Absolutely pissing myself because in the last chapter I wrote "flatulating" instead of "flagellating" lmao

Convict ship, Atlantic Ocean

Jean awoke with a start. For a split second he had felt as though he was falling, but it was merely an illusion of the deep, choppy waves that buoyed him.

It was his fifteenth day on the ship. He cast his gaze into the impenetrable darkness, knowing not whether it was night or day. When his eyes adjusted, he began to decipher the skeletal white lattices of surrounding hammocks, swinging in unison as the ship rocked and swayed. Soft snoring told him that he had not slept through breakfast. He shuffled into a seated position, cringing as feeling returned to his arms. Sleeping on his front had been a necessity since the brutal lashings; those final days in the holding cell had been a sickly blur. He remembered a young woman holding his head against her knees as he groaned in pain, and another wetting his hot brow. Their voices were gentle, their language alien, and they clucked around him like mother hens, offering what little they had: alcohol to clean the wound, honey to keep out maggots, even shreds of their own petticoats to serve as makeshift bandages. Jean didn't know why they wanted to help him, and was never lucid enough to ask. Perhaps he had been so incapacitated that they couldn't help but pity him, or perhaps they thought that, when he was healed, he could offer them protection. Their reasoning had been much simpler; when he had been thrown into their cell, the back of his shirt shredded and saturated with blood, his mouth had only managed to form one word: "Cosette." He was half-dead, and expressed no rage, no fear, only longing. It was said with such dejection, such need, that it transcended language and touched the hearts of all who rallied to help. 'I've got a boy,' one had said, though he hadn't been conscious to hear her. She was using her rationed drinking water to daub up most of the blood. 'He'd be twelve now. I used to cry for him too.'

By the time he was on the ship, his sanity was beginning to return to him and the wounds were beginning to close. He sat up straight in his hammock and carefully inched his legs over the edge. Irons were yoked around his ankles, as heavy as he remembered them.

It had been shocking how easily he had fallen back into the rhythms of enslaved life. The memory of it lived so keenly in his body that sometimes it felt as though he had never left, that some phantom chains had been looped around his ankles for seventeen years. In some ways it was easier to allow himself to sink back into the contours of his old life, but he couldn't let that happen. He couldn't resign himself to a life of bondage. He was a father now, and by any means necessary he had to get back to his daughter. He wondered how many miles of ocean they had travelled, how many days it had been since he had last seen Cosette. What was she doing right now? Perhaps she had been shown the same grace that he had been shown when he had escaped for the first time. He dreaded to think of the alternative.

A sharp clang yanked him from his thoughts. 'All hands!' a loud voice boomed. An onlooker had entered the deck, framed by a blitzing rectangle of sunlight. All around, men stirred and groaned, chains clanging as they got to their feet. Jean joined them, wincing as he straightened his tender back. One by one, they shambled after the onlooker, squinting in the brilliant sunshine. They stumbled up the stairs, clumsy in their chains.

'How's the back?' one of the men whispered to Jean. Jean blinked dumbly. He had managed to pick up the odd English word here and there, but was far from fluent. Seeing his confusion, the man gestured to his own back. Understanding, Jean nodded.

'Bonne. Merci,' he said.

The men did little by way of small talk, but illness was always noted. Just last week Jean had been ordered to help carry the body of one of his fellow prisoners onto the deck to be flung overboard. They moved in a strange procession, the body hoisted equally between them, his limbs slack and his slops still heavy with watery faeces and blood. Jean remembered the first night, the stench that hit him like a gust of hot air. The man had sobbed bitterly, propped up on shaking limbs as his glaucous spew dribbled through the cracks in the rotten floorboards of the hulk. His face was blanched, his lips red with blood like a painted whore. Jean was surprised to see that he was still living the next morning.

Jean thought of how his anchored body had slowly slid beneath the waves, darkening and darkening until his face was no longer decipherable. Jean had discreetly crossed himself as the other men walked away, clapping their hands of dirt and muttering about the smell. The image stayed with him as a ladle of skilly was slopped into his bowl. This was the routine. Food, work, sleep. He wolfed down the skilly like it was his final meal, his figure as tense as a starving cur who had found a bone in the street. He felt so detached from himself, from his own humanity, that if someone had tried to interrupt his eating, he was convinced that he would have growled to keep them at bay. Then came work. Hauling and scrubbing. His muscles ached and his wounds stung, his back sheeted with sweat, the sky above him a hard, blank blue. By the time he had shambled below deck into the marble-cool of the hulk, his skin was bright pink and peeling. He would collapse onto the hammock, wincing as its cross-stitched pattern cut into his sunburnt skin, and fall asleep.

