Free Kydd by Julian Stockwin

void.
    Disembodied voices rose and fell. His mind drifted, but returned to hear what they were saying.
    “No, mate — I saw ’im! Didn’t do a bloody thing, just watched while Ollie went over the side. Did nothing ’cept stare, the useless ninny.”
    “Yeah, you saw him, but he was givin’ a chance fer Lockwood to do somethin’ for himself. He had the deck, didn’t he?” Kydd recognized Bowyer’s troubled tones.
    “It won’t fadge, Joe,” someone replied. “The Captain ’as the ship. There’s no buts in it. It’s his dooty to look after the people, same’s it’s our dooty to look after the ship.”
    “Now, what I don’t like is this. When it comes to a situation, it’s ‘sharp’s the word and quick’s the motion’ but he just stood there! Yes, sir, just froze right up!”
    “So we gets a dirty great Frenchie, yardarm to yardarm, offerin’ to ventilate our sides — ain’t no time to be stoppin’ and starin’.”
    “I seen a scrovy like that!” a voice chirruped from out of the dark.
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “Did so too. He was touched, that’s what he was, used t’ stare like that — into his vittles, out the window, nobody could speak to him. Right scareful, it was.”
    “What happened to him, then?”
    “Well, one evenin’ he fell down in the pothouse, kickin’ ’n’ twisting ’n’ scarin’ the daylights out of us all until they took him off ter the bed-lam.”
    Kydd snorted into the gloom. “Bloody rot! You’re talkin’ of the falling sickness. Poor juggins to have you as his friend. It’s a kind of fit. An’ what I saw this afternoon wasn’t the fallin’ sickness.”
    Another voice challenged, nearer. “So what was it, Mr. Sawbones?”
    Conscious that he had attracted attention to himself, Kydd could only answer lamely, “Well, it wasn’t, that’s all.”
    The exchange drifted into an inconclusive silence.
    The edge of an unseen sail fluttered sharply and quietened, and an occasional muffled crunch of waves came from forward, in time with a slight pitch of the bows. Kydd shifted his position.He heard Bowyer from farther away: “Can’t blame the skipper, Lofty. He’s new, ’n’ he’s had to take over the barky from Halifax without the smell of a dockin’, poor lady.”
    “That’s all gammon, ’n’ you know it, Joe.”
    “No — what I’m a-saying is that, as bloody usual, in this war we’ve been caught all aback ’n’ all in a pelt — skipper’s got to get the ship out to meet the Frogs ’n’ ’e’s cuttin’ corners.”
    The man grunted loudly. “Pig-shite! You always were simple, Joe. What we ’ave is a Jonah! Seen ’em before. They doesn’t know it even but they ’as the mark! An’ it’s evil luck that comes aboard any hooker what ships a Jonah, as well you know, mate.”
    The murmurs died away, and Kydd shivered at the turn in the conversation. He took refuge in the continual run of shipboard noises — the ceaseless background of anonymous sounds that assured him his new world was continuing as usual.
    There were a few coughs before a deep voice announced, “When we makes Spithead tomorrer, I’m goin’ no farther than yon Keppel’s Head — get me a good sea coal fire ahead, a muzzler of stingo under m’ lee and I’ll not see daylight until we fronts back aboard.”
    “Stow that!” someone whooped. “I’ve got a year’s pay says there’s no fubsy wench in Portsmouth Point’s goin’ unsatisfied while I’ve got the legs to get me ashore.”
    The babble of voices was broken by one of the older men. “Presumin’ we get to step off.”
    “Course we will! On the North Ameriky station for near two years — stands to reason we dock first to set the old girl to rights afore we join the Fleet. Gonna take at least half a year — we’re forty years old, mate, and you know she spits oakum in any sort of sea!”
    “Yeah, that’s right! We had thirteen months ashore off of
Billy Ruffian
in ’eighty-eight, an’ she was in better