Page 35 of By Marsh and By Moor (Marsh and Moor #1)

The schooner lay at anchor out in the bay beyond the harbour. A jolly boat was waiting to transfer the prisoners to it.

Outside the thatched cottages clustered around the harbour, a few townspeople stood watching the prisoners on their march down to the sea. They cried ‘Shame!’ as the group passed, and a child slung mud at one of the gangers, but nobody dared approach the drawn cutlasses too closely.

“Look lively, there,” barked the midshipman, who was in command of the little procession.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jed watched the ganger marching alongside him, chivvying him along. The man held his cutlass with the ease of long practice. Jed’s heart was pounding. This was it, the moment he had been waiting for. The moment of his escape.

He kept his eyes sharply peeled, paying attention to everything: the position of each ganger, of Solomon, of the midshipman, of the people coming and going around the busy little harbour.

He tested the strength of his bonds. The prisoners all had their hands tied behind their backs, but they were not strung together.

They reached the waterfront. In the harbour, the town’s fishing boats floated at high tide, the late afternoon sun gleaming on their painted white boards.

Two small merchant vessels were moored along the opposite pier, busy unloading, anxious to put to sea again before the tide turned.

Closer by, two of the schooner’s seamen were in the waiting jolly boat.

“Prepare to receive prisoners,” the midshipman shouted down to them.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

On the quay nearby stood a four-horse waggon. The pile of crates beside it was emitting squawking noises, as of agitated hens. Two men were loading the waggon, casting nervous glances of sympathy at the prisoners.

A few yards further along the quay, a narrow alley disappeared between a tavern and a warehouse. It led up towards the almshouses, as far as Jed remembered. From there, he could lose himself in the town’s narrow streets, and then go to ground in the wooded slopes that rose behind it.

The first prisoner was urged into the jolly boat.

Jed sought out Solomon’s gaze. They were standing some three yards apart, separated by two gangers. Their eyes met.

“Now,” Jed mouthed, still hoping against hope to bring Solomon with him.

Solomon’s eyes widened in alarm. “Don’t,” he mouthed back.

Jed’s heart cracked. For one achingly short second, they both stood there, Jed trying to memorise every line of Solomon’s face.

Then he stepped back and drove his foot into the stack of crates, toppling it. The topmost crate burst open, and the hens burst out, squawking and fleeing in all directions. The guards and prisoners scattered.

Jed broke away from the group, racing towards the alley.

For ten or twenty glorious seconds, he thought he had succeeded. He plunged into the alleyway, his lungs burning. But it wasn’t easy to run with hands tied. The cobblestones were wet and slippery under his feet. He slipped and almost fell, and then the Marines were upon him.

A heavy weight slammed into his back, and his head bounced against the cobblestones, sending waves of pain through his body.

He was dragged upright. He couldn’t see straight, with blood trickling into his eyes and his head spinning.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Everything seemed very distant, as though it were happening to someone else. He was only faintly aware of hands pushing him down into the jolly boat, of the planks rocking under his feet.

From somewhere far away came the midshipman’s voice. “He’s been trouble from the start. Don’t put him in the hold with the rest. Next thing you know he’ll have stirred up a mutiny. Put him on the afterdeck. He can go to the Ossory this evening.”

When Jed came to, the sun had already set, and he was chilled to the bone in the night air. He tried to roll over. Pain spiked through his head.

He was on the schooner’s afterdeck, legs shackled to the capstan. Solomon must be down in the hold. Jed put his hand on the decking, spreading out his fingers, trying to push his hand through the wood. His heart ached.

The schooner was a small vessel, probably with a crew of less than a dozen, Jed reckoned. It had been converted to serve as a transport of soldiers or prisoners, and the gratings were all uncovered, letting some air down into the hold.

As Jed lay there, trying to summon the energy to sit up, there came the splash of oars of some smaller boat approaching the schooner.

“Ahoy there,” a voice hailed, followed by the sounds of someone coming up over the side.

Jed heard snatches of conversation. “Evening, sir… Two crates of pease… the captain’s mailbag… Ossory sails first thing tomorrow morning… sign for it here....” And then, a voice raised in irritation, “You’re trying to palm some troublemaker off on me? I don’t want him.”

Jed heard the words able seaman , spoken in a conciliatory tone.

“Oh, all right, then,” the previous voice said grumpily.

Footsteps approached Jed.

“On your feet, man,” a voice barked.

