The Monsoon (12 page)

Caroline gave Tom a single haughty glance, then moved in her chair so that he was out of her eye-line. Oblivious to the sideshow, William was continuing, “... Father, I know that as you have many times before, you will return to us with your fame enhanced and the holds of your ships bearing great profit. I live for that day. But while you are away I wish you to know that the affairs of the family here in England will receive my unstinted care and attention.” Hal leaned back in his chair, his eyes half closed, smiling encouragement as he listened to his eldest son’s sonorous praises and hearty wishes for his safety and wellbeing. But when William included the names of his three half-brothers in his address, Hal felt a tickle of doubt: the sentiments he was expressing were too fulsome.

He opened his eyes suddenly to see William looking towards Tom at the end of the table. His cold dark eyes were so much at odds with the warmth of his words that Hal knew that little of what he had said was sincere.

William sensed the depth of his father’s appraisal and glanced at him, quickly masking his malevolence. At once his expression became affectionate again, tinged with sadness for the impending departure of all those he loved best.

However, what he had seen in William’s eyes started a train of thought in Hal and filled him with foreboding, a sudden premonition that this was the last time he would sit around the same table with all his sons. The winds of hazard are bearing us all away, each on his own separate course. Some of us will never see High Weald again, he thought. He felt a melancholy so profound that he could not shrug it off, and had to force a smile to his lips as he rose to reply to William’s toast: “God speed and fair windsr t the end of the breakwater William sat on Sultan, his black stallion, and lifted his hat high in salute Las the two ships put out to sea. Hal walked to the rail of the quarterdeck and returned his salute before turning away to give orders to the helm to bring the ship round for the run down the Sound to the open sea.

“What course to weather Ushant?” he asked Ned Tyler as they cleared Penlee Point, and the green hills of England began to drop away astern. Ned stood by the newfangled steering wheel which, on such a modern ship, had replaced the ancient whipstall. It was a marvelous invention: using the whipstall the helmsman had been limited to five-degree turns either side of centre but with this new wheel he could lay the tiller seventy degrees across for much greater control of the ship’s direction under way.

“The wind stands fair, Captain. South-west by south,” Ned answered. He knew that the question was a formality, that Hal had checked his chart carefully before leaving his cabin.

“Mark it on your traverse!” Hal told him, and Ned set a peg in a hole in the border of the circular traverse board.

A peg would be added every half-hour and at the end of the watch the mean course could be found, and the ship’s position calculated by dead reckoning.

Hal walked ari looking up at the sails. They were running free, with the wind coming in fresh over the port quarter. With Ned’s setting, every sail was drawing beautifully, and Seraph was flying she seemed to leap from wave to wave. Hal felt a wild exhilaration, the intensity of which surprised him: I thought I was too old to have this joy again from a ship and the promise of adventure, he thought.

It took an effort to keep his expression calm and his gait dignified, but Big Daniel was standing by the break of the quarterdeck and they caught each other’s eye. They did not smile but each understood how the other felt.

The passengers were standing amidships, lining the rail. The women’s skirts whipped and fluttered in the wind, and they had to hold on to their bonnets. But as soon as Seraph cleared the land and felt the full thrust of the sea, the feminine squeals of excitement died away, and one after the other they left the rail and hurried below, until only Caroline was left standing beside her father.

All that day, and for several that followed, the force of the wind increased. It drove the two ships on, until -one evening it was threatening a full gale, and Hal was forced to shorten sail. As darkness fell, both ships hoisted lanterns in their main tops to maintain contact, and as dawn broke Ned knocked on Hal’s cabin door to tell him that the Yeoman was in sight two miles astern and that the light on Ushant was fine on the port bow.

Before noon they rounded Ushant and plunged headlong into the stormy waters of Biscay, which lived up to their evil reputation. For the next week the crew had good practice at handling the sails and working the ship in turbulent waters and high winds. Among the ladies only Caroline seemed unaffected, and joined Tom and Dorian for daily lessons in Master Walsh’s crowded little cabin.

