The Shadow of the Eagle (11 page)

‘In the Pacific? I had heard mention of the action, but assumed it to have been in the Baltic’

‘That, if I may say so, is the danger of assumptions.’ Birkbeck smiled at Marlowe. ‘Anyway, I first met him aboard this ship last autumn when he took
Andromeda
over from Captain Pardoe: not that Pardoe was aboard very often; he spent most of his time in the House of Commons and left the ship to the first luff…’

‘Who was killed, I believe,’ interrupted Marlowe.

‘Yes. We had trouble with some of the men — it’s a long story’

‘I gathered they were mutineers,’ Marlowe said flatly.

‘Ah, you’ve heard that, have you?’ Birkbeck looked at the young officer beside him. ‘Now I understand why you made that remark about incitement.’

‘Well, the temper of the men is a matter I should properly concern myself with.’ Marlowe invoked the superior standing of a commissioned officer, as opposed to the responsibilities of the warranted sailing master.

‘Indeed it is, Mr Marlowe. But you might also properly concern yourself with the temper of your commanding officer. I fear you may have fallen victim to a misapprehension in misjudging Captain Drinkwater. Consider his late achievement. Last autumn, as soon as he came aboard this ship, which had been kept on guard duties and as a convoy on the coast where her captain could be called to the House of Commons if the government wished for his vote, we went a-chasing Yankee privateers in the Norwegian fiords. We took a big Danish cruiser, the
Odin.
It was scuttlebutt then that Drinkwater had some influence at the Admiralty and was wrapped up in secret goin’s on. You heard what he said about that woman who came aboard the other night and that she was mixed up in some such business. I’ve no doubt the matter we are presently engaged upon is exactly as he told us.’

‘I had no idea,’ mused Marlowe for a moment, then added, ‘So, you consider we might see some action?’

Birkbeck shrugged. ‘Who knows? Captain Drinkwater seems to think so. Perhaps just by cruising off the Azores we will prevent all this happening, but if Boney escapes, God help Canada.’

‘We are playing for very high stakes …’

‘Indeed we are.’

‘But she’s an old ship and lacks powder and shot…’

‘What d’you think we can do about that?’

‘I, er, I don’t know. Put into Plymouth?’

‘It’s a possibility …’

‘But?’

‘Not one he’ll consider.’

‘Why not?’

‘It would delay us too much; we’d be subject to the usual dockyard prevarications, difficulties with the commissioner, warping in alongside the powder hulk, half the watch running … No, no, Drinkwater will avoid that trap.’

‘Well Gibraltar’s too far out of our way’ said Marlowe with a kind of pettish finality, ‘so what will Our Father do?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ Birkbeck grinned at the young man.

Irritated, Marlowe snapped, ‘No I damn well can’t!’

Birkbeck was offended by Marlowe’s change of tone. ‘Then you’ll have to wait and see!’ he replied, and left the first lieutenant staring after him as he made his way below.

Lieutenant Hyde of the marines sat in the wardroom reading a novel. It was said to have been written ‘by a lady’, but, despite this, it rather appealed to him. He was an easy-going man whose lithe body conveyed the impression of youth and agility. In fact he was past thirty-five and conspicuously idle. But whereas military officers were frequently inert, Lieutenant Hyde was fortunate to be able to persuade his subordinates into doing their own duty and a good bit of his own. Moreover, this was accomplished with an enthusiasm that bespoke a keenly active and intelligent commanding officer.

The secret of Hyde’s success was very simple; he possessed a sergeant of unusual ability and energy. Sergeant McCann was something of an enigma, even between decks on a British man-of-war which was said to be a refuge for all the world’s bad-hats. Sergeant McCann was as unlike any other sergeant in the sea-service as it was possible to be; he was cultured. In fact the novel Lieutenant Hyde was reading was rightfully Sergeant McCann’s; moreover the sergeant was diligent, so diligent that it was unnecessary for Lieutenant Hyde to check up on him, and he was well acquainted with the duties required of both a sergeant and an officer. This was because Sergeant McCann had once held a commission of his own.

