Inshore Squadron (6 page)

Bolitho was surprised he was so relaxed. He was able to drowse while the razor slid smoothly up his throat, to listen to the sluice of water overhead and the attendant march of bare feet as the decks were washed down.

He thought he heard the boatswain's thick voice, too. Swale, Big Tom as he was called, had a strange sounding tone, almost a lisp, caused by the loss of most of his front teeth. In battle or brawl, Bolitho did not know. Herrick had said he was a good boatswain, and at this moment he was probably examining the poop and quarterdeck again. It was always a strain for the first weeks at sea for a newly built ship. Timber, not always as well seasoned as it should be after years of war and shortages, could do strange things with the hull rolling about in all directions.

Benbow
certainly sailed well, he thought. Several times the other two-deckers had been forced to spread more canvas to keep up with her. A fine ship. She alone must have taken the best part of a forest to build.

Bolitho jerked upright in the chair, making Allday exclaim, “
Easy,
sir! I all but parted your windpipe just then!”

Then he said, “I heard it, too. Gunfire!”

Bolitho started to rise and then lay back again. “Finish the shave, please.” He controlled his sudden excitement. “It won't do for me to go rushing on deck.”

It was hard, all the same. He had always been used to going at once to the quarterdeck to assess the circumstances for himself. He recalled one of his first captains, when as a midshipman he had been ordered to pass an urgent message aft to that same lordly presence.

The captain had been drinking in his stern cabin. Bolitho could picture him without effort. As he had stammered out the message, the captain had turned merely to nod and say, “My compliments to the first lieutenant, Mr Bolitho. Tell him I will come up
shortly.
That is, if you have still the breath for it!”

Perhaps he, too, had been dying to see for himself, as Bolitho was now.

There was a tap at the screen door and Herrick entered the cabin.

“Good morning, Thomas.” He smiled. It was wrong to play games with Herrick and he added, “I heard firing.”

Herrick nodded. “From the bearing I would say it is
Lookout,
sir, to the nor' east.”

Bolitho wiped his skin with a towel and stood up, feeling the deck quiver as the rudder fell heavily in a trough.
Lookout
was the little sloop-of-war, and her captain was Commander Veitch, Herrick's previous first lieutenant. A stern-looking man from Tynemouth, utterly dependable, who had earned his promotion the hard way. If he was tackling something on his own, then it was small and agile. Veitch obviously considered there was no time to inform his flagship or call for assistance. He was not that sort of man anyway.

Herrick suggested, “Probably a blockade runner, sir.”

Ozzard hurried in with Bolitho's coat and held it out like a Spaniard tormenting a bull.

Bolitho said, “Are either of the frigates in sight yet?”

More explosions echoed against the
Benbow
's side. Short and sharp.
Lookout
's bow-chasers from their sound.

Herrick replied, “Not when I was on deck, sir.
Relentless
should be away to the sou' west and
Styx
down to lee'rd as instructed.”

“Good.” He slipped into his coat. It felt damp. “Let us see for ourselves.”

The sky was much brighter when they walked from beneath the poop, and Wolfe hurried to meet them.

“Masthead reports
Lookout
in sight, sir. She's in company with another smaller craft. Either a brig or a ship with one mast shot out of her!” He bared his teeth.

Bolitho could read his mind. An early capture. Prize-money. A command for somebody. Even a temporary one as prizemaster was all it needed in wartime. And some luck. Bolitho had had both, and had so won his own first command.

People bustled about the quarterdeck, securing the pumps and scrubbers, faces still obscured in shadow. But all well aware that their admiral was up and about. What did it mean to them? A sea fight? Death or mutilation? It would certainly be a break in the monotony of daily routine.

Bolitho saw some of the officers on the lee side of the deck. Byrd and Manley, the fourth and fifth lieutenants, and, younger still, Courtenay, the sixth, whom Allday had ousted from his barge.

He must find time to meet and get to know them. He was lucky to know the minds of the officers who captained the squadron, but if the
Benbow
was driven into a hard battle, a young lieutenant could find himself in command after one devastating broadside.

Wolfe had a telescope to his eye and said, “Here comes
Relentless!
I can just see her sky-scrapers. She scents the smell of battle, sir.”

Bolitho could imagine the activity aboard the thirty-six-gun frigate. He had met her young captain, Rowley Peel, only twice. He was the odd one out in the squadron, but was quick to move when need be. Dashing down from his station to protect his heavier consorts, to harry the enemy, to attempt whatever was so ordered by the flagship.

Old Grubb rumbled, “Better day today. Fine an' clear.” He lapsed into silence again, his hands thrust deeply into his shabby watch-coat.

Wolfe saw Pascoe on the larboard gangway and called harshly, “Would you go aloft, Mr Pascoe. Take a glass and see what you can determine.”

Pascoe threw his hat to a seaman and ran to the weather shrouds. He was amongst the black tangle of rigging and beyond the mainyard before Bolitho could watch his progress. Bolitho thought of his own hatred for heights, what it had cost him at Pascoe's age. He felt his mouth lift in a smile. It would sound ridiculous to tell somebody that one of the fruits of his promotion had been that he no longer had to climb up those head-spinning shrouds.

Pascoe called down, his voice clear above the drumming beat of canvas and rigging.

“
Lookout
has grappled, sir! The other one is a brig. She wears no flag but they are hoisting our colours now!”

Several of the idlers on the gangways and gundeck cheered, and Herrick exclaimed: “So soon. Well done. Well done.”

Bolitho nodded. “You trained your old first lieutenant well, Thomas.”

