Free Rapscallion by James McGee

throat
convulsed and he turned away, pulled the blanket over himself, and the contact
was lost.
    The scream was
not repeated. A small, rounded shadow appeared at the grille. A rat was
squatting on the sill, preening. As if suddenly aware that it was being
observed, it paused in its ablutions and lifted its head. Then, with a flash of
pelt and a flick of tail, it was gone.
    Hawkwood closed
his eyes. It was interesting, he thought, that the rat, when startled, had chosen
to exit the hull rather than seek sanctuary within it.
    Perhaps it was
another omen.

CHAPTER 5
     
     
    Hawkwood stood
at the rail of the forecastle and gazed down at his new world. The view was
less than impressive.
    Aside from the
two accommodation decks, the only other areas on the ship where prisoners were
permitted to gather were the forecastle and the well deck, the space referred
to euphemistically by the interpreter Murat as "the Park". Lasseur
had taken it upon himself to pace out the Park's circumference. The survey did
not take long. It was a little over fifty feet long by forty feet in width. It
didn't need many prisoners to be taking the air to make the deck seem
overcrowded. It explained why so many men chose to remain below decks. With
space at a premium, they didn't have much choice.
    Bulkheads at the
forward and aft ends of the ship separated the prisoners' quarters from those
of the ship's personnel. The militia guards occupied the bow. The hulk's
commander and the rest of the crew were accommodated in the stern. At first
sight, the bulkheads appeared to be made of solid iron. On closer inspection,
Hawkwood discovered they were constructed from thick planking studded with
thousands of large-headed nails. Loopholes had been cut into the metal-shod
walls at regular intervals to allow the guards on the other side of the
partition to fire into the enclosed deck in the event of misbehaviour or riot.
They resembled the arrow-slitted walls of a medieval keep. With the gun deck
reminiscent of a long dungeon, it wasn't hard to imagine the hulk as some kind
of bleak, impregnable fortress.
    At six o'clock
the guards had removed the hatch covers, allowing the prisoners to carry their
bedding topside to be aired. Hawkwood had welcomed the first light of dawn,
still conscious of the collective reek coming off his fellow inmates.
Lieutenant Murat had given his assurance that it would take only a few days to
become acclimatized. As far as Hawkwood was concerned, the moment couldn't come
soon enough. The gun- port location may have provided access to the elements
and a sea view, but it didn't mean the smell was in any way reduced. The foul
odours within the hulk had built up over so many years that they'd become
engrained in the ship's structure, like a host of maggots in a rotting corpse.
    Breakfast had
been a mug of water and a hunk of dry bread left over from the previous
evening's supper. The fist-sized block of stale dough had been made marginally
more digestible when dunked into the water. It remained small consolation for
what had been, despite Hawkwood's ability to negotiate the hammock, a fitful
night's sleep. Though it was a soldier's lot to bed down when and wherever he
could, it did not always follow that slumber came easily. The night had seemed endless.
Lasseur looked equally unrested as he peered out across the choppy brown water.
    Perched at the
extreme north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey, Sheerness dockyard lay across
the starboard quarter; an uneven line of warehouses, barracks and workshops.
Rising above these was the fortress; its squat, square outline surmounted by a
grey-roofed tower. Guarding the entrance to the Medway River, the fort
dominated its surroundings, a stone defender awaiting an unwise invader.
    To the south, at
the edge of the yard, lay Blue Town. The settlement provided accommodation for
the local workforce and owed its name to the colour of the buildings, all of
which had been daubed in the same shade of naval paint.