Erath: Chapter 4

The man they called Nicksin was the only person aboard the entire ship that bothered to take any hint of an interest in Erath. After the newcomer had been released from a few days of solitary confinement with only water to live on, Nicksin had shoved a hunk of something that felt hard and stale into Erath’s hand. However, he wolfed the food and washed it down with water to take the taste away. It did not, but he had been famished. And weak. After he had been unchained from the wall, Erath barely had enough strength to stand, let alone walk and climb out of the hold. It took him a quarter of an hour for to climb out of the hold without his head spinning, and longer to get to the galley where he could find food. All the while, his anger boiled as he noticed that some of the crew were watching his slow progress, yet not helping him when he would collapse. .
He sat on one of the benches, wishing he could have more food. Nicksin had already eaten his ration and was looking intently at Erath’s face. Although he had only been without food a few days, it had definitely left its mark on him. Already, his face was yellow and his cheeks were sunken in. His body that was once filled out finely was much thinner than before. His right wrist was caked with dried blood – evidence he had tried many a time to escape.
“How ya’ doing, lad?” Nicksin asked, nudging him good-naturedly.
Erath jerked away with a sour complexion. “Don’t touch me,” he growled.
“The chain didn’t do anythin’ for you, then? Didn’t calm that fire down, that’s for sure,” he added under his breath.
“I hate ‘im for doing it,” Erath said, unconsciously beginning to use the slang.
“Who?”
“The captain. He chains me up to a wall for a few days, meanin’ to starve me to death, then he lets me free when I’m at its door. ‘E just wants to watch me suffer, that’s what. Well I won’t let ‘im,” he said, slapping his knee. “I’ll show him I don’t break so easily.”
“Looks like you almost did,” Nicksin joked.
Erath leapt to his feet enraged and grabbed at Nicksin’s collar, dragging him from his seat.
“That what you think, eh?” he snarled, not six inches from his face.
“Well let me tell you something. I don’t want to hear any of what you have to say. What do you know? You’re a rag-tag sailor who’s known nothin’ but the sea.”
“What do you have to back yourself up with? A fishin’ line?” Nicksin retorted.
The few men that had gathered around the two chuckled softly.
Erath turned a nasty, angry face towards them that silenced them. He turned back to Nicksin and with a shove that sent him back to his bench, let go of his collar and walked away to the forecastle. His head was swimming from the sudden movement he had made and he did not want to pass out before the crew.
He was not lonely, for he was accustomed to being friendless. With the sour attitude he constantly wore, no lad his age dared cross his path. But Erath wasn’t always like that. He used to be happy and joyful as a child, until his mother died and his father had turned bad. Dareth used to be a rather fat and jolly man until his wife’s death. Then he took to his work. At times he would be gone fishing for days without returning. Because Erath had to work too to make money, he had to go along whenever his father went out fishing. The horrible attitude Dareth had rubbed off a little on his son, then when Erath did a poor job with the lines he would beat him at home. Erath did all he could to avoid his father, and because he did not have any friend to confide his troubles to, he bottled the anger inside until it eventually started boiling into a continuous anger that never went away.
Ratline sauntered in. He was a seaman, and so agile among the ropes that he had earned the nickname. Erath had already taken a keen disliking to him. He closed his eyes, pretending to sleep. Hopefully, Ratline wouldn’t notice him and would walk away. His hopes were dashed as he heard the whining voice address him.
“Cap’n says yur’ to be part ‘a’ my watch. Said ya’ prolly’ wouldn’t know what times those were, so they’re from e’lle’n to three at night. I’ll be comin’ to wake ya’ up on the first two nights, but after that, yur’ on yur’ own.”
Erath nodded.
“But ya’ got’ta learn ‘ow to climb the ropes so you can do it at night. C’mon.” He tugged on the edge of Erath’s hammock.
Erath rolled out of it and followed Ratline to the deck. His back had healed, and he felt he could climb the ropes fine. Surprisingly, his sour attitude turned a bit brighter as he walked about the deck, the warm breeze off the sea pouring over him like water. He took a deep breath and leaned over the rail to look out across the sea. All there was for his eyes to meet were blue; blue sky, blue water.
“C’mon, lad,” Ratline said again. “Into the riggings.”
Erath’s good mood was crushed with Ratline’s droning voice. He dragged his gaze from off the water and followed the seaman up the rope ladder of the mainmast.

Within two weeks aboard the Freedom, Erath had become almost as agile in the riggings as Ratline. He spent all the time he could climbing them, doing anything to get away from the crew. They were a nasty group, hardly worth the name of Navy seamen. The Freedom hardly even looked like a Navy vessel. Maybe at one time it did, but those glory days were long gone.
Erath discovered how he had been taken aboard the Freedom too. Nicksin and another sailor were talking about him, saying he had been pressed into the Navy. He found that out near midnight his second week at sea while he was on watch. They had been talking together in low voices at the helm.
“The lad was pressed eh?” the seaman asked.
“Aye, while he was walking down an alley.”
“What sort of lad was he?”
“Ah, from what I could tell, he was a fisherman’s son, on the poorer side of things. No education.”
The other man started scratching his head. “Now, how long was it you followed ‘im?”
“Hard to say,” Nicksin replied. “Long enough to get a good idea where he goes after fishin’ and where the most vulnerable places in the town were to get ‘im.”
Erath’s eyebrows shot up as he heard that. He had been followed? How ignorant was he?
He did not care to hear anymore of that conversation, so he slipped as quietly away from the men as he could, hoping they would not see him.

If Erath was not in the riggings, eating his rations, or sleeping, he was learning how to make the different knots. He had taken a liking to them and their complicated ways. Often when he was angry, he would take a line and run up into the riggings to sit on the foreroyal yard and tie knots, then untangle them, hence his skill in knot tying.
Although he was learning the ways of the ship, he was not learning how to gain favor with the captain. Erath had learned well not to anger him, for the fury of the captain was insatiable. It did not matter to Erath what the captain’s name was; he never bothered to learn it, and always referred to him as “Cap’n.”
As the weeks dragged by, Erath quickly picked up the sailor’s ways of speaking, acting, and even their sauntering gait. No one could have told he was a newcomer aboard the Freedom, for even his clothes were as tattered as his mate’s. He fitted in with them all right, but he wanted desperately to get off. However, it looked impossible for him to escape, or even resign without having the Navy call it desertion. If he did desert though, he could live a free life – so long as he did not come under the Court Marshall’s radar. And if that happened, he could be hanged. Without any kind of fair trial.
Risky as it seemed, the idea appealed to Erath. Then one day, his chance came.