The Mountain of Gold (15 page)

'
Seraph
be damned,' another shouted, 'I'll take my chance on the next Levanter out of Erith Reach!'

'Aye, that'll be a better wage than the King'll pay this side of the next century!' These cries, too, were greeted with approbation.

'Quinton?' shouted another. 'Another of the king's cursed gentlemen captains, put in by his papist friends and his painted whores. Popinjays, the lot of them. I'd rather sail under Old Nick!'

'Lost his first ship, too—the
Protector,
as was. And God knows what he did with the
Jupiter,
last year—they say she'd been holed twixt wind and water, and but rudely repaired before they brought her back into Woolwich—my brother's a shipwright down there—'

The murmuring and clamour of hostility grew apace. I was torn. My heart told me to ride forward boldly to the aid of one of my officers; and more, to that of a good friend. But my head gave other counsel. My appearance among the hostile throng at that moment would surely do nothing to change the mood. If anything, it would probably worsen it, for I somehow doubted that the entrance of Captain Matthew Quinton, stage left, would have been greeted by an enthusiastic ovation. Worse, it might diminish our prospects of raising men at another time, among the better disposed (or more desperate) who thronged the tidewaters of the Thames. And worst of all, my entrance might undermine Kit; and if I knew anything of Christopher Farrell, it was that he could fight his own cause.

My decision made, I turned my horse toward an alley on the left. There was rough, open ground at the back of the houses, and I made my way down to the rear of what was obviously an alehouse of modest proportions. I dismounted, tethered my horse and made my way towards the back door. As I did so, a formidably large and pungent woman emerged from within.

"Sakes,' she cried, 'it's the captain! John! Get your brother—'

I raised my hands to quieten Mistress Farrell, Kit's mother, whose speech still betrayed traces of her native Lancashire. She was a woman of little intelligence, but when it came to the rough protocols of the foreshore, there were few to equal her, and she caught my gist at once. She led me within and deposited me in a small side room, well away from the front windows and from the other customers, who were already far advanced in their lusty and liquid commemoration of the Virgin Queen. John Farrell, one of my friend's numerous elder brothers, served me a mug of Hull ale with a surly nod and a grunt.

I waited perhaps half an hour for Kit to abandon his unequal struggle with the recalcitrant mariners of Wapping shore and retreat back to the embrace of his family's alehouse.

'Captain Quinton!' he cried as he came into the room. 'I had not expected you to wait upon me!'

We shook warmly and toasted both each other and good success to the voyage of the
Seraph.
'Good success indeed,' I said, 'though from what I could hear, you were having but little success in persuading men of the merits of listing with us?'

Kit Farrell shrugged. 'It's hard enough to persuade a man to take a passage to Guinea at the best of times, sir. But with the winter coming on, and so many men already abroad or looking for a fat voyage in the spring, long before we'd be back from Africa ... And if truth be told, Captain, trying to raise men on a holiday was arrant folly on my part. My mother said as much to me, this morning. But I had a mind to be about our business, and idling away even Queen Elizabeth's day is not my way.' That was Kit, above all. I do not think I ever met a man of more purpose, for whom every hour was to be employed to best advantage. Of course, much of this derived from the Puritan faith of the Farrells, and from sermons drummed into him by the dissenting ministers who thronged Wapping and all the other Thames-side towns, fighting their endless battle to turn this least promising of congregations from drink, fornication and fist-fighting to the ways of Our Lord.

I said, 'I think your first instinct was correct, Boatswain Farrell. Tomorrow, we shall both resume the business of the
Seraph.
Today, I think we should fall in with the common herd. From what I have gathered of the great Gloriana, she would have demanded nothing less of us.' I raised my tankard, and we both toasted the immortal memory of Elizabeth the Great, Queen of England.

