SHE DESCRIBES A WILD, DRUNKEN, UPROARIOUS SCENE
The noise of many voices had been slowly growing in the cuddy. The
swell and the volume of sound were assurance that the interior was
full. I wondered the people did not drink and revel on the deck,
where there was plenty of room and fresh air and dewy coolness. The
cuddy, perhaps, was like being ashore, and put them in mind of their
old haunts. There was no likeness, indeed, to a tavern in it, yet
the convicts might find something to refresh their memory of the
boozing-kens in the broken mirrors and the low pitch of the ceiling or
upper deck and in the bulkheads, which would answer to their idea of
walls, particularly should the atmosphere become dense with tobacco
smoke and sickening with the fumes of rum and clamorous as a houseful
of shrieking madmen with the songs, jokes, laughter, and the many
humours of the stews and kennels.
The _Childe Harold_ was a very stoutly built ship. The cabin bulkheads
were exceedingly thick and substantial. I could not hear individual
voices plainly; the combined growl of the men’s speech, often rising
into a sort of roar like to the noise of a breaker sweeping back from a
beach after it has burst into froth, overwhelmed the particular notes
and accents which swelled it. Sometimes I thought I could hear Barney
Abram shouting, then there’d happen a sinking in the tumult when I’d
catch a loud, coarse laugh, solitary and startling, or the voice of a
man beginning a song that was quickly drowned by the freshening of the
hubbub.
There was a constant scraping and squeezing past my cabin bulkhead, as
though of people coming and going or thrusting to make room, with a
jarring grumble of talk but indistinct to me. This sort of thing may
have gone on for about half an hour. I looked at the chronometer,
and calculated that it was about half-past eight. I longed for nine
o’clock, when Tom had promised to come. The people were fast growing
noisier. Frequent scuffles occurred just outside my door. The cuddy was
densely packed, and the scuffling signified the struggle of some of the
fellows to draw close to the table where the drink was.
It was short of nine by a quarter of an hour when the key was turned
and Tom came in. This cabin-door was close to the cuddy quarter-deck
entrance; yet the interior was so full that when Tom entered and came
in with a sort of run, as though he had helped himself with his elbows,
I saw the crowd, close-packed, pressed hard against Bates’s cabin
opposite, as they were against mine. ‘Hold my arm,’ said Tom. I seized
him, and he took me through the door and shoved to right and left to
make a passage through, the cuddy entrance, that stood but five or six
feet away. He then returned to lock the door.
I was now able to see and hear. The cuddy, as I had suspected, was
packed full. The sailors had joined the convicts, so that there
were over two hundred and forty people in that roasting interior.
The atmosphere was dark with tobacco smoke, through which the large
cabin-lamps loomed like the red moon in a mist. I coughed violently
even on the quarter-deck whilst I looked through the open door, waiting
for Tom to come out. By standing on the coamings of the booby-hatch, I
got a view over the heads of the crowd and saw the whole picture.
Abram sat at the head of the table in shirt and trousers only; his
black, pitted, ugly face shone with sweat; they had put one chair on
top of another for him, and he sat with his legs wide apart and his
feet on the table; between his knees was a pail, out of which he was
ladling drink into pannikins which endlessly travelled his way, or were
extended at arm’s length to him. He seemed half drunk, and occasionally
withdrew the ladle full of the liquor to flourish it over his head,
whilst he uttered a roar like a beast expressing joy and having no note
but a roar; at such times he swayed on his perch as though he must
topple over.
As yet not many of the felons were intoxicated, but anyone could see
how it must be with them presently. The younger amongst the people made
the most noise. Again there was the aimless shouting of the morning,
the roaring chaff, the yells one to another from distant points, the
frequent breaking into songs, with local choruses, swaggeringly chanted
by those near the singer. The heat was frightful; I was amazed that
the wretches could draw breath. At this foremost end of the table,
high-perched like the ruffian Abram, was the hare-lipped convict; he,
too, had a big pail of liquor betwixt his legs, the contents of which
he served out with a pannikin. Nearly every man had a pipe, and again
and again one or another of the convicts rose to get a light at the
lamps. They stood on their chairs with a foot on the table and dodged
drunkenly at the flame, with an open end of rope-yarn or a piece of
wood, and whilst it burnt freely they lighted their pipes, blowing out
dense clouds, and then they’d pass the burning brands to men shouting
for them.
