Gentleman Captain (17 page)

Kit smiled. 'I forbore from mentioning him, sir, but it's true. A very fine sailor, and a good family.'

Kit Farrell ever spoke with a rare clarity. Nevertheless his words angered me and I stood for a moment composing my countenance before I turned to him again. 'A pity indeed that such a fine officer should be so marred by suspicion and perversity,' I said, spiteful and ashamed of myself at the same time. 'His tiresome obsession with his uncle's death...' I tailed off, aware of my companion's stillness and silence. 'But perhaps I should try harder to deal with him, then, Mister Farrell, if you say he should be my model.'

Farrell shrugged and smiled, and vanquished my peevishness of spirit with that one honest gesture. We feel into a sprightly conversation on the quarters of the wind and finished our meal in good humour.

As he made to leave the cabin, I detained him for a moment. 'You are a plain speaker indeed, Mister Farrell,' I said. 'I value that. I
need-that,
here on this ship, with these officers who are Harker's, not mine. You have my sanction to speak plainly to me at all times, Kit Farrell. Do not flatter me as you teach me the sea-craft. If I've been a dullard, tell me so. If I make mistakes as the captain of this ship, tell me that, too. I am determined on one thing above all, which is that I will not take another
Happy Restoration
and all its men to their graves, and face another court-martial for so doing.'

Kit Farrell nodded. 'I speak plainly only with men I trust, Captain.' He ruffled his hair in a gesture of boyish embarrassment. 'Well, sir, if it's a reminder of mortality you want, then learning the dead reckoning and some celestial navigation should do it. Shall we begin with them in the forenoon watch, Captain?'

'Not, then, the names of the ropes and the sails, or all the pieces of wood? I thought such knowledge lay at the heart of the mariners' mysteries.'

He smiled. 'Knowing the name of a rope won't bring you off a lee shore, Captain, nor bring you alongside an enemy. My father served in the last Dutch war under Generals Blake and Monck, that's now the lord Duke of Albemarle, and they knew so little of the sea they'd shout "Wheel to the right!" or "Haul up that whichum there!" or the suchlike. It didn't stop them bringing down the Dutch and all their great sailor-admirals, did it now? The sea's not a mystery, Captain, though sailors are like lawyers–for both make their trades a mystery, wear peculiar garb, and gull the layman with a strange language. But using the sea is just like making a journey on land, sir. It's all about knowing where you are, where you're going, how you'll get there, and what you'll do once you're there. You don't need to know the name of a horse to make it gallop, or to carry you to the next town, Captain. And you don't need to know the name of every sail and shroud on this ship to win a battle in her.'

Rame Head had fallen away well behind us, and the distant ship was out of sight up the Channel. I was still on the quarterdeck. In the continued absence of Francis Gale and his new prayer book, I had that morning taken the crew through a perfunctory reading of the daily prayer from the old, using the still pristine copy that Uncle Tristram had given me for my eighth birthday. Landon, Kit Farrell and Musk then went below, as did most of the crew, carrying their wooden plates, to receive Janks' latest offering for their midday dinner. A sullen master's mate from Rotherhithe had the watch, calling out the occasional order to the helmsman on the whipstaff in the steerage below (for these were still the times before it became the fashion for ships to be steered by a wheel, as they are today; another damnable innovation cried up and adopted on no better grounds than that Europeans favour it, and thus it must be superior to our old English ways).

Apart from the mate, the Moor Ali Reis, and two of the ship's boys, the quarterdeck was empty. With so few witnesses in sight, I returned surreptitiously to my feeble attempts to master the sea arts. On one of our starboard great guns, I balanced a blank ship's journal covered in sailcloth. Musk had grudgingly drawn columns on each page, and at Kit Farrell's prompting, I was endeavouring to fill in the entries for our voyage. Even then, all captains were meant to keep their own sea journals, but on the doomed
Happy Restoration
I had followed the example of most of my fellow gentleman captains and merely copied the entries from the master's log book. Now, Landon's journal was forbidden me by Kit Farrell. I looked out to sea, up to the rigging and scanned the coast. Then I turned my eyes downward and looked again in puzzlement at each of the columns on the page before me.

