In the paucity of his belongings Nolan had become very much like the men who were his keepers. In all his years at sea he had never met a sailor who seemed very much attached to material things. Some prized waterproof trousers or grogram jackets, but these were freely lent to other shipmates, often taken steaming off one back coming off watch and given to another going out into the weather. They did all love money, especially prize money, but even that appeared only to represent the pleasures it could be traded for on land—rum, food, and women. Nolan had never heard of one sailor who did well with even a fortune on shore. The concept of wealth or shrewd advantage in business seemed to repel them. Once at sea, a purse jingling with gold quickly lost the magnetism it exerted on land, and Nolan had several times watched drunken sailors skipping dollars across the water, playing ducks and drakes, rather than come back to the ship with unspent money.
At sea it was impossible for Nolan to feel that he was poor. All of the sailors aboard owned about as much as he did—that is to say the clothing on their backs, one jacket that was more or less better than the other, and enough small sundries to fill a ditty bag. The officers—save, perhaps, the most successful and well married—seldom owned more than the contents of a pair of cruise boxes. Nolan could name more than a hundred officers who slept in hanging cots under scratchy wool blankets and spent what money they earned on pistols, swords, or navigational instruments and never a set of curtains. Every man who has ever taken to the sea is eventually bent to this spartan ethos. Enough is plenty; any more is surfeit. Gradually, Nolan had come to embrace the sailors’ philosophy, living as much as he could in the present.
Nolan heard the ship creak, and someone said “what ho” to the Marine out in the passageway. Six bells, then seven; Nolan dozed, and he heard the sentry change outside his door. Nolan’s Breguet watch had been taken from him while he was aboard USS Amity (Lieutenant Papeneau said it could be used to aid navigation in case of an escape), but life afloat was not reckoned by a clock. It was nearly eight bells in the second dogwatch, what a landsman (or an Army officer) would say was 8 p.m. Nolan heard laughter again, the sound of sailors turned off watch, and the hoots and shouts of some going ashore. Occasionally a boat thumped gently against the hull as liberty men came and went. Eventually the decks became silent, and even the midshipmen quieted down. It slowly occurred to Nolan that the relief had been made, the standing orders were in effect, and any new orders had by now been carried out. He might not be rousted out this watch at all, and it was increasingly likely that he would be left in this cabin overnight. The thought astounded him—these were the best quarters he’d had in nearly twenty years at sea.
With a stamp, the sentry came to attention outside the door. Nolan heard the Marine say crisply, “Good evening, sir.”
There was a knock, and Nolan rose from the berth. As the door opened, the Marine snapped back to attention, a wonderfully blank-faced and mechanical creature. A shadow moved just on the other side of a lantern, and Nolan made out the silhouette of an officer.
“I came to see that you were settled,” Curran said.
There was slightly more light in the passageway than in the cabin, and Nolan answered to a shadow, not quite able to see the face. “I am, most handsomely,” Nolan said.
Curran glanced into the cabin and saw that Nolan was still clutching his coat and seabag.
“You have not stowed your things?”
As Curran stepped into the light, Nolan made out the face of the man who had taken custody of him on the pier. To Nolan, the man seemed even younger than he had in daylight, surely not more than twenty-five, though he had nothing of a casual air about him.
“Is this where I am to stay?”
“It is,” Curran replied. “Do you have a complaint?”
“No, sir, I do not.” Nolan tossed his seabag onto the berth. “If it was you who put in a word for me, I thank you.”
“I said nothing on your behalf.”
“Well, thankee, at any rate. On Hornet I was kept in a scuttle.” Nolan upended his bag and dumped his things on the berth. Curran saw that all the man owned did not cover half of the mattress. A razor, a scrap of towel, pieces of wool and cotton cloth, and a set of tissue patterns traced on paper that made Curran think that Nolan made his own clothing.
“Have you eaten?” Curran asked.
“I have been fed.”
On the plank table Curran saw a gray-yellow rectangle of ship’s biscuit—the corner of it moved as a weevil worked free. A dented can was next to it, leaking a not quite transparent liquid onto the middle of the desk.
“What is this?” Curran said to the Marine.
“It is salt cracker and bilge water, sir.”
Curran dropped the biscuit into the pot and handed it to the sentry. “See that the prisoner is fed a full portion from the mess deck. He is to have the regular ration, as well as ship’s water.”
The Marine was away at once. Nolan sat back on his berth, wary, considering. He said after a pause, “Well, I thank you then, Mister—”
“Curran. Now sir, about the terms of your confinement.”
“Ah. I know that I pose somewhat of an imposition. I will try to give as little trouble as possible.”
“I would be obliged for that. In return you are to have the run of the ship during the hours of daylight. I will curtail this privilege if you attempt to escape or violate the conditions of your sentence.”
Nolan waited for the inevitable “additional modifications,” for although every ship that had received him carried out the provisions of his sentence to the letter, some captains piled on amendments to the orders, sometimes for their own convenience, sometimes for their own amusement. Nolan waited for a list of off-limits places—the maintop, the boats, the powder magazines—and a roster of persons to whom he could not speak—midshipmen, the quartermasters, sometimes even the yeomen and clerks.
Curran added no extra conditions, and the pause lengthened. Nolan finally mumbled, “I am free to move about the ship?”
“During daylight, sir. After supper and retreat you may move about below-decks. You are to retire to your quarters at lights out.”
In his years in custody Nolan had rarely been granted this much autonomy. He drew a breath and then held it, like a man considering an unexpected move on a chessboard. He looked at the floor of the cabin, thinking. As Curran regarded Nolan, he began to form the impression that during his confinement the prisoner had lost something of the deportment of an officer. Nolan was given to speaking very quietly, often not looking an interlocutor in the eye. Curran wondered if perhaps the prisoner had lost some of his mind. For his own part, Nolan was still uneasy that this might all be some elaborate practical joke. He did not wish to give offense, especially at the start of a new commission, but he did not wish to be made a fool.
“I am to extend an invitation to dine with the officers of the wardroom, tomorrow at supper.”
“An invitation to me?” Nolan asked.
“Do not mock me, sir,” Curran said coolly.
“I meant no offense, Mister Curran. The circumstances of my confinement, you understand, have varied from ship to ship. I am sometimes practiced