This was shocking to see. Nothing in the behaviour of the malefactors
was so fearfully menacing. All that I here describe I witnessed in the
few moments whilst I waited for Tom to lock the door. He forced his way
out, took me by the arm, and in silence we mounted the poop-ladder.
Oh, the sweetness of the air up there and the peace and beauty of that
gentle tropic night! The moon was up, the dark sky was crowded with
stars to the horizon, the ship was sailing noiselessly before the wind.
Aloft, where the sails swelled stirless as carvings of stone, glowing
in the beams of the moon that shone athwart them, all was silent.
Forward, not a figure stirred. Aft, Mr. Bates walked on one side of the
deck, and by the clear, white light in the air I distinguished Will at
the wheel. Tom spoke no word till we were on the poop. He then said: ‘I
believe we shall be able to get away to-night.’
‘The sooner the better, Tom.’
‘If they don’t set fire to the ship,’ said he, ‘we may be able to get
away easily, and in a quarter-boat. I chose the gig because she hangs
where she may be lowered without much risk of observation; but the
people down there mean to drink themselves dead-drunk. If that happens,
we’ll take a quarter-boat.’
‘Is that Will at the wheel?’
‘Aye. The dog whose trick was up refused to stand any longer when he
understood there was grog going in the cabin. No other man would come
aft to relieve him. So much the better. It all works for us.’
We joined Mr. Bates and went to the helm and stood there. They were now
making a horrible roaring noise in the cuddy. It sounded like a great,
drunken cheering of a ‘sentiment,’ or speech.
‘I’ve been watching them light their pipes,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘We must
stand by, Butler.’
‘Bates, it’s to be done!’ exclaimed Tom, looking round the sea. ‘What
shall we want? Nothing that may not be got and stowed in twenty
minutes. Johnstone, jump forward and try one of the scuttle-butts. If
there’s water, fill a couple of boat’s beakers.’
He took the wheel from the lad, who fled off the poop like the shadow
of a cloud in a gale.
‘Which is the better quarter-boat. Bates?’
‘The aftermost.’
‘See if it’s all right with her.’
The mate sprang upon a hencoop and got into the boat, where his figure
was lost. He came out after a few minutes and reported everything in
its place. Will returned; he said that the starboard scuttle-butt was
half full, took the beaker out of the boat and went forward. When this
was filled he took the beaker from the other boat, filled and stowed it
in the boat we meant to use.
Just then a hush fell upon the people below. It startled one, so
suddenly did it come on top of the noise. The skylights lay wide open;
I stepped to one and looked down. Some of the convicts already lay
with their heads buried in their arms upon the table, motionless in
deep, drunken sleep. Others who were within the compass of my gaze
leaned back, staring in the stupefaction of drink with fixed eyes. A
few lay like dead men upon the deck. But the great mass were still wide
awake, full of the fever of drink and the life of their own hideous
spirits; as many as I could see were all looking aft where Abram sat,
and I had not been watching a minute when Abram, whose deep bass voice,
considerably thickened and deepened yet by the drams he had drained,
roared out the following song (I caught some of the words and long
afterward met with the verses):
The prize-fighter sang it thus:
As clever Tob Pitch, while the rabble was bawli’g,
Rode stately through ’Olbord to die id his calli’g,
He stopped at the George for a bottle of sack,
A’d probised to pay for it whed he cabe back.
Here broke in a roar of laughter.
His waistcoat a’d stockids a’d breeches were white,
His cap had a dew cherry ribbon to tie’t.
The baids to the doors a’d the balcodies rad,
A’d said: ‘Lack-a-day, he’s a proper yu’g bad.’
The singer was again interrupted by another great shout of laughter. It
may have been his drunken grimaces and thick pronunciation that amused
the convicts; there seemed not much to laugh at in the words of his
song.
