The Adventurers by Vivian Stuart

Author:Vivian Stuart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jentas Ehf
Published: 2022-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

7

George De Lancey stood on the deck of the transport Conway, moodily watching as the first boatload of convicts came alongside. All were from Cork Jail, all were heavily fettered, and all wore the same expression of sullen defiance as, prompted none too gently by the warders who had accompanied them, they clambered awkwardly up the accommodation ladder and vanished into the bowels of the ship.

Halting beside him, the Conway’s master, red-faced and grossly corpulent, observed contemptuously, “Your fellow passengers, Mr. De Lancey ... scurvy Irish traitors and rebels, the lot of ’em! A turbulent, desperate, and dangerous set o’ men, the head jailer warned me last night, to be handled with extreme care.”

“Is that so, Captain Barlow?” George returned, his tone cold. He had taken an intense dislike to the master since boarding the Conway at Portsmouth and wished that, in his eagerness to leave England; he had not taken passage in the first available ship but had waited, to make his choice with more care.

The Conway was large enough, her passenger accommodation spacious, but she was filthy and ill found, her officers, from the master down, loudmouthed and uncouth, her crew sullen and lacking in discipline—clearly, George had decided, the sweepings of the docks, discarded and set ashore by other ships.

He frowned, hoping to discourage the master’s confidences, but Barlow ignored the warning signs.

“One ’undred an’ seventy-two male convicts,” he went on. “Dangerous as they come, an’ how many bloody sojers am I given to guard the scum? Just twenty-five, an’ some ’arf-baked young ensign, who’s kept my gig waiting for over an hour ’cause he ain’t ready to come aboard! I ask you, Mr. De Lancey, is that any way to treat a ship’s master?”

“Presumably you’ve experienced similar treatment on your other voyages?” George suggested, his tone still cold. He made to move away, but the master followed him.

“I never made no voyage to Botany Bay with convicts before,” he admitted glumly. “Nearest I come to this kind o’ thing was when I was first mate o’ the Mercury, ten years since. Ivory Coast to the West Indies was her run, but ’twas black ivory she carried. Slaves, Mr. De Lancey,” he added, with a leer, when George said nothing. “But they didn’t give us no trouble. Any that tried to got put over the side, see? An’ no questions asked—we was paid for the ones we delivered in healthy condition.” He broke off to growl an order to the third mate, a weedy youth, with long, straggling hair, on which his faded peaked cap sat oddly askew.

The young man stared at him openmouthed and then, with a subdued “Aye, aye, sir,” he shambled off to the forward accommodation ladder, displaying no haste.

“Get a move on, mister!” the master shouted after him. “I want them chain cables rigged on the prison deck right away! An’ the leg-irons passed through ’em, understand?”

George had not heard the initial order, but there was no mistaking the implications of the second. He rounded on Barlow in angry disgust.

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