She spoke little, and not at all to Tom, continuing to ignore even his most clever quips and witticisms. She declined when he offered to help her with the mathematical problems that Master Walsh set for them.

Languages and mathematics were two of the areas in which Tom excelled.

She also refused to join the lessons in Arabic that All Wilson gave the three boys for an hour each afternoon.

During the crossing of the Bay of Biscay, Guy was prostrated by seasickness. Hal was deeply disturbed that any son of his could succumb so to the motion of the waves. Nevertheless he had a pallet laid in the corner of the stern cabin for him, and Guy lay there, pale and groaning, as though on the point of death, unable to eat and only just able to gulp water from the mug Aboli held for him.

Mrs. Beatty and her younger daughters were in no better case. None of them left their cabins, and Dr. Reynolds, helped by Caroline, spent most of his days attending to them. There was much spiriting to and fro of chamber, pots and dumping their contents over the side of the ship.

The sour odour of vomit pervaded the stern quarters.

Hal had ordered their course laid off well to the westwards, to avoid running aground during darkness on the islands of Madeira and the Canaries and in the hope of picking up more favourable winds when they at last entered the doldrums. However, it was only when they were approaching thirty-five degrees north latitude, with Madeira a hundred leagues eastward, that the gales began at last to moderate. In these easier conditions Hal was able to set about repairs to the sails and rigging that the ship had sustained during the storms, and to exercise his crew in manoeuvres other than sail-setting and shortening. The crew were able to dry out their clothing and sodden bedding, the cook could get his fires going and serve hot fare. A different mood took over the ship.

Within days Mrs. Beatty and her younger girls reappeared on deck, at first wan and listless, but soon in brighter spirits. It was not long before Agnes and Sarah had become the ship’s pests. They took an especial set at Tom, for whom they had developed an overwhelming 6.

hero-worship, and it was to escape them that Tom talked Aboli into allowing him to go aloft, without his father’s permission, which they knew would not be forthcoming.

Hal came on deck at the change of the forenoon watch to find Tom out on the yard thirty feet above the deck, bare feet planted firmly on the horse as he helped shake out another reef in the main topsail. Hal froze in mid-stride, his head thrown back, searching for an order that would bring Tom back to the deck without making plain his concern. He turned to the helm, saw that all the officers on deck were watching him, and casually crossed to where Aboli stood at the rail.

“I recall the first time you ever climbed to the main topmast, Gundwane,” Aboli said softly.

“It was in heavy seas off the Agulhas Bank. You did it because I had forbidden you to go higher than the main shrouds. You were two years younger than Klebe is now but, then, you always were a wild boy.” Aboli shook his head disapprovingly, and spat over the side.

“Your father, Sir Francis, wanted to take the rope end to you. I should have let him do it.” Hal remembered the incident clearly. What had begun as boyish defiance had ended in abject terror as he had clung to the mast top while, a hundred feet below, vistas of the deck alternated with glimpses of the creaming green waves as the ship rolled and plunged, and the wake streamed away behind. Was Tom really two years older now than he had been that day? Certainly the yard from which his son was hanging was not even halfway to the topmast.

“You and I have both’ seen a fall from the main yard,” he growled.

“It breaks bone and kills just as surely as from the mainmast truck.”

“Klebe will not fall. He climbs like an ape.”

Aboli grinned suddenly.

“It must be in his blood.” Hal ignored the sally and returned to his cabin, ostensibly to write up his log but in truth so that he would no longer have to watch his son in the rigging.

For the rest of the forenoon watch he waited to hear that terrible meaty thump on the deck above his head, or the cries of “Man overboardV When at last there was a knock on the door of the cabin and Tom, beaming with pride, put his head through to deliver a message from the officer of the watch, Hal almost leaped up with relief and hugged him to his chest.

When they ran into the doldrums, the ship lay becalmed, all sails drooping, without even an eddy or ripple under her counter. In the middle of the morning Hal was with Big Daniel, Ned Tyler and Wilson in his cabin, again going over Wilson’s description of the capture of the Minotaur by Jangiri. Hal wanted all his officers to know exactly what to expect, and to have their ideas on how best to bring Jangiri to battle, or to discover the whereabouts of his sally port.