But as at the windows the ladies he spied,
Like a beau id the box he bowed low od each side!
A’d whed the last speech the loud ’awkers did cry,
He swore frob his cart: ‘It was all a dabbed lie!’
The ha’gbad for pardod fell dowd od his dee;
Tob gave hib a kick id the guts for his fee--
Here broke in another shout that lasted some moments. The convicts
beat upon the table with their pannikins; several flaming matches were
passed along and pipes sucked hard. The atmosphere rose through that
open skylight hot as a blast from a furnace and dark with tobacco
clouds. The prize-fighter, in a thicker and deeper voice, proceeded:
Tob said: ‘I bust speak to the people a little;
But I’ll see you all cussed here before I will whittle.
Take courage, dear cobrades, a’d be dot afraid,
Dor slip this occasiod to follow your trade;
By codscience is clear a’d by spirits are carb,
A’d thus I go off without prayer-book or psarb.’
Thed follow the practice of clever Tom Pitch,
Who hung like a ’ero ad dever would flitch!
On finishing this song, the prize-fighter bellowed in a loud voice
of thunder: ‘Chorus, pals all! Chorus, pals all!’ And the drunken
mob, in every variety of note, till the chorus was no more than an
ear-splitting, discordant howling, repeated
Then follow the practice of clever Tom Pinch,
Who hung like a hero and never would flinch!
The convicts vastly enjoyed their own singing. They shrieked, cheered,
whistled, hammered and roared, and roared again with laughter and
applause. Whilst I looked I saw a man fall dead-drunk from his chair
right under the skylight and lie like a log on the deck. (This was the
lean, grey man who had talked of the devils that swam in a rum-cask.)
I thought of that day when Mr. Barney Abram sat with other prisoners
under the skylight and lifted up his voice in a song of devotion, and
the doctor’s stern face of approval came before me.
Some men on the main-deck laughed loudly and talked uproariously. They
were convicts going to the galley for hot water to mix fresh pails of
rum with. The moonshine lay white on the planks, and you could see the
buckets swaying in the fellows’ hands as they lurched, laughing and
talking, toward the galley, about whose open door hovered the sheen of
a lamp burning within.
‘I hope they’ll not end at this,’ said Tom, standing at my side and
speaking to Mr. Bates. ‘If they don’t get more drunk, they’ll fall to
fighting, and bethink them of the soldiers’ weapons under the poop, and
turn the cabin into a shambles.’
‘The drink takes effect quickly,’ said Mr. Bates.
‘Many of them haven’t tasted a drop for years!’ exclaimed Tom.
The people below fell silent again; a loud, clear voice, that did not
seem in liquor, began to sing. I guessed from the direction in which
the convicts’ heads were turned that the singer was the hare-lipped
man. We came away from the skylight and stood near the wheel, which
Will held.
‘This wind is taking off,’ said Mr. Bates.
Tom looked aloft and then round the sea. He started, peered a little
eagerly and, pointing, exclaimed: ‘Is that a vessel yonder in the flow
of the moonlight?’
Will, who had keen eyes, looked and said: ‘Yes, sir.’
The mate fetched the glass from the companion-way and gave it to Tom,
who said: ‘It’s a little brig, I think.’
The mate pointed the telescope, and when he was done with it I asked
leave to look. He steadied the glass, and I quite clearly saw the
vessel. She lay exactly under the moon in the full stream of the silver
light, where the first of it smote the dark edge and flowed across the
ocean.
‘How is she heading?’ said Tom.
‘She seems to be standing south,’ answered the mate.
‘Would she not receive us?’ said I.
‘We can’t board anything in these clothes,’ exclaimed Tom.
‘She don’t seem to be travelling,’ exclaimed the mate. ‘She hangs
steady under the moon. Perhaps the calm’s about her. The heat’s drying
up the breeze.’
‘Suppose she should have the doctor, soldiers, and the rest of them on
board,’ said Will.
‘Butler,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates with energy, ‘I swear you have nothing to
fear. You are innocent; you have saved life; you have witnesses----’
Tom stamped on the deck and turned his back with a gesture that was
like saying he had settled that question in previous talks with the
mate.