Weekday.
Well, it was a Tuesday, but this would not be enough for Trinity House, Mister Pepys or Kit Farrell. In the mariners' secret knowledge, each day had its own symbol, drawn from the dark worlds of astrologers and alchemists; symbols to which Master Landon appeared to be particularly devoted. Although I had drawn all the day-symbols, the sheet bearing them was below in the great cabin. For once, Farrell and Phineas Musk were united in something; that being, their determination to keep it from me. I would leave this column blank for the time being, I decided.

Month and date.
That was easy, despite the mariners' perverse insistence that each new day began at noon, not at midnight or dawn, as the rest of the world contended.

Distance run.
I knew this number, and wrote it down: seventy-six. But God alone knew what it signified, for the mariners insist that their mile is different to a mile on land. Perhaps it was greater, but then, it might have been smaller. Farrell had told me, and given me the exact figure for the difference. It was but one of the many elements of this strange new science that my grandfather had once mastered, and but one of the many that seemed so unwilling to lodge in my head.

I heard a sudden snort of laughter, looked up, and saw two of our men in the mizzen rigging. The monkey-like rapscallions looked down upon me as schoolboys look down from a great height upon the spiders they seek to torment. Their faces attempted a blank innocence but bore the unmistakeable expressions of those who stifle their mirth only with the greatest expenditure of effort. I could have punished them for mocking their captain, I suppose, but that would hardly have helped my cause.
Great God,
I thought,
why do I do this?
The mastery of the sea was a hopeless task, opening me up to ridicule and humiliation. Why not merely strut my quarterdeck in arrogant splendour, as Harris, Jennens and the rest of them did?
Your destiny is in the Guards,
I reminded myself,
not at sea.
But then I saw the death throes of the
Happy Restoration
in my mind's eye. I looked about me at my trim little ship that bucked along its sea path with such energy. And I called to mind Kit's patient, open face as he taught me and his scowling determination as he looked at the letters I showed him. I had my answer. I frowned in a 'be about your business' fashion at the men on the mizzen and resumed my efforts with the journal.

Course.
Well, we were plainly sailing west–even a Bedfordshire man knows the significance of the Sun's path through the skies–so I confidently wrote down the letter W. But then I would need to write a number, and this would be derived from the meridian compass that Landon cherished like a lover. Although I could already essay a sound guess at the bearing of a fixed point, an empty horizon was another case entirely. I decided to leave the remainder of this column blank for the moment.

Latitude by Dead Reckoning.
This, of course, was the substance of the mystic ritual that Landon and his mates conducted every noon-time. I was dimly aware of what the term 'latitude' signified–great circles around the globe, or at least, circles that did not exist, but which were deduced by mariners from the strange sightings that they took of the Sun or the stars by night, followed by much mumbling over books filled with impenetrable numbers. But as for 'dead reckoning', what form of reckoning was this? And why was it dead? Farrell had certainly mentioned it, but then, he had told me so much, and in so short a time. I pressed my quill hard against the paper, making a blot that would look as though I had accidentally obscured the correct number.

Wind.
Somewhat from astern, and somewhat off the land, which lay to the north. But I knew 'north' would not be good enough for Kit Farrell. No, the mariners had decreed that there were many kinds of north–'north by east', or 'east by north-east', and so forth. Was it still east by north, as it had been earlier? The yards seemed to have swung a little, but we had changed course too, which confused the matter. I wrote an 'N', and decided that would be sufficient.

Weather.
I looked at the sky...

A cry came from our lookout, Treninnick, perched an improbable way up our mainmast, and although some would damn it as popery, I thanked God, the shade of my grandfather, and our family's old patron saint, Quentin, for saving me from this purgatory of the log book. Treninnick's guttural Cornish shouts would have been unintelligible to me even if he had not been dangling from the mast in excitement, but Ali Reis, seemingly master of every tongue spoken from Calicut to Carolina, had no difficulty with it.

'The port of Looe, Captain,' said the swarthy rogue. 'First harbour in Cornwall. Boats coming out to us.'

