Free His Majesty's Ship by Alaric Bond

bibles, they are too.” Jenkins added.
           “All right, lads, turn about.” Flint stood up and inspected their work. Though wet, the scrubbed area of deck appeared white and smooth in the half light. The men turned so that their backs were to the cabins, before kneeling down and beginning again. This time they were resting on the area they had just scrubbed, and the deck was moist and gritty with sand. Matthew felt the damp though his trouser knees, although that was soon forgotten as his belly and back muscles began to object to the punishment.
           “Get's better, after a while.” Flint muttered. “Do this for a couple of weeks, and ya won't know yerself.”
           “That's if somtin’ else don't kill yer firs,” Crehan added some way down the line.
           Matthew determinedly turned his mind from the Irishman's threat, although at that moment endless mornings of this particular exercise seemed a bleak enough future.
           “It's just talk, lad.” The man on his immediate left was also Irish, although he spoke softly and without Crehan's unpleasant nasal twang. “An' as for the stoning, you'll not be seeing a proper sailorman with a belly now, would you?”
           Matthew set himself to the work and the line moved forward slowly, oh so slowly, while the bare deck lay before them all like an unvanquished enemy.  
     
    *****
     
           At first light a marine drummer appeared, and mounted the poop, the highest deck and right at the stern of the ship. For two seconds he held his sticks in the air before bringing them down on his drum, and beating out a rousing tattoo. In every commissioned ship at the anchorage the ceremony was performed and soon all of Spithead vibrated with the stimulating rhythm.
           Simpson broke off from his scrubbing to go below. He was the cook of Flint's mess, and it was one of his duties to collect the men’s rations from the stewards’ room, where the holders would be bringing them up from store. The drumming continued as he explained his purpose to the marine sentry, and passed down one companionway. It would carry on now until the port admiral's office took a fancy to fire a gun. The official definition of daybreak was when a grey goose could be spotted a mile off. On the sound of the gun, all ships would hoist their colours, and signals could be passed to and fro. It was the way of the ship, the way of the Navy, and on that particular morning it irritated Simpson.
           Clambering down the next companionway, he joined the queue outside the stewards’ room. As mess cook he was responsible for what had to be taken to the galley, and labelling it with a lead seal. Other items such as butter, fruit and any luxury that might be going, would also be under his charge and it would be up to him alone to distribute them to the men. This he would do fairly, as all men took turns in being the mess cook; besides Simpson had long ago discovered that the world had a habit of getting even.
           Still, it irked him, as did most things at that moment. The strict routine, the pattern for everything that the Navy seemed so fond of; all the humdrum work that had to be measured into strict timetables and organised patterns. He made no allowances for the difficulty of organising several hundred men to do several thousand tasks on a daily basis, he just longed for a break, a chance to order his own life and set his own way of living it.
           This was not a new sensation for Simpson; indeed it was one he had experienced many times before. And usually, as now, after a period of relaxation, when the ship was not fully worked up and men could do pretty well as they pleased. The first days back to normal routine were very hard for him to bear; he felt frustrated, controlled, and longed for a way to end the monotony.
           The chance came when he was heading from the galley back to his mess. Some of the lower deck