He stumbled away from the excited crowd, needing to be alone. He brushed against someone. It was Renzi, standing back from the others.
“You — you,” Kydd gasped, “get out o’ my way.” He made instinctively for the ladder to the deck below. There he turned and lurched to an open gunport, retched into the darkness and hung there, weak and trembling, despising himself for his weakness.
It took a while for him to register what he was hearing from the tight group of men sitting farther forward. They spoke very quietly, but there was no mistaking Stallard’s urgent, hectoring tones. “For fuck’s sake, you can do somethin’! Why do yer stand for it? Never heard of any being made to eat shite like on board this boat!”
Kydd heard a growled reply too soft to distinguish, then, “O’ course! That’s what they think yer worth. Meanest lobsterback gets a whole shillin’ a day.”
There was more rumbling. “Ah, now that’s where you’re dead wrong. If you ain’t been paid, then law’s on your side — and my bloody oath, yer don’t have to work until you have, see. And I oughta know — tell yer about it one day, I will.
“So we finds somewhere we can talk. Just don’t want to hear any more low cackle about lyin’ down and takin’ anything they wants to dish out.”
The voices died away, and Kydd could hear no more. When he pulled himself back inboard they had gone. He drifted listlessly back down to the lower deck, listening without interest to the desultory chatter, and was glad when the end of the dog-watch brought the hammocks down.
He lay back trying vainly to keep the misery-etched face of Buddles out of his mind. The violent contrasts of the day had left him empty and sick. It was no good: sleep was beyond him and he determined on activity as the only alternative.
He eased himself to the deck in the blackness, grateful that his hammock was so close to the main hatch. Careful not to disturb the sleepers whom he could hear breathing, snoring and grunting, he shuffled along on hands and knees. It was only when he got to the hatchway that he stopped to consider where he would go. The next deck above would be the same as this, full of sleeping bodies, and indeed the one above it, for all the time in port there would be no need to maintain a full watch on deck of half the men. Then he remembered the orlop deck below where he had spent his first night aboard, courtesy of the boatswain. The long walkway around the periphery — that would do.
The orlop had a pair of lanthorns at the after end. The men in irons lay sprawled asleep on the deck, a marine sentry suspiciously glassy-eyed against a door. The rest of the orlop forward was in blackness, and Kydd began pacing around the walkway.
He was totally unprepared for the sudden attack. An iron-hard pair of hands gripped him by the throat and dragged him choking and helpless across the deck to the gratings of the main hatch. “Shall I croak ’im?” his attacker whispered hoarsely. Kydd was forced to his knees.
“Wait — we’ll find out what he knows first,” returned an urgent whisper.
A tiny light, a purser’s glim — a reed in an iron saucer burning rancid fat — was uncovered, and in its sputtering light Stallard’s face appeared, devilish and delighted. “Well, if it ain’t me old royster, Tom Kydd.” There was just enough luminosity to reveal about half a dozen other figures among the shadows.
The pressure on his throat eased and he dropped to the deck, heaving burning breaths in spasms. A hand grabbed his hair and forced his head back. “Just we needs to know why you’re creepin’ around down here, Kydd. Stands to reason you’re not here for the sake of yer health,” Stallard said.
Kydd gulped air and tried to order his thoughts against the roaring in his ears and the savage adrenaline rush. “Couldn’t sleep — needed to —”
His hair was jerked savagely back, and a meaty hand gripped his throat. “You gull us ’n’ you’re shark bait, matey.”
“No — he’s square, I know him from a-ways back.” Stallard’s look became speculative. “See, me ’n’ me friends here don’t think it right we should have to go out to sea in this leaky old boat and drown like rats, so we’re goin’ to take action.” He looked around for confirmation, which he got. “The committee has to meet here, ’cos you know why, and we voted we stand for our rights as human beings, not poxy slaves.
“We’re now goin’ to organize the whole crew, and when those fuckin’ whistles blow to force us to sea, we’re just goin’ to refuse to sail.”
Kydd’s reply was left unsaid at the sight of Stallard’s wolfish grin.