In some ways, he was thankful for the back breaking labour; it was in the still, silent moments, the moments where all he could hear was the lapping of the waves against the side of the ship, that tortured him the most. His mind would go into freefall, with every possible misfortune that could have befallen Cosette parading before him in grim succession. Sometimes he would ponder what could have been had they never left Paris. He loathed himself for displacing them. Even if he had been arrested, Cosette would not have been as defenceless if they had stayed put. Disgraced, perhaps, but she had connections in Paris, people who could protect her. At the very least she spoke the language.

Sometimes he was seized by an unstoppable impulse to do something. He had frenzied thoughts of jumping into the open ocean and swimming to London. Sometimes he was convinced that he could do it if only wanted it badly enough; swimming the length of the Atlantic was easier to reconcile than the thought of never seeing her again.

The weeks melted together. Sometimes Jean longed to be lashed again, just to hyphenate the totalizing pain of everything else. More people died in their faeces. Some forced themselves overboard, their heavy ankle chains causing them to sink with merciful haste. Then, one morning, as unremarkable as any other, the rocking stopped.

Rowboats had been prepared for dispatch and the convicts were herded onto the deck. The ice-cold certainty of Jean's doom had not yet possessed him until he took his first steps on solid ground. He began to tremble in spite of the furious heat, staggering across the saffron sand. At last, he was here. Thousands of miles away from Cosette. Now there were no chances of mutiny, of turning back; he was anchored to his fate.

Waves of heat rippled up from the sand, warping the figures who marched ahead of him. His bare feet rasped the scorching ground, but he barely felt it.

'This way!' a guard ordered, directing the chain gang towards a settlement of squat, ugly apricot-coloured buildings. It was only when the ankle chains were unlocked that Jean realized that the iron had been baking in the sun: the manacles were removed and took the first few layers of his skin with them.

'What do you reckon?' one of the guards said, looking into Jean's dazed, sun-strained face. His supervisor squinted at him, taking in his height, his width, the thick tangle of old scars encircling his wrists. 'C block?'

The supervisor sniggered. 'At his dizzy age? He'll be no trouble. Send him to the E block. Might teach those sods some sense.'

With that, the guard yanked Jean's arm, steering him through the maze of cells. The heat inside was no less oppressive, compounded by the humid animal stench of unwashed prisoners. Beads of sweat prickled on Jean's lip. He felt as though he was slowly being cooked.

'Here we are,' the guard said, stopping before a crammed cell. One of the men was leaning against the bars, the meagre flesh on his back bulging through. The guard swiped his baton against it, causing him to shriek and leap away as though the bars were red-hot. Hoots of laughter erupted from the bunks as the prisoner scrambled to defend himself.

'Scared the bejesus out of me, didn't he! Checks aren't due for another half hour!'

'Big girls' blouse!' one of the men cackled, slapping his thigh. The guard unlocked the door, pushing Jean inside. Some craned their necks to see the new addition but most were still absorbed in their laughter. The guard slid the door shut and left without another word. Some moments later, Jean heard his baton tapping at the bars of a neighbouring cell.

'Well, I'll be damned,' someone said gently. Jean turned to see that it was the man who had been leaning against the bars. He was a young, friendly-looking man with dark skin and crooked teeth. 'Robin,' he said, sticking his hand out for Jean to shake. Jean's eyes flitted blankly from Robin's hand to his face.

'Is he half rats already?' one of the men exclaimed.

Robin scowled at him. 'Maybe he just knows when to keep his trap shut. What's your name old toast?'

'Name…' Jean parroted dumbly.

'Desert fever,' another said matter-of-factly. He was sat on a lower bunk, scowling with focus at something in his hands. He was pale man with sharp, sunken cheekbones, black eyes and wild black hair. Robin rolled his eyes.

'That gigglemug over there is Benjamin. He's too busy hatching his brilliant escape plan to give you the time of day.'

