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and the Pelicans ditty bags – for the same purpose.
    Away from the ship and the hierarchy that imposed, the four men could act as equals in the manner they had on first acquaintance: for they had originally met each other as civilians in the Pelican Tavern, set on the banks of the Thames. That was an event much recalled, as was the arrival of the man who, it turned out, was running from a King’s Bench warrant, most of these new acquaintances being in fear of a mere tipstaff.
    In recollection, the name of Pearce’s father Adam came up since he, according to Charlie Taverner, had been the cause of all of his son’s problems. ‘Don’t you smoke it, John. If he had not been so keen on his levelling then you would not have had those King’s Bench bastards on your tail and you would never have sought shelter.’
    ‘You place a mighty burden on his old shoulders, Charlie. Happen if the likes of you had risen up in the same way as did the French, we would not have had anything to fear.’
    ‘Excepting the loss of your head.’
    This was imparted by Rufus Dommet in a manner that had become more common of late; the onetime tyro of thegroup, nervous and often silent, had grown up now and in doing so had acquired a serious mien as well as a handy pair of fists. Where Charlie, first met, had been a fly sort, not surprising given his background, Rufus had been a shy youth and on the run from the law for a broken bond of apprenticeship.
    Handsome Charlie, with his winning ways, good looks and native cunning had been in the Thameside warren known as the Liberties of the Savoy for his way of life. He was a villain the tipstaffs would have dearly loved to collar for the way he had dunned the innocent out of their money.
    This was done through the sale of glister not gold, forged lottery tickets and his dab pickpocketing hand. Trouble was, said bailiffs were barred from the Liberties by ancient statute and could not touch him within its bounds, and all were free to wander where they willed on Sundays.
    In speaking of decapitation Rufus had alluded to something that had troubled John Pearce long before his own father had suffered the fate of so many. The mere mention brought back a horrible memory of the day in Revolutionary Paris that ardent tongue had finally been stilled. He had stood as witness to that terrible act in a jam-packed Place de la Revolution as the guillotine did its work.
    Adam Pearce, the radical speaker and pamphleteer known as the Edinburgh Ranter, chased from his own country because his views were seen as seditious, had fallen foul of men who, spouting words of freedom, hated that he questioned their motives and actions which had descended into barbarism. In place of Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité there had come about a vengeful bloodbath.
    No amount of threats would silence him until finallythe vocal sermonising about their crimes led to Adam being incarcerated and proscribed as an enemy of the Revolution, which could have only one outcome in what had subsequently been dubbed the Terror. Sure that he was seriously ill, certain the hand of death was already upon him, Adam went to his fate in place of another, an aristocrat and family man who shared a cell with him in the fetid corridors of the Paris prison known as the Conciergerie.
    Had he been right? Even before that dreadful day, son John had harboured doubts about his father’s solutions to the ills of monarchy and government by the powerful driving down on the weak: while he agreed with the sentiment it was not so easy to see the reality. In a peripatetic life, touring the country with the man known for his forceful oratory, he had seen much of human nature which was compounded when the pair had experienced, thanks to a nervous British government, the hell of the Fleet Prison for a short spell.
    The dregs of humanity resided there, and just as what had happened in France demonstrated the results of rapidly overturning the rule of law, that experience had