fools,” muttered a voice at my feet.
I glanced around, but could discover no one.
The harsh clearing of an old man's throat assailed my ears; I peered down die steps that led from quay to water, and eventually discerned a figure familiar in its outline—a seafaring man, with a neat white queue hanging down his back and a silver whistle around his neck. He was crouched in the stern of a small skiff, smoking his pipe. A quantity of fish was neatly stowed in a basket at his feet, and his line and tackle laid by.
“Mr. Hawkins,” I said.
The Bosun's Mate pulled his pipe from his lips and nodded. “Miss Austen, ma'am. Nell said as you were very kind to her. I thank you, I do, for your attention to my poor girl.”
A second rocket fired out of the Water and exploded with a great report over our heads: Despite myself, I started.
Jeb Hawkins pointed toward the prison hulk with his pipe stem. “That's a sorry sight, if 1 may be so bold. It burns my heart to see the Marguerite in such a state -cut down to a stump and disgraced. The times we had in her—aye, and the battles, too!”
“You were posted once in that ship?” I enquired curiously.
“That I were, ma'am—four year and more, ?? d many a sharp brush the Marguerite saw. She took fifteen French prizes in her day, and seven Spanish, make no mistake. She were a barky ship, the Marguerite; but it's donkey's years since she were fit for sailing.”
“What cause could the crew, find for signal rockets?” I asked him.
“Why, that's never the crew, ma'am! That's a few of Southampton's best, in Martin Whitsun's cockle of a boat, chivvying the Frenchies with the sound of the guns! The young lads're forever plaguing the prisoners with a fight; they think it drives the French half-mad, to have the sound of shells whizzing overhead and be prevented from offering a reply.”
I strained my gaze towards the hulk's waterline, and discerned the very small craft Hawkins had described, hard in the lee of the ship and almost indistinguishable in the darkness. A sudden misapprehension seized me. What if the rockets were a diversion—a cover for greater malice about to operate on board?
I turned to stare at the Quay's end, and Winkle Lane; no sign of Frank or Mr. Hill. And at every moment the dusk grew heavier! Surely if murder were done, it would strike under cover of night! I rounded on Mr. Hawkins in his skiff.
“You say that you are familiar with the Marguerite. Would you be so kind as to convey me to her?”
Hawkins eyed me dubiously; between drabs and prison hulks, he no doubt thought, I possessed curious tastes for a lady.
I opened my reticule and retrieved my purse: four shillings, five pence. The sum would have to do. I held out the coins.
“You're never thinking of clambering aboard yourself,” he protested. “It's right difficult for a lady, without a chair; but happen the Captain could find one—”2
“We shall deal with that difficulty when we come to it.” I clinked the money enticingly.
He shrugged, rose into a half-crouch, and extended-his palm. I dropped the shilling pieces into it.
“Have a care, ma'am, to step into the middle of the boat I'm not so young as I was, but strong enough for all that to make the Marguerite in under ten minutes.”
Ten minutes! It seemed ten hours, rather, as the Bosun's Mate heaved and grunted at his oars. I sat in the bow, facing the hulk, and he amidships, with his back turned to his object; I was privileged, therefore, to experience every agony of apprehension while the distant outline of the Marguerite loomed and grew no nearer. Eventually, however, as the darkness of late winter descended and the shouts of men flew across the Water, the hulk ceased to recede” I thought it came a litde nearer—a litde nearer—and a litde nearer; the Bosun's Mate showed sweat on his brow, and at last we approached so swiftly that the dark and glistening hull of the ship filled all our sight, a mountainous wall, with the waves slapping against its anchor-chains in petulant bursts of foam. A few lanterns had been lit against the turning of the day; their warm yellow light pooled in places on the upper deck, but shed no glow in the dark under-regions, the successive rings of hell, that comprised the lower decks. From die closed gun ports came the piteous