The Flying Squadron (4 page)

‘You
will
become accustomed to the motion, I promise you,' Drinkwater was saying, ‘but you must have some breakfast.'

‘Zounds, sir, no breakfast, I beg you . . .'

Drinkwater turned, his eyes twinkling. ‘Pass word for my steward,' he ordered, and when the man made his appearance, said, ‘Mullender, bring some cushions on deck.'

Solicitous for his guest, Drinkwater had them placed on the inboard end of a quarterdeck gun-truck and helped Vansittart ease himself down on to them.

‘An hour sitting in the sunshine and you'll have an appetite like a midshipman, Vansittart. Now heed what I say and keep your eyes on the horizon . . . good man.'

Vansittart mumbled his thanks and Drinkwater left him. One bell was struck forward as Drinkwater paused at the top of the companionway.

‘I'm goin' below to break my fast, Mr Frey. When the watch changes and you're relieved, give Mr Metcalfe my compliments and tell him we'll exercise the guns during the forenoon.'

‘Aye, aye, sir.'

‘And keep an eye on our guest,' he added in a low voice.

‘Beggin' yer pardon, sir,' the quartermaster asked Frey when the captain had gone, ‘but who is 'e?' The man jerked his head at the crumpled figure sitting miserably on the gun-truck.

‘Mr Vansittart's a King's Messenger,' Frey explained.

‘Bloody 'ell! Can't 'is Majesty find someone more fit to the task, sir?' The old man dropped his voice and muttered, for the benefit of his companions at the wheel, ‘Reckon 'e's proof the King's bleedin' barmy.'

*
See
Under False Colours
.

*
See
Under False Colours
.

‘Fire!'

Beside him, Drinkwater was aware that Vansittart winced for the eighth time, shocked by the concussion of the starboard battery which was now, after the fourth broadside, almost simultaneous in its discharges.

‘Very well, Mr Metcalfe, you may secure the guns and pipe up spirits.' Drinkwater turned to Vansittart who had earlier expressed a wish to ‘see the cannon fired'.

‘I'm afraid, sir, you'll have little option,' Drinkwater had said at breakfast when he had announced his intention of exercising the gun-crews. ‘When we clear for action the bulkheads will be removed and your cabin will cease to exist.'

Vansittart's look of mistrust, of being wary in his nautical inexperience of being mocked, had amused Drinkwater. But so it had proved, and the transformation of the ship had astonished Vansittart. The secluded comfort of his small but neatly appointed cabin was suddenly invaded by a gang of barefoot and grinning seamen even before the bosun's mates had finished their dreadful squealing at the hatchways and while the marine drummer still rattled his snare drum in the ruffle that signalled the ship was beating to quarters.

Volubly protesting, Vansittart's valet Copford had scooped up his master's silver-mounted mirror and brushes, his jade pomade pot and writing-case, together with his books, papers and dispatch box, before the coarse
hands of the seamen threw them unceremoniously into a spare chest Mr Gordon, just then officer of the watch, had thoughtfully sent down. The chest of drawers and washstand vanished before Vansittart's eyes and he was left contemplating two huge, 24-pounder cannon of whose existence he had only hitherto been vaguely aware. At that moment, sent from the quarterdeck above, Mr Midshipman Porter had plucked at his sleeve.

‘Captain's compliments, sir, and would you care to join him on the quarterdeck.'

It sounded neither complimentary, nor a question; beneath its formal veneer it was a command and it irritated Vansittart. He had only just mastered seasickness; now the wretched comforts of what passed at sea for civilization had been rudely snatched from him and this greasy, red-faced boy was dancing impatiently round like an imp.

