The Corvette (5 page)

He shivered and then cursed the widow MacEwan for her sagacity. The night air and the cold had found the knotted muscles in his shoulder. Holding fast with one hand he searched for the flask of brandy in his tail-pocket with the other. The coach swayed as the guard rose to pierce the night with his post-horn. As he swigged the fiery liquid Drinkwater was aware of a toll-keeper wrapped in a blanket as he threw wide his toll-gate to allow the mail through.

The glorious speed of the coach seemed to speak to him of all things British and he smiled at himself, amused that such considerations still had the power to move him. His grim experience off Boulogne and the brush with death that followed had shaken his faith in providence. The ache in his shoulder further reminded him that he was going to venture into Arctic waters where he would need all the fortitude he could muster. Command of the
Melusine
and her charges would be his first experience of truly independent responsibility and, in that midnight hour, he began to feel the isolation of it.

He took another swig of brandy and remembered the melancholia he had suffered after the fever of his recovery had subsided. The ‘blue-devils' were an old malady, endemic among sea-officers and induced by loneliness, responsibility and, some men maintained, the enforced chastity of the life. Drinkwater was acutely conscious that he owed his full recovery from these ‘megrims' to the love of his wife and friends. This thought combined with the stimulation of the brandy to raise his spirits.

Tonight he was racing to join a ship beneath a cloudless sky at what surely must be twelve miles to the hour! His thoughts ran on in a more philosophic vein, recalling Dungarth's long speech on the ambitions of France and the defence of liberty. He might talk of freedom being the goal of British policies, but at this very moment the press was out in every British sea-port, enslaving Britons for service in her Navy with as savage a hand as her landowners had appropriated and enclosed the countryside through which he was passing. The complexities of human society bewildered and exasperated Drinkwater and while his ordered mind was repelled by the nameless perfidies of politics, he was aware of the conflict it mirrored in himself.

There were many in Britain and Europe who welcomed the new order of things that had emerged from the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. Bonaparte was the foremost of these, an example of the exasperation of youth and talent at the blind intractability of vested interest. Surely Dungarth had overplayed the real danger posed by Bonaparte alone? Yet he would sail in command of his ‘corvette' to drive the tricolour of France from the high seas with the same eagerness that the mail-guard consulted his watch and urged his charge through the night. He suppressed the feeling of radical zeal easily. The excitement of the night was making him foolish. He had a duty to do in protecting the Hull whale-fleet. The matter was simplicity itself.

Then a precarious sleep swallowed him, sleep that was interrupted by sudden jolts and the contraction of aching muscles, and accompanied by the memory of Elizabeth's sadness at his departure.

They broke a hurried fast at Grantham after the terrifying descent of Spitalgate Hill and by noon had crossed the Trent at Muskham. Drinkwater rode inside for a while but, assaulted again by Mrs MacEwan who seemed desirous of information regarding the ‘gallant and charming Mr Quilhampton', he returned irritably to the box. He did not observe Mr Quilhampton's look of joy as he again exchanged seats and he was thoroughly worn out by the time the mail rolled into the yard of the Black Swan at York.

‘And what, my dear, did you think of Mr Quilhampton?' asked Mrs MacEwan staring after the captain and the tall young officer beside him.

‘I thought, Aunt,' said the young woman, removing her bonnet and shaking her red-gold hair about her shoulders, ‘that he was a most personable gentleman.'

‘Ahh.' Mrs MacEwan sighed with satisfaction. ‘See, my dear, he
has turned . . .' She waved her gloved hand with frivolous affectation while Catriona simply smiled at James Quilhampton.

Drinkwater took to his bed before sunset, waiting only to instruct Quilhampton to mind the baggage and engage a conveyance to take them to Hull the following morning. Quilhampton was left to walk the streets of York alone, unable to throw off the image of Catriona MacEwan.

The good weather held. The following day being a Sunday they were obliged to hire a private chaise but the drive over the gentle hills was delightful. Drinkwater was much refreshed by his long sleep at York where, by a stroke of good fortune, he had enjoyed clean sheets. They ate at Beverly after hearing mattins in the beautiful Minster, reaching Kingston-upon-Hull at five in the afternoon.

