I ate nutty bread with lashings of salty dripping and drank warm beer. Ahhhhhg !! gulping it down in one. I was mesmerised by the view through the window beside the snug table. The light traced the shape of small rectangular glass window panes onto the cobbled street and sea wall beyond. Wiping the creamy white froth from my mouth with the back of the hand I greedily swallowed this down too. The afternoon was almost gone and the clouds of night gathered like huge curtains ready to fall across the heavy laden skies and draw them into the darkness. A huge golden red ball of fire clung fiercely onto the purple drapes of sky until it slid down and dropped beneath the horizon. Only a thin red line of colour spread finally across the scene like the closing beam of light at the end of a play. Before the applause and the encore.
It wasn't raining, so I picked up my canvas bag containing musket, thick stick, wooden clogs and a brand new rag doll for my brand new baby daughter. I had not seen her yet this lovely innocent breath of love in human form. Completely undefiled by the ravages of drudgery, poverty living above the bread line -just. . I dreamed of the sweet scent of baby breath on my cheek as I held her close to my heart and the knowing pink fingers curling around my weathered thumb. My smile grew and smeared from ear to ear as if coloured in with crimson crayon
I left and turned around the corner of the local hostelry The Mermaid Tavern wrapped itself around the end of a block of fishermen's cottages. There wasn't a straight line in their construction either at street or roof level as each dwelling rose from a scrambled collection of broken blocks of stone leaning on each other bearing the weight of each other so that these weighty blocks transmuted somehow into cottages. Monoliths in the dark.
The sturdy cottages ran eastward towards the sea wall a last bastion of safety from the unpredictable waves. In the dark I felt rather than heard the sound of them crashing in an uneasy rhythm against the wall. And I tasted trails of salty droplets diluted with rain on my tongue as I licked my lips.
The shadows lengthened. I could no longer see the way ahead and in the pitch black of the night I felt a vice like grab at my right arm and another across my Adam's apple. Fingers so suddenly and so forcefully pushed my face backwards into my neck that my windpipe unexpectedly closed and I could not cry out. I fell sprawling onto the coarse, damp cobble stones beneath me, I smacked down onto my misshapen canvas bag now full of objects only fit for torture. No cushion to my fall at all. The pain was excruciating. My swollen head and bruised body lay with arms and legs in apposite angles to each other in a puddle of sea and rain water. I fell into a warm dark sleep wrapped up in stars and colours of other worlds swirling around my swollen brain. Eventually I heard muffled voices rumbling and angry with sinister threats. I was aware of the sound of wooden wheels on the cobble stones and a horse trotting reluctantly through driving rain and sea spray. I lay unable to move bound with thick knotted rope tearing into my wrists and ankles. The unwelcome straw bed stank from animal excretions and I was flung about like my daughter's precious rag doll thrown away into the rubbish.
I wanted to cry out and speak but no words came from my lips- they sprung into my brain but became scrambled not able to blurt themselves out into the silence. Fear engulfed me and as I could not run I froze in a state of catatonic anguish. The cart stopped and once again I was manhandled off it and dragged pulled, and half carried over a narrow wooden bridge, a steep climb which caused my captors to breath and pant heavily with the weight of their prize. They dropped me down a wooden shaft and I came to lay on heavy folded canvas which cushioned the fall and gave me some hope that I might survive.
Muffled grumbles, coughing and muted swearing reached me lying in the darkness. Until the sounds were gone completely and I was left alone.
The press gang alighted from the ship and went about their tawdry business once more finding unsuspecting fools like me- Abducted, stowed on her majesty's ship of the line, erased from life as though they had never been. Removed with a rubber's stroke from family and friends and life as before.
As sunlight flooded my face I was able to roll my body to a seated position and then to stand with my head peering out from the wooden aperture. My eyes swollen into slits alighted upon a leather buoy roped to the side of the ship. For it was then that I realised that this was where I had been thrown in the middle of the night. I read the letters printed on the buoy and made out HMS Prospect and the slow realisation of what had happened flooded my mind with dread and despair.
I then became aware of the motion of the ship. The old lady of her Majesty's line rose through the waves with a shudder deep in the wood, veering marginally to the right and then dropped back down with a hearty slap onto the ocean swell. I found my hands and feet had been untied during that long period of unconscious dreamless, sleep and I managed to haul myself out of the ship's hold. The horizon at every point of the compass was devoid of any sight of land. no rocks piercing through the waves no green grey mounds of hills in the misty distance. I peered for a long time and found no comfort in my view.
I sat down suddenly legs giving way to shock on top of the buoy printed with HMS Prospect some of the lettering was cracked and discoloured but there was no getting away from my new reality. I had been abducted, My new home was aboard this battered wooden galley for months maybe years at a time. I found myself blubbing hot salty tears as the enormity of my situation became clearer. I cried for the loss of my wife and brand new baby girl, my modest yet clean cottage , my garden full of rich homegrown fruits and vegetables, my work at the local forge and the steady Cornish soil and turf beneath my feet.
Then I heard a grizzled voice cry out. Come by my lads Hoist the mainsails and as The Prospect's jolly tars ran past me I joined the line on the rope and winch and we sang as we strained together to turn her into the running breeze and tide.
There once was a jolly fine ship's company
Sailing from th' Atlantic's shores
Who found themselves in the eye of a storm
With a there she blows my lads
'Twas the prospect of my ships company
For a taste of beer and some fine muscavie
And a ladies sigh and a sweet goodbye
With a there she blows my lads.
So we sailed on the jolly ship Prospect.
With hopes well high and a sweet goodbye
But we found ourselves in a tide of hell
With a there she blows my lads.
Da da da da da!
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