Read Online Under Enemy Colors by Sean Thomas Russell, Sean Russell, S. Thomas Russell - Free Book Online Page A

whisper.
    “Doctor? Doctor Griffiths?” The urgency of the voice reached deep into his sleep and drew him to the surface, where he sat, twisting knuckles into eye-sockets and shaking his head.
    From the other side of the gunroom he heard Griffiths, apparently none too happy with being wakened. “What is the matter?”
    “It is Tawney, sir. A sentry found him in the cable-tier, bloody and not able to be roused. He appears to have been beaten, sir.”
    Hayden rolled out of his cot and began pulling on clothes.
    “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…” the doctor muttered, and Hayden heard feet strike the deck.
    The first lieutenant emerged from his cabin at the same moment as Griffiths, and both set off at once for the orlop-deck, the marine who had called them scurrying before, lantern in one hand, musket in the other. They pummelled down the steps and made their way quickly forward.
    They saw two shadowy figures, one bent beneath the low deckhead, a lantern clutched in his fist, the other crouched in the waist-deep darkness created by the thick rounds of anchor cable. Hayden scrambled over the hawser after the doctor, who pulled spectacles from his pocket.
    A man lay crumpled on the dark planks, limp as a sleeping child, mouth slack and swollen.
    “We’ve not moved him, Doctor,” one of the men said. “Left him as he was, just as you always say.”
    Griffiths appeared not to hear, but felt at the man’s throat for a pulse. A long moment as the others held their breath.
    “He is not done for, at least. Bring the light closer.”
    The lanterns were lowered to cast their faint glow upon the sailor’s bloodied face. The flesh appeared bloated to bursting, inky-dark and crimson. Eyes were swollen shut, jaw oddly displaced.
    “Who did you say he was?” Hayden asked.
    “Dick Tawney, sir. Foretop-man.”
    “Who would have done this to him?”
    No one had anything to say in response. The doctor gently probed the skull, and then, with Hayden’s help, turned him on his side.
    “It is a wonder he has not drowned in his own blood,” the doctor observed, a barely controlled anger creeping into his voice. “Jump aft, Davidson, and fetch a cot from the sick-berth, if you please.”
    Tawney moaned, stirring a little. Griffiths took hold of the man’s shoulder and hip, bracing against a shift in the man’s weight, keeping him on his side. Blood dripped from his shattered nose and mouth. A moment later Davidson and the surgeon’s mate, Ariss, appeared bearing a cot. Under the doctor’s direction they shifted the deadweight of the sailor onto the sailcloth-covered frame. Tawney muttered something unintelligible, then his head lolled to one side.
    Bent low beneath the beams, they raised the cot, sliding it over the coils of anchor cable, waiting while Hayden and one of the seamen scrambled over, then bearing up the weight again. Tawney’s feet began a convulsive jig.
    “Is it the death rattle, Doctor?” the marine asked, clearly unnerved by what he saw.
    “No. It is like to a fit—from blows to his head. With luck it will not persist.”
    In the sick-berth, the cot was slung from rings set into the beams. Gently it swayed forth and back and forth. One of the patients woke to see what went on, the fevered whites of his eyes peering out from beneath a thick dressing that swaddled his skull.
    “It’s all right, Hale, go back to sleep.”
    “Wot ’appened to ’im?”
    “Exactly,” the doctor muttered. “Let us clean his wounds, Mr Ariss. Then cut open his shirt; there is blood, here, on his rib-cage.”
    Hayden stepped out of the way, watching as the surgeon and his mate went about their work with a practised, dispassionate air, fingers moving mysteriously in the smudged light. Twice Hayden was called to help restrain poor Tawney as he was taken by another convulsive fit, but then the man would fall limp again, unmoving. The doctor checked his carotid pulse each time, as the man had gone so still.
    Finally satisfied that he