‘Damn it,' he began, choking the protest off in a masterly effort to retain his
sang froid
before Porter. He had nowhere else to go and he was now being rudely jostled as the powder monkeys ran about the place and the seamen round the guns stretched tackles and hefted rammers and sponges. Mr Gordon appeared, his hanger bouncing belligerently upon his left hip, gesticulating, Vansittart observed, with a hand wanting two fingers. The normally mild officer had a gleam in his eye that lent force to his ‘If you please, sir . . .' which dissolved into a shout at his gunners. ‘Clear away there, starbowlines, look lively and beat those lubbers to larboard.'

‘Careful, damn your eyes,' snarled Porter at a passing landsman who slopped water from his pail over Vansittart's feet. ‘This way, sir . . .'

And Vansittart bowed to the inevitable and allowed himself to be drawn, squelching miserably in sodden shoes, on to the quarterdeck.

For three-quarters of an hour he wondered what all the fuss had been about. On deck, he could no longer see the main batteries properly, though he caught glimpses of activity beneath the boat booms in the waist. The upper-deck gunners manning the quarterdeck 18-pounders seemed to squat idly round their guns for some time while
a tirade of shouted orders in which the clipped voices of Frey and Gordon, each in charge of a 24-pounder battery on the gun deck, were interspersed with shouted exhortations from Mr Metcalfe.

The first lieutenant's most offensive weapon was a silver hunter which he consulted with maddening and incomprehensible regularity, dictating numerous time intervals to Porter who ran after him with a slate as he went from waist to quarterdeck and back, pausing now and again to make some remark to Captain Drinkwater.

The captain appeared to take very little interest in the proceedings but stood by what Vansittart was now able to identify with some pride as the mizen weather rigging, addressing the occasional remark to Mr Wyatt, whose face bore a sort of disdain for the present activity. Vansittart knew Wyatt was specifically charged with the frigate's navigation and supposed it was some esoteric point on this to which he and Drinkwater referred.

Periodically there was an awful rumbling from below which Vansittart felt most through the soles of his feet, but it did not appear to affect the men on the upper deck. Quite mystified as to what was happening and ignored by all who might otherwise have enlightened him, Vansittart was compelled to wait foolishly for an explanation.

In the event he was saved the trouble, for after half an hour Metcalfe ran up from the waist, stared at his watch, referred to Porter's slate, muttered something to Drinkwater, and turned his attention to the quarterdeck guns.

Silence was called for and the 18-pounders that had been cleared away earlier were brought to a state of readiness. Metcalfe excitedly called out a stream of orders at which the gunners, with varying degrees of verisimilitude and enthusiasm for so dumb a show, leapt around their pieces. The cause of the rumbling was swiftly revealed as the 18-pounders were run out through their open ports. On the command ‘Point!' the gun-captains kneeled beside the breeches of their brute black charges, squinted along the sights and ordered the carriages slewed, adjusting the elevation at the same time. Vansittart looked in vain for a mark, concluded correctly that it was a sham since no boat had put out from the ship,
neither had she been manoeuvred, and watched with increasing fascination. Each gun-captain drew away from his gun, raised one hand in signal while the other grasped the lanyard of his fire-lock. When the row of hands had all gone up, Metcalfe yelled ‘Fire!' and there was an anticlimactic click as flint sparked ineffectually against steel.

Having repeated this procedure with both quarterdeck batteries and then the half-dozen 42-pounder slide-mounted carronades on the forecastle, Metcalfe trotted back to Drinkwater.

‘Very well,' Vansittart overheard the captain say, ‘you may load powder.'

For the next few minutes Vansittart's ear-drums were assailed by the battering thunder of the guns. Clouds of acrid grey smoke swept over him and he was dimly aware, through the sudden, bright flashes that pierced the smoke, of dark objects hurled from the guns, first to starboard and then to larboard. At last they fell silent and Drinkwater turned towards him, the infuriatingly amused yet somehow attractive smile playing about his mouth.

‘The noise disturbs you, Mr Vansittart?'

‘A little, I confess,' Vansittart said, feeling more than a trifle foolish.

‘They were only half-charges, don't you know, to conserve powder. I get no allowance from the Navy Board, damn them.'

