Free By the Mast Divided by David Donachie

might have to be employed to get his ship to sea.
    For all his determination to see things in a positive light, nagging doubts existed. His orders could be suddenly changed, he had known it happen before; by the time he got back to Sheerness that convoy duty could have evaporated and he could be stuck at anchor waiting for a new assignment with some of those men aboard clamouring for release. Even if he weighed immediately, the sea was a capricious element. Ships had been known to run aground before they ever cleared the Thames and the Channel was one of the worst stretches of water in creation, a place where vicious cross-seas or thudding westerly tempests made the prospect of losing some vital spar or mast a distinct possibility. Vessels were often forced by such mishaps to run for one of the southern Channel havens to undertake repairs.
    Ralph Barclay forced himself to concentrate on the more enticing scenario; a quick clean break from the shore, a voyage blessed with good fortune that would take him to the Mediterranean and opportunity. And if, as he hoped, his service were successful, say a fleet action or some single ship success, well, what he had done this night would count for nothing. No one would bring before a court a naval captain who had proved his worth against his nation’s foes.
     
    A tide going slack, a widening river and a cold east wind blowing up the estuary, slowed the progress of the longboat and cutter, so that the menon the oars were obliged to pull hard, though in a steady rhythm that belied the effort they were making. As the stars began to fade, the sky going from black to the palest shade of grey, Pearce looked at his fellow victims, heads lolling forward as his had done in the night, only to jerk upright at some shock. Then came incomprehension, as if they could not acknowledge their predicament; that followed by a look around the boat, as the truth became apparent once more in their bruised faces.
    Naturally he picked out those he knew. Ginger Rufus looked like death, but that was in part due to the paleness of his complexion and the unformed nature of his features. Taverner’s face he could not see – though he was hatless he was crouched over – most obvious was the black blood that stained his blond hair above the ear. Walker, at the very front of the boat, he noted was alert, those bird-like eyes never still, as though he was searching for means to escape. It took the movement of another before he got sight of Scrivens, who, not young on first acquaintance, looked even more aged now.
    He had seen faces like that before, and much worse in the Bridewell. Recollection of that stinking pit of a prison sent a deep shudder though his already chilled frame. There was little room in this boat but that could not compare with the need to share a barred basement cell, thirty feet square, with over a hundred souls, and the stink of human effluvia that created. Old men and women, some of quality, others the dross of the streets, lay cheek by jowl with bow-legged, ragged and skeletal young boys and girls whose only crime had been to steal food in an attempt to ward off starvation. Some were those close to death when they arrived, and others he had watched as they struggled to survive in the cold, damp and disease ridden, rat infested hell-hole.
    Worse were those wedded to crime, the dregs of humanity who made it necessary for he and his father to take turns in sleeping, if a half-comatose state on a filthy stone-flagged floor, with only a minimum of straw – home to a whole race of biting insects – could be called that. Of both sexes, they would rob whoever they could of whatever little they had, even down to the clothes on their back if they could be removed with enough guile. Set up supposedly to meet the needs of justice, the Bridewell was a true den of iniquity with the venal warders the top of the pile of human ordure, men who made sure that anything of value – a watch, a ring, a good shirt