was hosed out, he stood back while five sweating sailors performed the task. Stunned by the amount of sludge and slime washed away, the thought of actually living in this hell was beyond understanding.

  When the crewmen finished the surgeon picked his way through until he was below the first bulkhead hatch, keeping an eye on the two marines who trained their muskets on the hold to ensure they did not abandon their duty. He commandeered two meek-looking convicts with the toe of his boot and ordered them to hang two lamps from the grille. Surveying the lit room, he saw it was more like a battlefield than a prison. He could not see any intact furniture, only fragments sticking up at unnatural angles from the sea of injured men. The hoses improved the foul odour temporarily, but it rose again, seeping and steaming from the men, slowly building in strength as Watkins became more accustomed to the atmosphere.

  Cursing the prisoners roundly to hide his fear, Watkins cleared a large area about him and ordered his two helpers to bring him the injured. The three dead men were laid out nearby, so he examined them quickly. Two were crushed, possibly suffocated, one of them a mere boy. The other body belonged to a stocky man of about twenty-five. Watkins shuddered to find the man had been stabbed in the chest, his ugly features frozen in the terror of his last moment. A thick shard of wood with a crudely fashioned handle protruded from his body and from the copious amount of blood staining his clothes, death had not been quick.

  Looking about uneasily, the surgeon knew someone in the hold was a murderer with very recent experience. Fear washed over him and he began to shake. “Get hold of yourself,” he told himself, “and get on with the job!” Then get the devil out of this hideous place!

  He quickly learned the names of the dead, Joshua Crabbe, Henry Dixon and the murdered Wilf Grey, and then sent a note to Captain Cross via a marine.

  Apart from the groaning, injured men, the convicts were a sullen bunch, noted Watkins, his confidence returning by the minute. The fit men gathered loosely at the outer edge of the light, watching him silently. Watkins stared back as though studying wild animals, which, of course, they were. His eyes were soon drawn to a man sitting thirty feet away. Even in the shadows he appeared huge and the dim light reflected off his red beard. A stony brow shaded his eyes, but Watkins could feel them on him, icy and contemptuous. The surgeon shuddered at his first sight of Rufus Redmond and his adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a bouncing ball. It was easy to imagine something demonic about the convict.

  Ever conscious of Redmond’s eyes burning into him, Watkins set about treating the injured. Almost forty of them required his services, so he prepared for a long night. Only one man was gravely ill; he had a punctured lung, caused by a splinter from a broken bunk. At least that was what he was told, he thought suspiciously. Unconscious, his mouth dribbling blood with every breath, the man would be dead before daybreak.

  The rest had broken bones, or thought they did. They made an appalling din, so Watkins asserted loudly that he would deal with the silent first. With few exceptions, the noise diminished markedly. Watkins wished he could banish the stench with the same speed.

  As he worked, the surgeon felt the atmosphere in the hold grow calm. He proved himself competent in the setting of limbs, using broken planks for splints, and slowly conversation resumed around him in low tones. He gradually convinced himself he was in no danger and had, perhaps, gained some respect. This kind of attention rarely came his way, so Watkins was not concerned that it emanated from such low company.

  It was well after midnight when the exhausted surgeon treated Owen Williams. His helper advised him of each convict’s name in advance. The old convict was dozing peacefully against a bulkhead, seemingly uninjured. Watkins w
as about to aim a tired kick at his helper for allowing a fit man into the treatment area, when he noticed Williams’s right foot lay at an unnatural angle. He kicked his helper anyway.

  The helper’s cry of pain woke Williams, who then blinked up at the surgeon. “’Ello, doctor,” he said.

  Watkins was startled that the convict displayed no sign of pain and also because he spoke. Everyone he treated so far had failed to utter a word. “Are you in pain, man?” he asked.

  Williams grinned. “Not s’bad, sur, thank ’ee. ’Ad much worse’n this in me time.”

  He cried out, however, when Watkins straightened the foot and bound it tightly. But the old man soon managed a weak grin.

  Watkins had finally found a friendly convict and, though painfully tired, he decided to exercise his curiosity. “That’s Redmond over there, isn’t it?” he asked in a whisper, nodding slightly in the direction of the big convict.

  “Aye, that’s ’im.”

  “Why does he hate Captain Cross so much?” Watkins had gathered a little intelligence on the relationship from the crew.

  Williams leaned forward to whisper. “The Cap’n done Rufus a terrible wrong. Wouldn’t want to be ’im when Rufus takes his revenge.” He shook his head to emphasise the point.

  I wouldn’t mind watching, though, thought Watkins. “What did he do?” he asked sharply.

  “Well, all I knows is ’ow Rufus were a sailor on the Cap’n’s preevus ship.” Fascinated, Watkins heard the tale slowly unfold.

  Redmond, together with a group of crew mates were ashore in Portsmouth, spending much of the night, and their pay, in one of the sordid taverns in the ancient town. Williams did not know why, but Redmond became involved in a fight.

  “Prob’ly gamblin’ or else a woman. Anyways, this other man pulls ’is knife an’ cuts Rufus’s arm.” Williams stabbed the air as he spoke. “Next thing, Rufus goes berserk an’ breaks the man’s neck wi’ ’is bare ’ands!” Williams twisted his hands and made a sickening cracking noise, which Watkins found quite unnecessary.