Indeed, five or six small craft were coming out of Looe Bay, tacking rapidly to intercept us, seabirds circling in their wakes. Within minutes, almost our entire ship's company was on deck; the starboard watch, whose duty it was, jostled with all those of the larboard who had come up from below. It was the first time I had seen so many of my crew in an unguarded moment, not at a formal assembly, and great Lord, what a crew they were. Almost all were bronzed by years spent in the open, in every weather condition under heaven. Every second man, at least, bore some sort of scar, no doubt obtained in one of James Harker's many battles. I knew a few names, now–'Tre', 'Pol', or 'Pen', most of them, the unfamiliar surnames of this Cornish breed. God alone knew what they truly thought of me.

A brave soul called out and waved to the approaching boats. Boatswain Ap, who bestrode the deck with an expression of alarm on his angular Welsh face, glanced at me for direction, but I shook my head. Seeing the exchange, a second man called out, then a third. Within moments, the entire ship's rail was alive with leaping, shouting, laughing Jupiters.

Alerted by the commotion, Musk and Kit Farrell had returned to the quarterdeck. 'So this is what they call a mutiny, I suppose,' said Musk. He rubbed his white hands together and fixed a desolate eye upon the rowdy crew.

I smiled. 'I think not. This is their country, Musk, so close they can almost touch it—'

'Or throw you and I to the fishes and steer for it, if they were so minded,' said he.

'They have all been away from home for months, if not years. It being that we must creep along the coast, let them have joy of it while they can.'

'Captain Judge seems to be taking an interest in our proceedings, sir,' Kit said.

I raised my eyepiece, and saw Judge on his quarterdeck, studying the
Jupiter
through his. He had discarded his wig and face powder, revealing a shaven head crowned with grey stubble and a harsh warrior's countenance at odds with the delicate Turkish gown of yellow silk that he wore.

'I doubt if Captain Judge approves of such abandon in a ship's crew, Mister Farrell,' I said. 'But if he wishes to take us past Cornwall as fast as the wind will permit, I'll at least give my men the consolation of some contact with their people.'

The first of the Looe boats was within hailing distance, and a shout came up from it. 'John Craze of Muchlarnick!' A young bearded man of the larboard watch waved. 'John Craze, your mother's dead these three weeks!' Craze turned away, his messmates comforting him.

A second boat hailed us. 'Will Seaton of Looe! Your wife's left you! Aye, and for John Craze's father, too!'

Seaton, a big man in the carpenter's crew, howled in fury, sprang down from the starboard rail, and launched a furious attack with his fists against his newly bereaved shipmate. Boatswain Ap and two of his mates stepped in briskly and cudgelled Seaton about the head.

'Maybe Captain Judge had the rights of it,' said Musk disapprovingly. 'By the time we get to Land's End, this ship won't have a man left standing.'

I was beginning to regret my decision to allow such liberty to the crew, but another boat had tacked smartly alongside us. She had three aboard her: two grinning young men on her sail and tiller, and a strong young woman with long black hair that flew about her comely face in the breeze. 'Hey, the
Jupiter
!' she called in a lusty voice. 'Hey, husband!'

'I'll husband you, woman, whenever you want it!' cried Julian Carvell, his grinning black face and slow drawl unmistakeable. The men around him laughed.

'I've better than you any day, blackamore! Where are you, John Tremar?'

Two men hoisted a little man, half the woman's size, onto their shoulders. He waved and shouted, 'I'm here, Wenna!'

'Tremar, you giant!' she cried, to laughter from every Jupiter. 'Look, John Tremar, at your parting gift to me!'

She stooped to a wicker basket jammed in the bow of the boat and lifted a corner of a blanket to reveal two tiny red sleeping faces. 'Holy Jesus!
Twins!
' cried John Tremar.

Wenna Tremar shouted, 'You'd best take the prize of all the oceans this voyage, John. Only the Spaniards' plate fleet will keep your wife and sons content!'

Emboldened by the delight of fatherhood, John Tremar shouted to me, 'Captain, sir! What chance we can take such a prize?'

Boatswain Ap moved threateningly towards him, but I raised my hand and smiled. 'We may struggle to take the entire plate fleet, John Tremar. But who needs King Philip's papist silver when we have good King Charles's honest coin? I rejoice with you in your good fortune!'

I reached into my purse and threw a silver crown, which Tremar caught expertly. The crew cheered, the first time they had saluted me thus, and I saw my mysterious Frenchman, Roger Le Blanc, smile to himself. Tremar grinned and held up the coin for his wife and sons to see.