This sort of conversation, overheard, did not reassure those same minds which thought to plunder the stores necessary for their own survival. Laurence supposed they would not have hesitated for a moment to throw their own fellows to the dragons, if thereby they might save their own skins, or for that matter obtain a cup of grog: which was the main subject of the daily reveries which occupied all their time besides the bare minim of tasks they could be chivvied into by the aviators.
There was not much necessary to keep the camp in good order: not much necessary, but what was necessary still was not done. Each morning saw the shore strewn afresh with driftwood and seaweed, palm fronds blown down upon them, the splatted excrement of the crying gulls objecting to the intrusion of so noisy a party into their domain. Laurence had given over trying to have the filth cleared away more than once every three or four days: instead they all kicked aside the refuse as they walked here and there, or slipped on it.
“If you will not work, you will not eat,” he had told the men—the one threat which made for any work at all, and which could not be used without limit. A slight, stoop-shouldered midwingman of sixteen like Cavendish could not clout Richard Handes, a man of thirty and four with fists the size of melons and a mouth full of teeth broken in dockside brawls.
Demane managed to impose, when he needed to; which Laurence was certain must have been due to some ferocious quarrel carried on out of his sight, and Emily Roland might have managed a few at once on the strength of personality alone: might have, if Laurence had any intention of trying so dangerous an experiment; instead he took every opportunity to order her away from camp before sunrise, and watched closely that none of the sailors drifted in the same direction.
Laurence would have given a great deal for even one man among the lot whom he could have made bo’sun, but if there were any trustworthy men to be found, they had not put themselves forward. O’Dea and Shipley were not properly of the sailors: they were Laurence’s followers, and O’Dea had enjoyed too well, during their stay about the Triomphe, making somber pronouncements on the demonic effect of liquor—a subject he was most qualified to speak upon, certainly—with imputations on the character of the sailors who had succumbed to its influence. His own culpability in that respect he protested vigorously: he had not been on duty, he was heard to say virtuously.
Shipley, meanwhile, had gown ambitious: he had begun to recognize, with so few hands among the aviators, that a man a little handy and willing might advance past his ordinary expectations. He had been a tailor, before some misfortune had led to his conviction and transportation, and with the loss of Fellowes had evidently formed the aim of making ground-crew master: they did not have harness for him to work on, now, but he made himself busy nonetheless, holding himself apart and lofty from the sailors. They were neither of them to be of use in bridging the gap.
The best candidate, if one were to be had, would have been Mayhew: an older man and one of their small handful of able sailors, who had at one time even advanced to the rank of master’s mate before being rated for drunkenness, and might have been of some use. But he had breathed a great deal of smoke in his own escape from the wreck of the Allegiance, and yet coughed in a near-consumptive fashion; and in any case, he had made no push to fix himself in authority among his fellows.
So instead Urquhart and Handes were the most popular—had even been delegated to speak to Laurence, after the first week, with the sailors’ grievances. “It is hard to be kept so short, Captain,” Urquhart said, with a shifty and a sidelong look that said he did not like so well to be actually addressing Laurence, instead of merely muttering with his fellows. “—dreadful hard, after the troubles we have had; we hope you will think better of it—”
Laurence listened with a mouth pressed thin by wrath, until Urquhart trailed off sidling back and away as his words dried up. Handes, less perceptive, added with brazen insolence, “It is no good going on here as if we were all still on board, and high and mighty. The stores must be opened and shared out proper. We had better have mess twice a day instead of one, and the beasts might bring us a little fish, too, instead of eating it all the day by themselves.”
The words alone were pure disrespect, if they had not also been foolish to an extreme; and to round them out with insult, Handes spoke while clapping one great fist into his other hand softly but in meaningful rhythm, as if he meant to imply some sort of threat: Temeraire was away hunting, at present.