First Lieutenant Francis Germaney stood in his cabin and passed water into the chamberpot. His eyes were screwed up tight against the pain and he cursed with quiet venom. He was certain now that ‘the burns' had been contracted in a bawdy house in Kingston-upon-Hull and he wondered if Sir James Palgrave were similarly afflicted. It would serve the God-damned smell-smock right for he deserved it, that pistol ball in his guts notwithstanding.

‘Oh Christ!' He saw the dark swirl of blood in the urine. And their blasted surgeon had not been sober since the morning of the duel. Not that he had been sober much before that, Germaney reflected bitterly, but there had been periods of near sobriety long enough to attend the occasional patient and maintain an appearance of duty. But now, God rot him, just when he was wanted . . .

Germaney resolved to swallow his pride and consult a physician without delay. Mr Surgeon Macpherson with his degree from Edinburgh could go to the devil. As he refastened his breeches his eyes fell on the letter from cousin Templeton. Commander Drinkwater's arrival was imminent and Templeton indicated that the First Lord himself was anxious to brook no further delay. Germaney reached for his coat and hat when a knock came at the door. ‘What is it?'

The face of Midshipman the Lord Walmsley peered round the door.

‘Mr Bourne's compliments, sir, but there's a shore-boat approaching answering the sentry's hail with “
Melusine
”.'

‘God damn!' Germaney knew well what that meant. The boat contained the new captain. ‘Trying to catch us out,' he muttered.

‘That's what Mr Bourne says.'

‘Get out of my fucking way.'

Drinkwater folded his commission after reading it aloud and looked about him. Beneath a cloudless sky the corvette
Melusine
floated upon the broad, muddy Humber unruffled by any wind. Her paint and brass-work gleamed and her yards were perfectly squared. She lay among the tubby black and brown hulls of the whalers and the squat shapes of the other merchantmen and coasters at anchor off the port of Hull, a lady among drabs.

Not a rope was out of position beneath the lofty spars that rose to a ridiculous height. Named after a Breton sprite,
Melusine
showed all the lovely hallmarks of her French ancestry. Drinkwater's spirits soared and although he knew her for a showy thing, he could not deny her her beauty. He clamped the corners of his mouth tightly lest they betrayed his pleasure and frowned, nodding to the first lieutenant.

‘Mr Germaney, I believe.'

‘Your servant, sir. Welcome aboard.' Germaney removed his hat and bowed. ‘May I present the officers, sir?'

Drinkwater nodded. ‘Mr Bourne and Mr Rispin, sir; second and third lieutenants.' Two young officers in immaculate uniforms bowed somewhat apprehensively.

‘Mr Hill, the Master . . .'

‘Hill! Why, 'tis a pleasure to see you again. When was the last time?'

‘Ninety-seven, sir, after Camperdown . . .' Hill was beaming, his face ruddy with broken veins and little of his fine black hair left beyond a fringe above his nape. Drinkwater remembered he had been wounded when a master's mate in the cutter
Kestrel
.

‘How is the arm?'

‘An infallible barometer signalling westerly gales, sir.' They both laughed. ‘I heard you was wounded off Boulogne, sir . . .'

‘I am a trifle sagged amidships, Mr Hill, but otherwise sound. I have an excellent second for you. May I present Mr James Quilhampton, Master's Mate, lately qualified at the Trinity House of London and a veteran of Copenhagen.' He stepped aside allowing the little knot of officers to receive Quilhampton's bow. Drinkwater turned to Germaney who resumed the introductions.

‘Mr Gorton, sir, whose six years are nearly up.'

‘How many have you served at sea, Mr Gorton?'

‘All of them, sir,' replied the midshipman, looking Drinkwater in
the eye. ‘I was two years a volunteer before that, sir.' Drinkwater nodded with satisfaction. Mr Gorton seemed to possess more potential than either of the two commissioned lieutenants. He turned to the next youth, perhaps a year or two younger than Gorton.

‘Lord Walmsley, sir.'

Drinkwater caught his jaw in time and merely nodded and turned to the next. Another seventeen-year-old, the Honourable Alexander Glencross essayed a bow and was received with similar frigidity. Drinkwater had the impression that neither of these two young gentlemen took their profession very seriously and was relieved to see two fairly commonplace specimens at the end of the line.

