Command a King's Ship (5 page)

Bolitho stared astern at the black, swirling water, hearing the urgent tide banging and squeaking around the rudder.

“Aye. It's a long step from land to sea. Far more so than most people realise!” He returned his glass to the rack. “I think I shall turn in now. It will be a long day tomorrow.”

Herrick stood up and nodded. “I'll bid you goodnight, sir.”

He knew full well that Bolitho would stay awake for hours yet. Pacing and planning, searching for last-minute faults, possible mistakes in the arrangement of watch-bills and delegation of du- ties. Bolitho would know he was aware of this fact, too.

The door closed and Bolitho walked right aft to lean his hands on the centre sill. He could feel the woodwork vibrating under his palms, the hull trembling all around him in time to the squeak of stays, the clatter and slap of halliards and blocks.

Who would watch them go? Would anyone care? One more ship slipping down channel like hundreds before her.

There was a nervous tap at the door, and Noddall, the cabin servant, pattered into the lantern light. A small man, with the pointed face of an anxious rodent. He even held his hands in front of him like two nervous paws.

“Yer supper, sir. You've not touched it.” He started to gather up the plates. “Won't do, sir. It won't
do.
”

Bolitho smiled as Noddall scampered away to his pantry. He was so absorbed in his own little world it seemed as if he had not even noticed there was a change of command.

He threw his new cloak across his shoulders and left the cabin. On the pitch-dark quarterdeck he groped his way aft to the taffrail and stared towards the land. Countless lights and hidden houses. He turned and looked along his ship, the wind blowing his hair across his face, the chill making him hold his breath. The riding light reflected on the taut shrouds like pale gold, and right forward he saw a smaller lantern, where the lonely anchor watch kept a wary eye on the cable.

It
felt
different, he decided. No sentries on each gangway to watch for a sneak attack or a mass attempt at desertion. No nets to delay a sudden rush of enemy boarders. He touched a quarterdeck six-pounder with one hand. It felt like wet ice. But for how long, he wondered?

The master's mate of the watch prowled past, and then sheered away as he saw his captain by the rail.

“All's well, zur!” he called.

“Thank you.”

Bolitho did not know the man's name. Not yet. In the next hundred days he would know more than their names, he thought. As they would about him.

With a sigh he returned to his cabin, his hair plastered to his head, his cheeks tingling from the cold. There was no sign of Noddall, but the cot was ready for him, and there was something hot in a mug nearby.

A minute after his head was on the pillow he was fast asleep.

The next day dawned as grey as the one before, but overnight the rain had stopped, and the wind held firm from the southeast.

All forenoon the work went on without relaxation, the petty officers checking and re-checking their lists of names, putting them to faces, making sure seasoned hands were spaced among the untried and untrained.

Bolitho dictated a final report to his clerk, a dried-up man named Pope, and then signed it in readiness for the last boat. He found time to speak with his officers, and seek out Mr. Tapril, the gunner, in his magazine to discuss moving some of the spare gun parts and tackle further aft and help adjust the vessel's trim until she had consumed some of her own stores to compensate for it.

He was changing into his seagoing coat, with its faded lace and dull buttons, when Herrick entered the cabin and reported he had brought fifteen new men from the hulks.

“What was it like?”

Herrick sighed. “It was a sort of hell, sir. I could have got treble the number, a whole company of 'em if I'd been able to bring their women and wives, too.”

Bolitho paused as he tied his neckcloth. “
Women?
In the hulks?”

“Aye, sir.” Herrick shuddered. “I hope I never see the like again.”

“Very well. Sign them on, but don't give them anything to do just yet. I doubt they've the strength to lift a marlin spike after being penned up like that.”

A midshipman appeared in the open door.

“Mr. Davy's respect, sir.” His eyes darted around the cabin, missing nothing. “And the anchor's hove short.”

“Thank you.” Bolitho smiled. “Next time stay awhile, Mr. Penn, and have a better look.”

The boy vanished, and Bolitho looked steadily at Herrick.

“Well, Thomas?”

Herrick nodded firmly. “Aye, sir. I'm ready. It's been a long wait.”

They climbed up to the quarterdeck together, and while Herrick moved to the forward rail with his speaking trumpet, Bolitho stood aft, a little apart from the others who were gathered restlessly at their stations.

Clink, clink, clink, the capstan was turning more slowly now, the men's backs bent almost double as the hull pulled heavily on the anchor.

Bolitho looked at the master's untidy shape beside the double wheel. He had four helmsmen. He was taking no chances, it seemed. With the helm, or his new captain's skill.

“Get the ship under way, if you please.” He saw Herrick's trumpet moving. “Once clear of this local shipping we will lay her on the larboard tack and steer sou'-west by west.”

