Free By the Mast Divided by David Donachie Page A

or handkerchief – went first to them as payment for some small act of partiality. He recalled how hard he had run that day, how his mind had worked to provide the right answers, ones that would keep him free from a return to that purgatory, only tofind that fate in the end had played a cruel trick by delivering him into another.
    Adverse luck had caused him to choose the Pelican, there was no point in looking for a deeper meaning, and there was some comfort in the fact that the men who had chased him all of the previous day would be hard put now to find him. But would anyone else in a world that seemed to have turned against him? As he ran through again and again the events of the last four years, of the highs and lows he had enjoyed, he had to ask himself again if anything his father had done in the time had been worthwhile.
    ‘What does it matter now?’ Pearce said out loud, in a voice so rasping that it told him he was in need of a drink of water.
    ‘I would be after saying, friend, that talking to yourself would be the first sign of madness, if what we were about was not mad enough itself. What in Christ’s name am I doing in a boat?’
    The voice from the comatose body close to his, unmistakably Irish, was that of O’Hagan. And so was the face now that Pearce could look at it properly; big, round, coarse-skinned, with narrow eyes that could seem to be merry even in this dire situation, the whole topped with the black, tight and thick curly hair that had saved him from concussion. Gone was the belligerent drunk of the night before; this incarnation could even manage a smile in a situation that did not in the least deserve one.
    ‘Where in the name of Holy Mary are we?’
    Pearce managed a grim smile. ‘In a boat, friend, as you say. We had the misfortune to run into a press-gang last night.’
    It was clear by the confusion on O’Hagan’s face that he could not remember. He pulled himself up with some difficulty as his hands, like Pearce’s own, were tied, groaning as he did so, those bright eyes closing to pressed slits as he slowly shook his head. ‘Jesus, Joseph and Mary, the drink has done for me again. Not that I had enough to fell me, they must have put gin in my yard of ale, the bastards.’
    Pearce looked down the boat to see if Charlie Taverner had heard the statement, one with which he would certainly not agree, but he looked to be either sleeping or still out from the effect of the blow he had received. Out of the corner of his eye, Pearce also saw Coyle, the little marine asleep across his lap, looking at them. He was seeing him for the first time in daylight, and he observed that their chief captor had a face so red and fiery, and so round, that except for the lack of a smile it would not have disgraced a Toby Jug. He was glaring at them now, as if by merely communicating they were fomenting rebellion. Pearce jerked hishead slightly in warning as the Irishman reopened his eyes, but it was ignored.
    ‘O’Hagan, Michael, Patrick, Paul.’ The bound hands came up as if to propose a shake, and Pearce was treated to another bit of evidence, in a pair of huge, heavy-knuckled fists, that he was with a man who would have been hard to take up sober. But with his own hands tied behind his back he was in no position to take up the invitation of contact.
    ‘That’s a lot of names.’
    ‘It is in the Papist tradition, I suppose for fear that God or the saints might lose us.’
    ‘Which one do you go by?’
    ‘Michael.’ He grinned. ‘Or O’Hagan. Or “you damned bog trotter” if you prefer.’
    ‘We met last night, Michael, and I recall that you tried to knock my head off my shoulders.’
    Those merry eyes showed disbelief at first, then, with the addition of a slight headshake, acknowledgement. ‘The drink, it is, for I am a lamb when not full of it. Your name?’
    The reply ‘John Pearce’ came without thought, the next being that such openness was incautious. There had been a time, before he