They were again howling out a chorus in the cuddy; the tobacco smoke
rose like steam into the moonshine through both open skylights; shouts
for drink and for pipe-lights were incessant. Tom, hearing a sound
of scuffling coming from the main-deck, went to the rail and stood
looking. He returned and said: ‘A dozen of them have staggered out for
air, I suppose; the freshness has proved too strong, and every man
dropped as though knocked on the head. There they lie, dead-drunk on
the decks.’
‘That vessel sits without life,’ said the mate, looking at the sea
under the moon. ‘I’ve been watching her. She’s either hove to or
there’s something wrong.’
Our own languid motion had drawn the little craft out of the brilliant
reflection. She now hung on the margin of it, scarce distinguishable
but for the faint light her sails made. I suppose she was about five
miles distant; certainly she had not seemed to move to the extent of
her own length since we caught sight of her.
Our canvas was now hollowing in. The white cloths came to the mast
softly and shook the dew upon them on the deck. The sea was grown
glassy under the moon, and round about were ice-like windings of
tremorless water. The breeze was falling fast, and the heat that came
in a sort of fold like a succession of swells out of the gathering calm
was heightened to every sense by a vast play of shooting stars over our
mast-heads. Tom stepped to the skylight to observe the time; it was
something after ten.
The uproar was at its height again below. A hundred voices seemed to
be singing a hundred different songs at once. In the midst of this,
half a dozen figures came into the companion-way. They all talked as
they ploughed up the steps, shoving one another in their drunken
scramble to keep steady. The first of them fell over the coaming and
lay laughing and cursing; the next tripped over him, but recovered
himself, with a mouthful of oaths, and with a stroke of his foot rolled
the prostrate man aside. The fellow laughed like one choking, then lay
motionless, and before the others had come up he was snoring.
One of these men was Barney Abram. He stood in the companion-way,
holding on and looking about him with his figure stooped.
‘Here’s Butler!’ exclaimed a man, talking brokenly and hiccoughing.
‘Come below, my rooster. Ain’t ye longer one of us, old drummer? Come
and drink. Don’t make it all greediness downstairs. Take your whack, my
lobscouser, and let’s hear you sing.’
He extended his hand. Tom put it aside, but without temper.
‘I have drunk enough. I can’t stand the heat down there, and I can’t be
there and here too, and the ship wants watching. Abram, you sing a good
song.’
The prize-fighter came out of the companion and stood in front of Tom,
slightly swaying his body.
‘It’s bit of a cub-dowd!’ he exclaimed. ‘My wife wouldn’t like to hear
of it. I cad fadcy her,’ he said, directing his moist eyes at the moon,
‘saying, “Bardey, ’ow could yer as a public bad?” By adswer would be
exceedingly sipple: “Biriab, it was id bid-ocead, ad there’s dot a
codger abugst the whole blazi’g boili’g of the fagots whose opidiod of
be as a public bad I value at that!”’ He snapped his immense muscular
fingers with the report of the explosion of a cap of a musket-nipple.
‘I’d rather have a shant o’ gatter (pot of beer) to blow an inch
of tripe of nosey-nick-nacker with than a caskful of that devil’s
fire on tap below,’ exclaimed one of the men. ‘It’s gammy for the
head--gammy--gammy.’ He pulled off his cap and sent it with a kick
flying overboard, and, putting his hands to his brow, groaned, swinging
his head from side to side. He then blindly reeled over to a hencoop,
fell against it, kneeling, and stretched his length.
A third fellow, who had stood looking at the moon for some minutes
in silence, with a drunken, imbecile grin, began to cry. He snuffled
and whimpered and exclaimed in broken, tipsy tones, ‘What ’ud my poor
mother think? Ho, yes, she brought me up in the straight ways, and this
is what it’s come to. Never was there a better scholard nor me nor vun
more promising till I fell in with a sneaksman. It was all along of a
footman----’ Here he blubbered and could not go on.
