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—”[25]

“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 little nearer — and a little 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 sounds of suffering men — groans, cries of delirium, the harsh cut of laughter.

Another skiff, larger than the Mate's and filled with at least eight young bucks of seafaring aspect, rowed around the Marguerite's bow and roared with delight at die sight of us. One — who must be their leader — held aloft a bottle in salute.

“Old Hawkins, ahoy there! Have you come to join the merriment? And brought a fishwife, too! Are you after selling your girl, Mate?”

“She's too dear for your purse, Martin Whitsun,” Hawkins retorted, “and well you know it”

“Aye, none but a fool would pay more than tuppence.” Whitsun busied himself with a bulky object clutched against his chest; another rocket, perhaps. He must have a store of them at his feet The two skiffs were drifting closer together; in a minute I should be discovered as anyone but Nell Rivers. I shrank behind the Mate's sturdy back.

“Oi, Nell,” shouted a buck through the gloom, “have ye tired of good English cock, then? Do you think to dance a jig for the Frenchies' pleasure? There's many a lad would die for the sight of your arse, love!” He grasped his trousers in a lewd gesture and commenced to lurch drunkenly in the skiff, so that it rocked and bobbled perilously in the waves.

“Mangy curs!” Jeb Hawkins swung upwards so suddenly that the pranksters were taken off guard. “I'll teach you to show respect to a lady!” The blade of his oar slapped hard against the drunken man's chest, and sent him careening overboard with a terrible cry. In falling, the man clutched at one of his mates — and the scuffle and tumble that then ensued caused Martin Whitsun to drop his rocket.

It had just been lit.

There was a horrified cry, “a welter of splashes and dark shapes leaping over the skiffs side, and I felt myself propelled backwards in Jeb Hawkins's boat by the violent pull of the man's remaining oar. And then, with a roar as calamitous as Judgement Day, the entire complement of Whitsun's rockets flared and shot skywards.

Boom! Boom! The light was searing, unlike anything I had ever witnessed, so that I covered my eyes with my hands and cried aloud in terror. Sparks and flaming pieces of Whitsun's ruined skiff rained down all about us. I was struck a glancing blow by one splinter, and crouched as low as possible in Hawkins's bow. Everywhere were heard the cries of Fire! Fire! — —and when I considered with surprise how singular it should be for the drunken bucks struggling about us to sound so vigorous an alarm, I glanced up at the Marguerite.

A burning spark, or several perhaps, had landed on the hulk's deck, where a coil of cable or a bundled hammock had caught ablaze. Perhaps one of the lanthorns had been knocked over by a flying splinter or struck by an errant rocket. Whatever the cause, flames were now licking merrily along the deck, lurid and frightening in the darkness. Where there had been no activity before, was suddenly a handful of flitting shapes — the Marguerite's skeleton crew, desperately working with sand and sacking to douse the greedy fire.

“Mr. Hawkins!” I cried. “What have we done?”

“That's not our doing, ma'am,” he shouted back. “That's God's judgement on the poor Marguerite!”

“But the prisoners — the men in chains below! What will become of them?”

The Bosun's Mate ignored me. He was bent over the side of his small craft, fishing intently for a floating oar. Heads bobbed everywhere in the expanse of water between ourselves and the Marguerite; Martin Whitsun's gang, I supposed, abruptly sobered by the shock of February water. One man appeared intent upon making for our boat. He thrust an arm awkwardly above the waves and cried out, then was submerged in swell. I hoped fervently that the rogues were more adept at the art of swimming than I should be myself, and clutched firmly at the gunwale of the skiff.

Hawkins rose up from the side with a triumphant cry, and stowed his prize in the oarlock.

“Mr. Hawkins!” I shouted fiercely as the man began to pull away from the burning prison ship, “you must go back!”

“I can do nothing from die water, ma'am. It's for the crew to save her now. The fire's not so great — I've seen worse in my time — but in the event they carry powder, we would not wish to be near. If the ship blows—”