The Bomb Vessel (16 page)

The signal to weigh had caused some confusion as no one was certain what the order of sailing was. Towards the northern end of the anchorage two battleships had run foul of each other, but already the handful of frigates and sloops had got away smartly, led out by the handsome
Amazon
, commanded by Henry Riou. Following them south east through the gatway and round the Scroby Sands, went the former East Indiaman
Glatton
, her single deck armed with the carronades which had so astonished a French squadron with their power, that she had defeated them all. Her odd appearance was belied by the supreme seamanship of the man who now commanded her. ‘Bounty' Bligh turned her through the anchorage with an almost visible contempt for his reputation. Drinkwater had met Bligh and served with him at Camperdown. Another veteran of Camperdown, the old 50-gun
Isis
ran down in company with the incomparable
Agamemnon
, Nelson's old sixty-four. The order of sailing had gone by the board as the big ships made the best of their way to seaward of the sands. The 98-gun
St George
, with Nelson's blue vice-admiral's flag at the foremasthead was already setting her topgallants, her jacks swinging aloft like monkeys, a band playing on her poop. The strains of
Rule Britannia
floated over the water.

Despite himself Drinkwater felt an involuntary thrill run down his spine as Nelson passed, unable to resist the man's genius despite the cloud he was personally under. Even Rogers was silent while Quilhampton's eyes were shining like a girl's.

‘Here the buggers come,' said Rogers as the other seventy-fours stood through the road;
Ganges, Bellona, Polyphemus
. Then came
Monarch
, Batter Pudding's father's flagship at Camperdown, and the rest, all setting their topgallants, their big courses in the buntlines ready to set when the intricacies of St Nicholas's Gat had been safely negotiated.

‘
Invincible's
going north sir,' observed Easton pointing to the Caister end of the anchorage where the cutters and gun brigs were leaving by the Cockle Gat.

‘I hope he has a pilot on board,' said Drinkwater thinking of the treacherous passage and driving
Kestrel
through it years ago.

‘Some of the storeships goin' that way too,' offered Quilhampton, aping Drinkwater's clipped mannerism.

‘Yes, Mr Q. Do you watch for
Explosion's
signal now.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘Martin's still playing at bloody commodore,' said Rogers to Easton in a stage whisper. The master sniggered. ‘Hey look, someone's lost a jib-boom . . .' They could not make out the ship as she was masked by another but almost last to leave was Parker's
London
.

‘The old bastard had trouble getting his flukes out of the mud,' laughed Rogers making an onomatopoeic sucking plop that sent a burst of ribald laughter round
Virago
's poop.

‘I hope, Mr Rogers, that is positively the last joke we hear about the subject of the admiral's nuptials,' said Drinkwater, remembering the plain-faced girl on whom he so relied. He might at least defend her honour on his own deck.

‘In fact,' he added with sudden asperity, ‘I forbid further levity on the subject now we are at sea under Sir Hyde's orders.'

Drinkwater put his glass to his eye and ignored Rogers who made an exaggerated face at Easton behind his back. Quilhampton laughed, thus missing the executive signal from
Explosion
.

Drinkwater had seen the bunting flutter down from the topgallant yardarm where the wind spread it for the bombs to see.

‘Heave up, Mr Matchett. Hoist foretopmast stays'l!'

The anchor was already hove short and it was the work of only a few minutes to heave it underfoot and trip it. ‘Anchor's aweigh, sir!'

‘Tops'l halliards, Mr Rogers! Lee braces, there!' He turned to Mr Quilhampton who had flushed at missing the signal from
Explosion
. ‘See those weather braces run, Mr Q.'

‘Aye, aye, sir,' the boy ran forward to vindicate himself.

‘Starboard stays'l sheet there! Look lively, God damn it!'

‘Anchor's sighted clear, sir.'

Aloft the topsail parrels creaked against the greased topmasts as the yards rose. The canvas flogged, then filled with great dull crumps, flogged and filled again as the yards were trimmed. Drinkwater looked with satisfaction at the replaced mainyard.

‘Steady as you go.'

‘Steady as you go, zur.'
Virago
gathered way and caught up on
Zebra
which had not yet tripped her anchor.