Old Mudge nodded heavily, one eye hidden beyond the headland of a nose.

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Herrick yelled, “Stand by on the capstan!” He shaded his eyes to peer up at the masthead pendant. “Loose heads'ls!”

The answering flip and clatter of released canvas made several new men peer round, confused and startled. A petty officer thrust a line into a man's hand and bellowed, “'Old it, you bugger! Don't stand there like a bloody woman!”

Bolitho saw a bosun's mate right forward astride the bowsprit, one arm circling above his head as the cable grew stiffer and more vertical beneath the gilded water-nymph.

“Hands aloft! Loose tops'ls!”

Bolitho relaxed slightly as the nimble-footed topmen swarmed up the ratlines on either beam. No sense in rushing it this first time. The watching eyes ashore could think what they liked. He'd get no thanks for letting her drive ashore.

“Man the braces!”

Herrick was hanging over the rail, his trumpet moving from side to side like a coachman's blunderbuss.

“Lively there! Mr. Shellabeer, get those damned idlers aft on the double, I say!”

Shellabeer was the boatswain, a swarthy, taciturn man who looked more like a Spaniard than a Devonian.

Bolitho leaned back, his hands on his hips, watching the swift figures dashing out on the vibrating yards like monkeys. It made him feel sick to watch their indifference to such heights.

First one, then the next great topsail billowed and banged loosely in confusion, while the seamen on the yards clung on, calling to each other, or jeering at their opposite numbers on the other masts.

“Anchor's aweigh, sir!”

Like a thing released from chains the frigate swung dizzily across the steep troughs, men falling and slithering at the braces as they fought to haul the great yards round, to cup the wind and master it.

“Lee braces there! Heave away!” Herrick was hoarse.

Bolitho gritted his teeth and forced himself to remain quite still as she plunged further astride the wind. Here and there a bosun's mate struck out with his rope starter or pushed a man bodily to brace or halliard.

Then with a booming roar like thunder the sails filled and hardened to the wind's steady thrust, the deck canting over and holding steady as the helmsmen threw themselves on their spokes.

He made himself take a glass from Midshipman Keen and trained it across the starboard quarter, keeping his face impassive, even though he was almost shaking with excitement and relief.

The sail drill was very bad, the placing of trained men too sketchy for comfort, but they were away! Free of the land.

He saw a few people on the Point watching them heel over on the larboard tack, the top of a shining carriage just below the wall. Perhaps it was Armitage's mother, weeping as she watched her offspring being taken from her.

The master shouted gruffly, “Sou'-west by west, sir! Full an' bye!”

When Bolitho turned to answer him he saw that the master was nodding with something like approval.

“Thank you, Mr. Mudge. We will get the courses on her di- rectly.”

He walked forward to join Herrick at the rail, his body angled steeply to the deck. Some of the confusion was being cleared, with men picking their way amidst loose coils of rope like survivors from a battle.

Herrick looked at him sadly. “It was terrible, sir.”

“I agree, Mr. Herrick.” He could not restrain a smile. “But it will improve, eh?”

By late afternoon
Undine
had beaten clear of the Isle of Wight and was standing well out in the Channel.

By evening only her reefed topsails were visible, and soon even they had disappeared.

3
A
M
I
XED GATHERING

O
N
THE
morning of the fourteenth day after weighing anchor at Spithead Bolitho was in his cabin sipping a mug of coffee and pondering for the countless time on what he had achieved.

The previous evening they had sighted the dull hump of Teneriffe sprawled like a cloud across the horizon, and he had decided to heave-to and avoid the hazards of a night approach.
Fourteen days.
It felt an eternity. They had been plagued by foul weather for much of that time. Flicking over the pages of his personal log he could see the countless, frustrating entries. Head- winds, occasional but fierce gales, and the constant need to shorten sail, to reef down and ride it out as best they could. The dreaded Bay of Biscay had been kind to them, that at least was a mercy. Otherwise, with almost half the ship's company too seasick to ven- ture aloft, or too terrified to scramble out along the dizzily pitching yards without physical violence being used on them, it was likely
Undine
might have reached no further.

Bolitho appreciated what it must be like for many of his men. Shrieking winds, overcrowded conditions in a creaking, rolling hull where their food, if they could face it, often ended up in a mess of bilge water and vomit. It produced a kind of numbness, like that given to a man left abandoned in the sea. For a while he strikes out bravely, swimming he knows not where, until he is too exhausted, too dazed to care. He is without authority or any sort of guidance. It is his turning point.

Bolitho recognised all the signs well enough, and knew it was the same sort of challenge for him. Give in to his own under- standing and sympathy, listen too much to excuses from his hard-worked lieutenants and warrant officers, and he would never regain control, or be able to rally his company when the real pressure came.

