The state of the crew, however, had become too bad to be amended in a hurry. Discontent of all sorts prevailed on board.
As we lay at Spithead, one day Hagger came to me and said:
“Will, I don’t like the look of things, there’s something going to happen. The men complain that the provisions are bad, and we don’t get fresh meat and vegetables from shore as we ought, and there’s no leave given, and flogging goes on just as it did before, and that our present captain is as severe as the last. There’s a knot of them got together, and they are plotting something. That fellow, Charles Trickett, is at the bottom of it, though he takes good care not to be too forward. They have won a good many men over, and they tried to win me, but I’m not going to run my head into a noose to make bad worse.”
“I know all you tell me,” I replied, “except that I was not aware there was any plotting going on. No one has spoken to me, and Trickett is the last person to do so, though he would be ready to get me into a scrape if he could. I don’t think they would be mad enough to attempt anything when they must know what would be the upshot. The leaders will be taken, and either flogged round the fleet, or hung at the yard-arm. I’m glad that you’ve kept clear, Dick.”
Next day a man I had seldom spoken to came up while I was writing a letter to my wife, and asked me to put my name to a paper which he said wanted a witness, and he could not find any man just then who could sign his name. He was one of the Lord Mayor’s men, but notwithstanding by this time had become a pretty smart hand. He had been a pickpocket or something of that sort it the streets of London, and always spoke of himself as being a gentleman, and was fond of using fine language.
“You’ll render me an essential service, Weatherhelm, if you’ll just do as I request. Here is the paper,” and he produced a large sheet folded up. “You’ll see me write my name, and you’ll just write yours as a witness under it. There’s the word ‘witness,’ you see, in pencil, you need not cover it up.”
He wrote down his own name as Reginald Berkeley, and I attached my signature.
“Thank you extremely,” he said, taking up the paper before I had time, notwithstanding what he said, to write down the word “witness,” which I knew ought to be in ink. “That is all I require. It may, I hope, be the means of bringing me a nice little income of a thousand a year or so, to which I am entitled if I obtain my rights, as my solicitor tells me I am sure to do. I’ll not forget you, Will, depend upon it. You shall come and stay with me at a snug little box I own down at Richmond,—that is to say, as soon as I come into possession of it, for I have not, properly speaking, got it yet,—or if you want a few pounds at any time, they are at your service. Thank you, thank you, go on with your letter. I must apologise for interrupting you;” and putting the paper in his pocket, he walked away.
I thought no more about the matter, and having finished and closed my letter, went on deck to get it sent on shore, as I knew my wife would be anxiously expecting to hear from me.
A short time after this another fellow, very much the same sort of man as Berkeley, as he called himself, addressed me, and invited me to come forward and take a glass of grog with him.