‘Port your helm,' Drinkwater looked round to see the order was obeyed. The big tiller was pushed over to larboard and
Virago
began to turn to starboard her bowsprit no longer pointing at
Zebra
.

‘Trim that foreyard, Graham, God rot you! Don't you know your business?' bawled Rogers as the petty officers directed the stamping, panting gangs of men. Matchett was leaning outboard fishing for the anchor with the cat tackle.

‘Course south east a half south.' Drinkwater looked to starboard and raised his hat. Aboard the
Anne Reed
he saw Tumilty acknowledge his greeting.

‘Course south east a half south, zur,' reported Tregembo.

‘Course south east a half south, sir,' repeated Easton, the sailing master. Drinkwater suppressed a smile. He almost felt happy. It was good to be under way at last, and upon his own deck at that. He did not want to look astern at the roofs and church towers of Great Yarmouth with their reminders of the rule of Law, which he so much admired yet had so recently disregarded.

The reflection made him search for his brother as the hands secured the deck and adjusted the sails to Rogers's exacting direction. He found him at last, in duck trousers and a check shirt, hauling upon the anchor crown tackle, a labour for unskilled muscles, supervised by Mr Matchett in the starboard forechains. The heaving waisters brought the inboard fluke of the sheet anchor in against its bill board and able seamen leapt contemptuously outboard to pass the lashings.

‘You had better cast the lead as we pass the Gatway, Mr Easton, the tide will set us on the Corton side else, and I've no wish to go aground today.'

‘Aye, aye, sir. Snape! Get your arse into the main chains with a lead!'

‘Give her the forecourse, Mr Rogers. And you may have Quilhampton set the spanker when we come on the wind off the Scroby Sands.'

Drinkwater looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock. A ship was coming up from the south and Drinkwater checked her number against the private signals. She was the
Edgar
, Captain George Murray, joining the fleet. He remembered Murray as the frustrated captain of the sluggish frigate
La Nymphe
, unable to get into action during the fight of St George's Day off the Brittany coast. With a shock Drinkwater realised that had been seven years earlier. It had been his first action in charge of a ship, the cutter
Kestrel
whose commander, Lieutenant Madoc Griffiths, lay sweating out the effects of malaria in his cabin.

At noon Drinkwater checked Easton's entry on the slate and stood down the watch below. Despite the confusion in the fleet Martin's little squadron was keeping tolerably good station. It was clear Martin wanted a post-captaincy out of this expedition.

‘What course for the passage, sir?' asked Easton formally.

Drinkwater smiled wanly. The fleet was tired of uncertainty. ‘I have only orders to stand towards the Naze of Norway, Mr Easton, as I told you yesterday.'

‘Mushrooms, Mr Easton,' said Rogers cheerfully, ‘that is all we are, mushrooms . . .'

‘Mushrooms, Mr Rogers?' said Easton frowning.

‘Aye, mushrooms, Mr Easton. Kept in the dark and fed with bullshit.'

‘But I tell you I am right, Bones.' The smell of rum hung in the heavy air.

Mr Jex had drawn the surgeon into the stygian gloom of
Virago's
hold on the pretext of examining the quality of a barrel of sauerkraut. The familiar tone he used in addressing Lettsom only emphasised the purser's misjudgement of the surgeon's character. Listening to the exaggeratedly flippant remarks which Lettsom customarily used, Jex had assumed the surgeon might prove an ally. Part of Jex's desire to find a confidant was due to his isolation after the discovery of his conduct in the affair off the Sunk. Lettsom avowed an abhorrence of war and the machinations of Admiralty, a common attitude among the better sort of surgeon and a product of keeping educated men in a state of social limbo, mere warrant officers among compeers of far lesser intellect.

Jex had decided that since he could not escape the taint of cowardice he might as well assume a spurious conscientious objection.
The rehabilitation of himself thus being complete in his own eyes, if in no-one else's, he now began to search for a means of furthering his own ends. But Jex's mind was expert in calculating, and the readiness and facility with which he did this was apt to blind him to his limitations in other fields. He was a man who considered himself clever when he was not. He was, therefore, a dangerous person to thwart, and Drinkwater had crossed him.