Benjamin shot him a fierce look and, now that he could make out more of his face, Jean noticed a clean streak of white cutting through his jet-black hair. 'Keep your bleeding voice down!' he hissed. 'Want us to get flogged before we even start?'

There was a collective groan from the men in the cell. 'Pete's sake, Ben,' one of the men piped up. 'I don't know why you bother with all this escape nonsense. Seems like a good way to cop a mouse if you ask me.'

'Yeah,' another voice growled. 'I'm not swimming across the fucking Atlantic just to be treated like scum but on cold, wet English soil instead. At least in here I'm fed and watered.' He smirked, looking about him. 'Not all of us have a lovely bit of jam waiting for us when we get home, eh Ben?'

The cell erupted once more into laughter, but Benjamin's face was far from amused. Sensing the tension, Robin cut in. 'That's Thomas,' he said, smiling nervously. 'Eats vinegar with a fork. Don't mind what he says.'

Thomas sat tall on his cot, barefooted and shirtless, bearing his whip-marks like proud battle scars. His hair hung in long lank rats' tails, dancing in his eyes. A young beard shadowed his cheekbones and a scar twisted his lip into a perpetual whore-master smirk. He tossed his head at Jean, eyeing him with calculation. Something cold twisted in Jean's stomach. He knew at once to be wary of Thomas.

'So,' Robin said, turning to face Jean. 'Let's try this again: Robin,' he said, pointing to his own chest. 'Benjamin, Thomas,' he pointed to the men in turn, 'and you are…'

'Jean,' he blurted, finally understanding. 'Jean Valjean.'

The cell broke out in confused murmurs. 'A froggy?' Thomas barked, frowning at Jean. 'How did he end up in here? Eh? Oi, froggy, Comment es-tu arrivé là?'

Dumbfounded, Jean gawped at Thomas. He would have been less surprised if a spider had crawled out of his open mouth. Robin chuckled at his reaction, clapping his back. 'I know we don't seem like the sort to be all, parler français,' he said, exaggerating the accent and drawing chuckles from his crowd, 'but we've got one hell of a teacher.' Robin's gaze then fell on a man in the top bunk, a small man with mousy hair and a pair of cracked spectacles so thick that his eyes seemed bug-like. 'This is Levi,' he said. 'Dizziest bloke you'll ever meet. Studied at Oxford. Started teaching us something to keep us all sane, didn't you Levi?'

Levi grinned bashfully, his heavy spectacles slipping down the bridge of his sweaty nose. The man sat beside him gave his arm a brotherly cuff. 'Bonjour,' he said, proffering his hand for Jean to take. Jean took it firmly, placing his other hand on top and shaking it.

'Bonjour,' he said, looking up earnestly into Levi's face. 'Merci.'

'We ought to find somewhere for you to sleep, old toast,' Robin said scouting the bunks for a space.

'I'll sleep next to Benjamin!' Jean exclaimed, a little more intensely than he had intended. Robin's eyebrows shot up and a few of the men began whistling. Thomas smacked his lips tauntingly at Benjamin.

'Looks like you've got yourself a new chuckaboo, Ben,' he said. 'Don't worry, when it's time for lights out I'm sure you can cuddle up and pretend that it's your lovely Lucy.'

Benjamin leapt to his feet and lunged towards Thomas, causing the men either side of him to scatter to the far corners of the bunk. It was then that Jean saw something glint in Ben's fist—the thing that he had been carefully tending to moments ago—and before he realised what he was doing, he had seized Benjamin's wrist. The concealed knife fell to the floor with a clang, and before it had time reverberate, was snatched up by Robin who shoved it into the waistband of his breeches. Jean was still holding Ben's arm high above his head, his knuckles whitening around the man's wrist. Benjamin panted, studying the older man's face, surprised but not afraid of the raw strength he had demonstrated just seconds earlier. The rage that had flooded his body slowly began to cool. He didn't take his eyes off of Jean's face, not even when the old man released his wrist from his iron grip.

'Jesus, Ben,' Robin breathed. 'Tryna get us all bloody killed?'

But Benjamin wasn't listening. Instead, he remained staring into Jean's face, an inscrutable look in his black eyes.

'Escape,' Jean said at last, keeping his voice low. 'You said something about escape?'