We were not too far gone on drink—our toasting had reached the memories of both of our fathers, and had not yet descended to wishing damnation upon the Pope, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and all other foreigners (as it had in the larger rooms elsewhere in the alehouse)—and we were discussing our respective recent voyages, mine in the Middle Sea aboard the
Wessex,
Kit in the Caribbee aboard the
Caroline Merchant.
The sun was down, for we were on the cusp of winter, and Mistress Farrell had John bring us more candles, and sea-coals for the fire. The hubbub in the Slaughtered Lamb grew ever louder, for the burning of the Pope was imminent, and men were beginning to throng the windows and to spill out into the road to watch the procession pass. The cacophony of rough trumpets and drums heralded its approach. There were songs galore, a dozen or more sung at once, all of them tunelessly. And yet, in the midst of all that, I thought I heard a child's cry: 'The dockyard! There's a fire at Deptford!'

Kit and I ran to the front of the Slaughtered Lamb, but it was well-nigh impossible to go any further. Both sides of the street were lined by an almost impenetrable throng of laughing, drunken spectators. Between them, a great river of people flowed triumphantly toward the east, singing and shouting as they went. Near to the head of the procession was the focus of it all, transported in mock-state upon a bier: a dummy dressed up in clerical alb and chasuble, adorned with a goldpainted wooden replica of the papal triple tiara.

Kit and I pushed our way through the crowd, but it took a seeming eternity to reach the procession itself, and even longer to steer a crazy course through the laughing, dancing, drunken revellers within it. The crowd on the river side was smaller, and we had less difficulty shoulder-charging our way through the whores and children who had congregated there. Through, then, and down an alley to the foreshore—to see the houses along the shore of Rotherhithe illuminated by flames a mile or more to the south and east of them. The bend of the river made it impossible to see the source, but Kit and I both knew that there was nothing beyond Cuckolds Haven, at the east end of Rotherhithe; nothing until one came to the royal dockyard at Deptford.

'We'll not find a horse-ferry at this time of night,' I cried to Kit, 'even if the ferrymen aren't all filling their bellies with ale!'

'Aye, sir,' he said, 'and the procession will block the road down to Shadwell and Poplar, else we could have ridden down the Isle of Dogs and hoped for a boat at the bottom of it. One thing for it, Captain, though there's no wind to sail with, and the tide's against us!'

We ran down to the river's edge, where Kit picked out one of the smaller boats that lay in the mud and began to push it down the mud toward the Thames stream. I joined him and promptly fell face down into the mud for my pains. We pushed again, and got the boat into the water. It was a bitter night, and frost was already forming on the banks and on the wales and planking of the boat itself. The tide had but recently turned, so as we settled to the oars, we both knew that we faced a hard row against the flood. So it proved. It would have been a struggle for a decent crew, but Kit and I were an ill-matched pair of oarsman; he had been born to this, whereas I was the landsman personified, splashing water clumsily with every stroke I took. Thus, with Kit to larboard and me to starboard, my inadequacies and the tide meant that we often veered alarmingly for the Surrey shore. This would have been a sufficient problem in an empty river, but the Thames has probably not been empty since first it bubbled its way to the sea. The narrow channel was full of ships and lighters at anchor, and as the tide came in, more and more of those that lay on the mud floated free, their cables placing a web-like succession of new obstacles in our way. My oar struck buoys or became entangled with cables more times than I can now recall. Yet on we went, for livelihood and honour depended on it. My hands and face were numb with cold, my shoulders and arms screaming with pain, yet like one of O'Dwyer's galley slaves, I rowed as though driven by the lash. As we made the turn in the river at Limehouse, I glanced behind me and saw over our bow the flames reaching up from Deptford yard. I was relieved that it seemed to be contained in the west side of the dockyard (the great storehouse was not ablaze, and I could see the outline of a great ship in the dry dock, which was obviously safe). But then I recalled that our
Seraph
lay in the west part of the yard, on that side of the wet dock, and...

'It's a bad fire,' said Kit, who had also glanced over his shoulder. 'Pray God they can contain it. If there's too much timber and tar and pitch scattered around the yard, the whole place could be consumed. Every ship in it too, by God.'

Just then, flames erupted behind us, too; directly in my line of sight. I could hear shouts, and singing, and saw the tiny shapes of men dancing, silhouetted against the flames of a great bonfire. The procession had reached its end, down on the Poplar shore, and the pope was being burned. All was well in drunken Protestant England.