He knew that many cursed him behind his back, prayed for him to fall dead or vanish overboard in the night. He saw their glances, sensed their resentment as he pushed them through each day, each hour of every one of those days. Sail drill, and more drill against Herrick's watch, while he himself made sure all engaged knew he was following their efforts. He made the men on
Undine
's three masts race each other in their struggle to shorten or make more sail, until finally he drove them even harder to work not in competition but as a gasping, silently cursing team.

Now, as he sat with the mug in his hands he found some grudging satisfaction in what they had done. What they had achieved together, willingly or otherwise. When
Undine
dropped her anchor in the roads of Santa Cruz today, the watching Span- iards would see a semblance of order and discipline, of efficiency which they had come to know and fear in times of war.

But if he had driven his company to the limit he had not spared himself either. And he was feeling it, despite the inviting rays of early sunshine which made reflections dance across the low deckhead. Barely a watch had passed without his going on deck to lend his presence. Lieutenant Davy had little experience of han- dling a ship in foul weather, but would learn, given time. Soames was too prone to lose patience when faced with a disaster on deck. He would knock some luckless seaman aside and leap into his place yelling, “You're useless! I'd rather do it myself!” Only Herrick rode out the storm of Bolitho's persistent demands, and Bolitho felt sorry that his friend had been made to carry the brunt of the work. It was too easy to punish men, when in fact it was an officer's fault for losing his own head, or not being able to find the right words in the teeth of a raging gale. Herrick stood firmly between wardroom and lower deck, and twixt captain and company.

There had even been two floggings, something which he had hoped to avoid. Each case had been within the private world of the lower deck. The first a simple one of stealing from another sailor's small hoard of money. The second, far more serious, had been a savage knife-fight which had ended in a man having his face opened from ear to jaw. It was still not certain if he would live.

A real grudge fight, a momentary spark of anger caused by fatigue and constant work, he did not really know. In a well- trained ship of war it was likely he would never have heard about either case. The justice of the lower deck was far more drastic and instant when their own world was threatened by a thief or one too fond of his knife.

Bolitho despised captains who used authority without con- sideration for the misery it might entail, who meted out savage punishment without getting to the root of the trouble and thereby avoiding it. Herrick knew how he felt. When Bolitho had first met him he had been the junior lieutenant in his ship. A ship where the previous captain had been so severe, so unthink- ingly brutal with his punishments that the seeds of mutiny had been well and truly laid.

Herrick knew better than most about such things, and yet he had intervened personally to persuade Bolitho to avoid the flog- gings. It was their first real disagreement, and Bolitho had hated to see the sudden hurt in Herrick's eyes.

Bolitho had said, “This is a new company. It takes time to weld people together so that each can rely on his companion under all circumstances. Many are entirely ignorant of the Navy's ways and its demands. They hate to see ‘others' getting away with crimes they themselves avoid. At this stage we cannot allow them to split into separate groups. Old hands and the new recruits, professional criminals and the weak ones who have no protection but to ally themselves with some other faction.”

Herrick had persisted, “But in
peacetime,
sir, maybe it takes all the longer.”

“We can't afford the luxury of finding out.” He had hardened voice. “You know how I feel. It is not easy.”

The thief had taken his punishment without a whimper, a dozen lashes at the gratings while
Undine
had cruised along be- neath a clearing sky, some gulls throwing their shadows round and round across the tense drama below.

As he had read from the Articles of War, Bolitho had looked along his command at the watching men in shrouds and rigging, the sharp red lines of Bellairs's marines, Herrick and all the rest. The second culprit had been a brute of a man called Sullivan. He had volunteered to a recruiting party outside Portsmouth, and had all the looks of a hardened criminal. But he had served in a King's ship before and should have been an asset.

Three dozen lashes. Little enough in the Navy's view for half killing a fellow seaman. Had he laid a hand on an officer he would have faced death rather than a flogging.

The actual punishment was terrible. Sullivan had broken down completely at the first blow across his naked back, as the boatswain's mates took turns to lay the lash over shoulders and spine he had wriggled and screamed like a madman, his mouth frothing with foam, his eyes like marbles in his distorted face.

Mr. Midshipman Armitage had almost fainted, and some of those who had just recovered from their own sickness had vomited in unison, despite the harsh shouts from their petty officers.

Then it had ended, the watching men giving a kind of sigh as they were dismissed below.

Sullivan had been cut down and carried to Whitmarsh's sickbay, where no doubt he had been restored by a plentiful ration of rum.

Each day following the punishment, as he had paced the quarter- deck or supervised a change of tack, Bolitho had the eyes watching him. Seeing him perhaps as enemy rather than commander. He had told himself often enough that when you accepted the honour of command you carried all of it. Not just the authority and the pride of controlling a living, vital ship, but the knocks and kicks as well.