Lieutenant Browne appeared through the after companion, buttoning his coat and saying, “I heard something. What is happening?”

Wolfe said to the sailing master, “A lot of use
he'll
be.”

Herrick answered, “We have taken a prize, Mr Browne. I fear you have missed it.”

Several of the nearby seamen were grinning and nudging each other. Bolitho sensed the change. There was a better feeling already.

“Deck there! Land on the lee bow!”

Herrick and the master bustled to the chart room beneath the poop to consult their findings.

That would be The Skaw. As far as the strange brig was concerned, it had been a near thing. An hour earlier and she would have slipped away unseen.

Bolitho said, “I will take breakfast now. Let me know when
Lookout
is near enough to exchange signals.”

Herrick stood by the chart room entrance, shading his eyes as if he expected to see the other vessels.

“Mr Grubb thinks we should be off The Skaw before noon if the wind stays with us.”

“I agree. Once there you may signal the squadron to anchor in succession.” Bolitho nodded to the other officers and made his way aft.

Herrick gave a great sigh. He tended to worry when Bolitho was nearby, but he worried all the more when he was gone.

Pascoe slithered down to the deck and retrieved his hat. He was about to approach the quarterdeck when a small figure stepped from between two
18
-pounders and said, “Excuse me, sir!” It was Midshipman Penels.

“Yes?” Pascoe paused and studied the boy.
Was I ever like that?

“I—I don't know how to explain, sir.”

He sounded and looked so despairing that Pascoe said, “Speak out.”

It was virtually impossible to find any privacy in a ship-of-war. Apart from the captain, and possibly a man deep in the ship's cells, there was always a crowd.

Pascoe knew very little about the newest midshipman. He was from Cornwall, and that was all he had to go on.

He said, “You are from Bodmin, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.” Penels looked around like a trapped animal. “There's someone in your division, sir. Someone I grew up with back in England.”

Pascoe stood aside as a file of marines stamped past on their way to one of their complicated drills.

Penels explained, “His name is John Babbage, sir. He was taken by the press-gang at Plymouth. I didn't know until we were at sea. He worked for my mother after my father died, sir. He was good to me. My best friend.”

Pascoe looked away. It was not his place to interfere. In any case, Penels should have gone to the first lieutenant or the master.

But he remembered his own beginning. The long, hungry walk from Penzance to Falmouth. Just a boy, and quite alone.

“Why did you approach me, Mr Penels? The truth now.”

“My friend said you are a good officer, sir. Not so sharp as some.”

Pascoe formed a mental picture of this unfortunate Babbage. A wild-eyed youth, nearer his own age than Penels', he would have thought.

“Well, we are with the squadron now, Mr Penels. Had you come to me in port I might have been able to do something.” He thought of Wolfe and knew it would have made little difference even then.

A ship needed men. Every hand she could get. Wolfe was a good officer in many ways, but he was short of sympathy for any catch brought aboard by the press.

But it must be hard for both Penels and his friend of boyhood days.

In the same hull, yet neither knowing the other was aboard until the ship was standing out to sea. Separated not only by rank and station, but also by the ship's own geography. Penels served with the afterguard for sail drill and duty with the quarterdeck nine-pounders. Babbage was classed as a landman in his own division at the foremast. Babbage was young and agile. With luck he should soon learn to run aloft with the topmen, the aristocrats of seamanship.

He heard himself say, “I will look into it. I'll not promise anything though.”

He strode away, unable to bear the gratitude in Penels' eyes.

Commander Matthew Veitch arrived in Bolitho's cabin and looked around him curiously. On his left shoulder the single epaulette denoting his rank glittered in bright contrast to his shabby sea-going coat. Veitch had served with Bolitho before and knew he would get no thanks for wasting time to change his clothing before he reported to the flagship.

Bolitho said, “Sit down and tell me about it.”

It felt strange to be at anchor again. The four ships of the line were all lying to their cables in close formation, with the Danish coast clearly visible through the quarter windows. The frigates were still on patrol, like watchdogs, they rarely rested.

The sloop and her prize were also at anchor off Skaw Point, which in recent months had become the fleet's general rendezvous and resting place.

Veitch stretched his long legs. “The prize is a merchant brig, sir, the
Echo
out of Cherbourg. Slipped through our patrols in a storm last week, her master says. She made a run for it, so I raked her promptly.”

Bolitho glanced at the bulkhead door. Beyond it Browne, who had a good knowledge of French, was busy going through the
Echo
's papers which Veitch had brought aboard.

A French brig. Without obvious cargo or passengers. She had taken considerable risk in running the blockade, more again when she had attempted to outsail the
Lookout.

“Where bound?”

Veitch shrugged. “Her master had false papers, I suspect. But the charts were found stuffed in the lazarette by one of my midshipmen with the boarding party.” He grinned. “The lad was searching for food, no doubt, but I'll not spoil his glory because of that!” He became serious again. “Two points were marked, sir. Copenhagen and Stockholm.”

Herrick moved restlessly away from the quarter windows and said, “It smells, sir.”

Bolitho looked at him. “You think as I do, Thomas? The French are in some way mixed up with Tsar Paul's discontent?”

Herrick replied, “I feel certain of it, sir. The more they can put under arms, the better it is for them. We'll have the whole world against us if they have their way!”

The door opened and Browne entered the cabin. He held one letter in his hand, the broken seal shining dully like blood. He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“What does it say?” Bolitho had noticed that Browne never shared a single word of information with anyone else present without his permission.