We rowed on, although all of my sinews were now joined as one in a loud chorus of pain and protest. At last we were into Greenwich Reach, and made for the dockyard wharf itself.

As we clambered ashore, I saw the true extent of the fire. Much of the area on the west side of the wet dock was ablaze, and the flames were already consuming the Fourth Rate that lay alongside the quay. To give credit, lines of dockyard men were hard at work bringing up buckets of water from the dock; others manned pumps as though their lives depended on it, or played the hoses connected to those pumps onto the flames. But most of the men were clearly concerned with dousing the fire at its source, thus saving the rest of the dockyard—as, indeed, they were right to do. Almost none seemed concerned with saving the three ships that lay alongside the west wall of the dock, the outermost of which was my command, the
Seraph.

Kit nudged me and pointed to a man whom we both recognised: Cox, the Master Attendant of Deptford, and thus the officer responsible for the safety of the ships in the yard. We ran to him, and asked him what he proposed to do to save our ship.

Cox scratched his head. 'Not much we can do, Captain Quinton. The
Harlingen
has already gone, God help her, though we tried to cut her free. We can't get men across her to save
Antelope
before the flames reach your
Seraph.'

'Good God, man,' I cried, 'surely we should be getting men out in boats and cutting
Seraph
and
Antelope
loose, rather than just standing here and letting all be lost!'

'No men to spare, sir. We have to save the yard—'

Now, it was true that the fate of three ships, and relatively expendable ships at that (for
Harlingen
was an old Dutch prize, and
Antelope
a mere Fifth Rate like
Seraph)
was as nothing to the fate of the entire dockyard. Yet the loss of
Seraph
would postpone my mission by many weeks, if not months, the time it would take to ready a new ship to be made ready to replace her. If, indeed, she was replaced at all. King Charles the Second was as fickle as the English weather, and by Christmas he might have forgotten all about the Mountain of Gold, especially if by then he was newly ensconced with Mistress Frances Stuart. And then how long it would be before Matthew Quinton found a new command, with pay and honour? I could see my good-brother Venner's face, and hear his prophetic words:
this mission will not succeed.

The thought struck me in that moment.
Sabotage?
But surely not even Sir Venner Garvey would risk the destruction of Deptford yard and the deaths of perhaps scores of men in this way?

Such suspicions could wait.

'Captain,' said Kit, 'I recall that you can swim, sir.' He had learned as much when we survived the wreck of the
Happy Restoration
off Kinsale two years before. It was a precious rare skill for a sea captain in those days, and even rarer among our glorious English aristocracy; but I had learned through necessity, diving into Ravensden pond when I was eleven to save my beloved twin Henrietta from drowning. (Much good it did her, for the consumption took her but two years later.) Kit pointed to the axes that were strewn around the quayside from the attempt to cut free the
Harlingen.
He said, 'Do you think you can swim with one of those?'

I stripped off my shirt. 'One way to find out, Mister Farrell.'

We both tucked axes into our belts and breeches, and lowered ourselves down the planking that lined the dockside. And came to the water. I cried in pain, for my limbs still ached from the row, and now they were assaulted by the bitterest cold I had then known in my life. For this was a hard frosty night in an English November, and only a madman would think it a good time to swim in the wet dock of Deptford.

Somehow I struck out for the
Seraph,
with Kit a little ahead of me. My heart raced. The cold seemed to be biting through my teeth. The axe was heavy and threatened to pull me under. Yet youth and desperation are powerful counterweights, and in truth, it was but a short swim. I took hold of a cable and hauled myself out of the water, climbing the larboard side of
Seraph
to her main deck. Kit was already there, and we both turned to see that the flames from the
Harlingen
were already creeping along the larboard rail and onto the main deck of
Antelope.
Pray God that neither ship had powder aboard, concealed by embezzling gunners.

Even if we were not blown to glory, we had precious little time. With gusto, Kit and I set to the task of hacking at the cables that secured our ship to the doomed
Antelope.
But Master Attendant Cox's men had been unduly scrupulous in making the ships fast. A myriad of cables fastened us to
Antelope,
and they were evidently of good, strong rope, not the poor stuff that the roperies often fobbed off onto the navy.