‘’Ark at Sipsod shedding tears!’ exclaimed Abram. ‘What’s ’e got to cry
about? Let the people he robbed cry. Bates, cub-dowd a’d ’ave a drink.’
The convict named Simpson shuffled to the companion-hatch, with some
trouble got his leg over the coaming, and then fell down the steps.
‘I’ve had all that I can stand up under, Mr. Abram,’ answered Bates,
‘thanking you kindly.’
‘I wish you’d sing another song, Mr. Abram; I never heard so powerful
and manly a voice,’ said I, hoping by this to get him below, where a
few more drams would finish him.
‘I studied busic udder the great Jo’d Brahub,’ he answered, wagging his
head with his indescribable leering smirk, that was deepened and made
more repulsive, if possible, by the drink he had swallowed; the moon
shone very clear, and expressions on the face were easily read. ‘If I
car’t si’g, who cad? By lay was Hi-taliad opera, but the ri’g answered
by purpose better.’
This he spoke in the most gentlemanly manner his tipsiness would
suffer. Mr. Bates saw my meaning.
‘I’ll go with you below, sir, and drink your health, and hope to have
the pleasure of hearing you sing another song.’
‘Cub along,’ said the prize-fighter, and both men went down the steps.
The din in the cuddy was still vile and distracting; but it wanted its
former volume. I looked through the skylight and found as much of the
table as I could see thick with the stupefied brutes, who, seated, lay
upon it from their waists in every sort of drunken posture, most of
which not a man amongst them could have put himself into had he been
sober. A score and more lay without life or motion on the cabin deck,
but numbers were awake, and pannikins of grog were being handed along.
The haze of the tobacco smoke hung dark as a river-fog.
I walked to the break of the poop and counted some twenty or
twenty-five dark figures lying helplessly insensible in various parts
of the main- and quarter-deck; men reeled out of the cuddy, as I
looked, fell down, with their hands outstretched, and never moved. It
was as Tom said: the wretches had not tasted liquor for months, and
many of them for years, and now they had been swallowing fiery ship’s
rum, I know not how many degrees above proof.
(I once, in Mr. Stiles’s time, put my tongue to a ‘neat’ dram or ‘tot,’
as it is called, and was burned as though by a flame.)
Numbers, I doubted not, had swallowed the burning poison undiluted.
The spectacle of the quarter-deck, above all the sight of the figures
lurching out and then dropping as though shot, was sickening and
frightful.
I went back to Tom. As I passed the skylight, Abram began to sing;
but his voice was full of drink, very hideously thick and his delivery
tuneless. I was sure, after pausing an instant to listen, that he would
soon be amongst those who were laid low.
‘I shall make for that brig,’ said Tom, ‘when we get away.’
I strained my sight, and then barely distinguished the vessel in the
obscurity some distance from the edge of the flood of moonshine.
‘It’s a dead calm,’ I said.
‘It matters not,’ he answered.
‘Shouldn’t we first contrive to roll those fellows off the poop?’ said
Will at the wheel, meaning the figures upon the deck.
‘It’ll take them all night to sleep off what they’ve got,’ answered
Tom. ‘I hope Bates won’t allow them to make him drunk. He’s afraid of
Abram.’
‘Where are the rest who came up with the prize-fighter?’ said I.
‘Gone below for more drink.’
We stood conversing in whispers. Abram’s singing had subdued, but only
subdued, the noise in the cabin, yet we could hear one another when
we whispered. After twenty minutes, Mr. Bates came up. I regarded him
anxiously. His face shone in the moonshine as though he had just lifted
his head out of a bucket of oil.
‘The heat below! Oh, the heat below! It’s wonderful they’re not all
dead men!’ he exclaimed.
He told us that he had managed to empty his pannikin on the deck before
putting it to his lips. They had handed him pure rum to drink. Had he
swallowed the dose he must have fallen down insensible. The people
close to him were too drunk to observe him. He dexterously, whilst
seeming to watch Abram, as though to catch his eye to drink his health,
poured out the contents of the pannikin, and did not know that the rum
had splashed over a man’s face until he looked down. The man, lying
like one dead upon the deck, received the discharge without a stir. It
seems, however, that Mr. Bates need not have put himself to any trouble
to feign drinking. Abram got on to the double chair and began to
sing, without taking any notice of the mate. In the midst of his song
he stopped to lift a pannikin to his lips, which he emptied, and was
then proceeding, when the upper chair gave way and he fell. After the
prize-fighter had lain a few moments groaning in sickness, he clawed
his way to one of the cabins, and Bates came on deck.
