THE DEPRIVED... Chapter 4...Part 5.

A continuation of my book.

On the deck were boys busily scrubbing the flooring, moving down the line, from fore to aft and then back again. Moving between the boys, Master Bonsy led Sam to the centre of the deck where the tall mast seemed to lose itself up into the mists of the sky.
“Climb to the top of the mast and stay there till you’re told to come down.” instructed Master Bonsy.
Sam moved forward and grasped the first set of spikes which had been hammered into the mast, reaching up as a ladder. Sam began to climb, the higher he got so did the cold wind seem to try its hardest to pull him from the mast, his hands seeming to freeze to each spike the higher he climbed. Sam gritted his teeth, hearing the demanding voice of Master Bonsy as he shouted through a loudhailer, ordering him to climb faster. The boys who scrubbed at the decking boards kept their eyes to their work, fearing to look up at the slim figure which now appeared to have vanished above the mists.
“Are you at the top?” shouted Master Bonsy.
A thin voice, losing itself to the wind floated down from the sky, assuring Master Bonsy that Sam was certainly at the top or near abouts.
“Then stay there till I order you down.” hailed the order.
Sam clung to the mast, his arms wrapped around the post as it swayed backwards and forwards in a wind which raked at his body with a strange whistling song. Sam took his mind away from what was happening, his thoughts on happier times as he saw pictures of his mother and father, back home in Ireland. He saw Beth and called out to her, his voice carried in the wind.

“Are you alright, Mister?”
Sam turned, losing the picture within his memory of the young boy clinging to the mast as he turned to face the woman who had spoken.
He said nothing.
“I thought I heard you saying something, is all. You called out a name, as if you was dreaming.” continued the woman.
Sam frowned, now fully aware of the woman who stood before him, seeing her garish make-up and knowing she was one of the Night-Girls who frequented the tavern across the road.
“It’s cold out here. I reckons you could do with a bit of what you fancy, aint it the truth?”
Sam smiled.
“Come with me.” was all he said as he walked further down into the darkness of the alleyway, his hand unbuttoning his coat as he walked. The woman hurried to catch up with him.
“We aint needing to go too far.” she said.
Sam turned to face her, his dark eyes wide and seeming almost black with a fire burning deep, his lips twisted with a hatred which brought a snarl from his throat as the knife was raised and slashed down in a fast cut which sliced into the woman’s throat, severing the jugular and bone behind. The woman dropped senseless to the ground, with Sam in the heat and strength of demons, kneeling beside the body and slashing at it till he ran out of frenzied breath and rose slowly, to stumble blindly away from the body and not fully aware of his surroundings till he had reached his lodgings and crept up to the attic room where he lay out on the bunk and began to cry.
“Oh Beth.” he sobbed. “What is happening to me? Where are you, Beth?”

“There’s another one!” cried Joe Ingram, coming into the front room with a thin hard-printed newspaper in his hand.
“Another what?” asked his wife, wiping the snuff from the front of her pinafore.
“Another one of them murders and it aint far from here. See here! There’s a drawn picture of the woman. She’s all cut up and brutally done in, so it says. Them high brass at Scotland Yard is saying here that it aint safe to walk the streets at night but they is also saying it aint to be long afore the villain is caught.” he finished.
Joe Ingrams’ wife took the paper from him and studied the drawing of the murdered woman, her pale thin face growing paler.
“Well I aint about to go in walking them streets late at night and it’s only them Night-Girls as have the nerve to.” she said, giving the paper back to her husband.
“It aint as much a decent drawing, is it?” decided Joe Ingrams.
Joe Ingrams’ wife took another pinch of snuff as he sat, his finger tracing the words in slow progress as his lips moved to the words.
“Murder, so it is.” he declared at length.

Sam woke with a start and lay on his back, his eyes on the bare ceiling joists as he tried to recall the dream. Giving up, he became aware of the rain which had begun to seep through the broken roof and now gathered on the joists, to drip from the timbers onto the floor. Sam rose and moved the bunk to a position in the far corner so that the bunk was out of the way of the dripping rain. Lying once more on the bunk Sam recalled the previous night, not of the woman or the slaying, such a memory was set within the subconscious. Sam more readily thought about the howling of the wind and now the rain which tore at his body as he clung to the mast those many years ago on the prison hulk.

“You can come down now!”
The voice from the loudhailer came up through the wind, indistinct and unintelligible. Even if Sam had heard the shout he did not answer but stayed where he was with his hands frozen to the mast and his teeth chattering, his whole body locked into rigidity.
“You can climb down now!” came the voice again.
“He can’t hear me, Sir.” said Master Bonsy to Mr. Cameron.
The boys who scrubbed at the deck now all raised their eyes upwards, trying to pierce the mists.
“Go up and get him down, Master Bonsy.” ordered Mr. Cameron.
Master Bonsy swore under his breath and began to climb the mast, the warmth of his thoughts and of how he would make the boy pay for having him climb the mast, helped him to rise ever upwards.
“What’s the matter with you!” screamed Master Bonsy, having reached to just under Sam and staring upwards. “It’s alright, you can climb down now!”
Master Bonsy hung to the mast and seeing no movement from Sam began to descend, deciding that the boy was dead and with his body frozen to the mast. Sam forced one hand away from the mast, gripping the iron spike and squeezing hard so that pins and needles shocked themselves through the cold as blood began to run through the veins and allowed his hand to move. He did the same with the other hand, concentrating his mind as he began to slowly climb down the mast, one spike at a time till his feet reached the decking.
“Get down below.” ordered Mr. Cameron. “Master Bonsy!”
“Yes Sir?”
“You take him down below and give him the rope’s end for disobeying an order to come down from the mast.”
“Yes Sir.”
In a strange way the lashing from the rope’s end gave Sam a feeling of warmth, the cold anaesthetising the flesh so the rope’s bite heated up his frozen body without any sensation of pain.
“Cry damn you!” shouted Master Bonsy, quite out of breath and with an arm too tired to lift anymore.
Sam kept his hands up to the beam, his face masked although he smiled inwardly knowing he had beaten the bullying Master Bonsy.

Sam had been set the task of pulling up the buckets of sea water, leaning far out over the side of the ship and drawing up the buckets to give to the boys who demanded fresh water as they scrubbed the decks. Each day, like the rest of the boys, he received a beating. It was not from a savage rope’s end as given by Master Bonsy or from the less savage Dropend. Each boy was made to stand opposite another and each given a thin lash with which to strike out at the other so as to drive out the very devil which possessed them and to remind them of the good which God endowed within.
“To drive the devil out and allow God in!” was how the Governor described the ritual.