There was a tap on the door and Herrick stepped into the cabin.

“About another hour, sir. With your permission I will give the order to clew up all canvas except tops'ls and jib. It will make our entrance more easy to manage.”

“Have some coffee, Thomas.” He relaxed as Herrick seated him- self across the table. “I am burning to know what we are about.”

Herrick took a mug and tested the coffee with his tongue.

“Me, too.” He smiled over the rim. “Once or twice back there I thought we might never reach land!”

“Yes. I can feel for many of our people. Some will never have seen the sea, let alone driven so far from England. Now, they know that Africa lies somewhere over the larboard bulwark. That we are going to the other side of the earth. Some are even beginning to feel like seamen, when just weeks back they had thumbs where their fingers should be.”

Herrick's smile widened. “Due to you, sir. I am sometimes very thankful that I hold no command. Or chance of one either.”

Bolitho watched him thoughtfully. The rift was healed.

“I am afraid the choice may not be yours, Thomas.” He stood up. “In fact, I shall see that you get command whenever the oppor- tunity offers itself, if only to drive some of your wild idealism into the bilges!”

They grinned at each other like conspirators.

“Now be off with you while I change into a better coat.” He grimaced. “To show our Spanish friends some respect, eh?”

A little over an hour later, gliding above her own reflection,
Undine
moved slowly towards the anchorage in the roads. In the bright sunlight the island of Teneriffe seemed to abound with colour, and Bolitho heard several of the watching sea- men gasping with awe. The hills were no longer hidden in shadow, but danced on the glare with every shade and hue. And everything was brighter and larger, at least it appeared so to the new hands. Shimmering white buildings, brilliant blue sea, with beaches and surf to make a man catch his breath and stare.

Allday stood aft by the cabin hatch and remarked, “I'll bet some Don'd like to rake us as we come by!”

Bolitho ran his eye quickly along his ship, trying to see her as those ashore would. She looked very smart, and gave little hint of the sweat and effort which had gone to make her so. The best ensign fluttered from the gaff, the scarlet matching that of the marines' swaying lines athwart the quarterdeck. On the larboard gangway Tapril, the gunner, was having a last hurried discussion with his mates in readiness to begin a salute to the Spanish flag which flew so proudly above the headland battery.

Old Mudge was beside the wheel, hands hidden in the folds of his watchcoat. He seemed to retain the same clothing no matter what the weather might do, hot or cold, rain or fine. He kept a variety of instruments and personal items in his capacious pockets, and Bolitho guessed that sometime, long past, he had been made to rush on deck and stay there with half of his things still scattered around his cabin.

He growled to the helmsmen and they edged the wheel over a few spokes, the main topsail filling and then drooping again as the ship idled beneath the land's protection.

Herrick trained his glass on the land and then said, “Passing the point now, sir!”

“Very well.” Bolitho waved his hand to Tapril. “Begin salute.”

And as the English frigate continued slowly towards her an- chorage the frail morning air shook and trembled to the regular crash of cannon fire. Gun for gun the Spanish replied, the smoke hanging almost motionless above the shallowing water.

Bolitho gripped his hands together behind him, feeling the sweat exploring his spine under his heavy dress coat and making one of his new shirts cling like a wet towel.

It was strange to stand so impassively as the slow barrage went on around him. Like some trick or dream. At any moment, he half-expected to see the bulwark blast apart, or a ball to come screaming amongst the rigid marines and cut them to a bloody gruel.

The last shot hammered his ears, and as the drifting smoke moved away from the decks he saw another frigate anchored at the head of the roads. Spanish, larger than
Undine,
her colours and pendants very bright against the green shore beyond. Her captain, too, had probably been remembering, he thought.

He glanced up at the masthead pendant as it whipped half- heartedly in the breeze. Soon now. More orders. A new piece to fit into the puzzle.

Mudge blew his great nose loudly, a thing he always did before carrying out some part of his duties.

“Ready, sir.”

“Very well. Man the braces. Hands wear ship, if you please.”

Bare feet padded across the newly-scrubbed decks in a steady rush to obey his repeated order, and Bolitho slowly breathed out as each man reached his station without mishap.

“Tops'l sheets!”

The flag above the battery dipped in the glare and then re- turned to its proper place. Some small boats were shoving off from the land, and Bolitho saw that many were loaded with fruit and other items for barter. With all their bread ruined in the first storm, and few fresh fruits to rival those in the boats, Triphook, the purser, would be busy indeed.

“Tops'l clew lines!”

A boatswain's mate shook his fist at some anonymous figure on the fore topsail yard. “Yew clumsy bugger! You 'old on with one 'and or yew'll never see yer doxy again!”

Bolitho watched the narrowing strip of water, his eyes half- closed against the searing glare.