‘Messrs Wickham and Dutfield, sir and Mr Frey.'

Mr Frey emerged from behind Dutfield where, Drinkwater suspected, the latter young gentleman had been holding him. Palgrave, it appeared, let his midshipman fool about and skylark. That was all very well but it led too often to bullying and Mr Frey was a child of no more than twelve years of age.

Germaney produced a purser named Pater, a bosun and a carpenter before drawing Drinkwater's attention to a disreputable figure half hidden behind the mizenmast.

‘Mr Macpherson, our surgeon.'

‘Macpherson of Edinburgh, Captain,' slurred the surgeon, his face wet with perspiration, his eyes watery with rheum, ‘
A votre service
' Drinkwater could smell the rum at a yard distant and noted the dirty coat and stained linen.

‘Lieutenant Mount, sir,' Germaney ploughed on, distracting Drinkwater from the state of the surgeon. Macpherson's short-comings would be the subject of some conversation between captain and first lieutenant, but later, and on Germaney's terms. ‘Lieutenant Mount, sir, of His Majesty's Marines.'

‘
Royal
Marines, Mr Germaney, you should not neglect the new title.' Drinkwater indicated the blue facings of a royal regiment. ‘An improvement upon the old white, Mr Mount,' he said conversationally and paced along the line of scarlet and pipe-clayed soldiers drawn up for his inspection. Mr Mount glowed with pleasure. He had spotted the glitter of gold lace a good fifteen minutes before the midshipman of the watch and had turned his men out in time to create a good impression.

‘Your men do you credit, Mr Mount. I would have them all proficient marksmen to a high degree and I should like you to take charge of all the small-arms training on the ship. I have a prejudice
against the junior lieutenant being responsible for the matter. He is better employed with his division and at the great guns.'

Drinkwater looked round, pleased with the obvious stir this small innovation had caused. He strode forward to stand by the larboard hance. A solitary brass carronade marked the limit of the hallowed quarterdeck of Captain Sir James Palgrave and the non-regulation addition to
Melusine
's long guns shone with an ostentatious polish.

‘I hope, Mr Germaney,' said Drinkwater in a clear voice, ‘that all this tiddley work ain't at the expense of the ship's true fighting qualities, eh?'

He was facing the men assembled in the waist and caught half a dozen swiftly suppressed grins.

‘N . . . no, of course not, sir.'

‘Very well.' He looked over the ship's company. They seemed to be made up of the usual mixture. Tow headed Scandinavians, swarthy Portuguese, three negroes, an Indian and an Arab amongst a herd of old and young from the two kingdoms and the emerald isle. ‘Do your duty men and you have nothing to fear.' It was an old formula, hack words but good enough for the moment. And if it lacked inspiration it at least encapsulated all that was required of them.

‘Pray take a seat, Mr Germaney.' Drinkwater hung his hat and turned to his first lieutenant. Captain Palgrave's hurried departure had made Drinkwater temporary heir to some handsome cabin furniture and a full decanter of rich malmsey.

He poured a glass for himself and the first lieutenant, aware that they had just inspected parts of the ship that he doubted Mr Germaney even knew existed.

‘That cockpit, Mr Germaney, is an ill-ventilated spot at best. I want it white-washed as soon as possible. There are marks there, and in the demeanour of the young gentlemen, of a slackness that I do not like. Now, your good health.' They drank and Drinkwater looked shrewdly at the lieutenant. He was on edge, yet displayed a certain lassitude to the task of showing the captain round the ship. An officer intent on creating a good impression would have shown off some of
Melusine
's good points rather than ignoring them. Well, it was no matter. For the present there were more urgent considerations.

‘The ship is well enough, Mr Germaney, although I withhold my full approbation until I see how her people make sail and work the guns. What I am not happy about is the surgeon.'

A surprising and noticeable interest stirred Germaney.

‘Tell me,' Drinkwater continued, ‘how was such a slovenly officer able to hold his position under an officer as, er, punctilious as Captain Palgrave,' asked Drinkwater drily.

‘I am not certain, sir. It seemed Sir James owed him some service or other.'

‘Is the man perpetually drunk?'

Germaney brightened. Things were turning a little in his favour. ‘I regret to say that that is most usually the case, sir. There is no confidence in him among the people.'