A lesser man would have let bitterness corrode his soul, but Sergeant McCann had nothing left in the world other than his work. He had been born in Massachusetts where his father had been a cobbler. At the age of sixteen his father had been dragged from their house and tarred and feathered by ‘patriot’ neighbours for the crime of opposing armed rebellion against the British crown. By morning McCann was the head of his family, his mother had lost her reason and his twelve-year-old sister was in a state of shock. Somehow he got his family into Boston and when that city was evacuated they fled to New York along with a host of loyalist refugees. Young McCann volunteered for service in a provincial regiment, fought at the Brandywine and earned a commission at Germantown. In his absence his mother took to drink and his sister became mistress to a British officer. McCann went south and fought with Patrick Ferguson at King’s Mountain, where he was wounded and taken prisoner. After a long and humiliating captivity he found his way back to New York, but no sign of his family. After the peace, in company with other loyalists, he crossed the Atlantic in search of compensation from the British government. In this he was disappointed, and found himself driven to all manner of extremities to keep body and soul together. Finally he entered the service of a moderately wealthy family whose country seat was in Kent. He stuck the subservient existence of an under-footman for three years, then joined the marines of the Chatham division. McCann learned to blot out the past by an intense concentration upon the present. Lieutenant Hyde called him ‘my meticulous sergeant’ and thus he was known as Meticulous McCann.

Owing to severe losses among the marines during the preceding cruise, Lieutenant Hyde, Sergeant McCann and a dozen additional red-coated lobsters had been sent aboard
Andromeda
at Chatham shortly before the frigate sailed on her escort duties. The combination of the elegantly languid Hyde and the pipeclayed mastery of McCann was thought by the officer commanding the Chatham division to be ideal for such a ceremonial task.

‘Is that damned book
so
entertaining, Hyde?’ Lieutenant Ashton now asked.

‘It is very amusing,’ Hyde replied without looking up from the page, adding, ‘Shouldn’t you be on deck?’

‘Frederic has relieved me. He’s under the impression I am acting as his clerk. Anyway, old fellow, I hate to disturb you from your intellectual pursuits, but the Meticulous One awaits your attention.’

‘Really …’ Hyde turned a page, chuckled and continued reading.

‘Do please come in Sergeant.’ Ashton waved the scarlet-clad McCann into the wardroom, then turned to the marine officer. ‘Hyde, you infernal layabout, you quite exasperate me! Sergeant McCann is reporting to you.’ Ashton rolled his eyes at the deck-head for McCann’s benefit.

Skilfully bracing himself against the heel and movement of the ship, McCann crashed his boots and finally attracted the attention of his commanding officer. Hyde affected a startled acknowledgement of his presence.

‘What the devil… ? Ah. McCann, men ready for inspection?’

‘Sir!’

‘Very well.’ Hyde put his book, pages downwards, upon the table and got up. He seemed to the watching Ashton not to need to adjust his tight-fitting tunic, but rose immaculate, preened like a sleek bird. He winked at Ashton, picked up his billy-cock hat and preceded McCann from the wardroom. Watching the pair leave, Ashton was shaking his head in wonder at the contrived little scene when a door in the adjacent bulkhead opened and a tousle-haired Frey poked his head out.

‘What the deuce is all the noise about?’

‘Oh, nothing, Frey, nothing, only Hyde and the Meticulous One.’

‘Is that all?’ said Frey, preparing to retreat into his hutch of a cabin just as the ship heeled farther over. ‘Wind’s shifting,’ he said, yawning. ‘Isn’t it your watch?’

‘I do wish people wouldn’t keep asking me that. The first lieutenant has relieved me.’

‘What for?’

‘He was feeling generous… Frey’ Ashton went on, ‘you know Our Father, don’t you. What’s he like, personally, I mean?’

Frey sighed, scratched his head and came out of his cabin in his stockinged feet. Sitting at the table he stretched. ‘I’m not sure I can tell you, beyond saying that I have the deepest admiration for him.’

‘They say he’s an unlucky man to be around,’ Ashton remarked. ‘Didn’t his last first lieutenant get killed, along with that fellow you were with, what was his name?’

‘Quilhampton? Yes, James was killed, so was Lieutenant Huke…’

‘Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Well ‘tis said we’re bound out to the westward in chase of two French ships that have escaped from Antwerp,’ expostulated Ashton.

‘If that is the scuttlebutt, then it must be true,’ said Frey drily, taking a biscuit from the barrel.

‘I had it from Marlowe who saw the captain this morning and then heard all about our gallant commander from old Birkbeck.’

‘Well then, you know more about it than I do.’

‘Oh, Frey, don’t be such a confounded dullard …’

Andromeda
lay down even further to leeward and ran for some moments with her starboard ports awash. Hyde’s novel slid across the table and fell on the painted canvas deck covering. Frey bent down, picked it up and gave it a cursory glance.