Jed struggled to his feet. He was looking at an officer, a weary-eyed, middle-aged man. This must be the man who had come aboard.

“You’ll do,” the officer said, after inspecting him by the light of a lantern. He looked over his shoulder. “Well, get him unshackled.”

Then Jed was being ordered into another ship’s boat, and rowed away through the choppy waters of the Bristol Channel, towards another ship at anchor in the far distance, its lights only dimly visible through the night.

Closer by, the shoreline was marked by dots of light here and there from the taverns and houses of Minehead’s waterfront. Jed twisted round to watch them recede as the gig’s crew pulled at the oars. They were already fading into the night—and his last hope fading with them.

The gig rocked gently on the waves. There was something horribly familiar in the sensation. Back at sea. One of the seamen at the oars flashed Jed a quick grin: commiseration and welcome.

Somewhere ashore, a church clock struck midnight, the nighttime land breeze carrying the sound clearly across the water towards them.

Then another noise came across the water: shouts and splashes from the schooner.

Jed craned his neck to see. There was some commotion on board, with cries of alarm piercing the night air.

Moonlight fell on two smaller boats that had come alongside, and dark figures were swarming up the side and onto the deck.

“They’re boarding the schooner, sir!” one of the men in the Ossory ’s gig cried out.

Jed’s heart leapt into his throat. Finally he understood Solomon’s urgent words: Don’t run . A rescue! And he was trapped out here in the middle of the bay.

The officer hesitated. He looked over his shoulder at his own ship, a good twenty minutes’ hard rowing away, and then back at the schooner, only a cable’s length distant. Jed watched him openly, terrified that he would decide to return to the Ossory for help.

The man pursed his lips, frowning.

“About turn,” he ordered. “Back to the schooner.”

Within a few minutes, they were back alongside the schooner, on the opposite side to the rescuers’ boats. No one answered their hails. On the deck above, shouts rang out and metal clashed on metal.

Indecisive, the officer put his hand on his sword. His men were watching and waiting. Jed’s heart hammered in his chest.

The officer came to a decision.

“With me, men,” he ordered, and soon the seamen were swarming up over the side, armed with oars and belaying pins.

One man was left to guard the gig: the same fellow who had thrown Jed a smile earlier. Jed eyed him. He didn’t like to raise his hand against man nor beast, and particularly not against some poor bugger who was only doing his job, and who was perhaps a pressed man himself.

The man stared back. He was young, little more than a boy, with weatherbeaten cheeks and plenty of muscle.

“Thinking of trying to rush me, are you?” he said to Jed. “I wouldn’t advise it. You go overboard with your hands tied like that, you won’t be coming back up.”

Jed swallowed. He couldn’t stay here, letting freedom pass under his nose.

“Cheer up,” the other man said. “It en’t a bad life. Ossory ’s a good ship. Fine captain. Fine crew. I’ve been with her three years already.”

“I’ve already been at sea five years, and spent every one of them plotting my escape.”

“It took you that way, did it?”

“Yes, it took me that way. I hated it. I won’t go back. I can’t go back.”

The man regarded him thoughtfully. “Got a wife and children, have you?”

Jed’s heart pinched. “A sweetheart, you might say.” Who was, he hoped against hope, currently in the middle of escaping.

“A good trade?”

“I was a carrier. Lived in a village just a few dozen miles from here. And you?”

“I was a sweep’s boy. Hated it. Ran away to sea as soon as ever I could.”

They studied each other. The battle raged overhead, a confusion of shouts and groans, clashes and thuds. Down in the gig, neither of them moved.

“You’re desperate enough to jump me, en’t you?

” the other man said. “What are you thinking, get your feet under you and throw yourself forward, give me a good headbutt in the jaw? And then I wallop you one. And then you lash out with your feet. And if we’re really unlucky, we overturn the gig and we both drown.

” He let out a soft laugh. “There’s no call for us to hurt each other.

” He jerked his head up at the schooner.

“Go on, I won’t stop you. I’ll say you overpowered me. ”

“With my hands tied?”

“Well, you’ll have to get loose first, won’t you?”

Jed jerked desperately at his bonds.

The man made no move to help. Jed looked about him, and his gaze fell on the rough edge of an oarlock. He turned, desperately sawing away, not caring if he cut his wrists at the same time.

The seaman watched him. “Sure you don’t want to stay? We Ossories won ten pound each in prize money last year, let me tell you. What do you say to that?”