Suddenly Hal broke off from what he was saying, and cocked his head. There was some unusual activity on the deck above, footsteps, the faint sound of voices and laughter.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” He came to his feet and hurried up the companionway. He looked about swiftly.

All the off-duty hands were on deck, in fact, every loafer on board seemed to be there. All heads were craned back, looking up at the main mast. Hal followed their gaze.

Tom was sitting easily astride the main royal yard and calling encouragement to Dorian.

“Come on, Dorry. Don’t look down.” Dorian was hanging in the topmast shrouds below him. For a horrible moment Hal thought he was frozen there, eighty feet above the deck, but then the boy moved.

He took one cautious step up, then he groped for a handhold on the ropework above his head and took another step.

“That’s it, Dorry! Another one now!” The strength-of Hal’s anger towards Tom was heightened by his fear for the child. I should have thrashed the skin off his backside when he played his first trick in the rigging, he thought, and strode to the helm and seized the hailing trumpet from its bracket. Before he could lift it to his mouth and bellow at the boys, Aboli appeared at his side.

“It will not be wise to frighten them now, Gundwane.

Dorian needs both hands and all his wits for the job.” Hal lowered the trumpet and held his breath as Dorian inched, hand over hand, up the shrouds.

“Why did you not stop them, AboliP he asked furiously.

“They did not ask me.”

“Even if they had, you would have let them go,” Hal said accusingly.

(I

do not know, in truth.” Aboli shrugged.

“Every boy comes to manhood in his own time and in his own way.” He was still watching the small boy in the high rigging.

“Dorian is not afraid.”

“How do you know?” Hal snarled, beside himself with fear.

“Look at the way he holds his head. Watch his feet and hands as he takes his holds.” Hal did not answer. He saw that Aboli was right.

A coward clings to the ropes and closes his eyes, his hands shake and the smell of terror is strong upon him. Dorian kept moving, head up and eyes ahead. Almost every man of the crew was on deck, watching, and they were silent and tense.

Tom reached out towards his brother.

“Almost there, Dorry!” But Dorian scorned the helping hand and, with a visible effort, pulled himself up beside his big brother. He took a moment to catch his breath, then threw back his head and let out a high cry of triumph.

Tom put a protective arm around his shoulders and hugged him.

Their beaming faces were clear to see even at that distance from the deck.

The crew burst into spontaneous cheering, and Dorian pulled his cap from his head and waved it at them.

He and Tom were already the ship’s favourites.

“He was ready for it,” Aboli said.

“And he has proved it.”

“My God, he’s only a baby! I will forbid him to go aloft again!” Hal burst out.

“Dorian is no baby. You see with the eyes of a father,” Aboli told him.

“Soon there will be fighting, and you and I both know that in a fight the topmast is the safest place for a lad to be.” This was true, of course. When he was that age Hal’s battle quarter had always been high aloft, for the enemies” fire was directed at the hull, and if the ship were boarded he would be out of harm’s way.

A few days later Hal amended the quarter-bill to place both Tom and Dorian in the mainmast crow’s nest when the ship went into battle.

He was not certain what he should do with Guy, who had shown no indication of wishing to leave the safety of the main deck. Perhaps he could act as surgeon’s mate in the sickbay, he thought.

But, then, he might not take kindly to the sight of blood.

n the doldrums the wind flirted with them. For days on end it died away completely, and the sea was oily calm.

The heat beat down upon the ship and they laboured for breath while sweat burst from every pore of their skins.

Those on deck sought the shade of the sails as respite from the sun. Then, on the horizon, a cat’s-paw would scratch the slick surface of the sea, and a breath of wind would scurry to fill the sails and bear them away for an hour or a day.

When the wind, capricious and fickle, stranded them again, and the ship lay dead in the water, Hal battle trained his men. He worked them at the guns, watch competing against watch to be the quickest at loading, running out, firing and loading again. He gave them musketry drill, throwing a barrel over side to act as a target.