‘Here, put it on the stern settee,’ said Ashton. Frey threw it to Ashton who caught it neatly and glanced at the title on the spine.
‘Pride and Prejudice;
huh! What a damned apt title for…’ He looked up quickly at the watching Frey, flushed slightly and pulled the corners of his mouth down. ‘Odd cove, Hyde,’ he remarked.

Frey stood up; he was about to retire to his cabin and dress for his watch, but paused and said, ‘You seem to think most of us are odd, in one way or another.’

Ashton casually spun Miss Austen’s novel into a corner of the buttoned settee that ran across the after end of the gloomy wardroom. He stared back at Frey, seemed to consider a moment, then said, ‘Do I? Well I never.’

Frey was galled by the evasion. ‘What d’you think of Marlowe?’

‘Known him for years.’ Ashton’s tone was dismissive.

‘That’s not what I asked,’ persisted Frey. There was a hardness in his tone which Ashton had not heard before.

‘Oh, he’s all right.’

‘That is what I told the captain,’ Frey remarked, watching Ashton, ‘though I am not certain I am right.’

‘You told the captain?’ Ashton frowned, ‘and what gives you the right to give him your opinion, or to presume to doubt Mr Marlowe’s good name, eh?’

‘Something called friendship, Ashton,’ Frey retorted.

‘Oh yes, old shipmates,’ Ashton said sarcastically, ‘as if I could forget.’

There was a knock at the wardroom door and Midshipman Dunn’s face appeared. ‘One bell, Mr Frey,’ he said.

‘Thank you, Mr Dunn.’ Frey shut his cabin door and reached for his neck-linen. There was something indefinably odious about Josiah Ashton and Frey could not put his finger on it. He was too damned thick with Marlowe, Frey concluded, and Marlowe was something of a fool. But it irritated Frey that he could not quite place the source of a profound unease.

As Frey went on deck he passed Hyde’s marines parading on the heeling gun deck. They stood like a wavering fence, the instant before it was blown down by a gale. Lieutenant Hyde had almost completed his inspection prior to changing sentries. He caught Frey’s eye and winked. For all his intolerable indolence, Frey could not help liking Hyde. One could like a fellow, Frey thought as he grasped the man-ropes to the upper deck, without either admiring or approving of him.

On deck the watch were shortening sail. The topgallants had already been furled and now the topsails were being reefed. Clapping his hand to his hat and drawing it down hard on his head, Frey stared aloft. The main topsail yard had been clewed down and the slack upper portion of the sail drawn up to the yard-arms by the reefing tackles. The windward topman was astride the extremity of the yard, hauling the second reef earing up as hard as he could, while his fellow yard-men strove to assist by hauling on the reef points as the big sail flogged and billowed.

Lieutenant Marlowe stood forward of the binnacle with a speaking trumpet to his mouth.

‘Jump to it, you lubbers!’ he was shrieking, though it was clear the men were working as rapidly as was possible. The unnecessary nature of Marlowe’s intervention confirmed Frey’s revised opinion of the first lieutenant.

Since Frey had last been on deck the weather had taken a turn for the worse. A quick glance over the starboard bow showed the white buttress of the Isle of Wight lying athwart their hawse with a menacing proximity as the backing wind drove them into the bight of Sandown Bay. The reason for Marlowe’s anxiety was now clear: he had left the reefing too late, giving insufficient time for the men to complete their task before they must tack the ship. To the north-west, several ships lay at anchor in St Helen’s road, while in the distance beyond, a dense clutter of masts and yards showed where the bulk of the Channel Fleet, withdrawn from blockade duties off Ushant, lay once more in the safe anchorage of Spithead. It would be a fine thing, Frey thought, for
Andromeda
to pile herself up at the foot of Culver Cliff within sight of such company!

Frey strode aft, took a quick look at the compass, gauged the wind from the tell-tale streaming above the windward hammock irons, and then stared at the land. Dunnose Head was stretching out on the larboard bow, and Culver Cliff loomed ever closer above the starboard fore chains, its unchanged bearing an ominous and certain precursor of disaster.

Beside Frey the quartermaster and helmsmen were muttering apprehensively and Frey’s own pulse began to race. The seamen coming on deck to take over the watch were milling in the waist. The experienced among them quickly sensed something was wrong. The wind note rose suddenly and to windward the sea turned a silver-white as the squall screamed down upon the ship. For a split second Frey’s artistic sensibilities compelled him to watch the phenomenon which looked like nothing so much as the devil’s claw-marks raking the surface of the sea.