Description
Sixteen, from Sylhet, on his first deep-water voyage. Frightened of the mastheads and sent up them regardless.
Recognisable at a glance: too small for his slop-clothes, and always looking at whoever is speaking.
His image (deploy once): in the first week he freezes halfway up the shrouds and has to be talked down in front of everyone. Every day after that he goes up without being told.
Background
Shipped by Serang Ismail out of a Sylhet family who know the serang’s name. That is the whole of the arrangement, and it is also why leaving him somewhere would be a debt Ismail carries home.
Motivations
Not to be sent back. Not to be the reason anyone has to stop what they are doing.
As Played — Session 7
He attached himself to Freddy almost at once and followed him about the ship, and Freddy — generous and paying no attention whatsoever to the boy’s age — kept him well supplied with alcohol for the length of the passage.
At Socotra he went ashore with the casks and was the first taken. Katherine had seen him resting in the shade at the cave mouth; passing again, she found a puddle of water, the impression of a barrel in the mud, and nothing else — no barrel, no boy, no footprints. He was found hours later hung from the ceiling of the cocoon chamber, paralysed and conscious, alongside Freddy. Emma climbed a human pyramid of his own crewmates to cut him free and lowered him into Thomas’s arms.
He is alive. He spent an unknown number of hours conscious and wrapped in the dark, and nothing about what that did to him has been established.
Connections
Serves under Serang Ismail in the Shah Alam. Recovered from the Socotra Limestone Caves by the party and the crew together — see Socotra Cave Rescue.
Appearances
Relationships
- Located at Shah Alam — Aboard for the Suez → Calcutta passage
- Serves Shah Alam — First deep-water voyage
- Serves Serang Ismail
- Participated in Socotra Cave Rescue — Taken from the cave mouth, cocooned alive, and cut down by Emma Wentworth
- Knows Freddy Cavendish — Followed Freddy about the ship; Freddy kept him supplied with drink; the two were cocooned in the same chamber
- Fears Socotran Cave Spiders — Paralysed, wrapped, and hung conscious from a cave ceiling by them