Mr Jex's stupidity now led him to believe that certain facts that had come his way were a providential sign that his new, Quakerish philosophy had divine approval, and that his deductive powers used in reaching his conclusion merely proved that he was a man of equal intellect with the surgeon, hence the familiar contraction of the old cognomen, ‘Sawbones'.

It was unfortunate that a mind skilled in feathering its own nest and dividing the rations of unfortunate seamen to an eighth part (for himself), was a mind that delighted in nosing into the affairs of others. He had nursed a grievance against Lieutenant Drink-water since he had been out-manoeuvred in the matter of his appointment. Drinkwater had intimidated him as well as humiliated him in his own eyes. Jex had not expected fate to be so kind as to put into his hands such weapons as he now possessed, but now that he had them it seemed that it was one more confirmation of his superior abilities.

It had started when he had been turned from his cot at one in the morning by an angry Mr Trussel. The gunner had brought a new recruit and Jex had let the dripping wretch know exactly what he thought of being roused to attend to the wants of waterborne scum. So vehement had he become that he had shoved his lantern in the face of the newcomer. Jex was incapable of analysing the precise nature of the expression he found there, but the man was not afraid as he should have been, only cold and shivering. Jex's suspicions were roused because the man did not quail before him.

Jex had seen the man immediately he came aboard, before his hair was cut and he had lost weight, while he was still dressed in a gentleman's breeches. At that moment Jex did not recognise Edward, merely took note of him. And because Jex had taken note of him he continued to observe ‘Waters'. Rogers had quartered Edward Drinkwater among the ‘firemen', an action station for the most inept and inexperienced waisters whose duty was to
pump water into the firehoses deployed by the purser.

There might have been no more to it had Jex not gone ashore for cabin stores at Yarmouth shortly before the order to sail. Being idly curious he had bought a newspaper, an extravagance he was well able to afford. Had he not purchased the paper he might never have made the connection between the new ‘landsman volunteer' and the man he had seen in the Blue Fox, a man who had come into the taproom immediately Lieutenant Drink-water had left the Inn.

The
Yarmouth Courier
reported: ‘A foul double murder, which heinous crime had lately been perpetrated upon an emigrant French nobleman, the Marquis de la Roche-Jagu, and his pretty young mistress, Mlle Pascale Eugenie Vrignaud. The despicable act had been carried out in the marquis's lodgings at Newmarket. He had died from a sword cut in the right side of the neck which severed the trapezius muscle, the carotid artery and the jugular vein. Mlle Vrignaud had been despatched by a cut on the left temple which had rendered her instantly senseless and resulted in severe haemorrhage into the cranial cavity. Doctor Ezekiel Cotton of Newmarket was of the opinion that a single blow had killed both parties . . .'

Jex rightly concluded that the two lovers had been taken in the sexual act and that the murderer had struck a single impassioned blow. But it was the last paragraph that filled Mr Jex's heart with righteous indignation: ‘A certain Edward Drinkwater had earlier been in the company of Mlle Vrignaud and has since disappeared. He is described as a man of middle height and thick figure, having a florid complexion and wearing his own brown hair, unpowdered.'

Mr Jex had embraced this news with interest, his curiosity and cunning were aroused and he remembered the man in the Blue Fox.

‘I tell you I
am
right,' Jex repeated.

Lettsom looked up from the opened cask. ‘There is nothing wrong with this sauerkraut, it always smells foul when new opened.'

Lettsom straightened up.

'To save ‘em from scurvy
Our captain did shout,
You shall feed 'em fresh cabbage
And old sauerkraut.

‘Make 'em eat it, Mr Jex, Mr Drinkwater's right . . .'

‘No, no, Mr Lettsom. Damme but you haven't been listening. I mean this report in the paper here.' He thrust the
Yarmouth Courier
under Lettsom's nose. Lettsom took it impatiently and beckoned the lantern closer. When he had finished he looked up at the purser. Jex's porcine eyes glittered.

‘You are linking our commander with the reported missing man?'

‘Exactly. You see my point, then.'

‘No, I do not. Do you think I am some kind of hierophant that I read men's minds.'

Jex was undettered by the uncomprehended snub.

‘Suppose that the murderer . . .'