‘And you fired them at no mark?' Vansittart asked in an attempt to appear knowledgeable. ‘I mean you did not intend the shot to hit anything?' He thought of the black dots he had seen in the centre of the discharges.

‘No, no, no, we fired at no mark and shot off nothing more offensive then the wads . . .'

‘But I saw . . .'

‘Oakum wadding, nothing more. The only ball you see, they say, is the one heading directly towards you, and I hope it won't come to that, eh?'

‘Oh.' Vansittart's tone was crestfallen.

Drinkwater felt sorry for the diplomat. ‘ 'Tis too lively to try at a target. If the wind falls light I will put out a boat, but the men are untried, a mixture, rough and uncoordinated as is usual at the beginning of a commission. At first it
is essential, a moment please . . .'

Drinkwater broke off his explanation to attend to Mr Belchambers. Vansittart could not hear what passed between them, but the midshipman's face was dark and Drinkwater's bore a look of disquiet when he turned back to resume.

‘At first it is essential to ensure the gun-crews operate in a disciplined manner and serve their guns correctly. One cannot afford mistakes in the heat of battle. You have doubtless seen an excited sportsman loose off a ramrod at game birds, well the same thing may happen here. Perhaps worse. A new charge thrust hastily into an unsponged gun may result in a premature discharge in which the carriage recoils over a gun-captain engaged in clearing a vent.' He paused, then added, ‘As it is, one man is suffering from crushed fingers.'

‘Mr Belchambers . . . ?'

Drinkwater nodded. ‘Yes, he brought me word of it. I ordered the powder largely to gratify the hands. Prolonged dumb show is useful, but nothing makes 'em concentrate like gunpowder. Now I'm doubting the wisdom of my own action.' A rueful expression crossed the captain's face and he smiled. ‘A pity,' he concluded.

Drinkwater turned away. Metcalfe was hovering with his insufferable watch, demanding the captain's attention. Vansittart cast about him. Already the guns were rese-cured and the pipes twittered at the hatchways with their appalling raucous squealing. Suddenly, as the cry ‘Up spirits!' went round the ship, Vansittart was aware of a strange buzz, as of a swarm of bees, and realized it was the ship's company, mustering for their daily issue of grog. For the first time since he had stepped on board, Mr Vansittart felt inexplicably easier about his situation.

He went below. Miraculously his cabin had reappeared. Copford was laying his toiletries on the chest of drawers. He looked white and drawn.

‘Where the devil were you?' Vansittart asked.

‘With the surgeon, sir. In what's called the cockpit. Full o' knives and saws it were, an' they brought some young cully down with his hand all bloody . . .'

It was not with the intention of holding a post-mortem that Drinkwater invited his officers to dinner that afternoon. It occurred to him that the time was ripe, both on account of the weather and the fact that the gunnery exercise had been a corporate act different from the heaving and hauling, the pumping and sheer drudgery necessary to clear the chops of the Channel. Whatever its failings, it had been the first step in shaking his crew together as the ship's company of a man-o'-war.

Looking at his officers as they silently sipped their soup, nervously adjusting to the unaccustomed luxury of his cabin, Drinkwater wondered what they feared about him, for their lack of chatter was awesome. Frey might have lightened the mood with his familiarity, but Frey had the deck and Drinkwater had not invited any representatives from the gunroom. He would break his fast with the midshipmen tomorrow morning. For the nonce it was his officers with whom he wished to become better acquainted and their present quiescence was vaguely worrying. Did he intimidate them?

It had come upon him, on recent mornings as he shaved, that he was ageing. He had no idea why this sudden realization of the obvious had struck him so forcibly. Perhaps it was the return to the cares and concerns of command after months of indolence, perhaps no more than the half-light that threw his face into stark relief as he peered at his image in the mirror. Whatever the cause, he had had a glimpse of himself as others saw him. Did that grim visage with its scarred cheek and the powder burns tattooed into one eyelid intimidate?