Soon after eleven o’clock, a tipsy figure, approaching Tom, stood
lurching and backing and filling. The man was a sailor. He asked, with
a drunken, broken laugh, if he should take the wheel.
‘Get away to your hammock!’ shouted Tom. ‘We’ll see to the ship. Off
you go, and tell the rest of you to turn in till you’ve slept the drink
off.’
The man went reeling forward, and in a maudlin voice broke into a song
as he worked his way off the poop.
But nothing could be done till the silence of drunken sleep was upon
the ship. I never could have dreamed that of two hundred and twenty
odd convicts, all would have overpowered themselves with liquor. There
were grey-haired men and men of education, people who had filled good
positions ashore. One, as I have said, was a surgeon, another had been
an officer in the army. There were several clerks and young fellows who
had been apprenticed to respectable callings. One had been a harbour
missionary. No need to lengthen the dismal catalogue. A few, at least,
I had thought would have held aloof from the hellish revelries of the
cuddy, have come on deck and breathed the fresh night-air and watched
the beautiful moonlight after a moderate sup or two from Abram’s and
the hare-lipped man’s buckets. Such persons I had looked for, and
wondered how we should be able to get away without their hearing or
observing us. But, it seems that there was not a convict in the whole
living mass of wretches, counting two hundred and thirty souls, less
Tom and the fellows that had lost their lives in the morning, who had
not entered heart and soul into this hideous merry-making.
Tom found out that by going down the companion-steps and taking a view
of the interior. The hour was then about a quarter to twelve. About
half a score of the felons were still awake, but drinking always. They
were too drunk to make much noise, and happily too overtaken in liquor
to be able to light their pipes. The heat was killing, Tom said. He
should not be surprised if several of the people were found dead.
‘Bates,’ said he, ‘get you now down with Will and overhaul the
slop-chest and bring up what you know is needful. They’ll take no
notice of you in the cuddy. They’re nearly blind drunk; they’re at the
aftermost end where Abram was, and the atmosphere’s black with tobacco,
and the cabin lights burn pale. Johnstone, I don’t want Marian to leave
my side. Here’s the key of my cabin-door. Bring up the clothes.’
Bates and my cousin went away. Tom now said he would go the round of
the ship.
‘We must see all the lights out before we leave her,’ said he. ‘Think
of a fire with the people in the state they’re in!’
He walked to the lifeless figures on the poop and moved them with his
foot; they lay as senseless as the plank they rested on. He then
passed down the steps and I lost sight of him. I guessed that the
convicts had been too drunk to climb the poop-ladder, or to attempt the
poop by the companion-steps; that was why there was none on this deck
save those two or three of Barney Abram’s party who had stumbled, and,
being down, had instantly slept.
I looked into that part of the night where the brig lay and dimly
discerned her. I forget where the moon at this hour stood, and with
what bulk she had risen. Silence was gathering on the convict ship.
Occasionally the hoarse, tipsy call of a man in the cuddy vexed the
ear, but those noises were rare, and I was pretty sure that another
quarter of an hour would do the wretches’ business and sink them in
the universal stupor. I wondered if the moon had ever before shone
down upon a more shocking picture of human bestiality. And yet how
exquisitely was the ship painted by the night beam in the midst of
that vast ocean hush! The sails hung like sheets of cloth of silver;
every shroud had a glint that resembled a thread of silver wire; stars
of white fire sparkled in the brass of the binnacle hood and in the
glass of the skylights, and the rail seemed encrusted with diamonds
and precious gems. The whole ship hung pale upon the sea, with never a
pulse to rock her; her spires rose phantasmally to the stars, but her
beauty was ghostly and the horror of sin was in it.